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SouthernKing

Second Lieutenant
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Aug 10, 2011
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Welcome! This is my first AAR on this site (not my first story/AAR about a strategy game, I have done several for Civ4 on the Civfanatics forums)

I will be playing as Portugal, using Death and Taxes 3.4 (or whatever was the latest version to not have the 1356 start) and that is what I will be playing throughout (unless, if it is possible to keep the save intact and transfer it to 4.X, then I will transfer. I would appreciate it if someone told me this.). This will be a history book style AAR, written from the perspective of someone in-universe. [Annotations will be written in brackets within the text, like this.] I will try to play in-character, so I will be making some moves that otherwise would be questionable. My goals ATM are to control everywhere that Portugal did historically, and more if possible, and turn Portugal into a sea-spanning empire.

Anyway, I will beautify this post later, when I have the time and motivation. Expect weekly updates.
 
Joao I: 1399-1407



October 15, 1399 was a decisive date in the history of the British Isles, for it was the date on which Henry of Bolingbroke, 2nd Duke of Lancaster, was elevated to the throne of England, becoming Henry IV. Little did anyone know that this event would change European history within just a few years.

Joao I, King of Portugal, took an immediate dislike to the new king. Joao had been cordial friends and allies with Richard II, Henry’s predecessor on the throne. However, Joao took an immediate dislike to the new king, considering him arrogant. Joao had visited London for the coronation, and during a feast afterwards Henry had made a tasteless joke about Joao. Needless to say, when just days later Henry asked Joao for aid in England’s war with France before Joao boarded the ship back to Portugal, Joao refused. The incident would start a long history of feuding between the the two kings and their respective countries, which would ultimately lead to war in less than a decade.

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Joao I, King of Portugal 1385-1418

When Joao returned to Lisboa, he decided that increasing the size and strength of the Portuguese military were in order. To do this, he elevated his top [“top” in this case meaning the people Joao thought were the most loyal to him] officers in each branch of the military, Nuno Alvarez Pereira in the army and Antonio de Carvalho in the navy, to the newly created posts of Grand Commander and Grand Admiral respectively, to head reforms as necessary. The size of the Portuguese army was doubled virtually overnight, and with de Carvalho’s leadership, a new generation of admiralty was recruited.

On the foreign front, Joao decided that it would be of utmost priority to ensure Portugal’s security. Therefore, Joao signed a defensive pact with King Enrique III of Castille to ensure Portuguese independence in Iberia. To help check England, he signed a defensive pact with King Robert III of Scotland. Both kings would become Joao’s personal friends later in life.

The Catholic Church in 1399 was struggling in the midst of the Avignon antipapacy and yet another investiture contest with the Holy Roman Empire. With the Church unable to maintain as strong a grip on Europe as it had done in the past, Joao began encouraging court scholars, as well as those at secular schools such as the University of Beira, to start straying from the Church’s narrowminded view. Although this meant that Portugal would start losing influence and favor within the Church, its reputation was crippled to the point where little could be done about these moves. Joao did take special precautions to ensure that he was not excommunicated.

In early 1400, a minor noble in the city of Faro, in the south of the country, proved himself to be Portugal’s foremost expert at defensive fortifications. Word of him arrived at the court, whence Joao proclaimed that not only would he be allowed to stay in Faro, he would also be elevated to the position of Mayor of Faro. [the previous mayor had died just months earlier]

In late 1402, tensions were rising between Castile and England over a trade dispute, especially after Enrique III banished all Englishmen from the country in November 1402. Henry IV within days declared war, joined by Wales and Pomerania. It proved to be a grave mistake. Portugal in defense of her ally embarked six thousand soldiers, half the Portuguese army, on a campaign to land in Wales and threaten England. [Why exactly Joao did this is unknown, but accounts suggest that the king was to some extent a megalomaniac.] The Pomeranian and Welsh navies were both easily crushed in the English Channel, and in April 1403 the Portuguese army debarked in Gwynedd, on the north coast of Wales, easily crushing the smaller Welsh army; only a handful of Welshmen escaped death or capture. The Portuguese soon laid siege to Caernarfon, the Welsh capital, and Joao soon sailed from Lisboa to join them. But in June, instead of heading directly to the Scottish border, an English army numbering thirteen thousand, coming from the south, attacked the Portuguese. Joao arrived just in time to see the battle; not wanting to see his army get destroyed, he accepted an offer of white peace, removing Portugal from the war. However, with the Portuguese army proving a key distraction, the Scottish were able to crush the English army in Northumberland, and England was forced to accept a humiliating peace, losing most of her northern lands to Scotland and Cornwall and Kent to Burgundy.
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The next few years brought peace However, bickering between nobles began to take its toll on the efficiency of the government. In April 1404, crisis emerged when Joao attempted to redraw the borders of feudal domains within the country to better organize and ease administration. However, this was not pleasing to many of the nobles who would end up losing land during the redrawing. Crisis emerged, as noble after noble threatened to revolt. Joao was forced to let the nobles retain control over everything except Lisboa and its vicinity, while he had been planning to add additional lands to his demesne. Consolidation of Portuguese royal power would have to wait.

