Chapter 5 - Pushing Further Into Africa
(The chapters seem a bit dull for me so I'm changing up the style slightly.)
Beatriz, empress of Castille, wanted to make her mark in history. The easiest way for her would be to continue her holy wars. However, there are two things standing in her way. First, the truce with Morocco has yet to expire. Secondly, Venice, a small trading nation, has a province in North Africa and allied with Tripoli. While she had to wait out the truce, she needed to find a way to remove Venice from the picture. An excommunication should work fine. While it would be nice to rid them herself, she knew that her navy doesn't have superiority over Venice. Therefore, she just needed to wait for someone else to take the lead while she reaps the reward. However, that opportunity never came. Barely a year later, Croatia, who controlled the curia following Castille, decided to revoke the excommunication. Beatriz vowed to make the Croatian pay but she knew now was not the time.
In the year 1387, the empress of Castille declared the third crusade against Morocco. Her goal is to remove Morocco from the map and protect Castille's southern borders.
Knowing full well that Morocco won't be putting up much resistance, she also declared war on Tripoli.
Jalayirids was already in a war and needed peace to recover. Beatriz merely laughed at the Muslim nation's poor attempt to challenge her. However, Venice was a different matter. In naval, Venice does indeed have the upper hand. Beatriz wanted to see how her troops perform before deciding whether to call in Granada. The war with Morocco was very simple. Destroy, siege and wait. As for Tripoli, they didn't put in much effort either. They had to deal with The Mamluks from the east and clearly lost their entire army somewhere in The Mamluk territory. Luckily, the Jalayirids did do the empress a favour by forcing The Mamluk an early peace deal with Tripoli with only one province taken. Castille troops were quick to siege and Tripoli proved to be nothing more than a small chore. The Empress got bold from her easy wins against the Muslim nations and decided to take on Venice's navy head on. The result was a loss but, luckily, the losses were minimum. Seeing that she needed some help, she reluctantly called in Granada. Before she could coordinate a naval assault, some rebels spawned near Tripoli and her redirected her attention there. When the rebels were dealt with, she found the Granada fleet was annihilated. To her surprise though, Granada managed to land on Treviso and began the siege. She wrapped up her war with Morocco and Tripoli (lost the screenshot with Tripoli, sorry):
Once Treviso was occupied, Venice were finally willing to give up Kairouan. The Jalayirids were already longing for peace and a white peace was arranged. Beatriz felt great job with her accomplishments in northern Africa. She wanted to accomplish more and an opportunity came up a bit further south:
The first colony was established in Tuat and Beatriz believed this will be her empire's key step to controlling all of Africa. Following the war with Tripoli, she let her troops rest before starting two unsuccessful campaigns against The Mamluks. The first merely gained Castille the province of Lybia as the attrition dealt a serious blow to Castille's armies. Luckily, The Mamluks wanted a way out and were willing to give up something. The second campaign didn't start off that much better as the large rebellions in Egypt proved too much for Castille troops to handle. Alexandria and Delta were obtained. Many believed this was a great victory but the empress didn't think so. She felt that she failed her empire by being unable to push far into Egypt. A couple of years later, she died in bed with the regret of unable to push into Egypt.