He might make the list. That's an impressive feat. But he did that with Iskandar the Younger, and when he was sole commander, that was the still impressive but bloody slugging match in Mesopotamia. So, there are also counterarguments to including him in a top 10.
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The lands of Germany (and neighbors)-The Arrival of Peace, part 1:
By the end of 1655, all parties involved want peace, and yet peace is hard to find. There are too many players involved, each with their ideal version of peace. Some might want to wait and see if events will improve their bargaining position, but if that happens, their rivals then feel the exact same urge for the exact same reason. Thus, while negotiations begin in earnest in the winter of 1655-56, it is not until 1658 that the guns finally, mercifully, fall silent.
Roman historiography varies in what it calls their conflict, the Great Latin War, Theodor’s War, or the War of the Roman Succession. Latin historians do not have such division; there is only the War of the Roman Succession. But they group the entire conflict from 1631 to 1658 as one war, with the 1631-34 period as a very distinct phase with the fighting. The nature of the war radically alters in 1635 with the Triune invasion of the Rhineland and Lotharingia, but the war after 1635 makes absolutely no sense without including 1631-34. Roman historians, for their part, usually stop paying attention after 1635, when their involvement ends.
And it truly ends there. The Romans are a great power and recognized as such, but for such a titanic conflict they are, after 1635, extremely conspicuous by their absence. The attendance at the peace talks in Cologne [1] are massive in scope. The German princes and their representatives are there in abundance, as are the Triunes, Lotharingians, Poles, and Hungarians. Due to the associated conflict in the Baltic, the Russians, Prussians, and Scandinavians are present with their own peace talks. The Spanish, Arletians, Bernese, and Lombards are also here, invited as observers. It is argued that they have an interest and should be involved in the peace-making process, to ensure that the result is acceptable to them as well and that they will support the peace and not try to destabilize it after the fact. The biggest player in Europe not represented is Rhomania, with the next biggest being Sicily. After that it is the likes of the Aragonese, Tuscans, Serbians, and Vlachs.
The Romans are not invited. None of the major combatants think Constantinople has any relevant involvement or interest, and the Germans in particular have no desire to see Romans getting mixed up in their business. The Roman massacres such as the Field of Knives, Dachau, and Ulm have not been forgotten. The White Palace doesn’t press the issue. (Whether or not that would have made a difference is unknown.) Athena at this stage is highly distracted by internal matters and any major diplomacy with Latins would be fraught considering war hawk agitation. She just doesn’t see enough profit in it to justify the pain.
Fighting continues throughout 1656 and 1657 as the negotiations bicker and dicker, but despite brief tactical triumphs going to both sides at different points, these mainly just serve to increase the body count even higher. One incident of note though is the young but now battle-tested Louis rallying successfully a wavering gun-line with possibly his most famous quote: “Stand, men! We are Frenchmen! Fools we may sometimes be, but cowards, never.”
The war in the Baltic had been a parallel conflict to that in Germany, but there had been connections. The most obvious had been the Russian expeditionary force to distract the Triunes in the Holy Roman Empire, but Scandinavian intransigence had also been heavily based on the hope of aid from Henri. Given the tide of battle in Germany, that intransigence has failed.
Notably, one of the breaking points had been a shift in Russian strategy. Moscow had been secretly communicating with Finnish nobility, promising the Finns entry into the federal Russian Empire as a “free and equal principality, with all the rights and privileges thereto”. Essentially, Finland would join as another Novgorod or Scythia. This was an attractive prospect, which held out the good possibility for more Finnish say in their broader state than they currently held in the Scandinavian realm. The Empire of All the North was overwhelmingly a Danish-Swedish affair, with the Finns, Norwegians, and Scots feeling rather neglected and ignored. Faced with this threat, Malmo wanted the war to end before the Finns got a chance to act on said proposal.
With the admittedly large exception of the existence of the Prussian state, the Treaty of Cologne marks the destruction of the legacy of the Great Northern War. Reval is ceded to Prussia and St. Petersburg to the Russians, who also take the Vyborg district of Finland adjacent to St. Petersburg. Furthermore, both Prussian and Russian merchant vessels will only have to pay half of the typical Sound Tolls.