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A map of Portugal as it were after the 1404 redrawing of ducal boundaries, with said boundaries visible.

The Portuguese navy was rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the most advanced and strongest in Europe. It already eclipsed that of its neighbor Castile, and only countries such as England and France could outmatch it. By 1407, it had become so reputable that Grand Admiral Antonio de Carvalho declared in a now-famous letter to King Joao that "Portugal's future lies across the waters" and that "we need to embrace glory in our navy." Centuries later, his words seem telling, even prophetic, although nobody realized it at the time...

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Not too many Portugal AARs; I'm interested to see where you go with this!
 
Subbed, how couldn't I?
 
Joao I: 1407-1418

Since 1309, first the Babylonian Captivity, then the Avignon antipapacy had torn the Church apart. But with the death of Boniface IX in Rome, then the invasion of Avignon by Charles VI of France a week later, the time seemed ripe for a reunification of the fractured Church. The first unified conclave in Rome in decades took place in June 1407, electing Cardinal Piccolomini of Siena as Pope Pius II. In Portugal, the resurgence marked the beginning of a years-long political crisis.

In the spring of 1408, Duarte [Edward], then fifteen and Joao’s designated heir to the throne, fell deeply ill. By April, the bedridden prince had a severe fever, and to the court it seemed all but certain he would die within days. A desperate Joao summoned one last doctor – a man who he had heard about who had earned a reputation as a healer in the south of the country. His name was Francesco de Faro.

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Duarte in around 1408, the time he fell deeply ill

According to a chronicler, Francesco arrived in Lisboa on the 2nd of April, 1408. By April 4th, Duarte was out of bed, walking around as if not ill at all. The court rejoiced; Francesco was rewarded by Joao with a healthy pension and the title of médico real [Doctor Royal]

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Francesco de Faro, c. 1408, after being named médico real​

But while Francesco was seen as a hero by the king and some of the court, not everyone shared that view. Some of the more pious minor nobles, particularly in the north of the country, began spreading rumors that Francesco was a sorcerer and began pushing both Joao and the Church to execute him. As Francesco continued to treat the sick and injured in Lisboa and elsewhere, these rumors spread far and wide. In the spring of 1409, these rumors reached the ears of the Duke of Beira, a weak-willed yet cunning man too soon to fall prey to rumors, yet at the same time able enough to realize that supporting Francesco’s execution would grant him greater support and power.

The Duke threatened to declare Beira independent if Joao did not have Francesco executed. Joao refused and simply sent in the army to Beira. The Duke proceeded to petition Pope Pius II, who was visiting Portugal that summer, to place Francesco on trial; the Pope was indecisive for months before refusing to comply with the Duke’s request in the autumn.

The situation reached a peak when, in November 1409, an assassin broke into Francesco’s current lodgings in Lisboa. The attempt failed; Francesco, being an able swordsman, fought back, and two guards Joao had posted outside rushed in and were able to chase the assassin off. Joao and some courtiers hatched a plot to smuggle Francesco out of Portugal to Castille; undeterred by the attempt on his life, Francesco refused to leave the country.

Just as it seemed that there would be a full-scale rebellion in Beira, in April 1410 the Duke of Beira disappeared. Three days later his body was discovered by Moroccan fishermen washed up along the coast in Tangiers. How he died to his very day remains a deep mystery; nevertheless, the support for Francesco’s execution quickly collapsed, and Francesco lived out the rest of his years peacefully, until tuberculosis took his life in 1416.

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Italy in the 1410s was in a state of flux. In the south, a civil war in Naples allowed for mercenaries, under contract with Venetian merchants, to overrun the city of Taranto in the southeast. The weak-willed King Carlo IV had in 1409 been forced to cede the land of Apulia, the southeasternmost part of Italy, to Doge Pasquale de Blazio of Venice, who then began dividing it up between retired merchants who wished to own land. With the largest and strongest state in Italy brought to its knees, Italy soon became a feeding ground for larger powers.

The north was fragmented into a number of independent duchies whose only hope of defense was that they were the border regions of the Holy Roman Empire. One of these was the city-state of Mantua. Duke Gianfrancesco I, a personal friend of the Duke of the Algarves in southern Portugal, died without childless and brotherless in December 1412. In his will he gave the duchy to Vincent, son of the Duke of the Algarves.

While few states cared at first, before Vincent could arrive in Mantua, Pope Pius II died in January 1413, in a shipwreck off the coast of Corsica. The new Pope, Paul II, gave nominal independence to the city of Urbino, giving it to Antonio, that city’s most powerful noble. Antonio refused to let a non-Italian rule Mantua, and in February 1413 invaded and placed himself on the throne. The event angered not only Vincent and Joao, but also Niccolo III, Grand Duke of Ferrara, who was also a personal friend of the Duke of the Algarves. On April 12, to protect his interests, Antonio declared war on Ferrara.

Joao, once hearing the news, immediately sent Vincent, along with six thousand Portuguese soldiers, to Italy. In 1410, Grand Commander Pereira had introduced the English longbow to Portugal, in what many decried as a waste of time and effort. But with war now at hand, Pereira’s efforts seemed to be paying off.

