The Sons in Splendor Vol IV: The Eclipse of the Sons

[CrepedCrusader]

Excerpt from audio guide to La Musee National, Paris, France. English version of audio guide (also available in High French, Romancia, German, Dutch, Swedish, Modern Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese) accurate as of 15th May 2021.

In this gallery you will find a series of objects and paintings commemorating La Guerre de la trois Henris, or the war of 3 Henrys, as it is colloquially known. Officially the French Civil War lasted from 1594 until 1597.

As you enter you will see the assassination of King Henry III, painted by Jean de Court. Henry survived numerous assassinations by Huguenots and other disgruntled subjects, but finally in December 1594 Louis De Prost succeeded in stabbing the King twice in the neck, killing him instantly.

Henry was survived by his infant son, young Henry, who was aged 5 when his father died, born in 1589 to the King’s second wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain. Portraits of mother and son can be seen on the right of the gallery. This high-vaulted gallery was built by the adult Henry IV – known in France as Henry the Good – to celebrate his majority in 1504. This King only became so after a short and bloody war.

In the centre of the room is the armour and portrait of Henry of Navarre, the second Henry of the war. A Protestant, and ally of the Britannic Empire, Navarre had been Dauphin until the younger Henry’s birth and immediately declared the latter’s illegitimacy. Although a Protestant, Henry of Navarre enjoyed considerable support from his own people in Aquitaine and Navarre, the Duchy of Brittany, the Huguenot colony in Bradbury and of course the Britannic Empire. Navarre’s claim to the throne and the illegitimacy of his distant cousin was promulgated in the Edict of Rennes, which is reconstructed on the left of the gallery.

The third Henry was the Duke of Guise, the Kingmaker. His portrait can be seen to the right of the gallery underneath the statue of Zeus. Guise originally did not declare for either claimant, and only committed to Henry the younger after the defeat of his forces at the Battle of Cholet in April 1495. A brief timeline of the Cholet campaign and the battle can be seen opposite Henry of Guise’ portrait. Henry of Navarre defeated a Catholic army under the command of François de Bonne, Duc de Lesdiguières in the pouring rain at Cholet. Originally born a Protestant, de Bonne, converted to Catholicism early in his life and committed himself fully to the cause of the younger Henry. His capture encouraged Guise to declare for the Dauphin, the feud between de Bonne and Guise originally having kept the latter out of the conflict.

As you walk along the gallery you will see ‘The Declaration of Nemours’ by Jacques Louis-Davide. One of the most famous works in French Art, the declaration is modelled on classical tropes, especially the sculpture of the three Horatii brothers. It shows Guise and three other French nobles declaring their loyalty to the young Henry who looks on from the corner, accompanied by his mother the Dowager Queen Isabella. Painted to mark the 200th anniversary of the declaration, Louis-Davide was patronised by the Duke of Guise’ descendants to emphasise the heroic nature of his declaration for the Dauphin in May 1595.

This painting marks the halfway point of the gallery. As you move past it you enter the story of the war itself. The campaigns of 1595 and 1596 are characterised by brutality and foreign intervention. The tableau on the right shows a collection of Breton and Brittanic weapons and standards. The most striking is the banner of the 3rd Calais Regiment, captured at the Battle of Brezolles in June 1596 by the mercenary commander Johan Tserclaes, Count Tilly.

Opposite the tableau, this action is shown in a painting by Champaigne. Tilly’s charge into the flank of the Calais Regiment swung the tide of the battle and the war as the forces of Henry of Navarre, Duke Edward II of Brittany and Baron Thornhaugh were put to flight as they attempted to march upon Paris. In the centre hangs Tilly’s portrait, along with that of the Count of Bucqouy and another of the Duke of Guise, the three Catholic commanders at Brezolles.

Beyond this is displayed the weapons and armour of the Catholic forces of the period, including that of Guise himself. Note the Musket on the right, it is based on stolen and recovered copies of Model III Snelbus, used by the Britannic forces. This Paris-made imitation was more or less identical, and levelled the playing field at Brezolles and later at the siege of Dax.

As we reach the end of the gallery, you will see a statue of Henry IV with Henry of Guise. This was commissioned by the young King himself to go in this gallery. Note that they are standing upon broken chains. This symbol of Navarre also represented their defeat of Henry of Navarre and their victory in the war in the summer in 1597. With the Britannic forces withdrawn to the home country following the political conflagration there, Guise, Bucquoy and Tilly found surrounding Navarre’s forces relatively easy.

To the left of the statue you can see the demise of Navarre. He was shot in the chest by a Catholic civilian during the siege of Dax where Navarre sought to hold off the Catholic army. With his death, his troops surrendered, and the war ended. On the opposite wall hangs the coronation of Henry the Good, another work by Davide. This is largely apocryphal; Henry IV was crowned aged 7 in 1596 as a propaganda tool, but here Davide paints him as the young man he would become; strapping, martial and pious. He is flanked by numerous dignitaries, including Guise and Tilly, but also Richelieu (another apocryphal addition).

Despite the inaccuracies, the painting nonetheless captures the optimism and strength evident in French society after the Civil War. France had stood by her rightful King, and for the first time in generations had frustrated the designs of the Protestants and the English.

[Author's Note: Trying something new here. It's always fascinated me how Museums tell their own story, not always the straight History. So this here is a little twisted to be pro-French. ITTL Guise was a money-grabber who held back his support until he could get the highest price for it. Only the genius of Tilly and Bucquoy really won the war for Henry IV. Navarre did have a good claim but ITTL was not as supported by foreign powers as the Museum makes out. There were some Britannic forces, but Navarre had genuine French support too (something the French Museum overlooked). But broadly the story of the Civil War is as it was told.

Oh just a quick note ITTL Henry III escaped his assassination in 1589, though his wife died of the Flemish Plague. This allowed him to re-marry (the Spanish Princess) and crank out a son before he died. This means that the House of Bourbon never happens, Valois endures, and the claim to the Spanish throne which Henry IV has through his mother may come in handy later... Hope you're enjoying it! -CC]

‘The Treaty of Elba 1596’ History Feature Youtube Transcript 8th January 2017

History is about action, intrigue, politics! It is about battles, assassinations and struggles for control. And then sometimes it is about a bunch of men signing bits of paper. But before you click off the video, this bit of paper these chaps are signing (show painting of the signing of the Treaty of Elba by de Troy) led to so much action, and look closely (zoom in) one of them is a woman! That’s right, there’s more to this boring scene than meets the eye. So today on Feature History we look at the Treaty of Elba.

(play intro sequence)

Well if you’re still with us, well done. Thanks for supporting the algorithm and still being here. The Treaty of Elba was signed in 1596 and it was an unprecedented alliance of the Catholic heads of Europe. Basically, they agreed to support the Pop Clement VII in his efforts to strengthen Catholicism and push back the Protestants across Europe. The Treaty was sort of an Avenger’s Assemble of the new Catholic heroes of Europe, half the people in the picture had only just become King or Duke or whatever or just become old enough to exercise power themselves. Now first to say that this picture is a fake, not all of these lads actually signed the Treaty themselves, they weren’t there, but the painter showed them to be there for Propaganda purposes.

So lets go through the who’s who to work out this here bit of paper was so important. Well leading from the front is Clement VII himself. He is often called the Imperial Pope as he wanted to restore Catholicism over the whole of Europe. After a Century of retreat this was a tall order, but he had already issued Floreat Christus, a Papal Bull designed to strengthen the Inquisition and Jesuit Education across Europe. Then you have the heavy hitters, the woman was actually present; Dowager Queen Isabella of France, mother of Henry IV. Next to her is her brother Phillip III of Spain who was only 18 at the time, he was also present, though I doubt he was so physically impressive. Then further to the left you have the Dukes of Savoy, Ferrara and Tuscany, all Italian nobles.

To the other side of Clement you have the real architect of the treaty, Teodosio I of Portugal. Teodosio had only been King since 1595 when Antonio I died. He had spent his exile in Spain, and was related to much of the Italians by birth. He hated the Protestants, especially the Britannic Empire, as he felt they had deprived him of his rightful crown by supporting Antonio. Beyond him are more men who hated the British; Duke William of Bavaria and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, also King of Bohemia and Hungary. Past those two fellas are another pair of English-haters. Sigismund of Poland, who had just lost his Swedish Crown after Britannic meddling and Peter of Ware. Peter was the Catholic claimant to the Brittanic throne, though he had never been there. Born in Tuscany, Peter signed the treaty on behalf of Britannia, though he had no authority.

So there you go. In short every ruler in Europe who had reason to dislike Protestants, and the British specifically, in a room together signing a Treaty. This couldn’t be good could it? What did the Treaty say? Well it pledged to the restoration of Catholic Europe. All the signatories promised that they would not ally with any Protestant power and would seek to undermine them, and wage war, when the time was right. This group of realms became known as the Catholic League (or Holy Union in some places, though this sounds like a wedding). The Treaty was a defence pact, if any of the signatories were attacked then all of them would go to war. So why was this special? There had been treaties like this before. This one was unprecedented, not a Catholic soul went against it, but it was given extra weight by events in England the next year.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Horrible Histories: Gruesome Gaels by Terry Deary (2002)

The Terrible/Terrific Trio of Tearmann
As Europe slowly caught fire in the 1590s a trio of terrifying minds took control of Tir na Gaelige, let’s meet the troublesome threesome!

The Chief: Aodh O’Neill
Sometimes called Hugh O’Neill, the Uachtaran of the Gaelic Kingdom in Norland was the younger brother of the Prince of Connacht, Seamus O’Neill. After his brother was lost in the Black Summer, never to be seen again, it sent his father over the edge; he began ranting and talking to himself. Aodh took over, some say he smothered his father in his sleep.

Aodh was ruthless; just what you needed to control a nation of native Columbian Creek and a mix of Irish and Scots. Aodh instituted the Bhaldraithe – a fight to the death (though not always) to solve an argument. Aodh won more than a few of these against his rivals, but also used them as a threat to get opponents to back down. Aodh was really the brains of the trio, and held the Irish realm together until his death in 1622.

The Warrior: Roe O’Donnell
Part giant, so the story went, Roe’s red beard was often woven with bone and twigs to terrify his enemies. Around the age of 20 Roe challenged Aodh O’Neill to a Bhaldraithe for the place of Uachtaran. He lost, but only because Aodh ordered the fight to take place during a hurricane – the bigger Roe lost his feet in the wet mud.

Impressed, Aodh made Roe the shield – Sciath – of Tir na Gaelige. Roe led multiple raids into enemy territory, including Bradbury where he rescued many Irish slaves. He would often go into battle naked with only two large axes and a Creek longbow for protection. He must have been quite a sight to behold!

The Pirate Queen: Grainne O’Malley
The mother of all Gaels, Grainne escaped her native Mayo during the Black Summer and fled across the Atlantic with her entire family in just two small boats. Washing up on the shores of Goughton, Grainne led her clan across country for hundreds of miles until she arrived at Tearmann [OTL Selma]. A woman of the sea, Grainne was never happy in the dense countryside.

She disappears from History for a time but in 1593 we know she captured a Royal Barrow Company Demi-Caravel The Ravenspur with a small crew. Despite being in her 50s, Grainne led a wave of piracy and pillaging across the Colombian Islands in the newly renamed Beandorcha (The Dark Lady). Grainne was the lifeline of the whole Gael-land; her pilfered silver kept the country going.

Aodh, Roe and Grainne between them gave Tir na Gaelige its first really stable government. They truly began to threaten the Britannic Empire for the first time. Of course, they had help.

Imperialism: A Very Short Introduction (2005) by Saul David

The period 1595-1525 is generally seen as one of stagnation, or at least entropy, for the Britannic Empire in the New World. There were no great losses, but the era of unprecedented and unopposed Imperialism was coming to an end. Domestic and Old World matters of course served to distract Britannic Imperialists but Colombia had some snares of its own.

From 1593 Irish piracy led by Grainne O’Malley steadily worsened until her death from malaria in 1601. O’Malley successfully captured a pair of Britannic Demi-Caravel in 1593, and with her expert understanding of sailing and the waters in the northern Colombian sea, she could easily evade English patrols. Initially Grainne preyed on small cargo vessels making the journey from Hartsport [Veracruz] or Barrow [Peru]. Such was the volume of cargo that her efforts at first went unnoticed.

By 1596 Grainne was stealing enough Silver from Barrow to get her noticed, and a Royal Barrow Company expedition was sent to stop her. Using her cunning and local knowledge, Grainne led the fleet onto hidden shoals where she could reach them with her lighter vessel and capture them piecemeal. The Battle of O’Malley’s Reef marked the low-point for the RBC. It was actually Grainne’s own declining health which curtailed her piracy from this point. Upon her death her Captain’s fought amongst themselves for dominance forcing Aodh O’Neill to execute the leaders, leaving his nascent navy placid but weakened.

Grainne’s piracy was successful because of another obstacle to Britannic Imperialism. In 1593 the Dutch GWC – West India Company – was founded to take formal control of the Nieu Amsterdam [New Orleans] settlement. The Dutch were rather late to the party, and hoped that this new port would allow them to catch up. Surprisingly the GWC became one of the major trading partners to Tir Na Gaelige, CEO Willem Barentsz especially worked out how to fence and hide the Barrow Silver stolen by O’Malley, paying for it in weapons and ships. Barentsz' motives have been hotly debated, though it seems likely it was his own greed rather than a humanitarian desire to help the Gaels.

Elsewhere Cornelius de Hooten, a protégé of Barentsz, founded his own settlement – Hootensburg [OTL Cape Town] - near the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa. Beating the British to this spot by a matter of months, Hootensberg would become an important waystation for trade to the East. The Dutch may have begun incredibly behind the British, but they were catching up quickly.

Chai: The Englishman’s Brew by D Sandbrook, review by S Schama in History Today, 8th October 2016

Just in time for Christmas comes the latest concoction of the popular-History darling Mr Dominic Sandbrook. Dear old Dom is brewing up a storm with his latest work; a love letter to all things Chai, just the thing for those cold winter evenings! The book gives a short History of Chai, from its ’discovery’ in India some 3000 years ago to its popularisation in the west and its place in the cupboard of every British home.

Being an early-modern specialist, I was particularly glad to see a lot of attention paid to James Lancaster and the East India Company’s efforts to import Chai into Britannia from Assam in the 1590s and establish the first Chai Houses in Westminster and Fleet Street in 1595 and 1596. From those small beginnings, Sandbrook charts the ‘humble cuppa’ and its work to change the politics and society of the western world. A bold History I must say, and helpfully broken up into ‘chaibreak’ sized chunks, a real treat! Verdict: 8/10

[Author's note: a few bits and pieces to wrap up 1591-1596. On Chai; ITTL the British bases in India are further east near OTL Dhaka and Calcutta rather than Mumbai or Madras as OTL. Hence the different word. If this is news to you, then check out the cool map! Yes I am a History, Etymology and a Tea nerd, so sue me!]

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Vengeance, Simon Scarrow (2011)

William Mason groaned as he stood and stretched his back. The ale made his head swim. ‘Dammit, shouldn’t have had that last one’ he thought as he got his legs moving. The Tavern was emptying out, it was long past dark, but there were still enough bodies to make the walk to the door treacherous. Well walk, more of a stagger. But Mason made it, the air outside was cold and dark but mercifully dry. St Stephen’s Day was not long passed, and his bones told him it might snow this week, nothing yet though.

The streets of Cornhill were quiet tonight. The few Taverns still open were buttoned up tight against the cold. The waning moon creaked down between the buildings. Fastening his cloak, Mason turned left and made for home. He hadn’t gone far when a young voice called his name ‘Mr Mason, sir! You dropped this!’ Mason turned to see a young boy of around eight, no older than his grandson Tobias. That sobered up the retired Guild master very quickly. What was a young boy doing out this time of night? He looked to find the child’s companion but saw no-one in the weak light. The boy was waving a glove in his hand.

William Mason leaned in to study the glove, it was brown and lined with fur. Stepping back a pace he said ‘sorry son that’s not mine, how come you’re out here alone?’ A shove in the back and the answer came ‘he’s with us.’ Then it went dark

…

He was in a cellar. The Ale had worn off hours ago. He had nothing, they had taken his boots, his cloak, even his belt. The room was dark and smelled damp. There was nothing save a wooden door and a rough grate in the floor. Light crept under the door. The sound of water told him that the Thames must be below. The grate was big, but he couldn’t lift it, it had been the first thing he tried. They had left him here for hours, he could hear faint noises but that was all, nothing to tell him where he might be. He had spent the time inspecting the brick work, it wasn’t much, and it wasn’t very good.

The door creaked and three men burst in. They were big and clad in black. The middle one had a scar down his left cheek, from his eye down to where a mask covered the man’s mouth. The other two also wore masks and thick black hats. Mason gasped and shot into a stand from where he had been sat. The stiffness from the Tavern was gone. Two of the men grabbed a shoulder each and pushed him against the moulding brick of the cell. The third, the one with the scar, pulled a long knife. ‘Speak out of turn and this goes through the eyeball, nod if you got it’ The man growled, a London accent. Mason nodded glumly.

Scarface turned to the door, peered round it and nodded. Two more men came in, again wearing masks. These men were leaner, but still well built. Regardless, William Mason knew money when he saw it. The newcomers also wore black, but their skin was clean and their eyes sharp. Above the mask he could see that the first man had a brown beard, the other he couldn’t make out in the gloom.

Brown-beard spoke first. ‘I am sorry for the manner of your apprehension Mr Mason, we just need to ask you some questions is all, then you are free to go. Now my associate has explained the rules, you will wait until I ask a question to speak is that understood, nod please.’ Bill Mason just nodded, he hadn’t expected a well-spoken gent, and the mans’ speech had confused him.

‘Now’ the bearded man continued ‘you were chief stone mason on the construction of the Imperial Hall is that correct? Nod if so please.’

Bill was lost, the Imperial Hall? It was a prestigious job after all, but it wasn’t an important building, a playground for the Yorks was all. He had thought this gang would want to know about the Aldgate Bank or the Goldsmith’s Guild, something like that. He realised he hadn’t responded. And nodded quickly.

‘Good. And you were responsible for the cellars as well?’

Another nod. The questions had taken an uncomfortable direction.

‘Good. And you were responsible for the secret passage down to the Thames?’

Mason froze. He tried to think. The knife pushed harder into his neck.

‘Mr Mason? The secret passage?’ Brown beard asked again, his voice calm and patient.

Mason couldn’t take it ‘I don’t know about any passage!’ He blurted, half yelled. The punch to his stomach made him choke. He doubled up and coughed. A thin trickle of Ale spewed onto the floor. There was an acrid smell now to go with the must. The two gentleman sighed as the three thugs hauled William back up.

There was a tense silence. The only sound came from the regurgitated ale trickling into the grate.

The gentleman stared William in the face, his kind green eyes scrutinising him. ‘Mr Mason. We know about the tunnel. We know you built it. We know it leads from the Thames dock into the Cellars. We just need you to tell us how to get inside.’

He began searching his belt pouch for something. His eyes never left Masons. ‘We also know about your darling wife, your son and his children, young Tobias is really something isn’t he?’ He pulled an object from the pouch and held it before William. The Mason’s heart stopped. It was a Knight. A tiny Alabaster Knight, no bigger than a child’s palm. It looked just like the one he had made Tobias for Christmas. Mason dipped his head but the Scar-faced thug pushed his chin up to stare into those green eyes again. The Knight had disappeared.

‘Now’ he began again ‘you have a choice my friend. Tell us how to get into the tunnel, it isn’t really a secret anymore. If you do you’re free to go. If not, then Tobias will join you in here, then Bridget and the whole family if necessary. So what do you say?’

William Mason thought. He stared into those green eyes. He really had no choice. ‘five down and three left.’ He whispered.

‘Come again?’

'Five brick down and then three left. From the corner of the wall parallel to the dock, at the far end. Five bricks down and then three left. That brick will be loose, push it and the door opens. Same on the other side.’ He slumped. Emotionally. Physically he was still being held up.

‘Very good Mr Mason. Now we will check this and get back to you. Stay here.’

With a grim chuckle the men left. Mason fell to the floor and the door closed.

Beyond the door the man with the brown beard removed his mask. The Mason’s instructions had sounded genuine. Robert Catesby smiled. Maybe this was what they had been waiting for.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Vengeance 29th March 1597

‘My Lords, my ladies, assembled dignitaries and gentlemen, his grace the Prince of Wales!’

Polite applause. The Imperial Hall was full, and everyone was staring at the wide open doors as Prince Edward of Wales strode through them. As he walked down the long line of tables to the dais, Edward met few eyes. Everyone here respected him of course – his was heir to the Empire – but few liked him he knew. His own household men cheered as he past, and Henry de la Pole gave him a short nod. The old warrior was seated nearest the dais, but not on it. Another slight from his father the Prince thought. Henry of St Albans deserved the acclaim of being seated at the high table for this banquet.

The room was dark – it was March after all – but the thousands of candles gave it a warm glow which Edward didn’t feel. The applause died as he ascended the steps to take his seat to the right of the great chair in the centre of the high table. He passed Wiltshire, Wells, Walsingham, vultures the lot of them; sycophants loyal only to themselves. They all nodded as the heir to the Empire walked past them, Edward did not meet their gaze, he didn’t care for them. There would come a day when he sat on the great chair to his left, and they’d be gone, alas not yet.

As he stared at the vacant chair, the man who would take it approached. ‘his Grace Emperor Edward I of Britannia, King Edward VI of England!’ the herald finished. The polite applause began again this time accompanied by a roar as Prince Edward’s father began his long walk down the Imperial Hall. The Hall was itself a testament to the old man’s will; only finished a few summers ago, the white marble columns embossed with Golden roses shone in the candle light. The tapestries on the far wall depicted the triumphs of the house of York; Limberg, Euskirchen, Towton. They were here to celebrate the latter of those, 136 years ago today, the founding of a dynasty which now dominated two worlds. Prince Edward was already bored; a whole evening of feasting and toasts, with only his father and Lord Wells for company. The Keeper of the Imperial Seal was a bookish and intelligent man, but straight as a damned-arrow and no fun at all, he was seated to the Prince's right. What Edward wouldn’t have given to be down there with Henry of St Albans, or even better in the arms of Roberta, his current mistress.

Emperor Edward had reached the dais now and was turning to address the assembled crowd of nobility, bureaucrats, ambassadors and other hangers-on. His words were lost to his son. The Royal Chaplain said grace and the banquet began, the Emperor took his seat next to his son. For a moment Prince Edward said nothing but stared at the table as the first course of delicacies were brought out; peacock, swan and a large bird imported from Goughton he couldn’t remember the name of. He was miserable. As someone in his forties perhaps the Prince should have been happier, but he hated these occasions and he especially hated his father.

The old man bit into a leg of Peacock and cocked his head to his son. The dark black fur robes gave him the appearance of an undertaker save for the large golden chain around his neck. Still chewing the Emperor managed to get his words past a mouthful of foul. ‘What’s gotten you so grumpy?’ he asked.

Prince Edward sighed inwardly, here we go again. ‘Nothing father’ he replied curtly, ‘just enjoying the banquet.’ It was a poor lie, he enjoyed his regular bleeding sessions with Harvey more than this.

‘Well cheer up’ his father said ‘I was going to save this until after, but now is as good a time as any.’

Prince Edward looked up from his silver platter, his fathers’ eyes held his carefully, not blinking or showing any signs of what was about to come. ‘I’m not getting any younger Ned, I want you to be King.’ And that was it, the Emperor returned to his plate and took another bite of the Peacock.

The Prince didn’t know what to say, King of England? It wasn’t unheard of whilst the Emperor was still alive, his own father had become King almost 20 years before he became Emperor. But why now? Before he had chance to say anything the Emperor cleared his throat and spoke again.

‘There is however one condition’ he said, taking a gulp of wine, the words were almost lost in the Norlandian Red. Prince Edward glanced at his father again. No, how could he know? ‘Get rid of this latest whore of yours, and take no others.’ The Emperor said his lips pursing with distaste, it wasn’t the fine wine he was drinking which made him do that.

Edward’s stomach tightened ‘this latest whore’ no matter what he did his father always discovered his mistresses. He stared at the plate again.

‘What was her name again Walsingham?’ The Emperor was looking past his son down the table. Edward turned and saw Wells, Wiltshire, the whole pack of them staring at him enjoying the spectacle. It occurred to the Prince that they all knew and must have known for a while. Shame anger and embarrassment all raced into his mind. The spy master raised his wine cup to his Emperor ‘Roberta sire, a rather plump wench from Eastcheap.’ Walsingham said.

…

The boatman strained against the ebbing tide. The small craft only contained two barrels of the finest Loire-Valley reds, fresh from Brittany, but their weight and the pull of the water made his job difficult. Above, the pale moon struggled to pierce the weak clouds, lending the whole sky a weak and pale glow. It was by this light that the boatmen guided his vessel across the Thames. He had done this route dozens of times, he would have known he was close to the Imperial Hall even without the banquet raising a din inside.

‘Halt’ a stiff voice yelled behind him. The boatman turned and lowered his hood. ‘Oh it’s you John’ the same voice said as he caught sight of the boatman’s face in the light coming from the Hall high above.

‘Evenin’ Perce’ the boatman hailed, ‘still out late then are we?’

‘Speak for yourself John, how come you’re back so soon?’ The guard asked lowering his gun to rest its butt on the stone dock.

‘Ah the Prince of Wales wanted more of the Loire Valley ’95 vintage for tonight, so here I am.

The small craft had by now drifted into the wide mouth of the water gate into the Imperial Hall. This small stone dock was used for people who did not want to be seen, and deliveries of course. John the boatman threw a rope up to Percy and the night watchman tied it to a metal ring set into the stone.

‘Need a hand with those two?’ the guard asked peering down at the pair of barrels.

‘Aye’ John replied ‘here just set them down there and I will take care of the rest.' He passed the two barrels up to the guard, who placed them on the edge of the dock. He didn’t notice one was heavier than the other. The boatman hauled himself up onto the dock beside his cargo. ‘Need anything else?’ Percy asked him as he cracked his knuckles. John noticed that the man had placed his gun against the wall 6 feet away to help with the barrels.

‘No thanks Percy’ John said as he moved past the guard towards the barrels. ‘you’ve done enough.’ The knife flashed once in the gloomy cellar and then bit into the guard’s throat, above breast-plate and below chin strap. The boatman held him from behind, directing the jet of blood out over the water in the cellar’s dock area. The body went limp and the boatman pushed it forward, grasping the sword belt as he did. Percy’s body slid more-or less silently into the water, dragged down immediately by the weight of the armour. The boatman stayed in a low crouch for a long-time, listening for the sound of footsteps or an alarm. Nothing. The knife followed the body into the water.

Guy Fawkes stood – his alias no longer necessary – and moved to pick up the heavier of the two barrels. He lowered it onto its side and rolled it across the dock with his foot. Five bricks down, three left. Then he was into the Prince’s secret passageway. There were already 2 barrels of powder here – Guy had been earlier in the day. Along with the others hidden across the wine cellars, he hoped this would be enough to do the job. He opened the one he had just brought to fetch out the bag of flints and fuses. He had to work fast, then back in the boat before anyone noticed Percy was missing.

Guy pulled the fuses from the bag and replaced the lid on the gunpowder - not wine in the barrel. With his second knife he spiked the barrel and allowed some of the powder to trickle free. In went the fuse and then he turned to the flint. Hurried but professional, just as his father had taught him.

…

Prince Edward just glared at Walsingham as the man took a swig from the raised cup and grinned at the future Emperor. Edward turned, glare still etched on his face, to face his father. ‘You spied on me?’ He said, more a resignation of defeat than an accusation.

‘It was necessary my son’ the Emperor replied. ‘you have no heir – no legitimate heir – this folly with common girls from the slums must stop. Until Britannia has an heir you have not fulfilled your duty. These ‘women’, if you call them that, stop you from doing that duty.'

Emperor Edward put a derisory twist on this last sentence which only angered his son even further. He gripped his table knife in his right hand. Staring hatred into his fathers’ eyes.

…

Guy was back in the boat. His hood was back up. He turned to grab the oars. Then realised he was still tied to the dock. He didn’t have time for this. Fawkes hauled himself back up and one handed untied the boat, sliding back down before it had chance to float away. Good, now get out of here! He pushed off, and the oars bit into the placid black water.

He couldn’t rush. As much as he wanted to. The guards of parapet above the river would see him leave. They expected to see a lazy wine merchant on his way home after one last delivery. They didn’t expect to see someone fleeing the charges he had just laid beneath their feet. So, against every instinct, Guy Fawkes slowly rowed back across the Thames, the Hall looming in its gaudy, arrogant, ostentation above him.

Meanwhile, the fuses burned.

…

‘Careful my Lord.’ Walsingham whispered. The spymaster had manoeuvred around Lord Wells to stand behind the Prince of Wales. Edward knew he was being foolish, a table knife for crying out loud, what was he going to do with that? The Prince dropped the knife and wrenched around in his seat to stare at Walsingham, the thin man looming over him. ‘How long?’ Edward snapped.

‘My lord?’ Walsingham asked, puzzlement distorting the smug grin on his face.

‘How long have you had your rats spying on me?’

‘He did it for me Ned.’ The voice was tired and wrenched with regret.

Prince Edward turned to see his father looking at him. There was sorrow in those ears, his face was contorted by discomfort. ‘I asked him to.’ The Emperor clarified.

‘You?’

‘I had to son. Our dynasty is at stake. Every day you foolishly cavort with these whores, you tip it closer to anarchy.’

The Prince of Wales said nothing. He glanced around him. The entire high table were focused on him or pretending that they weren’t Some dozen paces away St Albans and a few others had taken note of the drama unfolding above them. Prince Edward stood. Without a word he stepped back from the table, Walsingham let him go. He turned to the left, stepped from the dais and out through a back door into the Imperial apartments behind the hall. After a moment the Earl of St Albans stood too and made to follow his protégé.

