Glory & Squalor
1581
Festung Vorsehung is all but completely demolished by a hurricane of the type characteristic to the area. The Anabaptists apply to Alexander for a grant of territory to settle. Alexander renames the Saxon colony in the New World Christlichhafen (Christianhaven), which soon becomes abbreviated to Hafen.
As the war between the Spanish and the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands continues unabated, Alexander disclaims any intention of becoming sovereign of the Netherlands in any capacity, fearing his entry into the conflict directly would provoke war against both the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs simultaneously. This opens the way for William the Silent to offer the position of sovereign, with the title Protector of the Liberty of the Netherlands, to the current Duke of Anjou (the previous Duke of Anjou --briefly King of Poland--being now King Henry III of France). The provinces of the Netherlands who are united under the Union of Utrecht then announce in the Act of Abjuration their official independence from Spain.
Once again facing depletion of his financial resources because of the never-ending demands of the New World project, the subsidies to William the Silent and Stephen Bathory, and his own somewhat grandiose building program, Alexander begins looking for additional sources of revenue. Fearing the destabilizing effect of direct taxes, Alexander decides to expand his father’s messenger service into a fully functioning postal system, to which he grants a monopoly. Also, even though it has been implicitly occurring for some time, Alexander grants Saxony’s state-sanctioned lenders the right to accept deposits from third parties, essentially accepting loans from them, that they can then in turn themselves loan to various enterprises at a higher rate, earning a profit on the difference. This measure functions to raise revenue for Alexander, because it makes the money-lending business more attractive, and the licensing fees the Saxon Elector receives from the lenders is lucrative.
Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist and Flacist ministers and theologians unite in petitioning the Elector to ban the Servetian doctrine, which opposes the trinity and infant baptism. Because he fears a groundswell of condemnation if he were to refuse, Alexander consents. Later in the year Martin Chemnitz dies, but before he does he endorses his longtime ally Jakob Andreae as his replacement at the head of the Lutheran Church, a move by which the popular and well-respected Chemnitz prevents the Elector from essentially maneuvering one of his cronies into the position.
Following the death of Frances Cromwell, Frederick Henry Brandon mourned for several years. Then in 1578 he met on his political ally Sir Henry Sidney’s return from Ireland his daughter Mary Sidney, only seventeen at the time, whereas he is forty-four. Madly in love, he had begged Sir Henry to set aside her planned marriage to the Earl of Pembroke. He now requests Queen Elizabeth for permission to marry Mary, one of her ladies in waiting and niece to her favorite, the Earl of Leicester.
Frederick Ernest and his wife Sabine of Wurttemburg have a son, Maximilian. This complicates matters regarding the inheritance of ducal Saxony (which he would like to strip from Frederick Ernest outright) for Alexander immensely.
The Chancellor Duke Julius, his own vast wealth still increasing, purchases as a vacation home the palatial Ca’ Vendramin Calergi in Venice.
1582
Arriving in the Netherlands, Francois the Duke of Anjou is welcomed politely. With William’s support, he is made Duke of Brabant and Count of Flanders. However, Zeeland and Holland refuse to recognize his rule. A gunman opens fire on a coach in which Francois and William are riding, killing Francois. Europe is scandalized when it is discovered that the gunman was in fact a Protestant radical who did not want a Catholic member of the House of Valois to govern the Netherlands.
Despite fears that he is stretching the colonist population too thin, Wyat founds at the mouth of the largest river yet discovered in New Israel, the Kosalu River, the Festung Beharrlichkeit, or Castle Perseverance. Alexander grants the Anabaptists’ request and grants them all the offshore islands between the Elizabeth and Kosalu Rivers.
Realizing that money paid for exports leaves Saxony and do not contribute to the Electorate’s wealth, and believing that he can foster manufactures and crafts by a program of tariffs on imports, the Elector announces a schedule of fees for the import of fifteen different types of goods that are also made in Saxony. Exempt are basic grains and other commodities which Saxony either does not produce at all or does not produce enough of to satisfy domestic demand. The initial surge in revenue satisfies Alexander’s financial needs.
The Chancellor Duke Julius builds the largest library in Germany at Wolfenbuttel, and announces that any Saxon subject with a letter of reference from a Lutheran minister testifying as to their character may have access to the library.
