Our legacy shall be restored! - Brittany in an Aberrated World

[Nein]

Breton history up to 1066 is one of resilience in the face of larger powers; between the Romans, the Franks and the Vikings the small territory spent almost a millennium under the grasp of outsiders, perhaps wishing there was a bridge linking Bretons with their northern brothers…

Eventually, though, better times would come. When William of Normandy set to enforce his right to the English crown, little did he know he was to lose it all in Hastings. The Normans battled the English to a brutal standstill of which neither sovereign made it out of. The ensuing chaos precipitated a Scottish invasion that threatened the very existence of England; with only a last-ditch effort by the Earl of Wessex and the Lord Mayor of London, who had Breton assistance, saving the land at the Battle of Cambridge. Survival came at a bitter price, however. In the wake of the war, England was left without the troops or the money to defend itself, so, under pressure from all its neighbours, it collapsed, with each regional government accepting the “protection” of one of them. Southwestern England went to Brittany.

The disintegration of England was nothing compared to that of France. On the distant lands of Byzantium it was said it was God’s will, a punishment for a betrayal like few others. The armies of the pope, supposedly sent to continue the campaigns against the Muslims further east, marched in 1204 towards Constantinople. The crusader attempt to storm the walls was met with more strength than was expected, resulting in the deaths of more than one Western monarch, the French one among them. When news of that arrived in Paris a succession crisis was the only answer, as the Duke of Burgundy had been plotting such a thing in advance. He only wanted to put a man favourable to their interests, but instead, they gained the right to promote them on their own.

Years after the flames of war brought France down, the Pope organized a meeting in Rome to which most major noblemen of the area surrounding France in addition to the Kingdom itself came. In an attempt stabilize the region, the duchies of Brittany, Burgundy and Savoy, all within a considerable distance of each other, were awarded their own crowns. In this way the Papacy also tried to get rid of a powerful influence upon itself, aspect in which it succeeded.

For Brittany those two events might have possibly entailed its salvation, Celtic culture was safe this side of the Channel. Still, the best was yet to come…

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Colonel Nein reporting to protect the FtG AARdom! I believe Brittany has a lot of potential, as you get to be everywhere (France, Iberia, America, the British Isles...).
I've played 30 years already, and I've got cool stuff to write about.

 

[Alizon]

Interesting! Just try to avoid building British/French empires

 

[Nein]

For the first couple of centuries (1200 to 1400) one could barely see Brittany as a kingdom, as a minor expansion eastwards was all it had to show for it. The reality, though, was that the new monarchy was in the process of adapting to its new status, which required time. Particularly troublesome were the demands of non-Breton nobles (those who didn’t fight, the rest were banished immediately). The response was ingenious:
In the first place, the rights of these nobles to their fiefs were respected to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Secondly, a nation-wide parliament was created, with representation from the nobility, the clergy and also from the merchants; a characteristic of this assembly was the set of rights and duties awarded to each estate; and the violation of the latter could have serious consequences (many kings of the period were famous for pressing every possible instance to replace a Frenchman or Anglo-Saxon with a loyal Breton). Lastly, the kings tried to play the estates against one another to drown the complaints of any potential rebel. The downsides of these policies were a series of revolts from nobles who did not want to play along and crises involving the monarchy itself. In the effect, however, by the time of the great expansion Brittany had found a mechanism to keep a tight lash on its territories.

The time to exploit this development came in the 15th century, during the rule of John VI. The first half of his 43 years long left us with few international deeds, but it is clear from his later conquests he always had an ambitious mind.
Jean was a diplomat at heart, and to pursue his conquests he sent his sons and daughters to Ireland, Scotland and Burgundy, hoping to isolate the small statelets of the region.
The first objective was in France, where on 1420 he launched an invasion of the Duchy of Orleans, probably with the intention of gaining total control over it. The Burgundians who were themselves seeking power were not going to let that pass. Once the war had been reduced to a series of sieges, a major, though often overlooked event took place in Paris. There, in the wake of the arrival of a Burgundian army, the kings of both realms negotiated to let Burgundy keep the great city, in addition to Orleans, whilst Brittany annexed Tours.
The reason why this agreement is so important is because it effectively settled half of the territorial limits later discussed at Dijon on 1432.

