By spring of 1508, Philip had sufficiently recovered from Montelaimar to go back onto the offensive, and advanced to retake Chambery. The Provencals attempted to block the Lotharingian advance at Veyrins, but this time they had less time to dig in and Philip, having learned from his previous mistakes, did not simply order a frontal assault. Veyrins was tactically mostly indecisive – indeed the Provencals likely got slightly the better of it – but the Lotharingians outmaneuvered the Provencals in the aftermath, and they consequently evacuated the province. Philip launched a renewed drive into Provence from Chambery, but the Provencals were not so disordered as he'd hoped: he ran into an ambush on the Isere, and the smaller Provencal force, having torn his vanguard to shreds, escaped before the main body of the Lotharingian force could be brought to bear. Weakened on the Isere, Philip's invasion more or less ground to a halt. Provencal defeat east of the Rhone was tempered, however, by victory west of it; the Duke of Ales, operating with a small force, defeated a Lotharingian column trying to work its way through the Massif Central near Le Puei. Ales followed up his win by recapturing Saint Etienne and overwhelming the undermanned Lotharingian forward position at Vienne. The Lotharingians hold Liyon, as 1508 comes to a close, but they're more or less in a one-on-one fight with Provence, now, and the Provencals show no signs of collapsing as easily as the Saxons did.
(-90,000 taris from Provencal revenue, -11 Lotharingian Companies, -19 Lotharingian Levy Companies, -14 Provencal Companies, -6 Provencal Levy Companies)
The Provencal invasion of Saraqusta has come to an end somewhat anticlimactically. South of the Pyrenees in 1506, the Saraqustans painstakingly reformed their army, while the Provencals dithered in Mataro, waiting for reinforcements that never arrived. By the time the Saraqustans were ready to go in early fall, the Lotharingians had already invaded, and the Provencal army was falling back north. The Saraqustans, under Khalid, reoccupied Mataro and the other captured towns against no opposition, and late in the year besieged Girona. The scratch Saraqustan siege train had some trouble with the Provencal fortifications, but Provence had spared only a small garrison, and after a siege that stretched into 1507, the town fell. Facing only a small opposing force, the Saraqustans after Girona advanced north, taking Figueres and quickly investing and capturing Perpinya. And then Khalid, wisely unwilling to risk his army far north of the Pyrenees, stopped. The Saraqustans fortified Girona and Perpinya, and dispersed into garrisons along their supply lines, and with the southern front so quiet and the northern front so active, the Provencals pulled nearly all their forces out of the south in 1507 and 1508.
(+1 Saraqustan Prestige, -1 Catalunya Confidence, -4 Saraqustan Companies, -2 Saraqustan Levy Companies, -3 Provencal Companies)
With Italy seemingly committed to two wars already, an old enemy and an opportunistic rising power saw an opportunity to weaken the Empire to their advantage. North of the Alps, the Swabians raised a huge army, well over 40,000 strong, and planned the invasion of Lombardy. Advancing through the Valtelline in July, the enormous Swabian invasion faced scant resistance. A hastily raised Milanese defense force was summarily crushed on the shores of Lake Como, and the Swabians advanced into Lombardy. In the scant time they had, the panicking Milanese couldn't raise an army large enough to combat the Swabians. As the Swabians stormed Monza, the Milanese elites began to evacuate the city. The Milanese militia put up a brave fight, but they were terribly outnumbered and, after a brief siege, the Swabians took the city in August. Contrary to Swabian expectations, however, the fall of Milan did not cause the rest of the Po valley to fall into Swabia's lap. Most of the Milanese leadership escaped, with at least some of their movable wealth, and the reaction of the Partito Ambrosiano, far from being one of despair, was rather of more or less incandescent rage, at the Swabians and, to a lesser degree, at the Emperor who let this happen. And fortunately for the Milanese, the Partito Ambrosiano's resources were mostly undepleted by the Sicilian war, thanks to the party's unhappiness with the whole thing. The Swabians spent the rest of 1506 securing the Milanese hinterland and waiting for Lombardy to collapse. The Lombard municipalities, meanwhile, strengthened their various defenses, while their representatives held a meeting at Parma, spearheaded by the Ambrosians. At the Council of Parma, the Genovan nobleman Bernabo Visconti assumed leadership of the Partito Ambrosiano by sheer force of personality, convinced the few wavering municipalities to join up, and, in perhaps his most impressive trick, convinced the assembled northerners to turn their fury against the Swabians, rather than the Emperor. Over the winter, the municipalities raised taxes, called up levies, and delved deep into their reserves, and by the spring, Visconti had assembled well over 25,000 men at Piacenza. That left him still badly outnumbered by the Swabians, and the lack of Imperial reinforcement left him without a veteran core, but at least he could oppose the invaders.
