Europa: In the Age of the Fourth Race of Kings

[volksmarschall]

BOOK I: THE RENAISSANCE

PART ONE: CULTURE


VI

Court Life and the Rise of Bourgeois Politics
​

One of the more underappreciated aspects of the Renaissance was the Court lifestyle cultivated by the Renaissance. While it was later pilloried by Jacobins as the embodiment and pinnacle of lavishness and lack of concern for the suffering plight of the poor, the Renaissance’s impact on Courtly life influenced more than just courtly and upperclass culture, the politics of the courtly Renaissance lifestyle was equally an aspect of the flourishing Renaissance from palace hall meetings to grand ballroom dances and invitations to flex the muscle of one’s dynastic prestige, wealth, and educated literacy.

While Renaissance court life was no doubt elaborate and lavish, with grand balls and other grandiose ceremonies to satisfy the ambitious desires of noble families, it also reflected the new spirit of cosmopolitanism. In fact, women at the court found greater liberty than ever before. New voices, once relegated to the backrooms of the palace, were brought to the fore. Even, dialogue between opposing parties with kings and princes as mediators – rather than Church authority as mediator – became a rising staple of Renaissance court life.

The roots of cosmopolitanism go far back beyond the Renaissance. It is rooted in Socrates’s claim in Plato’s dialogues to be a “citizen of the world,” which meant that he was a “lover of wisdom.” The philosopher was, by his very nature, cosmopolitan – seeking the wisdom of all the world rather than be confined that which was local to him. Cosmopolitanism, in its classical to Renaissance form, did not necessarily mean openness and toleration as we think of these ideas today. It is rooted in the Platonic idea of knowledge of the Forms as being healthy to one’s soul, and since this is what we all crave as children of human nature and natural law, wisdom is the beginning of what we would call “self-help” today. The openness of cosmopolitanism, then, was openness to the world of ideas wherever they were to be found and from whomever their authors were.

FIGURE 1: A bust of Socrates, the first “cosmopolitan.”​

The Roman Stoics were also pioneers of early cosmopolitanism, especially in the writings of Seneca the Younger. Seneca argued, unlike the Greek stoics and cynics, that philosophy was the handmaiden of politics. In this way he followed from Cicero and Cato the Younger who preceded him. Knowledge was the means to know and cultivate virtue, which, in the time of the decline of the Roman republic, had a very explicit political goal in mind: knowledge led to the preservation of republican virtue, which would save the republic from its fall into tyranny and transformation into empire. In this sense, the Roman stoics failed, but their legacy lived on in more important ways.

The rise of Christianity ordered cosmopolitanism to a new end. St. Justin Martyr, for instance, extoled the great virtues of the Pagans, especially Plato and Socrates, even going as far as considering them followers of the Logos (Christ) before Christ’s incarnation. Tertullian, that great father of North African Latin Christianity before Augustine, also hailed Seneca as a de facto Christian saint before Christianity’s rise. Of course, Seneca, Plato, Socrates, and Plotinus were all influences upon Augustine, as were Cicero and Cato, the other great Roman stoics. Catholicism, then, shepherded cosmopolitanism but detached it from its explicitly political goals which emerged from Cicero, Cato, and Seneca. Instead, knowledge brought forth, in particular, self-knowledge – the knowledge of the self. This knowledge of the self, helped one understand one’s desires and therefore lead to a fulfilled life. Thus, wisdom is what ordered desire to its end, resulting in the happy life and the healthy soul. Knowledge of self and reality was necessary, according to Augustine, before one could truly help others.

But this long tradition of cosmopolitanism was always too self-focused. Renaissance cosmopolitanism, then, opened up cosmopolitanism and universalized it. Anyone with knowledge could have something important to say. As such, they should have a more active inclusion in courtly life, to aid and give consideration to the decisions of political rule. In this sense, Renaissance cosmopolitanism restored what a century of preceding Augustinian cosmopolitanism rejected: the unity of philosophy of politics, that knowledge was aimed more at helping others (through politics) than it was about helping the self. Thus, Renaissance cosmopolitanism was more along the older Roman line than the Platonic and Augustinian lines.

FIGURE 2: A bust of the Roman politician and philosopher Cicero. Cicero was a major influential figure in the development of Roman Stoicism, in contradistinction to Greek Stoicism, which had more immediate political overtures to it. Cicero was also a major influence over early Christianity too. Augustine, for one, credited Cicero with making him come to believe in God in Confessions. (In our timeline Cicero was also an influential figure over American Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in particular.)​

Before we begin to celebrate Renaissance cosmopolitanism, the mantra that “anyone with knowledge should be heard” really didn’t mean everyone however. It meant the elite and the elite alone. Granted, this also followed Cicero’s and Seneca’s cosmopolitanism of the intellectuals – the intellectuals were the only true cosmopolitans, but the floodgate opened by Renaissance cosmopolitanism had far reaching consequences that not even their original promoters could have ever imagined. If it was meant for aristocracy only, male and female aristocrats – especially princesses and queen consorts, for they too were educated in the art of philosophy, politics, and war during the Renaissance to reflect their newfound importance in courtly society and decision-making – then this growing inclusion of more aristocracy alongside the changes to economics also meant that Renaissance cosmopolitanism led to the rise of the bourgeoisie in political life. They had important things to say too that should influence politics and decision-making, hence, they deserved – nay, demanded – their seat at the table too.

