I would say RIP France but Im also thinking we might get a badass Napoleon so maybe RIP is too early but still, the odds are just not in France‘s side here
The Undying Empire: A Trebizond Timeline
- Thread starter Eparkhos
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Quite interesting how Spain is split here.
I'm rooting for Aragon to survive a while here. In fact, I like the idea of all these leagues forming up from smaller states. The many maritime trading republics are cool to and hope they get more spotlight. I would not mind the Rhinemouths being detached from France either.
You know, it seems to me that without the Ottoman's being a boogeyman for Christendom as long, that France would be the scary juggernaut of Europe to many of the smaller or weaker states. I could see everyone, including England nibbling away at it in times of weakness, just to contain them.
I'm rooting for Aragon to survive a while here. In fact, I like the idea of all these leagues forming up from smaller states. The many maritime trading republics are cool to and hope they get more spotlight. I would not mind the Rhinemouths being detached from France either.
You know, it seems to me that without the Ottoman's being a boogeyman for Christendom as long, that France would be the scary juggernaut of Europe to many of the smaller or weaker states. I could see everyone, including England nibbling away at it in times of weakness, just to contain them.
Just finished reading up on this. Got to say, this is probably my favourite tl currently. Looking forward to the crisis unfolding and whether The Trapezuntine Empire will prosper or perish. Even though both outcomes will be enjoyable to read!
Man I gotta say- those Nikaian borders seem really unsustainable. They are threatened by all directions except one- which itself is a recently conquered region with a big part of the populace hostile. Add to that no established military structure, except basic militia and a ravaged countryside. In short a veritable house of cards, which is as per the Pasha's design I would think. Trebizond needs to digest their conquests and secure their eastern borders, while Ottomans need to end and recover from the civil war.
So then this becomes a game of bluff between Trapezous and the Sublime Porte. Both know that this situation is not sustainable, and whoever blinks first loses the chance to control much of western anatolia.
I am willing to bet that the coming decade is going to be an interesting one...
But you have to consider that the Ottomans are surrounded on all sides by enemies and that those enemies have incredibly easy access to the Ottomans core. Trebizond, however, has a friendly Georgia in their eastern border along with having just secured it, the only threat to Trebizond that isn't the Porte is Karaman, but the Qutgulid Empire is still nominally allied with Trapezous and would jump at whatever opportunity they have to expel the Turks further east. So its more likely that the Ottomans blink first.
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Eparkhos
Banned
Sorry, I fell asleep while writing last night. I should have the update out this afternoon.
So far, only the English and the Lusitanians y Castillans have colonies in the New World. New England encompasses Long Island and a good bit of land around Manhattan Bay and on Delmarva, as well as a mining colony on the lower Susquehanna and some scattered settlement by Waldensians and other oddballs across the Mid-Atlantic.
The Lusitanians (Castilla e Portugal) are more focused on eastward trade than in OTL, but still have a number of colonies in the New World. The Portuguese have scattered factories along the coast of OTL Brazil--TTL's Virginia--while the Castillans have colonized the coast of Cuba and established some outposts across the Carribbean and even on the Mexican mainland.
That's.....a very succinct summation of the OTL situation.
Cesare isn't so much attached to his father as he is attached to the power that having a relative on the Papal throne would give to him. Basically, everything he is/will be doing is all centered around carving an independent power base for himself in Romagna.
That's strange, I think I had something similar happen to me. I think what it is is that once you ignore a notification for a thread for long enough, it stops showing up altogether. I was never able to solve it, but there's probably someone out there with more experience with it.
It may look that way, but remember, something as comparatively minor as the Investiture Controversy led to 1204 and everything after, so the butterflies are more than capable of crossing the Adriatic. Cool name, btw.
Big indeed. I've estimated that more than a million people will be killed directly or indirectly (i.e., famine, plague, exposure, etc.)
Thanks.
So far, only the English and the Lusitanians y Castillans have colonies in the New World. New England encompasses Long Island and a good bit of land around Manhattan Bay and on Delmarva, as well as a mining colony on the lower Susquehanna and some scattered settlement by Waldensians and other oddballs across the Mid-Atlantic.
The Lusitanians (Castilla e Portugal) are more focused on eastward trade than in OTL, but still have a number of colonies in the New World. The Portuguese have scattered factories along the coast of OTL Brazil--TTL's Virginia--while the Castillans have colonized the coast of Cuba and established some outposts across the Carribbean and even on the Mexican mainland.
Well, you're not wrong.
This war will probably determine the power balance of Western and Central Europe for the next few generation.
I wonder what effect this will have of Trebizond, I mean the war itself won't touch them but there could be some definite knock on effects.
I doubt the ongoing war is going to affect the Balkans or Anatolia that much unless something happens to Epirus.
Yeah like I said the war itself won't directly effect Trebizond, but it could be hit by ripple effects.
For example in otl the Portuguese establishment of a trade route with India by circumnavigating Africa indirectly led to the Ottoman conquest of the Mamelukes. So even though the War of the Three Leagues will presumably be fought primarily in Central and Western Europe it will most likely effect people in the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe and those people could in turn do stuff that would effect Trebizond.
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I think the most likely way for it to affect Trebizond is for it to affect Hungary and/or Morea. For the former, this war could allow them to annex the Duchy of Carinthia, securing their western border and allowing them to focus on the Porte, or they could get caught up in the war and the Ottomans use this to their favours. Either way, there'd have to be a war between Hungary and the Turks for them change things.
The latter, and IMO more likely to affect Trebizond, depends on Venice getting thoroughly stomped on (or almost that) and Naples/France being too busy fighting in Italy and Germany (maybe Iberia?) to help Epirus, allowing Morea to seize the Venetian ships in their ports, conquer the southern Aegean islands under Venice and then invade Epirus and Thessaly, presumably whilst the Turks are busy either fighting themselves or the Hungarians. This would reinvigorate the Greek cause in the Balkans (duh) and, at best, give Trebizond an ally (until Constantinople comes into question that is) whilst at worst it would at least mean the Ottomans have a stronger enemy.
The latter, and IMO more likely to affect Trebizond, depends on Venice getting thoroughly stomped on (or almost that) and Naples/France being too busy fighting in Italy and Germany (maybe Iberia?) to help Epirus, allowing Morea to seize the Venetian ships in their ports, conquer the southern Aegean islands under Venice and then invade Epirus and Thessaly, presumably whilst the Turks are busy either fighting themselves or the Hungarians. This would reinvigorate the Greek cause in the Balkans (duh) and, at best, give Trebizond an ally (until Constantinople comes into question that is) whilst at worst it would at least mean the Ottomans have a stronger enemy.
