The Visconti Victorious 2.0

[The Undead Martyr]

Wow, that's a lot of Emperors (not to mention alliteration). Did the electors in 1458 declare all five titles hereditary, or did they retain some role in admitting people to the "college of usurpers"?

They declared their own empires to be hereditary but the German Empire is still the elective HRE, ie they still get to choose Germany's kings.

Also, I've set up a Discord server for the mod if anyone's interested.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

I'm pleased to announce that the Medieval 2 Mod is online, albeit in a fairly rudimentary state.

As to the next update, I have started it but am far from finished. I'm tentatively hoping to have it done over Winter break, so approximately six to eight weeks.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

In the Shadows Lurk Lions​

“Wolves, unlike men, are cunning enough to disparage war, and wise enough to feast after the battlefield is vacated by the living.”

In the name of maintaining peace, selflessly disclaiming all territorial ambitions, Italy’s great Empress marshalled her banners for a brutal and bloody war, a war which would in time totally consume one continent and irrevocably scar another. As with most such follies, there were a multitude of causes ostensibly served by the bloodletting; as always, the root cause- beyond the perpetual folly of men (and in this rare instance, a woman held to be the wisest of her peers; a one-eyed man must seem a sage in the land of the blind) was the naked fact that imperial consolidation naturally required establishing imperial boundaries. Rome had its limes, the literal lines of Civilization, of Empire- beyond those borders lurked barbarian tribes and other such quasi-mythic unpleasantries. The consolidation of Italy, Poland, and Burgundy into the nuclei of powerful, continent-bestriding states necessarily overshadowed much of Europe, and in those shadows skulked the wolves and the lambs alike. Germany and France- the two traditional continental hegemons since at least the days of Charlemagne- were now fully eclipsed by their more fortunate neighbors- and being eclipsed, thus passed into darkness, and thence were invariably seized and devoured, as always befalls those wounded beasts which trail the herd.

Bavaria was the first major haunch of meat to be torn from the heart of Charlemagne’s folly, but it was not the first injury dealt to Imperial Germany. Both Italy and Burgundy had competed viciously for the affections of the Swabian principalities, the heart of the old Hohenstaufen dynasty, the dynasty which had flown too close to the Sun and been burnt at the behest of the Roman Papacy. Now their rivalry would extend east into the homeland of the Welf and Wittelsbach dynasties, and what was perhaps a friendly competition between allied powers turned rather more sinister as the stakes grew greater.

The principal fault line which rent the old “Middle Frankish” Italo-Burgundian alliance in twain was the critical question: who would be granted the honor of claiming Bavaria for themselves? Matteo’s Wittelsbach widow survived the Warring Vipers period and remained an honored guest in Carlotta’s Imperial Court at Naples, and in 1455 she agreed to pawn her dynastic claim to the Empress, a time-honored tradition of dispossessed claimants in need of ready cash to fund their lavish lifestyles. This slender reed was buttressed by the rather more substantial hereditary claims of the Younger Ivrean Dynasty- the ambitious young lords of Aosta, Geneva, and Saluzzo, who each could readily lay claim Bavaria thanks to their mother, the late Margrave Amadeus’s second wife Julie, sister of the late Duke William of Munich.

Whether Carlotta truly intended to annex or subjugate Bavaria as she had partially done to Aragon remains a matter of some historical controversy. The generally (though by no means universally) accepted belief is that the Empress ultimately desired to pawn Bavaria to the Burgundian Emperor in return for Comital and Ducal Burgundy, thus buttressing her northwestern frontier and securing the last piece of the defunct Imperial Arelate not in Italian hands. Carlotta’s greatest fear was that the Luxemburgs would claim all or part of Bavaria in the resulting gluttonous bout of interdynastic imperialism- barely a generation prior, after all, the Luxemburgs had claimed and annexed the better part of the defunct Habsburg territories, wresting Austria and Carinthia from the Tuscan Visconti through force of arms; with the exception of Carniola and Tirol (Venetian possessions) and the Further Austrian territories in Swabia, which were in Italian hands after the Breisgau was ceded by Burgundy as part of the negotiations securing King John’s Imperial Election, all of Austria was now Luxemburg property. If the Hungarians secured Bavaria, then they would be in command of the northern and eastern approaches to the Veneto; Venetian commercial and diplomatic independence, a cornerstone of Carlotta’s grand strategy vis a vis her eastern frontier, would be permanently jeopardized. Worse, possession of Bavaria would open the door for the Hungarians to meddle in Swabia, a region of vital geostrategic significance to both Burgundy and Italy. It was bad enough in the Empress’s eyes that she had to accommodate the haughty Burgundians; for the Luxemburgs to involve themselves as well would be far worse, since the greatest danger of all was that the incorporation of Bavaria would place the Luxemburgs in the position to make the German crown a hereditary possession of their dynasty. After all, the Bohemian crown was de facto hereditary even as it remained nominally elective, and the Luxemburgs had long positioned themselves as the defenders of traditional German rights and interests against the insurgent upstart Burgundians and Italians. The young Sigismund, fourteen and barely into his majority at the start of the crisis, was bound by marriage ties to the Elector Arnulf of Saxony and the Hohenzollern count of Franconia- if he gained Bavaria, then essentially all eastern Germany would be a Luxemburg dominion or dynastic relation, and the rest of Germany would surely fall in line as readily as a Roman legionary before the legate’s lash.

The Empress’s strategic machinations, such as they were, invariably ran aground upon Emperor John’s intransigence. The Holy Roman Emperor claimed, not without reason, that as the anointed King of Germany he had first dibs on Bavaria and the right to partition it on his own initiative. Moreover, John balked at the idea of pawning off his ancestral patrimony, a vital precondition for Carlotta’s renunciation of any Italian claims and interests in Bavaria. Burgundy proper was increasingly distant from the Atlantic nucleus of the Burgundian Empire, but the territory was still a rich agricultural province and strategically vital to the long-term stability of Electoral Burgundy’s western frontier: Burgundy, along with Picardy, gave the Burgundians a highly dominant position vis a vis the French monarchy; unlike more distant provinces such as the Dauphinate or Flanders, the French never reconciled themselves to the legal loss of these two provinces and would spend much of the 15th Century seeking to reclaim them. Indeed, King Louis XI had already given support to an urban rebellion in Dijon, the rebels claiming to act in the name of “their sovereign Emperor, the King of France.” John, in any event, crushed the city and slighted its gates, and retaliated against France by backing the League of the Public Weal to cripple Louis’s royal power; the entire affair nevertheless gave John notice that France still harbored ambitions against Burgundy proper and probably Picardy, Lorraine, and Artois as well. He responded by elevating his title- formally, he was known as “King of Flanders”; informally, all referred to him as the King of Electoral or Upper Burgundy, occasionally as the King of Lorraine; Emperor John began listing all of these titles together, caring not a whit that he was tacitly claiming dominion over the Rhodano territories belonging to Italy further south.

Calmer minds may have yet avoided war, but there was little calm to be found in these desperate decades. Like sharks baited by the blood and bodies left adrift after a major battle, the great powers dashed themselves heedlessly towards the charnel pit in response to the sanguinary ambitions of smaller, meaner creatures than themselves. Emperor John, acting in his capacity as King of Lorraine and Holy Roman Emperor, unilaterally promised Bavaria to Count William of Holland (who was John’s vassal twice over); John may or may not have intended this rash enfeoffment to trigger a conflict- in the Burgundian telling, John intended to present William to the other powers as a compromise candidate, and was allegedly prepared to offer “a fair accounting” to his peers; realistically John was probably playing with fire and he certainly deserved no sympathy for getting burned. While on paper he may have had the legal authority to unilaterally award a massive slice of Germany to his ally, the ichor of German politics was always the gap between de jure and de facto imperial authority, and neither Italy nor Hungary would meekly accept William’s appointment until and unless they had won their own pound of flesh in the bargain.

John’s recklessness- presuming that he was indeed trying to denigrate Hungarian and Italian interests, even at the risk of a general war- has been interpreted in one of two ways (leaving aside the dubious interpretation that the Emperor was naïve enough to think that William could be kept firmly on his leash like a loyal hunting hound): either the Emperor intended to seize as much territory as possible to improve his dubious bargaining position (possession being nine-tenths of the law) or he simply discounted the strength of Italy and Hungary and presumed that they could be cowed into submission by a show of force. In the former case (favored by pro-Burgundian sources) there was perhaps a glimmer of ruthless realism underlying the Emperor’s high-handed diplomacy; in the latter case (favored by, inter alia, Italian and Hungarian chroniclers) John was attempting to slight his imperial peers and implicitly force them into temporary subservience to his autocratic dictates. In either scenario, John’s cackhanded gambit illuminated his general disregard for both Italian and Hungarian power- a shortsighted belief admittedly somewhat understandable under the circumstances, given that both powers had spent much of the past two decades crippled by dynastic infighting and internal rebellion. Both Burgundy and Europe would pay a steep price for the Emperor’s hubris.

William’s occupation of Bavaria was met with predictably fierce indignation and a resolutely belligerent response- Italy and Hungary had already secretly pledged a tactical alliance in which it was agreed that, in the event that Italo-Burgundian negotiations broke down, the Ivreans would gain Bavaria, in return for “substantive concessions” elsewhere; in retrospect, this is generally interpreted (in addition to probable support for an electoral bid by the Luxemburgs for the Holy Roman Empire) as a vague insinuation of Italian support for a reconquest of Venetian-held Croatia, Serbia, or Carinthia- perhaps with Carlotta making good on her claims to either or both of Greece or the Venetian mainland in the process- but it may also have referred to Constantinople (then occupied by Kastrioti, who was until his death in 1461 prosecuting a rearguard action against the Venetian conquest of Greece and Albania) or support for a new Luxemburg dynastic appendage carved out of northwestern Germany- Carlotta was far more accommodating of Hungarian expansion in and around the Baltic than in her own backyard. Predictably, both powers set on war rather than accept the Wittelsbach fait accompli and began marshalling their supporters.

Although William’s claims were well-received and his advance largely unopposed, an outbreak of plague in Munich decimated William’s army and nearly killed the Count himself. In the interim, the Italians succeeded in driving the Wittelsbachs from southern Bavaria, but the refusal of Venice to allow transit through their territory- for the wary Venetians suspected, perhaps correctly, that Carlotta’s soldiers would perhaps do more than simply pass through to Germany, since after all the Italians held the Swiss Alps and could plausibly pass through to Swabia without transiting through the Terrafirma- had unanticipated consequences when a harsher-than-usual spring kept closed the St Gotthard Pass, cutting off the Ivrean army from supplies and reinforcements from Italy. Pre-modern armies of course tended to live off the land, but this “foraging” in practice was little different from rank banditry, and as the Bavarian conflict stalemated the Ivreans’ increasingly harsh depredations denuded Bavaria of provisions and “incensed” the local population firmly against the Italians; this, and a retaliatory Burgundian tour-de-force through Swabia, peeled away the Italians’ local allies, with critical garrisons such as Augsburg and Ulm being overwhelmed and forced to surrender, and a Swiss revolt breaking out in the Alps thanks to John’s incendiary diplomatic missives; in the meantime, William’s forces only grew in strength owing to the financial and political support of the Emperor, which enabled William to rally the local German princes such as the Hohenzollerns to his cause. William’s greatest triumph, however, would come in Austria, for William’s ambitions extended further beyond that of Bavaria proper: in response to haughty threats from distant Poland William launched a daring invasion of upper Austria.

William had timed his invasion well: the Hungarians were still not fully prepared for war- they had not anticipated the conflict to degenerate so quickly. The Magyar nobility did eventually agree to finance an army to defend Austria, but political delays enabled William to seize Graz before the Magyars interceded. On March 14, 1459, William confronted the Hungarians in the shadow of the Carinthian Alps and destroyed them in open battle, affirming his newfound “rights” to upper Austria.

