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I had a long update ready, but the forum ate my post 
I will try again when I find the time. I appreciate all of the kind words about my little family saga.
I will try again when I find the time. I appreciate all of the kind words about my little family saga.
If you're using Firefox, I recommend Lazarus and TextArea Cache. They'll save any posts you make, regardless of how bad the forum is.
Just caught up.I'm really enjoying the narrative style of this AAR.Looking forward to the next update.
Chapter XVI: Francisco II and the Empire
On April 16, 1654, Francisco II Visconti was proclaimed king following the death of his grandfather Fernando VIII. The new king was fifteen years old, the youngest monarch to grace the Spanish throne in over a century. He had been married at a very young age, to Jadwiga of Lithuania, who had arrived in Madrid only eighteen months before. Fernando VII had dreamed of a grand alliance whose member states would encircle the Holy Roman Empire and maintain the new status quo that he had achieved during his long reign. His great grandson therefore married the grand-niece of Ladislaus IV Jagiellon, and six months later they brought forth a son named Carlos.
The alliance between Lithuania and Spain did not last: Ladislaus was unwilling to bear the full force of the Bohemian war machine while his distant ally looted the riches of Italy. But Francisco and Jadwiga had built a strong marriage despite the cultural differences between them. At first they conversed awkwardly in Latin, initially the only language that the two shared. She picked up Castilian rather quickly, and he spent much of the household allowance that his grandfather allowed him in attempts to please his foreign bride with gifts from the north. His generous nature and her easy disposition made accommodating to an arranged marriage easier than was the case with many couples. The birth of Carlos in August 1653 only made Francisco that much more attached to his "beloved Edita" as he called her. On the day of the coronation, they presented a vision of youthful vigor, the new king on his throne with his young wife beside him with their heir on her lap.
Francisco immediately showed himself his great-grandfather's equal in matters of state. He issued a royal order two days into his reign proclaiming the island of Sicily to be an intrinsic part of the Spanish nation. Negotiations with the Sicilian government had begun under his grandfather, and Francisco merely followed up on what was a fait accompli, but nonetheless the national parliament was all in an uproar when the same day delegates arrived from Palermo expecting to be seated. The Italian and French delegates now outnumbered those from the Iberian Peninsula, but the king insisted on equality among his subjects.
It took considerable effort to smooth over domestic political strife in the parliament and in the press. Alonso de Cienfuegos, the Minister of State who had headed the council of regency during Fernando VIII's last days, advised for a censured press and other measures directed towards stability and peace, but Francisco refused. His people were a conservative lot as it was. They would not entertain any wild notions in the realm of politics, and any innovations in science and technology had to be encouraged, not discouraged by the Crown. With politics at home calmed down, Francisco decided that it was prudent to act on his sister Isabel's recent letter, complaining of the effort to disinherit her son Gianbattista from his father's throne. In another ambitious marital alliance, Fernando VII had arranged for Isabel Visconti's marriage to the aged Duke Gian VII of Ferrara, the better to solidify Spain's position in northern Italy and with some luck smooth out the vassalage that he had forced on the Holy Father amid the smoldering ruins of the Vatican.
Duke Gian had recently died, and Isabel proclaimed herself duchess regent for their little son, who was only three months old and by the most reliable reports very sickly. The Austrians claimed the throne for their own candidate, charging that Gianbattista was not the son of the old duke, who had died at age 85, following four childless marriages. Isabel retorted to the Austrian ambassador that she "had taken matters into her own hands" and maintained that her infant son was the trueborn heir of Gian VII. The Ferranese estates could come to no agreement, and so the young duchess had begged her brother to intervene. And intervene he did. Prince Angelo of Tuscany marched fifteen regiments towards the little duchy and besieged the city in the name of Francisco II of Spain, Italy, France, and Sicily. The banner of Otto I Hohenzollern already flew over the city, and despite being under house arrest, Isabel guaranteed that the siege would be short. Francisco himself led a massive invasion force of 35,000 men, horse, and artillery from Naples, but on approaching Ferrara already saw his own banner flying over the ducal palace. He restored his little nephew as Duke of Ferrara, but Isabel understood that her freedom and her son's right to rule were all at the pleasure of her gregarious brother. The King of Spain was for all practical purposes lord of Ferrara, and he placed the duchy under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Lombardy, a position that quite unexpectedly was now occupied by Isabel, Duchess Regent of Ferrara.