The Swabians, meanwhile, having at last realized that Lombardy wasn't about to fall into their lap, roused themselves from Milan and marched east, while Visconti moved north. Visconti's attempt to cut across the flank of the Swabian march was checked at Crema, and the Italians fell back on Cremona. Brescia was purposefully left undefended, and fell to the Swabians, who then marched on Verona, as Visconti moved to Mantua. To the surprise of the Italians, however, the Swabian army turned aside before reaching Verona, and instead marched up the Adige valley towards Trent. Given time to prepare, the Italians moved north, and dug in around Affi. Meanwhile, the Swabians besieged and captured Trent, and marched back down the Adige. Finding the Italians at last arrayed for battle, the Swabians eagerly engaged. Visconti's preparations served the municipal army well, and prepared Italian batteries raked the Swabian lines, but superior coordination, discipline and numbers on the part of the Swabians told, and they broke through after a bloody struggle. Visconti extricated his force intact and retreated towards Parma as the Swabians occupied Verona and Mantua. There then ensued a furious debate in the Swabian command as to their next course of action, as they had more or less fulfilled all their objectives. While the Swabians sat in Mantua, momentarily paralyzed by indecision, Visconti crossed the Po, received badly needed reinforcements from Genoa, and tried to restore flagging municipal confidence. In August, the Swabian high command reached a decision; they would make one more effort to destroy the municipal army, and then march along the Po back towards Milan. But Visconti prevented the Swabians from crossing the Po at Casalmaggiore. Denied the crossing, the Swabians advanced instead to Cremona, which they promptly captured and where they spent the winter.
Visconti spent the winter of 1507/1508 frantically scurrying about northern Italy, desperately working to keep his fraying alliance together and scrape up more troops. In late winter, his efforts received a tremendous boost when at long last Imperial reinforcements arrived, in the form of seven thousand veterans, finally withdrawn from Croatia. With his numbers bolstered, and municipal confidence partially restored, Visconti could again engage the Swabians on more or less equal terms. The Swabians had, for their part, decided to shore up their control in Lombardy by taking Pavia, the last major Italian stronghold north of the Po between Capua and Turin. The Italians moved to relieve the invested city in early summer. While the Swabians encamped at the Borge Ticino and in the park of Mirabello, the Italians moved to the northeast, managed to quietly breach the park wall in the night, and fell upon the Swabians. The Swabians in the park were battered, but the column from the Borge Ticino arrived in time to salvage the situation and cover their retreat. Visconti savored the badly-needed victory and quickly recaptured Cremona, while the Swabians licked their wounds in Milan. But despite the turn in momentum, the Swabians still had numbers; when Visconti tried to take Brescia, the swift despatch of a relief force from Milan forced him to retreat. The Italians had to settle for retaking Mantua against scant opposition, while the Swabians dug in around Milan and Verona and awaited further orders.
