Una diferente ‘Plus Ultra’ - the Avís-Trastámara Kings of All Spain and the Indies (Updated 11/7)
- Thread starter Torbald
- Start date
Most of the North African towns were conquered during Cisneros time when he was just regent of Castile. The Aragonese navy was used but it was always much easier to recruit men and taxes from Castile so the kings just did that. Aragon's main contribuitions were its mediterranean ports but the whole crown contributed practically nothing financially and militarilly until the XVIII century
Huh well it wasn't specified in the TL so I had no idea, explains the massive absence of any mentions of the aragonese, it surprises me though, surely the Cortes sees the wealth and goods pouring into Castille and Portugal and wants to share in the growth. Surely they benefit from the end of berber piracy the most, could the King not have used these levers to move Aragon closer to Spain.
At this point Castille and Portugal seem closer aligned
At this point Castille and Portugal seem closer aligned
The crown of Aragon was a mess back then. It had 4 parlaments that did as they pleased,they wanted to get involved in America but they didn't want to put the money or the men that Castile was putting. And that lead to huge trouble as only one region in the whole empire was sustaining the other pieces of it.
Olivares when he tried to pull the Union de Armas it backfired with the Catalan and Portuguese revolt. Olivares' plans on incorporating all the kingdoms into one were
- Ties of blood
- Share of responsabilities (appointing people from everywhere outside of Castile into important roles
- Removing the parlaments and their laws by force
27. "Une peste de filles"
~ "Une peste de filles" ~
Le Blason du Valois-Alençon
The lower classes are rarely ever the only casualties of war. No matter how far from the frontlines they place themselves, how carefully their bodyguard surrounds them, or how otherwise prudent they are with their own politically valuable lives, the nobility is never fully safe from the strain and misery of battle. Such was unfortunately the case for a great number of the vainglorious French nobility, and it had taken its toll on two very significant individuals, both princes du sang. The first had been Charles de Montpensier, the 3rd duke of Bourbon, who became one of the early casualties of the Third Italian War in 1525 when he broke his neck after his horse was shot out from under him by a Swiss arquebusier at Vesoul. The second would be François d’Angoulême, first in line to the French throne and duke of Valois, who succumbed unexpectedly to a carefully watched wound inflicted by a crossbow bolt at the siege of Thionville in 1546. As the untimely deaths mounted, Charles IX had begun taking greater precautions in preserving his successors (the loss of François d’Angoulême, a man in whom he had much confidence, had left him particularly devastated) by reserving positions of command for the peers of France that were not of the royal male line, but he had been too late in squaring away the French succession and he was powerless to prevent it from becoming a matter of ever greater anxiety. What had made matters even more complicated for the royal succession was a worrying trend in progeny. The cadet branches of the Valois dynasty had been struck in the 16th century by what both contemporary and future historians would refer to as a “plague of daughters.” Between Charles IX and the next three princes du sang in line to the French throne, only one of them had produced a son: the 4th duke of Alençon, Charles. What this meant was that the deaths of Charles de Montpensier and François d’Angoulême had left the 57 year old Charles d’Alençon as the first in line to the French throne. Further uncertainty arrived with the death of Charles de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme and now third in line to the throne, in 1549, which brought his 31 year old son Antoine to his father’s place in the succession.
The natural procession of the two Valois-Alençons - Charles IV and his son - to the French throne seemed fairly secure until the former’s death in 1552. When the League of Fulda and the Hapsburgs had declared their truce at Darmstadt in 1554, the lords of France urgently beseeched Charles IX to agree to a similar truce as soon as possible so that he might reconvene the Estates General for the first time in 68 years. Although Charles IX would agree to establishing such a ceasefire - sending his representatives to Ferdinand von Hapsburg’s camp at Masevaux to declare their observance of the Darmstadt truce - he would not attempt any break with past decades’ tradition and would not convene the Estates General, opting instead to continue scouring the duchy of Lorraine, the Trois-Évêchés, and the Franche-Comte in the hopes that those he might more confidently bring those territories to the negotiation table. Yet Charles IX would never see such negotiations, as he was caught by a sudden spell of tuberculosis and died unexpectedly in his tent outside of Épinal on February 2nd of 1556.
A simplified graph of the ancestry of the French claimants to the throne, c. 1556
Events at home in the years leading up to this misfortune had made a great many important Frenchmen ill at ease with the thought of a d’Alençon ascendancy. Charles IV d’Alençon’s eldest son by his marriage to Marguerite d’Angoulême, René, had died in 1544 at the age of 18, and as of 1547 the duke was left with a 28 year old daughter, Marguerite, and another son, the 14 year old Charles, both by his second marriage to Marie de Guise. This was a troublesome parentage. Marie was the older sister of François de Guise, the most influential aristocrat in northeastern France and a committed adherent of orthodox Catholicism and active opponent of Protestantism. François de Guise had become more aggressive in his dealings with Protestants as the 1540s and 1550s dragged on, and by Charles IX’s death he had become the leading exemplar of militant Catholicism in France and the de facto leader of its political arm both at court and on the field.
For those likeminded, François de Guise was an ideal representative: a war hero who had suffered facial scarring on the battlefield for his king, and the best of both worlds - both uncompromising in his Catholic faith and unapologetic in his French patriotism. Even amongst his most contemptuous rivals, François de Guise commanded respect, bearing the evidence of the measure of his devotion to the French monarchy on his very face - which he had earned at the siege of Metz. Yet, there was no small number of elites from the highest echelons of French society for whom the whole Guise family posed a serious concern. For one, Protestantism already had an outsized representation amongst the French nobility, and the Guise family's flat refusal to compromise with the Farelards could - if taken up by the younger Charles d’Alençon - easily spell disaster, the defensive resolve of the French Protestants being proven daily in the south of France. Even if he were not so black-and-white in his approach to France's religious issues, François de Guise caused enough alarm with his open ambition and occasionally overbearing attitude, and there were substantial fears of him turning a d’Alençon monarch into his puppet.
François I "le Balafré" de Lorraine
Duc de Guise
During his reign, Charles IX had built up a vigorous old guard that shared his unbridled hatred for the Hapsburgs, and it now held sway in his absence. Centered on the ministers of France and the knighted members of the "Ordre de Saint Eustache" (formed by Charles IX in 1525), this old guard refused to let 14 years of spilled French blood amount to nothing, and, as such, were willing to appoint the closest in line to the throne that would not threaten the war’s continuation - as any less to them would have seemed in essence to be handing the Hapsburgs the keys of Paris. These men would gradually enter into an informal partnership with a number of French nobles, statesmen, and clergymen to form a web of co-conspirators intent on seeing the house of Bourbon climb the throne. This shadow government, known to posterity as “les Arbitres” - the “Arbitrators” - was comprised of such figures as the Cardinal Odet de Coligny, son of the late French general and Seigneur de Châtillon, Gaspard de Coligny, while the rest were primarily close attendants of the deceased king and thus were almost universally soldiers (an unsurprising number of whom were Protestants): Louis, the Bourbon duke of Montpensier, Honorat de Savoie, the marquis of Villars, Louis II d'Orléans, the duke of Longueville, and Jean de Foix, duke of Nemours and son of the late marshal of France, Gaston de Foix. The marshal of France, Blaise de Montluc, would reluctantly fall in with these conspirators later on after much supplication from his crypto-Farelard brother Jean de Montluc. They would find their chief mouthpiece and coordinator in the erudite Michel de l'Hôpital, the Chancellor of France since 1553 who was quick to cooperate in order to earn the trust of France's powerbrokers.
The fears of France’s hitherto ignored Protestants led radical Farelards amongst the nobility and bourgeoisie to make two attempts in 1555 and 1556 to kidnap Charles IV d’Alençon’s son, in order to pressure him and his supporters into ensuring Protestant emancipation should he ascend the throne. While both attempts would be unsuccessful, the Guise family was sufficiently alarmed and took measures to protect the younger d’Alençon, first sending him to François’ brother Claude’s estate in Aumale after the first attempt, then to Joinville after the second, as François wanted the prince close at hand. No word whatsoever was heard of d’Alençon after March of 1556, and, amidst the plague and the rampaging soldiery that followed the collapse of the Masevaux ceasefire, the Arbitres contended that he was either captured or dead.
