MinAAR Threat (Mecklenburg AAR)

The Cooking Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Cooking Club was a group of wealthy North German merchants and bankers that met in Schwerin starting around 1420. Ostensibly assembled as a means of practicing culinary hobbies amongst friends, the Cooking Club was in fact a clearinghouse for political literature and a sort of mutual benevolent association for North German trading interests. Since the group remained as far from the public eye as possible, our knowledge of the Cooking Club's activities comes to us largely from the recovered papers of one of its members, a prosperous Schwerin banker by the name of Daniel Weber.

The men of the Cooking Club experienced the difficulties faced by the declining Hanseatic League at first hand. Faced with the military strength of England and the Kalmar Union, the group concluded that the best hope for a North German renaissance lay in welding the disparate array of duchies and minor states into a single maritime nation led by a strong central authority who drew support from wealthy merchants and the new middle classes and subjected the Church to his will. Their status as men of wealth gave them access to high places and some power over the often profligate nobility. (Domestic policy slider goals: Plutocracy/Free Trade/Naval/Free Subjects/Innovativeness/Centralization)

This power was first exercised in 1420 when several minor nobles' destitute estates were broken up and sold to the highest bidders. The event offended the aristocracy, but the Duke of Mecklemburg refused to intervene on the side of the incompetent nobles. (Slider adjustment: Aristocracy -1)

I've played up to 1465 so far. Many savegames have been reloaded in the course of learning how Europe works.

re Leto: Protestant, of course! By advocating subservience of Church to state, attacking the idea that the Pope was elevated in status over other bishops, and ascribing power in the Church to the 'community of the faithful', Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis really prefigured the Protestant Reformation. Take a look at the online Catholic Encyclopedia article on Marsilius of Padua. It is delightfully bitter about the subject.

Collapse of the Hansa

In 1420 Holstein foolishly declared war on Denmark over a matter of a few hundred morgen. (A morgen was the traditional unit of land area in the Low Countries, Northern Germany, and Scandinavia. The North German morgen was about 0.63 acres. Morgen means "morning" and the unit may have arisen from the amount of land that a yoke of oxen could plow in a single morning. The Dutch morgen is larger at about 2.10 acres. Guess the Dutch had better oxen.) That was the pretext, at least. The Luebeck, Bremen, and Hamburg representatives to the Hansa Diet were too enthusiastic about the war for land to be the only reason behind it.

The government of Mecklenburg knew that the whole thing was a bad idea. There were no Muscowite wars to distract the Danes, and our traders and fishermen knew well the size of the Kalmar fleet in the Sund. As a rich coastal province, we saw no reason to go to war with a bunch of guys whose national traditions were centered around ruthlessly pillaging rich coastal provinces. The Wismar and Rostock representatives walked out of the Hansa diet and the Duke refused to commit troops to the war.

Joining the Kalmar military alliance two days later may have been slightly beyond the bounds of good taste, but you can argue that Holstein and Bremen were asking for it.

We expected the Danes to attack south from Jylland and tie up the Holsteiners, but they never did. Instead Holstein's army crossed the border and engaged our forces near Schoenburg. The hastily raised Mecklenburger troops bolted and the Holstein army proceeded west to Schwerin, burning and pillaging as they went. Eventually order was restored among the Mecklenburg troops by a charismatic minor noble and sometime-brigand named Julius Neufeldt. The ranks of the army were notoriously dissatisfied with the idea of going back to fight Holstein's army, so Neufeldt decided to pillage Holstein and besiege Kiel in hopes of paying the Holsteiners back.

Unfortunately, Schwerin fell before Kiel did. Daniel Weber writes of smuggling his fortune out on a fishing vessel the night before Holstein troops entered the city. Somewhat humorously, Denmark chose that point to enter into the war. Their troops and ours made short work of Kiel. Bremen had raised a large force before the war but had second thoughts about using it and never entered hostilities. The war ended with Holstein making a very minor payment of ducats to Denmark in apology. Neufeldt was commended for his initiative and prepared a very fine Holstein schnitzel at his first Cooking Club meeting.

Holstein Schnitzel

1 veal cutlet (a chicken breast also works well)
2 eggs
flour
breadcrumbs

1. Pound veal cutlet flat with a meat tenderizer or pestle or anything else heavy. (Julius used his war hammer.)
2. Roll cutlet in flour so that it is throughly coated. Crack one of the eggs in a bowl and beat it until it's uniform. Dredge the flour-coated cutlet in the beaten egg, then roll the cutlet in breadcrumbs.
3. Pan-fry the cutlet until one side is golden brown, then flip it and fry the other side. Meanwhile, fry the other egg.
4. Serve the cutlet with the fried egg on top.

Am I ever going to get any explorers as a German minor, or will I have to wait for Military Entrepreneurship to allow my ordinary units to explore? All that white space rankles me.

Also, I'm having real trouble even holding onto the monopoly in the Mecklenburg CoT, let alone exploiting it. It's not really cost-effective to keep sending traders in. Am I doing something wrong or is this just the way European CoTs work?