(+120 Italian Levy Companies)
(+1 Swabian Prestige, -1 Partito Ambrosiano Strength, -28 Swabian Companies, - 9 Swabian Levy Companies, -2 Italian Companies, -39 Italian Levy Companies)
The Hungarians, meanwhile, took advantage of the redeployment of virtually the entire Carinthian garrison to other theaters. Two Hungarian armies crossed the border in mid spring of 1506. The smaller, under the command of Andrew, the heir apparent, headed towards Graz, while the larger, under the personal command of Stephen, advanced on the fortress at Marcia Castello. With the regulars all gone, the defense of Carinthia fell to the levies, commanded by the Viscount of Fiume. The force he mustered was wholly insufficient to the task of driving back the Hungarians, but the Italians were at least partially ready for a situation like this. Deeming the drive on Graz irrelevant, Fiume concentrated all his meager force against Stephen's push. While Andrew captured Graz with little incident and began securing the countryside, Stephen had to force his way through the Italian border defenses, and faced a hostile countryside and continual raids on his supply lines. Still, though annoying and delaying, Fiume's efforts couldn't actually stop Stephen from advancing, and he took Marcia Castello in mid-summer after a month-long siege. Stephen then resumed his march on Lubiana. Between Marcia and Lubiana, however, was Celie, the massively fortified administrative center of the march. The Hungarians had expected the Italians not to defend the town. They were mistaken. An attempt to storm the fortifications after a brief bombardment was driven back by an unexpectedly large and well-equipped garrison. The Hungarians settled in for a prolonged and ultimately unsuccessful siege, as the early onset of winter forced them to retreat. But Hungarian cannon had done enough damage to the fortifications that Fiume decided not to contest the town in 1507, falling back instead towards Lubiana. At Lubiana, the Hungarians endured another difficult siege, but were this time successful. Fiume pulled what was left of his army back west of the Dinarics. The exhausted main body of the Hungarian army recovered, secured the Sava basin, and prepared for a march on Trieste in the next year; meanwhile, a detachment was sent to force the Postumia Gate, but was there ambushed and destroyed by Fiume. In 1508, Stephen, having secured most of Carinthia east of the Dinarics, marched on the Postumia Gate in force, broke through the Italian force holding the fortifications, and advanced on the last great Carinthian fortress, that of Carso overlooking Trieste. Fiume gathered every man he had left to defend the fortress, and dragged the siege out far longer than the Hungarians had thought possible. But the Hungarians received unexpected reinforcement from the Sicilian fleet, and with relief thus cut off and Sicilian cannon deployed in the siege, Carso fell in early summer.
(+25 Italian Levy Companies)
(+1 Hungarian Prestige, +1 Gaborite Synod Confidence, -1 Carinthia Strength, -14 Hungarian Companies, -6 Hungarian Levy Companies, -25 Italian Levy Companies)
The Romans reinforced the Croatian theater in 1506, but not enough to actually drive back the Italians. Still, the Italians didn't have the men to advance either, so there ensued a series of indecisive skirmishes. When the Hungarians invaded Carinthia, the Italians in Croatia began to retreat northwesst, but were unwilling to simply abandon all their gains, and so Roman pressure prevented them from actually marching on Carinthia. By 1507, it was clear that Carinthia was beyond saving, and the Italians turned instead towards extricating themselves. In fall, the Italians managed to elude Roman attempts to bar the way, and crossed the Dinarics through the Knin pass, back to Dalmatia. A Roman attempt to follow was sharply checked, and when the Italians pulled out by sea in the winter of 1508, the Roman front more or less ground to a halt.
(+100,000 taris to Roman revenue, -6 Roman Companies, -4 Roman Levy Companies, -4 Italian Companies)
The Sicilians, having scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up with more levies, had a plan to destroy the Italian army in Sicily. Hugh of Catania, in overall command of the Sicilian armies, left winter quarters early and marched east to the coast, seeking to block the Italians in Syracuse. The Italian commander, Federico di Urbino, the Margrave of Carinthia, had meanwhile decided that, in the absence of major reinforcements from Italy, his positions in the south were indefensible. Intending to reunite his forces and then march directly on Palermu, he abandoned Syracuse not long after the Sicilians moved. Hugh intended to block the Italian route outside Austa. The Sicilians, with their various African and Sardinian reinforcements still en route, possessed only a slight numerical advantage, and their fieldworks were mostly incomplete when the Italians arrived. The ensuing battle was a protracted and bloody affair, but a small, daring Italian amphibious landing at Austa and the unexpected appearance, late in the day, of the garrison of Catania in the Sicilian rear allowed di Urbino to force the road. While Austa was tactically mostly indecisive, and the immediate upshot was a triumphal Sicilian reentry into Syracuse, the failure to prevent the Italians from retreating northward threw an early wrench into Sicilian plans. While the Sicilians celebrated and formed up their reinforcements as they arrived, the bloodied Italians evacuated Catania and retreated to Missina. Once there, di Urbino spent a couple of weeks reforming and rearming his army, by the end of which time the planned westwards offensive had to be scrapped, for a huge Sicilian army appeared before the city and established a siege, which rapidly became a nightmare for both sides. The Italian supply situation, with the better part of 20,000 men in the city, rapidly worsened, despite efforts to keep supplies coming in from Reggio, while Italian galleys launched a series of small, incredibly annoying nighttime raids behind the siege lines. As virtually all of Italy's neighbours entered the war, one-by-one, Italian forces were slowly evacuated to Reggio; this task was greatly eased in midsummer, when the Sicilian fleet was beached, and its men and guns thrown into the siege. Finally, in October the Sicilians, having opened a pair of relatively major breaches in the fortifications, decided to risk a general assault. Unfortunately, Hugh underestimated the remaining Italian strength; nearly 10,000 men still held Missina, and the Sicilian assault was driven back with appalling loss. With Missina still apparently impregnable, Hugh settled in to starve them out.