The laws of succession rather clearly pointed to d’Alençon as the rightful heir to the throne, but his very convenient absence, combined with Antoine de Bourbon’s seniority and the many anxieties concerning a Guise ascendancy (and the effects it would have on relations with France’s Protestant populace and German allies) had allowed a subversion of protocol to take place in April of 1556, with Antoine de Bourbon chosen to succeed Charles IX by an emergency session of the Estates-General which had been largely forced by the Arbitres. Antoine I would ascend the throne with the blessing of the French moderates and Protestants, who would remember the Bourbon monarch as “Antoine le Bon.”
Antoine I "le Bon" de Bourbon
Roi de France
There were a few additional coincidences that Antoine could claim authenticated his kingship. Charles IX had left the front in August of 1545 to convene a military council regarding Spain’s entry into the war and also to make a formal announcement as to who should succeed him, for which he named François d’Angoulême. When François died the very next year, Charles IX was unable to make known his preferred successor until early 1548 when he chose - quite predictably - the elder Charles d’Alençon. Salic law could determine the French succession simply enough, but the choice of a living king carried enormous symbolic weight - so much so, that it played a part in the enormous confusion that followed Charles IX’s death. Antoine had met privately with Charles IX twice before the late king’s death, and there was much speculation as to what the two discussed or if such private audiences implied that Charles IX was preparing Antoine to take the throne. What is more likely, however, is that he was instructing Antoine to merely be a counterweight to the Guise family and their coalition after the late king’s death - something that was perhaps insufficient for Antoine’s conceit and could not disprove the rumors that he had been tapped by Charles IX directly to lead France. On a less significant note, the deceased son of Charles IV d’Alençon, René, had originally been betrothed to François d’Angoulême’s elder daughter, his cousin Madeleine (4 years his senior) - an expected and inoffensive match - but their marriage was never consummated and René’s bride had passed to Antoine de Bourbon, who could now claim an even greater coalescence of royal blood to pass on to his would-be heirs.
However, there were difficulties with Antoine that soon became impossible to dismiss. For one, Antoine was vain and unstable, an emotionally abusive man who was more taken by hunting and dining than attending to the grievous state of his realm. Antoine lived the life of a French duke that never seriously anticipated being king, basking in the delights of the French monarchy while never once appearing in person on the battlefield - a marked departure from his gallant predecessor. Additionally - and more importantly - while Antoine had always declared himself Catholic, his actions seemed to speak otherwise for the more suspicious French Catholics. One of the primary reasons Antoine was put on the throne was due to his moderate approach to dealing with his Protestant subjects (something he had displayed in his highly ecumenical court as duke of Vendôme), an approach which - although preferable to the hardline stance of the Guise family - was even more liberal than that of his predecessor Charles IX. The late Charles, while having turned a blind eye on many a notorious occasion to the goings-on of the emergent Protestant communities of France, often publicly reaffirmed his staunch Catholicism and left no reason to doubt that he considered a permanent Protestant element within the French state to be unthinkable. As the traditional rituals of the king of France’s coronation made explicit the imbrication of the French monarchy and orthodox Catholicism, this was an extremely important tenet of the legitimacy of the French crown bearer, and thus for said crown bearer not to actively pursue the suppression of heresy - whether Protestant or otherwise - was to call his own right to the throne into question. There is no reason to believe that François de Guise or his cohorts ever openly challenged Antoine de Bourbon’s accession in any measure , and although they might have liked for him to denounce Protestantism more immediately and decisively, they seem to have been willing to cooperate with Charles IX’s successor. There was still common ground to be found amidst these parties in their desire for stability and their hatred of the Hapsburgs, but this was about to change.
While favored by many, if not most, of his own subjects, Antoine was decided to be an unacceptable successor to Charles IX for both Juan Pelayo and Charles V. Antoine’s unwillingness to end the war was exasperating enough for the Hapsburg emperor, especially with French forces in the north fighting uphill to keep Hapsburg forces from routing them completely. For Juan Pelayo, better terms could always be pursued and re-entry into southern France would be easy enough. Additionally, Henry II of Navarra had died a harried refugee in 1552, leaving behind no children of his own and passing his kingdom by law to his sister Isabel d’Albret, the second queen of Charles IX (allowing the French monarch to enjoy the title of “King Consort of Navarre” for the short years that remained to him). This meant that, by 1556, Charles IX’s youngest child, the 14 year old Jeanne, was both a yet unmarried daughter of the most recent king of France and the heir apparent to the kingdom of Navarra. Antoine had all but made it publicly known that he intended to make the young Jeanne his bride (if not for his pesky living wife, Madeleine), most certainly to see if she could provide him with a much needed son. For obvious geopolitical reasons, Juan Pelayo could not afford to let Navarra fall back into the sphere of France, especially not when Spaniards had bled and died to attain it and when France’s de facto monarch gave the Spanish crown such unease.
The Parisian mob had definitively embraced militant Catholicism by the mid 1530s - owed partly to the Italian links afforded to Paris by the French monarchy’s expansionism in the earlier part of the century, which brought the counter-Protestant movement to the city sooner than elsewhere. By the time of Antoine’s coronation, the Parisians had long since taken matters into their own hands in expelling the city’s Protestants by force and burning their literature, effectively driving the only traces of Protestantism that remained into the catacombs. Paris thus formed the most immediate and hostile source of scrutiny for the new, religiously ambivalent king, and the overwhelming tide of popular devotion would eventually have dire consequences for him. Further afield, Farelards were beginning to make up a disproportionate share of the French military at all levels during the late 1550s, a conversion process accelerated by both the austerities of army life and by hatred for the Hapsburgs and Spanish. By late 1558, virtually all of Antoine’s Protestant officers had begun threatening mutiny unless they were to receive a royal safeguard against the escalating accusations and aggressions of their Catholic comrades. On the advice of Blaise de Montluc - who was desperately trying to control the fallout of France’s northeastern front - Antoine announced in October of 1559 a set of strictures prohibiting violence and unprovoked acts of malice between soldiers of the crown under pain of death.
This proclamation, the “Peace of Sens,” was enforceable in only a handful of cases and on the ground was too little, too late. While it provided the Farelards a brief reconciliation with the crown and returned their willingness to continue fighting, it was predictably less well-received by others. In early November of 1559, while proceeding from mass one Sunday morning in Paris, Antoine’s carriage was mobbed by a large and unruly gathering of Catholic zealots. While he and his cavalcade would manage to maneuver past the crowd with a little difficulty, Antoine decided that it might be best for him to withdraw to Fontainebleau to let matters subside. They would not subside quickly enough, however. While out hunting one early afternoon a week after the incident in Paris, someone nearby fired off a wheellock pistol, the sudden ruckus of which sent Antoine’s horse into a panic, tossing the king violently down the wooded slope and into the side of a tree. Antoine would be brought back to his palace unconscious, the beginning of a coma in which he would linger for two months before finally breathing his last, sonless. Whether or not the gunman was a member of Antoine’s hunting party or a complete stranger was never determined, nor was his possible affiliation with the Hapsburgs or dissenters amongst the French nobility. An emissary from Charles V would arrive at Paris a few short weeks later, to inform the gentlemen of the French realm that Charles V d'Alençon was alive and well; what is more, he was a prisoner of the emperor's in Besançon.
The more protestants the better, down with the Papists!
No Popes or Patriarchs!
No Popes or Patriarchs!
I'm drooling
I'm flattered, but don't be fooled, it's still an absolute mess!
Congratulations on your marriage! Take your time with the updates, quality always trumps quantity (although the increased manpower recovery speed sure is nice
Thank you
And you're right, haha, although it's hard to beat that +5% discipline
Charles V - and consequently his heir, who will also be named Philipp (a predictable choice, after all) - are a little less "cosmopolitan" in their outlook compared to OTL, with a more pragmatic focus on the Central European sphere the Hapsburgs have built up. Charles V has had a harsher formative experience in Hungary and Bohemia, where his struggles to earn the respect and obedience of the nobility have been much more difficult (especially in Hungary) than OTL's counterpart event in Castile (the Comunero Revolt), and consequently he's a bit more severe and realistic in his treatment of his subjects and enemies and in his understanding of politics ITTL. Likewise, Charles V is a little more military-minded as well, with the Hungarian-Ottoman frontier (something that I'll flesh out later) being a more violent setting than Spain at this time. These are all traits that will most likely be passed on to Philipp, although diplomacy and bribery is still the favored Hapsburg approach.
