I'm surprised colonies exist, but I suppose they are much weaker than England in flames. Which means someone can go conquer them without any repercussions.
I bet it's France that does it.
I bet it's France that does it.
Un Dios, Un Imperio, Un Rey | Alternate TL.
- Thread starter Paladín Wulfen
- Start date
Paladín Wulfen
Kicked
Interest Fact: Today make 424 years since Philip II die...
NOW COME THE MAD KING TIME.
NOW COME THE MAD KING TIME.
I figure in this world he's both called "Philip the Great" and "Philip the Terrible" for his successes
I think that depends on wheter the Black Legend gave emphasis to that or not
El Rey Loco
Paladín Wulfen
Kicked
«España esta afrontando un reinado oscuro».
«Spain is facing a dark reign».
— Anonym
«Spain is facing a dark reign».
— Anonym
Felipe I's successor would be Felipe II, son of Felipe I and Catherine-Marie de Lorraine, a French princess from the house of Guise. Catherine was the second child of Francis, Duke of Guise, and Anna d'Este. She grew up during the French Wars of Religion, a civil war between Protestant and Catholic factions. In 1570 she married Philip I, before giving birth to four sons and one daughter. Of which only one would survive: Felipe. He himself would be born in the fortress of Toledo at two in the morning. Philip grew up pampered and yet received a consistent and stable education that made him be considered quite intelligent to the point that he frequently ordered the purchase of books to form a "school" library for the prince, made up mostly of history books. of Spain, the crown of Aragon, the history of Portugal, technical disciplines, such as astronomy and cartography. His bibliophile became a reflection of his wide culture and variety of his interests, which was accompanied by the collecting of rare objects and antiques to form an authentic "camera of wonders", characteristic of so many Renaissance princes. However, he was prone to exaggerated behavior that caused problems and discomfort, such as when in a hunting raid, he burned several hares alive, including a pregnant one, these sadistic behaviors would also include the sexual plane when he would experience having relations with several servants and maidens. of her sisters Isabella and Catalina. The whims were normally settled with a ridiculous compensation to the victim's father and the transfer of the maiden to another place away from Felipe. However, these behaviors that were hidden, were hidden under a pleasant and intelligent personality where he made use of his love of theater, painting and, above all, hunting to relate and achieve being loved while delegating his government in his Valido: a position comparable to the figure of the Prime Minister, although the position depended on the confidence of the king.
Philip II's accession to the throne came with great promise, as the new ruler replaced many of the court's prominent officials, most of them elders who served during the reign of his father and grandfather, with younger men. youths. Perhaps the most outstanding measure would be the appointment of Valido to Francisco de Sandoval, Marquis of Denia, and later, Duke of Lerma, who had been a page of the sons of Philip I and chief groom of the prince before being this King. The Duke of Lerma, showed himself to be a man of little intelligence and culture, ambitious and unscrupulous in the extreme. However, his policy from the beginning was focused on establishing an international peace, expelling the last Moorish redoubts from Spain while enriching himself personally through a masterful campaign of accounting and mortgage fraud, embezzlement and large-scale corruption where he dedicated himself to buying a large number of of houses, palaces and lots throughout Spain while managing influence peddling and the sale of public offices. This was concealed by hiring outstanding architects and using the best materials to enhance and beautify the capital and other great Spanish cities. On the other hand, in 1608 the Treaty of London was signed where the Empire of Spain signed a peace treaty with the Kingdom of England (which was in Personal Union with Scotland), the Treaty of London was favorable to Spain where James I of England promised not to intervene in continental affairs while suspending the activities of corsairs in the Atlantic Ocean, renouncing any kind of aid to the rebellious Netherlands, opening the English Channel to Spanish shipping, and prohibiting its subjects carry goods from Spain to territories in conflict with Spain. Spain, however, promised to withdraw Spanish troops while diminishing Spanish support for the formation of the English Catholic priesthood.
The Peace of London as it would be called, would guarantee that the following year, the Duke of Lerma would have troops available to carry out the Expulsion of the Moriscos. This initiative was supported by almost all sectors of the Spanish population: Nobility, clergy and peasantry, mostly fearing a possible collaboration between the Moorish population and the Ottoman Empire against Christian Spain. This opinion was reinforced by the numerous incursions of Barbary pirates, which were sometimes facilitated or celebrated by the Moorish population and which continually devastated the entire Mediterranean coast. The Moriscos were considered a fifth column, and potential allies of the Turks or Protestants. On the other hand, shortly after accessing the throne in 1598 after the death of his father Felipe I, Felipe II made a trip to the Kingdom of Valencia accompanied by Francisco Gómez de Sandova, great Moorish lord and spokesman for the Valencian nobility. . When he left there in May 1599, the king wrote a letter to the archbishop of Valencia and patriarch of Antioch, Juan de Ribera -a strong supporter of the expulsion- in which he gave him precise instructions for the evangelization of the Moors through preaching and the dissemination of a catechism that his predecessor in the archbishopric had written. These instructions were accompanied by an edict of grace issued by the inquisitor general. However, the evangelization was carried out with excessive inquisitorial zeal since the preachers sent by Patriarch Ribera to the Moorish populations transformed the exhortations into threats and also unilaterally reduced the term of the edict of grace from two years to one. While these events were being prepared, at a state meeting it was even proposed that the Moorish men and elders be sent to serve as galley slaves in the Royal Navy and their estates confiscated, and that the women be remitted to America, while the children they would stay in seminaries to be educated in the Catholic faith.
