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Égislad took [[Maximilian II of Hendalarsk|Maximilian II's]] accession to the Hendalarskara throne in 1558 as a moment of weakness in his mighty southern neighbour and duly moved to annex the County of Rasenwald, which held a key crossroads on the Zalgis and had been administered as a Hendalarskara-Zalgisbecker condominium since 1536. He compounded this by backing two separate failed plots in 1562; a failed coup in Schullerhausen, and an attempt on Maximilian II's life by a disgruntled faction of Hendalarskara nobles. Maximilian survived, unsurprisingly interpreted this twin attack as a declaration of war by the Captaincy-General, and responded by purging the offending aristocratic factions, annexing Schullerhausen outright in 1563 and driving Égislad's supporters out of Rasenwald in early 1564. A five-year truce was signed in the aftermath of Rasenwald's fall, but in 1569 a still-irate Maximilian promptly renewed the Hendalarskara offensive, now couched in almost millenarian terms as the ''Drang nak Wandák'' ("Drive to the Vandarch"). A string of crushing military victories followed, as the Captaincy-General's famed pike formations were outmanoeuvred and torn apart time after time by more mobile Hendalarskara forces, including the [[Khunyer]] ''huszar''. After an operation to relieve its garrison by sea failed, Zalgisbeck itself was [[Siege of Zalgisbeck (1571)|stormed and brutally sacked]] on June 11th 1571. Eyewitness reports of the carnage sent shockwaves across the Vandarch world, and Zalgisbecker independence burned on the same pyres as its defenders. | Égislad took [[Maximilian II of Hendalarsk|Maximilian II's]] accession to the Hendalarskara throne in 1558 as a moment of weakness in his mighty southern neighbour and duly moved to annex the County of Rasenwald, which held a key crossroads on the Zalgis and had been administered as a Hendalarskara-Zalgisbecker condominium since 1536. He compounded this by backing two separate failed plots in 1562; a failed coup in Schullerhausen, and an attempt on Maximilian II's life by a disgruntled faction of Hendalarskara nobles. Maximilian survived, unsurprisingly interpreted this twin attack as a declaration of war by the Captaincy-General, and responded by purging the offending aristocratic factions, annexing Schullerhausen outright in 1563 and driving Égislad's supporters out of Rasenwald in early 1564. A five-year truce was signed in the aftermath of Rasenwald's fall, but in 1569 a still-irate Maximilian promptly renewed the Hendalarskara offensive, now couched in almost millenarian terms as the ''Drang nak Wandák'' ("Drive to the Vandarch"). A string of crushing military victories followed, as the Captaincy-General's famed pike formations were outmanoeuvred and torn apart time after time by more mobile Hendalarskara forces, including the [[Khunyer]] ''huszar''. After an operation to relieve its garrison by sea failed, Zalgisbeck itself was [[Siege of Zalgisbeck (1571)|stormed and brutally sacked]] on June 11th 1571. Eyewitness reports of the carnage sent shockwaves across the Vandarch world, and Zalgisbecker independence burned on the same pyres as its defenders. | ||
===Decline and decay (1571 - 1900)=== | ===Decline and decay (1571 - 1900)=== | ||
Zalgisbeck lay in ruins for years after the sack of 1571; entire neighbourhoods of the once-prosperous city were abandoned, and it took decades for its population to recover to its pre-annexation high water mark of roughly 150,000. The city was deliberately neglected by Maximilian II and most of his immediate heirs as a consequence of Maximilian's near-death at the Captaincy-General's hands in 1562 and, to add insult to injury, was placed under the jurisdiction of [[Hernemünde]] after [[Kingdom of Hernemünde|that kingdom's]] conquest in 1579 - an administrative arrangement which prefigured the modern [[Mouth of the Zalgis]] province. By 1625, Zalgisbeck had once again become a notable port, reaching a population of roughly 85,000, but it continued to pale in comparison to Hernemünde, Frehmenwerth and the ever-rising cities of the [[Pentapolis]]. Hernemünde in particular had surpassed Zalgisbeck as a proto-industrial centre, as Maximilian's subjugation of the [[Herne]] watershed in the 1600s opened the rich [[Kupferberg]] mining districts to Hendalarskara settlement. This was compounded by the [[Statute of Goldorz]], another of Maximilian's tools for punishing the city, which was introduced in 1599 and limited all commercial guilds in Zalgisbeck to a maximum of 25 members, thereby hamstringing the city's industrial recovery. | |||
===Civil war and reëmergence (1900 - present day)=== | ===Civil war and reëmergence (1900 - present day)=== | ||