The Revival of Rhomaion: An Age of Miracles

Link to discussion thread: An Age of Miracles


The Revival of Rhomaion


Part 1: 1204-1403


An Age of Miracles


“Blessed are we above all men, for we live in an age of miracles,”-John XII Cosmas, Patriarch of Constantinople, August 29, 1300.

1204: Constantinople, the richest and most populous city in Christendom, as well as the capital of the Roman Empire, falls to the forces of the Fourth Crusade. The city is brutally sacked and many of its inhabitants raped and slaughtered by the soldiers of Christ. From the ashes the Latin Empire is formed, although three Greek states arise from the territories unconquered by the Crusaders. They are Trebizond, Epirus, and Nicaea.

1221: Theodoros II Laskaris is born, son of John III Vatatzes, and is a healthy infant, not inheriting the epilepsy of his father. (Point of divergence)

1243: The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of the Mongols at Kose Dag. The Sultanate is forced to pay a substantial tribute. However the main loss is not money, but the power and prestige of the sultan. With the destruction of most of his army, his authority over his outlying territories begin to dwindle, with thoughts of independence arising amidst the emirs.

1254: Theodoros II Laskaris becomes Emperor of Nicaea after the death of his father. By this time the Latin Empire is reduced to just Constantinople and the surrounding territories, although its vassals control the Peloponnesus and Attica. Venice controls Crete and most of the Aegean islands.

1254-1260: A Bulgarian invasion of Nicene Europe is defeated while a marriage alliance is contracted with Epirus. Nicaea is the most powerful state in the southern Balkans, but does not advance on Constantinople which is well guarded by the Venetian fleet.

Instead Theodoros and his trusted advisor, George Muzalon, work through a series of major reforms, many of which were started by his father. The main goal is the creation of a native Greek army backed by foreign mercenaries, rather than mercenaries forming the bulk of the army. Many soldiers are given lands, who pay for them by serving in the Nicene army. The majority are Greek but there are also many Cuman immigrants from Europe, who are settled on the eastern frontier.

Further aiding this development is the crippling of the Seljuk Sultanate by the Mongols. Not only was Seljuk military might significantly reduced, but also the Seljuks are forced to purchase many of their goods in Nicene territory, providing substantial revenue for the imperial coffers. The money is used to improve the pay and equipment of the army and also to raise the salaries of officials to reduce corruption. To increase loyalty to himself, Theodoros and George appoint low born officials who owe everything to the emperor.

1261: Angered by Theodoros’ policies, many of the Nicene nobles rise up in revolt. Their leader is Michael Palaeologus, a skilled general who had been under suspicion for some time. An attempted assassination of Theodoros fails, so the nobles raise an army. It is composed mainly of the nobles’ retainers and the Latin mercenaries, who are angered by Theodoros’ pro-Greek policies. The new soldiers created by Theodoros, both Greek and Cuman, overwhelmingly side with him.

On May 10, the two armies meet outside Cyzicus. The Latin mercenaries charge the Imperial lines despite Michael’s efforts to restrain them. However they charge over broken ground which breaks up the charge. The Cumans dart around the flanks, pouring waves of arrows into them, while the Imperial Greek infantry and cavalry smash into their front. For a short while they fight bravely but soon break under the ferocious assault of the Greeks. Theodoros’ army improvements show in the way his Greek forces are able to best a Latin army in pitched battle, contrary to the experiences of the Fourth Crusade.

Viewing the destruction of the Latins, the remaining rebel forces begin to flee. The Cuman attacks soon turn the retreat into the rout. Michael is killed attempting to rally his forces, his head delivered to Theodoros by a Cuman soldier. The soldier is rewarded with an equal weight in gold. With much of its leadership dead, the rebellion collapses. Theodoros confiscates the dead nobles’ land, using it to help pay for heavily armored cavalry, equal to western knights, called kataphraktoi. The nobles that survived are stripped of most their land, some of which Theodoros keeps and the rest is used to further expand the army.

As Theodoros cleans up the rebellion, the Seljuks chose this opportunity to invade the Empire. Theodoros’ army swings south, annihilating a Seljuk army near Philadelphia. Another Seljuk force retreats after raiding Bithynia, suffering heavy losses from the local troops. Smaller Seljuk bands do succeed in ravaging the Meander river valley for some time, before Theodoros annihilates a few of them in a pitched battle in August.

1262-1265: Theodoros is outraged by the Seljuk attempt to profit from the noble rebellion. All thoughts on taking Constantinople are forgotten as Nicaea prepares to punish the Turks. The year of 1262 is spent in defensive actions as Seljuk forces attempt to penetrate the frontier. Some succeed to perform minor pillaging, but Turkish losses are high. Meanwhile along the coast the Nicene fleet is expanded to include 120 vessels.

In 1263 the counterattack begins. The Nicene fleet divides in two, one force moving along the coast of northern Anatolia, the other along the southern coast. Theodoros himself moves up the Sangarius River, defeating a Turkish army near Dorylaeum. By the end of the year Sinope, Amorium, and Attaleia have all fallen to the Greeks.

The next year sees Turkish resistance intensify, mainly in the interior. Paphlagonia is almost entirely cleared of Turks by winter, while the southern Anatolian coast is taken as far east as the mouth of the Lamis. Theodoros attempts to march on Iconium, and although he wins two battles with the Turks, his heavy casualties force him to delay his plans. At the same time the Constantinople Latins attempt to raid Nicene Thrace but are ambushed by the local Cumans and largely wiped out.

On April 27 Theodoros crushes an army led by the Sultan himself, allowing him to invest Iconium, which falls three weeks later. During the siege Trebizond attempts to take Sinope by surprise but fails. A week after the fall of Iconium the Empire and the Sultanate make peace. The new border goes from the mouth of the Lamis river northwest to the Lake of 40 Martyrs, then north to the beginning of the Sangarius. It then follows the Sangarius until the point where it is closest to the Halys. The border then goes east to the Halys, where it follows the river to the Black Sea. Ancyra is just south of the line between the Sangarius and Halys and remains Turkish. Nicene territory in Anatolia is almost doubled.

1266: A combined land-sea force attacks the Empire of Trebizond. The city itself falls in July and the entire state is annexed by Nicaea. The Emperor of Trebizond is somewhat compensated by a new estate near Nicaea. In Italy Charles of Anjou attempts to invade the Kingdom of Sicily, ruled by Manfred Hohenstaufen. Charles is defeated at the Battle of Benevento and forced to retreat from Italy. However it is well known that he will try again.

1267-1268: In France Charles of Anjou licks his wounds and rebuilds his army. Theodoros works to repopulate Anatolia, settling Cumans and Greeks on the frontier. Many Turkish tribesmen, impressed by Nicene victories, convert to Christianity and join the Nicene army. Theodoros settles them in Europe, where it is doubtful they will be forced to fight other Turks. He also continues to enlarge the navy, in preparation for an assault on Constantinople. To help guard against Venice, he asks Epirus to hand over Dyrrachium. They do so grudgingly.

1269: Epirus, Thessaly, Athens, and Achaia, the remaining states in Greece, form an alliance to combat Nicaea. Combined they can assemble a powerful army with a large corps of Latin heavy cavalry, but mistrust and rivalries between the allies hamper cooperation. At Pelagonia the allied army is shattered, partly through the defection of the Thessalian army and the premature withdrawal of the Epirote one.

After the battle, Thessaly becomes a Nicene vassal. Epirus is completely overrun, the Despot killed in battle in September. Nicene attempts to invade Attica are hampered by the Venetians of Negroponte, which lead to several inconclusive clashes with the Nicene fleet. At the same time Charles invades Italy again, only to be defeated again at the Battle of Capua. He is forced to flee back to France a second time.

1270-1271: A truce is signed between the various Balkan states. The Nicene border now is at the Sperchius river. Theodoros focuses his attention on Anatolia, where minor Turkish raids have resumed along the frontier.

1272: A Nicene army skirts the edges of Constantinople in an attempt to frighten the Latins, only to learn that the garrison and Venetian fleet is away attacking the Nicene island of Daphnusia. The army sneaks into the city and captures it with almost no bloodshed. When the Venetian fleet returns, the sailors see their homes in flames and their families huddled along the shore. They load their families and flee to Negroponte, many of the refugees dying from lack of provisions along the way.

Charles of Anjou invades Italy for the third time and is victorious at the Battle of Naples. Manfred’s mainland dominions are quickly captured although Manfred himself retreats to Sicily to rebuild his strength.

1273-1274: Theodoros, styling himself as the new Constantine, works to rebuild dilapidated Constantinople. He also is crowned as Emperor again, but this time as Emperor of the Romans. Turkish raids continue in Anatolia, but are fiercely contested by the Roman army. War also continues with Venice in a series of naval actions. The Genoese Licario, in Roman employ, overruns many of the smaller Aegean islands.

1275-1276: In early 1275 the Empire launches a massive invasion of Latin Greece. The massively outnumbered Latins are swept aside and by the end of the year, only Venetian Modon and Coron remain out of Roman hands. Licario succeeds in taking Negroponte the next year, and Naxos shortly after that. In Italy, Manfred is killed in an attempt to recapture Taranto. Charles of Anjou is now King of Sicily and his appetite for further conquest leads him to look east.

1277-1282: A mass uprising in Crete against the Venetians allows the Empire to conquer the island. However Modon and Coron, well supplied by the Venetian fleet, continue to hold out. Venice offers an alliance to Charles to assist in his planned attack on Constantinople. However he is distracted by the invasion of Conradin Hohenstaufen. Conradin is defeated at Tagliacozza but retreats back to Germany.

Hungary invades Dalmatia in 1278, forcing Venice to fight on two fronts against Hungary and Byzantium. With ships devoted to the Dalmatian theater, the ability of the Venetian fleet to continue provisioning Modon and Coron is in doubt. Reluctantly Venice offers peace terms, although a treaty is not signed until March 1279. Venice is allowed to maintain control of Modon and Coron, as well as the Aegean islands of Kythera, Patmos, and Syra. All other Venetian territories in the Aegean basin are signed over to Constantinople. Venice is allowed to regain its old quarter in Constantinople, but all Venetian merchants are required to pay a five percent import/export duty. While still half of the normal fee paid by others, the Venetians have gotten used to paying none. They are also barred from the Black Sea.

Sporadic skirmishes continues on the Anatolian frontier. The military debacles of the thirteenth centuries from both the hands of the Greeks and Mongols mean that the Seljuk sultan has increasingly little control of his subjects. Annoyed by these raids, Theodoros takes Ancyra in May 1279 and installs a garrison. Cumans are dispatched into Seljuk territory in a series of counterraids.

However in October his attention is wrenched to Europe. On October 2, 1279, Charles of Anjou annihilates Conradin’s army at the Second Battle of Benevento. Conradin is killed rallying his troops, ending the Hohenstaufen dynasty (he had two children, a boy and a girl, but they both died before they were six months old). Charles of Anjou is now supreme in Italy. His court also harbors many refugees from the Latin states now overrun by Byzantium.

Charles makes careful arrangements for his invasion of the Empire. Pisa is forced into an alliance with Charles and Venice joins with the promise of regaining all its lost territories and trading privileges. Charles also is able to induce Hungary to end its failed invasion of Dalmatia. When news of the alliance reaches Constantinople the few inhabitants of the Venetian quarter are arrested and their property confiscated. Modon and Coron are again placed under siege, but remained supplied by the Venetian fleet.

He turns to Genoa for support. Genoa is offered Venice’s old quarter and Genoese merchants will only have to pay a token two percent import/export duty. The Byzantine emperor will also encourage the Tatar khan to allow the Genoese to establish a colony in Kaffa. Furthermore in exchange for Genoese naval support in the attacks on Modon and Coron, the two cities will be handed over to Genoa, although the Commune will have to pay an annual rent of 16,000 hyperpyra. Genoa accepts and the combined Byzantine-Genoese fleets are able to starve the two cities out in the summer of 1280. At the same time the Venetian Aegean islands fall to Licario.

The next year sees sporadic naval actions in the Adriatic sea. Venice’s fleet mainly focuses on keeping the enemy out of the Adriatic while Charles is reluctant to commit his own vessels until his grand fleet is complete. Thus Greek ships are sometimes able to raid the shores of Italy itself. In September 1281 a squadron of Roman warships raiding Apulia is approached by citizens of Bari, which is still inhabited by large numbers of Greeks. They offer to hand the city over to Theodoros. The squadron commander Thomas Komnenos, who conquered Corfu eight months earlier, accepts, quickly garrisoning the city without bloodshed. He then rushes over to Epirus, stripping many of the garrisons to bolster the force at Bari.

Charles is outraged at this and places Bari under a land blockade. He demands more exactions from Sicily, increasing dissent there, in his urge to get his fleet ready. His relations with Venice are also souring, as Venice is impatient to see some gains from the war in which it has lost what little it had been able to keep in the treaty of 1279.

On March 30, a French soldier is killed for molesting a Sicilian woman in Palermo just after Vespers. The incident sparks a mass revolt called the Sicilian Vespers. Nearly all of Charles’ armada is burned at Messina three days later. The king of Aragon Peter I, who has claims on the island through his Hohenstaufen wife, is invited to take control in May. Charles flies into a rage, going to Bari to order an immediate assault. It almost succeeds, but is thrown back with massive casualties. Charles offers peace in exchange for getting back Bari and Corfu. Theodoros demands Bari and Corfu in return for peace, although he offers a payment of 90,000 hyperpyra. With Aragonese squadrons raiding Italy, Charles is forced to accept.

For the first time in two hundred years, Byzantium has a foothold in Italy. But Theodoros does not get to enjoy his triumph for long. On November 19, 1282, he dies at the age of sixty one. He is buried with full honors and eventually revered as a saint. He is succeeded by his son John IV Laskaris, who is thirty three years old.

1283-1285: Europe is fully embroiled in the War of the Sicilian Vespers. John spends the first two years of his reign putting down a revolt in Epirus, then invading Serbia after it attempts to support the rebels. After the sacking of some border fortresses, peace is restored on a return to the status quo. Venice breaks with Charles of Anjou, requesting peace with Byzantium. John is in no mood to be generous. Venice must accept all its territorial losses, including its old quarter. They are given a new quarter, half the size of the new Genoese one. Venetian merchants must also pay a six percent import/export duty, triple of what the Genoese must pay. The only thing Venice gains is permission to trade in the Black Sea. John feels that the commercial competition between the two cities will help keep them honest.

1286-1290: The War of the Sicilian Vespers continues, although Charles of Anjou dies in 1286. Despite being faced by France, the Papacy, and Naples, Aragon-Sicily is winning, mainly through its extremely formidable navy. Also Aragon-Sicily receives a small subsidy from Byzantium, although talks of a marriage alliance between Constantinople and Barcelona eventually fall through.

Instead John has his eldest son Manuel marry a Georgian princess. With the Latins busy killing each other, he desires to finish the great task left uncompleted by his father, the retaking of Anatolia. However for now he continues the hellenization of Anatolia, as well as improving the empire’s economics. In 1287 he begins minting a new hyperpyron with 20.5 karats of gold, more than it had held for over a century. This does annoy Genoa as it now has to pay its rent for Coron-Modon in the more expensive coins, although the Genoese are somewhat mollified when the Byzantines convince the Tartars to allow the Genoese to open a second colony at Tana in the Sea of Azov.

John also works to reduce corruption and improve the efficiency of the imperial estates. In a gesture mirroring that of his grandfather, his wedding gift to his Georgian daughter-in-law is a coronet purchased with the profits from his poultry farms. Economic recovery is aided by the fact that Trebizond is becoming a major terminus for the central Asian trade routes as the Mamelukes tighten the noose on Acre.

However his good mood at his successes is diluted as Turkish tribesmen, increasingly less controlled by the Seljuk sultan, continually raid the frontier. Honors are evenly matched although in 1289 a small force raids the suburbs of Chonae.

1291-1295: In 1291, the city of Acre falls to the Mamelukes. All that remains of the once mighty Crusader States are the Kingdom of Cyprus and the Principality of Antioch; the latter is essentially a city-state. They survive mainly because the Mamelukes fear any attack on those states will draw in the Roman Empire and/or the Il-Khanate.

In 1292, Oljeitu, Khan of the Il-Khanate, is assassinated. The Mongol state soon begins to break up under a series of weak and short lived khans as local rulers attempt to assert their independence. The same year Teutonic Knights raiding Lithuania massacre four thousand Russian orthodox subjects of Lithuania.

Two years later delegates from Cilicia arrive in Constantinople. Afraid that the Mamelukes might march north as the Il-Khanate increasingly becomes less of a threat, the Armenians are desperate for a protector. Originally they looked to the Papacy and Catholic Europe, but the Massacre of the Faithful (what the 1292 Lithuanian slaughter is termed) changed their minds. As a result, their only other option is Byzantium. They offer to submit to Roman authority, in exchange for Constantinople acknowledging all their local rights and protecting them against the Mamelukes. John accepts.

A Turkish raiding party in 1295 is joined by Christian Turks who defect to join their ethnic brethren. Together they raid the Meander river valley but are eventually annihilated near Ephesus. There are a handful of other Turkish raids that year as well, but none penetrate very far as Roman army units flood the frontier.

1296-1300: Since the Armenian delegation arrived, there was a massive buildup along the Anatolian frontier. In 1296 the attack commences led by John himself, imitating his father. The Seljuk sultanate has been imitating the Il-Khanate, local emirs asserting their independence of Konya. As a result Roman forces face no united Turkish resistance but a multitude of minor Turkish statelets, most of which are more concerned with fighting each other than combating the Romans. Iconium (Konya) falls late in 1296.

Slowly but steadily the Romans advance across Anatolia, facing constant but poorly organized Turkish resistance. In 1298 Roman forces begin facing more serious opposition as several of the displaced Turkish tribes begin answering to a new leader named Osman. The campaign turns into a bloody stalemate, both sides suffering heavy casualties. After a year and a half, Osman decides that prospects in the collapsing Il-Khanate are better. Many medieval historians often wonder what would’ve happened if he had decided to remain in Anatolia instead.

Without Osman’s support, the remaining Turks are gradually pushed back, many of them choosing to join Osman in Mesopotamia. In April 1300 Theodosiopolis falls; two months later a Turkish force is practically annihilated at Manzikert. John stages a massive triumph in Constantinople, giving pride of place to the Georgian soldiers loaned to him by his son’s father-in-law. Historians explain the Laskarid success as compared to the Komnenid failure to retake Anatolia with three reasons, the lack of a western menace (the War of the Sicilian Vespers is still ongoing), the significant decrease in Seljuk capabilities after the Mongol invasion, and the conditions in the Il-Khanate which convince Osman to abandon Anatolia in favor of Mesopotamia.

The image is somewhat spoiled by the fact that a month later, Turkish rebellions break out in Cappadocia and Coloneia. Also several of the European border districts had been ravaged by the Serbians and Bulgarians while most of the army was in Anatolia. Since he had already begun dipping into his personal fortune to help pay the troops, John is forced to be content with a show of force along the European border without actually punishing either of the Slavic states.

1301-1305: The War of the Sicilian Vespers comes to an end in 1302. The Angevins retain control of southern Italy but Aragon and Sicily are united under Frederick II, third son of Peter I.

In Mesopotamia, the current Khan of the Il-Khanate attempts to use Osman and his army of refugee Turks to put down a major rebellion centered in southern Mesopotamia. However Osman kills the rebel leader at a parley in 1303, co-opts the rebellion and proclaims the birth of a Turkish sultanate to replace the one lost in Anatolia. In 1305 he takes Baghdad and establishes it as his capital; this is considered by most historians to be the official birth of the Ottoman Empire.

Also in 1305 a Roman army debouches from the Cilician Gates and marches into Syria. In the previous year it had broken the two Turkish rebellions of 1300. Greek settlers are brought in, attracted by tax exemptions, as well as a sizeable number of Vlachs. While this does settle Anatolia down some, the treasury suffers.

Mameluke detachments shadow the force but do not engage as it quickly becomes clear its target is Antioch. Manuel II Laskaris is in command. Antioch refuses to surrender and is besieged. After twelve days the gates are opened by local Orthodox citizens, causing the city to fall. There is some looting before Manuel can restrain his troops, but overall little damage is done to Antioch or its inhabitants. Religious toleration is promised to all Antiochenes, although an Orthodox patriarch is installed.

The pope is outraged and has the clergy proclaim a Crusade against Constantinople. The response is apathetic; all the major states of Europe have other concerns and without their support, it is obvious any crusade would fail miserably. All this episode does is confirm the Romans in their hatred of Catholicism and that the Fourth Crusade was not a fluke.

However in order to help forestall any threat, Manuel makes a special arrangement with Philip, King of Naples. Bari is becoming a major port where eastern goods enter Italy. In order to prevent the Angevins from attacking it, Manuel passes laws whereby Neapolitan citizens have to pay only a three percent value tax on luxury goods purchased in Bari. This ensures that Neapolitan merchants and nobles won’t support an attack on Bari, since direct Angevin control would likely raise the price. Also a Neapolitan tax collector is installed in Bari, to make it easier for Philip to levy duties on any goods passing from Naples to Bari and vice versa. The arrangement secures Philip much income, with little of the expense of defending or maintaining Bari.

During this period (and later) John faces a number of noble uprisings. He has inherited his father’s distaste of the aristocracy and usually appoints commoners to administrative and military commands. Also the conquered lands of Anatolia are divvied out to small landowners in an effort to revitalize the class. While the central Anatolian plateau is more favorable to pastoralism, he imposes limits on the amount of property any one individual or family can hold in a single theme. Obviously all this annoys the aristocracy but also hampers their ability to strike back. The fact that the Nobles’ Rebellion of 1261 resulted in the crippling or destruction of several of the major noble families only make things more difficult for the aristocracy.

1306-1310: The Il-Khanate is shattered. The main victors are the Ottomans, which rule a state stretching from Lake Van to Basra, and the Jalayirids, who rule most of the Iranian plateau with their capital at Fars.

Increasing trade rivalries in the Black Sea market cause war to break out between Venice and Genoa. John decides to remain neutral, but he has to use the Imperial fleet several times to enforce peace in Imperial waters. Fifteen ships are sunk in a squall after one such demonstration. However he does tell the Venetians that if they take Coron or Modon, he expects to start receiving rent payments.

With the Imperial fleet active, John decides to use it and seizes Cyprus in 1309. The papacy is distracted by the Templar trial and does not respond.

1311-1313: Tensions increase between Byzantium and Genoa when a Genoese squadron attacks several Venetian vessels in the harbor at Smyrna. The fighting gets out of hand and several dozen Greeks are killed and four Roman vessels burned. John demands reparations to be paid to both the Venetians and Greeks who suffered in the attack, but Genoa refuses. Three days before the Imperial demand reaches Genoa, the commune received news of a great victory at Ragusa; fifty one Venetian ships sunk or captured. With Venice itself under blockade, Genoa is in no mood to listen to Roman demands.

John’s response is fairly mild. He triples the Genoese duties to match the fees the Venetians pay, but only arrests those Genoese merchants who refuse to pay. Neither Modon or Coron is attacked, although he does send a messenger to Sarai to encourage the Khan of the Blue Horde to attack Kaffa or Tana.

At the same time, the Barbary Corsairs as they are now called, make their appearance. In 1312 a general truce is signed at Oran, bringing an end to the first stage of the Marinid attempt to control North Africa. Numerous soldiers and sailors, now without wars to fight, take to the sea and begin raiding Christian ships and shores. This mostly impinges on Aragonese and Genoese shipping.

1314-1315: Genoese resistance is crippled by a double blow in May 1314. First, the blockade of Venice is shattered at the Battle of Chioggia, the tide having turned in the Venetian favor by the arrival of a Venetian fleet from the east. Second, the Blue Horde launches attacks on both Kaffa and Tana. Both Venetian and Genoese merchants are expelled and John uses this to bar the Italians from the Black Sea. Crippled Genoa and exhausted Venice are in no position to argue, but relations distinctively cool.

1316: John IV Laskaris dies and is succeeded by Manuel II Laskaris, who is thirty two. Almost immediately afterward a revolt breaks out in Anatolia amongst the Turkish population still settled there. An Ottoman army invades Cilicia in support, bypassing well defended Antioch. At Tarsus, Manuel II Laskaris fights an inconclusive battle, but it stops the Ottoman advance and encourages the Mamelukes and Jalayirids to both invade the Ottoman Empire.

Manuel II, who has spent much time amongst the Turks of central and eastern Anatolia and fought beside many of them, is much more liked by the Turks than John IV. While during the 1296-1300 campaign several of the minor emirs joined with the Romans since then relations had soured because of attempts to convert them and relocate them to Thrace and Macedonia.

Manuel promises to stop any relocation attempts, provided that the Turks serve the Empire faithfully. He also promises religious toleration to those who still follow Islam (the data is vague but historians estimate at least two thirds are still Muslim, although the upper leadership is more likely evenly split), with the stipulations of no proselytizing and that mosques cannot be taller than the tallest church in any town.

Instead Manuel makes sure that the Turks are surrounded by other Christian settlers (Central and eastern Anatolia is a cultural smorgasbord, with Greeks, Armenians, Turks, the occasional Bulgarian, and Vlachs fleeing from Hungarian incursions) and serve alongside Christian troops. He hopes that this soft-sell approach will work, and it does, although it takes at least two generations.

He is criticized by the patriarch for this long-term approach; according to two separate accounts, Manuel called the patriarch a ‘Latin cleric’. The continued papal refusal to acknowledge Roman claims on Cyprus or Antioch is extremely grating to Manuel who harbors a special hatred for Urban V, who personally called him a ‘servant of Satan’ for his role in the fall of Antioch.

1317-1319: The rebels are quickly cowed without the promised Ottoman support and by Manuel’s concessions, but both Bulgaria and Serbia both take the opportunity to raid across the European borders. Manuel ignores the weaker Serbia and marches on Trnovo, flattening a much smaller Bulgarian army that attempts to stop him. The main Bulgarian army attempts to divert him by attacking Adrianople but Manuel ignores the threat, investing Trnovo. Another Bulgarian siege at Mesembria also fails to divert him.

Adrianople falls after a siege of only eleven days through treachery. When Trnovo falls three weeks later Manuel’s revenge is terrible. The city is razed to the ground with many of its citizens slaughtered. The remainder are transplanted to Anatolia. The outnumbered Bulgarian army is unable to intervene in pitched battle but does skirmish, freeing some 1,000 captives in one raid. Mesembria manages to avoid capture, but George Sphrantzes wrote “at most three cats were left alive in the city.”

Peace is made on fairly generous terms. Bulgaria does not have to pay any tribute and is allowed to keep all the spoils from Adrianople. All Roman prisoners and non-Trnovo Bulgarians are returned to their respective countries. Serbia makes peace shortly afterward, paying a small annual tribute of 2,500 hyperpyra.

All of Christendom is scandalized on May 19, 1319, when a Barbary squadron skirts Rome itself. A few dozen Moorish soldiers land and raid the countryside for a few hours, acquiring little of value before being forced to withdraw. However the psychological blow is immense.

Six months later the Ottomans defeat the combined Mameluke-Jalayirid army at the gates of Baghdad itself. The Battle of the Gates ensures that the Ottoman Empire will survive, despite being surrounded by three states all larger than it.

1320-1323: Delegates from both Genoa and Barcelona approach the pope in early 1320. Shaken by the raid on Rome, he agrees to their request. A general crusade is declared against the Barbary Pirates. Portugal, Aragon, Pisa and Genoa all participate; they had suffered the most from the pirates. However the commercial rivalries between the participants hamper cooperation. The crusade resembles four state-sponsored expeditions rather than any international effort. The only reason historians even list this as a crusade is the use of church money in the provisioning of the Christian fleets.

Tunis falls to a Genoese flotilla in 1321 while a Portuguese fleet takes Ceuta, although it is expelled the next year. Oran falls to an Aragonese armada, but that is the last success of the crusade. The crusade also has the effect of pushing the various Muslim emirs to favor the Marinids as a protector against Christendom.

1324-1330: In 1324, Manuel dies at only forty and is succeeded by his only living heir, his twenty year old daughter Anna. Anna I Laskaris, Empress of Rhomanion, is not taken seriously by the Bulgarians. When they raid across the border, a Byzantine army sacks Trnovo again, destroying what repair work had been done, and deports the inhabitants.

Mameluke forces also begin raiding Roman Syria (Antioch and a very small strip of coast to the south). Anna’s initial response is to marry Andronikos Komnenos, son of the duke of Trebizond. He gains great prestige and is crowned emperor, but due to his lack of Laskarid blood, only Anna gets to wear the purple slippers.

When the Roman army marches in 1325, public opinion is shocked by Anna’s decision to accompany the army while her husband remains in Constantinople. While she is fairly unpopular amongst the army officers, since as a woman she cannot lead an army (the army is commanded by Manuel Kantakuzenos, a major landowner in Cappadocia), she uses this opportunity to circulate amongst the common soldiers, who quickly grow to love her.

According to a letter written by the bishop of Chonae, her presence reminded the soldiers that Nike, victory, was a goddess. The increase in classical Greek references in Byzantine literature of the time corresponds with a form of proto-nationalism centered around Orthodoxy and Greek culture, although it is often more anti-Latin in nature amongst the less educated populace. The term Hellenes loses its derogatory term at some point, usually identified as Anna’s reign. Also the epic of Digenes Akritas is altered at this time to make the hero half Greek and half Turk, as opposed to half Greek and half Arab.

Roman morale is extremely high when the army debouches from the Cilician Gates, smashing aside the Mameluke raiding parties in Cilicia and breaking up a siege of Antioch. Two weeks later it invests Aleppo. Two weeks after that, a Mameluke army arrives to break the siege. Despite being slightly outnumbered (44,000 vs. 38,000) the Mameluke commander decides to attack, calling the Roman soldiers “a bunch of mewling kittens, content to be commanded by a woman. Even with 200,000 kittens, I will not be bested by any woman.”

He is. Because of his disdain for his opponent, he launches an unsubtle frontal attack on the Roman lines. The battle in the center is intense as the crack Roman troops, locally outnumbered, fight desperately to stem the ferocious Mameluke onslaught. The battle lines sway back and forth as sheets of arrows snarl out from the Roman archers in the rear. Anna herself is directly behind the engagement, her pavilion clear for both sides to see, although she does stay out of arrow range. The Roman numerical advantage is decisive. Four thousand Cumans and Turks lash volley after volley into the Mameluke flanks as Manuel throws the reserves behind the reinforced wings, ordering them to swing inward. Barely five thousand Mamelukes escape. Some historians refer to it as a “second Cannae”. The Mameluke commander is captured and “made into a woman” (castrated).

The next month see two more Roman victories over Mameluke armies. The first, over a force of 12,000, takes place just five days after the Battle of Aleppo. The second, three weeks later, is over a contingent 11,000 strong. With their armies in the north effectively destroyed, the Mamelukes are unable to prevent Aleppo, Edessa, and all of the Syrian coast as far south as Laodicea from falling. By September 1327 the Roman army is besieging Tripoli and Homs. Peace is eventually made with the Mamelukes ceding everything north of the Laodicea-Aleppo-Edessa line.

Anna returns to Constantinople; nine months later she has a son named Nikephoros. With the Mamelukes and Bulgarians cowed, she prefers to spend her time creating orphanages, hospitals, and schools. In 1330, she massively expands the University of Constantinople, which had not yet recovered from the Latin conquest. She portrays it as a second founding.

For the rest of her reign, she avoids warfare to the best of her ability. While she recognizes the need to have the army’s support, she doubts that further conquests would be ultimately beneficial. When Bulgarian raiders cross the border in 1330, she limits reprisals to a show of force along the frontier and then gives the Bulgarian king two court titles which together earn him an annual stipend of 3,500 hyperpyra. The raids stop.

The Ottomans do not invade the Mamelukes during the Roman war, mainly because their energies are diverted by an attempt to break into the Iranian Plateau. For four years (1326-1330) the Ottomans and Jalayirids spill much blood but the border remains unchanged.

1331-1335: Teutonic raids into Lithuania continue regularly, with mixed success. However one expedition in 1333 is ambushed by a Novgorodian army on the Lithuanian border (Its previous mission had been to enforce Pskov’s obedience to Novgorod). The Novgorodians win a crushing victory and return the Lithuanian captives to their homes. While the Teutonic Knights gain a steady stream of crusaders to bolster their ranks, Lithuania gains some support from Russians (mainly from Novgorod) who, since the Massacre of the Faithful, offer their support to the Lithuanians against the Knights. As the Lithuanian people decide whether or not to convert to Christianity, it is not surprising that nearly all of them favor Orthodoxy.

Western Europe is quiet until 1335, when the Ninety Years War begins between England and France. The French fleet sacks the Isle of Wight, but is caught in a storm and severely damaged. The next day the English fleet wipes it out.

1336-1340: In 1339 England wins a crushing victory over the French army at Calais, her longbowmen scything down waves of French chivalry. Calais capitulates two days later. The English army also conducts a series of ruthless chevauchees across northern France, although the primary theater shifts to Aquitaine after the Battle of Calais.

By 1338, the Marinids ruling from the city of Marrakesh have gained control of all of North Africa from Tripoli to the Atlantic with the exception of Oran and Tunis. When Castilian cavalry raid the borders of the Emirate of Granada in June 1339, the Marinids use this as an excuse to invade Iberia. Granada is quickly cowed into submission as Marinid troops land and march north. The next year the main Marinid army shatters a Castilian-Portuguese force at the Battle of Rio Salado.

After a series of Serbian raids and a Roman show of force in 1338, the Serbian king is also given court titles which earn him an annual stipend of 3,000 hyperpyra. Anna ignores the protests of the European army commanders, leaving to review troops stationed in eastern Anatolia.

1341-1346: England and France continue skirmishing but their struggles are drowned out as disaster after disaster comes from Iberia. Cordoba and Murcia fall in 1342 and a year later another Castilian army is wiped out attempting to retake Cordoba. Encouraged by their successes, the Marinids invade Aragon, seizing Valencia in 1345. The only Christian victories are in early 1346, when a Marinid fleet is destroyed by the Aragonese off Mallorca and a small Marinid army repulsed from Oran.

At the same time the Ottomans invade the Jalayirids again. This time the war goes much better for them. Gilan and Hormuz are both captured and are ceded in the peace treaty of 1346. Georgia seizes the opportunity to raid Azerbaijan, sacking Tabriz in 1345, but makes no attempt to hold any territories due to fierce opposition from the Qara Koyunlu.

1347-1352: The Black Death strikes Europe, killing over thirty million people. Historians believe it originated in the Far East and spread to Europe via trading ships operating out of Trebizond. The Roman Empire is the earliest struck in Christendom, but none of the surrounding states are able to take advantage before they are afflicted as well. The Black Death does slow the fighting in Iberia and France but does not stop it.

The Empire suffers especially due to its more urbanized nature. Constantinople loses at least forty five percent of its population, Thessalonica and Nicaea at least thirty five percent, and Antioch at least thirty percent. Perversely, Trebizond is the least heavily hit of all the major Roman cities. Of Byzantium’s neighbors, the Serbs and Bulgarians suffer the least, although even they are not immune.

1353-1361: At the Battle of Toulouse in 1358 English forces succeed in capturing the French King. The next year France signs the humiliating treaty of Toulouse, whereby England is confirmed in possession of Aquitaine as it belonged to Eleanor of Aquitaine although the issue of the King of England being a vassal of the King of France in his Gascon possessions is not resolved, the main reason the peace does not last. France also loses Calais, some of Normandy, and a small portion of Maine.

The Marinid army is finally defeated when it is repulsed from Toledo in 1357. Still the situation is desperate and the pope needs little convincing to declare a crusade. The Black Prince marches south in 1360. Basing out of Toledo, he inflicts serious damage on Marinid detachments scattered across the countryside, but he is heavily outnumbered.

When some French and German crusaders join him in 1361, he decides to march south. At Segovia on April 2 he meets the main Marinid force and defeats it. While the news is celebrated as far away as Copenhagen, the victory ultimately has little effect; the Marinids have become too well entrenched.

In 1358, Theodoros II Laskaris is officially canonized as a saint of the Orthodox church, almost immediately becoming the patron saint of Roman soldiers. Also at this time he is officially commemorated as Theodoros the Great.

1362-1366: Peace is finally made in Iberia as neither the Marinids nor the Black Prince can break the post-Segovia stalemate. The river Tagus becomes the dividing line between Islam and Christendom. Toledo, captured from the Muslims in 1085, is once again on the front lines.

In reprisal for Russian men serving with the Lithuanian armies, the Teutonic Knights pillage several villages under the protection of Novgorod.

In 1366 Andronikos Laskaris is crowned as a co-emperor. His fellow rulers are his father Nikephoros Laskaris and his grandmother Anna Laskaris, his grandfather Andronikos Komnenos having died two years earlier. He is eighteen years old.

1367-1370: In 1368 Andronikos Laskaris is engaged in his usual antics, sleeping with a disreputable woman known for her many lovers. One day when he is visiting, his guards kill a man they mistook as a rival lover. It was Alexios, Andronikos’ younger brother, who was seventeen. His father Nikephoros, whose health had been poor, is grief-stricken and dies a month later. Enraged, Anna strips Andronikos of his titles and removes him from the succession. She proclaims Konstantinos Laskaris, her grandson from her second child John (He died of the plague in 1360), as her heir. He is twelve.

In 1369, there is a large revolt of Christians in Marinid Spain. The Christian Iberian states all invade the Marinid territories, but due to the lack of cooperation between them the Marinids are able to defeat them in detail, which causes the revolt to collapse. To avoid any repeat, the Marinids promise religious toleration to Catholics in their European provinces, a privilege that is contingent on their good behavior.

1371-1372: Andronikos is outraged over the loss of his rights because of an unfortunate accident. Starting sometime in 1371 he gradually makes contact with discontented elements of the army and bureaucracy. Those elements have their power bases in Europe and are supported by the aristocracy, who also are based mainly in Europe. Anna Laskaris has always shown much more favor to Anatolia and that is where her support lies. Her preferential treatment of Anatolians in her hiring practices, many of which are often transplanted Vlachs, Armenians, and Christian Turks, over Europeans, who are usually full-blood Greeks, has led to increasing anger, which Andronikos works to exploit.

1373-1375: In March 1373 Andronikos launches his coup. Anna is unable to stop him but gains enough advance warning to flee to Nicaea along with Konstantinos. In Anatolia she is welcomed and fully supported while Europe backs Andronikos II Laskaris as he is crowned. While Anna does have a much larger army and treasury, Andronikos has Constantinople and the backing of the Imperial fleet. That backing allows him to seize Rhodes and Cyprus by the end of the year.

The next year is a stalemate as neither side can hurt each other. Andronikos II does not have enough troops to invade Anatolia and defend the northern borders (he cut the subsidies to the Slavs, which was one of the main grievances of the European army commanders) while Anna I has enough troops but not enough ships to invade Europe. The only event of consequence is the fall of Lesbos to Andronikos II in September, securing his control of the Aegean.

In a rare joint venture, Genoese and Venetian diplomats reach Nicaea in early 1375 and offer a deal. In exchange for their naval support in the civil war, Anna must reduce their duties to a mere two percent, allow both parties access to the Black Sea, and Venice must receive Crete, although she will pay an annual rent of 16,000 hyperpyra, equal to that paid by Genoa for Coron-Modon. Genoa backs Venice’s bid for Crete in exchange for Venice agreeing to bar its merchants from the Sea of Azov as long as Crete is in Venetian hands, and also baring its merchants from entering Kaffa for three years after the end of the civil war.

Anna’s advisors urge her to reject the Italian offer and make peace with Andronikos by disowning Konstantinos and reinstating Andronikos into the succession. However her hatred of her grandson, who she blames for killing her firstborn and favorite son, convinces her to accept the Italian offer.

1376: A great Italian armada, a hundred and sixty ships, enters the Aegean basin in late April. On May 1, it is challenged by the Imperial fleet, one hundred and twelve vessels strong, off of Melos. Despite the usual Genoese-Venetian bickering, the eight hour long battle ends in a crushing Italian victory. In exchange for the loss of fifteen ships and 3,100 men (9 Genoese ships, 1,900 men, 6 Venetian ships, 1,200 men) fifty nine Roman vessels are sunk or captured and 14,000 men captured or killed.

The two city-states are able to field such a large fleet despite their losses in the Aegean and Black Seas because of their substantial commercial networks. Venice dominates trade in the Adriatic and the two cities make up nearly all the trade with the Mamelukes and Antioch (Venice’s share is the largest). Genoa also controls Corsica and Tunis, making it a major trader in the western Mediterranean although this is fiercely contested by Catalan merchants from Barcelona and Sicilian merchants from Palermo.

The victorious fleet docks at Smyrna where Anna’s troops are loaded. They are disembarked in Gallipoli, seized as a staging area against Constantinople, which is invested on July 1 by the Anatolian army while the Italians blockade the port. Two attempts by Andronikos II’s forces to break the siege fail. Finally on November 29, Andronikos is deposed in a coup engineered by several of his courtiers and Constantinople is surrendered to Anna.

Konstantinos himself is the one to behead Andronikos. According to legend, Konstantinos said “So this is how you have ruled the Empire, cousin, by bringing to it nothing but civil war and ruin.” Andronikos replied, “Will you, cousin, rule it any better?” Historians are skeptical of this event, given the obvious parallels to the accession of Heraclius.

1377-1380: Venice takes possession of Crete, much to the outrage of the local inhabitants. Much to Anna’s embarrassment, she has to provide troops to the Venetians (part of the treaty obligations) to help put down the almost instantaneous Greek revolt. Both Genoa and Venice begin entering the Black Sea in force, crowding out local Greek merchants that had cornered the market since the Italian expulsion.

Anna also reinstates the subsidies to Serbia and Bulgaria, increasing them by 1,000 hyperpyra each. This is done so that the Slavic states won’t invade the Empire while she conducts a thorough purge of the European officer corps. To enhance her battered prestige, she purchases the Crown of Thrones from France (it had been transferred to Venice as collateral for loans by the Latin Empire, where it had been sold to France), paying 150,000 hyperpyra for it. It returns to Constantinople in a lavish celebration in 1378.

The Ninety Years’ War resumes in France, with French forces avoiding major pitched battles and concentrating on seizing English strongholds. The strategy proves very successful. By 1380, a third of English Aquitaine is in French hands. The resumption of the war and the subsequent need for funds is the reason the French are willing to sell the Crown of Thorns.

Tensions in the eastern Baltic increase daily as an undeclared war is in effect between the Teutonic Knights and Novgorod, along with the usual Lithuanian operations. The battles are mostly minor skirmishes with a few dozen combatants at most, but one Novgorodian commander, Mikhail Shuisky, gains a fearsome reputation as he wins one skirmish after another. Much farther east, another war leader gains renown, as the Jalayirids begin to suffer numerous raids by a warlord based in Samarkand. His name is Timur.

1381-1385: On January 11, 1381, Anna I dies just three weeks shy of her seventy-seventh birthday. She had ruled for nearly fifty seven years and was predeceased by all of her children (besides her two sons she had a daughter named Zoe who died of the plague in 1347). She is succeeded by Konstantinos XI Laskaris. However the real power is his cousin George Komnenos (he is the grandson of Thomas Komnenos, younger brother of Andronikos Komnenos, husband of Anna I).

The Bulgarians and Serbs chose to invade the Empire when George convinces Konstantinos to revoke Anna’s reinstated subsidies. The battered European armies, still not recovered from the civil war, are unable to put up serious opposition. Ochrid falls to the Serbs in July and Mesembria to the Bulgarians in September. George Komnenos, in command of the European armies, focuses more on pillaging than fighting. He acquires a great many spoils, but loses most of it as well as a decent percentage of his army at the Battle of Trajan’s Gate. Still Konstantinos refuses to remove him but pulls troops from Anatolia to bolster his European armies.

The Ottomans seize the opportunity and pounce in 1382. A Roman army outnumbered two to one is shattered at Manzikert and the Roman frontier rolled all the back to Theodosiopolis which is placed under siege. Ottoman troops raid as far west as Sebastea.

In 1383 George returns to the fight and chastened by Trajan’s Gate, has learned a valuable lesson; it is easier to rob corpses. He first feints toward Ochrid, which leads the Serbs to cancel a planned attack on Dyrrachium. The Bulgarians, spotting an opportunity, march south, sacking Philliopolis, Serres, and Christopolis in quick succession, then swinging east to ravage the suburbs of Adrianople. The repeated Bulgarian successes at taking the cities of Thrace is due to the fact that George had removed the bulk of their garrisons to supplement his army, which he proceeded to then lose at Trajan’s Gate. Also the Anatolian reinforcements do not go to replace the garrisons, but to supplement George’s field army.

The Bulgarians are in high spirits but complacent and heavily laden with spoils and captives when they return to Trajan’s Gate. George had spent the campaigning season behind the Bulgarians, sacking Sofia and ravaging the countryside. As soon as word reached him that the Bulgarians were marching north, he raced back to Trajan’s Gate. This time it is the Bulgarians who are ambushed. They suffer heavy casualties and lose all of their spoils and captives. Peace is made shortly afterwards, Mesembria being ceded back to the Empire in exchange for 85,000 hyperpyra and all Bulgarian prisoners. Serbia makes peace after Ochrid is retaken, restoring the status quo.

In Asia, the Ottoman invasion ends in 1384 without ever taking Theodosiopolis. News that Timur’s attacks are becoming increasingly common prompt the Turks to attack the occupied Jalayirids. Still the Roman frontier remains where it had been at the peak of the Ottoman advance; virtually all of Armenia is lost.

1386-1390: War continues in France, mostly in favor of the French. However the Duchy of Burgundy is beginning to show dangerous signs of independence.
George Komnenos has become very fond of war; the Bulgarian war allowed him to amass a large fortune. In order to make more money, he decides that he needs another war. In 1386 he convinces Konstantinos to revoke the Neapolitan privileges in Bari and the next year a Roman army lands in Apulia, commanded by George. His army is supported by a battery of six bombards, the first known use of Roman gunpowder.

The battle in southern Italy goes back and forth. The use of cannons allows George to seize Taranto but the advance stalls by the end of 1387. The Roman fleet has also not fully recovered from the civil war. While the Roman fleet is able to keep the Albania-Apulia supply lines open, that is all it can do. Neapolitan squadrons raid the Morea and southern Epirus. By 1388 they expand their operations eastward (raiding the Aegean involved the risk of provoking the Genoese and/or the Venetians. The latter actually favor the Neapolitan cause but are unwilling to break with the Empire, since that would leave the field entirely in the hands of Genoa.) Attaleia and Cyprus are ravaged in 1389, although an attack on Antioch is beaten off. The coast of southern Anatolia soon becomes the preferred target for Neapolitan squadrons.

In 1387, the Order of the Hospitallers is granted the isle of Malta by the king of Aragon-Sicily in exchange for the token tribute of two hunting falcons every year, an action taken in order to improve his relations with the Pope. In the late 1300s crusading fervor undergoes a revival, with the theme of ‘Christendom besieged’ becoming common in sermons throughout Europe. After the successes of the early 1200s, Catholicism has been steadily losing ground in the eastern and western ends of the Mediterranean.

In order to combat this trend, Pope Clement V decides to revitalize the Knights Hospitallers as a fighting force. Since the destruction of the Templar Order in 1310, the Hospitallers have focused on maintaining and expanding their hospital complex on the outskirts of Rome. A French noble contemptuously called them “better nurses than fighters” to which the Grandmaster replied that “the first duty of our Order is to our lords the sick.”

Also the Order is undergoing a series of accusations by nobles jealous of its wealth, claiming that its medical successes are due to following heathen Muslim and heretical Greek practices. They are even accused of dissecting fresh corpses to learn how the human body works, although modern historians can find no evidence of this. The Knights’ medical success is much more likely caused by their emphasis on exercise, lots of fresh air and sunshine, the separation of patients into different wards based on their ailments so that a man with a broken leg doesn’t catch the plague, and the use of silver plates and bowls as opposed to bacteria infested wood ones.

However Clement V wants fighters, not nurses, and convinces Jaime IV to transfer Malta to the Knights. While the Knights still maintain their hospital, it is downsized with many of the personnel being transferred to Malta. With loans from bankers in Florence and Siena, as well as church donations and an international recruitment drive undertaken by the clergy, the Hospitallers are able to field fifteen galleys by late 1390, which they begin using against Muslim shipping along the north African coast.

1391-1393: George finally gains a much needed victory at the Battle of Troia, although he suffers nearly 12,000 casualties (out of a force of 50,000). Determined to finally get some booty he marches on Salerno, investing the city. His cannons quickly smash three breaches in the walls, but before he can take the city orders arrive from Constantinople for him to desist. A general truce has started; Konstantinos is starting to show some independence.

In 1392 Naples cedes a ruined Apulia, the heel of Italy, to the Empire. It is a wreck, ravaged repeatedly by both Romans and Neapolitans. At least half of the population is either dead or emigrated. Taranto, a major port and the main prize of the war, has a population of less than a thousand. George is highly annoyed at the peace; it cost him the spoils of Salerno.

In May 1393, Pope Clement VI attempts to move the papacy to Avignon just two weeks after being proclaimed pope. However the Italian Cardinals object to this and as soon as Clement VI arrives in Avignon, the Italian Cardinals declare his election invalid and elect Martin V as rightful pope. France, the Iberian states, Norway, Denmark, and Hungary back Clement. The rest of Catholicism backs Martin.

The Teutonic stance on the Great Schism is unknown for a time as the Knights launch a massive invasion of Novgorod. Their siege of Pskov is fiercely contested as the citizens and a garrison outnumbered twenty to one fight heroically for their city and their God. Mikhail Shuisky gathers the Novgorodian army, skirmishing with Teutonic foragers as he does so. Seven thousand Lithuanian soldiers join them. According to the Chronicle of Mikhail Shuisky, the Lithuanian commander’s answer to the question “Why?” is “Why would we not fight for our brothers?”

On August 9, the Novgorod-Lithuanian army launches its attack on the Teutonic force. The battle rages for five hours; Mikhail is everywhere, pulling back hard pressed units, throwing in reserves at the crucial moment, rallying his men whenever they waver. After three hours the garrison and people of Pskov sally, slamming into the Teutonic rearguard. One contingent captures a battery of Teutonic catapults and turns them against their former masters. Finally at around 2:30 PM the Teutonic army breaks, fleeing desperately into the woods only to be cut down by Lithuanian cavalry.

Mikhail’s popularity skyrockets and he is hailed as Alexander Nevsky reborn. Using his newfound popularity he stages a military coup in November, being crowned King of Novgorod on November 15. His government, when fully formed, combines elements of the new monarchy and the old republican traditions of the city. While he is a king, his rule is not absolute.

1394-1397: George Komnenos returns to Constantinople and is promptly made civilian governor of Optimates (Bithynia), a wealthy, prosperous theme far away from any potential war zone, and is shunted off to Nicaea. Very little is known about his conduct as governor, but it is known that when his sister dies in 1394, he takes full responsibility for the upbringing of his fourteen year old nephew Demetrios Komnenos (his father had died in 1383, after which George helped his sister with a small stipend. Demetrios also takes the last name of his mother, as it is more prestigious than his father’s claim as a descendant of the Emir of Kayseri.) George makes sure he receives the finest military training possible.

In 1396 Hungary and the Empire sign the historic treaty of Dyrrachium, regarding respective spheres of influences in the Balkans. Bulgaria and Serbia are to be buffer states to preserve peace between the two powerhouses of the Balkans and neither is to annex any part of those two states without the other’s permission. The Empire also promises not to contest Hungarian attacks on Vlachia, provided that the Vlachs are allowed freedom of worship with their own churches and clergy, and are allowed to emigrate freely to the Empire if they wish to do so.

Also the Empire drops its own claims and recognizes Hungarian claims to Dalmatia from Istria to Cattaro (Venice controls the territory in question). In exchange it is written in the treaty that “If, by the grace of God, the most illustrious Emperor of the Romans should conquer the city of Venice, that city, along with all associated Italian territories west of Gorz, along with all Venetian possessions unbounded by the Adriatic Sea, will be considered the rightful property of the Roman Empire, and of the Roman Empire alone.

The Ottomans, in the course of their invasion of the Iranian Plateau, finally make contact with the mysterious warlord known as Timur. Born in 1338 in Samarkand as a member of the Suldus tribe, he spent most of his life establishing himself as leader of the Chagatai Khanate. Then in order to consolidate his rule and distract discontented elements, he embarked on a campaign of conquest.

After first humbling the rulers of Moghulistan, he crippled the Blue Horde by sacking its capital of Sarai in 1388, just as the star of Novgorod is beginning its ascent. He then turns his attention south, overwhelming the minor states of Persia that have managed thus far to avoid being annexed by the Jalayirids because of their preoccupation with the Ottomans. Once those were conquered he turned his attentions to the Jalayirids themselves.

In the summer of 1395, an Ottoman army is besieging Mazandaran when Timur’s main force arrives. He will not tolerate a rival in Persia and peremptorily demands that the Turks withdraw. When the Ottomans refuse, he annihilates their army and take Mazandaran. The next year he seizes Gilan and orders raids to commence on Ottoman possessions in Persia.

1398-1400: A crusade is launched against the Marinids, made possible by a truce in the Ninety Years War. Contingents from England, France, Germany, Italy, and even 300 men from Denmark join with the Castilian army at Toledo in 1398. Both Portugal and Aragon launch supporting offensives. The Crusade marches south, annihilating a couple of minor Marinid detachments and rejoices at the news of 4,000 Marinids killed in a failed attack on Aragonese Oran.

At Merida, the French knights in the crusading vanguard spot another small force of Marinids and immediately attack. They finish cutting the Muslims to pieces just in time to see the main Marinid army engulf them and wipe most of the French contingent out. The Marinids then attack the demoralized crusaders and score a crushing victory, moving on to besiege Toledo.

Marinid success however ends there. While the Portuguese offensive is rolled back to the Tagus, the Aragonese fleet, backed by Pisan and Papal galleys, succeeds in capturing Valencia in a surprise attack. And then there is Toledo. From its towers newly installed bombards roar down hellfire on the Marinid besiegers; wave after wave of Moorish soldiers hurl themselves futilely at the walls, clambering over the corpses of their fallen comrades. Roger de Flor, a participant and chronicler of the siege, optimistically called the Rock of Toledo “the graveyard of the Moorish people.”

Mining is of no use either. A vicious subterranean battle is fought between the Castilians and Marinids, in which the Castilians decidedly have the better of the exchange. On September 2, 1399, the Castilians detonate the first known gunpowder mine in history, wiping out five Marinid trebuchets and three hundred men. Two weeks later the siege is lifted.

In 1398 Timur takes Fars, the Jalayirid capital. Almost immediately he begins making preparations for the invasion of Mesopotamia. Cavalry raids are conducted almost daily while a Timurid army captures Hormuz. Sultan Mehmed I, called the Conqueror for his conquests in Armenia and eastern Arabia, conducts counter-raids but keeps his main force in Mesopotamia; he wishes to fight Timur on ground of his own choosing.

In 1399 Timur obliges him, invading Mesopotamia with over eighty thousand men. At Kirkuk Mehmed is defeated but retires in good order with minor casualties, although the city is lost. He gathers reinforcements, eventually commanding an army sixty five thousand strong; by that point Timur is almost at Baghdad.

In order to compensate for his numerical inferiority Mehmed decides to boost his men’s morale by fighting, as close as possible, on the same ground Bayezid I fought on during the Battle of the Gates. Thus Turkish morale is exceedingly high on November 3, when battle is joined.

It is not enough. The ferocious onslaught of the Timurid regiments break the Ottoman center as wave after wave of Mongol and Tartar horsemen hurl volleys into the Turkish flanks, overwhelming the flank guards by sheer weight of number. Mehmed throws in the reserves, halting the Timurid advance. Rallying his men with his presence, the Turks begin pushing the Timurids back, until a stray arrow knocks Mehmed from his horse. He is not dead, only unconscious, but the rumor of his death spreads wildly through the army. Panic begins to set in and Timur senses it, throwing in his own reserves. The Ottoman army shatters; Baghdad capitulates the next day.

Mehmed wakes up on November 5. Gathering together what he can of his army, he falls back to Basra. Timur, thinking he is no longer a threat, concentrates on capturing northern Mesopotamia; Mosul falls in February 1400. He wants the region secure as reports of Mameluke military buildups in northern Syria have him concerned.

When he is at Mosul, he is met by a delegation from Constantinople. After congratulating him on his victory over Mehmed, a treaty is made. Rhomanion will pay Timur 120,000 hyperpyra a year in exchange for not attacking the Empire. Konstantinos does this for two reasons. While George was stuck fighting in Italy, Konstantinos was freed of his influence. Since then he has made sure to remain so. Realizing that the two wars of his reign were ultimately counterproductive, he wants no more. Also he realizes that the money he gives to Timur will likely be spent on killing Mamelukes. However the view of many that Konstantinos is a weak old man is confirmed by these events.

After the treaty is signed, Timur moves with lightning speed into Mameluke Syria. He captures Homs in May, defeats a Mameluke army meant to relieve the city, and seizes Damascus in August. The main army then swings toward the coast, where most of the towns surrender immediately. Tyre foolishly tries to resist and is sacked in October.

On the other end of the Mediterranean, the Marinids fail to retake Valencia despite a four month siege due to their inability to implement an effective naval blockade. While the Marinid fleet is powerful enough to secure the Pillars and keep the Morocco-Granada line open, otherwise it is outmatched by Christian sea power.

1401-1402: The Timurid advance is temporarily halted by the defeat of a Timurid force not commanded by Timur at Nazareth. In response, Timur marches on Jerusalem, flattening a Mameluke force 30,000 strong at Arsuf. Terrified at the prospect of Timur gaining access to Egypt, the Mamelukes offer Timur a generous deal. In exchange for withdrawing from all his conquests south of Damascus, the Mamelukes will cede Damascus and territories north of it and pay him a lump sum equivalent to 2 million hyperpyra and an annual tribute thereafter of 240,000 hyperpyra. Such an offer places the Mamelukes in danger of bankruptcy but it buys them time. Considering that Timur turned sixty three a week after the treaty was signed, they might not have to pay tribute for long.

Timur welcomes the deal. Ottoman Armenia has been cut off from Mehmed in Basra since the fall of Mosul, and he wants to annex it before the Romans do. The rest of 1401 is spent doing so.

On August 9, 1401, Konstantinos XI Laskaris dies. George Komnenos returns to Constantinople after an absence of seven years for the funeral where he quickly earns the trust and respect of the new emperor, Theodoros III Laskaris, who is twenty three. In January 1402 twenty two year old Demetrios Komnenos, George’s nephew, is married to Theodoros’ eighteen year old sister Zoe.

Theodoros is one of those who thought his father was old and weak and is particularly disgusted by the treaty with Timur. George, who at age fifty eight still desires an opportunity for war and further riches, has to do very little to convince the emperor to repudiate the treaty.

Enraged, Timur immediately invades eastern Anatolia, seizing Theodosiopolis in September. Roman army units skirmish with his forces with Demetrios Komnenos participating in the fight. George and Theodoros’ strategy is to draw Timur into Anatolia, whittling his strength down with skirmishes and supply deprivation and then annihilate him somewhere in the Anatolian interior where he can’t possibly escape. In preparation for the campaign, George convinces Theodoros to appoint Demetrios strategos (general) of the Thracesian tagma, ten thousand strong.

1403: Timur’s army marches for the Halys river valley. In May he takes Sebastea after a twenty six day siege, slaughtering the inhabitants; he cannot afford to be slowed down by a large train of prisoners. Marching west, his foragers are repeatedly harassed by Roman cavalry, mostly Turkish and Cuman horse archers. Demetrios Komnenos is very successful at this, using his light cavalry to draw enemy squadrons into ambushes and then hammering them with his kataphraktoi.

Still Timur is merely slowed by this, but that is what Theodoros and George want as it gives them time to assemble the largest army Rhomanion has seen in four hundred years, if not more. East of Cappadocian Caesarea the forward scouts of both armies meet in early July. The Roman host numbers seventy two thousand strong, Timur’s eighty five thousand.
 
Last edited:
Interim 1

The Roman Laskarid Army, c. 1400

The Laskarid army at the time of Timur’s invasion was one of the most formidable forces in the known world. In a hundred and fifty years it never lost a war and more than doubled the size of the empire, to a height unseen since the Macedonian dynasty. Most modern historians follow the lead of Roman historians in attributing the design solely to Theodoros the Great, with the following Laskarid rulers merely expanding the system. However recent scholarship is beginning to challenge this view.

The Laskarid army was an organic growth of the late Komnenid army with Mongol influences. The army ranks were often identical to older army titles, but the forces commanded rarely were equivalent.

The primary organizational unit was the tagma, a division of ten thousand soldiers commanded by a strategos. The Empire in 1400 had nine tagmata, two in Europe and seven in Asia. Every one of these tagma was divided in ten tourma, each one comprised of a thousand soldiers and commanded by a tourmarches. In each tagma the tourmai (plural of tourma) were numbered from one to ten, with the first tourmarches being the most senior and second in command of the tagmata after the strategos.

The Laskarid tagmata (plural of tagma) combined aspects of the old Roman tagmata and thematic armies. Like the thematic armies, Roman soldiers were given lands as payment, the grants varying in size according to the type of soldier. Since the Laskarids had access to large estates confiscated after the Nobles’ rebellion and lands conquered in Greece and Anatolia, having enough land grants was never an issue.

Soldiers were allowed to improve their estates but could not move up pay grades by doing so. If a heavy infantryman improved his estate so that it yielded the same income as a medium cavalryman’s estate, he would be allowed to keep the revenue but would not be promoted to a medium cavalryman with its higher salary.

Grants were hereditary, provided the soldier secured his tourmarches’ approval and the inheritor agreed to accept all the obligations of the estate. However estates could not be divided without the approval of the strategos of the tagma. This was rarely done as a typical soldier could not improve his estate to maintain two soldiers of his troop type. A heavy infantryman might be able to improve his estate to where it could equip two light infantrymen or archers, but due to the emphasis on combined arms tactics and maintaining the balance between troop types, which will be discussed below, this was usually unacceptable.

However soldiers paid solely in land had little incentive not to rebel against the central government. Thus the soldiers were also paid cash salaries as well, equal to the annual income of their estates. For instance, an infantryman assigned an estate that yielded an average annual income of 10 hyperpyra would receive a cash payment of 10 hyperpyra every year. Thus any soldier revolting against the central government would effectively cut their pay in half.

Actually any rebels would lose more than half their salary. Every two years soldiers received a bonus designed to pay for equipment, which had to be purchased at state warehouses. The bonus matched the cost of a full set of arms, armor, and field equipment required of the soldier, which varied according to his military function. However since conscientious care of equipment usually allowed it to last much longer than two years, this represented an actual bonus for soldiers. Troops were also allowed to upgrade their equipment beyond the standard required of their troop type, and those upgrades could be acquired outside the state warehouse system, although the warehouses also provided the more popular upgrades, such as lamellar armor for heavy infantry.

Troops on active duty also received a pay bonus equivalent to one quarter of their annual salary, calculated to the time on active duty. This was done to compensate the soldiers for revenues lost while not attending their lands, although most soldiers above the lowest pay grades had family members or hired workers to replace them in the fields.

Sometimes there were minor equipment variations between tagmata based on the wealth of their host themes. For example, heavy infantry of the Thracesian, Opsician, and Optimates tagma usually had maces or war hammers as secondary weapons and some lamellar armor, compared to the short swords and mail armor used by the heavy infantry stationed in poorer themes where land improvement was less of an option.

Soldiers received their annual pay and biannual equipment bonuses at the first of the two tagma reviews held each year, held at the capital of the theme. Failure to attend either review with any excuse other than physical inability resulted either in the loss of that year’s pay if it was the first review that was missed or the next year’s pay if it was the second. Soldiers had to attend the reviews with all of the required equipment at a certain level of quality; failure resulted in pay reductions. Also at the exercises at the beginning of the review, the soldiers had to already be at a certain level of proficiency or risk other pay deductions.

Soldiers also had to attend eight reviews and training sessions with their tourma during the year. Failure to attend was also punished by pay deductions, and the troops were also required to keep their equipment and training up to a certain standard at these events.

Anna I’s popularity with the common soldiery largely rested in her use of the tagma reviews. Every year she attended two, gradually rotating through each tagma. There she would watch the drills and competitions and the best performing soldiers of each troop type would be given cash rewards, personally handed to them by the empress herself or later by her son Nikephoros.

At this time it would be helpful for the reader to discuss the various troop types in the Laskarid army. The focus was on combined arms tactics between the various troop types; the main purpose of the reviews was to make sure that the various troop formations could work effectively together. The troop types shall be discussed in order of pay grade, from the lowest to the highest.

The lowest pay grade was that of the toxotai, the foot archer. Typically they were armored in leather or cloth and armed with a composite bow and small sword or ax. Approximately ten to fifteen percent of archers were equipped with crossbows and were overwhelmingly stationed in Europe. Both composite and crossbowmen were usually accompanied in battle by a pavise carrier to protect them while reloading who outside of battle doubled as the handlers of the baggage train. Toxotai were mainly used to defend ground and support heavy infantry advances.

Next were the akritoi, the light infantry. These were skirmishers and flank guards, used to screen the main body. Equipped with a clutch of four javelins and typically a sword and armored in leather, they were trained to skirmish with the foe and then close to melee in support of the heavy infantry if necessary. The akritoi in eastern Anatolia were largely Vlach immigrants, who favored a cleaver as their secondary weapon. Timurid scouts soon learned to fear them as a cleaver armed Vlach could hack the head off a destrier.

The heavy infantry, the skutatoi, were the backbone of the Roman army and the most numerous troop type. Armored in mail and in some cases lamellar, they were equipped with a long spear called a kontos or sometimes a polearm. Due to the large kite shaped shields they carried to protect against Ottoman and Mameluke horse archers, the long spathion of the Macedonian period was abandoned in favor of a new sword type, named the spatha after a sword type from the Justinian period, approximately halfway in size between a spathion and a gladius. Many wealthier skutatoi used maces or war hammers. The heavy infantry were used for many purposes, often to hold ground and provide a support base for cavalry attacks, although George Komnenos used them as an offensive force to great effect in his Bulgarian campaign.

The cheapest cavalry units in the Laskarid army were the light horse archers called Turkopouloi, who were, not surprisingly, almost entirely Turks. Used as scouts and screeners, together with the akritoi they made sure that enemy forces had a difficult time gaining accurate intelligence on Roman troop movements. Swirling around enemy ranks, they pelted the enemy with a continuous barrage of missiles. Often unarmored and armed with a composite bow, unlike the akritoi they were never used in melee unless the situation was desperate.

Next on the scale were the koursores, the medium cavalry. There were actually two types of this unit, light and heavy. Light koursores were armored in leather and the mount in cloth, and armed with a kontos and a sword along with a shield. The heavy version had mail armor for the rider and cloth for the horse, and was equipped with a kontos, a mace, a sword and a shield. The category was evenly split in strength between the two subcategories. The koursores were often used in complement with Turkopouloi who would whittle down the foe and break up his formations, allowing the koursores to charge and shatter the lines, riding them down in the ensuing melee.

Skythikoi were armored versions of the Turks, with both the horse and rider being clad in mail. Usually they were drawn from the Cuman populations of Anatolia, but there were sizeable minorities of Greeks and Armenians in their ranks. Armed with a composite bow, they were trained to loose concentrated missile volleys on their foes and then fight in melee with their maces and swords in support of the elite of the Roman army, the kataphraktoi. Together the two made up the heavy cavalry portion of the Roman army.

The kataphraktoi were the best trained and equipped soldiers in the Laskarid army, with absolute obedience demanded in exchange for their high salaries. Both horse and rider were armored at least in lamellar and mail, with the richer ones often in plate. Equipped with a kontos, two maces, and two swords, they existed for the charge, which they undertake at the gallop in Latin fashion, as opposed to the flying wedge formation of Nikephoros Phokas, performed at a fast trot at best. Rare was the force that could withstand their onslaught. More disciplined than Latin knights, they were always supported by skythikoi.

Each tagma also possessed its own artillery train of ‘great crossbows’, used as field artillery, which were divided amongst the tourmai. The frontier tagmata also possessed counterweight trebuchets for siege artillery, with the Anatolian tagmata possessing twice as many trebuchets. Also each tourma had its own medical personnel, paid in the same fashion as soldiers, with one doctor for every twenty soldiers. There was also a quartermaster corps, responsible for distributing supplies while on campaign, and which included the cooks. During battle, the quartermasters were also to make sure that the soldiers would be supplied food and drink if possible.

Each of the tagma were designed to be self-sufficient armies, capable of operating on the combined arms principle by itself. A tagma at full strength had 500 kataphraktoi, 500 skythikoi, 1000 koursores, 1000 Turkopouloi, 4000 skutatoi, 1000 akritoi, and 2000 toxotai. The tourmai had one tenth of each troop type. As best as possible, tagma organization was based on the decimal system, where multiples of ten served as the full strength size of most units.

After the tourma, the next smallest army unit was the droungos commanded by a droungarios. These were not combined arms forces, but consisted of only one troop type. They were one hundred strong, except for the droungos of the kataphraktoi and heavy horse archers, which were fifty men strong. The droungoi though were all of the same rank and pay grade, with the droungarios of the kataphraktoi second in command of the tourma.

The kontoubernionwere squads of ten men each commanded by a dekarchos. The heavy cavalry droungoi had five kontoubernion; the remainder had ten. This was the smallest Laskarid army organizational unit.

There were several army units outside of the tagma system. In Constantinople, Antioch, and Bari, units were stationed called archontates. They were equal in strength to tourmai, but had a higher number of infantry. They were designed to provide a permanent defense to a critical area of the Empire and were full-time professional troops. Bari’s elevation to an archontate is due more to Laskarid pride at its possession rather than its value as a seaport or its strategic location. There is no known incident where these troops were used outside of their home province.

Also barracked in Constantinople were the Athanatoi, the Immortals. This was a personal unit attached to the Emperor, although Konstantinos XI Laskaris did loan it to George Komnenos in his Bulgarian and Italian campaigns. The two thousand troops were full time soldiers, organized in troop types in the same ratio as tagma troops. Its internal organization was also identical to a tourma, but with double the number of smaller military units and officers.

Less important cities in the frontier themes were given permanent, full time garrisons as well called allagion that varied in size from 300 to 50, with most being only a hundred at most. These were entirely infantry formations (the archontates had some cavalry), existing to provide a professional core for a citizen army in case the city is attacked.

The frontier themes also had units called bandon which were commanded by a count. These were formations two hundred strong, who were paid and reviewed in the same manner as tagma troops. However these units were either entirely turkopouloi or half turkopouloi and half mounted akritoi. The akritoi would ride while on the march and fight dismounted. The continued Laskarid preference for Anatolia is shown in their positioning. There were eight stationed on the Anatolian frontier. Europe had three, two for the Bulgarian border and one for the Serbian.

This was the Roman army system in place in 1400. Under competent leadership it was deadly and under a genius it was unstoppable. Its main weakness was that its focus on discipline, training and combined arms tactics meant that under poor leaders, the army often ‘tripped over its own feet’. This system would face its greatest challenge in the person of Timur, whose invasion was the greatest threat to the Empire since the Fourth Crusade. As the Anatolian tagmata assembled in the spring of 1403, only time would tell how it would fare.

laskaridarmymap1380.png
The distribution of Laskarid army units in 1390 (note that they have not changed position by 1403)​

Red=one tagma, although the troops are settled throughout their assigned theme​

Purple=Archontate, there is also one in Bari (off map)​

Green=Athanatoi, unique formation attached to the Emperor​

Brown=Bandon, each frontier theme has one bandon that is half Turkopouloi and half mounted akritoi. The remainder are pure Turkopouloi.​

The Kibyrrhaeots and the various Roman islands are kept outside of the regular tagma-theme system, as they are responsible for the upkeep of the Imperial fleet.​

And here is a short bit about some of the peripheral regions on the map.​


The Crimea/Ukraine: Most of the territory in question is under the control of the Blue Horde, the western and more powerful half of the Golden Horde, formed during the Mongol conquests. Theoretically the Blue Horde and the eastern White Horde are part of one larger state, but they function as two independent entities. In the past two decades relations between them have deteriorated dramatically, as the Blue Horde seeks to absorb the White Horde and create a Golden Horde that exists on more than paper. This is done to help compensate for losses in the west caused by Lithuania and Hungary.

The Principality of Theodoro is a Greek splinter state, left over from the Fourth Crusade. It does pay an annual tribute to Sarai, the Blue Horde capital, as protection money but is an independent state. For its size it is fairly wealthy, as it is perfectly located to play a major role in the Black Sea grain trade. In the principality itself, Greek merchants dominate the market.

Both the Venetians and Genoese have colonies in the region. Venice controls Soldaia and Kaffa, while Genoa controls Vosporo and Tana (both off map). Both Italian states are required to pay protection money to Sarai in order to keep their colonies. The Genoese colonies are slightly richer, but they are situated closer to Sarai and Genoese relations with the Blue Horde are poorer. Venice meanwhile has an ongoing border dispute with Theodoro, which claims that both Soldaia and Kaffa belong to the Principality.

Vlachia: Vlachia is not a state, but a geographical region named after its predominant ethnic group. It was under the control of the Blue Horde from the 1240s to the 1350s, but Sarai’s authority there was nominal after 1310. Divided into dozens of minor Vlach states, it is Hungary that claims suzerainty over the region. However Buda’s authority is also fairly weak and inconsistent. It is largely secured by periodic raids designed to enforce tribute payments and keep the Vlachs disunited and unorganized, as well as missionary efforts to convert the Vlachs to Catholicism.

The continual unrest in the region after the pullout of the Blue Horde is the reason that so many Vlachs have emigrated to the Roman Empire, being settled in eastern Anatolia as akritoi, a role in which they excel. The reason that Hungary has not attempted to annex the region outright is that concerns in the Holy Roman Empire and Dalmatia are more pressing. Also the Hungarian kings seek to “culturally conquer” the Vlachs through the Catholic missions, which if successful would require significantly less military expenses than an outright invasion and would secure a much more loyal population.


The Roman Laskarid Navy, c. 1400

The organization of the Roman navy in 1400 had many similarities to that of the army, but also some important variations. The region of Kibyrrhaeots, the southern coast of Anatolia, and the various Aegean islands and Cyprus, were the recruiting ground for the fleet. The sailors were paid in land estates, like the soldiers, and were reviewed in a similar fashion.

However the sailors were divided into two sections. In a six year cycle, each sailor would serve for three years on active duty, then return to their estates while the other section went on active duty. While inactive, the sailors were paid in cash, but the annual salary was only equal to one third of the value of the land, rather than equivalent as was the way with the army. Retention of this salary was contingent on maintenance of equipment and training, to be judged at the beginning of each of the five annual reviews.

While on active duty, the sailors were stationed in Constantinople with the Imperial fleet. In order to maintain discipline they were not allowed to bring their families, which were often needed to stay home and work the estates anyway. Then the sailors were paid the same salary as an akritos would receive while on campaign, which was almost a four hundred percent pay increase.

The Imperial fleet at Constantinople was kept at a strength of eighty galleys, which were all capable of being manned by one section of the Imperial sailors. While that was a force either Venice or Genoa could match, ships were quicker and easier to build than trained sailors. With the two section system, the Empire could theoretically field an armada of up to a hundred and sixty galleys, all with trained crews. This system was a recent innovation; Anna had developed it after the Laskarid civil war (1373-1376).

There were also separate squadrons stationed at Bari, Antioch, and Trebizond. The first two had eight galleys; the last one had five. The crews for those galleys were full-time sailors paid entirely in cash and housed in their respective towns. Mainly used to suppress pirates and keep the trade lanes secure, they were still trained to the same level as the Imperial fleet, which they would support if it was active in their region.

The Laskarid Economy, c. 1400

The Roman Empire prior to Timur’s invasion and the War of the Five Emperors was one of the most powerful states in the world economically. Its economy was highly monetized, with several types of coinage in circulation. There was a steady flow of currency as taxes and tolls went into Constantinople and came out again as wages and bonuses for soldiers and administrators and payments to contractors.

The structure of the Laskarid army encouraged trade throughout the empire. Regional trade fairs quickly grew up around the regular tourma and tagma reviews. While soldiers underwent their reviews, their families brought in extra produce from their farms and purchased needed supplies. The trade fairs that sprung up around the Thracesian and Optimates tagma reviews were among the largest in the known world.

Internal trade, which mostly consisted of agricultural products, was entirely in the hands of Roman merchants as the Italians rarely ventured beyond the coast. Also foreign merchants had to pay a five percent duty for transporting goods across theme boundaries, whereas natives only had to pay a two percent one. One of the most consistent features of Roman internal trade was the steady exchange of animal and plant products between central/east Anatolia and west/coastal Anatolia. One advantage for Roman merchants of this period was that the Laskarid bureaucracy, focused on maintaining the quality standards of the armed forces, paid little attention to commerce except to ensure that the appropriate duties were paid, which consisted of warehouse and dock rents and import/export duties.

The Laskarid government was determined that in terms of military equipment, no imports were necessary. While the state maintained the warehouse system that sold required equipment to soldiers, those warehouses were stocked by supplies from local independent contractors. Strict quality standards were fiercely enforced, with the supply of substandard weapons or armor considered a breach of contract. Those who violated a government contract in that manner were barred from accepting any other government contract for ten years. These government contracts were highly lucrative as the state provided the raw materials free of charge in the goal of maintaining quality.

The state also maintained stud farms so that there would also be an adequate supply of horses for the cavalry and logistical branches of the military. Cavalry soldiers were required to purchase their war horses from the stud farms to ensure quality standards. Strict breeding programs were maintained to ensure the high standards of the equines. Also there were Imperial forests, mostly located on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, dedicated specifically for providing timber for the navy. To maintain them, for every tree cut down one had to be planted, a statute enforced by the Inspector of the Imperial Forests.

Foreign trade was contested between foreign and native merchants. Except for the Venetians and Genoese, every merchant, including native ones, had to pay a ten percent value tax on any imports or exports. The Venetians and Genoese only had to pay a two percent duty. However Roman merchants had an advantage in the luxury goods market as they were better situated to gain ready access to eastern markets and had already developed substantial contacts with Ottoman and Indian merchants by the time Venetian and Genoese trade duties were reduced to two percent in 1376. As a result most eastern goods that came through the Empire (via either the Silk Road to Trebizond or overseas from India up the Persian Gulf and through Mesopotamia to Antioch) were shipped west in Roman cargo vessels, where they usually disembarked in Bari. Eastern goods coming through the Red Sea to Alexandria on the other hand were typically shipped to Europe in Italian vessels.

The most valuable Roman raw material exports were alum, used to dye wool, and mastic, an ingredient in perfumes and chewing gum. Both were worth their weight in gold. Chios, the main supplier of mastic, contributed over 100,000 hyperpyra a year to the treasury in taxes, well over five times the rent the Venetians paid for Crete. (1) Other exports included olive oil, wine, sugar from Cypriot plantations, and grain (Anatolia could not compare to the Ukraine as a grain exporter, but during times of peace it was an important adjunct of the market in cereals). The dark wines from the Peloponnesus known as Malvasia, a corruption of Monemvasia, were particularly popular in the west. With their control of Coron and Modon, Genoese merchants dominated the export market for that product.

The Empire also exported manufactured goods. There were thriving textile industries around Nicaea and Corinth which specialized in producing both high and low quality garments for different income brackets, a shipbuilding industry centered on Trebizond, as well as glassmaking and soap industries concentrated in the Opsician theme. Jewelry manufactured in Sinope was renowned for its high quality throughout the Mediterranean.

Since the Empire deliberately produced most of its material requirements, the Empire inadvertently followed the ‘Chinese model’. With the exception of high quality Italian plate armor, very popular amongst the kataphraktoi, the West had very little to offer in terms of trade except for bullion. The steady stream of precious metals that flowed eastward was a great annoyance to Catholic monarchs and a great boon to the Roman Emperors.

The Italians mainly benefitted from their monopoly of the carrying trade. With the exception of eastern luxury goods, particularly spices, most Roman exports were carried in Italian vessels. Roman merchants specialized either in the eastern markets or in internal trade, both of which were still lucrative. Venice and Genoa also dominated the Black Sea trade, monopolizing the export of furs and slaves from the region. However in the Ukrainian grain trade, merchants from the independent Principality of Theodoro held a substantial share.

The Empire had a highly developed but somewhat complicated coinage system, most of which dated back to John IV’s reform of the coinage system. The most valuable coin was the hyperpyron, on which the value of all lower coins were based. It had originally been invented by Alexios Komnenos (1081-1118) with 20.5 karats of gold, roughly seven eighths the value of the old nomismata. It had been debased after that, but had been restored to its original value in 1287. Eighty four coins were equivalent to a pure one-pound bar of gold. The other gold coins in circulation were the gold semissis, worth one half of a hyperpyron, and the tesmissis, worth one fourth.

hyperpyron.jpg

A gold hyperpyron from the reign of Manuel II Laskaris, 1316-1324​

There were two types of silver coins, the miliaresion, worth one tenth of hyperpyron, and the stavraton, worth one twentieth. Both the gold and silver coins were regularly used as international currency. Foreign coins containing precious metals could be used in Roman markets, but for matters of convenience foreign merchants preferred to exchange their ducats or florins, for example, for Roman currency.

The copper follis was the regular currency used by the majority of the population. One hundred folloi were equivalent to one hyperpyron. One follis was about the cost of a one pound loaf of bread. There was also a sefollis, worth one half of a follis, and a tesfollis, worth one quarter.

The copper coins were used purely for internal commercial transactions. Since foreign copper coins were not acceptable for such arrangements, foreigners were at a disadvantage participating in local trade. At the various established mints, foreigners could exchange their coins for copper Roman currency, but could only do so by exchanging legal international tender, gold or silver currency. Thus by needing to purchase everyday supplies foreign merchants contributed to the Empire’s bullion supplies. Also there was a five percent value tax levied on coin exchanges conducted at the mints, a tax specifically aimed at foreigners since Roman merchants operating abroad were still able to use their own precious Roman currency.

There were several mints scattered across the Empire in order to facilitate an adequate supply of currency. This was not done to facilitate commerce but to ensure that the government had adequate cash on hand to fulfill its financial obligations. There were three types of mints. Level One mints were authorized to produce all types of Roman currency. Level Two mints could only manufacture silver and copper coins. Level Three mints, by far the most common, could only make copper coins, but also functioned as monetary exchange centers. The other two types also did that as well, but not as often. When a money exchange was made at one of the Level Threes that required Roman silver or gold coins, they were drawn from on-site stockpiles. Foreign silver or gold coins gained in these transactions were transferred to higher level mints to be melted down into Roman coinage.

The Roman mints in 1400 were (listed in order of size):

Level One mints: Constantinople and Antioch (the latter regularly functioned as a money exchange site due to its prominence in east-west trade)

Level Two mints: Thessalonica, Nicaea, Smyrna

Level Three mints: Bari, Trebizond, Dyrrachium, Attaleia, Athens, Lemesos (Limassol), Monemvasia

The main reason that gold and silver coins were not used in everyday transactions, besides the fact that all but the stavraton were inappropriately valuable, was that taxes could only be paid in gold or silver. While this meant that there was a constant flow of precious metals to Constantinople, there was also a constant flow out to the provinces as bureaucrats and soldiers were also only paid in silver and gold.

At each of the mints, plus at exchange stations in Ancyra, Iconium, Sinope, Adana, Larissa, and Mystras, individuals could exchange their copper coins for silver or gold currency, but they were required to pay a ten percent exchange fee if they did so. The folloi were used by the government to help pay government contractors and to distribute as a sign of largesse. Individuals could also exchange precious coins for folloi without having to pay any fee. This enabled the central government to easily recoup its supply of precious currency, as soldiers exchanged their hyperpyra for the folloi they used in the markets.

The most important tax for the Roman treasury was the land tax levied every year. It was paid by every landowner, great or small, and was assessed on the size and quality of each estate. Every five years a land survey was taken across the Empire, grading each estate and determining its tax quota for the coming tax cycle. The only exception to this were tagma soldiers, who were exempted from the land tax as they had received their land grants from the state.

One of the reasons that the Laskarid economy was so strong was that taxes were just as vigorously enforced on the rich as they were on the poor. While wealthy landowners could potentially afford small private armies, they could not gain access to the high quality equipment supplied to Imperial troops through the warehouse system, and their retainers could not match the discipline of tagma troops either. To avoid aristocrats trying to intimidate tax collectors with their retainers, during his collection round the collector was authorized to order any soldiers, including a tagma strategos, to assist him in forcing compliance. So that the troops would be willing to aid him, for salary purposes this counted as active duty. Also Theodoros II, who hated the nobility, made a ruling in 1262 that if a noble were to attack or to hire or arrange someone else to attack a tax collector, it would be considered an act of high treason.

Another important tax was the head tax, which was levied on every household in the Empire, including the soldiers, and was gathered at the same time as the land tax. It was based on how many individuals were in each household, with variations based on the age and gender of the people in question. Thus a family with infants would have to pay less than one with children who were old enough to help in the family occupation. To ease the workload of the bureaucracy the census was conducted at the same time as the land survey.

For tax gathering purposes, the main administrative unit was the province, of which there were forty, four in each of the nine themes plus four in the non-theme territories. Each province was divided into ten sub-provinces, which were divided into ten districts. Tax collection was based in each district, then pooled and moved up the chain. Themes were not involved in the tax gathering process, but since province boundaries did not cut across the borders of themes, it proved to be quite easy for the claimants in the War of the Five Emperors to redirect the tax flow from Constantinople to their thematic capitals.

In towns and cities, tax gathering was somewhat more complicated. Every property owner had to pay a property tax, similar to the land tax, which were assessed in the land survey and based on the economic value of the buildings, whether they be houses, workshops, warehouses etc. If they were commercial buildings like a butcher shop or smithy, the assessments were based on the estimated annual income of the owner, taking into account the market prices of the product and the expected clientele. For example, a butcher who specialized in providing fish and poultry for poor artisans would be charged less than another butcher on the other side of town who regularly supplied veal for wealthy merchants. Non-commercial buildings such as houses were taxed based on how much they would fetch on the open market at the time of the survey. If individuals possessed properties both in the town and in the country, they were required to pay taxes on both.

Duties from trade and manufacturing made up a respectable minority of Imperial revenues. However those duties were only imposed on products that passed between themes or the national borders. Intra-theme trade, which mainly consisted of low-value high-bulk goods was not regulated or taxed. The expansion of the bureaucracy necessary to survey such commerce would likely cost more than the revenue gained. This had the incidental effect of encouraging more commerce. Small short-range merchants were able to establish businesses without being stifled by duties and were able to easily expand and soon began trading across themes, by which point they were able to survive the tolls.

The Plethon merchant family, one of the richest in the Empire in 1400, had started out by transporting low-quality Corinthian silks in small cargo haulers to the villages dotting the Corinthian gulf in the 1320s. Their profit margin was decent as they only had to pay property taxes on the warehouses and the ship tax, levied on all ship owners (excluding fishing boats used for that purpose) and based on the size of the ship, but no customs duties. Eventually they were able to expand their outreach, eventually monopolizing the transport of Corinthian silks to the Syrian theme, the source of their economic power. In his account of Konstantinos XI’s reign, John Pachymeres remarked that the Plethons’ taxes paid for the Constantinople archontate.

To improve the efficiency of tax gathering and reduce opportunities for embezzlements, there were few fees demanded beyond those of the regular taxes and customs duties. The main exceptions were that towns had to pay for a market license which had to be renewed every tax cycle, merchants had to pay a stall tax to establish a booth at a fair, and there was a fee required to construct mosques, although not churches. An inheritance tax was also required, but only on inheritances that were worth more than forty hyperpyra.


1) Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State and Society, OTL Chios in 1329 had an annual revenue of 120,000 hyperpyra.


The Battle of Cappadocian Caesarea

July 16, 1403, a few miles east of Cappadocian Caesarea

He sneezed. “Ah, dang it,” he muttered and tossed the mucus covered cloth to the side. It landed in a plain clay pot sitting on the brown carpet overlaying the reddish-brown ground. Picking up another, he dabbed it into the water filled clay bowl sitting on the rough wooden stand next to his cot, and gently patted the three inch scar trying to circle around his left thigh. Footsteps crunched outside the tent, causing a couple of small pebbles to bounce inside. The flap swung outward. “Hello, uncle,” Demetrios Komnenos said, not looking up.

George Komnenos, the second most powerful man in the Roman Empire, chuckled. “How did you know it was me?” he said in his bass voice while scratching the tip of his long nose.

Demetrios shrugged. “I just knew.”

George stared at him for a moment. “I sound heavier than all of your lieutenants, don’t I?”

Demetrios nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Your eyes say otherwise.” George’s eyes glanced down to Demetrios’ leg. “How is it?” he asked, gesturing toward the long red line, crisscrossed with black silk stitches. He’d gotten it three days earlier, a glancing blow from a Chagatai horse archer, in a minor skirmish.

“Oh, it’s fine. It just needs to be washed and the dressing changed every day.”

“Why don’t you have the physician do it?”

“I can do this by himself and he’s busy attending to the men.”

George nodded. “Anyway, the main reason I came is that you’re to report to the Emperor’s tent at noon; there’s to be a council meeting.”

“I will be there.”

“Good.” George turned and started to walk out, pausing at the tent entrance. “Oh, and I wanted to give you this.” He walked over as Demetrios sat up, pulling out a dirk clad in a black leather scabbard. “I know in your sword work you like to get in close because of your reach disadvantage.” Demetrios was only 5 foot, 2 inches tall. Demetrios reached out to take the dirk, his hand suddenly clasped by George’s, the pale skin of his uncle contrasting with his brown complexion, a legacy of his Turkish father. “Be careful, Demetrios. I promised your mother I would look after you.” He let go, leaving the dirk in his nephew’s hand.

“Don’t worry, uncle. You have not made that promise in vain.”

George, now at the tent entrance, nodded. “When you’re done here, see to your men. If God wills, battle will commence tomorrow and this barbarian will be finished by sunset.” On that note, he turned and left.

Demetrios finished dressing his wound and walked outside, his eyes squinting in the glare of the Anatolian sun. He looked up; there wasn’t a cloud to be see. Despite the heat, water had not been a problem. To the north the Halys meandered westward, drifting toward the city of Caesarea fifteen miles to the southwest.

However that was the Timurid water supply. The warlord was encamped eastward, south of the river just like the Romans, but upstream. George had therefore ordered that the Halys was not to be used for drinking or bathing, but merely to wash equipment; it was certain the Timurids were using it as a latrine. The Romans were using local wells and streams which were adequate provided the Romans did not remain for much longer.

However that meant that the Romans had to give battle soon, rather than continuing the skirmishing. If they didn’t crush the Timurids and gain access to fresh water by next week, the Roman host would have to pull back, leaving Caesarea exposed. Horrified by the massacre of Sebastea, the Emperor Theodoros was determined that another Roman city would not be so threatened.

Demetrios reached his horse tethered next to his tent under a canopy, scratching the equine’s nose gently. The mottled brown horse snorted. Demetrios continued scratching, sensing the presence of the man who silently glided up behind him. In his mind’s eye he saw the man’s right hand reach down, pulling his sword from his scabbard, shifting it up to point directly between his shoulder blades. The sword point was getting closer, closer, just about to touch Demetrios’ linen shirt.

He moved. Demetrios’ own sword flashed out of his scabbard into his right hand, parrying the man’s blade to Demetrios’ right, away from the horse. He stepped in as he parried, his new dirk snaking out in his left hand, driving toward his opponent’s unprotected ribcage. He stopped two inches short.

His eyes darted up to see the bearded grizzled face of his tutor, Michael of Abydos. There was no fear in his eyes. “Well, done, my lord.” Demetrios pulled his dirk back, allowing Michael to sheath his sword. Demetrios sheathed his. “Good, you play to your strengths. Remember what I always say?”

Demetrios nodded. “Brute force is the mark of a brute. Use speed instead, like the arrow.” He glanced away from the tall, burly Michael, who had just turned forty four; it was part of his teaching strategy to attack him at random intervals. As he spoke, he started untying the rope securing the horse.

Michael had been his tutor in the art of war since Demetrios was fourteen, teaching him all that he knew of fighting. Demetrios saw the small scar on Michael’s forehead; that was a year old wound, gained while attacking Timurid scouts south of Theodosiopolis.

“Oh, there’s no need. I watered him while you were tending to your leg.”

“Thanks. And how are you holding up?” He started walking south, towards the tents of his men. Michael, who was seven inches taller, easily caught up. “Well, all things considering.”

“And the men?”

“Morale is high, although that’ll change quickly when we run out of water. But until then, they’ve fought the enemy and they’re not afraid. Your uncle did well, making sure every unit got to fight at least one skirmish, so the men know what they’re facing.”

Several soldiers camped around a card game in the shade of a tent saw them approaching but Demetrios motioned them to stay where they were. He bent over their crouched backs. “So who’s winning?” He glanced to his left. “Ah, Ali, why am I not surprised?”

The Turk stared back. “Because all your money belong to us,” he replied in somewhat broken Greek.

Demetrios laughed. “Not likely.” He stood up. “Anyway, carry on. And make sure you get a full night’s rest.” He pointed at Ali, smiling. “And make sure he loses.” A chorus of enthusiastic “yes, my lord”s answered him. He started walking on.

July 17, 1403

Demetrios looked up. The sun glared back, unhindered by clouds. He glanced to his left. Sixty thousand Roman soldiers stood in full battle array, the sunlight glinting off the armored shells of the heavy cavalry and infantry. Behind the rows of skutatoi were the toxotai busy using their pavises as shade. Behind them were the melee cavalry, waiting to be committed to the battle. He couldn’t see the Emperor’s banner, but he knew it was directly behind the center of the line and that his uncle would be there as well. Any of Timur’s men trying to get to him would have to fight his way through the Opsician tagma and the Athanatoi. Meanwhile attendants scurried back and forth, making sure the men and horses were supplied with enough water.

The Roman army was in a north-south line, with the Halys river anchoring the left flank. The main concern, with Timur’s larger numbers, was the right flank, where he was stationed. To delay any outflanking maneuvers Demetrios had placed his tagma at a thirty degree angle to the rest of the Roman line, the southern end swinging westward, although his skirmishers were in a straight line, consistent with the light troops of the other tagmata.

His main concern was the potential gap that could arise between his men and the Chaldean tagma, commanded by a Turk named Iskander, stationed to his left. Currently he was atop his horse, directly behind the center of the Thracesian line. To the east the Timurid host sprawled like a black cloud steadily advancing from the horizon.

The Roman strategy for the battle was cautious, just like the campaign, but was calculated to exploit Timur’s aggressive tactics. The Romans would stand like a wall for Timur to beat his head against; once his strength had been whittled down sufficiently, even if that took a couple of days, only then would the Romans advance and flatten him with a combined kataphraktoi-skythikoi-skutatoi attack.

A horse snorted and Demetrios looked over to his left as his first and second tourmarches rode up. The commander of the first tourma was Michael of Abydos; the commander of the second was a stocky Vlach named Dragos cel Mare. Dragos squinted as light reflected off Demetrios’ plate cuirass, his twenty first birthday present from his uncle, and splashed into his eyes. “Are the kataphraktoi in position?” Demetrios asked.

“Yes, strategos,” Michael replied.

“Are they clear on their orders?”

“Nothing gets through the line,” Dragos rumbled. “Not even the devil himself.”

“Good. And the scouts?”

“Timur’s moving up his whole force. He can’t let us sidle up to his camp unchallenged without losing face in front of the tribal chiefs. Also there’re reports of rumors in Timur’s camp that the Osmanlis are on the move again.”

“Which means, if they’re true, that he wants this over with as much as we do.” Demetrios flicked the reins, starting to ride down the small hillock on which he had been standing, the two officers following.

There was silence for the thirty seconds it took for them to reach the main line of the Thracesian tagma. He motioned for his trumpeter to join him and then gestured toward the horizon, where thick clouds of dust were spewing upwards. He could see the swirling clouds of Timurid skirmishers, already trading bolts with the forward Turkopouloi, and behind them the massed ranks of Timur’s host.

“Gentlemen, get to your tourma. Order the great crossbows to hold their bolts; I don’t want their ammunition wasted on skirmishers. And remember, nothing gets through that line. And Dragos, tell Droungarios Muzalon that if I find any of his koursores in front of my battle line without my express order, I will have his head. Is that clear?”

They both answered in the affirmative and rode off, Demetrios focusing his attention in front of him. The Turkopouloi were falling back, shooting in Parthian fashion at their pursuing enemy counterparts. They were almost upon the line of akritoi. Despite the openness of the terrain, the gathering dust clouds and their fixation on the Roman cavalry meant that the Timurid horse archers did not spot the crouched figures of the light infantry…until it was too late. Javelins flew, stabbing into the hearts of the horses. The riders did not long outlive their mounts; those were not crushed by the weight of their mounts were decapitated by the arm of an akritos.

The surviving skirmishers fell back, sped on their way by a flight of arrows streaking out the toxotai. They soon came back, swirling close enough to loose a few arrows and then retreat out of range, the turkopouloi and akritoi shooting back. Units running low on ammunition would peel back to the main line and rearm, then return to the fight. Meanwhile the toxotai drungi lashed out at any Timurid soldiers foolish enough to enter their range. As far as Demetrios could tell, the skirmishing was going on all along the Roman line while Timurid foot archers marched forward to help support the screen.

Except for the extreme right. None of the Thracesians had been engaged except for the skirmishers and the men on the far left, where the tagma joined the Chaldeans. A Turk galloped up, his mount spewing foam. “Strategos, there’s an enemy contingent, seven thousand strong, attempting to outflank the right. They’re using the dust clouds to shield their movements. But they’re headed straight for the skutatoi on the far right!” If the Roman army had been in a continuous straight line, they would suddenly have appeared behind the Roman lines. But Timur did not know that the Roman flank was bent; the disposition of the Thracesian screen was consistent with that of the other light troops.

“Courier!” Demetrios barked, turning to look at a boy, no more than fifteen, mounted on a tall mare. “Go to Strategos Iskander. Tell him I need two kataphraktoi and two skythikoi drungi now, assembled with the Thracesian Tenth tourma. Go.” As commander of the flank tagma, he had seniority over any tagma commander stationed to the right of the emperor. He turned back to look at the Turk. “Composition?”

“Two thousand heavy cavalry, Persian lancers most likely.” The great cities of eastern and central Persia were the source of most of Timur’s heavily armored troops due to their wealth, but many of them were recent additions to Timur’s domain, which meant that their troop contingents were not necessarily the most zealous. “And five thousand infantry, all heavy. Armored in lamellar. No sign of archers, horse or foot.”

“No, there wouldn’t. Timur needs them making as much noise as possible in front.” Foot archers from both sides were now engaged in a missile duel, the black sheets blocking out the sun. The great crossbows began to loose. “Courier!” he barked at another boy. “I want the heavy cavalry and koursores drungi of the Fourth through Tenth tourma assembled at the far right of the line now.”


* * *


Arman muttered to himself as he trudged along, his boots swaddled in cloth to silence his footsteps, along with the footsteps of the thousands of soldiers next to him. Here he was, thousands of miles from his home in Herat and he was certain they were lost, wandering around in the dust clouds that clogged the air between the two armies, as well as his nostrils. A small voice in his head reminded him that that dust was also shielding him from Roman arrows. He could hear the screams of dying men and horses to the north, skewered by the ferocious missile volleys that steadily swept out from the Roman lines, a broom sweeping away the lives of men.

Swearing under his breath and wishing that he was back home with his wife and five year old son, he looked to his left; he was on the flank. The more valuable heavy cavalry were in the rear, but the lack of any screen was making him nervous. Due to the fierce resistance of the Roman light troops and the heavy casualties inflicted on their Timurid equivalents, the warlord was unwilling to divert skirmishers to cover the flanking attack lest by doing so and slackening the pressure on the Roman front, he alerted the Romans to the presence of that attack.

An arrow bounced off his helmet. Arman squinted; he could see the shadows of four light Roman horse, who spat out a couple of arrows and scurried off, leaving a high pitched wail of pain in the Timurid ranks. They kept marching on.

He could hear them whistling, falling amongst the men in front. Many clunked off armor, but the sickening sounds of arrows smacking into flesh and the shrieks of men suddenly screaming for their mothers showed that many had struck their mark. Where were the arrows coming from? A light breeze was blowing, tossing the dust clouds to the side, allowing him to make out the outlines of hundreds of infantrymen, standing directly in front of them. What?! We’re supposed to be behind…we’re lost and ran directly into the whole freaking Roman army!

The Roman infantry began steadily and uniformly banging their spears against their shields, the crashing sound rolling over the Timurid formation. It was positively eerie, that sound. The Roman soldiers did not yell, did not chant, but continued the pounding. It was not the sound of an army of men, but the sound of a force of nature.

The man in front of him collapsed, an arrow skewering his neck from left to right. The dust cloud to the left vomited out five hundred more. More men shrieked and screamed, the line wavering as men collapsed and men panicked as more arrows slammed into the ranks from the infantry in front and more from the cloud on the left.

There was a sound of thunder coming from the cloud as well, the sound of many very heavy things hitting the ground over and over again. The cloud roared “St. Theodoros!” One thousand Roman horse exploded out of nowhere. The Timurid lines shattered. Arman dodged the lance of a kataphraktoi, his sword skittering harmlessly off the armor. He turned, seeing a less armored horseman raising his mace. Darkness.


* * *


Demetrios bit off a piece of bread, looking up as Michael of Abydos approached. Behind him servants scurried from the camp, carrying bread soaked in chicken broth, cheese and watered wine for the soldiers. While there was a letup in the attack, the men were to eat; there hadn’t been any opportunity for a lunch break. Other servants carried less tasty items, replacement arrows and javelins for the toxotai and akritoi.

After using the Turkopouloi as spotters for the toxotai,the kataphraktoi charge had completely shattered the Timurid flanking force, running down over three thousand men and scattering the remainder. Since then there had been no more attempted flanking maneuvers but repeated probes against the Chaldean and left Thracesian tagma, backed up by occasional assaults concentrated on the meeting point between the two tagmata. In the last attack, five hundred Timurid infantry had managed to punch through, only to be flattened by Michael’s and Dragos’ kataphraktoi.

“The men are holding up well; they’re tired but I doubt the Timurids will try that spot again. They’ve lost at least fifteen hundred trying.”

“And the Chaldeans? I’ve heard that their center is being hit hard.”

“It is, but it’s holding. Melissenos…” That was the commander of the Anatolic tagma, stationed to the left of the Chaldeans. “…loaned Iskander his reserves and half his koursores.”

Demetrios bolted up onto his feet. “What, why doesn’t he need them?”

“He’s barely been attacked. Just a few probes his screen easily fended off. He’s close to the center; Timur is concentrating on the wings.”

Causing reserves to be pulled from the center to the wings, Demetrios thought. But he allows his targets to grow stronger while over a third of his army has yet to engage at all. Unless… “Courier! I want a report on the Opsicians and the Athanatoi now!” The startled boy stared at him for a moment. “Move! Or you’re out with the screen!” The boy scampered up onto his horse and galloped northwards.

Michael stared at him. “What’s wrong, my lord?”

“Probably nothing. But I want to be sure just in case.”

The boy was gone for over two hours, by which time the sun was getting close to setting; the battle had been going on for nearly all day, but ever since Demetrios had sent the boy, attacks on the right had dwindled down to almost nothing. And there was no news from the center. Dust clouds churned up by the wind had reduced visibility to less than a half mile. There was the steady sound of a continuous skirmish where the Chaldeans were stationed, but he could hear nothing from the center.

“Strategos! Strategos!” the boy yelled, his voice cracking. His mount was panting foam, her sides heaving in and out, struggling to draw breath.

“Well, speak up!” Demetrios demanded, nudging his horse with his left knee to get him to trot over to where the boy had stopped.

“Strategos, they’ve broken through.”

Demetrios’ heart stopped. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Massive Timurid assault, over thirty thousand. Punched through the Opsicians and enveloped the Athanatoi. The Emperor is completely surrounded, but he’s still fighting.”

Michael galloped up. “Michael, good. I want all tourmai prepared to abandon their positions and swing northeast; we need to relieve the center now.”

“I heard the news already from a scout. I must recommend against this action.”

“This is no place and time to argue. Boy, go.”

“Wait!” Michael bellowed, grabbing Demetrios’ reins. The boy stopped, glancing nervously between the two men.

“What are you doing, tourmarches?”

“Talking sense into you. The center is broken and Timur is hitting the left wing on two sides; it won’t last long. And Timur still has fifteen thousand men not in action. If you swing the right wing in to help the center, he’ll throw those reserves in to pin you from behind, then once he’s smashed the left he’ll turn around and crush you. We could lose the whole army, not just the center.”

“What do you suggest then?” he snarled.

“Retreat. Order the Chaldeans and the Anatolics to fall back as well. That way some will be saved.”

“Three of seven, that’s hardly worth anything.”

“It’s better than zero of seven.”

“I will not abandon the emperor. It is my duty…”

“Your duty is to the empire,” Michael hissed. “If you try to save the emperor, you will fail and likely lose the empire as well. Do you want history to remember you as the man who brought down a thousand year empire, the man who brought down Rome?”

Two seconds. “Damn you,” Demetrios snarled. “Damn you for being right.” He sighed. “It’ll be night soon. We can fall back then; it’ll be hard on the men, but we have no choice.” Michael nodded. “Spread the word, but keep the men from panicking,” Demetrios continued.

“Yes, strategos.” Michael rode off. Demetrios glared at the boy, still gaping at him. He closed his mouth and scurried off.

Demetrios was alone, looking off to the distance. Rhomanion has lasted for a thousand years, he thought. But I swear, on my father’s grave, on my mother’s grave,…on my uncle’s grave, that it shall not die on my watch. This I do swear. Behind him the bottom of the sun caressed the earth, bathing the horizon in crimson light.
 
Part 2

The War of the Five Emperors

1403-1414

"And thus the great warlord departed the land of the Romans. Yet the evil he brought with him did not depart with him, for he was but the first horseman of the apocalypse."-excerpt from John Pachymeres, The Histories


1403 continued: The Battle of Cappadocian Caesarea is a crushing defeat for the Roman army with the loss of over twenty seven thousand men. On the left wing, Nicholas Laskaris, a cousin of the emperor and commander of the Optimates tagmata, is able, barely, to keep the left wing intact despite grievous losses until nightfall, when it is able to retreat, much to the joyful surprise of the strategoi of the right wing. It is a very near thing. If Timur had had even one more hour of daylight or if the Athanatoi had not tied down so many of his troops, he would have wiped out the left wing. Due to heavy losses amongst his skirmishers during the morning actions, Timur is unable to pursue.

Timur’s losses are also rather high, about twenty thousand. Despite his failure to annihilate either of the Roman wings, he crippled the Opsician tagma, which suffered over sixty percent losses. His attack on the center was conducted by his fresh heavy troops on a line lacking significant reserves to plug the breaches, allowing him to punch through and envelope the Athanatoi, who were annihilated before nightfall but only after exacting a gruesome toll on their assailants. The Opsicians that were not surrounded along with the Emperor’s guard followed their training, joining up with the nearest intact tagma.

According to Pachymeres, a Timurid soldier approached the Emperor Theodoros III Laskaris at dusk, by which time nearly all of the Athanatoi had been killed, and said, “Come. My lord Timur summons you.” The Emperor replied, “Only God can summon me,” and ran the soldier through with his kontos, then charged into the mass of Timurid soldiery to be cut down a moment later.

George Komnenos, on the other hand, is captured alive and brought after dark to Timur’s tent just as he loses a game of chess to his son Pir Mohammed. Timur decides to keep him alive as a prisoner, carting him off to Samarkand in a cage. George Komnenos dies in 1406, although whether he killed himself or was strangled to death on the order of Timur is unknown.

800pxchlebowskibajazytw.jpg

The painting The Lord of Asia and his captive, George Komnenos by Ludovico Buvalelli, 1489. George is painted as a Turk due to a phrase uttered by the famous theologian and writer William of Steyn, a personal friend of Ludovico, who said in 1487 that the Roman people were "half-greek, half-turk, combining the worst aspects of both races."​

After the battle Timur marches on to Cappadocian Caesarea, the battered and demoralized Roman tagmata wisely staying out of his way, where the inhabitants pay him 400,000 hyperpyra for him to spare the city. Meanwhile the Roman army is forced to scatter due to lack of supplies. After they do so, flying columns split off from Timur’s force, extracting payments from many of the cities of central Anatolia, with Iconium and Ancyra paying the most. One column marches as far west as Chonae, getting over 200,000 hyperpyra in payment, but is destroyed by Demetrios and the Thracesian tagma on its way back from Caesarea.

After that Timur’s army turns east, marching out of Anatolia, leaving a garrison in Theodosiopolis but at no points further west. Since the Empire can still draw on European reserves which are completely intact, he does not believe he can hold any points deeper into Anatolia. Anyway Timur has accomplished his main objective, to punish the Romans for the breaking of the treaty, and has also acquired a significant amount of spoils despite the loss of the Chonae column. His main force however never marches west of Caesarea as a situation is developing in Mesopotamia.

That situation is Mehmed the Conqueror, who has finally begun his counteroffensive. Since the Battle of Baghdad he has steadily gathered together an army, supplementing his Turkish troops with Arabs from Al-Hasa and Oman, and even some contingents of Indian mercenaries. When he launches his attack in June 1403, his army is fifty five thousand strong, although its quality is not as good compared to the army he had at the Battle of Baghdad. He recaptures Baghdad ten days after the battle of Cappadocian Caesarea.

Timur’s response is somewhat delayed while he gathers reinforcements in Armenia, even hiring two thousand Georgians as mercenaries. In September he is attacked by an assassin who wounds his left leg, giving Timur a limp for the rest of his life, but fails to kill him. The assassin is dispatched by one of the Georgian mercenaries and in gratitude Timur swears never to invade his homeland. The assassin was in the employ of Mehmed.

The two meet in battle again at Tikrit on December 1. The Indian mercenaries defect at the beginning of the battle and Mehmed is utterly defeated as well as captured. Infuriated at the attempted assassination, Timur orders Mehmed and all of the Turkish commanders of units over the size of 200 to be impaled. The Arab leaders are spared. When Mehmed’s son and heir Osman II in Basra hears the news he says “I swear, on my father’s butchered body, that I, or my descendants, will one day stand in the ruins of Samarkand and spit on the grave of Timur.”

For the moment though he is forced to shelve that oath. Osman II offers to rule the southern third of Mesopotamia (Timur retook Baghdad without a fight on December 12) as a vassal of Timur and provide yearly tribute and a contingent to serve in Timur’s army. Having been gone from Samarkand for over a decade, Timur accepts and returns home.

Timur’s departure to Central Asia is met with great sadness in Catholic Europe. To the Catholics, Timur is viewed as the great king Prester John, marching out to crush Islam and liberate the Holy Land, an impression that is supported by Timur’s drive on Jerusalem. But according to Catholics, the great king is forced to retreat thanks to Greek treachery, for which they are punished at Cappadocian Caesarea. But still not chastised, those Greeks then attempt to assassinate the great king but fail thanks to the intervention of an angel. Yet the great king, disillusioned by the actions of the Greeks against him, decides to return home. However the story ends with his promise to return someday and finish the task he left unfinished, the salvation of Jerusalem. But this he will not do until the Greeks are destroyed, a task he leaves to the “pure and noble hearted Christians of the west, a people that will do great and glorious deeds once they complete this holy task”.

Meanwhile the situation in the Empire is confused at best. After the battle and Timur’s retreat, what is left of the various tagmata return to their home districts. Despite the loss of the Emperor and George Komnenos, only one tagma strategos perished at Cappadocian Caesarea, the strategos John Kantakuzenos, commander of the Opsician tagma. Nicholas Laskaris assumes control of what is left of the force.

Theodoros III’s successor is his only child, his son John V, but he is only eight months old. John’s mother, Maria of Barcelona, a sister of the king of Aragon-Sicily Jaime V, assumes control of the regency. However as a Catholic and foreigner she is very unpopular, which is not helped by her friendliness with the Venetian bailo, which earns her the ire of the Imperial sailors and marines.

Nicholas Laskaris, who can trace his descent back to Theodoros the Great, claims that the throne rightfully belongs to him in early September. Both of his tagmata, the Optimates and the Opsician join his cause, along with their associated themes. While he has control of two of the richest districts in the Empire, he has no fleet and one of his two tagmata is at less than half strength. To bolster his position, he is crowned Emperor of Nicaea on October 1. He also uses the tax gathering system already in place in the provinces to continue paying his troops without relying on the central bureaucracy (each theme is designed to be able to pay its tagma with its own resources, although the money goes from the provinces, is pooled in Constantinople, then redistributed back to the provinces), even giving them their biannual equipment bonus on time.

Maria, aware that she is unpopular amongst both her troops and sailors, decides she needs another support. Aragon-Sicily is too far away to be of use and is too distracted by the Marinids anyway. So she takes the commander of the Thracian tagma, Basil Palaeologus, as her lover despite the fact that he is fifty six and she is twenty one. She also turns to the Venetians, signing a treaty with the bailo in November. In the treaty the Venetians agree to patrol the Aegean and Marmara and protect Maria against any attacker to the best of their ability. In exchange Venice is no longer required to pay rent for Crete, is ceded the islands of Euboea, Kythera, Andros, Lemnos, and Imbros, and only has to pay a measly one percent import/export duty. The only thing she does not give the Venetians is an abrogation of the treaty of Dyrrachium.

Whatever support Maria has amongst the Roman population in Constantinople vanishes as soon as news of the treaty hits the streets. Even her supporters in court complain that she did not have to give the Venetians so much. A rioting mob besieges the Blachernae palace and has to be dispersed by the troops of the Constantinople archontate. In December Thomas Laskaris, commander of the Macedonian tagma, and his brother Basil, governor of Apulia, revolt against Constantinople. They both can trace their descent back to John IV Laskaris.

Thomas has his sights set on the throne and mirroring Nicholas has himself crowned Emperor of Macedonia and Hellas in Larissa. His brother, less ambitious and with less troops and further from the capital, merely declares himself King of Apulia and attempts to set up an independent state.

1404: The independence of Apulia is short lived for in February a Neapolitan army appears at the gates of Bari. With only the Bari archontate and a few poorly trained levies at his command, Basil capitulates after a siege of a day. Apulia becomes a vassal of Naples, paying fifty percent of its annual income and obligated to provide a contingent of 800 troops for the Neapolitan army on command. If on active duty, the Apulian contingent is paid by Basil for the first ninety days, after which the King of Naples is responsible for their pay.

There are a few desultory skirmishes between the Thracian and Macedonian tagmata near Thessaloniki, which is under Maria’s control, but since each side only controls one tagma, they are reluctant to risk serious losses. Anatolia is also quiet. Meanwhile Thomas begins to make preparations for the creation of more tagmata in his realm, confiscating the estates of Maria’s supporters to help provide land grants. Maria attempts to do the same, but is met by riots across her domains. To bolster her troop count, she begins recruiting Latin mercenaries. At the beginning she is able to pay for them using her own resources, but due to her drastically decreased tax revenue she is soon forced to turn to Venetian loans.

Technically, she still controls five of the seven Asian themes, but she is afraid to order the strategoi to attack Nicholas for fear that they will join him instead. What actually happens is almost as bad for Maria. In March, Manuel Doukas, commander of the Coloneia tagma, with the support of the Chaldean and Syrian tagmata, is proclaimed Emperor of Trebizond. While he has the most troops, he has the least legitimacy. His popularity amongst the frontier troops is due to his vigorous and victorious raids conducted against the garrison troops of Timurid Armenia. However he does not push to re-conquer the region for fear of drawing the warlord back from Samarkand.

Three weeks later Demetrios Komnenos also revolts, declaring himself Emperor of Smyrna and claiming the throne due to his Komnenid blood and his Laskarid wife Zoe, who would have been Empress if John V had not been born. He is supported by the Anatolic tagma, which he immediately uses to annex the Kibyrrhaeots, the recruiting ground for most of the Imperial fleet and where the sailors have their families and estates. He is rewarded by the defection of three quarters of the Imperial fleet, which he uses to take Rhodes and Cyprus.

Some encourage him to march on Constantinople, but to have even a small chance of success he would have to take his whole army. That would leave his territories defenseless and allow Manuel or Nicholas to seize them, which means if he failed at Constantinople, a likely possibility since his non-frontier themes lack siege artillery, he could lose his bid for the throne.

For three months after Demetrios begins his revolt, there is silence across the Empire, the calm before the storm. In July, simultaneous border skirmishes between the Optimates and Chaldeans and between the Thracians and Macedonians cause the cold civil war to turn into a hot war. Essentially there are two civil wars ongoing. The one in Europe is between Thomas Laskaris and Maria with her Venetian allies. The Anatolian civil war is much more confusing as it is a three way struggle between the Laskarid, the Komnenid, and the Doukid. Since the initial battles are between the Laskarid and the Doukid, Demetrios uses the reprieve to have his fleet seize Samos, Chios, and Lesbos.

Off Lesbos, the sixty ships of the Smyrnan fleet are attacked by a Venetian squadron thirty four vessels strong, who swoop in to engage before realizing how outnumbered they are. The Smyrnan victory is total, with the Venetians losing eleven ships, eight of them captured, while sinking only one Greek galley. Two weeks later a truce is signed between Demetrios and Venice, whereby Demetrios agrees to stay out of Europe and Venice agrees to stay out of Asia. While both sides know that it will not last, for now it suits both of them.

Maria is irate over the treaty, which was made without her approval, but her position is untenable without the Venetian fleet. She controls Corinth and Thessalonica, but Thomas controls everything in between. The Peloponnesus, although part of the Macedonian theme, is governed by Manuel Angelos, whose family lives in Constantinople. Because of that plus the fact that none of the tagma troops have estates in his province, he remains loyal to Maria. Thomas had made an effort to seize the region, but demonstrations by the Thracian tagma along the Vardar coupled with the expedited dispatch of a Latin mercenary garrison to Corinth had stopped the attempt. But her divided realm is kept together only with Venetian sea power. Genoa, while extremely disturbed by this whole affair, is unable to stop the Venetians due to a war with Aragon-Sicily over control of Corsica.

Nicholas, who is short on land due to the small size of his themes, but not so short on money, creates a new unit of Athanatoi to replace the old one lost at Cappadocian Caesarea. Like the pre-Caesarea version this unit of full time professional soldiers paid entirely in cash, when it is finally completed in early 1405, numbers two thousand strong.

Meanwhile in all the Asian themes, the usual replacement procedures are in effect to rebuild the battered tagmata. Sons of soldiers are confirmed in their possession of their father’s lands, rights, and responsibilities. This is preferable as the heirs, expecting an inheritance eventually, usually have at least some military training. If suitable family heirs are not available, regular farmers are often transplanted to vacant estates and converted into tagma troops. Obviously these recruits have little to no experience when it comes to the art of war.

To the north, King Andrew III Arpad of Hungary invades the Duchy of Austria, enraged at Duke Otto IV Wittelsbach of Bavaria’s ‘usurpation of his rightful title of Holy Roman Emperor’. Unfortunately for Andrew, only the elector of Saxony supports him. Otto IV likens himself to Emperor Otto I, once again defending ‘the lands of the German people against the Magyar menace’.

civilwarmap.jpg

In terms of territorial losses, the war with Timur did not do much damage to the Roman Empire. Although he had the opportunity to do so after Caesarea, Timur did not try to incorporate Anatolia into his domain. He had already conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria within the last decade and had yet to fully establish his authority in all but the first by 1403.​

There was also the fact that the Romans could draw upon the undamaged European tagmata. After Caesarea, Timur’s army was down to sixty five thousand effectives while the Romans were at forty five thousand. However if the European tagmata joined with the Army of Asia, the Romans would match Timur numerically. Being faced with another bloody battle like Caesarea was not something that appealed to Timur, which would have been guaranteed if he had tried a serious conquest of Anatolia.​

The main damage of Timur’s invasion was caused by the civil war that followed shortly afterwards. By mid 1404 all of the players had declared their ambitions and while fighting had started, territories had not changed hands except for several islands in the Aegean. Unless otherwise indicated, all Aegean islands are under Maria’s control.​

Here is a breakdown of the forces available to each of the contenders (does not include naval units), who are listed in order of greatest to least legitimacy.

