 |
An Online Game Engine
for playing the Machiavelli boardgame
Go Here to Play it
This is not a complete game. To play you need a copy of the boardgame Machiavelli by The Avalon Hill game Company
 |
The Campaign:
1455 The Balance of Power |
 |
Frederick III Habsburg was born in 1415. He became archduke Frederick V of Austria in 1424. He acceded as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1440 and was married to Eleanore of Portugal. Frederick's father was Ernest the Iron (Ernst der Eiserne),born 1406 and his wife Cymburga of Masovia. Frederick III had a son named Maximilian. For the last ten years of Frederick's life he and his son co-ruled as emperors. Frederick died 1493. |
 |
 |
Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) was the founder of the Medici dynasty, effective rulers of Florence. Cosimo inherited both his wealth and his flair for business from his father Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, a banker. In 1433 Cosimo was exiled from Florence by Rinaldo degli Albizzi, but his fortunes soon changed, and he returned in 1434. On his death in 1464, Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero, father of Lorenzo the Magnificant. Cosimo was also noted for his patronage of culture and the arts. |
 |
 |
Charles VII (February 22, 1403 - July 22, 1461) was king of France from 1422 to 1461, a member of the Valois Dynasty. Born in Paris, Charles was the eldest surviving son of Charles VI of France and Isabeau de Bavière. On the death of his father in 1422, the French throne did not pass to Charles but to his infant nephew, King Henry VI of England in accordance with his father's Treaty of Troyes signed in 1420. The English right to the throne of France was part of the Treaty in an effort to put an end to the war that had been raging for decades. Under the Treaty, King Henry of England ruled Northern France through a regent in Normandy and southern France by the Dauphin Charles from his fortified castle at Chinon. Without any organized French army, the English strengthened their grip over France until March 8, 1429 when Joan of Arc, claiming divine inspiration, urged Charles to declare himself king and raise an army to liberate France from the English. One of the important factors that aided in the ultimate success of Charles VII was the support from the powerful and wealthy family of his wife Marie d'Anjou (1404-1463). Despite whatever affection he had for his wife, the great love of Charles VII's life, was his mistress, Agnès Sorel. After the French won the Battle of Patay, Charles was crowned king Charles VII of France on July 17, 1429, in Reims Cathedral. Following this, king Charles VII recaptured Paris from the English and eventually all of France with the exception of the northern port of Calais. While Charles VII's legacy is far overshadowed by the deeds and eventual martyrdom of Joan of Arc, he did something his predecessors had failed to do by creating a strong army and uniting most of the country under one French king. He established the University of Poitiers in 1432 and his policies brought some economic prosperity to the citizens. Although his leadership was sometimes marked by indecisiveness, hardly any other leader left a nation so much better improved than when he came on the scene. King Charles VII died on July 22, 1461 at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, but his latter years were marked by an open revolt by his son who succeeded him as Louis XI. |
 |
 |
Son of Muzio Sforza, Francesco Sforza (1401 - 1466) founded the Sforza dynasty in Milan. Originally a mercenary leader of low birth he was most famous for being able to bend metal bars with his bare hands. He later proved himself to be an expert tactician and very skilled field commander. He saved the Visconti rulers of Milan from ruin on a number of occasions. As a reward, the then duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti allowed Francesco to marry his daughter Bianca but after the duke died without a male heir, fighting broke out. During this time, Franscesco turned against the Visconti, and seized control of Milan and its possessions. Under his rule (which was moderate and skillful), Francesco modernized the city of Milan. His court became a center of Renaissance learning and culture, and the people of Milan loved him. During Sforza's reign over Milan, Florence was under the command of Cosimo de Medici and the two enlightened rulers became close friends. This friendship eventually manifested in the Peace of Lodi, an alliance between Florence and Milan that succeeded in stabilising almost all of Italy for its duration. Regretably Francesco's successors were not nearly as competent, a number of them being dangerously unbalanced individuals. |
 |
 |
