History of Urcea (1402-1575)
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The History of Urcea from 1402-1575, sometimes also called the Reformation Period, consists of period of time from the establishment of House de Weluta on the throne of Urcea to the end of the Great Confessional War. Though the period began with efforts at reconstruction and a sense of unity reestablished throughout the realm, including peripheral areas of Canaery and the Cape, it soon became consumed by religious discord throughout the Kingdom and renewed dynastic struggle. The end of the period was characterized by war between the de Welutas and the Ronanids against the backdrop of the Protestant Reformation and The Anarchy, socio-political events which resulted Great Confessional War and entrenchment of the Catholic Church within Urcea. The end of this period saw significant reforms take place, most notably including significant changes to the social class system in Urcea, as well as the implementation of the Counter Reformation and a transformation to the Urcean national identity during the reign of King Leo II.
de Welutas established
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King Lucás II inherited a country torn by decades of division and armed conflict and the inattention clearly showed: the great plains to the east of Urceopolis that once served as the breadbasket of the continent were wastelands and the site of frequent battle, Urcean ports were treated with scorn by traders globally due to the prevalence of conflict-based piracy, and the once mighty road system built by Great Levantia found itself largely destroyed from years of overuse and neglect. Lucás, called the "barracks King" both for his popularity among soldiers but also for his humble roots (relative for a King) prior to taking the Throne, spent a considerable part of his 29-year reign attempting to rebuild the country figuratively and literally. The King invited great scholars from across Christendom to engage in discussion about what might today be considered a kind of very primitive proto-economics. As part of this effort to solicit advice on how to reconstruct the nation's wartorn economy, the King convened a council of all of the guilds of Urcea, the Gildertach, for the first time in 1407. Serving initially as an advisory board on trade and trade conditions, it has continued to meet intermittently through the present. While contemplating changes to the Kingdom's economy, Lucás II implemented sweeping legal reforms that, among other changes, formally brought about the end of the Great Landsmeet, which had not met since 1243. The King's legal reforms also included streamlining local succession laws, uniting the laws by which the succession of the Archduchy of Urceopolis and Grand Duchy of Harren functioned, thereby preventing a future occurrence of what occurred during the earlier Great Interregnum. Lucás began the long process of land reform by dramatically increasing the size of Crown-owned land by seizing large estates whose ownership had become disputed during the Saint's War. Among the series of economic reforms implemented, King Lucás II most famously intentionally debased the currency to help farmers and merchants cancel debts from the war they couldn't repay. Despite the considerable gamble, records seem to indicate the move worked and the Urcean economy was in considerably better state upon Lucás's death in 1431 than it was when he came to the throne some 29 years earlier.
Lucás conducted a series of efforts to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and trade, a proactive policy applauded by many modern historians as a pioneering use of state power during the early Renaissance. Most ancient Great Levantine roads had their broken ancient bricks removed, as in many cases the conditions allowed for plain dirt roads which better suited the level and type of traffic of 15th century commerce; the military-oriented limestone roads were no longer necessary, and the broken stones were often an impediment to travel. Roads were also cleared of many obstructions which had developed over the centuries, ranging from landslides to simple fallen trees. New aqueducts were constructed for the first time in nearly a millennia to irrigate the abandoned fields and support the cities. Lucás's efforts also focused on ending piracy in Urcea which had become common during the Saint's War in an effort to restore the Kingdom's reputations with foreign traders. While he had no regular navy at his disposal, in the summer of 1406 Lucás waged a land campaign up and down the coast of the Archduchy of Urceopolis and the Cape, where many secret pirate bases had been located. The so-called "Pirate Campaign of 1406" had the intended effect; most pirates were cleared out, and the ones who the army could not reach found the climate inhospitable and either stood down from piracy or relocated abroad, in some cases as far as Vallos.
Lucás passed away in the Julian Palace in 1431, reportedly in his sleep. His 29 years on the throne reestablished the monarchy and firmly entrenched House de Weluta in power. It had been the second longest reign of any Urcean king to that point (surpassed by Adrian I, 1275-1312) and most historians rate him among the best monarchs in Urcean history to that point.
