Here Dwells God - A Jewish Poland AAR

[Tommy4ever]

We're getting towards the end here! If we stick to my plan, we're 3 updates away from the end of the CK2 portion of this story!

A brutal series of conflicts. Everyone came out battered and bruised and Mesopotamia is now effectively a wasteland.

Yes, you can imagine that both the Arab and Jewish worlds would be severely drained by the Religious Wars. Then, just as they start to recover in the 1360s, they fight another major conflict in the Crimea and are both hit by plague.

A sobering end to the Holy Wars for the new king. The task of restoring order awaits in Poland, while the Middle East lies in ruins. All in all a sorry state of affairs, surely not helped by the fact that I highly doubt this is the final word on things. Surely the Jewish zealotry won’t take this defeat as sign that the great apocalyptic wars are over. How will they reform their prophecies, I wonder?

I was reading the other day about how the popularity of Christianity in the final years of the Roman Empire owed something to the nature of Christianity as essentially an apocalyptic cult. While Rome burned, the gospels preached eternal bliss in the afterlife – and in the context, who wouldn’t be tempted? For this reason I found it very interesting that you chose to give a sort of material “on-the-ground” account of the idea of the End of Times. It’s easy to remember that it wasn’t just a metaphor.

And RIP to the Jewish Iraqi Romanovs. That would’ve been fun!

Apocalyptic religious movements often seem to have a really incredible power to expand rapidly during times of hardship. I suppose when you live the life of a medieval peasant, the idea of an impending paradise is very compelling with real life is so miserable and has a high chance of getting worse at any moment.

I did really want to keep that Jewish Iraq alive. For one, it was fun having other Jewish states around (one of the reasons I loved it when we converted the Russian Principalities in the 12th century). The problem was they were basically constantly attacked by Holy Wars from every Muslim Sheik, Emir or Sultan around. I fought a series of major wars after their birth to protect them, but couldn't come to their aid when the Caliphate launched its massive invasion of Israel - and they quickly got gobbled up. Iraq probably only could have survived if I had kept them as a part of Poland.

A Mongol-like occupation of Mesopotamia and all ultimately for naught. At least the holy land was retained. I think a European focus might be needed for the foreseeable future.

Yes, we've certainly had our fingers burnt when it comes to grand Middle Eastern visions of conquest. I very nearly lost that last big war with the Arabs over Israel (especially when half of Poland rose in rebellion mid-way in). Was the closest damn thing you saw in your life.

We will refocus back towards Poland going forward now. Although Israel will naturally have a hugely important role in the nation's fate, not least because it is the centre of the Orthodox Jewish church.

So much bloodshed, and Iraq is lost back :/ . Well at least the holy lands are still intact. I'd have started with Levant keeping things contiguous and easier to defend. And isn't the 2 rivers supposed to be Nile and Euphrates?

You don't get to choose where the Kohen Gadol launched Great Holy Wars as a Jewish player (and I'm not sure you can even influence it). I was hoping he would go for Syria and I could control all of the Levant as a reasonably strong Middle Eastern Jewish state - possibly giving it independence at that point. But alas!

And the 2 rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates .

Seems we'll need to do divide and conquer once we handle affairs at home; the Christian states in Africa might be a good start.

We haven't forgotten those Crusader Egyptians - and will be returning to them in the next update .

Had a feeling events back home and crusades or jihads in the Middle East might intervene to make things difficult. At least Israel was retained. But civil wars are bad if even, as in the end every ‘enemy’ soldier you kill is one of your own subjects in the end.

And we certainly have had our fair shares of civil wars! And I wouldn't expect them to dry up any time soon ...

Yaroslavl did so much, could trample any foe into the dust ... but one.

I can quite imagine his name being thrice-cursed by his enemies for a long while yet, being praised by his friends, and being despised by all for being so successful - for his success makes their failures all the more stark.

I'm thinking that either at the end of this portion or the start of the EUIV part I might do a little retrospective on the 'great figures of medieval Poland' to look back on the lives of some of our biggest characters - Illiya the Bloodhound, Yaroslav II, King Gleb who converted the Russian Princes, Jacob Shamir the prophet. There were some very interesting people!