The War of the Ferranese Succession, the name by which history knows this little conflict, attracted much unwanted attention towards Spanish ambitions in the imperial territories south of the Alps. Francisco already controlled the entirety of Lombardy by inheritance, was King of Sicily and Naples, and suzerain of the Papal States (though he still dared not call himself by such a title). Archbishop Martin of Alsace admonished Francisco for his dynasty's occupation of Italy and France, once two of the greatest kingdoms in Christian Europe. Francisco received the Alsatian ambassador and had the prince-archbishop's epistle read in open court. He then presented a history lesson of his own, claiming the mantle of Rome for Spain. He argued that his country had been part of the Roman Republic since well before Christ was born, and brought prosperity to the Roman Empire. Spain had provided soldiers, generals, and even an emperor to Rome, while the German barbarians brought about its downfall. He also reminded the ambassador that Spain had never been part of Charlemagne's empire, of which the Holy Roman Empire was the descendant, so he had little reason to follow the dictates of the Emperor in Prague. He concluded, however, by assuring the ambassador that he had no specific dispute with the Archbishopric of Alsace and ordered that the prince-archbishop be sent his warmest compliments, reinforced by a gift of Catalonian wine and fine things from all parts of Spain's great empire.
The war continued to drag on, as the Austrian army drove back the combined Tuscan, Spanish, and Papal forces and recaptured Ferrara. Isabel and her entire court was allowed to depart, and the duchess regent and the infant duke found refuge in Milan, where she was received as the viceroy (rather than as yet another war refugee) with great pomp and ceremony. The Viceroy of Sicily, Luis Alvarez de Toledo, arrived with fifteen thousand fresh troops, and Ferrara endured its third siege in so many years. Fernando VII's heavy investment in the navy paid off, as the extensive Spanish merchant marine continued to supply reinforcements and supplies from the naval yards in Barcelona, Valencia, and Cadiz. The national naval tradition also helped those displaced by war, as many people fled in the opposite direction to these same port cities and found their way to the American colonies. In particular, the new colony in Texas received a large contingent of settlers who embarked from Gibraltar.
Peace came again in 1660 with Austria's acceptance of Spanish suzerainty over Ferrara. The estates had initially pressed Francisco to form a personal union with the duchy, but he insisted in turn that Gianbattista was de jure Duke of Ferrara. His nephew's death earlier that year made this debate a moot point, though Francisco decided to keep Isabel as Viceroy of Lombardy and allowed her use of the title Duchess of Ferrara for the rest of her natural life.
Spanish dominance over Lombardy needed no such political cover. Francisco was king of Italy by inheritance, and he felt himself justified in using the title after having defended the kingdom from the Austrian and imperial armies. This only offended the princes of the empire, because he usurped in their eyes a title that had belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor since the reign of Charlemagne. Francisco tried to ease the issue by inviting a number of the leading political figures in the empire to Milan for his coronation with the Iron Crown of the Lombards. He used the event to announce a new cultural endeavor in Italy under his own patronage. But the plan backfired. He only offended Austria, Bohemia, and many of the lesser states even more. A compromise solution to the diplomatic quandary offered by his correspondent Archbishop Martin of Alsace proved unacceptable to both parties. Francisco would have offered homage for his lands in Italy from the Po to the Abruzzi, but the king stalled doing so, while Frederick II Hohenzollern, recently elected as emperor, demanded that Spain relinquish all of Lombardy to the empire, but did not go so far as to issue an imperial interdict on Spain. After all, Francisco had considerable influence over the papacy as well as a growing military presence in northern Italy. So the situation remained in the air, which suited both monarchs, for the moment at least.