Velucian renaissance
House de Weluta maintained a fairly robust succession in the 15th century and enjoyed considerable support from the landed gentry, the peasantry, and the clergy as they enthusiastically attempted to mend the wounds of the Saint's War with positive result. The resulting period, overlapping with the early renaissance, is known as the "Velucian renaissance" after the family's Latin name. By the first year of the reign of King Niall IV (1456-1482), the country's population had recovered to its pre-war levels, and a robust building program began that would continue under the next three de Weluta Kings that would include a new system of roads, cleared trade routes, and a modernized series of defenses and fortresses. King Niall kept the Kingdom mostly out of foreign entanglements in order to facilitate the construction of the wartorn Kingdom, but he did involve himself in the political affairs of the Holy Levantine Empire, the first Apostolic King of Urcea to do so in a meaningful sense since the election of Emperor Niall I in the 13th century. Additionally, King Niall IV inherited the Principality of Halfway after the island's Crusader princes died out. This was an important step in Urcea's "step into the Odoneru Ocean" that had begun with the conquest of North Crotona in the latter part of the 13th century by King Donnchad I.
The full effects of Renaissance would also make its way to Urcea in this time, beginning in the 15th century and continuing on through the Baroque and Rococo period, which had a profound influence on the history of Urcean architecture. Niall IV's reign also saw considerable re-involvement in the affairs of the Empire and Urcea's other neighbors, including securing an alliance with the Kings of Angla with the marriage of one of his sons, Ronan, to a daughter of the Ænglish King, in 1465. The resulting offspring - members of a new cadet branch of the Julian dynasty known as the Ronanids - had Julian dynasty lineages on both sides, as the Ænglish King himself was a distant Cónn descendant in the female line. The new cadet branch of the Ronanids rise to considerable prominence in Urcea and play a critical role in the history of Urcea and the Holy Levantine Empire.
Despite Niall IV's considerable progeny, his descendants would have problems with inheritance. His successor, Constantine II, died after less than a year on the Throne, passing it to his brother Leo I. Leo would manage just two sons, the eventual King Adrian III and his sickly and weak brother Aedanicus who many scholars believe had considerable developmental disorders but nonetheless was able to reproduce, while Adrian had considerable difficulty doing so.
Adrian III ruled during the initial outbreak of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and, although he initially expressed interest and toleration, eventually decided to enforce religious unity and ban Protestant proselytism after the Pope promulgated Exsurge Domine in 1520. The Reformation created a relatively small Protestant minority mostly in the peripheries of the country. King Adrian spent the latter twenty years of his long reign (1492-1546) feuding with local lords and the country's neighbors, while breaking the country's alliance with the King of Angla as the latter became Protestant and the subject of an Imperial invasion. Adrian died in April of 1546 without an heir starting a minor interregnum. There was considerable dispute whether or not Aedanicus would or could ascend to the Throne. The most senior claimant beyond Aedanicus was Riordan of the House of Ronan, a great-great-grandson of Niall IV; Riordan's status as a Protestant made him largely unacceptable, but he managed to rally domestic support within the Archduchy as a lack of a credible alternative emerged. Considerable fighting between local factions broke out until Riordan himself seized Urceopolis and the Throne in October of 1546. As compensation for the loss of Urcea and as a potential base for later reclamation, Aedanicus was given the Duchy of Holchester by Emperor Conchobar III following the Nordmontaine War in 1554.
Ronanid reign
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Though Riordan V (1546-1557), first King of the House of Ronan and a Protestant, initially pledged that he would issue an edict of toleration, the Crown soon began to interfere in the functions of the Church and attempted to repossess the monastic lands in the Archduchy of Urceopolis. The Pope fled Urceopolis for Corcra and the persecution of the Church began in 1548, and in response Emperor Conchobar III granted Imperial immediacy to all vassals directly outside the crown lands of Urcea, bringing the so-called Imperial Kingdom to its functional dissolution. Taking this as a sign of approval from the Emperor, a large coalition of Catholic landed optimates rallied together to form the Catholic League and declared their intention to overthrow King Riordan V in favor of Prince Aedanicus, who reigned as Duke of Holchester and who had been gathering a rival court and allies.