Empress Maria: 11,400 soldiers-Thracian tagma, Constantinople archontate, and two banda. This figure does not include assorted mercenary contingents. While she, or more specifically her son John, is the rightful ruler of the Empire and controls Constantinople, she is extremely unpopular amongst her soldiers and subjects. Due to this she has extreme difficult in expanding her native Roman forces and is forced to rely on Venetian aid and Latin mercenaries, which further damage her popularity.

Thomas Laskaris, Emperor of Macedonia and Hellas: 10,200 soldiers-Macedonian tagma, one banda. His main advantage is that his lands are capable of supporting many more soldiers, unlike the Asian claimants whose provinces are already close to their carrying capacity in terms of expanding the tagma-theme system. He is also the only claimant who doesn’t need a fleet to attack Constantinople. However his domain is the most exposed to attacks from the west.

Nicholas Laskaris, Emperor of Nicaea: 14,000 soldiers-under strength Optimates and Opsician tagmata. He controls two of the wealthiest provinces in the Empire but lacks a fleet and his two tagmata were both seriously damaged at Caesarea. Also his territories are small and lack defensive depth, making him vulnerable to swift attacks.

Demetrios Komnenos, Emperor of Smyrna: 16,000 soldiers-under strength Thracesian and Anatolic tagmata. While Thracesia is just as rich as Nicholas’ themes, the Anatolic theme is the poorest in the Empire. He has the most territory of any of the claimants, but the bulk of that is taken up by the Anatolic theme. He also has the most powerful fleet of any of the claimants, and his tagmata took the least casualties of any tagma at Caesarea.

Manuel Doukas, Emperor of Trebizond: 23,000 soldiers-under strength Chaldean, Coloneian, and Syrian tagmata, Antioch archontate, and eight banda. He has absolutely no blood claim at all to the throne while even Demetrios can claim one through his Laskarid wife. However he controls the most troops of all the contenders as well as the cities of Trebizond and Antioch, both rich ports that serve as western termini for the Silk Road. Still, he is the furthest from Constantinople and on the eastern frontier, where a low-scale border war is in effect with Timurid Armenia.

1405: In Europe, the civil war is a stalemate as troops march and counter-march all over the border region between the Macedonian and Thracian themes, the goal being possession of the city of Thessalonica. Thomas Laskaris uses his horse archers to great effect, luring Maria’s Latin mercenaries into repeated ambushes where they are annihilated. Meanwhile behind the front he is busily creating tagmata for Epirus and Hellas.

The Hellas theme is somewhat of an oddity, as the plans for its creation were contingent on control of the Peloponnesus. For now he establishes land grants for as much of the tagma as possible, roughly forty percent of the soldiers, while promising land to the remainder when the peninsula is taken. Meanwhile he does not push the offensive, not wanting to risk his single tagma now before he can reinforce it. While the Thracian tagma may not care for Maria, it is willing to fight for its homes. He is also hampered in his war effort by a series of small Serbian raids across the border.

Bulgaria invades Maria’s piece of the Empire in April. With all her forces to the west fighting Thomas, she begs Venice to dispatch galleys to the Danube and pillage Bulgaria. The Venetian response is dilatory until she offers free trade to the Venetians; they will not have to pay any customs duties of any kind. The Venetians accept, suddenly springing into action. Venetian squadrons sail up the Danube, pillaging and burning all of the countryside within ten miles of the river.

Clearly needing more troops, Maria also pawns the Crown of Thorns as collateral for a loan to purchase more mercenaries. With those new mercenaries, coupled with an independent Serbian invasion of Bulgaria which pushes the border to the Morava, she is able to convince the Bulgarians to withdraw, although both they and the Venetians are allowed to keep all of their loot. Meanwhile Demetrios’ spies in Constantinople inform him of the planned transfer of the Crown of Thorns to Venice. Recognizing the opportunity he violates his treaty with Venice and ambushes the convoy carrying the relic off the coast of Ikaria, capturing it and bringing it in triumph to Smyrna. While the war with Venice resumes after the battle, Demetrios rightfully considers it a win.

portraitpaulinebonapart.jpg

Portrait of the Regent Maria of Barcelona, painted in 1479. While this portrait was made well after her death, historians are fairly certain it is an accurate portrayal as it is claimed to be a copy of another portrait made in 1405 which no longer exists, although the second version did take advantage of improvements made in the art of painting over the course of the fifteenth century. At the time of the original portrait she was twenty three. The original was part of The History of the Roman Empire in Art, an exhibition sponsored by the Emperor in Constantinople in the late 1470s.

While she was extremely unpopular amongst her Greek subjects, she was said to be an extremely charming woman in person. She had a great deal of support in court, which was how she maintained her position as regent and control over the central bureaucracy. Unfortunately for her, her diplomatic skills did not extend beyond those individuals with whom she could interact on a personal level. Still her feminine charms proved to be very useful as they gave her the unquestioning loyalty of Basil Palaeologus, the commander of the Thracian tagma, without whose support she would never have survived the Patriarch Incident.



Meanwhile in Anatolia, Demetrios is forced to join the land war in May when the Syrian tagma invades the Anatolic theme. Thus far Manuel has been following an ‘aggressive defense’ strategy in regards to his western border. Sending out swarms of small raiding parties, these light columns harass enemy forces and keep them off balance so that they are unable to launch a concentrated offensive. That strategy is also useful as a preliminary stage to a general offensive conducted by the raiding side.

However Manuel’s younger son Michael favors more aggressive tactics. A brave man, he wages war with more enthusiasm than skill. His older brother George is not a soldier but a doctor, who in the 1390s went abroad and studied the medical techniques of both Muslim and Hospitaller healers. He is the archiatros ton tagma (translation: Chief Physician of the Division, the commander of the 500 doctors attached to a tagma as well as the personal physician of the strategos) of the Coloneia tagma and the personal physician of his father. While there are the inevitable charges of nepotism few believe that George’s ability is inadequate to his station.

It is Michael Doukas who convinces his father to unleash the Syrian tagma on Demetrios, breaking the unofficial truce between the two claimants. Demetrios orders John Melissenos, commander of the Anatolic tagma, to fight a holding action while he invades the Opsician theme with the Thracesian tagma. With only a few small garrisons in the region due to the Opsician tagma campaigning near Sinope, Demetrios is able to capture all of the theme west of Poemanenum, including that city as well as the theme’s capital of Abydos, but is unable to continue when he receives news that Melissenos has been defeated at Pracana.

After installing garrisons in his conquests, Demetrios rushes east and defeats the Syrian tagma near Iconium, driving it back across the border between the Anatolic and Syrian themes but does not pursue beyond that line. With Nicholas and Manuel fully engaged in Paphlagonia, Demetrios begins making preparation to expand the tagma-theme system in his territories. He does not feel it would be wise to engage in further offensives until he has enough troops to match Manuel.

Far to the north, a marriage alliance is negotiated between Mikhail, King of Novgorod, and Gvidas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, whereby the heirs of both, Boris and Ieva, are united in matrimony. Ieva converts to Orthodox Christianity before her marriage which takes place in Pskov on June 30. If Gvidas dies without a male heir, which is likely since he is sixty nine and in poor health, then the crowns of Novgorod and Lithuania will be combined in a dynastic union.

1406: The civil wars in Europe and Asia continue, although at the noise of a rumble and not a roar. Realizing that the conflict is going to last longer than expected, the various claimants intensify their efforts to expand the forces available to them. All of the rulers except Nicholas and Maria are able to expand the tagma-theme system, with Thomas being the most successful and creating two full tagmata.

The main reason for his success is that a disproportionate number of Maria’s supporters have a disproportionate amount of their estates in his territories. He also adds a new innovation to the system by substituting businesses in engage for land. For example, if a business such as a merchant firm, leather tanning shop, blacksmith forge etc., is capable of producing an annual revenue equal to that of a skutatos estate, then one of the owners is conscripted as a skutatos. He receives the pay and equipment bonuses of a regular soldier and is responsible for following all rules and regulations. Tax exemptions granted to the owner’s business are the equivalent of the land grants made to regular tagma troops.

However both Manuel and Demetrios lack the necessary estates to create a full tagma so they create a new kind of district, a cleisurae. The district are named after an adjunct to the old theme system to guard mountain passes established by Theophilos (r. 829-842), but the old and new types are quite dissimilar. A cleisurae is a mini-theme, supporting one tourma as opposed to the ten supported by a theme. Demetrios is able to create six, Manuel four. They also, like Nicholas, create full-time corps of Athanatoi personally attached to themselves, which are two thousand strong.

Nicholas, short on the land grants that make the tagma-theme system affordable, creates independent tourmai that are full time soldiers paid in cash, but he cannot fund more than three of these and his troop count thus falls short of his rivals. His lack of Turkopouloi is compensated by recruiting more light koursores to fill the light cavalry niche.

Maria is short on funds and lands and despised by her people, who consider her a traitor and a sellout to Venice. The Venetians not only push Greek merchants out of business but continually misbehave in Constantinople. When charges are pressed by Greeks against Venetians, the case is heard in Venetian courts which universally favor the Venetian claimant. As a result, she is only kept afloat by Venetian loans and Latin mercenaries, who are usually less trained and disciplined than Thomas’ tagmata, and also antagonize the populace as well by their bad behavior.

Due to the plague epidemics of 1347-1348, 1359-60, and 1370-1371, many estates across the Empire became vacant. However since the last outbreak happened over thirty years earlier, Rhomanion’s population is recovering, although it is still only about three quarters what it was in 1346. The empty lands coupled with the minor population growth is what allows the various claimants to successfully expand the tagma-theme system and their armies, although such measures severely weaken the economy.

1407: In March a Neapolitan fleet seizes Corfu. As Thomas has no fleet, the attack goes unchallenged. However a month later a Neapolitan army lands near Avlona and is almost immediately engaged by Thomas’ light troops. The Neapolitan main camp is moved several miles inland to act as a buffer for the troops besieging the Albanian port.

After two weeks, a fierce raid is launched on the Neapolitan camp by most of Thomas’ Turkopouloi but they quickly flee, the enraged Italians giving chase. They run into a swamp, where the heavily armored Neapolitans are ambushed by the Macedonian akritoi. In such an environment, the Neapolitans stand no chance and are annihilated, with no prisoners being taken. Meanwhile Thomas’ heavy troops overrun the lightly guarded Neapolitan camp.

Thomas then dresses up many of his men in Neapolitan equipment and marches to where the Italian fleet is berthed, keeping several soldiers who speak Italian in front. The sailors, expecting the soldiers to be returning for more supplies, welcome the troops on board so they can help with the offloading. Thanks to their complete surprise, the Macedonians capture over thirty Neapolitan galleys. After dispersing the troops besieging Avlona, Thomas uses his new fleet to take back Corfu; it had been in Neapolitan hands for forty nine days. Peace is soon made, restoring the status quo.

Maria attempts to exploit Thomas’ vulnerability, ordering the Thracian tagma to invade the Macedonian theme. However she is informed that due to ‘supply difficulties’ the tagma is unable to do so. In actuality, the troops refuse to march west of the Vardar in order to support the ‘mistress of the Venetians’.

A far more damaging incident occurs in November 1407. On the tenth Maria asks the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anthony IV, to excommunicate her political enemies. Anthony remarks that it is rather odd for a Catholic monarch to ask an Orthodox cleric for spiritual assistance, but that if she were to convert to Orthodoxy he might reconsider. Maria flat out refuses, proclaiming ‘As long as I shall live, I shall never abandon the see of St. Peter, the true rock of the church and all faithful Christians,’ and then storms out of the chamber. Unfortunately for her, the patriarch had a scribe hiding behind a curtain recording the whole conversation.

The transcript hits the streets of Constantinople the next day, enraging the local populace. A mob gathers outside of the Blachernae palace chanting ‘We are the faithful’. Maria orders them to disperse but they refuse to do so. By early afternoon she has run out of patience and orders the Constantinople archontate to disperse the crowd, by force if necessary. They refuse to move. By now exceedingly annoyed, she orders her Latin mercenaries to do the job instead. When the crowd sees the Latin soldiers advancing, they start to throw roof tiles, pots, any projectiles that are handy. The Latins charge in and start cutting the mob to pieces.

The soldiers of the Constantinople archontate are watching the whole affair. Seeing their neighbors attacked and killed, they charge in as well and start attacking the Latin mercenaries. A full scale battle erupts between the Latins and the Greeks. The archontate troops are heavily outnumbered but are supported by the populace. While most are useless in battle, the members of the leather tanners’ and butchers’ guilds prove to be quite helpful. Due to their occupation they are used to blood and guts and the tools of their trade are readily adaptable for war. Still even with their support, the archontate soldiers are forced to retreat back to their barracks. The akritoi contingents prove to be quite adept at street fighting, hiding in houses and then ambushing Latin soldiers.

With the archontate largely contained, mainly of the Latin troops seize the opportunity to start looting. Over two hundred of them break into the gold and silversmiths’ district and start pillaging the shops indiscriminately for over two hours before they are driven out by a contingent of butchers and blacksmiths, the latter swinging their hammers with such force as to crack plate armor. With the assault led by a dozen akritoi the Latins are forced to pull back. While the shops were their main targets, at least three small churches were also sacked.

Maria, alarmed at the deteriorating situation, informs her troops that if any of her soldiers are caught deliberately starting fires as a battle tactic, they are to be burnt alive. The last thing she needs is more comparisons to 1203-1204. Meanwhile several members of the archontate ride out to the nearby countryside where three tourmai of the Thracian tagma are conducting maneuvers, asking them to aid them in the fight against the Latins.

Basil Palaeologus is also there and on hearing the news rushes back to the city. By nightfall the archontate barracks is under siege by the Latin mercenaries, but the one attempted attack is beaten back when the archontate troops managed to maneuver one of the bombards from the adjacent Acropolis arsenal into position and fire it down the crowded street packed with Latin soldiers.

The next morning the Latins start making preparations to bring up trebuchets from the arsenal next to the Harbor of Eleutherius to bombard the barracks. At 8 AM, Basil, Anthony, and Maria arrive at the scene. Maria wisely remains silent while Anthony is able to talk the archontate troops down while Basil calms the Latins, although he has to promise that they will be allowed to keep all the loot they gained. Through their diplomatic skills, the incident is over by 9 AM with the Latins abandoning their artillery preparations. The affair, dubbed the Patriarch Incident for how it started, killed seventy archontate troops, three hundred Latin mercenaries, at least half of which were killed in that one bombard blast, and seventeen hundred Constantinople civilians. Fortunately for everyone involved, no serious fires were started.

Meanwhile in Anatolia Manuel continues to remain largely on the defensive in the west, but in Timurid Armenia, raid after raid sweep over the countryside. With the active support of the locals, Timurid contingents are only safe outside of fortified cities if they travel in columns one thousand strong or more. Anything smaller is always attacked and usually annihilated. Because of these raids, Manuel has the complete and utter support of the populace of the eastern themes. Concerned about the loyalty of the Anatolic troops, Demetrios assigns them to guard his Aegean coast against Venetian raids.

In 1407 both Mikhail, King of Novgorod, and Gvidas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, die within three months of each other. Novgorod and Lithuania are united under Boris Shuisky, who is formally proclaimed King of Novgorod-Lithuania in May. He promises to respect the rights and traditions of the Lithuanian aristocracy and people and Lithuania formally converts to Orthodox Christianity, although a sizeable portion of the population had already converted in the last several decades. He receives congratulations and gifts from Thomas Laskaris, Demetrios Komnenos, and Manuel Doukas.

1408: A combined Polish-Teutonic army invades Lithuania, determined to break the union. They are allowed to penetrate Lithuanian territory while Boris brings up Novgorodian units to bolster the Lithuanian army, then attacks them on July 23 near the town of Sejny. Attacking at first light he achieves absolute surprise and absolute victory. The Teutonic contingents suffer the most casualties and largely disintegrate in the ensuing rout.

Manuel Doukas’ territories are ravaged by the first recurrence of the Black Death in almost forty years. While his troops, living in well sanitized camps and provided with the best food available, suffer very little from the disease, the various towns in his domain are not so lucky. At least ten percent of the population of Antioch, Aleppo, and Edessa perish. Trebizond continues its trend of being fortunate in regard to the plague, only losing four percent, largely due to draconian quarantine measures.

Both Thomas Laskaris and Demetrios Komnenos launch their long awaited offensives in March. Thomas’ army takes Corinth after just two days, the local Greeks opening the gates and expelling the Latin garrison as soon as they get the chance. It takes less than two months for him to secure the whole of the Peloponnese due to the overwhelming support of the local populace. He attacked south first because he did not want a second front in his rear when he marches on Constantinople and because he is now finally able to establish land grants for the remainder of the Hellas theme. The Genoese of Modon and Coron also back him, providing him with intelligence on troop movements in the Morea.

In Opsicia at the battle of Cyzicus, Demetrios and his army of thirty thousand wins an overwhelming victory over Nicholas Laskaris and his force of twenty two thousand. Nicholas falls back to Nicaea, where he dies under mysterious circumstances on June 9. With their leader dead with no male heir (Nicholas had four daughters), Demetrios is able to convince his troops to join his cause after promising not to take away any of their positions or possessions. Their newfound loyalty is soon tested when Manuel invades Bithynia and tries to convince the Optimates tagma and the professional tourmai to defect to him, emphasizing the fact that he has been fighting Timurids while Demetrios has been fighting fellow Romans.

However Manuel’s main weakness, his utter lack of any blood claim to the throne, convinces the troops to side with Demetrios. Manuel is defeated at Klaudiopolis but his losses are not heavy and he retreats in good order. Deciding that he needs to do something drastic to gain the loyalty of the western troops, he launches a full scale invasion of Timurid Armenia. In September the Coloneia tagma seizes Theodosiopolis, slaughtering its Timurid garrison. Sometime during the siege the Black Death spills into Demetrios’ territories, again largely ignoring his troops in their encampments and striking the cities.

The Corsican war between Genoa and Aragon-Sicily ends in a draw with the signing of the treaty of Lucca on December 4. While Aragon-Sicily was the stronger state, its war effort was handicapped by the need to keep sizeable forces at home to forestall a Marinid attack. The main benefactor is the Duchy of Milan, which had two of its three north Italian rivals, Genoa and Venice, distracted by overseas affairs. Thus Milan has between 1404-1408 managed to annex Brescia, Mantua, Modena, and Montferrat, decisively defeating its Florentine rival at the Battle at Fornuovo in June 1408.

1409: The war in Anatolia is reduced to two claimants, Demetrios and Manuel. Demetrios controls more territory and the richest parts of Anatolia, but Manuel has control of Antioch and Trebizond, two of the termini for the Silk Road, so he gains vast amounts of revenue from customs duties. Both the Timurids and Manuel do their best to avoid harassing merchants as they both benefit from the tolls they can levy on the traders.

The Anatolian war in 1409 consists entirely of small-scale raids and skirmishes, with no battles numbering more than five hundred combatants total. Both sides, battered by the plague epidemic, spend the year rebuilding their strength. Demetrios controls four of the pre-Caesarea tagmata, the six cleisurai, a corps of Athanatoi that numbers five thousand (he combined his and Nicholas’ and then added one of the full-time tourmai), plus one full-time tourma, for a on-paper total of fifty two thousand troops, not including the fleet.

Manuel controls three pre-Caesarea tagmata, a corps of Athanatoi that by 1409 also numbers five thousand, the four cleisurai, the Antioch archontate, three full-time tourmai, and eight banda, although the later were hit hard by Timur’s invasion, for a total of over forty four thousand troops. Demetrios’ numerical advantage is not decisive as he is forced to station a significant number of soldiers along his western seaboard as Venetian squadrons periodically attempt to raid his shores.

Thomas Laskaris gains a significant victory when he captures Thessalonica in May, advancing his eastern border to the Strymon by July. The resistance of the Thracian tagma is reluctant at best. Before they had been willing to fight for their estates; now if they are threatened the soldiers prefer to defect. Thomas is only forced to stop there because he has to deal with a major Serbian raid, which he crushes and then advances into Serbia proper. He sacks Nis in September with the use of six cannons, giving Thomas a profound fondness for the weapons. He uses the spoils to help establish a full-time tourma, bringing his total to three ‘free’ tourmai. His corps of Athanatoi also numbers five thousand strong by this point. When those formations are combined with his three tagmata, he fields thirty eight thousand soldiers.

However due to the lack of men with the requisite training, post-Caesarea European formations have significantly weaker or nonexistent Skythikoi and Turkopouloi contingents compared to pre-Caesarea units or post-Caesarea Anatolian units. The resulting holes are filled up by increased numbers of other troop types, so the post-Caesarea formations are still numerically equal.

However post-Caesarea formations in both Europe and Asia are not as well trained and disciplined as the pre-Caesarea units. The former do not have the regular tagma and tourma reviews to keep them in shape. While the battlefield does give them experience, she also has the annoying habit of killing her students. The repeated skirmishes are used by the various claimants as opportunities to train their soldiers in lieu of the reviews, while minimizing the risk of killing the trainees in the process.

Meanwhile Manuel continues driving deeper into Armenia. Here on the periphery of his empire, Timur’s authority has never been very strong and his subjects never very loyal. The small and scattered Timurid garrison forces, battered by years of Manuel’s raids, are unable to put much resistance. In July Manuel symbolically washes his sword in Lake Van, having regained the territories lost by the Empire to the Ottomans in the 1380s. At Mount Ararat on August 2 he destroys the last effective Timurid force in Armenia. Throughout all this there have been a series of raids between Timurid and Roman Syria, but no major offensives. Manuel is focused on Armenia and Anatolia, while the governors of Timurid Syria are wary of launching an invasion as it would leave them open to a Mameluke attack.

In Europe, Thomas signs a treaty with Genoa in December, whereby he promises to expel the Venetians from the Empire in exchange for Genoese naval support in doing so. All along the coast of Greece, ships are constructed as Thomas begins assembling his own fleet to bolster his captured Neapolitan flotilla. When Maria catches word of this, she decides to launch a preemptive strike. However instead of using the Venetian squadrons she decides to use her remaining Greek vessels in order to show that she still thinks of the Greeks. The sailors are not impressed and when they arrive off the coast of Thessaly they unanimously defect to Thomas. Maria now has no navy whatsoever except for what the Venetians provide.

Also in December Thomas makes contact with Demetrios. While they both want to become Emperor, they equally don’t want the Venetians to rule the Empire, which will happen if Maria remains in charge. Her only form of support that is still native to the Empire is the Thracian tagma, which is loyal only because its commander Basil Palaeologus is Maria’s lover. On December 30, he is found dead in his winter home in Constantinople, his throat slit.

1410: The new commander of the Thracian tagma is Michael Sphrantzes, a happily married man with three children. Maria’s advances are met with contempt but he does not betray her while Thomas begins his invasion of Thrace at the same time as the Genoese armada enters the Aegean. Off Monemvasia the Genoese and Venetian fleets clash, the former supported by fifteen galleys from Thomas’ new fleet. The battle lasts all afternoon, ending in a Genoese victory although the Venetians suffer fewer losses.

Thomas’ forces face little resistance and are joyfully welcomed by the Thracians. On April 1 he is challenged by the assembled might of Maria west of Adrianople; at the heart of her army is the Thracian tagma. In the morning the heart defects to Thomas, a feat that Thomas had been planning for four months. With that defection, the demoralized foreign mercenaries, about sixteen thousand strong, are easily destroyed in an hour long battle. Over ten thousand are taken captive, but since they are mercenaries there is no foreign government willing to ransom them while Maria’s time is just about up. The officers are all executed with the rank and file kept alive only to be sold to Sarai as slaves two months later.

On April 20, Thomas’ army, including the Thracian tagma, invest Constantinople. The Genoese-Thomasine fleet is too large for the Venetian squadrons stationed there, who remain berthed in the Golden Horn. The siege lasts only three days before some of the garrison open the gates and let Thomas in. He can afford to be generous. The Venetians are allowed to leave with their families and with whatever possessions they can fit on their ships, although all their remaining property is forfeit.

The Genoese receive Galata as a trading quarter but only after Thomas demolishes the fortifications. While they do not have to pay rent for their new quarter, Thomas makes it clear that they still have to pay a two percent custom duties, pay rent for Modon and Coron, and that cases between a Greek and a Genoese will be tried in a Greek court (cases between two Genoese are tried in Genoese courts).

John V Laskaris, now almost eight years old, is tonsured, castrated, and sent to a monastery in southern Epirus. Thomas has no desire to kill the boy and figures that keeping the real one alive will help prevent any pretenders from arising. Lady Maria of Barcelona, former Empress of the Romans, is treated with all the respect due to her rank and is returned to her brother King Jaime V. With her Thomas sends a treaty reducing the custom duties for Catalan merchants from the usual ten percent to eight percent. The reduction only applies so long as Maria does not attempt to return. The gesture, while making sure that the Catalan merchants will likely oppose any attempt by Maria to regain her title, is largely token since Catalan merchants rarely operate east of Messina. Thomas drops his former imperial title but waits to be crowned Emperor of the Romans until June 3, the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to Nicene forces in 1272.

Both Demetrios and Manuel declare Thomas an usurper but they are more concentrated on fighting each other. Demetrios, with his back free after the Venetian expulsion, launches an invasion of Cilicia but faces fierce resistance from the local Armenians, who are fanatically devoted to Manuel who is half Armenian from his mother. As a result progress is torturously slow.

Novgorod-Lithuania’s war with the Teutons and Poles ends with the Treaty of Riga in November. Poland, whose forces are still largely intact, merely cedes a few minor border fortresses to Lithuania. However the Teutonic Order, despised by all the peoples of Novgorod-Lithuania and without any field army worth mentioning, is not so lucky. Memel and Dunaburg are ceded to Lithuania, while Novgorod acquires Estonia as well as Ludsen and Dorpat.

The Sultanate of Adal, recently established in 1399, launches an invasion of Ethiopia under the command of the charismatic Imam Ali ibn Iskander al-Ghazi. Born in 1379 in Agra, part of the Delhi sultanate, as the second son of Turkish immigrants, his mother was killed in 1386 when the Hindu Bihari sacked the city. A fervent supporter of the jihad, he leaves the Delhi sultanate in disgust in 1405 after the overwhelming Vijayanagara victory over a Delhian army at the Battle of Ujjain. He makes his way to Adal, where his military skills quickly become apparent.

At Shimbra Kure, al-Ghazi defeats an Ethiopian army that outnumbers his 3 to 2, but suffers heavy casualties. Still the victory encourages him and his men, although some are disheartened by the last words of the captured Ethiopian general Mikael of Dessie, who says that they have brought the wrath of Allah down upon the Dar al-Islam for attacking a state that sheltered Islam in its infancy.

In Samarkand the seventy two year old Timur has been busy consolidating his control over Persia and Central Asia, which is why he has paid little attention to his distant and comparatively unimportant western provinces. He has also been occupied in launching raids against the Delhi Sultanate on his southeastern border as well as preparing for an invasion of China. But the fall of an entire province is a provocation he cannot afford to ignore. The past several months he has spent gradually disentangling himself from the Indian and Chinese theaters. In October both Demetrios and Manuel hear the news through their spy networks: He is coming.

1411: In January Demetrios and Manuel meet at the old battlefield of Cappadocian Caesarea, at which they had both served. They are both accompanied by their Athanatoi contingents and their ‘home’ tagmata, the Thracesian for Demetrios and the Coloneian for Manuel. Combat operations between the two had ceased as soon as they heard the news about Timur’s advance, with the conference arranged via emissaries who met at Zephyrium in Cilicia in late November.

Both have grave concerns, besides the obvious. With the news of Timur’s approach becoming common knowledge in Anatolia, Demetrios is growing increasingly unsure of the loyalty of his troops, particularly the Anatolic tagma, who are favoring Manuel, the one claimant who has actively been opposing the warlord’s forces. Demetrios himself is also eager to strike a blow against Timur, the murderer of his uncle and the closest thing he had to a father.

Meanwhile Manuel, who turned fifty nine last December, is growing increasingly weary of fighting. And even if he does become Emperor of the Romans, he is worried about the succession. His healer son George has absolutely no desire to become Emperor, while he feels that his other son Michael lacks the requisite patience and wisdom to make a good ruler. He has also been growing increasingly estranged with Michael since the failed invasion of the Anatolic theme in 1405. Michael had attributed his lack of success to the supposed cowardice of his soldiers, rather than his utter failure to conduct a proper reconnaissance. Also Manuel knows that in Timur’s present mood, the suffering that he will inflict on the people of eastern Anatolia will be absolutely terrible.

Thus both are adamant that Timur cannot be allowed to enter Anatolia again. As a result, over a period of twelve days, the two claimants come to a comprehensive agreement designed to present an united Roman Anatolian front to Timur. Manuel agrees to recognize Demetrios as rightful ruler of the Romans with the succession to pass down his line, but Manuel is recognized as co-emperor. Also Demetrios’ son Theodoros, almost three years old, is betrothed to Manuel’s granddaughter Helena and the daughter of his son George. She is almost two. The wedding is to take place once Helena turns fifteen. At the end of the summit, the two revive an old Roman tradition. Both are raised on their shields, Demetrios by Manuel’s men and Manuel by Demetrios’ and publicly proclaimed by both armies as Emperors of Smyrna and Trebizond.

George, with his father’s permission, becomes archiatros of Demetrios’ Athanatoi formation and Demetrios’ personal physician. The two men soon become good friends. However Michael Doukas is irate over the agreement as it ruins his chances of ever attaining the throne. With the specter of Timur looming over the Empire, he keeps him mouth shut for now.

Demetrios’ troops are overjoyed at the conference’s result. Their candidate is recognized as the senior emperor and they get to finally strike a blow against the Timurids instead of against fellow Romans. Manuel’s troops are not so enthused, but Manuel convinces them to accept the agreement, saying to them that ‘as Romans, our responsibility is not to any one man, but to the Empire itself.’

Manuel marches east after the conference, pouring supplies and men into Theodosiopolis while the fortifications are strengthened. Part of the improvements are four bombards forged in Smyrna, a gift from Demetrios. As soon as Timur’s host, ninety thousand strong, enters Roman Armenia in late February, it is immediately engaged by Manuel’s skirmishers. As they have had many years of practice in the art over the course of the Anatolian civil war, they are very successful with the akritoi proving to be extremely deadly in ambushing horse archers in the foothills.

Also since the conference an intense propaganda effort has been waged to convince the common people to accept the Caesarean agreement. Alongside Manuel’s appellation of ‘Guardian of the Empire’ is placed Demetrios’ conduct at the Battle of Caesarea, where his seventh of the Roman army was responsible for one fourth of the Timurid casualties. The argument of the heralds is that together the two emperors can defeat the great Timur himself and then rule far better than those mismanaging warmongering Laskarids. John Pachymeres, Demetrios’ court historian, publishes the first book of his history, covering the reign of Konstantinos XI Laskaris, where the role of George Komnenos in the wars of his reign is heavily minimized.

Meanwhile Timur had been counseled to invade Anatolia by way of Syria and Cilicia, avoiding mountainous Armenia where Roman infantry would have the advantage. However he rejected that advice. He is concerned that a Timurid army in Syria might provoke a Mameluke response; the Egyptians have been increasingly difficult in regards to the tribute payments required of them in the Treaty of Jerusalem. Also an advance through Syria would make it very easy for Osman II to cut Timur’s supply lines, while a direct assault on Armenia would not present the same vulnerability.

Timur is also eager to get the campaign over with as quickly as possible. His leg wound from the assassination attempt in 1403 has never fully healed, and his old age and the rigors of the march only aggravate the pain, as well as his health. Timur’s poor condition is why it took him almost five months to travel from Samarkand to Armenia.

The initial thrust into Armenia is not opposed except with skirmishers and scorched earth tactics. Manuel deliberately allows himself to be bottled up along with his heavy troops in Theodosiopolis, which is invested on March 28. Timur cannot allow such a powerful fortress to remain unconquered in his rear. Well fortified and supplied, Manuel repulses three furious attempts to storm the city with the bombards plus twenty five trebuchets proving very effective at smashing up the Timurid siege artillery. Meanwhile clouds of light Roman troops hang around the engagement, vigorously attacking foragers. On April 7 they even stage a small raid into one of the smaller Timurid camps, starting a fire which ends up killing over two hundred Timurid soldiers.

constantinexiiannisniko.jpg

Manuel Doukas, Guardian of the Empire, 1479. Painted showing the war leader, beloved amongst the people of eastern Anatolia, atop the ramparts of Theodosiopolis, one historical error is the color of his beard, which was completely white at the time.​

Since the Caesarea conference, Demetrios has been gathering his forces, setting up supply depots to the west of Theodosiopolis, and vigorously training his troops in how to counter Timur’s tactics. In May he begins maneuvering to cut off Timur’s supply lines. With foraging proving to be extremely difficult, the heavily guarded supply caravans coming from Persia are Timur’s only reliable source of provisions. With Demetrios maneuvering to intercept those caravans, along with the continual attacks of the light troops and Theodosiopolis’ defiant resistance, Timur is forced to abandon the siege on May 20.

His retreat allows Demetrios’ army to link up with Manuel’s troops. The supply depots stationed to the rear are what allows the combined Smyrnan-Trebizondian force of some seventy five thousand men to pursue Timur’s army without having to disperse and give Timur the opportunity to defeat them in detail. Since Demetrios is the senior Emperor, he is the commander of the combined army with Manuel as his second. Timur is unaccustomed to retreating in the face of the enemy so once his supply lines are secure on May 27 he turns and challenges the Anatolian army at a field infamous in Roman history: Manzikert.

With both armies well provisioned, neither side is willing to launch a major attack on the first day, which is spent entirely on skirmishing with honors about even. While the Roman light troops are experts at this business, their continuous campaigning for the last three months has taken a serious toll on their strength. They are not the only ones to have suffered serious loss. By this point Timur’s army is down to about eighty thousand effectives.

Since their primary objective is to keep Timur out of the Empire, Demetrios and Manuel resolve to fight defensively. So long as their army remains undefeated in the field, Anatolia is safe. Neither emperor is willing to gamble that in an attempt to take the battle to Timur’s larger army. However if the opportunity presents itself, that strategy may change.

On the second day, Timur attempts to break Demetrios’ left flank with a well coordinated combined infantry-cavalry attack. Due to his minute numerical superiority, the layout of the terrain, and his experience at Caesarea, Timur does not attempt an outright flanking maneuver, preferring a mass assault on the periphery in an attempt to shatter it and roll up the whole Roman line. Demonstrations by Timurid skirmishers are conducted along the rest of the line to prevent Roman reserves from being rushed to the left. The brunt of the attack is deliberately aimed at the Opsician tagma, which had suffered the most from Timur’s wrath at Caesarea.

The two armies grind against each other, soldiers smashing at each other from ramparts of their own dead. About an hour after the initial attack, a troop surge allows the Timurids to break through in three places. Prying at the gaps, pushing them back, hundreds, thousands of soldiers spill out behind the Roman lines, immediately turning to start the process of crumpling the Roman army. Cries of victory sound out from the Timurid ranks, making it only halfway out before choking on the sight before them.

A small stream of Roman soldiers, a thin silver line, stands in front of them, completely silent. One lone trumpet blast calls out; it is all these soldiers need. A shiver runs along the Roman reserve line as the lances of the kataphraktoi shift from the vertical to the horizontal and two thousand of the Empire’s finest, their armor ablaze in the light of the noontime sun, leap to the attack. The thunder of their charge roars across the battlefield, the hooves of their great war horses smashing at the earth, a steady drumbeat of death; their blinding specters is the last thing the Timurid vanguard sees.

Manuel leads the kataphraktoi charge on the largest Timurid breakthrough and is said to have personally killed Pir Mohammed, Timur’s favorite son. He had been leading the general assault and had gone to the front to embolden his men, causing them to make the breakthrough in the first place.

At the same time Demetrios personally rallies the soldiers of the main battle line, who gain inspiration when they see three arrows bounce off his plate cuirass, while Michael of Abydos leads acounterattack composed of both Demetrios’ and Manuel’s Athanatoi contingents. Due to the stalling of the initial advance, Timur had committed some of his reserves, reducing the threat to the rest of the Anatolian army and allowing the Emperors to draw on their main reserve. Michael’s thrust, with the sun at its back dazzling the eyes of the Timurid soldiery, savages the right flank of Timur’s assault, causing it to retreat. Once the attack has slackened the soldiers spontaneously begin cheering their Emperors. Both Demetrios and Manuel look on in joy; their two armies are becoming one.

Still Demetrios’ left wing is severely battered and he is forced to pull reserves from the center to secure it, making sure it is covered by a thick cloud of skirmishers. On May 29, Timur decides to copy his winning tactic at Caesarea and launch a mass assault on the weakened center. He is eager to get the battle over with as the pain from his leg has become so debilitating that he cannot mount a horse. Assembling his best armored Persian troops, both cavalry and infantry, the attack is launched at 9 AM.

25576506.jpg

A modern rendition of The Dragon and his Knights (for a video game called The Five Emperors) by Gottfried Liss, painted in 1499. While Latin-Roman relations in the fifteenth century were almost entirely bad, the exploits of Dragos cel Mare, particularly with Roman kataphraktoi, soon became famous in the west, where he was known simply as the Dragon.​


When Timur launches his attack, his best Khorasani infantry are in the vanguard swinging their four-flanged steel maces, specifically designed to smash apart opposing heavy infantry such as the skutatoi. With those deadly infantry supported by lancers, both mounted and dismounted, from Esfahan and Fars, who are just as well equipped as many of the kataphraktoi, the thin Roman line begins to crack. That it does not break is due to Demetrios’ personal intervention there rallying his men.

Meanwhile the mounted Persian lancers, organized into squadrons of twenty men, repeatedly charge the Roman lines. They focus on gaps in the skutatoi spear hedge ripped open by the Timurid heavy infantry, always making sure to disengage before they can be bogged down. To counter this threat, the akritoi are thrown into melee, their cleavers slashing at the unprotected hamstrings of the Persian horses. The screams of crippled horses echo across the field, along the cries of crippled men. While it does slow the Timurid advance, it is not enough to halt it.

Meanwhile the toxotai shower arrows onto the Timurid ranks, lofting them over the Roman line and darkening the sky with their sheets of missiles. Even with that support the Roman defenses begin to leak, with Timurid companies spilling out through the gaps. Every one that makes it through is immediately charged and flattened by reserve squadrons of kataphraktoi and heavy koursores.

In an effort to stiffen his lines, Demetrios orders one half of the kataphraktoi to dismount and support the infantry. While they are not used to fighting on their feet, the sudden influx of fresh, heavily armored, mace wielding soldiers is enough to stall the Timurid advance. Also the skythikoi advance to point blank range just behind the line, snapping volleys of composite arrows that slash through the air just a few feet above the heads of the Roman infantry, stabbing into the eyes of the Timurid soldiery.

Sensing that the attack’s momentum is failing, Timur throws in his reserves. With those engaged, not even the kataphraktoi can hold the line, and the center is slowly and stubbornly forced to bend backwards. More and more spills occur, the reserve cavalry squadrons barely able to keep up with the breakthroughs. Some of the Timurid soldiers begin to notice something odd further to the Roman rear, but do not live long enough to express their misgivings.

Out of the troops Demetrios had pulled from his center, only a quarter went to the left wing. The remainder went into a massive reserve. The Emperors had transferred men to the left, but most of them had been cooks, doctors, and baggage handlers dressed to look like real soldiers from a distance. The thick cloud of Turkopouloi around the left wing was to protect the subterfuge.

Manuel is in command of the extra-large Roman reserve and once the Timurid ones are irrevocably committed, he launches his attack. Slamming into the flanks of the Timurid assault, which had by that point created a large bulge in the Roman center, while some of the reserves reinforce Demetrios, the morale of the tired Timurid soldiers immediately starts to crack. After a short action where the Timurids are forced to defend themselves against attacks on three sides simultaneously, they begin to break. Manuel takes care to leave an escape route open so that the Timurids are not cornered but they are still slaughtered as they run the gauntlet.

Timur throws his skirmishers, all he has left, into the battle but they are lashed by concentrated missile volleys from the skythikoi and are forced to retreat. However one formation presses the attack too closely, allowing Dragos cel Mare to wheel around four kataphraktoi drungi and trap over eleven hundred Chagatai horse archers between them and the skythikoi. Only two hundred and seventy manage to make it out alive. By noon Timur has lost almost thirty thousand men.

At 2 PM the Anatolian army begins a general advance, sweeping aside the few light troops that attempt to oppose it. With the core of his army shattered and his elite troops annihilated, Timur has no choice but to sue for peace. At 3 PM Demetrios, Manuel, and Timur meet, although Timur has to be carried there in a litter. Since Demetrios and Manuel are eager to turn towards Constantinople, their terms are light. Timur must cede all claims to any territories lost to the Romans prior to his second invasion and swear never to attack the Empire again. He also has to make a lump payment equivalent to seventy thousand hyperpyra, but does not have to pay any ransoms for his prisoners, which are returned to him along with the body of Pir Mohammed. Timur has no Roman prisoners to return though; they had all been executed.

The total Anatolian casualties for the Battle of Manzikert comes to slightly more than twenty two thousand men. Timur loses forty one thousand. Bitter and dejected after his first defeat in over forty years, Timur withdraws from the Empire but only makes it as far as Ardabil in northwest Persia before he receives word that both the Mamelukes and Ottomans have launched general offensives into Syria and Mesopotamia respectively. There had been several Turkish and Syrian soldiers serving in Timur’s army that had deserted in the chaotic afternoon of May 29 and had galloped south, bringing news of the warlord’s great defeat. That both states are able to attack so quickly after his demise makes it clear that they had already been planning the operations for some time, likely since they learned of Timur’s second invasion of the Empire.

Despite the fact that his army is severely under-strength, Timur lurches his way south as far as Zanjan, where he is forced to stop when he catches a strong fever. Calling for his son Pir Mohammed, he dies on June 29. That son had been Timur’s preferred and most competent successor, which is why Timur had made sure he had stayed with the army, so that the soldiers would already be used to obeying him before the warlord died. Due to the short interval between the deaths of father and son, Timur was unable to make any arrangements for a new heir.

As a result, civil war breaks out between Timur’s remaining children and grandchildren, whose power bases are located in central Asia and eastern Persia. Elsewhere Timurid governors and local elites displaced by Timur attempt to establish their own states, viciously clashing with one another. The most prominent of these attempts is the mass revolt of the Jalayirids in Fars, Khuzestan, and Esfahan. Meanwhile the Mamelukes and Ottomans relentlessly drive north in an attempt to regain their lost territories. Osman II enters Baghdad in triumph two months after Timur’s death.

To the north, both Georgia and the Qara Koyunlu invade Azerbaijan, but soon start fighting each other instead. The reason why is that the Qara Koyunlu had controlled the region before Timur and seek to liberate and reunite with the conquered members of their confederation, while the Georgians are simply out for conquest. In the ensuing battles, Roman influence on the Georgian army quickly becomes apparent, particularly in the use of Georgian light infantry to counter the enemy’s light cavalry.

The Anatolian army returns to the west, but in late June Michael Doukas revolts, proclaiming himself as the rightful Roman Emperor. Setting himself up in Trebizond, he crowns himself Emperor of Trebizond. It is this last action that causes Manuel to explode with rage as it is a usurpation of part of his title. Unfortunately for Michael the main Anatolian force is firmly behind Demetrios and Manuel after Manzikert, so he only has the half-hearted support of one ‘free’ tourma and the Trebizond garrison.

On July 24, Trebizond is invested but the Anatolian army makes no attempt to storm the besiegers while the garrison makes no attempt at sallies. Manuel implores his son to see reason but Michael calls him ‘a spineless coward, who forsook his chance at the Imperial throne to play lieutenant to a man half his age.’ Manuel responds in kind, calling Michael ‘a bloodthirsty Latin, who delights only in slaughter and power.’

On August 20 Trebizond surrenders under a promise of amnesty, with Michael being delivered to the Emperors by his own courtiers. They both agree on what must be done. Michael is castrated, tonsured, and exiled to the new monastery of St. Theodoros Megas, founded on the site of the Battle of Manzikert. For the rest of the year, Demetrios and Manuel work to establish an administrative and military structure for the province of Armenia, transferring two cleisurai there from their estates in Anatolia.

Thomas is kept aware of the developments in Anatolia by his spies but is unable to intervene because he is occupied by a naval war with Venice. While still at war with Demetrios, the Venetians concentrate their efforts on Thomas, defeating a squadron of his off of Mount Athos and a Genoese fleet near Skyros. Thomas’ main disadvantage is his lack of trained, experienced sailors and marines since the bulk of the former imperial fleet is in Demetrios’ hands, who makes sure his fleet stays out of the way of the combatants.

In June another Genoese squadron is defeated at Amorgos, causing Thomas to decide that he needs to come to terms so he can intervene in Anatolia. First he succeeds in landing 3,000 troops on Imbros under the cover of night and then offers Venice terms. They will receive their old quarter back without having to pay any rent for it and will be allowed to keep their Aegean possessions, provided they pay a rent of 25,000 hyperpyra, resume payments of the rent for Crete (they are not required to make back payments) and Venetian merchants will have to pay a four percent customs duty.

Venice initially refuses the offers, but when Imbros falls and Thomas succeeds in landing a force on Lemnos after using his fleet to make a feint on Euboea, Venice accepts after managing to negotiate the Aegean rent down to 20,000 hyperpyra, figuring that with a foot in the door it can be widened later. The Venetians also do not want to give the Genoese time to secure a monopoly in the Black Sea trade. Genoa immediately protests to Thomas, stating truthfully that the agreement is in violation of their treaty. Thomas responds that if Genoa wanted to keep Venice out of the Aegean, perhaps they should have done a better job fighting them.

During the autumn, a famine sweeps across all the Empire, caused by a form of grain blight that damages the crop yield of harvests. Both Thomas and Demetrios make arrangements to ship grain from the Ukraine which is not affected, and form a gentlemen’s agreement not to attack the convoys, since neither want their future subjects to starve. Both scrupulously keep to the arrangement to avoid giving the other the major propaganda point of portraying their opponent as a ruler who would let their people starve for personal advantage.

Far to the south al-Ghazi attempts to break into the Ethiopian highlands but is bloodily repulsed at Antukyah. Another attempt at Wondo Genet also fails with heavy Adalese casualties. He attempts to encourage his men, but all they can think of is Mikael’s last words before being beheaded by al-Ghazi’s hand.

In central Europe the Hungarian-Bavarian war ends in a Hungarian defeat, although all Andrew loses is his pride and his claim to the Imperial title. Ironically, his attempt to seize said title solidified the Bavarian hold on it. In 1409, Otto IV was killed in the Battle of Klosterneuberg. The electors, determined to maintain a strong front against the Hungarians, immediately proclaimed Otto V of Bavaria Holy Roman Emperor. Also the dwindling state of Austria, devastated by the war, is pushed further into Bavaria’s orbit. However Hungary’s ally Saxony in the course of the war became the premier power in northern Germany, overrunning and annexing the Duchy of Brandenburg. Saxony’s retention of the duchy is a condition of the treaty of Salzburg that ends the war.

1412: Technically England and France have been at war since the late 1370s, although for most of that time it has been a sitting war interspersed by the occasional inconsequential skirmish. Neither side has been willing to make peace due to various grievances, but were equally unwilling to escalate the conflict due to parsimony on the part of the English and demoralization on the part of the French.

However the accession of Francis I to the throne of France in 1405 changed that. He was not willing to stand by while Edward VI, king of England, usurped his title and occasionally raided his land. So Francis escalated the conflict back to a hot war. Since then the English had been holding their own in Normandy, but have been losing ground in Aquitaine, with Toulouse falling in 1409 and the outskirts of Bordeaux frequently raided. With English Aquitaine reduced to a coastal strip, the French have decided to crush English Normandy, assembling a great host that challenges the English royal army, commanded by Edward himself near Alencon on June 5. The English army is outnumbered almost three to one.

Since the French have not fought a major field battle against an English army for almost fifty years, the French knights have largely forgotten the lessons of Calais and Toulouse. While the French host contains several crossbow regiments, the French do not bring them up but immediately charge the English lines, which have been given a makeshift fortification of a small earthen embankment and a row of stakes, both constructed during the night. Slowed by these obstacles, the French men-at-arms, both mounted and dismounted, are mowed down by longbowmen, but their heavy armor and sheer numbers make melee inevitable.

During the last charge, two French knights break through to attack Edward himself. He dodges the lance of the first, braining the knight with his mace as he charges past. The second is dispatched by his guards. During the charge the English archers run out of arrows and charge into melee swinging iron mallets. Exhausted by the stubborn resistance of the dismounted English knights, the French break and run.

Many of the French survivors stagger into the town of Alencon, but their morale and that of the locals is very low. Thus it only takes six days of barrages from English bombards, brought up from the recently finished English castle at Flers, to convince the town to surrender.

This battle galvanizes English support for the war. However the main effect occurs further east, in Burgundy. The duchy has over the last thirty years chafed under the rule of weak French kings and has been growing increasingly insubordinate. When Francis declares the absorption of Burgundy into the French crown in order to gain increased control over Burgundian manpower and resources to make up for the losses at Alencon, it is the last straw. Louis II, Duke of Burgundy, repudiates his ties of loyalty to the French crown, establishing Burgundy as an independent state. He reportedly uses the grant that was to give him some estates in Provence as compensation for loss of his ducal title as toilet paper. By December he formally enters the Ninety Years War as an English ally.

Naval battles begin occurring between Thomas’ and Demetrios’ fleets, with the Anatolian fleet consistently emerging victorious. Despite numerical parity, Thomas’ fleet still has the disadvantage of fewer trained sailors and marines. Demetrios steadily begins picking off Thomas’ Aegean islands, which transferred to his control after the fall of Constantinople, one by one. Demetrios deliberately advances slowly to ease the strain on ships and men.

Meanwhile Demetrios and Manuel continue to solidify their joint control of Anatolia, slowly rebuilding their armies in preparation for the final confrontation. Their main problem is lack of manpower. Many of the soldiers were new recruits who had joined in the last decade at a young age and had not raised a family yet because they were busy campaigning in the civil war. Thus there are not many military sons that can assume their fathers’ duties. To quickly fill the massive holes in their formations caused by the battle of Manzikert, the Emperors would have to take regular civilians and convert them into soldiers, but since civilians pay the land tax while tagma and cleisurai troops do not, that would damage their treasury. Manuel’s advice, which is the system that is followed, is to replenish the tagmata with military heirs as they become available, while relying on the fleet to forestall a Thomasine invasion.

1413: Thomas is desperate to invade Anatolia for he knows that with each passing month, his chances of conquering it grow smaller. Even with all of Europe, he cannot challenge an united Anatolia at full strength, but he can take on Anatolia in its post-Manzikert weakness. However he cannot invade until he has naval superiority over Demetrios’ fleet. But out of the six battles that take place in the Aegean between the two, Thomas has only won one. Starting in March Demetrios begins using his fleet more aggressively, gobbling up the Aegean islands under Thomas’ control at a faster rate and even sending raiding parties ashore in Greece. Thomas retaliates by sending raiding parties of his own onto Bithynian soil, where he attempts to stir up disloyalty amongst the troops stationed there. He is unsuccessful. Throughout it all, both sides scrupulously keep to their promise not to attack the continuing grain convoys.

The month of May is a tragic one for Thomas. On the 11th the Smyrnan fleet takes Tenedos, with which Demetrios is able to control all ship movement in and out of the Aegean end of the Hellespont. He receives the news three days before his third child and only son Andronikos, who is seventeen, dies of smallpox in Constantinople.

Frustrated and bitter, Thomas swallows his pride and makes a treaty with Venice. In exchange for the Serene Republic providing fifty galleys at their expense for the invasion of Anatolia, Venice is to receive rent-free quarters in Smyrna, Antioch, and Trebizond, its rent for the Aegean islands reduced to 16,000 hyperpyra, and its duties reduced back to two percent.

The treaty is extremely unpopular with Thomas’ troops and subjects, but he is still vastly more popular than Maria ever was, even after he establishes four cleisurai in the western reaches of the Thracian theme. Demetrios is outraged at the news of this, calling Thomas ‘a new Latin Emperor, a new lapdog of Venice,’ to his troops. Still Thomas has reason to be optimistic as the combined Venetian-Thomasine fleet defeats a Smyrnan flotilla off Tenedos and retakes the island in October. With that feat, the way is now clear for him to begin an invasion of Anatolia. He spends the winter relentlessly drilling his men, negotiating treaties with Serbia and Bulgaria to secure his rear, and gathering supplies, particularly powder and shot.

Also in order to compensate for his smaller armies, he has overseen a massive expansion of his artillery train, more than quadrupling the number of cannons amongst its ranks. The process had begun as soon as he took Constantinople. Ever since the siege of Nis Thomas has been most fond of the weapons, which allowed him to take the Serbian fortress in a mere twenty seven days.

Pride of place goes to two guns cast in Adrianople which hurl seven hundred pound cannonballs and two forged in Constantinople, whose shot weighs a quarter of a ton. The most common caliber are the twenty eight bombards which shoot missiles weighing a mere two hundred pounds. While their individual punch is much smaller than the great guns, they are much easier to move, fire faster, and are more accurate.

In October Thomas is visited by his oldest daughter Thamar Laskaris Visconti, Duchess of Milan, and his granddaughter Nicia, who is four. While there, Nicia asks her grandfather to show her ‘what emperors do’. So Thomas takes her with when he goes to review his troops, accompanied by a dekarchos named George, and also to the gun foundry where the second five hundred pounder bombard is almost finished. While at the foundry Thomas asks Nicia what the new gun should be named. She immediately blurts out ‘George’, and so the bombard is named.

131015141e00398.jpg

The bombard George

Meanwhile the Genoese, still trading out of Galata, decide to follow a policy of strict neutrality in regards to the Roman civil war. While the Venetians are gaining power by exploiting the situation, they are also accruing massive amounts of ill will from the Roman populace. The decision to stay neutral is based on the Commune’s desire to avoid having that ill will turned on them.

In the meantime the Mamelukes expel the last Timurid garrison from the territory they had ceded in the Treaty of Jerusalem. Many of the governors in the western regions of Timur’s empire had attempted to set up independent states in the wake of the warlord’s death rather than try to enter the war of succession. The slow speed of the Mameluke re-conquest is due to the fact that the state is still heavily battered from Timur’s invasion, both economically and militarily.

The Ottomans are in somewhat better shape as Osman II took Mosul in November 1412, shortly afterwards reestablishing a border with the Roman Empire on the shores of Lake Van. There are a few skirmishes between the two Muslim states in November and December, but since neither state can afford a large war, they agree to keep to the pre-Timur borders. The general exhaustion of his empire is also why Osman II does not attempt to intervene in the Timurid civil war. He knows that to fulfill his Samarkand pledge will take a long time and first the Turks need to rest and regain their strength.

1414: Novgorod-Lithuania decides to flex its muscles and invades the Grand Duchy of Pronsk, citing border raids and mistreatment of merchants as the reason. The heavily outnumbered Pronsky army is decisively beaten at Mozhaysk on May 27 and again at the small town of Moscow on June 23. The Duchy capitulates three weeks later with almost a quarter of its territory being annexed, split evenly between Novgorod and Lithuania. The former receives both battlefields and associated towns.

At the same time, the Mamelukes invade the Christian kingdom of Makuria, in response to raids on Egyptian caravans conducted by Bedouin tribes that the Makurians are supposed to block according to the bakt. The Makurians rage a fierce guerilla war against the Mameluke armies but are hampered by the large Muslim minority in their northern territories who aid Mameluke forces. Dongola falls in September and with it, the kingdom. The Mameluke border is eventually established at the sixth cataract of the Nile. Between that and Ethiopia lie a patchwork of puny states, a mix of Muslim, Christian, and pagan principalities.

Many of the Christian inhabitants flee southward to Ethiopia. With the continuing Adalese threat, the Ethiopian provincial aristocracy and Chewa (1) regiment commanders agree that a strong king is necessary and consent to the thirty two year old Yekuno Siyon taking the throne, although he only does so on condition that his eldest living son will succeed him on his death. The nobles agree, reasoning that they can ‘renegotiate’ in the future.

Yekuno’s first action as king is not martial but spiritual. He repeals the law that states that an abun, the titular head of the Ethiopian church appointed by the patriarch of Alexandria, is required to remain in Ethiopia after their appointment until their death. Because of this ruling, the Alexandrian patriarchs had often gotten rid of troublesome clerics by appointing them as abun. Yekuno aims to revitalize the Ethiopian church and use it as a vehicle to spread Ethiopian faith and culture to the numerous pagans and Muslims living in the kingdom and hopefully solidify the state.

He is aided in that goal by the continuing bloody war with Adal, as the threat of Muslim conquest galvanizes the Ethiopian clergy. Meanwhile al-Ghazi’s inferior numbers are beginning to take its toll on his cause, as numerous small engagements take place between Ethiopian and Adalese contingents. He wins every battle in which he commands, but the Adalese lost almost every battle where he doesn’t.

Still Ethiopian casualties are very high, particularly amongst the nobility. In his battles Yekuno uses his fast, light troops as a hammer, driving Adalese contingents into the anvil of his heavy troops, who are usually commanded by the provincial aristocrats. With provincial governorships and regiment command posts falling vacant, Yekuno is able to appoint commoners and personal friends to the positions.

The remaining nobility realize what Yekuno is doing, but the monarch’s popularity amongst the commoners and clergy who are finally safe from al-Ghazi’s raids, make them realize that any attempt at revolt during the war would almost certainly fail. Several actually defect to al-Ghazi, taking their feudal troop contingents with them in most cases. While it strengthens al-Ghazi’s forces considerably, it also helps to secure Yekuno’s position. Not only are more administrative posts available to which he can assign his own candidates, but he now has an excuse to keep a very close eye on the remaining nobility.

As blood continues to flow into the headwaters of the Nile, Thomas Laskaris launches his invasion of Anatolia. The Smyrnan fleet, battered and severely outnumbered by the combined Thomasine-Venetian flotilla, is unable to prevent a landing near Nicomedia on April 18. His army is fifty one thousand strong and is supported by an artillery train that is entirely composed of gunpowder weapons, sixty two guns strong. The Venetians are responsible for much of the naval blockade and for ferrying supplies from Europe. To secure his rear, Thomas also begins paying subsidies to the Bulgarians and Serbians, causing some of his European soldiery to mutter about ‘old Laskarid habits.’

edirnekusatmazonaro.jpg

The Emperor Thomas I Laskaris and His Army painted by Leonardo d'Saluzzo, 1486. Arguably his famous work, the portrayal of the Romans as Muslim Turks is due to the three years Leonardo spent in Aleppo as part of a trading expedition in 1454-1457. There he spent much time interacting both with Roman Turks and Ottoman Turks, seeing very little difference between the two. Also due to the several border crossings he undertook as part of trade negotiations with the Ottomans, he became very familiar with the Turkopouloi border guards, which only increased his tendency to view all Romans as Turks. The fact that he never went to any part of the Roman Empire other than the Syrian theme meant that his impression was never dispelled.​

While the painting of a large cannon is historically accurate for the depicted campaign, the large number of handguns used by infantry is not. Leonardo is guilty of equipping the Turks/Romans in a manner similar to a contemporary army of the 1480s. At the time of the painted events in 1414, handguns were still a primitive, primarily psychological, weapon. Only the forces of the Bernese League regularly used such devices.​

Nicomedia is well fortified and garrisoned, with six recently installed bombards supplementing the conventional defenses. Demetrios has his light troops continually harass the Thomasine army and with his far greater supply of Turkopouloi makes foraging a very dangerous business for Thomasine troops. As a result, the supplies ferried from Europe become the only dependable source for food and equipment replacements. Smyrnan squadrons repeatedly raid the supply convoys, avoiding direct confrontations with the main fleet.

The local farmers are also extremely hostile to Thomas’ troops, making sure to hide their food stores even when quartermasters offer to pay higher than the market price. Demetrios and Manuel had saved them from Timur; Thomas had not. Some of the European soldiers resort to forced requisitioning from the locals to bolster supplies, but before long Thomas outlaws the practice. Stealing food will not help him win the hearts and minds of the Anatolian people. The naval supply line will have to suffice.

Meanwhile the siege of Nicomedia drags on and on. Knowing that his manpower reserves are low, Thomas attempts to take the siege by bombardment or starvation, not by assault. Yet Thomas’ heavy guns can fire only a few times a day at most, allowing the defenders plenty of time to repair the damage. The main flaw in Thomas’ artillery train is a lack of light guns to sweep the breaches with shot and discourage repair attempts. Meanwhile the smaller guns of the garrison are able to keep up a steady counter-battery fire. By the time the siege enters its second month, seven guns, over ten percent of Thomas’ train, is out of action. One of those incapacitated guns is one of the seven hundred pounder bombards.

As the siege wears on with little end in sight, tensions between the Thomasines and the Venetians increase as the latter are often accused of hoarding the best provisions for themselves. Meanwhile the Venetians complain as Demetrios makes sure to concentrate his naval attacks on Venetian vessels. On May 22, a fight breaks out over a wager on a cock fight. Before long, Venetian sailors are pouring out of their ships as Thomasine troops spill out of their tents, grabbing their weapons and immediately leaping to the attack.

The akritoi are the first to attack, their cleavers lopping the limbs off of the lightly armored Venetian sailors. An attempted Venetian counterattack is flattened when the skutatoi march up, pushing the Venetians back to their ships. Once on board they savage the Roman infantry with ferocious missile volleys while units of toxotai form up along the shore and begin replying in kind. The only reason the commander of the nearest bombard battery does not start shelling the fleet is that his guns had just fired on Nicomedia’s walls and took too long to reload and reposition.

Order is restored after a hour, but the bad relations between the two allies are reduced to abysmal. Attempting to mirror a stunt that they had managed to pull off in 1148, the Venetians attack Thomas’ flagship (he is not aboard at the time) on May 24, endeavoring to commandeer it in response to their losses two days earlier. The assault is beaten off with support from the onshore artillery, one ball from a bombard ripping a Venetian galley in two, killing over half its crew. Thomas is able to patch up a working relationship with the Venetians by making a sizeable cash payment as compensation for damages gained in the May 22 attack.

In Nicaea, Demetrios is kept fully aware of these incidents by his scouts and spies. By the end of May Nicomedia’s supplies are running low and its walls are in poor shape, and he can wait no longer. Although he has a larger army than Thomas, Demetrios is forced to leave substantial forces in eastern Anatolia to guard the frontier. Bands of Ottoman Turks have been joining their ethnic and religious brothers, the Qara Koyunlu, in their fight against Georgia, and frequently the Anatolian frontier forces have to remind them exactly where the border is. This is particularly an issue in the new province of Armenia, ruled for twenty five years by the Ottomans prior to its conquest by Timur. Osman II has yet to abandon his claim to the region. Manuel is currently in Theodosiopolis coordinating the frontier defense.

On June 2, Demetrios’ main army arrives to contest Nicomedia; it is fifty three thousand strong. Skirmishers on both sides repeatedly harry the enemy forces. With his massive advantage in horse archers, Demetrios comes out the better. On June 4, his army marches out of camp just before dawn in full battle array, causing Thomas to march out as well. While Thomas’ troops are busy forming up, seven fire ships are launched against the Venetian fleet at anchor. Through expert seamanship the Venetians are able to fend off the attack with no losses but during the dawn confusion, one of Demetrios’ spies succeeds in killing Thomas while he attempts to organize support for the Venetians.

After the fire ships are destroyed, Thomas’ troops form back up into battle array, grateful that Demetrios failed to launch a simultaneous attack on the camp. They believe that it is because of the ten cannons that had been repositioned to guard the camp from such an attack. Then they realize their leader is dead. Consternation spreads through the ranks as the strategoi hurriedly confer. Thomas had no male heir after the death of his son, while his two daughters are married to the Duke of Milan and the voivode (governor) of Transylvania, a Hungarian vassal. Not wanting a foreign emperor, the strategoi decide to make one of their own the new emperor. Their choice falls on Michael Sphrantzes, who despite his recent addition to the Thomasine cause has quickly become very popular amongst the soldiers.

Michael however refuses the offer publicly in front of his troops. When asked why, he replies “As an emperor in this situation, I would be forced to work with them, and that I cannot countenance.” His outstretched arm points directly at the Venetian ships at anchor. To their right, the Imperial flagship is clearly in view. He then points over at Demetrios’ army and says “But with him as our lord, and a good lord he will be, we will have no need of Italian dogs in our Empire.”

With those words, he wins the support of the troops. The strategoi are more reluctant, but agree after deciding that a condition of their defection will be that they retain their current ranks and privileges. Michael leads the delegation that meets with Demetrios at 10 AM. Demetrios promises that no soldiers or officers in Thomas’ army will be punished in any way and will not be deprived of any of their current possessions, provided that they obey him as their new general and Emperor.

By noon, all of the European and Asian troops are aware of the agreement. There are many vacillators on the European side, until Demetrios issues his first order to the combined army. It is simple: “Kill the Venetians.” The Europeans are happy to comply. The Venetians, who have been watching the situation with increasing concern, immediately begin to weigh anchor, but do not count on the incredible speed of the Roman assault. The attack on May 22 had been bad enough, but that had been a haphazard affair, organized on the spot by the common soldiers. This time the assault groups are already fully formed and organized and led by their officers.

The Venetian sailors on the shore are ridden down by the European cavalry while the artillery is moved into position to start shelling the flotilla. Demetrios throws in his Asian troops to assist, but the European soldiers move too fast and thus do all the fighting. Most of the Venetian fleet is able to escape, but seven galleys are captured while docked, another three are sunk by artillery fire, and four more are captured or sunk by the combined Thomasine-Anatolian fleet.

Demetrios sends for his wife Zoe Laskaris and his son Theodoros, who are in Smyrna, and for Manuel Doukas. When they all arrive, they set sail for Europe; the gates of Constantinople are opened to them without contestation. The inhabitants of the Empire are weary of civil war and are willing to accept a strong leader that brings peace with him. Still in order to secure his position, Demetrios confirms his promises of immunity, extending them to the few thousand of Thomas’ troops that had remained in Europe. His governors and magistrates are also maintained, provided that they agree to serve Demetrios, Manuel and the Empire to the best of their ability. With such a generous offer, Thomas’ administrative staff make little fuss.

On July 1, the half-Turk, half-Greek Demetrios Komnenos is crowned Emperor of the Romans. With that, the Laskarid dynasty, which had ruled for two hundred and nine years (1205-1414), comes to an end. It had produced nine emperors and one empress, not including Maria. Alongside him his wife is crowned as empress and Manuel as co-emperor. On the 27th, Demetrios’ son Theodoros is also crowned on his sixth birthday as co-emperor, with special emphasis placed on his title as Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos. He is the second child of Demetrios and Zoe, with an eight year old sister named Anna.

Demetrios’ first official act as emperor is to cancel the subsidies to the Slavs, which the European population regard as an unwarranted humiliation. His second is to formally declare war on the Most Serene Republic of Venice. The Venetian quarter is confiscated, with the possessions and properties there auctioned off and the few remaining inhabitants ransomed. The proceeds are distributed to all the troops of the Empire as a ‘Venetian bonus.’

After eleven long years, the War of the Five Emperors is finally over. The united Empire under the new dynasty still faces many challenges but in the week long celebrations across the Empire that follow the coronation, all of that is forgotten. For now it is enough that the Empire is once again whole.
 
Part 3

The World Beyond Rhomania

1414-1421

"We are the true sons of Rome. We walk the streets of the Caesars; we speak their language, we rule their homeland. All that the Greeks can claim is a few bright minds in antiquity and a heritage as a race of Roman slaves."-Gherardino Bembo, artist and scholar in Florence, 1420​


1414 continued: There are two special visitors to Constantinople during the coronation, two monks from Ethiopia sent by Yekuno. Ethiopian contacts with the rest of Christendom had been intermittent at best since the fall of Acre, so Demetrios is very intrigued. They gain a personal audience with the new emperor and request that in the interests of aiding a fellow Christian nation, Demetrios sends some Roman artisans to Ethiopia in order to help improve their technological capabilities. Demetrios happily accepts and the monks return to Ethiopia with eight Roman artisans. In return Demetrios receives an ivory staff, with the top six inches overlain with gold leaf and adorned with a ruby the size of his thumb.

However his main concern is stabilizing the empire and winning the war with Venice. If every army unit from the civil war was at full strength, the Empire would have over hundred and fifty thousand men under arms, a number that cannot be sustained for long. He needs to decrease the cost of the army, but to do it in a way that doesn’t diminish his authority or release a bunch of armed brigands into the provinces.

His first step is to increase the interval between equipment bonuses from two to four years (the next bonus was due in 1415 under the old system). The soldiers immediately protest, forcing Demetrios to placate them by promising that the intervals will return to the usual two year cycle starting in 1421 and that there will be no more pay cuts.

Forced to rely on more subtle methods, Demetrios takes advantage of the fact that due to the civil war, many of the formations have holes. Two of the ‘free’ tourmai are converted into regular tagma troops by breaking them up and distributing the troops amongst the themes and cleisurai. However with the nine pre-Caesarea themes now numbering eleven plus fourteen cleisurai, Demetrios is out of the land grants that make the tagma-theme system affordable, and he has to somehow pay for a standing army of twenty three thousand men (the three Athanatoi corps, five thousand strong each, plus the Constantinople and Antioch archontates, one thousand strong each, and six ‘free’ tourmai, also one thousand strong each). Simply disbanding them is not an option, as they will almost certainly turn to brigandage.

The only possibility Demetrios sees available is that he must conquer more territory in order to make more themes so he has the room to convert his standing troops into tagma ones. He rejects Bulgaria or Serbia; he does not want an unruly Slavic population and it would be a blatant violation of the Treaty of Dyrrachium, which he had proclaimed to still be in effect before he stepped foot in Europe.

Despite the loss of their subsidies, both Slavic states have been quiet as neither is particularly willing to take on even a distracted but intact Roman Empire. Also since Serbia’s invasion of Bulgaria in 1405, the two Slavic states have been more intent on fighting each other rather than their neighbors. Since an incident between border patrols in September 1412, there has been a low-scale border war in effect along the Morava river, with most of the fighting taking place near the Bulgarian city of Vidin. Demetrios and Manuel have no desire to interrupt this turn of affairs.

Their eyes turn to where Roman splinter states are still in existence, Crimea and southern Italy, where Theodoro and Apulia respectively remain outside of his control. However attacking Theodoro would potentially involve crossing swords with the Blue Horde, while they cannot attack Apulia and its Neapolitan overlord until Venice is dealt with. The Venetian war itself is also not a solution, as Venice’s empire, though wealthy, lacks enough territory to satisfy Demetrios’ territorial requirements. The only areas that might help in that regard are Crete and Dalmatia. Still the former would only make a small dent in the standing army while a Roman attack on Dalmatia would significantly increase the chances of a Hungarian war.

Still he can lay some preliminary groundwork. The tagma troops are all taken off of active duty, saving Demetrios the cost of their active duty pay increase, and are sent back to their estates. With the blight diminishing in potency and a larger agricultural workforce now available, the threat of famine is diminished. He intends to make war on Venice solely with the standing troops and the fleet.

Demetrios makes sure that the review system is reestablished, with all of the old rules and penalties reinstated. With the cleisurai, each formation is subordinated to a theme. The regular tourma reviews conducted in a theme are copied in each cleisurae, but for the two annual tagma reviews, the cleisurae troops report to the tagma to which they are assigned. There they, like the regular tagma troops, are given their pay.

Also he adds a new feature to the review system, inspired by the effectiveness of Timur’s twenty-men squadrons of Persian lancers at Manzikert. To receive full pay, soldiers must not only meet certain individual equipment and training standards at the beginning of each review, but now so must each kontoubernion, the ten (in the case of heavy cavalry, five) man squad. While the members of the kontoubernion live near each other and regularly train together, such behavior had never been enforced under the Laskarids. The regular review periods had been concerned with the performance and coordination of droungos level formations and higher. Now the dekarchos of each kontoubernion is responsible for ensuring that the squad members are trained to work together in between the regular tagma and tourma reviews. Failure to meet the required standards results in pay reductions for each member of the kontoubernion.

At this point most of the Asian tagmata have still not recovered significantly from the bloody battle of Manzikert, with many vacant estates scattered across the themes. Since Demetrios and Manuel have more troops than they need, they are in no rush to fill the gaps. It is Manuel that discovers a way to use the situation to reward the Asian troops for their service. In September an edict is issued, authorizing second and third sons of soldiers to take over these empty estates and their assigned duties. This allows soldiers to provide multiple sons with inheritances, rather than just one.

Since many of the serving soldiers are relatively new recruits who have been on active duty for most of the last decade and thus have had little time to start a family, many of the potential tenants created by this edict are far too young to take up soldierly duties. However the edict allows soldiers to claim estates for their male heirs before they are of age, provided that they do not claim a vacant estate attached to a soldier type more than one level above their own troop type. Also the claim has to be made on behalf of a living son, although even a newborn can qualify. If the son dies before he reaches an age where he can take up military duties, the claim dies with him.

The advantage of this system is that not only are the Anatolian troops exuberant about the edict, but it will steadily restore the Anatolian tagmata to full strength. However it will do so at a slow, steady rate which will not strain the treasury as soldiers’ sons gradually come of age and take their claims. It also encourages the growth of military families, raising the Empire’s population and tax base.

Demetrios also considers converting some of the tagma troops into regular farmers, allowing them to keep their estates so they don’t run amok. However he promised not to disband any of the European tagmata, and the Asian ones would not appreciate having their ranks slashed after they had fought so hard and long for his cause. Plus during the argument over the intervals between equipment bonuses, the troops made it clear that they would regard an attack on one formation as an attack on all formations.

In the midst of the tagma reforms, the standing troops conduct the war with Venice. One of the Athanatoi formations and all of the ‘free’ tourmai are dispatched to the Crimea along with a dozen cannon to take Soldaia and Kaffa. The Venetians resist fiercely, but are outnumbered and have no possibility of reinforcement. They appeal to Sarai for aid, only to realize that the Khan, fixated on his invasion of the White Horde, is in no mood to intervene after Demetrios promises to pay the protection money for the two cities.

With their morale low and their walls crumbling under the crash of the Roman artillery, both cities capitulate by October. One tourmai is left behind as a new archontate, although the troops are evenly split between the two cities, while the remainder return to Constantinople. During the Crimean campaign the rest of the Imperial fleet had been engaging the Venetians. Due to their proximity to Constantinople, both Imbros and Lemnos fell quickly, with two batteries of eight bombards assisting in the capture of Imbros.

After the fall of Lemnos, a Genoese delegation approaches the Emperors to offer aid against the Venetians. Knowing that the Roman navy would not be enamored of the prospect of fighting alongside the Venetians, combined with the fact that the Marinids have been making demonstrations against Genoese Tunis, the Genoese are unwilling to commit ships or men. Coin is another matter; they offer a loan of 100,000 hyperpyra, to be spent on the war effort against Venice, which will not accrue interest if repaid before December 1417. Demetrios and Manuel happily accept, calling the Genoese ‘true friends of the Empire, whose kindness will not be forgotten or go unrewarded’. It is a purely commercial arrangement as Genoa does not enter the war.

After Lemnos, the war begins to get harder for the Romans. With the Venetian fleet basing out of Euboea and Crete, taking those two islands, as well as Andros and Kythera, prove to be much more difficult. The European naval squadrons are inferior in quality to the Venetian fleet and are used to being beaten, while the Asian forces took heavy casualties in the final stages of the civil war. Demetrios and Manuel could expand the navy, but galleys are expensive in terms of manpower and returning soldiers to active duty as marines would only further strain the battered treasury.

Demetrios decides to try something novel. He had been impressed by the performance of Thomas’ artillery when used on Venetian ships at Nicomedia and decides to harness that. He commissions the best shipwrights and gunsmiths in the Empire to come up with a vessel capable of crumpling galleys with mass gunfire. They base their design off of the large cargo vessels used by Genoa and Portugal, producing a three-masted vessel, with high fore and stern castles as artillery platforms. While slow and not very maneuverable, it is perfect for what Demetrios has in mind, a floating gun battery that will smash enemy galleys to splinters at range. Upon seeing the design, the Emperor likens it to the skutatoi, with the regular galleys acting as the akritoi. The design type is called a πυρξίφος ναυς (transliteration: purxiphos naus, translation: firesword ship).

While not as versatile as galleys, the purxiphoi have much smaller crews than the older vessels due to the lack of rowers. Since the largest maintenance cost for warships is the pay of their crews, this means that once constructed, the purxiphoi are fairly cheap to maintain, although the pay of the skilled gunners is much more than that of a rower. For gunners, Demetrios draws on those already in his service. Since they are used to operating artillery while on land, the Emperor purchases three cargo vessels from Genoa that closely match the characteristics of purxiphoi. While the gunships are being constructed the gunners practice firing cannons at sea while on board the freighters.

In Azerbaijan, Georgia annihilates a Qara Koyunlu army at the battle of Chemakha on June 19, with the city of Baku falling shortly afterwards. By the end of the year Qara Koyunlu forces are in full retreat with Georgia controlling virtually all of Azerbaijan north of the Kur River.

1415: There are several naval skirmishes in the southern Aegean between the Imperial and Venetian fleets. Following Demetrios’ orders, Roman squadrons only engage in battle if possible near the coast in order to minimize losses from drowning. The Venetians win most but the Romans give a good account of themselves as inexperienced European crews are paired with experienced Anatolian ones. Supported by the Anatolian crews, Demetrios is using these small engagements to build up his European sailors’ experience while the shipyards construct the purxiphoi (fireswords). In August he has eight, each one with eight heavy guns and six smaller ones.

The fleet sets sail for Euboea in October, the intervening two months having consisted of training exercises in the Marmara to help the galleys and purxiphoi work together. On October 11, it is challenged off Skopelos. The Romans have seventy nine galleys and the eight purxiphoi; the Venetians have ninety galleys. With only a weak breeze blowing, eight galleys are detailed to help pull the purxiphoi into position.

The Venetians assume the purxiphoi are odd looking troop transports and immediately move to engage, charging directly at the heart of the Roman fleet. After holding until the Venetians are well within range to improve accuracy, the cannons on the purxiphoi smash the leading Venetian galleys, sowing confusion amongst the ranks. As the Venetians close, they come under the fire of the lighter guns, which rake the decks of the galleys. While their shot is too small to sink galleys, the waves of wooden shrapnel they send flying scythe down the Venetian marines.

When the Roman galleys flanking the purxiphoi enter the engagement, they are fresh, organized, and in high spirits. The Venetians have none of those qualities but are still brave and determined. However it is not enough against the steel of Roman cannon and mace; the two hour battle ends with a crushing Roman victory. Seven Roman galleys were sunk and 1,100 men killed. The Venetians lose twenty galleys that were sunk, eighteen captured, and the loss of almost eleven thousand men.

The Venetian survivors scatter, allowing ten thousand Roman troops to be landed on Euboea without incident. For siege equipment they use some of the guns from the purxiphoi. All of the island except Negroponte falls by the end of October, with that city managing to hold out until late November. Along with the city, the Romans capture six galleys that had fled there after Skopelos.

In the east, the Timurid civil war ends with Timur’s grandson Shah Rukh emerging victorious. However out of all of Timur’s vast empire, he only rules the old Chagatai portion north of the Kopet Dag mountain range that Timur had controlled in 1380. The rest of his great domain has succeeded in breaking away. A new Jalayirid state stretches from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, while Sistan, Baluchistan, Kerman, and Khorasan are all independent. The first and last are ruled by members of the Timurid dynasty, with the other two ruled by Timurid provincial governors who went independent.

A Georgian army annihilates a Qara Koyunlu force with a sizeable Ottoman contingent, roughly twenty percent of the whole Turkic army, at Narekavank on September 9. The Azerbaijani war, which had largely consisted of raids and skirmishes since the fall of Baku, finally comes to an end after the battle. The region north of the Kur river is ceded to Georgia, while the Qara Koyunlu living in the region between the Kur and Lake Van become Georgian vassals. The Kingdom of Georgia now stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian.

1416: The Venetians are humbled but not beaten. Even with the loss of Euboea, the stakes are too high for them to back out now, as the key to their commercial network in the east is Crete. If they lose the island while Genoa retains Coron and Modon, their mercantile supremacy in the east will be in jeopardy. By extracting forced loans from merchants and conscripting Dalmatian sailors Venice is able to field another fleet, actually one hundred and two galleys strong, by March. The survivors of Skopelos are incorporated into the flotilla.

Venice’s actions in Dalmatia exceedingly annoy Ragusa and Zara, the richest of the Dalmatian cities. Commercial rivals with Venice, they find their vassalage to the Serene Republic and the ensuing Adriatic trade restrictions that come with that position most distasteful. The forcible conscription of their people, which includes Venetian press gangs roaming the waterfront kidnapping any able-bodied men they can find, is the last straw. As the Venetian armada makes its way down the Adriatic, Dalmatian envoys arrive in Buda.

They offer to transfer their allegiance to the Hungarian crown, provided that Andrew III promises not to interfere in their trade in any way or install a Hungarian garrison in their cities. Still smarting after the debacle in Germany as well as a series of minor Vlach victories over Hungarian forces, Andrew is eager for a chance to regain his lost prestige. Assembling the main Hungarian army and supplementing it with Croat contingents in his capacity as King of Croatia, he enters Venetian Dalmatia in late March.

The Roman and Venetian fleets make contact off the coast of Monemvasia on March 31. The Romans field ten purxiphoi and eighty galleys. Now aware of the danger posed by the purxiphoi, the Venetian galleys close fast, maneuvering to avoid the incoming volleys. Due to the slow rate of fire and low accuracy of the Roman guns, they are largely successful in their efforts, but the Venetian crews are significantly winded by the time the Roman galleys leap to the attack. That a sizeable portion of the Venetian fleet is either green or unmotivated due to their Dalmatian origins only compounds their problems.

The ensuing melee action is utterly ruthless. Impressed by the performance of akritoi against Venetian sailors at Nicomedia, many of the Roman marines are armed like the light infantry. Under the cover of a hail of javelins and arrows, they leap onto the Venetian decks, slashing with their deadly cleavers. The Venetians smash back with their swords and war hammers. The Venetian flagship is overrun by the Romans, recaptured, overrun again, recaptured again, and overrun for the third and final time. It is said by some of the Roman sailors that the entire deck of the ship was covered in bodies three layers thick.

Due to their superior numbers, five of the Venetian vessels are able to outflank the Roman line and try to storm one of the purxiphoi which had been attempting to maneuver to where it could fire its guns into the Venetian ranks without hitting Roman vessels, without success due to the light wind. Despite their massive advantage in manpower, the Venetians fail in their attempt. Sailors climbing up the boarding ladders are immediately attacked by axe-bearing marines, who quickly begin to chop off the hands of Venetian sailors as they reach the railing. The last galley, seeing the miserable failure of the earlier four, attempts to back off but accidentally positions itself as a perfect target for a broadside at point-blank range. A quartet of one hundred seventy pound cannonballs disintegrate the vessel; less than ten percent of the crew survives.

The entire naval battle from start to finish lasts for three and a half hours. While the Venetians give a much better account of themselves than they did at Skopelos, the defeat is just as total. The Romans lose twelve galleys and 6,500 men. The Venetians lose forty nine galleys, thirty of them captured, and over eighteen thousand men. While the Venetian prisoners are held for ransom, the captured Dalmatian sailors are immediately released and allowed to return home.

When news of Monemvasia reaches Venice, panic immediately begins to break out. Rumors abound that the Hungarian army and the Roman navy intend to launch a joint attack on the city. Three days after Monemvasia, the Zarans expel their Venetian garrison and open their gates to the Hungarians. While Demetrios had nothing to do with the Hungarian intervention and has no plans of cooperating with them, he welcomes the fearful atmosphere in Venice.

In June the Roman fleet docks at Dyrrachium while envoys are sent to Venice. Previously it had dropped off small Roman forces that quickly overrun Andros and Kythera. The Romans make no attempt to hide the location of their fleet, or the fact that Demetrios and all of the Athanatoi and ‘free’ tourmai are assembling in the city with numerous supplies and siege equipment. Manuel is back in Constantinople overseeing the Empire.

Demetrios’ demands are harsh. Venice will formally cede Soldaia, Kaffa, and all of the Aegean islands save Crete, the rent for which will be increased to 22,000 hyperpyra annually. The Venetians will still have a rent-free quarter in Constantinople, but any dock space in other ports will have to be purchased at market prices, and they will have to pay a six percent customs duty and be barred from the Black Sea.

Demetrios is encouraged by some to attack and retake Crete. However Demetrios wants the Venetian war over with quickly for the sake of the treasury, and the Venetians would be extremely reluctant to give up Crete. Also the high value the island has in Venetian eyes is something that might prove useful in the future. Due to geography, the Romans can much more easily attack Crete than Venice can reinforce it. So if in the future the Romans need to acquire concessions in other areas from the Venetians, they can easily gain them by threatening Crete. To retake the island would remove that diplomatic option.

Even with their control of Crete uncontested, the Venetians are utterly enraged by the terms, but news of Ragusa’s defection in late May and reports of ominous Milanese troop movements near Mantua give them little choice. When the treaty is signed on June 10, the only concession that the Venetians gain from the original offer is the right to trade in the Black Sea, although they still lose their colonies.

With his fleet, army, supplies, and siege equipment already in place at Dyrrachium, Demetrios wastes no time in enacting the true goal of his campaign. He had already made contact with Basil Laskaris, governor of Apulia, promising that Basil will be allowed to maintain his position and possessions and that neither he nor his two sons will be castrated, provided that he defects upon a Roman invasion of Italy. When Demetrios’ fleet appears off Bari on June 23, Basil keeps up his end of the bargain and is confirmed in his position as Governor of Apulia. With the defection of Bari, the rest of Apulia quickly follows.

Demetrios’ army is half the size of the force used in his uncle George’s Italian campaign, but his troops are much more experienced and have a far better commander. He also receives some reinforcements from the Apulians as he marches westward. Taken completely by surprise, the Neapolitans are unable to gather their forces before Demetrios’ bombards are hammering at the walls of Naples. The fleet sails around Italy in the meantime and imposes a tight blockade. By August 5 a Neapolitan force of some sixteen thousand soldiers is assembled and attacks Demetrios, but is outmaneuvered and destroyed in a two hour battle. Naples itself falls on August 12.

Having captured the entire Neapolitan royal family, Demetrios has no need to be generous. Everything south of the Salerno-Bari line is ceded to the Empire, including Salerno itself. In exchange all prisoners will be returned without ransom, a clause that vastly favors Naples, but Naples will have to pay a tribute equivalent to 40,000 hyperpyra for the next eight years. Also all of the plunder from Naples remains in Roman hands. At the same time Naples’ trade concessions in Bari are canceled.

The ‘offer’ is grudgingly accepted much to Demetrios’ delight, although it takes him over six weeks to establish his authority in the south. He immediately converts Manuel’s and Thomas’ old Athanatoi into tagma troops, creating the tagma of Italia. He also takes four of the ‘free’ tourmai and converts them into cleisurai, along with the Bari archontate troops. Demetrios also arranges the families and possessions of the troops to be transferred to Italy free of charge. The displaced Italian families flee north, most of them eventually settling in the Duchy of Milan.

The Apulian levies that Basil had formed during his vassalage are disbanded as well. However those levies are only allowed to return to their farms after turning in all their military equipment, for which they are reimbursed at the prices their equipment would have fetched if they were sold from the state warehouses responsible for providing equipment for the tagma troops. The tagma troops do not protest this action.

Shortly afterward Demetrios rules that the allagions, the small infantry troop formations kept in frontier cities, will no longer be paid by the central government but by their respective cities. Since they were purely defensive units, the allagions saw little action during the civil war and have little interaction with the tagma troops, who therefore do not protest this action either. At a stroke, Demetrios removes over four thousand troops from the army payroll. However due to the desire to cut corners, the cities do not pay the troops as much. The soldiers are forced to take up other occupations to supplement their income and gradually turn into a militia.

With the removal of the allagions and the conversion of two thirds of the standing army into tagma troops, the budget crisis is alleviated. Demetrios had been dipping into his personal fortune to help pay the troops during the Neapolitan war. Now there is no longer a deficit, but the budgetary surplus is laughably minute. In order to bolster the surplus, he needs to convert his two remaining ‘free’ tourmai into tagma troops, keeping only his Athanatoi and the archontates as full time soldiers.

During Demetrios’ invasion of Italy, the Pope in Rome had attempted to call a crusade. While a few insignificant contingents from central Italy did join the Neapolitan army and receive crusading indulgences, the speed of the Roman advance prevented the movement from becoming more serious, serving mainly to annoy the Romans by its existence. Determined not to be upstaged by his rival, the Pope in Avignon also declares a crusade but directs it at the Marinids.

However while Demetrios’ Neapolitan campaign was a great military success, which Demetrios himself considered to be his best conducted campaign, it seriously damages relations with the west. To preserve the element of surprise, Demetrios had not issued a formal declaration of war before his ships appeared off the coast of Apulia. The Pope uses this to portray Demetrios and the Empire as violent warmongers.

In October the Roman fleet appears off the coast of the Principality of Theodoro. Even though the army it is transporting only numbers seven thousand strong, commanded by Demetrios it is too powerful for the Theodorons to handle, and they know it. Sarai cannot help them as the Blue and White Hordes are engaged in a fierce war which the White Horde is currently winning.

Prince Alexios III Gabras surrenders after a token resistance that lasts only for two days. He and his family are given estates in Thracesia and are allowed to retire there intact. The lightly populated Principality, which had been heavily afflicted by the plague epidemics of the fourteenth century, has almost enough room to settle the two ‘free’ tourmai as cleisurai. There is some relocation, but the Theodorons who are forced to move are, since they are Greek, given townhouses in either Soldaia, Kaffa, Trebizond, or Constantinople (the Theodorons are allowed to choose which city), free shipping for themselves and their possessions, and a two year tax exemption. Even with these concessions, the transfer of two thousand men from standing to tagma allows the yearly budget to start showing a small surplus, but it is far smaller than that enjoyed by the Laskarids.

When Demetrios returns to Constantinople, the units on the Roman army payroll are as follows: (These figures assume full strength formations)

Tagma troops:

Nine pre-Caesarea tagmata: 90,000 men

Three post-Caesarea tagmata (Epirus, Hellas, and Italy): 30,000 men

Twenty one cleisurai (Five in Italy, Four in Greece, Ten in Anatolia, Two in Crimea): 21,000 men

Eleven banda: 2,200 men

Standing troops:

The Athanatoi: 5,000 men

Three archontates (Constantinople, Antioch, and Crimea): 3,000 men

Grand total: 151,200 men (with the current status of the post-Manzikert Anatolian tagmata factored in, the actual total is around 136,000)

Map of West Asia, December 1416:

westasia1416.png

1) Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, exercises loose hegemony over Vlachia.
2) Kingdom of Serbia
3) Kingdom of Bulgaria
4) Genoese colonies of Vospoda and Tana
5) Qara Koyunlu tribes-Georgian vassals
6) Emirate of Gilan-briefly controlled by the Jalayirids, it broke away in early 1416. The Jalayirids' control over their sizeable domains is rather shaky due to two decades of Timurid rule, with the Khan in Fars more of a 'First among Equals' rather than a supreme ruler. However the Persian magnates prefer Fars to either Baghdad or Samarkand.
7) Emirate of Qatar
8) Emirate of Hormuz
9) White Horde
10) Swati Kingdom of Kashmir, Buddhist monarchy with sizeable Hindu and Muslim minorities
11) Sultanate of Delhi
12) Sultanate of Khorasan (T)
13) Emirate of Sistan (T)
14) Emirate of Baluchistan​

The Timurid Empire, Khorasan, and Sistan are all ruled by members of the Timurid dynasty.​


Map of Italy, December 1416:

italydec1416.png

1) Principality of Zahumlje-Bosnian vassal
2) Duchy of Ancona
3) Duchy of Urbino
4) The Romagna-divided into patchwork of petty states
5) Republic of Siena
6) Republic of Florence-with its Milanese rival distracted by the Swiss, the Florentines were able to retake Modena in 1414 after losing it in 1408. Florence and Milan are currently at peace but that is likely to change.
7) Republic of Pisa
8) Republic of Lucca
9) County of Nice
10) County of Saluzzo
11) Bernese League
12) Swiss Confederation
13) Petty German states​

Eye in the Storm: The Swati Kingdom of Kashmir

The Swati Kingdom of Kashmir began with the emigration of the Pashtun Swati tribe from their original lands north of Kabul to the Kashmir valley in the 1330s. Pashtun migration had been occurring for quite some time, but in the opposite direction into the Delhi Sultanate, where Pashtun soldiers were in high demand to combat their aggressive Hindu Bihari and Vijayangara neighbors. However the Swati had mainly kept out of this trend, an oversight that allowed their tribal rivals to gain significant influence in the halls of Delhi. That development is what finally encouraged the Swati to leave their homeland.

Divided into several minor states, the Kashmir region had possessed a substantial Buddhist population for a thousand years by that point. Like their Pashtun cousins in Delhi, they quickly became prominent as mercenary soldiers, using that position to take over control of Baramulla, one of the largest Kashmir states. By 1360 they had become rulers of the entire Kashmir valley.

Originally Muslim in their Afghan homeland, they had converted to Buddhism both to avoid the cultural hegemony of the Delhi sultanate and to conciliate their subjects. However there were substantial minorities of Hindus and Muslims in their domains. In 1415, Swati Kashmir is sixty percent Buddhist, twenty percent Muslim, sixteen percent Hindu, and four percent Nestorian Christian. The latter is concentrated around Jammu and Srinagar.

Due to the significant religious diversity, the Swati follow a policy of religious tolerance. Buddhist stupas, Muslim mosques, Hindu temples, and Nestorian churches dot the landscape with many of the local saints and holy sites shared by some or all of the faiths. The stupas are the most common though, even when one discounts the Buddhist numerical advantage, as the Swati kings regularly subsidize their construction and maintenance. The other religious buildings are paid for by their congregations or wealthy patrons, particularly textile merchants, but unlike in the Roman Empire, they do not have to pay a special fee or obtain a special permit.

Srinagar, the Swati capital, is a major center of scholarship, drawing from ancient traditions of Hindu and Buddhist learning. Both the Buddhist and Nestorian monks maintain sizeable scriptoriums in the city copying numerous texts, particularly the Mahayana sutras. Several encyclopedias on botany and zoology are also products of the monastic scribes. One interesting feature of having Buddhist and Christian monasteries next to each other is that by 1400 some of the Christian monks have started combining prayer and yoga in a new syncretic practice.

Kashmir is a fairly wealthy country. In Srinagar the mint produces the silver and copper sasnu, square shaped coins, that are used as currency throughout the country, which mainly operates as a money economy except for the largely barren Ladakh region. The silver sasnus are used in international trade as they are of high quality, with a few even turning up in the hands of Antiochene merchants.

800pxsilvercoinofkashmi.jpg

A silver sasnu​

Kashmir’s main exports are knowledge, clerics, and textiles. Because of their high quality, Kashmiri textiles are valued through west Asia and India, often used by the upper classes as signs of their status. Many of the textile merchants who go to Delhi with their caravans loaded with fine cloth and carpets are Nestorian Christians, allowing that minority to yield power disproportionate to their share of the population.

The army is another tool used by the Swati to encourage religious coexistence, as the various regiments are deliberately composed of a mixed body of adherents. With the use of a textile tax, the Swati kings are able to maintain a royal core of professional cavalry regiments, trained in the use of the bow, lance, and sword. These are supplemented by provincial levies called up in times of need, with each district having to provide a certain number of men equipped to a certain standard based on the district’s population and wealth.

Kashmir managed to survive the hurricane that was Timur intact by becoming a vassal early in his reign. The vassalage was broken after his death but the Buddhist state remained outside of the Timurid war of succession. Shah Rukh, the ruler of Samarkand, is currently occupied with containing the rising power of the Uzbek Khanate, which rose to power after Timur crippled the rulers of Moghulistan. If he succeeds in that regard, his attention will most likely focus on Persia, where his cousin Jahangir leads the state of Khorasan and its elite corps of heavy infantry, used to such great effect at Manzikert.

As a result, Kashmir faces no threats to the north and west. To the south the Delhi Sultanate is a spent force, territorially still large but ruling over an embittered Hindu populace antagonized by years of oppression instigated by Pashtun generals and viziers. All the strength of Delhi must be spent on its southern and eastern frontiers against the Empire of Vijayanagar and the Kingdom of Bihar. However to the east lies a new and immensely dangerous power-Shun China.

1417: In March the Crown of Thrones is transferred from Smyrna to Constantinople amid great rejoicing, escorted there by the purxiphoi. One of the honored guests at the transfer ceremony is Andrea Alessi, Doge of Genoa, there to personally give his congratulations to Demetrios for his great victory over Venice. Also at this time the Roman debt to Genoa is repaid from the spoils from Naples. The two men, who were born within four months of each other, quickly strike up a friendship, often hunting together.

However their interaction is not all play. The two rulers along with Manuel also hold a series of meetings, their purpose: to destroy the economic power of Venice in the Empire. Several economic reforms come out of the conference that lasts for over five weeks (there were several breaks for hunting excursions). First a new tax is levied on fur and slaves from the Ukraine that are shipped out through Roman Crimean ports, a tax of five folloi a head on slaves and a two folloi tax on each pelt. These are lump sums levied on the amount of merchandise, not quality. It is a small tax, easily paid for by Roman merchants entering the trade, but foreign (Venetian) merchants have to exchange their gold or silver currency for the folloi at the new exchange center set up in Kaffa. Genoese merchants, who ship out of their colonies at Vospoda or Tana are unaffected by the new tax.

Demetrios and Manuel also pass two laws regarding the non-commercial activities of foreign merchants in the Empire. First a ruling is made that any foreigner ‘residing in Greek lands for thirty six months out of a forty eight month period or more is no longer considered in our eyes to be a foreigner, but to be a resident of our Empire and therefore responsible for paying the same taxes and tolls as any other resident.’ This ruling applies to both Genoese and Venetians.

However the use of the phrase ‘Greek lands’ refers to all of the Empire, plus Venetian Crete which is still a Greek land as its population is mostly Greek even though it is not controlled by Greeks. Thus all the Genoese have to do to avoid this proviso is occasionally spend time in the Crimean colonies, while Venetians are forced to return to Venetian territory in Italy or Dalmatia, rather than just make the short hop to Crete. Admittedly the ability of the Empire to confirm that an absent Venetian merchant is not residing in Crete is somewhat limited. Yet it is not completely unenforceable as the Empire maintains numerous spies and informers on the island, in addition to the reports of Roman merchants who dock there and from the consulate in Candia, Crete’s largest city.

The other law is composed of two related statutes. First it is ruled that if a foreigner establishes a home, warehouse, or shop outside of the assigned quarter, that foreigner is automatically to be considered an Imperial resident. This is mainly a concern in Constantinople where most Italian merchants live and where the Genoese quarter at Galata is almost three times larger than the Venetian quarter (for customer convenience, the Galata Genoese maintain a free ferry that crosses the Golden Horn every half hour between sunrise and sunset). Also in the case of a mixed Latin-Greek marriage, the nationality of any offspring is determined on where they are raised. If they are raised in Greek lands, then they are considered to be Imperial residents, while if they are raised in non-Greek lands they are considered to be citizens of whatever foreign nation to which the Latin belonged. Due to the long and uninterrupted occupation of Coron and Modon by the Genoese (by this point almost a hundred and fifty years) they are not considered Greek lands.

The final piece of legislation that comes out of the conference is a ruling that states that alum and mastic cannot be exported from the Empire in vessels that are not owned by Imperial citizens. However the law allows for five dispensations to the ruling, but no more. As soon as the law is on the books, Demetrios has the five dispensation forms drawn up and immediately gives them to Andrea in exchange for fifty thousand hyperpyra. While the law restricts Genoese access to the very lucrative market in those two products, Andrea is very pleased with it. He can use the dispensation forms to reward his political allies back in Genoa.

The Venetians are naturally horrified at the new legislature and the Venetian bailo immediately protests. As a deliberate snub the displaced Sheik of Touggourt, an oasis in the Algerian Sahara, is given precedence over the bailo. However both the bailo and the sheik are turned away empty handed. The Sheik had annoyed his Marinid overlords and had been forced to flee in 1410, trying to gain military support to retake his lands ever since.

Meanwhile Venice’s war with Hungary is going badly. With thousands dead and many still awaiting ransom from her war with the Romans, the Serene Republic does not have the manpower to wage an effective war. By this point Dalmatia has completely fallen with the main Hungarian army investing Trieste in May. Hungarian cavalry raids pour into the Veneto, their campfires visible in the lagoon.

There are only two states that can aid Venice in her plight. The first is Bavaria, which is not thrilled by the prospect of a Hungarian foothold in Italy. However Bavaria’s efforts are focused to the north due to increasingly poor relations with Saxony-Brandenburg, which has been eyeing Pomerania and forging a marriage alliance with Bohemia. Thus Bavaria’s response to Hungary is merely to create a defensive alliance with Tyrol and confirm the one it has with Austria. Also Bavaria, mirroring a recent Urbinese innovation, establishes a permanent resident ambassador in Vienna. But that does nothing to strengthen Venice.

The other potential ally is Milan, the most powerful Italian state. However Milan is enjoying watching one of its most dangerous rivals being repeatedly humbled. Thus when Venetian envoys arrive in Milan to ask for an alliance, the price is high. In exchange for Milan waging war on land against the Hungarians in Italy and Istria (but not Dalmatia) for up to five years and promising not to make peace without Venice’s consent unless the five year term has lapsed, Venice must abandon all claims to Brescia, cede the city of Verona, and also abandon all claims to Italian territories to the south of the Po (the most important of which is the claim on Rimini) and cede those claims to Milan. During negotiations the news arrives that Trieste has fallen. Nothing stands between the Hungarian royal army and Italy itself. Venice accepts the Milanese terms.

Milanese army contingents immediately move east, garrisoning Verona less than ten days after the agreement. Meanwhile the Hungarian army moves into the Friuli, Dalmatian vessels along the coast functioning as the supply train. In August, the Venetian fleet of forty seven galleys sets sail from the lagoon to cut that supply line, knowing that if they fail the city is likely doomed. Already forward squadrons of the Hungarian host can be seen from Venice, as the towns of northeast Italy are unwilling to resist the inexorable Magyar advance. On July 25, the first cannonballs, fired from guns forged in Macedonia and purchased by Andrew, begin falling in the lagoon.

Venetian agents in Lombardy, disgusted by the slowness of the Milanese mobilization, turn to another source of military aid, the Swiss Confederation. For almost a hundred years the halberdiers of the mountain cantons have been the terror of their neighbors. However much of their strength has been frittered away in an ongoing low level war with the Bernese League that has waxed and waned intermittently since the Bernese rival city of Freiburg entered the Confederacy in 1352. While the Bernese cannot match the cantons in numbers or ferocity, their soldiers are better disciplined, their leaders generally of better quality, and they are the pioneers of Europe in the area of handgun technology. Also the Habsburg counts of Breisgau and Sundgau are members of the Bernese League, providing League armies with a well equipped corps of German knights that feature prominently in League tactics.

With a truce in effect with Bern, many of the Swiss soldiers are happy to be recruited as mercenaries. Venice is able, barely, to pay for them by levying emergency taxes and forcing local merchants to loan the state money at low interest rates. With eight thousand Swiss mercenaries entering Italy, the Milanese begin acting more aggressively with several skirmishes occurring between Milanese and Hungarian horse. The Hungarians, equipped with capable light cavalry called hussars and Cuman horse archer contingents, repeatedly outmaneuver the Italian cavalry bedecked in plate.

On August 3 two pivotal battles occur, one on land and one at sea. At Treviso the Swiss army, followed by a Milanese force commanded by the Duke himself, confronts the main section of the Hungarian army commanded by King Andrew himself. The force had been gathering provisions for the final surge toward Venice itself. The Swiss, contemptuous of cavalry heavy armies due to their repeated victories over German cavalry units, immediately attack despite being outnumbered four to one, refusing to wait for the Milanese army to join them. Andrew, who had faced the Swiss before in his invasion of Austria, immediately begins planning a trap.

Glistening in the afternoon sunlight, the Swiss halberdiers rush across the field. While Andrew has a corps of plate-equipped heavy cavalry, most of his army is composed of hussars and horse archers, while most of his infantry are crossbowmen. The light cavalry demonstrate on the flanks of the Swiss, forcing them to form their hedgehog formation to not be overrun by a charge. But in such an array they are unable to advance and are hammered by missile volleys from the horse archers and infantry. The Swiss try to march towards the king’s position but every time they move they are charged by the light Hungarian horse, forcing them to remain in formation. Lightly armored to improve speed and endurance, the Swiss infantry have little protection from the missile storms.

Two hours after the battle began the slow moving Milanese arrive on the field and halt. The Milanese have also fought the Swiss and despise them since the Swiss executed all their Milanese prisoners, per their usual practice. A Milanese envoy reaches Andrew and informs him that provided that none of his troops attack the Italians, they will stand back and allow the Hungarians to destroy the Swiss.

With that threat gone, Andrew orders his heavy cavalry to dismount and commands them to take off all their plate armor except for their cuirass. Since they are still equipped with a gambeson and a full suit of mail, they are still admirably protected but will not tire as quickly now. With Swiss morale and formation integrity failing under hours of Hungarian missile volleys, Andrew attacks. The heavy infantry slam through the gaps in the Swiss halberds, hacking at the mountaineers at close range. It takes less than fifteen minutes for the fresh Hungarians to rout the exhausted Swiss. The remnants of the Swiss army is hunted down by the still mounted light cavalry. No prisoners are taken.

At sea, the Venetian fleet encounters a Dalmatian flotilla of forty five galleys off Pola. Emulating the purxiphoi, nine of the Venetian galleys are equipped with one or two light guns stationed in the bow. None of the Dalmatian vessels have cannon. The Venetians, trusting in the offensive power of their gun galleys, attack fiercely. Their cannons, although too light to inflict structural damage on the Dalmatian ships, shatter woodwork above the deck, sending splinters flying that wreak a terrible toll on the Dalmatian sailors. The battle lasts for over three hours, the Dalmatians fighting obstinately, but the Venetians win a total victory, sinking or capturing sixteen Dalmatian ships, not including five transports heavily loaded with rations and ammunition for the Hungarian army.

Despite his great victory at Treviso, Andrew’s situation is potentially perilous. He has adequate stores for the moment but taking Venice will likely be a long and complicated affair and extremely difficult without a large fleet. Also with his naval supply line largely cut after Pola, he is dependent on the overland route now. Italy itself can supply his artillery with adequate powder and shot but rations for his men are more difficult to procure. Plus if he advances on Venice the Milanese army is ideally situated at Verona to swing behind and cut off his land supply route. So Andrew decides to halt offensive operations for the rest of the year. His time is spent arranging treaties with Bulgaria and the Blue Horde so that Bulgarian and Ukrainian grain will feed Hungary the next year while Hungarian grain is shipped west to feed his army.

Western Europe is also engulfed in war. In May the English army commanded by King Edward VI seizes Paris after a siege that lasted a mere eleven days. The main reason for his quick success is the English siege train, relying heavily on gunpowder artillery and considered by many to be the finest in Europe. It is closely followed by the Burgundian train while the comparatively new Roman model is not considered in the running.

The siege train is managed by the Bourne brothers, who turned the branch into a model of efficiency. Instead of the older practice of hiring gun masters who brought with them crews and guns who were usually hired for a campaign at varying rates of pay, the Bourne brothers establish standardized rates of pay for the various members of the gun crews, who are hired for five year stints. Also to ease ammunition supply issues, the English cannons are reduced to four distinct calibers instead of the earlier hodgepodge, and those guns are equipped with stone, rather than lead or iron, cannonballs for cost purposes. In addition, the process of corning gunpowder is introduced, which increases the propulsive power of the powder and improves its shelf life.

English Normandy soon becomes the center of gunpowder production for the English artillery. The main advantage of corned powder over its meal-type predecessor at its earliest stage of development is its shelf life. No longer are English armies required to carry the ingredients and equipment to make gunpowder on site. For security reasons and to help secure a royal monopoly on gunpowder weapons, the corned powder is constructed next to royal barracks that garrison the various Norman towns. Since the urine of wine and/or strong beer drinkers is a component in the corning process (1), the need to collect the urine for powder manufacturing significantly boosts sanitation levels in the English barracks.

1) I am not making this up. For more, see Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe, and Kelly DeVries, “Gunpowder and Early Gunpowder Weapons”.

With the combined English-Burgundian artillery trains arrayed against them, French fortresses are rarely able to hold out for long. Edward and Louis gradually push their way south, slowly expanding their territories in order to ease integration. Edward takes special care to be diplomatic, avoiding pillaging and renewing French town charters without charging a special fee, and making sure to pay for all goods and services he requires. He can do all this due to the combination of several excellent English harvests in a row, the good relations with Burgundy which controls the Low countries and the main market for English wool, and his good relations with Parliament which make little fuss in providing subsidies for the continually victorious king.


Sub-Saharan Africa, c. 1415



Subsharan Africa c. 1415

The Swahili coast is mostly under the control of the Kilwa Sultanate, and is not appreciably different from OTL. The main exception is the city of Sofala, which is completely independent of the Sultanate (breaking free after an incident in 1335) but is a vassal of Great Zimbabwe. Both the Sofala state and the Kilwa Sultanate are highly urbanized societies dependent on trade, with connections in India.

Mali, Songhai, and Timbuktu are all tributary states of the premier power in west Africa, the Jolof Empire. It is heavily inspired by its imperial predecessors in the region and borrows liberally from some of their practices. For instance, all gold nuggets are the property of the Jolof Emperor and have to be exchanged for an equivalent weight in gold dust. For administrative purposes, the Emperor prefers vassalage to direct rule. To help maintain authority, one out of every six horses transported into the region belong to him as a toll, allowing the Emperors to maintain a formidable cavalry corps equipped with thick cloth armor and armed with maces and spears. The Jolof are pagan, but Muslims are allowed freedom of worship and play a major part in the administration.

The eastern border of the Jolof Empire is Lake Chad, where the Sultanate of Yao begins. Established at roughly the same time as Jolof, around 1350, the Sultanate is ruled by the Bulala people who overthrew the Kanem Empire to establish their own state. They carry on substantial trade with Egypt and its authority stretches to Kurdufan in the Sudan. To the east of that is a mix of minor principalities, a blend of pagan, Christian, and Muslim states, which stretches to the western border of Ethiopia. While Yao, already having difficulty maintaining control over its border provinces, is not a threat, the states are in peril. That threat is the Shilluk migration, who are moving north because of attacks from the Funj.

The last major state in sub-Saharan Africa is the Kingdom of Kongo, currently a pagan state that is much more centralized than most other African empires. Its only major threat at the point is its rivalry with the Luba Empire to the interior. Despite its fancier title, Luba is militarily weaker than Kongo. However protected by distance from large-scale attacks, the Luba stage frequent raids on the eastern provinces. The Kongolese army usually responds with counter-raids, and the captives netted in the raids are used to fuel a thriving slave trade. Kongolese slave traders are the main source of slaves for the minor states neighboring the Kingdom such as Ngoyo, providing the Kongolese kings substantial revenue from export duties on slaves.

iberia1417.png

1) Duchy of Burgundy
2) Bernese League
3) County of Saluzzo
4) County of Nice​

Despite its small size, Aragon is a relatively powerful state. Its merchants can be seen in Antwerp and Alexandria, and its capital of Barcelona is the largest city in Catholic Europe outside of Italy. The dual monarchy of Aragon and Sicily is a somewhat complicated structure, and will be explained more fully in the next update. Aragon also inherited Navarre in 1325, while the Principality of Andorra never came into existence. As for France, most of the fighting is in the northern areas, with the result that largely undamaged Provence is become quite influential in French affairs.​

1417 continued: Due to the continuing Ninety Years War, foreign participation in the crusade against the Marinids is extremely limited, with the Swedes actually being the largest contributors outside of the Iberians themselves (Originally Sweden had sided with Rome in the Schism, but joined the Avignon camp in 1400 to improve relations with Denmark). This actually turns into a source of strength as there are no large foreign contingents hampering uniformity of discipline, unlike earlier expeditions. In May Portuguese, Castilian, and Aragonese armies all march south, well equipped and supplied because of generous subsidies from the Iberian clergy and the Avignon pope Gregory XII.

The Marinids are not in as good of shape. Over the past several years tensions have been building between the Marinid elite, with their power concentrated in the cities of northern Morocco, the chief of which is Sijilmasa, and Granada, and the Berber chieftains of the interior. The Sheik of Touggourt is just one example of this. With the drop in relations, the chieftains have been lax in their duties of guarding the trans-Sahara trade in gold, salt, and slaves, a major source of Marinid income, which has therefore been suffering from Tuareg raids. As a result, much of the Marinid army is stationed in the southern marches when the Iberians invade the north.

The crusade begins on a good note, when all three Iberian armies score victories over outnumbered Marinid detachments. The largest battle, the battle of Consuegra, is fought by the Castilians and leaves four thousand Marinids dead on the field. It is the first offensive victory scored by the Castilians against the Marinids in over sixty years. The main reason for Castilian success, beside a numerical superiority of almost 2.5 to 1, is the military reforms of King Ferdinand. He uses the large reserves of cash made available to him for the crusade to award acts of bravery, which improves Castilian morale and daring. He also works to coordinate the actions of the Castilian cavalry and light infantry, the fearsome almughavars, copies of the Aragonese troop type.

In June he begins the siege of Calatrava, throwing up entrenchments as he brings his artillery train, a mixed cannon-trebuchet force, into range. As soon as all of his pieces are in position, he unleashes the heaviest artillery barrage ever seen in Iberian history up to that point with a train of eighty nine guns. Not even the volleys fired during the siege of Toledo in 1399 can compare. Bombards smash at the walls while the trebuchets hurl incendiary bombs over them and into the city, forcing the garrison to fight the Castilians in the front and fire in the rear.

With the horrendous screams of the cannonballs flying overhead, morale quickly diminishes in the city. Desperate, one of the garrison soldiers allows himself to be captured so that he can make an attempt to kill Ferdinand. When he tries to get an audience with the king, his poisoned dagger is discovered and he is cut to pieces on the spot as an assassin. The body parts are thrown back into the city with the next trebuchet volley. After three weeks of intensive bombardment, a deputation of citizens convinces the garrison to surrender. Ferdinand is not in a merciful mood, setting an extremely high ransom price which most of the citizens cannot pay. Those who can’t are sold into slavery.

Determined to press his advantage, Ferdinand installs a garrison, brings up more supplies, and then marches on Alarcos. Meanwhile the Aragonese have taken Castello de la Plana and are moving to attack Murviedro. If they can take that city, the Aragonese will have reestablished a land link between Catalonia and their Valencian enclave. The Portuguese, who have the smallest artillery train out of the three Iberian states, have not had as much success. Their main force is stalled in the siege of Alcacer do Sal.

If Ferdinand can take Alarcos, he will be able to invade the Guadalquivir river valley, the backbone of Muslim Spain. Three of the four largest Muslim cities lie on or near the river, Cordoba, Seville, and Cadiz. The fourth city is Granada. He begins the investment of Alarcos on July 10, ordering the guns to continue firing day and night. However he soon receives ominous news; the main Marinid army has landed in Malaga and is marching north.

Part of the strategy for the crusade had involved a naval blockade of Granada, to prevent the Marinids crossing over from Africa to Europe. Aragon and Portugal had provided the ships, along with a squadron of six vessels from Sweden. However since the nearest support bases for the blockaders are Lisbon and Valencia, their coverage is spotty. On July 6 a storm scatters the Portuguese fleet, driving several vessels far to the southwest. Three eventually make landfall in an archipelago which the sailors call Madeira. After making repairs and gathering provisions, the three ships return to Lisbon bringing news of their discovery. In a gesture of defiance to the Marinid tide, the Kings of Portugal have continued to maintain that city as their capital despite its position at the front lines.

Despite the brevity of the siege, the undersupplied Alarcos garrison is in poor shape when the Marinid army lands at Malaga with all its provisions, powder, shot, and artillery train, which had previously been stored in Melilla. Because Alarcos cannot hold out for much longer, the Marinid soldiers are ordered to quickly unload their supplies and powder, leaving them and the artillery stored in waterfront warehouses. Since the warehouses are not large enough to accommodate all of the supplies, many cases, including several barrels of powder, are placed under canvas awnings next to the buildings. Portuguese spies are aware of this, relaying the information to Lisbon as the Marinid host races northward with a bare minimum of supplies. They also take most of the Malaga garrison in the hopes that the sheer size of the Muslim force will compel the Castilians to disengage.

Ferdinand is not so easily frightened. Assuming that the Marinids will be slowed down by their sizeable supply and artillery train, he continues pummeling Alarcos. However he has not broken the garrison’s resistance when jinetes, the Iberian light cavalry, report that the Marinids are just a few days away, over a week earlier than expected. Outnumbered almost two to one, the Castilians hurriedly move the guns from their siege positions to defend the camp, throwing up entrenchments and earthen embankments.

When they are done, the Castilian camp resembles a miniature city. The Marinids encamp for the night to the south on August 2 but at dawn the next day, they immediately attack. Accustomed to beating Christians, the Marinids rush at the embankments, manned by ranks of silent, grim Iberians. Standing next to them are the Swedish crusaders, led by Olaf Tordsson. A six foot seven inch giant bedecked in plate, he served in Scotland as a mercenary in 1406-1410. He wields a claymore one-handed.

The Marinids launch a three-pronged attack on the Castilian camp, shouting and banging their shields and spears together. Still there is silence from the Castilians as the Moors charge, eating up the ground. Closer they come, and still nothing. One hundred meters, seventy five, fifty. Knights grip their lances, almughavars their javelins. Behind them the snorting horses of the Knights of Santiago stand around their sovereign. Thirty meters, still no sound from the Christian lines. Twenty meters, Ferdinand raises the Banner of Castile. The world explodes.

Every single gun fires virtually simultaneously, the sound itself physically staggering some of the men, immediately casting a cloud of smoke over the battlefield. All along the line, the crusaders brace, expecting Marinid soldiers to come screaming out of the fog. Nothing happens. It takes five minutes before the powder smoke clears enough for the crusaders to see the carnage. The head of every single attacking column has been obliterated. Positioned on top of shallow packed-earth embankments, the angle of the Castilian shots had caused the cannonballs to skip across the hard ground, scything through the Marinid ranks. Also where the cannonballs struck were lots of loose rocks and gravel, which were also sent flying at tremendous speeds, adding to the wave of shrapnel that smashed flat almost four thousand Marinids in one terrible instance.

To the rear, the remainder are regrouping. The almughavars climb over the embankment, standing near the top of the forward slope so they can loose their javelins just as the Moorish soldiers start to climb. Once the smoke has completely cleared, the Marinids immediately charge, racing to meet the Castilian lines while the cannons reload; their war cry is now a howl of rage. The almughavars hurl their javelins into the leading ranks, scrabbling up the embankments under the cover of crossbow volleys. The first Marinid to reach the top, a lightly armored Tuareg, does so in front of the Swedes. Olaf’s claymore clefts him in two, vertically.

All along the line the shock is tremendous, each side evenly matched as Marinid numbers are countered by Castilian fortifications. Dismounted knights wade into the fray, smashing at the enemy with almughavars flanking them, using their javelins as spears. Ramparts of Marinid dead begin to pile up alongside the Christian slain, but still more men pour into the fray. Crossbowmen from makeshift bastions pour bolts into the waves of Marinids coming up to reinforce the front ranks. Then the smaller Castilian guns, one by one, begin to sound, roaring enfilading fire into the Marinid echelons, kicking up more loose rocks that crack armor and break bones in addition to their own lethal shot.