Walsingham moved to cut him off, but the Emperor’s voice stopped him. ‘Leave him Francis. He needs time.’ Walsingham made to argue, but saw the look of sorrow and befuddlement on his liege’s face and returned to his seat.

‘Well that could have gone better.’ Emperor Edward said to no-one.

‘How exactly?’ Said another voice behind him. Its owner settled into the now vacant chair to the Emperor’s right. It was a gross breach of protocol, but if anyone could get away with that, it was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and Lord Protector of England.

Emperor Edward studied the man’s face. He was the spitting image of his father, strong but kind, plain but enigmatic. Anything could be going on behind that face, but it would always have the intentions of the realm and the York dynasty at heart. Edward had learned to trust the Tudors, and this one in particular. He smiled at the young man despite his melancholy thoughts.

‘Well I could have waited with the condition, not mentioned the mistress yet.’ The Emperor said.

‘True’ Tudor replied ‘but then you would have saved up trouble for later, this is his doing Edward, not yours.’ Tudor was one of a few who could use the Britannic Emperor’s first name without censure.

‘Look I will go after him’ the young man continued ‘he respects me, I will try and talk some sense into him. Faithfulness and celibacy are small price for a Kingdom.’

…

Ralph Osmund was good at his job. Castellan of the Imperial Hall wasn’t exactly challenging, it wasn’t like the place was every going to fall under siege. In reality his biggest foes were uniform violations and drunken party-goers. Like tonight for example. The Danish ambassador had already had too much to drink and one of the Grey boys had challenged him to a dual. Still, breaking that up had been easy. And now he had his rounds to make.

Ralph was good at his job because he had an eye for detail. Tonight of all nights – the York day banquet – he could have focused on the Great Hall and have taken his position of honour at one of the lower tables. But he took his role seriously. The lower colonnade was quiet, as were the cellars. The occasional servant scurried past carrying barrels of this or jars of that, but it was quiet.

It wasn’t until the Castellan reached the lower dock that his suspicions were aroused. The Imperial Hall didn’t really need river access, it wasn’t like they ever dealt with traitors or treasure; just people and food and drink. But the Prince of Wales had insisted, and so the Hall had been given a dock at cellar level which let straight out onto the Thames. On nights like tonight Osmund only had one guy down here, it was all he could spare, but Percy Lynch was a good bloke, and he could handle the rats and whatever else was down here.

But now Lynch was missing.

….

Guy Fawkes was still rowing. His pace was starting to quicken. He was far enough from the Hall now that the people on its embankment were blurred splodges in the pale moonlight. He was counting in his head. 540 since he lit the fuses. Or was it 440? Or 640? He couldn’t tell. He thought he may have skipped a century when he went up to untie the boat. He just didn’t know.

…

‘Lynch!’ Osmund called. His voice echoed off the low-barrelled ceiling. No response. The water lapped softly at the stone. The chamber was lit, but not too well. Osmund took a torch down from the wall. As he carried it, the shadows scurried across the chamber. One of the shadows was very odd; it was a gun. A model III Snelbus leaning against the wall. Ralph crouched and held the torch close. It was Lynch’s. No doubt about it. The man never tightened his flint screw adequately after cleaning. This gun had a loose flint. It was Lynch’s. But where was the man.

Ralph turned and scanned the dock. The torch light picked up a pool of liquid. It was near the edge of the dock. No more than a smear. Water? It sometimes dripped down here when it rained, but the night was dry. Wine? As he peered closer he could see the liquid was red in colour. He smelled it. Blood. Definitely blood. The air was metallic and tangy with the taste of it. Wherever the guard was, someone had bled here. That was enough for Ralph Osmund. Search the Hall, protect the Emperor, shut the whole banquet down if he had to.

…

Fawkes had made it to the far side of the Thames. The boat was tied to a small landing stage in the shadow of some warehouses. They were boarded tight and dark now, but they had been a good cover for him. They sold wine. Guy was still counting; 790? Or was it 690? 890? He knew he shouldn’t linger. If the bomb worked then the whole city would be in turmoil. If it didn’t they would be after him eventually. But he couldn’t leave.

This was his life’s work. Catesby’s. Percy’s. So many people had sacrificed for this moment. He had to be here to see it happen. To see God’s judgement finally paid upon the Godless Yorks and their followers.

…

‘Move!’ Osmund yelled at a small page. The young boy jumped to the side of the narrow corridor, the large cured ham he was carrying dropped to the floor as the Castellan swept past. Ralph Osmund was breathing hard and moving fast. His ceremonial armour was not helping his pace.

…

Prince Edward stormed through the lower colonnade. He had to get away from his father, the whole pack of them. ‘Ned!’ A voice behind him called. The Prince of Wales paused and turned. Henry de la Pole was stumping after him. The old man had taken a wound at Rouen and it slowed him up a little.

Edward waited for his friend to catch up. ‘What is it Hal? he asked?

But before the old man could reply they heard the sound of running footsteps. Both went to pull their swords and realised they had surrendered them for the banquet.

...

Ralph burst into the lower colonnade. It was still empty. Save for two people. Two men he hadn’t expected. The Earl of St Albans and ‘my Lord Prince of Wales?’ he said breathlessly.

The two men gawked at him as if he had just risen from the depths of the Thames itself.

‘Treachery sirs.’ The words tumbled out amid gasps ‘I have a guard missing and blood smeared on the lower levels. I fear a plot.'

…

1201, 1202, 1203. Guy couldn’t be totally sure, but he thought the fuses he had cut were shorter than this. What was going on? Maybe it was a dud? All of that danger for nothing? He couldn’t move. He had never wanted something more in his life. But he knew he couldn’t go back and check. 1214, 1215, 1216. On the count went.

…

Despite everything, Prince Edward moved back towards the Hall ‘My father…’ he began but St Albans cut him off.

‘I will get him Ned, you get out. Please get out.’ The old warrior yelled, he was already limping back the way he had come.

The running man, Osmund? Oswald? Moved to help Edward towards the main doors but the Prince shrugged him off. ‘I can go myself, you warn the others’. He said.

‘Ok sire, but please hurry, I don’t know how much time we have.'

….

Emperor Edward stared at the remains of his meal. Around him the banquet continued, but he wasn’t feeling it. What was the future of his dynasty? Raised voices behind him made him turn. He saw Tudor and Henry St Albans coming back into the main hall.

….

1239,1240,1241. The count continued. Fawkes was transfixed. Then something faint. From across the river voices, shouting? Had he been discovered? Amid the white columns of the Hall’s exterior he could see people running. He turned to leave.

That’s when the countdown stopped.

A loud bang. Then another. Then a plume of flame jetted from one corner of the building as if spewing from the stone itself. Another explosion and more flame. It was more like a roar now. The shouts had turned to screams. Stones flew out, a few landed in the Thames, breaking the calm still waters. As the fire built, a rumble followed. The Hall was coming down, half the columns at one end were tumbling, the roof too. Guy Fawkes just watched. The fires, the screams, and rumble of falling stone, all of it floated across towards him. The Justice of Heaven had arrived. To bury the House of York.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

1597: The Year of Three Emperors

‘The Yorks’ Season Seven, Ep 3: ‘Fire and Stone’ Script, Scene 1

Night. Camera slow pan over the burning ruins of the Imperial Hall. Top down. Slow pan to open square beside the Hall (Modern Day Limberg Circus). Huge mass of chaos and soldiers.

Enter Magnus and entourage

Magnus (Hugh Laurie): My God. Who’s in charge here? Who is in charge here?

Kempe (Tom Brooke) (emerging from crowd): I am sir. Sergeant Kempe, Swiss Guard.

Magnus: situation sergeant, where are the Imperial family?

Kempe: I…I don’t know sir. The whole building just….came down…it looked like an explosion. My men were stationed at Westminster Hall. We are pulling bodies from the rubble. So far we havn’t found his grace the Emperor or his son yet.

Magnus: The Lord Protector, Earl Richmond?

Kempe: no sign sir, some of his men are up the Mall there, but we havn’t found him yet either.

Magnus: Right. I am taking command. This here is my man Darrow, he will get you more men. Darrow assemble the Boars, I want half here helping the sergeant the other half I need you to lock down Westminster; the mint, Westminster Hall anywhere of value. No-one gets in or out.

Sir Edmund Darrow (Reece Sheersmith): Aye sir

Magnus: Maitland, take three men and call out the London militia, my compliments to Mayor Harding. He is to lock down the city and declare marshal law. Until the Emperor, Prince of Wales, or Lord Protector are found I am taking command. This was as like an attack by our enemies, we must be ready for treachery.

Enter John Whitgift, Bishop of London and Christopher Hatton, Chief Imperial Justice

Whitgift (Anton Lesser): and just what treachery would that be Viscount Don?

Hatton (Dennis Lawson): Indeed, as master of arms, you have no jurisdiction here. Explain yourself.

Magnus: Maitland, Darrow you have your orders

Hatton: Delay that. Stay right where you are. Don you have no legal power here, this is a civil matter for the Imperial Council to take care of. A Council which you are not a part of. Until we know more, this was a tragic accident, not a military matter. You are dismissed.

Magnus: Use your damned eyes man! The seat of our Empire BURNS! Would you be Nero and delay at a time like this?

Hatton: Well if I be Nero, then you are Caesar. Oh I know you have long sought power, Magnus, Bishop Whitgift and I will not allow you to seize it now.

Enter Margaret of Conde, Duchess of Cornwall

Margaret (Jenna Coleman): My Lord Don, what has happened?

Magnus: Unknown, my lady. The Hall has collapsed in flame, we believe there was an explosion, I fear treachery.

Whitgift: Never fear your majesty, there is no treachery. Your husband will be found. Myself and the Chief Justice will-

Margaret: What do suggest Lord Don?

Magnus: Secure the city my lady, organise search parties and groups of men to douse the flames.

Hatton: Your Grace, this man has no authority here

Margaret: Chief Justice my husband is missing, right now there is only one man I trust and it is this one. You are to give Lord Don all assistance he requires. Sir you are to use my seal of authority, in my husband’s name you are in control of this situation until he is found.

Calling, off screen

Kempe: we have found him.

Magnus, Hatton, Whitgift: who?

Kempe: The Prince of Wales, he is alive!

The Twilight Years: Britannia 1581-1597 by J Franks (2017)

The Gunpowder Plot ranks amongst the Black Summer, the sack of Paris and Slavic Genocide as one of the most infamous acts of History. The Catholic conspiracy of the Percy and Catesby families, along with their collaborators across England and Ireland, succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. The explosives planted by Guy Fawkes not only levelled the Imperial Hall but brought the Yorkist dynasty to its knees.

The explosion on the 29th March killed 83 people and injured more than 150. The list of the dead includes some of the biggest names in the Britannic Empire at the time: The Imperial Chancellor, Thomas Boleyn III, Earl of Wiltshire, William, Lord Wells, Keeper of the Imperial Seal, Spymaster Francis Walsingham, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond the Lord Protector, and most importantly, the Britannic Emperor Edward I. These five men could collectively have been called the hands, eyes, mouth, ears and brain of the Empire, their loss was cataclysmic and sent Britannia down a much darker path for the next quarter century.

The legacy of Emperor Edward I is debated elsewhere in this volume but suffice it to say here that his death at the hands of Catholic conspirators was an appropriate end for one of Britannia’s more controversial rulers. In his years as Emperor, Edward had presided over a malaise in the centre of the Empire. Largely leaving day to day matters to his subordinates, Edward took a more ‘hands off’ role than his predecessors. Instead he spent his days brooding at his palace of Limberg, south west of London, or at Greenwich, and only came to court when matters demanded his attention. His absence not only allowed for the Catholic threat to grow but gave free-hand to court intrigue.

Walsingham must surely bear some of the blame for the attack which killed him. As Keeper of the Imperial Records it was his responsibility to sniff out such plots. Instead it seems his energies were faced inwards against the likes of Martin Dalston, Magnus the Red and Henry of St Albans. Most tellingly, we now know that Walsingham had orchestrated a spy-ring around the Prince of Wales in the months leading up to the plot. For whatever reason, the eyes of the Empire were turned away when they most needed to be alert.

To their credit, the Percy-Catesby conspirators certainly kept a tight reign on their plot. Indeed such was the slow response from Spain, Portugal, the Papacy and even the Ware faction in exile that it seems only a few insiders knew of the conspiracy’s existence at all. This may certainly have prevented external detection, but it speaks volumes to Fawkes et al’s convictions that they had no call to warn anyone in the Imperial Hall of the impending disaster. Given the court faction’s complete removal of any Catholic-sympathisers, there would likely have been no-one in the Imperial Hall that night whom the plotters cared enough to warn.

Alongside the ‘Big Five’ deaths were a whole range of justices, courtiers, foreign ambassadors and military captains. Archbishop Scambler was also present at the Imperial Hall that night and would die two weeks later of his wounds. The Prince of Wales survived the initial explosion, and was pulled to safety, but would die by the end of November that same year, only adding to the confusion which Fawkes’ bomb sewed in the heart of the Empire.

Prince Edward was rescued very soon after the explosion, but was unconscious for days and even then was in no condition to rule the realm. Into the power vacuum stepped the survivors. By sheer chance Imperial Chief Justice Christopher Hatton was late to the banquet and in the ensuing days would try desperately to hold on to power as the main surviving member of the court party. Hatton’s side-kick in this regard was the firebrand Bishop of London, John Whitgift. Whitgift had been translated from Rochester a mere few weeks before and now he was in prime position to influence the future of Britannia. With the incapacitation of Scambler and the Emperor, and with the Archbishop of York distant, Whitgift became the mouthpiece of the Britannic Church, and preached sermons in favour of Chief Justice Hatton across the city.

In opposition to these two was the grizzled veteran Magnus the Red. As Master of Arms and Horse, the Viscount Don had only an advisory role in the Imperial Council and was superseded by Hatton. Magnus, however, immediately saw the destruction of the Imperial Hall for the existential threat it was and he attempted to take firm military control of the situation. In support Magnus had the de facto loyalty of all military units in and around London, Thomas Harding, Mayor of London and Michael Hicks, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Crucially Magnus also had the support of Margaret of Conde, the Prince of Wales’ wife, who equipped him with her husband’s official seal as he lay unconscious and that of Riker of Oudenberg, Duke of York and Imperial Constable.

For six days, as fires ravaged London and Westminster and Percys and Catesbys rose in rebellion, these two parties fought for dominance. The Master of Arms tried to impose martial law on London and the surrounding area, but Hatton shouted this down in a fractious Parliament. Magnus then attempted to raise Michael Hicks to the role of Imperial Chancellor, using the Prince of Wales’ authority, but he was blocked in the courts by Hatton yet again. Magnus even had the Chief Justice detained by his household guard – the Scarlet Boars – for a time but was forced to release him after the Justices of the Star Chamber collectively condemned the move. During this time the Master of Arms suffered a personal tragedy when the body of Henry of St Albans was found amidst the rubble of the Imperial Hall. A close friend and ally, St Albans was a grave loss to Magnus.

Nonetheless by the 4th of April the tide had began to turn against Hatton and Whitgift. News of the Great Catholic Rebellion from the north, and the arrest of Guy Fawkes on the 2nd as he tried to escape London, vindicated Magnus’ harsh actions in the days following the disaster. Two days later Riker of Oudenberg arrived from Calais. As Imperial Constable, Riker was the third most powerful man in the Empire (after the Emperor and the Lord Protector), he out-ranked Hatton. Riker appointed Magnus as interim Lord Protector, confirmed Hicks’ ascension to Imperial Justice and appointed his second son Johan of Bruges as Wells’ successor to the Imperial Seal. Riker could not remove Hatton, but he all but circumvented him

This emergency Council had their work cut out. Prince Edward, now King and Emperor in fact if not actually in body, was still unconscious and under the care of William Harvey. In the absence of heirs this left Richard I of Scotland as the rightful Prince of Wales. Word had been sent north, but with the Catholic rebellion in full swing, no-one was certain if the Scottish King knew that he was about to make History. This left Riker and Magnus between them in control of the Empire. In reality of course King Michael in Dublin, Duke William of York in Calais and Viceroy Raleigh in Goughton, alongside the regional Councils, had the extremities covered, but England was proving enough of a problem all on its own.

The ‘Red March’ is am umbrella term for the almost six months of unrest which followed the destruction of the Imperial Hall. North of the Humber this refers to an outright rebellion of Catholics. Across London and Bristol there were weeks of sporadic violence and looting. Most characteristic were the outpourings of hysteria and paranoia across England: anyone suspected of being a Catholic, or even foreign, was targeted. In Ipswich, more than 50 French Huguenots were killed by an angry mob who mistook them for French Catholics. The Dutch merchant’s house in Sandwich was looted and burned to the ground. Across the West Country, suspected Catholics were hounded from their homes, and Irish merchants and fishermen refused safe harbour.

Particularly targeted were Religious outliers; Catholics of course, but also those Presbyterians and Puritans who were judged to be ‘anti-clerical’ were now seen to be full-on traitors. Richard Hooker was killed as were a number of Brownists in East Anglia. It is estimated that at least 1000 people were killed. Only the local governance of Seneschals and military companies, introduced by successive Yorkist rulers, held the line and prevented much further bloodshed.

Such was the severity of the situation that Riker and Magnus dispatched Christopher Hatton himself to the home counties and the West Country to lead judicial trials himself. This restored law and order by the middle of May, but it also served to get Hatton out of the capital and allow his opponents free-reign. Two months after the explosion, a degree of order had been re-established to England south of the Humber, and it was at this moment that Prince Edward finally awoke.

The last pure Yorkist Emperor was coronated by Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of York ,by his bedside on the 22nd of May 1597. He of course had been King and Emperor from the moment his father died, but even this small ceremony was necessary to solidify power. For the next week Edward slid in and out of consciousness and was finally enticed to designate a Lord Protector to allow for more formal authority. Edward chose Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Known as Henry the Unfortunate, the new Earl of Richmond was only 26 when he became Lord Protector. He had lost both his father and grandfather to the forces of Catholicism, and by all accounts was perhaps not best suited for the role.

There has been an intriguing debate over this choice. Did Emperor Edward II mean to select a 26 year-old man as the de facto ruler of Britannia in its most dire moment since the Readeption? Did he in fact summon the man’s deceased father, unaware in his injured state that he was already dead? Historians have tried to find a link between Edward and the unfortunate Henry but aside from the few banquets and hunts where they were both present there is little evidence that either man knew the other well, let alone that they were friends. Nonetheless Tudor was not entirely out of his depth; he was a junior commander in the Wiltshire Regiment, and had spent a few years as his father’s secretary. Furthermore Riker was still Constable and Magnus still Master of Arms, they would both be needed for the coming struggle.

On the 27th of May, with the new Lord Protector less than a week into his job, word arrived from Newark with a messenger bearing the arms of Henry Cavendish, Earl Humber. The news was grave. The Earl himself was in flight from Doncaster where he had tried to stop the Catholic army. The north had been lost. Robert Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, and his son William were both dead. The Northumberland title had been reclaimed by the Percy family. Humber’s own son Charles was also dead and the Catesbys had reclaimed their lost land. Yet most concerning of all was that a coronation had taken place at York Minster; not a week before Papal Nuncio Camillo Borghese had crowned Peter of Ware, the last claimant of the Catholic Ware faction of England, King and Emperor Peter I. England once again had two Kings. One was dying, crippled, in London. The other had been raised for this moment. He had a loyal army behind him, and the support of half of Europe.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Youtube: Generals and Kings Channel: The Great Catholic Rebellion

Welcome back to the Generals and Kings Channel and our ongoing series on the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. In today’s video we will be analysing the Great Catholic Rebellion and the Battles of Ferrybridge, Dunstable and Hartlepool. In March 1597 a Catholic bomb placed beneath the Imperial Hall in London decapitated the Britannic leadership. This plot was the work of a group of English Catholics led by the Percy and Catesby families.

Since the 1530s, Catholics in England had gradually been frozen out of positions of wealth and power. The Percy and Catesby families had lost their titles of Earl of Northumberland and Humber respectively and had spent generations in the political wilderness. Common people had slowly been de-Catholicised by successive Church reforms and visitations yet a strong number of covert or clandestine Catholics still existed, especially in the north. Unlike the south and midlands, the counties of Yorkshire, Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland were more remote and their religious congregations more resistant to religious change. It is estimated that by 1590, around 60% of the population of these counties were Catholic.

In the weeks following the Gunpowder Plot, chaos reigned at the centre of the Britannic Empire as the Emperor’s surviving ministers wrestled for political power and to bring the country to heel. The leaders of the Great Catholic Rebellion used this confusion to strike hard at the Yorkist power structures in the north. Andrew Percy, the leader of the plot was alerted to the successful assassination on the 30th of March and immediately moved to attack the Earl of Northumberland, Robert Dudley.

Dudley was unpopular in the north and had taken the old Percy seat of Alnwick as his refuge. In the early hours of the morning of the 1st of April, Percy agents infiltrated the castle and assassinated Dudley and his heir William, Earl of Newcastle. Percy and his retinue of around 500 men marched first to Newcastle and then Durham where he declared himself the rightful Earl of Northumberland and pledged his allegiance to Peter of Ware as the Catholic King of England.

For the next month, as chaos in the south continued to delay a united response to the Rebellion, Andrew Percy gathered men to his banner at Durham and across the extreme north. He was joined by Robert Catesby, styled as the Earl of Humber, and William Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Together the three Earls had around 1,200 professional soldiers, but throughout April they were joined by more and more common folk swelling their number beyond 5,000 men. Finally, on the 28th of April, just over a month since the plot’s success, the first signs of foreign support for the rebellion arrived.

Peter of Ware had been in Tuscany when he received news of the plot and Percy’s rebellion. The Grandson of John of Ware, who died at the Battle of Wittering in 1538, Peter had lived his entire life in exile awaiting the moment to reclaim his throne and England for Catholicism. Accompanied by Cardinal Camillo Borghese, the Pope’s official envoy, and around 500 mercenaries led by Phillipe de Stenay, Peter of Ware landed at Whitby on the 28th of April.

Peter and the Catholic army marched on York where the Cavendish Earl of Humber was unable to hold the city owing to the sheer number of Catholic sympathisers. Peter was crowned by Borghese in York Minster on the 5th of May. This was an incredible propaganda coup for the Catholic forces. With the Prince of Wales still unconscious, and his official heir Richard I of Scotland claiming inheritance through a female, as Peter did through his great-grandmother Elizabeth of Ware, the Catholic Rebellion now had as legitimate a claimant to the Imperial throne as anyone else, all they now needed was a military victory to bring true authority.

In the first month of the rebellion, the sheer weight of support for a Catholic restoration in the north of England had forced the armies of the House of York to retreat further south. Battles had been avoided by sheer weight of numbers and momentum on Percy and Peter’s side. Yet after the latter’s coronation, the loyalist forces in the north knew they needed to offer resistance.

On the 17th of May 1597 Henry Cavendish, Earl of Humber had abandoned his estates in the East Riding of Yorkshire and pulled back to defend the River Aire at Ferrybridge. This was a well-chosen site. The river bends from north to east at Ferrybridge with the bridge itself running west to east. This allowed Humber to establish his cannon on the southern bank with a clear view of fire over the bridge. Humber was equipped with around 3,000 infantry – mostly made up from the Humber and Wakefield regiments – and a further 1,000 cavalry and light demi-cannon brought from the south by Sir Edmund Darrow, one of Magnus the Red's lieutenants.

On the opposing side, Peter of Ware and Andrew Percy possessed around 6,000 men, but only a third of these were well-trained or equipped. On the morning of the battle, Darrow’s cavalry harassed and harried the on-coming Catholics as they crossed open ground from York to the North East. Only De Stenay’s Italian mercenaries, mounted on horses, kept them at bay. This was all a delaying tactic, to allow Humber to complete his redoubt over-looking the bridge and for reinforcements to arrive. From the West, Thomas Stanley Earl of Derby brought another 2,000 men to reinforce Humber’s line where they were added to the south of the bridge. Thus, when the Rebels arrived at Ferrybridge the two sides were equal in numbers.

The battle of Ferrybridge began with a desperate charge over the bridge by the Northumberland rebels. Being the most loyal and ferocious of the Catholic army, Percy committed his own men first. They were able to cross the bridge and a bloody melee ensued. The enfilading cannon fire made this incredibly costly for the Catholic forces and they pulled back after an hour. By mid-afternoon, under cover of their own small cannon salvaged from York, the Catholics tried again, this time with De Stenay’s heavily armoured Italians in the vanguard. This attack was slightly more successful, killing Humber’s son Charles in the ensuing combat, but again it began to wane.

At a prearranged signal, the entire battle swung in an instant. With white smoke billowing from north of the river, the Earl of Derby ordered his men to turn their coats and butcher the loyalists holding the bridge. Stanley also sent a small detachment to attack Humber’s redoubt from its vulnerable left flank, finally silencing the guns. With these two distractions, the remaining Catholic forces thundered over the bridge and claimed the day. Dazed and confused, Cavendish and Darrow escaped to the west, circling around Wakefield and heading south.

The Battle of Ferrybridge had cost the Catholic army around 1000 men, but had added 2,000 more and the propaganda coup of the Earl of Derby whose conversion to Catholicism had been unknown to English society at large. The Protestant army had been almost totally destroyed; Darrow and Humber between them had around 800 cavalry to hold off the 7,000 men now still marching south.

For the next week Darrow and Humber tried to slow the Catholic advance using hit and run tactics across the hills and forests of the South Riding of Yorkshire. After another disastrous attempt to hold a river crossing at Conisborough near Doncaster on the 23rd, Darrow was killed, and Humber retreated again, this time to Newark.

By the end of May the Great Catholic Rebellion was reaching its climax. With all of England north of the Trent in their control, and the Loyalists in London only just focusing on the threat to the north, the Catholics received another boon, this time from the west.

When word had reached Ireland of the Gunpowder Plot, a number of Catholic rebels had similarly risen in defiance of King Michael in Dublin. However, disorganised as Irish rebellions so often were, they would have been easily destroyed were it not for two forces which intervened. The first was Cardinal Borghese who arrived in Carlingford on the same day as Ferrybridge. The second was Pedro Henriquez, the Count of Fuentes who arrived two days later in Bangor having sailed around Ireland to the west. Between them Fuentes, who had some 1,000 men, 28 ships and holds full of weapons, and Borghese enlisted the help of rebel leaders Hugh Maguire and Owen O’Rourke. It was hard to convince these men to leave Ireland, but Borghese brought with him a signed letter from King Peter, promising to relinquish his claims over Ireland if they helped him to win his crown.

So it was that after landing at Fleetwood, an Iberian-Irish force of 6,000 men led by Fuentes and Maguire marched into Chesterfield on the 1st of June to the nervous looks of the local townspeople. The Great Catholic Rebellion now truly represented the biggest threat to Britannia since the Ware Rebellion 70 years before. The Treaty of Elba had called all Catholic nations to fight Protestantism wherever they could, and the Gunpowder Plot presented them an opening which they now sought to exploit. Emperor Peter now commanded an army of over 15,000 men with which to press his claim, and he ordered the march on London. By the 3rd of June the Catholics were at Leicester, Humber having impotently pulled back to Lincoln.

It was at Leicester that news arrived from the Earl of Westmorland in Penrith where he had been guarding the rebellion’s rear from Scottish incursion. Westmorland had defeated a small Scottish force at Carlisle on the 29th of May, killing the Earl of Gowrie in the process. However he was unable to prevent the advance of a larger Scottish army massing near Berwick under King Richard and his favourites the Duke of Lennox and Earl Maxwell. Undeterred, Peter pressed on, hoping to bring the Loyalist army to battle.

For their part Magnus the Red, Viscount Don and Riker of Oudenberg, Imperial Constable, had been scurrying to raise an army since the dual ill news of Ferrybridge and Conisborough arrived in London. By the 5th of June, with Emperor Peter at Rugby. Magnus and Riker were forced to move. They had only been able to summon 12,000 men, given the unrest in England, and most of these had come from Calais. They included the three Calais Regiments, the Rouen Regiment, and the Piacenza company, alongside Magnus’ own Scarlet Boars. Outnumbered they may have been, but these units represented some of the best in the Britannic army.

Magnus and Riker needed to make a statement, and Dunstable was that statement. Situated on a gap in the Chiltern Hills north of London. Dunstable acted as a funnel for the Catholic army approaching from the north west. To hold this line, and not cower behind the city’s fortifications, would be a statement that the Britannic dynasty was still alive, and not prey to these usurpers.

The Battle of Dunstable was fought on the 9th of June 1597. The Loyalist Army was drawn up west of Dunstable, in the foothills of the Chilterns facing north-west over open ground. Riker and the three Calais Regiments held the right flank penned in by the walls of the town and the hills to their rear. Riker’s junior commanders were William Grey, Earl of Kent and Thomas Seymour, Lord Horsham. A mile away to their front was the wooded hill of Tattenhoe. On the left flank, and in overall command, was Magnus the Red with his own Scarlet Boars. With him were Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond and Edward de la Pole, the new Earl of St Albans, son of the late Henry.

Across the wide field the Catholic army advanced. The Count of Fuentes had their right flank with De Stenay’s cavalry to his right. In the centre of the field Hugh Maguire and Andrew Percy led the commons of the north and Ireland in a rather ill-disciplined mass. Beyond them, advancing under the shadow of Tattenhoe, were the professional English soldiers led by the Earl of Derby and Robert Catesby.

Riker and Magnus had established their forces in a good defensive formation; lines of infantry with cannons further up the slope behind them. Magnus remembered his lessons from the Battle of Nybro and had drilled his men constantly in the use of the model III Snelbus. He planned to hold the line with a sheer weight of firepower and smoke.

The Catholics had little space or time to bring up their own artillery, and Emperor Peter, ensconced behind Andrew Percy, knew that he lacked the advantage in gunpowder. However the Emperor also knew that he had the weight of momentum and morale on his side. His army was fighting for the hope of a Catholic restoration. Peter delivered a rousing speech to his men to make this fact known and, without a prior bombardment, gave the order for a general charge.