The Elector sends a delegation to England urging that Elizabeth allow the Duke of Suffolk to remarry, since doing so will allow for there to still be a Brandon claimant to the throne even if the Duke of Suffolk’s young heir, also Frederick Henry, dies. Elizabeth permits the marriage following an interview in which Frederick Henry once again proclaims his complete loyalty not merely to Elizabeth, but to whomever she chooses to succeed her. Frederick Henry the Duke of Suffolk then marries Mary Sidney.
1583
The Huguenots found the settlement of La Rochelle a few miles inland from Festung Erlosung. Having satisfied their immediate food requirements, but needing a cash crop to trade for supplies, the Huguenots of New Israel begin attempts to grow tobacco and sugar.
In compensation for the diplomatic services of Augustus Margrave of Meissen and leader of the Albertine Wettins, he is given the rights to 30,000 acres of land on the Frederick River in Hafen. Augustus’s son Christian, in line to succeed him as Margrave, is in an additional honor appointed governor of the colony. Christian refuses, an act that astonishes the Wittenberg court and shames his father, who had struggled to regain the trust of the Elector following the betrayal of his older brother Maurice. Searching for an alternative and feeling Hafen badly needs a stronger and more trustworthy government than Wyat provides, Alexander first considers his cousin Frederick Ernest but then realizes that any wrongdoing that might befall him in the New World would be blamed on the Elector himself. In the end, he settles on Ernest Brandon, the youngest son of his aunt Catherine and brother to Third Duke of Suffolk. Ernest is made Margrave of Hafen, a potentially important title since no boundaries have yet been established with other European nations defining Hafen’s limits.
As a complement to the tariffs imposed on imports the previous year, Alexander and Julius now issue a schedule of exports on which fees will be imposed. These include largely unprocessed commodities and goods to which value can be added by craftsmen before they are sent out of the country, like wood to make furniture, or bolts of textiles to be made into clothing.
With the profusion of different investment schemes, many of which are officially supported by or tacitly endorsed by the Elector, there arises a new type of investment company that essentially functions to do nothing else than to pay out as investment proceeds what others pay in as investment capital, without the money ever actually being put to productive use. Though not registered (registration with the Elector would mean that they would have to open their books and make their business known), they are able to explain this away by saying that they do not want to pay the Elector’s fees. These are called private investment societies, or as they quickly become known as because of the town in which they first arose, Leipziger societies. Quickly, these private investment societies absorb a huge amount of wealth from many investors, including many craftsmen and members of the lower gentry.
The Electress gives birth to a fifth child, Albert. In England, Mary Sidney Brandon gives birth to her first daughter, Elizabeth.
1584
With the financial condition of the colonization efforts in the New World foundering worse by the day despite the eagerness of religious minorities to escape across the seas, Alexander founds a joint stock company, ostensibly to fund future settlements but in reality to completely divest the Saxon Elector of his ownership interest in the colony and recoup from hapless investors some of the money that had gone into producing austere, self-sufficient but unprofitable religious communities in North America. The Anabaptists begin settling in Hafen, occupying the land between the Waccamaw River and the Ocean.
Sir Walter Ralegh, considering founding colonies further north in North America for England, accompanies his friend Ernest Brandon on his voyage to assume power in Hafen. Ernest’s wife, the princess Sophia of Sweden, pregnant with their first child, stays in Wittenberg.
The amount of money involved in the private investment societies accumulates remarkably, at the same time commercial traffic into Saxony drops because the new tariffs encourage merchants to buy and sell elsewhere rather than bother with Saxony’s taxes. This in turn leads many people with deposits in the private investment societies to try to withdraw their money simultaneously. The result is that they realize the private investment societies do not have enough liquid assets to cover the deposits. Financial panic ensues, as mobs of people hunt down and kill the managers of the investment societies, some of whom had grown fabulously rich in mere months.
The crisis forces the Elector to mobilize the army to preserve order. Special judges are appointed to return to depositors an equal percentage of what they contributed out of the funds in the societies do have and the wealth of the managers, but these moneys are paltry compared to what has already been paid out to other good faith investors, and in any case most of the societies kept defective or non-existent books. These judges are also empowered to issue speedy executions where they believe fraud has occurred.
As much of the private economic activity in the Electorate grinds to a halt, Alexander realizes this to be the most serious crisis the Electorate has faced than the Imperial Ban and the start of the Schmalkaldic War in 1547. He is faced also with widespread non-payment of taxes and fees that he needs to keep Saxony, with both a relatively large non-military bureaucracy and a sizeable military, running.