A cheer goes up at the far left; the Marinids have taken one of the gun batteries, positioned on a small hill. The Marinid soldiers quickly begin moving the guns to fire on the crusader camp while others start picking up crossbows from the slain. With an earth shattering bellow Olaf and his Swedes come roaring up the knoll. One of the Marinid soldiers with a crossbow slams a bolt in Olaf’s chest. It slows him down for about one second. In clear view of both armies, Olaf, with the crossbow bolt visibly protruding from his chest, grabs the soldier, lifts him above his head, and hurls him off the embankment. The remaining Marinid soldiers there are cut to pieces.

Marinid morale shatters. They do not want to fight this army, with its fiendishly lethal artillery and its apparently immortal giant. The Marinids flee back to their camp, crossbow bolts and cannonballs speeding them on their way. A few squadron of jinetes harass their departure with darts but withdraw before coming too close to the Marinid encampment. The battle had lasted for just under two hours, with a death toll of three thousand crusaders and fourteen thousand Marinids.

Once the Marinids are gone, Olaf strips off his armor. The crossbow bolt had struck an angled facet of his cuirass, penetrated it, the chainmail shirt under it, the padded wool-silk gambeson under that, and barely nicked his skin. The wound does not even leave a scar. Ferdinand himself thanks Olaf for his critical role in the defense, granting him an annual subsidy of 2,000 Castilian ducats for the rest of his life.

Despite the tremendous victory, the Castilian army is still in peril. In spite of the lopsided casualty ratios, the Marinids still have a numerical advantage, with their Berber light cavalry beginning to make attempts on the crusader supply line, which are kept open only with difficulty. Ferdinand is extremely reluctant to abandon the siege, since with the Marinid army in the area he would be forced to leave his magnificent artillery train, which he had only been able to finance with the church’s support.

So he sends messengers to both the Aragonese and the Portuguese, asking them to make demonstrations against the Marinid lines so that he does not have to abandon Alarcos, arguing that ‘Alarcos is key to the Guadalquivir, and the Guadalquivir is key to driving the Moor forever from Iberia’. The Aragonese have taken Murviedro, establishing a land link with Valencia, and are now marching on Cartagena, the nearest major Marinid port. While the Aragonese advance is a threat, the Marinids recognize that the Castilians are the greater danger. Meanwhile the Portuguese have taken Alcacer do Sal, but since their stores of cannonballs are running low, they are unwilling to advance further. To fight the Marinids, the Portuguese King Pedro I decides to try another tactic. On August 11, two Portuguese cargo vessels and twenty men sail from Lisbon under the cover of night. Their destination: Malaga.

In the evening of August 20, the two Portuguese vessels, the Sao Maria and the Sao Gabriel, sail into Malaga harbor, flying Marinid banners with the crew dressed in Marinid uniforms, posing as Portuguese from the Algarve in Marinid service. The skeleton crew of customs agents, depleted by the withdrawal of most of the Malaga garrison, conducts a quick inspection and is paid off with a bribe (a common practice amongst Marinid customs agents).

Spotting the unmistakable signs of Marinid guns stored under canvas, the Portuguese ships anchor as close as possible to the cannons. The powder is stored nearby, clustered around the overfilled wooden warehouses. By this point it is after dusk. Just after 7:00 PM both ships explode; the sailors had ignited the two hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder stored in the holds, covered under crates of fruit and Flemish textiles. None of them live to see the immense fireballs that rocket above Malaga, a second sun blazing over the city. As the thunderclap rocks the startled city, flaming debris showers the waterfront and ignites some of the outdoor powder barrels. The warehouse behind them detonates, another fireball racing upward to join the fading originals. Then the depot to the east explodes, then another, a long row of secondary explosions as each warehouse detonation sets off its neighbor.

By the time the seventh and final fireball issues forth, it is bright as day as the entire dockyard is in flames. Stores of pitch and canvas, kept to service visiting ships, fuel the inferno, which races northward to the city itself. All across Malaga the muezzins sound, calling the faithful not to prayers but to arms, to battle the roaring curtain of fire that would outshine the sun. It is the sound of a city in agony.

The call of the muezzins and the screams of the terrified inhabitants are soon drowned out by the crackling roar of the immense flames. Scattered by the debris from the explosions, fueled by gunpowder and pitch, the fire is almost a mile long less than twenty minutes after its birth. Hunger and a light sea breeze push it forward toward the city, devouring everything in its path. According to accounts, some of the people futilely attempting to battle the blaze are picked up and carried into the infernos by the winds created by the firestorm’s demands for oxygen. To the north, startled peasants look to the southern horizon, wondering at the sight. The horizon is glowing. By 8:30 PM, the fire slams into the great stone walls of the city, which hold it inside the city, devouring virtually every street, every building, every body it can find.

By morning, Malaga is no more. A charred wasteland filled with the bones of the twenty thousand dead is what remains. The cannons stored at the waterfront are now solidified pools of metal; the bronze and iron barrels had melted. With the city went most of the provisions for the main Marinid army, and all of its pay. That too had been melted; along the quay the few dazed survivors can step in puddles of gold.

When news of the disaster reaches Alarcos, Marinid morale is crushed. When the officers begin planning for a second attack on the Castilian camp, the men mutiny, demanding that the army retreat to the Guadalquivir (many of the men are from the river valley and want to protect their families from the new Christian weapon-the Marinids are still unsure on how Malaga was destroyed) and that they be paid. With little choice, the Marinid officers consent and the army retreats southward. On September 5 Alarcos capitulates to the Castilians.

It is the end of combat operations for the year. Ferdinand is busy rebuilding the fortress of Alarcos, buttressing the walls with earthen embankments. The Aragonese, due to lack of supplies, abandon the siege of Cartagena and retreat back to Valencia with their artillery. The Portuguese remain at Alcacer do Sal; they have no powder with which to prosecute sieges. And the Marinids remain on the defensive at the Guadalquivir, shifting through the wreckage of Malaga, trying to find out how one of their greatest ports was wiped out in the space of a single night.

1418: Although the crusade is still on, the war in Iberia is largely stalled. The Portuguese exhausted their reserves of gunpowder in the suicide attack on Malaga and are working to replenish them. Meanwhile the families of each of the ‘Malaga martyrs’ is given a stipend by each of the Iberian kings and all of the sons of the two captains are ennobled. The Castilians remain in Alarcos, holding position as Ferdinand also rebuilds his stockpile of powder and shot and orders the forging of more light guns. The smaller weapons, firing balls of no more than twenty five pounds, are his favorite due to their role in defending the camp at Alarcos. They are also used in concert with the larger cannons; the large guns smash open the breaches in the wall while the light guns hammer the area to prevent repair work while the large weapons reload.

However none of the Iberian states are idle. Portuguese and Aragonese vessels prowl the Straits of Gibraltar, pouncing on any Marinid vessels they find. There are three minor naval battles, none involving cannon, the Christians winning two. Meanwhile squadrons of jinetes and mounted almughavars basing from Alarcos raid the Guadalquivir valley, skirmishing with the Berber cavalry sent to oppose them. Overall the battles are a draw.

At the same time Marinid Africa is abuzz with activity. In all the cities of north Africa one can hear the sound of hammers striking anvils as blacksmiths forge weapons for the grunting young men drilling under the glare of sergeants. Waves of young Berber tribesmen, eager for adventure and gold, pour into the cities as caravans speed southward across the Sahara, purchasing slaves from the Jolof Empire to further bolster the gathering Marinid host.

Genoa is a major help to the Marinids in this, pouring war materials, particularly timber, canvas, and pitch for shipbuilding into its port of Tunis. Many Marinids had favored wiping out this Christian enclave in the past, but the Marrakesh sultans had always stayed their hand. Their wisdom is clearly shown as the Genoese are more than willing to sell weapons that will kill their Aragonese rivals, even if the wielders are infidels. They continue this traffic even after both the Avignon and Rome popes denounce it, Andrea Alessi remarking that “gold has no religion.”

The enclave at Oran is in a more precarious position. Considered to be a part of the Sicilian domain of the Aragonese crown, it is administered by Sicilian magistrates and frequented by Sicilian merchants. The decentralized nature of the dualistic Aragonese-Sicilian monarchy is what saves Oran. For while the Marinids are at war with Jaime V, King of Aragon and King of Sicily, they are only at war with his Aragonese dominions, not his Sicilian territories. So at the moment, Sicilian coin is financing Aragonese armies and fleets, but Sicilian manpower and vessels are not reinforcing them. An attack on Oran would be a declaration of war on Sicily and would bring those forces into play.

The near independence of Sicily in the Aragonese domain, which is a collection of autonomous kingdoms united by a common monarch, is the end result of the need for the House of Barcelona to conciliate the Sicilians. Invited in to drive away the Angevins, tensions had increased after the War of the Sicilian Vespers as the king Martin I (1306-1325) tried to rule Sicily as a personal domain. Sicily was rife with discontent under his rule, with some factions contemplating inviting Genoa or even the Roman Empire to take over the island instead.

Martin’s successor, Jaime III (1325-1348), instituted the reforms that turned Sicily into a virtually independent state. Granting the Sicilians complete independence in internal affairs upon payment of certain taxes and tolls, foreign affairs remained in Barcelona’s hands. The one exception was the declaration of war. The Sicilian Cortes had to approve any declaration made by Aragon for it to have effect in Sicilian domains, and they were under no obligation to do so, although they were obligated to allow their ports to be used as naval bases during an Aragonese war. The Sicilians could not however issue a separate declaration of war, but could merely confirm or deny a pending Aragonese declaration. This proviso, although extremely aggravating to Barcelona, had been demanded by and granted to the Sicilians, who did not want to be drawn into a long foreign war after the terrible bloodshed of the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

The Sicilian Cortes essentially is the government of Sicily. Comprised of Sicilian nobles, wealthy burghers, chief clergy, and representatives of the towns of Sicily (chief of which are Palermo, Messina, and Agrigento) they are the ones that lay down the laws and tax codes of the island, not the King. Every year the King is to receive a certain amount of payment each year, and beyond that a certain percentage (5-20%) of each tax and toll, with the percentage of land taxes being higher since at the time, central Mediterranean trade was being routed through Bari, Tunis, and Naples and Sicilian tolls did not look very profitable. However this helped spurred investment in trade and now Sicily is home to a thriving merchant class with Palermo a major port, four-fifths the size of Barcelona.

The nobles and burghers are descended from families that played major roles in the War of the Sicilian Vespers. Their positions in the Cortes are inheritable, but every member has to pay a sizeable installation fee to the King. In the event of a vacancy, the King chooses the replacement (who still has to pay the fee) but their choice has to be a native Sicilian. The Cortes oversees the courts of Sicily, but any Sicilian citizen has the right to appeal to the King.

The sound of war also comes from east Africa, as the Emperor Yekuno and the Imam al-Ghazi finally meet in battle for the first time at Ziway on April 4. For the last few years the war had consisted of low level skirmishing, neither side able to gain a decisive advantage. The two armies are evenly matched numerically; al-Ghazi’s Adalese veteran core is buttressed by feudal Ethiopian regiments commanded by noble defectors, fleeing Yekuno’s centralizing trends. The Adalese launch a fierce attack on the Ethiopian left wing, but are savaged by crossbow bolts.

The weapon is a new feature of the Ethiopian arsenal, designed by the Roman artisans in Yekuno’s service. To maintain a corps of crossbowmen, Yekuno took the bold step of recruiting simple farmers, not part of the soldier class, and using them to form a crossbow militia. They are provided a crossbow and bolts and are required to show up at local drill grounds twice a month to practice, but receive a small tax exemption and the opportunity to serve in the army with pay.

Despite their slow rate of fire, the weapons are brutally effective against the lightly armored Adalese troops, the bolts ripping through their light shields and killing or wounding the men behind them. The ferocious, irresistible onslaught that is al-Ghazi’s main battle tactic is blunted by the Ethiopian crossbowmen, who are supported by Ethiopian light infantry who fight with javelins and saber-like swords.

About two hours into the battle, some of al-Ghazi’s Ethiopian reserves defect back to Yekuno. With the morale of his troops wavering, the Imam moves near the front lines to encourage them. A crossbow bolt pierces his neck while atop his horse; he is dead before he hits the ground. Yekuno immediately sends in his Royal Guard, squadrons of horsemen protected with thick gambesons and wielding lancers and sabers, who pulverize the Adalese flanks. They break.

The result is a slaughter. Chased by the Ethiopian Royal Guard, the Adalese are cut down in droves. Some of their officers attempt to reorganize their men, but the Royal Guard is supported by squadrons of mounted crossbowmen who dismount to shoot. Every forming pocket of resistance is ripped apart by crossbow quarrels. Many of the Ethiopian defectors surrender, but while Yekuno accepts those of the men, he shows no mercy to officers and nobles who betrayed him and Ethiopia. Their severed heads join those of the Adalese soldiers.

Yekuno’s casualties are respectable but not crippling, and some of his losses are made up by Ethiopians defecting back to him. They are incorporated into his army, but are split up amongst loyal units and do not receive a share in the post-battle loot. After a three day rest period, the Ethiopian army immediately marches on Harar, the second city of the Sultanate of Adal after its capital Zeila. Despite its small garrison, the wealthy and populous city puts up a ferocious resistance, despite the fact that relief is extremely unlikely with the disintegration of the main Adalese army. Although Yekuno is determined, that is not enough. The success of the siege is due to Petros Phokas, one of the Roman artisans and a siege engineer who supervises the construction of five counterweight trebuchets which pummel Harar’s walls. After two weeks of bombardment by all five weapons and a siege of six weeks, the city surrenders.

A month later, Adal comes to terms with Ethiopia. Despite al-Ghazi’s brilliant early victories, the strain of taking on the significantly larger Christian state had utterly exhausted the Sultanate in both money and manpower. The Ethiopian defectors had lengthened Adal’s ability to fight, but it had not been enough. By 1418 al-Ghazi was the only thing keeping Adal’s will to fight alive. With his death, it died as well. In the peace, Ethiopia regains all its lost territory, plus Harar. Yekuno places the Somali city directly under his control, installing a royal garrison paid for by custom duties and replacing Muslim settlers with Christian inhabitants. While the population drop does lessen its commercial importance for a time, its strategic location on important local caravan routes allows Yekuno many opportunities to levy tolls and taxes.

As war dies down in Africa, it intensifies in Italy as Andrew III reenters the Veneto in April. After the battle of Treviso, the guns shelling Venice had been withdrawn back to Treviso along with the main Hungarian army, although throughout the winter squadrons of hussars had prowled the banks of the lagoon, ambushing anyone within reach. As a result Venice has had to rely entirely on its fleet to maintain communications with the mainland. Over the winter the Republic has purchased more cannons from any available seller with the use of more forced loans and extraordinary taxes, and installing them in towers sighted to fire on the previously used positions of Hungarian artillery.

As a result the Hungarian army gets a warm welcome when it arrives on the banks of the lagoon on April 20, but not enough to deter Andrew. He has ample supply reserves and numerous squadrons of hussars to guard his west flank against a Milanese attack. Without a respectable fleet his hope is that he can bomb the Venetians into accepting his peace terms, which are that Venice will cede all its territories in Dalmatia, Istria, and Italy (except for the lagoon itself) to Hungary and become a vassal state. With the failure of his bid to become Holy Roman Emperor, Andrew is contemplating the title ‘King of Italy’ as a consolation prize. The capitulation of Venice would be the first step to that goal.

During the month of May the Hungarians and Venetians trade cannonballs. To compensate for their firepower inferiority, Venetian vessels land elite corps of marines on the mainland at night which attempt to spike the guns. During the first raid they succeed brilliantly, wrecking four guns, including a bombard firing one hundred pound balls, with only one casualty from a crossbow bolt. After that, the strikes become much more chancy and deadly due to increased hussar patrols. Casualties on both sides are heavy.

As the siege of Venice drags into June, Andrew decides to seek more naval forces to bolster that of the battered Dalmatians. First he turns to the Roman Empire, where Demetrios and Manuel give him a polite but firm refusal. With a war weary populace, a shaky treasury, and the new theme of Italia to integrate into the Empire, the Emperors have no desire for foreign entanglements.

Also on the eastern frontier, Turkmen raids are becoming more frequent. Osman II is busy building up his forces to attack Gilan and the Jalayirids, concentrating his efforts on the richer and more populous southern half of Mesopotamia, which did not receive as much ‘attention’ from Timur. As a result the northern Turkmen, who view themselves as ghazis, have not been effectively leashed by Baghdad after the restoration of Ottoman rule. Their attacks are concentrated in Armenia, where the fighting is savage as many of the locals remember that those Turkmen had often served in Timur’s army and participated eagerly in the warlord’s atrocities.

Another state Andrew approaches is the Republic of Pisa. While territorially puny, Pisa is one of the richest states in Europe, with a navy and merchant marine second only to Venice and Genoa. Due to its extremely good relations with the Papacy, much of Pisa’s wealth is derived from transporting pilgrims who are encouraged by the clergy to seek Pisan passage. From Pisa, pilgrims can sail to Barcelona as part of their journey to Santiago de Compostela or to the holy land. Due to a special arrangement with Constantinople, Pisan transports en route to Outremer stop for supplies in Attaleia, bringing much business into the port.

One on one, Pisa cannot match Venice even in its weakened state, but combined with the remaining Dalmatian vessels, its chances of victory would be high. However Pisa is more concerned with its closer commercial rival of Genoa, which is kept in balance by Venice. While the destruction of the Serene Republic would benefit Pisa, it would likely benefit Genoa more. Also Pisa has been having some border disputes both with Lucca and with the Florentines, and wants to keep its forces close to home in case war breaks out.

Genoa is the last available option, capable of challenging Venice even at her height and eager for her destruction. At the moment though the Marinids are offering up to triple the market price for shipbuilding materials (North Africa has plenty of gold but not timber), provided their transport is expedited. As a result much of the Genoese merchant marine is occupied pouring those goods into Tunis. However those shipments have to be well guarded to protect against Hospitalier warships, which have been raiding the Marinid coast and who have no compunction against attacking those they see as traitors to Christendom. Also there is the possibility that Aragon-Sicily might declare war on Genoa to stop the traffic, and in that war there is no doubt that Sicily will join. So Genoa’s flotillas will remain in the western Mediterranean.

Even with the Hungarian failure to procure a fleet, the situation for the Venetians is perilous. With the roar of cannons, sleep in the city is impossible, especially after several local fishermen are suborned by the Hungarians into starting fires in the parts of the city outside of the Hungarian artillery’s range. While the plot fails, it only increases the tension in the city, with political and commercial rivals claiming their opponents are Hungarian collaborators. The old doge, Francesco Lando, is able to keep the muttering, fearful populace focused on defending the city, but it is obvious that their will to fight is crumbling.

Food shipments are also a problem. With a hostile Dalmatia and the Romans and Genoese dominating the Anatolian, Bulgarian, and Black sea grain trade, Egypt is the only available granary for the Republic. However Dalmatian privateers prowl the Adriatic; too weak to take on the Venetian fleet, they ambush isolated Venetian merchantmen and grain transports. With options dwindling, Francesco Lando turns to the one man who can save Venice, Vlad Musat.

The Kingdom of Hungary, one of the largest and most powerful states in Europe, has one major flaw, the continual running sore that is Vlachia. Except for Transylvania, the region is not quite a Hungarian vassal or province, but a repeatedly extorted satellite. Every time one of the Vlach statelets has attempted to consolidate the area, Hungarian forces led by the voivode of Transylvania have squashed the maneuver.

However tensions are also rising in once loyal Transylvania. Andrew III, fond of war and conquests, is also a loyal son of the Catholic church. In 1413 he issued the Decree of Cluj, whereby the nobility was restricted to Catholics only. Orthodox nobles, common in Transylvania, had to either convert or forfeit their lands and titles (Many had emigrated from Vlachia in the early and mid 1300s and pledged fealty to Buda, keeping their Orthodox faith in the process and followed by many Orthodox Vlach peasants). Most converted after the issue of the decree, but still practice Orthodoxy in secret, inspired by the gleaming example of Constantinople. Also taxes on Orthodox peasants were increased, both in an effort to convert and to help fund Andrew’s wars. Taxes on Catholic peasants were also raised, although not as much. While the burghers of Transylvania, mainly German immigrants making up about a quarter of the population, are loyal to Buda, the rest is increasingly not.

In Vlachia proper, the flame of Vlach resistance to Hungarian incursions and exactions is fanned by news from the Roman Empire. Many Vlach officers had served with distinction during the War of the Five Emperors and Timur’s invasions and been publicly commemorated. The most famous is Dragos cel Mare, a name known to every Vlach child. His cavalry charge at Manzikert is already a legend. Accustomed to losing at war, the example of the Dragon of Constantinople and other Roman Vlachs show that they can be victorious, giving the Vlach people a new sense of hope.

That new sense of hope is fostered by Vlad Musat, a minor nobleman from Bessarabia determined to drive the Hungarians out once and for all. Leading small bands of volunteers, he has won several small victories against Hungarian detachments through ambushes and guerrilla warfare over the past several years. With each victory he grows more popular and more volunteers flock to his standard. With Andrew distracted by his Italian war, Vlad’s cause has been growing momentum as noblemen and peasants alike pledge their fealty to him.

However the sheer size of Vlad’s movement by this point makes it a clear target for the Hungarians. Normally the voivode of Transylvania would have assembled the veteran forces of the eastern march and crushed the uprising. However the voivode, Gabriel Dobozi, a Catholic Vlach, is married to Vlad’s first cousin, a famed raven-haired beauty. His previous wife, Theodora Laskaris, second daughter of Thomas Laskaris, had died in childbirth along with the baby in 1415. Because of his wife’s very strong influence over him, Gabriel has been drifting away from Buda.

Due to Cluj his people are leaning towards Vlad as well as opposed to Buda. That the main exception are the Germans only encourages the remaining Transylvanians to favor Vlad. The German burghers as a class are the object of intense hatred, as they dominate commercial and mining activities, the most lucrative businesses, and vigorously and collectively squash any non-German competition. Even potential opponents, such as prosperous peasants wanting to invest in the grain trade, are ruthlessly sidelined and typically ruined. They are able to do so because the Buda-appointed judges always side with the Germans, since Andrew gains massive amount of revenue from mining duties.

On May 20, the city of Targoviste, the largest city in Vlachia, capitulates to Vlad’s army without a fight. The next day he is crowned King of Vlachia to the rejoicing of the populace. As he marches west several units of the eastern march, the Hungarian forces responsible for cowing the Vlachs, who are composed of Transylvanian soldiers, renounce their nominal Catholicism, revert back to the Orthodox faiths of their fathers they had never truly left, and defect to Vlad.

Initially there is a great amount of tension between the two groups who have fought often. While the Vlachs are more numerous, the Transylvanians are much better equipped and trained. Vlad knows that in a fight, the latter are more likely to win, but that he needs both in order to have a chance of challenging Andrew. There are two items available that are common to both parties, their hatred of Catholicism and their idolization of Dragos cel Mare, the most famous Vlach up to that point. Vlad draws on both elements to unify his disparate army.

On June 5, Gabriel Dobozi joins them. He converts to Orthodoxy alongside his wife (she had ‘converted’ to Catholicism before her wedding) and publicly proclaims Vlad as ‘King of Vlachia, Prince of Transylvania’. He urges all Transylvanians to support their rightful sovereign and not the usurper Andrew. The result is civil war as the Germans refuse and are immediately attacked by the Transylvanians, who are soon joined by Vlad’s army reinforced by marcher formations.

The slaughter is terrible as the German population is systematically annihilated, years of pent up religious and class rage erupting in a mass atrocity. Families are cut down where they stand even in surrender, their bodies dumped into mass graves. A common practice of Vlad is to load German prisoners onto barges and then use them as target practice for his artillery. He had acquired numerous culverins, light guns firing five to fifteen pound shot used to defend fortresses, and pressed them into field service.

The German survivors of the massacre flee westward, meeting up with marcher regiments composed of ethnic Hungarians which had remained loyal to Andrew. Vlad challenges them near Gyalu on July 2. Since most of his force is underequipped and untrained, Vlad fights a defensive battle, drawing the wagons of his supply train into a ring, a fortress on wheels. From behind the wagons, crossbowmen snipe the Hungarian horse archers while the culverins hammer them with shot, while halberds and cleavers are used to cut apart anyone attempting to storm the wagon laager. After four assaults spread out over the afternoon, which cost the Hungarians dearly, they retire from the field, fleeing westward. However the next day the rearguard is ambushed and cut to pieces. Many Hungarians and Germans are taken prisoner, but they are too poor to be worth ransoming. To deter further Hungarian attacks, Vlad finds a large field next to the road to Buda and has them all impaled, some twenty three hundred prisoners.

After the battle of Gyalu, Vlad formally establishes Targoviste as the capital of the new Vlach state, sending envoys to the Roman Empire, Poland, Serbia, and Bulgaria to proclaim his succession. The Poles, angry with Andrew because of a border dispute over Bartfa, a moderately sized and well fortified city with a Slovakian population currently under Hungarian rule, almost immediately recognize the Vlach state. The remainder send back polite but noncommittal replies.

Throughout his campaign, Vlad had been helped by Venetian subsidies, paid by the Venetians by selling various overseas assets and offering trade concessions for a price. Roman agents in Constantinople discover the transfers but allow them to continue, provided that no Roman currency is used (as that could be considered a violation of the Treaty of Dyrrachium) and that a six percent toll is paid on the money transfer. Merchants from Ancona and Urbino are the main benefactors of the Venetian sales.

In his efforts to bolster his popularity and legitimacy, Vlad adopts the epithet ‘the Dragon’ after the battle of Gyalu, mirroring Dragos cel Mare (whose first name actually means ‘precious’ in Vlach, his epithet originated because of the similarity of his name to the English word ‘dragon’ but was soon adopted by non-English speakers, including the Vlachs themselves). To the Vlachs, he is now known as Vlad Dracul.

Because of the sheer number of Venetian sailors languishing in Roman prisons and little sign that their mother city will be able to ransom them in the near future, Constantinople institutes a work program. Prisoners will be hired as cheap labor (the employers do not have to pay competitive wages) and can use the money to work towards their freedom. However since their pay is miniscule and largely taken up by the need to buy food (their meals are only provided if they remain on prison grounds, and the laborers are not there for their one midday meal), the money they make is almost nothing.

Mostly the prisoners go to work in the vineyards or mines near where they are kept. However a substantial portion are kept on Cyprus and end up working in the sugar plantations alongside ranks of Malian and Sudanese slaves. Conversely the plantation owners do not care about the longevity of the workers, so they are treated extremely poorly compared to slaves. Constantinople does not care either, as most of the prisoners are simple rowers, unable to fetch a significant ransom. Venetian ship captains and marine commanders, who can, do not participate in the program.

Slaves get better food free of charge, a longer midday rest break, and are paid more. They are paid by how much sugar they harvest and process and can use the pay to buy their freedom. This is done because it helps improve slave morale, decrease runaways, and makes sure the owners do not have to deal with old slaves who cannot work as well (the wages are calculated so that most slaves buy their freedom in their late forties or early fifties). Many freedmen actually stay in the business, being hired by their former owners as regular paid employees and serving as foremen. A handful of plantation owners are actually the descendants of former slaves, and use slaves on their plantations.

This does create a perpetual need for new slaves, which is only partially alleviated by the fact that offspring of two slaves are born slaves. Females only make up about 15% of the slave population, so there is little opportunity for slave progeny. The port of Alexandria and its Mameluke merchants are the main suppliers of fresh slaves (shipped up the Nile from Sudan), distantly followed by Genoese Tunis. Ukrainian slaves are not used as they fare rather poorly in the hot climate of Cyprus.

One of the Venetians in the program is a man by the name of Giovanni Loredan, a young, intelligent, educated, charismatic man, the son of wealthy salt merchants. He had fought in Skopelos as a marine officer and had later been captured at Negroponte. He had been ransomed by his parents but had rejoined the Venetian fleet, being captured again at Monemvasia. Because of his qualities, he quickly becomes the spokesman of the Venetian laborers, demanding food and a longer break. His demands are ignored with laughter, and he is given thirty five lashes to the cheers of the plantation slaves (the slaves do not like the Venetian laborers as every bushel of sugar they harvest means less pay and delayed freedom). He is left out in the field, the noontime Mediterranean sun beating down him. Lying there, he prays to God, promising that if he lives and gains his freedom, he will join the clergy and devote the rest of his life to serving him. He lives through the day, but will forever carry a mass of hideous scars along his back, a constant reminder of his hatred of all things Roman.

In the Veneto, when Andrew hears the news of Gyalu, he explodes with rage. According to one account, he bit the tip off of his scepter. With Transylvania and the eastern march gone, there is nothing to prevent Vlad from invading Hungary proper. Also the Vlach insurrection has cut off the grain shipments from the Ukraine and Bulgaria, which had been feeding Hungarians while Hungarian grain fed the army in Italy.

July 21 is a terrible night for the Venetians, as Andrew no longer cares about conserving powder and shot. At least two thousand cannonballs are fired into the lagoon; the roar of Venetian guns returning the fire is completely drowned out by the continuous salvos. In the city the populace is terrified, as not even Francesco Lando has received word of Gyalu (although he is aware of Gabriel Dobozi’s defection). In an effort to boost morale, another raid is launched but is thwarted before it starts around midnight, as a blind shot rips the troop transport in half just a few minutes after leaving the docks. The next morning Andrew offers peace terms.

Despite the situation in his eastern territories, he has no reason to be generous. He demands that Venice formally cede all its territories in Europe east of Gorz and make a lump payment of 500,000 Venetian ducats. After a day of negotiations, a peace is signed. Venice cedes the demanded territories, but the tribute is converted into installments of 25,000 ducats over twenty years. Two dozen Venetian councilors and wealthy merchants are handed over to Andrew, to be kept in Buda as insurance that Venice will honor their agreement. Venice or its citizens are also responsible for paying all the expenses of the hostages, including transportation to and from Buda. Francesco begrudgingly signs the treaty, muttering afterwards that ‘Venice has little more than her life left to her, but that is all one needs for revenge.’

As soon as the Hungarian army leaves, the Venetians set to work rebuilding their battered city. To make money, as many Hungarian cannonballs as possible are pried from the ruins and resold on the open market. But as they construct new homes, churches, and shops, uncovering the bodies of more and more dead, their thoughts, like that of their doge, are increasingly of revenge. There is anger toward the Hungarians for wreaking such damage. There is anger toward the Milanese for their betrayal. But most of all, there is anger toward the Romans. It was they who had summoned the Hungarians (untrue but believed by the Venetian populace); it was they who had crippled the Republic. Thousands of their sons and brothers continue to rot in Roman prisons or boil in Roman vineyards and plantations. As they stew, their thoughts drift back to happier days, to days of Enrico Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade, when Venice towered over Constantinople and cast her down. And they think, ‘our fathers did it once, perhaps our children shall do it again.’

As soon as Vlad hears the news that Andrew has entered Hungary in mid-August, he pulls back the raiders he had been sending out, consolidating his army in western Transylvania. By relentlessly drilling his peasant army, equipping them with captured Hungarian material, and corseting them with veteran marcher formations, he has significantly improved the capabilities of his forces, but not enough to take Andrew head-on. So he falls back before the Hungarian advance, burning fields and poisoning wells as he does so.

He deliberately retreats past Gyalu, where the skeletons of the Hungarians and Germans ghoulishly remain fixed on their stakes. To the Vlachs, it is a reminder of recent glory, boosting their morale as they retreat. To the Hungarians two days behind them (the army is moving rather slowly as it needs a large supply train since Andrew will not allow the troops to forage in his own domains), it terrifies them, the eerie ranks of their slain comrades staring at them from beyond the grave. To Andrew, it is a source of rage; he is now on the verge of apoplexy. Refusing to stop to bury the skeletons, he continues east despite the mutterings of his troops.

Finally at Torda Vlad turns and challenges Andrew, drawing up his troops in the wagon laager formation used at Gyalu. While the formation is a powerful defensive nut to crack, its main weakness is that it is a perfect target for artillery, and Andrew has a great many cannon. However they are scattered across the road behind the Hungarian army, unable to keep up with Andrew’s advance.

Also Vlad has been dispatching columns of light infantry behind the Hungarian army to harass flankers and stragglers. However their main mission has been to attack the various gun crews as they laboriously haul their guns across the Hungarian plain. With most of the hussars in the east attempting to corral Vlad and force him to fight, guarding the supply train carrying the army’s rations, or buried in the Veneto, the gun crews and their small escorts are often overrun, the crews slaughtered, and the guns spiked. So at Torda Andrew has no artillery, but has almost a two to one advantage in infantry and a six to one advantage in cavalry.

The attack is opened with fierce missile barrages from the Hungarian horse archers and crossbowmen, covering the advance of lumberjacks from the Carpathians armed with two-handed heavy axes to break the chains connecting the Vlach wagons. Vlach crossbows and the occasional handgun snap back, and then the culverins roar into action. By now the gun crews are the most professional part of Vlad’s army, and their targets are directly in front of them. The mauled Carpathians fall back, Andrew ordering the horse archers forward to shoot down the gun crews while they reload their pieces.

They advance, loosing sheets ‘so thick a man could walk on them,’ according to one observer. Missiles from the wagons volley back, but forward observers can see many men hurriedly spanning crossbows and reloading cannons, but not many shooting them. Closer they move, as Hungarian dismounted knights and mail-clad Croat infantry approach to storm the laager.

Then the reserve guns fire. Due to the lack of proper cannonballs, these cannons are loaded with canvas bags filled with miscellaneous debris such as nails, rocks or arrowheads. Since the ammunition used is less durable than regular shot, smaller powder charges are used, resulting in an extremely limited range. But in such close quarters, it is murderous, mirroring the volleys at Alarcos in lethality. The Hungarian army staggers back as its lead units are shredded. While the plate armor of the Hungarian knights is enough to repel the small projectiles when hit from long range, many of them had stripped off all their plate armor except for their cuirass to improve their endurance on their feet as they had done at Treviso. So most of them are not killed, unlike their less well-protected comrades, but nearly all suffer crippling wounds to their limbs and are out of the fight.

Andrew launches two more attempts on the laager during the afternoon, but fails to break through due to timely support from the Vlach culverins. With a very high number of wounded soldiers because of the use of scattershot and very discouraged survivors, Andrew is forced to abandon the campaign, pulling his battered army back to Buda. Vlad does not harass his retreat, not willing to risk provoking the Hungarian king into changing his mind. Gathering what equipment he can from the slain Hungarian soldiers, he withdraws to Targoviste.

However shortly afterward, a war of skirmishes begins, pitting Hungarian light cavalry and Vlach light infantry against each other. Since the Vlachs do not have the training or discipline of the akritoi that they try to mirror, the skirmishes mainly go in favor of Hungary. Fighting even in winter, the hussars begin the process of clearing western Transylvania, slowing starving the towns into submission.

To the south, the Vidin War comes to an end. For both Serbia under Lazar I and Bulgaria under George II, it is a bitter peace with the status quo restored. Bulgaria is forced to resign itself to the loss of its territories west of the Morava river, while Lazar has to abandon his dream of uniting the Southern Slavs into a great kingdom under his rule. However the Serbs are overall the winner, keeping their recent conquests and now controlling a respectable piece of the Balkans. Meanwhile Bulgaria is now a rather short and thin country, uncomfortably sandwiched between the Danube and Roman Thrace.

From Finland to Vizcaya: The Early Years of Olaf Tordsson

Olaf Tordsson was born in 1369, in the city of Turku in Finland, a member of the wealthy Borne family, which was very powerful in the region. When he was twenty years old he moved to Gotland to take control over the family assets on the island. The Borne family, ever in need of more money to help defend its holdings in Karelia against Novgorod-Lithuania, had begun dabbling in the Baltic trade that flowed through the island, although opposition from Hanseatic merchants was making that difficult.

Denmark had made threatening gestures toward Gotland in the past, including an attempted invasion in 1363 that had been destroyed in a storm before it reached the island. But by the ends of the fourteenth century, Denmark’s attention was focused elsewhere. Since the late 1340s, much of Denmark’s attention had been focused northward in Norway (no personal union between Norway and Sweden) or southward toward Germany.

There had been an invasion of Norway after the Black Death, the Danes counting on the heavy casualties amongst the Norwegian aristocracy to aid their attack. However the new king Eric III, the only survivor of the royal house, although just nineteen years old, rallied the people of Norway and drove the Danes out except for the coastal portions of Vestagder and Austagder, which they were able to keep. With Baltic success illusive, Denmark turned south toward Germany, forcing the Dukes of Slesvig back into vassalage along with the Duke of Holstein, although the free imperial city of Lubeck remained independent. Holstein’s titular sovereign, the Holy Roman Emperor, made a token protest but was unable to exert serious authority so far from Munich. Later with the rise of Saxony the Bavarian emperors viewed Denmark as a potential northern counterweight to Saxon ambition.

The threat to Gotland came from another quarter. Just eighteen months after Olaf arrived in Gotland, the island was attacked by the Teutonic Order. The trading wealth of the island was crucial to the Order’s survival, which was becoming more and more precarious as Novgorod and Lithuania moved towards each other. Against the plate-equipped Teutonic Knights (the Order had dispatched three thousand of their best men to ensure a quick success), the Gotland militia did not have a chance. It was Olaf who turned the tide, rallying the militia and reinforcing them with his own guard of 150 plate-clad men and his own terrifying presence. Attacking during a rainstorm while the wind blew into the Teutons’ faces, he drove them into the sea. The captured Teutonic gear Olaf took to supplement his guards’ equipment, the remainder being sold to Novgorod. The proceeds allowed him to expand his guard by another fifty men, all armored in plate.

For the next decade, he prospered in Gotland, but in 1398 the Borne family began its bid for the throne of Sweden, led by Olaf’s uncle Magnus Ericson. Since the Borne family was the power in Finland, many in the wealthy family had dreamed of becoming lords of Sweden as well. With the Swedish king Valdemar II distracted by a dispute with the Norwegians in Torsby and somewhat unpopular due to his favoring of Hanseatic merchants (which also imperiled Borne interests in Gotland), the time to strike seemed ripe.

They were wrong. Magnus landed north of the town of Trosa, which was small but sometimes frequented by the Hansa. Olaf himself did not participate, but dispatched fifty of his bodyguard and two hundred Gotland militia clad in mail in four ships to support the endeavor. However much of Magnus’ army was Finnish, some of whom were still pagans recruited from the Sami people. This allowed Valdemar to paint Magnus as a pagan ruler, hardly fit to rule a Christian kingdom.

Because of Valdemar’s propaganda, Trosa chose to resist, forcing Magnus to begin a siege. Trying to woo the town into capitulating, he forsook a direct assault, but the inhabitants of Trosa refused to listen. The siege allowed Valdemar to gather his forces and converge on Magnus’ army. In the ensuing battle, the Borne army was utterly crushed, although Olaf’s plate-armored soldiers wreaked a terrible slaughter upon their enemies before being felled by sheer weight of numbers. Magnus was killed.

Although the ringleader was dead, Valdemar knew he lacked the strength to invade Finland considering the power of the Borne there. So he settled for a return to the status quo before the rebellion. However Gotland was within his reach; to forestall an attack, Olaf went into exile. He took with him the remainder of his guard, one hundred and fifty men, and nine hundred of the Gotland militia.

Olaf’s company arrived in Bremen in February 1399, where they were hired as mercenaries. In northwest Germany, the power of the Bavarian emperors was extremely limited, allowing the numerous small states in the region to battle each other constantly. Bremen employed them against its main rivals of Hoya and Oldenburg, and due to Olaf’s leadership, particularly in the skillful use of terrain, they won several victories. Olaf used the spoils to improve the equipment of his men, increasing his full plate-armored men to two hundred and fifty by 1406.

While there, Olaf took an interest in horse breeding. Due to his size and the heavy armor that he wore, only the greatest of horses were capable of bearing the Swede into battle. To fill this need, Olaf created a stud farm responsible for providing him with war horses. In 1406 the pride of his farm was a young white stallion, eighteen hands, two inches tall. When his head was raised, even Olaf had to look up to stare him in the eye. It became Olaf’s favorite horse.

Yet their very success soon dried up their job opportunities, but a rather unusual employer appeared at this time, James II, King of Scotland, in need of skilled men to help fight the Norwegians (because of disputes over the Orkneys) and the English. Olaf took up the offer, fighting for the Scottish for the next four years. It is there where he began using the claymore. However the pay was poor compared to what they earned in Germany, so in early 1410 the company set sail for the Low countries, where they took up service in the employ of Burgundy. For six years they battled the English, Flemish rebels, and the occasional Germans. Olaf used the time to continue improving his men’s equipment. In 1416, the number of full plate-armored men remained the same as in 1406, but the remaining eight hundred men (losses had been replaced by new recruits; by this point the company is about sixty five percent Swedish, although all soldiers are equipped and trained in an identical manner) all have plate cuirasses to supplement their mail armor.

Then Gregory XII, pope in Avignon, issued his call to crusade. Thinking he might use the pope to return to Gotland, Olaf traveled there in September 1416. He stated that if the pope helped him to return to Gotland, he would do everything in his power to encourage crusades against both the pagan Sami and the Orthodox Novgorodians. Gregory was not interested; the Sami were not a threat to Christendom while Gregory wanted to improve relations with Orthodoxy. He offered another option. If Olaf would serve in the coming crusade, he would likely gain great wealth (from the looted cities of al-Andalus) and more men (from the troops disbanded by the Iberian kings after the crusade). And he would then gain the full support of the papacy, but only after the Marinid threat had been eliminated. To encourage Olaf’s participation, Gregory offered to bankroll the company. Olaf accepted and in March 1417 he arrived at the port of Bilbao, ready to participate in the Gunpowder Crusade.

1419: The Gunpowder Crusade resumes as all three Iberian armies move southward with Ferdinand by far the biggest menace as his thrust threatens the Guadalquivir. The troops already stationed in the valley vigorously oppose him with raids and skirmishes, but are reluctant to risk a major pitched battle where they can be targeted by the Castilian artillery. Deciding that his troops need a major victory to restore their confidence, the Marinid Sultan Abu al-Hasan ibn Mohammed has his new African army, safeguarded by the new fleet constructed with Genoese materials, land in Cartagena to combat the smaller Aragonese army. While the Portuguese forces are even smaller, they are not a threat to the major Mediterranean ports and it would take longer to move the troops there, and al-Hasan wants his victory now.

Near the village of Yecla, the forward scouts of the Marinid and Aragonese armies make contact. Outnumbered, the Aragonese throw up earthen fortifications similar to the ones used at Alarcos, positioning their artillery to defend their lines while harassing the Marinids with almughavars. Since the Aragonese are the original inventors of the fearsome light infantry, theirs are of the highest quality and severely harry the green Marinid troops.

The Marinids are nervous as they advance, as every hedge or copse of trees is a potential ambush. For the new recruits sleep is difficult as a favorite almughavar tactic is to sneak into the Marinid camps and slit throats at night. Spotting the fortified Aragonese encampment is actually a relief; here is something in front of them that they can kill. As soon as they are drawn up into battle array, they attack. It is May 16.

Once more Christian crossbows and cannons roar, slashing at the Muslim ranks. However the grassy farmland does not add a wave of smaller missiles like the gravel at Alarcos, and the Aragonese have less guns. Threatened ruptures are quickly plugged by the Swedish crusaders; Olaf Tordsson wants to be with the Iberian army that is advancing in full battle array as light cavalry skirmishing is not particularly his style. He also knows that the more he contributes to the crusade, the more Gregory XII will contribute to his return home. Roaring and swinging his massive claymore, the giant and his men make a most fearsome reserve.

However the sheer number of Marinid soldiers is still too much. A breakthrough is achieved at 11 AM, the soldiers spilling out and heading for the most opulent tent. It belongs to Maria of Barcelona, former Empress of the Romans, there to encourage the soldiers by her presence (she is much more popular in her native Aragon that she ever was in the Empire). She throws her household guards into the fray. Although few in number, they are all armored in plate and equipped with glaives. They attack, twirling and slashing with their long staffs, slicing down the enemy. When Olaf slams into them as well, they immediately break. The breach is plugged as Maria’s younger brother Martin, Prince of Majorca, leads a ferocious counterattack of the Aragonese knighthood, smashing into the stalled right flank of the Marinids.

The cavalry charge bites deep into the Marinid ranks, but outside the ramparts they are unprotected from flank attacks. The Marinid reserves counterattack the counterattack, surrounding the Aragonese knights. An attempt at breakout fails because the Marinid infantry swarm the knights, preventing them from working up an effective charge. They grimly form a circle, determined to take as many of the enemy with them as they can. Seeing her brother’s peril, Maria orders her guards to charge down the embankment.

Olaf immediately joins them, shouting to his men “Come on, you dogs! Do you want to live forever?”, then leaping over the embankment. Together Maria’s guards and Olaf’s Swedes charge down the slope, bowling over the Marinid soldiers foolish or unfortunate enough to stand in their way. The Marinid line recoils as the charge smashes into them, the twirling blades ripping open a hole. Bands of almughavars crest the hill, pouring javelins into the breach, widening it. Olaf, of course, is in the front of the advance, swords and darts and arrows bouncing off of his extra-thick plate armor (about the same weight as a normal man’s tournament armor). In contrast nothing is capable of stopping his hammer blows.

Spotting their rescuers, the knights start hacking their way to the front, their maces and axes making a makeshift rampart of corpses as they move. Pressed from the front and rear simultaneously, cannonballs still plowing into the mass, the Marinid front gives way, speeding south to get out of the Aragonese clutches. With the green troops, the panic is contagious. Within twenty minutes it is a rout. However the Aragonese knights lost many of their horses during the charge and melee, while the jinetes are tied up dealing with the veteran Berber cavalry units that did not take part in the rout. Therefore there is no murderous cavalry pursuit that would have wiped out the Marinid army. Its bloodied squadrons remain to fight another day. In the aftermath of the victory, Olaf decides to rename his favorite horse, his giant white stallion. From now on, he is to be known as Moorsbane.

Even without a pursuit, the defeat is devastating to the Marinid cause, confirming in the minds of the soldiers that attacking a fortified Christian camp is suicide. As a result, the Marinids fight a war of maneuver, attempting to ambush Christian armies. However since all three Iberian armies are employing a two-layer screen system of jinetes and almughavars (doctrinally almost identical to Roman screening tactics), ambushing them is rather difficult. However the Berber light cavalry, the hardiest part of the Marinid army, repeatedly stage raids on the supply lines which are fairly successful since the Iberian light infantry and cavalry best suited to counter them have to be with the main armies to protect them from ambushes by other Marinid units.

Despite turning Alarcos into a formidable fortress and supply depot, Ferdinand is forced to abandon his attack on the Guadalquivir because of these raids. Taking the strongly defended cities of the river valley requires huge amounts of powder and shot, which his harassed supply line can not adequately provide. Finding adequate rations is also difficult as foragers have to travel en masse and be well guarded against ambushes, which lessens their effectiveness. By July, Ferdinand is back in Alarcos, dispatching flying columns of jinetes and mounted almughavars in an effort to whittle down Marinid numbers.

The Aragonese and Portuguese are not as hampered by supply difficulties as their fleets are immune to Berber cavalry. However Aragon’s main target, the large port city of Cartagena, is now garrisoned by the Yecla survivors. To discourage a breakout attempt, the Aragonese construct large earthen ramparts and bastions, covering them with lines of wooden stakes. Although the Aragonese are now virtually immune to attack, so is the city. Too strong to be taken by assault or bombardment, the garrison will have to be destroyed through starvation, a long and difficult process as the new Marinid fleet fiercely challenges the naval blockade, allowing an intermittent flow of supplies into the port.

It is now the Portuguese who advance the fastest. Fighting in an area less important to the Marinid cause, they face the fewest and worst troops and fortifications. The main thing hampering their war effort is their low powder production, but a solution is found in March. Because of the Ninety Years’ War, England’s powder production has quadrupled in the past decade. However because of the English artillery’s reputation, many French castles surrender once the heavy guns are in position, before they fire a shot. As a result, Edward VI has more gunpowder than he needs. He trades that surplus for Portuguese coin, using that coin to purchase goods and services in the French towns. With English powder, the Portuguese army hammers its way south. When the campaigning season ends, Sines has fallen and plans are being made to invade the Algarve, the conquest of which would restore Portuguese borders to where they had been before the battle of Rio Salado.

Meanwhile the Vlach war continues, both Hungarians and Vlachs vigorously raiding each other. In one respect, that war mirrors the post-Yecla Gunpowder Crusade. The Vlachs lack the numbers to field a major offensive and guard the necessary supplies, while the Hungarians are reluctant to attack a Vlach army arrayed in its wagon laager (Vlach raiders are directed to wreck bridges and guard fords so as to prevent the Hungarians from being able to bring artillery to the front lines to blow apart the wagons). Although the Vlach screening system is not as effective as the Iberians due to their weakness in cavalry, it takes much less time to draw up the wagons into a defensive circle than to create Iberian-style fieldworks. However only large Vlach forces equipped with culverins are able to create effective wagon laager defenses capable of stopping a determined assault. In most of the fighting which is in the open and between smaller forces, the Hungarian soldiers are much more bold.

The main Hungarian advantage in the war is their vast superiority in light cavalry, the hussars. Faster than Vlach light infantry (although not as stealthy), they are slowly able to clear major Vlach forces from all of Transylvania west of the Gheorgheni-Sibiu line (about three fourths of Transylvania), including the old battlefields of Gyalu and Torda, by the end of the year. However the bands of Vlach raiders prove to be impossible to eradicate. This time, the impaled corpses at Gyalu are taken down and buried with Catholic rites. However east of that line, anchored by the two large towns, the Hungarians are unable to advance.

The latest conflict between the Blue and White Hordes comes to an end. While earlier wars had favored the Blue Horde, Sarai has never recovered from Timur’s attack, so now the two states are equally matched. The recent war ends with only a few minor adjustments in borders and exhausts both states. The main winner of the Horde war is their neighbors.

1420: In Roman Armenia, Turkmen raids are becoming more and more troublesome. To help counteract the attacks, Demetrios has one of the Coloneia (the theme to which the Armenian cleisurai are subordinated) and one Chaldean banda transferred to the region. The new arrivals are almost immediately attacked by Turkmen raiders, several of them losing wives and children in the attacks on the transport convoys. When the banda soldiers ambush another Turkmen column crossing the frontier, instead of ransoming the prisoners they execute them via burning.

The economy of the Empire is starting to pick up as long-distance trade networks disrupted by the War of the Five Emperors are revived (the damage and death caused by the Turkmen is limited to the frontier districts). While the Plethon merchant family, the richest in the late Laskarid Empire, and several others lost most of their fortune when the Corinth-Antioch trade link was cut, mid-level merchants are moving up to take their place. With inter-theme trade reviving comes increased tolls for the treasury. Also the stabilization of west Asia after the Timurid civil war has allowed the eastern trade to expand. Business in Trebizond is booming as smaller merchants move into the spice market and the trade in alum and mastic, needing ships to transport their products westward.

Merchants from Ancona and Urbino, while still vastly outnumbered by Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans, are becoming a more familiar sight. Living under the shadow of Venice, Naples, and the Papacy, the citizens of the two minor Italian duchies are much less antagonistic to the Empire, viewing it as a potential protector against their powerful local neighbors. To help secure their positions, Anconan and Urbinese merchants also make the practice of learning fluent Greek, both Duchies hiring tutors and bringing them to Italy to teach.

Most Italian merchants do speak some Greek, although usually it is minimal and limited to the marketplace (Various economic concessions such as reduced tolls and tax-free market districts made learning substantial Greek largely pointless in earlier years). Individually, the most successful merchants are the Coron and Modon Genoese, who are bilingual in both Italian and Greek, allowing them to make more and better contacts with local merchants. This is a byproduct of the fact that the merchants based there typically grew up there, not the result of a conscious policy on the part of the Genoese. Merchants from the mother city or the Crimean colonies are no more competent in Greek than their Venetian or Pisan counterparts.

There is also a sort of cultural prejudice amongst most learned westerners against the Greek language. With the expansion of Roman power in southern Italy, fear of the Empire is growing in western Europe, fanned by religious hatred which is eagerly encouraged by the Venetians. They are busy strengthening their trade ties with the Mamelukes (who are, in Roman eyes, the most dangerous threat to the Empire). As a result of this prejudice and fear, knowledge of Greek is considered suspect, with Latin viewed as the true language of learning.

Since the peoples of the west are members of the Roman Catholic Church, the progressively louder claims of Constantinople to be the true and only heir of both Greece and Rome is increasingly obnoxious. Surrounded by the ruins of ancient Rome, walking in the streets of Rome, the Italians consider themselves to be the real heirs of ancient Rome. Books by Latin authors such as Cicero and Livy are considered to be essential to any aspiring library (which have been made cheaper by the growth of paper mills beyond Iberia and Rhomania although the significant labor that goes into a manuscript still makes the texts quite expensive). Latin translations of ancient Greek authors already known to the west, such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Euclid, are also considered essential, although the translations make the bold claim that the Latin far better conveys the wisdom and vision of these authors than even the finest Greek (a claim that is met with scorn by Roman bibliophiles). The elegant Latin used in the chanceries of Florence, Milan, and the Papacy are also used to further the Italians’ superior claim to Rome over Constantinople, where Latin is a dead tongue.

Still there is some exchange of ideas between Rhomania and Italia. As plate armor is immensely popular amongst the kataphraktoi and wealthier skutatoi, Italian armor makers are imported into the Empire to teach their techniques. In Florence, artists patronized by the wealthy Gonzaga family begin using perspective to create three-dimensional paintings, something which had been used in the Empire for almost twenty years both in paintings and in medical and engineering textbooks.

1164287jakobfuggertheri.jpg

Portrait of Pietro Gonzaga, by Gherardino Bembo, Florence, 1423.

The increase in trade duties, plus improved agricultural taxes as the last of the blight leaves the Empire, allows Demetrios and Manuel to begin subsidizing new constructions. Due to budget constraints, they had been unable to do so earlier, which made the new Emperors look rather poorly compared to their Laskarid predecessors, all of whom had sponsored projects throughout the Empire. The first is a series of minor fortifications in their new Italian and Crimean domains to bolster frontier defense, equipped with thick, squat towers designed to mount cannons. At the moment the main concern is the Crimea, as Constantinople is paying protection money to Sarai for Soldaia and Kaffa, but not for Theodoro, which was taken during the height of the latest Horde war.

In September, an unusual embassy arrives in Trebizond seeking out the ruler of the Daqin. After a little confusion which is sorted out through the aid of a Kashmiri merchant, it turns out they are seeking the Emperors of the Romans. The envoys had been on an expedition throughout Asia, seeking allies against Shun China. The first stop had been in the Hindu Kingdom of Tibet, which had been extremely open to the proposal as the Tibetans found Shun expansion into the Tien Shan basin a serious threat (the Shun wanted to increase their control over the Silk Road by gradually taking over its waypoints) as it threatened to envelop their state.

The next stop had been in Swati Kashmir, which had been alarmed at the steadily approaching Shun advance and annoyed at the taxes Shun authorities had been placing on their textiles. However in India, the war between Islam and Hinduism is continuing to go poorly for the former. Unable to halt the inexorable Bihari and Vijayangara, a rumor is spreading in the Delhi Sultanate that the reason for their failure is that the ghazis have not dealt with the apostates to the north. While so far it has just been talk, it is making Srinagar nervous. So Kashmir did not enter into an alliance, but did offer to send some subsidies in the event of a war, although only in non-Kashmiri currency.

Their next destination had been Samarkand to try and meet with Shah Rukh. However they received word that the Timurid Khan was embroiled in a war with the Uzbek Khanate, which required all of his efforts. He would not be available. The states of eastern Persia were too small to be of help. While the Jalayirid state was large and capable of putting forth a mighty military effort, its decentralized nature made offensive operations on the part of Fars virtually impossible.

By this point mere geography would stifle any military aid, but the envoys were determined to make one last appeal. The might of Timur had been well known to them, and so they sought out the one state that had been able to best him in battle, Daqin, Great China. Perhaps such a state so mighty in the art of war might be able to find a way to help. And so they arrived in Trebizond, having traveled the entire breadth of Asia from their homeland, Wu China.

The Middle Kingdom is broken, China a land divided. When the Yuan dynasty collapsed in the 1350s, waves of rebellions rolled over China, gradually coalescing into two main groups, one in the north and one in the south. The first became Shun China (capital is Tianjin), the second Wu China (capital is Guangzhou). The border between the two states is the Yangtze river, heavily patrolled by Wu warships.

Both states are massive in their resources. Shun has a population of fifty million, and supposedly fields an army five hundred thousand strong. Wu’s peoples number thirty six million, and field an army that is a mere three hundred and seventy thousand strong. From their inception, both states have largely left each other alone, distracted by other threats. Shun spent the last third of the fourteenth century humbling the Oirats and the Kingdom of Urumqi, the latter opening Shun eyes to the wealth that could be gained by controlling the Silk Road. Wu spent that time conquering the Kingdom of Dali (a revival of the state destroyed by the Mongols) to the west. Also it had to deal with raids from Dai Viet, until the burgeoning Kingdom of Champa had destroyed that state with the help of Wu subsidies.

However now Shun has begun eyeing Wu, envisioning a rebirth of an united China. Several skirmishes and naval battles have taken place, Wu winning most, but the southern state has never had to face the full might of Shun China. If it does, its survival is precarious. To compensate for its numerical inferiority, Wu China has been much more open than earlier Chinese empires, dispatching diplomats and merchants all across Asia and the Indian Ocean, forging diplomatic ties for alliances and trade ties for wealth.

Both Demetrios and Manuel meet the Wu Chinese delegation in Constantinople, but are unable to offer any aid. The distance is too great and there is nothing that the Wu Chinese can offer anyway; Shun China is not a threat to the Empire. However they do offer a special gift, a copy of the latest spy reports from the Timurid Empire. Shah Rukh has won a crushing victory over the Uzbek Khanate at Gharm; the war there is over with the Uzbek Khan forced to pay a sizeable tribute to Shah Rukh, who has revived his grandfather’s title ‘Lord of Asia’.

While the envoys are disappointed at the lack of Roman aid of any kind, the report does brighten their mood. Perhaps Shah Rukh might be of some use to them after all. Not willing to travel through central Asia in winter, they elect to remain in Constantinople in the meantime, purchasing some high-quality Bithynian silks in the process. They depart in March of the next year, headed towards Samarkand via Georgia.

In Iberia, the Gunpowder Crusade remains largely stalled in both the Castilian and Aragonese theaters. Cartagena is still stubbornly holding out, while Ferdinand does not have the resources to break the hard Guadalquivir nut, even with the continuing church subsidies. Portugal does launch an invasion of the Algarve, but is faced with serious opposition from the locals, who have largely converted to Islam (unlike the population in the rest of conquered Portugal, who had remained Catholic and supported the Portuguese offensive) and supply the elite crews in the Marinid fleet. With their ships they act like nautical Berber cavalry on the Portuguese supply lines.

Encouraged by the Poles and Vlachs, the Slovakians under Hungarian rule also rise up in revolt, protesting against the crushing taxes Andrew has imposed on them in his need for ever more money to fight his wars. Fortunately for him, the recapture of about three fourths of Transylvania has restored virtually all of his silver and copper mines to his control, although many of them were damaged by the retreating Vlach forces.

Andrew marches north, heading toward Bartfa, which is the center of the rebellion, but is challenged by a Polish army moving down from Krakow. The battle of Bartfa is fiercely contested, the Polish lancers flattening the lighter Hungarian hussars, but Andrew wins after launching a counterattack at 5 PM, ripping open a hole in the Polish lines with massed crossbow volleys and punching through with Hungarian knights and mail-clad, mace-wielding Croat heavy infantry which rip apart the Polish ranks. However due to the lateness of the attack, the Polish army is able to retire in good order, garrisoning Bartfa.

Faced with a war in the north and in the east, Andrew knows he needs to make peace with one of his enemies. Reluctantly, he chooses Vlad, as he is the one most likely to accept peace. His terms are that in exchange for recognizing Vlad as ruler of Vlachia, including the portion of Transylvania that he still controls, Vlad will return all Hungarian prisoners without ransom, allow the transfer of Bulgarian and Ukrainian grain to Hungarian markets (although the Vlachs may place a import toll on the shipments), and allow Catholics to maintain their faith without persecution. Vlad accepts the terms, although all Catholic monasteries in his realm are dissolved and their properties transferred to his treasury. However the monks and other Catholics in his territories are allowed to keep their clerics and churches. Roughly fifteen percent of his subjects follow the western rite (the low level caused by the loss of most of Transylvania, although most of its Orthodox inhabitants emigrated to Vlachia), with the remainder being Orthodox.

1421: The Wu Chinese delegates gain an audience with Shah Rukh in Samarkand in early May. The Lord of Asia is busy readying his armies for a planned invasion of Khorasan to remove the most powerful of his dynastic rivals. As a result, he is initially unresponsive but then the Wu change tactics. They point out that while his grandfather had been great, there was one monumental task he had left undone: the conquest of China. If Shah Rukh could succeed in this endeavor, he would outshine even Timur himself. Such a lure is irresistible to Shah Rukh, who is eager to move out of his grandfather’s shadow. With the offer of Wu subsidies (transferred via Kashmir) Shah Rukh accepts; the armies of Timur will march on Shun China.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian-Polish war is a stalemate. Andrew had managed to impose a siege on Bartfa, but was forced to abandon it due to lack of supplies. He returns to the offensive, but is hampered by the fearsome Polish cavalry which is almost unstoppable in melee. Normally he would counteract the lancers with his horse archers, but they had been used to guard against Venetian marine raids during the war and took heavy casualties. While Hungarian knighthood is capable of standing up to the Poles in mounted combat, provided numbers are even, many of the nobility took serious wounds at Torda and were permanently incapacitated.

brandtbogurodzica.jpg

A column of Polish cavalry​

As a result, taking the field is dangerous for Andrew, who can only win through using obstacles to break up and slow Polish charges long enough for his infantry crossbowmen to whittle down their strength enough for his outnumbered cavalry to have a chance. In July the city of Pozsony, known to its Slovakian inhabitants as Presporok (OTL modern Bratislava), breaks into open revolt under the leadership of the Slovak noble Andrej Moyzes. The newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II of Bavaria, eager for a chance to humiliate his Hungarian rival (who has occasionally, despite the Treaty of Salzburg, called himself the rightful Holy Roman Emperor), sends substantial subsidies to the city, which are used to purchase cannons from the prestigious Moravian foundries.

Disengaging himself from the Polish army and garrisons to the east, Andrew marches on Pozsony, arriving in August, almost two months after the revolt. Taking this city is crucial if he wants to maintain control over Slovakia, as it is the largest, wealthiest Slovak city and the only one with an university (established in 1401). However due to its strategic location near the border of the Holy Roman Empire and Poland, it is well fortified and now, with the Moravian purchases, bristling with cannons.

The steady and accurate fire from the battlements, directed by hired Bohemian and German gun crews, forces Andrew to stay well away from the walls, making the fire of his own artillery haphazard and inaccurate. Meanwhile Andrej organizes the townspeople into brigades assigned to specific wall sections. The young men fight, the old men repair and fashion weapons, the women act as firefighters, and the children bring replacement equipment to the walls. As the entire populace fights to defend their town, Andrej is everywhere, rallying the timid and leading the courageous. A short, skinny man with a thin, bent nose, to the Hungarians he is as dangerous as an Olaf Tordsson.

During the siege, the city of Nitra, the second largest city in the region and the former capital of the old Principality of Nitra, rises up in revolt as well. The overstretched Hungarian army is simply unable to keep up with all of the demands placed upon it. Polish cavalry units sweep southward, held in check only when a few minor columns are ambushed in the Carpathian passes by local woodsmen.

To help safeguard his state while he (hopefully) reduces Pozsony, Andrew turns to an unexpected source for military aid, the Kingdom of Serbia. During the Vidin war, Lazar I had created a small but extremely well equipped corps of Serbian knights. Protected by the very best Italian plate armor, fighting with lance, mace, and saber, they are directly inspired by the disciplined Roman kataphraktoi. Personally commanded by Lazar himself, membership in the corps is very prestigious and lucrative, but demands unwavering obedience. To deliberately break formation during a charge in battle is punished by death (the same as the kataphraktoi), and the soldiers are required to spend two months of each year in peacetime in training (in contrast, kataphraktoi and all Roman tagma troops spend three months combined at the official reviews, not including unofficial drill to meet competency standards). Failure to meet predetermined performance standards results in immediate expulsion from the corps.

While giving Lazar, man for man, one of the most powerful cavalry forces in the world, it is also a serious strain on his budget. Andrew offers to purchase the services of the corps, providing the equivalent of 100,000 hyperpyra a year for their use (paid by the Hungarian silver mines, which are beginning to resume production after the cessation of Vlach raids), provide all their pay, equipment, and supplies so long as they are in Hungarian service, and a promise to allow Serbia a free hand in invading Bosnia and/or Zahumlje, so long as both Lazar and Andrew are alive (Lazar is 39, Andrew 42).

Lazar accepts the offer; it solves most of his post-war problems in one stroke. To lead the corps and bring honor and fame to the Serbian state, his second son Durad Brankovic (the Nemanjic dynasty had died out in 1347) is assigned as its new commander. He had already served as a droungarios (the corps uses Roman ranks) in the corps during the Vidin war, leading the climatic cavalry charge at the battle of Razanj in 1416 which shattered the Bulgarian left wing and ruined George II’s hope of regaining his lost territories.

serbianknight.jpg

Durad Brankovic, the Hammer of Serbia​

While the Serbian cavalry covers his flank, they do nothing to help the siege of Pozsony. What is particularly galling to Andrew is that many of the bronze cannons shooting at him were forged using Hungarian copper, which is the premier supplier of the Moravian foundries (which provides the Bohemian monarchs substantial revenue from exports, supplying most of Europe east of the Rhine and north of the Alps). However his fury is not enough to breach the city’s wall. Riding back and forth behind his own guns, roaring curses at virtually all of his kingdom’s neighbors, some of his advisers fear for his sanity.

While the Serbians can go toe to toe with the Polish lancers, they are vastly outnumbered. One column skirts the city of Pest, burning farmlands and villages, flattening an ill-trained, ill-equipped levy of local farmers and artisans when they try to defend their homes. Drawing on the wrath of the townspeople, the nobleman Bela Kinizsi proclaims himself King Bela V of Hungary, promising to bring peace to the Hungarians and death to the Poles. The city of Pest overwhelmingly supports him, although the royal capital of Buda on the opposite side of the Danube remains loyal to Andrew.

Hoping to take the capital quickly, Bela organizes a naval attack using local fishing boats and vessels tied up along the eastern bank. The inhabitants of Buda do the same on their side. The ensuing battle of Buda-Pest is fierce, but Buda has the advantage with its access to the royal arsenals and their stores of crossbows. Bela’s assault is beaten back, although the Danube runs red with the blood of the slain.

Andrew cannot ignore this, and retreats southward toward Pest. Near Acs, his rearguard and artillery train come under fierce attack from Polish lancers. Roaring into action, Durad and his knights charge at them head-on. The impact is tremendous as both ranks of plate-armored heavy cavalry slam into each other at the gallop. Lances splintering and shattering, the Serbs pull out their five-flanged maces, hammering at the enemy. The Poles, used to fighting less well-armored opponents such as Lithuanian or Hungarian hussars, are not all equipped with maces, allowing the outnumbered Serbs to successfully stall the Polish advance. Still the greater number of Poles allows them to curl around the Serbian flanks, threatening to envelop them.

Then Andrew himself charges into the fray, leading his heavy-armed knights. The right wing of the Poles is pinned between the Hungarian van and the Serbian flank and cut to pieces. Andrew is in the middle of it all, roaring out curses as he strikes at the Poles with his mace. With the Polish wing streaming back in disorder, the center begins to waver, allowing Durad to push onward. Meanwhile the Hungarian crossbowmen are in position, pouring bolts into the Polish left wing. Since the range is long, the barrages inflict only minor casualties, but distract the Poles enough so that the Serbs are able to strike killing blows.

Finally the hussars strike, plowing into the Polish rear, slashing at them with their sabers. With the right wing gone, the left wing reeling, and the center cracking, this is the last straw. The Poles break. Since the hussars are fresh, many of them are able to ride down the Polish grooms in the rear, who were holding remounts for the Polish nobles. With their fresh horses captured, many of the Polish knights and their exhausted mounts are captured in the pursuit. Four thousand Poles are taken prisoners, with another two thousand killed. Andrew loses fifteen hundred men, eight hundred of them Serbs.

Even with the need to detail men to guard the prisoners, Andrew is still more than a match for the city of Pest and ‘King’ Bela. Not willing to risk an open battle since he only has an urban militia, Bela holes up in Pest, which unfortunately for him still has fortifications that have not been upgraded since the aftermath of the Mongol invasions. Without cannons of his own to disrupt Andrew’s train, the royal batteries are soon hammering breaches in the walls.

However Acs has improved Andrew’s mood, and anger is no longer clouding his judgment. Recognizing the need to minimize casualties, he does not assault the city, even though he has a decent chance of succeeding. Instead he sends envoys to the citizens of Pest, informing them that they will be allowed to keep their lives and properties provided they hand over Bela and surrender the city. He also warns them that the longer they wait, the less merciful he will be, and if he has to take the city by force, he informs them that he ‘will butcher every living thing inside, tear down the buildings, salt the fields, and damn the site from now until Judgment day.’ For the moment Bela is able to keep the people’s loyalty because of their fear of Andrew’s wrath, but his position is shaky. His hope is that continued Polish incursions will convince the rest of Hungary (and perhaps the army too) to rise up against Andrew.

However Acs has chastened the Poles, who pull back their raiders and concentrate their efforts on Slovakia. With Andrew gone, Andrej Moyzes and a delegation are able to travel to Nitra to meet the leader of the Polish army in Hungary, Jan Piast, Prince of Mazovia and heir to the Polish throne. There they begin negotiations for the creation of a free Slovak state. Many of the delegation want to create a completely free state (many of them are merchants and mine operators and want a new state where they can more easily assure low taxes and tolls). Andrej disagrees, pointing out that without the protection of a greater power, the Slovak state would soon be reclaimed by a recovered Hungary.

His compromise is this, the establishment of a new Principality of Presporok, stretching from Presporok to Bartfa, to be a vassal state of Poland. The new state will have complete internal autonomy and will be allowed to make diplomatic treaties with any state it so chooses, except for states with which Poland is at war. The Principality will pay a regular tribute and will be defended by the Polish armies, but will not have to provide manpower except for its own defense and associated operations. To secure these stipulations, Andrej insists that they also be put into the future Polish-Hungarian peace treaty, when that time arrives. It takes very little for him to convince the delegation to back his proposal unanimously.

Jan reviews the proposal and accepts it, adding the stipulation that the Prince of Presporok must be crowned in Krakow and confirmed in his title by the King of Poland and also rewording the contract so that the tribute is paid to the person of the King of Poland, not to the kingdom of Poland. While it does not give the Poles direct control over the desired territory, the Kings of Poland gain a steady source of revenue that cannot be interfered with by the Sejm, the Polish assembly. The remaining issue is who is to become the first Prince of Presporok. It is a problem quickly solved. There can be no other choice than the Lion of Presporok, Andrej Moyzes. On August 20, he is crowned in Krakow. A new Slovak state is born.

As soon as the news arrive in Pest, the city surrenders. Bela is handed over in chains. The would-be king and his entire family are impaled outside of the gates of Pest. As for the city of Pest, Andrew is determined to make an example of them. Since they surrendered, he cannot raze the city without breaking his word. Instead he issues a decree; all the taxes of Pest are to be tripled. The townspeople do not protest, their eyes fixated on the rotting corpses posted outside the gates. They will remain there until Andrew’s death.

As soon as Pest is dealt with, he marches north. However with Bela’s uprising as a warning, he knows he needs peace soon, lest someone else try and perhaps succeed where Bela failed. Since driving the Poles out and conquering Slovakia would likely be a long and drawn out process, especially because of his losses in guns and gunners, he sends an offer to make peace on honorable terms. The Poles have been chastened by Acs while the Slovaks have what they want, so their terms are simple. Andrew must accept the Nitra Agreement formed by Andrej and Jan. Since it does not require him to give up anything he has not already lost, Andrew accepts the terms.

The Serbian corps is sent back to Lazar with Andrew’s thanks and a year’s worth of their rental fees, even though they had only served for a campaigning season. Lazar is somewhat annoyed by their return; he had hoped they would be gone longer so he could collect more money. Still, it means he can put his plans into effect regarding Bosnia. While the Vidin war was a blow to his dream of creating a pan-Slavic empire, it is still alive. The times are promising as well; he has an arrangement with Buda, while the situation on the Empire’s eastern border is about to explode.
 
Interlude 2

Roman Culture Under the Laskarids

The coronation of Demetrios I Komnenos and the inauguration of the Second Komnenid dynasty ended the War of the Five Emperors, the longest lasting civil war in Roman history. The Empire had managed to overcome its greatest crisis since the Fourth Crusade, largely due to the two claimants who had not been Laskarid, Demetrios and Manuel. Though they lacked Laskarid blood, the new Emperors could not escape the Laskarid shadow as the Second Komnenid dynasty still used the Laskarid bureaucracy and army in their administration. While they adapted the model at times, the underlying principles remained Laskarid. In social and cultural history, the Second Komnenid period also continued Laskarid trends.

In 1414 the Empire had a population of approximately 12 million inhabitants, compared to its 1345 figure of approximately 13.5 million (In comparison the geographical region of France had 20 million in 1345 and 16 million in 1400). While the major cities of Byzantium had suffered disproportionately from plague epidemics, overall the Empire lost about one third of its population during the Black Death, bringing its population down to 9 million. Although the 1340s to 1370s were rife with plague outbreaks, after 1371 the Empire was free of the contagion until it returned in 1406.

While the long respite definitely helped, other factors also contributed to the fact that the Empire’s population bounced back significantly faster than other Christian lands. (Both France and Byzantium lost about one third of their 1345 population to the Black Death, in 1400 France had eighty percent of its 1345 population, Byzantium eighty eight percent) The largest factor was immigration as Armenians, Georgians, and Vlachs emigrated from their poorer homelands into the Empire, which welcomed the influx of new soldiers and taxpayers to compensate for losses in its native Turkic-Greek populations.

The native Greek and Turkish populations also grew somewhat, as poorer families moved onto richer estates left behind by dead owners, allowing them to support larger families which was encouraged by a temporary reduction in the head tax. However the main reason for native population growth was the extremely capable nature of Roman medicine. In an effort to combat the plague, the School of Medicine at the University of Antioch had conducted a massive study of the distribution of plague fatalities across the Empire, which had been made possible by the extensive records of the Laskarid bureaucracy which had been placed at the doctors’ disposal (The large records kept by the bureaucracy was made possible through the widespread use of water-powered paper mills throughout the Empire, replacing the much more expensive parchment. The design, derived from Islamic models based on Chinese devices, appeared in Iberia and the Empire in the 1280s). Their findings were submitted in a report directly to Empress Anna I herself in 1366.

By comparing the similarities between the areas with the most plague deaths, the doctors in Antioch had found the cause of the disease: rats. Their explanation was that the ill odors of the rats disturbed the balance of humors in the human body, causing the plague. However since rats ate refuse, the best countermeasure was, in the school’s opinion, the construction of elaborate sewer systems designed to remove waste from both living areas and food preparation sites. Anna, who was an avid builder, took their report most seriously and subsidized the construction and improvement of sewer systems throughout the Empire as well as aqueducts to ensure access to fresh water for washing and drinking. The plague that occurred in 1370-71, by which time the project was well underway, claimed only half the lives taken in the 1359-60 epidemic.

The improvement in sanitation systems also supported the urbanizing trend of the Laskarid period. The growth of both the manufacturing and commercial sectors of the Byzantine economy encouraged the expansion of cities particularly in Anatolia, which had declined both in size and number during the Turkish Interregnum. In 1414 the ten largest Roman cities were as followed:

Constantinople: 320,000- the largest city in the world outside of China.
Antioch: 150,000
Thessalonica: 120,000
Nicaea: 75,000
Smyrna: 70,000
Trebizond: 57,000
Aleppo: 52,000
Dyrrachium: 45,000
Attaleia: 38,000
Nicomedia: 32,000

There were at least forty other settlements, two thirds of them in Anatolia, which had populations of at least ten thousand inhabitants. The Empire, with respectable grain producing regions in western Anatolia (particularly Bithynia), Thrace, and Macedonia, was able to provide for most of the food requirements of its cities for most of the fourteenth century. The size of the cities created a continuous internal trade cycle in the Empire, with foodstuffs flowing into the cities and manufactured goods flowing out (village industries were fairly small and limited in product production). However with a sixth of its population living in cities by 1414, those resources were clearly inadequate, with foreign imports having to make up the shortfall. As a result Constantinople began to look more and more at the principal granaries of the eastern Mediterranean, the Ukraine and Egypt.

By comparison the three largest cities in Catholic Europe were:

Venice: 142,000
Milan: 124,000
Genoa: 105,000

Construction works in the cities increased steadily throughout the Laskarid period, with the emphasis on sanitation compensating somewhat for the loss of contractors and workers in the 1345-1371 period. Aqueducts and sewers were only part of the process. The bathhouse also made a substantial comeback, with old ones being repaired and enlarged and new ones built. Incidentally both popes used this as an example of eastern decadence and impiety. The increase in commerce spurred the rise of warehouse complexes and covered marketplaces. To facilitate governance, new courthouses and bureaucratic office complexes were also constructed.

As Christianity or Islam was a major part of Roman life, new churches were erected to accommodate the spiritual needs of the growing populace. Each city had its own cathedral, based off Roman churches, not western Cathedrals. Usually they were in the middle of a large open air courtyard, typically used as a marketplace in times of good weather. In eastern Anatolia and the largest cities, the main city mosque followed a similar but smaller pattern. Besides the main cathedral there could be dozens or even hundreds of smaller churches serving local districts.

800pxchorachurchconstan.jpg

The Church of St. Theodoros Megas in Attaleia​

While the central government and the city management contracted and funded the largest construction works, the citizenry also played their part in building up Roman urban life. Wealthy merchants built elaborate townhouses while local entrepreneurs built cookhouses, taverns, and brothels to satisfy the various needs and appetites of the populace. Local aristocrats, finding their ability to invest in new lands hampered by government regulations designed to protect smallholders, began to invest in the cities. Some of the more enterprising and innovative noble families broke old traditions and began to dabble in trade whilst building small palaces as urban residences.

The largest ethnic group in the Empire was of course Greeks. All of Roman Europe, the western third of Anatolia, and the Anatolian coast was overwhelmingly inhabited by Greeks. Southern Italy also saw a major influx of Greek immigration as Constantinople brought in settlers to take over vacant Italian estates after the Neapolitan war (1416). Turks were the second largest, comprising most of the population in the pre-Caesarea Anatolic and Coloneia themes. As substantial numbers of Greeks had been settled in the regions as well, there were numerous instances of intermarrying. Demetrios Komnenos was the product of one such union.

One potential source of tension between Greeks and Turks was that Anatolian Turks could potentially call on the Mesopotamian Turks to fight against the Greeks, which had been done in the last years of the reign of John IV Laskaris. Initial Turkish acceptance of Roman rule had been gained by Manuel II Laskaris’ concessions, but it was secured by the actions of the Ottoman Turks.

During the fourteenth century, Baghdad had consistently looked eastward toward Persia, consequently caring little about the actions of the Turkmen living near the northern borders. Even though there was peace between Baghdad and Constantinople, Turkmen raids on the eastern Roman frontier were quite frequent. Fighting against a Christian empire, one which had driven their fathers from their homeland, the Turkmen saw themselves as ghazis, holy warriors. They also saw the Turks that had remained in Anatolia rather than participate in Osman’s exodus as traitors to the Muslim faith.

Fanatical and ruthless, these Turkmen committed numerous petty atrocities during their incursions against the Turkish Christian converts. This obviously angered the Christian Turks, but it similarly affected the Muslim Roman Turks, who were not targeted as often or brutally. Usually they merely had to watch as their neighbors, friends, and family members were killed. Also as their Greek neighbors, who fought alongside them against the Turkmen, told them tales of crusader atrocities, it was not long before the Turks living in the east thought of the ghazis in the same way Greeks viewed crusaders. The Greeks had shown them tolerance and mercy; their fellow Turks had shown neither.

When Armenia fell to the Ottomans in the 1380s, Baghdad was startled and dismayed as nearly all of the Turkish population, including the minority who still followed Islam, emigrated back to Roman soil rather than live under the rule of fellow Turks. Mehmed I reined in the Turkmen after the incident, but it was too late. During one skirmish in 1383, a Turkish tourmarch was captured and asked why he fought against his own kind. He replied “I don’t fight against my own kind. I fight alongside them, for I am Roman.”

Other major ethnic minorities in the Empire were Armenians, Georgians, and Vlachs. They were mostly concentrated in eastern Anatolia, settled there as tagma troops. Cilicia was almost entirely Armenian although due to long involvement in the Empire, other communities were scattered all throughout the Roman domains. Earlier in the fourteenth century, there had been a decent sized Cuman community in western Anatolia, but it had largely been absorbed into the surrounding Turkic-Greek populace. Once they had dominated the skythikoi troop type, but by the end of the War of the Five Emperors the category held soldiers from all the Empire’s peoples. In the Syrian theme, there were also large numbers of Kurds and Arabs. While the Arabs were underrepresented in the army and bureaucracy, the Kurds were employed frequently as akritoi.

The Empire was more homogeneous religiously than ethnically. The Greeks, Georgians, Vlachs, and most Turks followed Orthodox Christianity. The Armenians had their own rite, which was accepted provided that they did not have communion with Rome. Byzantium had had issues with heretics before, being largely intolerant, but the sack of Constantinople and the Exile, as the 1204-1272 period was called, changed that intolerant viewpoint. Now the attitude was “so long as it isn’t Catholic, it’s okay.” While Constantinople certainly preferred Orthodox subjects, eastern Christians were acceptable so long as they were loyal to the Empire and unsympathetic to Catholicism.

The previously monolithic view of heretics held by the Romans was now split up into three categories. The first were the ‘noble’ heresies. These were heresies that were of eastern origin and popular amongst large segments of both Imperial citizens and eastern Christians as a whole. The Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian churches fell into this category. These heresies were still considered incorrect, but were acceptable in the fabric of Roman society and were to be converted through the same soft-sell approach pioneered by Manuel II to convert the Anatolian Muslims. Roman rejection of its past tactics of using forced conversions was a direct counter to the Catholic forced conversions enacted during the Exile, which had failed miserably. The superiority of the Orthodox over the Catholic was to be shown by its conversion of heretics through kindness in a manner befitting Christ, not through the sword in a manner befitting barbarians.

‘Minor’ heresies were not so called because of their beliefs, but because of their size. These included Bogomils, Paulicians (Asian Bogomils), and Manicheans. Because of the small number of adherents the loyalty of these faiths was not essential to the well being of the Empire. They were persecuted to some extent, the state using their unorthodox beliefs as an opportunity to levy more taxes. While allowed their own clergy and small churches (which had strict size restrictions and required building permits with high fees), members were not allowed to own horses, had to pay an inheritance tax on all wills (Orthodox followers, noble heretics, and Muslims only had to pay an inheritance tax on wills valued forty hyperpyra or more), and paid double on head, ship, and stall taxes.

The third was ‘western’ heresies, at this point Catholicism. While the Empire did business with Catholic merchants and diplomats, they were not wanted as subjects and Catholics were heavily encouraged to either convert or move out of the Empire. They could not build churches out of stone, own horses or oxen, and every single Imperial tax was doubled (not even minor heretics had to pay double on land and property taxes-the largest ones in the register). Catholics were barred from living in several cities (this ruling applied to the few Catholic citizens of the Empire, not foreigners), including Athens, Attaleia, the island of Chios, Corinth, the island of Cyprus, Nicomedia, Sinope, Smyrna, and Trebizond. The pattern was specifically designed to keep them out of the most profitable industries and export markets in the Empire, such as alum, mastic, jewelry, textiles, and sugar. By this point it was a Roman proverb that the best way to hurt a Catholic was to hit them in the moneybag.

Muslims were treated similarly to followers of ‘noble’ heresies. Approximately ten percent of the Empire’s populace was Muslim, concentrated in the Syrian and Coloneia themes, mostly in the countryside. The only discrimination Muslims suffered was that a building permit and fee were required to construct a mosque, and that mosques could not be taller than the tallest church in the same settlement. While the uppermost tiers of the bureaucracy and army had almost no Muslims, below that the followers of Islam were represented proportionally to their segment of the populace. One would not find a Muslim strategos, but Muslim tourmarches were not unheard of, and Muslim drungarioi were fairly regular in the Coloneia and Syrian tagmata.

Jews occupied a point in between ‘noble’ and ‘minor’ heresies. Central and southern Greece was home to a substantial Jewish population scattered amongst the towns, which was predominantly involved in the textile, glasswork, and jewelry industries. Unlike western Europe, Jewish moneylenders were extremely rare, removing that one source of anti-Semitism from the Empire. The rules for building synagogues were identical to the rules for building mosques. Unlike Muslims, the Jews did have to live in ghettos, but these were simply districts where only Jews could live and the only place Jews could live (Muslims often lived in their own districts centered around a mosque, not because they were forced to but due to the fact that Christians did not like having their sleep disturbed by the call of the muezzin). Many Jews preferred it that way as it allowed the Jewish population to resist assimilation and conversion better than the Muslim population. Jews did have to pay an inheritance tax on all wills and also were required to pay a synagogue tax levied every five years at the beginning of each tax cycle, equivalent to one half of the property and land taxes regularly owed by the Jew.

Changes in Roman practices during the Laskarid period also affected areas of culture. One feature of literature had been that it was usually done in classical Greek, rather than the vernacular. This tradition died during the Laskarid period. The main cause for such a dramatic shift was the Laskarid reformation of the bureaucracy and army. All government employees and army officers had to be able to read vernacular Greek as the employees had to be able to read and fill out records and forms and all officers had to be able to read the military manuals, of which Theodoros II’s On War was the most used, that were part of their officer training. Regular soldiers were also encouraged to learn how to read and write. Also the widespread use of paper, even before the invention of the printing press, encouraged the production of books for a wider audience.

Since they were typically drawn from the ranks of commoners, bureaucrats and officers learned vernacular but not classical Greek, which was only understood by upper class scholars who could afford special tutors. At the same time native manufacturing and trade was encouraged by the Laskarids to lessen dependence on Italian imports, stimulating the growth of the artisan and merchant classes, which were also literate in vernacular Greek since their occupations depended on the ability to read contracts and inventories. The combined result was a relatively large class that was literate in vernacular but not classical Greek. As a result of this development in literacy, more and more literature was written in the vernacular, although among some Roman scholars classical Greek remained a stubborn holdout well into the 1400s.

One of the most popular pieces of Roman literature was the epic poem Digenes Akrites, about a mixed Greek-Arab marcher lord living during the Macedonian dynasty. There was a second later version that appeared in the 1330s, where the poem began with three Turkish brothers capturing three Greek sisters in a raid. Enamored by their captives’ beauty, the Turks defect to the Empire, convert to Christianity, and marry the sisters. The hero of the poem is the son of the youngest Turkish brother and youngest Greek sister. After that point, the two versions of the poem were virtually identical.

Alongside the two versions of Digenes Akrites was another epic poem (and a later prose version) called The Three Soldiers, which first appeared just a few months before Timur’s invasion. Set in the mid-twelfth century, its heroes are three former soldiers in the Byzantine army and close friends-the Greek Jason, the Vlach Mircea, and the Turk Ali. The tale follows the adventures of the three as they travel throughout the middle east, with one chapter devoted to their job as guards for a trade caravan to India and the wondrous sights they see, including a city of rubies.

Besides their excursion to India, the three soldiers defend Damascus from the Second Crusade, infiltrate the fortress of the Hashhashin after losing a bet, battle corsairs in the Red Sea, meet a young Saladin, and more. The poem, which is set almost entirely in Muslim lands, is very sympathetic to the followers of Islam. The wise cracking Damascene blacksmith, the beautiful triplet daughters of a Damiettan merchant (with whom the three soldiers engage in consensual but unchristian behavior), and the kindly and forgetful old imam of Mosul, are all recurring secondary characters.

While not all Muslims are portrayed favorably, none of the Catholic characters are. While the Catholics are brave, they are stupid, greedy, ill-tempered, intolerant, and brutal. The three soldiers meet the Damascene blacksmith after saving his daughter from being raped by crusader raiders. Overall the poem is a mixture of action and comedy, and it immediately became popular, especially amongst the soldiers serving in the civil war.

The poem also represents something new in Byzantine literature. The piece is designed to entertain, not to moralize. The three soldiers repeatedly sleep with the merchant’s daughters even though they are not married, but are never condemned for it. Priests and monks are the usual butts of the jokes told by Jason, Mircea, and Ali, who regularly engage in gambling and drinking. Most of their adventures begin with the trio getting into trouble because of their gambling/drinking habits and then having to find a way to get out of their predicament.

The Three Soldiers is widely considered to be the first popular sign of the ‘eastern philosophy’ that would play a major role in Roman political and cultural thought in the fifteenth century. Basically the philosophy argued that Orthodox followers had more in common with Muslims than with Catholics, due to their shared role in preserving and being influenced by the knowledge of antiquity, and by their common fate of being victims of the Catholic west in the form of crusades.

This philosophy was never consistently followed, mainly due to the fact that the Empire did have good relations with several Catholic states. However it was still encouraged by Byzantium’s foreign relations in the 1400s. In the several wars the Empire conducted with Muslims, none assumed the character of a holy war with one arguable exception. In the east, the Empire’s wars were conducted for political and economic reasons; the religion of the enemy was purely incidental. However in the west, the wars waged by the Empire were often flavored by elements of crusades, although they varied in degree.

The shadow of the west helped spark certain developments in Roman culture. The beginning of the Laskarid period had been a time of great trauma for the Greek people. No longer could they blithely assume that the westerners were mere barbarians, for those barbarians had taken the Queen of Cities itself, against which all of Islam had battered itself in vain. After Constantinople had been retaken Roman authors began to look toward long dormant ancient Greek literary forms as a way of reaffirming Roman superiority as the bastion of civilization, as opposed to the unlettered Latins.

One such revival was in the realm of romantic poetry, with several romance novels appearing in the fourteenth century. The earlier ones drew heavily on ancient Greek models and were set in the ancient Mediterranean and peopled by individuals from Greek mythology. Most were however set in Byzantine times, varying between the Macedonian, Komnenid, and Laskarid periods. Like The Three Soldiers, Catholics were often the villains. In Kallimachos and Rodamini, written by a Cypriot, the tale is about the quest of two lovers to be reunited after Reynald of Chatillon’s devastating attack on the island. After decades of struggle, the two are reunited after the Battle of Hattin, in which Kallimachos fought as a member of Saladin’s army.

The Laskarid period saw the creation of several histories and chronicles, which were often written for public consumption. Even the great court historian John Pachymeres, who participated in many of the events he recounted and was a tourmarch at the Battle of Manzikert, wrote in the vernacular. The world chronicle, which began in Genesis, grew out of favor as the Roman people wanted to hear more about their own specific heritage rather than that of the hostile outside. Roman chronicles, which started at the founding of Rome by Romulus, took their place. However most works were much more concentrated, typically covering the reign of one Laskarid emperor. Nicephoros Planoudes pointed the way for future Roman historians when writing his biography of Theodoros II Laskaris in the 1290s, using the substantial records of the bureaucracy as sources.

An emphasis on historical accuracy was the result of the influence of several military treatises in circulation during the period. While some significantly predated the period like Maurice’s Strategikon, both Theodoros II and Manuel II wrote treatises of their own. These were used in officer training and were utilized based on their relevance to the Laskarid army. Accuracy was key as to improve their usefulness to the army. With the decline of classical Greek as a literary language, classical stylistic elements also fell away, with an emphasis on clear language and modern information and examples. For example, John Pachymeres referred to Timur’s army as Timurid, Chagatai, or Persian, all of which were appropriate, but never classical labels such as Scythians or Huns.

Another impetus for the emphasis on accuracy in scientific and historical studies was the large university system that had grown up under the Laskarids. Starting with Anna’s second founding of the University of Constantinople in 1330, by 1414 there were also universities in Antioch, Thessalonica, Nicaea, Smyrna, and Trebizond. They were designed to help support the bureaucracy with fresh minds, and that bureaucracy was mainly used to maintain the military and economic supremacy of the Empire over its neighbors, through efficiency of operations and superiority of equipment and knowledge. The universities became another buttress designed to secure Roman supremacy, this time in the field of academics. Hence there was an effort to push beyond the knowledge of the ancients, through the study and observation of the natural world with the use of experimentation. This early scientific method was vindicated with the success of the plague report from Antioch.

In 1414 the University of Constantinople had seventy chairs, with schools of law, philosophy (included basic scientific and historical components), medicine, mathematics (included engineering components), astronomy, and music. The philosophy degree was the most difficult and prestigious to acquire, because of the broad range of knowledge required. Each of the smaller universities had the same schools as Constantinople, although with less chairs. Some universities specialized in certain fields. Trebizond’s School of Mathematics was the most prestigious, while Smyrna was the center for astronomical studies.

Antioch’s School of Medicine was renowned, even before the submission of its plague report. It produced many illustrious physicians who served strategoi, governors, and bishops. The most famous alumni was George Doukas, firstborn son of the Emperor Manuel Doukas and Archiatros ton Athanatoi, Chief Physician of the Immortals. Its reputation spread even to Muslim lands and many prospective Muslim doctors received their training in Antioch. While Roman Muslims were proportionally represented in the student body at the School of Medicine in Antioch, when added with foreign students about one third of the students there followed Islam. This caused some issues with the Orthodox church, but in 1351 the head of the school Stefanos Balamas had responded to the complaints of the Bishop of Adana with the answer that ‘we deal with the body, not the soul’.

The universities were public institutions, funded by the state with cash subsidies and land endowments. However student fees were kept high so that the government did not operate them at a loss. Cheap but low quality housing was constructed near the various university complexes to service the students, around which sprang up low-brow cookhouses, taverns, and brothels. For their degree in a specific field, students had to take introductory courses in all the schools, second level courses in a field that was not their primary choice, and then work their way up to the advanced courses in their chosen field. This was often a fairly expensive process that typically took five years.

There were government scholarships in place for those students who demonstrated ‘admirable quantities of the three great qualities-honesty, loyalty, and wisdom’. Those recipients would have the government pay for their schooling and housing, provided that they maintained the three great qualities; if they failed at any point they would have to reimburse with interest the government’s money. In exchange the scholarship receiver would sign a contract stipulating that they would work for the bureaucracy for no less than twenty years, beginning after graduation. In this way the central bureaucracy was able to secure the best and brightest young minds for its own. And by the time their contract expired, those individuals were well entrenched in the bureaucracy and unlikely to defect to the clergy.

The church had lost most of its hold over higher education after the fall of Constantinople. Theodoros II had been determined to make sure it did not regain that hold. He wanted the bureaucracy to be loyal to him, not the nobility or the church. The church did maintain its own schools, training individuals to join the clergy, but they paled in size compared to the secular universities.

The church had also declined somewhat in importance during the Laskarid period. While the Orthodox faith was still of immense importance, the church was no longer as prestigious. While many new churches and monasteries were endowed, including several new central cathedrals, the Laskarid Emperors had focused their patronage on the construction of roads, aqueducts, sewers, hospitals, schools, and orphanages. In many areas, such as in the construction and maintenance of hospices for beggars, the government had taken over the traditional church duties of social welfare. Wealthy merchants, officials, and nobles often followed the Emperor’s example, building schools or marketplaces rather than another church. Ambitious young men typically preferred to go to secular universities, hoping for government scholarships, rather than attend a clerical school or join a monastery.

Both public and private patronage was responsible for the network of secondary school systems throughout the Empire. The ones endowed by the state, concentrated in the larger cities, were treated largely like miniature universities although without any sort of scholarship system. Private schools tried to operate with a profit margin and were subsequently more expensive, but were much more common. One of the marks of a true Roman city at the time was that it possessed at least one secondary school. These schools were treated as university preparation centers, giving their students introduction and early exploration into the subjects taught at university. Approximately ten percent of the students were female.

Women began to assume a more public role in the Empire beginning in Laskarid times. The development of trade fairs centered around the tagma and tourma reviews actually helped to increase the status of women. It became quite common at these fairs for the husbands to attend the review while the wives would set up stalls and sell agricultural products, with the more capable ones using the proceeds to branch out into other product markets. On average, one quarter to one third of stalls at a tagma/tourma review fair were operated by women. Since acting as anything more than a purely local merchant required greater academic skills than those taught at primary school, many women attended secondary school to acquire the necessary learning. Women were barred from attending university, although some university professors were willing to teach female students as private tutors, although that was expensive.

Primary school was a purely private arrangement. Sometimes there were private schools endowed by a wealthy patron, but more typically the primary school was actually just a tutor, setting up a business in a particular village or city block. All primary school tutors had to have graduated from a secondary school. In primary school, basic reading, writing, and mathematics were taught. Here approximately one third of the students were women. Again the army led the way, as husbands needed educated wives who could run the estate while they were on campaign. And as educated wives became mothers, they made sure that their daughters and sons were educated.

With the growing emphasis on education and the scientific method, the typical subjects of art changed. Religious themes remained common, but naturalistic scenes or historical reenactments became common amongst mosaics and paintings created for secular buildings such as mansions or schools. Encouraged by the development of mathematical knowledge and the desire of the medical schools for accurate three-dimensional pictures of medical procedures, some Roman artists began experimenting with perspective in order to create a realistic 3D image. It was a technique that would quickly be adopted to great effect amongst the artists of the Italian Renaissance. In the Empire, it would culminate in the exhibition of The History of the Roman Empire in Art in the 1480s.

manueliipaleologus.jpg

Painting of St. Theodoros Megas, from the wall of his monastery at Manzikert.

The cult of Theodoros II Laskaris Megas began almost immediately after his death in 1282 and remained exceedingly popular throughout the Laskarid period. The patron saint of Roman soldiers, he was also highly venerated by civilians. Many of the Laskarid era churches and monasteries were devoted to him, the most famous being the monastery founded by Demetrios and Manuel at the battlefield of Manzikert. His reputation was deliberately fostered by his successors and he was viewed as the epitome of a good Emperor, toward which all others should strive. The intense love the common people felt for this emperor and saint can be easily understood by his supposed last words to his son and future Emperor John IV.

“Go, my son, and create a world where our people can live without fear.”


April 7, 1422, Roman Armenia:

The air stank of burning flesh. Necdet glanced around, the smoke from the charred buildings gnawing at his throat. The plumes of smoke swirled around him in a macabre dance, dancing to the beat of the wind. Their background was the collapsed, charred ruins of the mill scattered along the edge of the pond, draped in the corpse of a nine year old girl and a dog. To the sides lay the homes of the villagers, every one a pile of charred timbers. They were devoid of bodies.

Those were ahead, in the burned out ruins of the church. With a creak, the last few standing timbers crashed to the ground. Underneath them were the rest of the bodies, over three hundred. The fire had eaten their flesh; only their bones remained. Surrounding the charnel house lay about four dozen more corpses, covered in burn marks, some as black as the smoldering timbers under which they lay.

A gust of wind carried more smoke into his nostrils, causing him to cough just as something bumped his leg. He looked down. “What is it?” Iason called, glancing over at the koursore. Necdet picked it up with his left hand; his right held his spatha. It was a garland of flowers, tied together with a blue silk ribbon. “It’s a wedding wreath.”

“We’ve got one alive!” Stefanos yelled. “Come help me!” Necdet dropped the wreath and the two soldiers ran, jumping over bodies, Necdet noticing the slash and puncture wounds in several of the corpses. The Greek soldier was grunting, trying to lift a piece of timber lying atop what appeared to be a young Turkish woman. Burn marks cut across her face and body, three flower patterns seared into her chest. Her silk dress had been burned off, but those had remained. All of her hair had also burned away.

With Necdet’s help, they threw the timber off. Iason gently lifted the woman to a seating position, wrapping a cloak around her. Her eyes flickered. “Water, give her water,” Necdet said. Stefanos pulled out a leather canteen, dribbling a few drops onto her lips. Her eyes opened. “Where…who?”

A shadow fell over her, then receded as their dekarchos Mircea squatted. “It’s okay, milady. You’re safe now. The Turkmen are gone.”

She blinked. “Safe…who?”

“We’re a koursores kontoubernion, Manzikert cleisurae. Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine. An archiatros is on the way.”

“No, is, is my daughter alive?” she moaned. “My Mahperi?” The Vlach glanced up, looking at the soldiers combing the field for anyone living. They shook their head no. “Is she? Is she?”

“I’m sorry, milady, but-”

She staggered to her feet, grabbing at the arm of the soldier standing behind her for balance. “No, no. I have to find her.” She grabbed the dekarchos, the cloak falling off of her shoulders. “You have to help me find her!”

Necdet picked up the crumpled woolen cloak and gently draped it over the woman’s shoulders. She didn’t notice, her desperate eyes boring into the dekarchos. “Very well, milady,” he said. “How old is she?”

“Just eight months.”


“Very well. Men, find her daughter.”

Necdet turned to leave, but the woman then grabbed his arm. “No, help me. Please.” He nodded. They started hobbling through the piles of dead. After just a minute, the woman collapsed in front of a pile of four corpses, alongside which lay a pile of coral beads, the remains of a necklace.

Necdet squatted down next to her. “Are you alright?” She was shaking. He gently wrapped his arm around her shoulder, gently holding her. “It’s going to be alright,” he whispered.

She shrieked, an piercing wail erupting from her mouth, then collapsed onto the ground, sobbing. Necdet could make out the words “my sister”. Then she leaned forward, lifting the arm of the body to pull something out from under it. It was the completely blackened body of a baby. She shrieked again, clutching the infant to her chest, screaming “Mahperi!”

“Hey! Look what we found!” Necdet looked up to see two other soldiers, dragging a Turkman by the hair into the clearing. “He must have been unconscious and left for dead.” They dropped him, his head bouncing off a rock. The man yelled in pain.

Mircea walked over, glanced down, then looked back up. “Kill him.”

The Turk laughed. “Go on, kill me. I will go straight to paradise, and spend eternity in the arms of virgins for my service to the jihad.”

One of the draggers squatted down. “My name is Mehmed. I don’t know about you, but I worship Allah, and he does not grant paradise to those who murder women and children.” The woman was still shaking, clutching the blackened loaf of her child to her seared chest, ignoring the whole thing. Mehmed stood up, drew his spatha, and swung. The head flopped to the ground, the body falling next to it. A few drops of blood, flung by the blade’s motion, flew onto a smoking log. For a second they crackled, the smoke dying for a second, and then resumed.
 
Last edited:
Part 4

In The Shadow of Timur

1422-1430

"Although Timur's empire in the west did not long outlast him, such a man as he is impossible to forget. Beyond the mass graves and ruined villages, he left a psychological scar on both the Roman and Ottoman Empire, an image of a demon sent from hell to terrorize the world of men. Even today, five hundred years later, both Greek and Turk, in times of darkness, will call out 'To arms! Timur is at the gates!'"-Excerpt from In the Shadow of Timur: West Asia from 1411 to 1453.


1422: The number and size of Turkmen raids against Roman Armenia and the Coloneia theme continues to escalate, despite the fierce resistance of the troops stationed there. No matter how many Turkmen are killed, more keep coming, growing more and more ruthless (a trend that is matched by Roman treatment of prisoners). Osman II continues to ignore the attacks; to bring the Turkmen to heel would likely require a military campaign that would delay his planned attack on Gilan and he is able to gain some revenue from taxes on the loot and slaves acquired during the raids.

Osman’s apathy is what inspires the Turkmen to escalate their attacks. When Osman established his benign neglect policy regarding the raids, they were infrequent (one or two a year) and rarely had more than a hundred participants. Also at that time he had been more concerned with securing northern Mesopotamia than not annoying the Romans, who had still been in the War of the Five Emperors at the time. Now the attacks usually number anywhere from six to twelve a year and sometimes have contingents eight or nine hundred strong. Osman remains largely ignorant of this due to lack of effort on his part; all of his energy is fixated on building the armies of southern Mesopotamia that will allow him to fulfill his Samarkand oath.

By this point, there is a substantial divide between the Turkmen of the north and the regular Turks, one that has been growing ever since the exodus from Anatolia. Most Ottoman Turks live along the Tigris or Euphrates, either in the cities and towns or overseeing plots of land producing cereal crops (trade is dominated by non-Turkish peoples, primarily the Arabs of Basra). They are much more closely tied to the central government in Baghdad and are organized based on their city or province as their tribal organizations had been largely destroyed in the exodus from Anatolia (a fact that made Osman and his heirs trust them more).

The Turkmen are pastoralists, operating on the fringes of Ottoman society (Arab tribesmen farther south are in a similar position), and are organized into tribes and ruled by chieftains, who owe military service to Baghdad. Their tribes had emigrated from Anatolia largely intact, pledging their services to Osman and his heirs to avoid Roman conquest. Relegated to the poor periphery away from the centers of Ottoman power, the Turkmen tribes view their exodus from Anatolia as an expulsion from paradise, and they consistently have contested the verdict. In contrast, most ‘sedentary’ Turks have prospered in their new land (again unlike the Turkmen) and thus do not view the loss of Anatolia as any great sorrow.

Turkmen excesses had already cost Baghdad the sympathy of the Anatolian Turks. Mehmed the Conqueror had managed to curb those efforts, but his progress had been destroyed by Timur. The ‘sedentary’ Turks suffered terribly at his hands and view him as a monster. Many of them feel as Osman does, that Samarkand and Timur’s grave must be destroyed. However many of the Turkmen joined with Timur when he launched his invasion of Rhomania and served him faithfully since then, viewing him as the best chance of regaining the lands of the forefathers. That even he failed them in that regard has only made them more bitter.

Timur had left the Turkmen intact in his earlier campaigns which had been focused on wealthier regions. Despite his failure to conquer Anatolia, they still remember him fondly and want the Ottoman sultan and people to resume the jihad against Constantinople that Timur had begun. Timur had never viewed his attack on Rhomania as a holy war, but as punishment for violating a pact and later as a defense of his realm, but to the Turkmen it was a jihad. A common criticism voiced by the ulema of Baghdad and Basra is that the Turkmen spend all of their energy on the lesser jihad (the external war against infidels) and none of their time on the greater jihad (the internal war against evil thoughts).

In early April, three raids pour across the border simultaneously, each one two hundred strong. With those attacks tying up the banda another band, seven hundred strong, enters Roman Armenia largely unopposed. One of the first targets it hits is the village of Adilcevaz, largely inhabited by Christian Turks. Virtually all of the villagers are in the church celebrating a wedding. Since the other three Turkmen raids are being dealt with, the villagers do not post any guards, allowing the raiders to achieve complete surprise. Before the villagers realize what is going on, they are barricaded inside the church which is set afire. Most are immolated inside, the few escapees being cut down by the Turkmen. The rest of the village is burned to the ground after being thoroughly looted. Out of the four hundred and six inhabitants, one survives.

The atrocity of Adilcevaz utterly enrages the inhabitants of Roman Armenia and Coloneia. In Constantinople there is an uproar (the message had been conveyed by fast courier ships stationed in Trebizond who received fresh rowers at way stations along the Black Sea coast to increase their speed). Osman must be compelled to rein in his subjects, by force if necessary. By this point the Anatolian tagmata have recovered a good portion of their losses from Manzikert, although all of them still are not quite at full strength.

Demetrios’ plan is to call up the Athanatoi and the Thracesian tagma and go to Armenia, dispatching a request to meet with Osman. He will have enough troops to show the sultan he is serious, but not enough to be a threat. However in the meantime, he orders the border troops to stay on their side of the border; he wants a negotiated settlement, not a war. If Roman troops start counter-raiding across the border in force, it might provoke Osman into marching north with an army.

The order to hold is ignored by the border troops, who want blood. Their officers feel the same way. The Armenian and Coloneian banda pour across the frontier, spearheading an advance composed of the Armenian cleisurai and the Coloneia tagma, over eleven thousand men. The local Turkmen contingents that attempt to stand in the force’s way are swept aside, the turkopouloi working to pin the enemy horse archers so that they can be smashed flat by kataphraktoi charges. No prisoners are taken.

Along with the tagma comes the tagma’s artillery train, including eight bombards to replace the older trebuchets, some of which are still in service. This capable force allows the army, commanded by the Coloneian strategos Alexios Palaeologus, to take the town of Hakkari on May 6. The members of the local tribes who helped defend the city and who are members of the Turkmen are executed (the Roman soldiers are not particularly thorough in their background checks). However after that is done, many of the banda soldiers turn on the regular Ottoman soldiers and the local populace, cutting them down where they stand. Alexios orders them to desist, and when they refuse he orders the tagma troops to kill anyone executing prisoners without a written order from himself. They stop. After the situation has calmed down, Alexios has the prisoners transferred north to Theodosiopolis.

Such a threat cannot be ignored by Baghdad, so Osman musters his army at Baghdad and marches north. Due to his desire to take care of this as quickly as possible, he does not wait to gather the southern regiments but takes his professional troops and the regiments stationed around Baghdad, gathering more forces to him as he goes north.

Most of the Ottoman army is maintained via the timar system, whereby fiefs of land are granted in exchange for military service as cavalry. Unlike western fiefs they are not inheritable and unlike Roman land grants, the recipients do have to pay land taxes on their estates. Most of them are medium horse archers, not as fast or maneuverable as Turkmen cavalry, but equipped with light armor and maces so they are effective in melee. Supplementing them are sipahis, professional cavalry units maintained by the sultan as full-time soldiers and drawn from the Turkish population. They are armored with a lamellar cuirass and equipped with bows, maces, and sabers, similar to the skythikoi.

Alongside them are the janissaries, maintained by a ‘human tax’ levied on the non-Turkish population of Mesopotamia (preferably from the Assyrian Christians in pre-Timur days but now their numbers are too small for that). Boys between the ages of seven to ten are taken from their homes and trained by the corps, remaining in the sultan’s service for life. Well disciplined and equipped, trained from childhood, they are deadly infantry and owe allegiance only to the sultan. They are armed with bows, maces, and lances, trained in both missile and melee combat, but are not as heavily armored as sipahis (other than a helmet, metal armor is rare among the janissaries).

These army formations are also supplemented by complements from Turkish and Arab tribes on the fringes who are obligated to provide contingents to the sultan (the Turkmen tribes of northern Mesopotamia fall into this category). In addition there are the azabs, conscripts drawn from the farming and fishing villages dotting the Tigris and Euphrates. Vast in number, they are not well equipped or trained, mainly used in sieges and as fodder in battle.

kipchaqsecxiii57iu4.jpg

A Turkman (left) and timariot (right), attired more for mountain combat than for battle in the hot plains of Mesopotamia.

The Ottoman army by this point is large, with the sipahis and janissaries as its extremely capable core. However one of the main weaknesses is its lack of reliable infantry. While the janissaries are very competent, they only number about eight thousand. Most of the Ottomans’ infantry strength is made of undependable azabs. Meanwhile the timariots are capable melee and missile cavalry, but usually lack the training and discipline of Roman cavalry units and none of them are equipped with enough armor to challenge kataphraktoi or even heavy koursores in melee. Ottoman battle tactics mainly hinge on using the azabs, tribal contingents, and timariots to wear down the enemy, tie up their units, and allow the sipahis and janissaries to strike a killing blow against an exposed flank or rear.

Armor, or rather the lack of it, is the other flaw. Mesopotamia does not have much material for making armor, which is very expensive as a result and often imported. Only the sipahi guard personally attached to the sultan is well protected by Roman standards (and still many fall short of the armor worn by kataphraktoi). Many sipahis are less armored than skythikoi and most timariots have little more protection than light koursores. Janissaries fill the tactical role of heavy infantry but have the armor of light infantry. It is a serious issue as Ottoman armies are not able to compensate with a superiority in ranged combat and maneuverable units, as both the Romans and Mamelukes have horse archers to support their heavy cavalry (The Mamelukes do have the issue of unreliable infantry).

The Ottoman Empire had built up a substantial stockpile of armor over the fourteenth century, but it had all been captured or confiscated by Timur to equip his Persian troops. By this point, Osman has not made much progress in fixing this problem. Export of Roman armor is forbidden by law and smuggling attempts have been cut off (often literally) by the Turkmen raids. The Mamelukes, facing internal difficulties and Arabian revolts, are using their own stores of military equipment as is the Delhi Sultanate. The Jalayirids and Persians also refuse to sell since the Ottomans will turn around and use it against them. The last potential supplier, the Vijayanagara Empire, responded to the suggestion by tying several iron bars to the chief envoy and throwing him in the ocean. The Indian Empire, forged in the struggle to expel Islam from the subcontinent, has no intention to strengthen another Muslim state. The lack of armor also adds another impetus to an Ottoman conquest of Persia. It was the foundries of the Persian cities that equipped Timur’s heavy troops.

Meanwhile the Coloneian army continues to sweep south. Every Turkmen male above the age of fourteen in their path is killed on sight, regardless of whether or not they bear arms. There are a few more incidents with banda troops executing prisoners outside of this category, but they finally end when Alexios has twenty soldiers hanged and six officers (including one droungarios) paraded through the camp, tied to a donkey while facing backward, before being subjected to twenty five lashes. His concern for prisoners is not because of compassion, but because of strategic necessity; he does not want to encourage ‘sedentary’ Turks to fight to the last man. Because of crowding in Hakkari, many of the prisoners are shipped back to Theodosiopolis to await ransom. Aside from Imperial authorization, the campaign is unfolding much like a regular Roman raid-in-force, which is a source of great anger to Osman II, who believes this is the prelude to an unprovoked Roman invasion of his lands.

The situation has deteriorated to the point that an Emperor is needed. It is Manuel that sails for Trebizond along with the Athanatoi, calling up the Opsician and Optimates tagmata with orders to sail for Chaldea at once. The Imperial navy is dispatched to the appropriate ports. Six of the Anatolian cleisurai are also summoned, although they come by land and are to gather at Theodosiopolis. The still vigorous seventy-one year old Emperor is eager for one last campaign, protecting the people who had faithfully and unwaveringly stood by him during the War of the Five Emperors.

There had been some tension between the two emperors previously over the Turkmen question. Demetrios had been determined to maintain the construction projects in order to bolster the new dynasty’s prestige and so was unwilling to pay for a major military response. While the Turkmen had staged numerous raids over the past decade, the effective defense conducted by the banda had limited the size and scope of the fatalities and atrocities. In Constantinople they had just been a statistic, and a small and unimportant one at that. Compared to the Empire as a whole, even the most devastating Turkmen raids are puny pinpricks, while a war with the Ottomans would be anything but that.

However the news from the east now demanded that a major military response be mustered. While formidable, the Coloneian tagma is too small to stand against the combined Ottoman army. If the Ottoman riposte punched through the border in force, a peace agreement would be impossible without shattering the dynasty’s legitimacy and prestige, especially since any Ottoman offensive would be heralded by Turkmen riders who had previously heralded Timur’s invasions. If events went that far, war would be inevitable.

In the Emperors’ eyes, the only way to avoid that is to gather a host and reinforce the Coloneian tagma. A significant military offensive on the Ottoman side of the border, although rather expensive, might be enough to cow Osman II into making peace (especially since his Samarkand oath demands peace with the Empire) and force him to curb the incursions. And if the worst should happen and war comes, the army will already be in a good position to make sure it is a short and victorious one.

Traveling with the Athanatoi, he arrives at Trebizond on May 15. The first thing he does there is to order the muster of the Chaldean tagma as well. On May 28, he sets out with the Athanatoi and all three tagmata, a combined force thirty two thousand strong. Passing through Theodosiopolis to meet with the cleisurai, six thousand strong, (and take a look at the prisoners held there) and then Manzikert, he soon comes to the burned-out ruins of Adilcevaz. Nearby is the mass grave of the villagers. Staring at the carnage, he mutters ‘these are deeds worthy of a Timur’. The army sweeps onward, crossing the border on June 6.

On the same day, just south of the village of Ain Sijni, Alexios Palaeologus is challenged by the assembled timariots of Aqra, Al-Hamdaniya, Arbil, Koy Sanjaq, and Soran, a combined force of 12,000 men (given the frontier position of these districts, they have a much larger share of timars than the average) supported by an additional 1,600 from the local Turkmen tribes. The Roman army, somewhat depleted by the need to install a garrison at Hakkari, is 10,500 strong. Alexios, who had been a tourmarch at Manzikert, is not dismayed by the numerical odds. He encourages his men, saying “We are all of us Romans. We fought against Timur and we cast him down, a feat no other people can claim. After such deeds, what can frighten us now? Do not be dismayed at the sight of his slaves, for the master who made them terrible is long since dead.”

The battle commences in the early afternoon with the Roman army facing south, the Turks launching a fierce attack on the Roman center, but the thick armor and broad shields of the skutatoi soak up the arrows. Meanwhile the toxotai shower the enemy horses, while the cavalry that manage to approach the battle line are met with akritoi and their javelins, hungering for Turkish flesh. At the same time Alexios dispatches his horse archers to the periphery, shooting bolts into the Turkish flanks. While the turkopouloi are spread on both wings, all of the skythikoi are concentrated on the west. Their disciplined, concentrated volleys steadily push the Turkish columns to the east, the skutatoi, akritoi, and toxotai curling toward the east as well to help the push. As a result the formerly straight Roman line now looks like a J.

There the timariots are gradually pinned against a small hillock, which is seized by two droungoi of heavy koursores who scatter the Turkmen blocking their path with the support of their lighter counterparts. With much of the Turkish army now sandwiched, Alexios releases his kataphraktoi, sending them straight down the Ottoman throats. At the same time, the skythikoi loose one more volley, sheathe their bows, and charge into the fray. The timariots are flattened, unable to stand up to their heavier opponents. In less than half an hour, the Ottoman right wing and much of the center is shattered, the remainder falling back in disorder. In the two hour battle, the Romans lose 420 men, the Ottomans 5,760 (2,200 of those are prisoners). Because of the lopsided casualty ratio and the exceptional use of terrain and mutually supporting troop types, in the military manuals of the next generation the battle of Ain Sijni is considered to be the pinnacle of military science.

heavykoursores.jpg

Four heavy kousores. The 'poor man's kataphractos' was commonly used by the Coloneian tagma during the 1422 campaign, as the horsemen were more heavily armored than most timariots but did not tire as quickly in the hot sun as kataphraktoi.

It does not take long before Manuel and Osman hear news of the battle. Manuel makes for the battle site, near which Alexios has camped waiting for the Emperor to arrive. Alexios had served under Manuel at Caesarea (then he was a droungarios) and in the War of the Five Emperors and so is not fearful of meeting him. Manuel arrives at the scene in a quandary; he approves of what Alexios is doing in principle, but he cannot tolerate his violation of a direct order to keep his forces in the Empire. So the first thing Manuel does is issue a formal reprimand, because Alexios had failed to summon the men for their spring tagma review. As a result, the strategos’ pay for that year is revoked, but since Alexios’ share of the loot and ransom money is left intact, the strategos still comes out ahead. Meanwhile the men still are to receive their yearly pay at the next tagma review, but their active pay bonuses only begin accruing starting on the day Manuel arrives as they had not officially been called up.

Osman, of course, is enraged. A sizeable portion of his northern troop strength has been obliterated as a fighting force and now nothing stands between the Roman army and Mosul, the third city of the Ottoman Empire with 41,000 inhabitants (after Baghdad with 85,000 and Basra with 63,000). He continues to hurry northward, but with the loss at Ain Sijni, by the time he arrives at Mosul on June 24 he only has 37,000 men (although he has all eight thousand janissaries and six thousand sipahis), compared to the Roman army of 48,000.

The armies of Osman and Manuel finally meet on July 4, near the town of Bartella. Despite his numerical superiority, it is Manuel who first makes the offer to negotiate; he wants peace. The next day two sovereigns meet at the Mar Mattai monastery, run by an Assyrian Orthodox order. Despite the Turkmen and Timur’s rampages, there is still a respectable Christian population in northern Mesopotamia outside of Mosul. Timur had been largely distracted by the need to campaign against the Mamelukes and Romans and so had not had time to commit most of his usual atrocities. However the burned out ruins of Christian monasteries and villages, next to the mass graves of their inhabitants, still dot the landscape.