"He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." Usually it's meant a bit more literally, but even though he didn't fall in battle, in can say that in a very real sense Yaroslavl's attempts to live up to the apocalyptic mantle bestowed upon him ultimately ended up destroying him (and nearly took the kingdom with them).

Yaroslav was a really great character in the way we got to see him across 4 updates - first a zealous teenager awed by the prophet taking him to his father, then the young wunderkind of biblical legend conquering the Holy Land, then a religious reformer as Israel is rebuilt before becoming something of a megalomaniac consumed by his own sense of religious destiny. But when you are praised as the reincarnation of King David by your early 20s, what else can be expected! My fast moving style doesn't give us as many opportunities to see individuals playing major roles over several updates like that very often.

 

[stnylan]

The boy did good! And then the plague came ... and now an unscrupulous uncle and a new Yaroslavl kept near prisoner in a tower.

Jewish Poland is not done yet with internal and civil discord, methinks. In fact I would wager it is about to get worse.

 

[Cromwell]

A seven year old prince in a tower with a tyrannical uncle as regent. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[diskoerekto]

You don't get to choose where the Kohen Gadol launched Great Holy Wars as a Jewish player (and I'm not sure you can even influence it). I was hoping he would go for Syria and I could control all of the Levant as a reasonably strong Middle Eastern Jewish state - possibly giving it independence at that point. But alas!

Aha, I thought it was your choice.

 

[Specialist290]

Igor's reign appears to have given Poland some much needed breathing room, and time to rest (relatively speaking...) and consolidate its gains. From the looks of things, they'll certainly need every bonus they can get in the coming years.

 

[DensleyBlair]

A deadly virus uprooting best laid plans? Now where have I heard that one before...

Worrying situation for the Crown, what with the whole history of princes, towers and uncles. But good to see some measure of recovery in Poland nevertheless. I'm going to be fascinated to see how the world shapes up in time for the conversion. The Jewish–Arabian frontier in the Crimea is particularly interesting, with the idea of an expanded Middle Eastern conflict spreading across the Caucasus. I feel like it's been a while since we've seen what Western Europe is looking like, so I'll be intrigued to se how that ends up. Burgundy in the Baltic is one interesting quirk.

 

[Ebanu8]

Ouch. None can ever forget the Bubonic Plague, or the Black Death as it was called. Hope the boy manages to pull through.

 

[Tommy4ever]

1366-1380 – Princes in the Tower

Left to right: Prince Yaroslav Mitrofanovich, Yaroslav III, Simeon Demidovich​

At the death of King Igor courtly politics in Kiev became finely balances. The young King Yaroslav III was an impressive prodigy – fluent in Russian, Old Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew at the age of 7 – but he would need many years of nurturing before he could contemplate taking any governing responsibility. With plague ravaging the capital, already claiming his father’s life, his guardians had agreed that isolation within the towers of his palace was wise. This left power over the Kingdom in the hands of a regency council headed by the King’s uncle Yaroslav Mitrofanovich. On the council, Yaroslav’s power was balanced by the wisely old figure of the royal Cupbearer, Prince Simeon – by now approaching his 70th birthday. While both of these figures lacked the large landed estates of the most powerful Princes, they were the first and second in line to the throne. Simeon was next in line after the young King, as the second son of King Demid and the younger brother of Yaroslav II. Meanwhile, Yaroslav Mitrofanovich followed him in the line of succession, as the son of Demid’s youngest, and now deceased, son Mitrofan.

In the claustrophobic environment of the quarantined court rumours of the malevolent intentions towards the King by these two regents swirled around court. Unfortunately for the elder Simeon, Yaroslav Mitrofanovich had been more agile in positioning himself to carry out a war of intrigue – taking up the role as one of the King’s personal tutors he constantly whispered into his nephew’s ear about his suspicions of his rival. The decisive moment in this struggle came after a large banquet in 1367. There, Simeon, as Cupbearer formally charged with protecting the King from poisoning, grew overly jolly and allowed the child King to drink a significant quantity of wine. As the King awoke in the morning in agony, Yaroslav Mitrofanovich cried foul play – accusing Simeon of poisoning. The Prince was subsequently arrested and executed for attempted regicide, while Yaroslav took charge of administering a variety of cures for his nephew’s affliction, which passed within days.

