An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Henri II probably isn't interested in taking over any more German territory since he has already annexed the lands west of the Rhine into the French demesne. However, it's probably inevitable that Ottokar will lose control over the eastern Rhineland in favor of the Triunes, although luckily both Bavaria and Bohemia are safe from Triune annexation. Regardless, losing the Rhineland is going to devastate the Germans and I can't possibly see them accepting such a huge loss without another war for it in the future.
Random dinosaur shower thought:
Assuming that we get similar naming conventions of dinosaurs in Romania (although Latin terms would be stripped in favor of Greek names), I think there's a possibility that either Carcharodontosaurus or Spinosaurus is named Basilosaurus ("King Lizard") ITTL since those two might be the most likely speciments to be popular among the Roman court and the Basileus due to their monstrously huge size and terrifying appearance, befitting of a monarch trying to exude power and authority as an autocrat.
Again just a random shower thought, but it never hurts to imagine such things
Of course, then you'd have to find a different name for the real-life Basilosaurus, which also has had fossils found in North Africa and the Middle East.
I wonder how medical science in the Roman empire is faring, is the cutting edge medicine of the day humorism?
I wonder if Malta will become the center of medical science due to it hosting the knights hospitaller. I hope the Romans don't deprive the order of money due to being Catholic, they have been nothing but loyal to the empire.
I wonder if Malta will become the center of medical science due to it hosting the knights hospitaller. I hope the Romans don't deprive the order of money due to being Catholic, they have been nothing but loyal to the empire.
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Raven Movements: Not going to get into this because that’s the focus of the next update, but the Raven movement is like one of those armies from the 30 Years War with tons of camp followers. Even with the best of intentions, it can’t help but eat up the landscape. And their movements are going to have to be dictated by military necessity rather than ideological principles.
The more I think about it the more I like the ‘Wu agricultural expansion’ idea, largely because right now I’m on a prehistory kick. Which is yet another argument to keep outsiders away from Australia as long as possible.
Little Ice Age: It’s a global phenomenon. Everyone is going to get punched in the face.
Tyrannosaur (appeared in A New and Ancient World), Stegosaur, and Triceratops are all canon at this point in the narrative.
Medicine ITTL is at a comparable level to OTL; medical history isn’t a strength of mine.
The Knights aren’t at Malta; that happened well past the POD in circumstances wildly different from OTL. The Knights’ main base is at Minorca, which they rule as they did Malta or Rhodes IOTL.
The next part of Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids has been posted for Megas Kyr patrons.
Kyrie, eleison! The city of Constantinople is once again in Roman hands!
Thank you again for your support.
The more I think about it the more I like the ‘Wu agricultural expansion’ idea, largely because right now I’m on a prehistory kick. Which is yet another argument to keep outsiders away from Australia as long as possible.
Little Ice Age: It’s a global phenomenon. Everyone is going to get punched in the face.
Random dinosaur shower thought:
Assuming that we get similar naming conventions of dinosaurs in Romania (although Latin terms would be stripped in favor of Greek names), I think there's a possibility that either Carcharodontosaurus or Spinosaurus is named Basilosaurus ("King Lizard") ITTL since those two might be the most likely speciments to be popular among the Roman court and the Basileus due to their monstrously huge size and terrifying appearance, befitting of a monarch trying to exude power and authority as an autocrat.
Again just a random shower thought, but it never hurts to imagine such things
Tyrannosaur (appeared in A New and Ancient World), Stegosaur, and Triceratops are all canon at this point in the narrative.
Medicine ITTL is at a comparable level to OTL; medical history isn’t a strength of mine.
The Knights aren’t at Malta; that happened well past the POD in circumstances wildly different from OTL. The Knights’ main base is at Minorca, which they rule as they did Malta or Rhodes IOTL.
The next part of Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids has been posted for Megas Kyr patrons.
Kyrie, eleison! The city of Constantinople is once again in Roman hands!
Thank you again for your support.
Cryostorm
Monthly Donor
Probably the last Catholic group still relatively liked at this point, siding against Venice and helping in the Levant is unlikely to have been forgotten, nor their anti-piracy/Marinid privateering unappreciated, by Constantinople or the populace. Though I wonder if they ever started allowing other Christian denominations in or if the Orthodox, and other eastern Christians, made their own orders.
Doxa soi o theos!!!
I have read the update and all i can say is that is amazing
Are you planning on publishing Not the End once it's finished? Through Sea Lion Press or similar? I can't remember if you've already been asked this question, so sorry in advance if I simply missed it.
pls don't ban me
Monthly Donor
you need the greek version....
i was also thinking something like:
"LATINS PROVING ONCE AGAIN THEIR SKILLS AT RULING, SHALL WE PUT THEM OUT OF THEIR MISERY?"
