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This is the first of three Prelude Updates for my new Timeline "Their Cross to Bear" which takes its divergence during the early Reformation and tries to conduct a detailed (and hopefully entertaining) examination of a vast number of butterflies. We will see new and different forms of Christianity, follow dynasties as they rise and fall from power, explore the four corners of the world and determine what sort of world might have developed if things turned out differently. Sorry about the rather massive rehash of OTL that make up the preludes, but I felt it better to get all of this out of the way beforehand so that I can focus on the narrative and require fewer explanations later on. This first prelude focuses on the Italian Wars, the Ottoman Empire and the growth of Iberian power on a global scale. The second prelude gives a detailed overview of the background to the Reformation while the third documents the first several years of the Reformation. I would suggest reading the footnotes, I put a lot of comments, explanations and details in them which wouldn't fit in the actual update so you might miss out on a lot if you skip them. Please let me know your thoughts and comments if something seems implausible, incorrect or if you just want to discuss any topic that comes up. I plan to put up the first actual update on the 1st of January, while the three preludes will come out during the coming week. I really hope you enjoy!

The State of Europe in 1525

Italy at the Start of the Italian Wars
The Italian Wars would prove to be an era-defining source of strife in Europe for the first half of the sixteenth century, involving almost every political actor on the European Continent and redefining European Society on every level. Originally arising from dynastic disputes over the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, the Italian Wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and were marked with an increasing number of alliances, counter-alliances, and betrayals. Following the Wars in Lombardy between Venice and Milan, which ended in 1454 with the Peace of Lodi, Northern Italy had been largely at peace during the reigns of Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence and the Sforza family in Milan, with the notable exception of the War of Ferrara in 1482–1484. Thus, when King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 under the pretext of pressing the Angevin claim to the Kingdom of Naples and at the invitation of the Duke of Milan - in response to King Ferrante of Naples’ growing power and influence, the fragile equilibrium which had allowed Italy to become the economic, cultural and social heart of Europe found itself shattered and Italy given over to the horrors of war for decade upon decade. After initially driving all opposition before him and successfully taking up the Neapolitan Crown, Charles was forced to flee Italy, losing all of his conquests and dying two years later from an accident while playing tennis, his plans for another invasion interrupted.

Charles left behind no surviving heirs, leaving the Kingdom to his ambitious and popular cousin who ascended to the throne as King Louis XII of France. Under Louis, French ambitions expanded to include the Duchy of Milan which he claimed through descent from the Visconti Dukes of Milan in opposition to the Sforza Dukes who had driven Louis' distant cousins from power. Alongside the French, the Imperial Habsburgs under Emperor Maximilian I had involved themselves in northern Italy while to the south the Aragonese King Fernando/Ferran II, also King-Consort of Castile, expanded his power in southern Italy. Louis XII's reign would last seventeen years and would see wave upon wave of French, German and Spanish armies march into the fires of Italy where they became contestants on a field of battle like no other. Armies of unprecedented size clashed with sword, pike and cannon in an ever escalating series of skirmishes, sieges and battles. When King Louis finally passed away in 1515 he left behind two daughters who found themselves, as per established Salian inheritance law, passed over for their cousin, Francis of Anglouême, who would in turn marry the oldest of Louis’ daughters. King Francis I would prove to be a dynamic warrior-king who reformed French culture and society in his image and personally led French armies to victory in Italy on multiple occasions (1), bringing the War of the League of Cambrai to a victorious end in 1516. Fernando II of Aragon died a year after Louis, leaving his throne to his grandson Charles I von Habsburg who ascended to the throne Spanish thrones at the age of 16 and stood to inherit his paternal grandfather's Imperial throne.

By 1518, the peace that had prevailed in Europe after the Battle of Marignano was beginning to crumble. All European countries except for the Muslim Ottoman Empire had been invited to London for treaty negotiations where they hoped to bind the 20 leading states of Europe into peace with one another, and thus end warfare between the states of Europe. In October 1518 it was initiated between representatives from England and France. It was then ratified by other European nations and the Pope. The agreement established a defensive league based upon terms which committed states with an active foreign policy to not only commit to a stance of non-aggression, but also to promise to make war upon any state which broke the terms of the treaty. At the time, it was thought a triumph for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (2) and allowed Henry VIII to greatly increase his standing in European political circles, to the extent that England grew to be viewed by some as a third major power. The major powers: France Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire were outwardly friendly but they found themselves divided on the question of the Imperial succession.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, intending for a Habsburg to succeed him, began to campaign on behalf of King Charles of Spain, while Francis put himself forward as an alternate candidate. At the same time, the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire were forced to deal with the rising influence of Martin Luther, who found support with some Imperial nobles, while Francis was faced with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who interposed himself into the quarrels of the continent in an attempt to increase both England's influence and his own in the hopes of gaining enough stature to become Pope. Maximilian's death in 1519 brought the Imperial election to the forefront of European politics. Pope Leo X, threatened by the presence of Spanish troops a mere forty miles from the Vatican, supported the French candidacy. The prince-electors themselves, with the exception of Friedrich von Wettin, Elector of Saxony, who refused to countenance the campaigning, promised their support to both candidates at once. Before his death, Maximilian had already promised sums of 500,000 florins to the Electors in exchange for their votes, but Francis offered up to three million, and Charles retaliated by borrowing vast sums from the Fuggers (3). The final outcome, however, was not determined by the exorbitant bribes, which included Pope Leo promising to make the Archbishop of Mainz his permanent legate in Germany, an immensely powerful position which would have made the Archbishop the second most powerful figure in the Catholic Church. The general outrage of the populace at the idea of a French Emperor gave the Electors pause, and when Charles put an army in the field near Frankfurt, where they were meeting, the Electors obligingly voted for him. He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on 23 October 1520, by which point he already controlled both the Spanish crown and the hereditary Burgundian lands in the Low Countries which he had inherited from his father (4).