Part of the contention of the new Renaissance cosmopolitanism was who exactly should have their voices heard and who the bearers of cosmopolitan ideals were. For more than a millennia it was the clergy and the most senior and learned of the king’s advisors. Naturally, these groups were not too keen on losing their own power that they had come to amass over a 1,000 years of courtly services; much like how the French nobility were constantly opposed to the centralizing tendencies of the Valois from Paris.

In this light, Renaissance cosmopolitanism was revolutionary and, while not in any formal sense, anti-clerical, it was tacitly anti-clerical in practice as it was the educated clergy and clerical advisors who were often on the losing end of the new cosmopolitanism that saw court influence and growth from among the minor aristocrats, royal women, and wealthy traders and merchants, giving rise to the powerful merchant guilds, especially in the Mediterranean and the Italian republics.

Other places, however, attempted to strike a balance between old alliances and new emergences. This was especially true in France where the educated clergy wielded serious power, and continued to serve the nobility in a formal capacity that often blurred church and state relationships. For instance, the bishop of Angers had effectively become a permanent seat in the College of Cardinals, and the bishops of Angers served Rene, Charles III, Charles IV, Nicholas, and Louis-Joseph I as court ministers and advisors while doubling their responsibilities as episcopal head and also voting members of the College. In fact, Alexander VII, who was instrumental in forming the Holy Alliance to help the despondent pleas of Princess Elisabeth of Hungary to aid Hungary’s struggle against Ottoman invasion, was previously the bishop of Angers and court advisor to Louis-Joseph before being elevated to the Papacy and enlisted his former student as head of the alliance.

***​

Cosmopolitanism had a more immediate and noticeable influence on the arts and literature however. Pagan literature, especially the epics of Homer and Virgil, and especially Virgil’s Aeneid, had always been prized and de-facto Christian education material ever since Augustine wrote that it was Virgil’s Aeneid, along with Cicero’s Republic and now lost Hortensius, that had brought him to a knowledge of God and appreciation of the double desire for beauty in the human body and mind. In fact, while Exodus may have been the theologized work of migration and overcoming due to its standing in the Biblical corpus, it was Virgil’s Aeneid, whereby Aeneas founds Rome and is, in a sense, the father of the West, which served as the political and ethnic exodus story for Christian Europe. Indeed, the old Protestant claims of apostasy were rooted in this cosmopolitan paganism that supposedly infiltrated Christianity through the rise of Constantine, Theodosius, the Papacy, and especially St. Augustine. After all, if Rome had come to occupy such a central place in Catholicism, and Aeneas was the founder of Rome, then the companion relationship between Roman paganism and the rise of Catholicism went hand in glove; so much so that the Cult of the Saints had basically just replaced the old Roman pagan deities in patronage of cities, territories, professions, and festivals.

FIGURE 3: Aeneas Defeats Turnus, 1688. Although the Hebrew Bible’s story of the Exodus is the quintessential tale of a migratory people traversing from oppression to liberty, it was Virgil’s Aeneid, which was particularly influential over St. Augustine, which was the “exodus” narrative for Catholic Europe moreover than the Biblical Exodus. The celebration, or “Christianization” of pagan stories and ideals was a major issue the Protestant Reformers took objection to.​

The claim against cosmopolitanism, emanating from Protestantism, also led to a revived and rejuvenated interest in the old Pagan classics and stories that were widely employed by the Catholic Church and Catholic monarchs and noble patrons of the arts throughout Europe. One cannot understand the works of Peter Paul Rubens without knowing he was a Calvinist convert to Roman Catholicism during the height of sectarian conflict whose patronage was paid for by the du Quenoy,[1] Catholic Church, and other Catholic monarchs and aristocrats throughout Europe. Indeed, the new palaces and future museums, gardens, and the myriad of new statures that donned these great architectural achievements were not so much for a concern for aesthetics as it was theo-political propaganda: the great palaces and gardens of the Catholic world, filled with their fountains, homages to Greco-Roman Antiquity, and other statues served as a direct rebuke to the Protestant Reformation and a celebration of Europe’s pagan past which was not seen as being at odds with its Christianized outcome – or at least to the Catholic Church. Cosmopolitanism, in some way, meant that there were no strangers in a strange land.

