The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline

[Augenis]

Part 33: Breakthrough (1622-1625)
​

News arrived about the situation in the far west - that is, in the British Isles. After a year or so of fighting, the English army successfully overrun it's only land opponent, Scotland. While heavy resistance continued in the highlands for a long time after the surrender of the King of Scotland, the Kingdom of the Scots was no more. Scotland was officially incorporated, annexed into the English nation and divided into counties, and Puritan work to root out Reformism from the northern parts of the island began. In the beginning of 1622, 300 English Reformists, who hid in Edinburgh and formed a circle of intellectuals in emigration, were arrested and executed in London. King William III of England now reigned supreme over the British Isles, but his kingdom was unable to push any forward. An effective French and Dutch naval blockade destroyed most of the English navy and prevented the islanders from landing any troops in the continent, thus the English practically pulled out of the conflict, having grown bigger and stronger since their entrance, but not satisfied their revanchism.

In Lithuania, meanwhile, new troops were raised - the nobility was called to war, and the Russian voivodeships mobilized their units, too. These large reinforcements could drastically change the outcome of the war, so where will they be sent? Albertas Jogaila I ordered something... weird - the troops are to be sent to the Polish front, while he and the primary Lithuanian army march north to deal with Sweden. This decision was heavily influenced by recent news that arrived to his camp - scouts informed him that the Swedes, having dealt with the Danish, were sending a relief force through Finland to break the "siege" of Estland and retake all of Livonia. This force was led by the King of Sweden himself. Defeating Sweden became the prime priority of the Bear King, and thus he abandoned the good positions he had in Poland to deal with the northern front first. Stephen Bathory's Visegrad armies quickly used this opportunity to begin an offensive campaign into southern Poland.

On the way to Livonia, Albertas Jogaila I arrived to East Prussia, and his 30 000 men large army engaged the three times smaller army of the Duchy of Pomerania, which was slowly advancing through the region. The Battle of Allenstein saw a quick, but powerful victory for the Lithuanians - the Pomeranian forces weren't even aware that the Lithuanians were in the region until it was too late, and a sudden Lithuanian light cavalry charge broke the mercenary troops quite easily, with great losses on their sides. The Prussian front was secure. Sweden was next.

In the spring of 1623, King Albertas arrived to Dorpat, and almost exactly as he came, the news of Krakow falling back to the hands of Visegrad, and a large Swedish army appearing in Karelia, arrived as well. The situation was getting problematic. There was no time to wait. Bolstered with General Ostrogski's forces, the Royal Army poured into the Estland perimeter, beginning the Reval Campaign. The Lithuanians had 40-45 thousand soldiers on their side, while the Swedish and Livonian defenders could barely muster 17 000. The sea was still frozen and had been frozen since last autumn, so help could not arrive. In addition, the Swedes found themselves fighting a problem they did not expect to have - food shortages. Estonia was not a very fertile land as it was, and now, wrecked and burned by war and conflict, it could barely grow anything at all. Streaks of famine across the land were being reported one after another, and the army stockpile was running on fumes. This was the primary reason for Sweden sending a relief force, but it was too late, it seems... In April, the Lithuanian forces began their move north, capturing Paide and Viljandi with little opposition, and defeating small Livonian detachments on the way. The showdown between the starved defenders and the Lithuanians came near the town of Kegel (Keila), pretty much on the outskirts of Reval.

The Battle of Keila was, interestingly enough, a much closer fight than Albertas Jogaila I anticipated. The Swedish infantry formed the front line, managing to resist numerous Lithuanian volleys and cavalry charges despite their weak condition, hunger and small numbers. The Lithuanian Chronicle details that the Swedes used an interesting tactic to counter the pistol and sword armed Lithuanian light cavalry - forming hollow infantry squares in anticipation for a charge, which was surprisingly effective. However, the young King was quick to crack this tactic, and after 6 hours of intense combat that left many dead on both sides, the Royal Lithuanian Army came out victorious. The week after, Lithuanian troops were already marching into Reval, which surrendered without a fight. While the Swedes successfully seized the islands of Osel and Dago, mainland Livonia had been lost, and never to return.

Interesting thing to note - the Livonian War was also the time when Albertas's first son, Jonas, was born. There were, and still are, rumors that Prince Jonas was not born to the King's wife, Margarita Radvilaitė from Utena, but rather to a captured Estonian farmer's girl, named Katrin, during the annexation of Livonia. They are usually dismissed as mere hoaxes, though.

Albertas Jogaila I in the Battle of Keila (1854 painting)
​

At the same time, though, the main Swedish army, led by King Erik XV himself, began to cross the Karelian Isthmus. The defeat in Estland and Keila was disheartening, but the King of Sweden was not willing to give up yet. While the Lithuanians were banging their teeth on Livonia, the disciplined, professional Swedish forces dealt heavy damage to the Danish forces, and the "Lion of the North" overran Skane and Norway. Lithuania was going to be a much tougher opponent than Denmark, though, and Erik XV knew that. Albertas I, meanwhile, soon sent his armies to meet the Swedes in the Isthmus, and his orders were followed through.

The Battle of Antrea happened in September of 1623, and was the last major battle fought in the Swedish-Lithuanian "front" of the Catholic-Reformist War. The location for the battle was one of the worst that you could imagine - a swamp-ridden, lightly forested strip of land near a group of lakes. The difficult terrain made movement slow and cavalry ineffective, and Albertas Jogaila I adjusted to the different circumstances beforehand. The large Lithuanian army was spread out and divided into small sub-units, capable of moving fairly uninhibited by swamps and forests that riddled the land, and spread them out on a wide and narrow "front", facing the enemy. This division into tiny units, each commander by only a few officers, gave the Lithuanians much greater mobility and speed in the battle, which turned out to be the deciding factor of the clash.

Erik XV's Swedish forces arrived a few days later, during which Lithuanian scouts thoroughly inspected the area, marking down and informing the leadership of any paths, shortcuts or dangerous areas. Much like the Bear's ancestors, the medieval Lithuanian pagan warriors desperately resisting the Teutonic crusades, he relied on the terrain, and on fooling the enemy. This was not Lithuanian swamp with secret paths and preplanned defenses, but it's better than nothing. The Swedish forces, despite reports telling them of a large Lithuanian army facing them, only seemed to find a few scattered units here and there, but a sudden volley from a dense nearby forest cleared this confusion out - the Lithuanians were tricking them! After a few volleys, the skirmishers disappeared back into the forest, only for a large frontal attack to slam into Swedish ranks. Despite both forces taking just as heavy casualties, the Lithuanians suddenly retreated, distracting and confusing the surprised soldiers. Even more side attacks followed, none of them breaking the enemy, or even trying to...

What happened was a classic Lithuanian harassment tactic - attacking with an element of surprise, dealing as much damage as possible, then pulling back to safety and repeating, and so on. Medieval Lithuanian light cavalry was famous for their feigned retreats and their harassment of enemy ranks, and here, in this narrow isthmus in the far north, Albertas Jogaila I, their progeny, rediscovered them. The Lithuanian harass continued until Erik XV ordered his troops to retreat, moving back to Vyborg. Here, negotiations for an armistice between the two nations begun. To Sweden, it was clear that Lithuania was not going to be beaten anytime soon, and the Scandinavian nation was running short on additional recruits to match the Easterner war machine. Already, the occupation of Norway was eating up a lot of their resources, and staying stubborn and fighting on could mean even greater losses for Sweden. In the Treaty of Vyborg, Sweden officially recognized Lithuania's annexation of Livonia, though held onto Osel and Dago, the two large islands on the western Estonian coast that Lithuania was unable to access. No reparations were to be paid by either nation, though Sweden also agreed to lift the naval blockade on Lithuania that had been held for some time now, and was severely hampering the Lithuanian economy.

With the northern front secure, King Albertas moved his massive horde back south, where Visegrad and it's Stephen Bathory awaited. The reinforcements that were sent in 1622 didn't hold the line well, and throughout the two years of relative calm Visegrad managed to regain most of Lesser Poland and even begun incursions into Podolia. The Western front was collapsing, though - Maximilian IV was suffering one defeat after another, and only a Venetian and Visegradian intervention saved Vienna from being captured, and France was making steady pushes into Northern Italy and Spain. Only the North was a Catholic victory - Denmark was severely weakened, Scotland got annexed, and the North German cities and duchies pushed back one Reformist campaign after another thanks to their capable mercenary armies. Capable, but at the same time abhorrent. In many documented cases, mercenaries in all sides, if not paid well enough, would take the fight to the civilians, loot and steal as much as their heart desires in conquered lands, and commit some of the greatest atrocities in recent times. Both Catholic and Reformist chroniclers say one thing - the peasants die in droves from hunger and looting, diseases are rampant, entire, formerly fledgling cities become ghost towns, and anger over military losses is constantly released on innocent locals.

"The Great Miseries of War", a 1624 etching
​

On April of 1624, the Lithuanian army under Albertas Jogaila I reached the outskirts of Mazovia, and they arrived to news of true terror. The Ottomans, well aware of the long war between Lithuania and Visegrad, have taken the initiative and began a full scale invasion of the Triple Crown! The Turkish empire, the brand new entrant into the war, cared even less than the King of Lithuania for squabbles between Catholics and Reformists. What they saw was an opportunity to take revenge for the Battle of the Sava River, and this sudden declaration of war threw all Visegradian plans into chaos. Stephen Bathory, who marched out of Budapest saying that he will "serve Albertas's head to Charles IV on a plate", now hurried to said Lithuanian king and pleaded for peace. Charles IV himself agreed to concessions - Lithuania can be defeated later, right now it's the fate of the whole Union that's at hand.

Following Sweden, Visegrad signed an armistice with Lithuania, the Treaty of Lublin, on June of 1624. Podolia and Galicia all the way to Przemysl and the Carpathians was ceded, and the two countries agreed to "an eternal peace between the two nations, for our time and for the time of our progeny". Both signatories thought of this as only a temporary redrawing of lines, though - as soon as conditions line up, both would be more than glad to break the treaty for whatever they seek. But that is a story for another time.

While Visegrad enacted emergency conscription and rallied all available troops to fight the Turkish threat encroaching on Budapest, peace finally returned to Lithuania. At a great loss of life - more than 30 000 Lithuanian soldiers laid their heads for these victories, and who knows how many civilians were lost in terror in Livonia, Galicia and East Prussia... The prestige of the Bear King rose to new heights, dozens of poems and panegyrics were written about him, and this young warrior monarch found himself beloved by even the most cynical of nobles.

But even though war exhaustion was already gripping Lithuania's heart, Albertas Jogaila I was not done yet. Ooh no. Which country stole Lithuania's Black Sea coast? Which nation has been propping up Crimean raiders to loot it's Ruthenian provinces? The King has not disbanded his forces yet, the final enemy remains.

---

Sorry for brief inactivity

 

[Augenis]

Part 34: Translatio Imperii (1625-1630)
​

The joy of victory against the Westerners in Sweden and Visegrad spread across almost all estates of the Lithuanian nation. All but the poorest serfs and those living in conquered territories overjoyed at the news of the victories in Nowy Sacz, Keila and Antrea, the reacquisition of lost Volhynian territories, and even the conquest of new lands in Livonia and Galicia. The city of Reval began building a monument to the King, on the orders of stationed Lithuanian soldiers, to celebrate their "liberation from the German and Livonian oppressors and their Swedish allies". Similar monuments were to be built in Riga and Lvov, both acquired from Livonia and Visegrad respectively. The people themselves weren't too happy with their new Lithuanian overlords, but what can they do? Resist? Don't make me laugh!

This post-war joy resulted in some barbaric acts as well, unfortunately. During the conflict, the tolerance for Catholics dropped to an all-time low. Even though the Concordate of Brest hadn't been officially cancelled, there were numerous recorded instances of Catholic communities in Lithuania being shunned, attacked or even kicked out, they were seen as potential traitors or even spies for Visegrad and Sweden. You'd be lucky if they small church your community built over the years got seized and turned into an Orthodox temple - in many cases, Catholic churches even got raided by soldiers or locals. Numerous works of art were getting destroyed in such anti-Catholic attacks, and casualties were in the hundreds. This persecution turned official in 1625, when Albertas Jogaila I gave an official order to seize the Catholic Church of Saint Bartholomew in Vilnius, built in 1503, kick out the Catholic priesthood, and turn it into an Orthodox church, named the Church of the Holy Trinity and All Saints. Catholic book burnings took place as well. This all was not good news for the inhabitants of East Prussia, Livonia and Galicia, many of whom were Catholic, though they were pretty safe, so far.

Albertas Jogaila I began to stylize himself as the "defender of the Orthodox faith", the ruler of the last independent Orthodox nation standing, successor to the Byzantine Empire, and so on, which prompted much of this violence. And speaking of that - the Ottomans. Lithuania officially declared war on the Ottoman Empire on September of 1625, around the same time when the Turks and what remained of Visegrad were fighting for supremacy across the Hungarian plain. The Crimean and Ruthenian steppes were a much different environment from the plains and forests of Northern and Eastern Europe, thus the composition of the royal army was much different from the one he employed in the Galician or Livonian campaigns. Albertas's army contained little artillery, and had a much higher percentage of cavalry. While it still had some infantry, the army in general was much faster, more mobile both in and out of the battlefield and thus quite fit for steppe warfare. Most of the soldiers were veterans of the Catholic-Reformist War, too.

Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire, while feared by Westerners as as some sort of "reincarnation" of the Muslim armies that ravaged Anatolia and conquered Spain in the Early Middle Ages, was far from the unstoppable giant that they were portrayed as. While the empire was massive, one of the largest in the world, and stretched from Algiers to Baluchistan and from Crimea to the Gulf of Aden, the many ethnicities within the empire and it's massive size required a huge administrative apparatus that ate up a big portion of the Sultan's resources. The recently conquered Persia alone required dozens of thousands of soldiers to be permanently based there to enforce Ottoman rule and squash revolts. To alleviate some of the worst problems by all this overextension, the Empire surrounded it's peripheries with loyal puppets and protectorates, and the border with Lithuania was no different - despite being at war, the two countries had no direct border, the Ottoman protectorates of Crimea, Moldavia and Circassia were in the way. They had to be defeated before Albertas could even hope of marching across the Balkans like he wanted.

Before the winter of 1625-1626, Albertas Jogaila I reached the port of Khadjibey, formerly a Lithuanian stronghold, and after captuing it, rode to the Black Sea and got his horse to drink there. At least that's what the Lithuanian Chronicle says. It is no secret that the idea of a powerful Lithuanian nation stretching from sea to sea, from the cold and calm shores of the Baltic to the dark and salty Mediterranean-esque Black Sea, has been a heavy part of the romantic image of Lithuania ever since Jogaila the Great conquered the Black Sea shore in the 1390s, and Albertas knew it. After all, his second name is borrowed from the great ancestor of his. Taking over Khadjibey yielded a strategic victory, too, as Crimea was now successfully cut off from their land route to the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

During the first half of the year 1626, the 25 000 men large Lithuanian army stormed into the Crimean peninsula itself, dealing a heavy blow to the outdated and already cracked tactics and technology of the Tatars in the Battle of Chufut-Kale in March. Menli Giray, the khan of the Crimean Khanate, as well as a bunch of his courtiers and generals, were captured during the fight, and the resulting internal chaos led to Albertas Jogaila I marching into Bakhisaray with no resistance. The captured Khan received a list of demands, including surrendering his throne and agreeing to a partial annexation of the Crimean Khanate, turning it into a dependent, though partially autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Lithuania. Major monetary concessions and reparations were also included. Those were outrageous demands, but placed at gunpoint, the Tatar lord was forced to accept. Around the same time, the Turkish ports of Caffa and Cherson, defeating the small garrisons of both cities within a few weeks.

"The Annexation of Crimea", an 1869 painting
​

The Ottoman sultan, Mahmud I, was furious, but there wasn't much he could do. Transylvania was overrun and an advance detachment was besieging Buda, but he couldn't spare any more troops in light of fierce Visegradian resistance to fight off the invading Lithuanians. He did try to rally the vassals of Moldavia and Wallachia to war, though. Both of these small principalities were Orthodox, and could only rally small forces to defend their lands. Meanwhile, in autumn of 1626, Albertas I's Lithuanian army left the pacified and annexed Crimea and headed west, along the Black Sea. Arriving to Moldavia, the king was greeted as a liberator from the Turkish yoke - the Moldavians were well aware of Albertas's reputation as the leader of the Lithuanian Orthodox and a defender of the faith. As a sign of good will, the Moldavian forces were ordered put down their weapons when they saw the approaching Lithuanian army in sight. Albertas Jogaila I, knowing that, once this war is done with, he'll need a buffer between Lithuania and the Ottomans, decided to play along and promised the Moldavians independence, though with "eternal ties to Mother Lithuania".

Now this was a big threat to Ottoman positions. Mahmud I still wasn't sure whether Lithuania and Visegrad were allies or just at war with his nation at the same time, and he had real fears of the Lithuanians crossing the Carpathians and saving Buda from the siege. Even if that wasn't the case, Albertas Jogaila I was now only a few weeks away from arriving to Constantinople, or Konstantiniyye as the Turks called it, and a Lithuanian Constantinople would mean a practical decapitation of the Ottoman Empire. In addition, the insulting and rebellious Moldavian attitude made him even more furious, and the Sultan led the 35 000 men strong Turkish army in Transylvania east to intercept the Lithuanians before it was too late, defeat them in battle, pillage Moldavia and Crimea for their betrayal, and make the foolish Lithuanian youngling never step foot in the Empire again.

However, what he didn't know was that there was a reason for why Albertas didn't attempt to cross the Carpathians neither during his war with Visegrad, nor here - the mountains. The logistics of moving across wide mountain ranges, especially during cold weather, have been a huge problem to generals and soldiers ever since the invention of warfare. After all, even Hannibal had to face and cross the Alps when attacking Rome, and coupled with cold weather, marches across mountains can be disastrous. It was already late autumn by the time that Mahmud I's army reached the Carpathians, the famous Buzău Pass, and while the crossing was not a complete disaster, it did lead to the loss of a major portion of the Turkish army's horses and food supplies. Fatigue and attrition are also counted as a major result. And only three days after crossing and entering Moldavia, the Turks faced off against the Lithuanians in the Battle of Buzău. This was the first Lithuanian experience with the Janissaries - elite Ottoman infantry soldiers, used as bodyguards and household troops, famous for their discipline and often traumatizing past - former Christian boys, taken to slavery to serve for the Turks. Mahmud I brought 6000 of them to the battle, and, for some time, Albertas Jogaila I wasn't sure on how to deal with this force. He was too used to Northern-Central European battlefields and armies, and some of the things Mahmud brought - like camel cavalry, and the Sipahi, elite Ottoman cavalry - were foreign to him.

But he eventually learned how to crack the code.

Because of the large dieoff of horses, the Turkish army advanced slowly, skirmishing with the Lithuanians over a distance with cannons and muskets. The Turks had much more infantry than the Lithuanians, who, as was said before, brought a cavalry-focused army. The Ottoman long-range superiority was a problem, but their slow speed made them vulnerable to cavalry flanking - this is what Albertas Jogaila ordered to do after a short skirmish. Mahmud I responded with moving his own cavalry. The Turkish horses were tired, many of the best animals had died or were wounded, and thus after a few cavalry skirmishes across the Moldavian plains, the Lithuanian cavalry gained superiority. One interesting factor that helped turn the tide in cavalry clashes was the Lithuanian usage of the cavalry pistol - introduced during the 1610 military reforms, it was used as a response to the mass introduction of musket weaponry to infantry forces. Lithuanian light cavalry were equipped with both a sword for close-range combat and with a pistol for longer range suppression fire, and this gave an advantage to the Lithuanians compared to the Turkish sipahi and akinji. After Lithuanian domination in the flanks, the Turkish infantry found itself surrounded, it was unable to flee from the fast Lithuanian cavalry charges, and eventually began a mass retreat.

Buzău was a victory for the Lithuanians, but the Ottoman army had reserves. However, a second blow to their war effort came in the north.

Since last year, Buda, one of the primary cities of the Union of Visegrad, had been besieged by a Turkish army of 40 000 men. Stephen Bathory, with the orders of Charles IV, scrambled all forces that he could - men from all of Visegrad were conscripted, thousands of Western mercenaries were hired, almost the entire treasury was spent on outfitting the army - and on March of 1627, the Army of the Union of Visegrad arrived in the outskirts of the city, beginning the Battle of Buda. The city of Buda was near capitulation. Only 3000 defenders were left in the city, many of them starving, left to die and rot, and the walls of the fortress were near breaking. The Ottoman forces had dug tunnels under the walls and left explosive charges to finish the job, for the city to fear. And then the Winged Hussars arrived!

...Literally. It was one of the greatest and most terrifying cavalry charges in not just modern history, or even Hungarian, Czech or Polish history, but world history. Coming down from countryside, led by the determined Transylvanian general, the Visegradian cavalry forces practically rode over the Turkish infantry, rode over the Janissaries and the Turkish cavalry opposition, It turned the tide of the conflict, becoming one of the most crushing military victories in the entire 17th century, and on par with Czestochowa in the Polish Succession War. Even today, it holds a special place in the national identity of the nations that made up Visegrad at the time. However, throughout the years, the Battle of Buda had been severely overhyped - a nationalist would be quick to tell you that Bathory's Winged Hussars were the deciding factor of the war, even though the army defeated by them was only the secondary force of the Ottoman army in the conflict, and the conditions for the end of the conflict were rooted in something else.

