Post by Khalid ibn Walid on Apr 3, 2006 5:48:51 GMT -5
(Long explanation given in response to a question in a testers sub-forum thread. Cleaned up & reposted here for general consumption & if anyone wants to follow up/correct historical info about the marquises.)
The long story or the short? Too late.
The marquises (and BTW, these are all based on real people that existed) were old feudal magnates, hangovers from the old royal days before the creation of the independent communes.
When the newly-independent communes got organized, they immediately started flexing their muscles and imposing their will on the surrounding countyside. That means, they started bringing all the old neighboring feudal lords under their rule. The lords didn't ask to become citizens, they were forced to. The communal armies went out to their countryside manors, beat the living crap out of them, then dragged them kicking & screaming within the city walls, Almost every rural feudal lord was forced to take up town residence so the communal authorities could watch & control them better. (The Consul makes a hint of that threat if you refuse the offer to become a freeman.)
[P.S. - Of course, old habits die hard. These feudal lords were quickly bored by city life and so entertained themselves by building towers, picking feuds and fighting each other on the city streets, as if they were back on their rural estates.]
The marquises were just exceptionally powerful rural feudal lords who were strong enough to fend off the communal encroachments and this forced transplantation to the city. The communes never stopped trying, but the marquises deftly played one commune against the other and managed to maintain their independence.
Geography also helped. You will notice their castles are often in relatively-shielded, hilly areas, terrain which can be defended better against an attack by city armies. (yes, the terrain is relatively accurate and so are the castles)
During our era, the marquises just persisted in their own private Idaho -- living in their anarchic feudal way, robbing merchant caravans, and beating up on anybody who came against them, etc.
Their Guelf & Ghibelline leanings also correpond to real life, as they did play a half-role in the leagues when it suited their purposes or wanted to make friends & influence people. (The way to be left alone by an encroaching commune is to make friends with the cities enemy to it. So marquises living near a Ghibelline town would cozy up with the Guelfs & vice-versa.)
What happened to them?
Some were eventually crushed. After long defiance, Biandrate finally succumbed & was dragged into the city of Novara. Malaspina & Busca were forced to withdraw further away, giving up much of their lowlands to hide deeper in the mountains (the Malaspinas were driven all the way over to the Tuscan side of the Appenines, where they managed to carve out & hold an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny independent state, Massa-Carrara, until well into the modern era).
But a campaign by Emperor Frederick II in Italy in the 1230s changed the balance of power. As the Imperial-Papal elephants fought, the Lombard communes were shaken about. The marquises felt emboldened enough to come out of their shells and begin to push back against the communes. For a time, they managed to turn the tide and actually impose their will on the cities.
Fierce Ezzelino da Romano was the leading character of this drama. For about 20 years, he played on city factions to seize personal tyrannical control of many Lombard communes -- Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Mantua, Cremona and (almost) Milan, were, directly or indirectly, brought under his thumb. He was a ruthless ruler. He brutally laid waste to the Lombard plains and his cities piled with massacre after massacre. But it all came crashing down quickly when the cities revolted against his reign of terror. Ezzelino was finally defeated and killed by his great nemesis, the Marquis d'Este.
Da Camino, who had also made a bid during this time and briefly taken control of Treviso, was so shattered by Romano's whirlwind that what remained of his domains eventually succumbed to annexation by an awakening (& opportunistic) Venice.
But two others, the Marquis d'Estes and the Marquis of Montferrat, who had also been active during this time, lasted longer. Much longer.
The Marquis of Montferrat ( in cooperation with Pelavicini), had his moment of ascendacy by picking up the pieces after the collapse of the Romano empire. He managed to take personal control of many of the communes in western Lombardy, including grand ol' Milan itself. Pelavicini picked up the center, going all the way up to Cremona.
But those little empires too collapsed quickly enough in city revolts. Unlike Romano, however, Montferrat was not destroyed in the process but just clambered back to the relative seclusion of his hilly domains. His marquisate survived as an independent country until the 19th C., when it was swallowed by the House of Savoy.
The Pelavicini were less lucky. They eked on for a while, but were ultimately swallowed by Parma & Piacenza and resigned themselves to being city aristocrats of notable influence.