William’s military successes persuaded Carlotta to cut her losses vis a vis Germany, not least since a Wittelsbach Bavaria arguably suited her purposes better than an Ivrean Bavaria; she agreed to sign a separate peace with William, relinquishing Italian claims to Bavaria in return for a cash payment. William further agreed to abandon his military alliance with Burgundy, withdrawing his soldiers from Swabia and allowing the Italians to recapture their lost outposts from the Burgundians. The war now shifted seamlessly from a Bavarian succession crisis to a broader anti-Burgundian coalition, as the scope of Emperor John’s ambitions became apparent with his invasion of France in the sweltering summer of 1459, an invasion prompted in part by the announcement of King Sigismund of Hungary’s engagement to Louis of France’s sister Marianne that March and the implied beginnings of a rapproachment between France and Hungary.

King Sigismund’s new marriage signaled a broader shift in European high diplomacy. For the past two generations, the Luxemburgs had assiduously courted the house of Burgundy, building on the extensive commercial ties between the Baltic and the Low Countries to align the two kingdoms against the waxing power of the Norse and the waning power of England and the Hanseatic League. The two states certainly shared a common interest in opposing Scandinavian expansion into Northern Germany, but in practice they tended to view the matter differently: the Burgundians principally sought to assert their own hegemony in Western Germany to prevent a local rival from emerging to contest their visegrip over the English Channel, but their chief security concern was to the west, not to the east. The Luxemburgs, by contrast, never failed to view the Kalmar Union’s expansion as a grave and potentially existential threat to their control over the Baltic littoral. The union between Burgundy and England only heightened these divisions- while the Luxemburgs had granted preferential treatment to the Dutch merchants, they refused to extend the same courtesy to the English, a disparity which caused no small amount of consternation in London. Most critically, the Burgundians- notwithstanding their tactical and commercial arrangements with Poland- refused to break entirely with Italy before the outbreak of general hostilities: the Italo-Burgundian axis inaugurated by Azzone Visconti eight decades ago had proven a durable feature of European geopolitics even in the aftermath of the Visconti Dynasty’s self-immolation; this partnership between Pavia and Brugge posed a serious strategic dilemma for both the Luxemburgs and the French, and it had taken considerable effort on John’s part to disrupt it. Indeed, the rather abrupt rivalry between Italy and Burgundy- between the two most urbanized kingdoms in Europe- presaged their colonial competition in the following century.

Louis’ strategic marriage alliance came ironically at the nadir of Valois France’s power and prestige. Emperor John occupied Champagne in retaliation for King Louis’ rash attempt against Burgundian Picardy and he won a smashing success at Reims, utterly routing a French royal army and capturing the King’s uncle, Duke Charles of Normandy. In the wake of his victory, John- now made aware of the prospective marriage alliance, reacted rashly yet decisively to eliminate the danger. On April 15, 1459, he summoned his banners to Reims, where he informed his key vassals- the three principal being the Duke of Lancaster, the Duke of Lorraine, and the Duke of Brabant- of his intention to claim the French throne, thereby forging his own western “Triune Monarchy” to resist the Luxemburgs’ attempts at undermining Burgundian power in Atlantic Europe; this was no small fear, as after all a Luxemburg Holy Roman Emperor had died fighting for France at the Battle of Crecy a century prior.

Initial reactions to John’s pretensions were somewhat lukewarm. As a matter of law, John’s claims were uncritically accepted by his subjects- the English aristocracy, after all, were still not entirely reconciled to their Plantagenet Kings “losing” his rights in France and were hardly going to refuse a chance to plunder and despoil the lands of their ancestral enemy, especially when the Emperor promised to personally underwrite the costs of the expedition and the prosecution of the war seemed largely a formality. Yet neither John nor his vassals were fully prepared for the scale of the backlash they would face both within and outside of France: King Louis XI scorned his advisors, who pleaded with him to flee Paris, pleading that the city could not be trusted to hold fast, not against Burgundian artillery and certainly not given the mercurial and equanimous attitudes of the Parisians, who had once been partial to Burgundy in the past but were now rather less inclined in the present. Indeed, John intended to steal inside the city via chicanery, attempting to bribe the Butchers Guild- long a radical and broadly pro-Burgundian segment of the city- to open the gates on his behalf. Unfortunately for John and ultimately for Paris, the uprising was detected and some of the ringleaders arrested and executed; the panicked survivors then began an abortive uprising too early for John to take advantage of it. By the time John’s army had arrived, Louis’ soldiers had largely restored peace- but they had, critically, lost the Bastille, captured by Louis’ German mercenaries from Burgundian holdouts; the mercenaries then defected to John due to lack of pay and “ostentatious” bribes. John was nevertheless unable to force entry into the city proper: he was confronted not merely by the royal army but also the citizens of Paris, which- thanks to Louis’ own personal presence and antipathy for the “German” John and his mercenaries- now aligned themselves firmly and resolutely on behalf of their King.

The Gate at Porte St. Denis along the Walls of the Right (Northern) bank

Paris may have shrunk from her late-medieval peak of two-hundred-thousand souls, but her walls remained in the fullness of their glory- an imposing outer circuit constructed along the east bank at the orders of King Charles V. These very walls had rebuffed King Edward II’s victorious army in the 14th century- no medieval army could totally encircle the city, and indeed John’s army did not attempt to do so either. Instead, the Emperor resolved to simply bludgeon the city into submission via massed artillery fire. Burgundian cannons were rightfully considered the best in Northern Europe- the best in Europe, certainly, apart from the Venetians- and medieval walls were too thin, too tall, and too fragile to withstand sustained bombardment from gunpowder artillery. Burgundy focused his efforts on a multi-pronged attack, attempting to breach the walls near the Bastille to relieve his beleaguered allies within, as well as simultaneously forcing the northern gates to overwhelm and rout the outnumbered defenders.

Mons Meg, one of four great siege guns to be deployed against Paris​

The Burgundian siege began with an attempt to mine under the walls, but the Parisians noticed this and dug counter-mines- there are off-hand accounts to knights “grappling in the dark confines of the earth, the smell of powder and blood and the din of the dying their only guide forward”- but although the Burgundians did eventually succeed in detonating a mine in the north wall, the blast was much weaker than anticipated (water contamination, incompetence, and treachery have all been alleged) and a subsequent attempt against the walls was repelled with heavy losses on both sides. As the walls crumbled before the Imperial artillery, they ironically became even greater obstacles, the rubble both blocking passage and absorbing artillery fire better than the intact sections. Yet in the face of the Burgundian artillery and numbers, Paris could not hope to survive; her only hope was for relief, and no relief would come. Italian armies would not appear in France until the following year owing to political difficulties, and the King’s own loyalists were confronted with a Gascon invasion of Poitou and Anglo-Scottish piracy along the Norman coast, diverting what remained of the French aristocracy away from the capital as every baron and town retreated to defend their own lands. Paris would fight, and ultimately fall, on her own, abandoned by the Kingdom she nominally ruled.

John repeatedly attempted to negotiate a peaceful surrender; his losses were mounting, and time was not on his side. Many of his advisors pleaded with the Emperor to strike a deal and retreat, but King Louis- defiant to the end- refused all pleas, insisting that he would fight to the end and shed his own royal blood before he allowed his treacherous cousin into the city. Louis’ spine was stiffened by the surrender, on May 30, of the Burgundian holdouts in the Bastille, which eliminated the main danger to that section of the city’s defenses.

As May turned to June, the Burgundians- now at the end of their rope- determined on one final attempt against the walls. A new mine was dug which- unlike the previous attempts- remained undetected, and on June 5 it detonated, collapsing a section of walls of the Bastille. Fortuitously for Burgundy, the French had moved several of their artillery pieces into the Bastille the previous day, and the explosion resulted in a sympathetic powder detonation, leveling a good portion of the fortress’s outer defenses. King Louis XI and his royal guards committed personally to repelling the subsequent assault, but the King was grievously wounded in the melee, and his withdrawal precipitated a collapse of the defenders’ lines, giving the Burgundians a free path into Paris. King Louis XI was lost in the chaos, and never seen again; John’s men searched the city for three days but found no sign of the fallen French king. Some light to Louis’ fate was eventually discovered during renovations of Notre Dame in the 17th Century, when a small crypt containing a corpse in royal livery was discovered hidden behind a section of walls; this was widely accepted as King Louis’ remains and he was reburied with honors by the royal family. It is believed that Louis- mortally wounded or dead- retreated to the Ile de la Cite, and possibly requested (either of his followers or the clergy then present in Notre Dame) to be buried there, perhaps in secret; alternately, the King’s followers (in possession of their Sovereign’s mortal remains) may or may not have wished to hide Louis’ death in order to maintain royalist morale; they may have felt that the Duke of Burgundy would have forbidden a royal funeral or desecrated the body; or they may simply have perished in the brutal Sack which followed and taken their knowledge to the grave.

Cities taken by storm were almost invariably subject to atrocities, but even by the jaded standards of the 15th Century the Sack of Paris drew widespread comment and condemnation, because it was perpetrated by the crowned and anointed Holy Roman Emperor- the man ostensibly claiming additionally to be King of France- against his putative subjects, literal cousins, and fellow Christians. John’s partisans pleaded that the Parisians had proven themselves time and again to be rebellious and treacherous; this was rich coming from the man whose grandfather had literally orchestrated the murder of his own cousin the Duke of Orleans in the city streets, and the fact that the Burgundians’ own subjects in the Low Countries had famously revolted against and slaughtered much of the French nobility a century prior hardly burnished John’s reputation either.

Beyond the immediate death toll, the principal long-term ramification of Paris’ fall was the permanent abandonment of Paris for Tours as the new capital of the French monarchy. Paris had long been distrusted and denigrated by the Valois, and King Henry’s decision to move what was left of the French Court to Tours- an ostensibly temporary and entirely necessary military expedient- reflected a more permanent shift in France’s territorial composition: the inexorable reduction of the eastern provinces- the loss of Champagne, Picardy, and Normandy- forced the French Kings to abandon the Seine entirely and focus on the development of the Loire as their last leg of strength.

The slighting of Paris had an immediate and drastic demographic impact; comparisons to cities which suffered similar depredations in the period are instructive. Florence had, by 1450 (roughly two decades after Matteo’s Greens stormed its bastions and slaughtered the defenders of the revived Republic) largely recovered to its pre-civil war wealth and prestige, although its relative decline into the second city of Tuscany was a foregone conclusion (Siena, spared a sack and continually favored by both the Ivreans and the Visconti as their regional capital, had by the late 15th Century surpassed Florence in both wealth and population). Constantinople was thrice despoiled by foreign conquerors in the long and grueling 15th century- first by the Lombards under Ladislao, then by the Albanians under Kastrioti, and finally by the Venetians- and rebuilt and repopulated so many times that by the end of the century it was complained that the city had “been so overrun by foreigners and their foreign palaces” that it bore little resemblance to the Byzantine capital of the latter Paleologi emperors. And yet, when French Cardinal Richelieu passed through the city as part of a general pilgrimage through the Holy sites of Christendom, he remarked bitterly that Constantinople- a Venetian colony- was, at eighty thousand souls, twice the size of his native Paris; barely a century prior, when Emperor John of Byzantium had visited the French capital, he had undoubtedly felt the same bitter ruminations. Paris, for better or worse, had been the capital of the French monarchy, and for better or worse as the French monarchy’s power waned so too did Paris find herself eclipsed. But all of this lay in the future, and in the dark days of 1459 the French would have barely believed even that future possible, for they seemed to be living in the end of days.