Whatever was the case, Mahmud I decided to sue for peace with both Visegrad and Lithuania. In the Treaty of Varna, the Ottoman Empire recognized Lithuania's annexation of Crimea and let go of Moldavia - which eventually turned into a Lithuanian vassal state. The peace with Visegrad was sided differently, however. Despite the massive victory at Buda, Bathory was the first to realize that Visegrad was unable to wage war for any longer. The Catholic Crusade and the war with the Ottomans drained the nation's budget, Hungary was heavily looted by the Turkish invasion, and the country was becoming unstable. Mahmud I sent his peace demands on October of 1627, which demanded a concession of the border regions between Ottoman Bosnia and Visegradian Croatia, as well as the acquisition of Transylvania as a Turkish vassal. Even though Charles IV disapproved, Stephen Bathory agreed, ending the second worst chapter in the history of Visegrad. The first was yet to come, and Bathory wouldn't live to see it, but that is a story for another time.

"Stephen Bathory Receives Turkish Demands in Brasov", 1872 painting
​

Lithuania, on the other hand, left the war victorious, and the prestige of King Albertas Jogaila I rose to tremendous new heights. He was no longer just the King of Lithuania, he was now the defender of the Orthodox Faith, the vanquisher of the Turks, a powerful and talented conqueror from the East who defeated great, already established Western countries with his wit, skills and Westernized army. He successfully turned Lithuania into a juggernaut, a member of the Western world and yet at the same time it's competitor, and it was during his reign that Lithuania was finally accepted into the ranks of the great powers of Europe, alongside France, Spain and the Ottomans. It was not just a great power, but it expressed and projected it's power outwards - this was no longer just a simple kingdom. This was something else.

Ever since the end of the millenarian Eastern Roman Empire in 1450, one of the primary goals of the grand dukes, later kings, of Lithuania was to invoke translatio imperii and declare their nation to be the successor to the Byzantines, a "Third Rome", if you might. This was the reason for Algirdas II's marriage to Angela Palaiologos, to secure a bloodline related to the Roman Emperors and solidify this claim. This was also the reason for the fabrication of the Myth of Palemon - if Lithuanians are descendants of Romans, surely they must be the successors to Rome, right? And yet, the world did not approve of such claims - they used to see Lithuania as a country of barbarians, Sarmatians, untouched by Western culture and technology, living in forests, secretly worshipping their pagan gods, what claim to the ultimate Christian state do they have? And yet, here we are - Lithuania is now the fourth great power of Europe, and as far as the Europeans knew, the whole world.

It is thus no surprise that, not long after the Treaty of Varna that ended the Ottoman-Lithuanian War, the Metropolitan of Vilnius openly expressed his desire to see Albertas Jogaila I crowned as the first Lithuanian Emperor. And the King, prideful and glory-thirsty as he always is, approved of such an idea. The preparations for the coronation took over a year - after all, Lithuania had just fought through over a decade of war, it was obviously drained - but they finally happened. On October 22nd, 1629, in the Cathedral of the Theotokos in Vilnius, Albertas Jogaila I was crowned as the first Emperor of Lithuania.

The Empire of Lithuania has risen. The Silver Knight rides strong. And as it turns back to Europe, it realized that there is a lot to catch up to...

The world in the year 1630

Europe in the year 1630
​

Next week will be about what we missed - the end of the Twenty Years' War.

Also, something something winged hussars arrived

 

[Augenis]

Part 35: A Lifetime of War (1625-1630)​

The Twenty Years' War, as the people of Europe eventually learned to call the Catholic-Reformist war, ended exactly where it started - in Austria. Emperor Maximilian IV died in 1622, and the Austrian front of the war essentially turned into an Austrian succession war between the Reformist Prince Charles and the Catholic Prince Augustin. Augustin was young and had little experience in warfare or ruling the nation, while Charles was battle hardened, found more and more support among the people, and had nearby allies in the form of the Munich League, and this difference led to the result of the war in Austria. For a while, Vienna and it's surroundings were propped up and kept alive by Visegrad, but when the Ottomans declared war on them, the capital was soon overrun by the Reformist forces, and Austria was united under a single Archduke once again. Prince Augustin, meanwhile, received the execution axe.

The Holy Roman Empire has been decapitated! After numerous French victories in Northern Italy and Lorraine, this was the final blow in the morale of the Catholic crusaders, and countries began asking for peace left and right. Visegrad was the first to sue for peace, followed by almost all of the members of the Catholic Crusade. It was such a large contingent, that a common peace treaty had to be drawn, done in Amsterdam. The Treaty of Amsterdam in 1630 ushered in a new order to Europe - borders were redrawn, new great powers arose and others sunk deep down, and both sides agreed to tolerate both religions in the Holy Roman Empire. Err... Holy Roman Empire? This former giant of Europe was rapidly disintegrating. The Reformists, hoping to transform the defensive Munich League into something more tangible, while at the same time wary of too radical change, offered the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor to Charles of Austria, crowning him as Charles V Habsburg, which caused furious reactions from most of Europe. A Reformist as the Holy Roman Emperor?! Insane! The Pope refused to crown Charles, so it was done in Vienna under a Reformist pastor, and the Catholics began mobilizing for a second round. However, both sides were too tired and exhausted by war to begin the first move, and while the "Holy" Roman Empire remained as an institution, the Catholic North German principalities and free cities left the Empire one after the other, as well as the republics and monarchies of Northern Italy, leaving the HRE as a shell of it's former self, dominated by Reformists, but more centralized than before.​

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
​

The war caused over seven million casualties, both military and civilian, almost nine percent of the population of Europe at the time, and it shaped the history of the continent for decades and centuries to come. Many regions were utterly devastated by the conflict, some losing over half of their population in the end. Among the many cases of social trauma caused on the collective populace was the beginning of mass witch hunts across both Catholic and Reformist states - the frustrated, angry peasantry would lash out on anyone but themselves in light of the disasters upon them. On the other hand, however, the mass demographic shock caused the speeding up of economic and cultural development in central Europe, especially Germany.

France was among the few countries you could call the "victors" in the war. During the Twenty Years' War, the French armies successfully defeated the Spaniards and Italians, dealt devastating blows to Imperial armies in Lorraine and Wallonia, annexing both of these French-populated lands into the Republic. Despite being less than a hundred years old, France already secured his place among the small circle of European great powers, ranking among Spain, Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire and slowly turning into a continental hegemon. Throughout the later stages of the conflict, France was headed by Director-General Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and his rule is considered to be the beginning of the so-called "French Golden Age". Under Colbert's 15 year rule, France rapidly began to transform to an urbanized, capitalist society, where the ancient guild system was being replaced by manufactories and the wealth and power within the state gravitated from the feudal nobility to the growing class of burghers and capitalists, the bourgeoisie. During the 17th century, the Republic became a center of learning and innovation in science and technology, and it's wealth was staggering even compared to most of it's neighbors, where the development of modern era capitalism was slowed by the conservative and often reactionary monarchist regimes ruling them. Flanders and Wallonia, as well as the Paris region, were rapidly becoming the biggest industrial centers of Europe, where competition was so fierce that capitalists and landowners had to constantly look out for even the most minute or recent inventions to gain an edge over their competitors.

Director-General Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and the unofficial flag of Republican France, used by the French army and merchant ships. A variant without the coat of arms was also commonly used.
​

The Netherlands, while a war participant on the Reformist side, got off very lightly, and after annexing Gelre and Friesland, the Free State finalized it's ambition of uniting all Dutch under one banner. Not only that, but the success of the Dutch fleet in the North Sea ensured their trade dominance in the region for years to come, and the growing Dutch colonial holdings in North Vespucia - New Netherland - was steadily growing due to an influx of war refugees and lucrative fur trade deals with the nearby Algonquin and Iroquois tribes. New Netherland was perhaps the least homogenous society in the New World - while Dutch was the official language, neither the majority of the populace nor the all of the colonial government were Dutch. There were Walloons, Frenchmen, many natives, slaves from Africa and nearby Native Vespucians. Unlike the cash crop Carribean and South Vespucian colonies that Spain and Portugal held, New Netherland functioned more as it's own society, though still subservient to the Free State. Around the same time, the Dutch merchant Willem Verhulst sailed around Africa, passing India and eventually arriving to Guangzhou, and was the first European who reached China through the "around Africa" route and not sailing under the Portuguese flag. The riches of China, India and Japan enticed the merchants of the Netherlands just as much as they did the Portuguese a hundred years ago, and East India was set to become a field for heavy competition between the two naval powers.

England was the only Catholic participant of the Twenty Years' War that was not present in the negotiations for the Treaty of Amsterdam - they were only at war with a limited range of opponents and had peaced out years before. 1627 marked the death of William III of England, the unifier of the British Isles under the English banner and the Catholic faith. His successor, Charles I, was a notable member of the Puritan movement, and a strong follower in divine right and absolutism. Under his rule, England was transformed into the Kingdom of Britannia. The parliamentary system was disbanded and replaced with the King's absolute power - not without blood being spilled, of course. The followers of the Parliament took arms in revolt, but the King enjoyed popular support, especially from the devout English and Irish Catholics, and his "New Order" armies, often called the "Roundheads", named the former due to the numerous military innovations applied within their ranks and their strict discipline and the latter for the cropped heads of many Puritans, prevailed over the Parliamentary forces. Under Charles I, numerous leisure activities, such as theatre and sports, were banned, and the King freely ruled by decree and appointed the Ministers, only listening to the Lord and his Faith, as they say. Britannia became the first fully absolute monarchy in Europe, and while the Puritans were oppressive, the centralization and security that the King provided gave stability to the nation, and despite it's isolation, Britannia was developing just as swiftly as it's peers.

Sweden pretty much traded Livonia for Norway by the end of the War, and while it was definitely a fair trade, the Scandinavian nation found itself to be increasingly isolated as time went on. Both of it's neighbors - Denmark and Lithuania - were hostile for obvious reasons, and their allies in North Germany were only aligned due to opportunism and taking down a common foe. Britannia was also unwilling to cooperate, and the fanaticism of the English Puritans discouraged Erik XV from getting too close to hem and possible inciting something similar in Scandinavia. This diplomatic isolation led to the Swedes to look towards the sea - and towards the New World, no less. Sweden already had a little bit of experience in colonization in the form of Lapland and Finland, and the rumors of lucrative fur trade, cash crops and whaling opportunities gave additional incentive to look towards the seas.

Portugal was one of the few powers in Europe that stayed neutral throughout the entire conflict, and in the end of the Twenty Years' War, it ended up much wealthier than before. To understand the reason for this, one needs to look no further than South Vespucia. In the last years of the 16th century, the Inca Empire, inhabiting vast swathes of the Andes, had recently discovered massive reserves of silver in Sumaq Urqu, as well as in many other locations across the mountains, which instantly attracted the Portuguese like butterflies to a candle light. Because outright conquest of the Incas, or Tawantinsuyu as called in their language, was impossible to the Europeans, they instead offered a trade - silver for European production, like guns, weapons, alcohol and similar. The size of this trade route dramatically increased during the Twenty Years' War, when demand for precious metals and raw materials became almost astronomical, leading to what is often called The Silver Road, stretching from Cuzco to Manuel City, the capital of Portuguese Manuela. Both of these empires benefited from the trade route - Porugal could acquire large amounts of silver and gold for a much smaller price than, say, from Carinthian mines, while the Inca were touched by the winds of modernization and began to adopt Western technology. Cultural exchanges also began, and this contact between two alien cultures brought interesting hijinks - the Inca were shocked that the Portuguese used things like "carts" to transport goods, while the Europeans were astonished by the complex mountain road and bridge network across the country. Outside of South Vespucia, profits from trade in East Asia also flocked to Lisbon, and while the wealth that this colonial empire acquired was staggering, it was bound to attract rivals.

Spain, while a colonial empire much like Portugal, was not in as good of a position after the War. The Spanish treasury was drained, it's positions in Italy weakened, and it's former great power status overshadowed by France, but the nation was quick to recover. Much like Britannia, Spain was treading towards a path of absolutism, though the power of the King was not as supreme as in the British Isles. Spain's defeat in the continent brought much more attention by it's kings to it's colonies in the Caribbean and Vespucia, places where the empire could expand freely and bash on unsuspecting natives to "regain it's pride". During the Twenty Years' War, the governor of Spanish Central Vespucia, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, made and commanded numerous conquistador expeditions into the Yucatan peninsula, subjugating the small Mayan statelets in the region, and his successes in the field gave him noticeable PR in the eyes of the Royal Court, enough to continue funding the conquest efforts even long after Cervantes's death in 1628. Interesting developments around that era was the introduction of cotton to the Vespucias, first brought to the Spanish colony of Luisiana (named after Luis I, former King of Spain) to be cultivated as a cash crop. Back home, however, Spain was nowhere near willing to remain as the second fiddle to France in European hegemony...

But whatever disdain Spain felt was nothing compared to some of it's peers. Especially Germany. Germany was burned, raped and salted during the War ten times over. Many cities were destroyed completely. Many regions lost over half of their population. The pride of the region was crushed even further - both sides had to rely on foreign assistance to even stand a chance against their opponents, after all. And what's worse - the nation, formerly united, albeit barely, under the Holy Roman Empire, was now split in half. While the southern states banded under the reformed Holy Roman banner, the northern coast and it's duchies and cities left the Empire, and, fearing a second Reformist invasion, formed the loose North German Communion, headed by the Hamburg-Lübeck Union of Free Cities. Germany was now a battleground for the great powers of Europe to play around in and influence to their side, but the German spirit was not gone yet. Despite the gigantic loss of life that he region had endured, those who lived had access to surprisingly higher standards of living, and it is no surprise that Germany eventually developed to be one of the fastest growing regions of Europe. The South German statelets, most of them Reformist, enjoyed the same "bourgeoisization" and development of capitalism as France had, North Germany went through a similar process, and it started to look clear that if Germany were to be a single country, rather than thousands of little states, it could truly shake the balance of Europe.

But that is a story for a different time.

Modern Europe will never be the same as it used to be before the Twenty Years' War, however. Massive, gigantic changes were on the horizon, and none of the Europeans know that they were coming, either.

 

[Augenis]

Part 36: East and West (1630-1645)​

The fresh Empire of Lithuania was a nation of many ethnicities and of many faiths, and this variety only increased after Albertas Jogaila I's conquests. The Lithuanians, Ruthenians and Russians, among others, were joined by Crimean Tatars, Poles in Galicia, Baltic Germans, Letts (Latvians) and Estonians. The majority faith remained Orthodox, but the Catholic and Muslim minorities became sizable enough to warrant special treatment. One of the first things on Emperor Albertas's agenda was the eradication of the Concordate of Brest. Now that he was officially the successor to the Roman Empire, the ruler of the Third Rome, he had no need for deals with Catholics, especially since he wanted as much personal control over the Lithuanian Orthodox Church as possible. In 1631, in the same city where the Concordate was created - Brest - the Emperor and the Metropolitan of the Lithuanian church signed an official end of the experiment of unification between East and West churches. While Catholic influence remained in the Lithuanian Orthodox faith, it was no longer tied to the Papacy and began to tread it's own path.

This "restoration of Orthodox supremacy" was not taken positively by the Catholic majority areas in the Empire - in Livonia, Galicia and Prussia, for example - but Albertas Jogaila I assured that the rights of religious minorities to express their faith will not be threatened. The Statute of Lithuania, which included numerous articles on the freedom of religion in the Lithuanian state, was honored by the new administration, and the Emperor followed a simple policy - as long as you pay taxes to the state and don't try anything funny, you are free to worship God in whichever way you please. Only the Volanites, deeply entrenched in Russia, were discriminated, but even that discrimination was fading as the Lithuanians realized that subduing the Russians and converting them back to the true faith will not be as easy as they thought.

The Lithuanians and most importantly Emperor Albertas were now looking much farther east, however. After the Peace of Amsterdam, the redrawn borders of Europe were expected to stay set, and any expansion further to the west would have been met with large resistance - the East, however, with it's untamed plains, riches and a path to China, looked ripe for taking. Lithuania's eastern borders were next to Trans-Russia, the Russian refugee state situated along the Volga River, and the numerous Mordvin, Mari and Chuvash pseudo-statelets in the Upper Volga. Out of these, Moksha was turning out to be the strongest faction, having already united most of the Mordvin people and slowly expanding to enemy territory. This chaos in the Upper Volga was not only threatening to local Lithuanian governors, but also presented itself as an opportunity for the imperial court to begin Lithuania's eastern expansion. The years 1634-1637 were marked by the Upper Volga Campaign, a systematic conquest of most of the Upper Volga by the forces of the Voivodeships of Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan. Despite the massive logistical and resistance problems for the Lithuanian troops, it didn't take long before the Volga Finns eventually surrendered.

This, however, put Lithuania on a path of war with the Volgaks, who were naturally threatened by the Empire's new Eastern path and it's conquest of the Upper Volga. Albertas Jogaila I had his gripes with this "Russia", too. From his point of view, the Volgaks are still citizens of his Empire, just that they were rebellious and decided to flee instead of serve to their homeland, and for that they must be brought back under Lithuania's fold. While the Volga Russians were fearful of a possible Lithuanian attack, the Empire itself saw them as just a minor obstacle in their path. What can a bunch of refugees do? Do they even have enough men to stand against the might of the Lithuanian army? Do they even have guns, or do they fight with spears and bows just like the Tatars? It will be a cakewalk!

In 1639, the Lithuanians began large incursions into the Volga steppe, and sent an envoy with an ultimatum to the Trans-Russian Zemsky Sobor, demanding the Volgaks to surrender to the Imperial Crown. The Russians returned only the chopped off ears of the diplomats. Both sides knew that this was a declaration of war - and so the Lithuanian-Russian War began. Because of the vastness of the Eurasian steppe and the great distance between Volgan Russia and the core of the Lithuanian nation, the scale of the conflict was miniscule compared to, say, the Twenty Years' War. Nevertheless, the Empire mustered 18 000 or so men for the conflict, most of them being standing Voivodeship soldiers from Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan, as well as levied vassal Crimean Tatar troops. The first shots of the conflict were fired near the Sura River, where the Lithuanians besieged and captured numerous frontier Russian settlements and crossed the river, which used to serve as a part of the border between Trans-Russia and Lithuania. The Lithuanians also attacked from the north, from their captured Mordvin territories, pushing along the Volga river itself.

For the Volgaks, this was an emergency like never seen before, and the Zemsky Sobor ordered to rally all men and women of the nation for their struggle to retain their freedom. The situation looked grim. Volgan Russia only had a population of about 800 thousand people, which was just a drop in the ocean compared to Lithuania's monstrous 18 million. They had outdated weaponry, and even they had heard of Albertas Jogaila I's achievements in the West as an amazing military leader - though he wasn't leading the invasion force here. But what they had was determination. The Russian spirit! Russkaya dusha! And, just as importantly, they knew the land. Many of the Lithuanian soldiers had hardly ever seen a steppe before, while the Volgaks had tons of experience in flatland and steppe warfare and tactics. Defending against enemies all around us was a part of their life, and this experience turned the country into a nation of veterans.

They were, in a sense, the Russian equivalent of the Cossack hosts around the Black Sea, albeit sedentary rather than nomadic.

Throughout 1639, Lithuanian troops advanced slowly from the north, aiming for Vostovsk, the capital of Trans-Russia, located in a large bend of the Volga River, colloquially known as the Eastern Bend. Despite the terrain being a flat plain, perfect for movement, the Lithuanians neither moved fast or encountered the local armies on their way. Instead, they were repeatedly harassed by small mounted hosts of enemy raiders, sapping their strength bit by bit. The Volgak leadership was well aware of the strength of the Imperial armies, and that attacking them head-on would be a massacre, thus they used the Lithuanian weapon against them and employed effective hit-and-run tactics. The organization of such raids was simple - a small host of about 50 or so men, led by a local who knew the land of the battle, would approach and ambush the slow-moving armies, release a few shots of fire and retreat to the countryside before the opponent could muster a full counterattack. The Volgaks would employ shortcuts and other tricks to get the Lithuanians away from their tail, of course. It was such an effective, yet familiar tactic that the leader of the Lithuanian forces in the conflict, Jonas Radvila, remarked: "It's hard for me to tell whether we're invading Russia or accidentally attacking our own country".

An another problem the Lithuanians faced was the lack of supply. It was impossible to make any sort of supply line back to the homeland due to the massive distance, and the enemy territory was so sparsely populated that the soldiers could barely find anything to eat, even after raiding the nearest villages to the ground. Supply shortages were rampant across the Lithuanian troops, and the hit-and-run tactics employed by the Russians dealt heavy constant attrition to their ranks. In addition, since the majority of the troops were Russians themselves, they were not all that willing to fight their countrymen.

But despite all these faults, in 1640, the Lithuanians finally reached Vostovsk. Situated on a hill range and surrounded by the Volga on three sides, and heavily fortified in preparation, the city seemed almost impossible to take, but Jonas Radvila ordered his troops to attack anyway. The Defense of Vostovsk began. The Lithuanians crossed the Volga and stormed into the city, where 5000 Russian soldiers and over 17 000 civilian inhabitants took arms to repel the superior foe. Cannons roaring and pounding the wooden city, the posad was set on fire to draw out hiding defenders, and the Lithuanian armies drew closer and closer to the city's Kremlin. An advance regiment of 500 men managed to break through the Russian lines and reach the fortress itself, where the representatives of the Zemsky Sobor had barricaded themselves, but the troops found themselves unable to seize the recently renovated Kremlin, rebuilt with stone merely two years ago, and thus were surrounded and slaughtered. Despite the initially successful Lithuanian push into Vostovsk, they ran out of steam very quick - most of their cannons eventually broke down from the heat, the others were taken out by flanking Russian raiders, while the infantry in the city found itself unable to break the Russian lines despite their superior weaponry, and soon enough, the Lithuanians began to rout. Hundreds were fleeing across the Volga, but most of them were caught and killed, and only a tenth of the invading Lithuanian army managed to escape in the end.