On April 4, 1609, the Council of State made the decision to expel the Moriscos from all of Spain, but the agreement was not immediately made public in order to keep the preparations secret. The Spanish cavalry was mobilized to guard the borders while at the same time, the galleons of the Mediterranean fleet were entrusted with guarding the coasts of Africa. This deployment did not go unnoticed and alerted the Moorish lords who immediately met with the viceroy, who told them that there was nothing he could do. The expulsion decree, made public on September 22, 1609, granted a period of three days for all Moriscos to go to the places ordered, taking with them what they could of their property, and threatened with the penalty of death. death to those who hid or destroyed the rest «because S.M. he has seen fit to make mercy of these haciendas, estates and furniture that they cannot take with them, to the lords whose vassals they were». Only six families out of every one hundred were exempted from expulsion, which would be designated by the lords among those that gave the most evidence of being Christian, and whose mission would be "to preserve the houses, sugar mills, rice crops and irrigation, and give news to the new settlers who came”, although this exception was finally revoked and among the Moriscos themselves it found little echo. Likewise, Moriscos married to old Christians and with children under six years of age were allowed to stay, “but if the father is a Moorish and she is an old Christian, he will be expelled, and the children under six years of age will stay with their mothers.” There were gentlemen who behaved with dignity and even accompanied their Moorish vassals to the ships, but others, like the Count of Cocentaina, took advantage of the situation and stole all their property, including those for personal use, clothes, jewelry and dresses. To the extortions of some gentlemen were added the assaults by gangs of old Christians who insulted them, robbed them and in some cases murdered them on their journey to the embarkation ports.
There was no reaction of mercy towards the Moriscos such as occurred in Castile. Since the majority were forced to sell off the assets they owned and were not allowed to dispose of their cattle, their grain or their oil, which remained for the benefit of the lords. The exactions they suffered, together with the news that the event was happening throughout Spain, provoked the rebellion of some twenty thousand Moriscos who concentrated in the Sierra Nevada mountains, being harshly repressed by a third, by the local militias. and by volunteers attracted by loot. Other uprisings were made but were repressed by Tercios or local militias, although their work was largely facilitated by hunger and thirst. In total, some 350,000 people were expelled, most of them from the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragón, which were the most affected, since they lost a third and a sixth of their population, respectively. The depopulation that Spain suffered as a result of the Moorish expulsion would be the first time that higher birth rates would be motivated, this was done by introducing a series of measures to promote reproduction, with the aim of increasing the population. Loans were offered to married couples, with part of the loan canceled for each new birth. child, and any married man with more than six children was exempt from tax. The King argued that the Spanish people had a duty to themselves to produce as many children as possible. Corresponding to these incentives, laws were enacted to penalize citizens who proved to be less productive. Singles paid more and more taxes, even limitations were established for nuns, allowing women who are not of childbearing age or older to enter religious service.
While Spain began to face a dark time marked by worrying corruption, in France, King Henry IV of France and III of Navarre of the House of Bourbon, would begin to finance colonial expeditions to North America. The French first explored the "New World" looking for a passage to the Indies. French exploration of North America began in the reign of King François I when, in 1524, he sent Giovanni da Verrazano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland, in order to discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean. Although he did not discover this route, Verrazano became the first European to explore much of the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada. Ten years later, François I sends Jacques Cartier to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence River. Cartier's first two voyages were aimed at finding a passage to the Orient, while the third, beginning in 1541, was aimed at discovering the legendary kingdom of Saguenay and establishing a permanent colony on the banks of the Saint-Laurent. In August 1541, his group established a fortified colony, named Charlesbourg-Royal, where he subsequently built a second fort on a cliff overlooking the colony, to improve its protection. Giving each a task to accomplish, on September 7 Cartier set out in a rowboat for a reconnaissance, with a small escort, in search of the kingdom of Saguenay. However, bad weather and rapids prevent him from reaching the Ottawa River. Cartier returned to a Charlesbourg-Royal fighting for its survival. After a difficult winter, Cartier realized that he lacks the manpower and resources to protect the fort and find the kingdom of Saguenay at the same time. He returned to France in June 1542. The lord of Roberval took command of Charlesbourg-Royal, but he decided to leave the following year because of illness, bad weather and the hostility of the natives that drive the settlers to despair.
In 1562, Charles IX, under the leadership of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, sent Norman Jean Ribault and a group of Huguenot settlers to attempt to colonize the Atlantic coast and found a colony in what was Florida. The arrival of the Protestant Huguenots in the New World angered the Spanish who claimed Florida and opposed the Protestant settlers. In 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés led a group of Spaniards from Saint Augustine, 60 kilometers south of Fort Frances called Fort Caroline. On September 20, 1565, the Spanish, commanded by Ménendez de Avilés, attacked Fort Caroline and massacred its occupants, including Jean Ribaut, who would end up fleeing into the wilderness without knowing his fate. For 35 years, France initially focused on fishing in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to later focus on the fur trade, as a result of which, in 1599, Tadoussac was founded by the merchant François Gravé Du Pont and Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit, a captain of the French Royal Navy, when they acquired a monopoly of the fur trade from the French King Henry IV, Gravé and Chauvin built the settlement on the bank of the mouth of the Saguenay River, at its confluence with the Saint Lawrence to take advantage of its location, forming there the first trading post in Canada, as well as a permanent settlement. Four years later, Samuel de Champlain made his first trip to New France on a fur-trading mission. Although he had no official mandate during this trip, he did draw a map of the Saint Lawrence River and wrote, on his return to France later, a report entitled Des sauvages (where he explained his stay with a Montagnais tribe near of Tadoussac). Commissioned by Henry IV to report on his discoveries, Champlain participated in another expedition to New France, in the spring of 1604, led by Pierre Dugua de Mons. He helped found the settlement of the Île Sainte-Croix, the first French settlement in the New World, which will be abandoned the following winter.
