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glengarry leads said:
...one-province non-HRE center of trade? that'll last.
:rofl:
 
*Subscribes*
 
chapter V: Francois to Francois

Nantes, Bretagne, January 1482
At the ripe old age of 52, Pier du Tonquedoc still had his work cut out for him. The days of high-stakes diplomacy were long past – no more sea voyages to London or Amsterdam, nor stagecoaches to Paris. His body complained greatly at a mere walk through Nantes, so he kept these to a minimum as well. But many men had arrived, played, and departed the courtly life while Pier remained a constant in the court of the Dukes of Bretagne, and he fully intended to die in office.

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1481 had been consumed by the ‘crisis’ of confrontation with their one-time ally, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III of Austria. Zeeland was claimed as HRE territory by heredity, and it was feared that the Austrians would dispatch troops to punish Bretagne for her presumptuousness. Luckily for Pier, the worst the Emperor could do was bluster and sanctions, as Austria was at war with both Venice and the Turk. Still, the poor relations with the Empire were hurting Bretagne’s vital merchants.

The biggest problem was simple: administering one overseas territory was work enough. Adding the Dutch provinces of Zeeland and Holland into the bargain was another job entirely. It had overburdened the administration Pier had built by hand to run the country. He was constantly tinkering with the rules of the burgeoning civil service, but the wars with Burgundy had cost him some of his brightest minds.

“Now there’s something we need to fix,” de Tonquedoc said to his closest friend, the great translator Charles de Montbriand. “The next time we war with Burgundy, we need to make the civil service exempt from conscription… in fact, we should prohibit them from leaving for the Army!”

“What makes you so sure the next war will be with our old friend le Roi de Bourgogne?” Charles asked, and after a long pause, the two shared a long, hearty laugh. It had been two years since the last conflict ended, and it was all but certain that he would, some day, try to exercise his claims on Zeeland and Holland. Pier gave it three years, actually.

“Well, let’s draft some new laws for our boy Francois to sign, shall we?” Pier laughed.


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Unfortunately, it would be a wholly different Francois signing laws from here forward. Gone was the demure young Duke in whom Pier du Tonquedoc had invested so much time educating; claimed by pneumonia after a particularly nasty North Atlantic storm battered Amsterdam in the Autumn of 1482. Since Francis II had passed on with no heir as yet (his Dutch wife still with child), the next in order of succession was Francis III, the younger brother of Pierre II.

Francois III was an astute and valued judge of military matters – most Breton regiments received their first training under his command in Armor – but his crass and debauched court at Rennes had given most of Bretagne a distaste for the man. Indeed, Pier had as little to do with him as possible. And now he would be installed in Nantes within the fortnight. The old advisor redoubled his efforts to strengthen the civil service, out of fear that Francois III would contrive to undermine his work.

By early 1483, Pier judged his work to be well-accomplished. The new Duke, every bit as old as Pier, made it clear that he had no desire at his age to learn “about coins and scraps of paper” as he’d put it – and Pier’s strong centralized bureaucracy had begun to take shape in earnest. While the new duke eagerly awaited a new war of his own to fight, de Tonquedoc and de Montbriand managed to reverse the inefficient administration that had plagued Bretagne since Zeeland was added to the crown. The Duke’s one demand was that court be moved to his home, Rennes.


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More so than any other part of Bretagne, the new Duke’s home of Armor was falling more and more under the spell of the French crown. To make his paranoia worse, Francois III had no male heirs, only daughters, and was determined to see his eldest, Anne, follow him to the throne. Against Pier’s wishes, he summoned the seven estates to Rennes in the winter of 1486, demanding that each Count and Countess sign an oath recognizing Anne as first in line to the throne. Even Pier was uncertain as to who might emerge from a battle for the throne: perhaps Anne, perhaps Francois II’s half-Dutch infant son, also named Francois, now being raised in Amsterdam by his mother, perhaps old Duke Pierre’s youngest son Carlis, an avowed Francophile, educated in Paris upon Pier’s request.