Cardinal Wolsey, hoping to increase Henry VIII's influence on the continent, offered the services of England as a mediator for the various disputes between Francis and Charles. Henry and Francis staged an extravagant meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (5). Immediately afterwards, Wolsey entertained Charles in Calais. Following the meetings, Wolsey, also concerned with improving his own stature in preparation for the next papal conclave, proceeded to stage a hollow arbitration conference at Calais, which lasted until April 1522 to no practical effect. In December, the French began to plan for war. Francis did not wish to openly attack Charles because Henry had announced his intention to intervene against the first party to break the tenuous peace. Instead, he turned to more covert support for incursions into German and Spanish territory. One attack would be made on the Meuse River, under the leadership of Robert de la Marck, son and heir to the Duke of Bouillon and Seigneur de Flourance. Simultaneously, a French-Navarrese army would advance through Navarre after reconquering St-Jean-Pied-de-Port. The expedition was nominally led by the 18-year-old Navarrese king Henri d'Albret, whose kingdom had been invaded by Fernando II of Aragon in 1512 and had seen its lands south of the Alps occupied by the Spanish ever since, but the army was effectively commanded by André de Foix and funded and equipped by the French. The French designs quickly proved flawed as the intervention of Henry van Nassau-Breda drove back the Meuse offensive; and although de Foix was initially successful in seizing Pamplona, he was driven from Navarre after being defeated at the Battle of Esquiroz on 30 June 1521 by Íñigo Fernández de Velasco, 2nd Duke of Frías and Constable of Castile.

In the meanwhile, Charles found himself preoccupied with the issue of Martin Luther, whom he confronted at the Diet of Worms in March 1521 (6). On 25 May 1521, Charles and Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro, the Papal nuncio, proclaimed the Edict of Worms against Luther. Simultaneously, the Emperor promised the Pope the restoration of Parma and Piacenza to the Medici and of Milan to the Sforza. Leo, needing the Imperial mandate for his campaign against what he viewed as a dangerous threat, promised to assist in expelling the French from Lombardy, leaving Francis with only the Republic of Venice for an ally. In June, Imperial armies under Heinrich van Nassau-Breda invaded the north of France, razing the cities of Ardres and Mouzon and besieging Tournai. They were delayed by the dogged resistance of the French, led by Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard and Anne de Montmorency, during the Siege of Mezieres, which gave Francis time to gather an army to confront the attack. On 22 October 1521, Francis encountered the main Imperial army, which was commanded by Charles V himself, near Valenciennes. Despite the urging of Charles de Bourbon, Constable of France and fifth in line to the throne behind Francis' two sons and the Duke of Alencon, Francis hesitated to attack, which allowed Emperor Charles time to retreat. When the French were finally ready to advance, the start of heavy rains prevented an effective pursuit and the Imperial forces were able to escape without a battle. Shortly afterwards, French-Navarrese troops under Bonnivet, a royal favorite, and Claude de Lorraine seized the key city of Fuenterrabia, at the mouth of the Bidasoa River on the Franco-Spanish border, following a protracted series of maneuvers, providing the French with an advantageous foothold in northern Spain that would remain in their hands for the next two years.

By November, the French situation had deteriorated considerably. Charles, Henry VIII, and the Pope signed an alliance against Francis on 28 November. Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, the French governor of Milan, was tasked with resisting the Imperial and Papal forces; he was outmatched by the Imperial commander Prospero Colonna, however, and by late November had been forced out of Milan and had retreated to a ring of towns around the Adda River. There, Lautrec was reinforced by the arrival of fresh Swiss mercenaries; but, having no money available to pay them, he gave in to their demands to engage the Imperial forces immediately. On 27 April 1522, he attacked Colonna's combined Imperial and Papal army near Milan at the Battle of Bicocca. Lautrec had planned to use his superiority in artillery to his advantage, but the Swiss, impatient to engage the enemy, masked his guns and charged against the entrenched Spanish arquebusiers. In the resulting melee, the Swiss were badly mauled by the Spanish under Fernando d'Avalos, Marquess of Pescara, and by a force of landsknechts commanded by Georg Frundsberg. Their morale broken, the Swiss returned to their cantons; Lautrec, left with too few troops to continue the campaign, abandoned Lombardy entirely. Colonna and d'Avalos, left unopposed, proceeded to besiege Genoa, capturing the city on 30 May. Lautrec's defeat brought England openly into the conflict. In late May 1522, the English ambassador presented Francis with an ultimatum enumerating accusations against France, notably that of supporting the Duke of Albany in Scotland, all of which were denied by the king. Henry VIII and Charles signed the Treaty of Windsor on 16 June 1522. The treaty outlined a joint English-Imperial attack against France, with each party providing at least 40,000 men. Charles agreed to compensate England for the pensions that would be lost because of conflict with France and to pay the past debts that would be forfeit; to seal the alliance, he also agreed to marry Henry's only daughter, Mary. In July, the English attacked Brittany and Picardy from Calais. Francis was unable to raise funds to sustain significant resistance, and the English army burned and looted the countryside.


