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Starting things off with a Succession War and Imperial Intrigue! What did you pick for your first idea group?
Did Ranald learn nothing from the MacDrostans? The Imperial crown is a poisoned chalice.
Glad to see the AAR back.
Glad to see the AAR back.
Malcolm MacGiric
Lived: 1437-1491
Head of House MacGiric: 1471-1491
King of Scotland: 1471-1491
Lived: 1437-1491
Head of House MacGiric: 1471-1491
King of Scotland: 1471-1491
Under King Malcom, the son of Ranald and grandson of Gilbert, Scotland’s transition away from the Medieval era continued at pace. During his reign, Malcolm was confronted by a fundamental crisis within the Scottish elite as the alliances formed across the elite by his grandfather, and frayed during the reign of his father, started to break down. Malcolm’s efforts to deal with these problems would define both his reign, and the latter decades of the 15th century in Scotland.
The origins of the political conflict that overshadowed Malcolm’s rule was a sharp decline in the international power of Scottish merchants. During the era of the MacDrostan Empire, Scottish merchants dominated the trade of Northern Europe – maintaining an iron grip over German and especially Baltic trade. After the collapse of that Empire the Scots were pushed out of their position in Germany within a couple of decades, but continued to play a crucial role in the profitable Baltic trade routes for some time. However, from the middle of the 15th century Scots speaking traders originating from Poland, Lithuania and Pomerania started to become increasingly successful. By Malcolm’s ascension one was as likely to find a trader originating in Riga, Stettin or Gdansk in Scotland’s ports as a Scottish born trader in the Baltic cities.
The result of this shift was an upsurge in mercantilism amongst the Scottish mercantile elite. However, the merchants found themselves powerless to effect change through parliament, leading in turn to demands for a reorganisation of Scotland’s political system in favour of commoners. Malcolm’s solution to the anger of the mercantile classes was to bow to their every demand. Restrictions were placed upon foreign traders, with the crown using its influence to force the English to place similar restrictions on non-Scottish merchants, as Malcolm sought to empower the native trading houses. In the political sphere, Malcolm’s reforms were far more significant. Bowing to the fiscal pressure of the merchants, who still controlled the purse strings of the Kingdom, Malcolm divided the Scottish Parliament in 1482 into two separate houses – one in which the representatives of the Church and the nobility would sit and another reserved for commons. In effect, Malcolm had significantly increased the political weight of Scotland’s trading elites.
These changes scandalised the Scots nobility. In the Welsh Highlands there was talk of rebellion, across the Lowlands the landed aristocracy was incensed. The MacGiric monarchy established by King Gilbert at the start of the century had always been regarded as ‘Crowned Noble Republic’ in which the aristocracy ruled the country in alliance with other groups. By siding so obviously with the merchants, Malcolm appeared to be challenging the very foundations of that political system in a deeply concerning way.
A brief war between 1483 and 1484 against the English and their Bavarian protectors, after the English had attempted to expel Scotland’s merchants and remove the trading restrictions forced upon them by Edinburgh, greatly bolstered the monarchy’s prestige as the Scottish army and navy both performed admirably. Indeed, the King of Bavarian and Bohemia was forced to grant a substantial tribute to the Scots King at the conclusion to the conflict even as the Scottish economic domination of England was reinforced. Yet, pride won on the battlefield was no long term solution to the political crisis in Scotland whose resolution had only been postponed rather than put off entirely.
It was only in the aftermath of the war that the King finally addressed his shunned nobility. He chose to bribe the aristocracy in exchange for their swallowing of their pride and acceptance of the new status quo. The nobles were granted substantial pensions and tax exemption, whilst new economic privileges over the peasantry were also offered. The monarchy’s gambit was largely successful in bringing great Lords of the Kingdom on side, and averting the prospect of civil conflict. Unfortunately, by offering a bribe to the aristocracy the crown left itself in a precarious financial position.
Attempts to maintain the new political settlement by loans alone, even if the Scottish government made important strides forward in its financial mechanisms, proved inadequate. From the end of the 1480s the monarchy was forced to turn to the last available source of untapped income in the Kingdom – the Catholic Church. In order to keep the merchants and nobility docile, Malcolm took a wrecking ball to Scotland’s fragile religious settlement that had been established at the beginning of the century.