That's good
it was intended to stir curiosity. Keep in mind that "Belgium" is just an Anglicization of the Dutch "België" / German "Belgien," which are, in turn, Germanizations of the French "Belgique" / Latin "Belgica" - the latter of which was a term traditionally used for the entirety of the Low Countries, not just the southern half. The Latin forms of the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands were, respectively, "Belgica Foederata" and "Belgica Regia." If the Netherlands are to stay united under the Hapsburgs, they're much more likely to use a name grounded in tradition and Catholicism than the very Germanic "Netherlands/Nederland."The Imperial grip on Northern Italy right now is weaker than you think. The Fourth Italian War/War of the Savoyard Succession is creating some serious problems, not only politically, but religiously as well, (and with a firm Hapsburg grip on Switzerland, there's an unprecedented number of Swiss political/religious dissenters and mercenaries flooding into Northern Italy, adding to the powder keg). Not to mention the Spanish have many vested interests in the Italian peninsula, not only because of their possession of Naples and Sicily, but also because the wealthy bankers and merchants of Northern Italy provide them with much needed financial services and form one of the most reliable markets for the luxury goods they're importing from the new World and the Orient. If the Hapsburgs - who have their hands quite full - are unable to step up and arbitrate Italy's disputes, the Spanish may find themselves having to fill their shoes.
Bohemia is interesting. The Czech Republic had a huge German population before WW2, and an even larger one pre-independence. There's reason to believe that the Czechs more than likely would have gone the way of the Polabians - that is, assimilated into German culture - had it not been for the Hussite movement, which polarized the rural Slavic population (primarily Hussite) against the German nobility and town-dwellers (who largely opposed Hussitism). The Hussite Wars were a watershed event in Czech history, so there's going to have to be a number of things done differently from OTL that will mend the cultural rift in Bohemia and make the idea of joining this historically Slavic polity to a greater German union.
Anne of Navarre would be a sensible choice, but unfortunately she would only be 10 by the time of Charles IX's birth (her son). I think Louis XII would most likely have married a daughter of an Italian duke or magnate, and the only ones I can think of who were unmarried by the PoD in 1498 and are of an appropriate age to be married in ~1501 are the daughters of Lorenzo de Medici. I'm not entirely sure about this choice, so if you know of anyone else more suitable don't hesitate to let me know.
Spain, both IOTL and ITTL, is a term of convenience - much like Great Britain or Germany, both of which were used long before either of them were fully realized as nation states. It's just simpler to refer to the army of the Duke of Alba as Spanish when what it is specifically is Castilian-Aragonese (absent the Catalans, mind you). IOTL, the idea of belonging to "Hispania" was commonly felt by all the Christian inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula no matter the degree of separation between them (albeit just what it meant to be "hispano/hispânico/hispà" varied greatly depending on who was being asked) and by this point ITTL the Iberians pretty much universally consider themselves to be of one "nation," although that's taking a more classical rather than modern definition of what a "nation" entails. When I use the terms Spain or Spanish in this TL, what is meant is anything pertaining to the Spanish monarchy as a whole or to any of its constituent parts. I'll sometimes use Castilian, Portuguese, or Aragonese if necessary (such as when discussing the matters in which any of those three kingdoms and/or their subjects stand apart from one another, e.g. the actions of the Portuguese in the East Indies, of the Castilians in the New World, the Aragonese corts resisting assimilation, etc.), but the world outside the Iberian peninsula more or less recognizes all its inhabitants as Spanish due to the cultural/linguistic/historical/religious/geographic and, now, dynastic union that envelops them.
Padilla is correct. It would have been more efficient for all the restrictions between the Aragonese and Castilian crowns to have been dissolved IOTL, especially in regards to allowing Aragonese/Catalan/Italian colonists into the Americas, but perhaps the biggest reason this did not happen - apart from the Aragonese and Catalan resistance to losing their ancestral rights and liberties - was greed, more or less. Opening up the Americas to Aragon would have meant that the Castilians would have had to share the monopoly they had there (conquistadors weren't exactly a crowd keen on sharing). The same applies for why Manuel I insisted on Portugal maintaining its separateness should Miguel da Paz ever inherit all three kingdoms.
Also, regarding Catalonia's inactivity: Catalonia had endured a 10 year civil war from 1462-1472 and was hit particularly badly by the black death. Over a period of 150 years (1350-1500), Catalonia's population actually declined by ~37%. Catalonia was still recovering into the 17th century and wasn't in great shape to offer the crown money or men. The Catalan civil war also ended in a victory for the peasantry, leaving the crown subject to their laws rather than vice versa, which isn't an ideal situation for mass conscription or tax farming.
You may have noticed that England hasn't been mentioned recently or that there hasn't been too much military assistance from them beyond the action in Flanders (in fact, by the next chapter, most of their troops have been withdrawn from continental Europe). All of this is due to internal difficulties and - as you are right in noticing - Scottish intervention. Scotland isn't quite Protestant right now, but you'll see.
Huh, I didn't know about that in the term Belgium. Also I guessed correctly in that Northern Italy is not going to be part of the greater HRE, which makes sense with how disconnected it's been for centuries from the greater HRE.
Also I wonder where ITTL Philip II (heh it still works since he'll be the second HRE Emperor with that name ITTL) was raised ITTL. I'd imagine either the Low counties, where the main source of Habsburg power comes from and where both his father and grandfather was born and raised. The other option is in Bohemia/Hungary where Charles V ITTL served as a king whilst waiting to inherit the title of Holy Roman Emperor for decades.
Either way, certainly a more religiously relaxed and/or cosmopolitan place than Spain which certainly would influence the personality of ITTL Philip II.
Also I wonder where ITTL Philip II (heh it still works since he'll be the second HRE Emperor with that name ITTL) was raised ITTL. I'd imagine either the Low counties, where the main source of Habsburg power comes from and where both his father and grandfather was born and raised. The other option is in Bohemia/Hungary where Charles V ITTL served as a king whilst waiting to inherit the title of Holy Roman Emperor for decades.
Either way, certainly a more religiously relaxed and/or cosmopolitan place than Spain which certainly would influence the personality of ITTL Philip II.
Last edited:
Thanks for the response, I'd just like to specify reading my comment over that it might sound a little demanding but I wasn't saying that there must be aragonese colonisers or characters but that I think the timeline could be improved from having your explanations and Padilla's within it. A few lines about the strength of the Cortes, or the black plague civil war would be helpful for those like me with little education in Aragonese history.
Be interested to read any updates on the British Isles, there were a lot of ways it could have played out otl (most of them ending with Scotland conquered imo).
Be interested to read any updates on the British Isles, there were a lot of ways it could have played out otl (most of them ending with Scotland conquered imo).
Amazing work. I caught up already. Some questions:
- Will there ever be a world map just yet?
- Why hasn’t England done much yet?
- Will Christianity be more successful in Asia? Even taking a majority if not completely taking over the Malay archipelago?
- Will Spain get involved in the British Isles?
- Will there be an equivalent of the Thirty Years’ War or will the whole hullabaloo be butterflied away?
- Will Spain be more willing to explore and settle other parts of the American continents?
- Is Spain more or less isolationist on the European continent relative to OTL?
- Will the Netherlands rebel like they did in OTL? Or are they more tolerant of their rulers this time?
- Will there not be as much piracy in the Atlantic since there’s not much animosity between Spain and the Protestant countries the pirates originated from?
- How likely will Spain take over both the American continents?
- How likely will other nations build colonial empires of their own?
- Will Spain be more keen on developing its economy the way England did it in the early Industrial Revolution?
- What’s going on in Poland?
- What’s going on in Hungary?
- What’s going on in Russia?
- Will Spain get involved in the Japanese Warrinng States period?
- Will Christianity be more successful in East Asia and other countries like Vietnam, Burma, and India?
- Will Spain be able to convert parts of the Arabian peninsula and its Middle Eastern holdings to Christianity?
- How does the Netherlands feel about Spain?
- How does England feel about Spain?
- How likely will Spain and Venice find a truce together considering the threat of the Turks?
- Will Spain be willing to continue to wage war and conquest in North Africa?
- Are Portugal and Spain still considered separate countries? Or is it just that they’re together but are more or less autonomous from one another?
