The Steed and the Sea: a Roderlo megacampaign

[J_Master]

Intermission: the state of Europe at the Pragmatic Sanction of 1444

Europe in 1444 finds itself mainly as a mass of consolidating powers, both internally and externally. The foundation of the Staten Generaal in the Netherlands offers a great moment for us to discuss the state of Europe. It is also important to consider the field of European politics because from this point onwards as we see the Roderlo’s play a larger role on the field of European battle, no longer limited by the confines of their region and their politics.

The Kingdom of France​

First, we shall take a look at the French region. France has not been a expansionist power the past century, her conflicts have either been defensive, for example against many Holy Roman incursions under the Wittelsbachs, or internal, the Chaos of 1411 is a prime example of this. The Valois dynasty, the dynasty that had taken the throne after the main branch of the Capets had died out, had been pursuing a strong policy of centralization in the realm. It was this policy of centralization combined with a child king that lead to the two separate revolts. Whilst angered with the Roderlo’s seizing Flanders, one does not fight a war and not get angry about it, the Valois, in a certain way, began to appreciate the Roderlo’s. In the Roderlo’s, they had a stable factor ruling over Flanders. And, whilst yes, they now formed a real stretching across the borders of the HRE and France, thus making their power not fully dependent on French feudal contracts, the fact was that the Roderlo’s were a power not interested in the politics of the French court. A Flanders inside France and a player inside of the games of French power politics was simply hard to deal with. Noble’s controlling it meant that the most wealthy part of the kingdom could be turned against them at any time, and likely with English support. If the king were to take direct control over it through a viceroy appointed by him, well, the Flemish had thought the king a good lesson at the fields of Kortrijk and Pevelenberg about what would happen then. Even later, when Europe would send her armies to contain the Holy Roman Empire, a certain degree of understanding existed between the Valois and Roderlo’s, only “braking down” once the Roderlo’s intervened in the Rhineland, yet no fighting ever broke out on the direct Franco-Saxon frontier.

To refocus on France a bit, the centralization policy of the Valois has paid off. The region around Paris and towards the frontier with Germany falls directly under royal control in 1444, along with it a corridor of land stretching south from this core and the border regions with Plantagenet owned Aquitania. At the same time, the French nobles, more specifically the Blois family, have been working on a policy of centralization of their own, and in 1444 they are the last remaining opposition to Valois supremacy within the realm. With a effective policy of expansion of their titles and keeping titles in the family, the Blois have united Normandy, Anjou, Orleans and the County of Burgundy (actually a title under the HRE but they inherited it from the Burgundy dynasty, who were French based). They themselves have, by this point, developed large aspirations for the French crown, and it seems the issue is set to blow. Between these two factions is the other last independent French noble faction, the Bourbon of Poitou. Whilst having no ambitions for the French throne, their loyalty to one of the two factions is not clear. Outside of the direct authority of the French crown we find Brittany and Provence, owned by the Neapolitan d’Anjou. Brittany is just mostly hoping to keep whatever privilege she can, for however long she can, and the d’Anjou have been more focused on Greece and North Africa.

Iberia, North Africa and Southern Italy​

The Western Mediterranean is the realm of the d’Anjou. They rule over the kingdoms of Castille, Leon, Portugal, Naples, Africa and Hungary (not shown). The zeal created by the successful Eleventh and Twelfth Crusades spurred on the Reconquista into North Africa, although never completed due to the utter failure of Portugal to defend herself in 1365 against a new Moorish incursion. Portugal, in a state of chaos since and only protected by her bigger brother Castille-Leon to the east, went through multiple decades of chaos until settling in a personal union with the d’Anjou who had just come to rule the kingdoms east of her. Surrounded by the d’Anjou to the west and to the east, Aragon went south, wiping away the second to last Muslim holdout in Granada and establishing herself in the port of Oran on the 12th of October 1401. The d’Anjou responded by invading North Africa themselves, creating a race across the region about which can be said that the Aragonese certainly lost. Castille took Meilla and from there made themselves master of most of coastal and much of inland Morocco before hitting the Atlas mountains. In the west, the Neapolitans, with their experience crusading in Greece and Anatolia, took Tunis and seized much of the coast, transforming it into the Kingdom of Africa. After the coastal regions were taken, which was often helped a lot by the navies of the respective kingdoms and the nearby Italian merchant republics (at a price ofcourse), Muslim resistance stiffened inland. The often devided Islamic reams themselves consolidated into 3 more centralized entities. In the west, the Marinids pushed all remaining independent Islamic forces in the west under their rulership, fortifying behind the Atlas. East of them laid Tlemcen, more a coalition of Berber tribes than anything else, much the same like Fezzen, east of them, who were the tribal rulers of inland Tripolitania. The Crusader powers have also been able to pull off a rather successful policy of spreading Catholicism and settling Italians and Iberians in north Africa. The Aragonese lands have been fully settled by Catalans, much of Castillian Morocco has converted with the coast speaking Iberian, although more towards the Atlas the Moors do hold out. The Kingdom of Africa has had the hardest time with Naples also having to keep up their efforts to support the Jerusalemites, thus, the Tripolitanian coast remains Islamic and only the coast of Tunis speaks Italian.

The Near East​

The Balkans and Near East have seen a large amount of religious conflict ever since the start of the Crusading Era. Early in the reign of Johannes “IJzervreter” another crusade had been called, and his capture of Jerusalem, even if temporary, had reinvigorated the fire in the hearts of all Catholicism to see the Holy Land fall back into their hands. The Eleventh Crusade would be aimed at Egypt, and it would be a incredible success. From Cyreneica to the Sinai to Aswan, Egypt would be conquered by the Crusading armies, actually being awarded to one of the families ruling over the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Egypt saw the combined investment of all of Italy, sending many clergy to convert both Copts and Muslims to Catholicism, leading to Catholicism becoming the dominant religion all over Egypt. Eventually, the ruling Faliero dynasty would push onwards into Nubia and even helped re-establish the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Twelfth Crusade, the crown of which would also be bestowed upon the d’Anjou dynasty. During the 1330’ies, disaster would strike the crusaders as the Bahri dynasty struck back, having gathered the strength of most of Arabia and having held of the Timurids from the east. Egypt would fall back under the control of the Muslims, along with large tracts of Outrejourdain. The King would flee Alexandria, heading to the safety of Cyprus, protected by the Crusader fleet, one that was yet to be bested in battle. Far to the south, the Nubian lords were able to hold out, although now they are completely cut off from their liege and have to fight on their own now.

Further to the north, the question remains if the Byzantines will ever truly overcome the Frankokratia. Hellas remains under the control of the d’Anjou, and her islands remain under the control of the Venetians. The bigger insult is Constantinople, for whilst she had been recovered in 1258, in 1409 the Genoans took control of the city, together with Nicomedia across the Hellespont, establishing total control over the heart of the Empire once again and taking away her ability to tax traffic through it. The Byzantines, as of yet, have not faltered. Bit by bit, Macedonia, or at least the Frankish controlled parts of it, has been recovered, and recently a victory over Frankokratic Epirus has been achieved. The northern frontier has remained calm, mostly due to Slavic infighting. In the east, Asia Minor has been recovered, which is also due to Crusader efforts on the southern coast of Anatolia, the remnants of the Rum now limited to the Anatolian highlands, left to bicker among themselves. Up in the Balkans, Bosnia has unexpectedly developed into somewhat of a powerhouse, seizing the Crown of St. Zvonimir from the Hungarian d’Anjou, a setback for a dynasty which seemed so on the rise. For a moment, it had also seemed that a possible Serbo-Polish union might have been in the works as a noble from the Serbian royal house had risen to the Polish crown, yet, a inexplicable conversion to Judaism and the resulting implosion of crown authority in Poland and conquest by the Wittelsbachs put a quick end to that. Catholicism has advanced further up the Balkans than ever, with Hellas converting under the Frankish rule, and, after multiple armed clashes, Serbia converting in hopes to keep the Italians and Bosnians off their back. Bulgaria and Wallachia as of yet stand as the only remaining Orthodox powers outside of the Byzantines.

Eastern Europe​

Eastern Europe has mainly struggled with the consequences of the Mongol conquest for the last century. Poland has found itself completely destroyed, the last king of Poland being deposed in 1417, no new one being crowned and completing the Wittelsbach conquest of the region. The Wittelsbachs would actually go further beyond and come into contact with the Mongols of the Golden Horde, beating them back and further extending their system of newly established duchies. One of these dukes, the Duke of Lesser Poland Leopold “the Lame”, would be elevated to a newly restored Kingdom of Poland. To their north we find the Teutonic Order, which has establish their Baltic realm through crusading against the pagans and later warfare against their neighboring Christian states. Lithuania, which saw the walls closing in around her, had a choice forced upon her, that being between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. In the end, seeing a HRE friendly to the Teutons encroaching upon Poland, the decision was made to convert to Orthodoxy in the hope of winning favours of the Rurikovich, which saw themselves reestablished in the east as the Mongols began falling to infighting. Yet, the family once again fell to infighting, their realm being devided between the Kievan and Vladimirian-Chernigovan branches. Novgovrod has been trapped bweteen the Rurikovich and Teutons, seeing their prosperity due to being so far away from the Mongols fade away. The only bit of rest they have been granted comes from the north.

Scandinavia​

A hundred years ago, Northern Europe was the domain of Sweden. Ruling over Norway and Finland, and no threat coming from either Denmark or the Russians, perhaps the Swedes had held larger ambitions, but we’ll never know. Slowly but surely, their realm cam crashing in on them. Norway and Finland would slip from their authority, and the Swedish crown itself was faced with multiple noble revolts in the south. When some semblance of stability had returned, they had found the vacuum filled by a unexpected outside power. The Bruce family ruling Scotland had been granted a massive room to breath by the Plantagenet focus on the continent and later the infighting with the Hastings. In an attempt to secure friendly relations with Norway, a marriage was concluded between the heir of the Scottish throne and Norway. Through a series of death resulting from fighting rebellions and the Swedish on the frontier, the Finnish throne had reverted to the Norwegian king and the heir of the Norwegian throne had become the young King of Scotland. For now, the union seems to hold, although in the chaos surrounding the wars with Sweden Iceland has slipped from the grasp of the Bruce’s.

The Holy Roman Empire​

A place of much upheaval over the last century. The north has seen the rise of the Roderlo’s in Saxony and the Netherlands, with the only recent upset of their rise having been the loss of Bremen to the new Hanseatic Confederation. Holstein and Sleswig have seen a long rule by a unofficial confederation of peasant republics, yet it was broken during the Scandinavian invasion and occupation from 1440 onwards. After the region was returned to the authority of the HRE, it was awarded to the Schauenburgs, who had remained the official dukes of Holstein even whilst pushed back to Lauenburg. In the east, we find the divided Margraviate of Brandenburg. Whilst oficially the whole is still under the control of the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, in the southern portion the Von Rügens of Lausitz have seized control over most of the margraviate and have ambitions to finally kick the Bavarians out. Central Germany remains a mess of smaller feudal holdings, despite some small attempts at consolidation. Wittelsbach rule over the Palatinate and Franconia isn’t absolute yet as free cities and bishoprics stay outside of their power. The same situation is true in the Rhineland, yet these regions lack any real drive for centralization as Swabia is more concerned in the situation in the south and Cologne and Trier are at a deadlock. In the east, Bohemia has remained territorially stable for the most part, having only lost her small gains against Hungary and Poland after the 1444 treaty limiting the HRE. Her new position of power within the HRE as emperor will likely see her drawn towards conflicts on frontiers far from her own. Southern Germany is the realm of the middle sized states, laying as a chain of beads across the northern side of the Alps. With the exception of a few states like Alsace, Baden, Nordgau and republics, these are the lands of the Wittelsbachs and Habsburgs. Austria remains devided as ever as the attempts at unifying the Habsburgian lands by either diplomacy or force have failed. Perhaps a new round of attempts will begin soon? The Wittelsbachs meanwhile are plotting to restrengthen their position within the Empire to make a bid for the throne once more.

Across the Alps, we find Italy. Here, the region has also slowly coalesced into medium sized powers. The Savoyards have been too occupied with conflict with the kings of France and the d’Anjou to properly press their luck in Piedmont. Genoa has been able to establish their position as the primary merchant republic of Italy, leaving their competition of Venice and Ancona behind. Venice has mainly been bothered by the Habsburgs of Steiermark who have also held on to the duchies of Aquillia and Friuli, whilst Ancona has had to deal with both expansionist powers in the Papal States and Naples. In Milan, the Visconti have unified the central Po Valley and are set to move on to the rest of Northern Italy. The Papacy has done a lot of work conquering Tuscany, yet, the men who have done it on their behalf, the Dukes of Ferrara, have gained greater ambitions of their own. Only a couple of smaller powers remain at this point in the point of the duchies of Pisa and Parma and the county of Saluzzo remain.

Europe on the 11th of November, 1444​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Diederik I Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony, part II

The parliament established on the 11th of November 1444 is a far stretch from the current tricameral legislature. The third chamber, separate from the other two, would not be established until the middle of the 16th century, or about 100 years after the establishment of the Staten Generaal. The Staten Generaal themselves are also far from the modern two chambers. The Staten Generaal der Nederlanden (Estates General of the Netherlands) as the official title is, is exactly what this name describes. They are the general assembly of each of the individual provincial estates. The provincial estate is much like the court of the Grand Duchy itself. It is a gathering of the most important figures of that feudal holding. In most cases, this means that the provincial estate is made up of lower nobility and large land owners which also includes the Church. And whilst there was a Diet or Estates of Saxony, the nature of Saxony had this institute have more of a advisory role than the important legislative role that the Staten Generaal had. The old provincial estates had already held a greater role in lawmaking due to the region being further away from the capital and often most attention of the Grand Duke being on Saxony itself. Yet, within the Staten Generaal we already find a new precedent being set. Within the estates of Holland and Flanders, and partially within the estates of Brabant and Zeeland (Brabant mainly through the influence of the city of Antwerp, Zeeland mainly because of her strategic position and connections to Holland meaning the two provinces often formed one voting block) we see the increasing influence of the burghers. And whilst it was present in every holding of Diederik I (Oversticht is a prime example of this, it was separated from Nedersticht by pressure from the burghers, so that they could influence the policy within the new lordship more effectively than with the influence of the clergy in Utrecht competing with them), it became quite clear within these provinces. Holland, whilst still hampered by competition from the Hanseatic Confederation, was beginning to develop itself into a trading powerhouse. Antwerp was the port of the Netherlands and the whole of north-western Europe, which naturally saw Zeeland interested in her further development. And Flanders has found itself as one of the prime producers of textiles, bringing wealth to her cities, which is what lead to conflict with the kings of France in the first place.

Yet, the Staten Generaal der Nederlanden that would live for about 80 years is not complete yet. Feudalism and issues of succession within the French crown had left parts of the March of Brittany within the hands of a noble family who held land around Ghent, meaning it came under effective control of the Roderlo’s once Flanders passed on to them. Neither side was particularly happy with the situation. Nantes laid at the mouth of an important estuary, and control over it meant the ability to tax the trade there. Not to forget that the March of Brittany was established because the actual Duchy of Brittany snubbed the authority of the kings, and that the loss of control over a part of it meant that the defense of the kingdom was possibly compromised. At the same time, the Roderlo’s had been interested in Picardië for a while, the last lands north of the Zomme, as the Zomme had been one of the traditional southern borders of the Netherlands and what was sometimes considered Greater Flanders. Both parties had something to offer, both parties had something to gain, and thus, when Europe gathered in Rome, Diederik I and Phillip VIII began negotiations about the issue surrounding the feudal enclave. Nothing was decided in Paris, mainly because Diederik didn’t wish to be dragged into a internal French war. This was because it was very clear to Phillip that the sale of Nantes would force the hand of the Blois, since it would place a fortress in their rear. Finally, an agreement came about on the 23rd of February 1445, dragging Saxony into the De Blois attempt to seize the French throne.

Perhaps the most important thing that came out of the sale/exchange of Nantes and Picardië is the alliance between Saxony-the Netherlands on the one side and France on the other, and this is something that applies for both sides. France needed the help to bring Anjou under control, especially when they pulled off a sublime bit of diplomacy and gained the backing of the Crown of Castille after their initial defeat in their bid for the throne, and Saxony needed help to establish dominance over the neighboring feudal holdings and city states. Whilst the alliance was uneasy at times, mainly due to the Franco-Bohemian rivalry and Saxony being allied to both sides, it remained in place. Whilst the Anjou-Valois War was not a massive, balanced on a knife’s edge conflict, it did destroy the De Blois hope for gaining the throne once and for all and saw the return of Aquitania once the Plantagenets had collapsed.

Some years later, we see the first signs of the possibility of conflict between the new Staten Generaal and the monarch. When a century before Kleef had befallen the then Duke of Gelre Johannes “IJzervreter”, it had also technically left the Roderlo’s with a claim to the County of Gulik. Once the conflict with the Duke of Berg had concluded, the Staten Generaal pressed their claim. Gulik had traditionally been considered a part of the Dutch region, along with Gelre, Oversticht, Bentheim, Kleef and Friesland to a certain degree. It was only through rallying the Bishop of Luik who feared encroachment on his rights by adding Gulik to the Staten Generaal, rallying the nobility of Brabant who feared losing influence because of the ever increasing number of smaller holdings and some rather large bribes to keep the rest of the estates in line. Considering this, it’s maybe a small wonder the Staten Generaal kept in line in the defining war of Diederik’s reign, the First Hanseatic War.

The Hanseatic Confederation had always existed as an insult the Saxony. Had it been formed in any other time other than the reign of Karel I it would have been crushed by Saxon military might. The internal struggles that Saxony faced in 1429 saw the city council of Breemn sign the Treaty of Lübeck, which unified the three primary cities of the Hanseatic League in a confederation with a shared army, navy and foreign policy. To further centralize the government would have been a tough order, since the territory was made up of three unconnected cities. Not only that, but the new Confederation also pushed for the extension of the current obligations of the League, to begin acting more as a mutual defense league. Whilst the new efforts of Diederik had limited any chance of gaining new support among the cities of Saxony, think for example the cities along the IJssel, he couldn’t stop the free cities and smaller HRE member states from joining into this military pact. Not only that, but by the time of the First Hanseatic War, the Hansa had gained a powerfull ally, the Kingdom of Scotland, still in control over Norway and Finland by that point. When war broke out in the summer of 1459, it was the first real test of the newly established system.

When the war broke out on the 3rd of June, the immediate goal of Diederik was to limit the number of enemies that had to be fought. The immediate priority was the goal of the war, the city of Breemn, an enclave in the Saxon heartland. On the 4th of June, the Army of Eastphalia already encircled the city, and prepared to storm the it. Yet, as preparations were being made, on the 5th already, a delegation from the city and the garrison came forth. What became clear was that the city wasn’t properly defended against an attacking force 16.000 men strong. The army commanders of the Confederation had decided to abandon Breemn and hope that the city would hold up the Saxon armies for long enough that in Hamborg and Lubeek an army could be mustered that could march across the Elve, take the fortress at Stood and from there on move on Breemn and Broenswiek. The decision was to abandon Breemn with the exception of a few smaller ships and 300 men supplemented by some quickly raised militia. This decision was not popular with the city council of Breemn, who had heavily protested it, but they were outvoted by Hamborg and Lubeek. In the end, Breemn would fall back into the hands of the Roderlo’s without a drop of blood being shed. The militiamen could return peacefully to their homes, and the 300 men garrison was taken prisoner but would be released at the end of the conflict.

With the Dutch and Frisian armies taking care of business in the Rhineland, the Army of Eastphalia would guard the Elve to hopefully prevent any crossing of the river and call out for any reinforcement if needed. The Army of Westphalia focused on the city of Goslar, a part of the Hanseatic League. The 2.000 men strong city guard was brave enough to face the approaching army outside of the city walls, where most of them were killed on the field of battle, but not without taking 463 Saxons and 76 Frisians with them. The general, Karel Beck, moved by the bravery of the opponent, took in the remaining men of Goslar’s army and gave them the care he thought they deserved. This care took place whilst he and his Saxons and Frisians camped outside of Goslar for 4 ½ months, after which the remaining soldiers of the garrison and the city council capitulated. When hearing of the news whilst in command of the Army of Eastphalia on the banks of the Elve, Diederik left his post to negotiate a peace treaty. Here, he laid the groundworks for the Saxon relationship with the Free Cities just outside or sometimes fully inside Roderlo territory. They existed because the Emperor wished to maintain them, and Broenswiek would have to respect that. But, that would not mean that Saxony would not get as much out of these states as it could. What this meant is that the cities would have to pay whatever the Grand Duke wanted them to pay, whenever he wanted them to pay it, often for the duration of a peace treaty if these states found themselves dragged into conflict again as they allied with an enemy of the Roderlo’s.

Over the course of 1460, the minor states scattered about in the HRE would be brought to terms, and from that point onward Diederik could finally focus on his enemies in Holstein. The full force of his armies would cross on the 20th of November, just east of Hamborg. The Dutch contingent would seize the city, the Army of Westphalia would swing around the city and head north to confront, or at least to keep the armies of the peasants of Dithmarschen in check. On the 3rd of December, the Saxons and Frisians advancing on Lubeek would unexpectedly the Hanseatic army outside of Kiel. In a final, last ditch attempt to keep the route for Scandinavian reinforcements open, the army had camped near the city in the hope that they could welcome such an army from the north which would help them defend their capital. No army came. In that winter battle outside of Kiel, the Saxon cavalry was able to cut off any escape routes of the Hanseatic force. Demoralized, it surrendered, joining their compatriots from Breemn in capture. The Army of Eastphalia under the command of Diederik now continued on the Lubeek, in what turned into a grueling siege. The blockade established on the city was not perfect, as the Roderlo navy had to be based from ports in the Netherlands and having to pass by the Norwegian coast on their way to Lubeek. Supply shipments regularly made it into the city from either Norway or Finland. To add further to the misery of the Saxon army, the attempts by the engineers to bring down the walls failed for up to five times. In the second winter of the siege and many men in the army were hit hard by pneumonia, including Diederik. Yet, in the end, time was against the Hansa, and after 391 grueling days of siege, the city surrendered, and peace was signed, Breemn was returned to Saxon hands.

Whilst this was going on, at the same time the Imperial Diet was debating the issue that had come pressing again since 1444, the Kingdom of Italy, by now having received the nickname the Shadow Kingdom. It was clear that Bohemia simply could not exert power there, especially if one of the mayor players in the Italian game was the Papal State, and no move against them could be made without certain excommunication. The diet, in accordance with the wishes of Emperor Vláclav IV, allow for the “retreat from Italy”. All states with the exception of Savoy, more concerned about the protection of the Emperor from the French, left the HRE once hearing of the news.

To look away from the warfare of the second half of the reign of Diederik I, we shall look back to his continued reform of the administration of the Grand Duchy of Saxony. First were his efforts in working with the Staten van Saksen, where he attempted to sideline the nobility as much as possible whilst, at the same time, keeping them somewhat content. The efforts of increasing income for the state went through three methods. The first was by a mutual co-operation with the church. The church and state were both searching for increased taxable income. Thus, the crown and the church came to agreement, Diederik would use the money of the state to help invest in the many monasteries in the countries, helping to develop the economic output of the region. In return for the development, the church would guarantee a substantial part of the income would go to the state. Whilst a lot of these projects do not survive to the modern day, things like breweries and orchards need to be maintained and economically viable, some of these buildings survive on to this day. The second was the obvious that would happen with the reconquest of Breemn, it allowed the state to more effectively tax the trade going in and out of the realm. This had always been the greatest loss when Breemn had seceded, the Hanseatic Confederation would now tax the trade coming in and out of the city and the hinterlands where smaller cities who had also signed up to the League stood. Whilst this would in the long run mean a greater influence of the burghers upon policy within the duchy, it did mean that it was another small weakness in the armour of the nobility. The last was the ever increasing bureaucracy directly standing under the duke.

In the end, it was the pneumonia that caught up to Diederik. On the 27th of June, Grand Duke Diederik I, founder of parliament and one of the diarchs of 1443 and 1444, would pass away at the age of 56, leaving his throne to his son, Grand Duke Karel II.

Diederik I, reigned from 1430 to 1461​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Karel II Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony

One cannot help but see the immediate similarities between Karel II and the uncle who was his namesake. Saxony had seen success on the field of battle before their reign, and would see it afterwards, but both sought glory and found nothing but destruction. Luckily for the Saxon state, the failures that Karel I had in statecraft were not present in his nephew. Far from the naturally gifted reformer that his father had been, it would still be an insult to call Karel II a bad administrator. He could not have set in motion the reforms that his father started, but he was most certainly the man to continue them onwards.

The first five years of his reign are however tainted in blood by the massacre that was the First Holstein War. By this point one of the long term goals of the Roderlo’s to establish dominance over the region of Holstein, not only the duchy but also the remaining two cities of the Hanseatic Confederation and the last peasant republics in Dithmarschen. The region was of vital importance. When Charlemagne had conquered Saxony Holstein would the Limes Saxonicus, the easily defendable eastern border of Saxony north of the Elve river, separating the Frankish Empire and later East Frankia from the Slavic Obotrites living east of it in what is now Mecklenburg. In the north, the Franks built a series of defences referred to by modern historians as the Danish March. Not only was the region vital for the defence of the HRE and would make an excellent buffer space for any invading force heading for Saxony from either north or east, but what the wealth of the Hanseatic Confederation had shown was that it was absolutely vital for trade. The flow of trade from Northern Germany and the Baltic was controlled from the cities in the region. Hamburg, Lubeek and Kiel made it rich. To fund the future growth of the administration, the region and the wealth of her burghers was needed.

The war began with a dispute over the possessions of the Schauenburgs in Oldenburg, that old sore that was the beacon around which a lot of opposition to the brothers Karel and Diederik I had organized, and issue’s surrounding the passage of ships over the Elve river. The war began in a positive manner. In late September 1464, the army of Eastphalia crossed the Elve with backing of soldiers from the Netherlands, Frisia and Lausitz. The army of Duke Thietmar retreated behind the walls of Kiel, but this time the armies of Saxony would be luckier. 4 weeks into the siege, the walls of the city were breaches, which, whilst the storming of the city was repelled, caused many casualties to the defenders, who were barely able to patch the walls back together. Kiel would fall in April of 1465. And this is where the disaster began. On one of the last ships to leave the port of the city was the duke, heading into exile in Riga, one of the major cities of the Teutonic Order, his primary allies. The Teutons themselves had established complete dominance over the eastern Baltics for a few centuries now, and profited immensely from the Baltic trade, and weren’t going to let a outside power with ambitions gain so easy access to it. The first action they undertook was the braking of the blockade on the 27th of April, which allowed the duke to escape. They took a whole year to gather their armies, but in May of 1466 they crossed from Wittelsbach Brandenburg into Holstein, forcing the Army of Eastphalia back across the Elve and laying siege to Kiel. After the Army of Westphalia had dealt with a revolt of the city of Breemn, the city council had gotten angry with the greater amount of regulation and taxation imposed, both marched, along with many thousands of Dutch and Frisian reinforcements more, to relieve Kiel. Both attempts failed with disastrous results, the Teutonic army, outnumbered more than 2 to 1, being able to drive of the armed forces of Karel II both times with more than thrice the casualties. Disaster followed upon disaster as the Teutons were able to cross the Elve and laid siege to Stood, where another crushing defeat was given to Karel II. Left with no other options, Karel gave up the hope of acquiring Holsteen and sent his army back over the Elve, to raise anything that could aid the Teutons to the ground and to prevent any supplies from reaching them. Finally brought under control, Karel II was able to surrender, being humiliated when forced to recognize the rights of the Schauenburgs.

Sadly, and perhaps for obvious reasons, the First Holstein War is what remains his legacy in popular history to this day. But, one should not dwell on it too long. It was perhaps that this defeat was suffered on terms favorable for the Saxons, imagine what could have happened if it was a foreign power capable of enforcing her will. And whilst it can be said that Karel II was a lacking field commander, he was very much able to recognize where the future of warfare was going. In a certain way being dragged into the Italian Wars by the French was a blessing in this case. Saxony itself was too weak still to enter such a foreign adventure just after such a crushing defeat, but the Netherlands were still able to raise the men, so he requested the Staten Generaal send an army. This army, whilst lacking in the more modern ways of war, was able to lay invaluable contacts with Italian engineers and mercenaries and gain experience in the ways of war in which the Italian Wars were fought. What came forth from this was that Karel II was one of the most enthusiastic adaptors of the arquebus in Europe. When, in a last ditch attempt to get the Dutch forces to retreat from the conflict the Genoans launched a massive raid into Saxony, it were there innovations that allowed for the army to be beaten back at Meideborg. For the rest of his reign, the army would continue drilling in the new ways of war, to, in the end, be able to face the Teutons on the field of battle and defeat them, finally establishing dominance over Holsteen. And whilst not yet the revenge Karel II had wished for, Saxon intervention against Swabia in 1476 would put a permanent end to the rise of the Swabian Wittelsbachs and lead to the acquisition of Arensperg from the Swabians.

