Alternate History Thread V

I should probably make a table of contents soon, I suppose. It starts on page 48, so as not to waste me having gone back to check that.

I'm sad that nobody does alt-hists anymore, so I think I'll have a crack at it. I've had this idea bouncing around for a long time - some of you may remember me talking about it way when - so let's see if I can do anything worth doing with it. There's only two sentences of 'alt' here, but I thought it was probably a bad idea to just jump straight in on 29 October.

initiating spainwank

Oh, some of you may also remember that I've got an unhealthy predilection for both imperial Spanish pomp and pretentious Latin titles, so...

Non Sufficit Orbis

Prelude: The Developing Dutch Crisis, 1559—29 October 1566

Since the king's departure from the Low Countries in 1559 following the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, Habsburg power had slowly and continually eroded as the constitutional question, aggravated by the Spanish zero-tolerance policy towards heresy, attained every greater prominence in the politics of the States. Philip's half-sister, Margaret of Parma, proved a weak-willed and ineffectual regent, and the Dutch grand seigneurs – Lamoral, Count of Egmont, William, Prince of Orange, and Phillipe de Montmorency, Count of Horne chief among them – came to thoroughly dominate policy and consolidate state functions under their control. In 1564 Horne, Egmont and Orange engineered the recall of Cardinal Granvelle from his post as chief minister for the Low Countries. Without Granvelle's capable if somewhat domineering presence, Margaret became almost totally dependent on the grandees for the maintenance of the government's authority. Under the influence of the grandeess the Brussels government moved towards moderating persecution of Protestantism in the States. This, however, was a line Philip was unwilling to cross. Despite the advice of a specially convened council of theologians and a personal appeal by Egmont, in October of 1565 the king issued a pair of letters from his country estate at Segovia laying out his policy in no uncertain terms: there would be no moderation of the anti-heresy laws, there would be no modification of the relationship between the States and the Brussels council, and the nobles could either fall into line or be guilty of something very close to treason.

Naturally the letters from Segovia served only to exacerbate matters. Through the early autumn groups of Dutch nobility, organized loosely if at all, had been engaged in furtive meetings to discuss their response to whatever policy the king decided. The publication of the letters from Segovia confirmed their resolve, and over the winter a confederation of some four hundred nobles, nearly all from the lesser nobility, attached their signatures to the so-called Compromise of the Nobility, a petition demanding the moderation of the heresy laws and the abolition of the inquisition. In April three hundred armed men led by Hendrik van Brederode forced their way into Margaret's presence and read out the demands. Habsburg ministers might dismiss the petitioners as Gueux [beggars], but Margaret was never made of particularly stern stuff in the first place, and with the great magnates threatening to resign rather than carry out the king's orders she had no choice but to accept the demands. The Dutch nobility briefly rejoiced, but it turned out that by so blatantly exposing the powerlessness of the government they had opened a Pandora's box that even they could not control. With the end of suppression Protestants began swarming out of the woodwork; by the summer thousands of men, many of them armed, were regularly attending open-air sermons by radical Calvinist preachers, and even the magnates admitted that they had lost control of the situation. Unfortunately, so had the confederation of the Gueux. On 10 August an armed Calvinist mob led by an ex-hatmaker lately returned from England stormed the monastery at Steenvoorde and smashed the images within. Three days later a second monastery was sacked outside Bailleul, and shortly after that the iconoclast fury began in earnest. Organized groups of Calvinists cast down hundreds of churches all across the Low Countries in August and September as in many places the burgher guards either stood aside or actively participated, while the magnates refused to act and some among the lesser nobility actively encouraged the fury, Brederode even personally leading the casting down of churches on his lands.