Frederick II's death in 1665 brought to the imperial throne his considerably less prudent son Maximilian II. On November 23, 1666, the imperial vicar demanded that Francisco give up Lombardy to the empire or face serious consequences. The new emperor had found allies in the estates of Parma, who now refused to pay taxes to the King of Italy. Isabel responded in accordance with Francisco's written orders to her, by removing the entirety of Lombardy from imperial jurisdiction and--this part was her own doing--personally putting the imperial vicar (none other than Otto von Hohenzollern, late Duke of Ferrara) backwards on a donkey. Having seen him to the gates of the city, the Viceroy of Lombardy proclaimed in a loud voice, "I would rather have this long-eared ass for a lover than to see this short-eared ass braying at me again." A contingent of the 3rd Regiment of Milan escorted Otto backwards through Spanish Lombardy and then at the Austrian border Colonel Juan Alvarez de Toledo in an action that later earned him notoriety removed Vicar Otto from the donkey, declaring as he did so that the viceroy wanted the beast returned to her. The popular wordsmiths interpreted this of course to mean for her bed.
Agitation with the empire continued during the 1660s and 1670s. Agitators, believed to be acting for Austria, tried to stir up rebellion on more than one occasion, while in January 1677 the emissary of a Burgundian pretender presented a request for material aid in their rebellion, which Francisco gave in order to avoid losing face before the entire nation. Relations thus worsened with Burgundy, with whom he shared an extensive frontier. The Dukes of Burgundy maintained a claim on the French throne, but no fresh incident had marred their relations with Spain to this point. Francisco prayed that it would end there. So he sent the would-be revolutionaries on their way with a fat purse.
Precisely two years later, Spain's liberal policy towards innovative ideas caused a backlash among the clergy. A philosophy professor at the Royal University Fernando VII in Calabria had published a tract condemning clerical marriage as unnatural, though he had meant it "merely as a treatise of a historical nature." Confronted by the Archbishop of Naples, Francisco II agreed to have the publication suppressed and the as-yet undistributed copies kept under lock and key. The national academy responded negatively and pressed the parliament to protect academic freedom. The king's adversaries in parliament found it no hard task to use the issue against him. Privately, the archival records show, Francisco wrote that he found much merit in the treatise as a polemical work and credited its author for the quality of his argumentation.
The difficulties of the first two decades of Francisco II's reign gave way to greater national stability in the 1680s. The stresses of ruling such an enormous empire had taken their toll. On June 9, 1682, Francisco had reached the venerable age of 44 and in a speech to his royal council recounted their collective efforts to consolidate the realm, to be more inclusive of Italian, French, and recently American and African concerns. He also expressed relief over the future. His eldest son Carlos, the Prince of Asturias, had recently married Elizabeth of Lancaster, the sister of King Malcolm I of Great Britain, and they had already welcomed two sons into the world, the eldest a sturdy boy named Felipe and the youngest a sweet little boy named Francisco de Paula. Francisco II gave more power to Carlos, naming him to the important viceroyalty of Lombardy, after Princess Isabel died in March 1680, and then on the occasion of his own birthday regent of Italy and Africa. His younger son, Fernando, was granted the position of Viceroy of France, while his daughters Juana, Carlota, Maria de la Luz, and Isabel were sent to the Americas to rule over Mexico, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata. Their husbands were sent as the captains general of these overseas kingdoms. This new step in imperial administration Francisco justified by saying that he had consolidated his dynasty's rule over a third of the world, and that all his children should have their place in the world that their ancestors had created for them. As he slowly found his health fading, he reasoned to himself that Spain was trouble enough. Let the young take on the world and find their place in it. He found himself slowly wavering and worse for wear. His beloved Edita had passed on the previous winter, the victim of pneumonia and fevers. He did not see himself surviving her for long.
His own health was broken during the winter of 1682-83. Francisco II had taken to long walks in the royal hunting estate in Asturias. One day he caught cold, which developed into a pneumonia from which he would never recover. He lingered on until the following June, when he saw Carlos's fourth child baptized, a child named Maria de los Angeles. The morning after the baptism, Francisco was discovered dead in the royal chapel, his head bowed over in prayer. Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain that same afternoon under the regnal title Carlos II. Francisco II's reign would be remembered for relative peace and the efficient administration that he had espoused. But despite a secure succession, the future remained uncertain so long as Spain had an almost equal rival in the Holy Roman Empire.
