Evilprodigy
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Knowing the luck of the irish, the English and French would fight this theoretical war entirely within the confines of Ireland.
An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania
- Thread starter Basileus444
- Start date
Yeah, but I have to admit I was quite disturbed when I read that.
So I shared.
Actually no. Because this will end up being somewhat shorter than the OTL 30 Years War. This conflict started ITTL in 1631 with Theodor’s invasion of Rhomania and won’t make it to 1661. (And the Triune invasion of the Rhineland was even later, 1635.)
Forgot to comment on last update, but I hope this rising of the people makes future Germany a place where will of the people is taken into account more than in some other countries. I'd say I hope for evolution into parliamentary rule, but initiative for that usually comes for burghers and minor nobility, not peasants.
Regarding this update, Louis seems like a ticking time bomb. However I don't think it will evolve into civil war, more like a separatist rebellion of English parts.
What about Irish? Aren't they the third crown, but not mentioned at all?
P.S.
Did latest ACOUP post about logistics influence this update?
I thought it’d be an interesting take to have Louis not be a bad monarch per se, but while he’d be a good King of France, he wouldn’t be a good Triune Emperor.
ACOUP is a great blog, but it didn’t consciously affect this update. It did the next one though.
As for Irish, see comment below.
The Duc d’Orleans, Gaston, is Henri II’s first cousin. If Henri and Louis both bought it, he’d be the next in the line of succession. That’s all that have been officially mentioned.
I’d say at this stage the navy is roughly 50-50 between English and French. So, the English are contributing substantially more there per capita but aren’t dominant. The breakdown of the Triune navy into English and French components is going to be a plot point later, but I don’t want to say more than that because more is involved and I want to avoid spoilers.
Henri, Louis, and English lessons:
This is definitely a mistake on Henri’s part. I figure in a ‘normal’ setup, while Louis would’ve been raised separately, he would’ve had regular visits from his father. And when Henri tried to converse with young Louis in English, this issue would’ve come up, and addressed much earlier. But Henri stayed away for emotional reasons. He hired the best tutors in the Triple Monarchy for his son and called it good. But then the best tutors also turned out to be very French tutors…
France, England, and Ireland:
Ireland and the Irish will play an important role once we get to ‘General Crisis: Triune Variant’. I’m setting up parts of that here, but the ‘Irish issue’ doesn’t have any direct connection with the war in the HRE, so it’s not mentioned here.
The latest section of Not the End: The Empire Under the Laskarids has been posted on Patreon for Megas Kyr patrons. Manuel II Laskaris takes the throne of Rhomania. At first, he is busy securing his position in Europe and his political authority against his cousins, but that is all to ensure he will not be distracted as he returns against to the eastern frontier.
Thanks again for your support.
pls don't ban me
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@Basileus444 can we get an updated map of the world? i'm kinda curious to see who has what
The Lands of Germany (and neighbors), 1652-1655
Technically no, since 'Roman' is a political label/identity. That means anyone serving a sovereign/state that is not the Roman Emperor/Empire becomes not-Roman. So, a former Roman in service of, say, the Vijayanagara Emperor, stops being a Roman and becomes a Greek, but if they returned to serving the Basileus, they would be a Roman again.
Having said that, there are former-Roman mercenaries in the fighting, but they're spread out and not in solid and significant blocs. For example, there might be 3000 former-Romans, but it is 3000 individuals as opposed to a contingent of 3000.
(I feel the need to be precise here since the subject of Roman and Greek identity regularly pops up in the comments, and it just doesn't mesh with our OTL modern concepts of national identity.)
I know maps are very useful, but I don't like making them. If someone would be willing to make an updated version of the 1635 map (DracoLazarus made that one) that would be great, but I don't have the patience or inclination to make sure that I've precisely outlined the borders of the Duchy of Berg, for example.
I know that's not helpful, but that's where I am.
* * *
The lands of Germany (and neighbors), 1652-1655:
The lands of Germany (and neighbors), 1652-1655:
Despite the presence of the Dauphin, it is the northern Triune offensive that draws the most attention. While Elizabeth may have started this new phase with her appeal to the Russians, Leopold has become the face of German resistance to Henri. Furthermore, given that Leopold owes his position as Duke of Saxony entirely to Henri’s generosity, there is a personal element in Henri’s desire to crush the Habsburg.
Due to supply considerations rather than symbolism, Orleans invades Saxony via the same route as Philip Sigismund has, and is so challenged at the same place, the field of Breitenfeld. Yet Second Breitenfeld is quite a different affair from the First.
For starters, it is at least three times larger. Numbers vary, but also Leopold has at least a 3 to 2 advantage in numbers, although these are unbloodied recruits drawn from the uprisings. That dictates Saxon tactics, organized by Andreas Hofer but clearly copied from Raven practices.
The Triunes seem surprised by the sheer number of opposing forces. Initial scout reports had been accurate but not believed, the Duc calculating that an army that size cannot be sustainably maintained. German columns hurl themselves at the Triune lines, moving fast under galling Triune gunfire, not returning it but closing as fast as they can into melee. Casualties are horrific, but enough columns make it, and where they do their concentration and weight means they invariably break through the Triune line. With his gunline fragmenting, the Duc orders a retreat, ceding the field. Again, Breitenfeld marks a German victory.