Marquises of Este, who took control of Ferrara during this time, held on and even acquried, later on, Modena. D'Este built up Modena-Ferrara into one of the most magnificent of Italian Renaissance states. Este was hugely important in the 15th & 16th C., when he was France's critical ally in Italy. Este stayed independent for as long as he could -- not a mean feat when an imperialistic Venice and a powerful Papal States were both badly wanting his domains. He eventually accepted an ambiguous vassalization to the Pope (BTW, the Marquis d'Este was the famous last husband of the Pope's scandalous daughter, Lucrezia Borgia.) But by 1598, the Pope had enough of the marquis and annexed the d'Este state altogether.
So that's who the marquises are.
[BTW, the city revolts which dislodged the marquises were led by the old city nobles factions whom you meet in the game. However brief, the rule of marquises had swept away many old city institutions with all their carefully in-built checks-and-balances, clearing the way for one noble faction or another to seize full control of the levers of power. It was this way that the Visconti, Della Scala, Carrara, etc. eventually managed to erect their own personal tyrannies in the cities.]
The player is insulting because the marquises are haughty blue-blooded sons-of-b*tches who think themselves better than everyone else. They have an implacable hatred of cities, who they feel stole their divine right to rule the country -- and they act as if they still do. The marquises treat the player like crap because they regard the player as just another feeble servant of the lowly burghers whom they despise, far, far beneath a top-of-the-cream, high-born feudal lord like them.
So the player insults them back and threatens them a bit. It's his/her way of letting the marquises now there is a new big dog in Lombardia who is not cowed by their fearsome reputations or their long pedigrees.
As you've noticed, these marquises live as robber barons -- they routinely rob caravans and so are wanted for a long list of thievery. Naturally, the merchants protest and demand reaction, but city authorities are too chicken to take the marquises on head-to-head. So they carry on with impunity.
(Marquises don't feel robbing merchants is dishonorable; they are so caught up in their sense of feudal superiority and have such disdain for city professions that they regard making a living as a merchant as just a "low" form of thievery itself. So, in their minds, the marquises don't think they are thieves but justicers, "robbing robbers", and so performing some sort of public service.)
(Incidentally, the name "Pelavicini" is, literally translated, "rob the neighbors". 'Cause that's what he did for a living.
)
If you capture a marquis, take him to a Consul. He's got a long list of charges they have to answer to, so he'll take them off your hands. And, of course, you collect the merchants' reward.
admin said:
ingolifs said:
A question about these marquises. What's their story? Why are they hostile to pretty much everything that moves? Why is the player so insulting when he talks to them? What's supposed to happen when you capture a marquis in battle? The long story or the short? Too late.
The marquises (and BTW, these are all based on real people that existed) were old feudal magnates, hangovers from the old royal days before the creation of the independent communes.
When the newly-independent communes got organized, they immediately started flexing their muscles and imposing their will on the surrounding countyside. That means, they started bringing all the old neighboring feudal lords under their rule. The lords didn't ask to become citizens, they were forced to. The communal armies went out to their countryside manors, beat the living crap out of them, then dragged them kicking & screaming within the city walls, Almost every rural feudal lord was forced to take up town residence so the communal authorities could watch & control them better. (The Consul makes a hint of that threat if you refuse the offer to become a freeman.)
[P.S. - Of course, old habits die hard. These feudal lords were quickly bored by city life and so entertained themselves by building towers, picking feuds and fighting each other on the city streets, as if they were back on their rural estates.]
The marquises were just exceptionally powerful rural feudal lords who were strong enough to fend off the communal encroachments and this forced transplantation to the city. The communes never stopped trying, but the marquises deftly played one commune against the other and managed to maintain their independence.
Geography also helped. You will notice their castles are often in relatively-shielded, hilly areas, terrain which can be defended better against an attack by city armies. (yes, the terrain is relatively accurate and so are the castles)
During our era, the marquises just persisted in their own private Idaho -- living in their anarchic feudal way, robbing merchant caravans, and beating up on anybody who came against them, etc.
Their Guelf & Ghibelline leanings also correpond to real life, as they did play a half-role in the leagues when it suited their purposes or wanted to make friends & influence people. (The way to be left alone by an encroaching commune is to make friends with the cities enemy to it. So marquises living near a Ghibelline town would cozy up with the Guelfs & vice-versa.)
What happened to them?
Some were eventually crushed. After long defiance, Biandrate finally succumbed & was dragged into the city of Novara. Malaspina & Busca were forced to withdraw further away, giving up much of their lowlands to hide deeper in the mountains (the Malaspinas were driven all the way over to the Tuscan side of the Appenines, where they managed to carve out & hold an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny independent state, Massa-Carrara, until well into the modern era).