Aedanican phase of the War of Religion
Although the conflict initially took form as a dynastic dispute, soon sectarian fighting began and each side began wanton atrocities. Many villages and towns founded during the reign of Great Levantia were destroyed and not resettled, providing evidence to archaeologists how the typical Urcean of this time lived. The rebellion grew into the Urcean War of Religion with the Protestant, Royalist forces controlling the Urce River valley and the Catholic rebels controlling the countryside. As part of the war effort, Aedanicus relocated to Castle Welute. Riordan spent most of his reign prosecuting the war, and the Royalist forces experienced a considerable setback at the Battle of Clada in 1554, forcing the King to look to Protestant neighbors and allies such as the Kingdom of Gassavelia for assistance, drawing Urcea into forming the Protestant Union. The Union planned to march on Corcra and establish Protestantism as a legal religion in the Empire alongside Catholicism. The Great Confessional War between the Catholic Holy League and the Protestant Union, and the Urcean War of Religion was largely subsumed into the greater conflict.
Riordan V died in 1557 and was succeeded by his Protestant son Donnchad III, who was considered to be an exceptionally more talented commander than his father. Donnchad managed to break a Catholic siege of Urceopolis and maneuvered north to Castle Welute. Rather than besiege the Catholic stronghold, Donnchad raided the fortress and took Prince Aedanicus, the Duke of Holchester, and brought him back to Urceopolis. There, in 1560, he was drawn and quartered and his head was mounted high in the Pale for the city to see, with the remaining parts sent to various rebel leaders; this act was viewed as a severe atrocity by contemporaries and far beyond the honorable conduct of war, leading many moderate optimates in the countryside to abandon the Protestant cause. Next, Donnchad launched a campaign to the southwest to break out of the Urce valley and link up with Protestant forces from the Kingdom of Gassavelia, which he did successfully. By 1562 Donnchad defeated the Holy League at numerous battles in southern Urcea and Gassavelia and the combined forces began to besiege the city of Cana.
Leonine phase of the War of Religion
Leo de Weluta, eldest son of Prince Aedanicus, assumed the mantle of leadership of the Velucian faction upon his father's death. Leading a small force comprised mostly of Catholic troops from his Duchy of Holchester and mercenaries given to him by the Emperor, Leo launched a surprise attack on the city of Roekdorse in modern North Ionia and took the mostly-Catholic city, overcoming the small Royalist garrison. Soon, Leo began to call upon the avowedly Catholic Ionian Highlanders, who viewed "Auld Royal Leo" as their King, to flock to his banner, which they did. With the victory, the Pope proclaimed in 1563 that Leo was rightful heir to the Kingdom and gave him a Papal grant of the Kingdom stating as much, making Leo the de facto leader of Catholic Urcean forces. Reorganizing the shattered rebel forces and consolidating the Imperial-given forces, the Ionians, and the rebels into a new army, Leo began a march southwest to Urceopolis, besieging Protestant-aligned cities as he made his way down the river valley. The Protestant King Donnchad and his Gassavelian allies had to abandon the siege of Cana and march the two armies northeast. Leo and Donnchad's armies met for the first time in the northeastern plateau and engaged in a series of skirmishes for a year. Donnchad was continuously assured that a Protestant offensive from the Electorates of Lucarnia and Hollona would relieve him and attack the Imperial army from the rear, and continued to draw back his army in a series of bloody retreats in order to draw the Catholic forces in for a fight in which the allied armies would be able to strategically entrap the Imperial army. No reinforcements came, and Donnchad made the decision to continue the retreat on to Urceopolis in an attempt to draw the Catholic army into a siege of the well-defended city and potentially destroy them by sallying the Protestant forces forth. Leo managed to flank Donnchad with a detachment mostly comprised of cavalry and light infantry, positioning troops between Donnchad and Urceopolis, forcing the Protestant armies to stand and fight near Drumfree. At the Battle of Drumfree, which occurred on April 9th, 1565, both sides seemed deadlocked for nearly eight hours of fighting before Donnchad was mortally wounded by a primitive form of grapeshot, leading to the Protestant forces fleeing. Donnchad, abandoned by his troops, was then speared hundreds of times and his mangled corpse thrown into a ditch.