While this happened, the king was already pondering what his next move would be. The Scots, who returned to finish what they began on 1067, made it easy. On December 8, 1421 they launched an invasion of Breton England, and their Norwegian brothers followed suit. Brittany called upon its Norman vassal, though it could do and did very little in the conflict.
As the army had taken too many losses in the War of Orleans and the treasury was short of gold, Scotland managed to take the border towns with little to no resistance being offered. In these conditions the invaders might have failed to prepare themselves for the Breton counterattack, which came in force the following year. The result was the total obliteration of the invaders (in the battles of Bristol, Oxford and Lincoln). Afterwards the war progressed slowly, due to a combination of Norwegian reinforcements and Breton losses. Still, the result was the same, and the Celts advanced all the way to the cities of the Scottish lowlands.
Once peace arrived, the Bretons had conquered England all the way to Northumberland; John of Brittany succeeded where William of Normandy had failed.

With this great deed, the king’s prestige grew immensely. However, now he rule the land he annexed.
As the English nobles continued to own most of the land, and they were glad to see Scottish rule overturned, the task was relatively easy. He elevated his brother Arthur de Richemont to “Lieutenant of England”, and entrusted him with fighting the remaining pro-Scot nobles, who rebelled more than once, and carrying out a census of the population and wealth of the region. A copy of the Breton parliament was created (note that the English lands that had already belonged to Brittany remained linked to it); although representatives from both would gather to deal with national matters in times of crisis.

Arthur de Richemont

The one problem John dealt with on his own was Northumberland. This was a land the Scots had settled, and a few months after the conquest a delegation of descendants of English nobles whose fiefs were taken away from asked him to restore their ownership of the land. In this instance, the king chose to side with the Scots. Not only was a four centuries old claim of little value, but this helping the English would strengthen the power of the region even more, something unacceptable. It was a gambit, but one he thought would be beneficial to the monarchy.

Now possessing a large land such as England, the kingdom could be far more ambitious in its undertakings, but it would always have to look at events elsewhere, for it was not the only expanding power...


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Interesting! Just try to avoid building British/French empires

I'm inevitably going to have to mix those 2 at the beginning due to my location, but I plan on expanding to other areas inhabited by the Celts.

 

[blklizard]

I'll tag along to see where this goes. Not familiar with FTG so I'll be interested to see what happens.

 

[Nein]

Cool! I didn't plan on posting many pictures, but I'll try to add them to show you.

 

[blklizard]

Cool! I didn't plan on posting many pictures, but I'll try to add them to show you.

Don't feel forced to do so. If you could incorporate those events in your writing, that would work as well. In my AARs, I generally avoid too many pictures and shift into more writing so I don't mind if there was a lack of pictures.

 

[Polak]

An AAR from FTG ; I will follow

 

[Kuld von Reyn]

I have fond memories of playing Brittany in the Interregnum mod, though I never managed to complete a game with it. Haven't played Aberration, but since the Breton position seems similar my interest is piqued. Will be the following this. FTG AARs are usually pretty fun.

Btw, where did you find a version of Aberration for that map? (Assuming you didn't make it yourself.)

 

[Nein]

Here's the mod (it's not just a map change, there are many additions, especially outside of Europe): http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?680629-A4k-2.0

 

[DKM]

subbed

Good Luck!

 

[Nein]

A New France

The order brought down by the collapse of the French realm took centuries to be properly replaced. The then chaotic regions fell under the sway of local dukes abetted by worried landlords, to whom the former often gave concessions that resulted in each duchy being little more than a Federation with no foreign influence. Indeed, the number of nobles (and peasants) who embarked on Crusades abroad significantly waned, a fact that raised an alarm at the Holy See. Concern turned to fear during the Islamic resurgence in Spain of the late 14th century, which as a consequence turned southern France into a front of the war against Islam. Although the Kingdom of Savoy had already been created by that time, and though peace and quiet were to be found in almost unprecedented levels within the region, the French kings were still too weak to oppose the resistance Rome desired; something more had to be done.

That something was the meeting at Dijon of 1432. In that year, and with the support of Pope Eugenius IV, Philippe III “le Bon” of Burgundy assembled the other two sovereigns of France to settle once and for all the issue of who owned the rights to each part of France. Aside from the Pope’s own needs, this meeting was not born out of a desire for peace; in fact, the opposite is true: Brittany and Burgundy were both ruled by ambitious kings who would have found the promise of peace with the other two kingdoms appealing only insofar as that meant the possibility to expand elsewhere (including the independent statelets of France), while Savoy could not afford to keep a watch on both Burgundy and the Sultanate of Granada.
Thus, it can be said that, for the first time since 1204, the lands beyond France became the main topic of discussion, despite France itself being the land partitioned.

