Chapter Six, Part Two: 1572-1577—The Sins of The Fathers
Chapter Six, Part Two: 1572-1577—The Sins of The Fathers
The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
Euripides (485 BC - 406 BC), Phrixus
I had thought to spare myself the joys and agonies of parenthood by distancing myself from my fellows, setting myself upon a cometary orbit that only periodically brought me into closer and warmer contact and just as predictably drove me away again. Bad enough to keep saying goodbye to people I’d grown to love and respect—how much worse to lose someone you’d raised from a child?
But pride has always been my weakness. And with my newfound closeness to Queen Veronica and King Felipe came a closeness to their children. The bond was made official, in fact, as I became their tutor—a useful role for me to play in many respects. So it was that over the years, I came to feel a sense of pride and possessiveness towards them.
Carlos, named for his grandfather, had already turned fifteen by the time Queen Veronica and I had our little talk. All of the children had inherited good looks from their parents, but Carlos had a sense of slow smoldering about him, a youthful passion that turned the heads of the young ladies of the court and made him a natural leader to the young nobles. Too late to have much influence over the pillars of his education, I concentrated my efforts on advanced topics like ethics, philosophy, and economics, trying to instill in him a sense of scale and scope too often absent from European politics.
Isabel and Catalina were six and five then, just beginning to take serious instruction from me. Though Carlos was the heir, Queen Veronica had set quite a precedent for a forceful and effective role for women in politics. If they were one day to be married off for political advantage, they would not go unarmed into a foreign court. While preserving a respectable patina of the noblewoman’s arts in their curriculum, the Queen and I had made certain that history, finance, mathematics, science, and language would be paramount.
Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, c. 1571 by Alonso Sanchez Coello
Baby Felipe came along in 1578, six years after my talk with the Queen, and received no less of an education for his distance from the throne. By then, the girls were quite interested in babies, and treated him as if he were their own. The King and Queen often joked that young Felipe had been blessed to have three mothers.
I do not think that I was alone in seeing those years through the prism of family life at Court. It was a heady time, with the King and Queen much beloved and the minutiae of their lives eagerly discussed by noble and commoner alike, news sped along in countless ways—by good roads, by printing presses and newspapers, by peace within our borders, by fast merchant ships, and by all the other fruits of our labors and researches.
So it was that as the realm grew, so too did the demand for the Royal Family to favor events far and wide with their presence. Under the subtle influences of our Genoese Queen, much of their personal attention favored the Italian states, and rather less was paid to the Germanic ones. An understandable decision, though as we discovered later, not without its price.
In peacetime, despite some lingering concerns over rebels, the family scattered like dandelion fluff on the winds. April of 1572 found young Prince Carlos, fresh from a hasty course in the newly drafted King’s Justice, personally swearing in the first batch of five judges in the North African provinces. Queen Veronica and the Princesses Isabela and Catalina, meanwhile, were in Tuscany to oversee their becoming a signatory to the alliance treaty that some had openly begun to call the
Pax Hispania. And King Felipe had sailed to Modena to preside over its formal incorporation into the Kingdom of Spain at the famous church of San Pietro, accepting the “petition” of Alfonso d’Este II, Duke of Ferrara, Milan, and Modena.
Of the bunch, only Modena was any cause for concern. The actual effect of her move would be minimal, at least at first—Alfonso would remain Duke of Modena, and it would legally retain its status as a duchy even after his death. Further, though a wealthy land to begin with, and richer still with its years-past acquisition of Milan, its effect on our vast economy—though certainly salutary and welcome—would be small.
The Pope, however, was outraged. According to treaties signed back in 1501, with no direct male heirs, at Alfonso’s death the duchy of Ferrara would legally pass to the Papacy. Given the wealth of Ferrara, this was no small thing to Rome, and Gregorius XIII saw this move—perhaps correctly—as a calculated provocation. Moreover, given Modena’s close proximity to Emilia and our recent warnings, it could not have escaped his attention that 40,000 Spanish soldiers now lay stationed on his back doorstep. Indeed, with Tuscany in our alliance and Venice’s retreat before the Turks, His Holiness must have suddenly felt quite cut off from sympathetic arms.