Last edited:
Also this TL reminds me of Viriato's Portuguese America and Southern Africa the Redux.
I think TTL's Philip II (Philipp II here, on account of being decidedly more German than his OTL counterpart) would probably spend most of his pre-emperor years in the same areas as his father (apart from an early childhood in the Hofburg), namely in Bohemia-Hungary to gain some military experience and in the Low Countries and Franche-Comte due to his familial roots there and to receive from his father's most competent and trusted advisers. What is most important about this is that I think TTL's Philip will have a much better working knowledge of how the Netherlands in particular works and will have much accumulated much better relations with its nobility, which should - hopefully - prevent most of the OTL misunderstandings and rash judgement on his part that led to the 80 Years' War. The fact that he is not king of Spain will also mean that he won't try to import the inquisition into the Netherlands ITTL, which was of course a huge source of contention IOTL.
Yeah, I seriously regret how little attention I've been able to give Spain so far and such explanations would have avoided a good deal of confusion. I understand your confusion as well, I consider Early Modern Spain to be my most well known area but I still struggle with understanding exactly where the crown of Aragon fit into it. I'll be getting into Aragon soon, however, in an update regarding difficulties integrating the 3 very disparate kingdoms of Spain.
Scotland and the British Isles will be interesting. A Catholic England and possibly no Battle of Flodden means Scotland might be making very different decisions in regards to its continued independence and foreign policy. As a minor spoiler I will tell you this much: someone to the east (not the French) is going to be investing a lot in keeping Scotland out of English hands...
- I've thought about doing a world map, but as of yet there are just too few changes on a large scale to justify making one. I think by 1600 enough will be different territorially to show a real departure from OTL, so I'll try to make one for then when we get around to that date.
- England just hasn't gotten its update yet, although that's lined up to happen almost immediately after the next one. I'll add, however, that at this point in history England is still doing a bit of recovery from the War of the Roses and also from losing its continental possessions in the Hundred Years' War. England's prestige in Europe has shrunk back a bit, and while they're still considered a European power they aren't treated with quite the same respect as the kingdoms of France or Spain. Luckily the Tudors have really turned things around and England is gathering steam once again.
- Christianity will be more successful in Asia, partly due to the slight Castilianization of the Portuguese colonial administration ITTL. There's more manpower available (less Portuguese have gone to Brazil also), so the Portuguese have the added luxury of considering the possibilities of assimilating and expanding their Asian possessions rather than just using them for a quick cash grab as they did IOTL. Bernardino de Sahagún's Gregorians are also another departure from OTL (they're one of many new religious orders ITTL that will effectively split up the responsibilities of OTL's Jesuits and prevent that order's monopoly on counter-reformation education and evangelism) that will serve to make Catholicism adapt to non-European cultures with greater ease thanks to their interest in ethnography and indigenous languages. I'm not sure if Christianity will become the majority religion in the Malay archipelago due to the continued existence of the Malay sultanates, but I've yet to make any firm decisions as to what happens that far ahead.
- Spain won't be sending any Invincible Armada to England ITTL, of that you can be sure, but England will certainly have religious and political problems that might necessitate Spanish assistance or even intervention. Spain ITTL will probably have a greater cultural impact on a still-Catholic England, however.
- I think the Schwarzkrieg has absorbed most of the negative inter-confessional energy that led to OTL's 30 Years' War, but there will certainly be bad blood between German Protestants and Catholics for years to come. I think the political divide between the two groups definitely won't be as sharp as IOTL, but it will continue to manifest itself for a long time in conflicts that aren't explicitly religiously motivated.
- I've thought about this, but there's an unusual element added to the Spanish crown ITTL in the form of the Portuguese. Not only has Portugal's royal family married into to the family that has united Castile and Aragon, it has done so in a very favorable patrilineal marriage that basically means an Avis ascendancy over all of Spain (regardless of how the Treaty of Montehermoso insisted that Miguel da Paz would be of the "Avis-Trastamara" - an important distinction but one that does little to prevent Miguel from being raised to be a Portuguese rather than Castilian-Aragonese monarch). As such, Portuguese interests have an outsized representation at the court of the Spanish monarchy and Portuguese possessions are thus going to receive much more attention than they would've if the Trastamaras had subjugated Portugal.
- Yes. No Hapsburgs for Spain means involving itself in Europe beyond its most immediate concerns are out of the question, and the Spanish monarchy will begin to look to the Atlantic and beyond as its primary area of concern (with some secondary attention of course paid to its Mediterranean frontier).
- There's a Dutch revolt happening right now, mostly stirred up by the League of Fulda and Dutch Protestant nobles. However, this revolt is sort of running off the same fuel as the League of Fulda and has lost much of its support following the League's collapse. Following this, the Dutch Protestants are greatly over-represented in the nobility, with most of the middle and lower classes remaining Catholic or half-Catholic and partaking in the revolt for mostly non-theological reasons (e.g. class warfare against Catholic nobles, disgruntlement with a corrupt and inattentive clergy, disgust with material wealth in churches and monasteries, etc.), so there isn't a very solid base for the revolt to continue if and when the aristocratic agitators are defeated.
- Interestingly enough, most of the pirates targeting Spanish ships up until the 1580s or so were actually French, so piracy is still a problem ITTL and might even be a bigger problem in some areas due to some developments such as the French settler colonies in Brazil surviving. I have an update concerning piracy in the Americas lined up, but - like so many other updates - it's blocked by my inability to finish this next one.
- As unlikely as in OTL. I also doubt the other Catholic seafaring powers of Europe are just going to accept the terms of Inter Caetera and let Spain gradually take over the whole of the Americas without at least requesting a re-assessment from the Pope.
- I'm still configuring who gets or tries to get what across the world, but colonial envy is real and many European kingdoms are just as envious of Spain's conquests and wealth as they were IOTL. Things will probably move much slower in North America (and also Africa and Asia), but we'll have to see.
- Not as likely simply due to different agricultural conditions, an underdeveloped native industry and middle class, and a lack of strong current, high output rivers (hydro-power was one of the most important building blocks of the industrial revolution). However, I'm hoping the first two problems can be resolved much more satisfactorily than in OTL, and most of the other disadvantages can be recouped by a focus on international financial services (rather than heavy industry) with precious metals and stones as its primary source of capital - much like OTL's Netherlands, which is going to be quite a bit slower in harnessing its economic potential ITTL.
- Poland will have a surviving Jagiellon heir courtesy of Sigismund II, so there might not be an elective monarchy and the Lithuanians might not be willing to have their Grand Duchy's personal union with Poland replaced with a real union until they've had a few more difficulties with Muscovy. Overall, a more centralized Poland that might absorb a territorially reduced Lithuania.
- Mostly dealing with the incessant raids of the Turks and their Serbian vassals as well as the occasional spate of troublesome Protestant reformers. There have been Ottoman invasions since the beginning of Musa I's reign (son of Selim I): two in the 1530s, neither very successful, and another in the 1540s, which you'll see about soon.
- I'm still working out what to do with Russia, but what I have so far is that the siege of Kazan is going to drag on longer than IOTL and will end (the first time) with a Russian withdrawal due to an earlier start to the Livonian Wars. This brief respite for Kazan is actually going to devastate the Tatars even greater than IOTL as what was supposed to have been a quick conquest turns into years of skirmishes and raids from the cossacks, gradually turning into bloody grind to the Urals and into Central Asia. Expect the Russian monarchy to be greatly weakened.
- Probably, although I'm still trying to find a plausible way for them to do so successfully and also keep Japan open.
- Possibly in India, at least, although I can't say as much about the other two quite yet.
- Unlikely, given the lack of converts made by the 100+ years of Portuguese occupation. But Portuguese missionary efforts are different ITTL, so we'll see. I imagine there might be some converts who will eventually form a distinct lascar-type group (or assimilate into one) in the Indian ocean and might re-settle in Portuguese India or Portuguese East Africa.
- The Netherlands doesn't really have a national consciousness right now, but the Dutch, Flemings, Frisians, and Walloons who bother to have an opinion on the Spanish probably either regard them as reliable business partners or as lousy Papists who are still reliable business partners.
- Fairly well. England's old ties with Portugal and Arthur Tudor's marriage to Katherine of Aragon mean that the English monarchy is unlikely to pursue anything other than good terms with the Spanish, but there's an undeniable competitor relationship that may cause relations to cool later on.