This almost total collapse of government authority left all the power players in a near impossible position. Margaret, of course, was utterly aghast and angrily denounced any and all attempts by the Calvinists or the nobility to reach local accords, but without the support of the magnates could do nothing for the moment but write a series of increasingly desperate appeals for aid to Philip and frantically levy troops to suppress the disorder. Egmont, Horne and Orange were scarcely in a better position: they might be all for moderating the heresy laws in the name of ensuring public order, but public order was noticeably lacking at the moment, they were all of them good Catholics, and besides the radicals had not much more use for the magnates than for the Habsburgs. The magnate party had tried to steer a moderate course between the Geuex confederacy and the government, but they were running out of room and they knew it. On 3 October Egmont, Horne, Orange, Orange's brother Louis of Nassau, and the Count of Hoogstraten met to discuss their position, where each expressed their growing unease at the hostile course of the Brussels council, and their alarm that the king was preparing to take drastic measures to restore order.

In Spain Philip and his advisors had been distracted by the Turkish menace for several years; only after the Turkish defeat at Malta in 1565 could the king turn his attention fully to matters in the Low Countries. Already by early 1566 Philip had resolved to visit the Netherlands and take strong, personal action to set matters aright. The confederation of the Gueux upset those plans – after all, it was technically treason – and Philip followed the escalation over the summer through letters from Margaret and reports from his councilors, while remaining characteristically undecided on the correct course of action. In late July Montigny, Horne's brother, arrived at court to request royal approval of the roll-back of the heresy laws forced upon Margaret by the Gueux; when this was denied, Montigny angrily and dramatically warned the king that unless he took drastic action immediately both Habsburg rule and the Catholic faith would be lost in the Netherlands for good. Combined with the outbreak of the iconoclast fury and accompanying hysterical letters from Margaret, this convinced Philip that military action was necessary. As the iconoclast fury continued and the Calvinists made gains across the countryside, Margaret's letters became fantastically dire – by the peak of the crisis, she was claiming that half the countryside was lost to heresy and 200,000 men were in arms against the government. Presented with this information, the course of action was clear, and on 22 September a meeting of the Council of State agreed that force was the only recourse left to the crown. Orders were sent, troops set in motion, arrangements made to secure the passage through Franche-Comte and Lorraine. All that remained was to settle the precise parameters of the force to be sent and – critically – to decide who should lead it. On 29 October Philip and his chief councilors met at the Escorial to finalize their plans.

The councilors all agreed, of course, that force must be used, but within the council there were visible two main factions, the same two factions whose rivalry had defined Spanish policy for the decade. Broadly speaking these might be termed (at least in this case) the moderates championed by the Prince of Eboli, Ruy Gomez, and the hardliners led by the Duke of Alva. Alva and his cohort, influenced by the apocalyptic picture painted by Margaret's letters, argued that the king must take no chances, but quickly and decisively crush all who had opposed him and the Church so that they would never be able to threaten either again. Ruy Gomez argued that a relatively small force might suffice, provided that Philip led it personally – for only the king commanded sufficient respect to resolve the crisis. Alva countered that the passage posed too great a risk to the royal person – for all the ports of the Netherlands were held by men of suspect loyalty, while the land route passed dangerously close to French Protestants, who would no doubt jump at the chance to kill or capture Catholicism's greatest champion. Ruy Gomez protested that there could hardly be anywhere more secure than the camp of thousands of the finest soldiers in the world, and after an extended and heated debate the king pronounced himself convinced. Philip would lead the 8,000 veterans stationed in Milan to the Netherlands and restore order. Preparations for departure began immediately, for the king was set upon reaching the north before winter closed the alpine passes.

The first installment in what I hope results in Protestantism going the way of the Arians.

Revolt and Settlement in the Netherlands, 1566-1570

Philip, accompanied by Ruy Gomez and a skeleton court, departed from Cartagena on the 9th of November, leaving Castile under the nominal regency of the crown prince, Don Carlos. Philip was, however, fully aware of his heir's increasing instability, and left Alva as chief minister with secret instructions to keep the Prince of Asturias on a very tight leash; real power in Castile would be exercised by the Iron Duke, and increasingly by Philip's dashing young half-brother, Don Juan of Austria, whom Alva quickly adopted as a sort of protege. Philip and company joined the Spanish force, some 7,000 strong, in Lombardy on the 20th of November, and hurriedly set forth. A forced march got the army across the Mont Cenis pass by the 27th, just ahead of winter, and the army and king recuperated for a while outside Chambery while Francisco de Ibarra finalized arrangements for food and transport along the route to the north. On Christmas Day the army arrived at Thionville in Luxemburg, and there halted as Philip summoned Margaret to give an accounting of the situation.