In the wake of Burgundy’s bloody victory, the nineteen-year-old King Henry, former Count of Alencon, cousin of the martyred King Louis, son of the captive Duke Charles, and last hope for the Valois princes, turned his back on the smoldering shell of his fallen capital and fled west to Angers, where he attempted to rally his remaining loyalists against the invaders. Henry’s efforts were initially less than successful- the Duke of Gascony only refrained from declaring outright for Burgundy due to the sweltering admonitions emanating from Naples, the point stabbed home by a formal Italian declaration of war contra their erstwhile Burgundian allies and extensive lines of credit opened to King Henry by the Genoese; nevertheless, Duke Richard took the opportunity to complete his conquest of Poitou, ostensibly in the name of “maintaining the King’s royal government” without specifying which king, precisely, he was nominally acting in the name of- Henry certainly had few friends indeed below the Loire and could expect nothing good from that direction. The Duke of Brittany was more receptive to his nominal sovereign’s desperate entreaties, mainly due to Emperor John’s cackhanded diplomacy.

Brittany had traditionally leaned towards England and by extension Burgundy as the guarantors of their provincial autonomy vis a vis Paris; like Flanders, Brittany depended utterly on the sea and was utterly naked before the sea as well, and her natural interests therefore leaned strongly towards peace and particularly against war with the man who simultaneously ruled England, Flanders, and Germany and could thus strangle her foreign trade with barely more than an angry letter. In principle John should have easily won over Brittany by promising to respect the very same privileges that his father’s soldiers had literally fought to enforce on an intransigent French monarchy, but John- flush with victory- wanted to “bring Brittany into the fold” and ensure free access to Breton ports for his subjects and their commerce. Specifically, he wanted Brittany to crack down on piracy ranging out of St Malo, which was a major menace to both English and Dutch merchants operating the route down the Atlantic to Spain and Gascony, and he further demanded a guarantee of uninhibited passage of Anglo-Burgundian goods and soldiers up and down the Loire; if the Duke was incapable of meeting these demands then Emperor John proposed trading Brittany for Ducal Burgundy- this was a fool’s bargain at best, and it is not surprising that the Bretons rejected it out of hand. But it was John’s “request” that the Duke engage his daughter and heiress Anne to Prince Anthony, John’s youngest son, which forced Brittany into the French camp. John promised that the couple would rule Brittany as an independent fiefdom, but it was clear from context that John’s ultimate ambition was to reduce Brittany fully to vassalage and drag it inexorably into his clutches, not unlike what his father had done to England- Brittany would, at best, be (like Brabant and Scotland) a cadet apanage of the Burgundian monarchy, at worst just another province in John’s sprawling empire- and if there was one thing that the fractious Bretons agreed upon, it was that their country could not survive as a mere province, not if its commerce was to thrive.

King Henry, in his desperation, was by contrast far more accommodating and magnanimous- and, perhaps more importantly, fully over the barrel and literally within Breton power as an “honored guest” at Nantes. Henry’s offer was blunt and candid- he was prepared to marry the future Duchess Anne and, in his capacity as suzerain Emperor, elevate Brittany to a coequal kingdom with France, granting to Brittany the dignity she so desperately desired and guaranteeing that the Valois would not rule Brittany as a mere apanage, as they had done with other provinces that fell into the royal demesne. He was also prepared to make substantial territorial concessions in return for Brittany’s entry into the war against Burgundy- all of Anjou, the western half of Normandy, and the Atlantic port of La Rochelle and its hinterland were promised to his young bride, albeit as fiefs of the French crown in personal union with Brittany rather than a de jure cession of French territory; to sweeten the deal, Henry not only affirmed that these new dynastic acquisitions would be governed under the “traditional” privileges but would be fully exempt from all royal taxes, tariffs, and tithes during the Duchess’s lifetime. This allotment would give Brittany a predominant position in the Bay of Biscay and the Loire Valley, and together with promises of an Italian invasion of Burgundy were sufficient to entice Brittany to declare for the Valois.

Breton support came just in time for Henry, as England and Scotland both finally roused themselves to war on behalf of their nominal sovereign. Although the English parliament had granted an initial subsidy to John, they had refused to extend it, despite the indignation of both John and his Northumbrian banners, chief among them the Duke of Lancaster. Since the integration of Scotland into the Burgundian regime, marcher lords on both sides of the border found it impossible to engage in their traditional pastime of raiding and pillaging across the Anglo-Scottish frontier. Many therefore turned to military service abroad- the latter 15th century saw a renaissance in the “free companies” of Anglo-Gascon and Scottish mercenaries plying their trade on the continent. Many in England saw the Franco-Burgundian war as a chance to repeat the exploits of John of Gaunt and burn their way through the wealthy French countryside, and their Scottish counterparts quickly came around to the notion as well. The great Dunbar family of Scotland had married into the Lancasters shortly after Scotland’s conquest by England, and the Dunbars now joined their former enemies in pressing for war on the continent- after all, the Auld Alliance had been with the King of France, and John was now (allegedly) King of France ruling from (the despoiled husk of) Paris. For the first time in history, English and Scottish armies were preparing to march together under the same banner- the Burgundian Fleur-de-lys. A joint Anglo-Scottish army landed in Normandy, seizing first Cotentin and then Caen before moving inland to despoil Anjou. But the British were not the only “foreigners” to involve themselves in the Franco-Burgundian feud, for in 1460 Italy finally roused themselves from their stupor and crossed the Alps in force; the Anglo-Scottish forces found themselves confronted not only by the Bretons but also an army led by a young Ivrean Prince- Duke Victor Emmanuel of Aosta- who had initially determined to carve a principality for himself from the rotting corpse of southern France before being diverted north by the machinations of his sovereign Empress.

Twenty-two and handsome, brave and brilliant, arrogantly ambitious in the way that only talented men of means can afford to be, Victor Emmanuel had realized that Gascony’s fence-sitting meant that neither side of the brewing civil war was likely to raise serious objections to an Ivrean freebooter army descending upon the Gascons like locusts. The legal gauze bandaged around this nakedly opportunistic landgrab had been concocted in combination with the Lombard ambassador to Venice. Following the abdication of the last King of Jerusalem, his sister had sold away her vestigial claims to Palestine to the Republic; Venetians had no real interest in these claims beyond securing their control over Levant, but as “Queen” Elizabeth was a direct descendant of Henry of Aquitaine she had nominal claims on both Gascony and England, and Victor Emmanuel determined to buy those rights off the bemused Venetians. It was only the intense efforts of Carlotta, who outright arrested her nephew after learning of his scheme, that prevented the invasion from coming to pass; frenetic diplomatic negotiations quickly secured the marriage of Duke Richard’s daughter, the Countess Henrietta, to the young Ivrean prince, mollifying him with the county of Montpelier as a dowry and providing Carlotta with additional leverage to keep Gascony from defecting to the Burgundians. The captive Ivrean- spirited from his (admittedly quite lavish) tower cell to the wedding altar- then received from Empress Carlotta a most prestigious wedding gift: a crown of finely wrought Swiss gold, encrusted with emeralds and rubies and laden with promise- the crown of Ireland.

Italian involvement in Ireland was somewhat sporadic before the Ivrean conquest, but in the post-Warring Vipers period, the expansion of Genoese trade in the Atlantic saw an increased involvement between Britain and Italy. As the Burgundians naturally favored their own Dutch and English merchants over the foreign Genoese, Genoa turned west to the Emerald Isle, taking a new interest in the rich pastures and copper mines of the southern clans. Genoese interests had been implicated in the Ivrean plot against Gascony, and the Genoese became the first and most significant backers of the Ivrean invasion of Ireland, salivating over the prospective expansion of their commerce into a new and exciting corner of Europe.

Victor Emmanuel crossed the Alps in late August 1459, preceding the Italian invasion of Burgundy by several months. He distinguished himself well in skirmishes with British cavalry in Anjou and assisted in King Henry’s reconquest of Alencon in September 1459; John’s own army recaptured Alencon the following month, and indeed the “capture” was arguably more of a raid, but it was a welcome reminder to the Normans that their King had not totally abandoned them.

As winter settled upon a wartorn France, Victor Emmanuel and his army departed from St. Malo and landed near Cork. Somewhat inauspiciously, the Ivreans were scattered by winter storms, and it took the better part of two weeks for the Italians to rally together. That time gave the Lord Regent of Ireland, [lord], time to rally his forces and receive hasty reinforcements from England. Ivrea tarried further to recruit soldiers from the Irish clans, but his nominal claims to kingship won him little respect; his gold, however, did woo some fence-sitters to sign on as mercenaries, bolstering the Italian army to five thousand fighting men. His decision to support the Hiberno-Normans against the Gaelic King of Thormond, led the latter to ally with the pro-English Earl of Kildare and the powerful James, Earl of Desmond, these great southern magnates marching against the Italians.

The Battle of Tipperary is sometimes held out as proving the supremacy of the gun over the bow, but English historians rightfully point out that the English Loyalists were not fielding their famed Longbowmen- such men, like knights, were members of an elite professional warrior caste, and the fighting in France had siphoned off this valuable manpower; Ireland was a benighted backwater under the Burgundians, English rule barely extending to the horizon visible from Dublin’s walls. The “archers” fielded by the Burgundian loyalists were consequently largely of native Irish stock, and no match for their famed Welsh compatriots.

The Italian army was roughly equal in size but contained hardened contingents of Genoese crossbows as well as arquebusiers- perhaps the first instance of such weapons being utilized in the British Isles; the English, meanwhile, were a conglomerate of garrison soldiers (principally a mix of archers and billmen) supplemented by the firm backbone of the Hiberno-Normans. Victor Emmanuel was no military genius, but he was certainly competent and charismatic, and his army was qualitatively superior and- most critically- had a decisive advantage in missile troops. The Genoese extracted a bitter toll in the initial archery duel, and this provoked a general charge by the Anglo-Irish cavalry, who were promptly set upon and slaughtered by the Ivreans’ disciplined halberd-wielding men-at-arms; many of the Irish levies threw down their arms or fled rather than fight, and the Earl of Desmond was captured. The Ivreans had won a clear victory- the “English” army in Ireland was extinguished, while the Latins had lost barely twenty soldiers in the melee, a definitive demonstration of the power of the emerging continental “pike-and-shot” system when arrayed against a more traditionally “medieval” force.

In practice the battle was less definitive than it appeared; although Ivrea succeeded in winning over much of the southern clans after the victory- after seizing the wealthy Kingdom of Desmond and disposing of the inconvenient sons of the fallen Desmond clansmen, he was hailed as High King atop the Rock of Cashel, traditional seat of the Kings of Munster, becoming the first man to bear that title since the Scottish invasion of Ireland the previous century. His reign initially did not extend beyond Munster, but unlike the Bruce he had secured from the Papacy a formal revocation of Plantagenet rights to Ireland. It was however the attainder and execution of Thomas Fitzgerald- heir to the captive Earl by the Dublin Parliament which led to the collapse of English rule. In 1366, the English had passed the Statute of Kilkenny, banning intermarriage between English and Irish and restricting the use of the Gaelic language. In practice this law proved impossible to enforce even in the Pale, and additional laws restricting Gaelic dress and custom were passed by the Dublin Parliament. Thomas, like his father, had resisted the enforcement of these laws, and- with his father defeated and the military power of Kildare and Desmond destroyed- the English seized him and had him attainted for treason. His subsequent execution precipitated a general revolt against English rule, and James Fitzgerald agreed to accept a pardon and pledge loyalty to the Ivreans; this, and a naval blockade enforced by the Genoese, enabled Victor Emmanuel to seize much of the Pale, although the beleaguered English garrison in Dublin still resisted the invaders thanks to timely reinforcements from England. Ultimately, the fate of Ireland would be determined in Europe, not in Britain, as Ivrea’s army would be no match for an irate Burgundian Emperor free from his continental commitments.