Alfonso V of Aragon (a.k.a. Alfonso I of Naples), surnamed the Magnanimous, was the king of Aragon and Naples and count of Barcelona from 1416 to 1458. Born 1396 and died June 27 1458, he was a son of Ferdinand I of Aragon (a.k.a. Ferdinand of Antequera). He represented the old line of the counts of Barcelona only through women, and was on his father's side descended from the House of Trastamara, a noble family of Castile, is one of the most conspicuous figures of the early Renaissance. No man of his time had a larger share of the quality called by the Italians of the day "virtue." By hereditary right he was king of Sicily. Disputed the island of Sardinia with Genoa, and conquered the kingdom of Naples. He fought and triumphed amid the exuberant development of individuality which accompanied the revival of learning and the birth of the modern world. When he was a prisoner in the hands of Filipo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, in 1435, Alfonso persuaded his ferocious and crafty captor to let him go by making it plain that it was the interest of Milan not to prevent the victory of the Aragonese party in Naples. Like a true prince of the Renaissance he favoured men of letters whom he trusted to preserve his reputation to posterity. His devotion to the classics was exceptional even in that time. For example, Alfonso halted his army in pious respect before the birthplace of a Latin writer, carried Livy or Caesar on his campaigns with him, and his panegyrist Panormita did not think it an incredible lie to say that the king was cured of an illness by having a few pages of Quintus Curtius read to him. The classics had not refined his taste, for he was amused by setting the wandering scholars, who swarmed to his court, to abuse one another in the indescribably filthy Latin scolding matches which were then the fashion. Alfonso founded nothing, and after his conquest of Naples in 1442 ruled by his mercenary soldiers, and no less mercenary men of letters. His Spanish possessions were ruled for him by his brother John. He left his conquest of Naples to his bastard son Ferdinand; his inherited lands, Sicily and Sardinia, going to his brother John who survived him. |
 |
 |
Callixtus III (born 1378 as Alphonso de Borgia in Jativa, Valencia, Spain and died 1458) was pope from April 8, 1455 to August 6, 1458. His early career was spent as a professor of law at Lerida and then as a diplomat in the service of the kings of Aragon, especially during the Council of Basel. He became a cardinal after reconciling Pope Eugenius IV with King Alfonso V of Aragon. He was raised to the papal chair in 1455 at a very advanced age as a compromise candidate. He was feeble and incompetent. The great object of his policy was the urging of a crusade against the Turks, who had captured Constantinople in 1453, but he did not find the Christian princes responsive to his call despite his every effort. He made two of his nephews cardinals, one of whom, Rodrigo Borgia, later became Pope Alexander VI. He ordered a new trial for Joan of Arc, at which she was posthumously vindicated. He died in 1458. |
 |
 |
Mehmed II (1432-1481), nicknamed the Conqueror, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire a short time in 1444 to 1446, and from 1451 to 1481. Mehmed II brought an end to the Byzantine Empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453 (during the well-known Siege of Constantinople), and other Byzantine cities left in Anatolia and the Balkans. The invasion of Constantinople and successful campaigns against small kingdoms in the Balkans and Turkic territories in Anatolia bestowed immense glory and prestige on the country and the Ottoman State started to be recognized as an empire for the first time. As can be guessed from his successful campaign against Otranto in southern Italy and his adopting the title Roman Caesar, he was presumably trying to vitalize the Eastern Roman Empire. For a probably similar reason, he gathered Italian humanists and Greek scholars at his court, kept the Byzantine Church functioning, ordered the patriarch to translate the Christian faith into Turkish and called Gentile Bellini from Venice to paint his portrait. He is also recognized as the first sultan to codify criminal and constitutional law long before Suleiman the Magnificent (also "the Lawmaker") and he thus established the classical image of the autocratic Ottoman sultan (padishah). After the fall of Constantinople, he founded many universities and colleges in the city, some of which are still active. |
 |
 |
Francesco Foscari was doge of Venice at the height of the Italian Renaissance. Foscari was elected to lead Venice in a long and protracted series of wars against Milan, governed by the Visconti, who were attempting to dominate all of Italy. Despite notable victories, the war was extremly costly to Venice and to her ally Florence, and they were eventually overcome by the forces of Milan under the leadership of Francesco Sforza. Sforza soon made peace with Florence, however, leaving Venice adrift. |
 |
Machiavelli online engine ©2003 Rodney Emms http://www.cyberdance.com.au/wargames
References to the boardgame Machiavelli (©1980 Avalon Hill Game Co.) are used without permission.
