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Denmark will not renew its NAP's that will come to end in 1338. Worried enquiries are to be directed straigth to the crown office.
 
CORNWALL...AND WAR!

”And if you would just sign here… and here… and then we will be done to day my lord.”
And Väinö signed the last parchment and rolled it, placing the royal seal in. He then stood of from the table and looked the pile of agreements of Non-aggression and defensive alliances. World looked much safer place to be.
“Ah, now with whom we don’t have any NAP with?”
“With France my lord…”
“Yes…France…”

*****​

“Sail to Ireland? We don’t want to sail to Ireland…look, when Lands End falls, the last castle of Cornwall would be ours!”
“No my liege, He is sailing to Ireland. And with him all the remaining armies of France… all who could get in to those ships and now they are reaching the isles with heavy keel.”
“Interesting. But better Ireland than Cornwall I say…all of French armies…”
And the King did shiver bit, while his sable coat cloaked him warm… that was lot of armies…all of France…even if just rest of them…”
“WAIT”
“My liege?”
“Did you say rest of French armies?”
“Glump…Yes…”
“And where are the rest of them? And why are they sailing to Ireland…?”
“My Liege…the Spaniards and Germans…They attacked France.”
“But that’s impossible, we made a deal! We had understanding!”
“My liege…”
“Bring me Gollevainen!”
“My liege?”
“Indeed, it’s time to start scheming…and while you are getting him, pass the Lands end to see whether that De Flandre pagan wants to surrender or not.”

*****​

A sun rose and set down. The moon went through its periods. Castles and forts in Cornwall gave their last fight and while the remaining ruggedly regiments of France sailed by Lands end, the waving Dannebrog greeted them in hollow mockery of their misery. Once great nation was no more. All provinces French had fallen under sareseen’s yoke. A counter-pope was set up in Rome by the infidels and the faith of Christian man was put to the test.
For Gwyneth, Wales and England, sun rose brighter. The Dôn name was now said in every court and house with amazement and appraisal.

*****​


“Who is this man? Wearing rags and covered in dirt and foliage! Is this the Finnish necromancer brought from deep woods where he was making illegal spirits? Or is this some highway thug brought to hear justice? begone! as the time of Kings is…”
“Psst…”
“What?”
“It’s the King of Loire…”
“I see… And where is Gollevainen?”
“He is at Tavastland now. He is organizing the royal ice-fishing competition. And there will be no Alcohol served! Except beer… and if someone wants anything stronger that can be arranged too.”
“I see…. Put that one on our calendar then.”
“Very well my Liege.”
“SOoooo….King Of Loire? King of Neustria? A duke of Ireland I would say.”
“#*/&#”
“Ah, how rude!”
“P*ss off!”
“Now, now, aren’t we both Christian men here…”
“Psst…”
“Ah I see…well Anyways, How it’s going to be? I can offer you either sword or the cross…and in both cases I will be taking those crowns for me thank you…”
“#()?¤$£#”

“Psst…”
“Not now, can’t you see I‘m negotiating?”
“A letter arrived…”
“what letter?”
“An anonymous letter”
“What did it state?”
“To cancel all agreements with…pssts…shhss…”
“I see…”
 
Denmark will not renew its NAP's that will come to end in 1338. Worried enquiries are to be directed straigth to the crown office.

I know not of what treaties you speak. The ones Bavaria and I signed with Denmark last 20 years, and were signed in 1328.
 
the pile of agreements of Non-aggression and defensive alliances.

Like said I signed so many NAPs in 1328 that someone of them must end in 1338;) The ones regarding Bavaria and An Andalus aren't the sole ones.

EDIT: after digging it up little, the al-andalucian-denmark NAP was agreed on PM to be 10 years, Then posted here unilaterally by Al-andalucia to be 20 year long, and when Signed by Denmark, we presented it to be signed as orginally agreed. Al-Andalucian response was to taken care of our concerns.

so I inturpt it to be lasting only 10 years.
 