Using his cavalry, Leo trapped and annihilated the Protestant armies the next day, clearing the way for him to Urceopolis. Marching towards the city and then establishing camp outside the city, he felt himself unworthy to enter first, and sent for the Pope. The Pope and Leo entered the city on May 14th, 1565 at which point the Pope crowned Leo as King Leo II, ending the War of Religion and sending the Great Confessional War into its second phase as well as restoring the House de Weluta to the Throne. Following his coronation, the new King sent for the remains of his father and interred them at the Leonine Crypt.
Fate of the Ronanids
After Leo seized Urceopolis, the remaining members of the House of Ronan in Urcea - including the children of the recently killed King Donnchad - mostly disappear from the historical record. A letter from Leo to an official in the Imperial court in 1571 makes passing reference to former Prince of Halfway Caelian Ronanid "enjoying...a comfortable imprisonment for the benefit of the realm", but no further mention in his papers or court records exist of any of the remaining Ronanids. A majority of historians believe that Leo imprisoned most of them for a time and then had them killed once the Great Confessional War concluded in 1575; this opinion is based on typical contemporary practice and political calculus, but no direct evidence exists for it. A minority of historians believe that most of the Ronanids had fled the city before Leo's arrival and went on to live in anonymity; this theory is plausible, but many historians point out that it seems unlikely these individuals would not travel abroad to Alstin to historically documented members of the family living there.
The fate of the family was as unclear to contemporaries as it is to modern historians. In 1590, a Derian man claiming to be Prince Caelian issued a proclamation in Dericania calling for a revolt of the supposed hidden Protestant masses against the Holy Levantine Empire. Pseudo-Caelian attracted a small following but was captured after a short rebellion in October 1591; he recanted his claims following torture. Rumors and legends of the "true Caelian" circulated throughout Levantia until around 1615.
The Leonine revolution
Having defeated the Ronanids and with only a few Protestant partisans left in Urcea, King Leo II now had relatively free reign to prosecute the Great Confessional War on behalf of the Holy League, squarely putting the Protestant Union on the defensive. After defeating a small band of Ronanid rebels south of Cálfeld, Leo marched the Imperial Army south and besieged Harzenon by the end of 1565. The well-fortified city held out until 1567 when the Imperial Army successfully breached the walls after an extended cannon barrage. Combined with the capture of its loosely-held eastern portions, the fall of its court and capture of its King led to the total collapse of the Kingdom of Gassavelia soon suffered total and Imperial occupation, ending the Southern Levantine theater of the war. The remaining campaigns of the war were largely siege-based against Protestant cities in northern Dericania, and although the war continued for another eight years, no major Protestant power within the Empire threatened the ascendancy of the Holy League. The peace allowed King Leo II to reign in Urceopolis for the first time beginning in late 1567.
The Counter Reformation
Although he came to the throne as an impressive commander, most historians remember King Leo II for his dramatic and revolutionary effect on nearly all parts of Urcean life. These early years of his reign were consumed by cultural and religious changes, and his later, post-war reign would focus on legal reforms. Leo's religious program largely centered around implementation of the Counter Reformation. His reign coincided with the changes made by the Council of Trent and also in the foregoing decades during which time Urcea was under Protestant rule. The earliest changes were in accord with the universal trends of the Counter Reformation: seminaries were established throughout Urcea, the King paid lavishly for the restoration of defaced icons and Church structures, and monasteries were reformed according to new Church prescriptions.
The Counter Reformation would take on an additional level in Urcea beginning in around 1569. Leo's interest in it seems to not only have been institutional reform, but a major cultural revolution. In his private letters, he wrote that "the initial triumphs of the Ronanids came...not only from an apathy towards the true faith among the subjects of the Kingdom, who should have surely rejected their illegitimacy...but also in our inability to curry the divine favor." In this sense, Leo viewed himself to be analogous to the Biblical King Hezekiah, who enacted religious reform and cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. Leo wrote that Urcea "was still hot and formable from the war" and that "it must be reforged...as a holy nation." To this end, Leo began to attempt cultural reform by both example and by means of a recasting of the role of the monarchy in Urcean life. In Easter 1570, in thanksgiving for his restoration to the Throne, Leo began a Kingdom-wide on-foot procession of himself and his entourage from Urceopolis to Cálfeld, which would depart on Easter Sunday and arrive on the feast of Corpus Christi. During that time, Leo met with thousands of his subjects, endowed dozens of churches, schools, and hospitals, led prayer services, and allowed his retainers and other nobles to live lavishly in camp while he lived in an austere tent. The Pilgrimage of 1569 was remembered by contemporaries - noble and common alike - as one of the most elaborate and memorable occasions of their lifetime, and in some instances it had been the first time an Apostolic King had visited many places within the Kingdom, not including while on campaign. As part of his overall agenda of engendering greater faith and devotion, Leo erected large statues and other monuments at every city he visited in 1569, some of which still remain today.