Such was the ferocity and anger of the Catholic horde, that the ill disciplined Irish and Northmen were able to cross the open ground in front of the Loyalists in just a few minutes; they were in musket range long enough for a few shots before they fell upon the hapless Britannic Regiments. Magnus had over-played his hand. He had relied on the expert gunnery of his soldiers to stop the tide. But once the lines were engaged most only had socket bayonets or the butts of their Snelbus for hand to hand combat. A second rank of pikes were largely useless once the distance had been closed. This against men who had never made the progression to muskets but still fought with axe and sword the result was very one sided.

The Catholic charge landed heaviest on the Rouen regiment in the centre of the Protestant line forcing Magnus to fall back and reform. This gave his flank a better angle on the slowly advancing Spanish Tercios of Fuentes, but left Riker and his Calais Regiments dangerously exposed, forcing them to form up into static Hutton Squares. The battle ground down into stalemate as the stout Loyalist forces threw back wave after wave of crazed Irishmen and northerners.

At this desperate moment Magnus played his remaining trump card. Sir David Maitland and 200 of the Boars had ridden around Dunstable and emerged above Tattonhoe behind the Catholic army. Riding into the Catholic rear, as Giovanni had famously done at Limberg, Maitland set his sights on the Imperial banner and Emperor Peter beneath it. Here the Earl of Derby’s upbringing bore fruit. Losing his father at a young age and schooled in the military academies of England, the closet Catholic had learned all of the tricks of the Imperial army. He had studied the tactics of Edward V, Richmond, Hutton, Giovanni and Magnus from an early age, and he knew to expect this ruse. Stanley committed his own reserve of 200 cavalry armed with Schragbus which to this point had lain in wait beneath the steep escarpment of Tattonhoe, out of sight. They took Maitland’s force in the rear and destroyed it completely.

Fresh from victory, and reloaded, the Catholic reserve, commanded by Stanley’s brother William, launched another attack at the Protestant line. With the Calais Regiments holding the centre, and now disjointed by Magnus’ retreats, the left flank of the ‘damned 3rd’ Calais regiment was vulnerable. Having been defeated by the French at Brezolles a year before, the 3rd Calais Regiment now again found their formation splintered and their commander Earl Grey slain. Meanwhile on the Loyalist left, an earlier counter charge by Edward of St Albans had blunted a move by De Stanay around Magnus’ flank. The consequence was that the battle line was now split in two. With Magnus and the Boars on the left gaining ground against the tiring Irishmen whilst Riker’s flanked collapsed.

The Catholic reserve, having defeated the ‘damned 3rd’, set off into the Loyalist rear to silence and pillage the artillery line. It was now around 5pm and Magnus knew that he had lost his gamble. Signalling the general retreat, his well-disciplined Scarlet Boars held the line long enough for the remains of the left flank to retreat, killing the Spanish commander Fuentes in the process. But Catesby sensed blood. He had successfully blocked off Riker’s retreat into Dunstable, and the reserve Cavalry prevented the Imperial Constable from fleeing upslope. Instead the veteran commander held on with his remaining regiments, hoping for relief, but none came. At last, as the night drew in, Riker of Oudenberg was struck by a Catholic projectile and killed, Lord Horsham surrendered soon afterwards.

The Battle of Dunstable was a disaster for the Britannic Empire. Magnus the Red had overplayed his hand, and underestimated the tenacity of his opponent. The defeat left him a broken man, retreating to Oxford with the 5,000 or so men of his army that he could salvage. The Catholic victory was impressive, but rather pyrrhic; Hugh Maguire, Count Fuentes and Phillipe De Stenay were all dead and the army had taken around 5,000 losses. The strength of the Irish and Spanish contingents was spent. Only Catesby and Derby’s shrewd handling of their flank had preserved their forces. Even so, there were not enough men to guard the 3,000 or so prisoners taken at the end of the battle. Emperor Peter gave every man the chance to change sides but only a dozen or so did. The rest, including Lord Horsham, he had executed as traitors.

The next morning, as Peter and his remaining commanders discussed their next steps a messenger from the north arrived. King Richard I had taken Durham and burned the city, especially the Cathedral, and was marching on York promising the same fate for the city of Peter’s coronation. Despite this disaster, the Emperor sensed that the road to London was open and ordered that the army march and seize the city. Much to his dismay Catesby and Percy demurred; they did not have the strength to take or besiege the city and instead petitioned Peter to return north to save their homes. Sensing the mood of the men, the Emperor acquiesced and the army turned back north.

King Richard I only had 6,000 men under Maxwell and Lennox. His intentions were to slowly march on London to claim his place as heir to the Empire, hoping that Magnus and Riker would destroy the Catholic threat by the time he arrived. When Richard I heard the news of the disaster at Dunstable, the Catholic army was already back at Leicester a mere week or so away. The Scottish King moved towards Hartlepool where relieving news arrived by demi-caravel from London on the 15th of June. Magnus the Red had survived Dunstable, but had taken to his chambers to brood on his defeat. Henry Tudor had taken command at the age of 26 and requested Richard to hold his ground, burning and pillaging the countryside as best as he could to draw the Catholic forces north.

Tudor had dispatched this message with one of the demi-caravels the London shipwrights had developed for use around the Britannic islands when speed was of the essence. He used this speed to his advantage. The fair summer weather allowed a journey between London and Hartlepool to take just 36 hours by boat. Tudor therefore decided to pack the Barbican and newly arrived Amiens regiments into any small, fast ships that he could find. They were unable to take any horse or heavy cannon, but Tudor’s own initiative, and the military pedigree of the Amiens Regiment’s commander George Hartson, Earl of Amiens were hoped to give them an edge.

This amphibious force arrived off the coast of Hartlepool on the 19th of June, ten days after Dunstable. Richard I had dug defensive emplacements around the town and was holding the line. On that same morning, expecting a response from London, Peter of Ware was again inciting his weary men to attack the town and destroy the Scottish army in order to reinvigorate his campaign. Even as dawn rose, with the Catholic infantry preparing storm the make-shift defensives at the northern end and headland, they came under cannon-fire from the sea.

Completely wrong-footed, Peter and his army withdrew swiftly inland to their camp west of the town. Sighting the false Emperor on the beach, Tudor ordered an immediate landing on the sand. He was able to coerce three ships captains to ram their ships up onto the long beach west of the Headland like the Vikings of old. The action would break all but one of them, but it allowed the fully armed Amiens Regiment to drop into the shallow surf in full armour and wade ashore. The other ships beat towards the town’s harbour and immediately battle was joined.

A few larger ships were able to cover the beach landing from anchor in the shallows. This gave the Amiens Regiment a lot of artillery cover, which they added to with their own ranks of Snelbus fire. The broken beach and shingle prevented any kind of Cavalry charge, and the men of Amiens were able to storm the low dunes behind the beach and secure the northern barricades. Seeing this, Lord Maxwell sallied with his own cavalry and cut the disorientated Catholic infantry to pieces.

Determined to re-gain the initiative, and against the advice of Percy and Catesby, Peter of Ware ordered his own counter-charge into the northern melee to buy his army time to reform. Only William Stanley, the hero of Dunstable, was willing to lead the charge with him, the rest of the commanders repeating their reluctance. ‘Ware’s last charge’ as the manoeuvre has become known, initially went well, and sliced through Lord Maxwell’s flank. However, the Imperial banner drew men towards the young pretender, most of all King Richard I. Not known for his battlefield prowess, Richard I could nonetheless not resist his own glory and fame. With his own household guard, and the Duke of Lennox in tow, the Scottish King rallied from the northern gate of Hartlepool and struck Peter’s force in the rear. The false Emperor was unhorsed and died shortly thereafter.

With their Emperor slain, the Earls Derby, Northumberland and Westmorland knew that their cause was lost even as more infantry poured from Hartlepool’s western gate. In a move which has haunted the Catholic cause ever since, the English leaders of the Rebellion, the Gunpowder plotters themselves, turned and fled.

It would take another year for Henry Tudor and the Cavendish Earl of Humber to hunt down the remaining rebels across the vastness of the northern moors. Of course by that time Britannia had a new Emperor and was returning to a sense of normality and stability, for a time at least.

We hope you have enjoyed this video on the Great Catholic Rebellion. This is the Generals and Kings channel, and we have more videos coming up on the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries so like and subscribe to keep up to date. Until then, we will see you on the next one.

‘Pocket Biographies: Tricky King Dickie – Scotland’s most infamous King’ J Forestall, 2019

After his victory over the Catholic rebels at Hartlepool, King Richard was welcomed in England as a saviour. That he had dawdled and relied on Henry Tudor’s desperate amphibious landing for victory was quickly lost in the relief that Emperor Peter had been killed. King Richard finally arrived in London at the end of July and immediately requested that he be made King of England in order to solidify his hold on the succession. This wasn’t that unusual, and the recent existence of a pretender made the need for a clear heir all the more pressing, but it did ruffle some feathers, namely those of Magnus the Red. Still nominally Master of Arms despite his absence from Hartlepool, Magnus took an immediate dislike to the Scottish King, but his protestations were easily overruled.

In any rate it was August before the dying Emperor was conscious and lucid for long enough to be asked for his consent, and this time was needed to summon Queen Margaret Seymour from Scotland and to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury. After much wrangling, tricky Dickie was able to get his own choice of Archbishop. The realm was too exhausted and desperate to argue with him, and so John Whitgift finally achieved the role he had always wanted. Richard I became King Richard V of England on the 3rd of September 1597.

The King immediately stamped his authority on his new realm. Lennox became Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Lord Maxwell the Chancellor of the Exchequer. These were both vacant roles since the crisis and so there was little opposition to Richard’s rapid filling of the posts. However the dual appointment of Scots was not lost on anyone, and fears grew that when Richard became Emperor the entire Empire would be run by up-jumped Scots.

Unfortunately, before any real understanding of how Richard would act as Emperor could be built up, Edward II died in his sleep. The Last Yorkist Emperor had never really ruled in that name. Since the Gunpowder Plot he had drifted in and out of consciousness, his body slowly shrivelling whilst others tried to hold his Empire together. Finally Richard Stewart-York (his name changed to give a sense of continuity) had achieved his destiny: on the 24th of December 1597, he was coronated Emperor Richard II of Britannia, King Richard V of England, King of Scotland, Lord of Columbia, Guardian of the Low Countries and Defender of the Faith. Any misgivings about Richard’s suitability were withheld in the name of stability and continuity. Everyone was relieved that the crisis was over and that a successful switch of dynasty hand been made peacefully and without bloodshed. How wrong they would prove to be.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Key positions

Emperor Richard II, King Richard V of England, Richard I of Scotland Lord of Britannia and Defender of the Faith
Imperial Constable: William, Duke of York, Oudenburg and Picardy, Prince of Anhalt-Kothlen
Keeper of the Imperial Seal: Esme Stewart, Earl Lennox
Imperial Chief Justice: Sir Christopher Hatton
Imperial Chancellor: Sir Michael Hicks
Lord Protector of England: Henry Tudor ‘the unfortunate’, Earl of Richmond
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Lord John Maxwell
Master of Arm and Horse: Magnus the Red, Viscount Don
Archbishop of Canterbury: John Whitgift
Lord Privy Seal: Earl Home
Keeper of the King’s Records: Edward Seymour, Earl of Surrey and Bedford
Chief Justice of the Star Chamber: Sir John Coke
Admiral of England: Sir William Monson

Key Characters

Emperor Richard II, Richard I of Scotland, Richard V of England, Lord of Britannia and Defender of the Faith
At the age of 27 Richard has just become one of the most powerful men in the world; his realm encompasses the majority of the New World, the British Isles and Northern France with colonies and trading posts from the Canaries to Japan. However Richard is a son of Scotland first and foremost. His upbringing, disjointed and devoid of parents as it was, has not really prepared him for this challenge. Expect him to rely on his inner circle.

Margaret Seymour, Empress of Britannia, Queen of England and Scotland
Emperor Richard’s second wife, after the first died in a mysterious fire, Margaret has not enjoyed a happy marriage. Shunned by her husband, and only wheeled out to perform her duty (which she has at least managed three times), Margaret spends her days in solitude or with the servants her husband provides. At least she is back in England now.

Henry ‘The Unfortunate’ Tudor, Earl of Richmond and Lord Protector
Aged only 26 when the Gunpowder Plot killed his father and thrust him unexpectedly into power, Henry has gone about the job with youthful vigour and naivety. His crazy decision to ram the beaches at Hartlepool may have won the day, and the respect of the new Emperor, but its recklessness speaks to Henry’s lack of experience. Retained in his position as a sign of continuity, Henry needs to learn, and fast, as factions begin to emerge at court

Magnus the Red, Viscount Don and Master of Arms and Horse, Magnus the Younger, and Edward de la Pole, Earl of St Albans
These three are the disgruntled party in the new court. Magnus the Red never really had complete power under the old Emperor but at least he was respected and in command of the entire Britannic army. After his defeat at Dunstable by the rebels Magnus has taken to his estates in Hertfordshire to think on his failures, though he still has his title. Magnus’ interests at court are represented by his son Magnus the Younger and his protégé Edward of St Albans, son of the late Henry. These three men are soldiers, and good at it, but they are not happy with the new Emperor and his Lords.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford
One to watch. Though a minor Earl, Devereux’s voice is loud. He is a strong proponent of Presbyterianism, is Chancellor of Cambridge University, and has been speaker of Parliament twice. He knows everyone, and knows their business. He should be regarded as a complete wildcard. [Note: OTL known as the Earl of Essex, ITTL the Cromwells retain this title, so he is Earl of Thetford instead.]

John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury
Finally, Whitgift has the role he has for so long coveted. A veteran theologian and politician, Whitgift is appalled by the talks of separatism and Presbyterianism within the Britannic Church, having once famously compared them to Canaanites and allegedly punching their leader Bishop Robert Brown. Now finally Archbishop of Canterbury, and backed by his close friend and intellectual sole-mate Emperor Richard II, Whitgift can finally deal with the treasonous Reformists once and for all.

Sir Michael Hicks, Imperial Chancellor
Known to History as the first man ever to be proposed by Parliament as Lord Protector, Hicks now sits as Imperial Chancellor. Though rising to power amid the tumultuous Red March, and nominally loyal to Magnus the Red, Hicks has more than enough connections and personal ability to carry out the job. His contacts in the City of London with its many banks will come in particularly handy. Unfortunately Chief Justice Hatton absolutely loathes him.

Esme Stewart, Earl Lennox, Keeper of the Imperial Seal
Richard II’s closest friend and advisor. Lennox was not popular in Scotland, and is even less so in England. Lennox suggested to Richard II that Tudor keep the Lord Protectorship, but give him the role of Keeper of the Imperial Seal. By 1598 this role is as close to a Chief of Staff as the Early Modern World will get, Lennox controls all access to the Emperor and that means only Whitgift and a few Scots see him. Really dislikes Magnus in particular of all the English.

‘The Lords of March’: Lord John Maxwell, George Gordon, Marquess Huntly, George, Earl Home, John Erskine, Earl Mar, Thomas Erskine, Earl Kellie, Sir John Carmichael, Sir James Sandilands, Sir James Johnstone
These are the Scottish Lords Richard II brought with him to England. So-called as they were awarded grants of land from the diminished Earldoms of Northumberland and Westmorland, giving them land on both sides of the border. These men are loyal to Richard II without fault and all share his views about Catholics and Presbyterians. The term is also derogatory; these men are only Lords because of the events of March 1597.

Thomas Stanley (attainted) Earl of Derby
Having infamously converted to Catholicism in secret, and then been defeated at Hartlepool, Stanley escaped to Spain with his Catholic mother and her new husband, Jesuit Robert Persons, in tow. With the death of the Ware male line, he has become the face and voice of Britannic Catholicism in Europe. He is not finished, not by a long way.

Edward Seymour, Duke of Surrey and Bedford, Keeper of the Imperial Records
Though young, as the Empress’ brother, Seymour managed to win himself the role of Imperial spy-master. Like Henry Tudor he is keen, but is perhaps at the mercy of Magnus and Devereux.

William Duke of York and Oudenberg, Arthur Hartson, Duke of Normandy, George Hartson, Earl of Amiens, Frederick Boleyn, Lord of Cambrai, Albert Earl of Pembroke-Gloucester and Prussia
Known as the Continental Lords, these five men between them represent the Britannic Empire in Europe. Accordingly, their relationships with Protestants in Germany and the Netherlands are very good; Albert inherited the Dukedom of Prussia from his mother, and his wife has just become Duchess of Saxony after the House was wiped out by the Flemish Plague. Consequently, these men have little time for the politics of London, instead far more concerned by Paris, Rome, Madrid, and Lisbon. The Hartsons and Oudenbergs are descended from Richard of Shrewsbury (b1473) and have a significant military pedigree. When war comes to Europe, and it will, expect them in the vanguard.

King Michael I of Ireland
The first King of Ireland is aging. Since he killed or enslaved 25% of his subjects in the Black Summer of 1580 Michael has become increasingly removed. Ostensibly loyal to London and a part of the Britannic Empire, time will tell if this will actually mean anything to the Irish King or his heir Prince Matthew.

Aodh O’Neill, Uachtaran of Tir na Gaelige
Occupying the southern swamps and glades of Norland, the last decade has seen a real growth for Tir na Gaelige. Now having relations with the New Canaan Republic in New York and some kind of trade with the outside world, Aodh is finally ready to do something about the thousands of Irish enslaved beyond his eastern border by the Huguenots of Bradbury County. He is aided by his Sciath (Shield) Roe O’Donnell and the Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley

Edward II, Duke of Brittany
Though descended from Edward IV of England, Edward (or Edouard) fiercely maintains Breton independence. Technically Brittany is in a military alliance with London, and allows their Protestant priests in, but they are linguistically and religiously independent. Increasingly the KKB or Breton Trading Company is bringing in much needed Gold and Edward has the chance to chart his own middle path between Britannia and France.

Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, Franck, Duke of Hesse and Margrave of Brandenburg, Ludwig, Duke of Wurttemberg
The three main German Protestant Princes. The Holy Roman Empire is no more and these three are increasingly reliant on each other (and the Dukes of Oudenberg and Normandy, naturally) for protection. Between them, these three are a strong part of the Protestant Copenhagen Alliance, though of course they still fall out from time to time.

Pope Clement VII, Henry IV of France, Phillip III of Spain, Teodosio I of Portugal, Sigismund III of Poland, William of Bavaria, Ferdinand of Austria, King of Bohemia and Hungary
The 'Big Seven' signatories of the Treaty of Elba, together they have formed the Holy League of Elba in order to defend Catholicism and push back the Protestants. Joined by another dozen or so minor Dukes and Counts, the Elba League is the greatest Catholic alliance in almost a Century. Unlike previous attempts at Catholic unity, Pope Clement VII is really pushing a military, economic and theological revival of the Church and is aided by the personal grievances of every single signatory. Six of the ‘Big Seven’ (the 7th being the Pope) have suffered personal setbacks, Civil War, murdered parents, dynastic meddling, or rebellion funding from the Protestants in the last 20 years, especially from Britannia. Now that the soon-to-be-canonised Guy Fawkes has torn the head from the Protestant beast, the time has come for vengeance once and for all.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

So as you can gather from the Key People posted above, there are some real turbulent times ahead. Technically this the end of the TL as the last direct male heir of Edward V in the line of succession has died, with a Stewart-York taking over. BUT I have about 27 years of TL left with two HUGE wars and then we are done. I am stoked for the next section. Only thing is I am away now for 2 weeks, so there will be a break.

Also I have a document attached which is my planning work on the family trees up to 1598 and will explain some of the links mentioned in the other post. It is rough as anything, but may help if you're a wee bit confused.

See you in a few weeks, thanks again for all the support, until then stay safe and keep well!

CC

 

[CrepedCrusader]

1598-1606: A Tricky Time

By the dying fire: English Catholicism after 1597 by R Rex

English Catholicism died with a whimper. As a flame starved of Oxygen, the faith merely disintegrated after the Battle of Hartlepool. The Catholic Emperor Peter died on the field as did his erstwhile companion William Stanley. The remaining leaders of the rising – Percy, Catesby, Stanley and Neville – fled west into the Pennine fastness of northern England. All four ‘false Earls’ were immediately attainted as traitors by the new Stewart regime and hunted like dogs. By the Autumn of 1597 enough soldiers had flooded into the north from the south-west and Europe to crush any remaining opposition and Henry Tudor, the unfortunate, was incredibly motivated to hunt down the last vestiges of Catholicism. Whatever the young man’s shortcomings in his unexpected position of power may have been, both his father and grandfather had perished at the hands of Catholics and he was determined to make the Empire safe from them.

Ironically it was the one Earl who did not hail from the north who made good his escape. Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, escaped to Speke on the River Mersey – where he collected his mother and her new husband, ex-Jesuit Robert Persons – and sailed for Ireland. According to legend, Stanley disguised himself as one of his mother’s housemaids in order to escape which won him the title of the ‘Maid of Shawbury’ in Protestant circles. Landing in Drogheda, the fugitive Stanleys discovered that the concurrent Catholic Rebellion in Ireland had also been crushed by King Michael’s forces. They immediately returned to the sea heading for Brittany and thence into France where the fleeing Earl was taken in by the newly victorious Henry IV ‘the Good’.

The rest of the Catholic leadership were less lucky. The Earls of Richmond and Humber led the hunt across the northern counties to bring them to justice. Catesby was finally cornered at the ruined Priory of Mount Grace, not 15 miles from Hartlepool where he had gone to ground. In a stand-off between the architect of the Gunpowder Plot and the forces of Henry Cavendish in September 1597, Catesby triggered an explosion which destroyed the abandoned Priory and took five others with him to the grave.

Andrew Percy was perhaps even less lucky. Always an honourable man despite his subterfuge, Percy merely returned to his ancestral seat of Alnwick to await his fate. Within three days the Lord Protector Henry Tudor himself had arrived to take him into custody. Percy was transported to the Tower of London and imprisoned along with Guy Fawkes, the Emperor’s assassin. After a show trial, and bearing clear signs of torture, the pair were hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on the 5th of November 1597.

By the dawning of a new year, only William Neville, Earl of Westmorland, remained at large in England. Returning to the Lake District, the final rebel commander evaded justice for over a year and was not apprehended until 1599 following a brutal campaign of reprisals by Magnus the Younger and William Stewart.

With the leaders of the rebellion scattered to the four winds, the common people stood little chance of continuing the struggle. Even those minor gentry who had joined the endeavour fled for cover as their leaders did. The result was that by spring of 1598 every Catholic believer north of the Trent who owned so much as a dozen acres was either executed, imprisoned, exiled, or in hiding. In short, what spine the Catholic faithful still had in England had been obliterated.

Emperor Richard II was fastidious in chasing down any remaining Catholic landowners or Gentry, using the surviving records of Sir Francis Walsingham to great effect. A number of Priests were also unearthed as Catholics were turfed wholesale from their homes and Priest holes were revealed. A prime example is of Speke Hall, once the haven of the Maid of Shawbury’s family, the Hall was owned by the Norris family. The family head Charles had been arrested after Hartlepool and his wife Agnes was powerless to stop the Imperial forces which evicted her and her young children in April 1598. The Hall was immediately occupied by John of Mar who within a week apprehended the Priest John Floyd who had been hiding for days behind an upstairs fireplace. Floyd was summarily taken to Chester and burned as a traitor and heretic.

With the clerical and landowning head cut from English Catholicism, the common people were left helplessly exposed. As was customary, the majority of the commons were pardoned for their role in the rebellion and allowed to return home. However, an unusually high number of yeomanry were also indicted and executed allowing their lands to be occupied by farmers from the south of England. This helped to relieve some of the overpopulation in the south and recognised the role that some peasantry had in inciting the rebellion. Nevertheless, this was not a move intended to re-colonise the north with Protestants. Instead the wave of Religious reforms and education in the decade after 1598 more than saw to that. That these reforms were mainly implemented to steer the Empire away from Presbyterianism and Puritanism is often overlooked. Richard II was far more concerned by the extremist Protestant faction in the south than he was the rump Catholic hold-outs, their ‘re-education’ was merely a helpful side-effect.

And so the last vestiges of Catholicism in England were wiped out. Many of the evicted gentry sought refuge in the New World or London, but a few made it to Ireland and Brittany, finding much more succour in the latter. Nonetheless, Catholics were denied any and all positions or titles by the Imperial establishment and so, for the next century at least, they would become a dying breed in English society.

The Stanley lands passed to Thomas Stanley’s uncle Richard, albeit weakened and curtailed. When Richard died in 1600 his sole heir Anne passed the lands to Lord William Hastings who was allowed to ascend to the title as a means of continuity and to drown out the original Earl Derby still lurking on the continent. The new Hastings Earldom was trimmed down from its previous size with the Lords of March taking on around 40% of the original land between five of them.

These Lords of March generally cleaned up in the wake of the Great Catholic Rebellion. Earls Lennox, Home, Gordon, Kellie, Mar and Maxwell, and Lords Carmichael, Sandilands, Johnstone and Stewart all became ennobled from the confiscated lands in the north. John Dudley, grandson of the infamous Robert, inherited the Northumberland title and again around 60% of the land with the new Lords of March taking chunks of it along the border. Only by virtue of his service after Hartlepool did the Cavendish Earl of Humber retain all of his lands. In the West, the final capture of William Neville allowed another rising star and Scottish favourite, William Stewart, to ascend to his title as Earl of Westmorland. The first time a Scot had ever been Warden of the English West March, Stewart (a distant cousin of the new Emperor) more than proved himself militarily during the Ricardian transition to power. The commander was one of the few Scots to get on well with the Imperial establishment.

‘Pocket Biographies: Tricky King Dickie – Scotland’s most infamous King’ J Forestall, 2019

King Dickie’s tenure as King of Scotland had been characterised by a closed inner circle of favourites and sycophants who monopolised his time and attention and who controlled the Kingdom in his name. Dickie’s turbulent time as Britannic Emperor began in much the same vein. Arriving in England with Earl Lennox and Lord Maxwell, by the end of 1597 another dozen or so nobles had made the journey south to take up their place beside their patron. These included George Gordon, Marquess Huntly, George, Earl Home, John Erskine, Earl Mar, Thomas Erskine, Earl Kellie, Sir John Carmichael, Sir James Sandilands, Sir James Johnstone and Captain of the Royal Scots Guard William Stewart. All of these men were granted land in the north of England, hence their collective name, but a few were also given trusted positions. Lord John Maxwell became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Earl Home was made Lord Privy Seal but the most prestigious award went to Earl Lennox, the Emperor’s number one who became Keeper of the Imperial Seal. The Legendary Lord Richard Lees had made this role a vital political clearing house for Britannic business and a crucial link between Emperor, Lord Protector and Council. Lennox would instead become the gate keeper, using his influence over the Imperial Council to dictate policy and prevent access to the Emperor from all but his favoured few.

The reaction to these instalments from the established Imperial hierarchy may have been more vociferous if it were not for two reasons. Firstly, was the sheer shock which the crisis of 1597 had been upon the body politic. For all the warning signs, Richard II was a steady Emperor who had brought the anarchy in England to a close. His honeymoon period would last for at least a couple of years before his actions began to publicly ruffle feathers. For the time-being the Lords of March were an annoyance, but they were mostly kept safely in the north or in a handful of positions. The second reason for muted opposition was the de facto ‘leader’ of such opposition: Magnus the Red.

The Viscount Don had suffered a rare defeat at Dunstable, and it sent him into a period of morbid introspection. Magnus took to his estates, even as the Battle of Hartlepool was being fought, and though he emerged for the double coronations of his new King and Emperor, he refused to go north despite his liege’s instruction. To have such an absent figure as the main source of opposition to Emperor Dickie meant that there were few dissenting voices before 1601. Indeed, Magnus’ depression – if that is what it was – did not help his case. Being ordered to the north in 1599 to help track down the fugitive William Neville, Magnus responded in the affirmative but instead only sent his son Magnus the Younger, giving the impression that he had gone himself. When this ruse was uncovered by William Stewart, who would eventually arrest Neville, Magnus was summarily relieved of his command and the position of Master of Arms was given to Stewart himself, newly created Earl of Westmorland. Magnus could not rightly complain about this; he had misled his Emperor and failed to take the field against outlaws, instead he continued to languish in the home counties pondering on what might have been.

Emperor Richard II’s actions between 1598 and 1600 were those of a man getting a handle of his ship of state. He had changed the crew, now he had to bring them up to speed and fix the leaks in the vessel. The first of these leaks were the Catholics. Richmond, Humber and William Stewart were instrumental in clearing up the remnants of the northern rebellion, but they also acted as the men on the spot to implement the first wave of reforms.

Archbishop Whitgift enacted a number of changes between 1598 and 1600. First he strengthened the ecclesiastical commissioners, specifically doubling their numbers in the north and placing them under the dual authority of the Archbishop of York and Lord Lionel Grey. To this he added the proviso that the 49 articles and the Book of Common Prayer be taught in every Grammar School in the country and also in each Church at least once a year. Though not a law, Whitgift went further and instituted a series of lessons aimed specifically at children to instruct in the ways of the Britannic/Anglican Church. This was not a philanthropic gesture, though one designed to bring children more fully into the Church to prevent a slide into Catholicism.

These measures, alongside the wholesale eviction of known Catholic sympathisers in the north, would break the back of English Catholicism for generations. Ireland was a slightly tougher nut to crack. By 1598 Ulster was the most Catholic region of Ireland remaining. King Michael had been able to put down the Rebellion here but lacked the manpower to fully control the territory, and so the Ulster Plantation was begun.