On April 16, 1654, Francisco II Visconti was proclaimed king following the death of his grandfather Fernando VIII. The new king was fifteen years old, the youngest monarch to grace the Spanish throne in over a century. He had been married at a very young age, to Jadwiga of Lithuania, who had arrived in Madrid only eighteen months before. Fernando VII had dreamed of a grand alliance whose member states would encircle the Holy Roman Empire and maintain the new status quo that he had achieved during his long reign. His great grandson therefore married the grand-niece of Ladislaus IV Jagiellon, and six months later they brought forth a son named Carlos.
The alliance between Lithuania and Spain did not last: Ladislaus was unwilling to bear the full force of the Bohemian war machine while his distant ally looted the riches of Italy. But Francisco and Jadwiga had built a strong marriage despite the cultural differences between them. At first they conversed awkwardly in Latin, initially the only language that the two shared. She picked up Castilian rather quickly, and he spent much of the household allowance that his grandfather allowed him in attempts to please his foreign bride with gifts from the north. His generous nature and her easy disposition made accommodating to an arranged marriage easier than was the case with many couples. The birth of Carlos in August 1653 only made Francisco that much more attached to his "beloved Edita" as he called her. On the day of the coronation, they presented a vision of youthful vigor, the new king on his throne with his young wife beside him with their heir on her lap.
Francisco immediately showed himself his great-grandfather's equal in matters of state. He issued a royal order two days into his reign proclaiming the island of Sicily to be an intrinsic part of the Spanish nation. Negotiations with the Sicilian government had begun under his grandfather, and Francisco merely followed up on what was a fait accompli, but nonetheless the national parliament was all in an uproar when the same day delegates arrived from Palermo expecting to be seated. The Italian and French delegates now outnumbered those from the Iberian Peninsula, but the king insisted on equality among his subjects.
It took considerable effort to smooth over domestic political strife in the parliament and in the press. Alonso de Cienfuegos, the Minister of State who had headed the council of regency during Fernando VIII's last days, advised for a censured press and other measures directed towards stability and peace, but Francisco refused. His people were a conservative lot as it was. They would not entertain any wild notions in the realm of politics, and any innovations in science and technology had to be encouraged, not discouraged by the Crown. With politics at home calmed down, Francisco decided that it was prudent to act on his sister Isabel's recent letter, complaining of the effort to disinherit her son Gianbattista from his father's throne. In another ambitious marital alliance, Fernando VII had arranged for Isabel Visconti's marriage to the aged Duke Gian VII of Ferrara, the better to solidify Spain's position in northern Italy and with some luck smooth out the vassalage that he had forced on the Holy Father amid the smoldering ruins of the Vatican.
Duke Gian had recently died, and Isabel proclaimed herself duchess regent for their little son, who was only three months old and by the most reliable reports very sickly. The Austrians claimed the throne for their own candidate, charging that Gianbattista was not the son of the old duke, who had died at age 85, following four childless marriages. Isabel retorted to the Austrian ambassador that she "had taken matters into her own hands" and maintained that her infant son was the trueborn heir of Gian VII. The Ferranese estates could come to no agreement, and so the young duchess had begged her brother to intervene. And intervene he did. Prince Angelo of Tuscany marched fifteen regiments towards the little duchy and besieged the city in the name of Francisco II of Spain, Italy, France, and Sicily. The banner of Otto I Hohenzollern already flew over the city, and despite being under house arrest, Isabel guaranteed that the siege would be short. Francisco himself led a massive invasion force of 35,000 men, horse, and artillery from Naples, but on approaching Ferrara already saw his own banner flying over the ducal palace. He restored his little nephew as Duke of Ferrara, but Isabel understood that her freedom and her son's right to rule were all at the pleasure of her gregarious brother. The King of Spain was for all practical purposes lord of Ferrara, and he placed the duchy under the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of Lombardy, a position that quite unexpectedly was now occupied by Isabel, Duchess Regent of Ferrara.
