The Pomeranian Reductions

Timeframe: Early- to mid-1700s
Belligerents: Güntherite Pomerania vs. everybody.
Outcome: The dissolution of Pomerania as an independent state until the 1830s.

For most of the 17th century, the Baltic Sea was a Güntherite lake. The north was dominated by the sprawl that was Denmark-Sweden; the south, by sansinger Pomerania, the once unstoppable juggernaut that had toppled the Teutonic Knights and left the Holy Roman Empire moribund.

Then the Great Realignment came, and as the Russian Empire became a serious threat, the ever-struggling Polish-Ruthenian Commonwealth found itself facing a constant problem: Pomerania, for the longest time their vassal, was turning into a Russian cat's-paw. And while Pomerania was by no means the unstoppable military juggernaut of its youth, in alliance with Russia it would leave the commonwealth facing a two-fronted war.

At some point [when?], Pomerania did something tactically smart and strategically stupid: they did ally with Russia, very briefly, against Poland-Ruthenia. Krakow's worst fears had been verified.

The Pomeranian Reductions

As is typical with most wars, I'm not sure about any of the details of what goes on, except that there are three Reductions:

• The First Reduction (1715-1716), involving Poland and Brandenburg.
• The Second Reduction, (1745-8), by far the largest. (It was part of the early-1700s great war cycle.) Poland was overwhelmingly the benefactor of this, and it reduced Pomerania to a vestigial rump state.
• The Third Reduction, in which Poland basically took the rest of the rump state.

There was no Pomerania left for a Fourth Reduction to take place.

Aftermath of the Pomeranian Reductions

Nearly 200 years later, the southern Baltic littoral still bears the scars of the Reductions:

• A huge number of Pomeranians emigrated rather than enduring the national humiliation of the Reductions. (In particular, after the Second Reduction number of military leaders washed their hands and found work as mercenaries elsewhere.) For the next thirty years or so, anyone who didn't have sectarian reasons to object had a few Baltic expats on hire somewhere.
• Most of those émigrés were specifically the elite of Pomeranian society. Philosophers argue that this led to the "plebeianization" of Pomerania - when it regained its freedom during the Burning Thirties, it was in an aggressively republican form, and they've been worryingly receptive to vanguardism (most notably Prusso-Marxism) ever since.
• The Reductions also noticeably didn't reduce Livonia, which went its own way ever since. At the time of the Reductions, Pomerania and Livonia were considered to be opposite ends of a common Güntherite culture. No longer.

Strategically, the Second Reduction was the true game-changer: by the time it was done, Poland-Ruthenia had finished Güntheritism as a serious political force in Europe. (Less Scandinavia, of course, but every harbor to Lübeck was once again under Catholic control.) It was Güntheritism's single greatest loss; and with Scotland's turn from the Ryal Kirk (and the subsequent rise of modern England-Scotland), the stage looked set for Güntheritism to be expunged altogether.

• Seville under the Five Families was always a faithful friend of Güntheritism wherever it showed itself. With the collapse of Pomerania, Umayyad Seville essentially lost any influence it may have had in central Europe.
• What it did gain was a wave of settlers who were happy to repopulate the regions hit hardest by the Liturgical War. It's Hispano-Baltic Texas for a reason.
• The Most Christian Kingdom, meanwhile, was quite happy about this state of affairs, in no small part because the Sodalites were very involved with their new conquests, and a stronger Sodality meant a stronger France. (At least that was the reasoning.)