A Second White Rose - Edmund, Earl of Rutland Survives
- Thread starter Zestinobambino
- Start date
Chapter Thirteen: A Taste of Fame
Chapter Thirteen: A Taste of Fame
A map of Italy in 1473, showing the major powers on the peninsula.
A map of Italy in 1473, showing the major powers on the peninsula.
Early into the Franco-Alliance War, Louis XI sent word to his primary allies - the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Savoy and the Duchy of Milan - asking for assistance against the English-Breton-Burgundian threat. Since Amadeus IX, Duke of Savoy’s death in 1472, followed by Amadeus’s eldest son Philibert’s death from tuberculosis in 1473 [1], Amadeus’s second son Charles (born in 1468) was Duke of Savoy under the regency of his mother Yolande of Valois. Since Yolande was Louis XI’s sister, it was no surprise that she agreed to send a contingent to fight under the banner of the Red Prince, who had been living in Geneva with his in-laws. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan also sent 1,000 men, but he was more bothered about maintaining cordial relations on the Italian Peninsula at the time as relations between the papal states and Florence worsened. Luckily, the war had ended before the worsening of relations devolved into violence.
Florence, 26th April 1478
Lorenzo de’ Medici was about to take a seat in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore for High Mass when someone behind him screamed “Liberty!” He spun round and saw a man holding a knife charging at his brother Giuliano.
“Giuliano!” Lorenzo gasped as the man, whom he recognised as Francesco de’ Pazzi, brought the knife down over his head towards Giuliano’s chest. Giuliano brought his arms up in self-defence and pushed Francesco’s arms to the left. “What is this treachery, Pazzi?” Giuliano spat.
“Freedom.” Francesco snarled back and swung his knife through a wide arc, slicing through Giuliano’s clothes and ripping skin off his chest. Now another men set upon Giuliano - Bernardo Baroncelli. Bernardo grabbed Giuliano from behind, putting the man in a headlock. “Now!” He shouted at Francesco, and Francesco thrust his dagger into Giuliano’s throat. Blood spurted out of the wound as he pulled the knife back out, and Giuliano collapsed to the ground, trying to stem the bloodflow with his hands - to no avail. He died there, on the floor of the cathedral.
Meanwhile, another man had come charging at Lorenzo himself. Lorenzo vaguely recognised the man as one of Francesco de’ Pazzi’s employees, snarling and wielding a knife. Lorenzo stepped to the side and punched the attacker square in the nose, staggering the man backwards - but now Baroncelli was behind him and pushed him to the floor. Baroncelli pinned Lorenzo down and raised his knife, about to bring it down into Lorenzo’s threat. “Goodbye, Medici scum,” he hissed, but then someone behind Baroncelli picked the man up and threw him off Lorenzo. Lorenzo recognised his saviour as one of his employees, a banker called Francesco Nori. “Lorenzo! Are you hurt?” Nori asked Lorenzo urgently.
“My leg. I twisted my ankle falling.” He answered, and looked at his brother’s corpse. By Giuliano’s side, another Medici retainer was engaged in a fight with Francesco de’ Pazzi. Lorenzo started towards Pazzi in rage, ready to avenge his brother - but his ankle gave way, and he just fell over again.
Nori helped him up. “Poliziano! Over here,” he shouted at Poliziano, a poet and one of Lorenzo’s intellectual friends, who rushed to Lorenzo’s side. “Escort him out of here.” Nori ordered.
“Of course.” Poliziano nodded. He put an arm around Lorenzo’s shoulder and together, the two men hobbled off.
“Are you alright, Lorenzo?” The poet asked Lorenzo.
“It is minor damage,” Lorenzo grunted. “It is nothing compared to what I shall inflict on the dogs who have done this.”