In some way, then, the culture of cosmopolitanism is partly responsible, along with the Reformation, with the great explosion of art and culture in the later 16th and early 17th centuries that venerated classical antiquity against the push into modernity – something celebrated by Protestants as a means to carve out their own identity to challenge the authority and inheritance of the Roman Church. In the eyes of Renaissance humanists and cosmopolitans, if Augustine had learned from Virgil and Cicero, if Justin Martyr had praised Plato and Socrates, and if Thomas Aquinas saw himself as a student of Aristotle, and even learned aspects of Aristotelian thought from Averroes, then they could surely revive all of these ancient, even heathen, works to their own benefit.

The culture of the Renaissance was far reaching and its legacy universal, and one that reaches down with us today. Outside of Italy, the Angevins were strong patrons of the arts, promoters of the School of Angers, and tirelessly remained patrons of the arts during the height of religious conflict. But just as the Renaissance saw a revolution in culture, so too did it bring forth a revolution in politics, war, and religion.


[1] For this timeline’s purposes.

SUGGESTED READING

Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity

Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe

Virgil, The Aeneid​

 

[stnylan]

Yes, one revolutions tends to go hand in hand with another, and all revolutions tend to revolve as much as change.

 

[Nuada Airgetlám]

A certain amount of hypocrisy on the Protestant part, not acknowledging their own direct and indirect debt to those pagan thinkers.

 

[guillec87]

subbed!

 

[volksmarschall]

Yes, one revolutions tends to go hand in hand with another, and all revolutions tend to revolve as much as change.

We're about to see a major revolution -- just not necessarily one that is inherently political in the coming chapter.

A certain amount of hypocrisy on the Protestant part, not acknowledging their own direct and indirect debt to those pagan thinkers.

Historically it was a bit of embarrassment on the part of the more "radical Protestants" (later generation Calvinists, Anabaptists, non-Conformists, etc.). While initially there was the usual protest against certain abuses and practices, it wasn't quick until even the Lutherans (Melanchthon especially) began claiming that Catholics had embraced the pagan thinkers moreover than Christ.

It was thus necessary for Protestants to distance themselves from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the neo-Platonists, Cicero and the Stoics, etc., all of whom had been fondly adopted and baptized into Christianity via Catholicism -- which played to the hands of Protestants claiming that "Romish" or "Popish" doctrines and beliefs were nothing more than ancient Greek and Roman thought. New hermenutical means, and the renewed interest in "literalist" readings and "prophecy" altered the Protestant consciousness and relationship to Scripture. All very fascinating, all things I will eventually cover in Book II. But there's overlap and cross pollination at different sections throughout how I plan to go through the timeline.

subbed!

Great to have you @guillec87!

 

[volksmarschall]

BOOK I: THE RENAISSANCE

PART TWO: POLITICS AND WARFARE

I

The War of the Public Weal​

The Renaissance did not just inaugurate an intellectual and cultural revolution that, in various ways and inheritances, still reverberates with us today. It also produced a revolution, in every sense of the word, in the world of politics and warfare. The movement away from the medieval toward the professional and mobilized armies that would come to be a mainstay of early modern, and modern, Europe, has its beginnings in the Renaissance. When Jacques I of France crossed the Alps with his cousin Charles IV of Anjou, who was now also the King of Catalonia and claimant to the title in Naples, the French army hauled with it some 8,000 artillerists, walking alongside a long wagon train of animals and culverins to bring an unleashing hell upon the armies of Savoy, Milan, and Habsburg Austria. But the story of the century’s long Italian Wars has its roots in the end of the Hundred Years’ War not between France and England, but between France and Burgundy, as well as the other Hundred Years’ War between the Dukes of Anjou and the Trastámara Kings of the Crown of Aragon.

FIGURE 1: The Dominions of the Kingdom of France, ca. 1445. The French Kingdom was nominally the most powerful entity in Europe, and had been for some time. One historian has said that the history of Europe can be understood as the history of France – the fate, glory, and decline of Europe often tied to the successes and failures of the French kingdom and aristocracy. Hegel’s spirit seems to have elected France, if you will, to be the grounds on which the fate of Europa hung.​

I have already mentioned that the English-French Hundred Years’ War garners public imagination and immediate recognition when one talks of a “hundred years’ war.” What is often forgotten was that another Hundred Years’ War was the direct byproduct of the Anglo-French struggle for the control of the French throne: the internal familial disputes among the Valois, the Kings of France and the Dukes of Burgundy. At the same time that this struggle between royal dynasty and royal apanage unfurled, the other Hundred Years’ War that dominated southern European, and especially Italian, politics was coming to its climax: the struggle for control over Naples, the jewel of the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, and the longstanding conflict between the nobles houses in Anjou and Aragon.

***​

The end of the Anglo-French Hundred Years’ War in 1456 was a tipping point in the longstanding struggle between Charles VII’s attempt to wrestle control over his defiant cousins who sat as the dukes of Burgundy and various other titles. The Duchy of Burgundy was one of the wealthiest and most prestigious titular lands that were not a de jure kingdom, even if, in all practical means, it was an aspirant kingdom. Burgundy’s line of dukes held the royal apanage as descendants of John II. Philip the Bold, John’s youngest son, was given the lands and titles of Burgundy, and Burgundy quickly became a flourishing entity in its own right.

