PerfNES I: Ultima Ratio Regum
- Thread starter Perfectionist
- Start date
Perfectionist
Angel of Verdun
International Events
In early 1512 Pier Syrtsema, a Benedictine monk and theologian at the remote monastery on Borkum, published On Christendom, an enormous and magisterial work of political theory. This would have been of little account, save that a copy somehow found its way to the Rector of the academy at Brussel, who immediately recognized it as a work of genius and forwarded it to Ramsay. Pier's work contained any number of significant insights, but what immediately electrified Ramsay was his views on oecumenical authority; a large portion of his book was devoted to systematically and incontrovertibly demolishing the arguments of the monarchists and advancing an idea of Christendom, with England at its head, that would not have been out of place in the headiest days of Cenwulf's empire. The Heinricians of course instantly started trying to find a weakness in Pier's thought, but after the man himself was called to Ramsay and there decisively won a pair of debates with his critics, these efforts mostly dried up. Pier's ideas then spread like wildfire through the monastic intellectual community, in the most dramatic change in church thinking in generations. By the end of 1514, Pier was permanently resident at Ramsay, and On Christendom was believed by many, inside the monastic establishment and out, to represent virtually the official thought of the Archabbot.
In early 1514, after an exhaustive investigation, the Inquisition General into the Order returned its conclusions to Ramsay. The brothers of the Order in general were found to be conducting a good faith effort to abide by their Rule; however, the Inquisitors concluded that there was a long-term systematic effort by the upper echelons of the Order to marginalize the Order's primary function of ministering to the natives and generally skirt the boundaries of their Rule in pursuit of political and military influence. The Inquisition recommended the dismissal of virtually the entire Order leadership, and the installation of an Inquisitorial staff to monitor their replacements for a decade, and Theobald readily agreed to the Inquisition's recommendations. However, when Ramsay's decree arrived in Lyndanisse in late fall of 1514, Grand Abbot Absalon angrily refused to step down and threw Ramsay's envoys and the Inquisitorial commission in prison. Absalon's defiance was met with no little unease by the rank and file of the Order, but the Mark Captains backed him to a man, and intense pressure from them kept any open unrest from breaking out. The broader monastic establishment is in something of an uproar; most orders, and all the major ones, are horrified at Absalon's actions, but in odd corners of the monastic world the old mutterings that Ramsay's authority is too great and a second monastic reformation required are growing louder. Meanwhile, the Danish monarchy finds itself in a difficult position: Absalon is urging the Danes to use their influence to overturn Theobald's decree, while Ramsay and the domestic monastic establishment are pressuring the Danes to enforce Absalon's removal by force.
(+1 Mission Captains Strength)
The ongoing diplomatic revolution in the Mediterranean seems to have reached a climax in these years. Lucrezia in Egypt and Carolus in Italy, motivated respectively by Sicily's attempts to install a vassal state in Egypt and by the enormous municipal uproar of the previous year, formed an alliance and together orchestrated a grand conspiracy against Aimeric, involving nearly every power in the Mediterranean basin and even some outside. For the second time in a decade Sicily finds itself at the center of a firestorm, but this time the situation is far more dire, as even old friends are now on the other side.
(+Egypto-Italian alliance, +Saraqustan-Muwahhidun-Isbunan alliance, +1 Egyptian Prestige)
The Sicilians responded to the Egypto-Roman tariffs of the previous year by imposing their own retaliatory tariffs, and by reaching out to the Chobanids. Hoping to make up losses in the Egyptian and Roman markets with gains in the Turkish market, the Sicilians worked out an agreement with the Chobanids by which Sicilians gained preferential treatment over their Egyptian and Roman competitors, and were allowed to establish an extraterritorial Sicilian mercantile quarter in Antioch. The deal was inaugurated by the despatch of a grand trade convoy, under the command of the freed di Lampedusa, in 1512, to the east. While the convoy of 1512 proved successful, the Chobanid deal was not quite as profitable as the Sicilians had hoped, mostly because after 1512 the eastern Mediterranean became extremely risky territory for Sicilian merchants, who in any event had bigger things to worry about.
(+80,000 taris to Sicilian revenue, +20,000 taris to Chobanid revenue)
The war in Libya seemed to reach a conclusion in 1512 the Ghaniya and the Sicilians agreed to a white peace. The Sicilians quickly retreated to Tarabulus and drew down their forces, while Ghaniyan troops, including the Campanians, reoccupied the rest of Tripolitania. Contrary to Sicilian expectations, the Campanians did not immediately remove to Italy, claiming, when pressed on the matter, that their contract held for another year. The Sicilians viewed this as vaguely unsettling, but in the end weren't willing to cancel their other plans for it.
With opinion in Hungary turning so dramatically against the Roman marriage, Ioannes became terribly concerned for his daughter's well-being, despite Hungarian assurances, and so in 1513 he convinced Dadibrenos to green light an attempt to get Theophano out of Hungary. With the connivance of some Bohemian nobility, the Romans contrived to spirit Theophano out of Esterzgom over the winter, and had her over the border into Bohemia before the outraged Hungarians realized what had happened. This caused something of a diplomatic kerfluffle, of course, but relations between the Hungarians and the Romans could scarcely sink any lower, and at least Theophano's safely home.
(+1 Roman Prestige, -1 Hungarian Prestige)
Faced with a Chobanid ultimatum, the unwilling Ardabilids had no choice but to seek a peace with the Horde. Uzbeg drove a hard bargain, and extracted the cession of a huge portion of eastern Persia.
Finally giving in to Danish diplomatic pressure, and hoping to undermine the Inquisition, the Order reentered the war with Lithuania in 1512. Reassured by the Order's entry into the war that he would not be hung out to dry, Andrei in Polotsk attacked Lithuania shortly thereafter.
(+Order-Polotsk alliance, -1 Lithuanians Confidence, +1 Ost Danskere Strength)
Domestic Events
Between the continuing success of the Gascon project, and the ongoing revolution in monastic political thought, the English political scene is undergoing significant changes. By 1514 the monastic members of the Witan, influenced heavily by Theobald, had adopted On Christendom as something a rallying call, and begun advocating strongly for a forceful imperial policy on the continent. The existing pro-imperialist elements in the Witan, already emboldened by the successes in the south, quickly rallied around the monastic coalition, forming a far stronger and more cohesive party than before. Fearing complete marginalization, the anti-imperialists and waverers began forming closer associations of their own, and making more radically anti-imperial pronouncements. The Witan is increasingly polarized between the two sides, but, at least for the moment, the Imperialists are dominant, and their rhetoric is aggressively self-confident.
(+factional reshuffling for England, +Imperialists, +Monarchists)
With the English showing no signs of stopping, and the Lotharingians dithering, Gascony has resorted to increasingly desperate measures to keep its army in the field. Remaining sources of credit were virtually tapped out, tariffs on the Atlantic trade hiked, and an extraordinary grand council of the realm summoned in early 1512, at which William and his allies forced through a truly massive tax levy. These fiscal measures predictably caused some significant unrest, particularly in the coastal towns, but royal forces cracked down, and instituted a series of confiscations from prominent dissenters that further bolstered the state's warchest. All this has contributed considerably to political instability in Gascony, and undermined the monarchy's popularity at a delicate moment, but it did allow the Gascons to pay their soldiers, recruit large numbers of reinforcements, and at least give the English a run for their money (see below).
(+2,000,000 taris to Gascon treasury, -1 Maritimers Strength, -1 Inlanders Confidence, -1 Royal Bureaucracy Confidence)
Albrecht of Lotharingia died in the winter of 1512/13, and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm. In stark contrast to his father, Wilhelm was deeply concerned by the ongoing English conquest of Gascony, and almost immediately began trying to build a case for intervention. This proved unexpectedly difficult; royal efforts were energetically opposed by both von Aller and the Rudolfings, who argued for a Germany-first policy, and by Philip of Burgundy, who badly wanted yet another crack at Liyon. Still, by the end of 1514 Wilhelm's arguments and persistence had won over many of his critics; moreover, as Leofric's engine of conquest rolls on and the Imperialists in the Witan grow ever louder, it is becoming harder even for the Saxons to ignore English ambitions. There is a growing trans-factional consensus in the Lotharingian nobility that something has to be done, even if there is still disagreement about precisely what that something should be.
(-1 Saxons Confidence, +1 Royal Court Strength)
Forst Ygo's interest in alchemy and the occult increased throughout 1512 and 1513. Late in 1513, he was approached by a wandering Irishman with an archaic accent. This man claimed to have spent the last five hundred years on Saint Brendan's Island; what's more, he claimed to be in possession of a map showing its location, which he was willing to part with for a significant sum. Ygo readily coughed up the money, of course, and spent the winter of 1514 feverishly preparing an expedition to go in search of the island. His sons tried to dissuade him - though not very hard, since the old man had apparently gone senile at last – to no avail: in spring of 1514 Ygo, Olfinga, and some seventy volunteers set out in two ships. They took on supplies in Vedraford, promised to return within the year if successful, and then disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again. Ygo's loss was much mourned in Frisia, though not without a certain sense of relief in the political class that the apparently immortal old bastard was finally off the stage.
(-Ygo (presumably))
The departure of Ygo changed little in the way of policy for Frisia; Klaes simply became ruler in name as he had long been in truth. The economic development of the principality continued. The North Sea littoral in general is seeing something of an economic and cultural effervescence, and Frisia is at the epicenter.
(+120,000 taris to Frisian revenue, +50,000 taris to English revenue, +40,000 taris to Danish revenue)
The Isbunans agreed to the requests of the Company of the Canaries, and reopened exploration down the African coast. The Company received a contract to explore some hundred miles of coastline a year and a monopoly over any trade developed as result thereof. While the Company fulfilled its end of the bargain with aplomb, events in the Mediterranean threaten to remove much of the impetus for exploration southwards; already even Company directors are starting to question whether Africa is really such a good idea after all.
(+1 Company of the Canaries Strength)
With the Sicilian alliance gone Saraqusta was left dangerously isolated, and so Khalid was receptive when he was quietly approached by emissaries from Al-Radi in 1512. There was, of course, a certain uneasiness in the inner circle about working with the Muwahhidun, but proponents argued that Al-Radi, if not the rest of them, was reasonable and trustworthy: he had never broken a treaty, and the Isbunans had done well out of their long association – why should Saraqusta be different? In the end Khalid decided that these considerations, and the newfound hatred of Sicily, trumped the risks, and agreed to an alliance with the Muwahhidun against the Sicilians in early 1513. The askaris, and the ruined merchants of the coast, generally applauded the deal as necessary for getting back at the Sicilians, but the Christian population and those in the interior who were not as affected by Sicilian actions, were generally appalled. So too was the ex-Emir Faisal, when the news arrived at his mansion in the mountains. In fact, for Faisal, who had spent his life planning the destruction of the Muwahhidun, the news brought him back to life; he couldn't let Khalid throw the emirate away. Faisal snapped out of his years-long depression. When his guards confiscated his correspondence and refused to allow him to return to the capital, he eluded his captors and fled across the Gascon border, and thence into Liyun, where he was warmly greeted by the emir.
(-1 Christians Confidence, +1 Askaris Confidence)
Belatedly taking municipal opinion on board, Carolus in Italy undertook a near complete about-face. A peace with the Hungarians was quickly reached, and the Emperor turned his complete attention to patching things up with the municipalities. In early summer of 1512 Carolus arrived in person at Genoa with a small retinue and requested a meeting with Visconti. Impressed by the Emperor's humility, Visconti graciously invited him into his home. There ensued two weeks of intense discussion between the Emperor and the municipal leader, as Carolus tried to bring Visconti onside with his plans. At the end of the Emperor's stay, Visconti pronounced himself completely satisfied with Imperial aims and explanations, and agreed to accompany Carolus to Rome.
Carolus spent the rest of summer in Rome, preparing for his new campaign in the south while trying to shore up his finances and mend fences with the Neapolitans. Visconti, meanwhile, had apparently decided that outright opposition to the imperials wasn't in his or the Ambrosians' best interests, and instead resolved to make himself indispensable to the Emperor. Genially ignoring the brief given to him, Visconti instead set himself up as a sort of municipal representative at court. In the process, he shored up his own control over the Ambrosians; his unique access to the center allowed him to undermine and outmaneuver several of his rivals.
Carolus, meanwhile, was having some liquidity issues; persistent rumours in Italians banking circles that the Emperor was planning to take the Saraqustan exit from his mounting debt made credit somewhat hard to come by. The start of Italian campaign was pushed further and further into the fall, and finally moved entirely to next year. This suited the Neapolitans not at all, but provided Visconti with an opportunity. In late fall, he convinced Carolus to summon the Neapolitan leadership to Rome for strategic discussions; simultaneously, Visconti organized the arrival of the leaders of the Ambrosian cities. Then, with both groups in the city, Visconti suddenly presented a general municipal council to the Emperor as a fait accompli, to which Carolus had no real answer. The first Council of Rome, a century earlier, had seen the municipalities neuter imperial power; luckily for Carolus, the Neapolitans believed, and Visconti agreed, that at the moment imperial power was needed to combat the Sicilians, and so the Second Council of Rome had rather a different outcome. Over weeks of wrangling, threatening, and bargaining, Visconti extracted from the municipalities an extraordinary tax grant for the Emperor, on the condition that it be used only for a Sicilian war. This was regarded in imperial circles as something of a poisoned chalice. On the one hand the money was immensely welcome; on the other, going to the municipalities for the means of waging foreign war was uncomfortable at best, and Visconti's growing influence seemed positively dangerous. Any concerns would have to wait, though; for the time being the Emperor is fully occupied with his Sicilian war.
(+3,000,000 taris to Italian treasury, +1 Partito Ambrosiano Confidence, +1 Partito Ambrosiano Strength, +1 Partito di Napoli Confidence, -1 Imperial Court Confidence)
Between the continuing anti-Sicilian tariffs levied by various Mediterranean states, massive royal levies, the conscription of merchant ships into military service, and raiding by various corsairs and pirates, the long-suffering Sicilian mercantile class has entered something of a crisis. The Bonnano banking house collapsed in 1513, and half a dozen other major concerns followed by 1514. If Sicily pulls through, it will likely take years to recover.
(-150,000 taris from Sicilian revenue)
Annoyed by the Campanian interference in Libya, Aimeric decided to establish his own mercenary band, to annoy his enemies and make money while being plausibly disconnected from the Sicilian state. And the Sicanian Band would be better in every way than the Campanian, with blackjack, dashing uniforms, and a flamboyant commander: Duke Hugo di Catania! Said company quickly found employment in, of all places, the Baltic war, as the Danes hired them to attack Polabia.
The Mediterranean Admirals were thrilled when Lucrezia announced an end to the Red Sea campaign and a renewed focus on the Mediterranean. They were less enthusiastic when Lucrezia revealed that said focus would require moving against Sicily. The Admirals protested strenuously at the decision, arguing that helping Italy destroy Sicily was a betrayal, no matter Aimeric's overreaching. In the end Lucrezia was forced to bring Matteu di Fayum back to quiet them, on the condition that di Fayum was granted complete discretion over the naval campaign. Outside the Old Norman diehards of the fleet, however, the decision to complete the break with Sicily met with general approval; most of the monied classes of the Delta have found they rather like the prospect of the Sicilian stranglehold on the west being broken.
(+2/-1 Admiralty of the Mediterranea Confidence)
With the great magnate families mostly dead or impoverished, support in Rome for another campaign to retake Anatolia plummeted, it now being the considered opinion of most of the syntrophiai that a wasteland populated by a bunch of crazies wasn't worth dying for. Demetrios Dadibrenos, acting through the Emperor of course, therefore agreed to a peace deal with the Chobanids, for real this time, that saw most of the Anatolian interior ceded to the Turks. Since Dadibrenos' cabal had come to power on an anti-Chobanid platform, this was politically somewhat delicate; fortunately, Dadibrenos had a solution. The reverses in Anatolia were publicly blamed on the stupidity and greed of the magnates, and the incompetence of Ouranos, who had together undermined the Empire's best laid plans. The former, being mostly ashes in Ankyra, were in no position to defend themselves, and Ouranos was thrown in prison before he had a chance to react. Dadibrenos' scapegoating proved quite successful at diverting anger away from him and the Emperor; it also had the beneficial secondary effect of removing his greatest potential rival from the political scene, giving Dadibrenos more or less undisputed control over the government.
(-1 Roman Prestige, -Anatolian Grandees, +1 Syntrophiai Confidence)
After large parts of Polabia were devastated by the Sicanians, the Lusatians graciously stepped in to aid their cousins, providing funds and manpower for the rebuilding of Schwerin, food for the countryside, and soldiers to guard the border, allowing Polabia to keep up its war with Denmark. All this has made Lusatia extremely popular in Polabia at the moment, both with the nobility and the populace at large, insofar as the latter has an opinion.
(+1 Lusatian Prestige, +50,000 taris to Polabian revenue)
Determined to win this war with Denmark and reverse Poland's decline, Miesko attacked what he saw as Poland's greatest deficiency: its ineffective resource mobilization capabilities. In 1512 he summoned the nobles, magnates and churchmen of Poland to a grand council at Poznan. There they hashed out Miesko's Great Bargain: a constitutional upheaval that saw the irregular councils of nobility transformed into a regularly scheduled bicameral parliament with authority to impose taxation on the whole country. The magnates were somewhat unhappy with the bargain, as they feared, quite correctly, that it would undermine their special influence over the crown, but as Miesko won over the lesser szlachta, the churchmen and the burghers, the magnates put up less and less resistance, and finally acquiesced. The new Sejm has somewhat ill-defined influence over royal decision making, which will certainly cause some friction in the long run; in the short run, however, Miesko was mainly concerned with convincing the Sejm to enact a tax levy amounting to many times the annual ordinary revenue of the monarchy, which they duly did late in 1512. With this enormous sum at his disposal, Miesko went on a spectacular recruiting drive, and stepped the war with Denmark into a higher gear.
(-1 Mozny Strength, +1 Szlachta Strength, +1 Burghers Confidence)
Miesko's secondary domestic concern was to find some way of increasing the Polish monarchy's access to credit. The existence of the Sejm, with its promise of easier taxation, helped make foreign lenders immediately more receptive to Polish advances. Hoping to develop an internal credit market, Miesko established and patronized an annual fair at Gliwice, reaching out to foreign merchants, and particularly to the Radhanite houses, to encourage attendance. With the various seaborne trade routes in greater or lesser states of disarray, the overland routes through Poland were anyway seeing something of a resurgence, and Miesko's efforts only further stimulated this phenomenon. Gliwice is a long way from equaling the great fairs at Isbunah or Dyflin, but by the standards of eastern Europe it is already quite significant.
(+50,000 taris to Polish revenue)
Algirdas died of complications from a wound early in 1512. Liudas succeeded him, but for all the efforts to associate him with the monarchy he still could not quite step smoothly into his father's capacious shoes. Although Liudas was readily recognized by the various power groups in the Lithuanian state, he had a much harder time convincing them to support his policies, and Lithuania drifted somewhat aimlessly through these years, occupied by internal wrangling. The Volynians in particular seem to have seen the transfer of power as a chance to preemptively claw back some influence from the Lithuanians, and were consistently obstreperous.
(-1 Volynian Confidence)
Faced with the problem of administering its vast new Anatolian holdings, the Chobanid empire turned to the obvious man for the job: Karabiyikoglu. He already controlled thousands of ghazis; confirming his as governor-general of Anadolu seemed both eminently sensible, and probably unavoidable. So, the cleric turned war hero quickly set about enforcing his new-found authority. With some difficulty he brought the nomads into lines and established, by the end of 1514, some semblance of unified government in Anadolu. Somewhat alarmingly for the Chobanid center, Karabiyikoglu also turned his attention to the religious affairs of the province. Proclaiming that Roman rule had left its corrupt imprint on Islam in Anatolia, he and his associates began promulgating a severe interpretation, somewhat at odds with the Chobanid official line. Taqi ad-Din had been sufficiently worried by Karabiyikoglu's religious leanings that he sent a team of high ranking clerics to keep an eye on him; unfortunately, the charismatic Karabiyikoglu mostly converted said clerics to his way of thinking, and by the end of 1514 was firmly in control of the Anatolian religious establishment.
(+2 Chobanid Prestige, + Anadolu)
Karabiyikoglu's uncompromising interpretation of Islam has spread only slightly outside of Anatolia, but it has established a foothold in the madrassa known as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, carried there by members of Taqi ad-Din's commission.
The Chobanid peace with the Ardabilids brought a great many Dhahabis under foreign rule. They were not, of course, at all pleased by this turn of events; fortunately, Taqi ad-Din had anticipated their displeasure and retained a very strong force in the new territories to suppress disturbances. This they did, though not without some difficulty, but the province still simmers with discontent, and the cost of keeping the Dhahabis in check so far has far exceeded the return.