A completely unexpected turn of events in North Africa drew our attention, however. Returning from his state visit, Prince Carlos’ ships were attacked by unflagged warships off the Barbary Coast. His two escorts were burned down to the waterline as they interposed themselves in defense of the Prince. However, with the gallantry and stupidity of youth, Carlos ordered the captain of his flagship to come about and rake the enemy with cannon fire rather than catch the wind and flee. Spanish arms may be the envy of the world, but our navy had not kept pace with our armies, and the Prince’s fleet was outnumbered and outgunned.
A Spanish merchantman out of Gibraltar came upon the floating wreckage of Carlos’ flagship, drifting with nothing but corpses aboard. The Prince and his party of young nobles and guards, however, were not among the dead. Anxiously, the court waited for a ransom demand that never came. The entire European fleet assembled for the first time in decades in Gibraltar to comb the North African coast, with no result.
To be honest, we all would have suspected some misadventure by the Reconquista but for the fact that Cristóbal Alcon, the eldest son of Diego Alcon, was one of the missing young nobles. Almost against their will, the two young men had achieved a grudging respect and admiration for each other in their previous meetings around the court. Both were excellent horsemen and skilled fencers, and while the very thought of an Alcon fencing with the Infante would give our ministers heartburn, I have no doubt but that they tested each other’s steel privately on more than one occasion.
Months passed with no news and reluctantly we were forced to leave the search to others and turn back to the press of business. The next classes of judges, three and ten, were sent to South America, India, and the Home Territories. Citing the almost forgotten but still active Treaty of Tordesillas, Spanish troops occupied the French trading posts in Les Cayes and Tobago, generating weak protests from the exhausted French and causing much breaking of glass in the Vatican.
Queen Veronica meanwhile retreated with her daughters to her family estates in Genoa, issuing forth periodically to meet with the ambassador from Tuscany and present gifts. Among these was a much beloved portrait of Felipe’s father Carlos by a Venetian artist of whom the Queen had long been a patron—one Vecellio Tiziano. Tiziano claimed now to be over a hundred, though I had met him and he seemed barely a day over eighty and still spryly hopping about his workshop. The painting had occupied a place of pride in the main hall of the palace, and the Tuscan ambassador was quite frankly moved to tears by the gift. A short time later, in January of 1573, Tuscany announced their desire to enter closer alliance as vassals to the Spanish Crown.
Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, 1548 by (Titian) Vecellio Tiziano
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The ceremony was simple and rather beautiful, attended by a fair number of dignitaries, including representatives from each of the other members of the alliance. It was not until after Felipe had sheathed the massive ceremonial sword on which the Duke of Tuscany had sworn his oaths of allegiance that I spared a glance for the functionaries. I was startled to see what I could well imagine a mirror image of the King sitting beneath the banner of our Austrian brethren. Possessed of the same dark good looks, the ambassador yet seemed to be a decade or so younger. And while he radiated a dignity and poise similar to the King’s, it was perceptibly different. A moment’s thought placed it as a much more consciously military carriage. Even as Felipe’s eyes often traced the middle distances, alighting now and again to acknowledge an important or welcome personage, this man’s eyes restlessly patrolled the room, noting first the approaches and exits, tracing the weak points, and then appraising the occupants. If I had not had quite a bit of time while the ceremony concluded, I think the distinction would have been lost on me.
As the dignitaries filed forward to offer their congratulations and well wishes to King and Duke, the Austrian hesitated a moment at a distance from the King. Something about it struck me as odd, and in later discussions with the Queen, I was to find it the distance at which a man of Felipe’s height and reach could easily swing the sword of state. Evidently, the Austrian was uneasy about the possible nature of his reception, though I could scarcely believe that any would honestly believe the King faithless enough to commit the double desecration of attacking an ambassador in the House of God.
King and Ambassador locked eyes for a moment, and I was immediately put to mind of stallions inadvertently brought too close together. But after an awkward instant, the two broke into long-practiced diplomatic smiles and greeted each other exactly as protocol demanded. I let out the breath I had not noticed pausing in my chest.
Protocol, however, did not demand what happened next. Queen Veronica, sweeping forward as relentlessly as the tide, appeared suddenly at her husband’s right arm. Curtseying fractionally deeper than courtesy required, she offered her hand to the Ambassador—another breach of protocol. Even more unthinkably, the Ambassador took the proffered hand of the Queen of Spain and brought it briefly, reverently to his lips. Against all reason and despite my non-entity status, I took a step towards the tableaux, outraged and sure that disaster lay only heartbeats away. As I moved, I was sure that I could hear the light slap of leather as a dozen hands reached for their weapons.