The Hundred Years’ War began as a blessing for the Valois of Burgundy. Initially allied with their senior cousins in Paris, they had come to consolidate a lot of territory under their stewardship. In doing so the Duchy of Burgundy had come to possess the wealthy trading centers of the Lowlands and the counties of northerly France: Artois, Rethel, and Nevers, and through their marriage into the Dampierre family, had also come to acquire stewardship over Flanders.

Philip’s son, John the Fearless, became even more ambitious. Duke John, in seeing the changing fortunes of war after the French disaster at Agincourt, quickly allied with King Henry V of England and marched his army to capture Paris. It didn’t help that the Burgundian line of the Valois had also come into warring conflict over disputations with the Orleans and Armagnac duchies, heightening the animosity between the senior Valois branch ruling over France the junior branch that, through John, clearly sought either the acquisition of the French throne for themselves or de jure independence of the French Kingdom to possess their own kingdom. And why shouldn’t this have been the case for the Burgundians? Their wealth and power rivalled that of any of the kingly dynasties of Europe, if it did not rival them, then it exceeded them – and yet, these poorer and less powerful families possessed the titles of king while the Burgundians were, legally, vassalized dukes in the service of the French crown regardless of the wealth and power they had amassed.

Within the Hundred Years’ War between England and France was the Hundred Years’ War between the cadet House of Valois in Burgundy, and the senior House of Valois in Paris. Involved in this saga, beyond the continuation of filial squabbling for power and prestige that had become a staple of French dynastic politics since the days of the Merovingians, was also the attempt of the Valois to overcome that decentralized centralization of power wielded by the various aristocratic families of France and especially the royal apanages who threatened the direct rule and claim to rightful kinship by the direct Valois.

The assassination of John on the Bridge of Montereau by Charles VII’s entourage helped bring to a close of the Burgundian-Armagnac conflict that had embroiled France during the latter half of the Hundred Years’ War. It also corrupted the filial relationship between the two Valois branches. The Burgundian alliance with England was collapse in the 1430s, but the alliance with England, the occupation of Paris, and the sowing of discord between the Armagnacs and Burgundians was something that put Burgundy on the losing side of the Hundred Years’ War. That said, despite the English expulsion from Normandy and the County of Maine restored the Rene of Anjou, the Burgundians still possessed the heart of their territories and wealth and posed a serious threat to French territorial ambitions. At the same time, the Angevins were tacitly worried over the recent moves by their cousins in Paris to absorb and centralize the territories of the Armagnac and Auverge.

FIGURE 2: An image depicting the assassination of John the Fearless on the Bridge of Montereau.​

If the Hundred Years’ War proved John and Philip correct that their cousins in Paris would use the war as a pretext to finally beginning the consolidation of the French lands under direct rule, and if a millennium of this decentralized centralized rule by the apanage counts and dukes, along with other counts and dukes, was now threatened – then they did act rationally to seek protection of their domains even if this led them back into filial rivalry, murder, and the War of the Public Weal, also known as the Burgundian Wars.[1]

In some manner the War of the Public Weal can be seen as an extension of the Hundred Years’ War, the logical outcome of the Duchy of Burgundy’s flip-flopping during the war to serve their own benefit, and also as an independent conflict within the French Kingdom between the noble and aristocratic prerogatives that were being threatened by Valois centralization. It was, in effect, the simultaneous attempt by various French noble families, namely the Armagnac, and junior Valois branches, especially from Burgundy and Anjou, to retain their ancient and ancestral customs and rights that had been enshrined to them going all the way back to the Merovingian Age, and part of another hundred year conflict between the Valois family – the conflict between the wealthy and powerful descendants of Philip the Bold to not only retain their apanage rights, but to also break free from the shadow of their cousins who held the title King of France while, due to their own wealth and power, sought independence and their own de-jure kingdom.

***
​

The War of the Public Weal broke down into two phases: The Burgundian Phase, which, in some sense, really began in 1363 when Philip the Good was given the title and lands of the Duchy of Burgundy and slowly began to amass other counties to his name through war and marriage, continuing through the Burgundian-Armagnac Civil War of the Anglo-French Hundred Years’ War, and continuing until 1479 with the marriage of Isabelle of Burgundy to Matthew of Austria, eventually leading to the dissolution of the Valois Picardy and its acquisition to the Habsburgs.

