((Ack. I'm a tad later than normal, aren't I? No worries, it's still before midnight here, so alles gut. Screenshots tomorrow, I hope.
Yes, this is an abnormally short installment for me. (Short. 1750 words is short now. Gods I've changed.) This is because frankly even RECALLING this unholy chain of Badboy wars makes me start shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. I'd never really had a "dishonorable scum" nation before that was a different religion than all its neighbors. Gods that was nasty with all the rebellions, and... oh no, another sobbing fit... ))
[/b]Interlude- The Ambition of King Victor II[/b]
Victor was, as his namesake grandfather, a driven man. He never let anything get in his way, between him and his only goal- revenge. His was the kind of personality that saw the entire world as something set against him, personally, and that the only way to gain happiness was the beat the world and make it stop harassing him. In the wrong mind, this leads to paranoia and insanity. In the right mind, this leads to being renowned as a king among kings, and one of the finest military minds in history.
He respected Ivan as a good administrator. Unfortunately, he also saw Ivan as immensely powerful. Saw that some of the older nobles trusted Ivan more than this youngling king, and if there was a disagreement, there could be... unpleasantness. And Ivan was, if anything, a cautious man. Victor's distrustful mind saw all too clearly that the old man would resist when Victor began a war, and that it would generate significant resistance, and would hamper Victor's plans.
Thus, Ivan had to go. It wasn't personal.
Similarly, Victor's decision to allow his sister Anne to Ivan's son Willem wasn't out of any motive so charitable as good feeling for his sibling, no. Victor realized that the assimilation of the old advisor's bloodline into the royal one would silence many of the old nobles' complaints about Ivan's dismissal. Also, Victor didn't know if he himself would have time to sire children, so this was a handy way of ensuring a tidy succession. An untidy one, with civil war breaking out, would do irreparable damage to Victor's goal, even after Victor's own death, and that simply wasn't acceptable.Thus, his sister having to marry. Finding a suitable match was simple, and the fact that they were fond of each other made it all too easy.
Nothing personal, again.
There were, broadly speaking, two "camps" of nobles. One, the minority, felt as Victor did; that war was inevitable, and a thrust into Germany and the heart of the Christian world in Italy was the best way to gain revenge on those who had transgressed against them in the past. To these nobles went the important generalships, control of strategic duchies in the interior of the country, and power. The majority felt that a simple consolidation and existance as a powerful European kingdom would in and of itself be enough to thoroughly mock and discredit the Christians. To these "potential rebels" went the small, isolated counties on the borders of the nation, and in the disputed territories where armies were most likely to attack first, and the cold sholder of Lupinstadt.
Victor never stopped planning. He was, as one contemporary admiringly put it, "...beyond good, past the concept of evil. He simply is. Do you call the sun evil when it causes drought, or good when it brings needed warmth? It is not the one nor the other, and neither is the king." He painstakingly assembled plans of attack, diplomatic schedules, conscription timetables, and a thousand other pieces of paper before he took a single step. The task took Victor two years.
On New Years Day of 1466, Victor made his opening move. A declaration of war was delivered to the Hungarians, hanging tenaciously on to their rump state of Eger, surrounded by werewolf country. Their allies to the south in Croatia and north in Bohemia came to the Hungarians' support, as expected. Victor nodded at the news, and sent twenty thousand troops, half his entire army into Eger. His new advisor, a lickspittle minor noble named Rossbart, protested this mightily.
"Sire! The Hungarians have fifteen thousand troops alone, the Croats the same, and the Bohemians double both! If they join up and attack us, we'll be murdered. We should send the whole army."
"No, Rossbart. The Hungarians would never dare cooperate with either of their allies, out of spite. They disagree too strenuously on, say, Pest, and the Carpathian foothills. They all want it, and they're more jealous of each other than they are afraid of a 'ragtag, poorly motivated' force from the sticks." Victor said as he was being fitted for his suit of armor. "A bit wider on the shoulders, I'm afraid, armorer. It pinches."
Rossbart merely fretted to himself in silence after that.
Victor had, of course, predicted truthfully. The Hungarian Army moved out and besieged Maros, and the Bohemians Carpathia. But instead of going for Pest and presenting a single continuous line of allied troops to Victor, he instead selfishly went for the slightly richer territory of Presburg. That left a gaping hole in the defence of Eger and the Hungarian royals. One that, as per Victor's timetable, the army was marching through almost before it had been made. It was a coup- Before any of the three Transylvanian forts had succumbed, the city of Eger yielded the royal family to Victor's forces almost without a fight. Then wheeling to the left, they engaged and scattered the Croatians in front of the city of Guns, and pushed forwards into Krain. There they left a small infantry force, and pushed onward to the capitol of the Croatians. Encircling and sieging them both in an efficient manner, the Croats yielded scarcely a year after the war had started. Now, alone and facing a formidable and proven army, the Bohemians wavered, pulling back to defend Moravia. Peace negotions with the alliance started.
