A very important event for France happens in the mountain trails of Switzerland, let's say.
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A very important event for France happens in the mountain trails of Switzerland, let's say.
You know, this is quite the interesting read. I would like to see how you write in the Revolution.
Messily.
Pretty much; I've been trying to avoid thinking about the Revolution though because it's so far off--I still have a whole 17th century to build up Enlightenment France like a sandcastle before destroying it all in a fit of rage
for me, that was fine. Its in the HOI timeframe that it is problematic as it so quickly meshes with other topics.
sorry for lack of comments, time on the boards has been rather limited, but some great updates and your impending intervention in the Netherlands sounds like it is all going to go soooooo smoothly
Woo! Managed to finish this before the power goes out
The Forty Years War
The War in Swizterland
Within a month of Louis’ declaration of war against the Catholic Union, it became clear that the war would be far more complicated than the Bourbons had thought. To refresh you, dear reader, France had entered the 40 Years War on the side of the Protestant Coalition, with the goal of keeping the status quo of parity between the Reformist and Catholic religions in the Holy Roman Empire.
But it wasn’t clear what exactly France was fighting for—everything that she wanted she already had at the start of the war. What would happen if the Protestants started winning? Many French generals raised this question—if Louis XII couldn’t accept a Germany dominated by the Hapsburgs, how would he react to a Germany dominated by Protestants?
Furthermore France’s army wasn’t reliable. Even though the upper levels of the officer corps was comprised of competent Generals who had fought in the War of Savoy, the lower levels, as well as the soldiers and their auxiliaries, were mostly staunch Catholics who couldn’t be trusted in the hundreds of religiously inspired civil wars being waged across Germany.
There was one last problem, one which afflicted all of the Armies of Europe in the 40 Years War: there was simply no doctrine in the early 17th century for fighting a guerilla war. The French Academie de Guerre, perhaps the most strategically advanced in the world at the time, was fully caught up in a doctrine of ‘decisive battle’, which was utterly unsuited for the kind of war France was about to enter. Worst of all, no one, least of all the Counseil or Louis XII, knew how unprepared the French army strategy was.
The soldiers of France. Although French soldiers were rarely devoutly religious, fighting their coreligionists in order to prop up heretical regimes was still something they found problematic.
Louis offered a half-way solution to the ‘loyalty problem’—the newly created Armee de Bourbon would be sent to fight France’s wars until a full solution was found. The Armee de Bourbon was the product of Louis’ military thinking—a fully cavalry anti-partisan force comprised entirely of noblemen. Although the Army was derided within the military as Louis’ ‘pet regiment’, politically the Army was hugely important.
The promise of a quick ascent to a generalship brought nearly 15,000 young noblemen to its ranks. By 1574, the army’s ranks contained the heirs of more than 1,500 ‘Great Houses’ (noble houses which could trace their heritage back more than 400 years), as well as over 10,000 members of the ‘Lesser Houses’ (Noble houses which traced their heritage back more than 100 years). It was also the only army in all of France which included a Hugenot contingent: the La Rochelle Regiment was comprised of the entirety of the local notables, many of whom were Calvinists*. This would gain crucial importance later on.
![URL]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6_DXX4pkmQ/S9-Z2OoRWmI/AAAAAAAAAV4/GgPt-ol9zPw/s1600/jezdziec+1+comix.jpg[URL="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_C6_DXX4pkmQ/S9-Z2OoRWmI/AAAAAAAAAV4/GgPt-ol9zPw/s1600/jezdziec+1+comix.jpg"][/URL])
A cavalryman of the La Rochelle regiment
The army was led by Francois de Gruyen, known by his men as ‘de Gruyere’, for the lavish rations he procured for his men (including meat, foi gras, wine and all sorts of cheese). De Gruyen, an active if arrogant officer, had served as a cavalry officer in the Savoyard Theatre of the War of Savoy, and had been promoted based on loyalty to the crown and his skill at leading cavalry charges. He led his army with gusto into the first French campaign in the 40 Years War—the Swiss Civil War.