(+50,000 taris to Chobanid revenue, +30,000 taris to Chobanid expenses)
The Horde likewise found itself in the position of having to integrate Dhahabis into the state; indeed, Uzbeg had a rather harder job than Taqi ad-Din. Eager to turn his full force against the Russians, Uzbeg, unlike the more cautious Chobanids, heavily drew down his garrison forces in Persia in 1512. Consequently, by early 1513 Dhahabi unrest had reached epidemic proportions, and large portions of the occupied territories were completely out of Horde control. An impatient Uzbeg led a punitive campaign to restore order, and swept through the rebellious areas with fury. While the Dhahabi rebels proved absolutely incapable of opposing Uzbeg's army, they had more success at attacking the man himself; in May of 1513, while parading through the streets of Mashhad, Uzbeg was struck by a lucky rock thrown from by a Dhahabi from an overlooking rooftop. The Horde army tore Mashhad apart in retribution, but that did nothing for their Khan; Uzbeg never woke up, and expired three days later. As Uzbeg's son Jani was only three years old, and there were no other obvious successors, there immediately ensued a scramble for control over the young Khan. Khalil, the Beglerbeg of Transoxiana and commander of the Horde's forces in the east, immediately pulled his forces out of Persia and returned to Samarqand, where he pronounced himself Jani's protector and regent. Shahgali, terribly alarmed that the traditional rival of the Beglerbeg of the Dasht-i-Kimek was apparently calling the shots, pulled his men out of the war with Novgorod and rushed east, arriving at Bukhara late in the year. There he produced a young nephew of Uzbeg called Berdi, and although he didn't declare for him, he was clearly keeping his options open. Through late 1513 through the summer of 1514 there ensued a tense standoff between Khalil and Shahgali, which, although it never came to open war, consumed all the attention of the Horde. Eventually the two Beglerbegs reached an agreement that a regency council, composed mostly of qarachi begs and nominally headed by Khalil, would handle affairs until the Jani came of age. Shahgali, however, remained with a strong force on the eastern edge of the Dasht-i-Kimek, and kept Berdi under a notably close eye; clearly he doesn't completely trust Khalil. Meanwhile, with Horde attention so firmly in the east, Qasim in Crimea has been free to act with increasing independence, and even to interfere in the Dasht-i-Kimek.
(+2 Beglerbeglik of Transoxiana Strength, -1 Beglerbeglik of Dasht-i Kimek Strength, -1 Beglerbeglik of Dasht-i Kimek Confidence, +1 Khanate of Crimea Strength)
Garbhasena, the ex-spymaster of Delhi, turned up at last in 1512, at the Bijapuri court of all places, where he offered his services to the young Sultan Ala-ud-din II. Initially suspicious of the Yenogretic Garbhasena, Ala-ud-din was eventually won over by his clear hatred of Arghun and his evident competence. By the end of 1512, Garbhasena had secured a permanent place at the Sultan's side, and over the winter played an instrumental role in formulating Ala-ud-din's involvement in the south (see below)
(+1 Royal Court Confidence)
The delicate balance in the Pandyan empire had been upset over the previous decade by the growing power of Ambadeva, Viceroy of the Andhra. Various subtle efforts by the Pandyan center to undermine Ambadeva had succeeded only in alienating the Viceroy; by 1510, Ambadeva had come to believe that the Pandyans were bent on his destruction, and begun making preparations to defend himself. By 1513 the Viceroy had amassed a considerable warchest and won several powerful Pandyan vassals to his side. The Pandyan Raja, seriously alarmed by Andhran actions, demanded that Ambadeva come south to explain himself; instead, Ambadeva declared a rebellion against the Pandyans and moved south with an army.
The Nanhai set about trying to reestablish administrative control of what was left of their realm, reconstituting the court in Kunming and doing their best to get the countryside paying taxes again. With the Haishu distracted by events in their own homeland, the Nanhai were actually afforded enough breathing space that this was more or less successful; while the government is impoverished and weakened, at least the provinces are still listening to the center, and it seems unlikely now that the Nanhai domains will simply dissolve into anarchy, as was a distinct possibility in 1512.
(+500,000 taris to Nanhai revenue, +1 Bureaucracy Strength, +1 Bureaucracy Confidence)
In early 1512 Pier Syrtsema, a Benedictine monk and theologian at the remote monastery on Borkum, published On Christendom, an enormous and magisterial work of political theory. This would have been of little account, save that a copy somehow found its way to the Rector of the academy at Brussel, who immediately recognized it as a work of genius and forwarded it to Ramsay. Pier's work contained any number of significant insights, but what immediately electrified Ramsay was his views on oecumenical authority; a large portion of his book was devoted to systematically and incontrovertibly demolishing the arguments of the monarchists and advancing an idea of Christendom, with England at its head, that would not have been out of place in the headiest days of Cenwulf's empire. The Heinricians of course instantly started trying to find a weakness in Pier's thought, but after the man himself was called to Ramsay and there decisively won a pair of debates with his critics, these efforts mostly dried up. Pier's ideas then spread like wildfire through the monastic intellectual community, in the most dramatic change in church thinking in generations. By the end of 1514, Pier was permanently resident at Ramsay, and On Christendom was believed by many, inside the monastic establishment and out, to represent virtually the official thought of the Archabbot.
In early 1514, after an exhaustive investigation, the Inquisition General into the Order returned its conclusions to Ramsay. The brothers of the Order in general were found to be conducting a good faith effort to abide by their Rule; however, the Inquisitors concluded that there was a long-term systematic effort by the upper echelons of the Order to marginalize the Order's primary function of ministering to the natives and generally skirt the boundaries of their Rule in pursuit of political and military influence. The Inquisition recommended the dismissal of virtually the entire Order leadership, and the installation of an Inquisitorial staff to monitor their replacements for a decade, and Theobald readily agreed to the Inquisition's recommendations. However, when Ramsay's decree arrived in Lyndanisse in late fall of 1514, Grand Abbot Absalon angrily refused to step down and threw Ramsay's envoys and the Inquisitorial commission in prison. Absalon's defiance was met with no little unease by the rank and file of the Order, but the Mark Captains backed him to a man, and intense pressure from them kept any open unrest from breaking out. The broader monastic establishment is in something of an uproar; most orders, and all the major ones, are horrified at Absalon's actions, but in odd corners of the monastic world the old mutterings that Ramsay's authority is too great and a second monastic reformation required are growing louder. Meanwhile, the Danish monarchy finds itself in a difficult position: Absalon is urging the Danes to use their influence to overturn Theobald's decree, while Ramsay and the domestic monastic establishment are pressuring the Danes to enforce Absalon's removal by force.
(+1 Mission Captains Strength)
The ongoing diplomatic revolution in the Mediterranean seems to have reached a climax in these years. Lucrezia in Egypt and Carolus in Italy, motivated respectively by Sicily's attempts to install a vassal state in Egypt and by the enormous municipal uproar of the previous year, formed an alliance and together orchestrated a grand conspiracy against Aimeric, involving nearly every power in the Mediterranean basin and even some outside. For the second time in a decade Sicily finds itself at the center of a firestorm, but this time the situation is far more dire, as even old friends are now on the other side.
(+Egypto-Italian alliance, +Saraqustan-Muwahhidun-Isbunan alliance, +1 Egyptian Prestige)
The Sicilians responded to the Egypto-Roman tariffs of the previous year by imposing their own retaliatory tariffs, and by reaching out to the Chobanids. Hoping to make up losses in the Egyptian and Roman markets with gains in the Turkish market, the Sicilians worked out an agreement with the Chobanids by which Sicilians gained preferential treatment over their Egyptian and Roman competitors, and were allowed to establish an extraterritorial Sicilian mercantile quarter in Antioch. The deal was inaugurated by the despatch of a grand trade convoy, under the command of the freed di Lampedusa, in 1512, to the east. While the convoy of 1512 proved successful, the Chobanid deal was not quite as profitable as the Sicilians had hoped, mostly because after 1512 the eastern Mediterranean became extremely risky territory for Sicilian merchants, who in any event had bigger things to worry about.
(+80,000 taris to Sicilian revenue, +20,000 taris to Chobanid revenue)
The war in Libya seemed to reach a conclusion in 1512 the Ghaniya and the Sicilians agreed to a white peace. The Sicilians quickly retreated to Tarabulus and drew down their forces, while Ghaniyan troops, including the Campanians, reoccupied the rest of Tripolitania. Contrary to Sicilian expectations, the Campanians did not immediately remove to Italy, claiming, when pressed on the matter, that their contract held for another year. The Sicilians viewed this as vaguely unsettling, but in the end weren't willing to cancel their other plans for it.
With opinion in Hungary turning so dramatically against the Roman marriage, Ioannes became terribly concerned for his daughter's well-being, despite Hungarian assurances, and so in 1513 he convinced Dadibrenos to green light an attempt to get Theophano out of Hungary. With the connivance of some Bohemian nobility, the Romans contrived to spirit Theophano out of Esterzgom over the winter, and had her over the border into Bohemia before the outraged Hungarians realized what had happened. This caused something of a diplomatic kerfluffle, of course, but relations between the Hungarians and the Romans could scarcely sink any lower, and at least Theophano's safely home.
(+1 Roman Prestige, -1 Hungarian Prestige)
Faced with a Chobanid ultimatum, the unwilling Ardabilids had no choice but to seek a peace with the Horde. Uzbeg drove a hard bargain, and extracted the cession of a huge portion of eastern Persia.
Finally giving in to Danish diplomatic pressure, and hoping to undermine the Inquisition, the Order reentered the war with Lithuania in 1512. Reassured by the Order's entry into the war that he would not be hung out to dry, Andrei in Polotsk attacked Lithuania shortly thereafter.
(+Order-Polotsk alliance, -1 Lithuanians Confidence, +1 Ost Danskere Strength)
Domestic Events
Between the continuing success of the Gascon project, and the ongoing revolution in monastic political thought, the English political scene is undergoing significant changes. By 1514 the monastic members of the Witan, influenced heavily by Theobald, had adopted On Christendom as something a rallying call, and begun advocating strongly for a forceful imperial policy on the continent. The existing pro-imperialist elements in the Witan, already emboldened by the successes in the south, quickly rallied around the monastic coalition, forming a far stronger and more cohesive party than before. Fearing complete marginalization, the anti-imperialists and waverers began forming closer associations of their own, and making more radically anti-imperial pronouncements. The Witan is increasingly polarized between the two sides, but, at least for the moment, the Imperialists are dominant, and their rhetoric is aggressively self-confident.
(+factional reshuffling for England, +Imperialists, +Monarchists)
With the English showing no signs of stopping, and the Lotharingians dithering, Gascony has resorted to increasingly desperate measures to keep its army in the field. Remaining sources of credit were virtually tapped out, tariffs on the Atlantic trade hiked, and an extraordinary grand council of the realm summoned in early 1512, at which William and his allies forced through a truly massive tax levy. These fiscal measures predictably caused some significant unrest, particularly in the coastal towns, but royal forces cracked down, and instituted a series of confiscations from prominent dissenters that further bolstered the state's warchest. All this has contributed considerably to political instability in Gascony, and undermined the monarchy's popularity at a delicate moment, but it did allow the Gascons to pay their soldiers, recruit large numbers of reinforcements, and at least give the English a run for their money (see below).
(+2,000,000 taris to Gascon treasury, -1 Maritimers Strength, -1 Inlanders Confidence, -1 Royal Bureaucracy Confidence)
Albrecht of Lotharingia died in the winter of 1512/13, and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm. In stark contrast to his father, Wilhelm was deeply concerned by the ongoing English conquest of Gascony, and almost immediately began trying to build a case for intervention. This proved unexpectedly difficult; royal efforts were energetically opposed by both von Aller and the Rudolfings, who argued for a Germany-first policy, and by Philip of Burgundy, who badly wanted yet another crack at Liyon. Still, by the end of 1514 Wilhelm's arguments and persistence had won over many of his critics; moreover, as Leofric's engine of conquest rolls on and the Imperialists in the Witan grow ever louder, it is becoming harder even for the Saxons to ignore English ambitions. There is a growing trans-factional consensus in the Lotharingian nobility that something has to be done, even if there is still disagreement about precisely what that something should be.
(-1 Saxons Confidence, +1 Royal Court Strength)
Forst Ygo's interest in alchemy and the occult increased throughout 1512 and 1513. Late in 1513, he was approached by a wandering Irishman with an archaic accent. This man claimed to have spent the last five hundred years on Saint Brendan's Island; what's more, he claimed to be in possession of a map showing its location, which he was willing to part with for a significant sum. Ygo readily coughed up the money, of course, and spent the winter of 1514 feverishly preparing an expedition to go in search of the island. His sons tried to dissuade him - though not very hard, since the old man had apparently gone senile at last – to no avail: in spring of 1514 Ygo, Olfinga, and some seventy volunteers set out in two ships. They took on supplies in Vedraford, promised to return within the year if successful, and then disappeared over the horizon, never to be seen again. Ygo's loss was much mourned in Frisia, though not without a certain sense of relief in the political class that the apparently immortal old bastard was finally off the stage.
(-Ygo (presumably))
The departure of Ygo changed little in the way of policy for Frisia; Klaes simply became ruler in name as he had long been in truth. The economic development of the principality continued. The North Sea littoral in general is seeing something of an economic and cultural effervescence, and Frisia is at the epicenter.
(+120,000 taris to Frisian revenue, +50,000 taris to English revenue, +40,000 taris to Danish revenue)
The Isbunans agreed to the requests of the Company of the Canaries, and reopened exploration down the African coast. The Company received a contract to explore some hundred miles of coastline a year and a monopoly over any trade developed as result thereof. While the Company fulfilled its end of the bargain with aplomb, events in the Mediterranean threaten to remove much of the impetus for exploration southwards; already even Company directors are starting to question whether Africa is really such a good idea after all.
(+1 Company of the Canaries Strength)
With the Sicilian alliance gone Saraqusta was left dangerously isolated, and so Khalid was receptive when he was quietly approached by emissaries from Al-Radi in 1512. There was, of course, a certain uneasiness in the inner circle about working with the Muwahhidun, but proponents argued that Al-Radi, if not the rest of them, was reasonable and trustworthy: he had never broken a treaty, and the Isbunans had done well out of their long association – why should Saraqusta be different? In the end Khalid decided that these considerations, and the newfound hatred of Sicily, trumped the risks, and agreed to an alliance with the Muwahhidun against the Sicilians in early 1513. The askaris, and the ruined merchants of the coast, generally applauded the deal as necessary for getting back at the Sicilians, but the Christian population and those in the interior who were not as affected by Sicilian actions, were generally appalled. So too was the ex-Emir Faisal, when the news arrived at his mansion in the mountains. In fact, for Faisal, who had spent his life planning the destruction of the Muwahhidun, the news brought him back to life; he couldn't let Khalid throw the emirate away. Faisal snapped out of his years-long depression. When his guards confiscated his correspondence and refused to allow him to return to the capital, he eluded his captors and fled across the Gascon border, and thence into Liyun, where he was warmly greeted by the emir.
(-1 Christians Confidence, +1 Askaris Confidence)
Belatedly taking municipal opinion on board, Carolus in Italy undertook a near complete about-face. A peace with the Hungarians was quickly reached, and the Emperor turned his complete attention to patching things up with the municipalities. In early summer of 1512 Carolus arrived in person at Genoa with a small retinue and requested a meeting with Visconti. Impressed by the Emperor's humility, Visconti graciously invited him into his home. There ensued two weeks of intense discussion between the Emperor and the municipal leader, as Carolus tried to bring Visconti onside with his plans. At the end of the Emperor's stay, Visconti pronounced himself completely satisfied with Imperial aims and explanations, and agreed to accompany Carolus to Rome.
Carolus spent the rest of summer in Rome, preparing for his new campaign in the south while trying to shore up his finances and mend fences with the Neapolitans. Visconti, meanwhile, had apparently decided that outright opposition to the imperials wasn't in his or the Ambrosians' best interests, and instead resolved to make himself indispensable to the Emperor. Genially ignoring the brief given to him, Visconti instead set himself up as a sort of municipal representative at court. In the process, he shored up his own control over the Ambrosians; his unique access to the center allowed him to undermine and outmaneuver several of his rivals.
Carolus, meanwhile, was having some liquidity issues; persistent rumours in Italians banking circles that the Emperor was planning to take the Saraqustan exit from his mounting debt made credit somewhat hard to come by. The start of Italian campaign was pushed further and further into the fall, and finally moved entirely to next year. This suited the Neapolitans not at all, but provided Visconti with an opportunity. In late fall, he convinced Carolus to summon the Neapolitan leadership to Rome for strategic discussions; simultaneously, Visconti organized the arrival of the leaders of the Ambrosian cities. Then, with both groups in the city, Visconti suddenly presented a general municipal council to the Emperor as a fait accompli, to which Carolus had no real answer. The first Council of Rome, a century earlier, had seen the municipalities neuter imperial power; luckily for Carolus, the Neapolitans believed, and Visconti agreed, that at the moment imperial power was needed to combat the Sicilians, and so the Second Council of Rome had rather a different outcome. Over weeks of wrangling, threatening, and bargaining, Visconti extracted from the municipalities an extraordinary tax grant for the Emperor, on the condition that it be used only for a Sicilian war. This was regarded in imperial circles as something of a poisoned chalice. On the one hand the money was immensely welcome; on the other, going to the municipalities for the means of waging foreign war was uncomfortable at best, and Visconti's growing influence seemed positively dangerous. Any concerns would have to wait, though; for the time being the Emperor is fully occupied with his Sicilian war.
(+3,000,000 taris to Italian treasury, +1 Partito Ambrosiano Confidence, +1 Partito Ambrosiano Strength, +1 Partito di Napoli Confidence, -1 Imperial Court Confidence)
Between the continuing anti-Sicilian tariffs levied by various Mediterranean states, massive royal levies, the conscription of merchant ships into military service, and raiding by various corsairs and pirates, the long-suffering Sicilian mercantile class has entered something of a crisis. The Bonnano banking house collapsed in 1513, and half a dozen other major concerns followed by 1514. If Sicily pulls through, it will likely take years to recover.
(-150,000 taris from Sicilian revenue)
Annoyed by the Campanian interference in Libya, Aimeric decided to establish his own mercenary band, to annoy his enemies and make money while being plausibly disconnected from the Sicilian state. And the Sicanian Band would be better in every way than the Campanian, with blackjack, dashing uniforms, and a flamboyant commander: Duke Hugo di Catania! Said company quickly found employment in, of all places, the Baltic war, as the Danes hired them to attack Polabia.
The Mediterranean Admirals were thrilled when Lucrezia announced an end to the Red Sea campaign and a renewed focus on the Mediterranean. They were less enthusiastic when Lucrezia revealed that said focus would require moving against Sicily. The Admirals protested strenuously at the decision, arguing that helping Italy destroy Sicily was a betrayal, no matter Aimeric's overreaching. In the end Lucrezia was forced to bring Matteu di Fayum back to quiet them, on the condition that di Fayum was granted complete discretion over the naval campaign. Outside the Old Norman diehards of the fleet, however, the decision to complete the break with Sicily met with general approval; most of the monied classes of the Delta have found they rather like the prospect of the Sicilian stranglehold on the west being broken.
(+2/-1 Admiralty of the Mediterranea Confidence)
With the great magnate families mostly dead or impoverished, support in Rome for another campaign to retake Anatolia plummeted, it now being the considered opinion of most of the syntrophiai that a wasteland populated by a bunch of crazies wasn't worth dying for. Demetrios Dadibrenos, acting through the Emperor of course, therefore agreed to a peace deal with the Chobanids, for real this time, that saw most of the Anatolian interior ceded to the Turks. Since Dadibrenos' cabal had come to power on an anti-Chobanid platform, this was politically somewhat delicate; fortunately, Dadibrenos had a solution. The reverses in Anatolia were publicly blamed on the stupidity and greed of the magnates, and the incompetence of Ouranos, who had together undermined the Empire's best laid plans. The former, being mostly ashes in Ankyra, were in no position to defend themselves, and Ouranos was thrown in prison before he had a chance to react. Dadibrenos' scapegoating proved quite successful at diverting anger away from him and the Emperor; it also had the beneficial secondary effect of removing his greatest potential rival from the political scene, giving Dadibrenos more or less undisputed control over the government.
(-1 Roman Prestige, -Anatolian Grandees, +1 Syntrophiai Confidence)
After large parts of Polabia were devastated by the Sicanians, the Lusatians graciously stepped in to aid their cousins, providing funds and manpower for the rebuilding of Schwerin, food for the countryside, and soldiers to guard the border, allowing Polabia to keep up its war with Denmark. All this has made Lusatia extremely popular in Polabia at the moment, both with the nobility and the populace at large, insofar as the latter has an opinion.
(+1 Lusatian Prestige, +50,000 taris to Polabian revenue)
Determined to win this war with Denmark and reverse Poland's decline, Miesko attacked what he saw as Poland's greatest deficiency: its ineffective resource mobilization capabilities. In 1512 he summoned the nobles, magnates and churchmen of Poland to a grand council at Poznan. There they hashed out Miesko's Great Bargain: a constitutional upheaval that saw the irregular councils of nobility transformed into a regularly scheduled bicameral parliament with authority to impose taxation on the whole country. The magnates were somewhat unhappy with the bargain, as they feared, quite correctly, that it would undermine their special influence over the crown, but as Miesko won over the lesser szlachta, the churchmen and the burghers, the magnates put up less and less resistance, and finally acquiesced. The new Sejm has somewhat ill-defined influence over royal decision making, which will certainly cause some friction in the long run; in the short run, however, Miesko was mainly concerned with convincing the Sejm to enact a tax levy amounting to many times the annual ordinary revenue of the monarchy, which they duly did late in 1512. With this enormous sum at his disposal, Miesko went on a spectacular recruiting drive, and stepped the war with Denmark into a higher gear.