- The Spanish and Venetians aren't very fond of each other due to the Portuguese usurpation of the spice trade, Venice's earlier alliance with the French, and the almost submissive agreement the Venetians have found themselves under with the Ottomans. Every attempt by Venice to just maintain the status quo in the Eastern Mediterranean earns it the hatred of Europe's zealots, while every inch the Ottomans squeeze from the Venetians is taken as a welcome sign of weakness by Venice's immediate neighbors. I don't expect Venice to firmly side with an anti-Turkish coalition until they've lost more than they could ever hope to regain.
- Yes, although the crusading spirit exhorted by Cardinal Cisneros and Miguel da Paz has simmered down a little bit. Right now, the Spanish kingdoms and militant orders are managing their North African possessions in their own way, with attempts made to manage their Maghrebi puppets and also to fortify and settle what they've gained directly.
- Yes, although under one monarch who will shortly make their dynastic union unbreakable by law. Nonetheless, Portugal, Castile, and Aragon at the moment all maintain separate cortes, separate militaries, and separate law codes - with some fairly strict laws against free migration from one kingdom to another.
Thank you, I'm actually a fan of his TL's (especially the one you mentioned) and they served as an inspiration in starting one of my own.
Thanks for answering my questions Torbald. I hope this TL can win an award soon. It’s quite sad Viriato couldn’t continue his original TL. Glad he inspired you though.
This got me thinking about several things. Could England and the entirety of Spain be united together through marriage kind of like the way OTL Spain and Austria were united through marriage? I can only imagine what the two could do together. I can also imagine it would further solidify their legitimacy to both American continents as well since there’s one less competitor to worry about. Maybe Spain would be more willing to let people colonize them freely like England did? And without being dragged into uselsss European conflicts Spain could invest more into ensuring total control of both American continents and more explorations across the world to hold more land. I kind of envision Spain being able to allow immigration and settlement to OTL Canada, the Southern Cone, and the US to ensure a permanent hold and that no one else claims the land, establishing missions, small settlements, and naval bases in the Pacific Islands and Australasia to spread Christianity and promote trade, taking over Northern Africa and the Levant to ensure a victory over Islam, having bases to spread Christianity in West Africa and turning them into economic piggy banks, and dominating the entire Indian Ocean to ensure total economic and political control, spread Christianity, and maybe even send settlers and immigrants if possible.
Also I wonder how the Spanish monarchs view the Protestants. Since they don’t have the huge tie to Austria would they not be as willing to meddle? I suspect that the Spanish campaigns and conquests in North Africa will cause the monarchs to try to get both sides to quit tearing each other and get them to realize that they have a much worse problem at their hands, AKA the Turks.
This got me thinking about several things. Could England and the entirety of Spain be united together through marriage kind of like the way OTL Spain and Austria were united through marriage? I can only imagine what the two could do together. I can also imagine it would further solidify their legitimacy to both American continents as well since there’s one less competitor to worry about. Maybe Spain would be more willing to let people colonize them freely like England did? And without being dragged into uselsss European conflicts Spain could invest more into ensuring total control of both American continents and more explorations across the world to hold more land. I kind of envision Spain being able to allow immigration and settlement to OTL Canada, the Southern Cone, and the US to ensure a permanent hold and that no one else claims the land, establishing missions, small settlements, and naval bases in the Pacific Islands and Australasia to spread Christianity and promote trade, taking over Northern Africa and the Levant to ensure a victory over Islam, having bases to spread Christianity in West Africa and turning them into economic piggy banks, and dominating the entire Indian Ocean to ensure total economic and political control, spread Christianity, and maybe even send settlers and immigrants if possible.
Also I wonder how the Spanish monarchs view the Protestants. Since they don’t have the huge tie to Austria would they not be as willing to meddle? I suspect that the Spanish campaigns and conquests in North Africa will cause the monarchs to try to get both sides to quit tearing each other and get them to realize that they have a much worse problem at their hands, AKA the Turks.
Last edited:
28. Une guerre de vingt ans
~ Une guerre de vingt ans ~
Le deuxième siège de Metz (1556)
Le deuxième siège de Metz (1556)
François de Guise’s cousin, the duke of Lorraine (also named François), was an imperial subject and knew full well that the support he had lended to French operations was tantamount to high treason. He wanted Guise to swear to him that he would not withdraw French forces from Lorraine until a favorable resolution could be worked out with the Emperor. Guise would respect his cousin’s wishes admirably and proved his mettle while he was at it, successfully defending Metz against a larger army led by Ferdinand von Hapsburg in 1553. With the Imperial Diet at Mühlhausen finally concluded in August of 1556, Guise shored up Metz’s battered defenses and braced for the inevitable arrival of the emperor himself and the once-again united princes of the empire. The death of Charles IX had been taken as an end to the ceasefire by Charles V, for whom the temptation to truly undo the might of France and play kingmaker was incredibly tempting. While there were still 18,000 Frenchmen under François de Guise holding down Lorraine and another 11,000 roughly split between the leadership of the captains François de Coligny and François de Beauvais in the Franche-Comte, Coligny and Beauvais were both open Farelards and there was thus a great deal of animosity between them and the fervently Catholic Duke of Guise. Just as at Montauban years earlier, these irreconcilable religious differences made the strongest arm of the French military unable to fully coordinate with itself, ultimately leaving it vulnerable to a now unified Imperial army. Miraculously, Guise withheld yet another siege at Metz - with Charles V himself attendant outside the walls - but he was too stubborn (and also, admittedly, tied down) to have organized a more integrated defense with the Protestant-led armies in the Franche-Comte. The duke could only look on helplessly while the Hapsburgs obliterated Beauvais’ relief army at Clerval, resulting in the death of François de Coligny and sending Beauvais running to Dijon, leaving Besançon completely undefended.
Meanwhile, Corneille de Berghes, the Bishop of Liège, had watched the successes of the French in the Southern Netherlands under the leadership of Blaise de Montluc with bated breath, finally deciding in late 1554 to take what seemed to be the most prudent course of action in offering the French the right to quarter in his bishopric, so long as their leadership could restrain them from despoiling it. With thousands of French troops under Armand de Gontaut holed up in the city of Liège and its environs over the winter, a particularly virulent outbreak of plague was unleashed in late January of 1555 and soon began to wreak havoc indiscriminately. Within a few weeks, 4,000 Frenchmen were rotting in mass graves, and many more were still suffering plague-stricken. The pestilence subsided briefly in the summer, but returned with a vengeance in the fall. The marshal Montluc’s force, stationed in Brussels, ended up being the most badly hit, and when the news of the king’s death arrived in February, the plans to capture Mechelen - which would have effectively brought the Hapsburg Netherlands to its knees - had to be abandoned in favor of consolidation around Liège, Brussels, and Calais. The emperor’s stalwart representatives in the Netherlands, René de Châlon and Lamoral van Egmont, weary of the failures in confronting the French, concerned with the rapidly spreading plague, and eager to attend to the rebellion to their north, beseeched Charles V for reinforcements to strike a decisive blow at the now greatly weakened French. Both men had been unable to attend as closely to the front as was needed, with Egmont busy protecting his ancestral holdings in Holland and Châlon attempting to find a practical way to protect his own fiefdom deep in the Vivarais from rampaging Protestants.
La peste à Liège (1555)
The emperor met their request, and thousands of once hostile Hessian and Franconian troops filed into the Netherlands along the Rhine under the command of his son, Philipp, who granted Châlon leave to relieve his besieged principality of Orange and divvied up his leadership responsibilities between Philippe de Lannoy and Charles II of Croÿ, the respective governors of Brabant and Hainault. Both sides had been very badly depleted by disease, and their numbers were continuing to drop. When Philipp and Lannoy arrived at Aalst in early April, they found Egmont and his contingent in a interminable series of skirmishes with Montluc’s vanguard, both forces too debilitated to undertake any conclusive movements. The fresh blood added to the Imperial side was without a counterpart for the miserable French, who were quickly bowled over, opening Brussels up for a siege. Commiserating with his men, Montluc was unwilling to combine the hardships of siege warfare with the plight of a plague epidemic, and ordered a hasty retreat from the devastated city, ordering Gontaut to withdraw as many as he could from Liège and to meet him at Mons to reorganize, while Charles de Cossé, the comte de Brissac, and his garrison would remain in Calais.