One of the prime actions of the reign of Karel II was the Acte der Taal van het Hof (Act of the Language of Court) where we begin to see the real beginnings of separation of the region from the rest of the Germanic languages. As we have seen before, there already existed separation between Lower, Middle and Upper German with Dutch in the west and Frisian along the coastline of Frisia. For a long time, the language of the Roderlo court had been ambiguous. The language used at the old court at Arnhem in 1337 was Middle Dutch. When Johannes “IJzervreter” had died and the court moved on to the east, first to Hannover and then to Broenswiek. This lead to the primacy of what is generally referred to a Middle Low German. Although it must be noted that the people who spoke these languages didn’t know it as this. Most of the time, despite the differences and the fact that a noble from Holland and the eastern border of Saxony would have a hard time understanding each other, the people speaking would refer to what they were speaking as a variant of Duitsch, Duuts, Dietsch, etc. This term simply meant “of the people”, in this case the language of the people, although “volk” would have to be considered in more of a tribal or nation specific way. But none the less, the language spoken at the court of the Roderlo’s would shift along with it. Yet, with the establishment of the Staten Generaal, a second capital was established for the realm, and the two capitals served two separate halves of the realm, separated by some 450 kilometers. The documents being produced by these two separate courts were often not understandable in regions like Flanders or along the Elve. What the Acte der Taal van het Hof did, was make the effective division official and give names to them. The language of the eastern half of the realm was referred to as Saxon, named after Saxony. The language of the western half was named after the political entity created there, Nederlands, which English has decided to name as Dutch, basing it on the old way the Dutch referred to their own language.

It’s also a fine time to dive into the choice of name for the parliament in the west. The region had known many names by 1444, and multiple were considered for the union. One of the first names considered was a version of the Romanized term Belgae, België or Belgium in English. It was considered not appropriate enough because it did not refer to the whole of the region, it referred to the parts of the Netherlands south of the rivers, where the Belgae had lived, north of the Meuse, the lands were inhabited by Batavians, Frisians and some other tribes. A variation on Magna Frisia was also considered, but with the Opstaltree remaining out of the new parliament, the real Frisian entity, it was also quickly dropped. Another variation that had been considered was Lower Frankish Circle, yet this was considered too bulky and when the idea was teased to Phillip VIII in Rome, he immediately shot it down. The connection to Frankia and the heritage associated with it was too much. In the end, “Netherlands” was considered a neutral name which also, across western Europe, had a clear meaning of referring to the general area of the land that was assigned to the Staten Generaal.

To return to the act itself, whilst each half of the realm was assigned a primary language, all documents would translated into the language (or dialect really) of the capital of the other half of the realm. For the regions outside of the Staten Generaal but speaking in a tongue more similar to that of Antwerp, exceptions were made, where their primary language would be Netherlandish. This exception applied to Gelre, Gulik and would later apply to Keulen and Berg. Frisia, with her being separate from both the institutions of Saxony and the Netherlands, remained an edge case, working under their own Frisian but often translating all documents into Saxon for the purposes of the court in Broenswiek.

The last major advance of Karel II was the creation of a greater control over the national economy. The creation of money was still under the control of many local authorities. Not only that, but money itself wasn’t standardized yet. Currency was still a matter of local authorities, cities and whoever controlled them. Over the HRE, no single currency had also been confirmed yet, although in the Rhineland multiple states, Trier, Cologne, Mainz and Franconia-Palatinate, had created a single currency, the Rheinish Gulden. The further Saxon encroachment upon the upper Rhineland during the reign of Diederik I had allowed the Rheinish Gulden to gain further prominence throughout Kleef, Gulik, Gelre and the areas around Düörmp. Not to forget that with the conquest of Breemn the Hanseatic coinage (Sundische Mark but this was only in partial use, later the Lübische Mark would be made official) had significant influence over the economy of the Grand Duchy. What this meant is that the currency in use by most of the nation was foreign made and thus foreign controlled, the economy was at the whims of foreign and often hostile powers. The state had already seen some of this during the First Holsteen War as it had some troubles both financing the war effort after casualties started numbering in the tens of thousands, part of the reason Breemn revolted was the forced loans the government enforced upon the merchants. The Grand Ducal Mint and the Bank of Saxony were two separate institutions with their own purpouses. That of the mint seems relatively clear, to control the supply of money to the economy and put it under control of the Grand Duke. To this end, it started minting the new Saxon Gulden, closely based off of the Rheinish Gulden. Whilst it would not be the only currency in use in the realm, the Rheinish Gulden and Sundische Mark/Lübische Mark would remain influential and as the nature of things was and the Netherlands would also continue to mint a couple of local currencies, it was the most stable of all because of the backing of the state. Secondly was the Bank of Saxony, mainly concerned with the health of the finances of the state, existing to back up the state when it needed money to finance whatever it needed, be it a grand construction project or whatever war the state found itself fighting. The money put into this was varying of origin. The Roderlo’s themselves invested quite a penny, as did many nobles. Ironically, perhaps the most influential investors were Hanseatic merchants, although they were not a majority. Their influence would however began to slowly wane as the Hanseatic League and Confederation continued their long decline and as the Netherlands would become the center of trade in all of Europe.

Karel II Roderlo, a man so often just declared to be just like his disaster of an uncle, reigned until his early natural death in 1476 at the age 39, 3 weeks after the beginning of the war against Swabia.

Karel II, reigned from 1461 to 1476​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Johannes II Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony

When his father died in the first months of 1476, Johannes II was but a young boy of 9 years old, yet to turn 10 on the 11th of June of that year, more than 5 years to young to take the burdens of state upon him by the laws of that time. Thus, his mother and widow of Karel II, Sophia took the reigns during this 5 year long regency. Sophia was unremarkable, a fine caretaker especially with the aid she had from the advisors of the late Grand Duke. She would mainly preside over the war with the Swabians, leading it to a successful conclusion with the conquest of Arensperg and the restoration of the free cities of Frankfurt and Rhotenburg, which would see the Swabian Wittelsbachs supplanted by the resurgent Welfs in the Palatinate and allowed for the continued refinement of the new military methods introduced by Karel II. The most interesting developments of the regency were elsewhere in Europe, and we shall discuss them in a rather quick manner.

Iberia had seen quite a lot of war since the relative peace of the early 15th century. Moorish control remained over parts of the Kingdom of Portugal that it had reconquered some 50 years before, Granada had been extinguished and her populations either converted to Catholicism or forced out, unifying the peninsula beneath the Castilian and Aragonese crowns In the 1450’ies a war would break out between the two Catholic realms over some disputed borders in the Andalusian and Murcian regions, leading to a Castilian victory and the secession of the disputed regions. In the Crown of Castile, the throne had recently passed on to the Ligurian house of Polizzi, which had cleared a lot of the rivalry between the two realms, the Aragonese De Barcelona being a lot more comfortable with the Polizzi on the Castilian throne, which had finally revived the idea of a united, Catholic Iberia. On the 28th of October 1480, Sança de Barcelona and Garça Polizzi married, creating the Iberian Union which would eventually result in the Kingdom of Spain after the upstart Rodrigo III de Bragança was put in his place in Portugal, unifying the kingdoms of Castille, Leon, Portugal, Navarra, Algarve, Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Majorca and Sardinia.

In France, Phillipe VIII would die in 1452, setting in motion a series of events that would see the death of the Valois. His first born son, Henri, had died as a field commander against De Blois 7 years back. In his place Guichard would come to rule, a idle monarch more interested in the pomp of the court rather than pursuing the struggle with the De Blois to its natural end, leading to the De Blois establishing themselves in Brittany as duke. One could have hoped that Guichard, with all his spent at court, that he could at least produce an heir. Problem was that Guichard didn’t take a liking to his wife, a Bourbon noble, most likely because he was a homosexual. A decade after the death of Guichard, one of his alleged lovers confessed the whole affair, which confirmed most rumours. At this point, the French throne passed on to Clorinda Valois, the 2nd daughter of Phillipe, the first having died in childbirth, the child also dying, she had been married to a Tyrolean Habsburg. Clorinda Valois was however married to a younger brother of Karel II, Frederik. Thus, when Clorinda died, the throne passed on to her son, who became Hugues II, a member of the House Roderlo.

On the 11th of June 1481 Johannes II turned 15, which saw him finally crowned and his mother, widow of Karel II, step down as regent. The eventual short duration of his reign, relatively speaking, meant that there isn’t any really strong identifying character of the reign of Johannes which we can often see much easier in other rulers of the era.

The first move of his reign came a year into his reign. Far to the east, beyond Bohemia, the Teutonic Knights and Poland had been locked in a struggle of life and death, bleeding eachother out much like the bloodletting that had taken place some 15 years before in Holsteen, now, the blood had come flowing to the Teutons own lands. The Schauenburgs had dutifully answered their call, but would themselves be backstabbed by the Teutons on the 1st of August 1482, as, accompanied by a proclamation read aloud by the grand duke, his armies crossed the Elve once again. The casus belli had been much like that of his father, issues surrounding the rights of the Schauenburgs in Oldenburg. Whilst the treaty ending the First Holsteen War had affirmed the rights of the Schauenburgs in both Oldenburg and Holsteen, the men who had written the treaty on behalf of Saxony had been smart enough to leave open the question of the exact nature of the relation between the Schauenburgs and Roderlo’s.

The whole conflict might be so irrimarkable that the whole thing becomes remarkable. And especially if one were to consider the war in relation to the First Holsteen War. Holsteen was committed in the east, the only thing that remained was the garrison at Kiel. At Kiel, it is estimated that just about 1.200 men perished in front of the walls of the city, the vast majority of casualties on the Saxon side of the conflict, with only a few deaths in a single naval battle that saw most of the Holsteener fleet sunk. What had cost his father about 85.000 lives to only receive humiliation and made Karel II spent the rest of his time rebuilding his army for another confrontation that he would certainly win that time around, Johannes II had accomplished for 1.200 men. In the treaty ending the war, signed on the same day as the capture of Kiel, “the Duke of Holsteen would recognize the historic relation between his realm and that of Saxony, and would act in accordance with that.” Holsteen was subdued.

Johannes II was the project of generations of Roderlo’s who had worked towards decreased dependence on the nobility for the daily matters of state. In the increase of the administration, he mainly worked with the clergy, who had been a noble ally in the past whilst working to expand grand ducal authority. What this would also lead to is the staunch Catholicism of his two sons at a crucial time in European history, but that is for later chapters of this history. At the same time, the attempts of Johannes II (and his mother, she had seen the necessity to keep the nobility in check) would backfire. There are those who way it was obvious, but one has to consider that Holsteen was defenceless, and that the nobility was looking for a excuse to get upset, although not directly over the legal centralization of power. The backbone of the Saxon army was still made up of feudal levies, which meant that in the wars of the reign of Karel II (and the continuation of which under Sophia) it was the nobility which had most directly paid in blood loyal to them. In an effort to keep these men happy, the regentess had promised (with consent of her son, so close to rulership himself) that there would be no war until the reserves of men was “properly restored”. What the nobility got upset over was the Second Holsteen War, a conflict with a country that couldn’t defend itself and had, at most, cost 1.300 men.

The most “interesting” part of the administrative history of Johannes II is a still badly understood period of temporary insanity of the grand duke. We know it developed very rapidly in June of 1482, a couple of months after Kiel had fallen and Holsteen brought to servitude. The best accounts of this period come from his court physician, who was called to the bed of the grand duke one morning with the question if he could “make the swishing in my ear stop”. He had no idea what Johannes could be talking about, but he prepared some mixture he could put in his ears. As the days progressed, it only seemed to become worse, until, one day, at breakfast, Johannes suddenly turned white, as he asked where his father was. Everybody insisted where he was where he had been for the past 6 years, in a grave in the cathedral of Broenswiek. He continued asking and everybody around where his father was, and everybody continued insisting his body remained where it had been. Suddenly, as Johannes’ questioning turned more desperate, he cried out “DON’T FOOL ME, I KNOW HE’S HERE, I HEARD HIM”, at which point everybody understood the gravity of the situation, and Johannes was quickly brought back to his chambers. At the same time, the clergy accomplished a almost “palace coup” type move, securing control over the channels of power to prevent a noble coup. What we see over the following weeks as Johannes was locked in his chamber is a man deeply haunted by the ghosts of his past. In brief moments of clarity, which were almost a greater suffering than when he was in his delusions, knowing what he would be going through again, he spoke to those close to him of what he heard. He would hear and see men crossing hastily made bridges across the Elve, marching straight into the mouths of monsters. He would see the battles of the First Holsteen War play out before him as Teutonic Knights slaughtered his men and ate them alive as they screamed out for him. He would hear the voice of his father, screaming at him to avenge him. He would find himself drowning in the Elve and Baltic time and time again, being trampled by the Teutons marching over his body. This state continued on for almost two months, and with the court getting ever more nervous what the continued absence of the grand duke would mean, the journal suddenly stops mentioning what happens. The last thing written in it is “Tomorrow, we shall approach the Bishop of Münster for aid, this has to stop.” The only entry relevant to this period of insanity is five days later, and says: “We may thank God that Johannes is able to resume his duties again.” Whilst no written record exists, it is highly theorized an exorcism was performed.

There is one thing of the reign of Johannes II that never receives the credit it needs. The Iberian realms had been able to start looking towards other ventures in their time of relative peace, and especially once the crowns of Castille and Aragon had unified. With a Italian monopoly on trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and a very hostile Bahri Sultanate ruling over Arabia, the Levant and Egypt, prices for goods from the Far East, the lands of India and Cathay, had been skyrocketing as the Bahri, and Italians in turn, tried to squeeze every penny out of the monopoly they held. Spain, in her position at the Gates of Hercules, and her conquests deep into the Moorish lands, was aware of the lands that laid beyond the great waste of the Sahara, of the great Empire of Mali, and her access to the sea to her south. Her south! Africa had sea south of her! She began expeditions, always treading just a bit further along the coast, charting as she went along. And whilst she did in outmost secrecy, news spread along the trade routes of the Atlantic, north, towards Saxony. Saxony had for a while actually been a place in good contact with the Bahri, as Diederik I and Nuraddin II had been close friends since Diederik I had went on a trading mission and pilgrimage to the Levant. They remained friends until Nuraddin died in 1460. Renewed conflict with the crusader states had forced both realms to oppose eachother again, the friendship not surpassing the chains that generations proved to be. Saxony, now cut off from the Far East, remained cut off as priorities of the state laid elsewhere, but with news from Spain coming northwards, Johannes II took a gamble, and began funding his own expeditions, finding a man named Martin von Diest who had been planning a small expedition to hopefully trade with the Malian Empire. What it eventually turned into was a expedition to establish contact with and to chart the coasts of Mali and whatever land that the expedition might “bump in to”.

It turned into a resounding success. The expedition left on the 1st of December 1487 from the port of Antwerp. From there, they would follow the Channel and cross from the tip of Britanny to Coruna in the Kingdom of Portugal, making contact with the authorities of the Crown of Castille, who asked what they were planning to do, to which they responded with a trading mission to the Christian lands of North Africa. To statisfy their partial lie, they first went to t the port of Salé, a heaven of piracy, where they actually acquired some information about coasts beyond the knowledge of Saxony. From there, they made landfall in a few other ports, but soon they passed on what was known and after 2 weeks of careful sailing and mapping (of coastline of a land that was a desert) they came across the first signs of civilization, they had reached Mali. Here, they made contact with the local authorities and began trading most of the goods that they had carried along for the journey, mainly for the gold that the region provided. Here, they also heard of a set of islands to the west, which the small fleet sailed to once they were done on the Malian mainland. After a week of sailing, they discovered the Cape Verde islands, already being known to the Spanish at that point, like most islands off of the west coasts of Africa and Iberia. After mapping the islands, the fleet turned back north, heading to the Azores (part of the Crown of Aragon) to finish the ruse of their trading mission and reporting on the vast emptiness beyond Spanish rule in Africa. After a few days in the Azores, they went further back north, passing along Madeira to a rumored set of islands also already discovered by the Spanish, known at the time as the Azores and later settled under the more familiar name Frederik-Hendrikland. From there, the mission sailed into one last port before returning north, the last Moorish stronghold in Iberia, Lisbon. Taking on some last provisions they sailed north again, returning to the port of Antwerp on the 26th of May 1488. When news of his returned arrived in Broenswiek, Johannes II immediately traveled to Antwerp to poor over the newly made maps.

The coasts mapped by Martin von Diest, Frederik-Hendrikland being just north of the area shown​

Sadly, Johannes II would not rule for long. He would become ill with a as of yet still very badly understood illness in February 1493, 2 years into another conflict with the Hansa. He would remain ill for the rest of his days on earth, dying on the 6th of September 1493 at the age of 27. He would leave behind his 12 year old son Frederik-Hendrik and his wife Gunhilda, pregnant of his second son, Jan, both of who would become grand dukes.

Johannes II, reigned from 1481 to 1493
​

(A small note, within CKII, there was a issue with cultural conversion and the subsequent conversion of names. This means that the regal number of a monarch might not align with the one given to them by the AAR.)

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Frederik-Hendrik I Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony

We find ourselves in the same situation as at the beginning of the reign of Johannes II, a monarch too young to reign himself and his mother, a now widow, stepping up in his stead. Not only that, but the recently deceased grand duke also left a unfinished war behind for his heir. But, unlike the regency of Sophia, the regency of Gunhilda does have a interesting note, despite being shorter by more than 6 years.

The war with the Hanseatic League was a small inheritance from Johannes II. In his will, he had already declared how he wished the war to end. The somewhat disunited focus of the war has given it many names. Bergische War, due to the annexation of Berg, Third Holsteen War due to the destruction of the final peasant republics in the northern HRE and the complete reintegration into the Duchy of Holsteen and finally the war was known as the Second Hanseatic War, due to the war being a mayor clash between the Hanseatic Confederation and the Roderlo’s. Most importantly, it signalled that the Hansa was on an irreversible decline, as the Hanseatic League was disestablished for the first time, the confederation however continuing onwards. Next to this war, Gunhilda was mainly interested in the proposed colonization of the, at the time known as, Azores, beginning to prepare a expedition for permanent settlement there.

Whilst the beginning of a renewed era of Saxon overseas settlement, much like had happened hundreds of years before on the coasts on the other side of the North Sea, Gunhilda’s regency is known for something of a much more religious nature. Increased involvement of the clergy in government had led to a large amount of prodding from the regentess into the possibility of the canonization of Widukind. The paperwork had been laying around for a while already at this point, the Bishop of Munster had been working on collecting proof of the miracle’s involved in the conversion of Widukind, his zeal after conversion and his eventual struggles in battle against the pagans at the frontier of the empire of Charlemagne. At the beginning of the regency, all of this was sent to Rome for the Pope to decide on (since the 12th century canonization is one of the things that had slowly moved from local bishops to Rome). Eventually, a month before the 15th birthday of Frederik-Hendrik and the end of the regency, Widukind was canonized by Pope Silvester III. It is also important to consider the political side of this canonization. What it meant was that the Roderlo’s were now directly decedent from a saint and the Pope hoped to keep them on his right side. The reforms within Saxony meant that Saxony, or at least the Saxon clergy, had become a large contributor to the coffers of the Curia.

When Frederik-Hendrik I rose to the throne, it quickly became clear he was neither interested nor capable of leading the colonial ventures started by his father. Nor was he a particularly excelling administrator. No, what Frederik-Hendrik I was is obvious, a soldier. His more natural position would have been as a second or third son, a fine general and military advisor for a older brother who could have a happy and long reign, and perhaps he himself would die on the field of battle, knowing that the battle being fought was already won and that the men only needed to know that he wasn’t dead. Perhaps all a bit too poetic. But what becomes clear very fast is that the reign of Frederik-Hendrik I was defined by war, which had him gain the epithet “more soldier than duke”.

Yet, first we shall look at another defining fact of the reign of Frederik-Hendrik I. A little under 10 years into his reign he would marry a girl of the French nobility named Amice. There was no love present within the marriage, but they were content with being together and were both aware of the duties they had as husband and wife. But, as the marriage “went on”, the couple “spent time together”, it became awfully clear that Amice could not get pregnant. At first the couple, in full agreement with one another it has to be said, thought there was something wrong with Amice. So, Amice went out to attempt to figure out what could be wrong with here, yet physicians could find no defect with her. They quickly turned to Frederik-Hendrik, and it didn’t take them long to figure out what was wrong with him. He was impotent. During his somewhat prudish upbringing it had never come forth that he “couldn’t get it up”. What this would mean that his brother Jan, not yet born at the time of the death of their father, excluding any kind of miracle, would be the heir. As for the relation between Amice and Frederik-Hendrik, they would remain true to their marriage. Amice would often come with Frederik-Hendrik on campaign or just visit him on the training grounds scattered around the whole of Saxony.

Frederik-Hendrik I and his younger brother Jan, about 5 years before the marriage of Frederik-Hendrik and Amice​

The first major campaign of Frederik-Hendrik would be in the east. In early 1501, the Von Rügens finally made their move to assert their dominance over the Wittelsbachs in Brandenburg. What this again meant was that Saxony found itself in conflict with the Hanseatic Confederation, again. The Hansa, still feeling the effects of the first forced dismantling of the Hanseatic League, was too weak to put up any real resistance, and once the Hanseatic armies had been defeated in the fields of Holsteen, again, Lubeek would be put to siege and her walls broken again. To, for once and for all, establish dominance over the Hansa, Frederik-Hendrik would enter the city in what can almost be described as a Roman triumph. All the wealth of the city was gathered and carted around in a parade, followed by all the prisoners taken in the war by that point (there were quite a few Bavarians and Wittelsbach Brandenburgers included) and at the end there was the “triumphator” himself followed by his victorious army of Saxons, Dutchmen and Frisians. At the end, he would not behead those captured but would make the city councils of Hamborg and Lubeek kiss his feet to complete the humiliation. In the end, the loot displayed in the “triumph” was carted back to Broenswiek to the ducal treasury, with another massive sum enforced upon the Hanseatic Confederation to be payed over the coming ten years.

In the meantime, the Army of Westphalia had assisted the Lausitzer armies in subduing Wittelsbach Brandenburg, which had ended in a rather shortlived Siege of Berlin, ending after 39 days as a massive defection from within the Wittelsbach ranks lead to the gates of city being taken by storm. From here, the war moved on to the main supply route from Bavaria to Brandenburg, Bohemia. The clash came at Neuhaus in Southern Bohemia, where the last stragglers from Brandenburg and the main force from Bavaria had caught up with each other but had remained for too long to reorganize allowing the Saxon, Lausitzer and Dutch armies chasing after them to catch up. To all their credit, they lead an excellent, utilizing the ever increasing hilly terrain to have a fighting retreat southwards in the hope of reaching Austria and some potential aid from another rival of the Tyrolean Habsburgs. In the end, the larger amount of cavalry present in the larger army fighting them meant that vital routes of passage were simply blocked by some well placed cavalry. The army was eventually able to slip away through the Sudeten, leaving behind a lot of men and all her guns. Whilst defeat had long become obvious for the Wittelsbachs, it took until Regensburg was hit by the first cannonballs of the armies of Frederik-Hendrik for Welf III to finally come to terms. Brandenburg was finally singed over to the Von Rugens, who completed their almost 100 year long goal of establishing themselves as the ones in power in Brandenburg.

The end of the War of Brandenburgian Ascension also marks a watershed moment in Saxon, Dutch and Frisian history. A couple of months after the victory, with new wealth flowing back into the royal coffers, a proposition was made by a group of merchants during one of the gatherings of the Estates of Saxony. The Azores had been mapped some 16 years before, and as of 1504, the Crown of Spain hadn’t taken any action yet to claim the island for themselves, somewhat of a surprise to the merchant class of Saxony and the Netherlands. And from Spain there had already come in news of lands beyond the seas, of an entire new continent where, according to rumours, Spain was already sending her restless men now that even North Africa was almost pacified. In this climate a bit of a panick developed within the merchant class of the lands of the Roderlo’s. It was feared that if no action was undertaken, Saxon and Dutch merchants would be cut out of the potential wealth of this newly discovered west, as rumours of untold riches already began feeding their way back towards Europe. It was also already know that there lived people there, which also made the clergy somewhat anxious to uphold Saxony’s crusader heritage to spread Catholicism to this new world. These forces eventually coalesced around one figure in the court, the widow of Johannes II, Gunhilda. The duchess-dowager was in many ways the stable factor in the transition of power through her regency and even long after. It was not that this was unwanted on the part of Frederik-Hendrik, his mother provided him with a stable powerholder to relegate powers to whilst on prolonged campaigns. This is the reason the merchants and clergy looked to Gunhilda when they found Frederik-Hendrik to be failing in their eyes. Gunhilda had inherited her husband’s somewhat short-lived legacy and was well aware that he certainly took an interest in further explorations past what Martin von Diest had done along the West African coast. If anybody was going to push further overseas, it would be Gunhilda, but she would still need the permission of her son. And here, being a mother, she was able to play off of the character of Frederik-Hendrik. If the “triumph” in Lubeek hadn’t made it clear, Frederik-Hendrik was a bit of a vain man. Oftentimes, he was painfully aware of this, and we know that he often confessed for his pride, but it’s something that stuck with him till his end. Gunhilda eventually convinced Frederik-Hendrik to settle the Azores on two points. First, as always playing to the character of the More Soldier than Duke, she convinced him of the military value of the islands. If the Spanish Crown was to head overseas, the Azores would be an excellent naval base from where the Spanish economy could be hindered. The other was a simple point of pride. The Azores, and any other lands settled or discovered, would be named in his honour. In the end, he gave his approval and state funds, men and material would be made available to support the settlement of the newly rechristened Frederik-Hendrikland. What this also meant that until Grand Duke Jan assumed the throne (who would quickly do away with this shortlived convention) that the two continents of the New World were known as Frederikia in the north and Hendrikia in the south.

After the decision to settle Frederik-Hendrikland, we find the second military campaign of the reign of Frederik-Hendrik, the assistance of the French Roderlo’s in their first conflict against the De Blois. Whilst the De Blois had been able to secure an alliance with the, now, Crown of Spain, the internal struggles with a rebellion in Leon, the ongoing issues with sucession in the Kingdom of Portugal, the continued pacification of North Africa and all the associated debt meant that King Enrique II was unwilling to defend the relatively small Duchy of Anjou against the combined might of Roderlo France and the holdings of the Roderlo’s in the Holy Roman Empire. The war was a “walk in the park” so to say. Anjou was quickly overrun by French, Dutch and Saxon forces. The only battle the Saxons had to fight against the Anjou was against a exhausted and previously defeated regiment of Anjou footmen in the County of Burgundy. From here, the Army of Westphalia moved on to Saluzzo to force that De Blois ally out of the war and Frederik-Hendrik moved on to Baden with the Army of Eastphalia to them out of the war. Here, Frederik-Hendrik made his, self-admitted, “greatest mistake in the whole of my reign as Grand Duke and my long command of the Army of Eastphalia”. Both the armies of Saluzzo and Baden were able to escape north, and were able to besiege and occupy Broenswiek, the first time the city fell during Roderlo rule. The court had luckily been able to escape the city and fled to Antwerp for the time being, joining up with the Staten Generaal to rally the forces to retake the capital. News of the fall of Broenswiek came to the grand duke just after Freiburg, the capital of Baden, had fallen to his armies. At this point he recalled the Army of Westphalia from its campaign on the other side of the Alps. Together, they would march back north where, joined by Dutch reinforcements, the cannons of the armies would level large sections of the walls before they would take the city by storm, being welcomed by the populace as liberators. Secondly, the combined army would decent on the Saluzzan and Badener army now ravaging the Saxon countryside in the north. Hearing about the Saxons returning north to liberate their home, the invading forces began fleeing, and, as often seen, they would get stuck between the Elve and and the armies of the Roderlo’s, doing battle at Stood, where once the army had seen the loot taken from their homes, they would not leave many alive, only stopping once some 500 men remained, who were finally taken prisoner. In the end, king Hugues II of France made peace with the De Blois, virtually ending their power with exception of their last holdings along the Channel coast and an outpost on the border with the Crown of Castille.

2 years after the end of the war in France, we come to the third military campaign of the reign of Frederik-Hendrik I. Once again, it was Sieghard II von Rügen that called on Saxon aid. Ever the militarist, after subduing the Wittelsbachs he looked beyond. In the north, the Danish position over Pommerania made them too strong to take on. Thuringia was a weaker power and the boundary between the two states had long been disputed. The conflict itself is not very interesting, Bohemian and Saxon support of Brandenburg meant that victory was assured. The war has an interesting note, in that it had the battle where Frederik-Hendrik commanded the most diverse army. The Battle of Gullik saw a army of Thuringians and Wurzburgers face off against what was initially a army of Luxembourgers, Saxons and Holsteeners but eventually reinforced by Dutchmen, Brandenburgers and Frisians.