The French advance into Lombardy and the Pavia campaign of 1524–25: French in Blue and Imperial in Red
Francis tried a variety of methods to raise money, but concentrated on a lawsuit against Charles III, Duke of Bourbon. The Duke of Bourbon had received the majority of his holdings through his marriage to Suzanne, Duchess de Bourbon, who had died shortly before the start of the war. Louise de Savoy, Suzanne's sister and the king's mother, insisted that the territories in question should pass to her because of her closer kinship to the deceased. Francis was confident that seizing the disputed lands would improve his own financial position sufficiently to continue the war and began to confiscate portions of them in Louise's name. Bourbon, angered by this treatment and increasingly isolated at court, began to make overtures to Charles V to betray the French king. By 1523, the French situation had entirely collapsed. The death of Doge Antonio Grimani brought Andrea Gritti, a veteran of the War of the League of Cambrai, to power in Venice. He quickly began negotiations with the Emperor and on 29 July concluded the Treaty of Worms, which removed the Republic from the war. Bourbon continued his scheming with Charles, offering to begin a rebellion against Francis in exchange for money and German troops. When Francis, who was aware of the plot, summoned him to Lyon in October, he feigned illness and fled to the Imperial city of Besançon. Enraged, Francis ordered the execution of as many of Bourbon's associates as he could capture, but the Duke himself, having rejected a final offer of reconciliation, openly entered the Emperor's service. Charles then invaded southern France over the Pyrenees. Lautrec successfully defended Bayonne against the Spanish, but Charles was able to recapture Fuenterrabia in February 1524. In the meanwhile, On 18 September 1523, a massive English army under the Duke of Suffolk advanced into French territory from Calais in conjunction with a Flemish-Imperial force. The French, stretched thin by the Imperial attack, were unable to resist, and Suffolk soon advanced past the Somme, devastating the countryside in his wake and stopping only fifty miles from Paris. When Charles failed to support the English offensive, however, Suffolk—unwilling to risk an attack on the French capital—turned away from Paris on 30 October, returning to Calais by mid-December (7).

Francis now turned his attention to Lombardy. In October 1523, a French army of 18,000 under Bonnivet advanced through the Piedmont to Novara, where it was joined by a similarly sized force of Swiss mercenaries. Prospero Colonna, who had only 9,000 men to oppose the French advance, retreated to Milan. Bonnivet, however, overestimated the size of the Imperial army and moved into winter quarters rather than attacking the city; and the Imperial commanders were able to summon 15,000 landsknechts and a large force under Bourbon's command by 28 December, when Charles de Lannoy replaced the dying Colonna. Many of the Swiss now abandoned the French army, and Bonnivet began his withdrawal. The French defeat at the Battle of the Sesia, where Bayard was killed while commanding the French rearguard, again demonstrated the power of massed arquebusiers against more traditional troops; the French army then retreated over the Alps in disarray. D'Avalos and Bourbon crossed the Alps with nearly 11,000 men and invaded Provence in early July 1524. Sweeping through most of the smaller towns unopposed, Bourbon entered the provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence on 9 August 1524, taking the title of Count of Provence and pledging his allegiance to Henry VIII, in a reoccurrence of the English claim to the French Crown, in return for the latter's support against Francis. By mid-August, Bourbon and d'Avalos had besieged Marseille, the only stronghold in Provence that remained in French hands. Their assaults on the city failed, however, and when the French army commanded by Francis himself arrived at Avignon at the end of September 1524, they were forced to retreat back to Italy. In mid-October 1524, Francis himself crossed the Alps and advanced on Milan at the head of an army numbering more than 40,000. Bourbon and d'Avalos, their troops not yet recovered from the campaign in Provence, were in no position to offer serious resistance. The French army moved in several columns, brushing aside Imperial attempts to hold its advance, but failed to bring the main body of Imperial troops to battle. Nevertheless, Charles de Lannoy, who had concentrated some 16,000 men to resist the 33,000 French troops closing on Milan, decided that the city could not be defended and withdrew to Lodi on 26 October. Having entered Milan and installed Louis II de la Trémoille as the governor, Francis at the urging of Bonnivet and against the advice of his other senior commanders, who favored a more vigorous pursuit of the retreating Lannoy, advanced on Pavia, where Antonio de Leyva remained with a sizable Imperial garrison.

The main mass of French troops arrived at Pavia in the last days of October 1524. By 2 November, Montmorency had crossed the Ticino River and invested the city from the south, completing its encirclement. Inside were about 9,000 men, mainly mercenaries whom Antonio de Leyva was able to pay only by melting the church plate. A period of skirmishing and artillery bombardments followed, and several breaches had been made in the walls by mid-November. On 21 November, Francis attempted an assault on the city through two of the breaches, but was beaten back with heavy casualties; hampered by rainy weather and a lack of gunpowder, the French decided to wait for the defenders to starve. In early December, a Spanish force commanded by Hugo de Moncada landed near Genoa, intending to interfere in a conflict between pro-Valois and pro-Habsburg factions in the city. Francis dispatched a larger force under Michele Antonio I of Saluzzo to intercept them. Confronted by the more numerous French and left without naval support by the arrival of a pro-Valois fleet commanded by Andrea Doria, the Spanish troops surrendered. Francis then signed a secret agreement with Pope Clement VII, who pledged not to assist Charles in exchange for Francis's assistance with the conquest of Naples. Against the advice of his senior commanders, Francis detached a portion of his forces under the Duke of Albany and sent them south to aid the Pope. Lannoy attempted to intercept the expedition near Fiorenzuola, but suffered heavy casualties and was forced to return to Lodi by the intervention of the infamous Black Bands of Giovanni de' Medici, which had just entered French service. Medici then returned to Pavia with a supply train of gunpowder and shot gathered by the Duke of Ferrara; but the French position was simultaneously weakened by the departure of nearly 5,000 Grisons Swiss mercenaries, who returned to their cantons in order to defend them against marauding landsknechts. In January 1525, Lannoy was reinforced by the arrival of Georg Frundsberg with 15,000 fresh landsknechts and renewed the offensive. D'Avalos captured the French outpost at San Angelo, cutting the lines of communication between Pavia and Milan, while a separate column of landsknechts advanced on Belgiojoso and, despite being briefly pushed back by a raid led by Medici and Bonnivet, occupied the town. By 2 February, Lannoy was only a few miles from Pavia. Francis had encamped the majority of his forces in the great walled park of Mirabello outside the city walls, placing them between Leyva's garrison and the approaching relief army. Skirmishing and sallies by the garrison continued through the month of February. Medici was seriously wounded and withdrew to Piacenza to recuperate, forcing Francis to recall much of the Milan garrison to offset the departure of the Black Band; but the fighting had little overall effect. On 21 February, the Imperial commanders, running low on supplies and mistakenly believing that the French forces were more numerous than their own, decided to launch an attack on Mirabello Castle in order to save face and demoralize the French sufficiently to ensure a safe withdrawal (8).