Unfortunately for Yaroslav III, the execution of Simeon had made him no safer. Instead, he had merely removed the most powerful counter to his uncle’s influence at court. From Simeon’s death, the King’s isolation in his tower grew more absolute, with his public appearances growing increasingly limited. One evening in 1368 his servants found that he had disappeared from his chambers – with his body being found washed up on the bank of the Dnieper several miles south of Kiev. His uncle claimed he had been kidnapped by enemies of the crown and the Vyshenky dynasty, yet few believed that he had not been murdered by the man who now rose to the Polish throne as Yaroslav IV.

The machinations in Kiev accelerated a growing divide between the Polish monarchy and the Jewish Orthodox religious hierarchy. The formal structure of Orthodox Judaism had been created in the heady atmosphere of the Great Aliyah and the Wars of Religion. The relationship between the secular power of the Polish crown and the clerical authorities in Jerusalem, and for that matter the Kohen Gadol and the wider Jewish community of Rabbis was not set in stone. Many in Jerusalem were keen to exert the power of the High Priesthood as a power independent, even above, the Polish monarchy. The descent of the Vyshenky dynasty into inglorious, inward-looking, fratricidal conflict only added further impetus to this move. The means by which the High Priesthood sought to attempt to revive the religious fervour of the first half of the century – calling for a renewed civilisational conflict against the enemies of Judaism. In 1371, the Kohen Gadol Rostislav II called upon all Zealous Jews to assemble in Israel, and launch an invasion of the Crusader states of Egypt – conquering the land from which Moses had led the Jewish people to freedom two and a half thousands years before.

Without the backing of the Polish monarchy, the army of Zealots the High Priest was able to assemble was far smaller than the armies that had rampaged across the Middle East between the 1310s and 1340s. Nonetheless, many thousands of holy warriors made the journey from European Poland, the Order of Zealots itself wholeheartedly backed the Kohen Gadol’s efforts while the lords of Israel uniformly lined up behind the war effort. It was one of these lords, Prince Igor of Ascalon, who led the Jewish army across the Sinai and into Egypt. Defeating the Templars around the Nile Delta, he proceeded to besiege the key port of Damietta. This siege lasted for several years, with the Templars receiving scant assistant from Europe while a steady stream of fervent warriors arrived in Egypt from Poland. After Damietta finally fell in 1374, Igor and the Zealots attempted to push southwards but were defeated by a Templar army outside of Cairo. At the same time, the Jews were reluctant to attack Papal ruled Alexandria for fear of provoking a larger European response. They therefore agreed a truce with the Templars – with most of the Nile Delta coming under the control of Igor of Ascalon.

Back in Europe, the stain of Yaroslav IV’s dark rise to power hung over his reign. A suspected kinslayer, child murderer and regicide, he had the reputation of a tyrant before every ascending to the throne. Fortunately for him though, the ravages of the plague made any rebellion against his ruled in the months and years after his ascension in 1368 impractical – allowing him to consolidate his grip over the country. By the time a major rebellion broke out in 1377, he was strong enough to field a large army – and secured a major victory over a rebel coalition attacking Kiev. However, the scale of the revolt against his rule meant that a no single battle could tip the scales in his favour. The civil war had years left to run.

Following from his victory near the capital, Yaroslav IV initially met with significant success – defending an attack on Minsk, capturing Smolensk and terrorising large tracts of rebel-held countryside through Galicia and Old Poland. Yet the balance of the conflict tip significantly against him after Igor of Ascalon, the conqueror of Damietta, arrived on the shores of the Black Sea with a large Israelite army, and the tacit support of the Kohen Gadol in 1380. With the Orthodox authorities turning decisively against him, Yaroslav needed a quick victory to avoid the splintering of his coalition – and sought out a decisive battle against Igor near Odessa.

There, his army was badly beaten and fled from the field in a disorganised fashion. With a small group of followers, Yaroslav rode across the southern Steppe, attempting to safely return to Kiev. During this journey his retinue was intercepted by a band of Georgian raiders just north of the Crimea who slew his guards and captured the King. This dramatic incident left the fate of Poland balancing on the judgement of a group of nomadic warriors. The Georgians demanded a vast tribute in exchange for the safe return of Yaroslav to the capital and were promised riches beyond their imagination. Word of the priceless booty in the Georgians’ hands soon spread across the Steppe. Soon groups of Khazars, Cossacks and Tatars descended upon the region, causing a bout of fierce fighting on the Steppe as rival nomadic groups fought over the possession of Yaroslav. In the midst of this confusion, the King was killed and the prospect of his ransom was ended.