The Portuguese landed in Ferrara in June 1413, easily crushing the small invasion force Antonio had sent in.

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In July, the Portuguese advanced to the walls of the city of Mantua itself, crushing a small Mantuan defense force in the countryside.

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After a seven-month long siege, the defenders of the beleaguered, starving city surrendered in March 1414.

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Vincent forced Antonio to return to Urbino, never to step foot in Mantua again. Vincent pledged fealty to the holder of the throne of Portugal.

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The last years of Joao's reign were mostly peaceful. By 1416, he had become a recluse, drinking fine wine behind the walls of his Lisboa palace and leaving the running of the country to his nobles and close advisors. However, in January 1418, an outbreak of smallpox took the sixty-year old Joao's life. The crown passed to the twenty-eight year old Duarte, a far different king than his father...
 
In portugal:
Cure 'em: Witch (WARLOCK!)
Not Cure 'em: Murderer, failed genius etc.
nice update!
I assume peace?
 
Duarte’s (Edward’s) coronation on the twentieth of January, 1418, heralded the start of a new – and far more unstable – era in Portuguese history. While the first years of his reign were fairly peaceful and quiet, that would all change. In March 1419, Duarte’s wife, Eleanor of Aragon, died, leaving Duarte devastated. He fell into a depression, and took to heavy drinking. This period lasted until about 1422, and during this time Duarte received the not-so-honorable title of “Duarte the Adulterer.”

On April 5, 1420, according to a court record, a court mistress bore a child whom she named Antonio. While she never revealed who the true father was, the fact that Duarte named baby Antonio the heir to the throne, as well as bestowing the de Avis name upon him, in May 1421 created suspicion that he was actually the king’s bastard. [In fact, a recent DNA test done at the University of Beira has proven with 90% certainty that Antonio and Duarte are closely related.]

Mismanagement of the Portuguese economy under Joao’s late years had been massively accelerated under Duarte. While Duarte drained the Portuguese treasury with his lavish feasts and extravagant celebrations, he appointed Paulo de Olivera, who had become [in]famous for his handling of the treasury of the Duchy of the Algarves in the 1410s. de Olivera was placed in charge of “financial reforms.” However, these “reforms” were little more than bailing out the suffering treasury with foreign loans, mostly from Castille and France. Interest drove up the costs of maintaining the nation, and as Duarte continued to spend unnecessary amounts of money on personal use, Portugal spiraled into a deep pit of debt.

In May 1422, a comet appeared in the western sky over Europe. There was widespread panic, especially since the celestial object was most brightly seen on the southwest coast of Portugal. There was widespread sentiment that the comet was sent by God in response to Duarte’s “madness.” However, after the comet, Duarte only got worse.

The 1420s were a chaotic decade to be in the Portuguese court. Although Duarte had recovered from his depression by 1423, he had become alcoholic and drank for breakfast. He began dishing out large amounts of cash, some coming directly from the country’s treasury, to purchase large quantities of cheap liquor from Russian merchants. He personally visited the city of Novgorod in 1424 to supervise one of the largest liquor transactions in pre-Industrial Revolution history. “Duarte the Adulterer” by 1425 had become “Duarte the Drunkard.”

With the nobles choking under the jittery thumb of Duarte, some revolted. Even if drunk, Duarte was still a competent military commander, and revolts by nobles in the summer of 1426 all failed. The mess culminated in April 1427, when Duarte, clearly by this point insane, dressed, spoke, and probably even thought as if he was a traveling minstrel, and started walking from Lisboa to Porto unguarded.

Finally, after Duarte was shepherded back home after nearly a week on the road, Portugal’s top doctors were called in to help, and by 1428 Duarte was sober for the first time in years.

But Duarte’s mind would never be the same. Just months later, in August 1428, Duarte formed a plan. He would build a summer palace on a Mediterranean island. To do that, he picked Corsica. He would make Corsica his second kingdom. He declared war on Corsica immediately. Six thousand Portuguese troops landed on Corsica in September and easily defeated the one thousand Corsicans who were outside Bastia, the fortress-capital of the island. After an easy, if lengthy, siege, Bastia fell to the Portuguese in July 1429. Duarte arrived in Bastia, walked to an empty land outside the city, and declared that spot to be his palace ground.

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Very interesting, I had awaited something more... decent of Duarte.
 
Enjoying this so far. I normally prefer a few more screenshots, but your writing is straightforward and lively, and I am duly entertained. Got me following :)
 
Very interesting, I had awaited something more... decent of Duarte.
I can see why ;)
Enjoying this so far. I normally prefer a few more screenshots, but your writing is straightforward and lively, and I am duly entertained. Got me following :)
Thank you. I will do my best to try and get more pics in future updates.
Interesting... Hows your BB like?
Not that high. In game I'm about 100 years ahead, and I have not done a ton of conquering so far. Although...well, you will see ;)
A madman! How fun!
Indeed :)
That's a lot of BB for one province! Will follow :)
Yes, but I don't think the king cares all that much ;)

Thank you to everyone reading this, I will have the next update up in a day or two.