To my continued amazement, however, despite a brief and smoldering glare from the King there was no outcry. I looked around in growing wonder, sure that the world had gone mad or that there was a joke here that I could not seem to fathom.
“Don Juan, you must do us the honor of dining with the family tonight,” the Queen said firmly, looking more at her husband than at the ambassador. Both men gave slightly embarrassed chuckles before nodding.
“As the Queen says, then. I am at your service,” the ambassador referred to as Don Juan said, finally releasing the Queen’s hand and sketching a florid bow to both majesties.
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Consulting later with several inveterate gossips, I finally was given the punch line. The ambassador was Don Juan de Austria, not only a legendary general in his own right, but also the half-brother of Felipe. Raised mostly by his mother at the Austrian court, Juan had not come to Spain in his childhood, and I’d been…indisposed… during his brief visit in the aftermath of the attack on Carlos in the chapel.
According to court gossip, Juan and Felipe had never gotten along easily. Both were leaders, born and raised to the task, as alike as Carlos and his friendly rival Cristóbal Alcon. Unlike the younger men, however, the positions of Juan and Felipe might easily have been reversed by circumstance. Moreover, there were rumors that towards his end, Carlos had intrigued on Juan’s behalf to bring him to the throne in Austria.
In any event, though he had done well with the cards he’d been dealt, it was undeniable that Juan had been a victim of his birth rather than a beneficiary. If he had been Carlos’ older son, he would certainly have inherited the throne of Spain. If he had not been Carlos’ son, he would have stood through his mother to lay serious claim to the throne of Austria. At the least, if he had not lain astride two different destriers, he would almost certainly have ended up a Duke or a Count for his many heroic deeds. Instead, the Spanish feared a powerful Austrian Habsburg who might one day become the basis for a coup, and the Austrians feared a powerful Spanish Habsburg for the same reason.
And now, with the mysterious disappearance and possible death of Felipe’s son and heir Carlos, Juan could yet make a bold move for the throne by offering his hand to his young niece, the Princess Isabela. As both brother and son-in-law to the King, Juan would be in a strong position to inherit, even if Felipe and Veronica were to have another son. And even if they were to play fast and loose with tradition and allow a daughter to inherit, Juan would rule alongside Isabela. Suspicious minds with loose tongues were already awag with commentary on how “convenient” Carlos’ disappearance had been for Don Juan.
As things stood, the King and Queen had no such suspicions, and no inclination to refuse the bold offer made by Don Juan that evening at dinner. Hearing about it later from the Queen, I could feel her enthusiasm and was almost swept away myself.
“It was a stirring speech, Michael. All the more because we could see his nervousness—imagine a veteran campaigner like that, hesitating and almost stammering! In all earnestness, he foreswore any personal claim to the throne and offered his services as general to the cause of Spain.” The Queen smoothed her long skirts reflexively as we walked through the garden, though any twig that might have plucked a single thread out of place had been painstakingly pruned back away from the path only an hour before.
“It makes a great deal of sense, really. Many of his oldest friends at the Austrian court are long dead or gone now, and he seems weary of the constant politicking. As an Austrian general he would never do more than police the borders—there is no sign of the political will to do anything but enjoy the general prosperity of the
Pax Hispania –though of course he would never be crude enough to say so. At the head of a Spanish army, though, he can spend the rest of his career forging something glorious—something worthy of Spain and of him.” Queen Veronica spoke quietly and thoughtfully, eyes almost lidded shut in contemplation. I knew that the map of the world was laid out in her mind’s eye, and she was already moving a piece labeled ‘Don Juan’ across it.
In the end, Don Juan was given a full commission as a Field Chief Judge (it loses a lot in translation), and a semi-permanent posting in Milan with a rather large force under his direct command (35k/13k/90) and a reserve force of 16k infantry in Genoa. Officially, his army was there to suppress rebels and serve as our bulwark against Turkish aggression. Unofficially, by happy coincidence, Milan was also perfectly situated to threaten many of our other enemies, including Helvetia, Savoy, the Papal States, and Wurtemburg—not surprisingly, each of those states began building up their own forces as well.
However, yet another happy coincidence existed—the close proximity of Milan and Genoa. A day’s carriage ride or a scant few hours on a string of fast military courier horses could see one between the army headquarters and the Queen’s estates. While the King and I considered Queen Veronica to be, of course, beyond reproach, wagging tongues need precious little to keep themselves in motion perpetually.