They still have chapter houses, although they focus much more on hospitality for pilgrims and medical care (for both Orthodox and Catholic pilgrims, at least to common sites, and all donations are welcome) rather than armed security. They’re not as prominent or numerous in the Empire as they used to be, but that’s because ever since they got Minorca the Knights have been concentrating most of their efforts there. They’re still thought of fairly well; in a combined operation against Algiers the Romans wouldn’t be willing to put their ships under a Spanish commander, but would be willing to do so with a Hospitaler Admiral.
Thank you.
I haven’t thought that far ahead. Since it’s supposed to go into the early 1400s and I’m only at 1272, I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m finished with it.
Look to the West: The Ravens' Rebellion Part 2
Look to the West: The Ravens' Rebellion Part 2
At the beginning of the Long March, as it is often styled, the Ravens do not seem to have any particular destination in mind. They head to the northwest, keeping Bohemia on their right. Elizabeth, interested only in securing control over northern Bavaria, loses interest once they leave her lands. She has reestablished her authority over the region, but it is highly depopulated, stripped, and devastated. Ottokar still retains an interest in crushing this uprising, but he was dismayed at the butcher’s bill he’s already had to pay. So when the princes threatened by the Ravens call for aid, he wants them to contribute. They object, which infuriates Ottokar. The princes want him to crush rebels in their own lands using his money and his troops, while they refuse to add their own money and troops to the contest. Disgusted and wanting to conserve his resources, Ottokar restricts his efforts to ensuring the Ravens stay out of Bohemia. The Bohemian nobility back him fully in this; they don’t want to see Bohemian resources wasted on matters that are solely of German interest.
Some of the princes try to stop the Ravens but individually they lack the numbers. Most retreat to their fortified strongholds, harassing the peasants, although since the peasants are really good at ambuscades those raids can get very hairy for the raiders. The Ravens lack the artillery to break into fortified settlements, so most towns are able to buy them off with supplies coupled with a promise to move along. The princes and towns are just concerned with getting the Ravens to be somewhere else rather than cooperating together to destroy them. They certainly want the Ravens slaughtered, but they want someone else to do the bloody work.
In mid-summer the Ravens arrive at Fulda where a decision needs to be made. Do they turn to the west or shift to the north? Greatly complicating the decision-making process is that simultaneously a Triune army is storming out of the Fulda Gap from the west. This is the largest of the ‘forward columns’ traipsing through Germany, showing everyone who the real power is in the land and requisitioning supplies to maintain the Triune forces. It numbers 20,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry, backed by a field artillery train.
This is a serious problem for the Ravens. They cannot retire the way they came; they’ve eaten it up. They need supplies from Fulda to continue forward, but Fulda isn’t cooperating because the burghers know that the Triunes are going to demand supplies as well. Fulda can’t feed both, but only the Triunes can smash through the walls to take the city. Furthermore the Triune commander, the Earl of Pembroke, has his blue blood up at the thought of uppity peasants and is keen to wipe out the Ravens himself. The Ravens can’t avoid battle; they have a huge train of women, children, and animals, slowing their movement to a crawl.
Zimmermann has a numerical advantage, the most common figures giving him 27000 infantry. However he only has 600 ‘cavalry’, and they are practically all mounted infantry riding cheap nags rather than real cavalry. He has some artillery pieces captured from the Bavarians and Bohemians but with limited ammunition and crews far less capable than the skilled Triune artillerists. This is by far the greatest military test he has faced thus far.
Given these disadvantages, Zimmermann (likely unknowingly) takes a page from Iskandar the Great’s playbook and decides to stun the world with his audacity. He attacks.
Leading the way is a giant swarm of skirmishers, the most experienced and dedicated of his recruits. Many of them are crack shots, having been poachers in their past life. What is unprecedented in this, at least in this part of the world, is the sheer size of the swarm. Here Zimmermann’s experience of warfare in the east is demonstrated. The German forces had deployed some skirmishers during the fighting with the Romans and gradually upped the amount over the course of the war, but even by the end it was not comparable to the clouds Roman and Ottoman armies regularly threw at each other. The Triunes are even less used to skirmisher clouds than the Germans; the swarm would be standard to any Roman Strategos or Ottoman Bey, but the Earl has never seen anything like it.
The swarm is to harass and distract the Triunes from the real threat. With the widespread deployment of the flintlock musket plus ambrolar combination in recent decades, massively increasing the firepower of infantry compared to their matchlock arquebusier predecessors, the focus has been on line formation, maximizing the firepower component. That doesn’t work for Friedrich. In an open field engagement, he can’t afford to stand around and trade lead with opponents who will certainly have massive artillery superiority. He’s seen what massed guns do to infantry in the open. Also it is incredibly difficult to get men to stand in such brutal combat; that act runs contrary to all instinct of self-preservation. This is the origin of so much of the brutal discipline in regular armies of the time. The men must be more terrified of their officers than the enemy in front of them. (This is also why there is absolutely no tolerance for cowardice in the officer corps.) Friedrich though has volunteer recruits; he can’t get away with abusing them even if he wanted to, which he does not.
