The Holy Roman Empire Squared - A history blog AAR

[quicksabre]

Post 8: Into the World
Holy² Roman¹ Empire²
Throughout the end of the 17th century and into the 18th, the Roman Empire had begun to wet its feet in the wide oceans, and some citizens began to take an interest in bodies of water which were not the Mediterranean. At first these bold explorers were merchants and missionaries, but soon small amounts of government funding began trickling into Greek colonies and with it ordinary settlers looking to escape the bustle of Europe, or perhaps seeking a bit of the adventure they heard about in tales of their ancestors. The first colonies were founded on several of the Caribbean islands by the Indies company, which soon fractured as the East Indies company formed itself on a small outpost on Java in an attempt to reign in the spice trade. These colonies got little attention until French and Brenton monarchs were able to escape overseas and organize sufficient resistance to prevent the peaceful assimilation of their last European footholds into the Empire. A fleet and a small expeditionary land force was dispatched to deal with the upstarts, who quickly gave in and swore fealty to the Kingdom of God. It was a small force, only a handful of warships and regiments, but upon the conclusion of the war the government decided to leave them in the colonies as a peacekeeping force to ensure that the Empire's overseas subjects did not try to use their distance as an excuse for insubordination. It was a decision that would have far reaching consequences. (founded a few colonies, more for fun than anything else, had to take a few colonies from France and Brittany in order to vassalize them to diploannex later)

Image: The East Indies colony circa 1730. (Note, this picture wasn't really meant to go here, but it is the only one have have of my colonies in the East, which are pretty irrelevant right now… soon I will take over Majaphit and colonize New Zealand as well. This also provides some closure for the Breton question. France follows a decade later.)

Following the war, the only only opponent with sufficient political clout to maintain a European outpost was Portugal. The situation created tension in Europe, and by 1721, relations between the two powers had deteriorated to the brink. Rome declared war on Portugal to make good on its claim to Lisbon. The Roman court was optimistic that the Portuguese would relent under the constant military pressure on their capital, and pursued a policy that precluded invasion of Portuguese colonies in the hope that the government would relocate if their overseas territories were sufficiently strong. A large fleet was dispatched to the colonies to defend them from Castillian and Portuguese invasion, but that was to be the extent of Roman operations in the western hemisphere. Or at least, the extent of planned operations. Under the orders of Governor Andreas Diogenes of the West Indies, the Army of the Indies sailed for Tortuga under General Philemon Argyros, brushing aside Portuguese garrisons and easily capturing the entire island of Hispaniola. From there they moved to occupy Cuba, and, finally, establish a foothold in Mexico itself. These moves took place in less than two months, and concurrent with the Roman Occupation of Lisbon, and the Portuguese command was taken completely by surprise. The 4 regiments of the Army of the Indies occupied much of Mexico's Gulf Coast before a counterattack could be mounted. But when it came it was devastating, driving the Romans completely from the north and into Honduras. With her armies heavily outnumbered on land, the tenuous Roman presence in the western hemisphere was at risk of collapsing completely. Pandora's box was open, and the Roman High Command had to make a decisive choice - commit fully to the American Front, or give it up entirely. They chose to commit. (Tried to wait for Portugal to relocate its capital, but it never did. Occupied some islands, tried to invade Mexico to get a foothold but didn't have enough troops to solidify the gains, so I shipped over a 'light division' to give me an edge on the continent)

The Second Light Division, 16,000 strong, was dispatched from southern Gaul to Honduras to aid the beleaguered defenders there. But by the time they got there, the Army of the Indies was gone. They landed, secured the surrounding countryside, and were promptly attacked by the Portuguese army, which was routed, pursued, and destroyed. The Second Light dug into Honduras, preparing for a protracted siege. Meanwhile, the Army of the Indies landed further north along the Gulf Coast. The Portuguese high command panicked and surrendered to the local generals, both of whom accepted, taking the provinces of Honduras and Tohoncapan under their personal governorship. Following their example, several local commanders in charge of the garrisons in Cuba and Hispaniola also refused to give up the provinces they occupied. The initiative of their local commanders forced the Kingdom's High Command to finally acknowledge the fact that there were substantial numbers of Roman citizens living beyond the boundaries of the 'Old Empire'. In both the military and civilian fields, the exploration, colonization, and governance of the New World became increasingly formalized. (annexed a couple of strategically placed coastal and island provinces… I'm going to have to clear the entire coastline of the Portuguese Empire in order to annex Lisbon… Was hoping to be able to support colonial revolters, but they aren't around yet, and don't want to take the risk of waiting on Lisbon. Better to take it into my own hands and be safe! Can always fund rebels later. After that I took Quest for the New World to get the colonialism casus belli).

Image: Against the designs of the Kingdom's High Command, ambitious local commanders set out to seize their own piece of glory in the New World.

