Recent content by Xavier

High levels of trust all around I see. Truly, a recipe for success!

Best source I ever had for this is a site I stumbled upon over a decade ago, but was too stupid to properly bookmark, so you'll have to settle for my memory. Bear in mind that for the next part little concrete proof exists, besides common sense, vague descriptions (since outdated by the time we...

A charge does not look like what Hollywood shows us, at all. In fact, most charges never even make contact with the enemy. Whether on foot or on horseback, you have to be suicidal to physically smash into a well formed enemy line at speed, and horses are quite fearful animals as well. So, if...

Short wiki page on the new governor, former viceroy of Naples and ambassador in Rome and with experience against the Ottomans. IOW, while experienced in governing/diplomacy, likely to make mistakes regarding how to deal with protestants. Romero OTOH, certainly has some interesting info on his...

There is no precedent at this point for removing an Electorate (let alone 2) from existence by foreign conquest (nor, IIRC, for an electorate durably changing hands this way), so one should not expect the Habsburgs (and other German princes) to just shrug and parachute the orphaned electors...

Been there, done that, and totally got away with it before for the French. Admittedly, the Three Bishoprics together are several times smaller than Liège, but still, no legal differences and Liège is not an electorate. Just needs a good excuse to march in. Trier, being an electorate, is...

And to think that most places that had tax farming implemented it because it was seen as more efficient and reliable than the preceeding tax collection schemes. But more than half of collected taxes as 'expenses', holy cow! No wonder that the commoners were pissed at the gabelle, taille and...

You don't easily end an instutution that has existed for nearly a millenia (exact age depends on how you count) and which suits most rulers that are part of it. OTL it took Napoleon's massive, swift victories to create the necessary system shock. An Ancien Régime state is highly unlikely to ever...

A blessing in disguise then (anything that removes the opportunity for van Hembyse to go full fanatic anti-Catholic persecution is a good thing). OTL, Aarschot took the side of the Spanish in 1577, TTL in a way he....sort-of-but-not-quite did just now in order to fill the power vacuum. Curious...

Interesting. For things to end up better than OTL for the Low Countries, the Catholic nobles, who are already feeling uneasy about the Calvinist zealots, preferably need to be angrier at whatever the Spanish reaction will be to this assassination than with the assassination itself, so I'm...

Exactly 17km to the Palais du Louvre from the Château de Versailles, while the Château de Compiègne is just shy of 72km. So if a king goes for Compiègne as main residence, everything important will have to move there, which, IIRC was not entirely the case with Versailles since Paris was within...

Both a vote of confidence asked by the government as a motion of censure on the initiative of the Assemblée would have required an absolute majority of members. From the actual text of the proposed constitution (sole link on its French wiki): Those were also literally copy-pasted into the...

The examples you give are all cases of less accurate transliterations of native names being replaced with more accurate ones. Except for Ukraine, there it's Russian based ones being replaced for Ukrainian based ones. "Duitschland" in Dutch is a completely different linguistic change. It is...

Impossible to even start guessing without knowing which version of the Netherlands, how and when. A pre-Burgundian local dynasty pulling a Habsburg in the middle ages is going to have a completely different result than a much later unification for instance.

Indeed, nothing to gain for Prussia here, so not happening. Even more so since legally, King of Prussia is his first job (he gets to be German Emperor ex officio in the constitution). An unlikely hill to die on for powerless Luxembourg, they are bound to get better treatment by 'willingly'...