"Sire! Sire, you seem almost to be playing with the Bohemians! We have Eger and the Hungarian king, just as we've taken the gold mines of Krain from the Croats. We've won sire! Declare peace!"
"Nonsense, Rossbart. Call the army from the Bohemian border back to Lupinstadt. I will personally take our fresh half of the army and take a vacation in Bucaresti. Don't make peace with the Bohemians yet, Rossbart. Wait precisely five months."
"Five- Bucaresti- half the army- SIRE?!"
"Goodbye, Rossbart. Oh, and when the Ottoman ambassador shows up to declare war in a month or so, just act like your normal frenzied self and have a fit in front of his honor, if you would be so kind?"
Rossbart whimpered.
The Sultan duly declared war in August of 1468. Remembering how in the last war he had been persuaded to make peace too quickly, after trying a roundabout attack through the Balkans, this time he resolved to punch straight through Wallachia and to Lupinstadt, ending war quickly and painlessly while the werewolves' army was still in the West. He marched, of course, along Victor's plan, right down to the individual road. When, roughly fifteen miles from Bucaresti, the Ottoman scouts ran into a roadblock in a highly forested length of road, the Sultan grew wary.
Unfortunately, he'd waited several hours too long to grow caution, as elite spearheads of cavalry were already punching through his flank, trying to trap him. Although the Sultan escaped, half his army didn't. Cold, panicked, and worn down by tireless harassment, they surrendered en masse only fifteen days after the declaration of war. The Ottomans no longer had the manpower to mount an invasion of Transylvania, and wouldn't for another year or so. On return to Lupinstadt, Victor was hailed as a hero by the crowds, and even Rossbart seemed happy, for once. That would change.
A week later, Austria declared war on Transylvania. That was expected. Venice did as well. That was not. Victor flew into a mad rage when he heard, screaming at the walls for betraying him. Rossbart, sensibly, hid. After the first night, Victor calmed down enough to begin ordering forces around. He abandoned his original goal; taking multiple territories from Austria and isolating Vienna and the Emperor. His new goal?
Survival.
The ensuing five years of warfare were some of the most brutal seen in Europe for centuries. Ever concerned about spies, betrayal, and the rest, King Victor decreed that Christians in "combat areas" were either to be executed or exiled immediately. Naturally, King Victor- and King Victor alone- determined what was a combat area. The ensuing butchery would depopulate entire swathes of the country. Whenever the army advanced into Austria, or Venice, people fled before them. Those that were caught were essentially playing a dice game- would they live or would they die? It depended on the temperment of the general.
In retaliation, the Christian forces predictably began butchering peasants inside Transylvania that they found, on the rationale that any of them might be a werewolf or a spy. After a year of this, the entire combat zone on the Austro-Transylvanian border was a depopulated no man's land.
Poland, noting that their capitol city was uncomfortably close to Transylvania's border, and noting the atrocities committed in Austria, elected not to pursue war at the current time.
After six years of warfare, all the powers had been exhausted. The Bohemians redeclared war in the end stages, which had the net effect only of pulling Croatia back into it. Croatia very quickly ceased being a kingdom, as their economy had been ruined, and unable to produce troops. Add another king to the prisoners' train.
Eventually, out of sheer necessity of number of rebellions, Transylvania and Austria would sign a white peace in 1476, following which the Austrians were disappointed again by the French Inheritance of Burgundy off to the West. After his "beautiful plan's" disastrous failure, King Victor II retained only a spark of his former fire and energy, barely staying awake through the involved Venetian peace negotiations. He toured the ruined area on the Austrian border, taking in the ruined villages, occasional corpses strung up from the trees, and seemed vaguely bored with the whole trip. The failed war shattered his dreams.
Even during the grand festival marking the Hunt of the Hungarian and Croat kings marking, unofficially, the end of the war for the people, Victor seemed listless. He pursued halfheartedly; when the inevitable kill occurred, he was quick, efficient, and wasted no energy.
The nobles began to mutter among themselves, in small groups. "Have not Anne and Willem had their first child? Is it not a boy? Could not one of us serve as regent for a profitable decade or two? Is not Victor derelict of his duties to crown and country?", for in truth Victor took a lazy, blase approach to ruling now.
Then one morning, entirely without prior notice, Victor awoke buzzing with an idea- the one idea which would bring a vengeance on the Austrians. He wrote it down, blue eyes blazing with a new, unholy fury and passion. He presented the plan to a few eminent nobles that afternoon. They approved.