Volgak raider cavalry, a modern drawing
​

The Volgaks, caught by the joy of victory, almost immediately went on an offensive. Within the next year, they retook all of their territory that was captured by the Lithuanians, and the threat of a Volgan Russian invasion of the Russian heartland became a serious threat. When Emperor Albertas Jogaila I heard of the news of the crushing Lithuanian defeat at Vostovsk, he was furious - but there was nothing he could do. Some voices in the Zemsky Sobor called for an invasion and liberation of the Russian mainland, but the Volgaks knew that it was infeasible. Despite their victory in Vostovsk, the Volgaks were way too outnumbered to attempt anything similar to that, thus they opted for a white peace with the Empire. Lithuania agreed, and status quo war returned.

The Russian-Lithuanian War was the central event in the developing national identity of the Volgan Russian people, and it has been their inspiration for years to come. No longer were they just bands of former refugees seeking shelter in the steppe, they were now a proud country with the strength to stand up and roar against the Empire, the mightiest nation of Eastern Europe! It was around this time that mainland Russians and Volga Russians began to split and form separate nations, the former focused on their dreams of independence from the Empire of Lithuania, and the other centered on their subjugation of the steppe and victorious defense of their new homeland. Even the languages of the two nations started to slowly split off - the heavy Tatar influence on the Volgak culture was seeping into their language as well.

While for Lithuania, this was a humiliating, but overall not all that impactful defeat. After all, it's not like they lost half of their country or something. The last years of Albertas's rule were uneventful, and Lithuania could only follow what was happening outside of it's borders. The first Swedish colony in the Vespucias, Gustavia, was founded in Saint Brendan's Land, established as a whaling base, and the King of Sweden soon claimed the entire island as his nation's territory. The tensions between the Dutch and Portuguese were nearing a breaking point, drawing the world closer to it's first ever colonial war, while a number of skirmishes in Ottoman Persia resulted in the beginning of a war between the Ottoman Empire and the Mughals, both of these nations claiming the buffer state of Baluchistan in between them.

Albertas Jogaila I died in 1645, less than 50 years old, to tuberculosis. To Lithuanians, his reign is the beginning of the Lithuanian age of glory. His tactical and strategic prowess and sharp mind in battle allowed the fledgling nation to defeat opponents it previously never had the hope of overcoming, and sometimes all at once, and all these victories eventually culminated in the creation of the Empire of Lithuania. Much like the man behind his second name, the Emperor is remembered fondly as a symbol of Lithuanian strength, great power and patriotism. As the infamous Augustinas Stankevičius would later remark in the first half of the 20th century, "Jogaila turned Lithuania into a power, but Albertas Jogaila shaped it into a world power".

Of course, it's not like Lithuania was perfect in any regard. Unlike in most of Europe, where feudalism was abandoned and forgotten, serfdom and exploitation of the peasantry only grew stronger in this "empire of the east", and who knows how badly could it damage the nation in the long term? Lithuania was still a nation of villages and forests, it's cities were small, the bourgeois class practically non-existant, and the development of capitalism extremely slow. And I'm not even talking about the dozens of nationalities trapped in the empire... Still, for now, this nation could enjoy it's time of glory and great power status. It'll need it.

Albertas's son, Jonas I, was the heir to the throne, and ascended to it soon after his father's death. Long live the Emperor.

---

The reason for my short absence is that I was planning out the next, so-to say, story arc for this TL. Kind of. Also, I'm working on a Lithuanian translation of the first half of the timeline to present as a school project, so that's taking up some of my time as well.

 

[Augenis]

Quick special chapter to not kill this timeline yet.

Special Chapter

Baroque in Lithuania
​

Possibly originating it's name from the Portuguese word "barroco", meaning "imperfect pearl" (though this origin has been disputed), and originating from Italy, the Baroque was a movement in arts and culture that replaced the Renaissance by the end of the 16th century. Much like it's predecessor, Baroque was heavily influenced by ancient Greek and Roman art, though also adding the features of the Medieval Era and the Renaissance itself to the mix. Although associated by many with pompastic and often exaggerated motion, simple to understand, yet often overdesigned, the Baroque actually holds a deep history within it's motifs and thought.

The end of the 16th century marked the collapse of Renaissance thought. The discovery of Vespucia, the Heliocentric system - pioneered by the Italian scientist Alberto Cogliatti, who later fought in a long battle with the Church over his discoveries - and then further advances in astronomy and navigation moved the borders of the Universe far back. To the Baroque man, it had become clear that it is impossible for a mortal human to comprehend the vastness of the Universe, not to mention try to control it and shape of like the Humanists wanted. In addition, the view on religion had also changed. The Reformation, pioneered by the Renaissance, threw Europe into a string of bloody wars and inhumane tragedies, and the view of God as a vengeful, cruel overlord was reflected in the arts and literature of the time. The phrase "memento mori" ("remember, you'll die"), brought to popularity from the Antiquity, can easily describe the mentality of the Baroque era.

Drama, tension and an exaggerated appeal to the senses to create grandeur are the primary qualities of Baroque art.

Pyotr Krashevsky, "Naturemorte", 1622
​

This art movement reached Lithuania around the same time as the rest of Europe - right after the end of the Twenty Years' War, brought to the nation by Lithuanian students in Western universities, especially architecture. The grandeur of Baroque architecture was supported and appreciated by both the Kings of Lithuania and the Lithuanian nobility, which saw it as a way to show off their wealth and power, and thus Baroque architecture quickly established a hold in the Kingdom. One of the most famous architectural wonders of Lithuanian Baroque is the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Sobor in Vilnius, funded by Martynas Augustas Pacas and finished in 1658. It is considered to be one of the most beautiful churches in Eastern Europe, and was placed among the "Seven Wonders of the Modern Era" by a public poll in 1986.

Exterior and interior of the Sobor
​

All was quiet on the literature front, however. Lithuania did not produce great poets or writers during the Baroque, certainly not on the same rank as the Visegradian Matthias Casimir Sarbiewski, even nicknamed the "Sarmatian Horace", nor the French Francois Excellier-Flammant, whose groundbreaking novel "Sir Roland" paints a satirical take on the Medieval knight novel genre. Lithuania did have local authors, however. The most well-known one is Emerikas Senkevičius, the son of a minor noble, who broke through his path to fame writing panegyrical poems to Albertas Jogaila I during the years 1624-1627. Out of them, the most well known is "Albertomachia", about the King's campaign against Sweden in the later stages of the conflict.

A peculiar work from the Lithuanian Baroque is Martynas Augustas Pacas's "Journey to the South", published in the year 1609. As a young and fiercely religious man, this soon-to-be great magnate went on a long journey to the Middle East to visit the many Christian holy sites scattered across the region - first Constantinople, then Palestine, where he reached Jerusalem itself - and kept a diary during the whole trip. The diary turned out to be so interesting and peculiar to his people, most of whom had never even seen the Middle East, that Pacas agreed to release it as a Latin book, which, due to it's quick spread across Europe, was one of the first Lithuanian "best-sellers", in a way. Among the many readers of the book was Prince Albertas Jogaila, who, after becoming King, reportedly kept the book along with him through all of his campaigns and even cited some of it's passages to his camp during the war with the Ottomans.

To Lithuanian art historians, the Baroque is like an intermediary between the first Lithuanian works in the Renaissance and the incoming light of the Enlightenment and beyond, but it is still remembered as an era of achievements.

---

So, I've finished a portion of my Lithuanian translation, I'm thinking of continuing the timeline itself soon. There's a lot of things I've planned out, going as far as the 18th and 19th centuries, and I'm sure it will be exciting.

While we're in this "hibernation period", let's discuss! What are some of your predictions for this timeline? Anything you think or hope will happen sometime down the line? Or maybe you read me like a mirror and can already tell my plans?

 

[Augenis]

Part 37: The Witcher (1645-1655)
​

During the time of his father's death, Prince Jonas was merely a student in the University (Academy) of Vilnius, enrolled in natural philosophy and hardly prepared to rule over the largest empire in Europe. Most likely, he didn't think that his father would die so soon and leave him to be the heir to the throne. Maybe he also thought that Albertas Jogaila I would not choose him as his heir and instead pick from one of his younger brothers - Žygimantas and Mykolas. The nobility of the Lithuanian nation was not so keen on letting a 20 year old rule the nation, either. But, alas, both of these thoughts were not fulfilled, he was brought to the Palace to be crowned as Emperor Jonas I of Lithuania, the new monarch.

Emperor Jonas I of Lithuania
​

Jonas I was not determined and ambitious nor extremely wroth like his father, he didn't excel in combat at all. He was not some great genius or an excellent statesman like Algirdas II. He wasn't a bloodthirsty tyrant, nor did he ever wish to be. He was just a jumped up university student who was crowned as the Emperor, lacking any and all experience in court matters or administration, and this was reflected in the way he ruled - carefully, without any ambition or extravagance, trying his best to not destroy anything, but not attempting to go on a second conquest spree, either. The developing absolutism of Albertas Jogaila I's rule was relaxed during his son's reign, Jonas I found himself more and more reliant on the advice of his court to effectively rule, and being kind-hearted and accepting as he was, he carefully let go of some of his father's absolutist machinations. Perhaps this "craven rule" was for the better, Lithuania was still trying to recover from it's participation in the Twenty Years' War, and a content and unambitious king was fine for that. Under Jonas I's short rule, the economy of the empire began to grow and regain it's former strength, the Baroque art movement firmly established itself in the country and new technological advancements from the West reached the nation, though how much of that was actually caused by him is questionable.

On the other hand, the Royal Court began to grow more and more stronger, disproportionally in comparison to the emperor, unchecked corruption flourished within it, which was not what the dynasty wanted...

Jonas I was uninterested in the day-to-day matters of the state - what his heart yearned for was science. Despite his father's best efforts to shape him into a soldier, Prince Jonas prevailed over his father and travelled to the University of Vilnius to study natural philosophy, the precursor to modern science. The 17th century was the heart of what will later be called the "Scientific Revolution", the scientists and philosophers of the day were beginning to crack the secrets to the primary mysteries of the world and philosophy - what is going on in the Universe, why do things act the way they do, and how do they act, exactly? The already mentioned Italian astronomer Alberto Cogliatti and his work in developing the modern Heliocentric model in the end of the 16th century is considered to be the beginning of this era, and the 17th century will only grow more rife with such discoveries. The modern day term "Camarian physics" borrow their name from the great French physicist Francis Camaro, considered to be one of the greatest minds of all time, who was the first to develop the three laws of motion in 1651 and was among the first to pioneer the scientific method. Camaro's works were greatly influenced by the earlier Swedish mathematician Anders Nilsson, whose 1611 tractate "The Celestial Physics" laid the basis for the Nilssonian laws of planetary motion, and is also the first known mention of the word 'physics' as a science. Outside of the laws of motion, Camaro also created the law of universal gravitation, laying the mathematical principles for this fundamental force of physics, and developed the use of calculus in these sets of laws. According to a popular anecdote, the physicist imagined the idea of gravity by watching an artillery salute in his home city Orleans - no matter how hard the cannon were to fire the cannonball, it was destined to fall back to the ground, as if something was pulling it down, and this gave Camaro the spark needed.

How is this related to the matters at hand? Well, while at the time Camaro's revolutionary ideas had yet to gain widespread traction, among the first supporters of his theories was Emperor Jonas I. Quite adept at the natural sciences himself, the monarch contacted the French physicist out of the interest in his works. Despite living on the other sides of Europe, Camaro in Orleans and Jonas in Vilnius, the two intellectuals engaged in detailed correspondence for a few years, and the young emperor converted his room in the palace to a laboratory for testing grounds. This development startled the rest of the Royal Family, however, especially the two of his already adult brothers - Žygimantas and Mykolas. To them, Emperor Jonas was becoming more and more of a threat to the integrity of the monarchy, his lack of interest in national or foreign affairs could revert everything that their father and grandmother built up for them. They weren't alone in this suspicion - a sizable portion of the Lithuanian nobility feared that Jonas I's rule will lead to the collapse of the Empire. Some even compared it, without much basis, to the Polish succession crisis in the 15th century, and Jonas I to Siemowit III - and nobody wanted that to happen to Mother Lithuania.

Jonas I was unaware of the court and his brothers secretly turning against him, especially since he was becoming more and more detached from his duties as Emperor to work for science. But Žygimantas and Mykolas couldn't just kick their brother out - he was still the monarch, the highest authority in the Lithuanian nation both politically and religiously, being the controller of the Lithuanian Orthodox Church and all - but what they could do was slander him. Look at what he's doing, after all! Instead of ruling his nation and leading it to greatness like his father, he's writing letters to foreigners and engaging in shady activity in his room! There's only one explanation - he must be a heretic, a witcher! Witch hunts were not necessarily unknown to Lithuania, but they certainly weren't common, either. Popularized across Germany during the Twenty Years' War in order to find sufficient scapegoats for the horrors inflicted upon the countryside by both sides, they spread across Europe, more and more cruel methods were being developed to deal with the "witchcraft" and "witches", like drowning and burning.

Mykolas and Žygimantas managed to rally most of the court to bust the "witcher" Emperor, they even managed to sway the leaders of the Karaite Guard to their side, and suddenly, on one night in the year 1654, the doors of the Palace were busted and Jonas I was kicked out and arrested, just as when he was writing down notes for the results of his experiment. But, being an emperor and all, he couldn't just be burned or executed in some way, especially since a sizable portion of the population was still in favor of the monarch. Instead, the conspirators handed him a horse, a small bag of money and released him in Brest, near the Visegradian-Lithuanian border, and told to leave the country and never return. And so he did. The exiled emperor travelled across Europe for a few years before finally arriving to France to meet his acquaintance - however, by the time of his arrival, Francois Camaro had already been dead. Jonas I lived the rest of his life in relative poverty, living in Paris and cooperating with the French Academy of Sciences. Many were interested in this "fallen emperor from the Far East", especially since most Parisians had never even seen a Lithuanian person before in their life. Jonas I, Emperor from 1645 to 1654, oldest son of Albertas Jogaila I, died in the year 1701 in France, hardly even remembering his homeland, but dying just as he wanted to live - as a man of science. His legacy had been tainted by his successors, who wanted to portray him as negatively as possible in order to legitimize their coup, but nowadays he is recognized as a forward-thinking, though unambitious and ineffective monarch.

Back in Lithuania, however, an interregnum arose. The two remaining brothers, Žygimantas and Mykolas, clashed for the crown for a few months, before the latter was finally captured, arrested and executed by the former. Stained in the blood and tears of his kin, Prince Žygimantas, the second oldest son of Albertas Jogaila I, was crowned as Emperor Žygimantas I on March 11th, 1655. The Emperor is gone, long live the Emperor!

 

[Augenis]

Part 38: The Emperor is Gone! Long Live the Emperor! (1655-1675)
​

On the foreign front, the reign of Jonas I was marked by the seven year long East Asian War between the Netherlands Free State and Portugal. The Dutch were a rising maritime power for half a century by then, and their ambitions to control the world trade flow were dangerous to the Portuguese, who held a monopoly in trade with East Asia and profited greatly from it - and thus the two maritime powers clashed for supremacy. Interestingly enough, this can also be considered to be one of the first proxy wars in history, as most of the fighting between the two nations was done by local Indonesian and Indochinese kings and rulers allied with one of the Europeans. In the end, however, the Dutch prevailed, and the influence held by Portugal in East Asia was severely curbed. While they still retained Manuela, their prize colony, they had to cede numerous trade ports in Asia, most notably Taiwan and Macao. Coupled with their holdings in North Vespucia, the Dutch were establishing themselves as one of the primary great powers in Europe, at least for now.

The beginning of Žygimantas I's reign was quite chaotic. The supporters of Jonas I were angry at the surprise coup, and the population was growing restless. The new Emperor had lots of ambitions himself - he wished to continue his father's absolutist policy, conquer Volga-Russia once and for all, continue expanding West and perhaps into the Balkans. But achieving all of these wishes would require some serious work, and the opposition to his rule was strong. The first few years of Žygimantas I's rule were slow, focused on establishing power within all of the regions of the Empire. One way or the other, the new Emperor managed to replace most of the former Voivodes with loyalists of his regime, securing the army for his apparatus. The armed forces of the Empire of Lithuania were always the most powerful tool in the hands of the monarchs - ever since it's foundation, Lithuania had been a nation focused on militarism. Control of the Army almost always led to you being the most powerful person in the country, and the rest of the government institutions, like the bureaucracy and religion, were secondary matters.

Žygimantas I, Emperor of Lithuania
​

One of the crowning achievements of Žygimantas I's reign was the creation of the Third Statute of Lithuania, compiled in 1661-1665. This document greatly expands on the Second Statute of Lithuania, updating numerous laws and punishments and setting the tone for the rest of the Emperor's reign. Serfdom was reaffirmed and in many cases even strengthened, for example, fugitive serfs were now always required to be returned back to their owner rather than emancipated after a specific time period. Žygimantas I hoped to receive the support of the reactionary nobility with this change - whether it worked is up to history to decide. The country's status as a hardened absolute monarchy was now finalized, too - the Council of Lords now only had an advisory role on royal matters, although the court remained powerful in actually influencing policies. The Statutes of Lithuania were once again notable for their progressive legal tradition, and greatly influenced the development of codified law across the continent, even if they were reactionary in many aspects.

Much like his father, Emperor Žygimantas was a military man and was not interested in the arts or sciences, but he did not completely abandon them like, say, Teodoras I. Even though the shackles of serfdom greatly limited the development of cities and all that came with them, the first manufactories, called "ekonomijos" ("economies") began cropping up throughout the nation during his reign, mostly funded by private investors wishing to diversify. However, their structure was much different from what was developing rapidly in the West. For one, these "ekonomijos" used manorial labor rather than hired workers, and many of them were established in noble estates rather than in cities. As such, they were extremely ineffective, even if they applied modern technology, and most of them went bankrupt. The few that survived became a small, weak foundation for an incoming modern economy, and this was not a good sign. Throughout the 17th century, the prices of grain and lumber began to drop as alternative suppliers like North Vespucia began to come into play, and since these two resources were Lithuania's primary exports to Western Europe, this was obviously concerning to them. And the Lithuanian nobility, which held almost all of the land within the country, was well aware of this problem. Some tried fighting the dropping revenue with higher production, but it would only cause the price to shrink even faster than normal.

This elongated "grain crisis", beginning around the year 1650 and extending for over a century, would come to haunt Lithuania for many times. It was becoming clear that surviving as a mono-export state was not fit for such a powerful empire, and something had to be done to diversify. Many others were denying that this was even a problem, and that the grain price will stabilize over time, so there is no need to worry and potentially infest your mind with dreams of, say, abolition of serfdom. Who'd ever want to do that? Oh, right, all of Western Europe has already pretty much abandoned it and are reaping the positive results...

"Grain Pays" and "Grain Doesn't Pay", two pictures illustrating Lithuania's economic situation in the 16th and 17th centuries respectively. During the Age of Exploration, the prices for cereals and lumber skyrocketed and this resulted in a golden age for the Lithuanian economy, but once the price stabilized, financial problems ensued.
​

The "grain crisis" was also problematic to the monarch, as diminishing income from taxes and tariffs led to holes in the budget, most of which was being spent on the military and paying for the court. Žygimantas I decided that the financial problems will need to be fixed in the long term, but for now, the people need to be distracted by something - how about a quick war? And in fact, the 1660s looked like the beginning of a new Twenty Years' War to many spectators. The organization of the continent after the Treaty of Amsterdam was not supported by everyone, most notably Spain and Visegrad, whose power was curbed after the disastrous conflict. Visegrad's revanchism was directed towards two empires - the Ottomans and Lithuania. While the Ottomans were vegetating and dealing with their overextended empire, Lithuania seemed too powerful to take on - but the Lithuanians wanted war against Visegrad as well. Žygimantas I was quick to bring up the Polish Succession War into question - should Poland really be a part of the Union of the Triple Crown, or should it instead serve under him?

1667 looked like it was going to be the beginning of a new great European war, but it never came to yield fruit. Lithuania was preparing for war against the Visegradians, but this potential shift in power balance was not appreciated by the rest of Europe, and rightfully so. The Lithuanian nobility was not willing to go to war, either, especially when the treasury of the Empire was already half empty and the war would most likely turn into a stalemate. Sweden immediately stood besides Visegrad, which was now seen as the victim of the situation, and France protested the belligerent actions taken by the Lithuanian forces. Žygimantas I blamed Visegrad for funding uprisings in Lithuanian Galicia and demanded compensation, but he got squat. The Polish Crisis was a Lithuanian diplomatic defeat, the Empire backed down, fearing a pan-European coalition on their doorstep, and the order created by the Treaty of Amsterdam endured for another day.

Twenty years of Žygimantas's rule had passed, and the aging king realized that he has achieved so little so far. And in fact, his inaction towards the "grain crisis" has resulted in his empire growing even weaker than what Jonas I left him. Something had to be done. Someone must fall beneath him.

But who?

 

[Augenis]

Part 39: The Last Crusade (1675-1680)
​

The Ottoman Empire.

As time went on, this empire's weakness was slowly becoming apparent. Much like the preceding great Islamic caliphates, the Turks were the Scourge of Europe who scared everyone from Spanish sailors to Hungarian peasants, their elite Janissary and Sipahi forces were a terror in the battlefield, but their expansion from the Atlantic to the Indus River came at a great price - the burden of administrating and maintaining this gigantic territory with their administrative apparatus. The need to constantly crush and defeat rebellions across the Empire, maintain order, keep up the necessary bureaucracy to collect taxes and continue expansion was a constant drain on the state's resources, and a large portion of the spending being needed to maintain the court and pay for the Sultan's luxuries did not help. From the outside, the Empire looked like a giant with legs made out of clay, despite it still being among the five great powers of Europe. Although, you can say the same thing about Lithuania as well.