Philipp von Hapsburg put the experience he had accumulated amongst his father’s Hungarian retainers in the Balkans and in the service of the League of Regensburg to good use, effectively outmaneuvering both French leaders and inserting his army between theirs at Namur in May, where he had encircled the French garrison. Montluc and Gontaut were driven to Cambrai and St. Quentin, respectively, to shepherd their ruined and chaotic mass of enervated soldiery into something resembling a line of defense while the Hapsburgs put Valenciennes and Rethel to siege. Montluc withdrew with a more serviceable force and was finally succored by reinforcements from Picardie that he had requested a year prior. Hoping to swing things back in France's favor, Montluc began marching northeast as soon as he could, aiming for the exposed city of Ghent. However, Montluc would be taken by surprise at Lille by the Count of Egmont, and was pushed back once again, this time all the way to Arras. The plague, the forced marches, and this chain of defeats broke the confidence that the French soldiery in the northeastern theatre had in their leadership. Mass desertions and mutinies became increasingly commonplace in the aftermath of Lille, and by late 1557, Montluc could hardly scrape together 7,000 troops to defend everything north of Metz.
With Charles IX’s death and with Montluc and Brissac recalled to Paris by the then-nascent Arbitres (Brissac placing his lieutenant, Cyprien de Bernay, in command of Calais), the front in the Netherlands was left without consistent, centralized leadership, and French officers were left to bicker amongst themselves. Any attempt now to stall the Hapsburg momentum from the northeast now seemed to be of no use, yet the same salvific plague that had destroyed the French turned on their opponents as quickly as was to be expected. In Lorraine, neither side fully understood the fierceness of this disease nor the speed with which it had spread, and, not wishing to jeopardize Philipp’s ascendancy to the imperial office by an untimely death, Charles V relieved his son from his command as soon as he received word of the pestilence, effectively leaving his forces in the Netherlands as disorganized as those of the French. The whole northeastern front entered stasis.
- Le ruine du Midi -
"Los reyes usan a los hombres como si fuesen naranjas, primero exprimen el jugo y luego tiran la cáscara."
"The kings use men like oranges, first they squeeze the juice and then throw away the peel."
- Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba
After Montauban, southern France might have appeared completely open to subjugation by the Spaniards, but the difficulties that lay ahead for anyone hoping to pacify that region were immense, and Juan Pelayo had other concerns. With the Turks threatening Genoese possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Italian peninsula growing more unstable, Berber piracy proving difficult to fully stamp out, the legal and financial institutions of Spain badly in need of redress, and many amongst the nobility actively conspiring against him, Juan Pelayo had his hands full and was as eager for a respite as Charles IX. A ceasefire would be agreed upon by the two monarchs in January of 1552, with the Spanish garrison evacuated from Toulouse but with the entirety of Navarre and the cities of Carcassonne and Béziers remaining under Spanish occupation as security on their gains until a conclusive treaty could be drawn up."Los reyes usan a los hombres como si fuesen naranjas, primero exprimen el jugo y luego tiran la cáscara."
"The kings use men like oranges, first they squeeze the juice and then throw away the peel."
- Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba
Meanwhile, the outcome of Montauban had shattered a fragile interconfessional truce in southern France - one held together only by the imposing presence of the royal army under the Count of Enghien, which was now a non-factor. The League of Valence had sprung into action in mid 1552, citing a need to restore order and protect the rights of Protestant Frenchmen in the absence of any military intervention from the Crown. A semi-professional army was assembled shortly after with its command given to François de Beaumont, the baron of Adrets, and the League of Valence began to consolidate itself in the Rhône valley. By 1556, the League had so unquestionably made itself the hegemon of southeastern France that the Arbitres arranged a pact with them at Saint-Étienne, granting them permission to act with royal authority provided they treat their Catholic countrymen with decency and forbearance. Simultaneously, Adriano, the duke of Savoy, decided to join the side of his Hapsburg backers once he felt comfortable with the situation in France and within his own duchy in 1556 (the French in Cuneo having left in 1552 to reinforce Montpellier against the possibility of a Spanish siege), and sent an army of his own to expel the French garrisons from the passes of the Cottian Alps and open up Dauphiné and Provence. While the French were expelled from the passes of Tende and Larche easily enough, the aging duke had overestimated the weakness of the French position in the region and had gotten tied up at the passes of Grand St-Bernard and Montgenèvre. Some 9,000 Savoyard troops and Swiss mercenaries under the Count of Nice ended up breaking through Montgenèvre just in time for the thaw in early April, but were confronted by an unexpected relief army of 3,500 under François de Beaumont at Briançon. Despite outnumbering the French, the Savoyards were in poor order and feeble from weeks fighting in freezing Alpine conditions, and were driven back to Turin while Beaumont pushed as far into the duchy as Susa.
With their spirits high and their performance as a professional fighting force proven, the League of Valence re-occupied the passes of the Cottian Alps and began to organize a campaign to push down the Rhône and take Avignon. The victory at Briançon was just what the League of Valence needed, serving both to earn the support of the “Trois-Villes” (the three allied, Farelard-dominant towns of Mende, Millau, and Alès) and of sympathetic nobles further afield, as well as to open up a route for Swiss Protestants to funnel in and offer their martial services. Yet Briançon would ultimately leave the League of Valence with an overconfidence that would lead to a serious setback as well.
After the battle of Ravensburg in 1547 and the following pacification of Swabia, the Duke of Alba had moved westward towards Basel to ensure the safe return of Spain’s churchmen from the ecumenical council and also to intimidate Charles IX into not pushing further eastward. After departing for Spain in 1552 to assist military efforts in the Western Mediterranean, Alba returned to Genoa in March of 1556 following the death of Charles IX. With more troops cycled through Genoa, the Duke of Alba now commanded 9,000 men in three tercios, two thousand Genoese and Swiss mercenaries, and an expanded complement of horsemen. Troubled by a more competent Turkish navy, by the encroaching Protestants in northern Savoy, and by the implications an invasion from either would have for Spanish interests in Genoa, Juan Pelayo had decided the best use for his esteemed general was to place him in Northern Italy, where Spanish power projection was most in need. As Charles IX’s death had offered Juan Pelayo the opportunity to further dismember France with Hapsburg assistance, Alba’s immediate assignment was to besiege Toulon, where the French admiral Paul de Thermes had entrenched himself with the remnants of France’s Mediterranean fleet. Despite his initial successes in the Gulf of Lion, Thermes had been unable to procure enough manpower or ships to compete with the Castilian-Aragonese navy or to invade the isle of Corsica (his primary goal), and felt the safest choice for him and the men under his command after Charles IX’s death would be to regroup and weather the inevitable storm into which he felt France would shortly plunge.
Avignon, with the Pont d'Avignon shown
With Papal Avignon threatened by the Farelards that had now taken control of most of the Venaissin (including the principality of Orange), the pleas of Pope Ignatius I for the armies of Spain to protect it were sent both to Juan Pelayo’s ambassador in Rome, Juan de Vega, and directly to Alba via a Papal delegation led by the Spanish Cardinal Gaspar Cervantes de Gaeta. That Ignatius was a Spaniard as well was of course emphasized, persuading Alba to write his monarch with the suggestion that relieving Avignon would both reflect well on his kingship and also allow Spanish armies a leg up in cutting off France entirely from its Mediterranean coast. Juan Pelayo, heeding Alba’s advice, instructed his weathered general to purchase on royal credit as many Swiss and Italian mercenary contracts as he needed to keep Toulon encircled, and then to head north and secure Avignon. Once Avignon was safe and the better part of Provence was more or less subdued, Alba would be free to regroup with the Spanish garrison in Toulouse, stamping out any resistance along the way in Languedoc and leaving the protection of Genoa to the general Alfonso d’Avalos (who would march north from Naples).
However, maintaining the siege of Toulon would end up being unnecessary, as Paul de Thermes declared his surrender before Alba had even made plans to depart, having been informed by the Spaniards’ of Charles IX’s death two and a half months prior. With the ports of Provence open, Alba was able to move forward with greater confidence in his supply lines and set out for Avignon in late May. A small army of 2,000 under the leadership of a Farelard from Ardèche by the name of Matthieu de Privas had occupied Sorgues and Les Angles opposite the city, but Avignon was well-fortified and manned by an experienced garrison of Swiss guardsmen, although there were grumblings of Protestants in their ranks and the food stores were running low. When Alba and his army arrived in mid-June, the Swiss garrison was relieved of its duties (after its suspect members were tried and put to death) and the city’s Papal dignitaries and bureaucrats were evacuated.
