The Thin Wedge of Europe

[Von Acturus]

I feel bad for the queen. Marriages of conveniences are hard enough, doubly when you are married to someone who cannot love you or even feel attracted to you. And I feel bad too for the staff sergeant, who even after his lover his dead has to be silent and suppress all acknowledgement of their love.

The Sami seem to have braved through the darkest days, even if the threat of assimilation and discrimination are still ever present. I wonder how complete will the Christian conversion be, will it create a long lasting syncretism with the pagan religions or will it replace them altogether?

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-THREE.
Labourers in the Vineyard
25 April 1531 – 18 June 1536

​

Matej Štefánik found that his first order of business, as regent, was to re-establish the ties between Moravia and its various allies (like Biela Rus’) and dependencies (like Julevädno and Drježdźany). In some of these cases, this was a mere formality, but the lady of Biela Rus’ wanted to marry the thirty-year-old uncle of the infant Tomáš, Eustach Rychnovský. This was far from a mere formality! So it was that not five weeks after his nephew’s taking the throne, Eustach was wedded to the Grand Princess of White Rus’, Vlastislava Oskyldr.

In the north, the inevitable happened in December of that year, as one of Jozef’s cherished ambitions was brought to fruition. Úlf Svinhufvud, the siidalávlut of the Lule Sámi, was ‘encouraged’—in fact compelled—to accept the overlordship of the governor of Moravian Laponia. The cultural ties that the Moravian government had been so assiduous in promoting among the Lule Sámi rather forced Úlf’s hand. The siida had already largely been won over to the idea of promoting Sámi unity within Moravian borders, with even the few holdouts of independence now faltering.

In this way, Julevädno was fully brought under the sway of the Moravian state. Although the full integration of Moravian Laponia brought great prestige to the Moravian state and tactically connected Moravia directly to its northernmost ports without the need to brave the hostile northern seas, the dreams of an independent Sápmi were put on hold—as far as anyone knew, indefinitely. The eastern Sámi were all under Moravia, and the western Sámi were all under the rule of the East Geats.

Štefánik’s evenings, spent helming the wheel of the Moravian ship of state, were no less stressful than his mornings and days, for they were spent largely chasing after the toddler-king that had been entrusted to his care. Tomáš had evidently inherited his father’s youthful penchant for mischief, and then some. There wasn’t a day when Štefánik didn’t have to direct the palace servants to clean some charcoal scrawlings off the walls, clean up smashed bottles and overturned tuns in the pantry, or rescue the ostlery cats from exuberant and good-natured but no less rough handling. Tomáš submitted to Matej’s scoldings with earnest and heartfelt remorse, but his resolve to do better and to please his caretaker rarely lasted the length of one track of the sun. The matter wasn’t helped by Queen Mother Lesana’s doting on the child—Matej of course had no official rank beyond that of zbrojnoš and could therefore not remonstrate with the Queen Mother, and so there was little he could do on that front.

Still, there was no doubt that Kráľ Tomáš 2. Rychnovský was a youngster of remarkable energy and determination. When Tomáš finally began schooling, he took to his letters and numbers with all of the curiosity, attention and zeal with which he had been vandalising the palace in his younger years. It gratified Štefánik no end to see this.

The Regent was assisted in his tasks, however, by the distinguished natural scientist Bážá Ruigi, who more commonly went by his Moravian assumed name of Bohodar z Rožmberka. The Sámi scientist, though he was only several years above forty, his hair and his long beard were very nearly all of frost. Though one might easily have imagined it to be on account of the stresses in caring for little Tomáš, in fact he had very little to do with it. Indeed, Tomáš and the Sámi scientist got along well.

Instead, what had whitened Bážá’s hair was grief—decades of it. Long gone were his disappointments at having been passed over for advancement in the diplomatic corps. He had found his niche, at least as far as his natural talents of observation and study were concerned. Instead, his grief was for his native Koutajoki—for the river of his youth which he knew he would never see again. It was for his people generally, as the way of life that they had once lived, fishing and herding and hunting—was vanishing.

And in specific, it was for his mentor, Vulle Gáski. Vulle had once tried to wrest him out of the pit of despair and cynicism… only, it seemed, in the end to fall in himself. The work of writing Vyřkedant, in part in protest at the destruction of the life he’d grown up in, and in part in instruction of the city Sámit who were in want of guidance, had consumed him. And what he’d found in his last years, to his chagrin, was that his work was rejected by the traditional herdsmen whose way of life he’d sought to convey, and that it had been picked up by Moravians of a radical stripe with whom he felt he had nothing in common. Having thus failed to give the account of himself that he wanted, he had wasted away.

The original of Vyřkedant had been sent back to Vulle’s wife and children in Koutajoki, to whom had gone the primary dedication. But the very first screw-pressed copy had gone to Báža. On the first page was written, in Vulle’s hand addressed to him: Aň tón vujjkesť vygkev. ‘May you be guided aright.’ It was Bážá’s most prized possession.

Tomáš, though a child marked by the same rambunctiousness and irreverence that his father and uncle had possessed, was not without a certain sense of sympathy. He noted the wrinkles upon his tutor’s brows, and inquired about them.

‘Not to worry,’ Bážá had told Tomáš. ‘Marks of an old herdsman with too many lost deer behind him.’

‘Can’t you find them again?’ asked Tomáš.

Bážá smiled sadly and murmured to the little boy beside him, ‘I wish I could.’

~~~​

One hallmark of Štefánik’s early regency was that he shifted the Moravian state’s attention from the north to the south. Having established a solid presence in Sápmi, Matej Štefánik received with alarm the reports from the elder diplomats on the situation in the Carpathians. The Eastern Roman Empire had revived with a vengeance—Basileus Likinios 2. Kaloēthēs once again asserted New Rome’s right to stand athwart the world, as had been the glory and birthright of his city for a millennium past. The Eastern Romans would certainly not tolerate the Kárpátok Birodalma, a barbarous state made up of a mishmash of non-Hellenic peoples—Slavs, Magyars, Vlachs—to exist on its doorstep, let alone to call itself a ‘Birodalma’ (a right which belonged exclusively to the realm of the Basileus). It was Likinios’s evident good luck that Carpathia just so happened to be in the middle of one of its regular succession crises.

In addition, the Eastern Roman Empire had renewed its claims upon the Black Sea coast—all of it. And they were sending their best riders and gunmen into the south of Great Rus’. And so far, Great Rus’ was much the worse for wear on account of this incursion from the south.

A careful rebalancing was therefore in order. Matej Štefánik made several conscious choices… not at this point a firm or consistent policy, but a marked turn of the gaze southward. He began making friendly overtures to the Detvanských—something hitherto unheard-of—and joined a coalition of Orthodox Christian countries against New Rome’s rejuvenated imperial ambitions.

He also made a cultural show of force—responding to the demands of the Moravian Orthodox clergy in the Stavovské Zhromaždenie, Matej Štefánik invested significant state funds into building a Temple of Saint Rodana the Unmercenary in the village of Zemplín, practically on the border with Carpathia. The diplomatic implications of the building, its placement, and its dedication were all quite clear to any observers, most of all the Carpathians—a more suitable olive branch couldn’t have been extended. Saint Rodana, the youngest sister of Bohodar 3. Letopisár, had been a nun beloved of all in that region of the Carpathian mountains, healing all by the power of her prayers without asking anything in return. And her association with Letopisár, a Moravian king happily married to a Mögyer queen-consort, was a further token of Moravia’s goodwill toward its southern neighbour.

The clergy were quite pleased. So were the Carpathians, and the Ruthenians. The Eastern Romans, however, were not.

~~~​

The southern end of the Morava Valley had long been acknowledged as a prime viticultural region of Europe (though not quite as well-known as those of Neustria and Italy). Queen Ilse, the consort of Róbert, had been particularly fond of Riesling-style wines made from grapes from the Znojmo region. The 1533 crop of grapes had been particularly abundant, leading the old noble families from southern Moravia to come forward with a rather novel proposition.

‘My Lord Regent,’ Peter Bratislavský came forward with a bow, representing five different families—the Bratislavských, the Rastislavských, the Bítovských, the Holomkovcov and the Ištvánovci—of the Znojmo region, ‘this past season has been a bumper year for our vineyards. It’s a rare thing, but we have, frankly, far more wine on our hands than we know what to do with. If it please my Lord Regent, it would be a great boon to us if we could be given licence with the trader guilds in Bratislava or Praha to market our wine abroad.’

