Serves 'em right 
I assume the Holy See wont be getting its own enclave state by the end of all of this!
I assume the Holy See wont be getting its own enclave state by the end of all of this!
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Impressive. More impressive than I had expected, even considering all we had been told before about the rebels and the rotten core of the Church government.
Nice map!
If you got the free version of Ulead it will expire in 15 days and then it will track your IP so you can't try it again. But I tried several others and they're just not as handy
I might have to think of buying it.
And no, I wouldn't mind a sequel to the Fall of the Infallible Pope. Revolution and its Discontents?
Cheers.
If you got the free version of Ulead it will expire in 15 days and then it will track your IP so you can't try it again. But I tried several others and they're just not as handy
I might have to think of buying it.
And no, I wouldn't mind a sequel to the Fall of the Infallible Pope. Revolution and its Discontents?
Cheers.
Complete and utter chaos is not an easy thing to portray. Hundreds of books have been written on the French and Russian revolutions, and most of them fall short of being able to relate what happened, the atmosphere, the living through such momentous times. At best they can only hope to offer an impression.
And your update leaves a very powerful impression at that.
And your update leaves a very powerful impression at that.
If enough subjects rebel, even a King - or an 'infallible' Pope - must bow. The only things to be settled, it seems, are the length of the butchers bill and the makeup of the successor government.
The Pope will probably never get any credit for uniting Italy, but he deserves that, at least.
The way the revolution is going we may see the Pope in exile, even the Vatican in flames!
The Pope will probably never get any credit for uniting Italy, but he deserves that, at least.
The way the revolution is going we may see the Pope in exile, even the Vatican in flames!
Another great update. I'm a bit dissapointed though that reality rears it's ugly head in your game, it was quite amusing to read about successful reactionary Pope country.
a Marxist Italy, and a peasant revolt in Naples! this is getting interesting.
btw, congrats on your AARward.
this is getting interesting. btw, congrats on your AARward.
I haven't had a chance to respond in a while, but I want to say excellent work as usual. Your map showing the progress of the revoultions added a nice touch.
As to the subject at hand, I can't help but wonder what Italy will look like after this is all said and done. It looks obvious at this point that temporal power only has one more update left, but then what? It looks like we will soon have a civil war on our hands between the Marxist and the Republicans.
Q
As to the subject at hand, I can't help but wonder what Italy will look like after this is all said and done. It looks obvious at this point that temporal power only has one more update left, but then what? It looks like we will soon have a civil war on our hands between the Marxist and the Republicans.
Q
An award? Hot diggity!
I mentioned this in the Weekly AAR Showcase thread, but I can't thank you readers enough for your constant feedback, comments, and even views. That's been a huge factor in my own enjoyment of this AAR. So cheers!
An update, and response to comments, should be ready for Saturday as usual. In a moment of madness I offered to write an article for the AARlander but hopefully that won't be cause for delay. I might push the update back to Sunday if I want to take the extra time to polish it up... we'll see.
I mentioned this in the Weekly AAR Showcase thread, but I can't thank you readers enough for your constant feedback, comments, and even views. That's been a huge factor in my own enjoyment of this AAR. So cheers!
An update, and response to comments, should be ready for Saturday as usual. In a moment of madness I offered to write an article for the AARlander but hopefully that won't be cause for delay. I might push the update back to Sunday if I want to take the extra time to polish it up... we'll see.
Take your time ComradeOm. We'll wait patiently what it seems will be the last piece of a masterpiece...
Just caught up on your most recent updates... Enjoyable stuff!
I'm torn between sympathy for the utter internal collapse of Papal Italy and awe at your exceedingly sophisticated colour-changing, passage-of-time-expressing map. Too cool...
Oh and congrats on your award- you get my vote!
I'm torn between sympathy for the utter internal collapse of Papal Italy and awe at your exceedingly sophisticated colour-changing, passage-of-time-expressing map. Too cool...
Oh and congrats on your award- you get my vote!
Great AAR ComradeOm! I look forward to see how things pan out in Italy; if some sort of liberal-coalition government will be formed or if the children of the revolution will turn on each other. Either way, the Papacy's days of primacy look to be over.