Immediately Osman launches into a tirade, condemning Manuel and the Romans for this wanton and unprovoked attack on his domain. Manuel remains silent until the Sultan’s words (but not wrath) are spent and then tells him in gruesome detail about the massacre at Adilcevaz. At the end he finishes “Timur is dead, but his soldiers still roam, following the savage rule of their master. By their hands, he lives, committing the barbarities that your father fought and died to prevent. So tell me, who will you become, your father, or the monster who butchered him?”

There is silence for almost a minute, until finally Osman looks Manuel in the eye and says “My father”. For the next three hours the two sovereigns talk, hammering out a peace treaty. Manuel continues to emphasize the benefits of peace to make sure Osman does not change his mind. Not only does it help secure his northern border, but it also encourages the growth of trade, whereby goods from India travel through the Persian Gulf to Basra, then up the Euphrates and then by caravan to Antioch, a source of great wealth to both empires.

For both sides, the terms are light. The Empire must abandon all territory it seized, including the city of Hakkari, and return all prisoners in exchange for the lump sum of 130,000 Turkish para (gold coins equivalent to 105,000 hyperpyra). Also Manuel promises that the Empire will not intervene in Persia during Osman’s invasion, in exchange for Osman reining in the Turkmen. In an interesting twist revealing the growing importance of trade in Roman eyes, Manuel insists on an additional concession to which Osman agrees without protest. Roman silks are hereby not to have an import tax levied on them when they enter Ottoman soil.

The negotiations are concluded when Manuel gives Osman a gift, a scimitar with the guard overlain in gold leaf and adorned with three rubies, three emeralds, three sapphires, and three diamonds. On the gold leaf is etched in elegant Turkish calligraphy ‘The Sultan Mehmed is my master. He is your master too.’ It is his father’s sword, captured by Timur at the battle of Tikrit in 1403. The warlord gave it to his favorite son Pir Mohammed, causing it to be captured by the Romans at Manzikert when he was killed.

The two armies depart the next day, the Roman army (with the cash) marching toward Theodosiopolis while Osman rides for Mosul, dispatching summons to all the Turkmen chiefs to meet him in two weeks at the city. They all arrive but in an ugly mood, angry over the complete lack of a response to the Roman execution of Turkmen. They are also angry as they wanted a full-scale war with the Empire, where the regular Ottoman army would be brought into action to clear away the banda, allowing the Turkmen to raid richer areas of Anatolia.

Osman is aware of their mood, but is more determined than ever to focus the energy of the Ottoman state to the east, following in reverse the path the Great Seljuks took. At first the sultan is diplomatic, reminding the chieftains of their obligations to provide troops for the upcoming Persian campaign (Osman intends to attack the Emirate of Gilan next year). The Turkmen complain as the ghazis want to strike against the infidel, not fellow Muslims. Osman, by this point, is fed up with Turkmen intransigence. Not only had they nearly involved him in a war with the Roman Empire, but while he was waiting for the chiefs to gather he had received an envoy from Tbilisi, complaining that the Turkmen were stirring up the Qara Koyunlu vassals of Georgia. If the ghazis had their way, he would be at war with both Christian states.

One of the Turkmen chiefs stands to lecture the sultan, criticizing him for his failure to wage the jihad. During the process he says “We are the Faithful. You must follow us and wage-”. There is a thud as the chief’s head lands on the ground, followed a second later by the body. Everyone in the tent stares at the sultan, specifically the blood-stained scimitar, his father’s blade, that had suddenly appeared in his right hand. He growls “I am the Sultan, not you. I will not tolerate the filth of Timur clouding my land and my faith. You will obey me. We will march on Persia and leave the Christians of the west alone. For by slaying only the guilty and sparing the innocent, they have shown themselves to be better Muslims than you.” Although not entirely true, it is the greatest insult he can say to the Turkmen.

The chastened chiefs obey for the moment, but once they are out of Mosul they ride back to their tribes, raising the cry of revolt (a few tribes remain loyal to Baghdad, but they are a minority). The ghazis will not tolerate anyone standing between them and the jihad, even other Muslims. Osman, of course, is enraged at the treachery. Still at Mosul, he calls up timariots from southern Mesopotamia along with the Arab tribesmen of Najaf and al-Muthanna, ordering them to hasten to Mosul at all speed. Meanwhile the timariots already in the north duel with the Turkmen, who have turned to raid with fire and sword the villages of northern Mesopotamia. Convinced of the righteousness of their cause as the only true Muslims as opposed to the shirkers, cowards, and Christians surrounding them, they see no reason to show any more mercy toward their Muslim neighbors than they showed to the Christian settlers of Armenia. Columns of tearful refugees pour into Mosul while plumes of smoke dot the horizon. Osman is not alone in remarking how similar to Timur’s invasion the scene looks.

When the troops from southern Mesopotamia arrives, Osman fields an army of fifty five thousand men, well screened by light timariot cavalry and Arab tribesmen who show significantly more loyalty to the Turkish sultan than the Turkmen. He is also aided by a few reconnaissance reports from Roman officers on the frontier, happy to help the sultan in his task. Despite their bravery and the constant stinging attacks they unleash, the Turkmen have no chance. Organized on a tribal basis with no clear authority above that (the role assumed by the sultan), and having only light horse archers, their bravery gains them nothing as one by one their own villages go up in smoke. All they can do is slow the Harrowing of the North.

timariots.jpg

Osman II ordering a mixed sipahi/timariot attack on a Turkmen village. The Ottoman sultan (on the heavily armored blue charger) is portrayed at least twenty years older than he actually was in 1422.

Those that die are the lucky ones. All males over the age of eleven and women over the age of sixteen are sold into slavery to the owners of the sugar plantations in southern Mesopotamia, where most of them die because of the brutal workload. The remainder are dispersed throughout the realm, many of the girls provided as wives to unmarried timariots, while three thousand of the children are taken to join the janissary corps. The expansion is paid with the sultan’s share (50%) of the loot taken from the defeated Turkmen. Originally Manuel had wanted all of that returned, but had yielded when Osman insisted that to take back the spoils, he would certainly have to fight the Turkmen. However due to expense and supply consumption of calling up regiments from all over Mesopotamia, plus the destruction of a significant reservoir of light cavalry, Osman decides to postpone his Gilan campaign by a year.

The Ninety Years war is shaken when King Francis I of France takes the step of employing Swiss mercenaries, which became available after the Swiss Confederation and Bernese League signed a formal peace treaty in February. Previously all cessations of hostilities between the two states had been merely truces with term limits. The Long War between them ends with no clear victor as territorially neither gained anything (both had expanded but not via conquest, the most famous being the Habsburg counts joining the Bernese League in 1395). In terms of prestige, the Confederation is the most famous, with its halberdiers and pikemen in high demand as mercenaries. The less populous Bernese, wary of frittering away their manpower on foreign adventures, are not nearly as well known even though their use of gunpowder and combined arms tactics have repeatedly trounced the Swiss.

In April Francis launches a bold campaign, hoping to knock Burgundy out of the war in one massive stroke and hopefully destabilize English efforts to break the Loire frontier. His vast host, swelled with barely trained peasant levies alongside glistening French knighthood, is surrounded by mercenaries from Germany, Italy, and Scotland, although the Swiss are the most numerous and fearsome. His first target is Autun, a wealthy Burgundian city of 26,000, currently filled with supplies for the Burgundian army and artillery, including twenty guns stored in warehouses.

The French army, thirty seven thousand strong, is challenged by a Burgundian force twenty one thousand strong, including three hundred English longbowmen on loan. Outside of the Low countries, Autun is second in size only to the capital of Dijon in the Duchy. The smaller army forces an engagement two miles south of the city, hoping to buy the townspeople time to repair the old walls, which are in poor shape. Neither side attempts to place artillery for use in the battle. The Burgundians want to keep the cannons to defend the city itself, since they have no illusions about winning in the field and do not want to lose the cannons before the siege. Francis, impatient for a victory, does not want to take the time to position the guns on their cumbersome sleds (wheeled gun carriages have yet to be invented, even by the Bourne brothers).

The Swiss immediately attack the center of the line, their ranks of bristling pikes sweeping across the field. The English longbowmen, sheltered in a copse of trees in the left wing, pour flanking fire into the Swiss squares but are too few to halt them. The wind is also blowing in their faces, lessening the effectiveness of their volleys. There are a few Burgundian crossbowmen who also open up on the Swiss, but their positions are exposed. The French knights charge down upon them, the Burgundian chivalry sallying in response. As the cavalry plow into each other, the Swiss battalions make contact with the Burgundian foot.

Almost immediately, they begin to cut through as the Burgundian levies cannot stand against the spiky plow. Squadrons of men began peeling backward in disarray. But the Burgundians have mercenaries of their own and Palatine Zweihanders lumber into the fray, the massive swords cleaving the tips off of the pikes. The Swiss begin to stagger as the Germans grimly hack their way inwards. However by now the Burgundian foot is reeling back all along the line, pursued by French knights who have cut their way through the outnumbered Burgundian horse. A few squadrons retain enough tactical sense to wheel around and strike the Germans in the rear. It is enough; the advantage swings back to the Swiss. The Germans know that they will be shown no mercy by the remorseless Swiss, so they do not attempt to surrender. Every single one of them is killed, but they perish surrounded by a pile of enemy corpses that outnumber their own almost two to one.

The Burgundian army is annihilated as a fighting force, but the French army leaves seven thousand dead on the field (half of them are Swiss). The panicked Burgundian foot is pursued back to Autun, where the inhabitants close the gate but too late. A company of enemy soldiers are already in the city. A desperate attempt by the townsfolk to stop the gates from being reopened is cut to pieces. And then the army rolls in, enraged over its heavy losses on the nearby battlefield. The mercenaries and French both begin a massive sack, gutting anyone who impedes them. Francis does not attempt to stop them, but encourages them and even joins in, ransacking like a common soldier. He sees no reason to show any mercy to those he regards as traitors and rebels.

For two days the people of Autun are given over to a holocaust of rape and slaughter, until finally the thirteen thousand survivors can bear it no longer. They rise up, tearing at their assailants with anything available. Many a Swiss soldier, vulnerable in city streets where they cannot wield their pikes, dies with a townsperson’s teeth embedded in their throats. After five hours of bloodshed, the uprising is put down without mercy. The victorious soldiers wade through the gore which reportedly reached halfway to their knees; not a single inhabitant of the city is said to be left alive.

The city is stripped of everything of value and then burned to the ground. The primary objective of the attack is forgotten as now Francis, the French, and the mercenaries all want to return to friendly soil with their loot. However most of the countryside has turned out in force, determined to avenge the massacre of Autun. While they are not soldiers, the local peasants have strong arms, sharp farm implements, and know the terrain. Every straggler is torn to shreds, the body pieces left on the road in piles.

By the time Francis returns to his capital at Vichy, his army is down to twenty five thousand men. When he disbands the contingents of peasant levies, it is a mere thirteen thousand strong. While he did capture many supplies, powder, shot, and coin in addition to the twenty guns, Francis’ actions at Autun has dealt his cause a crippling blow. There had been a growing pro-French faction in the Duchy who had felt uncomfortable fighting alongside the English and wanted rapprochement with the French sovereign. The massacre at Autun destroys that faction just as effectively as it killed the townspeople. Three days after Francis arrives at his capital, he receives news that Tours has capitulated to an English army. The town fired three cannonballs at the English and then surrendered.

Far to the east, Shah Rukh begins his attack on Shun China, dispatching flying columns up the Fergana valley from his base at Khujand. By the end of the year, he has cleared it of Shun troops, although those only consisted of some scouts, and forced the local rulers into line. The Shun had been suborning the local rulers who had grown rather independent during the Timurid War of Succession and the Uzbek conflict. The loss of their foothold there is a heavy blow to the Shun advance along the Silk Road. This far from China, supplying large numbers of troops is rather difficult, a difficulty that the well-watered and fertile Fergana valley would have helped solve.

While the Romans are occupied with the Ottomans, Lazar begins his invasion of Bosnia. His main justification is the nature of the Bosnian church, which has the dubious honor of being considered heretical by both Catholic and Orthodox churches. Portraying himself as a defender of Orthodoxy against heresy, Lazar sweeps into Zahumlje first, burning churches as he goes. The advance is spearheaded by the Serbian knights, still led by Durad Brankovic. At the village of Cerici, they are challenged by a Bosnian levy that outnumbers them nearly two to one; one cavalry charge sweeps them aside.

Enraged because of the burning of churches and eager to avenge the defeat at Cerici, the Bosnian ban (king) Trvtko III Subic, gathers the full weight of the Bosnian levy at Vrci. Unfortunately for him, his cavalry is only armored in mail, and all of his infantry are peasant conscripts, hardy individuals but not trained soldiers. When the Serbs arrive at Vrci, the Bosnian army launches a fierce attack spearheaded by the men of Vrhbosna, who swing giant clubs with iron heads. The Serbian lines hold under the fierce attack while Durad annihilates the Bosnian cavalry and then charges into the rear of the Bosnian army. At once it shatters, the peasants scattering into the woods, many of them being run down by Serbian light cavalry. Amidst the bodies of the slain is Trvtko Subic.

The rest of Bosnia submits rapidly after Vrci, although the city of Vrhbosna resists for eight days, capitulating after the first known use of Serbian cannon. The Bosnian church is outlawed, its buildings either destroyed or converted into Orthodox structures. Serbian priests are brought in to minister the Bosnian flock, while colonies of Serbian settlers are established at Vrhbosna, Konjic, and Zenica. They are given land in exchange for military service, serving as either infantry or cavalry depending on the size of the estate. Four times a year they are required to attend a ten day review for training, and are obligated to meet individual proficiency tests or have their lands revoked.

1423: The year is forever known as the Year of Victories to the English. Because of Burgundy’s weakness, England puts an army of twenty three thousand men into the field, backed up by ninety pieces of artillery. With such an array behind him Edward Bourne, commander of the Royal Artillery, outdoes himself, capturing thirty eight fortified places in the course of the campaigning. Most had capitulated as soon as he brought the heavy guns into position. The most difficult was the siege of Orleans, but even that city only held out for nineteen days, handicapped by a lack of gunpowder (because Francis had spent the money on mercenaries for the Autun campaign) and a demoralized garrison. Orleans had been the third fortress captured. His final conquest of the year, after being transferred to Aquitaine, is the capture of Toulouse.

Not only is the Loire frontier shattered, allowing English and Burgundian troops to pour into central France, but Francis himself is having extreme difficulty with his subjects. His conduct and those of his troops at Autun hangs like a cloud over his rule. With French townspeople preferring to be ruled by a lenient English king than a bloodthirsty French one, he is forced to rely more and more on foreign mercenaries, predominantly German and Swiss. The sight of foreign troops marching through their streets and fields, which is usually accompanied by some amount of looting even in friendly territory, only encourages their disloyalty.

Thus Francis is unable to capitalize on Burgundian weakness as he has to maintain troops at home to guard against rebellion. The most serious threat is a plot among several leading burghers in Carcassonne to surrender the place to an English detachment in the region, but a dispatch from the burghers is intercepted by a French patrol. Francis has the instigators rounded up, brought to Vichy, tortured for several days straight, and then decides to execute them. It takes a while for him to decide how; he considers hanging or beheading to be too quick and painless. One of his courtiers suggests the ‘Vlach treatment’. Francis happily agrees. The next day the citizens of Vichy look out their windows and see twenty five men impaled on stakes in the city square.

Somewhat brighter news comes from Provence as boatloads of Jews pour into Marseille, fleeing the chaos of the Gunpowder Crusade. Experienced artisans and moneylenders, they are welcomed with open arms by the new governor, Charles Valois, the third son of Francis (and the second in line to the French throne as the oldest brother died of smallpox in 1419). Although he is only eighteen, the tall French prince has already browbeaten the Count of Provence to accept his realm’s formal absorption into the domains of the French crown, proving to be an excellent general in the process. With the arrival of the Jews, he shows himself to be an excellent administrator as well. Using their capital and experience, he expands the wine and coral (used to make jewelry and highly valued by Roman jewelers) trade as well as the textile and glassmaking industry. Amidst the carnage of the Ninety Years War, untouched Provence reaches across the Mediterranean, plying its wares as far as Constantinople.

In the Queen of Cities, after a tavern brawl in Nicaea, Demetrios issues a new and somewhat unusual piece of legislation. From now on, it is forbidden for university students to possess a weapon with a blade longer than three inches. The law also prohibits students from owning maces. Hunting weapons, such as spears and bows, are not prohibited because they have a purpose outside of warfare and because students are unlikely to take them with on a trip to the brothel or tavern.

The reason for this legislation is that many university students are younger sons of soldiers. It is common amongst military families, at least amongst the skutatoi and cavalry troop types, that the eldest son inherits the estate and position as soldier while the younger sons go to university to gain the education necessary for a government position. When they leave home, they are customarily given a sword or mace from their father or older brother who has access to the warehouse system. Previously the government had done nothing, but the increasing number of situations involving young men, swords, and alcohol obviously needed to be fixed.

Anthony IV, Patriarch of Constantinople, the patriarch who helped start and defuse the Patriarch Incident, dies on May 14. His successor is Adem I. While some of his predecessors had had Turkish blood, he is the first Patriarch of Constantinople to be a full-blooded Turk (itself becoming a bit of a rarity after 120 years of intermarriage between Greeks and Anatolian Turks). Only thirty nine years old, he has risen up through the clergy and has a profound distaste for monasteries and monks, as the ones near his birthplace of Amaseia have a well-deserved reputation for corruption.

Just three months after Adem’s accession, Demetrios receives a complaint against the monastery of St. Gregory of Nyssa at Amorium. A minor nobleman named Andronikos Psellos had started investing in the wine trade some years earlier and by now is a wealthy merchant, one of the most successful of a small but growing class of noble merchants (they are drawn from the ranks of the minor nobility, who are more concerned with wealth than with propriety unlike their loftier class brethren). He had been importing Achaean wine into Attaleia to be served in taverns, a potentially lucrative business because of all the Latin pilgrims that passed through the port because of the special arrangement between Constantinople and Pisa.

His success had hinged on owning the whole operation, from the vineyards to the taverns, so that the prices at the taverns could be kept low to undercut competitors (as there are no middlemen). Using his land estates, he was also investing in cattle ranching in the interior, hoping to use the animal products to expand his taverns into an eatery as well. During a business trip to oversee his new vineyards in Morea, he had entrusted a herd of cattle to the monastery for safe keeping, providing the money for their upkeep as well as an additional charge for the service.

When he returned, he went to the monastery and asked for his cattle back. The monks refused, saying that they had been carried off by rustlers. Andronikos then asked for the money back, arguing that since they hadn’t kept his cattle safe, they should not be paid for that service. The money apparently had been stolen as well. However on his way out, viewing the cattle owned by the monastery, he recognized some of the cows as his own. But where his brand would have been, all of them had scar tissue. Claiming that the monastery had robbed him, he eventually took his case all the way to the Emperors themselves.

Demetrios sided with Andronikos, arguing that if the landowner’s cattle had been stolen, the monastery was contractually obligated to replace them with cattle of equal value. Andronikos noticed that the animals he received all had the scar tissue. After the court case, Demetrios revives an old practice of Konstantinos XI. Starting in 1396, he had begun compiling evidence of monastic corruption, a process that had been cut short by his death. This case becomes the first new entry to the old list.

On August 9, the city of Venice bursts into celebration as the last of her sons come home. All of the Venetian prisoners in Roman hands have been ransomed, including those working on the sugar plantations. For a week the city is decked in ribbons and filled with music. Already in the last few years the Republic has made a substantial recovery. Focusing less on the Aegean and Black Sea, Venetian merchants have increased their business with the Mameluke Sultanate, which is eager to encourage trade through its ports of Alexandria and Damietta. Venetians in particular patronize the latter, as in Alexandria they face heavy competition from Genoese and Sicilian merchants and some Greeks who are involved in the Sudanese slave trade.

The trade route through the Red Sea, which benefits the Mamelukes and the Italians, is in direct competition with the Persian Gulf route which benefits the Ottomans and Romans. Some of the wealthier merchants in the Empire have begun suggesting that the Emperors ‘trim’ the competition. Also Venetian merchants are returning to the roots of Venetian commercial prosperity, the salt trade. The Loredan family last year made a special contract with King Francis I, providing salt for the French army.

Giovanni Loredan returns to his home, his back a mass of scar tissues. He participates in the celebration, noting that behind the ribbons and banners, the dancers and musicians, half-ruined churches and homes still remain. His parents try to draw him into the salt trade, but he follows his vows and joins the clergy, traveling to Rome where he quickly comes to the attention of Pope Martin VI for his natural intellect, good management and organizational skills, and charismatic orations. With the pope’s personal favor, Giovanni quickly begins to rise.

1424: In Constantinople, there is a massive celebration as Theodoros Komnenos, son of Demetrios Komnenos, and Helene Doukas, granddaughter of Manuel Doukas, are wed. The young co-emperor, almost sixteen years old, has already started to become involved in government. During his childhood, he had spent much of his time in the docks and markets of Smyrna (where Demetrios and his family often spend the winter months as Demetrios is very fond of his former capital) and Constantinople, and so has a much better understanding and sympathy for commerce than is usual for Roman Emperors.

The preparations had begun a full year before the actual ceremony, with invitations being dispatched to every ruler of significance in Europe and the Middle East. The King of Novgorod-Lithuania, Alexei I, is the most powerful attendee. The Kings of Hungary, Serbia, Vlachia, and Georgia also attend, while Aragon, Genoa, Saxony, Bavaria, Ancona, Urbino, Florence, and Poland all send representatives. Venice is deliberately not invited.

Demetrios and Manuel make every effort to dazzle their illustrious guests. They dine on gold dishes (although they are not allowed to keep them) and are given clothes made from the finest Roman silk. But what most impresses and alarms the attendees is the honor guard for the wedding. Not only are the Athanatoi and the Constantinople archontate called out, but the Thracesian tagma as well. The sight of sixteen thousand men, marching in formation with their burnished armor reflecting the sunlight, is a far more visible reminder of the Empire’s might than any amount of precious cutlery.

Since the fall of the Fergana valley, there has only been intermittent dueling between Timurid and Shun forces, as both sides have been hampered by the barren landscape of Badakhshan. So far, nearly all of the engagements have gone in favor of the Timurid forces. Shah Rukh lacks the heavily armored melee infantry and cavalry which his grandfather had favored after Caesarea, so he is relying on light cavalry archers to sting the enemy forces into submission. If caught in melee against unbroken Shun forces, they are easily cut to pieces, but it is almost impossible for the more cumbersome Shun troops to do so and they use up much less supplies. As he continues to nibble at his enemy, Shah Rukh spends his Wu and Kashmiri subsidies well, recruiting tribesmen from as far away as the Oirats, Sibir, and the Blue Horde.

Finally, thirteen years after making his pledge, Osman II takes the first step toward fulfilling the Samarkand Oath, what will become known to historians as the Great Project. On March 10 he and his armies cross over the border into the Emirate of Gilan. Desperate, the Emir appeals not to the Jalayirid Khan in Fars (who used to be the emir’s sovereign and refuses to help now), but to the Emperors in Constantinople. He offers to become a Roman vassal, provided they prevent his emirate from becoming an Ottoman province. Per the Bartella agreement, the request is denied. Deprived of foreign aid and outnumbered almost seven to one, most of the emirate falls within the year, although the capital Astara withstands an eight month siege, falling in January of 1425.

The Marinid fleet makes another effort to supply the garrison at Cartagena, which has held back Aragonese attempts to take the city for five years, being intermittently supplied by the fleet. By this point the crusader camp has turned into a proper city, called Ciudad de Canones (City of Cannons), well fortified with earthen ramparts that have helped turn back four attempts by Marinid army units to break the siege. It is by now a fairly populous city as well, filled with various shops set up by camp followers and filled with the children of soldiers and the female camp followers.

However in this naval battle the Aragonese are joined by several Portuguese vessels. As the Portuguese advance into the Algarve has dissolved into an indecisive carnage, the Portuguese navy has been made available to the other crusaders in the hope that its aid may break the post-Yecla stalemate. Six of them are retrofitted cargo vessels, equipped with high fore and aft towers to serve as gun platforms, the Portuguese version of the purxiphoi. With the gunnery support of the purxiphoi, the Aragonese-Portuguese fleet is able to drive off the Marinid warships and sink eleven supply-laden transports.

Still the garrison, on its last stores, refuses to surrender. Olaf Tordsson leads the assault five days after the battle. While the giant is still a terrifying sight, familiarity has dulled the shock. No longer can he make a full Marinid army flee in terror as he did at Alarcos. During the attack, which seems to be making progress, punching through the makeshift fortifications erected by the Marinid soldiers behind the breaches, he is hit. Normally his thick armor would have protected him, but the projectile is a lead ball propelled by the latest model of Bernese handgun (it had been sold by the Genoese to the Marinids and shipped to Cartagena in an earlier, successful convoy). Mangling his left arm, he is dragged from the battlefield by his men bellowing “I only need one arm to hit people!” The assault wavers, the Marinids regroup, and the attack is driven back to its starting position.

Three weeks later the garrison capitulates on generous terms. The garrison soldiers must hand over all military equipment, but are allowed to go free without ransom. Several Marinid transports are allowed to dock to take them back to Africa. The local populace does have to be ransomed, but Pope Gregory XII pays a lump sum of 45,000 ducats to liberate five thousand poor prisoners who cannot pay their ransom (this is in addition to the church subsidies the pope in Avignon has continued to pour into the Gunpowder Crusade, the main reason why the three Iberian states have been able to maintain the struggle for so long).

Three months later, another sign occurs that the stalemate may be breaking. The Guadalquivir has seen the most fighting, but still Ferdinand has not succeeded in gaining a foothold in the river valley, until now. On September 4, the garrison at the citadel of Alcaudete sallies out to attack a party of Castilian raiders in the immediate vicinity, but is ambushed and cut to pieces. The Castilian raiders dress themselves in the Marinid gear, bluff their way into the fortress, kill the handful of remaining defenders, and unfurl the Castilian banner from the top of the battlements.

Ferdinand is ecstatic at the news, dispatching reinforcements and supplies from Alarcos as soon as he hears the news. Part of the reinforcement is part of Olaf’s company, including their leader who has recovered from his wound at Cartagena. A Marinid attempt to retake the castle is beaten back by the original captors, but the arrival of the relief column scatters the Marinid troops before they can begin a proper siege. Meanwhile Ferdinand is busy planning an all-out attack on the Guadalquivir for the spring of next year.

The Marinids are not idle either. In Africa, the Cartagena survivors, now hardy veterans, serve as experienced cadres corseting the waves of new conscripts. Genoa continues to pour supplies into Tunis, despite increasing attacks from Hospitaler galleys. By this point the Order and the Republic are in an undeclared war, both parties attacking each other’s ships on sight. As the Marinids gather, building up new armies as they have done before, something new is added. This time the troops will be commanded by the sultan’s heir, his eldest son Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu. Nineteen years old, he has already served extensively in the Sahara fending off Tuareg raids, building up his natural expertise in the art of war. To the Iberian troops serving under him, he is known as ‘the Hammer of al-Andalus’.

1425: Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu, son of a Christian mother and a Muslim father, of mixed Berber-Castilian blood, lands in Iberia on April 4 at Gibraltar. Forty one thousand men follow. The troops land at the Rock because the Aragonese and Portuguese navies have again gone on the offensive, trying to cut the supply line between Africa and Europe. Genoa is of less help, as the Republic is now officially at war with the Hospitalers and Pisa, while rumors abound that Milan is being encouraged by the Pope (in Rome) Martin VI and Venice to enter the conflict.

His first target is Alcaudete, where Olaf Tordsson and seven hundred men (only the full plate-armored men of his company are present) await the arrival of the Grand Army of Castile, the largest host Christian Spain has ever assembled, crusade or not, thirty four thousand strong. With them are one hundred guns exactly. Adequately supplied by the numerous cities and towns of the Guadalquivir, the Marinids advance faster than the Castilians who have to funnel all their supplies through Alarcos. Years of raids and depredations have turned the region between Alarcos and Jaen a barren no man’s land. The only thing that eats well there are the vultures.

On April 19 the siege of Alcaudete begins, laborers dragging their fifty two cannons into position. Mohammed towers above them all; he stands six feet, five inches, almost as tall as Olaf himself. Alcaudete has a few guns too, and they begin a steady fire against the Marinid guns which is greeted with a vigorous reply. Mohammed orders an assault after three days, hoping that the damage already inflicted and the sheer size of the Marinid army will demoralize the garrison.

In less than four minutes, five hundred Marinid soldiers are killed as they attempt to pour into the breach hammered in the outer wall. Any soldiers that can make it through the gauntlet of enfilading cannonballs and crossbow bolts is awarded the chance to face Olaf in close combat. By the time the corpses around him personally number twenty, the Marinids decide they prefer the rain of missiles, fleeing backward in disarray.

Mohammed cancels the attack, continuing the bombardment and ordering sappers to work. However before the latter can make much progress, red and gold banners appear on the horizon; the Grand Army has arrived. The Castilians advance in high spirits; they are almost all veterans, bloodied in victory against their foe. The Marinids still have the numerical advantage though, and accept the challenge. It is to be the greatest clash between Islam and Catholicism since the Third Crusade.

800pxalcaudete.jpg

Alcaudete today. The Moorish citadel was the prize in the largest battle of the Gunpowder Crusade.​

Since they are taking the offensive the Castilians do not have time to build much field fortifications, but they do manage to move seventy guns into position to fire on the Marinid troops (most Castilian guns fire balls weighing less than forty pounds and so can be moved by a team of ten horses, virtually impossible to relocate during battle but still small enough to make positioning in the field prior to an engagement possible).

The Castilians halt before they make contact with the Marinid battle line, beginning a brisk bombardment instead. The Marinid guns that are in position return the fire but they are heavier (thus being more difficult to move and reload) and are outnumbered nearly three to one. The numerical disparity continues to go against the Marinids as the Castilians, now quite skilled with artillery, bring more and more of their heavier guns to bear, adding their weight to the hail of fire.

Mohammed attacks, sending forward waves of Berber light cavalry, which are met head-on by squadrons of jinetes. The combatants swirl around each other, hurling darts, javelins, and arrows; the Marinid army begins a general advance. As the infantry approach, Mohammed dispatches five thousand cavalry on a flanking run, using a small wood to help mask their movements. The infantry on both sides meet with a crash as the killing begins in earnest. Mohammed wants the Castilian line pinned in place and due to the fierce opposition of the Castilian skirmishers, that is only possible through a general melee. Both sides are evenly matched in bravery, but while the Marinids are more numerous, the Castilians are better armored.

As the bodies pile up in the front the flank attack is spotted by the almughavars Ferdinand has posted as flank guards. After spending back a warning, they immediately attack, hurling their javelins at the lightly armored throats of the horses, then whipping out their long knives to slash at their hamstrings. The Castilian knights held in reserve charge into the fray, hacking through their lighter opponents, but then the heavy cavalry Mohammed had posted as support charges into battle as well. Unique among Marinid units, they are armored in lamellar plus a plate cuirass and greaves; the horses are armored in cloth and lamellar (the lamellar is made by Marinid smiths but the plate is Italian produced, imported by Genoa). The Marinid reserves make substantial headway against their immobilized opponents, but not enough to break the battle-hardened knights. Ferdinand throws in his household guard and Maria’s retainers (she is not present but her glaive-men are), prompting Mohammed to send in more of his reserves. Olaf pounces.

The gates of Alcaudete crash open and the garrison sallies, Olaf at the head, aiming directly at the Marinid prince’s banner. He is atop Moorsbane, decapitating the head of the first Marinid horse that gets in his way in one clean blow. The garrison slams into the startled and under-strength rearguard, cutting it to pieces, then plowing into the prince’s guard which is also undermanned because of the men sent to reinforce the flank attack.

Olaf is still in the lead, bowling aside the guardsmen in his path, charging at the prince. Mohammed accepts the challenge, pulling out his own, massive sword as some of the regular Marinid troops turn around to reinforce the guard. The two giants smash at each other, trading eight blows, each one capable of leveling a lesser man. Each one is slightly wounded; Olaf receives a shallow cut to the head while Mohammed is slashed in the left arm. But before either can take advantage, their followers rush in, sweeping their leaders away from each other.

It is all the common soldiers can do to protect their leaders, as they have to wage a battle on two fronts. They have to defend themselves against the enemy soldiers, but also hold back their leaders from charging back into their titanic duel. They manage to win, but barely. Meanwhile the Marinids in the center, without reserves to support them (they had been diverted to defend against Olaf’s sally), are breaking, green units falling back in disarray, infecting other regiments with their panic.

With the pressure on the center failing, Ferdinand himself enters the fray, hitting the flank battle with the very last bits of the reserve. Fighting on two fronts, the Marinid cavalry breaks, and Ferdinand wheels the Castilian cavalry to hit the still fighting Marinid foot in the side. Many of the veteran soldiers, survivors of the Cartagena slugging match, had previously resisted the panic and continued fighting, but now they too begin to retire. However they do so in good order despite their heavy casualties, giving close pursuers a bloody nose for their trouble. Mohammed decides the battle is lost and retires with his troops, forced to abandon his guns in the process. The battered Castilian army does not pursue. The battle of Alcaudete claims the lives of sixteen thousand Marinids and twelve thousand crusaders, including two hundred and thirty men of the Alcaudete garrison.

While it is a crusader victory, allowing the Castilians to keep their toehold in the Guadalquivir, it is not decisive. The victors are in little better shape than the losers. By the time Ferdinand is ready to begin the attack on the first obstacle, the city of Jaen (population 39,000-small by al-Andalus standards), Mohammed has reformed his army which is still quite dangerous as most of his casualties were fresh conscripts, not his veterans (deliberate on his part). Over the course of the campaigning season, the two armies thrust and parry along the river valley, fighting a war of maneuver but not of battles. Because of the rich river valley, neither side has serious supply difficulties, although the Castilians are slightly worse off.

On the other theaters, the stalemate again appears to be in effect. In Murcia, Martin, Prince of Majorca, leads an Aragonese column into an ambush at Aledo. Nearly the whole contingent, three thousand men including eleven hundred knights, are cut to pieces as the badly wounded prince is captured. He dies four days later despite the best efforts of the Moorish physician (he could have fetched a sizeable ransom). In the Algarve, the Portuguese siege of Aljezur, which had been making some progress despite fierce resistance, is shattered when a gunpowder mine is detonated below the commander’s tent, wiping out virtually all the high-ranking officers of the siege. The dispirited men break camp and retreat to winter quarters at Sines.

Far to the southeast, Ethiopia stirs once more. The state had remained quiet since the end of the Adalese war, but Yekuno has never ceased to continue his centralizing efforts. There have been a handful of noble revolts which Yekuno has put down with frightful slaughter due to his monopoly on the knowledge the Roman artisans possess. He makes sure they are well paid but forbids them on pain of death to accept a gift from anyone other than himself. Of the eight, six of them are married to Ethiopian women (they have been there for over a decade now) and have children while the other two are married but without offspring.

Using the tolls levied on caravan trade throughout his realm (Harar provides over half of them), Yekuno has established a military system designed to supersede the feudal Chewa regiments which have an annoying habit of going native and rebelling. It is called the Axumos system, referring to the old kingdom of Axum but with a Greek os-ending because of its similarity to the tagma-theme system in place. An assortment of infantry and cavalry troops are settled on land grants and receive a small payment each year, in exchange for military service (Chewa troops just received land, making them difficult to control by the central government). The soldiers are paid at a three week review in the spring, and they are also required to attend another two week review in the fall. These troops form the backbone of the new Ethiopian army, supplemented by Yekuno’s personal troops, the crossbow militia, the Chewa regiments, and nobles’ retainers.

To the west of Ethiopia, the Shilluk migration is making significant inroads into the numerous petty states of the region. Desperate for aid, some of the local rulers call on Ethiopia for protection, pledging to become vassals in exchange for shelter. Since the area is a sizeable producer of ivory, slaves, and gold, Yekuno accepts, dispatching several small armies into the region. The Shilluk, organized into independent tribes, are not a monolithic bloc, forming coalitions between tribes as necessary and frequently fighting amongst each other.

At Qessan, a coalition of three Shilluk tribes is foolish enough to challenge the Axumos in battle and are swept aside. With the men killed, the women and children are captured and scattered throughout the Ethiopian empire as slaves and concubines. However the Shilluk are still quite numerous and now adapt their strategies. Brave and strong, the Shilluk are extremely dangerous in small-scale battles while their lack of any pan-tribal organizations makes large field battles against Ethiopian forces almost suicidal. So often bands of Shilluk will harry Ethiopian forces, forcing them to remain concentrated so that other bands can raid other areas with impunity. While the ‘war’ is a stalemate, there is still some signs of change as tribute from Sennar begins to allow Yekuno to expand the number of cavalry in the Axumos. Armored in thick cloth and equipped with a lance and a slashing sword, the Ethiopian cavalry is the most effective unit fighting the Shilluk.

The Rightful Pope (in Avignon) Gregory XI, Servant of the Servants of God.

urbanvu.jpg

Pope Gregory XI was born Gabriel d’Perpignan in Roussillon, on the border between Aragon and France in 1358, the second son of wealthy vineyard owners. As his eldest brother was going to inherit the estate, he entered the clergy at the age of fifteen. At thirty he was a cardinal, siding with the Pope in Avignon when the Great Schism began. His argument was that Rome was made holy by the presence of the pope, not through any intrinsic quality of its own. He argued that Rome had been the city of Nero; the great Christian emperor Constantine had made his capital in the east ‘where his children still reside’.

In his twenties, Gabriel had gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but had wintered in Constantinople on the way home. Having spent several months in the company of Greeks, he is much more tolerant and forgiving of them than most high-ranking Latin clerics. One item that especially impressed him there was that Roman commoners could read the Bible (although the price of books at the time meant most did not own one). When he returned to the west, he encouraged the creation of more bibles for the clergy and laity to read, although he still insisted that only a bible in Latin was proper. Translations could be condoned, but could not be considered completely accurate.

He was elected the rightful Pope in 1404 with very little opposition. From the beginning the man who signed all of his letters ‘servant of the servants of God’ focused most of his energy on caring for the poor. Commonly wearing a homespun, woolen, monastic habit except on special occasions, Gregory daily walked in the streets of Avignon, blessing the poor, washing their feet, and distributing alms. Often living frugally (in stark contrast to virtually all high-ranking clerics), every night he fed a dozen of Avignon’s poor. When he traveled through the realms of Christendom that followed the Avignon papacy, which he did a lot, he would do the same regardless of where he was.

One of his greatest initiatives was the setting up of soup kitchens throughout the cities of western Europe, arguing that ‘if we feed their stomachs, we will feed their souls as well.’ He also set up several church funds to pay for a series of orphanages and hospitals he had built. Because of his continuing efforts to aid the poor, his frugal lifestyle, and his efforts to wipe out church corruption, he was well loved by church reformers who had been regularly arguing against the excesses of the church. Under Gregory’s tenure, they fell silent. Because of the continuing disruption of the Ninety Years War (which he tried repeatedly but ultimately failed to stop), most of Gregory’s handiwork was concentrated in Iberia.

Because most of his projects were located in and bore fruit south of the Pyrenees, the Pope also spent much time there. As a result, he had a far greater understanding of the trials facing the Iberian people than normal Avignon popes who were usually French and concerned with England and Germany or Roman popes who were concerned with the Roman Empire. Thus when his rival issued a call to crusade against Constantinople in 1416, Gregory was quick in issuing a crusade against what he saw as the true threat to Christendom, the Marinids.

The concept of holy war was not something Gregory viewed with great fondness. One of the main criticisms of the various reformers was that the crusade had turned from a ‘necessary but evil’ war to defend Christendom into a club used to hit whoever was currently annoying the pope. In Constantinople, he had seen tolerance and understanding used to convert hundreds of thousands of Muslim to Christianity, a record the Catholic sword was incapable of matching.

Regarding the rationale for the Marinid crusade, he said that ‘Peace and goodwill amongst Christians toward the heathen will show them the righteousness of our faith. In that way they shall see the light. The use of the sword to spread the Word of God will not ensure true conversion in their hearts, but will instead drown it. For why would a man follow a faith that shows him nothing but violence and hatred?

‘It would seem that this current holy war against the Moors that I support is contrary to these sentiments I have just expressed. However it is the nature of great states throughout history to wage war against their neighbors. So long as Islam and Christendom share a common frontier, war is inevitable because of the fallen nature of men. For peace to come between Islam and Christendom in the west, and for the light of Christ to be spread through the path of peace, that frontier must be eliminated. Europe belongs by right to the Iberians and Africa to the Moors. Once the proper order of things is restored, and the waters of the Mediterranean act as a buffer cooling the hot and angry nature of men, then peace will come. And then will come the sanctifying light of Christ’.

Printing's First Decade (1425-1435)

In 1425, Trebizond was a bustling port with almost sixty thousand inhabitants, most famous for its shipyards and the school of mathematics at the university. It was also, after Constantinople of course, the most cosmopolitan city in the Empire. In a single street one could bump into Scots at one end and Kashmiri at the other. Beside the churches (Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian, and Nestorian) and mosques, there was also a small Hindu temple and a Buddhist stupa, paid for by the handful of merchants from India and Kashmir.

thumbnailxlarge11280680.jpg

The church of Aghia (Saint) Sofia in Trebizond. Ever since the Empire of Trebizond was conquered by Theodoros II Megas in 1266, the city has been the sight of much Laskarid construction, in order to help convince the independent-minded Trebizondians to accept Laskarid rule. Because of this, many Romans in the early fifteenth century consider Trebizond to be the most beautiful city in the Empire, because it has the beautiful architecture of Constantinople without the massive urban slums.

On his fortieth birthday on February 8, Pavlos Apokaukos, one of the richest shipbuilders in the city, received a birthday gift from his younger brother Matthaios, who was a silversmith. It was a copy of Euclid’s The Elements, bound in leather with silver clasps and a silver engraving on the front, showing the ancient mathematician working in a study at Alexandria, the Pharos lighthouse visible in the background through the window (the lighthouse was currently being restored by the Mamelukes). It was the first printed book using moveable type in existence.

The invention of the moveable type printing press, built by the combination of Matthaios’ technical expertise and Pavlos’ capital, immediately found a market. Even with the use of paper, replacing the far more expensive parchment or papyrus, textbooks were far out of the price range of all but the richest students. The average ratio was one textbook for every eight students. Matthaios’ printing press made Euclid’s book affordable for individual students. To lower prices, Matthaios did not provide binding, but only a stack of pages with the buyer providing their own binding. Students typically just wrapped it up in paper, while the shipbuilders who also wanted a copy of The Elements usually purchased a leather, velvet, or silk binding that was often decorated with gold leaf or silver engraving. By the end of the year, the three printing presses that have been set up had provided two hundred copies of The Elements and fifty copies of Apollonius’ On Conics.

Of course there was demand for other works as well from the university students and faculty, beyond what Matthaios could supply. Just a year after the printing press’s invention, the Roman government purchased the specifications for the machine for a handsome sum of money and the right of a printing monopoly in the Chaldean theme to Matthaios. Anyone attempting to print books inside the theme could be prosecuted by the entrepreneur.

The very first thing printed by the new government press was standardized tax forms. With the combination of double-entry bookkeeping (a Milanese invention) and standardized tax registries, the bureaucracy became more efficient and also less prone to corruption and embezzlement. The government press soon expanded to more products. Military manuals, official court histories, conduct guides for courtiers, and later atlases (produced for military officers) and cultural guides on neighboring peoples were all produced. The church, influenced by Patriarch Adem (Adam) who was enamored by the machine, also established its own small printing business, which churned out saints’ lives, prayer books, and bibles (which are written in vernacular Greek, as well as Turkish, Armenian, and Vlach, much to the surprise of western merchants).

In the Roman Empire, with its large and numerous concentrations of literate individuals, the technology of the printing press spread very rapidly. Matthaios abandoned his silversmith business to concentrate entirely on printing, eventually owning over sixty presses scattered over twenty five shops. Even so, he was unable to keep up with demand even in the Chaldean theme. He used his monopoly license to make other printers pay a fee to him for every book printed, but was forced to keep it small so Chaldean printers would be able to operate, rather than going out of business from Optimates presses. Even so, by 1435 he was one of the richest men in the Empire.

The printing press’ immediate success was not only helped by the large supply of Roman readers but also by the nature of Roman culture. With the advent of paper in the 1280s, manuscript prices declined to the point that members that were skilled artisans or above could afford one or two, perhaps more. Book owning became more prominent, mainly consisting of the Bible, a couple of saints’ lives, and perhaps a classical text or too.

The nobility and wealthy merchants as a matter of prestige strove to assemble the greatest libraries to outshine their peers, which was encouraged by the growth of a learned class from the universities. To and fro they scoured the Empire and beyond for classical texts, which is why so many became available for early printing. Instead of hiding in a monastic cache, they were lovingly maintained in a silk merchant’s library. Unlike the west, where a similar book-owning tradition developed in the early Renaissance, it was considered a mark of great shame to not have read and comprehended the contents of one’s library. Scholarship was considered a virtue, another byproduct of the extensive university system, as the best scholars at university had the best chance for advancement in the bureaucracy.

The printing press drastically reduced the price of texts, allowing lower class individuals to purchase books. Many did to elevate their social standing, causing citizens to refer to their neighbors by how many books they owned (ex. Petros is a eight-book man). This is the origin of the phrase ‘two-book man’, meaning a nobody. Someone who could only afford two books after the expansion of printing, likely a bible and a saint’s life, was clearly someone of little learning or wealth.

Book binding was the most expensive part of the new printed text. Paper bindings were the most common, not very durable but very cheap, and were used by students and poorer artisans and merchants. There was a close relationship between printers, leatherworkers, jewelers, and silver/goldsmiths. More expensive bindings for wealthier and more prestigious customers were in leather, silk or velvet and often highly decorated. Many an artist also got a job decorating texts, adding pictures to histories and textbooks. Fancier texts were considered more prestigious than plainer works, even if the contents were identical.

By the time the printing press was ten years old, it was scattered all across the Roman Empire. There were three hundred and twenty private, sixty government, and thirty five church presses. The Georgian capital of Tbilisi was the first non-Roman city to acquire the technology in 1431. It had three presses producing bibles and military manuals. A wave of new literature came into existence, made possible by the press while in 1435 the first printing press in the west opened in Venice.

printingpressearly.jpg

A Roman printing shop, c. 1435.

Some of the cities began to produce guide books to increase business and tourism in their locales, pointing out ancient ruins, local relics, detailing local ordnances and business opportunities, and suggesting the best eateries, taverns and inns. In Constantinople the city government produced A Guide to the Relics of Constantinople, which detailed the various relics throughout the city, describing the associated saint, the relic itself, and the church where it was kept and displayed. Two years after it was published in Greek, it was translated into Italian and German, turning Constantinople into a regular center of pilgrimage, typically frequented by pilgrims either going or returning from the holy land. In Attaleia, because of the pilgrim traffic, a Pilgrim’s Guide to Outremer was published, detailing the various holy sites and providing information on pilgrim hostels in the region. Translated into half a dozen languages, it was immensely popular.

Advertising also began as businesses could cheaply produce posters and pamphlets extolling their products and services. There was also a growth in children’s literature, mostly educational material such as reading primers (there was still no primary school apparatus in place). However there was still some fun texts as well. By far the most popular was the series Alexios and the Latins, written in simple Greek, detailing the adventures of a quick-thinking ten year old Greek boy in Apulia who repeatedly outfoxes bumbling Latins attempting all kinds of dastardly deeds. Mirroring The Three Soldiers, Alexios has a Turkish best friend named Ebecen and another close friend who is Armenian and named Razmik.

Besides ancient and contemporary literature, some older Roman historians that fell in between the two were also being printing. These included Anna Komnena, Michael Psellos, and George Akropolites. However the most famous and widely read of this category was The Annals of Niketas Choniates, which included graphic accounts of the sack of Thessalonica in 1185 and the Fourth Crusade. A booklet containing those two sections only, titled The Latin Fury, was put into print in 1434.

The blossoming of the Italian Renaissance led to a sort of culture war between the Italians and Greeks. The Greeks fought two battles. The first was over who was the true heir of Rome. To do that, Roman chronicles from the 1300s were dusted off and printed and new ones written, emphasizing the connection between Augustus, Konstantinos Megas, and Demetrios I. Also as part of a government effort, Latin manuscripts popular in western Europe were translated into Greek (often done by Urbinese or Anconans) and printed, so that Greek envoys could beat the Italians in literary contests.

The second was to prove the vitality of Greek culture, to counter the accusation that it was nothing more than the ‘legacy of a race of Roman slaves’. The mass printing of numerous classical Greek texts, far exceeding the driblet of texts the west was familiar with, largely countered the point. John Pachymeres in one of his last writings argued that the modern Roman Empire was in fact superior to the classical model the Italians venerated. He said that ‘the early Romans had only Trojan blood (a reference to the Aeneid) to strengthen them. It was enough for them to do great deeds. But today Romans have both Trojan and Greek blood. The blood of Achilles and Hector, Caesar and Alexander, is in our veins. That is our heritage, not the heritage of slaves but of titans. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and we are their children.’

Valencia, the Kingdom of Aragon, 1426:

Esteve squinted, boring his eyes into the upside down cup. His eyes flicked to the left. “That one,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Bernat asked.

Esteve growled. “Yes, just lift the damn cup!” Bernat did; there was nothing underneath. “Damn it! I thought I had you this time. You must be cheating; you’re hiding it up your sleeve.”

“I’m not wearing any sleeves.”

“Minor detail.”

The two Aragonese guardsmen were sitting at a table set up along the battlements of St. Sebastian, one of the coastal forts guarding the port of Valencia. A few other guards were scattered along the battlements, lounging in the shade. It was a hot day, a few fluffy clouds and fat seagulls gliding overhead. Below the great stone ramparts, light waves lapped against the shore as three merchant galleys slowly beat their way out of the harbors, the beat of the drums and the grunts of the rowers carrying over the breeze.

Esteve scratched the black stubble of his chin and looked over at the nearest soldier. “Hey, Jordi, want to give it a try? Perhaps he’ll go easy on a virgin.” He laughed.

Jordi blushed, looking down at the ground. There was no stubble on his face, just some baby fat. The ‘soldier’ was a boy of fifteen. There was silence for a moment as Jordi shuffled and then looked up, his left lip twitching upward. “At least I don’t molest goats.” Bernat howled.

Esteve scowled, “Why you little… Look at me!”

Jordi’s head darted back to look at the older guardsman. “I thought I saw something.”

Bernat looked out to the sea. “There’s nothing, just those galleys.” Now clear of the breakwater, the galleys were unfurling their sails, their oars slack for now.

“I’m telling you, I saw something.” He squinted. Esteve looked, squinting as well. Was that something moving? The horizon twitched. “Ships on the horizon!” Jordi yelled, his voice cracking on the last syllable. Everywhere men looked out to the horizon, trying to spot them as the wind shifted, now blowing from the east. Below the galley deckhands bellowed curses as the rowers began again.

“There!” Bernat shouting, pointing. Esteve followed his finger, seeing the masts a second later. Those were big ships. Glancing around them, he could see more smaller shapes, galleys by the look of things.

The lounging guardsmen burst into motion like a nest of disturbed ants. Now everyone could see the fleet, and it was a big one. Calls went out, officers bellowing at men to grab their weapons. Esteve grabbed his quiver and bow which had been laying to the side, tightening his belt as he did. Jordi was looking at him, swallowing. “Don’t worry, boy. You’ll do fine.”

“I’ve never killed a man.”

“It’s easy. Just pretend he’s a big chicken and gut him.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Don’t worry,” Bernat added. “Remember, the other guy is just as scared of you as you are of him.”

Nearby an officer bellowed. “Light the ovens!” With the introduction of cast iron shot, an English innovation, King Jaime had instituted a new practice in his coastal forts. The cast iron shot would be heated till it was red hot, then fired. It required delicate handling, but its effect on wooden vessels who couldn’t respond in kind was devastating.

Nearby men were grunting, readying the great cannons that guarded the fort. There were twenty four, four of which fired one hundred and twenty pound balls, potentially enough to break a galley’s back in one blow.

As they did so, men hauling up bags of powder, cannonballs, crossbows, and arrows as men in the barracks raced forward with spears and halberds, they could hear them, the drums. The westward breeze carried the noise, drummers on dozens of galleys beating their rhythm, the oars slicing through the water to the tempo. It was fast, very fast. In front of the fort, the merchant galleys were backpedaling fiercely.

“Who are they?” Jordi asked, staring at the horizon, crawling with ships steadily advancing. The drums were getting louder.

“I don’t know,” Esteve muttered. Those tall ships were odd. They looked like cargo ships, the great ships used by the Portuguese and Genoese when they sailed to the North and Baltic Seas, except different. Their fore and aft towers were taller. Who were they?

Two ships in the incoming armada were pulling ahead. They were smaller ships, lightly constructed, built for speed. Scouts. “Gunners! Ready your pieces!” The shout went down the battlement as well trained crews burst into action. Esteve could see the crews of the great guns laboriously prime their weapon, two burly, shirtless men lifting the great cannonballs the size of a man’s torso. The drums were getting louder.

“Cannon two, ready to fire! Cannon five, ready to fire!” Along the casemate, the call rang out. Over a thousand pounds of shot were now ready to be loosed upon the foe, a small foretaste of hell. “Archers to your position!” Esteve glanced over his spanned crossbow, making sure it was ready with an armor piercing quarrel. Jordi looked over at him, brandishing a halberd, a nervous tic in his eyes. “I can almost make out their standards, on the scouts anyway.” The drums were getting louder.

“Great guns, hold your fire! Culverins, stand by!” a nearby officer shouted.

“Wait,” Jordi whispered. “I can see them now.” Esteve squinted. He could just make them out too. A yellow flag, with a black double-headed eagle on it, a crown above their heads.

byzantineimperialflag.png

Greeks.

1426: The Ottomans commence their attack on Persia proper. While they attack all along the frontier, from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, their main thrust is concentrated in the north at the Emirate of Mazandaran, one of the wealthiest and fertile regions of Persia. The Jalayirid Khan issues a call to arms to all the states of the realm, gathering his personal troops and marching to Khuzestan. Overall the Persian response is rather incomplete; the Emirs of Yazd and Tabas refuse outright, citing the escalating Khorasan-Kerman conflict to the east.

Osman himself leads the attack into Mazandaran, defeating the Emir first at Roodsar and again at Rahim Abad. However at Chaloos, on the shores of the Caspian, he faces a much more serious challenge, as this time the Emir refuses to sally but holes up in the city, supplied by small vessels plying the Caspian. Osman builds a small flotilla of his own to counter the threat but the Turks are no sailors. It is annihilated as soon as it puts out to sea. Meanwhile the land forces have made little progress against the city’s stout walls as the Ottomans lack a gunsmith industry, forcing them to rely on trebuchets.

There are also a series of sea battles in the Persian Gulf as the Emir of Hormuz enters the war despite his distance from the front lines. Hormuz is a significant trade rival of Basra, maintaining a small fleet of merchant vessels that import spices from the great clearing house of Ceylon to Persia. Basra has attempted to divert the trade into its own port to feed the Mesopotamian and Syrian demand for spices, with some success. Overall the battles go in favor of Hormuz as the Emirate has a larger corps of experienced sailors.

In Khuzestan the battle goes back and forth between the Ottoman and Jalayirid armies. In the open, the former have the advantage, pummeling the enemy without challenge. But fighting in hilly terrain or from small mountain forts, the Turks are bloodied again and again. The Ottoman response is simple and ruthless. The Persian and Jalayirid troops are simply buried under waves of azabs, who with their flesh dull their opponents’ blades and tire their arms, until the sipahis and janissaries are thrown in to begin the rout. The butcher’s bill is massive.

The butcher also demands his due from east Asia. At the village of Yining, Shah Rukh, commanding tribes whose origins stretch from the Crimea to Altai, challenges the main Shun army, sixty two thousand strong. It is composed of the elite palace regiments of Shun China, bolstered by the most experienced Wei troops (semi-professional farmer-soldiers). For five days the armies battle, Shah Rukh slashing the enemy with lighting raids, showering the enemy with fierce hammer blows of missiles and then retiring before the more cumbersome Shun forces can engage. Finally on the fifth day the Wei troops break, exposing the flanks of the palace regiments. As the Wei flee in disorder, cut down by pursuing cavalry, other squadrons pour arrows into the regiments from all sides. By the time night ends the slaughter, over a third of the Shun army has been destroyed, with Shun’s best troops utterly annihilated. The door to China is open.

An joint envoy from Castile, Aragon, and the Avignon Papacy arrives at Constantinople in early March, asking for aid against the Marinid Sultanate. The delegates are greeted with skepticism, as the Empire has no quarrel with the Marinids, nor is it likely to gain one in the near future. The main item the Iberians have to offer is the goodwill of Christendom; Demetrios remarks that that is worth its weight in gold.

It is, in fact, the Papal envoys that turn the tide in favor of the delegation. Not even the Catholic Church can offer enough money to make the Roman Empire enter the Gunpowder Crusade, but the envoys do carry a personal appeal from Pope Gregory XI to the Emperors. It is addressed to the Roman Emperors (typical papal addresses to Constantinople are to the Emperor of the Greeks), recounting the great service the Empire has done serving as a bulwark of Christendom against the tide of Islam.

It ends with an apology for the Fourth Crusade, condemning in no uncertain terms the actions of the crusaders and Venetians. “There is no excuse,” it says, “no rationale that can justify those crimes, those atrocities, committed against God and man. The crusaders, sworn to serve Christ, to fight the heathen, and protect the faithful, instead turned upon the greatest city in Christendom because of lust and greed. Because of what they did, you have rightfully and justly hated us. In that you are in the right. It is our hope though that with this act of contrition, we may begin to heal these wounds, and that perhaps together we may embark on the path of healing Christendom, of which we are both a part.” It is met with stunned silence, before the envoys are directed to leave so that the Romans may discuss this unexpected turn of events.

At the next meeting, the Romans are much more amenable to the Iberian appeals, but there is still the matter that they have nothing of sufficient value to make the Romans enter the war. However the Aragonese then propose the following exchange, Roman naval aid (but not an army) in exchange for allowing Roman sugar and silk to be shipped into Aragonese, Sicilian, and Castilian domains duty-free. Despite the victory at Cartagena, controlling the seas is still difficult for the crusaders as the Genoese continue to pour naval supplies into Tunis despite having to detail numerous ships to maintain a blockade of Pisa (the Hospitalers have largely shifted their attacks to Marinid Tripoli where the new Marinid vessels are being constructed).

Theodoros then adds an extra stipulation to the agreement. The sugar and silk will only be duty-free if it is imported by Roman-owned vessels, thereby preventing Italian traders from being able to take advantage of the treaty. It is a serious blow both to Venice and Genoa, as those two products are the most profitable Roman exports (alum and mastic are more valuable on a per unit basis, but are exported in much smaller quantities). The stipulation is accepted and with substantial pushing from Theodoros IV, the deal is made. On April 9, eight purxiphoi and thirty eight galleys set sail for the western Mediterranean. The Empire has entered the Gunpowder Crusade.

The expedition does not begin auspiciously. When the fleet nears Valencia, a monore (light vessel, very fast with single bank of oars, used for scouting) is dispatched to inform the garrison of their impending arrival. However the vessel is caught in a minor squall and loses two days. Thus when the Roman fleet arrives in all its martial array to impress the Aragonese, with purxiphoi in the center surrounded by dromons (unlike earlier Roman dromons, these are triremes modeled off of Italian war galleys) and ousiakoi (biremes that are in between dromons and monores in size), flanked by monores, the garrison thinks they are under attack. Fortunately two monores are dispatched ahead of the main fleet, which allows the garrison to identify the ships’ owners, and the garrison commander and officers of the watch knew to expect the Roman arrival. So the Roman fleet is able to dock in Valencia without being fired upon, but just barely. The lead monore arrives the next day.

Pressured by Charles Valois, Francis agrees to an extraordinary proposal formulated by his son. To secure more mercenaries, Charles suggests turning to an unique source, one made possible by Provencal merchant contacts in Constantinople. So three weeks after the Iberian delegation a French delegation, led by Charles Valois himself, arrives in the Queen of Cities, asking to rent some of the tagmata. At first, the proposal is met with ridicule. Neither Demetrios or Manuel is fond of turning their professional soldiers into common mercenaries.

However early in the negotiations, Charles and Theodoros become close friends. Both have somewhat of the mentality of merchants and are fond of exploring the docks and markets, interacting with the vendors in a manner not common of royalty. The Greek prince actually meets the French prince while the latter is haggling with a butcher over the price of some steaks. Theodoros, who had an arrangement with the butcher in question, bought the French provisions at his special rate and was then reimbursed by Charles.

With the backing of Theodoros, the French negotiations go smoother. Pointing out that Demetrios is unlikely to need the soldiers anytime soon and that the money would help subsidize the construction projects that Demetrios views as necessary to portray himself as a Laskarid Emperor, Charles is able to convince the Emperor to accept. However the price is extremely high. While the Empire will pay for their transport to France, France must provide all of the troops’ pay, including their active duty bonuses, and provide an equal amount of money to the Imperial treasury. With such a high price, France can only afford five tourmai. Demetrios calls up five of the Anatolian cleisurai and appoints Dragos cel Mare as their commander. They sail in May.

The forty one year old Vlach officer has, for all his fame in Vlachia, done very well for himself in the Roman Empire. The strategos of the Thracesian tagma prior to his reassignment as commander of the French Expeditionary Force, he owns a small palace in the suburbs of Smyrna, where his noble Greek wife and two children (a girl and a boy) live. He is a minor patron of artists in the Smyrna area, and his palaces are adorned with some of the finest mosaics in the Empire.

The Roman ‘army’ lands in Provence none too soon. Both England and Burgundy have launched an all-out effort to cripple France and end the war, marching south from the staging area at Orleans. Instead of the broad advances the allies have been using so far, now both armies are focused on taking Vichy itself. Given the disarray and demoralization through the French realm, if the new capital falls, it is likely that everything outside of Provence will fall with it or shortly afterward.

Francis I orders all of the French armies to rally to Vichy to help combat this threat, but his authority is dwindling. Many of the French nobility remain on their estates, gathering their retainers but remaining in defensive positions. An English thrust is also marching northeast from Toulouse, conducting a massive chevauchee designed to cow the inhabitants of Languedoc and Provence into not marching to Vichy’s aid. It is a break from Edward VI’s conciliatory tactics, but the strain of maintaining the English artillery is threatening to break his exchequer. He needs the war to end soon, hence the bold attack at Vichy despite its distance from the Loire.

Charles Valois himself is ordered to report to Vichy to aid his father, but he refuses. He is the ruler of Provence, and his concern now is to protect Provence, not France. As a result, the Toulouse prong is the greatest threat. When the Romans land, he is at Beziers organizing a counterattack; he requests the Romans join him. Dragos accepts. He is not looking forward to working for Francis I (a sentiment he had made clear to Demetrios before, but had been overridden as the Emperor wanted one of his best commanders to command the expedition so that Roman honor would not be sullied) and welcomes the chance to delay or avert that situation.

However on the way there, Dragos learns that Beziers is under siege by the English army and the French prince is trapped inside. He decides to continue on anyway, expecting that once he arrives at the city, with Charles’ help he can break the siege. On May 22, his scouts make contact with a English detachment seventy five hundred strong, forcing the Romans to take up defensive positions near the village of Lodeve.

The English are commanded by the Duke of Suffolk, who has seen relatively little action for the past several years due to poor health. That time has been speckled with accusations of cowardice, as some of his peers think his ill health is just a front. Since he is facing a foe that is outnumbered, an unusual occurrence for English armies on the continent, the Duke does not take up a defensive position per the usual English practice but immediately marches to the attack. Eager to come to blows with the Romans so he can refute the charges against him, he does not give the men a chance to rest and have lunch, but attacks around 1 PM.

Not the most imaginative general, the Duke adopts the typical English formation of the Ninety Years war, disregarding the fact that he is on the tactical offensive, not the defensive. The men-at-arms are dismounted and held in a refused center, while his five thousand longbowmen are arrayed on the wings, which swing forward toward the Roman lines, creating a crescent. At approximately two hundred meters from the Roman lines, the toxotai commence shooting at them, causing the longbowmen to halt their advance to return the bolts.

At close range, the English longbows pack more punch than Roman composite bows, but at this range, the size (and resulting lack of aerodynamics) of longbow arrows means that the Romans have the advantage in penetrating power. Still the missile volleys are fierce as the English archers outnumber the Romans five to one. Black sheets streak across the sky, each side shooting six times a minute, as the skutatoi form a shield wall and begin absorbing the volleys. Used to eastern horse archers, the skutatoi hold up well under the barrage.

There are a few copses of trees to the flanks of the armies in between the battle lines. As the longbowmen furiously concentrate their fire on opponents who refuse to break under the volleys, unlike all their other enemies, Roman heavy koursores burst out of the grove, charging at the startled archers on the English left wing. The Duke is not caught napping though and with a great crash the English mounted knights charge into action. However as soon as they are engaged, skythikoi come charging out as well, shooting their bows into the mass of English horse at point blank range, wheeling out of the way as their kataphraktoi brethren hurl themselves into the melee. As the cavalry of both sides smash it out on the left wing, the skythikoi sheathe their bows, draw their sabers, and ride down the English archers there before they can retreat to the safety of their dismounted men-at-arms.

However the right wing is still shooting as the left wing crumples, and one longbow arrow strikes Dragos directly in the forehead. It bites into the plate, sticking there, and then stops; the strategos is untouched. His men stare at him for a moment, the Roman volleys slackening. He is heavily dazed, with a minor skull facture. Then Dragos laughs, shouting “It’ll take more than that to kill a dragon!” Laughter echoes down the Roman lines as Dragos trots down them with the arrow still buried in his helmet. As the archers shoot again, they shout “The dragon! The dragon!” Consternation ripples down the English ranks.

By now the English archers on the left are virtually annihilated although the outnumbered English knights still fight bravely. Seeing the skythikoi form up, readying an attack, the longbowmen on the right wing shift their fire, loosing shafts as they begin to advance. Despite the protection of their barding, some men pitch from their saddles as horses go down screaming. But still the skythikoi trot forward, loosing volleys every six steps, bows singing even as more shafts drop upon them. Here and there longbowmen collapse as Roman arrows slice into them. Then Dragos commits his light cavalry, and the light koursores charge out from behind another grove. They are upon the archers before they realize what hits them.

By the time the battle is an hour old, Dragos has swept the field clear of the English archers and cavalry, leaving the outnumbered English melee infantry (including the Duke himself) completely defenseless against his missile troops. As the Roman lines advance toward the English, his kataphraktoi menacing the exposed English flanks while the horse archers race forward, shooting as they move, the Duke capitulates.

The English army is annihilated. Dragos takes almost three thousand prisoners and kills over two thousand more (mostly longbowmen trampled in the cavalry charges). His losses number about three hundred, mostly lightly armored toxotai. He has his own wound attended, which heals well although for the rest of his life he is periodically plagued by headaches. The few panicked survivors pour into Beziers and warn the soldiers there of the disaster, claiming they were bested by a Roman army twenty thousand strong. Alarm spreads rapidly, allowing Charles’ spies in the English camp to inform their prince of the news. Thus when Dragos appears and launches a fierce attack under cover of night on the camp, Charles is ready and launches a sally of his own. By morning the English have been scattered.

Charles and Dragos immediately join forces after the English prisoners are transferred to Charles’ control in exchange for a substantial sum of money. One of Charles’ advantages over his father is that while he controls substantially less territory, it is per capita richer and he has much tighter control over its revenue. The latter is due to an overhaul he made of the toll system, eliminating minor ones in favor of a few, more easily collected ones. While the amount of tolls on Provencal trade remain largely the same, the simplification of paying them helps to increase trade and Charles’ revenue.

Together the Provencal and Roman armies, numbering sixteen thousand, sweep westward with their sights on Toulouse. The English, used to winning, have been effectively cowed by their sudden reverses combined with the aura of the Dragon. As a result, the English-Gascon army of about fifteen thousand allows itself to be shut inside Toulouse without contestation. Here the siege is difficult, as Provencal cannons are of poor quality while Roman artillery is of low quantity. For two months the sappers and trebuchets continue their laborious work to no effect.

Finally, low on supplies, the Duke of Suffolk regains his courage and organizes a mass sally of the garrison. Attacking at dawn on August 15, they strike with the terrible energy of men who know they must conquer or die. The allied lines begin to crack, as ordinary men cannot stand against such desperate bravery. As the garrison nears breakout, the heavy cavalry held in reserve finally move into position. Side by side French knights and Roman kataphraktoi advance, sunlight glinting off their armor as they form their lines, their silhouettes shivering as their lances are lowered for the attack. One trumpet sounds; it is all these soldiers, on both sides, need.

The Duke’s voice calls out, trying to be heard over the oncoming thunder, but it is of little use as he tries to reform his lines. As the cavalry reaches the one hundred meter distance, it bursts into gallop, three thousand horses (one thousand Romans, two thousand French) beating down the earth in an unstoppable drumbeat. From the Roman throats comes their cry of old “St. Theodoros!” For the French, led by Charles Valois himself, it is a new call “For Provence!”. The uneven English lines stand as much chance as a leaf in a hurricane.

According to his official chronicler, Gaspard Bureau, Charles himself slays the Duke of Suffolk in single combat. Regardless of who killed their commander, the English troops are cut to pieces, the survivors spilling back into Toulouse with the enemy right behind them. Despite heavy fire from crossbowmen and a half dozen culverins, Provencal soldiers succeed in capturing a gatehouse and holding it long enough for three skutatoi droungoi to secure it. The city falls by the end of the day.

To the north, Francis I is doing far worse. He led a cavalry charge on a Burgundian troop near Evaux-les-Bains only to be ambushed by squadrons of English longbowmen hiding in the woods. After losing substantial numbers of knights to the shafts, the Burgundian knights charge straight down their throats bellowing “Autun!”. Most of the French column is wiped out, with Francis himself losing two mounts before escaping on the horse of a slain guardsman. His second son Louis is killed during the battle. His eldest, Philippe, was not present but was in Vichy.

Roman Armor Just Prior to the War of the Orthodox Alliance c. 1430


Although the equipment standards of the Roman army in 1430 had remained the same since they were implemented in 1304 upon the establishment of the Coloneian theme by John IV Laskaris, Roman armor in those 126 years had substantially increased in quantity and quality. While to receive their pay, tagma soldiers only had to meet the minimum standards (equipment bonuses were calculated to pay for the minimum equipment requirement) most soldiers, if they could, purchased more armor and weapons to ensure their survival in battle. In the case of maces, war hammers, leather lamellar and steel lamellar armor, the Roman state deliberately made it easy for soldiers by providing them through the warehouse system. If they were not available at the time, a soldier could also place an order for them. Plate armor had to be procured by the soldier directly from a blacksmith, but the warehouse system also maintained a list of contacts with smiths capable of making plate armor, giving that information as desired to soldiers. An important item to remember about Roman equipment standards was that they were enforced by army officers who understood the nature of armor protection, not civilian bureaucrats. Thus many heavy troops arrived at tagma reviews without their mail suits but were not penalized so long as the soldier had protection over the same body area (steel lamellar for the torso and leather lamellar for the limbs was the accepted alternative; complete leather lamellar was considered too light). Light troops such as akritoi or turkopouloi however were not allowed to purchase heavy armor that would hamper their effectiveness as light troops. As a result, the Roman army that fought in the War of the Orthodox Alliance had a much heavier battle line than the Roman army that fought in Anna I’s Syrian War.



Toxotai: The foot archer of the Roman army was very lightly armored, typically in thick lamellar leather (about 60%) or cloth in the poorer themes. Their main source of protection was their pavise shields. Those toxotai who were crossbowmen wore their own on their backs in battle, turning them toward the enemy as they reloaded. However the vast majority (85-90%) were composite bowmen capable of loosing shafts at a rate of one every six to eight seconds (admittedly continuing this rate for long periods of time was extremely tiring). Turning their backs would only slow their rate of fire. So in battle each composite bowman had a pavise handler, typically a baggage handler, who protected the archer who would shoot behind its protection. This system was how Dragos cel Mare’s toxotai at Lodeve took so few casualties despite being under the attack of thousands of English longbowmen. The longbowmen could only shoot at the exposed heads, a very small target, although since the toxotai lacked steel helmets any shot that did strike was a lethal blow.



Akritoi: The ferocious light infantry of the Roman army were also lightly armored, protected by leather lamellar and a steel cap secured by a chin strap. Their main protection was speed and ferocity, qualities they possessed aplenty.



medievallamellarstainle.jpg



A reenactor of a Khorasani heavy infantryman c. 1430. Roman lamellar armor was quite similar in design and capabilities. While plate offered better protection, steel lamellar was the favored heavy protection because it was much easier to make and repair, as well as substantially cheaper.




Skutatoi: The core of the Roman battle line, the skutatoi were substantially more armored than other Roman infantry. The minimum equipment was a thick cloth kavadion (worn under armor), a heavy chainmail shirt that covered the arms and legs, another thick cloth garmet called a epilorikion worn over the armor, thick leather gloves, a large kite shaped shield made of steel-reinforced wood with a steel boss and rim, and a steel helmet that covered the head and face. However by 1430, many skutatoi had added to this array. By that time, at least sixty five percent of skutatoi were protected by a steel lamellar cuirass with leather lamellar protection for the limbs in place of the chainmail, including all of the skutatoi serving in the Athanatoi, as well as virtually all of those serving in the Optimates, Opsician, and Thracesian tagmata.



Turkopouloi: Superb light cavalry, the turkopouloi like the akritoi with whom they usually operated, were very lightly armored. Protected by leather lamellar, most even did not have the steel cap, preferring one of leather or felt. Speed, maneuverability, and their skills in horse archery was what protected them.



Light koursores: A form of melee light cavalry, these were better equipped than turkopouloi. Their horses were usually unarmored, although sometimes they were protected by light cloth barding. The riders wore light chainmail and an epilorikion, wearing a steel cap like the akritoi. Only slightly slower than light horse archers, they could usually catch them if they had the advantage of surprise, and in melee they could chop light horse archers to bits.



Heavy koursores: Often called the poor man’s kataphraktoi, this troop type has also been given the confusing name of light heavy cavalry. That is because although they often functioned like heavy cavalry, even their good protection could not compare to that of the kataphraktoi. Their mounts were protected by thick cloth barding, with chainmail barding for the horse’s face and neck. The riders were protected by a kavadion, heavy mail, an epilorikion, and a skutatoi-style helmet. About half of the heavy koursores by 1430 had outfitted themselves like the skutatoi with leather and steel lamellar to replace the increasing unpopular chainmail.



Skythikoi: Heavy horse archers, these troops were designed to fight in melee and were very well equipped for the task. Their mounts were protected by thick cloth and mail barding, with steel lamellar protection for the face and neck. The riders wore a kavadion, heavy mail protection for the whole body, an epilorikion, a helmet, and a lamellar cuirass. By 1430 about half had added steel lamellar protection for their limbs (replacing the mail) and about a third protected their torso with a plate cuirass.



Kataphraktoi: The elite of the Roman army, these war machines were awesomely protected. The great warhorses were protected by thick cloth and full steel lamellar barding, making them almost immune to archery fire. The men too wore a kavadion, complete steel lamellar armor over their whole body, and an epilorikion. And even that was not enough for many, as by 1430 about forty percent used a plate cuirass as well.



1427: In the south the Provencal-Roman armies are doing well, although none of their victories can compare to the fall of Toulouse (because the army there was supposed to be conducting raids, not sieges, the city was not stocked with English artillery). Marching into Aquitaine, they face fierce but ultimately ineffectual resistance from the local Gascons, who have long been ruled by England and prefer it that way. Although every attempt to challenge them in the field is crushed, after beating their heads against stubborn Gascon fortresses, the army retires to Toulouse, ignoring the blood-curdling threats issued by Francis.

Francis meanwhile is virtually penned up in Moulins; the only connection he has to the rest of his domains is the Allier river, heavily patrolled by Burgundian boats. Despite his precarious situation, his ‘requests’ to his various nobles (and Charles) for troops warn that ‘those who refuse to aid their God-ordained sovereign of the realm of France will suffer the fate of all traitors and rebels, the just fate issued upon the city of Autun’. Once again, Francis’ complete and utter lack of any diplomatic skills is devastating to his cause. Unsurprisingly, none of the recipients are inclined to aid him. Meanwhile the massed weight of the entire English artillery train, one hundred and twenty two guns, including two monsters who shoot three hundred pound balls, disintegrate the walls. After a siege of only seven days, Moulins is largely defended by hastily created earthen ramparts and ditches and piles of rubble.

On June 4, Francis meets an individual even less inclined to listen to him. It is a thirty pound cast iron English cannonball which strikes himself squarely in the head, which promptly ceases to exist. Five days later his son Philippe is also killed, this time by a Burgundian crossbow. Charles de Valois, Count of Provence, is now by right the King of France. In that capacity he meets with Edward VI, King of England, and Louis II, Duke of Burgundy, at Moulins, which had capitulated just before, to discuss peace terms.

It is an exemplary moment to pursue peace. A normal French king would be loathe to give up his northern territories, including the capital of Paris, but Charles is not a normal French monarch. His heart and his mind are Provencal, looking to the Mediterranean and not toward northern France. What does it matter to the Marseille merchant that Paris is English? The price of red coral in Sinope is more important than that. A war to the north would not serve Provencal interests and would likely harm them severely instead. Plus there is also the fact that considering the size of the Roman contingent, Charles does not like his odds of facing an English army commanded by Edward VI himself.

Louis II also wants to see a quick end to the war as well. If the war continues, the most likely outcome would be the English conquest of all of France, something which would not be in the best interests of Burgundy. A free state in southern France could be an effective counterweight to future English aggression. Plus if peace is made, perhaps that new French state could be gobbled up by Burgundy alone, rather than an alliance in which the Duchy is a junior partner.

Edward VI is also interested in peace. He is not so convinced that a total conquest of France is possible, as his manpower and monetary reserves are beginning to crack (a fact he has thus far kept from his Burgundian allies). Control of northern and western France would be an immense addition to the English state by itself. Plus a southern French state could be used to curb Burgundian ambitions toward Paris.

Thus the Ninety Years War comes to an end in a twenty one day summit at Vichy. The first proviso concerns the allocation of titles. Charles Valois abandons all claims to the title King of France, ceding it to Edward VI, now King of England and France. Louis II’s duchy is elevated, with him becoming King of Lotharingia. One of the courtiers protests that the Holy Roman Emperor would not approve of the arbitrary revival of a dead kingly title that threatens his own supremacy. At that point Dragos, who is present, stands up and says that “The true Roman Emperor has no quarrel with the title, and supports its bestowal on the worthy duke.” The worthy duke smiles and replies “That’s good enough for me.” And the deed is done.

To compensate for the loss of his title, Charles is crowned King of Arles, the name given to his new kingdom. It too is the revival of an old title from the early Middle Ages. The rebirth of the Lotharingian and Arletian titles are explicitly stated to have no claim on territories held by the other as established in the treaty of Moulins, or on English territories granted in the same documents. Claims on non-signatories are not mentioned.

It is now that Charles’ military campaign of the last year really pays off. With the support of Louis, he is able to pressure Edward into allowing him to keep Toulouse and the surrounding territories as part of the Kingdom of Arles, substantially enlarging its territory. Centered around the Rhone river valley with the Toulouse detachment, the Provencal-Arletian state is small but highly urbanized and developed by western European standards, home to thriving vineyards, a substantial network of merchants, and a respectable manufacturing district producing armor, glassware, and perfume. As a result Charles’ domain is more powerful than a map would suggest.

Lotharingia does not gain a great deal of territory, as after the Autun debacle its armies do not inspire as much respect as either the continually victorious English armies or the recently victorious Provencal one. Most of its remaining strength is spent keeping the Low countries in line. While the various towns there, particularly the great port of Antwerp, provide a huge amount of revenue they are never very happy with rule from Dijon. In the treaty though England recognizes Lotharingian sovereignty over the whole region. The new kingdom gains some slices of France, but nothing compared to the vast array that England formally receives.

Although England loses some pieces of Aquitaine to Arles, the majority of French soil now lies in English hands. The port of Calais, where the wool staple is located, lies near the Burgundian border, while the great French cities of Paris, Rheims, and Orleans also are in English France. Overall the region is secure, basking in the comparatively light and stable rule of Edward VI. The great universities of the realm along with the towns are wholeheartedly behind the English monarchs, who has unfailingly confirmed and maintained their old charters. Only Brittany murmurs discontentedly, but the disturbance has yet to enter the realm of deed.

franceendof90.png

France at the end of the Ninety Years War. The white in the Kingdom of Arles is the Avignon Papacy.​

As the treaty of Moulins is signed, bringing an end to the Ninety Years War, a messenger arrives from Avignon. Pope Gregory XI is dead. No longer will beggars dine at his table, no longer will peasants have their feet washed by the Holy Father. But as he felt the end draw near in the winter of 1426, the servant of the servants of God was determined to do one last deed, to end the Great Schism that has torn apart the Catholic Church for forty years. His great rival Martin VI predeceased him, dying in December of 1426 and due to Gregory’s overtures, a successor has not been elected whilst Gregory traveled to Rome to negotiate in person.

Part of Gregory’s conditions had been that the united Catholic Church must continue to subsidize his projects, all of them, in full. The cardinals, aghast at the cost Gregory had been pouring into those projects, refused. It is said that at that moment Gregory lost his temper the only time in his life. In a full throated bellow, fit more for a middle-aged general than an old priest, he damned them, damning them for their greed, their lust, and their malice. He said ‘You watch the children of God go hungry so that you may finish your golden salt shaker collections! You are no Christians, no followers of Christ! With every breath you slight the cross. I will have nothing to do you curs. It would be better to dine with the Greek and the Moor, for at least they do not spit in the face of God with hypocrisy!’

When he is finished, he storms out of the chamber; the negotiations are over. He returns to Avignon, hearing on the way that the Roman cardinals have elected a new pope. Fearful of the Greek threat, they have decided to draw closer to Germany so they might have the weight of that numerous people in future contests. To that end, the new pope is from the Palatine, known for his great piety and not so great intelligence and takes the name John XXIII. In Avignon, Gregory, sensing his health failing, takes off his papal regalia, dons a monastic habit, donates all his possessions to a poor fund, and stands down as his personal protégé is elected Pope, taking the name Gregory XII.

While he is on his deathbed one of his attendants murmurs that surely Gregory is a saint and will go straight to heaven. Gregory’s eyes flicker open, and for a brief moment his voice is as strong as ever. He looks the attendant straight in the eye and says “You’re wrong. Too many sons have died because of me. Only once all of them have entered paradise will I be allowed to join them. A just God would not have it otherwise.” Then he closes his eyes, lays his head back down, and is no more.

Throughout all the realms that follow the Avignon church, the people mourn in special services, from Portugal to Finland. Even just a few months after his death, the peasants in Castile, who above all others benefitted from his generosity, begin to speak of ‘St. Gregory the Kind’. In Constantinople, in the Hagia Sophia itself, Patriarch Adem (Adam) himself leads a prayer for Gregory’s soul. And in Rome, John XXIII issues an anathema upon the memory of Gregory XI, publicly remarking that in a modernized version of Dante’s Inferno, Dante would surely meet the former pope in the bowels of hell.

The Gunpowder Crusade gains another entry when the Sicilian Cortes votes in favor of entering the war. Sicilian ships swoop down upon the north African coast, burning and pillaging. Oran is placed under a blockade on its landward side, but a Marinid attempt to establish a naval blockade is thwarted when a combined Aragonese-Sicilian-Roman fleet scatters the vessels. Overall the Marinids are content with a simple land blockade, except for a few odd probes. Their best troops are stationed in Iberia, and that is where the contest will be decided.

Sicily also declares war on Genoa as well with King Jaime’s approval, her ships attacking Genoese convoys en route to Tunis in cooperation with Hospitaler warships. Here Sicily stands largely alone except for the Knights. While Aragon does enter the war against Genoa as well, her ships are devoted to fighting the Marinids, although a dozen galleys from Sardinia, which is part of Aragon’s domain, join in the battle by harrying the Genoese off Pisa. Both Emperor Demetrios and Doge Andrea Alessi are still good friends though, so the Roman fleet remains based in Valencia, except for one instance when its marines help beat off a half-hearted attempt to storm Oran.

1428: Desultory fighting in the Mediterranean and Iberia continues as the Gunpowder Crusade rumbles along. But in March the Iberians receive a papal bull (from the Pope in Rome) calling Iberian efforts ‘an act of folly, for you foul yourself by consorting with wanton heretics. The blood of your sons is just recompense for your sins’.

The missive comes as a tremendous insult to the Iberian people. Rome has consistently been virtually blind to the threat posed to them by the Marinid Sultanate. The Iberians remark that they were quick to call crusades against Constantinople but had to be harangued into declaring ones against Fez. They have been distracted by other concerns, particularly the Roman Empire, whose turkopouloi are now stationed at Salerno, menacingly close to the Eternal City. Yet those heretics that the Roman pope condemns are now doing more for their cause than the Holy Father himself. Avignon has been far better to them, for Gregory XII continues the subsidies.

However the storm that sweeps across Christian Iberia is not because of any great love for the Romans, whose alliance was bought, not given. But the insult leveled upon their sacrifice cannot be condoned. Both peasant and priest denounce the Roman pope throughout the land. A phrase uttered by the commander of the Roman fleet, Alexandros of Kerasous, quickly gains popularity; he calls them ‘defenders of the western bulwark of Christendom’. The papal envoy to the Castilian court is actually lynched in Burgos without any punishment being leveled against the perpetrators.

The storm dies down though as Mohammed unleashes his own storm upon Christian Iberia, finally coming into his own as an army commander. A whirlwind of activity, he smashes in the Algarve, scattering the Portuguese before him, fighting several small engagements against isolated detachments and winning every single one. Even with the continued church subsidies, Portugal no longer has the strength to continue the conflict and is forced to drop out, although the Marinids recognize all of the Portuguese conquests to date; they are territories of little consequence or value. Except for the Algarve, the kingdom has restored its pre-Marinid borders.

With the withdrawal of Portugal, the naval cordon between Africa and Europe is gravely weakened, allowing Mohammed to receive a new artillery train and more conscripts (Marinid manpower reserves are almost exhausted, but are not there yet), including several squadrons of heavy-armed cavalry. News from the central Mediterranean is also promising.

On April 5, the Sicilians had launched an attack on Tunis, hoping to knock out this pillar of Genoese and Marinid power. Unfortunately for them, Tunis is well fortified (Andrea Alessi has used his personal friendship with Demetrios to gain special deals on Roman cannons) and they attack while a Genoese convoy is docked there, unloading its cargo to a large Marinid caravan. Both the Genoese sailors and Marinid drivers and guards join in defending the city.

The Sicilian galleys are largely unequipped with artillery, with only two possessing a single cannon each, meaning the coastal artillery can fire on them largely unhindered. The handful of half-wrecked galleys that manage to fight their way into the harbor are buried by the defending soldiers. It is a military disaster for Sicily, virtually knocking the Sicilians out of the war. Eleven days later, the Sardinian warships harrying the blockade of Pisa are brought to bay by a Genoese squadron off Elba and roundly trounced. Except for the Hospitalers, the Genoese again have uncontested command of the central Mediterranean.

In Iberia, judging the Castilians to be too well entrenched, Mohammed launches a whirlwind campaign in Murica, where Aragonese forces have been largely demoralized since the debacle at Aledo. In three sharp engagements, he drives them out of Murcia and then in a brilliant coup seizes Cartagena through treachery. The city that took the Christians five years to capture holds out a mere five hours. Ciudad de Canones has to be placed under siege but with his new artillery train and more experience in their use, Mohammed is able to take it after a siege of thirty one days, only hindered by a few offshore cannonades from Roman purxiphoi.

Now the Marinid army is able to menace Valencia itself, second only to Barcelona in Christian Iberia. Jaime is desperate to avoid an attack on this jewel of the realm, but with the disasters in Murcia he has no army left to oppose them. Fortunately for him, Mohammed is feeling generous (as viceroy of al-Andalus he has the authority to negotiate peace terms regarding Iberia). Castile is the main threat, as Castilian troops are poised to attack the Guadalquivir, not Aragonese. So Aragon is forced to abandon all claims to Murcia, Ciudad de Canones, and Cartagena, but is allowed to keep all the territory it seized between the Ebro and Valencia.

Despite the brilliance of its artillery, jinetes, and almughavars, standing alone against the Marinid tide Castile stands little chance. In one exhausting but brilliant campaign, the Hammer of al-Andalus has completely reversed the tide of the Gunpowder Crusade. Just after Aragon withdraws from the Gunpowder Crusade but before the Roman fleet can return to Constantinople, Ferdinand arrives in Valencia to make a personal appeal to Alexandros. He beseeches ‘a fellow defender of the bulwark of Christendom’. He emphasizes the similarities between the Iberians and Romans, who together have sheltered Europe from the Muslim tide yet have been badly treated in spite of the blood they have shed. He asks that the Romans perform one last task before they depart.

Fortunately for him, Alexandros is receptive to such talk. His fleet has not seen much action, as its very presence has helped intimidate the Marinid navy, and both he and his men are looking for a battle and spoils. Also Alexandros was given a personal audience with Demetrios himself, who emphasized the need to improve relations with the Catholic west. Unlike his son, Demetrios is more concerned with improving relations with western Christendom. The alliance itself would help a little, but it had been bought with trade concessions. Alexandros realizes that this task will, if successful, earn the undying gratitude of the Iberian people.

So when the fleet departs Valencia, it does not head east but southwest. On September 3, the people of Melilla see the masts of the purxiphoi on the horizon. After the exertions of the Murcia-Cartagena campaign, Mohammed’s men and supplies are exhausted, so he is busy biding his time, paving the way for the assault on Castile. Alcaudete is under blockade and Berber raids again pillage the outskirts of Alarcos. The almughavars and jinetes fight bravely but since the Marinids are now fighting on only one, not three fronts, they are vastly outnumbered.

The city of Melilla is the great clearing house where African supplies are stored to be shipped to al-Andalus. More guns lie there in the warehouses to be used against the fortifications at Alarcos while barracks are full of Africa’s last batch of recruits. Marinid reserves have finally reached the breaking point. If Mohammed’s offensive fails there can be no others, at least not for several years.

Because of the threat from Aragonese and Portuguese vessels, the coastal fortifications are state-of-the-art. When the fleet comes into range they are immediately fired upon by cannons located in three defending forts. The purxiphoi halt, firing volleys to provide covering fire as lead galleys land marines to withdraw the great chain that protects the harbor. There is a fierce fight as scimitar and harpoon slash at each other but the best Marinid troops are in al-Andalus. The chain is lowered, allowing the dromons to start pouring into the harbor. Meanwhile the purxiphoi continue pouring shot into the fortifications, although a great ball has broken the back of one of them while another two are in ruins with at least half their crews dead from artillery fire.

The dromons charge into the bay, their bow guns (by now most Roman galleys are equipped with four culverins-two in the bow and two in the stern) firing into the merchant vessels berthed there at point blank range while artillery screams down upon them from the fortifications. Archers on deck sing out whistling volleys, trying to cut down the ballista and cannon crews. Crippled vessels ground themselves, marines and sailors pouring out of their dying ships in a frenzy of boarding actions. The local garrison and the merchant sailors fight desperately, but in the ruthless melee of a boarding action, the Roman marines are supreme. Flames erupt from the merchant ships as they are lighted, more marines storming the port itself to ignite the warehouses. However the Marinid army pay chests are discovered in time and taken away as spoils.

Even more soldiers turn and storm the coastal fortifications, which are not designed to defend against a landward attack. Every Marinid gunner is cut down without mercy as one by one the guns are spiked. By now the harbor itself is a scene from hell, flames leaping into the sky, stilled only the streams of blood flowing along the wharf. Recruits from the barracks come streaming into the harbor to help, but they are green. A few showers of culverin shot and a charge of marines scatters them. In the course of three hours the Roman fleet completely destroys Melilla’s capability to function as a naval base and supply depot, but at a high cost. Out of the forty six ships that attack the Marinid city, only thirty return.

When the battered, half wrecked fleet sails into Valencia, it is greeted with tremendous cheers. King Jaime is there in the city, and although he is now at peace with the Marinids he is immensely grateful for what the Romans have done. He meets with Alexandros, who has a broken arm (caused by a falling spar) and a large gash on his forehead, and offers to pay for all Roman repairs and resupplies. The offer is accepted. Meanwhile the news spreads through Aragon, Castile, and Portugal, and in churches across all three lands clergy and laity meet to give thanks to God for the victory the Romans have given them. And nowhere is the word ‘heresy’ to be heard.

The Romans soon depart from Constantinople, stopping in Palermo on the way home to again be greeted with celebrations by the inhabitants. When Alexandros finally returns to the Queen of Cities, Demetrios personally meets him at the docks (Manuel is too ill to do so as well while Theodoros does not approve), congratulating him on his great victory, both in its military and diplomatic senses, and granting him the rank of komes (count-not inheritable) and an estate near Heraclea.

In Iberia the mood is not quite so happy, as the glow of Melilla wears off when a new missive from the Roman pope arrives forbidding Iberian clergy to donate to the Gunpowder Crusade, ignoring the fact that they don’t answer to Rome. The hard line the Roman Papacy is taking with the Iberians due to their alliance with the Empire is because of the arrangement of power in Rome. While John XXIII himself is German, many of his closest friends are Italian, largely from the Kingdom of Naples. Also his personal assistant is Giovanni Loredan, who often is the public face of the Holy Office (and some would say its brains as well). Giovanni’s position gives him a great deal of influence over the Roman Pope.

Aragonese and Sicilian merchants have over the past few years become increasingly involved with the Egyptian market, to the detriment of Venetian interests there. Portugal has also steadfastly blocked Venetian attempts to expand its trade network into the Atlantic system. Also there is the simple fact that the Iberians have been allied with the Romans, the ones who put the dozens of scars on his back. His argument to the simple-minded pope is that contact with the Romans will lead the Iberians into heresy, and that only strong measures will serve to save them from that path.

The pope actually takes it a step farther, publicly proclaiming in a papal bull that trade with heretics is an endangerment to weak souls (a statement that annoys not only the Roman Empire but Novgorod-Lithuania as well). The proclamation has little effect on Orthodox-Catholic trade, but Doge Andrea Alessi of Genoa remarks to several leading merchants that apparently “wine is Catholic, silk is Orthodox, ginger is Muslim, and I believe that means nutmeg is Jewish.”

Mohammed is now in a quandary. Without the additions to his artillery train that were stored at Melilla, he is not fond of his chances of taking Alarcos relatively cheaply, as by now it is the best fortified place in Iberia, possibly even western Europe. He could take it, but it would take an immense amount of time and blood, and Marinid manpower reserves are spent. And until he takes Alarcos, he cannot bring war to the Castilian heartland. And now with the Ninety Years War over, there are rumors that English, Lotharingian, and Arletian armies may begin moving south, a force the Sultanate would be hard pressed to resist even now, much less after the necessary losses from taking Alarcos.

So instead of launching his planned offensive, he instead unleashes a hurricane of raiding parties upon Castile. Their orders are to scour the land, taking as many Castilian prisoners as possible, both soldiers and peasants. Although the large columns of captives make juicy targets for the Castilians, the sheer number of veteran Marinid troops assigned to screen them means that very few of the launched attacks actually succeed.

Finally as winter arrives, Mohammed begins peace talks with Ferdinand. They meet at Alcaudete, still in Castilian hands and bristling with captured Marinid guns. Ferdinand has used his few months well. He has been able to take advantage of the peace in France to hire large numbers of disbanded soldiers. They come rather cheap, as both Italy (except for the Genoa-Pisa war) and Germany are quiet. The Holy Roman Emperor is enraged over the creation of the Kingdom of Lotharingia without his consent, but Bavaria cannot fight both Lotharingia and Saxony at the same time, and war with Saxony over its designs on Pomerania is inevitable by this time. In fact, virtually all of Europe is silent, except far to the east where the armies of Pronsk are moving.

With his ranks bolstered by English longbowmen moving on horses and fighting dismounted, Ferdinand has been able to maul the last two Marinid raids. Still thousands of his subjects are in captivity, and even with the mercenaries he is too weak to take the offensive. If the Grand Army was not enough, then nothing within Castile’s native resources is capable of confronting the Marinids alone.

With his army incapable of serious offensive operations, Mohammed is forced to offer far more lenient terms then he would like. His proposal is that Alarcos become the new border between Castile and the Marinid Sultanate, with the fortress remaining in Castilian hands. However Alcaudete is to revert back to Muslim control, an offer Ferdinand is not willing to accept. Now the reasoning for the raids is made clear. Mohammed proposes that Ferdinand returns Alcaudete and in exchange he will receive all the captives without having to pay any sort of ransom. The Marinids would still have to buy back their captives, but that pool is much smaller. With reluctance, Ferdinand accepts the deal, signing for Sicily as well (a few weeks later Aragon and Sicily make peace with Genoa, restoring the status quo).

Iberia is at peace for the first time in eleven years. Overall the Gunpowder Crusade could be considered a limited Christian success. The Marinids did lose a sizeable portion of their territories in al-Andalus, but nearly all had been lost in the first year when the bulk of Marinid forces had been stationed in Africa. Once they returned, for all of the impressive Christian victories at Alarcos, Malaga, Yecla, and Alcaudete, the best the crusaders could achieve was a rough stalemate, one that had been shifting in favor of the Marinids until Melilla cut it short.

Plus the territory the Marinids lost was mostly peripheral. Granada and the Guadalquivir, the backbone of al-Andalus, remains in their hands largely untouched. Also the Algarve, the source of the best sailors in the Marinid fleet, still is under their control and stoutly loyal, although the region and populace took some damage during the repeated Portuguese attempts to conquer the region. So in the end, the Gunpowder Crusade does help to strengthen the Iberians a little, but does not impact the strength of the Marinid Sultanate.

1429: At the initiative of Mohammed, peace is restored between the Marinid Sultanate and the Roman Empire. He also convinces his father to allow him to keep his powers as Lord of al-Andalus. As soon as peace is made, he begins working to improve relations between al-Andalus and the Romans, encouraging the import of Roman goods to draw in merchants, so that a future war will be much less palatable to the Roman treasury.

Now it is the other end of the European continent that erupts into war as a mass revolt breaks out in the Blue Horde under the leadership of a chieftain named Kebek Surenchar. Disgusted by the rather incompetent leadership of Sarai, he quickly is able to create a vast coalition of Tatar tribes under his banner, aided by Pronsky subsidies. As he proclaims a new Khanate of Perm, the armies of Pronsk smash into the Blue Horde, ripping out a sizeable portion of its territories along the western Volga, inflicting a smashing defeat on a Tatar army of eleven thousand just a few miles from the Sit River when a surprise charge by the Pronsky heavy lancers drive the Tatar left wing into the Volga, killing fifteen hundred and causing another seven hundred to drown. The outskirts of Sarai itself are raided by Pronsky horse. Meanwhile Kebek gobbles up all of Sarai’s territories east of the great river, then turning to invade the White Horde.

The White Horde is in better shape internally than the Blue Horde, but as soon as Perm armies cross the frontier, the Khanate of Sibir and the Uzbek Khanate also invade. By the time the dust clears, the Blue and White Hordes have been reduced to second-tier powers. The Blue Horde is in an especially precarious position. Although Pronsk has been content with the bite it took and Kebek has decided to set up his own state rather than conquer Sarai, now Georgia, the Roman Empire, Novgorod-Lithuania, and Vlachia are eyeing the truncated Crimean horde. When news of Sarai’s disasters reach Constantinople and are then confirmed by Roman agents in Sarai, Demetrios cancels the subsidies that he had been paying as protection money for Soldaia and Kaffa.

More ominous news for Sarai also comes from Kiev. Alexei I, King of Novgorod, in that great, ancient city of the Rus, has married Anastasia, the daughter and only heir of Boris II, Grand Duke of Pronsk. It is the end of a long period of reconciliation between the two Russian states, forged with increased ties of trade and a common cultural influence from the Queen of Cities. A representative from Constantinople is present at the marriage, presenting the bride with a dark red dress made from the finest Roman silk, embroidered with gold thread, and accompanied by a pearl necklace strung on a gold chain, from which dangle four diamonds, two sapphires, and a ruby the size of a thumb. In the words of Demetrios himself, it is a gift ‘worthy of an empress’.

Far to the southeast, the Emir of Khorasan, Pir Mohammed, great grandson of Timur, declares himself Sultan of Persia. Over the past four years as his uncle Shah Rukh drives deeper into Shun China, the Emir has successfully overrun the smaller Timurid states in eastern Persia. Sistan and Baluchistan, small in size, fell quickly. Kerman had posed a greater challenge, especially since it received some financial support from the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi is doing somewhat better, as Vijayangara pressure has slackened while the Indian Emperor deals with Maratha unrest). Despite that, Pir Mohammed’s superiority in heavy-armed troops proved decisive.

However the question now is where to turn. Swati Kashmir is one possibility, but the Buddhist state has been careful to not give him any provocation. Plus the Swati state is adored by its inhabitants, which would make controlling the region difficult at best. Persia itself is a more tempting prospect, but Pir Mohammed does not want a border with the Ottomans, at least not yet. So it is to India that he turns. His imams are of course furious at his desire to fight the last Muslim state in India, but he is adamant in his course. In his capital of Ghayen, which has become a thriving city of 29,000 since it became a Timurid provincial capital in 1384, the preparations begin.

1430: Finally, after four years of struggle, Osman II takes the city of Chaloos, killing the Emir of Mazandaran in the process. By now he has a small armada operating on the Caspian, overwhelming the natives’ superior skill with superior numbers. He also now has a large cache of captured armor with which to outfit his troops, and now with an artillery train that is much more experienced (although still lacking cannons), he is able to overrun most of the Emirate by the end of the year. Elsewhere Ottoman progress remains slow but steadily forward.

The greatest problem is actually in the Persian Gulf, where the Emirate of Hormuz has made itself into a significant nuisance. Several times the Hormuz fleet has been able to place Basra under blockade. This is a very serious threat as the naval war encourages merchants to chose the Red Sea route of bringing their goods to the west, which removes a substantial source of revenue from both Ottoman and Roman coffers. In fact Baghdad has received a couple of complaints from Constantinople over that fact, as Antioch is also beginning to suffer.

After the fall of Chaloos, Osman decides on a series of reforms designed to improve the speed of the Ottoman conquest of Persia. First, he starts instituting azab conscription in Mosul, Basra, and Baghdad, which had previously been exempt (a clause left from the days when the Ottomans were newcomers in Mesopotamia and needed the support of the major cities). However these azabs are to be protected by mail armor and a helmet, while equipped with a long spear and a sword, and are to be subjected to much stronger discipline than is customarily given to regular azabs, which are little more than raw levies. Old Janissaries, too old for regular campaigning, are to be their drill sergeants.

The armor comes from a rather unexpected source, Georgia. The medium-sized state has a respectable armor industry and has become a significant supplier in the region due to royal investments. The Ottomans quickly become their biggest customers. Also via the Georgians, Osman makes contact with Venetian merchants also willing to help supply the Ottoman army. Not only does Osman buy their armor, he also recruits Georgian mercenaries for use in his army, a clause he does not regret as the Georgian army has adopted Roman organization and discipline as far as possible.

He also gains another boon in late September as a revolt breaks out in Syria against the Mamelukes. Damascus capitulates almost immediately because of treachery and the rebel armies under their leader Barsbay, swings west, gradually reducing the coastal cities so that Cairo cannot ship an army to attack him in the rear as he advances. At Acre, he faces his first serious opposition, a Mameluke army 20,000 strong. In a six hour battle, he annihilates it as a fighting force.

As Barsbay continues his advance, Osman is able to reduce the number of troops he had stationed in Mesopotamia to guard against a Mameluke offensive, dispatching them to the southern front. With the fall of Mazandaran, Hormuz is now the highest priority. Although it is not between Baghdad and Samarkand, its attacks are the most damaging and in the days of his father, it was an Ottoman city.

And to the west a new age begins its dawn as Lisbon dispatches an expedition to colonize the island of Madeira. There are several factors encouraging Lisbon to begin exploration to the west and south. The Marinids derive their great economic strength via their control of the northern terminus of the Sahara caravan routes, through which comes gold, salt, and slaves from the Jolof Empire. If the Portuguese can establish direct relations with Jolof, they might be able to cut out the Marinids and cripple their economy. Also there is a desire to gain access to the fabled east, from which comes spices. That would cut out the Italians, particularly the Genoese. Also a few rumors have sprung up because of Roman contacts with Ethiopia, rumors that speak of a great African empire, ruled over by a Christian king named Prester John (the Timur is Prester John story is fading in popularity). He would make a great ally against the Marinids.

europe1430.png

1) Kingdom of Aragon, Kingdom of Sicily
2) Kingdom of Arles
3) Duchy of Savoy, Counties of Nice and Saluzzo
4) Republic of Genoa
5) Kingdom of Naples
6) Papal State (of Rome)
7) Republic of Florence
8) Duchy of Milan
9) Kingdom of Lotharingia
10) Minor German states
11) Duchy of Bavaria-Holy Roman Emperor
12) Duchy of Austria
13) Kingdom of Bohemia
14) Principality of Presporok
15) Duchy of Saxony-Brandenburg
16) Teutonic Order
17) Kingdom of Serbia-Bosnia
18) Kingdom of Bulgaria
19) Emirate of Qatar
20) Swati Kingdom of Kashmir
21) Bernese League and Swiss Confederation
22) Duchy of Pomerania
23) The Most Serene Republic of Venice
 
Part 5:

Twilight of Heroes

1431-1439

"And so we see that there is one foe even more irresistable and terrible than Timur."-attributed to Demetrios Komnenos​


1431: The quiet in Europe does not last long as Saxony launches an invasion of Pomerania. The Saxon attack is extremely successful, capturing Danzig after a siege of twenty four days through the use of an artillery train of thirty four cannons. However the plans of the Saxon Duke Hans Leopold I are thrown into chaos as the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II responds with the full might available to him, smashing aside the Saxon forces guarding the southern border. With his authority over Pomerania is virtually nonexistent, his claim as overlord through his imperial title a legal fiction, it is the perfect justification for attacking the one German prince that can possibly match the Dukes of Bavaria.

The Saxons had planned their campaign with the assumption that Bavaria would hold back a significant portion of its strength to guard against a Hungarian attack. Relations between Buda and Dresden are still very good, and Andrew III has made great progress in restoring his state to a great power. Relations between Targoviste and Buda are still cold, but Andrew has little reason to want a war with the Vlach state. His desire for revenge is concentrated to the west. For in the disasters of the Polish War, Bavarian coin was far too prevalent to be hidden.

Still Buda remains silent as Bavarian armies sweep all the way up to Dresden, where they are finally halted by the walls of the Saxon capital. On July 1, the Bavarian soldiers launch a tremendous assault on a pair of breaches in the wall. Despite heavy casualties they manage to fight their way into the city, where they are met with an earth-shattering bellow. A few seconds later Olaf Tordsson hits them.

With the death of Gregory XI, Olaf lost his chance to return to Sweden with the Papacy’s aid, as Gregory XII is not willing to endanger his support in Scandinavia with the intensification of the schism. So he is making his way back the way he left, the way of the mercenary. By now a wealthy man from the spoils of the Gunpowder Crusade, his company has swelled to five thousand men, a truly international force, composed of men discharged from the Ninety Years War and the Gunpowder Crusade. Alongside Swedish heavy infantry stand English longbowmen, Lotharingian landless knights, Castilian jinetes, and Aragonese almughavars. Drilled ruthlessly in combined arms tactics, led by Olaf it is a terrifying force, now in the service of Saxony.

The longbowmen lay down a withering hail of missiles as the rest of the company advances. As the heavy-armed troops slam into the Bavarian vanguard, the almughavars loose their javelins, draw their weapons, and charge in as well. Meanwhile the longbowmen shift their fire to attack the Bavarian soldiers moving up in support. After forty minutes of butchery, the Bavarian assault is sent fleeing back in disorder.

Two weeks later the siege is lifted as Saxon reinforcements arrive, joined by contingents from their German allies, Cologne, Cleves, Hesse, and Brunswick. As the Bavarian Emperors increase their hold over southern Germany, the northern German princes have become increasingly concerned for their own power, causing several of them to drift into Saxony’s orbit. Shortly afterwards Austria, the Palatine, and Württemberg enter the war on Bavaria’s side. Both sides begin wooing Prague, but the Bohemians refuse to enter the war on either side, preferring to remain neutral so they can sell cannons, powder, and shot to both sides.

In the waters of the Mediterranean, Genoa makes peace with the Hospitalers. The war had been largely a paper one for the past two years, as Genoa is shipping less supplies to the Marinids and focusing its efforts on the continued blockade of Pisa. Completely free from that quarter, the Hospitaler fleet turns with full fury upon the coast of North Africa. Modeling their fleet after the Romans, their galleys are now mostly equipped with light cannons and the Knights now field three purxiphoi. In October, their new fleet sacks the Marinid port of Mahdia.

In Baghdad, Sultan Osman II receives a most distinguished visitor, a craftsman from Bithynia. However this craftsman, whose name is Ioannes Donauri, is a gunsmith, aware of the latest techniques in artillery and gunpowder manufacturing through the Empire and in western Europe, having spent time in Castile and Normandy specifically for such a purpose. He is given a massive pension, and immediately gets to work forging cannons. The Emperor of Vijayangara has finally consented to conduct trade with the Ottomans, exchanging Maratha iron for Ottoman bullion. The trade is small, only allowing the production of cannons and not armor, due to the expense of shipping such a bulk item as iron ingots and the effect of Hormuzi raids.

On April 19, Manuel Doukas, eighty years old, lays dying, surrounded by his son George, his granddaughter Helene, and Demetrios and Theodoros Komnenos. His health had been poor for the last few years, and now he is feverish and delirious. Lying in bed he mumbles continuously, mostly gibberish, but here and there Demetrios can discern a military command. But soon one word is repeated over and over again, “Manzikert. Manzikert.” Then his voice rattles, sighs, and whispers “Victory.” Manuel Doukas, Guardian of the Empire, dies with a smile on his lips.

He is given a lavish state funeral, befitting his stature as a Roman Emperor. But he is not buried in Constantinople, but per his request his body is laid to rest at the Monastery of St. Theodoros Megas at Manzikert. He wants to lie amongst the people of eastern Anatolia, among whom he was born and who he protected and was protected by during the Timurid invasions and the War of the Five Emperors. The monastery, already a center of pilgrimage because of the relics there, becomes even more of a site as pilgrims also go there to visit the tomb of their emperor. There he is not known as the Guardian of the Empire, the Shield of the Romaioi, the Lion of Theodosiopolis, the Bane of the East. Here, in the lands he called home, he is simply known as the Protector.

thedeathofkingarthur.jpg

The Death of the Emperor Manuel III Doukas by Giorgios Kaukadenos, 1469. Virtually none of the painting is faithful to history. The author, who was friends with many in the sizeable Arletian merchant community of the day, was heavily influenced by Arthurian legend, a theme that appears in many of his paintings.​

With the death of Manuel Doukas, the loyalty of eastern Anatolia to the Komnenid dynasty is somewhat weakened. Theodoros IV, as he is married to the granddaughter of Manuel, becomes the public face of Constantinople in the east, observing the tagma reviews of the Chaldean and Coloneian themes with his wife at his side, who is visibly pregnant. In Trebizond she gives birth to a daughter, Anastasia Laskaris Doukas Komnenos.

The rebellion though actually ends up taking place in southern Epirus when a man appears in Arta, claiming to the rightful Emperor John V Laskaris, son of Theodoros III who had been slain at Caesarea. There is an awkward start when some of the town council members point out that an eunuch cannot be emperor, forcing John to drop his pants in public to prove that he is fully functional.

Despite the unbecoming beginning, John actually manages to gain a respectable following amongst the Epirote population. Even the presentation of the real John V, a castrated monk, does not slow it down. That is because Bedros Laskaris, son of Andronikos II Laskaris (the eldest son of the emperor who started a civil war in the late years of Anna I’s reign-he survived Anna’s purges intact only because he was four at the time), endorses the pretender. The rebellion is centered mainly amongst the lower-class artisans and peasant farmers.

Why the rebellion is able to gain impetus is because of the way the view of a good emperor has been shaped by the Laskarids. The tradition of the builder emperor, raising up edifices to improve his subject’s wealth and lives such as aqueducts and marketplaces, as opposed to less directly beneficial venues such as churches or palaces, began with Theodoros II Megas, although it only became firmly established with Anna I. By now, a century later, it is essentially mandatory for an emperor to maintain this tradition.

The civil war started by Bedros’ father in the 1370s had largely played on the alienation of Europe from the Laskarids. It is the same now with the Komnenids. Italy and Crimea have seen a great deal of construction because of their position on the frontier, while Anatolia has seen much because it is the economic powerhouse of the empire. Meanwhile Europe is comparatively silent, with less projects and the ensuing business opportunities that follow in their wake. The peasants and artisans in Epirus are particularly angry because, despite repeated appeals for improvements, the road system in the area outside of Dyrrachium remains poor. As a result, these lower class individuals have a much harder time getting their goods to the town fairs, which are seen as the major money-making opportunities. Instead the Komnenids have been putting the funds for infrastructure improvement into eastern Anatolia because of the need to conciliate the inhabitants there as Manuel Doukas’ end drew near.

The rebellion ends up fizzling however as the local tagma troops are not willing to join in the movement. Many of them either received their positions from Demetrios Komnenos or from Thomas Laskaris, the man who had exiled John V during the War of the Five Emperors. With the rebellion beginning to spread beyond Arta district, the Epirote tagma is called up to squash the revolt. Against real troops, the artisans and peasants stand little chance. After three ‘battles’ which leave at least a total of two hundred and fifty rebels dead, John and Bedros Laskaris are captured. They are castrated, tonsured, and exiled to monasteries near Amorium, along with all of Bedros’ male heirs. The surviving rebels have their taxes tripled for the next three tax cycles, although some of those funds are diverted to improving the road network in the region.

1432: The Pomeranian War expands outside of Germany as both Poland and Hungary enter the fray. Poland launches a surprise attack on Danzig which fails, forcing the Polish army to begin a siege of the major port. To further their power over that of the Polish nobility, the Kings in Krakow have been encouraging grain production for export (where it can be taxed via export tolls); control of Danzig would greatly facilitate that. This is a facet of the Polish kings’ efforts to raise up a class of burghers to counteract their nobles, an effort strengthened by the influence of Presporok merchants and the example of the Roman Empire. The Polish crown prince Jan Piast has a copy of Giorgios Akropolites’ History of the Roman Empire, which covers the reign of Theodoros II Megas, including a sizeable section on the Nobles’ Revolt and aftermath.

Andrew III launches a massive invasion of Styria, driving hard for the city of Vienna. The various towns in his path do not last long, as he has rebuilt his artillery train through a combination of native production and purchases from Bohemian and Roman foundries. He has also invested heavily in creating a sizeable corps of stout Croatian infantry who are very effective at taking strong places, alongside squadrons of Hungarian knights disciplined after the Serbian model. Although weaker in missile power than his armies in the 1410s and early 1420s, it is still a very formidable force.

It is paid with the increased exploitation of Hungary’s abundant silver and copper mines. The death of most of the German mine owners during the Vlach revolt allowed Andrew to impose heavier taxes on the new owners, in the name of protecting the mines and operators from Vlach incursions. There are even a few rumors that Andrew actually paid Vlad to make a few demonstrations in order to convince the owners to accept.

Although Poland is attacking his ally Saxony, Andrew does not attack his northern neighbor, focusing all of his attention on Bavaria. With better disciplined infantry, he is able to prevent his men from sacking Vienna when it capitulates. A sign of the new Hungarian discipline is shown in Andrew’s order that men quartered in a home are allowed to demand a bed, two pots (one for use as a chamber pot, another for cooking), and a right to cook at the fire. To take anything else is punished by castration (taken from Roman military justice codes).

As Bavaria and Saxony are both occupied, Denmark finally launches its long-awaited attack upon Lubeck. The city is well defended by fortifications and a small but effective fleet, but the Danes soon place the city under blockade. On land it is very tight, but Hansa merchants turn out to be very adept at smuggling supplies through the naval blockade. To the east the Saxons battle back against the Poles with mixed success. At Grob Mollen (OTL modern Mielno), the Saxons savage a Polish army that foolishly tries to charge the Saxon Castilian-style earthworks, but at Stettin three weeks later a Polish column sweeps a Saxon army off the field in a mass cavalry charge before the Saxons are able to form up.

In Constantinople, Demetrios receives more reports of skirmishes in Crimea. Tatar riders have been increasingly crossing the border, burning crops and enslaving peasants, which is also interfering with the fur trade (the slave trade in the region is not popular with Roman merchants as African slaves are preferred because they are better workers on the sugar plantations). Aware of what happened the last time he ignored a raider problem, Demetrios authorizes counterattacks into Blue Horde territory. Overall they are a mixed success, as Tatar horsemen are able to match Turkopouloi when it comes to horse archery, but when Sarai protests, the Khan receives a warning from Demetrios that ‘he should control his subjects, otherwise foreign princes will do it for him’.

George Doukas, son of Manuel Doukas, begins an on-and-off tour to foreign lands in order to improve his medical knowledge, as well as that of the Roman people, by studying the medicinal techniques of others. Although by this time the archiatros is fifty six, he is still remarkably fit for his age, explaining it by the high-vegetable, low-meat, no-alcohol nature of his diet. His first stop is Georgia, where the Georgian King Konstantin II Bagrationi is delighted to meet him.

Further south, the chaos in the Mameluke Sultanate continues as Barsbay’s advance is halted at Jaffa. Ferocious fighting continues all throughout the region as the rebel leader solidifies his control of Syria and manages to capture Jerusalem. His capture of the holy city is marred however when he gives into the calls of some of the more fanatical imams (who complain that the Mameluke Sultans, the defenders of the Holy Cities of Islam, have done little to protect the faith against the Roman advance-the last Mameluke-Roman war was in the 1320s) and massacres over a thousand Christian pilgrims, a mix of Catholic, Orthodox, and Ethiopians.

Meanwhile the chaos is causing Mameluke control over Arabia to slip. Yemen has long been ruled by a cadet branch of the Burji dynasty, the same dynasty that rules Cairo. However Yemen is also a vassal of Cairo, a condition imposed because of repeated Yemeni attempts to monopolize the Red Sea trade to the detriment of Egypt. So a month after the fall of Jerusalem, Sana’a repudiates all ties of vassalage to Cairo, defeating a Mameluke fleet off Sajid island with the support of dissidents from the Hedjaz. With control over the Bab el-Mandeb, the Yemeni Emirs begin requiring each ship passing through the strait from either direction to pay a toll.

In the Persian Gulf the naval war continues as Osman II orders an attack on Bahrein, seizing the island from the neutral Arab Emirate of Qatar for use as a naval base. The protests are ignored. With the capture of Bahrein, the momentum starts to swing in favor of the Ottomans. Roman supplies are of great help in that regard as the great shipyards of Trebizond are connected to the border by a network of roads (Demetrios is willing to sell naval supplies to Baghdad because the Ottomans cannot use a fleet against the Romans).

With the removal of the Turkmen threat, trade has picked up substantially between the Ottomans and Romans. Now with the Persian invasion and subsequent Ottoman demands for military equipment, Roman military stores have started being smuggled across the border despite its prohibition. The main problem with enforcing that edict is that many of the soldiers who are responsible for border security are in fact the ones smuggling.

With their access to the warehouse system, the border soldiers are in an ideal position for the illicit traffic. They can get their equipment cheap and easily and know the layout of the border. Ironically Hakkari becomes a major way point in this illegal traffic. To counteract this threat, Theodoros (who is now largely responsible for eastern Anatolian affairs), decides not to try and crush it, which would antagonize the locals, but to co-opt it.