The expedition then founded the colony of Port-Royal. In 1608, Champlain would found a fur post that would become Quebec City, establishing itself as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New France (Vice-royauté de Nouvelle-France). In Quebec City, Champlain would forge alliances between France and the Huron and Outaouai against his traditional enemies, the Iroquois. Champlain like other French travelers continued to explore North America, using the birch bark canoe to move quickly across the Great Lakes and their tributaries. Samuel Champlain would manage to explore almost the entire Atlantic coast of Canada, including Hudson Bay, which was called "mer du nord" (north sea) by the natives. Unlike in Metropolitan France, New France was only Catholic as religious minorities were not allowed to settle which contributed to the slow growth of the colonies. One colony that would stand out would be Acadia, which was founded four years before Quebec in a separate geographic area. By the early 1600s, about a hundred French families had settled in Acadia. The Acadians developed friendly relations with the native Micmac, learning and applying their hunting and fishing techniques. Living on the frontier, the Acadians were involved in every conflict between the natives and the French and later the British. The Acadians learned to survive by adopting a neutral attitude and refusing to fight for either side; for this they were called the “neutral French”.
On the other hand, in 1579 the Republic of the Seven United Provinces was born, which soon became a new commercial and maritime power in Western Europe. The Republic quickly became home to a series of import and export companies that soon gave birth to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602, with government collaboration. Seeking new trade routes that might prove profitable, the VOC hires captain and explorer Henry Hudson to explore the Northwest Passage, the northern Siberian passage to Asia. This, who had already tried the same route on behalf of English investors (Moscovite Company), decides, commanding the ship Halve Maen (Media Luna), to seek the route from the Indies to the west, as indicated in the notes of the English captain John Smith who had been part of the first attempt at permanent colonization in English Virginia, in contradiction to the directives he received from the Company. From Virginia, it heads up the American East Coast to the mouth of the Zuide Rivier and then to New York Bay, which the French had christened Nouvelle-Angoulême in 1524. Going up the river, Henry Hudson soon realized that the river was probably not led to the kingdom of Cathay (china). It is, on the other hand, when the Amerindian term Manna-hata is known, from which the name "Manhattan" would derive for the island that stands out in the meeting of the river and the ocean. His trip on behalf of private Dutch interests would ignite a notable commercial interest for the fur trade in the Noort Rivier (Hudson River) delta. In subsequent years, four Dutch companies competed for the fur trade with Native Americans in the region. These four companies, concerned about the possible negative impact of a rivalry, came together and received in 1614 from the States General of the United Provinces a monopoly company charter ceding to them the entire exploitation of the fur trade on the territory for three years.
Returning to Spain, the first patent for a modern steam engine would be issued by a versatile Navarro-Spanish, who stood out as a soldier, painter, cosmographer and musician, but, above all, as an inventor named Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont. Although the first to use a steam-propelled machine in a rudimentary way was Heron of Alexandria, in the Roman Egypt of the 1st century, it would be Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont who would manage to make a functional steam engine for the time. The power of water vapor had been known for a very long time, for since the 12th century, there had been an organ in Reims Cathedral that worked with steam. What Ayanz came up with was to use the force of steam to propel a fluid (the water accumulated in the mines) through a pipe, taking it out in a continuous flow. In addition, he applied the same effect to cool air by exchanging it with snow and directing it inside the mines, cooling the environment by inventing "air conditioning". And it wasn't just theory: he put these inventions into practice in the Guadalcanal silver mine in Seville, evicted precisely by the floods before he took charge of its exploitation. This invention, in itself, was not the only one because Ayanz invented many other things: a pump to drain boats in case of flooding; a precedent of the submarine but that could only navigate rivers; a compass that established magnetic declination; a furnace for distilling seawater on board ships; conical stones for grinding; metal roller mills; irrigation pumps; the arch structure for the reservoir dams; a movement transformation mechanism that allows measuring technical efficiency. Up to 48 inventions were recognized in 1606 by the "invention privilege" (as patents were then called) signed by Felipe II. One of the most striking inventions was that of a diving suit.
The Diving Suit consisted of a cowhide suit with two ducts that allowed the entry and expulsion of air, an idea that provided a solution to the deficient system of the bells that did not allow this renewal and limited the time of the submerged diver. The ducts started from a rudimentary diving suit and were connected to a bellows that propelled the air. Thus, unlike the bell system, the diver could remain for a long time without going outside and, above all, he had the freedom of movement that was essential for the purpose envisioned by Ayanz, rescuing riches from the bottom of the sea and collecting the abundant pearls In America. Philip II himself commissioned Ayanz to demonstrate the effectiveness of his ingenuity. Courtiers, people of rank and spectators from the common people gathered, always with a background of luxury and theatricality, so much to the taste of the king, that he chose as his stage the waters that bathed the now-defunct Palacio de la Ribera, his favorite in the summer. Before the astonished gaze of the king and his entourage, the first diver in history stayed under the murky waters of the Pisuerga for more than an hour. He only returned to the surface at the request of the monarch and, once outside, he assured that he could have been underwater as long as 'her coldness and hunger' allowed. This is how Jerónimo Ayanz told it:
"His Majesty wanted to see what seemed most difficult, which was the ability for a man to work under water for a space of time. Thus, in August of last year, 1602, he went with his galleys along the river of this city to the garden of Don Antonio de Toledo, where there were many people. I threw a man under the water, and after an hour His Majesty ordered him to come out and although he replied under the water that he did not want to come out so soon because he was well, His Majesty again ordered him to come out. Who said that he could be under the water as long as he could suffer and sustain her coldness and hunger." Let's remember that the summer in Spain was not comparable to that of France or other countries.