Lorenzo escaped Santa Maria del Fiore relatively intact, making it back to his home with Poliziano’s help (rumours after the attack began to spread that Lorenzo had been saved by a mysterious man in a white robe, but these claims were never proved [2]), and the people of Florence failed to rise with the conspirators as expected. Archbishop Francesco Salviati of Pisa, a leader of the conspiracy, attempted to seize the Palazzo Vecchio, where he was arrested by Gonfaloniere Petrucci. Within an hour, Salviati had been hanged by a lynch mob from the window of the Sala dei Duecento. Between April and October, 80 conspirators had been hanged across Florence.
A large part of the disagreement between Florence and the papal states stemmed from the town of Imola, a small town in Romagna. Since coming to power in 1471 as pope, Sixtus IV had been using his papal power to elevate the standing of his relatively poor relatives in the della Rovere and Riario families. Sixtus IV intended to buy Imola for Girolamo Riario, his nephew (or, according to rumours, perhaps his illegitimate son), but Lorenzo de’ Medici had also intended to buy the town in May 1473 from Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, because Imola lay on the main route between Florence and Venice. Galeazzo Sforza now decided instead to sell the town to Sixtus IV on the condition that his illegitimate daughter Caterina was allowed to marry Girolamo Riario. The Medici Bank refused to finance this transaction, forcing Sixtus to deal with the Pazzi Bank instead. This, coupled with the Pazzi family’s distaste for Lorenzo’s unchallengeable level of power, led to the conspiracy.
In the aftermath of the conspiracy, Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa - one of the conspirators - was murdered. The death of such a high-up prelate caused outrage within the papal states, and Pope Sixtus IV decided to excommunicate the entire city of Florence in revenge for the death of Archbishop Salviati. By July, Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Calabria - son of Ferrante, King of Naples - was leading an army into Florence’s territory. Lorenzo rallied the citizens of Florence to defend the city, but with little military aid coming from his traditional allies in Milan and Bologna, the war dragged on throughout 1478 and 1479, causing great damage to the Florentine economy and causing support for the Medici to waver. To solve the crisis, Lorenzo took drastic action - he travelled to Naples and handed himself over to King Ferrante, where he stayed for several months as a prisoner. However, in March 1480, Lorenzo returned to Florence with a peace treaty - Naples’s men were to withdraw from Florence immediately. This was followed by more good news in December 1480 when, under pressure from King Ferrante, Pope Sixtus IV lifted the interdict on Florence, and the excommunication was reversed. Peace returned to Italy.
The Medici family for many years had simply been a wealthy banking clan within Florence, but their power under Lorenzo had skyrocketed. Using his immense wealth to basically buy the Florentine Republic by creating new legislative bodies that directly answered to the Medici, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s main objective was to transform his family’s standing from that of bankers to that of aristocrats, with Florence as their own hereditary fiefdom. He had already begun to make familial connections with the nobility of Italy, when in 1469 William VIII, Marquis of Montferrat married Lorenzo’s sister Bianca de’ Medici, giving the family their first taste of aristocratic blood. William was Bianca’s second husband - her first had been Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, who had died in 1466 and by whom Bianca had five children. William and Bianca had two daughters - Lucrezia (born in 1471) and Bianca (born in 1473) [3].
[1] - minor butterfly. IOTL, Philibert was Duke of Savoy from 1472 to 1482. I have cut that short to make certain marriages in the coming chapters easier to make work.
[2] - there’s no way that no-one on this website knows what I’m referencing here, so a cookie to whoever says it first.
[3] - a couple of things here worth explaining. IOTL, William VIII married Elisabetta Sforza, but ITTL Elisabetta is married to Charles, Duke of Berry. Also IOTL, Bianca and Guglielmo stayed together until Bianca died in 1505.
@Zestinobambino ! Amazing work! Lorenzo made such a boss move! Hoping the best for the medici's
Thank you! I've been reading about the Medici recently, they're a very interesting bunch (especially Lorenzo)
What has become of Warwick's brother Montagu - presumably he followed his brother and stayed loyal to Edward ITTL?
