The lady of Cologne
1309: The first settlers arrive to Vinland.(OTL, Newfoundland) At this point in time England and Denmark could barely hold up their population as it had grown steadily from the year 1000. Most of Europe faces similar population problems, and the mass of immigrants to England during the Mongol invasion didn’t help out. Edwyn II therefore supported a great number of German immigrants in building a ship and sailing towards Magnia.
1310: Another group of Germans arrive from York to the new world. The Skraelings of Vinland start to fight against the colonizers but diseases have killed most of them of and the colonizers get rid of them relative ease.
1311: Jamuka the wise dies. His three sons divide the empire between themselves. Ortuga the youngest takes the land in the east, the land of Rus and Novogorod. Temujin the middle brother takes Poland and most of Lithuania and Hungary. Kublai the oldest took the west, the German states, plus the kingdom of France and Denmark.
1312: Henry IV of France refuses to pay taxes to Kublai. Kublai gathers an army that is interestingly enough mostly German although lead by generals from the ordu. The first war of the hunnish toll starts.
1313: The first truly Anglodanish settlements in the new world. They settle in Alexandria, which is on the mainland of Magnia. The settlers are all from north England.
The battle of Lorraine ends with victory for Kublai. Henry IV pleads with the Khan for peace, offering him ridiculous amounts of gold. Kublai won´t settle for anything less than Henry´s head which Henry is very reluctant to give. Fear spreads through France, as everyone knows the Mongol revenge will be terrible for the people of France. The war continues… this time though the Mongols aren´t having an easy time defeating the French, the French have learnt more on how to fight them and the strategies of the invaders aren´t that superior this time. The war drags on.
1314: Temujin dies, possibly from poisoning. Soon after his death, his brother Ortuga arrives to Crackow and takes over his empire.
1315: Heavy rain ruins crops in Europe and a famine becomes widespread. The population of Europe was peaking at the time and the land barely able to sustain it. When the crops fail it results in the death of thousands all over Europe, from Scotland down to Greece.
The heavy rain also has an effect on the Mongols, the bows used by Kublai´s cavalry in France are ruined on the eve of a battle and the French spearmen are victorious. Not only that but a huge portion of the army gets stuck in swamplands in Flanders and are slaughtered by Henry´s armies.
1316: Due to lack of bread revolts break out all over England. King Edwyn tries to solve this by bringing fish from Iceland and Greenland and crops from Vinland and Alexandria. Maize is seen in Europe for the first time.
Tales of the land in which there is no lack of food, in which butter drops from the straws and fish are in abundance spread through out the Anglodanish kingdom.
1317: Three ships leave Jutland, four ships leave York and two ships leave London heading for Magnia.
Kublai is killed by his own troops and his army flees France. Henry IV gains legendary reputation for defeating the Mongols. French troops plunder Saxony, Lorraine, Westfalia and all of west Germany in search for food.
1318: The heavy rainweather in Europe ends this year and there are no famines. Yet settlers continue to arrive from England and Denmark to the new world, and a peasant rebellion spreads through all of Germany, killing all they can find of Turkic origin.
When news of this reach the court in Crackow, the Mongols are enraged. Ortuga has to deal with this and goes with a great army into Germany. Land is burned, pillaged and sacked, and so the only peasants in Europe that still have to deal with hunger are Germans.
1319: The settlement New London is founded. (Ironically in the same place as OTL New York). This is though the end of mass movement from the Anglodanish union for now. The population has stabilized, and there is now enough land and food to sustain the population.
1320: Ortuga sends a message to Henry IV, demanding he pay taxes to him like he did to his father. Henry IV feels very confident and sends a messenger to Edwyn II asking for help. Edwyn II which still officially holds the title duke of Denmark and pays tribute to the emperor, isn´t interested in going to a war with Ortuga.
Cian the explorer sails out from Dublin. The Irish also have had problems with overpopulation and suffered from famine in 1315, and so naturally are interested in settling other places and get rid of landless people. Cian comes to Magnia on an English ship bought by the king of Ireland. A year later the first Irish settlement in the new world is founded. New Ireland. Eirinn Úrma is located more to the south than the Anglodanish settlements. Over the next twenty years more settlers will come and by 1340 the population would surpass 20,000 making it the most populous white Magnian settlement in the new world.
1321: The second war of the hunnish toll starts as Ortuga´s troops pass through Saxony. The French fight with an almost religious fervour against the ordu, which they are now starting to refer to as the Huns.
1322: Edwyn II dies and his son Valdimar I becomes the king of the Anglodanish union. He is only twelve years old though and the thing in York takes care of most of things under the supervision of his mother Margareth.