Switzerland had been the center of the Hapsburg Empire during the early 16th century; many of its Cantons elected candidates who were either supported by or related to the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Most importantly, the center of Switzerland was economically dominated by the Swiss Road, which ran from France to Tyrol and connected Hapsburg Spain to Hapsburg Austria.
Heinrich Zwingli was the face of the Reformation in Switzerland.
But the Reformation hit Switzerland hard. Heinrich Zwingli, a theologian who attained a ‘theophony’ in 1531, started preaching for a form of Protestantism which called for the nationalization of the monasteries and the mercenary companies. If we view Zwingli’s call for the nationalization of the mercenary companies in light of his democratic instincts (which many later historians have not taken seriously enough), then Zwinglianism can be seen as a revival of the Republican experiment, as well as the most radical form of Protestantism to date.
Zwingli held that the birth of Christ heralded not a change in the temperament of God but the replacement of the pagan gods of Judaism and the Romans with the merciful Christian god. From that concept, Zwingli held that all of the old rites of Catholicism, including the Eucharist, the celibacy of Priests and Christmas, were to be wiped away to make for a purer Christianity. This was close to the hearts of many a Swiss, as Switzerland had already been isolated theologically (many priests already lived with wives). The nationalization of the monasteries was another very popular move; the nationalized monasteries were given the responsibility of increasing literacy through a Bible taught in the vernacular. Very quickly, many of the cantons converted. In 1554, by the death of Zwingli (who had been elected to the Council of Zurich until his death), most of Switzerland and all the major urban areas followed Zwingli’s path to heaven.
The religious demographics of Switzerland in 1572, including the Swiss Road, the two religious alliances, and in green, the major agricultural areas of Switzerland. Note that Zurich, Schwyz, and Basel are all neutral
It was, to some degree, inevitable that the Catholics would respond to the swift conversion of the Confederation, considering that Switzerland was in the middle of the Catholic hinterland and Europe and Switzerland’s key economic importance to the Hapsburg realms. The radicalism of Zwingli’s theology was another factor to consider—Priests not taking the Eucharist, who considered Catholics to be not a heretical but a heathen faith. By the 1560s the Jesuits had come into Eastern Switzerland in force and had started a near on civil war in the country.
The Confederacy of Switzerland became a low level warzone. In the early 1560s the War of the Federations was seen mainly through political killings. The Jesuits, willing to stop at nothing to end the Swiss Heresy, formed a defensive alliance (the Federation of the Three Leagues) while they paid assassins to kill publically Zwinglian councilmen. The Alliance of God’s Will, which represented the Protestant faiths, responded in kind. The assassins of the two sectarian leagues didn’t only kill men within their own and each other’s borders—the major neutral cantons of Schwyz and Zurich also found their public figures murdered in the street. These political murders were brutal, and often splintered the communities they took place in.
The Defenestration of Zurich
It wasn’t until 1572 that the conflict drew international attention. The Defenestration of Zurich occurred when the Army of the Three Leagues invaded Zurich by dark of night, forced their way into the town hall, and threw the Zwinglian councilmen out of the city hall’s windows, proclaiming Zurich to be a Catholic canton. In response, the Alliance of God’s Will cut off the Swiss Road. This led to a flurry of responses by the Holy Roman Emperor, the surrounding Counties and Duchies (Baden and Bavaria both sent 1,000 soldiers on opposing sides), and lastly, by the French king. It was the critical importance of Switzerland that led Louis XII to deploy the Armee de Bourbon to Switzerland, even though many of the crucial questions involving what France was fighting for, how she was to fight, and with whom was she to fight, remained unanswered.
The march of the Armee de Bourbon
*Historically many religious minorities were excluded from military service until the French Revolution in France and the 19th Century in the rest of Continental Europe.
The Forty Years War
The War in Swizterland
Within a month of Louis’ declaration of war against the Catholic Union, it became clear that the war would be far more complicated than the Bourbons had thought. To refresh you, dear reader, France had entered the 40 Years War on the side of the Protestant Coalition, with the goal of keeping the status quo of parity between the Reformist and Catholic religions in the Holy Roman Empire.