The War of the Ferranese Succession, the name by which history knows this little conflict, attracted much unwanted attention towards Spanish ambitions in the imperial territories south of the Alps. Francisco already controlled the entirety of Lombardy by inheritance, was King of Sicily and Naples, and suzerain of the Papal States (though he still dared not call himself by such a title). Archbishop Martin of Alsace admonished Francisco for his dynasty's occupation of Italy and France, once two of the greatest kingdoms in Christian Europe. Francisco received the Alsatian ambassador and had the prince-archbishop's epistle read in open court. He then presented a history lesson of his own, claiming the mantle of Rome for Spain. He argued that his country had been part of the Roman Republic since well before Christ was born, and brought prosperity to the Roman Empire. Spain had provided soldiers, generals, and even an emperor to Rome, while the German barbarians brought about its downfall. He also reminded the ambassador that Spain had never been part of Charlemagne's empire, of which the Holy Roman Empire was the descendant, so he had little reason to follow the dictates of the Emperor in Prague. He concluded, however, by assuring the ambassador that he had no specific dispute with the Archbishopric of Alsace and ordered that the prince-archbishop be sent his warmest compliments, reinforced by a gift of Catalonian wine and fine things from all parts of Spain's great empire.
The war continued to drag on, as the Austrian army drove back the combined Tuscan, Spanish, and Papal forces and recaptured Ferrara. Isabel and her entire court was allowed to depart, and the duchess regent and the infant duke found refuge in Milan, where she was received as the viceroy (rather than as yet another war refugee) with great pomp and ceremony. The Viceroy of Sicily, Luis Alvarez de Toledo, arrived with fifteen thousand fresh troops, and Ferrara endured its third siege in so many years. Fernando VII's heavy investment in the navy paid off, as the extensive Spanish merchant marine continued to supply reinforcements and supplies from the naval yards in Barcelona, Valencia, and Cadiz. The national naval tradition also helped those displaced by war, as many people fled in the opposite direction to these same port cities and found their way to the American colonies. In particular, the new colony in Texas received a large contingent of settlers who embarked from Gibraltar.
Peace came again in 1660 with Austria's acceptance of Spanish suzerainty over Ferrara. The estates had initially pressed Francisco to form a personal union with the duchy, but he insisted in turn that Gianbattista was de jure Duke of Ferrara. His nephew's death earlier that year made this debate a moot point, though Francisco decided to keep Isabel as Viceroy of Lombardy and allowed her use of the title Duchess of Ferrara for the rest of her natural life.
Spanish dominance over Lombardy needed no such political cover. Francisco was king of Italy by inheritance, and he felt himself justified in using the title after having defended the kingdom from the Austrian and imperial armies. This only offended the princes of the empire, because he usurped in their eyes a title that had belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor since the reign of Charlemagne. Francisco tried to ease the issue by inviting a number of the leading political figures in the empire to Milan for his coronation with the Iron Crown of the Lombards. He used the event to announce a new cultural endeavor in Italy under his own patronage. But the plan backfired. He only offended Austria, Bohemia, and many of the lesser states even more. A compromise solution to the diplomatic quandary offered by his correspondent Archbishop Martin of Alsace proved unacceptable to both parties. Francisco would have offered homage for his lands in Italy from the Po to the Abruzzi, but the king stalled doing so, while Frederick II Hohenzollern, recently elected as emperor, demanded that Spain relinquish all of Lombardy to the empire, but did not go so far as to issue an imperial interdict on Spain. After all, Francisco had considerable influence over the papacy as well as a growing military presence in northern Italy. So the situation remained in the air, which suited both monarchs, for the moment at least.
Frederick II's death in 1665 brought to the imperial throne his considerably less prudent son Maximilian II. On November 23, 1666, the imperial vicar demanded that Francisco give up Lombardy to the empire or face serious consequences. The new emperor had found allies in the estates of Parma, who now refused to pay taxes to the King of Italy. Isabel responded in accordance with Francisco's written orders to her, by removing the entirety of Lombardy from imperial jurisdiction and--this part was her own doing--personally putting the imperial vicar (none other than Otto von Hohenzollern, late Duke of Ferrara) backwards on a donkey. Having seen him to the gates of the city, the Viceroy of Lombardy proclaimed in a loud voice, "I would rather have this long-eared ass for a lover than to see this short-eared ass braying at me again." A contingent of the 3rd Regiment of Milan escorted Otto backwards through Spanish Lombardy and then at the Austrian border Colonel Juan Alvarez de Toledo in an action that later earned him notoriety removed Vicar Otto from the donkey, declaring as he did so that the viceroy wanted the beast returned to her. The popular wordsmiths interpreted this of course to mean for her bed.