At year’s end, as various state projects are being stopped for lack of funds and civil servants sent home because the Elector cannot afford their pay, Alexander realizes there is an urgent need to raise money to avert catastrophe. He asks the largest land owners, the leading guilds of each town in the Electorate, the owners of the registered lenders and the mines and other significant economic enterprises in Saxony to send representatives to a General Congress, the first of its kind in the history of the Electorate, the following year.
Alexander’s reasoning in doing so is that were he to impose a direct tax outright sufficient to resolve the problem he would face a revolt from whichever quarter the tax was imposed on, with any of several major European powers more than willing to fund such a rebellion and overthrow the Wettins once and for all. Only by deferring the perception of responsibility for the new burdens onto every economic interest can he hope to avert some apocalyptic uprising against his rule.
The princess Sophia of Sweden gives birth to a daughter, Elizabeth (named not after the English sovereign but her sister the Swedish princess much beloved in Wittenberg), who is the Margrave of Hafen’s first child. The Elector’s younger brother John Frederic’s wife the princess Elizabeth of Sweden in turn gives birth to a son, whom she names Alexander. He lives seven weeks.
1585
In Wittenberg, the General Congress meets. Alexander holds receptions and preliminary meetings with representatives of the major interests before the Congress opens to garner support and test the consensus. He opens the Congress by a speech declaring flatly that even with spending curbed as sharply as possible without throwing allies like William the Silent or Stephen Bathory to the wolves, abandoning the military or the colonies, and closing the schools, Saxony will not have sufficient funds in the treasury to pay the army by the end of the year. The problem has been exacerbated by the various guarantees the state made to depositors and to various business arrangements during the boom years, which now in the context of the bank run, the decline in tax receipts, and the continuing increase of costs has brought the state to a precipice. Invoking the memory of his father, Alexander asks the General Congress to save the realm by agreeing to a program of mutual shared sacrifice until matters improve.
A week later, the Elector has his answer in the form of a list, The Sixteen Theses, presented to him by the General Congress. However, in terms of serious policy matters only five were truly significant and controversial. The first and most serious is that the General Congress be reconstituted as a permanent deliberative body named the Estates General, with power over taxing and expenditures roughly proportional to the English parliament. The second is the abolition of the tariffs on imports and exports straightaway, because though tradesmen and manufacturers had at first welcomed the idea of restricted competition from outside, the same foreign merchants as sold competing goods were frequently also the buyers of other Saxon goods to take back on the opposite leg of the trip, and that many merchants were now circumventing Saxony outright. The third proposal is stronger laws against the private investment societies that had caused all this woe. The fourth was to remove Chancellor Julius from office and bar him from the Elector’s employment in all respects. Finally, the fifth and most wide-reaching proposal in terms of society was that the guilds be given great freedom to start their own enterprises for the education and training of members, lending both to members and the clients of members to finance purchases, to provide various types of insurance to members and their families as an economic service (rather than hitherto as a charity), serving at the same time almost as a quasi-state means of regulating the economy. This last proposal actually manages to be the most popular, since in an economy paralyzed by a crisis of confidence the empowerment of the oldest and most stable economic institutions in a variety of different ways appears to make sense.
The General Congress, which is dominated by craftsmen and the urban classes, begins to unite behind the leadership of Marcus Hauser, a respected stonecutter from the Erzebirge whose chief clients had heretofore been the Electoral household. The General Congress waits two tense weeks for Alexander’s response to its demands. Alexander weighs the consequences of accepting permanent limits to his powers that would have been unthinkable to his father, but realizes on the crucial questions he actually has no choice. Thus he issues his reply to the General Congress: he accepts the concept of the Estates General, and is willing to concede to them some power over taxes and expenditures with respect to domestic matters, but not with respect to his household, the military or foreign affairs. He consents to end the tariffs, and strengthen the laws against the lending societies. With respect to Duke Julius he announces his intent to hold fast and declares that he under no circumstances will accept popular dictate over who is and is not his chancellor or otherwise in his service. Finally, with respect to the guilds he accepts all the principles put forward by the General Congress. Two days after he sends his reply, the Chancellor Duke Julius announces his intent to retire (and enjoy his still more than sufficient wealth in Venice), separate from the question of the demand put forth by the General Congress. This leaves only the outstanding question of the permanent division of power.