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Pier could no longer travel to Rennes, but from him, Charles de Montbriand had learned the game well. Charles understood that the French crown would take the proposed act as an affront, especially as Anne was notorious for humiliating the Frenchmen living in Armor. The old diplomat convinced two of the four counts to refute the Duke’s demands, and the resultant turmoil greatly distressed the country. Pier’s back-channel communications with Paris were as vital as ever, however, and le Roi was most pleased with developments in Bretagne. England was making noise again, and the French were anticipating another war any year now.

Nantes, meanwhile, was transformed almost overnight by the departure of the royal court. Gone were the fops, the bickering ladies and greedy bishops that had fouled the air around Pier for decades. He had expected the city to become sleepy, but a rather remarkable thing happened: the merchants, artisans, bureaucrats and educators all stayed in Nantes, and soon the palace and the plaza outside it was the heart of a vibrant public life, sans nobiles, as it were. The long-standing trade with Venezia had brought back some of the radical ideas sweeping public life in Italia; the Renaissance, they called it… Pier approved mightily.

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Gameplay notes, ch 4. (thru 1485)

whew, lots of stuff going on in peacetime, and lots of stuff showing off Magna Mundi's chops. First of all, taking Zeeland has earned me some sass from the HRE... the annexation events usually give you an option to 'give the province back' but of course i refused...

the next big pain in the ass was losing my NICE Francois for a weaker one. It also wrote me into a bit of a corner, narrative-wise, since my Francois was too young to have an heir so soon, but it got worked into the story pretty nicely, if i may say so.

adding the seventh province was safe under the decent-admin monarch, but my new guy's low ADM earned me the Inefficient Administration tag. This is a MM restraint on fast-growing empires, and the negative effects you see above are just the beginning -- however, by hitting gov6 and taking Bureaucracy, i bumped myself back up to safety... for how long, it remains to be seen. (if i manage to keep adding provinces, hehe)

a few years later, we get the Estate of Rennes... just to be clear, the wording you see in the event box sort of applies to 'accepting' the act, whereas i have declined it. the stability hit is more than worth the big boost in relations with France, which should keep me safe from a ruinous war with France for the time being. (the other option nets you stability and some other goodies, but France gets mad!)

Finally, the nicely-implemented spread of renaissance ideas comes to the Vendee first. I've been working that innovation slider! More renaissance awesomeness to come later, hint hint!
 
Do you plan on taking Utrecht/Breda/Vlaanderen or is it the other Irish minors you are after?

And keep up the great writing, this is an AAR i will most certainly be following.
 
This is really, really fascinating.
 
Fulcrumvale said:
This is really, really fascinating.
Agreed, very well-written.
 
all: Thanks for your kind attentions! its my first AAR and been much more fun than i thought it would be.
steckie: the Dutch provinces are much more lucrative, and much more dangerous. so I'm going for them! Ireland might be worth picking up later, but at this stage, the provinces are so poor and depopulated that they aren't worth having. I can always have them later. England has shown NO desire to get Meath back, nor to mess with the Irish minors. In fact, what the hell HAS England been up to? ... i certainly would vassalize the other two irish minors if they give me casus belli, but i'm not going to start something on my own. now that i no longer have the six-star artiste. Stability is too precious in MM.

Vlaandern is one of the most lucrative provinces within reach, and I'm definitely 'after it' yes i am. :)
 
chapter VI: Up the Loire.

June 15, 1487. Bergen, Zeeland.
Francois III had spent the better part of his public life yelling, and he knew few men better at it. Decades of intimidating fresh regiments on Armor’s mustering grounds had given him a keen insight into the mind of the lowly soldier. And it was indisputable that little was to be gained by yelling at these men before him.

The 250 Breton men of the garrison in this sleepy part of Zeeland were not a contented lot. Francois knew a dozen ways to rally a soldier, but the surest way to demotivate him was to pay him too little. And that’s exactly what we’ve done, by God! Damn that doddering old penny-pincher du Tonquedoc, the Duke thought. These men were suited enough for keeping the day-to-day citizenry in line, but one shudders to think of what might happen if a real uprising were to start…

Francois was touring Zeeland with Visant de Penguem, the crown’s right-hand man in all matters martial. The two were discussing the boons and drawbacks (mostly drawbacks) of introducing Dutch soldiery into the army, when a rider tore into camp from the south. Neither man had to remind the other that this would be the direction of the frontier with Vlaandern, which the Burgundian crown had regained control over some years back.