The lessons of the past Century had shown Emperor Richard II the folly of deporting Catholic Irish to a random spit of land in the New World, and for all his faults he didn’t have the stomach to sell them into slavery. The leaders of the revolt were executed, a few imprisoned in the Tower of London, and around a dozen exiled to Goughton, but the majority were merely evicted and replaced by good Protestants. The 16th century wave of migration, New Lothian aside, had not really reached Scotland and for the most part land was getting scarce there. Thus, the prospect of freshly vacated farmland in Ulster was tantalising indeed. Between 1598 and 1600 some 10,000 Scots crossed over to Ireland and settled largely in counties Down, Armagh and Antrim. In the short term this settlement would effectively quell the unrest in Ireland, but in the long term it would create an even larger headache.

With the largest leaks in the Britannic Empire being taken care of, Richard II began to establish his own authority on his realm. By spring 1599 he was ready to release his own treatise into political philosophy: The MacAlpine, named after the mythological Scottish King who reportedly rid Scotland of supernatural forces. Though not on the same intellectual level as Edward IV, Edward V and Edward VI, this short work outlined Richard II’s understanding of the ‘divine right of Kings’ in a rather Humanist fashion. In brief Richard stated that as the highest form of human authority on earth, albeit one undergirded with heavenly authority, the role of Emperor should be unassailable but that the uncontrolled forces of nature, superstition, and the sinfulness of man could easily challenge this. Richard cited no greater example than the Gunpowder Plot where a weakened realm (though he didn’t blame the Yorks explicitly) had allowed for the plotters to slip through the cracks and cause mayhem. The MacAlpine was clearly as much of a response to this catastrophe as it was the new Emperor’s chance to outline his philosophy. Richard’s ramblings go on for some pages, but his applications are at least fairly clear. Though assisted by various Councils, Bureaucrats and other functionaries, the laws of the realm made it clear that ultimate authority rested in his hands, and his hands alone. The political ramifications of this would soon be felt, but even by 1599 this was already evident in the religious sphere.

Already John Whitgift had cleaned house a little, the more Reformist Bishops of Norwich, Ely, Oxford and Rochester had been encouraged to retire and had been replaced by mere political yes-men willing to toe the line of Whitgift’s, and thereby Richard’s, ultimate authority. In Scotland too, a new wave of staunch Bishops firmly held the door of Presbyterianism closed for the time being.

One final change of note which Richard II tried to make in these early years was to move the York Day celebrations, still held in 1598 even after the previous year’s disaster, to the 19th of June instead. This was purely political move: from the date of Towton to instead the Emperor’s own victory at Hartlepool. It was a clear attempt to co-opt this day of memory and celebration for his own image, but it failed to get any real support.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

With Heaven in the Balance: Britannia 1581-1626, W O’Reilly (2003)

The period between 1597 and 1600 had truly been the honeymoon of the Stewart dynasty. Equipped with the ‘free pass’ granted to him by the chaos of 1597 and the desperation for stability, Emperor Richard II cleared the last remnants of Catholicism from the north of England and installed his own men in positions of wealth and influence. Though the new Lords of March were not entirely welcome in London – Lennox was especially hated, as he had been in Scotland – they were seen as a necessary evil to replace those Lords lost in the ruin of the Imperial Hall. The final arrest of William Neville, and his replacement by William Stewart as Earl of Westmorland, in 1599 marked the end of Catholic resistance and the double-edged sword of Church reform and Catholic evictions saw to it that the threat could not easily be resurrected.

Thus, in the dawn of a new Century, with his dynasty secure, Emperor Richard II would have been forgiven for relaxing a little; Henry Tudor had by now grown into the role of Lord Protector and was capable of running day to day tasks. Richard, however, had other priorities, namely the suppression and eradication of Protestant extremists in England.

By 1600 England was an entirely Protestant nation. In certain places this Protestantism manifested itself as extremist Puritan or Presbyterian factions. Largely found in the south and east around London, these two factions had been permitted and even encouraged under the late Yorkist Emperors, but now their survival became incredibly tenuous.

Puritans, led by Thomas Cromwell II, Earl of Essex, Judge Thomas Richardson and disgraced ex-MP John Rainolds, sought to purify the Church of any outside influences. Focused primarily on the service of the word and the preaching of scripture they wished to eradicate anything which detracted from that; Church decoration, vestments, music, liturgy, the book of Common Prayer and Ecclesiastical over-sight. They were not overtly against Royal authority over the Church, so long as it allowed them to eradicate impurities in their daily lives and Churches.

Presbyterians were less concerned by the outward expression of Church, though they shared some of the Puritan’s desires to remove gaudy decoration and music from Churches. Instead, Presbyterians sought the whole-sale reform of Church leadership; they worked towards the complete separation of Church and state, the removal of Archbishops and Bishops, and the creation of Presbyter Councils to lead Churches and the wider faith community. Imported from Scotland, Presbyterianism was numerically weaker than Puritanism but enjoyed a stronger intellectual basis given the number of exiled Presbyterian intellectuals in the Low Countries including Andrew Melville, Francis Johnson, John Perry, John Welsh and Henry Stock. Within England the most high-profile Presbyterians were Laurence Chadderton, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the Reverend Thomas Cartwright and Admiral of England William Monson (though he was much less overt than the others).

Both of these groups believed that their demands were reasonable and could be eventually achieved by working inside the established Church as they had done for decades. The Gunpowder Plot ended their ambitions. Contrary to popular opinion, the backlash against Puritans and Presbyterians after 1597 was not because they were implicated in the plot itself. Indeed, Magnus the Red and the Tudor family, along with many others, would have been considered moderate Puritans, albeit ones who kept their religious proclivities close to their chests. Instead the Gunpowder Plot paved the way for the introduction of the most anti-reform Emperor and Archbishop of Canterbury in over a century.

Richard II’s dislike of Presbyterians was well-known since his time as King of Scotland. Richard had actually turned back the tide of reform north of the border by outlawing Presbyters and reinstating Bishoprics across the realm, where his father had abolished them. It was also Richard who had sent Andrew Melville fleeing to the Netherlands where he formed a close community of like-minded exiles. Richard’s dislike of Presbyterians partially came from his religious tastes but mostly from his political philosophy. As the MacAlpine demonstrates, Richard believed in unassailable and centralised political authority which guarded the engines of power from nature, superstition, and the sins of man. To the new Emperor, Presbyters not only hopelessly fractured Royal authority, but they cast the Church onto a multitude of sinful men, laying it bare to their own corrupted whims. Richard therefore opposed any attempt to undermine Church authority, and thereby his own, and into this he lumped the majority of Puritan requests to reform. To the Emperor’s mind, to give in on the Prayer Book would be to invite an even greater challenge on the authority of Bishops, something he would not allow.

Richard II may have been opposed to Presbyterians and Puritans for mostly political means, but in John Whitgift he found an Archbishop who possessed the piety and zeal to defend the Church from what he saw as dangerous heretics. Whitgift had made his career as the attack-dog of Orthodox Anglicanism/Britannicism, driving back any attempts to remove the BCP, vestments, crucifixes or Bishops. Whereas Richard saw the extremists as a threat to his political power, Whitgift saw them as an existential threat to the fabric of the Church in the Empire. Only so recently saved from the Catholic menace, Whitgift wanted to now protect it from any further changes.

It is under these conditions which we must view the increasing tensions of the 1600s. The first sign that the honeymoon period was over was the arrest of Thomas Cartwright in June 1600. Rector of St Botolph’s in Cambridge, Cartwright had encouraged a number of his congregation to form a Lay Council and had even allowed some of them to preach, a clear violation of Church regulations. His arrest coincided with a number of Church crack-downs on ‘unorthodox’ elements across the south-east, but Cartwright’s was by far the most high-profile, with him being a well-known figure in Presbyterian circles. Under normal circumstances, Cartwright may have expected to be censured and released, but Imperial spies had identified correspondence between him and the Melville enclave in Amsterdam. Melville was still outlawed by Richard’s order back when he was King of Scotland, and so Cartwright found himself transferred from Ecclesiastical to Imperial jurisdiction and charged with treason.

By any metric it was a trumped-up charge and the Chief Justice of the Star Chamber, Sir John Coke, said as much when Cartwright was brought before him that Autumn. The drama reached its peak on the 21st October 1600 when Coke, in the middle of his summation of the dismissal of Cartwright’s charges of treason, was interrupted by the Swiss Guard and the arrival of Emperor Richard II himself. The Emperor relieved Coke from the case and passed Cartwright on to the Imperial Chief Justice, Christopher Hatton. Hatton had never forgotten the way his power had eroded the night the Imperial Hall exploded, and he hitched his fortune firmly to the Imperial bandwagon. By 1600 he was one of the few Englishmen, besides Whitgift and Tudor, to be permitted regular access to the Emperor by the Earl of Lennox. Hatton placed the rebel Vicar in the Tower whilst an investigation was carried out.

The reaction from Parliament, meeting concurrently, was strong; a group of London MPs, led by Puritan Thomas Richardson, questioned the legality of this move; only the Star Chamber itself could request that a case be handed one once a trial was in session, the Emperor was in violation of the founding charter of Edward V of the Star Chamber. Richard II responded by invoking Imperial Prerogative. Originally suggested by Sir Thomas Wyatt back in 1551 as a mechanism for circumventing the necessarily ponderous and complicated Imperial bureaucracy in a crisis, Imperial Prerogative had only been used previously during the Low Countries War, never in a domestic situation, and certainly had not been intended for forcing through an illegal move by the Emperor against the wishes of Parliament.

It seems that throughout the winter of 1600-1601 a case was slowly built against Cartwright. His arrest had gone far beyond the realms of clerical indiscretion; Richard II had targeted him as a symbol of the unorthodox and unauthorised drifting of the Church towards Presbyterianism and it seems he wanted to make an example. Cartwright was unfortunate that his case became a political and legal battleground. Just after Epiphany 1601 Chief Justice Hatton declared that evidence had been uncovered that Cartwright had been conspiring with the fugitive Earl of Derby to have Richard II assassinated. It was an outrageous claim, but the lingering atmosphere of fear, combined with Imperial propaganda seemed to be making it stick. To the opposition Lords, however, it was a sign that something further must be done.

That something was the Petition of Mercy, presented to Parliament in late January 1601 by Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford, the Earl of Essex and Magnus the Red. A petition signed by over 400 Lords and MPs, it was even more intriguing for the triumvirate who delivered it. If London was the heart of Britannic Puritanism-Presbyterianism then Cambridge was the brain. The city’s many colleges formed an intellectual centre for Reformist Protestants, all under the protection of their Chancellor, Robert Devereux, Earl of Thetford. Devereux’s involvement, therefore, came as the representative of numerous intellectuals but also as someone who had an interest in maintaining the Laws of the Empire. The Earl of Essex, Thomas Cromwell II, was simply a strong proponent of Puritanism and did not like the implications of Cartwright’s treatment for his own cause. Magnus’ motives are far more enigmatic.

Since 1599 Magnus the Red had remain in self-imposed internal exile. No longer Master of Arms, he remained on his estates in Bedfordshire seldom emerging for anything. Magnus’ faith has been the subject of fierce debate; it is hard to tell whether he had one at all, save the superficial faith everyone of his age demonstrated. Magnus the Younger was a peripheral member of Thetford and Essex’s circles of pro-Reformers but it is hard to know whether his father shared these views. Far more likely is that Magnus had never liked Richard II and had painted himself as the guardian of the Yorkist legacy, one plank of which was upholding of the rule of law. Cartwright’s treatment threatened this legacy, and so Magnus was forced out of retirement.

The Petition of Mercy was a simple document calling on Richard II to show clemency to Thomas Cartwright and allow him to go into exile in Europe. The Emperor received the petition but completely ignored it thereafter. Cartwright’s trial began in the middle of February 1601. Again, Richard’s silence has been the subject of fierce debate but put simply he had no requirement to respond to the petition and through the entire process the Emperor demonstrated his intention to carry out his actions, which he deemed to be legitimate and fair. Regardless, Cartwright was brought to trial and after a single day’s adjudication Hatton found him guilty on all charges.

The entire sorry affair was destined to end with the probable execution of a clergy of the Church. Until fate intervened. Not four days after the guilty verdict Thomas Cartwright was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London. The recriminations and hysteria were swift. Thetford, Essex and Magnus collectively declared that foul deeds were afoot whilst Chief Justice Hatton and the Earl of Lennox apparently shouted them down in public. Richard II remained silent throughout the whole affair. What happened to Cartwright is the greatest question over this whole debacle. Theories range from Imperial assassins to Magnus himself strangling the Priest to him merely dying of old age or an illness.

The Cartwright Affair closed with the unfortunate Priest’s death. He was buried in the grounds of the Tower of London and Parliament move on to other matters. Any attempts to find answers or justice were met with a stony wall of silence on the part of Emperor Richard. The wider movements of 1600 and 1601 however need little interpretation; Cartwright was one of almost 100 Presbyterian or Puritans charged with minor offences around this time. Cartwright’s case was unusually heavy-handed but many of the others faced fines, removal of office or titles and in many cases they fled to the continent. The consequence was that by the end of 1601 much of the larger Puritan-Presbyterian names at grass-roots level had been winkled out.

There were few exceptions, but they included the Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus the Red. These three between them possessed too much power and influence to be taken down as easily as Cartwright had been. Their actions with the Petition of Mercy had, after all, been legal and there was little that Richard II could do for the moment. Thus for about a year a slow shadow-game developed whereby anyone who expressed public opinions in favour of further Church reform were questioned and maybe even charged. In the meantime the Triumvirate tried to exert their own influence without exposing themselves to charges. A quiet tug of war developed between Richard II and Whitgift on the one hand and the Triumvirate and the reformists on the other. The question of Church reform was the main bone of contention, though the Cartwright Affair had added questions of legality and the Yorkist legacy into the mix as well.

Everything remained behind the scenes until Richard was presented with an opportunity to strike at his opponents. Laurence Chadderton was Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and one of the few overt advocates of Presbyterianism left in England. His Michaelmas Address to new Matriculates in September 1602 included a thinly veiled swipe at the Imperial establishment, the Master declaring that in times of turmoil and tyranny it was left to institutions such as Cambridge to advance the cause of justice and reason. The exact text of the speech has been lost, but the message was clear. That Chadderton had been a friend of Thomas Cartwright had been no secret, and it seem that the Earl of Surrey had placed a spy inside Emmanuel College on behalf of the Emperor. The speech was reported back to London and Chadderton was immediately summoned before the Privy Council to explain his actions.

Chadderton was defended by his Chancellor, the Earl of Thetford, but once again Richard II smelled blood. Cambridge had become the centre of discourse on the question of Church Reform, replacing Canterbury and Lambeth, now silenced by John Whitgift. Robert Devereux had done his best to protect the venerable University from Imperial interference, but after the Emmanuel Address, as it became known, his position became untenable. Before Christmas 1602 Devereux was removed as Chancellor and replaced by John Whitgift himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury of course appointed a proxy but the point had been made: Cambridge University was now under the control of the Orthodox Protestant faction, the status quo. As for Chadderton, he remained in his post, appointed by the Fellows of the College not the King, though by the new year he had slipped out of England and made his way to Amsterdam and the conclave of Andrew Melville.

Throughout the Cartwright and Chadderton incidents Henry Tudor had tried to remain the voice of reason and compromise. Universally liked for the unfortune which had befallen his house, Tudor was one of the very few who could walk into the presence of both Richard II and the Triumvirate unopposed. The role of Lord Protector was technically only restricted to secular matters within England; the running of Parliament, collection of taxes and maintenance of the judiciary, but in reality such was the influence of the Lord Protector that Tudor was privy to almost any of the goings-on at court. It is widely believed that it was he who defused the Chadderton incident without any further legal proceedings.

In the spring of 1603 Tudor was searching for a bride for his only son and heir, Arthur, by now aged 14. Eventually a match was arranged with Richard II’s oldest daughter, Anne, who was only 10 at the time. The marriage was carried out by proxy in the summer of 1603 and was attended by all the major Lords of England, including Essex, Thetford, and Magnus. The Emperor’s son Richard, Prince of Wales (aged 7) was simultaneously betrothed to Lady Elizabeth Maxwell to scotch any suggestion that he marry an Englishwoman. Nonetheless the Stewart-Tudor match was the force for conciliation and unity it was intended to be and for a while tensions again simmered down.

As the years rolled into 1604 the majority of Presbyterians and Puritans in England were keeping very quiet. A number of the louder ones had left for the Netherlands or even the New World, but those with land or wealth to lose stayed put and prayed for a change in the Imperial regime. It was not to be. The Spring Parliament opened in 1604 with Imperial Chief Justice Christopher Hatton coming to the fore. Hatton announced new laws and regulations for the suppression of treason and heresy. Again citing the Gunpowder Plot, and emotively including his own experiences, Hatton declared that all matters of treason be now tried immediately by the Imperial Supreme Court itself, no longer the Star Chamber. Furthermore, Heresy could now be classed as treason – the Emperor was after all the head of the Church – the decision on this wresting solely with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In effect the Treason Act of 1604 legitimised the course of action taken over Thomas Cartwright. Heresy normally fell under the Church’s purview, but now Archbishop Whitgift could pass such cases onto Hatton himself to try as treason. It was a worrying development.

The function of Parliament in 1604 was still really to approve taxation and act as a rubber stamp for Imperial legislation. They had no power whatsoever to stop the Treason Act. The reaction in the Halls of Westminster was of horror and unease, but there was little that could be done. Enter Thomas Richardson. The MP was also a Justice in the county of Middlesex and fortunate enough to have been elected speaker for this Parliament. Richardson had also opposed Cartwright’s case being passed over from the Star Chamber back in 1600, and the Treason Act again brought out his opposition to this move. There was little Richardson could do about the Treason Act, but when Chancellor Lord John Maxwell came before Parliament to request Taxes for the renewal of border fortifications, Richardson dug his heals in.

Ironically, Maxwell’s request was a cleverly veiled attempt at self-enrichment. Only discovered at a much later date, the 2% tax on movables would have paid for Channel defences, and the walls around Calais, but also for the border forts on the Scottish-English border where Maxwell and his fellow Lords of March owned considerable land. The taxation would have invariably favoured them, but Parliament was not to know this. Instead, Parliament’s refusal to sign-off on this relatively small Tax came entirely from their displeasure at the Treason Act.

For nearly a month, whilst other business of Parliament was concluded, Maxwell was refused his tax on at least another four occasions. Eventually at the end of April Richard II himself came to Parliament and demanded that the Tax be granted. What happened next has gone down in legend. Richardson suggested a private parlay between himself, Robert Devereux, Henry Tudor, Emperor Richard II, Lord Maxwell and a further 5 MPS to resolve the issue. In the speaker’s chambers Richardson offered to grant the tax in exchange for the repeal of the Treason Act. The Emperor refused to give, and Richardson called the legality of the Act into question. This proved to be an unwise decision. Devereux tried to defend his companion and the pair of them were arrested for contempt.

As the speaker of Parliament and the Earl of Thetford were led from Westminster Hall in chains, Parliament collapsed into a chaotic melee of shouting and jostling. Having left by another route, Richard II was spared what came next. The Royal Guards, led by Maxwell and a shell-shocked Tudor, were pelted first with books and then papers and even shoes. The unrest spilled onto the streets of London where rotten fruit and faeces were added to the barrage. So ended the Riotous Parliament: with their speaker imprisoned in the Tower, the Parliament collapsed.

The Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus, down a member, had lost much of their teeth with Devereux’s arrest but received a ground-swell of support from disgruntled MPs and Lords. Thetford’s place was taken by William Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. At 25, and after the remarkable exclusion from power after his father’s death in the Gunpowder Plot, Boleyn was not exactly the most influential Lord, but he was nonetheless propped up by the considerable Boleyn fortune and was religiously Puritan in nature. Boleyn and the Earl of Essex were together able to make contact with Henry Tudor and suggest a compromise. Tudor seems to have been caught off-guard by the arrests at Parliament, and was momentarily caught between service to his Emperor and his fellow Lords. Nonetheless he was able to convince Richard of the untenability of the situation; Parliament were needed for taxation sooner or later and they would not meet whilst their speaker was in custody. A Conference was thus planned to be held at the Imperial Place of Limberg in the summer of 1604. It was hoped that this would solve the evolving constitutional crisis at the heart of the Empire.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Military History. (1998) by Ian Mortimer

As Magnus the Red was to the Britannic Military, so Jean Tserclaes, Count Tilly was to the armed forces of Catholic Europe. For almost a century the forces of France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Bavaria and the Italian States had been bested in the field by the Protestants time and again. The successive reforms of Magnus, his father Richard of Hatton, and Henry Tudor, Lord Hampton had transformed the moribund Protestant forces into a professional and well-equipped force capable of anything. By 1590 Britannic forces– and Dutch and German to a lesser extent – were lead by well-trained and professional officers, and had begun to use line infantry tactics in place of the pike and musket combination.

In contrast the forces of Catholic Europe were still largely caught in their post-medieval faze: the Tercios formation was still paramount with combined use of Pike and gunpowder weapons, which were generally less effective than their Protestant rivals. Officers were still largely untrained and appointed for their name and little else.

This began to change in the mid 1590s. Firstly the Catholic defeat in the Swedish Civil War, at the hands of Magnus the Red and his new infantry tactics, alerted military commanders across Europe to this sea-change in strategy. Secondly, the Treaty of Elba began an unprecedented period of Catholic co-operation as never before. For the first time in History, the Catholic realms of Spain, Portugal, France, Austria and Bavaria were united against a common enemy, allowing collaboration in all matters including military. Thirdly, and most importantly, the French Civil War which ended in 1597 brought about the culmination of these efforts.

The victory of Henry IV ‘The Good’ in France brought a period of stability to the Catholic sphere and a number of more specific military developments. A number of Protestant weapons, including the model III Snelbus, were recovered from the battlefield of Brezolles in 1596 after the Britannic Companies’ defeat and were swiftly copied and manufactured by workshops in Paris, Milan, Munich, Vienna and Florence. Furthermore the French War brought a certain commander to the fore: Jean Tserclaes, Count Tilly. Unlike the sycophantic Duke of Guise, Tilly was a minor member of the gentry, exiled from his homeland after the Dutch capture of Brabant in the Low Countries War. Tilly lacked the land and influence to be included in French society, but in the desperation of war his stunning victories at Brezolles, Podensac and Dax thrust him into the limelight; Henry the Good appointed him to his Council with responsibility for defending France.

Tilly’s reforms would transform the military of not just France but the entire Holy League of Elba. Tilly’s own rise had demonstrated the advantages in training officers and gathering them from a wider pool than the upper nobility. Accordingly Tilly established two Military Colleges in Paris in 1599, with another in Orleans, and copy-cat institutions in Toledo, Lerida, Oporto, Nice, Milan and Salzburg by 1607. By 1602, with the blessing of both Kings, he had joined forces with Francisco Gomez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, his opposite number in Spain. Both Lerma and Tilly had served together in the French War and collectively they embarked upon the next stage of their reforms. In 1603 both France and Spain introduced a form of military service; each county had to provide 10% of their male population between 20 and 40 for military use, and had to train them in the use of a musket 3 times a year. This was small, but it was a start. Each man would be paid for their days’ training and for any service they were called upon to do. This system, known as the dixiem, would form the backbone of future Catholic armies and would be copied across the Holy League.

By 1604 Tilly and Lerma’s efforts had been noticed by the Vatican. Cardinal Borghese was dispatched to meet with them in Avignon to discuss a wider strategy. Borghese had accompanied Peter of Ware on his ill-fated return to England in 1597. Despite the failure of the Great Catholic Rebellion, Borghese had nonetheless seen the potential in pan-Catholic sentiment. The Cardinal had used it himself to send Irish and Spanish reinforcements to Ferrybridge and Dunstable where they were victorious. Together Borghese, Tilly and Lerma realised that to overcome the antipathy between the Catholic realms they would need to use this common faith. From 1604 any member of the Dixiem would be awarded with letters of service and a red cross badge to be sewn onto their uniform. The idea was these soldiers were serving the Kingdom of God, not their own realms, Applications for military service doubled across Catholic Europe.

There were of course some opposition to the co-opting of secular forces by the faithful, but Clement VII addressed these with the Papal Bull ‘In Fidelis Militum’. The Bull stated that military service against the Protestant Heretics could only be just and under the aegis of the Papacy. Each military unit would consequently be accompanied by a priest and whole armies would have inquisitors and cardinals in support. Clement, however, included the need for a non-clerical military commander and in August 1604 Jean Tserclaes was appointed Comandante Supremo in the Vatican.

A year later, this Bull was answered from the most unexpected quarter. A strange ship arrived in La Rochelle harbour in the summer of 1605. Captained by a red-haired woman and flying a strange Green flag with a golden Harp upon it, the occupants of the ship requested an audience with Henry the Good. The Captain – Grainne O’Malley, in strangely accented Latin, presented her crew to the French King. Amongst them were the descendants of Irish and Scots exiled to the New World, freed Irish and African slaves from the Huguenot Plantations of Bradbury, and finally a pair of Creek warriors, the like of which had never been seen in Versailles. The Gaelic embassy agreed to diplomatic relations with the Holy League of Elba and pledged military support in event of a war with the hated Britannic Empire.

Aside from these logistical and morale developments, Tilly worked on new infantry tactics which were immediately taught in military colleges and to the Dixiem. Tilly had studied Britannic tactics in Sweden and France and knew that to out shoot them with his conscript army would be difficult. Instead he focused on column charges, sharpshooting, and grenadier tactics. The main bulk of Catholic infantry would fire two rounds and then charge in column formation. Those with skills with the musket would stay clear of this melee and target officers. For tougher defences, Tilly invented the Grenadiers. These men were taller and stronger on average, and would be equipped with multiple weapons. Most radical were the grenades they used. A specific design of Tilly’s, these grenades were designed to be lobbed into a line of infantry and wound as many as possible with flying shrapnel thus allowing the Grenadiers and regular infantry to go in and break the line.

Finally Tilly turned to the cavalry. Save for the Polish Hussars, the age of the heavy cavalry charge was all but over. Anti-cavalry tactics had been so well developed that the rate of losses was insufferably high. Instead, the nobility would abandon their role as chevalier and either serve as infantry officers or in the new Lancer Companies. Tilly borrowed heavily from the Britannic Lancers here; lightly armed and armoured the Catholic Lancers would carry a short spear, sabre, Schragbus and at least one other weapon, usually a pistol. Their role would be to harry broken infantry or screen an advance. Tilly knew that Catholic Europe could no longer afford massed cavalry charges with high casualty rates. As with the rest of his reforms, Tilly focused on getting the best from what he had, only time would tell if they would pay off.

The only real exception to Tilly's reforms was Portugal. Always more a naval power than a land-based one, Admiral Afonso de Castro built up the Portuguese navy in Brazil, Angola and the East Indies in order to deter Dutch ships. In Europe a small standing army was created but Castro focused on building as many small commerce raiders as he could. He knew that in the event of a war, little could challenge the Britannic Navy and instead he focused on disrupting and raiding their trade.

Of Madness and Piety: Europe 1597-1627, A Thompson (2009)

1597 had brought success beyond the wildest dreams of the Catholic Holy League. Not only had the French Civil War ended in a Catholic victory, but Guy Fawkes singlehandedly assassinated the Britannic Emperor, his heir and most of the ruling Council. The ensuing Catholic Revolt may have been another defeat, but it was in fact a blessing in disguise for the Catholic Powers. Peter of Ware, like the entire Ware faction, had become a political hot potato; nobody wanted him and nobody knew what to do with him. His death at Hartlepool actually cleared the decks in a helpful way. Furthermore, out of the rebellion came Cardinal Borghese, Count Tilly and their ideas for pan-Catholic unity. By 1604 it was clear that Catholicism was on the rebound in Europe.

Not only had Tilly, Lerma and Borghese’s reforms started to bear fruit, but Britannia and the Netherlands had both lost long-term heads of state. In Britannia, Emperor Richard II was too busy suppressing Presbyterianism to be concerned with the continent. Indeed a cabal of Britannic Lords, led by William Duke of Oudenberg and Arthur Hartson, Duke of Normandy, had increasingly taken over representing the Britannic Empire in Europe. This was confirmed in 1602 when William was made Imperial Constable for life and the Wardenship of France was awarded to the Hartson family as hereditary. In effect Richard II was handing off his southern flank to these two men, reliable certainly, but the Emperor was demonstrating that he wanted them to run with the situation.

The Oudenberg family controlled everything east of Calais whilst the Hartsons controlled everything to the west. The Boleyn’s Cambrai branch existed in the middle as a small and compact defence facing Paris. These men between them had the contacts and the time to defend the Britannic Empire in northern Europe, but as events later would demonstrate, they could become dangerously exposed.

As for the Netherlands, William I, William the Great, died in 1599. Born into a fragmented and subjugated realm, William had fought countless times to free his people from the Catholic yolk and establish a Kingdom which could rightfully take its place beside the Britannic Empire in the pantheon of Protestant nations. His son William II inherited the crown. A capable young man, and well supported by the Dutch nobility, William nonetheless took some time to get used to his new position.

It didn’t help that the early 1600s saw new divisions in Protestantism. As if the incendiary events in Britannia were not enough, Lutherans and Calvinists on the continent finally dissolved into internecine feuds over doctrine. This was mostly academic, though a number of murders and scuffles in the Netherlands and Palatinate forced a united response. William II and Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, arranged a conclave in Frankfurt where William of Oudenberg agreed to be arbitrator. In the end, the divisions lasted only a couple of years, but they demonstrated that Protestantism could be divided and exploited.

An obvious Faultline in the Protestant alliance by 1605 was between Britannia and the rest of the League of Copenhagen. The majority of the signatories, including the Netherlands, were drifting towards a Calvinist understanding of Protestantism whilst Richard II was decidedly holding the Lutheran line and even executing some Calvinists such as Thomas Cartwright. After William II had refused to return Andrew Melville to England for trial, there began an unofficial break in relation between him and the Britannic Emperor. No new treaties were made, but neither were old ones repudiated. Instead, Richard II simply fell silent upon European matters. That Oudenberg and Hartson continued to support William II was unsurprising, and a guarantee that the Protestant Alliance had not totally collapsed, but it nonetheless provided an opening for the Holy League.