The second half of the War of the Public Weal was from 1479-1588 which marked the revival of the Angevin Dynasty throughout Southern Europe. Rene, admittedly, was a shrewd diplomatic genius to make up for what he lacked in military prowess. Aligning himself with his cousins in Paris, the Angevins benefitted tremendously during the Burgundian phase, winning the apanage of Burgundy, as well as the counties of Nevers and Rethel, for their contributions to dissolving the Burgundian attempt to restore aristocratic prerogatives. The flip side of this was that, upon Rene’s death on August 4, 1480, Charles III was the last great feudal magnate, holding the titles Duke of Anjou, Bar, Burgundy, and Lorraine, Count of Provence, Nevers, Rethel, and Maine. The Armagnac and Auvergne families had become fully vassalized to direct Valois stewardship[2], the Burgundian Valois held been put to flight, even losing their Dutch and Flemish lands to proto-nationalist revolts; their lands were now contained to Picardy, and Luxembourg – Charles the Unfortunate[3] lost the War of Public Weal, and sat as only the Duke of Luxembourg, Count of Artois, Hainut, and Palatinate of Burgundy. His death, as mentioned, without a male heir, passed what remained of the once great and powerful magnate to his only daughter, Isabelle, whose marriage to the young Archduke of Austria eventually led to the lands and titles of the Valois of Burgundy to pass into the hands of the Habsburgs.

FIGURE 3: A painting of Charles “the Unfortunate,” the last male ruler of Burgundy from the Valois line. His passing led to the division of what remained of the once-mighty duchy that nearly became a centralized kingdom that threatened the more senior Valois Family in Paris. War, as Machiavelli noted, is a brutal and harsh teacher wherein Fortuna decides the fate of nations and dynasties.​

The politicking of the War of the Public Weal would have made Machiavelli blush. In fact, some might say that Machiavelli’s Prince was influenced by the outcome of the War of the Public Weal – for, if one looked at the situation of the apanages, commes, and duches in 1450, one would have logically expected the Duchy of Burgundy to come out as a winner; the Burgundians, not the Angevins, to rise to become the fourth race of kings. Instead, through sheer chance, Lady Fortune changed the winds. Where Juno failed, Fortuna succeeded, and Fortuna clearly fell on the side of the Angevins, rather than the Burgundians, during the War of the Public Weal.


[1] In real life the Burgundian Wars and the “League” of the Public Weal never resulted in armed conflict. In this telling, I am synthesizing the two to reflect the in-game developments and ramifications of what followed.

[2] By “Vassalization” I am referring to their annexation into the French Kingdom proper, though, because of the historicity of the power of the French aristocracy, they remain prominent families to the service of the French Kingdom.

[3] In our timeline, Charles the Bold.

 

[stnylan]

The War of the Public Weal sounds like a totalitarian public relations campaign. Make of that what one will.

 

[TheCreator901]

Subbed!

 

[J_Master]

What are you using for the France setup? It isn't vanilla. Is it a mod or did you do some tagswitching and releasing as vassal?

 

[guillec87]

interesting! how did a French guy get the Crown of Aragon? I missed that part

 

[volksmarschall]

The War of the Public Weal sounds like a totalitarian public relations campaign. Make of that what one will.

Isn't that always the case with monarchies, especially those in the medieval and early modern periods? And especially relevant for France, all monarchies considered...

Subbed!

Great to have you along @TheCreator901! Hope you enjoy the style and content.

What are you using for the France setup? It isn't vanilla. Is it a mod or did you do some tagswitching and releasing as vassal?

I started as France and released some of the vassals to make it more "historical" and fitting for the 15th century where France was very much still broken up into her apanages and duches. It makes the writing fit more a more historical narrative and also allows for me, as Provence, to remain as the great apanage and feudal holdout among the French aristocracy while, since I'm not simply writing about my game and exploits as Provence, but also allow an equally historical narrative on the centralization of France through their annexation of vassals and what not. Nothing more than that -- it was mostly for writing purposes, and the fact that I could write in accord with the game as well though keep a certain level of historicity to it.

interesting! how did a French guy get the Crown of Aragon? I missed that part

You didn't really miss it. Since I am writing, through the persona of the historian, as if you all know this history (as if readers well into the future of this game's timeline) I like to include foreshadowed events and what not like a normal history book would. I will deal with the acquisition of Catalonia later in this section on politics and warfare in the Renaissance as part of the larger writing of the long struggle between the Angevins and kings of Aragon just like in our timeline, though, naturally, the outcome will be radically different as already foretold.

 

[Idhrendur]

A lovely update. It looks like you are a far more skilled player than I, if I'm reading through to the gameplay correctly.

And in regards to your earlier responses, I am a firm protestant, but I also believe that the reformation frequently threw out the baby with the bathwater. No doubt you'll have plenty to say along those lines in future updates.

 

[volksmarschall]

A lovely update. It looks like you are a far more skilled player than I, if I'm reading through to the gameplay correctly.

And in regards to your earlier responses, I am a firm protestant, but I also believe that the reformation frequently threw out the baby with the bathwater. No doubt you'll have plenty to say along those lines in future updates.

Eh, that may or may not be true (though EU series, along with Victoria have always been my favorite of the Paradox titles) with regards to gameplay but what I love about Provence is she has so much potential but needs a few lucky breaks to go her way (particularly early). In any case I’ll leave it to you to read into the gameplay through the history narrative how that all comes about. I’ve had several very successful Provence runs: this being one of them and thought I’d share in the only way @volksmarschall knows how. But there’s something about Provence/Anjou that is so intriguing to play as in EU4 (not to mention the longstanding history – the Angevins were such an important dynasty in the Middle Ages and yet Fortuna elected them not to be the next great dynasty despite their hopes to be so).