The Siege of Rhodes
1510 was a time of intense political troubles for the Ottoman Empire. Succession struggles among princes, an endemic Ottoman problem, were exacerbated by the rise of Shah Ismail of the Safavid Dynasty in Persia around the turn of the century and the rebellions of his followers in Anatolia in 1511–12. The Ottomans had, from the very beginning, opposed the partition of their lands among princes, and favored what could be called “unigeniture”: following the sultan's death, and sometimes before, princes fought among themselves for the succession, often to the death, and only one of them became sultan. Thus, rather than dividing territories among the members of the ruling family according to a common Turko-Mongol practice, the Ottomans were able to secure the reign of only one member of the dynasty. This ensured the preservation of the domains, but also legitimized civil war as the path to succession. In 1509, Selim, an Ottoman prince, was the provincial governor, “sancakbeyi”, of Trabzon, on the southeastern corner of the Black Sea. He was concerned that his father and the majority of the elite favored his brother, Ahmed, as the successor to the Ottoman throne, which amounted to an eventual death sentence for him. Selim left Trabzon, crossed over to the Crimea to join his father-in-law, who happened to be the Tartar Khan of Crimea, and his son, the future sultan Süleyman - the provincial governor of Caffa, and then moved to the Balkans, where he gathered an army. He could not prevail over his father's forces in a fateful encounter near Istanbul in the summer of 1511, but he was able to secure the support of the janissary corps and the military elements in the Balkan provinces. He had already established a martial reputation for having fought against the Georgians and Ismail's supporters during his governorate in Trabzon. His nearly self-destructive campaign against his father further solidified his image as a warrior prince: he was widely seen, against his more gentlemanly brothers Korkud and Ahmed, as the man who could meet the considerable military challenges created by pro-Ismail rebellions in Anatolia and Ismail's move from Iran and Eastern Anatolia to the west.

Selim thus came to the throne in May 1512. From then until January 1514, he waged incessant warfare against his brothers and their sons, finally emerging as the sole victor in early 1514. The march of Shah Ismail Safavi to power in the lands of the Aq Qoyunlu Turkmen confederation prepared the necessary background for Selim's rise to power as well. Ismail, as the leader of the Safavid religious order and the self-styled representative of Twelver Shiism's messianic Hidden Imam, led a politico-religious movement that created a powerful vortex for various groups in the Middle East, including many in Ottoman territories. The relations between the Ottoman political center and the nomadic communities in Anatolia had always been strained, and the nomads resisted, to the extent of their abilities, Ottoman attempts at taxation, sedentarization, and deportation. Moreover, in various parts of Southern and Eastern Anatolia, Ottoman conquest was relatively recent, and the Ottomans did not have time to co-opt or assimilate the local power holders. Ismail, willingly or unwillingly, started a powerful movement that resembled a social revolution and pulled in not only nomads, but also townsmen and disgruntled tmar holders as well. Since Timur Leng’s invasion of Anatolia in 1402, the death of Bayezid I in captivity, and the partition of the Ottoman realm among the surviving princes, this was the first genuinely existential threat encountered by Ottoman rule. Under Bayezid II, the Ottoman establishment had already tried to formulate a coherent military as well as ideological/theological answer against the Safavids. Selim, on the other hand, turned it into his main focus. He sought the support of religious scholars, who sanctioned his activities against the Safavids through legal opinions that described the latter as apostates and unbelievers and ascribed to the Ottoman sultan the duty to fight. As soon as he exterminated his dynastic rivals, Selim marched against Ismail's followers in Anatolia and massacred thousands of them. He then marched further east and defeated Ismail's troops at the Battle of Çaldran in August 1514. The victory at Çaldran, secured by the supremacy of Ottoman gunpowder weapons over the Safavid cavalry and light infantry, probably stopped an eventual Safavid takeover of Anatolia. Because both rulers survived what was expected to be a final and fatal encounter, however, Çaldran also signifies the first step in the institutionalization of the Ottoman-Safavid religious and political competition. In his next attempts at securing Ottoman domination in the region and preempting another Safavid push eastward, Selim destroyed the principality of Dulkadir in 1515 and overran the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria in 1516-17, bringing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina under Ottoman sovereignty.