Matej Štefánik was frankly surprised by the suggestion, but it wasn’t unwelcome. ‘Landowners making their peace at last with the Bratislava merchants’ guild? Will wonders never cease! But of course I shall grant you the licence.’

Soon enough, Moravian wine was being distributed from Bratislava throughout Europe. It was not uncommon in the years to come to see bottles of 1533 Muškát from Znojmo, Bílov and Mikulov adorning the walls of both English pubs and Greek tavernas.

The news of the death of Bohumil z Rožmberka came not long after that. He died at Rovaniemi of a respiratory illness not long after overseeing the integration of Julevädno’s warriors into the regular Moravian army—not a small task, but one which he was able to undertake for the good of the realm. He was buried in the same cemetery at Luleju in which Kráľ Prokop and Kráľovná Helene had been interred. Bohumil’s death seemed to mark definitively the end of an era—although Moravia had not yet begun to formulate a coherent južnápolitika, she was now no longer invested to the degree that she had been in her severnípolitika.

Building of churches and planting of vineyards were not the only new developments along the southern borders of Moravia. In the border town of Nové Zámky, crown officials quickly discovered that the fortifications had been considerably advanced—above and beyond that which might be expected in a town of (hitherto) relatively small import. Upon making inquiries, the men from Olomouc discovered that the fortifications and embankments had been the project of a local military engineer, named Blagoslav (or Blahoslav in Moravian). Blahoslav having arrived as a refugee with his family in Nové Zámky from that region of Austria that was populated with South Slavs, and bearing a South Slavic name, he had become known to the townsfolk as Blahoslav ‘the Bosnian’—Blahoslav Bosniak. (Whether he was actually a Bosnian or in fact a Lesní Slovak, neither he nor his neighbours could tell.)

The court officials summoned this Blahoslav to them. Deep-jawed and saturnine, and possessed of a trim and wiry build, he certainly had a South Slavic look about him. He regarded the officials of the Moravian Crown warily, and with a look of burning resentment. He had not forgotten the deal which had put his family out onto the streets from their village in the Viedenský Les, or who had been responsible for making it.

‘What would the Crown want of me?’ asked Blahoslav sullenly.

‘Show respect!’ one of the gendarmes who had accompanied the court officials strode forward and laid an arresting hand on Blahoslav’s shoulder. No sooner had he done so than Blahoslav had slid nimbly out of the gendarme’s grasp, and there was a gleam of steel in Blahoslav’s hand.

‘That’s enough!’ barked one of the officials. ‘Hold your place! And you, Blahoslav—put up your steel. There is no cause for needless bloodshed.’

Blahoslav gave a wry, humourless kind of smile and replaced the knife to his belt. The gendarme reluctantly backed away.

‘Your talents have come to our attention,’ said the official. ‘We would like to extend you an offer of invitation to Olomouc, that your art may serve a higher purpose.’

‘Higher purpose?’ Blahoslav scoffed. ‘You can’t possibly expect me to serve a man who has caused so many of my family, my people, to suffer eviction and vagrancy—not for any price!’

Another of the officials spoke calmly to him: ‘The man who sold the Viedenský Les is dead. The one now seated on the throne, the one to whom we have all sworn fealty, is his eight-year-old son—he wasn’t even born yet when you lost your ancestral home. Surely you can’t hold the son blameworthy for the sins of his father?’

Blahoslav, despite his temper, was not an unjust man. Whatever deadly grudge he might hold against Kráľ Jozef, he wouldn’t allow a child, not even his child, to suffer. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘I can’t.’

‘Then would you consider our offer? Not on the late Kráľ’s behalf, but on behalf of the current one?’

Blahoslav did. He took several days about it. But in the end he acquiesced. The position in Olomouc would certainly be lucrative enough. And if there was a chance to shape the mind of the young king, and aid his fellow refugees from the Les… might it not be worth taking?

And so it was that two of the highest councillors in the Kráľ’s inner circle, apart from Matej Štefánik, were a middle-aged Sámi and a young ‘Bosnian’ (or Lesní Slovak), respectively. The very people by whom Moravia had done wrong these past decades each now had, for better or for worse, a labourer in the vineyard—a representative high in the inner Zhromaždenie.

For the Sámit, this welcome turn of events—a Sámi advisor to a very young king—came not a moment too soon. The Orthodox Christian mission of the Great-Ruthenian Abbot Trifon (formerly the hermit Mitrofan or Miťää) in Peäccam was bearing fruit beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, though whether it was good fruit or bad, it was too soon to tell. The good news of Christ was spreading westward from the Kola Peninsula into Anárjávri and further… though Trifon’s recently-baptised lay disciples, like Jompá of Peäccam, occasionally made rather a hash of Christian teachings by interpreting it in the light of Sámi shamanism. The resultant syncretic popular religion became a matter of lively debate among the more educated clergy in Moravia, who felt it to be an unacceptable compromise with heathenry, idolatry and superstition. But in its theological rudiments it certainly was Christian… the process of proper catechism would have to follow where the message of Ímmiľ Alľk had already gone.

 

[HistoryDude]

I wonder if the new king's mischievousness will influence his reign...

Byzantium's newfound imperialism isn't a good thing, but at least they removed any threat from Carpathia.

 

[Revan86]

I feel bad for the queen. Marriages of conveniences are hard enough, doubly when you are married to someone who cannot love you or even feel attracted to you. And I feel bad too for the staff sergeant, who even after his lover his dead has to be silent and suppress all acknowledgement of their love.

Life wasn't easy for folks with same-sex attraction back then, that's for sure. Nor for those they were close to.

The Sami seem to have braved through the darkest days, even if the threat of assimilation and discrimination are still ever present. I wonder how complete will the Christian conversion be, will it create a long lasting syncretism with the pagan religions or will it replace them altogether?

You were anticipating me!

Syncretism is usually the result where Christianity is urged on an indigenous population with varying degrees of coercion and pressure, and it can be of a more or less benign form. I am compelled to wonder if that 'popular religion' event I got in Sápmi pops up more frequently when you're doing active missionary work.

I wonder if the new king's mischievousness will influence his reign...

The question isn't 'if'. The question is 'how'.

Byzantium's newfound imperialism isn't a good thing, but at least they removed any threat from Carpathia.

The ERE does manage to be a pain in my butt for a couple of centuries after this. But yes, the threat from the south did rather push Carpathia into my corner.

 

[Von Acturus]

That Byzantium seems quite the threat for all of the nation's around the Baltic, Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean seas. Hopefully a coalition can cut them down to size.

I find it very interesting how the Moravian state is dependent on the members of the peoples which it more actively discriminates against or ignores to function. The new popular religion can be a sign of a future where Sami and Bosnians and all other ethnic groups have a visible and accepted presence in Moravian culture and society.

 

[Midnite Duke]

The Sami's loss of an idyllic lifestyle is sad but time marches on. The number of cultures that have ended due to technological advancement, aggressive neighbors and climate change is unnumberable. A climate change loser is the mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley. The rural agrarian lifestyle centered on the small family farm has fallen due to changes in farming advancements where one farmer can now produce what a hundred did a century ago. Thanks

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-FOUR.
The Lord is a Man of War
29 October 1536 – 8 May 1539​

Queen Mother Lesana approached the quarters she had once shared with Kráľ Jozef. She checked in her step as the sounds of urgent activity issued from behind the door. Her door.

Hesitating only a moment, she bore down and flung the door wide, and found the Regent and a fresh-faced young blonde, sinning in a rather… inventive position on top of her bed.

The subsequent moment saw the girl flinging what she could of the sheets and her discarded gown hastily and entirely unconvincingly over her person and quailing beneath the daggers that shot over her platinum-blonde head between the Regent and the Queen Mother. Like a cornered squirrel, she first gingerly, then with determined speed, bolted for the door beneath one of Lesana’s shoulders.

The Queen Mother watched her go, and then turned her glare back upon Štefánik, her lip curling with sheer disdain.

‘I care not,’ she said in a voice of pure frost, ‘whether or not the Lord Regent chooses to solicit women of custom. Entertain a whole parade of them, if you like. But I will thank you not to do it in my rooms. And not to do it where my son might stumble in on you with his impressionable eyes.’

She slammed the door on Štefánik before he had the chance to respond.