The prohibition is shrunk, outlawing only the export of steel lamellar and plate armor, which because of their size and weight is not a common smuggler’s item anyway. Allowed to trade in the open now, eastern merchants now enter the trade, exporting weapons and mail armor to the Ottomans and paying export duties on them. To discourage soldiers from abusing the warehouse system, Theodoros (with Demetrios’ permission) institutes a purchase registry for each soldier, to keep track of any soldier buying an unusually large amount of equipment. Starting in the Coloneian theme, it is spread over the rest of the Empire over the next few years.

The soldiers themselves are somewhat annoyed by being cut out of the smuggling system. To conciliate them, Theodoros promises that in next year’s construction budget funds will be devoted to improving roads in eastern Anatolia, so that their families will have an easier time bringing goods to the markets. It is a promise he keeps.

At the same time in Constantinople Demetrios and the strategoi are drawing up three battle plans, one against the Mamelukes, one against the Bulgarians, and one against the Blue Horde. Part of the Bulgarian plans involve an attack on Serbia, in case Lazar decides to contest the region. So far he has not taken advantage of the Bulgarian chaos, due to unrest in Bosnia and a few border disputes with Vlachia, but that could change. Serbia’s army may be small, but its heavy cavalry demands respect.

However it is the latter plan that is considered the highest priority, as Tatar riders continue to prick at Theodoro despite the counter-raids while a new Khan has risen to prominence. His name is Jabbar Berdi, styling himself after the Mongol Khans of old, and he is busy slowly working to bring his domains under his effective control. At the moment, Novgorod-Lithuania is having a particularly nasty border skirmish with the Bonde in Finland, while Pronsk is quarrelling with Perm. With Vlachia and Georgia wary of taking on even an under-strength Blue Horde, only Constantinople is in a position to sabotage the Khan’s efforts. Roman agents in the Horde begin making contact with various chieftains opposed to Jabbar Berdi’s centralizing efforts, slipping them small subsidies. Also as part of the preparations for the plans, orders for a new type of light cannon are placed, alongside directives for the construction of new purxiphoi to replace the ones lost at Melilla.

* * *

Cities of Rhomania, c. 1435

Besides Constantinople, the largest city in the world outside of China, the Second Komnenid Roman Empire is dotted with cities. It is the most heavily urbanized society in the world, with roughly one-sixth of its population living in settlements with ten thousand people or more. While extremely low compared to industrial times, considering the technology of the day, it is an impressive achievement, showcasing exemplary achievement in administration, transportation of goods (particularly foodstuffs), and sanitation. Below is a list of the fifteen largest cities in the Roman Empire c. 1435.

Constantinople: The Norse call it Miklagard, the Russians Tsargrad. Also known as the City of the World’s Desire, the Queen of Cities, to many in the eastern Mediterranean it is simply known as The City. Capital of the Roman Empire, a major seaport, and home to the largest Roman university, it is also home to a sizeable armor and gun manufacturing district, and has the most literate population of any city or district in the Empire. Population: 330,000.

Antioch: Although it came close, the city was never sacked by the Mamelukes and its capture by then prince Manuel (II) Laskaris was relatively bloodless. Because of its historical significance as a Greek and Roman city, the Laskarid Emperors put tremendous effort into reviving this city as a true metropolis. Also the seat of a Patriarchate and University, it is a massive thoroughfare, one of the western termini of the Silk Road. The School of Medicine’s student body is one third Muslim, many of them hailing from Muslim countries and commanding high salaries when they graduate and return home. Antiochene merchants are some of the most expansionist citizens of the Empire, urging further conquests of the Levant both to provide a larger foodstuff-producing hinterland and to cut down on rival Mameluke trade ports. Population: 155,000.

Thessalonica: Usually the second city of the Empire, it dropped into third place during the Black Death, which did not affect Antioch as heavily due to more developed sewer systems. It is also a major trade port, through which flows most of Macedonia’s trade. Its trade fair is quite probably the largest in Europe, and its University often sees some students from Western Europe. Population: 125,000.

Nicaea: Home to an University, the city is also of great historical and symbolic importance to the Romans due to its role as the capital during the Exile. While not on the sea, its trade fair, bolstered by the tagma reviews, is still sizeable. It is also situated near sizeable textile, soap, and glassmaking industries. Population: 76,000.

Smyrna: A major seaport, through which flows most of the Empire’s exports of alum, mastic, and olive oil. It also has an University, most famous for its school of astronomy. It is even rumored that some of the faculty have suggested that the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around. It is often used as a second capital by the Komnenid Emperors, due to its role as their capital during the War of the Five Emperors. Population: 73,000.

Trebizond: Birthplace of the printing press, a Silk Road terminus, home of an University skilled in Mathematics, and the site of a massive shipbuilding complex, Trebizond is the fastest growing city and arguably even more cosmopolitan than Constantinople. There is even a small Buddhist stupa, maintained by the handful of Kashmiri merchants who trade their superb carpets. The city and its environs are also becoming a sort of vacation resort for wealthy nobles and merchants and has the most printing presses per capita of any city in the Empire, including Constantinople. Population: 64,000.

Aleppo: The most heavily Muslim of the Empire’s great cities, its size is largely due to its strategic position near the Mameluke border, as well as on the main road to Antioch from the east. Its Great Mosque, constructed in the 700s, remains a mosque, and after a renovation in 1426 is considered to be one of the most beautiful Muslim buildings in the world. Population: 52,000.

Dyrrachium: Situated at the western end of the Via Egnatia (which is still well maintained and in use), the city is also a sizeable port. It is a common departure point for Italy, and is home to a sizeable Italian community composed of Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans with a growing number of Urbinese and Anconans. The Epirotes are the greatest proponents of expansion into Italy, both to curb Italian merchants and to pay back the Neapolitans for their repeated attempts to invade, the latest of which was during the War of the Five Emperors. Population: 46,000.

Attaleia: A major stopping point for pilgrims traveling to Outremer, the city is also a major export point for central Anatolian products, particularly from its growing cattle ranches. Population: 39,000.

Nicomedia: It is considered that the best silk comes from Nicomedia. The silk industry, although small compared to the one around Corinth, is the major force behind the economy. Population: 32,000.

Bari: A sizeable trade port, the first foothold of Roman rule in Italy is by now entirely a Greek city. A petition has been made to establish a new university there to replace the defunct Catholic one in Salerno. Population: 30,000.

Corinth: The largest city in southern Greece, it has a sizeable port which exports the textiles and wine that are the main products of the Peloponnesus. Fifteen percent of the population is Jewish, mainly working in the textile and much smaller glassmaking industry. Population: 25,000.

Iconium: Outside of Nicaea, this is the largest inland city, situated on several key roads crossing Anatolia. The region itself does not produce many manufactured goods, but mostly animal products. The main exception is its leather products, which are in high demand as book bindings for merchants. Population: 23,000.

Caesarea: The premier city of the Coloneian theme, its importance also rests due to its position along the road network. Its trade fair, bolstered by the tagma reviews, is also fairly sizeable. Population: 21,000.

Nicosia: The largest settlement on Cyprus, it is the debarkation point for most of the island’s famous and lucrative sugar production. Less happily, it is also home to the largest slave market in the Roman Empire, specializing in Sudanese ‘products’. Population: 18,000.


* * *


1433: The Genoese-Pisan war finally comes to an end with a crushing Genoese victory. Pisa is forced to pay a massive indemnity and is forbidden to trade in Tunis or the Low countries (to which Genoa dispatches two heavily armed convoys a year) ever again. Because of the long blockade, Genoese merchants have managed to gobble up most of the Pisan merchant contacts in the western Mediterranean. Pisa had held out for so long to its ultimate detriment due to the encouragement of the Pope, who is a major source of business as he encourages pilgrims to use Pisan transports. Unfortunately for them John XXIII had not done more because he is fearful of pushing Genoa into the Avignon camp.

But with the continued whispers of Giovanni Loredan and now this, John XXIII is finally stirred into action. On March 19, he formally excommunicates Doge Alessi and lays an interdict on the Republic of Genoa. When the news reaches Milan, the Duchy’s armies begin to move south, preceded by a herald with a declaration of war. Convincing Milan to move against Genoa took all of Giovanni’s skills. While the Duchy is the most powerful Italian state (except the Roman Empire), its main quarrel is with Florence over Modena. The reason Milan has not moved already to regain its lost territory is that an attack on Florence would likely bring in Venice, Lucca, Bologna, and Ravenna on Florence’s side. Milan’s ally of Siena is not enough to address the imbalance.

However against Milan, Genoa stands alone. Its powerful fleet is useless at stemming the Milanese tide. Possible allies are limited. Florence has netted a powerful defensive alliance, but not an offensive one and so will not help. Savoy is too weak and frightened of Milan. Arles is a commercial rival and war-weary anyway. The Bernese are simply not interested while the Swiss are too expensive.

Mohammed in al-Andalus actually offers the aid of an army if Genoa provides the transport and supplies, an offer Andrea Alessi is forced to turn down with reluctance. Bringing a Muslim army in Italy would certainly bring down the condemnation of all of Christendom upon the Republic. So Andrea turns to the last remaining source. As Milanese troops sweep through Liguria largely unchallenged, all of Genoa’s strength is diverted into protecting the city itself. Two weeks before the siege begins on May 20, the Doge sails for Constantinople.

He arrives to find Demetrios on death’s door, with Theodoros in command of the city and Empire. Demetrios had traveled to the Crimea, to personally oversee the construction of new earthen strongholds in the region as well as to dispatch a series of ferocious raids into Horde territory to counter Tatar attacks. But while he was there he was assaulted by a Tatar column, and one arrow struck him in the belly (because of the heat he was not wearing armor at the time). George Doukas, still in Tbilisi, traveled to the Crimea to tend him. For a while, he recovered enough so that he could return to Constantinople but has since regressed into a feverish unconsciousness.

So it is with Theodoros that Andrea must negotiate, not with his father with whom he has a personal rapport. The Doge had hoped that he could use that rapport to buy Roman military aid fairly cheaply, perhaps a small increase in the rent for Croton and Modon. But first Theodoros is busy dispatching envoys to Novgorod, Pronsk, Tbilisi, and Targoviste, asking them to attend a summit so that ‘we may deal with the Sarai problem together and for all time’.

Genoa wants military aid, but the question is what can Genoa offer in return for Roman help. Theodoros, who is interested in expanding Roman merchant contacts in the central and western Mediterranean, is quite willing to haggle over trade opportunities. Unfortunately for Andrea, the news from Liguria is bad as the Milanese have apparently hired English and Burgundian gun crews, using them to hammer breaches into Genoa’s walls. Help is needed, and soon. In the end, Andrea is forced to concede a great deal.

Genoese merchants are now to pay a four percent import/export duty, double their earlier rate (Aragonese and Sicilians pay eight percent, everyone else, including Imperial citizens pay ten percent), allow Roman merchants to pay only 60% of the usual import/export duties in Tunis and Genoa, and start paying an annual rent of 2,000 hyperpyra for Galata. While the agreement does net a good sum of money for Roman coffers, it does much to dampen Roman-Genoese relations.

Andrea’s bad mood is somewhat alleviated when he sees the armada being outfitted. Demetrios has regained consciousness and appears to be on the mend, although he is too weak for visitors. After receiving the news of what he missed, he approves Theodoros’ plans both regarding the Sarai problem and Genoa, but insists that a great host be sent so that the Italians will better fear them. Alexandros of Kerasous is placed in command of the fleet, with Dragos cel Mare in command of the army.

Andrea departs with the fleet, his six galleys being swallowed up by the Roman flotilla. Twelve purxiphoi (out of sixteen) and seventy galleys escort troop transports carrying the Thracesian tagma and four cleisurai. As a further effort to conciliate eastern Anatolian popular opinion by providing her sons with active duty bonuses and booty opportunities, the cleisurai are all from that region. They are made available because of the continuing Mameluke civil war. As they exit the Aegean, nearing Crete, they are shadowed by five Venetian warships. The flotilla arrives at Genoa on September 1.

The arrival of the Romans is enough to convince the Milanese to lift the siege. There is no way to take Genoa now, and to fight the Roman Empire and Genoa would be a bloody affair which could wound the Duchy enough that the other Italian states might jump in to take advantage of the situation, which could be fatal. Dragos leads his troops to follow the retreating Milanese, along with most of the Genoese army. Meanwhile Doge Alessi formally announces Genoa’s switch to Avignon.

The Milanese eventually camp at the village of Bagnaria, throwing up Castilian style earthworks to protect their camp which is also bristling with light cannons. Dragos recommends a blockade of the camp until the allies can bring up the heavy cannons, but the Genoese want revenge. They launch a fierce attack but are badly bloodied, fleeing back in disorder as the Milanese cavalry sally. The Roman kataphraktoi meet them in a great crash but the ensuing contest is a draw, both sides retreating with moderate casualties.

Now the allied camp is filled with argument, as the Genoese are angry for the Roman refusal to help the attack while Dragos is angry they ignored his suggestions. However the debate is cut short as news arrives that a papal army is marching from the south, allowed to pass through Florentine territory upon pain of excommunication. It is said to number eighteen thousand strong.

The Genoese are unsure of what to do about the threat, since although they are now with Avignon, they are wary of furthering angering a state with such strong influence over its Italian neighbors. Also their switch to Avignon is purely political, its removal something to dangle in front of the Pope to make John XXIII back off. So soon after the news arrive, it is back to the arguments. By now seriously annoyed, muttering that he prefers working with Provencals, Dragos decides that the Genoese can deal with the Milanese while he turns and takes out the papal army. The two forces split up on September 28.

Dragos races south, dispatching waves of Turkopouloi ahead of him who quickly begin harassing the papal forces. It is extremely unnerving for the papal soldiers, as the Turkopouloi in the cleisurai called up for the expedition are more Muslim than is usual in the Roman army. As the Italians march, they hear cries of “Allahu ackbar!” before they are cut down. The news travels to Rome, where John XXIII is quick to issue another statement, saying that “The Empire of the Greeks proves by these actions that they cannot be ranked amongst the nations of Christendom. Instead they take their stand amongst the servants of Mahomet.” Gregory XII comments on that, wondering aloud when the people of Melilla converted to Christianity.

On October 13, the Papal army arrives at Ameglia, a short ways into Genoese Liguria, and encamps for the night. A few sentries are posted, but the camp is not fortified. At around midnight, with a crescent moon, a handful of elite akritoi make their way forward, slitting the throats of the guards. Soon men awaken, hearing and smelling fire as tents begin to shrivel up into flames. Spilling out of their tents, ignoring their arms and armor, they frantically begin to create bucket brigades to quell the inferno. The Roman skutatoi fall upon the camp; it is a slaughter. Surprised and unequipped, the papal soldiers are cut to pieces, many choosing to run instead of fighting. All that changes is the minute of their death, as the Roman turkopouloi and light kousores are mounted and surrounding the camp. In a single night, Dragos completely destroys the Papal army, taking only ninety five casualties of his own.

He is in a good mood the next day, as he also captured a good amount of plunder. The army had been accompanied by several high-ranking priests, including six bishops, two archbishops, and two cardinals, all of whom were killed. They had all had in their tents large numbers of dishes made of gold or silver, often with jewels, as well as silk cushions. When it is distributed amongst the men, it is equivalent to three years’ pay each (including the active duty bonus). Dragos himself has a chest filled with precious jewels alone, including a ruby the size of a walnut.

However afterwards he receives news that the Genoese army commanders had continued quarreling after he left and so had been roundly trounced by the returning Milanese army. Genoa is again under siege, although the Milanese haven’t managed to completely envelope the city’s landward side as the Roman purxiphoi are stationed offshore, firing on anything in range. They are supported by new Genoese purxiphoi, laid down at the end of the Pisan War. Dragos marches hard for Genoa, but news of his victory and approach precede him anyway, causing the Milanese to break the siege and retreat out of Liguria before he can catch them.

John XXIII is utterly enraged when he hears the news of Ameglia. The only thing that stops him from immediately declaring a crusade is Giovanni Loredan. He points out that a crusade at this point will be impossible. Germany is up in arms, Bavarian, Saxon, Polish, and Hungarian armies marching back and forth, smashing each other at every opportunity. Lubeck has fallen to the Danish forces, who are now sweeping south into Mecklenburg. England is occupied with a Welsh revolt and Lotharingia with a Frisian one. If the pope calls a crusade and it fizzles just like the last one, it would severely damage the papacy’s prestige, perhaps irreparably. So Giovanni councils patience; the time will come, but not yet. John XXIII listens.

Milan too is also wary. The Milanese were never keen on this war in the first place, much less tangling with the Dragon himself, who in the west is far more feared than Demetrios Komnenos. So shortly after the second retreat from Genoa, the Duchy and the Republic make peace restoring the status quo. Laden with booty, Dragos and the Romans sail back to Constantinople, leaving the muttering Genoese behind.

As all of this is occurring, Alexios Palaeologos, the victor of Ain Sijni, invades Syria with the Coloneian, Chaldean, Syrian, Anatolic, and Optimates tagmata, fifty thousand men. There are many in the Roman court who are eager to take advantage of the Mamelukes’ difficulties while the civil war lasts. Their argument is that Bulgaria and the Blue Horde can wait, an argument Demetrios and Theodoros both accept. However the glow in some courtiers’ eyes, dreaming of Jerusalem, is not accepted by either Emperor.

It is to be a limited campaign, as neither want to get bogged down in the Levant. As the Egyptians launch an offensive from the Sinai, Barsbay is hard pressed but decides to focus on his southern adversaries. When they swing inland away from the coastal supply lines, he is able to maneuver his foe into a prepared killing ground near Jericho and wipe out twelve thousand Mameluke soldiers for only three thousand Damascene (after his operating capital of Damascus) losses.

With his southern flank secure, Barsbay swings north, force marching his troops to relieve the city of Tripoli which is under siege. On August 14 he launches an attack on the Roman army, timing the attack with a sally of the Tripoli garrison. While on the right wing the attack goes well, his heavy cavalry managing to chop their way through waves of akritoi, koursores, and even a thin line of skutatoi, on the left the assault is ripped to shreds by the newest model of Roman cannon, a light six-pounder, which are protected by an earthen ditch and embankment. With the left wing broken, the right is brought to a halt as kataphraktoi charges hammer at the stalled Damascenes. Eventually Barsbay is forced to retire, having lost six thousand of his forty eight thousand men.

The Romans took four thousand losses, but kept the field and took Tripoli. Alexios had concentrated his skutatoi and toxotai on smashing flat the garrison sally, then riding the wave of panicked survivors back into the city. Shortly afterwards peace is made with the Damascene Sultan, who is forced to cede all of the Roman conquests, including Tripoli, the second city of Mameluke Syria after Damascus itself, as well as the city of Homs. Another notable conquest is Krak des Chevaliers, which is repaired, renovated, and outfitted with cannons for use as a new border fortress. Meanwhile Barsbay vows that once he has taken Egypt, he will get his revenge.

1434: The Mameluke civil war remains a stalemate as Barsbay cannot, despite repeated bloody attempts, break into Egypt, even after his great success at Jericho. With it now clear that Egypt will remain untouched for a time, Giorgios Doukas resumes his medical tour as Demetrios has recovered from his Crimean wound, although he never regains his old strength. He visits the Mameluke Sultan in Cairo and is given a splendid welcome, as the fame of his medical talents has spread through the Muslim world (this is because many Muslim physicians study at the University of Antioch, Giorgios’ alma mater).

While there Giorgios further studies Muslim medicine and also, in order to further his understanding of human anatomy, dissects a gorilla and two chimpanzees provided to him by the sultan (dissecting corpses was contrary to Christian theology of the time, so dissecting pigs was the usual way of teaching anatomy, a method with obvious flaws). After spending several months in Cairo, Giorgios then backtracks to Constantinople to check on Demetrios’ health, then travels to Baghdad where he is met by Osman II in person.

Osman is back in Mesopotamia because he is busy organizing a great naval offensive designed to knock Hormuz out of the war. In the Persian Gulf the tide is turning in favor of the Turks, who can afford to throw bodies at problems in order to smother them. In Basra carpenters work feverishly to assemble an armada of vessels. Meanwhile Ottoman armies push along the northern shores of the Gulf, slowly edging their way toward Hormuz itself. Elsewhere along the front lines there is little action, although a series of raids roll into Khuzestan in order to keep the Jalayirid Khan pinned there.

Meanwhile in central Europe Bavaria, Saxony, and Poland continue to pummel each other indecisively. Only Denmark and Hungary see substantial gains in their campaigns. The Danes, consolidating their hold over Lubeck, have successfully overrun the Duchy of Mecklenburg, forcing the duke to submit to being a Danish vassal, his two children to be raised in Copenhagen. The Danish armies however have not marched further south, except to place the city of Hamburg under siege. They do not want to overextend themselves.

Also they need to keep an eye on the situation in Sweden as Olaf Tordsson has finally returned home, proclaiming himself the rightful King of Sweden. Denmark gave his approval to his cause after Olaf promised he would make no attempts on Danish Scania, a promise he is likely to keep as Bonde family interests are oriented more towards Finland, Novgorod, Livonia, and Estland. When he arrives, Gotland and Finland, firmly under the control of his relatives in the Bonde family, almost immediately declare for him, adding their militia troops to his company.

In Sweden itself, the response is much colder but still promising. Most of the countryside remains loyal to King Valdemar II, the king who had originally forced Olaf into exile. However Vasteras and Uppsala both join in support of Olaf because of Valdemar’s Hansa-friendly policies, giving Olaf a powerful foothold in central Sweden.

He lands near Uppsala in May, marching southward with a combined total of nine thousand men while Valdemar gathers his soldiers, about fifteen thousand militia and fifteen hundred German mercenaries, in Stockholm before marching north. Valdemar tries to lay an ambush near Vallentuna, but Olaf’s jinetes discover the trap in the woods. A fierce attack by the almughavars manages to drive the startled Swedish troops out into the open, where Olaf flattens them with longbow volleys and heavy cavalry charges. Valdemar II is killed during the battle. After thirty six years in exile, fighting from Scotland to Spain, Olaf takes his place as King Olaf I of Sweden.

Far to the south, King Andrew III has cleared most of northern Austria of Austrian and Bavarian army units, and even now cavalry raids sally out in Tyrol and into Bavaria proper. However his main army remains stationed at Vienna as Andrew’s aims are much less ambitious than during his first invasion of the Holy Roman Empire. Then he wanted to become Holy Roman Emperor, but now with a wracking cough that shakes his whole body, he is more concerned with leaving a strong and prosperous state to his son Istvan, rather than with enhancing his personal glory. To that end, he seeks not the Imperial title, but the duchy of Austria to replace the loss of Presporok.

In Bern, an order is received for fifty of the finest Bernese handguns. It is an order from Constantinople, where Theodoros is eager to take a look at these new weapons of which he has heard stories. He is particularly interested to see how well they perform penetrating steel lamellar armor, the kind worn by heavy Mameluke cavalry.

Eastern Europe also stirs as responses come back to Theodoros’ proposal for a summit to deal with the Blue Horde. After an initial round of negotiations in Constantinople between representatives, it is decided to hold the summit not at Constantinople but at Targoviste, the small but growing capital of Vlachia. This is done so that the Romans cannot dictate the agenda, something that Vlachia has no chance of doing considering the attendees. They are Vlad I Musat, King of Vlachia, Konstantin II Bagrationi, King of Georgia, Alexei I Shuisky, King of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Lithuania, and Demetrios I Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans.


* * *



Roman Local Government, c. 1435



Aside from Constantinople itself, the various cities of the Roman Empire were locally governed through city councils. These councils varied in size from town, often relatively in proportion to their population. For example, the sleepy town of Athens with its six thousand souls had a council of eight, while Antioch’s had over a hundred and twenty. Certain positions on the councils were reserved. These included a seat for the local bishop, the city advocate (essentially the city’s representative at the Imperial court), the chief judge of the city’s law courts, Imperial provincial officials (in district capitals), the head chair of the university (in university towns), the head archiatros of the city’s largest hospital, and the local strategos or tourmarch (in thematic or tourma-district capitals-this also include cleisurai capitals). The remainder were composed of the local dynatoi.

The dynatoi, the upper class of the Empire, was made up of wealthy landowners, merchants, business owners, clergy, and government officials. It was a class based overwhelmingly on wealth and offices held, not on a system of peerage. After the Nobles’ Revolt, Theodoros Megas had made sure that court titles could not be inheritable to avoid a hereditary aristocracy based on blood. With a focus on money and office, the dynatoi were far more dynamic than a ‘normal’ western aristocracy, as new dynatoi rose and fell with the winds of fortunes and the whims of their superiors. The result was an upper class that was not only much more involved in commerce (because of the large number of wealthy merchants) but also one that could not easily form into a monolithic block to oppose the Emperor’s will.

With that in mind, it should be noted that certain families still had an advantage in prestige and influence, and were almost always numbered amongst the most powerful dynatoi. The main ones were the Komnenid, Laskarid (from the cadet branches), and Doukid families, and drew their prominence from their close connection to the Imperial throne. Despite the fact that a Komnenos was on the throne, the Laskarid dynatoi were the most powerful due to their greater numbers and reach throughout the Empire, whilst both the Komnenids and Doukids were concentrated in Thracesia and eastern Anatolia. There were also some rural landowning families of great wealth and prestigious bloodlines; these were the Apokaukos, Kantakuzenos, and Kaukadenos families.

The prestige of their family names lend their members additional weight amongst the dynatoi class, but it was an informal power. However it was a power best used through the use of marriage alliances between upcoming mercantile dynatoi and members of these families, meaning that this subset never became a rarefied ‘super dynatoi’. Its existence depended on the continual influx of others with wealth and offices, along with its own resources in those fields, as its family name was not enough. For example, the Laskarids of Chonae were not numbered amongst the dynatoi as due to a lack of good marriage alliances (they were infamous for producing the ugliest daughters in Anatolia) had fallen on hard times and were mainly a family branch of scribes.

To be on the council one had to meet a very stiff wealth requirement, based on average annual income which was determined based on the property tax records. It varied somewhat from city to city, but Trebizond’s, one of the lowest, was set at a value twelve times higher than a kataphractos’ annual earnings, including the revenues from his estate. However there was a key bit of legislation enacted by Anna I, designed to cripple the power of the rural landowners. The wealth had to be derived from within ‘city bounds’, which was a circle which surrounded the city, its edge half a mile from the walls. As a result, the exceedingly wealthy cattle and sheep rancher Nikolaios Gabras was unable to participate in the Iconium city council as his ranches were outside the bounds.

The duties of the local civic governments were limited mainly to maintaining the city itself, the walls, the allagion (the city militias) if appropriate, the hospitals, ensuring the swift and impartial treatment of justice, making local ordinances which had no authority outside the city bounds, and levying some taxes. Their power in the last regard was extremely limited as Empire-wide taxation was entirely in the hands of the Imperial bureaucracy. In the capitals of the tax districts, the Constantinople-appointed official was on the council, and the determination of tax requirements and the assessors were all directed by Constantinople.

Also the cities were forbidden to levy any tolls on trade as Constantinople’s control over trade duties was an important part of negotiating with westerners, particularly Italians. The local taxes could only be imposed on residents, goods, and services that did not move out of the city bounds. Thus a merchant could be taxed if he rented a warehouse, but could not be charged an additional toll on the spices he stored there after paying the Imperial toll.

Aside from the fixed positions, positions on the council were determined by election from and by the local dynatoi. Terms of service, electoral procedures, and number of positions available varied widely from city to city, but all had in common the high wealth requirement for participating. This had the effect of bolstering the merchant/business owner over the landowner, as the former could encourage customers to patronize or boycott respectively political allies and opponents.

This option was largely unavailable to the wealthy landowner (who if he was on the city council was likely a merchant/rural landowner who usually identified more with the former than latter half). This was supported by Constantinople, who viewed wealthy merchants with far less alarm than wealthy rural landowners. The latter had an annoying tendency to rebel, while merchants enjoyed and supported the Imperial government that maintained the roads, laws, and army that ensured the peace and prosperity necessary for their livelihood.

Council positions were very prestigious, far more than their meager salary warranted. It gave publicity and respectability to merchants and ‘new dynatoi’. Council members often took after the Emperors, subsidizing construction works in their cities, which further added to their prestige. Many a new dynatos, still insecure in his new status and looked down on by the rural landowning aristocracy with its venerable (although politically useless) bloodlines, would strive to become a city councilman and build new markets, bridges, or churches emblazoned with his name.

In Constantinople, there was still a Roman Senate, in the sense that there were individuals with the title of Senator. The Senators were given the titles as a symbol of prestige, with no powers or responsibilities. Like titles with actual substance, it could not be inherited. Since it was an impotent title, it was given out at whim to random worthy individuals. For his victory at Lodeve, Dragos cel Mare was made a Senator, even though he spent most of his time in Smyrna. Some of the new dynatoi who had essentially purchased the title for prestige reasons had begun pushing for more power to be attached, with the most popular proposal being the Senate becoming essentially the city council of Constantinople.

The civic governments of the post-Restoration period (after 1272) have often been compared to those of the classical Empire. The cities were the focal points of the growing middle class and mercantile dynatoi, on which the Empire based its economic might. The effect of Theodoros Megas and the Nobles’ Revolt can be seen in the systematic efforts to keep rural landowners out of power in the cities. The reserved positions were for various bureaucratic officials (along with one token though highly influential seat for the clergy) while the very narrow-base democracy helped to keep the free positions in the hands of wealthy merchants and out of the landowners.

One proposal to expand the franchise in 1399 had been rejected without pause. If urban poor could vote, landowners could buy political support by cheaply renting out pieces of their estates. That would give them voters, money (from the rents), and a potential army. That was something no Roman Emperor could possibly tolerate. Konstantinos XI Komnenos Laskaris, the Emperor who turned down the proposal, said “This would turn Constantinople into Athens. The lords would use the poor to raise them to the purple. That is a threat that cannot be tolerated, a threat Theodoros Megas worked all his life to prevent. For her safety and glory, Rhomania must remain an Empire.”

The Titan of the East: Novgorod-Lithuania

They have two lords. The second is their king, a man, who must inevitably fade and be replaced. But the first, the greatest, is far more enduring. He is known as Lord Novgorod the Great.

Despite Mikhail Shuisky’s revolt in 1393, which resulted in him becoming the ruler of Novgorod, elevating the title from prince to King, Novgorod did not evolve into a despotic monarch on the Pronsky model. The city’s republican traditions were far too strong for that, and Mikhail in many cases did not even bother to try.

kulikovo.jpg

The Battle of Pskov by Demetrios of Larissa, 1459. Roman paintings of the time were heavily focused on historical events, particularly Roman history. However this is an example of the 'Varangian' School. This was not because they were painted by Varangians, but because they commemorated Russian history. This painting was commissioned by Alexei of Moskva, the second commander of the Varangian Guard.​

The King of Novgorod, unlike the Prince, was not an elected individual. Commonly the prince of Novgorod was actually a foreign ruler, who could enjoy great wealth from access to Novgorod, but who was foreign and too far distant to impose direct control. Mikhail’s greatest innovation was the establishment of a hereditary monarchy, which he consciously created based upon the Roman model. This was done prior to the outbreak of the War of the Five Emperors, when the Empire’s prestige was high after wresting Apulia from the Kingdom of Naples.

The new King obviously undertook the prince’s duties, which overall were fairly minor. He received embassies and oversaw secular court cases, but little more. But under Mikhail, the powers of the sovereign increased dramatically.

Besides the archbishop of Novgorod, the most powerful pre-Mikhail official was the posadnik. He managed the current affairs of the city and oversaw tax collection, which obviously gave the holder a great deal of power. When Mikhail became King, he merged the offices of prince and posadnik, giving the powers of both to himself. With the army firmly behind him because of the battle of Pskov, he now had the taxes to keep their loyalty as well as the diplomatic powers to maintain good relations with Lithuania.

Also the posadnik and now the King was the chair of the veche, the popular assembly of Novgorod. Composed of a mix of boyars, wealthy merchants, urban craftsmen, and free peasants, it was a relatively democratic institution, although many times the boyars were able to dictate the agenda. Mikhail broke it into two sections, the House of Commons and the House of Boyars, in order to break the boyar hold on the veche.

The houses were the ones responsible for developing laws and ordinances, with the exception of those relating to the levying of regular taxes and tolls which were kept in the monarch’s hands. Extraordinary temporary taxes had to gain the approval of the House of Commons. The levying of tolls on the fur trade, one of the main sources of Novgorod taxation, was the big exception to monarchial control of finances. That was also kept under the control of the House of Commons.

Only the House of Boyars could appoint the Tysyatskys, the thousandmen, originally a militia commander, but now a judge who oversaw lower secular court cases that were not under the authority of the monarch. However their choices had to be approved by the King, who also held the right to dismiss them without cause. However all the boyar members of the House were known as Sumbouloi, a Greek word meaning adviser or councilor. The title, being Greek, was considered to be quite prestigious, and the holders enjoyed special access to the King as compared to commoners.

Thus despite its Roman veneer, the Novgorodian kings had relatively little of the Roman Emperor’s absolute power. They controlled the army, most taxes except the biggest, and oversaw the courts and foreign affairs. But to actually make laws, the support of the veche was needed. Besides that, the King never ruled alone. The continued idea of Lord Novgorod the Great, essentially the idea of the state as a person, also acted as a check on the King’s power. For the Lord was the first ruler of Novgorod. And the second ruler, the King, was expected to remain true to that character. And given that the people of Novgorod drew their wealth from trade, the most important parts of that character were justness and order.

Mikhail also centralized the new Kingdom of Novgorod, which was henceforth to be more than just the city itself and some other stuff. The local towns and surrounding districts were ruled by local governors appointed by the King and approved by the House of Boyars. The direct method of rule also helped to tighten Novgorod’s control of the provinces after the Lithuanian union and conquests in Estonia and Pronsky turned the state into a true territorial empire. To the north the Ugric tribes were not ruled directly, but instead paid regular tribute to Novgorod.

Unlike in Pronsk, serfdom was not that common in the Kingdom of Novgorod. Again in an attempt to emulate the Romans, Mikhail deliberately broke up boyar estates (many of the boyars had opposed Mikhail’s reforms, leading an abortive revolt in 1397), establishing peasants as free landholders in addition to the already existing ones. Mikhail’s army was largely of peasant stock, and he used the free peasants to give the Novgorodian army a powerful corps of infantry, often armored in mail and equipped with axes or halberds. While the boyars were responsible for serving as cavalry in the army, the power lay with the stout infantry, which helped Mikhail to ensure that the boyars also paid their fair share of agricultural taxes.

For the sake of clarification, it should be noticed that in recent historical thinking, the term Pronsky serfdom is coming under increasing attack. Pronsky land ownerships was based on a series of large landowners who rented pieces of their estates to peasant tenants, unlike the series of independent smallholders common in Novgorod and Rhomania. Due to Pronsk's undeveloped economy compared to those two states, much and sometimes all of the rent was in the form of labor services, giving it a much more feudal flavor compared to Roman/Novgorodian renter-leaser relationships. Pronsky peasants could leave whenever they so desired and were not tied to the land. When a great landowner sold some of his estate to another great landowner, the peasants came with, the main reason why the term serfdom is still used so frequently. The peasants simply transferred their contractual obligations to the new owner.

Lithuania was united to Novgorod by the person of the monarch, but there was still ample interaction between the two halves of the union. Novgorodians and Lithuanians regularly intermarried, the armies frequently fought side by side against Teutonic Knights and Poles and later against Tatars and Pronsky. Also Lithuanian grain fed Novgorod’s fifty thousand inhabitants. The power of the nobility was stronger in Lithuania than in Novgorod. While the Grand Prince of Lithuania had control of the capital of Vilnius, whose court was held in Lithuanian, and estates throughout the realm, most Lithuanian governors were drawn from the aristocracy. Also in Lithuania the lower classes had much less political power, although that was starting to change at this time as Lithuanian merchants trading in iron and grain rose in economic status.

The Novgorodian-Lithuanian economy was based both on agriculture and trade, with the latter dominating in Novgorod and the former in Lithuania. The primary export was fur, but flax, salt, honey, and iron were also major exports. In Lithuania and the southern Novgorodian domains, grain production was also respectable, allowing the state to be a small grain exporter.

Unlike its Roman model, Novgorod-Lithuania was not very urbanized. Novgorod itself was far in the lead, but it was the only city that would have even moderately impressed Romans. The five largest cities were as follows:
Novgorod: 50,000
Polotsk: 22,000
Kiev: 20,000
Pskov: 14,000
Smolensk: 11,000
By comparison, Vilnius (usually known as Vilno by non-Lithuanians): 8,000 Note the concentration of large urban centers in the Novgorodian part of the Union. Both Polotsk and Kiev, Lithuania's greatest cities, were much more Russian than Lithuanian in character.

Despite the distance, Roman influence could be spotted. A true gentleman had to be able to speak, read, and write in three languages, Russian, Lithuanian, and Greek, while a good civil servant should be fluent in the first two. A few enterprising Roman scholars had come up north over the last century, but knowledge of Greek, as much as it was valued, remained relatively limited. Constantinople was more a city of myth, known as Tsargrad.

Novgorod had looked to the west, toward its trading opportunities in the Baltic and the Hanseatic League, of which it was a member. Novgorod-Lithuania however looked more to the south. In the halls of Novgorod, bards told tales of Kievan Rus. Besides the desire to draw closer to their co-religionists, strong in a state born out of crusades (the resurgent Roman Empire had caused most of Europe’s crusading energy to focus on the Baltic, a terrible crucible from which had been forged the Novgorodian-Lithuanian kingdom), there were also economic factors.

As towns in Novgorod and Lithuania grew out of the vigorous trade networks in place, there was a need for more grain-growing land, which could be most easily acquired to the south. Also there was a desire to trade directly with the Romans. The Baltic was a major market for Roman silk and jewelry, which was extremely expensive because of the distance. If the Novgorodians could revive Kievan Rus (a dream given solid form by Lithuanian control of Kiev) and restore the old trade routes along the great rivers, they could make a huge amount of money.

Novgorod-Lithuania was excellently equipped for such a task. The combination of the two large states gave the King/Grand Prince access to a wide array of troops, allowing the armies to use effective combined arms tactics. Along Samogitian axemen stood Novgorodian halberdiers, Tatar horse archers, and heavily armored boyar cavalry and Lithuanian knights fighting in the Polish fashion. Roman influence was most obvious in this area as their military ranks abounded. Strategos, tourmarch, and dekarchos were all used. The main exception was the title of droungarios, the commander of a hundred, which never seemed to agree with Russian tongues.

Novgorod was the stronger half of the union. More wealth was concentrated there due to a stronger commercial and manufacturing sector. While Lithuania did produce a lot of its armor, Novgorod was where cannons were manufactured. Originally cannons had been imported from Moravia, but they had been used to create a native gun industry. While one should definitely learn Lithuanian, Russian was the common tongue. Lithuania got its Orthodoxy from Novgorod, and although the liturgy was done in Lithuanian, there was little practical difference between Russian and Lithuanian Orthodoxy. The metropolitan of Kiev was almost always a Russian and he was the ecclesiastical head of the Lithuanian church, not the archbishop of Vilnius.

Thus by the time the Council of Kings was convened in Targoviste, Novgorod-Lithuania had clearly become the second most powerful Orthodox state, after the Roman Empire, and was one of the great powers of Europe, even if yet its presence had not been felt west of the Oder. While there were strong Greek and Lithuanian influences, it was above all a Russian state. For alongside the dream of restoring the trade routes of Kievan Rus was also the dream of restoring the unity of Russia held during that time. The Romans had recovered from the disasters of the early 1200s and restored their old, great empire. Now it was the turn of the Russians.

A Rebirth of Glory: The Kingdom of Georgia in the Late Middle Ages

After the death of Queen Tamar the Great in 1213, the Kingdom of Georgia fell on unhappy times. While to the west the Empire of Nicaea grew and prospered, both the Seljuk Turks and the Georgians felt the terrible might and wrath of the Mongols. Georgia lost the empire she had built up over the past decades and was forced to become a client of the Il-Khans in 1246. However even the territories left to Georgia fractured, provinces revolting to become independent states, a process supported by the Il-Khans as it gave them a series of weak vassals rather than one potentially powerful client. The nadir came in 1259, when the kingdom itself was split in two, with the Kingdom of Georgia remaining as a shadow of its former self alongside the Kingdom of Imeretia.

David VI (the Clever) Bagrationi was the first king of Imeretia. He worked tirelessly to weaken Mongol influence over his land, building relations with the Blue Horde and the Mamelukes. However his greatest diplomatic coup came in 1287, when his daughter Tamar married the future emperor Manuel II Laskaris in exchange for ceding all Georgian claims on pre-1204 Roman territory. It substantially boosted his prestige amongst the Georgian nobility, as he was now the father-in-law to the man who would one day become the preeminent monarch in Orthodoxy. His granddaughter would take the Roman throne as Empress Anna I. Unfortunately for David, he died before he saw his work bear fruit.

It was his son Konstantin I who took the throne in 1293 that saw his father’s dream come true. The strain on the Il-Khanate of standing firm against the Mamelukes, the Blue Horde, the White Horde, Chagatai and now the reviving Roman Empire proved too much for the Mongol state. In 1292 the Khan Oljeitu was assassinated in Isfahan by a Persian nobleman, throwing the state into chaos. Oljeitu’s attempts to wring more taxes and men out of every available source had earned him a great many enemies. When a civil war over the succession erupted, many of the local governors in the Il-Khanate took the opportunity to try and grab their independence.

Konstantin did take the opportunity to expand his holdings in Georgia, but also sent a contingent of two thousand soldiers to aid his brother-in-law’s father Ioannes IV Laskaris in his re-conquest of Anatolia. The Georgians (at this point more properly called Imeretians) fought bravely and were given pride of place in the victory celebration in Constantinople in 1300, where the famous phrase ‘an age of miracles’ was coined by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Roman capture of Anatolia further destabilized the situation in the Il-Khanate as Osman and his Turks poured eastward, wresting Mesopotamia from its Mongol overlords. As the lands between the Caucasus and the Indus continued into chaos, Konstantin struck. Over a period of five years from 1301-1306 he reclaimed Tbilisi, Samtskhe, and Nakhichevan and crushed a revolt by his younger brother Mikeli concentrated in Racha and Upper Imeretia.

By the time he was done, Konstantin had restored the unity of the pre-Mongol Georgian kingdom. In a massive ceremony, he publicly relocated his court from Kutatisi (which in Georgian eyes assumed a Nicaea-like significance) to Tbilisi. Once that was done, he set about reorganizing the Georgian state so that such an event could never happen again, which truly earned him the title “Konstantin the Great”. His source of inspiration was his neighbor to the west, the Roman Empire, now in control of virtually all of Anatolia and eyeing Cyprus and Antioch.

Because of his conquests and crushing of political enemies, Konstantin had a massive amount of land at his disposal, much like the early Laskarid Emperors. With those estates, he set about creating a tagma-theme system identical to the one in the Empire. Originally the focus was on cavalry, Konstantin creating special estates for heavy melee cavalry and horse archers.

However one aspect of improving his army was recruiting drill dekarchoi from the Romans. Many older soldiers there who had retired in Anatolia got new jobs training Georgian soldiers, bringing with them their knowledge of Roman combined arm tactics and military treatises. Their influence spurred the creation of infantry estates as well. Both infantry and cavalry took part in required review sessions, at which time the soldiers received cash payments paid by the king’s own estates, which remained sizeable, taxes on gold mines, and tolls on caravans.

The culmination of the Romanization of the Georgian military came in 1326, the year before Konstantin’s death, where the basic unit of the Georgian army became the tagma. Georgian tagma were organized on the combined arms principle like the Romans, although they were much weaker in light cavalry (the Georgians could not draw on the mass of Anatolian Turks available to the Romans as Turkopouloi). These tagmata, because of the smaller population base of Georgia, only numbered five thousand strong each. Aside from that, their organizational structure was identical to Roman tagma despite the distaste of some because of its Mongol-based structure. As of 1435, the Kingdom of Georgia could field a total of five tagmata, based in the districts of Abkhazia, Imeretia, Guria, Kakheti, and Tashiri.

Konstantin was succeeded by his son Giorgi V “the Magnificent”. Georgia remained at peace for most of his reign, with only a few skirmishes with the Blue Horde and the Qara Koyunlu to mar it. His epithet is due to his diplomatic, economic, and cultural achievements. When his cousin Anna I Laskaris re-founded the University of Constantinople in 1330, he made sure that Georgian students studied there from the beginning. Georgian tradition states that the first student enrolled at Constantinople actually was a Georgian.

He also reformed the law code, built a respectable series of roads and aqueducts (with the aid of Roman architects and Roman-educated Georgians) to improve trade and urban life, and negotiated with the Mameluke Sultans, securing the restoration of several Georgian monasteries in the Holy Land as well as the right of passage for pilgrims. He also encouraged caravans to pass through Georgian territory on their way to Trebizond, building up a series of inns at fifteen mile intervals alongside the roads he built and refurbished. The Georgian tetri was revitalized during this time, and the silver currency was given the ultimate tribute when it was accepted as legal tender which could be used to pay taxes in the Roman Empire, rated at a value of four tetri for three stavrata (silver coins worth one twentieth of a hyperpyron). His death day on December 2 in 1346 is still considered an evil day in Georgia.

Giorgi was succeeded by his son Alexei I, his name showing the sizeable Greek influence on Georgian society. Besides soldiers, many Greek educators and artisans eventually ended up in the Georgian kingdom, significantly strengthening it with their knowledge and expertise. Greek was considered essential for a gentleman, and the Georgian diplomatic service prided itself on its exquisite Greek which sometimes drew compliments from Constantinople. In 1350, his younger sister married Nikephoros Komnenos Laskaris, the firstborn son of Anna I.

Art and architecture, already influenced by Roman methods, grew more Greek, with a church of Aghia Sofia completed in 1358 that was a deliberate (although much smaller) imitation of Justinian’s church. Several new monasteries sprang up at the time, which played a sizeable economic role in developing marginal lands for agriculture. The Black Death did slow the process down and spurred many Georgians to emigrate to the Roman Empire. However the diffusion of Roman medical knowledge helped Georgia’s population base to start recovering at a respectable rate.

Under Vakhtang III, who came to the throne in 1369, Georgia once more began to stir. It was said that Konstantin restored the Georgian Kingdom, Giorgi the Georgian purse, Alexei the Georgian soul, and Vakhtang the Georgian Empire. Admittedly it was modest compared to what was to come, but the achievement was still impressive. In 1378-1380 he reduced Ossetia into vassalage. A decade later he forced their ethnic brothers in Alania proper to kneel as well. Wisely he incorporated them into his army, finally giving the Georgians a good arm of light cavalry.

Thus equipped he turned south, hammering with fire and sword the lands of the Muslims. Here he made no attempt to conquer, but merely to plunder as thoroughly as possible. In this he was given monetary aid by the Romans, smarting over the recent conquest of Armenia by the Ottomans. While the attacks are not directed against the Ottomans themselves, the chaos from the border drew in many of the northern Turkmen of Mesopotamia into the conflict. One of the early grievances between the Turkmen and Baghdad was that the latter provided no aid in the struggle against the Georgian chevauchees.

Vakhtang died in 1394, fortunately for the Georgian state. He was succeeded by David VII, who was far more peaceful than his father. As a result, the army of Georgia and Timur never crossed swords, sparing the Kingdom much potential destruction. It was in fact a Georgian guardsman who saved Timur from an Ottoman assassin in 1403. As its neighbors to the south were ravaged and conquered by the Lord of Asia, Georgia remained untouched.

Besides good relations with Timur, David’s main gift to his country was turning Georgia into an exporter of military equipment, which would become a massive economic boon. Through the use of subsidies and special contracts for supplying the tagma troops, he was able to build up the industry. The first major customer was the Genoese, who wanted more armor for their soldiers as they were concerned by the growing power of Venice in Maria of Barcelona’s realm. Manuel Doukas, Emperor of Trebizond, was the second major customer, using Georgian equipment to help outfit the new formations he created during the War of the Five Emperors.

In 1411 David was succeeded by the current monarch, Konstantin II. His great achievement was the further expansion of both the Georgian armament industry and the empire. After the death of Timur, his empire collapsed and the Georgians turned with full force upon the Qara Koyunlu. With Persia in chaos and a battered and more distant Ottoman Empire, from which Georgia was shaded partially by Roman Armenia, the goal this time was to conquer.

When the dust cleared, the Georgian state had doubled in size. It had a ring of vassals stretching from Ossetia to Gher. Tabriz itself had been placed under siege, fired upon by Georgian cannons, although it was never taken. Shirvan had been completely annexed, with the town of Baku becoming a thriving port on the Caspian. Konstantin deliberately encouraged Silk Road merchants to use the Caspian by providing ferry services across it to Baku, then building a road and inn system from there to Trebizond.

By 1435, Georgia was a prosperous, mid-sized kingdom. Beside the armament industry, there were also half a dozen printing presses, a small woolen textile industry, and a minor ‘tourist’ trade. Besides the area around Trebizond, many wealthy Roman merchants and nobles set up small resorts along the Georgian Black Sea coast (due to the Georgian practice of discounting parts of the property tax to encourage Roman investment). This had a habit of bringing in much Roman currency which was used in the Georgian economy; the Roman folloi were a common sight.

Georgia also had several small cities, which although small by Roman standards were still respectable in size. The capital of Tbilisi was the largest with 27,000. It was followed by Ani with 20,000, Dvin with 15,000, Baku with 12,000, and Kutatisi with 11,000. There were also a half dozen smaller settlements in the 5-10,000 range. There was a small Jewish community in Ani and Dvin as well.

While the Georgians did have a number of Muslim vassals (although the various Qara Koyunlu chieftains were gradually converting to Orthodoxy) Muslim subjects were not nearly as well treated as they were in the Roman Empire. That was due to the fact that in Rhomania, it was the Catholics who had broken the state. In Georgia it was the Muslims (the Il-Khanate, although originally pagan had converted to Islam), and as a result all the animus that amongst Romans was directed on Catholics was directed by Georgians upon Muslims.

With the Ottoman advance into Persia, further Georgian expansion to the south seemed unfeasible. As a result Georgian eyes turned north toward the Blue Horde. There had once been a time when the Georgians trembled before the Mongol. It was now time for the Mongol to tremble before the Georgian.

* * *

1435: Alexei travels to the conference via the Dniestr river, accompanied by eight thousand heavy cavalry. When he enters the territory of the Blue Horde though, he is met by Vlad and his wagon laager with eleven thousand soldiers. On their halberds are spitted the heads of at least seven hundred Tatar riders, who had attempted to skirmish with the Vlach force when it crossed the Dniestr, only to be ripped apart by concentrated crossbow and culverin volleys, supported by the roar of fifteen handguns. The Vlach and Novgorodian armies travel the rest of the way to Targoviste together.

Vlad goes to great lengths to prepare his capital for the arrival of his illustrious guests. It is a tremendous honor for the young kingdom to host the Council of Kings, as it is being called. Both the Roman Empire and Novgorod-Lithuania are vast states, the greatest in Europe, while the Kingdom of Georgia is a respectable power in its own right, with a proud and illustrious history behind it.

All of the guests enter via the west gate, passing by the pedio tou polemou (field of war in Greek) where Vlad has his culverin crews out conducting their monthly exercises. They are escorted by the Vlach heavy cavalry, a very small force, but clad in burnished heavy chainmail and a plate cuirass and helm, their great mounts clad in silk cloaks and steel barding. The streets are lined with Vlach halberdiers, lightly armored but with weapons and helms shining.

Not all of Vlad’s demonstrations are martial. Each guest is presented with a fine, dark red, silken shirt, made of Chinese silk (which is more prestigious than Roman silk, and of higher quality although the gap is increasingly small). They dine with silver cutlery, ornately engraved by the finest Vlach silversmiths (emigrants from Transylvania who are quite skilled in working with silver because of the nearby Hungarian mines).

Of course the three other monarchs have to make a grand entrance as well. Konstantin comes with his guard corps of heavy cavalry, both horse and rider armored in burnished plate, with great red plumes atop their helmets, brandishing steel-tipped lances. A third are also equipped with composite bows, although the fifteen arrows each carries in their quiver display arrowheads covered in thin gold leaf. Alexei also comes with squadrons of heavy cavalry, the richest Novgorodian boyars and Lithuanian nobles, equipped with their finest panoply. The great wealth of Novgorod is on full display, as each horseman wears over their armor the finest ermine fur coat. Also with Alexei are the Russian archontes tou kampou (Greek-lords of the plain), the most illustrious and powerful units in the Novgorodian army. The greatest contingents are the formations called Sons of Alexander (Nevsky) and Sons of Mikhail (Shuisky).

Maintained as permanent, professional units, they are armored horse archers, the men and mounts protected by the finest Russian lamellar. Equipped with composite bows, light lances, maces, and sabers, highly disciplined and trained, they are the greatest horse archers in all of Christendom, matching skythikoi at range and besting them in melee. They are not dressed up in finery, but are attired in all their martial array, advancing in perfect lines; it is an intimidating sight.

Of course Demetrios is not be outdone. Despite Theodoros harping on the expense, his father travels with the whole of the Athanatoi, who receive new equipment free of charge, including a plate cuirass for the skythikoi and skutatoi. The heavy cavalry are given cloaks of the finest Roman silk lined with gold thread, and every officer from the rank of dekarchos on up wears a great gold ring on their sword hand. Four elephants, a gift from Cairo, each covered in silk cloth and a diamond-studded golden headdress, bring up the rear. Also Demetrios comes with a dozen copies of the Bible as gifts, a dual Greek and Vlach translation, with a velvet binding, laced with gold thread, adorned with four diamonds each and with a gold engraving on the cover showing the Last Supper of the Christ.

He also comes with Dragos cel Mare, who is specially attired. On his shield, which has a gold rim, is painted a great black two-headed dragon, looking like the Roman eagle minus the globe and crown. Two great swords are clutched in its talons and above its heads are the words “Drakos tes autokratorias” (Greek-dragon of the empire). The Vlach people are most excited to see him. The monarchs may be rich and powerful individuals, the elephants may be strange and wondrous creatures, but they cannot compare to a living legend.

Also at the summit are several representatives sent by the Kings of Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia. While the meetings are held behind closed doors where they are not allowed to attend, the Catholic delegates are there to observe what is going on, lest it herald something dire for their realms. The most illustrious is old Jan Hus, a professor of theology at the University of Prague, renowned for his learning and his fierce opposition to the Bavarian Emperors.

The sight that Jan Hus and his co-religionists see is a terrifying one. For as the monarchs meet, the best troops in all of Orthodoxy drill outside of Targoviste, watched by hordes of Vlach children. The sheer discipline and precision of the troops as they relocate culverins and loose volleys of arrows while at the gallop is ominous as target dummies collapse with hundreds of arrows in them or disintegrate when struck by culverin shot. Jan Hus, although not a military man, is extremely impressed, wondering that heretic nations could be so powerful with such fine troops.

The notion that it is so they might chastise Catholic kingdoms for their sins is not one that appeals to him, as Orthodox arms have not often been directed to the west; it is Islam that has mostly suffered from Orthodox might, from Morocco to the Volga. His conclusion is that perhaps Orthodoxy is not so heretical after all, and during the later half of the conference he spends most of his time speaking with the Bishops of Targoviste and Nicaea. When he returns from the council, he begins a series of criticisms against the Catholic church which are heavily shaped by Orthodox theology. The most prominent and repeated is his rejection of the pope acting like the monarch of the church; he much prefers the Orthodox model where the Patriarch of Constantinople is merely a first among equals.

The Orthodox monarchs are concerned with the east however. Despite Jabbar Berdi’s efforts, many of the Tatar chieftains are unwilling to answer to Sarai (in large part due to Roman subsidies) while others are conducting raids on the Blue Horde’s neighbors. Just before coming to the conference, Konstantin had orchestrated a battle against such raiders, ambushing them as they attempted to storm the Caucasus, hemming them in with rockslides and then flattening them with heavy infantry charging down the mountainside. He left twenty six hundred dead on the field.

However as the conference takes place, ominous news arrives from Roman agents in the Blue Horde. Jabbar Berdi has been appealing directly to the tribesmen, going around the tribal chieftains who have been bribed by Constantinople. Appealing to their desire for glory by his constant references to the old glory days of the Mongols, he has managed to win the loyalty of many of the tribesmen.

Jabbar Berdi’s position is further bolstered when several of the chieftains are killed, their caches of Roman gold confiscated and a sizeable cut sent to the Khan. With that coin he is able to win the support of more vacillating tribes; as these had been the ones conducting raids on their Orthodox neighbors Jabbar promises that from now on the armies of the Horde will march only against the infidel, not against fellow Muslims as had been mostly the case for the last half century. The alarming news make it all the more imperative for the conference to succeed.

Greek is the common tongue of the monarchs, as all can speak it fluently, although both Alexei and Vlad have thick accents (particularly the latter). Konstantin’s Greek is flawless, speaking it like a Trebizondian. The initial proposal put forward by Demetrios is simple, a grand Orthodox alliance of the assembled nations for the purpose of dismembering the Blue Horde. All of them had been eyeing the Horde, but had been concerned with stepping on the toes of either Novgorod-Lithuania or the Roman Empire. By now both Novgorod and Pronsk have resolved their border issues with the Bonde and Perm respectively. There is initially an awkward moment after that when Konstantin wonders aloud why the Grand Prince of Pronsk is not present, even though his aid in such an endeavor is most useful.

The Grand Prince of Pronsk, Boris II, is dying. Although he inflicted serious wounds on the Blue Horde, it did the same to him. He led a cavalry troop that ravaged the environs of Sarai but was wounded by a Tatar arrow in the process. It has never really healed and now the resulting health problems will kill him. His only heir is his daughter Anastasia, who is currently married to Alexei I.

The proposed alliance is easily accepted, but it is the details that prolong the conference, how many troops are each party to provide and how the territory is to be partitioned. It is Vlad that suggests that the subject of partition be taken up after the victory is won, not beforehand. But due to the alarming and rapid revival of Sarai’s fortunes, the monarchs are agreed that if possible the entire Horde must be destroyed.

While the conference is taking place, Alexei receives a proposal from the leading boyars of Pronsk. Boris is dead, and in his will his son-in-law is to inherit the Grand Principality of Pronsk. The boyars are willing to not contest the inheritance, provided their conditions are met. Firstly, Alexei will not interfere with the rights and privileges they now possess. Secondly, a House of Boyars must be set up to assist Alexei in ruling Pronsk, with powers equal to that of the Novgorodian veche but with only boyar members. Thirdly, rumors have reached them of the conference’s purpose and they want in on the action. Alexei, his eyes glittering with the sight of a dream fulfilled, accepts all the conditions without hesitation.

The meetings had been interrupted, but now the King of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Lithuania and Pronsk, is eager to push forward. In the end, it is decided that the allies will launch their attack in April of the coming year. Vlachia will contribute fifteen thousand troops, Georgia twenty thousand, and Novgorod-Lithuania-Pronsk and the Roman Empire thirty thousand each.

1436: As planned, each of the signatories of the Targoviste agreement launch their attacks in April. Vlachia invades the Ukraine from the west via Bessarabia while Georgian troops swarm north from the Caucasus mountains. Meanwhile the Novgorodian soldiers sweep south all along their long frontier, but with the primary thrust directed down the Volga with the planned target of Sarai.

The main Roman attack is based from Theodoro with the goal of overrunning the Crimean peninsula. However at the same time, another Roman army is to move up the Don river, with the primary goal of securing the Don watershed and the secondary target of beating the Novgorodians to Sarai. Whoever captures the Horde capital will be in a great position when it comes time to divvy up the spoils. However that operation requires the cooperation of the Genoese colony at Tana. Theodoros proposes a demonstration by some of the purxiphoi; Demetrios wants to try something a bit more diplomatic. His proposal, which is accepted, is that Demetrios will drop the 2,000 hyperpyra that Genoa must pay annually for Galata in exchange for using Tana as a supply depot so long as hostilities continue between Constantinople and Sarai.

With a supply base secure, the attack is launched. While Demetrios himself commands the Crimean thrust, the invasion of the Don river valley is led by Pavlos Doukas, a cousin of Manuel. He is one of a new class of officers, one who basks in the prestige of being part of the army that bested Timur but is too young to have actually fought against the warlord. He is the strategos of the Opsician tagma, posted there in an effort to conciliate the eastern Anatolians who are enamored with the Doukas family because of Manuel.

Certain that Romans can overcome all odds, Pavlos races up the river, doing little to secure his flanks or fulfill his primary assignment, focusing instead on the glory that would accrue to him as the conqueror of Sarai. With ten thousand men he charges toward the Horde capital, unaware that the Khan Jabbar Berdi is gathering his troops, ready to fall on the isolated Roman column with almost three times that number. While his strategy forces him to abandon the outlying regions to the Orthodox Alliance, Jabbar hopes that if he can inflict a sizeable defeat on the most powerful of his adversaries, it might scare Vlachia and Georgia enough to cause them to bow out, allowing him to turn with full force upon Novgorod before the Romans can regroup.

From what little news he is getting of Pavlos, Demetrios is now seriously alarmed. Returning to the Crimea has been bad for his health, so he dispatches Dragos cel Mare up the Don river with a flying column of eight hundred cavalry and five hundred mounted infantry to order Pavlos to rein in his advance. Dragos eventually meets up with the Opsician tagma near the ruins of the town of Voronezh destroyed by the Mongol invasion, just south of where the Voronezh river flows into the Don. There the Opsicians have forded the river to prepare for the final assault on Sarai itself.

It is then that Jabbar Berdi launches his attack, when the Roman troops have their back against the Don, their artillery on the other side of the river. The Tatars press in close, making sure the Romans cannot disengage and retreat back across the ford. The missile troops do their best to keep the horsemen away but they are vastly outnumbered by the twenty nine thousand Horde riders. The skutatoi can do nothing but remain fixed in their defensive formations, largely immune to the missile volleys but unable to move. Dragos is unable to launch any of his signature charges as the kataphraktoi and heavy koursores are too slow to catch the horse archers in the open terrain, while the light koursores would be torn to shreds by the missile volleys. For now, despite their massive numerical disparity, the Roman army holds, but once they run out of missiles and endurance, they will be destroyed.

The Dragon and the Bear: The Battle of Voronezh

June 3, 1436

The Tatars were getting bolder. Closer they came, swirling in front of the Roman lines, pouring a black humming wave of arrows into the armored ranks of the skutatoi. The akrites, out of javelins, had already retreated behind that protective wall, although not before mauling the first squadrons of Tatar horsemen to enter into their reach. But with that screen gone, the horsemen drew ever closer, trying to ram arrows through the thick shields and armor of the skutatoi. Some of the toxotai droungoi were actually firing their arrows between the heads of the skutatoi, the enemy was so close.

Less than twelve thousand Romans versus twenty nine thousand Tatars. They couldn’t retreat in their situation; the Tatars would shred them if they tried to fall back across the ford. If they could make it across the river, they’d be safe. The artillery was being set up to cover the ford, but it could not fire across the Don. There was too much risk of hitting the Roman lines instead, and the last thing he needed was a cast iron cannonball careening through the hedge of skutatoi keeping the foe at bay.

Dragos gritted his teeth; he could feel the onset of another headache. He really did not need it now, but they had never gone away since that day at Lodeve. The thought of longbows made him look to the center, where one corps of archers was hunkered down behind their pavises, not returning the bolts. The others had been given free rein to shoot back, no longer firing in volleys but instead at each archer’s best speed, to help keep the enemy away, an endless call of whistling death. But that was not enough. One Tatar rider, either bolder or dumber than the rest, charged in, nimbly loosing his own missile.

Half a dozen arrows slammed him out of the saddle as his horse stumbled, five more in its flanks, crashing into the front rank. Two skutatoi went down under the impact as a Tatar squadron that was much farther off poured arrows into the small hole. There were a series of large clunks as most of them bounced harmlessly off the steel lamellar and one plate cuirass; Opsician troops were amongst the best equipped Roman soldiers. Several shrieks of pain showed that still some had found flesh.

An arrow bounced harmlessly off his own plate cuirass. Dragos made an exaggerated yawning gesture as another skipped off the steel lamellar protecting his left shoulder. He heard a laugh behind him to the left. He glanced back to see Antemios Mouzalon, the first tourmarch of the Opsician tagma, and the second in command to Pavlos Doukas. The strategos responsible for getting the tagma into this mess was currently off his horse, cowering behind a pavise shield.

“Do you want to take a nap, strategos?” Antemios asked. “I think it’d be okay. We can drive off these buggers while you’re sleeping.” A couple of the nearby men laughed.

“No, that won’t be necessary, tourmarch.” An arrow buzzed past the officer’s ear; he didn’t even flinch.

The men were tiring; his keen ear could notice that some of the archers’ volleys were slackening, even though they should still have a third of their arrows. But their morale was good; if they could retreat, it wouldn’t turn into a rout.

Dragos flicked his reins, trotting over to where his one fresh corps of archers was stationed. “Richard Hawkwood, prepare your men. On my command, you are to loose fifteen volleys at your best speed, no more, no less.”

The grizzled English knight nodded, then turned and bellowed, “All right, you miserable maggots, get ready to kill things!” The five hundred longbowmen of the Thulioi, the name of their regiment, stood up, their pavise handlers covering them with their shields. Based on his own suggestion to Demetrios, the Roman Empire had again begun the practice of hiring foreign mercenaries, in this case English longbowmen who had been decommissioned at the end of the Ninety Years War. While using foreigners rather than native troops went against 150 years of military practice, it was considered acceptable so long as foreigners remained only a small portion of the army. The five hundred here were half of the number hired; the remainder were in the Crimea.

Dragos looked over at Antemios and then pointed at Pavlos “Get that thing on his horse, we’re charging.” Now that the Tatars were getting really close, Dragos’ plan was now going into effect. The longbowmen, previously unused and thus a complete surprise, would stun that army with their deadly shafts. There weren’t enough to shock it for long, but that was all he needed. As soon as the Thulioi were done, all of the kataphraktoi and skythikoi would sally. It wasn’t likely they’d kill many of the enemy, who were far faster, but the Tatars would have to concentrate on them, giving the rest of the army a chance to escape across the Don.

“We’re charging?” Antemios asked, now on the ground dragging the quivering Pavlos to his feet.

“Pavlos and I are charging. You’re to lead the retreat.”

“Shouldn’t you do tha...”

“No. This charge has to work, which means I need to be in command.” Antemios opened his mouth to protest. “Do your duty, tourmarch, and let me do mine.” He nodded at Richard.

The English knight opened his mouth, sounding words that had never before been heard in Russia. “Longbowmen! Let fly!” The twang of bowstrings being let loose called out down along the line and five hundred whispers of death flew in the sky, the great shafts speeding upward. By the time they began to fall another flight had already sung out. The Thulioi weren’t aiming at the nearest Tatar riders, but at the ones in the second ranks. The close ones would be swept up in the charge; there was no point wasting arrows on them. The arrows struck.

Men and horses went down screaming. At that range, skutatoi would have been largely proof against even those great bows, but the Tatars were almost entirely light cavalry. The center of that great host reeled backward in disarray, even as the English loosed another volley, spearing more men and horses. The shriek of agonized horses, piercing, screaming, rose up from the plain as another flight of remorseless shafts sped down. Dragos looked out beyond the growing lake of carnage to the nine banners of the Khan, poles on top of which were circles, suspending black horsehair tails, a direct callback to the days of Genghis Khan himself. That was his target.

“Strategos! Look!” It was Antemios, his arm stretching out to point in the distance. Dragos followed it, beyond the Khan’s banners, fluttering in the breeze, to a series of three small hillocks behind the Tatar line, where a thick bar of horsemen were cresting. Above them flew more banners, emblazoned with a black bear and a white armored horseman.


* * *


“God’s wounds,” Alexei I, King of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Lithuania and Pronsk, muttered. The army of the Khan was almost enveloping the small Roman force, although its center had been badly bludgeoned. From his position on the hill, he could see the Roman dragon readying his cavalry charge, unlike the Khan who in his zeal to swarm the Romans had neglected to secure his rear. Unlike the dragon’s usual charges, it would fail. These light riders were not pinned against some obstacle or blinded by battlefield dust clouds.

Alexei had received news of the Roman strategos’ dash at Sarai some weeks ago. The trap he had fallen into so easily was obvious. If he’d paid any attention to the dispatches from his allies, he would have know that they were facing minimal opposition at best, a few thousand riders here and there, meaning that the Khan had concentrated his armies, almost certainly near Sarai. So he had raced ahead with a column of cavalry to help the Romans extricate themselves, receiving news on the way that the Dragon himself had arrived to take command of the exposed Roman force.

The situation was critical. Because of the need for speed, Alexei only had eight thousand riders with him, meaning that the Khan’s army outnumbered the allies by almost fifty percent. But those eight thousand were Novgorod’s and Lithuania’s finest sons, archontes tou kampou, lords of the plains. Between these men and the Dragon, it should be enough.

hero8l.jpg

A reenactor of a Novgorodian archonte c. 1410. By the time of the battle of Voronezh, many of the archontes, including all of the elite formations commanded by Alexei, the Sons of Mikhail and Sons of Alexander, were armored completely in steel lamellar, making them immune to Tatar arrows except at point-blank range.​

He nudged his stallion in the side, trotting down the line, the sunlight glinting off his helm. “Sons of Alexander! Sons of Mikhail! Do you know what we’re going to do to those Tatar scum? We’re going to take our lances and shove them up their bony asses, that’s what! We’re going to rip off their heads and use them as chamber pots! We’re going to stomp them into paste and use it to grease the wheels of our wagons!”

He turned around to face the enemy, wavering in indecision about how to respond to this new threat. He pulled his lance from where it was strapped to his back. “Archontes, prepare to charge!” The trumpets sounded, the men pulling out their bows. Alexei wasn’t a horse archer; these men were. Their lances would be preceded by waves of arrows. He lifted his lance upward, stabbing toward the sun. “For Holy Mother Russia!” Eight thousand voices replied, the trumpets sounding, the banners blowing in the wind, and Alexei swung his lance forward. Eight thousand hooves slammed into the ground as one, the drumbeat of a nation, the drumbeat of a nation regaining its honor and its soul. The drumbeat of the Rus, once again sounding in the north.


* * *


A huge grin leaped onto Dragos’ face as the Novgorodians began their advance. They were smart, coming forward at a trot, saving the exertion of the gallop until they were almost upon the enemy. The Tatars began shifting to face the Novgorodians. They would engage in missile combat; fighting archontes in melee would be suicide. But since the Novgorodian horse were so well armored, they’d have to shoot their arrows at close range to have a chance of penetrating. And the charge was aiming directly at the Khan, causing the Tatar horse to concentrate in front of the direct center of the Roman line. They were ignoring the Romans, who had remained fixed behind their wall of infantry. But penned between two forces, focusing on the Novgorodians, the Tatars were a perfect target for the Roman heavy cavalry. They wouldn’t be able to maneuver out of the way.

“Megale Aloga!” he yelled. In Greek it meant great horses, the blanket term applied to both kataphraktoi and skythikoi together. “Prepare to charge!” All along the line, the trumpets sounded, the banners waving, signaling the men. The infantry began moving, shortening their lines, opening gaps through which the cavalry could move. Once beyond the infantry hedge, the heavy cavalry would reform their lines and attack. “Soldiers of the Empire! Advance!”

The horses started moving, Dragos reaching over to tug Pavlos’ horse forward. A well trained war horse, braver than its master, it followed its brothers as they swept forward. The Novgorodians were shooting now, the Tatars replying in kind as their foe leapt to a canter, closing the gap. Some of the riders, paying attention to the rear, starting spilling away from the mass of horse, trying to get out from between the onrushing sweep of heavy cavalry. Some squadrons peeled away, discharging missiles as they moved, the skythikoi responding in kind.

The Romans were fully formed now, the trumpets sounding again. They too advanced at a trot, the skythikoi sending out volleys of whistling death every six steps. The Novgorodians were drawing close, close enough that some of the Tatar arrows were spilling men from their saddles. The archontes leapt to the gallop, loosing one last arrow and then unfurling their lances. In the front a great figure in ornate burnished plate led the way, arrows bouncing off him. Dragos gestured at the nearest trumpeter, and moments later Rhomanion’s finest also leapt to the attack.

He felt young. The wind blowing through the holes in his helm, the buzz of excitement from both horses and riders as they leapt to the gallop, the smell of sweat, the snapping of the banners. He could feel it all, and he smiled. As the black earth of the Ukraine flew underneath the feet of his horse, he smiled, and remembered.

The first time he had ever mounted a horse, fearfully glancing between the worried, furrowed face of his mother and the snorting black beast underneath him. He was four. And then his father gently opened his small boyish hand and placed the rough leather reins in them. He remembered how he had gingerly wrapped his fingers around them, and felt the fear fade away as the horse quieted. It felt right.

He remembered Caesarea. The screams of the dying as Timur’s hordes beat against the right wing, here and there breaking through. And how he had rode them down, coating the tip of his lance in their blood, a small measure of revenge for the butchery of Sebastea. The numerous skirmishes of the War of the Five Emperors, the sickening stench of civil war. And then Manzikert, Great Manzikert, Glorious Manzikert. The day the demon had been banished, the day Anatolia had been made safe, the day he had become a legend, the day he had become a dragon.

It had been a long time since then. He had been a strategos since, directing campaigns and armies, but never again leading a cavalry charge in battle. He had won many a battle against many a foe. But his legend had been made on that dusty field at Manzikert, where in the open he had caught the enemy light cavalry with his heavy horses and crushed them. It was that charge that had made him a dragon, not Lodeve, not Ameglia, but Manzikert.

And so as he raced ahead in a great cavalry charge, just as he had done in Armenia so many years ago, he laughed. The headache was gone. He felt young again; he felt right again. No longer a tired old man with a chronic headache. He laughed again, still, the hooves of his horse pounding at the ground, once more the legend, once more the dragon. And that too would become part of the legend, the dragon laughing as he charged.

The Tatar horse were swerving, trying to get out on the onrushing clutches of the heavy cavalry. But they had to move sideways to escape both, and that took a little extra time, time they did not have. The first to strike was the Romans, Dragos gutting a Tatar rider with his lance. Although they had launched last, they had less distance to travel and the Tatars had not been expecting a sally. Two thousand Romans versus twenty nine thousand Tatars, long odds, but they did not fight alone. Their brothers in the faith stood with them. Thirty seconds later the lance of Alexei tasted a Tatar face.


* * *

“I didn’t know he could be killed,” Antemios muttered. “After Lodeve we all just thought he was immortal.”

The King of Novgorod ran his fingers through his black beard and grunted as the two priests, one Roman and one Novgorodian, bent over the body, praying for the departed soldiers. Antemios didn’t think they’d be necessary. Once his helm had been removed, the face of Dragos cel Mare was peaceful, quiet, as if he were sleeping now that the Roman priest had closed his eyes.

It was only when one looked down that Antemios had seen how his commander had died. On the left side of his neck was a short but lethally placed gash. Some lucky rider had managed to slip their blade in a chink in the armor. It was not likely he had long enjoyed his victory. Blood and brain covered the dragon’s mace, its owner’s body surrounded by enemy dead.

Antemios glanced over at the labor detail standing nearby, fidgeting with their shovels and staring at the body of their former leader. “He’ll be buried here, with his men.” The leader of the detail nodded.

Alexei started. “Are you sure? I’d think he’d prefer to be laid to rest in Constantinople, or perhaps Smyrna.”

“Yes, your majesty, I’m sure. If he’d died of old age at home, he’d have been buried there. But a death in battle, he’d want to lie with his men.” He rasped, his throat constricting as tears clouded his eyes. “With fellow soldiers of the Empire.” He bent down, gently, reverently, nudging the mace out from the stiffening fingers that held it. “You’ve done your duty, Dragos cel Mare, Dragon of the Empire. Let it never be said otherwise.”


* * *



The battle of Voronezh is utterly decisive. The Khan is left dead on the field with almost thirteen thousand of his cavalry, the rest scattered to the wind, all nine of his banners captured. Besides the loss of the dragon, the Roman lose almost seventeen hundred men, while the Novgorodians have about nine hundred casualties. As the Roman force is battered while the Novgorodians lack siege equipment, Sarai is spared for a time.

But the damage to the Blue Horde from Voronezh goes far beyond the loss in riders, even in the loss of their Khan. The death of Jabbar Berdi, their deliverer, is utterly devastating to the morale of the young tribesmen on which he had built his rule. Listless and dismayed, they scatter, showing little of their martial vigor in the operations that follow. Many of them chose to flee, rather than defending their lands.

Their attitude is not helped by news from the west. The Vlachs mourn the loss of their hero, but two weeks after the battle of Voronezh Vlad Dracul drives seven thousand Tatar horsemen into the Dnieper River with well placed culverin volleys. The Vlach king symbolically washes his sword in the river after the battle, proclaiming ‘the dragon lives on, in our memories and in our children, for we are his kin, a people with the blood of dragons.’

The Romans end up retreating back to Tana, hearing news that Demetrios is in poor health. Thus it is the Georgians, Novgorodians, and Vlachs which overrun most of the Blue Horde, the Romans only taking the Crimean peninsula. The Georgians are actually the first to commence the siege of Sarai, but it is not until the arrival of heavier Novgorodian artillery (floated on barges down the Volga) that the city is taken. Sarai is burned to the ground, its people taken away as slaves in Georgia and Novgorod. What is left of the Horde after Voronezh and Sarai does not last long, many of the Tatars fleeing eastward across the Volga into the Khanate of Perm, significantly strengthening the sparsely populated state, now the only credible barrier between the Orthodox Alliance and northern Asia.

1437: The Alliance monarchs meet at Theodoro to discuss the partition of the Blue Horde, jointly occupied by their armies. The beginning of the summit is marred by reports of another Bulgarian raid across the border. King George II’s hold over his kingdom has, since the Vidin War, devolved into a bad joke, and many young Bulgarians, bored and well armed, have taken to fighting each other.

However when the Thracian tagma was assigned to the Crimea (as it was the closest, it cost less to ship it there, thus Theodoros pushed for assigning that tagma), many of them turned and starting attacking Roman settlements, a few forays probing the suburbs of Adrianople. The Constantinople archontate inflicted a sharp defeat on one party of raiders near Mesembria, but due to the lack of coordination and organization among the bands, it had little effect on slowing the attacks. Demetrios is thus eager to get the conference over so that he can deal with Bulgaria and his own health, which disagrees vehemently with the Ukraine.

The second reason that the Roman Empire does not get a great deal of territory from the Theodoro agreement is more embarrassing; its showing was not that good. In the one battle where Roman troops met more than three thousand Tatars, they nearly lost and would have been defeated had it not been for the arrival of the Novgorodian archontes. All of the other participants have the laurels from the defeats of at least three medium-sized Tatar forces (with Vlad’s victory on the Dnieper the largest engagement after Voronezh). All the Romans have are the trouncing of a few isolated detachments in the Crimea.

Vlachia gains all of the Ukraine west of the Dnieper river. Almost immediately Vlad begins the construction of a major port on top of a small Tatar village, naming the city Odessos as it is believed to be near the site of an ancient Greek colony. Georgia gains the Don and Volga rivers as its northwest and northeast borders respectively, with a small land frontier with Novgorod-Lithuania-Pronsk where the two rivers are the closest. The Roman Empire takes the rest of the Crimean peninsula, with Novgorod consuming the rest of the Horde, including some Black Sea coastline. Genoa’s colonies at Vospoda and Tana are in a diplomatic limbo while the talks take place, but in the end Genoa begins paying Tana’s protection money that had originally been sent to Sarai instead to Novgorod. In the interest of good relations, Demetrios waives the protection money for Vospoda.

Demetrios returns to Constantinople immediately after the conference. Despite the best efforts of Giorgios Doukas, he is very weak, constantly coughing. The warmer climate around Constantinople helps, so in May he travels to Smyrna to stay there in his old palace left from the War of the Five Emperors. Pavlos Doukas is summarily discharged, castrated for criminal incompetence, tonsured, and then exiled to a monastery in the Crimea. The severity for the punishment is because his actions led to the death of the Dragon. He is replaced by Antemios Mouzalon.

Plans are made for transferring two of the Anatolian cleisurai to the Crimea to bolster the archontate and the two cleisurai already there. To forestall protests, the Roman state pays all transport costs and waives the head taxes of the soldiers and their families for the next two years. Once the appropriate paperwork is issued, Demetrios remarking that now he wishes the printing press had never been invented, because now he is drowning in paperwork, final plans are made for dealing with Bulgaria.

An embassy is dispatched to Buda, as under the Treaty of Dyrrachium from the 1390s, the Roman Empire cannot annex any Bulgarian territory without Hungarian approval, a clause designed to maintain the Slavic state as a buffer between the two powers. With the independence of Vlachia though, Bulgaria’s role as a buffer state is gone. Andrew III realizes this and still involved in Germany, is eager to maintain good relations. His price arrives at Buda on July 14, three thousand cast iron cannonballs (of varying weights determined by Hungarian gunners), two hundred tons of gunpowder, and sixteen Roman fifty-pounders, all of the transport costs to Buda paid by Constantinople. For that, Andrew III allows the Romans to do whatever they desire to Bulgaria.

The Thracian and Optimates tagmata are to assemble at Adrianople, where they will meet up with the Imperial artillery stored at the Constantinople arsenals. The goal is nothing less than the complete subjugation of Bulgaria. The Macedonian tagma is also called up, but is assembled at Ochrid to watch the Serbian border. Two days after Andrew III’s acceptance arrives, the invasion begins.

The Bulgarian army by this point consists of little more than a few hundred of George’s retainers, who remain holed up in Trnovo with their monarch. However the Bulgarian people, organized in ad hoc bands, turn out in force, skirmishing with Roman detachments, snipping at the flanks, and harassing the supply lines. It is noted by the Roman officers that many of the Bulgarians, despite being poorly dressed and barely bathed, have rather new maces in their possessions. One month before the Roman tagmata and artillery crossed the border, a Venetian squadron of twelve cargo vessels docked in Varna, returning with holds full of Bulgarian grain. Twenty years ago that would have been normal, but after the Venetian War, the Serene Republic purchases most of its grain from Egypt.

Still the Bulgarian attacks are only annoying, not enough to stop the Roman advance which slowly and methodically takes town after town. The Romans though are also hampered by several days of bad rain which wash out the Bulgarian excuses for roads. Moving artillery is extremely difficult in these conditions, and it is impossible to budge the great bombards. On September 2, one three hundred pound gun, her crew, and the labor battalion assigned to try and move the monster, are ambushed and cut to pieces by Bulgarian raiders.

However through skill and sweat the labor battalions are able to get the smaller pieces moving, even as Alexandros Gabras, commander of the Thracian tagma and overall commander of the operation, moves on Trnovo. The city itself manages to hold out for twenty eight days through the bravery of the garrison, but its fortifications, not designed to defend against gunpowder artillery, are not so stout. When soldiers finally storm the city, King George II Asen throws off his royal regalia, yells “God forbid that I should be a king without a kingdom!”, and charges into the fray to die as a common soldier alongside his men.

With the fall of Trnovo, the Second Bulgarian Empire is at an end. The rest of the country is taken by the end of the year. It is decided by Demetrios and Theodoros that Bulgaria will not be annexed, but turned into two vassal states. A cooperative noble, Radomir Shishman, becomes Duke of Vidin, while Petar Radic becomes Duke of Varna. They rule the western and eastern halves of the former Bulgarian state respectively.

Both have to send their children to Constantinople to be educated, and are not allowed to conduct foreign relations with any state, including each other. The Bulgarian patriarchate is abolished, but the Bulgarian clergy and liturgy are left undisturbed, with a ruling made that only Bulgarian clergy can have sees in Bulgaria (this does not include the former parts of Bulgaria conquered during Nicene times). None of them have a rank higher than bishop though and have Greek superiors. Internal affairs are left entirely in the hands of the dukes, provided that the required tribute in grain is sent. To further Theodoros’ vision of turning Bulgaria into little more than a large granary for the Empire, sizeable numbers of Bulgarian artisans and their families, at least two hundred thousand, are relocated to settlements in the Anatolic and Coloneian themes, the most lightly populated themes in the Empire.

At the same time, a series of twenty eight small forts are established, covering the main Bulgarian roads and the Danube frontier. These are to be garrisoned by Roman tagma troops on intervals of six months each. A schedule is set up, designed to circulate amongst the tagmata of Europe, who approve of the opportunity for active duty bonuses.

There had been a few incidents in the Danube delta between Roman troops and Vlach soldiers. Prior to the construction of Odessos, the delta had been the major departure point for Vlach grain, with fierce competition between Bulgarians and Vlachs. However due to the need to keep most of their forces on the Hungarian borders, the Vlachs had made no attempt to wrest the area by force, even during Bulgaria’s anarchy. An agreement is made, whereby the border is established at the St. George distributor, the southernmost channel in the delta. While the Vlachs may place tolls on Greek merchant vessels sailing up the Danube on their side of the border (which does not include St. George itself), they are to allow Roman warships to pass without hindrance, provided that at least two days’ warning is given (that clause is present so that in the event of a Bulgarian revolt, the Roman navy can harry the insurgents from a second front).

But as one Orthodox state disappears, another is born. As the Roman armies laboriously trudge through Bulgaria, Alexei I is in Constantinople negotiating with the Roman Emperors. Like the Targoviste agreement, a consensus is quickly made; it is only the details that are difficult to reconcile. For what Alexei I wants, he gets rather cheaply, a halving on custom duties imposed on Roman sugar, silk, and jewelry.

He arrives at Kiev on August 11. Three days later, with the approval of his subjects (which he had made sure to get before going to Constantinople), he is crowned Alexei I, Megas Rigas, Great King of the Rus. The new crown is a gift from Demetrios, made by the finest goldsmiths and jewelers in the Empire. The negotiations in Constantinople was for the approval of the title, which in a sense is an elevation from King to Emperor.

It is not quite the equal of Basileus and remains outside the hierarchy of Roman titles (Alexei wanted a Greek title for increased legitimacy-the main difficulty in the negotiations was the creation of an appropriate Greek title that did not imply any sort of Russian claim on the Empire). However in Roman political ideology, the Roman Emperor remains the head of the family of monarchs, but the Megas Rigas is second in the hierarchy. The Holy Roman Emperor is demoted to third place with a quip by Demetrios, remarking that ‘a true Great King is better than a false Emperor’. Despite his title, the new state that Alexei creates is soon known to its people and the world not as the Kingdom of the Rus, but by another name, Russia.

1438: The birth of the Russian Empire has an immediate effect on the Pomeranian War, as a terrified Poland begins peace talks with Saxony in the city of Prague, the King of Bohemia acting as a mediator. At this point, the war is not going well for Saxony. Due to Andrew III’s desire to consolidate his hold over Austria, now entirely under his control, the armies of Hungary have not been pressing hard against Bavaria, allowing the Holy Roman Emperor to concentrate the bulk of his strength against Saxony. So far the armies of Saxony have been able to hold the line, but that is all they have been able to do. Meanwhile Poland has overrun over two thirds of Pomerania.

Originally the goal had been to claim all of the stricken Duchy, securing Poland’s hold over much of the southern Baltic coast. But the need to get troops to the eastern frontier now, lest the Russian bear get hungry, means that they will settle for Gdansk, the Polish name for Danzig. Reluctantly, the Saxon Duke Hans Leopold accepts. While he gets back most of the territory he lost, the most valuable portion by far is now in the hands of Poland.

Hans Leopold gathers his northern armies, unleashing them not upon Bavaria but upon Denmark. Profiting by the continual distraction of their major enemies and growing more ambitious, the Danes are now the masters of a sizeable swath of north-central Germany. By this point they have conquered Lubeck, Mecklenburg (which had attempted to break its vassalage and failed in 1435), and Hamburg, forced the rulers of Bremen, Oldenburg, Luneburg, Hoya, and Hannover to kneel as vassals, and are currently probing the Altmark.

Faced with the Saxon troops from Pomerania, grim-faced veterans with strong arms and large zweihanders and heavy crossbows, the Danish forays are quickly driven out of Altmark with much slaughter. Saxon troops spill into Luneburg, Hans Leopold pouring troops from southern Saxony into the fray as news arrives that Andrew III is once again on the move, invading Bavaria itself with forty thousand men and seventy guns, heading straight for Munich itself.

In Luneburg, the Saxon troops are able to inflict three defeats on small Danish detachments, all of which were outnumbered at least two to one. But before the Saxons can press their advantage, alarming news arrives from the south; Andrew III has made peace. The great army he led into Bavaria was not an attempt to conquer the duchy, but a great show of force to make the Emperor Conrad II come to terms.

Andrew III’s terms are simple. The Duchy of Austria will be signed over to the Kings of Hungary, to rule with no ties of vassalage to Munich. In exchange, Andrew will abandon his revived claim to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and more importantly will not use the thousands of cast iron cannonballs he has accumulated. With Andrew III’s well trained and disciplined host on the doorsteps of his capital, Conrad is forced to accept. Andrew returns to Vienna, proclaiming himself ‘by the Grace of God, King of Hungary and Duke of Austria and Transylvania.’

With the withdrawal of Hungary from the war, Saxony now stands alone. Its north German allies have been largely cowed or overrun by the Danes, while Bavaria’s German allies remain completely intact. Peace is quickly made with Denmark, with Saxony accepting all of the Danish conquests in Germany except for the Altmark (which was never captured, only occasionally raided).

The combined Saxon and Bavarian armies meet on the field of battle at Pausa on May 11. The Saxons field an army of fifteen thousand, the Bavarians twenty thousand. The Saxons manage to set up half a dozen culverins and open a brisk cannonade on the Bavarian right wing, causing some of the units to flee back in disarray. Believing that if he pushes hard, he can rout the rest of the enemy army, Hans orders a mass assault, heralded by waves of crossbows and followed by ranks of Saxon knights and halberdiers.

Han’s attack bites deep into the Bavarian lines, but then they run into an ambush of camouflaged culverins which rake the company at point blank range. At the same time, Conrad has managed to reform his crumbling wing, which takes the Saxon attack in the flank. A counterattack from the Bavarian cavalry completes the debacle. With a third of the army gone, the battered and demoralized Saxon troops flee back to Dresden as Conrad II gathers his forces to deliver the knock-out blow. Although he did win, he took twenty five hundred casualties of his own, over a tenth of his army. But if he can force Saxony-Brandenburg to kneel, truly kneel, as a vassal or better yet, conquer the dual duchy outright, Conrad II Wittelsbach will have restored the position of Holy Roman Emperor to a level of power it had not held since the days of the Hohenstaufens.

Conrad II is not the only one to notice that fact. Every German prince, down to the exiled Duke of Austria living with his cousins in Prague, is horrified by the prospect. As a result Conrad’s allies dither, being lax in provisioning and recruiting troops for Conrad’s invasion, much to his annoyance. Despite his best efforts to speed them along, including the push of sizeable amounts of coin, he is unable to stop the southern German princes from dragging their feet.

Meanwhile Hans Leopold is not idle. He has reformed his army with what troops he can, adding to them with mercenaries. Mainly they are Frisians, skilled light infantry driven out by the crushing Lotharingian response to the revolt last year. However a new force arrives in central Europe, for on June 20, three thousand Russian archontes disembark from their transports at the port of Wolgast. These special mercenaries are the finest soldiers in the new Saxon army. When they arrive on the front lines, they almost immediately smash apart a Bavarian column five thousand strong, riddling it with arrows and then sweeping it aside in a lance charge after their formations had been broken.

But Russia is not the only Orthodox state to which Hans Leopold turns in his hour of need. On the same day that the archontes arrive in Pomerania, a delegation representing most of the independent German princes arrives in Constantinople. There, in exchange for Constantinople forcing Bavaria to back down, they will recognize Demetrios Komnenos as the Holy Roman Emperor.



The offer is not made because of any sort of love or good will between the northern Germans and the Romans, for there is none. However the Germans have nowhere else to turn. Denmark, Poland, and Hungary are not trustworthy, and neither is Lotharingia. Hans Leopold will absolutely not tolerate a Lotharingian emperor, as the then-duchy of Burgundy extorted Frisia from Saxony in the 1410s (who had inherited it in the 1380s), when the German duchy was busy conquering Brandenburg while Andrew III invaded Austria for the first time.

The Plantaganet Empire (as the kingdom of England-France is often called) is an option, but King Edward VI is a personal friend of King Louis I of Lotharingia, which automatically earns him Hans Leopold’s hatred. Arles and the Iberian kingdoms are too far away or weak to force Bavaria to back down. With approaching Constantinople, the princes also hope that Conrad II’s touchiness over the Imperial title might prompt the Bavarian monarch to grant concessions in exchange for re-recognition of his title.

This option is made after Hans Leopold had already sued for peace. However Conrad, smarting after Austria’s exit from the Empire, is in no mood to be generous as Saxony’s resources now appear to be utterly spent. Conrad demands that Hans Leopold will step down as Duke of Saxony and Brandenburg, retiring to a prepared estate in Tyrol, signing over the duchies to Conrad himself. Hans’ response is simple: “I was born a prince; I will die a prince.” The war would go on. The other German princes who comprise the rest of the delegation join because they realize that a united Bavaria-Saxony-Brandenburg could take on the rest of the HRE combined (with the caveat that one excluded Lotharingia/Burgundy, but that could be easily done by Bavaria-Saxony forming an alliance with Arles, as Charles I of Arles has already started complaining about Lotharingian harassment of Rhone River traffic).

Meanwhile dreams of uniting the Roman Empire, of restoring the unity destroyed by Charlemagne, dance in the eyes of the Greeks. But cold reality soon puts a stop to that dream. The German princes here are willing to accept an emperor in Constantinople because he would be too far away to threaten them. But that distance means that the Romans cannot hurt the Bavarians. If they used the Adriatic to ferry an army, they would have to pass through Venetian territories. A march overland all the way to Bavaria would be slow, consume huge amounts of supplies, and be at the mercy of Hungary. While relations with Buda are good, Demetrios and Theodoros are not willing to risk an army on them. Thus the Germans are turned away empty-handed.

There is also the fact that the princes here represent a minority of the lords of the Holy Roman Empire, an admittedly wealthy and powerful minority, but still a minority. Maintaining real Imperial rule in Germany would be virtually impossible even if distance wasn’t a factor, for the Kings of Bohemia and the Dukes of Burgundy (as the Kings of Lotharingia are in the HRE-their royal territory pertains to their French territories) have not weighed into the contest, but would immediately oppose a Greek army dispatched to the region.


Even if the Romans had accepted, the tagmata never would have reached Germany in time. Conrad, run out of patience with the dilatory princes, launches his attack on Saxony with just the forces available to him from his Bavarian domains. Considering how badly his rival has been battered over the last few years, it should be enough, especially as he managed to enlarge his artillery train since the last attempt on Dresden and also supplement his army with Swiss mercenaries.

The Saxons, outnumbered almost two to one, make the final stand just a mile south of their capital. Alongside the Saxon core stands the Frisian mercenaries, the Russian archontes, and eight battle cohorts of the Bernese League. The latter are a new sight in central Germany. The one hundred men cohorts, built on a combined arms system of handgunners, crossbowmen, dismounted knights, and heavy burgher infantry, have only rarely left their Alpine homeland.

The Bavarians, trusting in their numerical advantage, launch a brisk attack spearheaded by the Swiss pikemen on the right wing. The archontes sally out from the Saxon lines, their composite bows pouring a hail of missiles that stagger the Swiss ranks, who are then smashed flat when the Bernese handguns roar out their curtain of flame and smoke. Less than a minute later, the dismounted Habsburg knights slam into the Swiss vanguard, followed two minutes by the archontes charging into the chopped-up Swiss rearguard. The pikemen are cut to pieces.

Meanwhile the other Bavarian attacks have been heavily harried by the Frisians, allowing the Saxons to hold, barely. But now the archontes begin pouring arrows into the Bavarian columns, staggering their ranks. Then the Bernese gunners once more roar out and the Habsburg knights and Russian cavalry sally out into the smoke, and together shatter the Bavarian army. Conrad II is wounded with a broken arm but flees back to Munich with his army. Most of his cavalry managed to escape; the fine plate armor of the knights stood up well to Russian arrows and even Bernese bullets, but his infantry has been annihilated as a fighting force and his artillery captured. Without the latter two, there is no way he can take Dresden and thus force Hans Leopold to kneel.

The other alternative is peace. Hans Leopold also wants peace, as his realm is virtually bankrupt from all his mercenaries and years of war. In the Treaty of Dresden, Conrad II is forced to recognize Saxony’s control of Pomerania (the parts it holds anyway), in exchange for Hans recognizing Conrad as the rightful Holy Roman Emperor. In agreements shortly afterwards, Conrad is forced to recognize Denmark’s and Poland’s conquests as well.



* * *



Ebenat, Ethiopia, November 14, 1439:

“Congratulations, negusa nagast, the last of the rebels has surrendered.”

“It’s about time; I thought they had run out of rats to eat a week ago. Come, sit down, sit down.” The young, brawny man who was the newest Emperor of Ethiopia gestured a bare arm at the rough wooden seat opposite the equally rough table. With his other he picked up a drab clay cup and set it down. “Have a drink.”

“Thank you, Yohannes,” Ioannes said, sitting and taking a sip. “I’ve finally gotten used to this.”

“Bah, you Greeks are too obsessed with sugar. A bitter drink is good for you; that it keeps you awake is a bonus. And I see you’ve finally realized to call me by my name, took you long enough.”

“It wouldn’t do to denigrate your position, especially when several of the nobles and Chewa commanders are up in arms. I don’t want my son-in-law to get killed. I mean, he is annoying, but I do love my daughter.”

“Ha! You say you love her, but you let her marry me.”

“I can’t help it if she has bad taste.” Yohannes snorted his drink. “Anyway, now that you’re secure on the throne, I can treat you with the respect you deserve.”

“You aren’t worried about damaging my image?”

Ioannes took another sip. “After this, what courtier would dare to whisper? And what I call you won’t stop the Somali raids on the Harer trade caravans or the Shilluk migration. So why not?”

“Such politics. You’ve come a long way since your days as a Thracian blacksmith.”

“I blame your father. He’s the one that brought me here. What, twenty five years ago?”

“Do you miss it?”

“What?”

“Do you miss home?”

“Oh, by God, yes. Melke’s cooking is far better than…”

“I didn’t mean here, in Ethiopia. Do you miss it, Constantinople?”

“Constantinople, no. Way too many people. I grew up in the country. Three hundred thousand people crammed into one place just doesn’t seem natural. I sometimes miss Thrace itself, but…” He took another drink. “My wife, my children are here. For better or worse, my home is here. Why are you smiling?”

“I was hoping you would say something like that. I’ve been thinking that it’s time for me to expand my father’s work, to continue what he began.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need more Roman artisans. Lots more. And you’re going to get them for me. I just wanted to make sure you’d come back when you’re done. So you’d better pack, father. You’re going home."

* * *

1439: Osman II, despite poor health, is personally present at the fall of Hormuz. The pesky emirate had fought extremely well on both land and sea, preventing the Ottomans from ever being able to fully blockade the city. Due to that failure, the great port had managed to hold off an Ottoman siege for the last eighteen months, even though it was supported by fifteen Ottoman cannons, their first use of the weapons. Their technique is improving though and experiments have begun to create hand cannons.

More immediately promising though is the performance of the urban azabs. The program has since expanded, with every town in the Ottoman domain with a population over eight thousand having to field a certain quota of troops. Although not as well armored as their Persian opponents, being mostly clad in mail armor from the Roman Empire, they are far superior to the rural azabs. Still drilled by old janissaries, they are extremely proficient at pinning smaller but heavier Persian formations, allowing janissaries to make a killing blow on the flanks and rears. With rural azabs, the anvil often broke before the hammer could get into position.

Although only Mazandaran and the Persian Gulf coast have fallen into Ottoman hands, the sipahis and janissaries are also showing equipment improvements, both through trade with the Georgians and Venetians and the acquisition of Persian foundries and equipment. Most of the janissaries in the first few ranks are now equipped with a steel lamellar cuirass, although further back they remain clad in leather lamellar. As a result of these reforms, the Ottomans are performing better in the field, although due to the size of Persia and the martial skills of its inhabitants, progress is still slow.

In Constantinople, as a corollary to the recently begun military reforms, the Emperor Theodoros conducts a substantial restructuring of the tax districts. During the War of the Five Emperors, the various contenders had managed to gain the loyalty of their troops because they were able to pay them without Constantinople. They had been able to do that because every nine tax districts were completely bounded by one theme. With no territorial overlap between the economic and military districts, it was distressingly easy for the latter to gain complete control of the former.

Now the Empire is divided into ten prefectures, each of which is divided into ten provinces. These are deliberately designed so that no one prefecture is entirely within one theme. The tax gatherers, who still have the right to call up tagma soldiers to enforce tax payments if needed, report to the prefects. The prefects are given a handsome salary, but are forbidden to purchase any country land. Also they are required to keep their primary residence and family in Constantinople.

To the south Barsbay finally manages to break the deadlock in the Mameluke Civil War when he succeeds in capturing the port of Aqaba. More importantly though, he gains the allegiance of the Hedjaz. Not only does it give him substantial prestige as defender of the Holy Cities of Islam, but also the Hedjazi fleet. Although small it is more than a match for the primary Mameluke Red Sea fleet which has yet to recover from its defeat at Sajid Island. However the support of the Hedjaz does come at the price of certain promises to the Hedjazi imams, because of the Roman attack on Tripoli, they are not conditions Barsbay finds distasteful.

Over the past twenty years a movement has been growing amongst the Hedjazi imams, which received a significant boost when Turkmen chiefs fled south after the Harrowing of the North. Its main tenets are a stricter, more literal interpretation of the Koran and a much greater emphasis placed on the lesser jihad, the struggle against the infidel.

It is born out of a sense in Sunni Islam that the tide is going against them. In the west the Marinids have lost ground for the first time in a hundred years. To the north, the Blue Horde has been dismembered by the infidel, who even now is turning his gaze east across the Volga. To the east, the Empire of Vijayanagar continues to shine strongly, not only fighting Islam in India with distressing effectiveness, but also dispatching subsidies and fleets to Indonesia to bolster Hindu princes against the shoots of Islam in the Far East. There those efforts are joined by two expansionist Hindu kingdoms, Champa and Majapahit. It is highly possible that Islam will lose both India and Indonesia.

But most of the rhetoric is directed against one state, the Roman Empire. Not only did it expel Islam from Anatolia and Armenia, but it is also the closest threat, with the possible exception of Ethiopia, to the Holy Cities of Islam. There is also the worrying fact that its over a million Muslims seem perfectly content to be ruled by a Christian Empire. That is, of course, due to the extremely high degree of religious toleration for Muslims in the Empire, a wisely maintained relic from the days of Manuel II Laskaris. Except for a few high-ranking positions, the bureaucracy and army are open to Muslims. Soldiers participating on the hajj forfeit their pay because of the reviews they miss, but are not otherwise penalized.

Nevertheless, the realities of living in a Christian state still led to conversion. Now the Empire is 10% Muslim; in 1300 it was 35% Muslim. That makes the Romans a grave threat in the eyes of the Hedjazi imams. For if anyone could turn back Islam in its heartland, over which the Empire looms ominously, it would be them.

However for the moment Barsbay’s attention is focused on Egypt, not Anatolia. With the use of the Hedjazi fleet, he is able to ferry troops to Suakin, outflanking the Mameluke forces barring the Sinai. After a forced march, he is hammering at the gates of Cairo. After a three week siege the city capitulates, and with it all of Egypt. The armies in the Sinai surrender shortly afterward, although Barsbay takes the precaution of having their generals poisoned shortly afterwards. The Mameluke Sultanate is once again whole.

The speed of Egypt’s fall prevented the Roman government from coming to the aid of the Cairo government as had been planned. A convoy from Rhodes bearing supplies for the Mameluke armies arrived at Alexandria to find that Barsbay’s forces were already in control of the port. For the sake of appearances, the convoy commander made a show of trying to sell the supplies to the Damascenes/Mamelukes. After haggling over the price, the convoy left, not fooling Barsbay for a second.

In Constantinople, Demetrios can no longer hide his rapidly failing health. Despite his best efforts, Giorgios Doukas can do nothing to halt the Emperor’s decline. Just a few days after his sixtieth birthday, he breathes his last. Like his co-emperor Manuel Doukas, the last words on his lips are “Manzikert, victory.” He is buried at the Monastery of Aghios Theodoros Megas just outside Constantinople. Shortly afterwards, he is accorded the title Megas by Patriarch Adem (Adam), the first to be so honored since Theodoros II. He had restored the empire’s unity and power, guarded her against the Lord of Asia, and sent Roman armies to lands and seas untouched even by Justinian himself. In all the lands of Orthodoxy, now fully recovered from the disastrous 13th century, he is mourned and remembered. He had also founded the Second Komnenid Dynasty; like the first, it would see the greatest and vilest of men wear the purple, take the Empire to heights of glory and the edge of ruin, embodying all the best and worst aspects of man.
 
A Timurid (and Others) Interlude


Part One: A Dream of China

The battle at a small village in the wilds of central Asia, a poor, desolate place called Yining, in 1426, was utterly decisive. In a running, five-day battle Shah Rukh destroyed the best troops of the Shun army. The years of long skirmishes, of periodic raids, the torturously slow push eastward, came to an end at that village. The gates of China were open, and Shah Rukh, grandson of Timur, Lord of Asia, entered the one land his great ancestor had failed to overcome (Timur had destroyed a Delhian army on the banks of the Indus in 1395 when it tried to contest his conquest of Baluchistan).


gdzz21.jpg

Shah Rukh and his men at the beginning of the invasion of China.​

Initially progress was fast, the Timurid soldiers pouring into the defunct Kingdom of Urumqi, an independent Chinese state that had broken away from the Yuan, leading a free existence until it was conquered by Shun in the 1410s. It was that conquest which had stirred Timur into contemplating an attack on Shun, before he had been distracted by the fall of Armenia and the Manzikert campaign.

In Urumqi there was still some of the old elite, dreaming of their old power. In exchange for assured positions in the new order, many of them defected to Shah Rukh, allowing him to take several strong places despite his weakness in artillery and infantry. By the end of 1428, he had control of all of Urumqi, giving him access to a pool of infantry outfitted with equipment from the Wei troops stationed there. The Wei troops had not been from Urumqi and so were not trustworthy, being turned into forced labor battalions and arrow fodder to be used when attacking cities. Shah Rukh also gained the services of many Urumqi engineers, including a few with the knowledge of cannon casting.

However as his forces move into Shun proper, the Timurid advance slows down considerably. Shah Rukh’s connections with Timur (whose atrocities are known, sometimes even exaggerated, in China) and Genghis Khan, while extremely useful amongst the people of the steppe, have the exact opposite effect here. Despite the best efforts of the Urumqi engineers, sieges are bloody, brutal affairs even by the usual standard of medieval sieges. Particularly obstinate are the cities of Jiayugan, which allows Shah Rukh to outflank the Great Wall, and Yunwu (OTL modern Lanzhou). Those cities, which put up exceptional resistance, each one holding at for over eight months each, were razed to the ground, their inhabitants either executed or sold into slavery. The glut in the market causes the price of slaves in the Delhi Sultanate to fall to a third of its 1426 price by 1432.

However with the fall of Yunwu in December 1431, the political situation in China is transformed. Shah Rukh now has access to the Yellow River, the backbone of Shun China. If he takes it, north China is his. And then in March of the next year, the armies of Wu move. Pouring across the Yangtze river in the great troop transports escorted by rows of black warships armed with dozens of rocket launchers, the peasant levies stationed in the south (what is left of the good troops are in the north) are easily swept aside.

In southern Henan, eight great battles are fought over the course of 1432 between the Shun and Wu, both sides fighting mainly with mediocre levies. That is all Shun has, while most of Wu’s elite troops are annihilated in a great ambush in the first battle by the son of the current Shun Emperor, Zhu Di. With poor troops on both sides, incapable of performing sophisticated tactics, the later battles turn into slugging matches decided by whoever has the most bodies. When the Prince of Shun is killed in the eighth battle, at least two hundred thousand Chinese (Shun and Wu) soldiers have been killed, along with at least one and a half million peasants.

Meanwhile Shah Rukh continues to work his way down the Yellow River, city after city falling because of lack of garrisons. The Shun concentration on Wu is because they are not entirely without allies. North of the Yellow River, a vast host is gathering, lured by Shun bullion, made up of contingents from the northern Yuan (the Mongols), the neo-Jurchen kingdoms (the tribes had reformed their old state after the collapse of Yuan China), Joseon Korea, and the Ashikaga shogunate (an attempt by the shogun to export samurai violence to the continent).

In November 1432, during the siege of Beijing, the Shun capital, the allied army finally arrives, outnumbering Shah Rukh’s forces by almost three to one. In the face of such odds, Shah Rukh retreats, harassing the enemy with his light cavalry. While the Mongols and Jurchen are able to beat back the probes, both the Koreans and Japanese take moderate casualties. Finally on November 25, Shah Rukh turns and offers battle at Puyang.

The Timurid cavalry launch a mass sally preceded by shrieking, stinking waves of rockets, flattening the Jurchens. When the Japanese move to support, the Koreans, who had been bribed by Shah Rukh beforehand, instead attack the samurai, who are swiftly crushed between their new assailants and the Timurids. Largely unengaged, the Mongols retire from the field.

Returning to Beijing with the Koreans in tow, Shah Rukh resumes the siege. For three months it continues, both sides hammering each other as the Wu steadily creep north over devastated Henan. Finally on February 19, Zhu Di, the Last Emperor of Shun, sallies with his cavalry. The charge, though spectacular to view, is swiftly crushed, as both the riders and horses are both malnourished. But Zhu Di perishes with his blade in the belly of a Timurid soldier.

With the death of the Shun Emperor Shah Rukh is able to march into Beijing unopposed. Although he extorts a massive lump sum out of the city, he strictly prohibits any looting or sacking; it would not do to wreck his new capital. On February 27, he proclaims himself the Hongwu Emperor, the first of the Tieh (iron) dynasty. Shortly afterwards, he receives several Wu delegates who bring congratulations, a huge mountain of bullion and silk, and a demand that he leave, although the Wu emperor is willing to grant Shah Rukh the territory of Urumqi. Shah Rukh laughs, asks “Why would I abandon my empire?” and has the delegates executed.

Immediately he marches south, leaving five thousand cavalry in Beijing under the command of his second son Jahangir to solidify Timurid/Tieh control over the north. Once again Henan is the site of great battles, as he systematically annihilates the Wu levies. The Shun troops in the area, eager for victory and revenge, attach himself to the cause. With their support, particularly in sieges, by December 1433 Shah Rukh has command of all of Shun China. In Beijing, Jahangir takes a wise step towards earning the loyalty of the Chinese in November when he promises religious toleration for all the peoples of the new Empire. As for himself, he remains a Muslim but almost immediately begins working to synchronize Confucianism and Islam, equating the Mandate of Heaven with Allah’s will and the Confucianism concept of ren with the Muslim emphasis on charity. These efforts are immediately approved by Shah Rukh when he hears of them.

It is not until 1436 that the invasion of Wu begins, as it is necessary to construct a fleet to carry the Tieh army across the Yangtze. In the meantime, Shah Rukh is busy cowing the members of the alliance. In 1434, he destroys the power of the Northern Yuan in a whirlwind campaign, incorporating their domains into his massive empire. In 1435 he does the same to the Jurchens. And while Shah Rukh begins the invasion of Wu, to bring back the Mandate of Heaven, Jahangir invades Korea, which is not to be spared by the defection of its army at Puyang. However due to the well-fortified nature of Korea’s supplies and the limited resources available, Jahangir is not able to complete the conquest of the country until 1439.

Japan itself is spared because of the sea and the need to concentrate Shun’s fleet on the Yangtze. Despite the death of most of the most troublesome samurai, Puyang is a major blow to the Ashikaga Shogunate. The remaining samurai blame the shogun for the debacle, and so as Shah Rukh and Jahangir move into Wu and Korea, in Japan the shogunate is on its death spiral into fragmentation and collapse.

In May 1436, four massive sea battles, each one involving more than five hundred ships and fifty thousand men, erupt on the Yangtze. The Wu have the better of it because of superior sailors. But they serve Shah Rukh’s purpose, as the distracted Wu fleet is unable to prevent twenty thousand Tieh cavalry from sneaking across the river unnoticed. On the night of June 1, the Wu fleet is burned at anchor by a surprise attack. The rest of the Tieh army, Timurid, Urumqi, and Shun, pour across the Yangtze.

For the Wu, it is the last straw. Their armies had been destroyed in Henan, and with the loss of the fleet and the Yangtze they have lost their last defense. Only the sheer bulk of Wu slows Shah Rukh down, but due to the small garrisons and demoralized population, even that bulk shrinks fast. In August 1438, the Wu capital of Guangzhou falls. China is once again whole. Two weeks later Shah Rukh drops the title ‘heir of Timur the Great’. He has fulfilled his greatest dream, to move out of the shadow of his grandfather, for he now rules over an Empire even greater than Timur’s. That empire is soon enlarged even more, as emissaries from Swati Kashmir, Tibet, and the Kingdom of Champa to the south of Wu all offer to become vassals and pay tribute in exchange for protection, an offer Shah Rukh is happy to accept.

Meanwhile many of the Wu take to the sea, fleeing in the great ships with which they had traded as far as Malacca. Initially they stop in Tondo where they are welcomed. However when the Tieh fleet seizes Taiwan in March 1439, the Wu are expelled in the name of maintaining good relations with Tieh. The Wu are forced to flee again, some making their way to Champa. The Champa do accept some, but only a few so as not to offend their Tieh overlords. Onward the Wu fly, to the Majapahit Empire, the greatest power in southeast Asia now, with a massive fleet capable of challenging even Tieh and vassal states all over Indonesia. However the Majapahits are old rivals of the Wu, who had not taken kindly to Wu traders in their seas earlier. They will not take in the Wu, but they also bar the Wu from fleeing west, not willing to risk that they will encamp with their Malay or Ayutthayan rivals.

So onward the Wu fly, this time to the south. Eventually, on the edge of the world, they spot a vast land stretching across the horizon. They make camp, establishing a new settlement which they christen Nan (south). There they build homes and farms, intermarrying with the locals and amongst each other. And as children are born, they teach them, instilling in them a dream of a great land to the north, the land of their ancestors, a land to which they will one day return. And so as the Southern Wu, as they call themselves, build, they give their children a dream, a dream of China.



Part Two: The Dance of Destruction

When Pir Mohammed began his invasion of India, Islam had been slowly and steadily retreating from the subcontinent for the past seventy years. The Pashtun migration which began in the 1320s had led to the creation of the Swati Kingdom of Kashmir, but its effects further south had been far less pleasant. Lured south by the prospects of fighting in the Delhian army in its campaigns against rebellious Marathas backed by a mysterious Hindu state in the far south, most Pashtuns were fierce followers of ghazi Islam (the Swati were a conspicuous exception to the rule). In that respect they followed the small band of refugee Turks who, after falling out with Osman I, had fled from Mesopotamia to India and later invited the first wave of Pashtun immigrants.

That trait would not serve Delhi well. The recently established Tughlaq dynasty had like its predecessors maintained a policy of religious toleration for Hindus, who made up the vast majority of the state’s people. However as the Pashtuns grew in power, the policy began to change. By the 1370s, Hindu temples were regularly razed to the ground and mosques built in their place, while Hindus themselves steadily lost most of their legal privileges and access to certain occupations, often being forced to convert to and follow Islam at the point of the sword.

Delhi paid dearly and almost immediately for this stupidity. In the years 1374-1380, the Vijayangara state overran all of India south of the Narmada river (Madurai had already been annihilated when Delhi’s armies were occupied crushing a Hindu revolt in the Rann of Kutch), skillfully exploiting Maratha resentment against Delhi. At the same time waves of Rajputs fleeing persecution moved south, providing Vijayanagar with a formidable corps of medium cavalry. Joined by war elephants and Maratha infantry, the Vijayanagara army was a formidable force.

In 1377, a mass revolt broke out on the lower Ganges centered around the province of Bihar. It succeeded because by this point the Pashtuns were acting more as a Praetorian Guard than actual soldiers. In the name of pay increases, they deposed four sultans in three years, allowing the Bihari revolt to crystallize into a new state and form an alliance with Vijayanagar. The purpose was to drive Islam out of India completely and forever.

By 1431 when the invasion began, that process was well under way. Vijayanagara had not expanded beyond the Vindhya mountains although its raids north were frequent and devastating. Bihar had overrun Bengal and Assam, as far as Mrauk U. In India, its western outpost was the city of Lucknow. However ironically Delhi’s weakness now was its greatest strength. Both of its Hindu rivals ruled over a vast array of diverse peoples, who previously had been united by the Muslim threat, but now were growing restless. In that year, Bihar was occupied with a revolt in Assam and Burma, while Vijayanagar was dealing with a mass Maratha uprising as well as the grumbling port cities along the western coast.

Pir Mohammed had a significant advantage over the Delhi Sultans. His army, though only twenty five thousand, was well equipped, disciplined, and experienced. Like his great-grandfather Timur, he easily crushed the first Delhian army sent against him by driving it into the Indus. Many of the Delhian soldiers threw themselves into the river and risk drowning rather than stand against the charge of Pir Mohammed’s heavy Khorasani cavalry.

As Pir Mohammed steadily grew closer, town after town capitulating before him, the Pashtuns in Delhi grew more and more alarmed. Their usual solution to any problem, deposing the current sultan, did not help. However when Pir Mohammed was thirty miles from Delhi he sent a messenger to the Pashtuns, promising that if they joined his cause, they would retain all their current rights and privileges, including their current pay. They immediately defect.

With the aid of the Pashtuns, the Khorasani Sultan is able to take Delhi without contest, although it is again the Pashtuns who depose the Tughlaq Sultan. Once Pir Mohammed is secure in his capital, he invites all of the Pashtun guard to a great victory celebration outside of the city, where he provides huge amounts of alcohol. During the night the Khorasani fall on the inebriated Pashtuns and massacre them. With the guard gone and the capital in his possession, Pir Mohammed is able to have the entire Delhi Sultanate under his control by the beginning of 1432. In March he proclaims himself ‘Sultan of Khorasan, India, and Persia, Heir of Timur the Great, Lord of Asia’.

For the rest of 1432 however he is forced to travel back to Khorasan, as the Emirs of Yazd and Tabas had invaded his realm. Rather than following their titular sovereign, the Jalayirid Khan, in the fight against the Ottomans, the two emirs had hoped to expand eastward instead. Outside the walls of his capital of Ghayen, Pir Mohammed meets the Persians in battle, annihilating them at dawn by having his heavy cavalry charge with the sun directly behind them. The frightened, squinting, Persian troops are swept aside.

Thus it is not until 1433 that Pir Mohammed is able to launch his invasion of Hindu India. Determined to knock out the more powerful threat first, he focuses his attack on Vijayanagara. The Bihari armies, built on the teeming masses of the lower Ganges, are known more for their bulk than their quality. The advance into the great Hindu empire is slow, as the Narmada river and Vindhya mountains form a perfect glacis.

Also the year spent in Khorasan allowed the Vijayanagara Emperor time to solidify his position. With the threat from Delhi suddenly revived, the old reason for the Empire’s existence has returned. As Pir Mohammed slowly pushes his way south through Maharashtra, harassed by Maratha light infantry, the armies of Hinduism gather. It is a veritable host of peoples, Marathas, Rajputs, Tamils, Telugus, Kannadigas, and Keralans, including all the Dravidian peoples of southern India. It is joined by contingents from the Kingdom of Bihar, Bihari of course, but also Orissans, Bengalis, Awadhis, and Jharkhand tribesmen. It is the assembled might of Hindu India in all its teeming, diverse glory. As the army departs Vijayanagara, the Empire’s capital (which is as big as Constantinople), the soldiers pass through ranks of Brahmins, dancing the tandava nritya, Shiva’s dance, the dance of destruction.

The army, though diverse, is actually small by the standards of the populous Indian states, particularly Bihar, numbering about forty five thousand, but it is comprised of their very best troops. If the army is destroyed, the Hindu states will be forced to rely on levies, which would not last long against Pir Mohammed’s veteran troops.

