At the dawn of the 16th Century, King Filippo Maria II’s power spreads over northern Italy, a bit of southern Italy, southern France, some of the islands of the Mediterranean, and a small portion of northern Germany.
In addition, Navarre (on the Atlantic coast between France and Spain) is a vassal, and Sicily, Brandenburg and Wurttemburg are allies. Not a bad power situation!
While we were busy at war, there was actually some positive action in the field of trading!
We were able to improve the relative situation of our merchants by improving the compete chance. The Shrewd Commerce Practice national idea gives us this necessary boost, which I hope to put into action very soon.
An event provides us with what is generally a rare opportunity during wartime, when merchants are generally skittish and hard to find.
As was mentioned in an earlier update, we were able to successfully slip 2 merchants into Andalucia, which was at that time a mid-range, “early 400’s” CoT. Interestingly, after the turn of the century, it turned into the top CoT in the world! It was up at about 480 total trade volume – presumably because of overseas acquisitions.
We did lose one merchant shortly after the beginning of the year. But the income from the remaining guy was almost equaling my income from 3 merchants at Liguria!
In the wake of war, business still remained. Those dogged, doggerel Frenchmen in Languedoc had to be taught a lesson.
General Guzman led 4,000 trained soldiers against their 5,000. Despite their superior morale, the Milanese were having difficulty. Only once more troops arrived, later in the month, did the rebels finally give in.
Interesting machinations have occurred in the Holy See. Venice – blast them! – were able to bribe Cardinal Paradisi’s loyalty away from us. General Paradisi agreed to plead our case with him, but to no avail.
But at the very end of 1500, Archbishop Containi (a distant relative of the late General Containi) comes into a cardinalship from Bremen. We now have two cardinals who pledge loyalty to Milan, and we could probably get Paradisi back if we made an effort.
In June, the once mighty and growing German Kingdom of Hesse is humbled.
Brandenburg, our good and faithful ally, grows slightly. Meanwhile, Austria also grows, extending a long, intruding arm into northern Germany. Austria’s whole appearance becomes more snakelike all the time – it sprawls in thin lines across Europe!
I wonder at the military defensibility of such a spread out country, without great defensive depth. But Austria remains one of the foremost military powers of the world. And she is our hostile neighbor.
We will attend to the possibility of future conflict by preparing for the worst. Whether that conflict, or one more of our own choosing, is to come first, we cannot yet say.
In assessing our economic situation at the end of 1500, we find that we (somehow!) are falling behind many of our potential enemies, and even much of the Musselman world!
This, naturally, is of great concern. What to do? We have been at war, and many of our resources have been channeled into those efforts. Because of that, our technology research has fallen behind many other powers. We have never come into our own in trade, which still puzzles me, but is probably related to trade tech. And we also have not built many of the province improvements that we might have, had we not been spending money on war.
As part of a revitalization effort, we disband all of the mercenaries we have purchased (about 7 regiments) except for the two regiments we are sending back to Bremen. We will need those, until we can build our own units there.