Apropos Protestantism the one problem I have with the term is it is such an umbrella. Historical Protestantism (Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Reformed, Baptist, Methodism) vs. Modern Protestantism (e.g. Charismaticism, Pentecostalism, and “non-denominational”); and then from within this the reality that High Anglicans and High Lutherans are basically (at this point) just very “liberal” Catholics having retained ecclesiastical, Eucharistic, sacramental, and aesthetical theology much like Catholicism (showing their Catholic roots) but being “progressive” on social issues. Of course, certain very stingy Protestant sects (e.g. hardcore latter Reformed) would see such “Protestants” as crypto-Catholic. And yet this doesn’t even take into account that first generation Reformed Protestantism didn’t harbor as strongly anti-Catholic views as 19th century Reformed (neo-)Calvinism came to hold: like believing Catholics worship Nimrod and his wife! (Not joking.) [This is particularly influential in the US where 19th century revivalism mixed democracy and Protestantism -- as you know from reading Empire for Liberty -- and saw Catholicism as a threat to 'democracy' and 'true religion' thereby altering previous Protestant views of Catholics as being "lost sheep" (some of whom are saved and part of the "invisible church" as was Calvin's original view) into being downright Pagans, apostates, and worse, Babylonian totalitarians. ]

I’ll be more or less focusing on the political ramifications of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, especially France’s (and by extension, Provence’s) leading role in the Counter Reformation. From time to time I’ll make historical and intellectual asides where I find and feel appropriate in the persona of our friendly author.

 

[volksmarschall]

BOOK I: THE RENAISSANCE

PART TWO: POLITICS AND WARFARE


II

The Nature of Renaissance Warfare​

Things did not start off well for Rene during the War of the Public Weal, however, despite the beneficial election from Fortuna in the latter stages of the war. Having met defeat at Chalons, the hopeful Angevin advance into Southern Burgundy had put Charles VII’s planned invasion of Picardy on hold. In fact, the nature of Fortune is something to marvel at, behold, but never be able to fully grasp as Machiavelli knew well. Charles the Unfortunate, who might as very well have been Charles the Fortunate in the opening year of the war, had repelled the French invasion of Burgundy, put to flight his cousin Rene, and the Dutch contingent of his armies had also defeated a small French party that had moved into Picardy.

In part, the early success of Burgundy was due to the devolved centralization that had characterized the Kingdom of the Franks in the past. Burgundy was already heavily centralized, and continuing to centralize, and was challenging the legitimacy and power of the senior Valois in Paris. Their ability to craft the League of the Public Weal was a testament to their strength, wealth, and prestige within the French lands. The various minor aristocratic families that came to support them, did so on the belief that Burgundy would succeed in curbing Valois centralization from Paris, and help restore the old rights of the aristocrats that was threatened from Charles’s victory over the English which restored Normandy to the French realm. The Kingdom of France, though ascendant after having beaten back the English, was still in the process of centralizing itself. The Armagnacs hated the Burgundians, so naturally aligned themselves against the Burgundian push for de jure independence. The Angevins, too, were in no position to align with Burgundy, even if their long term interests favored the Public Weal – as even evidenced by the second phase of the war and the Second League of the Public Weal that Charles IV crafted upon his ascension to the Kingdom of Catalonia. Burgundian power and sovereignty rested upon the connecting of their northerly lands with their estate power in Burgundy – the Duchies of Bar and Lorraine, which were lands and titles held by Rene, were in the way, a barrier to the highway Burgundy needed to connect its wealthy Dutch and Flemish lands in the north with their estate seat of power in the south. The Angevins, who even benefitted from the expulsion of the English from Maine, were caught between a rock and a hard place.

These were the darker days of the Angevin Dynasty. They had lost Naples to Aragon, and caught between a centralizing kingdom under Charles VII and Louis XI, and a centralizing Burgundy under Philip III and Charles I, Angevin interests looked to align with those who were the least most immediate threat. Their long term interests were with Burgundy, and perhaps, part of the eventual failure of the First League of the Public Weal was Burgundy’s inability to relax their dreams of kingdom that rode through the Duchy of Bar and Lorraine. Rene would have been an ideal ally for the Public Weal because their interests were very much against Frankish centralization. The problem, of course, was that Burgundian aspiration depended upon centralization too. The Burgundian League was one that sought the protection of the rest of the French nobility only because it was in Burgundy’s interest to centralize its own power to overcome that of their senior cousins in Paris. Unfortunately that also meant that their cousins from Anjou, who also held the duchies of Bar and Lorraine, were sort of in the way of Burgundian aspirations. As such, Rene tacitly opposed the League out of self-preservation. Burgundy threatened Bar and Lorraine more immediately than Charles VII’s centralization plans. Defeating Burgundy’s territorial ambitions over Bar and Lorraine could give the Angevins time to reorient a League of Public Weal to their benefit.