Jean Tserclaes was not a man to pass up such an opportunity, and he targeted his efforts at his homeland of Brabant. In the winter of 1605 Tilly sent 3,000 men into Brabant including 300 of his best Grenadiers under the command of his number two, the Count of Bucquoy. After a daring raid into the Dutch city of Brussels, the entire metropolis rose up in support of Bucquoy and the Protestant garrison was killed or captured. By mid-February 1606, in freezing temperatures, Bucquoy and his master waited to see whether there would be a united Protestant response to their incursion. That matter entirely rested with Richard II of Britannia.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

With Heaven in the Balance: Britannia 1581-1626, W O’Reilly (2003)

The Limberg Conference was one of the most defining moments in Britannic History. Held throughout the months of June and July 1604 the Conference was called by Emperor Richard II, at the suggestion of his Lord Protector Henry Tudor, to try and solve the developing crisis in England. Namely, that for the previous two months the Earl of Thetford and the Speaker of the Commons, Thomas Richardson had been held in custody. Furthermore, that Parliament had been dissolved after it refused to grant taxation, and that all of this was the culmination of four years of Imperial strong-arming and ignoring the laws of the realm in the name of persecuting Presbyterians and Puritans. It was probably always going to be a tall order to solve all of these problems.

In the months before the Conference began, the Emperor had launched another propaganda campaign; Dream of the Vigilant was re-published with a new foreword by Richard himself. This venerable text, the foundation of the Yorkist monarchy after its initial 1484 release, emphasised constant vigilance on the part of the Crown and the need for control over the realm. At the time this was an appeal to the Yorkist legacy and continuation, but textual analysis has shown how the 1604 and 1484 versions differ. The changes are slight, but Richard II emphasised the need for centralised control by one person whereas Edward IV, and Edward V after him, had advocated for a small inner circle of trusted advisors and counsellors. Dream of the Vigilant was not alone in this treatment, both Machiavelli’s Prince and King were republished, again with forewords by Richard. In short, the Emperor was stating his claim to authority over the realm and it did not augur well for the conference.

With Devereux and Richardson in prison, the Imperial delegation entreated with the Triumvirate; Thomas Cromwell II, Earl of Essex, William Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Magnus the Red, Viscount Don. No Bishop of Clergy could be convinced to join them. A number of other MPs were invited into the Imperial Palace, but many more made the short journey from London to camp around the grounds and await news. This became something of a summer attraction and various stalls, fairs and entertainers set up on Limberg Common to cater to the crowds.

For Richard’s part he was accompanied by John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, Earl Lennox as Imperial Seal, Tudor as Lord Protector, and Christopher Hatton as Imperial Chief Justice. From the beginning these men had the advantage. Hatton and Lennox had their opponents, especially in Magnus the Red, whilst Whitgift had free-reign to justify any of Richard’s arguments with the gospel and none of the Triumvirate could really argue.

It was the Archbishop who began proceedings. Whitgift unexpectedly introduced a New Church Act, designed to combine the Seven Acts of 1537 and update them. This document was large, and must have been prepared for the suspended Parliament, but by the Limberg Conference it included, buried towards the back, provisions for dealing with heresies which were very similar to the Treason Act. These harsher measures however, were buried under pages of perfectly acceptable religious doctrine; the act reaffirmed the scriptures, the 41 Articles, the Sacraments and many other practices. The act did reaffirm Bishops but allowed for a new legal court, overseen by Whitgift and Hatton where people could ask for arbitration in religious matters.

Richard II then presented a fait accompli: Parliament could assent to the New Church Act, and the requested taxes, and Devereux and Richardson would be pardoned and released. The Emperor had not bargained on a response. It was Cromwell who replied, the grandson of one of the English Architects of the Reformation. Parliament hoped to assent to the new Act and the taxation, in time, but they had demands of their own: firstly Richard was to acknowledge the necessity of Parliament in granting taxation. Secondly, he was to replace the Earl of Lennox with an English Lord as Keeper of the Imperial Seal. Thirdly, Richard was to respect Parliamentary privilege – anything said could not be tried as treason, though Parliament would censure and charge any such behaviour on their own terms. Finally, and most controversially, Richard was to swear by oath, and codify, that the use of his Imperial Prerogative was to be restricted to times of war or extreme internal rebellion.

Needless to say that Richard immediately suspended the rest of the day’s proceedings when these were read, and the Conference did not reconvene for a week. By such time the Triumvirate had already added to their demands that heresy be tried by the Church and treason continue to be tried by the Star Chamber, having read Whitgift’s new Act. Carefully and cautiously, the negotiations continued throughout June and into July, the Lords labouring intensely through the summer heat. We do not possess a non-partisan account of the Limberg Conference, some Dutch observers were present but they cannot be considered impartial. It is, however, possible to conclude that these negotiations were often fraught and were incredibly sapping of energy.

One insight we do have comes from the Tudor archive, and a letter dated the 19th of July 1604 from the Lord Protector to his distant cousin in the New World. In it Henry The Unfortunate carefully outlines the tension in the Conference so as not to appear against the King, but it is possible to glean that Magnus’ presence was singularly unhelpful, only slightly more so than the Earl of Lennox. The Viscount Don had never gotten on Richard’s good side and the feeling was mutual. According to Tudor ‘the Viscount Don often hawkishly watches each exchange, saying little until an agreement is close, thereby he interjects and throws up many suspicions so as to waylay discussion’. Whilst Magnus kept jumping at shadows and suspecting treachery, Lennox was high-handed to the point where Magnus, and even Boleyn on occasion, refused to address him or acknowledge his presence. Through this letter we can see the frustration which Tudor must have felt at proceedings.

By mid-July discussions had included the Ambassador from the United Netherlands. Richard had in fact pledged to pardon Richardson and Devereux, and consent to having taxes approved by Parliament, but had turned his attention to the Presbyterian enclave in Amsterdam. Citing his own fears of treason, Richard pardoned some of the more minor members such as Richard Stock, but demanded that Melville be returned to England to stand trial. Within a week Richard had his answer: Dutch Ambassador Henricius Van Der Vlissingen gave his King’s apologies, but as Melville had broken no Dutch laws they were not at liberty to arrest him, and could not force him to return to England.

This derailed the entire conference for another week whilst Richard calmed down and was comforted by the Earl of Lennox. At one point Richard ordered the Warden of the Cinque Ports to tighten defences and summoned the Admiral of England, but Tudor was able to talk him down. Again. Wisely, Essex and Wiltshire suggested that Richard pardon all the Presbyterian Enclave, including Melville, and entice him to return that way. This Richard did, but within a year only two members of Melville’s community had returned to England out of over 500. Perhaps Richard had hoped that the blanket pardon would bring Melville back under his control, but alas the wily old Theologian smelled the trap it probably was.

In the wake of the Dutch refusal, the Conference was on its last legs. The final deal, hammered out and signed in the first week of August 1604, made neither side happy. Richardson and Devereux were released and pardoned, and Parliament assented to Lord Maxwell’s taxes for fortifications, but the Emperor still retained the right of Imperial Prerogative, Lennox retained his position and the matter of Parliamentary Privilege was still unhelpfully vague.

In short, the Limberg Conference achieved very little in the short term. In the long term it has been considered almost as important as Magna Carta for its contributions to a constitutional monarchy. However, in 1604 it merely kicked the can down the road and claimed a high-profile victim in the process. Henry Tudor had been given the unenviable task in 1597 of surviving the crisis of the Great Catholic Rebellion, rebuilding a polity under a foreign Emperor, and then constantly interceding between newly emergent factions. He had tried his best, with limited experience, but his patience and health had been wearing thin. The Limberg Conference had been the last straw. In September 1604 he resigned in his role as Lord Protector. Some suggest he was forced into it, but there exists no evidence to support this claim. It is most likely that at the age of 31, Henry Tudor had become so exhausted by the business of politics that he could no longer live on the frontline.

With Parliament not scheduled until the new year, Richard left the Protectorship vacant, which raised some fears that he would never fill it and rule alone. Tudor’s departure was a big blow to the Triumvirate, with Devereux once again in the fore and Wiltshire relegated, they had always relied on the Lord Protector for an ‘in’ with the Emperor, and to at least hear them out, they hoped that another Englishman would replace Tudor, perhaps the Earl of Surrey. It was not to be.

The Spring 1605 Parliament opened in February. John Langham was elected as Speaker. A moderate and middle of the road Protestant, it was hoped that he could unite the Parliament and that the shame of the previous year could be avoided. The first order of business was to approve the Emperor’s choice of Lord Protector. This was a formality, Parliament had never rejected a choice before. Richard chose Esme Stewart, Earl of Lennox. There was silence in Westminster Hall. Surely Richard knew just how hated Lennox was? The Triumvirate would literally have anyone else as Protector, and even Langham and his moderates disliked Lennox. Parliament stalled and within a day Richard II invoked Imperial Prerogative to make Lennox his Lord Protector. The man’s son, Ludovic, took his place as Keeper of the Imperial Seal, not that Richard needed anyone’s consent for this position.

Was Richard simply mad? To read the fallout from this decision, it could not have failed to reach him that Lennox was hated. Indeed, Richard had changed his mind in 1597 from appointing Lennox to the role then and retaining Tudor. The man was so hated that a portion of the Limberg Conference had been devoted to discussing his role in government.

All of these facts are true, but they misunderstand the mind of Richard II. Alone from an early age, and finding it difficult to trust people, the recent years in power had only reaffirmed Richard’s fears. Only Lennox and his fellow Scots had not opposed the King, in fact they had protected him. True, a few English were loyal – Whitgift especially – but the majority of them had opposed him. Parliament had even rioted in the face of his soldiers at the previous gathering in 1604. So what was he to do? Admittedly Lennox himself had prevented Richard from building relations with many English Lords, but in the face of that the Emperor’s pool of trusted men was very shallow.

Parliament reacted to Lennox’s appointment by Imperial Prerogative as we might expect them to. Even John Langham was unable to keep business running after a significant number of MPs refused to attend or acquiesce to summons in defiance of the Emperor. Instead many of them took to the Chai Houses around London which had been spreading for the last decade. There they drank the newly imported brew from the east and discussed the unprecedented events at Westminster. Exasperated, Langham had to go to the Emperor and report that Parliament was unable to function. Richard simply dissolved the meeting and instituted new regulations and taxations by Imperial Prerogative. Whether these new measures were ever intended to be brought to Parliament or were a reaction to their opposition is unknown.

Firstly Richard dissolved the Councils of the West and Wales, appointing Lords paramount instead. He also dismissed all the Seneschals across England who had been responsible for military and taxation co-ordination and again replaced them with a smaller group of loyal men. Next a new Tax was placed on the New World colonies designed to prove their loyalty to the crown each year. They would be required to face a fixed amount each year dependant on size and trade with the metropole. Finally, Richard introduced a new 50% duty on Chai imports and a further 10% annual tax on sellers of Chai. Together these new laws could be said to have some basis in Richard’s political philosophy, especially the trimming down of regional governance, but in this context they came across as an attack on Parliament. The Chai tax was most hated. Not only was it outrageous but it targeted the unofficial new centres of political discourse.

When MPs tried to return to Parliament they found a detachment of Scots guards barring the way into Westminster Hall, and the doors chained. Desperate, the Triumvirate dispatched an envoy to Tudor’s seat in Yorkshire, but he declined to attend. With no recourse left, the three Lords requested a parlay with the Emperor. Lennox refused to even admit Magnus the Red but allowed Essex and Thetford to go before Richard. We will never know what transpired in that meeting but suffice it to say that it ended with both men leaving London immediately for their estates in East Anglia. The best guess is that both Lords were threatened by Richard and Lennox in order to make them back down. With his allies lost, Magnus too left the city and the MPs were forced to disperse. The rest of 1605 would descend into an awkward silence. Richard II did little more for the rest of the year, as if he had already shot his legislative bolt. The Triumvirate had seemly had all of the wind taken out of it, and was scattered to the winds. It would be European events that it would break the silence.

In January 1606 a rebellion broke out in Brabant and the City of Brussels rose against the Kingdom of the Netherlands. At the time the causes of this revolt were unknown, but now we now know that a French force led by the Count of Bucquoy, smuggled into Brussels, was responsible. Nonetheless William II requested aid from his Britannic ally. Aware of the political fallout in England, he sent it via William of Oudenberg, Imperial Constable.

Oudenberg had been absent from the drama in England over the previous years, though his agents had kept him well informed. When he arrived in London the Earl of Lennox initially prevented Oudenberg’s access to the Emperor. It was only when he appealed to his cousin, Empress Margaret, that he was able to present the message from the Dutch King. Richard refused out of hand to aid the Dutch.

Oudenberg was not famous in England, not on the scale of Henry Tudor, but he was liked enough to be spotted by the common people of London. When rumours emerged of Oudenberg’s mission, and his rebuttal, there was a public outcry across London. By the 1st of February, Essex, Thetford, Oudenberg and Magnus met at the latter’s seat in Buckinghamshire to decide their next move. Regardless of their political opposition to Richard, Magnus and William both knew the need to support the Dutch, lest the Catholics be emboldened by the Protestant Schism. Alas they had tried to convince Richard, and all but Oudenberg was unlikely to be readmitted to the Emperor’s presence.

Everything changed on the 3rd of February when an unexpected visitor arrived. Henry Tudor had barely left Yorkshire since he had returned there in the autumn of 1604. He had refused to come to Parliament during the previous year’s crisis, but this was different. Tudor had heard of a rebellion in Brussels before, it had killed his grandfather in what became known as the Low Countries War. If there was trouble in the Low Countries again, to Tudor it could only be Catholics, and that made him act.

On the 5th of February, Tudor arrived at Limberg to see the Emperor and was able to get past the Earl of Lennox relatively easily. Over an entire afternoon Oudenberg, Magnus, Essex and Thetford waited outside the gates in anticipation of Richard’s acquiescence. After hours of negotiation, a haggard Henry Tudor emerged. The Emperor had said no. The Britannic Empire would forsake its alliance, and the Dutch were on their own.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Of Madness and Piety: Europe 1597-1627, A Thompson (2009)
The Siege of Brussels began in mid-February 1606. The Count of Bucquoy and the citizens of the city watched as Dutch forces emerged from the freezing mist which blanketed the flat landscape and began to construct siege works. The weather prevented Bucquoy from learning whether the Britannic Empire had answered the call of their Dutch allies for over a week. Eventually, a daring night-time scouting party was able to confirm that there could not detect any Britannic banners in the besieging force; though they were confused by an Orange banner with the cross of St George in the corner.

This was the flag of the new Orange Free Company. William, Duke of York and Oudenberg, had been unhappy at Richard II’s abandonment of the Dutch alliance. Given his close proximity to the House of Orange, and his intimate understanding of European affairs he knew that they could not be allowed to stand alone. It was not that they lacked the strength to bring Brabant to heal, but more that the symbol of Britannic absence would embolden the forces of the Pope. William adopted the strategy of his great-great-grandfather Richard of Shrewsbury who founded the Piacenza Company rather than obey his brother’s orders to observe the 1492 truce with France. William of Oudenberg founded the Orange Free Company with letters patent from King William II who was more than happy to receive the help.

As with the Piacenza Company, the Orange Free Company was not an official army but it was soon bulging with second sons desperate to earn their spurs and fortunes. Johan of Bruges, brother to William of Oudenberg was placed in overall command but his lieutenants were Giovanni Hartson II, his cousin Sir John Henslowe, Sir Georg Boleyn and son of Johan, Henry of Bruges. Beyond these strapping young men came another 4,000 or so adventurers or career soldiers. The Orange Free Company may have been well-led but its doctrine was rather haphazard to begin with; around 1,000 fought on horseback but the rest were armed with Snelbus, though largely untrained in new line infantry tactics. Nonetheless the Orange Free Company was a proud and eager fighting force when it arrived outside Brussels in winter of 1606.

They were to be disappointed. The frigid weather of February, which made digging trench-lines tortuously difficult, ended abruptly in a wet April where weeks of rain and snow melt turned the fields of Brabant into a quagmire. The siege trenches turned from shallow pits to swamp-land in a matter of days. The English adventurers would have been forgiven for having doubts about the campaign. Worst of all was the dysentery; latrines had been poorly dug and the weather flooded the siege lines with human waste. Ironically the citizens of Brussels actually had ample water, and still had more than a month’s worth of good provisions by Easter Sunday. The bells of the Catholic Mass taunting the Protestant army huddled in the rain outside the walls.

By the first days of May the weather broke and the sun finally re-emerged, but the damage had been done. Of a besieging force of around 25,000 around a fifth had succumbed to disease or desertion. Chief amongst these was King William II himself. Leading from the front as his father had done, William had caught dysentery from the squalid conditions which a withdrawal for medical care in Antwerp had been unable to cure. The second King of the Netherlands expired on the 4th of May 1606. Survived only by a daughter, who had married Giovanni Hartson II, William’s brother Edvard became King in his place.

The death of the Dutch King was a divine signal to the people of Brussels, and their French benefactors. King Edvard had broken off the siege after his brother’s death and instead dispatched bands of cavalry to disrupt communications around Brabant. This was a stop-gap measure whilst he consolidated power at home and convinced the stadtholders and burghers to renew the war against the Catholic rebels. William of Oudenberg tried to re-double his efforts and resigned his post as Imperial Constable intending to join the Orange Free Company. Unfortunately, Richard II accepted William’s resignation, conferring the job on Arthur Hartson, but prohibited William from joining the war in the Low Countries on oath, instead commanding his presence in London.

The Brabantian Rebellion was destined to descend into a slow-burn as the summer of 1606 arrived. The rebels had secured their territory, despite Dutch harassment, and the siege of Brussels had been a dismal failure. Instead news arrived from the east which changed everything.

The Formation of the German Reich, C Clark (2015)

Modern readers would be forgiven for thinking that the German Empire was inevitable. Instead what is today one of the world’s leading superpowers was bound together out of desperation and a (fairly) common language and faith. For millennia the lands across the Rhine had been broken into tiny tribes and states, some no larger than cities, with very little in common. Even the Holy Roman Empire had been no more than a loose collection of Princes under a titular head whose de facto power depended on the man who held the position. That is until the Reformation finally tore it asunder in 1554 and it was dissolved.

From the ashes of the HRE there survived a number of German states. These continued much as they had for generations, only without an overlord. For many of them, business continued as usual. The west was dominated by Hesse and the Palatinate, arguably the champions of the Protestant cause which had ended the old Empire. In the East stood Saxony, which had been the first realm to adopt Lutheranism, but remained on the frontlines of the struggle, penned in by the Catholic rulers of Bavaria, Bohemia and Poland.

As the 17th Century dawned, these three realms held together the smaller realms of Wurttemberg, Brandenberg and Westphalia, along with many others. They were united simply by their Reformed faith and a vague linguistic connection. The Palatinate under Elector Wilhelm was by far the most centralised given its forging in the Palatinate War which won its freedom from the HRE and inadvertently destroyed it in the process. Saxony, by contrast, was far less centralised and indeed was in a precarious position under the dowager Duchess Anna and her 14-year-old son John.

From such disparate beginnings does the story of the German Reich begin. It would take the efforts of two rival dynasties and an horrific war to bring it about. The first of these dynasties was the House of Pembroke-Gloucester-Plantagenet-Hohenzollern. Quite a mouthful, it was known by its contemporaries as the House of Pembroke-Prussia after the two great titles which it combined. Albert, Earl of Pembroke-Gloucester and Duke of Prussia died in September 1605, leaving his son Albert-Henry to inherit vast tracts of land across western and eastern Europe. Albert-Henry was the fifth-generation descendant of Richard of Gloucester, brother to King Edward IV of England. His ancestors were Plantagenet Kings. Through his grandmother, Anna-Sophia of Prussia, Albert-Henry was a Hohenzollern and inherited the Duchy of Prussia on the Baltic Sea. In short, the man who would become a titan of Europe was steeped in its past, thought in 1605 his future seemed far from certain.

Albert-Henry, Earl of Pembroke, Earl of Gloucester and Duke of Prussia – Hal to his men – owed fealty to two rulers, neither of which were particularly inviting. The first was Emperor Richard II of the Britannic Empire who at the time of Hal’s inheritance had suspended Parliament and was embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Lords and Commons of England. The second was Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, signatory of the Holy League of Elba, despiser of Lutherans, and Catholic strong-man. As if this were not enough for him to contend with, Albert-Henry’s wife, Anna of Saxony, had inherited the Duchy of Saxony in 1596 at the death of her brother and passed it to her son John, who was still 13 in 1605. Thus through his wife and son Albert-Henry could exert control on the western border of Poland as well as the north.

Owing to these complications on the continent, Albert-Henry left his English lands in the trust of his Great-Uncle Magnus the Red and his son Magnus the Younger thus allowing him to concentrate on Prussia and Saxony. As such, Hal sent an envoy to swear allegiance for Pembroke-Gloucester which Richard II accepted with little alacrity owing to his greater concerns. Poland was a much more complicated matter. Under the Prussian Tribute of 1525, Albert-Henry had to swear allegiance to King Sigismund III as King of Poland. Albert’s father had avoided this in person, but that had been before Sigismund’s defeat in the Swedish Civil War at the hand of Magnus the Red. Accordingly, Sigismund was determined to crush the Protestant pimple in his backyard and to absorb Prussia back into his domain, such was the situation when Albert-Henry became Duke in 1605.

Alas, the Catholic monarch was not the only threat to Albert-Henry. The other dynasty which forged the Reich was the House of Hesse. The heavy-weights of Western Germany, the current Duke Franck was the grandson of Phillip the Great, one of the architects of the German Reformation and the dissolution of the HRE. Like Albert-Henry, Duke Franck had come into the inheritance of title in eastern Germany through his mother. In Franck’s case he had become Margrave of Brandenberg after the House had been decimated by the Flemish Plague. As such, the House of Hesse now claimed land in eastern Germany too, as Albert-Henry did, and the two men eyed each-other cautiously. The hawkish Vasa on their flanks kept both men peaceable, but there was little love lost between them.

For his part, Albert-Henry spent the first six months of his inheritance trying to consolidate his lands in the east. He ignored all demands to come before King Sigismund and pay homage, taking refuge in his long association with the Dukes of York-Oudenberg and Normandy (Hartson). Instead, Hal – through his wife of course – appointed famed Saxon polymath Bartolomaus Scultetus to the Chancellorship of Saxony. Not only did Scultetus have intellectual and mercantile contacts, including Johannes Kepler as a close-friend, but he had the respect of the Saxon Junkers, whilst not requiring their patronage to survive. He was a perfect front for Hal’s machinations whilst he strengthened defences in Prussia.

Ironically, it would be the Houses of Hesse-Brandenberg and Pembroke-Prussia-Saxony, these sometime rivals, who would bring the German people together into one Reich. Sigismund Vasa himself would be partly responsible in the fullness of time. We know now from research into the Polish Republic’s archives, that Sigismund III had planned a legal injunction against the new Duke of Prussia from his refusal to pay homage in the winter of 1605-6, but alas before this could be instigated, two eruptions to the south stole everyone’s attention.

Generals and Kings Youtube Channel: 'The Battle of Rip Mountain'

Ferdinand of Austria was a pragmatic man. Born in 1551 in the same year the Holy Roman Empire has disintegrated, Ferdinand had been raised by his mother and mother in law – the twin Duchesses of Austira and Bavaria – to preserve the Habsburg holdings after the cataclysm wrought by his father. For his entire 50+ year rule Ferdinand had worked to maintain the status quo as much as possible in Bavaria, Hungary, Austria and the parts of Italy where he still enjoyed suzerainty. Through careful diplomacy, papal support and a degree of religious tolerance unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, Ferdinand was able to preserve his inheritance and pass it on to his son Maximillian when he died in 1604.

Maximillian III Habsburg, King of Hungary and Bohemia and Archduke of Austria had likewise been raised by his father to respect and protect the status quo. Upon his coronation he pledged to uphold the laws of his father, especially those which protected religious freedoms. Under Ferdinand, religious persecution was banned, the inquisition barred from his lands, and Lutheran teachers could move around with a degree of impunity. There was still local unrest where a Catholic preacher would be chased from a Protestant settlement and vice-versa, but these were usually small enough to go unnoticed. Prague, for example, had become a Protestant centre of learning whilst Brno and Vienna were still largely Catholic.

The trouble began almost immediately. Maximillian swore his allegiance to the Treaty of Elba, as his father had done. For Ferdinand this had again been a pragmatic decision intended to keep him in line with his Catholic peers when in reality he paid mere lip-service to the obligations of the Treaty. Before 1606 Spain, Portugal and France had been far more willing to oppose Protestantism than Austria had been. Whether Maximillian intended for the same plan is unknown, but his hand was forced by matters beyond his control.

The first was the Hussite contingent in the New World. For almost a Century Czech speaking Protestants had lived in the New Canaan Republic with their language, culture and faith preserved. The legendary Chief Councillor Levi Slusky had sent the NCR onto a new path by establishing contact with the Gaels in the southern swamps of Norland. To unite the Republic, Slusky had sought to turn its attention outwards to protect and defend the helpless and the weak. This had already begun in the New World, and in 1604 efforts to defend and protect the weak began in the Old World too. Henry Bydlinsky had lived in New York his entire life, but was descended from the Taborites of southern Bohemia. He had taken Slusky’s words to heart and in 1604 he arrived in Leipzig with around 30 followers and made for his ancestral homeland.

Later propaganda makes Bydlinsky out to be a rebel and a freedom fighter but it is hard to support this from archival evidence. He was a merchant and a scholar, a devout Lutheran rather than a more vague Hussite, and he gathered some support from Saxony as he crossed southwards. Bydlinsky’s mission may have been to gather recruits and emigrants for the New Canaan Republic, but he also moved from town to town preaching the word and teaching people to read and write as well. Most striking was that Bydlinsky’s mission was not entirely Christian; he had brought with him a few Rabbi who also reached out to the Jewish communities of Bohemia, Moravia and even into Transylvannia too.

The second force upon Maximillian was Pope Clement VII. The failure of the Great Catholic Rebellion in England, and the accession of Albert-Henry to the Prussian Duchy, and his son to Saxony, had frustrated the pontiff. For all his work and the reforms in the west of Europe, the east still seemed to be lagging behind. Clement therefore encouraged Maximillian to allow the inquisition into his realms as a precondition for approving his coronation. Faced with the emerging Bydlinsky threat, Maximillian had little choice but to acquiesce.

Thirdly, Maximillian’s hand was being forced by the Ottoman Empire. For the last 70 years the Ottomans had been distracted. First Charles V had defeated them at Kalocsa and in the ensuing decade a power struggle had dominated the Sublime Porte. Then campaigns against Persia had pulled the Ottoman attention east. Finally the 1601 defeat at the Battle of Telceker had closed off the prospect of eastward expansion for the time being. The New Sultan, Ahmad IV, was casting his eyes once again west. In winter 1604-5 an Ottoman army moved into Albania and abducted some 9,000 new soldiers. With the spectre of foreign invasion, Maximillian could not afford internal division.

Consequently, in autumn 1605 the Inquisition was finally allowed into Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. At first the incursions were minor and the guilty parties were largely treated with mercy, but as is always the way, politics and personal vendetta crept in to twist the Inquisition into a more corrupted institution.

In November 1605 Michael Patrascu was brought before the inquisition. A landowner and politician from Transylvania, Patrascu was a Lutheran and had constantly sought his own advancement despite the Catholic overlordship of the territory. Unfortunately for him, Inquisitional agents had discovered that Patrascu had been in Constantinople meeting with representatives of Sultan Ahmad the previous year, and they rightly suspected that Michael sought the Voivodship of Transylvania in the event of an Ottoman invasion. Michael’s situation was already dire, but was not helped by his personal vendetta against the current Voivode Boldiszar Bathory. A member of the infamous Bathory clan, Boldiszar was unpopular and known for his cruelty, and so it was little surprise when he was found murdered two weeks before Christmas 1605.

Although in the custody of the Inquisition, Patrascu was blamed and summarily executed by Boldiszar’s son Sigismund Bathory. Patrascu’s allies rose in rebellion and chased the inquisition west into the mountains. For the week of Christmas an insurrection raged in Transylvania as the Bathorys were hunted down by the Bethlen, Bocskai and Szekly families. On St Stephen’s day 1605 an entire Catholic Church was set ablaze during Mass, in the mistaken belief that Sigismund was present. He wasn’t but over 100 innocents died. By the New Year, with Transylvania dissolving into civil war, and with his attention firmly fixed in Bohemia, Maximillian placed the entire region under the control of the inquisition and their chosen candidate for Voivode Girogio Basta.

That Basta was an Italian nobody, but an accomplished warlord, was already an unwise choice, but he was also the cousin of the Inquisition’s leader Cardinal Borghese and this turned the entire conflict upon its head. By Easter of 1606 the Protestant rebels, for that is surely what they were now, had elected their own leader, Stephen Bocskai. Despite being synonymous with the ensuing rebellion, Bocskai had in fact been a moderate before Patrascu’s murder, albeit one who despised the Bathory family as much as anyone else. After six months of violence, the Bocskai rebellion showed little sign of abating, with new massacres and ambushes being perpetrated every week. Something was needed to change the status quo and it arrived in the second week of May.

Following his resignation as Imperial Constable, William of Oudenberg had been given more time to think and work to defend the League of Copenhagen from the Catholic menace. The Bocskai rising, for all its chaos, was acting as a convenient distraction on the extreme eastern flank of Catholicism and so he took the decision to fan the flames a little. Ever since the 1583 Treaty of Constantinople, the Britannic and Ottoman Empires had shared an understanding of mutual trade and respect over their spheres of influence. William knew this well, he had helped to broker the deal, and so it was that a pair of Ships laden with Snelbus arrived in the Ottoman Capital in March of 1606. These ships were led by Sir Henry Thornhaugh, a scion of the Oudenberg family and accompanied by Sir William Hartson, grandson of the Earl of Amiens and son in law to the Duke of Prussia.