But it wasn’t clear what exactly France was fighting for—everything that she wanted she already had at the start of the war. What would happen if the Protestants started winning? Many French generals raised this question—if Louis XII couldn’t accept a Germany dominated by the Hapsburgs, how would he react to a Germany dominated by Protestants?
Furthermore France’s army wasn’t reliable. Even though the upper levels of the officer corps was comprised of competent Generals who had fought in the War of Savoy, the lower levels, as well as the soldiers and their auxiliaries, were mostly staunch Catholics who couldn’t be trusted in the hundreds of religiously inspired civil wars being waged across Germany.
There was one last problem, one which afflicted all of the Armies of Europe in the 40 Years War: there was simply no doctrine in the early 17th century for fighting a guerilla war. The French Academie de Guerre, perhaps the most strategically advanced in the world at the time, was fully caught up in a doctrine of ‘decisive battle’, which was utterly unsuited for the kind of war France was about to enter. Worst of all, no one, least of all the Counseil or Louis XII, knew how unprepared the French army strategy was.
The soldiers of France. Although French soldiers were rarely devoutly religious, fighting their coreligionists in order to prop up heretical regimes was still something they found problematic.
Louis offered a half-way solution to the ‘loyalty problem’—the newly created Armee de Bourbon would be sent to fight France’s wars until a full solution was found. The Armee de Bourbon was the product of Louis’ military thinking—a fully cavalry anti-partisan force comprised entirely of noblemen. Although the Army was derided within the military as Louis’ ‘pet regiment’, politically the Army was hugely important.
The promise of a quick ascent to a generalship brought nearly 15,000 young noblemen to its ranks. By 1574, the army’s ranks contained the heirs of more than 1,500 ‘Great Houses’ (noble houses which could trace their heritage back more than 400 years), as well as over 10,000 members of the ‘Lesser Houses’ (Noble houses which traced their heritage back more than 100 years). It was also the only army in all of France which included a Hugenot contingent: the La Rochelle Regiment was comprised of the entirety of the local notables, many of whom were Calvinists*. This would gain crucial importance later on.
A cavalryman of the La Rochelle regiment
The army was led by Francois de Gruyen, known by his men as ‘de Gruyere’, for the lavish rations he procured for his men (including meat, foi gras, wine and all sorts of cheese). De Gruyen, an active if arrogant officer, had served as a cavalry officer in the Savoyard Theatre of the War of Savoy, and had been promoted based on loyalty to the crown and his skill at leading cavalry charges. He led his army with gusto into the first French campaign in the 40 Years War—the Swiss Civil War.
Switzerland had been the center of the Hapsburg Empire during the early 16th century; many of its Cantons elected candidates who were either supported by or related to the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Most importantly, the center of Switzerland was economically dominated by the Swiss Road, which ran from France to Tyrol and connected Hapsburg Spain to Hapsburg Austria.
Heinrich Zwingli was the face of the Reformation in Switzerland.
But the Reformation hit Switzerland hard. Heinrich Zwingli, a theologian who attained a ‘theophony’ in 1531, started preaching for a form of Protestantism which called for the nationalization of the monasteries and the mercenary companies. If we view Zwingli’s call for the nationalization of the mercenary companies in light of his democratic instincts (which many later historians have not taken seriously enough), then Zwinglianism can be seen as a revival of the Republican experiment, as well as the most radical form of Protestantism to date.
Zwingli held that the birth of Christ heralded not a change in the temperament of God but the replacement of the pagan gods of Judaism and the Romans with the merciful Christian god. From that concept, Zwingli held that all of the old rites of Catholicism, including the Eucharist, the celibacy of Priests and Christmas, were to be wiped away to make for a purer Christianity. This was close to the hearts of many a Swiss, as Switzerland had already been isolated theologically (many priests already lived with wives). The nationalization of the monasteries was another very popular move; the nationalized monasteries were given the responsibility of increasing literacy through a Bible taught in the vernacular. Very quickly, many of the cantons converted. In 1554, by the death of Zwingli (who had been elected to the Council of Zurich until his death), most of Switzerland and all the major urban areas followed Zwingli’s path to heaven.
