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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 royal crypt. | 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 royal crypt. | ||
==Leonine | ==The Leonine revolution== | ||
Having defeated the Julio-Angloise 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 Julio-Angloise rebels south of Cálfeld, Leo marched the Imperial Army south and besieged | Having defeated the Julio-Angloise 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 Julio-Angloise 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 (City)|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 {{wp|Counter Reformation}}. His reign coincided with the changes made by the {{Wp|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: {{wp|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 precriptions. | |||
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 Julio-Angloise 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 {{wp|Hezekiah}}, who enacted religious reform and cleansed the Temple in {{wp|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. | |||
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 {{wp|Baroque architecture}}. | |||
===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 [[History_of_Urcea_(1575-1798)#Leonine_reforms_and_17th_century_expansion|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 Church|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 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]]. | |||
[[Category: History of Urcea]] | [[Category: History of Urcea]] | ||
[[Category: Urcea]] | [[Category: Urcea]] | ||
[[Category:IXWB]] | [[Category:IXWB]] | ||