That Crazy Idea

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That Crazy Idea



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After continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, he finally had success in January 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and they received Columbus in Córdoba, in the Alcázar castle. Isabella turned him down on the advice of her confessor. Columbus was leaving town by mule in despair when Ferdinand intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch him.


However, Columbus would contract Pneumonia after he was fetched so he died before coming back to Isabella I of Castile causing the navigation by Columbus to fail to materialize.


The idea of Columbus discovering sailing west to Asia was considered as a crazy idea and Colombus proposal was considered as “That Crazy Idea” and an impossible feat after the new continent west was discovered.


On the same time, Isabella would continue to pressure her daughter, Isabella to remarry to the Duke of Beja, however, the German Emperor Maximilian offered to have her hand after the dissolution of the proxy marriage between him and Anne of Brittany in exchange for the hand of Margaret of Austria for Juan, Prince of Asturias.


The Princess have been playing a game with her mother as Isabella did not want to remarry and wanted to stay in a convent after the death of her first husband.


Eventually, Isabella could convince her namesake eldest daughter Isabella to marry the Holy Roman Emperor, who was grief sickened by the death of her first husband, Alfonso.


Isabella of Aragon left Castile with a broken and heavy heart and headed to her future husband in Germany with her retinue.
 
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Uh, the Norse Sagas had reported land in the far North, along with unfriendly locals. There was fishing off the Grand Banks, so land was known further South. There are hints that a storm-battered ship may have drifted to the Caribbean then, repaired, headed North and came home on the Gulf Stream...

IIRC, there are gaps in Columbus' back-story which suggest he'd heard 'fishermen's tales', done his research, bought his sources' portolans and silence, perhaps with a payment up-front plus a promise of a share of the huge profits expected.

IMHO, Columbus was totally fixated on notion that such sightings were the outlying Spice Islands to East of Asia. This meant he HAD to assume the Earth was a lot smaller than the ingenious Alexandrians and umpteen Silk Road travellers claimed...

I reckon some-one else would have got wind of such tales, done the crossing in the early 1500s...
 
Uh, the Norse Sagas had reported land in the far North, along with unfriendly locals. There was fishing off the Grand Banks, so land was known further South. There are hints that a storm-battered ship may have drifted to the Caribbean then, repaired, headed North and came home on the Gulf Stream...

IIRC, there are gaps in Columbus' back-story which suggest he'd heard 'fishermen's tales', done his research, bought his sources' portolans and silence, perhaps with a payment up-front plus a promise of a share of the huge profits expected.

IMHO, Columbus was totally fixated on notion that such sightings were the outlying Spice Islands to East of Asia. This meant he HAD to assume the Earth was a lot smaller than the ingenious Alexandrians and umpteen Silk Road travellers claimed...

I reckon some-one else would have got wind of such tales, done the crossing in the early 1500s...


Yeah..that is true, but he thought he was going to asia, so my TL prevents that from happening and the Portuguese are the ones that discover America..
 
IMHO, Columbus was totally fixated on notion that such sightings were the outlying Spice Islands to East of Asia. This meant he HAD to assume the Earth was a lot smaller than the ingenious Alexandrians and umpteen Silk Road travellers claimed...

Yet he knew how to use the stars to calculate latitude, something that doesn't work if your globe is too small. I'm convinced he argued both good and bad sources in circles to get his voyage approved. The real question was the size of Asia and the extent of the spice islands, not the globe.
 
You can navigate by it with the wrong size of the earth - you just don't arrive where you went, neither do you get to where you've been. Mathematically expressed as the formula L+o+St=No-w+Ay_home
 
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On her journey to Antwerp, she stops in Paris wherein she meets Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, the woman whose marriage with her prospective husband has recently been dissolved.