Within the last century or so, Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire conflicted numerous times, with the biggest war between them taking place during Albertas Jogaila I's reign, which he won and reacquired access to the Black Sea for his recently established empire as a result. And now, Žygimantas I wanted more. While Lithuania had sea access both in the Baltic and in the Black Sea, in both cases their access was blocked by foreigner-controlled straits, which, in the case of Constantinople (Konstantinyye), were often blocked to Lithuanian merchant ships. This "thirst for warm waters" was among the main driving factors for Lithuanian southern expansion. Religion played a role as well - the Balkans, dominated by the Turks for centuries, were Lithuanian brothers in faith, and the empire's status as the leader of the Orthodox was calling for liberation of the Balkans. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was not protected by the Amsterdam System, the set of "eternal treaties" made after the Twenty Years' War which set in stone the concept of "balance of power in Europe", making sure that none of the four great powers of Europe - France, Spain, Visegrad and Lithuania - get too powerful at each other's expense. This was the view that cost Lithuania the Polish Crisis a few years earlier, but it did not take the Ottoman Empire, which was considered to be "outside the boundaries" of Europe and it's politics, into account.

In 1674, after the assassination of the 13 year old Murad IV by smothering him with a pillow, the Ottomans descended into a succession crisis between three vying successors, which Lithuania saw as the perfect opportunity to strike. Preparations were made for a great campaign to the south, food was being stored, taxes were raised to fill up the half-empty treasury for the war, and plans were being drawn for the attack. While many people today credit Žygimantas I as the mastermind of the conflict, this is a historical misconception. While the Emperor indeed wished to make a blow to the Turks, the true mastermind of the invasion was his Grand Hetman, Jaunutis Songaila, who held many manors and lands in the south of the empire, especially along the Black Sea, and was keen on expanding his holdings on the expense of the Ottoman Empire. News arrived to the Lithuanian court in the beginning of 1675 - after taking care of his rivals for the throne via assassination and imprisonment, as well as swaying the Janissaries to his side, the dead Sultan's cousin Abdulmejid was crowned as his successor, Abdulmejid I.

Assuming that the succession crisis has left the country unstable and that the new Sultan is weak, Žygimantas I officially declared war on the Ottoman Empire in March of 1675, crying out for the liberation and protection of his "Orthodox brothers".

But was he going to fight alone? Of course not! Why not try to get Visegrad on his side? They have been fighting the Ottoman Empire for centuries now, and wouldn't they want to reconquer some of the lands they had lost? But Abdulmejid I was faster.

What Žygimantas didn't know was that he shouldn't have underestimated his opponent. Before his tenure as Sultan, Abdulmejid had been a seasoned warrior and leader of the Janissaries, and was well versed in the intricacies of Ottoman diplomacy with their northern and western neighbours, among other things. He was aware that if Visegrad were to join on Lithuania's side, the two European powers would be able to push the Turks out of the Balkans, so what he had to do was to prevent that from happening. And while both Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire were mobilizing their armies for a great conflict, Abdulmejid traveled to Buda, to King Charles VI of Visegrad, and after less than a week of negotiations, they signed the Treaty of Budapest. The Ottoman Empire agreed to cede Transylvania and some of their Croatian provinces in exchange for Visegradian neutrality in the conflict. Both of the nations knew this to be a temporary measure, but both left satisfied anyway.

With his western front secure, Abdulmejid could turn all of his focus towards Lithuania. The Four Year War has begun.

Abdulmejid (Abdülmecid) I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire
​

1675 was the year of the Lithuanian offensive. Moving through their vassal Moldavia, the 85 000 men strong Lithuanian army, led by the Emperor himself, reached Wallachia and easily sieged through the weak castles in their way. While the populace was not massively opposed to the Lithuanian occupation, it wasn't the "instant cheering and rebellion to join with Mother Lithuania" that Žygimantas I expected. On September of 1675, the imperial forces crossed the Danube and defeated vanguard Turkish units in the Dobruja region. The primary Ottoman force was still preparing and gathering troops near Konstantinyye. Lithuanian-aligned Crimean troops seized the Circassian coast, but were defeated by the troops sent from the Ottoman vassal Circassia. However, fearing an even bigger Lithuanian invasion, the Circassians did not advance into Crimea and instead held their ground in the mountains. Not like Žygimantas I cared. He wanted to defeat the Turks on the field as fast as possible, but they were avoiding a direct encounter, which was a wrench in his plans.

1676 rolled in, and neither side seemed to gain a clear hand over the other. In March, the Lithuanians captured Varna, a major Turkish port in Bulgaria, then seized Burgas to the south, not far away from Konstantinyye itself. The 11 000 men large Ottoman garrison in the region was decisively defeated, and after this victory, Žygimantas I sent Abdulmejid I a peace offer, demanding numerous territorial concessions in the Balkans and the Circassian Coast. The Turkish chronicles state that the Sultan laughed while reading the entire offer - this man was demanding a harsh peace after capturing a few cities! The answer was simple - no. Despite this insult, Žygimantas I was unable to just march to Konstantinyye and take the fight at the Ottomans - the city was too heavily defended, and the large Turkish army could very easily push back his offensive. So the war turned into a stalemate. Advancing deeper into Bulgaria was not an option due to the large mountain ranges in the way, so the Lithuanians spent their time raiding the region to the south of Varna. Abdulmejid I, however, moved in a weapon that the Lithuanian monarch did not even take into account - the supreme Ottoman Navy. From 1676 onward, this massive fleet constantly bombarded Lithuanian ports along the Black Sea and set up an effective blockade on all Lithuanian merchant ships in the region. The tiny Lithuanian Black Sea Fleet could hardly do anything in response, they couldn't even leave their port in Khadjibey without fears of being shelled to death.

In 1677, the Turks finally advanced forward, and the two armies met in the fields near Dyulino, south of Varna. 75 000 Lithuanians meet 110 000 Turks. However, neither army attempted to advance on the opponent, nobody wanted to risk it and attack. The Battle of Dyulino resulted in a few minor skirmishes between the frontline forces of each armies before Žygimantas I finally retreated back towards Varna. As a result, the Turks recaptured Burgos the month after the "battle". Both armies were starting to run low on supply, however - the Ottomans had fielded a massive army which could hardly be fed from the land, while the Lithuanians were far from their homeland and were scraping the last bits of the supply they brought with them. The war was stalemated even further, both empires employed raiding tactics to make the other force succumb to hunger, but all it did was ruin the land even more. Already there were recorded cases of hunger and famine in the region, and Žygimantas's planned "revolt by the Balkan Orthodox" didn't come. Lithuania's history of collaborating with the Catholics through the Concordate of Brest and abandoning most of original Orthodox doctrine was still remembered by the priesthood in the region, and the Patriarchate in Konstantinyye spoke out against the Lithuanians. The people may have wanted to revolt, but they lacked any strong leaders to rally them, and Abdulmejid was careful in suppressing any news about Lithuanian successes in the war to not incite the Serbs, Bulgarians and Albanians to take arms against him. When you hear that the Lithuanian heretics will be defeated soon and are falling, would you raise your pitchfork to support them, even if your priest, the only authority you know, tells you that you shouldn't?

Of course, you can't say that the South Slavs were content with living under the Ottomans, either. Just that this was not their time.

By 1678, Žygimantas was getting desperate, and he finally decided to make a move, meeting Abdulmejid's army near Bliznatsi, a bit to the south from Varna, and the Battle of Bliznatsi began. The Lithuanians had the element of surprise, but their main force moved too slow to take full advantage of this edge. However, the Turks had their own problems, most notably their lack of food supply after the long campaign marching across Bulgaria. They did have the numerical advantage, however. The fight began with a long and drawn out skirmish between the infantry of both sides, neither side able to make a successful push through the deep swamps that the battle was set in. Eventually, however, the Turks began to flank the Lithuanian forces, slowly trying to surround them, and in response Žygimantas sent out his empire's feared Lithuanian light cavalry for a harass charge. While the first few hit-and-run strikes were successful and pushed the Turkish infantry back, the hostile terrain of the battlefield was not good for maneuver, and a few failed charges resulted in heavy volley damage on the raiders, effectively ending the cavalry offensive. However, Abdulmejid was unable to counter with his own cavalry due to the terrain as well. Luck was on his side, however, as Žygimantas I eventually gave the order to retreat, leaving the Turks in control of the battlefield with heavy casualties on both sides.

However, the Ottomans were unable to make full use of this victory because of their food shortages. The land was thorougly devastated and couldn't maintain the massive armies, and any offensive into Lithuanian territory would have meant travelling through barely inhabited steppe for hundreds of kilometers, a death sentence for a starving army. Four years had passed and neither side was able to defeat the other in this bloody stalemate. Time for peace. And peace was made in Varna, in October of 1678, reinstating the status quo. Neither side gained anything in the peace deal, except for Circassia, which annexed the Ottoman-held Circassian Coast and managed to break free from Turkish control due to Abdulmejid's focus on the war with Lithuania.

Map of the Four Year War (1675-1678). Hatched territory represents the maximum extent of Lithuanian occupation in 1676. Moldavia, a Lithuanian vassal, is marked as part of Lithuania in this map.
​

The "great crusade to liberate the Orthodox" failed. The Ottomans were tougher than what Žygimantas I thought. Abdulmecid I's prestige rose to great heights, while Lithuania's descended down further. Former rivals started to eye this eastern empire not with fear, but with hopes of revenge. Žygimantas I failed to achieve what he set out for - he died in 1680, unloved, considered to be an ineffective monarch by most. His eldest son, also named Žygimantas, succeeded him, as Žygimantas II, and he was about to receive the greatest challenge of his life.

 

[Augenis]

Part 40: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold (1680-1689)
​

Žygimantas II lacked the ambition of his father, lacked it among many, many other things. During his father's reign, the prince was groomed in the royal court, first looked after by nannies, then by "volunteer" courtiers, and he grew to be a decadent, sinful person who would much rather spend his time in lavish feasts and going after the prettiest whores rather than trying to be the best emperor for his country. Naturally, this didn't bode well with any part of the empire. Even his father was growing disappointed in how the heir turned out, and the Lithuanian nobility feared the day when the old emperor would die and the flamboyant weakling will ascend. And that day has arrived.

If Žygimantas II were to rule in, say, the 1630s, perhaps everything could have been fine. After all, Jonas I didn't do too badly in his reign. But this was a different time, and now, enemies from outside and from within were eyeing the weakened empire like a flock of vultures, and thus, there was a lot of reason to fear for the future.

Emperor Žygimantas II of Lithuania
​

Lithuania's greatest adversary at the time directly ties in to the most troubling province of the Empire - Galicia. Conquered by Emperor Albertas Jogaila half a century ago, Galicia was populated with Poles and Ruthenians, and their people were dying to return back to their homeland, Visegrad. Large military detachments had to constantly be stationed in the region to pacify the populace, which had been on the brink of revolt for the last two decades. The Empire was unwilling to let go of Galicia, however, as it's wealth, high population and strategic position more than paid off for the trouble. Galicia, and especially Lemberg, the biggest city and strongest fortress in the region, was Lithuania's gate to the West. But who was constantly funding the rebellions? Who was using the suppression of Galician Poles for propaganda value? Who was sharpening their sword for an attack to the East as a response?

If your answer to all of those questions is "Visegrad", then you'd be right.

The Union of Visegrad was an oddity in European politics. Between the oligarchic democracy of France and many German countries, and the dark autocracy of Britannia and Lithuania, it looked like a mix of the two. It had a King, but an elected one, and he shared his power with the nobility, the National Assembly. These two institutions cooperated to organize the country's policy both domestically and in foreign affairs. The phrase "noble democracy" can sometimes be thrown at it, but the power of the King was too strong to have Visegrad be simply classified as a weird republic. One issue would always form the heart of Visegradian politics - their relations with the big eastern neighbour. The House of Luxembourg, the reigning dynasty, rode of the waves of revanchism that seeped across the country after the defeats in the Twenty Years War, and the reign of Charles VI saw major reforms in the country's military, adapting the Swedish model of military organization and applying mercantilist policies to increase the country's budget. Visegrad was sharpening his teeth, and even though the Amsterdam System prevented them from attacking Lithuania immediately after Žygimantas II's ascension, a stroke of luck was about to shine for them...

While Visegrad was the biggest outside threat for the Empire, internal problems plagued it as well.

After the Great Russian Revolt, the spirit of the Russian people had been broken for a long time. Many of the most energetic and determined leaders of the nation left for the East, where the country of Volga-Russia was formed. The Lithuanian kings, later emperors, tried to stamp out the primary things that incited the Russians to revolt - Volanism, Russian history and their ties to the West. Orthodox priests would travel through Russia day and night to discourage the populace from their heretical faith, official chronicles would avoid any mention of Russian history before the Lithuanians, and trade routes to the region were closed. But even these conditions did not stop the russkaya dusha from thriving and surviving. Volanite ideals and Russian traditions began to form the basis for a new Russian nation, focused on patriotism, piety and the democratic ideas of the Great Russian Revolt. Within the second half of the 17th century, numerous underground Russian organizations began to form, the new generation, educated in Western universities, was starting to take the torch. The undisputed leader of the brewing new Russian Revolt was Vladislav Semyonov, the son of a minor Russian noble from Tver, famous for his charisma and passion only matched by his peers in the so-called "Group for Russian Liberation".

The Russians were not the only internal problem for Žygimantas II to deal with - his own base of supporters was rapidly shrinking, and to explain that, we need to take a look into the style of rule of the monarchs of Lithuania from the end of the 16th century onward. The rising and powerful nobility was a threat to the ambitions of Queen Sofija and Emperor Albertas Jogaila. Unlike their predecessors, they could no longer rely on the nobles to remain on the throne, especially when they were starting to develop dangerous beliefs on, say, emancipating the serfs or giving the people more power in the government. Instead, they turned towards a fairly recent phenomenon in Lithuania - the military class. Since the establishment of a standing mercenary army, the military was no longer made up of noble volunteers, instead being composed of professional career soldiers from all three estates, and due to the age-old tradition of Lithuanian militarism, they were a force to be reckoned with in political affairs. Because of the expansive nature of the Lithuanian Empire, the monarchy and the military entered a bountiful "marriage of interests", both structures helping one another for their own needs, which led to the position of Grand Hetman (supreme army commander) becoming one of the most influential positions within the country.

However, the ascension of Žygimantas II changed that. Žygimantas II was either not aware of these ties between him and the military, or resented them, as he ignored the army matters and instead shifted his focus on reconciling with the nobility, if not just feasting all the way through. Obviously, angering your family's biggest political ally without a big reason was not a good thing, and this situation was even worsened in 1685, when the old Grand Hetman, Jaunutis Songaila, who was willing to put up with the flamboyant king, died, replaced by Aleksandras Chodkevičius, a general from Black Rus', who was far less tolerant of this betrayal. But one couldn't just remove the Emperor, right? Žygimantas II had no brothers, only sisters, and his closest male relatives were generations apart - plus, removing a 400 year old monarchy and the head of the Lithuanian Orthodox Church wouldn't give great PR with the people, so what could be done?..

Nevertheless, it was a not good time for Lithuania to have infighting.

In 1686, many diplomats and rulers across Europe gasped as France and Spain suddenly went to war. Although, in hindsight, this wasn't as surprising as one might think. It was, in fact, a colonial conflict - while the Spaniards historically were a domineering force in the Caribbean, the rising French nation challenged them, establishing a set of colonies along the northern coast of South Vespucia, the so-called colony of Nouveau-France[1], eventually coming into conflict with the Spanish settlements in the region, who were also colonizing it under the name of Nuevo Galicia. War broke out when a French fleet, sent to reinforce the French settlers, was accidentally shelled by the Spanish ships in the sea, who mistook it for pirates. The war quickly spread to the Old World, skirmishes began in the Pyrenees, and neither country could no longer help enforce the Amsterdam System anymore - a stroke of luck for Visegrad on a scale of the Battle of Buda.

In the first months of 1687, after a portion of the Lithuanian garrisons were pulled out to reinforce troubling Russian regions, Galicia suddenly erupted in a major revolt. The rebels seized numerous towns, villages and fortresses along the Lithuanian-Visegradian border, and even won a number of clashes with Lithuanian troops in the first month. Something was off about this event, though. These didn't feel like simple rebels - they seemed too well financed, coordinated and attached to the neighbour in the West. Many of them were as well armed, if not even better armed, than their opponents. It was quite clear who was pulling the strings behind this revolt, who incited it and who helped make it happen.

However, Žygimantas II's reaction to the news was far from what the court and the military expected. When he was informed of the Galician Revolt and their possible ties to Visegrad, the emperor instantly went for the worst option possible, and ordered his army to mobilize and his diplomatic corps to declare war on Visegrad. It had to be done, in his eyes. And thus, war began. Charles VI, who was having the time of his life with all of the successes falling in his hands, immediately played the victim card. Lithuania broke the Treaty of Amsterdam! They want to annex all of Poland, or even beyond! They will break the balance of power in Europe!

Lithuania, with it's disloyal army and a brewing second Great Russian Revolt, now found itself fighting a war against an adversary who's more than meets the eye.

Apsaugok, Viešpatie.

---

1. OTL Venezuela and the Guyanas

 

[Augenis]

Part 41: The Time of Troubles (1688-1690)
​

In our time, in the 21st century, amateurs in history often ask - what enabled Visegrad to survive this long, surrounded by such hostile odds? Ever since it's creation, it had been attacked from all three sides, by the Ottomans, by the Lithuanians and by the Germans, and yet it managed to repulse any invasions for hundreds of years. Even when their enemies would gnaw away pieces of their territory and destroy their armies, it would return like a phoenix and restore it's borders. Some called it extreme, stupid luck and happenstance. Some babbled that the West Slavs and the Magyars are biologically superior. Some tried to look into the country's economy or demographics, and while they found some clues, it didn't explain the whole picture.

One of the best explanations, however, came from the Polish historian Karol Maciewski in 1987, in a book titled "Guns, Tactics and Steel", where he raises the proposal that Visegrad's survival was mandated by the country's approach to warfare, starting with 16th century reforms that managed to save the country in the long term. One thing that both contemporary and past historians note about Visegrad is it's education. In 1680, the union hosted 14 universities (in comparison, Lithuania only had four - in Vilnius, Kiev, Riga and Karaliaučius), not counting numerous colleges as well as a primary school network. Visegrad's literacy rates were among the highest in Europe - and it especially specialized in military literacy. Since the 16th century, all military officers in the army were required by law to be literate and have a degree in military education, and in the middle of the 17th century, the literacy requirement was extended to normal soldiers as well - a phenomenon way ahead of it's time. Visegrad had the highest quantity of published military literature in the continent, it supplied all of Europe with manuals of arms, and all of this resulted in an obvious outcome, as Maciewski states - the army of Visegrad was much more adaptable, literate, disciplined and accepting of innovation than any of it's peers, a giant advantage on the battlefield that allowed Visegrad to survive for so long.

Of course, it's not like the country was full of heavy armored space marines or something - it was not a perfect and flawless force. What it especially lacked was numbers, which is where their opponent in the Galician War, Lithuania, shined.

The Galician War began with a major Lithuanian thrust into Mazovia, in northern Poland, where the imperial army overwhelmed local garrisons before reinforcements could arrive, reaching the Vistula by September. The Visegrad force was focused on Galicia itself - a Hungarian army of 25 000 men marched across the Carpathians and joined up with the rebels in East Galicia, capturing Przemysl in October of 1687 and marching east towards Lemberg. They engaged a vanguard Lithuanian unit of 14 000 soldiers near Mostyska, easily defeating them and forcing the survivors to flee. In the Battle of Mostyska, the Visegradians showcased a new military development of theirs, the perfected art of volley fire - line infantry. Standing in a thin straight line with only a few lines of men making it up, shooting in volleys, the soldiers were able to maximize the effectiveness of the musket, even if this tactic came with a cost in mobility. The Lithuanians, who were mostly light skirmishers and scouts, could not withstand this unseen type of offensive.

In light of this defeat, Grand Hetman Aleksandras Chodkevičius was briefly recalled from Vilnius to the Galician Front, commanding the Lithuanian forces in Lemberg in preparation for a Visegradian assault. The intelligence that the survivors of Mostyska reported was worrying, but Chodkevičius was confident in his army's abilities. The 37 000 men large Lithuanian force, mainly composed of recruits from Ruthenia, left the fortress in the beginning of December, when the first snow had already fallen, and faced the Hungarian forces in the Battle of Horodok. The winter was turning out to be an extremely cold one, and the ground was already covered in two feet of snow, heavily limiting the mobility and visibility of both armies. Lithuanian skirmish attempts were ineffective and were repulsed by the Visegradian line infantry, but what the Hungarian commander did not expect was the sudden Lithuanian cavalry charge into the battlefield - perhaps because trying to attack with horses during freezing weather is insane. The first Visegradian line collapsed under the sudden strike, but there were two more left, and they suddenly moved back and formed a square. An infantry square. Chodkevičius's cavalry did not try to break them, fearing that the losses would be too monumental, and eventually the weakened Visegradians retreated anyway. The Lithuanians were left in control of the battlefield, but at a great cost in manpower.

A modern recreation of a Visegradian infantry square. The Visegradian forces were often called "redcoats" due to their red clothing.
​

In Greater Poland, the Lithuanian advance was stopped by the harsh weather. The local Polish population took arms to resist the Lithuanian invasion, disrupting their supply, slowing the invading armies down and damaging their war effort in other ways, and vanguard Lithuanian units were defeated near Kielce, to the north of Krakow, preventing the Lithuanians from storming into Lesser Poland and thus potentially cutting off and surrounding the Visegradian armies in Galicia.