The incident with Štefánik and the young blonde—a sixteen-year-old East Slovak chit from Zemplín named Larisa—had some rather long-lasting repercussions, both for the Stavovské Zhromaždenie and for the realm as a whole. To those who knew of it—and those who knew of it were, like the Queen Mother, powerful and influential indeed—the Regent’s rakishness was something of an indication of the lax morals of the capital. There followed a widespread crackdown on such ‘goings-on’ among the civil servitors, and the Zhromaždenie issued a rare (and thus scathing) censure of the Regent, which caused something of a crisis of confidence in the government. The Zhromaždenie did not, however, impel Štefánik to resign or revoke his rank of office.

Far from being put aside or cast off, though, Larisa Zemplinská became a permanent fixture of court life as the Regent’s kept woman—and nine months later, the mother of his only son, Artemie. The Štefánik line continued. And Štefánikovcov would continue to occupy positions of rank and distinction in the capital, despite Artemie’s illegitimate status.

Same destabilising event twice in two years. Dang it, Larisa...

~~~​

Whether (depending on whom you asked) as a result of the heroic efforts of Vulle Gáski and Bážá Ruigi on their behalf, or as a result of the sheer cussed stubbornness of the Sámi people as a whole, by the late 1530s the Sámi culture had come to be accepted in Moravia very nearly as much as the Czech and Carpatho-Russian cultures. It became common to see city Sámit in places like Olomouc, Bratislava and Brno as well as in Praha—and unlike the city Sámit of earlier times, these ones tended to be a bit prouder of their roots, and routinely wore their traditional gákti in public. A patois of Czech and the Lule and Kíllt languages was heard regularly in the streets of Praha.

But in the northlands, in the heartland of Sápmi, there was trouble brewing. Once again, it was trouble of a religious nature.

A militant rogue East Geatish preacher named Dag Jägerhorn took to delivering fiery sermons in the so-called ‘Finnmark’, an icy firth-marked region bordering on Anárjárvi. Many of the Northern Sámit under Moravian rule flocked to listen to Dag’s sermons, and became convinced of his teachings. This caused a great deal of consternation among the Orthodox bishops, who faulted the mission of Abbot Trifon for inadequately preparing the Sámit in the faith. (Little—quite possibly too little—was said about the economic hardships and loss of traditional ways of life among the Sámi themselves.)

An indignant official embassage was sent from Olomouc to Norrköping demanding an accounting of this run-amok wolf in sheep’s clothing. But after being granted an audience with King Bo 2., they quickly discovered that this Dag Jägerhorn was a renegade even in the eyes of his own (Roman Catholic) people. He was rumoured to have been swayed by the tutelage of a disgraced Austrian cleric named Heinz Bollinger, who propounded the same erroneous doctrines taught by the Vaudois in western Burgundy.

Little help was forthcoming from the Stures for any joint venture against him in the North, however. Östergötland was aligned strongly with its fellow Germanic powers: East Francia and Gardarike. The first of these directly threatened Moravia’s western border (not to mention the tiny rump principality of Drježdźany, which no longer possessed the city whose name it bore); and the second had been in a long, protracted, bloody war with Moravia in living memory.

It was left to the Moravians to put a stop to this heretical son of the devil, before his sorcerous ways dragged still more of the Sámit hellward.

~~~

Saint Trifon of Pechenga​

‘No, my dear son,’ the abbot said sternly. ‘I will not permit it.’

‘But, Aďžä, give me a word!’

‘A word I have already given you,’ Abbot Trifon spoke again, unperturbed. ‘And that word is “no”.’

The round face of the Sámi youngster screwed up in consternation. ‘Surely, Aďžä, it cannot be right that this madman is allowed to run wild among my kinfolk, my people, in Anárjárvi like this, snatching my brothers and sisters out of the ark of the Church and leaving them to drown in the seas of the world!’

‘It is not right,’ Trifon agreed mildly. ‘I agree with you.’

‘Then why should we not fight for the truth?’

Trifon shook his head and lay his hand on the Sámi novice’s shoulder. ‘Oh, my dear Jeansa. You ask me for a word, but you do not understand the word I have already given to you! You are fighting for the truth. You are fighting for the truth every single day. Every time you say the prayer of the heart, you are fighting. Every time you drag yourself up at dawn, light the lampadas and pray the Our Father before the holy icons of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Mother, you are fighting. Every time you fast from flesh meats and strong wine, you are fighting. Every time you refuse to condemn or judge your brother for a wrong they have done to you, you are fighting. These—not muskets, not cutlasses, not horses, not houfnice—are your weapons.’

‘And what good do those weapons do us against the likes of Dag Jägerhorn?!’

‘Dag Jägerhorn is not your enemy.’

‘But he is a heretic, Aďžä!’

‘He is, most clearly, a heretic.’

‘And are not heretics our enemies?’

Trifon let out a long breath, not quite a sigh. ‘My son, my dear son. We do not wrestle with flesh and blood, but against princes and powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, against wicked spirits in high places.’

‘So you say,’ Jeansa son of Jompá of Peäccam told Trifon sullenly.

‘So says Holy Scripture,’ Trifon pointed out to him. ‘So says the prince of the Apostles, in his letter to the believers in Ephesos. Tell me, my dear one—who is it that saved you?’

‘Ímmiľ Alľk did.’

‘And Ímmiľ Alľk—did he use any swords or knives or guns to save you?’

‘No.’

‘Then how?’

‘He shed His blood for me,’ Jeansa answered. ‘He poured out the living waters from His side. Like a shaman He went down to hell to rescue those there, not as they seem to do in spirit, but by dying in the flesh. And in His death, He conquered the power of death.’

‘And if Our Lord Christ has done all these things, and still does all these things for your salvation, and does them without the use of this world’s weapons—what is it that you fear that Dag Jägerhorn can do to you?’

Jeansa thought. And he thought. And he returned to his cell.

However, there was a commotion in the abbey foregate at Peäccam some weeks later. There appeared there a number of fighting men: Slavs—Moravians and Bohemians—astride horses bearing pistols, or shouldering muskets, or wheeling pieces Budějovice-smithed and -bored. At their head was a gruff Bohemian captain by the name of Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat.

‘I would speak with the abbot here!’ Zdravomil shouted.

Soon enough, Abbot Trifon appeared at the abbey gate. He gazed about at the armed and armoured men who were gathered there.

Zdravomil addressed Trifon brusquely. ‘We have arrived from Rovaniemi. We are bound up the coast to do battle with the armies of the foul Dag Jägerhorn.’

‘I was informed of your coming,’ Trifon nodded calmly. ‘Please, be welcome, dear ones. We do not have much—vegetables, fish and monks’ bread, some small ale—but you are welcome to what we have.’

The Moravians and Bohemians bustled their way into the courtyard. To the Sámi monks instructed by a Russian abbot, the behaviour of the West Slavic soldiery seemed crude, almost boorish. They swore, they belched, they laughed roughly and derisively among themselves, and—worst of all—many of them did not remember God when they ate and drank! Jeansa was outraged at their behaviour, and let the abbot know of it.

‘My son,’ said the abbot, ‘even if they do not love the Lord, the Lord loves them. And so must we.’

It was midway through the week when Zdravomil, at least, seemed to remember his manners.

‘My Lord Abbot,’ he saluted Trifon, ‘please forgive us. We are not accustomed to being in such a place of tranquillity as this. I fear we have disturbed your peace.’

Trifon embraced Zdravomil with his hands. ‘As Christ forgives, I forgive. Forgive me, a sinner.’

Zdravomil couldn’t quite suppress a chuckle. ‘You—a sinner?’

‘If the Lord should mark iniquities, which one among us could stand?’ Trifon quoted the Psalmist. ‘But there is forgiveness with Him.’

‘If you say so,’ Zdravomil said wryly, unwittingly echoing the novice who stood by Trifon’s side. ‘If you will consent to it—would you bless us before we depart, and pray for our victory?’

‘Both I will do and gladly,’ Trifon spoke gravely. ‘Gather your men in the courtyard.’

It was done. All the men who had been stomping and swaggering around the place like they owned it were brought out, and at a sharp command they were suddenly made silent and solemn. Trifon emerged in his priestly garb and pectoral cross and kamilavka, with a Psalter in one hand and an aspergillum in the other. Jeansa bore the bowl of holy water behind him, as the abbot walked up and down in front of the soldiers at attention.