As can be expected, Frederik-Hendrik was also a important military reformer. An enthusiastic adaptor of the cannon, both against unmoving fortifications and in the open field of battle, although it was still of limited usage in that role. He was also one to take heavy inspiration from the Landsknecht for his infantry, mixing pikers with other infantry. But, where we see the biggest influence on his continued improvement is in one of the works he has written on warfare in the regions of his realm: “On the peasant armies of the northern and western Holy Roman Empire”. In the first passage of the book he already admits that “peasant” might not be the best way to describe the armies and battles in question since these were also often made up of the lower classes of the cities, but eventually settling down on the term “peasant” because it makes the tile nice and short. The book itself is a part historical work and part strategical and tactical analysis of famous wars and battles by peasant forces during the medieval era. The West-Frisian Guerilla (1133-1297) which would see one of the Counts of Holland, Willem II, killed when out on a lake without a escort after he had fallen through the ice. His son, Floris V, would get his campaigns against the West-Frisians stuck in the swamps of the area. The Battle near Ane (1227), where the peasants of Drenthe lead by the self-styled Count of Coevorden would be victorious over the knights of the Bishop of Utrecht. The cavalry charge of that battle would get stuck in the swamp and finished off by the peasants, among the deaths being bishop Otto van Lippe. The Battle of the Golden Spurs is perhaps the most famous discussed, remaining a part of the mythos of Flanders to this day. Very much in the same vain, the army, mostly made up of the citizens of the cities of Flanders would defend Kortrijk and be victorious over the noble armies of the King of France. The conflicts of the Roderlo’s with Holland, where victory often depended on knowledge of the local terrain. And lastly, the history of the peasant republics in Sleswig and Holsteen from their meteoric rise around the turn of the 15th century where a unofficial confederation of them would control the region and fight off both Danish king and Holsteener dukes to their downfall in 1440-1444 and eventual end in the Third Holsteen War, a conflict he remembers and describes the peasants of Dithmarschen as “the most worthy of enemies, a sad fact we had to eradicate them on the field of battle.” What his eventual analysis and advice comes down to is that cavalry often can’t find her proper place in warfare in the general area due to the hardships of the terrain. This advice would only be really brought into practise by his brother because Federik-Hendrik was not yet able to utilize the armies of the Staten Generaal fully. Knowledge of the terrain is key, as smaller and worse equipped armies can more easily gain an advantage over larger, better equipped armies in the terrain of the region. And, if anything, it was infantry that decided battles. In bad terrain, they were the most mobile. They were the most easy to equip and the most cost effective, as a single spear or goedendag would be able to best a knight in the most shining of armour. The infantryman would also often have a high morale when fighting for his own land, but Frederik-Hendrik I cautioned against long, drawn out campaigns far away where no other advantage was heavily utilized. This book would long be used by many military commanders serving the Roderlo to gain inspiration in how to more properly utilize the infantry of their time.

Whilst the latter years of the reign of Frederik-Hendrik I would see the continued first steps overseas (the first settlements of Suriname, Riekshaavn and Koeba), the big leap made in that department would be made by his brother. No, what defines the last years of he rule of Frederik-Hendrik I is the start of the Reformation. Europe had seen heresy pop up over her entire history, Cathars, Waldensians, Fraticelli and Bogolimism to name a few, but nothing to tear up the religious unity of Europe like the Protestants would. In 1512, a papal commissioner for indulgences had been sent to the northern Holy Roman Empire to help with the rebuilding of St. Peters Basilica. A Dominican monk named Sievert Bauhamert was confronted with this when he was confronted with those who had come to him to confess their sins showed him their indulgences, which made it so that Bauharmert could only give absolution and not impose penance. In frustration, he would write down his many grievances with the Catholic Church (he had long held certain personal problems with the hierarchy) and sent them to the Archbishop of Hamborg (was held in personal union with the Bishopric of Breemn). Immediately, Bauhamert came into conflict with his fellow Dominicans. On the 1st of March 1513, he would nail his letter to the Archbishop to the doors of the St. Nicholas Church in Kiel, marking the official beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

News of the action of Sievert Bauhamert would spread quickly. Holsteen would over a short period of time already become one of the real nests of the Reformation. When news of it arrived in Broenswiek, both Frederik-Hendrik and his brother Jan reacted distressed. Both were pious Catholics, upset by the heresy and new split in the Church, but both also understood that this would be the potential catalyst for much new violence. Already in 1514 a small conflict between the clergy and nobility about a small piece of land near Ravensbärg spiralled out of control, which, with Frederik-Hendrik choosing the side of the clergy lead to a revolt by the nobles with at least a degree of sympathy to this Bauhamert they had heard of. Later, a revolt of a much similar character would take place over in Flanders. What we also see is the first harsh crackdowns on Protestantism when in the summer of 1515 a priest from Dusseldörp had begun publishing the Bible in the common language. Frederik-Hendrik, being the “man of force” that he was had a simple solution, both the books and the priest would be burned, also signalling the beginning of the repression of Protestantism in Saxony. Finally, the greatest problem that presented itself to the Grand Duke in 1517. The city councils of Hamborg and Lubeek had decided to adopt the teachings of Bauhamert as the new state religion and began actively supporting him, providing a large threat to Saxony as it would be a destabilizing force that the Hanseatic Confederation hoped to exploit. To prevent this, Frederik-Hendrik would mobilize his armies and march into the cities again, once more doing battle in the fields of Holsteen and outside the cities of the Confederation. Bavarian support (Bavaria remained Catholic for this time) meant that the war became drawn out over the course of a year (into 1518) as a Bavarian army had to be defeated that attempted to relieve Lubeek. In the end, the city councils were forced to convert back and forced to stop any support to the heretics, but the damage was done. Simple political difference meant that the Hanseatic Confederation remained Catholic in name only and would convert back soon after the death of Frederik-Hendrik. The Bauhamertists had firmly established themselves in Holsteen and slowly the heresy was creeping out into other parts of Europe. If only one thing, what it meant was that Saxony itself remained safe from large religious conflict for now.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Frederik-Hendrik I would die young, suffering a heart attack on the 13th of October 1520 whilst drilling his army in their camp Meideborg. His death at the age of 37 saw his brother Jan gain the throne at the age of 26. History would know him as Jan de Grote, in English, Jan the Great.

Frederik-Hendrik I, reigned from 1493 to 1520, iconically depicted with his sword​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Jan “de Grote” Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony, part I

It is not the capacity of a monarch that defines him as “the Great”. A monarch may be the most capable of his dynasty and the most capable his country will ever see, but if he’s not granted the time to let his capacity do what is required, he does not earn such a title. Greatness is a combination of time and capacity, and perhaps greatness is also expressed in how a monarch is able to overcome his weaknesses. Jan de Grote was certainly not the most capable monarch the Roderlo’s would field, there had been more capable men before him and there would be more capable men after him, but it is through the length of his reign and his reign taking place at a crucial time in European history that he has gained the title of “the Great”.

Speaking of personal weaknesses, we come to the mayor problem in the reign of Jan immediately. First is his marriage to a girl of the French branch of the family. (To assure the modern audience, they were not first cousins.) This becomes important in a different way later, but Jan would have a child with Ermessinde, names Johannes. As with his older brother, Jan was a devout Catholic, so he stayed true to his marriage. This is something we see throughout his entire reign, but perhaps strongest in his guilt. Johannes would die very young of a fever, and, as Jan puts it in his own words: “Sin takes a hold of us when we are at our lowest. It consumes us, and makes us turn our backs to God.” In this lowest moment of his, he would find solace not with the Lord, but in the arms of one of his maids. It’s soon afterwards that he would realize the gravity of the mistake he had made. He would be honest to his wife, which would cause a massive rift in their relationship. He would also “live up to the consequences” of his mistake, adopting the young boy as his heir, being christened as Diederik, from who the Roderlo line would continue on.

A few different events would take place before the mayor one of the early reign of Jan de Grote. First was the support to the French Roderlo’s in finishing off the last remaining bastion of Anjou (dynastic) influence in France, the city of Toulon. Itself not a massive affair by any means, but it did mean that there was conflict between Saxony and the Papal State, continuing on due to later circumstances regarding the French throne and the French (re-)conquest of Avignon. Secondly was the last desperate call of the Hanseatic Confederation. The city councils of Hamborg and Lubeek had decided to, in one last desperate bid, call to the Imperial Diet for aid. Argueing that it was the Hansa alone that could prevent the most important trade routes of the Empire from falling into the hands of foreign powers (in this case really the Danes). What the Hansa called for was a Empire wide embargo on Saxon merchants, a restoration of privileges and the “restoration” of Breemn to the confederation with even the lands of Stood and Loonborg included to create a “viable state to take charge of the northern defence of the Empire”. What it really all meant was that the Hansa was looking for a Empire wide coalition to take up arms against the Roderlo. Nobody was going to take it serious. The Emperor still stood strong behind the Roderlo’s, and was in no way interested in destroying his strongest ally in the Empire. The “cries for justice” as Hanseatic propaganda put it, were ignored, the Diet deciding against any action. Lastly was the War of Saint Ursula, which saw the end of the worldly power of the Bishop of Cologne. The bishop hadn’t made any friends in the last years, pressing territorial disputes with both the Roderlo’s and the Prince-Bishoprics to its south, Mainz and Trier, leading to a general “understanding” between both sides. Cologne had actually already been bested in warfare once before by Trier and had given up much land around Coblenz and the Moselle river, but the Emperor had forced Trier to return it. With a informal agreement between the two states, both Mainz and Saxony would eventually take their parts, causing Coblenz to pass on to Mainz and Keulen to be reorganized into a county, one of many held in personal union with Saxony.

It is now that we arrive at the 13th of May, 1526, another very important date in Saxon, Dutch and Frisian history. Against the backdrop of the Reformation lashing out in the Holy Roman Empire, the Bohemians desired the continued existence of the Diarchy, giving ascent to the continued centralization of the Roderlo holdings within the HRE. Within the Roderlo holdings there had been some continued conflict over the extent of the authority of the Staten Generaal, with the smaller holdings between the Maas and Roer rivers seeking to escape the domination by Saxony somewhat. Jan also somewhat feared the continued existence of the Frisian Freedom as an entity which might find itself swayed to a foreign power if “encouraged” enough. Lastly was the biggest fear, the main halfs of the realm, the Netherlands and Saxony, due to the inherently separate institutions, drifting apart. Whilst for a monarch who wished to continue to centralize power in his person, it would be a hard pill to swallow, a capable monarch would be able to keep the Staten Generaal in check. To, once and for all bind the realm together, the authority of the Staten Generaal would be extended eastwards by including Frisia, Oversticht, Gelre, Zutphen, Kleef, Gullik, Keulen, Berg and Saxony into the parliament, with the Staten Generaal itself being moved east to convene in Broenswiek from now on.

Whilst the workings of the Staten Generaal were discussed in the first chapter following her establishment on the 11th of November 1444, the inclusion of Saxony somewhat broke the internal workings which were already far from the “ideal” proceedings of a modern parliament with all proceedings well regulated. The issue within the Staten Generaal was often around the way the provinces would vote. Smaller and less wealthy provinces, those like Utrecht, Doornik or Kamerijk, would prefer a “one province, one vote” system, fearing to be always overruled by larger and wealthier states. Those larger and wealthier states preferred a system where the amount of money a province payed into the national treasury decided the weight of the vote of a province. (The idea of the amount of people deciding such a thing was still far, far removed from the minds of everybody.) Since 1444, the Staten Generaal had worked in an ad-hoc manner. For each session, which only lasted a couple of weeks every year, the provinces would agree on the manner of voting, which was highly dependent on the issues of the year. If it was a year of low spending, merely the maintenance of the standing forces under the Staten Generaal, the three big financiers of the central government, Holland, Flanders and Brabant, would often just come together and insist on the one vote system. If, however, there was greater expenditure required, the block of the three greats would split. Brabant, despite owning Antwerp, was always a more land-facing province, laying centrally in the Dutch half of the realm and having a strong nobility, she was the natural candidate for a stronger backing of the military. Holland, being protected behind a lot of provinces and a lot of water, was always a lot more interested in trade and naval matters. Flanders fit precisely in between these, with her wealth also being based off of trade but being a lot less protected than Holland, frugal, but not unwilling to spend. If, for example, it were the smaller states south of Brabant who were calling for greater military spending, Brabant was often quick to back her up, but Holland and Flanders might in response insist on voting by wealth. What often happened was compromise. The unwilling provinces were given a discount on what they had to pay for a system of voting more likely to end up with the expenditure being approved. Or, if deadlock came, it was often the monarch who whipped the Staten Generaal into action. It is obvious how Saxony, with her immense size and potential wealth breaks the system. Whilst not as lucerative as the later business Holland, Flanders and Brabant would do with the New World and Far East, there was still quite a volume of trade going through the rivers of Saxony, not to forget that it was still at the centre of the old Hanseatic network allowing her to easily tap into the Baltic wealth. If going by wealth, Saxony would easily make up between 33 and 40 percent of the income of the state alone. In the first session of the enlarged Staten Generaal, both the provinces and Grand Duke were able to reach an agreement on the regulation of the Saxon vote, the first regulation on the manner of the conduction of a vote in the history of the parliament. Saxony was, at minimum (meaning in case of a one province one vote), granted five votes, corresponding with the internal administrative division of Saxony. These votes, would however, be cast as one block.

We’ll take a further look at the inner workings of the state around this time, where we come to the position of Stadholder, which had also been established in 1444 as a local (the province) replacement of the lord. In many ways this position was only limited to matters of the enforcement of law and order and the local regiments it would provide for the army, as much of the decision making was either done in the Staten Generaal or the Provincial Estates. If there was a riot or some public display of heresy to be supressed somewhere, it was the Stadholder who ordered the troops around. The position of Stadholder was often over more than one province, and we see this we the more prominent ones in the Dutch half of the realm, with often Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht sharing a Stadholder or Gelre and Zutphen or Vlaanderen, Artesië and Doornik. Even here Saxony formed a exeption, where, because of her size, the Stadholder was backed up by five Lieutenants, who would each have one of the five quarters to act as a replacement of the Stadholder (who himself was already a replacement of the ruling monarch).

Lands represented within the Staten Generaal, with the exception of Holsteen, Aken, Düormp and Hamborg, at the time of the eastwards extention​

As the topic of the administrative reforms of Jan de Grote are discussed, we will jump to much later in his reign. In 1560, Jan would, with the approval of the Staten Generaal and consent of the local bodies, create the Kamer der Watershappen (Chamber of Waterboards), a truly unique institution of government that could have only been created where the Roderlo’s ruled. Like the Staten Generaal, the Kamer der Waterschappen would be the national collection of local authorities, in this case the Waterschappen. From the 10th century onwards, the people of the Netherlands began reclaiming land from the sea and organizing the defence against the water, be it against sea, lake or river. At first, it were those who directly benefitted from them who payed and maintained these structures (ie, the people owning land next to a dyke). As these structures would become more complex (think about structures to control the water level in a polder) these individuals, already often the more wealthy owning larger tracts of land, could not afford to pay for them alone. Maintenance and control was placed in the hands of Waterschappen, at the time called “hoogheemraadschappen”. These bodies acted more as bodies of oversight as the system “on the ground” remained very much the same. It was when conflict arose that the Waterschappen would step in. The costs of a hole in a dyke could easily bankrupt some folks, leading to often sporadic maintenance, which could lead to either floods or massive fines for the party not maintaining the dyke. In worst cases of offense, the death penalty could even be enforced if the crime was big enough. Knowing that the simple principle of “Wie het water deert, die het water keert” (who the water harms shall turn it back) was potentially putting large tracts of land at risk, it isn’t strange to consider that the Grand Duke was looking at a greater level of organisation. The Kamer would, despite her often dysfunctional state (considering that Zeeland, Holland, Utrecht, Gelre, Oversticht and Frisia counted about 3.500 of these bodies it isn’t rather strange this body was often dysfunctional too, even with several assemblies below her), provide a good way to increase funding for the water defences. With consent of both the Staten Generaal and the Kamer der Waterschappen, a national tax would be levied of which the proceeds would be put at the authority of the Kamer der Waterschappen, funding the maintenance of existing defences and creation of new projects, like the draining of the lakes of Holland or works on the channels and rivers leading to the cities of Bruges and Ghent.

Count Willem II of Holland grants privileges to the Spaarnedam dijkgraaf and waterboard, 1255 ​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Jan “de Grote” Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony, part II

In colonial matters, the inheritance Jan received from his brother was a mixed one. Yes, Frederik-Hendrik I had left his brother with colonies spanning across much of the Caribbean and a fledgling colonial rivalry with the crown of Spain. The only thing he had not given to his younger brother was an effective colonial policy. Or, perhaps a colonial policy with a little more concern with the present. When discussing Frederik-Hendrik I, we had discussed the first settlements in the New Word, the merchants manipulating his ego and the fact that Spain “had gotten there first”. What this meant is that two Catholic powers were now in competition with one another over a colonial project, and the prize was clear, domination over the Caribbean. It had slowly become clear that Pope Theodorus II was also taking a interest in the colonial ventures of the Saxons and Spanish. The first people from the New World had already been brought back and had shown to very much be willing Christians. With the faith descending into crisis in Europe, perhaps it could find strength overseas. Whilst not yet made official, the Pope started encouraging the rivalry by promising to legitimize the claim of the most capable of the two powers. But, back to the difference in colonial strategies. Spain and the Saxons went at the colonization of the Caribbean in two different manners. Both powers were aware of the region and her features. Spain chose a concentrated effort on the island she had christened Hispaniola, her first ships landing on the east coast and working from that initial settlement onwards. The Saxons began with a false start. Due to a storm, the first ships meant to settle the island of Riekshaavn, got stuck in a storm in the middle of the Atlantic, forcing it on a much more southernly course. The would eventually make landfall in Suriname, starved of supplies and thus unable to continue on to their intended destination, they would have to settle right there. An important setback in the race for the Caribbean, but not one that could be overcome. No, what really killed the Saxon chances at gaining the Pope’s favour here was the Saxon strategy. After the first attempt at landfall in Riekshaavn had failed, a second one would be sent. Riekshaavn had been chosen as it was a natural location for a port, stuck between the smaller islands to her east and the larger to her west. The colony would be a success, but it was isolated. And whilst the Spanish were moving west across Hispaniola, a second Saxon colony would be established at what was deemed another natural hub for trade, the ABC Islands. The Saxons were looking for long term profit, whilst the Spanish were hoping to gain the Papal blessing to beat the Saxons in the short term and then use that to establish their long term profit. Thus, it was when the Saxon colonies at ‘n Brookn and Haverkamp were developing that the Spanish had claimed Hispaniola and moved on to the east coast of Koeba and the lesser island in the east that it was clear who would be able to raise the natives to Christ.

Signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas by the representatives of the different crowns of Spain​

Spanish claims to the Caribbean would be confirmed in the Treaty of Tordesillas, but, what was more important, was that it unofficially established the Tordesillas System. If a Catholic colonial power (Saxony or Spain mostly, but it also bound other Catholic countries) was able to prove their dominance in a certain area and able to bring the natives to Christ, the Pope would be willing to grant legitimacy to their claim in that area. Whilst Jan was able to fully utilize the (potential) backing of the Pope, what it meant was that he would have to break the treaty to make anything worthwhile of his little heap of colonies in the Caribbean. The base in the Caribbean lacked what Spain had, a island from where the whole lot could be governed. Koeba would partially fill this role, as the island would eventually be unevenly split between both powers, but there would be a centre of governance around Haverkamp.

One cannot talk about the beginnings of the Saxon colonial empire and not mention the War of the French Succession. In a certain way, it came at the precise right time for Jan and it saved many of the colonial ambitions the Grand Duke had. Eudes II, also a Roderlo, died in 1537. His only son, Philippe, had died some years before in battle against the Papal State just outside of Florence. At that point, he was already rather old, and so was his wife, and whilst Eudes wanted to, the Pope was unwilling to give a divorce so that Eudes could marry and younger, and hopefully, fertile, wife. But, it was not to be, and thus, when he died on the 28th of July, the French throne passed on to his eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess of Saxony, Ermessinde. The Spanish Crown, fearing to be forever dominated by this new Catholic monarchy, pressed the claim of the Blois, holding on to their last remnant of power in a small city north of the Pyrenees named Perpignan. Immediately after news of the French throne passing on to Ermessinde, king Silo II of Spain immediately demanded she vacated the throne, which she and her husband promptly refused. With Spain declaring war, she had not only declared war on the combined Roderlo realm, but also on their ally Bohemia, commanding the Imperial armies.

Despite the numerical superiority on the Franco-Saxon side, the war would eventually become a rather close fought affair once this coalition was far in Iberia. The major lines of advance would be east and west of the Pyrenees. First battle would be done in northwest Castille, as the eastern column was still stuck besieging a series of fortresses in Catalonia. This resulted in the first great battle of the war being near Soria between forces mainly made up of the crowns of Leon, Castille and Algarve on the one side and Saxons and French on the others. Despite being slightly outnumbered, the Roderlo forces were able to carry the day with their more effective use of artillery and usage of the terrain, despite being the attacking force. This battle opened up the centre of Iberia to the allied forces and would eventually cause the fall of the Spanish capital, Toledo, on the 1st of September 1538. By this point, the court of Urraca (Silo II died in November the year before) had already evacuated to Lisbon after the news of the loss at Soria had reached the capital. Also, around the time of the fall of Toledo, the last fortress in Catalonia would fall, meaning that all of the Crown of Aragon would lay open for the conquest. Whilst some smaller battles would follow on land and sea, neither party was able to achieve a real victory over the other. The final and deciding clash would come down in Andalucia near Almeria, where the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire would face off against the combined forces of most the crowns of Spain. The battle turned into a multiple day meatgrinder as reinforcements continued to trickle in and the winter weather and hilly terrain made manoeuvre incredibly hard. In the end, the Spanish, more familiar with the terrain and with the aid of a stampede of local cattle, were able to break the Imperial forces on their right, forcing a retreat.

Urraca, realizing the state that Spain was in, utilized the recent victory over the invaders, and negotiated a peace treaty. First, and most importantly, Spain would recognize the rights of Ermessinde to the French throne, and that of her Roderlo successors. Secondly came a rather large amount of gold, officially to pay the armies that had invaded her for the costs of the supplies, but in reality, they had never needed that supply as they plundered the local land and the gold flowed straight into the coffers of France, Saxony and Bohemia. Third, and for the Saxon colonization efforts most importantly, a region that had been long eyed by Jan, and in which Spain already had considerable investment, would be transferred to the Grand Duchy. These were the lands where Spain had sent missionaries, sent colonists and built forts around the Rio de la Plata, known in English as the Silver River, would form the new basis of the Saxon colony of Zilverstroom (Silver Stream). Whilst initially faced with a rebellion from the local Castillian settlers, they would quickly found themselves overpowered by Saxon arms and settlers sent from the County of Flanders. The city of Buenos Aires, now renamed to Sint Nicholaas, would function as the administrative centre of the colony at the southern end of Kremersland.

The Zilverstroom colony at the time of the Saxon takeover​

Most importantly in the Saxon colonial ventures under Jan de Grote is the conquest of Southern Periosia: the land of Aztec, Mixtec, Zapotek and Maya. It would be a long series of wars with the natives which neither Jan or the many commanders that went west would see the end of. First of these commanders would be Gerhardus Coninck, a citizen of Brugge with a disputed connection to Pieter de Coninck of city fame. He would leave Flanders somewhere in the middle of 1533 and arrive in Haverkamp in November of that year. After reorganizing his band somewhat, recruiting a few locals whose farming ventures had failed on the island and saying their last prayers, they would leave for the Yucatan. Timing couldn’t have been better as conflict had broken out between the various Maya states, allowing for the siege of the Maya city of Sotuta to continue on as the expedition was able to, in all safety, raid the lands around for their food. After some continued campaigning along the northern coast of the peninsula, they would come across a army of another Maya state, with who they cut a deal, destroying the Xiu state both had been at war with and handing the northern coastline over to Saxony. Whilst he would found the city of Johannesburg on his new acquisition, he would soon move onwards to the heart of what he would eventually describe as the “most demonic empire I have had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon”. He refers to all the followers of the so called Aztek religion, even if not everybody fell under the Aztek state. In reality, the states lying here were in constant warfare with one another, mainly to capture people to have them “partake” in human sacrifice, but, at the time of invasion, were unified under the dominance of Totonac. On the one hand, this campaign was a success, De Coninck landed, founded Diederikshaven and fought off the natives who tried to recapture this new, tiny city. On the other hand, we know it was the intent of De Coninck to conquer much, much more of Southern Periosia, if not root out that “Cult of Satan”.

The further conquests of the Flemish Conquistador would focus on the Maya, a much more divided and weaker bunch, where the efforts of the newly founded Jesuits were also having great success already in converting the local population. De Coninck would die in the heat of the jungles of Southern Periosia. He would be succeeded by Floris Brouwer, who had been one of De Coninck’s lieutenants, and he would very much continue his work clearing out the Maya states of Yucatan and Pacific coasts. His successor, Willem Kerpen, would be the one to see the end of the reign of Jan, fighting against the Mixtec and Zapotec, executing any Aztek priest he came across. At the end of the reign of Jan de Grote, whilst its capital was not yet established, the core of the Viceduchy of New Saxony, governed from Johannesburg, was well established.

The areas under the direct control of the Viceduke of New Saxony at the end of the rule of Jan de Grote​

We’ll take a moment to explore the system of governance that would be adopted on the continents of Periosia and Kremersland. Officially, all of the New World possessions of the Roderlo’s were ruled from one city, first Johannesburg at the tip of the Yucatan, but later from Roderlostad, although this is after the rule of Grand Duke Jan. It, however, became clear very fast that a colony stretching over multiple disconnected patches of land, simply could not be ruled by a single man from a city far away from the coastline. This would mean that power in the far away territories would have to be delegated. These would be organized into the so called Lieutenancies, lead by lieutenants. The name probably finds its origin in the lieutenants who served under the expedition leaders in Central Periosia. These Lieutenancies would have certain autonomy of action, as well as be treated separately in the matters of trade, tarrifs and taxation with the fatherland. What this generally meant was that big picture decisions, the general strategy of warfare in the colonies, maintenance of colonial navies, drive for expansion, would be organized from Roderlostad. Other, more local matters such as the raising of militia’s, working with the clergy in matters of native conversion and the organisation of plantations was done at the Lieutenancy level. Heading towards the end of the 18th century, this system would see reform, but it would mostly stand until then. When Grand Duke Jan died, New Saxony was firmly established, with Zilverstroom and the Karieben accounting as their own Lieutenancies, but with Belgium fast developing into the potential 3rd Lieutenancy under the Viceduke.

Belgium was a bit of a accidental colony. In the 1530’ies the Hastings of England, jealous of the Saxon and Spanish ventures, sent their own explorers westwards. First, to explore Greenland, but when it became clear no colony could be established there (yet), they continued west in the knowledge that there was new land to be found there. Land they found, naming the island Newfoundland. The Hastings, exited to have found land that had not been touched yet by either Spanish or Saxon settlers. England had found her little spot in the New World, one that was quickly growing into a bigger spot in the New World. News of this Newfoundland would not remain confined to the halls of Parliament in London, quickly spreading with the merchants to across the channel, from where the Grand Duke and Staten Generaal slowly grew worried about the, as of yet, unchecked expansion of the English claims in Northeastern Periosia. Finally, in 1549, the Staten Generaal approved the construction of a fort at the place know as Lange Eilant. With them would be sent a group of men gathered by the Staten of Brabant. Thus, on the 7th of July 1549 they would make landfall at the Lange Eilant and construct a small fort and town, dubbing it Nieuw Antwerpen. Following the establishment of Nieuw Antwerpen, merchants of the old Antwerp would start to take an interest in the area due to the fur trade, the area being rich in beavers. What thus followed was an expansion of the colony mostly sponsored by the merchants of Antwerp, leading to the new colony of Belgium being mostly settled by men from Brabant. At the end of the reign of Jan de Grote, we find that the arrangement of shared military-merchant rule is not a permanent institution as the local populous is longing for the implementation of a civilian government.

The island of Sintbernhardusland would also come to fall under the authority of the Lieutenancy of Belgium​

The last colonial ventures we’ll discuss are those around Africa. Continued exploration by Andries Kremer in the South Atlantic would earn him wide spread fame, eventually resulting in the southern continent of the New World being named after him. On the other side of the sea, he was the man who would personally establish Saxony as a player on the continent. Between 1544 and 1561 he would establish multiple fortresses along the Kaap- and Goudkust, even leading expiations inland to establish contact with the Malian Empire ruling over the local Ashanti. But, more importantly, in 1549, he would be authorized by Staten Generaal to stake a claim to the southern most tip of Africa before Spain could do it. With both parties knowing off the route around Africa to the Indian Ocean trade, South Africa was prime real estate for a resupply station. Thus, on the 17th of April 1550, he would make landfall on the coast of the Tafelbaai, where he and his men would construct Fort de Goede Hoop, and a settlement named Kaapstad. Kremer would eventually die whilst on a mission to map more of the Indian Subcontinent, dying of scurvy on the Maldives.