Leaving one ship as payment, Thornhaugh, William and an Ottoman guide took the stock of Snelbus over-land accompanied by a band of Bulgarian mercenaries until they arrived at Bocskai’s HQ of Kosice on the 13th of May 1606. The Britannic Empire may have been officially neutral, but the House of Oudenberg was putting it’s considerable weight on the scales in favour of the Protestant cause. With the weapons, Bocskai was planning a renewed offensive against Basta when news from Bohemia arrived.

For all the chaos of the Bocksai Rising, it remained a simple side-show throughout the winter of 1605-6, which may explain why Maximillian handled it so badly. Instead, the Habsburg’s attention was solely focused on Bohemia. Whilst Transylvania had been a political feud dressed up in religion, Bohemia was a war of faiths, pure and simple. Bydlinsky’s influence had always been strongest in Bohemia, where it rested on a legacy of Lutheranism. Since the Reformation, the Hussite and Waldensian remnants in Bohemia had been reinvigorated. Thanks to Ferdinand’s policy of conciliation it is estimated that by 1600 around 50% of Bohemia was Protestant but that this was predominantly in the urban areas of western Bohemia and Prague in particular.

As such, the Inquisition of 1605 landed rather heavily on the city. Cardinal Borghese was one of the most vociferous Catholics of the entire 17th century. He shrewd wit matched only by his zeal for rooting out heretics. After all, his work in the Catholic Rebellion in England had fanned the flames of dissent there, and he and been instrumental in gaining Tilly and Lerma’s military reforms Papal backing as well. Borghese personally led the inquisition into Prague and for most of October and November he forced the Protestant clergy of the city to pay fines and be forced to leave. These actions brought him to the notice of one Jindrich Matyas Thurn.

Thurn was one of the few nobles of eastern Europe to have visited the New World. He had studied at the Colleges of New York for a year in his youth and had established a trading empire for himself to complement his family’s land. Thurn was also well known amidst the Lutherans of Bohemia and became a friend of Bydlinsky. It is even suggested that it was this friendship which encouraged Bydlinsky to come east in 1604. For the first 40 years of his life Thurn had kept his head down in Bohemia, a Protestant but one content to abide by Ferdinand’s laws. The Autumn of Inquisition changed all of that. In late November, Thurn himself confronted Cardinal Borghese at Prague Castle, a tussle ensued which ended with Thurn imprisoned and awaiting trial.

But before this could be carried out, events in Transylvania, and the murder of Boldiszar Bathory dragged Borghese and his entourage to the east. In his absence, all of the pent-up rage and anger in Prague exploded into three days of rioting in mid-December. It was during this conflagration that Thurn was rescued. The cabal of Bohemian nobility had elected one of their own to lead the rescue. Albrecht z Valdstejna, at the age of 22, was already becoming renowned for his military skill. He had served with the Swedish army for the previous four years in Estonia and Lithuania and had returned home when he heard of the Inquisition tearing through Bohemia. This future hero of Protestantism successfully escaped Prague with Thurn and headed for Dicin on the Saxon border.

In their wake Thurn and Valdstejna left a city in turmoil. A week later, on Christmas Day, Maximillian and his Austro-Bavarian army marched into the city to restore order. He only had 14,000 men against as many as 90,000 angry Protestants. Maximillian went to the rather appropriate Church of St Nicholas where Mayor Wilhelm Kinsky requested that the Inquisition be disbanded. During this meeting a group of Bavarian soldiers came under fire (or possibly stones) from the direction of the castle and opened fire. In the air of panic, even more weapons were discharged and by the evening the whole city around the castle was ablaze. The St Nicholas massacre was an extreme tragedy with thousands killed on both sides, but by the morning, with the fires still raging, Maximillian was forced to pull south towards Tabor.

Thurn and his associates could reportedly see the smoke from Prague 30 miles away in Dicin. Reports were swift to follow, and the nobles of Bohemia made a fateful decision. Invoking their ancient rights dating back to the thirteenth century, the Bohemian Protestants elected a new King. Debates raged for hours until a name was settled upon. He may not have possessed any claim to the throne of Bohemia, but he was close and religiously sound. To the astonishment of even himself, Albert-Henry, Earl of Pembroke and Gloucester, and Duke of Prussia was elected King of Bohemia on the 29th of December 1605. This was a wild choice, and was entirely a political gamble by Thurn. Valdstejna had met Albert-Henry during his service in the Baltics and knew his credentials as a warrior and a Protestant. Crucially, though Albert-Henry could never have been considered a King of Bohemia, he had the geographical proximity, and more importantly the connections, to potentially bring the Bohemian Rebels victory.

It was two days before Saxon Chancellor Bartolomaus Scultetus received the unexpected news, and another week before a half-frozen rider arrived at Konigsberg to tell his master. To Albert-Henry this could not have come at a worse time. Already embroiled in a cold war, if you will pardon the pun, with the King of Poland, the last thing he needed was another title to fight for. Nonetheless, Albert-Henry was no fool and he gave Scultetus permission to assemble a Saxon volunteer force for Bohemia whilst he sent to Calais, Oudenberg and Frankfurt for advice and further aid.

King Maximillian, now fighting for his title, moved his shrunken army of 8,000 men west when he heard this news. Tidings from Hungary were equally grim, but he had no choice but to trust that Borghese and Basta could handle them for now. Instead Maximillian had to bring Thurn and the others to battle, and quickly, before their new claimant could bring his considerable resources to bear. The issue was that the St Nicholas Massacre had denied Prague to Maximillian, indeed the countryside for miles was strewn with desperate and angry refugees who would only delay him. Therefore, the Habsburg army turned west and was then forced south when Pilsen barred it gates. This detour did allow Duke Augustus of Bavaria to reinforce Maximillian with a further 3,000 men, but the winter weather forced the army to take refuge in Regensberg whilst the snow abated.

Thus it was February before Maximillian and Augustus were once again on the move, still slowed by the cold weather and shortage of fodder. They decided to march directly to Dicin, but moved along the Ohre River valley to make their march easier. This was a sound strategy in its way – the valley carved through the mountains and led straight through Thurn’s heartland into Dicin. However it had the effect of bringing the Catholic army to within a dozen miles of Saxony. Not only did this make the line of advance obvious, but it served to push some of undecided Saxons into action, most notably Henry IX of Plauen who did not take kindly to the army on his doorstep.

Unsurprisingly Thurn and Valdstejna received early warning of the advance and the young commander carried out delaying actions along the Ohre valley as Thurn desperately tried to gather reinforcements. By the 2nd of March, Maximillian III was at Teplice only 15 miles from Dicin but crucially only 30 miles south of Dresden. This delay, however, had allowed for help to arrive from Albert-Henry. Whilst the Duke himself was still tied down in Prussia his cousin Magnus the Younger arrived in Leipzig with 2,000 men of his father’s elite Scarlet Boars and a further 2,000 Snelbus for the Saxon army.

Maximillian got wind of this Saxon army marching south to meet him on the morning of the 3rd of March but the scouts reported that it was no more than 5,000 men. The Catholic army by now numbered 15,000 men and Maximillian believed he could force-march towards Dicin and bring Thurn to battle before his reinforcements arrived. This plan, however, had not counted on Albrecht Valdsjtena. The young commander knew that Magnus was on the way and over the next two days delayed and delayed the Catholic advance, allowing Thurn and his army of 6,000 to flee south-east in the direction of Prague. Maximillian’s forces arrived in Dicin to find the town abandoned, but they met an unexpected emissary: Jan Chodkiewicz, Hetman of Lithuania.

King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland was preparing a legal and military assault on Prussia when Maximillian’s winter march began. Initially scathing of the Bohemian rising, Sigismund was shaken from his ignorance by the arrival of the Scarlet Boars in Leipzig. He was in a battle for his throne against the house of Pembroke-Gloucester, and it was clear that Albert-Henry was willing to call in his relatives and their considerable resources from England. Poland had to smash the Bohemians before Magnus could join them. Sigismund pulled Chodkiewicz out of Lithuania where he had been fighting a brush-war with Protestant separatists, equipped him with 3,000 men including 1,000 Winged Hussars, and sent him to the southern frontier.

The Polish and Austro-Bavarian armies had nearly caught Thurn in their jaws, and now they turned to destroy his Saxon reinforcements. Here they hit a snag. Magnus the Younger may have been as aggressive as his father when it came to tactics, but he still possessed the wit to realise his situation. The Bohemian Rising was at present limited to its corner of Europe, if Chodkiewicz or Maximillian were to enter Saxony then they would bring the entire weight of the League of Copenhagen down upon them. The young man wisely stayed north of the Elbe and moved west to Meissen, protecting his force and joining up with the light cavalry of Albrecht Valdstejna in the process. For his part, Thurn finally marched on Prague where the joyous citizens of the city opened their gates to his army and welcomed them as conquerors, not the desperate fugitives they in fact were.

By the end of March 1606, the Catholic army had camped at Melnik about 20 miles north of Prague. Now with an army of 20,000 men, Maximillian sent his Austrian and Polish cavalry into the surrounding countryside to pacify the region whilst his main army guarded against Thurn moving back north to his power-base.

Europe was slowly descending into chaos. Maximillian knew that the Bocskai Rising in Transylvania had elected a new leader, and that Brussels was under siege. It was also clear at this point that, for all the actions of the Houses of Oudenberg, Hartson and Pembroke-Gloucester, the Britannic Empire did not mean to commit whole-heartedly to these conflicts. This emboldened the Archduke and on the 2nd of April his army marched south towards Prague, trying to call Thurn into either a battle or a further retreat. The strategy was sound and bold but had not reckoned on the weather. The torrential rain and snow melt which swelled the Elbe and Vltava Rivers not only slowed the Catholic advance but prevented them from stopping Thurn’s march north along the western river bank.

Thurn, Valdstejna and Magnus were united near Lovosice on the 6th of April and faced a difficult choice. Their army now numbered 12,000 men but was still outnumbered by the Catholic forces. Thurn, however, had had enough of running and knew that he now had to stand and fight if he had any hope of achieving a free, Protestant, Bohemia. Rip Mountain was where he chose to make his stand. Rip Mountain jutted a few hundred metres above the Elbe plain and was topped with a 13th century Chapel, now converted for use as a Protestant Church. It commanded views for miles and had a particularly steep slope to the south-east, towards Prague and the advancing Catholics.

The two sides met on the 14th of April, and the Protestants had spent the previous week digging fortifications and a double trench line into the hillside. The main defensive weapon in this situation was the cannon, but Magnus had only 6 demi-cannon with him and Thurn had none. The two commanders therefore had to be clever with the disposition of their forces. Rip Mountain is almost a perfect circle with villages at the 1 o’clock (Krabcice), 4 o’clock (Ctineves), 6 o’clock (Mnetes) and 7 o’clock (Vrazkov) positions. Thurn gave the latter two villages to Krsytof Harrant to defend and fortify to protect the southern flank. In Krabcice he placed Valdstejna and his light cavalry. These fought in the style of Bohemian Hussars, but with the latest Britannic Schragbus for close-quarters fighting. That left 9,000 men to hold the centre of the field; the eastern slope of Rip Mountain. Thurn was in overall command on the summit but had given Magnus the Younger and Jachym Shlick command of the trench lines; Magnus the south and Jachym the north.

The heavy woods and slopes of Rip Mountain hid the true nature of the Protestant defenses, but Magnus had a masterful knowledge of artillery and ambush tactics learned from his father. Redoubts for the six guns had been dug in around the Church on the summit. However, four of them had been equipped with pulley systems allowing them to be moved relatively quickly down-slope to secondary positions closer to the enemy. On the morning of the 14th, Maximillian’s army arrived at Rip Mountain expecting an entrenched defence. The Duke of Bavaria suggested that they surround the mountain and starve out the rebels, but Maximillian was smarting from having allowed the crisis to drag on for almost four months by now. The deciding vote went to Jan Chodkiewicz who assured the King of Bohemia that his elite 3,000 Polish infantry could smash the northern flank of the rebels whilst his Winged Hussars looped around the hill and attacked from the west. The decision was made for them as the six cannon on the summit of the mountain opened fire. There was little damage done, but the barrage acted as the goad Magnus the Younger had intended for it to be.

Chodkiewicz and his men circled around to the east and approached Rip mountain at a fast pace. Simultaneously, Alexander Gosiewski’s Hussar charge distracted Valdstejna’s light cavalry who were forced to scatter into the forests in the face of such overwhelming power. As the Polish infantry advanced on the hill, Magnus played his hand. Two cannons on the extreme northern end of the Protestant line were rolled into position and their grapeshot began to tear holes into the Polish line. To this, Jachym Shlick added the fire of his own men; they may have been Bohemian peasants most of them but 500 had been trained and armed with Snelbus and from their trenches and fox-holes these hunters began to pick off the Poles before they could even get in range. Further to the west the Hussars were having similarly bad fortune; the western slope may have been less steep but it was far more wooded and prevented them from easily attacking the Protestant rear.

Chodkiewicz was forced to withdraw and confronted Maximillian at his HQ in Ctineves; the Poles could maybe carry the day, but a general advance was required to fix the rest of the Protestant line and to make their numbers tell. By early afternoon, a fully renewed attack began, this time with Chodkiewicz on the southern flank whilst the Bavarians and Austrians churned up the same place he had tried earlier that morning. As the attack began, so too did a torrential downpour which would last long into the night. This caused difficulties for both sides as footing on the mountain became treacherous. Trying to move a cannon on his flank proved a disaster for Magnus as it slipped in the mud and tumbled to the bottom of the slope. It killed two Poles in the process but was lost for the rest of the battle. This loss proved costly as Magnus’ men were distracted by this loss and were forced to give ground by Chodkiewicz’s next charge. The first trench line had fallen on its southern flank and Magnus and Thurn ordered the retreat to the second line further up. In the melee of battle and torrential rain, this order was easier said than followed and Shlick’s men became exposed. The Catholic right, led by veteran commander Wilhelm von Enckefort was able to surround his flank and pin them.

With the rain seriously hampering movement, and the cannons becoming all but useless, the Battle of Rip Mountain may very nearly have ended for the Protestants then and there. The Catholics’ superior numbers were beginning to tell and the defensive gamble had seemingly been lost. Not for the last time, the Protestant cause was saved by Albrecht z Valdstejna. His men may have been scattered by the Polish Hussars, but they found it easier to move than their opponents in the heavy rain and mud. Emerging from the forests to the west Valdstejna and his men descended on the village of Vrazkov, relieved Krystof Harrant’s force and together they counter-charged into the Catholic rear. Alexander Gosiewski’s Hussars had been lying in wait for such a moment, but the ploughed fields and boggy mire surrounding Rip Mountain no longer allowed their devastating massed charges. Instead the Poles became bogged down and were easy pickings for the Schragbus and Karbiners of the Bohemian Hussars.

With his rear in jeopardy, Maximillian had to sound the retreat at the crucial moment. Much to the anger of von Enckefort and Chodkiewicz the Catholic army was forced to disengage. They may have suffered grievous casualties on the slopes of Rip Mountain, but victory had been so near. With the light fading they were forced to retreat towards Melnik. The battle of Rip Mountain was inconclusive; Magnus and Thurm had held the field, but had lost almost half of their men in the effort. The Catholics had taken the initiative with still 14,000 men left standing, but the weather had prevented them from pressing their advantage. Two days later, however, on the 16th of April, the entire history of Europe, and the war, changed.

Albert-Henry, Duke of Prussia and Earl of Gloucester and Pembroke crossed into Bohemia at the head of an army of 8,000 men to claim his place as King of Bohemia. Throwing caution to the wind, the aspirant young man had left Konigsberg in the command of vassals, sailed to Rostock, gathered his son John Duke of Saxony, rendezvoused with a mostly Brandenberger force under John of Saxe-Weimar, and marched south. The reason behind Albert-Henry’s actions have long been debated; it was tactically bold but fool-hardy and was sure to anger King Sigismund III.

The Oudenberg letter is commonly asserted to have been the reason why Albert-Henry acted. Still on display in the Reichs Museum in Frankfurt, the letter is dated from the 4th of March 1606 and was sent to Albert-Henry from his distant cousin William, Duke of Oudenberg. In it the Duke acknowledges that Europe stands on the brink of anarchy – from Brabant to Bohemia – and that the Emperor of Britannia was loath to get involved in this crisis. Instead Oudenberg suggests that the individual men of Europe each had a collective responsibility to good order and the eradication of tyranny and superstition. He encourages Albert-Henry to take action in Bohemia to secure ‘not your rights, but the rights of the good and just people of that fair land’.

The Oudenberg letter certainly reads very well and has been used by many throughout the centuries to justify Pan-European sentiment. The reality is somewhat more mundane. By this point in 1606 William of Oudenberg was confined to London and Calais and was becoming increasingly frustrated with his Emperor’s lack of support for Protestantism in Europe. He sought any way he could find to advance the cause of his faith and his letter was calculated to do just that. It helped of course that Oudenberg was able to arrange a force of 2,000 mercenaries to sail for Rostock and to send a personal plea to Franck of Hesse for aid. The Duke of Hesse received his own version of the Oudenberg letter, and this explains why he sanctioned Saxe-Weimar to assist his rival Albert-Henry.

Whatever the reason, the arrival of Albert-Henry in Bohemia transformed Rip Mountain from an inconclusive struggle for survival into a predestined triumph over the forces of Catholicism in favour of the future King of Bohemia. Faced with a larger enemy force, and continued unrest in Transylvania, Maximillian pulled all the way back to Brno and then Vienna leaving Chodkiewicz to carry the dire news to his master is Warsaw.

On the 1st of May 1606 Albert-Henry and his army were triumphantly greeted by rapturous crowds in the semi-ruined city of Prague. The privations of the last six months had reduced the city to a shadow of its former self but it had endured and remained a jubilantly Protestant city. Thurn wasted no time and had Albert-Henry declared King Albert I of Bohemia on the 9th of May.

Far from an end to hostilities, the declaration in Prague only intensified the conflict in Europe. The Brabant, Bohemian and Bocskai Rebellions were all still ongoing in May 1606 and it was clear that the forces of Catholicism and Protestantism were once again at each others' throats. Though they did not yet know it, the Crown Heads of Europe had just instigated the largest war Europe had ever seen: the Twenty Years War had begun.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Presbyterianism, Wikipedia Article. 17th Century New World
Presbyterians increasingly emigrated to the New World after the turn of the 17th century. Persecution in Europe, especially from Emperor Richard II in the British Isles, caused many to seek a new life. The Norland colonies of New Avon, Goughton, and New Kent, as well as Hartsport in Grand Colombia became hubs of Presbyterianism. Although the various treason laws passed in Westminster technically outlawed Presbyterianism, the sheer nature of the frontier allowed many congregations to flourish.

New Avon, being the largest and least developed colony had thriving communities in its southern counties around New Wycliffe [Providence, RI] and to the west, along the border with the New Canaan Republic at Cartwright [Springfield, MA] with far smaller and scattered settlements north from the Colonial capital of Julianston [Boston, MA] in what is now the state of Melville [OTL Maine]. These New Avon settlements faced the least opposition, but were also the most remote.

Further south, many Presbyterians chose to settle in the superior climate of Goughton colony, though after the 1602 riots instigated by Viceroy Raleigh and the Bishop of Goughton Edward Chichester, many were force to flee the city for the rural areas. As in New Avon, the more tolerant New Canaan Republic was a place of refuge and significant numbers fled to the southern bank of the Potomatch River and formed settlements around New Cambridge [Fredericksburg,VA].

There were few Presbyterian attempts to settle in Bradbury, owing to the opposition of the Huguenot settlers there. New Kent was only a marginally more attractive prospect as the colony’s easily available land was mostly occupied. The only real urban area of the New World where Presbyterianism really took root, besides perhaps Julianston was in Hartsport [Veracruz]. The ‘wild west’ image of the port city at the entry point to the old Aztec Empire attracted many religious and political outcasts. Indeed the leaders of the Hartsport Presbyterian movement found places in the City’s University, most notably Mentor Alting, Robert Cushion and John Winterbourne.

It is estimated that between 1597 and 1607 some 60,000 Presbyterians emigrated to the New World with as many as 10% to Hartsport alone.

Voyage for Utopia, by Edward Winstanley, Wikipedia Article

‘The Voyages of Mr Edward Winstanley, an English Gentleman and Scholar, to the far reaches of the Southern Colombian continent to his majesty’s colonies of Ithaca and Barrow including reflections on the natives and the author’s own discoveries of Utopia’ or simply ‘Voyage for Utopia’ by Edward Winstanley is a semi-autobiographical travel book published in 1603. The work was written between 1598 and 1601 based on the author’s own journeys south of the Ithacan isthmus. The book includes elements of political and natural philosophy and especially touches on the themes of paradise and Utopia. Originally poorly received, and only published in the New World, the book later rose to prominence as the inspiration for later works of ‘travel fiction’ and political philosophy influencing Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Franklin and Wesley amongst many others. It is regarded today as one of the best records of early 17th century Barrow, though its anthropological value is far more controversial and debateable.

Background

Edward Winstanley was born in 1571 in Cornel, Nova Albion. The son of a merchant, Winstanley became an apprentice of the Grand Colombian Company at the age of 12 but was released after he was blamed for a warehouse fire which destroyed £40,000 of merchandise. Escaping his creditors, Winstanley travelled to Hartsport where he was taken aboard the Royal Barrow Company ship ‘Titiana’ under its master William Joplin.

Winstanley worked for the RBC first aboard the Titiana and then in their offices in Northam where he managed shipments coming north across the isthmus from Barrow. In 1597 Winstanley became distracted by talk of the exotic world to the south and was able to secure passage to the new Royal Barrow Company capital of Mortimer [Lima, Peru]

Plot

‘Voyage’ begins with Winstanley on route to Mortimer aboard the ‘Albatross’ a RBC ship. Here we meet Captain Fallon and Winstanley’s travel companion Matthew Yonge. The ship is carrying gunpowder and mechanical supplies for the silver mines at Potcham 2000km away from Mortimer

The Albatross arrives in Mortimer, which Winstanley unfavourably compares to Hartsport as a hive of ‘unwashed sailors, filthy criminals and vile natives.’ Winstanley was particularly struck by the amount of native Incans he encountered. In the more northern colonies, the New World epidemics had already killed around 60-90% of natives but in Barrow by 1600 the numbers were much lower. Winstanley criticises what he see as the laziness and corruption of the natives.

Most striking for Winstanley was the presence of Africans in Barrow. In contrast to elsewhere in the Columbias, these Africans were not all slaves and indeed the leader of the caravan to Potcham which Winstanley joins is described by Winstanley as a ‘large black brute, who nonetheless greeted me as aHome Counties rogue might.’ In short, Tobias Yarnal, the mixed-race guide of the RBC was the son of slaves but had nonetheless been educated in Fort Parker and had risen to a senior rank in the Company. Throughout the novel his relationship with Winstanley grows to the point where they become good friends.

The expedition into the Andes begins. For the first 100 miles, Winstanley describes the Imperial Road slicing eastwards through mountain passes. Winstanley reports that this was still under construction in places but still made the journey to Fort Houser [Jauja, Peru] rather easy compared to the terrain. Winstanley describes the monotony of this journey as rather pleasant given the climate and the new road. He seems to be satisfied with the Britannic Empire’s work in controlling the forbidding landscape.

From Fort Houser, however, Winstanley’s tone begins to change. The expedition travels to Cusco on the old Incan Roads, and the author favourably compares their efforts to those of the Britannic Empire. Here, during a rain-storm, the expedition is forced to take refuge in an Incan village and Winstanley is brought to appreciate the Incans which are ‘untainted’ by the European mercantile forces. He describes the artistry and craft work of the villages in favourable terms. Cusco, likewise, with its predominance of Incan structures, similarly impresses Winstanley. The Royal Barrow Company headquarters in the City are built into the Old Royal Palace which Winstanley both admires and abhors as the RBC have destroyed portions of Incan artwork for their own convenience.

By the time that the expedition reaches Lake Parker [Titicaca] Winstanley is in awe at the sheer beauty of the landscape and the ingenuity of the indigenous peoples. The final stage of the journey to Potcham across the lakes and river systems of Upper Barrow is interrupted by an attack from Incan rebels which results in the death of Captain Yarnal. Finally Winstanley reaches Potcham and is horrified at the human suffering and damage being caused by the mines.

In the final section of the book, Winstanley details a likely-apocryphal conversation between himself and his companion Matthew Yonge wherein they discuss a number of issues. These chapters act as Winstanley’s reflection on the work of the RBC and the impact this has had on the Incan population and their African slaves. Unusually for his time, Winstanley is ambiguous about the treatment of these peoples, rather than accepting it as necessary or beneficial for them as prevailing thought held. Instead Winstanley holds up both Captain Yarnal and the lazy and drunk inhabitants of Mortimer as both the virtues and vices of Empire. The conversation, and the book, concludes that the villages of Upper Barrow, where indigenous culture still survives, are a kind of Utopia.

Printing and Reception

Winstanley returned to Ithaca, and thence to Cornel by 1603 where he had his book published. Only an original run of 100 copies were ever produced, and the five still held at the University of Hartsport, are priceless. One of these was gifted personally by Winstanley to his friend Francis Bacon on whom it is believed it had a significant impact. More generally, the book was largely lost to irelevance and Winstanley retired to his estates outside Cornel where he died in 1623.

Significance and Legacy

Barring a few anomalies – the rebel attack was likely fictitious, and we have records of Tobias Yarnal alive in 1605 – ‘Voyages’ is one of the best historical sources we have on 17th century Barrow. The journey, the people and the general conditions are all verifiable through historical evidence, and Winstanley fairly faithfully depicts Barrow as it was at the time; namely, a company-run Colony designed to exploit the natural resources of the area and propped up by the enforced labour of Africans and indigenous peoples.

Winstanley is far less reliable when it comes to his description of local anthropology. For many years in the 18th and early 19th century, Winstanley was considered one of the best authorities on Incan culture. It was only when retroactive study was carried out by Potcham and Mortimer Universities that his descriptions were found to have been embellished or entirely fabricated. It now seems that he had very little contact with the indigenous culture and merely extrapolated from a few small encounters.

‘Voyage’ has been held up in more modern times as one of the earliest anti-Imperial or anti-Capitalist texts. Engels himself referred multiple times to Winstanley’s work. This was never the author’s intention, and the work has a far more widely accepted legacy in the Humanist ideas of the Enlightenment.

Youtube Transcript: Gameplay Historian ‘Ninja’s Code Columbia: Green Sails - Historical Accuracy?’ June 2018

Welcome back to the Gameplay Historian and my ongoing series on the Ninja’s Code franchise. After the stunning success of 2008’s Ninja’s Code, Disparsoft Games released the sequel Ninja’s Code Columbia in 2010. We covered this in a previous video, find the link in the description. Columbia was a true evolution of the Ninja’s Code gameplay style and its open-world missions were well-received by fans and critics alike. The setting, however, was less well liked; set during the Columbian Secession, Ninja’s Code Columbia leaned heavily in the political direction of the first game. It was fairly accurate, but discussions over rights and jurisdictions were far less interesting than stabbing.

To re-right the ship, and score a huge win for the fans, Disparsoft beefed up production of an intended DLC and released it as a full game. This could have ended in backlash, but the resultant high seas adventure of Ninja’s Code Columbia: Green Sails ended up being bigger than its predecessor in terms of scope, gameplay and reception. But just how Historically accurate was Green Sails, did it sacrifice accuracy for thrills?

Green Sails places the player in control of Grainne O’Malley, one of the most famous Pirates in History. Grainne is a hero to modern Gaels and so this was a hugely controversial and risky decision for Disparsoft to make. They could have easily been met with protests over their use of such a beloved historical figure, whilst the Anti-Britannic bashing from the first game had never been forgotten and Grainne herself, of course, didn’t like the British much at all. I am happy to say though that the guys at Disparsoft did their homework and the Grainne of Ninja’s Code is one of the most accurate depictions of her in fiction.

That said, they had to start somewhere, and the first 4 hours of tutorial of Grainne in her 20s and 30s is fictional. This isn’t the developers fault, little record of Grainne exists before 1593, but we do know that she escaped Ireland in 1580 and travelled across the Atlantic and Goughton until she reached the Gael capital of Tearmann. The characters of Orbha and Bracha who accompany Grainne at this time are likely fictional. So the story of the tutorial is based in History, but we don’t have the information to be more specific with places people and events.

The tutorial ends in 1593 with the Ravenspur mission, and this is the first part of the game that we know is historically accurate. We know Grainne and her small crew captured the Royal Barrow Demi-Caravel Ravenspur in 1593 north of the coast of Cove [Cuba] and she did rename the ship the Dark Lady, though of course this was the Irish name Beandorcha which Disparsoft changed.

From here the open world of the game really opens up with a huge map of the Columbian sea covering Cove, Nova Albion [Hispaniola], New Kent [Florida] and the southern coast of Norland including Dundeirenach, [Mobile] and Nieu Amsterdam [New Orleans]. One tiny thing here is that Nieu Amsterdam was only founded in 1586 by Willem Barentsz and although it grew rapidly, Disparsoft chose to map the city at its 1611 levels, the end point of the game. That way the city is bigger than it should be at the start of the main campaign, but at least they didn’t have to work out how to grow it over time.

Whilst I am nit-picking, I should point out the most obvious inaccuracy which is that the whole Ninja fraternity over-arching plot to tie Green Sails into the first game is totally fake. They only put that in to connect the franchise, but you probably knew that.

So the main campaign is broken into two acts: 1593-1601 and 1603-1611. The first part sees Grainne’s rise to Pirate Queen of the Columbias with her preying on British merchant ships. In the game this was realised by the player being able to control the Dark Lady, raid ships and settlements, and then spend the loot on upgrades. This is largely what Grainne herself did, as well as sending funds back to her overlord Aodh O’Neill in Tearmann. So yes he was a real person from History, though there probably wasn’t a romance between him and Grainne as the game depicted.

