Probably sometime at the end of the month or the beginning of December. I've been rather busy with school, and haven't really been able to work much on writing.
Visconti Victorious: Medieval Italian Unification
- Thread starter The Undead Martyr
- Start date
Bad news. I've just accidentally destroyed my thumb drive, and like an idiot didn't make any backups.
Meaning I need to start over from nothing.
Meaning I need to start over from nothing.
It really sucks as I was fairly close to finishing.
I think I'm going to consolidate the next few updates. Initially I was thinking the war was going to take another four or five, instead I think I'll just do it in three.
Bad news but it happens.
Good news is that you're not quitting
Die Wacht am Rhein
Die Wacht Am Rhein
England's entry into the war greatly complicated the Western theatre. Where once the conflict might have been confined to the upper Rhineland, now it had expanded to encompass all of the Atlantic seaboard, from the North Sea to the Straits of Gibraltar. Iberia and Aquitaine were once again the battleground for competing English and Italian ambitions. “Seville,” noted Prince Henry of Castille, “is the fulcrum of the Atlantic, seize it and we shall slam the door in their face.” If the mouth of the Guadalquivir could be taken then key Italian bases in Cadiz, Granada, and Gibraltar would be placed in immediate danger. The Andalusian Nasrid Caliphate of Cordoba was trusted to hold the line, given the rough parity with Spain and the rugged terrain, but the potential for a calamity in Iberia nevertheless hung as heavily in the minds of Italian strategists as the loss of Aquitaine did for England. King Henry of England accordingly dispatched 18,000 men Aquitaine[A] which with the support of 22,000 Frenchmen under the Dauphin Charles of Burgundy opposed the Italo-Gothic alliance on an even footing. The main French army of 24,000 was in Champagne alongside a smaller force of 12000 Englishmen and a further 6000 German and Dutch allies. Adding to this the Spanish army the Franco-British alliance had over 90,000 soldiers in the field.
Against this formidable coalition the Italians effectively stood alone- Venice, Poland and Austria were active only in the east, and the Goths and Cordobans together had barely 20,000 men- but in 1502 there was little for concern. By the 16th century Gian Federico Visconti commanded one of the greatest armies in world history, boasting a century of institutional experience stretching back to the Wars of Unification, a sophisticated and dynamic bureaucracy, the wealth of thirteen million inhabitants, and a standing army of one hundred thousand professional soldiers.[*b]
The Italians effectively had two choices: to blitz the Rhine and hope to knock France out of the war before the English arrived, or else to play defensively in the north and attack west into Aquitaine. Aquitaine's subjugation was a longstanding Italian objective; aside from giving ready access to the Atlantic and a further buffer for the Transalpine provinces, capturing the province would give the Italians and their allies a crucial wedge between England and Brittany, on the one hand, and Iberia, on the other. The king’s brother-in law, King Henry of Gothia, appealed frantically for Italian assistance after the English siege of Toulouse, but the Italian command staff preferred a daring offensive against the Rhineland, as it appealed to the values of Virtu[1] inculcated in the officer classes from birth and had as well substantial political benefits.
The Rhine was the beating heart of Europe: the crossroads of Italy, Germany, France and England, and a rich and divided territory under the loose aegis of the Holy Roman Empire. This strategically vital territory was largely apathetic- if not antipathetic- to Italy; the English were their overlords, the French their neighbors, and Italy's defeat did not engender confidence that she could successfully prosecute the war she had so arrogantly provoked. A strong tour de force in the region would sway some of the fence sitters and strengthen the Italians' hand in future negotiations- the Visconti especially hoped to court Duke John II, ruler of the Duchy of Cleves and the patriarch of a new and powerful principality in northwestern Germany. Well positioned in the rich lands of the Lower Rhine the La Marcks ruled a small but wealthy territory and had intermarried with many of Europe's aristocratic dynasties, including the Lancasters of Holland and Valois of Flanders, as well as the Wittlesbachs of the Palatinate and Hohenzollerns of Poland. Having secured the inheritance of the powerful duchies of Julich-Berg by the marriage of his son, John III, to the heiress Duchess Maria, and with blood ties to both the Lancaster and the Valois made the La Marcks among the leading German nobility. One might be surprised to think that the duke would side with the Italians, given his blood ties to the English and French and the fact that he was uncomfortably close to their territory, but duke John was an exceedingly ambitious man. If he sided with the Italian alliance he could have his pick of territory as war spoils, whereas the English alliance offered him nothing. Above all else John desired the recapture of the Duchy of Gelre, ceded to Holland as the price of Emperor Henry's support for Maria's inheritance.