Friedrich can’t stand and trade fire. He needs to close and force a melee. Line formations are terrible at this, but columns are a different matter. The firepower of columns is weak, but they are comparatively very fast and maneuverable, much better at forcing a melee. In addition their shape encourages the men’s morale as just having a bunch of your mates literally at your back helps boost your spirits (plus the shame of trying to run away in front of all your mates). This plus their shape makes columns more resistant to cavalry attacks, a very pertinent detail at this point.
Friedrich deploys his best infantry not in the swarm into line to provide firepower but most of his foot are concentrated into three massive columns. The swarm distracts the Triunes, preventing them from blowing the heads off the columns with concentrated musketry and artillery. Flanking Triune cavalry halt one column but are unable to break it while the Triune cavalry on the other side get lost in the dust and smoke of the battlefield and attack the Raven camp. They are beaten off at the wagon laager by the Raven cavalry they’d scattered earlier plus the camp followers.
Meanwhile the other two Raven columns hit the Triune line and easily punch through it. Commanded by soldiers who’d served under Zimmermann in Rhomania, the columns pivot and start rolling up the Triune army. It breaks and routs. The cavalry, seeing the day is lost, ride away unmolested while the artillery train is overrun. The Triune infantry flee toward nearby Fulda, pursued by a massive murder of enraged Ravens. The inhabitants of Fulda, either through hatred of the Triunes or more likely fear of accidentally letting the Ravens inside, refuse to open the gates and the Triune soldiers are butchered outside by the Ravens.
It is the greatest defeat of a Triune army in a generation. The Earl of Pembroke is utterly disgraced and wisely retires to his country estates and stays there. Europe is stunned. Friedrich extracts a massive contribution from Fulda, helped substantially by the new Triune cannons and their accompanying ammunition wagons. He also makes the decision to head northeast. Traveling west runs the risk of running into more and larger Triune armies and despite the victory he does not wish to press his luck.
The Ravens have little support in the towns and cities of Germany; theirs is overwhelmingly a rural movement. Built with and for peasants, the Ravens distrust the cities, home of the moneylenders who take their land when payments fail. The oratory is geared towards the needs and fears and desires of the rural peasantry.
Zimmermann sees this as a problem militarily. The original ‘Raven land’ was overrun, so there is no guarantee a new ‘Raven land’ would fare any better, unless it was more defensible. The clearest way to make it more defensible would be to have a fortified city or cities to act as bases to secure the land. But to do that requires seizing said city or cities. Thanks to the Triunes, the Ravens now have the artillery to make a go at it, but Zimmermann doesn’t have the knowledge for siege work. So any Raven siege, even with those guns, would be an inept and slow affair, leaving the Ravens horribly vulnerable during the process.
The three Chief Ravens discuss the situation and Johann gets to work. Aside from extorting supplies from the towns, Eck has been forcing the towns to print pamphlets for him. Once made, despite the best efforts of authorities across Germany and beyond, they spread. Johann expands on the aspects of his oratory that are less peasant-specific. He emphasizes the fundamental equality of all believers before God, proof that social hierarchy is a human, not divine, construct. He also adjusts the economic aspects. The peasants should have enough land to at least have a reasonable guarantee of providing for their families. Workers should have a job that earns them enough to get the same guarantee. There should be less discrepancy in wealth between urban poor and urban elites, just as in the countryside. Men who have skill should be able to profit, but not if it comes at the expense of taking bread from the mouth of another. These words definitely reach an audience within the towns and cities, particularly in one city.
Magdeburg is not one of the great cities of Germany, but was solidly in the prosperous second-tier with a pre-war population of 35000. The war has not been kind to it. Unlike the great cities like Lubeck which are still financially solvent (if shaky), Magdeburg’s civic debt has soared to crippling proportions from forced loans to the Wittelsbachs and the expenses of its military contributions. To combat the debt, taxes have been raised or added, including on many vital products, even while at the same time work has dried up.
The work that is available is funneled towards those with connections to the elites, such as guild masters and their relations, which infuriates the journeymen who lack these connections and opportunities. The journeymen, and other city-dwellers like them, had contributed to the city’s war effort by supporting the civic bond drives with their earnings. The odds of them getting repaid are minimal and they know it. Meanwhile the elites had, if they’d been able, invested less in the city’s bonds but in Roman bonds, so they are still seeing returns on their investments even as they hike taxes on salt for everyone else and simultaneously steer the limited supply of work towards themselves even though they need it least at the moment. The city is frothing with anger and someone, although who has never been identified, makes contact with the Ravens.