Austria lay prone as a target for Victor's ambitions and the werewolves' dreams.
Yes, this is an abnormally short installment for me. (Short. 1750 words is short now. Gods I've changed.) This is because frankly even RECALLING this unholy chain of Badboy wars makes me start shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. I'd never really had a "dishonorable scum" nation before that was a different religion than all its neighbors. Gods that was nasty with all the rebellions, and... oh no, another sobbing fit... ))
[/b]Interlude- The Ambition of King Victor II[/b]
Victor was, as his namesake grandfather, a driven man. He never let anything get in his way, between him and his only goal- revenge. His was the kind of personality that saw the entire world as something set against him, personally, and that the only way to gain happiness was the beat the world and make it stop harassing him. In the wrong mind, this leads to paranoia and insanity. In the right mind, this leads to being renowned as a king among kings, and one of the finest military minds in history.
He respected Ivan as a good administrator. Unfortunately, he also saw Ivan as immensely powerful. Saw that some of the older nobles trusted Ivan more than this youngling king, and if there was a disagreement, there could be... unpleasantness. And Ivan was, if anything, a cautious man. Victor's distrustful mind saw all too clearly that the old man would resist when Victor began a war, and that it would generate significant resistance, and would hamper Victor's plans.
Thus, Ivan had to go. It wasn't personal.
Similarly, Victor's decision to allow his sister Anne to Ivan's son Willem wasn't out of any motive so charitable as good feeling for his sibling, no. Victor realized that the assimilation of the old advisor's bloodline into the royal one would silence many of the old nobles' complaints about Ivan's dismissal. Also, Victor didn't know if he himself would have time to sire children, so this was a handy way of ensuring a tidy succession. An untidy one, with civil war breaking out, would do irreparable damage to Victor's goal, even after Victor's own death, and that simply wasn't acceptable.Thus, his sister having to marry. Finding a suitable match was simple, and the fact that they were fond of each other made it all too easy.
Nothing personal, again.
There were, broadly speaking, two "camps" of nobles. One, the minority, felt as Victor did; that war was inevitable, and a thrust into Germany and the heart of the Christian world in Italy was the best way to gain revenge on those who had transgressed against them in the past. To these nobles went the important generalships, control of strategic duchies in the interior of the country, and power. The majority felt that a simple consolidation and existance as a powerful European kingdom would in and of itself be enough to thoroughly mock and discredit the Christians. To these "potential rebels" went the small, isolated counties on the borders of the nation, and in the disputed territories where armies were most likely to attack first, and the cold sholder of Lupinstadt.
Victor never stopped planning. He was, as one contemporary admiringly put it, "...beyond good, past the concept of evil. He simply is. Do you call the sun evil when it causes drought, or good when it brings needed warmth? It is not the one nor the other, and neither is the king." He painstakingly assembled plans of attack, diplomatic schedules, conscription timetables, and a thousand other pieces of paper before he took a single step. The task took Victor two years.
On New Years Day of 1466, Victor made his opening move. A declaration of war was delivered to the Hungarians, hanging tenaciously on to their rump state of Eger, surrounded by werewolf country. Their allies to the south in Croatia and north in Bohemia came to the Hungarians' support, as expected. Victor nodded at the news, and sent twenty thousand troops, half his entire army into Eger. His new advisor, a lickspittle minor noble named Rossbart, protested this mightily.
"Sire! The Hungarians have fifteen thousand troops alone, the Croats the same, and the Bohemians double both! If they join up and attack us, we'll be murdered. We should send the whole army."
"No, Rossbart. The Hungarians would never dare cooperate with either of their allies, out of spite. They disagree too strenuously on, say, Pest, and the Carpathian foothills. They all want it, and they're more jealous of each other than they are afraid of a 'ragtag, poorly motivated' force from the sticks." Victor said as he was being fitted for his suit of armor. "A bit wider on the shoulders, I'm afraid, armorer. It pinches."
Rossbart merely fretted to himself in silence after that.
Victor had, of course, predicted truthfully. The Hungarian Army moved out and besieged Maros, and the Bohemians Carpathia. But instead of going for Pest and presenting a single continuous line of allied troops to Victor, he instead selfishly went for the slightly richer territory of Presburg. That left a gaping hole in the defence of Eger and the Hungarian royals. One that, as per Victor's timetable, the army was marching through almost before it had been made. It was a coup- Before any of the three Transylvanian forts had succumbed, the city of Eger yielded the royal family to Victor's forces almost without a fight. Then wheeling to the left, they engaged and scattered the Croatians in front of the city of Guns, and pushed forwards into Krain. There they left a small infantry force, and pushed onward to the capitol of the Croatians. Encircling and sieging them both in an efficient manner, the Croats yielded scarcely a year after the war had started. Now, alone and facing a formidable and proven army, the Bohemians wavered, pulling back to defend Moravia. Peace negotions with the alliance started.