(-1 Mozny Strength, +1 Szlachta Strength, +1 Burghers Confidence)
Miesko's secondary domestic concern was to find some way of increasing the Polish monarchy's access to credit. The existence of the Sejm, with its promise of easier taxation, helped make foreign lenders immediately more receptive to Polish advances. Hoping to develop an internal credit market, Miesko established and patronized an annual fair at Gliwice, reaching out to foreign merchants, and particularly to the Radhanite houses, to encourage attendance. With the various seaborne trade routes in greater or lesser states of disarray, the overland routes through Poland were anyway seeing something of a resurgence, and Miesko's efforts only further stimulated this phenomenon. Gliwice is a long way from equaling the great fairs at Isbunah or Dyflin, but by the standards of eastern Europe it is already quite significant.
(+50,000 taris to Polish revenue)
Algirdas died of complications from a wound early in 1512. Liudas succeeded him, but for all the efforts to associate him with the monarchy he still could not quite step smoothly into his father's capacious shoes. Although Liudas was readily recognized by the various power groups in the Lithuanian state, he had a much harder time convincing them to support his policies, and Lithuania drifted somewhat aimlessly through these years, occupied by internal wrangling. The Volynians in particular seem to have seen the transfer of power as a chance to preemptively claw back some influence from the Lithuanians, and were consistently obstreperous.
(-1 Volynian Confidence)
Faced with the problem of administering its vast new Anatolian holdings, the Chobanid empire turned to the obvious man for the job: Karabiyikoglu. He already controlled thousands of ghazis; confirming his as governor-general of Anadolu seemed both eminently sensible, and probably unavoidable. So, the cleric turned war hero quickly set about enforcing his new-found authority. With some difficulty he brought the nomads into lines and established, by the end of 1514, some semblance of unified government in Anadolu. Somewhat alarmingly for the Chobanid center, Karabiyikoglu also turned his attention to the religious affairs of the province. Proclaiming that Roman rule had left its corrupt imprint on Islam in Anatolia, he and his associates began promulgating a severe interpretation, somewhat at odds with the Chobanid official line. Taqi ad-Din had been sufficiently worried by Karabiyikoglu's religious leanings that he sent a team of high ranking clerics to keep an eye on him; unfortunately, the charismatic Karabiyikoglu mostly converted said clerics to his way of thinking, and by the end of 1514 was firmly in control of the Anatolian religious establishment.
(+2 Chobanid Prestige, + Anadolu)
Karabiyikoglu's uncompromising interpretation of Islam has spread only slightly outside of Anatolia, but it has established a foothold in the madrassa known as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, carried there by members of Taqi ad-Din's commission.
The Chobanid peace with the Ardabilids brought a great many Dhahabis under foreign rule. They were not, of course, at all pleased by this turn of events; fortunately, Taqi ad-Din had anticipated their displeasure and retained a very strong force in the new territories to suppress disturbances. This they did, though not without some difficulty, but the province still simmers with discontent, and the cost of keeping the Dhahabis in check so far has far exceeded the return.
(+50,000 taris to Chobanid revenue, +30,000 taris to Chobanid expenses)
The Horde likewise found itself in the position of having to integrate Dhahabis into the state; indeed, Uzbeg had a rather harder job than Taqi ad-Din. Eager to turn his full force against the Russians, Uzbeg, unlike the more cautious Chobanids, heavily drew down his garrison forces in Persia in 1512. Consequently, by early 1513 Dhahabi unrest had reached epidemic proportions, and large portions of the occupied territories were completely out of Horde control. An impatient Uzbeg led a punitive campaign to restore order, and swept through the rebellious areas with fury. While the Dhahabi rebels proved absolutely incapable of opposing Uzbeg's army, they had more success at attacking the man himself; in May of 1513, while parading through the streets of Mashhad, Uzbeg was struck by a lucky rock thrown from by a Dhahabi from an overlooking rooftop. The Horde army tore Mashhad apart in retribution, but that did nothing for their Khan; Uzbeg never woke up, and expired three days later. As Uzbeg's son Jani was only three years old, and there were no other obvious successors, there immediately ensued a scramble for control over the young Khan. Khalil, the Beglerbeg of Transoxiana and commander of the Horde's forces in the east, immediately pulled his forces out of Persia and returned to Samarqand, where he pronounced himself Jani's protector and regent. Shahgali, terribly alarmed that the traditional rival of the Beglerbeg of the Dasht-i-Kimek was apparently calling the shots, pulled his men out of the war with Novgorod and rushed east, arriving at Bukhara late in the year. There he produced a young nephew of Uzbeg called Berdi, and although he didn't declare for him, he was clearly keeping his options open. Through late 1513 through the summer of 1514 there ensued a tense standoff between Khalil and Shahgali, which, although it never came to open war, consumed all the attention of the Horde. Eventually the two Beglerbegs reached an agreement that a regency council, composed mostly of qarachi begs and nominally headed by Khalil, would handle affairs until the Jani came of age. Shahgali, however, remained with a strong force on the eastern edge of the Dasht-i-Kimek, and kept Berdi under a notably close eye; clearly he doesn't completely trust Khalil. Meanwhile, with Horde attention so firmly in the east, Qasim in Crimea has been free to act with increasing independence, and even to interfere in the Dasht-i-Kimek.
(+2 Beglerbeglik of Transoxiana Strength, -1 Beglerbeglik of Dasht-i Kimek Strength, -1 Beglerbeglik of Dasht-i Kimek Confidence, +1 Khanate of Crimea Strength)
Garbhasena, the ex-spymaster of Delhi, turned up at last in 1512, at the Bijapuri court of all places, where he offered his services to the young Sultan Ala-ud-din II. Initially suspicious of the Yenogretic Garbhasena, Ala-ud-din was eventually won over by his clear hatred of Arghun and his evident competence. By the end of 1512, Garbhasena had secured a permanent place at the Sultan's side, and over the winter played an instrumental role in formulating Ala-ud-din's involvement in the south (see below)
(+1 Royal Court Confidence)
The delicate balance in the Pandyan empire had been upset over the previous decade by the growing power of Ambadeva, Viceroy of the Andhra. Various subtle efforts by the Pandyan center to undermine Ambadeva had succeeded only in alienating the Viceroy; by 1510, Ambadeva had come to believe that the Pandyans were bent on his destruction, and begun making preparations to defend himself. By 1513 the Viceroy had amassed a considerable warchest and won several powerful Pandyan vassals to his side. The Pandyan Raja, seriously alarmed by Andhran actions, demanded that Ambadeva come south to explain himself; instead, Ambadeva declared a rebellion against the Pandyans and moved south with an army.
The Nanhai set about trying to reestablish administrative control of what was left of their realm, reconstituting the court in Kunming and doing their best to get the countryside paying taxes again. With the Haishu distracted by events in their own homeland, the Nanhai were actually afforded enough breathing space that this was more or less successful; while the government is impoverished and weakened, at least the provinces are still listening to the center, and it seems unlikely now that the Nanhai domains will simply dissolve into anarchy, as was a distinct possibility in 1512.
(+500,000 taris to Nanhai revenue, +1 Bureaucracy Strength, +1 Bureaucracy Confidence)
Perfectionist
Angel of Verdun
Military Events
While the Gascons spent early 1512 recovering from Limotges and rounding up cash, the English, under Alfgar, the new Ealdorman of Gascony, began a campaign aimed at Bordeu itself, hoping to strike a decisive blow. Alfgar struck out in force south from Limoges early in the spring. A series of skirmishes around Neicon went England's way, and confirmed to the Gascon commander, Geoffroy of Bruelh, that he was too badly outnumbered to effectively oppose the English advance. His plea for reinforcements was answered with orders to buy time for William's fiscal efforts to bear fruit; judging his position untenable, Bruelh evacuated Peiregord and retreated to the Dordonha, where he began setting up a defensive line. Alfgar occupied an undefended Peireguers in April and immediately advanced on the Dordonha. Expecting the English to take the shortest route to Bordeu, Bruelh concentrated his defenses at Liborna, and there repulsed an English column. Alfgar was in no hurry, however, and so the greater part of his strength was deployed further east, against the Gascon fortifications at Brageirac. These fell after a short, sharp contest and the English secured the crossing. Having crossed the Dordonha, Alfgar spent May and June slowly pushing south and west, intending to isolate Bordeu from the east of Gascony before beginning the siege. The Gascons initially made little move to oppose the English advance, but by late June William's politicking was more or less finished and the Gascon army had been considerably bolstered. In mid July Alfgar launched an assault on Liborna. Perhaps overconfident, he split his force to cover both sides of the river, and when an unexpectedly large relief force, under the personal command of William, arrived from Bordeu English forces on the south bank were routed, and Alfgar fell back in disarray to Brageirac. While Alfgar was busy reforming and reinforcing, William found himself with a substantial numerical edge, for the first time in the entire war, and he wasted no time exploiting it. English positions south of the Dordonha were cleared by the end of August, though Alfgar held Brageirac. An offensive into the Charanta in October achieved significant successes, though the arrival of reinforcements from Brageirac made the hoped-for recapture of Angouleme impossible.
In 1513, the tenor of the war changed completely. For a decade the English had been content to gradually grind the Gascons into dust, while the Gascons lacked the forces to do more than react to English moves. The war had consequently been a slow affair, filled with sieges and skirmishes but with a bare handful of proper battles. Now, though, the Gascons had an edge, however slight – but attaining it had cost them most of their reserves of men, materiel, and political will. Clearly William had no choice but to go for broke; he had to win a really significant victory fast, before he lost the ability to keep his men in the field. On the English side, meanwhile, the winter of 1513 saw the arrival of a large reinforcement column from the north, headed by the Atheling Cenwulf.
While Alfgar, certain that time was on his side, delayed in Brageirac, William made the first move in 1513. Hoping to cut off the English from the north and force Alfgar into the field, the Gascons marched on Peirigord, rooted out the outlying English garrisons, and invested Peiriguers. Alfgar was indeed stirred to action, and marched, without a great deal of urgency, to the relief of the town. William declined to be trapped by Alfgar's relieving army, and instead moved to intercept him. Thanks partially to an unusual breakdown of English scouting, and partially to Alfgar's continuing overconfidence, the Gascons stole a march on Alfgar, fell on the unprepared English near Saint Amand and put them to flight. Breakdowns in discipline prevented William from really following up his victory, and English losses were in the grand scheme comparatively light, but the English army was in disarray in the immediate aftermath. Peiriguers surrendered and Alfgar retreated north, with William hard on his heels. On the Vienne, just south of Limotges, Alfgar was for a second time outmaneuvered and handily defeated; while Alfgar kept retreating, William captured Limotges, with a large store of weapons and silver as an unexpected bonus. Alfgar ordered a consolidation of garrisons to bolster the field army, and with English control of the countryside thus diminished, the Gascons quickly reoccupied most of Lemosin. After taking a brief rest to shore up his communications, William advanced towards Poitiers. By the end of July Alfgar finally took the Gascons seriously enough to try something imaginative; unfortunately, this took the form of an attempted operational envelopment near Civaux. Naturally William graciously permitted the English to split their force, and then pounced on the western prong of Alfgar's attack and smashed it to bits. Cenwulf, in command of the eastern force, extricated his men intact, and bloodied the overeager Gascon pursuit, but nevertheless, for the third time in half a year the English army was sent reeling backwards. Alfgar was unceremoniously sacked once word of Civaux reached Leofric and replaced in command by Cenwulf. While the Atheling reorganized his new command, replacing many of Alfgar's comrades in the officer corps, William captured Poitiers.
All the Gascon success of the previous six months had not, however, fundamentally changed the hard calculus facing William: he was still running out of time and money, he still didn't have any leverage, and the English army was still powerful enough to destroy him once the money ran out. In Poitiers, however, he hit upon a possible solution to all his problems. If he could only contrive to corner and destroy the English army and capture the Atheling, he might still win the war at a stroke. This idea quickly became an obsession, and in service to it the boldness that had characterized his campaigns turned to recklessness. Ignoring advice to consolidate his gains or move against the relatively undefended strongpoints on the Loire, William instead lunged at the English army, falling back towards La Rochelle. The Gascons stormed Niort and fell upon La Rochelle so fast that they nearly caught the English unprepared. Unfortunately for William, it was only nearly. The English ensconced in La Rochelle, supplied by sea and protected by naval cannons, were completely unwilling to come out and fight, and William simply hadn't the time to reduce the place. Instead, ignoring all sensible advice, he marched towards Nantes, burning as he went, hoping to draw out the English. He succeeded. Cenwulf left La Rochelle and moved to catch the Gascons before they could retreat to the safety of the south. William managed, one last time, to steal a march on the English and engaged Cenwulf at Fontenay. Cenwulf, however, proved both organizationally and tactically far superior to Alfgar; more importantly, the Gascon army was by this point almost completely exhausted, sick, hungry and low on materiel. It's quite a testament to William's generalship that Fontenay was much of a contest at all; as it was, it was for a time in late afternoon a very near run thing, but when the English center refused to retreat morale and discipline in the Gascon army evaporated, and by evening the battle had become a rout. William and what he could gather of his army fell back south, while Cenwulf, lauded as the saviour of Imperialism, recaptured Niort and Poitiers.
In 1514 time ran out for Gascony. In January the state was forced to default; in early February the estates came close to outright revolt when the monarchy tried to force through another tax levy; by March citizens in the coastal towns were rioting against draconian fiscal measures; and through it all the army, at best underpaid and at worst not paid at all, was dwindling to desertion. In April mutinous regiments sacked Limotges to make up for back pay, whereupon William, reasoning that he couldn't hold any of it anyway, ordered the systematic looting of as much of the previous year's reconquests as possible. This kept the army more or less under control, but crushed the Gascon monarchy's popularity in the affected areas. Cenwulf followed up the retreating Gascons and by June was back on the Dordonha. William, like Bruelh before him, hoped initially to hold the Dordonha line, but a mutinous company betrayed the crossing at Liborna, and the Gascons had to quickly retreat towards Bordeu. In early July the English at last besieged the city, while the Anglo-Frisian fleet blockaded the Gironde. Conditions in the city quickly became dire and public opinion turned against the mercenaries holding the walls. The English assaulted the city while half the garrison was busy putting down a massive bread riot, and quickly breached the walls. Most of the garrison stopped fighting or tried to switch sides once it became clear that the English were inside. The die-hards delayed the English long enough for William and his children to slip out by the river, but the English forces did capture William's wife, brother and sister.
After the fall of Bordeu, the English rather hoped that Gascon resistance would halt, and indeed for a while it seemed this might be the case; a great many maritime towns and cities, alienated and taxed into oblivion over the last few years of Gascon rule, enthusiastically declared their allegiance to the Emperor. Missives sent to the inland settlements demanding their submission met with a distinctly frosty and ambiguous reception, even in the confused aftermath of Bordeu, when it was thought William might be dead. When William turned up a month later in Tolosa, very much alive and determined to continue the fight, ambiguity turned to clear rejection. Meanwhile, the Gascon army was reorganized by Bruelh around Marmanda and repulsed a lackluster offensive up the Garonne in late summer. It seems likely that Gascony has sustained a mortal wound, but it's still kicking and seemingly determined to go down fighting.
(+2 English Prestige, +200,000 taris to English revenue, -400,000 taris from Gascon revenue, -30,000 taris from Gascon expenses, -Maritimers, +1 Inlanders Strength, -109 Gascon Companies, -8 Gascon Levy Companies, -66 English Companies, 5 Gascon Companies to England)
Both sides had planned to strike first, but the first blow of yet another contest between Sicily and Italy was struck by the Sicilians, while Carolus was delayed by financial concerns in Rome. In June Simon Castamara, newly created Conte di Trapani, led a Sicilian force across the straits to besiege the impressive, if somewhat undermanned, Italian fortifications at Reggio. The Neapolitans hurriedly began gathering forces around Cosenza to mount a relief of the city. The Sicilians promptly took advantage of the drawn down garrisons in Calabria and mounted amphibious descents on Crotone and Taranto, the latter personally commanded by the Admiral Ricard. The appearance of two more Sicilian forces threw the municipal commanders into momentary confusion; eventually it was decided to reduce the forces at Crotone before attempting to relieve Reggio. The Sicilian commander at Crotone, curiously enough a Genovese expat called Bartholomew di Gorgona, led his outnumbered force in a daring raid against the oncoming Neapolitans that overran an extended column and forced the Neapolitans to a dead stop. Shortly thereafter, Reggio fell to di Trapani. With the greater part of Sicily's force on its way north, the Neapolitans decided to retreat to Cosenza. There they tried to hold, hoping to contain the Sicilians in southern Calabria. They failed, and the municipal forces were scattered by the Sicilian veterans. Di Trapani occupied the rest of Calabria while di Gorgona marched his force along the coast to link up with Ricard in Taranto. After Cosenza, the Sicilians faced relatively little opposition, as the Neapolitan forces were mustering further north, and the Neapolitan leadership was busy in Rome; by the end of the year, Sicilian forces had overrun Calabria and most of Apulia, and back in Palermu Aimeric had high hopes for his policy.
(+1 Sicilian Prestige, -4 Sicilian Companies, -12 Italian Levy Companies)
In 1513 the sky fell on Sicily. Between the beginning of February and the end of March, declarations of war arrived from Egypt, the Ghaniya and Saraqusta, and Sicily shortly found itself under attack from literally every direction.
In Libya the Ghaniyans and the Campanians quickly moved against Tarabulus and Misratah and all the rest of the holdings of the Admiralty. Even less well defended than five years ago, these all fell quickly. After that the advancing Ghaniyans faced practically no resistance. By the end of the summer they were back at Qabis. After Qabis the Campanians and the Ghaniyans mostly parted ways; the Ghaniyans roamed into the interior, rooting out Sicilian outposts and trying, without much success, to recruit the local Berbers onside. The Campanians kept pressing along the coast, ending the year just short of Sfax. By 1514 the Ifriqiyans, though still more concerned with the Muwahhidun, managed to organize some credible resistance to the Ghaniyan advance. Sfax held out for a month against Campanian guns, and a Sicilian cavalry force inflicted a defeat on Ghaniyan raiders at Qafsa, and mostly pushed the Ghaniyans back to the coast by mid-summer. The Campanians were still advancing, though. By fall, reinforced by most of the Ghaniyan cavalry, they were at Mahdia, and the Sicilians decided they had to fight. Having painstakingly mustered some ten thousand men, the Sicilians engaged the Campanians just outside the city, and although they took the worse of the engagement and were forced aside, they did inflict enough damage on the Campanians that they were forced to stop in Mahdia, and make no further advance into Ifriqiya. The Ghaniyans were another story, and their raiders have reached alarmingly close to Tunis itself, but at least they aren't occupying anything, and the Sicilians are having some increasing success in countering Ghaniyan raids.
(+1 Ghaniyan Prestige, -1 Sicilian Prestige, - Admiralty of Tarabulus, -200,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, -14 Sicilian Levy Companies, -2 Ghaniyan Companies, -4 Ghaniyan Levy Companies, -6 Campanian Companies)
By 1513 the pseudo-siege of Algiers was into its third year. Used to the boredom of the siege and confident that the Berbers couldn't seriously threaten the city, the Sicilian garrison had perhaps become complacent. They were in for a rude awakening. Over the winter Al-Radi had quietly moved large numbers of guns to the Maghreb and begun preparing to mobilize a large segment of the Maghrebi askaris. In early spring the Muwahhidun began an intense bombardment of Algiers, and a strong force of askaris captured Bomardas, severing the land link with the east. Corsairs appeared and harassed shipments into the city, but couldn't cut the sea link; nevertheless, the garrison at Algiers was now cut off and badly outnumbered. A month into the bombardment the Muwahhidun guns finally opened a major breach: askaris poured in, d'Ebaccar was killed leading a counterattack, and the rest of the Sicilian force mostly destroyed in bloody street fighting. A small Sicilian force managed to retreat in good order to the Roccia in the harbour. This quickly proved to be more or less impenetrable, but the Muwahhidun didn't really care about taking it. They had bigger fish to fry than a tiny fortified islet. The border forts at Mandoura and Naciria were overrun, and Berber irregulars poured into Ifriqiya, while the main force marched along the coast.
The fall of Algiers sent Ifriqiya into a panic. Forgotten, for the moment, was the animosity towards the Zuray; now they were essential parts of any defense. Zuray cavalry were despatched to oppose the Muwahhidun raiders – in which they did not really have a great deal of success, being too few to oppose so many – while the Ifriqiyan gentry appealed to Sicily for immediate aid. Aimeric had bigger problems, of course, and the Ifriqiyans were brusquely told to fend for themselves. In Tunis an extraordinary council of the great landowners, merchants and bureaucrats of Ifriqiya, organized by the Chief Magister Al Hawas, met to make arrangements for opposing the Berbers. By late summer Al Hawas and his cohorts had cobbled together some fifteen thousand men out of militias, Arab tribesmen, retainers and mercenaries, and the Muwahhidun had taken Bougia. In the interior the Berbers were gradually gaining the upper hand over the Zuray and other local resisters. The scratch Ifriqiyan force, under the command of the great landowner Hugo di Biserta, moved west, gathering volunteers from the local population as it went. By the time di Biserta reached Jijel his force had swelled to over twenty thousand, though many of them were badly armed and, lacking royal officers to keep things in order, discipline was throughout atrocious. The Muwahhidun, meanwhile, were slightly outnumbered, but they were better armed, more experienced, and, thanks to Al Radi's reforms, generally more disciplined. Finding the road along the coast blocked by di Biserta's force, the Muwahhidun for the first time pivoted inland. By the time the surprised Sicilians realised what was happening, the Muwahhidun were over the mountains and marching on Tadjenat. Di Biserta couldn't beat them to Tadjenat, where the Muwahhidun army linked up with a large part of their Berber cavalry, but he did arrive in time to block the way to Constantine. There ensued a month or so stalemate, as the Muwahhidun waited while their cavalry cut off di Biserta's scouting and forage. Eventually, with the Sicilians effectively blind, the Muwahhidun moved against the larger Sicilian force in the Oued Seguin. The massive Muwahhidun cavalry advantage was put to good use, as di Biserta's force was systematically outmaneuvered, separated, and routed.