But a campaign by Emperor Frederick II in Italy in the 1230s changed the balance of power. As the Imperial-Papal elephants fought, the Lombard communes were shaken about. The marquises felt emboldened enough to come out of their shells and begin to push back against the communes. For a time, they managed to turn the tide and actually impose their will on the cities.
Fierce Ezzelino da Romano was the leading character of this drama. For about 20 years, he played on city factions to seize personal tyrannical control of many Lombard communes -- Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Mantua, Cremona and (almost) Milan, were, directly or indirectly, brought under his thumb. He was a ruthless ruler. He brutally laid waste to the Lombard plains and his cities piled with massacre after massacre. But it all came crashing down quickly when the cities revolted against his reign of terror. Ezzelino was finally defeated and killed by his great nemesis, the Marquis d'Este.
Da Camino, who had also made a bid during this time and briefly taken control of Treviso, was so shattered by Romano's whirlwind that what remained of his domains eventually succumbed to annexation by an awakening (& opportunistic) Venice.
But two others, the Marquis d'Estes and the Marquis of Montferrat, who had also been active during this time, lasted longer. Much longer.
The Marquis of Montferrat ( in cooperation with Pelavicini), had his moment of ascendacy by picking up the pieces after the collapse of the Romano empire. He managed to take personal control of many of the communes in western Lombardy, including grand ol' Milan itself. Pelavicini picked up the center, going all the way up to Cremona.
But those little empires too collapsed quickly enough in city revolts. Unlike Romano, however, Montferrat was not destroyed in the process but just clambered back to the relative seclusion of his hilly domains. His marquisate survived as an independent country until the 19th C., when it was swallowed by the House of Savoy.
The Pelavicini were less lucky. They eked on for a while, but were ultimately swallowed by Parma & Piacenza and resigned themselves to being city aristocrats of notable influence.
Marquises of Este, who took control of Ferrara during this time, held on and even acquried, later on, Modena. D'Este built up Modena-Ferrara into one of the most magnificent of Italian Renaissance states. Este was hugely important in the 15th & 16th C., when he was France's critical ally in Italy. Este stayed independent for as long as he could -- not a mean feat when an imperialistic Venice and a powerful Papal States were both badly wanting his domains. He eventually accepted an ambiguous vassalization to the Pope (BTW, the Marquis d'Este was the famous last husband of the Pope's scandalous daughter, Lucrezia Borgia.) But by 1598, the Pope had enough of the marquis and annexed the d'Este state altogether.
So that's who the marquises are.
[BTW, the city revolts which dislodged the marquises were led by the old city nobles factions whom you meet in the game. However brief, the rule of marquises had swept away many old city institutions with all their carefully in-built checks-and-balances, clearing the way for one noble faction or another to seize full control of the levers of power. It was this way that the Visconti, Della Scala, Carrara, etc. eventually managed to erect their own personal tyrannies in the cities.]
The player is insulting because the marquises are haughty blue-blooded sons-of-b*tches who think themselves better than everyone else. They have an implacable hatred of cities, who they feel stole their divine right to rule the country -- and they act as if they still do. The marquises treat the player like crap because they regard the player as just another feeble servant of the lowly burghers whom they despise, far, far beneath a top-of-the-cream, high-born feudal lord like them.
So the player insults them back and threatens them a bit. It's his/her way of letting the marquises now there is a new big dog in Lombardia who is not cowed by their fearsome reputations or their long pedigrees.
As you've noticed, these marquises live as robber barons -- they routinely rob caravans and so are wanted for a long list of thievery. Naturally, the merchants protest and demand reaction, but city authorities are too chicken to take the marquises on head-to-head. So they carry on with impunity.
(Marquises don't feel robbing merchants is dishonorable; they are so caught up in their sense of feudal superiority and have such disdain for city professions that they regard making a living as a merchant as just a "low" form of thievery itself. So, in their minds, the marquises don't think they are thieves but justicers, "robbing robbers", and so performing some sort of public service.)
(Incidentally, the name "Pelavicini" is, literally translated, "rob the neighbors". 'Cause that's what he did for a living.
) If you capture a marquis, take him to a Consul. He's got a long list of charges they have to answer to, so he'll take them off your hands. And, of course, you collect the merchants' reward.