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Part XL: The War of the Three Leagues in Italy (1517-1523)
Eparkhos
Banned
Sorry, no time for question responses tonight. I might not post tomorrow, these things are an utter female dog to write.
Part XL: The War of the Three Leagues in Italy (1517-1523)
The War of the Three Leagues has been described by some as the ‘War of the Leagues of Italy and the War of the Leagues of Germany and the Low Countries’. This may be true, and it certainly is an accurate reflection of the regional nature of the war. There were four theaters of the war--Germany, Iberia, Italy and the war at sea--but the two most important by far were Germany and Italy, and there was next to no overlap in combatants between the two regions, other than the obvious participation of France in both. As such, in order to give an accurately and timely description of this oh-so important war, Italy, Germany and the other fronts must all be described individually, in as much detail as circumstances will allow.
As previously mentioned, the chief combatants in Italy were the Marian League--consisting of Modena, the Papal States loyal to Hyginus II, Urbino, Tuscany[1] and Venice--and the League of Verona--consisting of France, the Kingdom of Lombardy and the city-states that were vassals thereof, the Papal States loyal to the Borgias, Savona and Naples. Neither were especially well prepared upon the outbreak of war--with the very large exception of Tuscany--and so the campaigns of 1517 can be described as a scramble to take the field first and steal a tempo[2] from the enemy.
The first battles of the war were fought north and west of Rome itself, as Hyginus and Cesare Borgia struggled for control over the Holy See itself. Cesare had a much better force in terms of both quality and quantity, while Hyginus had a not inconsiderable number of fanatics on his side and access to the Papal coffers, which would allow him to raise a mercenary host with great speed if left unmolested. As such, Cesare knew he had to drive Hyginus from Rome as soon as possible, and Hyginus knew that Cesare would attempt to do just that. For several days, the armies of the two magnates skirmished in the fields north of Rome, both trying to control the heights to the west of the city that would allow Cesare to reign hell down upon those below. However, the desperation that fired Cesare would prove to be his undoing. On 4 May, a gap appeared in Hyginus’ lines near the Black Forest of Latium, and Borgia forces charged into it in an attempt to role up the Pope’s lines. This was not, in fact, the tactical blunder which Cesare believed it to be but instead was a carefully-laid trap. The Borgia army was cut in half and isolated in two ravines, in which they were slaughtered without mercy by the deputy of the Prince of Peace. Cesare was one of the few not killed, instead being throne into the Papal dungeon to rot.
With the immediate threat neutralized, Hyginus turned to mobilizing and meeting the less immediate but still pressing threat to his south. Naples was in a personal union with France and its viceroy, the Count of Guise[3], had raised an army and marched on Rome as soon as word of the Marian League reached him. The Neapolitan host was quite large and was headed right for Rome, and it appeared as if Hyginus was up a creek. Thinking quickly, the Pope made contact with a monk named Thomas of Calabria. Thomas was a reformist priest in the vein of Savonarola, and during his decades-long service to the faith he had converted thousands of Neapolitans, noble and commoner alike, to his sect, called the Deuservii[4]. Alexander VI had attempted to outlaw the Deuservii to no avail, and so Thomas was no friend of the Borgias or their allies. Hyginus offered to host a church council to adopt some of the Deuservii’s ideas if they slowed the Neapolitan advance, and Thomas leapt at the opportunity to secure official support. The Count of Guise was found dead a few days later, having ‘choked in his sleep’, and after his unfortunate passing the Neapolitan host shattered, as Deuservus noblemen led entire contingents off to God only knows where. However, Naples still remained a threat, and so Hyginus wrote to Ferdinand III of Aragon, who was a young and eager ruler[5], and offered to restore the Crown of Naples to the Aragonese if they would only come and take it from the French. Ferdinand too leapt at the opportunity, and within a few months Guise’s successor was dealing with a Deuservii revolt and an Aragonese invasion, which would knock Naples out of the war indefinitely.
Further north, Tuscany was leading the charge against the Lombards. One of Savonarola’s closest students and the Tuscan secretary of war, Niccolo Machiavelli, had been tasked with leading a host of 15,000 men into the Po Valley to establish a buffer zone to protect Tuscany while more forces were mobilized[6]. This he did quite well, driving off a Lombard strike against Parma by the Vicomte of Saluzzo and reducing several fortresses across Romagna, helping the Modense take Bologna and reducing a half-dozen fortresses south of the Po with his considerable siege train. He attempted to take both Piacenza and Cremona but failed. He decisively defeated another Lombard host led by the French viceroy, Pierre Terrail, at the Battle of Pontenure in late May, but was unable to take Piacenza from the remnants of Terrail’s force despite several months of bombardment. Cremona too remained steadfast, its defenders repulsing several attempts to cross the Po and sending at least two very expensive cannons to the bottom of the river. Machiavelli retired into Modense territories that winter. The Modenese, under Alfonso d’Este, had also been hard at work, reducing Rimini and Ravenna alongside the Urbinites, and aiding the Venetians in their long and bloody siege of Ferrara, which controlled the lower part of the Po Plain. Finally, on 24 November, Ferrara was taken by an army under the personal command of Loredan, the Doge, but it was too late in the year to make strategic use of it.
The French themselves were notably absent during the 1517 campaign season, as a sizeable peasant revolt in Occitane had drawn off Louis XII and much of his army. The young king, however, was determined to make up for lost time in 1518, and in late March he and a host of some 25,000 men descended onto the Italian plain at Ivrea. They raced down the Po Valley with surprising speed, sufficiently spooking Machiavelli into withdrawing back into Tuscany, and reliving the hard-pressed Piacenza and installing a fresh garrison. Then, the French continued moving down the south bank of the Po, ravaging the lands of Modena as punishment for the breaking of their ancient alliance. Parma, Modena and Bologna were all fired upon and the lands around them devastated with fire and sword, while Regio was outright taken due to the actions of a duplicitous burgher. The Reggians had never been very fond of the Modense, and so Louis allowed them to massacre their Modense rulers to satisfy their bloodlust and ensure their loyalty to the French cause in Italy. After taking Reggio, he continued moving. The Urbinites fled into the hills as the French advanced, choosing dishonor over death, while the Modense and the Venetians withdrew across the Po itself. Louis laid siege to Ferrara, while hurried fortifying and gun-smithing had turned into the second most heavily-fortified city in Italy second only to the great fortress city of Italy. However, after several days, Louis decided his time was better spent elsewhere and left the siege camps outside of the city, leaving behind a few thousand men and a great number of cannons to keep up the siege. Then he crossed the Po west of Île-de-Roi, a heavily fortified river island that kept the Venetians from sailing further upriver, and moved to pursue the Venetians and the Modense, who were caught completely off-guard. Despite the heroic bravery of the Venetian rearguard, the French were able to force a crossing of the Adige and caught up with the retreating Marians at the small village of Agna, on 23 July 1518.
