feedback :
this one was quite long in fact ^^ next part the weekend i think
morningSIDEr : we had God on our side , at least at two critical moments !
Dewirix : no i'm not going up against France or Castille , but against Burgundy !!
chapter VIII : warmonger , part II
So ... how is it looking?
-allies , OK : we've got Milan , France , Netherlands and our ally Müntser
-finances OK , we got about 250 ducats out of our last campaign
-army OK , we are now at 150% of our forcelimits
Archbishop , i got great news : they all joined our crusade!
the battle plas is this one : crush Baden and Savoy army which , for some reason , is stationned in Baden , let one regiment siege this burgundian vassal
occupy Metz and storm the citadel of Lothringen (Metz fortifications are a shadow of what they once were , due to the offensive burgundian doctrine) , and try not to fight the biggest enemy stacks , while trying to root/disturb the little ones , so they don't have time to merge into doomstacks
God was clearly on our side as when the front was starting to look grim facing one of the main burgundian stacks on Metz and about the battle , the lowlands were overrun by the french and the dutch , and the milanese forces were ealing with Savoy , a moderate peace was sent to the burgundian king where he lost only the disputed area ad a small peace token. This peace would hurt the burgundians a lot as they were almost accepted as legitimate rulers of Lorraine , some lords were ready to pledge allegiance to them in a few years time
With this , the relations with our big western neighbor were sour again , but people was confident in the future , and we even accepted the burgundian culture ^^ , and the Metz fortifications were rebuilt.
In 1455 we favored artisanate , and started to build workshops around the bishopric , and we see here the French fight the Castillans for some puny reason , to revert to status quo after some fighting
But those good times , with stable allies and easy wars ended in 1457 when we started our subjugation of Pisa.
the war went smoothly , with Pisa subjugated and Ferrara taken back into the empire from Naples , where the emperor and locals granted us the legal ownership of the province , but both France and Milan dishonored the alliance.
a high ranked statesman ws hired , but the problems really arose with the newly added goal to vassalize switzerland , who relocated in the southern Baden province
We followed the Netherlands in their war to vassalize Oldenburg , and took advantage of that to vassalize Thuringia.
In 1458 we formalized the scales and measures between our rhenan heartland and italian possessions , and as a result gained some production effiency.
a border dispute arose in march 1459 about the surrounding of Pfalz , some palatine nobles seeing Franken occupied by Bavaria preferred to join Alsace than Bavaria!
an alliance was signed with England , and of all allies , only Bavaria dishonored the enemy side , which is fortunate as they are the very powerful emperor , but the Netherlands dishonored in our side too :/
Naples is the leader of the enemy alliance , composed of the papal states , the palatinate and some OPM in the empire , saxony.
after a quick war , the palatine nobles agreed to join our country , and to give us the former royal treasury (275 ducats).The pope is left easy , and we agree to a white peace with him after crushing his army , and Naples is stripped of its other imperial province , Modena , who happily join ouritalian territory and collection of universities , not so bad for a very narrowminded state as we are closely following the dictrines of the church!
the problems would come in 1461 s we returned the favor to England , and helped them in their reconquest of Picardie against Burgundy ...
unfortunately , if the small burgundian allies pose no threat , the emperor decided to intervene and was leading a vast and mighty army. The plan here is .. to not lose , we keep our armies home and try to crush invaders , while diverting two or three regiments to occupy Baden and Trier.
But the emperor is simply too strong and was starting to overrun our forces , our ranks were depleted , and as they moved to retake Baden we quickly assaulted back Pfalz.
Then , after two long years of war , we could at least make peace , conceding defeat to Bohemia , saying that we were fooled by England in honouring our alliance with them , as they honoured it when we called them earlier...
We were at peace again , but if the coffers were filled , nobody was left to hire in the bishopric , and our war exaustion was quite high too , all that for England who failed her recnquest , they even gave Calaid to Burgundy to make peace some months after we could find our way out of this war!
well , sometimes in this chaos one of our army leaders , general Rudolf , subjugated Switzerland by himself! her ally Austri was having trouble with Bavaria and Croatia and such , we were at war technically against them for a few months but Rudolf declared that no Austrians were ever seen or fought , whild we were at war against Bohemia and Burgundy!
the Archbishop was furious to learn that , but as we achieved victory in this little war the punishment was moderate , and Rudolf was sent to protect the border with the papal state , that was a bit hard as apparently we were at war against Milan at some point and they revoked our military access , and would of course not renew it!
his last campaign was to subjugate the northern minors of Mainz and Trier , at least we wouldn't fight them anymore , but the Pope was at war once again against us , and this time as had some border dispute on our territory he would not white peace with us , even when we steamrolled his german allies! Milan would not let us pass through her territory , and our navy , consisting of three cogs was sunk by papal galleys when Ancona fell
the 23 october 1466 the archbishop died , letting a somewhat difficult situation in the south
edit : where the F*** are my screens? i can see them briefly before they vanish!
edit2 : i've found it , fixed!