Thanks to his swift conquests, he was thus able to almost double the empire's territory and population in the scope of a few years. Selim's takeover of Egypt and Syria can aptly be considered the beginning of the sixteenth century’s global conflict. His capture of parts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea coast pitted the Ottomans against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, further contributing to their emergence as global actors in early modern Eurasia. By rising to the challenges posed by Ismail and his supporters, Selim started a period of intense military, cultural, and religious competition. Ottoman imperial ideology began to revolve increasingly around notions of messianism, universal monarchy, the caliphate, and the ultimate politico-religious leadership of the ruler over his subjects. Such universalist ideologies had been popular among the Ottoman elite since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, but their popularity had somewhat decreased under Bayezid II, whereas Selim revived them to an unprecedented extent. In the coming decades, the new ideological arsenal would be utilized not only against the Safavids, but also their Christian rivals. Selim's conquests did not solely produce new political and ideological stakes. They also led to the emergence of new problems on the administrative front. The quick conquest of large territories in Eastern Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt did not mean that the Ottomans had control over them. Most of these areas had been under the rule of various Muslim powers for several centuries, and local laws, customs, and rules were developed enough to require a careful work of harmonization and adaptation on the part of the Ottomans. Moreover, in predominantly Muslim areas of the Middle East, the Ottomans had always suffered from being a Muslim dynasty with a less than stellar pedigree, and the simple act of conquering never brought them the comforts of legitimacy. The persistence of local and tribal identities and the survival of figures from the old dynasties further complicated the task. For these reasons, a new administrative apparatus was increasingly needed to make the Ottoman presence durable in the newly conquered areas and to ensure the extraction of resources necessary for the Ottoman military machine. Selim was the first ruler to actively steer the Ottoman enterprise toward a process of early modern Eurasian empire building. He deployed large armies fortified with gunpowder weapons and instigated a process of territorial expansion. He explained and defended this expansion with reference to ideologies that attributed to the Ottoman sultan a function of political and spiritual guidance and a world-historical role in the fight between the forces of good and evil. He promoted sultanic authority, tried to curtail the power of the Ottoman elite and especially the prominent pashas, and created an environment that was conducive to the rise of secretaries as record keepers and the rulers’ trusted assistants. The generation that followed, led by Süleyman, inherited these challenges, problems, and opportunities, and members of this generation spent their lives in a world whose foundations were laid by Selim.

From Süleyman’s accession, his father Selim’s aggressive policy in the east was superseded by one of disengagement: Süleyman sought to contain Persia, not conquer it. Envoys sent secretly to the Safavid court at Tabriz to ascertain the risk posed by Shah Ismail established that he was preoccupied by an army of the Sunni Özbek state which lay to his east, which was again threatening Safavid territory. This left the new sultan free to set out on his first campaign – in the west, where unfinished business demanded his attention. Like Shah Ismail, European monarchs were also occupied elsewhere – Charles V with the first stirrings of the Reformation and Francis I of France with resisting Charles’s claims against his territories in Italy – and unprepared for a sudden reversal of Ottoman policy in the west after years of peace. Süleyman aimed to capture the great fortress of Belgrade which neither Murad II nor Mehmed II had been able to wrest from Hungary. Hungary was weak and isolated and unable to respond, and on 29 August 1521 Belgrade surrendered after a siege of almost two months. Some of the defenders who had hoped to remain were forcibly exiled to Istanbul where they were settled near the fortress of Yedikule; others from the towns and castles of Srem, the tongue of land between the Danube and Sava rivers, were settled in villages of the Gelibolu peninsula. Several other Hungarian strongholds also fell to the Ottomans, who now had access to the route westwards along the Sava and the possibilities of water-borne transport which it offered. Possession of Belgrade after the failed sieges of 1440 and 1456 provided the Ottomans with a strong forward base for any push into the heart of Hungary.

Next it was the turn of Rhodes, another stronghold Mehmed II had failed to capture and which the Knights had feared Selim would surely attack. What the Ottomans found insupportable was not that Rhodes sheltered and supplied pirates who made attacks on Ottoman shipping, but that the Knights held as slaves many Muslims captured on corsair raids while making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Those who managed to escape from Rhodes complained of the harsh treatment they received, which often ended in death for those who did not escape or could not afford to ransom themselves. Süleyman commanded his army in person; the siege lasted five months and the Ottomans accepted the surrender of Rhodes on 20 December 1522. The Knights had sustained great losses, and were allowed to go free; settlers from the Balkans and Anatolia soon arrived to take their place. The Knights sailed west but could find no permanent refuge until in 1530 they settled on the inhospitable island of Malta which Charles V offered them on condition that they take responsibility for the defense of the Spanish outpost of Tripoli in North Africa. The conquest of Rhodes brought the Ottomans a step closer to full control of the eastern Mediterranean basin. They failed, however, to exploit the island’s commercial or strategic possibilities; the Venetian envoy Pietro Zeno noted this neglect almost immediately, observing in 1523 that ‘the Sultan has no use for Rhodes’. Of the large islands in the region, only Cyprus and Crete remained in non-Ottoman hands.