Andries Kremer makes landfall at Kaapstad, please note that the depiction of the Prinsenvlag is wrong, Adolf van Oranje-Nassau was yet to be appointed Stadholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht ​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Jan “de Grote” Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony, part III

Finally, we shall look at the European affairs of the reign of Jan de Grote. We find the continent slowly sinking into a abyss of violence as the Reformation would begin clawing her way out of Holsteen. The first conflicts after the extension of the Staten Generaal would still be of a worldly origin. The Emperor would call upon Saxony in a renewed drive against the Hungarians and Poles, leading to another war against the two kingdoms. What we would further see is that the Kingdom of England would make overtures onto the continent by capturing the port city of Brest from the remnants of the Blois family domain. Whilst successful at taking the city and having the Blois recognize the English control of the city, the king in Paris (this is before the War of French Succession still) was not so easily amused, and demanded the return of the city to the kingdom, being refused and thus leading to a war between the two powers. Whilst there would be few and far between land combat in France itself (England only attempted 2 landings and the main land front was against Denmark) it dead lead to the first mayor sea war between the Saxons and English. Combined with the French navy they would eventually score a decisive victory over the English navy off of the coast of the mouth of the river Tyne.

More important would be the continued battle against the Reformation, and first of all Jan would continue the battle like his brother had, on the battlefield itself. Once again, it was the Hansa, having readopted Protestantism after the death of Frederik-Hendrik, that would find itself punished for joining the Reformation. The Hansa now only existed by the unwillingness of Saxony to not fully conquer the whole lot to not gain the ire of the rest of Europe. The Hansa continued on in limbo, only backed by Bavaria, which was slowly turning into another hotbed of the Reformation, but only under the other major branch, Hoeflerism, which had found her home in Regensburg when Henning Hoefler began publishing his works in the city. The war was most famous for the Sack of Lubeek, which, in contrast to when Frederik-Hendrik I had sacked the city was not a controlled affair, the army breaking down in chaos as they assumed they were once again free to lay waste to this centre of the Reformation. Once the Grand Duke had heard of this, he became livid. His goal was to take Hamborg and leave the Imperial Diet approving, not gain their ire by sacking the city they were not conquering. In the end, he had those who started the looting executed, partially helped rebuild the city (a positive as the populous would see that Saxon rule could also be benevolent) and engaged in policies to keep his army under check better.

This era would also see the final war fought side by side with the Brandenburgers. The Von Rügens, after finally taking the Brandenburger throne for themselves, had set their eyes on Meckelenburg and Danish held Pommerania, for a way out to sea to finally tap into the Baltic trade themselves. Knowing they would not be able to best such a powerblock, they called upon Saxony to help them out. Saxony was fearing the spread of Protestantism in Denmark, Mecklenburg and Pomerania, as Krutoj II had already made Bauhamertism the state religion of Mecklenburg. As Denmark was a participant in the conflict, it also marked the beginning for the Saxon Baltic Fleet, as growing commercial interest in the area would force a greater power projection in the area. In the end, the Brandenburgers would claim much of inland Pomerania and the capital city of Stettin, opening up the way to the Baltic. Just after the war had ended, Margravine Anna would join the Reformation by declaring for the Hoeflerist camp. Jan, outraged by this betrayal, would immediately renounce the alliance. The other major Catholic power of the Empire would, however, stay true to their alliance with the Von Rügens, showing that there was a gap growing between Saxony and Bohemia.

These religious matters on the other side of the Elbe were, however, just small notes compared to the announcement made by Pope Callistus IV, who excommunicated the Grand Duke on the 5th of January 1543.

The excommunication of Grand Duke Jan was both the height of the Spanish-Saxon rivalry and the massive internal division Catholicism faced in the 16th century based around this rivalry. And, it was the closest Catholicism came to ending, or, at least, the unity of the Roman Catholic Church. Once news of the excommunication Broenswiek, the court of the Grand Duke and Staten Generaal descended into utter chaos about how it should react to this news. It was obvious, to the entirety of Catholicism, that this was a political move. The papacy of Callistus IV had been the result of massive, utterly massive Spanish backing during the Papal Conclave of 1538. From sources not known in Broenswiek at the time, we even know that Queen Urracca threatened to have the Pope killed and replaced with a more compliant Spanish bishop if he did not issue the excommunication. But, this news was only revealed to the world in the 1980’ies when documents documenting the whole affair were discovered in the Papal library in Rome. But, despite this, the excommunication still carried its weight, and it threatened the Roderlo house itself. In Broenswiek, there eventually came three avenues of response. Firstly, was the most orthodox response. As it was obvious that this was a purely politically motivated move, there were noblemen and clergy who believed that a antipapacy was the best response, gathering the at least the HRE and France to their cause and to march on Rome, deposing the “false” Pope and installing the Bishop of Doornik, Renée van Abelen, to the Holy See. Second, and most certainly influenced by the events some years prior in England and a fair shair of Protestant theology, were a decent section of the merchants and some noblemen, who proposed a “permanent” solution to the “ever changing nature of the Papacy”. They proposed the establishment of a state church with a Pope appointed by the monarch. Lastly were a collection from the clergy, merchant class and nobility, who simply proposed waiting it out, as they saw which way the wind was blowing as Spain had obviously caused all of Catholicism to turn itself against her influence on the Papacy. With an internal campaign for support for a Saxon candidate for the Papacy, a local bishop could be elected at the next Conclave on the promise of a concerted effort to fight the Reformation and ending the internal division of Catholicism, thus ending the Saxon-Spanish rivalry. For weeks, it remained chaos as the Grand Duke was working on his plan, but finally, on the 13th of February, he announced his decision in the Staten Generaal.

“Gentlemen, it pains me deeply to need to have made this decision. It is clear to me, this parliament and every good Catholic in the world that the decision made by His Holiness Callistus IV is the greatest abuse of influence on the Papacy by a worldly power. Spain, in her quest to pursue worldly power, may have forever broken apart Catholicism, and that in her greatest crisis, when heresy is running rampant throughout the Empire and the Saracens have just years ago retaken Jerusalem. However, it is not my intention, to split apart the Church further now that it might be in her greatest crisis, whatever his faults may be, I shall not challenge Callistus IV. And for those who think I will partake in heresy, let me make it very clear, I will not, and I shall take appropriate measures against those in my government and in this chamber who engage with heresy.”

Whilst not announcing it publicly, his rejection of the first two courses of action meant that there would be an attempt to gain the papacy for Renée van Abalen through the next conclave. The next few years would see a massive battle within the Church as Spain attempted to hold on to whatever waning influence it could hold and Saxony attempted to court as many of the anti-Spanish bishops, enraged at Spain for the abuse, to its side. At the same time, the inability of Saxony to do much against the Reformation became clear as a group of Hoeflerist theologians would be able to settle in Düörmp as the city council chose the side of the Reformation. Their influence within Saxony reached far quickly, their works being spread fast and soon much of the Angrian Quarter was in some way involved in Hoeflerism, as well as the other provinces, stretching as far as across the Meuse river into Opper Gelre. The Emperor, afraid of the potential consequences of allowing the Roderlo’s to fight the Reformation at this point and unwilling to surrender a Free and Imperial City to the Saxons, did not allow intervention into the city. The region around the city would thus remain a Protestant hotbed, remaining a thorn in the side of Broenswiek as unrest with the Catholic monarchy was high. Hoeflerists services held out in the open field, the famous Hagepreken, would often be violently broken up by cavalry sent by the Stadholder and Lieutenants. But, as many of the local city militia’s would also find themselves at these services, after a while these militiamen would organize defenses for the services, resulting in these Hagepreken becoming bloodbaths as Protestant militia’s and units loyal to the Grand Duke would fight it out.

However, the situation would change in early 1546 as Callistus IV died, and after a rather long Papal Conclave, Renée van Abelen would be elected as His Holiness Pope Victor IV.

Pope Victor IV, is much like Jan de Grote a great example of greatness as a function of time and capability. He would not occupy the Holy See for long, but, he would be the most influential Pope in centuries, as he would call for the Council of Trent.

Trent was chosen as the best compromise location for the council. Both Saxony and Spain had proposed to hold the council in a city in the Pyrenees, but Victor IV knew that that would make the Council too much of a worldly affair, focused too much on the Saxon-Spanish rivalry. No, whilst it had to close that gap in Catholicism, the Council would be the answer to the Reformation itself, to start the necessary reforms and to give a doctrinal answer to the theologians now spewing heresy from Kiel, Düörmp, Regensburg and many other places in the Holy Roman Empire. Trent, in Northern Italy, provided neutral ground within the HRE yet south of the Alps, and at the same time allowing Protestant observers to the Council, in the hope that they would see that their legitimate concerns were being listened too. Without getting into the theological too much, it must be said that the shared uncompromising stance of the Imperial, Saxon and French clergy on one side and the Spanish clergy on the other meant that in some way both parties were able to find each other. Combine this with the uncompromising stance of the Italian clergy, and the somewhat reformist clergy from southern Germany and Denmark were completely outnumbered, leading to a Council that very much confirmed Catholic orthodoxy and made the way clear for the Counterreformation. Over the course of 3 years, most theological and organisational issues would be solved, with the council continuing another 2 times before here definitive end, finally providing a unified answer to the Reformation. But it would not be a success if both Spain and the Roderlo’s could not heal the worldly division.

Luckily, they did. Whilst neither Saxony nor Spain was willing to declare a end to their rivalry, as it was seen as conceding to the other side, both powers were able to let go of more direct forms of confrontation and adopted a “I don’t get in your way, you don’t get in mine” attitude to colonisation, meaning both powers would try to avoid a direct confrontation like the War of French Succession or any kind of colonial competition like had happened in the Caribbean. Spain also agreed to accept the territorial integrity of the French crown, meaning an end to the support for the last holdout of the De Blois in Perpignan, which would be ended in 1560. Both also agreed to throw their weight into the Counterreformation, with Spain focussing her efforts on the heresy beginning to crop up in Italy and Saxony would spearhead the Counterreformation in the Holy Roman Empire. The fact that Bohemia was left out of this shows the growing irrelevancy of the Diarchy and the slipping influence of Bohemia on Imperial affairs. But, that’s beside the point, as the Counterreformation was about to enter its full swing.

The first strike of the Saxon Counterreformation would be at “that cesspit where all this began”, Holsteen. Both the Duchess Gerberga and Grand Duke Frederik-Hendrik I had been caught off guard by the new heresy, only preventing its spread into Saxony proper by force of arms, but it could not prevent its spread into the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, but now, finally, something could be done. With issues such as absenteeism tackled, much of the wind that had carried the Reformation in Holsteen was taken out of its sails, opening up the way for renewed proselytization to the people of Holsteen. This was done by the (relatively) newly established Jesuit order. But, the political independence of Lubeek made it so that the Counterreformation could not yet reach into the city. But, for the rest, it was a success. For the moment, Protestantism was forced underground in Holsteen, with Kiel ending as a centre of the Reformation. A good section of the Protestants Reformers converted back to Catholicism, but most of them fled the city, first to friendly Lubeek, but quickly to Southern Germany, which itself was becoming the real hotbed of the Reformation. As for Bauhamert, he had died 2 years before the beginning of the Council of Trent.

One cannot talk about the warfare of the reign of Jan de Grote, especially once the Counterreformation began, and not mention Adolf van Oranje-Nassau. Adolf was the third son of Count Albrecht I of Nassau. He, in an effort to raise relations with Saxony, was educated in Leuven, together with Diederik, the illegitimate son and adopted heir of Jan de Grote. Here, he would experience the beginnings of the Reformation and find himself pulled into the anti-protestant movement in Saxony. He would return home, where he would work hard as a commander of the army of his father. This would change however when Albrecht I adopted Bauhamertism as state region. Adolf, acting quickly, fled before a Catholic persecution would begin, and with him came a diverse set of Catholic refugees and a decent amount of wealth. He fled to Brabant, where he had inherited the Barony of Breda, the previous baron being a friend also made at Leuven and dying without heirs, thus leaving it to him. With his wealth he would also purchase the Princedom of Orange, which had been held by the French crown ever since Avignon had been taken by the French crown. With this he would change his name from just Nassau to Oranje-Nassau. Whilst in the meantime, Diederik had unfortunately died in a horse-riding accident, Adolf was left with a good relationship with the Grand Duke. This proved beneficial as in 1549, the Stadholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht had died, and Jan needed a replacement. The Leuven educated and militarily experienced Adolf seemed like the perfect choice. 3 years later, in 1552, he would add the Stadholdership of Vlaanderen to that list as the previous one was removed due to accusation of heresy. Despite these proving false, his position was untenable, thus forcing Jan to remove him. Combined with his property in Brabant giving him a seat in the Staten van Brabant and thus the Staten Generaal, this made Adolf van Oranje-Nassau the most powerful man in the Dutch part of the realm, only after the Grand Duke himself. It is not crazy that in his victories, the Dutch would adopt his colours, and that of his descendants, as their own.

His chance for revenge came soon after, as on the 18th of June 1551 the Grand Duke would, together with Gerberga of Holsteen, make a declaration “ending the autonomy of the city of Lubeek”. Lubeek would, however, not take this “revocation of autonomy” laying down, calling upon their Protestant allies Franconia and Nassau. This time, when the walls of Lubeek were breached and the army into the city under the command of the Grand Duke, there was no plundering as the death penalty was put upon anybody who dared to plunder. Jan wished to show to his new subjects that he would treat them with respect, as a proper ruler should. Thus, when the army took control over the churches in the city, the Protestant clergy was rounded up to be escorted to the border with Mecklenburg, where they were told to flee to Bavaria (if they wished to keep their lives). At the same time, all that he demanded of the city council was the official dissolvement of the Hanseatic Confederation (Lubeek was the only one left) and that the council were to openly convert back to Catholicism. With the exception of one member, who was trialled for heresy but escaped before the verdict could be declared, all converted back on the spot. Following this, the Grand Duke announced that the city would come to be the base of the Baltic Fleet and that a restoration and expansion of the harbour would be funded by him. With this, the city was placated.

Over in Nassau, things were not so calm. Adolf was in a vengeful mood, and was thus unwilling to exercise full control over his army in many cases. As the army laid siege to Wiesbaden, the rest of the county had to provide for the army laying siege to that city. The Army of the Rhine, the one often involved in the suppression of the Hagepreken, had grown hard by the past years, and the Siege of Wiesbaden would show this.The groups of men sent out to gather supplies would, if they visited a town that had not been visited before, come across the local Protestant church and arrest the local clergy, hold a ad-hoc heresy trial in which the clergy were always found guilty, before killing the clergymen, and sometimes the rest of the general population, who were unwilling to convert to Catholicism. Once Wiesbaden had surrendered, the Stadholder would also not hold back his men when plundering the city. And as that city descended into chaos as the army went around in the city and treated it as any other town in the county, Adolf entered the castle where he would gleefully confront his father, forcing him to reconvert to Catholicism and readopt it as the state religion. Once the army had left, the chaos in the county would however continue as the death of so much of the local Bauhamertist clergy had left a massive vacuum which was filled with Hoeflerist preachers soon after, causing a situation rather much like in the region around Düörmp to develop, but with three involved parties and a government lacking in any capacity to enforce order.

Speaking of Düörmp, in late 1555 multiple Protestant electors would come together in Regensburg, founding the Evangelical Union, with the aim of “advancing the Protestant Case in the Holy Roman Empire”, which would have either meant the legalization of Protestantism or the enforcement of one of the branches as the state religion of the Empire. With the treat clearer than ever, finally, Emperor Siegmund IV would allow Grand Duke Jan to intervene in the city of Düörmp, effectively signing away the “Free and Imperial City” status the city held. The siege of the city would last well into 1557, the city preparing for a siege ever since it had converted to the Protestant cause. It was once again the Army of the Rhine that entered the city, again under the leadership of Stadholder Adolf, but even he would be shocked of the violence that took place once the city fell. The army, having grown bitter during the two winters spent outside the city walls and under constant attacks by the garrison inside, put the entire city to the torch after it had looted and thoroughly terrorized the population. The city burned for 4 days and it is said that Grand Duke Jan could even see the billowing black clouds in Broenswiek, although he has remained very vague in his writings on the matter. After this had happened, he threatened to dismiss Adolf from his position if it ever happened again, Adolf, often giving a fiery defence of himself if he ever did something wrong, was so disgusted by what happened at Düörmp that he could only say that the Grand Duke was right. What did happen tho was that Düörmp ended as a centre of the Reformation, because the theologians that had been writing there had either fled the city in the last day before its fall or been killed in the aftermath.

Soon after the Burning of Düörmp, the Grand Duke would loose another heir. Diederik had died some 15 years before, but his son, the young Johannes, had already been married to a girl of the Flemish nobility. In an act of revenge for Düörmp, the Evangelical Union had come together and put a price on the head of any member of the House Roderlo. Word spread quickly throughout the Empire and Europe. Within the Catholic part, it was taken as an impossibility that a heretic would be able to kill a member of one of the most prominent Catholic dynasties of Europe. They were protected by God after all! But, it would not prove to be the case. Whilst visiting the Army of the Rhine, one of the new conscripts, a arquebusier would unload his weapon into Johannes, after which he would take the but of it and smash it multiple times into his head before he could be restrained and dragged away from him. The arquebusier had actually been a survivor of the Burning of Düörmp, who had sworn revenge whilst looking at the burning city after escaping. Whilst the heir lay bleeding out on the ground, he would pray for his wife and unborn child. “May God have more mercy upon them than upon me.” And with that, Grand Duke Jan had lost another heir. He would see it as divine punishment, for not keeping his army under control in Düörmp. One month after the death of Johannes, his son, and the new heir would be born, who would be christened as Floris.

The last major act of the reign of Jan de Grote would be the establishment of the Grand Ducal Commission on Fortifications. One thing had slowly become clear over the past decades of warfare, the old medieval fortresses were vastly outclassed by the ever increasing capabilities of the new cannons. Not only that, but the current fortifications had been built by multiple dozen different states and statelets. With the increasing warfare in the Holy Roman Empire and Saxony becoming a massive target for the Protestant powers, it had become obvious that the medieval system did no longer provide adequate defence. There had, however, been ideas on how to improve fortifications, mainly coming from Italian engineers. What would eventually be put together was a rather odd bunch of Italian engineers, local nobility, military men (Adolf van Oranje-Nassau would also find his way into the Commission), merchants (looking for ways to defend important trade hubs and to finance the projects) and finally some representatives of local city councils (who mainly advocated for their own towns to be fortified). The goal of the whole Commission was to come up with a system of national defence, building fortresses at important chokepoints and places of economic interest. What it would en up doing over the coming 50 years is create the basis of a system that would last for two centuries to come. However, the Grand Duke would see none of her work done.

Grand Duke Jan, under whom Saxony would come to find itself the first among the Catholic powers of Europe due to her proselytization to the natives of the New World, the unity of the Saxon, Dutch and French realms and her primary role in the Council of Trent and the Counterreformation, would pass away in his sleep on the 5th of November, 1566. His actions, and defined by his limitations, he would earn his honorary title, The Great.

Jan de Grote, ruled from the 11th of October 1520 to the 3rd of November 1566​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Floris Roderlo, Grand Duke of Saxony

It might be proper to expect that when Grand Duke Jan passed away on the 3rd of November 1566, that there would have been an heir ready to take over his many, many crowns. Yet, it was through many deaths, that it was his great-grandson who would ascend to this thrones at the age of 8, thus, ensuing another regency council, this time not by the widow of the former monarch by widow of the former heir, Fenne von Landau, who would head the regency. Her regency is very much another grab bag of issues, the just under seven year duration f her “reign” as always being unable to be defined by anything. But, there are some things of note.

First is the continued outbreak of religious violence around Düörmp. Whilst the city itself remained quiet, the regions in Angria and to and over the Meuse that had been brought under the influence of her writers remained as many in the countryside loyal to those writers now long gone. The Hagepreken continued as well, although not as heavily contested, as Grand Duke Jan had relieved the Army of the Rhine after a lot of her duties in patrolling the countryside after the Burning of Düörmp, her role now being fulfilled by units more varied, often pulled from either the Army of Eastphalia or the Army of Brabant. The continued cycling of units and the lesser focus on rooting out the heresy by force of arms meant that the Hagepreken could actually continue on in relative peace. At first, this made a degree of peace return to the region, but once news of te death of the Grand Duke and the regency had reached, the local preachers took it as a sign of God that the time was now to drive the Catholics out. The preaching grew ever more intense, until, one day, a preacher called upon his faithful to march into the local church and to destroy the “false icons”. The mass of people, spurred on by the preacher, would barge into a town near Dusseldorp where they would take down and smash any and all statues, paintings and stained glass they could find. News of this would quickly spread around the region, where soon other towns and larger cities like Dusseldorp itself or Arensperg would fall victim to the plundering masses. There were cities like Kleef, Mönster or Keulen which found themselves spared from the Beeldenstorm, mainly because of the timely intervention of either units from the Army of the Rhine or loyal city militias organized by the city itself. In many ways it was a wakeup call to the Regentess and the Staten Generaal, who had believed that much of the Reformation in Saxony had already passed and that the outburst of violence at Düörmp had been the last of it. In the end, a large amount of Hoeflerist peasants and city folk would gather under the banner of a rather charismatic preacher would attempt to separate the whole region from the authority of the Grand Duchy, but it would soon end in failure.

The other major point of the regency was the succession issues that came cropping up. As know, Diederik had not been a legitimate son of the old Grand Duke, yet, it was now his grandson for who there was a regency. The issue was that the French throne had passed through Ermessinde, which meant that technically Floris should not have inherited the throne. However, when Ermessinde had died in 1543, it had been decided by the French nobility that Jan would hold on to power untill his death. There were two reasons for this. The first was the fact that the Franco-Saxon personal union had certain benefits for the French crown, as it found itself protected from any Spanish incursion (which would be confirmed at the Council of Trent). It also meant safe access of French merchants to start trading in the New World and even set up their own colonies such as Louisiana north of New Saxony. Secondly was a rather simple issue, there was no heir. The moment Ermessinde had died, there had already been multiple different nobles who presented their claim to the French throne as rightfull. Due to a simple lack of a clear line of succession as the French branch of the Roderlo’s had died out, there were some five noble lineage’s that claimed a right to the French throne. To prevent any chaos of breaking out, Jan would become defacto King of France. But, when he died, nobody was willing to untangle the mess that was the French succession, especially as nobody had a willingness to break the personal union yet. Eventually, the French nobility would recognize the rights of Floris to the French throne as the “heir of the Roderlo’s”. Whilst most were willing to accept this ruling, over the course of the regency there would be multiple attempts to take the French throne, all failing.

The regency would come to an end on the 15th of December 1572. Just under a year later, captain Mannes Bakhuizen would set sail from the port of Antwerp, and would reach Frederik-Hendrikland about 2 week later. Staying here to take on supplies for the trans-Atlantic trip, he would leave the islands after a week, heading for the Lieutenancy of Zilverstroom and the port of Sint Nicholaas, arriving about two and a half months later due to bad weather off of the coast to the north. From here, he would fully resupply his ships over the course of 2 week, before setting sail again into the unknown, to find a westward route to the Far East. He would be the first one to round Kempersland and have the straights there named after him, the Mannesstraat, but he would be stuck here for multiple months. From here, he would cross the pacific, coming across a couple of smaller islands in Micronesia, using them to resupply a bit with the help of the natives before heading out again, this time taking a more southernly course and being the first Saxon to land on the Spice Islands, establishing contacts with the local kings and thus starting a long relationship between Broenswiek and the Indonesian archipelago. From the Spice Islands, he would continue on westwards, over the Java Sea before passing through the Sunda Straight. From here, he would continue on over the Indian Ocean, where a period of lacking winds combined with a outbreak of scurvy almost spelled disaster for the journey. They were able to limp into port in Kaapstad where the whole fleet and crew remained for some 4 months, demolishing one of the ships which was used as construction material in the small colonial city and restocking the remaining two ships as best they could, from here, they would sail some 80 days back to Frederik-Hendrikland, where the locals were ecstatic to see Bakhuizen and his fleet again. Whilst they would only stay for 2 days, it meant that a ship traveling back to Antwerp would already bring the news of his return to the homeland, where he arrived on the 9th of May 1576 in an incredibly lavishly decorated port, completing the first journey around the world.

Grand Duke Floris would also search for a replacement for the Brandenburgian alliance, which would also have to be a alliance aimed against the Von Rügens. The Branderburgers had long been a expansionist power since the consolidation of the Margriavate. They had confronted the Danes already with Saxon aid. And whilst the lack of Saxon aid in a first conflict with the Thuringians had caused them to lose their honour and the city of Wittenberg, they would be absolutely crushed in a second war, which saw the Brandeburgers take most of Meissen. Brandenburg would also lay their hands on parts of the Kingdom of Poland whilst fighting on the side of the Kings of Bohemia. Floris would find that ally in the shape of a old enemy made by the Brandenburgers, the Kingdom of Denmark. Saxony and Denmark had always held a cordial relation. Neither was interested in a strong Hanseatic Confederation, or Peasant Confederation in Holsteen. And whilst the Sound Toll had been somewhat of a thorn in the side of Saxon merchants, the direct access to the Baltic that Lubeek gave made this already much less of a issue. Floris, besides a ally against Brandenburg, was also interested in propping up Denmark, who was slowly becoming the prominent power in Scandinavia due to Sweden descending into chaos, Norway falling to foreign powers and the last of the Scottish influence falling away, as a Catholic power. Denmark was also struggling with the reformation, with even a Hoeflerist revolt sponsored by Brandenburg taking place in Danish Pomerania.

Despite the growth of Brandenburgian power being a worrying development for the powers that be in Broenswiek, it did weaken Thuringia much. Thuringia, who had been sponsoring another theologian centre of the Reformation in their capital of Erfurt. Many of these reformists had been the ones dispelled from Kiel and Lubeek or their students, being radicalized into Hoeflerism by their experiences with the Saxon Counterreformation. The Thuringian offered them a chance to spread their writings in the heart of the Saxon state. Yet, luckily for the Roderlo’s, they had learned from their initial experiences and had been able to contain the heresy to a small border region near the town of Chöttingen. Once again, it were the armies of Saxony that moved out and forced a foreign power to stop their support for the Reformation. Floris would conduct his campaign much more properly than the one against Düörmp. Once they had entered Erfurt, the city would be searched, heretical works burned, the theologians gathered and given a choice. Convert or leave for the south. Some chose to return to Catholicism but most bled to the south, strengthening the Hoeflerist resolve of Bavaria. Whilst Thuringia would stay under a Hoeflerist regime, they were forced to abandon any kind of sponsorship for the Hoeflerist cause and the Reformation at large.

With ever more wind being taken out of the sails of the Reformation, and the failure of the Evangelical Union to garner enough foreign support to challenge the emperor and the Catholic League, the Catholic powers within the Empire finally made their move. Emperor Waldemar IV would assert his dominance over the Imperial Diet, and with the help of the Catholic member states would reaffirm Catholicism as the only permissible religion of the Empire. The Evangelican Union, know that there was nothing that could be done, disbanded. Whilst it was certainly a victory for the whole of Catholicism, it was a practical death sentence for the Empire. Be the reaffirmation of Catholicism as the religion of the Holy Roman Empire meant that any elector of any other religion would be stripped of their status. With the ever decreasing amount of Catholic princes, this mean that only 4 respectable states were left to carry the burden of choosing the new Emperor. It must also be mentioned that the reaffirmation of Catholicism doesn’t mean that it was able to enforce this on the princes or their local population. What it did mean however was that whatever respect or authority the Emperor still carried was completely lost, gridlocking the Imperial Diet most of the time.

Finally, we shall speak of the last project started by Floris. The Kingdom of Scotland had entered a long decline since her hay day at just before the turn of the 16th century. Norway, Finland and the Swedish possessions had been lost, the kingdom had bankrupted herself in colonial ventures in Periosia, Kremersland and West Africa and the Kingdom of England had recovered from her internal civil wars, leading the much of the Kingdom itself being overrun. In 1563, King Alan II of England would even declare himself King of Scotland “by right of conquest”, after which he would unify his four kingdoms, England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, into the new Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, emulating the Roderlo’s by unifying all four parliaments into one seated in London. Whilst there was no opposition in either Wales or Ireland, Scotland remained a sore spot, as resistance to English rule continued on lead by the MacGregors of Scotland. But, they could not last forever. Limited to the last islands in the north and a few lost settlements north of the Lieutenancy of Belgium. Floris, in attempting to weaken the British monarchy, would establish contact with these last remnants of the independent Kingdom of Scotland, but his work was cut short.