With Yaroslav IV’s death, the reason for the civil war had been removed. Yaroslav IV’s remaining allies grouped around the King’s son, crowning him Yaroslav V in Kiev. These Yaroslavian loyalists approached the rebels seeking peace. They agreed to the formation of a joint regency council consisting of Princes drawn from both sides of the civil war, while another boy King named Yaroslav was left to sit on the Polish throne.

 

[Tommy4ever]

Phew! Three Yaroslavs later and we have another boy King with the same name as the last time, just this time minus the scheming uncle. Lets hope Yaroslav V has better luck!

The boy did good! And then the plague came ... and now an unscrupulous uncle and a new Yaroslavl kept near prisoner in a tower.

Jewish Poland is not done yet with internal and civil discord, methinks. In fact I would wager it is about to get worse.

A seven year old prince in a tower with a tyrannical uncle as regent. What could possibly go wrong?

When I saw this whole storyline playing out in the game my urge to do a Richard III style sojourn was just too strong! The scheming murderous characters are often the most fun in CK2 .

Aha, I thought it was your choice.

Yeah - from this point on I decided to only get involved in Great Holy Wars for a target I really wanted. I worried that taking all Templar Egypt would make Poland too strong so stayed out. The war was a stalemate for a long time, until a revolt broke out in the Templar lands and the rebels around the Delta ended up surrendering to the Jewish invasion.

Igor's reign appears to have given Poland some much needed breathing room, and time to rest (relatively speaking...) and consolidate its gains. From the looks of things, they'll certainly need every bonus they can get in the coming years.

Igor's reign was certainly a fairly successful one that gave us some respite. Its a shame he didn't get the chance to be involved in more conflicts before his relatively early death - his martial stats were actually even better than his father Yaroslav II.

A deadly virus uprooting best laid plans? Now where have I heard that one before...

Worrying situation for the Crown, what with the whole history of princes, towers and uncles. But good to see some measure of recovery in Poland nevertheless. I'm going to be fascinated to see how the world shapes up in time for the conversion. The Jewish–Arabian frontier in the Crimea is particularly interesting, with the idea of an expanded Middle Eastern conflict spreading across the Caucasus. I feel like it's been a while since we've seen what Western Europe is looking like, so I'll be intrigued to se how that ends up. Burgundy in the Baltic is one interesting quirk.

Talking about people being in quarantine was maybe a little too close to home .

Let's hope Yaroslav V doesn't follow the same history as his predecessor ...

As for the rest of the world - I'm going to wait until after the conversion to do a review of the rest of the world (if only because borders get shifted up quite a bit by the conversion itself). But we'll have a detailed look across the rest of the known world at that point - I'll include a bit of a potted history of each area as best I remember it.

Ouch. None can ever forget the Bubonic Plague, or the Black Death as it was called. Hope the boy manages to pull through.

The boy never caught the plague, but couldn't quite escape from his jealous family members :.

 

[diskoerekto]

This Yaroslav IV, what a *********! Lost a genius king before he ever had a chance to rule! That's a reason to break a keyboard or a mouse

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

You almost have to admire how committed the Polish kings are to getting in their own way.

 

[Ebanu8]

Ouch, now this is quite messy. Looks like we need to get a grip on our reigns of power and resolve all the issues plaguing Poland and Israel, one at a time.

 

[DensleyBlair]

A child prodigy murdered by his uncle, who in turn gets ingloriously killed in battle. Poetic justice indeed.

Nice to see something like an entente reached between the rival religious powers in Sinai. How long will that last I wonder.

 

[Crimson Lionheart]

Yaroslav IV got exactly what he deserved. Justice follows every man

 

[Bullfilter]

Catching up with the last two rapid-fire updates , but have some comments on the previous one first:

Symbolically, the capital was moved from Minsk to the city of Kiev.

Interesting move. Did it have much practical (beneficial) effect in-game?

the rebellion of the 1840s

Typo there?

engaged in a constant Hobbesian struggle

Oh, very nice reference.