Events in the Netherlands had moved with alarming rapidity while the king was en route. Margaret recovered her head after the disasters of August and September and by October the government felt strong enough to undertake serious measures to put down the unrest. Horne was recalled from Tournai in disgrace and replaced with a safely loyal governor with orders to suppress Calvinist worship, and likewise the governors of those provinces where image-breaking had only lately spread were ordered to punish Calvinists attempting to push the boundaries of the Compromise. With the government counter-offensive underway, the Calvinists had to respond. Egmont, Horne and Orange remained undecided still, but Louis of Nassau had started raising troops in August, and Montigny had secured arrangements with the French Huguenots on his return from his Spanish mission. Clearly, however, the Gueux couldn't afford to wait for foreign aid, and the Calvinist consistories and their supporters in the nobility – Brederode and Nassau chief among them – had by the end of October begun urgently raising money to be employed 'for the country's defense'. At the end of November Tournai and Valenciennes closed their gates when Margaret sent garrisons in an attempt to forestall trouble, and on December 17 the regent declared the towns guilty of treason. Immediately thereafter the Calvinists of Flanders raised forces in revolt, and Brederode mobilized his men and seized control of s'Hertogenbosch. This, then, was the situation Philip confronted on his arrival in the Netherlands.

In Thionville Philip and Ruy Gomez were heartened – this was not the catastrophe Margaret's letters had led them to expect – and saw an opportunity. The magnates, the party of Egmont, Horne and Orange, were noticeably drawing back from even their previous tepid support of the rebellion: the Calvinists, ecstatic over the successes of the Wonderyear, were overplaying their hand and overestimating just how much the Catholic nobility would tolerate. Accordingly Philip summoned the prominent leaders of the opposition to counsel with him in Brussels. The Calvinists sensed their peril: Brederode, perhaps unwisely, refused outright and continued raising troops in the north, while Louis of Nassau produced at one last meeting of the magnates a letter, supposedly from the king to the regent, declaring Philip's intention to have the opposition arrested upon his arrival. It seems to have been a forgery and Egmont – who had, after all, known Philip since they were both boys – dismissed it out of hand. Only Orange was persuaded to refuse the summons, though even he hedged, pleading that his non-appearance was because the unrest made the journey too dangerous to undertake rather than due to any disobedience on Orange's part.

Orange's suspicions were not vindicated by events. Horne and Egmont were greeted warmly in Brussels, where they reassured the king that, whatever disagreements they may have had in the past, they had no desire to see the country overrun by mobs of violent Calvinists. And already, having failed to secure the support of the magnates, the rebellion was faltering, at least in the south. In January the ill-organized Calvinist forces in Flanders were routed by government forces and Tournai occupied by a government garrison on the 11th; just weeks after it began, the revolt in the south was reduced to the besieged town of Valenciennes. In the north Brederode was formally elected leader of the Gueux confederacy by a meeting of Calvinist representatives, and the Grand Gueux distributed propaganda and solidified the Calvinist position in the north. Without the support of even Orange, let alone Egmont and Horne, however, there was no question of attempting to relieve Valenciennes in the face of the Spanish army, and that town surrendered on the the 3rd of February rather than risk a sack. Instead, Brederode began rallying troops at a fortified camp outside of Antwerp, in the hope of taking that indispensable city before Philip could arrive and decisively tip the balance. A desperate assault on the 13th of March was beaten back handily with the assistance of some 1,000 men supplied by Egmont, and advance detachments of the Spanish army arrived in time to destroy the remnants of Brederode's force. Hope for the Calvinists now lay with French intervention, but the prospects there were dim and fast diminishing. Conde and Coligny still debated the wisdom of intervention when Valenciennes surrendered, and that left the Huguenots with the prospect of 7,000 Spanish veterans between them and their possible allies - not a proposition the prince and admiral were eager to chance.