Apart from the fighting in Ireland, Italy took minimal part in the fighting in 1459, owing to bitter political bickering over state finances. Empress Carlotta anxiously desired to fund an expansive military intervention in France, and she wanted her vassals to pay for it: she assembled the Lombard Senate in June- two weeks after Paris’ fall- and insisted that the Lombards authorize a further subsidy for the raising of an army. The Lombards balked: they had already subsidized an Italian invasion of Germany, and insisted that these funds, and the Empress’ royal coffers, should be sufficient to underwrite any additional military endeavors; failing this, they demanded oversight of the Empress’ diplomatic commitments, ensuring that she would not entangle the Kingdom’s financial resources in foreign adventures. This incensed Carlotta- in the first place, diplomacy was unequivocally the right of the Sovereign, and like her great-grandfather Gian Galeazzo she always played her cards close to the vest; submitting her negotiations to the Senate would imply that she could not act as a true sovereign, and unacceptably constrain the necessary discretion and flexibility required by international diplomacy. The Empress’s coffers moreover were not limitless- Carlotta spent much of her resources on massive constructions. She was personally financing, among other things, the construction of an aqueduct in the Abruzzo, intended to resolve the water shortages there owing to the rapid expansion of the population, as well as renovations to the Duomo of Milan and St. Peters Basilica and the construction of a new Marian Nunnery in Rome.

What the Senate truly desired was less an attack on Carlotta’s sovereign authority than the removal of the hated Count Rodrigo of Molise, the Empress’s close confidant and alleged lover, who had ratcheted up royal taxation to expand the Kingdom’s roads and barred the cities from levying their traditional tariffs without his approval. Rodrigo had succeeded in implementing such measures in Sicily, where baronial power was weak and the cities largely quiescent, but Lombardy was a different animal, and none of the haughty northern cities were prepared to relinquish their “traditional” rights to oversee their immediate hinterlands- certainly not to a “Sicilian tyrant.” Carlotta finally agreed to kick Rodrigo upstairs by appointing him as her imperial attaché to France; in his place, she appointed Alfonso de Medici, a Florentine banker, to oversee the project of centralizing the royal administration in Lombardy. This hardly mollified the truculent Lombards, who were barely more willing to tolerate a Tuscan than a Sicilian, but Alfonso was more politically adroit than his predecessor and managed to soothe the Lombards’ ruffled feathers by agreeing to appoint men chosen by the “advice” of the Senate into the administration; Alfonso was able to use the existing rivalries between the cities to split their coalition, encouraging competition for benefices and offices under his domainRegardless, the logjam was finally broken with minimal injury to the Crown’s dignity or authority, which was what Carlotta wanted all along: on September 5, 1459, the Lombard Senate finally pledged new military subsidies sufficient to finance a military campaign the following Spring; campaign was planned for mid-March, early enough to hopefully avoid the worst of the thaw-induced flooding along the Rhone but late enough to permit passage through the Swiss Alps.

Three armies were fielded by Italy: the largest, the principal “royal” army under the command of the Margrave of Ancona, was tasked with conquering the Burgundian Ducal capital of Dijon and then moving west into France to support the reconquest of the Seine Valley. An Ivrean army under the Duke of Savoy was tasked with taking Besancon, which was to be formally incorporated into the Kingdom of Provence; a smaller army under the Duke of Geneva invaded through the St Bernard Pass to Switzerland and then on to Alsace, tasked with clearing the Burgundians from Swabia and supporting Savoy’s advance into the Rhineland. The Burgundians responded to this incursion in full force, and battle was joined two miles from the Alsatian town of Mulhausen, where the Lombards avenged their defeat at Basel.

Duke Anthony of Brabant had his own Dutch forces and the support of Duke Rene of Lorraine. The Burgundian forces attempted to confront the smaller, Alsatian army, but were outplayed- baited into a battle by the adroit maneuvering of Duke Amadeus of Savoy. Nevertheless, Anthony did not spurn battle- his forces were now over twenty-thousand- a quarter of these knights- opposing a combined force of slightly larger size. Both the Italian and Burgundian armies had a solid core of professional infantry- the Italians fielded their Swiss subjects, while Burgundy had marshalled a substantial contingent of Flemish militiamen, armed with pikes and their famed Goedendags. Arthur’s troops encountered the Italians firmly entrenched, and decided to utilize their cavalry to engage in a broad flank, attacking the Ivreans from two sides.

The Burgundian cavalry succeeded in closing and engaging the Latins, but it was the vicious fighting between the Flemish and Swiss which decided the battle. The Flemings generally lacked the Swiss’ heavy armor, and the Swiss additionally were supplemented by heavy infantry with halberds and polearms; these troops succeeded in gradually pressing in the flanks of the Flemish forces. The Burgundian cavalry did partially break through and shattered part of the Latin line on the southern flank, but they were immediately set upon by the fresh Lombards, who overwhelmed and destroyed the Burgundians; the victorious Swiss joined in the fighting, crushing Burgundy’s army in a grueling slog that lasted through to the afternoon. Among the fallen was Duke Anthony, whose mangled corpse was discovered two days after the battle; the Duke of Lorraine was captured, and promptly abandoned the Burgundian cause, placing his duchy at the disposal of the Ivreans.

The bloodshed in France did not halt the tenuous and tense negotiations at the Council of Bologna, which continued uninterrupted even as several of the participants were actively at war with each other. The principal result of the Council of Bologna was twofold: first, the formal endorsement of vernacular translations of the Bible, and second the formalized divide between “procedural” and “doctrinal” Church practices.

The use of the vernacular had grown largely in Germany and Bohemia in response to a growing demand among the public for direct access to the Bible, particularly after the invention and proliferation of the Printing Press enabled the public to read scripture for themselves. This unnerved the clergy, who believed that the public could not be trusted with the Holy Book, owing to the necessity of “interpreting” the Bible in a way that coincidentally aligned with the Church’s daily operations. Moreover, with the integration of Greek, Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian Catholic Uniate Churches, there was a desire to ensure a degree of ideological consistency in the practice of the Mass. These ran afoul of both the Burgundian and Luxemburg desires to placate their religiously and culturally heterodox subjects- Luxemburg Bohemia already had extracted the concession of vernacular use of Czech by the clergy, and the Luxemburgs extended this to the rest of their territories (specifically, embracing the use of German, Polish, and Hungarian; Lithuanian was excluded owing to Polish chauvinism). The Burgundians meanwhile were at least partially influenced by the vestigial legacy of the heretic John Wycliffe as well as the writings of Jan Hus, which permeated west to the Low Countries from Lithuania via the Baltic trade. Burgundy saw the Catholic Church as the key pillar justifying their rule, and especially after the breach of the Anglo-

Carlotta initially refrained from involving herself, but as the debates grew more vitriolic she grew more concerned. The German states in particular strongly favored vernacular, and Carlotta was unwilling to risk “losing” influence in Germany to either Hungary or Burgundy over a seemingly minor theological point. She interceded in the Papal Conclave of 1460, extracting from the College of Cardinals a pledge that the new Pope would make reconciling these differences his top priority; Pope Pius II, a Sienese native of aristocratic stock, initially pledged to follow this, but he resented Imperial interference and stood firm on the use of vernacular, asserting moreover that the Church Councils had already decided the issue and could not therefore reverse established doctrine; this rather blatant attempt at curtailing Conciliar authority roused the Empress’ ire, as did his intransigent insistence on attempting to force a peace between Italy and Burgundy in order to launch a new Crusade for Africa and his contempt for the Italian alliance with Granada. Somewhat predictably, Pius took ill suddenly, and died of “natural causes” two months after his election. As she had done with another “problematic” prince who she had (probably) poisoned, Carlotta orchestrated a lavish state funeral; and when the Conclave again assembled, she politely reminded the Cardinals of her anxious desire to see the ongoing Church Council come to an equitable solution to the matter of the vernacular. The next Pope- a wealthy French Aristocrat, Guillame d’Estouteville, took the hint, and as Pope Innocent VIII towed the imperial line. Thus originated a sardonic observation by contemporary Italians that one who placed his hand in the viper’s jaw must be said die of natural causes should he be poisoned.

The other great problem confronting the Council was the growing pains of the Venetian Empire. After the death of George Kastrioti, his many sons tore apart the nascent Byzantine Empire, which gradually succumbed to Venice, culminating in the capture of Constantinople in 1461. This, and a similar fragmentation of Hasanid Iran after Uzun Hassan’s death the following year, meant that by the close of the decade Venice found itself somewhat abruptly in command of nearly all of the former territories of the Eastern Roman Empire, at least on paper. In practice the key to Venice’s success was their fairly hands-off approach which enabled them to seamlessly integrate provincial elites into their client network. The Venetians wanted to ensure total control over the church in their territory in order to prevent Papal or foreign meddling, which could threaten to undermine their authority; Venetian demands were less onerous than those of the Germans and were swiftly accepted.

The Council did also serve as a forum to attempt peace negotiations between France and Burgundy, but these proved more intractable than the salvation of souls. The Burgundians saw no reason to abandon their claim to the French throne, certainly not without gaining substantial territorial concessions; the French were equally insistent that Burgundy withdraw from their dejure territory and relinquish their claim to the French throne. Nor was Italy inclined to accept the status quo- among other things, the Burgundians refused to cede their claims to Burgundy proper, which was a sine qua non for Carlotta, or to accept Irish independence, which was a major but not essential condition for the Empress. So long as neither side held a decisive advantage in the field, the war would continue, and indeed it would soon expand into Iberia and beyond. On November 2, 1460, King Sigismund of Poland turned sixteen years old, dismissing his mother’s regency and beginning a reign whose glory eclipsed the sun.

 

[taovkool]

On November 2, 1460, King Sigismund of Poland turned sixteen years old, dismissing his mother’s regency and beginning a reign whose glory eclipsed

This part got cut off, I think.

Other than that, it's an interesting update! Carlotta really got a tangled mess to deal with.

 

[King of Danes]

To anybody interested, I've nominated this tl for a turtledove in the mediaeval category If anybody wants to second it, they can do so now

 

[The Undead Martyr]

For God and Profit​

When King Sigismund II ascended to the triune monarchy, he inherited a host of problems- problems burdening the troubled legacy of his dynasty. For four generations, the House of Luxemburg had struggled to assert an expansive, imperious vision of royal power untrammeled by the nobility or foreign rivals such as the Visconti; in practice, the family never fully succeeded at realizing their ambitions for a truly autocratic monarchy, but they would during Sigismund’s reign arguably come closest to achieving the latent Caesaropapist and Carolingian ambitions of King Lajos II two decades prior.

Internally, the greatest obstacle to King Sigismund’s ambitions was the simmering discontent of his Hungarian nobility, who resented that the Luxemburgs continually prioritized the Baltic interests of Poland and Brandenburg over that of their “ancestral” kingdom on the Danube; such discontent coalesced around the King’s younger brother, Prince Stephen, who hoped to seize the Hungarian throne for himself, and launched a revolt backed by the Magyar nobility in 1457 which simmered on for many years after its formal defeat and Stephen’s gruesome battlefield demise in 1459. Apart from his vassals and family, Sigismund also fretted over the waxing preeminence of the mighty Kalmar Union, since 1456 split de facto between King Erik of Denmark and Crown Prince Valdemar of Gotland, who ruled quasi-independently as King of Sweden in all but name; father and son bitterly contested control over Sweden’s government and the Kalmar Union’s governance generally, and they feuded most bitterly over foreign policy. Valdemar strongly favored the Swedish preference towards eastern expansion into the Baltic, whereas Erik never abandoned his focus on northern Germany, ambitions which had placed the Kalmar Union on a direct collision course with not only Poland but also the Hanseatic League and the Burgundian Monarchy.

Valdemar’s policies opposed not his father’s wishes, but also those of the Italian Empress, who was lobbying hard for Erik to join the war against Burgundy. The Norse, after all, had a substantial claim on the English and Scottish thrones thanks to King Erik’s mother Princess Isabella of England; it was hardly implausible for Carlotta to imagine a Norse invasion of Britain, particularly as Erik still held Orkney and the Shetlands. The Kalmar Union was also at odds with the Burgundians over the succession to Ravensberg in Westphalia. Nevertheless, open hostility was less likely than it seemed- Erik knew that his kingdom lacked the means to endure a protracted confrontation with even a beleaguered Burgundy. Carlotta, like many of her contemporaries, tended to overestimate Norse power relative to that of the great powers, owing to the Union’s military victories in early conflicts vis a vis Poland over the Baltic littoral and their prestigious acquisition of an imperial title; Valdemar’s support for a rapprochement with Burgundy was perhaps more in line with Norse power and strategic objectives, even if it diverged from what Carlotta hoped to gain from her courtship of the Norse House of Griffin.