After Oued Seguin di Biserta fell back to Annaba, while the Muwahhidun captured Constantine and then dispersed for the winter. In 1514 the Muwahhidun quickly moved against Annaba; judging that he couldn't risk a repeat of Oued Seguin, di Biserta abandoned the city and moved to Tabark, where there was a stronger defensive position. The Muwahhidun briefly considered assaulting his position, but by this point their lines with the west were dangerously thin, and resistance and raiding from the unoccupied interior was becoming a serious problem. So, instead, they left a covering force at Tabark, and moved into the interior in force. The Muwahhidun spent the rest of the year systematically suppressing the Sicilian presence west of Tebessa, which by the end of the year was the westernmost Sicilian garrison. Di Biserta, conscious that his force was the only thing standing between Al Radi and Tunis, and terrified of being drawn into a trap, sat paralyzed in Tabark, issuing continuing appeals to Aimeric and Al Hawas for reinforcements.
(+90 Sicilian Levy Companies, +70 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, -300,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, +1 Tunisian Gentry Strength, -1 Tunisian Gentry Confidence, -1 Maghrebi Arabs Confidence, -16 Sicilian Companies, -52 Sicilian Levy Companies, -8 Muwahhidun Companies, -28 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
Saraqusta, with Muwahhidun and Isbunan backing, assembled a force in Barcelona over the winter of 1513. In spring the force, under the askari general Ibn Sirin, moved to Valencia, where it was joined by both a large corsair fleet organized by Al Radi, and an Isbunan fleet. The combined force, after the expected squabbles over command, then sailed against the Baleares. There the corsairs broke off to do piratey things, while the Saraqustans and Isbunans moved against Medina Mayurqa, the capital of the Admiralty. Although Ricard, most of the fleet, and most of the men were away in the east, Ricard's lieutenant Adolfo di Palmaria did have a few thousand men and a dozen ships at his disposal to resist the invasion, and the seaward defences of the islands were generally pretty strong. At any rate, di Palmaria managed to throw back the initial Saraqustan assault on the city, whereupon Ibn Sirin elected to land on the other side of the island at Alcudia. The Sicilian squadron attempted to interfere, but was driven off by the Isbunans. With di Palmaria forced to concentrate all his defense on Mayurqa, the Muwahhidun corsairs, meanwhile, had a field day, ravaging the rest of the Baleares, obliterating local attempts at resistance and carrying away thousands of slaves. When Ibn Sirin sent detachments to occupy Manurqa, Ibiza and Formentera, they met no resistance, a devastated countryside and a populace that, if anything, was grateful for the protection. On Mayurqa, the Saraqustans quickly occupied the east of the island, and then began reducing the network of fortresses surrounding Medina Mayurqa, while the Isbunan fleet sat in the harbour and conducted a (mostly ineffective) bombardment. Di Palmaria did his best, but of course he hadn't the men to really contest the countryside; by midsummer he was under siege in Medina Mayurqa. With the Isbunans making resupply by sea difficult and their naval artillery pounding the walls, di Palmaria nevertheless held out for two months before surrendering. But surrender he did, and after half a year's campaign the Baleares were lost to Sicily.
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, -Admiralty of the Baleares, +Navy, -2 Saraqustan Companies, -2 Saraqustan Ships)
In Calabria di Trapani hoped at the beginning of the year to at least hold something, as a bargaining chip if nothing else. Sicilian garrisons in Apulia were withdrawn to focus on the defense of Calabria. The imperial army, commanded once again by the reliable old war horse Federico di Urbino, mustered at Potenza, where it was joined by the remnants of the Neapolitan force defeated the previous year, and what additional levies the Neapolitans would contribute. Di Urbino's force, numbering well over thirty thousand, advanced on Sicilian positions in mid spring. Unwilling to commit to an early battle, di Trapani led his main force back to Cosenza, while small detachments harassed and ambushed the oncoming Italians. This did little to slow them, and once di Urbino realized what was happening most of the Sicilian forces, with few safe fortifications to retreat to, were run to ground and destroyed. Still, to the Sicilians that was only a minor setback; the main force at Cosenza was still certainly strong enough to halt di Urbino. And so it proved: when the Italians arrived at the town they dared not assault it. Di Urbino and di Trapani skirmished for a while around Cosenza, while an Italian detachment moved slowly down the eastern coast of Calabria towards Crotone, but it seemed unlikely, at least to the Sicilians, that the Italians could evict the Sicilian army by force. It was at this point that the Egyptians arrived.
The Egyptian fleet had mustered at Crete early in the spring. There were problems with the ship's biscuit, and difficulties organizing the transports, and so the expedition was delayed for a month, but it did eventually set out, with di Fayum commanding the fleet and Enzo di Disuq in command of the land forces. The Egyptians arrived first in Taranto, where they tarried for a time, resupplying and conferring with their Italian counterparts. It was eventually decided that the Egyptian and Italian fleets should join up; this was something of a problem, since the Italian fleet was mostly in the Tyrrhenian, and the Sicilian fleet guarded the Straits of Missina. Di Fayum and the fleet moved to a planned rendezvous with the Italian fleet off Reggio. Communications being what they are, it proved impossible to exactly coordinate with the Italians; the Italian fleet arrived first, and found, instead of the Egyptians, Ricard and his Sicilians waiting for them. The Italians unwisely tried to force the strait and were, naturally, beaten up. Fortunately for them, the Egyptians arrived in time to force Ricard to disengage and run to the safety of Missina, though the Italians noticed that perhaps the Egyptians hadn't moved quite as fast as they might to intercept. Anyway, the combined fleets constituted absolutely overwhelming force, and the Egyptians had no difficulty landing their army at Reggio, which quickly fell to an assault backed by Egyptian naval artillery. The Egyptian promptly began marching north, intending to take the Sicilians in the rear. Di Trapani was by this point aware of the various setbacks that had befallen Sicily elsewhere; as commander of the largest Sicilian field army, he felt that he had to preserve his force at all costs. He consequently decided to attempt to evacuate his army by sea before the Egyptians arrived to crush him. Pulling out of Cosenza, he forcemarched to the wetlands at the mouth of the Amato, with di Urbino hard on his heels. There the Sicilian army met Ricard with his fleet, who had commandeered merchantmen to act as transports and slipped out of Missina at night. The evacuation was, in the end, more or less successful, but it very nearly was catastrophic. If di Fayum's van had been a little bit faster, they might have spoiled the whole thing, instead of only overrunning the stragglers; even more seriously, the Egyptian fleet appeared on the horizon just as the evacuation concluded. But, once again, the Egyptians seemed strangely reticent to engage, and Ricard escaped. The Italians were furious that di Fayum had thrown away 'another Gibraltar', and heated allegations of collaboration with the Sicilians were thrown around before cooler heads prevailed.
With the Sicilians evicted from Italian soil, the allies moved on to the next phase of the war. The Italian army crossed the strait and invested Missina, which, unlike a decade earlier, was somewhat reasonably garrisoned. The garrison was not, however, large enough to pose a real threat if they sortied, so the Italians simply erected lines of circumvallation and waited for either their artillery to bring down the fortifications, or the Sicilians to mount a futile relief effort. Things were slightly more exciting further south, where the Egyptians captured Catania by a ruse and destroyed the militia that had been mustering there. The Egyptians then, curiously, stopped for more than a month. Di Disuq claimed it was to conduct necessary preparations and fortify his hold on Catania; the more paranoid and excitable of the Italians claimed that it was to give the Normans time to work out the next phase of their plot. Anyway, during that month Missina fell; given Italian numbers, the outcome had never been in doubt. Remembering his earlier mistake, di Urbino then began marching straight west, on Palermu, shadowed by the Egypto-Italian fleet.
Meanwhile, di Trapani was busy getting his army back into fighting trim, and Aimeric was desperately trying to raise money and men to combat the invasion. An enormous emergency hearth tax was levied on the principality, forced loans raised from all the major banking houses, and a massive levy imposed on the Church. This all contributed considerably to the disruption of the Sicilian economy, but at least it raised enough cash to go on a tremendous recruiting spree. In fact, between Al Hawas' efforts and Aimeric's, the manpower of the principality is considerably depleted. As access to other recruiting grounds is difficult at best, this may be problematic in the future. But that's the future; all that mattered at the time was that by late summer of 1513 Sicily had roughly achieved numerical parity with the the invaders, although of course the quality of many of the new Sicilian troops was lackluster at best. Judging di Urbino to represent the greatest threat, Aimeric despatched di Trapani and the greater part of the new army to oppose the Italian westward march, while Giuseppe Patenno took a smaller force to oppose the Egyptians, now advancing on Syracuse. The Italians had advanced to Carunia, halfway to Palermu, before di Trapani arrived to block the road. Having caught, so he believed, the Italians out of position, and with a numerical advantage, di Trapani decided to chance an attack. On the Sicilian left flank their advance ran into the stone wall of di Urbino's veterans and was stopped in its tracks. On the on the right, repeated massed pike charges up the slopes eventually forced the Italians back, at great cost. The Italians delayed long enough, however, for di Urbino to pull his right flank back before di Trapani could swing around and trap him against the sea. Carunia was a Pyrrhic victory for the Sicilians; they stopped the Italian march and took the field, but suffered more than three times as many casualties as the Italians. And di Urbino fell back only a little way, to Santu Frateddu, where he dug in, repulsed a probing attack from the Sicilians, and waited for the Sicilian army to either fall apart from lack of pay, or leave to fight the Egyptians. For Patenno had not succeeded in stopping the Egyptian advance: for a second time a Sicilian army tried to block the road to Syracuse at Austa, and for a second time it had failed. Patenno's shattered force retreated west after Second Austa, and the Egyptians mounted a triumphal entry into Syracuse, the city fathers having decided at the last moment not to attempt a futile defense.
While the Gascons spent early 1512 recovering from Limotges and rounding up cash, the English, under Alfgar, the new Ealdorman of Gascony, began a campaign aimed at Bordeu itself, hoping to strike a decisive blow. Alfgar struck out in force south from Limoges early in the spring. A series of skirmishes around Neicon went England's way, and confirmed to the Gascon commander, Geoffroy of Bruelh, that he was too badly outnumbered to effectively oppose the English advance. His plea for reinforcements was answered with orders to buy time for William's fiscal efforts to bear fruit; judging his position untenable, Bruelh evacuated Peiregord and retreated to the Dordonha, where he began setting up a defensive line. Alfgar occupied an undefended Peireguers in April and immediately advanced on the Dordonha. Expecting the English to take the shortest route to Bordeu, Bruelh concentrated his defenses at Liborna, and there repulsed an English column. Alfgar was in no hurry, however, and so the greater part of his strength was deployed further east, against the Gascon fortifications at Brageirac. These fell after a short, sharp contest and the English secured the crossing. Having crossed the Dordonha, Alfgar spent May and June slowly pushing south and west, intending to isolate Bordeu from the east of Gascony before beginning the siege. The Gascons initially made little move to oppose the English advance, but by late June William's politicking was more or less finished and the Gascon army had been considerably bolstered. In mid July Alfgar launched an assault on Liborna. Perhaps overconfident, he split his force to cover both sides of the river, and when an unexpectedly large relief force, under the personal command of William, arrived from Bordeu English forces on the south bank were routed, and Alfgar fell back in disarray to Brageirac. While Alfgar was busy reforming and reinforcing, William found himself with a substantial numerical edge, for the first time in the entire war, and he wasted no time exploiting it. English positions south of the Dordonha were cleared by the end of August, though Alfgar held Brageirac. An offensive into the Charanta in October achieved significant successes, though the arrival of reinforcements from Brageirac made the hoped-for recapture of Angouleme impossible.
In 1513, the tenor of the war changed completely. For a decade the English had been content to gradually grind the Gascons into dust, while the Gascons lacked the forces to do more than react to English moves. The war had consequently been a slow affair, filled with sieges and skirmishes but with a bare handful of proper battles. Now, though, the Gascons had an edge, however slight – but attaining it had cost them most of their reserves of men, materiel, and political will. Clearly William had no choice but to go for broke; he had to win a really significant victory fast, before he lost the ability to keep his men in the field. On the English side, meanwhile, the winter of 1513 saw the arrival of a large reinforcement column from the north, headed by the Atheling Cenwulf.
While Alfgar, certain that time was on his side, delayed in Brageirac, William made the first move in 1513. Hoping to cut off the English from the north and force Alfgar into the field, the Gascons marched on Peirigord, rooted out the outlying English garrisons, and invested Peiriguers. Alfgar was indeed stirred to action, and marched, without a great deal of urgency, to the relief of the town. William declined to be trapped by Alfgar's relieving army, and instead moved to intercept him. Thanks partially to an unusual breakdown of English scouting, and partially to Alfgar's continuing overconfidence, the Gascons stole a march on Alfgar, fell on the unprepared English near Saint Amand and put them to flight. Breakdowns in discipline prevented William from really following up his victory, and English losses were in the grand scheme comparatively light, but the English army was in disarray in the immediate aftermath. Peiriguers surrendered and Alfgar retreated north, with William hard on his heels. On the Vienne, just south of Limotges, Alfgar was for a second time outmaneuvered and handily defeated; while Alfgar kept retreating, William captured Limotges, with a large store of weapons and silver as an unexpected bonus. Alfgar ordered a consolidation of garrisons to bolster the field army, and with English control of the countryside thus diminished, the Gascons quickly reoccupied most of Lemosin. After taking a brief rest to shore up his communications, William advanced towards Poitiers. By the end of July Alfgar finally took the Gascons seriously enough to try something imaginative; unfortunately, this took the form of an attempted operational envelopment near Civaux. Naturally William graciously permitted the English to split their force, and then pounced on the western prong of Alfgar's attack and smashed it to bits. Cenwulf, in command of the eastern force, extricated his men intact, and bloodied the overeager Gascon pursuit, but nevertheless, for the third time in half a year the English army was sent reeling backwards. Alfgar was unceremoniously sacked once word of Civaux reached Leofric and replaced in command by Cenwulf. While the Atheling reorganized his new command, replacing many of Alfgar's comrades in the officer corps, William captured Poitiers.
All the Gascon success of the previous six months had not, however, fundamentally changed the hard calculus facing William: he was still running out of time and money, he still didn't have any leverage, and the English army was still powerful enough to destroy him once the money ran out. In Poitiers, however, he hit upon a possible solution to all his problems. If he could only contrive to corner and destroy the English army and capture the Atheling, he might still win the war at a stroke. This idea quickly became an obsession, and in service to it the boldness that had characterized his campaigns turned to recklessness. Ignoring advice to consolidate his gains or move against the relatively undefended strongpoints on the Loire, William instead lunged at the English army, falling back towards La Rochelle. The Gascons stormed Niort and fell upon La Rochelle so fast that they nearly caught the English unprepared. Unfortunately for William, it was only nearly. The English ensconced in La Rochelle, supplied by sea and protected by naval cannons, were completely unwilling to come out and fight, and William simply hadn't the time to reduce the place. Instead, ignoring all sensible advice, he marched towards Nantes, burning as he went, hoping to draw out the English. He succeeded. Cenwulf left La Rochelle and moved to catch the Gascons before they could retreat to the safety of the south. William managed, one last time, to steal a march on the English and engaged Cenwulf at Fontenay. Cenwulf, however, proved both organizationally and tactically far superior to Alfgar; more importantly, the Gascon army was by this point almost completely exhausted, sick, hungry and low on materiel. It's quite a testament to William's generalship that Fontenay was much of a contest at all; as it was, it was for a time in late afternoon a very near run thing, but when the English center refused to retreat morale and discipline in the Gascon army evaporated, and by evening the battle had become a rout. William and what he could gather of his army fell back south, while Cenwulf, lauded as the saviour of Imperialism, recaptured Niort and Poitiers.
In 1514 time ran out for Gascony. In January the state was forced to default; in early February the estates came close to outright revolt when the monarchy tried to force through another tax levy; by March citizens in the coastal towns were rioting against draconian fiscal measures; and through it all the army, at best underpaid and at worst not paid at all, was dwindling to desertion. In April mutinous regiments sacked Limotges to make up for back pay, whereupon William, reasoning that he couldn't hold any of it anyway, ordered the systematic looting of as much of the previous year's reconquests as possible. This kept the army more or less under control, but crushed the Gascon monarchy's popularity in the affected areas. Cenwulf followed up the retreating Gascons and by June was back on the Dordonha. William, like Bruelh before him, hoped initially to hold the Dordonha line, but a mutinous company betrayed the crossing at Liborna, and the Gascons had to quickly retreat towards Bordeu. In early July the English at last besieged the city, while the Anglo-Frisian fleet blockaded the Gironde. Conditions in the city quickly became dire and public opinion turned against the mercenaries holding the walls. The English assaulted the city while half the garrison was busy putting down a massive bread riot, and quickly breached the walls. Most of the garrison stopped fighting or tried to switch sides once it became clear that the English were inside. The die-hards delayed the English long enough for William and his children to slip out by the river, but the English forces did capture William's wife, brother and sister.
After the fall of Bordeu, the English rather hoped that Gascon resistance would halt, and indeed for a while it seemed this might be the case; a great many maritime towns and cities, alienated and taxed into oblivion over the last few years of Gascon rule, enthusiastically declared their allegiance to the Emperor. Missives sent to the inland settlements demanding their submission met with a distinctly frosty and ambiguous reception, even in the confused aftermath of Bordeu, when it was thought William might be dead. When William turned up a month later in Tolosa, very much alive and determined to continue the fight, ambiguity turned to clear rejection. Meanwhile, the Gascon army was reorganized by Bruelh around Marmanda and repulsed a lackluster offensive up the Garonne in late summer. It seems likely that Gascony has sustained a mortal wound, but it's still kicking and seemingly determined to go down fighting.
(+2 English Prestige, +200,000 taris to English revenue, -400,000 taris from Gascon revenue, -30,000 taris from Gascon expenses, -Maritimers, +1 Inlanders Strength, -109 Gascon Companies, -8 Gascon Levy Companies, -66 English Companies, 5 Gascon Companies to England)
Both sides had planned to strike first, but the first blow of yet another contest between Sicily and Italy was struck by the Sicilians, while Carolus was delayed by financial concerns in Rome. In June Simon Castamara, newly created Conte di Trapani, led a Sicilian force across the straits to besiege the impressive, if somewhat undermanned, Italian fortifications at Reggio. The Neapolitans hurriedly began gathering forces around Cosenza to mount a relief of the city. The Sicilians promptly took advantage of the drawn down garrisons in Calabria and mounted amphibious descents on Crotone and Taranto, the latter personally commanded by the Admiral Ricard. The appearance of two more Sicilian forces threw the municipal commanders into momentary confusion; eventually it was decided to reduce the forces at Crotone before attempting to relieve Reggio. The Sicilian commander at Crotone, curiously enough a Genovese expat called Bartholomew di Gorgona, led his outnumbered force in a daring raid against the oncoming Neapolitans that overran an extended column and forced the Neapolitans to a dead stop. Shortly thereafter, Reggio fell to di Trapani. With the greater part of Sicily's force on its way north, the Neapolitans decided to retreat to Cosenza. There they tried to hold, hoping to contain the Sicilians in southern Calabria. They failed, and the municipal forces were scattered by the Sicilian veterans. Di Trapani occupied the rest of Calabria while di Gorgona marched his force along the coast to link up with Ricard in Taranto. After Cosenza, the Sicilians faced relatively little opposition, as the Neapolitan forces were mustering further north, and the Neapolitan leadership was busy in Rome; by the end of the year, Sicilian forces had overrun Calabria and most of Apulia, and back in Palermu Aimeric had high hopes for his policy.
(+1 Sicilian Prestige, -4 Sicilian Companies, -12 Italian Levy Companies)
In 1513 the sky fell on Sicily. Between the beginning of February and the end of March, declarations of war arrived from Egypt, the Ghaniya and Saraqusta, and Sicily shortly found itself under attack from literally every direction.
In Libya the Ghaniyans and the Campanians quickly moved against Tarabulus and Misratah and all the rest of the holdings of the Admiralty. Even less well defended than five years ago, these all fell quickly. After that the advancing Ghaniyans faced practically no resistance. By the end of the summer they were back at Qabis. After Qabis the Campanians and the Ghaniyans mostly parted ways; the Ghaniyans roamed into the interior, rooting out Sicilian outposts and trying, without much success, to recruit the local Berbers onside. The Campanians kept pressing along the coast, ending the year just short of Sfax. By 1514 the Ifriqiyans, though still more concerned with the Muwahhidun, managed to organize some credible resistance to the Ghaniyan advance. Sfax held out for a month against Campanian guns, and a Sicilian cavalry force inflicted a defeat on Ghaniyan raiders at Qafsa, and mostly pushed the Ghaniyans back to the coast by mid-summer. The Campanians were still advancing, though. By fall, reinforced by most of the Ghaniyan cavalry, they were at Mahdia, and the Sicilians decided they had to fight. Having painstakingly mustered some ten thousand men, the Sicilians engaged the Campanians just outside the city, and although they took the worse of the engagement and were forced aside, they did inflict enough damage on the Campanians that they were forced to stop in Mahdia, and make no further advance into Ifriqiya. The Ghaniyans were another story, and their raiders have reached alarmingly close to Tunis itself, but at least they aren't occupying anything, and the Sicilians are having some increasing success in countering Ghaniyan raids.