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The breathless cavalryman related the news: Burgundian troops were gathering near the border, and a diplomat’s coach was on the road not an hour behind him, though it was likely headed to Amsterdam.

“Surely they don’t know we are here, Duke,” Visant speculated.

Francois was lost in thought. “The Burgundians are audacious to move so soon, don’t you think? How many men do you think they have brought into play?”

“Surely no less than 10 thousand, sir,” the advisor replied.

“We’ll marshal our forces outside Amsterdam then, and ready them as best we can. We’ll have to muster troops in Armor and the Vendee as quickly as possible, one of us should be there to oversee it,” the Duke said.

“Then I dare say, sir, it should be you,” Visant said, knowing full well how unfortunate his lot was; moving desultory regiments around Holland, trying to delay a large, well-rested Burgundian force, would not be easy work. “I shall do my best and await your return!”


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A month later, in Rennes, Francois split his time between negotiating the marriage of his daughter Anne to an English noble, and the regimental officers who were assembling four regiments from scratch. Hardly time to sleep, yet here was this letter from Pier du Tonquedoc, demanding his presence in Nantes. A two-day ride each way, but the Duke remembered Pier relating in confidence that the original plan to siege Meath was du Tonquedoc’s, so he mounted up and rode south.

Seated at a chessboard in his private library, Pier asked the Duke what he planned to do with the four regiments currently being razed.

“We’ll sail back to Holland, and we’ll need twice again as many men, to repulse the Burgundians,” the Duke brooded. “Did the old man bring me here to play chess,” he thought.

“Well let me offer you a counter-plan. What would you do if I told you I had negotiated right of passage through France for our regiments?”

The Duke stared at the old advisor with incredulity. “One, you did this without informing me? Two, they’ll reach Vlaandern faster by sea than by slogging through Normandie and Calais, anyhow.”

“One, you didn’t need to know. And two, they’ll reach Dijon quite quickly, by taking barges up the Loire to Sancerre, and then marching forty miles to the capital of Bourgogne.” Pier looked up from the chessmen with a squint, and the faintest hint of a smirk.

Duke Francois managed a laugh despite his humiliation. “Well that’s quite the thought, I’ll take it under advisement.” He turned to leave.

"Our friends in Paris tell me they’re wholly defenseless... Bourgogne and Franche-Comte both.”
“Adieu!”


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Francois took the first 4000 men far up the Loire. A beautiful river, and surely a better morale-builder for the recruits than a week in the leaky holds of Bretagne’s rotting main fleet. Also good for the morale was laying siege to a capital virtually unopposed, which is what Francois did. A few letters reached him from Holland; Zeeland was under Burgundian control once again. de Penguem was, as predicted, badly beaten on the field of battle, but then hit upon the masterstroke of enticing the Dutch to revolt just as the Burgundian army arrived in the vicinity of Amsterdam. The Duchess, Carice, was instrumental in this as well. Regiments from Leinster and Munster acquitted themselves quite well in harassing Vlaandern, and only a few Burgundian forces had managed the long return south to the capital.

For once, the Dutch are played the fool, Francois thought in the miller’s house which had served as his base camp in Dijon. Funny world. I raised these regiments to fight Phillipe VI, and the first real combat they’ll see is against a Dutch rebellion. Francois straightened to allow his aide-de-camp to pomp up his dress uniform, then strode out into a sunny Winter morning.
Waiting for him was Phillipe VI, le Roi de Bourgogne. He looked defiant, despite the shackles around his wrists. “What are your terms, vous chien méchant…

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gameplay notes, ch. 5 (thru 1490)

lots of stuff going on here. I should confess right off: it took me a couple reloads before i realized how comprehensively screwed I was, and a couple reloads to hit upon the right strategy, the right timing, etc. My inflation is already bad news... creeping near 14%, though that's nowhere near as horrible in MM as it is in Vanilla. But once I hit upon the idea of sending my leader, rather than leaderless regiments, to Bourgogne, i had my storyline and the peace settlement I wanted. The storyline rebellion in Holland really did happen; 18k troops pop in on top of me while the main Burgundian force of 12k is marching in from the south. I hightailed it to Utrecht (bootrecht!) and watched the carnage. Go, rebels!

