The Ecumenical War
"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?"
-St. Augustine,
De Civitate Dei
"If a seed of grain cannot die, it can never break the kern and grow into new life. If the Christ cannot die, He cannot save. If the church cannot die, it can neither grow, nor save."
-Matthias Heyden,
De Regnum Dei
Overview:
The Ecumenical War, which lasted on and off from 1569-1603, and included various sub-conflicts like the War of the League of Palencia in Spain and the Systematic Wars in Italy, fractured a previously united (if decentralized) Orthodox Church into two competing camps, the Imperials and the Metropolitans. It was a devastating war, one of the first to employ massed formations of gunpowder troops and cannons in Western Europe on a grand scale. Large portions of Francia, Flanders, and Italy were devastated and remain so to this day. The war was largely fought on the grounds of the Frankish Empire in Germany, Flanders, Spain and Italy, though the war spread to Albion and fighting even broke out in Circadia as the Orders Militant were affected by the Schism.
The Ecumenical War or Wars are largely separated by historians into three general phases, though these phases bled into one another:
-The War of the Antiemperor (or the Frankish Civil War)
-The Systematic War
-The Great Remonstrance
Background:
In this world, the idea that the councils of the Christian church were its supreme authority did not fall out of favor, but remained strong. The medieval church was placed forcefully under the authority of secular rulers as early as 1179, with the Humility of Spoleto, during which Pope Zachary II was brought before several monarchs in chains to acknowledge his wrongdoings in acting outside of the councils. Papal supremacy over the body of the Church was declared a heresy, and although the Pope retained certain important rights, his authority was diminished, returning to levels seen during the Byzantine Papacy centuries before. The Kings of (East) Francia traditionally enjoyed the greatest influence over the selection of the Pope, especially after inheriting Tuscany in the 13th century.
Although this strong monarchical control over a decentralized church prevented many major church-state schisms from occurring throughout the Middle Ages, it spawned a persistent strain of utopian, anti-church/monarchy-complex thought that periodically broke out into clerical and peasant revolts against corrupt monarchs, a trend which culminated in the Great Remonstrancy at the close of the 16th century. More on that later.
After Spoleto, the Council of Milan confirmed the proper constitution of the Church along early Christian lines: The Bishop of Rome, successor to Peter, was first among equals, but could not impose his will upon any other Archbishop without the consent of the whole Church. Core theological matters like the nature of Christ, the sacraments, and so on could only be decided by a Great Council of the Church including bishops summoned from every Metropolitan see across the world. (Along earlier lines, the Monophysites and Nestorians were confirmed to still be heretics.)
In other non-doctrinal matters, like liturgical language, clerical celibacy, matters of the purse and local monasticism, etc., the Metropolitan Archbishops were considered to be largely autocephalous. Furthermore, the principles of the
harmonium ecclesia were established, dictating that local rulers, anointed by their archbishops, had a role in the protection and guidance of their realm's churches. (What this means truly differs from place to place, but it largely placed a block on clerical independence.) The Byzantine Emperor, as successor to Constantine, was also re-confirmed as Roman Emperor and
primus inter pares over the Christian monarchs of the world. This was done largely to paper over the wound between the Greek and Latin branches of Orthodoxy, and this was successfully managed with some grumbling from the kings of Francia, Normandy and Aquitaine.
After the fall of Constantinople to the Mongols and the somewhat successful Second Crusade to recapture it, it was determined that the line of Constantine had ended, and the Roman Empire had ended with it. (Descendants of the Argyrid emperors who fled to Serbia would dispute this violently, contributing to their own separate schism with the bulk of Christianity as the Greek-influenced Serbian Empire grew in strength.) The main issue in mid-14th century Europe was by the rivalry between the Frankish Empire and the Gallic Empire of Aquitaine, which mostly played out on the battlefields of Italy. Despite a slightly higher rate of peasant-clerical insurgencies, the controversies over investiture and Papal supremacy were largely considered settled.
It was the controversial Gallic 'emperor' Helias I's unorthodox religious and personal beliefs that motivated the Pope at the time, Leo V, to excommunicate him at the head of the First Council of Frankfurt, and simultaneously to elevate the King of Francia at the time to the new title of 'ecumenical emperor,' echoing the title granted to Charlemagne centuries before, to replace the diminished and crippled authority of Byzantine Constantinople. Gabriel I Falkhart, later Kaiser Gabriel
der Große was anointed in 1364 in Frankfurt, inaugurating a new era in European history. While this religious sanction did undermine Helias' support base, allowing the Normans and Franks to ultimately defeat the Occitan armies on the battlefields of Italy and Champagne, it created a new issue: The status of the Ecumenical Emperor as sovereign of all Christendom.