Through the 13th and 14th centuries any attempt to move against the Church’s economic privileges or to try to extract incomes from it for the crown had been closely associated with the Fraticelli movement – with the movement in turn enthusiastically supporting any such moves. Since the beginning of the 15th century, non-conformist elements in Scottish Christianity had been tolerated within the Catholic Church, but the Kingdom’s policies and hierarchies had always remained clearly on the side of orthodoxy. From the late 1480s the Scottish monarchy would begin cut down upon the Church’s economic privileges, once again opening up fissures in Scottish religious life that had never been wholly sealed.
Far, far away from the halls of power in Scotland itself, something momentous was happening on the icy isle of Greenland. Having had knowledge of Greenland for centuries, during the late 1480s Scottish explorers setting off from the Duchy of Iceland to establish settlements on the South-Western shore of the mostly inhospitable island. Although few realised the significance of this at the time, it was the beginning of the Age of Discovery, an age that would transform the world and see Scotland and the Scots play an invaluable role.
Malcolm passed away at the age of 54 in 1491, leaving his Kingdom to his younger brother Duncan. He left behind a fragile Kingdom on the cusp of a new era, but whose future remained shrouded in uncertainty.
Indeed! Large portions of the people of the Lothians, Northumberland, Yorkshire and Lancashire (most of the core areas of the Scottish Kingdom!) have Anglo-Saxon descent, even if their culture has now emerged as Scots.
Thanks! Hope you keep enjoying it.
I won't be mentioning idea groups directly very often but I chose economic ideas and then colonial ones.
For as long as they don't go to Panama.
I can make no comment on future plans regarding Central America and the Gulf of Darien
.Utrecht and Ostfriesland (those little Yellow spoldges around the Netherlands are still owned by me) are, but none of the rest of Scotland is.
A short while
/ Did Ranald learn nothing from the MacDrostans? The Imperial crown is a poisoned chalice.
Glad to see the AAR back.
Indeed, on both counts!
Great update!
((Sorry you didn't get the result you desired, Tommy.
Thanks, and don't worry - the struggle doesn't end
.
And when we say 'race', it looks very much like Scotland has a major advantage over everyone else.
And when we say 'race', it looks very much like Scotland has a major advantage over everyone else.
A good head start is the best way to win!
I'll be interested to read about further political changes as Scotland fully distances herself from the Middle Ages and embraces the oncoming Renaissance. I'll be interested also to see how you fare on the colonisation front – especially whether you end up in Darien.
Duncan I MacGiric
Lived: 1439-1501
Head of House MacGiric: 1491-1501
King of Scotland: 1491-1501
Lived: 1439-1501
Head of House MacGiric: 1491-1501
King of Scotland: 1491-1501
Duncan I may have ruled for just a decade between his brother’s and then his own death, but his reign witnessed decisive shifts in the balance of power in Europe, an important turn in the conflict within the Scottish elite, as well as one of the most dramatic moments of the Age of Discovery. Possessing an impressive political flair, Duncan set Scotland well on its course into the next century.
During the 1490s the sands of European diplomacy, which had been relatively stable for several decades, were shifting. Following the death of the childless King of Bavaria-Bohemia and then his son in quick succession, Duncan’s niece Elisabeth, the daughter of his sister, became first in line for the Bavarian throne. With Elisabeth having been raised in Scotland, and with residual anti-Scottish sentiment still a factor in German politics, she was an unpopular candidate for the crown. However, in large part through the diplomatic and financial pressure of the Scots monarchy, her ascension proceeded without issue in 1492.
This peaceful situation did not last long. By the end of the year Ludwig von Habsburg, the Duke of Moravia and Austria and pretender to the throne, had risen in rebellion and sought the support of the Poles. As the Scots declared their support for Elisabeth they drew in the French and Irish, in turn leading to the Lotharingians and Aquitainians involving themselves in the conflict on the side of Ludwig. As the conflict raged on both England and Frisia would declare war upon the Elisabethan coalition by the end of 1494.