‘Spasi, Gospodi, ľudi Tvoja,’ intoned Abbot Trifon as he whipped the aspergillum back and forth in the air, sprinkling each of the soldiers, their horses and weapons in turn with the holy water, ‘i blagoslovi dostojanie Tvoje, pobedy pravoslavnym christianom na soprotivnye daruja, i Tvojo sochraňaja Krestom Tvoim žiteľstvo…’

Jeansa was at first scandalised again that they were blessing these rough and worldly men—the same soldiers whom Abbot Trifon had forbidden him to join in their battle against the heretics. But he marked carefully the faces of some of them. Although quite a few of them had a bored, blasé look, as people just going through the motions of prayer, some of them had their heads bowed in reverent silence. Some of them even crossed themselves. And Jeansa could have sworn that it wasn’t just the holy water that was rolling down the cheeks of one soldier who had been particularly rowdy!

When the blessing was done, Jeansa returned again to Abbot Trifon.

‘Would you have me give you a word, my dear one?’ asked the abbot.

This time, Jeansa struggled to get out the words… but that was on account of a struggle he was fighting within his own heart. Did he understand? Having said one thing to him, and another thing to the soldiers… having forbidden the one and blessed the other… if he had seen these two things side by side, he might have thought the Abbot to be an utter hypocrite. But now…

‘You blessed them to fight the enemy.’

Abbot Trifon turned to him.

‘You saw the tears on that one? In the courtyard?’

‘I did.’

‘He was already fighting the enemy.’

It came to Jeansa. With sudden, jarring clarity. And he couldn’t hold back his own tears anymore.

‘Forgive me, Aďžä. Forgive me,’ he choked. He was about to start bawling like a baby. But Trifon got to him first and put his arms around him, in a gesture of pure comfort and consolation.

‘You do understand, my dear, dear one. As Christ forgives, I forgive.’

~~~

The armies of Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat marched west from Peäccam on their way up from Rovaniemi. The reason they had cut across into Kola was precisely to cut off Dag Jägerhorn’s access to the sea and trap him against the Fells. They had not expected to meet with a Russian abbot in that northernmost outpost of Moravian rule. But for many of the soldiers, their whole morale seemed to have changed as a result—whether for better or for worse it could not yet be said.

The two armies were in fact fairly evenly matched, with roughly equal numbers of cavalry and infantry. The one advantage that Kolovrat had, at least in military terms, were his handful of mobile artillery pieces at the rear—and there weren’t quite enough of those to make a real difference. And unfortunately, even that advantage was obviated by the fact that they had to cross the Karasjohka to attack Jägerhorn’s camp. No hard advantage could avail either side. The outcome was in other hands.

Both sides called upon the Lord to assist them in the battle. The wild fire and thunder of Dag Jägerhorn’s sermonising whipped the rebellious East Geats into a righteous frenzy, whereas the holy water that Abbot Trifon had sprinkled upon Kolovrat’s army could still be felt upon their skin and his prayer of ‘O Lord, save Thy people’ was still pealing softly like a church bell in many of their ears.

‘Herren är en stridsman!’ cried the Jägerhorniter. ‘Herren är hans namn!’

From the Moravian side, a young soldier’s voice rose up in song. ‘Boh je naše útočisko aj sila, pomoc v úzkostiach stále prítomná! Preto sa nebudeme báť, aj keby sa krajina prepadla a hory rúcali sa do mora…’

At the Karasjohka by the village of Njuorggán, the men of the East clashed against the men of the West; the thunder of the cannon crashed and the cries of horses and men reached up to heaven. The Karasjohka flowed red with East Geatish and Moravian blood. The Lord might be a man of war, but it was abominable to think that He could take any pleasure in this slaughter in His name.

In the end, though, it was the Jägerhorniter who were put to flight. And though he was quite unaccustomed to it, Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat was humbled—for he knew that his planning and his strategy had practically nothing to do with the outcome.

~~~

The news of this victory reached Olomouc, however, to much celebration. And much less humility.

And as the Stavovské Zhromaždenie were again convoked, it was the high clergy who were suddenly emboldened—beyond even the nobility.

‘God is clearly with us,’ opined the eristic Bishop Arsenie of Bratislava. ‘Our victory in the North is a sign! Perhaps now is the time, Lord Regent, that we should consider coming in force to the aid of our brethren in the Faith who suffer under the Austrian yoke and under the Pope’s crooked crozier! We cannot leave good Slavs, good Slovaks, to suffer torture and eviction as they have done—the rotten fruit of an impious and wicked bargain struck by the former king!’

‘That’s quite enough,’ said Matej Štefánik. ‘I will not abide slander of the former King in this court. The Crown is as much a sacred trust to me, howbeit temporary and expedient, as your mitre is to you.’

(That comment got a few wry smirks and suppressed chuckles. It was indeed rather rich coming from a man who’d been caught red-handed wenching on the former king’s bed.)

‘Be that as it may,’ Štefánik went on, perhaps a trifle more forcefully than he might have otherwise, ‘I happen to agree. The situation in Panónsk is highly volatile, and Austria’s actions there have not been conducive to good order. I would be willing to front a claim to those lands from the clergy, provided that it could be arranged legally and with proper cause.’

‘The cause is proper,’ Bishop Arsenie pressed. ‘The Church will see it through.’

‘Then it is agreed,’ said Štefánik. ‘Karl of Austria will hear of our grievances—and will answer them, either in arbitrage or upon the field of battle.’

 

[Von Acturus]

War with the whole of Germany is on the horizon. That'll be a bloody one!

 

[Midnite Duke]

Moravia is being mighty expansive. Thanks

 

[HistoryDude]

Ah. Well, it seems as if the regent is doing interesting things. Why is he still the regent again?

Moravia attacking Austria after defeating heretics (are those Protestants?) is a bold move. Let's hope that this tale doesn't imitate Icarus's.

 

[Revan86]

War with the whole of Germany is on the horizon. That'll be a bloody one!

It will.

Moravia is being mighty expansive. Thanks

It is.

Ah. Well, it seems as if the regent is doing interesting things. Why is he still the regent again?

Moravia attacking Austria after defeating heretics (are those Protestants?) is a bold move. Let's hope that this tale doesn't imitate Icarus's.

Power does things to people, and even a man like Štefánik isn't immune to its temptations. He wouldn't be the first to prefer his side dishes to be nubile teenage blondes, either.

To be honest, it is actually fairly easy to write sinners, or even heroes with Shakespearean flaws. There were plenty of those in Lions of Olomouc: Pravoslav was a controlling narcissist, Radomír 1. was something very close to a sociopath, and Želimír was a paranoid basket-case who literally had to get pimp-smacked by his archbishop into doing the right thing--and writing those guys was fun. I believe it was Ursula K LeGuin who maintained (tongue slightly in cheek) that it's a lot harder to write good characters that stay interesting.

Now, maybe this is me being overly critical of my own work, but I found this to be the case in Lions. I tried writing a 'good king' in Bohodar 3. Letopisár, but honestly he came off as too idealistic and cutesy. In retrospect the only truly good king of the Rychnovský line in that story was Jakub, and his 'goodness' was never accentuated but always understated: he was 'good' by being a dutiful son and soldier, a loyal husband, and a caring father. He had opportunities to do wrong, and he gave them up and denied himself out of love. That spoke volumes to me about his character.

As to the heretics in Finnmark, in-game they were considered Waldensians. Historically, the Waldensians were a proto-Protestant lay movement in Switzerland which preached apostolic poverty and attacked the privileges of the clergy; most of them ended up going back into the Catholic Church, but a pretty chunky minority of them joined the later Reformed movement under Zwingli and Cauvin. I tried to bring some of this flavour into the story by having Jägerhorn be tutored by a rogue preacher from 'Burgundy' (which is the in-universe equivalent of Switzerland).

 

[filcat]

'Burgundy' (which is the in-universe equivalent of Switzerland).

lol. Good thing you highlighted the context as in-universe, otherwise if burgundy as equivalent of switzerland is said at the wrong place, one can face the thunderous gaze from any helveti/a of confoederatio

 

[Revan86]

TWENTY-FIVE.
The Valley of Berachah
8 July 1539 – 1 January 1544

I.
8 July 1539 – 30 August 1542
​

The war that the Regent had planned to declare upon Austria in defence of the Orthodox Slavs of Pest and the Les did not occur. That was because a different hammer-stroke befell Moravia, in the summer of 1539.