As a series of relentless Frankish monarchs gradually forced the consolidation of the many chaotic principalities of Francia into a more coherent confederation, the stabilizing authority of the Ecumenical Emperor was seen as less of an asset to the Church and more of a dominating influence. And the thirst of the Falkharts for control only grew...
The War Begins:
Throughout the 16th century, the so called
sistematica, bands of armed locals supporting independence for the republican communes of northern Italy, had been plaguing the Frankish with repeated rebellions. In the year 1565, particularly deadly revolts were put down in Florence and Cremona with dozens tried for treason and hanged. The Emperor, Heinrich I Falkhart, subsequently passed laws revoking the longstanding privileges of the communes, partitioning them out among several Frankish nobles and administrators. This inflamed Italian opinion against the Emperor and angered Aquitaine, whose commercial activities in northern Italy, protected by treaty, were disrupted by the unrest. The Emperor also limited the independence of the great Italian monasteries, levying a protection tithe from which they had traditionally been exempt.
After the death of the previous pope in 1568, the growing populist fervor against Frankfurt infected the Roman mob, who prevented various pro-Imperial archbishops from entering into the basilica where the vote was being held. An Italo-Occitan cardinal from Torino known for his firebrand criticisms of Imperial power, Ildebrando Cazzaro, was elected Pope as a result, taking the name Stephen XI. Upon his accession, he began to raise an army in Rome, which was seen in Frankfurt as a violation of the traditional harmonium. Emperor Heinrich demanded the Pope come to Frankfurt to explain himself, and he refused, furthermore declaring that the title of Ecumenical Emperor belonged not to the Frankish king by blood, as was the custom, but to the most pious monarch in Europe. He directly challenged the Emperor and threatened excommunication.
Naturally, this led to a very brief war, and Stephen's proclamations were seen as a bit of an overreach. The hastily recruited Papal army was shattered in battle at Orvieto, and Pope Stephen was captured and taken a prisoner to Frankfurt. Stephen escaped from his captors, seeking sanctuary in a monastery near Geneva, but an Imperial army soon surrounded the city and demanded the pope be released by the abbot, who refused. Frankish soldiers ultimately had to bring the Pope out by force, an act which incensed the various noble courts of Europe as excessive and brought many around to Stephen's position.
The papal internment at Frankfurt lasted one year, during which the Pope refused to recant at his trial and denounced any ecclesiastical court against him as lacking sanction. This escalated, until the Second Council of Frankfurt, convened mostly of Frankish and Moravian archbishops, found the pope guilty of heresy for having violated the
harmonium, and for asserting Papal supremacy over and above the Councils of the Church. Then, they burned him at the stake. The council hastily elected the Emperor's cousin as Pope Boniface XI the following day.
The world went mad at this. The King of the Lombards, a Frankish vassal, was assassinated by his own guards in Ravenna, and all of Italy was soon on fire with rebellion. Aquitaine and Normandy, perpetual rivals, set aside their differences and sent an ultimatum to the Emperor, demanding the immediate resignation of Pope Boniface and a new Papal conclave. Furthermore, they demanded that Emperor renounce his title and dissolve the Imperial bonds over Lombardy, Bohemia and Burgundy. This last condition was particularly intolerable to the Franks, and the battle lines were soon drawn. Denmark also joined the coalition, seeking revenge for the loss of Lybaek a generation prior. Across Europe, the martyred Pope Stephen was widely hailed as a saint, and popular opinion quickly turned against the Imperials.
Within Germany, Emperor Heinrich's actions were not well received, and several Circles of the Empire immediately rose in revolt. A pretender Imperial candidate cropped up almost immediately: Gustav von Stralsund, Duke of Pommern, who promised to restore the long-trampled rights of the Circles at the expense of the Falkhart dynasty. In this, he was actively supported by the Danes to whom he had promised significant concessions. But Heinrich Falkhart would prove to be, to the despair of his foes, one of the most stern and gifted warriors of a generation. The battle was soon joined.
The War of the Antiemperor:
The first phase of the war lasted about 12 years, and it featured repeated, uncoordinated attempts by the coalition allies to overthrow the Emperor, hampered partially by the inability of the Occitans and Normans to work together. Initially outnumbered, the Frankish Emperor won several victories against the Normans on the fields of Burgundy, preventing that sub-king from revolting and uniting his forces behind the Emperor against a Norman army. The Danes were capable of capturing Hamburg after a 2 year siege, but several initial attempts to advance down the Elbe were repeatedly beaten back. A combined Danish-Norman expeditionary force sought to land in the Low Countries and cut the Empire off from the sea, but Heinrich and his dukes defeated them in detail.