Lecture Thirteen: Rome or Death! (1876)
"It will be a double glory for [the Prince] to have established a new principality, and adorned and strengthened it with good laws, good arms, good allies, and with a good example; so will it be a double disgrace to him who, born a prince, shall lose his state by want of wisdom" Machiavelli
Papal dominance of the Italian peninsula had been originally been secured by military success and ultimately it was the Holy See's failure to effectively coordinate and deploy its military assets in 1875-'76 that produced both a year of localised warfare and the fatal erosion of its temporal powers. Without military aid from the capital it was left to provincial administrators and landowners to organise a defence of the Papal state. Unsurprisingly the revolutionaries, of whatever stripe, could usually muster more support from the local population than these defenders of an unpopular and reactionary regime. The Church's civil apparatus had been badly tarnished by decades, centuries in some areas, of oppressive rule and by Spring 1876 over half the country was effectively out of Papal control. As local rebels consolidated their hold on towns and cities, often by "cleansing" them of figures known to be loyal to the Church, they began to come into contact with other revolutionary groups in neighbouring settlements. Slowly larger formations of rebels, drawn from as many as a dozen towns or villages, began to assemble. In the north, where the labour movement already possessed extensive, if decentralised, organisational structures, rebel divisions had begun to move from city to city as early as January 1876. Further south the peasants of Naples and Sicily formed little more than temporary mobs that rarely ventured far from their villages.
Contemporary engraving of revolutionaries - note the representation of workers, peasants and liberal professionals
As has been mentioned previously, there was no uniform ideology shared by the various conspirators. Some groups were truly revolutionary while others had less radical designs. Even within these categories there were disagreements over methodology, personalities and ideology. By and large however conflict between the groups was minimal. Even factions diametrically opposed to each other's politics could still unite in the face of continued intransigence of the Papacy. It was the refusal of Pius IX to even contemplate constitutional change, at the least, that allowed for the uneasy and loose alliance of liberals and socialists. That is not to say that there was no competition between the many varied rebel associations. Pius was the immediate target but the more farsighted revolutionaries were surely already planning for life after the Pope. In this context the importance of Rome becomes clear - whichever faction held the capital would find its position in the new order greatly enhanced. As the rest of the country increasingly fell to rebel armies, ambitious eyes began to shift towards the Eternal City.
In all there were three attempts to take Rome as the civil war continued to rage throughout the rest of the country*. The first was a rather abortive effort by the workers of Napoli following their own revolt in December 1876. Having secured their city, one of the first to openly declare its opposition to the Papacy, a small detachment of armed workers and peasants (approximately three thousand in number) began to work their way through the various towns and villages on the road to the capital. Their brief march through Latium came to an abrupt halt at Fondi where the militia was intercepted and annihilated by a formation of mercenaries from the Esercito Pontificio. The opportunity to march on Napoli was squandered as continued, and well founded, Papal nervousness over discontent in Rome conspired to recall the mercenaries to the city proper. Maintaining control of the vast slums of Rome was proving to be a full time occupation for the army but it was not until the next year that the soldiers would be again called upon to meet an external threat.
Rome was hardly immune to revolutionary sentiment and the city was in a state of martial law from late 1875
Anacona, long a stronghold of republican sentiment, had been one of the first towns to declare its opposition to the Papacy in the chaotic days of Winter '75. There the strong liberal revolutionary tradition, itself a product of a healthy middle class, helped impose some semblance of unity on the myriad local organisations and factions. The heady slogans of Mazzini's heritage masked an organised mobilisation and the local bourgeoisie and professionals had remarkable success in assembling a number of organised militias, largely drawn from reformers/dissidents from within the Papal army. By April 1876 the threat of counter-revolution in the liberal heartlands (largely confined to the Adriatic coast and former Tuscan lands) was effectively quashed and this makeshift army, some fifteen thousand strong, was dispatched to march on Rome. Like Mazzini's aborted effort some thirty years previously, the liberal advance was checked by the Esercito Pontificio in the countryside surrounding Reiti but with heavy losses on both sides. The Papal mercenaries proved unable to secure a convincing victory and the liberal regiments withdrew largely intact and contented themselves with maintaining a presence on the roads leading east from the capital. The noose on Rome was only tightening.
Without assistance from the rest of the Papal army the Esercito Pontificio could not hope to both take the battle to the rebels and simultaneously police an agitated population within the city itself. Yet there was no help forthcoming - the bulk of the surviving Papal regiments were either isolated along the Austrian border or engaging in piecemeal battles with either local rebels or bands of deserters. In the Piedmontese lands, where the majority of active divisions had been stationed and fighting had been fiercest, the last significant bastion of Papal rule in the region collapsed with the capture of Alessandria by AICA militias in June 1876. This left almost all of the north-west of the peninsula under the nominal control of various socialist factions. While lacking the centralised organisation of the liberals, the worker militias were numerous, well armed, and had some basic tool of co-ordination in the AICA. Much of the energy of this movement was taken up in internal projects, both ideological bickering and revolutionary social reforms, but by late May preparations were underway for a campaign to "liberate" Rome. The march proper didn't commence until the following month but the revolutionaries had succeeded in assembling an impressive thirty thousand armed men and, shockingly at the time, women.