The rugged terrain of Maharashtra does not make supplying and deploying a larger force feasible, one of the reasons why Pir Mohammed launched his attack there. Since he is not enamored of the loyalty and ability of the Delhian troops, he is relying on his Khorasani soldiers, giving him an army of only thirty four thousand soldiers. He is outnumbered, but he is used to that, and his lighter army is able to move faster even with the sporadic attacks of the Marathas. The Baluchi tribesmen under his command, fighting in terrain similar to their homeland, make for a formidable screen.

The armies of Islam and Hinduism meet at the fortress of Devagiri (sometimes known as Deogiri). It is October 9. Overconfident in their numerical superiority, the Hindus immediately attack with their best units, the Rajput cavalry. They perform rather well, driving through the ranks of Khorasani screeners, but are bought up short by the armored rows of the heavy infantry, far better equipped than any Indian foot soldiers. In an attempt to break through, the Rajputs are badly bloodied and driven back when Pir Mohammed sallies with his own cavalry.

Consternation ripples through the Hindu ranks at seeing their best soldiers so badly and quickly trounced. Smelling the fear, Pir Mohammed immediately attacks, launching a mass cavalry charge, closely followed by the heavy infantry. If he can smash apart the demoralized Indian infantry lines, he can effectively shatter the power of Vijayanagar and Bihar in a single afternoon.

Only one thing stands in the way. The trumpeting, bellowing ranks of Vijayanagara armored war elephants, fifty strong, anchoring the Hindu lines while flights of arrows streak out from the platforms on top. The horses will not charge. The Khorasani mounts are not used to the sight and smell of these strange, monstrous beasts, and will not charge, despite the cursing and whipping from their enraged masters. The cavalry charge collapses into a confused morass, which is only compounded when the following heavy infantry become entangled in the mix.


warelephants.jpg

The Vijayanagara reserves​

The Hindus sally with everything they have. The reformed Rajputs lead the way, followed by the remainder of the Indian cavalry, who are used and trained to work with elephants. Then the entire Indian infantry move as well, the elephants following in the rear as mobile archery platforms to keep the Khorasani light troops at bay. Struck from three sides simultaneously, the entangled Muslim troops, for all their armor, are doomed and cut to pieces.

Pir Mohammed is among them, leading a few battalions of infantry forward that manage to hack their way through the trap, even killing six elephants in the process. But then an arrow strikes Pir Mohammed down on the edge of escaping; he is dead before he hits the ground. The troops he had been leading panic and scatter, allowing the Hindu reserves to plug the gap.

The Khorasani army is utterly destroyed, although the initial Rajput charge and the slugging match at the end mean that Hindu casualties are also very high. In Delhi, Pir Mohammed’s twin sons, Mirza and Nasir, realize that with the threat of Shah Rukh to the north and the Hindu states to the south, their father’s realm is too big to handle. Thus they split it by casting lots, Mirza taking Khorasan and Nasir Delhi. Neither has much difficulty in securing control of their two realms. In Khorasan Mirza is the legitimate heir, while Nasir faces no internal political opposition since the destruction of the Pashtun guard.

Nasir is given an additional reprieve, for upon the death of his father and the collapse of the Muslim threat, the internal disturbances of his Hindu neighbors have returned with full force, preventing either from capitalizing on the victory at Devagiri. Bihar is additionally pressed as it shares a border with Tieh, admittedly a very rugged one, but no state can be comfortable with such a monster as a neighbor. For the Bihari the situation is only compounded by efforts from Shah Rukh to draw Lanna into his network of vassals.

For Nasir the situation is even more serious. To the west, the Ottoman-Persian war continues, if more quietly after the fall of Hormuz due to Osman II’s deteriorating health. However to the north Shah Rukh continues to prosper, working to draw the White Horde and Perm into his massive empire, unseen since the days of the Great Khans. But Nasir knows and fears that his great-uncle will turn his gaze south. And so he prepares, rebuilding his shattered armies, forging closer ties with the Ottomans, preparing for the day when the Lord of Asia returns.




asia1440.png

Asia 1440

1) Timurid Empire/Tieh China
2) Ottoman Empire
3) Jalayirid Khanate
4) Great Khorasan
5) Swati Kingdom of Kashmir (Tieh vassal)
6) Tibet (Tieh vassal)
7) Delhi Sultanate
8) Kingdom of Bihar
9) Vijayanagara Empire
10) Kingdom of Kotte
11) Kingdom of Lanna
12) Kingdom of Ayutthaya
13) Minor Malay states (main power is Sultanate of Malacca): predominantly Muslim, converted by Muslim Bengali refugees fleeing the Bihari. Their religion is the main justification for attacks on them by Vijayanagara, Majapahit, and Champa.
14) Majapahit Empire
15) Khmer Kingdom
16) Kingdom of Champa (Tieh vassal)
17) Southern Wu

Between the Steppe and China: The Kingdom of Urumqi

They called themselves the Western Han. Both Shun and Wu called them barbarians. They were both right. When the Yuan dynasty collapsed in the mid 1300s, it sparked a mass wave of revolts and war across China which only settled down in the early 1380s with the establishment of the Shun dynasty in the north and the Wu dynasty in the south. During that time, many refugees ended up fleeing westward (the way south to Champa was barred in the 1370s when the Wu began their campaign to destroy the revived Dali kingdom).

There on the western frontier, the refugees set up a new home, forming alliances and intermarrying the scattered Uyghur tribes. Through skillful manipulation of these ties, along with the knowledge of gunpowder weapons, the Western Han were gradually able to form a new Chinese kingdom on the outskirts of central Asia. Urumqi, which meant ‘beautiful pasture’ in the local tongue, became the capital, growing from the yearly gathering of tribal chieftains that the Western Han had instituted to foster cooperation and loyalty amongst the tribes. A major boost to Chinese control over the tribes occurred in the early 1380s when Timur smashed the tribes of Moghulistan to the west, causing the Uyghurs to rally to the Western Han banner out of fear. The diplomatic skills of the Chinese with Timur, negotiating a small tribute and turning his gaze westward, only solidified their position.

In its political organization, the Kingdom of Urumqi actually resembled the Ottoman Empire. There was a centralized core of the state, concentrated on the capital and cities, surrounded by a cloud of tribal organizations linked to the core through a variety of marriage and vassal ties. The outer cloud was mostly Uyghur, although gradual intermarriage with the Chinese core resulted in the growing creation of a mixed racial society, something which came to a temporary halt during the Shun occupation. Beijing outlawed the marriage of Han and Uyghur during that time in an attempt to keep apart the two pillars of Urumqi power.

Due to the preponderance of the Uyghurs, the Urumqi state’s main faith was actually Sufi Islam, followed even by the majority of the Chinese population by the time of Shah Rukh’s invasion. That was a large reason why the Urumqi people almost unanimously supported Shah Rukh when he invaded, especially after he dropped the prohibition on Han-Uyghur marriages. During the Timurid invasion of China, the Urumqi played a vital role as infantry and engineers, providing Shah Rukh the tools he needed to take the great cities of China.

However after the fall of China, Urumqi now presented a problem. Its people expected special privileges because of their Muslim faith and their loyal support. However the vast majority of Tieh China, the old peoples of Shun and Wu, looked down on the Urumqi as bastardized barbarians. Any hint of favoring them over the “pure Chinese” was unlikely to go over very well. Yet Urumqi was of vital importance to the Timurid/Tieh Empire, for it bridged the two components of that state. If the Timurid/Tieh Empire was to survive in whole, Urumqi loyalty was vital. Balancing the needs of Urumqi and China would be the greatest and most enduring problem of the Timurid/Tieh Emperors. Their failure to find a permanent solution would be fatal.

And on the other side of the world...

The Eastern Settlement, Norwegian Greenland, July 1439:

“Damn Skraelings,” Eric muttered, shifting in his wooden chair as the two guards dragged the thing from the church, which was currently doubling as a law court. It had been caught pilfering chickens from one of the homesteads two days earlier; it would be put down outside.

He rubbed the top of his nose. “What’s next?” he asked, looking at his assistant Aage who was standing off in the corner.

He glanced down at the sheet of paper, gently setting down the page on the Skraeling on top of the pile; the blank side would be reused. Space on the four ship convoy dispatched annually from Norway was limited. “We have another request from Alfred to-”

Eric exploded. “Will that goddamn Swede ever shut up?!” He jumped up and down, the fifteen or so individuals in the front of the church staring at him. Aage merely cocked an eyebrow. “No cows! No cows! No fucking cows! Has he been outside? How many times do I have to say it before he’ll get it?!” He sat back down. “My cousin has made it clear. He’s not going to subsidize idiots.”

“So how should I respond?”

“Oh, the usual. Remind him that Norway keeps us alive because of the walrus tusk trade and because we’re a good waypoint for the cod fishing. Neither of which requires cows. And that his continued insistence on trying to raise cows here is just plain stupid. Even a Dane would have figured out by now that it’s a waste of time. Oh, and add this. If he asks one more time about his stupid cows or lack thereof, my response will involve an axe and his face.”

Aage scribbled down the note as the church door creaked open, a squat, scarred middle-aged man pounding his way towards Eric. He stopped short, flipping a coin which the judge. “Look what the latest Icelandic fisherman brought in.”

Eric examined the gold coin. That in itself was rare; Greenland did use some money, mostly copper and some silver, but was mostly barter. “What are these markings, Amund?”

“They’re Greek,” Aage said. “It’s a hyperpyron.”

“Shiny. I wish I worked for this monarch.”

“Why?”

“Because then I get paid in this, rather than fish. That’s the currency in these parts, salted cod, the money of my glorious cousin, the King of Norway, Iceland, and a piece of crap.” He sneered.

“When you say piece of crap, are you referring to here or Scotland?”

“That’s a good question. This place sucks, but we only have a couple of Scottish fisherman. Scotland’s full of them. Why my cousin decided to unify the Norwegian and Scottish crowns I’ll never know. All he gets are a bunch of Scots and annoyed Englanders.”

“Meh, who cares?” Amund muttered. “Besides if the Scots pitch in, maybe the yearly convoy will get bigger?”

“That would be nice,” Eric replied, turning to look at Aage. “If that happens and Alfred asks about cows, I’ll still kill him. Or maybe exile him to those rocks in the west where the fishermen have their cleaning shacks.”

“Anyway, have you heard the news?” Amund asked. Both Eric and Aage shook their heads no. “Olaf Tordsson is dead.”

“Really. Did he die in his sleep?”

“Nope. The Swedes killed him. They didn’t like paying taxes to support his fancy company, so they rose up. They say it took three shots from a culverin the Danes gave them to kill him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Aage said, grinning. “If the tales are true, it’d take at least seven.” Eric rolled his eyes.

Amund smiled too. “Anyway supposedly his son Gustav has set himself up in Abo and proclaimed himself King of Finland rather than bow to the new king the Swedes elected. Rumor has it he may even convert to Orthodoxy to keep the Russians off him.”

“Interesting,” Aage muttered, glancing down at the next sheet. “May I ask you a question, Eric?”

“Sure.”

“Who do you hate more, Basques or Swedes?”

“That’s hard. Basques are ugly, annoying, little rats who keep trying to steal our fish. But the Swedes are just so, oh, Swedish. And they never shut up about cows. I hate Swedes more.”

“That’s good. Because they caught another Basque.”

“Again! That’s the fourth this month! All right, that’s it. Get me my axe…”

The Demetrian Military Reforms of the Late 1430s and Early 1440s

The Roman army’s performance in the late 1430s had not been auspicious. In the Crimea, an entire Roman tagma had come close to being annihilated in the field and had only survived through the fortuitous arrival of allied reinforcements. In Bulgaria, a weak and disorganized opponent whose might consisted mainly of ad-hoc bands of raiders had managed to inflict several minor defeats on isolated detachments.

Those defeats had largely been caused by the stranding of numerous heavy cannons in a sea of mud. Bogged down and isolated from each other, the gun crews and laborers trying to move the guns had been highly vulnerable to light Bulgarian raiders. Because of the poor showing in these two conflicts, the Emperors Demetrios I and Theodoros IV enacted a series of broad reforms, designed to improve Roman performance in the field.

The military reforms are typically called the Demetrian reforms after the senior Roman emperor. However by late 1438, when the German delegation arrived in Constantinople, Demetrios’ health, never fully recovered from his Crimean ventures, was extremely poor. While officially he was still senior, Theodoros IV was the true ruler of the Roman Empire and likely deserves much of the credit for these reforms.

The first reform was a revision of the equipment ordnances of 1304. These had been set down at a time when plate armor was still extremely rare and when the Empire, having just completed the re-conquest of Anatolia, lacked the money for substantial outfitting of steel lamellar armor. Hence in those ordnances, chainmail armor was extremely common. By 1439, that was decidedly less so. Over the past century, soldiers had gradually improved their protection, outfitting themselves with steel lamellar and plate armor, supplementing it with leather lamellar for the extremities. The improved capabilities of soldiers equipped in such manner as opposed to mail-clad soldiers had already become apparent to some observers, including Manuel Doukas, as early as the battle of Cappadocian Caesarea.

The new equipment ordnance of 1439 essentially accepted the changes and completed them. Mail armor was entirely dropped from the list of required material. Skutatoi, heavy koursores, and skythikoi were all to be protected by a steel lamellar cuirass for the torso with leather lamellar for the limbs; these were supplemented by the kavadion and the epilorikon. Light koursores dropped their light mail and instead wore complete leather lamellar, improving their role as light cavalry. Also all soldiers who were to fight in melee on a regular basis who had not already done so were required to purchase a mace or hammer in addition to their swords, a clause added because of the growing amount of heavy armor used by the Empire’s foes.

The increase in equipment requirements was matched by an increase in equipment bonuses. That the empire could afford to do this was in large part due to the growth of the printing industry. Not only were a new book and press tax added to the roster, but the new industry created a slew of businesses upon which could be levied property taxes. The main influx came from the latter. The first two were kept rather low (the book tax was a one-time charge levied on the printer which was 5% of the book’s production cost, the press tax was a yearly payment of a semissis, a gold coin worth a half of a hyperpyra-the cost to set up a press was typically around 25 hyperpyra) to avoid charges that the government was trying to tax private presses out of business to leave the field clear for government presses. While those produced manuscripts intended for government employees, the military treatises were considered good reading for a cultured gentlemen while the cultural guides were highly valued by merchants for the information they gave on foreign beliefs and customs.

Soldiers were required to sell back their mail armor to the warehouses at a price set at around one half of what the soldiers had paid for the armor. Despite the fact that they were being gouged, there was remarkably little grumbling. Since well-maintained lamellar armor lasted far more than the two years between bonuses, these reforms essentially gave most soldiers a decent raise. Complainers were usually silenced by their kontoubernion-mates who did not want to jeopardize their good fortune with malcontent. Ironically, the government then turned around and sold the mail at a respectable profit to the Ottomans, meaning that the urban azabs of Mesopotamia were mostly protected by Roman mail.

The next reform has gotten the most attention from historians, due to its immense influence on the future of Roman gunpowder warfare. Essentially there was a mass overhaul of the artillery, taking into accounts lessons learned from the English and Castilians as well as the experiences of the Bulgarian war. The focus was on increased mobility and ease of operations. Ironically, the great bombards devised by Thomas Laskaris were only useful inside the Empire, where its elaborate road network made the transport of the monsters such as the bombard Giorgios possible. In less developed countries, such weapons were barely mobile, a weakness that had been heavily exploited by Bulgarian irregulars.

Also the Gunpowder Crusade and the Ninety Years War showed that larger numbers of medium and light guns were better than a few great guns. Although they fired smaller shot, it was more than compensated by the greater ease in positioning more weapons and their higher rate of fire. The latter allowed an attacker to sweep a section of wall with continuous fire, hampering repair efforts.

As a result, the great guns were, in a sense, retired from field duty, being set up as part of the defenses of five new forts. The first was on the northern shore of Lake Van, on the Ottoman border, and was called the Dragon Fort. The second was to protect the seaward approaches to the thriving port of Bari, called the Fort of St. John the Merciful, the saint who had been the father of Theodoros Megas. The fort of St. Theodoros Megas was set up on the opposite side of the Adriatic at Dyrrachium. The last two forts, set up on opposite sides of the Bosporus near Constantinople to enforce tolls on ships exiting or entering the Black Sea, were designed by a Turkish architect and thus became know as Rumeli Hisari (on the European side) and Anadolu Hisari (on the Asian side).


28772567287725670065ist.jpg

Rumeli Hisari today-Rumelia was the term used by Turkish speakers to refer to the Empire's European possessions, distinct from Anatolia.​

The main weapon of the Roman artillery became the bronze cannon firing cast iron shot weighing fifty pounds. These were also given wheeled carriages rather than the early sleds to further increase their mobility, an innovation applied to all the other Roman artillery weapons. There were also seventy and hundred-pounder cannons used, along with culverins firing twenty five and fifteen pound shot. The smallest Roman cannon, called the mikropur (little fire), fired a ball weighing six pounds.

Originally artillery had been assigned on the tagma level, attached to a specific tagma but not smaller units. Now most of the culverins and mikropurs were actually attached to the various tourmai. Thus on average, every tourma during a campaign would be supported by two mikropurs and one heavy and one light culverin. The heavier guns remained assigned either to the tagma artillery train or to the Imperial arsenals.

The navy also participated in the artillery reform. All Roman oared warships were outfitted with light culverins, although the size of even these small weapons and the obstructions caused by the rowers meant that even the largest dromon mounted only six cannons total, all located in the bow or stern.

It was the purxiphoi that saw the most changes. All of the great guns that had made up most of their armament were removed, replaced by ten of the bronze fifty pounders, located on the top of the main deck. There had been some suggestions on sticking them into the ship and adding wooden doors that could open, allowing the weapons to shoot out. It was rejected as there were concerns about jeopardizing the integrity of the ship and its subsequent ability to take battle damage. On the two great towers were added an additional eight light culverins and six mikro purs.

With the ships’ weight of fire decreased dramatically, the purxiphoi were now able to shoot more rapidly and the removal of the great guns which tended to make the ships top-heavy improved their sea-handling capabilities. In light of what Theodoros had in mind for the new fleet, four more purxiphoi were laid down, two in Constantinople and two in Trebizond. When they were completed they would bring the total of purxiphoi up to a total of twenty two. In comparison the Portuguese fielded thirty by this time (they were at the forefront of the Portuguese explorations around west Africa, at the time currently surveying the Canary Isles), the Aragonese twelve, Genoa and Venice both eight, the Hospitalers three, England-France and Arles two, and Lotharingia and Denmark one.

Another innovation was in the realm of officer training, which was seen as highly needed because the War of the Five Emperors, the Ain Sijni campaign, and the lead-up to the battle of Voronezh showed serious flaws in that area. Previously officers had been trained at the tagma and tourma levels at the reviews, supplemented by the military manuals that they were required to read. While this did produce officers skilled in battlefield tactics, it left the strategy and management side weak.

The response was the creation in 1440 of the first military academy, the Skoleio tou Polemou (the School of War). Any would-be officers had to pass its intensive three year course, which covered strategy, tactics, unit management, logistics, a form of proto-psychology designed to teach officers how to deal with disagreements amongst soldiers, diplomacy skills, military history, and the culture and traditions of the Empire’s enemies. Its ostensible goal was to “turn every officer into a dragon”. Of course such a goal was impossible, but it did succeed in creating a more proficient and versatile officer for the Roman army. The first school opened at Constantinople, but soon more sprang up in Thessalonica, Smyrna, Trebizond, and Antioch.

To get into the Skoleio, an applicant had to display ‘honesty, loyalty, and wisdom’, the same qualities demanded of those who received government scholarships at the universities. However the old officer corps was kept in place, allowing natural attrition to take its toll and was steadily replaced by the new system of graduates.

A new, separate school, the School of Artillery, was created for the artillery and engineers, which trained both officers and enlisted personnel. Being literate was required for entrance. Besides the specialized training for soldiers in their fields, the artillery officers received much the same training as cadets at the Skoleio tou Polemou. Institutions were opened up at Constantinople, Thessalonica, and Antioch.

There was also a significant reworking of military ranks. One major flaw in the Laskarid system was that there was no officer between a dekarchos (commander of 10 or 5 in a heavy cavalry unit) and a droungarios (commander of 100 or 50 in a heavy cavalry unit). The innovation was the creation of an officer called an eikosarchos, who was in command of two kontoubernions. He became in the new system the lowest ranking officer, replacing the dekarchos who remained as the highest military rank for the regular soldiery.

The eikosarchos commanded a new unit called the brazos (rock), as they were to be the rocks on which the army would rest as a whole. It was made up of twenty one men, the eikosarchos and two kontoubernions. Each kontoubernion had ten men, made up of one dekarchos (the equivalent of a sergeant), a pentarchos who commanded a section of four men, and a tetrachos who commanded a section of three.

The heavy cavalry formations kept the same ranks. There a brazos was made up of eleven men, the eikosarchos and the two cavalry kontoubernions of five men. In those there was just the dekarchos and the four men under their command. As a result, droungoi no longer had a numerical strength of 100 but 105 men (heavy cavalry droungoi grew from 50 to 55) not including the droungarios, being made up of five brazoi.

Graduates from the Skoleio entered the army as eikosarchoi, and as far as possible the new officers were attached to brazoi with experienced dekarchoi. The purpose of these reforms was to make the army more flexible in regard to small-unit tactics, as well as to instill greater loyalty in the officer corps, which would eventually grow from promotions of the eikosarchoi pool. As for training the brazoi, just as the dekarchoi had to make sure their kontoubernions met certain training parameters at the review, the eikosarchoi had to do the same with their brazoi.

Another result of this reform was that the increased need of soldiers to drill between reviews, as individuals, as part of a kontoubernion, and as part of a brazos, meant that functionally the tagma soldier was virtually a full-time soldier. Because of the need to train continuously to maintain their pay and equipment bonuses and so their units would look good and be called up for active duty, which gave another bonus and the opportunity for plunder, they did very little farming. Their family members and hired hands became the ones working the farm or business while the soldier drilled.

Perhaps the most important part of the overhaul of the officer corps was the removal of land grants, turning all officers into full-time professional soldiers. While the already existing officers kept their current pay structures, Skoleio graduates were not given land grants but were paid entirely in cash. This was done so as to further secure the loyalty of the officer corps to Constantinople. While tourmarches and strategoi would be wealthy enough to potentially purchase their own estates, junior officers would be much more loathe to join in a rebellion if they had no other form of sustenance. The new officers were stationed in the same vicinity as the men they commanded (who were still paid in a combination of land and cash) so they could facilitate their continued drilling.

The reforms also saw the creation of new troop formations. The first of these, which technically predated the reforms, were the Thulioi, the one thousand English longbowmen maintained as a professional standing force. Protected in leather lamellar, they were armed with their signature longbow, a hammer, a sword, and a steel cap, making them capable of fighting in melee.

New professional formations also were created during the reform period itself, mainly as an effort to decrease the power of the tagmata strategoi in the Empire. All of the contenders during the War of the Five Emperors besides Maria had started out as strategoi. They had remained quiet for many years after the accession of Demetrios and Manuel, and the army had remained loyal during Ioannes’ and Bedros’ short lived rebellion, but that insurrection served as a warning of what was possible.

The new formations were designed to increase the power of the full-time units. Paid entirely in cash, their loyalty to their imperial paymaster was solid. The equipment of the Athanatoi, already improved for the Council of Kings in Targoviste, was permanently upgraded. The kataphraktoi and their horses were armored in full plate, the skythikoi riders with full plate and their mounts with steel lamellar barding, and the heavy koursores mounts with lamellar barding for the face and neck. This was all in addition to the plate cuirasses added for Targoviste, which became part of the equipment ordnances for the Athanatoi.

A new formation called the Scholai, after the tagma of old, was established in 1440 and stationed in Aleppo, watching the Mameluke border. It was made up of two tourmai, composed like the regular tagma tourmai, and two hundred new troops called mauroi, after the Greek word for black, the color of the substance used to power their new weapons. These men carried handguns, modeled on the Bernese type and firing a ball weighing ten ounces. These were short-range, inaccurate weapons which took at least four minutes to reload, but they were highly effective against armor and threw up an immense cloud of smoke and noise that was highly disorienting. Their handguns were equipped with an iron butt so they could be used as a club. The mauroi also wore a steel lamellar cuirass, a steel cap, and leather lamellar and were equipped with a mace and sword. Their tactics were to fire a volley at point blank range, strap their handguns to their back, and charge into melee with their maces.

A total of five mauroi banda were created at that time, each with two hundred men. One was attached to the Scholai. The second was stationed at Tripoli, the third in Bari, the fourth in Theodosiopolis, and the fifth in Antioch. Becoming used to the smoke and noise became a regular part of the reviews, so that regular troops would be able to effectively operate in such an environment along with the mauroi. Another formation, two thousand strong, was also created, which has attracted the most attention amongst the students of history. They were called the Varangoi, or more famously, the Varangian Guard.

The new Varangians came mainly from Russia, specifically the former Principality of Pronsk. Many of the minor boyars had not been happy with the new arrangement in Russia, but with the archontes and the Novogorodian infantry and artillery behind him, Megas Rigas Alexei I was untouchable to the likes of them. Thus many of them had traveled south, offering their skills in warfare to the Roman Emperors, who organized them in the new Guard. Two hundred and fifty of them served as heavy cavalry, armored in steel lamellar for the horse and rider, fighting with lance and axe. Another two hundred and fifty were armored horse archers, fighting much like skythikoi, but armed with heavy axes as well as bows. The remaining fifteen hundred are known as the Varangian mauroi. They were equipped and fight like regular mauroi, but used the heavy axe in melee like their mounted comrades.


miscellaneous97830.jpg

The old Varangian Guard, equipped with its signature two-handed great axes, had been disbanded after the fall of Constantinople in 1204. The new Varangian Guard was not equipped the same as the old, but the new Varangians would soon gain a reputation for deadliness on the battlefield and loyalty to the Emperor that would make their forebears proud.​

The reforms did have the effect of increasing the size of the Roman standing army from eight thousand (the Athanatoi and three archontates) to thirteen thousand. The resources to pay for this came from a number of sources. One of them was the trade concessions that have been exacted from the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Genoa, Aragon-Sicily, and Castile over the past several years, which had done much to increase the export of Roman goods and the subsequent gain in toll revenue. Another was the growth of the new printing industry as a source of taxes as well as the sales from government presses.

A third was the increase of trade with Russia with the establishment of a direct land route, which brought in much currency from both import duties placed on furs, amber, and grain and export duties placed on jewelry, silk, and sugar. The Russians seem to have a particular fondness for the latter. The final source was increased trade links with Arles and Al-Andalus, which had helped to keep relations warm with the first and substantially improve relations with the second. In 1441, at the tail end of the imposition of the reforms, the Hammer actually proclaimed that ‘Cordoba and Constantinople, the twin beacons of the Mediterranean that outshine everything in between, are the best of friends. Long may it remain so.’

The final element of the reform was rather small; it was a book. Written by Demetrios Komnenos, it was called The Good General and published in 1440, becoming an instant bestseller. It covered both battle tactics and campaign strategies, with an emphasis on good logistics, morale, intelligence, and rapid movements. Its section on cavalry warfare was actually written by Dragos cel Mare before he was killed.

However it was the last section that drew the most attention, both at the time and amongst historians. It was a scenario, about how a Catholic crusade might be sent against the Empire and what was the best way to defend against it. It emphasized the maintenance of a powerful fleet to defend against approaches by sea, as well as keeping up good relations with Hungary (to bar the Balkans against Crusader attack) and with the Marinids (as they could provide bases in the western Mediterranean that might prove useful and could potentially threaten Italy, which would likely be the center of such a conflict).

The Demetrian reforms were an expensive process, and although they were begun over just three years, it took at least fifteen for them to fully implemented. However with the improvements in equipment, gunpowder weapons, and officer training, coupled with the fine training and discipline from Laskarid times which had never wavered, they gave the Roman Empire a truly deadly army. The Empire would have need of it in the years to come.
 
Last edited:
The Lords of Asia

Part 6.1

1440-1448

"Samarkand must be ours or the vultures. Until either one or the other happens, the Turkish people will never be safe."-Sultan Osman II​


1440: The gloom hanging over the Imperial court after the death of Demetrios is dissipated when the Empress Helena at last gives birth to female twins, who are named Zoe and Irene. Including the twins, by this point the Empress has had three daughters, but no less than eight miscarriages. This is especially unusual since the physically-active Empress models her diet after Giorgios Doukas, and thus is extremely healthy and looks about five years younger than her age of thirty one.

The first act of Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos as sole Emperor is receiving a delegation from the new Emperor of Ethiopia, Yohannes I. The eldest son of Yekuno (known posthumously as the Great), his initial years on the throne beginning in 1437 had been troubled ones. He had to put down a revolt by his nobles and some of the feudal Chewa regiments, keen on exercising their role in electing the monarch. The Axumos, supported by the crossbow militia and the royal regiments, had shown them the error of their ways. Besides securing Yohannes on the throne, it helped to establish a solid dynastic tradition for the Ethiopian throne.

With increased tribute from the Sennar states and from caravan trade tolls from merchants keen to avoid the Yemeni monopoly of the Bab el-Mandeb, Yohannes’ finances are in a good position. With that money, he has been able to substantially improve the Ethiopian cavalry, steadily hammering the Shilluk back into Central Africa. The support of the Roman artisans has continued to be of great importance to Yohannes, and his first wife is the daughter of the lead artisan and an Ethiopian noblewoman.

The delegation is in Constantinople to show its gratitude and also to request more artisans to further aid Ethiopia’s quest to modernize. While they bring gifts of gold and ivory, more importantly they bring a large stockpile of brown beans that when ground into a powder and mixed with hot water prove to be a stimulating beverage. The resulting beverage is called kaffos, a Greek corruption of the beans’ province of origin in Ethiopia known as Kaffa.

It immediately becomes a huge success amongst the Imperial court when one of the new tax prefects adds Cypriot sugar to the mix. Unfortunately due to lack of knowledge about the plant itself, the Roman attempts to cultivate it all fail. When it becomes known that supplies are out, purportedly Alexios Palaeologos, victor of Ain Sijni, submitted a battle plan on the spot with the objective of seizing control of the Nile River valley, so that more could be transported from Ethiopia.


coffeebeans.jpg

The Nightmare of the Mamelukes​

As this is happening, tensions are increasing between Mamelukes and Romans all across the eastern Mediterranean. Several attacks on pilgrims in the Holy Land occur and are unpunished by the local authorities, who also do nothing to stop bands of young men from crossing the Roman border to burn and pillage. As a result, Theodoros authorizes the Syrian tagma and banda to respond in kind as they see fit. On both sides of the border, streams of displaced refugees fleeing their burning homesteads becomes a common sight. Meanwhile the price of Sudanese slaves increases almost fifty percent because of ‘supply difficulties’. Sales of Egyptian grain are also similarly affected, although for some reason sales to Venetians do not shrink.

Theodoros, keen to improve relations with a state so well situated to harry the Mamelukes, grants the Ethiopian request. A total of thirty four artisans, included three gunsmiths, accompany the Ethiopians as they return home. However in Alexandria, the party is arrested by Mameluke soldiers and at the personal order of Barsbay, every member of the contingent, both Ethiopian and Roman, are executed. When a protest arrives from Ethiopia, with a veiled threat of diverting the Nile, Barsbay’s response is utterly ruthless, tempered by the influence of the hard-line Hedjazi imams.

A month later, on August 9, over fifteen thousand Coptic Christians across the Mameluke domains, mostly artisans, priests, and scribes, are rounded up and executed. The response from the Mamelukes’ Muslim neighbors is universally one of horror. The imams of Mesopotamia issue a fatwa condemning the massacre in no uncertain terms as contrary to the proper treatment of people of the book, hampering conversion efforts as it would encourage the Copts to rightly look on the Muslims as vile. The imams of the Roman Empire join in the condemnation, calling it ‘savagery worthy of a Crusader’.

However not all Muslims agree with the Roman imams (who are deliberately very closely tied to the Roman state, particularly in the administration of justice). In August the banda capture a group of thirty men from two villages attempting to cross the border to join the Mameluke army. Poor Arabs, with no prospects in life beyond scratching out an existence in a marginal region of Syria, the lure of loot from the coming jihad is as much of an incentive, if not more, than the call to the faithful itself. When the news is heard, a Christian mob razes the two offending villages to the ground, killing their inhabitants.

From Al-Andalus, from the hand of the Hammer himself, comes a letter damning all those responsible, writing that ‘I have seen more fear of God, more love of justice and mercy, more kindness and compassion, from the infidels on my border. Upon hearing what you have done, I am ashamed to be a part of the same faith as you. But I take comfort from the fact that though you call yourself Muslim, you are not. By your actions, you have shown your true natures. You are not Muslims, but dogs.’ In Ethiopia, the day becomes known as the Massacre of the Innocents. Islam would long rue that day.

1441: Keen to steal a march on the Romans, it is Barsbay who opens the war. In Alexandria, he attempts a mass arrest of the Greek merchants, but through the aid of local Coptic Christians as well as Sicilian traders, many are warned in time. They flee, abandoning their goods and homes but saving their families. Mameluke galleys attempt to stop the fleeing Roman ships, some of which are equipped with cannons. There has been an increasing number of purxiphoi-style cargo vessels (large, broad beam, sailing vessels minus the bow and stern towers) in Roman civilian service. Some merchants have taken to arming their vessels with cannons to guard against pirates, particularly Venetian ones which are becoming an increasing problem. This is a trend supported by Theodoros, as it gives him the opportunity to levy a new cannon tax.

With cannons at their disposal, unlike the Mameluke galleys, the Roman freighters are able to smash three into splinters, then turning their guns on Alexandria itself before withdrawing. The enraged Alexandrians turn with full force upon the Copts, who are sheltered as much as possible by the Aragonese, Sicilian, and Genoese merchants, who are also targeted in the attacks. Barsbay manages to restore order after much loss of life and property.

Shortly afterward, Barcelona, Palermo, and Genoa issue a joint demand for damages. Included is the unveiled threat of joining the Romans in the war if their terms are not accepted. The ultimatum is given additional force by a bull issued by Pope (in Avignon) Gregory XII which states ‘if the just demands of these faithful gathered here are not met by the government in Cairo, we will have no choice but to issue a call to crusade to aid our Roman brothers in the faith’. Presented at the same time with a joint demand from Tbilisi and Novgorod for a renewed guarantee for protection of Georgian and Russian monasteries and pilgrims, Barsbay is forced to stand down.

Smarting over his diplomatic defeat, Barsbay pours into Roman Syria with an army of seventy thousand men, although admittedly many are recent conscripts from the villages of the Nile. Even with that disadvantage the Syrian tagma is disinclined to accept open battle, instead holing up in the various fortified castles and cities. Since they are well guarded by cannons, Barsbay is unable to reduce any of the major fortifications with the exception of Homs, but nevertheless he presses onwards. His hope is that if he can take the Cilician Gate, he can hold it against the onslaught of the Anatolian armies, allowing him to mop up all of the Roman territory south of the Taurus mountains.

As he advances, his fleet launches a series of raids upon Cyprus. Although vastly outmatched by the Roman fleet and badly trounced whenever they contest that fact, many Mameluke galleys are able to land small raiding parties on Cyprus. The damage they inflict is ultimately limited, but succeeds in disrupting sugar production and Roman tax revenue. Barsbay attributes those successes as the reason why his advance is only opposed by the Syrian tagma and a few Anatolian cleisurai; the Romans must lack the necessary money to call up more troops. With Tripoli, the Syrian Rock (the Greek name for Krak des Chevaliers), and Aleppo remaining stubbornly defiant behind their fortifications, Barsbay does not bother conducting a proper siege of Antioch, merely throwing up a loose blockade of the city.

However when he enters Cilicia, he faces massive waves of opposition, not just from the native Armenians but also from newly arrived banda from the Coloneian and Armenian theaters. Composed of turkopouloi and mounted akrites, these frontier troops are superb skirmishers. However the lack of skutatoi and kataphraktoi formations convinces Barsbay that with the crippling of Cypriot production, he has hamstrung the Roman defenses in the east. In October he places Tarsos under siege.

1442: Barsbay had attempted to seize the Cilician Gates during the winter but had been stymied by the fierce defense of the local cleisurai along with repeated attacks on his supply lines. However the Hedjazi imams have not been blind to the situation, and in January they issue a joint fatwa, calling all the faithful to join in a great jihad against the Roman Empire.

The response from the House of Islam is mixed. From Al-Andalus comes an ominous silence, although from North Africa a trickle of Berber cavalry makes its way into Alexandria. Yemen refuses to join in an endeavor that will only serve to strengthen its former overlords. On the other hand, central Arabia disgorges a multitude of her sons, giving Barsbay a sizeable but poorly equipped and disciplined pool of light cavalry. The Ibadi Emirate of Oman does not act, although there is little surprise in Mecca over that.

The greatest disappointment comes from the Ottomans and Roman Muslims. The people of Mesopotamia remain fixed on the goal of Persia and will not be moved. The call of jihad is discredited in their eyes by its association with the Turkmen and Timur. In fact, many of the ulema in Baghdad and Basra condemn the jihad, arguing that it endangers the safety of the 1.3 million Muslims under Roman rule. Those Muslims too do not stir. The Romans have treated them well, ensuring them the continued practice of their faith as well as their prosperity. They are not keen to jeopardize that.

With Berber and Arab cavalry helping to protect his supply lines, Barsbay calls up even more Egyptian levies to bolster his army in Cilicia, building up the greatest host the eastern Mediterranean has seen since the day of Timur. By the beginning of May, he has ninety thousand men in Cilicia, along with fifteen thousand men scattered across Roman Syria on blockade and garrison duty.

On April 6, Alexios Palaiologos moves. The Roman fleet lands the Epirote and Helladic tagmata, along with three European cleisurai, in Tripoli. At the same time, the Macedonian, Optimatic, Opsician, Thracesian, Anatolic, Chaldean, and Coloneian tagmata debouch from the Cilician Gates, seventy thousand men. And that is not all, for Theodoros is determined to put the full might of the Roman Empire into this struggle, an effort not matched even by Manzikert. On April 16, Alexandros of Kerasous appears off Damietta with a fleet of sixty ships, protecting transports loaded with the Helladic tagma, the Athanatoi, the Varangoi, and two cleisurai, nineteen thousand men. By mid-May the Roman Empire has put a grand total of one hundred and twenty five thousand men into the field.

To pay and supply this utterly massive host strains even the Roman bureaucracy. It is aided by the fact that command of the sea is virtually uncontested, and also that the vast bulk of the army can draw directly on Anatolian resources. However many enterprising Genoese, Anconan, and Urbinese merchants are able to land lucrative supply contracts running supplies into Antioch and Tripoli. To pay for all this, Theodoros cancels the construction subsidies for the year and increases the size of the ‘Senate’ by over sixty members by selling the title of Senator to wealthy merchants, doubling it in size.

The Roman army in Tripoli moves quickly under the command of Isaakios Laskaris, strategos of the Epirote tagma, with an able second in the person of Vlad Dracula, the eldest son of the Dragon, born in 1410. The Mameluke blockade forces, not expecting a vigorous sally, are scattered and repeatedly hammered in detail, racking up roughly four thousand losses. The survivors flee south, away from the coming conflagration in Cilicia. With the blocking forces cleared, Isaakios is able to assemble the Syrian tagma and the Scholai, boosting his combined army to a force of thirty five thousand.

Although massively outnumbered by Barsbay’s host, Isaakios presents a huge threat to the Sultan’s survival, as the Roman army in Syria is now sitting atop his supply lines. Supply by sea is impossible because of the Roman fleet, and there is no way that Cilicia itself can provide for the host. Still hampered by the repeated raids of the Roman banda, Barsbay begins to fall back as Alexios pushes south.

The Sultan finds his retreat blocked at Adana, where Isaakios has encamped. He has protected his position with an extensive network of earthen ditches and embankments, lined with stakes and covered by rows of culverins and mikropurs, recently shipped into Antioch along with all of the Thulioi. Those longbowmen are positioned in the center of the line, ripping apart the first Mameluke foray that attempts to probe the Roman line.

Despite its strong defensive position, Barsbay knows he has to clear away the Roman army. It is atop the main road leading south; if he moves his forces off the road away from where they can be supplied by his remaining reserves, they will have to scatter for foraging, allowing his army to be defeated in detail. But if he remains on the road, slowly attempting to pry Isaakios from his position, there is a very real possibility that Alexios’ host will plow into his rear. It is following closely behind, and Barsbay cannot turn on the Anatolians without exposing his own rear to Isaakios. To buy himself time, Barsbay throws five thousand of the Arab light cavalry at Alexios in order to slow his advance. Although they inflict little damage, they succeed in the task of delaying the advance.

With the need for speed, Barsbay abandons subtlety, relying on his numerical advantage of five to two over Isaakios’ army. It is April 22. Wave after wave of men plow against the Roman fortifications, whose archers and artillery wreak an utterly horrific slaughter. The attacks are conducted without letup, the infantry leading the way, following by sergeants slashing with whips to make them move forward. The lightly armored infantry are ripped to shreds by the hail of composite arrows, but they perform their task of soaking up the missiles. The sheer numbers allow some to actually reach the Roman lines, here and there hacking down Roman soldiers before dying. Meanwhile more infantry, armed with shovels, are busy tearing down the stakes and filling in the ditches with earth from the embankments. Due to the need to concentrate strength and missiles on their actual attackers, the Roman soldiers are unable to halt the dismantling.

After hitting the Romans with a total of eleven infantry attacks over the space of five hours, forcing them to use up most of their arrows and endurance, fifteen thousand heavy cavalry roar into action. The noise is incredible, the sight terrifying, fifteen thousand great horses beating at the earth, the ground shaking, the banners flying, the trumpets blowing, a great dust cloud fanning out behind the host, like the tail of a great lion. Above the cloud the sun shines down, reflecting off the steel lamellar of the host, which blazes, an onrushing typhoon of sound and light, reaching out to touch the Roman lines.

One thousand mauroi answer, ripping the air apart with the bellow of their weapons, letting loose a great pall of powder smoke, sending forth their own tide of fire and death. It does not matter that their handguns are inaccurate; at that range and with that big of a target, they cannot miss. It does not matter that their handguns are short-range, that their targets are well armored; at that range, the lead balls cannot be stopped. The first Roman handgun volley fired in anger sallies out, one thousand tiny balls against fifteen thousand great horses.

The center of the Mameluke charge shatters into bloody mist as the balls smash through their armor, ripping apart the flesh underneath. But despite the shrieking of horses, men collapsing on the ground with limbs blown off, it is not enough, not to stop this host. The akrites and toxotai pour out a fierce hail of missiles, attempting to hold the now utterly enraged Mamelukes back long enough for the mauroi to retreat back behind the skutatoi. They succeed, barely, the line of berserk heavy cavalry slamming into the ranks of the spearmen as they close the holes in their formations.

The Roman line buckles under the impact. The Mamelukes, well armored and equipped with maces, steadily begin hammering down the skutatoi despite heavy losses, remaining deadly even when dismounted. With leaks starting to appear, Isaakios orders his kataphraktoi, skythikoi, kousores, akrites, and mauroi into the fray. Then Barsbay throws in his remaining infantry, the sheer weight steadily pushing back the trembling Roman ranks.

The fighting is utterly savage. As lances snap and swords break, men continue to fight, clawing at each other, hammering their opponents with nails and teeth. Still the Roman lines quaver backward, forcing Isaakios to throw even the turkopouloi and toxotai into melee when they run out of arrows. Still, the Romans are slowly pushed back, although the Mamelukes are forced to follow through rivers of their own blood and mountains of corpses. Finally Barsbay himself enters the battle with his elite guard. The arrival of fresh troops is enough to cause some of the exhausted Roman troops to begin routing, forcing Vlad Dracula to enter the battle himself to stem the tide.

The course of the battle, which involves both leaders fighting as common soldiers, results in them facing off against each other. They exchange about eight blows, Vlad succeeding in killing Barsbay’s mount before the Sultan’s bodyguards can intervene. Vlad manages to escape without injury; the Roman army is not so lucky. On the far right a battalion of Mameluke infantry capture a battery of four mikropurs just before they can be fired. Grunting with effort, their sheer adrenaline allows the men, with the support of some of the more far-sighted Mameluke cavalry and their horses, to reposition the Roman cannons. They are fired directly down the Roman lines.

Skipping along the ground, the impact of those four shots is horrendous. The first Roman skutatoi hit simply disintegrate. The remaining thirty or so killed by each shot are merely torn apart. The entire Roman right wing becomes unhinged, the exhausted Roman soldiers routing in panic. With Mameluke troops curling around the flank, the rest of the Roman army gives way as well, the left wing dissolving into rout although the center retains relatively good order under the eye of Isaakios.


crusaders01td8.jpg

The collapse of the Roman lines​

As the Roman army collapses, Barsbay finally commits his light cavalry. The enthusiastic but lightly-equipped ghazis would have been nearly useless in the melee, but pursuing a broken foe they are superb. What is left of the right wing is virtually annihilated, and the left nearly so before Vlad is able to reform the tourmai to fend off the Arabs. With a heavily battered army of his own, Barsbay is in no mood to challenge Alexios advancing from the northwest after annihilating the ghazi force, so he resumes his march south, taking with him the captured Roman artillery and supply train.

The battle of Adana is the bloodiest battle in the Middle east since Manzikert. Out of thirty five thousand Romans, only eighteen thousand come out again. But the cost for the Mamelukes is even more horrific. Out of the host of eighty five thousand, only fifty seven thousand return to Syria. And while it is true that the bulk of the losses were Egyptian infantry conscripts, easily replaceable, the death of sixty eight hundred heavy Mameluke cavalry (out of fifteen thousand), is far more serious. The capture of two dozen Roman artillery pieces is nowhere near enough to compensate.

In Egypt, the Roman expedition under the command of Stefanos of Kos has been doing much better, capturing Damietta in an afternoon due to its nonexistent garrison. Originally it had been proposed to launch the Egyptian attack on Alexandria itself, but had been rejected because of the Venetians. Due to serious Sicilian, Aragonese, and Roman competition most of the Venetian merchants in Egypt had relocated to Damietta where they had a complete stranglehold on trade. An attack on Damietta not only would severely wound Venetian interests, but also cut off the main conduit through which the Venetians might funnel aid to Barsbay.

With most of the Mameluke army in the Levant, only Alexandria and Cairo with their stout fortifications and civic militias are able to impede Roman attacks. However with only nineteen thousand men available, installing a series of garrisons would quickly drain the Roman army of combat soldiers. Instead Stefanos has contented himself with merely holding Damietta itself while extorting payments out of the various Egyptian towns, substantially enlarging the purses of his soldiers in the process.

The only serious battle is fought just north of Cairo, between the Varangian Guard, two thousand strong, and nine thousand Egyptian levies. One handgun volley and a mass charge is enough to shatter the Egyptians. The ‘battle’ lasted less than half an hour, the Egyptians taking over nine hundred casualties, the Varangians six.

However news of Adana brings this activity to a halt. Leaving twenty thousand men in Syria to fight a holding action against Alexios, Barsbay hurries south with forty thousand men, strengthening it with scattered troop detachments and garrisons. By the time he places Damietta under siege on August 4, he has forty nine thousand soldiers. But for all his numerical advantage, Barsbay is stymied. With limited artillery and very poorly trained crews to man them, he has little to support his mediocre infantry. As a result his chances of taking Damietta by storm are almost nonexistent. And he cannot starve out the Roman garrison due to their control of the sea.

Meanwhile the news from Syria is not good. While Isaakios’ army was effectively crippled by Adana, Alexios’ own host is completely undamaged. Homs fell on July 3 after a siege of eight days, after which the Mameluke blocking force fell back to the pre-war border harried by the garrisons from the Rock and Tripoli. Shortly afterwards Alexios chased it into Damascus, throwing up siege works and hammering the walls with concentrated artillery fire.

With the enemy confined, Alexios split off two tagmata to besiege Beirut and Sidon. Both cities had been taken by Timur and their fortifications had not been repaired, unlike Damascus. Under the hail of Roman cannon fire, both cities capitulate after an eighteen and twenty two day siege respectively.

On August 30, a banner of truce flies above the battlements of Damietta and shortly afterwards Barsbay meets with a Roman envoy, none other than the Empress Helena. Theodoros’ goal had been nothing less than the complete and utter destruction of the Mameluke Sultanate. His plan had been to draw the Mameluke army into Cilicia and annihilate it. If successful, the Mamelukes would then only be able to draw on raw levies without the support of veteran troops, and would for all their numbers been swept aside. However the defeat at Adana broke that plan, and now the Empire is faced with a potential slugging match down the Levant, something Theodoros is unwilling to stomach, especially after the butcher’s bill from Adana.

Barsbay too is desirous of peace. Adana was a pyrrhic victory because of his horrendous losses in heavy cavalry, and the rest of the war has not gone well for the Mamelukes. Everything north of the Litari river is to be ceded to the Romans, including the cities of Beirut and Sidon, although Baalbek remains Mameluke. In exchange Damietta is to be handed back. Both sides will keep all their spoils (a clause that favors the Romans because of the Egyptian expedition) with prisoners to be ransomed. Barsbay accepts the terms, but is utterly enraged when the Romans demolish Damietta with mass gunpowder charges before retiring. Unsurprisingly the Sultan is not mollified when his protests are met with the response that the treaty did not state that Damietta was to be handed back intact.

There is one additional element of the treaty that Barsbay does not like, but Theodoros refuses to hand over his Mameluke prisoners until it is accepted. A new party is dispatched to Ethiopia, guided by some Ethiopian monks from a monastery in the Sinai. Instead of the original thirty four, a hundred and eighty two Roman artisans go to the African kingdom, including seven skilled in the manufacture of gunpowder and cannons (although not handguns). They also include armorers who know how to make plate armor, some retired drill dekarchoi, and doctors conversant in the latest medical practices, including Giorgios Doukas’ recent discovery that the water from boiled willow bark actually makes for a mild painkiller.


revival20of20rhomanion2.png

Map of the Known World after the 1442 Treaty. Note that Ottoman control of Khuzestan is tenuous at best.​


1443: There is relief in Constantinople when the new Hungarian monarch Istvan I, son of the Warrior King (as he is known) Andrew III, confirms the treaty of Dyrrachium. With the army involved in the Levant, there was concern that the new king might try and sweep south across the Danube into Serbia, an advance that would have been opposed only by the Thracian tagma. However Istvan is more concerned with solidifying his control over Austria. And while he does hunger for martial glory, his eye instead sweeps north to Presporok.

Andrew III had died in August of the previous year. Despite the troubles of his reign, the loss is genuinely mourned by the Hungarian people. While he had brought them low in the disasters of the Vlach revolt and Polish war, he had rebuilt their strength and pride, and once again given them a name as conquerors. He had made mistakes, grave mistakes. But he had learned from them, and fixed the damage. Many monarchs have done far worse.

A second envoy arrives from Samarkand, demanding the same as the first sent during the height of the war, the payment of the tribute the Romans had paid to Timur under Konstantinos XI. The first, who had only demanded the resumption of tribute, was sent away empty handed. The second however demands the resumption plus all the arrears going back to 1403. The Roman response is identical to the one given by the Ottomans to the envoys they receive at the same time. The only tribute Shah Rukh gets are the severed heads of his ambassadors.

It was the twin diplomatic crises at Buda and Samarkand that caused Rhomania to stay her hand during the recent peace treaty, particularly the later. Theodoros had feared that the envoys heralded a mass Timurid invasion, which meant that the army could not be tied down in the Levant. When it becomes clear that in fact Shah Rukh is not yet ready to move west, there are many in the Roman court and society who urge the resumption of the war, or at least forcing a more favorable rewrite of the treaty terms. However the Emperor refuses, keeping the tagmata on their estates and continuing the reforms to the officer corps. In an effort to distract the people from this unpopular policy, tourmarch Vlad Dracula is granted the title of comes (count-not hereditary). But so long as the shadow of the Lord of Asia hangs over the Empire, the army shall remain there.

Meanwhile the Helladic tagma soldiers return to their homes, laden with the spoils of Egypt. The mass influx of wealth, which is immediately invested in improving farmland and developing local industries (soldiers provide artisans with capital to improve their production and receive in return a share of the increased profits), help lead to a small economic boom centered around Corinth. One prominent revival is the Corinthian branch of the once powerful Plethon family (they had been ruined by the War of the Five Emperors), who invest in the expansion of shipbuilding and silk.

A new school joins the Roman university system, as Theodoros approves the charter for an University at Bari. The rapidly growing city with its thirty two thousand inhabitants, thriving as a debarkation point for goods from the east, is by now wholly a Rhomanian city. There was an old Catholic university at Salerno, but after the Roman conquest a generation ago it was shut down.

The establishment of a new university, even if it is small, is a sign of how the Greek element in southern Italy is once again in ascendance. By this point, Orthodox followers make up about a third of Roman Italy’s people, and about two thirds of its middle and all of its upper class. Native Italians, who overwhelmingly remain true to the Catholic faith of their ancestors, are almost entirely poor farmers scratching a living out of marginal soil. The best farmland had been given to the Italian tagma and five cleisurai settled in the region.

Their wretched existence is even more miserable due to Roman tax policy, which levies double the normal taxes and triple the head tax. The extreme head tax increase is unique to Roman Italy, a deliberate attempt by Theodoros to discourage the Italians from breeding. It is also a common practice to kidnap Italian children as infants to be brought up in Orthodox monasteries or families. As a result of this policy, the Greek element in southern Italy is by far the fastest growing as natural increase is supplemented by immigration from Anatolia. It is also not surprising that constantly outside of the towns can be seen the hanging skeletons of captured brigands, mostly Catholics forced off their land, which only increases the anti-Catholic sentiments of the Roman population.

1444: In July, Charles I of Arles succeeds in arranging a marriage between his son Louis and the daughter of Conrad Habsburg, the count of Breisgau and Sundgau. The Habsburg counts are the second most important member of the Bernese League, after the city of Bern itself, with their armored knights providing a crucial role in League combined arms tactics. It is a major step forward in Charles’ ongoing efforts to gain the League as an ally in the event of a war against Lotharingia. Charles has also been forging ties with Denmark as well, in addition to his embassies to the Kingdom of Norway and Scotland as a counter against England-France.

In Persia, the Ottoman invasion has largely quieted. Although along the border raids and skirmishes abound, since the fall of Hormuz large offensives have halted. Partly it is a relaxation after the hard campaigning of the last two decades, but also a desire on Osman’s part to husband strength for the coming battle with Tieh China. In Samarkand Shah Rukh has been busy laying up supplies, gathering more tribesmen to his banner alongside mass formations of Urumqi and Chinese infantry. While he may have surpassed his grandfather in the eyes of some, the lure of the lands of Timur’s old empire is irresistible. In 1443, Osman received a Timurid delegation which demanded the resumption of the old tribute that Osman had paid while Timur was still alive. The Sultan did send a tribute back, the heads of all of the envoys save the most juniors.

Constantinople too is not blind to the danger. Shah Rukh is determined to make it abundantly clear that he is greater than his grandfather, but even the fall of China has not convinced some that it is so. The argument is that Timur could have conquered China too. But he was instead beaten at Manzikert, by the one state able to defeat him, the Roman Empire. Avenging Manzikert and toppling the Romans will make it clear, beyond any doubt, that Shah Rukh is mightier than his ancestor. In fact, if he conquered China and the Romans (Persia and the Ottomans would be a necessary prelude) he would be greater than all of the Great Khans of old, including Genghis Khan himself.

In an effort to guard against such a threat, the Roman Office of Barbarians opens its first spy ring in China in 1444, an extension of the old network set up in the Timurid heartland. While due to the huge travel times, the information is sparse and intermittent, they paint a picture where Shah Rukh’s first son Mahmud is increasingly disliked by the Chinese because of his frequent patronage of the Urumqi. Instead they support Mahmud’s younger brother Jahangir, who has consistently looked after their interests and worked to integrate Chinese practices and individuals into the Tieh administration, including the Confucian exam system. The politics serve to fuel an old and intense rivalry between the brothers.

Osman also has been busy. Besides forging closer ties with Greater Khorasan, he has spent the last few years working to form a defensive alliance with Georgia and Russia against the reborn Timurid Empire. Georgia is still reluctant, as was Russia at first, but Shah Rukh’s continued meddling in Perm is an intolerable threat to Russia’s frontier. Near the end of the year, Osman receives the news. If the Ottomans are attacked by Tieh China, they will not stand alone.

Far to the west, another advance continues as well as Portuguese traders begin colonizing the Canary Islands. However they face an unusual threat in these waters, Andalusi warships. The Hammer, still Lord of al-Andalus, is interested in securing a direct sea route to the Jolof Empire and its rich supplies of slaves, gold, and ivory. Cutting out the Sahara caravan route would bypass the problems posed by Berber and Taureg raiders. While Marinid north Africa is ill equipped for such a task, the Hammer can draw upon the natural merchants and sailors of the Algarve, as well as the expertise of the small but growing community of Andalusi Greeks.

After the bloodbath of the Adana-Damietta campaign, Constantinople is quiet, except for the buzz of gossip about the greatest social event of the year. In May, the Empress Helena Komnena, wife of Theodoros IV, hosts a great banquet in the Blachernae. The guests are the first female graduates of the Roman university system.

* * *​

Sunlight Over Cordoba: Al-Andalus Under the Hammer


In 1445 the Gunpowder Crusade had been over for seventeen years. That it had ended with al-Andalus surviving as anything more than a rump state had mainly to do with the Hammer of al-Andalus, Mohammed al-Hasan ibu Abu. The recovery of al-Andalus after the crusade was also because of the inspiration of Mohammed.

When he retained his powers as Lord of al-Andalus, answerable only to the Marinid Sultan, his father, in Marrakesh with full control of all of al-Andalus’ institutions and peoples after the crusade, he inherited a battered state, but not without its strengths. Much of the territory had been ravaged, the Algarve in particular, but the backbone of Muslim Iberia, the Guadalquivir valley, had been mostly spared. The region was still populous and relatively wealthy, more urbanized than anywhere in Christendom except for the Roman Empire.

It did have a well developed agricultural and fishing sector, with some small-scale trading. Its main weaknesses lay in the lack of a large export sector, as its agricultural produce was not particularly valuable except in high bulk. The primary trading partner was actually the north African cities, a continuous, dependable flow, but one of little profit.

Al-Andalus’ main weakness was not economic, but in its military. It had contributed little manpower to its own defenses, with over ninety percent of the Marinid army being drawn from African sources. That had nearly spelled disaster during the Gunpowder Crusade, as the Iberians had concentrated much of their efforts on severing the Iberian-African connection. The burned out ruins of Malaga showed how close the crusaders had come to doing so.

The lesson to Mohammed was clear; al-Andalus must provide her own army. Previously the Marinid sultans had discouraged this, concerned with the possibility of the Andalusi army being turned against them. Mohammed’s position in the Marinid hierarchy allowed him to bypass this concern. The main source of inspiration for Mohammed’s reforms was the closest society he could find to the one he ruled, the Roman Empire.

His first action was to encourage the activities of Roman merchants in his realm. While he still levied tolls on imports of silk and sugar, unlike the Aragonese, the great urban masses of the Guadalquivir made for a gigantic market. But he provided trade quarters, where the Romans could live by their own laws, with their own judge and law court to regulate relations amongst themselves, as well as churches. With such concessions he was able to lure many traders to the region despite fears of ill will after Melilla. Not only did they provide Mohammed’s treasury a steady influx of tolls, but the increased trade ties between Cordoba (where Mohammed moved his capital in 1433) and Constantinople ensured that there was a strong merchant lobby in the Queen of Cities against future Marinid wars.

Mohammed was not just interested in Roman merchants, but also craftsmen. With offers of high salaries and honors, he was able to convince many to relocate to Al-Andalus. Since he also provided transportation and houses, the majority moved with their families, setting up small immigrant communities in Cordoba, Granada, Cadiz, and Seville, something the Hammer deliberately encouraged to ensure that the artisans would remain in his realm. By 1445 the combined communities, partly through natural increase amongst the Romans and through local intermarriage, numbered about twenty thousand.

Although he drew on all kinds of artisans, Mohammed paid particular attention to those with skills with military applications, specifically armorers and shipwrights. In the interest of maintaining good relations with the Marinids, Constantinople allowed the emigration, although gunsmiths were barred from leaving the Empire. It was in large part due to Constantinople’s facilitation of his reforms that Mohammed backed the Romans over his fellow Muslims in the Adana War.

Drawing on Marinid and Andalusi gunsmiths, he was also able to create a small gun making industry around Cordoba, which also produced cast iron cannonballs and gunpowder. For the navy, the Hammer did draw greatly on Roman shipwrights when creating the first Muslim version of the purxiphoi, using them to supplement a small force of galleys. To avoid relying too heavily on Genoese imports, Mohammed passed rulings designed to maintain and expand the Andalusi forests as a source of timber, as well as native flax and hemp production.

The Hammer however was not just interested in military applications. Roman glassmakers and jewelers also moved to Al-Andalus, bringing their knowledge and expertise. As their market was the inhabitants of the Marinid Sultanate, a region that did not see imports of Roman glass and jewelry (just spices, silk, and sugar), Theodoros IV did not object to the development of Andalusi industry.

Mohammed also brought in scribes and doctors as well. They were native Andalusi, but Mohammed dipped into his treasury to establish a scholarship system of his own so that they could attend Roman universities. Typically they attended Antioch, which had the most Muslim students and teachers, although they went to every university except Thessalonica, where there had been several incidents with Latin students. When the students returned to Al-Andalus, they brought back Roman administrative and medical knowledge and texts. To further the distribution of this information, in 1441 two Roman printers set up shop in Cordoba, establishing the first printing press in the Muslim world.

Roman artists also found a source of patronage in Mohammed’s court, several emigrating west as well. When Mohammed began the construction of the Alhambra in Cordoba in 1439, he used Roman artists to help decorate his new and beautiful palace. In fact in 1443 when Theodoros wanted a piece on the siege of Acre during the Adana war, he actually asked for a loan of Mohammed’s best resident painter, Stefanos Iagaris. Mohammed was only too happy to comply.



portraitofmehmediibygen.png

A personal portrait of Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu by Stefanos Iagaris, 1437​


Nevertheless the primary focus of Mohammed was the reformation of the military. Using the money from the economic reforms, he established two professional regiments in Cordoba, two thousand heavy cavalry equipped with lances and maces, and five thousand heavy infantry armed the same. They were both armored in steel and leather lamellar, the steel lamellar forged by the Roman immigrants and the local armorers they taught.

However seven thousand men, no matter how well equipped, would not be enough to defend Al-Andalus in a repeat of the Gunpowder Crusade. Again what Mohammed did was very heavily influenced by the tagma-theme system in use by the Romans, which was explained in detail to him by the old drill dekarchoi that he had also brought from Rhomania. In the countryside, he instituted a system of land grants, waiving land taxes in exchange for military services. Unlike in Rhomania, where new estates were created out of conquered or confiscated land, the soldiers’ estates are transformed from existing farming lands.

In the cities though, the true source of power in Al-Andalus, he followed the Epirote model established by Thomas Laskaris during the War of the Five Emperors. There instead of land grants, family business with tax concessions had been used as the support base. Mohammed did the same here, drawing on the artisan and merchant classes. The lower-class artisans and merchants such as carpenters and butchers were responsible for the light infantry, while more up-scale occupations provided heavy infantry and heavy cavalry (in the case of cavalry typically several businesses pooled their resources to field one soldier). The countryside estates were the source of all the light cavalry and the bulk of the heavy horsemen.

All of the Jund (the name applied to the Andalusi version of the tagma-theme) participated in regular reviews, a total of five annually, each one lasting twelve days. There they also received a small lump sum, contingent on meeting proficiency standards at the beginning of each review. Unlike the Roman model, the Jund were not equipped by a government-run warehouse system, but had to provide their own weapons and armor to a certain standard.

By 1445, the Jund numbered twenty six thousand strong, with two thousand heavy cavalry, six thousand light cavalry, eight thousand heavy infantry, and ten thousand light infantry/archers. The two guard regiments and the Jund were also supplemented by several Berber tribes that Mohammed settled in the depopulated land north of the Guadalquivir, providing the Hammer with a good border guard against the Castilians at Alarcos and a reservoir of skilled if somewhat rambunctious light cavalry.

However it was the political development of 1445 that would be the most important impact of Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu’s rule over Al-Andalus. In that year, his father, the Marinid Sultan, died in Marrakesh. Mohammed was the rightful heir, but was extremely reluctant to leave the land in which he had lived for the last twenty years. His wife was Andalusi, and all of his children had grown up there. However he could not become Sultan and remain in Cordoba. The people of North Africa, both the inhabitants of the towns and the Berber tribesmen of the interior, would not tolerate a Sultan on the other side of the Rock of Tariq. It would remove them from their position of power.

So Mohammed struck a deal with his younger brother Ahmed. Mohammed would remain as Lord of Al-Andalus while his brother became Sultan. The Hammer would render unto the Sultan “all the respect due to his august station.” Ahmed, jumping at the unexpected chance before him, did not complain about the extremely vague phrase. The agreement was an informal one between the two brothers, not a drawn-up treaty. Mohammed continued to render the regular tribute Al-Andalus owed to Marrakesh, but there was one massive hole in the fraternal agreement, no discussion on the succession for either the Sultan or the Lord.


A Modernized Excerpt from Alexios and the Latins, a popular Roman children's story book in the mid 1400s


Alexios glared at the latin knight, his eyes boring into his hairy face. “What gives you the right to steal our cow?!” he yelled.

The knight glanced over, raising a bushy eyebrow. The bellow of a ten year old boy did not intimidate him. “What right?” he said, laughing, spraying spittle all over the ground. “Why, I’m the biggest, bravest knight in all the world. That gives me the right, stupid peasant. Now go away before I kill you.”

“You’re not the biggest, bravest knight in all the world,” Alexios said.

A hideous scowl twisted the man’s face as he dropped the rope with which he had been pulling the cow. He took a step forward, his hand wrapping around the pommel of his sword. His heavy armor gleamed in the sun. “Why you little brat, I ought to-”

“Have you ever beaten the sea?” Alexios asked.

The man stopped. “What?”

“Have you ever beaten the sea? You haven’t. Well, there was a Roman knight who challenged the sea to a duel, and he beat it. But since you haven’t beaten the sea, you’re only the second biggest, bravest knight in all the world.”

“No! I’m the biggest, bravest knight!” he snarled.

“You aren’t. You have to beat the sea to be that. But if a Greek can do it, surely a German can.”

“That’s right!” the knight bellowed, slamming his foot on the ground. He mounted his horse and pointed at the nearby beach. “Come, boy, and see how a German beats the sea!”

A minute later they were on a sandy beach, the knight trotting to the edge of the water and unfurling his lance. “Oh, sea!” He bellowed. “I am the greatest knight in all the world, and I challenge you to a duel!”

A wave lapped onto the shore. “See, the sea is scared of you. It won’t answer back,” Alexios said. The man smiled. “Now go on, show it how brave a knight you are.”

“Alright, sea!” the man yelled. “You won’t answer my challenge. But I will not be denied my duel. Prepare to defend yourself!” The man urged his horse into the water. For several steps the horse obeyed, but whinnied in fear and jerked its neck as the water lapped at the base of its neck.

“Come on!” Alexios yelled. “Are you going to let a horse stop you? You’re supposed to be the greatest knight the world has ever seen.”

“I am!” the knight roared, shoving his mount forward, boxing its ear. The animal obeyed, going deeper, deeper. Now it was craning its head up, keeping its nostrils above the water. The knight beat at the water. “Take that! Take that!” He dropped his lance, pulling out his mace, smashing at the surface. “Forward, you stupid animal!”

The horse took one more step. Too deep. It slipped, the knight flailing as he fell off the saddle, and disappeared from sight. There was a gurgle, several bubbles and then nothing. The horse splashed its way onto the beach, snorting angrily. Alexios walked over, gently stroking its nose. “Sorry about that.” He took the reins, gently tugging the horse forward, and Alexios turned to go and fetch the cow.


Our Empress: Basileia Helena Komnena


Basileia Helena Komnena, Empress of the Romans, would have been powerful simply because of the men in her life. The granddaughter of Manuel III Doukas, the daughter of the famed archiatros Giorgios Doukas (who according to some rumors had the power to raise the recently dead to life), and wife of Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos, family ties alone would have been enough to earn her a place in the history books.

She was born in 1409 in the Coloneian march theme. A somewhat wild place, the theme had few cities, and contained members of all the peoples and faiths that made up the cosmopolitan Empire. It was also the only theme of the Empire without a clear religious majority. The Syrian theme was mostly Muslim, with the Cilician Armenians as a large minority and Antioch as an Orthodox island. The remaining themes were all majority Orthodox Christian, although the Anatolic theme had a small Muslim portion.

Here on the march, with no great cities like Trebizond to the north or Antioch to the south (unless one counted the ruins of Sebastea), there was no opportunity for Helena to grow up as a refined court lady. She grew up in the outdoors, learning to ride and hunt alongside her grandfather (although she was merely mediocre in those skills).

When she became Empress, she was determined to be more than just the wife of the Emperor. Her model was the Empress Anna I, though fortunately not in foreign affairs. Her husband Theodoros was mostly interested in subsidizing construction with direct economic benefits, such as roads and covered marketplaces. She was much more concerned with funding new hospitals, schools, and orphanages.

Both her grandfather and father gave her some land to fund her efforts, in addition to those already provided by the Imperial treasury. After she started, she also received some more land in wills from various individuals who wanted the estates to be used in charity work as well (the increased involvement of government in what would be called social services was a trend begun by Theodoros Megas, started as an effort to lessen the influence of the Church and increase that of the Emperor). What Helena did was divide the lands into small parcels, renting them to individuals willing to farm. It helped landless sons get a start, and the rents enlarged the Empress’ coffers.

She also sent some representatives to the Avignon Papacy, to learn how they conducted their own charity work and see if Helena could use any of their ideas. She opened soup kitchens in almost every city in the Empire, including Italy, the Crimea, and the newly conquered portions of Syria. She also funded the construction and maintenance of eleven hospitals, concentrating on the smaller cities that were not as well provided with good medical care.

Besides her charity efforts, she also worked on bettering the condition of women throughout the Empire. First she convinced her husband to pass new legislation to prevent the harassment of women market vendors, which was becoming a problem as some trade fairs. She also managed to convince the universities to begin allowing female students in the schools of medicine. It had long been Roman practice for women to be treated by women doctors who were as well trained in the medical arts as their male counterparts.

However the rise of the university system that was for males only had resulted in a sizeable gap between male and female doctors. And as a result, the care given to male and female patients, even at the same hospitals, also was substantially different in quality as due to their lack of university training, female doctors had not been able to learn and use the new advances in medicine developed at the schools over the last hundred years. After much pushing, Helena was able to get all of the universities to open schools of medicine for female doctors in 1439. They were separate from the male academies, with female faculty and students. The remaining schools at the universities however remained barred to women.

In the early 1440s, she was also able to convince her husband to pass several pieces of legislation that protected and expanded the rights of women. The first was a lessening in the gap in punishments from anti-adultery laws. Women still suffered more heavily, as they could be executed, but the punishment for men was raised from a steep fine to castration. Admittedly the anti-adultery laws were rarely used in practice, as families were reluctant to so publicly air their dirty laundry. A related statue also read that if a man killed his wife because of adultery (or the lover), he would be charged with murder himself.

Nevertheless the main focus of Helena’s new legislation was on the economic role of women in the Empire, with the rationale that it was stupid to constrain half of the Empire’s population from participating in the economy (and tax production). It was an argument that appealed very strongly to Theodoros’ mercantile mind. First, the right of a bride to bring and maintain property during a marriage that remained hers and hers alone (with the husband having no rights to it unless freely granted by the wife) was affirmed. Women were granted permission to invest in industries and businesses without the permission of their male relatives, and any profits were to be hers alone.

Women had already been involved in the Empire’s economy before, but mostly in the lower classes. There they worked as farmhands in the country, as wet nurses, or as textile workers. There had been some women merchants, mainly army spouses running stalls at the trade fairs around the reviews. The aim of the new legislation was to increase the ability of middle and upper class women to be involved as well, fueling the economy with their knowledge and capital. Incidentally the printing industry was to be the main beneficiary of this policy, as mothers interested in the education of their children subsidized the printing of children’s literature and textbooks.

In 1444 however came her greatest victory. Then she was able, with the support of the patriarch Adem (Adam), to convince her husband to pass a new law regarding the nature of slavery in the Empire. It stated that no child could be born into slavery, even if both parents were slaves. It was common practice on the Cypriot plantations for the owners to use their few female slaves for pleasure and breeding stock, as the offspring they produced, whether with the slaves or with the master himself, grew up to be new slaves. While the law did not stop all sexual harassment of female slaves, it did decrease it substantially as well as bring the number purchased down to almost nothing. However with the removal of any possibility of natural increase of the slave population, there grew more agitation amongst the merchants of the Empire for the conquest of Egypt, this time to secure direct access to the Sudanese slave pool.

However throughout her life Helena focused most of her energy on the plight of orphans. She founded at least thirty orphanages, which together cared for over ten thousand children. She did more than just create the institutions. She also set up systems that provided orphan girls with dowries so they could marry, and also helped arrange apprenticeships for boys so that they could learn a useful trade from local artisans. Many were able to acquire an education through the schools Helena also set up, some, both male and female, eventually going on to university.

It is quite likely that her continued efforts on the behalf of children was a direct result of the difficulties of having them herself. By early 1445, she was thirty six years old, although she looked more like thirty. She had given birth to a daughter Anastasia in 1431, but had eight miscarriages before giving birth to the twins Irene and Zoe in 1440. She became pregnant again in 1442, but again suffered a miscarriage. Even her father Giorgios was stumped, because of the Empress’ great health.

Because of the need to secure the succession with the lack of a male heir, Anastasia was married to Petros Palaiologos, son of Alexios Palaiologos, with Anastasia to succeed Theodoros as Anna I had succeeded her father Manuel II. The Palaiologos family was finally beginning to recover from its reputation of treachery, under which it had hung for over a hundred years after Michael Palaiologos’ death in the Nobles’ Revolt. It had begun to clear in the late 1300s, only to reform after Maria of Barcelona became the lover of Basil Palaiologos. The recovery of Palaiologid honor was entirely due to Petros’ father Alexios, the victor of Ain Sijni and the Lion of Syria, and the marriage was an attempt to weld the powerful and skilled general to the side of the arrangement.

Despite her difficulties in bearing children, the Emperor Theodoros still loved Helena dearly and refused to divorce her. There was only one time when he was not faithful, in 1430, when he slept with one of the kitchen maids, a woman from Sweden whose parents had emigrated to the Empire in the 1420s. At that time, despite being married to Helena for six years, the couple had had no children. The childbirth was fatal to the maid, but the daughter Alexeia survived. Although by this point Helena was pregnant with Anastasia, she decided to raise the girl as her own, but since she was a bastard she was raised on Helena’s estates in Coloneia.

There she grew up much like her adopted mother, learning to ride and hunt in the wild march theme, becoming far better at both than Helena, who had much less opportunity to practice living in Constantinople. She also learned how to wield a blade, largely as a result of having to gut kills during the hunts. Her tutors were the local tagma soldiers who often joined her and her retainers in the excursions. This would in the mid 1400s lead to an intense rivalry between Anastasia and Alexeia. The former was raised in Constantinople as a proper lady of the court. But Helena preferred the company of her like-minded stepdaughter, leading to her natural one getting jealous. The rivalry between the two would poison relations in the Imperial family, as the twins Irene and Zoe were eventually drawn into the conflict, Irene on Anastasia’s side and Zoe on Alexeia’s.

In 1445 the Empress was pregnant, and this time Giorgios had an answer, poison. She had refused to hire a taster so it was a possible solution. When she was about four months along, her chief cook was discovered adding something to her soup. When Giorgios examined the dish, he was able to confirm his theory; it was poison, designed to induce a miscarriage. The chef had served with Helena’s household since just a few months after Anastasia’s birth, and when she was pregnant with Zoe and Irene he was recuperating from an injury after falling off a horse.

The cook was tortured, confessing what he had done, and that he had been paid by the Doge of Venice. Theodoros exploded with rage, and it was only the personal intervention of the Empress herself that prevented an immediate declaration of war on the Serene Republic. Shah Rukh was still out there, and with a threat of that magnitude the Empire could not afford a war in the west.

She was able to calm her husband down with those words, although Theodoros muttered that as soon “the Tatar is gone, there will be a reckoning.” But the anger turned to joy when the Empress gave birth five months later. At long last, after twenty years, Theodoros and Helena had a son, in whom was combined the blood of all three Imperial dynasties and the lineage of both Theodoros and Demetrios Megas. His name, Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos.


madonnaoftherosary1.jpg

Madonna of the Rosary by Fiorenzo Santi, 1446. A painter of the Urbinese court, Fiorenzo spent seven years living in Constantinople as ambassador at the Komnenian court, becoming good friends with the Imperial couple. In his most famous work, painted in honor of the birth of Andreas (and given as a belated gift) the Empress served as the model for the Madonna. Its use of darker, more subdued colors is a sign of Roman painting influence on specifically Fiorenzo's but also Urbinese art in general.​


“An Empress is to be a mother to her people. She is to guide and educate them, correct and chastise them when need be. But above all, like any mother, she must care for and love them,”-Basileia Helena Komnena


1446: By the early 1440s, Venice had completely recovered economically (although not demographically) from the disasters of the 1410s. As a result, the old war party who desired revenge upon the Roman Empire had been increasingly challenged by a peace party, composed of younger merchants involved in the Egyptian trade and the new bookmaking industry.

By 1446, Venice has twenty four printing presses, more than the rest of non-Roman Italy combined. Many enterprising traders had managed to make small fortunes by exporting Venetian made books to the large urban literate masses of northern Italy. However in the past few years these exports had been under threat as the more established and much more numerous Roman presses flooded the book market with their own products.

The conflict over the book trade would be fatal to the peace party. It had already been dealt a serious blow with the destruction of Damietta in 1442. Many members had been completely ruined while others merely lost most of their sources of revenue and therefore their political power. Venice as a whole had suffered greatly because of Damietta, but the younger merchants had been especially hard hit.

In an effort to preserve their hold on the book trade, the Venetians pass a 50% value tax on all Roman books passing both into and out of the territories belonging to the Serene Republic, effectively doubling their price. Most Roman manuscripts had been shipped through Venice as it was much better placed to serve the north Italian market than Bari and the shipping costs were cheaper than Genoa.

This is a considerable danger to a new element in Roman trade that Theodoros has been promoting. The Emperor is also eager to punish the Venetians for poisoning his wife, and this presents a good opportunity. On September 8, there is a mass arrest of the Venetians in the Empire, with all their properties confiscated. At the same time ten purxiphoi and fifty five galleys take a cruise off the northern coast of Crete. Theodoros’ demand is clear. The book duty must be removed, or the lives and properties of the Venetians will be forfeit.

Venice is in no position to fight the Romans now as the Serene Republic needs at least a decade more to recover demographically and to recruit allies. Unaware of the true extent of Shah Rukh’s empire and without any meaningful contact anyway with Samarkand, the Venetians are forced to capitulate. Theodoros releases his prisoners and their possessions, but it is still an utter humiliation for Venice, discrediting the remaining members of the peace party.

Meanwhile in Egypt, through a combination of luck and poisoning of potential rivals, Barsbay has managed to remain on his shaky throne. But he is incredibly unpopular. His forced levies and extraordinary taxes for the Adana campaign, coming after the exactions of a bloody civil war, had already made him disliked. The war did not help.

In March Barsbay narrowly escapes being killed by an assassin, the sultan managing to knock his assailant unconscious. Under torture the man identifies his paymaster, the general Janbulat of Gizeh. When Janbulat is summoned to Cairo, he realizes that he has been found out and instead rallies his troops. Barsbay assembles his own and the two meet in battle under the shadow of the Pyramids. The battle of the Pyramids sees Barsbay’s smaller force swept aside and the Sultan killed, but it chews up another four thousand Egyptian levies and three hundred Mameluke cavalry.

Janbulat is now the unchallenged Mameluke Sultan, with Barsbay’s numerous enemies rallying to his cause. However Theodoros is not willing to allow this opportunity to pass without contest. In June he demands that Janbulat grant him the title ‘Defender of the Syrian and Coptic Christians’, a concession the new Sultan grants. Almost immediately Theodoros begins dispatching sums south to help refurbish ‘his’ monasteries and churches.

To the north, in the town of Draconovsk, the Russians finish the elaborate Church of the Defenders of Orthodoxy. As it is a Russian edifice, the chief figures are Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Shuisky, but both Theodoros Megas and Konstantin the Great of Georgia also appear.

The city of the dragon is at this point only a town with three thousand souls, actually built on the opposite side of the river from the battlefield, which actually lies in Georgian territory. But it is of great importance both as a focal point for Russian colonization of the Ukraine and as a transfer point of goods between the Volga and Don rivers. While the threat of war with Shah Rukh looms ever higher, so long as peace lasts, business along the Silk Road prospers.

The church is completed at the same time as a new bond is formed between Russia and Rhomania. Both are threatened by the power of Shah Rukh, and thus in Draconovsk Alexei and Theodoros renew their alliance pledges from the War of the Orthodox Alliance. While Georgia and Vlachia remain outside of the agreement for now, the new agreement between the two great powers means that the Orthodox Alliance has once again taken solid form.

There is one other individual who is prominent in the new church. It is none other than Dragos cel Mare. The simple mausoleum built over his tomb is incorporated into the structure of the church. Comes Vlad Dracula is present at the consecration, a physical reminder of the continuation of the dragon’s line. Another is on the side of the mausoleum itself. On its granite walls is carved a two-headed dragon. Under it is writ, in all the tongues of the Orthodox Alliance, these words: “The dragon is not dead. He merely sleeps. But know this, infidels and heretics, the day will come, when Orthodoxy needs him most, when he shall return. For the dragon is not dead. He merely sleeps.”

1447: Giorgios Doukas decides, despite his age of seventy one, to make one last trip on his international tour of studying medicine. He had visited Georgia, the Ottoman Empire, the Mamelukes, and Russia. This time he goes west, to the island of Malta. The Hospitaler Order is happy to see him. While their primary duty now is to harass Marinid shipping and the North African coast, they have not forgotten their responsibility to their lords the sick. At Malta, alongside the fortifications and shipyard is a large, well equipped hospital. There is some of the finest medical care in the entire world. The Hospitalers have deliberately kept abreast in the latest Roman developments in medicine, and the Knights are honored to have such a renowned healer in their midst.

However while Giorgios is there, the Marinids launch an all-out attack on the island, which is supported by the six purxiphoi of the Andalusi fleet. The attack, which is conducted by forty thousand soldiers and a hundred ships, is not only aimed at eliminating an annoying thorn but also at securing a base to attack Sicily. Marrakesh is interested in attacking the great island, as it would be a major resource boon and be a way of weakening Aragon without automatically drawing Castile and Portugal into a war.

The fighting is intense and brutal. The Hospitaler fortifications are among the most modern in all of Europe, with thick, short walls buttressed with earthen embankments and supported by round bastions that provide enfilading fire against assaults. While the Marinids are able to slowly reduce the bastions and smash breaches in the walls, they have to pay in huge amounts of powder and blood.

Giorgios is busy throughout the siege serving as a doctor to the Knights, but during the battle he is recognized by a Marinid physician who had studied at the University of Antioch and had actually attended lectures by Giorgios. After the tenth week of the siege, the Marinid commander falls ill and requests Giorgios as his physician. The Knights accept, asking Giorgios to broker the possibility of a truce as their supplies are running low.

He is able to heal the Marinid general’s illness, but truce talks break down almost immediately. The Marinids are insistent that the island be turned over to them while the Knights refuse to leave. The archiatros is the one who is able to break the deadlock. His proposal is that the Roman Empire takes control of Malta instead. The Knights would be compensated by hospitals in Constantinople and Antioch, as well as the Syrian Rock known as Krak. That citadel the Knights would garrison and maintain, providing protection for local pilgrims and merchants and a set quantity and quality of troops in the event of a Roman war with a Muslim power.

The Knights accept the offer, although Malta’s titular owner, the King of Aragon and Sicily (the Knights pay him a rent of two hunting falcons a year) is left completely out of the deal. The justification is that he failed to send reinforcements or supplies and thus the vassal-liege relationship is therefore null and void. The Pope in Rome wisely does not condemn the move, and neither does the Pope in Avignon. Many in the Order as well as Christendom in general welcome the move as a way of reintroducing Catholicism into the Holy Land.

The Marinids also sign the agreement. While they do not gain a base, it gets the Hospitalers out of their way. They also acquire the Knights’ fleet (the Knights had vigorously opposed this clause, but it was the only way to get the Marinids to accept), three purxiphoi and twenty four galleys. They also gain a large cash sum from Constantinople. Theodoros gladly ratifies Giorgios’ decision as Malta is well suited as a waypoint in the growing and lucrative trade between the Empire and the Iberians and Andalusi.

1448: John XXIII, Pope in Rome, is dead. When the College of Cardinals meet to elect a successor, one candidate quickly surges into the lead. Despite his relative youth (he is only fifty) he has the backing of the Venetian, Neapolitan, and Bavarian cardinals. On August 19, Giovanni Loredan is elected Vicar of Christ, Bishop of Rome, Pope Julius II.

He immediately begins to work on diplomatically isolating the Romans. His first target is the city of Pisa. The Pisan monopoly of the Mediterranean pilgrim traffic, due to good papal relations, is the pillar of the city’s economic power, without which it would collapse into a third-rate power. Until now, the Pisans had typically used the Roman port of Attaleia as a stopping point for supplies. Julius now demands that Pisa cease using Attaleia and instead use the Venetian port of Candia in Crete instead. With no alternatives other than poverty, the Pisans accept.

At the same time, a Georgian delegation arrives in Samarkand to ask whether or not Shah Rukh will honor Timur’s oath never to attack Georgia (done after a Georgian guardsman saved Timur’s life from an Ottoman assassin). However the delegates do not meet with Shah Rukh himself who is in Urumqi but with his eldest son Mahmud. When he is asked, he responds that Timur’s oath was only for when he was alive. As he is now dead, his oath is worthless. However if Georgia was willing to kneel as a vassal, that would be worth much more. The delegates refuse, returning home. As a result, Konstantin pledges to join the Russians and Romans in a mutual anti-Tieh alliance.

But Mahmud is not done with the Georgians. Two months after they leave a cobbled-together flotilla launches a surprise attack on the city of Baku, catching the garrison completely off-guard. The city of sixteen thousand is burned to the ground; those that can’t be shipped to the slave markets of Samarkand are massacred. The Georgian tagmata arrive too late, finding only a burned out husk filled with the blackened corpses of their brothers.

With three of the four alliance members now working together again, Constantinople, Novgorod, and Tbilisi all bring pressure to bear on Targoviste to join the effort, recreating the Orthodox Alliance in full. King Vlad is interested in such a goal. While Shah Rukh is not a threat to him, it would in the future help provide a very useful counterweight to Hungarian and Polish aggression and also lead to the possibility of more prestigious councils in Targoviste. In July he promises eight thousand men and ten culverins in the event of war with the Timurid Empire.

Osman too has been busy, cobbling together a formidable coalition of his own outside of the Orthodox Alliance framework (that has superseded the Russian-Ottoman agreement, with the result that Shah Rukh actually faces two coalitions, the Alliance and the Ottoman coalition). Khorasan and Delhi, ruled by the two sons of Pir Mohammed who are both dynastic rivals of the Lord of Asia, came as a joint package. But what is most impressive is that Osman has managed to bring both Bihar and Vijayanagar into the alliance as well. Bihar had been directly threatened by Tieh China, while the Vijayanagara Empire joined to protect its ally.

It is none too soon. In November Constantinople receives a report that Shah Rukh has returned to Samarkand. While he has some stern words with his son regarding his conduct with Georgia, he does not punish Mahmud. That is because Shah Rukh is done collecting supplies and men. Both Perm and the White Horde stand with him. All of Central Asia, the steppe east of the Caspian, China, and Korea answer to his call, an empire that not even Genghis Khan saw. In April of the next year he crosses into Persia at the head of an utterly massive host, even greater than Timur’s. The Lord of Asia has returned.


Major Players of the War For Asia

All images taken from the award-winning miniseries The Lords of Asia.​


aragorn2.jpg

Comes Vlad Dracula, strategos of the Chaldean tagma, Episode 7 The Second Spring


boromir2a.jpg

Konstantin II, King of Georgia, Episode 2 The Fall of Baku


denethord.jpg

Emperor Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos, Episode 3 The Orthodox Alliance


eowynfighting.jpg

Alexeia Komnena, illegitimate daughter of Theodoros IV, shown during her ahistorical visit to the court of Vlad I, King of Vlachia and Lord of the Dragon Throne, Episode 3 The Orthodox Alliance

faramir3.jpg

Dragos Musat, Prince of Vlachia, Ep. 9 A Time of Dragons​


osmanandbayezid.jpg

Osman II, Sultan of E-raq (left), and his son Bayezid (right), Episode 5 Ramsar


galdan.jpg

Galdan of Merv, Shah Rukh's chief lieutenant, Episode 4 Into Persia


genghiskhan.jpg

Mahmud, Shah Rukh's eldest son, Episode 6 Two Little Armies


shahrukh.jpg

Shah Rukh, Hongwu Emperor of China, Great Khan of Mongolia and the Golden Horde (through his White Horde vassals), King of Korea and Urumqi, Sovereign of Tibet, Kashmir, and Champa, Khagan of the Uzbeks, Uyghurs, and Tatars, Heir of Timur the Great, Lord of Asia. Episode 1 The Lord of Asia
 
Last edited:
The Lords of Asia

Part 6.2

1449-1450

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to heal, and a time to kill…”-Ecclesiastes 3:1-3


1449: Shah Rukh’s initial thrust takes him into Jalayirid territory, but the Khan in Fars and his ‘vassals’ are not the Hongwu Emperor’s main target. Instead he almost immediately swings west into Ottoman Mazandaran. The Lord of Asia has divided his main host into twelve prongs, each one ten thousand strong, a mix of cavalry and infantry of all types. That does not include the vast wave of skirmishers preceding the prongs or the large corps of couriers to maintain communications between each division and to allow them to converge on targets too hard for one prong to deal with on its own.

At the same time another Tieh army is raiding the northern border of Khorasan while in China another is demonstrating on the eastern march of Bihar. To the north the Permese and White Horde vassals of Samarkand pour across the Russian frontier, dueling with the archontes. However these attacks are not enough to stop Russia from striking back. Russian soldiers fly down the Volga into the Caspian, sailing across the sea to the eastern shore, harrying the coast with fire and sword. The Georgians do the same, staging out of the small villages on the Caspian coast, even while others work to rebuild Baku.

In Mazandaran however, the Ottomans are steadily driven back by the Tieh offensive, until finally Shah Rukh decides to offer battle. He wants to fight the Ottomans before they get too close to the Georgian border. According to his spies, all seven of Tbilisi’s tagmata, thirty five thousand strong, have been called up. And more ominously, to the west, the entirety of Rhomanion’s Anatolian troops are assembling in Armenia.

Shah Rukh deliberately consolidates three divisions at Ramsar in western Mazandaran, finally providing a fat, juicy target for the Ottoman army. Osman II, his son Bayezid, and fifty five thousand Turks fall for the bait, but when they arrive on July 22 they are faced not with three, but with eleven divisions, not to mention over fifteen thousand additional light troops. The Ottoman army is the most powerful the Turks have ever put into the field. It includes all twelve thousand janissaries, ten thousand (out of fourteen thousand) sipahis, the bulk of the urban azabs, and the best timariots and Arab tribesmen in all of the Ottoman domains.

Outnumbered over two to one, Osman attempts to fall back, but the waves of Timurid light cavalry prevent him from doing so. Forced to give battle, Osman positions his forces on the roughest terrain available, a stretch of flat but rocky ground, and sits there. Despite their numerical advantage, the waves of Timurid foot and light horse are unable to budge the steady ranks of janissaries and urban azabs throughout the entire first day. Shah Rukh does have heavy troops of his own, but he is reluctant to commit them against an unbroken foe. While he does have, for all intents and purposes, unlimited number of soldiers, his reserves of well-armored troops is much more finite.

But the Ottoman position is grave, much like that of the Romans at Voronezh. They cannot move, as the locked shields of the heavy infantry is their only protection, but if they stay, they will run out of missiles and endurance and then be cut to pieces. Yet when night falls, the Ottoman lines still stand.

At the beginning of the second day, the Timurids again resume their stinging attacks. This time they face little missile fire, so the light troops steadily creep closer. Still the Ottoman projectiles sweep out only intermittently and sickly. They must be running out. Onward the Timurids approach, drawing nearer, pouring a mighty rain into the shields of the Janissaries and urban azabs.

At 9:03 AM, the Ottoman line erupts. Every Turkish archer looses their volleys simultaneously, the black scythe flattening the Timurid lines as the roar of the first Ottoman handgunners smashes out. More and more missiles sing out over the scream of impaled Timurid men and horses as trumpets call in the Ottoman rear. The sipahis sally.

Ten thousand sipahi heavy cavalry. Thirty thousand Timurid skirmishers. The stunned men of the Lord of Asia stagger in terror as the ground trembles, the drums of the Ottomans beating in unison with the thunder of their horses. And above it all, above the rumble, above the calls of fear and dread, above the trumpet sounds from the Timurid lines, can be heard the call, the call of the Turks, their call for the last five hundred years, ever since the days long ago when their forefathers left their homeland to embrace the faith of the Prophet. “Allah! Allahu ackbar!” Impact.

The sipahis flatten the enemy. Shocked by the unexpected missile volleys, the Timurids do not have time to evade the heavy cavalry. For their failure, they die as Ottoman lances slam into their bellies and Ottoman maces smash into their skulls. The only thing that slows the Ottomans down are not their arms and blades, but the need for the sipahis to ford the rivers of blood. In less than fifteen minutes, nineteen thousand Timurid soldiers are left dead or wounded on the field of Ramsar.

Shah Rukh moves. With a roar of a thousand trumpets, he finally commits his fresh, unbloodied, heavy troops, thirty five thousand strong. The infantry charge straight down the Ottoman throats, their call a chorus of tongues from across the breadth of Asia. To the wings the Tieh heavy cavalry fly, led by Shah Rukh’s most trusted lieutenant, Galdan of Merv. It was he who first crossed the Yangtze and burned the Wu fleet. From the great cities of central Asia, Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, the call of Galdan and the horsemen are the same, a deep throaty roar sounding over the rumble as they urge their great horses into a charge on the sipahis’ flanks. “Timur!”

* * *

Osman steadied his twitching mount, looking out across the battlefield. Despite the gathering clouds of dust, he could still see the heavy cavalry, both Ottoman and Timurid. He could hear the battle cries. The steady bass “Timur!”, the warbling cacophony of the Timurid infantry, and the call of the Turks as Bayezid accepted the challenge. The sipahis once more roared forward. If they were to die, they would take as many of the demon’s minions with them.

But it wasn’t the end, he thought. At least, it didn’t have to be. The sipahis had mauled a huge portion of Shah Rukh’s screen. Retreat was possible. But it wouldn’t matter, not in the end, if Bayezid was killed. Yes, Osman lived, but for how long? He had lived seventy years; even in peace he did not have much time left. And what would it profit the Osmanlis, if his heir was to die? No, they had a chance now, but only if Bayezid lived.

“Suleiman! Orhan! Mehmed!” he barked. “The army will advance!”

The three aghas, the Ottoman corps commanders, stared at him in shock. “Sultan?” Orhan, the azab agha, asked.

“You heard me, the army will advance.” Mehmed, the timariot agha, opened his mouth. “I think it’s time to leave this place,” Osman continued. “But I’m not leaving without my son, or my sipahis.” As one the three aghas looked out to the field, with its mounds of skirmisher corpses, and smiled. “The army will advance.”

“Yes, sultan. Timariots to the wings! Janissaries, azabs, prepare to march!” The trumpet calls sounded out, soon joined by the clatter of an army readying to move.

“Sons of E-raq!” Osman yelled, turning to his Household cavalry, his personal guard of heavy horsemen. “We have ridden together in many a battle, fought many a foe. We have tasted victory, and defeat, together. No Sultan could ask for braver warriors, for more valiant champions. But I must ask you, at least once more, will you ride with me into fire, into death? Will you come with me, to storm the ramparts of hell, to cross blades with the demon himself?”

He could see the fire in their eyes, as one after one, they called “Yes, sultan! We shall!”

Osman smiled. Hope lives. He turned his horse around to face the enemy, raising his sword, his father’s old sword, into the air. “Allah!” he shouted. “Allahu ackbar!” Forty five thousand voices answered. As the call of the Turk faded, he could still hear the accursed word, ‘Timur, Timur’. He lifted his sword again. “For Tikrit!” he yelled. It had been at Tikrit where his father had been killed. It had been at Tikrit where Timur had impaled the Ottoman officers in a field. It had been at Tikrit where Timur had broken the Ottoman state and laid it low, but only for a time.

For a moment there was silence. But then an azab chanted, “Tikrit.” Then a janissary, then a household cavalryman, then a timariot. The call grew as more took it up, a steady, rumbling oath of vengeance, until once again forty five thousand voices yelled as one. “Tikrit!”

Osman raised his sword for a third time. “Forward!” The trumpet calls sounded, and then the drums as the hooves of horses and the feet of men beat out their heavy song. And so the Ottoman army, bellowing its new cry of revenge and hope, advanced onto the bloody field of Ramsar.


* * *​


Osman’s charge comes as a complete surprise to the Timurids. The azabs and janissaries fall upon the Tieh cavalry columns, prying them open as the sipahis fall back. Meanwhile the timariots fly to the wings, pouring a hail of missiles into the fray, the snarl of an immense, angry monster.

Shah Rukh unleashes all his troops. His light cavalry pour forward, heralded by sheets of arrows, spearing the timariots with their great shafts, who volley back, a great dance of horse archers, swirling, shooting, dying. With the reserves in place, the Timurid heavy cavalry and infantry hammer down on the janissaries and azabs. No quarter is asked; none is given. So long as the men in the lines draw breath, they continue to kill.

Slowly, bloodily, the Ottomans fall back. Finally the surviving sipahis roar into action again, slamming the enemy back long enough for the infantry to disengage. The Timurids pursue, the janissaries lashing their ranks with arrows. It is a slow, brutal retreat, with miniature sieges as men ward off enemy attacks with ramparts of dead.

As night falls, both armies retreat back to their starting positions to lick their wounds at the end of that bloody day, bloodier than Adana, than Cappadocian Caesarea, than Manzikert. In the cruel slugging match, twenty three thousand Ottoman soldiers fall. Of the ten thousand sipahis who charged out so bravely in the morning, only thirty seven hundred remain, although one of them is Bayezid.

But the demon has been bloodied. The Lord of Asia has lost over thirty six thousand men, more than half slain by the single cavalry charge of the morning. Yet while it is a hard blow to his army now, it is not irreparable. Many of the dead were light infantry and cavalry, and with the wide steppes of Asia and the teeming masses of China at his command, he has far more of those available to him. Meanwhile the Ottomans have lost the cream of their army, janissaries, urban azabs, sipahis. Elite, well equipped soldiers, dedicated and disciplined, the heart of the Ottoman army, their blood now waters the shrubs of Ramsar.

On July 24, the bloody horizon, stained by the light of the rising sun, looks out upon an Ottoman army in full retreat. With Shah Rukh’s screen currently in ruins, they can now fall back, but only if the main Timurid host is busy. Because of the need for speed, only the cavalry will fall back. The sipahis and timariots can be saved, as well as the janissaries placed on extra mounts, but the remainder must stay.


* * *



“This is insane,” Bayezid blurted out.

“Yes, it is. But no more than yesterday,” Osman replied.

“That was different.”

“You’re right. This is how it should’ve been done.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your life is valuable; mine is not.”

“That, that’s not true.”

“It’s the truth, and you know it. Our people need a strong leader.”

“We have one, you.”

Osman smiled sadly. “I am old. This war demands the touch of the young. No, my time is over. Let a young janissary take my horse. You will need him.”

“No,” Bayezid sniffed. “I need you.”

Osman smiled again. “No, you don’t,” he replied, placing a hand on Bayezid’s shoulder. “No sultan could ask for a better prince, no father for a better son.” With his right hand, Osman pulled out his sword, the sword of his father Mehmed, taken by the Timurids, captured by the Romans, and returned to his hand by Manuel III Doukas, the man who had bested Timur himself.

He held it out to Bayezid. “Take it.” Reluctantly Bayezid did, wrapping his hand around the shiny hilt. “You are my heir. I give you my empire. I know you will make me proud.”


* * *​


Sultan Osman II himself leads the dawn infantry charge. The Timurid scouts, commanded by Shah Rukh’s eldest son Mahmud, are caught completely off guard and are immediately thrown into disarray as the Turkish infantry try to storm the main camp. They have no chance of success, but as the Timurid troops spill from their tents, their gaze, and that of Shah Rukh’s, is fixed on the attack, and on the banner of the Sultan in the vanguard of the assault.

Osman is killed early in the attack, and an absolutely ferocious battle is waged over his body. The Timurids win, but the twelve thousand Turks take an equal number of Timurids with them. Their deaths were not in vain, for though only twenty thousand Turks remained when it was done, the two most important were numbered among them, the Sultan Bayezid II, and hope.

And so ends the great battle of Ramsar. In terms of bloodshed, not even Manzikert could match it. Thirty five thousand Turks, forty eight thousand Timurids, the numbers of the slain are almost double that of the slain at Cappadocian Caesarea.

Bayezid falls back to Mesopotamia. In all the towns of E-raq, the news of Osman’s death spreads rapidly, and the muezzins call the faithful, not to prayer, but to war. It does not matter that Shah Rukh is one of the faithful, that many of his soldiers follow the Prophet. The war against the Lord of Asia is no longer, in their eyes, just a war. It is jihad, a holy war. Under the call of the imams, all of the people of E-raq, Turk and Arab alike, answer.

Meanwhile in Mazandaran, Shah Rukh licks his wounds. His losses, despite their immense size, are replaceable, but it will take time. As more troops are brought from central Asia and China, he steadily overruns the remaining Ottoman possessions in Persia. Bayezid is busy rebuilding his army in Mesopotamia, and so they are largely on their own. Because of the current battered state of his army, Shah Rukh does not wish to invade E-raq yet, potentially tangling with the Georgian and Roman armies, especially with Ottoman Persia hanging on his flank. In October the great port of Hormuz falls, and with it all of Osman II’s work in Persia is undone.

But the sultan’s legacy lives on in E-raq itself. Though the ranks of the janissaries, sipahis, and urban azabs, may be dangerously thinned, they still stand, filled with the hunger for revenge. However that will not be enough. Disregarding the rural azabs, whose effectiveness in battle against Shah Rukh would be virtually none, the Ottoman Empire can after Ramsar only field an army of forty thousand soldiers, mostly timariots, only including eight thousand sipahis, six thousand urban azabs, and a janissary ‘corps’ of two thousand made up of old drill sergeants and trainees.

In comparison, Shah Rukh has pulled even more troops from his vast eastern domains, swelling his host to an absurd size. Even after replacing the losses of Ramsar, his main host, scattered across the breadth of Persia because of its immense numbers, now stands at twenty one divisions, along with over forty thousand unattached light troops.

But the Turks do not stand alone. In January of 1450, Nasir, Sultan of Khorasan, inflicts a smashing defeat on the Tieh army raiding his border. Aware that the war for Asia will be decided in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, his soldiers take to the sea, landing in Basra to aid their allies. They number fifteen thousand strong along with Nasir himself, and they are swelled by another five thousand soldiers from Delhi.

But it is not just from the Dar al-Islam that hope springs. In late February the Georgian army under the command of King Konstanin II pours across the border, twenty five thousand strong, in a late winter raid. On March 1, the city of Tabriz is sacked. In the flames goes up five thousand Timurid troops and one of the largest Timurid supply depots. And the Georgians do not return to their homeland, but instead march on, to join with the Ottoman timariots around Mosul. The battle will be decided here. While ten thousand Georgian soldiers remain in the kingdom to guard against raids, the Lord of Asia will not attack there, not while such great forces are gathering in E-raq, perfectly placed to cut his supply lines

News of these victories does much to boost the morale of the new Ottoman recruits, which had been badly damaged by the news of the gathering immense host to the east. But then comes more news, filling the hearts of the Ottomans with both fear and hope. On March 20, five thousand Russians and eight thousand Vlachs cross the border into Mesopotamia. But it is not they who cause such consternation. For these Orthodox soldiers herald something far greater. Three days later the Romans too cross the frontier, seven tagmata, one thousand men of the Hospitaler Order, the Athanatoi, the Scholai, and the Varangian Guard, eighty thousand strong, led by Emperor Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos.


* * *



Constantinople, November 10, 1449:

“Here, this is wrong,” Helena said, reaching over to shift her husband’s sleeve.

Emperor Theodoros glanced down at the fold of fabric that had been moved one inch to his left. “Yes, yes, that made a lot of difference,” he said, smiling.

Helena frowned, a piece of her dark brown hair, with just a few traces of silver, falling down across her forehead. “This is serious.”

“No, that is serious.” He pointed at the men behind him, busily packing the wagons with bandoliers of arrows, handguns, barrels of powder, swords, maces, blacksmithing tools, all the accoutrements of war. “This, on the other hand…” His wrinkled hand reached over to brush the strands of his wife’s hair back into place. “This is not.”

Silence. “I’m worried for you,” Helena said.

“I know.”

“This is ridiculous! You’re going up against one of the greatest warlords the world has ever seen, and you’ve never fought a battle. You’re not your father. You’re not the Dragon. You have Alexios. Why do you need to go?”

“You know why. Alexios Palaiologos is the best general we have, but his greatest victory was over the Turks. How do you think they’d react if he was the commander of the allied army sent to help them?”

“Those Turks should be grateful they’re getting help at all.”

“We’re doing this for ourselves, not for the Turks. If they fall, we’ll be Shah Rukh’s next target.”

“I know, I know. It’s just so frustrating.”

“Daddy!” Theodoros jerked his head over as a brown-haired streak raced across the room and latched onto his right leg. The Emperor saw his son Andreas’ huffing tutor shuffle forward, an apology in his eyes. Theodoros waved him off.

Bending down, he picked up his four year old son and lofted him to his shoulder. “Why are you crying?” he asked Andreas.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I have to. And that means you’ll be the man of the palace while I’m gone. You’ll have to care of your mother and sisters. Do you know what that means?” Andreas shook his head no, his green eyes wide. “It means…” Theodoros reached up with his left hand, gently brushing the tears away from his son’s smooth cheeks. “That you have to be strong. Emperors don’t cry. You can’t either.”

“I’ll-” Sniff. “Try.”

Theodoros nodded. “Good,” he said, handing Andreas over to his mother. He glanced over at the men, who seemed to be almost done loading the equipment. “I will be leaving soon. Helena, you will be regent in my absence.”

Helena’s face was blank, both her’s and Andreas’ eyes glistening with tears. “Is there anything you would have me to do, your majesty?”

“Yes, two things. First, I would have you smile.” Helena blinked, washing her eyes with her tears, and a small smile shone from her lips. Theodoros smiled. “Much better. I want to remember you like this.”

Helena laughed, one small, sad laugh. “And the other thing?”

“Ah, yes. You might want to put Andreas down first.” She did, Andreas fidgeting until she wrapped her left hand around his right. Theodoros took a step forward. “A kiss then, for good luck.” Helena laughed, a real laugh this time, and smiled.


* * *


Theodoros walked along the edge of the parade ground. Since they were still in the Optimatic theme, the camp was only lightly fortified with a small ditch and wooden palisade, but the ordering of the tents and the discipline of the sentries was the same as if the Athanatoi and Varangoi had been camped outside Samarkand itself.

He looked over at the nearest guardsman, a skinny man, who seemed to be unusually absorbed in the task of adjusting his horse’s saddle, a task that kept his face averted to the Emperor. He walked over. “Hello, Alexeia.”

She whipped around, Theodoros seeing her blue eyes, although her face was covered up by her helm. She sighed, pulling it off and causing her long blond hair to fall down. “How did you know it was me, father?”

“I’m the Emperor of the Romans.” Theodoros pointed at a songbird perched atop a nearby white tent. “See him. He’s one of my best spies.” Alexeia laughed. “What are you doing here?”

“You need soldiers. I thought I’d help.”

“I have eighty thousand.”

“It’s not enough, what with having to keep all of the European tagmata at home to keep an eye on the Latins, what with a Venetian cur as pope.”

“No, it isn’t. But why are you here?”

“I just can’t stand by and do nothing. The women of the empire didn’t have swords when Timur invaded. They still died upon them. And I’d rather die with a sword in my hand.”

“I’d rather you didn’t die at all.” Two seconds. “Andreas loves you almost as much as he loves his mother. He’s too young to suffer such a loss.”

“I, I don’t know what to say.”

“Thank you would be a good start.”

“What, why?”

“I’ve decided that you can come. But no riding around like some regular koursore. You’re to be one of my personal guardsm…err…people.”

“Thank you, father. But why?”

“Oh, my guards, they’re good at fighting and killing, but they’re horrible conversationalists. This is going to be a long march and I want someone to talk to.”

“Seriously.”

“You’ll come, whether you have my permission or not. At least this way you’ll be reasonably safe.” He stretched his left arm out to her. “So will you ride with me?”

Alexeia smiled. “Of course, father.” And she took his arm.

1450: In Cairo the news of the impending conflagration in E-raq brings mixed reactions. While Rhomania’s European troops remain in their districts, keeping an eye on the Italians, Serbians, and Bulgarians lest they try anything, Anatolia is almost completely devoid of soldiers. Many urge the Sultan Janbulat to attack and take advantage of the unique opportunity.

However Janbulat is from Damascus, and there memories are still strong of Timur. It had been ruled by the Lord of Asia for almost fifteen years, and the Damascenes are not keen to repeat the experience. Remembering what Timur did to the Levant in the early 1400s, there are also many who do not want to do anything that would hamper the coalition arrayed against his heir.

Janbulat eventually sides with the latter party, but he does not hesitate to take advantage of Roman distraction. Increased ties are developed with Venice, with four new trading quarters created for the Serene Republic’s use, including a massive addition to the one they already possess in Alexandria. With the expansion, the Alexandrian territory under Venetian law is greater than the Aragonese-Sicilian, Genoese, and Roman zones combined. To facilitate the opening of the new districts, the property is confiscated directly from Coptic and Syrian Christians, many of whom flee north to Roman Syria.

Venice is in no position to move on the Romans either. They would have to face the Roman navy and European troops, both of which remain intact. Their first order of business is to elect a new doge after the old one and his two eldest sons die after eating apparently tainted pies. The new leader they pick, a man of forty two, bears the name of Enrico Dandolo.

Enrico’s first order of business after hiring new tasters is to continue the diplomatic and espionage initiatives begun by his predecessor. His second daughter is married to the crown prince of Naples, while contacts are established with the Dukes of Varna and Vidin. Meanwhile Pope Julius II has been busying buttering up the Pisans, pointing out the commercial benefits they would accrue if their rival Genoa’s friend the Roman Empire was crippled. He also gains Florentine favor when he provides the Republic with shipments of grain to avert a famine. Originally the Florentines had been purchasing Apulian grain but the cargos were diverted to Syria.

As Italy slowly stirs, Janbulat moves, not north but south. Twenty two thousand men march down the Nile, smashing a budding Makurian revolt. Yet that is not their target, but the Ethiopians. Yohannes had, with the effective crippling of the Shilluk migration, steadily been creeping his control northward, and had been emboldened by the news of Roman troops movements, mistakenly believing that it was for an invasion of Syria.

The Ethiopians and Mamelukes meet in battle near the city of Soba, close to the confluence of the Blue and White Nile. Not expecting resistance, the Ethiopians are ambushed and driven back with heavy losses, although many of the Egyptians ominously note how well disciplined the Ethiopian spear line was and that several squadrons of the cavalry were equipped in high-quality steel lamellar. Mameluke casualties are moderate, mainly from the Ethiopian Royal Guard Cavalry, which had launched a charge to cover the withdrawal of the infantry.

The battle of Soba effectively kills Yohannes’ plans for expansion to the north. Meanwhile in the south several large bands of Somali ghazis, joined by men from Yemen and Mogadishu, raid the Harer district. While they are eventually driven back, the raid is heavily damaging, a potent symbol of an increasing dangerous problem. Ethiopia has the strength to outmatch the local Somali, but they can draw upon the vast manpower pool that is the Dar al-Islam.

Yet on August 9, the tenth anniversary of the Massacre of the Innocents, a baby girl is born in the village of Mewari. Her name is Brihan. According to legend, in the peasant hut, the new parents are visited by an old local monk who asks to hold the child. When the girl is placed in his arms, he smiles, the first time anyone has ever seen the sixty year old do so. When asked why he replies “She will make Islam howl.”

In India the fighting is on three fronts, in the northwest against the Kashmiri vassals of Shah Rukh, in the east in Assam against the Tieh forces in southern China and their Champan vassals, and in the north against the Tibetans. The ‘war’ in the northwest is, unlike the fighting on all the other fronts from the Volga to Assam, a very bloodless conflict.

The Kashmiri are not enthusiastic allies of Shah Rukh. Their ties of vassalage to Samarkand were forged from fear, not from interest. The war itself is actually very damaging to the Swati economy, as it is killing their best customers. The bulk of the fighting is concentrated in the upper Punjab, the rivers there hindering combat operations. It is entirely a war of swirling light cavalry bands, who dance around each other, almost never clashing, spending most of their time simply riding around and burning a dilapidated hut here or there.

Assam is far different. Along the banks of the Brahmaputra, and in the hills and jungles of that land, it is also a war of small bands rather than great armies, a war of raids and ambuscades, conducted with all the savagery that entails. The Timurid and Tieh troops assigned to this frontier, unused to jungle warfare, perform very badly, but the troops from Champa prove to be exceedingly deadly. The only Indian troops that can match them are the companies of Maratha infantry from the Vijayanagara Empire. While they are able to stymie the Champan advance, the poor performance of the Bihari in battle leads to them being held in contempt by the Vijayanagara.

Unlike the Kashmiri, the Champans have benefited from Tieh overlordship. An ancient kingdom, over a century old during the days of Konstantinos I Megas, Champa had been in decline until it had allied with Wu China in the mid 1300s, leading to a renaissance of power. Continuing that tradition, the kings have made good relations with the Chinese a cornerstone of their power.

As Shah Rukh is reluctant to deal with such a far off corner of his huge empire, the Kings of Champa have in effect been delegated the responsibility of policing and taxing southeast Asia in Shah Rukh’s name. With such an awesome force backing them, the Champans have managed to bully tribute payments from all of their neighbors, with only Majapahit, sheltered by the sea and its great fleets, remaining immune.

To the north, the war is waged between the Tibetans and the Nepalese vassals of Bihar. The ‘war in the clouds’, as it is sometimes poetically called, is not as fierce as the war in Assam, but is not a farce like in the Punjab. Neither side is able to gain advantage during the fighting.

Meanwhile in the west far larger forces are on the move. The Romans advance in Mesopotamia in eight columns to alleviate supply issues, maintaining contact with each other using couriers as they march on Baghdad. It is necessary as northern Mesopotamia is incapable of providing provisions, which have been allocated to the allied forces congregated around Baghdad. Roman Armenia, whose infrastructure has been deliberately built to supply a Roman offensive in this area, helps a great deal, but the inability of the Romans to pillage the landscape and thus concentrate their forces provides Shah Rukh with an unique advantage.

In early April, on the banks of Lake Dukan, three Timurid divisions attempt to ambush the Thracesian tagma while it is on the march. On the shore the Timurids attack, lashing the Romans with arrows, but the tagma soldiers form up, hunkering down behind their shields and returning the bolts with arrows and cannon fire. Futilely beating against the silver line, the Timurid troops are caught completely off guard when Vlad Dracula, the newly appointed commander of the Chaldean tagma, slams into their rear. A mass kataphraktoi-skythikoi charge flattens the Timurid light horse, plowing them into the lake. Without cavalry, the infantry are chopped to pieces, with the end result of six hundred Roman casualties and over nine thousand Timurids.

However a week later at Mawat, the Anatolic tagma is ambushed by another three Timurid divisions, this time under the personal command of Galdan of Merv. The Opsician and Syrian tagmata rush to the aid of the Anatolics, but then another four divisions fall upon them. The battle of Mawat is a confused melee, as the heavy Roman troops are pinned in place while Timurid skirmishers slash at them, completely overwhelming the vastly outnumbered akrites and turkopouloi.

With the Roman skirmishers gone, Galdan pours massive waves of arrows into the tagmata ranks. At first the Romans give as good as they get, the toxotai lashing out with their own flights of arrows while the artillery roar their own terrible call, but as missiles and strength wane, the Timurid blows begin to tell.

Galdan’s light troops have done a superb job of killing the Roman courtiers, but the complete absence of any contacts with those three tagmata has by itself alerted Alexios Palaiologos to the danger. While the victor of Ain Sijni is titularly merely the Coloneian strategos, he is effectively in charge of the expedition, with Theodoros IV delegating almost all command decisions to him.

Thus on April 17, Galdan finds himself facing not thirty thousand, but eighty thousand Romans as the columns concentrate at Mawat. While Galdan is able to retire in good order, one division is caught and smashed to bits by a Hospitaler/Varangian charge, the three thousand men between them slaying or capturing over seventy eight hundred of the Timurid soldiery. In the end the battle could be considered a draw. The Romans retained the field, but their losses of nine thousand are exceedingly painful and impossible to replace. While Galdan retreats with fourteen thousand casualties of his own, they are mainly light troops and thus their loss is of little concern.

Finally the Roman columns arrive in Baghdad, although they end up camping to the north to alleviate crowding and supply issues. It is then that Theodoros meets with his fellow monarchs. The commander of the Russian contingent is Nikolai of Ryazan, the only non-royal commander of the allied contingents. The Vlach force is led by Crown Prince Dragos Musat, while the Khorsan-Delhi, Georgian, and Ottoman forces are led by Sultan Nasir, King Konstantin II, and Sultan Bayezid II respectively.

The main concern is again supplies. In total the allies have over a hundred and fifty thousand men under arms. Despite the rations coming in from the prepositioned depots in Roman Armenia (whose columns are repeatedly harassed by Uyghur tribesmen) it is not enough. Already there are reports of fights breaking out as Roman troops start to ‘requisition’ food from the locals.

One of the biggest gripes of the Roman soldiers is their monotonous diet on this march, which consists mostly of bread and salted pork. Due to the need of reducing fodder and water requirements the large herds of sheep that typically followed Roman tagmata as a mobile supply of fresh meat (often managed by Turkish or Kurdish pastoralists hired for the campaign and paid for their labor) have not appeared. Also the usual local produce that is also used to provide nutrients and dietary variety have not appeared as well.

The next major concern is who is to command the combined army. The two contenders are Sultan Bayezid and Emperor Theodoros. Bayezid’s argument is that since it is his land, he should command, while Theodoros counters that his troops make up over half of the allied force. Bayezid adamantly refuses to take orders from Theodoros though, as that would place him in the position of being commanded by Alexios Palaiologos. Eventually a command council, composed of the various army commanders is created, a total of five (Romans, Georgians, Vlachs and Russians, Ottomans, and Khorasani and Delhians). Unsurprisingly it is a bickering, indecisive body, which is not helped by the fact that all of them are on half rations.

Shah Rukh in fact helps fix the supply dilemma, as in mid-May five of his divisions invade southern Mesopotamia, driving hard for Basra, the Ottomans’ second city. The Roman Anatolic and Syrian tagmata, bolstered by five thousand Ottoman timariots and five thousand Georgians, are dispatched in an attempt to ward them off.

It is obviously a diversion, as Shah Rukh’s primary target is Baghdad, the seat of Ottoman power. So long as it remains in Turkish hands, the Lord of Asia cannot deal with either Georgia or Rhomania. But the allies have no choice; if they keep their great army together it will wither from starvation.