The unified duchies of Julich-Cleves-Berg, including the disputed duchy of Gelre
The king still hoped to see his son ensconced in the Electorate of Cologne. Henry VIII's opposition hurt Italian ambitions in the region, as the Emperor wielded legal jurisdiction as well as political influence and military might. To that end Gian Federico Visconti now wondered if he could turn the Papacy into another instrument of foreign influence in the manner of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The reassessment of Italo-Papal relations coincided with the election of an especially formidable pontiff Adrian VI, in 1499. As Gioffre Borgia, the Royal Ambassador to Rome, would remark, the new Pope had “the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a mercenary, and the soul of a fishwife.” Worldly, learned, and ambitious Adrian was a masterful theologian and politician, and determined to reassert Rome's preeminence as the spiritual leader of Europe. Gioffre himself was a longtime correspondent with the Pope and a favorite of the king, and his appointment as the king's ambassador was a shrewd choice.
Gioffre Borgia was the fourth of nine sons of a Valencian hidalgo. Gioffre's father Rodrigo had a fairly typical career for the lesser Italian nobility: he joined the army, fought without any particular distinction or disgrace, and retired to the Pavian court, where he secured a sinecure as a lesser functionary. Fortunately for his family's future prospects, Rodrigo proved rather more adept at palace intrigue than at warfare, securing substantial estates with his marriage to a Sicilian countess. Although his family was wealthy enough to provide a modest stipend Gioffre's ambitions drove him to seek his fortunes in Pavia, where he successfully passed the State Exam and secured a position as podesta of the town of Mantua. Like most of his peers Gioffre lived a life of excess, drawn to wine, women, and the various licentious indulgences available to the idle rich. Unlike his peers, however, Gioffre stood out as a quick wit and tireless worker, and his skillful administration of Mantua ensured his continued success. The precocious Iberian first caught the king's eye during a debate in Pavia, and thereafter became one of Gian Federico's courtiers and closest confidantes. In the shrewd and cynical man the king found a scion his true sons never matched, and he personally chose the twenty three year old man as his envoy to Rome.
Pope Adrian welcomed the king's envoy, but overreached himself in suggesting a return of Umbria or Latium to Papal control from “our steward and servant” the King of Corsica. Gian Federico flatly refused to consider any cession of territory, instructing his ambassador to “remind his Holiness who is Caesar of Italy.” Gioffre tactfully refrained from simply regurgitating his king's ire, and coaxed the Pope into a more moderate stance. By the Concordat of 1502 the Pope agreed to formally endorse Matteo's candidacy for the Bishopric of Cologne, and more generally lent the considerable soft power of the Papacy to the cause of the king in the Low Countries. In return Gian Federico Visconti pledged to end his taxation of church fiefs, and acknowledge Papal investiture in the Kingdom of Naples, albeit subject to royal veto. The treaty also formalized the de jure relationship between the Papacy and the Visconti regime in regards to ecclesiastical lands in Italy: Papal sovereignty was restored to certain properties in Romagna, Corsica, and Naples, at the cost of renouncing all claims to the bulk of the Papal lands, beyond the legal fiction that the Pope was the de jure liege of the Kingdoms of Sicily, and Sardinia and Corsica. As a secret clause of the treaty the Pope also agreed to invest Gian Maria as king of Andalusia, a rank betrayal of the Granada sultanate but one justified by faith and political advantage. For his efforts Gioffre's position was cemented, and he was soon appointed to the Senate, where he quickly became a leading figure of the Aquilae.
The remnants of Italy's first army rallied and joined to the forces of Gian Maria, investing the city of Metz in late April 1502. Although the French armies attempted to relieve them the Italians managed to hold them at Nancy, a forced march by a relief force arriving in time to destroy the Valois army. This effectively ended Lorraine's participation in the war, although she remained nominally cobelligerent through the entire conflict. As Gian Federico had hoped the victory also convinced Duke John to turn cloak: within three months of the fall of Metz the duke betrayed the Emperor and launched an invasion of Holland, an act which would have significant repercussions for German political history.