The Knyaz of Biela Rus’, Matfei 2. Oskyldr, declared war on Galicia in order to reclaim from them the traditional White Russian capital city of Minsk. Biela Rus’, unfortunately, had suffered numerous humiliations over the previous decades, mostly at the hands of the Rychnovských-Nisa. Wedged as it was between Great Rus’ and the Galician lands, White Rus’ often found itself on the short end of the stick, and their territory had dwindled dangerously. But they still had a powerful friend in Moravia. Even if this war would recall every past favour done, and the memory of Sister Liusia Rasćislaevna into the bargain—Minsk would be regained. And Matej Štefánik wasn’t in a great position to say ‘no’.

Beginning something of a trend, Iziaslav 2. Rychnovský-Nisa had forged alliances with powers to the West. He had already forged marital ties with the Tann family of Bayern, and the Kaloēthēs family of Italy (belonging to the same dynasty as the Eastern Roman Emperors, but in a different male line). As a result, no sooner had Moravia declared war on Galicia than it found its southwestern marches threatened by Archduke Lantfrid 2. von der Tann and Despot Aripertos 3. Kaloēthēs, respectively.

The White Ruthenian war for Minsk was to be a bloody, wretched, devastating affair for Moravia.

Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat had been recalled to western Bohemia, from which he was to spearhead the attack—not into Galicia, but into Bayern to head off the reinforcements. The Bavarian Reichsmarschall was, ironically, of partial Moravian extraction—hence his name, Dietpold Morawitzky. Owing to his familiarity with the terrain and the people, it was evidently thought best to employ him to lead the attack.

Morawitzky crossed into Moravia first; Kolovrat met the Bavarian army near Domazlice on the march between the two countries, just southwest of Plzeň. The deployment of the armies was fairly standard; even the numbers of cannon on each side was at parity. Morawitzky fielded his men with frustrating manœuvres and feints, however—Kolovrat could tell at once that this was no court-rearling but an accomplished field general opposing him.

That made it somewhat bewildering when Morawitzky sacrificed an entire wing of his own cavalry to secure a line of retreat for his main infantry and artillery units, which departed without firing a shot. Suspecting further deception, Kolovrat gave the order to halt pursuit. However, the order came from the Regent—not to pursue Morawitzky, but instead to begin occupying Bavarian land and denying him the ground from which to launch another attack on the southwestern front.

Kolovrat privately disagreed with this order, but he carried it out anyway. The Czech general quickly occupied Oberpfalz, Straubing, Passau and Regensburg, where he was soon joined by the Sorbian general Hrabiše Parčowski, who was of a much different temper than Kolovrat. Parčowski insisted on taking command of all field and combat operations, relegating Kolovrat to the comparatively thankless task of staffing occupying garrisons in the territories they’d gained. Kolovrat attempted to warn Parčowski of Morawitzky’s deceptions in battle and warned him about making any unnecessary engagements, but Parčowski dismissed these (at least in private) as the spooks of a timid old man.

Hrabiše Parčowski advanced southward, and unfortunately allowed himself to be lured into an ambush near Landshut. Morawitzky had left a rump force behind him to hold Parčowski’s men in place while he brought in northern Italian reinforcements commanded by Liutpert Ludovisi. The battle at Landshut turned into an utter fiasco. Half of the manpower of the occupying force was being supplied by Drježdźany’s Sorbs.

Parčowski’s reckless advance had left him a sitting duck. Kolovrat marched his forces southward at double time after Christmas Day of 1539 in an attempt to haul the Sorbs’ behinds out of the fire. Kolovrat managed to extract Parčowski’s Sorbs at an acceptable cost, but Morawitzky’s little bait-and-switch had quite effectively robbed the Moravians and Sorbs of their forward momentum and put them squarely on a rearward footing… leaving the Bavarians and Italians with clear avenues of attack into Cheb, Plzeň and Budějovice.

The Moravian defeat at Landshut was only the beginning of the bad news. Pomerania had been warming toward Galicia for some time, and decided on that crucial moment to stab Moravia in the back. On 29 January 1540, Despoina Dervan Anchabadze-Vskhoveli of Pomerania issued a decree barring all ships flying Moravian colours from of her Baltic Sea ports, utterly isolating the landlocked Moravian heartland from its Sámi holdings in the north. This base treachery decisively ended the Moravian-Pomeranian alliance that had been the vital linchpin of Moravia’s severnípolitika, and Regent Matej Štefánik was left with the formality of annulling the treaty with the Pomeranian despotess on 1 September the same year.

In the meanwhile, Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat was busily fighting an engage-and-retreat campaign against the advancing Bavarian-Italian force of Morawitzky and Ludovisi. He was no stranger to stratagems either, and Kolovrat managed to harry and provoke the Italians into splitting their army in half and pursuing his own toward Brno. The Moravians finally scored a victory over the advancing Italians there, but the fact remained that they were fighting the enemy inside Moravia Proper. That fact wasn’t exactly a morale-booster. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, in order to front the costs of the war and balance the books, the Regency government had taken to asking favours from East Francian lending-houses (the Italian ones being presently unavailable for obvious reasons).

A zbrojnoš, a fighting man, of Štefánik’s calibre, understood all too well the need to maintain morale. The Regent therefore sent the reserve armies of Moravia into Galicia along the northwestern border to begin attacking the main enemy, in a line running west to east from Krakow to Halych, and sent a missive to Kolovrat on the western front to hold as well as he could with what forces he had to hand.

The eastern front, owing to the engagement of Galicia’s troops elsewhere against White Rus’, performed admirably. Soon Krakow was under Moravian control, as were Tarnów, Peremyšl and Drohobyč, and the fastnesses of Sandomir and Halyč were under Moravian siege.

~~~​

‘Bážá? Bážá!’

Tomáš found the white-bearded Sámi scientist lying on the floor in his study, and he feared the worst had befallen him. The thirteen-year-old king went to his mentor’s side, and checked to see if he was breathing. He was, but it was laboured.

‘Don’t… worry for me, Tomáš,’ said Bážá Ruigi. ‘Be a good lad, and fetch a priest here.’

‘Why, Bážá? You’ll be fine! Of course you’ll be fine!’

Bážá chuckled. ‘Young people. You think you’ll live forever. Go… and get me a priest, Tomáš.’

On the edge of tears, Tomáš ran down to the palace chapel and fetched the dean there, Father Gorazd. The bespectacled priest followed Tomáš biddably up to the room where Bážá was, and between the two of them they handled Bážá Ruigi to a bed and made him comfortable, though by this time the Sámi scientist’s breathing was becoming quite laboured and ragged. Tomáš Rychnovský stood respectfully to the side and out of earshot while Father Gorazd shrove Bážá Ruigi one final time, administered to him the extreme unction and gave him the Holy Gifts. Tomáš then came forward. Bážá clutched him by the hand.

‘Do right by your people,’ Bážá Ruigi exhorted the king. ‘Act with justice, love mercy, and walk in humility.’

The first two of those would come far easier to Tomáš than the last, but he promised to abide by his teacher’s last wish.

‘Am I truly to die…’ Bážá spoke thinly, ‘… so far from my Koutajoki?’

Those were the last words that were spoken by Bážá Ruigi, on the thirtieth of November, 1540. He departed this earthly life in the small hours of the following morning.

Tomáš mourned Bážá Ruigi deeply, and found it deeply unfair that his beloved tutor should be taken from him at the all-too-early age of 51. The scientist had been a profound influence upon him, had instilled in him an indelible curiosity about the created world and its workings, and had also managed to impress upon him a certain degree of sympathy for the Sámi people and their plight.

~~~​

The Veliky Knyaz of Ruthenia, Vseslav 4. Rychnovský, passed away not long after the court advisor did, on the twenty-first of February, 1541–leaving the throne to his nephew, Vseslav 5. Rychnovský. Štefánik was quick to renew ties with the Russian branch of the Rychnovských; at this point, with Pomerania having decidedly set its face against Moravia during a time of war, Moravia needed all the friends it could get.

And that included former enemies. The Detvanských of Carpathia came forward with a surprising offer in late March that year. Általános Svorad 2. of Carpathia came in person to Olomouc at the head of a long entourage and personally extended the hand of friendship to Regent Matej Štefánik, offering not only the usual niceties but the formal proposal of an alliance.