The religious demographics of Switzerland in 1572, including the Swiss Road, the two religious alliances, and in green, the major agricultural areas of Switzerland. Note that Zurich, Schwyz, and Basel are all neutral
It was, to some degree, inevitable that the Catholics would respond to the swift conversion of the Confederation, considering that Switzerland was in the middle of the Catholic hinterland and Europe and Switzerland’s key economic importance to the Hapsburg realms. The radicalism of Zwingli’s theology was another factor to consider—Priests not taking the Eucharist, who considered Catholics to be not a heretical but a heathen faith. By the 1560s the Jesuits had come into Eastern Switzerland in force and had started a near on civil war in the country.
The Confederacy of Switzerland became a low level warzone. In the early 1560s the War of the Federations was seen mainly through political killings. The Jesuits, willing to stop at nothing to end the Swiss Heresy, formed a defensive alliance (the Federation of the Three Leagues) while they paid assassins to kill publically Zwinglian councilmen. The Alliance of God’s Will, which represented the Protestant faiths, responded in kind. The assassins of the two sectarian leagues didn’t only kill men within their own and each other’s borders—the major neutral cantons of Schwyz and Zurich also found their public figures murdered in the street. These political murders were brutal, and often splintered the communities they took place in.
The Defenestration of Zurich
It wasn’t until 1572 that the conflict drew international attention. The Defenestration of Zurich occurred when the Army of the Three Leagues invaded Zurich by dark of night, forced their way into the town hall, and threw the Zwinglian councilmen out of the city hall’s windows, proclaiming Zurich to be a Catholic canton. In response, the Alliance of God’s Will cut off the Swiss Road. This led to a flurry of responses by the Holy Roman Emperor, the surrounding Counties and Duchies (Baden and Bavaria both sent 1,000 soldiers on opposing sides), and lastly, by the French king. It was the critical importance of Switzerland that led Louis XII to deploy the Armee de Bourbon to Switzerland, even though many of the crucial questions involving what France was fighting for, how she was to fight, and with whom was she to fight, remained unanswered.
The march of the Armee de Bourbon
*Historically many religious minorities were excluded from military service until the French Revolution in France and the 19th Century in the rest of Continental Europe.
You might be the only person in the world who is capable of making Switzerland (dullest nation in the world) even remotley interesting.
Death on the Alps
It soon became clear how unfit the strategy of ‘decisive battle’ was to the war in Switzerland. The moment de Gruyen entered the land of the Alliance of God’s Will*, he split his army into 5 corps of 3,000 men and ordered each to ‘find and defeat vagabonds on the field’. There were two significant problems with this strategy—the first that Catholic partisans were mainly hidden in the cities, and it was difficult for a primarily Catholic French army to seek out and murder highly zealous Catholics. The second problem was that de Gruyen left the Huguenot contingent, who would have been most useful in Switzerland, in Lorraine as a reserve.
This had two effects—firstly, the French army was amazingly lenient towards Catholic partisans. Secondly, the La Rochelle regiment contributed strongly to the conversion of the Duke of Lorraine to Calvinism.
Pierre duc de Lorraine, one of the chief Hugenots in France after 1580.
The French army had exempted Calvinists from conscription since 1530. The first reason given was that the pacifism of Calvinist thought may interact poorly with the place of a soldier in a machine of destruction. But there was another reason. There was a worry in the ranks of the officers over what would happen if they allowed Calvinists, who were raised under a doctrine that ‘every man a priest’, into the ranks of the army. Calvinists saw converting others away from the heathen sect of Catholicism as a sacred duty, and the Huguenots had a bad reputation in France due to this—any hint of gregariousness by a Calvinist was seen as a sign that they wanted to you to convert to their religion and their cause. This rumor piqued the interest of the Duc de Lorraine.