In Ansbach the Hohenzollern Duke Albert IV of Ansbach-Bayreuth aspired to the ducal crown of Franconia. Ansbach-Bayreuth had briefly been in union with Brandenburg-Poland, but passed to a cadet line with the death of Frederick Iron-Tooth; nevertheless the county benefited enormously from the aggrandizement of its ruling dynasty. King Frederick himself had made an abortive attempt to subdue the city of Nuremberg, provoking a coalition under the adroit diplomacy of Emperor Frederick of Austria to oppose Hohenzollern expansionism in the region. Austria still viewed such expansion warily, but the Italians, for much the opposite reason, favored Hohenzollern ambitions, especially after the War of the Landshut Succession broke out in Bavaria. Austria herself largely abstained from the ongoing war, opting instead to take advantage of her neighbors’ instability, and the Habsburgs interceded in Landshut on behalf of Rupert of the Palatinate in exchange for the promise of territorial concessions. The Hohenzollerns as a family additionally enjoyed staunch French support (for much the same calculus as the Italians), which only increased after the Burgundian Inheritance given longstanding economic relations between Flanders and the Baltic.
As 1503 turned to 1504 the war in the west were overshadowed by the outbreak of two major rebellions in the east: a noble insurrection in Lithuania. Poland's Ruthenian territories resented the Poles' staunch Catholicism and especially the centralizing tendencies of the Hohenzollerns who sought to claw back some semblance of Royal power in Lithuania;[1] and secondarily the Shiite Revolt, “led” by the fourteen year old nominal head of the Safaviyya Order and self-proclaimed Shah of Iran Ismael I.
The Safaviyya were a Shia sect which had been supported by the early Akk Qoyunlu, who despite being Sunni sought to patronize many faiths, heathen and heretic included, as a method of demonstrating their imperial largesse and buttressing their rather shaky legitimacy. The division between Sunni and Shia was not, at this time, a solid one, in much the same manner that the eventual Schism between the Chalcedonian sects of Christianity was not a sharp delineation in the early days of the Church. This movement, however, had not remained as pliant as the emperors might have wished, and enjoyed strong support in southeast Anatolia, Azerbaijan, and in the rugged province of Mazandaran, alongside the Caspian Sea[5] In 1488 the head of the order, Ismail's father, was killed leading a rebel army against the Persians, and in 1494 his eldest son (and Ismail's brother) was executed outside the rebel stronghold in Ardabil. Ultimately the Emperor decided to sue for peace with the west, dropping out of the war entirely. The emperor brought the Safavids to battle and destroying them; the young Ismael was hacked to pieces by the Shah’s soldiers. The Safavid revolt was ultimately a symptom of the malaise, rather than its cause, as evinced by their persistent support from the tribes even after multiple defeats. Upon the Emperor’s death a new revolt broke out, prompting the new Shahnanshah to begin a systematic persecution of the heretical sect.[C]
Given the collapse of royal authority in Poland and a surprise Anglo-Portuguese victory off the coast of Morocco the Visconti alliance readily accepted Baysangur's offer of a status quo peace; the de facto division of the Delhi Sultanate in India was formally acknowledged, as were the Venetian possessions in the Levant, in exchange for a cash indemnity and a pledge not to aid or abet the rebels in Iran. Anatolia and Syria were thereafter restored to pre-war borders. The Byzantine Emperor was greatly displeased with this peace, as he was enjoying considerable success in Anatolia, but recognized that Persia was too strong for him to face alone, and grudgingly accepted the treaty. The Roman Empire did at least secure the cession of the Principalities of Imeriti and Abkhazia along the Black Sea, two poor but strategically significant Georgian fiefs which controlled the rugged frontier between Anatolia and the Crimean Steppe- and additionally used the Hohenzollern’s troubles to wrest control of Moldavia and the Crimean coast from the Polish Commonwealth.
[1]Virtu, literally meaning manliness, referred to the traditional Roman values- bravery, daring, love of honor and glory above material gain, coolness under pressure, and a stoic, self-effacing devotion to duty, the state, and one's family.