(+1 Ghaniyan Prestige, -1 Sicilian Prestige, - Admiralty of Tarabulus, -200,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, -14 Sicilian Levy Companies, -2 Ghaniyan Companies, -4 Ghaniyan Levy Companies, -6 Campanian Companies)
By 1513 the pseudo-siege of Algiers was into its third year. Used to the boredom of the siege and confident that the Berbers couldn't seriously threaten the city, the Sicilian garrison had perhaps become complacent. They were in for a rude awakening. Over the winter Al-Radi had quietly moved large numbers of guns to the Maghreb and begun preparing to mobilize a large segment of the Maghrebi askaris. In early spring the Muwahhidun began an intense bombardment of Algiers, and a strong force of askaris captured Bomardas, severing the land link with the east. Corsairs appeared and harassed shipments into the city, but couldn't cut the sea link; nevertheless, the garrison at Algiers was now cut off and badly outnumbered. A month into the bombardment the Muwahhidun guns finally opened a major breach: askaris poured in, d'Ebaccar was killed leading a counterattack, and the rest of the Sicilian force mostly destroyed in bloody street fighting. A small Sicilian force managed to retreat in good order to the Roccia in the harbour. This quickly proved to be more or less impenetrable, but the Muwahhidun didn't really care about taking it. They had bigger fish to fry than a tiny fortified islet. The border forts at Mandoura and Naciria were overrun, and Berber irregulars poured into Ifriqiya, while the main force marched along the coast.
The fall of Algiers sent Ifriqiya into a panic. Forgotten, for the moment, was the animosity towards the Zuray; now they were essential parts of any defense. Zuray cavalry were despatched to oppose the Muwahhidun raiders – in which they did not really have a great deal of success, being too few to oppose so many – while the Ifriqiyan gentry appealed to Sicily for immediate aid. Aimeric had bigger problems, of course, and the Ifriqiyans were brusquely told to fend for themselves. In Tunis an extraordinary council of the great landowners, merchants and bureaucrats of Ifriqiya, organized by the Chief Magister Al Hawas, met to make arrangements for opposing the Berbers. By late summer Al Hawas and his cohorts had cobbled together some fifteen thousand men out of militias, Arab tribesmen, retainers and mercenaries, and the Muwahhidun had taken Bougia. In the interior the Berbers were gradually gaining the upper hand over the Zuray and other local resisters. The scratch Ifriqiyan force, under the command of the great landowner Hugo di Biserta, moved west, gathering volunteers from the local population as it went. By the time di Biserta reached Jijel his force had swelled to over twenty thousand, though many of them were badly armed and, lacking royal officers to keep things in order, discipline was throughout atrocious. The Muwahhidun, meanwhile, were slightly outnumbered, but they were better armed, more experienced, and, thanks to Al Radi's reforms, generally more disciplined. Finding the road along the coast blocked by di Biserta's force, the Muwahhidun for the first time pivoted inland. By the time the surprised Sicilians realised what was happening, the Muwahhidun were over the mountains and marching on Tadjenat. Di Biserta couldn't beat them to Tadjenat, where the Muwahhidun army linked up with a large part of their Berber cavalry, but he did arrive in time to block the way to Constantine. There ensued a month or so stalemate, as the Muwahhidun waited while their cavalry cut off di Biserta's scouting and forage. Eventually, with the Sicilians effectively blind, the Muwahhidun moved against the larger Sicilian force in the Oued Seguin. The massive Muwahhidun cavalry advantage was put to good use, as di Biserta's force was systematically outmaneuvered, separated, and routed.
After Oued Seguin di Biserta fell back to Annaba, while the Muwahhidun captured Constantine and then dispersed for the winter. In 1514 the Muwahhidun quickly moved against Annaba; judging that he couldn't risk a repeat of Oued Seguin, di Biserta abandoned the city and moved to Tabark, where there was a stronger defensive position. The Muwahhidun briefly considered assaulting his position, but by this point their lines with the west were dangerously thin, and resistance and raiding from the unoccupied interior was becoming a serious problem. So, instead, they left a covering force at Tabark, and moved into the interior in force. The Muwahhidun spent the rest of the year systematically suppressing the Sicilian presence west of Tebessa, which by the end of the year was the westernmost Sicilian garrison. Di Biserta, conscious that his force was the only thing standing between Al Radi and Tunis, and terrified of being drawn into a trap, sat paralyzed in Tabark, issuing continuing appeals to Aimeric and Al Hawas for reinforcements.
(+90 Sicilian Levy Companies, +70 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, -300,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, +1 Tunisian Gentry Strength, -1 Tunisian Gentry Confidence, -1 Maghrebi Arabs Confidence, -16 Sicilian Companies, -52 Sicilian Levy Companies, -8 Muwahhidun Companies, -28 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
Saraqusta, with Muwahhidun and Isbunan backing, assembled a force in Barcelona over the winter of 1513. In spring the force, under the askari general Ibn Sirin, moved to Valencia, where it was joined by both a large corsair fleet organized by Al Radi, and an Isbunan fleet. The combined force, after the expected squabbles over command, then sailed against the Baleares. There the corsairs broke off to do piratey things, while the Saraqustans and Isbunans moved against Medina Mayurqa, the capital of the Admiralty. Although Ricard, most of the fleet, and most of the men were away in the east, Ricard's lieutenant Adolfo di Palmaria did have a few thousand men and a dozen ships at his disposal to resist the invasion, and the seaward defences of the islands were generally pretty strong. At any rate, di Palmaria managed to throw back the initial Saraqustan assault on the city, whereupon Ibn Sirin elected to land on the other side of the island at Alcudia. The Sicilian squadron attempted to interfere, but was driven off by the Isbunans. With di Palmaria forced to concentrate all his defense on Mayurqa, the Muwahhidun corsairs, meanwhile, had a field day, ravaging the rest of the Baleares, obliterating local attempts at resistance and carrying away thousands of slaves. When Ibn Sirin sent detachments to occupy Manurqa, Ibiza and Formentera, they met no resistance, a devastated countryside and a populace that, if anything, was grateful for the protection. On Mayurqa, the Saraqustans quickly occupied the east of the island, and then began reducing the network of fortresses surrounding Medina Mayurqa, while the Isbunan fleet sat in the harbour and conducted a (mostly ineffective) bombardment. Di Palmaria did his best, but of course he hadn't the men to really contest the countryside; by midsummer he was under siege in Medina Mayurqa. With the Isbunans making resupply by sea difficult and their naval artillery pounding the walls, di Palmaria nevertheless held out for two months before surrendering. But surrender he did, and after half a year's campaign the Baleares were lost to Sicily.
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, -Admiralty of the Baleares, +Navy, -2 Saraqustan Companies, -2 Saraqustan Ships)
In Calabria di Trapani hoped at the beginning of the year to at least hold something, as a bargaining chip if nothing else. Sicilian garrisons in Apulia were withdrawn to focus on the defense of Calabria. The imperial army, commanded once again by the reliable old war horse Federico di Urbino, mustered at Potenza, where it was joined by the remnants of the Neapolitan force defeated the previous year, and what additional levies the Neapolitans would contribute. Di Urbino's force, numbering well over thirty thousand, advanced on Sicilian positions in mid spring. Unwilling to commit to an early battle, di Trapani led his main force back to Cosenza, while small detachments harassed and ambushed the oncoming Italians. This did little to slow them, and once di Urbino realized what was happening most of the Sicilian forces, with few safe fortifications to retreat to, were run to ground and destroyed. Still, to the Sicilians that was only a minor setback; the main force at Cosenza was still certainly strong enough to halt di Urbino. And so it proved: when the Italians arrived at the town they dared not assault it. Di Urbino and di Trapani skirmished for a while around Cosenza, while an Italian detachment moved slowly down the eastern coast of Calabria towards Crotone, but it seemed unlikely, at least to the Sicilians, that the Italians could evict the Sicilian army by force. It was at this point that the Egyptians arrived.
The Egyptian fleet had mustered at Crete early in the spring. There were problems with the ship's biscuit, and difficulties organizing the transports, and so the expedition was delayed for a month, but it did eventually set out, with di Fayum commanding the fleet and Enzo di Disuq in command of the land forces. The Egyptians arrived first in Taranto, where they tarried for a time, resupplying and conferring with their Italian counterparts. It was eventually decided that the Egyptian and Italian fleets should join up; this was something of a problem, since the Italian fleet was mostly in the Tyrrhenian, and the Sicilian fleet guarded the Straits of Missina. Di Fayum and the fleet moved to a planned rendezvous with the Italian fleet off Reggio. Communications being what they are, it proved impossible to exactly coordinate with the Italians; the Italian fleet arrived first, and found, instead of the Egyptians, Ricard and his Sicilians waiting for them. The Italians unwisely tried to force the strait and were, naturally, beaten up. Fortunately for them, the Egyptians arrived in time to force Ricard to disengage and run to the safety of Missina, though the Italians noticed that perhaps the Egyptians hadn't moved quite as fast as they might to intercept. Anyway, the combined fleets constituted absolutely overwhelming force, and the Egyptians had no difficulty landing their army at Reggio, which quickly fell to an assault backed by Egyptian naval artillery. The Egyptian promptly began marching north, intending to take the Sicilians in the rear. Di Trapani was by this point aware of the various setbacks that had befallen Sicily elsewhere; as commander of the largest Sicilian field army, he felt that he had to preserve his force at all costs. He consequently decided to attempt to evacuate his army by sea before the Egyptians arrived to crush him. Pulling out of Cosenza, he forcemarched to the wetlands at the mouth of the Amato, with di Urbino hard on his heels. There the Sicilian army met Ricard with his fleet, who had commandeered merchantmen to act as transports and slipped out of Missina at night. The evacuation was, in the end, more or less successful, but it very nearly was catastrophic. If di Fayum's van had been a little bit faster, they might have spoiled the whole thing, instead of only overrunning the stragglers; even more seriously, the Egyptian fleet appeared on the horizon just as the evacuation concluded. But, once again, the Egyptians seemed strangely reticent to engage, and Ricard escaped. The Italians were furious that di Fayum had thrown away 'another Gibraltar', and heated allegations of collaboration with the Sicilians were thrown around before cooler heads prevailed.
With the Sicilians evicted from Italian soil, the allies moved on to the next phase of the war. The Italian army crossed the strait and invested Missina, which, unlike a decade earlier, was somewhat reasonably garrisoned. The garrison was not, however, large enough to pose a real threat if they sortied, so the Italians simply erected lines of circumvallation and waited for either their artillery to bring down the fortifications, or the Sicilians to mount a futile relief effort. Things were slightly more exciting further south, where the Egyptians captured Catania by a ruse and destroyed the militia that had been mustering there. The Egyptians then, curiously, stopped for more than a month. Di Disuq claimed it was to conduct necessary preparations and fortify his hold on Catania; the more paranoid and excitable of the Italians claimed that it was to give the Normans time to work out the next phase of their plot. Anyway, during that month Missina fell; given Italian numbers, the outcome had never been in doubt. Remembering his earlier mistake, di Urbino then began marching straight west, on Palermu, shadowed by the Egypto-Italian fleet.
Meanwhile, di Trapani was busy getting his army back into fighting trim, and Aimeric was desperately trying to raise money and men to combat the invasion. An enormous emergency hearth tax was levied on the principality, forced loans raised from all the major banking houses, and a massive levy imposed on the Church. This all contributed considerably to the disruption of the Sicilian economy, but at least it raised enough cash to go on a tremendous recruiting spree. In fact, between Al Hawas' efforts and Aimeric's, the manpower of the principality is considerably depleted. As access to other recruiting grounds is difficult at best, this may be problematic in the future. But that's the future; all that mattered at the time was that by late summer of 1513 Sicily had roughly achieved numerical parity with the the invaders, although of course the quality of many of the new Sicilian troops was lackluster at best. Judging di Urbino to represent the greatest threat, Aimeric despatched di Trapani and the greater part of the new army to oppose the Italian westward march, while Giuseppe Patenno took a smaller force to oppose the Egyptians, now advancing on Syracuse. The Italians had advanced to Carunia, halfway to Palermu, before di Trapani arrived to block the road. Having caught, so he believed, the Italians out of position, and with a numerical advantage, di Trapani decided to chance an attack. On the Sicilian left flank their advance ran into the stone wall of di Urbino's veterans and was stopped in its tracks. On the on the right, repeated massed pike charges up the slopes eventually forced the Italians back, at great cost. The Italians delayed long enough, however, for di Urbino to pull his right flank back before di Trapani could swing around and trap him against the sea. Carunia was a Pyrrhic victory for the Sicilians; they stopped the Italian march and took the field, but suffered more than three times as many casualties as the Italians. And di Urbino fell back only a little way, to Santu Frateddu, where he dug in, repulsed a probing attack from the Sicilians, and waited for the Sicilian army to either fall apart from lack of pay, or leave to fight the Egyptians. For Patenno had not succeeded in stopping the Egyptian advance: for a second time a Sicilian army tried to block the road to Syracuse at Austa, and for a second time it had failed. Patenno's shattered force retreated west after Second Austa, and the Egyptians mounted a triumphal entry into Syracuse, the city fathers having decided at the last moment not to attempt a futile defense.
Perfectionist
Angel of Verdun
In 1514 di Dissuq and di Urbino, after realizing with disappointment that the Sicilian army had not evaporated over the winter, decided on a two pronged drive on Palermu. A strong force was seconded from the Italian army to the Egyptian, bringing them to roughly equal strength. The reinforced Egyptians took Rausa, brushed aside Patenno's reformed army at Gela, and stormed the fortress at Licata. In the north di Trapani, realizing that the forces opposing him must have been weakened to supplement the offensive in the south, launched a major attack on Santu Frateddu, hoping to break through to Missina. Di Urbino hadn't weakened himself that badly though, and moreover had spent much of late fall building fieldworks at Santu Frateddu. The Sicilians failed to break through, and with the Egyptians closing on Girgenti di Trapani had no choice but to retreat, followed cautiously by the Italians. As the Italians captured Cifalu and the Egyptians Girgenti, Aimeric in desperation ordered an attack on the Egyptians by almost everything he had left. At Sciacca di Trapani actually inflicted a fairly stinging defeat on the Egyptians, though Sicilian casualties were still higher, and the Egyptians fell back to Girgenti. The Sicilians couldn't follow up the victory, though, because di Urbino was closing in on Palermu, and di Trapani had to rush back north to save the capital. The Italians retreated to Trabia and there fought the Sicilian counterattack to a stalemate. Meanwhile, the Egyptians had reformed and were back in Sciacca. The Sicilians did have some good news late in the year, when the Egyptians retreated from a siege of Castedduvitrano, and an Italian attempt to advance from Trabia was checked, but as things go it's clearly only a matter of time before Palermu falls.
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, +1 Italian Prestige, +1 Egyptian Prestige, -700,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, -200,000 taris from Sicilian expenses, -2 Sicilian Merchantry Strength, -41 Italian Companies, -11 Italian Levy Companies, -11 Italian Ships, -13 Egyptian Companies, -9 Egyptian Levy Companies, -2 Egyptian Ships, -52 Sicilian Companies, -18 Sicilian Levy Companies, -4 Sicilian Ships)
The final blow struck against Sicily really only added insult to injury. By early 1514, di Catania and the Sicanian Band had arrived back in Provence, where the King promised to arrange their transport to Sicily. The Provencals, however, knew which way the wind was blowing; after convincing the Sicilians to part from their weapons and separate for transport, they promptly arrested di Catania and the other leaders of the Sicanians, and confined the rest. The Provence then sent the flotilla that they had ostensibly prepared for the Sicanians with a few thousand men to Sardigna. Landing at Alghero, the Provencals quickly occupied a large section of the island, facing virtually no resistance; indeed, many of the Sardignan gentry seem to already be angling for position in a post-Sicily world, and clearly consider striking a deal with the Provencals more attractive than bending the knee to Italy or Saraqusta.
(-1 Sardigna Strength)
The Muwahhidun invasion of Ifriqiya triggered a secret understanding between Liyun and Sicily, though really Liyun would probably have acted anyway; Saraqusta falling into the Muwahhidun orbit along with Isbunah was obviously something the Liyunese couldn't let happen without a fight. They were, however, caught somewhat off guard by the timing, and since the reforms of the previous decade had slashed the standing force, the Liyunese couldn't launch the immediate invasion of the Muwahhidun borderlands that they might have hoped. Things were further delayed by disagreements with the League over loan terms, but nevertheless a reasonably strong Liyunese force under the Malik Ibrahim crossed the border by midsummer, while al-Mu'id was still wrangling with his League and Mustarib creditors. Unfortunately, Ibrahim targeted his offensive at precisely the fortresses Al-Radi had invested the most time and effort into improving over the previous few years, and the campaign came to an almost immediate dead halt before the powerful fortress complex at Malagon. Most of the Liyunese siege train was still en route, and the new style bastions of the fortress proved almost invulnerable to bombardment by the few guns at Ibrahim's disposal. After a dispiriting month long siege the Malik withdraw back across the border. By this point al-Mu'id had managed to raise more money and men, and Ibrahim's force was considerably reinforced. So, of course, were the Muwahhidun defenders at Malagon, as the Andalusian askaris were gradually called into action. Rather than having another crack at the Muwahhidun center, Ibrahim elected to attack the far west, the traditional weak point in the Muwahhidun lines. And indeed, he found Caceres relatively lightly held, and it fell after a brief siege, whereupon Ibrahim advanced on Merida. But the Muwahhidun relieving army arrived from the east before that city fell, and Ibrahim decided not to chance the battle just yet, pulling back to Alhuzen. With the Muwahhidun army at Merida, Ibrahim decided to try instead for Batalyos, trusting on Isbunan neutrality to keep his flank safe. The Muwahhidun fell upon the Liyunese ten miles outside the city, but Ibrahim repelled them, with some loss, and thereafter the Muwahhidun commander apparently elected not to seriously contest Batalyos, as Ibrahim occupied it easily.
(-5 Liyunese Companies, -3 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
At this point a pair of events swung the focus of the war firmly to the east. In mid fall a strong force of Muwahhidun raiders emerged from Saraqusta into the lightly defended upper valley of the Ebro, where they wreaked considerable havoc and prompted the recall of troops from the west to watch the apparently active Saraqustan border. More interestingly, it was around this time that Faisal, ex-emir of Saraqusta, arrived in Liyun asked for help in reclaiming his throne. Operations in the west were suspended, as al-Mu'id decided that the possibility of flipping Saraqusta's allegiance was far more enticing than any direct gains against the Muwahhidun.
In 1514 thirty thousand Liyunese invaded Saraqusta, with Faisal at their head. Al-Mu'id proclaimed that Khalid was a traitor and usurper and that Liyun was determined to see the rightful emir restored to Saraqusta. Saraqusta itself fell immediately, and from the capital Faisal issued missives to the countryside, calling on the people to abandon Khalid and return to their rightful ruler. Khalid recalled troops from the Baleares and began mustering an army around Tarragon, while the Liyunese advanced slowly down the Ebro. By the end of June the Liyunese had reached the sea, whereupon they turned north to Tarragon. They there defeated Khalid and took the city after a brief siege. The main Saraqustan army fell back towards Barcelona, while Khalid did everything he could to buy time and slow the Liyunese advance. A Liyunese column was ambushed and nearly destroyed at Geltru, forcing Faisal to spend some days reorganizing his march, but nevertheless on 21 August the Liyunese reached and invested Barcelona. Khalid had, of course, no small expertise when it came to defending Barcelona against a clearly superior force; indeed, by the standards of the Provencal attempt the Liyunese siege was practically a cakewalk. Barcelona held out through August, and into September, though Liyunese guns were gradually pulverizing the fortifications. Before the Liyunese could launch an assault, however, the Muwahhidun, at long last, arrived.
The Muwahhidun had initially taken advantage of the Liyunese drawdown in the west to retake Batalyos and advance on Caceres. When the Liyunese drive into Saraqusta began, Khalid at first assured Al Radi that he could handle it, and the Muwahhidun launched their own offensive north from Malagon, directed at Tulaytulah. This cleared the Liyunese border forts after a month long campaign; unfortunately, by that point it was apparent that Khalid could not handle the Liyunese invasion alone, and the Muwahhidun offensive stopped, as most of the army was withdrawn to staging grounds at Valencia. On 20 August the Muwahhidun army crossed the border; a week later they stormed Amposta and crossed the Ebro. On 3 September the Muwahhidun reached Tarragon, where a strong Liyunese garrison was acting as a rear guard. Tarragon delayed the Muwahhidun for a week, but, bolstered by the arrival of the Saraqustan and Isbunan fleets on the 8th, the Muwahhidun stormed through a breach and captured the town on the 10th. With the Muwahhidun closing in, Faisal mounted an assault on Barcelona on the 13th; when it was handily beaten back, the Liyunese abandoned the siege and moved west, intending to destroy the Muwahhidun army on their own terms. The Muwahhidun, however, eluded Faisal near Olerdola and met up with Khalid's army. Undaunted, Faisal moved against the combined force at Piera. The Saraqustan infantry veterans outmatched their Liyunese counterparts, however, and held long enough for a devastating charge by the combined askari corps to drive home. Faisal was forced to retreat from Piera, but Khalid, certain that the Provencals were about to attack, refused to follow up the victory. The Provencals didn't attack, as it turned out; the ominous troop concentrations that had worried Khalid were ordered only to move if Saraqusta collapsed entirely. Faisal spent the rest of the year securing the mountainous areas in the northwest, taking particular pleasure in capturing and burning the mansion where he had spent his captivity.