Agitation with the empire continued during the 1660s and 1670s. Agitators, believed to be acting for Austria, tried to stir up rebellion on more than one occasion, while in January 1677 the emissary of a Burgundian pretender presented a request for material aid in their rebellion, which Francisco gave in order to avoid losing face before the entire nation. Relations thus worsened with Burgundy, with whom he shared an extensive frontier. The Dukes of Burgundy maintained a claim on the French throne, but no fresh incident had marred their relations with Spain to this point. Francisco prayed that it would end there. So he sent the would-be revolutionaries on their way with a fat purse.
Precisely two years later, Spain's liberal policy towards innovative ideas caused a backlash among the clergy. A philosophy professor at the Royal University Fernando VII in Calabria had published a tract condemning clerical marriage as unnatural, though he had meant it "merely as a treatise of a historical nature." Confronted by the Archbishop of Naples, Francisco II agreed to have the publication suppressed and the as-yet undistributed copies kept under lock and key. The national academy responded negatively and pressed the parliament to protect academic freedom. The king's adversaries in parliament found it no hard task to use the issue against him. Privately, the archival records show, Francisco wrote that he found much merit in the treatise as a polemical work and credited its author for the quality of his argumentation.
The difficulties of the first two decades of Francisco II's reign gave way to greater national stability in the 1680s. The stresses of ruling such an enormous empire had taken their toll. On June 9, 1682, Francisco had reached the venerable age of 44 and in a speech to his royal council recounted their collective efforts to consolidate the realm, to be more inclusive of Italian, French, and recently American and African concerns. He also expressed relief over the future. His eldest son Carlos, the Prince of Asturias, had recently married Elizabeth of Lancaster, the sister of King Malcolm I of Great Britain, and they had already welcomed two sons into the world, the eldest a sturdy boy named Felipe and the youngest a sweet little boy named Francisco de Paula. Francisco II gave more power to Carlos, naming him to the important viceroyalty of Lombardy, after Princess Isabel died in March 1680, and then on the occasion of his own birthday regent of Italy and Africa. His younger son, Fernando, was granted the position of Viceroy of France, while his daughters Juana, Carlota, Maria de la Luz, and Isabel were sent to the Americas to rule over Mexico, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata. Their husbands were sent as the captains general of these overseas kingdoms. This new step in imperial administration Francisco justified by saying that he had consolidated his dynasty's rule over a third of the world, and that all his children should have their place in the world that their ancestors had created for them. As he slowly found his health fading, he reasoned to himself that Spain was trouble enough. Let the young take on the world and find their place in it. He found himself slowly wavering and worse for wear. His beloved Edita had passed on the previous winter, the victim of pneumonia and fevers. He did not see himself surviving her for long.
His own health was broken during the winter of 1682-83. Francisco II had taken to long walks in the royal hunting estate in Asturias. One day he caught cold, which developed into a pneumonia from which he would never recover. He lingered on until the following June, when he saw Carlos's fourth child baptized, a child named Maria de los Angeles. The morning after the baptism, Francisco was discovered dead in the royal chapel, his head bowed over in prayer. Carlos was proclaimed King of Spain that same afternoon under the regnal title Carlos II. Francisco II's reign would be remembered for relative peace and the efficient administration that he had espoused. But despite a secure succession, the future remained uncertain so long as Spain had an almost equal rival in the Holy Roman Empire.
That's why there's generals...
not the best administrator but that's why there is bureaucrats too
More than 8,000 views. That's great. Hope everyone is enjoying it, and thanks especially everyone who is commenting.
Carlos II is rather more competent than his historical namesake, and he is known to drool a lot less. I figure he's got pretty good diplomacy, which is where I think I'll take him. He's also got a huge diplo bonus from Spain's huge SoI. And with an administrative monarchy, well he's got a huge bureaucracy and not much to do but say yea or nay on this or that measure and of course sire a nice brood of heirs.