An outlying town or fortification is breached by rebels
Process of this army was slow but by mid-July it had made its way down the coast and was approaching Rome from the north. We know that on July 26 contact was made with the commanders of the liberal formations to the east of the city and agreement was reached on a joint assault. The reputation of the Esercito Pontificio was formidable enough to encourage the different factions to act in unity, and detachments from both armies began to press towards the city in the following week. Facing far superior numbers (outnumbered, according to accounts, by over three to one) the Papal forces were unable to maintain a defence of the outlying towns and began to retreat into the city of Rome itself. As it did so the discipline of the mercenary force began to break down with the Papal soldiers leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. That there were no attempts by officers to maintain discipline indicates that the lower ranks were not alone in recognising the hopelessness of the situation. This low morale is the best explanation for the panicked reaction of a detachment of Papal soldiers to a civilian protest in the Roman neighbourhood of Magliana on August 13. Having refused to disperse, the unarmed crowd was fired into with the resulting deaths of 96 civilians and hundreds wounded. The reaction of the rest of the city was, as expected, explosive with riots and revolution breaking out throughout Rome**.
By August 19 the situation had clearly deteriorated to a point far beyond Papal control. The position of the few thousand mercenaries fighting fierce battles on the edge of the capital became completely untenable with the city in flames behind them. It is not in the nature of a mercenary to fight to the death and mid August saw mass desertions from the Esercito Pontificio. The few native Italians in this elite unit generally remained loyal to the Holy See, as did a smattering of Irish and Swiss units, but these numbered at most three thousand by early September†. These numbers were not nearly enough to defend the Papacy from the revolting citizens or the advancing armies but they did secure enough time for the Vatican staff to evacuate the city. Having proven largely impotent in the face of popular fury, the Pope and his government finally left port for Spain on September 7 1876. Their destination was Spain and exile.
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* The most recent work dealing with the various attempts to seize Rome is "Pick, D., (2005), Rome Or Death". Both that work and this lecture share as a title the popular rallying cry used by the various revolutionary parties to help foster some degree of unity in opposing the Papal regime.
** "Matteson, R., (1901), The Roman Theocracy and the Republic" does an able job of documenting and explaining the complex social tensions and relations that existed in Rome before the Revolution, and the series of risings and riots that exploded during it.
† Most deserting mercenaries fought a fighting retreat for the coast where they were largely successful in commandeering fishing vessels and steamers to escape. The most audacious attempt however was staged by a thousand members of the Guardia Svizzera who abandoned the defence of Rome and broke out towards the north east in an attempt to make for Austrian border. Miraculously they reached Ferrara before meeting with defeat and massacre. The experience of this "Expedition of the Thousand" is vividly recalled by one of the few survivors in "Abba, G.C., (1880), Noterelle di uno dei Mille"
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This update is somewhat longer than I'd like and its clear to me that the format/tone (or perhaps author!) of the AAR simply not up to such a detailed examination of events. I'm not sure as to whether I'll wrap everything up with the next update or have another one after that. Either way we are definitely nearing the end of this story.
Again, thanks to everyone for their congrats on the Weekly AAR Showcase. I've also done a small piece for this months AARlander (which should be out today) on achieving the border effect that I use for my images. That should be all
Jape: *Checks the above update* I think you're right
CCA: Thanks but, as I say above, the style I've chosen for this AAR is really clashing with the detail needed to explain/describe these events. I'm still eager to examine the fate of post-Papal Italy but (if it happens!) this will be a different AAR with a different format/style.
And, for some strange reason ( ), I do like my new avatar
J. Passepartout: I'd feel more guilty about the rapid collapse of the Papacy if it wasn't for the thousands of words I've spent building up to it. This last update encompasses that tendency of mine - lots of description leading to a short/rapid collapse. I'm not sure if this is a result of the nature of the AAR or a flaw in my own writing/planning. Either way its something that I'm aware of.
Of course there is a degree of "railroading" in this AAR. The custom events that I used were specifically designed to increase unrest and release it in a single revolution. I'd like to think that this is more historical than the Vicky way of combating rebels for decades while managing a prosperous economy.
RGB: I do like the map and I can see myself making use of a similar type in future AARs. Once I don't have to pay you royalties of course! It took an hour or two to put the base map together but animating it was a breeze. Naturally I've learned a few lessons along the way... which is always nice
stnylan: You think my writing is "complete and utter chaos"?
Thanks. There are times when I feel that I'm too much of a perfectionist for my own good. Hmmm does that sound disgustingly conceited?