[2]The union with Poland had emerged largely as a consequence of Teutonic Order's expansionism, but the Grand Duchy's nobles also enjoyed the extension of Polish liberties to their ranks, in contrast to the more authoritative powers of the Geminid Dukes prior to the union. This very tradition was claimed by the Hohenzollerns who viewed their eastern territories as a cow to be milked dry for the sake of their imperial ambitions.
[3] Gioffre was named for Rodrigo's maternal uncle, a cardinal whose papal ambitions had run afoul of the Visconti as a consequence of his pro-Barcelona politics during the War of the Aragonese Succession.
[4]Persia had long been divided between the sedentary populations and the nomadic peoples. This unsteady mix was, under the powerful Bayandurd rulers, largely beneficial, economically and militarily, but the increasingly autocratic and aristocratic traditions of the Caliphs chafed at the sensibilities of the Turkic tribes, who resented the abrogations of their treasured liberties by “foreign” rule. This resentment had simmered beneath the surface for some time, fueling the zombie-like resilience of the Shia movement
[5]Mazandaran had long proven resistant to central rule; even the Mongols only managed to subdue the restless province in the twilight years of the Ilkhanate, and the Bayandurids likewise found the province all but ungovernable.
[A]In OTL Henry VIII dispatched a force of ~14,000 to Gascony in 1508 during the Italian Wars, which with their spanish allies if somewhat larger given better logistics but most of their effort would be focused on the Low Countries.
[*b]For comparison, The OTL Ottomans under Sulemain the Magnificent had around 100-120,000 soldiers and 10 to 12 million people, while Francis I had anywhere from 12 to 14 million people and an army of around 40 to 50 thousand. As a very rough rule of thumb pre-industrial civilizations could leverage about 1% of their population for war; France's population in the later middle ages- bearing in mind that the Black Death and Hundred Years War killed literally millions- is generally given as peaking at 15 million, although this figure as far as I am aware included all of modern day France's lands, while Iberia and Italy had around ten and 12 million, respectively; Germany as a whole was roughly identical to Italy, more or less. Italy's population is somewhat higher due to the abrupt end of the Italian Wars and the flourishing economy, which together with the added provinces (Valencia and Provence are noted to be quite rich and populated territories) bumps up the numbers slightly. More significantly the high urbanization and more effective government means that the Italian state can leverage much more of its resources compared to the feudal mess that is 16th century France.
[C]This is effectively the same as OTL, up to the point that Ismael is killed by the Akk Qoyunlu rather than conquering them.
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Added in a map, corrected the dates some, and upon reflection changed the title to something a bit more evocative. It was something I'd been considering for some time now but never really got around to it.
I actually did end have backups. Just didn't make much difference. In any case, I don't think the next update will take as long, depending on how much I put into the battles. Right now I think the war will last two more updates, which is somewhat surprising- I was expecting to have it be a bit longer, as the turning point is in the next update. In any event a few naggling details from the post-war situation have been settled (the Rhineland is a mess). Among other things I've decided on the first major *Protestant countries of TTL.
I actually did end have backups. Just didn't make much difference. In any case, I don't think the next update will take as long, depending on how much I put into the battles. Right now I think the war will last two more updates, which is somewhat surprising- I was expecting to have it be a bit longer, as the turning point is in the next update. In any event a few naggling details from the post-war situation have been settled (the Rhineland is a mess). Among other things I've decided on the first major *Protestant countries of TTL.
This zoomed in map really helps one appreciate Italy's added girth.
A pretty border is a pretty border. It's pretty defensible, too, with the Rhone and the Swiss Alps. Ive made no secret about wanting to make an Italian Kaiserreich equivalent, as a contrast to the typical imelitne that goes straight to Roman Restoration. Or worse, puts everything under the Habsburgs.
Though Renaissance Italy's internal divisions are rather aesthetically pleasing as well I must admit.
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Provided that they are sorted out in a reasonable time
B A L K A N I Z E D E U R O P E
Oh, dear.
One thousand little wars, commerce whittled down to a trickle by robber barons and toll gates every few miles, no major infrastructures ever built (who ponies up the money?).
Back to the very darkest of the Dark Ages.