But the age of discoveries did not end with the turn of the century. Well, a Portuguese sailor and explorer in the service of Spain named Pedro Fernández de Quirós, left Peru with the intention of finding the Terra Australis Ignota, the “great land of the mythical south”, and conquering it for Spain and the Church. Terra Australis (completely Latin Terra Australis Ignota or Terra Australis Incognita, "[The] Unknown Land of the South") was an imaginary continent with origins in classical Greece introduced by Aristotle and Eratosthenes on the basis of prejudices related to geometric symmetry. His ideas were later extended by Ptolemy, a 1st century Greek cartographer, who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed by a land mass to the south. When, during the Renaissance, Ptolemy became the main source of information for European cartographers, this continent began to appear on their maps. The Quirós expedition, with the three ships Santos Pedro y Pablo, San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes, left Callao on December 21, 1605 with 300 sailors and soldiers, reaching the Tuamotu and the islands later called Austrialia del Espíritu in 1606. Saint (Vanuatu). Quirós landed on a large island that he believed was part of the southern continent, and he called it the "Austrialia of the Holy Spirit" (combining the words "Austral" and "Austria", the reigning dynasty in Spain and Portugal). The island still bears the name of Espiritu Santo. There he founded a colony that he called "New Jerusalem", but it was later abandoned due to disagreements between the components of the expedition, and due to the hostility of the indigenous Ni-Vanuatu. Some weeks later Quirós went to sea again. Contrary winds prevented the ships from following a more direct route along the already known northern coast of New Guinea. But a storm caused the expedition to end up going south until reaching a peninsula, the expedition managed to reach Australia.
Upon arrival, they soon encountered a ship flying the flag of the Dutch East India Company. The ship was the Duyfken, commanded by Willem Janszoon (also known by his short name Willen Jansz), a Dutch captain and explorer. Quirós and his fleet engaged the Duyfken, which was quickly ripped apart by superior firepower before being boarded. The Spanish eventually subdued the crew before Janszoon's maps, logbooks, and voyage notes could be removed. The captured documents made it possible to obtain nearly 320 km of the coastline mapped along with the VOC's navigation routes, which made Quirós spend the six winter months in Australia, mapping it completely before setting sail for Manila where he was received by the Captain General Rodrigo de Vivero y Aberrucia, who wasted no time in granting colonization rights in Australia. However, the problem that Pedro Fernández de Quirós had was actually settling and pacifying the territory. Quirós launched a massive propaganda campaign to encourage the landless poor of Japan, New Spain, Peru and the Metropolis to settle in the region. The result was hundreds of peasants and impoverished former Ronin from Japan and elsewhere traveling to Australia totaling three thousand people. However, colonization quickly faced a problem based on the rocky, steep, and somewhat dry terrain of the island-continent. causing two food shortages in the first five years. Fortunately for the settlers, Portuguese connections made Australia a future home for hundreds of cattle from Portuguese South Africa and India, including several dozen Cachena from Portugal and Galicia. By 1620, thousands of families had settled in the colony over the years, living in settlements, forts, farms, and ranches on the coast and its interior, which was populated by families that used horses to drive livestock.
However, the Spanish were outnumbered by the native aborigines, who saw their land, trees, and wildlife taken, cut down, or hunted. That caused tensions and hostilities to erupt as settlements expanded, disrupting traditional indigenous food-gathering activities. While the reactions of the Aboriginal inhabitants to the sudden invasion by the British were mixed, they became hostile when their presence led to competition for resources and occupation of their land. European diseases decimated indigenous populations, and the occupation or destruction of land and food resources sometimes led to starvation. The natives were quick to take hostile action against the Spanish in conventional battles where large groups attacked the Spanish on open ground during which the aboriginal residents would attempt to use superior numbers to their advantage. Indigenous tactics varied, but were mostly based on preexisting hunting and fighting practices, using spears, clubs, and other simple weapons. Unlike the indigenous peoples of North America, they were not generally adapted to meet the challenge of Europeans, and although there were some instances of individuals and groups acquiring and using firearms, this was not widespread. This meant that the indigenous peoples were never considered a serious military threat afterward, no matter how much the settlers feared them. The Aborigines however also used medieval warfare tactics where they advanced in a crescent formation in an attempt to outflank and surround their opponents, waiting for the first burst of fire and then throwing their spears as the colonists reloaded. Generally, however, such open warfare proved more costly to indigenous Australians than to Europeans.
Central to the success of the Europeans was the use of firearms where although they were often cumbersome single-shot, smoothbore, muzzle-loading weapons with flintlock mechanisms produced a low rate of fire, while they suffered from a high failure rate and were only accurate to within 50 meters (160 ft). Despite the flaws, firearms were sometimes a frightening element given the sound they caused that often followed someone who died. However, extensive use was also made of swords, pikes along with crossbows, and arquebuses. The scarcity of firearms did not prevent the Spanish pioneers in Australia from pioneering the use of mounted arquebusiers, an early form of dragoon.
It will always be better than Caligula albeit by a narrow margin.
Paladín Wulfen
Kicked
The next chapter gonna be short but necessary for the future situation.
Tell me, you like the Storms, horses and the sea? There go the clue for the next chapter
Tell me, you like the Storms, horses and the sea? There go the clue for the next chapter
Storms, horses and sea. He reminds me a lot of Poseidon.
The origin of the brumbies?
China allways needed imported horses and maybe Austrialia can open the chinese market to the spanish...
China.