Various rebellious Circle nobles in Schwyz, Bohemia, and Sachsen did little to support the northern pretender or coordinate with the allies, and proved only temporary roadblocks rather than speeding the immediate overthrow the coalition had hoped for. The wavering loyalty of Burgundy, which might have revolted if not for the Norman threat, was key. The only place the anti-Imperials saw some progress was Italy, where Occitan forces captured Milan, though an Imperial presence was maintained around Venice and Ravenna. Italy featured some of the more brutal battles of the war, as systematica and diaquilae (loyalist) militias committed horrific atrocities against rival settlements up and down the Po Valley and in Tuscany, which the Imperial Preceptor notoriously held down with Avar and Magyar mercenaries, for a time.
The first phase of the war came to a decisive end in 1581, when the two Emperors finally clashed in a series of battles in Bohemia, as the so-called Antiemperor sought to relieve his ally the king of Bohemia, who was trapped in a siege in Prague by Heinrich's armies. Gustav pushed south at the head of a combined Frankish, Danish and Norman army, capturing the imperial fortress at Magdeburg and threatening the heart of the Empire. Heinrich met them in battle outside of Prague, his Frankish levies augmented by Moravian auxiliaries. The aptly named Battle of the Two Emperors concluded with a stalemate on the field for both coalitions, Heinrich's first major check of the war, but the pretender Emperor Gustav was struck a glancing blow by an arrow fired by a Moravian light horseman supporting Heinrich. He died of an infected wound two weeks later.
With the death of von Stralsund, the Danish-Frankish rebel front collapsed as Bohemia pledged loyalty to Heinrich. Outside of the Danish-held ports of the far north and some Norman gains in Flanders, control over Francia had mostly been secured by the Frankish Emperor. Pope Boniface XI died in the same year and was dutifully replaced with XII, seeming to cement Frankish control over the papacy, though the Roman mob brought forth an antipope, Zachary III, so heretical that not even the coalition wished to recognize him.
The Systematic Wars:
A year later, in 1582, the vindicated Emperor gained a new ally: Albia-Norway signed an alliance with the Franks and invaded Anglie, capturing Glaucistre and sweeping south to besiege the great fortress-city of Londonne. As the Normans withdrew from Flanders to respond, Heinrich turned his attention to Italy, where Imperial control had been crippled far from the Adriatic basin. Aquitaine had been busy however, mobilizing and arming the various Italian city-states that had now achieved their independence and were not eager to give it back. Under the lead of Marquiz Azalaïs-Vincenç de Montelaimar, the Italo-Occitan armies held the passes at Trent against Frankish probes. De Montelaimar had spent his reprieve by capturing Ravenna, and trapping the puppet King of Lombardy on the island of Venice. The Preceptor of Tuscany, last remaining Imperial representative in the region, was captured and beheaded in 1583 after refusing to denounce the Emperor and his Pope.
The Alpine front then entered a stalemate for several years, as raids and counter-raids failed to make much of an impression. Rather than annex the region, the Occitans contented themselves with allowing the local communes and burgesses to organize themselves as they pleased, with a purely theoretical bond to King Eloïs as Protector of the Ambrosians. Though there was some rumor of de Montelaimar declaring himself King of Italy, nothing came of it.
In the mid to late 1580's, the war expanded further afield: Seeing a trade opportunity and incensed by the Frankish treatment of religious minorities, the Prince-Emir of al-Andalus declared war on the Franks. The Franks quickly countered the Andalusian threat, building a coalition of pro-Imperial rulers in Asturias, Vasconia and Toledo, the so-called League of Palencia, which declared war on the Andalusians. Vindelia too was soon thrown into the chaos.
The effects of Andalusia's entry into the war rippled across the world; by 1586, Andalusian and Norman privateers had managed to seize most of the treasure fleets that traditionally brought gold from the Orders Militant in Circadia, to Frankish Antwerp in return for refined goods. Furthermore, Danish and Norman ships gradually tightened a blockade of the Flemish ports, increasing the misery of the Fleming and Zeemarker burghers and eventually causing an economic collapse in Antwerp.
In distant Circadia, the Normand faction of the pro-Imperial Knights of Alexandria revolted, gaining support from the Andalusian blockade preventing assistance from abroad, but this was put down by the majority Frankish and Visego factions after a few fierce battles mostly pitting large native armies against one another. Boarding their allies' ships, some rogue Knights fled to the Hesperidean Isles, eventually setting up their own petty slave-theocracy-pirate-kingdom on the newly rechristened isle of Stephenia with Norman assistance.