Our declaration of war against the Mughal in July of 1573 was almost a welcome distraction, though we certainly didn’t plan it that way. Unhappily, the French Resistance also thought it would be a good distraction. A few days after the declaration, they struck with complete surprise and overwhelmed the garrison at Cevennes. The next day the Palatinat and Hessen declared against us.
After the recent object lesson administered by our forces in Mainz, Felipe was quite stunned by the obstinate stupidity of the Elector Princes in Pfalz. Their timing could not have been more laughable. The Mughal war had been well prepared for, and their allies knew it—Astrakhan, Uzbek, and even our long-time enemy Persia dishonored their alliance rather than face us again so soon. Felipe’s strategy of cycling wars had timed out perfectly—almost every other major power was still bound by a five-year peace treaty with us. With hands tied, the Crowns of Europe squirmed uneasily in their thrones as Spanish armies marched into Pfalz and Hessen.
By October our forces had utterly crushed the Mughal and the once proud Shah Akbar was forced to sign away Kutch, Agra, and Thar. But when the official copy of the treaty arrived at the palace a few months later, we discovered to our horror that it had been written completely in blood—the blood of the Mughal Shah, a mutely eloquent testament forever linking his homeland’s humiliation and shame with his own.
Felipe had corresponded unofficially with the Shah for some time. The man had shown himself to be wise, charismatic, and deeply spiritual—a powerful and effective leader who simply had the misfortune to be born to the wrong time in his nation’s history. Though the war served our ends and the Mughal Empire could not be allowed to stand at the last, its final death sentence could be postponed. Felipe and Veronica returned the treaty to Akbar with a solemn oath that despite any other considerations, while Akbar yet lived, so too would his beloved nation.
But if mercy and compassion were to be the order of the day for the great Shah, it was not to be for the Palatinate. That same month, Pfalz fell to repeated assaults, and Felipe resolutely sent his terms to the Electors. Spain and her King would settle for nothing less than the complete annexation of Pfalz. The Palatinate would cease to exist as a nation, and her Electors would be given a choice of a harsh but free life taming the distant wilds of our Indian provinces or a reasonably comfortable but caged life in the distant highland estates of our vigilant Scottish allies. Not surprisingly, to a man they chose the comfortable prison.
The terms of the annexation of the Palatinate were read aloud each hour outside the walls at the siege of Hessen, in hopes that their stubborn ruler would abandon the foolhardy course his ally had charted for the both of them. Wilhelm IV, the Landgrave of Hessen—a young man only six years into his reign—took to the top of the walls personally at the twelfth reading to boldly shout his defiance. Each of the next twelve readings, Wilhelm read out the terms of his alliance with the Palatinate and their declaration against Spain, his voice as pure and strong as any herald.
We never knew what secret deals had been made, or what brave oaths sworn, to instill such false hope of rescue in Wilhelm. When the walls fell and he was brought before Felipe four months later, starvation and despair had hollowed his chest and darkened his eyes. The words of his formal surrender were an ashen whisper on his lips, and it is said that the bold Landgrave never again spoke above a whisper till the end of his days almost two decades hence.
Faced once more with nobility and gallantry, Felipe had taken earnest counsel with his advisors. Not this year would the flag of Hessen be forever furled. Wilhelm was escorted into a private audience chamber, and when he returned, his carriage was a measure straighter. A mere 200 ducats were exacted in recompense for their assault. Felipe never spoke of the conversation that had passed between them, except to repeat a line from the speech he gave publicly afterwards announcing the treaty.
“Indulge me only in this, that I should be allowed the luxury of keeping some few enemies who are worthy of my regard. If I am opposed only by weak and petty men whose hearts and minds will never stretch wide or walk tall, then how will I and my heirs know how far we must reach to achieve our beloved Spain’s glorious destiny? No, I say to you that the truest measure of a man or a nation can be found in the quality both of their friends and of their enemies.”
The speech and the policy alike were wildly popular. Criticism from hawk and dove alike were muted by the balance of Felipe’s diplomacy—in one hand the sword and in the other the olive branch. Moreover, even the commonest and least learned men of Europe had quite a fair idea of which enemies were being referred to as weak and petty. What’s more, many of them shared the opinion and secretly cheered Felipe for daring to speak the truth even when their own leaders were being skewered by the barb. It was, in many regards, Felipe’s finest hour.