Paladín Wulfen
Kicked
Around the beginning of the 17th century the forces of the Catholic Spanish Empire were in opposition to those of the Protestant Netherlands, resulting in an undeclared war on their possessions in Asia. In the middle of the situation was the strategic island of Formosa, named after the Portuguese sailors, who passed near it in 1544, baptizing it for the Europeans with the name of the island Ilha Formosa, which means "Beautiful Island". But its importance would not awaken until in 1615, Dutch traders in search of an Asian base of operations first arrived on the island, intending to use the island as a station for Dutch trade with coastal China. When the Dutch arrived in Formosa, they found the southwest of the island already frequented by a mostly transient Chinese population numbering about 1,500 but at no time did they see or pay attention to any kind of Ming territorial marker. Deciding to settle in Taiwan and in common with standard practice at the time, the Dutch built a defensive fort to act as a base of operations, on a temporary basis. This temporary fort was replaced four years later by the more substantial Fort Zeelandia. With a base of operations established and fortified, the Dutch demanded that China open the ports of the southeast to Dutch trade. China refused, warning the Dutch that Formosa was Chinese territory. The Dutch threatened that China would face Dutch raids on Chinese ports and ships unless the Chinese allowed trade and China did not trade with Manila, but only with the Dutch in Batavia and Siam and Cambodia. However, the Dutch discovered to their chagrin that, unlike the small kingdoms of Southeast Asia, China was not easily intimidated, so the Dutch decided to "induce the Chinese to trade by force or fear" by attacking Fujian and Chinese shipping.
The mercantile piracy campaign ended with Dutch defeats that were avenged by the Dutch in Formosa since they forced the Chinese population in Formosa to forced labor. The Chinese offensive reached the Dutch fort on July 30, 1624, with 15,000 Chinese troops and 40-50 warships under General Wang Mengxiong landing and placing the fort commanded by Marten Sonck under siege, forcing them to sue for peace on July 3. August 1624. However, while the Dutch contingent was initially made up mostly of soldiers and other laborers from the other Dutch colonies, particularly the area around Batavia. The number of soldiers stationed on the island rose and fell according to the colony's military needs, from a low of 180 soldiers in the early days to a high of 1,800 shortly before Wang Mengxiong's invasion. There were also a number of other personnel, from traders and merchants to missionaries and schoolteachers, plus the Dutch brought with them slaves from their other colonies, who primarily served as personal slaves for important Dutchmen. During the siege of Fort Zeelandia, in which Ming Chinese forces commanded by Wang Mengxiong besieged and defeated the Dutch East India Company, the Chinese took Dutch women and children prisoner who became slaves or concubines. Some Dutch physical characteristics, such as auburn and red hair became a taste of the concubines of Chinese commanders and soldiers to the point that Dutch women who were taken as concubines and slave wives were never freed. The Dutch defeat saw how the Chinese were able to match a European power in power. So his attentions were soon focused on the Spanish possessions along the Chinese mainland coast.
The main European possession in the Chinese territories was the Island of Macao. The Portuguese occupied Macao on August 14, 1556 while also building bases of operations there for trade with China, especially Canton. Both Portuguese and Chinese merchants flocked to Macao, and it quickly prospered, becoming an important node in the development of Portugal's trade in Southeast Asia. Due to the situation, Peking decided to lease Macao to Lisbon in exchange for Macao paying homage in 1557. Six years later, the number of inhabitants of Macao was a thousand Portuguese, almost all married to Malays and Japanese converted to Christianity and a few thousand Malay Malays, Indians and African slaves. Macao became the gateway to Christianity for the entire Chinese Empire. Producing that the Spanish missionaries established in Manila (Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans), rushed to settle in Macao. But at the time the Portuguese Viceroy of Goa demanded that these establishments be handed over to Portuguese religious orders. However, they did not obey, so the small city of Macao would be littered with churches and convents. With Spain annexing Portugal, Portugal's insular territories would not recognize sovereignty until in 1583 Macau finally recognized the Spanish king as sovereign. But they kept their autonomy, their trade and the Portuguese flag. Macao was named a city by Felipe I of Spain with the name of Cidade do Nome de Deus de Macau. In 1605, Dutch attacks led the Portuguese to build a wall without China's permission. This made the 14th emperor of the Ming dynasty: Wanli begin to educate his successor: Zhu Changluo so as not to be frightened by foreign barbarians. Zhu Changluo's rule lasted only about a month when he perished at the hands of a conspiracy by court eunuchs.
With the Wanli Emperor and his heir, the Taichang Emperor, dead in 1620, Taichang's son Zhu Youjiao became emperor at the age of 15. The Tianqi Emperor, as Zhu Youjiao would become known, was illiterate and showed no interest in studying him. However, he was a noted carpenter and craftsman, often spending a great deal of time woodworking and instructing his servants to sell their covert creations on the market just to see how much they were worth. His curiosity coincided with the sight of Dutch guns and ships, even the arrival of a Dutch concubine named Catharina Herman piqued his interest in the West. But Catalina would influence the Emperor based on the stories transmitted: Catalina would speak of the King-Emperor of Spain, of his warriors who fought like possessed demons invoking her warrior hero: Santiago Matamoros and much more. Catharina Harman was a fierce woman who had already killed several Spanish Catholic men. the Dutch motivated the young 20-year-old emperor to wage war against the Catholic demons. This alone would cause in 1625, the Chinese Empire ruled by the Ming dynasty to declare war on the Spanish Empire demanding the return of Macao at the same time as demanding freedom from the tributary state of Japan. For China was considered the ruler of the world and the rest of the uncivilized barbarian nations only worthy of paying tribute to the Empire. The invasion would occur on October 8, 1625 when a naval blockade was instituted on Macao as artillery batteries and Chinese ships began to bombard the island or plague sea minefields that were wooden boxes, sealed with putty that turned a mechanism of steel wheel lock flint to produce sparks and ignite the fuse of the naval mine. At one point they would launch several fire ships that would end up burning the port of Macao and blocking it with five galleons inside.