It was a different story in 1507. In early spring, the Sicilians launched another general assault, and found to their surprise no resistance; the Italian forces had been dramatically drawn down over the winter, and the last six hundred evacuated the previous night. If not quite the glorious victory the Sicilians had been hoping for, at least they could celebrate the removal of Italian forces from Sicily proper, and prepare to carry the war to Italy itself. Before continuing to the campaigns of 1507, it is necessary to briefly describe some much less interesting Roman attacks in 1506. Early in the year, a small Roman army under Stefanos Rhodinos attacked Italian Epirus. Epirus was lightly garrisoned, but even so the terrain and fortifications made Roman progress slow. Still, Rhodinos did make progress, and dedicated Roman diplomacy and Roman money succeeded in detaching a large portion of the local elite from the Italians. By late summer, the remaining Italian presence was confined to the citadel at Durazzo, which Rhodinos besieged. Durazzo held out long into the winter, but at last it surrendered in early 1507. Rhodinos then moved on to the next phase of the plan; with the support of the Sicilian fleet, he transported his army across the Adriatic and besieged Bari. Contemporaneously, the Sicilians, under Simon Castamara, launched a daring naval descent on Naples itself. The Neapolitans, caught by surprise, didn't have time to concentrate the forces from their hinterland. The civic militia made the Sicilians pay dearly for it, but Castamara took the city by storm. With the fall of Bari shortly afterwards, it appeared to panicking southerners that the whole of the Mezzogiorno might fall to the invaders, but the Sicilians were strangely content to merely hold Naples. And fortunately for the Italians, the calming presence of Federico di Urbino shortly stepped into the breach. His army, mustering at Foggia in preparation for a transit to Lombardy, instead marched, under his direction, back south to Salerno. There di Urbino, after talking them off the ledge, convinced the Neapolitans to give him overall control of all municipal forces in the south. Rhodinos, meanwhile, blissfully oblivious to di Urbino's presence, tried to cross the Apennines and link up with the Sicilians. His column, unsupported by the Sicilians, narrowly avoided walking into a massive ambush near Candela, and fell back towards Bari. Outmaneuvered, Rhodinos found himself forced to ground near Cerignola. Massively outnumbered, and embittered by the lack of Sicilian support, Rhodinos decided to parley, rather than throw his force away to no good end. In exchange for the return of Bari and the other Roman-held towns, di Urbino granted Rhodinos safe passage back to Epirus. And so, rather anti-climactically, the Roman invasion came to an end.
With the Romans out of southern Italy, di Urbino turned in 1508 to reducing the Sicilian presence. While Rhodinos was facing di Urbino alone, Castamara had been reinforced by most of the Sicilian field army, bring his strength at least close to the Italian's. Strangely, however, Castamara had focused on holding and improving the fortifications of Naples itself, rather than gaining control of the countryside, and so had difficulty countering di Urbino's offensive. Rather than risk an immediate assault or investment of the city, di Urbino instead worked to shut the Sicilians out of the plains around Naples, and tighten a noose around the city. Di Urbino constructed or rehabilitated a series of minor fortresses around Naples, made Sicilian raids too costly to continue, and gradually confined the Sicilians to the city. The Sicilian position at Soccavo fell in spring, and Italian forces operating from the fortification closed down the west. In midsummer, the Italians retook Capri, and thenceforth the Italian squadron based on the island made communications and supply with the south problematic. In fall, the Italians scored a coup, when a sudden attack from Soccavo captured the castle at Megaride, almost within range of the main Sicilian fortifications. Naples is not yet under a sustained siege, but Castamara is more or less pinned within his fortifications, and the supply situation is increasingly difficult.