The winter of 1688 was the epitome of the Little Ice Age, a period in climate history marked by a relative drop in temperatures across the world, especially in Europe, and this year, one of the coldest winters in Lithuanian history set in. Large fields of crops were destroyed by snowstorms, and the situation was critical in the northern parts of the country. Aleksandras Chodkevičius returned to Vilnius on his own, and there, he secretly persuaded the weak Emperor to wait before helping the poor in distressed regions, claiming that the war must be placed higher than relieving the peasants. Chodkevičius knew that this decision will be very unpopular and that the blame will be placed on Žygimantas II, not him, a major boon to his plans, even if this meant risking the lives of thousands and people. And indeed, famines rapidly spread across the countryside, the Emperor's inaction was irritating the mobility and the peasants, the monarch's standing within the country was weakening.

Grand Hetman Aleksandras Chodkevičius
​

In 1688, the Visegradians went on the offensive. The Grand Hetman had left the front, officially leaving control over the war to the Emperor himself, who was far less versed in strategy, if he knew anything about it at all. In Greater Poland, the Lithuanian forces were soundly defeated in the Battle of Skiernewice, a two times smaller Visegradian army was victorious in the field with only minor losses. Throughout the year afterwards, most of occupied Poland was liberated, the Polish, Czech and Hungarian forces even took over a large portion of East Prussia, standing a breath away from the heartland of the Empire itself. However, the Visegradians were unable to advance, as their push towards Gumbinė was surprisingly pushed back by the Karaite Guard - the best of the best in the Lithuanian army, the Emperor's guard, founded in the 16th century, handpicked from Karaite, Jewish and Tatar soldiers and instilled with nigh perfect discipline - near Allenstein. Despite there being only 1000 Karaite Guards on the field, they stopped and pushed back a five times bigger Visegradian conscript force. Lietuva Land was safe for the time being.

The war in Galicia was also in Lithuania's losing side - at Stryj, the Visegradian army began a renewed offensive. Lithuanian positions were constantly harassed by Galician partisans, lacking in adequate supplies and in a large salient, so they eventually retreated. Lemberg was captured by the Hungarian forces in August of 1688, and this marked the Visegradian reconquest of the region. Charles VI was growing ambitious, however - taking only Galicia will not be enough. Push forward, soldiers of the Triple Crown!

But wait! Do you remember the Battle of Allenstein? Where the Karaite Guard defeated the Visegradians, even though it is required to constantly stay by the Emperor's side unless he wishes differently? It was Aleksandras Chodkevičius, working through bribed courtiers, who encouraged the Emperor to send the Karaite Guard to the front, actually - their undying loyalty to the Emperor would have proven to be troubling had they stayed in Vilnius. Of course, he didn't voice these concerns publicly. A conspiracy was beginning to form in the court, targeted against Žygimantas II. The military was tired of Žygimantas's weak rule and was ready to take the matters into their own hands. The people were angered by the inaction during the winter of 1688, and a large portion of the nobility feared that Žygimantas II will turn out to be a Siemowit III analogue for Lithuania - a braindead ruler who will run it to the ground. The "Group for Russian Liberation" was arming and preparing to retake the streets. Visegrad was less than a hundred miles away from the Nemunas River.

This was fertile ground for the 1688 October Coup. The military units loyal to the so-called "Council of the Lords", headed by Chodkevičius, stormed the Royal Palace and arrested Žygimantas II, only releasing him five days later, when he accepted all of the conspirators' demands. The executive powers of the country were transferred to the ten people council, headed by the Grand Hetman and composed of the most powerful position holders in the country - Field Hetman (second in command) Martynas Pacas, Patriarch Jevgeniy, Chancellor Jogaila Sapiega and other important figures. However, the rest of the Council of the Lords only had an advisory role, and in reality, almost all of the power was concentrated in the Grand Hetman, who ruled with the power of the military under his command.

However, there is one important distinction - Žygimantas II did not go anywhere. The Emperor was still the Emperor, he could have nice clothes, parties, be protected by the Karaites and call himself Emperor if he wants. But don't get confused, it was now the Grand Hetman, not the brightly colored man in the Palace, who was the real leader. Lithuania had become a military dictatorship, with even a fancy term to refer to it - the Hetmanate.

Aleksandras Chodkevičius now held all the strings of the country, and it was up to him to save it.

 

[Augenis]

Part 42: They Were Martyrs (1690-1692)
​

The beginning of the Hetmanate was intense. Internal and external troubles were threatening to rip the Empire apart. However, Aleksandras Chodkevičius was nowhere near willing to let his country to collapse like that, and he'd be ranked if he didn't try anything to stop it. Chodkevičius is considered to be one of the most interesting figures of the 17th century, both in his achievements and in his origin story. The Chodkevičiai (Chodkiewicz) used to be an influential family in the reign of Albertas Jogaila I, but numerous unsuccessful business choices and rival families caused their power to decline, and by the time that Aleksandras was born, they were reduced to plikbajoriai (Lith. "bald nobles", basically landless nobility), and this energetic and scheming Grand Hetman had to both save his family and rise to the highest possible position in the Lithuanian state, even more powerful than the Emperor, all within his lifetime.

He is also popular in post-mortem portrayals because he can easily fit into obvious character archetypes. For Lithuanians, he plays the role of a dark, double-edged antihero who saved his Empire, even if it meant violating ancestral right and the Emperor's authority, such a view being the main focus of the 1997 opera "Chodkevičius". For Russians, Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, however, he's an evil scheming bastard, a villain, a cliched one even, like in the famous novel "1691". Or course, both of these views are just revisionist creations, no person in history is a cartoonish villain or anti-hero with a simple personality, but the history of Chodkevičius's portrayal is nevertheless very interesting and worthwhile to look at.

In the aftermath of the October Coup, there were a few irritated rumblings from the Lithuanian nobility, but overall, the people were content with this sudden change in government. That's how unpopular Žygimantas II was. Plus, many of the nobles figured that they'd have a much higher say in the Hetmanate than in the imperial regime, so they supported it. The Grand Hetman secured a stable power base within Lithuania Propria and Ruthenia, his rule was not instantly threatened - it was Russia and the invading Visegradian armies who were the problem. In the former, the situation was getting more and more critical by the hour, the local Russian population was preparing for a revolution, led by the charismatic Vladislav Semyonov and his "Group for Russian Liberation", while the latter was rapidly advancing into Lithuanian territory, The Hetmanate had to react fast, and so it did. The state was rapidly put to full mobilization, all of the nation's strength was being directed towards the military and it's apparatus. A mobilization of volunteer noble units, reminiscent of ancient Lithuanian military organization, was put into place, and loyal soldiers raided the Royal Palace to gather up enough loot for hiring mercenaries. Martial law was enacted all over Russia, and an extensive crackdown on Vladislav Semyonov's supporters began. Chodkevičius had enormous political capital to enact extreme measures, he was here to save Lithuania and his peers knew it.

1691 saw the beginning of a major Visegradian push towards the Lithuanian heartland. In April, forces under the Czech general Bruno Bilek captured Brest and moved on towards Gardinas, dangerously reminiscent of Matthias Corvinus's march in 1467, which was alarming to the Lithuanian army. The Galician Front was also no longer stationary, the Hungarian forces moved on and captured Lutsk from the retrating Lithuanians, an important forces in western Ruthenia. Charles VI wanted the troops in East Prussia and in Podlasie, around Brest, to connect into one united front that could push right into Vilnius, and this is why he ordered Bilek to continue pushing towards Gardinas. Time was running out. France and Spain finished their war in 1690, ending it in a French victory, and now had free reign to look east. Charles VI hoped for a single, glorious campaign to end the war right then and there, which, ironically, was the same line of thought Teodoras I used to justify his attack towards Krakow in the Polish Succession War before Czestochowa. To connect with the Prussian Front, Bruno Bilek's forces had to defeat an 18 000 men strong Lithuanian contingent near Vawkavysk, initiating the Battle of Vawkavysk. And, even though Visegrad's superiority in personnel and tactics has already been explained, this clash showed their primary weakness - arrogance. Dazzled by the numerous victories throughout the Galician War, the Visegradian officers no longer saw Lithuania as an adversary, but rather just a road to walk through, heavily underestimating their opponent. And the Lithuanians at Vawkavysk were led by Algimantas Songaila, a young, but very talented officer, son of Jaunutis Songaila and the Grand Hetman's close ally, who already had experience in fighting the Visegradian armies in Galicia and Greater Poland. In addition, the Lithuanians knew the land, they knew the terrain, and their opponents did not.

The armies were about equal in strength, but the Lithuanians had the advantage of the city's fortifications. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly close battle, taking almost three days to finish. Visegrad's forces bombarded the town day and night and initiated numerous well-planned attacks, many of which came close to actually breaking the Lithuanian defense, but Songaila's forces held out every time, and in the end, they even managed to push the Redcoats a few kilometers back. It has been said by some sources that Charles VI was so sure in his troops, that when the news of a Visegradian defeat arrived to his court in Buda, he dismissed the news, believing that it's just Lithuanian propaganda. But it was not! The Lithuanians won the battle! And even though the Battle of Vawkavysk was only a minor setback for the advancing Visegradian forces, it was a big enough victory that it reached the ears of the rest of the Treaty of Amsterdam signatories, and soon enough, diplomats from France and the Holy Roman Empire arrived in both Buda and in Vilnius, requesting an armistice to be signed before a peace treaty can finally be negotiated.

And are you really going to fight the Amsterdam System? Denmark once tried to fight the system in 1648, attacking Holstein and declining French requests for peace, and what they got was a united French and Swedish intervention that dethroned the warmonger Frederick III in two months... The two sides put down their weapons, and Aleksandras Chodkevičius used the armistice to turn his focus to another frontier, where something massive was about to happen...

19th century imagining of the Battle of Vawkavysk
​

In Russia, crackdowns were getting more and more successful, or at least they appeared as such in the eyes of the Hetmanate. Secret Russian student organizations in the Universities of Vilnius, Riga and Kiev were busted, leading to multiple arrests, prosecution of the remaining Volanites was getting so fierce that it was even starting to violate the laws of religious tolerance detailed in the Statute of Lithuania, and serfdom was strengthened in the countryside to prevent the peasantry from becoming a medium for Russian separatism to spread through. This all was, however, overshadowed by a single event in 1691, which went down in history by the instant.

Tver had for a very long time been the heart of the Russophile movement, as it is sometimes called in the present day. It was the largest and most Westernized city in the entire region, it used to be the capital of the short-lived Russian national state founded and destroyed during the Great Russian Uprising, and naturally it is where the Lithuanians focused their efforts the most. In the Market Square of the city, far to the side, away from the ruins of the city's Kremlin and the town hall stood a quiet, inconspicuous two-story building, mostly ignored by the masses of the city and the Lithuanian garrison. But in secret, it was the heart of the flow of illegal pro-Russian press across the city and beyond. And managing funds for arming for a potential revolution. And sending cries of help to the West. It was the headquarters of the Group for Russian Liberation, indeed. And isn't it funny that in 1691, after extorting information from a Russian student in Kiev, the Lithuanian troops suddenly kicked down the door of the building one night?

In what was dubbed as the Tver Affair, Lithuanian soldiers arrested 12 out of 25 head members of the Group of Russian Liberation, including the leader of the organization itself, Vladislav Semyonov. Most of them, including Semyonov himself, were young, less than 30 years old did not attempt to cover up their crimes and deeds, they saw no reason to. The orders from the Grand Hetman were clear - let them hang. Show the Russians what happens if they attempt to rebel. What was said, that was done. On June 23rd, 1691, all 12 captives were hanged in the Tver Market Square, the event being watched by hundreds of people. Shocked, frightened, angry. Very angry.

Vladislav Semyonov, the Russian revolutionary
​

However, Semyonov's execution had the opposite effect - it united the Russian people. Semyonov and his peers had become martyrs, heroes who died for their land under such an oppressive regime. These youths made the Hetmanate fear. Outside of Lithuania, Semyonov's death was used as a tool by Charles VI in the peace negotiations between Visegrad and Lithuania, overseen by French and German diplomats in Lublin. The King of Visegrad successfully convinced his Westerner peers that Lithuania needed to be put in check, it is an unstable and oppressive power, and it must be contained before it "either collapses, or turns towards Europe for revenge". Despite heavy protests from Žygimantas II and Aleksandras Chodkevičius, the French and Germans were convinced by this logic, and the Peace of Lublin was made out to be harsh on the Lithuanians. Lithuania had to cede Galicia, Volhynia and Podlasie, and it was required to pay heavy war reparations to Visegrad. Even though Charles VI also wanted to acquire East Prussia, to extend the frontier with Lithuania a bit further, these wishes were not granted. At first, Chodkevičius and the Lithuanian delegates stormed out of the room, disgusted by the peace terms, but when France, Sweden and both Germanies threatened to join on Visegrad's side, the Grand Hetman was forced to give in.

Lithuania lost a large amount of territory, with Lemberg, Lutsk and Bialystok among many other lost cities, as well as over one and a half million people within the conceded land. But it had now secured it's western frontier, and could now focus towards the East, where everything was past it's boiling point...

 

[Augenis]

Part 43: Mother Russia Bleeds (1692-1700)
​

While Vladislav Semyonov's martyrdom rallied the Russians for revolution, the destruction of the Group for Russian Liberation had as much of a negative effect on their efforts. Without Semyonov's leadership, all the organization and planning of the revolt collapsed - and in addition, they were facing a much more powerful foe. This was not the 1570s, where Lithuania was still a semi-feudal kingdom plagued by a succession crisis and still fighting a losing war at the time of the revolt. Despite the defeat in the Galician War, the Lithuania of that day was a centralized military dictatorship with a professional army and a desire to slash and burn through all of Russia.

The Hetman's orders were clear - give them a second "Glinskiada". That's how the Russians ironically called Mykolas Glinskis's bloody scorching campaign in the Tverian-Lithuanian War, after the famous panegyric about him - and the end of the 17th century turned it from an ironic saying to an official term.

The first city to rise in revolution was Suzdal, the thousands of citizens overthrew the garrison of the city in June of 1693, declaring this to be the heart of the Second Great Russian Revolt, and raised the old flag of the 16th century rebellion, a light blue banner with the coat of arms of the Russian nation, Saint Michael the Archangel. The Lithuanian garrison in the city, save for the Russian members, was slaughtered and gored, and put on display in the town square. Even the Russian soldiers themselves were seen with heavy suspicion. Suzdal was followed by a number of other towns - Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, also small towns like Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Bryansk. But what about Tver, which was almost universally considered to be the capital of Russia? Well, the Lithuanians knew that Tver would be among the first to fall to revolution, and thus they held a massive garrison within the city to prevent this from taking place. Even then, numerous street clashes and skirmishes were popping up one after another.

Aleksandras Chodkevičius's response was obvious - he began preparing a massive campaign to pacify the unruly East. Though, in this case "pacify" was pretty much the complete opposite of an another word with it's root, "pacifism". An army of 50 000 soldiers began to march from Polotsk, aiming for the Russian voivodeships. Chodkevičius ordered his generals to enact a bunch of... extreme measures in preparation - to incite looting and destruction through hunger, the soldiers were purposefully given a half of their normal wage and food ration, and they were provided with tools you wouldn't normally associate with warfare, like scythes and bags. For looting. In addition, some units handpicked the soldiers for the campaign to be bachelors, especially older ones, seeking to fulfill their physical desires rising from lack of love.

Disgusting. But it was the 17th century.

A group of Lithuanian soldiers looting a Russian house
​

But wait! Throughout this entire war, we have forgot to discuss one country! One country, whose inaction in the conflict may have doomed the mainland Russians completely - Volga Russia. Why wasn't this Russian country by the Volga River intervening in the conflict? The answer was simple - eastern ambitions. A constant stream of refugees and a high population growth rate meant that the lands of the Volgaks were becoming overpopulated, and thus they began a steady expansion to the eastern and southern steppes, defeating the local Khanates of Astrakhan and Sibir. Even envoys from Shun China noticed this rising power in between Europe and Asia. This expansion, however, drained Volga Russia's resources, and they were unable to interfere in the Russian revolt in the mainland, which they almost certainly wanted to.

In late 1693, Lithuanian armies reached Bryansk, putting the city and it's surroundings through seven days of fire and destruction. Massive clashes between lightly armed, inexperienced Russian rebels and professional Lithuanian forces took place, but opposition was quick to succumb. Mass flag and book burnings took place, the leaders of the uprising were hanged, and eventually the Lithuanians moved forward to the next victim. One thing that was heavily in favor of their side was the infighting and disagreements between the Russians themselves. In the 16th century uprising, the rebellion was centralized, had a single governing authority, and even then it was prone to internal conflict - and now, each city was revolting all by itself with little to no cooperation with others, each one had their own view of how Russia should be created. The nobility was quite conservative, and believed that a simple monarchy would unite all the Russians, while the peasantry and some citizens wanted radical republican reforms, even beyond what was present in France. This prevented the Russians from putting up an organized, serious resistance.

In 1694, Chodkevičius's forces pillaged through the southern parts of the region, recapturing Moscow, Ryazan and Suzdal. The situation was getting critical, and the leader of the revolution in Nizhny Novgorod, Alexander (the Chronicle of Lithuania, the only source on this event, only mentions his first name), began a last ditch effort to organize a Russian army against the Lithuanian threat. He was joined by the opolcheniye from other minor towns in the region, and the Russian forces met the Lithuanians in the Battle of Nikologory, not far from Nizhny Novgorod itself. Despite the high morale and willpower within the Russian forces, they were heavily outmatched in almost every other category - logistics, weaponry, experience, leadership and tactics, among others. The Lithuanians adopted the usage of line volley fire that they fought against in the Galician War, and Russian skirmish tactics were no match against it. In addition, the Russians had no cavalry, while the Lithuanians had plenty, and it easily overrun the remaining rebel forces. The victory in Nikologory opened the path for "restoring order" to the rest of Russia, and by the end of 1695, all regions and voivodeships were firmly under the Hetmanate's control.

The Russians were not done yet, however. Many of them took the fight into the forests, and for the next five years, the Lithuanians had to fight a low-scale partisan insurgency campaign. Russian partisans attacked small Lithuanian units, harassed their supply lines and spread anti-Lithuanian literature and proclamations. For each Russian offensive, however, the imperial forces would respond with ten times the ferocity and damage, not even checking in the villages they are dishing justice on are rebelling or just in the way. Mother Russia continued to bleed. It's hard to calculate the number of casualties that the "Second Glinskiada" caused, but most historians calculate them to be very, very high.

And thus, a yet another century has come to an end. The 17th century can be considered to be an intermediary, a break between the late ages of the Renaissance and the brewing Enlightenment, and with it, the modern era as we know it. Lithuania firmly established itself as one of the four great powers of Europe, but not a world power. It stands as the vanguard of reactionary absolutism, even surpassing Britannia in it's authoritarianism, one could say. But the modern era has no place for old kings. As the 18th century rises to the horizon, one thing we can say - after the next 100 years, Europe might become completely alien to Chodkevičius's generation.

 

[Augenis]

Chapter 44: A World of Wonder, A World of Light (1700)
​

The 17th century has come to an end, and as the bright rays of the next century begin to roll in towards the world, it has become clear that this planet shall never be the same. Especially Europe. Beginning with the life of Francis Camaro in the mid-17th century, the Scientific Revolution has turned into a continent wide phenomenon, and beyond that. Scientists and philosophers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and many other nations have began to unearth the answers to the greatest questions a man can pose - about his own existence, about the existence of the Universe, and life. Engineers and capitalists are delving deeper and deeper into technology, seeking to find the most efficient way to produce wealth, and their ambitions will soon manifest into something enormous. And most importantly, with discoveries comes knowledge, and with knowledge comes doubt. Indeed, people across the continent have begun to doubt the most basic principles that Western society and politics have been built upon. Where will this take them? The 18th century is a century of crossroads, and the paths that it's inhabitants will take shall decide the fate of their ancestors for millennia. The Enlightenment has begun.

But Europe isn't the only place in the world! What of the other continents and regions of the world? What is happening in the Vespucias, Asia and Africa? After all, sooner or later, the developments in Europe are going to affect them as well. So it is a good idea to catch up.

Map of Asia in the year 1700 AD​

At first, the 17th century appeared promising to China, at the time still ruled by the Ming dynasty. Merchants from Portugal and the Netherlands brought silver to the nation at reasonably low prices, which was extremely valuable to the Ming, as they needed precious metal to cover their hyperinflating paper currency. However, the East Asian War between Portugal and the Netherlands weakened the standings of both powers in the region, and trade between Europe and China shrank. In addition, infighting and chaos in Japan at the time meant that their silver supply was also cut off. The prices of this valuable metal skyrocketed, which was disastrous to the peasantry as they had to pay taxes in silver. Ming China faced a number of internal problems as well - the recently conquered Manchu tribes were rebelling, there was growing disconnection between the extremely wealthy upper class and the poor peasants, and the Little Ice Age brought a host of it's own problems as well, spreading famines and epidemics across the land. The Mandate of Heaven was lost. The people were angry, and this anger was used by an upstart rebel from the Shaanxi province, Li Zicheng, who organized a great peasant army and took down the Ming dynasty, first in the northern parts of the country, then in the south, finally founding the Shun Dynasty in 1665. However, not all Chinese were in favor of this new radical government - a large number of Chinese refugees, mostly from Guangdong, led by Zhu Xiuling, the nephew of the last Ming emperor, fled to the islands south of China, settling in the most northern one and founding the nation of Lusang.

The 17th century was a turbulent time not just for China - Japan went through a host of it's own problems, named as the Sengoku period ("warring states period", named after the unrelated period of Chinese history) - the country was fractured into a number of competing states, each led by a warlord. The Emperor was powerless, but even the supposed real head of state, the Shogun, had troubles controlling the chaos. The Europeans traded with all sides in the conflict, providing them with valuable modern technology, especially guns. The 17th century saw the Sengoku period come to an end, however, as Japan had now been fully unified under the Toyotami dynasty. As the country was no longer in chaos, the recovery was swift, and the economy and societal development of the new, unified Japan increased a lot. Japanese silver was now as valuable as ever, and the country profited from this trade.