Macao managed to get a small ship through the Chinese naval blockade and into the Philippines. Once there, Viceroy Santiago of Austria-Yamato of Japan would begin to form several Tercios called Tercio de Sendai, Tercio de Owari, Tercio de Shikoku, Tercio de Satsuma and Tercio de Ronin, formed by veteran Samurais or Hidalgos veterans in crushing related revolts. with Catholic activity or the creation of the Spanish-Japanese Creole language led by Miyamoto Musashi. The Japanese troops were at the same time supported by several Philippine Tercios. The Spanish expected an easy victory. They considered themselves a powerful empire since it stretched across America, Europe, and Asia that had barely suffered a major defeat in recent decades. China, on the other hand, was a kingdom led by Asians who waged constant war with tribes from the northern steppes. However, this did not prevent Macao from falling into Chinese hands and expelling the Spanish and Europeans from China. There were several factors that explain why the Ming were victorious. The first is the workforce. In short, the Bulgarians were able to mobilize and deploy thousands of troops in less time. Spain and its Viceroyalty of Japan increased to just under 80,000 men in total, of which approximately 15 thousand were sailors and Navy Infantry. However, the Chinese deployed troops led by Yuan Chonghuan, a military man who in his youth befriended several Jesuits and spent a lot of time working on modifying European cannons, which would later allow him to know how to counterattack them using Hongyipao: culverins of European-style muzzleloaders introduced to China based on trade or plunder from European ships. The Spaniards in their rescue offensive to Macao arrived at a depopulated city, looted and above all full of corpses in pyramids of heads and crucified people. That was a clear provocation.
Japanese Tercio Soldier with Tanegashima-style Arquebus
The invasion of mainland China was carried out by the Guangdong Province using the Pearl River Delta as a landing zone. However, Spanish soldiers began to commit crimes against civilians, such as robbery, rape, and murder. This senseless crime spree resulted in Spanish soldiers murdering at least 2,000 civilians in the first month of fighting on the continent. The Spanish commanders showed little concern for the crimes that the soldiers were committing and did not discipline the soldiers responsible for them or devise ways to prevent crimes. This led many Chinese to take up arms and form guerrilla bands made up of battalions of poor peasant recruits who harassed the Spanish to the point that they were considered shock infantry. However, by early 1626, huge columns of Mongol cavalry could be seen, advancing at full speed with Ming imperial standards carried by the main units. The incredible depth of the advance of the Chinese formations defied the Spanish imagination: nearly one hundred thousand Mongol horsemen descended from the northern borders to expel the Spanish. When news of the reinforcements reached the Spanish, they were quick to understand the scale of the offensive; the Chinese were committing a good number of specialized heavy and light cavalry in a classic offensive to their doctrine and carried out on a scale that indicated no less objective than the destruction of Spanish military power for their expulsion. In all areas, the Chinese forces were numerically superior to the invading Spanish army. Technologically, however, most of his equipment was poorer and his troops, likewise, largely peasants of low morale. This meant that the actual forces available to meet the advance were quite insufficient.
By now, the fighting in the Danube Delta was at its fiercest. The Spanish were constantly trying to advance, most of their engineers setting up fortifications there and assisting in the fighting effort. However, the northern Sino-Mongol force was on, constantly outflanking the Spanish along the coast and then relentlessly harassing. With the Tercios making steady, if bloody, progress in the south, it was felt that the offensive was still proceeding in excellent order. By mid-1626, Mongol horsemen raced forward unhindered along the roads as peasants came out of hiding cheering. In response to the Chinese advance, the advancing Spanish armored cavalry columns came into contact with the Chinese forces. They immediately attacked, charging full speed towards the attack without any serious attempt at reconnaissance or preparation, relying purely on speed and shock. The Spanish forces in the area were light and poorly equipped to face the numerical mass of the charging steppe wolves. The Spanish units in the area fought valiantly throughout the night, suffering sixty percent casualties while doing little to stop the Chinese. A final thrust the next morning opened a path and the Spanish forces quickly collapsed after that. The Spanish withdrawal saw how the Pearl River Delta was filled with barges trying to return to safe land but the arrival of a typhoon caused absolute chaos. After four days and nights of continuous rain, China's southeast territories were drenched. Typically, tropical cyclones weaken over land, but the soggy ground meant the storm would continue to blow just as hard as if it had been in the Moluccas, picking up speed until the eye was moving at 60mph, about as fast as a tornado, fast enough to reach the Pearl River Delta and Macau in a single night.
When the first fifty foot wave hit the shoreline of the Pearl River Delta. The Spanish fleet bore the brunt of the storm. Homes were smashed to rubble the size of human arms. Cargo ships weighing sixty tons were lifted from the sea and launched against the shore. Trees near the shoreline were dumped as pick-up poles. The entire coastline was altered and the Delta was a solid mass of foam, hurling corpses of men, beasts, and ships into the wreckage of coastal communities. After the first blow and the following ones just as hard, the Chinese militias patrolled with torches and lanterns. Initial calculations estimated that between 700 and 1,200 villages had been eliminated. Meanwhile, almost all roads and paths were unusable, in the middle of a town the Santa Isabel, one of the galleons created in Japan, lay open like an open whale and burning after being attacked by peasants who killed the crew. The Chinese and Spanish forces had been battered by the storm, their logistics gasping in pain and their communications crying. The storm was actually a boon to the Chinese, giving the Chinese commanders time to strengthen their defensive positions before possible Spanish reinforcements arrived. Other regions of China had been hit, but not as badly as this one. 600,000 deaths were reported in the storm, more than 2,000,000 injured and more than 500,000 people homeless approximately. However, in the north the situation was the opposite. Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci's victory in the Battle of Ningyuan would strike fear in Beijing as storm-sewn chaos had briefly paralyzed Chinese forces in the area and drastically weakened law and order while thousands of homeless refugees they moved to territories in the North. But with the Spanish practically expelled, the horror of the north came with its weakening.