Moors and Turkish adventurers from the Levant, of whom the most successful would prove to be Hızır Reis (9) and Oruç "Barbarossa" Reis, natives of Mitylene, increased the number of raids conducted on Europe from the North African coast around the turn of the 15th century. In response, Spain began to conquer the coastal towns of the region including Oran, Algiers and Tunis. Algiers was taken by Oruç in 1516, wherefrom he soon began terrorizing the coastal population of the Mediterranean alongside his brothers and a host of other corsairs. But when Oruç was killed in battle with the Spanish in 1518, in the aftermath of his attempt at capturing Tlemcen, his brother Hızır appealed to Selim I, the Ottoman sultan, who gave Hizr Reis the title of Beylerbey of Algiers, along with janissaries, galleys and cannons, in the process Hızır inherited his brother's place as leader of the Barbary Corsairs, his name "Barbarossa" and his mission, and at the same time brining the Ottomans directly into conflict with the Spanish in the eastern Mediterranean. With a fresh force of Turkish soldiers sent by the Ottoman sultan, Barbarossa recaptured Tlemcen in December 1518. He continued the policy of bringing Mudéjars, Moors who had remained under Spanish rule following the fall of Granada, from Spain to North Africa, thereby assuring himself of a sizable following of grateful and loyal Muslims, who harbored an intense hatred for Spain. He captured Bone, and in 1519, he defeated a Spanish-Italian army that tried to recapture Algiers. In a separate incident, he sank a Spanish ship and captured eight others. Still in 1519, he raided Provence, Toulon and the Îles d'Hyères in southern France. In 1521, he raided the Balearic Islands and later captured several Spanish ships returning from the New World off Cadiz. In 1522, he sent his ships, under the command of Kurtoğlu, to participate in the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes, which resulted in the departure of the Knights of St. John from that island on 1 January 1523. In June 1525, he raided the coasts of Sardinia. In May 1526, he landed at Crotone in Calabria and sacked the city, sank a Spanish galley and a Spanish fusta in the harbor, assaulted Castignano in Marche on the Adriatic Sea and later landed at Cape Spartivento. In June 1526, he landed at Reggio Calabria and later destroyed the fort at the port of Messina. He then appeared on the coasts of Tuscany, but retreated after seeing the fleet of Andrea Doria and the Knights of St. John off the coast of Piombino. In July 1526, Barbarossa appeared once again in Messina and raided the coasts of Campania. In 1527, he raided many ports and castles on the coasts of Italy and Spain. These intensifying raids would eventually lead to a major contest for control of the Mediterranean between the Ottomans and their Christian rivals.


Spanish Conquest of Mexico, meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma II
In one area of Europe only did the crusading ideal win striking success: on the south-western frontier of the continent in Iberia. Here that different outcome was hugely significant for the future not merely of western Christianity but of the world. From the eighth century, Arab Islamic conquests had established long-lasting Moorish principalities and kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula. These became centers of a highly developed Islamic culture which, with a tolerance imitated by the Ottomans and not by Christians, also allowed Jewish culture and thought to flourish in its midst. However, the fifteenth century saw the culmination of centuries of gradual Christian reclamations from the Moors with the capture in 1492 of the Islamic kingdom of Granada, in the extreme south of the peninsula. The news was celebrated all over Christian Europe as a rare reversal of Muslim advance. The victorious troops were in the service of joint monarchs, Fernando of the eastern Spanish kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and the principality of Catalonia, and Isabel of Castile, a much larger though mostly more thinly populated kingdom which ran from north to south in the peninsula. Aragon and Castile, precariously united by the joint accession of Fernando and Isabel as a married couple in 1474, remained separate political entities, and there was no reason for them to remain linked when Isabel died. However, the death of her successor Philip of Burgundy after only two years resulted in a new union of the crowns under Fernando; henceforth they were never again divided, and Aragon and Castile could be regarded for external purposes as a single Spanish monarchy. To the west, the kingdom of Portugal, at the remote edge of Europe on the Atlantic seaboard, had long before this won its struggles against the Muslims and had secured its independence against Castile for the time being.

The distinctive brand of Christianity formed in Iberia not only destroyed the only non-Christian societies left in western Europe, it also began extending the reach of western Christendom beyond its natural frontiers, in sharp contrast to the defeats and contraction in the east. The initiative in military and commercial conquests across the sea was taken not by Spaniards but by the Portuguese. Their seafaring expertise was forced on them by their exposed and isolated position on the Atlantic seaboard and by their homeland’s agricultural poverty, but they also had a tradition of successful crusading against Islam. They began their adventuring in north Africa, capturing the Moroccan commercial center of Ceuta in 1415, and they went on to contest with Muslims for dominance in African trade through ever more bold exploration, seeing their efforts as a fight for Christianity as well a quest for wealth. From as early as 1443, they were actively involved in the slave trade, which had previously been a Muslim monopoly: they created the first extensive intercontinental slave-trading route, shipping African slaves back home as labor to such an extent that soon a tenth of the population was black in Portugal’s southernmost region, the Algarve, a foretaste of later enforced mass movements of population to America. By the end of the century, Portuguese ships had become much more ambitious. They were fueled in their adventures by an optimistic myth or quarter-truth, that there was a distant, powerful Christian kingdom ruled over by ‘Prester John’, who would be an unbeatable ally against Islam – probably an echo of the real existence of a Christian kingdom in Ethiopia. Although Prester John never fulfilled European hopes, the galvanizing effect of the myth was enough. The Portuguese explored down the western flank of Africa, eventually rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reaching India by 1498 and sailing around the Chinese coast by 1513. In 1500 they made their first landing on the east coast of South America, in what later became their colony of Brazil, and everywhere they established footholds, forming the basis of a maritime empire which to some extent came to justify the pretentious title confirmed by Pope Alexander VI for King Manuel of Portugal in 1502: ‘Lord of the conquest, navigation and commerce of India, Ethiopia, Arabia and Persia’. Latin Europe marveled at their achievement, gradually swallowed its disappointment at the non-appearance of Prester John, and turned from the wretched situation in the Balkans to take new hope for survival.