Valdemar ultimately swayed his father towards rapprochement with Bruges because of the continued militancy of the La Marcks, one of Germany’s most powerful families. The dynasty had lost Julich, Berg, and Gelre to the Burgundians during Azzone’s Rhenish campaign several generations prior, but they retained their principal seat of Mark and reclaimed Ravensberg by marriage- Duke William V took a Tecklenberg countess as bride and, utilizing these claims, engage in rapid expansion into the vacuum left by the collapse of the Tecklenberg dynasty, which had briefly consolidated much of Westphalia under one principality. Munster was captured by the La Marcks in 1455 and Osnabruck besieged in 1456; Emperor John of Burgundy thereafter levied an Imperial Ban against his wayward vassal, but with his forces fully preoccupied in France he could not offer much in the way of direct opposition, and he turned to the Norse for support.

Erik and Valdemar were at least temporarily in accord on the matter of subjugating Oldenburg given that city’s support for the Hanseatic League, the major competitor for Norse trade in the Baltic. Valdemar was given personal command of the Norse armies in Germany- in part due to Erik’s desire to remove his son from Sweden- and Valdemar soon proved himself to be a supremely capable commander, smashing Duke William’s army near Lippe. It was while in Westphalia that Valdemar learned of his father’s illness and death- contrary to later depictions of the “Soldier King” being hailed by his army on a blood-soaked battleground, Valdemar was encamped near Osnabruck when he learned of his father’s demise, hastening home for his coronation.

Valdemar immediately set his stamp on Norse diplomacy. Spurning Empress Carlotta’s offer of a subsidy, he instead negotiated a formal alliance with Emperor John, receiving enfeoffment as Duke of Bremen, Verden, Oldenberg, and Hoya- affirming Valdemar’s conquests and transforming the Norse King into the largest landowner in Northern Germany; John also promised a cash payment for the partial renunciation of Norse claims vis a vis the British Isles- the treaty specifically mentioned the thrones of England and Scotland, but Valdemar reserved for himself and his heirs the possibility of pressing claims to the Hebrides and Ireland due to the “miserliness” of the cash indemnity and John’s refusal to grant Valdemar an Imperial princess for a bride. Instead, Valdemar secured the hand in marriage of a daughter of the Duchy of Luneburg, Countess Elizabeth, consolidating an alliance with the powerful and esteemed House of Welf and thereby cementing Norse influence over the entire former Stem Duchy of Saxony and simultaneously consolidating their new position as the greatest North German magnates between Burgundy and Poland. Valdemar withdrew his armies from Munster, where the House of La Marck was reinstated by Imperial Decree after John reconciled and lifted the Ban, permitting them to retain Tecklenberg; John- despite his misgivings at emboldening the former Lords of Julich- felt it prudent to create a counterweight and buffer to Danish expansion towards his Rhenish frontier.

Having stabilized the west, Valdemar turned his full attentions east, where he initiated hostilities as the lynchpin of an anti-Novogorod alliance encompassing Muscovy and Pskov. Valdemar besieged and sacked Novgorod, proclaiming himself King; Sigismund, incensed at the injury done to his client, predictably declared war.

Valdemar’s initial successes in the east failed to bring Poland to a decisive battle and his momentum quickly stalled. Although Valdemar’s army menaced Wilna, his much-anticipated Lithuanian revolt did not materialize, and he was forced to withdraw for lack of supplies. Poland’s own forces rapidly retook the territory lost to the Norse and launched their own counter-invasion of Livonia, menacing Talinn before withdrawing due to a disease outbreak and the breaking of a Hanseatic blockade by the Swedes.

Valdemar’s reverses in the east were further aggravated by the open hostility of the Hanseatic League in the west, which defied Emperor John’s will and allied itself with Poland against with the Norse; Valdemar had attempted to construct a war fleet in order to attack the city, but Lubeck- urged on by Sigismund- penetrated the Danish Straits and burned the Danish fleet, bombarded Copenhagen, and plundered the surrounding territory before departing, a major personal insult to Valdemar’s prestige in Denmark.

King Valdemar could now see the writing on the wall and decided to sue for peace. The Norse were prepared to surrender Livonia and Novgorod, but insisted on keeping Holstein, Riga, and Estonia; they were also prepared to grant commercial concessions to Polish trade through the Oresund. Ruminating decades later, Sigismund claimed that his greatest mistake was not accepting this peace deal, but at the time it was perhaps understandable for a young king, flush with victory, to be swayed by the thought of wresting the Crown of Denmark or Sweden onto his own head and asserting total hegemony over the Baltic.

Sigismund’s prospective invasion of Denmark ran into the obvious problem that he lacked a navy with which to force the Oresund; although the Danish fleet had been burned, the Swedes had their own vessels placed at their King’s disposal, and the narrow Danish straits were a formidable obstacle for any foreign invader even without armed resistance. Few states in this era had a navy of their own, and Poland was certainly no exception- instead, Sigismund was forced to rely on auxiliary ships recruited from his subject cities, specifically Gdansk/Danzig, a Hansa affiliate and major shipbuilding center. Here however he ran into a problem- the Hansa refused to expand their war effort into Scandinavia, fearing- correctly- that helping turn the Baltic into a Luxemburg lake was not to their advantage.

The Hansa, like Switzerland, were a loose coalition of autonomously minded cities grown rich from trade; and like the Swiss, they would fall victim to the powerful territorial magnates on their borders. The Hansa had won their initial confrontations with the Danes in 1432, wresting free travel through the Oresund and control over Hamburg and southern Holstein, but the growth of Polish and Burgundian power alongside a Norse resurgence was now to prove fatal to the League. The Hansa depended on trade between the Baltic and the North Sea, with major Kontors in Antwerp and London accounting for nearly a third of Lubeck’s trade and the Novgorod, Danzig, Riga, and Visby Kontors accounting for another quarter. The London Kontor faced considerable difficulties thanks to the intrusion of the Dutch, who increasingly viewed bulk imports from the Baltic (principally grain and lumber) as the Mother Trade- critical to the viability of their urban core; such trade necessarily traveled entirely by sea, bypassing the Hanseatic Cities and cutting Lubeck’s profits to the bone. On the other end of the League, Polish-held Danzig found itself increasingly at odds with its western compatriots, as Danzig’s foreign trade prospered alongside the increased bulk trade between Poland and the Netherlands; vainly, Lubeck attempted to block this trade and prevent Danzig from sharing its shipbuilding talents with the Dutch, a move which only served to alienate Danzig and Prussia generally from the League.

Emperor Sigismund had no patience for Hanseatic dithering, and he took drastic action, securing a new commercial agreement with Emperor John that locked the Germans out of the Low Countries entirely; John revoked the Hanseatic privileges and closed the Kontors in his territory on both sides of the English Channel, ripping the heart out of Lubeck’s western commerce. The League finally responded by entering frenetic negotiations with the Danes, but Norse support came too late for the Hansa. Riga fell to a Polish army and was brutally sacked. Lubeck itself- the political and geographic heart of the moribund Hansa- was ultimately to suffer a similarly cruel fate at Sigismund’s hands.

Apart from defying Sigismund’s demand to furnish a navy, Lubeck had the misfortune of being athwart the Polish army’s advance west towards Jutland; Sigismund’s generals refused to permit the possibility of an independently hostile Lubeck at their rear and- particularly once it became known that the Hansa were negotiating with Valdemar- the siege of Lubeck became a strategic inevitability.

As with Paris, the fall of Lubeck would be a bloody affair; as with Paris, Lubeck’s fall would be remembered and mourned by later generations as an ostensible symptom of “national” disgrace. Lubeck’s fall would however be rather less dramatic than the Siege of Paris, if only because Lubeck was a much smaller, poorer, and less heavily defended city, and the outcome was largely foreordained given the sheer disparity of forces. Although Sigismund was unable to enforce a blockade, his heavy guns were more than capable of smashing apart Lubeck’s medieval walls; Lubeck, defiant to the bitter end, was taken by assault on September 5, 1462.

Valdemar’s forces were delayed by the necessity of suppressing a revolt in Norway and continued haggling over the Oresund, but he crossed into Jutland late in September, preparing to meet the Poles in open battle. Sigismund’s armies were only liable to gain in strength if Valdemar delayed, and the Norse had done well in previous engagements. Indeed, he could count on the support of his in-laws, the Welfs of Luneburg, and he promised them territorial concessions- all or part of Brandenburg- in return for their support.

Poland’s armies confronted the Danes south of Kiel along the banks of the Weser River; Valdemar’s forces, although heavily outnumbered, fought like lions, but it was the arrival of the King’s Saxon allies which precipitated Poland’s withdrawal. This costly victory “saved” Denmark from invasion but did little to change the broader strategic picture. Although Lubeck opened its gates to the Danes, lack of funds and the onset of winter forced Valdemar to scupper plans for an invasion of Brandenburg; timely reinforcements from Poland overran Pomerania and the lords of Mecklenberg defected into the Polish camp, placing Sigismund uncomfortably close to Denmark. The focus of the war nevertheless shifted east towards the Baltic and south towards the Black Sea.

Bavaria had watched Sigismund’s misfortunes with wary interest. Duke Henry of Munich resented the unfavorable division of Austria a generation prior, and the further sundering of Bavaria between himself and his brother only heightened his hunger for more land. Henry’s designs on Tirol were thwarted by the diversion of Italy and Hungary towards different fronts; even a unified Bavaria could not match the Venetians on their own merits. Luxemburg setbacks in the north suggested to Henry that Austria proper might fall into his grasp if he acted quickly, and by the Winter of 1462 it was clear that he was preparing an invasion.

Bavaria was not the only front to divert Sigismund’s attention- Prince Stephen III of Moldavia succeeded his father’s titles in 1461 and immediately began distancing himself from Poland. Stephen had allied himself with the powerful Radu III, Prince of Wallachia, against the Hungarians, which posed a common threat to both powers; Stephan defeated a Polish invasion of Moldavia in 1457 but was subsequently forced to give tribute to Sigismund in 1460. In response, he agreed to marry Prince Radu’s daughter, entering a new alliance which enabled him to break tribute and reclaim Bukovina. Moldavia had, since Stephan’s reconquest of Cetatea Alba and Chilia on the Black Sea, increasingly aligned with the Venetians, and in 1462 Stephen took advantage of Poland’s Baltic woes to invade Gothic Tataria, the lands of the Teutonic Order.

In response to these depredations, and Prince Radu’s conquest of Hungarian-held Pitesti in northern Wallachia, Sigismund determined to launch an invasion of the Danube principalities, exploiting a temporary truce with Valdemar to shift his focus to his southern frontier. Moldavia was quickly overrun and the capital of Suceava razed; Stephan- barely escaping battlefield defeat with his life- fled south with his court to Wallachia, and Poland’s armies pursued- running directly into the armies of Prince Vlad, younger brother and heir to Radu, who ambushed and destroyed the Hungarian army as they crossed the Danube.

Vlad was a cruel and cunning prince, and he wished to send a message to the Rumanian “heretics” who had converted to Latin Christianity and accepted Magyar suzerainty. His choice to impale thirteen Catholic “princes” of Wallachia however attracted considerable condemnation from the West- Pope Alexander described the men as “martyrs” for the Latin faith- and only hardened Sigismund’s determination to continue the war. Sigismund- acting autonomously as “Emperor of Sarmatia”- declared a Crusade against the savagely heretical Wallachians, beginning to recruit soldiers in Germany for a new and even larger campaign towards the Danube; this decision, which had formally been endorsed by the Council of Basel, nevertheless saw censure from Emperor John, who insisted that a Crusade against heretics (particularly Orthodox Christians) was of a different character than a Crusade against infidels and could be called, if at all, only by the Holy Roman Emperor or the Pope; such legal-theological distinctions did little to dissuade Sigismund or his supporters, and Pope Alexander VI eventually endorsed the Crusade, mooting the point. The Wallachians, in their desperation, turned to the only power capable of resisting the Luxemburgs, and offered to become a client state of Venice.