The Ravens arrive at the walls of Magdeburg in late August. The city’s fortifications are not new, built in the early 1500s, but they were designed with gunpowder in mind. Against Vauban they would not be a formidable obstacle, but to the Ravens they are practically impregnable. The city resists when the Ravens first appear, the rhetoric being stirred up against them in the city by emphasizing their ‘country bumpkin’ and ‘foreign’ (although they’ve accrued followers during the march, the Raven core is still that of Bavaria) nature.
It is not enough. Four days into the siege, several journeymen, disgusted that their opportunities for work and advancement are being blocked while their families struggle, clear a bricked-up sally port and let a Raven squad through it. Together they attack the nearest gatehouse, opening it and the Raven army pours into the city. Friedrich Zimmermann issues the following famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) order: Spare the commons but kill the lords.
What follows is often described as the Sack of Magdeburg but in the words of a modern Roman historian, it was “likely the most orderly and clean sack of a city in the history of city sacking. It hardly deserves that description and its use speaks more to the bias of the users rather than the actual historical circumstances.” Those who continue to resist are cut down but there is very little looting and no wanton raping.
There is killing but it is specific targeted killing, not the rampant random slaughter of a sack. Those who are identified as the ‘lords’, the civic elite, are executed. One’s status as a member of this condemned category is determined by a mix of the size of one’s home, the fineness of the clothes, the conditions of one’s hands (are there calluses from working with tools?), and neighborhood informants. Suddenly there are lots of openings in the craft guilds to the delight of the journeymen. However the chief lord, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, manages to flee the city.
The execution of the rich, followed by the division and redistribution of their assets among the poorer folk, reminds many in Latin Europe of the events in Genoa, although the Ravens killed many more of the upper tiers than the Romans who only targeted the big grandees and their families. There seems to be no inspirational connection between the two events, but many Latins link the two. This is a major factor in the likes of the Spanish and Arletians prioritizing the Romans over the Triunes. The Triunes are not a threat to the social order. The Romans are much more questionable in that regard.
After the fall of Magdeburg, the Ravens fan out and occupy the countryside that recognized the lordship of the city, also raiding further afield for supplies. With the influx of Ravens and them no longer moving, foodstuffs are a major concern. While the larders of the nobility are the preferred targets, it has to be said that many Ravens end up taking food from peasant households, often devastating said households.
The raids do not cross into Saxony but focus westward. Ottokar has not moved against the Ravens since they left Bavaria. While he wants the Ravens destroyed, anything that can defeat a Triune field army is something he might need in the future. Furthermore he doesn’t want to risk devastating his own army in the process, creating yet another power vacuum for Henri to exploit. The Chief Ravens pick up on this and thus avoid territories that answer directly to Ottokar. (The big flaw is the concern that the princes will turn to Henri to deal with the Ravens if Ottokar won’t, but Ottokar has already lost too many soldiers he can’t easily replace to rush again into battle against the rebels.)
Still it is a hard and hungry time for the Raven Land of Magdeburg over the winter of 1637-38. The redistribution of elite assets is cancelled out by the influx of all the Ravens, but the people bear it better than they did under the old regime. There was suffering under both the old and new, but under the old there were blatant exemptions which fed justified resentment. There is still suffering and resentment in the new, for hungry and angry people are rarely pleasant peaceful folk, but at least here misery gets the company it craves and all are in the same boat, which helps morale in its own way.
The Ravens and Magdeburg survive the winter, albeit in reduced numbers. The spring arrives and the agricultural cycle continues. Tools are repaired and built, damages to the walls are fixed, and the faithful gather in churches to take communion in both kinds. They are addressed by poor and plainly-clothed country priests who delight in the downfall of their wealthy clerical superiors, preaching on the fundamental equality of all believers before God. While the villagers operate their own courts and assemblies as they would without noble interference, the city magistracies are determined by open elections with voting open to all resident heads of households, without any other property requirements. It is a startling innovation, especially since it means some women, chiefly widows, who are heads of their own households, are able to vote. It is a truly bizarre, and many would argue unnatural, sight.
Ottokar’s campaigns in 1638 avoid the Raven lands. The Triunes are still cautiously sticking mainly to western Germany, not approaching Magdeburg. The lesser lords seem too intimidated to oppose the Ravens when they send out their ‘redistribution parties’ again in the summer. Perhaps a new world is possible.
Perhaps.
Great update. So nice to see a break for poor peasants who just want a better life. I don't doubt that some princes might look to Henri to help with the Ravens if Ottokar won't do anything, but I'm very doubtful Henri will want to bother. That's a long way into Germany to go to punish some peasants that you have no intent of ruling over. The only way a move like that seems to make sense to me would be if Henri decided to just go for the whole HRE. But that seems way too much even for someone as ambitious as him.
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