(+1 Liyunese Prestige, -Saraqusta, -1 Christians Confidence, -1 Divan (Saraqusta) Confidence, +1 Askaris (Saraqusta) Strength, -400,000 taris from Saraqustan revenue, -70,000 taris from Saraqustan expenses, -19 Saraqustan Companies, -5 Saraqustan Levy Companies, - 20 Muwahhidun Levy Companies, -20 Liyunese Companies, -8 Liyunese Levy Companies
The Hungarians made a series of increasingly implausible excuses for their continued presence in western Carinthia, as they waited for the Italian army to be safely far away in the south. By the beginning of 1513, when the Hungarians still hadn't removed beyond the Carinthian border, it was clear to even the most thickheaded Italian that they had no intention of honoring the treaty. Fiume secured the transfer of the Imperial army in the Alpine passes to Carinthia in the spring, and they had mostly arrived by the time the Hungarian attack kicked off. The Hungarians made progress, of course, but facing Italian professionals they found the going much slower than in their previous offensive; the siege of Celie alone consumed most of 1513, although it did finally fall. After Celie the Hungarians slowly pressed on, but unrest in the occupied areas and drew off forces to garrisons, and Fiume's efforts continually hampered their forage. Lubiana fell to an assault late in the year that left the Hungarians exhausted and undermanned, but the hinterland remained in Italian hands, and so that was as far as they got.
(+1 Hungarian Prestige, -1 Carinthia Strength, -1 Carinthia Confidence, -11 Hungarian Companies, -9 Hungarian Levy Companies, -14 Italian Companies)
While the Poles were busy with their political reforms, the Danes spent early 1512 redeploying their forces in somewhat confusing fashion. The army on the Vistula withdrew to the coast, where Larson was removed from command and the newly arrived Hrothgar Ragnarsson installed in his place. Ragnarsson's army was despatched by sea to the west. An incredulous Kopanski slowly reoccupied the fortresses on the Vistula, half-expecting the whole thing was a trick. By mid 1512, before any of the Polish reinforcements had arrived or even been recruited, Kopanski was back at the Danish border. In the west, Ragnarsson and his forced landed at Stralow and then moved to retake Stettin. The Danish fleet attempted to break into the lagoon to support them, but was repulsed by Polish galleys; Ragnarsson, however, faced relatively light opposition on land, and retook Stettin after a brief siege. The Danes then advanced south. The absence of the fleet and its guns, still unable to get past the Polish galleys, slowed Ragnarsson's progress, but nevertheless by the end of 1512 he had reached Gorzow, encouragingly close to Poznan.
In Prussia the Danes went over almost entirely to the defensive. While Magnusson continued fortifying the Danish hold on the coast, Larson was given as a sop a relatively small, mobile contingent of the Prussian army, with orders to make himself a nuisance to the Poles. He carried out these orders with no particular enthusiasm, and in any event the presence of Kopanski's army made such things difficult at best.
In 1513 the war went rather differently. By this time the Polish reinforcements had arrived; now the Danes were badly outnumbered nearly everywhere. Even so, the first real action of the year went the Danes' way as Hugo and the Sicanians advanced into Polabia at last. With the main Polabian army tied down in the north, the Sicanians brushed aside the Polabian border guards, crushed a hastily assembled force of levies outside Schwerin, and occupied the capital after a brief but savage siege. However, as the Polabians rallied for a counterattack and Ragnarsson began making preparations to join with the Sicanians, news arrived in the north that Sicily was under attack from all quarters, whereupon Hugo, judging his loyalty to his prince and country to outweigh his loyalty to his contract, decided to immediately return to Sicily. And so the Sicanians promptly turned around, looted Schwerin for good measure, and marched out of Polabia, leaving a trail of destruction behind them.
Kopanski, now with some twenty five thousand men at his command, advanced on Danzig in spring of 1513. Deciding that attempting to harry the Poles was no longer a realistic option, Larson consolidated his forces and prepared for a defense of the city. He was somewhat hampered by the slightly convoluted Danish command structure; Larson was now nominally under Magnusson's command, and Magnusson flatly refused to send his rival any reinforcements. Larson was consequently outnumbered two to one by the advancing Poles. That was not the worst news for the Danes, however. While Kopanski advanced on Danzig, ten thousand Poles moved into Pomerania, another ten thousand into eastern Prussia, and a combined Polabian-Polish army advanced towards Kiel. While Larson did everything he could to slow down Kopanski, Ragnarsson beat a hasty retreat back to Stettin to assess the situation. There it was decided, after some deliberation, that the army marching on Jutland was the greatest threat, and Ragnarsson's army was therefore evacuated by sea to Kiel to stop them. He arrived in time time to meet the Polabians at Poretz, south of the city. The outnumbered Polabians were defeated but retreated in good order, and escaped Ragnarsson's attempts to bring them to a further battle. Ragnarsson, under pressure from Prince Magnus, decided that he couldn't send aid to the east while the Polabian army was intact, and so much of the rest of the year was spent in a complicated series of maneuvers that saw the Danes retake Smukke but fail to bring the Polabians to anything approaching a decisive battle. Anyway, while Ragnarsson was trying and failing to crush the threat to Jutland, Larson managed by a herculean effort to prevent Kopanski from reaching Danzig until mid fall of 1512, although at the cost of much of eastern Prussia. And when Kopanski did invest Danzig, a combination of Larson's preparations, the Danish fleet, and the early arrival of winter stymied him, and he had to retreat.
With Ragnarsson delayed in the west and Larson fully occupied with Kopanski, there were virtually no Danish forces left to oppose the other Polish thrusts. Stettin was recaptured by a Polish army in midsummer, which then advanced towards Stralsund. The Vendland cities did their best to organize a resistance, but alone could only delay the Poles, not stop them. By the end of 1513, most of them had fallen; by the end of the next year, the Poles held the entire coast between Stettin and Danzig.
In early 1514 Ragnarsson at last managed to bring the Polabians to battle, only a few miles from Schwerin, and inflicted a fairly crushing defeat. He could not, of course, follow it up, because the situation in Prussia was growing critical; Ragnarsson and his army were despatched there immediately. Kopanski reinvested Danzig early in the year; with Larson's force thus completely occupied, the Polish army in the east of the country made steady progress towards Klaipeda. Ragnarrson disembarked at Klaipeda just ahead of the Polish army, defeated a Polish assault, and then launched a counterattack south. Nearly as important as Ragnarsson's army was the fact that with him came Prince Magnus, who, although lacking an official capacity, had the prestige and the willingness to order Magnusson to fall into line, and so finally the Danish garrisons on the Lithuanian coast marched into Prussia. Meanwhile at Danzig Kopanski, though still making little progress, had been reinforced by the Polish army from Vendland, and Polish galleys were beginning to make a dent in the Danish cross-bay supply efforts. Ragnarsson's arrival in theatre gave fresh urgency to the siege, and in May Kopanski decided to launch an assault and trust to numbers. Larson held the city, but just barely; fortunately, Ragnarsson's approach forced Kopanski to retreat. Both sides consolidated their forces; adding Larson and Magnusson's forces to his own, Ragnarsson had roughly equal strength to Kopanski. Needing a quick victory, the Danes decided to force an engagement with the Poles. Kopanski moved east and the Danes pursued; on the far side of the Elbing, Kopanski stopped and the Danes decided to force the crossing. At Larson's urging, guns from the fleet were emplaced the night before the battle. Under cover of artillery, the Danes handily attained the far bank, but when the Poles moved out of the field of fire of the guns, the battle nearly turned. However, while Ragnarsson and Magnusson were being pushed back, Larson and his veterans on the left flank carved up their inferior Polish counterparts. Thanks to a breakdown in the Polish chain of command, caused by confusion amongst some freshly minted officers, Larson smashed unopposed into Kopanski's center, and the Polish position quickly disintegrated. Kopanski retreated back into Polish territory and licked his wounds, while the Danes expelled the remaining Polish forces in eastern Prussia. But while Elbing saved Prussia, at least for the moment, the rest of the Danish empire is still in grave peril.
(+2 Polish Prestige, -Vendland Cities, - 150,000 taris from Danish revenue, -50,000 taris from Polabian revenue, -41 Danish Companies, -11 Danish Levy Companies, -57 Polish Companies, -4 Polish Levy Companies, -11 Polabian Companies)
The brothers of the Order mustered on the Daugava in early 1512, under Anders, Mark Captain of Livani. In late spring they crossed the border and advanced on the great Lithuanian fortress at Daugpils, which they then besieged. Daugpils was, this time, quite well garrisoned, but a weak Lithuanian counterattack was beaten back in early summer, and after that it was only a matter of time before the Order's engineers brought down the walls. Daugpils fell in early July, and the Order immediately began repairing the damage and strengthening the fortifications. With Daugpils secured, Anders began moving west, systematically clearing the lesser fortresses along the border. With most of their forces occupied fighting the Danes, the Lithuanians couldn't spare enough men to effectively oppose him; by the end of 1512, the Order had a stranglehold on northern Aukstaitija. In early 1513 Liudas briefly gathered enough support to launch a major counterattack against the Order, aimed at retaking Daugpils. Against the Order-improved fortress, however, Liudas' guns made little headway, and while the Lithuanians were busy at Daugpils, Anders was marching steadily down the Nevesis, capturing Panevezys by mid summer. After a four month siege, the Lithuanian force at Daugpils disbanded acrimoniously, and Liudas redeployed his men to the Nevesis, where they checked the Order advance force at Keynan, stopping Anders' advance on Kaunas. An attempted Lithuanian counterattack ran into the Order's fortifications and stopped dead just north of Keynan, while Anders spent the fall clearing Zemaitija, meeting Danish forces at Siaule in early October.
In 1514 the Order, alarmed by rumblings from Novgorod and distracted by the outcome of the Inquisition, withdrew a large portion of the southern army to the guard the homeland; however, as the Lithuanians were fully occupied by Danish and Polotskian offensives, Anders decided to risk a campaign to clear the Sventoji anyway. With no large-scale Lithuanian resistance, the reduced Order force made steady headway, reaching Ukmerge by early fall. And then Anders, ignoring Danish requests for a quick strike at Kaunas, settled in, fortified his gains, and, judging it a prudent political move, set his men to ministering to the locals.
(+1 Order Prestige, -100,000 taris from Lithuanian revenue, -8 Order Companies, -5 Lithuanian Companies, -6 Lithuanian Levy Companies
Andrei elected to focus his attacks on Smolensk, hoping to pry that principality out of Liudas' hands. It took him somewhat longer to organize his men than it did the Order, of course, but by mid-summer they were ready, and Andrei advanced on the fortress at Orsha, intending to drive a wedge between Smolensk and Lithuania proper. The Lithuanians, not having given much thought to the possibility of an invasion from Polotsk, were slow to respond, and Andrei reached the Dneiper more or less unopposed. After driving back a small force despatched from Smolensk, Andrei settled in for a siege while calling on the boyars of Smolensk to expel their Lithuanian prince and switch sides. They didn't, of course, but Andrei's offer at least somewhat confused the political situation in the city. Anyway, Orsha fell by the end of summer, cutting the direct road between Smolensk and Minskas, and Andrei advanced towards Smolensk. In the face of a threat to a crucial component of the empire, Liudas elected to pull a large force out of the Danish war to oppose Polotsk. As Andrei slowly captured the Lithuanian forts on the Dnieper and the Lithuanian relief force rushed east, Jonas, the Lithuanian prince of Smolensk, gathered his levies and raised what mercenaries he could. Avoiding Polotsk's garrison at Orsha, at the cost of a not insignificant amount of time, the Lithuanians arrived on the Dneiper and met Jonas just as Andrei finished reducing the fortress at Gnyozdovo. As Andrei advanced on Smolensk itself, the combined Lithuanian force attacked his column in the forest just outside the city. The decision to engage in the forest proved to be ill-advised; with the Lithuanian cavalry advantage mostly neutralized, Krazny Bor was at best a draw for the Lithuanians. However, in the face of the unexpectedly strong Lithuanian force, Andrei had no choice but to abandon the advance on Smolensk and retreat some twenty miles down the Dnieper to reassess the situation, while the Lithuanians retook Gnyozdovo and shored up the defenses.
Having reinforced his army, and with the Lithuanians weakened by the siege at Daugpils, Andrei in 1513 restarted his advance up the Dnieper, quickly reaching Gnyozdovo once again. This time, however, he found it strongly garrisoned by Jonas' men and well supplied, and Andrei's assault was beaten back decisively. He was then forced to besiege the fortress, but this proved a harder task than the previous year; the Lithuanian repairs stood them in good stead, and Andrei's small siege train continually malfunctioned. To make matters worse, Polotsk proved incapable of preventing the Lithuanians from resupplying the fortress via the river. After a long and dispiriting siege, the arrival of the mud season induced Andrei to admit defeat and retreat. With his army in a poor state he decided against further campaigns that year.
After the humiliating failure of 1513, Andrei was determined to make 1514 count. Rather than trying once again for Gnyozdovo, he decided to attack the east of the principality. Jonas was, somewhat incredibly, completely wrongfooted by this change of emphasis; he had spent all winter preparing for a third attack on Gnyozdovo, and the Polotskian advance in the east made rapid progress towards Vyasma. Jonas quickly despatched a relief force east, but Andrei pounced on the Lithuanians in open country and routed them. Vyasma fell shortly afterwards and as Andrei marched west, Jonas issued an urgent plea for reinforcements to the center. Liudas, however, hoped to take advantage of Andrei's absence to retake Orsha, and so besieged that fortress, rather than rushing immediately east. Andrei had not, however, been so foolish as to weaken the garrison of the strategic point, and the Lithuanian siege made slow progress. Still, they did make progress, and Orsha would have fallen, save that in the interim Andrei near Dorogobuzh again crushed Jonas' army. Faced with the choice between taking Orsha and saving Smolensk, Liudas decided for the latter, breaking the siege and hastily moving east. Liudas arrived at Smolensk as Andrei captured Yartsevo and began his final advance on the city. For the second time the Lithuanians moved to bar his way. This time they had the good sense to avoid forests, the Lithuanian cavalry was employed to good effect, and Andrei was forced to a halt. Still, the Lithuanians suffered heavy casualties, at least among the men of Smolensk, and could not repel Polotsk's forces. In Smolensk itself, there is growing sentiment that perhaps Andrei has a good point, though the presence of Lithuanian troops has prevented any overt expressions of that sentiment.
(+20 Lithuanian Levy Companies)
(-1 Lithuanian Prestige, -1 Smolensk Confidence, -9 Polotsk Companies, -12 Polotsk Levy Companies, -7 Lithuanian Companies, -22 Lithuanian Levy Companies)
(-1 Sicilian Prestige, +1 Italian Prestige, +1 Egyptian Prestige, -700,000 taris from Sicilian revenue, -200,000 taris from Sicilian expenses, -2 Sicilian Merchantry Strength, -41 Italian Companies, -11 Italian Levy Companies, -11 Italian Ships, -13 Egyptian Companies, -9 Egyptian Levy Companies, -2 Egyptian Ships, -52 Sicilian Companies, -18 Sicilian Levy Companies, -4 Sicilian Ships)
The final blow struck against Sicily really only added insult to injury. By early 1514, di Catania and the Sicanian Band had arrived back in Provence, where the King promised to arrange their transport to Sicily. The Provencals, however, knew which way the wind was blowing; after convincing the Sicilians to part from their weapons and separate for transport, they promptly arrested di Catania and the other leaders of the Sicanians, and confined the rest. The Provence then sent the flotilla that they had ostensibly prepared for the Sicanians with a few thousand men to Sardigna. Landing at Alghero, the Provencals quickly occupied a large section of the island, facing virtually no resistance; indeed, many of the Sardignan gentry seem to already be angling for position in a post-Sicily world, and clearly consider striking a deal with the Provencals more attractive than bending the knee to Italy or Saraqusta.
(-1 Sardigna Strength)
The Muwahhidun invasion of Ifriqiya triggered a secret understanding between Liyun and Sicily, though really Liyun would probably have acted anyway; Saraqusta falling into the Muwahhidun orbit along with Isbunah was obviously something the Liyunese couldn't let happen without a fight. They were, however, caught somewhat off guard by the timing, and since the reforms of the previous decade had slashed the standing force, the Liyunese couldn't launch the immediate invasion of the Muwahhidun borderlands that they might have hoped. Things were further delayed by disagreements with the League over loan terms, but nevertheless a reasonably strong Liyunese force under the Malik Ibrahim crossed the border by midsummer, while al-Mu'id was still wrangling with his League and Mustarib creditors. Unfortunately, Ibrahim targeted his offensive at precisely the fortresses Al-Radi had invested the most time and effort into improving over the previous few years, and the campaign came to an almost immediate dead halt before the powerful fortress complex at Malagon. Most of the Liyunese siege train was still en route, and the new style bastions of the fortress proved almost invulnerable to bombardment by the few guns at Ibrahim's disposal. After a dispiriting month long siege the Malik withdraw back across the border. By this point al-Mu'id had managed to raise more money and men, and Ibrahim's force was considerably reinforced. So, of course, were the Muwahhidun defenders at Malagon, as the Andalusian askaris were gradually called into action. Rather than having another crack at the Muwahhidun center, Ibrahim elected to attack the far west, the traditional weak point in the Muwahhidun lines. And indeed, he found Caceres relatively lightly held, and it fell after a brief siege, whereupon Ibrahim advanced on Merida. But the Muwahhidun relieving army arrived from the east before that city fell, and Ibrahim decided not to chance the battle just yet, pulling back to Alhuzen. With the Muwahhidun army at Merida, Ibrahim decided to try instead for Batalyos, trusting on Isbunan neutrality to keep his flank safe. The Muwahhidun fell upon the Liyunese ten miles outside the city, but Ibrahim repelled them, with some loss, and thereafter the Muwahhidun commander apparently elected not to seriously contest Batalyos, as Ibrahim occupied it easily.
(-5 Liyunese Companies, -3 Muwahhidun Levy Companies)
At this point a pair of events swung the focus of the war firmly to the east. In mid fall a strong force of Muwahhidun raiders emerged from Saraqusta into the lightly defended upper valley of the Ebro, where they wreaked considerable havoc and prompted the recall of troops from the west to watch the apparently active Saraqustan border. More interestingly, it was around this time that Faisal, ex-emir of Saraqusta, arrived in Liyun asked for help in reclaiming his throne. Operations in the west were suspended, as al-Mu'id decided that the possibility of flipping Saraqusta's allegiance was far more enticing than any direct gains against the Muwahhidun.
In 1514 thirty thousand Liyunese invaded Saraqusta, with Faisal at their head. Al-Mu'id proclaimed that Khalid was a traitor and usurper and that Liyun was determined to see the rightful emir restored to Saraqusta. Saraqusta itself fell immediately, and from the capital Faisal issued missives to the countryside, calling on the people to abandon Khalid and return to their rightful ruler. Khalid recalled troops from the Baleares and began mustering an army around Tarragon, while the Liyunese advanced slowly down the Ebro. By the end of June the Liyunese had reached the sea, whereupon they turned north to Tarragon. They there defeated Khalid and took the city after a brief siege. The main Saraqustan army fell back towards Barcelona, while Khalid did everything he could to buy time and slow the Liyunese advance. A Liyunese column was ambushed and nearly destroyed at Geltru, forcing Faisal to spend some days reorganizing his march, but nevertheless on 21 August the Liyunese reached and invested Barcelona. Khalid had, of course, no small expertise when it came to defending Barcelona against a clearly superior force; indeed, by the standards of the Provencal attempt the Liyunese siege was practically a cakewalk. Barcelona held out through August, and into September, though Liyunese guns were gradually pulverizing the fortifications. Before the Liyunese could launch an assault, however, the Muwahhidun, at long last, arrived.
The Muwahhidun had initially taken advantage of the Liyunese drawdown in the west to retake Batalyos and advance on Caceres. When the Liyunese drive into Saraqusta began, Khalid at first assured Al Radi that he could handle it, and the Muwahhidun launched their own offensive north from Malagon, directed at Tulaytulah. This cleared the Liyunese border forts after a month long campaign; unfortunately, by that point it was apparent that Khalid could not handle the Liyunese invasion alone, and the Muwahhidun offensive stopped, as most of the army was withdrawn to staging grounds at Valencia. On 20 August the Muwahhidun army crossed the border; a week later they stormed Amposta and crossed the Ebro. On 3 September the Muwahhidun reached Tarragon, where a strong Liyunese garrison was acting as a rear guard. Tarragon delayed the Muwahhidun for a week, but, bolstered by the arrival of the Saraqustan and Isbunan fleets on the 8th, the Muwahhidun stormed through a breach and captured the town on the 10th. With the Muwahhidun closing in, Faisal mounted an assault on Barcelona on the 13th; when it was handily beaten back, the Liyunese abandoned the siege and moved west, intending to destroy the Muwahhidun army on their own terms. The Muwahhidun, however, eluded Faisal near Olerdola and met up with Khalid's army. Undaunted, Faisal moved against the combined force at Piera. The Saraqustan infantry veterans outmatched their Liyunese counterparts, however, and held long enough for a devastating charge by the combined askari corps to drive home. Faisal was forced to retreat from Piera, but Khalid, certain that the Provencals were about to attack, refused to follow up the victory. The Provencals didn't attack, as it turned out; the ominous troop concentrations that had worried Khalid were ordered only to move if Saraqusta collapsed entirely. Faisal spent the rest of the year securing the mountainous areas in the northwest, taking particular pleasure in capturing and burning the mansion where he had spent his captivity.