 

[quicksabre]

Details
The stories of this time are particularly interesting, because in many ways they drove the history of the period. Following the downfall of the western powers, the peace with the eastern powers, and the decline in then number of rebellions across Europe, the Kingdom of God was, to use the vernacular, boring. After 3 centuries of legend, it seemed that the Kingdom had reached a point of stasis. As the government became increasingly accepting of colonial endeavors, Greek adventurers set out to seek their fortunes across the sea. These people created a new class of Roman legend - the frontiersman. Perhaps the most important and defining characteristic of these adventurers was that they saw themselves as such. They settled uninhabited Caribbean islands whose inhabitants had been wiped out long ago by Europeans or disease, but soon they ran up against Western powers - many of whom were hostile, still bitter at their removal from their European heritage generations before. The unbridled wanderlust of the Roman settlers had run into an obstacle they could not overcome.

In its early stages, all Roman colonists fell under the jurisdiction of the Indies Company, technically a branch of the National Bank but effectively independent. There was an office in Rome with exactly one worker. The real power lay in the colonial offices themselves, where colonists elected their own governors and followed their own laws. The residents prided themselves on returning to their Roman republican roots. Rome left the to their own devices as long as they paid small tariffs, usually in the form of sugar exports, to the Kingdom. But as vacant Caribbean islands quickly disappeared, and stories of heroism and adventure and riches trickled back to the Old World, an increasing demand for overseas land caused the Indies Company to request access to Arabian ports so that would-be adventurers could turn their eyes east to the Spice Islands. The Company's request was granted and colonists flocked to Java, which was split among the native Kingdom of Majaphit, the Swedes, and the Greek settlers. There was also a sizable population of native tribesmen on the island. In reaction to these foreign threats to what was growing up to be a very profitable colony, the Indies Company funded the creation of the Army of the East Indies - a force of about 3,000 settler-soldiers to protect the colony. This force wasn't enough to deal with a concerted invasion by either Sweden or Majaphit, but it offered basic protection and was the first militarization of the colonies. The Indies Company expected that the profits from the spice trade in the colonies would allow the colonists to compensate them for the incurred expenses, but the hopes of officials living on the other side of the world were far from the minds of residents of Java. Annoyed by Company demands, and flush with funds, the settlers there created their own East Indies Company. They simply sent their own representative to Rome and continued to pay their tariffs. The (now) West Indies Company howled but they lacked the teeth for real repercussions, and were completely ignored by other Roman authorities.

The incident revealed two things about the nature of Roman colonies - First, they were weak. However, they were also essentially independent. Governor Andreas Diogenes recognized the opportunity here, and began machinating for the presence of a small regular army in the West Indies to 'protect Roman interests and compel the obedience of subservient kingdoms'. He also advocated for the commander of this force to be his friend and Puerto Rican native Philemon Argyros. These requests were ignored even more thoroughly than complaints about the East Indian schism, at least until outbreak of the last Franco-Roman war.

The war broke out because the Romans wanted to claim the last French and Breton outposts in the old world and complete the conquest of the old province of Gaul. Unable to resist, these provinces fell easily but the monarchs of both countries escaped to the New World, where the world assumed they would stay permanently. However, they refused to abdicate control of their last European territories and shocked the world by mustering support for their claims from Castille, Portugal, Sweden, Britain, and Ireland, which, except for Castille and Portugal, were traditional enemies and never agreed on anything. It is here that modern conspiracy theorists see the work of Andreas Diogenes. His peaceful trading relationship with all of these New World powers (except Sweden), and his apparently peaceful intentions meant that he had cordial relationships with all of them. It probably would have surprised Rome to know that there were British, Portuguese, Castillian, Irish, and Scottish embassies in Puerto Rico. The moderate version of the theory (the radical one, clearly ludicrous, is that Diogenes started the war himself) goes that as the one person all of these governments trusted, Diogenes would have been the only person capable of uniting them. This claim is questionable but it is certain that he maintained relations with all of them despite the official Roman policy of diplomatic and economic isolation. It is also certain that he benefitted greatly from these developments. His requests for military support were finally granted, and the Army of the West Indies was formed and dispatched to the Antilles. These troops quickly quelled French and Breton resistance in the New World, but rather than risk war with a full coalition of enemy nations they preserved the French and Breton holdings in Europe in exchange for submission to the Kingdom of God. (none of this really happened in-game. I am trying to justify the fact that I couldn't take their European Capitals despite the fact that they had no chance of ever holding them.)