But the tide of war changes quickly. Charles sent Rene “his best knight,” Jean Bureau, and the Swiss Confederacy, which had a compact with the Angevin Duke, had also joined the war. The reformed army that gathered at Lyon was a mixture of French and Swiss troops led by one of the heroes of late Medieval France, the great knight and general Jean Bureau, who far outpaced and outclassed Rene in military strategy and tactics. The second push into southern Burgundy was met by the Burgundian armies just south of Dijon at Beaune, the great capital of Burgundian Wine. Indeed, there was some worry from the Burgundians and the French at fighting a battle on the vineyards, but nevertheless, the two armies skirmished with each other before meeting for pitched battle.

FIGURE 1: The Battle of Beaune fields between the Franco-Swiss army under Jean Bureau (depicted marching off to battle at right), the last great knight of medieval France. A veteran of the Hundreds’ Years War and experienced horseman, Bureau’s exploits during the middle fifteenth century made him a legendary and almost mythical figure in French history and literature.​

***​

Here I need to comment on the nature of late medieval and early Renaissance warfare. We often have the image, thanks to Hollywood and the romantics, that medieval and early Renaissance warfare was a pitched battle of two giant masses of men and horses opposite each other, running and galloping at full pace, with swords and lances drawn, and a battle resulting from an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object. I can think of Mel Gibson’s epic Braveheart as a perfect example of how medieval battles are often envisioned by the imagination of moderns. In reality, this was hardly ever the case.

Before the rise of professional armies, most armies of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe were drawn from levies. Farmers, peasants, and serfs, essentially gathered by their manor lords and thuggish knights, given some equipment for protection, and sent off to war. These men were not professional soldiers, but professional farmers. Farming was the lifeline of all kingdoms. Without food, without the harvest, the kingdom, count, or duchy was in serious trouble.

The goal, then, was not to smack face first into the enemy and have a meat grinding hack-a-thon where the winner was whoever hacked more enemies to death. Instead, warfare was precise, strategic, and thoughtful. Armies and their commanders scouted each other, engaged in small skirmishes as both sides maneuvered for land advantage and to learn the true intent and power of their enemies. In most cases, the skirmishes never materialized beyond small-scale engagements. The men needed to be home in time for the harvest. Armies dissolved for the harvest, only to be reassembled after the planting season, and the skirmishing to battling resumed in the summer months. Upon occasion one side would gain a definite advantage and either press this advantage into a full battle, or force the opposing side to grow weary and lose patience, eventually leading to the confrontation that both sides simultaneously desired to end the conflict, but also avoid so as to limit the bloodshed and look back to the harvest that was needed for the kingdom’s survival.

The Battle of Beaune followed the same tradition of medieval fighting. For two weeks the two sides engaged in a myriad of smaller skirmishes all around the countryside of the small French town and adjacent vineyards. Eventually, the Burgundian army encamped itself in a nearby forest that prevent the continuation of skirmishing and the Franco-Swiss ability to gather intelligence on the Burgundian side. However, the decision to do so left the road to Dijon open, and the Swiss contingent of the French army pressed northward. The seat of the Burgundian estate was left open, forcing the Burgundians to leave their forest hiding spot and reconvene just north of Beaune to stop the Swiss advance. In doing so, they were dogged and tracked by Bureau and Rene from the south, and the pitched battle finally occurred whereby the Burgundians were broken from the two-pronged assault on their forces. Through skirmishing and the pitched battle, the month-long campaign around Beaune resulted in the Burgundian flight from the Duchy of Burgundy and the eventual fall of Dijon to Angevin forces and their Swiss allies.

FIGURE 2: The Battle of Beaune, tapestry. Hand-to-hand fighting was the most common form of military engagement in the late medieval age and into the Renaissance. However, the stereotypical image of charging forces clad in armor and swords is largely mythical. In reality medieval and Renaissance battles were fought through prolonged maneuvers, skirmishing, and only occasionally resulted in full scale hand-to-hand battle.​

If the Battles at Chalons and Cambray worked in the favor of Charles in the first year of the war, the Battle of Beaune had reversed his earlier fortunes. The defeat caused Charles to have to flee northward, leaving Dijon open to the Franco-Swiss advance. A small garrison held out for several months, but eventually surrendered when supplies ran out. This was common in siege warfare too. No one really wanted to knock down castles and other great defensive works, instead, it was best to just starve the enemy into submission, occasionally flinging projectiles from catapults and trebuchets at the enemy to break their will.