The Pekin sack was the first! A glorious capital city burned to the ground as its streets were adorned with peasants and eunuchs being dragged away as their bones shattered by the very force with which they were dragged! The Emperor and his royal retinue were enslaved and chained to be taken north! The Yangtze turned Red! The canals and the Yangtze River itself were clogged with the dead of thousands of executed peasants! Wives flogged by the Manchus and sold to their own husbands! Suzhou and Hangzhou ended up in ruins and emptiness! The Yellow River turned red with the blood of the Ming warriors who, returning north to finish off their nomadic enemies, faced living nightmares. The Ming Dynasty fell in less than ten years and by 1636, the Qing Dynasty of Manchu origin ascended the Jade Throne.
La Guerra de los Veintidós Años.
Paladín Wulfen
Kicked
«La guerra es nuestra patria, nuestra armadura es nuestra casa.».
«War is our country, our armor is our house.».
— Common Spanish Warcry during the Thirty Years War
«War is our country, our armor is our house.».
— Common Spanish Warcry during the Thirty Years War
The Spanish defeat in China was a severe blow to the Spanish pride that had been winning wars almost non-stop. It was one thing to lose a battle and another to lose the war. The so-called Philip II War was a conflict that would give the Dutch a certain mercantile advantage by using Formosa as a base of commercial operations with the nascent Qing dynasty. Felipe II would die from a fit of rage that would make him try to attack several of his advisers who would end up fleeing from him until they ended up tripping and breaking their necks when falling down some stairs. His death allowed the accession to the throne of his son: Philip III, aged 25 in 1630. The young emperor was passionate about the arts, especially painting and theater, intelligent, cultured and fond of hunting, bullfighting and the women. Felipe was not long in marrying Luisa Francisca de Guzmán in 1631, who descended from the kings of Portugal through the paternal and maternal lines. Her paternal grandmother was Ana de Silva y Mendoza, a descendant of Alfonso I of Portugal, and her maternal grandmother, Catalina de la Cerda, was the I Duke of Braganza, Alfonso. She was the great-granddaughter of Ana de Mendoza, princess of Éboli. She is a direct descendant, by mother, of San Francisco de Borja; and, consequently, a direct descendant of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borja or Borgia). Felipe III after his rise to the throne also chose Gaspar de Guzmán and Pimentel Ribera and Velasco de Tovar, known as the Count-Duke of Olivares as valid. The relationship between the Count-Duke and the Emperor Felipe, went back to when Gaspar de Guzmán obtained in 1615 that Francisco de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, named him gentleman of the chamber of Prince Felipe, future Felipe III of Spain, with time, Olivares, an intelligent man of great influence, was able to win the favor of the future Philip IV of Spain, so that when he acceded to the throne in 1630, he named him favorite instead of the Duke of Uceda, with Olivares' faction triumphing: The Imperialists.
However, while the Count of Olivares begins a frantic political activity. I have initiated a broad program of internal reforms ranging from the social to the economic to the military. The military reforms of the Count of Olivares consisted of standardizing the military regulations, increasing the number of Tercios to a total of 100 Tercios (300,000) distributed throughout the Empire that went from America to Spain, passing through Italy and Africa. The Olivares Reforms reduced the number of pikemen and shortened the length of the pikes from 16 feet to 11 feet, lightening the armor and using it in combination with the musketeers, at the same time so that the cannons had mobility, they shortened them, lightened their chariots of weapons and reduced their calibers. I have adopted three types of artillery: siege (24-pounder), field (12-pounder), and regimental (4-pounder). However, these reforms saw how in 1640, the Uprising of Catalonia broke out, which would be called the Reapers' War (Guerra dels Segadors, in Catalan). This conflict, which began exactly on June 7, 1640, would be more motivated by the huge number of 25,000 soldiers that would have to be delivered to the Imperial Army. Even when the Count-Duke of Olivares proposed exchanging the soldiers for a "service" of 250,000 ducats a year for fifteen years, or for a single "service" of three million ducats, the General Council of the Principality of Catalonia (Generalitat in catalan) refused, emphasizing that their proposals for new "Constitutions" be approved and that the "greuges" ('complaints') against royal officials that had accumulated since the last Catalan courts were held in 1599. Misunderstanding between the Catalan elite and the king himself had also contributed to the death of a royal adviser of Catalan origin, the Marquis of Aytona, who did not arrive in Barcelona because he died in an accident.
The situation increased to such an extent that the viceroys who were in charge of the security of the roads and trade routes could barely contain the attacks of banditry at the service of clans or noble factions that controlled or stimulated the activity of rival gangs of criminals. (Mostly peasants and shepherds affected by the economic crisis in the area, such as Serrallonga). In addition to responding to a secular internal dynamic, they also did not miss the opportunity to intensify it to destabilize the system of government. During the mandate of the Duke of Lerma, public order in the Principality was in a very precarious situation. But the problem broke out during the Corpus de Sangre on June 7, 1640, a large group of reapers, with the connivance of a good part of the local population, would attack some Castilian soldiers who were resting in a tavern, the incident would end with several wounded reapers, three dead and the dead Castilian soldiers. The situation served as a fuse for a general uprising of the entire population of the Catalan counties against the mobilization and permanence in the region of the Tercios of the royal army to the point that the Presidios (fortresses built around the border) were isolated and under siege In the midst of this situation, the Molt Honorable Senyor Pau Claris, at the head of the Government of Catalonia, promoted the decision to place the Catalan territory under French protection and sovereignty by sending a courier ship to France to request military support. This would be used by King Louis XIII of France to invade the Spanish Roussillon and Northern Italy with the support of Savoy who was of pro-French thoughts. In October 1640 French ships began to use the Catalan ports while Catalonia began to pay for an initial French army of three thousand men that France would send to the county by ship.