This new relationship between the state and bootstrapping Cossack adventurers would be one of the defining characteristics of Late Medieval and Early Modern Poland.

And a great little sentence there, too.

two armies, each well over 20,000 strong, were sent across the Black Sea to oppose the Polish aggression. Having inherited his father’s strategic mind, Igor swept these armies aside in impressive fashion.

Must have been an interesting campaign, after the initial shock wore off.

Yet, Igor was his own man. He had no desire to risk what he had already gained from the war and sued for peace – with the Caliph thankful to lose only his Crimean lands after such a stinging defeat.

A wise settlement, methinks.

the German Plague – a form of pneumonic plague that had already claimed tens of thousands of lives in the Holy Roman Empire and Scandinavia. Spreading rapidly along trading routes, the virus was particularly catastrophic in urban centres – claiming as much as a quarter of the population in the largest Polish cities including Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow, Minsk, Smolensk and the capital Kiev. Its most infamous victim would be King Igor himself, who died shortly after falling ill in 1366 at the age of 46.

Oh dear. How current.

Yes, we've certainly had our fingers burnt when it comes to grand Middle Eastern visions of conquest. I very nearly lost that last big war with the Arabs over Israel (especially when half of Poland rose in rebellion mid-way in). Was the closest damn thing you saw in your life.

Must have been very entertaining to play though - getting one's monies-worth from the game!

Will read and comment on the latest chapter a little later. Thanks for a great read thus far as you rocket along to the cross-over point to EU4.

 

[hawaiiansteve]

The ups and downs of the story of Jewish Poland is a great story. I look forward to every new post!

 

[Specialist290]

Yaroslav III was such a promising young lad... Of course, he would fall into the clutches of and be destroyed by his cretin of an uncle.

There's a certain irony in Yaroslav IV being considered so valuable as a hostage when he ended up being pretty worthless as a king. I'd imagine that even some of the more loyal boyars probably dithered just a little while scraping together the ransom money...

 

[stnylan]

My my, all these Yaroslavls!

And yet we are virtually back to square one. Let us hope Number 5 stays alive

 

[Bullfilter]

While both of these figures lacked the large landed estates of the most powerful Princes, they were the first and second in line to the throne.

Uh oh. This will almost certainly end grimly.

His uncle claimed he had been kidnapped by enemies of the crown and the Vyshenky dynasty, yet few believed that he had not been murdered by the man who now rose to the Polish throne as Yaroslav IV.

OOC: did he do it for sure? Or just a suspicion?

In the midst of this confusion, the King was killed and the prospect of his ransom was ended.

As others have said, what goes around ...

 

[Tommy4ever]

The Sceptre, the Mitre and the Scarlet Lady – 1380-1402​

As the various factions of Poland’s shattered elite came together following the death of Yaroslav IV, they sought to re-forge the realm’s political structures in an effort to end the instability and monarchical overreach that had plagued much of the past century. In recent years a view had gained traction across wide sections of the nobility that a powerful monarch was in and of itself a destabilising influence requiring significant restraint. They therefore sought to build structures capable of outliving the regency council of the young King Yaroslav V’s minority, and permanently alter the Kingdom. This led to the creation The Council of Twelve – in effect a regency council expect to continue to sit throughout the King’s life, with the authority to significantly constrain the King’s freedom of action. Its members was to be drawn from across the realm – featuring the Chief Rabbis of Minsk, Kiev and Warsaw, a representative of the Kohen Gadol, two noble members each from Old Poland and Galicia, three from Ruthenia and one from Israel. These positions would rotate among different individuals but retain the balance between the different regions of the Polish realm.

This new political structure did successfully introduce a twenty-year era of peace to the realm. With power shared broadly across the elite, and underpinned by the theological backing of Jerusalem, internal dissent was significantly reduced. Moreover, there was very little appetite for the expensive foreign adventures that had sapped the Kingdom of so much of its energy through the preceding century. The only major conflict of note from the end of the 14th century was the Anconan War. In 1388 the Poles made common cause with the Dalmatian city of Ragusa – turning against the influential trading Republic of Ancona. In Azov, Kerch and Damietta, the Poles stormed the Anconan trading quarters and slaughtered the Italian merchants – seizing their properties, while the Ragusans attacked their shipping lanes through the Mediterranean. This conflict had been strongly pushed for by the Rabbinate, who were concerned that a resurgence in Catholicism in the Black Sea region was being caused by the encroachment of Italian merchants into the region.