On the 11th of November, 1585, Grand Duke Floris would suddenly pass away. He had always been a sickly man, but he still surprised the world with his sudden death. His death at the age of 27 meant that another long regency would follow.

Grand Duke Floris, reigned from 1566 to 1585, sometimes nicknamed “the Shortlived”​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Johannes III “de Wetgever”, part I

As we follow the Roderlo’s throughout history, it becomes clear that regencies are not uncommon for this dynasty. Both before and after the Staten Generaal was founded, there had been regencies, but these had had some time to be prepared and had a propper figure to lead the regency. Often being a Duchess-Dowager, a other relative or a bishop. But, with the unexpected death of Grand Duke Floris, there came a massive problem in the fact that nobody had prepared any kind of regency. The old Duchess-Dowager, wife of Grand Duke Jan was long dead, outlived by much by her husband. The wife of Grand Duke Floris was also dead, dying because of complications with the birth of her second daughter. For a few days after the 11th of October, this meant that, whilst Johannes III was Grand Duke under the idea of “the Grand Duke is dead, long live the Grand Duke”, nobody held actual power.

The Staten Generaal quickly reacted. Whilst normally called together by the monarch, now, the Staten van Vlaanderen took the initiative. They sent out riders for the Staten Generaal to gather at once in Broenswiek. They would do so on the 17th, with about 2/3rds of the total amount of seated members being present for the first day of the session, many not being able to be there at such a short notice, with many of the other members not even having their usual entourage with them. The rest of the members would come in over the next days. The session moved fast, and despite not being fully filled, it was able to gain the majority needed to pass the motion to establish a regency to be staffed by people to be determined by the Staten Generaal. Only a few members voted against, mostly men who had been close confidentials of Floris and Jan, who saw it as a powergrab by the Staten Generaal, who had no right calling itself together. Among the men who voted for the move was Stadholder Adolf, who mainly saw the move as needed for two reasons. The first is obvious, if not this regency council appointed by the Staten Generaal, than who? Secondly was much more pragmatic. Yes, it was a massive, unlawfull powergrab, but, he was the most powerfull noble of the realm, a natural pick for such a council, and he would not throw away such a position to at least keep the powergrab in check by voting against it by blind idealism.

As the days went on, debate ensued over who should take place in this council, and who many men should even be on it. The second issue was resolved after two days, which was twelve. The first one was harder, as it should be representative of the whole apparatus of the state. First to be picked were the Bishop of Utrecht and the Bishop of Keulen as the ecclesiastical representatives. Second were some five important merchants of Amsterdam, Ghent, Brugge, Amsterdam and Breemn respectively. Next were three noblemen, two from Saxony and one from Gelre. Lastly, on the final day of the debates, it was decided that both a general and admiral should take seat on the council. The admiral was from Zeeland, which lead to the nobles forming a block behind the Stadholder. They were refusing to support anything if he was not put on the council, fearing domination by merchants of the Netherlands. Whilst Stadholder over there, he remained a noblemen with the strongest connections to the ruling house. Thus, not wishing to deadlock the Staten Generaal, and the entire nation, he was put on the council as the last member.

It is on the council that we find the last service of the Stadholder and the preservation of what in any other cae would have been the legacy of Grand Duke Floris. The MacGregors of Scotland had seen the kingdom in a long decline, ending with English invasion and Alan II of England declaring himself King of Great Britain and Ireland. The regency, pushed on by Adolf, would send a delegation to the Shetlands to work out a deal. It was obvious that it was only a matter of time before a English expedition would land on the islands. The negotiations were tough, despite the tough situation for the MacGregors. What the Saxons needed was a legitimate line for the Scottish throne to support. What the Scots needed was everything, absolutely everything. The main negotiations were around the future of the Scottish economy, the degree of political independence Scotland would have, Saxon sponsorship of the Scottish state, the future frontier with England and the future of Nova Scotia, Belgium and Newfoundland. In the end. Scottish trade would be dominated by Dutch and Frisian merchants, they would be allowed to invest freely in the Scottish economy, whilst Scotland would have her national defence bolstered by Saxon funds and Scotland would be allowed to maintain her colonies north of the Belgian frontier at the Spaarne river. Negotiations were completed on the 6th of November 1588, with a delegation traveling to Broenswiek to, on the 5th of December, bow before a slightly confused 7 year old Johannes as he was proclaimed as the new Protector of Scotland. Only 3 days later would Stadholder Adolf die. The position of Stadholder of Vlaanderen would be granted to the Stadholder of Doornik, but his son Willem-Frederik would succeed him in Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, as well as in his position on the regency council.

Despite the involvement of military men like the Van Oranje-Nassau’s, the regency council would not involve itself in warfare, also because warfare was a issue that was the prerogative of the monarch (with consent of parliament of course), but because the previous monarch had not officially delegated power to a regent, the “constitutional” (no codified constitution existed) consequences were thought of as too great. The council did heavily involve itself in the development of the national economy and preparation for war with England, the obvious goal of the Protectorate. The main focus of the Staten Generaal would be the continued reclamation of land in Holland and Zeeland. With the works in Zeeland would also come the fortifications at Vlissingen and Westkapelle and in the north of Flanders at Breskens and Cadzand, which would be fortifications aimed at controlling shipping up and down the Westerschelde to the port of Antwerp. Antwerp, meanwhile, had grown into a absolutely massive hub of global trade, as products from all over the world were heading to her as the stapleport of the whole of Europe. From this time, we already see some Middle Eastern and West African merchants making the trek all the way to the port to do business. The Staten Generaal would also massively increase the size of the navy in anticipation of the coming conflict with the English. The last victory over the English had only been possible because of the addition of the French navy in the Battle off the Tyne Mouth. It were the Dutch merchants who demanded that, to make sure that trade would continue on at least relatively uninterrupted, the navy would be able to best the English in a one on one fight. Lastly, the normally unwilling Holland and Flanders were both willing to fund an expansion of the standing army in expectation of the campaign in Scotland, England and Wales.

On the 1st of January 1597 Johannes III would reach seniority and at the session of parliament that followed the parliament would dismiss the regency council. Immediate issue’s were another French noble attempting to seize the French throne and the early death of Willem-Frederik in a explosion in a gunpowder storage whilst preparing for the campaign in Scotland. He would again be replaced by his son Diederik, who would become the primary commander of the campaign. And, whilst the Staten Generaal were discussing on matters of language within the city of Ryssel, the final preparations for the Highlands Campaign.

A ultimatum would be delivered on the 2nd of January, to the English authorities in Edinburgh, which would be denied and immediately followed by a declaration of war in the name of the Protector of Scotland. The Highlands Campaign would begin on the 9th as the Army of the Rhine would land on the Orkney’s under the command of Diederik von Arnim. First priority of the navy was the reinforcement of the army now in the far north of the Hasting’s realm. Whilst the main power of the navy was focussed on escorting the troops north as any loss might have been disastrous for both those men and the ones already in Scotland proper, elements of the navy on trade escort were caught off-guard by the full might of the English navy, suffering some losses before being able to retreat. Revenge would come at the hight of summer, as the Saxon navy was able to corner and best the English navy at the Moray Firth, ending any hope of the English maintaining control of the seas around Scotland, allowing the armies to move onto the highlands. That same summer, Saxon armies would do battle outside of the (slowly being reinforced) walls of Broenswiek, leading to another Saxon victory forcing the way open to the city of Mainz.

Meanwhile, back in Scotland, the army and navy, under command of Diederik van Oranje-Nassau, would take control over the Hebredines after a series of clashes with the English forces on the islands. But, as of yet, the armies were still stuck in the Highlands as Aberdeen, the old royal capital of Scotland, was still under English control. At the same time, back in the south, a massive revolt would break , partially lead by parliament, against Fulk II and his policies of centralisation and slow moves to take away many of the privileges of parliament, foreshadowing the English Civil War. The fall of Aberdeen had also removed the last obstacle for the Saxons to move on into Northern England, and on a visit to his generals, he would speak the words that would define the coming decades. “The spite against Prefidious Albion is nowhere more rooted in the national spirit than in the Netherlands, Saxony and Frisia. May God punish England.” These words would actually travel back to the Staten Generaal, where, once read, the whole house would join in with “God straffe Engeland!” Whilst moving south, the Saxon armies would assume a scorched earth policy. Over the coming months the army would move south until when, in February 1602, the army stood at the gates of London. Fulk, unwilling to let England fall to the torch, surrendered. Peace would be humiliating, England was indeed punished. The mainland holdings of Newfoundland would be lost to Belgium and the Highlands and old capital of Aberdeen would come back under royal Scottish control.

Now that the English had had their first taste of real defeat, Saxon merchants ruled supreme. But, especially in the slowly blossoming trade with the far east, competition between the different Dutch merchants was starting to hurt the competitive position of the nation as a whole in comparison with the Spanish merchants trading in the Indian Ocean. And not only was the national competitive position at risk, these smaller companies also had a worse negotiating position with their far eastern partners. The merchants, especially the ones seated in the Staten Generaal were slowly becoming aware of this situation, the Grand Duke to was well aware of losing the competitive advantage that came with the fortresses the Saxons had established in South Africa and Southern Sumatra. It was the Grand Duke, like much in his reign, who would take the initiative. In the 1604 session of the Staten Generaal, Johannes would put before the house a bill that was meant to unify the companies and grant that newly created company a charter, a monopoly on all Saxon trade from Kaapstad to the east, meaning all of the Indian Ocean, the Indonesian Archipelago, China and whatever unknown lands there would be left to be discovered. This company, being an amalgamation of the efforts of multiple merchants, would be named the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.

The company was actually very innovative. Because of the large degree of investors involved (many companies sailing for India, Indonesia, Indochina and China had been doing so with just one ship), the Grand Duke came up with a rather innovative solution. Shared ownership based on the amount of invested in the company and a dividend pay-out based on how large of a part of the company one owns. But, not only would ownership be shared, one could also sell their part of the company on to someone else, and the company could also receive an influx of cash by selling new stocks. The VOC would be the first publicly traded company in the world.

The roadblock the Saxons faced to the total domination of the coastline of the MacGregor Bay were colonies belonging to the Kingdom of Norway. Norway had found itself in much of the same situation as Scotland, perhaps because it had found itself in a union with Scotland for a while. Both Scotland and Norway had bankrupted themselves attempting to establish colonies in the New World, both on the northern part of Periosia, which was combined with foreign takeover at home leading to a utter collapse of the authority of the crown. In case of Norway, foreign invasion had been of the Dukes of Vastergötland (a curious bunch who had established themselves fully independent from the Kingdom of Sweden), the Kings of Finland and Kings of Denmark. Finland, the growing power of Scandinavia, had actually backed up the remnants of Norway much as Saxony had with Scotland. What this resulted in was a war spanning 3 years, in the freezing cold of winter at times, across Scandinavia as Saxony and Denmark fought to end the independent Kingdom of Norway and push Finland back into the woodlands of Lappland, resulting in the Norwegian crown passing on to Gorm II along with Vastergötlander possessions within Norway and the division of the Periosian colonies between Belgium and Nova Scotia.

Whilst the victory of Saxony and Denmark had caused the undisputed supremacy of the latter in Scandinavian affairs, there would develop a much bigger upset in the European balance of power in the Holy Roman Empire. The title of King of the Romans, King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor had been lost for the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1591 when the remaining electors, excluding Saxony, had voted to back the Duke of Savoy, Boniface II von Habsburg, for the Imperial throne. This choice continued to be supported in 1602 when his heir, Thomas II, was also elected to the Imperial throne. Bohemia, which had internally also had a elective monarchy, the situation caused a massive upset as the Imperial throne had been in the hands of the crown ever since 1439. Internally, Bohemia was growing restless, as the Reformation had taken a hold of the Germanic populations of the kingdom. Thus, when Václav V von Habsburg died, his cousin, Siegmund V would be elected. He was from the Styrian branch of the family, meaning that he was a Bauhamertist, yet he offered himself up as a compromise candidate to heal the wounds of the kingdom, gaining support from both Protestant and Catholic nobles alike. But, once on the throne he would quickly side with the Protestant nobles, declaring Bauhamertism the state religion, thus, ending the diarchy with Broenswiek. Whilst he would die in 1617, causing a short violent struggle over the throne which the Catholics would win by placing Waldemar VII, a Savoyard Habsburg, on the throne, there would be no rapprochement between the two old diarchs.

1617 would also be the year of the start of the Second Anglo-Saxon war. Whilst the war would result in the reconquest of the Lowlands and the annexation of Cumbria and Northumberland into the Scottish Crown, for what remained of the “Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” it provided the definitive blow to royal power, as King Richard IV had tied his success (after the failures of his father against the Saxons and Scottish) to that of his army. But, now that that was destroyed, his dictatorial rule over the Parliament resulted in them demanding his abdication. He refused, beginning the English Civil War. Whilst important in the sense that the English would keep themselves occupied on their island for a while, the conflict between monarch and his parliament was also propping up in Saxony.

Johannes III was the beginning of the idea of absolutism within Saxony, and he was quite a extraordinary monarch for Saxon standards. Often taking initiative over the Staten Generaal in proposing legislation or even sidestepping them by going directly to the provinces themselves and taking on responsibilities that had been the responsibility of the Stadholder. He had also been able to have the merchants be indebted to him by funding a lot of the VOC from his personal fortune. Where, in the past, the Grand Duke and Staten Generaal had a much more balanced relation where both took active roles in the legislative process requiring both to actively consent to the laws, the political manoeuvring had the Staten Generaal vote itself (partially) out of the way on the 24th of February 1624, as it granted the right to levy taxation to the monarch in case of emergency. Taxation had been an issue that the provincial estates, and later the Staten Generaal had always had a say in. Johannes III, whilst he would still work with the unofficial consent of the Staten Generaal, would start to centralize power into his person, becoming an example for many other European monarchs as it hailed the age of absolutism.

 

[J_Master]

Intermission: the Reformation and the nation forming process

At the turn of the 17th century we find Europe, and especially the Holy Roman Empire, torn apart by conflicts that would come to define the future divisions of the continent.

The first obvious division that the Reformation is possible is the separation of Saxony from the rest of the Germanic nations. Through the embracing of the Reformation throughout all of the Holy Roman Empire except Bohemia and Savoy, it created a natural division. Not only was the Catholic-Protestant division at play, the internal Protestant division also began to play after the dissolution of the Evangelical League. The northeast, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Pommerania, had found itself as a stronghold of Hoeflerism, being quite opposed to Bauhamertism. Compare this to the much more religiously mixed Franconia, Swabia and Upper Rhine, where rulers often took a more conciliatory position towards the other main branch of Protestantism. This caused a degree of infighting between the strongly Hoeflerist northeast and the moderate Hoeflerist and Bauhamertists of the Central and Southern Holy Roman Empire.

If there is one event that singlehandedly split Saxony apart from the other Germanic nations, it’s the Burning of Düörmp. The whole of the Protestant camp in the Holy Roman Empire took it as a massive propaganda opportunity against the Saxons. Not only that, but it was quickly turned into policy by the surrounding states. The Lower Germanic Dialect Continuum, one that Saxon was a part of, continued onwards east across the Elbe. Meckelenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, all spoke Lower Germanic. The Lausitz had long had their powerbase in Southern Brandenburg, where the people actually spoke Meissner dialects, a part of the Central Germanic group. Whilst the center of power being in Meissner lands did bring about a shift towards the more Central Germanic way of speaking, it was the hostility towards Saxony that cause the Von Lausitz to standardize a language of court like had happened in Broenswiek. Whilst not completely rid of its Lower Germanic roots, it did take on much more of the dialects spoken in the lands conquered from the Thuringians than of that on the lands on the Pomeranian frontier or along the Elve.

Across the rest of the Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire, much of the same was happening. Bavaria began standardizing her dialects, much as in Swabia. The same was happening in Swabia, despite the territorial integrity of the duchy being rather compromised. Across the other parts of the empire, there were a little more issues. The lands between the tip of Bohemia and the French border continued to be a rather odd amalgamation of small states, making the creation of a standardized language a rather odd job. Than, ofcourse, there were the areas of the Empire that found themselves under foreign rulership. Pomerania, much like Norway would, would find a rather large amount of influence from Danish. The old Swiss cantons, conquered and integrated into the Duchy of Savoy, also had a difficulty of forming into a more cohesive mass, not to forget the remaining independent cantons tucked away far in the Alps. Lastly, Bohemia is also a rather odd mess of language. The conquest parts of Upper Hungary and Poland added in masses of Slavic speakers into the kingdom, when the core itself had been subject to a large degree of Germanisation, with Silesia, the Sudetendland and a decent amount of the urban population of the Kingdom. The dialects continued to have a rather large amount of Slavic influence, and with the Crown focussing more on their Slavic subjects also hindered the development of a Bohemian language in its own right.

The state of the Reformation just after the death of Siegmund V and the return of Bohemia to Catholicism, putting the Reformation over her peak​

Whilst in Europe we see the development of her future nations, overseas we’re also starting to see some interesting developments. In the Lieutenancy of Belgium, Brabantian colonist continued to come into the colony and to settle, yet, at the same time, expansion was still very much limited by native resistance, most effectively organized by the Iroquois Confederacy, by this point encompassing much more than the five nations that had come to establish her. Many of the firearms the Iroquois used had been given to them by the English who smuggled them in via the MacGregor River from Newfoundland. For the English colonists on the Periosian mainland it was quite a backlash. As the new settlers required land, they looked eagerly to the northern coasts, where the limited amount of English settlers would, over the course of the a couple of decades, they would quickly be outnumbered, and as land was getting somewhat sparce on the coast, the Belgian Lieutenant and the Viceduke decided to begin resettling the English settlers to the peninsula of Edwardia. To tuch upon the English colonies in Periosia for a bit, they differ quite a bit from the homeland. Much like in Scotland, it was Catholicism that helped to keep, or develop, a separate identity. Catholicism is what helped Scottish resistance to the Union alive, even if it became a minority in the Lowlands. Over in the colonies, many people who decided on making the trek overseas were either non-Church of England Protestants or Catholics, mainly Welsh Catholics. And whilst Newfoundland wasn’t ideal for settlement, mainly because of the climate, the British Crown would soon sponsor a new colonial venture on the southern Atlantic Coast of Periosia, founding a new colony at the peninsula at the southern tip of the mainland. Like the other colonial powers gripped by the Reformation and Counterreformation, the English would name their colony Georgia, named after Saint George. (The other colonies in the area were French Louisiana, named after Saint Louis IX, Spanish Dominica, named after Saint Dominic and the yet to be founded French Remigia, named after Saint Remigius. The region would be known as the Land of the Saints, with the gulf finally gaining a name that stuck, the Gulf of the Saints.) Georgia whilst there would also be state sponsored colonies who stuck to the state sponsored religion, the Welsh colonies would be able to keep themselves somewhat separate from central authority in the swampy region.

Within New Saxony proper, we also begin to find a cultural shift taking place. Whilst disease would ravage the native population of the entire New World, within Southern Periosia the natives would remain an influential group in the demographics of the Viceduchy. The policy of devide and conquer meant that much of the old aristocracy would be integrated into the new power structure. At the same time, with colonists coming in Saxony, a new sort of informal power structure would develop, dividing society into different casts based on their descent. At the top would be the Saxons born back in the homeland, from where the Viceduke and his closest men were always from. Below them were the pure blooded Saxons born in the colony, descending from there would be Saxon-native mixes, natives and then blacks, whore were not very present in the colony. This digs into another topic regarding colonisation, the triangle trade and slavery. The Saxon colonies themselves were never in the prime location for a slave based economy to develop. New Saxony was abundant with cheap native and mixed labour and slaves were more of a luxary for the wealthiest within the colony, more of a way to flaunt their wealth. Southern Belgium would see slavery, but it was only a small part of the rather diverse economy of the colony. Zilverstroom was always lacking in any kind of economic activity that would require masses of cheap labour. The only places where it was ever really practised was the Saxon Caribbean, including Suriname, and the main colony on the continent of Africa, the Cape.

South Africa was also seeing interesting developments in the department of nationhood. Among the first colonists, there had only been men. Despite the piety the priests implored, many of the common men found the need for a form of “release.” Within the first years of the colony we already find a section of the colony, or of the lands around the colony, being inhabited by children born of a Dutch father and Capoïd mother. Whilst much of this would stop happening once the VOC started shipping in women whom the colonists could marry, the continued birth of mixed race children, both second and third generation as well as first generation would continue happening. Conflict, at this stage being rather small scale, would break out between the small colony and the natives living around the colony. The campaign being launched against the Khoisan would by combination of the local colonists, organized into the Kommando’s, and soldier hired by the VOC. Often times, these expetitions would continue to create new people of mixed descent. Whilst a bit after the timeframe we’re talking about, 1625, continued increase of the operations of the VOC in the East Indies and Indian Ocean trade, would also see them begin to import slaves from the Arab slaving operations and, “more domestically,” they would import some cheap labour from Malaya, which would all continue to add into the ethnic mess that would be the most mixed ethnicity in the world, the Afrikaners.

Later painting of the Cape, 20th century​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Johannes III “de Wetgever”, part II

The freedom of action that the Staten Generaal had granted to the monarch was even somewhat of a shock to the proactive Johannes III himself. The degree of influence he held over the Staten Generaal was much greater than expected through his control over a lot of the finances of the merchants of the Dutch provinces and the Saxon coastal cities. With this realisation, Johannes decided to push this new advantage a bit further in his next war. The target was the Free and Imperial City of Goslar, but, due to the obligation the emperor had to defend these cities and the desire, on the part of both Johannes III and the Staten Generaal, to raise arms against the “traitorous” Brandenburgers (resentment over their conversion to the Hoeflerist camp was still viewed as a stab in the back), allowed for a backdoor into the city of Goslar. Since the readoption of Catholicism in Bohemia in 1617 under King Waldemar VII in the fierce struggle for the throne, the militant Counterreformation had also taken a hold of Bohemia, which also, finally, made them abandon their longstanding alliance with the Von Rügens. (Of note is that Goslar had actually readopted Catholicism by itself under influence from the Counterreformation from the surrounding Saxon lands, which made the Emperor willing to defend the city.) But, perhaps most importantly, was that a declaration of war on Brandenburg also meant that Denmark would have the chance to retake the parts of Pommerania lost (the war for which had actually seen Saxony and Denmark on opposing sides). The war would be the death of the Von Rügens, and the hight of Danish ambitions in the region for the moment. All three sons of Gero II would find their death in the conflict, two whilst leading cavalry charges and the middle one in the Siege of Stettin, when disease was ravaging the city. When the peace was concluded, the second daughter of Gero was married off to the Danish heir Uffe. And, once the Von Rügens died out with Gero II, the throne passed on to his eldest daughter, who had been married to Lothaire von Hohenzollern of Nurnberg, who would become Lothaire III. Against him, Ùffe would press the claim of his daughter in law. A small coalition of states from the Empire would in the end triumph over the Danish invasion, forcing a return of some of the land gained in the War of Goslar. Hohenzollern rule of the margraviate would also be rather short, as a local noble would quickly gain the support of the other nobles of the realm and move against Lothaire, who was presented as a return of Southern Rule like there had been during the time of the Wittelsbachs. The independence (besides loyalty to the Emperor) of the margraviate was restored in 1627.

At the same time, Goslar was proving to be trouble for the Grand Duke. The policies of absolutism and centralisation of power within the Grand Duchy proved to create a unstable situation in the city which had enjoyed the typical somewhat democratic government most Free and Imperial cities enjoyed, with most privileges this government enjoyed being stripped away and most control being transferred to the Lieutenant and Stadholder. Shortly after the annexation of the city, Emperor Thomas IV demanded the restoration of the Free and Imperial status of the city, leading to emboldened resistance within the city. From the 21st of January 1627, some one and a half years after the annexation of the city, the old government and the city militia mutinied, making the city lawless for about half a year, ending once the army marched back into the city on the 7th of July. This was however, 2 months after the death of Johannes III, who had died the 1st of May that year, following a stroke 3 days earlier.

Johannes III “de Wetgever”, reigned from 1585 to 1627, sometimes considered first among the absolutists of his age and another example of greatness being a combination of capability and time​

 

[J_Master]

The Reign of Frederik-Hendrik II “de Aasgier”

There is a widely known “fact” about the last moments of Johannes III. The old Grand Duke was well aware of his accomplishments. Bound to bed those last three days, he reflected on his life and noted what he saw as his greatest failures. He would have wanted to break Great Britain apart, he would wanted the move even further with the absolutism, but most of all, he would have wanted to spend more time on his only son. “His failures are mine.” He already saw that his son would be named in one breath with Karel I.

There is one place where Frederik-Hendrik II is remembered fondly though, despite the rest of his reign and reputation. Just after his ascention to the throne, news would arrive from Roderlostad. Ships from the viceroyalty had made contact with a new settlement of Spanish colonists a few hundred kilometers up the Pacific coastline, a colony which the Spanish had dubbed California. Worrying about the potential loss of claim to much of the Pacific coastline, the viceroy had already authorized further expeditions north to claim new land and to make sure a eventual settlement of the border would be much in favour of the Saxon state. What the viceduke requested was some man and gold to help settle the coast northwards, but the Grand Duke took it as a opportunity to immediately leave his imprint on the colonial empire. When he approached the Staten Generaal with his plans, they were rejected almost unanimously. Nobody was interested or saw the profitability in a new colony north of the one currently being settled by the Spanish. But, as this was very early in his reign (only a month or two following his coronation) he still had the rather large personal wealth his father had left him with. From here, he gathered whatever the willing members of the Staten Generaal were willing to give from their personal fortunes and headed off to Frisia, where he began recruiting from the local population, especially a lot from the poverty ridden Wadden Islands, whose only source of income was the raiding of British merchant shipping, which had collapsed following the devastation of two wars with the Saxon state and the ongoing English Civil War. Once his merry band was collected, they headed off and arrived in the spring of 1629, where the origins of the settlers quickly became an issue, as the pirates were not very good colonists. Once autumn arrived and the crops didn’t turn out the yield they needed, they turned back to their old ways and began raiding the local natives. In the end, disaster was averted when on Christmas Eve a ship arrived from the mainland of the Viceduchy which resupplied the colony. The colony of Gryn, as the Frisian settlers had decided to name it as the islands off the coast reminded them of the island/sandbank in the Waddensea, despite its rough start, would stand the test of time and still remember the monarch who sent them there relatively positively.

We touched upon it before, but Frederik-Hendrik II is known as “de Aasgier” (“the Vulture” in English) for a simple reason, his tyrannical and cash-strapped rule. The origins of this rather unflattering nickname are not within the modern bounds of the Roderlo domain, but within that kingdom over which Frederik-Hendrik II was also monarch, France. (On a rather quick sidenote, the relationship between the new King and his subjects already began rather shaky, as during his coronation and the feast thereafter he, very much overly confident, tried to talk to his subjects in his very limited French, accidentally insulting many, many of the nobles and clergymen there, even if his aides tried fervently to stop him.) France had actually seen a rather large amount of internal development since the Roderlo’s first took charge. Since managing the sometimes “unwilling to cooperate” Staten Generaal was often already too much of a job for the monarch, France was simply left alone for the nobles to rule as long as they stayed loyal to the Crown, and this had actually paid of for her. The combined force of France and the Netherlands-Saxony had made sure France had been safe from foreign invasion since the beginning of the personal union. What the dominance of the Saxon navy also meant was that French merchants, although not nearly as wealthy or influential as their Dutch counterparts, had gained access to the New World which had also lead to the settlement of Louisiana and, by this time, the early beginnings of Remigia with the first outpost for trading with the local natives being established just around the time of the transfer of power from Johannes III to Frederik-Hendrik II. What the absenteeism of the Roderlo’s also meant was that the Kingdom was not heavily taxed in any way, and the ambitious monarch saw within France a way to pay for his extensive building projects and economic investements. Thus, when in 1630 he called together the Estates General and proposed the implementation of many new taxes, during a time of peace even, it isn’t strange that all of the three estates, the nobles, clergy and bourgious, completely vetoed any new taxes. At this point the king called in his personal guard, who were all of Saxon, Dutch and Frisian origin, and he “asked kindly to reconsider their position on the matter.” The estates, now fearfull for their lives, accepted the new taxes, but returned home to begin scheming to resist the new taxes. And, very quickly, it became clear to the Grand Duke that if he wanted anything from the French part of his domain, he would have to make sure himself that the taxes would arrive in Broenswiek. Thus, in 1631, he sent his army out to France on a campaign which was, on paper, to aid the royal tax collectors in their duty. It quickly turned into nothing but a campaign of plunder. One French chronicler recalls that “not since the time of the Germanic invasions have we seen such a thing, not strange considering it are the same barbarians that have returned after 10 centuries.” The small scheming would quickly turn into larger conspiracies as France was ready to break with Roderlo rule to preserve her wealth and the lives of her citizens.