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Warriors of Crom

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It was the year 1328 when the treacherous Dônmark assaulted the Frankish lands of Cornwall. The Döns had thought that the Children of Crom wouldn't give them an good opponent but High King Thurcytel de Flandre, King of Loire, King of Normandie and King of both Gaelic and Frankish people proved the Dôns beliefs wrong. He raised the Children of Crom to fight against this invading horde and set sail to Cornwall to help his brethren there. The armies of Cornwall had fought well even though they had had to retreat few times but after every retreat they had attacked again and forced the Dôns to retreat. When the High King arrived with the main land armies as well as Irish reinforcements the tide was turned, the Franco-Gaelic armies quickly gained the upper hand and pushed the Dôns back beyond the border. A small expedition was launched at Kent and soon the city fell to the Franks. Thurcytel had no intentions to claim land from the Dôns but to reach an agreement with them about the Cornish borders.
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Soon reports about raids in Southern main land border reached the capital of Paris and from there on the news were delivered to the High King in the Isles. These reports described foul beasts raiding and plundering the border towns, killing everyone on their way by ripping their heads off. Some said they were men possessed by demons and some claimed that they were no men but beasts with the head of a bear and horns of bull. Thurcytel soon realized that they were no beasts or men possessed by demons but armies of Al-Andalus. It seemed that the Andalusians had used the war between Loire and Dônmark to gain an advantage over Loire and seize all of their lands. Thurcytel had expected this to happen but he had hoped that the Andalusians would have been more honorable that this, nevertheless armies were raised in the southern border and in the mainland to counter these monsters and hyenas who had attacked them.
13thW4.jpg


But the hordes in south Loire were too many and many men were lost in the effort to counter them. High King of Loire even tried to negotiate with the Andalusian envoys but no answers were heard and it began clear that what they were after was all of Loire and Normandie. The Children of Crom fought hard and bravely against the invaders and in Cornwall the Dôns were dying. Months later another setback stroke the Kingdom of Loire, the Bavarians attacked from the West to conquer the border lands to themselves before the southern demons would do it. Reports of heavy losses came from the south and soon Thurcytel was slammed in the face with the reality. Even though he would win in the Isles, defeating both Bavarians and the Andalusian demons wouldn't be possible, not anymore. The Bavarians closed in to the city of Paris and the nobility fled to the countryside. Thurcytel send out envoys to the nobility and ordered all those loyal to Crom to retreat to the Emerald Isle and to regroup there with him. So Thucytel turned around his armies in Cornwall and set sail to Ireland, hoping that others would come. Before he left from Cornwall left an note to the Dôns, in it he surrendered Cornwall to the King Väinä.
13thW2.jpg


Many came to Ireland and the High King was able to regroup his armies to counter any invasion to the island. Soon the mainland had fallen as well as Cornwall and rumors of boats heading towards Ireland started spreading. Soon the Bavarians landed in Munster, they found no resistance there and started to siege the castle until they realized that they had walked in to a trap. High King Thrucytel killed the Bavarians in the name of Crom and those who escaped died while swimming back to Flanders. Thrucytel knew that Ireland was an fortress that none could penetrate and to gain an foothold there would require vast amounts of armies and simultaneous attacks everywhere. Then the Andalusians tried their luck but their fate was similar to the fate of the Bavarians expect none of them were allowed to escape. After few tries of failed invasions to Ireland the Andalusians grew tired and offered peace, peace for all the lands in Loire, Normandie and Bretagne except for one small province known as Cornaueil. Thrucytel accepted this peace and secured the existence of the Gaelic people in Ireland. Soon his health began to decline due to the wounds he had received defending Ireland. He died only a year after the peace was made and left his son Eadbert to rule as the King of Loire in Ireland. His final wish was that Eadbert would do everything in his power to protect the people of Ireland and Bretagne. After his death Thrucytel was beatified and declared as a saint. Some said that Crom himself had guided his sword and inhabited him thus he was called the St. Crom and all those who served under him were known as the Warriors of Crom.

Eadbert knew that alone Loire was sure to be destroyed by the Andalusians who wouldn't honor the peace treaty. So he decided to seek audience with the King of Dônmark. Eadbert offered him his loyalty and the titles of Loire and Normandie for the lands of Ireland. King of Dônmark accepted this and welcomed the Gaelic people in the Nordic Empire of many different cultures. Eadbert returned to Ireland to help in the rebuilding of their new home land.
13thW3.jpg



A little more accurate version of what actually happened last session.

OOC: I change me AAR reward from Prestige to Piety pretty please.
 
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Treaty of Corfu

The Autokrator of Rome and the Caliph of Dar-al-Islam hereby pledge, each to the other, that they shall come to each other's aid in the case of attack; that they shall not send assassins to the others' realm, nor engage third parties to do so; and that they shall return such lands as may from time to time pass by inheritance or rebellion into the others' hands. This treaty shall expire in 1350. Further, the province of Bari shall be ceded to the Caliph, who shall pay the administrative costs of the transfer.
 
