New Era, Old Gods- an EU4 Norse Sweden AAR (2024)

Hope I haven;t kept you waiting too long for this one.

Chapter 38- Damage and Control​

Charles had been well prepared when the opportunity rose. A large French royal army had already been in place in French Ruthenia to lay siege to the Varangian exclave of Vladimir, which the Turks, despite a nearby border, could not easily respond to, being forced to move westward to prevent the total collapse of Bavaria. So confidant was he of the backwardness of the Norsem*n that the task of actually invading Scandinavian Livonia was left to the Lithuanian army.

Fig. 1- initial French invasion routes.​

Armand de Luyens, the French commander assigned to actually conquer Vladimir, was less confidant, being unnerved by how far he was operating from any allied forces, and when he heard word of a large Norse counterattack massing, abandoned the siege and fled. The Norse army under Karl Gustav Ackeleye, redirected westwards and caught the Lithuanian army in a dispersed state after the fall of Reval and utterly crushed them.

Fig. 2- Troop movements for the Battle of Osel.​

However, the Lithuanians soon struck back- the army that had sailed back from Benin, dissatisfied with the failure of a substantial allied liberation of Bavaria to materialize, struck north through Lithuania, hoping to push through and join the nest of the Norse army in Livonia, only to be intercepted by another Lithuanian army and scattered across hostile lands.

Fig. 3- the Battle of Voluine, mid-18th century painting supposedly by a Lithuanian veteran, though this has been disputed​

Both sides sought to follow up on their successes. The Norse desperately sought to recruit someone- anyone- to lead a follow-up attack, often regressing to calling upon the levy forces of local nobles. The Imperial forces sought to follow up on this success by joining to the victorious Lithuanian levies a large portion of the French Royal Army and sending them north to Livonia to prevent the Norse from gaining anything by their victory.

Fig. 4 the Livonian Front, Winter 1704​

However, Ackeleye, in a desperate attempt to avoid disaster, sent out a screening force to delay the French main army long enough for him to restore and garrison the fortifications at Reval, and then retreated his own main army north of the Gulf of Finland. While Scandinavia might not have been winning every battle, none could deny that the Norse army was able to get things done, and get them done quickly.

Fig. 5- Extract from Kim’s 1743 commentary on Sun Tzu, using the Retreat from Reval as an example​

By the start of the 1705 campaign season, the war remained inconclusive, with the Ottoman army occupying Lithuanian Tartary, but unable to push into the more heavily-fortified Ruthenian lands, with the French having, after a year of hard fighting, driven the Norse from Livonia but failed to truly control it themselves.

Fig. 6- actual areas of control in Eastern Europe, spring 1705​

However, the winter had been hard, and the defenders were short on food. Several key Norse strongholds fell in quick succession, and, at the urging of the young King Knut, Ackeleye rode out again in the summer to prevent a complete collapse of the defensive lines.

Fig. 7- Runestone raised in Reval during the winter of 1704-1705, praying to Freyja to keep wendigoes from the minds of all inside the fortress​

Buoyed by the successes, the Emperor restated his goals- to push Sweden from Livonia entirely and reduce Norse Varangia to the wild lands beyond Holmgard.

Fig. 8- French initial demands​

This was, of course, unacceptable to the Norse, and as the newly-raised army had performed well so far, Karl Gustav Ackeleye sought to continue his advance with the now-ready Norse army by taking the fight to the French- specifically, their direct royal holdings on the Varangian border. Unbeknownst to him, De Luyens’ reinforcements had finaly arrived, and he was preparing there for a renewed push into Varangia. What resulted was a messy, chaotic, bloody encounter battle with disconnected forces and frontage dozens of leagues across.

A battle the French ultimately won.

Fig. 9- diagram of the Battle of the Tvertsa This is somewhat speculative, as nobody had a prefect idea of the tactical situation on the day​

The armies retreating back to Sweden had no rest, as Lubeck had fallen, and the ever-reliable fortress of Lund was again under siege. Harrying attacks failed to dislodge the French invaders.

Fig. 10- damage to the old walls of Lund​

Though the Turks had finally arrived at the Livonian front, it seemed to be too little, too late. The Norse army was practically gone. Retaking Livonia would be a hard and uncertain fight. Saving Bavaria, let alone pushing into the French home country, seemed impossible. All seemed lost.

At least, that was the view from the Royal Palace in Stockholm.

Fig. 11- troop positions in Eastern Europe, spring 1706.​

Though Karl the Wolf had filled the Stockholm Thing with his loyalists, it had on paper retained a decent amount of power. And the Royal Pack was now succumbing to old age, or had been disillusioned by the mismanagement of the Poodle. When a young, well-travelled up-and-comer named Arvid Horn suggested that he be given authority over diplomacy with France, he was able to persuade the thing to back him, and the young king Knut was not prepared to stand against him.

Horn’s plan was simple- a pure bluff. Before joining the Thing, he had been a merchant captain, and was well informed of what the French believed. Specifically, they did not know how close they were to victory. They had gone into this war believing that Seweden would be as lightly-defended as it had in previous conflicts, so the Burkenskoldian Fortifications had caught them by surprise. But more than that- bring unable to penetrate significantly into the Scandinavian heartland, the French had no real idea of what was going on in there. Better yet, it was assumed by many in France that Armand de Luyens, from his position on the front lines, would have a better idea than most of the situation. However, De Luyens had already shown himself to be overcautions, and was telling Paris that the armies he had defeated at the Tvertsa were in much better condition than they actually were- and the French general staff weren’t even sure that that armies they had fought at the Tvertsa and in Scania were one and the same! By appearing to confirm these assumptions, Horn was able to negotiate a much less onerous peace then what Charles had been calling for a year ago- instead of practically pushing Sweden back to the Baltic, there was merely an expansion of the French exclaves in Russia and Tartary, the island of Osel, and the creation of an independent Croatia.

Fig. 12- territorial changes after the treaty of Osel​

Horn had genuinely been trying to save his homeland from ruin, but it had also been a means to an end. In his travels, he had seen many things, read many books, and spoken to many people. He was fluent in many languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Yue Chinese and Korean. And he was one of the first to interpret the Balkh Club’s ideas into a western context (he may be the first person to have described himself as an ‘Illuminatus’), trading the unfamiliar Buddhist mysticism for evocations of the government-by-council spoken of in the Icelandic Sagas and the glory of the Roman Republic.