Finally, both sides hammer out an arrangement by which the Electorate of Saxony shall have two sets of affairs. The first, the “princely matters” including foreign affairs, the military, the police, the courts, the colonies and the Electoral household insofar as it is supported by its own enterprises and spoils, is to be in the discretion of the Elector. Moreover, the Elector will always be within his right to levy taxes so long as the proceeds of the tax are completely used to fight a war or repel an invasion. This is meant to spare Alexander some of the humiliations the English parliaments have put to the monarchs of that country, especially Elizabeth. The other category, the “common matters”, includes taxes of all other types and for all other purposes, schools, universities, hospitals, orphanages, roads, measures to promote trade and manufactures that do not contradict treaties or arrangements made by the Elector with other sovereigns, the pay, numbers and qualifications of civil servants, building programs of all types including domiciles of the Elector and his family paid for by tax moneys, religious laws and observances, and general laws. The Elector, acting alone, can still issue decrees with respect to any subject matter not proscribed in the final arrangement, but he can neither spend money for items within the “common matters” on merely his own authority, nor can he raise or lower taxes without the consent of the Estates General. In the event of an affirmative conflict between a decree of the elector and a law passed by the Estates General, the Elector’s will is effective in princely matters, the Estates-General in common matters.
Wrangling continues for a few weeks as the Electorate’s fiscal woes worsen, until Alexander and the General Congress agree to a last round of horse-swapping: he suspends the subsidy to Stephen Bathory, which the General Congress finds wasteful adventurism, and at the same time the General Congress consents to insert into its final document the provision that it will accept the Elector’s absolute right to choose his own councilors, provided that they abide the law, both the pre-existing law of Saxony and that crafted by the Estates-General. The final provision of the deal is for the General Congress to raise an exorbitant sum and thus prevent the insolvency of the Elector and the state.
The deal being finally struck, the Elector signs the Fundamental Articles for the Order and Peace of Saxony under His Christian Majesty the Elector, for all intents and purposes a Saxon Constitution. The money does not flow in quickly at first from the economic constituencies represented in the General Congress, and Alexander considers openly the possibility of abrogating the deal if it does not result in solvency for Saxony.
As a backdrop to the economic and political crisis of Saxony, the Netherlands descends into chaos when William the Silent is stabbed to death outside his home. In their attempts to find a foreign monarch willing to lead them, and their desire for that monarch to be Alexander now muffled by the spectacle of events unfolding in Wittenberg, the Dutch approach the other great Protestant power, Elizabeth of England. In the Treaty of Nonsuch, she agrees to provide open military assistance to the Dutch to help them keep their independence from Philip II of Spain, in return for Ostend, Brill and Flushing. The Treaty also names Elizabeth’s favorite Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester as Governor General of the Netherlands. Spain’s response to this act of Elizabeth’s is straightaway to begin military hostilities against the English on the high seas and elsewhere, making it clear that Spain considers itself at war with England. Interestingly enough, considering the Elector Alexander’s embarrassment in domestic policies, this turn of events is seen as revealing the prudence of his policy (never very popular) of not openly taking sides in the Dutch Revolt.
In the ongoing war in the Netherlands itself, the situation is dire. The Spanish, having laid siege to Antwerp in 1584, controlling its vicinity, and built elaborate siege-works, are seen as likely to retake the city. William the Silent had died while attempting to figure out a way to defeat the Spanish and relieve Antwerp, and his loss is intensely dispiriting both to the people of Antwerp specifically and the Dutch generally.
Thus, Alexander asks John Casimir of Simmern lead a force of well-trained volunteers (actually the cream of the Saxon army, essentially masquerading as mercenaries) into the Netherlands to lift the siege. He also sells several Saxon warships to the Dutch at less than their cost, thus recouping some funds in his ongoing financial crisis while helping Protestant allies. John Casimir of Simmern arrives at Antwerp on August 10 and surprises the Spanish troops, who were led to expect that any reinforcements would arrive not from the east but from the north. The Spanish positions are rushed, and their remarkable engineering-works blocking the Scheldt River destroyed. John Casimir’s victory at Antwerp with his famously “borrowed army” is enough to restore Saxon spirits and amplify the prestige of the Elector at a crucial point in the resolution of the crisis in Wittenberg.
In the disorder of the year, it is almost an afterthought that William of Orange’s son by Anna, Frederick Augustus, is elected stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland even though he is just twenty years old and the office is not inherited.
Despite the problem with the trustworthiness of investments, the Saxon West Indies Company begins offerings its shares, as the directors thereof begin enticing the younger sons of large farming estates to migrate in the hopes of establishing their own family lands. The Saxon West Indies Company’s promise that the natives of the New World provide cheap and problem-free labor is a complete and utter lie.
