"Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcentury@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:rrostrom.21stcentury-30FC57.18515807072008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "Mike stone" <mwstone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> >
> >How about Philip III of Spain? He was an indisputably legitimate
descendant
> >of John of Gaunt, and whatever Christian population Britannia had at
the
> >time of the Event would probably think of itself as "Catholic". rather
than
> >Protestant.
> >
> >Does the Kinsale expedition of 1601 go to Britannia instead, either on
> >Philip's own behalf or maybe his sister Isabella's? Could anyone else
> >intervene in time?
>
> 1) Roman troops are not going to wet
> their pants and flee en masse just
> because some barbarian fires off a
> boomstick.
>
> A handful of clumsy smoothbore
> matchlocks will not be decisive against
> well-trained infantry with steel
> weapons, bows and arrows, and horses.
>
> Cortez defeated the Aztecs, who did
> not have any of the above, with the
> aid of large numbers of local allies,
> while the Aztec state was being decimated
> or worse by Euro diseases - and it was
> still a struggle.
>
> Britannia has a veteran Legion and
> probably a fair number of auxiliaries
> in place. (On the Pictish border, in
> Siluria, and making sure the Britons
> get no silly notions.) Any filibusters
> will be seen off quickly.
At least, they will as long as the Legions can be paid. Can Britannia
sup****t those armed forces without the rest of the Empire to draw on?
This as I understand it is why "Emperors" of Britain tended not to
prosper.
They needed more territory in order to raise the taxes to pay their men,
so
they had to cross the Channel and expand their dominions. Then of course
they either press on to Rome (iirc only Constantine I managed this) or
they
come to a sticky end like Magnus Maximus or Constantine III. Carausius
avoided defeat but probably only because he got assassinated before it
could
happen. His successor got defeated instead.
Incidentally, the Spanish Tercios were some of the best infantry in
Europe,
and could probably take on Roman Legions with a good chance of winning. Of
course, on the naval side, 17C Europe was well ahead of anything Britannia
would have had.
The Romans would, of course,s till have had the Picts to fight, assumig
the
whole island has been ISOT'd
>
> 2) Given the shocking and extraordinary
> nature of the ISOT event, would anyone
> be seriously debating the relative
> merits of obscure Tudor relatives' claims?
> The Kingdom of England is _gone_. There's
> nothing to fight over. One might as well
> claim the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or the
> succession to the Byzantine Empire.
Claims which the Kings of Spain _would_ have raised, had there been the
remotest prospect of enfprcing them.
>
> 3) With the disappearance of England, the
> English position in Ireland collapses.
> Besides the material effect, the moral
> effect of knowing that the homeland is
> gone and will never send any further
> sup****t would be decisive.
>
> Hugh O'Neill sweeps the board, and may
> even declare himself Ard Righ. He may
> not even need Spanish help, though he
> probably gets some.
>
Agreed.
> 4) Once the crowns of Europe know what has
> happened, there will be embassies and
> missions to Britannia. But conquest will
> not be considered for a good while. If
> Britannia rejects all Christian missions
> and remains flagrantly pagan, there might
> be a Crusade of sorts. Might: there are
> much worse infidels, actual enemies of
> Christ, all over the Med and Balkans, and
> no one is "crusading" against them any more.
Unless you call Lepanto a Crusade.
I quite agree, though, that invasion is not the _only_ way to go. Rudolf
II
as "Roman Emperor" has an arguable claim to authority over Britannia, and
might delegate it to his Spanish cousin. The Spanish, for their part, have
enough gold to try and buy the loyalty of at least part of the Britannia
troops. They would go broke later, in the Thirty Years War, but that's
still
in the future. And while the languages are not identical, the average
Roman
will probably find it easier to talk to a 16C Spaniard than to, say, a
Dutchman [1]. The Romans have no obvious reason to ally with Dutch or
German
Protestants, whom they may well think of as "Barbarians".
As to religion, if you had to subscribe to some sort of Christianity in
order to be taken seriously in this world, I suspect the Romans would
accept
it before long, probably going for Catholicism, which was based in Rome
and
conducted its services in Latin, rather than Protestantism.
Interesting question is what happens to Caledonia. Does the King of
Denmark/Norway repossess the Orkneys and Shetlands, and have a shot at
converting the Picts to Lutheranism? Expect some fireworks if he tries.
[1] Of course, European "top people" of any nationality could communicate
with them in Latin, but I suspect the Spanish, with a clearly Latin-based
language, would seem more like "kindred" to them than the north Europeans.
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
Q) In the Roman Civil Wars, why did all the bachelors fight for Sulla?
A) Because they weren't the Marian kind.
|
