Chapter 22 - Getting Close to the End
Clemens XIII was replaced by, you guessed it, Clemens XIV!
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A few years later Clemens died and the new elected pope was Pius VI.
Pius oversaw the dissolution of the Jesuit order, founded nearly 250 years earlier by Ignatius de Loyola. The Jesuits had become too powerful for the Pope's liking.
This was followed by a quarter century Jubilee
[I'm confused about this. The Jesuit event occurs in 1773 but is ascribed to Pius. However Pius's election takes places in 1775 and that date is confirmed in the Jubilee event. Something's wrong there. I've moved Pius's election to make the sequence make sense.]
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Austria still wasn't happy with Switzerland and the papal vassals thus declared war. Pius had armies camped in Milan and the Papal army therefore was the first to siege in both provinces. Switzerland was quite overmatched in this war, obviously, so it was very short. Pius had no interest in Swiss lands so he just did the obvious.
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The Swiss war was followed by several decades of peace and quiet, tinged with trepidation at the continued stockpiling of armed forces by France. [France had the million ducat bug, but I fixed that. I checked for it again but this build up was legit.]
As a change of pace here is the diplomatic map for 1795. Note, although France is marked in red they actually like us a lot except for the embargo they won't lift. Wirtemburg broke vassalization, but I don't recall how or why. I didn't try to annex them obviously, no borders.
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Pius was replaced by another pope of the same name.
This occurred in 1800, which was also supposed to be a Jubilee year. However the political situation of the time was not conducive to this. That said, the Pope refused to completely bow to Napoleon's demands. The Papacy does not fear France's might.
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In 1805, just to prove the point above Pius through the Papal Alliance (Papal States, Austria and Poland) into war with France and Portugal. This proved to be much more than was desirable. The French armies are overwhelming in number and led by strong leaders. After two years Pius wanted to bail out of this bloodbath. Fortunately, Portugal is the alliance leader. Austria and Poland are left to their devices (i.e. to get smashed badly by France).
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To appease his injured pride, Pius turned instead to the Safayid Empire, to test the tried and true practice of infidel purging. The Persians are well behind in tech and are easy to demolish, despite their large armies.
We relieve them of Irak and several Turkish provinces. Our plan was to release Ottomans as vassals again (Safayids had annexed them again to give us the CB for this war). But to do that we'd have to give up Anatolia and Smyrna. We opt not to do this. Irak is released though.
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Europe and Middle East, 1812:
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Last update tomorrow!