Štefánik was suspicious at first–there was little love lost between the Nitrans and the Carpathians to the south, who had long harboured designs upon the Slovak lands. But even he had to admit that Svorad 2. seemed to be nothing but sincere. The old Moravian-Carpathian border disputes over Zemplín and Maramoroš, and the blood feud with the Ruthenian Khovanských, seemed like ancient history next to the voracious territorial ambitions of the Kaloētheis, and the subsequent invasions from the south that had reduced the territory of his ancestral patrimony by over half, including the old heartlands that had formerly belonged to the Bulgarian tribe from which Svorad hailed.

And to most of the Moravian diplomatic corps, even the hand of friendship extended by a former enemy seemed like a godsend. Moravia’s entire foreign policy posture had been blown to hell by Pomerania’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, and despite Kolovrat’s tenacious asymmetrical strategy in the west, there could be little doubt that the Moravians and Bohemians were getting their rear ends quite thoroughly handed to them on that front by the opposing alliance of Bavarians and Italians. Moravia’s and Carpathia’s mutual embrace was certainly driven by political necessity, but it could also no less be said that this embrace was warm and welcome.

The Moravians attempted to make up for their losses in the west by consolidating their advances in the east, but the victories were Pyrrhic when considered in the broader light. Sandomir fell to Moravian guns on the tenth of June–but Praha fell on the fifteenth. Halyč ran up the white flag on the thirtieth of July–but then so did Plzeň two weeks later, on the fifteenth of August. The Carpathian Emperor selflessly sent up several divisions of husáry, but these were to little avail in checking the momentum of the Bavarian-Italian advance.

Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat, who was fighting off both Morawitzky and Ludovisi more or less single-handedly, had to improvise in his tactics. Although his hit-and-run cavalry raids were effective in harrying and luring the enemy into small ambushes, wherever his infantry met the enemy, they were outclassed. The ‘deep defence’ tactics that the Moravian generals had been experimenting with prior to the war, it soon became clear, were useless when confronted with a trained force superior in numbers. The old pike-and-shot formations which Kolovrat had been using were too rigid, and belonged to an era when shield-walls and solid ranks were what swayed battles in their favour.

After hearing a story in the camp one night, from a well-travelled soldier of fortune who had fought in Andorra, Kolovrat began turning to some unexpected sources for tactical inspiration.

The Neustrians, in their border campaigns against al-Andalus, faced similar situations to that which now presented itself in Bohemia. If this soldier of fortune was to be believed (and not all such mercenaries were, mind), the Neustrians were able to overcome the larger Andalusian forces, in his words, ‘en divisant les tiers’. Instead of staggering their pike-and-shot forces for depth, they kept their musketeers in a formation around their pikemen, and their arquebusiers in four separate corner formations around those. The musketeers were kept spaced widely enough that if they met with a cavalry charge, they could yield quickly to allow the pikemen to advance to meet it, with covering fire from the hackbuts.

It was an intriguing battle tactic. After studying what the Neustrians had done by arraying their forces like this against larger Andalusian armies, Zdravomil z Kolovrat began ‘hollowing out’ his pike squares and shifting the musketeers and houfnice into positions along the side in a modified division-en-tiers. The greater flexibility and speed of manœuvre that this provided was soon evidenced in battle.

On the twenty-fourth of January, 1542, Kolovrat dared to march head-on against Morawitzky’s army from Bratislava via Brno… meeting them right outside of Olomouc. The last time Olomouc had been besieged like this, it was in a civil war, and it had been a Sámi nobleman who had taken the city and held the king’s daughter for ransom. This was somewhat different: a foreign invasion. And the citizens of Olomouc turned out in force to aid Kolovrat or at least to wish him well.

It would be wrong to claim that Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat wasn’t nervous or anxious on the eve of this battle, but as an experienced commander he did not let these emotions show to any but his trusted lieutenants. He was trying what was for him an entirely novel battle tactic against a force of roughly equal numbers, led by a highly experienced and manifestly devious commander. But for all that, there would be no half measures here. He committed one and all to the divisions-en-tiers, and rolled the devil’s bones.

The results were encouraging.

Kolovrat quickly found that the altered tactics worked particularly well with the artillery, which could easily defend the central infantry formation from flanking actions. Even though the Bavarians had higher morale, the Moravians’ newfound manœuvrability more than made up for it. No matter which side the Bavarian riders came in from, they found Moravian pikes on that side and entire lines of enfilade fire and artillery balls mowing them down. The Bavarians still made a fight of it, and they actually managed to cut into the northwestern corners of two of the artillery formations before the musketeers could move to provide covering fire. But man for man and shot for shot, the Bavarians were still decisively outclassed at Olomouc, and were forced to call the retreat. Wild cheers and shouts of joy and praise to God went up from the walls of Olomouc upon seeing Kolovrat carry the day.

Carrying the momentum forward, Kolovrat moved northward to engage Ludovisi where he was besieging Brassel. Ludovisi commanded a larger force, made up of mixed Italians and Galicians–nearly twenty-seven thousand strong. Even with Kolovrat’s reinforcements from the eastern front and volunteers from Olomouc, he could only conjure up twenty-five thousand. As a result, he adopted a mixed tactic: tiers formations as the advance force in combination with a Moravitzky-inspired bait-and-switch, with the bulk of the cavalry held in reserve in the Opolanie at several hours’ remove.