In 1492, the same year that Granada fell, the adventurer and explorer Christopher Columbus rewarded Fernando and Isabel’s trust by making landfall across the Atlantic on the islands of the Caribbean. His achievement caused tension with the Portuguese, and this prompted Pope Alexander VI, a former subject of King Fernando, to partition the map of the world vertically between the two powers in 1493: the kingdoms confirmed this agreement in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas. Although the uncertain conditions of map-making meant that the line was not as clear a division through the Atlantic as it was intended to be, and the Portuguese were later able successfully to appeal to Tordesillas when they established their American colony of Brazil, the bulk of transatlantic activity would be Spanish, technically the new dominions became part of the Kingdom of Castile. Over the next three decades the Spaniards realized the vast scale of what they were now invading, as they moved beyond the Caribbean into Mexico, and saw that they had reached not merely Columbus’s scattering of islands, but a whole continent. Columbus made four voyages to the West Indies as the monarchs granted Columbus the governorship of the new territories, and financed more of his trans-Atlantic journeys. He founded La Navidad on the island later named Hispaniola on his first voyage. After its destruction by the indigenous Taino people, the town of Isabella was begun in 1493, on his second voyage. In 1496 his brother, Bartholomew, founded Santo Domingo. By 1500, despite a high death rate, there were between 300 and 1000 Spanish settled in the area. The local Taíno people continued to resist, refusing to plant crops and abandoning their Spanish-occupied villages. The first mainland explorations were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquest. In 1500 the city of Nueva Cádiz was founded on the island of Cubagua, Venezuela, followed by the founding of Santa Cruz by Alonso de Ojeda in present-day Guajira peninsula. Cumaná in Venezuela was the first permanent settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland Americas, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times. The Spanish founded San Sebastian de Uraba in 1509 but abandoned it within the year.

Following Christopher Columbus' establishment of permanent settlement in the Caribbean, the Spanish authorized expeditions, or "entradas", for the discovery, conquest, and colonization of new territory, using existing Spanish settlements as a base. The first encounter with the Yucatec Maya may have occurred in 1502, when the fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus came across a large trading canoe off Honduras. In 1511, Spanish survivors of the shipwrecked caravel called Santa María de la Barca sought refuge among native groups along the eastern coast of the peninsula. Hernán Cortés made contact with two survivors, Gerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero six years later. In 1517, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba made landfall on the tip of the peninsula. His expedition continued along the coast and suffered heavy losses in a pitched battle at Champotón, forcing a retreat to Cuba. Juan de Grijalva explored the coast in 1518, and heard tales of the wealthy Aztec Empire further west. As a result of these rumors, Hernán Cortés set sail with another fleet. From Cozumel he continued around the peninsula to Tabasco where he fought a battle at Potonchán; from there Cortés continued onward to conquer the Aztec Empire. In 1524, Cortés led a sizeable expedition to Honduras, cutting across southern Campeche, and through Petén in what is now northern Guatemala. In 1527 Francisco de Montejo set sail from Spain with a small fleet. He left garrisons on the east coast, and subjugated the northeast of the peninsula. Montejo then returned to the east to find his garrisons had almost been eliminated; he used a supply ship to explore southwards before looping back around the entire peninsula to central Mexico. Montejo pacified Tabasco with the aid of his son, also named Francisco de Montejo.

The Spanish campaign for Mexico began in February 1519. The Spanish campaign declared victorious on August 13, 1521, when a coalition army of Spanish forces and native Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés and Xicotencatl the Younger captured the emperor Cuauhtemoc and Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. During the campaign, Cortés was given support from a number of tributaries and rivals of the Aztecs, including the Totonacs, and the Tlaxcaltecas, Texcocans, and other city-states particularly bordering Lake Texcoco. In their advance, the allies were tricked and ambushed several times by the people they encountered. After eight months of battles and negotiations, which overcame the diplomatic resistance of the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II to his visit, Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlan on November 8, 1519, where he took up residence, welcomed by Moctezuma. When news reached Cortés of the death of several of his men during an Aztec attack on the Totonacs in Veracruz, he took the opportunity to take Moctezuma captive, Moctezuma allowed himself to be captured as a diplomatic gesture. When Cortés left Tenochtitlan to return to the coast and deal with the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Pedro de Alvarado was left in charge. Alvarado allowed a significant Aztec feast to be celebrated in Tenochtitlan and on the pattern of earlier massacre in Cholula, closed off the square and massacred the celebrating Aztec noblemen. The Alvarado massacre at the Main Temple of Tenochtitlan precipitated rebellion by the population of the city. Moctezuma was killed, although the sources do not agree on who murdered him. According to one account, when Moctezuma, now seen as a mere puppet of the invading Spaniards, attempted to calm the outraged populace, he was killed by a projectile. Cortés had returned to Tenochtitlan and his men fled the capital city during la Noche Triste in June, 1520. The Spanish, Tlaxcalans and reinforcements returned a year later on August 13, 1521 to a civilization that had been weakened by famine and smallpox. This made it easier to conquer the remaining Aztecs. After hearing about the fall of the Aztec Empire, the Tarascan ruler, the Cazonci, Tangaxuan II sent emissaries to the Spanish victors, the Tarascan state having been an enemy of the Aztec Empire. A few Spaniards went with them to Tzintzuntzan where they were presented to the ruler and gifts were exchanged. They returned with samples of gold and Cortés' interest in the Tarascan state was awakened. In 1522 a Spanish force under the leadership of Cristobal de Olid was sent into Tarascan territory and arrived at Tzintzuntzan within days. The Tarascan army numbered many thousands, perhaps as many as 100,000, but at the crucial moment they chose not to fight. Tangáxuan submitted to the Spanish administration, but for his cooperation was allowed a large degree of autonomy. This resulted in a strange arrangement where both Cortés and Tangáxuan considered themselves rulers of Michoacán for the following years: the population of the area paid tribute to them both. Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, then president of the first Audiencia decided, to march on northwestern Mexico with a force of 5,000–8,000 men in search for new populations to subdue, and when he arrived in Michoacán and found out that Tangaxuan was still de facto ruler of his empire he allied himself with a Tarascan noble Don Pedro Panza Cuinierángari against the Cazonci. The Cazonci was tried with plotting a rebellion, withholding tribute, sodomy and heresy, and he was tortured and executed.

Summary:

The Italian Wars dominate Western European politics from 1494 onward.