The Battle of Agna was more of a massacre than a battle. The primarily mercenary hosts of the Marians were completely demoralized, while the French and Lombards were incredibly confident. Loredan led the Venetians from the front, giving them a somewhat effectively morale boost, but the complete cowardice of the Modenese reduced this. The two armies lined up on the north bank of the Adige, the French occupying the Veronan right and center, and the Lombards the left. The Marians deployed the Venetians on the left and the center, while the Modenese were deployed on the right. The hope was that the weaker Lombards would be less effective against the weak Modenese, but the opposite happened. As soon as battle was joined, a steady line of Frenchmen advanced silently in their shining armor on a bright summer day, hitting the Venetians head-on. Then, the Lombards, many of whom had had their homes despoiled by the Marians, charged forward and went through the Modenese like a sledgehammer through wet tissue paper. The Venetian center was suddenly pincered and they collapsed, streaming from the field and being ridden down by the French and the Lombards. More than ten thousand Marian soldiers were dead for less than 3,000 Veronese, and the sheer morale blow of the battle was crippling.
After Agna, the French and Lombards spread out across the plains, laying siege to and taking more than two dozen cities and fortresses, a mixture of Venetian, formerly Lombard and Modenese. Parma, Bologna and Rovigo were all taken without a fight, while Modena and Ferrara were ground down into the Renaissance versions of Stalingrad before the besieging commanders decided it was best to just try and wait them out. By the end of the year, the French and the Lombards controlled the vast majority of the lowlands, the only failures being at the two aforementioned sieges and the Battle of Sarsina, where a Lombard probing force was given a bloody nose by an Urbinite army under the command of the Duke himself, ---- de’Medici.
After a brief hiatus, fighting resumed in the spring of 1519. Modena had been effectively crippled, but the other Marian states had finally reached their stride and would be more than capable of picking up the slack. Tuscany and the Papal States had both mobilized most of their levies, albeit while leaving substantial reserves, and Urbino had completed the assembly of its mixed citizen and mercenary army over the winter of 1518 and 1519. The Venetians, meanwhile, were rapidly reassembling their almost entirely mercenary army; as will be touched on in the section about the war at sea, the Savonese were incapable of operating east of the Straits of Messina, and so La Serenissima was able to keep her trade routes to Egypt open and thus her coffers full. Louis does not seem to have realized this, for that spring he dispatched 10,000 soldiers from his 35,000 strong host (by now a motley mixture of Frenchmen and Lombards) under Gaston de Foix to reinforce the defenders of Paris.This left him with only 40,000 men--his own host, plus the armies besieging Ferrara and Modena, as well as detachments helping the Savonese defend against Tuscan raiding in Liguria--against the 60,000 men of the coalition.
After spending several more weeks bashing his head against the heavily pock-marked walls of Ferrara, Louis decided to attack Tuscany, hoping to take the fight to the enemy heartlands and draw pressure from the Savonese. He and his personal army marched south into the Apennine passes south of Bologna. The king had hoped to keep this march at least somewhat quiet, but he had underestimated, as so many northerners had before, the loyalty the people of Italy felt to the Pope. Hyginus was informed by his network of spies of the Franco-Lombard path and concluded that there was only one destination they could possible have in mind; Florence. He personally led an army of 15,000 men north to help defend the city, joining the 20,000 men Machiavelli had already mustered. The two armies camped at the small town of Calenzano, near the mouth of the passes, cannons dug in and pointing at the mouth of the slot.
On 22 May, Louis and his army arrived, pouring out of the pass under heavy fire. They formed up on the plains below the pass as the king tried to organize a combined assault on the ridge and the forces positioned there, but any units that advanced were absolutely shredded as every cannon turned to fire upon them. Finally, after more than 10,000 Frenchmen and Lombards had assembled, Louis concluded his only options were withdrawal or an all-out assault to take the ridge. He chose the latter, and at noon precisely the assault began. Thousands of soldiers stormed across the by now blood-stained fields and up the ridge, cannons carving long trails through them but failing to halt their desperate advance. The leading edge of this wave rolled up the hill and into the lines of Hyginus and his soldiers, standing in close formation at the spine of the ridge. The wall of advancing swords and maces slammed into their pike hedge, corpses being spitted by the sheer number of men hurtling themselves forward. Overwhelmed, the Papal forces began to waver, and it seemed as if the mercenary-based force might break and flee. But then, over the spine of the ridge, came the Tuscans, who had been occupied taking mass[7]. With the Florentines behind them, Hyginus and his men turned back the oncoming tide. After several hours, Louis was forced to sound a retreat. The Franco-Lombards fell back into the pass, then eventually pulled back entirely.
Calenzano had the potential to be a crushing victory for the Marians, but they failed to follow it up. Hyginus and his army were too exhausted to give chase, while Machiavelli feared that he could be outmaneuvered in the warren of passes and valleys that made up the spine of the Apennines. As such, they were content to allow the French to withdraw and regroup on the plains. The Urbinites made several raids against the exposed French flank, even managing to resupply the garrison of Ferrara in a fly-by-night attack. However, de’Medici feared drawing attention to his small principality while the Tuscans and the Pope were unable or unwilling to support him. He would no longer have to be worried about this after the middle of July, however, as that was when Padua, which the Venetians had managed to hold despite nearly a year of siege, fell. Louis and his army immediately poured into Terrafirma, ravaging the country and confining the Venetians into their castles and fortresses, many of which were taken easily or pounded into submission. Louis went so far as to even fire on Venice itself from the mainland, and although the cannonballs all fell short, it succeeded in putting the fear of God into the Serene Republic. Louis spent the rest of the year prowling Terrafirma, looking for a way across the few scant miles of water which separated Venice from the mainland, and during his absence Hyginus and Machiavelli resumed offensives in the west. In early September, the Third Battle of Genoa[8] resulted in a Tuscan breakthrough, and Machiavelli was now in a position to effectively skewer Alessandria and Savona, forcing the Lombards to leave one to be taken.