Were Pietro Loredan still the Doge, this by itself probably would not have sufficed to drag Venice into a war, but the new Doge Pasquale Malipiero took a very different attitude towards Venetian relations with Europe. Malipiero was a firm adherent of a “Balance of Power” mentality which was increasingly endorsed and articulated by the leading Italian political thinkers during the 15th Century, articulating a simultaneous vision of both domestic “mixed” monarchical governance and foreign high diplomacy which inaugurated the formal ideological birth of the Modern Age.

In the Middle Ages, both Pope and Emperor had wielded their authority to play peacemaker, and all other secular and spiritual authorities felt compelled to deference. But the Papacy was now barred from “secular politics” by the various compromises marking the end of the Western Schism, and the Holy Roman Emperor, John of Burgundy, was a warmongering usurper so far as most of Europe was concerned. In the absence of any authority capable of restraining or even mediating between the major powers, how was peace to be maintained, and in the absence of peace how was Venice to secure her commercial and political interests abroad?

Venice already found itself at war with Iran over such interests, arguably in line with such balance-of-power concerns; Uzun Hassan- the Muslim Alexander- died in 1456 at 33 years of age, leading to a fragmentation of his empire between his many generals and kinsmen; as with Alexander, his young heir Yaqub Beg was utilized as a puppet before his inevitable tragic demise at the hands of Hasan’s younger brother, the exiled Jahangir, invaded Syria on the invitation of a Mamluk pretender, a clear threat to Venetian commercial hegemony over the lush lands of the Nile Delta. Alvise Loredan’s Syrian army was caught out of position and forced to give battle near Homs on April 5, 1458.

Venice’s army was a modern, infantry-oriented pike-and-shot professional force, supplemented by bronze cannons, Turkish and Armenian mercenary cavalry, and a core of heavily armored “Swiss” halberdiers (these may have been Germans, as the Venetians tended to describe all such mercenaries as “Svissa” regardless of their precise origin). The Iranian army by contrast was a traditional cavalry army, albeit more than twice the size of the Latins. But Loredan had chosen his ground well, establishing his camp in the narrow mountain passes between Homs and the Levantine Coast, prepared to wait out a siege or fend off an assault long enough for his ally, the Mamluk Sultan, to ride forth and relieve him. This, Jahangir certainly knew; fear of the combined Venetian-Egyptian army, the Turks’ sheer weight of numbers, the insult done by the Latin sack of Ankara the previous year, and the onset of an exquisitely rare desert rain- asserted by the Caliph’s ambassador to be a divine intervention- all factored into his decision to order a general assault.

Unfortunately for the Akk Qoyunlu, cavalry tend to fare poorly in frontal charges against disciplined ranks of well-ordered infantry, particularly when the infantry had artillery support and defensive field works; and while Jahangir ordered his soldiers to dismount and attack on foot, an attempt to exploit a breakthrough with a subsequent cavalry charge foundered on poor terrain. Although the rain did indeed inhibit the Venetian gunpowder weapons, at least one cannon was still operational; far more critical were the defensive trenches, undetected by the Iranian scouts, upon which much of the Iranian cavalry perished, piling up before the Venetian lines. Subsequent waves only added to the carnage, pressing their compatriots to death in their advance; by the end, the Iranian army had lost thousands, and was forced to a shameful retreat. Although Jahangir survived, he was subsequently overthrown and murdered in a palace coup.

Apart from securing the submission of Homs, the battle mainly served to shatter the remnants of the Akk Qoyunlu dynasty, enabling Shaykh Junayd- spouse of Uzun Hassan’s sister and leader of the heterodox Shia Safaviyya- to seize control of Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, with the conquest of Qoyunlu-allied Shirvanshah undertaken ostensibly through the claim of his wife. Shaykh’s conquests were aided by Loredan’s own despoilation of the Euphrates valley. The arrival of the Mamluk army the following month enabled Loredan to go on the attack, launching a devastating raid into Mesopotamia. Although the Venetians lacked the numbers or the artillery to attack any of the major settlements, these lands- having partially recovered from Timurid’s rampage half a century prior- were again subject to brutal invasion and plunder by roving bands of Egyptian, Armenian, and Latin cavalry; by the time Loredan withdrew, he and his soldiers were carrying with them the better part of Mesopotamia’s wealth and the fame (and infamy) of having watered their horses within sight of Baghdad’s walls.

In the wake of Loredan’s tour de force his partisans gained ascendancy in Venice itself, a tendency which prompted a serious resistance from the Venetian oligarchs, who feared the growing power and popularity of the Loredans and similar soldier-aristocrats and sought to clip their wings. Indeed, Venice’s comparative reticence to intervene directly (notwithstanding Doge Foscari’s own views on the matter) likely owed to fears among the Senate of further military expansion destabilizing the Republic’s inner peace, much as had befallen Rome. Nevertheless, the Teutonic Order’s imposition of new tariffs- a necessary measure to meet Sigismund’s demands for heightened tribute as well as the Order’s ongoing border feuds with Moscow and the Kazar Khanate- finally swayed the Republic to act, if only to defend her commercial interest.

Gian Carlo “of Ragusa” was appointed to command the Venetian effort in Crimea- given that city’s longstanding rivalry with Venice, this was a clear sign of the Republic’s growing dependence on Dalmatian and Illyrian manpower, but Gian Carlo was also a staunch supporter of the Loredans, being a compatriot of Alvise Loredan’s successful and lucrative Anatolian Campaign the previous decade; Gian Carlo’s appointment was both a sop to the Loredanensi, the predominant supporters of Orientalismo or a staunch eastern-focused policy which disdained entanglement in European affairs; dispatching Gian Carlo to Crimea may have been a form of polite exile, sending him far away from Venice itself, and it was sometimes alleged that the Crimean war effort was stymied by the city’s refusal to adequately support it. Gian Carlo made do with comparatively meager resources, brutally sacking Tana and assisting the Principality of Theodoro in repelling a Teutonic invasion, thereby securing the Principality as a Venetian client. An assault on Perekop- rechristened Taphros, its ancient Greek name- captured the isthmus connecting the Crimean Peninsula to the Pontic Steppe, enabling Venice to assert her control over the native Tatars and German colonists of Crimea. Teutonic control over the Peninsula had never been particularly strong, and from 1465 it became a Venetian possession in its entirety. Venice founded a new city on the southern end of the Saetta peninsula.

After completing his conquest of Wallachia, Sigismund subsequently decided to negotiate, recognizing that Venice was at once the most and least dangerous: the most dangerous because Venetian wealth and power was the central axis of the southern coalition; the least because the Venetians had few overt territorial ambitions, and fewer reasons to continue fighting. The war had been costly both for its own sake and with the collapse of Pontic trade; the sacking of Tana had gutted lucrative Venetian Crimean trade- predominately slaves, but also grain, lumber, livestock, and amber, all traded for metal goods and other finished wares- with little in the way of territory or profit to show for the endeavor.

Peace with Venice was followed shortly by peace with Valdemar; lacking funds and fearing a further invasion, Valdemar agreed to relinquish claims on Pomerania in return for acknowledgement of Norse influence over Pskov and Mecklenberg, the return of Riga, and the cession of Lubeck to the Norse.

Sigismund was not entirely pleased with this result- the “loss” of Riga and Lubeck was aggravating, since this gave the Norse renewed influence over the Baltic (indeed, the collapse of the Hanseatic League arguably meant that the Kalmar Union ended the conflict stronger than it began it as far as the Baltic was concerned) but affairs on his eastern frontier were now too unsettled for the Emperor to ignore, and the war was growing far too costly at a critical juncture- on April 14, 1466, Emperor John of Burgundy died of dysentery while encamped with his army outside the besieged city of Orleans. The Burgundian war effort did not end with John’s death (Orleans was subsequently captured) but his tenure as Emperor did- Sigismund set his eyes firmly on the prize of the Holy Roman Empire and he was prepared to put his territorial ambitions vis a vis Germany on hold if it could gain him the German crown.

Carlotta agreed to throw her dynasty’s two votes behind Sigismund, but only after he pledged to withdraw his armies from Germany, make peace with the Norse, and provide a cash subsidy for her armies in France- Carlotta had no intention of allowing the Luxemburgs total hegemony over the Baltic, which she feared might well result if Sigismund continued his war. Italian pressure was joined with Papal pressure, as the new Pope, Alexander VI, sought to sway Sigismund to confront the “heathens and heretics” on his eastern frontier instead of shedding good Catholic blood. Sigismund solemnly swore before the Prince Electors to take up the Sword of Christendom- a new Crusade was proclaimed against Moscow, which had earned the King’s ire by attacking his tributary, the principality of Tver.

Tver had agreed to accept the Latin Uniate Church, following Novgorod’s example, likely also to ensure Polish protection vis a vis Moscow, Tver’s old rival. As anticipated Grand Duke Ivan of Moscow did not respond kindly to this apostasy and he invaded Tver, hoping to capitalize on Poland’s preoccupation with her western frontier. This ultimately was to prove Ivan’s undoing, as Sigismund’s truce with Scandinavia permitted an overwhelming response to this transgression- Poland’s armies invaded Tver in force and captured Ivan after annihilating the Muscovites on the banks of the Dnieper. Sigismund’s plan for a reconquest of Moscow was however thwarted by the proclamation of a Muscovite Republic by its irate citizens, who were totally unwilling to tolerate the reign of the incompetent Rurikids- particularly the captive Ivan, who had agreed to convert to Latin Christianity and give tribute to Poland. A Polish army besieged Moscow and for five weeks the city endured a grueling blockade, Sigismund’s Crusaders blasting apart Moscow’s walls and indiscriminately bombarding the city itself. Unlike Paris, Moscow eventually triumphed over the Emperor at its gates, as much due to disease and poor logistics as their own firmly resolute defiance- Sigismund eventually ordered a withdrawal and his armies dissipated, many joining a new Teutonic campaign (more a raid) into Khazaria. By the treaty of Smolensk, Poland acknowledged Moscow’s new Republican regime and relinquished, for a second time, their claims to suzerainty; in return, Moscow recognized Polish suzerainty over Tver and Novosil, and additionally accepted the loss of the Dvina lands and Beloozero, which gave Poland a predominant influence over Novgorod, notwithstanding that city’s nominal submission to the Kalmar Union. Peace was not popular in Moscow- although formally independent, the Muscovite Rurikids remained in Sigismund’s court, a tacit threat- and the loss of so much territory only reinforced the city’s precarious situation.

With Russia largely reduced to subservience and the Danube frontier quiescent, Emperor Sigismund turned his attention back towards the Norse. Valdemar’s military triumphs were quickly undone by Sigismund’s machinations and Valdemar’s own diplomatic blundering- his hamfisted attempts at subjugating Baltic commerce prompted serious unrest in both Lubeck and Riga; this, and the imposition of new taxes and a heavy garrison in the latter city, eventually triggered a Night of Fire, as the Rigans (led principally by the Baltic German burghers) rose in revolt and massacred Swedish colonists in the city. The Rigans then appealed to Emperor Sigismund, “Protector and King of Germany,” who eagerly declared war and invaded Livonia. Novgorod also revolted again and proclaimed Sigismund their Grand Duke, owing to Sigismund’s promise of autonomy (including, critically, a pledge not to enforce the Uniate Church) and the partial return of the Dvina lands; Valdemar’s position in the east quickly unraveled, and by 1468 he was forced to sue for peace, surrendering Livonia, Riga, Novgorod, and western Pomerania to Poland. A new treaty fixed the Norse border further south, surrendering Novgorod’s old claims in Ingria; in practice, like the earlier treaty of Noteborg, the border remained largely fictional, as neither power had much interest in mapping out the frigid forests of Finland. Sigismund’s peace brought his Empire to its territorial zenith, and he would enjoy a fairly stable peace in subsequent decades, in no small part due to the stabilization of relations with Venice, the other major power in the Dinaric Peninsula and the Euxine Sea.