This is a sharp blow to the Scandinavians, whose previous near-monopoly of Baltic trade and all those custom duties of just a few decades earlier now lies completely in ruins. There is some compensation within the Holy Roman Empire though. In the articles of the Treaty of Cologne relating to land redistribution, the Principalities of Schleswig-Holstein, formerly Wittelsbach lands wrested from the Danes, are ceded to Peter II, who rules them through personal union with all his other titles.
That is far from the only change in the borders in the Holy Roman Empire and the bulk of the negotiations and treaty articles are focused on these. Most of the changes, while significant to the parties involved at the time, are not significant on the historical stage, but there are some exceptions. One of these is a noticeable simplification and consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire’s political structure. In 1630 there were over three hundred Imperial principalities. In 1660 there are seventy-one.
Some of the disappearances come from west of the Rhine, where all former lands of the Holy Roman Empire are ceded to Henri. This cession, while painful, is unsurprising. More disappearances come from the eastern bank, where most of the contentions that drag out the negotiations for years take place.
In the end, Henri II walks away from the peace conference with practically all of what he wanted. He wanted subservient buffer states on the east bank to protect his west bank conquests. Given the extent of Leopold’s losses, the Saxon Duke is unable to press all the way to the great river as he had hoped. But his show of strength over the past several years means that Leopold’s legitimacy can survive agreeing to such cessions, even though Philip Sigismund’s would not have in making even the exact same concessions. Leopold cannot be mistaken for a Triune stooge.
Most of the east bank of the Rhine is consolidated into several medium-sized states; Henri wants buffer states with some heft. In the north is the rump kingdom of Lotharingia, whose status is unchanged from its own peace agreement with Henri years earlier. Proceeding south are the Duchy of Cleves, the Duchy of Berg, the Archbishopric of Trier, the Principality of Nassau (shifted westward, losing its eastern territories), and finally the Duchy of Baden, the largest of these.
All of these are Triune vassals, but are also recognized as Imperial principalities, with representation and rights in Imperial organizations, in much the same way as Peter II of Scandinavia is an Imperial prince by virtue of being Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. This is in contrast to lands west of the river, which are by treaty considered outside of Imperial law and organization.
The exceptions to this are the Archbishoprics of Cologne and Trier. Both remain as Imperial states and are not Triune vassals. As two of the Imperial electors, they are too significant to be allowed to be humiliated such by the Triunes. But both suffer massive territorial losses. The clerics lose all their holdings west of the river, something like 95% of their pre-war territories. They get some lands east of the river to make up for this, but even so, the archbishops’ portfolio drops around three-quarters in value. The two clerical states make for some chinks in Henri’s buffer zone, but Henri is willing to make these concessions, necessary to conclude the war.
The new Duke of Baden is Philip Sigismund. Henri, Leopold, and Elizabeth can all agree in throwing him under the bus, and the Guelph loses his ancestral lands in central Germany, which are largely parceled out as compensation to the various dispossessed Rhineland princes. But he is given Baden as compensation.
Philip Sigismund also loses his Imperial title. As part of the negotiations, the Imperial electors all meet and formally strip him of the title, electing Leopold of Saxony as his successor. This promotion, approved by Henri, makes Leopold both willing and able to make all the previously mentioned Rhineland concessions which Henri required.
Elizabeth agrees to this, as she secures what is most important to her. The Duchies of Bavaria and Wurttemberg are recognized as the rightful possessions of her son, Karl Manfred, who finally returns to Germany shortly after the announcement of peace, accompanied by his new wife, the Princess Yevgenia, the youngest daughter of the Russian Tsar Basil I. It is a sharp fall in Wittelsbach fortunes as compared to the beginning of the war but compared to the threat of extinction that had loomed during the middle of the war, Elizabeth is satisfied. The future is uncertain. A Habsburg may be Emperor now, but the Wittelsbachs had once just been Dukes of Bavaria. What was may come again. But for now, survival and peace are needed.
Karl Manfred also gets an unplanned bonus. As part of the reshuffling of the Rhineland, the Palatinate ends up being destroyed in all the land-trading. The Palatine Wittelsbachs who’d ruled the territory had gone extinct during all the fighting, with Karl Manfred being the closest heir. However, a Bavaria-Wurttemberg-Palatinate inheritance would create a large south German Wittelsbach power bloc that neither Leopold nor Henri want, and so the Palatinate was dissected instead. The electoral title is transferred to Bavaria as a sweetener to make up for this.