Unfortunately for the Marians, Machiavelli would never be able to make this skewer. Louis and his army force-marched through a surprisingly mild winter to reach the Piedmont. Machiavelli was forced to abandon his winter camp and withdraw eastwards out of Liguria, effectively ceding the field to the numerically superior Franco-Lombard force. Rather than giving chase, Louis then set up his own winter quarters in the by-now completely moonscaped ruins of the former Third City of Italy, planning to resume the offensive the next spring. In his absence from the east, the Urbinites once again took the field, breaking the siege of Ferrara for a second time and providing cover for Giulio d’Este, the commander of Modena, to make a breakout and flee up into the Apennines.
In the spring of 1520, Louis broke camp again and resumed the offensive. He gravely needed to break the back of the Marian League soon, because the war in Italy and the ongoing fighting in Germany and in Iberia was draining his coffers at an alarming rate. The Lombard peasantry were also getting uppity, as many of them had had their homes and livelihoods devastated for a war they had no stake in. There was also the more pressing problem of a lack of conscripts and supplies, which was greatly hampering his war effort. The Marians, on the other hand, were also beginning to tire, but were doing far better, as the Venetian and Urbinite money-lenders had the prospect of French conquest and/or eternal damnation to worry about if they tried to call in debts.
After breaking camp, Louis and his force threaded through the hills and mountains of Liguria. He knew that Machiavelli would be watching the coast roads, and knew that if his plan were to work then he could not be caught out on the coastal plain. The trek was long and arduous, but after two weeks the Franco-Lombards emerged into the valley of the Magra River, the western edge of Tuscany. More importantly, they were behind Machiavelli and his army, with only Hyginus’ 10,000 men, who Louis outnumbered by 2:1, between him and Florence. Louis at once began force-marching towards Florence, Machiavelli’s surprised army racing behind him in hopes that they could intercept the French king before he reached their capital. The rule of Savonarola and his followers had been exceptionally cruel and dictatorial outside of Florence, where the number of supporters was much lower, and so as the French advanced the more libertine cities began to revolt, welcoming the French as their liberators. Lucca in particular was joyful, expelling their Tuscan garrison and hoisting the fleur-de-lis above their battlement. Bands of volunteers joined the Franco-Lombard column as it marched, driving its numbers even further higher. It seemed as if Hyginus and his army would be crushed.
But they would not. Hyginus knew the lay of the land, and he knew where the best place to make his stand was, namely at the pass of Serravalle, where the roads to Florence crossed the last mountain range between the city and Tuscany at large. When Louis and his army arrived at the pass in early June, they found Hyginus and his army dug in across the roads, dozens of cannons levelled at them and a wall of pikes several thousand strong facing them down. After a failed assault, Louis pulled back and tried to circle around towards one of the other roads, only to run into Machiavelli and the Tuscan army, who had been delayed by putting Lucca to the sword for their treason[9]. The Marians had the Franco-Lombards pincered, and all three commanders knew it. Louis broke off a rearguard, then bolted southwards, hoping to escape from the closing trap. Hyginus and Machiavelli hurtled after him, pursuing the fleeing king all the way to the valley of the Arno, then down that river towards the sea. All three armies were run ragged in their flight and pursuit, so much so that all three hosts lost soldiers to exhaustion and heatstroke. Finally, Louis reached safety at Livorno[10], which had been captured and held by the Savonese back in 1518. However, there was not enough space for all the men in the army to shelter within it until they could be sealifted away, and so Louis turned to do battle with the Tuscans, who were the closest of the two pursuing armies. The resulting battle was a bloody affair, the two armies remaining rigidly in position until Hyginus and his army appeared on their flank, forcing Louis and his men to flee back to Livorno. Those who could not make it in scattered and fled in all directions, most of them being ridden down by the Tuscans in the following days.
Over the next few weeks, the Savonese evacuated Louis and his surviving men back to Liguria and Provence. While the king and at least part of his army had escaped, their morale was utterly broken and Louis knew he would be unable to campaign again that season.
The Marians, however, had no such handicap. With Louis withdrawn from Italy indefinitely, they went into a bonanza. During the rest of 1520, the Marians campaigned against the Lombards from all directions. The Venetians managed to reconquer most of Terrafirma[11], while the Urbinites drove the French and the Lombards out of Romagna proper, moving into Modense territory and beginning the liberation of those lands. The Tuscans, meanwhile, resumed their offensives in Liguria, retaking Genoa and several other important ports, such as La Spezia and Rapallo. The Savonese put up a good fight, but they were too few in numbers to stem the rising tide. These offensives continued in 1521 as well, unchecked due to the worsening situation in France proper. The Lusitanians, whose strategic goals no longer made a strong France, allied or no, a desirable state of being, had turned against their former allies and were in the process of overrunning the Pyreneees. Louis was now occupied dealing with that, and could spare fewer and fewer resources to the War in Italy. By the end of 1521, Alessandria was under siege, Cremona and Piacenza had both been taken by the Marians and the lower half of the Po Valley had been cut off in its entirety. Verona was under siege and seemed to be on the verge of falling, and it was clear that Milan would be next.
And so, Louis, ever the gambler, had bet everything on one last throw of the dice. He had managed to scrape together a force of some 11,000 men in early 1522, almost the entirety of his reserves. He managed to persuade the doge of Savona, Francesco della Rovere, to provide a fleet to him, on the promise of exorbitant wealth after the war. More than sixty galleys were brought together at Savona as the final army was prepared for transport. Louis’ last hope was a direct assault on Rome itself. He hoped to land this force at Ostia, only a few miles from Rome, and march on the Eternal City itself, subsequently breaking the back of the Marian League and looting the curia treasuries. How delusional this was is a matter of speculation, but if things had gone perfectly then it is possible this bold plan may have succeeded.