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The Devil and the Taxman

In Hell, so the bitter jest runs, the weather is Scandinavian, the nobles are Andalusian, the priests are Egyptian, and the tax collectors are Roman; while in Heaven, on the other hand, the weather is Egyptian, the nobles are Scandinavian, the priests are Andalusian, and the tax collectors are still Roman, for certainly they are not going to take the mere salvation of your soul or a trifling matter like the personal intervention of Jesus as any sort of excuse for not paying what you owe.

Another often-told anecdote speaks of the time when the Devil came to collect the taxman, but he pleaded so eloquently for his soul that at last the Devil agreed to take, in his place, the first person they should come across whom someone else damned. "But," added the Devil, "it must come from the heart". So they set out to find who might be damned, and they met a man struggling to plow his muddy field with an old nag of a horse. "Damn you," cried the farmer, "don't sit there like a lazy ass, pull!" And the taxman said, "There you go, that farmer has damned his horse." "No," replied the Devil, "a man does not speak from the heart when he curses the beast that works his fields; we must go on."

So they went on, and they met a woman whose child cried for food; "damn you," said the woman, "can't you be quiet for once? Don't you see there is no food in the house?"

"Ha," said the taxman, "there is your victim; that child is damned, and by her own mother at that."

"Nonsense," said the Devil; "a mother does not damn her children from the heart; it was despair and hunger that spoke. We must go on; but perhaps not much further." And as he spoke, the mother looked up and saw the taxman, and she cried out, "There's the swine who takes the food from a mother's hand! May he be damned!"

"Ah," said the Devil. "Now that was from the heart."

These tales illustrate the pervasive nature of Roman taxation, but also resignation to it. Lower and upper classes (exploited and exploiting, respectively) united in regarding taxes as a law of nature, as unalterable as the weather. The farmer may curse the hailstorm that destroys his crop, but he does not take up arms against it. In fact, the tax system did demonstrate a remarkable longevity; the land and grain taxes that were paid under the Komnenoi were the same as those reformed under Justinian, and could trace their lineage to the tribute payments debated by Cato and Crassus. A version of the system survived in the lands overrun by the Arabs during the crisis of the seventh century; the diwan that supported the early Arab garrisons was collected by a Roman bureaucracy. In the West, on the other hand, ownership of land replaced the right to tax as the source of state wealth under the Merovingians, leading eventually to the emergence of a full-blown feudal system.

It was the ability to extract surplus production in a centralised manner, and not any absolute difference in land productivity, that made the Middle Eastern states (Rome and Caliphate alike) so much wealthier, qua states, than the royal dynasties of the West. In per-capita terms their wealth was similar, but in the West the money, and with it the military power, was spread over far more hands. In particular, taxes (in money and kind alike) supported regular, paid armies, as well as glittering courts. In the last two centuries of the first millennium, it is true, Rome had been forced by repeated crises to support some of its armies on the production of the provinces they defended. All the same, a regular army, paid in cash collected by the central fisc, remained the ideal for which all Emperors strove, and under the Komnenoi the ideal was largely accomplished.

All this is not to say, however, that the Roman system was in any sense efficient. On the contrary, so ingrained was the corruption of the system that the taxmen, reporting their activities to the central fisc, routinely quoted their commissions on what they had collected in two categories: Legal and illegal! In other words, longstanding custom had completely overruled written law in what the tax collectors were paid, and as a consequence the revenue due to the fisc was reduced by one-fifth - before considering that this is what the taxmen felt they could report without fear, because everyone in the system considered it their just due. In addition comes whatever stuck to their fingers in a manner that was genuinely illegal, that is, which would have caused actual punishment if discovered; this has been variously estimated as between a fifth and a third of the monies actually extracted from the peasants.