Carlos II is rather more competent than his historical namesake, and he is known to drool a lot less. I figure he's got pretty good diplomacy, which is where I think I'll take him. He's also got a huge diplo bonus from Spain's huge SoI. And with an administrative monarchy, well he's got a huge bureaucracy and not much to do but say yea or nay on this or that measure and of course sire a nice brood of heirs.
Chapter XVII: Carlos II and the World
The coronation of Carlos II marked a new era in Spanish domestic and foreign politics. The new king was not a great warrior, but his strengths lay in his command of diplomatic and administrative matters. The enlargement of the Spanish Crown during the reigns of his great-great grandfather Fernando VII and his father Francisco II required the creation of a well trained and large bureaucracy. Francisco II had consolidated the dynasty's control over Italy, at the expense of worsening relations with the Holy Roman Empire and in particular his powerful neighbors Austria and Burgundy.
Carlos II sought to improve relations with those monarchs whose territory bordered his own and to maintain the status quo. He understood that Spain's major problems were internal, not least because no country could defeat her militarily. He focused initially on Spain's African and American colonies. His father had authorized an extensive program of mapping his enormous overseas empire. His successor spent a number of weeks mulling over the recently completed maps. The first thing that he noticed was that much of the world was painted canary yellow, and his prime minister the Duke of Galicia told him that this reflected his own domains. The yellower the better. The first map that he studied showed southern Africa. The integration of France during Fernando VIII's brief reign had brought much of that region under Spanish dominion. East Africa was divided between the colonies of Wun China, Persia, and Holland.
The second map showed West Africa, which his minister of the navy the Count of Lleida said was generally called Guinea. The Sultanate of Mali dominated much of the region, but Poland, Holland, and the Ottoman Empire vied for control of the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
The third and fourth maps showed North America and the Spanish Caribbean. The king noticed with slight displeasure that England had such a strong presence across the continent, while the Duke of Galicia pointed out that the Kingdom of Holland had relocated to North America following the Fifth War of Burgundian Aggression some two generations earlier. Somehow this fact had escaped the notice of both Spanish geographers and the royal bureaucracy until now. The final colonial map showed the Arctic regions of North America, divided between British, Burgundian, and Dutch spheres. Spain had no great territorial presence there, although Portuguese and Basque fisherman were known to frequent those waters rather frequently.
Finally, Carlos turned to the last piece of parchment that had been placed in front of him, a comparison of all the navies of all the nations in the known world. The king was pleased to see Spain rank second on the list, second only to Great Britain and not by a great margin. The Count of Lleida took the occasion to request increased funding for an expanded navy, but Carlos II saw little reason for that. Spain's rivals were in Europe, and none were great naval powers. The map of Europe that had been included in the bundle of documents, almost as an afterthought, was encouraging. Spain continued to dominate all of Europe south of the Alps and west of the Rhine, as well as all of North Africa from the Canarian Sea to the Nile. The Ottoman sultan was no enemy of his, nor were the great land empires of Lithuania (his mother's homeland), Hungary, and Denmark.
By the end of 1683, the Royal Geographical Commission had finished its work, and the king put his signature on the final report, which he approved for publication in Latin, Castilian, and French. The following year saw the presentation of his eldest son Felipe as the heir apparent and the investing of the title of Prince of Asturias on the seventeen-year-old. Prince Felipe was married to Carlota of Austria, the niece of Emperor Otto V von Hohenzollern, in a ceremony held in Toledo to great fanfare. The father of the groom took the opportunity to improve relations with Austria in particular and with the other princes of the Holy Roman Empire whose representatives were in attendance. Following the royal wedding, Carlos II returned to the royal apartments, dismissed his servants, and stared intently at an enlarged wall map of Europe that he had commissioned for his own use. His son's marriage into the imperial family might present the leverage that he needed for Spain to secure a stronger place in Europe. With that thought, he drew a sheet of parchment from his desk drawer, dipped his pen momentarily into his inkwell, and began writing furtively. That night his grand design gradually began to materialize on paper, the beginning of a new foreign policy not forged with steel and blood but with gold and ink.