The Scots deployed large numbers across the Channel and North Sea to participate in the Elisabethan War’s primary battle fronts in Northern France (in particular Normandy and Ile de France), the Low Countries and Northern Germany. The Scottish armies, a far more professional force than most of their continental equivalents, enjoyed a string of victories. Most notably at the Battle of Paris where their late arrival on the field tipped the balance of war’s largest single engagement away from a Lotharingian-Aquitainian army and in favour of the France, saving the French capital from falling in the process.
At sea the Royal Scottish Navy did not perform nearly as well as the Kingdom’s land armies. At the Battle of Cote D’Argent a mixture of incompetence on the part of the Scots and the military genius of the Aquitainian commanders, not mention the advantage of larger vessels, led to the destruction of the better part of the Scottish fleet.
The War was eventually concluded with a convoluted peace agreement in 1496 after all sides bowed to exhaustion. In Bavaria-Bohemia, Elisabeth remained Queen – but agreed to marry Ludwig von Habsburg, significantly the King of Ireland and France agreed to divide his two Kingdoms between his two sons – separating a would be super power. It was a peace agreement that could have effected Scotland’s position negatively, instead the Scottish alliance with France only grew tighter and Bavaria-Bohemia maintained a close relationship with Edinburgh long after Ludwig became King alongside Elisabeth. Whilst her diplomatic position remained secure, the War had been disastrous for the Kingdom’s fragile financial situation.
In order to hold the political peace within the Kingdom, Duncan’s brother and predecessor had compromised the Kingdom financially by granting the nobility numerous financial advantages. These had in turn been supported through a mixture of heavy lending by the crown and a push for the extraction of incomes from the Church. Duncan placed an even heavier toll on the Church in Scotland – encouraging mass corruption within the Church to support his financial exaction. The most noted Church scandal to emerge in the 1490s was the sale of the position of Bishop of St Andrews, second only to the Archbishop of York in the hierarchy of the Scottish Church. Conflict within Scottish Christianity had re-opened in the 1480s, now it was starting to accelerate.
In 1495 Donald Gilchrist finally set out from Greenland, sailing South-Westward he came to a large island which was dubbed ‘Newfoundland’ before soon discovering a vast continent which would later become known as North America, but was named ‘Nova Scotia’ by Gilchrist himself. A New World had been discovered, and it was claimed by Scotland.
Gilchrist’s success led to a series of further expeditions from 1495-1499 in which he travelled through the Hudson Bay and as far South as the Florida Keys – mapping a large part of the Eastern coastline of North America. Back in Scotland, the discovery of the New World did not, initially at least, have the earth shattering impact one might expect. Indeed, in the last years of the 15th century the Scots did little to engage with the new continent. Sailors travelled to Southwards to take advantage of the good fishing waters around Newfoundland whilst a tentative trading operation, largely managed by Donald Gilchrist and his family, saw a slow trickle of goods travel across the North Atlantic. Nonetheless, prior to Duncan I’s death in 1501 the crown had already approved the plans of the Gilchrist family to establish a permanent settlement on Newfoundland as a means of both protecting securing fishing grounds and expanding Scottish trading interests in Nova Scotia. It wouldn’t be until the 16th century that the bearing the New World would have on the Old would start to become clear.
Duncan I passed away in 1501, leaving his Kingdom to his nephew of the same name, the younger brother of Elisabeth of Bavaria-Bohemia. During Duncan II’s lengthier reign the world, and Scotland in particular, would change at a terrifyingly rapid speed.
Thanks, I won't force the issue - but should the opportunity arise I wouldn't be against it.
Well, we are now entering the period when you will be able to see!
And when we say 'race', it looks very much like Scotland has a major advantage over everyone else.
Eliminating the competitors also works well. >
Idhrendur has the right idea! Enewald may be a bit ambitious
. In this alt history we have numerous powers with the ability to be players in the colonial race for the Americas on Europe's Western shoreline - Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Aquitaine, Mauretania and the Spanish Princelings all have potential, but not all will make the jump to being a colonial power.I'll be interested to read about further political changes as Scotland fully distances herself from the Middle Ages and embraces the oncoming Renaissance. I'll be interested also to see how you fare on the colonisation front – especially whether you end up in Darien.
All things shall soon become more apparent!