Ralegh founds the colony of Virginia, named after Queen Elizabeth of England. His first settlement, Fort Leicester, is at the southern mouth of a bay that reaches far inland to the north, and which is to the north of the Saxon Elector’s Huguenot and Anabaptist colonies.
The Electress bears a sixth child, a daughter named Sybille. Sabine of Wurttemburg, the wife of the Elector’s cousin John Ernest, dies of complications from a pregnancy.
1586
The General Congress—spurred by the threat of a revocation of the Elector’s assent in the event they do not contribute the required sums to keep the Saxon state functioning—come up with the necessary funds. The guilds hold elections among members for their share of the representative to the Estates General, other members being chosen on the basis of the size of their landholdings or other economic enterprise. The result is a legislative body that has a minority gentry presence because of the wealth that has been created in the past sixty years by manufacturers, craftsmen, merchants and bankers. By virtue of it being founded for the purposes of raising money to keep the state solvent, it is functionally speaking a plutocracy, albeit one in which many groups of bourgeois tradesmen and merchant aggregate their interests into representation.
Flaunting his independence of the new Estates General in matters of his appointments, Alexander appoints as Chancellor Henry Julius, son of the former chancellor Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, Duke of Lower Saxony.
Meeting in London to negotiate treaties governing the relationship of Saxon and English colonies in the New World during their respective months spent in Europe, Wyat and Ralegh agree to establish the Cape Fear River as the boundary between the colonies of Hafen and Virginia. Hafen would extend no further north than the River, and Virginia would extend no further south. This arrangement is confirmed by Elizabeth and Alexander, both of whom are more eager to avoid a boundary dispute with each other in the face of the current situation with Spain than anything else.
In the Netherlands, the situation decays as the new governor-general the Earl of Leicester makes common cause with extremists among the Calvinist camp, running far afield of the policy that Alexander had supported under William of trying to win support from as different religious sects within the Netherlands. Leicester thus begins to lose popular support, and suffers military reversals. Though the matter is delicate, given Elizabeth’s relationship to Leicester and Leicester’s family relationship to Mary Sidney Brandon as uncle, Alexander writes Elizabeth expressing disapproval of these policies. While the letter is in transit, the Spanish defeat the English in the Netherlands at Zutphen, and Mary Sidney’s young brother Robert—a soldier under Leicester—is killed.
At year’s end word comes that Stephen Bathory, the Transylvanian prince who has ruled Poland as an ally of the Saxons, has died. The event throws Alexander’s Eastern Strategy into chaos.
The seventh child of the Elector and Electress is born, Elizabeth.
1587
Alexander attends the opening of the first Estates General. The Elector, emulating his father’s famous Retrocession at Prague, makes a grand display of courtesy to the assembled members, and delivers a speech that serves as a manifesto in defense of free trade and reduced spending by the government, a plan that has as its chief objective preempting policy disputes that would serve as opportunities for the Estates to enlarge its powers over the Elector.
The Estates-General is thrown into disarray when John Casimir, Elector-Regent of the Palatine and the Elector Alexander’s cousin-in-law, arrives in Wittenberg to warn of a conspiracy to kill the Elector. Speaking to a horrified Alexander and Chancellor Henry Julius, John Casimir informs them that the young Christian, now Margrave of Meissen following the death of his father Augustus and head of the Albertine Wettins, has been plotting with the Elector’s first cousin Frederick Ernest. The object of their conspiracy is the replacement of Alexander and the restoration of the Albertine and Ernestine Wettins to their respective lands as of the time of the accession of Alexander’s father Frederick Henry, with Christian becoming the Duke of Saxony at Dresden and Frederick Ernest the Elector of Saxony at Wittenberg. Financial records support the fact that recently much of Frederick Ernest’s personal fortune had vanished for reasons he is unable to explain, but which John Casimir asserts was spent to procure mercenaries in the Netherlands. John Casimir finally asserts he heard of this plot when the young Margrave himself tried to invite John Casimir to participate on the ground that he, like the ringleader Nikolaus Krell and Christian himself, was a Calvinist. The actual murder of the Elector was to be committed during the closing session of the Estates General by a Catholic member who had been manipulated into serving as a dupe, with the effect that the misdirection would hide the true culprits long enough for them to take power.