(+20 Italian Levy Companies)
(+1 Sicilian Prestige, +1 Italian Prestige, -1 Roman Prestige, -1 Partito di Napoli Strength, +1 Catholic Church Strength, -22 Sicilian Companies, -10 Sicilian Levy Companies, -11 Italian Companies, -8 Italian Levy Companies, -4 Roman Companies)
The Sicilians had more success at sea. After losing the 1506 season to the siege of Missina, and most of the 1507 one to escort duty, Ricard and what was left of the fleet were at last cut loose in late summer of 1507. With little time left in the season, the Sicilians contented themselves with capturing Crotone , burning Taranto's harbour, and ravaging Calabria, before wintering in Crotone, where they defeated a hastily raised municipal attempt to evict them, albeit one without di Urbino's approval. This was just a appetizer for 1508. With the Italian fleet busy either with di Urbino or harassing the Sicilian coast, Ricard had the run of the Adriatic. For an opener, he took captured and sacked Otranto, then followed that up by ambushing the militia of Brindisi outside the walls, capturing that city, and conducting a series of raids into the Apulian countryside. With a relatively major municipal army on the way, the Sicilians abandoned Apulia in late spring and moved up the coast, leaving a trail of destruction in their path. A descent on Pescara failed, and the Romagnan cities proved too tough to contemplate attacking, but even there the Sicilians terrorized the countryside. Since this is a Sicilian war with Italy, the fleet had, of course, no choice but to attack Venice, and after Rimini Ricard headed straight for the city. Even with near a century of freedom from Sicilian attack, Venice has not recovered anything close to its tenth century glory, and the Italians didn't even bother to defend the lagoon, instead strengthening their positions at Chioggia and Mestre. The Sicilian fleet captured the town against no resistance, but failed to take Chioggia, and were left with embarrassingly little to do with their conquest. After a couple of weeks, with Italian reinforcements on the way, Ricard pulled out and headed east. On Istria, the Sicilians linked up with the Hungarian army besieging Trieste, and with the addition of Sicilian artillery the city finally fell. Ricard then descended on Roman Dalmatia, pillaging a series of islands, capturing Porto Grande, and seriously threatening the Italian strongpoint at Zadar. The arrival of winter then brought an end to the campaign, and Ricard's core headed back to Trieste to winter.
(+15 Italian Levy Ships)
(+1 Sicilian Prestige, +1 Admiralty of the Baleares Confidence, -1 Carinthia Confidence, +200,000 taris to Sicilian treasury, -2 Sicilian Ships, -1 Sicilian Levy Ship, -12 Italian Levy Ships, -2 Italian Levy Companies)
In Cyrenaica, the councils of the Ghaniyan emir were united on a single point: this was an opportunity unlikely to recur, with all those powers that ordinarily buffeted Ghaniyan politics distracted by more pressing affairs, and the emir had to seize it. As the Egyptians were winning their war, Tarabulus was the obvious target. Tarabulus held other attractions, too: the chance to bring the Zurayids to heel, perhaps. And indeed, the Zurayids strongly resisted the emir's plans through all of 1506. In 1507, however, it came out that a large portion of the Zurayid elite was on the Sicilian payroll. The ensuing scandal led to political turmoil with the Zurayids themselves, as Sicily's friends were generally undermined by their political adversaries, backed by the emirate. By summer, the Zurayids could no longer effectively withstand the emir's pressure, and the Ghaniyans finally attacked Tarabulus. The Sicilians had pulled every military man in the admiralty out to defend the homeland, and the coastal forts around Misratah fell quickly and easily. Tarabulus itself held out a little while longer, but still fell by fall of 1507. The easy early successes attracted the doubters; in 1508, the Ghaniyans mustered a far stronger force. The Sicilian Admiral, Peire di Lampedusa, levied virtually every able-bodied Sicilian in the admiralty, but couldn't stop the Ghaniyan westward push short of Djerba. The recently strengthened Sicilian fortifications on the island, manned by Peire's outnumbered levies, held against a month-long Ghaniyan attack, and the Ghaniyans eventually abandoned the islands, but that was the lone bright spot for the Sicilians. Ghaniyans took Tittawin and Medenine, eliminating the last holdings of the admiralty outside of Djerba. While Zaydi raiders ranged far into the north, the main Ghaniyan army took Qadis in the fall, drawing uncomfortably close to Ifriqiya.