1324: The Dantzig league opens up their first kontor in the new world, in the town Arhus in Vinland. They start shipping lumber and fish from the new world. The Dantzig league now has a Kontor in York, London, Bergen, Haroldsburgh, Heidaby, Visby, Uppsala, Tallin, Novogorod, Turku, Dublin, Flanders, and of course all major Polish and German cities in north Europe.
1325: The war between Ortuga and Henry IV ends and they agree on permanent borders between their empires. However Henry also promises to pay him taxes, only a little lower amount than originally. A lot of land has been destroyed in Flanders and Frisia and the Jews are blamed for being collaborators with the “Huns”. Jews flee persecution and into Germany.
1326: Saint Katherina which turns eighteen years old that year starts hearing voices in her head. She´s in severe doubt whether angels or demons are whispering in her ear at first but at last she becomes convinced that it is Gabriel the Archangel which is talking to her. The voices tell her that god has chosen her to liberate Germany from the Mongols.
This same year, three ships, full of Jews leave the port in Hamburgh heading for the new world. Zion is founded north of Eirinn Úrma.
This year Ortuga dies and his son Jamuka II takes charge.
1327: Charles I becomes king of France after his father´s death. A few days before his coronation in Rheims young Catherina arrives to Munich* in Bavaria after having walked barefoot Brandenburg. She seems to be a delirious mad woman and of course she is not allowed to speak to the lord of Bavaria, Conrad Welf. She makes several strange statements such as: the king of France is dead, now only Conrad can liberate Europe.
The guards laugh at the girl, but she makes more predictions: she predicts the Mongols will plunder a city in the north for no good reason and that Conrad´s son will get sick soon.
She lives as a beggar and waits outside the castle of Conrad for a while and soon she´s proven right about a lot. The news of Henry´s IV death reach Munich, soon after that Conrad´s son gets sick and a cousin of Emperor Jamuka, Yesugei, plunders Lübeck because of rumors that the citizens of the city were preparing a rebellion.
Soon the word of her predictions reach Conrad which asks to see her. He asks her to try to heal her son. She goes to see him and one day later the boy is well. Conrad then asks why she wanted to see him. She tells him god has decided that his blood shall be the blood of those who will rule Germany. She tells him that she can see he is a devout christian and one willing to do the bidding of god.
Conrad isn´t all to willing though to lend her an army to fight the huns. He realizes his chances would be small, and makes her take several tests to prove her honesty. Many experts are called to determine whether or not she´s a virgin and several priests ask her deep theological questions to find out whether god could be speaking through the girl, or if it´s the devil.
By the end of the year Conrad is still in doubt.
1328: Jamuka´s court is short of money. Silk, and spices have been brought from China and India along with several other luxurious items which have taken a toll on the royal coffers. Jamuka knew no limits when it came to spending on parties and buildings. The young inexperienced king sees no other way but to raise taxes. He demands higher payments from Germany and Denmark.
Valdimar I refuses to pay those taxes and renounces the title duke of Denmark, taking up instead king. He sends a message to France asking Charles I to join him in a joint war against the wretched huns. Not so surprisingly Charles decides to join Valdimar, hoping to finally being able to gain some land back from the Mongols.
When the city states of Germany hear the news they think the time has come for a rebellion. They were soon to be proved wrong.
1329: To everyone´s surprise Jamuka II, despite being merely 17 years old, was a very good general. He met Valdimar´s army of Anglodanes not far from Hedeby and crushed it with relative ease. The Anglodanes hadn´t done a landwar for a long time and they were still lagging behind the Ordu tactically speaking. Valdimar I agrees to pay double taxes after being captured and ransomed back.
Charles I had headed to Luxembourg and was hailed as a liberator all over the duchy. When he met Jamuka´s army centrally in Germany he didn´t liberate anything at all. He was killed in the battle and his forces were scattered. After quelching all rebellions in north Germany and putting men loyal to him as heads of various cities and counties he headed towards France.
Conrad had been one of those convinced the time was ripe and had finally given Catherine the army she wanted. After hearing the news he stopped her army and asked her to return back to Munich. It is to late though, for Catherine´s generals are still convinced and when she says no, they say no as well, and so the army of Conrad proceeds without him.
When Jamuka arrived to France the French didn´t offer their usual resistance but surrendered once they heard the news of their king´s death. Humiliatingly Jamuka makes one of his hunting dogs “the prince of France”. The French have just agreed to paying Jamuka double taxes when news that Cologne has been taken by a bavarian army reach the emperor´s ears.
Jamuka is said to have laughed when he heard that the army was being lead by a woman. In any case he headed his army towards Cologne expecting his warluck to remain with him. However, Jamuka was mistaken this time.
*Although Munich wasn´t founded until hundred years after the POD, it is very likely that if a town would be founded at that location it would have that name, since a monastery of Municher monks had been there from the 9th century.
yay!