Charles VIII met Isabella and was impressed by Isabella, he said that he would had married her if France is not in danger in losing Brittany, however, Isabella is unimpressed of Charles VIII



Isabella of Aragon arrives in Antwerp in the early part of 1494 to meet her new husband, Maximilian after her difficult journey to the Habsburg territory, her retinue is mostly dismissed the ships that carried her would carry Margaret, the chosen bride to Juan, her brother and her future sister in law and thus she married her groom in Antwerp as soon as she had arrived and the retinue that escorted Isabella are the ones that embarked to escort Margaret.

Isabella and Margaret found themselves fond of each other and it was Isabella that escorted her as she is leaving to the ship to Castile.



When Margaret stopped to the French court she insulted the King of France and told him that she hated the fact that she was abandoned by the one she is supposed to marry.



Margaret married Juan, Prince of Asturias as soon as she arrives in Valladolid, she commented that Isabella was kind and that she would foster the relations between Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.



In Rome Isabella is crowned as Holy Roman Empress a year after the marriage.


Margaret m. Juan, Prince of Asturias d. 1500(a)

1a. Maria b. 1497

2a. Juan b. 1499

3a. Ferdinand the Posthumous b. 1501





Isabella of Aragon m. Emperor Maximilian(b)

4b. Kunigunde of Austria b. 1495

5b. Francis of Austria b. 1497

6b. Ferdinand of Austria b. 1499

7b. Catherine of Austria b. 1505
 
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Since the marriage between Isabella and Manuel is no longer possible, they suggested Juana of Aragon to marry Manuel instead, on 1496, Manuel marries Joanna of Castile, he met his bride in Badajoz and married her on Lisbon on 1497.


Joanna of Castile would make the two Kingdoms of Portugal and Castile remain in Peace and made Castile focus on Africa rather than the new lands discovered by Portugal, however Castile would also be able to find colonies in the lands discovered by Portugal.


She and Manuel would have 5 children who survived infancy.


Eleanor b. 1498

Manuel b. 1500

Ferdinand b. 1503

Catherine b. 1506

Duarte b.1510


Apparently, Portugal had already explored the Cape of Good Hope and took advantage of the passage to the East and already gained some presence in India and already have access to the Spice trade.


The Portuguese would establish small settlements in the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.


Cabral would be drifted to a new land on one of his travels to the Cape of the Good Hope he called as the “Land of the Holy Cross” in `1500.
 
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Anne of Brittany went into labour on the night of 10 October and was swiftly attended to by the royal doctors and midwives. With her was Charles who, much to the annoyance of those around, soon lost his calm due to anxiety. However, all went well, and at 4 o'clock in the morning, the Queen gave birth to a robust and well-formed boy who was automatically Dauphin of France.


The Dauphin was immediately the subject of controversy. His parents and his godmother, Jeanne de Laval, widow of King René I of Naples, wanted to name him Orlando (French: Orland), after Roland, the Carolingian hero of The Song of Roland whose name was rendered thus in Italian. The name had been suggested to them by François of Paule, a hermit and preacher in whom they had confidence. However, the godfathers (Louis, Duke of Orléans, next in line for the throne, and Peter II, Duke of Bourbon) flatly refused to allow a future king of France to be given such a foreign name and begged for him to be named instead after his ancestors: Louis, Philippe or Charles.


However, Anne told her husband to name her son, Francis in memory of her late father, so her son became known later as Francis I of France.


Three children would follow for Anne named Elizabeth of France b. 1493, Francis of Guyenne b. 1495 and Eleonore of France b. 1497 till the death of Charles VIII due to jousting on 1499.
 
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In the end of the 15th Century or the beginning of 16th century, Volcano of Pinatubo erupted and destroyed the lives of the people in the plains of the Pampanga river, the ashes and lahar ravaged the lands.


On the end of the 15th Century or the beginning of 16th century a part of population of Pampanga River plains migrated to the Tundun and Burakan area as well as the Southern Sambal area after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo due to the destruction it has caused to the area.


The destruction of the area of the Pampanga river enabled the area of Burakan, Tondo and Sambal area to flourish while the actual core area is just recovering, the Majapahit territory of Selurong and its constituent Kingdoms which are Selurong and Kaboloan and trading City States.