Lorraine, the largest independent duchy in France, hadn’t been touched by the Reformation until the start of the 40 Years War. Ever since 1568, Protestants from Germany had been fleeing to any place which offered a reprieve, which included the relatively tolerant Duchy of Lorraine. The Duc’s tolerance was further bolstered by Louis’ announcement that France would be fighting on the side of the Protestants, fighting for tolerance and against religious tyranny. But the Duc critically misread the King’s declaration. Louis was declaring a war against the Hapsburg Empire and for a continuation of the beneficial status quo. Religious tyranny, sectarian violence, Protestantism had no place in Louis XII’s conception of power politics.
But this ignorance of ideas was to cost Louis greatly. Pierre de Lorraine saw a new form of Christianity blooming in Louis’ actions. The wars against the Hapsburgs, the reestablishment of Gallic Bishops, and this new war for Protestantism all pointed to a new denomination, which would combine French Protestants and Catholics into one powerful bloc and wipe off the map the old ways of Catholicism. It was this vision that Pierre brought to the captain of the La Rochelle regiment, Abraham d’Ancon.
D’Ancon found this view novel and perfect for his purposes. It had been the dream of every Huguenot ever since the Epiphany of Calvin to have a homeland to their own, a land of French Protestantism. Lorraine could very well become such a haven. And so Abraham D’Ancon and Pierre de Lorraine started to talk, late into the night, every night.
Erasmus’ ‘Dinner in Nancy’. Note that while D’Ancon was described as ‘dark haired, slight of figure and with a full beard’, Erasmus purposefully chooses to depict D’Ancon as evocative of Christ. This is in keeping with Flemish artistic traditions at the time, which were dogmatically Protestant.
Meanwhile in Switzerland, the war was going horribly. De Gruyen moved his men back and forth along the countryside, looking for a mass of troops to defeat. He found none—the Swiss Civil War was fought by concentration of less than a hundred men in most cases, and such small numbers could melt away into the countryside if need be. De Gruyen’s mobile, offensive strategy meant that the French soldiers never hunkered down in the countryside, never fostered ties with the townspeople, and thus never had an easy time procuring food.
The Armee de Bourbon found itself starving through three hard years in the Protestant half of Switzerland. Though De Gruyen’s strategy of decisive battle did create some victories, such as the sweeping victory against Austrian troops trying to come in from Briesgau, more than 80%** of cavalrymen died from frostbite, starvation, and disease instead of ‘on the field of battle’. It seemed that the Armee de Bourbon, in search of a battle, was instead dying in drove on the way to the next battle. Many of the deaths (mostly by frostbite) occurred when a contingent was moving from one town to the next.
’Figures gathered around a fire’. Cold took the lives of more Frenchmen than any battle or violent ‘incident’
Worse still, the Armee de Bourbon had hardly ingratiated itself with the populace. Reports tell us that, on average, 157 Frenchmen died per month due to ‘incidents’ with the local population. The number of Swiss Protestants killed by drunk, hungry, or lecherous Frenchmen is not recorded, but other records of the French Army in Switzerland do not paint a rosy picture of relations between the peacekeepers and the kept. ‘Des Alpins’, a French satire written in the 1620s about the ‘Swiss Adventure’, describes an encounter between the fictitious French captain D’Aveugle and Councilman of Zurich.
”Des Alpins” said:
Although Les Alpins was a satire, it did touch upon very real issues of the expedition—the basic cultural ignorance of the Frenchmen, the entitled attitude of the Armee de Bourbon, and the lack of communication between the Armee de Bourbon and the people they supposedly protected (this was the 5th visit of the D’Aveugle Regiment to Zurich). All of these posed a huge problem to the Armee de Bourbon, almost as great a problem as the climate and disease.
On the 2nd of the February of 1579, de Gruyen was given a message by the King himself—the Armee was to return to Nancy by the end of the year in order to contribute to the war effort in the Netherlands. In the same day, he got another message from a scout, saying that the Imperial Guard, made of noblemen from the Austrian Empire’s periphery, was marching into Eastern Switzerland, and was moving to attack the Alliance of God’s Will.