By 21 of February 1525 King Francis and an Imperial army find themselves on the eve of a battle at the Italian city of Pavia.

The Ottomans advance in every direction, from Algeria to Mesopotamia and from the borders of Hungary to the Cataracts of the Nile.

The Iberian Kingdoms spread across the globe, initiating the first great period of Colonization.

Footnotes:

(1) King Francis I of France is a really interesting character who I hope to explore in depth as part of the timeline. He has a rather mixed record, like almost every other ruler of this period. The sixteenth century in many ways forged European culture as we know it today and was dominated by an eclectic group of rulers who stand out from many of their predecessors and successors. Francis I of France, Philip II of Spain, Henry VIII of England, Emperor Charles V, Süleiman the Magnificent, Ismail I Safavid, Babur and Akbar of the Mughal Empire, Christian II and III of Denmark, Gustav I of Sweden and a whole host of others are among the most prominent and memorable rulers in history, dominating history books like few others. They were joined by some of the most powerful, fascinating and influential women in history, from Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, through Catherine and Marie de' Medici, as well as Roxelana and Margaret of Parma. I am really looking forward to exploring this period in detail.

(2) Thomas Wolsey was an English churchman, statesman and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the King's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered, and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state and extremely powerful within the Church, as Archbishop of York, a cleric in England junior only to the Archbishop of Canterbury. His appointment in 1515 as a cardinal by Pope Leo X gave him precedence over all other English clerics. The highest political position Wolsey attained was Lord Chancellor, the King's chief adviser. IOTL he eventually fell from power when he failed to negotiate the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

(3) The Fuggers were a German family who proved became a historically prominent group of European bankers, members of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers, and venture capitalists. Alongside the Welser family, the family controlled much of the European economy in the sixteenth century and accumulated enormous wealth. The Fuggers held almost a monopoly on European copper market. This banking family replaced the de' Medici family, who influenced all of Europe during the Renaissance. The Fuggers took over many of the Medicis' assets and their political power and influence. They were closely affiliated with the House of Habsburg whose rise to world power they financed. Jakob Fugger "the Rich" was elevated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in May 1511 and created Imperial Count of Kirchberg and Weissenhorn in 1514. Today, he is considered to be one of the wealthiest people to have ever lived.

(4) Simultaneously with all of these challenges Charles was facing a significant popular revolt known as the Revolt of the Communeros in Spain. It was an uprising by citizens of Castile against the rule of Charles V and his administration between 1520 and 1521. At its height, the rebels controlled the heart of Castile, ruling the cities of Valladolid, Tordesillas, and Toledo. In 1519, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor. He departed for Germany in 1520, leaving the Dutch cardinal Adrian of Utrecht to rule Castile in his absence. Soon, a series of anti-government riots broke out in the cities, and local city councils (Comunidades) took power. The rebels chose Charles' own mother, Queen Joanna, as an alternative ruler, hoping they could control her madness. The rebel movement took on a radical anti-feudal dimension, supporting peasant rebellions against the landed nobility. On April 23, 1521, after nearly a year of rebellion, the reorganized supporters of the emperor struck a crippling blow to the comuneros at the Battle of Villalar. The following day, rebel leaders Juan de Padilla, Juan Bravo, and Francisco Maldonado were beheaded. The army of the comuneros fell apart. Only the city of Toledo kept alive the rebellion lead by María Pacheco, until its surrender in October 1521.

(5) The Field of the Cloth of Gold was a meeting between the Kings of England and France which while ludicrously, impressively and famously lavish proved of little political significance beyond allowing the two kings and their retinues to get to know each other.

(6) The second and third parts of the Prelude will deal almost exclusively with the Reformation, where the Diet at Worms and many other events will be covered.

(7) Henry blamed the Imperial forces for this failure which had proven fruitless and expensive in the extreme. IOTL he stayed out of the war following this campaign and sided with the French during the next Italian War. ITTL things will play out somewhat differently but will take all of this into consideration.

(8) Keep this in mind, the PoD will center on the Battle of Pavia with the ripple effects causing changes everywhere afterwards. The Battle of Pavia really should be considered immensely important when trying to evaluate how impactful certain battles were.

(9) This is the man known to posterity as Hayreddin Barbarossa, but both of those are names he has yet to gain at this point. He will probably pop up again under several combinations of these names, his titles etc. He is yet another figure who makes up the incredible tapestry of personalities in this period.


EDIT:
As I have been made aware that I should inform readers, this TL borrows extensively, particularly for the OTL parts, from a range of different sources. These range from wikipedia pages to books.

The most often used sources are as follows:

MacCulloch, Diarmaid:
Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2003)
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)
All Things Made New: The Reformation and its Legacy (2016)

Weir, Alison:
Henry VIII: The King and His Court (2001)
The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991)
The Lost Tudor Princess: A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (2015)

Keay, John:
India: A History
China: A History
The Spice Route: A History

Clot, André:
Süleiman the Magnificent

Crowley, Roger:
Empires of the Sea

Finkel, Karoline:
Osman's Dream

Mallett, Michael and Shaw, Christine:
The Italian Wars

Caroll, Stuart:
Blood and Vengeance in Early Modern France
Martyrs & Murderers: The Guise Family and the Founding of Modern Europe

Fletcher, Catherine:
The Black Prince of Florence

Gristwood, Sarah:
Game of Queens: The Women Who Made The Sixteenth-Century

Norwich, John Julius:
Four Princes

Grousset, René:
The Empires of the Steppes

Fisher, Michael H.:
The Mughal Empire

Hemming, John:
The Conquest of the Inca

MacQuarrie, Kim:
The Last Days of the Inca
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