The Elector rewards John Casimir’s gallantry by making him Margrave of Meissen on the spot and giving him the remainder of Frederick Ernest’s personal fortune. He orders his cousin Frederick Ernest stripped of his lands and titles and thrown into the Coburg Veste, this time without even the pretense of a trial. Quick trials are held for the former Margrave Christian, Nikolaus Krell and nine others, who are all executed. The three children of Frederick Ernest, now for all intents and purposes orphans because their mother is already dead, are sent to Hafen to be raised by their cousin Ernest Brandon, Margrave of Hafen. Their return to Germany is proscribed by law. At first, Alexander wants to send the four small children of the dead Margrave Christian of Meissen with them, but the Elector of Brandenburg intercedes on their behalf because they are his grandchildren, and so they are exiled to Brandenburg instead, all titles, properties and rights of succession they hold with respect to Saxony being absolutely nullified. Finally, for all remaining purposes ducal Saxony ceases to exist. The only subdivision within Saxony with any autonomy is Lower Saxony, under the retired Duke Julius.
Bizarrely enough, the discovery of the plot and the ensuing chaos runs parallel to the signing of the death warrant for, and execution of, Mary Queen of Scots in England.
Despite Saxony’s continuing penury, Alexander resolves to intervene in the question of the Polish crown. Disappointed by his previous surrogate the Duke of Teschen, Alexander forwards his own claim to the Polish crown, asserting that with the religious freedoms recognized within Saxony and its new Estates General, he is of all the candidates the one best suited to maintain Poland’s tradition of “golden liberty.” Alexander’s rivals are first, the emperor’s brother the King of Bohemia, the Archduke Maximilian, and King Sigismund of Sweden. Either of these two would result in a completely unacceptable arrangement east of Saxony: Maximilian would enfold Poland within the Habsburg realms, and ensure the family’s domination of Europe outright; Sigismund, a Catholic with questionable commitment to maintaining the Reformation within Sweden, would rule Poland in a personal union with Sweden that would also dominate Europe and make the Baltic Sea his virtual private lake. Alexander’s efforts to bribe and charm the Polish nobility (a neverending stream of Polish nobility is received at Schloss Moritzburg, and the Estates General complains loudly about the ostentatious entertainment expenses) nevertheless do not go well. However, the influential Catholic Polish politician Jan Zamoyski discusses with Alexander the prospect of another deal: if Alexander aids the election of Sigismund III Vasa and the defeat of his Habsburg rival, the Polish-Saxon alliance will be maintained and he Zamoyski will argue on behalf of Saxon interests to the new king. The alliance of Alexander with a leader of the Catholic lower nobility of Poland strikes many as odd, but it arises from the fundamental concert of interests between two leaders who defined their interests as being opposite those of the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turks. Thus Sigismund III Vasa is elected King of Poland.
For the first time in its history, Hafen’s population does not increase on the previous year, as disappointed and miserable younger sons of the Saxon nobility and their families begin returning home, and disease begins to take its toll. Hoping to stem the flow, and increasingly pessimistic about the Dutch revolt and the English adventures in the Netherlands, Alexander consents to opening the colony to Dutch settlement, as well.
The Dutch rebels choose Frederick Augustus as the captain-general of the rebel army instead of the Earl of Leicester, who returns to England in humiliation.
Marie Eleonore gives birth to her eighth child, William.
1588
The Archduke Maximilian, King of Bohemia attempts to lead an army against his rival for the Polish throne, Sigismund III Vasa. At the Battle of Byczyna, the forces of Sigismund under Zamoyski deal a catastrophic defeat to the Habsburgs and capture the Archduke. Members of the Habsburg family appeal to the Emperor Rudolf, who expresses no real desire to intervene. Appeals are then made to the Pope, who calls on Sigismund III Vasa to release the Archduke. The English ambassador Sir Henry Sidney writes to his daughter than when he asked the Elector why he had provided active support to the Catholic Sigismund, Alexander responded that the choice he faced was “between two outlandish chimerical monsters, and the one he chose to be born was the one he knew to be least likely to survive.”
