well, in the end things didn't turn out that well. I disbanded the peseant army (I couldnt afford the upkeep anyway), split general off of stacks, disbanded any general unit with a loyalty below 4, made sure my king was in a nice central location with easy access to most of the empire, threw titles around and in the end all I managed to do was delay the civil war by a turn or two.

The war itself was not particularly bad, it cost me 7 of 29 proviences and 7k of my 20k men. It took me a turn to retake the important provinces (3-4) and squash all of the rebels still in my territory. However, the very next turn.....civil war...Thats when I called it a night.

What annoyed me was that none of the generals that rebelled (either time including 2 Princes) had a low loyalty.