The before-mentioned East Asian War had considerable impact in South East Asia. Because of how far away the East Indies were from Europe, the two powers were unable to dish the war out by themselves and thus relied on local Asian allies. Ayutthaya sided with the Dutch during the conflict and made the right choice, as it's influence and territory expanded considerably. The Dutch also took over a number of Portuguese colonies in East Asia, like Taiwan and Macao. However, as the dust of the war settled, the Netherlands was unable to maintain the same intensity of trade, the standings of both merchant powers in the region weakened considerably, and over time, they lost many of the territories and ports they acquired. The appearance of the Lusang Chinese nation also shook the balance of the region, and Shun China began to flex it's muscles, slowly rising from the untouched isolated slumber that their predecessor lived through, which also came with sizable impact. Dark times were on the horizon.

India, or more correctly the Mughal Empire, was entering an age of prosperity, however. Throughout the 17th century, this juggernaut between the Far East and the Muslim world had to endure opposition from all sides, facing both Turkish attacks and warfare with the Marathas. The turn to the 18th century is marked in Indian history as the rule of Bahadur Shah II, more commonly known as Bahadur the Enlightened. Under his rule, the Mughal Empire conquered Baluchistan, taking it from the Ottoman Turks, and also defeated the Maratha opposition in the south of the nation, in Deccan. However, he is most commonly known as a very educated and down-to-earth ruler, he was especially interested in the education of his subjects and developing a more closely interlinked economy and society, in what is now known as the "Era of Light", or the "Indian Enlightenment". The previously severed trade ties with the West were restored, and Bahadur II grew interested in the sciences and technology that the Europeans brought, hoping to encourage to development of these fields within his empire. Because of the hostility for the Ottomans, India became the primary trade link between the West and the Far East, and profited from it in many ways.

Populated with powerful, wealthy, but often arrogant empires, Asia has become the dream world for the Europeans, a world of wonders and treasure - but trade with it was difficult. The Vespucias were blocking the way through the west, while travelling east meant either going through the Ottoman Empire or around Africa. And the Asians themselves were hardly interested in a fair exchange - outside of a few funny technological quirks or precious, precious gold or silver, there wasn't much that the Europeans could bring that would satisfy, say, the Shun or Mughal emperor. Something had to be done about this.

Map of North Vespucia in the year 1700 AD​

More and more colonists are arriving to the Dutch prime colony in Vespucias - New Netherland. Situated along the continent's east coast, this colony provides a multitude of resources from naval supplies to grain and metals for the motherland, and the denizens of the Old World see these virgin territories as a land of opportunity. Unlike most other European colonies in the Americas, New Netherland is self-governing, and the great range of nationalities and religions composing it have created a very free and pro-democratic environment. This self-governance is not viewed highly by the leaders of the Netherlands Free State itself, which would much rather prefer increasing central power in the colony to maximize profit. Time will tell if this brewing conflict will result in anything meaningful.

What the Netherlands had to actually worry about, however, was a new competitor in the colonization of the continent. The Kingdom of Sweden, uncomfortably squished between the Germans and Lithuania, began to look west, and in the middle of the 17th century, they began establishing colonies on Saint Brendan's Land, primarily using them as whaling bases and trade outposts. Soon enough, this colony of New Sweden began expanding to the continent nearby - the coasts of Flevoland. While their efforts have so far been weak and the number of Swedish settlers is very low, not to mention the conflicts with the nearby native Vespucian tribes, it's still an important event for the future of the region.

While the Dutch and Swedish colonies in North Vespucia are growing, Spain's mainland colony - Luisiana - has so far been stagnant. The flow of settlers has been very slow, and numerous border settlements had to be abandoned. There are two reasons for this trend. First are the troubles at home. In the end of the 17th century, Spain was embroiled in a long colonial war with France which drained the nation's treasury and weakened their standing in the region. The second reason was the hostile relations with the local Vespucian tribes. While the Dutch and Swedish settlers preferred trading with the locals (sometimes accidentally spreading diseases in the process) and maintaining peace, the Spaniards, whose main experience with dealing with locals came from genociding the Carib tribes and fighting long wars in Mesovespucia, answered with force. Numerous border conflicts between Spanish strongholds along the Missisippi and the local native Vespucians were heavy in casualties for both sides.

Luisiana wasn't the only place where Spain conflicted with the locals. The Yucatan peninsula, inhabited by Maya tribes, became a battleground for competition between the Spanish and the Empire of Mejico, a loosely bound Nahua state in Mesovespucia, led by a nativized Spanish dynasty. Both rival powers were slowly expanding into the region and trying to counteract each other's influence within it. Because of the difficult climate and the dense vegetation, however, it being a jungle and all, this push was slow.

North Vespucia was still seen by Europeans as useless forested and frozen land, but all of that was about to change. It didn't seem to have many resources, but it was perfect for settler colonialism, and as the Amsterdam System locked the borders of Europe, this was where the Europeans could release their pent up energy. For now.

Map of South Vespucia in the year 1700 AD​

The primary indigenous South Vespucian state, the Inca, carried on to the 18th century more or less peacefully. The close trade links with Portugal via the Silver Road came off as a double-edged sword. On one hand, the Incas had their first experience in acquiring and using modern technology, and their standing in the wide world increased. The army was modernized and began to adopt locally manufactured gunpowder weapons, and much like the Mughal emperors, the Sapa Incas were interested in cultural exchange with the Westerners (although, in their case, it was the Easterners). However, the trade also brought diseases which the people had no resistance to, and in the 1630s, a massive smallpox epidemic ravaged the land. By the 18th century, the population of some regions still hadn't recovered to the pre-smallpox levels, but the danger of such a massive epidemic has more or less vanished by now. Relations with Portugal remain cordial.

However, while the Portuguese were willing to trade and stay in Manuela, this was not the case with a brand new power in the continent - the French. After acquiring New France in the Franco-Spanish War, they were rapidly starting to exert influence on the northern parts of South Vespucia, and they almost certainly had heard of the riches that the Incas held. A few French exploration missions along the Andes resulted in skirmishes with Inca units, the relations between the two nations soured. As the reigning Director of the Estates-General Pierre Fatio, the closest person to the head of state of France, did not even hide his intentions to carve out a French colonial empire in South Vespucia, the Incas might have to prepare their weapons for a battle for survival.

And this wasn't even th only case of troubling news for the Tawantinsuyu. The Kingdom of Britannia, an isolated Puritan absolute monarchy on the edge of Europe, was now growing interest in joining the race for South Vespucia. King Edward VII agreed to launch a number of exploration missions led by Admiral James Kent towards the southern part of the continent, past Manuela, to determine the feasibility of setting up an English colony there. The British had a number of ambitious plans - redirect the course of the Silver Road, perhaps conquer up to the Andes, and hopefully hold the monopoly in trade between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans due to their position right at the straits. Time will tell if these ambitions are feasible.

South Vespucia might end up as a new battlefield for the European powers, but this time, they are not alone. The Incas are willing to defend their empire and their way of life by any means necessary, and who knows - perhaps that will is going to shatter, or maybe the Europeans will discover that gnawing on a cat's tail is not a good idea.

Map of Africa in the year 1700 AD​

For almost two centuries, the Ottoman Empire had been a dominant force in North Africa. While Egypt and Tripolitania were under it's direct control, the Maghreb - Morocco, Tunis and Algeria - were dominated by it as vassals and protectorates. Morocco was the last to fall to Ottoman domination, doing so in 1648, during a succession crisis. The Turks simply moved in troops to oust a rebellious prince and install a friendly government, and at the same time, the Portuguese annexed a portion of the nation's coast. What the Ottomans were interested in was employing the Berbers as corsairs and pirates for raiding Christian ships and cities for loot and especially slaves, a very valuable commodity.

Isolated from others by the world's largest hot desert and two wide oceans, Sub-Saharan Africa entered the 18th century without feeling much impact from the events going on elsewhere. Only the southern parts of the continent were affected by European colonialism, especially the southernmost tip, where the Portuguese established the Colony of the Cape. It was a very valuable colony with a strategic position, and the Dutch tried to conquer it during the East Asian War, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Other powers were also looking forward to establishing bases on the coast of Africa, but this massive, densely forested and deadly continent, filled with malaria spreading insects and hostile native empires, seemed uninviting.

Map of Europe in the year 1700 AD​

A new era is dawning across Europe. The light of knowledge and reason is bound to touch upon all, from the wealthiest noble to the poorest serf. New ideas, ideologies and beliefs are about to arise and reshape the landscape of the planet forever. In this enlightened era, where will Lithuania stand?

Map of the world in the year 1700 AD​

 

[Augenis]

Part 45: A Period of Grace (1700-1712)
​

Double-team us once, shame on us.

Double-team us twice, shame on you.

This was the idea floating around the heads of the Hetmanate as the dust of the Galician War and the Second Great Russian Revolt settled. It was clear as day - Lithuania was now surrounded by hostile powers. Russians to the east and Visegrad to the west, and almost always when one strikes, the other joins to help. It happened during the second half of the 16th century, and it happened in the end of the 17th century. Something had to be done about this. This was the prime line of thought behind the new foreign policy of the Hetmanate, devised by Grand Hetman Aleksandras Chodkevičius and accurately named Eastern Strategy. The basics of this idea were simple - defense on the West, offense on the East. Diplomatic and military efforts in the West must be focused on preventing an another unexpected war with Visegrad, either by improving relations with them, making necessary alliances or outright dismantling the Triple Crown and thus making it powerless. While on the East, anything goes, - Lithuania expected that the neighbors there were weaker and could simply be taken over, and the sparse lands of the steppe had to be integrated - but any new Russian Revolt must be prevented, forever. By any means possible.

The main development in Lithuania during the first decade of the 18th century was the beginning of the construction of a series of fortresses and fortifications along the new Lithuanian-Visegradian border, known colloquially as the Western Wall, or Chodkevičius's Wall. Lithuania was quite lucky in this case - the new border ran through good defensive terrain, like forests, hills and the Pripyat. The Grand Hetman was a visionary in this case, he knew that the Amsterdam System is not going to be eternal, and once it falls, it will fall with a bang - and to protect Lithuania's interests during this event, preparations had to be made in advance. The fortresses along the Western Wall, the most famous being in Grodno, Allenstein and Pinsk, were very impressive, constructed with modern technology in mind, and were the first star forts in Lithuanian territory. Of course, Visegrad responded with protests, but at the time they didn't really mind, their revanchism had already been satiated.

While the Grand Hetman's fears on the death of the Amsterdam System appeared unfounded, some developments during the beginning of the 18th century appeared worrisome. The first half of the Age of Enlightenment were a time of incredible economic growth in Germany, growth that started all the way back after the Twenty Years' War. Peace in the land was beneficial to the recovery of the countryside and the cities, and the inclusiveness and democracy in Reformist South and Central Germany bolstered growth. New advancements in technology helped, too. However, one thing was a problem to the German economy - the division of the nation into the southern Holy Roman Empire and the North German Communion. The hostility between the governments of these two blocs severed trade ties and weakened Germany's standing in the global market. But the idea of a single, united German nation did not disappear, quite the opposite - it strengthened under the flag of the shame and anger that the Germans felt for the horrors they suffered during the Twenty Years' War. The Enlightenment in Germany was unique in that it began to take a national character along the other values brought by the movement, and slowly the people, especially the upper and middle classes, began to question this division of Germany and whether a united "Germania" should instead replace it.

The wealth of the divided Germany and the potential power it could wield if it was united worried it's neighbours, however, especially France. But this German Enlightenment was far from being able to yield fruit.

Vienna in the 18th century. Outside of being the capital of the Kingdom of Austria and the unofficial center of the Holy Roman Empire, it was also the center of the German Enlightenment and, in the eyes of some people, "the heart of Germania"
​

An another very important development was taking place in Lithuania, however - though it's impact is much harder to quantify. And once again, it was the brainchild of Grand Hetman Chodkevičius. Now that Tatars and other raiders no longer plagued the land, colonization of the Dykra - the barely inhabited lands along the Black Sea, also called the Pontic Steppe - could continue at full force, and it was the Hetmanate who took the initiative, following the Eastern Strategy. The lands south of Ruthenia were divided into Voivodeships, the inhabitants were put through a census and numbered, and the imperial government began a period of full-scale colonization of the region. Settlers from Ruthenia, Russia and Lithuania Propria were invited to settle in many newly built cities along the Dnieper and the Baltic Sea, as well as beyond that - and in some instances, even force was used, sometimes to order entire villages to move south. Reports were bringing interesting news - civilians who began to practice agriculture grew record grain yields, and if crop rotation is used, sometimes they could reach 2 or 3 times greater yields than what was grown back home. The Lithuanians might not have known that yet, but they began to till and exploit the most fertile lands in all of Europe.

Sad news arrived on June of 1708 - the Emperor, Žygimantas II, died after a period of illness, most likely tuberculosis. Since he had no children nor brothers, he was succeeded by his cousin, the son of his aunt Marija, now crowned as Algirdas III. Žygimantas II was a much disliked monarch, he didn't really care for his country and instead focused on his own physical desores, and even centuries later he is despised for almost destroying the Empire. Algirdas III was only eight years old when he succeeded his cousin, but he didn't really need to be independent, anyway. The man who replaced Žygimantas II, Aleksandras Chodkevičius, didn't live much longer, either - he died on October 21st, 1711. Unlike his predecessor, Hetman Chodkevičius is viewed much more favorably - although, it really depends on who you ask. He saved Lithuania in a time of crisis, but at the same time, his army's brutality during the Second Glinskiada is seen in a very negative light.

Chodkevičius's death sparked a short succession crisis - the Grand Hetman did not leave any heirs, and there were no instructions on how he should be succeeded, he died too early. Some nobles feared a possible civil war, but the Council of Lords, the advisory instution under the former Grand Hetman's reign, was quick to come to a solution and nominated General Algimantas Songaila, the hero of the Battle of Vawkawysk during the Galician War, as the new Grand Hetman of Lithuania. The military dictatorship that was the Hetmanate was now established.

Algimantas Songaila, former Voivode of Kiev, now Grand Hetman of Lithuania​

 

[Augenis]

Part 46: The World Ain't Gonna Stop Spinning (1712-1725)​

The news of Algimantas Songaila's appointment as the new Grand Hetman of Lithuania came as a surprise to many, both within the Empire and outside of it. Many nobles were aware that the Council of Lords was meant to only be an advisory institution under Hetman Chodkevičius, which is why the news of it actually flexing it's legislative muscles and choosing the successor to the dictator was quite a shock to them. Visegrad, whose King secretly hoped that Chodkevičius's death would cause a civil war in their eastern neighbour, also didn't take the news very lightly. But there was little actual dissent - after the near disaster that the Galician War and the Russian revolt were, the zeitgeist of the time in Lithuania wished for the Empire to remain stable. Emperor Algirdas III officially appoited the general as the Grand Hetman in 1713. Algimantas Songaila's dictatorial rule (what other type of rule is there?) began with a still wind.

What can be said about the man in the helm himself? A lot of things, actually. Back in his early days, Algimantas Songaila was one of the primary original supporters of Chodkevičius's coup, and his prestige across the Empire rose to tremendous heights after he successfully defended the fortress of Vawkawysk from superior Visegradian forces, preventing an enemy breakthrough into Lithuania Propria itself. In the Hetmanate government, Songaila served as the Voivode of his home region, Kiev, but was also influential in the higher reaches of the government. He was a major proponent of the construction of the Western Wall, even sometimes complaining that it might be too weak, and when he became the Grand Hetman, he ordered an additional expansion to the line of fortifications. Algimantas Songaila was a patriot to the Empire, a stern follower of where his nation will lead. He was neither very charming, nor an administrative genius, but he had one redeeming trait - his nigh-fanatical wish to improve his nation's status in Europe. While not the greatest leader that Lithuania has ever seen, he was far more than satisfactory for the position.

Songaila held a much more pragmatic view towards the Russians than his predecessor. While Chodkevičius would have wished to burn Tver to the cinders and build a statue of himself in the ashes if he could, the new Grand Hetman understood that such harshness will only incite further revolutions - what he figured, however, was that the Russians were far too united. Their culture and their religion was what unified them into one entity, and the natural response to that, in the Hetmanate's mind, would be to attempt to split the Russian nation up. Before the Lithuanian conquest of the Rus', the many East Slavic dialects in what we now call Russia were slowly beginning to split off, especially the Old Novgorod dialect, and under the Hetmanate, the attempt to "restore" and renew these linguistic differences began. Lithuania had a lot of sway in reshaping the course of language in it's territory - for one, it had control of the education system and a powerful apparatus to get things going. The ultimate goal of Songaila's government was to create two competing nationalisms in place of one Russian identity - one based around the Novgorod-Pskov area and the other around the Tver-Vladimir area. The Chronicle of Lithuania during this time was marked by a significant change in it's composition - while previously only writing about Lithuanian legends and history, it was expanded to cover the past of the entire Empire, including the artificially separated "Novgorod people" and "East Ruthenian people". Under the Hetman's orders, a vocabulary of the "Novgorodian language" and a translator book between "Novgorodian" and "East Ruthenian" were published, both composed by a Ruthenian scholar named Ivan Vinchevsky. This "divide and rule" tactic was a massive and hardly efficient task, but it set the stage for an entirely different set of Russo-Lithuanian interaction.

Never before did the government of a nation attempt to artifically destroy a nationality.

Outside of dealing with Russia in the name of the Eastern Strategy, Algimantas Songaila was also dedicated to rebuilding the imperial military. Following the example of Visegrad, military colleges were founded in Vilnius and in Kiev, and the long needed requirement of basic literacy for military officers was instituted. In addition, this was the first time in Lithuanian history that the Imperial Navy, long forgotten and neglected, received more than a fifth of the total military budget. A renovation program, replacing most of the 17th century ships with more modern versions, began. The Enlightenment had reached Lithuania by now, too, and it's echo was about to build up to something important.

18th century Lithuanian military uniforms. Pictured here are members of the 1st Imperial Infantry Regiment - on the left is an officer, on the right is an average soldier.​

However, no matter what Lithuania was trying to do, that was not where the focus of the world was on during the decade. And the focus was on Western Europe, more specifically, France and the Holy Roman Empire. The border between France and this multi-state entity was composed of tiny principalities, margraves and Reformist republics, and more often than not, the borders between them and with the French were not very well defined. In addition, a series of diplomatic mishaps and the self-seeking actions of a particular French border general, Didier Diderot, led to a border conflict between local French forces and the small Republic of Elsass, a member of the HRE, which soon joined the tiny nation's side. This marked the beginning of a two-year long French-German War between 1721 and 1722. For many Germans and Frenchmen, this was the first war they had seen in their life, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VII - a man of the Enlightenment and a patriot of his nation - was eager to put the reformed HRE to the test and turn it into the next great power of Europe, even if it meant fighting their brothers in faith. Throughout the last century, the Empire was slowly coalescing into a single state, a federation of some sorts, a hotbed of developing German nationalism. However, HRE forces were soundly and easily defeated by more disciplined and well prepared French forces, and the Germans were forced to sign a punitive peace treaty in 1722, forcing to pay reparations and cede a few border territories.

This was a humiliation for the southern Germans, and the former French-German friendship, developed during the Twenty Years' War, broke apart almost in an instant. While the Germans felt betrayed and defeated, the Director of France, Pierre-Louis Beaumont, and his government were starting to get worried. They didn't expect the HRE to unite in arms against their aggression - even if they lost in the end anyway, they have set a bad precedent for the future? A united Germany was the biggest possible threat for the Republic of France, and this cooling of relations became mutual as the French realized that the Amsterdam System must be protected at any possible cost.

It was around this time that Beaumont's Red Party, considered to be a fringe movement merely 20 years ago, began to gain popularity over the worried French population. The politics of the Republic had by then devolved into the standard two-party system, common under the so-called "winner takes all" format of election that France used in local elections - dominated by the moderate and pro-capitalist "Blue Party", calling itself "the party of De Foix", and the nativist, conservative and pro-aristocrat "Red Party", currently in control of the Republic. Beaumont, and by extension the Reds, were against any sort of compromise with Germany - it had to stay divided, forever.

In other news, a new competitor joined the race for South Vespucia. The Kingdom of Britannia, famous in Europe for being the continent's first true absolute monarchy and a haven for Christian extremism, began to spread and flap it's wings, arriving in this southern continent after a short flight. In 1715, the British established a small port and whaling base on a small group of islands southeast of South Vespucia, naming them "Charlia". A few years later, the first British colonies on the continent itself were founded, this being the cities of Jamestown and Southampthon. The territories were not far from the Inca and Portuguese Manuela, but distant and small enough to not bother them, yet. Far from the British Isles, these first islander colonies in the New World were put under the umbrella term "Virginia", basically referring to it being supposedly virgin land.

An another region lit up in action during this time, too - Sub-Saharan Africa. The forgotten region, avoided by Europeans due to the hostile environment, hosted numerous empires throughout millenia, and now, a brand new one came to light. For most of it's history, the Benin Empire was mostly locked to Benin City in the mouths of Niger, serving as a link between the Europeans in the ocean and the Africans on land due to it's strategic situation. For this reason, Benin was the first to be introduced to and adopt Western technology such as muskets and steel. In addition, throughout the years this small, but densely populated state built up a sophisticated bureacucracy and a very disciplined army, famous across Western Africa for it's effectiveness. The final spark needed for hegemony was placed by Oba (Emperor) Eweka III, a unique individual in Beninese history - he was the first Oba to be educated in the West, and who started the hegemony that Benin became. Between 1718 and 1725, this empire defeated and subjugated many of it's rivals, overpowering them with a sophisticated and disciplined army with Western weaponry, and the final achievement being the toppling and conquest of the great Songhai Empire in 1724. Most of the Niger Basin was united under the Benin Empire - the very first "gunpowder empire" in sub-Saharan Africa, - though a few states escaped it's hegemony, like Kanem Bornu and a recently restored Mali. This rapid expansion came as a surprise to local European powers, especially Portugal, who did not anticipate such a sudden birth of a new West African empire. But now it was there, and the Westerners had to reason with it.