The Armee de Bourbon at this point was a shadow of its former self. Of the 12,000 soldiers who marched from Nancy into Switzerland, only 5,400 remained. And the remaining soldiers weren’t so much ‘veterans’ as they were lucky to not have died from malnutrition and cold—they were in poor shape, their enthusiasm in the aristocratic project of the Armee de Bourbon broken, their faith tested and defeated, their faces muted.
The Battle of Zur, between the newly incoming Imperial Guard and their predecessor, the Armee de Bourbon, was a pathetic display. The Imperial general, just as enthusiastic for a fight as de Gruyen had been, broke the Armee de Bourbon within an hour of combat, and chased the Armee de Bourbon across the Swiss countryside. It is estimated that 4,000 Frenchmen died on the field of battle, but it is also estimated that in their enthusiasm to defeat the enemy, the Austrian army lost 6,000 to the cold and to malnutrition.
De Gruyen, his immediate staff, and a small contingent of 40 cavalrymen were all that returned to France. As they descended from the Swiss alps into Lorraine, they were met by strange company. D’Ancon came, wearing the garb of a general, at the head of an army of men dressed in white.
“Welcome”, D’Ancon said, “to the lands of Pierre, Duke of the Huguenots”
The New Coat of Arms of Pierre de Lorraine
*France entered the war based on a cassus belli of ‘keeping the peace’. As such, it was far later until an offensive action was taken.
**Statistics are hard to come by at the time, but the French Army kept passable records until 1715.
you are doing a great job handling this hugely complex situation. I really liked the discussion around the Duc de Lorraine's misreading of Louis' war goals, and the way that religion is influencing every aspect of public and social life at this stage.
And you capture neatly the realities of an army of occupation intersecting with a hostile civilian population
And you capture neatly the realities of an army of occupation intersecting with a hostile civilian population
Thank you very much. I went to New York this week for what I thought would be a weekend last week and I only brought enough classwork for maybe a 5 hour trainride. This chapter, the last, and the thought that went into them, was the product of being totally isolated in Long Island for a week so I'm happy that it turned out well
Did these events actually happen due to Theologians named Zwingli and Calvin? That'd be cool.
No that would be awesome though. I've been slipping in historical figures ever since Calvin and Machiavelli
well, Switzerland was indeed a great faliure but I must admit that when I read that you sent thousands of cavalrymen into the nation who perfected Pike warfare I expected the faliure to come in open battle. Ohh well considering you are at war with Austria I really hope that France does better in the lowcountries.
It depends. I think that even had Louis succeeded completely in Brabant, the death of a large portion of the French nobility on the slopes of the Alps would have led to huge discord.
Nice. I finished my AAR during the storm, then proceeded to waste about 36 hours of my life checking facebook for updates from elsewhere (because, naturally, people who lost power would be on facebook updating those of us who still did).
Anyway, great update!
I've been following this for the last week, and it was GLORIOUS. Keep up the good work sir!
Thank you!
New news: I got my old computer back, and I'm now going through the process of recreating my Lords of France game. Expect updates which include (!) game screens within the next couple of weeks (because I'll be avoiding my work like mad)
Another announcement
this game is now a Magna Mundi Ultimate game, using the Christmas Momod. I was playing this as a MMP2 game (personally, In Nomine was the most balanced expansion of EU3), but with the collapse of the Magna Mundi project, it's nearly impossible to get MMP2. It's a sad fact, and it will likely lead to a different map, but I am insistent on getting this AAR running again, and bringing it back on track.
this game is now a Magna Mundi Ultimate game, using the Christmas Momod. I was playing this as a MMP2 game (personally, In Nomine was the most balanced expansion of EU3), but with the collapse of the Magna Mundi project, it's nearly impossible to get MMP2. It's a sad fact, and it will likely lead to a different map, but I am insistent on getting this AAR running again, and bringing it back on track.
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Oh boy oh boy, i was planning on reading what looks like an excellent AAR (with the fallacious goal of better begging you to write a MMU+Cmm AAR after this one, that is), and skimming through the last posts of this thread in a state a burgeoning excitement, when i finally hit the bottom. Oh boy!!