Taxes were not only a issue in the Kingdom of France however. Untill 1630, the personal projects of “de Aasgier” had been running on his inheritance. Whilst the Staten Generaal was willing to plug the gap in 1630, this was only due to the to-be-expected influx of money from France, which arrived in 1631 and allowed for the Grand Duke to continue his spending spree. Hoping to make Gryn a massive success, he sent over a few extra groups of Frisian settlers between 1620 and 1635. Another massive sum went into the VOC, and this was the reason the Staten Generaal were willing to bridge the gap. However, whilst the VOC received a massive influx of money from the state, the money invested didn’t immediately turn a profit as it was invested more in the supporting infrastructure of the company rather than the immediate expansion of the company fleet or acquisition of new ports in the Far East. A lot of money actually went into the holdings in Africa, as the fortresses on the West African coast were expanded and contacts with the natives were increased. Over on the Cape, it was much the same issue as the VOC and Grand Duke continued to improve upon the defences of Kaapstad as they feared foreign seizure of the colony and thus the loss of control of the trade routes to the east. Further investment went into the company garrison to defend the colony and the farms stretching ever further where regular produce as supplies for the ships were farmed as well as a small but growing section reserved for the production of grapes meant to make wine. Another large, although much smaller, part of the money actually went into the improvement of the new colonies on the island known as New Holland, more specifically to expand the ports to improve contact with the other ports under control in the East Indies. The last, and smallest part of the French “taxes”, went into those direct means of profit discussed earlier, the expansion of the fleet and the increasing of the presence in the Spice Islands.

Indeed, that money from the looting campaign in France did run out very quickly, and it was reserved for purely the VOC. And those well-known with Frederik-Hendrik II know that within the homeland his expenditure was also very large. This is where his conflict with the Staten Generaal comes up. Already from the start, with the settlement of Gryn, the Staten Generaal was unwilling to cooperate with a monarch who they deemed was only out for personal glory. Once the French money had ran out, the most immediate source of money for the monarch was through the Staten Generaal. Over the course of 1633, and a rather long session of the Staten Generaal, Frederik-Hendrik tried to negotiate with the parliament over the new taxes for his projects, except, in the end, the conditions they demanded were deemed to go “against the Divine Right I have received and which this parliament has chosen to indeed confirm upon my father and all his rightful heirs.” At the end of the 1633 session of the Staten Generaal, the Grand Duke made an announcement. That “due to the unwillingness of this house to cooperate with my benevolent rule, I have decided that it is in the best interests of the nation that it shall no longer be gathered.” By refusing to call together the Staten Generaal in 1634, the Grand Duke had escalated the situation, and no less because he began to use the right to issue emergency taxation which his father had earned rather liberally. A lot of this money actually went into national development, as it flowed back into that other representative body, the Kamer der Waterschappen, which invested it into reclaiming land on the Waddenzee Coast and the Eems Estuary and taming the many rivers, repairing old canals and constructing new ones to improve the way from the hinterlands to the cities on and near the coast. Whilst he did invest the money into projects good for the public interest, the Grand Duke also invested in vanity projects. As Baroque was catching on throughout all of Catholic Europe, “de Aasgier” became one of her most famous and well known patrons, quickly commissioning new churches, cathedrals and palaces built throughout the realm to show the superiority of the Roderlo dynasty to her Protestant equivalents in the Holy Roman Empire. But back to the issue of the Staten Generaal. What followed in 1634 was not a gathering of the Staten Generaal, but the provinces were still allowed to gather in their provincial estates. Whilst Saxony, as the home of the Grand Dukes, remained calm, the situation to the west was less calm, as the oldest region to be intergrated in the parliament. In the end, the Staten van Gelre, Brabant and Henegouwen were disbanded by force of arms from the forces loyal to the Grand Duke. The year after, the Staten van Holland actually began discussing something called the “Plakkaat van Verlatinghe”, which would have declared the rights of Frederik-Hendrik II to the County of Holland null and void due to his “inability or unwillingness to defend the ancient rights of the people of the land” and would have empowered the Staten to elect a new Count from the Roderlo dynasty. In response, Frederik-Hendrik ordered the stadholder, Floris van Oranje-Nassau, to dissolve the assembly. For some reason, due to delaying actions, almost all of the Staten van Holland were able to escape capture and go into hiding. In the 1980’ies, correspondence between the Staten and the stadholder were found, which discussed the length of the delays that Floris would implement and which members would stay behind in Den Haag and voluntarily accept imprisonment as a way to publicly resist the actions of the monarch. This shows that in 1635 even the most loyal of the supporters of the Roderlo were unwilling to go through with the Grand Duke for much longer, and in the end they didn’t have to endure him for much longer.

A later (1720) example of Saxon Baroque in the township of Zwilbrook​

Whilst the origins of the conspiracy are not fully known, we know that by the summer of 1636 a group of mainly merchants, although there were some Dutch nobles present, would approach the highest military advisor of the Grand Duke, Gerulf von Supplingenburg. Gerulf was a “veteran” of the first plundering of the Kingdom of France. Since then, he had shown his prowess in handling the logistics of the Saxon, but more importantly, company armies, which had seen him rise to the highest office in the military. When approached during that day in autumn, he rejected, but he did not inform the monarch of the conspiracy, perhaps already having doubts about his reign. When, during the winter from 1636 to 1637 the Grand Duke decided to back up his finances with another campaign in France. Upon hearing this, Von Supplingenburg recontacted the group, citing “the horrors during his first tenure in France” as the reason for searching contact again. During the whole of 1637 they bided their time, until, in the final stages of preparation in late September of that year, Von Supplingenburg was finally given some time alone with the Grand Duke. As Frederik-Hendrik bowed over the maps of France in front of him, Von Supplingenburg planted a dagger in his back. He was left to bleed out over the course of half an hour, dying just past 3 o’clock on the 22nd of September, 1637.

Frederik-Hendrik II “de Aasgier”, reigned from 1627 to 1637​

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Diederik II, part I

The murder of the Grand Duke was a event that shook the whole nation, even the greatest enemies of the monarch. The reason of which was the situation over in England, where at the end of the English Civil in 1629 war the parliamentarians had elevated one of their own, Oliver Cromwell, to the position of King of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland (at least nominally). The elevation of Oliver I also meant a death sentence for the last of the Hastings, James III. His cousin, the self-styled Alan III, was able to escape with his life from the final royalist stronghold in Manchester across the border into Scotland, where in return for accepting the protection of the court in Aberdeen and the Protector of Scotland in Broenswiek he would officially convert to Catholicism (the Hastings had been accused of being crypto-Catholics and attempting to reunify the Anglican Church with Rome) and renounce any rights to the Scottish throne. Whilst a rival, the sudden death of James III, the Terror of Parliament and the Anglican Church falling into the hands of puritans was a massive shock to the whole of Saxony, even if Protestant takeover was impossible. Quickly reminded of these events after the murder of Frederik-Hendrik II in 1637, and even freightened of a series of civil wars like had happened after the murder of Julius Ceasar, the whole of the state apparatus reinforced itself behind his heir, the two year old Diederik II, something which didn’t seem to be realized by the most radical of the conspirators. 11 days after the death of Frederik-Hendrik, they pushed forward a motion in an emergency session of the Staten Generaal to establish a regency council like had happened during the minority of Johannes III, a council to be filled with the conspirators who had by now styled themselves as The Liberators to make the Julius Ceasar comparison even more obvious. The less radical conspirators, even including Von Supplingenburg had by now completely ratted them out, disgusted by their actions. (Von Supplingenburg, for his part but also his confession and betrayal of the other conspirators, was eventually locked away for life but was released in the years to come for reasons that will become clear very soon.) In face of a threat to the monarchy itself, the state had rallied behind the only logical choice of regent and one of the great women of this history, the widow of the late monarch, Åse MacGregor. In the days following the death of her husband she was able to gather the forces loyal to her husband, and those loyal to the dynasty in general, behind her and, with an almost completely unanimous vote in the Staten Generaal, have herself be confirmed as sole regent.

The Kingdom of France was however done with Roderlo rule. As the news of the second French Taxation Campaign had already spread to France in the spring of 1637, the whole of the Kingdom began a preparation to rise in revolt. Armouries were being raided, whole units of the Royal Army started defecting and some parts of the country were already separate from the Royal capital of Paris, all in anticipation for the Saxon invasion which was expected to begin late in the year, but it never arrived. What the threat of invasion had forced however was for all the different factions within the Kingdom to search for a singular uniting figure, which was found in the shape of Clotaire d’Escoubleau. Clotaire, despite his last name, was a full blooded, male line descendent of Hugh Capet, his most important forefather, and his second most important forefather being Louis Valois, a second cousin of Guichard de Valois, the last Capetin to rule over France before the Roderlo’s took over. His position as Count of Chartres also made him the lynchpin in any attempt at seizing Paris. The death of “le Vautour” had forced their hand, and caused him to march on Paris, where he was crowned 5 days after the death of Frederik-Hendrik II. In the end, Åse, with the full ascent of the Staten Generaal, decided to let the issue drop and recognize the end of the personal union, seeing France as more trouble than it would be worth.

Clotair d’Escoubleau leaves for Paris​

The context of both the regent and the Staten Generaal letting France elect her own monarch is often forgotten, but it was not lost on the actors of the time. Something was rotten in the state of Saxony, and it had not only been one bad egg of a monarch, if anything it had been a series of good monarch keeping the whole thing from collapsing and one bad monarch who had allowed the contradictions in the state to come to the surface. But as of yet, the state went on through the mud, pretending everything was fine.

Far to the east, the VOC found itself in her first major conflict with one of the local states, the stagnant Majapahit Empire. After her height in the 14th century, it had slowly slid away from her position as the power in the archipelago, after the middle of the 15th century it had however been able to recover somewhat, re-establishing total control over Java and establishing itself on Celebes. Her refusal to pay tribute to the Yuan Emperors had however cut her off from the Chinese markets, letting states like Malacca or Pasai further pass her after her low point in the 15th century. The VOC, on her part, the new and rising star in the region, was still looking for a port to base her operations from. For over 3 decades she had had a considerable degree of influence, especially on the states and islands of the spice islands, but the lack of a central capital was beginning to hold her back. Several options were considered back in Antwerp. Palembang was a city already under control, but deemed to not be fit. Malacca was considered as it was the prime city controlling the straits of the same name, controlling the routes to the Indian subcontinent, but it was the capital of the Malacca Sultanate, meaning that it would require a war that was probably not worth it. Some considered a capital on Borneo, but the influence of the company there was still too limited. Some even suggested a capital on the islands north of Borneo and attempting to break into the Chinese market, but this would have meant a war against the Yuan Dynasty or paying tribute, both very unprofitable. There also was a suggestion to establish a capital somewhere on the Spice Islands, but this was considered not central enough. Finally, the decision fell, the capital would be on Java. The company, authorized by the state (setting a president), would declare war on the 1st of December 1638. The main naval battle would take place in the Flores Sea as the Majapahit moved to reinforce Celebes against the already present VOC. Losses on both sides would be heavy, mainly due to the superior VOC numbers compared to the Majapahit navy but also due to the overconfident attitude of Otwin Schweltz who lead the VOC navy. But, as the Majapahit retreated back to port it meant that the army of the Company could land on the western end of the island, from where (after gathering a bunch of local mercenaries) began to systematically move eastwards, finally facing the Majapahit army in a pitched battle near Surabaja, ending in them retreating and attempting to escape to Bali. The Majapahit king was however captured in the attempted escape, leading to him surrendering multiple ports on the island. One of these, Sunda Kelapa, would be rechristened as Batavia, the new center of power of the VOC in the far east.

Our detour to the far east does not distract from the main issues facing the state around this time. Aachen remained a possession of the monarch in person, as nobody was willing to rock the boat yet on the status quo and including a hostile city into the Staten Generaal was also considered to be too destabilizing. Thus, the city raised her flag in revolt in the first months of 1639, leading to what is sometimes called the “Second Burning”, as the blame for the massacre was placed on the monarch and his regent by the most radical of the members of parliament. The “Masacre” was however much reduced in scale with the vast tracts of the population of the city not feeling any consequences for it as they had been the ones to throw open the doors to the army again. Within the group of advisors the regentess kept there was also growing division. There were those who were willing to give concessions to the provinces and those who wished to put on the leash even tighter for refusing to support the old monarch and even causing his death. In the end, cardinal Van Laar and his supporters of centralization won out, which continued to keep the cities of Saxony out of provincial Staten and thus out of the Staten Generaal.

Between 1637 and 1644, tensions continued to grow after the regency had asserted itself in pretty much the same place of power as the old monarch had, even if not as blatant in her abuses. The discontent with the current situation for the representative bodies was clear, but this does not paint a complete picture. During this time, some of the provinces started protesting the lack of control over the lack of control they had over the units which they raised for the army, which was under control of the Staten Generaal and the monarch. We see protests from local bodies (especially those unthreatened by the water) about the taxes being raised to help fund the Kamer der Waterschappen. There was also the general split growing (which would later on start to define politics at the national level) between the landwards facing provinces wishing to fund the army (the loss of France and Bohemia and rising tensions with these two powers) and the seawards facing provinces (the rivalry with Great Britain and a feared comeback of the rivalry with Spain, not to forget the new colonial competition from France) which caused provinces to call upon their privileges to deny fund for the national level and instead fund their direct interest on their own or with neighbouring provinces who had the same interest. This was the prime conflict that had never been resolved ever since 1444 or even before as the provincial Staten had existed since before. Sovereignty.

Whilst remembered as a bad monarch in his time, this is the greatest failure of the reign of Frederik-Hendrik II. A proper monarch would have been able to resolve the issue of sovereignty in a more peaceful manner, whereas he forced them to become a great problem, to only be solved after a great degree of violence. On the 1st of June 1644, a motion was put forth in the Staten Generaal which would move the body back to its old home of Antwerp, a definite power grab by the Dutch, merchentile provinces. Whilst the motion failed to gain a majority, regents Åse vetoed the motion for good measure. In response, a representative of Brabant responded “It is not within the authority of the monarch, nor that of his regent, to regulate the business of this house or that of any of the houses of the provinces.” To this, the regentess would respond with “You are called here by the authority of the monarch, and nothing else, just like you are back over in Brussels.” What followed was a hours long, heated debate between the parliamentarian inclined members and the Roderlo loyalists. In the end, another vote would be held on the issue, proclaiming that it was the monarch who ruled at the good will of the provinces. Whilst the vote was sure to go down om failure, the regentess forbade a vote, causing the Brabantian delegation to storm out. In the end, they would return home, dismiss the Stadholder and take charge of the provincial army in “an effort to protect our ancient rights and privileges.” The Saxon Troubles had begun.

Within the Anglophone world, there is this notion that the English Civil War and the Saxon Troubles are the same conflict, just applied to different countries. It may be obvious to say at this point, but if this was the case conflict would have long since broken out during the rule Frederik-Hendrik II. Yes, his abuse of power caused the escalation to this situation, but even when a province dared to make a move against his rule, none joined, nor did the army revolt. There also were no clear defined sides within the Saxon Troubles as there were in the English Civil War with her Parliamentarians and her Royalists. It was a complicated web of political rivalries, interests of money, influence by the clergy and loyalty to the 10 year old Diederik and his mother Åse, all way too complicated to tell in a history like this one. There never, truly, was a real civil war like in England, more so certain elements of the state turning against each other. Spanning a the whole rest of the regency, and even beyond, the state would be beset by rebellion on all sides as local authorities fought the provinces, the provinces fought the Staten Generaal and the Staten Generaal would come into conflict about the role of the monarch.

Word of the rebellion of Brabant would spread rather quickly, with likeminded authorities, mainly cities (Ossenbrugge, Meideborg and Roermond) throughout the realm, joining the province along with her stated goal. The rebellion would be quickly suppressed in the dispersed cities, but Brabant would remain in a state of rebellion long into 1647. Within the army, there quickly grew some discontent about the swift suppression of such a rebellion which some saw as rightful. The regency moved to purge the disloyal elements from the officer corps, once again with the help of Von Supplingenburg, who again provided many names of potentially disloyal officers. Many of the Dutch provinces feared that the suppression of Brabant would lead to Saxon domination and the further erosion of their privileges in favour of the monarch. This would remain until Brabant was joined in rebellion by the southern Dutch provinces. The growing aggressiveness of the language policy of the state, caused by and combined with the breakup of the personal union with France had caused a growing level of distress with the partially francophone south, refusing to pay taxes until they would receive assurances about their autonomy in matters of language. (Whilst it is not obvious today, at the greatest extent the French language, or dialect very similar to it were used as far north as the southern border of Brabant and Flanders, and in the latter case the city of Ryssel was even Francophone throughout most of the Medieval Era, the County of Flanders only adopting and enforcing a unilingual policy in 1597 with approval of the Staten Generaal. The Dutch provinces, now fearing French intervention, allowed for a complete crackdown on the rebellion, ending in the early summer of 1647 as the hoped for French intervention never came.

Area’s in state of rebellion during the winter of 1645-1646, showing Brabant (with ‘s Hertogenbosch recaptured by the regency) and the Union of Atrecht​

As soon as the rebellion in the Netherlands was supressed, did trouble pick up in the oddball of the whole union, Friesland. Unlike the other provinces, Friesland had always remained as her Opstaltree self, a confederation. Whilst the whole confederation was still technically a voluntary union which owed her loyalty to the monarch. The loyalty of Friesland to the monarch was never in question during the 1648 rebellion. The main issue was the structure of the Opstaltree made governance of Frisia rather hard (the fact that pirates continued to control the islands nominally under its control showcases this, especially when those pirates attacked Saxon ships during the English Civil War). At a gathering of the Opstaltree in 1648, a number of delegates, led by the city of Groningen, would attempt to move towards the abolition of many old local privileges and cracking down on piracy. In response, the areas dependent on piracy for their economy would form their own, rivalling confederation based from the city of Harlingen, and the combined navy of the pirates began blockading the whole Frisian coast, hurting the merchentile backers of the Groninger government. Both proclaimed loyalty to Broenswiek and both asked for aid, but seeing as the Groninger faction was the one wishing to centralize the confederation, it was clear who the regentess would support. Holland and Vlaanderen would quickly send out their navies te relieve the blockade, and troops under the leadership of Stadholder Floris would move to occupy West Frisia which had chosen to side with the Harlingers. If it had been the whole of Frisia that had chosen to revolt, perhaps it would have lasted longer, but as troops from Oversticht and Gelre moved to quash the rebels Frisia was pacified again. Even the islands were quickly put under control by the Stadholder of Holland and his (relatively) new marine soldiers. The pirates, the ones who had been the largest spark for the revolt, left for England and the protection of King Oliver, where he sponsored them to conduct raids against Dutch and Saxon merchants shipping, quickly become a major threat to the economic life of the nation and of the income of the state and her regentess.

The pirates would strike particularly hard at the economy of one of the provinces, Flanders. Her textiles industry had always been dependent on imports from England, and she had been hit by the rivalry with her when the United Kingdom had been at her greatest extent. The opening up of the Scottish market had saved her by opening a new supply of wool. But, as the trade routes went along the English coasts, the Frisian pirates were now cutting her off from her supply again. The Staten of Flanders were however not going to accept the destruction of her economy laying down. Fed up with the focus of the Staten Generaal and the regentess on continental and internal affairs, she withheld any taxes owed to the Staten Generaal in 1649, citing ancient privileges and the wish to protect the common good of the whole nation as she would use the funds to increase the size of her navy to protect against the new threat. Whilst the first signs of this were very much positive and a boost to her public image, she was also moving behind the scenes. Whilst the Staten of Brabant and of the southern provinces had not been allowed to gather since her revolt during the 1644-1647 period. The cities here had however been allowed to reconvene their councils, and the prospect of renewed revolt but with Flemish backing had grown very enticing. At the same time, the regentess had been attempting to move a act through the Staten Generaal to force Flanders to deliver her taxes to the treasury in Broenswiek. This was however quickly stopped when Flanders (behind closed doors) approached the monarch and made the backing she had from the many Brabantian and (at the moment still) Francophone cities. She presented Åse with a choice, face a revolt that could threaten to rip everything south of the Rhine from the union or leave the issue of Flanders be. To sweeten the deal, Flanders (which was actually staunchly anti-Francophone) would deliver lists of the supporters of the new rebellion to Broenswiek (excluding the Brabantian cities) so that they may be dealt with. The regentess accepted, letting Flanders be for the moment and ordering the army once again south.

It was thus then, when the cities of the south once again fell under military control in the first days of the summer of 1649, at the height of the Saxon Troubles, that Diederik II would turn 15 years of age, and his mother would step aside.

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Diederik II, part II

Åse MacGregor was, when her husband was still alive, a moderating influence on the monarch. But, as she had seen the events unfolding south of her native kingdom, and the allegiances of the Anglicans of Scotland started to increase public dissent, followed by the assassination of her husband had turned her from that moderate voice into a firebrand. One of her great displeasures, when we read her personal writings, is that she started to lose a grip on the education of the heir due to the need to actually administer the nation, especially considering that the Staten Generaal was not there anymore to really assist the monarch. Most of the responsibility of the raising of the young monarch eventually fell into the hands of Adalbert van Dael, a clergyman from Kleef. Where a lot of the clergy had found themselves within the more radical camp of the regentess, Van Dael had found himself within the more moderate camp of the clergy. This isn’t to say he was in any way connected to the sentiment often shared by those within the regionalist, provincial or Staten Generaal camps. Like his brothers, he was a firm believer in the Divine Right to Rule, the monarch being appointed by God himself. Where he differed was more in the practical application. To be a good monarch, one had to know of the troubles and concerns of his subjects. To make the lands prosper, both had to work in harmony. The conflict that had been brought on by the late Frederik-Hendrik II had only caused death and suffering to befall upon the Saxons, Dutch and Frisians. Whilst Van Dael had died a year before Diederik’s full ascention to the throne (of old age, he was 79 years old) and the Dowager had been able to press for more absolutist educators, the old Van Dael had left his impression on the young monarch.

What immediately became clear was the clear break that Diederik II would make from the policy of his father and mother, but only if one watches carefully, as the young Grand Duke was also careful not to alienate his most ardent supporters (those being the absolutists of his mother). His first move was reaccommodating with Flanders as the monarch and the province still held knifes at each other’s throats. By this point, the pirates operating from England had become a real drain even on the treasury of the monarch, which would allow for a greater degree of intervention. The burghers of the Flemish cities were approached to now indeed pay the taxes they owed, in return for seats on the naval commission handling the hunting of the Frisian pirates and an act of the monarch which would confirm the national obligation to defend her commerce. The Flemish had gotten their “taxation with representation.”

The much more dangerous case of rapprochement would come later in 1650. Whilst the coastlines of Periosia were slowly filling up with European settlements, the inlands also began to experience increased European influence through their fortresses and contacts with the natives for beaver hunting. Conflict would arise along the Saeffel river, where the influence of New Antwerp and Santo Domingo met. To the northeast, the Hoodenoosjoone (known to the English as Iroquis) had found themselves in an ever ascending position in the beaver fur trade since both Scottish and Saxon traders had made contact with them. In their search for new hunting grounds, they would expand southwards and come into conflict with the Shones. The Shones were much the same like the Hoodenoosjoone, they had come into contact with a European power who attempted to expand their influence in Periosia and establish greater influence in the beaver fur trade. In the case of the Shones, it were the Spanish who would develop into their European partner of choice, through their influence radiating up the rivers. The Shones, in much the same way as the Hoodenoosjoone, they sought to expand their hunting grounds, and both tribes came into conflict south of the Great Lakes of Periosia. Throughout the late 1640’ies, conflict would slowly escalate, and without too little outside intervention, the Shones would triumph in the first fase of the conflict, leading to lost profits for the Antwerpish merchants trading with the Hoodenoosjoone. This forced the Antwerpish merchants and the Lieutenant of Belgium to act, gathering local settler militias, European mercenaries and native auxillairies and sending them out west, with the mercenaries paid out of the pocket of the young monarch. All in all, this cobbled together armed force would stand ready in New Antwerp at the beginning of summer 1650, and moved to make contact with their native allies that summer. From there, during the late summer and fall, a couple of skirmishes would take place whilst this combined army would move back south over the lands the Shones had taken control of, until it would meet a unified Shones army at the bank of the Saeffel, crushing it in the muddy banks. Afterwards, it would even move south, where it would come across a party of Spanish merhcants, and, in the following disagreement, only their native pathfinder would come out alive, fleeing back to the nearest Spanish fort to tell the of the encounter. Within the Saxon army, it had also quickly become obvious what had happened, and the army quickly retreated north again and sent a rider out the notify the Lieutenant of the colony to notify him of what had happened, and he quickly set sail to Santo Domingo to work out the potential developing crisis. The Spanish Viceroy, whilst interested in the area, knew it was far away, hard to really reinforce and also had to deal with the developing French colonies in Louisiana and Remegia and the English colony in Georgia as far as the frontiers went. In the end, both powers came to a agreement that the Seaffel River would form the boundary between their two spheres of influence, and the Shones would retreat to the Spanish side of the river. (The Shones would, in turn, become a important ally against the French aligned Cherokee.) More importantly, with the reinforcements that had been sent out by Diederik II, he had finally been able to placate Brabant somewhat, and combined with a royal amount of bribes, had been able to calm the province down enough so that in 1651 the Staten of Brabant could once again gather in Brussels, for the first time in five years.

Rough extent of the influence and presence of New Antwerp throughout Eastern Periosia around the time of the victory over the Shones and the treaty with the Spanish crown​

At the same time of the first gathering of the Staten in Brabant in five years, the monarch faced another revolt in the very heart of the country. Whereas most of the revolts of the Troubles had their roots in the issues of centralisation, ancient privileges and the limits of royal power, this one was a simple one over taxes. At the heart of the nation laid the oldest Roderlo holding, Gelre, and as such the royal hold on power had always been most powerfull around here. The years and years of rebellions had slowly increased the burden of taxation on this quiet region of the country. The gathered Staten of Gelre, Staten of Zutphen and Staten of Oversticht would offer a petition to the monarch. All members would underline their loyalty to the monarch and requested the unfair yoke be lifted from their shoulders. In response, the monarch wrote them a letter explaining how the situation had forced him to raise taxes and how for the foreseeable future he could not lower them. The next year, in 1652, he would even use the raised revenue to send mercenaries out to far away Java, as a lack of support during the past years of crisis had allowed for local lords who wished to break away from the rule of the company. When the king asked for another round of emergency taxes that year to increase the garrisons in the Southern Netherlands, it forced the earlier mentioned staten to act. Within their official Act of Rebellion, all pledged their absolute loyalty to the monarch, but felt forced to protect their own interest as the increasing taxes had forced a lot of the local functions of the government to grind to a halt, increasing banditry and preventing the effective rebuilding of Oldenzaal after the great fire that had broken out on Christmas Eve of 1651. Hearing of the rebellion, the Grand Duke reluctivity rallied the armies of the Grand Duchy itself, beginning the Tranenrebellie, “the Rebellion of Tears”. Both armies would meet outside of Venlo as the rebels attempted to swade the Staten of Kleef to join them in their rebellion as they had been feeling many of the same pressures as the provinces already in rebellion had. Before the battle, the leaders of both armies met at what was to be the middle of the battlefield. Much of the conversation between the rebel leader Joris van den Bergh and the monarch is unknown, but we do know how it finished. Van den Bergh presented his demands in a simple way: “We just ask of you that the burden of taxation be lifted” to which the monarch responded “If I were to do that now, it would be a sign of weakness and it would only embolden other rebellions, and I would again be forced to place that yolk your shoulders.” Both parties understood the situation they had manoeuvred themselves into. The two men parted ways, but not before both had committed to pray for the soul of the other. With tears in his eyes, Diederik gave the order to attack. The battle would see a third of the rebel force dead, among who Van den Bergh, with the rest captured, ending the rebellion that very day. As soon as the Grand Duke had returned to his capital, he would posthumously pardon all rebels.