So the Gueux were on their own, and with the Spanish troops now backing the government counter-offensive their retreat became a rout. Antwerp accepted a Spanish garrison at the end of March – Orange choosing to resign his offices and flee the city rather than stay and risk punishment for his earlier inaction – s'Hergtenbosch expelled the Calvinists on the 10th of April, and on the 17th Brederode abandoned his lands and fled, first across the Zuider Zee, and then, when government forces arrived in Friesland, to England, taking refuge with the Dutch Calvinist exile communities there. And that, at least for the moment, was that: the Calvinists were dead or scattered, their leaders captured or fled, and government control was undisputed. It was an astonishing turn-around. Philip returned to Brussels in triumph and there called the States General, in order to 'resolve those disorders that troubled these countries.' And then, characteristically, Philip dithered. The States General met all through the summer, and Philip spent much of that time closeted also with Margaret and Egmont and several others of the great magnates, but no action was taken. The reason was the usual one: Philip simply could not make up his mind. He had come to the Netherlands expecting a catastrophe and intending to wipe out heresy by any means necessary, but he found a very different situation, and persuasive voices urging moderation. Philip might be a passionate Catholic, but he was also more than intelligent enough to see the merits of Egmont and Margaret's position that reconciliation and public order should take precedent. To make matters worse word arrived in August that the Moriscos of Granada had begun a rebellion, and Philip agonized for some time over whether to return immediately to Spain, before a combination of Ruy Gomez's cajoling and a letter from Alva assuring the king that things were well in hand persuaded him to stay. And so the king's inflexibility on matters of faith contested with his instinct for rule, and the Netherlands held its breath waiting to see which would win.

Fearing that the king would decide on harsh punishment, tens of thousands of Dutch, Calvinist or Calvinist-leaning or simply possessed of an excess of prudence, had fled abroad as government forces advanced. And the leaders of the exile community did not dither over the long summer and fall of 1567. Nassau and the Count of Culemborg undertook a fresh mission to the Huguenots, and this time secured a more concrete understanding. In Germany Orange secured the services of near 30,000 men for the coming campaign season, in large part by recruiting practically en masse an imperial army disbanded after suppressing a revolt in Saxony – although privately Orange confessed he was still uncertain that military action was the best course. In England, meanwhile, Brederode fought off an attack of depression and began mobilizing the exile communities to support an invasion. In this he had the enthusiastic support of Queen Elizabeth. In September a pair of Genoese vessels carrying payment for Philip's army were seized by the English on a flimsy pretext – leading an enraged Philip to recall his ambassador in Elizabeth's court - and the money turned over in large part to Brederode, who quickly put together a small but competent privateering force dubbed, inevitably, the sea beggars. The Protestants were rapidly recovering their footing after the catastrophes of the spring; indeed, by the winter, Orange's continued malaise notwithstanding, the loose Protestant alliance seemed to regard this as an extraordinary opportunity to catch the Spanish king in a trap – Burghley's memorandum of the 21st of November spoke of 'cutting out the brain of the Papists at a stroke.' In a series of meetings over the winter the allies worked out a plan for four simultaneous invasions: Orange and Nassau from the east towards Brussels, Brederode by sea to towards Antwerp, and the Huguenots under Lord Hannecamp from the south. Coordinating all this was difficult, but the plan was set to go into motion in April of 1568.

Unfortunately for the confederates, by then Philip had made up his mind at last. On the 23rd of February he made his decision known and published his Moderation. It landed in the Netherlands like a thunderbolt. Its key provisions included a moderation of the placards (though outright Calvinist worship remained banned), provision for a constitutional settlement to be held soon, restrictions on the billeting of Spanish troops, and, most important of all, a general pardon for all involved in the events of the previous years. Immediately the confederates felt the ground give way beneath them. Of the perhaps 50,000 Dutch who had fled in the previous year, at least 40,000 returned and availed themselves of the pardon immediately; even Culemborg got cold feet and ran home. At a stroke Brederode in England and Orange in Germany found themselves divested of the better part of their support and resources. The rebellion had been reduced almost entirely to the Calvinist hardcore...and poor Orange, who had tried to the last to chart a middle course. Philip directed a personal appeal to the Prince of Orange to return, with all forgiven, but Orange, after much painful deliberation, ultimately chose to stick with the plan. Perhaps he felt that his honour demanded he see things through; perhaps Alva had been right and Orange had been a die-hard Calvinist all along; perhaps he simply feared that if he didn't invade his unpaid mercenaries would kill him. Whatever the reason, it proved a fateful mistake.