Shah Rukh too is suffering from supply problems of his own. With the destruction of Tabriz and the Caspain crawling with Russian and Georgian ships, feeding his immense host, even with Chinese bureaucrats to organize the logistics and Persian resources, is exceedingly difficult. While the various lords of Persia, even the Khan in Fars, have kneeled and are supplying his troops with provisions and transport, their loyalty is suspect at best. The feint at Basra is done just as much to decrease the number of mouths to feed as to distract the enemy. His late advance, done after the union of the allied armies, is also because of the need to set up new supply depots after the fall of Tabriz.

But with the dispatching of troops to the south, both sides are now prepared. In late May Shah Rukh crosses the border, racing for the great city of Baghdad, the city of a hundred thousand souls (in fact by this point most of the city’s population was been expelled from the region to decrease the number of mouths to feed). The Ottoman scouts fly back in the face of the Lord of Asia’s host, spreading the call far and wide. And so the allies, slowly, moving at Bayezid’s insistence to make sure that the city is protected, advances, scattering waves of skirmishers to harry the foe. Side by side, Georgian Alan cavalry, Ottoman timariots, and Roman turkopouloi slash at the foe. Outnumbered they may be, none can doubt their courage or their skill in war.

But for all the bravery and bloodshed, it is only the prelude. On June 1, underneath the hot Mesopotamian sun, the two armies meet at the small village of Taji, a mere twenty miles from Baghdad itself. Together the allies number sixty thousand Romans, thirty thousand Ottomans, twenty thousand Georgians, twenty thousand Khorasani and Delhians, and thirteen thousand Vlachs and Russians, one hundred and forty three thousand. The Lord of Asia has two hundred thousand.

It is very poor terrain, flat and wide open, playing to Shah Rukh’s advantages in cavalry and sheer numerical strength. The allies however are forced to give battle there as they cannot risk the supply lines to Baghdad being cut, while the arguments over the direction of march in the council meant the army did not have time to chose a better position before Shah Rukh was upon them.

One Emperor, One King, Two Sultans, One Prince, and One Lord of Asia. The coming battle will be known by many names. To some it is simply called the battle of Taji. But to the peoples who participated, such a name is not enough. Some call it the Battle of the Nations, the Romans call it the Emperors’ Battle. But it is the Turks whose name is the most enduring. For them there are no fancy names or titles, no grand phrases or eloquent speeches. To them it is simply known as The Battle.


* * *



Konstantin coughed. An arrow bounced off his helmet. Konstantin snarled.

The ground in front was black with the swirling masses of Timurid horse, pouring a hail of projectiles into the Georgians, the clang of arrowheads banging against armor and shields intermingling with the smack of arrowheads biting flesh. A great whistle sounded, and a flight of Georgian arrows sallied out into the sky, spilling Timurids from their saddles. The hail continued.

Again he coughed, the dust invading his nostrils. He scowled out at the land. It was flat, relentlessly flat. He couldn’t think of worse terrain on which to fight. The region around Taji was a vast, sun-baked plain, perfect cavalry country with no natural terrain fixtures that the allies could use to anchor their flanks to compensate for Shah Rukh’s huge numerical advantage.

Konstantin pointed. “They’re readying for another charge.” His bodyguard Alexei nodded, wiping the sweat and dust from his forehead.

Shah Rukh had been pounding them with waves of skirmishers all morning, supported them with regular shock attacks, focusing on the chinks between the various armies. The Lord of Asia wasn’t using his heavy troops but was keeping them in reserve. What Konstantin saw was something new, something the Turks had not reported seeing at Ramsar. These were medium cavalry and infantry, armed with maces and scale armor, from the Jurchens, Koreans, and the old Wei troops of Shun and Wu. Only moderately disciplined, they were nowhere near as lethal as Roman or Georgian skutatoi, but made up for it in huge numbers; Shah Rukh had at least sixty thousand, as far as Konstantin could tell.

Alexei glanced in the direction of Konstantin’s gloved finger and sneered. “Dracula will have them for lunch.” Even now the Timurid horns were blowing, the medium cavalry beginning to charge as the infantry started to run. They were making for the chink between the Georgian left flank and the Roman right, held by the Chaldean tagma and its new strategos Vlad Dracula. Behind them horse archers advanced at a trot, loosing volleys at the Roman skutatoi.

A black wave whistled out from the silver line, blazing in the Mesopotamian sun, flattening the forward ranks of the column. Horses went down screaming, the riders behind tripping over the bodies, the infantry in the rear plowing in their backs. Konstantin could hear the officers screaming at their men to spread out. Too late.

A curtain of flame roared out from the silver line as the Roman culverins and mikropurs spoke. The column shattered, no longer black but red, as the men in behind ran away shrieking from the carnage. The Roman and Georgian guns were loaded with ‘Vlach shot’, hollow canisters filled with ten-ounce lead balls.

Timurid horse archers sped forward to cover the retreat, swirling in front of the Roman lines. The barrage wasn’t meant to kill, but only to prevent the skutatoi from breaking ranks to allow cavalry or akrites to sally. More Roman arrows lashed out, toppling a few as the Lord of Asia’s light horse retreated at a trot, lobbing Parthian shots back.

Konstantin frowned even as the Georgians cheered, lashing out a volley of arrows to help speed the Tieh on their way. This was too easy. It would take several minutes at best for the guns to reload. Shah Rukh’s heavy troops could be upon the battle line well before the pieces would be ready to fire. But where were they?


* * *


Bayezid ducked as an arrow slashed above his head. Five dozen more spat out from the cloud, Bayezid hearing the meaty smack followed by a shriek as one found a Turkish eye. In the morning, the air had been clear, but now with over three hundred thousand pairs of feet beating at the ground, the battlefield was quickly getting choked by great ranks of dust clouds.

Seventy timariots spilled out of the dust, snapping arrows back as three toppled from the saddles. “Sultan! We must retreat!” Bayezid turned to look at Mehmed, the agha of the timariots. There was a brown bandage wrapped around his forehead and left ear, where an arrow had slashed the skin.

“We fall back and the entire right flank of the army is gone!”

“It’s already gone!” Bayezid could hear the sounds of battle behind Mehmed, the timariot guards desperately trying to fend off Shah Rukh’s flanking force. “If we don’t move now, Shah Rukh will take us in the rear, and we’ll lose the whole army!”

“If we fall back, Shah Rukh can roll up the whole army anyway!”

“He’s doing it already,” Mehmed snarled. “There goes the Delhians.” The Indian troops were pouring out of the choking morass, no longer an army but a mass of screaming men, tripping over each other as arrows slashed into the ranks. To their west, Bayezid could see the Khorasani retreating as well, but orderly and in step, arrow volleys snapping out from their ranks every ten seconds.

The sultan swore. “Very well. Prepare the timariots to cover our retreat. Hold the sipahis as a reserve to keep them off as we retire.”

Mehmed breathed a sigh of relief, then snapped the orders at the trumpeters. The calls rang out, the first units of Ottoman infantry beginning to turn away from the battle. Shah Rukh struck.

Forty thousand Timurid medium troops slammed into the fracturing Ottoman line, bowling over the first ranks of janissaries and azabs. At the same time arrows scythed into their right flank as the battered flank guards scattered under the blow of an enemy that outnumbered them over five to one. Even veteran troops, the troops that the Turks had lost at Ramsar, would have been hard pressed to stand in these conditions. But with these men, new levies, half-trained recruits, the Ottoman line shattered.

“Run! Run for your li-” “To Baghdad!” “Abandon your posts!” The Turkish troops were streaming back in rout.

“Stand fast, men!” Bayezid yelled. None did. An arrow snapped past his nose.

Mehmed grabbed the reins of his horse. “We must go! Now!” He yanked and the two joined the rush of men, as the entire right flank of the allied army gave way.


* * *


The drums were beating rapidly. Manuel of Kyzikos could hear the shouts of the tourmarches, the screeching of the horns, as the turkopouloi-akrites screen shattered. The light troops were flying back in disorder, racing for the gaps in the skutatoi battle line. They were flanked.

The Roman left had been refused but it had only delayed the inevitable. Shah Rukh had pounded the screen over and over and over again, both sides piling up a gruesome body count, but the turkopouloi and akrites had been pushed beyond their endurance. Now Shah Rukh’s heavy troops were curling around the left flank. Manuel could feel the rumble as those forty thousand men marched, arrows slashing out from the dust clouds from the light horse archers swirling around them.

“Form up!” Manuel heard Boris, the Varangian strategos, yell. “Mauroi, prepare to fire!” Behind the stocky, bearded Russian, Manuel saw the Emperor, clad in gleaming plate and surrounded by bodyguards, including one skinny one that he knew was the Emperor’s illegitimate daughter.

The rumble was getting louder; the Timurid heavy troops were running. Six light koursores spilled out of the murk. “They’re coming!” Boris and Ioannes Melissenos, the Athanatoi commander, were hurriedly talking to each other, Ioannes gesturing with his hands. Boris’ mouth grimaced.

He turned and yelled. “Varangians!” Manuel was not one of them, but a skutatos from the Opsician tagma, but he could see the guardsmen loosening their axes. Twenty five thousand Timurid men burst out from the dust, bellowing in a dozen tongues, the roar of a great, angry bull. “Fire!” Two thousand handguns roared back, an immense wall of fire flattening the front Timurid ranks, covering them in a pall of powder smoke. The Varangians slung their handguns, brandishing their battle axes. “Archangel Saint Michael, defend us in battle! Attack!” Twenty five hundred Varangians struck.

Manuel could barely make out the battle, a conflict of shades and shadows in the dim. The front Timurid lines had been blown apart; their armor had not saved them from the great lead balls. The ones behind were staggering, some wounded, some stunned, choked by a strange fog, the stinky breath of an angry dragon. And then the Varangians came, great, armored figures in the dark, clad in lamellar and with great axes. They knew the dragon’s breath, and they did not fear it. For they breathed the dragon’s breath, they blew the dragon’s fire, they brandished the dragon’s claw. Their axes tasted flesh.

The Timurid advance wavered, the crunch of Varangian axes as they smashed limbs and shattered bones reverberating in the dust. But then more men piled in. For every Timurid skull that was crushed, three more appeared in their place. The Varangians fell back, great black sheets of arrows flying from the Roman lines to cover their retreat, and another taste of dragon’s breath as the Scholai mauroi roared out their own handgun volley.

The Varangians returned to their old position, waving their axes and shouting obscenities at the foe. They had fought for only five minutes, and lost over a hundred of their number, but it was time well spent. Ioannes now was calm, his hands still, as the Athanatoi moved alongside the Varangians. The reserves were in place. The flank was secure.


* * *


Theodoros glanced over at his daughter, his sweaty hand gripping the pommel of his sword. She stared back at him, her lower lip trembling. “That was close,” he muttered. Alexeia nodded, dusty sweat dripping down off her chin.

The Timurids had reformed, and now roared to the attack, smashing at the silver line of skutatoi, heralded by sheets of arrows from foot archers that had finally moved up in support. The skutatoi trembled, but as Roman arrows screamed down in plunging fire and dismounted kataphraktoi waded into the bloodbath, they held. The Timurids had completely curled around the left flank like a great hook, but they still held.

He frowned, his brow wrinkling. “They’re giving up rather easily.” The Timurids were withdrawing, sped on their way by a ragged handgun volley. Flights of light cavalry were spilling in, pricking at the Roman lines as the infantry reformed just beyond arrow range.

“Emperor Theodoros! Your majesty!” A courier galloped up, his heaving, foam-spraying mount skidding to a halt.

Theodoros felt his stomach tighten. “What is it, soldier?”

“Sir! The line is broken!”


* * *


Galdan smiled as the latest report reached his ears. The tall Jurchen squirmed under the gaze of that feral grin. “You may go,” Galdan said, waving his hand. The man galloped off.

While the Roman left flank had held its ground once its position had been turned, it had been forced to commit all of the local reserves to do so. Thus when the second hammer blow fell on the Roman line, it broke. There was now a Timurid wedge between the ten thousand Roman soldiers on the extreme left and the remainder, and it was widening as the…What was the name again?...Optimates flew backward in disarray.

The ones on the left were now completely isolated from their comrades, surrounded by a strengthening cordon of Timurid troops which already outnumbered them almost four to one, including nearly all of the heavy troops. And one of those men trapped in there was none other than the Emperor of the Romans. This time he had no difficulty recalling the name he wanted. Caesarea, he thought. Caesarea.

He turned behind him, to the armored, snorting mounts of his personal guard. “Keshiks!” he bellowed. “Forward!” He nudged his horse into a trot, and behind him the Keshiks marched, the men who had brought down Wu China, who had broken the Jurchens and humbled the northern Yuan. And following them were another fifteen thousand men, to bolster the ever tightening noose. A noose, Galdan thought, more than fit for an Emperor. And once again his feral grin flashed in the sun.


* * *


“What?!” Dragos yelled, staring at the quaking courier. He took a deep breath. Both flanks of the army were gone, the right one fleeing back to Baghdad with the Timurid light cavalry chasing after them while the left was surrounded and about to cut to pieces.

“Your highness, what are your orders?” Dragos turned to look at Mircea, his second-in-command. “Your highness?”

Dragos wasn’t listening. In his mind’s eye he saw the battlefield. The left flank wasn’t gone yet, and with the elite Roman guard tourmai it would take a long and bloody time for the Timurids to destroy that pocket. And at the same time they’d have to guard their flank carefully lest the Romans try to break the ring. Shah Rukh’s heavy troops weren’t on the right wing; they were bad for pursuit, and he wouldn’t be holding them in reserve. His mediocre medium troops wouldn’t stand a chance against Athanatoi and Varangians. No, the heavies were on the left flank. Meaning…

Dragos smiled and turned toward Mircea. “We attack.”

“What?”

“We attack.”

“It’s suicide!”

“Perhaps. But the beast’s throat is bare, for now. We must act on it.” He held up his hand. “The decision has been made.”

Dragos trotted over to where the two thousand Vlach heavy cavalry were stationed, looking into their eyes. They had heard the news. “Sons of Vlachia! My brothers! It is true that the day is dark! That hope is dim! But we are Vlachs, we are people with the blood of dragons! For a hundred years, the Hungarians tried to break us. They failed. And when we could bear it no longer, we rose up. We challenged the mightiest kingdom of the west with farmers and blacksmiths, and we won! Now once again we challenge a mighty kingdom, but we are Vlachs. We shall prevail.”

He looked into their eyes. Fear was still there, but determination as well. Hands still gripped swords and lances, but no longer with shaking white knuckles but the steady grip of combat veterans. “Saint Jude!” Dragos shouted.

Two thousand voices answered. “Saint Jude!” The patron saint of lost causes.

Dragos turned around to face the hosts of the Lord of Asia. “Riders of Vlachia! Advance, and kill!”

Trumpets sounded, and two thousand hooves slammed against the earth. The Vlach infantry opened their ranks, the two thousand cavalry filing through. Onward they marched, Dragos in the lead. Forward they went, onto the great field, into the swirl of dust and blood, and into legend.


* * *


Konstantin stared back at the courier and then back at Vlad Dracula and Alexios Palaiologos. “He’s doing what?!”

“He’s charging the enemy, with two thousand heavy cavalry.”

Alexios shook his head. “Idiot.”

Vlad nodded in agreement. “He needs more men.”

Alexios jerked his head to look at his fellow Roman. “We need to rescue the Emperor. We’re only here so we can coordinate the retreat so Shah Rukh doesn’t take us in the rear too.”

“We aren’t retreating,” Konstantin growled.

“What?”

“We aren’t retreating,” Konstantin repeated, looking up to stare Alexios in the eye. “I am rebuilding Baku. In the center of the port I am erecting a new palace. I want the so-called Lord of Asia’s head as a front door decoration. And I am going to get it.”

“What about the right flank?” Vlad asked. “If you attack as well, Shah Rukh’s force on the right can swing in and envelop you.”

“Most of the Timurid troops there are chasing the Delhian and Turkish cowards. Those that aren’t are bashing their heads against the Khorasani. They actually know how to hold a position.

“No, I’m going to follow that Vlach idiot, and I’m going to take this…” Konstantin pulled out his black mace. “…And shove it up Shah Rukh’s ass.”

“Our flanks are turned, our allies give way, and we attack?” Alexios said. “This is madness.” Then he smiled. “But then, two hundred years ago, the thought of our people surviving at all would have been madness. Vlad, take the Chaldeans and Thracesians. We can’t have the Georgians and Vlachs have the credit of killing that demon.”

“And the Emperor?”

“I’ll take the remainder and rescue him. We get him out, shore up our left flank, and then we can either fall back in good order or support your attack, depending on well it goes.” Konstantin nodded.

“Good,” Vlad said. “We are agreed. To the throat then, like a lion.”

“No.” It was Konstantin, looking at Vlad now. “Like a dragon.” And the Georgian’s eyes flicked out to the dusty battlefield. It had been on a dusty Asian battlefield where Dragos cel Mare had gotten his name, where he had shattered a Timurid force outnumbering his own over three to one. They all knew the name of that field. Manzikert.


* * *


They had held, for a time. Five times the Timurid medium troops, supported by hordes of archers, had smashed against the ranks of Athanatoi, Scholai, Varangoi, and a few odd Opsicians, and five times they had been sent back screaming, drenched in their own blood. But then the sixth attack came, corseting by lamellar-armored soldiers with stout arms and great maces. But even that had been thrown back too. And the seventh. And the eighth.

But then the ninth. Courage mattered not, not when the arm, limp from exhaustion, could no longer hold a sword. Skill mattered not, not when the leg, weak from fatigue, stumbled and collapsed. And so the ninth broke through, led by a rider in black with an evil smile.

Manuel pulled his mace from what was left of a Korean’s face, numbly trying to flick the brains off the flanges. The battle lines were now just a memory, as a huge press of men smashed at each other in a great melee. At times the feet no longer touched the ground, for the bodies covered all of the bloody sand.

He turned and looked. The Emperor was still seated on his horse with only the tight grip on his sword showing any sign of anxiety. Manuel could see his lower face, cast in a small frown, as if he was annoyed over a child’s mistake in grammar. At his side his daughter stood, sword in hand, calmly surveying the battlefield as the tide crept every closer to the Emperor.

A black horse smashed through the thin line of bodyguards. A second later one of them slammed their mace onto the mount’s head, crushing its skull. The rider jumped off the collapsing beast, his sword sweeping out and slashing the guard’s neck before he landed. A second later another blow stove in the ribs of the second guard.

An arrow slammed into the neck of Theodoros’ mount. It reared in pain, throwing the Emperor, and then collapsed on top of him. Manuel heard one of the Imperial legs snap.

The man turned. Nothing stood between his blade and the Imperial neck. Save Alexeia. She wasted no time with words, her sword flickering out. The man parried, and then swung. She blocked with her shield, but stumbled back a step.

Manuel tried to get his legs to move, but he was so tired. He just wanted to lie down and sleep. Alexeia dodged another swing, but just barely. If he was lucky, nobody would notice and he would wake up and find the battle over. He would live. Alexeia tripped over the arm of a fallen Athanatos and landed on her back.

No. He would not sleep, could not sleep. Not now, not yet. He staggered, finding within him enough strength to yell at his leaden legs. “Come on, you dogs, do you want to live forever?!” He took a step, then another, then another. The man was raising his sword over Alexeia’s body. Manuel swung.

The man moved, ever so fast. His sword parried the mace, and then slashed at Manuel. The skutatos blocked with his shield, but his whole body shook under the impact. The man swung again, Manuel blocking again, but he could hear his shield cracking. The man swung one more time. His shield shattered. Manuel’s arm went numb as he collapsed, but he heard the sound of some of the bones in his arm breaking.

He looked into the sky, the sun staring back. It was a beautiful thing, a light blue canvas with a ball of light. He smiled. So this is how it ends. A shadow blocked out the sun. It was the man, raising his sword.

Alexeia struck. Once more her blade sung out, and this time the steel tasted flesh. The man shook as the sword stabbed into his armpit through the gap in his armor, through his side, and squarely into his heart. She pulled it out again, her long blade completely stained in crimson. The man fell.

Her gaze turned to Manuel, still lying on the ground. How does one talk to a princess? “Uh, nice sword work,” he rasped weakly. That’s not it.

She smiled. “You too.” The Emperor muttered, Alexeia spinning around and taking three long steps. She knelt down. “Father, it’s okay. I’m here. He’s dead.”

Theodoros’ hand grabbed her forearm. “No. You don’t understand.” He jerked his head toward the corpse, grimacing in pain. “That is Galdan of Merv.”

Alexeia drew back, Theodoros letting go. “It is?” The Emperor nodded. She smiled, striding over, and Manuel watched as in one clean blow she cleaved the head from the body. Spiking it on her sword, she lifted the head above her and shouted. “Galdan is dead!”

A chorus of cheers rose up, followed a second later by a symphony of wails. Manuel heard it but his eyes were fluttering. This spot is quite comfortable. I think I’ll sleep now. A shadow fell over him.

“Stay awake, soldier,” Alexeia said. “Athanatoi do not sleep during a battle.”

Manuel’s eyes sprung open. “I am not an Athanatos.”

Alexeia smiled, extending her arm. “You are now.” Manuel nodded, took the offered limb, and Alexeia pulled him to his feet.


* * *


Dragos looked over at the sound of a galloping horse, one belonging to a Georgian courier. The Vlachs were advancing at a trot, ringed by Alan cavalry that were acting as scouts in the dusty murk. The courier pulled alongside the prince. “Your highness, his majesty Konstantin II requests that you hold your advance until he can arrive in support.”

Dragos nodded. “How many men is my good cousin sending to aid me?” Probably a few hundred to salve Georgian honor.

“Forty thousand.”

Dragos jerked his horse to a halt, staring at the courier. “Forty thousand?”

“Yes, your highness. Twenty thousand Georgians and twenty thousand Romans.”

That wasn’t a spoiling raid to cover a retreat. That was an all-out attack! “Tell my good cousin I would be honored to fight alongside him. But on one condition. The Vlachs began this advance. We shall begin the attack.” The Georgian nodded, and galloped off again into the murk.


* * *


“The Christians are what?!” Bayezid sputtered.

Mehmed puckered his face. “They’re attacking. Both flanks are turned and they’re attacking!” He glared out at the pack of Turks, still spilling backward. Some had regained their courage, but even with the support of the sipahis Bayezid had been unable to get the bulk to turn around and fight. Now he was just trying to make sure the Timurid pursuers didn’t bowl them over.

Bayezid growled. “We’re fighting for our homes, and our families, and the Christians show greater courage in defending them. I’m glad my father isn’t alive to see this.” He glared out again over the Turkish ‘army’. “That’s it.”

The Sultan brought his horse to a halt and roared out, “Archangel Saint Michael, defend us in battle!”

That brought the Turks to a halt, as men turned and stared at the Sultan offering up a prayer to a Christian saint. “What are you doing?” Mehmed asked, his eyes wide. Several more soldiers murmured the question.

“Converting. It is apparent that honor and glory have departed the House of Islam and gone to the Christians instead.” ‘No, that’s not true,’ the soldiers murmured. Bayezid sneered. “Is that so? Then why do the soldiers of Islam run in fear while the soldiers of Christ attack? As for me, I would stand with those willing to battle the demon. If they be only Christians, so be it.”

He turned around, trotting back toward the battle. Behind him a great murmur rose up, and then the sound of marching as the Turks returned to the field.


* * *


“They’re what? Are they insane?” Mahmud sputtered.

Shah Rukh sighed. “Yes, they are. But a good commander is one who actually isn’t entirely sane. It helps him be creative.” Mahmud’s eyes bugged out at him. Shah Rukh sighed again. Why do I even bother?

The Lord of Asia turned to look at one of his lieutenants, who shook his head no. The soldiers pursuing the Turks and Delhians had been recalled, but it would take time before they returned. And Galdan, though he was pounding the Romans into a pulp according to his last report, was too heavily engaged to come to Shah Rukh’s support. No, it was best to keep the Mervian where he was. Once the Imperial pocket was destroyed, then Galdan could turn on this attack with the heavy troops and strike in its rear. The Georgians and the Romans would both be gutted.

The allied soldiers started appearing in the dust cloud, marching in perfect order, flights of arrows streaking out from the skythikoi. The wind started gusting, tossing the clouds aside, revealing the army in all its martial array. Drums beat, trumpets blew, as steadily they crept forward.

Infantry in front, Georgian and Roman skutatoi, skythikoi and turkopouloi riding alongside, lashing out with their missiles. Down the Timurid lines shrieks sounded out as they tasted flesh. Further back the allied archers stood, painting the sky black, their arms letting fly an arrow every eight seconds. The Timurid archers answered.


* * *


Vlad Dracula looked back at the men behind him, silent ranks of Georgian and Roman kataphraktoi, gleaming in plate and lamellar, to his flank the heavy riders of Vlachia. For a moment the allied ranks paused, the formations dressing their lines.

The son of the Dragon looked out at the Timurid formations before him. Even with troops scattered to both flanks, the ranks here numbered at least seventy five thousand. Yet for all their terrible size Vlad saw little gleam of armor. Only the ranks of the keshiks, the elite heavy horsemen of the Lord of Asia, shone in glory under the light of the blazing sun, spilling through the dissipating clouds.

Vlad smiled, a feral smile, the toothy grin of a wolf, of a dragon. It was flat ground, hard ground, perfect ground for the men behind him. “Men, it is time! It is time to make the dogs pay, to send the demon back to hell! Our fathers did it; it is now our turn! It took but three dragons to banish Timur! What can this one do against forty thousand dragons?”

A soldier, Vlad did not know who, yelled out, tweaking those famous words known and loved by all Romans. “Blessed are we above all men, for we live in an age of dragons!”

Vlad smiled, the corner of his eye noting the snap of banners. Dragos was ready. Konstantin was ready. It was time. “Kataphraktoi, ready kontoi!” The allied line shivered, the lances of five thousand great horsemen shifting to the attack. “Archangel Saint Michael, defend us in battle!”

“Allah! Allahu ackbar!” Vlad snapped his head to the right, spotting four thousand sipahis canter next to the Georgians, the banner of the Sultan snapping in the wind.

He smiled once again. “Forward!” The drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and together the assembled might of the Romans, Turks, Georgians, and Vlachs roared to the attack.


* * *


“What are they saying?” Mahmud asked, turning to look at his father, his mouth opening in shock. “What?”

Shah Rukh was smiling. At first the foe had yelled their traditional cries, but now it was something new, something terrible. The men charging toward him knew their position. They were desperate men, but that made them even more brave. They knew that in their place, they must conquer or die. This they accepted; this they welcomed. He did not know who had first taken up the call, whether a great officer or a lowly spearmen, but now all of them were yelling it. “Death! Deaaath!” With men like that, I could conquer the world.

But they were not his men. “Keshiks!” he yelled, barking orders at the squadron commanders. His nose scrunched as he smelled someone lose control of their bowels. He looked over at the man. It was Mahmud. He sighed. Genghis Khan didn’t have to deal with this.

The Vlachs would hit first. Already their leader was sweeping out ahead of the armored formations even as arrows pelted his ranks. Shah Rukh opened his mouth to dispatch another keshik squadron. “My Lord, look out!” one yelled. The arrow skipped along his horse’s lamellar barding, making a ‘dinging’ sound, and stabbed straight into its eye. The beast reared, screaming in pain as more arrows slammed into it, and fell.


* * *


Manuel grimaced, awkwardly hefting his mace in his right hand, trying to ignore the wince of pain from his left arm, wrapped in a sling. Emperor Theodoros stared at him, gritting his teeth as he shifted his cast-bound right leg. Both were seated on the ground, resting for what was to come. Alexeia bent down, handing her father a flask of water. Manuel thought he smelled poppy. It was his third cup.

“I never thought it would end like this,” Manuel muttered. Although the death of Galdan had demoralized the Timurids, allowing the Romans to push them back, they were now regrouping for what would be a tenth and final attack. Out of the ten thousand Romans in the noose, a thousand were dead, and only two thousand were without some sort of wound.

“This isn’t the end,” Theodoros murmured, his eyes staring up into the clearing sky. He smiled. “The gray curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.”

“See what?” Manuel asked.

“White shores, and beyond a far green country.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“No.” Theodoros shook his head.

“Wait, how do you know that?”

Theodoros smiled. “I’m the Emperor of the Romans. Some of the angels are my spies.”

Manuel snorted. Perhaps it was the fatigue, the fear, the buzz of battle, but it was funny. He laughed, and then laughed again. Theodoros chuckled. Alexeia giggled. That only caused Manuel to laugh more, which only made Theodoros and Alexeia continue. Other men, nearby men, began to laugh as well, then more and more, as the words spread, laughter in their wake.

The Timurids surrounding them stopped what they were doing. The horns were ready to blow, the men ready to march, but they stopped. The sound made them pause, the sound coming from their quarry, the sound of nine thousand men laughing as one.


* * *


Jeong swallowed, glanced nervously at Geumwon. Like him, his fellow Korean was clad in scale armor, gripping his mace tightly. “Why are they doing that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

Jeong opened his mouth, then ducked as an arrow darted past his head. “What the?” Seven more slashed past him.

“Now there goes our flank,” Geumwon muttered glumly. The soldiers that had been on the outer side of the cordon were flying back, a mob rather than an army, desperately fleeing the hammer blows of the Roman relief column. Light cavalry were flying around them, the turkopouloi pounding them with arrows, concentrating the missiles on officers attempting to restore order.

The ground was beginning to tremble. Jeong looked and saw several hundred heavy cavalry, encased in plate, with great black shields and white crosses, pounding at the earth as they leapt into gallop. “Deus vult!” they shouted.

Another rider rode up, drenched in red. It was blood. “Shah Rukh is slain!” he shrieked. “Run for your lives! The Lord of Asia is dead!” He galloped off.

The knights were still coming, behind them the rumbling din as kataphraktoi and skythikoi joined the charge. “Deus vult!” “Saint Theodoros!”

Jeong looked at Geumwon. “You know, I really hate this place.”

“Me too.”

“I’d like to go home.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s go.” They ran.


* * *


“Do I have to do everything myself?!” Shah Rukh yelled, glaring at the trembling doctor. “I’m fine. Go away.” The physician fled.

The night breeze gusted through the open tent flap just before the guard closed it. “I am not pleased,” he said, glaring at his division commanders, who fidgeted under the gaze. He had been knocked unconscious by the fall, but had suffered no permanent injury. His army had not been nearly as fortunate.

While the desperate charges of the keshiks had succeeded in stalling the allied advance before it chopped up more than ten thousand infantry, his forces on the right flank, the allied left, had suffered far worse. They had been completely broken, the Roman Emperor rescued, and his best lieutenant, Galdan, killed by a woman no less. Shah Rukh felt his blood boil. The only good thing about that debacle was that the sight of the retreating heavy troops had caused the allies to break off the attack. Now with the fall of night both sides had retired to lick their wounds.

And grievous wounds they were. Shah Rukh had lost over forty thousand of his host, either through death, injury, capture, or desertion. The allies had lost their Delhian troops, at last report well on their way to the Indus by now. The Roman losses tallied close to the strength of two tagmata, a third of their force, while the casualties of the Georgians and Vlachs scarcely below that. While the bulk of his center troops had been far outmatched by the allied attack, the keshiks far outmatched most of them. Out of their roll of five thousand, eight hundred were now incapable of battle. But they had done the same to ten times that number of their foe.

He was still glaring. “I am not pleased,” he repeated. “Leave. And summon Mahmud.” While Shah Rukh was unconscious, command had fallen to his son. If he had organized the heavy troops on the flank and then attacked, they might have rolled up the allied center. But he hadn’t. Only once the Lord of Asia had awakened and dispelled the rumors of his demise had the troops been brought to heel, long after the allies had retreated out of danger. Another opportunity lost, another avoidable disaster. I should have done this a long time ago.

The officers fled out of the tent. Shah Rukh ignored their panicked flight, staring at the fire. This is not over, he thought. An empire in the west, to match the one he had already won in the east, was still in his grasp. He would take it, and give it all, the greatest empire anyone had ever conquered, greater than Alexander, greater than Genghis Khan, greater than Timur, to his worthy son, his second son. Jahangir.


* * *​



The Field of Taji, Night of June 1, 1450:

The candlelight flickered on the insides of the tent. Outside could be heard the crackle of fifteen thousand campfires and the rustling of sleepy men and horses as they bedded down for the night.

“You idiot,” Shah Rukh snarled, glaring at his oldest son.

“How could I-” Mahmud protested.

“It’s your duty! A leader has to lead; you have to be able to bring men into battle and lead them to victory. This is something you continually fail to do. You failed to guard against the Ottoman charge at Ramsar. Then you failed to make sure Tabriz was protected.” His meaty fist slammed against the rough wooden table, causing the rocks holding the corner of the map down to jump. “And now this! The allied center could have been mauled, if you had gotten the men to stand and fight. Instead they were able to retire without contest.”

He rubbed his head. “I should’ve brought Jahangir instead.”

“What?”

“I said, I should’ve brought your younger brother instead. Except if I’d left you in Beijing, all of China would be in open revolt by now.”

“That’s not fair.”

A sneer. “Oh, it isn’t, my idiot offspring?”

“No, it isn’t. You’ve always favored Jahangir. He’s the one you appointed as your viceroy in Beijing when you invaded southern China. He’s the one you placed as commander of the Korean expedition. He’s the one you sent when the Mongols got restless. He’s-”

“Enough. He’s always shown himself capable of doing those things. You have not. This latest debacle is just another in a long list of your failures.” A pause. “I should have done this a long time ago.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, I have not spent my entire life building an empire greater than anything seen since the days of Genghis Khan to hand it over to a moron who will just lose it. Instead it’s all going to Jahangir. He has what a man needs to rule an Empire.”

Tears clouded Mahmud’s eyes. “You can’t do that. I’m the eldest. I’m the rightful heir.”

“I can, and I will. Now get out of here. You are nothing to me now.”

“But, father-”

“I said, get out. I am no longer your father. You are no longer a part of my line. Now lea-” Shah Rukh gurgled, staring down in surprise at the sword blade buried in his belly. Mahmud’s hands were clenched around the blade, his knuckles white, his eyes glistening
with anger and fear. Shah Rukh smiled weakly and whispered. “Better.”

Mahmud, in surprise, let go of the hilt. There was a thud as his father collapsed onto the ground, lying on his back, the pommel pointed up, his eyes wide open, staring through the tent into the night sky. There was a rattle, a sigh, and Shah Rukh, Hongwu Emperor of China, Great Khan of Mongolia and the Golden Horde, King of Korea and Urumqi, Sovereign of Kashmir, Tibet, and Champa, Khagan of the Uzbeks, Uyghurs, and Tatars, heir of Timur the Great, the Lord of Asia, was no more.

* * *​

With the death of Shah Rukh, Mahmud succeeds him as commander of the army, blaming the Lord of Asia’s death on a Roman assassin. As Galdan of Merv, the most respected and feared Timurid commander after Shah Rukh himself, is also dead, he faces little personal opposition to his assumption of command. However his authority over his troops is extremely shaky, because at best he is viewed as a non-entity militarily, and at worst a complete imbecile. The keshiks, the most powerful unit, man-for-man, in the host mainly subscribe to the later view.

There is also the matter of his younger brother Jahangir, Viceroy of China. Mahmud cannot afford to give his brother a chance to seize Urumqi and Samarkand before he does as it would kill any chance of him ruling over the united Timurid-Tieh Empire. But to do that he needs peace on his western flank. Thus on June 2, the new ‘Lord of Asia’ meets with the allied monarchs.

His terms are simple, the restitution of the pre-war status quo. All lost territories are to be ceded back to their owners, all prisoners returned without ransom. While there are some in the allied camp who want to push on and destroy the Timurid army, namely Bayezid and Nasir, the heavy losses give the others pause. The terms are accepted.

The main hangup is when Mahmud asks Theodoros for Galdan’s body back. If he had custody of the body and was able to bury it in Merv, it would do much to secure the Mervians’ loyalty to Mahmud’s cause. However Theodoros wants money for it. Mahmud points out that all prisoners are to be returned without ransom. The Roman Emperor responds that since Galdan is free to leave whenever he wants, he’s not a prisoner so that clause doesn’t apply.

Mahmud gives up and offers the Timurid equivalent of 10,000 hyperpyra. Theodoros wants 100,000. Over a hour is spent on the haggling, which ends with Mahmud getting the body for the price of 55,000 hyperpyra. Except the body is still missing its head, impaled on a spike in the Roman camp. Mahmud is livid, Theodoros pointing out that the ‘Lord of Asia’ didn’t ask for the head, only the body. Eventually Mahmud gets the head as well, but Theodoros receives another 27,000 hyperpyra.

Immediately Mahmud races back to Samarkand, detaching his Persian garrisons as well as the army menacing Basra before the Ottomans take custody of their lost provinces. Before Bayezid can arrive, the locals rise up, seizing the towns and citadels, and shortly afterwards pledging their loyalty to the Jalayirid Khan Qasim II. Using the battle-hardened corps of troops from the years of anti-Ottoman campaigning, as soon as he hears the news of Mahmud’s retreat, he sweeps in and secures those territories. The Ottomans, utterly exhausted by their losses at Ramsar and The Battle, are incapable of resisting. All of Osman’s conquests in Persia are lost, the frontier rolled back to its position in 1420.

When Qasim returns to Fars, he grants himself a new title, reflecting his new goal of creating a centralized Persian Empire. No longer is he the Jalayirid Khan, a leftover fragment from the days of the Il-Khanate. Now he is Qasim I, Shahanshah of the Persians. With his direct control of Mazandaran, Gilan, and Hormuz in addition to his own lands around Fars, he is the most powerful Jalayirid ruler since the days of Timur. Fortunately for the Turks, he still faces overly powerful vassal emirs, particularly in Yazd and Tabas, so despite his rapid success Qasim still has a long way to go before being supreme in all his domains.

In E-raq, Bayezid returns to Baghdad, and as the allied armies return to their homelands with his thanks, the people of the capital flood back into their city. The strength of the Turks may now be at a low ebb, but Osman’s reforms to the army still remain. They can, and will, be rebuilt. Given time, the Turks can once again be a great power. And when they do, all know who their target will be. For on the anniversary of Ramsar, Bayezid goes to his father’s grave and swears the Samarkand Oath.

In central Asia, Mahmud is able to take Samarkand before his brother. The two siblings meet in early September at Urumqi, agreeing to rule the Empire between them, Mahmud from Samarkand and Jahangir from Beijing. When they depart to return to their capitals, the brothers swear everlasting pledges of goodwill and friendship. No one is fooled for a second. War will come between the two, sooner or later, and much more likely it will be sooner. Neither will tolerate the other ruling part of their father’s empire.

The key to the inevitable war between the Timurid and Tieh components of Shah Rukh’s empire will be the Kingdom of Urumqi, the half-steppe, half-Chinese state existing on the frontiers of both. Here Mahmud actually has the advantage, as the Urumqi despise Jahangir for his repeated policy of favoring old Shun and Wu officials in the Tieh administration.

But as Samarkand and Beijing arm themselves, the rest of Asia is quiet, as the fighting in the north and in India peter out from lack of activity. However in southeast Asia, Champa shows dangerous signs of insubordination since when Jahangir waives Lanna’s tribute payments (to placate the Hindus) the Champans march in and extort the same payment, only this time all will go to Champa.

But for now there is peace. Though on paper the great empire of Shah Rukh remains, in reality it died with him. Neither Mahmud or Jahangir have credible supporters outside of their current heartlands, no Urumqi collaborators as Shah Rukh had in China. No, the future of that great continent no longer resides with the Lord of Asia. Instead, it belongs to the Lords of Asia. What they do with it, out of the Shadow of Timur, will be their shame, or their glory, alone.
 
Last edited:
Great Halls and Evil Times

Part 7

1451-1458

"What's a little fire to these stone walls?"-unknown, from the siege of Constantinople​


1451: The Orthodox armies return home in triumph, with a week-long celebration in Constantinople complete with chariot races in the recently restored Hippodrome. In Targoviste Prince Dragos is welcomed as a great hero, the charge of his two thousand horsemen immediately becoming the stuff of legend, a tale of how the Vlachs, the weakest of the Orthodox Alliance, showed and led their brothers in the faith on the path to victory.

The new legend leads to the creation of a new banner for Vlachia. As a people with the blood of dragons, it is only fitting that their standard should have a dragon. Theirs is a red dragon, showing that the Vlach state was born in blood and war, on a black background, showing the night in which the Vlachs had slept before their dawn. And now the dragon is given three heads, representing the three dragons that showed the Vlachs the way to glory. The first is Dragos cel Mare, the second Vlad I Dracul, and now the third is Prince Dragos himself.


housetargaryenbanner.png

The banner of the Dragon Throne of Vlachia


In Georgia and Russia the mood is not so happy. Konstantin returns to Tbilisi in triumph, but without the desired head of Shah Rukh. Plus Mahmud, the one responsible for the destruction of Baku, is still Lord in Samarkand. Thus the King refuses to return the spoils and captives garnered in the cross-Caspian raids, in violation of the treaty at Taji.

In this he is supported by Alexei, who is still irked that Perm remains a vassal of Samarkand. Mahmud, having difficulties with all of his vassals and eyeing his brother’s domain (who is having similar vassal difficulties), cannot afford a continued conflict with Georgia and Russia. He ransoms his captives from Georgia, which though costly actually gives Mahmud badly needed support amongst the local populace. That somewhat compensates the Lord of Samarkand for the loss of Perm, as the need to pay funds to Georgia meant that the Permese no longer received their sweetener for their loyalty. In August they proclaim ‘eternal goodwill and friendship’ with Mahmud, but sever their ties of vassalage.

In Constantinople, Manuel of Kyzikos, a lowly skutatos, is catapulted to the heart of Imperial power when he is made the personal bodyguard of Prince Andreas. In that capacity, he spends much time with Alexeia, who upon her return to Constantinople has been giving her half-brother lessons in the use of the blade. Meanwhile the thoughts in the Blachernae quickly turn to war. Theodoros is determined to make the Venetians pay for the poisoning of his wife, and with Shah Rukh dead, the path is now clear.

However the standing formations of the Roman army, the Athanatoi, the Varangoi, and the Scholai (the Thulioi, largely wrecked at Adana, were disbanded after the battle) have all been gutted. Also the Anatolian soldiers took heavy losses of their own, with the seven tagmata mustering an active-duty roll call of fifty five thousand. The Empire is not ready for another war. So Theodoros waits, for now.

Alexeia actually proves to be an unexpected but welcome source of manpower. Tales of the daughter of an Emperor, born of a Swedish mother, who slew a Tatar giant, had begun to spread almost as soon as the Emperors’ Battle was over, making their way all the way back to her mother’s homeland. Landless Swedes, like their forefathers centuries before, take to the rivers of the Rus to sail to the City. Theodoros deliberately encourages this, as he was extremely impressed by Varangian performance at Taji and is eager to rebuild the Guard.

The most important Swede to arrive in Constantinople does not come because of the legend. His name is Gustav Olafsson, son of Olaf Tordsson, the Giant of Gotland, Bane of the Moors. His stint as King of Finland had been a very short and uncomfortable experience. Rumors that he had secretly converted to Orthodoxy had antagonized his relatives, while attempts to make tribute payments more regular had annoyed the Sami. In February he is toppled and forced to flee into exile like his father had. In the meantime the Bonde resume their tentative ties of vassalage with Sweden.

Like many of the Swedes who come to the Queen of Cities in search of gold or legends, Gustav soon joins the Varangian Guard. Unlike his father who left Gotland with a thousand men in tow, he fled with only a few dozen retainers and so is not considered a threat. Because of the Swedish immigration, the Guard actually regains its pre-war manpower rather quickly, although it will take much longer before the new recruits become as skilled with the axe and handgun as those slain at Taji.

Theodoros also puts the money he got for Galdan’s body to good use. Whilst in southern E-raq, the Roman soldiers seized samples of a new food crop as part of foraging expeditions, taking some back. The Emperor subsidizes the new cultivation. The crop actually flourishes the best in Greece, and helps provide a boost to the local economy and population. It is rice.

Also the Emperor puts the money (and more) into a new project on the Golden Horn. It is a copy of the Venetian Arsenal. Although it will take several years before it is completed, the Imperial Arsenal will be a series of factories and shipyards, each one producing a component of a vessel that will be fitted together to create an actual vessel, including purxiphoi. Coming with high walls for defensive and security reasons, as well as housing for workers as well as centers for rope and canvas production, over half again the size of the Venetian original, it is a huge undertaking. To oversee the creation of the shipyards, the best Trebizondian shipwrights are appointed as overseers and consultants.

Meanwhile in northern Germany, the Count of Oldenburg Christian VI, is elevated by the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III (Duke of Bavaria Conrad II) Wittelsbach. He is now Duke Christian I of Oldenburg, Lord of the Northmarch. The latter is a new title, recognizing that the new duchy stands on the border of the Danish dominions in Germany. In the event of war with the Danes, the Duke is to be the captain-general of all Imperial forces in northern Germany.

1452: Early in the year the main event is the visit of King Charles I of Arles to Constantinople to see his old friend Theodoros IV. It is a social call, where the two monarchs renew the ties of friendship and trade between the two Mediterranean powers.

Charles is accompanied by thirty lances fournies, the new organizational unit of the Arletian army. The lances are ten-men squadrons, composed of a mounted knight, two sergeants at arms, two mounted archers (unlike eastern horse archers they dismounted when shooting), three halberdiers or pikemen, and two servants. Organized in companies of ten lances, each unit is assigned to and maintained by a district of Arles, providing the young kingdom with a professional, standing army.

It is something the kingdom needs. Both England-France and Lotharingia are under the rule of new monarchs, Henry IV in England-France, and Philippe I in Lotharingia. Both are young lords, eager to move out of the military shadows cast by their fathers, particularly Henry IV. In addition both are loyal sons of the Roman Catholic Church, with Pope Julius II actually the godfather of Henry.

As a way to bolster his defenses in the event of war, Charles has also forged diplomatic ties with the Bernese League and the Kingdom of Norway-Scotland, with his ducats also making their way to the hands of the ‘kings’ of Ireland. There are currently five, little more than local big men, whose ‘armies’ are mainly gangs of cattle rustlers. However Arletian coin and knowledge, sent via Aragon (who has some border disputes with English Aquitaine over the territories of the defunct kingdom of Navarre) is slowly starting to change that.

Charles is doing all this as a defensive measure; his gaze is still fixed on Provence and the Mediterranean, his memory full of the terror and bloodshed of the Ninety Years War and the reign of Francis the Butcher. But in the streets and roads of Provence and Occitania, a new generation is rising that does not remember those things. Instead they hear the songs of the troubadours, singing of the kings of old, and something is born in their hearts. For now it is just a seed, for now just a dream, but a dream of France.

Obviously the Romans have no such dreams; their hearts are set on other things. In the city of Acre there is an incident. On September 4, a Roman baker who had set up shop there on the edges of the Roman trading quarter is accused of serving spoiled meat pies (a true accusation). A fight breaks out, which soons turns into a riot that tears through the Roman quarter, burning and pillaging. By dawn of the next day, the district is in ruins, with over eighty of the locals and almost two hundred Roman citizens dead.

Immediately, there is outrage in Constantinople. Many still smart over the generous Mameluke treaty at the end of the Adana campaign and are eager to redress that issue. With Shah Rukh dead, Theodoros’ main argument for not doing so is gone. Also the Emperor is much more inclined to listen to the arguments. With the tensions between Samarkand and Beijing, trade along the Silk Road is suffering, while Qasim’s control of Hormuz has caused the Persian Gulf trade route to jump up in price. As a result, the Red Sea route, dominated by Mamelukes and Italians (once the Yemeni take their cut), is growing in prominence.

Thus Theodoros shelves his plans for dealing with Venice. In October the eastern banda cross the frontier in a series of raids while orders are dispatched to call up the tagmata for a spring campaign. Because of the state of the Anatolian divisions, the Helladic, Epirote, and Thracian tagmata will be assembled, leaving the defense of Roman Europe in the hands of the Italian and Macedonian tagmata, twenty thousand men. It is far less than the usual muster, but considering how badly Italian armies fared the last time they crossed swords with Rhomania (Dragos’ Genoese campaign), Constantinople is not concerned.

1453: In early April a two-prong offensive is launched against the Mameluke Sultanate. The first follows the old invasion route, through the Cilician Gate, down the road into Syria where the Hospitaliers join forces with the army. On April 25, the Roman army, forty one thousand strong (composed of the Thracian tagmata, along with a patchwork of the most intact Anatolian tourmai, plus the Hospitaliers) under the command of Alexios Palaiologos, crosses the Lipari, its first target the city of Tyre.

A week before an invasion fleet appears off the coast of Egypt. Unlike last time, they do not make for Damietta; the Romans have no interest in a pile of rubble. Their eyes are set on a far greater prize, a mighty port, a great city dating back to antiquity, long a jewel in the eyes of the Romans, Alexandria.

Vlad Dracula is in command, taking over from Isaakios Laskaris, his old commander at the Battle of Adana, who had retired in late 1451. He commands twenty six thousand men, the Epirote and Helladic tagmata (the latter fighting in familiar territory) and the six Italian cleisurai. Unlike Damietta, the city garrison is not caught off guard and manages to repel the initial attack.

For over a month the stout, newly rebuilt walls of Alexandria stand firm against the artillery bombardment. The deadlock is broken when two brothers, secretly Coptic Christians, leave a sally port open with Vlad’s knowledge, allowing him to infiltrate elite kontoubernions into the city during the night. On the morning of May 29, the Alexandrians awake to find the Romans already inside the walls. By the afternoon, the great metropolis is once again a Roman city, the first time in eight hundred years.


capturingdamiate.jpg

The Fall of Alexandria​

The foreign quarters of the Pisans, Genoese, Sicilians, and Aragonese are left undisturbed and intact. The Venetian district is not as lucky with the entire region and all its possessions confiscated. The furnishings and contents of the homes and warehouses are distributed to the soldiers as booty, but the lands and buildings are given back to the original Coptic owners (if present) who had lost them years earlier when Janbulat expanded the Venetian zone.

However after the fall of the city, Roman progress in Egypt slows to a crawl. In the Levant the Roman advance is also tepid at best. Sultan Janbulat, with a lighter battleline, declines to offer battle against the Romans, instead using Fabian tactics. Using light cavalry, he snips at supply lines, scouts, and foragers but avoids open battle. Keeping his men concentrated, if just out of reach, also forces Alexios to keep his own, rather small (the army in Anna I’s war against the Mamelukes in the 1320s was larger), army concentrated, rather then breaking up to conduct multiple sieges.

Because of the difficulty of supplying the army by land, much of the Roman fleet is active off the Syrian coast ferrying supplies. The remainder are cruising off the Nile delta, attempting to stop Venetian blockade runners. The fall of Alexandria has made it much more difficult for the Serene Republic to ship in arms, but still the galleys make their ways into the ports of Cyrenaica and villages along the Delta.

Janbulat had asked Doge Dandolo to intervene militarily, but had been told that it would be two years before the Serene Republic is ready. The Sultan is annoyed, but somewhat placated both by the extremely generous shipments of arms and the promise that when Venice does strike, it will be absolutely crushing.

For all of the Venetian aid and the Mamelukes’ Fabian tactics, it is only enough to slow the Roman advance, not stop it. While in Egypt Vlad is penned up in Alexandria by clouds of light cavalry falling on any columns that advance from the city, in Syria Tyre falls in late June, Acre in early August. Finally Alexios moves on a position that Janbulat must defend, Damascus.

Janbulat attacks just outside the city, falling on the Roman columns with waves of light Arab cavalry and Sudanese infantry, holding the Mamelukes in reserve. Despite his numerical superiority (50,000 to 38,000) the Sultan still fights cautiously, aware that the bulk of his troops cannot match skutatoi or kataphraktoi in melee. Then Alexios counterattacks, mass arrow volleys preceding a sally of the kataphraktoi and skythikoi. While the Arabs wheel out of the way, the Sudanese are caught and chopped to bits, but they stall the Roman advance as the carefully husbanded Mameluke heavy horsemen roar into action.

The cavalry melee is a brutal slugging match, both sides smashing each other with maces. When the skutatoi advance to support their mounted comrades, Janbulat sends his light cavalry back in to nip at their flanks. The attacks cause little harm, but it gives the Mamelukes the time they need to retreat in good order. When night falls, ending the battle, Janbulat’s army has sixty seven hundred casualties, but inflicted forty three hundred on the Romans.

For over two weeks there is a stalemate, as Alexios tries to force another battle or besiege Damascus, Janbulat maneuvering to prevent that. On September 3, the deadlock is broken when turkopouloi find a Mameluke supply caravan and burn it, forcing Janbulat to fall back due to lack of provisions. On September 7, Damascus is placed under siege.

1454: Spring finds Vlad still in Alexandria, still unable to move up the Delta. In the Levant, Alexios captures Damascus in February. Due to horrid winter conditions, frequent garrison sallies that disrupted the artillery bombardment, as well as Damascus’ modern defenses (designed by Venetian siege engineers), the city had managed to hold out for over six months.

After three weeks of gathering supplies and reinforcements, Alexios resumes his march south, harried by light cavalry. The advance is slow, with the Romans forced to take every little hill fort and stockade to deny refuges to the Mameluke skirmishers. The unusually hot, even for Syria, summer weather doesn’t help, although that issue is partly solved when the Romans arrive in the Jordan River valley. Still Janbulat does not attack directly, preferring his waves of skirmishers. Despite all the difficulties, Alexios pushes on, and eventually he is rewarded. For on October 9, the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City, is placed under siege.

In Constantinople, as winter falls, the Imperial family begins to break up for the coming year. Alexeia departs for Coloneia, while Anastasia and Irene remain in the capital. Theodoros travels to join the army at Jerusalem, accompanied by the Varangians and the bulk of the Athanatoi, while the Empress Helena, Zoe, and Prince Andreas elect to spend the winter and spring in the Komnenid palace at Smyrna.

In Italy too, things are stirring. Doge Dandolo had told Janbulat he would need two years, and he has gotten them. As 1454 ends, Venetian vessels have been trickling into Crete, swelled by every pirate ship Venetian and papal coin can buy. As 1455 begins, they start to move. In Italy itself Papal and Neapolitan armies join ranks, marching south as the long oppressed Italian peasantry in Roman Italy explodes into revolt. To the east, the armies of Serbia, Varna, and Vidin pour across the border, burning and pillaging.

And in late March, the Serene Republic itself moves. In Crete the Lion of Saint Mark has assembled the greatest fleet Venice has ever seen, one hundred and eighty two ships, with five hundred cannons and forty four thousand men. As the sun creeps beyond the horizon to gaze down upon the Aegean on April 10, it spies a black tide, a great forest of masts, festooned with red and gold banners, the Lion of Saint Mark, sword in paw, advancing on the coast. The Black Day of Rhomania has begun.


europe1455.png

1) The Kingdom of Arles
2) Minor German and Italian States
3) The Duchy of Oldenburg
4) The Republic of Genoa
5) The Republic of Florence
6) The Papal States
7) The Kingdom of Naples
8) The Most Serene Republic of Venice
9) The Kingdom of Serbia-Bosnia
10) The Kingdom of Vlachia
11) The Duchies of Vidin and Varna (Roman vassals, currently in rebellion)
12) The Duchy of Milan
13) The Teutonic Order
14) Realms of the Shahanshah of the Persians
15) The Principality of Presporok (Polish vassal)



The Black Day of Rhomania


Smyrna, April 10, 1455:

“Look out!” Pietro yelled as the Greek cannonball flew over his head. It crashed into the water, the spray lashing out to a height twice that of the galley’s main mast.

Pietro glanced over at his fellow Venetian marine, Ludovico. “You know,” his friend said. “We haven’t actually declared war yet.”

Pietro snorted. “I think, looking at this…” He gestured out at the Great Armada, the largest fleet the Lion of Saint Mark had assembled, mightier even than the host during the Fourth Crusade, one hundred and eighty two ships. “…that the Greeks know we’re not here to sell wine.”

Ludovico nodded, squinting at the city. There, behind the short sea wall, was the great naval base that was their first objective. The armada’s final target was nothing less than the Queen of Cities itself. But first the Aegean had to be rendered incapable of supporting the Greek fleet, and only Smyrna and Thessalonica could maintain that in its entirety.

The second bombard on the tower guarding the approach to the city roared, another great cannonball flying out. This one did not miss. It smashed into the prow of a galley, plowing its way through the length of the entire ship, bursting out the stern and slamming into the sea. The galley listed out of control; those rowers that had not been crushed by the ball itself had been shredded by the pieces of shattered oars sent flying, bouncing around the rowing deck.

A glop of blood landed on Pietro’s face. “What the?” he said, wiping it off. He glanced up the center mast. A body had been flung up by the cannonball’s impact, hurled through the air, and been squarely impaled by the mast.

Pietro scowled. A second later Ludovico laughed as an explosion blossomed on the Greek guard tower. “Ha! Those stupid Greek bastards! Their own gun went and blew up in their faces! Ha!” Pietro smiled, ignoring the drying clots of blood as the lead Venetian galleys stormed the harbor.

* * *

“We have to go, now,” the guard, Ioannes, hissed.

The Empress Helena shoved another loaf of bread into her knapsack. Andreas could hear her muttering. “The one day that I send most of the guard off-duty…” Fifteen minutes earlier he had been secluded in a quiet grove of the massive palace gardens, listening to his mother play the lyre. And then they had heard the call, the terrible call as the bells of Smyrna’s seven hundred churches and the muezzins’ of her thirty mosques began to scream.

Now Andreas could hear women screaming and men yelling outside, knowing that the Venetians were storming the harbor. His tutor had told him that Smyrna, for all its importance as the Empire’s fifth city, a metropolis of seventy five thousand souls, was guarded by a mere three cannons. He had seen the armada the Republic of Saint Mark had sent, its size turning the sea black with the great host of ships. The port’s guns had been like three slingshots against an elephant.

His sister Zoe, five years older than his age of ten, grabbed his hand. “Come on, Andreas,” she said, tugging. He tripped over the hem of his woolen peasant smock that was dragging on the ground. All of them, the Empress Helena, the Princess Zoe, himself, and the two guards were in disguise, in the hopes that the Venetian soldiers wouldn’t busy themselves chasing a group of servants. Somewhere, Andreas thought, a serving boy was running around in his clothes, which didn’t itch and actually fit.

They stumbled out in the court, just in time to hear a stable boy shriek as a Venetian sword slashed open his belly, his organs spilling onto the ground. Over twenty soldiers were pouring into the west courtyard, which also happened to be where the stables were. One of them pointed as Zoe. “She looks tasty!” he laughed. A dozen split off, charging toward the group.

“Run!” Ioannes yelled, stepping between Andreas and the group, along with the one other guardsman. “Run!” Andreas ran, looking back behind as the two Roman soldiers unfurled their blades and cut down the first pair of Venetian marines to reach them. A moment later they fell as well under the blow of Venetian maces.

Helena, Zoe, and Andreas fled, out into the city, their feet desperately beating down the cobblestone streets as the howls of the soldiery grew ever closer. Here the streets were deserted, the inhabitants already fled or dead. Several of the storefronts had previously been smashed in, bodies hanging over the edge.

As they reached a small plaza, decorated by a small plinth commemorating a local hero who had lost his life fighting Venetians fifty years earlier, Andreas tripped and stumbled. A second later he staggered to his feet, helped by his mother. Too late; the Venetians were upon them.

Two brawny, hairy arms grabbed Andreas, pinning his own arms behind his back as a blast of hot breath, reeking of sweat and grappa, slammed into his left ear. Meanwhile two more soldiers ripped the woolen cloaks off Zoe and Helena. One grabbed Helena’s chin. “Eh, a bit old, but still nice.” Another leered at Zoe. “I was right.” He licked his lips, smacking them together a second later. “Tasty, very tasty.”

As one, the nine soldiers looked at the face of the man holding Andreas. “They’re all yours, boys.” Less than a second later both women were on the ground, their clothes ripped off. A moment later both were invaded simultaneously.

“Mom!” Andreas yelled as his mother screamed, as his skinny arms struggled to get free.

The man tightened his grip, his hot breath blasting Andreas’ neck. He whispered in his ear. “Relax, boy. You’ll get your turn.” He laughed, spittle spraying the side of the prince’s face. He flinched, which only caused the man to laugh again.

A second man stabbed into Helena, howling a moment later and yanking out. She spat something bloody at him. “Why, you goddamn fucking bitch!” He roared. His sword flashed out and swung downward. There was no scream, no cry of pain, only a bloody gurgle as the blade impaled her heart, her unblinking eyes staring out at Andreas. Helena, Empress of the Romans, was dead.

Ignoring the whole affair, a third man entered Zoe. She was no longer screaming; her head was hanging limply on the ground, staring at the corpse of her mother. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no sound as her body jolted to the thrusts of the thing rutting inside her.

An arrow sung past the head of one of the Venetians. Andreas saw a man down one of the streets armed with a hunting bow. He notched another arrow and let fly at the man holding the boy. The man ducked, letting Andreas go in the process. His eyes darted to his sister’s face. ‘Run’, she mouthed, the thing still rutting. ‘Run’. He ran.

He fled down a random side street, his heart pounding in his chest. The Venetians, distracted by the archer, did not pursue. He took a turn, then another, then another. He was lost.

The quarter was deserted. Here the Venetian tide has already smashed through, wrecking shops, homes, even churches. Andreas stopped to stare at one small church, tucked into an alley, the doors ripped out, a dozen bodies strewn inside, including four young women with their clothes ripped off. In the distance he could hear the screams as the storm tore into another district, moving away from the harbor.

“In here.” Andreas whirled around to see a Turkish man, his chin covered by a large black beard, looking out from a door hanging from one hinge. “In here. If the Venetians come back and find you, they’ll kill you.” Or worse, Andreas thought. He went inside.

It was a home, Andreas noting the bookshelf lying on the floor in the corner, a dozen or so books lying around it. In a corner four mats lay on the ground, all pointed to a corner. They were prayer mats; the man was a Muslim. He threw aside another, larger mat, revealing a door to an underground cellar. He opened it, the door creaking. Andreas looked down, seeing a woman’s face illuminated by the flicker of a pair of candles. The man nodded and Andreas crept down the stairway. The man followed, throwing the mat over the door and closing it.

Andreas sat down, flinching from the cold stone. The man picked up one of the candles from the woman and sat down as well, facing Andreas. “What is your name?” he asked.

“I am Prince Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos. Who are you?”

The man smiled. “Royalty, in my home.” He glanced at the women, next to whom two girls, about eight and five, were huddled. “And you said I would never get anywhere in life.” He smiled, the woman shaking his head. “I am Prince Nazim, and these are my wife and daughters.”

Andreas scrunched his face in confusion. “Prince? But you are too old to be a son of Sultan Bayezid.”

Nazim stifled a laugh. “I am not an Osmanli. But I am a prince. We are all princes.” He glanced at his wife. “Or princesses.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Is not God the Emperor of Heaven?” Andreas nodded. “And are we not all children of God?” Andreas opened his mouth, and then he heard the front door of the home crash in.

* * *

Pietro glared up at Ludovico. “What are we doing here? There’s nothing here.”

“I’m telling you; I saw some people go in here.”

“This is pointless. So what? While we’re here, the Morosini brothers are getting a piece all the best women. What are you doing?”

Ludovico threw aside the largest stretch of cloth on the floor, revealing a door. “Told you there was something here.”

“It’d better be good. I’ve only gotten two women today so far. Do you hear Simone? He’s supposed to be on his thirteenth.”

Ludovico ignored him, throwing open the door and yelling down in his broken Greek. “Come out or burn you! Five…four…three.”

Someone, a man, yelled back in Greek. Pietro didn’t understand, but moments later, one by one, a man, a woman, two girls, and a boy, the last obviously not a member of the family with his much lighter skin and hair, clambered out. The man gestured at Pietro, speaking again. Pietro looked at his friend. “Did you understand that?”

“No.”

“Do you think he’s worth anything?”

“No.”

“Well then.” And his sword swept out from his scabbard.

* * *

Andreas watched as Nazim tried to talk the Venetians. “Take me if you must, but leave my family alone, please.” The Venetians talked for a second, and then the short one rammed his sword blade into Nazim’s belly. His wife shrieked as the soldier pulled out his bloody blade, Nazim’s body flopping to the floor. A moment later the same blade gestured at the woman, a grin creeping across his face.

Andreas had seen it before, on the faces of the men as they piled on top of his mother and sister. “No,” he whispered, clenching his fists and taking a step forward.

“Saint Theodoros!” Two Roman soldiers burst into the room, the two Venetian marines wheeling around. Too late. One Roman skewered the short one with his javelin, hefting the body in the air and slamming the convulsing body onto the ground. The other swung his blade, not a sword but a giant cleaver, ripping the head off the tall Venetian in a single stroke.

“We have to leave, now,” the one with the javelin barked, pulling his weapon out of the corpse. “We need to get to the university, before more come back.”

The wife was on the ground, holding Nazim’s body, rocking it back and forth as she cried. Gently, Andreas put her hand in hers and tugged. “Milady,” he said, speaking as if he was talking a princess, since he was. “We must go.”

She nodded, sniffing. “Yes, we must.” And she reached over and closed her husband’s eyes. Andreas heard her whisper, her last words to Prince Nazim. “Not all of us are children of God.”

* * *

Manuel of Kyzikos glanced down the street, holding his sword blade flat against his chest. There were two men, hauling a young woman down towards the harbor. He recognized the woman, the older sister of his charge Prince Andreas. The one he should have been guarding, if he hadn’t been off-duty at a tavern on the far side of town. They were getting closer. He moved.

His blade flashed out, the Venetian sword moving to parry, but not fast enough. Manuel rammed his weapon into his opponent’s armpit, puncturing his heart. He flicked it out again as the man toppled. The other Venetian had let go of Zoe, slashing with his sword. Manuel parried, his blade singing as it snipped the tip off the man’s nose. The Venetian staggered, long enough for Manuel to gash open his throat.

Zoe was standing, staring at him blankly, a massive bruise the size of a fist on her left cheek below her puffy eyes. “Manuel?” she whispered.

“Yes, milady. It is me.” He extended his left arm towards her. “Will you come with me?” For a moment she glanced at his rough, dark hand, and then she took it.


* * *


Iason stared at his opponent. He blinked, and the kataphraktos thrust his blade. His fifteen year old son Philippos parried, the wooden sword clunking off Iason’s. Thrust, parry, jab, dodge.

Iason heard the horse galloping into the village where a droungos of kataphraktoi had their estates. “Riders of Rhomania! The demon is at the gates!” Both Iason and Philippos froze at the words, Iason’s blood running cold. What?! Timur is dead! Shah Rukh is dead! “The Venetians are attacking Smyrna!”

Iason glanced over at his eikosarchos Matthaios, who immediately began barking orders. “Alexios, get this man a new horse so he can warn the other villagers. Manuel, ring the church bell. I want the men here now.”

Iason turned to Philippos. “Get the horses ready.”

“Iason?” He turned to look at the speaker, his wife Anna. He could see the fear in her eyes, and knew they reflected what was in his own. Their first son, Michael, a short, bookish man ill-suited for the life of a heavy cavalryman, was in Smyrna, a student of astronomy at the university.

“We’ll get him out, I promise.”

“We?”

“Philippos is coming with.”

“What?! Why?”

“The droungos is at two-thirds strength. We need every man we can get.”

“But he’s not a man! He’s still just a boy!”

“He’s close enough. And if we’re to win this, a lot of boys are going to have to learn how to be men before they should have to.” As he finished the sentence, the bell of the village church began to toll.


* * *


Manuel looked over his battle line and shook his head. The ‘army’ defending the University of Smyrna campus, the only part of the town not in Venetian hands, was anything but. Manuel counted four soldiers, all Imperial guardsmen who like him had been off-duty when the attack began. As a result they, like him, were armed only with a sword and no armor, not their full kit of plate armor, mace, and sword.

The remainder were a mix. Alongside blacksmiths with their hammers stood pimps with their clubs. Alongside butchers with their cleavers stood students with their boar spears. Merchants, tanners, beggars, local aristocracy with their retainers, the whole gamut of Smyrna’s people were here, what was left of it.

They had nowhere to run. Venetian cavalry were on the prowl outside the walls, making sure no one could escape. They wanted prisoners for ransoming. And if their captives weren’t worth anything, well the best way to keep the shipyards from being rebuilt was to kill the labor force that could do it.

Manuel sniffed. The stench of sulfur was in the air; the Venetians had started blowing up the navy yards. As he watched the last, desperate hope of Smyrna’s people, he knew that the Venetians had already won. They had already gotten what they came for. The great stores of pitch, hemp, canvas, the slipways for repairing vessels, the stores of powder and shot, all were being destroyed. The Roman fleet would return from the Holy Land, outnumbered almost two to one by the Republic’s armada, and now it would have no supplies, no place to rest and repair.

“Here they come again!” a student yelled, his voice cracking at the last syllable.

“Wait!” Manuel shouted as a few notched their bows. “It’s a flag of truce.” A Venetian galloped forward.

Manuel clambered over the rough barricade compiled of bits of piled-up debris and walked over to the Venetian, his hand on his pommel. “Good day to you, sir,” the horseman said.

“Allow me to disagree.”

The man grimaced. “I suppose I deserve that.” Manuel nodded. “Anyway, I am here to inform you that we are allowing some of your people through our lines.” He gestured at the Venetian ranks, which opened up.

Manuel barely managed to stop himself from bulging his eyes out. Andreas was alive, with two soldiers, a Turkish woman, and two girls. Andreas’ eyes met Manuel, widening for a second, and then transforming into a blank, empty stare.

Manuel looked at the Venetian. “Haven’t you forgotten to kill them first? That does seem to be how you…people make war. Kill everything.”

The man winced. “Not all of us are savages. I, for one, would have liked peace to exist between us. If you had not destroyed our trading quarter at Damietta, it might have been so.”

“If you wanted peace, maybe you should’ve stayed out of our civil war.”

The man sighed. “This is pointless. Anyway, here are your people. Whether or not they live once we take the university, I cannot say. But this is the best I can do.”

Manuel nodded. “So there is some honor in Venice.”

“A little.”

“Well, it’s better than nothing.”

“That is true.” A pause. “You have ten minutes to make peace between you and your God. Then we attack.”

“Ten minutes till you attack. Well then, you have twelve minutes to make peace between you and your God.” The man nodded, turning to leave. “Good day to you, sir,” Manuel said.

* * *

“Andreas!” Andreas turned and looked as he staggered over the barrier guarding the university. A moment later Zoe wrapped her arms around him. “You’re alive.”

He hugged her back. “How did you get away from the Venetians?” he asked as she let go.

“Manuel rescued me.” She gestured at the man.

A moment later he kneeled on one knee before Andreas, bowing his face. “My prince, I am sorry.”

“For what?”

Manuel’s eyes remained fixed on the ground. “I failed in my duty.”

“Look at me.” Manuel did. “You did not. You rescued Zoe. Had you been there when…when…” Tears clouded his eyes, turning Manuel into a blur. “Emperors don’t cry,” Andreas snarled at himself. “Princes don’t either.” He blinked the tears away, clearing his throat and looking straight at Manuel. “Had you been there, one more Roman would be dead, and it still would’ve happened.

“No.” He gestured out at the banners of lions. “They are the ones who should apologize. And they will.”

* * *

Iason stared at the mutilated Venetian corpse, sprawled in the shrubbery to the east of Smyrna, shaded by the pillars of smoke rising from the city. In the sky, more clouds were gathering, shrouding the sun. He glanced at Matthaios as he flicked a piece of Venetian kidney off his blade. “He talked. The bastard talked.”

“So the rumors are true, what those refugees said?” Matthaios asked.

“Every word, and more.”

Matthaios grimaced, spitting. “Tell the men to mount up. We ride.”


* * *

The Venetian horns were sounding. Their ten minutes were up. Manuel glanced behind him. Zoe and Andreas were huddled in the shade of a fountain, with the prince clutching a small knife he had found off the body of a dead butcher. He drew his sword.

The Venetians began marching. Many came in ordered ranks, disciplined, hardy marines. But many more…Manuel sneered. These were no soldiers. Unlike the marines, which marched in unison, chanting calls to Saint Mark and the Virgin Mary, their call was more like the howling of a pack of mangy curs, an incoherent ruckus of hundreds of pirates, the offal of the Mediterranean.

A crossbow bolt snarled past Manuel’s ear. A ragged flight of arrows lashed out from the Roman lines as a dark cloud swept across the face of the sun. Crossbows snapped back, men on both sides going down screaming. Manuel ignored that, staring at the incoming dogs. “I fought in the Emperors’ Battle!” he roared. “Do you think I fear the likes of you?!”

They were close, the howling of the curs intermingling with the roar of the Lion of Saint Mark. Manuel yelled one more, the call of the Romans, hailing back to the day when they had been a broken people in exile, and had still conquered. “Theodoros Megas!” And then there was no more time for ancient calls, for shouts to great heroes or saints in heaven. There was only time for killing.

* * *


Andreas watched, his eyes wide, as Manuel fought. He had seen it before, in sparring matches on the training field. He had even dueled against Manuel a few times. But he had never before seen his personal guard as he had been before, simply a soldier on a battlefield.

He could barely see Manuel’s blade as it slashed at the Venetians, gashing open their wrists as they climbed over the stockade. He did not know how Manuel killed or wounded. A lot. But it was not enough. Everywhere the Romans were giving way, the Venetians cutting down everyone who stood in their path.

One almost completely covered in blood hurled himself at Zoe, waving his sword above his head. Manuel was pulling his blade out of another’s belly. It wouldn’t be soon enough. Zoe hurled a rock, just missing the man’s ear as he flinched. Andreas shoved his knife into his ribs.

The Venetian stopped, his eyes widening as they stared at the small hands holding the blade inside, his mouth frozen in an O. He collapsed.


* * *

Manuel saw the body topple. Andreas took a step back, staring at his bloody, shaking hands. “Andreas?” Zoe said, grabbing his shoulder. He flinched.

“I, I..” he stammered.

Manuel ripped the dagger out of the ribcage. “We need to go now. We’ll have to take our chances with the cavalry outside.”

“We’re dead,” Andreas muttered, still staring at his bloody hands. “We’re all dead.” As he spoke, the wind began to pick up, blowing from the west, from the sea.

“Archangel Saint Michael, defend us in battle!” Manuel whirled towards the bellow. Over two hundred kataphraktoi were spilling over the barricade, these ones armored in lamellar and swinging maces. The Venetians immediately began staggering back.

The armored soldiers plowed through the Venetian ranks in front of them, blood and limbs flying. “To the ships!” some of the students started yelling. “To the ships!” Everywhere now the Venetians were flying backward, stunned by the sudden arrival of Roman reinforcements. The regrouped Smyrnans poured after them. “To the ships!”

“Wait here,” Manuel ordered Andreas and Zoe, and then started running after the Smyrnans, who had been joined by the kataphraktoi. “Pull back!” he yelled. “Pull back!” He climbed over the barricade. Nobody was listening.

He grabbed an eikosarchos. “You have to pull them back. If the Venetians regroup they’ll run us over.” The man opened his mouth, but it was too late. The whoops of joy had turned into shrieks of terror, as the foe swept up from the harbor, rounding the corner. Only it was not the Venetians; it was hell itself, a roaring curtain of fire, leaping from building to building.

The city was in flames, the blaze pushed on by the new sea breeze. The fire from the shipyards had obviously spread, a force more terrible than Venetian or Roman combined. Manuel grabbed a groaning body, hauling the man to his feet and back up the street. Inside the university people were screaming for water, even as the wind died.

Manuel dropped the man against the embankment, only now getting a look at him. It was the Venetian who had let Andreas through the line. He groaned, looking at Manuel. “You said twelve minutes. That was more like sixteen.”

The Roman laughed, hauling him to his feet. “So I’m late. Your sword please.”

The man nodded, handing Manuel the blade. “I am your prisoner, sir. Now, should we do something about that?” The nearby houses were beginning to smolder. Manuel opened his mouth, just as a drop of water hit his nose. And with a great burst of thunder, the heavens opened and it began to rain.

Smyrna, April 11:

Manuel coughed as the smell of smoking flesh and wood invaded his nostrils. The rain had come, the night had past, and they had lived. The Venetians had gone during the storm, leaving what was left of Smyrna’s people in the remains of their ruined city.

But not all of them had managed to flee. Over fifteen hundred had been captured, most in the victorious charge before the onslaught of hell. Now they were being paraded through the streets of the university campus, the one part of Smyrna still standing relatively undamaged.

While there was jeering, there was no one throwing things. They were too busy. Women stood on the sidelines, wrapping blankets around their waists, stabbing with their fingers. Every man with a female finger pointed at him was pulled out of line by the guards. If the woman nodded her head yes, the Venetian was gutted on the spot. To Manuel, it looked like about one-fourth were being chosen.

He glanced down at his charge. Andreas’ crop of short brown hair stuck out above a body now dressed more like royalty, taken from a part of the Imperial palace that had survived looting and fire just a few hours earlier. Now he was clothed in the finest purple Roman silk, but despite the fact that the robe was bunched up on his shoulders and flopping over his black leather belt, the hem was still brushing the dark gray paving stones. Andreas’ hazel eyes were darting back and forth, sweeping over the column of Venetians, a slight frown on his lips as he scratched his chin.

Manuel took his eyes away for a second, only to hear the hiss of a snake. Andreas’ bony arm was stretched out. “Him,” he snarled. The burly, hairy Venetian with a bald spot struggled for a moment as the butcher grabbed his arm. An university student pointed a barbed boar spear at his eye; the Venetian stilled. The butcher dragged him forward so that he was standing before Andreas. “Kneel,” Andreas ordered.

The man’s eyes were too busy widening for his legs to obey. Andreas’ eyes flicked over to Manuel. He took one step forward and swung. The man’s shriek almost overshadowed the crunch of bone as his right knee shattered under Manuel’s mace. He collapsed. Manuel glanced down and then up at Andreas. The prince’s face was completely blank, staring impassively down at the Venetian. His eyes were cold, empty, dead. “Relax, it’s your turn now,” Andreas said.

The quivering man was silent. Andreas shrugged and looked over at another guardsman. “Sword.” The man pulled it out of his scabbard in one slick movement, reversed the blade, and placed the shiny steel pommel in Andreas’ small fist. Wrapping both hands around it, the boy hefted the sword, his eyes boring into Manuel.

Manuel grabbed the Venetian’s black hair, hauling him upwards. Andreas swung. For all the fury he put into the blow, he possessed only the strength of a ten year old boy. Instead of smoothly decapitating his target, the sword ripped out a fleshy chunk of the man’s neck, the edge of the bone peeking out, a speck of white in a tide of blood. More blood had sprayed out from the wound, splattering Andreas’ purple robe as well as his face. He blinked a couple of times to flick away the drops from his eyes, but otherwise his face was blank.

He swung again, jamming the sword in the bone, cracking but not breaking the man’s neck. He was still conscious, his mouth frozen in an O, his face in a hideous grimace of pain. Andreas wrenched the sword out; his face still blank. He swung one more time, and with a great crack the man’s neck shattered, the body collapsing on the ground as Manuel held the severed head. At a nod from Andreas, he dropped it with a thump. Ignoring the drying blood spots on his robes, the prince’s dead eyes were again sweeping the column. “They’re not all guilty, your highness,” Manuel said.

The boy shrugged. “Kill them anyway. God will know his own.”

* * *

The Roman siege lines, Jerusalem, April 13, 1455:

Theodoros, Emperor of the Romans, sighed, flicking a hyperpyron across the table. It banged against an empty silver pitcher. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Squish. He wiped the bits of smashed fly off the golden coin. Clunk. “Where’s the serving boy? I’m thirsty.”

Alexios Palaiologos looked up from his book. “Do you want me to fetch him, your majesty?”

“No.” Squoosh. Theodoros wiped off the antennae splattered across his portrait on the money. “Worst place to put a holy city, ever,” he muttered.

He picked up an ink quill, scratching at a piece of paper. Scrit, scrit, scrit. Alexios looked up. “Your majesty, may I ask what you’re doing?”

“Figuring out exactly how much Janbulat owes me for all this. War is like trade. You each try to swindle each other, and whoever wins then makes the other reimburse them for their trouble with interest. Now let’s see, carry the four…” Scrit, scrit. “Aha. Wait a minute; that isn’t right.” He glared at the number. “Oh, that’s what’s wrong. I just included the ‘this place sucks’ rate. I forget the ‘fuck you’ interest rate.” Scrit, scrit. “Much better.”

Alexios looked at the figure. “That’s…umm…huge.”

“Yes, it is. And I’m actually leaving out the…” Theodoros turned his head toward the tent entrance. “WHERE’S MY DAMN DRINK?!...” He turned back. “…rate.”

The serving boy hobbled into the tent, two goblets clattering on the tray held by his shaking hand. Sweat was pouring down his forehead as Theodoros swiped one cup. “About time,” he muttered, bringing it to his mouth.

The smell wafted its way into his nose. He sniffed; something about it was off, bitter. He set it down, looking at Alexios. “Don’t drink it; it’s poisoned.”

The boy’s eyes widened, Theodoros wondering if they’d pop out of his head. Then the boy winced as Alexios’ hand crushed his bicep. The Emperor was surprised at the strength in those wrinkled, seventy five year old hands, hands that had fought at Manzikert, at Caesarea. The last of his father’s generation looked at Theodoros. “Find out what he knows,” Theodoros snarled. A moment later the strategos hauled the boy out.

Theodoros stared at the table. Flick. Clunk. Squish. He stared at the fly’s eye splattered in the middle of his portrait’s forehead. “And I still don’t have a damn drink.” Scrit, scrit, scrit.

* * *

1455: Smyrna is in ruins, over four-fifths of it a burned out husk, with half of its people dead. In Constantinople there is confusion and panic as rumors swell the Serbian army to a ludicrous 120,000, while a more credible tale roams the streets saying that the Emperor is also dead. When Prince Andreas and Princess Zoe meet Alexeia in Nicaea, the City is in the midsts of a power struggle between Anastasia Komnena Palaiologa, eldest legitimate daughter of Theodoros, and old Patriarch Adem.

Anastasia, who was slated to become Empress with her husband Petros Palaiologos (son of the strategos Alexios) as consort in a manner similar to Empress Anna I, has never forgiven her younger brother for existing. When Andreas actually arrives at the city, she tries to use her retainers to physically bar the Prince from entering. It succeeds, up until the moment Manuel cuts off the head of the chief retainer on Andreas’ order. They stand down. Once inside, with the support of the Patriarch, Anastasia is expelled from the City, although not before the contents of the armory and kitchens she owned for the support of her retainers is confiscated for the defense of Constantinople.

They need it. In Thrace the Bulgarians face virtually no opposition, sweeping across the countryside, burning and pillaging. Only the fortified towns provide protection against the raids, as the Constantinople archontate remains stationed at the Theodosian Walls. To the west is the greater threat as the Serbs, led by their King Stephan VI, march down the Vardar river valley, a real army with a small gunpowder artillery train and their elite corps of knights, still commanded by Durad Brankovic, younger brother of the king.

The Macedonian tagma commanded by David Plethon, reinforced by the frontier banda with their turkopouloi and mounted akrites, fights a holding action, trying to gain time for the armor-making and gun-casting shops to either move their equipment into Thessalonika or destroy it so that it cannot be used by the Serbs. Meanwhile the kataphraktoi, concentrated in the districts surrounding Thessalonika, form up at the city itself, for news has arrived of the Black Day (via a mandator-Imperial mounted courier-from Smyrna to Abydos, then a monore-fast, light Roman galley-to Thessalonika).

On April 19, the Venetian armada appears off the third city of the Empire, expecting another quick, easy victory, for the city is only guarded by four guns compared to the Venetians’ four hundred and ninety eight. But unlike Smyrna, one of the defending guns does not explode, and this time the garrison has enough warning to heat the ovens. The hot iron shot breaks the back of five of the Venetian galleys before they can close.

The Venetians storm the harbor, boatloads of marines pouring onto the beach. Trumpets sound in the city, a silver tide of kataphraktoi sweeping out. Gone are their usual calls, to saints and angels. This time there is only one word, over and over, roaring above the din of heavy horses at the gallop. “Smyrna!” The Venetians are thrown into the sea.

The harbor runs red with the blood of three hundred Venetian corpses, joined by eighteen Romans. Two more Venetian ships go up in flames before the armada can withdraw to lick its wounds, disappearing to begin systematically sacking the Aegean islands while the Macedonians turn around to confront the Serbians. It is the hope of the Venetians that while the Romans confront their allies, they will gain another opportunity to attack.

For three weeks David sits at Thessalonika, harrying the Serbian scouts and snipping at their supply lines. Overall the attacks are a nuisance at best, but they perform their task of stalling the attack long enough for the tagma to concentrate its full strength on the lower Vardar, covering the withdrawal of the workshops.

Finally Stefan decides he has had enough and takes off for Constantinople, maneuvering to place himself between the city and the Macedonians. After a long tiring march he arrives at Gevgeli (OTL Gevgelija) on May 1 where he is challenged by David, despite the fact that the Romans are extremely outnumbered (10,000 versus 18,000). The strategos however is not willing to let the Serbs get any closer to the capitol without a serious fight, and he also very nervous about leaving Thessalonika exposed.

He is also hopeful that the Serbs’ fatigue, plus the fact that half of the enemy army are levies, albeit good ones, will even the odds. The other half however, composed of Durad’s corps and the military colonists from Bosnia organized in a Serbian version of the tagma-theme system, is of very high quality.

David attacks early in the morning, the turkopouloi and skythikoi sweeping on ahead and lashing the Serbian ranks with arrows. The Serb light cavalry sallies, the Roman horse wheeling back to reveal the akrites, who savage the heads of the columns, throwing them back in disarray. As the cavalry fall back, disrupting the Serbian lines, David throws in his infantry.

The Serbian infantry cracks under the impact, but it does not break. As Stefan commits his reserves, they begin to curl around the Roman flank. Then Durad strikes, his knights shattering the strained left wing of the tagma. As the skutatoi fly back in rout, the Hammer of Serbia wheels around to roll up the rest of the Macedonians who begin to retreat, only to be met head-on by the kataphraktoi.

The Roman heavy cavalry are outnumbered almost four to one, but before they are cut down they stall Durad long enough for David to extricate his center and right wing, although the former is very badly chewed up when Stefan throws in his household troops. As a result, the Battle of Gevgeli is only a Roman debacle, not a disaster. Macedonian losses number twenty six hundred (half of those are captured), including over sixty percent of the kataphraktoi, while the Serbs lose fourteen hundred, but keep the field, and more importantly a clear road to Constantinople.

The last is actually gained after the battle, when David’s attempt to withdraw towards the City is blocked by Serbian cavalry. Too battered to risk another battle, he retreats to Thessalonika, where he is penned up by fresh troops from Serbia and allied reinforcements from the Bulgarians. His presense though deters the returning Venetian armada, fresh from overrunning Euboea, which moves on toward the Hellespont.

In Epirus, the war goes less smoothly for the allies. One of the first things Serbian irregulars did after crossing the border was to ransack some of the local flocks. Immediately the Albanians dwelling in the region turn out in force, bands of their fierce light cavalry, known as stradioti, sweeping out from their hillside dwellings and pastures, skewering every Serbian raider they find. Their attacks move past the border, where the Albanians pillage the Serbian livestock.


stradioti.jpg

An Albanian stradiot.

As a result of these attacks, the Serbian advance is ground to a halt before it can even start, despite the lack of regular Roman troops. However the Albanians concentrate their efforts in Epirus and southern Serbia, allowing more raiders to sweep south across Hellas, unchallenged by the Macedonians pinned in Thessalonika. Lightly armed, they are unable to take any fortified towns and are brought up short by the citadel at Corinth, but the countryside is thoroughly ravaged.

To the east, Stefan marches, seizing Adrianople on June 17 and Gallipoli on June 29 with Venetian support. The next day Venetian marines and Serbian soldiers take the fort covering the Asian side, detonating its powder magazine after seizing its guns, shot, and the remainder of the powder. With its fall, the Hellespont is now clear and the Venetian armada, now one hundred seventy four vessels strong, enters the Marmara.

By that time, the main Serbian body, swelled by troops from Bulgaria, have seized Rumeli Hisari, including its giant bombards which they turn on the Roman transports attempting to bring Anatolian reinforcements for the City. When the Venetians arrive, Anadolu Hisari is taken as well, its guns, powder, and shot seized before it is destroyed. On July 6, they anchor just outside cannon range from what used to be Constantinople’s Harbor of Theodosius.

Constantinople’s garrison, including the Constantinople archontate, the Athanatoi attached to Andreas and Zoe, and the troops from Anatolia, number seven thousand. The combined forces number forty thousand Venetians, twenty thousand Serbs, and twenty thousand Bulgarians, a total of eighty thousand. On July 7 the siege begins.



Roman Siege Lines at Jerusalem, May 9, 1455:

Alexandros looked at the battered ramparts of the Holy City, the tattered Mameluke banners still fluttering from the towers. He sniffed, inhaling the smell of dust and sweat, but not powder. Due to the difficulty of supplying the army this far inland, keeping the artillery armed with powder and shot had been a major problem during the whole campaign. Food was more important. That was how Damascus had held out for six months, whilst Jerusalem was nearing its seventh, when Tyre on the coast had lasted for only two weeks.

Emperor Theodoros strolled out of his tent, humming a ditty while his hand fiddled with his sword pommel. He pointed the messenger that followed him towards the nearest kitchen tent, from where the smell of thin vegetable soup, today with a little chicken, was coming.

Alexandros glanced at Petros, a fellow skutatos. “Do you know what the courier’s message was?”

Petros shook his head. “No, but the Emperor’s smiling. That’s a bad sign.”

Theodoros stopped. “You and you.” He jabbed his finger at Alexandros and Petros. “Come with me.”

He marched off, the two men running to catch up. For a few minutes they walked in silence, serenaded only by the sound of the grunting, sweaty men hauling out buckets of dirt from the sapping tunnels. A tired stick of a boy looked up from his load at Alexandros.

Finally they stopped. Their seven Venetian prisoners, engineers working for the Mamelukes that were captured three weeks earlier, had just finished their combined lunch of three pieces of bread. Two guards stood off to the side. Theodoros pointed at one. “Giovanni, come here.”

The Venetian got to his feet, the Emperor gesturing for him to come closer. The prisoners’ guards, Alexandros, and Petros all took a step closer, hands on their swords. Theodoros held up his left hand. They stopped.

A second later the Emperor gripped the Venetian’s left shoulder. “Giovanni, I’ve decided to let you go…”

“Why, thank you, your m-hurk-” The man stared down at the blade buried to the hilt in his belly. Theodoros twisted.

“…to hell, cur.” The Emperor stepped back, pulling his bloody blade out. Giovanni collapsed, the other Venetians gaping in horror. Theodoros turned around, Alexandros taking a step back from the look in the Emperor’s eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Kill the rest.”

As the guards stepped forward, unfurling their blades, a horseman rode up. Theodoros looked. “Strategos Palaiologos,” he said smoothly as a Venetian screamed. “Wake the guns.”

* * *

In Italy, the combined Papal-Neapolitan army sweeps across the border, thirty one thousand strong. Although half is a mixture of civic militias and feudal levies, universally of poor quality, the other half is composed of experienced condottieri, paid with papal and Venetian coin, all well disciplined and equipped.

The allied army is immediately engaged by the frontier banda, but the Italian tagma is in far more serious trouble. In order to concentrate their forces, the Roman soldiers have to fight their way through a hostile countryside, as except for the regions around Bari and Taras (Taranto), all of Roman Italy is in revolt. The peasantry themselves cannot stand in the way of the Roman troops without the help of regulars, but they try. Two weeks after the Black Day, the Italian tagma under its commander Nikolaios Laskaris is concentrated at Bari. It has already suffered almost seven hundred casualties without fighting a single battle larger than a skirmish, but the number of slain peasantry is at least four thousand.

Nikolaios does not even bother attempting to control the countryside, instead evacuating as many loyalists as possible to Bari and Taras. Since most of the Orthodox (and thereby loyal) population is settled in those two cities, it is a relatively easy task. But even with just defending two sites, the Italian tagma is stretched too thin. Taras, the smaller and less fortified, is taken and sacked after a three week siege.

Thus in less than two months, all of Roman Italy, the whirlwind conquests of Demetrios Megas, have been undone. Only Bari remains, defended by six thousand tagma troops, bolstered by a trained militia of four hundred men, twenty five hundred fresh recruits from the thirty two thousand inhabitants of the Orthodox city, and two hundred mauroi.

The siege here is far more difficult for the Italians. Not only are Bari’s fortifications more elaborate, they are designed for and are equipped with heavy bombards, including some great guns whose shot weighs over three hundred pounds. And there are eight galleys of the Imperial fleet in harbor, which under the cover of night repeatedly land raiding parties between the siege lines.

Still after a month, there are two breaches in the wall. On July 1, a mass assault is hurled at the fortifications. At the first breach it is met with a curtain of fire as the mauroi slam into them, throwing the Italians back in disarray before their attack can really get started. But in the second breach, guarded mainly by militia troops (since the breach was considered less vulnerable), the attack succeeds, the troops spilling out into the streets of Bari.

The breakthrough is led by three hundred Italian condotierri. They are challenged by one skutatoi braxos of the Italian tagma, twenty one men, led by their eikosarchos Takat, a giant of a Turk. As the Italians charge Takat yells out ‘Let them come! There is one Roman in Italy who still draws breath!’. Then he throws his lance as if it were a javelin, smashing in the face of the condottieri captain. The rest turn and flee.

With the resulting confusion, the attack is quickly thrown out of the city. Both sides are exhausted, settling down for a long and protracted engagement. The Roman galleys lessen their raids, instead maintaining a steady line of communications and supplies with Dyrrachium. Many an Albanian makes a great deal of money selling captured Serbian livestock as provisions for Bari. A few of the stradioti are even hired as mercenaries to help enlarge the garrison.

Due to the Venetian armada being posted either to the Sea of Marmara or to the southeast Mediterranean to keep the Roman fleet divided, only the papacy can stop the Roman Adriatic squadron. That is because the Venetian warships that are in the area are ordered to guard the supply convoys headed to Constantinople, and they refuse to be distracted, especially as the heavily outnumbered Imperial galleys make sure to stay out of the way.

A papal squadron of sixteen galleys is dispatched, but is barred from passing through the Straits of Messina by Sicilian warships. King Ferdinand of Aragon, son of Jaime V and nephew of Maria of Barcelona, is not amused by what he has heard of the Black Day. The squadron is forced to go the long way around Sicily and is scattered in a storm off Trapani.

Ferdinand is far from the only one disturbed by the Black Day. Even the Holy Roman Emperor cannot stand the thought of royalty, even schismatic royalty who he hates, being treated in such a manner. Pope Julius, gritting his teeth and muttering all the way, formally condemns the rapes and murder committed against the Komnenoi, but says absolutely nothing on the treatment of the Smyrnan populace. As penance, he levies a massive fine on the Republic of Venice, but then secretly takes the funds given to the See of Saint Peter and pays the condotierri with them.

Overall, the nations following the See of Rome, unaware of the subterfuge, are content, especially after Julius announces that any further improprieties regarding treatment of royals will result in the automatic excommunication of the offender. Doge Andrea Alessi receives the news whilst on his deathbed. He responds with laughter. When asked why, he says “I am looking forward to seeing my old friend Demetrios Komnenos. And I just realized that where we shall meet, there will be no Venetians.” And with those words, he passes.

His successor is his son Alessandro Alessi. The dynastic nature of the transfer of leadership is in large part due to Andrea’s friendship with Demetrios. In his possession are the five certifications that allow five non-Romans to export mastic from the Empire, a very lucrative trade. He was originally sold them by Demetrios, but later reached an agreement with Theodoros, that in exchange for an increase of the renewal fee, Constantinople would refuse anyone other than a member of the Alessi family to buy out a certificate. With the papers in his family’s hands, Andrea in the course of his long life has used them to secure his family’s hold over political power in Genoa.

Pope Gregory XII in Avignon is also old, but he refuses to pass up this opportunity to show up Rome. In a papal bull proclaimed on August 4, he condemns the wanton rape and slaughter of a Christian city that had been given no chance to surrender.

At the end he issues an invitation to all the lords of Christendom, whether they follow Avignon, Rome, or Constantinople (he even requests that the Romans forward the request to the Ethiopians) to come to a great council at Avignon. Its purpose is so that ‘we lords of Christendom, servants of Christ the Just and Merciful, may be better able to understand and fulfill our duties toward the weak and helpless’. While Gregory wants the council to happen as quickly as possible, the war makes it impossible for the Romans to attend. Thus it is scheduled instead for the year 1460, in five years’ time. In the meantime, as a gesture of goodwill and a way to embarrass Julius, Gregory institutes a charity drive for ‘the good Christian people of Smyrna who have recently suffered such terrible and unjust calamities’.

Julius does not remain silent in all this. On September 25, he issues a bull of his own. It is the culmination of the ‘Christendom besieged’ ideology that has been growing in clerical circles for over a century. In it he recounts the reverses Catholicism has suffered since the glory days of the early 1200s (in which the Fourth and Albigensian Crusades figure prominently), of how since then on every front it has been engaged, it has been pushed back.

The crux of his argument is a comparison of the present-day Catholic church to the Old Testament Israelites. ‘We stand in the Promised Land granted to us by God, a land flowing with milk and honey, but also filled with peoples steeped in heresy and evil. Like the children of Israel, we must be strong and root them out with fire and sword. If we do not, as the children of Israel ultimately failed to do, then like them we shall be destroyed and supplanted by others better able and willing to carry out the task of God on earth.’

But for all the philosophical speculation and eloquent arguments, the duel between popes does nothing to affect the military balance in Italy. Here it is clear that the legacy of Demetrios has failed. If Roman Italy is to survive, it must be due to another sovereign. But here the hand of Thomas, last of the Laskarid Emperors, reaches out from beyond the grave, for his line and legacy still live on in these lands.



300pxironcrown.jpg

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, currently in the keeping of the Duke of Milan, Matteo III Laskaris Visconti​


Meanwhile in Constantinople

Outer Theodosian Wall, August 19:

Manuel looked at the Serbian camp, the wide array of tents and campfires, surrounded by earthen platforms from which boomed their artillery. In front the siege trenches steadily crept forward, laborers throwing up piles of dirt as Roman cannonballs screamed down on them.

His gaze shifted north, where the calm Golden Horn shimmered in the light of the sun. For now the small raider ships were docked, but come night they would once more be on the hunt. Beyond lay Galata, surrounded by a squat, ramshackle wall hastily erected just before the Serb-Bulgarian-Venetian host had arrived. He could not see it, but he knew the Cross of Saint George, the banner of Genoa, hung from the crude battlements. Genoa was neutral in this conflict.

During the day. At night companies of volunteers crept across the Horn, numbering only a few hundred at best, but helpful all the same with their high-quality crossbows. More useful though were the shipments of Russian grain, sent to Constantinople through the Genoese intermediaries.

The allies knew this, but stayed their hand. Neither Genoa nor Rhomania could match the armada sprawled across the Marmara, but against both in full strength the armada would be hard pressed. And Venice dared not disturb the Russian bear, not while the giant grain transports were docked just across the Bosporus from the campfires of twenty thousand Roman soldiers killing any Venetian stupid enough to set foot in Asia. And not while King Istvan of Hungary was the new brother-in-law of Megas Rigas Alexei.

Towards the city he could hear the sound of the patriarchal procession, weaving its way around the city, stopping for special prayers at the most hotly-contested sections of the wall, particularly in Blachernae district. Patriarch Adem had refused to leave, even while there was still time despite his age of seventy one. Besides leading processes, he had also helped organize the rationing scheme, threatening immediate excommunication of grain hoarders and rabble rousers, and also providing free of charge, church bells to be melted down into cannonballs.

Despite the fact that it still housed a quarter of a million people, the city seemed empty. One hundred thousand of her children had gone to Anatolia before the Venetians had blocked the straits, and the remainder, all organized into labor battalions, had little time for celebration or merriment. Gone were the bells for weddings, the sounds of bustling marketplaces, the crying of newborn babes. Now there was only the sound of shovel, sword, and cannon.

Manuel looked up at the sun and then at the gunmaster as the bells began to toll for None. “Should be just about time.”

The man chewed on his mustache hairs. “Yup,” he nodded, and then turned and bellowed. “Fire!” Four culverins roared, throwing up fountains of dirt around one of the Serbian timber-enforced embankments, trying to kill the gun crews.

“Do you think it worked this time?” Manuel asked.

The great bombard Giorgios, commissioned by Thomas Laskaris, boomed, a cloud of powder smoke rising from the Serbian lines as it belched its five-hundred pound cannonball. It sailed over the Theodosian Walls, crashing down into the street, skipping down the road, the ball of a giant. “Does that answer your question?”

“They missed,” one of the attendants, a young cadet from the School of Artillery, whispered. “They missed the entire city wall! Those stupid Serbs can’t even hit this wall!” The man jumped onto the battlements, turning around and dropping his pants.

“If you’re not careful, Ioannes, somebody is going to put a crossbow bolt in your white ass.”

“Eh,” the gunmaster said. “It’s a fat ass; he’d be fine.”

Manuel laughed, turning around to look at the one who had made the first comment, the ‘Lady’ Alexeia. She was in leather lamellar, the light breeze gusting her long blond hair back, her left hand cupping a helmet while her right rested on the pommel of her sword. “Manuel, I see you have things well in hand.” Her eyes twinkled.

Hanging back behind her were the Princesses Irene and Zoe, who stood in the shadow of a tower. A cannon boomed three hundred meters down the line. Irene ducked behind a stone. Zoe stared out at the camp, blinking slowly.

“Yes, milady. We’re preparing a sally from the Kerkoporta.”

“Is that the one you left unlocked?”

“That’s the one. The Serbs took the bait; almost a hundred were caught. Idiots, who leaves a sally port unlocked? Anyway we’re hoping to finally knock out Antigonus.” Alexeia grimaced at the name of Thomas Laskaris’ favorite bombard, named after the City-Sacker, firing a ball weighing seven hundred pounds. Most of the Serb and Venetian pieces were light weapons, having little impact on the stout Theodosian Walls, especially after the peribolos between the inner and outer walls had been filled in with earth by the local populace, save for a few paths to allow sallies. It was the captured Roman cannons, the great guns retired to coastal defense, that gave the allied cannonade its teeth.

Her eyes darted to the right, a hiss coming from her lips. “I don’t care if you have to tie him up and sit on him, but keep him out of the fighting, for God’s sake.”

Manuel turned and saw Andreas, clad in a specially made suit of plate armor, gloves tucked into his belt along with a short sword and mace, heading down the steps to join the men gathered for their sally. Most were members of the new urban militia, butchers and tanners used to bloodshed or blacksmiths with their strong arms, but they were corseted by some members of the archontate and cadets from the School of War. Manuel ran after him, grabbing his shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The Prince turned around, staring at Manuel. “Helping.”

“If you get killed, it’d be a disaster.”

“You need every sword you can get.”

“Dammit, Andreas, you-”

“I can’t just stand by and do nothing!” Andreas clenched his fists. “I didn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything. Not again, do you hear? Not again.”

Manuel gently gripped the prince’s shoulder. “Andreas, your people need you. They need you alive.” He gestured out at the camp. “Who created this host, who gave it form?”

“The Venetians.”

“And who do they fear the most?”

“My father.”

“No. They fear you. They…” Maybe I shouldn’t continue this thought.

Andreas continued it. “They poisoned my mother.” His fists were shaking, clenched, his fingernails biting into his palms. Two drops of blood splattered the gray stone.

“To prevent you from being born. Andreas, the Venetians fear you. And that fear is our people’s hope. We need that hope.” Three Serbian cannons boomed. “We need you to stay alive. The Empire needs you to stay alive.”

Andreas sighed, opening and staring at his wounded palms. He tightened them again. “It’s just, it’s just…” His voice trailed off.

Manuel squeezed his shoulder, opening his mouth just as the woman shrieked. He did not know why. Perhaps she had found the crushed body of someone she loved. It did not matter; it was too late. Andreas’ eyes stared out, through Manuel. His eyes, his mind, were no longer in Constantinople. They were in Smyrna, the Black Day.

Manuel grabbed his shoulders. “Andreas, snap out of it! Andreas!” Andreas’ eyes locked on Manuel, but they did not see him. They were still in Smyrna. The prince’s blade flashed out, driving for Manuel’s stomach. He jumped back, the sword skittering off his plate cuirass. Andreas dropped the weapon, it clattering on the stone.

“Manuel?” Andreas started at the sword, and then up at his guard. “Manuel, I, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“I’m fine, Andreas.” Manuel picked up the sword and handed it to Andreas. “It’s over.”

“No, it’s not. It’s never over.” His head snapped to his left. “Zoe!” He started running.

The Princess was frozen as well, her eyes staring out beyond the sky. Irene touched her. Zoe whirled around, slamming her twin to the ground. She was still in Smyrna.

“Zoe?” It was Andreas.

Zoe, standing over the cringing Irene, turned and looked at him. “Andreas?”

“I’m here. I’m here.” He wrapped his hand around hers. “They’re gone.”

Zoe’s eyes were in Constantinople now. “They’ll be back.” Andreas nodded, still holding her hand, a prince and princess, brother and sister, together, with their demons.

* * *

Jerusalem, the Holy City, falls to a mass assault on May 9. The first six tourmai to enter the walls, holding off a mass counterattack long enough for the remainder of the army to join them, unofficially becomes known as the Army of Jerusalem. After the fall, Theodoros dispatches peace emissaries to Janbulat, but they are immediately turned away without gaining an audience. The Emperor realizes that if Janbulat is to come to terms, he will need to be forced, and the only way to do that is to destroy the main Mameluke army.

After establishing a garrison, the Roman army sweeps across the countryside, destroying every settlement in its path. Dark plumes of smoke stretch across the horizons, the remnants of villages and villagers. However the Romans do not kill everyone unfortunate enough to be in their path. Only every male between the ages of ten and sixty five are murdered.

The remainder are not left alive out of compassion. With their homes, fields, food stores, and menfolk gone, the survivors’ only hope is the Mameluke army. Janbulat could stop and help them, expending supplies and time, making it easier for Theodoros and Alexios to force a battle. Or he could leave them to die, which would demoralize his troops and embitter them against him, particularly the large contingents of now veteran Egyptian levies.

The Sultan decides to aid the survivors with provisions, while still trying to avoid a battle whilst remaining in the field. Unlike before, Alexios is able to force an engagement at Jericho which chews up one of Janbulat’s sections and leaves three thousand Mameluke casualties. Overall though the Sultan is barely able to keep the bulk of his army out of reach of Alexios’ smaller but heavier battle line, but the strain on supplies and the endurance of men is growing intolerable. Then in early September news reaches both armies that brings both of them to a halt. Cairo is under siege.

A month earlier Vlad Dracula had moved. Coming out of Alexandria with twenty one thousand men, he had allowed himself to be surrounded by Mameluke forces at Wadi El Natrun, who nevertheless refrained from assaulting his well fortified camp. On the night of August 9, a mass charge falls on one of the Mameluke camps surrounding Vlad’s position, which is brought up short by the earthern embankment. As the Mameluke soldiers stagger out of their tents to fight back, they realize something is different. Since when do cavalrymen ride donkeys? Realizing that it’s just a herd of animals, they start filing out of camp to round them up.

Then Vlad attacks, shredding the out-of-position soldiers. The earlier charge had been a deliberate stampede of his baggage train animals. The battle is a complete success, similar in decisiveness and deadliness to the victory won by his father over a papal army at Ameglia. Two weeks later he places Cairo under siege.

Janbulat knows his capital is strong, well fortified, garrisoned, and supplied, but it will eventually fall. He cannot relieve it, not with Alexios hanging on his flank. When new peace envoys arrive, he is willing to listen. Theodoros is also willing to be generous. While here in the Holy Land he holds the whip hand, the news from Constantinople, conveyed out by small raider ships from the Golden Horn, is ominous. The Imperial family has abandoned its residence in the Blachernae, relocating to the run-down, not-used-in-centuries Bucoleon. He cannot afford to be delayed in negotiations.

In exchange for peace, Theodoros returns all Mameluke territories taken in this war, as well as much of interior Syria. The new border remains at the Lipari River, curving just west of Baalbek which is Mameluke once again and heading north to Krak and then on towards Aleppo. Here, as the frontier snakes on towards the Euphrates and beyond to Edessa, it is the frontier as Anna I knew it. But from the Roman point of view, the coastal towns and forests, the most valuable parts, remain in their hands.


levantafter1455war.jpg

Red represents the post-war border, while green is the pre-war frontier. The blue shows the territory seized during the course of the conflict.​


And even with the cessations of over a quarter of pre-war Syria, one jewel, the greatest of them all, remains in the hands of the Romans, Alexandria herself. It is a jewel Theodoros absolutely refuses to destroy. A great port, its mighty lighthouse still lighting the Nile Delta (repaired by the Mamelukes with funds from Roman merchants interested in keeping it intact), it is also the seat of a patriarchate, and home to a great number of Coptic Christians. To destroy it would complete demolish the Imperial title of ‘Defender of the Coptic Christians’. Janbulat is reluctant to part with it, but the strain of the war, coupled with the lure of receiving back Jerusalem and Damascus, is too much to resist.


* * *

Roman Imperial Camp, the Holy Land, September 3, 1455:

“Your master wants what?” Theodoros asked, frowning.

The nose of the Milanese envoy twitched. “The Duke of Milan desires not just monetary compensation for his expectation, but also your Imperial majesty’s recognition of his claims.”

“And why would we do that?”

The man smiled with his lips. His eyes were blank. “My master has maintained that he has a distant claim on the Roman throne due to his descent through his grandfather Emperor Thomas I Laskaris. Your father denied any such existence. He merely asks that you acknowledge the existence of this claim. He does not expect you to stand down; he knows the Roman people would not accept a Catholic. He merely asks for your acknowledgement of his descent from the Laskarid royal line.”

I am sure that is all he wants, for now, Theodoros thought. But what about later? What about my grandchildren’s time, when the Milanese decide to press their claim, to further widen the door I let open? He sighed.

“So, what say you, your majesty?”

At least this way I will have grandchildren. May they forgive me.

“Tell your master we accept.”

The man smiled and bowed, Theodoros waving him out. A moment he gestured at the Grandmaster of the Hospitaler Order, Juan de Toledo, to come forward. “We march now for home and battle with Venetians. We know that in your agreement you are only required to commit soldiers against Muslims. But I must ask, will your knights march with us?”

Juan opened his mouth. “Your majesty, we soldiers of the cross do not consider it appropriate, due to the nature of our oaths, to draw swords against Christians…” Theodoros pulled out a bag from behind his throne, three times the size of his fist, and plunked it down. Hyperpyra gleamed at the grandmaster. “But they have, by their actions, shown themselves not to be true Christians, and thus that stricture no longer applies.”

“I thought so. How many men can you bring?” Theodoros drew out a sapphire the size of his nose, examining it.

“Twenty five hundred men. Three hundred of them of them knights.”

The Emperor continued to stare into the jewel, a smile creeping onto his lips, a cold smile, the smile of a predator readying its teeth. “Good.”


* * *


On land, the guns have fallen silent, but in the waters of the southeast Mediterranean the fight rages on. Squadrons of Roman and Venetian warships smash at each other as the Romans attempt to concentrate and the Venetians try to stop them. Overall the Lion of Saint Mark has the better of the fight due to superior numbers and the advantage of interior lines, even managing to take down five purxiphoi.

But the constant fighting is a severe strain on the ships and men, which is exacerbated by the distance of their bases in northern Crete. To alleviate the latter issue, twenty ships descend on the hitherto untouched island of Cyprus, anticipating the resistance of only a few hundred militia at best. Ten thousand plantation slaves land on them. Theodoros had paid for their freedom, in exchange for their strong backs and arms and sharp machetes in the fight against the Lion.

With the promise of liberty, the slaves overwhelm the completely startled Venetians, hacking many to pieces and hurling the desperate, panicking survivors back into the sea. They try to flee, but it is too late. With insane bravery, the slaves claw their way through the storm of missiles to storm the ships at anchor. Out of the twenty that dock in Cyprus, only six escape. And three of them make their way back to Candia for off Attaleia, ships from Genoese Modon and Coron, flying the banners of their cities but not the Cross of Saint George, fall on them without warning,.

In mid-September, Theodoros begins his long march to Bithynia. Thinking that Alexandria is vulnerable, the bulk of the Venetian fleet in the area descends on the city, a total of seventy warships. Only a weak smattering of cannonballs contests their approach, until over fifteen ships filled to bursting with marines are in the harbor.

The roar of the concealed mikropurs and culverins is almost, but not quite, enough to drown out the battle cry “FOR SMYRNA!” as Vlad and his men spring from ambush. The Venetian transports are struck at point-blank range, the solid shots smashing the planking into wooden shrapnel as canister shot sweeps the decks. It is not battle; it is slaughter.

Horrified, the Venetians backpedal, and then the concealed fortress guns open fire, their great shot screaming down at the approaching vessels. Many ships are so close that they are actually hit by plunging fire, the shot punching through the height of the ships and ripping out the bottom to vanish into the deep. When the flotilla finally manages to withdraw from range, the seventy ships now number fifty two.

Defeated, they return to Crete, only to find the island ablaze in revolt. With the Venetian fleet distracted, the Romans had managed to slip three thousand men onto the island, along with a promise that ‘Crete will be freed from her Venetian shackles’. The Cretans explode into revolt, handing the countryside at one stroke to the Romans. But the Lion’s great bastion at Candia, reportedly second only to Constantinople as a fortress, stands firm against the tide.

At Constantinople the siege continues, but at a slower rate. Supplies are a major problem, especially now as winter approaches, making foraging more difficult. The ship losses don’t help matters. One of the biggest issues is powder, as the great siege guns have a huge appetite. The Serbians are attempting to ramp up production, but it is taking time, too much time. As winter falls, the siege settles into a relatively quiet stalemate, both sides gathering strength for the spring.

Yet even as guns sleep, men continue to die. One is Giorgios Doukas, the famed archiatros and father of Helena. Despite his age of seventy nine, he had remained in the capital to help tend to the wounded. In the early afternoon of December 7, after spending the last eight hours straight tending to the wounded, he lies down to take a nap, and never wakes again.

There are a few attempts by the allies to land in Asia, both to drive away the Anatolian tagmata and secure more foodstores, which are an issue, but the shore is swarming with turkopouloi. Every landing is noticed and attacked before a credible perimeter can be established, the allies giving up after the fourth attempt and fifteen hundredth casualty. For now the only battle is in the waters of the Marmara, between Venetian warships and Roman blockade runners.

In March, the war awakens again. In Italy the Milanese cross into the Venetian terra firma, driving for the city of Padua. They face virtually no opposition. The bulk of Venetian strength, in the form of the armada still numbering one hundred and forty ships, is still in the Aegean and Marmara, barring the way to the eighty ships of the Imperial fleet.

In Anatolia Theodoros has assembled an army of sixty thousand, ten thousand of which are Georgians hired as mercenaries, their campfires lighting up the Asian shore. Seventy five thousand of their foe stare back across the Bosporus at them. With the men invigorated by fresh supplies from Serbia, and with Theodoros watching helplessly, the allied army hurls itself at the new breaches in the Blachernae wall, and breaks through.

Blachernae District, Constantinople, March 12, 1456:

Gustav gripped his axe, stretching his arm. He nudged his horse; it took one step forward. He looked at upon the men in front of him, his men, his Varangians. Just the day before two hundred of them, all mauroi, had been ferried across the Bosporus under the Venetians’ noses, just in time for this.

The allies had taken the Gyrolimne Gate, the Gate of Blachernae, and the Anemas Prisons, and were now sweeping down the streets toward the Blachernae Palace. Militia were on their way, but the allies had to be plugged now, before more got loose in the city. Two hundred men, Varangians all, against at least two thousand foes pounding down the street, roaring their battle cries.

He sniffed. He smelled fear. He saw fear, peeking out of the eyes of his men. I think not. “Does the dog fear the rustle of the hare?” he asked. A few men looked at him. “Does the fox fear the cackle of the hen?” More gazed at him, a few shaking or saying no. “Does the bear fear the sound of the deer?”

“No.” The enemy was getting closer.

“DOES THE LION FEAR THE DIN OF THE ANTELOPE?!”

“NO!”

Gustav opened his mouth again, and the three men who knew his father swore that they saw and heard not Gustav, but Olaf the Giant himself, as he had been at Alarcos, where he had started a rout of an entire Marinid army.

“THEN I ASK YOU, DOES THE ROMAN FEAR THE CRY OF THE VENETIAN?!”

“NO!”

The allies poured around the corner, yelling their battle cries. But Gustav had one more word to say before the killing.

“FIRE!”

* * *

Manuel could hear the roar of the handguns two streets over. He turned. “Your highness, we should fall back. Reinforcements will be here soon.” Even as he spoke, he spotted a group of eight artillerymen pushing a mikropur into a position where it could sweep the street.

He looked down at the Prince, who had turned eleven just that morning. Andreas opened his mouth, Manuel readying himself for an argument. “We are.” It was not Andreas who spoke, but Alexeia. She looked at the prince, frowning. “This is not the time or place for heroics.” The voices of the incoming allied soldiers were getting louder. ‘For God and Saint Mark!’ was the main cry, but Manuel could make out a smattering of Serbian and Bulgarian in the din.

Crash! An artilleryman spat out a curse. One of the mikropur’s wheels had fallen into a pothole. The eight men heaved; the weapon would not budge. And then there were nine. Andreas was pushing with them. He turned his head to glare at Manuel and the other eight guardsmen accompanying him and Alexeia. “Help us!” he ordered.

Manuel swore under his breath, but grabbed the barrel and started pulling as the other guards and Alexei joined the effort. Looking down the muzzle he saw the powder and shot stuffed in the chamber. It was already loaded. With a great heave and a groan, the gun banged back onto the street. The enemy swept around the corner. Ten meters.

“Clear!” the gunmaster roared. Manuel shoved Andreas behind the cannon as an attendant frantically struck flint. The torch ignited. Five meters.

The gunmaster lit the fuse. Two meters.

The weapon roared.

And the enemy was upon them. Manuel’s blade snaked out of his scabbard, slicing open a Venetian throat. He parried a Serbian axe, his weapon skittering down the haft to lop off the wielder’s fingers. Blows from a Bulgarian mace hammered him back a few steps, until his sword flickered out to find a rib. Behind him, he could feel Alexeia’s back pressed up against his, sensing the shifts as her arm moved, a parry, a slash, and then a scream as her own blade tasted flesh.

“Saint Theodoros!” Waves of mace-wielding militiamen poured into the fray, hammering and smashing at the foe. Within a minute it was over as the Roman reinforcements swept the foe back towards the walls, whooping in victory as they did. Manuel turned; Alexeia beamed at him, but then her expression changed to one of horror. He wheeled around. Andreas was down, a Bulgarian dagger that had slipped under his cuirass embedded just below his right ribcage. Manuel dropped his sword, picked up the body, and ran.

* * *

Fire. Pain. That was what he remembered, all he remembered. They were the world. They were his existence. He blinked.

He was in a garden, a light breeze rustling the leaves as a brook babbled and birds sung. He smelled cherries. Taking three steps, he rounded a flowering bush and saw her. She was a mature woman but still beautiful, strands of elegant gray edging into her faded brown hair. Her warm eyes smiled at him. Helena, Empress of the Romans.

“Mom!” he shouted, running. A moment later his arms were wrapped around hers, and hers around him. “I missed you,” he sniffed.

“I missed you too,” she replied, stroking his hair. “But you can’t stay.”

Andreas broke the embrace, staring up at her. “Why? I’m dead.”

Helena smiled, a small, sad smile. “No, you’re not. You have to go now.”

“What? I don’t want to.”

“You have to. The Empire needs you; your people need you.” She frowned. “Never forget that. The duty of a lord is to live for his people.” Andreas nodded, causing Helena to smile again, circling her arms around in another hug. “Goodbye, Andreas. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.” And then she was gone, and there was only darkness.