When Alba received word that François de Beaumont had been spotted moving south from Malaucène at the head of 4,500 troops, he threw his army’s full weight at Sorgues, dispelling the force encamped there, and then feigned a withdrawal to the west. After waiting a day and a half, Privas took the bait and attempted to cross the Rhône. Once Privas’ force had fully encircled Avignon, a party of Spanish saboteurs, having been hidden away on the Île des Papes with a large cache of gunpowder, floated downriver on rafts to the Pont d’Avignon, in which they succeeded in blowing a sizeable gap. With their immediate means of retreat destroyed, the men under Privas were painfully vulnerable, and, after an ill-advised attempt to construct a makeshift pontoon bridge, a Spanish contingent under Íñigo López de Mendoza re-appeared and proceeded to sweep away the unprepared French. Hearing that the Spaniards had given battle on the banks of the Rhône, Beaumont, now passing Aubignan, rushed his army along to come to Privas’ aid. Beaumont was surprised to see two Spanish tercios waiting for him outside of Carpentras, and made the inadvisable decision to confront them on an open field, ending in a crippling defeat with 1,200 French dead.
Although he now had the military leadership of the League of Valence cowering in Montélimar, Alba would be unable to follow up his victory at Carpentras as he was needed in the east. After restoring René of Châlon to the principality of Orange and leaving a garrison in Avignon, Alba departed Provence to assist in ending the stalemate that had developed between Spanish and French forces along the Garonne. The march from Avignon to Toulouse took Alba and his army through Nimes, Montpellier, Béziers, and Castres - a route which was replete with Farelards. Alba’s troops, out of retaliation for incessant Farelard raids and motivated either by hatred of the Protestants or by simple rapaciousness, looted and burned with abandon. After resupplying at Toulouse and reconnoitering the situation along the rivers Tarne and Aveyron, Alba would link up with the main arm of the Spanish army in early 1559.
The Duke of Alba enters Toulouse (1559)
18,000 Spanish troops - nearly all Castilian - had entered Southern France in late March of 1556 under the maestre de campo Julián Romero de Ibarrola (one of the first common soldiers to reach such a rank), basing itself in Toulouse and assuming control of vast swathes of the country with relative ease. A serious challenge was to be found, however, in taking the city of Bordeaux, Romero's most pressing goal. While Toulouse had simply surrendered almost as soon as the ceasefire was broken, the city of Bordeaux had seen the buildup of an genuine French military presence since 1553 under the governor of Guyenne, Gaspard de Saulx, the sieur de Tavannes, and - although outnumbered by the Spaniards - was still large enough to hold the city and pose a significant threat. The admiral Nicolas de Villegaignon and his lieutenant Gaspard II de Coligny (brother of the Cardinal Odet de Coligny) had meanwhile been hard at work assembling a serviceable fleet in the fortified harbor of La Rochelle, financed primarily by themselves and other private investors (along with requisitions from the locals in the name of the king, of course). Coligny ran reconnaissance to Royan and Le Verdon-sur-Mer, where he assisted in the construction of extensive earthwork fortifications, and to the Delta de l’Eyre, where he was able to periodically arm and re-supply insurgents in the Landes.
Romero sent his sargento mayor, Cristóbal de Algodre, to solve this problem by having him and a contingent of men-at-arms slog a complement of artillery through the miles of forested marshland dominating the Médoc peninsula in order to take the French position at Le Verdon-sur-Mer. Having maintained the secrecy of his approach to Le Verdon at the cost of slitting the throat of just one nosy shepherd, Algodre assembled his troops around the French position in the dead of night and ordered a quick, surprise bombardment of the makeshift fortifications followed by a general charge. The numerically disadvantaged French garrison fought valiantly - with those unable to escape into the night slaughtered to the last man - but their position was compromised and they were unable to return fire while under pressure from the Spanish cannons. By the first light of morning, Algodre was able to direct his artillery towards Villegaignon’s ships. With resupply from either the Bay of Biscay or the Garonne now impossible, Tavannes decided relocation to Libourne was necessary if starvation was to be avoided, and Romero scrambled his troops across the river to force a battle. The battle of Libourne would be the first sign of cracks in the otherwise indomitable Spanish tercio, with significant casualties inflicted on both sides. The bloodshed was so severe, in fact, that Romero was beseeched by his officers to sound a retreat, and was on the verge of doing so before an emissary sent by Tavannes informed him of the French surrender. The Spanish had lost more than 4,000 of their own since putting Bordeaux to siege.
Les lignes de front, 1559
An abortive league would be desperately assembled at Angoulême in the aftermath of Libourne by any of those amongst the Poitevin nobility who either supported the house of Bourbon or simply hated the Spaniards. With an army hastily built from Farelards and fortune-seekers from Poitou and the edges of the Massif Central, the League of Angoulême was yet another band of Catholics and Protestants which lacked the direct royal support and religious toleration within its ranks that might have allowed it some success. Instead, the consequent battle of Cognac on the 8th of April, 1559 became yet another masterclass demonstration of military leadership for the Duke of Alba and of the fighting prowess for his tercios - a perfect bookend to the impressive services he offered the Spanish monarchy beginning at Ravensburg in 1547.
- Le fils prodigue revient -
No one had seriously believed the contention that d'Alençon was dead - indeed, if he was then the Duke of Guise would have liked to have heard about it. For his own safety, the prince du sang had been living in great secrecy on the outskirts of Joinville following his two kidnapping attempts. While Joinville was certainly close to the frontlines, the manner in which d'Alençon fell into Hapsburg hands invited a good deal of suspicion for two reasons. Firstly, the closest Imperial garrison at the time of his supposed capture was at Vittel, nearly 80 kilometers away. Secondly, Charles V seemed to make up his mind regarding the French succession rather quickly - throwing in his full support for d'Alençon once he had affirmed that he was in his custody. While it would never be proven, it is highly likely that d'Alençon's capture was a ploy to earn Hapsburg trust, as gathering support from the French aristocracy alone would have been extremely difficult so long as the court was infiltrated by Farelards and Antoine de Bourbon sat the throne. Whether or not d'Alençon had planned for the Hapsburgs to support him, it was a development that would work tremendously in his favor.
For all the bombastic success he had had in Germany and the incredible stroke of luck brought by the plague of 1554-1556, Charles V knew that the carefully arranged peace in the Empire was still fragile and could not endure the strain placed on it by further French stubbornness or a dead Hapsburg heir. Furthermore, at this point he was now virtually crippled by gout and coping with a litany of other health issues on a daily basis, and wished to finally end the conflicts which he had spent his entire adult life fighting. Hoping to achieve a little détente, Charles V agreed upon another ceasefire with marshal Montluc at Belfort on January 19th of 1560, where he also formally pardoned the duke of Lorraine, later withdrawing to Besançon with his army and quickly liberating all the towns of the Franche-Comte in the process. Charles had wisely let off the French and removed for them the an external threat which had thus far distracted them from most of their own internal disputes. Every Frenchman of import had called for the Estates General to be assembled, and, with the ceasefire in place and his cousin’s safety secured, Guise left Metz and headed straight for Paris. This was a matter of trepidation for the Arbitres, whose hastily assembled regency council had begun to fear the militantly Catholic Parisians and what effect a zealot and war hero like Guise might have on them, and how he might use them to achieve his own ends. At this point the younger d’Alençon’s survival was also plainly known in Paris, and his status as a hostage of Charles V put both the Arbitres and the Guise family in an incredibly awkward bind.