(so basically, in this point the downtown of the OTL Metro Manila which is empty before is settled by Kapampangan settlers instead of OTL where it is settled by the people of Calatagan)


In the following decades the Pampanga river basin would recover and restore its previous population in the 1530’s, which would contribute to the short term recovery of Majapahit.
 
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Ludovico Sforza of Milan, seeking an ally against the Republic of Venice, encouraged Charles VIII of France to invade Italy, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples as a pretext. When Ferdinand I of Naples died in 1494, Charles VIII invaded the peninsula with a French Army of twenty-five thousand men (including 8,000 Swiss mercenaries), possibly hoping to use Naples as a base for a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. For several months, French forces moved through Italy virtually unopposed, since the condottieri armies of the Italian city-states were unable to resist them. Charles VIII made triumphant entries into Pisa on November 8, 1494, Florence on November 17, 1494, and Rome on December 31, 1494. Upon reaching the city of Monte San Giovanni in the Kingdom of Naples, Charles VIII sent envoys to the town and the castle located there to seek a surrender of the Neapolitan garrison. The garrison killed and mutilated the envoys and sent the bodies back to the French lines. This enraged the French army so that they reduced the castle in the town with blistering artillery fire on February 9, 1495 and stormed the fort, killing everyone inside. This was the famous "sack of Naples". News of the French Army's sack of Naples provoked a reaction among the city-states of Northern Italy and the League of Venice was formed on March 31, 1495.


The League was specifically formed to resist French aggression. The League was established on 31 March after negotiations by Venice, Milan, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Later on the League consisted of the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Milan, Spain, the Papal States, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Mantua and the Republic of Venice. This coalition, effectively, cut Charles' army off from returning to France. After establishing a pro-French government in Naples, Charles started to march north on his return to France. However, in the small town of Fornovo he met the League army.


The battle of Fornovo was fought on July 6, 1495, after an hour the League's army was forced back across the river while the French continued marching to Asti, leaving their carriages and provisions behind. Francesco Guicciardini wrote that both parties strove to present themselves as the victors in that battle, but the eventual consensus was for a French victory, because the French repelled their enemies across the river and succeeded in moving forward, which was their reason for fighting in the first place.

As a result of Charles VIII's expedition, the regional states of Italy were shown once and for all to be both rich and comparatively weak, which sowed the seeds of the wars to come. In fact, the individual Italian states could not field armies comparable to those of the great feudal monarchies of Europe in numbers and equipment.

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Naples, after initial reverses, such as the Pyrrhic victory by the French at the Battle of Seminara on June 21, 1495, Ferdinand II, King of Naples, with the able assistance of the French general Anne de Montmorency eventually reduced the Spanish armies in the Kingdom of Naples. Thus, Ferdinand II of Aragon retreated and the Aragonese surrendered to the French. King Charles VIII died on December 7, 1500 and was succeeded to the throne of France by his son, Charles Orlando, who became Charles IX of France under the regency of Louis, the Duke of Orleans.


Louis, Duke of Orleans decided to invest one of the sons of the Duke of Lorraine, Claude as the King of Naples in his regency in 1502 in order for him to focus on his claims to Milan, initially the Kingdom of Naples was a puppet Kingdom, the Duke of Lorraine is a claimant to Naples.
 
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True but you can't navigate by it without knowing the size of the earth. The size of a degree of latitude is dependent on the size of the earth.

That's irrelevant. The use of latitude is to know how far north or south you are of some other locations whose latitude is already known, from a periplus or portolan. You can't calculate how many kilometers it is, but if you are any sort of a veteran mariner, you know how many days sail it is from (say) Oporto to Bristol, assuming fair winds. Observations of latitude (by the height of Polaris above the horizon) would tell you how far along you are, regardless of contrary winds or calms, and help you find Bristol at the end of the voyage.
 
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