I am really enjoying the pace of the game, writing the AAR. Everything seems to have a reason to be fleshed out, and the things that happen in the game (Lorraine's lapdog-like devotion to Burgundy for instance) seem to make sense all of a sudden...

Was going to provide a 50-year tactical breakdown, a peek at all the sliders and everything, but never made screenshots when i should have, and so much wild stuff has gone down in the interval (my savegame is in 1520 or so) that I'm just going to do it whenever i get Core on Meath in 1530 or so.

Lets see: I'm sending boats 'round England for intel every few years and they are having some wicked War of the Roses type hijinx up there... the Papacy is kicking ass; North African states seem to be more than holding their own in Spain (Granada took Navarre and i am at a loss to explain that one, storyline or otherwise, but it's caused all manner of weirdness)

France, meanwhile ... hard to peek behind the curtain, but we've got a really high relationship and you would think with no war, France would be doing great ... but we're level on tech and there's some major troubles ahead for her... stay tuned!
 
The AI seems to be less than competent...lets hope that you're luck holds up, there.
 
Nice peace you got there. Those rebels can be a Godsend. I repeat...can. Not necessarily "are." ;)

That ought to keep Burgundy off your back for a while. At least until you begin making designs on Vlaanderen, which we all know is coming eventually. :D
 
This is your first AAR? :eek: It's masterfully written.

I'm quite enjoying it; you've done quite well for yourself in a short time. Soon enough, though, Burgundy might be inherited or the New World beckon to France...what then?

You can rest assured I'll be waiting to find out!
 
Beamed: One can only hope so... I generally like to be in a prolonged peacetime at this stage of the game (working toward the manufactory tech levels, then pushing hard for gov. tech 12) and it would be nice to have a quiet spell...
Enewald: I figured I could take one HRE relations hit... it's been All Austria thus far, and remember we were allied once, so I had hopes that i wouldn't get trade sanctions.
Fulcrumvale: The AI? Erm, we're talking about EU3 right? It's never wholly competent. The Burgundian DoW on France was pretty bad, yes, but nothing compares to the total inability of England to do anything effectively, or be affected by another AI power...
Coz1: Yeah, a nice peace. I did, to be fair, still have a decent force in the north, since I'd so meekly avoided combat while my morale built back up. To be precise: they took Zeeland, had MONTHS of combat to beat the Zeeland rebels, after which I marched back over from Utrecht and ran them off. As they recouped in Zeeland, I marched through to join my Irish allies in Vlaandern (they'd gotten to, i think, 38% already!) and when i got there with my general-less army, the Leicestrian king immediately hit the 'Woot' button and, thanks to the wall breach, he got the province, at the expense of most of my manpower. About this time, Franche-Comte fell and the 2k Burgundian troops returned to Bourgogne had not dispersed my garrison ... so i immediately sued for peace and got it, first time off. Was surprised.
dharper: *blush* yes its my first AAR. I had the skeleton of a story, and a bit of writing done, for my second Ceylon campaign, back with MMI, but it never went anywhere. glad you're enjoying!
 
Great read, Glengarry!

As a kind of general advice, avoid negative stability. That can kill you.


You did well in your war with Burgundy.


As for Granada conquering Navarra... Ouch! I am at a loss to explain it!


In your next update, please attach a picture with a general view of europe.


:)
 
chapter VII: Passing the Mantle

Rennes, Armor, Bretagne. December 1492.
Charles de Pontbriand stalked through the home of the Bishop of Armor, a worried, worried man. Four months since Duke Francois III died in his sleep, and the country still lacked a proper ruler. Charles was hardly welcome in the home of Anne, the eldest daughter of Francois. “By all rights, she should be Duchess,” he thought. And yet his old mentor Pier, from Nantes, wrote that he was doing all in his power to block her investiture. And so de Pontbriand did likewise.

“The Duke served his country brilliantly, as have the people of Armor. Anne deserves to be recognized,” the Bishop told Charles.