Director: You are aware that you've just compressed over ten thousand words of mine into a single line? This AAR could have been so much shorter
But you are perfectly correct of course. The Napoleon quote that I used in the title post of the AAR expresses similar sentiments. That's very much been a theme, if not the overriding one, of this story.
Alojzy: Well I've always been something of a historical determinist, as you no doubt know from the History forum, and ignoring broad historical trends is just not my style. The sad thing is that this is how I play all my P'dox games...
Cinéad IV: Its not going to be the Papal States for long
Quirinus308: Honestly I have no idea as to what post-Papal Italy will look like. I'll probably lay down the foundations in the next update but aside from that nothing is planned out. Of course civil war is probably a good bet.
Hastu Neon: This is my masterpiece all right... its all downhill from here
Pirate Z: Merci
DerKaiser: Thanks again. The map is far from perfect but it did work out well. Attempting to explain, in words, the collapse of Papal power province by province would have been a disaster.
VILenin: And unfortunately with the end of the Papacy comes the end of the AAR. I'm not quite finished yet but this story is really all about the Holy See
Again, thanks to everyone for their congrats on the Weekly AAR Showcase. I've also done a small piece for this months AARlander (which should be out today) on achieving the border effect that I use for my images. That should be all
-----
Jape: *Checks the above update* I think you're right
CCA: Thanks but, as I say above, the style I've chosen for this AAR is really clashing with the detail needed to explain/describe these events. I'm still eager to examine the fate of post-Papal Italy but (if it happens!) this will be a different AAR with a different format/style.
And, for some strange reason (
), I do like my new avatarJ. Passepartout: I'd feel more guilty about the rapid collapse of the Papacy if it wasn't for the thousands of words I've spent building up to it. This last update encompasses that tendency of mine - lots of description leading to a short/rapid collapse. I'm not sure if this is a result of the nature of the AAR or a flaw in my own writing/planning. Either way its something that I'm aware of.
Of course there is a degree of "railroading" in this AAR. The custom events that I used were specifically designed to increase unrest and release it in a single revolution. I'd like to think that this is more historical than the Vicky way of combating rebels for decades while managing a prosperous economy.
RGB: I do like the map and I can see myself making use of a similar type in future AARs. Once I don't have to pay you royalties of course! It took an hour or two to put the base map together but animating it was a breeze. Naturally I've learned a few lessons along the way... which is always nice
stnylan: You think my writing is "complete and utter chaos"?
Thanks. There are times when I feel that I'm too much of a perfectionist for my own good. Hmmm does that sound disgustingly conceited?
Director: You are aware that you've just compressed over ten thousand words of mine into a single line? This AAR could have been so much shorter
But you are perfectly correct of course. The Napoleon quote that I used in the title post of the AAR expresses similar sentiments. That's very much been a theme, if not the overriding one, of this story.
Alojzy: Well I've always been something of a historical determinist, as you no doubt know from the History forum, and ignoring broad historical trends is just not my style. The sad thing is that this is how I play all my P'dox games...
Cinéad IV: Its not going to be the Papal States for long
Quirinus308: Honestly I have no idea as to what post-Papal Italy will look like. I'll probably lay down the foundations in the next update but aside from that nothing is planned out. Of course civil war is probably a good bet.
Hastu Neon: This is my masterpiece all right... its all downhill from here
Pirate Z: Merci
DerKaiser: Thanks again. The map is far from perfect but it did work out well. Attempting to explain, in words, the collapse of Papal power province by province would have been a disaster.
VILenin: And unfortunately with the end of the Papacy comes the end of the AAR. I'm not quite finished yet but this story is really all about the Holy See
Dang! I was hoping for a public hanging. Maybe that's my sadistic side talking... o
Excellent, Italy is free of the Papacy! Now for a decade of liberal-socialist violence!
I'm actually quite interested in what will happen to the Papacy, will it finally realise its place as merely a gaggle of cult admins and stop with all this 'beyond Kings' garbage?
Or more interesting, an early anti-cleric revolution might spare on militant Political-Catholicism which was a strong influence on Fascism & Co. in later years
o Excellent, Italy is free of the Papacy! Now for a decade of liberal-socialist violence!
I'm actually quite interested in what will happen to the Papacy, will it finally realise its place as merely a gaggle of cult admins and stop with all this 'beyond Kings' garbage?
Or more interesting, an early anti-cleric revolution might spare on militant Political-Catholicism which was a strong influence on Fascism & Co. in later years
The Catholic Church historically was rather angry; if it survives with the hierarchy intact there is going to be such a rage that no Catholic will stand a chance of being elected president in 1960.