However, there might be some cause for tension in the future if the implication here is that Edward is going to claim the entire Warwick inheritance:
A lot of Warwick's northern core Neville lands (i.e. not those he had inherited from the Montacutes as Earl of Salisbury and Beauchamps as Earl of Warwick) were male-entail, and thus should go to Montagu (and his son George) upon Warwick's death.
As king, can totally see Edward claiming these lands regardless to endow his younger sons by Isabel, but this might cause some disgruntlement.
However, there might be some cause for tension in the future if the implication here is that Edward is going to claim the entire Warwick inheritance:
A lot of Warwick's northern core Neville lands (i.e. not those he had inherited from the Montacutes as Earl of Salisbury and Beauchamps as Earl of Warwick) were male-entail, and thus should go to Montagu (and his son George) upon Warwick's death.
As king, can totally see Edward claiming these lands regardless to endow his younger sons by Isabel, but this might cause some disgruntlement.
Yep, the whole Neville family has remained loyal.
That's true. I think Edward would definitely still claim the Neville lands - he always had a skill for overruling traditional inheritance laws to suit himself and his family, but he's got the extra argument of it being in Warwick's will that he takes the land, unless Warwick makes for some small provision for Montagu. But I do see your point about how that could upset Montagu.
Last edited:
Chapter Fourteen: Preserving the Bulwark
Chapter Fourteen: Preserving the Bulwark
Emperor Frederick III had been unable to send men to assist Louis XI - his attention was taken up by the Bohemian-Hungarian War. This war had begun in 1469 when the King of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, had invaded Bohemia to rid the country of its “heretical” Hussite king, George of Podebrady. After the death of King George in 1471, the Diet of Bohemia elected Vladislaus Jagiellon, eldest son of King Casimir IV of Poland, to succeed him, but the papal legate Lorenzo Roverella declared Matthias Corvinus the true King of Bohemia. Frederick III confirmed Vladislaus’s position as King of Bohemia and Prince-Elector, forcing Matthias to invade Austria and blockade Vienna. It was this siege that prevented Frederick from organising any real assistance for Louis XI. The siege resulted in an eventual peace between Matthias and Frederick in Korneuburg in 1477, in which Frederick promised to install Matthias as King of Bohemia and Matthias swore loyalty to the Emperor. The war finally came to an end a year after the Franco-Alliance War with the Treaty of Brno between Matthias and Vladislaus; both men were permitted to use the title King of Bohemia, and the lands of Bohemia were divided between the two.
As part of the Peace of Korneuburg, Frederick III agreed to pay Matthias I a healthy sum of 100,000 florins, to cover the costs of the Bohemian-Hungarian War. They agreed that this didn’t have to all be paid in one go - Matthias accepted the offer of being paid 20,000 florins a year for five years. Frederick raised this sum from the consolidated lands in Austria as well as Maximilian’s lands in France as Duke of Languedoc, ensuring that by 1482 the debt was fully paid off [1]. With that, Matthias was free to begin to focus on two other key parts of his reign - securing the dynasty, and defending Hungary.
Matthias’s father John I of Hungary had seen Hungary as the Bulwark of Christianity as the Ottomans continually expanded northwards into Europe. Matthias furthered that idea - it was part of why he had begun developing his professional army, the Black Army, although in recent years the Black Army had seen more use against other Christian European monarchs than it had against the Muslim Turks. So far, Matthias had proved to be a solid military commander, and his Black Army was a powerful army to suit such a commander. Matthias envisioned the next aim of the Black Army was to establish a greater Hungarian state to counteract Ottoman expansion. He saw a state stretching from the Adriatic to the Black Sea - with his rule over Croatia, an Adriatic coastline was secured, and if he could liberate Wallachia and bring both Wallachia and Moldavia into Hungarian suzerainty, then he would have the Hungarian empire that he wanted. Doing that would mean that Hungary could stretch across the entirety of southern Europe, blocking the Ottomans off at every turn - and perhaps, he could convince them to stop their conquering of Europe.