The Tranenrebellie would prove to be the final mayor clash of the Saxon Troubles. It proved royal power stood uncontested, as most of the realm had gone up in rebellion at least once and had lost. But, more importantly, it had shown that even the most ardent supporters of the monarch had found themselves forced to rebel out of loyalty to their country and people, who could no longer bear the burden the constant conflicts had placed upon them. The sadness Diederik felt in ordering the destruction of the army of some of his most loyal subjects is also explained in how close he was coming to finally solving the issues the country had been facing. 1653 passed in calm, with the exception of a few riots endorsed by local city governments throughout Holland which were put down after a few days when the provincial troops took charge of the situation. Thus, we arrive at the gathering of the Staten Generaal of 1654. It was the first proper gathering since the rebellion of Brabant 10 years back, and since then there had always been one or more of the provinces refused to let gather and thus who were unrepresented at the national level. 1653 would see no Staten Generaal gathered as the monarch wished to see how stable the country would be with all of the provinces gathering their local legislatures for the first time in 10 years again. When Diederik called for the Staten Generaal to gather again in 1654, it immediately became clear what would be at the core, peace. A lasting peace. Whilst the monarch stood triumphant, he needed to work with his subjects, and thus he needed to compromise. It was already made much easier as he was not as staunch of a absolutist as his parents and his grandfather had been. The session of 1654 is filled with fine bits of rhetoric and negotiation, but for the sake of this history we will stick to her conclusion. The main issue of sovereignty would be a triumph of the monarch, as he would be recognized as the sovereign, who ruled through the grace of God. However, it was also recognized that, if a monarch wished to reign as a proper Catholic monarch, he would require knowledge that was granted to him through representative bodies. Thus, the monarch would partially grant his sovereignty to the Staten Generaal, who ruled together with the monarch. Most important to note on this solution is that there was no mention of the local provinces. Yes, many of their rights and privileges would be recognized and most of all standardized so to say under this massive act of the Staten Generaal, but what it did was from, what had always been a confederation into a federation, with at her head a monarch that held all titles in perpetual personal union as had been confirmed in 1526. For the rest, the act would be a confirmation of the status quo on the powers that the monarch held already, the secularisation of the worldy holdings of the remaining Prince Bishoprics, the centralisation of Frisia under one parliament (the Opstaltree) and her elected head of state (the Potesta, who would always be the Grand Duke of Saxony), combined with a pardon for the pirates operating from England, further decreasing the independence and the size of the armies raised by the provinces themselves and the obligation to the monarch to call together the Staten Generaal at least once every 4 years. On the final day of the 1654 session, the 1st of June 1654, the Staten would vote on the Akte des Landsvrede, “Country Peace Act”, of 1654. Whilst many were upset about the loss of local autonomy, they knew that Diederik had given them as much as he could. The right to remain involved in the decision making process was a lot. With the exception of the Southern Dutch provinces, all voted to pass the act. The Saxon Troubles were over.

On a final note, there is something which seems awfully absent which was present during the earlier massive state reforms of 1444 and 1526. The Emperor. During those earlier reforms, the monarch had always acted with expressed permission of the Emperor. If this proved anything, it was that the Holy Roman Empire had become an empty institution. Wenzel IV of Bohemia had only recently gained the Imperial throne after it had, for a few decades, been in the hands of the Savoyard Habsburgs. Bohemia, dealing with threats on her eastern border, was far from ready to deal with any kind of incursion on the very structure of the Empire itself. But, once the threats from the Tartars and Russians were dealt with, he would begin the reassertion of Imperial authority through the restoration of Catholicism to her princes and establishing new electors, which would in the end set the stage for a clash of giants decades long after his death.

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Diederik II, part III

Whilst the new status quo was certainly a hard swallow for many, it had finally brought peace, but more importantly unity, back to the realm. Which meant that foreign intervention became a larger possibility again. And there was one country many were keen on to receive Saxon revenge, England.

The Saxon Troubles had allowed for England to once again grow in strength. Whilst it had provided no direct danger to Scotland as the kingdom held by the MacGregors had been able bolster her defences and postponed any potential rebellion in the Lowlands, Northumberland or Cumbria loyal to London. When that rebellion did eventually fire, it was already 1657, and the rebolstered garrison sent by Broenswiek would only play a minor role in putting down the rebel armies. A greater problem had become the continued piracy both in the North Sea but also in the North Atlantic and even in Periosia. But, the target in this case was rather unusual, namely the whaling ships in the North Atlantic. For the Roderlo’s, it provided to mainly be a dent in the wealth of the city of Amsterdam, where most whaling companies in Saxony had based themselves from. Their main base of operations had been established in Smeerpothaven, an island far north from the Scottish Färöarna Islands. But, for Scotland, the hit had been much harder, as a larger part of the economy had become dependent on the trade of whaling produce with the continent (Scotland had become the primary supplier of whaling produce to powers who refused to trade with Saxony, mainly France). Thus, when during the Saxon Troubles her ability to project overseas was lost partially, the English established themselves in what they called Beaver Bay, where they started whaling, intercepting Scottish whaling in the area and starting their own beaver fur trade. Finally, by the crushing of the revolt in 1657, the Staten Generaal decided to declare war to put the English in their place again. Those, exactly, two years from the 2nd of November 1657 to the 2nd of November 1659 that made up the Third Anglo-Saxon War was the greatest military defeat in English history. The English, Irish and Welsh ability to make war or even properly defend their established holding had in any way been restored following the English Civil War, despite the strong warmaking ability of the Parliamentarians during that conflict. No, once again, the contact of London with the outside world was once again immediately cut off at the start of the war, and the Saxon-Scottish force was able to cross the border from their supply bases in what was once Northern England. By June 19th of 1658, the first Scottish units began to encircle London and subjugate to her 3rd siege since the first one by Diederik van Oranje-Nassau in 1619. Both Richard V and his Parliament had fled to Ireland, where they had hoped to make a last stand by virtue of the Emerald Isle being a lower priority to their enemy and thus dedicating lesser forces to it. Initially it seemed to work as the Scottish invasion of Ulster was repelled in July of 1658, but as most of England and Wales had fallen by then, avenging the humiliation the Scottish had faced became the top priority for the campaigning season of 1659. By then, Dublin had become a fortress, that would be put to siege from the 6th of April onwards. Whilst the Saxon-Scottish force was willing to sit the siege out, the strain on their supply chain had become to large to allow the siege to continue into the winter, and the city would be taken by storm on the 26 of October, capturing the government of the United Kingdom which had been trapped in there. Forced to sign a peace, Richard V and his government gave up on the whaling piracy, surrendered dominion over Beaver Bay to the colonial authorities of Nova Scotia and paid for the damages caused and the cost of the invading armies, a light peace treaty which was condemned by many in Broenswiek. But, where most hawks were interested in weakening England, her Crowned Republic and her Anglican Church, the more moderate members of the Staten, who had won out with the favour of the monarch in the end, were more concerned about the potential of a foreign power who could take advantage of continued English weakness (read King Clotair in Paris).

Rough extent of Scottish colonial authority in Periosia following the acquisition of Beaver Bay​

Whilst the Peace of Dublin was a moderate one, it did result in a large transfer of wealth from the English treasury to the Saxon one. Whilst the treaty may have been moderate, in terms of land transfers, the sums of cash transferred had been more than enough to pay for the listed costs which they were supposed to pay for according to Dublin. What remained was pure profit for the treasury, which used it to pay the outstanding loans which had been taken to help fund the war effort during the Saxon Troubles. But soon, with the finances of the nation fully restored, the monarch, again, looked at overseas expansion, this time to support his own VOC. And the VOC had become interested in the markets of the Indian subcontinent. India had found itself in a renewed position of disunity after the end of the Turkic Tughlaq Dynasty had collapsed in the later half of the 15th century. Whilst the Tughlaq had been collapsing, the void would be filled by one of the last entities that had avoided Tughlaq rule, the Eastern Ganga dynasty of Kalinga. During the collapse she would ally herself with the many revolting entities and herself conquer those who did not wish to cooperate with the Ganga. What this eventually lead to was that, at the point of VOC entry into the subcontinent, the Ganga ruled over a state stretching from the western borders of Bengal to the Persian Gulf. All colonial powers had already attempted to make a deal with the Kalinga Ganga. Following the conquest of and establishment of the colonial capital of the VOC at Batavia one of the higher priorities had become a port in southern India. It was admiral Merckx who, in 1664 in service of the company, would be sent from Batavia to Orissa to hopefully buy a lesser port to allow for access to the subcontinent. He was sent there with perhaps the full knowledge that the Ganga were unwilling to accept the surrender of a port, very much weary of whatever may result of it following the conquest of Batavia. Whilst he did negotiate with good faith when he was in Cuttack, the terms both sides found non-negotiable were simply too far removed from one another. When he was readying to leave Cuttack, the detachment of soldiers that had accompanied him got into a scuffle with Ganga soldiers, which ended in the capture of most of this escort, Merckx fleeing to his ships and fleeing out of the harbour whilst under fire from the cannons on the shore. The incident was most certainly the plan B the company had thought up to grant themselves a casus belli if the Ganga were unwilling to give in, but Merckx returned to Batavia and raved at governor Visscher as the plan had, in the end, put his own life in danger. But, it would result in the desired war. The VOC fleet would leave Batavia in September, crossing the Bay of Bengal where they arrived at the northern end of the Coast of Coromandel. From there, they would sail and fight their way south along the coast in a series of skirmishes to land the army on Ceylon. The final and decisive battle would take place on the waters just east of Tharangambadi where the Kalinga fleet had finally been able to gather up. Whilst bad positioning on the part of Merckx allowed for his flagship and a couple of lesser ships to be isolated by the Kalinga fleet, the breakout from the encirclement sank both the Kalinga flagship and their morale and the fleet would find herself fleeing to the coast where she would be beached and set upon by the cannons of the Company fleet and the marines who undertook raids for the coming three nights. The destruction of the Ganga fleet not only meant the isolation of Ceylon, it also meant that escape from the much larger Company army for the Ganga army stationed there was now impossible, which would find itself destroyed before it was allowed to retreat into the hinterlands of the island. Even a relieve force sent by the erstwhile ally of the Kalinga, the Timurids, found destruction outside of the city of Negapatam. The Kalinga, not wishing to see much of the wealth of their realm stripped away by a foreign army ravaging about, and having to worry about the Maratha state to their west, gave in, ceding the Maldives, Ceylon and opening trade to foreign powers. The VOC on their part was quite pleased with the result, but Ceylon would prove to be a hotbed of rebellion as the company was unable to fully assert their authority over the innards of the island, demonstrated by the fact that when, now governor of Ceylon, Merkx was required to quell a small uprising, was killed in the ambush that followed.

The last few years of the reign of would be quiet, mainly filled with a renewed fever to build upon the polders, dealing with the remnants of English piracy and the accompanying smuggling and further opening up trade links throughout the Baltic. Diederik would have a stroke on the 2nd of January 1673, passing away because of the complications on the 31st at the age of 38. For the whole duration of his reign, he didn’t have a son, thus leaving the throne to his younger brother Johannes.

Diederik II, reigned from 1637 to 1673​

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Johannes IV

Johannes IV was only 3 months old when his father Frederik-Hendrik II was murdered. Throughout their youth, the two brothers would both be educated by men selected by their widowed mother. As told earlier, Diederik II was tutored by Van Deal in matters of statecraft. Johannes IV, not expected to ever rule the nation, was educated mostly in matters of warfare. In 1651, at the age of 14, he would become a part of the leadership of the garrison of Bergen. The next year, he would command a regiment during the Tranenrebellie, being the one to report the death of Van den Bergh to his brother. During the later years of his reign, Johannes would be a part of the invading force during the 3rd Anglo-Saxon War, leading his army through Western England and Wales, capturing Bristol and from there moving east to link up with Van Oranje-Nassau in London who would leave Johannes in control of the forces occupying Southern England whilst he would move to capture Dublin. After returning home he would be made Stadhouder of Gelre, Zutphen and Oversticht, occupying the family castle as his seat of governance. He would spend Christmas of 1672 in Antwerp, discussing the defense of the French border regions with a couple of other Stadhouders from the Dutch part of the realm. As he was returning home on the 4th of January, and after his carriage had crossed the Waal river, a rider approached who would bring him the news of the stroke his brother had had. He would make haste and head to Broenswiek, where he would spent some time with his brother when recovery still seemed possible, before going rapidly downhill on the 28th. The death of his brother was announced to him during dinner on the 31st.

The fortress town of Samberburcht constructed based on instructions from Johannes IV​

Johannes IV was a military man at heart, although he did not lack the capabilities to handle the basic matters of statecraft. Whilst his reforms are recalled as a military matter, it’s mostly a matter of statecraft. The end of the so called provincial armies had been heralded by the Akte des Landsvrede. What had enabled the provinces to revolt was their continued ability to raise armed forces on their own. From the medieval era onwards, many towns and cities had had their own schutterij, a local militia. And whilst many of these did indeed take part in the rebellions, they had never been the backbone of any kind of armed force the province had been able to bring against the central authority in Broenswiek. It had been their own, professionally raised army. These had continued existing along with the army raised by the monarch and the Staten Generaal ever since it had first been convened in 1444, but since then the trend had certainly been towards the increasing importance of the central army. In 1654, there had been put a cap on the size of the armies the provinces could raise, which varied roughly according to seize, population and income, with Saxony the largest at about a 10th of what the monarch and the Staten had raised at any moment. Whilst it meant that the provinces themselves would be unable to make a fist against Broenswiek, it did mean that a little more than a quarter of the regular army that the realm would field would fall under multiple, parallel command structures. Throughout his somewhat short reign, Johannes IV was able to get rid of all provincial armies. At first, he was able to forcibly disband the armies of the Wallonian provinces and added in many militias for good measure. What it would mean was that the defense, both in the regular and in the civil sense, was in the hands of the central government now, meaning that it would actually become a regular expense, something which would cause tensions later. Following Wallonia would be the smaller provinces, think those among the Rhine and scattered throughout the Netherlands. Being dependent on outside support for defense made giving up their own meagre forces. Next were the provinces already well represented within the army, think Gelre, Saxony and Brabant. The last ones were, to be expected, the merchantile provinces. As always most resilient against any kind of centralization of power. Whilst simple strongarming was a part of the argument, Johannes IV made a concession which he had already been preparing to make.

As with any army which needed to move onwards in the early modern era, the Saxon army had a issue with officers. Whilst, as Frederik-Hendrik had documented, Saxony did have her fair history with peasant armies and thus a more bottom up style of leadership, the fact that feudalism had triumphed over the peasant armies of the Northern HRE had placed army leadership firmly in the hand of her aristocratic class. As was everywhere, nepotism played a fair part in the selection of new officers. Not only that, but what more socialist inclined writers would describe as “classism” also played a fair part. The regular commoner never had a shot at any real high position of authority within the army (and it’s not as if those wealthy but not of noble lineage wanted it to be that way), but those of considerable wealth also had a harder time to get into the ranks of the officers. The general acceptance of nepotism did extend to large sums of money for recommendations, but the prestige of a name was never attainable for many. Whilst Holland had seen a partial merger of the merchant and noble classes, this did not extend that far inland. There was, however, somewhat of a way around this. Those local militias and schutterijen, often employed by the regular armies, would allow for those of lower standing to gain positions of command. Johannes IV was well aware of the practice, coming into contact with it through his own military career. From him serving at the field of battle Venlo through his later career in Britain and even in organizing the small remnants of the provincial armies during his tenure as Stadhouder he would find frustration in his available officers, especially knowing that there were more capable men within the local militia, or at least with more talent than those currently officially serving under him. He would gather a small clique of bourgeois who were willing to strive for officership along with several nobles who would love to have them serve under them. In the 1680 session of the Staten Generaal he set aside funding for a new officer academy in Hannover, where he would also introduce officer commissions into the army structure. Whilst paying for a commission is often thought of as the peak of corruption in any armed force, it was at the time a innovation, especially as it opened up the ranks of the army to a new group of potential recruits who enthausiastically joined joined the ranks of the officers. Even the men of the regular soldry now found a way potentially to the top, as a wealthy higher officer might become their patron and they could start rising in the ranks (and earn a bit off the top as the junior officer would give up the potential gains of being promoted and thus receiving a more valuable commission).

To continue a, by this point, long Roderlo tradition, Johannes IV died relatively young, aged 43 on the 23rd of November 1680. At autopsy, it was discovered that the cause of death had been what was initially testicular cancer. His short 7 year reign cemented the new internal stability of the realm.

Johannes IV, reigned from 1671 to 1680​

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Karel III

For a long time, through either sheer luck or more active diplomacy, Saxony had found herself outside of European conflict for a while. Despite the inter-European wars fought over the last decade, some involving both allies and rivals of Saxony, she had mostly reserved herself to fighting outside of the European mainland. Mainland Europe had been the site of internal strife or consolidating her position in the Empire, no major warfare to strengthen her own position or that of an ally. This would, however, change shorty into the reign of Karel III.

Two months after the birth of his first son (the young Johannes V), Denmark would declare war on the Polish lordship of Inowroclaw, the independence of which was guaranteed by the Teutonic Order, weary of the Danish ambitions in the Baltic sea and thus upon her coasts. Ever since the Danish conquest of the Brandenburgian holdings in Pommeralia, there had been tensions as the Brandenburgers had conquered Danzig from the Teutons. Inowroclaw lay precicely south of Danish Pommeralia on the Vistula, with the Teutons just east. Victory was a forgone conclusion simply due to the size of the combined Saxon-Danish armed forces, which outnumbered the Teutons and her allies from the Alpine region by somewhere between 2 or 3 to 1. This is precicely why both the young monarch and his parliament were unwilling to commit too many troops to this war. (In case of the parliament, they didn’t like the expenditure, in case on the monarch, he needed the troops for something else on his mind.) They would, however, be soon forced to change their attitude. On the 8th of February 1863, Stadholder Diederik II was able to score a major victory outside of Brünn where he was able to fully whipe out a Teuton army. However, through detachments, minor skirmishes and plain attrition his depleted force would be whiped out on the 23rd of February just a couple of kilometers away from the first field of battle. Reminded much of the First Holsteen War, and not wishing to suffer any more humiliating defeats, both parliament and the monarch authorized two new armies to be sent east, and for the lost Army of Westphalia to be rebuilt and later recommitted to the fight. Immediate result of the loss at Brünn was the Kingdom of Bohemia being knocked out of the war as a Danish ally, but, not grasped at the time, was that the Saxon military had perhaps been out of the European game for a little bit too long. What must also be mentioned is that a rather large sum was payed to the Teutons to ensure the safety of the leadership of the army that had just gotten whiped out, leading to a direct strengthening of the Teutonic war effort which lead to setbacks for the Danes in Estonia.

Bohemia being knocked out didn’t decisively change the outcome of the war, but it did however complicate the peace proceedings, as they were forced to secede most of Greater Poland to Uros Decanski II Czartoryski, nominal pretender to the Polish crown. What would otherwise have been the banishment of the Czartoryski to their other holding, the city of Kiev, turned into a minor territorial concession. The Duchy of Vastergötland would also come to an end, being integrated into the Danish crown. The Danes were, in turn, disappointed by the attitude the Saxons held about their designs upon the Baltic coast. As of yet, the access the Saxons held to the coasts was still free, but they feared the Danes gaining unfavorable leverage. Despite demands such as the secession of all of Estonia, the east bank of the Vistula and the city of Riga, this was mediated back to equal trading rights for Danish merchants (compared to the more welcome Saxon and Dutch merchants) and the secession of the islands of Ösel. Denmark, fearful of the weariness their aggressive expansion would cause in the kingdoms of Sweden and Finland (who had, as of yet, still been played apart from the Teutons), agreed, hoping that Sweden and Finland would not form a united block against the power of Copenhagen.

Of further note is the VOC campaign against the Hosokawa Shogunate of 1688-1689. Whereas the war against the Kalinga had been a matter entirely provoked by the VOC, in this case she stumbled into a case that server her search for new markets perfectly. In a fine example of how the coin, sword and cross were often carried by the same hand in the Far East, the murder of a Dominican missionary would lead to intervention by the VOC. The army of the Company (already made up of mostly European mercenaries) would, in this case, be backed up by mostly Chinese mercenaries, also showing the growing importance of Formosa to the VOC (and the growing Chinese presence on the island). The Japanese islands had, since the establishment of the Hosokawa Shogunate, grown wealthy by the internal peace that now reigned, the war like qualities of the samurai losing some of their significance as they generally developed an affection for more economic and but especially cultural pursuits, despite the restrictions of their class, as they were not incredibly strictly enforced by the Hosokawa. Much like the Koreans had experienced, the Hosokawa had seen the development of their navy to fight the pirates active on the many lesser islands. Despite the home advantage the Japanese navy had, the VOC would triumph, their victory not fully undependent on those exact pirates. The VOC would, through dominance of the sea, be able to trap the Japanese army on Kyushu, beating it in a series of engagements largely supported by the navy. Pressing their advantage, the armies stood at Kyoto, home of both the Shogun and powerless Emperor, 20 months after the start of the campaign. Japan would be forced to grant trading concessions along with the ports of Nagasaki and Kagoshima and the islands of Tsushima and Okinawa. As for the pirates, the VOC was already planning to hand them over to the authorities in Kyoto at the start of the war. “Piracy is simply bad for business.”

The happenings over in the east are worth mentioning due to the significance they would have a couple of years later on what was going on back over in Europe. What had been on the mind of Karel III during the First Baltic War was the aggressive foreign policy of the d’Escoubleau’s of France, Clotaire V (1637-1675), Hugues III (1675-1688) and now the regent for Théoderic III, Eglantine de Blois, had been pushing French influence in Lorraine and the Rhine, a historically contested region between the Holy Roman Empire and France. Bohemian weakness lead to no opposition when the Duke of Lorraine, in search of a new powerfull backer after a series of lost wars to the Bishop of Trier, declared the feudal contracts with Emperor null and void, instead seeking a new one with the young Théodreic III. Ironically enough, no attempt to restore the rights of Reginar II would be undertaken as the Bishop of Trier was also very much in Paris’ pocket, her prime ally on the western bank of the Rhine. As of 1691, France had found herself dragged into a Balkan conflict between now styled Vlachian “Emperor of the Romans” and the more traditionally styled Byzantine “Emperor of the Romans” in their feud over the Serbian despotate. The monarch determined that now was the time to strike, despite the signals that the newer officers gave him. The Saxon army would not be able to best a French army in a 1 to 1 fight. The French had more experience as they had found themselves in a state of semi-constant warfare (either internal and external) since Clotaire V had risen to the throne and they had also adopted modern and strict styles of drill. Their finances would also be able to hold up better as unlike a enemy like Great Britain, they were not nearly as dependent on overseas trade with their colonies of Louisiana and Remigia but much more on the Mediterranean where the navy had difficulties projecting power. The demand to retreat from the Empire was made on September 22nd 1691, only three months after Théoderic III had reached seniority. Rejection was received on the 29th and on the 1st of October the armies began movements to put Caux, Rethel and Trier to siege.

The initial naïve optimism of the war lasted under a year. Caux and Rethel, not much more than some hastily improved late medieval fortresses fell quickly after the Saxon cannons were brought to bear on their walls. Frankfurt fell to a combined Holsteener-Danish siege. Which lead to the first attempted siege of Paris and the Saxon army stuck on the much more fortified Trier. May the 1st would however see the death of Emperor Václav VI and the election of Jakob II of Baden, a French ally, which would lead to the Imperial Diet attempting to denounce the war Saxony was waging. Much more worrying were the troop movements through Baden, as a Savoyard army was preparing to get the Free City of Frankfurt back in the fight. On the 9th of August, a Papal-Saxon force attempted to relieve the garrison. The Savoyards had, however, been reinforced over the course of the nigh by a massive French army. And as the forces under Papal commander Callistus Serio advanced in the morning, they found themselves quickly on the backfoot as the French aggressively counterattacked with their superior numbers. They were barely able to escape. The French force followed up by moving on the now unsupported army besieging Trier, who were luckily informed in time and made an orderly retreat. A week later, much the same happened in Northern France, as the Saxon armies had been split by French maneuvers and the siege of Paris had to be abandoned, barely escaping back to Kamerijk. It was at Kamerijk that, reinforced by units from the east, the French advance would be stopped and forced to retreat in a battle that cost the Saxon much more lives in comparison to the French, despite outnumbering their foe 2 to 1. In a fine example of severely lacking coordination between allies, a small Savoyard army would be crushed at Kamerijk 3 weeks later, as well as a Danish victory over another Savoyard army at Rothenburg. It had, however, become clear that Saxon chances for victory had quickly diminished. Peace had returned in the Balkan with a status quo ante bellum (unsatisfactory for both sides) and the Pope leaving the war at the cost of possessions in the Po Valley just after New Year 1693.

As of yet there still existed a change for the Roderlo to be victorious. Victory over the French at Kamerijk had secured their ability to hold on to Caux and Rethel and with it the road to Paris. A attempt to put Rethel to siege in March was defeated and thus the time was deemed right to attempt to take Paris to hopefully end the war on favorable terms. Whilst Paris was put to siege for a second time. The French would move on the rear of the Saxon armies to cut supplies, leading to a ever escalating series of skirmishes which would culminate with the gathering of forces just north of Reims near the town of Courcy. Outnumbered and outgunned, they would be forced to retreat after one of the most bloody days in the history of the Saxon military. The cavalry heavy army was, however, able to use her horse mounted soldiers well to allow the army to retreat west where she would eventually find the safety of the fortress at Amerongen. It was however clear that even the strong fortresses of the South would not be able to provide safety for the battered army, thus, they retreated further to Brabant. The main issue that faced the defense of the fortresses was now demoralization, worsened further by the fall and subsequent sack of Kamerijk. A full collapse of the military apparatus was however prevented by the calculating diplomacy of Maarten van Stein-Stirum, one of the monarchs prime diplomats. He would, as described in his own words, “bribe the ego of Théoderic III.” He would be able to come to a deal that was a combination of a massive bribe in gold, admittance of defeat and the return of the port in Japan. For Théodoric, it was revenge upon the enemies of France that his grandfather had not been able to get. When read out in the Staten Generaal, it caused an outroar. A member for Zeeland would not that “a war lost by the nobility should not be paid for by the merchant marine!” But, the simple fact was that if this deal could not be agreed upon, that the bribe would otherwise have to be the coastline from Grevelingen to Caux. Parliament, pushed on by the monarch, would begrudgingly accept. France exited the war and abandoned her allies, who would in turn be unable to hold back the simple weight of the Saxon army. Savoy would be forced to return recent gains against both the Pope and multiple princes just north of the Alps. Trier was forced to return parts of Central Lorraine, in the hopes that some leverage could be gained upon but it would prove to be to no avail. In the end, the war fueled revanchism within Saxony and gave Théoderic a desire for more. A second War of the Rhine proved inevitable.

New status quo in the Upper Rhine following the First War of the Rhine​

The period following the First War of the Rhine is often compared to the situation following the is often compared to that following the First Holsteen War. Whilst yes, revenge was the prime motivator behind change, it is a sign of the times that this was much more dependent on systems rather than the personal will and ambition of the monarch. Karel III was not the prime mover of change within the military apparatus. Conduct of the war had been in the hands of the many older aristocratic nobles, and the loss in the war opened up the way for the (still) Grand Ducal Officer Academy of Hannover to start paying dividends as her cadets started filtering into the now empty positions, which lead to a greater emphasis on massed artillery and the expansion of the infantry body of the army. The Staten Generaal had also, begrudgingly, come around to the increased amount of spending. However much discontent there may have been with the “aristocratic loss of the war”, the simple fact was that a superior enemy did not care about who lost the war for them, just that the Saxons did. At the same time, Van Stein-Stirum was sent to the Mediterranean to hopefully gain an advantage over the French. He would, together with a section of the admiralty, negotiate about aid towards the Papal navy and a Saxon naval base in Pisa “in the hypothetical situation” that war was to break out with France again. Main target would be the French trade with North Africa and the Most Serene Republic of Trinacria and Parthenopea. War with the foremost merchants power of the Mediterranean was however a acceptable risk if it meant the ability to threaten French merchant activity. The great achievement of Van Stein-Stirum was, however, the defection of the most potent French ally, Savoy. Savoy had effectively been bribed by the French in the advancements of their claims in the Po Valley against Friuli and the Papal State. Where success in the early war had granted them parts of their claims, France exiting the war early meant that Savoy was forced to return the land along with more in the Holy Roman Empire. This betrayal lead to the immediate cancellation of the alliance upon the conclusion of hostilities. The death of Thomas V in 1697 also lead to the loss of the Savoyard throne for the house Habsburg. In their stead, a cadet branch of the d’Escoubleau. This particular branch had actually partaken in one of the many internal conflicts that France had faced in the middle of the 17th century. They had been landowners in the southeast of France and had attempted to push their claim to the French throne during the minority of Théoderic III, causing them to lose their claims and go into a favorable exile in Savoy. Where the Habsburgs had been more interested in foreign policy aimed at the Empire and thus their predisposition to anything related of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the d’Escoubleau-Provence were much more interested in their old Marquisate of Provence and the lands surrounding, making them a perfect ally against the Kingdom of France. France, in term, desperate for a new Italian ally, would bind herself to Friuli, a state that had found herself in conflict with both Savoy and the Pope. Also, in 1706, the crown of Emperor would pass back to the Bohemians with the crowning of Rudolf III, and he was again not favorable to continued French expansion in the Rhine. Not all was as smooth sailing as is presented though. In New Saxony, a colonel of mixed European-native descent and famed for his exploits during the guerilla of the French colonies was promoted to a general serving under the Viceduke. It was however a very controversial move as he himself was one of the first few and faint voices calling for more independence from Broenswiek. Meanwhile, the monarch himself was much more interested in the quiet start of the Enlightement and the Industrial Revolution, often receiving some of the lesser known early Enlightement thinkers at one of his countryside palaces to converse with, or being shown some of the earliest prototypes of industrial machines.