Pamphleteers and scholars in Leo's employ began to publish a large number of documents and books arguing, in line with the ongoing Counter Reformation, that the Apostolic King governed Urcea on God's behalf for the benefit of the Urcean people. Most scholars made an effort to distinguish this from a divine right of kings, stating that Leo ruled because of his own devotion to God and the Catholic Church, making the point that the nation would be similarly endowed should it follow him in faith. In 1570, the Pope gave Leo the title fidei defensor, "defender of the faith". As new seminaries began operation, Leo began to generously endow these institutions in order to accept more freemen into the Clergy. Leo wrote that it was his belief many of the commoners saw religion as "...an exercise of the minds of the nobles" and that greater connection between the Crown, Church, and people were necessary. Although national identity as a concept was not yet devised, most historians believe that Leo's overall aim was to imbue the Urcean national sense with an inherent Catholicity, not only for its own sake but in order to ensure a permanent place for Catholic rulers generally and House de Weluta specifically.
Leo's religious reforms would continue after the war with a spate of church building that occurred throughout most of the 17th century, rebuilding much of Urcea's ecclesiastical architecture in the unquestionably Catholic Baroque architecture. Most scholars attribute Leo's reign as the beginning of a distinct Urcean idea of governance and the relationship between the King, Church, and society.
The Imperial Pivot
Upon death of the sitting Emperor of the Levantines in 1572, the Collegial Electorate met and chose King Leo as Emperor, putting the entire Holy League army under his command. Leo was drawn away from his reform program, and accordingly would delay a large number of legal and social reforms until after the war. He spent the next three years prosecuting the war until the Holy League's final victory in 1575, after twenty years of fighting.
Leo showed no mercy and expelled all Protestant landholders from the Empire, enforced the legal status of the Catholic Church, enforced several of the doctrines of the Counter Reformation throughout the rest of the Empire in line with his domestic reforms in Urcea. Leo redistributed former Protestant lands and strengthened the Imperial Inquisition in Levantia. Urcea, from the conflict, gained considerably; the Kingdom of Gassavelia was partitioned, with the western half of the Kingdom (and its colony of Antilles) being given to Urcea and the remainder becoming part of Dericania, called Faramount. In South Levantia, Emperor Leo deprived the formerly Protestant controlled Philaridon Republic of much of its territory and traditional rights. The Republic's existence continued for more than a century, but following the reign of Emperor Leo it was reduced to little more than a city-state client of Urcea. Emperor Leo brought the results of the Great Confessional War to their natural conclusion, prosecuting the Dragonnades which largely left the Holy Levantine Empire uniformly Catholic and left many of the Estates of Urcea in disarray, as more than half of the Custóirs appointed by his predecessor were removed. The Dragonnades helped dramatically increase Royal authority in the realm as huge Protestant landed estates were seized by the Crown. Following the Great Confessional War, the power and expansive lands of the nobility in relation to the King went into terminal decline and by the time of the Red Interregnum, any of the remaining feudal estates were completely wiped away, though their influence and power was only nominal by that point.
As the war ended and King Leo II sat on the Imperial throne, peace and relative stability came to Levantia for the first time since the beginning of the Anarchy. The peace and newfound religious unity, as well as Leo's own political authority, would inaugurate a new era in Urcean history. The second half of his reign would see a myriad of legal reforms to join his cultural and religious reforms, such that, between the reforms and conflict, the Urcea of his death was virtually unrecognizable from the one first ruled by the de Welutas beginning in 1402.