More than a year and a half of peace ensued. The brevity of the war had caused barely a hiccup in our tax collections, and gold was coming in quickly, if not actually as fast as we could spend it. Queen Veronica’s market list carried a hefty price tag, after all. Still, eleven more judges and nine fortification upgrades were ordered begun in the period of general good feeling that followed our peace with Hessen.
In November of 1575, our Declaration of War was served to the Persian Shah. His call for assistance was rejected by his sole ally, the stalwart Shah Akbar of the Mughal. In fact, Akbar caught us all by surprise when he independently declared war on Persia two months later. A private message to Felipe wryly joked that he should feel confident leaving the Persian front to the Mughal, allowing Spain to focus on other matters closer to hand.
Those matters were anything but a joke, however. The grand Ottoman Empire had for some time now been an aging lion with a thorn in its paw. The great Suleiman had been stunned and broken by being betrayed by both his sons Mustafa and Bayezid. Each had, according to tradition, been trained personally by the great Sultan to succeed him, and each had used the knowledge against his father. In the end, Suleiman died a bitter and heartbroken man, lost in the melancholic reverie of wine. His remaining son, Selim II, ascended to the throne a mirror of his father’s last days, lost in the pleasures of flesh and grape and content to let his viziers attend the humdrum matters of empire. Selim’s rule was brief, and when his son Murad III came to power in 1574, the world waited with bated breath to take his measure.
Murad, like his father before him, was a sybarite, living for the gratification of the flesh. But he also had the ruthless surviving skills of an old drunkard willing to pimp his family for one more bottle. His first act on the throne was to order the purging of his seven brothers so they could pose no impediment to his reign. His next act was to strip the Grand Vizier, Sokollu Mehmed, of most of his powers though Mehmed had served faithfully and well for over a decade, keeping the body and soul of the Empire together despite the dissipations of its Sultans.
Sokollu advised the Sultan that matters between Spain and Turkey were different. True, in the last confrontation five years previous, Spain had bought her way out of the fighting. But the circumstances were far different now. Turkey had been weakened by years of war with most of Europe and rebellions within. Moreover, last time around Spain had been already beset with enemies. This time, she faced only the anemic Persia.
Murad, however, had made up his mind. Aching to make his mark in world affairs and step out of the long shadow of his grandfather, he was almost pathetically eager to believe the lies and misinformation seeping across his borders from Venice, Persia, and Rome. Spain, he was sure, was far too distracted by other matters to make any serious defense. A quick feint at the Queen’s estates in Genoa and a sustained thrust east might even succeed in regaining Egypt and Mekkah, thus avenging one of Suleiman’s only losses!
The Turkish Declaration of War arrived in December, along with parallel declarations from the many allies Sokollu had so studiously courted these past ten years—Bohemia, Kazan, Wallachia, Crimea, Oman, and Aden. This was serious enough that for the first time in years, Felipe actually activated the mutual defense provisions of the Pax Hispania, sounding the call for our own allies to enter the fray. Don Juan was given a free hand to do whatever he could on the western front, while a hodgepodge of forces—some still marching into Persia—were called to assemble on the eastern front.
The rest of the world took heart at this development, an almost apocalyptic confrontation of superpowers. Declaration of hostilities arrived almost like clockwork:
- January: Nubia
- April: Thuringen (Wurtemburg and Baden)
- May: The Papal States (Venice, Eire, the Knights, and Russia)
Hannover (though her allies in Hessen and Saxony declined)
- June: Ethiopia
Astrakhan (Golden Horde)
- August: France (Savoy, Helvetia—Portugal dishonors the alliance)
- September: Saxony
- March (1577): Netherlands (Sweden)
The Uzbeks
Amidst the general chaos, Sultan Murad actually brought his alliance to bear on the grand alliance of the Papal States. Looking to settle old scores, he declared war on them the very day following their declaration on Spain. This led to an almost comical rewriting of orders in Rome, and numerous stirring chases of couriers to deliver the new orders before the old ones could be carried out.
All of this was made possible by the fact that for once, the omnipresent spies of the Pope had failed him. Just as his declaration of war was arriving in Spain in May, our troops had received their orders to pull out of Turkey. The war had ended just two weeks before the Pope’s message. Spain was now in possession of Tyrol and Mantua, thanks in large part to the frenetic assaults led by Don Juan along the western front. Thus, the Don was free to turn his still formidable forces against the Pope. Rome’s troops were numerous, almost on a par with Don Juan’s in sheer numbers—something like 30 to 40,000 men. But they had no leader to match the Don, and little faith in the rightness of their cause.