But, of course, it did not. Word of this had leaked out and a Venetian fleet that had been bound to blockade Savona was reinforced with La Serenissima’s Sicilian squadron, putting together a force of nearly forty galleys. This fleet was waiting for the Savonese as they rounded Elba, striking into their flank with shocking force and sending several heavily-laden transports to the bottom. The Savonese moved to counter this, of course, the transports breaking off and turning west while the warships turned to meet their attackers. But then, as the two squadrons slammed into each other, the other shoe dropped. Two dozen Calvian galleys sailed out from behind a nearby isle, bristling with guns. The opportunity to make tremendous gains in what was clearly such a one-sided war had roused the Calvians to abandon their isolation, and now they fell upon their archrivals with a relish. Within an hour of the battle starting, only eight of the Savonese galleys were still afloat, running for open water where they may be able to shake off their pursuers. The rest were either sunk, in the process of sinking, or run aground on Elba or one of the surrounding isles. All in all, several thousand soldiers and even more sailors had been killed[12].
With the destruction of the Elba Expedition, the War of the Three Leagues was effectively over in Italy. The morale of French and Lombard forces absolutely collapsed, and most of the fortresses which they had so long held were abandoned without a fight, their defenders slipping away into the countryside to defend their homes and families. Only Milan and Turin held out by the end of 1522; the former because its commander, Terrail, refused to surrender without explicit orders from the king himself, and the latter because it had become the rallying point for the small number of soldiers who believed that they were much better off than they actually were and that Taillerdupierre’s counter-attack would turn the war around any second now. It was clear to any sane man that the war was over, but Louis refused to admit this, no matter how obvious it became. Finally, on 16 January 1523, Louis XII was killed by an arquebusier at Figueres; peace followed his death a few weeks later.
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[1] I misspoke in the previous update; Savonarola’s state was not the Florentine Republic but rather the Tuscan Republic, whose capital was Florence.
[2] This is a chess term that was popular in academic histories several decades ago. It essentially means to be able to move without your opponent being able to match you.
[3] His proper name was Louis d’Armagnac, but there are too many Frenchmen named Louis in this story, and so I will use his official title instead.
[4] Latin for ‘Slaves of God’.
[5] Ferdinand III was the posthumous son of Juan, Duke of Menorca, the son of Ferdinand II. His grandfather had managed to cling to life long enough to pass the throne directly to his grandson, then died a broken man in 1516. As with most young rulers, Ferdinand was eager to prove himself and hoped to achieve the ambitions of several Aragonese rulers and reclaim Naples.
[6] Remember, the Tuscans were hyper-militarist millinerians who believed they would be called upon to fight the armies of the devil with next to no warning, and so they were always ready for war at a moment’s notice.
[7] It’s quite ironic that the Papal armies were willing to fight without mass while the Tuscans were not, but it’s always possible Hyginus had given mass the night before.
[8] Genoa and its burned but still-standing fortifications had become quite the point of contention between the two armies, and it had been subject to near constant bombardment from both sea and land.
[9] This was shocking to many in this highly Christian world, and the Lucca Massacre would become workhorse of the early propaganda departments active in France during this war.
[10] ATL Livorno’s fortifications were built much earlier by the paranoid Savonarola, who feared that they would have to be used in a war with the pope.
[11] That is, the mainland territory which they had held before the war began.
[12] This was included here and not in the section about the war in the sea because of its direct relevance to the conclusion of the War in Italy.
Part XL: The War of the Three Leagues in Italy (1517-1523)
The War of the Three Leagues has been described by some as the ‘War of the Leagues of Italy and the War of the Leagues of Germany and the Low Countries’. This may be true, and it certainly is an accurate reflection of the regional nature of the war. There were four theaters of the war--Germany, Iberia, Italy and the war at sea--but the two most important by far were Germany and Italy, and there was next to no overlap in combatants between the two regions, other than the obvious participation of France in both. As such, in order to give an accurately and timely description of this oh-so important war, Italy, Germany and the other fronts must all be described individually, in as much detail as circumstances will allow.
As previously mentioned, the chief combatants in Italy were the Marian League--consisting of Modena, the Papal States loyal to Hyginus II, Urbino, Tuscany[1] and Venice--and the League of Verona--consisting of France, the Kingdom of Lombardy and the city-states that were vassals thereof, the Papal States loyal to the Borgias, Savona and Naples. Neither were especially well prepared upon the outbreak of war--with the very large exception of Tuscany--and so the campaigns of 1517 can be described as a scramble to take the field first and steal a tempo[2] from the enemy.
The first battles of the war were fought north and west of Rome itself, as Hyginus and Cesare Borgia struggled for control over the Holy See itself. Cesare had a much better force in terms of both quality and quantity, while Hyginus had a not inconsiderable number of fanatics on his side and access to the Papal coffers, which would allow him to raise a mercenary host with great speed if left unmolested. As such, Cesare knew he had to drive Hyginus from Rome as soon as possible, and Hyginus knew that Cesare would attempt to do just that. For several days, the armies of the two magnates skirmished in the fields north of Rome, both trying to control the heights to the west of the city that would allow Cesare to reign hell down upon those below. However, the desperation that fired Cesare would prove to be his undoing. On 4 May, a gap appeared in Hyginus’ lines near the Black Forest of Latium, and Borgia forces charged into it in an attempt to role up the Pope’s lines. This was not, in fact, the tactical blunder which Cesare believed it to be but instead was a carefully-laid trap. The Borgia army was cut in half and isolated in two ravines, in which they were slaughtered without mercy by the deputy of the Prince of Peace. Cesare was one of the few not killed, instead being throne into the Papal dungeon to rot.
With the immediate threat neutralized, Hyginus turned to mobilizing and meeting the less immediate but still pressing threat to his south. Naples was in a personal union with France and its viceroy, the Count of Guise[3], had raised an army and marched on Rome as soon as word of the Marian League reached him. The Neapolitan host was quite large and was headed right for Rome, and it appeared as if Hyginus was up a creek. Thinking quickly, the Pope made contact with a monk named Thomas of Calabria. Thomas was a reformist priest in the vein of Savonarola, and during his decades-long service to the faith he had converted thousands of Neapolitans, noble and commoner alike, to his sect, called the Deuservii[4]. Alexander VI had attempted to outlaw the Deuservii to no avail, and so Thomas was no friend of the Borgias or their allies. Hyginus offered to host a church council to adopt some of the Deuservii’s ideas if they slowed the Neapolitan advance, and Thomas leapt at the opportunity to secure official support. The Count of Guise was found dead a few days later, having ‘choked in his sleep’, and after his unfortunate passing the Neapolitan host shattered, as Deuservus noblemen led entire contingents off to God only knows where. However, Naples still remained a threat, and so Hyginus wrote to Ferdinand III of Aragon, who was a young and eager ruler[5], and offered to restore the Crown of Naples to the Aragonese if they would only come and take it from the French. Ferdinand too leapt at the opportunity, and within a few months Guise’s successor was dealing with a Deuservii revolt and an Aragonese invasion, which would knock Naples out of the war indefinitely.