The fall of Dijon to Rene of Anjou was the decisive turning point in the First League of the Public Weal, and the first phase of the War of the Public Weal within France. Just as Lady Fortune had blessed Charles in the first year of the war, Fortuna moved to his enemies and blessed them. The fall of the estate of Burgundy dealt a massive blow to Burgundian prestige and power. Some of the other French nobles who had aligned with Charles were quick to abandon him. Of course, their own treachery on the matter was not lost to Charles VII, Louis XI, Louis XII, or Henri II. The capture of Dijon also marked the renewal of the House of Anjou. The county of Rethel also passed into possession of Rene at the close of the war, and the county of Charolais was eventually granted to Charles VII’s youngest son, the future Duke of Orleans, Henri,[1] and from whom the last Valois King would descend from.[2]

Charles of Burgundy, meanwhile, had his prestige crippled. Although his power base in Palatinate Burgundy, Nevers, and the Lowlands was still firmly in his grip, the Second Burgundian War, fought in 1470, ended in outright disaster with Rene coming to possess Nevers and Louis XI seizing Cambray and other lowland territories. His rash and imprudent decision to go to war with Rene over the desire to reclaim Dijon did in the First League, further alienated Charles from the rest of the Valois family line, and he eventually died in 1475 with Brabant, Flanders, and Holland having all slipped away from his possession too, passing what lands remained of the once great feudal holdings to his daughter Isabelle. Her marriage to Matthew, Archduke of Austria, and her resulting death eventually meant Habsburg inheritance of Picardy and the Palatinate Burgundy.

The fortunes of Burgundy were a stark reminder of the nature of late medieval politics. The lands were granted as an apanage to the youngest son of John II. Through Philip the Bold, John the Fearless, and Philip the Good, the Duchy of Burgundy soared into the skies and reached the clouds, rivalling any royal dynasty across Europe in wealth, power, and prestige. John’s attempts at consolidating a possible early kingdom, if not his own rule over France, came to a shattering end with his murder. Burgundy’s alliance with England during the Hundred Years’ War, and France’s eventual victory in that war, meant that Burgundy had chosen the wrong side – something that Charles VII, who supposedly orchestrated the murder of John the Fearless, would not soon forget. Charles the Unfortunate came to power after the managerial reign of his father. He set out to confront centralization by Charles VII, establishing a well thought out and powerful league of French nobles who sought to retain their power. Even the early battles at Charlons and Cambray seemed to highlight that Burgundy’s want for de jure independence and kingship was very possible. But then the tide swung rapidly against Charles and his Burgundian ambitions, exiling him to Picardy, eventually seeing Rene seize three of his former titles, and with heart broken, death and inheritance to Isabelle, and her marriage to Matthew of Austria, the fate of Burgundy was sealed.

FIGURE 3: France, ca. 1480, at the closure of the Burgundian Wars and Isabelle of Burgundy’s marriage to Archduke Matthew of Austria.
​

[1] Could be seen as the equivalent to Charles Duke of Berry, born 1446.

[2] The direct Valois line I write as having expired in 1535 with the death of Francis I, whose death led to another Valois ascending the throne. France had “a noble from the House of de Valois inherits the throne” to cover. He was 23 when he ascended, and 28 or 29 at his death pending on his actual birthday. As such, I’m taking the opportunity to write what happened often, how an apanage branch became head of the dynasty in France. (Note: this is not my branch of the family, just how a "noble from the House of Valois" became King of France in 1535 which is now the medium by which the Orleans-Valois, if you permit, are ruling over France.)

 

[TheCreator901]

Provence carries on to maintain itself as a region of importance.

 

[stnylan]

Of course the other reasons why pitched battles were avoided so assiduously is that they could be so disasterous to one's cause. As this one was to the Burgundians - and despite all the dilly-dallying it did become a meatgrinder of its own. But then, that's what happens when a small semi-professional core runs amok in the peasant levy.

 

[KingJerkera]

Well that went quite well. I wish you luck against France though hopefully they don't gun for you until you have some more provinces under your belt.

 

[guillec87]

very interesting story! and I like the way it is written

 

[volksmarschall]

Provence carries on to maintain itself as a region of importance.

With a little bit of luck with the French and Swiss AI armies just happening to be in the same region as my army was.

Of course the other reasons why pitched battles were avoided so assiduously is that they could be so disasterous to one's cause. As this one was to the Burgundians - and despite all the dilly-dallying it did become a meatgrinder of its own. But then, that's what happens when a small semi-professional core runs amok in the peasant levy.

I will discuss that in more detail where appropriate -- all of those "mercenary cruelty" events for me!

Well that went quite well. I wish you luck against France though hopefully they don't gun for you until you have some more provinces under your belt.

Must do everything to keep France on my good side, at least until the time is right to "break away." It's important to remember that although playing as "Provence" which plays, in game, as a de jure independent nation; the writing is if Provence is simply an extension of France but worried about being incorporated into the centralized French Kingdom. So conflict with France is all but inevitable...

very interesting story! and I like the way it is written

Thanks! It also makes the writing a bit easier to do it through a persona of the historian too. Instead of some dry textbook history.

 

[volksmarschall]

Post is blank to start the new update on the next page for reader's sake.