As Elizabeth makes preparations to fight the Spanish Armada and the anticipated invasion by Philip of Spain and the Duke of Parma, she appeals to Alexander for help. Alexander, mindful of the long history of slights from Elizabeth and her own refusal to provide assistance in the previous stand-off with the Habsburgs over the crown of Poland, refuses. When the Duke of Suffolk and his backers then attempt to secure a place for the young Frederick Henry in the Earl of Leicester’s defensive force (being organized in the event the Spanish make it ashore) in which he can distinguish himself, they are summarily refused. Unfazed, Frederick Henry Brandon joins the Earl of Leicester’s force as an ordinary infantryman, unheard-of for someone of his rank, and drills to fight the Spanish should they land in England. The English navy fails to stop the Armada in the Bay of Biscay, and peace talks between England and Philip’s subordinate the Duke of Parma break down. The approach of the armada creates near-panic conditions in England, but in a series of naval engagements climaxing off Calais, where fireships similar to those used in the siege of Antwerp are employed, the English repulse the Armada and the feared invasion never occurs. An attempt by the Spanish to recapture the initiative fails in a naval battle off Gravelines. The English then attempt to pursue the Spanish Armada north. However, it soon becomes apparent that the English ships have run out of ammunition, and the Armada reverses the chase and begins pursuing the English south.
The remaining Spanish ships then attempt to escort the Duke of Parma’s force of 15,000 men across the English Channel on barges. The Dutch navy attacks, now with the small Saxon fleet aiding the effort fully despite orders from the Elector not to do so. This winnows the forces of the Duke of Parma down to 7,000 men by the time they land in England in Essex. The Spanish and English armies meet at Maldon, where in 991 a force of Anglo-Saxons beat back a Viking invasion. The Earl of Leicester’s incompetent leadership almost cost the English the battle, but an assault credited to Leicester’s assistant Peregrine Bertie (who is incidentally related to the Brandons by way of the First Duke of Suffolk’s second marriage) routs the Spanish. Several thousand prisoners, including the Duke of Parma, are held to be ransomed to Spain. The episode wrecks not merely Spain’s ambitions with respect to England but the effort to restore Spanish authority in the Netherlands. The costs to Spain of the episode are only magnified as the Armada suffers shipwrecks and shortages of provisions in its flight north around the British Isles and return to Spain, pursued by rearmed and re-provisioned English, Dutch and Saxon ships. The Saxon navy itself loses the Alder Von Lubeck in an engagement off Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In recognition of his celebrated role in the victory, Bertie, already a baron, is made the first hereditary Duke of York, fourth creation. Frederick Henry Brandon, who served bravely in the Battle of Maldon, is not only knighted but summoned to the Queen’s presence immediately following the battle, where before her court Elizabeth washes the blood and dirt from his face and praises him as “a stout noble son of England, and no other country,” with “more of the puissant blood of his noble forbears than any foreign prince I’ve met.” It is praise for Frederick, and insult for Alexander, whose efforts to help was seen as so insignificant as to be insulting. The Earl of Leicester is dead from cancer by the year’s end.
Disruptions in trade to the west and the crisis in England fuel the revival of Saxon’s commerce and the overland trade routes on which it depends, as tax revenues increase and many of the projects of the Elector suspended for lack of funding are revived. As the inflow of money from the Elector’s enterprises increases, his dependency on taxes for the time being decreases, and the Estates-General sees its power decline somewhat.
The Armada Year completely disrupts British efforts to maintain Virginia. Saxon ship traffic to the area is itself curbed by the warfare on the high seas, but the self-sufficiency of the Saxon towns helps them subsist. Saxon supply runs keep Ralegh’s colony going.
1589
In Wittenberg, the English ambassador Sir Henry Sidney proposes a solution to the economic problems of the New World colonies, most particularly the shortage of laborers that seem destined to arrest the development of new cash crops capable of funding further development. Sidney, based upon his service to Elizabeth in Ireland, proposes the transportation of the Irish to the New World in great numbers to work the land as forced labor to work on tobacco and sugar plantations. This would facilitate both the English “pacification” of Ireland and the Saxon settling of Hafen. The matter is discussed enthusiastically in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant circles, yielding the publication in London later the same year of Sir Edmund Spenser ‘s Letter to Their Most Christian Majesties Elizabeth the Queen of England and Alexander the Elector of Saxony, On Furthering Reform in Commerce in the Newly Settled Lands, which is widely read in both London and Wittenberg.
Cautiously, the Elector Alexander provides his assent to the idea, realizing that the colonization effort cannot support itself with the new budget strictures unless some means of increasing profits in Hafen is found. In London, Queen Elizabeth assents as well but with the limitation that only criminals, vagrants and rebels duly sentenced by a judge or an officer of the crown can be “exported.”