"Sire! Sire, you seem almost to be playing with the Bohemians! We have Eger and the Hungarian king, just as we've taken the gold mines of Krain from the Croats. We've won sire! Declare peace!"
"Nonsense, Rossbart. Call the army from the Bohemian border back to Lupinstadt. I will personally take our fresh half of the army and take a vacation in Bucaresti. Don't make peace with the Bohemians yet, Rossbart. Wait precisely five months."
"Five- Bucaresti- half the army- SIRE?!"
"Goodbye, Rossbart. Oh, and when the Ottoman ambassador shows up to declare war in a month or so, just act like your normal frenzied self and have a fit in front of his honor, if you would be so kind?"
Rossbart whimpered.
The Sultan duly declared war in August of 1468. Remembering how in the last war he had been persuaded to make peace too quickly, after trying a roundabout attack through the Balkans, this time he resolved to punch straight through Wallachia and to Lupinstadt, ending war quickly and painlessly while the werewolves' army was still in the West. He marched, of course, along Victor's plan, right down to the individual road. When, roughly fifteen miles from Bucaresti, the Ottoman scouts ran into a roadblock in a highly forested length of road, the Sultan grew wary.
Unfortunately, he'd waited several hours too long to grow caution, as elite spearheads of cavalry were already punching through his flank, trying to trap him. Although the Sultan escaped, half his army didn't. Cold, panicked, and worn down by tireless harassment, they surrendered en masse only fifteen days after the declaration of war. The Ottomans no longer had the manpower to mount an invasion of Transylvania, and wouldn't for another year or so. On return to Lupinstadt, Victor was hailed as a hero by the crowds, and even Rossbart seemed happy, for once. That would change.
A week later, Austria declared war on Transylvania. That was expected. Venice did as well. That was not. Victor flew into a mad rage when he heard, screaming at the walls for betraying him. Rossbart, sensibly, hid. After the first night, Victor calmed down enough to begin ordering forces around. He abandoned his original goal; taking multiple territories from Austria and isolating Vienna and the Emperor. His new goal?
Survival.
The ensuing five years of warfare were some of the most brutal seen in Europe for centuries. Ever concerned about spies, betrayal, and the rest, King Victor decreed that Christians in "combat areas" were either to be executed or exiled immediately. Naturally, King Victor- and King Victor alone- determined what was a combat area. The ensuing butchery would depopulate entire swathes of the country. Whenever the army advanced into Austria, or Venice, people fled before them. Those that were caught were essentially playing a dice game- would they live or would they die? It depended on the temperment of the general.
In retaliation, the Christian forces predictably began butchering peasants inside Transylvania that they found, on the rationale that any of them might be a werewolf or a spy. After a year of this, the entire combat zone on the Austro-Transylvanian border was a depopulated no man's land.
Poland, noting that their capitol city was uncomfortably close to Transylvania's border, and noting the atrocities committed in Austria, elected not to pursue war at the current time.
After six years of warfare, all the powers had been exhausted. The Bohemians redeclared war in the end stages, which had the net effect only of pulling Croatia back into it. Croatia very quickly ceased being a kingdom, as their economy had been ruined, and unable to produce troops. Add another king to the prisoners' train.
Eventually, out of sheer necessity of number of rebellions, Transylvania and Austria would sign a white peace in 1476, following which the Austrians were disappointed again by the French Inheritance of Burgundy off to the West. After his "beautiful plan's" disastrous failure, King Victor II retained only a spark of his former fire and energy, barely staying awake through the involved Venetian peace negotiations. He toured the ruined area on the Austrian border, taking in the ruined villages, occasional corpses strung up from the trees, and seemed vaguely bored with the whole trip. The failed war shattered his dreams.
Even during the grand festival marking the Hunt of the Hungarian and Croat kings marking, unofficially, the end of the war for the people, Victor seemed listless. He pursued halfheartedly; when the inevitable kill occurred, he was quick, efficient, and wasted no energy.
The nobles began to mutter among themselves, in small groups. "Have not Anne and Willem had their first child? Is it not a boy? Could not one of us serve as regent for a profitable decade or two? Is not Victor derelict of his duties to crown and country?", for in truth Victor took a lazy, blase approach to ruling now.
Then one morning, entirely without prior notice, Victor awoke buzzing with an idea- the one idea which would bring a vengeance on the Austrians. He wrote it down, blue eyes blazing with a new, unholy fury and passion. He presented the plan to a few eminent nobles that afternoon. They approved.
Austria lay prone as a target for Victor's ambitions and the werewolves' dreams.