(+1 Liyunese Prestige, -Saraqusta, -1 Christians Confidence, -1 Divan (Saraqusta) Confidence, +1 Askaris (Saraqusta) Strength, -400,000 taris from Saraqustan revenue, -70,000 taris from Saraqustan expenses, -19 Saraqustan Companies, -5 Saraqustan Levy Companies, - 20 Muwahhidun Levy Companies, -20 Liyunese Companies, -8 Liyunese Levy Companies
The Hungarians made a series of increasingly implausible excuses for their continued presence in western Carinthia, as they waited for the Italian army to be safely far away in the south. By the beginning of 1513, when the Hungarians still hadn't removed beyond the Carinthian border, it was clear to even the most thickheaded Italian that they had no intention of honoring the treaty. Fiume secured the transfer of the Imperial army in the Alpine passes to Carinthia in the spring, and they had mostly arrived by the time the Hungarian attack kicked off. The Hungarians made progress, of course, but facing Italian professionals they found the going much slower than in their previous offensive; the siege of Celie alone consumed most of 1513, although it did finally fall. After Celie the Hungarians slowly pressed on, but unrest in the occupied areas and drew off forces to garrisons, and Fiume's efforts continually hampered their forage. Lubiana fell to an assault late in the year that left the Hungarians exhausted and undermanned, but the hinterland remained in Italian hands, and so that was as far as they got.
(+1 Hungarian Prestige, -1 Carinthia Strength, -1 Carinthia Confidence, -11 Hungarian Companies, -9 Hungarian Levy Companies, -14 Italian Companies)
While the Poles were busy with their political reforms, the Danes spent early 1512 redeploying their forces in somewhat confusing fashion. The army on the Vistula withdrew to the coast, where Larson was removed from command and the newly arrived Hrothgar Ragnarsson installed in his place. Ragnarsson's army was despatched by sea to the west. An incredulous Kopanski slowly reoccupied the fortresses on the Vistula, half-expecting the whole thing was a trick. By mid 1512, before any of the Polish reinforcements had arrived or even been recruited, Kopanski was back at the Danish border. In the west, Ragnarsson and his forced landed at Stralow and then moved to retake Stettin. The Danish fleet attempted to break into the lagoon to support them, but was repulsed by Polish galleys; Ragnarsson, however, faced relatively light opposition on land, and retook Stettin after a brief siege. The Danes then advanced south. The absence of the fleet and its guns, still unable to get past the Polish galleys, slowed Ragnarsson's progress, but nevertheless by the end of 1512 he had reached Gorzow, encouragingly close to Poznan.
In Prussia the Danes went over almost entirely to the defensive. While Magnusson continued fortifying the Danish hold on the coast, Larson was given as a sop a relatively small, mobile contingent of the Prussian army, with orders to make himself a nuisance to the Poles. He carried out these orders with no particular enthusiasm, and in any event the presence of Kopanski's army made such things difficult at best.
In 1513 the war went rather differently. By this time the Polish reinforcements had arrived; now the Danes were badly outnumbered nearly everywhere. Even so, the first real action of the year went the Danes' way as Hugo and the Sicanians advanced into Polabia at last. With the main Polabian army tied down in the north, the Sicanians brushed aside the Polabian border guards, crushed a hastily assembled force of levies outside Schwerin, and occupied the capital after a brief but savage siege. However, as the Polabians rallied for a counterattack and Ragnarsson began making preparations to join with the Sicanians, news arrived in the north that Sicily was under attack from all quarters, whereupon Hugo, judging his loyalty to his prince and country to outweigh his loyalty to his contract, decided to immediately return to Sicily. And so the Sicanians promptly turned around, looted Schwerin for good measure, and marched out of Polabia, leaving a trail of destruction behind them.
Kopanski, now with some twenty five thousand men at his command, advanced on Danzig in spring of 1513. Deciding that attempting to harry the Poles was no longer a realistic option, Larson consolidated his forces and prepared for a defense of the city. He was somewhat hampered by the slightly convoluted Danish command structure; Larson was now nominally under Magnusson's command, and Magnusson flatly refused to send his rival any reinforcements. Larson was consequently outnumbered two to one by the advancing Poles. That was not the worst news for the Danes, however. While Kopanski advanced on Danzig, ten thousand Poles moved into Pomerania, another ten thousand into eastern Prussia, and a combined Polabian-Polish army advanced towards Kiel. While Larson did everything he could to slow down Kopanski, Ragnarsson beat a hasty retreat back to Stettin to assess the situation. There it was decided, after some deliberation, that the army marching on Jutland was the greatest threat, and Ragnarsson's army was therefore evacuated by sea to Kiel to stop them. He arrived in time time to meet the Polabians at Poretz, south of the city. The outnumbered Polabians were defeated but retreated in good order, and escaped Ragnarsson's attempts to bring them to a further battle. Ragnarsson, under pressure from Prince Magnus, decided that he couldn't send aid to the east while the Polabian army was intact, and so much of the rest of the year was spent in a complicated series of maneuvers that saw the Danes retake Smukke but fail to bring the Polabians to anything approaching a decisive battle. Anyway, while Ragnarsson was trying and failing to crush the threat to Jutland, Larson managed by a herculean effort to prevent Kopanski from reaching Danzig until mid fall of 1512, although at the cost of much of eastern Prussia. And when Kopanski did invest Danzig, a combination of Larson's preparations, the Danish fleet, and the early arrival of winter stymied him, and he had to retreat.
With Ragnarsson delayed in the west and Larson fully occupied with Kopanski, there were virtually no Danish forces left to oppose the other Polish thrusts. Stettin was recaptured by a Polish army in midsummer, which then advanced towards Stralsund. The Vendland cities did their best to organize a resistance, but alone could only delay the Poles, not stop them. By the end of 1513, most of them had fallen; by the end of the next year, the Poles held the entire coast between Stettin and Danzig.
In early 1514 Ragnarsson at last managed to bring the Polabians to battle, only a few miles from Schwerin, and inflicted a fairly crushing defeat. He could not, of course, follow it up, because the situation in Prussia was growing critical; Ragnarsson and his army were despatched there immediately. Kopanski reinvested Danzig early in the year; with Larson's force thus completely occupied, the Polish army in the east of the country made steady progress towards Klaipeda. Ragnarrson disembarked at Klaipeda just ahead of the Polish army, defeated a Polish assault, and then launched a counterattack south. Nearly as important as Ragnarsson's army was the fact that with him came Prince Magnus, who, although lacking an official capacity, had the prestige and the willingness to order Magnusson to fall into line, and so finally the Danish garrisons on the Lithuanian coast marched into Prussia. Meanwhile at Danzig Kopanski, though still making little progress, had been reinforced by the Polish army from Vendland, and Polish galleys were beginning to make a dent in the Danish cross-bay supply efforts. Ragnarsson's arrival in theatre gave fresh urgency to the siege, and in May Kopanski decided to launch an assault and trust to numbers. Larson held the city, but just barely; fortunately, Ragnarsson's approach forced Kopanski to retreat. Both sides consolidated their forces; adding Larson and Magnusson's forces to his own, Ragnarsson had roughly equal strength to Kopanski. Needing a quick victory, the Danes decided to force an engagement with the Poles. Kopanski moved east and the Danes pursued; on the far side of the Elbing, Kopanski stopped and the Danes decided to force the crossing. At Larson's urging, guns from the fleet were emplaced the night before the battle. Under cover of artillery, the Danes handily attained the far bank, but when the Poles moved out of the field of fire of the guns, the battle nearly turned. However, while Ragnarsson and Magnusson were being pushed back, Larson and his veterans on the left flank carved up their inferior Polish counterparts. Thanks to a breakdown in the Polish chain of command, caused by confusion amongst some freshly minted officers, Larson smashed unopposed into Kopanski's center, and the Polish position quickly disintegrated. Kopanski retreated back into Polish territory and licked his wounds, while the Danes expelled the remaining Polish forces in eastern Prussia. But while Elbing saved Prussia, at least for the moment, the rest of the Danish empire is still in grave peril.
(+2 Polish Prestige, -Vendland Cities, - 150,000 taris from Danish revenue, -50,000 taris from Polabian revenue, -41 Danish Companies, -11 Danish Levy Companies, -57 Polish Companies, -4 Polish Levy Companies, -11 Polabian Companies)
The brothers of the Order mustered on the Daugava in early 1512, under Anders, Mark Captain of Livani. In late spring they crossed the border and advanced on the great Lithuanian fortress at Daugpils, which they then besieged. Daugpils was, this time, quite well garrisoned, but a weak Lithuanian counterattack was beaten back in early summer, and after that it was only a matter of time before the Order's engineers brought down the walls. Daugpils fell in early July, and the Order immediately began repairing the damage and strengthening the fortifications. With Daugpils secured, Anders began moving west, systematically clearing the lesser fortresses along the border. With most of their forces occupied fighting the Danes, the Lithuanians couldn't spare enough men to effectively oppose him; by the end of 1512, the Order had a stranglehold on northern Aukstaitija. In early 1513 Liudas briefly gathered enough support to launch a major counterattack against the Order, aimed at retaking Daugpils. Against the Order-improved fortress, however, Liudas' guns made little headway, and while the Lithuanians were busy at Daugpils, Anders was marching steadily down the Nevesis, capturing Panevezys by mid summer. After a four month siege, the Lithuanian force at Daugpils disbanded acrimoniously, and Liudas redeployed his men to the Nevesis, where they checked the Order advance force at Keynan, stopping Anders' advance on Kaunas. An attempted Lithuanian counterattack ran into the Order's fortifications and stopped dead just north of Keynan, while Anders spent the fall clearing Zemaitija, meeting Danish forces at Siaule in early October.
In 1514 the Order, alarmed by rumblings from Novgorod and distracted by the outcome of the Inquisition, withdrew a large portion of the southern army to the guard the homeland; however, as the Lithuanians were fully occupied by Danish and Polotskian offensives, Anders decided to risk a campaign to clear the Sventoji anyway. With no large-scale Lithuanian resistance, the reduced Order force made steady headway, reaching Ukmerge by early fall. And then Anders, ignoring Danish requests for a quick strike at Kaunas, settled in, fortified his gains, and, judging it a prudent political move, set his men to ministering to the locals.
(+1 Order Prestige, -100,000 taris from Lithuanian revenue, -8 Order Companies, -5 Lithuanian Companies, -6 Lithuanian Levy Companies
Andrei elected to focus his attacks on Smolensk, hoping to pry that principality out of Liudas' hands. It took him somewhat longer to organize his men than it did the Order, of course, but by mid-summer they were ready, and Andrei advanced on the fortress at Orsha, intending to drive a wedge between Smolensk and Lithuania proper. The Lithuanians, not having given much thought to the possibility of an invasion from Polotsk, were slow to respond, and Andrei reached the Dneiper more or less unopposed. After driving back a small force despatched from Smolensk, Andrei settled in for a siege while calling on the boyars of Smolensk to expel their Lithuanian prince and switch sides. They didn't, of course, but Andrei's offer at least somewhat confused the political situation in the city. Anyway, Orsha fell by the end of summer, cutting the direct road between Smolensk and Minskas, and Andrei advanced towards Smolensk. In the face of a threat to a crucial component of the empire, Liudas elected to pull a large force out of the Danish war to oppose Polotsk. As Andrei slowly captured the Lithuanian forts on the Dnieper and the Lithuanian relief force rushed east, Jonas, the Lithuanian prince of Smolensk, gathered his levies and raised what mercenaries he could. Avoiding Polotsk's garrison at Orsha, at the cost of a not insignificant amount of time, the Lithuanians arrived on the Dneiper and met Jonas just as Andrei finished reducing the fortress at Gnyozdovo. As Andrei advanced on Smolensk itself, the combined Lithuanian force attacked his column in the forest just outside the city. The decision to engage in the forest proved to be ill-advised; with the Lithuanian cavalry advantage mostly neutralized, Krazny Bor was at best a draw for the Lithuanians. However, in the face of the unexpectedly strong Lithuanian force, Andrei had no choice but to abandon the advance on Smolensk and retreat some twenty miles down the Dnieper to reassess the situation, while the Lithuanians retook Gnyozdovo and shored up the defenses.
Having reinforced his army, and with the Lithuanians weakened by the siege at Daugpils, Andrei in 1513 restarted his advance up the Dnieper, quickly reaching Gnyozdovo once again. This time, however, he found it strongly garrisoned by Jonas' men and well supplied, and Andrei's assault was beaten back decisively. He was then forced to besiege the fortress, but this proved a harder task than the previous year; the Lithuanian repairs stood them in good stead, and Andrei's small siege train continually malfunctioned. To make matters worse, Polotsk proved incapable of preventing the Lithuanians from resupplying the fortress via the river. After a long and dispiriting siege, the arrival of the mud season induced Andrei to admit defeat and retreat. With his army in a poor state he decided against further campaigns that year.
After the humiliating failure of 1513, Andrei was determined to make 1514 count. Rather than trying once again for Gnyozdovo, he decided to attack the east of the principality. Jonas was, somewhat incredibly, completely wrongfooted by this change of emphasis; he had spent all winter preparing for a third attack on Gnyozdovo, and the Polotskian advance in the east made rapid progress towards Vyasma. Jonas quickly despatched a relief force east, but Andrei pounced on the Lithuanians in open country and routed them. Vyasma fell shortly afterwards and as Andrei marched west, Jonas issued an urgent plea for reinforcements to the center. Liudas, however, hoped to take advantage of Andrei's absence to retake Orsha, and so besieged that fortress, rather than rushing immediately east. Andrei had not, however, been so foolish as to weaken the garrison of the strategic point, and the Lithuanian siege made slow progress. Still, they did make progress, and Orsha would have fallen, save that in the interim Andrei near Dorogobuzh again crushed Jonas' army. Faced with the choice between taking Orsha and saving Smolensk, Liudas decided for the latter, breaking the siege and hastily moving east. Liudas arrived at Smolensk as Andrei captured Yartsevo and began his final advance on the city. For the second time the Lithuanians moved to bar his way. This time they had the good sense to avoid forests, the Lithuanian cavalry was employed to good effect, and Andrei was forced to a halt. Still, the Lithuanians suffered heavy casualties, at least among the men of Smolensk, and could not repel Polotsk's forces. In Smolensk itself, there is growing sentiment that perhaps Andrei has a good point, though the presence of Lithuanian troops has prevented any overt expressions of that sentiment.
(+20 Lithuanian Levy Companies)
(-1 Lithuanian Prestige, -1 Smolensk Confidence, -9 Polotsk Companies, -12 Polotsk Levy Companies, -7 Lithuanian Companies, -22 Lithuanian Levy Companies)
Perfectionist
Angel of Verdun
When Ambadeva declared his rebellion in early 1513, he had one great advantage over his adversaries: while the Pandyans would need some weeks to gather any substantial force from their vassals, Andhra's veteran forces were ready to go almost immediately. Ambadeva resolved to make hay while he could, and struck immediately at the holdings of the Kakatiya dynasty, his old rivals to the southwest. The overmatched Kakatiya fell back before the Andhran onslaught, and by midsummer Ambadeva and his allies had occupied rather more than half the dynasty's territory. At the siege of Anantapur, however, a Pandyan army with the Raja at its head arrived and forced the Andhrans to retreat. Meanwhile, the oft-fractious nayaks of the north had been chivvied into action by the Pandyans, and a powerful combined army advanced into Andhra against scant resistance. Briefly the Pandyans hoped the rebellion might be swiftly crushed, but then Ambadeva played his trump card: an alliance with Bijapur. Two Bijapuri armies crossed the border and, with the nayaks away, quickly advanced across the north. With Bijapuri forces threatening the domains of the individual nayaks, the northern Pandyan advance quickly ground to a halt. In 1514, Ambadeva and Ala-ud-Din contrived to catch the army of the nayaks between them at Athani and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Pandyans. While Ambadeva pivoted south to oppose the suddenly dispirited main Pandyan force, Ala-ud-Din marched triumphantly into Bijapur, and overran most Pandyan territory north of the Krishna.
(+1 Bijapuri Prestige, -2 Nayaks Strength, -2 Nayaks Confidence, -23 Bijapuri Companies, -45 Bijapuri Levy Companies, -32 Pandyan Companies, -168 Pandyan Levy Companies)
With the Horde paralyzed by internal affairs after Uzbeg's death, its fortunes in its various foreign entanglements suffered considerably. Shahgali left very few troops in Samara when he went east in 1513, and by summer of 1514 Ibraimov had successfully evicted the remaining Horde elements from Samara. The war seems to have more or less petered out, though no official peace treaty has yet been signed.
(-2 Nizhny Companies, -3 Nizhny Levy Companies, -6 Horde Levy Companies)
Following the assassination of Uzbeg and the subsequent withdrawal of most Horde forces from Persia, Dhahabi unrest exploded in the Horde occupied territories. By the end of 1514 the Horde had lost control of nearly everything to Dhahabi rebels, and the Ardabilid center had brought most of the rebel groups more or less under their wing. It remains to be seen if the Horde has the political will for another invasion of Persia to rectify the peace treaty.
(+200,000 taris to Ardabilid revenue, -8 Horde Levy Companies, -5 Ardabilid Levy Companies)
Delhi undertook a final push to root out and destroy the Bengali resistance. Through 1512 and 1513 Sartak methodically eliminated Muhammad's remaining bases in the Ganges delta. Although Sartak's attempts to bring the Bengalis to a decisive battle failed – Muhammad knew the ground too well and had absolutely no intention of fighting on Delhi's terms – so too did Muhammad's efforts to ambush and destroy isolated Delhi regiments. By early 1514 Muhammad's room to maneuver had all but vanished, and Delhi's efforts to detach his remaining supporters were finally having significant success. Throughout the year Muhammad's forces were gradually depleted by desertion and relentless pressure from Sartak; finally, the Bengali's last organized force of any size was run to ground in his last major stronghold, in the Khasi Hills, and destroyed. And with that the organized Bengali resistance, at long last, came to an end, though banditry is still rife in the province. Somewhat disappointingly Muhammad himself lived up to his elusive reputation, and somehow managed to evade Sartak after his defeat and disappear. He is thought to be either hiding in the jungle, or to have taken refuge in Maipang; either way, it seems unlikely he can pose a threat any more.
(+1 Delhi Prestige, +2,500,000 taris to Delhi revenue, +700,000 taris to Delhi expenses, -18 Delhi Companies, -23 Delhi Levy Companies, - Bengal)
Mandukhai despatched a token force from the Mongol center to aid Galdan and the Yehe in the Jurchen civil war. This proved insufficient to immediately defeat the Jurchen khan, as the Yehe army suffered a defeat on the upper Liao that sent them temporarily reeling backwards. Throughout 1513 and 1514, however, as the Haishu position in the south weakened, a number of opposing clans began to reconsider the wisdom of the alliance with Haishu that started the whole mess. A series of defections to the Yehe cause, capped by the betrayal of the Uda at Siping in 1514, seriously weakened the Jurchen legitimists, and by the end of 1514 the edge clearly lay with the Yehe and their Mongol allies. The Jurchen khan has begun to put out quiet diplomatic feelers to Galdan and Mandukhai, hoping to find a resolution to the conflict that doesn't involve his head on a spike in Khanbaliq.
(+1 Mongol Prestige, -8 Mongol Levy Companies, -3 Jurchen Companies, -32 Jurchen Levy Companies)
Both Emperors in China came to the same conclusion in early 1512: the only thing keeping the other's head above water was their field army; kill that army and kill the state. The Nanhai levied the last few thousand peasants in any sort of fighting trim and gave Qi Jiguang all the scant resources they could muster, while the Haishu drew down their garrisons in Shandong and in the occupied territories to supplement the army facing Qi Jiguang. Aware that time was not on his side, Qi Jiguang moved rapidly west, hoping to intercept the Haishu army marching east before it could link up with the garrison forces coming from the north. The Nanhai caught the main Haishu force near Jiujiang, but failed to destroy it in battle. The Haishu retreated westwards, but with another twenty thousand man Haishu army approaching from the north Qi Jiguang dared not pursue. The Nanhai fell back east, the Haishu joined forces, and Qi Jiguang, now outnumbered and facing increasing supply difficulties, was forced to fight a defensive and delaying war. And if things had continued in that vein there is little doubt that eventually Qi Jiguang would have been forced to ground and crushed, his forces rooted out of Zheijiang, and the Nanhai condemned to a quick oblivion. Of course, things transpired rather differently, because in summer of 1512 the Mongols were, at long last, ready to move.