It may also be argued that a side effect of this meeting was the Breton conquest of England. The reason for that is the number of troops necessary for so large a territory; if king John had to keep a garrison in France while he invaded England, his campaign may have never been as successful as it eventually came to be. Either way, the war was certainly related to his enthusiasm for the treaty, which deprived him of any claims to Burgundian land.


The Great Lieutenant

General and regional governor are rarely roles a king entrusts to a sibling, one who could question the monarch’s authority, and there is little doubt Arthur de Richemont would not have ended in such positions if he had not proven his worth in battle. In the first battles of the English campaign, when Brittany was merely defending itself against the Scottish expansion, he gained prestige by his daring resistance in the face of superior armies, prestige which only grew once he was tasked with leading small armies in distraction maneuvers later on.
Eventually the king came to accept his brother was the man who should lead the campaign, role de Richemont would fulfill during its last year. It was not for that for which he rose to fame, however.
Not a decade had passed before Scotland tried to recover the lands it had lost, this time with further help from the Irish. To the Scots’ dismay, Brittany was prepared this time. The future governor of England managed to decimate the invaders aided by reinforcements from the mainland, and soon enough took the war to Scotland itself. That campaign turned out to be relatively easy; Ireland, on the other hand, presented a bigger problem, as its fleet could easily keep Brittany in Great Britain (Wales was meanwhile taken early on). To land on the neighbouring island, the kingdom had to spend almost two years improving its own fleet, which enabled general de Richemont to land in Dublin and humiliate the Irish.
An unexpected consequence of the invasion of Ireland was the seizure of information regarding the exploration the Irish were carrying out with Portuguese help beyond the Pillars of Hercules, who by 1440 had already discovered the Americas. It would not be long before John’s successors had adapted its ship designs and tools to follow their enemies into the unknown.

One final twist of fate would occur before the New World was conquered. The formerly zealous Briton foreign policy took a decision Rome and many other Catholic states found outrageous: Allying itself with the Granadan muslims. The move can easily be explained by Brittany’s own interests in southern France that were threatened by a newly formed pan-Iberian force; the Bretons would annex the Atlantic coast at whatever cost.
By that time the Duchy of Normandy had been definitively been integrated into the kingdom, lending even greater strength to what was already the greatest force of Western Europe, a force that was no longer afraid of Rome.

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It's really cool to see so many people posting here (though I'd like to see Ober... )!
Also, I apologize if anyone is annoyed by the design changes (font, alignment...), I'm just testing to see what looks better.

 

[blklizard]

32 years passed and your realm is enormous. Do nations get blobby easily in FtG? Burgundy looks like the only threat to you so far but, after that, it might be smooth sailing unless there are mechanics that weaken you once you grow too large.

With a New World discovered, I bet the Breton want a piece of the pie as well.

 

[Nein]

As a matter of fact, I'm surprised myself. Very.
The main reasons for the blobbing are:
1) Luck in battles and a 5/5/5/1 leader (totally unexpected)
2) Cavalry. Cavalry in FtG in extremely OP in the early game, at least in plains (which France and England are).
3) I'm playing in Normal difficulty
4) Both wars against Scotland were defensive. In FtG there's a HUGE difference in the Bad Boy (Infamy?) you get from offensive and defensive wars unless you have cores, which I do not have in England or Ireland.

 

[Kuld von Reyn]

Here's the mod (it's not just a map change, there are many additions, especially outside of Europe): http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?680629-A4k-2.0

Ah, I see. Thanks!

A New France

Looks like things are going well for Brittany. Wasn't expecting such explosive expansion.

IIRC there are events to either change the culture of French lands or gain French culture as Brittany in Interregnum. I wonder if Aberration has anything similar.

2) Cavalry. Cavalry in FtG in extremely OP in the early game, at least in plains (which France and England are).

I remember I once managed to defeat both Dauphiné and England as Burgundy in the 1420s because I just wiped out the entirety of their armies with my cavalry. Certainly not one of the most balanced things about FTG.

 

[Nein]

IIRC there are events to either change the culture of French lands or gain French culture as Brittany in Interregnum. I wonder if Aberration has anything similar.

Actually, Brittany starts with both English and French cultures (not Occitan though)

 

[Kuld von Reyn]

Actually, Brittany starts with both English and French cultures (not Occitan though)

I see. Sounds a tad more OP than in Interregnum.

Given how splintered the rest of the world is, it seems you've already achieved in a dominant position after just a couple of decades. Makes me wonder how your empire is going to look by the end of it.