On the 30th of March the Huguenot army under Hannecamp crossed into Artois, on the 5th of April Brederode's (now greatly reduced) force landed in Flanders, on the 15th Nassau's force crossed into Gelderland, and on the 29th Orange invaded Brabant; the timing, at least, had worked about as well as could have been expected. That was all that went well, however: the invaders found not a shred of support in the countryside. Many of Brederode's men were captured by locals as they sought to infiltrate Flanders, and the rest scattered by a small government detachment under the command of Montigny at the end of May, whereupon the Big Beggar fled ignominiously back to his ships, and spent the summer raiding ineffectually along the Dutch coast and burning Catholic churches. The Huguenots were checked mere miles into Artois and withdrew hastily into France to avoid encirclement. Back in France they were almost immediately cornered and routed by a force sent by the French king – so much for Conde and his promises. It was evidently up to the brothers Nassau if the rebellion were to succeed. They were not up to the challenge. Philip moved to block Orange's road to Brussels in early June, and then waited, content to let Orange's army disperse from lack of pay. With other option open to him save retreat in disgrace, Orange elected a desperate attack. At Wavre Orange's men, weakened by desertion and low on morale, were summarily shredded by Philip's force and its core of Spanish veterans, and the Prince of Orange barely escaped with his life and freedom, if not his dignity, intact. Of the grand invasion that left just Louis of Nassau in the field. Hearing of his brother's defeat at Wavre he realized the futility of the endeavour and began retreating back towards Germany, his largely Protestant troops taking out their frustration by brutally sacking the villages they passed; the promised local support had not materialized in Gelderland either. He, however, was cornered by a superior government force in Limburg, led, humiliatingly enough, by none other than his former compatriot Lamoral Egmont, and likewise defeated. And that, once again, was that: the grand Protestant coalition had achieved precisely nothing.

In the aftermath of Philip's maravilla año, the military threat to the Netherlands was totally extinguished. The brothers Nassau reunited in Germany with what few troops they retained, but they were clearly a spent force – Orange's intransigence in the face of Philip's fair treatment had destroyed his credibility, and in December of 1568 the States General stripped him of his positions as stadholder. Disconsolate, the brothers sought refuge with their erstwhile Huguenot allies. Brederode plagued the Dutch coast for a season, but a government fleet under Horne quickly forced him back to England. Even Protestant England was no longer a safe haven, however; after Orange's defeat (and more pertinently after hearing dire rumours of imminent Spanish reprisals) Elizabeth did an abrupt volte-face, expelled Brederode and his beggars, and even returned to Philip the money seized the previous year. Brederode too found his way to the Huguenots. Within the Netherlands, meanwhile, the tide had decisively turned against the Calvinists. What the iconoclast fury began, the depredations and vehemence of the Calvinist armies had completed: both public opinion and the opinion of the nobility (excepting that small portion that were hardcore Calvinists, who went into exile with Brederode and Orange) had decided that the maintenance of order and good government required at least some suppression of the Calvinists. There remained, however, the political situation. The constitutional tensions that had caused the trouble in the first place remained, and Philip now applied himself to the problem with his usual diligence.