The game gave Grainne a wide cast of allies: her children Lua and Aine, Roe O’Donnel, Willem Barentsz, Marcel Loray and Lucaz Brnas. All of these are real people from History and largely as the game depicted them. Lua and Aine did often go to sea with their mother, and Lua was killed by the English in 1599, though Grainne may not have been there to see it. Barentsz was the governor of Nieu Amsterdam, although it is unlikely he would have met Grainne personally so much. Loray, the representative of the KKB – the Breton Trading Company – did genuinely meet Grainne when she tried to take his ship and they became lifelong secret friends behind the back of the English. And finally Brnas, the Canaan Corsair; the game skips over the fact that these two were rivals early on, but we do know that they took part in the 1611 raid on Hampton together which ends the game.

For the villains, Disparsoft repeated their trick from the previous games of putting a sinister twist on real people. Captain Anthony Shirley was a Royal Barrow Company captain tasked with chasing Grainne down in 1594, and we know he was responsible for the death of her son Lua which so brutally ends the first act on the game in 1599. His defeat by Grainne in the mission ‘Low and Behold’ in 1596, genuinely did occur. It was known as the Battle of O’Malley’s Reef and is still visited by tourist boat trips from Nieu Amsterdam today.

Another slight change is that Shirley died in 1604, not 1602 as the game had it, and probably not by Grainne’s own hand. But this was because Disparsoft needed to move it to kick off the second Act. After the death of Lua in 1599, Grainne disappears from the historical record for three years. The game has her in mourning for her son, but we honestly don’t know where she went. The British certainly believed her dead though.

The second act opens with another Treaty – bad memories of the previous game’s political intrigue were stirred – but this truly happened and its worth mentioning as few people thought this was true. The 1602 Treaty of Nieu Amsterdam was a localised secret treaty between the Dutch GWC, Breton KKB and New Canaan Republic Trading companies. Not only would they support each others’ trade but they secretly employed Grainne and her ships as privateers to harry the British ships and so increase their own work. In real life this is what got Grainne out of hiding, but the game plays it as a consequence of Shirley’s death.

For the second act the map expands further; past Hampton all the way up the Norland seaboard towards Goughton. And as a result it introduces three new villains. Henry Tudor ‘The Resurgent’, Tristram Maze and Pierre Degua. All of these men are real from History but they have varying degrees of villainy. Degua was just an explorer who disappeared on his third journey beyond the Mizzizzippi in 1606, he was a Huguenot, but he was not responsible for killing Gaels nor was he killed by Grainne, that we know of. Henry the Resurgent was the son of Henry the Weak, and was a ferocious warrior, but as far as we know he and Grainne never met, he was too busy restoring his family’s fortunes. There is some truth to Tristram Maze’s villainy however. Tristram was a bastard descendant of the first Henry Tudor, the one who built Hampton, the entire bastard line became something of the ‘trouble-shooters’ of the New World Tudors and Tristram Maze was no exception. In the game Tristram is depicted as a sadistic, slave-owning, vain man, and this largely fits with his real character.

If the theme of the first act was piracy, then the second act is surely a general attack on the Britannic Empire in the New World. One of the early missions – Springtime in Paris – sees Grainne pilot the Dark Lady east out of the Columbian Sea, past a Britannic Fleet, to take a Gaelic delegation to Paris. Again this is accurate, Grainne was the main representative of Aodh O’Neill to the Catholic Holy League where a plan was formed to attack Norland.

This plan forms the backbone of the second half of the game, with the player leading raids on shipping and plantations off the main Atlantic seaboard. Here the game does take a little poetic license once more; the Huguenots of Bradbury are quietly overlooked and Anglicised, save Degua oddly. I suppose this made sense as the Bretons are depicted as allies, but Louis of Conde was definitely not a cockney.

We are also introduced to some more allies. Lukaz Brnas becomes a permanent wingman, and we get to pilot his ship the Zurivast in a few missions. This was modelled on his real ship, though the triple flaming cannon balls special ability is really an addition for gameplay, not accuracy. We meet Simon Stevin for a mission where we return to Green Bay [Guantanamo]. Stevin is presented as a pilot, but he is really more of an engineer, though he was present in Columbia at this point. Finally is Henry Champlain, who helps us to raid Nova Albion in one mission. Again this is a fiction for gameplay purposes, but Champlain’s voyage to establish a French colony in Fleuve D’Argent did occur in 1606.

The end game begins in 1610 with the battle of……..BUFFERING [Spoilers!]

The Portuguese-Dutch War, Wikipedia Introduction

The Portuguese-Dutch War (1597-1620) was part of the larger Twenty Years War. Around a decade before the larger war, Portuguese and Dutch traders in the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans began an armed naval conflict, targeting each others’ vessels. Given the small size of the relative populations the war remained a largely naval engagement for much of the war, although it became swallowed up by the far larger Twenty Years War. The main theatres were in Indonesia and India where trading vessels were often attacked and sunk. The war created a naval arms race with both nations rushing to create armed merchantmen.

The war remained largely between these two powers. Despite Dutch efforts, Britannia refused to become officially involved although captains would often make unsanctioned actions against the Portuguese, most notably John Davis at the Battle of Nicobar in 1605. Britannia’s reluctance came from their own internal issues and tensions with the Dutch over settlements at the Cape of Good Hope with the British Daviston [Simon’s Town] being only a few kilometres from the Dutch Hootensberg [Cape Town]. This was one of the first instances of colonial proxy wars in History with Dutch and Portuguese client states in India occasionally coming to blows.

In India, the war is remembered as the foundations of the Sepoy system which would bring the country to its knees in civil strife, and was responsible for the removal of the Portuguese from Goa.

The Big Book of Biographies: Chapter 7 The Seventeenth Century

Bacon, Francis (22nd Jan 1561-????) Philosopher, Political Scientist, Revolutionary. B: Hartsport, Columbia. D:????
Francis’ father was a lecturer at Hartsport University in Columbia and had helped to establish the institution as one of the premier centres of learning in the New World. Francis followed his father into Academia and read widely on natural and political philosophy. In 1584 Bacon became one of the youngest Fellows of the University ever appointed. In 1587 the first of his 58 books were published ‘Philosophie of Man’ which became a significant work of Humanism. By 1606 Bacon had founded a scholarship at the University in his late father’s name and was one of the most respected academics west of the Atlantic. However, Bacon became increasingly disenchanted by contemporary society; news from the Old World, and works such as Voyage for Utopia by his friend Edward Winstanley began to convince Bacon that change was needed.

Barlow, Robert (17th March 1561-????) Engineer B: Boston, Lincolnshire, D:????
Barlow was the pioneer of the Wagonway. Wagonways were deliberately straightened and flattened road ways and were paved. They were designed to move heavy or bulky items quickly over medium to long distances. Indeed in later designs Barlow would incorporate embankments and cuttings to keep the Wagons as level as possible and even allowed for a downward slope in the prevailing direction of travel. Barlow’s primary achievement was the Wollaton Wagonway completed in 1603. The Wagonway ran for 14 miles between Heanor and Nottingham and cut the journey times for coal and stone to the city from days to hours. The Wagonways were soon being copied across England and then the wider world.

Kepler, Johan (27 December 1571-????) Astronomer, Physicist, Mathematician, Inventor B: Weilderstad, Wurttemberg D:????
Kepler was born in Weilderstad to Colonel Heinrich Kepler of the Wurtemberg Guard. This gave him an interest in weaponry from an early age. Kepler studied at Tubingen and Gronigen before moving briefly to Graz. However as a Protestant the increase in tension following the Treaty of Elba caused him to flee to Leipzig University where he continued his studies in Mathematics and Physics. Here he met Bartolomaus Scultetus who introduced him to Albert-Henry Duke of Prussia and his son John Duke of Saxony who became Kepler’s student and patron.

Shakespeare, William (26 April 1564-????) Playwright, MP, Military Commander B: Stratford-Upon-Avon D:?????
….Shakespeare’s distinct ‘Middle Period’ spans the decade or so between the Gunpowder Plot and the start of the Twenty Years War (1597-1606). Shakespeare had become a household name by this point, largely for his comedies and history plays and so began to branch out into more risky and satirical material. This period still saw some comedies; As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Antwerp and the Merry Ladies of Limberg but became famous for the tragedies: Alexander and Pancaspe, Icarus and Daedalus, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamnet and Anthony and Cleopatra. Many of these tragedies had political undertones to them and often included jilted or forbidden love as a plot device. Many commentators have shown how these reflect the discontent in London during this decade and in particular the political turmoil and the issues created by the deceased Prince of Wales’ infidelity.

Stevin, Simon (1st December 1548- 17th August 1619) Engineer B:Tillburg, Netherlands D: Nieu Amsterdam, Mizzizzippi Colony
…Having completed the new docks in New York in 1593, Stevin received a lucrative contract from the Dutch GKW to lead the Engineering works in their new city of Nieu Amsterdam. This job was to define Stevin, and he would retire and later die in the city. Over the next 25 years Stevin designed a large complex of levies, dykes, canals and docks for the city which allowed him to tame the mighty Mizzizzippi River and to transform Nieu Amsterdam into one of the largest trading cities in the New World in a few decades. During this time, following the Treaty of Nieu Amsterdam, Stevin transitted up the Gearthafili [Alabama] River to Tearmann, the capital of the Gaelic Realm. This was a personal request by Governor Barentsz who asked Stevin to make adjustments to the river to improve its navigability. By 1611 it was a possible for a Dutch Vileboot (similar to a Caravel) to sail up as far as Tearmann which massively improved access and trade for the Gaels.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Ok so I know this map is dead sketchy, and completely doesnt use the approved colour scheme. But it shows the state of play in 1606. Light blue in OTL Belgium is the Catholic rebellion as the light purple in Bohemia etc is the Protestant ones.

Germany: light grey in the middle is a catch all for the myriad states and then clockwise from Denmark: Gold =Brandenberg-Hesse, Dark Grey= Prussia-Saxony, Blue and Yellow= Bavaria, Grey with spots = Wurttemberg, Green = Palatinate.

Hope it at least gives some clues!

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Whilst I'm on a roll... I know the borders are modern US but the areas of control would be helpful. Red is the Empire, Gold is the New Canaan Republic, Blue is Bradbury, technically part of the Empire but beholden to themselves, Green is Tir na Gaelige, Orange is Nieu Amsterdam.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

1606-1611 Binding and Loosing

Generals and Kings Youtube Channel: ‘Battles of Antwerp and Tommel’

Welcome to the Generals and Kings Channel, and our ongoing series on the Twenty Years War. Europe, May 1606: the continent stood on the brink. The Battle of Rip Mountain and the ascension of Albert-Henry of Pembroke-Prussia to the Bohemian throne had once again declared open hostilities in Europe. However the conflict may have been contained to the east if it were not for Jean Tserclaes, Count Tilly. The French general had for years planned his return to his homeland of Brabant at the head of a Catholic army but the Britannic sentinels had made this an impossible dream. Yet after Rip Mountain, and the Duke of Oudenberg was recalled to London to explain his actions to his Emperor, Tilly saw his chance.

The Count went before Henry IV, King of France and used Rip Mountain as justification for war. If the Protestants were not going to abide by their spheres of influence, then the Catholic Holy League would be mad to allow them to go unpunished. France declared war on the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the 31st of May and Spain joined them a week later. Even before the official declaration, Tilly had planned well. Since the middle of winter, Charles Bonaventure, Count of Bucquoy had been in Brussels with 3000 French soldiers disguised as Walloons to ferment rebellion. This had drawn out the Dutch who lost their King William II to dysentery in the subsequent siege and were forced to pull back.

Brabant was still in rebellion, but Richard II’s inaction allowed Tilly to set his sights even higher. On the 4th of June Tilly himself crossed into Brabant with 20,000 French soldiers behind him and the Seigneur de Villeroy raising the Dixiem Levee en Masse back in France. Within a week Brussels had been joined by Mons, Namur and Liege in rebellion against the Dutch King. The Low Countries had been badly served by the French and Spanish Kings in the Low Countries War some 30 years previously, having been abandoned to their fate once their tactical use was spent. Now though, Tilly’s presence at the head of the army, not to mention the support of Bishop Jean Richardot of Liege, encouraged a general rising. Tilly marched into Brussels on the 8th of June to a hero’s welcome.

In the Netherlands, King Edvard I responded to this news with grim determination. He may have been King for only a few months but was almost 50 and had spent a lifetime at court and on the battlefield. The Dutch King had been desperately trying to cajole the stadtholders and burghers into supporting a renewed campaign into Brabant with little success. The French declaration of war and Tilly’s invasion gave Edvard the justification he needed to gather an army. Unfortunately, the majority of the Dutch strength lay at sea, and without Britannic help they were exposed on the battlefield.

The Netherlands only had around 15,000 men to hand and these included around 5,000 Englishmen under Johan of Bruges and the Orange Free Company. Franck of Hesse, though dithering over a final decision on what to do, sent a further 2,000 men and the states of Westphalia and Hannover together provided another 3,000 mercenaries. By mid-June Edvard thus had 20,000 men to throw into the fray but they were not a united force, and he was still gathering men.

Tilly had known this, and had already begun a swift advance north towards Antwerp, leaving Bucquoy to guard his rear. Tilly arranged his army around the city walls and began negotiating with the Burghers to surrender the city. Antwerp had always been Catholic, and even after 30 years under Dutch control had remained so. More importantly Antwerp was an all important harbour on the channel. France had lost all ports north of La Rochelle through the last century of war and Antwerp would be a crucial coup for them. Therefore Tilly chose the diplomatic route whilst his army dug emplacements at Schoten east of the city facing north and east.

King Edvard had to move, and was heartened by the news that Tilly seemed to only have 20,000 men himself. Gathering his own force of 20,000, Edvard crossed the Meuse and marched for Antwerp. If he could reach the city before they capitulated he could still maintain his realms’ integrity. The Dutch reached Hoogstraten on the 29th of June a dozen miles from Antwerp and immediately moved to the attack. Edvard’s army may have been cobbled together, but it did not lack for firepower, the majority of the soldiers were armed with Snelbus or Dutch copies. Nor did it lack experienced commanders. Edvard himself was no slouch but his right wing was commanded by the veteran commander Anthony Schetz, Baron Grobbedonk, his centre – including the Germans – by Phillip de Hohenloe-Neuenstein and his left, the Orange Free Company, by Johan of Bruges, brother to the Earl of Oudenberg. Where Schetz was cautious, Johan was champing at the bit and Phillip in the centre was just trying to forge a coherent command from his units. Nonetheless Edvard trusted them to break the French line and was in reserve with a further 2,000 himself

The Dutch army’s hasty preparations meant that they were light on heavy cannon and heavy cavalry but they had brought around 3,000 light cavalry commanded by Giovanni II Hartson in the manner of his great grandfather; fast fierce and brutal. Accordingly, the Dutch army drew up in double lines on the morning of the 30th of June in sight of the French earthworks east of Antwerp. These earthworks would have prevented a cavalry charge at any rate and so Edvard planned to mount a general advance with infantry hoping to sweep the French from the field, prove his worth to the citizens of Antwerp and gain their help with a flank attack from the city itself.

Count Tilly had chosen his defensive positions well. The flat land around Antwerp offered few vantage points but he had found a shallow rise running south east from the village of Schoten and had drawn his men up along this more or less parallel to the modern Nord Canal which now stands on this spot. Tilly gave himself the left flank and fortified Schoten itself. The central redoubts, studded with light cannon built on the Brittanic model, Tilly gave to the Duc de Lesdiguières, Francois de Bonne who had been his mentor earlier in life. Finally Tilly took a risk on his right; lacking in cavalry as the Dutch were, Tilly treated his right flank like his cavalry wing and gave it to his heavy Grenadier companies under the command of the relatively inexperienced but headstrong Henri de Chivre, Marquis de Barre. Tilly admired the young man’s fearlessness and ferocity in the face of enemy fire and trusted him to make his own decisions of when to move.

Given their lack of cannon, the Protestants moved first. The open and marshy ground meant that they were dangerously exposed to de Bonne’s cannon in the centre and the Westphalian infantry suffered casualties before they could close. Fired up for battle, the Orange Free Company saw this difficulty and moved to their right as they charged catching the far eastern end of the French earthworks unexpectedly in the flank. This brave move by Johan of Bruges allowed for the Dutch centre to close and engage at point-blank range. Tilly may have dug earthworks and trained his men, but the French soldiers were outmatched by their Protestant opponents and soon de Bonne’s men began to buckle.

Henri de Chivre saw his chance and charged left into the Orange Free Company. Johan of Bruges had miscalculated, he had taken the French right flank for auxiliary forces, having never encountered Grenadiers in the field before. The white-crossed straps of the Grenadiers may have made them appear to be Engineers, but the English mercenaries soon discovered that they were anything but. Tilly’s new Grenadier tactics, using Grenades and hand to hand weapons such as axes, worked wonders on the English rear and soon they began to break just as the French centre had. On the French left, Tilly continued to hold Schoten; he had placed his best marksmen and a further five cannon in the village and they turned the streets into rivers of blood as Anthony Schetz’s men were ground down and the Baron himself was killed in the hail of fire.

For all of this time Giovanni II Hartson had prowled the battlefield with his light cavalry, Schragbus primed and ready, but had been unable to spot the reported French Cavalry. Late in the afternoon Johan of Bruges signalled to his cousin for aid and Hartson took his men into close quarters, blowing holes in the Grenadiers of the French Right. These caused grievous wounds, but the short range of the weapon brought Giovanni’s cavalry into Grenade range which badly unsettled the horses and caused some to bolt.

With the Protestant cavalry retreating in disarray, Bishop Jean Richardot made his move. The 36-year old Bishop had been part of Tilly’s delegation in Antwerp and had managed to gather around 500 men of the city, mostly the poor and desperate, but including some poorer artisans sons and the like, into something resembling a fighting force. These men did not officially represent the City government, still undecided, but Bishop Richardot led them out of the city gates on horseback and into the flank of Anthony’ Schetz’s force.

King Edvard was at this point taking his reserve over the bodies of their comrades into the French earthworks hoping to break the line once and for all when he saw the Lion and Griffin banner of the city sally from the gates. For a moment it must have seemed that the city had sided with him, only to have the Antwerpian forces attack his own army. This tiny force scored a huge morale victory as Schetz’s demoralised army cracked and ran with Tilly in pursuit. Fearing the city lost, Edvard ordered the general retreat.

The Battle of Antwerp was a relatively even affair. The Protestant army lost around 7,000 men, mostly to Schetz’s force though the Free Company also took losses on the left. Tilly’s army lost 6000 general infantry and a further 500 Grenadiers from an original count of 3000. Crucially, however, the battle turned into an overwhelming French victory when the city of Antwerp capitulated. Their hand may have been forced by Richardot’s group of vagabonds, but with their nominal King in retreat, the Burghers of Antwerp had little alternative and signed an alliance with Henry IV 'the Good', King of France. With a protestant army beaten for the first time in a generation, and Antwerp in Catholic hands, the rest of Wallonia arose in favour of the Catholic Holy League.

The Summer’s campaign was far from over and Bucquoy arrived in Antwerp in mid-July with another 30,000 French troops. These were from Tilly’s conscripted army, but they still swung the balance of power firmly in Tilly’s favour. Secondly Luxembourg also declared for Tilly and the Holy League with Ernst von Mansfeld pledging 4,000 infantry and 2,000 much-needed cavalry to the cause. Tilly could now field 50,000 men, with more on the way. Never being one to relinquish the initiative, the French commander launched an audacious invasion of the northern half of Brabant centred on the City of Turnhout.

The Battle of Antwerp may have been a crushing morale blow for the Netherlands, but it had not cost them greatly in terms of manpower. King Edvard retreated back towards Hertogenbosch to gather reinforcements which arrived in their plenty. The Dukes William of Guelders and William of Julich-Cleves-Berg and Richard of East Frisia straggled over the Waal and Meuse Rivers throughout July with their forces and Duke Franck of Hesse sent his brother Paul with a few regiments having decided to declare war on France himself. The Dutch contingents numbered around 25,000 men but were mostly relatively inexperienced soldiers, though well-equipped. The Hessians, by contrast, were only 4,000 men but Franck had dispatched some of his finest soldiers of the Dorsten College. These Dorstensoldaten added a much needed kernel of strength to the disparate Protestant army.

King Edvard nonetheless still had two problems. The first was command; his 42,000 men strong army had a number of capable commanders; himself, Johan of Bruges, Giovanni II Hartson, Phillip of Neuenstein, William of Guelders, Richard of East Frisia, William of Cleves and Paul of Hesse, but none of these 8 men really stood out as having the necessary experience or skills to command a disparate and sprawling army. Anthony Schetz had been that man, but his death at Antwerp had left a void of command no one person could easily fill. King Edvard himself took command, though his meetings were often long and fractious.

The second Dutch problem was one of tactics. From Hergotenbosch King Edvard knew that Tilly was marching north east from Antwerp towards Turnhout. He also knew that Tilly had 50,000 men and could go anywhere south of the Meuse: Breda, Rosendaal, Eindhoven, all were open to him. Unsurprisingly Johan of Bruges advocated for an aggressive approach, closing with Tilly and destroying him before he could prepare the ground as he had at Antwerp. The Dukes of Cleves and Guelders, uncertain of the viability of their forces suggested their own defensive positions around Hergotenbosch and Eindhoven to hold Tilly in the south and west of the Netherlands.

By the 23rd of July, Tilly had reached Turnhout and placed the Protestant town under siege. This forced Edvard’s hand and he marched on the city in force. Unbeknownst to the Dutch, Tilly had planned this. The Catholic guns; a dozen light pieces and 5 heavy guns, had not even been unlimbered outside Turnhout, and siege works had only been haphazardly begun. Instead, Tilly had hoped to catch the Dutch in the field and destroy them. Therefore he immediately broke off the siege and marched north to where King Edvard had chosen to give battle outside the village of Tommel.

Today Tommel stands on the border of the Netherlands and Wallonia, the twin towns of Baarle Hertog and Baarle Nassau speaking to the complex history and borders in this part of the world. To Edvard, Tommel represented an adequate place to hold Tilly’s advance and to break his army. Modern forestry has changed the face of the battlefield but in 1606 the fields south west of Tommel were open and flat, rising gently to the village itself on a low ridgeline. To the western end of this ridgeline the Protestant line was anchored by the Heimolen Forest into which Edvard placed his Britannic contingent; 3,000 Orange Free Company infantry under Johan of Bruges, 6 light cannon and 2,000 light cavalry again commanded by Giovanni II Hartson.

From Heimolen across to the hamlet of Schaluinen Edvard arranged his Dutch infantry, all 30,000 of them. Taking the Dukes Williams’ concern over the quality of these men, Edvard had broken them into two deep lines of infantry. Each line could stand and fire in volleys and in this way Edvard hoped to bring up the second line to support the first when the time was right in order to destroy the French in withering fire. To this he added his dozen cannon interspersed between the ranks to increase the damage at long range. In order to further bolster the line he broke it into four sections and gave command to William of Guelders, Phillip of Neuenstein, William of Cleves and himself in order to allow for closer control. To the Protestant left Edvard sent his trump cards: Schaluinen became the billet of the Dorstensoldaten and Paul of Hesse whilst Richard of East Frisia commanded the 2,000 heavy cavalry which Edvard had been able to scrape together.

When Tilly arrived, he saw Edvard’s depositions and had no intention of playing ball. The obvious decision would be to advance over the flat open ground in front of the Protestant positions and close on them before the hail of gunfire tore the French army to shreds. Tilly did not do that. The French field marshal instead divided his combined forces into two unequal halves. The 30,000 less-experienced conscripts he placed on the left flank under Francois de Bonne who had held the line so well at Antwerp. Here at Tommel de Bonne’s job was again to fix the Protestant right flank and main line whilst the Marquis de Barre, again in command of the Grenadier contingents and a further 10,000 men on the right crushed the Protestant left. In support, de Barre had the Count of Bucquoy and Ernst von Mansfeld further to his right. Mansfeld had the heavy Catholic Cavalry and Bucquoy controlled the 3,000 or so light cavalry and a further 2,000 Luxembourg infantry as a rapid reserve to exploit any gaps with de Barre created. Tilly remained in the centre behind Francois be Bonne’s conscripts with the 12 light cannon, again as a rapid reaction force, the heavy cannon had been left with the baggage train.

The Battle of Tommel began on the morning of the 28th of July as a thin morning mist cleared from the battlefield. The sight which met the Protestant army was a confusing one; Tilly’s army was advancing obliquely and out of line to their own position. Assuming this was a mere mistake brought about by the mist Edvard reordered his right flank moving up Neuenstein and Guelders’ divisions and displacing the Orange Free Company from their forest positions to stand in open country. This was exactly Tilly’s plan, and he ordered his extreme left under Guilliame II de Lamboy – a Walloon declared for his cause – to move up his own cannon and disrupt the Dutch movements. Whilst this was going on the Marquis de Barre had closed the distance to the hamlet of Schaluinen on the right. De Barre had not known that the crack Hessian troops were holding the village until this moment and he immediately swung left to avoid the strong point. Francois de Bonne, in command of the French left now ordered a general advance and for around an hour his forces exchanged volleys with their Dutch counterparts across the open fields.

Around the flanks, Giovanni II led a probing attack against de Lamboy’s flank, but was repulsed by disciplined fire before he could get within Schragbus range. At the opposite flank Mansfeld and Richard of East Frisia’s heavy cavalry drove into each other hoping to annihilate their opponents. Bucquoy committed his own cavalry reserve to this fray and the balance immediately swung towards the Catholics. In the centre, the Marquis de Barre had finally reached a decision. Completely ignoring the entrenched Hessians in the village, he launched his entire command at the Dutch line just to the west of it. This was the Duke of Cleves division, and some of the greenest soldiers in the Dutch army. De Barre unleashed his and Tilly’s new tactic: The Grenadier Column. Infantry columns were not new, Sigismund III had attempted one at Nybro, but Tilly and de Barre had thrown in the Grenadiers as a hardened point supported by mobile artillery.

Tilly was able to bring up his guns to unnerve Cleves’ infantry just as de Barre’s men changed from line to column. The French Grenadiers, in the centre of the line, ran into a trot and the conscripts to their flanks followed behind to create a column. Thus 12,000 angry Frenchmen, with the Grenadiers as a hardened spear-point crashed into the inexperienced Dutch line. The first line was entirely broken and fell back into the second. Seeing the danger, Paul of Hesse sent 3,000 of his own men to fire into the middle of the French column and King Edvard turned his own light cannon on the same spot. Bucquoy’s reserve may have plugged the gap, but he was engaged in the cavalry duel and the opportunity was lost.

With the column’s momentum broken, the Grenadiers were forced to retreat back to their own lines under the Hessian gunfire. The column charge may have failed to break Cleves’ line entirely but he had suffered around 45% casualties and was seriously weakened. However the battle had allowed Mansfeld and Bucquoy to drive off the Frisian cavalry exposing the Protestant’s flank around Schaluinen even more.

Meanwhile, on the left flank, a co-ordianted attack by the Orange Free Company and Giovanni’s cavalry had encircled and destroyed de Lamboy’s division killing the Wallonian exile in the process. His 16 year-old son, Guilliame III would survive to torment the Protestants another day.

Around noon, Tilly pulled his own line back and called in his commanders to decide on their next course of action. King Edvard did the same, but his conference was a good deal less unified. The morning had only confirmed the Duke of Cleves fears, and he wanted to retreat from the field. A shouting match ensued in which Johan of Bruges called the Duke out for cowardice. Edvard, quickly losing control, relieved Cleves of command and had Johan take over the beleaguered Dutch left with around 300 Britannic mercenaries to steady the line. This left the Orange Free Company under the command of Sir Georg Boleyn, son of the Lord of Cambrai. This ill-tempered debate had robbed the Protestants of any chance to change tactics, and the French army began to advance once more causing the commanders to scurry back to their positions.

For his part, Jean Tserclaes, Count Tilly, did not need a debate to decide his next moves; he gave his orders and his army obeyed him. De Bonne again had command of the left and centre, though he had placed the Duc de la Force in the deceased de Lamboy’s position to bolster the left and had also given him von Mansfeld’s Cavalry to hold off Giovanni. To the right Bucquoy and de Barre had their orders and they implemented them to a tee.

Again De Barre sent his Grenadiers towards the Protestant left and what had been Cleves’ division, with Tilly’s cannon to his left and Bucquoy to his right in reserve. However, just outside of Snelbus range, De Barre halted his charge and turned his entire force of 8,000 men to the right to face the Hessian positions in Schaluinen. With the conscripts firing volleys, Tilly firing over their heads, and the Grenadiers now charging into the more lightly defended western edge of the village, Paul of Hesse was caught completely off guard. Concurrently, Bucquoy’s infantry arrived from the south to fix the defenders whilst his cavalry swept around the east and north to encircle the strongpoint.

In the tight confines of the village, Tilly’s new weapons and tactics paid dividends. The use of Grenades and hand to hand weapons prevented the elite Dorstensoldaten from forming infantry lines of fire and allowed them to be picked off piecemeal. As Paul of Hesse’s command was hacked apart his call for aid was answered by Johan of Bruges. Bruges had the Dutch conscripts engage their French counterparts and silence their flanking fire whilst he took his own 300 men from the Orange Company into Schaluinen to try and salvage the situation.

As the battle hung in the balance on the right flank, the left was grinding into stalemate. The Duc de la Force continued to fix Georg Boleyn’s infantry while von Mansfeld dealt with Giovanni’s cavalry. Mansfeld knew he need to close to defeat Giovanni, which his heavier cavalry could not do. Instead he settled for drawing Giovanni away from the battlefield which allowed la Force to close on the remaining infantry with impunity.

