Okay...
because apparently the Irish are incapable of changing religion?
All Hail Germania (The Actual TL)
- Thread starter ImperialVienna
- Start date
because apparently the Irish are incapable of changing religion?
My mother is Irish Roman Catholic, so I feel like if I wrote TL in which the Irish became Protestants, I might like be genetically hardwired to explode.
Valdemar II
Banned
This will have interesting effects on Scandinavia, in OTL the Catholic Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden was overthrown, one of the reasons he lacked support was because his strong Catholic stance and high taxes to fund his wars in Sweden. Ironic Christian II was quite pro-Lutheran, but because of a close alliance with Emperor through a marriage with his sister. With him converting to Lutheranism he can confiscated the church property and which mean that he doesn't need to raise the taxes. Likely it will end with Gustav Adolph and much of the rest of the Swedish nobility killed (which will make the next Swedish rebellion weaker), and Danish rule of Sweden continues for one more generation (at least), before they have the oppotunity to try to throws the Danes out again.
Christian II is/was still overthrown in Sweden. If memory serves Christian was over thrown in the early 1520s but the Reformation in Sweden didn't really take hold until the later 1520s-early 1530s. In any case I need Gustav Vasa to take the thrown so I have a wife for Edward VI of England or my entire English Monarchy gets thrown off.
Valdemar II
Banned
Christian was overthrown several times in Sweden, but he finally lost when he was overthrown in Denmark in 1523, while he was raising a army to deal with the Swedish rebellion, because the people was tired of new taxes to pay for mercenaries, if he convert to Lutheranism he get access to money without needing to raise taxes, which mean that he can continue sending armies to Sweden for years, which would slowly attribute the Swedish until they accepted his rule.
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Chief Bishop isn't the actual title it's just to position he effectively occupies (similar to the Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury). For the actual title, currently I'm debating between Primate and Metropolitan, or just leaving it as Archbishop.
As I've said, I need Katherine Vasa to be born a Princess of Sweden for my English Royal Family to work, and honestly thats the main driving force behind Christian still being ousted from Sweden.
On a totally unrelated note, I've finally done a very basic map of the world/Europe in 1530 just using the standard base map:
It looks like the Habsburgs are nibbling away at Central Europe from east and west. And France is being deconstructed one duchy at a time.
Speaking of Catholics exploding, I feel that many diehard Habsburg followers and descendents who saw your timeline placing their family as the leaders of the Protestant Reformation might launch a fatwa against you. Seriously saying that this is an awesome timeline just doesn't cut it.
Speaking of Catholics exploding, I feel that many diehard Habsburg followers and descendents who saw your timeline placing their family as the leaders of the Protestant Reformation might launch a fatwa against you. Seriously saying that this is an awesome timeline just doesn't cut it.
Legacy of a Monarch – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor & King of Spain, Part 1
The death of Philip I in 1530 completed a long series of events that resulted in an unprecedented amount of power being vested in his son and heir Charles of Ghent. At the age of 30, Charles already ruled as King of Aragon, Bohemia, and Hungary, and with his father’s death he assumed the mantle of Holy Roman Emperor, King of Burgundy and Castile, and Archduke of Austria. Charles spent much of his first year after Philip’s death traveling through out his various realms to be coroneted. He was elected Holy Roman Emperor, with out contestation before August was out and then traveled to his birth place of Ghent where he was crowned King of Burgundy. Charles then made the long voyage to Spain, where at Valladolid he was crowned Co-King of Castile, assuming the position his father had held with his mother.
Charles did not have the insatiable lust for power that his father had. While he knew it was his destiny to lead and rule he did so in a much more pragmatic way. Charles accepted that he could not personally rule all of his domains as Philip would have tried to do in his place, so shortly after his coronation as King of Castile, he appointed his brother Ferdinand as Regent for Castile, Aragon, and Naples, and effectively gave him all the powers of the King, as it was already understood that Ferdinand would succeed him in those realms.
Charles returned to Vienna in early December of 1531. He spent much of the next six months establishing the powers of the new Church with in the Empire. However by June it became clear Charles would need to focus much of his attention of important matters of state and could not spend that time on the Church. As a result he established the Archbishop of Salzburg, Maximilianus Transylvanus, as the first Metropolitan of the whole of the Imperial Church. It was from this position that Transylvanus, working closely with Luther, is credited with building the Church.
Charles thus turned from his duties as Head of the Church to the duties of the Holy Roman Emperor. A tense peace had once again befallen much of Europe. Between them Spain and the Holy Roman Empire now occupied most of the Italian peninsula, and in Hungary, the Ottoman attacks had dulled down to only erratic, occasional raiding. England remained very much on the fence, even with Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Henry now could not side with Catholic France and the Italian states because he was viewed as a heretic, however Charles, as Emperor and King of Spain, and Ferdinand of Aragon by extension, also would have nothing to do with him so long as their Aunt, Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon remained imprisoned in England.
Charles used this lull in the fighting between the Habsburgs and their opponents in both the East and West to reorganize the much of the Empire’s political structure. While there had been little contestation to his election, Charles first focused on the power of the Prince-Electors. In August of 1532 he summoned the Electors to Vienna. It was there that be first met Johann Friedrich I, the recently enthroned Elector of Saxony. Johann Friedrich had inherited his grandfather’s unyielding belief in the righteousness of Martin Luther’s reforms and his avid support for the Emperor. By September all of the Electors had arrived. Other then Charles there were only three men present, the Archbishop of Trier, and the Electors of Saxony and the Rhine, the offices of Archbishop of Cologne and Mainz having never been restored to their electoral prestige. It was before these men that Charles proposed his plan, to establish the position of Holy Roman Emperor as hereditary legacy with in the House of Habsburg. To ensure this he wished that the Electors concede their positions as Electors to him. In exchange, he promised to ensure and expand their hereditary lands when he began to reorganize the Imperial Circles. With clear support for the Emperor from Johann Friedrich, the other two electors had little choice to agree or lose their land and power to the Emperor.
With his family’s position as Holy Roman Emperor now secure, Charles turned his attention, as he had promised the electors he would, to reforming the Circles of the Empire. To this end he effectively redrew the interior of the Holy Roman Empire. Notably he established a new separate Bohemian Circle covering all of the Kingdom of Bohemia, included Salzburg in the Austrian Circle rather then the Bavarian, established the Italian provinces in the new Lombard Circle. The Burgundian Circle was separated into the Upper Burgundian Circle (including Switzerland, Breisgau, and the Burgundy Proper) and the Lower Burgundian Circle (comprised of the Netherlands). Charles issued the Edit of Hofburg, ordering compliance with the new tax procedures that accompanied his reorganization. Any Prince who refused the Emperor’s will was unceremoniously ousted from power by troops loyal to Charles.
Charles however had not accounted for the effects of his domestic policies on foreign relations, and when minor infighting began with in the Emperor’s domain, Francis I of France and the Sultan both seized the opportunity to try and recoup their losses. French troops began to pour into Burgundy Proper as Turkish troops moved into Transylvania. However the French King and the Ottoman Sultan had over estimated both the strength of the Prince who attempted to resist the Emperor and the time it would take for the Emperor to rally support. Charles sent the Duke of Bourbon in to Burgundy, promising that if Charles of Bourbon brought him a victory against France, the Emperor would richly reward him.
In Transylvania, Charles was not so lucky. With his most competent general and troops fighting the French, Charles had little to send into Transylvania. What worsened the situation was the fact that the minute Ottoman troops began to enter the region, much of the Transylvanian nobility that had once sworn loyalty to the Emperor, flipped sides and began aiding the Turks. By winter’s end much of Transylvania was under Ottoman occupation and the Sultan set his sights on Vienna.
However even as Turkish troops began to march for Vienna, the tide of battle against France began to swing dramatically in Charles’s favor. The Duke of Bourbon quickly and successfully ousted the French from Burgundy, before he moved on to Milan. By early spring Milan was in Imperial hands and Charles of Bourbon was wrecking havoc in Provence. It was shortly after the fall of Milan that an English emissary arrived in Ghent seeking and audience with the Emperor. Charles could not leave Vienna for his native Flanders at the time and so he gave his sister Mary, the Governess of the Netherlands the authority to act on his behalf. The English emissary brought a proposal from his King. Evidently, Henry VIII had become uneasy about the possibility of England being blackballed out of influence in France. The English King offered that if relations between England and the Habsburg domains were to resume, he would send Catherine of Aragon and their daughter Mary to back to Spain, ending Catherine’s captivity. Mary of Hungary accepted on behalf of her brothers, wanting more for her Aunt’s safe return then for political jockeying.
By the summer of 1533, Charles of Bourbon had begun to withdraw from fighting the French and began his march to face the Turks in Hungary. As he withdrew French and Imperial delegates met in Milan to arrange a peace. Charles V had a very simple demand, Francis I would abdicate the Milanese throne, with which Francis begrudgingly complied. Imperial and Ottoman forces finally met as Pressburg in October. Charles of Bourbon successfully out maneuvered the Turks and was able to force them back into Turkish Hungary, with the German Army giving chase. However the Duke of Bourbon’s men were tired and demoralized and it wasn’t long before he was forced to pull back to Austrian held Hungary. Charles of Bourbon returned to Vienna expecting to be chastised for his failure against the Turks. However Charles V made good on his promise to the Duke and for his victory against the French, Charles of Bourbon was given the throne of Milan.
Charles’s peace however was short lived. As peace came on the international stage, religious dissenters rose up in Münster. Anabaptists seized the city and began forcibly converting the populous and those who would not convert were executed. After consulting with the Metropolitan and Martin Luther, Charles V sent an army in to crush the rebellion by any mean necessary. Luther was loudly opposed to the second generation of religious dissidents that had begun to emerge like the Anabaptists. He believed they now threaten God’s established social hierarchy, and was quite firm that they had to be crushed if they would not repent. On Easter Sunday, Imperial troops retook the city and executed the leaders of the rebellion. Charles used the chaos as an excuse to place the city directly under his rule, making the Archbishop who had once ruled, purely a church official.
Over the next year and a half, Charles continues to combat the Anabaptist movement in the Northern Circles of the Empire, with general success. It is in 1536 that Catherine of Aragon died in Barcelona. Her daughter Mary was then sent to Naples where she acted as Ferdinand’s Governor for several years, during which time she married. With the defeat of the Anabaptists by in large, Charles begins to focus on expelling the Turks from Hungary. He spent the next several years preparing his forces for a massive invasion, while at the same time the Sultans plotted the same thing. It is in 1538, in the midst of Charles’s military build up, that Maximilianus Transylvanus, the Imperial Metropolitan and Archbishop of Salzburg died. Charles quickly replaced the office of Metropolitan with the man he viewed as the most logical choice to over see the Imperial Church, Martin Luther.
Questions, Comments, Concerns?
I do have a question for anyone who actually reads this. For my next installment should I:
A. Finish Charles V's legacy
B. Begin Francis III of Brittany
C. Begin Ferdinand VI (His time a Regent)
D. Something else you can think of
(I can't seem to decide)
The death of Philip I in 1530 completed a long series of events that resulted in an unprecedented amount of power being vested in his son and heir Charles of Ghent. At the age of 30, Charles already ruled as King of Aragon, Bohemia, and Hungary, and with his father’s death he assumed the mantle of Holy Roman Emperor, King of Burgundy and Castile, and Archduke of Austria. Charles spent much of his first year after Philip’s death traveling through out his various realms to be coroneted. He was elected Holy Roman Emperor, with out contestation before August was out and then traveled to his birth place of Ghent where he was crowned King of Burgundy. Charles then made the long voyage to Spain, where at Valladolid he was crowned Co-King of Castile, assuming the position his father had held with his mother.
Charles did not have the insatiable lust for power that his father had. While he knew it was his destiny to lead and rule he did so in a much more pragmatic way. Charles accepted that he could not personally rule all of his domains as Philip would have tried to do in his place, so shortly after his coronation as King of Castile, he appointed his brother Ferdinand as Regent for Castile, Aragon, and Naples, and effectively gave him all the powers of the King, as it was already understood that Ferdinand would succeed him in those realms.
Charles returned to Vienna in early December of 1531. He spent much of the next six months establishing the powers of the new Church with in the Empire. However by June it became clear Charles would need to focus much of his attention of important matters of state and could not spend that time on the Church. As a result he established the Archbishop of Salzburg, Maximilianus Transylvanus, as the first Metropolitan of the whole of the Imperial Church. It was from this position that Transylvanus, working closely with Luther, is credited with building the Church.
Charles thus turned from his duties as Head of the Church to the duties of the Holy Roman Emperor. A tense peace had once again befallen much of Europe. Between them Spain and the Holy Roman Empire now occupied most of the Italian peninsula, and in Hungary, the Ottoman attacks had dulled down to only erratic, occasional raiding. England remained very much on the fence, even with Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Henry now could not side with Catholic France and the Italian states because he was viewed as a heretic, however Charles, as Emperor and King of Spain, and Ferdinand of Aragon by extension, also would have nothing to do with him so long as their Aunt, Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon remained imprisoned in England.
Charles used this lull in the fighting between the Habsburgs and their opponents in both the East and West to reorganize the much of the Empire’s political structure. While there had been little contestation to his election, Charles first focused on the power of the Prince-Electors. In August of 1532 he summoned the Electors to Vienna. It was there that be first met Johann Friedrich I, the recently enthroned Elector of Saxony. Johann Friedrich had inherited his grandfather’s unyielding belief in the righteousness of Martin Luther’s reforms and his avid support for the Emperor. By September all of the Electors had arrived. Other then Charles there were only three men present, the Archbishop of Trier, and the Electors of Saxony and the Rhine, the offices of Archbishop of Cologne and Mainz having never been restored to their electoral prestige. It was before these men that Charles proposed his plan, to establish the position of Holy Roman Emperor as hereditary legacy with in the House of Habsburg. To ensure this he wished that the Electors concede their positions as Electors to him. In exchange, he promised to ensure and expand their hereditary lands when he began to reorganize the Imperial Circles. With clear support for the Emperor from Johann Friedrich, the other two electors had little choice to agree or lose their land and power to the Emperor.
With his family’s position as Holy Roman Emperor now secure, Charles turned his attention, as he had promised the electors he would, to reforming the Circles of the Empire. To this end he effectively redrew the interior of the Holy Roman Empire. Notably he established a new separate Bohemian Circle covering all of the Kingdom of Bohemia, included Salzburg in the Austrian Circle rather then the Bavarian, established the Italian provinces in the new Lombard Circle. The Burgundian Circle was separated into the Upper Burgundian Circle (including Switzerland, Breisgau, and the Burgundy Proper) and the Lower Burgundian Circle (comprised of the Netherlands). Charles issued the Edit of Hofburg, ordering compliance with the new tax procedures that accompanied his reorganization. Any Prince who refused the Emperor’s will was unceremoniously ousted from power by troops loyal to Charles.
Charles however had not accounted for the effects of his domestic policies on foreign relations, and when minor infighting began with in the Emperor’s domain, Francis I of France and the Sultan both seized the opportunity to try and recoup their losses. French troops began to pour into Burgundy Proper as Turkish troops moved into Transylvania. However the French King and the Ottoman Sultan had over estimated both the strength of the Prince who attempted to resist the Emperor and the time it would take for the Emperor to rally support. Charles sent the Duke of Bourbon in to Burgundy, promising that if Charles of Bourbon brought him a victory against France, the Emperor would richly reward him.
In Transylvania, Charles was not so lucky. With his most competent general and troops fighting the French, Charles had little to send into Transylvania. What worsened the situation was the fact that the minute Ottoman troops began to enter the region, much of the Transylvanian nobility that had once sworn loyalty to the Emperor, flipped sides and began aiding the Turks. By winter’s end much of Transylvania was under Ottoman occupation and the Sultan set his sights on Vienna.
However even as Turkish troops began to march for Vienna, the tide of battle against France began to swing dramatically in Charles’s favor. The Duke of Bourbon quickly and successfully ousted the French from Burgundy, before he moved on to Milan. By early spring Milan was in Imperial hands and Charles of Bourbon was wrecking havoc in Provence. It was shortly after the fall of Milan that an English emissary arrived in Ghent seeking and audience with the Emperor. Charles could not leave Vienna for his native Flanders at the time and so he gave his sister Mary, the Governess of the Netherlands the authority to act on his behalf. The English emissary brought a proposal from his King. Evidently, Henry VIII had become uneasy about the possibility of England being blackballed out of influence in France. The English King offered that if relations between England and the Habsburg domains were to resume, he would send Catherine of Aragon and their daughter Mary to back to Spain, ending Catherine’s captivity. Mary of Hungary accepted on behalf of her brothers, wanting more for her Aunt’s safe return then for political jockeying.
By the summer of 1533, Charles of Bourbon had begun to withdraw from fighting the French and began his march to face the Turks in Hungary. As he withdrew French and Imperial delegates met in Milan to arrange a peace. Charles V had a very simple demand, Francis I would abdicate the Milanese throne, with which Francis begrudgingly complied. Imperial and Ottoman forces finally met as Pressburg in October. Charles of Bourbon successfully out maneuvered the Turks and was able to force them back into Turkish Hungary, with the German Army giving chase. However the Duke of Bourbon’s men were tired and demoralized and it wasn’t long before he was forced to pull back to Austrian held Hungary. Charles of Bourbon returned to Vienna expecting to be chastised for his failure against the Turks. However Charles V made good on his promise to the Duke and for his victory against the French, Charles of Bourbon was given the throne of Milan.
Charles’s peace however was short lived. As peace came on the international stage, religious dissenters rose up in Münster. Anabaptists seized the city and began forcibly converting the populous and those who would not convert were executed. After consulting with the Metropolitan and Martin Luther, Charles V sent an army in to crush the rebellion by any mean necessary. Luther was loudly opposed to the second generation of religious dissidents that had begun to emerge like the Anabaptists. He believed they now threaten God’s established social hierarchy, and was quite firm that they had to be crushed if they would not repent. On Easter Sunday, Imperial troops retook the city and executed the leaders of the rebellion. Charles used the chaos as an excuse to place the city directly under his rule, making the Archbishop who had once ruled, purely a church official.
Over the next year and a half, Charles continues to combat the Anabaptist movement in the Northern Circles of the Empire, with general success. It is in 1536 that Catherine of Aragon died in Barcelona. Her daughter Mary was then sent to Naples where she acted as Ferdinand’s Governor for several years, during which time she married. With the defeat of the Anabaptists by in large, Charles begins to focus on expelling the Turks from Hungary. He spent the next several years preparing his forces for a massive invasion, while at the same time the Sultans plotted the same thing. It is in 1538, in the midst of Charles’s military build up, that Maximilianus Transylvanus, the Imperial Metropolitan and Archbishop of Salzburg died. Charles quickly replaced the office of Metropolitan with the man he viewed as the most logical choice to over see the Imperial Church, Martin Luther.
Questions, Comments, Concerns?
I do have a question for anyone who actually reads this. For my next installment should I:
A. Finish Charles V's legacy
B. Begin Francis III of Brittany
C. Begin Ferdinand VI (His time a Regent)
D. Something else you can think of
(I can't seem to decide)
I plan on doing a colony installment at some point, but right now I'm shying away from it to focus on Europe.
Love the TL, also how they finally got the HRE into a proper country. I thought that Martin Luther would reform the catholic church not split from it. I think a colonial update would be cool especially I want to know if the HRE formally has colonizes these or it is just settlers going there.
And yes I know I might be spamming, off topic, whatever but I have to ask you something. Are you ever going to continue Austria Never forget Thy past? I was following that but by the time I got to the end you had already stopped posting. Could you at least finish it, pretty please
?
Keep it up,
Jim
And yes I know I might be spamming, off topic, whatever but I have to ask you something. Are you ever going to continue Austria Never forget Thy past? I was following that but by the time I got to the end you had already stopped posting. Could you at least finish it, pretty please
?Keep it up,
Jim
I've decided to write the last segment for ANFTP when I go back and edit it, hopefully sometime this summer. I want to put a little distant between the storyline and myself right now so I can view it more objectively since I seemed to be receiving a lot of criticism for points that I couldn't understand why I was being criticized for.Love the TL, also how they finally got the HRE into a proper country. I thought that Martin Luther would reform the catholic church not split from it. I think a colonial update would be cool especially I want to know if the HRE formally has colonizes these or it is just settlers going there.
And yes I know I might be spamming, off topic, whatever but I have to ask you something. Are you ever going to continue Austria Never forget Thy past? I was following that but by the time I got to the end you had already stopped posting. Could you at least finish it, pretty please
Keep it up,
Jim
Oh thats OK, just now I know you'll actually continue it. I'll stop spamming now
.Jim
I think I vote for "A". I really want to read a bit more about Imperial Metropolitan Martin Luther. I never realized how much a fan of the HRE I was until I started reading this TL and occasionally looking up some OTL history I was totally unfamiliar with. I look forward to the next update on Europe!
Charles V, the big-jawed. I want to see him continue down this side of the reformation.
Legacy of a Monarch – Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor & King of Spain, Part 2
Charles’ military build up continued over the next several years. Imperial and Turkish forces began to engage in minor border skirmishes and raids in 1540. It was also during that year that Charles left his Central European realms in the hands of his wife, Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and set off to meet with his uncle, Francis III of Brittany and his brother, Ferdinand of Aragon. Ferdinand and Charles met with Francis in the Breton capital of Rennes. The three had grown up together, as Francis was only a year Charles’ senior, and all at one point studied under the tutelage of Niccolo Machiavelli, and most accounts of the meeting record it as a meeting of brothers. Before Ferdinand and Francis, Charles laid out a most ambitious plan. The Emperor not only wanted to retake his Hungarian realms from the Sultan, he sought to liberate the seat of Turkish power, Constantinople, from the Sultan and restore the Byzantine Empire in the form of a loose confederacy. Charles recognized that the Ottoman’s territory in the Balkans could not be effectively administered as a single centralized political unit as the Byzantines had done. He instead proposed a political structure similar to the one he had just dismantled in the Holy Roman Empire, with a group of loosely federated states all tied to a single elected Monarch. Obviously the plan was that most of these principalities would be subordinate to the Habsburg Monarchy.
The meeting ended with the three agreeing to Charles plans, with the understanding that what they sought to achieve would take years. Charles set off for Austria as Ferdinand and Francis readied a large Breto-Spanish Fleet and Army that was to assemble at Taranto in Spanish controlled Naples. Charles’s return to Austria was delayed when he arrived in Ghent to find Edward, the Duke of Anjou had come to meet with him. The Duke had received word of the Habsburgs’ plans. It is he that is credited with first describing Charles’ vision as the “Habsburg’s Crusade”, and Edward made it abundantly clear that he wished to join in this endeavor. At first Charles was rather blind sided by the aging Monarch’s request. Edward was 65, and clearly not well. He had apparently developed a case of gout during his tenure as Duke. However Edward made it quite clear he had no desire for person glory, only that his second son, Francis (named for Francis III of Brittany) be given a fiefdom if and when the Habsburg Armies were successful. Charles could hardly decline an offer of support no matter how small, and gave Edward the details of the Breto-Spanish forces.
By 1542 it seemed as though all of the Habsburg forces were in place and ready. However several of Charles’ advisors in Vienna still remained unsure of the feasibility of the Emperor’s plans. Large numbers of both Imperial and Spanish forces had been committed to Charles’ Balkan campaign, and many of his advisors feared that Francis I of France may seize this opportunity to strike the Empire’s western borders with Vienna’s attention focused East. However these fears were alleviated when in early April, France went to war with England over Normandy.
Imperial Troops entered Hungary in early May, while at the same time the largely Spanish fleet in Taranto set sail for Greece. The Turkish forces had prepared well for the Imperial march into Hungary, however they had not prepared for the invasion of the Peloponnesus from the sea by the Spanish. Even as Imperial forces under the Duke of Milan became bogged down in Transylvania and just outside of Buda, Spanish, Breton, and Angevin forces began to land near Corinth, with considerable help from the local Greek population and began to march for Athens. With in a month, Athens had fallen with minimal blood shed, thanks again in large part to the native Greek population who aided and defected en mass to the advancing Spaniards, giving the army what was almost a home field advantage. Secure in their position in Athens, much of the Spanish force began to push toward Epirus and Thessaly. However their advance quickly came to an abrupt halt. While initially the Turks had been pushed back largely due to the surprise of an invasion of Greece, by the time Habsburg forces reached Central Greece the Turks had managed to dig in and began putting up a formidable defense. The mountainous terrain, that the Spaniards now sought to conquer, furthered the defending Turks’ advantage.
In the North however, Imperial forces saw success. After being bogged down for nearly six months, the Duke of Milan finally captured Buda and by spring of the next year, the Turks had been once again driven from Transylvania. Charles of Bourbon continued the push to take the whole of the Hungarian Kingdom from the Turks before the end of the summer, while Imperial Forces farther East began to move into Ottoman Moldavia pushing toward Suceava. Charles of Bourbon was able to expel the Turks from Hungary over the course of the next year, however his attempts to advance forward fail miserably and he is forced to hold position in the Hungarian frontier. Similar events occur in the invasion of Moldavia; Habsburg forces successfully capture Suceava and the surrounding countryside, however attempts to push further out failed.
In the Aegean, the Turkish Navy rallied under Hayredden Barbarossa, and moved to assail the Spanish fleet landing on Rhodes. During the fleets’ first confrontation, the Spanish were forced into retreat, and the Turks looked to have prevented the invasion of Rhodes, however during the sea battle, Barbarossa was impaled by a large splintered piece of wood from a cannon ball hit on the deck of his flag ship. The wood was eventually removed; however the Ottoman Admiral died several hours later due to loss of blood. News of the death reached the Spaniards who now once again plan to attempt to invade Rhodes. Roughly a week later the two fleets once again engaged off the coast of Rhodes. This time the Spaniards came out victorious and thus began their assault on the island.
The Conquest of Rhodes was the last major event of the First Habsburg Crusade. With in months of the Spanish landing on the island, Turkish and Habsburg diplomats had reached an accord to end the fighting. The Sultan agreed to recognize Habsburg gains in Hungary and Greece, however Charles was forced to withdraw his forces in Moldavia returning the principality effectively to the Sultan’s control. As pre Charles’ proposal, the Greek territories were divided into three. Francis of Brest, the second son of Francis III of Brittany was established as Francis III, Duke of Athens, and Richard Plantagenet, the second son of the Duke of Anjou was installed to the Principality of Achea. The County of Rhodes was established as a dependency of the Spanish Crown.
The First Habsburg Crusade was the last major conflict of Charles V’s reign. France continued to be weakened and distracted by its wars against England and its growing Protestant population, which opposed much of Francis’ policies. In the east, minor border skirmishes continued in the Hungarian marches, however neither side sought to press for an all out war, with the cost of the last one still fresh in their minds.
Charles thus turns his attentions inward. In 1546, Martin Luther, founder and leader of the Reformation died in the Archbishopric Palace in Salzburg. Charles next appointed Andreas Osiander to the post of Metropolitan, however he died with in four years of assuming the position at the head of the Imperial Church. Charles thus appointed Matthias Flach to the post, the first non-ethnic German to hold the position.
Charles other great accomplishment in the final years of his reign was the establishment of a central Imperial Bank, largely dominated by the Fugger family of Augsburg in Vienna. With a central bank now in place, Charles under took, to establish a single currency for the whole of the empire. Imperial coffers overflowed with gold and silver from both the new and old worlds, and Charles used this to his advantage, promising large Imperial pensions to those loyal to him or who he needed to be loyal to him.
The “Universal Emperor” abdicated his thrones in 1556 at the age of 55. In Germania and Hungary he was succeeded by his only son, Philip of Brandenburg, who became Philip II, Holy Roman Emperor. In Spain and the Mediterranean, Charles was succeeded as had been agreed by his grandfathers decades early, by his brother, Ferdinand of Aragon, who took the regal styling Ferdinand VI. Charles retired to his birth place and childhood home of Ghent. He spent the remaining two years of his life effectively as his son’s Governor of the Netherlands, over seeing the 17 provinces. He was said to have lived like a King, without the responsibilities of one. Charles V died in 1558, and was entombed in Ghent.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
Once again I have am stuck as to what to write.
The possibilities are:
Ferdinand VI of Spain
Edward VI of England
Philip II of Germania
Francis III of Brittany
Conquest of the New World
Something Else
Charles’ military build up continued over the next several years. Imperial and Turkish forces began to engage in minor border skirmishes and raids in 1540. It was also during that year that Charles left his Central European realms in the hands of his wife, Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and set off to meet with his uncle, Francis III of Brittany and his brother, Ferdinand of Aragon. Ferdinand and Charles met with Francis in the Breton capital of Rennes. The three had grown up together, as Francis was only a year Charles’ senior, and all at one point studied under the tutelage of Niccolo Machiavelli, and most accounts of the meeting record it as a meeting of brothers. Before Ferdinand and Francis, Charles laid out a most ambitious plan. The Emperor not only wanted to retake his Hungarian realms from the Sultan, he sought to liberate the seat of Turkish power, Constantinople, from the Sultan and restore the Byzantine Empire in the form of a loose confederacy. Charles recognized that the Ottoman’s territory in the Balkans could not be effectively administered as a single centralized political unit as the Byzantines had done. He instead proposed a political structure similar to the one he had just dismantled in the Holy Roman Empire, with a group of loosely federated states all tied to a single elected Monarch. Obviously the plan was that most of these principalities would be subordinate to the Habsburg Monarchy.
The meeting ended with the three agreeing to Charles plans, with the understanding that what they sought to achieve would take years. Charles set off for Austria as Ferdinand and Francis readied a large Breto-Spanish Fleet and Army that was to assemble at Taranto in Spanish controlled Naples. Charles’s return to Austria was delayed when he arrived in Ghent to find Edward, the Duke of Anjou had come to meet with him. The Duke had received word of the Habsburgs’ plans. It is he that is credited with first describing Charles’ vision as the “Habsburg’s Crusade”, and Edward made it abundantly clear that he wished to join in this endeavor. At first Charles was rather blind sided by the aging Monarch’s request. Edward was 65, and clearly not well. He had apparently developed a case of gout during his tenure as Duke. However Edward made it quite clear he had no desire for person glory, only that his second son, Francis (named for Francis III of Brittany) be given a fiefdom if and when the Habsburg Armies were successful. Charles could hardly decline an offer of support no matter how small, and gave Edward the details of the Breto-Spanish forces.
By 1542 it seemed as though all of the Habsburg forces were in place and ready. However several of Charles’ advisors in Vienna still remained unsure of the feasibility of the Emperor’s plans. Large numbers of both Imperial and Spanish forces had been committed to Charles’ Balkan campaign, and many of his advisors feared that Francis I of France may seize this opportunity to strike the Empire’s western borders with Vienna’s attention focused East. However these fears were alleviated when in early April, France went to war with England over Normandy.
Imperial Troops entered Hungary in early May, while at the same time the largely Spanish fleet in Taranto set sail for Greece. The Turkish forces had prepared well for the Imperial march into Hungary, however they had not prepared for the invasion of the Peloponnesus from the sea by the Spanish. Even as Imperial forces under the Duke of Milan became bogged down in Transylvania and just outside of Buda, Spanish, Breton, and Angevin forces began to land near Corinth, with considerable help from the local Greek population and began to march for Athens. With in a month, Athens had fallen with minimal blood shed, thanks again in large part to the native Greek population who aided and defected en mass to the advancing Spaniards, giving the army what was almost a home field advantage. Secure in their position in Athens, much of the Spanish force began to push toward Epirus and Thessaly. However their advance quickly came to an abrupt halt. While initially the Turks had been pushed back largely due to the surprise of an invasion of Greece, by the time Habsburg forces reached Central Greece the Turks had managed to dig in and began putting up a formidable defense. The mountainous terrain, that the Spaniards now sought to conquer, furthered the defending Turks’ advantage.
In the North however, Imperial forces saw success. After being bogged down for nearly six months, the Duke of Milan finally captured Buda and by spring of the next year, the Turks had been once again driven from Transylvania. Charles of Bourbon continued the push to take the whole of the Hungarian Kingdom from the Turks before the end of the summer, while Imperial Forces farther East began to move into Ottoman Moldavia pushing toward Suceava. Charles of Bourbon was able to expel the Turks from Hungary over the course of the next year, however his attempts to advance forward fail miserably and he is forced to hold position in the Hungarian frontier. Similar events occur in the invasion of Moldavia; Habsburg forces successfully capture Suceava and the surrounding countryside, however attempts to push further out failed.
In the Aegean, the Turkish Navy rallied under Hayredden Barbarossa, and moved to assail the Spanish fleet landing on Rhodes. During the fleets’ first confrontation, the Spanish were forced into retreat, and the Turks looked to have prevented the invasion of Rhodes, however during the sea battle, Barbarossa was impaled by a large splintered piece of wood from a cannon ball hit on the deck of his flag ship. The wood was eventually removed; however the Ottoman Admiral died several hours later due to loss of blood. News of the death reached the Spaniards who now once again plan to attempt to invade Rhodes. Roughly a week later the two fleets once again engaged off the coast of Rhodes. This time the Spaniards came out victorious and thus began their assault on the island.
The Conquest of Rhodes was the last major event of the First Habsburg Crusade. With in months of the Spanish landing on the island, Turkish and Habsburg diplomats had reached an accord to end the fighting. The Sultan agreed to recognize Habsburg gains in Hungary and Greece, however Charles was forced to withdraw his forces in Moldavia returning the principality effectively to the Sultan’s control. As pre Charles’ proposal, the Greek territories were divided into three. Francis of Brest, the second son of Francis III of Brittany was established as Francis III, Duke of Athens, and Richard Plantagenet, the second son of the Duke of Anjou was installed to the Principality of Achea. The County of Rhodes was established as a dependency of the Spanish Crown.
The First Habsburg Crusade was the last major conflict of Charles V’s reign. France continued to be weakened and distracted by its wars against England and its growing Protestant population, which opposed much of Francis’ policies. In the east, minor border skirmishes continued in the Hungarian marches, however neither side sought to press for an all out war, with the cost of the last one still fresh in their minds.
Charles thus turns his attentions inward. In 1546, Martin Luther, founder and leader of the Reformation died in the Archbishopric Palace in Salzburg. Charles next appointed Andreas Osiander to the post of Metropolitan, however he died with in four years of assuming the position at the head of the Imperial Church. Charles thus appointed Matthias Flach to the post, the first non-ethnic German to hold the position.
Charles other great accomplishment in the final years of his reign was the establishment of a central Imperial Bank, largely dominated by the Fugger family of Augsburg in Vienna. With a central bank now in place, Charles under took, to establish a single currency for the whole of the empire. Imperial coffers overflowed with gold and silver from both the new and old worlds, and Charles used this to his advantage, promising large Imperial pensions to those loyal to him or who he needed to be loyal to him.
The “Universal Emperor” abdicated his thrones in 1556 at the age of 55. In Germania and Hungary he was succeeded by his only son, Philip of Brandenburg, who became Philip II, Holy Roman Emperor. In Spain and the Mediterranean, Charles was succeeded as had been agreed by his grandfathers decades early, by his brother, Ferdinand of Aragon, who took the regal styling Ferdinand VI. Charles retired to his birth place and childhood home of Ghent. He spent the remaining two years of his life effectively as his son’s Governor of the Netherlands, over seeing the 17 provinces. He was said to have lived like a King, without the responsibilities of one. Charles V died in 1558, and was entombed in Ghent.
Questions? Comments? Concerns?
Once again I have am stuck as to what to write.
The possibilities are:
Ferdinand VI of Spain
Edward VI of England
Philip II of Germania
Francis III of Brittany
Conquest of the New World
Something Else
Hungary is just held in personal union as it was IOTL (just earlier), the Greek states are currently more or less just vassals of the Habsburg Monarchy.