Venetian attention was fixed on the tantalizing wealth of the east, which thanks to the return of Bartolomeo Colleoni from China now ignited lurid public imaginations. By the mid-15th century, Venice had already made regular contact with the cities of the Horn; a Venetian colony in Aden was attested as early as 1448, and in 1453 Venetian ambassadors were warmly received in the court of the Ethiopian Emperor, electrifying Europe with the seeming confirmation of “Prester John’s” existence. In the 1450s Dalmatian adventurers routinely roamed as far as the Fourth Cataract of the Nile, subjugating the diffuse remnants of the Alodian Kingdoms of Nubia and “protecting” them against the Sudanese Arabs in return for tribute and the occasional conversion to Latin Christianity. But the expedition into the Indian Ocean which the brilliant fifty-two-year-old Admiral Pietro Mocenigo undertook in 1458 would exceed all expectations and inaugurate 16th Century Venice’s imperial Golden Age. Riding high from a distinguished career in the East- among other things, he participated in the capture of Rhodes during the Warring Vipers period and razed Iranian-controlled Antioch in 1454- he was persuaded by the lurid tales of “Cathay’s” great wealth and agreed to champion an expedition alongside Colleoni. Venice had traditionally not been a power outside the Mediterranean, but like Genoa she had tentatively engaged in commercial dealings in the Atlantic, and two decades (by this point) of experience in the Red Sea had given the Venetians the opportunity to consider alternatives. Colleoni- having been borne east on Zheng He’s voyages two decades prior- adamantly insisted upon using “German” style cogs, of which there were many to purchase after the rump of the Hanseatic League signed its own peace treaty with Poland. Twenty were chosen and outfitted, purchased in the antebellum period from a declining Lubeck desperate for funds. Between the ships and the personnel, financing the expedition proved to be beyond even Mocenigo’s means, and so he and his compatriots secured permission from Doge Francesco Foscari to charter their own private bank for the express purpose of financing the expedition.

Venice had already founded her own state bank- the Bank of St. Mark- in 1416, following the example of her Genoese rival- the Bank of St. George, founded in 1405, holds the distinction of being the oldest state-run deposit bank in the world. The Bank of St. Mark was, like the Bank of St. George, run by the government, and it was not generally accessible to non-citizens, such as the inhabitants of the Terrafirma. By contrast, the new Bank of St. Zeno (patron of Verona and of fishermen) was loosely modeled on the state insurance systems which defrayed costs for merchant convoys. Crucially, unlike the “partnerships” which were endemic to Italy, this bank was open to investment from “any Christian subject” of Venice, instead of being restricted to family/guild members (as merchant guilds and trading firms were) or Venetian Citizens. St. Zeno was arguably the first investment bank in the world, allowing private investors to buy in to securities tied to merchant expeditions into the east in return for an annual dividend based on the liquid capital available to the bank.

The Venetians had experience with the Red Sea trade already. Thanks to the publication of Niccolo di Conti’s accounts- spanning fifteen years of travel from 1420 through 1439- Venice had firsthand accounts of the vast riches and powerful states of India; de Conti, like many other merchants present in Syria and Egypt, gained fluency in Arabic, a lingua franca of the Indian Ocean trade. Many of these men would accompany Mocenigo’s expedition, which was outfitted and consolidated in 1459.

The Venetians encountered few initial difficulties, sailing from Venice to Alexandria and then hauling their ships over the Sinai to Suez. Then they traveled by sea along the Hejaz, finally watering at Aden before making the well-worn trip east to India with the summer monsoon winds. The Venetians landed at Konkan along the Malabar Coast on July 1, 1460.

The lesser lords of the Malabar Coast were accustomed to giving nominal tribute to their northern neighbors, but the situation in Southern India was increasingly unsettled. The established Vijayanagara Kingdom had declined far from its golden age under Deva Raya II (r. 1422-1446). Deva Raya’s son and successor Deva Raya III was by contrast a weak and incompetent ruler whose reign began with a string of early defeats against the Gajapatis, which had by 1458 wrested control over much of the eastern coast of India and were increasingly menacing the heartlands of the Empire.

This situation immediately called to mind the decrepit state of the Mamluks and Colleoni acted quickly to seize the situation. He began by signing alliances with the Malabar princelings such as Konkan- records indicate rich tributes, such as Venetian glassware and intricate silverware produced in Venetian Tirol- and opened negotiations with the Vijayanagara Empire, entering an alliance against the Bahmanis Sultanate. The Venetians defeated a Gujarati navy but were unable to make any territorial gains to continued resistance and the hesitation of Colleoni to risk his limited forces on a landward excursion; an attempt at occupying Chaul resulted in a massacre, and the Venetians followed the Vijayanagara in suing for peace, deciding to focus on consolidating their position in the south rather than attempting to push north. Bahmanis had been more successful on land, and the weakened Vijayanagar Empire was unable to contest Venetian suzerainty over the Malabar states. Together with the establishment of trade relations with the Kingdom of Kotte on Sri Lanka this began the Venetian presence in India, as yet largely limited to coastal outposts and a growing network of trade agreements. Nevertheless, Colleoni dtermined create an independent shipyard in Colombo, recognizing its strategic location; he requested that additional personnel and ships be sent from Venice to assist in this, and by 1465 the Venetians had established a small Arsenal there. A follow-up voyaged ranged north, but abortive attempts at gaining access to the Bahmanis

1469 also saw a peace of exhaustion between France and Burgundy. King Henry’ armies succeeded at seizing Caen but failed to take Carentan on the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula, or breach the heavily fortified Seine frontier; Paris, Rouen, Honfleur, Reims, and Troyes all remained under Burgundian control. At the peace table, France gained direct suzerainty over ducal Burgundy- comital Burgundy was annexed indirectly by Italy and reincorporated into the Kingdom of Provence. Duke John of Lorraine abdicated his territories and Lorraine was swapped for Auvergne, Lorraine thereafter being annexed directly into the Burgundian crownlands; Alsace, meanwhile, was absorbed by Italy. The treaty on the whole was deeply dissatisfying to King Henry, especially since he had to relinquish his claims over southern France.

Carlotta’s armies occupied Gothic Septimania after Henry’ armies rashly initiated hostilities with Aquitaine by crossing into Poitiers. Although Henry succeded at seizing Poitiers and La Rochelle he was unable to press further owing to stiff Gascon resistance and lack of funds; in the south, Carlotta took the opportunity to occupy the old County of Toulouse, establishing a direct land link between Italy and Iberia. Carlotta somewhat mollified Henry by offering her younger son Amadeo as a ward; given that Henry was now the last living male of the mainline Valois (owing to his uncle’s death in captivity) and presently without issue (his sole sibling, Princess Marie, was engaged to Margrave Sigismund of Brandenburg, heir to the vast Luxemburg Empire) if the French wished to block the Burgundian inheritance they had few alternatives than accepting a claim through the female line, and the Ivreans were after all four generations removed from Princess Isabella, thus placing them closer to the line than the Duke of Gascony- and the Ivreans were certainly the more powerful and prestigious dynasty.

The final treaty finally confirmed Gascon independence- in no small part because Carlotta flatly refused to hold Toulouse in anything but full sovereignty- and the territory was subsequently elevated to a Grand Duchy, nominally- like the Kingdom of Brittany- still subordinate to the French Empire, but for all purposes fully independent. Carlotta’s envoys also gained acknowledgement of King Victor Emmanuel’s claims to Meath, albeit at the price of forcing him to accept the nominal suzerainty of the British Empire.

The Italians wanted peace on their northern border not merely to prevent either a Burgundian or French collapse- Carlotta wished to exploit the death of King Juan of Castille to launch a full invasion of Iberia, pressing her claim to the Crown of Aragon and seizing the County of Barcelona.

The Gascons met and defeated a Spanish army near Bilbao but Duke Henry was fatally wounded in the fighting, and the Gascons withdrew with his remains; Henry’s young son Arthur became the new Duke of Gascony. Further east, the Italian siege of Barcelona ran into substantial difficulties owing to disease and bad weather; the Catalans had managed to fortify their city before the Italian arrival, and successfully repelled Italian assaults. Finally the Italians decided to withdraw, as Gascony’s withdrawal would enable Spain to enter Aragon with force. The Treaty of Zaragoza in 1464 confirmed Italy’s annexation of Urgell and Girona and ceded Navarre to Gascony, effectively settling the borders where the lines lay at the conclusion of hostilities.

King Carlos was quite happy to gain this treaty- Carlotta’s nominal submission in her role as Countess of Urgell was a significantly prestigious political concession, since- even if she was not acknowledging Spain as an Imperial equal- she was still accepting Spanish sovereignty in Iberia, or at least the parts controlled by King Carlos. Yet in practical terms the Italians left the war with a solid improvement in their geostrategic position- they had conquered Urgell and Gerona, giving them a firm foothold south of the Pyrenees for the subsequent war all knew was inevitable. Moreover, Carlotta flatly refused to relinquish her dynastic claims to Aragon, even with the offer of a significant cash payment. Italy was admittedly in somewhat strained financial circumstances, but the Empress- like the Burgundians- found certain benefits to ruling over major financial centers. The Empress enjoyed generous lines of credit from the great banking clans of Genoa and Tuscany- after all, many of these men were her courtiers- and her policies vis a vis Iberia were always underwritten- literally and figuratively- by the Genoese. Indeed, the invasion was arguably an attempt by Genoa to crush Catalan commerce and thereby eliminate an annoying competitor; and it was the Genoese who, faced with diminishing returns, pressed most firmly for peace, so that Italian arms could shift south to confront the Barbary Corsairs.

The death of Hafsid Sultan Abu Amr Uthman left an uncomfortable power vacuum in North Africa; Tunisia immediately lost control over the Berber tribes of the interior and their Algerian possessions further west. This in turn led to an immediate upswing in piratical attacks against Mediterranean commerce, which directly threatened the crucial geostrategic underpinning of the Italian state and predictably triggered a violently decisive response.

Much as the Byzantines during the Makedonian period had invaded Syria to protect their Anatolian holdings, the Italians found it prudent to suppress Arab piracy along the African coast to protect Italy and Iberia. This tour de force was as much a diplomatic as military venture: in a striking parallel to the Ming Treasure Fleets, Carlotta’s regime chartered the construction of several large “Africa Cogs” outfitted with luxurious appointments and exotic curiosities such as Ethiopian Lions, Nile Crocodiles, and a great many birds and beasts from Eastern Europe; the fleet also had a substantial contingent of soldiers, ambassadors, and rich treasures with which to overawe the Africans. Tunis was the first port of call and the Tunisian Emir readily acceded to resume his father’s tributary status. The Italian chroniclers- unlike the Tunisians, which insisted that this was merely a reinstatement of the old alliance- asserted that Tunisia at this time became something more than a mere ally; regardless, the Tunisian state at this time remained independent, albeit increasingly vulnerable to Italian pressure.

The Algerian states further west were less amicably disposed, and the Italians conquered Oran and Algiers by force of arms; the inhabitants were given the choice between conversion and expulsion, and Italian colonists imported to settle the new acquisitions. Italy’s adventures were mirrored by the culmination of the Portuguese conquest of the Rif in northern Morocco. The Portuguese resented and feared Genoese encroachment on their traditional interests in Africa’s Atlantic coasts and had gradually expanded their colonial outposts along the faltering periphery of the Waadi Sultanate.

Many of the Berbers were quite happy to sign their own deals with the Italians- indeed, the Italians were arguably better neighbors than the Tunisians, since Italy- unlike Tunis- had no interest in trying to conquer or subjugate the hinterland, and the Italians were perfectly happy with buying off the Berbers to protect their new colonies.