But at a heavy cost. Unusually, the victor’s casualties are over double that of the vanquished. A large reason for that was the lack of any effective follow-up after the Triune line was breached. Too mauled, disorganized, and green, the columns were unable to swivel about and encircle the fragmented Triune line after the Germans had broken them, so the Triunes, remaining disciplined and controlled, simply retire. One Triune regiment, forming square, beats off at least six separate assaults as it moves off the field. The success of the retreat is clearly illustrated by the fact that they lose only one cannon, which is spiked before it is abandoned.
Orleans retreats to reconsider his strategy. Leopold gathers up more recruits to make up his losses and pursues. As the southern army rots in the mud and excrement around Munich, the Duc and Duke clash four more times in massive field battles. Each one plays out the same. The Triunes are forced to retreat westward, but always in good order and after inflicting massive casualties on the Germans. As a saying soon goes: the Duc can be moved, but only after ten thousand casualties.
The sheer intensity and carnage are not necessarily intentional, but inevitable given the constraints. Leopold’s advantage is in numbers, but to assemble an army big enough to defeat the Triunes is to assemble an army too big to be fed. It has to be used immediately before it wastes away, hence the extremely aggressive tactics. While the lack of supply forces immediate battle, the green nature of most of his soldiers means that subtle and sophisticated tactics on the field are too much to ask, hence the reliance on compact columns (cohesion is easier to maintain in such a mass as opposed to a thin gun line) and frontal attacks. That pattern thus created is also a self-perpetuating one. The heavy losses mean that few soldiers survive long enough to gain more experience and skill which would allow more options, requiring a continuation of the mass and highly-offensive army.
The system truly breaks down in 1653. To counter German tactics, Orleans and Nemours both emphasize more firepower, especially field artillery, which is murderously effectively against attacking columns. But artillery trains require much in the way of draft animals which impose a massive logistical burden; horses require lots of fodder, feed, and water. And these more effective Triune armies means that Leopold needs even larger masses of infantry to compensate.
The strain is too much, and logistical systems on both sides break under the effort. Strategy is reduced mainly to provisioning armies, with forces moving not to where they can damage the enemy’s political or military center, but simply to relatively unravaged districts that might sustain the host for another month or two.
The most absurd example of this comes in 1654. After intense fighting has burned and eaten out much of central Germany, the combat shifts south to more edible regions. Bavaria at least is involved in the fighting but hunger doesn’t care much about political lines. Both armies, needing to feed their hosts somehow, crash into western Austrian territory, devouring the landscape. An absolutely ballistic Stephen rallies an army to halt them from marching eastward (and has much more success this time around as even the most dovish Bohemian nobles are outraged).
Blocked that way, now the alarm is that the combatants may march south across the Alps. The Lombards marshal an army of their own to guard the Brenner Pass, reinforced by Tuscan and Romagnol contingents. The Sicilians also send 6000 troops of their own to help, although before they get there the Triune and German forces both turn back. [1] The march back, over districts already wracked and ruined, is a disaster, with both sides losing as much as 20% from disease, desertion, starvation, and vengeful peasants. [2] Stephen stands down his army afterward, with no follow-up other than a series of curses on both houses.
But there is a strategic trend in play. While the fighting wobbles back and forth, overall the Triunes and their German allies are gradually pushed west toward the Rhine. When the Triunes win, they lack the logistics to effectively use those victories. The large artillery trains and guerrilla attacks on supply wagons (some nationalistically or religiously motivated, some by revenge, and some by hunger), combined with the increasing wastage of the German countryside and people, make even a repeat of the attempted Munich siege impossible.
Death tolls for the Triune soldiers are heavy. By 1656 it is said, with some but not much exaggeration, that there is not a noble family in France who has not lost some family member serving as an officer.
Yet their losses are as nothing compared to German casualties. Even though the strategic trend is tilting toward Leopold and Elizabeth, the blood count is incredible. Some observers, who were veterans of fighting in Bulgaria as well as in Germany and so are in a position to know, claim that the Triunes have killed more Germans on the battlefield in five months than the Romans did in five years. Much of that is due to the intensity of the fighting and the crude frontal tactics of Leopold, but even so it testifies to the tenacious skill of the Triune forces. The Germans can shove the Triunes backwards, but cannot break them, and their losses are too high, even in victory, to make decisive use of their successes.
Leopold, in a spirit of youthful optimism when the German uprising was in fresh flower, had dreamed of pushing all the way to the Rhine and even beyond, back to the pre-war border. Elizabeth remarks in 1655 that at this rate, by the time Leopold reached Verdun, Germany would be inhabited mainly by carrion eaters and not much else.
These high losses, and the rather limited progress for which this blood has paid, sharply curtail popular enthusiasm that had been so high earlier in the decade. The large masses are getting harder to sustain and refill, while peasant anger is rising against princely authorities and the ever-increasing demands for blood and grain. On the bright side from the perspective of many princes, the bloody carnage has killed off many of the most ambitious and aggressive peasants who might’ve caused trouble otherwise. Still, the situation clearly cannot endure for long.