Wary of rumors he had heard concerning his arrest or assassination should he return to Paris, François de Guise tarried on the outskirts of Troyes, where he was joined by Charles de Cossé, the comte de Brissac, and Gaspard de Saulx, the sieur de Tavannes. The temporary respite had afforded these three like minded men an opportunity to discuss the miserly state of France, and the seemingly unchecked spread of heresy within it. Fed up with the cynical, politically minded machinations of the Arbitres and the unshakeable grip that group held on the country, Guise, Brissac, and Tavannes swore to one another in great solemnity on the night of February 16th that they would not rest until the Catholic faith once more reigned supreme in their native land. This was the founding event of what would soon be dubbed the “Sainte-Ligue” - or “Holy League” - of France, a coalition of Catholic exclusivists with François de Guise as its informal leader. The Sainte-Ligue’s membership would expand rapidly in a matter of weeks, gathering such individuals as Henri de Montmorency, son of the late marshal Anne de Montmorency, François de Guise’s brother Claude, the duke of Aumale, and Honorat de Savoie, a former associate of the Arbitres. Two important propaganda victories were also quickly gained for the Sainte-Ligue on the influence of François’ brother, Charles, who, as both a cardinal and the archbishop of Reims, was able to win over the Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, brother of Antoine de Bourbon, and also able to offer Charles d’Alençon a provisional coronation in the same cathedral where Louis the Pious, the first king of France, was crowned centuries prior.
In the meantime, Charles V and Juan Pelayo had both been invited to meet with representatives of the French nobility (drawn from both the Arbitres and the Sainte-Ligue) at Reims to discuss terms of peace and the French succession. Charles V had grown worryingly ill over the previous months and sent Granvelle and his son Philipp in his stead (alongside others). Juan Pelayo departed shortly from Comillas on the Cantabrian coast, and landed at Vannes in Brittany just in time for the feast of St. Anne, the Bretons’ patron saint. Juan Pelayo may have felt a twinge of sadness at seeing his maternal homeland in the midst of its exuberant festivities, but he was well aware at this point that any hopes of acquiring the peninsula had to be extinguished. The Imperial delegation, arriving ahead of the Spanish, presented its own terms: the French monarchy would renounce its claims in Italy, the Netherlands, the Franche-Comte, and beyond the Meuse River, remove its armies from said territories, and pay an annual indemnity of 150,000 ducats to the Imperial Diet for 10 years - in return, Charles d'Alençon would be released from his imprisonment and free to take his rightful place on the French throne.
The release and installment of the d'Alençon prince as king - something that Charles V had thought was a balanced concession to the French (he would, after all, be offering an end to their interregnum) - was in fact no less loathsome to many members of the French delegation than any of the other demands levelled by the Hapsburgs. If this had already left the French prepared to decline, they became much more prepared to do so upon receiving news that Charles V had died on the 25th of February (one day after his birthday) at the age of 60 in the city of Aachen - presumably from tuberculosis, the same illness that claimed his nemesis. This complicated matters, and any civility at the proceedings at Reims quickly dissolved: many from the French embassy denounced Charles d'Alençon and the Duke of Guise as Hapsburg stooges, while the Hapsburg embassy made veiled accusations of bad faith on the part of the French, with implications of Charles V’s untimely death being part of an assassination plot. All the while, Michel de l'Hôpital was struggling to maintain a semblance of unity within the French party while its Protestant and hardline Catholic elements were grasping for each other’s throats. As the whole affair began to precipitously unravel, a handful of French representatives decided that at this point the d'Alençon candidate was the most reasonable option and sided with the Sainte-Ligue, although the majority (before heading back to Paris) would tell the Hapsburg representatives and their d'Alençon pawn to burn in hell, in so many words.
There would, however, be no welcome for the Arbitres returning to Paris. Once the Sainte-Ligue issued its ultimatum to the Parlement of Paris demanding the gates of the city be opened for the true king, Charles d’Alençon, or they would put it to siege, the imminence of civil war - and the standing regency council’s role in precipitating it - became all too apparent to the king-hungry Parisian populace. While Philipp von Hapsburg essentially sat back and watched, the delicate order built up by the Arbitres began to tear itself apart, starting with enormous riots in Paris that forced many of Antoine I’s closest attendants to flee the city as the Duke of Guise and his cohort approached the outskirts towing cannons. As he and several others departed via the Porte St. Jacques, Gabriel de Montgomery, captain of the Scots Guard under Antoine I (and later convert to Protestantism), reared his horse around and cursed the jeering crowd following him, accusing them of dooming their realm to an aeon of foreign oppression.
Members of the Sainte-Ligue file into Paris (1560)
But Montgomery was unaware of just how laughable many French subjects considered such an accusation, and of how deaf were the ears on which the entreaties of the Arbitres now fell. In the aftermath of Antoine I’s untimely death, some of the Arbitres had made appeals of varying enthusiasm for one of Antoine’s brothers to succeed him, but their options were limited to Charles, who was a childless Cardinal, and Louis, the prince of Condé, who was a committed and vocal Protestant. Ultimately the Arbitres’ plan for France proved too disjointed and too incoherent to maintain preeminence amongst the nobility. The Arbitres ceased to be the power bloc they once were - unable to unite across confessional lines, lacking a centralized leadership, disengaged from the interests of the peasantry, and too slow to provide sensible goals in accomplishing their now impossible aspirations of both stabilizing France and defeating the Hapsburgs. Many of the Protestant Arbitres - such as Jean de Foix and the brothers Odet and Gaspard de Coligny - would formally renounce their Catholic affiliates and join Louis, the Bourbon prince of Condé and youngest brother of Antoine, in organizing a cohesive front to safeguard their faith in an increasingly polarized France. These nobles would bind themselves to the loose alliance of roving Farelard militias, Farelard-majority towns, and remnants of the League of Valence in the Fraternal Compact of 1561, forming the “Princely League of the Confederacy of Reformed Towns and Cantons” (“La Ligue Princière de la Confédération des Villes et Cantons Réformés”), known more concisely as the “confédérés” (confederates).
Charles d’Alençon, having been received by the Parlement of Paris and crowned formally as Charles X of France, was finally free to enter negotiations with the Spanish and Hapsburgs in his capacity as king. In March of 1562, accompanied by Michel de l'Hôpital - who had become his most trusted advisor at the expense of a now largely out of favor François de Guise - Charles X met with Juan Pelayo, Philipp von Hapsburg, and Cardinal Granvelle at Soissons, where he accepted an adjustment of the earlier terms offered at Reims:
- Charles X would be given the hand of the late Charles V’s youngest daughter Johanna to conjoin the houses Valois-Alençon and von Hapsburg in peaceful union.
- France would pay an annual indemnity of 65,000 ducats for 10 years to the Imperial Diet, along with one payment of 100,000 ducats to the States General of the Netherlands for the purpose of relieving the many towns and villages there devastated by plague and warfare (this was much more agreeable than the original demand for 10 annual payments of 150,000).
- Charles X would renounce for him and his heirs any claims to territories under Imperial jurisdiction.
- Juan Pelayo (recently widowed) would take the hand of Jeanne de Valois, de jure queen of Navarra and daughter of the late king Charles IX, to conjoin the houses Valois-Alençon and Avís-Trastámara in peaceful union (Juan Pelayo would have preferred to wed her to his eldest son Gabriel so as to ensure the kingdom of Navarre would be brought into the Spanish union, but Gabriel was already married to Elizabeth Tudor [Isabel de Inglaterra], eldest daughter of king Edward VI of England and Hedwig of Poland). The children of Juan Pelayo and Jeanne would inherit the kingdom of Navarra.
- Everything between the sweep of the river Adour and the Pyrenees would be ceded to the kingdom of Navarra, barring a pale on the Atlantic coast which would allow all the ports down to Saint-Jean-de-Luz to remain in French hands.
- The duchy of Brittany would pass to Charles X and his heirs in perpetuity (it would have passed to Charles IX after the duchess Claude's death in 1558 had he still been alive).
- The kingdom of England would receive an enlargement of their Pale of Calais, stretching to to Étaples and Saint-Omer (a separate, concurrent agreement with the Hapsburgs would see the Pale of Calais extended to Bergues and Dunkirk in the Netherlands, a gift to the English crown for its assistance).
Left: the Kingdom of France, 1562
Right: blue - royal control, yellow - Sainte-Ligue control, purple - Protestant/confédéré control
Last edited:
Hapsburgs stronk. I’m wondering if things stabilize within the HRE that Phillip doesn’t get a chance to meddle in france and carve off more territory.
Poor France. It’s going to be a shitshow there. I could imagine that he Royalists might ally with the Protestants to stop the Sainte-Ligue madmen.
I wonder how the Holy Roman Empire is going to do with this little victory of theirs. Is it going to solidify a little better?
I wonder how the Holy Roman Empire is going to do with this little victory of theirs. Is it going to solidify a little better?
Last edited: