Chapter 13: Preparation (1570-1580)
We left the last chapter considering an alliance with Bohemia. That alliance was concluded and immediately preparation for the war with teh Commonwealth were begun. A loan was taken and the Independent Army raised again. And soon enough the call to arms arrived and Oda honored it of course.
On Poland's side was her personal union junior partner Hungary. On Bohemia's side were a couple of German minor princes. So Oda' entry was going to drastically change the balance of power. But as some readers noted, the outcome of the war would depend on how quickly Poland would overwhelm Bohemia. So to prevent an early Bohemian collapse, the Shogun directed his forces towards the fort of Smolensk, beyond which was an open road to the heart of Poland .
And in sieging Smolensk, Oda got a big assist from the introduction of the military technology of the Tenaille, which made the fort obsolete . And Oda spies began building networks inside Poland not only to help with the sieges, but also to mitigate the aggressive expansion reputation hit after the war [ht
@Nikolai II ]
And in another happy event for Oda, veterans began to flock to her mercenary companies, replenishing their manpower.
After Smolensk fell, Odan armies raced to Warsaw and placed it under siege, while Polish troops were still tied up with Bohemia in the West. And in that contest, Poland clearly had the upper hand, handily defeating Bohemia armies on multiple occasins
Oda quickly took Warsaw and moved west, taking Krakow in record time as well, to take some of the pressure off the Bohemians
And in that effort , Oda was successful. Maybe too successful as she managed to draw almost the entire Polish army back east, where they converged on the Independent Army in Mazyr.
The Odan troops held till the very end , soaking up a lot of enemy fire . But eventually the Odan line broke and the Independent Army withdrew, at half strength, to Warsaw. The Poles pursued. The Odan high command, seeing that the independent Army was not in fighting condition anymore, ordered the troops to withdraw further west , towards the Bohemian lines siging Poznan .
And seeing that Poznan was about to fall, the Odan artillery and siege general joined the effort and helped Bohemia take the city . After that the Odan troops paused and waited for the Independent Army to replenish. And after the mercenaries got some more discipline thanks to Oda's splendor
[Age Ability] , the mercenaries combined with the regular troops and began a counterattack. At the battle of Warsaw they successfully pushed away the Poles
After Warsaw, Odan armies moved back East to cover the multiple sieges and occupations undertaken by the Daimyo swarm. And again they encountered a Polish field army. And this time they emerged victorious at Severia - but with very heavy losses .
At that point the Shogun decided that ODa had helped Bohemia enough, and needed to start looking at what gains could be obtained from Poland. He ordered the armies to move towards the Lithuanian region forts of Kovno and Riga, leaving the Bohemians to fend for themselves for now. And he had the diplomats periodically check peace options with Poland.
While that was going on , the truce with Sunda in the East Indies expired . Unfortunately, Oda did not have a claim on Sunda
[I forgot to fabricate one]. Not wanting to let Sunda join the coalition, and seeing that Oda had an excess of administrative power, the Shogun declared war without a
Casus Belli
That war was mostly handled by Daimyos and a local army and did not affect the conduct of the war with Poland at all.
Back in Europe, Odan armies took Riga and Vilna, and repulsed another Polish attack at Warsaw. And those successes allowed Oda to obtain a very favorable peace from Poland
Oda took pains to avoid exacerbating her aggressive expansion reputation .Only the province of Mitau was annexed. But Poland had to release Estonia and Latgalia. And both nations were willing to become vassals of ODa, following in the footsteps of Finland and Karelia . Another benefit of the peace was Oda obtaining access to the Lithuanian mercenary company thanks to owning Mitau in the Baltic region
[yes, that was intentional].
With Poland in a truce with Oda, the coalition members apparently realized they would never be able to defeat Oda, and the coalition began to dissolve . And this time, it did not come back .
As for Bohemia, they continued their war with Poland alone, without Oda's help. And they lasted many years, before they finally ended up ceding a few provinces to their enemy. And in international news that would become relevant later on, the Ottomans completed the annexation of Rhodes, taking one province from Venice in the process.
And back in the East Indies, the war of Oda Aggression against Sunda ended with Bali, Blambagan and Sunda all incorporated in the dominion of Oda.
WIth Oda at peace, she was then able to complete the vassalization of Estonia and Latgalia.
Oda was now free of the constraint of the coalition. And she could take care of some unfinished business, and annex the last remaining center of trade in the Moluccas, owned by Luwu
The war with Luwu and Buton was easy and finished with Oda taking the center of trade at Makassar, turning Luwu into a Daimyo and annexing Buton and later releasing it as a Daimyo.
At that point Oda had secured all the trade centers in SE Asia, and had no coalition to contend with . It had defeated its rival the PLC and took Estonia and Latgalia from them. So it was a good time for the Shogun to reassess the long term strategy in the service of the ultimate goal of removing all Emperors from Earth. And with all of Eurasia known to Oda, a comprehensive list of all these Emperors was available
There were the two titular Emperors , those of China and the Holy Roman Empire. Then the large de facto Empires of Poland, France, Ottomans and Spain (the big four). Rounding up the list was the middling power of Persia and the Emperor-in-name-only of Ethiopia. On that list, it was the big four that would clearly require the most effort . Oda had already fought one of them. It was now time to fight a second one.