Yet the suffering of Germans is even more lopsided than the above suggests, since those are military comparisons. Triune losses are entirely on foreign soil, among soldiers and their camp followers. There are no cavalry columns roaming the Loire valley, plundering villages, burning what they cannot take, and raping the villagers too slow to get away. There are many in Germany.
The level of destruction and death is impossibly to quantify and highly variable. Certain areas such as northwest Germany along the North Sea coast see very little fighting. In areas along the Lotharingian border where a lively trade in cattle and related products thrive, one might not realize a war is going on. Yet at the same time, a Thuringian priest records that in 1650, he had 542 parishioners. In 1660, he has 97.
These are numbers though. Statistics are bland, and large numbers are not easily conceptualized. But behind each number was a someone, a person. Those 445 Thuringians that vanished between 1650 and 1660 were 445 individuals. They had names and hopes and dreams and fears, loves and hates and annoyances and quirks, perhaps an ugly face and an aversion to the color green, but an infectious laugh and an always-comforting embrace. History cannot know these, but they existed.
The high hopes of 1651 had failed by 1655; too much had been lost, on all sides, for those to endure. For this cannot endure. The struggle must end. The price for total victory is just too high. But until that blessed peace, any peace, comes, the suffering must continue.
History cannot know the voices of most of the dead, on both sides. But that makes it even more necessary to let those who few speak who can. The bells had rung for Vespers in 1651, but the spirit four years later is embodied by the final words Heinrich said to his wife Angela before he was conscripted. “Farewell my love. We will meet again, under the ground.” [3]
[1] Although this operation shows all the major Italian states acting in concert, little should be made of it. The various Italians may agree that keeping hairy and hungry trans-alpine barbarians out is a good idea but agree on very little else.
[2] Most of the enlarged German armies come from peasant stock, but now they have guns and are starving. In such conditions, former sympathies and empathies find it difficult to survive.
[3] OTL quote, although different context. See Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. The need to remember that behind the numbers, the statistics, were people, individual people, was from the conclusion of this work.
pls don't ban me
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I kinda suspected it, considering I've registered after seeing your TL and followed you since then.
@DracoLazarus are you available? sry for bothering you.
So who does Germany hate more now? Rhomania or the Triunes? Also this level of depopulation suggests that Germany might not be a relevant power until the mid 1900s rather than the mid 1800s IOTL
These few lines summarise why I simply love this TL. It is not just a parade of dates and battles, it is like a marvellous detailed painting showing not just one or two persons but a multitude and often enough focusing to the common people, a peasant, a soldier, a merchant etc.
I express my gratitude @Basileus444 !
They might take a page from OTL Hungary to demographically unscrew and ethnically screw themselves by importing a great mass of foreign settlers.
If anything, a German victory might end up being a bigger boon for its people than the OTL 30 Years War. The losses in the civilian population are not as catastrophic while whoever gets to claim the Emperorship has the opportunity to centralize the state under a sense of nationalistic fervor.
With the Triunes possibly going into a civil war and Rhomania retreating from European politics, Germany has ample time to recover quickly.
Triunes, for sure. Ulm was one thing, but that's nothing compared to what the Triunes have done during this entire war.
At this stage, would the peace negotiation be a game of trying to bluff who's in worse shape? Germany is ravaged, but the Triunes must be running of fumes too.
I feel it will be the Tribune's that take themselves out of this war. Henri only has so much coin and manpower to spend, that is also not mentioning the fact we could see an English company turning on a chastising French commander, and French units being brought in to subdue. Which would go over as well as spreading peanut butter with an impact wrench.
IF I were an enterprising Greek in Italia, I would be looking at any contact I have back home and be selling any weapon I could get my hands on. Officially the government has to keep at arm's distance. Between Elizabeth being behind one side and the Spider on the other, the distance from the conflict would bode better for them than if they actively sold arms to either if not both sides. But, back-channel contacts and the right handshakes would offer opportunities for making some dirty money. I mean if one's scruples were easily massaged.
IF I were an enterprising Greek in Italia, I would be looking at any contact I have back home and be selling any weapon I could get my hands on. Officially the government has to keep at arm's distance. Between Elizabeth being behind one side and the Spider on the other, the distance from the conflict would bode better for them than if they actively sold arms to either if not both sides. But, back-channel contacts and the right handshakes would offer opportunities for making some dirty money. I mean if one's scruples were easily massaged.
Yeah. 30 years war took away more or less 50% of the German population at the war's end, and they still managed to outpopulate France in the 1800s.
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Thats because of French demographic problem in the 19th century. France was the demographic beast of Europe before that point. And i expect with the ongoing devastation of Germany, they are going to keep this lead for a long time. Unless England somehow burns down France in the upcoming triune civil war
Cryostorm
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Yeah, I would take one look at the mess in Central Europe and go, "Nope, they can sort it out on their own." Besides, I highly doubt many Romans are losing sleep as Germans and Triunes kill each other in appalling numbers.
I imagine there are a couple groups that are rubbing their hands at the news.