Thanks everybody for responding. As for the reason I didn’t take anything from Burgundy this time, there are three main reasons.
1- I’m still burning off the infamy from earlier conquests, so I didn’t want to add too much to that. Taking anything from Burgundy would cost 4 infamy per province.
2- I stated in the first post that I wasn’t going to do any excessive expansion in Europe. That mean I won’t take a lot of territory without some good reason.
3- As mentioned, Burgundy is a nice buffer for France. I know I can handle them, the BBB is another matter especially if I seized one of their cores from Burgundy.
Range: I’ve had reasonable relations with France for most of the game so I might try your idea in the chapter after this one. It’d be nice to not worry about anyone in mainland Europe.
Chapter Ten: Colonial Madness
At one time, Burgundy had been the strongest nation in the Empire besides the Emperor’s own. It stood as a bulwark on the western border keeping away France and England, with the only cost to the Empire being a few of its smaller members getting forcibly absorbed. Now that those nations had stood up and fought back, that image was shattered.
The major powers of Europe could smell blood in the water and began to make their move to grab what they could.
Friesland was no exception. Ernst I was regretting not taking anything in the last war while it was still available, so when one of his newly independent allies joined in the fray he was happy to assist and take at least a small slice.
Burgundy’s situation was so dire that even its only real ally, England, abandoned it.
Frisian and Trierian forces moved across the border and began to besige the unguarded northern regions of Burgundian territory. However, it seemed that France had focused too many of its troops against Burgundy as their allies against it had been able to make significant gains in the south and force a somewhat harsh treaty on them.
With England still to fight, France made peace with Burgundy without taking anything. This gave the Burgundians a second wind as they could devote forces to fighting the other invaders.
It wasn’t enough to save them completely though, as they were forced by Bohemia and Milan to grant independence to most of their South German and Wallonian lands (very annoying as I was on the verge of taking Liege...)
It did buy them the room they needed to counterattack the Frisians and Trierians to the north however.
The main army marched into the Lorraine and engaged the Germans there, crushing them completely.
As he wasn’t the one in charge of the war, Ernst decided to bail out and take what he could before the Trierian king signed some humiliating peace treaty that forced him to give up his conquests. In the aftermath of that betrayal, Trier ended up becoming a vassal of Burgundy once again.
With Burgundy weakened further, there seemed to be no immediate military threat to the kingdom, allowing Ernst I to focus on building its wealth even further.
He finally completed Hendrik I’s program to emulate the economy of Holland, allowing goods to flow freely into and out of the country. Also, his and his uncle’s work to defeat Burgundy and bring Friesland to the political fore had been acknowledged as the even the peasants of Holland and Gelre began to think of Friesland as their rightful rulers.
Further reports from Portuguese explorers came into Europe, describing in increasing detail an massive untamed land far to the west. This place had caught the king’s interest at first, but now he was certain he wanted Friesland to be among the first nations to exploit it.
An expedition lead by Willem Roorda was financed by the king personally, with the aim of investigating the new world and if possible establishing a Frisian base camp there. The small fleet departed for the Azores, which would be the staging area for the mission.
However, Ernst never got to find out what was there, as soon after the fleet arrived at the Azores he seemed to go mad with glee. Apparently the excitement of launching the expedition and the possibilities of what it might find was too much for him.
He was found in his room in a pile of coins, dead due to accidentally choking on a small gold piece in his insane cavorting through the money. His son took on his father’s quest and ordered the fleet to sail onwards from its base. Johan II, named for his great-uncle, was more or less the same has his father. Raised in great luxury he had learnt how to deal with other people in the ruling class, but not much more than that.
Upon arriving in the New World, Roorda discovered that the Portuguese were already establishing a significant presence on the new continent. He knew that his king would not be pleased if all the resources of the New World slipped away from him, so he immediately got to work establishing an outpost on one of the islands in the region.
Upon establishing the camp, they were approached by the native peoples of the island. However the approach was treated as hostile act by the defenders, who had not seen these barbarians before and in the ensuing violence a good number of them were killed.
It did give reason for Johan II to deploy an extra guard force to the region, and encouraged people to travel there to tame the violent lands. A town quickly sprang up around the harbour of the camp as more and more people sought their fortune in the New World. It wasn’t long before the small outpost became the primary stopping point for Dutch colonists heading further west.
The town was named Port Hendrik, after the king who had led Friesland to glory in the Old World. Now he had returned, if only in spirit, to lead them to glory in the New World. Roorda continued exploring the continent, mapping out the northern coastline and eastern seaboard of the new continent, before investigating a large island chain to the south. Most of this was still out of reach for colonial convoys crossing the Atlantic, so they were forced to divert to the colder mainland (ah, the joys of colonial range...)
Meanwhile, in Europe Burgundy continued its downward slide. While it had staved off imminent destruction in the earlier war and had begun to re-conquer the land it had once held, that didn’t save it from the shifted focus of its larger neighbour.
France took some of the territory that it rightfully claimed, with the intention of repeating it in future. Perhaps it would have been a good idea for Johan II to turn his eyes back to Europe.
Doing so might have saved his life. As it turned out, he had inherited the sin of obsession from his father and he waited eagerly for any and all news coming back from Americas, a name given by the Portuguese to the new land. Despite the fact that it took months for messages to cross the ocean, he only listened to messengers from across the sea and only gave orders to them. In the end, his isolation from the normal flow of politics in Europe drove him mad.
In his final moments he realised he was becoming like his father and took his own life to die with some honour remaining, something Ernst I had not managed. The court had been expecting this outcome for a while and invited one of the sons of the King of Münster to take the throne before the body was even cold.
Koenraad I was a far more competent leader and he too was interested in the New World, albeit in a much healthier fashion. Friesland’s interests there had grown from nothing to some significant holdings in just a decade, so it was clearly the best way for the nation to grow. Out in the wilderness there was no Emperor or established kingdoms to hold back their growth.
Portugal had good few decades head start though, so they could easily block any further expansion if they wanted the continent to themselves. Koenraad had to carefully consider whether they needed to be removed, for the future of the New Friesland colonies.
To be continued...
So, a vote for my readers. Since some people seemed disappointed with the lack of conquest, here’s the opportunity to change that. Should I declare colonial war on Portugal? Here are the relevant pluses and minuses.
+Most of Portugal’s colonies haven’t grown into cities yet, courtesy of a lack of colonial maintenance on their part. This should make them easy to grab.
+I can easily match Portugal’s military strength in the Americas.
-Attacking them could bring in England and Castille, so I won’t be able to do any fleet movements after the declaration as they’d just get sunk.
-North America isn’t that rich, it might be better to not take colonies I’ll have to spend money on to save it for the Caribbean. However, my colonial range is so poor even with two 4-star advisors that it’ll be decades before I can reach there.
What do you think?