Fifty thousand Mongols crossed the border into Shandong in early July. The Haishu defenses in the provinces were powerful, but critically undermanned by the demands of the campaigns in the south; the Mongol army punched through the border defences with relatively little difficulty and stormed Weifang. The few Haishu regular forces in the province, supplemented by hastily raised levies, tried to retreat southwards, but were cut off near Rizhao and forced onto the Shandong peninsula. While the Mongol infantry contained Haishu forces on the peninsula and gradually advanced westwards, the great mass of Mongol cavalry swept south at full speed. They reached Yancheng almost totally unopposed, by which point the panicking Haishu were redeploying everything out of the campaign in Zheijiang to oppose the Mongol onslaught. As the Mongols irrupted into the Yangtze plain, they found some seventy thousand Haishu infantry drawn up to oppose them. Judging that, for the moment, discretion was the better part of valor, the Mongols elected not to engage, and instead ravaged the rest of northern Haishu. The Haishu dared not seek a battle on Mongol terms, but they did their best to contain the damage, while Li Qilai, facing the ruin of his dynasty, frantically pulled every string and called in every favor he had.
Qi Jiguang took advantage of Haishu distraction to stabilize his supply situation, recruit reinforcements from southern Zheijiang, and set up a defensive perimeter around what was left of Hangzhou. Further west, meanwhile, a second, smaller Mongol force crossed what was once the Nanhai border and, meeting virtually no organized opposition, immediately set about wreaking considerable havoc.
The one area where the Haishu had success was at sea. The Mongol fleet in the Yellow Sea tried to break out to cause trouble for the Haishu in the East China Sea, but were caught and decisively beaten off Weihai. After that the Mongols slunk back west and spent the rest of the war mounting raids against Shandong to little effect. The Haishu could not, of course, exploit their control of the sea, lacking the spare forces to do so, and so their fleet could do nothing more than crush the odd over-enthusiastic Mongol flotilla and take menacing but mostly harmless cruises along the Mongol coast.
In 1513 Li Qilai assumed personal command of the Haishu army, now swollen by his efforts to over eighty thousand strong. It was decided that Qi Jiguang represented the weaker link in the forces opposing Haishu, and so Li Qilai decided to try and crush him quickly, retake Hangzhou, and then rely on naval supremacy to hold the Yangtze line against the Mongols. An outnumbered Qi Jiguang was defeated at Suzhou and forced back towards Hangzhou. The Haishu penetrated his defensive line at Jiaxing and advanced on the capital. The defences of Hangzhou had not been repaired since the last time it fell, but Qi Jiguang decided to defend it anyway, tearing down buildings and erecting barricades throughout the city. It took a week of street fighting that left the city more or less totally ruined, but the Haishu did manage to retake Hangzhou. It was a fairly empty victory, however; they paid heavily, and Qi Jiguang escaped south with an intact army. Meanwhile, the Mongols, having reached the Yangtze, had been burning and pillaging their way west. After the Nanhai escaped Haishu pursuit, Li Qilai decided that trying to hunt down and finish Qi Jiguang would take too long, and so turned to oppose the Mongols.
Perhaps ill-advisedly, the Haishu decided to force the issue with the Mongols. Crossing the Yangtze at Nanjing, Li Qilai led his army west, intending to leave the Mongols no choice but to fight. The Mongols, meanwhile, disengaged from their campaign around Wuhan as soon as they learned of the Haishu crossing, and rushed east to meet them. The Mongols caught the Haishu on open ground on the shores of Lake Chao, frustrating Li Qilai's attempt to find more favorable ground. Forty thousand Mongols, most of them mounted, met a heterogeneous Haishu force numbering slightly over sixty thousand. The battle initially went fairly well for the Haishu, but when the Mongol center began a feigned retreat Li Qilai, sensing victory, eagerly committed his reserves. The ensuing vast Mongol counter-charge crushed the extended Haishu center, and very nearly captured the Emperor himself. With the center collapsing and the Emperor running for his life, the Haishu soldiers routed, and were run down in their thousands by the Mongols. Li Qilai and what was left of the Haishu army fled across the Yangtze, where Mongol pursuit was frustrated by the Haishu fleet. Nevertheless, Lake Chao left the Mongols in undisputed control of the northern bank of the Yangtze.
In 1514 the Mongols decided that, on balance, they'd rather let the Chinese kill each other for a bit longer, and so, rather than attempt to cross the Yangtze, moved west, rooting out the few remaining Haishu garrisons and moving into Haishu-occupied Nanhai territory. South of the Yangtze the Haishu still hoped to beat Qi Jiguang, if for no other reason than to scratch out a better bargaining position. By this point, however, Qi Jiguang had set deep roots in Zheijiang, especially in the south, and instead of the dispirited and diminished army they had expected to face, the Haishu found themselves facing a well-fed force in good spirits. Li Qilai's offensive south was blunted at Jinhua, and he had to scramble to stop Qi Jiguang's counter-attack towards Hangzhou. After that the front in Zheijiang devolved into a stalemate; the Haishu accepted that they no longer had the power to defeat Qi Jiguang, while Qi Jiguang himself was more than willing to wait for Mongol support, and busied himself evicting Nanhai administrators from Fujian.
In Shandong, meanwhile, the Mongol infantry slowly but steadily advanced, taking fortress after fortress while the Haishu defenders could do nothing but passively oppose them. By the end of 1514, only Qingdao and the far east of the peninsula remained in Haishu hands, protected and supplied by the fleet.
(+3 Mongol Prestige, +1 Nanhai Prestige, -1 Haishu Prestige, -4,300,000 taris from Haishu revenue, -700,000 taris from Haishu expenses, -1 Army Administration (Haishu) Confidence, -1 Army Administration (Haishu) Strength, +1 Naval Administration Strength, -1 Naval Administration Confidence, -34 Nanhai Companies, -54 Nanhai Levy Companies, -43 Mongol Companies, -11 Mongol Levy Companies, -7 Mongol Ships, -88 Haishu Companies, -106 Haishu Levy Companies, -3 Haishu Ships)
Meanwhile in the south, Guangzhou conducted a slow, methodical campaign into Nanhai territory. The Nanhai had far bigger things to worry about, of course, so the only real resistance Guangzhou faced in most areas came from local nobles not keen on bowing to the merchants. The attempt to advance into Yunnan in 1513, however, met with a strong response by the Nanhai defenders of the province, and the Guangzhou commanders decided to concentrate on less-defended, more profitable areas. By 1514, the Society had a firm grasp on a wide swathe of southern Nanhai territory.
(+1 Guangzhou Prestige, -11 Nanhai Levy Companies, -5 Guangzhou Companies)
NPC Diplomacy
FROM: Gascony
TO: Lotharingia
Hey look, an Englishman called Cenwulf conquering Gascony. This couldn't possibly have negative consequences for Lotharingia down the line. I hope Leofric makes you crawl, you pathetic cowards.
FROM: Leagueting
TO: Denmark, Poland
This nonsense is jeopardizing the stability of the Baltic trade routes, and we've had enough. We have a peace proposal that we believe is fair to all sides. Denmark, you're going to cede the Vendland cities between Stettin and Danzig to Poland; Poland, you're going to be satisfied with that, you're going to grant the Vendland cities autonomy, and you're going to agree not to interfere in any League interactions with said cities. If either of you refuses to accept a peace proposal, either this one or another, we will regard you as an enemy of League interests and take appropriate action.
FROM: Jurchens
TO: Mongols
Any chance you'd be willing to let byegones be byegones if we let the Yehe back into the confederacy and give them all honors and acclaim?
FROM: Haishu
TO: Mongols
Are you men who might have terms for us, or monsters who intend to burn everything and piss on the ashes?
World Map, AD 1515
(+1 Bijapuri Prestige, -2 Nayaks Strength, -2 Nayaks Confidence, -23 Bijapuri Companies, -45 Bijapuri Levy Companies, -32 Pandyan Companies, -168 Pandyan Levy Companies)
With the Horde paralyzed by internal affairs after Uzbeg's death, its fortunes in its various foreign entanglements suffered considerably. Shahgali left very few troops in Samara when he went east in 1513, and by summer of 1514 Ibraimov had successfully evicted the remaining Horde elements from Samara. The war seems to have more or less petered out, though no official peace treaty has yet been signed.
(-2 Nizhny Companies, -3 Nizhny Levy Companies, -6 Horde Levy Companies)
Following the assassination of Uzbeg and the subsequent withdrawal of most Horde forces from Persia, Dhahabi unrest exploded in the Horde occupied territories. By the end of 1514 the Horde had lost control of nearly everything to Dhahabi rebels, and the Ardabilid center had brought most of the rebel groups more or less under their wing. It remains to be seen if the Horde has the political will for another invasion of Persia to rectify the peace treaty.
(+200,000 taris to Ardabilid revenue, -8 Horde Levy Companies, -5 Ardabilid Levy Companies)
Delhi undertook a final push to root out and destroy the Bengali resistance. Through 1512 and 1513 Sartak methodically eliminated Muhammad's remaining bases in the Ganges delta. Although Sartak's attempts to bring the Bengalis to a decisive battle failed – Muhammad knew the ground too well and had absolutely no intention of fighting on Delhi's terms – so too did Muhammad's efforts to ambush and destroy isolated Delhi regiments. By early 1514 Muhammad's room to maneuver had all but vanished, and Delhi's efforts to detach his remaining supporters were finally having significant success. Throughout the year Muhammad's forces were gradually depleted by desertion and relentless pressure from Sartak; finally, the Bengali's last organized force of any size was run to ground in his last major stronghold, in the Khasi Hills, and destroyed. And with that the organized Bengali resistance, at long last, came to an end, though banditry is still rife in the province. Somewhat disappointingly Muhammad himself lived up to his elusive reputation, and somehow managed to evade Sartak after his defeat and disappear. He is thought to be either hiding in the jungle, or to have taken refuge in Maipang; either way, it seems unlikely he can pose a threat any more.
(+1 Delhi Prestige, +2,500,000 taris to Delhi revenue, +700,000 taris to Delhi expenses, -18 Delhi Companies, -23 Delhi Levy Companies, - Bengal)
Mandukhai despatched a token force from the Mongol center to aid Galdan and the Yehe in the Jurchen civil war. This proved insufficient to immediately defeat the Jurchen khan, as the Yehe army suffered a defeat on the upper Liao that sent them temporarily reeling backwards. Throughout 1513 and 1514, however, as the Haishu position in the south weakened, a number of opposing clans began to reconsider the wisdom of the alliance with Haishu that started the whole mess. A series of defections to the Yehe cause, capped by the betrayal of the Uda at Siping in 1514, seriously weakened the Jurchen legitimists, and by the end of 1514 the edge clearly lay with the Yehe and their Mongol allies. The Jurchen khan has begun to put out quiet diplomatic feelers to Galdan and Mandukhai, hoping to find a resolution to the conflict that doesn't involve his head on a spike in Khanbaliq.
(+1 Mongol Prestige, -8 Mongol Levy Companies, -3 Jurchen Companies, -32 Jurchen Levy Companies)
Both Emperors in China came to the same conclusion in early 1512: the only thing keeping the other's head above water was their field army; kill that army and kill the state. The Nanhai levied the last few thousand peasants in any sort of fighting trim and gave Qi Jiguang all the scant resources they could muster, while the Haishu drew down their garrisons in Shandong and in the occupied territories to supplement the army facing Qi Jiguang. Aware that time was not on his side, Qi Jiguang moved rapidly west, hoping to intercept the Haishu army marching east before it could link up with the garrison forces coming from the north. The Nanhai caught the main Haishu force near Jiujiang, but failed to destroy it in battle. The Haishu retreated westwards, but with another twenty thousand man Haishu army approaching from the north Qi Jiguang dared not pursue. The Nanhai fell back east, the Haishu joined forces, and Qi Jiguang, now outnumbered and facing increasing supply difficulties, was forced to fight a defensive and delaying war. And if things had continued in that vein there is little doubt that eventually Qi Jiguang would have been forced to ground and crushed, his forces rooted out of Zheijiang, and the Nanhai condemned to a quick oblivion. Of course, things transpired rather differently, because in summer of 1512 the Mongols were, at long last, ready to move.
Fifty thousand Mongols crossed the border into Shandong in early July. The Haishu defenses in the provinces were powerful, but critically undermanned by the demands of the campaigns in the south; the Mongol army punched through the border defences with relatively little difficulty and stormed Weifang. The few Haishu regular forces in the province, supplemented by hastily raised levies, tried to retreat southwards, but were cut off near Rizhao and forced onto the Shandong peninsula. While the Mongol infantry contained Haishu forces on the peninsula and gradually advanced westwards, the great mass of Mongol cavalry swept south at full speed. They reached Yancheng almost totally unopposed, by which point the panicking Haishu were redeploying everything out of the campaign in Zheijiang to oppose the Mongol onslaught. As the Mongols irrupted into the Yangtze plain, they found some seventy thousand Haishu infantry drawn up to oppose them. Judging that, for the moment, discretion was the better part of valor, the Mongols elected not to engage, and instead ravaged the rest of northern Haishu. The Haishu dared not seek a battle on Mongol terms, but they did their best to contain the damage, while Li Qilai, facing the ruin of his dynasty, frantically pulled every string and called in every favor he had.
Qi Jiguang took advantage of Haishu distraction to stabilize his supply situation, recruit reinforcements from southern Zheijiang, and set up a defensive perimeter around what was left of Hangzhou. Further west, meanwhile, a second, smaller Mongol force crossed what was once the Nanhai border and, meeting virtually no organized opposition, immediately set about wreaking considerable havoc.
The one area where the Haishu had success was at sea. The Mongol fleet in the Yellow Sea tried to break out to cause trouble for the Haishu in the East China Sea, but were caught and decisively beaten off Weihai. After that the Mongols slunk back west and spent the rest of the war mounting raids against Shandong to little effect. The Haishu could not, of course, exploit their control of the sea, lacking the spare forces to do so, and so their fleet could do nothing more than crush the odd over-enthusiastic Mongol flotilla and take menacing but mostly harmless cruises along the Mongol coast.
In 1513 Li Qilai assumed personal command of the Haishu army, now swollen by his efforts to over eighty thousand strong. It was decided that Qi Jiguang represented the weaker link in the forces opposing Haishu, and so Li Qilai decided to try and crush him quickly, retake Hangzhou, and then rely on naval supremacy to hold the Yangtze line against the Mongols. An outnumbered Qi Jiguang was defeated at Suzhou and forced back towards Hangzhou. The Haishu penetrated his defensive line at Jiaxing and advanced on the capital. The defences of Hangzhou had not been repaired since the last time it fell, but Qi Jiguang decided to defend it anyway, tearing down buildings and erecting barricades throughout the city. It took a week of street fighting that left the city more or less totally ruined, but the Haishu did manage to retake Hangzhou. It was a fairly empty victory, however; they paid heavily, and Qi Jiguang escaped south with an intact army. Meanwhile, the Mongols, having reached the Yangtze, had been burning and pillaging their way west. After the Nanhai escaped Haishu pursuit, Li Qilai decided that trying to hunt down and finish Qi Jiguang would take too long, and so turned to oppose the Mongols.
Perhaps ill-advisedly, the Haishu decided to force the issue with the Mongols. Crossing the Yangtze at Nanjing, Li Qilai led his army west, intending to leave the Mongols no choice but to fight. The Mongols, meanwhile, disengaged from their campaign around Wuhan as soon as they learned of the Haishu crossing, and rushed east to meet them. The Mongols caught the Haishu on open ground on the shores of Lake Chao, frustrating Li Qilai's attempt to find more favorable ground. Forty thousand Mongols, most of them mounted, met a heterogeneous Haishu force numbering slightly over sixty thousand. The battle initially went fairly well for the Haishu, but when the Mongol center began a feigned retreat Li Qilai, sensing victory, eagerly committed his reserves. The ensuing vast Mongol counter-charge crushed the extended Haishu center, and very nearly captured the Emperor himself. With the center collapsing and the Emperor running for his life, the Haishu soldiers routed, and were run down in their thousands by the Mongols. Li Qilai and what was left of the Haishu army fled across the Yangtze, where Mongol pursuit was frustrated by the Haishu fleet. Nevertheless, Lake Chao left the Mongols in undisputed control of the northern bank of the Yangtze.
In 1514 the Mongols decided that, on balance, they'd rather let the Chinese kill each other for a bit longer, and so, rather than attempt to cross the Yangtze, moved west, rooting out the few remaining Haishu garrisons and moving into Haishu-occupied Nanhai territory. South of the Yangtze the Haishu still hoped to beat Qi Jiguang, if for no other reason than to scratch out a better bargaining position. By this point, however, Qi Jiguang had set deep roots in Zheijiang, especially in the south, and instead of the dispirited and diminished army they had expected to face, the Haishu found themselves facing a well-fed force in good spirits. Li Qilai's offensive south was blunted at Jinhua, and he had to scramble to stop Qi Jiguang's counter-attack towards Hangzhou. After that the front in Zheijiang devolved into a stalemate; the Haishu accepted that they no longer had the power to defeat Qi Jiguang, while Qi Jiguang himself was more than willing to wait for Mongol support, and busied himself evicting Nanhai administrators from Fujian.
In Shandong, meanwhile, the Mongol infantry slowly but steadily advanced, taking fortress after fortress while the Haishu defenders could do nothing but passively oppose them. By the end of 1514, only Qingdao and the far east of the peninsula remained in Haishu hands, protected and supplied by the fleet.
(+3 Mongol Prestige, +1 Nanhai Prestige, -1 Haishu Prestige, -4,300,000 taris from Haishu revenue, -700,000 taris from Haishu expenses, -1 Army Administration (Haishu) Confidence, -1 Army Administration (Haishu) Strength, +1 Naval Administration Strength, -1 Naval Administration Confidence, -34 Nanhai Companies, -54 Nanhai Levy Companies, -43 Mongol Companies, -11 Mongol Levy Companies, -7 Mongol Ships, -88 Haishu Companies, -106 Haishu Levy Companies, -3 Haishu Ships)
Meanwhile in the south, Guangzhou conducted a slow, methodical campaign into Nanhai territory. The Nanhai had far bigger things to worry about, of course, so the only real resistance Guangzhou faced in most areas came from local nobles not keen on bowing to the merchants. The attempt to advance into Yunnan in 1513, however, met with a strong response by the Nanhai defenders of the province, and the Guangzhou commanders decided to concentrate on less-defended, more profitable areas. By 1514, the Society had a firm grasp on a wide swathe of southern Nanhai territory.
(+1 Guangzhou Prestige, -11 Nanhai Levy Companies, -5 Guangzhou Companies)
NPC Diplomacy
FROM: Gascony
TO: Lotharingia
Hey look, an Englishman called Cenwulf conquering Gascony. This couldn't possibly have negative consequences for Lotharingia down the line. I hope Leofric makes you crawl, you pathetic cowards.
FROM: Leagueting
TO: Denmark, Poland
This nonsense is jeopardizing the stability of the Baltic trade routes, and we've had enough. We have a peace proposal that we believe is fair to all sides. Denmark, you're going to cede the Vendland cities between Stettin and Danzig to Poland; Poland, you're going to be satisfied with that, you're going to grant the Vendland cities autonomy, and you're going to agree not to interfere in any League interactions with said cities. If either of you refuses to accept a peace proposal, either this one or another, we will regard you as an enemy of League interests and take appropriate action.
FROM: Jurchens
TO: Mongols
Any chance you'd be willing to let byegones be byegones if we let the Yehe back into the confederacy and give them all honors and acclaim?
FROM: Haishu
TO: Mongols
Are you men who might have terms for us, or monsters who intend to burn everything and piss on the ashes?
World Map, AD 1515
Spoiler World Map, AD 1515 :
Perfectionist
Angel of Verdun
OOC: Right, sans casualties, because they're still all over the place and I really wanted to get this up tonight. I've just realized that I completely forgot about the Horde, and there are one or two other things I need to add in, but that's most of it; should fix casualties and stuff tomorrow. Stats will take a bit longer, because I need to do a thorough check for things that have gotten messed up; my trade numbers in particular are outdated, I think.
Kentharu
Zebra Commander
Wonderful update perf
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
OOC: Great update perf, you made my morning!
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
It was fun while it lasted, but I'm going to have to quit at this time.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for having me.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
You shan't. 
Ninja Dude
Sorry, I wasn't listening...
Hmm... I've been absent for quite some time. Could I maybe get a list of countries that need players and a little summary for their current situation?
Longphort League is open and trying to broker a Baltic Peace, Emirate of Liyun is open and getting all violent, the Muwahiddun are open and all violent, Saraqusta is open and in a hilarious mess, and also all violent. Actually, almost all of Iberia, minus al-Isbunah, shows signs of turning into a bloodbath. Provence is open and has a lot of potential with the collapse of Sicily. Sicily is recently vacated if you want a fixer-upper. Thuringia, Lusatia, Polabia and Bohemia are all open in central Europe, while Friland, and the Order of Saint Knut are open way up north. Go east a bit and you'll find Veliky Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Polotsk, Kiev, Volynia, Tver, Yaroslavl, the Tokhta Horde and Georgia. That's just covering Europe.
At this point, I think there's a lot of fun to be had in Iberia, Central Europe, and the various Russian (and not-Russian) states, although I confess to find the war out there to be a little confusing.
At this point, I think there's a lot of fun to be had in Iberia, Central Europe, and the various Russian (and not-Russian) states, although I confess to find the war out there to be a little confusing.
The Haishu in Eastern China need a player. Their long war with the Nanhai (western China) is winding down, but they are under pressure from Mongols. They are friendly with Guangzhou (me) in south China.
This is an excellent game!
Why.?
