"Mike stone" <mwstone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>"Rich Rostrom" <rrostrom.21stcentury@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>>
>> 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?
Why not? Britannia paid tribute to Rome, AIUI.
The Britannic government has long-term problems,
but it won't dissolve overnight.
>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.
Well, yeah, a national army of 1600 could defeat
a legion. But not a few hundred refugees from an
expat army, as was suggested. Britannia would
not be a pushover.
>> 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.
More of a defensive action. Turkey
was a threat - Britannia is not.
>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.
Governor Quietus will not take it seriously,
once he realizes that it is over a thousand
years later, and that there was a small gap
of 300 years between the Roman Empire and the
German "Empire".
Neither will anyone else in Europe.
>The Spanish, for their part, have enough gold to try
>and buy the loyalty of at least part of the Britannia
>troops.
They could have tried that other places, but never
did AFAIK. They don't have any intro to Britannia.
>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].
Slightly. Speakers of degenerate Latin,
or speakers of a barbaric tongue who
also speak good Latin? Not much to choose.
>The Romans have no obvious reason to ally with Dutch or German
>Protestants, whom they may well think of as "Barbarians".
Given 16th standards of bathing, they're
_all_ 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.
Nominally, perhaps. It could depend on
which side tries to dictate to them -
which I would expect the Catholics to
do first. Protestants had no difficulty
allying with non-Christians in east Asia...
>Interesting question is what happens to Caledonia. Does the King of
>Denmark/Norway repossess the Orkneys and Shetlands...
Probably.
>and have a shot at
>converting the Picts to Lutheranism? Expect some fireworks if he tries.
The area becomes a sort of terra nullius.
Nobody really wants it in 1600.
--
| People say "There's a Stradivarius for sale for a |
| million," and you say "Oh, really? What's wrong |
| with it?" - Yitzhak Perlman |
|