The world in the year 1725

(Do you like my new format? I made it with the standard map and the TOASTER scheme and all)

(Maybe it will get clearer for you on who is controlling what)​

 

[Augenis]

Part 47: The Serfdom Debate (1725-1735)​

While the decades after the Galician War marked a slow recovery from the infamous Grain Crisis, now sparked by increasing demand in the West as well as some producers switching to other production, the economic level of the Lithuanian Empire remained behind the Western countries. Urbanization was not fast enough to give way to an early manufacturing base, and thus Lithuania remained as a mostly agricultural nation, where the majority of the population was locked in villages and manors by serfdom. Sure, there were a number of advancements in the efficiency of farming, and the Pontic Steppe was giving one record yield after another, but agriculture alone was not going to build a powerful, world-tier economy, and this was where Lithuania's illusions of being a world power were starting to hit a brick wall.

A much different view of the world was proposed by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, a movement that has been taking Lithuania by a storm for a while now. Lithuanian Enlightenment thinkers like Valdemaras Chotiškis, Jonas Arbūnas and others, echoing European thinkers and heavily inspired by nature, which they perceived as orderly and the perfect God's work, declared that all citizens of a country must be equal in front of the law, and concepts like slavery or serfdom are unnatural, ineffective and must be swept away to create a better society. After all, animals like ants or beavers do not enslave one another and yet are able to create wondrous constructions, so why should humans be any different? The wish to emancipate the serfs was very controversial for Lithuania in the period (Arbūnas was even once arrested by the Hetmanate for such beliefs), but it was starting to gain traction.

The 18th century marked a development which is often described as The Serfdom Debate. Citizens across the Empire were beginning to discuss and often openly question the long-standing institution of serfdom, whether it was beneficiary or even ethical to hold the majority of the population locked to manors without any rights, almost like slaves. Both sides, the abolitionists and the conservatives, had their own arguments. The reactionary layers of the population believed that only keeping serfdom can preserve the imperial system from a potential revolution, while the abolitionists claimed that the institution and all that comes with it are the primary reasons for the empire's economic downturn, and emancipation will turn out to be beneficiary in the long run. Conservatives feared that emancipated peasants will not wish to serve in the army without a landowner forcing them to do so, while abolitionists rebutted by saying that this will only spark the shift to a modern, professional army. The Hetman and his government didn't make their stance on the issue clear, yet, but whichever path they will take, it will be one of the deciding factors for Lithuania's future.

18th century serfs in the Vologda region​

However, while these internal debates were ongoing, Lithuania was successfully expanding to the East. 1729 marked a diplomatic victory for the Lithuanians, as Sweden and the Hetmanate finally decided on the border between the two nations in Northeastern Europe, a region in which they have been competing for almost a hundred years. King Frederick Charles II and Hetman Algimantas Songaila decided on a border to the White Sea, ceding Karelia and the Kola peninsula to Sweden, but obtaining control over the Nenets and Komi territories further east. With a clear border established, colonization could finally begin, in a similar manner as with the Pontic Steppe - entire villages of serfs getting forcefully relocated to designated territories, which in this case was usually a hillfort near a local river for easier communication. Northeastern Europe was most elusive for the Lithuanians due to the massive supply or rare furs it could provide - while the local Nenets and Komi tribes were surely unhappy with their new neighbours.

This was not the only place where Lithuania solved decades old border conflicts with neighbour nations, although in this particular case, it was solved with blood and steel, rather than diplomacy. Lithuania and Volga Russia both laid claims on the Don region, the land to the east and northeast of the Azov Sea. While Lithuania controlled the river banks, most of the upper river was populated by Russian settlers, and after a series of failed negotiations for resolving the border conflict, Lithuania and Volga Russia officially went to war in 1730. Despite their previous victory in the early 17th century, the Volgaks proved to be no match for the more experienced and prepared Lithuanian army this time, and after two years of conflict, Lithuania seized control of the Don river up to the Don-Volga crossing. Despite it's growing strength, Russia could not challenge Lithuanian military hegemony, yet.

However, the Eurasian steppe was far from the only region that was embroiled in conflict. After the end of the Sengoku period, the united Toyotami Japan rapidly grew in strength due to it's recovering economy and population, as well and adaptation of some Western technology from the Dutch, and feeling confident, the Shogun began to flex his nation's muscles. In 1724, Japan annexed the Kingdom of Ryukyu, which had broken away from Chinese influence after the fall of the Ming dynasty, and their next target was Joseon Korea - but this is where the Shun dynasty, fearing a breach into their sphere of influence, stepped in. The next nine years were marked by what is known as the War of the East China Sea. Since both sides were separated by a large body of water (it's in the name, after all), almost all of the battles of the conflict were duked out in the sea. The Japanese fleet was eventually defeated and destroyed by combined Korean and Chinese efforts, but neither side had the capability to land troops on the other, so a peace was signed with no territorial changes. Japan was not defeated, but it's expansionism was stopped.

An another region that lit up in flames around this time was a surprising one - North Vespucia. Tensions between New Netherland and Luisiana, colonies of the Netherlands and Spain respectively, over the rights to the region between them finally reached a breaking point when the Spaniards incited a number of native Vespucian tribes in the area to rise up and attack Dutch settlements nearby. Much like the War of the East China Sea, the Spanish-Dutch War was inconclusive, because both powers lacked the power projection to force the other side to surrender. Eventually, the two colonial empires were forced by France to enter the negotiations table, and the conflict region was partitioned, although the hostility remained. This war was also very important for the Dutch in that it marked a significant cooling of relations between the metropoly and New Netherland, or just Dutch Vespucia. As time went on, the Free State's profits from trade shrank because of the mercantilist policies employed by many European nations, so the Dutch were hurrying to integrate New Netherland into the country in order to be able to rip more taxes from the rich colonisits. And the Vespucians themselves hated this. It should also be noted that the composition of New Netherland was far from homogenous - outside of Dutch settlers, the land was inhabited by Frenchmen, Englishmen and other refugees from Europe, and also native Vespucians, which forged a far different culture from the one present in the metropoly. During the Spanish-Dutch War, the Netherlands were facing serious financial problems, and thus in 1733, the Staathalter proposed what is now known as the Rotterdam Compromise. New Netherland would gain seats in the Dutch Estates-General if they agreed to additional "war taxes" being levied in the colonies - and the colonial assembles surprisingly (and paradoxically) refused, citing that "New Netherland shall not become a mere state in order to be robbed by the Dutch barons. The compromise is only a step to integrate the colony and strip it of it's autonomy - there will be no taxes and no representation".

Of course, war and conflict wasn't the only thing happening. 1731 was marked in history by the publishing of the "Three Pillars of Government" by the French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Yves Pascal. It is famous in the world today for being one of the first to formulate the concept of separation of powers into different systems - the legislative, executive and judiciary function - that balance the other two out to make sure none get too powerful and thus undermine a country's democracy. In addition, spoken law or basic codification is not enough for the laws and basic concepts of a modern nation, and the philosopher believed that they need to be codified into a single document. Later philosophers and writers expanded on his ideas. Pascal was a notorious supporter of French republicanism, but his work was deemed quite controversial in his nation. While the reigning Reds saw this idea of separation and codification as an attack towards the French system and were for the most part sceptical, the Blues added the application of many of Pascal's ideas into their program.

Much like 1731, 1734 also went down in history, but for far different reasons. The idea of the existence of a sixth continent, separate from both the Old World and the Vespucias, had been postulated since the 17th century, and there had already been some evidence backing it up - for example, there were reports of a Portuguese galleon straying off it's course and reaching an unknown virgin land to the south of Indonesia during the East Asian War - but they were never confirmed, until that day. A Dutch fleet, led by the explorer Huibert van der Pols, explored the waters south and southeast of the Moluccas, discovering a vast new continent located on the western shores of the Indian Ocean. The expedition examined and marked over 300 miles of coastline, and the Netherlanders also sent an expedition led by van der Pols to the continent itself. In his diaries, the captain described the land as "lifeless, coarse and rough. If this is Terra Australis, then there is a reason why we never knew about it before". The captain himself named the land Oceania, noting the fact that it was surrounded by oceans, and this name stuck.

But what's there of use in that dead land?

 

[Augenis]

Part 48: The Power of Man (1735-1750)
​

While the government of Lithuania legally enforced serfdom, it was up to the landowners themselves to choose whether to oppress their peasantry or to emancipate it - after all, they had absolute control over the serfs' lives, it was their ancient right. And as the 18th century rolled in, the nobility, many of whom were now educated in local or Western universities and followed the ideas of the Enlightenment, began to openly question whether the serf had a right to choose for himself or not. That is the already mentioned Serfdom Debate, but while some nobles engaged in discussion and debate over the legality of serfdom, others took matters into their hands, emancipating their serfs and allowing them to work their land for themselves - of course, usually still working for the same landowner, just as paid workers rather than slaves. However, none other such event resonated within Lithuanian society more than the work of Paulius Viktoras Karbauskis (Rus. Pavel Viktor Karbauski), the noble who created a "peasant republic" along the Nevėžis River.

The Karbauskiai family were wealthy landowners holding a lot of lands in Lithuania Propria, and the 32 year old Paulius Viktoras inherited their estates in 1739. Before this inheritance, the noble was a graduate of the University of Paris and one of the central figures of the Abolitionist movement, and when he gained the massive tracts of land with over 6 000 serfs under his thumb, he decided to create an example of the success that emancipation can provide. The serfs in the Karbauskiai estates were rapidly emancipated and most of the lands were divided between the now free farmers, the old corvée was replaced with monetary rent, the people were given a number of radical rights, like the ability to manage their land by themselves, freely engage in arts and crafts, and even have representatives and vote! Vote, I tell you! Crazy! While Karbauskis remained as the supreme head of state, the "democrat" of the manor, he organized an assembly of representatives, voted in by the peasants themselves, to help him rule. The peasantry also organized courts and a militia force for protecting the manor and hunting. Karbauskis also ordered the foundation of a school for peasant children in the village, as well as a printing house for publishing and spreading literature within the peasantry. Numerous conservative magnates were skeptical of this radical project, but by the end of 1745, five years after the foundation of the so-called Republic of Dotnuva, the income of the manor increased by two times, and no suspected "peasant anarchy" arose - in fact, Dotnuva became exemplary across the entire empire as the proof in favor of the emancipation of the peasantry.

Of course, it's not like Dotnuva did not have to go through opposition. Fearing that the example that this peasant republic would set can incite a revolution, the conservative nobility petitioned to the military numerous times, requesting that this experiment would be shut down by force. Paulius Viktoras Karbauskis stood in front of the court six times, magnates accused him of "spreading dangerous thoughts", "breaking serfdom laws" and other accusations, but the court stood on his side, claiming that the young noble legally exercised his right to treat his serfs in whichever way he chose. Even the Grand Hetman himself was worried about this experiment - but so far, everything seemed to be stable. The fact that Dotnuva now paid far more in taxes than what it used to was also a nice bonus.

While the foundation of the Republic of Dotnuva was the big news domestically, Lithuania was also active on the foreign front - and by "active", meaning "going to war". After the Four-Year War between Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire, one of Ottoman protectorates, Circassia, broke away from Turkish domination, and managed to keep up it's independence for a while despite being surrounded by powerful foreign powers. The situation of Circassia was a great worry to the Lithuanians and to Hetman Songaila, however, who feared that the tiny nation's history of being a Turkish protectorate could lead to them ending up back under Ottoman domination, creation a two-front situation in a potential future war with the Sultanate - this problem had to be solved immediately, while the Ottomans were busy fighting a war in Central Asia. The War of Circassian Annexation, stretching for nine months in 1744 and 1745, was successful for the better armed and organized Lithuanians, even though they were not necessarily familiar with the Caucasian terrain, and the tiny Islamic state was annexed. The war war won! But what the Lithuanians didn't count for was the tenacity and determination of the Circassian people - a hardy folk. A wide war of resistance continued in the following decades. In some ways, it was a repeat of the Teutonic attempts to conquer Lithuania - the locals, while outnumbered and equipped with weaker weapons, employed the environment to their advantage to successfully resist the occupants for a long time.

In half a millennia, the small, weak nation had become the conqueror of nations, the same thing it fought to resist for so long.

Grand Hetman Algimantas Songaila, almost 80 years old by that time, died in his bed in 1749. While not the greatest ruler of Lithuania, he was capable of leading it well, and his rule marked many significant changes in Lithuanian society. The Enlightenment was roaring, and the country recovered from the crisis at the end of the 17th century. Not to mention the great expansion of the territory of the empire, and if counting the sparsely developed northern territories, almost doubling it since his appointment. Unlike before, this time it was expected from the Council of Lords to choose the next Grand Hetman of Lithuania - although the choice was certainly contentions. Numerous generals and marshals were "campaigning", but in the end, the Field Hetman under Songaila's rule (pretty much the second in command), Augustas Velniukas, was chosen to be the next dictator.

Paulius Karbauskis reads the Statute of the Republic of Dotnuva to his serfs
​

It didn't take long for the news of Huibert van der Pols's expedition and the discovery of Oceania to reach the ears of Europeans, and while some were uninterested in the region just like the explorer himself, others were more enthusiastic. The New World was huge, but it was already mostly divided between a few colonial powers and some native civilizations, which the Europeans lacked the necessary power projection to conquer. European powers which were late to the game in the Vespucias now eyed this brand new continent - but far too little was known about it to even guess it's actual worth. The second European explorer to reach Oceania was Clement Baker, travelling under the British flag. In nine years of travel between 1738 and 1747, Baker sailed around Oceania, created the first map of the continent, noting it's small size when compared to all other continents, and visited the land numerous times. There, Baker's men found the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent - dark-skinned, primitive people, the Oceanians. If there were locals in this continent, then that means there are people to exploit and extract wealth from! The King of Britannia, Richard IV, rejoiced. Clement Baker also discovered two large volcanic islands far from the coast of Oceania - at the time, the expedition was exhausted, far from home, quite literally on the other side of the world from Europe - so they gave the two islands an appropriate title - Terra Ultima ("farthest land"). An expedition to land and investigate the northern of the two islands ended in disaster, however - the locals were not as welcoming as the Oceanians, and numerous members of the crew were massacred and cannibalized before the rest managed to flee to the ship. After this event, the expedition returned home, and King Richard IV greatly rewarded the surviving members of the expedition.

The biggest news that came at this time, however, were once again the friction between France and Germany. In 1746, the newly elected Director of the Estates-General of France, François Rousseau, had to immediately deal with a yet another crisis in the Holy Roman Empire. A representative from Geneva, Rousseau was one of main leaders of the Blue Party, though he had been an independent candidate for most of his career, and he rose to the position of Director on the agenda of pro-bourgeoisie policies and negotiating with the Germans rather than suppressing them. The bourgeoisie - business owners, bankers and wealthy artisans, for example - were centered in Wallonia, which was a border region next to North German Rheinland, and they feared that a war would result in their businesses getting attacked or, even worse, nationalized. So they were against a full out war with the eastern neighbours. In 1746, chaos erupted in Saxony after the ascension of a new duke, Friedrich Augustus I. Unlike most other North German states, Saxony stayed in the HRE and did not join the NGC, because it had a large Reformist population that was best not irritated. The dukes, however, stayed Catholic, a unique occurrence in the HRE. And while previously Saxony was presented as an example of peace between Catholics and Reformists, the new Duke was a devout Catholic and aligned with Visegrad and the NGC, he didn't care about upholding the peace and thus renewed oppression of Reformism. The Reformists in Saxony took arms, now ready to tear down the old monarchy and replace it with a Reformist republic, in what is nowadays known as the Saxon Crisis. Austria stood in favor of the Reformists and moved in the army of the HRE to the duchy. Rousseau, instead of intervening and kicking the HRE in the curb like his predecessors would have done, instead supported the German efforts to defeat the rebellious Catholic duke. This brought great anger from the interventionist Red Party, numerous protests were staged in Paris demanding swift action, but the Directorate's choice stood strong, and the bourgeoisie were supportive. Rousseau was reelected in 1750, and began talks of restoring relations with the HRE.

Can peace in Europe be saved? Probably not. But one can still try.

While the Republican rebellion in Saxony was big, it did not start a world revolution, unlike a whole other event at this time.

While it was hardly a single event - more of a conclusion of multiple factors - it ended up becoming the most important development in the history of humanity since the dawn of agriculture. There's a lot to tell about this...

The creation of the Republic marked an important change in the history of France. During English rule, the nation stayed as a feudal society, dominated by aristocrats, where the majority of the population was unfree and locked to farms. The English Kings were not very interested in the ideas of capitalism or modern consumerism that were developing in Italy and the Netherlands, so the creation of a capitalist system was slow and weak. This changed with the creation of the Republic - the abolition of serfdom and the redivision of the lands in the countryside in favor of the farmers greatly increased agricultural output and freed many hands, leading to rapid urbanization, the inclusiveness of the republican system helped the rapid evolution of modern entrepreneurial spirit and customer-consumer relations, and the Flammantian faith encouraged hard work and liberty, further boosting the development of capitalism. France became one of the fastest growing countries in Europe, Paris soon solidified itself as the heart of business, culture and science in the entire continent. The incorporation of Wallonia, a rich mining region, meant that the country obtained a stable source of coal and steel, too. This is what we know as the "French Golden Age", taking place during the 17th and 18th centuries - science and culture was flourishing, competition between businesses encouraged rapid adoption of the latest technological innovations, and French democracy allowed the rich to push through laws that benefited them, creating a system favoring anyone, no matter their birth, race or nationality, as well as creating a system of "patents" to protect the rights of the inventor to his inventions. While the rest of Europe was dipping into absolutism or oligarchy, France was a beacon of democracy, and this was their greatest advantage in the incoming era.

The first field where the great revolution began was textile. After the Puritan coup in Britannia, the island nation closed itself off from the rest of Europe, ending an important source of wool and textiles and forcing entrepreneurs to look for alternatives. Southern France, already an important source of wool beforehand, became that alternative, and the French Golden Age was also a golden age for the French textile industry. Fighting with fierce competition from India, Spain, Lithuania and other sources, as well as each other, French farmers and textile manufacturers had to constantly seek for innovation to keep up, and the constantly rising demand for textiles meant that the field was very profitable. France became a leading textile producer, outproducing all other countries in Europe, but at the beginning of the 18th century, their capitalists reached a brick wall - there weren't many ways left to increase production without hiring more workers. The problem was that spinning and weaving were still done by hand, ineffectively, and usually in households, slowing down the rate of production by a lot. What do you do now? Turn to technology, of course! The breakthrough in the field was done by one inventor, Isaac de Lure, an entrepreneur from Languedoc. de Lure accurately guessed that the best way to increase production is to make it so one worker can work on multiple threads at once, and after employing a number of fellow inventors, he constructed the world's first "spinning frame" in 1741, a mechanical wool spinner that would produce numerous threads at once. It even worked with cotton, not just wool. It proved to be too heavy and powerful to be powered by a person, however, and after experimenting with a few other sources of energy, de Lure adapted a water wheel to the frame, creating the water frame. The entrepreneur constructed an experimental water-powered wool mill on the Cèze river, and it proved to be not only commercially viable, but also far more efficient than what his competitors could provide. Textile was the first field to begin the process of industrialization.

But what happens when there are not enough rivers nearby, like in Wallonia? How do you power a factory then? This question was solved around this time, too, and once again in France. For millennia, people have wondered about the power of boiling water and if man could employ it. The ancient Greeks and Romans created experimental devices using steam power, like the Aeolipile, but they achieved nothing spectatular, and the earlier centuries saw a few rudimentary devices with a similar motion being created. The first practical steam engine, however, was created in 1705. The miners in the Sambre-Meuse valley often had to fight the problem of water seeping into their mines and flooding them, and a Picard inventor, Jean-Pierre Duhamel, constructed a simple steam-powered pump as a solution, and it proved to be effective enough to spread across the country. However, it was also very inefficient and rudimentary in it's construction, and it was up to an another engineer, Roland Beaugendre, to continue Duhamel's path. The biggest innovation in the Beaugendre steam engine, finished in 1748, was the introduction of a condenser into the system, and a rotary motion. Such simple improvements almost doubled the efficiency of Duhamel's engine, and while the former was important, the latter was revolutionary. It was the first time in human history that man's machines surpassed the average amount of solar radiation per square meter, this being 1.361 kilobeaugendres (kBG). Man has defeated the Sun. And that's not all - even Beaugendre himself noted that "the properties of the steam engine could be successfully employed for rotary motion in wagons, ships and industrial machines".

A revolution is looming. An Industrial Revolution. The age of man is truly beginning.

Map of the world in the year 1750
​

---

It has come to my attention that the chapters in my TL are, on average, um... very long. Even compared to other TLs I read on this site. Does that bother any of you?

 

[Augenis]

This is a quick bonus chapter that I decided to just get out of the way now.