Domestic difficulties marred this picture of waxing strength- and intimated the haunting specter of renewed dynastic infighting. Prince Azzone had matured into a bright but surly young man. Thanks to his marriage to the Portuguese Princess Emilia, he had a rich dowry and solid international ties; his control of Provence and Tuscany additionally gave him a substantial basis of support.

Ties between Tuscany and Provence predated the Visconti conquest. Avignon’s Papal Curia had drawn Tuscan bankers and merchants like flies to honey. Although the Avignon community had largely evaporated after the collapse of the Avignon Papacy, the expansion of Rhodanian commerce after the consolidation of Flemish Burgundy saw a massive revival. By 1470, Marseilles had blossomed into a major city of nearly fifty-thousand souls, approximately two thousand of which were Italian, a roughly equal split of Tuscan artisans and merchants on the one hand and Lombard administrators and aristocrats on the other. Successive Visconti and Ivrean monarchs strongly encouraged the establishment of a native Lombard nobility in the Rhone valley through generous land grants. During Carlotta’s reign, was estimated that as much as two percent of the country was Lombard gentry- given that 95% of all feudal societies were peasant subsistence farmers, this- together with the urban burghers, administrators, and clergy- meant that the overwhelming majority of the upper class was Italian, many of which were deeply distressed by the breakdown of trade between the Low Countries and the Mediterranean.

Several of the leading families in Tuscany came to resent Carlotta’s regime, with the collapse of lucrative Dutch trade being a principal irritant; Carlotta, as a distant, domineering, woman, also faced no small amount of patriarchal contempt, which readily lent itself towards traitorous thoughts of defiance, at least in Florence. By contrast, her son, Prince Azzone, now twenty-two years old- was a well-known and respected figure in Tuscany. Prince Azzone could and did promise an end to costly foreign excursions and renewed commercial ties to the Low Countries and Iberia; he succeeded in winning over several leading patrician families such as the Pazzi. On September 1, 1469, he and his followers succeeded at seizing control over the Florentine garrison; the Prince was not formally crowned a King, but he listed several “demands” to his mother, including Viceroyal powers in Lombardy and the appointment of his own followers into Carlotta’s government.

The Prince’s Revolt was doomed to failure, given the sheer power wielded by Carlotta, and the arrival of her armies made overt defiance less appealing; Siena, Azzone’s capital, quickly surrendered to the Empress’s armies after a short siege, and a Genoese fleet sacked Pisa’s harbor and burned the rebel navy, isolating the revolt from Azzone’s supporters in Provence. With Prince Azzone’s support rapidly evaporating, several Florentines were bribed into opening the gates and the city was retaken. Although Florence was mercifully spared a sack, many of its oligarchs were publicly hanged, drawn, and quartered, pieces of their corpses hung from cages over Florence’s gates. As for the Prince, he was granted the crown of Valencia and “encouraged” to take up the governance of that province, a polite form of exile; Carlotta assumed subsequently Viceroyal powers over both Tuscany and Provence and staffed both kingdoms with her loyalists.

There the matter might have ended, but the Prince “succumbed to his wife’s whispering temptations” and the diplomatic pressure of the Portuguese, and he attempted to impose new tariffs on Genoese merchants in Valencia. When Carlotta countermanded this, he raised an army in revolt, appealing to both Castille and Portugal for aid. This was not quickly forthcoming, although Castille did unsuccessfully besiege Cadiz; the Prince’s army was crushed by Carlotta’s forces, and Azzone himself captured and returned to Italy as a prisoner, where he subsequently died of an unspecified illness. He was buried in a lavish ceremony; almost immediately, there were allegations that Carlotta had poisoned her own son. Parricidal poisonings were not unheard of in this period, but for a mother to poison her own child shocked contemporaries- presuming, of course, that Carlotta was responsible.

Carlotta dissolved the Principality of Etruria into the royal domain and enthroned her two-year-old grandson Victor Amadeo as King of Provence, reasserting primogeniture and sidelining Azzone’s younger twin Amadeo. Amadeo refused to attend his mother’s court; unable to keep her son close at hand, Carlotta instead granted him Septimania and the royal crown of Mallorca (largely nominal given that island was like Corsica a Genoese colony), sending him far away from Italy. To further keep her son from mischief, she appointed the staunchly loyalist Gianfransesco Datini, scion of a wealthy Tuscan family, as her viceroy in Provence.[1] Gianfrancesco’s father had squandered the family fortunes on politics and artistic patronage, and the new patriarch had instead taken a far more parsimonious tack. He had spoken candidly against the Prince’s coup, and Carlotta trusted that he would be sensible enough to resist Victor Amadeo if her younger child were foolhardy enough to try and launch his own rebellion.

It was at this time that the Empress relocated her principal residence from Naples to Rome, likely so that she could remain closer to her new dominions in Tuscany; the implications of an Empress governing Italy from the Eternal City were, of course, certainly also beneficial.

By and large the Tuscans accepted Tuscany’s mediatization- in no small part due to the rapid rise of the Medici as adjuncts of the Empress’ reign. The great Cosimo de Medici- one of the few Florentine Patricians wise (or opportunistic) enough to voluntarily defect back into the Empress’ camp- became the Royal Viceroy of Etruria, and his daughter became the Empress’ lady-in-waiting; in return, the Medici graciously accepted the closing out of several substantial debts, which Carlotta had been inclined to seize outright as a price of the family’s flirtation with treason. Loyal Siena was not neglected- a daughter of the esteemed Piccolomini, the young Giovanna, was engaged to Crown Prince Victor Amadeo, and the Piccolomini gained many estates in Naples and Provence at the Empress’s behest. Benefices, lands, and offices rained down on the surviving Tuscan oligarchs, and on April 4, 1461, the Empress deigned to reinstate Etruria as a new principality, now encompassing both Tuscany and Latium, with its own Senate in Siena, establishing for Etruria a political dualism mirroring that of Milan and Pavia in the north; this decision, achieved under intense pressure from the Tuscans, only confirmed the de facto division of Tuscany and Latium from Lombardy, which Carlotta now grudgingly accepted as a point of law, for she desired new taxes from Tuscany to finance a full-throated invasion of Iberia, with two massive armies assembling for a simultaneous invasion of Aragon and Andalusia.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Sort of a general musing/discussion.

One of the more complex questions of modern Europe is why, precisely, Italy declined from her peak in the 15th and 16th centuries. Shifting trade routes, foreign invasion, political fragmentation- these undoubtedly mattered, but the collapse of Italian industry is far more perplexing. I have read that high wages and an ingrained guild system, together with political ossification, did much to reduce Italian competitiveness. The depredations of North African pirates and the Spanish colonial administration likewise probably reduced urbanization in the south.

There was also an article I found today that suggests the two plagues in the 16th century had a uniquely catastrophic demographic impact due to hitting both the cities and countryside.

I have some of my own thoughts on what might diverge, and what the implications of those divergences would be. Among other things I am envisioning a much slower "contact" with the New World. But I am curious to hear what y'all think.

 

[NedStark]

Wow, Venice is essentially Eastern Roman Empire in all but name. But I do hope that even with all these new expansions, the Most Serene Republic would not go the way of the ancient Roman Republic.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Wow, Venice is essentially Eastern Roman Empire in all but name. But I do hope that even with all these new expansions, the Most Serene Republic would not go the way of the ancient Roman Republic.

Venice's Byzantine heritage will definitely be emphasized by ttl's historians.
The key difference is that their empire is closer to the Raj than Rome or the Ottomans.

 

[NedStark]

Venice's Byzantine heritage will definitely be emphasized by ttl's historians.
The key difference is that their empire is closer to the Raj than Rome or the Ottomans.

Sure, it could be similar to how the Dutch governed its Empire IOTL. Anyway the rise of the military class paralelling OTL Rome could be worrying regarding Venice's republican governance.

Historically, there weren't any republican state that governed such a large territory without losing its republicanism, not until the United States.

 

[dissatisfieduser]

I have some of my own thoughts on what might diverge, and what the implications of those divergences would be. Among other things I am envisioning a much slower "contact" with the New World. But I am curious to hear what y'all think.

Why would contact be slower?

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Why would contact be slower?

If at all, because Iberia will be a very different place and the Atlantic more of a battleground.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Sure, it could be similar to how the Dutch governed its Empire IOTL. Anyway the rise of the military class paralelling OTL Rome could be worrying regarding Venice's republican governance.

Historically, there weren't any republican state that governed such a large territory without losing its republicanism, not until the United States.

New Spain is a good comparison as well, at least for the parts nominally subject to Venetian rule (ie excluding protectorate like the Mamluks). The military class is more of an adventuresome landed Gentry.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

I'll have to dig up my book on Venice. I don't think that it will matter for this update but I do want to go more into how Venice is governed.

Venice tended to be fairly hands-off, apart from the appointment of provincial governors (a system not unlike the Romans...). This tended to work well in the Terrafirma, and to an extent in Dalmatia and Ionia, but Crete saw quite a bit of unrest.

The biggest issue is the creation of Venetian colonies across the Balkans, and the question of how those colonies are governed. The Venetian patriciate aren't going to want to share in the lucrative offices, but at the same time that didn't necessarily cause issues in Dalmatia (or rather not always.) There is also the pre-existing institutions of Bosnian and Croatian Kingdoms with Bans (viceroys) which would probably be kept with the Doge playing the role of King. In Crete Venice established a miniature Venetian government, albeit largely shorn of most powers, which caused even Venetian colonists to revolt.

What I'm thinking is that military and fiscal pressures could force Venice to reconstitute a separate assembly for the Cittadini or citizens, with a few specific offices- a set of Tribunes to veto/check the Council of Ten, perhaps, or rights over taxation, or nomination of some judicial positions (the Quarantia). I do not know how plausible this all is, but the big roadblock is how to handle Illyria? Pre-existing institutions (Croatian self-governance) likely persist, but with a large influx of Latin and Venetian lords (thanks to Azzone's conquest and then the Venetian conquest thereafter) and then interests like Venetian/Ragusan colonies in Pristina due to the mines, and the Venetization(?) of places like Cattaro, Corfu, Durazzo etc.

My understanding of Venice is that it was basically a police state oligarchy with a strikingly high degree of aristocratic solidarity, and that the patricians were, like Rome and elsewhere, largely confined to the city, albeit owning large estates elsewhere. So then, what of Venetian colonists in e.g., Zara, and potential political representation? Local government was largely left to the natives, likely including Venetians, but would this tend to maintain itself in the face of a rural landed gentry or would there be pressure for some sort of either regional assembly (the reconstitution of existing things like the Croatian Diet; this path probably leads towards a Venetian-led "Adriatic Confederation" a la the Dutch/Swiss) or representation in Venice itself (I think something like having provincial "Senates"- cloning the Venetian government, a la the Kingdom of Candia, onto Croatia etc., and then having representation somehow in the Major Council; Venice's usual response to domestic upheavals or crises was to expand the Patriciate to incorporate ambitious and/or wealthy commoners so extending that overseas isn't totally implausible IMO) or both, bearing in mind that so long as the Patricians want to keep the provincial governorships open they aren't going to devolve total power to the provinces?

 

[The Undead Martyr]

General question, as I consider re-rewriting some of this before I publish it (probably after I finish the timeline here)- what things should I change? Were any parts not specifically detailed enough, vague, or generally lacking attention? Anything that seemed implausible?
The hardest part of writing this, for me, has been the increased scope- I set out, this time around, with a deliberate intention to follow the rest of Europe (specifically France, Spain, and Germany) almost as closely as Italy, given the sheer number of interactions between Italy and . Unfortunately I haven't had the best luck getting too deep in the weeds for Spain or Iberia generally; if I did rewrite anything specifically that's probably where I would start.

I'm excited to get to 1500, because that's about where the timeline petered out in the first version, and I expect that I can push past it since I've already got some plans for at least the first half of the century.