raharris1973
Well-known member
[apologies for the ASB ISOT overload, but that's where I am right now. If not your thing, I suggest a skip on this one]
In 1533 AD, shortly after the Kingdom of France, under Francis I receives the first Ottoman Embassy in Paris for him to plot aligned measures against the Habsburg empire of Charles V, and as he is dealing with the "Affair of the Placards", the entire Kingdom of France disappears in a flash of light.
In its place, is the Gaul of the late 5th century, 400s BC, in the youth of Brennus of the Senones, who in OTL went on to sack Rome. This is the land that the English in the Pale of Calais, the people looking from atop the Spanish Pyrenees, and from the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and Papal Enclave of Avignon all see. They see a great deal more woodland and open grassland across the line than before, a hallmark of a less crowded country. But it is still inhabited decently, around the border, and in the interior, and there are wood, thatch, and stone structures of varying complexity visible.
But completely missing from the line of sight of these European neighbors are any Churches, Cathedrals, nary any Crosses or glass windows!
It takes less than a day for border communities to recognize and begin reporting (via riders) that the "French" aren't speaking French, they don't have any priests or churches, some of them, including soldiers, appear immoderately dressed, naked, or body-painted. There will be violent clashes at the borders with various towns molested and robbed over the first week, but any organized body of knights, pikemen or troops suffice to chase off barbarians or compel the abandonment, or surrender, of nearby towns or forts.
The Empire of Charles V, it soon becomes clear, has lost its main rival in the Christian world. Both the English and the Habsburgs, and constituent states of the HRE begin defensive expansion and have a "crumbling frontier" advancing into what was France.
While the mechanism is unclear, the Celtic barbarians seem to die at an unusually high rate after prolonged contact with or conquest by 1533 Europeans, leaving their lands to be claimed, fought over, and disputed by various squatters and noblemen high and low. Unknown to the people, the Gauls are extra vulnerable to the nearly 2,000 years extra evolution of microbes and other disease carriers. However, as they've had livestock and agriculture for millenia, the impact of these diseases on Gaults hardly matches the impact of those diseases on New World native Americans. And, the Gauls introduce some novel, nasty infections to the Europeans of the 1530s, whose genetic immunity to those bugs had long since been bred out.
How do things proceed in Europe, and the world, from here? Charles V's "Universal Monarchy" no longer has France to stymie it, and is active on several fronts: The Americas (most recently, Peru), Hungary, the Mediterranean, the "Gaullish" heathen frontier, an internal fight with Lutheran and now Calvinist schismatics. A Pope jealous and wary of his power.
Probably the biggest single challenger to Charles V and his collection of realms. is Suleiman the Magnificent and his Ottoman Empire.
Without another rivaling state on its own technological and demographic level to worry about, can Charles V contest much more vigorously the Ottoman conquest/vassalage of Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and perhaps overturn it entirely?
While "Gaul" is primitive and thus hardly menacing, is the vast, exploitable, heathen land available for conquest and conversion a temptation that can end up absorbing most of the Habsburg states' attention and distract them from counter-Ottoman and American and global activities?
Your thoughts?
In 1533 AD, shortly after the Kingdom of France, under Francis I receives the first Ottoman Embassy in Paris for him to plot aligned measures against the Habsburg empire of Charles V, and as he is dealing with the "Affair of the Placards", the entire Kingdom of France disappears in a flash of light.
In its place, is the Gaul of the late 5th century, 400s BC, in the youth of Brennus of the Senones, who in OTL went on to sack Rome. This is the land that the English in the Pale of Calais, the people looking from atop the Spanish Pyrenees, and from the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and Papal Enclave of Avignon all see. They see a great deal more woodland and open grassland across the line than before, a hallmark of a less crowded country. But it is still inhabited decently, around the border, and in the interior, and there are wood, thatch, and stone structures of varying complexity visible.
But completely missing from the line of sight of these European neighbors are any Churches, Cathedrals, nary any Crosses or glass windows!
It takes less than a day for border communities to recognize and begin reporting (via riders) that the "French" aren't speaking French, they don't have any priests or churches, some of them, including soldiers, appear immoderately dressed, naked, or body-painted. There will be violent clashes at the borders with various towns molested and robbed over the first week, but any organized body of knights, pikemen or troops suffice to chase off barbarians or compel the abandonment, or surrender, of nearby towns or forts.
The Empire of Charles V, it soon becomes clear, has lost its main rival in the Christian world. Both the English and the Habsburgs, and constituent states of the HRE begin defensive expansion and have a "crumbling frontier" advancing into what was France.
While the mechanism is unclear, the Celtic barbarians seem to die at an unusually high rate after prolonged contact with or conquest by 1533 Europeans, leaving their lands to be claimed, fought over, and disputed by various squatters and noblemen high and low. Unknown to the people, the Gauls are extra vulnerable to the nearly 2,000 years extra evolution of microbes and other disease carriers. However, as they've had livestock and agriculture for millenia, the impact of these diseases on Gaults hardly matches the impact of those diseases on New World native Americans. And, the Gauls introduce some novel, nasty infections to the Europeans of the 1530s, whose genetic immunity to those bugs had long since been bred out.
How do things proceed in Europe, and the world, from here? Charles V's "Universal Monarchy" no longer has France to stymie it, and is active on several fronts: The Americas (most recently, Peru), Hungary, the Mediterranean, the "Gaullish" heathen frontier, an internal fight with Lutheran and now Calvinist schismatics. A Pope jealous and wary of his power.
Probably the biggest single challenger to Charles V and his collection of realms. is Suleiman the Magnificent and his Ottoman Empire.
Without another rivaling state on its own technological and demographic level to worry about, can Charles V contest much more vigorously the Ottoman conquest/vassalage of Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and perhaps overturn it entirely?
While "Gaul" is primitive and thus hardly menacing, is the vast, exploitable, heathen land available for conquest and conversion a temptation that can end up absorbing most of the Habsburg states' attention and distract them from counter-Ottoman and American and global activities?
Your thoughts?