The battle of Brassel happened on the second of March, as the rivers were just beginning to thaw and swell. The bait-and-switch worked brilliantly. The reinforcement cavalry charge from the rear sent the Italians into a panic, and they left the Galicians behind to be cut down in a bloody rout. At long last, Moravia seemed to have regained the upper hand on the western front of the war. This was shown when Kolovrat marched essentially unchecked toward Praha and countersieged the city. The liberation of Praha from the Bavarian-Italian occupying force did not take long–less than six months. The Bohemians were assuredly grateful that one of their own had come to their rescue.

~~~​

‘Your Majesty,’ said Matej Štefánik, ‘we must make ready to leave, now.’

‘Whatever for?’ asked Tomáš. ‘Surely we aren’t in danger here! Not after Kolovrat’s victory!’

‘An enemy is most dangerous when he’s cornered,’ Štefánik told his charge knowledgeably. ‘Morawitzky and Ludovisi may have been put to flight, but now Iziaslav has turned his personal attention on us here. That means a far bloodier, far less civilised fight on our hands than we’ve had so far.’

‘Surely it can’t be that bad!’

Štefánik steepled his fingers, and Tomáš groaned inwardly. A history lecture was coming on, he knew it. Sure enough: ‘Your Majesty, during the May Day War between Galicia and Moravia, the Galicians invaded and took Novy Sadec. What followed afterward was infamous. They rounded up anyone in that town of Bulghar or Jewish descent–whether they were actually Jewish or not, did not matter to them. They threw them into swine-pens and shot at their legs and feet. They cut off ears and noses and took them for trophies. They herded them into churches and guild-halls and set those buildings on fire, burning them inside while they cheered and got drunk outside. They stripped women naked, humiliated them and paraded them through the streets, before lashing them to posts and beating them to death.’

‘That’s beastly!’ Tomáš cried.

‘With respect, your Majesty, no. Not beastly. There is no beast as cruel as a human being with a grudge,’ Štefánik remarked. ‘Especially when that grudge is given licence from worldly authority. And lest you get too proud, understand that there are cruelties in Moravia’s history as well.’

‘I understand,’ said Tomáš.

‘I hope for your sake that there are limits to that understanding as yet,’ the Regent said drily, ‘but what’s important now is that–for your own safety–you should not be in Olomouc when the Galicians begin besieging the city.’

Tomáš reluctantly agreed to flee the city to meet up with Kolovrat’s camp, accompanied by Regent Štefánik and a handful of other retainers.

One of the local nobles, however, saw in the young king’s flight a prime opportunity. For several years prior to Tomáš’s majority, Barón Vojtech z Ditrichštejna had been building up a base of support and recruiting a private army. That endeavour had, if truth be told, been aided significantly by the Regent’s tarnished reputation, and by mounting dissatisfaction with his administration over the growing debt and the débâcle that had been the progress of the war on the Western front until recently. But as the Kráľ fled the city, Ditrichštejna seized his chance, and raised his own flag in rebellion. Two hostile armies were now encamped upon either side of Olomouc.

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, that's terrible timing for a succession crisis.

Is a war with Pomerania approaching?

Also, just out of curiosity: did you reload to avoid the war with Austria, given that the last chapter ended with a screenshot of that declaration of war?

 

[filcat]

Also, just out of curiosity: did you reload to avoid the war with Austria, given that the last chapter ended with a screenshot of that declaration of war?

Nope, that screenshot was not a DOW but a message for gaining a conquest-cb.

 

[Midnite Duke]

Allies, do not want to live without them, but so dangerous to one's health. The Pretender picked a fine time to revolt with Galicians on the doorstep. Thanks

 

[Von Acturus]

With a but of luck the pretender and invader armies will end up fighting one another and the Moravians will just have to do a little cleanup.

This disastrous war and the loss of Pomerania seems to warrant a new foreign policy. Carpathia may be a beginning, especially if Moravia seeks to counter Byzantine influence.

 

[Idhrendur]

Oh man, what timing. But maybe those invading armies will take care of him for you.

 

[Revan86]

Well, that's terrible timing for a succession crisis.

Is a war with Pomerania approaching?

Also, just out of curiosity: did you reload to avoid the war with Austria, given that the last chapter ended with a screenshot of that declaration of war?

Nope, that screenshot was not a DOW but a message for gaining a conquest-cb.

Yup, what @filcat said. I didn't actually declare the war; I got the casus belli for it and intended to use it later. Just didn't get the chance.

Allies, do not want to live without them, but so dangerous to one's health. The Pretender picked a fine time to revolt with Galicians on the doorstep. Thanks

With a but of luck the pretender and invader armies will end up fighting one another and the Moravians will just have to do a little cleanup.

This disastrous war and the loss of Pomerania seems to warrant a new foreign policy. Carpathia may be a beginning, especially if Moravia seeks to counter Byzantine influence.

Yeah, there's a definite pivot from north to south with Pomerania's abandonment of Moravian interests in the north. Of course, things were already on somewhat shaky ground with them given that they had claims on Vratislav and a couple of my other Polish holdings.

And yeah, you guys do a most excellent job of reading my foreshadowing...

Oh man, what timing. But maybe those invading armies will take care of him for you.

One way or the other, right? Only one way to find out...

 

[Revan86]

II.
1 September 1542 – 1 January 1544

And he said: Attend ye, all Juda, and you that dwell in Jerusalem, and thou king Josaphat: Thus saith the Lord to you: Fear ye not, and be not dismayed at this multitude. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. To-morrow you shall go down against them: for they will come up by the ascent named Sis, and you shall find them at the head of the torrent, which is over against the wilderness of Jeruel. It shall not be you that shall fight: but only stand with confidence, and you shall see the help of the Lord over you, O Juda, and Jerusalem: fear ye not, nor be you dismayed: to-morrow you shall go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.

2 Paralipomenon 20:15-17​

‘He will not be going with you,’ Lesana told Matej Štefánik bluntly.

‘With respect, madam,’ the zbrojnoš answered her, ‘this is a time of war, and the king’s proper place is with his men.’

‘I do not speak merely of my wishes,’ the Queen Mother bridled. ‘Tomáš is now of age. It is high time that he fulfilled his duty to the family, wedded and sired a child–especially in a time of war when Tomáš might be called upon to fight. The royal line needs that assurance.’

Štefánik sighed. His term as Regent was over, and he could no longer exercise any official sway over the king or his mother. Still, he made one last-ditch attempt to exercise his prior authority.

‘The King’s presence will be a great boon to morale. The people of the country will see that he has not abandoned them.’

‘And he will not have abandoned them,’ Lesana spoke. ‘Indeed, in siring an heir he will have assured them of the stability that comes with an unbroken line. Ditrichštejna will no longer be able to claim that God is no longer with the Rychnovských.’

In the end, Tomáš was prevailed upon to accompany his mother to Velehrad, where the Sokol family from which she hailed originated, and where Lesana’s uncle and aunt still held an estate. There, the Queen Mother had already arranged a match for Tomáš to his second cousin in the maternal Sokol line: Milomíra Sokolová.

There was something a bit more than slightly self-interested about the Queen Mother’s choice of betrothal. She had a position at court that she wanted to keep secure, and a son whose gratitude and goodwill she would rely on for her maintenance. And after her experience with Jozef, a husband who couldn’t love her, one couldn’t exactly blame Lesana for wanting that added bit of insurance that would come from consolidating her son’s ties to her family.

But the betrothal interview went well. Tomáš was young, energetic, and possessed of the idealism common to many teens. And Milomíra, who was only a couple of months older, was remarkably sharp and perceptive, and her grandfather (the master of the estate) spoke proudly of his granddaughter’s education and keen head for the legal niceties. It helped from Tomáš’s perspective, of course, that Milomíra was a good-looking young woman of fifteen with sandy-brown hair, a round, regular face, healthy full cheeks and lips and a precocious figure; just as it helped from Milomíra’s that Tomáš was healthy, robust after the usual West Slavic way, and of above-average height for his age.

The private interview went even better. Milomíra Sokolová took delight in showing Tomáš all manner of documents related to ancient judgements at court and obscure aspects of canon law. And then she brought out the Sokol genealogy.

‘We are an ancient family,’ she told Tomáš with pride. ‘There was a Sokol present at the Blood Court of Brehna, for example. Our surname indicates that one of our line was responsible for keeping the king’s falcon; thus, it’s likely that our family was attached to one of the royal hunting-grounds.’

Despite their near relation, Tomáš found himself quite deeply attracted to Milomíra Sokolová. It wasn’t just her looks, either. Tomáš knew a thing or two about genealogy and canon law, and was thus able to hold his own in conversation with her. And that led her to open up. Something of a recognition of like for like took place between them without being spoken aloud. And Tomáš found there was something quite alluring about a woman who was both passionate and competent, and also something endearing about the fact that she was willing to share this interest of hers with him.

It was not long after the betrothal interview that Tomáš met with the general who had done the most to advance his cause, Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat, as he was returning from the western front at Praha through Pardubice. Queen Mother Lesana’s party was able to join Kolovrat’s retinue at Svitavy with little trouble, by taking the circuitous southern route skirting clear of the capital. The trim-bearded Bohemian nobleman snapped the young king a sharp salute when the two of them met.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Kolovrat, ‘I am glad to see you hale, whole and well-accompanied. The former Regent understands his business, I will give him that.’

‘I’m glad to see you too, Zdravomil. How goes the campaign?’

‘Uncertain,’ Kolovrat informed the king with his characteristic caution and honesty. ‘There’s a reason I’m making the assault directly from the west: the odds will be better in our favour than if we approached by the river. But I have no idea what to expect when I get to Olomouc. A great deal rides on what manner of man Ditrichštejna is: whether he’s a garden-variety political opportunist with delusions of grandeur, or a deep-dyed, black-hearted traitor who would sell out his nation to the Galicians. But we might be facing twenty thousand men there, or fifty thousand. I don’t think I need to tell you what that means.’

Indeed he didn’t. Tomáš understood very well that in the former case, there might be a chance of victory. In the latter case, there was none.

~~~​

It might be said with some justice that the White Ruthenian War for Minsk was decided precisely in those later battles outside the Moravian capital city. And once again, it was not the might of Moravia’s armies nor the cunning of Moravia’s generals–though both Moravia had in plenty–that turned the tide of the war. It could be credited to the intervention of the Most High.

And when they began to sing praises, the Lord turned their ambushments upon themselves: that is to say, of the children of Ammon, and of Moab, and of mount Seir, who were come out to fight against Juda; and they were slain. For the children of Ammon, and of Moab, rose up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, to kill and destroy them. And when they had made an end of them, they turned also against one another, and destroyed one another.

2 Paralipomenon 20:22-23​

As Kráľ Tomáš’s party and Zdravomil Kolovrat’s army made their way eastward along the Bohemian Road to Olomouc, they came to the vantage point at Veľký Kosíř, overlooking the Morava Valley outside the capital city. There, looking down into the field which lay between them and Olomouc, they found a remarkable sight awaiting them.

The armies flying the rebel vanes of Vojtech z Ditrichštejna were fighting a pitched battle against the northern Italian forces of Liutpert Ludovisi and the Galicians under Iziaslav 3.

‘Which one should we help?’ asked Kráľ Tomáš.

Kolovrat smiled grimly. ‘Neither. Let them fight.’