However, such a grandiose project would require an heir to follow Matthias. He was on his third wife now - Beatrice of Naples - but still only had one illegitimate child called John. By 1482, after six years of failing to get Beatrice pregnant, he began to realise that he was unlikely to have a child with Beatrice, and so began setting John up to be his heir. He publicly announced that John was to be his heir, and loaded John with riches, giving him the Duchies of Głogow and Slavonia. He also began a campaign in Rome to have Pope Sixtus IV legitimise John. Sixtus continually refused, but when Sixtus died and was replaced by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 Matthias found a more willing ally. In a papal bull of 1485, John Corvinus was recognised as the legitimate son and heir of King Matthias I.
Matthias also began negotiations for John to marry Bianca di Montferrat, the daughter of William VIII, Marquis of Montferrat and Bianca de’ Medici. This marriage had a high symbolic value. Bianca di Montferrat was a member of the House of Palaiologos-Montferrat, the legitimate descendants of the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos II and thus the living successors to the Eastern Roman Empire. While Matthias never planned to lead a crusade powerful enough to restore the Empire, he knew that the marriage would cement Hungary’s role as the bulwark of Christianity. To begin satisfying Matthias’s dream of this great Hungarian empire, he sent envoys to Venice to negotiate the transfer of some Venetian lands on the Adriatic coastline to Hungary, and used most of Bianca di Montferrat’s dowry to buy Zadar off Venice.
Bianca di Montferrat moved to Hungary in 1486. John and Bianca were married the next year in Buda on 1st April 1487, when John was fourteen and Bianca was fifteen. Matthias then went on the charm offensive with Emperor Frederick III and Vladislaus Jagiellon, trying to convince them both to support John as Matthias’s successor when Matthias died and the Hungarian diet had to elect a new king. While they would not technically have a say in electing John, giving John international backing from the Jagiellon and Habsburg families would certainly not hurt. Frederick III gave his support to John easily, seeing the advantages of Matthias’s vision for a coast-to-coast Hungary, acting as a militarily powerful buffer zone between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, but Vladislaus Jagiellon took more convincing. He promised to support John Corvinus’s bid for the Hungarian throne as long as Matthias resigned his claims on the Bohemian throne. Although Matthias wished to keep his claim on Bohemia so that he could add the kingdom to his imperial project, and use the Bohemian lands to raise money for future wars against the Turks, he agreed to Vladislaus’s terms. Given their age, John and Bianca’s marriage was not consummated for some years after their wedding in 1487, but for the time being, the Hunyadi dynasty seemed secure.
A map showing the lands involved in Matthias I’s imperial dream. Not only did he intend to conquer Wallachia and Moldavia, he also wished to take possession of Venetian lands along the coastline and push down to the Republic of Ragusa and recreate, under Hungarian suzerainty, the kingdom of Bosnia and despotate of Serbia, with rulers appointed by the kings of Hungary. The base map is the same as the map I put in the prologue, just zoomed in on southeast Europe.
[1] - OTL, Frederick didn’t pay the whole sum, which led to Matthias invading Austria and beginning the Austrian-Hungarian War. That no longer has to happen, giving Matthias more time to sort out his succession.
Last edited:
Cool chapter! Good moves from matthias, the war for his empire sounds fun - is he going to lead that war, or will john?
Also, did you know - in assassins creed lore, margaret duchess of Burgundy is a templar? You can send one of your recruits to kill her in a contract in ac brotherhood
I'm not sure yet. I've left the timeline between 1478 and 1490 (Matthias's OTL death year) vague other than about Matt's plans for John, so I can make that decision later.
Yes! My friend told me that the other day, funnily enough. I reckon that implies Richard III was a Templar too, but I really hope Edward IV wasn't involved!
Thank you! I couldn't bear to let the Hunyadis vanish so quickly. And yes, you're right - the Habsburgs are going to have their hands full, so they'll have a vested interest in keeping a strong regime in Hungary going and fighting the Ottomans.
What do you think of the idea that Hungary takes the colloquial name of the Kingdom of the Raven? Since Corvinus is Latin for raven.