/Isabel, Princess of Asturias, March 3, 1830
The coronation of Carlos II marked a new era in Spanish domestic and foreign politics. The new king was not a great warrior, but his strengths lay in his command of diplomatic and administrative matters. The enlargement of the Spanish Crown during the reigns of his great-great grandfather Fernando VII and his father Francisco II required the creation of a well trained and large bureaucracy. Francisco II had consolidated the dynasty's control over Italy, at the expense of worsening relations with the Holy Roman Empire and in particular his powerful neighbors Austria and Burgundy.
Carlos II sought to improve relations with those monarchs whose territory bordered his own and to maintain the status quo. He understood that Spain's major problems were internal, not least because no country could defeat her militarily. He focused initially on Spain's African and American colonies. His father had authorized an extensive program of mapping his enormous overseas empire. His successor spent a number of weeks mulling over the recently completed maps. The first thing that he noticed was that much of the world was painted canary yellow, and his prime minister the Duke of Galicia told him that this reflected his own domains. The yellower the better. The first map that he studied showed southern Africa. The integration of France during Fernando VIII's brief reign had brought much of that region under Spanish dominion. East Africa was divided between the colonies of Wun China, Persia, and Holland.
The second map showed West Africa, which his minister of the navy the Count of Lleida said was generally called Guinea. The Sultanate of Mali dominated much of the region, but Poland, Holland, and the Ottoman Empire vied for control of the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
The third and fourth maps showed North America and the Spanish Caribbean. The king noticed with slight displeasure that England had such a strong presence across the continent, while the Duke of Galicia pointed out that the Kingdom of Holland had relocated to North America following the Fifth War of Burgundian Aggression some two generations earlier. Somehow this fact had escaped the notice of both Spanish geographers and the royal bureaucracy until now. The final colonial map showed the Arctic regions of North America, divided between British, Burgundian, and Dutch spheres. Spain had no great territorial presence there, although Portuguese and Basque fisherman were known to frequent those waters rather frequently.
Finally, Carlos turned to the last piece of parchment that had been placed in front of him, a comparison of all the navies of all the nations in the known world. The king was pleased to see Spain rank second on the list, second only to Great Britain and not by a great margin. The Count of Lleida took the occasion to request increased funding for an expanded navy, but Carlos II saw little reason for that. Spain's rivals were in Europe, and none were great naval powers. The map of Europe that had been included in the bundle of documents, almost as an afterthought, was encouraging. Spain continued to dominate all of Europe south of the Alps and west of the Rhine, as well as all of North Africa from the Canarian Sea to the Nile. The Ottoman sultan was no enemy of his, nor were the great land empires of Lithuania (his mother's homeland), Hungary, and Denmark.
By the end of 1683, the Royal Geographical Commission had finished its work, and the king put his signature on the final report, which he approved for publication in Latin, Castilian, and French. The following year saw the presentation of his eldest son Felipe as the heir apparent and the investing of the title of Prince of Asturias on the seventeen-year-old. Prince Felipe was married to Carlota of Austria, the niece of Emperor Otto V von Hohenzollern, in a ceremony held in Toledo to great fanfare. The father of the groom took the opportunity to improve relations with Austria in particular and with the other princes of the Holy Roman Empire whose representatives were in attendance. Following the royal wedding, Carlos II returned to the royal apartments, dismissed his servants, and stared intently at an enlarged wall map of Europe that he had commissioned for his own use. His son's marriage into the imperial family might present the leverage that he needed for Spain to secure a stronger place in Europe. With that thought, he drew a sheet of parchment from his desk drawer, dipped his pen momentarily into his inkwell, and began writing furtively. That night his grand design gradually began to materialize on paper, the beginning of a new foreign policy not forged with steel and blood but with gold and ink.
/Isabel, Princess of Asturias, March 3, 1830
The sixty thousand Castilians standing around in Lombardy are mostly for show.
Spain is rich, prestigious, and armed to the teeth, with not much left to prove. We'll see how it turns out.
Don't worry. I have a big finish in mind. Muahahahaha!
World conquest? or just becomming Holy roman emperor? or reunite the Roman empire?
anyways a great AAR kudos to you!
Yes.
anyways a great AAR kudos to you!
Thanks. It was the first time I played through with DW. Happy to see that you like it.