With the words of King Felipe still ringing in their ears, many of the Pope’s forces fled the battle at the first sight of the Spanish troops, who waved banners of flag and crucifix and in many cases yelled
‘Assalaam Alaikum!’ (Peace Be On You All). The Muslim greeting had been ironically adapted by the troops as their battle cry at the Don’s suggestion. Very familiar with Islamic culture from his long years on their borders, he appreciated the nuances of its meaning as both irony and earnest wish. “Our goal is peace, our desire is unity,” he told his captains. “But if we can only have those things through war, then we will charge to battle courageously and with a prayer for the enemy on our lips. And one way or the other he will find peace—on earth or in heaven.”
Though distracted somewhat by the French alliance opening a second front in August, Don Juan managed to march his troops determinedly through the Papal States. By January, Gregorius capitulated, and offered Emilia and Romagna for peace. He had been warned, and now his bill had come due. Still, he had one final trick up his sleeve. By some sleight of hand, the treaty, which by all rights should have been signed by Gregorius as leader of his alliance, was instead signed by him solely as the leader of the Papal States. When our copy of the treaty arrived at the palace, Felipe was incensed.
On other fronts, we paid Hannover and Astrakhan 250 ducats each for peace. Astrakhan in particular was a near thing. They poured over the border in a tidal wave, sieging Azerbaijan with 40,000 cavalry. Felipe refused to blink, betting that his garrison could withstand the siege better than the ill-prepared horsemen. Finally, in January, with the walls close to collapse and the huddled remnants of cavalry not much better off, he agreed to make a face-saving payment to the Khan. And in February, the Doge in Venice responded to Felipe’s gracious explanation of the Pope’s treachery. For the princely sum of 2 ducats—all that remained in our treasury—Venice would consent to peace on behalf of the remaining members of her alliance.
We later heard rumors that the Doge had been almost as infuriated as Felipe by Gregorius’ double-dealing. The two pieces of silver we paid with our treaty were, it is said, sent to the Pope with a one-line note reading “Has the price of betrayal fallen now from thirty pieces of silver to two?”
On other fronts meanwhile, after capturing Sudan, we accepted a white peace with Nubia. Thuringen and her allies, beaten back in a number of bloody defenses of our provinces, were only too happy to accept a white peace as well.
And then there were the gains, oh so many of them besides the aforementioned Tyrol, Mantua, Emilia, and Romagna. Persia, eager to sever their border with the Mughal, surrendered Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Indus just in time for Astrakhan to begin a siege of Spanish Azerbaijan. The French alliance yielded Morbihan, Vendee, and Maine for peace. Saxony offered Kleves, continuing the unraveling of the tiny empire they’d spent so much to build. Ethiopia relinquished Issas and Ogaden, and the Uzbeks ceded Bouzatchi & Ust Urt.
Quite notably, the Netherlands was forced to give up the colonies of Magellanes and Gander, as well as her trading post in Santa Cruz. As Magellanes had only recently opened a new and promising Center of Trade, the loss was particularly keen. All the more so because the dreaded Dutch King William of Orange had spent the whole war boldly laying siege to Zeeland with over 90,000 men. Poorly planned and provisioned, William’s forces were also harried by loyalist troops breaching dikes as they went. The whole misadventure was a debacle that ended with two thirds of his force dying from starvation and disease amidst one of the richest and most productive lands on the continent.
Once again, Spain had run the gauntlet of enemies on multiple fronts and emerged victorious. The cost, however, was high. In twenty-four months of war the treasury had been emptied repeatedly to pay for treaties and new recruits, and army losses had been higher than any war previous. And if anything, our enemies were consolidating. While the war raged, Turkey quietly vassalized Aden and soon after China did the same to Korea. Turkey also slipped out of its war with the Papal Alliance with a paltry 25 ducat indemnity.
As with most wars, however, this one had its bizarre footnote. A report from our Captain in Cartagena told a strange tale of darkness and mistaken identity, as an English survey force came into contact with our Captain’s patrol in February at the height of the war. Shots were fired, and the two forces managed to inflict some serious damage upon each other regardless of their small size. Luckily, at daybreak the units were able to see each other’s banners and break off the fighting. In eighty years, this had been the only instance of shots fired in anger between the English and Spanish. With the historical date of the Spanish Armada fast approaching, I hoped this would not be a portent of things to come.
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