There was room, then, for a reforming Emperor to vastly increase his real revenue (and consequently the army he could support) without any unpopular (and probably counterproductive, since taxes were already very high as a percentage of actual production) increase in the land dues or the grain tax. This required, however, a great deal of personal attention, a vast capacity for detail (details reported in Roman numerals, at that), and a fine judgement of exactly how far the bureaucracy could be pushed. These are quite different gifts from the martial of Konstaninos, or the flair for compromise and justice displayed by Mathias. The Emperor Alexios is famous for no victory in the field, and no law bears his name. But he possessed an intriguer's talent for spying on his own bureaucracy, so as to find out what he ought to have been paid; an enormous patience for sitting through the flowery rhetoric and endless precedents of ministries hundreds of years old (one document, ostensibly listing the reasons why a village in Thrace has paid only twenty solidi, instead of the thirty-five the Emperor is demanding, begins with a three-paragraph invocation of the Muses, to sing of disaster and bad weather!), and a finely-tuned sense of when even the most entrenched civil servant would have to agree that a colleague had gone too far. By beginning with truly egregious cases, Alexios was able to "boil the taxmen slowly"; that is, by the time they realised that he was intent on reforming them thoroughly, rather than just reining in the worst abuses, the process was already far along, the worst obstructionists had been identified and targeted, and several exemplary heads had rolled. (The phrase is not to be taken literally; one of the first reforms was to rescind the death penalty for corruption in tax matters, replacing it with mutilation and fines. This counter-intuitive measure proved a stroke of genius, for it meant that relatively honest tax collectors would no longer be literally killing their colleagues by informing on their corruptions.)

Unfortunately, unlike the earlier reforms of Mathias and Konstantinos, of the laws and the army respectively, those of Alexios rested on a single lynchpin: The ability of Alexios himself to follow the enormous mass of detail that was the Roman tax system. His crackdown produced an enormous influx of revenue to the state's coffers, but he could not in a single generation create an honest bureaucracy that policed itself. While he lived he could keep the abuses in check, and the institutional memory of the mutilations certainly produced some improvement for a few decades. But in the long run, the bureaucracy's sense of entitlement to commissions that they had collected without fear for two centuries proved too strong for any one man to overcome; although Alexios had managed to prosecute several people for collecting the customary commissions (that is, the "illegal" ones openly reported as such), and thus roll back this form of corruption, the force of habit proved too strong, and the practice eventually bounced bac after his death. He is nevertheless the first Emperor to really grapple with the problem of creating an honest bureaucracy, and also the first to show what could be done by cross-checks and independent inspections. To him can be traced the eventual professionalisation of the Roman civil service, whereby civil service came to be regarded as a steady income rather than a spectacular source of wealth.


---------------------------------------​


I repeat my earlier post on the demesne statistics, to show the effects of Alexios's crackdown:

Code:
     HCav      LCav      HInf      LInf      Pike      Arch      Total
BOHE    0.20    0.23    0.08    0.39    0.03    0.06    314771
BULG    0.19    0.31    0.31    0.00    0.10    0.10    265450
CROA    0.16    0.20    0.11    0.40    0.07    0.06    98714
DENM    0.14    0.23    0.08    0.39    0.08    0.08    95063
LEON    0.15    0.19    0.14    0.36    0.06    0.09    172345
PERS    0.22    0.23    0.08    0.36    0.00    0.11    392447
RUSS    0.18    0.24    0.05    0.41    0.07    0.06    206824
MAML    0.12    0.24    0.13    0.39    0.05    0.07    72558
FATI    0.20    0.21    0.09    0.42    0.04    0.05    239072

HCav      LCav      HInf      LInf      Pike      Arch      Prod      Cult
BOHE    43.53    30.00    32.52    14.85    26.00    18.66    31.37    21.26
BULG    68.80    33.86    49.88     0.00    32.71    22.76    39.75    28.75
CROA    58.60    32.85    44.32    16.48    32.74    21.30    36.13    26.40
DENM    48.87    30.57    34.85    14.83    25.52    18.73    30.53    21.88
LEON    51.14    31.05    40.00    14.94    27.46    19.79    32.11    24.83
PERS    56.34    31.82    39.50    16.66     0.00    21.08    36.24    26.24
RUSS    56.11    31.56    42.29    16.36    33.10    21.64    36.14    25.81
MAML    43.65    29.93    33.08    14.30    23.91    18.02    29.69    21.46
FATI    60.79    32.27    42.57    16.41    32.10    21.13    37.05    28.75

Chief points to note: Rome has caught up with Egypt in cultural numbers as well as ineffable superiority. The Roman demesne host has more than doubled in size due to the new Emperor and his very effable superiority in stewardship; the combination of stewardship 19 and the richest province in the game means that the Byzantion regiment, alone, is about 65k strong. And none of it is militia. Long live the Emperor Alexios!
 
Your demesne is right across the border from mine, so you are the first to steal all the innovations that get made within civilisation. But in fact you are behind Egypt as well as Rome, in spite of your advantageous position.
 
Being a nekulturny barbarian with no understanding of the important things, you would. :p
 
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