The Portuguese were not so easily brought to heel, however. Imperial policy since the Serpent plan had been one of economic and political isolation, in the hopes that the government would recognize their tenuous position and give up on their European claims as had the British and Spanish before them. This time, however, the Roman policy was failing. Portuguese colonies were wealthy and protected by a powerful fleet that had not been destroyed during the fighting in Iberia. They had secured an alliance with Castile, which had become increasingly revitalized as it was reinvented as the chief continental power in North America and the owner of all of Western Africa, which protected its slave trade to North American plantations and threatened North Africa, the Kingdom's soft underbelly. The Roman claim to Lisbon was strong, but continued political support for the Portuguese prevented its annexation.



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Image: The battle of Honduras ended major Portuguese resistance in Mexico. It was not apparent at the time, and would take several decades, but this battle marked the end of the Portuguese colony.

 

[Memento Mori]

Nice to see that only Portu-Gaul is separating you from victory. I had a problem with them too, when I was playing Castille. I admit that I cheated a bit, though and when they only had the capital and 2 colonised islands, I just made a custom decision shifting their capital I don't exactly see this as cheating, as I could have just annexed them, but I wanted to see how would a country starting solely from a few colonies do. And to my surprise, they did very well - they became a one of the 3 American superpowers (apart from GB and France, which were evicted from the mainland and replaced by England and Rev. Fance respectively ) later on by annexing Aztecs, Incas and colonising lots of stuff around, including Siberia!

 

[quicksabre]

Nice to see that only Portu-Gaul is separating you from victory. I had a problem with them too, when I was playing Castille. I admit that I cheated a bit, though and when they only had the capital and 2 colonised islands, I just made a custom decision shifting their capital I don't exactly see this as cheating, as I could have just annexed them, but I wanted to see how would a country starting solely from a few colonies do. And to my surprise, they did very well - they became a one of the 3 American superpowers (apart from GB and France, which were evicted from the mainland and replaced by England and Rev. Fance respectively ) later on by annexing Aztecs, Incas and colonising lots of stuff around, including Siberia!

No cheating is one of my (few) rules! So I didn't cheat, or modify the save or txt files in any way. I had plenty of time to take them out, as you will see in the next update. I did do something like that once, too, and they survived OK but never really became a major power.

Post 9: Closing the Ring
Holy² Roman² Empire²

The Mexican expedition had important consequences for Rome. First, it destroyed their hopes of driving the Portuguese from Europe to the colonies by revealing that Portugal's vast, apparently rich empire was, in fact, a paper tiger. Second, it revealed that the Kingdom's colonial empire was too powerful and too far outside of the Pope's jurisdiction for the comfort of the central government. In the 1720s, following the war, Rome began a large-scale reorganization of its colonies, called the 'Holy Quest for the Right and Power of God in the New World', more commonly known as the 'Quest for the New World'. This reorganization was a three-part process.

First was the restructuring of the provincial governments into a hierarchical system with Rome at the top, rather than the quasi-independence the colonies had previously enjoyed. The local governors and customs of electing them, however, were kept as long as they recognized the new hierarchy. Second was the formalization of territorial claims and the allocation of diplomatic resources to New World politics. In theory, these measures were about opening diplomatic channels and exerting more control over local borders to prevent unexpected flare-ups. Practically, it allowed more diplomatically efficient conquest of New World territory. (colonialism causes belli!)

Third was the strengthening and formalization of the New World military. With almost 150 years of precedent for organizing military units, the Roman government did not put too much thought into the organization of the units they dispatched. As a result, the first Roman armies in the New World were large, cumbersome beasts that were wholly inappropriate for waging war in the Americas. This could easily have led to disaster, at least for Roman soldiers if not Rome as a whole, as they tried to drag their masses across too few poor roads and died from disease and attack. Local commanders, having fought Natives and Portuguese and Castillian raiders for decades would have recognized the folly, but Rome wanted to avoid the insubordination of the previous Portuguese war and gave command of the armies to European commanders who were directly loyal to the Pope. There was also a European overall commander of the New World military based on Martinique, although local governors had the authority to dispatch units on specific missions in response to local crises.

Image: Local governors had sufficient authority, and clout with mid and lower-ranking officers, that they were able to run campaigns independently of the overall army commanders.

This system was too dispersed to have the intended effects, but it did allow local governors to use more appropriate forces, under the command of native New World leaders, to wage their campaigns, while keeping the burdensome artillery back for defense. This made Papal forts in the new world practically unassailable by most New World armies, and also allowed field armies a great deal of flexibility. Roman generals, however, were not happy, and the system might have broken down completely had hostilities not broken out again in 1726. The European commanders seethed as they were forced to remain behind walls while locals led small detachments on a rampage across the countryside. Small, fast armies were much more suited to colonial warfare, especially against the Portuguese, against whom the Romans enjoyed a staggering technological and tactical advantage in pitched combat.

Image: One of many victories in the 30+ year conflict across the Portuguese Empire. Notice the numerical differences between the armies.