In the wake of subduing the Circles, but still surrounded by a ring of hostile enemies, the Emperor considered his options. Regaining Italy would be necessary, but difficult with the alliance as intact as it was. Having convinced the Albians to attack Normandie, and the Normans not really having gotten anything out of the war, Heinrich correctly judged the Normans as the weak link in the alliance's chain. A three-pronged invasion force swept into Lorraine and the Norman Bight, overwhelming the outnumbered Normans who, even with some Occitan support, were struggling against the combined forces of Albia and the Emperor. Despite the Norman naval advantage, Aplemont itself was soon under threat.
For their part, the Normans signed a cease-fire with the Frankish Empire in 1586, surrendering a major tribute payment, and recognizing the legitimacy of Pope Boniface XII, breaking the coalition and weathering furious cries of treachery from Aquitaine. The Normans then turned their full efforts for the next few years to fending off Albia-Norway, and Anglie became locked in yet another reprise of the Irish Wars that isn't worth detailing here. Denmark took the opportunity to harass Norway as the Emperor's attentions were focused elsewhere, though no permanent gains were made. Having knocked out Normandy, and having no desire to invade Aquitaine head on and face the legendary fortresses of Liyon, Heinrich made the decision to finish the war and confirm his dominion over Europe in the place where it began: Italy.
Both sides attempted to play their trump cards as the war in Italy approached a climax. Genoa and Constantinople declared war on Aquitaine and the Italian republics in 1587, and a Greek-Crusader army from Aegypt secured the aid of Naples before eventually marching north to capture Rome (and drive out the local Antipope) as the Emperor marched south over the Alps. But Andalusia, which had beaten back the disorganized attacks League of Palencia and forced them to terms, landed an army in Provence and marched it into Italy to join the Italo-Occitans, while gathering an armada of over a hundred ships. The peerless Andalusian navy ultimately faced the Genoan-Aegyptian fleet in a battle off the coast of Elba and sunk about a third of it, displaying their larger ships' manifestly superior technology and gunnery.
For the Marquiz de Montelaimar, the war in Italy now hinged on preventing Emperor Heinrich's army from joining with the Aegyptian force led by the Greco-Aegyptian Grand Master Christophoros de Pelusion, which now held Rome. In 1588, the decisive campaign in Italy began. Both Imperial and allied armies maneuvered south, the Imperials trying to reach Rome and the allies blocking their path by holding the passes against them. Sun-soaked, cloth-wrapped Berbers and brightly colored Avars bedecked in bells shadowed one another on horseback as the two armies marched south in parallel.
In perhaps the most fateful decision of the war, Emperor Heinrich decided to attack the allies at Camaldoli, in the rolling Apennine hills some twenty miles east of Florence. Perhaps he decided that forcing the approaches to Florence would be superior than taking a circuitous route south. Perhaps he thought that waiting for the cautious de Pelusion to come north would have resulted in the Aegyptians' defeat. Perhaps he had simply grown bored of a seemingly endless war of maneuver. Certainly his battlefield intelligence was poor, thanks to de Montelaimar's screening.
At any rate, history will never know, because the Imperial army, funneled into a narrow, upward-sloping valley, was trapped in an ambush, as Moroccan janissaries came screaming out of the hilly forests to hit the Frankish flanks and rear, and the repeated uphill charges of dismounted Frankish cavalry disintegrated in the teeth of well-prepared cannon fire.
To his credit, Heinrich extracted himself from the situation rather effectively, crushing the attempts to encircle his forces and withdrawing to the north in good order. He would defeat one of de Montelaimar's lieutenants in a battle near Bologna to end the campaign season. However, the attempt to regain Imperial control over all of Italy had suffered a massive setback. Meanwhile, de Pelusion had ironically advanced into Tuscany, although his Genoan garrison lost control over Rome to the Italian mob in the wake of his advance, aided by the Count of Orvieto. Florence was besieged and fell to the Egyptians, and the armies were free to link up by the next spring...but by 1589, the tide of war had changed, and the Emperor was no longer in Italy.
With the entrance of Constantinople into the war on the Imperial side, Serbia finally had someone to hate, and sent one army into Ostmarch while another one rumbled into the Aegean. The Genoans for their part had been crippled by the Battle of Elba, and scraped together all of their resources to protect Constantinople, the gem in their trading crown. This left the Aegyptians as the only major force opposing the Marquiz de Montelaimar, and after a few months of skirmishing, they negotiated their own surrender in return for safe passage back to their homeland, which would have been difficult otherwise now that Andalusia ruled the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Emperor Heinrich certainly intended to return to Italy and finish the job he had just barely failed to complete. But several days after fighting a victorious battle with the Serbs near the Croatian border, he received word of a massive rebellion engulfing Flanders and Zeemark. The final phase of the war had begun.