Special Chapter

Countries by Population in 1750
​

EUROPE - 120 000 000

Ottoman Empire: 32 000 000
- Anatolia: 8 500 000
- Balkan Territories: 4 000 000
- Egypt: 3 500 000
- Ottoman Persia: 5 000 000
- (and others)

Republic of France: 25 000 000

Empire of Lithuania: 18 300 000
- Lithuania Propria (including Prussia, Livonia and Estonia): 3 000 000
- Russia: 8 500 000
- Ruthenia: 6 000 000
- Circassia: 450 000
- Crimea: 350 000

Kingdom of Britannia: 12 500 000
- England: 7 450 000
- Ireland: 3 050 000
- Scotland: 2 000 000

Holy Roman Empire: 12 200 000
- Austria: 1 700 000
- Bavaria: 1 500 000
- Wurttemberg: 1 000 000
- Swiss Cantons: 850 000
- Saxony: 750 000

Kingdom of Spain: 8 500 000

Kingdom of the Union of Three Crowns (Visegrad): 8 600 000
- Kingdom of Poland: 3 500 000
- Kingdom of Hungary: 3 000 000
- Kingdom of Bohemia: 2 100 000

North German Communion: 5 500 000

Kingdom of Naples: 4 000 000

Russian State (Volga Russia): 4 000 000

Free State of the Netherlands: 2 400 000

Papal State: 2 000 000

Kingdom of Portugal: 1 850 000

Most Serene Republic of Venice: 1 750 000

Grand Duchy of Savoy: 1 700 000

Kingdom of Sweden: 1 500 000

Grand Duchy of Tuscany: 1 000 000

Denmark: 800 000

Principality of Moldavia: 250 000

VESPUCIA (NORTH AND SOUTH) - 45 000 000

Inca Empire: 20 000 000

Empire of Mejico: 3 500 000

Portuguese Manuela: 2 000 000

Spanish New World: 1 950 000
- Luisiana: 650 000
- New Granada (Central Vespucia): 500 000
- Spanish Caribbean: 800 000

New Netherland: 1 800 000

New France: 850 000

New Sweden: 200 000

Virginia (British): 150 000

ASIA - 495 000 000

Shun Dynasty: 250 000 000

Mughal Empire: 160 000 000

Toyotami Shogunate: 27 000 000

Joseon Dynasty: 8 000 000

Lusang: 6 500 000

Siam (Ayutthaya): 4 000 000

Burma: 4 000 000

Khmer: 1 650 000

Oman: 480 000

AFRICA - 90 000 000

Benin Empire: 30 000 000

Morocco: 2 200 000

Tunisia: 1 500 000

Algeria: 1 400 000

Portuguese Cape: 600 000

WORLD ESTIMATE - ~750 000 000

Hopefully this will make it easier to gauge the relative strength of some countries.

 

[Augenis]

Part 49: The First Domino Falls (1750-1763)
​

The heart of the developing Industrial Revolution was Wallonia. Even though this region was only acquired by France in the Twenty Years' War over a hundred years ago, it was easily integrated into the Republic and became one of the nation's most vital provinces. Here, France's largest source of coal and iron was located, and a thriving heavy industry rapidly built itself around it. Wallonia had already been quite urbanized compared to the rest of Europe before, and the Revolution only hastened the process. Of course, France wasn't alone in the path towards industrialization, and as soon as great inventions come, copies and reinventions follow. The water frame was quick to spread to Britannia, which remained as a large textile producer despite it's isolation, and the properties of the steam engine were adopted by German entrepreneurs in Saxony and the Rheinland, both also rich with natural resources.

Not in Lithuania, however. What was happening there, though? Well, for one, this eastern empire now had a new overlord - Grand Hetman Augustas Velniukas, successor to Algimantas Songaila, and he was approved by the dying Emperor Algirdas III in January of 1751. Velniukas was already 65 years old at the time of his inaugural, and he achieved this position by spending quite a lot of money on bribes - he could afford it, of course, being a wealthy magnate from Samogitia and all. He was a conservative, old and not very energetic man, and his rule was one of calmth and growth. However, he was a great opponent of Abolitionism and an old guard within the military, so he irritated the liberal and republican forces within the country. The Russians didn't like him much, either, much like they disliked any Hetman - but who would ever listen to their opinion?

Like a yin-yang to the new Grand Hetman was the new Emperor. Emperor Algirdas III died on June of 1753 after a long period of illness, dying while clutching to his heart. It is not known what was the disease that killed the 50-ish year old Emperor, but modern historians suspect a heart disease of some sorts, or maybe just an unlucky heart attack. Whatever may have been the cause for his death, he was replaced by his eldest son, Jonas II, a true man of the Enlightenment. Educated in the University of Paris and acquainted with the philosophy at the time, he was liberal, opposed to the Hetmanate, to absolutism and to serfdom, he was very well liked by the moderate and liberal forces within the country, and, while he didn't show it, he secretly harbored hopes to one day remove the Hetman from power and restore the position of power of the Emperor. Since the coup led by Chodkevičius, the monarchy held a ceremonial position at best, saved from complete removal thanks to the authority that the Emperor, as the head of the Lithuanian Orthodox Church, was to the common people of the empire. The keys to power were held by the Hetman, who ruled as a dictator, as well as his clique, the Council of Lords, in a weird oligarchical military dictatorship - and Jonas II hoped to one day change that.

The beginning of the second half of the 18th century seemed to be calm, what with the tensions between France and the HRE decreasing and such, but a crisis shook Lithuanian society in 1760. And it, unsurprisingly, was tied to Russia. With the spread of the Enlightenment, a number of individuals across the region were hoping that the seed has been sown for a new, more successful Russian rebellion, hopefully with foreign support. Many of the Russian intellecuals who were considering such a revolution, like Ivan and Vladimir Kozlovs, had been forced to emigrate, settling in Western Europe and finding brothers in arms in the name of German Enlightenment thinkers, who were also wishing for their state's independence. However, in 1760, Lithuanian officers revealed a Russian-German plot to incite a rebellion in Tver, and numerous people affiliated were captured and arrested. The rebellion was prevented, but a worrying thought reached the minds of the Lithuanian government - this Enlightenment thing, and especially the Germans, are dangerous! France was not the only country worried about the things developing in Germany anymore...

Vilnius in the 18th century​

Another worrisome event happened in China in 1758. During the last years of the Ming dynasty, the Chinese emperors reluctantly allowed the Portuguese to set up a few trade ports on the massive empire's coast, most notably in Hainan and in Macao. After the East Asian War, those ports were taken over by the Dutch, but the relations between the Europeans and the Chinese mostly remained the same, even after the Ming were replaced by the Shun dynasty. However, the new Emperor of China, Chuangzhi, was not happy with the situation in the European trade ports - used to the protection that the Emperor gave them, the Europeans began acting like little kings in their ports, freely exploiting the local Chinese populace and raising costs of their goods while purchasing Chinese tea, porcelain and silk at extremely low prices. The Dutch also learned of the Shun efforts to study European technology, and thus began withholding their secrets. After a number of diplomatic mishaps, Chuangzhi arrived to the final solution - kicking out the Western devils from the Chinese mainland and Hainan. Knowing that the numbers are not on their side, the Netherlanders retreated without firing a shot, and their ports were seized. A devastating blow to Dutch trade in East Asia.

Nothing good was going on on the other side of the world, either. The Benin Empire, forged through guns, cannons and steel in the beginning of the 18th century, was not meant to last. The nation covered a vast territory, and the bureaucracy of the originally small nation was overloaded. Trying to tie dozens of cultures together into a single state proved to be impossible, and after the Oba died in 1755, a succession war escalated into the complete collapse of Africa's short-lived gunpowder empire. It may have fallen quickly, but it's impact on the development of West Africa is insurmountable - Benin brought Western weaponry, bureaucracy and a more centralized style of rule to the region, and even though it collapsed into splinter states, they all retained the legacy of the Empire, seeing it as a pinnacle of the region's power.

However, while all of that was important, the true star of the show was the events in North Vespucia. More specifically - New Netherland. Dutch colonial rule over the region proved to be harder and harder to bear for the colonists of the region. It's hard to say which exact event led to it's end, but a string of bad decisions and often just determined fate was responsible. As time went on, more and more countries switched to a mercantilistic trade system, prioritizing exports and fighting imports with high tariffs, and such a situation was deadly to the Netherlands, which lived and breathed with world trade. The eviction from China also played a huge part, and as the Netherlands moved closer to bankruptcy, the more they taxed New Netherland, seeing it as their only choice for survival. And it's not like the Netherlands didn't attempt to switch to domestic production - but how do you do that when you're so lacking in money? Hell, how do you do that at all? The more taxes on New Netherland grew, the more they resented Dutch rule. It was the first half of the 18th century when a separate "Vespucian Dutch" identity formed, and now it had to be put into the test.

The final straw came with Wilhelm van Lieber, a Dutch tax collector who arrived to New Amsterdam on June of 1760, informing the New Netherland Assembly of a recently passed colonial tariff on furs - and the people of New Amsterdam responded by tarring and feathering the poor man, then sending him back to the ship to go back to Europe. This was the signal for the beginning of the Vespucian Independence War. Militias began to form across the country, in the same style as the French leveé during the Flammantian Wars and Russian opolcheniye during the Great Russian Rebellion. The metropoly only held 2500 men in the colony at that time, and even that small number was widely spread out across the country, so the first stages of the conflict were a resounding success. The New Netherland Assembly, previously merely a colonial parliament organized for resolving local matters, now changed it's name to the Vespucian Assembly, declaring itself to be the supreme government of what used to be Dutch Vespucia.

Problems came when the metropoly finally assembled a force for putting down the upstart colonists, and the first shipment of over 3000 soldiers arrived in New Rotterdam, in the north of the country, in spring of 1761. By summer, over 10 000 Dutch soldiers were stationed in the Vespucias, and despite heavy resistance, they managed to secure the north of the country, barely failing to take New Amsterdam after a siege, Not all Vespucians wanted to rebel from the Netherlands, either - many were opposed to such a radical step, and others were just undecided. A capable leader finally arose among the previously disorganized Vespucians - Herbert der Pols, previously a minor commander in the Dutch colonial army, now the supreme commander of the Vespucian militia, and in the Battle of Nordehamm, he broke the loyalist lines and secured a major victory in the conflict, pushing the metropoly forces back to the outskirts of New Rotterdam by the beginning of 1762.

Neither side was able to continue the war any further, however. The Netherlands was nearing bankruptcy, and it could not maintain a standing army for long, and the Vespucians were blockaded at sea, ran low on ammunition and supplies, and the northern part of their country had been greatly damaged by the conflict. France, ruled by the Blue Party, was still neutral, but elections were drawing near, and the frontrunner Red Party candidate Francois Doriot was openly advocating for supporting the Netherlands - it is not known whether this fact had any effect on pressuring the combatants, however. Negotiations between the Vespucian Assembly and the Netherlands finally began, and in a historic agreement, the New Rotterdam Compromise of 1762, the Netherlands accepted the independence of New Netherland, although with a vague addition "in eternal ties with the Free State of the Netherlands". In practice, this equated to the two countries aligning together on foreign policy and maintaining a free trade agreement between them, and the Vespucians nominally accepting Dutch overlordship in some occasions.

While not completely independent yet, the Vespucia Free State was born. VFS became the first country in the world to begin applying the ideas of the Enlightenment within it's political system, and the Vespucian Assembly was ready to enact such radical, crazy ideas as universal suffrage for all males, abolishing the three estates and equalizing their rights, and the separation of powers into the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. Vespucia had always been a nation of immigrants and refugees, united for a seek for freedom and a new life, and while some parts of Europe were embracing absolutism or "reactionary" democracy, it's lawmakers set their sights on the values of equality and liberty.

One interesting fact to note - many volunteers from Europe participated in the Vespucian Independence War, mostly on the side of the colonists, and they formed what is now known as the "Vespucian Liberty Legion", a nod to the Jean de Foix's Liberty Legion during the Flammantian Wars. Many of them were Germans, though there were many French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Polish and even some Lithuanian volunteers. The leader of the legion was Albrecht Reiter, and one of the many officers in the Legion was an interesting, fiery, but bright German man from Bavaria, noted by General Reiter as "a wayward, but competent boy, with a burning heart", named Maximillian Schwarzburg...

While all of this was happening, Grand Hetman Augustas Velniukas's health was rapidly weakening. The general was almost 80 years old by then, and on October of 1762, not long after hearing the news of the establishment of the VFS, the dictator of Lithuania died, to the surprise of none. Velniukas's rule was not marked by any superb achievements nor great successes, but it did not have to be. The biggest headache he caused for future generations was for Lithuanian high school students in the 21st century, who keep forgetting him, because he was in between two truly great and memorable leaders... After Velniukas's death, the Council of Lords appointed Martynas Pacas as the next Grand Hetman of Lithuania.

Unlike his predecessors, Pacas was only 38 years old, energetic and willing to seek for change. But what challenge awaits him in this changing world?

 

[Augenis]

Part 50: Vultures are Gathering (1763-1770)
​

Who was Martynas Pacas, referred to by Slavs as Martin Pac and by Germans as Martin of Lithuania?

Born on July 24th, 1733 - interestingly, he is the first ruler of Lithuania whose accurate birth and death dates are known - in Grodno, Martynas Pacas hails from the House of Pac. This family of magnates was ethnic Lithuanian in origin, coming from Jieznas, and is recorded in history as owners of many lands in the Grodno (Gardinas) region since the 15th century - however, their ethnicity got murkier and murkier as time went on. Grodno, or Gardinas, was a boiling pot between Ruthenians and Lithuanians, situated right on the "border" between these two cultures, and thus intermarriages between ethnicities were especially common there - not just limited to the peasantry, either. Martynas's father was Jonas Pacas, a Lithuanian noble with a lot of Ruthenian, Russian and even some German ancestry, while his mother was a minor nobless from Bryansk, and whether she was Ruthenian or Russian is hard to define. Because of this mishmash of blood from numerous cultures, Martynas Pacas, his nationality and his accomplishments are often claimed by all three of the nationalities that made up the Empire at the time.

But no matter what, Pacas was the new Grand Hetman of Lithuania, ascending at age 30. He was quite a controversial pick - after all, he was over twice as young as his predecessor when he was appointed - but the protests calmed down as soon as the new dictator settled down in his position in Vilnius. Pacas was noted to be an exemplary military commander, capable of inspiring thousands of soldiers and cracking complex military strategies even at this young age, and his family's status as one of the most prestigious and oldest magnate dynasties in the Empire helped his status and prestige. The new Grand Hetman was a moderate, a negotiator, not especially concerned with protecting ancestral rights if innovation and reform were to be a more viable alternative, and unlike, say, Algimantas Songaila, he held some compassion towards the lowest rate citizens in the nation - Russians, Mordvins, Circassians, Tatars and others. One of the first decrees released by the new Hetman was related to serfdom, the heavily debated practice of keeping peasants locked to their landowners and their will. The Act of 1764 marked the beginning of a path towards abolition - according to this law, the practice of lažas (corvee) was banned across the Empire for good, and the obligation of serfs to their masters was to be replaced by činšas (tithe) and other monetary obligations. Činšas, as a form of obligation, was common since the 17th century, but numerous manors continued the ineffective, uneconomical practice of forcing their peasants to work without any pay - until 1764, of course.

While this move brought Pacas at odds with many people, it also gave him an unlikely ally - Emperor Jonas II himself. Jonas II was far from a moderate - in fact, he was quite a man of the Enlightenment - but he understood that in order to increase the imperial institution's standing within the Hetmanate, he needed allies within the system. And, in addition, the pro-abolition stance of the Grand Hetman was appreciated by the monarch. And for Pacas, the support of the Emperor was necessary to maintain his rule - the monarch's voice resonated heavily among the lower classes, who saw him as the leader of the Church and almost like a "father". The two men entered into an unofficial "political alliance" and began to work together in the following years.

The biggest plan that Martynas Pacas had, however, dealt with the neighbour in the East. Over half a century has passed since the beginning of the Eastern Strategy, and it appeared to be successful - the territory of the Empire was greatly expanded, grain production increased a lot thanks to the incorporation of the Pontic Steppe, and the nation remained very stable. However, Lithuania was starting to get bottled and surrounded, with few places left to expand into - if only the Volgaks were not in the way... That's it! Under the rule of the new Grand Hetman, Lithuania began preparing for what is now known as the Volga Gambit - striking Volga-Russia and conquering this nation of Russians and Tatars for good to open a window into the rest of Asia. This was not going to be just a simple invasion, like what happened under Albertas Jogaila I, either - the Hetmanate went as far as to build hundreds of miles of road across the steppe and train the army for warfare in the flatlands. A multi-front attack, one from the south and one from the North, was drawn up, and the plan was to attack without officially declaring a war to get the Volgaks surprised, but it never came to be.

Europe was just too distracting for Pacas to ever actually go through with the Volga Gambit, and this plan - a plan that could have changed history forever - was forgotten to time.

Martynas Pacas (Ruth./Russ. Martin Pac) - Grand Hetman of Lithuania since 1763​

And a lot was happening in Europe in such a short time.

In late 1762, the Estates-General of the Republic of France elected a new Director - Francois Doriot, the candidate put forward by the Reds. Doriot was a retired general, one of the leaders of the brief French-Holy Roman War two decades ago, and this background molded him into one of the most anti-German politicians in the nation. Not only was Doriot against the prospect of a united Germany, he even saw the current centralized Holy Roman Empire as too large and dangerous for France. The man saw no compromise. Charles VII, the Emperor of the German Nation at the time, noted in his diary that "Whenever I did anything that resembled independent thought, Doriot would send me a letter, claiming that if I go any further, the French will occupy the left bank of the Rhine and kick me out of Vienna. He wanted us to be his puppet, a vassal". Doriot's Directorate marked a swift increase of tensions across all of Europe, and his reelection in 1766 only heightened them further.

However, Doriot's biggest headache did not come from Germany - but rather it's neighbour. Throughout the 18th century, the situation in Visegrad had been gradually weakening. A string of weak, ineffective rulers revealed the problems in the Visegradian system - the constant clashes between the King and the nobility, the disenfranchisement of the lower classes and Hungarian domination in the affairs of the country. In addition, the lack of a uniting force in the form of Lithuania, which outright built a wall of fortifications between itself and the rest of Europe, meant that the three nations that composed Visegrad began to think of departing in their own, separate ways. The tension bursted into an outright revolt, when in 1765, the citizens of Prague finally took arms against the government in the name of an independent Bohemian Republic, aligned with the HRE. These people were mostly farmers and burghers, a disorganized force rallied by bitterness and seek for reform, but it nevertheless terrified not only the King in Visegrad Castle, but also Director Doriot in Paris.

In order to defend the Amsterdam System, the French organized a 50 000 men large expedition to be sent towards Bohemia, but a problem arose - how do you get the men there? The HRE is the best route to Visegrad, but they were opposed to letting even a single French soldier on their soil. Doriot, upon hearing the German refusal, interpreted it very simply - the Germans are collaborating with the Bohemian revolutionaries, they are a threat, and they must be dealt with. 1765-1766 marked the short French invasion of the Holy Roman Empire. Charles VII chickened out - fearing that opposing a French invasion will end much worse for Germany in the end, he ordered the imperial troops to stand down and surrender, and all the French had to fight in opposition were local militias and armies of a few resisting republics, like Saxony. Even today November 21st, the day of the beginning of the French invasion, is a day of infamy for the German people. French troops surrounded and occupied Vienna, then ousted Charles VII from power and installed his distant cousin, Jean I - a French noble from Brittany. Bohemia soon followed, and after a two-month Siege of Prague, during which 19 000 Czech civilians and defenders died, the Bohemian Republic was strangled in it's crib.

How did the Germans react to this French intervention? Very, very, very negatively. To many, this seemed like the end of Germania, their country was humiliated and left to be annexed by the French juggernaut. An organized, militant underground opposition movement formed against Emperor Jean I and the French soldiers that enforced his authority, some even went as far as to fight guerilla campaigns against the French in the Alps and Bavarian mountains. The North German Communion stood together with it's South German brothers, and many refugees from the HRE settled down in the North, where they continued supporting the opposition. Even if Director Doriot sent out vague promises of returning the HRE back to German rule once the situation stabilizes, France failed to control the situation. Even some of the Frenchmen themselves did not support this occupation of Germany, especially the Blues, who protested against the war and occupation as a waste of resources.

But that's not where the focus of the Europeans was at the time. After the failed rebellion in Prague, Visegrad continued to be unstable, and a new revolt seemed inevitable. This time, Lithuania had to get involved as well to help stabilize the situation. Historians have recently revealed an interesting fact about the discussions on Visegrad's fate between France and Lithuania - in 1766, Grand Hetman Martynas Pacas half-jokingly proposed that Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and France-HRE partition Visegrad into three pieces, taking Poland, Hungary and Bohemia respectively, to end the instability in the Danube region for good. It is not known whether this idea was ever actually considered, but many doubt it's historical accuracy - especially considering that France's stance on the Amsterdam System made it uphold static borders in Europe above all, while Lithuania's Eastern Strategy spoke of staying on the defensive in the Western "front".

Whether or not this hypothetical "Partition of Visegrad" ever went beyond Pacas's joke, it never happened, and the two great powers of Europe decided to avoid a direct military intervention in Visegrad for now. The new King of Visegrad, Franciszek I, seemed promising to both France and Lithuania and to the nobility, and the situation in the union was slowly starting to stabilize. Perhaps Visegrad would have returned back to it's former strength, if not for what happened in the West.]

1769 was the beginning of the election season in France. While no laws in France mandated a term limit, it was deemed honorable for a Director to not seek reelection after serving two terms, and Francois Doriot upheld this tradition, officially informing the Estates-General in June of 1769 on his decision to retire after the 1770 election. But he spoke too soon. Doriot soon received very troubling information about the situation in Germany from the military staff - the Germans have went to full rebellion, seizing towns and cities and pushing back the small French garrisons. The cherry on the top of the rebellion cake was the event now known as the March to Schönbrunn, where over 80 000 armed citizens of Vienna and surrounding towns marched against the French Emperor Jean I, declaring this the beginning of the Republic of Germania...

The Great German Revolution has begun.