The success that the system enjoyed saved it despite the protests of Rome's commanders, and slowly a formal reformation of the New World military began to take shape, although that would not be completed until the final retirement of European generals from the command of New World armies. Because of the lack of glory, or really any campaigning at all, for generals in the New World, the position was hardly favorable and promising European commanders typically tried to finagle their way onto the Eastern Front facing the Muscovite heretics, where wars periodically broke out. Thus these positions were soon filled by men who had risen through the ranks of the New World forces and understood the nuances of warfare in the colonies. The success of their reforms would eventually shake the Roman High command into action in 1760, leading to the first major Roman military reform since the Bohemian War. (finally, I take military modernization and increase my tactical lead over my enemies even more!)

In the mean time, the campaign against the portuguese lasted over 30 years and spanned the entirety of North and South America as Castille, Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland all got involved at various times. The Romans generally stuck to the coastline, where they could receive the support of their powerful navy and where the roads were usually better. By the 1740s they were establishing political as well as military footholds in Central America, Peru, and southern Brazil, and had swept the Portuguese from their islands strongholds in the Caribbean. One ambitious general even took an expedition to Africa, raiding Portuguese towns in Angola and the Cape. Settlers poured into this new land, quickly overtaking the local populations. The New World was quickly becoming a Greek playground. (series of war-truces against portugal, trying to cut their entire coast in order to isolate lisbon… I actually succeeded, although I was denied the pleasure of force-moving their capital. Also I started using all of my settlers to assimilate colonies)

Image: Romans establish outposts in Peru.

Constant warfare on their own soil drained the Portuguese government of money, manpower, and political capital. By the 1750s revolutionaries swept the countryside, finally winning their war in 1758 when they forced the monarchy to abdicate, moved the capital to Cuzco, and agreed to renounce their claims on all conquered land and Lisbon in exchange for peace and a guarantee of independence. The colonial governors were outraged - in less than half a century Roman power in the New World had grown a hundredfold and there was little to suggest that the trend could be reversed. But with Lisbon finally in their grasp and the goal of reestablishing the entirety of the old Roman empire, the Kingdom's interest in maintaining the diplomatic apparatus to justify their colonists gains on the international arena dropped significantly. They had other goals, mostly in Russia, and the distraction was no longer welcome.

Thus began the final phase of the Roman resurgence - in the East the Kingdom's armies slowly pushed back the Heretics nearly driving them from the Baltic Sea, while the East Indies company expanded their colonies in New Zealand, the Philipines, Kamchatka, and, much to the annoyance of the West Indies Company, California. In the New World espionage replaced force as the primary means of expansion. The West Indies company funded colonial nationalist movements in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and elsewhere to fight against their chief rivals. All of these except Mexico would eventually be crushed by their own creditors and integrated into Roman territory. (I started using some great cheese to win bb-free conquests in the new world - sponsor colonial rebels in a big swath of land you want to conquer - when they declare independence all of those provinces plus all adjacent provinces will defect to the new country - if ONE of those provinces was yours, you can annex the entire country for 0 bad boy during their revolutionary war, including the provinces that used to belong to your rival! Ahaha, fun times)

Image: Roman troops take over Brazil after funding its independence movement from Castille.

 

[quicksabre]

A quick announcement - my objectives are complete, they were officially completed in 1758. I played until 1800 and I will post one more all-screenshots update of the 'state of the world' at that time. It should be up tomorrow assuming this Hurricane thing doesn't cut my power. A huge thank you to everyone who read and posted here, I hope you enjoyed watching me take this wild ride as much as I enjoyed playing it.

 

[Deus Eversor]

as a matter of fact, i did
well i hope frankestorm won't hurt you one bit.

 

[MarkusH]

AWESOME

Renmae yourself "The Imperium of Man"

 

[quicksabre]

Post 10: The Aftermath (Images only)
Alternative titles (more suggestions welcome):
The Holy Roman Empire Squared
The Imperium of Man
Chucknorrisland

Western Europe

Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Near East

Arabia (notice the remnant Ottomans there… No idea where they came from but I kept them as a cute pet)

North and West Africa

Carribean and Central America

Western South America

Southern South America

East Indies

New Zealand

South Africa

West Africa

East Asia

Army Ledger

Navy Ledger

Emperor Ledger

Province Count Ledger

And for dessert, Pie!!

 

[quicksabre]

as a matter of fact, i did
well i hope frankestorm won't hurt you one bit.

Thanks Deus Eversor! I really enjoyed your comments!

AWESOME

Renmae yourself "The Imperium of Man"

Thanks MarkusH! I included your suggestion as a possible title for my empire in the last post

 

[Deus Eversor]

You should thank yourself, without your inspiration, i wouldn't had gone, on my end, there!

Also, the Imperium of Man sounds apropriate.