Away from Alva and the hardliners of the Spanish court, Philip had become convinced of the need for a full incorporation of Dutch interests in Habsburg rule to prevent a recurrence of the breakdown of authority of the early 60s. He was also determined to settle things once and for all; no half-measures, nothing less than a full constitutional overhaul was called for. In the deliberations of 1569 outright Protestant toleration was not an option – even the more tolerant of the Dutch had seen that if you gave the Calvinists an inch they'd not be satisfied with anything less than the whole – but everything else was on the table. Again the States-General met all through the summer, this time with a mandate to consider all things pertaining to the governance of the Low Countries, though Most of the actual work, of course, was done by Philip, Ruy Gomez, Egmont, and a few of the other magnates. Philip's chief priority was preventing heresy from taking root again, and he therefore insisted on the implementation of his new bishoprics scheme and accompanying inquisition, although he accepted limits on inquisitorial authority to placate the towns, and agreed further that poor Granvelle should not, after all, receive the new archbishopric of Mechelen. Beyond that, Philip saw the settlement as an invaluable opportunity to address the decentralization and regionalism of the Low Countries, that old problem that had bedeviled its rulers since Philip the Good. To this end he resolved to transform the States-General into a proper deliberative body, to which the crown might address its fiscal needs. The final settlement seemed to change little in practice, save that the States-General should meet more or less regularly: a royally appointed governor-general would still oversee the whole, stadtholders would still oversee each province (though there was now to be a restriction that no man could hold more than one at a time; Philip wanted no repeat of Orange's dangerous accumulation of influence), and the Council of State in Brussels would still handle most military and foreign affairs. In practice, however, the Settlement of Union would have far-reaching consequences: the stadtholders were rapidly reduced to an even lower status than they had previously held, and the magnates who quickly dominated the more centralized Council of State found that in their new positions the particularism they so recently championed had become an irritant. There were numerous other modifications and simplifications of the immensely complicated body of taxes and judicial administrations in the Netherlands, and modifications and concessions to regional privileges, but these did not alter the fundamental dynamic the Union established¹: centripetal forces began to dominate.

This was not, of course, easy to work out, even with Egmont and the rest of the magnates onside – the burghers and lesser nobles were too powerful for that. Philip was preoccupied for much of 1569 by intense political wrangling, and at several points was so discouraged he nearly abandoned the project altogether. But in the end, by the judicious application of patronage, veiled threats, promises and outright bribes, and the clever exploitation by Ruy Gomez of feuds between the provinces, the nobles and the burghers, and the various noble families themselves (Culemborg, desperate to work his way back into the good graces of the king, proved an especially invaluable go-between ), the affair was settled by August, and on the 23rd the States-General published the Act of the Union of Brussels, establishing the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Philip spent the month of September and early October touring each of the provinces, securing their allegiance to the Act, gladhanding the local notables, and ceremonially confirming their various privileges, and receiving their various loyalties. That tedious bit of ceremony done with (Philip fretted in a letter to Alva that 'I have spent all these days meeting this noble and that and receiving this honour and that and have hardly a time to look at my work'; rather than bask in the glow of his triumphs, all the Prudent King wanted was to get back to his paperwork) Philip repaired to Brussels to meet with the Council of State and determine policy. Philip had the idea to use the Spanish veterans, now so strategically placed, as the germ of an army to advance his strategic goals in northern Europe, an object previously rendered difficult or impossible by the tyranny of distance. The magnates in the council mostly pushed for an invasion of France, to root out Orange and the rest of the traitors; Egmont thought instead to attack those Protestants in Germany who had aided and abetted Orange's invasion; and Philip himself seems to have favoured the idea of invading England and restoring Catholicism to that country (even the consideration of which paid dividends; as mentioned above, Elizabeth chose to expel the Gueux and abjectly beg forgiveness when rumours of Philip's mindset reached her). Events, however, would yet again overtake the king. Leaving Margaret of Parma once more in charge of the Netherlands, and Ruy Gomez to act as her chief minister (this on the forceful urging of Egmont and Margaret herself; while Ruy Gomez was unquestionably a great asset to the Netherlands, his detachment from the king meant the loss, at least temporarily, of his influence over the greater kingdom, and the man was unhappy to concede the field to Alva), Philip departed with haste for Spain on the 3rd of November, for a letter from Alva had arrived carrying dire tidings: the Venetians were convinced and the Duke agreed that the Great Turk was stirring, and the Prince of Asturias was dead.

OOC: ¹ And are immensely dull anyway. I don't think you really care about exactly what Eboli did to the Joyous Entry; I bored myself to sleep even trying to write about it.