The closest Empire to Oda was obviously the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Oda had a border with them , and was able to fabricate a claim on them ( via the still-uncored province of Simbirsk, kept in Oda's direct possession specifically for that purpose) . But one does not attack such an Empire without preparation. ANd it was not just the war with them that concerned the Shogun . He was more concerned with the
post-war peace. HE knew the war would be hard , and therefore the peace had to be worth it. But annexing land from the Ottomans in the Western Steppes ( or whatever one called the plains North of the black Sea) would be difficult because those provinces were out of coring range for Oda. And unlike the situation in Asia, where Oda could annex distant land, give it to a vassal Daimyo and then core a province next to it- those provinces lay in Europe and therefore could not be treated the same .
So the Shogun had his diplomats obtain maps of Arabia from Persia, and looked at ways Oda could penetrate the Ottoman Empire via the Indian Ocean . It turned out that Oda would not be able to annex lands directly from the Ottomans in Arabia, as they were too distant from her provinces in South East Asia. Oda needed to get closer. And the Shogun identified two provinces in the area that Oda could use as stepping stones: Ash Shariqyah owned by Aden , and Gawdar on the Makran coast, owned by Delhi.
So Oda began preparations for war to take one or the other province. As part of these preparations, Oda declared war on Ming's remnants in China.
The main purpose of the war was to simplify troop travel in China, because Oda's possessions in South China were disconnected from her holdings in Tibet and North China. But also to whittle away potential coalition members should that problem arise again . Oda mostly let her Daimyo swarm handle that war, with some help from small mercenary companies.
But the main preparatory war before Oda could take on the Ottomans was on Delhi, who was declared on via their ally Chagatai.
The main aim of the war was to take the province of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. Once cored, that province would give Oda range to Ottoman possessions around the Red Sea. To make sure no ally took that province for themselves during the war, Oda did NOT call on Persia or Gujarat to help against Delhi, although they were willing. She did call on landlocked Jaunpur however. A secondary aim of the war was to own a province in India and gain access to two more mercenary companies ( as you could have guessed, the constant wars and rebellions have been draining the handful of mercenary companies Oda had access to, and more would be needed in a potential war with the Ottomans).
The war was fairly easy. Chagatai and Delhi had Kazan on their side, and that enemy was the first to be tackled by Oda.
After annihilating their army , Oda took the city of Kazan itself. That freed up the Grand Company to make a beeline drive to the province of Gwadar, for Oda seriously feared Persia may take advantage of Delhi's trouble and make a play for the province herself. Meanwhile, the armies in India were also making an effort to reach Gwadar quickly, via sieging the fort at Jalalabad.
Eventually the Grand Company reached the target first and secured it for Oda. Meanwhile, Delhi's armies took Tsaparang fort in the Himalaya mountains but otherwise got bogged down fighting Jaunpur. And Chagatai itself was eventually overrun by the Daimyo swarm. Odas armies then made a push to the capital Delhi itself, and once they secured it, they were able to impose peace terms
First was Kazan. Although they were Oda's first tributary, now that the relationship was broken, they had a poor opinion of Oda's aggressive expansion. The Shogun feared they would gravitate to their co-religionist the Ottomans, and so he weakened them by forcing them to return land to Muscovy ( Oda did not want to take land herself to minimize aggressive expansion with Ottomans, and to avoid worsening her governing capacity problem).
Next peace was in the other war with Ming
Ming ceded provinces that helped connect Oda's holdings in China to each other. All provinces went to Daimyos.
Next peace was the important one with Delhi
ODa took two very sparsely populated provinces, but with significant strategic value. Ladakh allowed entry into West India , giving availability to the Gorkhalis and Ganges mercenary companies . Gwadar was a stepping stone towards the Middle East. Oda also released Kashmir as a free nation, eventually turning them into another Daimyo .
Finally Oda made peace with Chagatai, annexing just enough land to straighten out the lines of communications in Central Asia
So in all the peace treaties with the Muslim nations, Oda took care to avoid upsetting the Muslim world at large with aggressive expansion. This was all to prepare for the coming war with the Ottomans. And further preparations were done on the diplomatic front, where Oda concluded an alliance with Venice , who controlled North East Italy and was rival with the Ottomans.
Oda also managed an alliance with Genoa, who was
allied to Venice and not rivals with her! And in a good omen that the Gods were blessing Oda's plan to attack the Ottomans, the latter declared yet another war on the Mamluks
Oda reacted by beginning a hefty monthly subsidy to the Mamluks, taking their income from about 30 ducats to 45 ducats a month. Oda hoped that would help the Mamluks hold on until Oda was ready for her war. And Oda took another step towards readiness by completing the adoption of Aristocratic ideas and activating the policy of Autonomous Estates
That policy increased Oda's force limit from 228 to 264 regiments, surpassing the Ottomans. And as the decade ended, Oda was almost ready to declare war. She was only waiting on Venice's truce with the Ottomans to expire - in just 2 months - so that she would have their help in the war.
and this is where we leave our narrative. And end with the customary status view of Oda
Oda has a superb cadre of generals, with two of them conscripted from her Daimyo vassals
[got Cherrypicking achievement from it]. And her army is larger than her future enemy the Ottomans, who were still fighting the Mamluks. Oda is certainly more than prepared to take them on.