Orthodox Judaism had changed a great deal in the decades since the Return to Israel. In the past power had been defused to a widely dispersed Rabbinate, with individuals basing their authority upon their piety, learning, charisma and personal contacts. Now, it increasingly flowed downward from the High Priesthood, with the Kohen Godol gradually seizing influence or outright control over key religious appointments. Some feared that this transformation was undermining the spiritual foundations of the faith – rewarding the cronyistic and politically skilled over the devout and scholarly.

This view was dearly held by King Yarolsav V. Crowned King at the age of 11, Yaroslav grew into a dearly devout man eager to restore the spiritual virtue to the Jewish church. Through the 1390s he grew close to a variety of reform-minded Rabbis but found it difficult to influence the upper echelons of the Priesthood. In 1400, the King travelled to Israel to speak with the recently conferred Kohen Gadol Rogvolod. The High Priest would dismiss the King’s demands, sending him back to Kiev with only minor concessions. However, Queen Cicek would choose to remain in the Holy Land even after her husband left for Poland. This fateful decision would set off a remarkable Homeric drama, and speed the descent of the Polish Kingdom into an era known as the Crisis of the 15th Century, or simply – The Anarchy.

Queen Cicek, famed for her beauty, had come to Poland to marry Yaroslav V in 1395 as a teenage Tatar Princess. Although she had borne the King a son, Voislav, soon afterwards the two soon grew distant. As a convert to Judaism, she had been eager to accompany Yaroslav to the Holy Land in 1400. While there, she became captivated by the Kohen Gadol, Rogvolod, and fell in love. After the King left, she remained and began a passionate affair with the High Priest. In 1401, she bore him a son, who Rogvolod openly accepted as his own.

Having been cuckolded by his High Priest was an incredible humiliation, but for his shame to be openly announced to the world was simply too much. Ignoring the demands from The Council of the Twelve that he seek mediation with Rogvolod, Yaroslav deployed a squadron of soldiers to Jerusalem who promptly arrested the Kohen Gadol and placed him on a ship to Poland. The Kingdom soon erupted into chaos. While few sympathised with the High Priest’s scandalous behaviour, the unilateral arrest of the head of the Orthodox Jewish faith was an intolerable act of tyranny. As news spread to the general public, rioting broke out in Kiev and the Council demanded that the High Priest be immediately freed.

Fearing for his life, the King fled to capital for the Carpathian highlands – where the presence of a large local Christian population would insulate him from Jewish anger at his behaviour. There, he amassed a large army from whatever allies he could buy with loyalty and coin. In early 1402 he struck down from the highlands, defeating a sizeable conciliarist army outside of Lvov before entering the Galician city. From there, he began his advance on Kiev.

Midway between Lvov and Kiev the King faced down his enemies at the Battle of Korets. Despite possessing a sizeable numerical advantage, Yaroslav’s army fell to a devastating defeat. The great conciliarist general Sviatopolk the Bear, the Prince of Smolensk, had waded into the royalist ranks on foot with a mighty bloodaxe – rallying his men and striking terror into his enemies’ hearts. As the King’s army evaporated before him, Yaroslav had attempted to flee the field, but was unable to find a horse to carry him to safety. Instead, Sviatopolk found the King hidden in a small cave just a few miles from the battlefield.

Within the King in captivity, the conciliarists were free to impose their vision upon the Kingdom. The Kohen Gadol, imprisoned by royalist forces in Azov for the last several months, was released and restored to his position in Jerusalem. More significantly, Yaroslav was forced to sign the Statue of Golden Liberty. This treaty guaranteed the rights and freedoms of all noble born Jewish men across the Kingdom in perpetuity. Henceforth, the King would be subject to strict laws limiting his power – forbidden from taking action against his vassals, or members of the Rabbinate, without legal justification and the approval of his council. Meanwhile, an assembly of several hundred of the greatest lords and most influential Rabbis in the realm were drawn together to act as an advisory body, seeking to guarantee the Statute and ensure that the interests of the wider nobility were respected. The collapse of monarchical power in Poland continued at pace.