Further north, Tuscany was leading the charge against the Lombards. One of Savonarola’s closest students and the Tuscan secretary of war, Niccolo Machiavelli, had been tasked with leading a host of 15,000 men into the Po Valley to establish a buffer zone to protect Tuscany while more forces were mobilized[6]. This he did quite well, driving off a Lombard strike against Parma by the Vicomte of Saluzzo and reducing several fortresses across Romagna, helping the Modense take Bologna and reducing a half-dozen fortresses south of the Po with his considerable siege train. He attempted to take both Piacenza and Cremona but failed. He decisively defeated another Lombard host led by the French viceroy, Pierre Terrail, at the Battle of Pontenure in late May, but was unable to take Piacenza from the remnants of Terrail’s force despite several months of bombardment. Cremona too remained steadfast, its defenders repulsing several attempts to cross the Po and sending at least two very expensive cannons to the bottom of the river. Machiavelli retired into Modense territories that winter. The Modenese, under Alfonso d’Este, had also been hard at work, reducing Rimini and Ravenna alongside the Urbinites, and aiding the Venetians in their long and bloody siege of Ferrara, which controlled the lower part of the Po Plain. Finally, on 24 November, Ferrara was taken by an army under the personal command of Loredan, the Doge, but it was too late in the year to make strategic use of it.
The French themselves were notably absent during the 1517 campaign season, as a sizeable peasant revolt in Occitane had drawn off Louis XII and much of his army. The young king, however, was determined to make up for lost time in 1518, and in late March he and a host of some 25,000 men descended onto the Italian plain at Ivrea. They raced down the Po Valley with surprising speed, sufficiently spooking Machiavelli into withdrawing back into Tuscany, and reliving the hard-pressed Piacenza and installing a fresh garrison. Then, the French continued moving down the south bank of the Po, ravaging the lands of Modena as punishment for the breaking of their ancient alliance. Parma, Modena and Bologna were all fired upon and the lands around them devastated with fire and sword, while Regio was outright taken due to the actions of a duplicitous burgher. The Reggians had never been very fond of the Modense, and so Louis allowed them to massacre their Modense rulers to satisfy their bloodlust and ensure their loyalty to the French cause in Italy. After taking Reggio, he continued moving. The Urbinites fled into the hills as the French advanced, choosing dishonor over death, while the Modense and the Venetians withdrew across the Po itself. Louis laid siege to Ferrara, while hurried fortifying and gun-smithing had turned into the second most heavily-fortified city in Italy second only to the great fortress city of Italy. However, after several days, Louis decided his time was better spent elsewhere and left the siege camps outside of the city, leaving behind a few thousand men and a great number of cannons to keep up the siege. Then he crossed the Po west of Île-de-Roi, a heavily fortified river island that kept the Venetians from sailing further upriver, and moved to pursue the Venetians and the Modense, who were caught completely off-guard. Despite the heroic bravery of the Venetian rearguard, the French were able to force a crossing of the Adige and caught up with the retreating Marians at the small village of Agna, on 23 July 1518.
The Battle of Agna was more of a massacre than a battle. The primarily mercenary hosts of the Marians were completely demoralized, while the French and Lombards were incredibly confident. Loredan led the Venetians from the front, giving them a somewhat effectively morale boost, but the complete cowardice of the Modenese reduced this. The two armies lined up on the north bank of the Adige, the French occupying the Veronan right and center, and the Lombards the left. The Marians deployed the Venetians on the left and the center, while the Modenese were deployed on the right. The hope was that the weaker Lombards would be less effective against the weak Modenese, but the opposite happened. As soon as battle was joined, a steady line of Frenchmen advanced silently in their shining armor on a bright summer day, hitting the Venetians head-on. Then, the Lombards, many of whom had had their homes despoiled by the Marians, charged forward and went through the Modenese like a sledgehammer through wet tissue paper. The Venetian center was suddenly pincered and they collapsed, streaming from the field and being ridden down by the French and the Lombards. More than ten thousand Marian soldiers were dead for less than 3,000 Veronese, and the sheer morale blow of the battle was crippling.
After Agna, the French and Lombards spread out across the plains, laying siege to and taking more than two dozen cities and fortresses, a mixture of Venetian, formerly Lombard and Modenese. Parma, Bologna and Rovigo were all taken without a fight, while Modena and Ferrara were ground down into the Renaissance versions of Stalingrad before the besieging commanders decided it was best to just try and wait them out. By the end of the year, the French and the Lombards controlled the vast majority of the lowlands, the only failures being at the two aforementioned sieges and the Battle of Sarsina, where a Lombard probing force was given a bloody nose by an Urbinite army under the command of the Duke himself, ---- de’Medici.
After a brief hiatus, fighting resumed in the spring of 1519. Modena had been effectively crippled, but the other Marian states had finally reached their stride and would be more than capable of picking up the slack. Tuscany and the Papal States had both mobilized most of their levies, albeit while leaving substantial reserves, and Urbino had completed the assembly of its mixed citizen and mercenary army over the winter of 1518 and 1519. The Venetians, meanwhile, were rapidly reassembling their almost entirely mercenary army; as will be touched on in the section about the war at sea, the Savonese were incapable of operating east of the Straits of Messina, and so La Serenissima was able to keep her trade routes to Egypt open and thus her coffers full. Louis does not seem to have realized this, for that spring he dispatched 10,000 soldiers from his 35,000 strong host (by now a motley mixture of Frenchmen and Lombards) under Gaston de Foix to reinforce the defenders of Paris.This left him with only 40,000 men--his own host, plus the armies besieging Ferrara and Modena, as well as detachments helping the Savonese defend against Tuscan raiding in Liguria--against the 60,000 men of the coalition.
After spending several more weeks bashing his head against the heavily pock-marked walls of Ferrara, Louis decided to attack Tuscany, hoping to take the fight to the enemy heartlands and draw pressure from the Savonese. He and his personal army marched south into the Apennine passes south of Bologna. The king had hoped to keep this march at least somewhat quiet, but he had underestimated, as so many northerners had before, the loyalty the people of Italy felt to the Pope. Hyginus was informed by his network of spies of the Franco-Lombard path and concluded that there was only one destination they could possible have in mind; Florence. He personally led an army of 15,000 men north to help defend the city, joining the 20,000 men Machiavelli had already mustered. The two armies camped at the small town of Calenzano, near the mouth of the passes, cannons dug in and pointing at the mouth of the slot.