Whilst this was going on in Europe, the VOC retook her footing after the forced loss of her holdings in mainland Japan. 1703 saw the VOC assume more control over the island of Java and expand her spice plantation in the Molucca’s. The more noted war was their second conflict with the Kalinga, as they had again started providing support to another series of revolts on Ceylon. Much like the First War of the Rhine, what was first hoped to be a quick war against a distracted enemy with limited goals turned out to be a massive slog and a massive loss for the VOC. The Ganga found themselves joined by the Malay states of Pasai and Perak, who hoped to split the VOC up and push them out of their long established base in Southern Sumatra. Hope for quick victory was real. If the army of the Company was able to force the Kalinga to negotiate quickly enough, and Palembang held out long enough, it might just all be over in a year. And the army was at first able to advance at a lighting speed along the Andhra Coast, taking all forts along the way in just 10 months and projected to join the Bengali army in their siege of Cuttack in another 5. But, it was at this point that the government in Batavia recalled their armies as Batavia itself had quickly become threatened by the advancing Malaysians. Over the course of the late summer, they would be defeated in a series of battles on Western Java as the recall bulk of the army and navy now made escape impossible. News of Batavia being threatened or the final victory at Banten on the 11th of July, as Karel III died on the 7th of September, aged 42.

Karel III, reigned from 1680 to 1706​

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Johannes V

It had quickly become clear to the VOC leadership in Batavia and back over at her headquarters in Europe that the conflict she had found herself in wasn’t the quick, low cost operation she had hoped for. 1707 would see a slow, arguois campaign across Sumatra with a stubborn defense at Palembang. In turn, the force left behind in mainland India would face the full might of the Kalinga army as they had dealt with the enemies on their northern frontier, leading to a crushing defeat whilst trying to lift the siege of Velandadu. Another battle, on lesser scale, at Madurai would see them forced to retreat to Ceylon, whilst the garrisons in the mainland, now isolated from any outside help, would be rolled up, with all gains of 1705 lost. This would be topped off by a naval defeat at the tip of Sumatra, attempting to bombard the Pasai capital. The VOC would lose some of her most battle capable ships. To continue financing the war had become too costly a option for the Company, yet it would not allow herself to be bested by a Asian power, fearfull of what consequences that would entail for her holdings, mainly surrounding the Chinese seas. The VOC turned to the Staten Generaal for direct aid. Where the proceeding started normal, it was a member for Keulen who, half-jokingly it must be said, noted that “a war lost by the Company should not be paid for by the aristocracy.” The joke turned into a argument, the argument into anger, anger into rage and rage escalated into a brawl which saw the whole floor of the chamber covered in men fighting or those trying to stop the fight. It was only the direct intervention of the monarch, who commanded some of his guards to enter the chamber, putting the fight, and the day’s proceedings, to a end. It was only the next day, and with the “carefully persuaded” resignation of the two members who had started the argument, that the proceedings would continue. Within the first year of his reign, the 24 year old Johannes had already left his impression on his parliament.

The debates considering the extent of the aid, and the demands in turn are best described as a “long slog”. Both sides understood the need to compromise (lest they embarrass themselves again), but it didn’t mean that this was very willingly. Slow, but never stuck, the aid bill would be passed on 17th of June 1707. It contained a payment that was “carefully considered to be the amount needed to defeat the Ganga of India”, and not much more than that. Not that it was needed because the bill also required the company to concentrate her efforts on defeating the Ganga, to be read as cutting her losses everywhere else. Luckily, the Pasai had been willing to seek peace following their victory on the sea outside of Pasai, as it left her position strong enough to actually resist demands. In the end, only minor concessions around Palembang would be given to help increase the defense of the city in the future. Following some tense moments around the summer of 1708, when the potential of a Indian army landing on Ceylon seemed real and would have destroyed the VOC presence in India, late 1708 saw the gathering of the new VOC armies on Ceylon, with them crossing onto the mainland in early 1709. This time, there would be no lighting war up the Andhra Coast, as the fortresses had been heavily reinforced, if only provisionally. A slog of a campaign with only minimal battles was the result, and in 1710 the flank of the advance up the coast was so endangered that a campaign into the uplands of Hyderabad was conducted with the simple goal of preventing any supply base of being set up, a simple campaign of plunder. Finally, the Company would take Cuttack in the first days of 1711. With the funds the Staten Generaal had set aside gone, and any more expenditure coming, once again, from her own coffers, whatever the Orissans offered was what she was going to get. Control over Madurai and her surroundings, the port of Bahktal and the secession of any support to rebels on Ceylon (not that the Ganga maintained the base’s for such support anymore). The VOC, exhausted, took the deal, forced to focus her resources into rebuilding the fleet after a devastating loss in the Bay of Bengal.

National interest had however diverted from the humiliation that had been the bare skin victory over in India. Growing ever more confident about the renewed ability of the army, the military leadership began provoking a confrontation with the French. Ever since the dissolution of the personal union over France, the French colonies in the New World lived in a continuous state of uncertainty. They had been founded by French merchants for the purpose of trade with the native population, but it had later expanded into colonies of settlement and plantation as Louisiana and Remigia provided fertile land for especially tobacco, a commodity in increasing demand back over in Europe. The previous war had seen the occupation of these colonies and the guerilla fought by local garrisons reinforced by militia’s and native allies. The end of the war had seen the evacuation of these territories and French administration had returned. The end of the war had however left multiple minor border issue’s unsolved, along with ongoing conflict between the native allies of both parties. Colonial authorities were encouraged to press the issue’s by providing arms to native allies and construct fortresses in the disputed areas, a job much easier as the previous war had left the authorities with extensive knowledge of area. At the same time, New Antwerp began giving out letters of marque to pirates operating from the Republic of Providence. Most prominent of these was Rosalie Gibbs, a Georgian of Catholic-Welsh origin, she had turned to piracy after the death of her husband and her only daughter had left her with a mountain of debt. Throughout the early 1710’ns, the French coffers and colonies felt the squeeze as Providence and Broenswiek made a tidy profit off of the tobacco piracy. This went so far that, in 1713, the admiralty over in Antwerp actually requested that Gibbs, by now a well-known captain, travel to Europe and take charge of the main formation of the Saxon fleet, doing so by December of that year. That same year Théoderic III sent more soldiers overseas to Remigia. In the summer of 1714, this would lead to the Masacre at Fort Strydom. 15 Saxon soldiers were killed out of a garrison of 55. Demands for the return of the fortress and the abandonment of all French territorial claims were unmet. War was declared in September that year.

The Second War of the Rhine provided both sides the rematch they had been hoping for. For Saxony, it was the chance at revenge she was hoping for, for France, victory would assure dominance of the Upper Rhine and finally security for her ever more profitable colonies. But, the task that France faced was much harder this time. Savoy had flipped sides, her ally Friuli was isolated and the southeast laid open to invasion. For both sides, the goal was clear, dominance of the Alps, and Saxony was hundreds of kilometers away. French strategy was based around taking control of the northern end of the Alps, Savoyard Switzerland, and dominating the passes south, to take away the most likely route of advance for any Saxon force through Trier and Lorraine. By May 1st 1715, Basel was in French hands and French forces were shoring up the position in the passes leading up to Milan, dominance of Italy seemed secure and the war doomed for Saxony, had it not been for the fact that on March 12th Paris was already in Saxon hands and Dijon was being stormed. Trier was deemed too small of a threat to the Saxon Rhine and her fortifications too strong to be a priority. By the end of summer, still without any mayor engagements, Basel had been returned to Savoy, the French armies trapped east of the Alps and Friuli settled with the unbearable task of supplying the massive French forces. France had also come to be stuck without a head of state as Théoderic insisted in witnessing the sure to be victory first hand. The French armies, stuck in either unknown or hostile territory, were forced to retreat further and further, further and further away from home, whilst Saxon, Savoyard and Papal armies took control over the Po valley, as the Friulian armies refused to give battle to a superior enemy. Not only that, but over the course of 1715 and 1716 the Danes actually took the effort of breaking through the rough half a dozen modern and less than modern fortresses that protected Trier itself and her hold over the Rhine, exiting the war, making returning home for the French even more impossible than it already was. The only way now was to defeat the numerically superior allied forces in a pitched battle and making a run for it whilst they were licking their wounds. First battle would be done at the northeastern most end of the Alps, at the Wienerwald. A force of roughly 30.000 Frenchmen faced of against a allied force just over twice their number. A brilliant piece of defence by the French commander Carloman de Bercy, he managed to inflict about 2500 more casualties on the Saxons than the 3000 they inflicted on him and he managed to retreat in good order, luring the Saxons to the east whilst the main body of the army was attempting to move through Carinthia, neutral Tyrol and Savoy, homewards. However, aid by the Savoyards, familiar with Alpine warfare, made the Saxon army much more mobile than her French counterpart, despite not being intended to fight in the terrain. The French losing time to break through, and it all came to a head at the city of Villach in Carinthia. Around the city, a small force of Saxons and Savoyards was camping, and on the 4th of September 1716, the French main body of 96.000 soldiers would attempt to force their way through the 23.000 allied soldiers. The allies were, however, very much aware that the Saxon main body of 112.000 men was less than a days march behind. The French attacked just before dawn, which the allied forces had actually anticipated. At first, the French thought they had achieved complete surprise, but this was shattered moments later when the cannons of the defense of Villach opened up with cannister at point blank range, shattering the first French wave. For three and a half hours, the Saxon-Savoyard army held on by anchoring her lines on the sides of the mountains, placing itself in the valley the French had to pass through. After those three and a half hours, when the line seemed about to waver, a cannonshot was seen from a hill in the direction of Klagenfurt, signalling the arrival of Karel Roderlo, first cousin once removed of Johannes V, commanding the main body of the allied army. Carloman de Bercy fought a defencive action against Karel for as long as he could to buy Théoderic as much time as he could to force victory, but the main valley needed for the advance still wasn’t laid open. At about one past noon the decision was made to have as much of the army attempt to get away through one of the lesser valleys, with the king in front to head the defense of France. De Bercy actually rallied the troops so well for the defence that Karel had thought the French had received reinforcements. Only when later noticed from greater height that the French had started their retreat did a full scale attack begin, cutting straight through the middle of the French army, preventing most of it from retreating and being stuck between the mountains on two sides and allied soldiers on the other two. The death of De Bercy by a cannonball shooting his legs under him finally allowed for this part of the French army to surrender. Much of the part of the French army that had escaped was hunted down later as the valley they retreated into simply wasn’t large enough to allow for such an army to march through at such a scale and such a speed. To this day, one can still find people there who claim descent from French soldiers who hid in the mountains and simply never left for France again. As for what it was worth in the end, Théoderic was able to escape to France with a small section of his army. Back at home, there were new soldiers waiting, however, France would be at the mercy of her enemies.

The French defeat at Villach meant the immediate exit of Friuli from the war in exchange for the return of large parts of Steiermark to her dejure Duke. As for France, Théoderic focused his defence on the southeast, although it was compromised as in May 1717 Rosalie Gibbs, in command of a combined Papal-Saxon armada in the Mediterranean defeated the whole remaining French navy, followed quickly by the taking of Marseilles and Toulon. His defeat and capture at the hands of a smaller Saxon-Papal army under command of Waldemar van Enter, one of the new Hannoverian officers, finally forced peace upon France. The terms with Saxony might actually be considered the least harsh, as for them the victory was overcoming the French armies in the field. Saxony demanded the handover of all holdings in the New World as well as the restoration of the Duke of Lorraine to the Empire. For the Pope, it was reperations for the loss of Avignon some centuries before. The Savoyard demands were the harshest, as it was the secession of the Dauphinate and Provence. As for Théoderic III, the close to 4 year long occupation some parts of the realm had withstood had made him very unpopular to say the least, despite the many achievements of his realm. In the interest of protecting the rights of his son, his wife Marie de Bourbon, preformed a palace coup, forcing an abdication and having herself be established as the regent of their 13 year old son.

At this point, we could return to the Far East, where between 1718 and 1722 the VOC once again found herself in conflict with Pasai and Perak again, this time backed up by the Timurids of Persia who began cultivating a interest in Sumatra, or how the Yuan began developing their own trade networks with India, the more important developments took place in Europe over this time. We shall reflect on this situation in the Far East in the near future.

From 1718 to 1720, Brandenburg had found herself in another war on two fronts with Denmark and Bohemia. Despite holding the Imperial throne, Bohemia was in a weakened position. The loss of Greater Poland to the Czartoryski had restarted instability in the Kingdom of Poland as their title was threatened from west and east, not to forget that the Danube Basin was also proving a volatile region. Denmark, at the time, was also facing revolts throughout Norway. All in all, the situation allowed for the numerically outnumbered Brandenburgers to gain a decisive victory over her enemies, again taking the port city of Stettin and taking control over the bordering Sudeten mountains and Silesia. For over a century now, Broenswiek had maintained a balance of power east of the Elbe, mainly to make sure no country would prove able to challenge Saxony enough by laying waste to her heartland. Whilst the relation between Broenswiek and Prague had long since soured, protestant Brandenburg, a very viable military power especially with a enlarged tax and population base, would prove a much more formidable enemy than the old ally, Catholic Bohemia with a sub-par army quality wise. The war with Brandenburg is not worth discussing, a quick affair dealt with through numerical superiority and fast movement. Within a year, spanning late 1722 and early 1723, Brandenburg was forced to abandon her territorial acquisitions, forced to return to the 1717 status quo. But this is where Broenswiek and Prague clashed.

Johannes V had provided Emperor Premsyl III a great service, possibly preventing the end of the Crown of Bohemia, he had hoped for a counterservice, one that only the Emperor could provide, a royal title. For centuries now, the Roderlo had occupied one of the most powerfull realms of Europe, witch shared institution it had practically become a fully united entity if it was only besides the fact that all individual pieces owed loyalty to the Emperor. Yes, the Roderlo had occupied the throne of the Kingdom of France for about a odd century, and since 1675 a Estrid-Roderlo (much more Roderlo than Estrid but the name carried significant prestige for the Danish kingdom so it was put first) occupied the Danish throne. But the last time there had been a king who ruled from Saxony it was Otto Liudolfinger who rose to be King of Germany and (re-)founder of the Holy Roman Empire. He had died in 973. To add fuel to the fire, in 1721, as Boniface III had reached the age of seniority, he had himself crowned as the King of Arelat, a title within the Holy Roman Empire effectively dead since the 14th century, when the heir to the French throne was raised to the title of Dauphine by the Emperor himself. With the secession of the Dauphinate Amédée VII had seen it fit to claim the title, although he had died only days before his coronation as such. The young Escoubleau king, much like his Saxon counterpart, wished to see his title confirmed by the Emperor. For Premsyl III it was a simple direct assault on his powers as Emperor. Ever since the short-lived Bohemian Reformation, the Emperors seated in Prague had worked mostly on bringing the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, the shattered core between the Alps, France, Burgundy and Saxony back to the fold, with many great results. Whereas after the Protestant League had proven itself unable to challenge Catholicism as the state religion of the Empire there had only been 3 eligible electors (the Grand Duke of Saxony, the King of Bohemia and the Bishop of Trier), by now, through diplomacy, strategic marriages and some fair deal of bloodletting, there were 8 electors who could vote for a new emperor, even if all their subjects were not fully in line with Rome. Within these states, there was at least some semblance of traditional feudal loyalty to the Emperor. The Austrians, ever protestant, continued to snub the Emperors, much like the other members east of the Elbe. Savoy had moved out from under the French shadow, ready to assert herself, and Saxony was by now a world spanning empire. Giving out and affirming the royal titles would be the death sentence for the Empire, shattering the last remaining authority it had. Only a suicidal Emperor could have agreed to the demands. And thus, despite being chosen to, as a hoped sign of good faith, host the 1723 and 1724 sessions of the Reichstag, the situation continued to deteriorate. Not only that, but by this point the Enlightenment had “made a damming statement about the HRE.” This is not the famous “not Holy, or Roman, or an Empire” quote, this is a fabrication by 19th century liberals. The Enlightenment had started developing the idea of the nation. To put the sole responsibility of the end of the HRE on the shoulders of the Enlightenment is wrong. The Empire, through religious conflict, growing outside influence and the Continental Germanic sphere growing both in Europe and the rest of the world, had simply culturally shattered. The HRE was a Empire in the sense that it was a entity containing multiple nations. This is why the title of King would destroy the HRE.

It is during the growing tensions of 1724 that Johannes V would seek allies among his fellow princes, foreshadowing the shattering of the HRE that was about to happen. In the summer of 1724 he and his 24 year old son, Willem-Frederik, would tour the Empire. The electors, in general, stood behind the heir of the men who had empowered them, except a few. The Duke of Thuringia, seeing in Saxony a rival of Brandenburg who actually proved time after time the better in the field, saw a ally in standing up and hopefully regaining lands in Meissen. The Duke of Lorraine, who owed much to his Saxon backers and hoped for a royal title themselves and to press claims in the Rhine. And lastly a ambitious Count of Rothenburg, who hoped for the title of prince and lands to go along with it. In November, Johannes V and Willem-Frederik went to tour the northern HRE, with a curtesy visit to their vasal Adolf IV in Kiel, a unsuccesfull bribe to Kanut III in Wismar, to be followed with a visit to the Duke of Pommerania and a member of the family, Svein II of Estrid-Roderlo, in Copenhagen. On the 18th of December, whilst crossing the frozen straits to Sjealland to spend Christmas in Copenhagen, the carriage carrying both the Grand Duke and his heir crashed through the sea ice. The throne would pass on to the closes living male relative of the king, his cousin and the Victor of Villach, Karel IV.

Johannes V, reigned from 1706 to 1724​

 

[J_Master]

The reign of Karel IV, part I

The ascension to the throne of Karel III was a great shock throughout both Saxony and the rest of Europe. Not only because of the way his predecessor had died and he had suddenly become the direct heir, but mostly because of the reputation he had gained. Not being closely linked to the line of succession had allowed him to cut lose from the many rules, regulations and obligations of the court in Broenswiek. From a young age, he had always been the wilder type, especially at some of the many parties held at lesser castles. By the age of 15, there were already stories of him having mistresses of up to 10 years older. By the next year, this turned into a great controversy as he had a affair with the wife of Count Willem-Otto van Randwijk, the Stadholder of Gelre, Zutphen, Kleef and Berg. By now, he had become quite the headache for the late Karel III, so he was quickly shipped off on what would be his Grand Tour of Italy, a custom much more common among Scottish and Scandinavian upper classes, but was not unknown to the rest of the continent. His Grand Tour would however be a 7 year long journey across almost the whole of the continent. At the end of 1706, he crossed the Alps into Italy. Whilst staying and studying in Florence, he would have an affair with young Duke of Tuscany. He would travel further south to Rome, where he was received by Pope Sylvester IV. In one of their evening dinners, a theological debate would begin which, as confirmed by both Karel’s own writings and that of witnesses, was almost won by the young Roderlo had it not been for the intercession of Cardinal Casciano. Travveling further to the south he would spend some months between the ruins of the Mezzegiorno before hopping on a Parthenopean ship bound for Thessaloniki and traveling overland to Constantinople, where he would wander the streets and witness the Vlachian siege of the city in 1708. From there, he would sail along with a Genoan merchant back to Italy, where he would spend a few months studying in Venice, especially intrigued by the old institutions of the Republic of the city. Having made a fair bit of pocket money off of his travels on merchants ships, he would throw some of the wildest parties that Italy had seen, amazing his guests with a inexplicable ability to keep drinking without getting drunk. He would, once again, leave behind a fair amount of children conceived either out of wedlock of with a woman who wore the ring of another man. From Genoa he would travel on to Spain, where for his personal enjoyment, he would re-enact Don Quixote to see how long he could pull off the act without the authorities getting to him. 23 days was the answer, from where he was put on a boat in Lisbon and sent back home to Amsterdam.

He arrived back in Amsterdam in late 1709, where, once Broenswiek and Johannes V had been made aware of his return, decided to send him away, again. This time, he would leave for the Baltic, where he would learn among the knights of the Teutonic Order, again, not without “sexual controversy”. In late 1710 war would erupt between the Knights and the Russian Principality of Muscovy. A slow mobilization of the armies saw the piecemeal destruction of them, which lead to the Muscovite besieging the city of Pskov, where Karel was remaining at the time. During the storming of the ramparts, the commander of the city was killed. For an hour, the city was leaderless and the defenses of the city began to waver, until it was Karel who, reluctantly, stepped up to the position, rallying the garrison and seeing the Muscovites driven off, seeing the lifting of the siege some two weeks later as the relieving army of Teutons arrived. During the following 2 years he would command Teuton forces in Ingria and Smolensk, before being requested to return to Broenswiek. There, some of the officers of Hannover had actually been sent to observe the conflict to the east, mostly to asses the Teutons ability to see of any potential Danish attack, and they had noted the abilities of the semi-exiled Roderlo. On their recommendation Johannes V had recalled him. He would be allowed to return home and command a army in the field if he “would be able to behave himself like a propper man for once”. He acquiesced, though this didn’t actually change his behavior, but he went about it in a much more discreet manner. Thus, for his “exploits” after he had returned home we have to go off of him own incomplete and exaggerated writings. Thus, we shall not cover them, but they are colorful to say the least. But this was the man that rose to the Saxon throne on 18th of December 1724.

Battle of Bryansk, one of many Teuton-Muscovite clashes going on in the Land of the Rus at the time​

If the previous section also hadn’t made it clear, Karel IV was a well learned and conversed man. During his travels he often found himself in one of many coffeehouses enjoying Olivarian coffee whilst partaking in much of the philosophizing of the age. This would quickly come to define his reign. Much less cautious than his uncle had been, he would begin to actively provoke the Emperor into a confrontation. In the company of his court, he demanded to be called king, though it was not yet clear what he was the king of. Within communications with Boniface III he would deliberately often refer to his kingly title, being responded in kind, though still not clear what he was the king of. In late October of 1726, Emperor Premysl III would visit Broenswiek, still with the hopes of working something out, as the alternative title of “King in” had been floating around. It turned into a disaster, much wanted by Karel IV. When the Emperor would speak to him, he would simply refuse to listen if he did not refer to him as king. The first day, this caused annoyance, the second day massive frustration, causing the Emperor to simply leave on the third day, the 29th of October; “he is still the same brat that toured the continent.” Karel took his chance, playing up the personal insult and demanding a apology, which did not come. On the 14th of November, war would be declared against the Bohemians, starting the War of Imperial Dissolution.

The actions of Karel IV had shocked many of his allies within the Empire, the more diplomatic approach of Johannes V bringing them on board to what might have been slow escalating action, but not this. Since the return of Premysl III to Prague, the armies of the Crown of Bohemia had been gathering for what was obvious to be the inevitable clash. As soon as the declaration of war was received, they would march on Saxony, in the hopes to bring a decisive blow quickly to then take Broenswiek, forcing a Roderlo concession. In a way, the Emperor had made a right assessment, many of the armies under the Staten were either forced to divert to the west to help out the Count of Rothenburg or simply days away from mobilization yet. What they failed to consider is the fact that enemy they were facing was Karel IV. He was able to get the Dutch section of his forces destined for the clash with Bohemia to Broenswiek within a week. Through his personal popularity and loyalty among the troops he was able to ask the most of them they could give. His greatest obstacle, the IJssel, was crossed by seizing all nearby ships and having them form a bridge across the river which the army marched across. By the end, some 156.000 men stood at the ready to march of east to counter the Bohemians, their vassals, allies and whatever scraps came in from the rest of the Empire to defend their liege, numbering around 202.000. News had come in that this army had moved north, through Brandenburger lands, to keep Karel IV cut of from whatever Danish reinforcements might arrive. (Denmark would stay neutral during the conflict, seeing the war as a chance to take on the Teutons without Saxon involvement in the peace process.) For the Bohemians the issue had now become where the cross the Elve river, which was clear pretty quick. There was one crossing fully controlled by Brandenburg, on route to Broenswiek where they would have a chance of a unopposed crossing, Dessau. By now, late November, the Victor of Villach was also made aware of this fact. He gathered whatever could move, horses, carts, even another couple of ships, and loaded them to the brim with soldiers and their equipment, and he raced off to Dessau. There, he had his small army immediately prepare for a assault of the city, whilst he went off to the gates to demand the surrender of the garrison. So surprised in fact by the arrival of the Saxons, the garrison threw down their arms at the sight of Karel and his cavalry escort riding through the open gates. Once the commander was made aware of this fact, he angerly demanded to know what was going on, as the Margrave was neutral in the conflict. Karel simply responded by stating that “I’m at war with the Emperor, I have no reason to trust his vassals.” Now, the waiting game had begun, as the now Saxon garrison manning the city defenses and positions in the countryside waited for the inevitable arrival of the Bohemians.

The night from the 4th to the 5th of December saw the unusually late first snowfall of the year, and as the sun began to rise the snowfall only began to increase. The Elve was not yet covered in much ice however. Closing in on midday, the Bohemian vanguard arrived, expecting a safe crossing of the Elve. They were granted it by the watchfull Saxons, who opened up on their enemy once they began setting up positions to secure the crossing. Though most of the Bohemian light infantry present was captured, the cavalry was able to make it back across to notify the Saxon control of the city to their commander, Rudolf von Capek. Within two hours, the main body of the Bohemian army, some 190.000 men stood ready to force a crossing, retake Dessau and hopefully convince the weary, protestant Margrave that Saxon defeat would be in his interest. Now, the attempt to cross would be challenged immediately. Not only that, but the Saxon army, disorganized by the taking of all logistical and transport methods, began to trickle in, a the longer the Bohemians waited, the harder the crossing would be. Over the course of the afternoon, the first two attempts at a bridgehead were countercharged by the Saxon infantry, until the third bridgehead at half past 5 was formed. Some 65.000 Saxons were now present, but they could not force the Bohemians back to the other side of the river. At the same time, it was quickly turning dark, and the bridgehead laid within artillery range of the city, forcing a move on the city. The city, relatively lightly defended to make the two countercharges possible, would fall within a hour of the order of the storming, already long past the sun went down, leaving the Imperial army in control of the city. But, during the assault, Karel IV gained another massive amount or reinforcements, with more coming in over the course of the night.

As of the rising of the sun on St. Nicholas Day and the final stop of the snowfall, the Saxon army still stood between the Imperial and Broenswiek, massing for their assault on the Saxon lines as soon as the sun had awoken the soldiers from their sleep. But, as the first hour of forming up and the restart of the battle came to an end, they began to be attacked from the rear, during the night, a part of the Saxon army themselves had made the crossing. The Imperial army, cramped in the site of her original landing and the city of Dessau, was unable to effectively maneuver enough units to challenge the Saxon attack, finding herself encircled by a lesser foe. The snow surrounding Dessau would colour red, as well as the Elve, something seen as far as Meideborg and Stendal downstream. But, by the end of the day, the strength of the Empire was gone, Karel IV, now hailed as the Dessauer, had triumphed.

March written in honour of the Dessauer and his victory at Dessau​

The destruction of the Imperial armies sealed the fate of the Empire within the first month of the war. By now, the issue for Karel had become enforcing his will upon the rest of the Empire, meaning occupation of land, taking of capitals, imprisoning princes and electors. This included a close call at the Siege of Rothenburg where the city almost fell into Hessian hands, a close call with death at the Siege of Trier and the capture of the Emperor at the Polish capital of Cracow, but, by early 1728 the Roderlo monarch had dragged about half the nobility of Europe to Rome, where the Pope agreed to be a (not so) neutral arbitrator between the parties. The last gathering of the Reichstag, also in Rome, would confirm the Treaty of Rome on the 4th of April. It contained several small territorial changes in favour of Saxony and her allies, main receiver of which being Rothenburg, which would also be elevated to status of principality. The Emperor would also confirm the bestowment of the Kingdom of Arelat to Boniface III, and agreed to crown Karel a king. Karel IV had become captivated by the idea of the “triune people”, the three tribes of the Dutch, Frisians and Saxons brought together into one greater whole, a union destined from the start of these tribes. This idea had received the name of Dietsland, a mistranslation or wrongly spelled version of Duitsland, meaning “land of the people” (with people here in a very blood-bond manner, and not the more modern English connotations with more left wing ideologies), but which itself was disliked through it also describing the old Kingdom of East Frankia and one of the titles of the Emperor. The English, having already assigned “Dutch” to the Netherlands by this point, chose to translate this new title as the Kingdom of Dytschland. The final act of the Treaty of Rome, was Premysl III agreeing to his abdication as Holy Roman Emperor, with Pope Hadrianus VI swearing, both for himself and his successors seating on the Throne of Saint Peter, to not crown another Emperor, ending Charlemagne’s Empire that had been founded 927 years before.

Where once was the favorite capital of Charlemagne, and for centuries Emperors had been crowned as his successor in the Cathedral of Aken, on the 17th of May 1728, Karel IV would be crowned King of Dytschland by His Holiness Hadrianus VI, to be followed by a recognition of his title by King Premysl III of Bohemia.