There are some more clauses in the treaty relating to Imperial security. Henri, in order to ensure there is no diplomatic backlash against a maneuver he is currently enacting, agrees to two noticeable concessions. Firstly, the borders between his east-bank vassals and the rest of the Holy Roman Empire are guaranteed by the Russians. If the Triunes march east beyond what they have gained here, the Russians will be treaty-bound to aid the Germans in their defense.
Exactly why the Russians agree to this is somewhat unclear, with two possible motives. One is the simple matter of prestige. It is a solid indicator that the Russians are back as a major European power. The other is that this gives Moscow an Imperial connection, which may prove useful in flanking the Scandinavians in future Baltic wars, rather than slugging it out in the Finnish borderlands.
Meanwhile, the border between the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary is also guaranteed, this time by the Triunes. While Stephen’s territories outside the Empire are not covered, in the event that a Roman attack breaches the Imperial frontier from the east, the Triunes will be treaty-obligated to march to Germany’s defense. (Athena does not protest when she hears this, astutely observing that it would only be taken as Roman bad faith and proving the necessity of the clause. One only protests a ‘no invasion’ rule if one intends to invade, she reasons.)
Leopold wants these guarantees to help his new Imperial credentials. His first acts as Emperor have been to sign away significant chunks of the Empire and so he needs to do something to show that he is taking the matter of Imperial security seriously. By these guarantees, he shows that he is working to protect the Germans against their two most recent threats, the Triunes and the Greeks. (The Russians have an extremely good reputation in Germany at the time and are not in the least viewed as a danger.)
In exchange for accepting these requirements, Henri gets the approval for a diplomatic coup of his own. The Dauphin Louis is to marry the twelve-year-old Princess Joanna, currently the only child of King Leo II of Arles. Leo is just thirty-three years old in 1658 but he suffers from occasional bouts of malaria, having contracted the disease while a teenager.
Furthermore, Queen Eleonora’s first childbirth with Joanna had been a very difficult one and given the years since Joanna’s birth have not been followed by any other pregnancy, there are fears that the complications made her incapable of giving birth again. Despite these concerns, Leo remains adamantly devoted to his wife, refusing to divorce her. Unlike possibly every other male monarch in Christendom at the time, except for Henri II, Leo II even refuses to take a mistress.
Thus, there is a very real possibility that when Leo II dies, Joanna will be his heir, giving Louis a very strong claim to the Arletian kingship. There is the matter of Salic law not allowing inheritance to go through the female, but the Plantagenet claim to the kingship of France is based on ignoring that legal quibble.
The Spanish protest the match, but they are isolated. That is why Henri decided to bring this matter up at Cologne, even though really it has nothing to do with the conflict, not even in a tangential way as had the Scandinavian-Russian disputes. Henri already has Arletian support, as the pro-Triune faction there is dominant. The Germans, Hungarians, and Russians all are not willing to speak against the match. It is not viewed as a big concern to them, and moreover Henri makes it clear that their support for this marriage is required for him to make the concessions regarding Imperial frontiers that the Germans, Hungarians, and Russians view as big concerns. The Sicilians and Romans, for the same reasons as the Spanish, would oppose the match, but they are not at Cologne.
In the autumn of 1658, Leopold is crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Cologne Cathedral by his uncle the Pope. Rome, for obvious reasons, was not available. It is a stunning ceremony, with dignitaries and notables from Lisbon to Moscow. Two weeks later it is followed by another stunning ceremony, the marriage of Louis and Joanna, with a similar exalted guest list. The ceremony is also officiated by the Pope. Henri wanted that, to make sure the marriage carries as much legitimacy as possible in the eyes of Arletian Catholics. But to English Puritans, concerned about the laxity of Bohmanism south of the Channel, it is another, and disturbingly prominent, sign of the religious degeneracy of the French.
[1] A long time ago, I made a reference to these, but I referred to them as Westphalian in a nod to OTL at the time. When I wrote that, I had only a vague idea of the details and hadn’t nailed down a location. So, I am engaging in a slight ret-con here, but Cologne feels like a better fit after looking at events.