On 22 May, Louis and his army arrived, pouring out of the pass under heavy fire. They formed up on the plains below the pass as the king tried to organize a combined assault on the ridge and the forces positioned there, but any units that advanced were absolutely shredded as every cannon turned to fire upon them. Finally, after more than 10,000 Frenchmen and Lombards had assembled, Louis concluded his only options were withdrawal or an all-out assault to take the ridge. He chose the latter, and at noon precisely the assault began. Thousands of soldiers stormed across the by now blood-stained fields and up the ridge, cannons carving long trails through them but failing to halt their desperate advance. The leading edge of this wave rolled up the hill and into the lines of Hyginus and his soldiers, standing in close formation at the spine of the ridge. The wall of advancing swords and maces slammed into their pike hedge, corpses being spitted by the sheer number of men hurtling themselves forward. Overwhelmed, the Papal forces began to waver, and it seemed as if the mercenary-based force might break and flee. But then, over the spine of the ridge, came the Tuscans, who had been occupied taking mass[7]. With the Florentines behind them, Hyginus and his men turned back the oncoming tide. After several hours, Louis was forced to sound a retreat. The Franco-Lombards fell back into the pass, then eventually pulled back entirely.
Calenzano had the potential to be a crushing victory for the Marians, but they failed to follow it up. Hyginus and his army were too exhausted to give chase, while Machiavelli feared that he could be outmaneuvered in the warren of passes and valleys that made up the spine of the Apennines. As such, they were content to allow the French to withdraw and regroup on the plains. The Urbinites made several raids against the exposed French flank, even managing to resupply the garrison of Ferrara in a fly-by-night attack. However, de’Medici feared drawing attention to his small principality while the Tuscans and the Pope were unable or unwilling to support him. He would no longer have to be worried about this after the middle of July, however, as that was when Padua, which the Venetians had managed to hold despite nearly a year of siege, fell. Louis and his army immediately poured into Terrafirma, ravaging the country and confining the Venetians into their castles and fortresses, many of which were taken easily or pounded into submission. Louis went so far as to even fire on Venice itself from the mainland, and although the cannonballs all fell short, it succeeded in putting the fear of God into the Serene Republic. Louis spent the rest of the year prowling Terrafirma, looking for a way across the few scant miles of water which separated Venice from the mainland, and during his absence Hyginus and Machiavelli resumed offensives in the west. In early September, the Third Battle of Genoa[8] resulted in a Tuscan breakthrough, and Machiavelli was now in a position to effectively skewer Alessandria and Savona, forcing the Lombards to leave one to be taken.
Unfortunately for the Marians, Machiavelli would never be able to make this skewer. Louis and his army force-marched through a surprisingly mild winter to reach the Piedmont. Machiavelli was forced to abandon his winter camp and withdraw eastwards out of Liguria, effectively ceding the field to the numerically superior Franco-Lombard force. Rather than giving chase, Louis then set up his own winter quarters in the by-now completely moonscaped ruins of the former Third City of Italy, planning to resume the offensive the next spring. In his absence from the east, the Urbinites once again took the field, breaking the siege of Ferrara for a second time and providing cover for Giulio d’Este, the commander of Modena, to make a breakout and flee up into the Apennines.
In the spring of 1520, Louis broke camp again and resumed the offensive. He gravely needed to break the back of the Marian League soon, because the war in Italy and the ongoing fighting in Germany and in Iberia was draining his coffers at an alarming rate. The Lombard peasantry were also getting uppity, as many of them had had their homes and livelihoods devastated for a war they had no stake in. There was also the more pressing problem of a lack of conscripts and supplies, which was greatly hampering his war effort. The Marians, on the other hand, were also beginning to tire, but were doing far better, as the Venetian and Urbinite money-lenders had the prospect of French conquest and/or eternal damnation to worry about if they tried to call in debts.
After breaking camp, Louis and his force threaded through the hills and mountains of Liguria. He knew that Machiavelli would be watching the coast roads, and knew that if his plan were to work then he could not be caught out on the coastal plain. The trek was long and arduous, but after two weeks the Franco-Lombards emerged into the valley of the Magra River, the western edge of Tuscany. More importantly, they were behind Machiavelli and his army, with only Hyginus’ 10,000 men, who Louis outnumbered by 2:1, between him and Florence. Louis at once began force-marching towards Florence, Machiavelli’s surprised army racing behind him in hopes that they could intercept the French king before he reached their capital. The rule of Savonarola and his followers had been exceptionally cruel and dictatorial outside of Florence, where the number of supporters was much lower, and so as the French advanced the more libertine cities began to revolt, welcoming the French as their liberators. Lucca in particular was joyful, expelling their Tuscan garrison and hoisting the fleur-de-lis above their battlement. Bands of volunteers joined the Franco-Lombard column as it marched, driving its numbers even further higher. It seemed as if Hyginus and his army would be crushed.
But they would not. Hyginus knew the lay of the land, and he knew where the best place to make his stand was, namely at the pass of Serravalle, where the roads to Florence crossed the last mountain range between the city and Tuscany at large. When Louis and his army arrived at the pass in early June, they found Hyginus and his army dug in across the roads, dozens of cannons levelled at them and a wall of pikes several thousand strong facing them down. After a failed assault, Louis pulled back and tried to circle around towards one of the other roads, only to run into Machiavelli and the Tuscan army, who had been delayed by putting Lucca to the sword for their treason[9]. The Marians had the Franco-Lombards pincered, and all three commanders knew it. Louis broke off a rearguard, then bolted southwards, hoping to escape from the closing trap. Hyginus and Machiavelli hurtled after him, pursuing the fleeing king all the way to the valley of the Arno, then down that river towards the sea. All three armies were run ragged in their flight and pursuit, so much so that all three hosts lost soldiers to exhaustion and heatstroke. Finally, Louis reached safety at Livorno[10], which had been captured and held by the Savonese back in 1518. However, there was not enough space for all the men in the army to shelter within it until they could be sealifted away, and so Louis turned to do battle with the Tuscans, who were the closest of the two pursuing armies. The resulting battle was a bloody affair, the two armies remaining rigidly in position until Hyginus and his army appeared on their flank, forcing Louis and his men to flee back to Livorno. Those who could not make it in scattered and fled in all directions, most of them being ridden down by the Tuscans in the following days.