(+10 Sicilian Levy Companies)
(+40,000 taris to Ghaniyan treasury, -2 Admiralty of Tarabulus Confidence, -1 Admiralty of Tarabulus Strength, -1 Banu Zuray Strength, -8 Ghaniyan Levy Companies, -7 Sicilian Levy Companies)
The entry of the Danes into the Lithuanian conflict was a turning point, though not in the way Erik and Zygimantas had hoped. Zygimantas' appeal played right into Algirdas' propaganda, as most of the Lithuanian nobility assumed Zygimantas had promised something significant in return for Danish aid. He hadn't, as it turned out, but nobody believed him, and Zygimantas' increasingly desperate efforts to raise revenue only further alienated his elites. Worse still, the Danes showed a peculiar lack of urgency, mustering in Pomerania and painfully slowly marching into Lithuania along the coast. So Zygimantas, for a long time in 1506, didn't even have Danish troops to help keep order, and the trickle of defectors and apostates became a flood. Algirdas breached the eastern border forts in early spring, and two Princely armies advanced on Kaunas from the east and north, joined by ever increasing numbers of Zygimantas' former subjects. As Algirdas closed in on Kaunas, the Danes at last arrived in force; unfortunately, the Danes had chosen to send half their men to fight the Poles in the Vildmark. Consequently, even with Danish reinforcements Zygimantas' army, reduced by defection and desertion, was still outnumbered. The joint force was defeated on the Neris, but escaped Algirdas' attempted encirclement and fell back into Kaunas, which the Prince promptly besieged. Zygimantas held the city for several weeks against the siege, thanks in no small part to Danish technical expertise. Unwilling to grind his army into the dust before the walls of Kaunas, Algirdas retreated, to root out the last of Zygimantas' loyalists in the east. Meanwhile, in the Vildmark the Danes and Poles, more or less evenly matched, engaged in a confusing and bloody series of skirmishes and ambushes. The Danes were unable, at least for the time being, to completely evict the Poles and had to pull back to Prussia to winter, but at least kept the Poles from joining the march on Kaunas.
Over the winter of 1506-07, both sides prepared for a decisive engagement in the next year. Algirdas continued to ply Zygimantas' remaining retainers with a combination of promises and threats. In Kaunas, Zygimantas in December apparently suffered something of a psychotic break, though signs of madness had been evident for some time; the policy of the Duchy was more or less taken over by Peder Magnusson, the Danish commander, and Kristian Smeden, the de facto leader of the East Danes. The partnership proved fairly effective, and Smeden managed to rally the wavering East Danes in support of the regime, but the newly Danish face of Zygimantas' regime only completed the alienation of the Lithuanian powerful: in February Valimantas Kesgailos, the last noble of hurzur rank still loyal to Zygimantas, switched sides. Algirdas, having reinforced his army and supplemented his siege train, invested Kaunas once more early in spring, as Magnusson decided against challenging the Prince in the field. Hopes for a quick victory were dashed, as the Danes quickly repaired every breach, and the siege lasted into summer before finally a group of disaffected residents, likely organized or encouraged by Algirdas' agents, opened a gate from the inside. Algirdas' troops poured in, and Smeden was killed on the walls, but Magnusson managed to pull most of his men out in time, and evacuated down the Neman to the Danish fortification at Klaipeda, taking Zygimantas and his family with him. While Algirdas stayed in Kaunas to stabilize things, Liudas gave chase, subduing remaining loyalist garrisons on the way. The need to keep a strong enough force in Kaunas to check the southern Danish army weakened Liudas' field force sufficiently that taking Klaipeda proved beyond him, but for most intents and purposes it didn't matter. What was left of Zygimantas' regime began to collapse entirely after the fall of Kaunas: his army either faded away or effectively took service with the Danes, his remaining governors quietly approached Algirdas for clemency, and Zygimantas himself descended still further into madness.
I've had a really bad year, and more things than this fell by the wayside; this was almost the last thing to go, actually. I'm thankful to everyone who put time and effort into this, and really sorry to have been such a dick. In my saner moments, I really wanted to do a good job.