The former Chancellor Julius of Brunswick, Duke of Lower Saxony, a servant of the Elector Alexander for almost thirty years and author of many of the most important reforms of his reign and that of his father, dies. His fortune still largely intact even following the great economic crisis of the decade, Julius divides his fortune among his children, including Henry Julius, the young chancellor, who alone will inherit the family lands and the hereditary title Duke of Lower Saxony. As an added compensation for the service of their father, the Elector Alexander awards his three younger sons—Philip Siegmund, Joachim Charles, and Julius Augustus— vast territories in the northern reaches of Hafen, between the Cape Fear and Waccamaw Rivers.
With the multiple crises—the financial panic, the Polish succession crisis, the Albertine plot, and the Armada—all finally past, the Elector Alexander turns his attention to finding a bride for his son, Frederick Henry. He begins negotiations to marry Frederick Henry to Anna Vasa, the younger sister of Sigismund III Vasa, hereditary ruler of Sweden and elected ruler of Poland, and hence the ruler of the largest empire in Europe. Sigismund is currently without children, and Anna is next in line for the throne of Sweden, making possible for a Saxon-Swedish personal union. Though Anna is unlike her brother a Lutheran, and is renowned for her learning, the negotiations with Sigismund III Vasa cool because of her personal reluctance to marry.
The magnitude of Elizabeth of England’s triumph over Spain becomes clear when Philip II of Spain is forced to sign a peace treaty ending hostilities and turn over a huge amount of silver bullion to Elizabeth as ransom for the captive Duke of Parma, who is released on payment. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands the loss of the Duke of Parma and his army results in the extinction the Spanish fighting force in the Netherlands. Effectively if not officially, Spain permits a truce in which the Dutch rebels consolidate and push south into previously Spanish-held territories.
Finally, in Transylvania Alexander finds a client-prince to support, Stephen Bathory’s former chief minister and Calvinist Stephen Bocksay. Alexander restores a small stipend to Transylvania to the imperial budget, hoping to build a regional power capable of counter-balancing the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.
After ten years of tireless work, Joachim Hartmann finally publishes his five-volume Diseases and Cures of the Human Body by Case. It represents the most detailed and systematic record of knowledge in the history of medicine up to that time, including an evaluation of different cures for various diseases arrived at by evaluating the proportion of times a given cure worked versus the number of times it was prescribed for a given ailment. To this day this thumbnail score of treatment efficacy, the Hartmann number, is used by medical practitioners. Hartmann’s work revolutionizes medical knowledge, resulting in him being recognized by the Elector as “our physiological Copernicus.”
1590
Frederick Henry, the heir to Elector Alexander, is killed while practicing his swordsmanship when he slips and hits his head on a stone corner in Wittenberg. Inconsolable, Marie Eleonore retreats into seclusion over her grief. Elizabeth of Sweden assumes the public functions of her role as Electress, and her sister Sophia of Sweden assumes responsibility for caring for the remaining children of the Elector and Electress. The new heir to the Electorate is Alexander’s son, John. Alexander decides to invest John with the title Duke of Saxony, which will henceforth be the title of the designated heir.
Though Alexander continues to mourn for his dead son, he also redoubles his efforts to find a suitable spouse and thus secure his legacy. Negotiations begin between the Elector Alexander and Christian IV of Denmark whereby the Elector’s son John would marry the King’s eldest daughter, the princess Elizabeth of Denmark. Her next oldest sister Anne had the previous year married James VI of Scotland.
The first ships laden with Irish slaves set sail for the New World. Although per the directions of Elizabeth the exported Irish are supposed to be criminals, the joint stock company founded to sell them in Hafen onto the plantations there manages to procure a great many on the basis of manufacture or exaggerated offenses. Almost immediately, the economic turnaround of the colonization project begins. Returning to the New World and finding his own colony surviving, Ralegh undertakes to found additional settlements and expand.
The Elector Alexander intervenes in an academic dispute at the University of Helmstedt between the Lutheran faculty and an itinerant professor and intellectual, Giordano Bruno. Bruno, widely traveled throughout Europe and with high connections to both the French royal family and the Sidneys, has been fleeing persecution resulting from his persistence in challenging orthodoxies of all varieties. Astounded by his brilliance, and undeterred by Bruno’s unorthodox religious beliefs, Alexander allows Bruno a teaching position in a special school he founds for him in the Electoral residence at Pillnitz in Dresden on the condition that his lessons not involve religious subject matter, but instead mathematics and philosophy. The School of Bruno quickly becomes the intellectual seat of Renaissance Europe.
In the Netherlands, Frederick Augustus takes the town of Breda, held by the Spanish since 1581.