Over the next few weeks, the Savonese evacuated Louis and his surviving men back to Liguria and Provence. While the king and at least part of his army had escaped, their morale was utterly broken and Louis knew he would be unable to campaign again that season.
The Marians, however, had no such handicap. With Louis withdrawn from Italy indefinitely, they went into a bonanza. During the rest of 1520, the Marians campaigned against the Lombards from all directions. The Venetians managed to reconquer most of Terrafirma[11], while the Urbinites drove the French and the Lombards out of Romagna proper, moving into Modense territory and beginning the liberation of those lands. The Tuscans, meanwhile, resumed their offensives in Liguria, retaking Genoa and several other important ports, such as La Spezia and Rapallo. The Savonese put up a good fight, but they were too few in numbers to stem the rising tide. These offensives continued in 1521 as well, unchecked due to the worsening situation in France proper. The Lusitanians, whose strategic goals no longer made a strong France, allied or no, a desirable state of being, had turned against their former allies and were in the process of overrunning the Pyreneees. Louis was now occupied dealing with that, and could spare fewer and fewer resources to the War in Italy. By the end of 1521, Alessandria was under siege, Cremona and Piacenza had both been taken by the Marians and the lower half of the Po Valley had been cut off in its entirety. Verona was under siege and seemed to be on the verge of falling, and it was clear that Milan would be next.
And so, Louis, ever the gambler, had bet everything on one last throw of the dice. He had managed to scrape together a force of some 11,000 men in early 1522, almost the entirety of his reserves. He managed to persuade the doge of Savona, Francesco della Rovere, to provide a fleet to him, on the promise of exorbitant wealth after the war. More than sixty galleys were brought together at Savona as the final army was prepared for transport. Louis’ last hope was a direct assault on Rome itself. He hoped to land this force at Ostia, only a few miles from Rome, and march on the Eternal City itself, subsequently breaking the back of the Marian League and looting the curia treasuries. How delusional this was is a matter of speculation, but if things had gone perfectly then it is possible this bold plan may have succeeded.
But, of course, it did not. Word of this had leaked out and a Venetian fleet that had been bound to blockade Savona was reinforced with La Serenissima’s Sicilian squadron, putting together a force of nearly forty galleys. This fleet was waiting for the Savonese as they rounded Elba, striking into their flank with shocking force and sending several heavily-laden transports to the bottom. The Savonese moved to counter this, of course, the transports breaking off and turning west while the warships turned to meet their attackers. But then, as the two squadrons slammed into each other, the other shoe dropped. Two dozen Calvian galleys sailed out from behind a nearby isle, bristling with guns. The opportunity to make tremendous gains in what was clearly such a one-sided war had roused the Calvians to abandon their isolation, and now they fell upon their archrivals with a relish. Within an hour of the battle starting, only eight of the Savonese galleys were still afloat, running for open water where they may be able to shake off their pursuers. The rest were either sunk, in the process of sinking, or run aground on Elba or one of the surrounding isles. All in all, several thousand soldiers and even more sailors had been killed[12].
With the destruction of the Elba Expedition, the War of the Three Leagues was effectively over in Italy. The morale of French and Lombard forces absolutely collapsed, and most of the fortresses which they had so long held were abandoned without a fight, their defenders slipping away into the countryside to defend their homes and families. Only Milan and Turin held out by the end of 1522; the former because its commander, Terrail, refused to surrender without explicit orders from the king himself, and the latter because it had become the rallying point for the small number of soldiers who believed that they were much better off than they actually were and that Taillerdupierre’s counter-attack would turn the war around any second now. It was clear to any sane man that the war was over, but Louis refused to admit this, no matter how obvious it became. Finally, on 16 January 1523, Louis XII was killed by an arquebusier at Figueres; peace followed his death a few weeks later.
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[1] I misspoke in the previous update; Savonarola’s state was not the Florentine Republic but rather the Tuscan Republic, whose capital was Florence.
[2] This is a chess term that was popular in academic histories several decades ago. It essentially means to be able to move without your opponent being able to match you.
[3] His proper name was Louis d’Armagnac, but there are too many Frenchmen named Louis in this story, and so I will use his official title instead.
[4] Latin for ‘Slaves of God’.
[5] Ferdinand III was the posthumous son of Juan, Duke of Menorca, the son of Ferdinand II. His grandfather had managed to cling to life long enough to pass the throne directly to his grandson, then died a broken man in 1516. As with most young rulers, Ferdinand was eager to prove himself and hoped to achieve the ambitions of several Aragonese rulers and reclaim Naples.
[6] Remember, the Tuscans were hyper-militarist millinerians who believed they would be called upon to fight the armies of the devil with next to no warning, and so they were always ready for war at a moment’s notice.
[7] It’s quite ironic that the Papal armies were willing to fight without mass while the Tuscans were not, but it’s always possible Hyginus had given mass the night before.
[8] Genoa and its burned but still-standing fortifications had become quite the point of contention between the two armies, and it had been subject to near constant bombardment from both sea and land.
[9] This was shocking to many in this highly Christian world, and the Lucca Massacre would become workhorse of the early propaganda departments active in France during this war.
[10] ATL Livorno’s fortifications were built much earlier by the paranoid Savonarola, who feared that they would have to be used in a war with the pope.
[11] That is, the mainland territory which they had held before the war began.
[12] This was included here and not in the section about the war in the sea because of its direct relevance to the conclusion of the War in Italy.
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I don't think it'll go that far. In all likelihood French ambitions have been postponed
Unlikely. France never lost or gained massive swathes of land at once unless it was a war for a claim on the French throne.
They might lose their progress in North Italy, maybe Roussillon and chunks of the French possessions in the Netherlands, but that is it.
I hope Burgundy survives, as the POD is at 1447 and Charles the Bold may or may not have died in the same circumstances. Even if he died though, Mary of Burgundy wouldn't have died in 1482 due to an accident. I hope Charles the Bold had a male heir before he died. That would prevent the War of the Burgundian Succession from occurring, which would change history by a lot.
The main problem with Burgundy is that based on apanage law, the entire Duchy of Burgundy and the Picard Somme cities revert to the crown the moment the Burgundian line runs out of male heirs.
The moment the Duchy of Burgundy is lost, the Burgundian state becomes almost entirely a Netherlands-based power.
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