By early evening the battle was balanced on a knife-edge, with both lines of infantry locked in a bloody tussle. Edvard had long ago committed his second line to the fray but the French conscripts were proving more resilient than he had believed possible and de Bonne’s competent command kept them in the fight. Meanwhile, Tilly sensed his opportunity. The over-stressed and leaderless remains of Cleves’ command were successfully holding the 5,000 conscripts of De Barre’s column, but they were vulnerable after their commander had run off into the fire of Schaluinen. Tilly turned his cannon on them, and commanded de Bonne’s right division, under the command of Guilliame III de Lamboy, to charge into the leaderless Dutch flank. The young man, eager to avenge his father, did just this, and with Tilly’s support, broke this wing entirely.

King Edvard’s own division, the next one in line, saw this but were themselves engaged and could do little to stem the tide. With Giovanni off chasing Mansfeld, Johan of Bruges and Paul of Hesse in the village, and the rest of the line in combat, there was no-one left to commit to the hole in his line. Accordingly, Edvard ordered that his infantry disengage and retreat, sending frantic orders for Giovanni and the remnants of the Frisians to cover him. By now Schaluinen had been entirely surrounded, and the most experienced elements of the Protestant army were left trapped inside, and were being slowly strangled by Bucquoy and de Barre. Edvard had no choice but to leave them to their fate. With darkness looming, and their army in retreat, the Protestant forces in the village finally surrendered.

Paul of Hesse was taken into custody but Johan of Bruges would die of his wounds within two days of the battle. If the Battle of Antwerp had been a setback for the Protestant cause, then the Battle of Tommel had been a complete disaster. King Edvard had lost 19,000 men from his army, including most of his cavalry and experienced infantry as well as three of his best commanders; one dead, one captured, and one in disgrace. The Dutch King left garrisons in Maastricht, Eindhoven and Hertogenbosch before withdrawing all the way back to Utrecht with only 15,000 men.

In contrast, for Tilly, Tommel had been the vindication of all of his efforts. It had proven the value of the Dixiem system of conscription, the power of Grenadiers and column tactics, but most of all the Brabant Campaign had given hope to the entirety of Catholic Europe. Antwerp had joined their cause, the whole of the Netherlands below the Waal, save a few cities, had been captured, and the Protestant armies had been forced into retreat. Tommel had cost Tilly 9,000 men, but this still left him with over 40,000 men with yet more on the way from France, Spain, Portugal, Savoy and the Italian cities. The battle had also confirmed the positions of a number of commanders. Henri IV made Tilly Duke of Brabant for his efforts and the Marquis De Barre became Duc de Liege. The young Gulliame III de Lamboy had avenged his father and regained his ancestral territory near Liege itself as well as the title Seigneur de Lamboy. Most of all Tilly had become the undisputed Catholic Marshall; it had been his plan and tactics which had regained Brabant for the Holy See, and there were none now in Christendom, save the Pope himself, who could argue with him.

Thanks for watching the Generals and Kings channel and we will catch you again on the next one.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

With Heaven in the Balance: Britannia 1581-1626, W O’Reilly (2003)

The mood in England in the summer of 1606 was rather sanguine. Parliament had not met that spring, as had been customary, but everyone knew that Richard II had rejected the call to war. The Emperor himself merely focused on his reforms and protecting himself from the outside. Lennox, the new Lord Protector, handled the majority of the day-to-day business whilst Chief Justice Hatton and Archbishop Whitgift took care of the legal and clerical changes respectively. In the main, Richard II remained publicly silent and most people continued with their lives.

Was there any opposition to this benign tyranny? Well the Triumvirate of Essex, Thetford and Magnus remained free, but after the previous few years were treading very carefully. Likewise, the rest of the MPs from the previous Parliament were keeping their heads down. Given the educated and Reformist nature of the most out-spoken critics, these tended to be from London, the south-east and East Anglia and so were closest to Parliament. This allowed some to make their feelings known, especially through illicit printing presses in London, but these handbills were not circulated beyond the city limits.

Consequently, for most people in the Empire, who at any rate never had recourse through Parliament, day to day life continued as before. Of course they had their heroes; Tudor and William of Oudenberg to a lesser extent, but until they came to grief the masses were happy with their own little worlds. It may seem hard to believe now, but Richard II actually had his fans and supporters. Scotland of course favoured him as did the Welsh and West Country after he had abolished the old Councils and replaced them with more limited and benign Lords Paramount. In general, regions with few Presbyterians, or with limited connection to the continent, had little to complain about. Even the far north, often the thorn in London’s side, was indifferent after the recent wave of evictions and the grants of land to the Lords of March.

Nonetheless the Empire did not operate in a vacuum, and the events in Europe that summer did not escape the notice of Richard and his subjects. As ever, London and the south-east were most clued in to the events in Brabant and Bohemia and it was they who reacted most vociferously to them. The first news came in May with the victory of Rip Mountain and Albert-Henry’s ascension to the Bohemian throne. Richard II had already accepted the young man’s fealty for Pembroke-Gloucester but had regarded his European adventures as an irrelevance until this news arrived. Not only had Albert-Henry upset the balance of power, bringing Calvinist/Presbyterian ideas to Bohemia in the process, but he had done so with the assistance of Magnus the Younger.

Richard II immediately sent heralds to Prague demanding Albert-Henry’s presence. These were destined to be ignored for a long time as the new King defended his realm, but the man’s cousin and backer, Magnus the Red, was summoned to Limberg to explain his actions. Surprisingly, William of Oudenberg was not yet summoned himself, his role in the eastern rebellions could not yet have been known, but he remained at his apartments in St Pancras where Richard had left him. In his typically truculent style, Magnus dawdled and delayed to come the 40 or so miles from his estates in the Home Counties until mid June when William Stewart – Master of Arms and Horse – was dispatched to bring him.

Magnus the Red pleaded his ignorance before Richard II; he could not be held responsible for the actions of his son, no matter what the charge. Of course it was hard to come up with charges as Magnus the Younger had been under the employ of a ‘foreign’ Prince and had not been at war with the Empire. Imperial Justice Hatton, a long-time enemy of Magnus the Red, tried desperately to make something stick against his rival but his subordinate in the Star Chamber, Sir John Coke, allowed Magnus to leave Limberg. So it was that Magnus was still in London at the start of July when news arrived of the fall of Antwerp.

Tilly’s victory sent certain sections of London society into fits of panic. Many of the merchants relied on the city as an entry-point to Europe. Even those which didn’t hated the idea of the Catholics having a Channel harbour; it could only mean bad things for trade. The Imperial Exchange – a kind of Stock Market – collapsed into something approaching a riot as investors tried to get their money out of continental trading companies. Nonetheless the reactions was still limited to these mercantile classes. The common people could not really comprehend the gravity of the situation, and after all there were only a few English mercenaries fighting over there, wasn’t there? There was little danger. We know that Magnus and Oudenberg met around a week after this, and were joined by Essex and Thetford in St Pancras.

The mood in London was to boil over, however, after the Battle of Tommel. When the news arrived on the 1st of August, including the personal tragedy for Oudenberg of his brother’s death, even the common folk failed to miss the significance this time. The Catholics had won two battles and had taken much of the Netherlands below the Meuse and Waal. Never mind that Tilly was carefully avoiding Britannic territory around Bruges, in the atmosphere of hysteria it seemed that Bruges, Calais, even London could be next. At this point, Richard II summoned Oudenberg to explain the actions of his dead brother Johan, but like Magnus, William had nothing he could say.

A few MPs had begun to drift into London throughout July, hoping to be re-called to grant taxation for a declaration of war, after Tommel this trickle turned into a flood. Meeting around Limberg Square beside the Halls of Westminster within a week of the Battle, these MPs and the triumvirate plus Oudenberg debated what to do. Henry Tudor had resumed his aloof retreat from affairs and refused to come to London. William of Oudenberg, desperate to get over to Calais and salvage the situation, suggested that they again go to Limberg Palace and request that Richard II declare war. In the end, with no better alternative, this is what they did on the 11th of August, followed by over 5,000 MPs and concerned Londoners and merchants outside the city to the Imperial Palace.

William of Oudenberg volunteered to go before the Emperor but he was refused entry. To the Earl of Lennox, Oudenberg seemed to be at the head of a small mob, and he was ordered to depart and return to his apartments and await the Emperor’s summons. Dejected, the party returned to London, but undeterred the MPs tried to force their way into Westminster Hall on the 13th to discuss the situation in a formal capacity. They found the doors chained, locked and guarded by the Scots Guards. Only the Earl of Essex’s personal appearance and appeal for the MPs to prevent bloodshed forced them to go home.

Four days later Richard II finally spoke: Magnus ‘the Red’, Viscount Don, was hereby accused of treason for consorting with foreign Princes against the security of the Britannic Empire. Forewarned, Magnus was able to escape arrest and flee into the fens west of Benfleet. The arrest warrant was accompanied two days later by a Public statement by the Earl of Surrey on behalf of the Emperor. Whilst Richard II regretted the loss of life in the Low Countries, the Kingdom of the Netherlands had shown an unwillingness to help the Empire and was even now sheltering the Emperor’s enemies. Richard II pledged to help them after Andrew Melville and his colleagues were returned to England to stand trial. Until then he would do nothing. Furthermore, Magnus’ flight into hiding was being taken as his admission of guilt. Accordingly, his lands and titles were forfeit, as were those of his son Magnus the Younger. They were to pass to the 8 year old son of the younger Magnus, but were to be held in trust by the Emperor until he reached his majority. In effect Richard II had absorbed Magnus' land.

These developments reached William of Oudenberg on the 19th of August, still practically under house arrest. The Duke had been threatened with the same attainder and disinheritance as Magnus if he left London without the Emperor’s permission, but William of Oudenberg was not easily scared. His father, and now brother had been lost in battle to Catholics. His father had died at Dunstable fighting beside the now outlawed Magnus. For all the potential for anger with the fugitive Lord for his father's death, Oudenberg respected the old man and his attainder for treason was the final straw. William of Oudenberg owned significant lands in England and Europe, the former would be lost if he left England, but Richard II had given him little choice. William was the Imperial Constable, his job was to protect the Empire from external threats, and one was stirring right at that moment in Brabant. He could not ignore it.

On the night of the 24th of August 1606, William of Oudenberg escaped London and reached a boat – the demi-caravel Caroline – at Tillbury where Magnus was waiting for him. Men loyal to the Earl of Essex had arranged the flight into exile. The Caroline slipped into the Medway and reached Ostend on the evening of the 25th of August. Within a day word came from London to the commander of the Ostend Garrison, Sir Edmund Bowyer, to arrest the two fugitive Lords and return them to the capital. For Bowyer this was an easy decision; William of Oudenberg was his patron, and Bowyer himself was the son-in-law of Arthur Hartson, Duke of Normandy and long term friend to William and Magnus. The two men remained free and unmolested throughout the Winter.

Richard II was said to be furious, but an expedition to Oudenberg would have to be a veritable invasion to recover Magnus and William, and not something the Empire could afford without raising taxes through Parliament. The Emperor was therefore stuck and returned to brooding in his chambers. Archbishop Whitgift had pro-Richard and anti-Oudenberg/Magnus sermons preached in Churches across the realm, but beyond that and other Propaganda there was little that could be done. At least public order remained intact. Justice Hatton kept a tight lid on proceedings and any sedition was immediately charged. Besides, Oudenberg and Magnus had slipped away like thieves in the night rather than incite a mob. For now the Emperor’s minions were able to control the situation, but Magnus and William’s actions had set an eventual Civil War into motion.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Of Madness and Piety: Europe 1597-1627, A Thompson (2009)

King Albert I of Bohemia was an energetic young man. It could be said that as Duke of Prussia, father to the Duke of Saxony and King of Bohemia, Albert-Henry had stretched himself too thin. Yet this scion of the House of York was not one to miss an opportunity, nor one to shirk from hard work. As 1606 moved into summer, the new King set about reforming his Kingdom. Thurn was immediately made Lord Chancellor and Valdstejna given further land in the north marches to defend against Polish incursion. Wilhelm Slavata was removed from the Council as was Chief Justice Raphael Minishevsky, both Catholics. Aside from these changes, Albert-Henry pledged to respect the Catholic Church and would not confiscate the land of anyone, unless they actually rose in rebellion against him.

It helped that there were no shortage of volunteers to the new regime. Many Protestants emerged from the woodwork, as too did those who were simply hoping to take advantage of the new ruling dynasty. Albert-Henry was well aware of the need for more support however, and in June 1606 he summoned the New Canaanite preacher Henry Bydlinsky to Prague. The new King of Bohemia knew very well of the ties his realm had across the Atlantic, and the Canaanite Republic’s willingness to help the weak and defenceless. He therefore asked Bydlinsky to carry out a mission to New York to gather supporters and supplies. Not long after Bydlinsky left Prague, Albert-Henry himself was on the move to secure Pilsen and Tabor in the south; both cities admitted him as their rightful King.

While Albert I was nation building, his opponents tried to get their house in order. Sigismund III of Poland and Maximillian III of Austria had both been taken by surprise by Albert-Henry’s arrival in Bohemia. Maximillian especially hoped that Rip Mountain would be the beginning of the end of the rising, and it instead had become the foundations of a much larger threat. For the time-being, Maximillian had returned to Austria and then moved to Transylvania hoping to crush Stephen Bocskai and then return to Bohemia in swift order. Here again the Archduke was frustrated. Not only had Bocskai been bolstered by the arrival of over 1000 Britannic Snelbus, accompanied by Sir William Hartson and Sir Henry Thornhaugh, but by the uprising of Gabriel Bethlen.

Bethlen had actually supported the Bathorys until the assassination of Boldiszar. Following the death of his patron, and the general uprising behind Stephen Bocskai, Bethlen joined the rebels hoping to advance his own ambition by riding their coat-tails into power. With all of this extra firepower, Bocskai felt able to move beyond the mountains and in June 1606 he attacked the town of Oradea which guarded the entrance to the Hungarian plain. The town swiftly surrendered and the rebels moved into the plain itself. In July and army led by Giorgio Basta cornered them near Debrecen, and after an inconclusive battle, Bocskai was forced to retreat. Sensing a victory, Maximillian rushed to aid Basta himself, and confronted with this overwhelming strength, the rebels pulled deeper into Transylvania.

Maximillian advanced throughout August, retaking Oradea, but as his army entered the mountain passes he found the typical guerrilla tactics of Bocskai and his men impossible to deal with. Of the 22,000 men who left Oradea for Cluj, within 3 weeks 17,000 were left through desertion, garrison or attrition, forcing Maximillain to turn back.

As summer drew to a close in Transylvannia, the upland regions were for all intents and purposes free, but the lowlands still under the control of the Archduke of Austria. Maximillian would need greater resources to make a break through in the next campaign. With the war by now having spread to the Low Countries, Cardinal Borghese left for Rome to co-ordinate the wider effort, and hopefully send help to the east. The fact remained, however, that Maximillian had lost around 40% of his remaining territory and was struggling to retake it.

Further north, the lack of Maximillian was not a complete let-off for Albert I of Bohemia. Brno remained in Catholic hands, and Augustus, Duke of Bavaria lurked in wait with around 10,000 men. As a tense staring match began in the south, Sigismund III moved in the north. Taking full advantage of Albert-Henry’s split domains, the Polish King sent 15,000 men under Jan Sapieha to Prussia to harass the Prussian nobles and lay siege to Konigsberg whilst he and Chodkiewicz invaded Bohemia from the north-east with a further 20,000. Sigismund III hoped that the Catholics around Hradec would rise in support of him, but he was to be disappointed.

Almost twenty years of war – with very little to show for it – had already begun to disquiet the Polish nobility who were becoming reluctant to fund their King’s never ending dynastic ambitions. The people of Bohemia were likewise suspicious and Albert-Henry’s pledge to respect their Catholic faith meant that they were willing to stick with the new King rather than join one known for his profligacy and military stupidity. This of course played right into the hands of Albrecht Valdstejna who spent much of July and August engaged in hit and run battles against the Polish Hussars. As at Rip Mountain, the sheer power of the Polish cavalry was certainly something to be feared, but the swiftness and lightness of their Bohemian foes made them hard to catch, and Valdstejna had the best of the engagements. The final straw for the Poles came when Hradec itself barred their gates to the Polish army. With Thurn on his way with a relief force, Sigismund was forced to retreat.

For all of the drama of earlier in the summer, Bohemia, Moravia and Transylvania settled down into an uneasy stalemate. Neither side had the forces to press their advantage and it would take a winter of strategizing and scheming with allies to try and break the deadlock. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, Sultan Ahmad IV watched the situation to his north with growing interest.

 

[CrepedCrusader]

Limberg Palace, south-west of London, 16th September 1606

Servants scurried to get out the way. Emperor Richard II was not often seen in the lower courtyard of Limberg Palace, and they knew better than to be seen by him. A beating may very easily follow for even the slightest infraction, if they were lucky. The Emperor stalked across the rough cobbles of the courtyard, heading diagonally for the gate into the Orchard. He went there regularly to think, or to calm down, and today he didn’t have time to take the long way.

‘Your Grace!’ a voice shouted from behind him. Richard whirled, hatred in his eyes, the last sight of a maid’s skirts disappearing behind a wall was the only sign of a servant he could see. Instead, striding out from the small door below the long gallery was Lennox himself. Richard’s shoulders sagged just a little. He turned and continued his stalking.

‘Leave me be Esme’ he muttered to his shadow behind him. The Emperor had no desire for talk just now, he needed to think. It had been Hicks who had done it, damn that man. Maybe Hatton had been correct, and Richard couldn’t trust the Imperial Chancellor either. Richard wanted to blockade Calais and Ostend, force the traitors to surrender. He could not have dissent in his Empire. No-one disobeying his orders. Magnus was always a traitor, but to have Oudenberg, and now Amiens and Normandy as well, giving aid to the Dutch and Germans, without his permission, was beyond reproach. He would smoke out the lot of them dammit! He would have their heads on spikes! And here was Hicks, the bean counter, telling him that such a move would destroy them!

His breathing was short now. His temper was seething still. Without realising it he had already swung open the door towards the orchard. The large square of tress with its high wall lay before him. And there was the Empress Margaret. Shrouded and distant she might be, how Richard liked it of course, but she was here! In his space!

‘OUT!’ he roared. The sound cannoning back off the tight walls around him

The hooded figure of his wife turned in fright and then made for the far exit, her two ladies rushing in her wake, one taking her arm supportively. That was no good either, Richard thought passively. He rotated his wives’ ladies in waiting every six months to prevent her gossiping about him, maybe he should shorten that to three months.

He stopped his angry pacing. He hadn’t even known he was doing it. He unclenched his fists too.

‘You too!’ he barked whirling on his friend.

The Earl of Lennox looked tired. The man was old, sure, but the lines around his eyes and his grey complexion were nothing to do with age. The treason of Magnus and the others had taken its toll on him too.

‘Easy Richard’ The Duke replied, raising his hands in a placatory gesture. He kept them there as he began counting. ‘Ten, Nine, Eight…’ It was slow and deliberate, just as it always was. Richard closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He started counting too.

‘four, three, two, one.’ His eyes stayed closed as he felt Lennox’s hand on his shoulder.

When he opened his eyes, the old man’s were staring sadly back at him.

They stood in silence like that for a long time. Emperor and his father-figure. Richard mostly stared at the ground, Lennox never took his eyes off him he knew.

‘I’m sorry’ the Emperor finally said, meekly, like a child.

‘Nothin t be sorry for Dickie’ Lennox replied stroking the man’s cheek.

‘This is hard, there is no right answer’

The Emperor stepped back. Out of Lennox’s reach. ‘I know’ he admitted, again like a child who had just been reminded of his chores.

‘I want them dead Esme’ He said finally. ‘Magnus, Oudenberg, the whole lot of them. And Hicks is no better. A danger to the realm’s coffers? What is he talking about? We need to destroy Calais.’

Silence again.

‘Aye, yer right’ Lennox said, allowing his soft lowland lilt to break in. It soothed Richard. ‘But I seen the figures myself Dickie, we can’t go without the customs revenues from Calais. We’d be bankrupt in a month.’

‘Then what should I do?’ Richard said, not angrily but completely broken. He felt totally lost, and for once he could let it show. He only ever let Lennox see him like this. A tear ran down his cheek. It was safe to do that here. He hoped.

‘What should I do?’ he pleaded again, this time through a sob.

Lennox took a step forward. He placed a soothing arm around his Emperor. As the sobbing subsided he said ‘Well I was talking to Bill Stewart. He reckons we can land in St Malo and march east. Once you’re over there, no-one will dare oppose you. The Duke Of Brittany certainly can’t stop you. Then we go to Calais and take them down. I’ll be with you every step of the way, you know that.’

Emperor Richard thought for a long time. He retreated into his favourite corner of the Orchard. He could see both doors from this corner, it made him feel safe, and the sun lit the top half of the wall at this time of day. He stood pensively for a few minutes, Lennox remained rooted to the spot. Then Richard nodded. ‘When?’

‘Spring’

‘Good, thank you Esme’

Silence returned again.

‘Before you go’ Richard asked, not that Lennox had shown he was about to leave ‘dismiss Hicks for me, and ask Maxwell to get up to speed on the Imperial job, I feel our Chancellor is not long for his job.’

Inwardly Lennox whinced, another Englishman to be sacked and replaced with a Scot? Outwardly he just nodded.

‘Anything else, your Grace?’ Lennox asked, formal again now that Richard’s mood had passed.

‘Yes, one thing, do you still have eyes on the Empress?’ Richard asked, his tone level, his eyes again pointing at the floor. ‘Any further contact with our Duke of Richmond?’

‘None since January your Grace, when he asked her to intervene over the war. I will alert you if any further letters arrive from him for the Lady Margaret.’

‘Very good, thank you Lennox.’

Taking his cue, the Earl of Lennox turned to leave to make the arrangements to bring the traitors to justice. Behind him the Emperor of Britannia sunk to the ground and began to hug his knees.

Versailles, 29th November 1606

Jean Tserclaes was tired. The last year had seen success beyond his wildest dreams. Brabant was Catholic again. And his! But the job was far from done, and the last week had seen meetings and parlays with countless Princes, Bishops, Cardinals and Generals from across Christendom in order to bring the work to a conclusion. The Marshal of Europe strode through the colonnades to his rooms in the west wing of the palace. The rainy night sky outside being driven back by the dripping arched roof and the guttering torches. The Count of Tilly began to loosen his belt as thoughts of bed beckoned.

Britannia was fighting with itself, that was what he had heard. The Dukes Oudenberg and Normandy were arrayed against their Emperor. There was no better chance than now to secure the whole of the Low Countries and maybe even Normandy too, who knew? But then Borghese had arrived. Jean respected the Cardinal, he after all had the ear of the Pope, and he was stirring up enough fervour to cover France’s own land-grab. But now Tilly had to pay the piper. It seemed Hungary was in a mess. Those infernal Habsburgs, could they not go into oblivion quietly? Not a century ago they had looked to be the dominant power in Europe, now they couldn’t even deal with a pair of minor rebellions. And, of all people, they were coming to France for help.

The whole day Jean had been locked in debate with Borghese, Henry IV, and the Polish and Habsburg ambassadors. They were asking for aid, Tilly and his master were trying to evade their demands whilst Borghese gradually needled the French into helping. Wasn’t this after all the Faith Militant? The whole of Christendom in arms to push back the Protestant menace? The Cardinal was right of course, but Tilly knew that pipedreams and Holy missions were nothing compared to cold hard tactics. The east was all but lost. That was even if the Ottomans stayed quiet which they were unlikely to do. Better to focus on the Low Countries, they were much easier.

Of course Tilly needed to throw the other partners something. France could not be the sole beneficiary. He was thinking about Wurttemberg and Bohemia when a voice behind him caused him to turn. ‘My Lord!’ It cried.

‘I told you the Count Tilly is not to be disturbed he has retired for the night!’ came a curt reply. Jean recognised that second voice, it was Fauzere, his steward. The man himself came around the corner at the end of the colonnade pursuing a man in white robes. Was that, a Bishop?

‘I am sorry my Lord’ Fauzere said to Tilly ‘your excellency, please leave the Count be, you can see him in the morning.’ This last to the man in white, so he was a Bishop.

‘It’s ok Fauzere, I will see his excellency’ Tilly said re-tightening his belt and pushing the door open to his chamber.

‘Please, your excellency, do you come in’

The Bishop entered, and in the pale candle light of the ante chamber Tilly could see that he was young, very young, perhaps no more than 25 or so.

‘Thank you, my Lord’ the young man said ‘my apologies for the late hour, but I have been trying to reach you all day, and despite my office, I was barred entry.’

‘Of course, your excellency’ Tilly said, sitting down and beginning to unlace his boots. He indicated for the Bishop to sit in the wooden chair opposite him. ‘What did you hope to see me about?’

The Bishop ruffled his robes awkwardly and Tilly realised he was looking for something. Then with a jangle a large set of dark grey keys emerged from the white folds. The Bishop held them out to the Marshall of Europe.

‘My Lord, I bring you the keys to the Vendee, expressly the keys to the fortress of Talmont. The whole region is ready to rebel in favour of the true faith. The Duke of Brittany is weak, and his English masters are distracted. I give you my word as a Holy father, that should you invade tomorrow then the County shall be yours, mayhaps Nantes too.’

Tilly left his boots loosened around his ankles. He reached over and took the keys from the Bishop. There in the end of the key was the heart of the Vendee. It was true. Tilly thought about the spoils of war, and the map of Europe he kept in his head. He looked up to the young Bishop, whose eyes excitedly gazed back at him in the candlelight.

‘Thank you, your excellency, I am sorry I did not ask your name?’

‘Du Plessis, My Lord, Armand Du Plessis, recently elected Bishop of Lucon. You may know my father the Seigneur de Richelieu?

Tearmann, Tir na Gaelige, 7th January 1607

Grainne Ni Mhaille was home. After almost a year sailing across the Atlantic, avoiding the Britannic patrols and deadly storms, she had been to Paris and was now back in sight of Tearmann. As her riverboat plied up the Gearthafilli River she saw the Ui Neill Hall on the hill overlooking the sanctuary. The town was not even 50 years old but already it was the largest Irish-speaking settlement Grainne had ever seen, it made Castlebar look like a tiny hamlet.

In the dying light of sunset the chimneys of the hundred or so huts and taverns added smoke to the sky. Above them rose the Ui Neill Hall. Its pitched roof like the great palaces in the old country, save that this one was made with wood the colour of the natives’ skin. Tearmann was not organised, nor particularly pretty, not after Paris, but it was home.

On the dock she could see a huge man staring downstream at her. He was monstrous, easily a torso bigger than the next man on the dock. That and his mob of red hair cascading down his shoulders told her it could only be one man. Roe O’Donnell. As the boat touched the dock, his face remained impassive. The dark eyes lancing out from the tangle of red hair and beard. Grainne stepped lightly from the boat and strode up to the O’Donnell keeping her eyes fixed on hers, though they were at the same height as his navel.

‘Roe’ she nodded in greeting. The Red man just stared back, only a tiny glint in one eye betraying his true feelings.

‘Welcome back’ he said dead-pan. ‘He wants to see you’. He could only be one person.

‘Lead on’ Grainne responded. She and Roe spoke only few words in public, they could catch up and get drunk later, now they needed to project their image of strength to the people. It was one of the few things keeping the Kingdom alive.

Roe turned and Grainne followed. As they walked through the muddy streets of Tearmann, Grainne could see the signs of growth. New, larger houses, were being built and the children who came out to greet her seemed taller and wider than before. Clearly harvest had been good. The early evening was not chill, and the sound of insects really helped Grainne to feel like she was home. Most of the people they passed, save the children, did not meet her eye, or even look at her, walking with Roe O’Donnell did that to you.

After a while they reached the palisade around the Ui Neill Hall. The large skeleton of an alligator hung above the open gateway. Aodh had killed it himself. His guard – flanked by two huge Africans with Axes - lined the way to the hall, Roe and Grainne pushed past them and through the doors without a word. Only them on the entire earth could do so without permission.

The hall was dark and smoky. Tiny movements in the shadows the only sign that it was occupied. The great fire in the centre the only source of light.

‘So, you are back?’ Came the voice from the gloom at the far end.

Neither Roe or Grainne said a word, they just walked past the fire until they could see the throne by its light. On a raised dais it rested, twisted bronze wood. On it sat a tall dark man with razor-like features. His eyes were darker than Roe’s but they blazed in the light of the fire. Both Grainne and Roe knelt before him as he stood. Noise in the shadows told them that the few other occupants did the same.

‘Leave us’ The High King of the Gaels said. Sounds of shuffling again. Then the voice spoke again ‘rise, my friends.’

Grainne stood and looked up. Aodh Ui Neill was standing in front of her, the red paint under his eyes livid in the fire light. The dark man grinned and embraced his pirate Queen. ‘Good to have you back Grainne’ he said. As he pulled back, a meaty paw smacked into her spine as Roe gave her his informal welcome. It would have floored her had she not been ready.

‘Good to be back’ Grainne said, punching a tiny fist into a muscled bicep the size of an Oxen’s thigh in response.

‘What news from the Old World?’ Asked Aodh eagerly.

‘We have friends and allies.’ Grainne replied. ‘The French gave us money to buy weapons and ships from New York.’ They want us to cause havoc to the English this side of the Ocean.’

Her news was as welcome as she thought. Aodh’s grin grew even wider and Roe howled like a wolf. ‘And the other thing?’ He asked impatiently.

‘The Britannics are falling apart, if we are to rescue our brethren we will never get a better chance.’ She smiled and placed a hand on Roe’s arm, with the other she took Aodh’s hand. ‘This is it brothers.’

Roe howled again and looked at his King. ‘Can we?’ He asked like an excited child. Or at least, one who weighed over 140kg and stood almost 7 feet tall.

Aodh Ui Neill paused a moment, and then nodded. ‘Call up the Clans, Roe, it is time to bring our people home.’