This game has a vise-like grip on my brain. I played until ungodly hours last night.

April 14, 1433 - The Battle of Lauenburg

And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to destruction; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.

Few houses have been more divided than the Hansa Diet of the 1430s. The assembly was continually paralyzed by the feuds that had arisen from the inconclusive war in 1420 between Holstein and Bremen on one hand and Mecklenburg and the Kalmar Union on the other. The Western faction distrusted Mecklenburg for its betrayal in the war, and Mecklenburg no longer trusted its alliance partners to behave in a manner conducive to trade. Duke Heinrich II of Mecklenburg and his advisors soon realized that the lack of political cohesion in Wendish Germany could spell disaster in the years to come. The Kalmar Union was terrifyingly strong and the central German states might easily consider the rich northern states ripe targets for expansion. It was time to reunite the Hansa under strong political leadership. The Kalmar Union, ever anxious to gain hegemony in northern Germany, could be exploited to this end. When the truce with Holstein and Bremen expired in 1433, Mecklenburg and the Kalmar Union again declared war.

The Mecklenburgische Freiwillige marched east with some 13,000 foot and 8,000 horse as the Danes came south from Jutland and attacked a ragtag Holstein force. After driving off a small force that had been dispatched to hold the border, the Freiwillige came upon the main body of the Bremeners northwest of the town of Lauenburg.

An old bridge east of the town had been washed out by heavy spring rains. Although the Mecklenburg foot were able to ford the Elbe tributary, the cavalry had to ride several leagues in order to find a bridge that they could cross. Joachim of Ludwigslust was in command of the foot. The brother of the Duke and as impetuous and brave a man as could be found in all Mecklenburg, he decided to press on east without waiting for the horse. In so doing he blundered into the encampment of the Bremener army.

Seeing that Joachim was without cavalry and believing that the Mecklenburgers had been so rash as to attack all on foot, the Bremeners immediately attacked. The endless flat scrub of the Lauenburg Heath afforded little cover for Joachim and his beleaguered footmen. They formed what lines of battle they could and fought bravely, but their morale was badly shaken by the nigh-unstoppable charges of the knights of Bremen. If not for the valor and courage of Joachim and his bodyguard, the Mecklenburgers might well have broken. The testimony of Claus of Grabow, a minor noble who fought at Joachim's side, was later recorded by an unknown monk at a small abbey in Grabow where it was discovered by historians in 1907.

The nobles of Bremen attacked our lines again and again. We were hard pressed, for they would charge, and then ride away and let their archers fire, and then charge again. I have never seen a man fight so stoutly as Joachim did that day. By my count he killed twelve knights of Bremen with his great pole axe, and his armor was all dented and smashed where he had been struck. He strode from place to place, rallying the spirits of the men and calling cowards back into the line. All might have been lost in that dark hour were it not for the blessing of God and Joachim of Ludwigslust.

The Mecklenburg horse were led by Ulrich of Mecklenburg, son of the Duke and later Ulrich II. Less impetuous and more crafty than his uncle Joachim, he received word from his advance riders that the engagement had begun while his corps was still a league and a half away from it. Riding cross-country, he surprised and scattered a small cavalry screen and came upon the Bremeners' flank in a great charge. Accounts from surviving Bremen troops tell that the Bremeners had thought the Devil and his armies were upon them, so furious and merciless was the charge of Ulrich and his knights.

The tide of the battle shifted and the remnants of Joachim's force rallied. Bereft of support from their archers, the knights of Bremen were at last decisively engaged by the Mecklenburg footmen and began to suffer dire casualties. When the Mecklenburg knights killed many of the Bremener horse in a brutal charge on their rear, the remainder of Bremen's army broke and ran. The Duke of Bremen and many other great nobles were taken prisoner in the tumult.

The battle was very bloody. Near ten thousand Mecklenburgers had died and an equal number of Bremeners had also perished. Joachim of Ludwigslust was mortally wounded by a crossbow bolt. Duke Heinrich was in no mood to let the victory be wasted. He demanded that all the nobility of Bremen swear fealty to Mecklenburg and that Bremen become a vassal of the Duchy of Mecklenburg. The Duke of Bremen had little choice but to accept.

The Battle of Lauenburg and the vassalization of the nobles of Bremen was to mark the beginning of Mecklenburg's rise to greatness. Today the bull flag is hung out on April 14 and Mecklenburgers join arms and sing 'Ulrich on the Heath' at football matches, but few remember the terrible cost of the short but bloody war. Every town in Mecklenburg and Bremen lost sons and fathers. One village near Dassow saw more than ninety of its hundred and forty men killed. It ceased to exist shortly thereafter.

The war struck the Cooking Club as well. Four of its members died in the battle or on campaign. Daniel Weber had used part of his personal fortune to raise a company of footmen from the town of Schwerin. He caught pneumonia while leading them east and died on April 12 at age 54. His son Karl Weber took over the Weber banking house and Daniel's seat in the Cooking Club.