Ludovisi clearly hadn’t been expecting a large private army to show up on his rearguard as he was besieging the capital city, and that showed in the hurried appearance of his deployments. His cavalry in particular had been caught unawares, and his riders were being expertly outridden and thwarted by the noble cavalry sworn to the Moravian pretender. The Italian horsemen were cut down practically to a man in the resulting bloodbath.

After the horsemen were dealt with, the Moravian rebels turned their guns on the Italian infantry, and began slaughtering them with equal brutal efficiency. As it was clear that he had no hope of retaining his ground at Olomouc, Ludovisi began ordering a retreat northward for his artillery units, using his surviving infantry as rearguard cover.

‘Excellent,’ Kolovrat remarked, with only the barest trace of sarcasm. ‘Now, to thank Ditrichštejna properly for his service to the realm.’

The general sounded the charge, and the Second and First Armies of Moravia swept down from Kosíř onto the field to do battle with the surviving rebels. Vojtech z Ditrichštejna had no time at all to recoup his losses or refresh his men, but had to make do with the formations he had as he turned to face the Moravian loyalists. Zdravomil once again used his bait-and-switch tactics and his modified divisions-en-tiers to devastating effect. Just as the Italian cavalry had been cut down by the rebel riders, so too they in turn were mown down by enfilade fire as dry grass by the scythe. By simply waiting for their enemies to destroy each other, the Moravian Armies had swept the field at minimal cost to themselves.

The rebels broke southward in rout just as the Italians had broken northward. The Kráľ and his general followed, first to Brno and then southward toward Bratislava where, on the twenty-fourth of November, the rebels to a man lay down arms, and delivered Vojtech z Ditrichštejna up to the justice of Kolovrat’s military tribunal.

‘Barón Vojtech Janíček z Ditrichštejna: It is the solemn and considered judgement of this tribunal,’ Kolovrat told the rebellious nobleman, ‘that you are guilty of high treason: a crime punishable by hanging you by the neck until dead. But in light of your bravery against the invading Italian force, I am inclined to commute that sentence. You are therefore offered the choice of a traitor’s death, or the more dignified death by beheading, to be carried out at once.’

There wasn’t really that much choice to be had between the possibility of a drawn-out, excruciating death by strangulation at the end of a hangman’s rope, and the comparatively quicker and more painless block. Thus it was no surprise when Ditrichštejna exclaimed: ‘I elect for the end that is due to a man of my rank and station in life.’

The block was brought out and Ditrichštejna made to lay his head upon it. One of the infantrymen took the axe and landed the blow as cleanly as might be expected.

~~~​

With the Italians removed for the time being from the fighting, all that was left was to deal with the Galician main force. The Belarusians had pressed significant gains in the east against Galicia, as most of the fighting was occurring on Moravian soil. But the fury of Galicia was now focussed upon Brassel: the main fastness of the Silesian March and a town which had a long history of resistance against foreign invasion.

The general whom Galicia had recruited for the occasion was a disgruntled Tverian named Vasilii Bibikov. As Bibikov took command of the armies and exacted the deference of Dietpold Moravitzky and Liutpold Ludovisi, it quickly became clear that although he was a decent all-around commander, he had no particular outstanding talent either. Thus he relied upon superior numbers and domination of artillery fire when it came to deploying the armies of Galicia’s alliances against Kolovrat’s relief force from the south: twenty-eight thousand against twenty-seven thousand.

Kolovrat demonstrated soundly to the Galicians that it is better to be a master in one trade than a jack of all. Although Kolovrat lacked the advantages of number, and also thus fire and the ability to charge, he nonetheless possessed flexibility and the gift of being able to read a battlefield. Even with fewer men, he was able to position them and command them with alacrity upon the field, enabling them to strike and withdraw as he pleased, or to take advantage of brief windows of opportunity.

Thus the battle of Brassel was won by Moravia; and what’s more, Zdravomil was able to capture just shy of five hundred seventy pieces from the retreating army: a nice little trove of trophies indeed!

One of the unexpected outcomes of Italian involvement in the White Ruthenian War for Minsk, was that Italy itself was riven by internecine conflict. It sat ill with many Orthodox northern Italians and Magna-Greeks that they were spilling the blood of fellow Orthodox Christians. As a result they began declaring their opposition to Despot Aripertos, or splitting off into various and sundry free bands and mercenary companies.

Two such companies of condottieri made their services available to Kráľ Tomáš 2., for a fee: i Pii Poveri Fratelli e Liberi Moschettieri di Lombardia, based in Pavia; and la Grande Truppa dei Compagni Toscani Ben Credenti della Via Crucis, based in Lucca. At present, the Moravian state was far too far in debt to take on any such offers with a credible chance of payout… but the divisions in the Italian ranks were nonetheless welcome news to the loyal Moravians.

Further welcome news came from the north, though it was laced with more than a bit of Schadenfreude. Despoina Dervan of Pomerania had decided to reclaim some of the traditional lands of her right from the Kingdom of Lotharingia… only to call down upon her own head the wrath of the East Geats.

‘Pity. She might have been able to use an ally like Moravia about now,’ remarked Tomáš to his mother.

‘Hush,’ Queen Mother Lesana said back. But she was smirking.

In late September of 1543, the Galicians and their Bavarian and Italian allies managed to force open the gates of Brassel. Although they didn’t conduct themselves anywhere near as heinously there as they had in Novy Sadec during the May Day War, there was still a fair bit of looting and burning that occurred, and more than one instance of immoral imposition upon Silesian women by ill-disciplined Galician soldiers.

Bibikov had been dismissed, and Iziaslav 3. once again placed his trust in Dietpold Morawitzky to oversee the field units around Brassel. Zdravomil Krakovští z Kolovrat understood by now that if he could remove Morawitzky from the equation… this war would be over for good. The task, therefore, was to draw him into open battle, and then surround him.

That would not be easy to do, as Morawitzky was, like Kolovrat, a cautious commander, well aware of stratagems. The old bait-and-switch routine therefore wasn’t likely to work: Morawitzky knew how Kolovrat operated and would be expecting it by now. A certain added layer of deception was therefore called-for.

He therefore very carefully tailored the composition of his advance force to be inferior to Liutpert Ludovisi’s alone, which was presently inside Brassel itself. It was a risky move, but by attacking a force at parity, he hoped to put Morawitzky in the position of having to guess as to whether Kolovrat was putting his strongest men forward or his weakest, and then decide accordingly. What Zdravomil Kolovrat hoped, was that Morawitzky would think Kolovrat had counted him out, and deployed his men solely against lifting the Italian occupation.

In reality, Zdravomil had divided his men into a half, then a quarter, then another quarter, and then each of these en tiers. He would attempt to stagger his reinforcements so that the last group could close in behind Morawitzky and cut off any avenue of escape while the main force pinned Ludovisi’s deployments to him. He also knew that this staggered tactical setup would have to be clockwork-timed; otherwise the superior Italian artillery pieces strategically deployed around Brassel would mow the Moravians down utterly.

According to the history books, the battle of Brassel lasted for three hours. The first ‘feint’ which consisted of entirely half of Kolovrat’s troops went in first and drew Ludovisi’s attention, and then the first-stage bait-and-switch happened with the third quarter of Kolovrat’s army. After watching for several minutes, the Bavarians swooped in out of the northwest to land the decisive killing blow by pinning the Moravians down into the range of the Italian artillery embankments. And that’s when Zdravomil Kolovrat tied the skin over the jar with his last quarter of reserves. Dietpold Morawitzky saw the predicament he was in at once, and ordered his men to cast their weapons down. The Galicians, Italians and Bavarians were marched out of Brassel and instructed to return home after laying down arms.

The War for Minsk ended in an embarrassing defeat for Galicia, after having started the war so strongly and occupied Bohemia in its entirety for much of the duration. But Matfei 2. Óskyldr extracted not only Minsk, but also Brest, Volýň, Grodno and Vilkomír, as well as a hefty indemnity from Iziaslav 3. Rychnovský-Nisa. Galicia was now in very little position to offer a challenge to Moravia’s position in Eastern Europe.

Kráľ Tomáš wedded his maternal second cousin Milomíra Sokolová just after the Christmas Feast of 1543, to great pomp and celebration. It was hoped that the young king’s rule would be as splendid as his grandfather’s had been, who also had come to the throne at a young age.