“And so it would be, save for the matter of her husband...” Why the old Duke had ever permitted her to marry an English Lord, Charles could not fathom. In truth, he was not a bad fellow. But perceptions mattered most in this game, especially where the French were concerned. “Carice should arrive this week from Amsterdam with young Francois, and we’ll see who the Estates back then.”

Despite the constant warring with Burgundy, Bretagne had found ample time to change in the four decades since the English were routed in Meath and at sea. Schools and workshops were no longer exclusively the domain of the nobility. The church was in decline, and the humanist ideals espoused by the Florentines were all the rage, in Nantes and Amsterdam alike. One routinely heard Dutch, French, English and even Gaelic at court, and every civil servant was ordered to become fluent in at least one of the four. In the merchant quarters, the new ethics were even more on display.

Such a modern populace would accept a female sovereign, Charles thought. But perhaps not an English one. He reread the most recent letter from Pier and agreed, as always. This would be his line of attack as the Estates met.

One vote each for the five leading houses of the Vendee and Armor. Four houses each with a vote from Morihban and Finistere. One each for Zeeland, Holland and Meath. Charles made the rounds to the various family patriarchs. “You remember how the English troops sacked le Mans in 1452.” “The sailors of Finistere will say their victory was for naught.” “Your family may profit handsomely while sitting as Regent.” To each his own.

The vote was 11 to 10 in favor of installing the 12-year-old Francois IV. Bretagne would have a regency council.


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...

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After four relatively sleepy years of regency, Francois IV was crowned Duke… in Nantes. Armor had predictably rebelled, the old martial-minded nobles fielding a large force with frightening speed, and all regiments loyal to the new Duke were predictably engaged in Zeeland. Pier du Tonquedoc risked his health for one final trip to Paris, to see the new French King, Charles the Ninth.

Charles’ path to the throne was also circuitous at best. The third son of Louis VIII had required a battlefield death and a drunken accident to remove two brothers from the scene, and the French were adjusting to this unexpected new monarch. He was, Pier thought, unexceptional in every way, save one… he was wed to Claudine Monforzh, the second daughter of the old Breton Duke, Francis III.

Complications, indeed, the old bureaucrat thought, as he waited for his audience in Paris. By the acts signed in Rennes, the new Queen of France was also third in line to the Breton throne, after Francis IV and her older sister Anne. It was time for his audience.

“Salud, Mat an traoù ganeoc'h?” said the French king in passable Breton. Pier stole a look at Claudine, but she was impassive as always.

“You do me honor, but when I am in Paris, I prefer hearing the more refined sound of French,” Pier flattered. “My new Duke, Francois IV, sends you his warmest greetings from Nantes.

“Francois the Fourth, that’s quite a few Francois… they tell me you’ve known a few,” Charles said.

“I've always hoped they would name one after me, actually, but these wars with Bourgogne take up too much of our time,” replied du Tonquedoc, earning a laugh.

The real reason for his visit, of course, was to plead the French king to put down the rebellion in Armor. This would not please some quarters, of course, but Pier could see no better alternative. bringing troops home from Zeeland was as good as an invitation to the Burgundians, who were known to be raising armies once again. If the families who wanted Anne on the throne got too far out of control, the nobles in Finistere and Morihban could join them, and it would likely mean civil war.

Charles agreed to dispatch the sizeable force he maintained in Normandie (to discourage the English) and before wishing Pier farewell, made a surprising suggestion: The old artist Maurice de la Motte d’Airan was recently returned to Paris from the Cote d’Azur and would like to see Pier.

It was a curious meeting. The artist had left Nantes many years ago, to possess his family’s estate in Paris, and upon seeing the commissions his art now commanded in Paris, had never returned. Many years later, he found himself in service of the Duke of Savoy, and his frescoes for the palace in Turin allegedly rivaled the great works of Rome and Firenze. But in his advanced years, he had lost all inspiration.

“Why don’t you return to Finistere, see the fog roll in around Enzh Ousa, paint there? The paintings of your forgotten, imagined youth?” asked du Tonquedoc. d’Airan thought it a splendid suggestion, and asked Pier to stay in Paris a few weeks so as to accompany him on the return to Bretagne. But five days later, Maurice learned that he would be traveling alone, for the great man, the architect of Bretagne, had taken ill and quickly died at the age of 70.


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