On the other hand, Italy was invaded in November by an army of thirty-five thousand French soldiers led by the 18-year-old Duke of Enghien Louis II of Bourbon-Condé. The Duke of Enghien managed to get Savoy to lend five thousand Savoy soldiers trained according to the doctrine of Tercio. The Spanish forces stationed in the Capitania General de Milan had been involved in intermittent combat for years with Italian rebels, Protestants and French raiders. But the last few years and months had been a frenzy of army training and reform, so that the quality of command and control and the skill of the individual infantryman had greatly improved. To the extent that it could be said that if anyone was mentally prepared for war, the Milan Tercios were. Spain had been producing soldiers with excellent morale and discipline (chained by loyalty to king and religion) for decades, and a culture that prevalent martial skill and personal apotheosis made an individual Spanish soldier a terrifying opponent in close combat due to Spanish Fencing considered undefeated although it rivaled the Italian. Perhaps most importantly, the Spanish were not accustomed to below-company-level maneuvers and had severe difficulties coordinating small-scale operations except for the so-called Encamisadas: stealth-attack actions intended to sabotage or destroy enemy equipment or decapitate in command of the enemy before a battle. However, the Duke of Enghien brought enough artillery and a supply train to penetrate the line of fortified and well-garrisoned presidios that protected the borders. However, the first French attack on Italy came towards the base port of the fleet in charge of guarding the Italian coast: Genoa. Admiral Jean Armand de Maillé led a fleet of 75 ships to eliminate the fleet or neutralize the port city of Genova.
The attack saw Frances inflict significant damage on the Spanish fleet, most of it receiving only minor injuries from defending coastal batteries. As a general rule, Spanish ships were larger and more heavily armed than normal ships of their size. Their crews were very good, and the ships themselves were state-of-the-art. Surprise and organizational advantage allowed Frances at various points to attack softer elements of the Spanish fleet, before launching fourteen Fireships which ended up detonating and blockading the port. The Spanish fleet, although defeated, could not be said to have been disgraced either. He stood united against the attack, gave in to attacks too hard by enemy fire and ended up sinking most of the captains with their admirals. Other than that he only had limited knowledge of the enemy he was facing; given the circumstances, little more could have been expected. If the engagement had taken place on another day, the French fleet would have been hit much harder. A few days later, far from an easy victory over the Frog Eaters, the Spaniards found themselves in a bitter struggle against a deeply determined enemy. The result was nothing short of a bloodbath. Fighting between November 20 and December 1 resulted in little territorial gains for the French. For the most part, however, the lines remained impassive as casualties forced the Duke of Enghien to wait out the winter and upgrade his army. Enghien's strategy required infantry units to exploit gaps prepared by artillery attack, which required an effective system of communication between artillery batteries and infantry battalions, which simply did not exist. The non-commissioned officers who usually led raids had neither the equipment nor the authority to pass on intelligence and recommend courses of action to nobles who refused to follow orders from lower nobles.
The war soon degenerated into open warfare when a coalition of German Protestant states decided to attack Habsburg-Austrian possessions to prevent them from supporting their Spanish cousins. In response, the Catholic League: a coalition of German Catholic states that served as a counterweight to the so-called Protestant Union, began to move to confront the Protestants. The Protestants chose as their commander in chief Frederick V of the Palatinate who managed to ally himself with the French. Thanks to his alliance with the French, Frederick V managed to finance a powerful and large army made up of German, English, Nordic and even Danish mercenaries, but most of them were Protestant. This time would be marked for Germany as a period of epidemics, famines and looting brought by the armies of the conflict while the region's economy began to collapse as towns and cities were razed, looted or even saw their industry lack. of resources to prosper, while the war became even more horrendous. The war soon became a landscape of armies of war criminals laying waste to towns and cities while mobs of people burned everyone else. In the midst of this conflict I would highlight the Swiss War where Switzerland would end up becoming Protestant and opening a war front against Spain. However, the terror would occur when in 1650 he would enter the war: Sweden led by Gustav II Adolf of Sweden and his professional army that was comparable to the then undefeated Spanish Tercios. The addition of the so-called Swedish Vikings plunged Germany further into the torture, pain and horror of war. But during the war, events such as the battles or sieges of Kreuznach, Alsheim, Oppenheim, Bacharach, Mingolsheim, Wimpfen, Höchst, Frankenthal, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Fleurus, Stadtlohn, Dessau, Lutter, Stralsund, Wolgast, Frankfurt, Werben, 1st Breitenfeld, Rain, Fürth, Alte Veste, Lützen, 1st Rheinfelden, 1st Nördlingen, Willstätt along with dozens more.
The war would end in 1666 after twenty-two years of war with the Peace of Westphalia where the Holy Roman Empire was weakened by the primacy of the German states against external powers, such as the emperor or the pope, which would encourage greater autonomy of the German states. more than a hundred states that were within the Germanic Empire. The Swiss Confederation ended up becoming a Protestant country due to an internal war while Sweden achieved a hegemonic position in the Baltic Sea at the expense of Denmark, which after several lost battles, mainly against Sweden, was forced to sign peace with it in 1645. , where Denmark lost many of its possessions in the Baltic and Scandinavia. Spain on the other hand, would continue its period of decline in Europe where its Tercios would end up losing their supremacy in favor of the French troops that would show their superiority thanks to the uprising of Louis XIV of France that was instructed by the Cardinal-Duke of Richelieu, at the same time that Louis XIV would marry the daughter of the daughter of King Philip III of Spain: Maria Teresa of Austria to establish peace with Spain, although this would not prevent France from supporting the pirates (filibusters and buccaneers) from the Isla de la Tortuga (base French pirate, where they were supplied with gunpowder, ammunition, etc.), coming to attack the western part of Hispaniola from there.
From now on the turning point begins. Hopefully it doesn't end so badly and they lose a lot in Italy.