Part 29: Crusader Kings: Chapter 29 - The Great Mortality: 1361 - 1390
1361 - 1390: The Great Mortality
The Bubonic Plague is spreading across Germany. Tax income slows to a trickle, desperate people flee from afflicted family members, bodies go unburied, the nobility shut themselves in their castles, and priests speak of the Judgement of God and the End Times, but above all... death marches on.
Francisco refuses to shut himself away, continuing his duties, giving out alms from his coffers, and leading prayers for forgiveness and salvation. His devotion is rewarded with death, as first his advisors are taken, then his daughter, then one of his sisters, and finally, he himself falls ill.
Knowing that the end is near, his final act is to appoint his surviving sister regent of Swabia, to rule it until his son Waldemar reaches majority. A few days later, he is dead.
Amanieu Tittoni of Sardinia is elected King of Germany. Having only recently entered the Holy Roman Empire, Sardinia has already been given Electoral diginity on account of its vast estates in North Italy.
Duchess Berenguela barely even has time to arrive in Wurttemberg before she, too, is infected. She dies after a weeklong struggle against the plague, leaving Swabia without any adult Hohenzollerns left alive.
Waldemar is forced to assume the rule in June of 1366, at the age of twelve. There is not even enough courtiers alive to fill all important positions, but on the other hand, there is little to oversee in Swabia other than funerals and prayers.
Seeing his entire family and all his friends wiped out by a seemingly arbitrary act of a vengeful deity has left him deeply bitter towards God, and in particular, the Papacy, whose promises of averting the plague have all been as empty as the halls of Castle Wurttemberg.
In 1368, the worst finally seems to be over, as fewer and fewer new cases are occuring. By now however, Swabia, indeed all of Germany, is a wasteland of abandoned fields and devastated cities full of the dead.
It seems that God's Wrath knows no boundaries: Just as the survivors are beginning to pick up the pieces, a new, and even deadlier form of the plague arrives in 1370, killing many of those who survived the first onslaught, including Waldemar's bastard brother Ramon, the only other Hohenzollern to survive the first plague.
An early victim of the Pneumonic plague is King Amanieu, and for lack of any other candidates willing to travel to the plague-ridden city of Mainz, the fifteen-year old Waldemar is elected King of Germany in 1369.
Religious frenzy is following in the wake of the plague, as everyone seeks someone to blame, be it the Jews, the Pope, or more creatively, the Chancellor of Germany. Waldemar does not even bother reading the charges his diocese bishop has levelled, dressing him down in front of the entire court instead. Outraged, Bishop Wilhem takes leave of the court.
Waldemar makes no secret of his disdain for the priesthood, but even with Germany's army reduced to a tenth of its normal size, he is still too powerful for the Pope to do more than send scolding letters.
Waldemar reaches majority in 1370. Honest, stubborn and skeptical, he has acquired a vengeful and sometimes petty streak from his conflicts with the clergy.
His wife is Irmgard von Andechs, a distant cousin of the Duke of Saxony.
The Pneumonic Plague finally begins to abate in 1379. All over the world, rulers and subjects alike are too shocked and diminished to do much of anything other than try to rebuild their shattered lands, and for once and the world remains at peace for a full decade. Even Germany is unusually quiet.
In 1390, perhaps hoping to heal the rift between himself and the skeptical Waldemar, the newly elected Pope Boniface IX offers to crown Waldemar Emperor - a decision he would come to greatly regret.