* * *


Manuel trudged down the dark halls of the Bucoleon. He was tired, so tired, almost as tired as that day in E-raq. The allied attack had been beaten back, the reinforcements managing to retake the wall, or what was left of it, but it had been bloody and hard. Alexeia walked around the corner, her eyes red, her cheeks lined with trails of tears. “Milady, how is he?” he asked.

She gestured at an open adjacent room. He walked in, followed by Alexeia who closed the door. Both sat down on a couch. “Not good. He’s feverish, calling out for his mother. I, I tried, but somehow, somehow he knew.”

She was crying again. With a shudder, she grabbed Manuel and pulled him to her, wrapping her arms around him as she cried into his shoulder. Gingerly, tenderly, he wrapped his arms around her as she shook, draining herself of her tears as she wept.

He did not know how long they sat there, when exactly it changed, or how, whether it was the grief, the fatigue, or something else. Alexeia had been still, been silent, for some time. And then her arms moved, her fingers gently prying at his collar as her hot breath tickled his neck. He reached down to lightly clasp her hands, holding them.

He opened his mouth. ‘What are you doing?’was what he had been going to say. She stared at him, her eyes looking into him, silent. Manuel felt himself leaning forward. What are you doing? Their lips met. He expected her to recoil, to strike him. She was the daughter of an emperor, he a lowly guardsman. She didn’t. Instead Alexeia leaned in, pulling herself closer as her lips pressed against his. Manuel could feel his hands reaching up, starting to undo her dress.

He pulled away. “Stop me,” he whispered.

Alexeia smiled. “No.” Her hands reached up again to start unbuttoning his collar. “No,” she repeated.

* * *

Andreas felt something. What was it? Wind. He saw something. Light. He blinked.

He was in a courtyard, stone buildings surrounding him, a memorial plinth in the center of the square. He had seen it before. A blast of hot breath, drenched in sweat and grappa, burst down on his neck. And then he saw them, again. His mother and sister on the ground, Venetians on top. A blade flashed down, a woman gurgled, and a man whispered in Andreas’ ear. Smyrna. The Black Day.

He screamed.

* * *


Zoe strummed the lyre, humming a song sung by the asikoi, the traveling minstrels of the Empire who had sprung up from the Turkish tradition of the asiks. The body of her brother lay on the bed, his belly covered in bandages, dozens of the candles lighting the scene as he breathed. His body was alive, but no one knew where his mind was.

The door creaked open, Alexeia and Manuel walking in. She noted that their clothing seemed a bit ruffled, and that the looks flashed between them looked…different. Warmer?

Andreas shrieked.

She had heard that sound before. She knew where he was. The lyre crashed to the floor as she lunged forward, grabbing his arm. “Andreas, Andreas, I’m here.”

He stopped screaming, but started twitching back and forth. “No, no, no,” he moaned.

She started stroking his forehead. “Hush, hush, it’s over.” He still moaned, still there, locked in his mind with the demon that would not die. She began to sing, a low, quiet song, a song sung by Helena herself the morning of the Black Day, in a garden in Smyrna, the paradise before hell.

The room stilled as she sang, the notes cascading out of her. She sang, and she cried, the tears flowing down her cheeks, but she still sang, the whole song, every word, clinging to the memory of it, the last memory of her mother, unspoiled, undamaged, untouched by war, her mother as she had lived. On and on the notes came, but she treasured every one, until the time came for it to end.

Andreas blinked. “Zoe?” he whispered.

She grinned. “Yes, Andreas. I’m here.” She looked up at Alexeia. “He’s awake.” Her half-sister sagged in relief, Manuel bracing her.

She looked back down. Andreas was smiling at her. The bells began to toll. But there was something different; they lacked the note of fear, of terror, that had accompanied the ringing for the past eight months. Was that joy? And then they heard the call, as the people of Constantinople began to shout. “Istvan! Istvan!”

Hungary had moved.

* * *

Theodoros sat on the smooth, gray rock, listening to the sound of the sea lapping against the shore. He stared out at the glowing horizon, as the first rays of the sun peeked across the horizon to dance upon the waters of the Black Sea. The light shone, twirling in joy atop the sea. It was a beautiful sight, a wondrous sight, dawn in all its pristine glory.

He smiled.

1456: The Hungarian invasion comes as an immense blow to the Venetian war effort, far more so than the Milanese attack. For while the army of Milan is a serious danger to the terra firma, it cannot hope to take Venice herself. However the Hungarians, through the ships eagerly provided by its Dalmatian vassals, chief of which is Ragusa, do possess a fleet and thus the ability to take the Queen of the Adriatic.

The debate amongst the Venetian squadron commanders about what to do is long and difficult. It is clear that warships must be dispatched to defend the city, but if enough vessels are sent to have a clear advantage over the Dalmatians, the remainder at Constantinople will have an equal disadvantage against the Roman fleet, especially if they are joined by ships from the Genoese colonies at Modon, Coron, Vospoda, and Tana who have already begun poaching Venetian ships. And so the decision is made, to the shrieking, impotent fury of their allies, for the great armada in its entirety to abandon the siege.

On March 17 the fleet beats its way down the Marmara, scarcely crossing the horizon before a swarm of small ships burst from the Golden Horn to transport the armies of Asia into Europe. The muttering Bulgarians and Serbians fall back, taking their light artillery pieces with them, but they are forced to abandon the great guns due to the speed with which the Roman troops are being ferried across the Bosporus.

They retire to Adrianople, some thirty five thousand strong, but they are not pursued by the Roman army. Instead all of Constantinople is ablaze in celebration, rejoicing in the silence of the guns. The handful of Hungarians in the city, as well as the Genoese volunteers from Galata, are carried through the streets by cheering crowds. And in the thanksgiving service held in Aghia Sophia, led by the Patriarch Adem, in which the Galatans attend, there is no distinction between Catholic and Orthodox. For here there are only brothers, those who fought, bled, and died, together.

Meanwhile the Venetian fleet docks at Candia, still under siege by the Cretans and the Roman forces there. The Candians beg for aid, but news has arrived that Udine in the Friuli has fallen to the Hungarian army, while Padua has been taken by the Milanese. If Venice is to survive, they need to move now. So they depart without breaking the siege, but not before being joined by a new force.

That new force is six thousand Mameluke soldiers loaned to the Serene Republic as mercenaries by Sultan Janbulat. Now disciplined veterans, they hail from Upper Egypt, making them a respectable threat to Cairo, but are also relatively distant from the Hedjaz, so they are not as influenced by the Hedjazi imams and thus more willing to work for an infidel.

With these in tow, the Venetians are able to break the Dalmatian blockade of Venice, although the bulk of the Hungarian fleet is able to retire to safety. But the Republic of Saint Mark now needs the manpower onboard those ships, so there the fleet must remain, empty of her crews, as the Lion readies herself to defend the terra firma.

As the Venetians fight for their lives, so do the Bulgarians. In May Vlad Dracula lands on the shores of the Danube, sweeping southward and leaving a trail of death behind him. The armies of Varna and Vidin, still at Adrianople, pull back to defend their homeland, leaving the city with half of its original defenders. King Stefan deposits a garrison of two thousand men to slow the Roman advance as he pulls back his raiding parties.

On June 4, Adrianople is placed under siege, resisting for sixteen days under the fire of the great bombards that had so recently been shelling Constantinople. Meanwhile Stefan has returned to Serbia, scattering the Albanian raiders while pulling back his own. The defense of Adrianople becomes the archetype for the campaign, as the Romans steadily advance, gradually taking each fortified place seized by the Serbs in their earlier advance. In October they finally reach Thessalonika, restoring secure land connections between the Empire’s first and third cities.

There is another reason to celebrate in Constantinople during that month. On October 11, Princess Kristina Shuisky, the eleven-year-old and youngest daughter of Megas Rigas Alexei I, arrives at the Queen of Cities. She is to be the bride of Prince Andreas, once he turns fourteen (Kristina is one month older), the first marriage between the Roman and Russian royal houses. The two very quickly become good friends.

1457: In the Veneto the fighting is brutal. The Venetians’ initial attempt to knock out Milan in one blow with a mass ambush at Padua backfired, resulting in heavy casualties. Since then the Venetians have waged a series of desperate holding actions, but the combined onslaught of the Milanese and Hungarians is too much. Painfully, steadily, and roaring all the way, the Lion of Saint Mark is bled.

Hopes that the two would come to blows soon fade. Istvan is not like his father Andrew III when he invaded Italy in the 1410s, eager for conquest and unwilling to brook any competitors. Istvan too is hungry for new lands, but his appetite is turned more towards Presporok and Bosnia. Thus he and Matteo agree to divide the terra firma between them, with the Piave River as the border. The city of Venice and the lagoon though are recognized by both parties to belong to Constantinople. Milan lacks the naval forces to seize the territory in question, while Istvan is concerned that the naval effort required on his part for such a task would place too much power in the hands of his Dalmatian vassals.

The willingness to concede Venice is also a result of Istvan’s negotiations with Theodoros. On July 8, the treaty of Dyrrachium, sixty one years old, is declared null and void. The Serbian state is to be partitioned, Buda acquiring Bosnia and Constantinople Serbia.

On paper the division favors the Empire, but Buda gains several important concessions. First, Rhomania will not make any effort to protect or patronize the Bosnian Orthodox Church. Second, several Hungarian rebels in King Stefan’s court will, if captured by Roman forces, be handed over without receiving any ransom. And third, any Roman claims in Italy implied by the Treaty of Dyrrachium are handed over in full to Hungary. The only exceptions are Venice and Ravenna. The latter is an independent city, one of the petty principalities of the Romagna, but one on which Venice has claims (and therefore the Empire, since if it conquered Venice it could in a sense be its inheritor).

The inclusion of Ravenna is a sign of a new policy gaining current both amongst the common people and those in power. It is a policy that places a huge emphasis on the idea of re-conquest, particularly that of the ‘old Roman heartland’, viewed as consisting in some eyes of the current Imperial territories, plus Jerusalem, Ravenna, Sicily, Carthage, and Rome itself. The idea was greatly strengthened by the conquest of Alexandria and Jerusalem, as well as the current war. The last had been used to explicitly condemn the Laskarid/Early Komnenid policy of only limited conquests, preferring instead the development of core territories. Proponents of the new paradigm point out that the old policy had allowed enemies to survive and even come close to taking the Queen of Cities, when instead they could have been squashed.

1458: Vidin falls in April, marking the end to an independent Bulgaria. Like his counterpart in Varna, the Dux and his entire family are exterminated as rebels and traitors. The two duchies are abolished, a new theme of Bulgaria established in their place, with its capital at Philippopolis (Plovdiv).

By the time the smoke clears, the population of Bulgaria has dropped from 900,000 to 700,000. Half of those had been killed; the others relocated, including over thirty thousand sent to the sugar plantations of Cyprus and Crete (Candia had fallen in March 1457, restoring the whole island of Crete to Roman rule). There is an understanding that these are temporary, only to cover the labor shortage until more African slaves become available, but very few of the Bulgarians survive the experience.

As for the freed slaves, some of them find the military life appealing and end up settling in Bulgaria as new tagma troops, a few entering the School of War to train as officers. Most of the remainder are settled either in Bulgaria as civilians or in Thessaly, which had been hit hard by Serbian raids.

In Italy the war still goes on, but mostly on paper. The siege of Bari continues, but neither side has forced military action. To the north the Venetian armada remains silent, the ships fixed to their quays as most of the manpower needed for it is now rotting on a dozen different battlefields in the terra firma, which by that point is virtually gone.

Thus Theodoros elects to personally take the field against Serbia. Alexios is finally feeling his seventy-eight years, while Vlad has been reassigned to the Thracesian tagma to help oversee the restoration of the Anatolian tagmata. The Serbians had already been cleared from Roman territory by summer of 1457, but Theodoros elected to wait until Bulgaria was dealt with so that the blow could be utterly crushing. It was also to help coordinate with the Hungarians who are massing their forces on the Bosnian border.

In any event, it is the Romans who strike first. Stefan concentrates his army against this first threat, and on August 25 he and his twenty five thousand men, the totality of Serbia’s might is challenged by Theodoros. The Romans have forty five thousand, a formidable force even though the Emperor had decided to leave the understrength Athanatoi and the Varangoi under their new commander Gustav Olafsson at Constantinople. The name of the battlefield is one that will be immortal amongst the Serbian people.


1035208kosovopoljefushe.jpg

Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds​


Theodoros immediately attacks with his full strength. On the Serbian right flank the Roman charge is thrown back by Durad and his knights’ ferocious counter-charges. But on the left the line gives way, an arrow killing King Stefan as he attempts to rally his men. The entire army gives way, Theodoros throwing in the reserves to pursue the broken foe.

But Durad Brankovic, the Hammer of Serbia, and his heavy cavalry have not been beaten. As the Roman army spreads out to chase the routing infantry, they launch a desperate do-or-die charge on the Imperial center. Most of them die, Durad among them, but many Romans fall under the blows of their maces. And as the blood of a king waters the field of Kosovo, so too does an Emperor’s.


* * *


So this is how it ends, Theodoros thought. The feeling was fading from his broken body, strewn on the field, staring up at the clear skies. Battalions of ravens were gathering, their black formations assembling for the feast spread before them. A light breeze, carrying with it the stench of blood and bowels, crested over him. It was getting dark. I’m sorry, Andreas. I’m sorry.

Was that, music? The notes from the lyre danced around him, accompanied by a chorus of songbirds. He blinked. A woman was standing before him, a lyre at her side, and somehow he was standing too. “Helena,” he whispered.

She smiled. “Hello, husband.” Her fingers intertwined around his. “Welcome home.” And she led him forth into the garden.

Theodoros died with a smile on his lips.



denethord.jpg

Theodoros IV Laskaris Komnenos, 1408-1458​


* * *

Blachernae Palace Complex, the Queen of Cities (Constantinople), September 2, 1458:

Manuel pushed the door open, his scarred hands rubbing against the slick engraved oak, and quietly walked into the room. As usual, Prince Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos was sitting in a chair, hunched over a book and writing notes, with his left elbow pointed in Manuel’s direction. Skrit skrit, the scratch of the goose-feather quill on a piece of paper, the only noise in the room. The purple robes hung over his skinny, thirteen-year old frame, almost enveloping him in their folds. Around his waist was a belt, a dirk tucked next to his left hip.

Andreas looked up. “Manuel, you’re back. Do you have news of my father? He said in his letter he’d be home soon.” The smile faded from his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“There was a great battle fought at Kosovo six days ago. The Serbians were completely destroyed.” Manuel took a deep breath. I don’t know how else to say this. “But your father was killed.”

“Father…is dead?” Manuel nodded. “How?” Andreas rasped.

“Twelve Serbian knights broke through to his position. The guards did not stop them in time. I’m sorry.”

Andreas’ face was red, his trembling left hand gripping the pommel of his dirk, his right bunched into a fist. A few tears rolled down his smooth face. He turned his back toward Manuel, his shoulders shaking. While the boy’s right hand wiped at his cheeks Manuel could just barely make out the whisper. “You’re the Emperor now. Act like it.”

He turned back to Manuel, his face still red, but the tears were gone. The boy’s eyes had the same blank, dead look he had seen three years earlier, on the Black Day. “Who knows?” the prince asked.

“Just me and the messenger. He’s under guard.”

“Good. I have a chance. Get the Patriarch and bring him to Aghia Sophia at once. I’ll need him to crown me Emperor. I’ll also need the commanders of the Athanatoi and the Varangoi as well.”

Manuel nodded. “Who’s to be regent?”

“No regent.” Andreas raised his hand to forestall the man’s protest. “Who? With both of my parents dead, the only real choice is my brother-in-law Petros. I’d have my throat slit in less than a month. If I was fortunate, he’d be the one to kill me and not Anastasia; he’d at least make it quick. No, if I want to live, I have to rule, and rule alone.”

“The army won’t like it.”

“They will after they hear what I have to say.” Andreas walked over to the shelf, pulling out a large sheet of canvas and dropping it on the table. It was a map of the Empire, showing all of its territories, from Alexandria in Egypt to the Crimea. He pointed a bony finger at western Anatolia. “Vlad commands the Thracesian tagma. With his support, both the Optimatic and Opsician tagmata would join me as well, twenty six thousand men.”

“How are you going to gain his support?”

Andreas took a deep breath, then blew it out his lips as he stared at the map. His eyes flicked to the north. “He has a daughter; I believe she's seventeen, and I’m not married.” Manuel’s eyes shot up from the map to stare into those of the Prince. Still blank. Still cold. Still dead. “It makes the army happy, since it gets them a famous, experienced war hero, and not a boy to lead them.”

“What about Kristina? You were to be married at the end of the year.”

For one brief second, pain flashed in Andreas’ eyes. “A Russian princess will not help me now. I need the loyalty of the Roman army, not the Russian one. Kristina can’t give me that. No, there’s no other way. Let’s go.”

Manuel bowed his head, striding to the door. There he turned around to look at the prince, who was staring at the map with his back to the entrance. “No other way,” Andreas whispered. His hand rubbed at his cheek. “Emperors don’t cry,” he snarled. “Emperors don’t cry,” he whispered. Turning around, he looked at Manuel with his dead eyes, and followed.
 
Last edited:
The Boy Emperor

Part 8.1

1458-1460

"And on such small shoulders does such a great and mighty Empire fall,"-Matthaios Melissenos, History of the Wars of God and Rhomania.


Aghia Sophia, September 2, 1458:

Andreas stared out at the group in front of him, generals, courtiers, officials, the beating heart of the Roman Empire. If his reign was to last more than a minute, he would need their support, or their silence.

He stilled his fingers which wanted to twitch really, really badly. The great robes of state, his father’s robes, hung over him, the heavy crown squatting on his head. It had already been placed there by the shaking hands of old Patriarch Adem as the group had been admitted. They had seen the crowning, had witnessed it, but had not given time to protest, yet.

“By will of my father, may he rest in peace, Theodoros, fourth of that name, Laskaris Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans, Vicegerent of God on Earth, I am his successor to Rhomania and all her domains. Does anyone challenge this most lawful and righteous claim?” In the corner of his eye, he saw Manuel tighten his grip on his blade. He had his orders; Andreas currently only had six guards, but they were ones he could trust implicitly. No one, no matter their rank or station, despite the fact they were in this most holy place, would be allowed to live if they said ‘yes’.

Gustav Olafsson, strategos of the Varangian Guard, stepped forward. He had been summoned straight from the training yard, and so was kitted out in full armor, his great sword and two black maces hanging from his belt. Manuel tensed.

Gustav stared into Andreas’ eyes. Seconds passed, and then the old Varangian smiled. “I swore an oath.” He turned around, now his hand around his sword. “Emperor Andreas, first of that name, demands your obedience. I suggest you give it.”

Blachernae Palace, September 16, 1458:

“That goddamn son of a bitch! I am going to kill him myself! That worthless, miscreant, fucking piece of shit!”

“Milady, what is wrong?” Manuel asked.

Alexeia whirled around, the snarl of an enraged lioness on her lips. “That hell-spawn, whore-sprung Vlad Dracula is what’s wrong! I manage to convince Andreas to accept him as regent, which I was only able to do when I pointed out he’d still be able to marry Kristina, and then he pulls this!” She grabbed the letter, shaking the crumpled ball for a second and then hurling it on the floor.

“He’ll accept the position,” she continued, her nostrils flaring. “But only if Andreas marries his daughter Maria!”

“And if the Emperor says no now,” Manuel added. “He turns Dracula into an enemy, something he can’t afford since Anastasia and Petros managed to escape arrest, and Alexios in Thessalonika.”

“Exactly.”

“Does the Emperor know?”

Alexeia stared into the corner, not looking at Manuel. “Yes, he knows.”


* * *

“You don’t have to do this,” Kristina whispered.

Andreas poked at his lunch. “Do what?”

“Rule alone. Break the marriage. You know, everything.”

“Yes, I do.”

Kristina exploded. “But why?! God’s wounds, Andreas! You’re only thirteen! No one expects you to rule by yourself! Take a regent!”

“You’re only thirteen too.”

She crossed her arms, glowering at him. “That’s not the point. I’m not trying to rule an empire by myself. Why won’t you take a regent?”

Andreas slammed his fork down. It bounced off the plate, clattering on the floor. “Because there is no one!” He took a deep breath. “Petros or Anastasia would both have me killed within a month. No one would accept Alexeia, a bastard, as the head of government.”

“There’s Vlad.” Silence. “What’s wrong?”

Andreas glared down at the plate. “He took the position,” he growled.

“What?”

“Vlad agreed to be regent until my sixteenth birthday.”

“But, that’s good, isn’t it?”

The plate crashed against the wall, the lunch splattering against the stone or falling on the ground. The two guards stuck their heads into the room. Andreas snarled at them. They left. “I have to marry his daughter.”

“What?”

“I have to marry Maria. That’s his condition. And I can’t insult him. Alexios Palaiologos is Anastasia’s father-in-law. I can’t hope to fight both him and Vlad.”

He looked up at her. His eyes were cold, dead. “He’ll arrive in a week or so with Maria. As soon as she arrives, we’re to be wed. You may keep your quarters until spring, when it will be safe for you to return to Novgorod.”

“So I’m to remain her and watch as you marry that, that, whore?”

He stared at the wall. “Blame God for the Russian winter, not me.”

Kristina sighed. Andreas exuded coldness, the blankness of his eyes showing a blankness of his soul. She knew that look; she had seen it before, after one of his nightmares. She needed to get him out of it. She had studied history, and she was certain that another man, another ruler of a great empire, had held the same look in his own eye. His name had been Timur.

“How long do you think it will take before you get tired of her?”

He looked at her again, at the spark in her eyes, her slightly crooked lip, and his own eyes began to shine a bit. “About two minutes, maybe three.” His own lip began to curve up into a little smile. He and Kristina had already done it twice in secret.

But memory faded, and reality resumed. Andreas was again staring off into the corner. “So it’s over,” Kristina said.

Andreas’ head snapped back to her. His eyes blazed. “No. I will find a way. We will be together. And may God damn anyone who gets in the way.”



* * *

donaldsutherland.png

Image taken from Ep. 7, The Old Lion, of the award-winning show The Komnenoi

Alexios Palaiologos, the Victor of Ain Sijni, the Lion of Syria. Although his seventy eight years are finally beginning to catch up with him, his name still inspires respect and fear amongst all the armies of Rhomania. Father-in-law of Anastasia Komnena Palaiologa, eldest daughter of Theodoros IV, he is the teeth of Anastasia's threat to Andreas.​

Duty to his family. Duty to the Empire. Those are his choices. Depending on what he does in the coming weeks, the Empire may once again be in a civil war, an ironic outcome, since he is the last to have seen the War of the Five Emperors.​

Cappadocian Caesarea, January 12, 1412:

Alexios chewed furiously on the strip of bacon, spitting out a piece into the crackling fire. Around him were the campfires of ten thousand men, the Coloneian tagma in all its glory, once again on this bloody battlefield, where this had all began.

Manuel Doukas, Emperor of Trebizond, looked up at him. “You don’t like this, do you, tourmarch?”

“With all due respect, your majesty, I don’t.”

“And why not?”

“It’s not right. You’re the rightful emperor. You’ve done all you can to fight the Timurids, not fellow Romans. Why should you be the one to step down, to become junior? It should be him!” Alexios stabbed his finger out to the west, where the campfires of the Thracesian tagma, the tagma of Demetrios Komnenos the usurper, were located.

Manuel looked back towards them and then at Alexios. “Perhaps you’re right. But it does not matter.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting for the last eight years?”

The Emperor sighed. “If we are to survive Timur, we must be strong, we must be united. And I will not let my epitaph be that I was the one who brought civil war and death to this empire.”

Alexios opened his mouth. Manuel stepped over, wrapping a hand around his shoulder. “My duty is to the empire. So is yours. Never forget that.”

“Father!”

Alexios’ eyes shot open, the light flooding into them. He blinked. The canvas of the tent stared back down at him, the smell of an army camp of forty thousand men seeping into his nostrils. Petros was staring at him. “What is it?” Alexios asked.

“The usurper has arrived.”


* * *

1458 continued:

The day after Vlad arrives in Constantinople, Andreas and Maria are wed with a great deal of pomp, ceremony, and a lack of joy in the new couple. Shortly afterwards the Optimatic, Opsician, and Thracesian tagmata begin filing into the City. They are none too soon.

Somehow Anastasia and Petros Palaiologos were able to evade the guards sent to arrest them, sneaking out of Constantinople onto a monore (light courier/scout ship) and then to Thessalonika, where the just retired Alexios has his estates. Quickly enlisting his service, they travel north to Kosovo where with the support of Alexios and arguments to the effect that the Empire cannot survive a child ruler after what it has been through in the last decade, they gain support of the army there, forty one thousand strong.

At the same time a battered, defeated Venice abandons all of the terra firma to the Milanese and Hungarians who divide it according to their previous agreement. All that remains to the Serene Republic, after the fall of Candia and now this, is the lagoon itself. Yet the Lion still has teeth. The one hundred and forty ships of the armada are still intact, and the Republic has enough manpower to man half of them once the Venetians exchange prisoners. Although that means the Romans have a slight numerical advantage now, it ensures that any Roman attack on Venice would be long, expensive, and bloody, especially since there are forty two hundred Mamelukes guarding the new forts rising on the Lido.

The use of Mameluke soldiery actually draws little condemnation from the crowns of Europe. That is because the Mamelukes, unlike the Marinids, have posed no threat to the sovereigns’ interest. The one ruler most likely to protest, given his role as Defender of Christendom, the Holy Roman Emperor, does not mind as anything that kills Hungarians is good in his book. There is also the fact that Hungarian expansion over the past forty years has alarmed most of eastern and central Europe, while the west is too far distant to really care.

The one major area to be affected by this is the Duchy of Milan itself. Already distancing itself from the Papacy because of Julius’ increasing ties to Florence, the use of Muslim troops against them by a papal ally is too much. While Milan remains Roman Catholic, the obedience of the Milanese people and clergy to papal orders is increasingly suspect. The biggest example occurs in December when Matteo mobilizes elements of his household cavalry to drive off inquisitors harassing a Hussite settlement on the outskirts of Pavia.

The Hussites, a small but growing movement that follows the teachings of their since-dead leader Jan Hus, are present mostly in Bohemia itself, along with northern Germany and now Milan. Their main beliefs are the participation of the laity in communion, the use of the bible alone as the basis for religious beliefs and acts, and the rejection of transubstantiation, the monastic institution, and the office of pope. The latter ensures that Avignon as well as Rome hates them.

The Romans do not care about such theological developments, or even about the condition of Venice at this time. They are fixated on each other. Even as Hungarian troops overrun Bosnia, facing scarcely any resistance, Alexios wheels around to march on Constantinople in the hope of knocking his opponent out quickly. Vlad and Andreas sally out to meet him; the people of Constantinople are in no mood to endure another siege. With the three tagmata, reinforced by the Varangoi and Athanatoi, they have thirty three thousand men.


* * *


The town of Drama, Western Thrace, October 10, 1458:

Andreas stilled his fingers, which desperately wanted to twitch. His horse snorted, shuffling a step. He tightened the grip on the reins. Alexios, Petros, and Anastasia, along with one other rider he did not recognize, rode up, the banner of truce flying over their heads. It was identical to the one next to Andreas, who was accompanied by Manuel, Gustav, and Vlad. The eight riders were in the middle of a field, directly in between the two Roman armies. He could hear the sound of shovels all around him, troops preparing fieldworks for the battle, the inevitable battle, unless it was resolved here, now. A blackbird cawed overhead, a black dot in a gray sky.

“Sister,” Andreas said, staring at Anastasia.

“Usurper,” she replied.

“Father would disagree.”

“Father was a fool who got himself killed. And what happened the last time an emperor died on the field and left an underage heir?” She stared at Alexios. “Do any of us want that to happen again?” Alexios shook his head no.

Andreas’ hands tightened on the reins. He had to turn Alexios. If he didn’t, civil war was inevitable, something the Empire likely could not afford, not after the past decade. But the more Anastasia spoke, the more Andreas knew Alexios would not turn. There were too many parallels between this and the opening act of the War of the Five Emperors. There is another way, he thought.

I’d be dead if I do.

The thought ended, sounding in the halls of his mind, and then he was there again, Smyrna, the Black Day. But not at the courtyard. He was in the basement of a home, lit only by the flickering of a candle. Nazim looked at him, his black, bushy eyebrows staring out. “For are we not all children of God?”

Yes, we are. And better that only one should die, rather than thousands. His hands started reaching up towards the diadem atop his head, his robes crinkling.

If you do this, you’re dead.

Too much Roman blood has already been spilled. It is time for this to end.

This is your end!

So be it.

Anastasia was done talking about the threat of civil war if a boy was on the throne. “Now, look here, milady-” Vlad said.

“I will abdicate,” Andreas said. Everyone stared at him, Gustav furrowing his brow, Vlad opening his mouth in dismay, and Manuel looking as if he were in pain. Petros grinned. “I will abdicate.” With trembling, shaking hands he took off the crown. His sister sneered. You are dead now, you know that. He held it out to Anastasia. “Take it; it’s yours.”

“Why?” Alexios asked.

Andreas looked at the old, wrinkled general. He had a far-off look in his eyes, as if he were not really there. “I will not have my epitaph be that I brought civil war and ruin to the Roman Empire.” Anastasia smiled, flashing her teeth.

Alexios nudged his horse, trotting forward so that he was next to Andreas, to his right. “Take it,” the prince said, holding it out to the general.

Alexios reached out. But his hand did not touch the crown; instead they wrapped around Andreas’ trembling arm, stilling it. “That will not be necessary, Basileus.” He let go, wheeling his horse around.

Anastasia and Petros gaped at him. The other rider, after a nod from Alexios, charged back towards the camp. “For God!” he yelled. “For God and Emperor Andreas!”

“What have you done?” Anastasia asked, glaring at her father-in-law. “Why? We have superior numbers; we can win this.”

Alexios stared back. “I have a friend, who deserves to not have had all his life’s work be in vain.”

“Who?”

“Nobody you know.”

“We can win this.”

“That does not matter. Even if you had all of Timur’s hosts, it would not matter. I will stand by those who honor my friend’s name, come what may.” She opened her mouth again. “It’s over, Anastasia.”

Behind her, her army, what had been her army, took up the call of the officer. “For God! For God and Emperor Andreas!”

Constantinople, October 23, 1458:

“How do I look?” Andreas asked, spreading his arms. The large silken robes of his father were draped over him, a foot of the purple cloth lying on the floor around the boy.

“I can’t tell,” his older sister Zoe said. A second later the eighteen year old chuckled. “I know you want to.”

Andreas smiled. He spun around really fast, the hem of the robe flying around him. He stopped, staggering a bit, causing the diadem atop his head to flop down on the left side.

Zoe laughed. “Come here,” she said, tugging on his right arm and pulling him until he was standing right in front of the chair. She straightened the crown. “There, much better. You look very regal.” Her hand brushed some of his bare skin. “You’re cold.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

“Look at me. I look like a boy playing at being an emperor. Which is what most of the people think of me already.”

“You could wait-”

“No. I can’t. It would take too long to make a properly tailored emperor’s robe, and cutting up father’s would not be a good start to my reign. I have to appear before the people as Emperor now. The longer people whisper and wonder about whether or not I can rule, the greater the chance I end up with a knife in my ribs.”

“Well, if you want to look more like an emperor, you might want to take off that.” She pointed at the drab brown belt wrapped around Andreas’ waist. Strapped to it was an equally dull scabbard holding a dirk, its plain steel pommel sticking out of the sheath. It was the kind of blade that would be worn by an ordinary skutatos.

“I need this to protect myself.”

“Why? You’re the Emperor. You’ll have Manuel, and bodyguards.”

“Bodyguards didn’t help father.” The siblings’ eyes met, and unspoken words flashed between them. Or mother.

Maria entered the room, a scowl on her face. Andreas held out his arm for her to take. “It’s time,” he said. Maria took the limb.

“Could you look a little less disgusted?” Zoe asked.

Maria’s eyes swept over the princess. “Could you shut up…” Her eyes fixed on the area where Zoe’s womanhood was covered with fine red silk. “…whore?” Zoe flinched as if she had been slapped. She looked back at the Imperial couple, the shame and pain in her eyes clearly visible.

Maria then flinched as Andreas’ blade pricked at her throat. “Listen, bitch,” he hissed. “If you ever, ever call her that again, I will kill you myself. I don’t care if you’re my…wife…” he spat the last word. “…or who your father is. If you do, I will kill you. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good,” Andreas muttered, his sword disappearing. “Now time to go. Guards!” A moment later half a dozen filed into the room. Forward they went down the passageway, the dark path that led from the Bucoleon to the Hippodrome. And then they entered the light, the sun beating down from the clear sky, perfect weather. The sound of one hundred thousand people rolled over them. The Hippodrome, restored just before the War for Asia, was filled to capacity.

And the people spoke. It did not matter that Andreas was still a boy, that his robes did not fit, that his wife was scowling at them. He had fought beside them during the siege, been wounded beside them, and now the rumors said that he had been willing to give away the throne, the crown, his life, so that they would be spared the horrors of another siege, of civil war.

And one hundred thousand voices yelled as one:

“HAIL, BASILEUS!”

Draculan Estates, outskirts of Chalcedon, March 10, 1459:

Vlad’s fist slammed down on the table. “What are you doing, woman?”

Maria glared. “What you should’ve known was going to happen!”

“What is your problem?”

“He’s a boy.”

“He’s the Emperor of the Romans, for God’s sake. There is no better match.”

“Ha! You call this better. He’s a boy! I want a man.”

“Why?”

“Aaargh! You men are all the same. Do you think women don’t have the same kind of needs men do? Would you be satisfied with a girl for a wife? I think not.”

“There are bigger things at stake than your personal pleasure. And these continual attacks on the Emperor’s sister are only making things worse.”

“Why should I stop? The whore deserves it.”

“What did she do?”

“I decided to have a little fun with a man because I didn’t get one for a husband. She found out and had the audacity to lecture me about sexual impropriety. The whore, can you believe it? The one who’s done it with at least half a dozen, and especially after what she’s doing now.”

“And what is she doing now?”

“She’s sleeping with Andreas, that’s what. Ever since his little Russian bitch left for Draconovsk last month.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Maria, these slanders are going to get you killed someday.”

“Andreas wouldn’t dare. He may threaten but he wouldn’t dare.”

“If you push him enough, he might not care anymore, and he will kill you.”

Maria flashed her teeth. “Not if I kill him first.”



thetudorsdormer20.jpg

Maria Draka Komnena, Empress of the Romans. Her hatred of Zoe Komnena stemmed from an early incident. Less than three weeks after the marriage of Andreas and Maria, Zoe discovered the Empress cavorting with one of the palace guards. The next day the guard was found dead in an alley in one of Constantinople's seedier districts, apparently the victim of a bar fight turned lethal. Image taken from the show The Komnenoi, Ep. 13 Peace


alienathepillarsoftheea.jpg

Zoe Komnena, known as the 'Virgin Princess', although no one dares call her that to her face or that of her brother's. Her refusal to marry after the Black Day has been the subject of much gossip in Constantinople, and her close, some would say too close, relationship with her brother has resulted in fertile ground for the Empress' slanders. Image taken from The Komnenoi, Ep 14 The Russian Envoy


1459: The new year opens with a flurry of diplomatic activity. Anastasia and Petros are both placed under house arrest at an estate on an island in the middle of the Aegean, a far lighter punishment than Andreas wants, but he dare not do more for fear of Alexios’ response. However the Emperor has no plans to be so lenient once Alexios passes. He is now seventy nine, and is likely soon to die of old age. And if he should be so inconsiderate to not, certain things can be arranged and in this case there would be little suspicion of foul play.

In an effort to improve Vlad’s disposition, despite the poor (at best) Imperial marriage, Andreas arranges a special honor for the strategos. In view of his service to the state, as well as his father before him, Vlad and his house are bestowed the patronym Drakos, the Family of the Dragon, replacing their old Vlach family name.

* * *

Novgorod, April 22, 1459:

“That stinking, rotten, little bastard twerp,” Alexei I, Megas Rigas, of the Rus growled. “I should invade the Crimea for this.”

“You can’t do that, father, and you know it,” Kristina said.

Alexei snarled, several courtiers in the back of the room cringing. Kristina stayed where she was, looking at her father as he sat atop his throne. She was right, and Alexei knew that. The veche would never countenance a war, not over this, not when several of the leading members had made huge amounts of money with the sugar trade. And the Ukraine’s continued growth and prosperity depended on the grain exports to Constantinople. Alexei Shuisky had been insulted, Lord Novgorod the Great had not.

The king still had the snarl on his face, but his shoulders slumped. “We’ll just have to find another way. But first we must look to your future. The King of Denmark’s third son is available. He would make a good husband, strong, handsome, and unlike a certain Roman Emperor, trustworthy.”

“No.”

A couple of courtiers goggled at her. Alexei’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“I said no.”

“Why not?” he growled.

Kristina squared her shoulders, taking a deep breath. “I am not a virgin.” A glass shattered on the floor, red wine splattering the stone and the pants of the courier who had dropped it. Nobody in the room noticed; they were too busy staring at the princess, waiting for the coming eruption.”

“What?”

“I am not a virgin.”

Alexei shot to his feet, his hand grabbing his sword. “THAT RAT BASTARD! I WILL KILL HIM! NOT ONLY DOES HE BREAK HIS WORD, BUT HE STEALS YOUR VIRGINITY!”

“He did not steal my virginity.” Alexei’s head snapped around to look at her. “I stole his.” The king blinked twice. “Father, there is still a way. I will be Empress of the Romans someday, and you will have a grandson as Emperor of the Romans, not some petty Danish count.”

Her father sat down, laying his hand on the armrest. “Tell me.”

* * *

In the spring Vlad Dracula-Drakos renews the attack on Serbia, although with only half of the combined army that met and nearly fought at Drama (the remainder were demobilized), but he faces little opposition in the post-Kosovo chaos. The Serbian nobility, which had been largely cowed by the royal Brankovics but are now eagerly asserting their power, are quick to fall into line when they realize that the Empire is only interested in vassalization, not conquest. That is far more preferable than the Hungarians, who are establishing direct royal control in Bosnia and who are heretics as well. By September, they have all submitted to Imperial authority.

In order to ensure that the Serbians will not be a threat, the old kingdom is divided into a total of eight principalities, not including the piece extending up to and including Naissus (Nis) which is incorporated into the theme of Bulgaria, the one area imposed under Constantinople’s control. The eight principalities are Zeta, Belgrade, Raska, Srem, Toplica, Macva, Pec, and Backa.

As Vlad organizes Serbia, peace is signed between the Empire and Venice. Venice formally signs over Crete, with both sides having to ransom prisoners, but remains alive. It is a treaty that Andreas signs with great reluctance, taking a great deal of persuasion by Alexeia, and after seeing the reports from the east. The Turk is on the move.

Agents tell an ominous tale, of supply depots constructed in Mosul, of janissaries and sipahis drilling on the banks of the northern Tigris, and of a visit by Bayezid himself to the fortress of Harran, the key Ottoman citadel near the Roman border. The Ottomans are by no means recovered from the War for Asia, but given the exhausted state of the Roman army and state (it is estimated that Roman casualties since the intervention in E-raq are over a third more than Caesarea, the War of the Five Emperors, and Manzikert combined), if the Ottomans attack while the Empire is occupied in the west, the consequences could well be catastrophic.

A few weeks later, peace is also made with the Papacy and Naples, both of whom are unaware of the Turkish threat. Here Rhomania takes another loss, Naples and Constantinople restoring the border of 1392. Once again Apulia is in Roman hands, but all of the conquests of Demetrios Megas are signed away. Andreas too signs this treaty, muttering all the way.

And so the Smyrnan War ends with little fanfare, with no great battles or councils, far different from its beginning. But though the war is finished, neither side is. Both Julius and Andreas hunger for revenge, the treaties only fanning the flames of their desires. For them this is not peace; it is a truce.

Now though they have other concerns. The first is mutual. For on July 28, King Istvan of Hungary takes two new titles, granted by Pope Gregory XII to secure Hungarian goodwill for the coming council, and also to allay complaints that the Avignon Papacy only cares for the Arletians and Iberians. The call from Buda goes out: ‘Hail, Istvan, first of that name, by the grace of God, King of Austria, Bosnia, and Croatia, and Emperor of the Hungarians’.

All Rome and Constantinople can do is grumble; neither can afford a conflict with Buda. Julius is busy engaged in damage control, while in Constantinople preparations are underway for the extermination of the Apulian peasantry, who are still in revolt, continuing the siege of Bari even after the withdrawal of the Neapolitan and Papal troops.

* * *

Blachernae Palace, Constantinople, September 4, 1459:

“You’re happy,” Manuel said.

Alexeia turned around, cocking her eyebrow. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No. It’s just that when Vlad’s in the room…” He nodded to where the strategos was standing on the opposite side of the audience hall, just a little over half the distance between the great doors and the pair of thrones, on which were seated the Emperor and Empress. The latter had her usual scowl on.

“Oh, this is a special occasion. I want to see his face.”

Manuel cocked an eyebrow. “You know something.”

“Of course.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

She grinned. “Nope.”

Manuel glowered at her for a moment, and then his eyes darted down. Alexeia’s belly was just beginning to swell; they hadn’t been careful enough. She placed a hand over it. “We can’t keep doing this,” she whispered.

“I know. We could get married…”

Alexeia shook her head. “Not now. The dynasty’s shaky enough already. To have a Komnena, even a bastard, wed a guardsman, won’t help.”

“Andreas has promised to make me a comes.”

“And he can’t do that until Vlad steps down as regent.”

“So we’re stuck.”

“I’m afraid so.”

The doors opened and a tall Russian with a great brown beard, clad in furs and silks, strode in. In the antechamber Manuel could see several more. “From his majesty, Megas Rigas Alexei, first of that name, to his Imperial majesty Andreas, first of that name, Emperor of the Romans, greetings.”

“We are honored to accept these greetings,” Andreas intoned. “And are ready to welcome the new ambassador that my good cousin sends, so that goodwill and peace may continue between our great nations.”

“The Megas Rigas desires that those should continue. They have been somewhat strained of late due to unfortunate circumstances, and it is to repair that, to ensure the continued prosperity and glory of our two realms, and the security of the one true Orthodox faith, that we have sent our new envoy.” He gestured at the Russian delegation, some of them shifting to allow a person to pass through. “The new envoy of the Rus to the Roman court…”

He stepped aside, revealing the person to the Emperor. “Lady Kristina Shuisky!”

Manuel looked at Vlad. His face was twisted, red, glaring at the Russian speaker who stared back and blinked. Maria’s visage was even more unpleasant, but directed solely at Kristina. The Russian princess ignored the Empress; her eyes locked with Andreas. A moment later she remembered her manners, bowing her head and curtsying.

“We are honored to accept the new envoy, and we send our thanks to our good cousin,” Andreas said, looking at the Russian speaker. "His efforts to maintain peace between our two great empires will not be forgotten.” His eyes once again locked on Kristina. “They most certainly will not be.”


* * *

As October comes, Andreas heads east to the eastern themes to tour the frontier defenses, and to present a show of forces to help discourage Bayezid. At the same time, a very prominent delegation arrives in Fars, bearing gifts of goodwill from the Romans to the Shahanshah of the Persians. In their still weakened states, the Ottomans cannot afford a two-front war, so Bayezid backs down.

Thus the 1450s, the decade that saw the War for Asia, the fall of Alexandria, the Black Day, a death of an Empress and Emperor, and a siege of Constantinople comes to an end. It is a quiet end, much to the relief of the people of the Empire. All that remains now is Apulia.


eastmed1459.png

The Central and Eastern Mediterranean, 1459. Note that Apulia outside of Bari is not at this time under Roman control.
Thanks to ElSho for all his help.​

Legend:
1) The Republic of Florence
2) Duchy of Milan
3) The Romagna
4) Duchy of Urbino
5) Duchy of Ancona​


Siege Lines at Bari, March 24, 1460:

Alfredo stared at the Roman envoy, a squat, hairy droungarios with a big nose. “Can you repeat that?” he asked. As the emissary cleared his throat, Alfredo nonchalantly stretched his right arm, placing his hand on a helm that used to belong to a skythikos. He started lightly tapping out a beat.

Despite his age of twenty four, Alfredo was the ‘commander’ of the Apulian ‘army’, the contingent of men the province had provided the allied cause after most of the peasantry had returned to the fields. Four thousand strong, they had all, Alfredo included, started out as peasant farmers, but now they were veteran soldiers, armed with a mix of captured Roman and abandoned/borrowed Papal and Neapolitan equipment.

Though they had been abandoned by their allies, by their rightful sovereign the King of Naples, they remained in the field even though by themselves the garrison at Bari outnumbered Alfredo’s force almost two to one. The Barians had already attempted to disperse them, but the stout redoubts of the siege lines, defended by culverins the Apulians knew how to use, had thrown the sally back. Still even with the support of the Apulian peasantry, who despite their participation in the initial revolt were nothing more than eager farmers, their chances of survival against the Roman counter-offensive were virtually nonexistent, and Alfredo knew it. They were all still here.

“Your men are being given the opportunity to surrender. Anyone who stands down and hands over his weapons will be allowed to return to their pre-rebellion property unharmed.”

“And what of the officers, the ringleaders?”

“On that the Emperor is adamant. They will suffer the fate of all rebels and traitors.” The Roman smiled thinly. “You understand, of course, that rebellions such as these cannot go unpunished.”

Alfredo smiled back with an equally thin smile. “The Emperor is most generous.” He knew what the Romans were attempting, divide and conquer. If the officers tried to fight since they had nothing to lose, the men, being offered an unexpected pardon instead of suicide, might turn on their leaders, either abandoning them or even better from the Roman point of view, handing them over in the hope of currying favor.

Alfredo’s eyes swept over the inhabitants of the blockhouse. Many were officers, elected to their positions by the men, but there were common soldiers too. They gazed back, their eyes grim but defiant. They would not yield. They had risked death to escape their former lives; they would not go back to escape it. Alfredo smiled. “No.”

The envoy blinked. “What did you say?”

“No.”

“Do you really think that you can stand against the son of the Dragon and all the hosts of the Empire?”

“I did not say that. I only said that we would not surrender.”

“You’re mad!”

“No, we’re not. It is better to die like men than live like dogs. You offer us the latter; we prefer the former.”

The droungarios looked around the chamber, waving his arms. “If you do this, you will never return to your homes, your families again. The only place you will go is hell.”

Alfredo laughed, causing the man’s head to jerk back at him. “That will not work, Roman. We are here for one reason.”

“And that reason is?”

Alfredo leaned forward. “Hell is preferable to Roman rule.”

1460: As soon as March dawns, twenty thousand men land in Apulia, two thousand reinforcing the garrison at Bari while the remainder seize Taras in a surprise attack. Vlad is in command of the main force, since although he is still regent he has found soldiering to be far more enjoyable. The force he commands is smaller than he is used to, but his foe, though brave and numerous, are of poor quality, with the exception of Alfredo of Lecce’s army at Bari.

As a result, Alfredo is Vlad’s first target. He marches north, leaving a trail of burned villages and villagers in his wake, but before he is able to get very far he receives news that Andreas has landed in Taras. The strategos slows his advance, allowing the Imperial caravan to overtake his army at a village near Bari.

* * *

Corato, Apulia, April 7, 1460:

Manuel sniffed, the harsh and all too familiar stench of cooked human flesh thrusting its way into his nostrils. He glanced over to his right, where two eikosarchoi on their horses were gingerly picking their way through the carnage. Squoosh-fphbttt. One mount put their hoof down into the bloated meat-sack that had once been an eight year old boy.

The two riders, both eighteen years old, looked queasily at Manuel. Both were recent graduates from the School of War, who due to their high marks had been assigned to the Athanatoi, to the droungos under Manuel’s command; he had been promoted to droungarios just five months earlier, a few weeks after Alexeia had departed for Coloneia. The first, taller one, with a thin black moustache, was Andronikos Angelos. The second, a descendent of Florentine refugees, was Lorenzo de Medici.

Manuel looked behind them, where Andreas was guiding his horse through the corpses. The fifteen-year-old had sprouted in the almost-two years since his father’s death. Still skinny, the boy was now tall and lanky, his smooth face now maintained against a light brown scruff by shaving rather than youth. Kristina was at his side, mounted on another horse. She had come to Apulia because of ‘the need to maintain good relations between Russia and Rhomania given the recent strain placed on such ties’.

Both were clad in leather and wool, not silk. Andreas had refused any luxuries not afforded to the men as well; he dressed as they did, ate as they did, slept as they did. The only exception was the presence of Kristina, something the soldiers actually liked. Boys did not keep mistresses; men did. And Kristina had followed and supported him all the way.

Manuel’s and Kristina’s eyes met. He could see the horror in her eyes. But then they darted over to glance at Andreas’ dead eyes. She looked back at Manuel, worry now intermingled with horror. She knew what her lover was capable of, how he had killed for the first time when he was only ten. She had come into the village, into this hellhole, even though she could have gone around, so that Andreas would have no excuse except to come as well. Perhaps if he saw, with his own eyes, he might stem the slaughter wreaked by his armies. Already at least nine thousand had been slain.

Andreas froze. His gaze was locked on one corpse. It had been that of a young woman. There were several slashes in her belly, her nose and left breast had been cut off, and her inner thighs were a mass of bruises. She had been raped, repeatedly, before the end. As Manuel stared, he realized that the woman had the same hair and build as Helena. He looked at Andreas.

The Emperor was trembling, his hands shaking. His eyes were no longer dead, but filled with horror. “What, what have I done?” he whispered, his voice quavering. Then his gaze lost focus, staring through Manuel. He was there again, the Black Day. His eyes rolled back into his head.

“Andreas!” Kristina shrieked, grabbing his body as it started to topple off his horse.

* * *

Vlad stepped into the tent, staring at Manuel. “How is he?” His gaze locked on Kristina, who was bent over the cot on which Andreas was lying, wiping a wet cloth across his forehead. Vlad’s face twisted. “What is she doing here? Send her back to Constantinople.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Kristina said, still stroking Andreas’ forehead.

“What?”

Kristina’s head jerked around to glare at Vlad, pain and anger stabbing out of her eyes. “I said, haven’t you done enough?”

“What I have done has all been for the good of the Empire.”

“And what about Andreas?” Still unconscious, he twitched and moaned. A tear trickled down Kristina’s cheek. “He needs me. Do you think Maria would do this?” Vlad’s face hardened. “Get out,” she snarled. Two seconds. “I said, GET OUT!”

Lorenzo stepped forward. “Sir, the lady asked you to leave.” Vlad looked at him. The Medici was an Athanatos, the Emperor’s guard regiment, Andreas’ guard regiment. And they knew where his allegiance lay.

Vlad took a step out, but then turned to look at Kristina. “Andreas is Emperor. As royalty, he must learn to live without love. That is the way of things.” He left the tent.

Manuel heard her mutter “That doesn’t make it right.”

Andreas moaned again, and then lay still. She looked up, more tears streaking down her face. “I don’t know what else to do. He won’t wake up. I’ve never seen him this bad.”

“Kiss him,” Lorenzo said.

Both Kristina and Manuel looked at him. “What?” the Russian said.

“Kiss him. It works in the stories.” Kristina blinked, and then bent forward and gently kissed Andreas on the cheek. Nothing happened. Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “What, you’re being chaste now? You want to wake him up, you’re going to need to do more than that.”

Kristina looked at Manuel, who shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

She leaned over, this time pressing her lips to Andreas’. For a second nothing happened, and then the Emperor began to move, his arms wrapping around Kristina. His eyes opened, five seconds later the couple breaking their embrace. They were silent, Andreas looking at Manuel, a smile on his face. “See, I told you.” Lorenzo said.

Manuel opened the tent flap. “That you did. And now, I think they’d like to be left alone.”

* * *

Near Bari, April 11, 1460:

Andreas stared at his enemy counterpart, Alfredo of Lecce. A skinny man, but far taller than Andreas, with a heavily freckled face and reddish hair. German ancestor, most likely, not surprising considering the name. Alfredo’s horse snorted as a fly flew into his nose, the Apulian calming the mare with a few strokes on the neck and a whisper. He looked up, staring directly at Andreas. “So why are we here? Have you come to tell me whether I’m to be drawn and quartered, or boiled in oil?”

Vlad glanced over at the Emperor. Andreas knew his father-in-law, bleh, was wondering why they were here as well. The Roman army, when combined with the Bari garrison, outnumbered Alfredo’s force over six to one. Even in their entrenchments, equipped with their culverins, they stood little chance, not with Roman hundred pounders in Andreas’ artillery trains. So it had come as a surprise to everyone on both sides when he had insisted on parleying with the Apulian commander.

“I would speak with you,” Andreas said.

Alfredo snorted. “I’m here.”

“Alone.” The Apulian jerked in surprise.

“Your majesty, is that wise?” Manuel asked.

“I must protest this, sir,” Andronikos added.

“I agree,” Lorenzo said.

Andreas’ head snapped around to stare at the three officers, his guardsmen. “I am your Emperor. Obey me.”

“Demetrios Megas,” Vlad whispered.

Andreas ignored that, but gestured toward a small hillock, looking at Alfredo. “After you, strategos.” Alfredo cocked an eyebrow at the use of that title, but trotted over. A second later Andreas followed, leaving the four Romans and two Apulians that had accompanied Alfredo behind.

The two rode in silence until they reached the hill. “I could kill you now,” Alfredo said.

“Yes, you could. But you won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Would my death save your people?”

“No.”

“That is why you won’t do it. All of this…” Andreas gestured toward Bari. “You’re doing for your people, not for simple revenge.” He smiled wistfully. “Which makes you a better person than me.”

Andreas gazed out, toward the west, where the sun was lighting up the clouds as it began its descent. “Lovely land.”

“That it is.”

The Emperor nodded. “A fine land, a fertile land. More than enough for both of us.” Alfredo scrunched his face in confusion as Andreas turned to look at him. “You said you would rather die like men than live like dogs.”

“That is correct. And we have not changed our minds.”

“I did not think so. But I must ask you, would you rather die like men, or live like men?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m offering you another choice. What would you say to becoming members of the Apulian tagma?” Alfredo blinked in confusion. “You and your men are brave, veteran soldiers. Rhomania could use men like that.”

“What, why would we consent to becoming your subjects, after all you Romans have done?”

“You do not understand. You would be tagma soldiers. Your biggest complaint has been that you were reduced to marginal lands and your children, while the best estates went to tagma soldiers. Well now you would have those estates, and you would keep your children.”

“But what about the tagma soldiers already here? They would never give up their lands or work beside us.”

Andreas smiled. “As it so happens, I have a new theme that needs soldiers. They will be reassigned to Bulgaria.”

Alfredo’s eyes narrowed. “But I only have four thousand. A tagma has ten thousand. Where would the rest come from?”

“I’m sure there are six thousand other Apulian men who would be interested in my offer.”

“That is all very nice, but we will never consent to giving up the faith of our fathers.”

“You will not be forced to.”

“Why?”

“A man once asked me, ‘Are we not all children of God?’ There will be no more persecution of Catholics. You shall be treated as any other of the noble heresies. But there is one condition I must insist on.”

“What?”

“That you recognize Gregory XII in Avignon as Pope, not Julius I. Will that be a problem?”

“Julius abandoned us here to die. We have no loyalty to him. But won’t doing all this make you look weak?”

“Probably. But mercy is not weakness. My grandfather understood that; if others don’t…” Andreas shrugged. “They will have to be taught.”

“You would do all this, even after the Black Day?”

“I do this so there will be no more Black Days, for your people or mine. There is only one people who deserve a Black Day, and they are not Apulians.” Andreas straightened in his saddle. “So, what say you?”

“How do I know this is not some sort of trick? Why should I trust you? After all, you have already slaughtered the inhabitants of at least a dozen villages.”

Andreas grimaced. “I cannot change what has already been done. I can only do what I can to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. I swear, on my mother’s grave, that I am telling you the truth and that I will do all that I have promised.” The Emperor stared as Alfredo chewed his lip for several seconds. “Well?”

“In that case, Basileus, we have an agreement.”

1460 continued: Andreas’ plan to reintegrate Apulia into the Empire meets with sizeable opposition, particularly amongst the clergy, but it is overcome when Vlad throws his support behind the endeavor. He does this both to warm relations between himself and the Emperor, but also because it helps allow him to conduct an army reform, one he believes will not only improve military efficiency but also help secure its loyalty to him and not Andreas.

The main feature of Vlad’s reform is the elimination of most of the cleisurai districts. While these had proved very useful during the War of the Five Emperors, allowing the claimants to maximize their manpower resources, since then the multiplicity of tiny provinces has proven to be an administrative headache. Along with the old Italian tagma, the Italian cleisurai are transferred to Bulgaria to fill the empty tagma of Bulgaria. Because he failed to hold southern Italy, Nikolaios Laskaris, who owed his position as Italian strategos to Theodoros IV, is cashiered and a personal friend of Vlad placed in command of the Bulgarians.

Meanwhile the Balkan and Anatolian cleisurai are condensed to form the tagma of a new theme, Cilicia-Phoenicia, carved out of the Syrian theme, which even with the recent losses to the Mamelukes has still grown significantly since its creation. The last element of his army redistricting is comparatively minor, the transfer of the Crimean archontate to Thessaloniki where it can help keep an eye on the Serbs. As a result, of the old twenty one cleisurai only seven remain, three in Armenia and four in Crimea.


vladarmydistricts.png

The various Imperial themes, numbering fourteen strong. Those marked with a (V) have strategoi loyal to Vlad. The numbers next to Armenia and Crimea denote the number of cleisurai there. The southern coast of Anatolia and the island maintain the navy and remain outside the tagma-theme system. As for professional units, there are archontates (1000 strong) at Constantinople, Antioch, and Thessaloniki. The Athanatoi and Varangoi (5000 strong each) are in Constantinople, while the Scholai (2200 strong) are at Aleppo.​

But that is not all Vlad does. He also conducts a thorough vetting of the tagmata strategoi, retiring the oldest ones, and replacing them with younger men. When he is through, six of the fourteen strategoi are friends of his, and that does not include the Thracesian tagma, over which Vlad is still strategos.

In April Alexeia gives birth to a bastard son at her estates in Coloneia, who is given the name Demetrios. Just a few weeks later her rival Anastasia Palaiologina gives birth to twin sons during her house arrest, choosing names that make it clear she has not abandoned her imperial aspirations. Her sons are named Basileios and Konstantinos. Two months later, after Andreas has returned to Constantinople but before Alexeia has, news arrives from Avignon. Patriarch Adem is dead.

The Council of Avignon had not gone well, almost immediately dissolving into a theological argument, occasionally descending into fisticuffs, between the Rome and Constantinople delegations. For over a month this unhappy state continued, the council accomplishing absolutely nothing towards its goal until finally news of what has happened in Apulia causes Julius to storm out. He is immediately followed by all of the delegates from the Roman Catholic kingdoms, most of whom are beholden to Julius for their high clerical positions.

The only good to come out of the council is at the end. Just four days after Julius leaves, Adem’s health begins to fail rapidly; three days after that he is dead. Gregory XII pays all the expenses for his funeral, and for the construction of the new chapel where his body is interned. It is to be an Orthodox church, for the use of Roman merchants and diplomats. And on the front is engraved in both Latin and Greek Gregory’s answer to the question ‘Why?’, an answer he had heard in the news from Apulia. On the façade is writ ‘For are we not all children of God?’

But in Constantinople, Adem’s death gives Vlad an opening. Because of the clergy’s disgust of Andreas, Vlad is able to get his own candidate elected, Maximus III of Amaseia. With the patriarch securely in his pocket, Vlad is finally able to issue a declaration. ‘Due to these unsettled times, and the current straits of the Empire’ Vlad pushes back the date of Andreas’ accession to the throne and the end of Vlad’s regency to Andreas’ eighteenth, not his sixteenth birthday.

Andreas immediately protests, but he is without allies. Adem is dead, while Alexeia is in the east. Vlad has the patriarch and half of the strategoi beholden to him, while the other half (except for Alfredo himself) are annoyed over the pro-Catholic Apulian policy. Even the Coloneian and Syrian strategoi, from regions with large Muslim populations, are angry, as they fear that increased ties to Catholicism might lead the Empire to start persecuting Muslims.

Faced by such a front, Andreas is forced to back down; the support of the Athanatoi and Varangoi are not enough. However he does demand two concessions out of Vlad, remarking that ‘Maria does seem to be accident-prone, and it would be a shame if I was so distraught that I might not be able to protect her’. First, Vlad must honor the promises Andreas made to the Apulians. And second, Manuel must be promoted to comes. Vlad accepts, not willing to risk the life of his daughter, and he knows that especially after what he does next, he cannot afford to push Andreas too far. While the provinces are overwhelmingly his, Constantinople itself, her troops and citizens, acknowledge only one master, Andreas himself.

On September 4, Manuel and Alexeia are wed in Aghia Sophia. It is a happy day for the couple, as well as for Andreas, her sister Zoe, and her new friend, none other than Alexios Palaiologos himself. The old man and the virgin princess have become quite close, jokingly referring to each other as grandfather and granddaughter. And it is a victory for Andreas, but it is shortly followed by a major defeat.

pillarsoftheearth.jpg

Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos (left), Alexios Palaiologos (center), and Zoe Komnena (right), at the wedding of Manuel of Kyzikos and Alexeia Komnena. Andreas famously refused to dress splendidly for the wedding, claiming that at such a ceremony 'the groom is the emperor'. As for Alexios, now eighty years old, his health is poor. The main reason the old strategos still lives without an 'arranged' death is his new but deep friendship with Zoe, as Andreas refuses to do anything that would hurt her. Image taken from Episode 15, The Triumph of Vlad Dracula


During the summer, a plague epidemic swept through Buda, killing Istvan and his two sons. In August, Istvan’s younger brother takes the throne of Hungary as Emperor Ladislaus I. His wife too perished in the outbreak, and despite his infatuation with his lowborn Croatian mistress, the nobility insist that he remarry, preferably with the Russians to maintain the anti-Polish alliance.

Vlad sees an opportunity in this to get rid of Kristina, but Alexei apparently prefers a grandson as Emperor of the Romans rather than Emperor of Hungary. It is a more prestigious title, belonging to a more powerful state, and one which is more strongly tied with the Great Kingdom of the Rus. So the Megas Rigas makes no move to arrange a marriage between Ladislaus and Kristina.

On September 1, Alexei I is killed in a boating accident. His eldest son Nikolai takes the throne of Russia, being crowned in Kiev like his father, and almost immediately afterwards Kristina is recalled from Constantinople. After arriving at Kiev, she has a long and loud argument with her brother. When Kristina points out she is not a virgin, and that the Hungarians know that, Nikolai responds that the Hungarians and Ladislaus don’t care; they are adamant about the anti-Polish alliance, especially since Krakow has been strengthening ties with both Bohemia and Bavaria. When Kristina protests that Ladislaus is three times her age, Nikolai says ‘You are royalty. Duty to the state must take priority over love’.

On Christmas Day, Kristina marries Ladislaus and is crowned Empress of Hungary.

kristinaandladislaus.jpg

Kristina Shuisky Arpad, Empress of Hungary, and her husband Ladislaus I. Image taken from Episode 16, Christmas in Buda


* * *

Blachernae Palace, Constantinople, December 16, 1460:

Maria grunted as her husband pushed himself into her. She didn’t watch, staring up at the red silk canopy covering her bed. A moment later her eyes flickered down over the Emperor Andreas’ lean body on top of her, and then up to his face. Blank face. He thrust, one, two, three. Maria looked again at the canopy.

Another thrust, one, two, three. He sighed, stopping for a moment. “This doesn’t help. Might as well be using a corpse.”

Maria’s head snapped down to glare at her husband, her lips curling into a snarl. “I might actually conceive a son if you weren’t too busy sticking yourself into your Russian whore. Oh, wait, you lost her, ha.”

Andreas snarled and then grunted as he resumed. “Want…more…of this?”

“No,” she sighed. “Just hurry up and finish.” Another heave. “Are you sure you want me to have a son?”

“What?”

“Are you sure you want me to have a son?”

“Yes. Empire…needs…heir. Why…not?”

“Once I have a son, I no longer have any use for you.” With her hand she caressed the great scar at the bottom of Andreas’ right ribcage, the legacy of a Bulgarian blade in the siege of Constantinople.

Andreas looked at it too, faltering a bit, then thrust again; Maria jolted. “Last Maria…regent…did not…end well.”

Maria shrugged. “My position would be shaky at first, but I am not Maria of Barcelona. I would manage.”

“You…forget…thing.”

“What?”

Andreas halted. “Once you have a son, I no longer have any use for you either.”

She sneered. “Is that so? You’re still a boy of fifteen. How will you fare without the support of my father?” Andreas shoved himself into her, hard. Maria bit her lip, a few drops of blood trickling down her chin. “I am going to kill you,” she growled.

He didn’t respond, thrusting rapidly three times. Maria could feel him quivering inside her. It actually feels good, she thought. She snarled at herself inside her head, her tongue licking the blood on her lip, rolling the salty flavor in her mouth. She looked at Andreas, aquiver. He wasn’t paying attention.

He came. As he did, Maria stared up at the canopy, not thinking of the man, the boy, inside her. She was the daughter of one of the Empire’s greatest living generals, nineteen years of age. She could have married into the upper ranks of society, and she had. The most powerful ‘man’ in the known world was atop her. And now all she wished was for it to be Thomas there instead.

In her mind’s eye she smiled at the remembrance of the Albanian guardsman, son of a pig farmer, his rough, callused hands, the smell of sweat and leather that clung to him, his trimmed black beard, not the fuzzy brown scruff of her husband. And then she frowned. Thomas knew what she wanted, that she wanted him, but he did not dare reciprocate, not while the thing atop her could have him killed with one word.

Andreas sighed and pulled out, flopping onto the bed next to her. “It’s over,” he said.

“Finally.” She tilted her head to look at him. “I’m still going to kill you.”

Andreas stared at her and then sat up, his right hand tracing his scar. A faint smile flickered on his face. “Perhaps.” He got up out of the bed, putting on his clothing. Maria kept staring at the ceiling as the Emperor rustled in the corner. He was finished. “Till tomorrow.”

Maria sighed. “Till tomorrow.”

Two weeks later the Empress missed her period.
 
The Boy Emperor

Part 8.2

1461-1469

Imperial Palace, Buda, June 15, 1461:

Ladislaus stepped into the chamber, his eyes darting around to see the multitude of doctors, midwives, and wet nurses. “Leave us,” he commanded. A moment later only two others were in the room, Kristina Shuisky Arpad, and the newborn infant she was holding. Her infant, a son.

“He’s small,” Ladislaus observed as he walked over to stand beside her. He knelt down.
“He is, but his cry is good and strong.”

“Good. I was worried. He came very early.” No, he didn’t, Kristina thought, quietly thanking the Virgin for her son’s small size. He actually took longer than normal.

“Do not fear, your majesty. He will live, so long as I have something to say about.”

Ladislaus beamed. “Good. What did you want to name him?”

“With your permission, your majesty, I would like to name him Andrew.”
“Andrew. After his grandfather?”

Kristina smiled. “Yes, after the Warrior King of Hungary. It is a good, strong name, don’t you think?”

“I do, and I approve. Well done.” There was the clunk of boots on carpeted cobblestones, and then the creak of the door as Ladislaus left the room.

Kristina stared down into the face of her son. Not after his grandfather, she thought. But after his father. Andreas.

1461: Vlad’s happiness at finally having his daughter pregnant is somewhat lessened when on March 12, Andreas’ sixteenth birthday and the original date for the end of the regency, there is a near-riot in Constantinople. In the Hippodrome the crowds had refused to take their seats for the races, demanding their emperor instead. Only when he appeared in the Imperial box would they settle down.

Alarmed by this, when Maria finishes her second trimester in June, he has her moved to his estates outside of Chalcedon. While he would prefer to have his grandchild born in the purple, he knows childbirth would be a very convenient time for Maria to have an accident. In all events, she has a relatively easy birth on August 26. It is a son, Demetrios Drakos Doukas Laskaris Komnenos.

Blachernae Palace, Constantinople, July 1, 1461:

Andreas sneezed and glanced over at his third cup full of ouzo. It was sitting next to a copy of his grandfather’s, Demetrios Megas’, work on generalship, bound in a plain leather binding. He shook his head. He needed his head clear, or at least not any fuzzier than it already was; burying himself in drink would not get Kristina back.

He looked over the map of the known world sprawled in front of him. Iceland stared back in the far off corner. I need a war, he thought. He was loathe to admit it, but it was true. The Empire was battered, exhausted, worn out by a decade of near-continuous fighting. But that did not change the fact that he needed a war.

This isn’t right. The people deserve a rest. But then he thought of Kristina, of how when she smiled she would get these dimples in her cheeks, the sound of her laughter, the sight of sunlight dancing off her diamond earrings. Her face, her touch, her counsel. The room went blurry as tears clogged his eyes. By God, I miss her. And if he wanted her back, I do, oh I do, then he needed a war. Then there will be a war.

He looked over the map. Hungary?

That would be nice. A head shake. No, I need a war the Empire can win.

The Ottomans?

It’d annoy the Cilician and Syrian strategoi. Their lands made huge amounts of money from the eastern trade that came via the Ottoman lands. Plus Andreas did not want to get any closer than he had to the chaos in central Asia. War had finally come between Mahmud and Jahangir, Jahangir’s superior numbers and wealth matched by Mahmud’s better troops and his new lieutenant Babur. By the Office of Barbarians’ latest reports, Mahmud’s new brother-in-law was currently in Kashmir, trashing the state for its ill-timed attempt to break its vassalage.

The Mamelukes?

That’d make a nice target. Alexandria could use a hinterland. He shook his head, trying to drive out the fuzziness from the first two glasses of ouzo. It’d involve too many men, and too much territory. I need a quick war.

Venice?

That’d be nice. But no, too much risk of the false emperor getting involved. Especially with that bastard Julius. He seems to visit Paris and Dijon…a lot.

Naples?

Not sure if I can trust the Apulians there. And I’m going to need them. I need a tagma I can trust.

His eyes drifted over, to the west. He smiled. I have a war.

Blachernae Palace, Constantinople, February 7, 1462:
Vlad smiled. It was a good day. He glanced over to where Andreas was cooing over his son, held in Maria’s arms who also had a huge grin on her face, both of them seated on their thrones. They hadn’t slept together since it had become clear the Empress was pregnant, but Vlad wasn’t worried. Andreas had the appetites of a young man, and without Kristina around, it was only a matter of time before he turned back to Maria. Plus the news from Buda, the fact that Kristina must have conceived on her wedding night to have a child so fast, had to weaken Andreas’ ardor for the Russian princess/Hungarian Empress.

And if instead he decided to play around with the maids, which according to rumor he already had, although there were no bastards...yet. Vlad shrugged. If it got out of hand, he’d just have the patriarch give a few sermons about the sins of marital infidelity. After all, Theodoros Megas had famously been faithful to his spouse.

He looked across the crowd of courtiers, bureaucrats, and soldiers gathered in the audience hall. Most of the latter were loyal to him, most of the middle to Andreas, and the former were insignificant. Only the Athanatoi and Varangoi were firmly in Andreas’ pocket, and possibly the Apulian tagma. Vlad had seven tagmata, and the remainder were wary of a boy whose only command experience consisted of capitulating to Catholics and rebels. But that shouldn’t matter, he thought as his grandson gurgled happily at one of Andreas’ faces, eliciting a giggle from Maria. That was why he wasn’t at the head of the room, but instead among the crowd. Let the boy rule, he thought. So long as I get my grandson on the throne, and my daughter at the Emperor’s side.

The only small cloud on this sunny day was the news from Syracuse. Apparently there had been some sort of riot, followed by a fire, in which at least a dozen Roman merchants had been killed, along with over three hundred locals, and the local sheriff was claiming the Romans were responsible. He sneered, more likely some of their stupid schism. Sicily still followed Rome, much to the annoyance of Avignon Aragon, and with the deepening schism after the failure of Gregory’s council, the tensions were increasing.

The doors boomed open as a tall man with dark skin and eyes strolled into the chamber, the envoy from Barcelona, the reason why they were here. Vlad noticed his stride; he was a soldier, even if he was clad in fine red silk, rippling in the sunlight and not armor. “We welcome the representative of our good cousin, Ferdinand, first of that name, King of Aragon and Sicily,” Andreas intoned.

“I cannot return that welcome,” the envoy. A ripple of whispers swept the crowd. Vlad frowned. “For my master and his good subjects can no longer stand by and allow such treachery to happen. You have incited disorder amongst my lord’s subjects, and done great harm to their lives and livelihoods, all in the name of the profit of your merchants. Do you deny these charges?”

More whispers swept the crowd, this time not surprised but angry. There had been increasing tensions between Aragonese-Sicilian and Roman merchants for quite some time. Barcelona still held a trade concession granted by Thomas I Laskaris to keep Maria of Barcelona at home, which was annoying especially since she had been dead for fifteen years, and the Aragonese and Sicilians were aggravated over the lack of silk and sugar duties on Roman products and traders, bestowed in exchange for help in the Gunpowder Crusade. In fact, after the obvious clamor against Venice, Naples, and the Mamelukes, Aragon-Sicily was the first target by the expansionists, especially amongst the European strategoi, the ones most beholden to Vlad.

“Of course I deny these charges. It is entirely possible that accidents have occurred, but it has not been our intent to harm your master or his people.”

“Sweet words, your majesty. But honeyed words from a Greek are not enough to close this wound.” He pulled out a scroll from under his robes. “It is my duty to inform you that as of now, a state of war exists behind the Kingdom of Aragon and Sicily and the Roman Empire.”

The crowd exploded, snarling and roaring at the envoy who stared back impassively. A few guards started forward, hands on their swords. “Hold!” Vlad yelled. “We will have order in this court!” The mob settled down and Vlad turned to Andreas, who nodded in thanks. “Although it is my prerogative as regent to decide this man’s fate, I will follow your wishes on this matter, your majesty.”

“Our thanks,” Andreas replied, looking at the messenger. “You expect to die, don’t you?”

“I do, your majesty. But I am prepared to do what I must in service of my lord.”

“Good man,” Andreas said, smiling and gesturing at the crowd. “It is on such men that empires are built. Such a man is not to be harmed. We are not Venetians here.” Laughter. He looked again at the Aragonese. “You will be confined; I cannot take the risk of you giving our secrets to your master. But when it pleases God to once again see peace between our realms, you shall return to your home, without payment of any ransom. Such is my will. Let it be done.”

Applause burst from the crowd, Vlad clapping a few times himself as two guards escorted the man away, not to a prison, but to an apartment. Vlad would see to it himself that Andreas’ word here was kept. But then his eyes drifted over to the Emperor’s face. Was that a smile? He blinked, and whatever it was, was gone.

1462: Both Vlad and Andreas immediately throw themselves into planning for the war. Vlad’s proposal is for a massive assault, consisting of the entire Imperial fleet, currently eighty six warships strong, including fourteen purxiphoi, along with the Epirote, Macedonian, and Thracesian tagmata, plus the Varangoi and Athanatoi, a total of thirty four thousand men (if the formations were at full strength it would be forty thousand-note that both the guard regiments are at full strength, an unique status) without the fleet. It would be under the overall command of Vlad.

Andreas immediately protests to this arrangement, pointing out that since Vlad is regent, his place is at the capitol, or at least in a position where he cannot be cut off from Constantinople. Instead he suggests that he go with those forces, minus the Thracesian tagma in order to alleviate supply issues. What will truly matter in this fight is the quality of the Imperial fleet, not so much the army, if all goes to plan.

And it is of high quality. While construction on the Imperial Arsenal had been halted during the siege of Constantinople and the work site seized by the allied army, all of the equipment had been moved inside the city and survived. Thus construction was able to resume quite rapidly, and although the great shipyard is still as of yet incapable of producing any vessels, it has repaired and refitted every single ship in the Imperial fleet.

Plus its guncasting and powder-making facilities, designed to provide the entire navy’s needs in those regards, are fully operational. As a result, even though the fleet still falls short of its preferred strength of one hundred ships, with twenty purxiphoi, it is a very powerful force, in far better shape than any of the tagma (the best is the Helladic, at 82% strength).

Another feature that makes them more effective in battle is an innovation that dates from the Demetrian military reforms of the late 1430s. At that time, the two-section system whereby men were rotated between full-time and reserve status, was ended. Instead three-fifths of the fleet’s manpower pool had been turned into full-time sailors and marines stationed in Constantinople, where part of their pay was in the form of rent-free housing for themselves and their families. Meanwhile the remainder were turned into reservists receiving no pay but only paying half-taxes, although there the lack of money to maintain training for these units meant that by the early 1460s, their quality had declined substantially. In effect the navy had gone the way of the army, sacrificing trained reserves in exchange for a more capable initial core.

A side effect of this was that the Imperial fleet was firmly in Andreas’ camp. Although the sailors themselves had been serving in the Levant during the siege, their families had been in the city, and thus support Andreas (which also gives Andreas the favor of the Alexandrian archontate, one thousand full-time soldiers who had originally been part of Constantinople’s civic militia during the siege), something that would not have been possible under Anna I’s setup with half the men and all of the families stationed in the provinces. The lands that provided the estates under the old arrangement still remain outside the tagma-theme system, their taxes providing the funds for the professional fleet.

Vlad is suspicious, but Andreas points out that if Demetrios is going to be secure on the throne he is going to need ‘a strong father, not just a strong grandfather’. Besides, he is taking both the Macedonian and Epirote tagmata, both of whose strategoi are loyal to Vlad. The argument is cut short when news arrives from a Genoese Modon trader that Ferdinand has moved. Malta is under siege; there is no more time.

As this is going on, efforts are made to secure the eastern front against the Ottomans. On March 15, Irene Komnena marries Prince Mikeli Bagrationi of Georgia, second son of Georgia’s new king, David VII. Konstantin II had died peacefully in his sleep at his new palace in Baku last September, mourned by all his people. Andreas had originally not moved to marry off Zoe’s twin for fear of hurting his sister, but relations between the twins has declined recently. Irene has always favored her older sister Anastasia, so it is also hoped that by sending her to Tbilisi it will prevent her from doing any political damage to Andreas in the Empire.

The Athanatoi and Varangoi board the Imperial fleet, but they do not stop in Thessaloniki to rendezvous with the Macedonians and Epirotes as planned. Instead they stop in Monemvasia, in the Helladic tagma (whose strategos is as yet uncommitted) for supplies and the latest intelligence reports, before pushing on for Messina. Four monores peel off from the armada to summon the Apulian tagma, along with the Bari squadron. Andreas is planning to take the island of Sicily with twenty thousand men, the men he knows he can trust.

While the summoning of Alfredo and his men leaves Apulia wide open to Neapolitan attack, Naples stays its hand. They are still very wary of Roman power, and so will not intervene unless it becomes clear the Romans are losing. Another reason for staying out appears in early April, when the Duchies of Ancona and Urbino both sign defensive alliance pacts with the Roman Empire. All three parties agree to treat any Neapolitan, Papal, or Venetian attack on any of them as an attack on all.

The Aragonese fleet, numbering seventy eight ships, is caught completely off guard by the Roman landing. It had been deployed to defend the forces besieging Malta, which is holding out stubbornly despite the five-hundred-strong (a new formation, a half-archontate) garrison’s numerical inferiority of over twenty to one. Andreas had also dispatched several monores as blockade runners to encourage that deployment.

The Marinid siege fifteen years earlier had done much to show the weak points of the Hospitalier fortresses, which have since been rectified. One new feature of Malta’s defenses is that key points outside the citadels have had their distances to the gun towers measured beforehand, so powder does not have to be wasted on ranging shots.

Although Andreas has yet to be joined by the Apulian tagma, and only has the two guard regiments, Messina falls in a night. Although the city is taken by assault and not surrender, the liberties of the Roman soldiery are limited by a new decree. Any soldier found guilty of rape is to be castrated, and any officer who willfully fails to enforce this decree is to suffer the same fate. Andreas also takes other measures, although less drastic, to safeguard the lives of the women and children. His orders are that ‘all the possessions of the city are to go to the troops (Andreas foregoes his own share to encourage cooperation), but the buildings and people are to remain inviolate, save those who bear arms, for Messina is now a Roman city, and its inhabitants Roman people’.

While there are incidents, including several rapes, they stop when Andreas proves he is not bluffing. On April 19, the day after Messina’s fall, sixteen Roman soldiers are publicly castrated in full view of both the army and Messina’s people. The act is ended by a public announcement to the soldiers that ‘you have had your night, your right as victorious soldiers, but this is a Roman city now. Any soldier who steals will be charged as a thief.’ Once he is finished, Andreas goes to the jewelers’ district, finds a storeowner who managed to hide some of his wares, and purchases several broaches for Zoe.

The Athanatoi and Varangoi remain in Messina for a week, Andreas planning his next moves, gathering more supplies from the countryside (which he scrupulously makes sure are paid for, either with cash or tax exemptions), and also making clear to the Sicilians his plan for their future as members of the Empire. A handful of churches are seized and established as Orthodox churches, but eighty percent, including the cathedral, remain Catholic. The bishop is confirmed in his rights and duties, and an understanding that in the event of an Orthodox bishop of Messina, neither will have any jurisdiction over churches, clergy, or adherents belonging to the other creed.

This is toleration granted to Roman Catholics, which is even more grating to Rhomanian minds than the concessions in Apulia. But Sicily has steadfastly remained loyal to Rome ever since the Schism began almost eighty years earlier, and is unlikely to stop now. Unlike in Apulia, the Sicilians do not have a recent grievance with Julius. But for now Andreas can afford to ignore this issue. He has given his soldiers victory, and for now that is all they care about.

As April ends, Andreas marches, but as he heads for Palermo, he receives ominous news. The Sicilian levies are concentrating, far more rapidly than he expected. At Cefalu he is challenged by their fully assembled might, fifteen thousand to his ninety five hundred. The Romans immediately backpedal, the Sicilians pursuing, but after their forced marches they are already tired. Andreas sends waves of turkopouloi at them, stinging the Sicilians with arrows and also taunting their manhood, or lack thereof, as well as the quality of their womenfolk in the Romans’ beds, when they get the chance. Enraged, the levies charge after the light horsemen.

As soon as they spot the Roman army, anchored on a low rise east of Cefalu, the Sicilian army whips itself into a furious, pell-mell charge. The turkopouloi fall back, the Sicilian knights chasing after them, only to run into caltrops. The knightly charge shatters as rearward horses plow into their crippled predecessors, until some realize that the Roman cavalry are retreating only down special lanes in the caltrop fields. They follow these lanes, and discover that Andreas had pre-positioned his cannons on them. What is left of the Sicilian cavalry is smashed flat.

Fearful of the carnage in front of them and buffeted by the panicked cavalry survivors, the levy infantry is shakey at best. When the skutatoi plow into them, though their charge is disjointed by the need to navigate around the caltrops (followed by workmen clearing as many as possible for the next phase), they break. Andreas commits as much of his cavalry as he can maneuver through the spiky fields, completing the rout. The Sicilians suffer over twenty three hundred casualties, mostly cavalry, while the rest of the army is effectively destroyed, many of the infantry throwing down their arms in flight and hightailing back to their fields. The Romans take less than three hundred casualties, mostly caused by long-range crossbow fire, and only forty fatalities. Many in the army proclaim it a second Ain Sijni.

Despite the victory, Palermo, Sicily’s chief city with forty five thousand inhabitants, prepares to resist, but instead capitulates when Alfredo arrives and doubles the size of Andreas’ army. In less than four weeks the Romans have taken all of northern Sicily, as well as the island’s two greatest cities. After spending five days in Palermo, which is left with a garrison of 500 men, Andreas heads southwest, moving around the coast. His plan is to move counter-clockwise around the island, securing the shoreline before taking the rugged interior.


* * *


Roman Camp, west of Palermo, May 15, 1462:

Ioannes growled as the slop landed in his wooden bowl. “Still haven’t found any food, have you, Manuel?”

The hairy cook shrugged his fat shoulders, his belly wobbling back and forth. “Shut up. Do you want your bread?”

“Yes.” A snarl. A moment later a hunk landed in the slop. A maggot peaked out at him.
“I thought we were supposed to get fresh provisions!” The speaker was the one next in line after Ioannes, a skinny one, probably a new toxota. Ioannes didn’t know who he was, and he couldn’t tell since his hood was up.

“I was the one supposed to get fresh provisions,” Manuel said. A laugh. Spittle. “I didn’t hear anything about you getting any though.”

“But-”

“Listen, you’re obviously new, so I’ll let you off this time. But from now on, shut up, or you won’t get anything. Oh, and don’t try to kill me. I have a few officer friends who wouldn’t take too kindly to something like that.”

“This isn’t right!” the man continued. “Fresh provisions are to go to combat soldiers, not sold on the side while we eat pig swill!”

“Fine! You don’t like it, then don’t eat it! You want to complain, go to the Emperor!”

The man jerked down his hood, revealing a tanned, bony face covered in a short but thick light-brown beard. “I AM THE EMPEROR, YOU GODLESS HEATHEN! ANDRONIKOS, LORENZO! SEIZE THIS MAN!” Two eikosarchoi that had been lounging in the back, officers Ioannes had assumed were some of Manuel’s friends, moved. Before the cook could waddle away, muscled hands were clamping down on his shoulders.

“By the power vested in me by God Almighty, I, Andreas, first of that name, Emperor of the Romans, find you, Manuel of Matapan, guilty of extortion and embezzling army property. For this crime I sentence you to be executed by decapitation, judgment to be carried out immediately.” He gestured at Manuel’s stores. “And get rid of this.”

“What are we supposed to eat?!” a soldier in the back of the line shouted.

Andreas pointed to several wagons camped two hundred meters to the west. A faint scent of oranges drifted over. “My provisions. Fresh bread, fruit, mutton, wine, Sicilian but it’s the best that’s available, and even some sugar pastries. They’re all yours.”

“Your majesty, what are you going to eat?” Ioannes asked.

Andreas held out his hand. “May I?” He pointed at Manuel’s bowl of slop and maggoty bread. “No sense in letting it all go to waste. Now go, eat. You men deserve it.”


* * *


Meanwhile the Roman and Aragonese fleets battle, both sides acquitting themselves with skill and courage. The Roman advantage in numbers and more recent refits is counterbalanced by the greater proximity to Aragonese naval bases, particularly Agrigento, which is now Andreas’ next target. But the need to secure his new conquests slows his march, and on May 24 the fleets again clash off Syracuse.

It is a calm day, a very calm day. Without any wind, it proves impossible to move the purxiphoi without towing, so the Aragonese are able to close without being subjected to the usual hail of cannon fire. In the two hour melee that follows, the Romans have the worst off it, although as evening comes the wind picks up and they are able to retire.


* * *


Roman Camp, near Trapani, May 28, 1462:

Manuel looked at his emperor. Andreas was seated on a plain wooden chair, his now-leathery-tanned right arm resting on a pile of military treatises. He could see the Strategikon, as well as works by Nikephoros Phokas, Theodoros Megas, and Demetrios Megas. “How bad is it?” Andreas asked.

“Bad,” Lorenzo reported. “One purxiphos captured, along with six other vessels. Five more sent to the bottom. About two thousand casualties. It’ll be at least three weeks before the fleet will be ready for action again, and now the Aragonese will have the advantage in numbers.”

“I don’t like this,” Andreas said. Manuel saw Lorenzo opening his mouth to say ‘how could you not not like this?’ He shook his head. ‘Not now.’ “So far the Aragonese have been cautious in using their ships, and then all of a sudden they come straight at us. They weren’t willing to take us head-on even when we were approaching Palermo, but now… They’re up to something, something big.”
richardarmor.jpg

Emperor Andreas Komnenos in the field, image taken from Ep. 18, Sicily


Andronikos poked his head into the tent. “Your majesty, the Andalusi envoy is here.”

“Bring him in,” Andreas ordered. Two Andalusi galleys had made landfall at Trapani the day before, carrying a representative who said he had urgent news for the Emperor of the Romans.

Andronikos lifted the flap, and a second later the man entered. He wore a white turban, reportedly the latest fashion in Cordoba, which contrasted heavily with his brown skin, and a red silk robe. Manuel squinted; the face looked familiar. “I bring greetings from Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu, Lord of al-Andalus, to his imperial majesty, Andreas, Emperor of the Romans.”

“We welcome these greetings, and look forward to the news he has sent us.”

“Of course, your majesty. As you must know, my lord has numerous spies in the court of Ferdinand, and they have come in possession of news that is of great import both to my master and to your majesty. The king is no longer in Barcelona.”

“And where is he?”

“He is coming here, to Sicily.”

“So that is why they came right at us,” Manuel heard Andreas whisper. The Emperor then raised his voice. “Your master would not happen to know how many soldiers he is bringing with him, would he?”

“Forty thousand.”

“What?!” Lorenzo exclaimed. “That is ridiculous! Ferdinand can’t possibly have such an army!”

Andreas held up his hand to silence the eikosarchos. “We quite agree. Not even the Grand Army of Castile reached such a size. Aragon cannot field such a force, not without help. How many?”

“Fifteen thousand Castilians, hired as mercenaries, but with the understanding that in the event of Aragonese victory, the sugar and silk trade concessions in Castile will also be removed.”

Andreas looked at Lorenzo. “All of the monores are still combat-ready, correct?”
“Yes, your majesty.”

“Good. I want them out patrolling the western approaches yesterday. And I want turkopouloi watching every stretch of coast from here to Syracuse. They’ll most likely make for Agrigento. See to it. Go.” Lorenzo left the tent.

“Now that that is taken care of, I have another question,” Andreas said.

“I am to place myself at your disposal,” the envoy replied.

“Your face looks familiar. Have we met?”

“No, your majesty. But you have met some of my family.”

“How so?”

“I am Leo Drakos, son of Vlad Dracula, older brother of Maria. You should be quite happy to be married to her.”

Andreas’ face tightened. “And why is that?”

“Because a year with her takes a century off of purgatory.”

Andreas grinned. “You know your sister well. How did you come to be an Andalusi envoy?”

“I am a painter, and my skills became known to the Lord, who asked for me to come to his court. That was in 1453, and I have been there since. When it became time for this mission, I was chosen, not only for the fact that my Greek is fluent, but also because my relation to your imperial majesty has made me somewhat of a political inconvenience.”

“How so?”

“Having the Roman Emperor’s brother-in-law as a member of Cordoba’s court makes Marrakesh’s look poorly by comparison, which has led to…tensions. It also has concerned the Catholic powers.”

“We understand. Does that mean you wish to return to the Empire upon completion of your assignment?”

“I do, your majesty. If you would allow it, of course. The Lord of al-Andalus is eager to improve relations with Marrakesh. My wife and all our possessions are in the ships we took.”

Andreas smiled, crookedly this time. “You may. An Andalusi woman for a wife. I hear they are quite beautiful.” That caused Manuel to frown. Andreas had already picked out a favorite camp follower, Theophano, and tried two more. It was a miracle that he hadn’t sired any bastards yet.

“They are, your majesty.”

Lorenzo entered the tents. “The orders have been issued, Emperor.”

“Good. Now summon the strategoi. We need to plan a suitable reception for the king’s arrival.”

1462 continued:
For several days the Roman monores and turkopouloi watch, and on June 2 the news arrives. The fleet has come, row after row of great troop transports, bristling with men and arms, horses and cannons, the pride, the elite, of Aragon. Knights from Aragon, almughavars and jinetes from Valencia, crossbow and sword and buckler men from Catalonia, twenty five thousand men, joined by equally formidable Castilians and their disciplined Knights of Santiago, fifteen thousand strong.

Andreas though is quick to note several weaknesses in this powerful array. Shadowed by Genoese warships to guard against a surprise attack on Corsica, the fleet had not stopped at Sardinia but instead has been at sea since it left Majorca in the Balaerics (information passed on by one of the Genoese ships). The men are tired and weak, and the horses will not be fit for combat for several days until they regain their land legs. Unwilling to wait any longer, the Aragonese do not make port at Agrigento, but instead land at the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Selinus in southwest Sicily, trusting on the size of their army for protection.

It would have done them good to find more substantial protection. About a hour before dawn on June 5, the soldiers are awakened by the roar of hellfire as six mikropurs and four thousand mauroi scream projectiles into the camp. The line of sentries had been cut apart earlier by akrites, allowing the whole Roman army to sneak into position for the ambush.

Startled and frightened by the stink and noise, the Aragonese troops immediately begin to panic. The Castilians, on the other hand, are very familiar with gunpowder weapons. They remain steady, forming up as best they can and charge the line of gunners, hoping to cut them down before they can reload.

Those fifteen thousand men are met head-on by the Apulians, led by Alfredo himself with an earth-shattering bellow. He may be outnumbered three to two, but his men have not spent the last few weeks on a long sea voyage, and had their first night on land interrupted by the largest single handgun volley in history to date.

The heavy cavalry charge cracks the Castilian lines, but they manage to hold, inflicting numerous casualties, particularly amongst the less well protected koursores. But when the skutatoi join in the attack as well the Castilians break. Flying back in disarray, they are pursued not only by the Apulians, but by a mass charge of the Roman army. With arrows sweeping overhead, all of the Roman melee cavalry and infantry sally.

The Aragonese and Castilians are annihilated, pinned between the Romans and the beach. After the breaking of the Castilian charge, it can no longer really be described as a battle, but as a massacre. Before the battle, concerned about detaching men to guard prisoners while facing an army twice the size of his own, Andreas had ordered ‘no quarter’. The orders are obeyed; no prisoners are taken.

There are only about three dozen exceptions, King Ferdinand and the highest ranking nobles and officers in the army, all that is left from an army of forty thousand. While only about half the Iberian force fell to Roman swords, many of the remainder fled in the woods as a disorganized mob or into the sea where most drowned.

In less than three hours, Andreas has completely destroyed the Aragonese host and captured both the anchored fleet and the King. All it cost him was six hundred and ninety casualties. Before the men had made comparison between Andreas’ battles and Ain Sijni. But now they make comparisons to Ameglia, the victory of which the Dragon himself was most proud, where he destroyed a Papal army and took less than a hundred casualties.

With Ferdinand as his prisoner, Andreas is able to force a peace treaty. The afternoon after the battle of Selinus, peace is made between Aragon and Rhomania. The Empire receives the entire island of Sicily and all offshore islets, and the Roman trade concessions in Aragon are renewed, whilst the Aragonese ones are revoked. What few prisoners on both sides are ransomed, while Ferdinand is allowed to go free only after the entire island not already under Roman control has capitulated.

Thus in less than two months Andreas has conquered the entire island of Sicily. Amongst the men he is sometimes called the Little Megas. To the rest of Christendom he is known as the Butcher. Julius does not say anything, does not have to say anything. The panicked tales of the few survivors of Selinus are enough, tales of a boy who summoned legions of hell to spearhead his ambush, those tales and the piles of dead. On the shores of Calabria, corpses wash onto the beaches carried by the ocean current, the cadavers ringed by honor guards of ravens. It is a grisly sight, and one none of the Christian kings dare forget.

As a military feat, the only parallel in recent Roman history is Demetrios Megas’ conquest of southern Italy. When the comparison is made, reportedly Andreas smiles and replies “Not quite. Wait until we’re back, and then compare campaigns.”

For now though, Andreas is busy arranging for the future of Roman Sicily. Plans are made for a new theme, although finding manpower to fill it is a problem. The Empire’s population over the past fifteen years has actually declined, dropping from 12.5 million to 11.9 million (not including Sicily). More immediately though Andreas is able to work to bolster the Sicilian economy. Roman sugar plantations now cover Cyprus and dot Crete; they are now invited to Sicily, being granted tax exemptions to offset setup costs. It is a concession that earns Andreas the favor and gratitude of the powerful Cypriot plantation owners and their great reserves of coin.

Finally in mid-July Andreas sets sail for home, leaving behind five thousand men to act as a garrison until the status of Sicily’s armed defenses can be established. The remainder come to Constantinople for a triumph.


jackjackson.jpg

Alfredo of Lecce. Despite his position as strategos, he has never forgotten his peasant origins. During the Sicilian triumph, even though he was at Andreas' right hand during the procession, he dressed plainly, just like his fellow Apulians. There he was well noticed by the elite of Constantinople, where he also caught the eye of Zoe Komnena.


Somewhere off the coast of Chios, July 28, 1462:

Andreas stared off into the green Aegean, a few seagulls squawking overhead. He ached. He hadn’t lain with Theophano for three weeks now, ever since the swell in her belly had made it clear she was with child. There were plenty of other camp followers, but none as good as Theophano.

She looked like Kristina, the woman from Messina. A bit taller, a bit skinner, her eyes a little rounder and darker, but she was close. When he was with the other camp followers, he could sometimes see Kristina when he closed his eyes. Their touch would bring back memories, and his mind would flash away, back to the good old days. His mouth twitched upward. Here I am, seventeen years old, and already pining for the good old days. By God, I feel old. His breath rattled through his lips. By God, I miss her. His vision began to cloud, but with a snarl and a swipe of his sleeves he destroyed the tears.

Emperors don’t cry. He sighed again. The tears were gone, but he still missed her.

But not with Theophano. With her, the memories did not come. She may not have been Kristina, and she would never be Kristina. But she was close enough. With her the pain, the ache, the memory would be gone, at least for a time.

But not anymore, not while she was pregnant. And so he ached. The camp followers could take away this ache, or any of the maids at the palace could for that matter. But they would bring the memories back, and he did not want them.

How about Maria?

What about her?

Do her. You haven’t in, what, almost two years now. It’ll make Vlad happy.
Andreas shrugged. Eh, why not? She is my wife, after all. Might as well use her for something.

That’s the spirit. And you knows, maybe you’ll enjoy it this time?

Snort. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Blachernae Palace, Night of August 5, 1462:

Maria barely managed to keep herself from jumping as Andreas entered the chamber. She had been waiting for this day ever since the birth of Demetrios. And she had been ready for it for almost six months, and then that stupid war with Aragon had derailed her plans.

There were two goblets of wine hidden in the corner, for after the intercourse. Both were poisoned. But Maria had gradually built up an immunity to the potion. She would be horribly sick for a few days afterwards, but she would live. Andreas would not. And the best part was that no one would suspect her of the assassination, not when she had so clearly been a target too. It would just be another sin for which the Venetians would have to pay on Judgment Day. Who knew, it might even start a war with Venice now, one that her father would be certain to lead, furthering solidifying both his and her position in power. All that needed to be done now was the drink…and the sex.

Andreas’ robes thumped to the ground, and Maria’s eyes drifted over to gaze at the body of her husband. Sicily had changed him, and a part of her nodded approvingly. His skin had darkened, the leathery tan of one who had been out in the sun. He had grown too, both his muscles and in height. And his bread, although still a light brown, had filled out to be a real beard, not a ridiculous scruff, complementing a deeper voice that she had yet to hear crack.

The bed shifted as Andreas slid under the cover. Unlike before, she did not stare at the ceiling but instead watched as her husband slid into her. He seemed more graceful, more sure, than before, and with his tanned skin and toned muscles, it was the grace of a panther. She smiled, just barely.

Andreas pushed into her. He was not trying to be painful, just firm. He thrust again; he seemed more eager than usual. His manhood throbbed inside her as he pushed again, hard but firm. She liked this too. This felt good. A part of her watched, horrified, as she moved. But most of her, caught up in the moment, did not care. She did something she had never done before, in all the times she had lain with Andreas. She wrapped her arms around him, feeling his hot body, his warmth pouring into her.

He thrust again, grunting, and she moaned in pleasure. Her fingernails dug into his back, scratching bloody trails. He thrust again, harder. He seemed to be getting more excited. She moaned again. He thrust, and again she clawed his back. He pushed, almost frantic this time, his manhood quivering inside her as she moaned and her nails raked his back. God, this is so good-

Andreas came, exploding inside her, the wave rolling over her. She sighed as Andreas went limp on top of her, a second later rolling off and pulling out. He lay next to her, his chest heaving. The whole thing had lasted less than two minutes.


* * *

Andreas shifted and got up. He had lain next to Maria for a few minutes, a near tenfold increase from the usual. As he sat up, he touched the wounds in his back, which ached. His fingers came away bloody; Maria’s nails had shredded his back. But he didn’t mind.

It had been different. Kristina had never done anything like that. She was gentle. And Theophano and the others did not dare touch him like that. And it had been good. He had not thought of Kristina the whole time. You’re right. I did enjoy that. He looked at the still form of Maria. She was certainly no Kristina, but physically she was still a beauty. She was staring at him. The look in her eye seemed…hungry. “Tomorrow?” he asked.


* * *


Maria started as Andreas spoke. She had just been about to ask him if he wanted a drink. Her thoughts spun around in her head. Should she ask? Do it tomorrow. I want to do that again. At least once more.

She smiled. “Yes…I look forward to it.”

“I…I do too.”

Three weeks later, the Empress once again missed her period. And in all those nights, every night, she never once asked her husband if he wanted a drink.

Blachernae Palace, September 16, 1462:
Andreas quietly pushed the door open and entered the room. Zoe glanced at him with puffy eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, and then at the rasping, pale figure on the bed. He knew that his sister had been in the garden with Alfredo when the news had come; Alexios Palaiologos had collapsed.

The old, wrinkled figure barely moved, his eyelids fluttering, his chest almost imperceptibly rising and falling. For eighty two years he had lived, born in the same year as Demetrios Megas, and it appeared that his time had finally run out. It was a natural death, a clean death. Andreas looked at Zoe’s grief-stricken face; he never would have done this to her.

He wrapped his right hand around her left. She sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her gently as she shook. Zoe had always been cold, withdrawn, since the Black Day. To everyone except Andreas himself, the only other one to have the demons. Even now as he sat there, he could feel the image, the nightmare, starting to fall back into place before his eyes. Zoe jerked; it was happening to her too, again.

He hugged her tighter. “Shhh, shhh. It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. Gradually she stilled. The demons had stayed their hand, this time. Silently he thanked the Virgin that they had not come, not just for Zoe but for himself.

Alexios though, old strategos Alexios though had somehow become her friend. Reportedly it had been a gift of an orange that had started it; Andreas didn’t know if that was true. All that mattered was that he made Zoe happy.

Alexios shuddered, Zoe burying herself deeper in Andreas’ embrace as she sobbed. She would not watch, could not watch. She had already seen her mother perish; she could not watch another close to her fall as well. “Zoe?” Andreas whispered.

Alexios’ eyes jerked open, swiveling around to stare at Andreas. “Do not fear, Demetrios,” he said. “She will be fine. Take care of her.”

Andreas nodded. “I will.”

Alexios smiled, his eyes closing. Those eyes had seen so much. Both of Timur’s invasions, the War of the Five Emperors, Cappadocian Caesarea, and Manzikert, Great Manzikert. The last to have seen them; the rest had fallen. The breaths grew weaker, fainter, slower. There was a rattle, a sigh, and Alexios Palaiologos departed from the earth. And so the times he had seen, the great battles and the heroes who had fought in them, passed irrevocably into history, and legend.


* * *


As soon as Alexios Palaiologos perishes, both Andreas and Vlad issue orders for Anastasia, Petros, and their two sons to be eliminated. But it becomes evident that Theodoros’ eldest still has friends in court, since by the time the assassins arrive they have all managed to flee. Flying to the east, they do not come to rest until they arrive at their destination, a place certain to take them in and able to protect them against Constantinople’s wrath.


madrasahnizamiyah.jpg

Baghdad


1463: On March 12, Vlad Dracula formally stands down as regent, and Andreas takes the throne as sole ruler of the Roman Empire. In Constantinople, there is a huge celebration, complete with races in the Hippodrome. And two months to the day after that, another Komnenos is born, Leo Drakos Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, second son of Andreas and Maria. He is named after his uncle, who returned to Constantinople for the triumph and has since remained there as Andreas’ personal painter.

The time since the end of the Sicilian campaign has also seen a sort of reconciliation between Andreas and Vlad. The former, after his victory, no longer feels so threatened by Vlad and so is more relaxed. Vlad, on the other hand, makes no complaints when it becomes clear that the Emperor intends to keep Theophano around as a mistress, even after she gives birth to a girl who is named Simonis. One reason for that is that a few weeks prior, news arrived that Empress Kristina of Hungary had given birth to a healthy baby girl of her own, named Julia.

However Vlad does not simply stand aside and allow Andreas to assume full power. He is still strategos of the Thracesian tagma, and responsible for overseeing the restoration of the Anatolian tagmata. As a favor to Andreas, he also personally arranges for the transfer of two of the Crimean cleisurai, the Thessaloniki archontate, and one of the Armenian cleisurai, four thousand men in total, to serve as the basis of the Sicilian tagma.

The remaining six thousand are a problem though. With every tagma save the Apulian needing manpower to be back at full strength, there are none to spare from the military families whose sons have been refilling the ranks. Another option, to change peasants to soldiers, would give the Empire troops but cost it taxpayers, something the treasury cannot afford at the moment. A third option, arming the Roman Catholic Sicilians, is rejected as political suicide. No one in the Empire, even those who tolerated Andreas’ Apulian policy, will accept that. Eventually it is decided that when military sons come of age, some will be assigned to Sicily, with the goal of having that tagma at full strength by 1475.

Vlad does not restrict himself just to those duties though. It is actually with a sigh of relief that he withdraws from politics and concerns himself with the army. He has got what he wanted, two grandsons now in line to the throne. Now his concern is to ensure that the Empire his grandson will inherit will be a strong one.

He continues the army reforms he had started earlier, with Andreas’ permission, clearing out old officers and appointing up-and-coming younger ones. And while Vlad does select friends to oversee these new positions, Andreas does admit that Vlad has not forsaken the needs of the army and Empire in his selection. Vlad may have chosen friends or relatives of friends, but they are all competent and qualified.

As well, Vlad also enlarges the Schools of War and Artillery, and streamlines the quartermaster and artillery branches, improving their efficiency by clearing out defunct positions and by arranging new supplies of mules and wagon wheels, both of which had been major issues in Theodoros IV’s Jerusalem campaign. As a reward for his efforts, to fulfill an administrative hole, and to the resounding applause of the army, Andreas resurrects a title that has been defunct ever since the days of Theodoros II, who had stopped using it in the wake of the Nobles’ Revolt. On November 15, the same day that it is announced that Empress Maria is pregnant for the third time, Vlad Dracula is promoted to Megas Domestikos, the commander-in-chief of the entire Roman army, outranking every single strategoi and answerable only to the Emperor himself.

As for Andreas, the new schedule he imposes on himself once he takes the throne gives him little time, both to focus on army reform and to think of Kristina. One of the first orders of business is to cease offering tax concessions to sugar planters setting up shop in Sicily. While the ones who already did so keep their concessions, it had been decided by Andreas and grain officials that Sicilian cereal would help feed Dyrrachium and Thessaloniki, and the expansion of plantations, although a welcome source of revenue, was endangering Sicily’s ability to do so.

Andreas also revives an old policy of Anna I, watching the reviews of at least two tagmata each year, accompanied by Demetrios so that the army will get used to seeing their future sovereign. And while funds are limited, because of much of the reserves being spent in the last fifteen years of war, Andreas concentrates his efforts on rebuilding Smyrna. Part of that effort is a grant made to the University of Smyrna to ‘rediscover liquid fire’.

But Andreas’ most famous innovation is actually his first, beginning just two days after his accession. It is known as the Circuit. Three times a week, when he is in the city, he rides around Constantinople, beginning at Aghia Sophia and moving counter-clockwise around the metropolis until he returns to the great church. During those rides, anyone, regardless of their station, may approach Andreas, make a petition, and be heard. Some days he spends all daylight on the ride.

Many complain that he is exposing himself needlessly to Andreas, to which he responds with his most famous quote (at top of the post). Actually, he is for now in little danger. The Most Serene Republic of Venice, the state most able to defeat Roman security, has absolutely no such interest in that kind of deed.

The tremendous military reverses of the past few years mean that the once discredited peace party is back in power. Under their leadership Venice has managed to quite rapidly revive as a major economic (although not military) center, particularly from the Venetian printing presses and salt pans in the lagoon. Politically though, their goal is clear, to remain low and hope that given time, there can be rapprochement with Constantinople and a restoration of the old Venetian trading empire.

Their primary spokesperson, Matteo Grimaldi, hopes for a future where ‘Rhomania and Venice, who indeed have so much in common, can once again stand side by side as we once did against Norman aggression, and make all the nations tremble.’ To further that goal, when the Serbian prince of Srem attempts to intrigue with Venice against Constantinople, the Venetians denounce him to Andreas, who quickly marches into Serbia and replaces the prince with a more pliable cousin. But Andreas’ response to the whole affairs sums up the Roman attitude to the Venetian gestures. ‘Too late.’

But as Andreas marches into Serbia during the summer, he is not marching into E-raq. There a peace delegation is sent, led by Her Serene Highness Alexeia Komnena, who has, by act of Andreas, been formally legitimized as a Komnena, although she and her offspring (she had a second son, Anastasios, born in July 1462) are dead last in the order of succession, and she can never be addressed as ‘Imperial’, only as ‘Serene’. She is accompanied by her husband Manuel, resplendent in the new uniform of a tourmarch of the Athanatoi. He had been promoted for his role in capturing Ferdinand at Selinus.

Having the delegation led by a woman is meant to be an insult to the Turks. And having the two key figures be the slayers of Galdan of Merv is meant to be a reproach for their ingratitude. Bayezid II, who to placate internal rivals has been playing a hardline course with the Romans, refuses to hand over Anastasia and her family. Eventually it is agreed that Bayezid will keep the Anastasians, and the Romans will provide a yearly sum for their ‘upkeep’.

Reportedly at the end, once everything was finalized, an Ottoman courier muttered that ‘meddling with the Romans seems to pay’. Supposedly Alexeia heard the comment and replied ‘It is your children that will pay for what you’ve done. For when the Lord of Asia returns, we will not aid you.’ Historians are certain that the tale is apocryphal, actually dating from the invasion of Timur II.

For now, there seems little danger of the Lord of Asia returning. But a new force is stirring, one completely unsuspected by those in power. For decades now, Srinagar with its great monasteries has been a center of pilgrimage and learning for the Nestorians in the east. Kashmir has been a safe haven for the followers of the Catholicos, and the bulk of the Kashmiri textile merchants actually follow the creed. Using their trade connections, they have actually served to help both strengthen and connect the various Nestorian churches through Kashmir, southern Mesopotamia, India, and China (those elsewhere were destroyed by Timur).

When Srinagar itself is placed under siege by Babur, Mahmud’s chief lieutenant and brother-in-law, the reaction of the Nestorians is explosive. When the Catholicos issues a call to arms to all the faithful, the response is nothing less than that of a crusade. Volunteers flock to Kashmir to raid Babur’s lines. Though ill-trained and disciplined, their enthusiasm proves to be a serious annoyance to the Timurids.

But more damaging to Samarkand and Mahmud is the response of the Nestorian merchants. There had been many Nestorians in Yuan China, and neither Shun or Wu had done much to harass them afterwards, with Wu actually encouraging immigration to gain access to their financial knowledge and contacts. Now they make sizeable contributions to Jahangir’s war fund, while many enlist in the Tieh army.

With improved finances and a more eager army (Jahangir’s main difficulty thus far had been getting his Chinese and Korean troops to fight so far west), the Tieh Emperor smashes aside the Urumqi defenses, seizing Urumqi itself in August. The advance stops there because of the approaching winter, but it is clear Jahangir’s next target is the fertile Ferghana valley. With such a threat, Mahmud recalls Babur from Kashmir.

Swati Kashmir is saved, if just barely. Much of the countryside has been ruined, and a sizeable portion of its population slain. The latter though is partly made good as many of the Nestorian crusaders are eager to settle in Kashmir and do so. As a result of the demographic shifts, the proportion of Nestorians as part of the Kashmiri population more than triples to thirteen percent.

Western Eurasia is also not quiet, as the Hammer of al-Andalus takes full advantage of Castilian and Aragonese weakness. Mustering his personal guard and the Jund, he invades both states at the same time, supported by the Andalusi fleet. The Marinids in Africa do not participate, save for seizing Aragonese Oran at the beginning of the offensive.

Aragon has no army, and Castile only half an army. What few detachments that place themselves in the Hammer’s path are swept aside. In September Valencia falls, and three weeks later the citadel at Alarcos, the most heavily fortified place in the Iberian peninsula, and a Castilian dagger pointed at the Guadalquivir valley, is also seized.

Not willing to push on for fear of the Portuguese or Arletians getting involved, Mohammed decides to be content what he has already got. Peace is made on that basis in November. While he has not restored the borders of al-Andalus as they had been before the Gunpowder Crusade, Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu has added the city of Valencia and its thirty thousand souls to the roll of Andalusi cities, and ensured that any Castilian threat to the Guadalquivir, the heart of Muslim Spain, will first have to brave the great redoubts of Alarcos and their mighty guns.

Portugal has been watching affairs in Iberia and Italy with grave concern, but have remained involved. That is because they have reached an important milestone in their quest for the east. On October 14, two ships anchor in Lisbon harbor, on board the first loads of slaves, sold directly from the source and not through Berber intermediaries. They have reached the Senegal.

1464: In May begins the Two-Month War between England-France and Norway-Scotland. More of a series of raids than an actual war, the fact that it is elevated above the usual border skirmishes is due solely to the presence of King Henry IV Plantaganet. While his father Edward VI had been careful to maintain his image and presence in England, his son has not, lured by the greater wealth and population of his French domains.

That fact has caused some muttering amongst the English barons, particularly the marcher lords who have seen little royal aid in defense (particularly in the English pocket in Ireland), with the money and men going to maintain garrisons and artillery parks along the border with Arles. Henry’s visit to Yorkshire is to help silence those mutterings. When Scottish brigands cross the border, the king personally leads a counter-raid.

There are a few minor skirmishes, but in the only battle of note King Henry is nearly felled when Norwegian axemen are able to break through the line of English billmen. The ‘war’ ended shortly after that when a chastened Henry returned to English soil. However of historical interest is the nature of one of the Norwegian casualties, a man named Eric, the first man born in the New World to travel to the Old. Orphaned as a child, he had been rescued and raised by Icelandic fishermen, eventually taking up service under the King of Norway-Scotland.

In Hungary, Emperor Ladislaus decides to postpone the planned invasion of Presporok, despite the earlier rush to secure the Russian alliance for that purpose. The simple fact is that the plague epidemic of 1460 had killed a good portion of the nobility and seriously crippled the army’s leadership pool. In his view an attack at this time would be most unwise. Megas Rigas Nikolai is annoyed by the decision, as some of the Lithuanians and Novgorodians had been pressuring him to seize Riga from Poland’s Teutonic allies in the expected conflict.

At the same time, Mahmud and Jahangir cross swords for the first time, two brothers dueling for a continent. The fighting is mainly in the Ferghana valley, Mahmud’s territory, but Jahangir’s supply lines are long and tenuous, even with the continued support of the Nestorians. With neither side fully prepared for battle, they limit themselves to raids and skirmishes as they build up their hosts from across all of Asia.

In contrast, the year is quiet in Rhomania, a great relief to all its inhabitants. The main event is actually the birth of Eudoxia, Andreas’ and Maria’s third child and their first daughter (although it is Andreas’ second), in early August. That December it is again announced the Empress is pregnant, which prompts a laugh and a comment from Vlad that ‘this is starting to get a bit ridiculous.’


* * *


Blachernae Palace, October 4, 1464:
Andreas flipped the page of his book, Xenophon’s Anabasis, shifted in his chair, and then winced as his back protested. He looked up to see Maria staring at him. She smirked and went back to her stitching. She had been especially…energetic last night, and with Theophano pregnant she expected him back tonight. Not that he minded, although his back could use a break.

“Ah, I am slain!” Lorenzo yelled. Both Andreas and Maria looked over to where the eikosarchos had been dueling with spoons against Prince Demetrios, now three years of age. Lorenzo staggered up off the bench, twisting his face, and fell on the ground. “Urgle, gurgle, bleh, I’m dead.” He went limp.

Demetrios giggled. “Ha, ha! I win- Hey!” Andreas’ spoon scooped out a bite of the prince’s cake before he could react.

“Mmmm, that’s good,” Andreas said, smiling.

Demetrios scowled at him, but then turned around and bopped Lorenzo’s hand as it crept towards the slice. “My cake! Get your own!”

Lorenzo, standing again, shook his hand and mouthed ‘Ow’. Maria had her hand on her forehead, shaking her head. Andreas heard her mutter “Boys. They never change.”

A moment later a woman, her head covered in silver hair, appeared at Andreas’ side. “Excuse me, your Imperial majesty. But it is time for the prince’s nap.”

Andreas nodded, pointing at the rest. “Make sure he gets that when it’s over.” As the nanny took his son to his room, he flicked a silver stavraton at Lorenzo, who caught it. “Go get yourself a drink.”

The Medici bowed. “Yes, your majesty,” he said, and then raced off.

“Do you think he’s going to spend it on a drink, or on the barmaid?” Maria asked.

“Oh, probably on the barmaid. I think I even know which one.”

Maria nodded. “So when do you think those two will finally do it?”

“Who?”

Maria gestured with her chin. “Them.”

Andreas turned around to see the couple. It was Alfredo and Zoe, walking along the edge of the garden that began on the other side of the courtyard. Alfredo was gesturing wildly with his hands, like he usually did. Zoe laughed.

“You are obsessed.”

“So? You are too.”

Andreas nodded. “So when did you stop hating her?”

“When she started acting like a woman, and not like a nun. I don’t like nuns.”

“That’s because you’re nothing like one.”

Maria smirked. “And you like it that way.” A pause. “You never answered my question.
When do you think they’ll finally do it?” She started to take a drink.

Andreas glanced back at the couple. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe when I send Alfredo some powder so he can load his cannon.”

Maria sputtered, looking down at her stitching and then up at Andreas. She scowled, setting aside her drink as he laughed. “Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, you are in big trouble!”

“What did I do?”

“You…” She stood up, rolling up the piece she had been working on. “You made me spill wine on my stitching!” She took a couple of steps, whacking him on the shoulder. “Why you, you, barbarian!”

Andreas stood up, trying to block as she whacked him several more times. “Ack! Stop, that, woman.”

Maria paused and smiled evilly. “Make me.” Whack.

Andreas yanked the roll from her and grabbed her hands so she couldn’t hit him with those. She tried to push him over, forcing Andreas to take one step back and jerk her towards him. A second later they were standing, bodies pressed together, noses almost touching. Maria smirked yet again. “You’re eager.”

Andreas shook his head but didn’t move away. “You want to do it here?”

Maria rolled her eyes. “No. My chambers are close, and empty.”

“You want to do it now, in the middle of the day?”

“Oh, we could wait until tonight.” She pressed herself tighter against him. Andreas could feel the warmth of her body through his clothing as she wrapped both her legs around his left. “If…” She blew into his ear, her hot breath tickling the skin. “…you think you can wait that long,” she whispered, playfully nipping at his ear. Andreas could feel his body instinctively respond. “I thought not.” Nipping his ear again, she whispered, “We should go before you get too excited.” She tightened her legs around his, standing up on tiptoes so she should blow directly into his ear. “Or before I just have you right here.”

They managed to make it to the chambers.


mariawithchild.jpg

Maria Komnena, Empress of the Romans, and her daughter Eudoxia. It was not only Vlad who benefited from the improvement in relations between the Imperial couple, but also the palace staff. In fact, it was often said that Andreas and Maria enjoyed each other physically to an extent that was inappropriate, even if they were married. This had actually resulted in arguments between Vlad and Patriarch Maximus III when the latter had refused to cancel a sermon in which he condemned 'actions which by their excessiveness are made sinful'.


Buda, December 23, 1464:
Kristina Shuisky Arpad, Empress of Hungary, stared at the piece of paper, the latest dispatch from Constantinople. She couldn’t believe it. That bitch Maria was pregnant again, for the fourth time. She didn’t know what Maria, or Vlad, had done to make Andreas come to her bed so often, but whatever it was, it was working very well. But the meaning was clear; if she was to return to Constantinople, she would have to act. It was apparent that Andreas couldn’t.

Leaving Buda was the easy part. She had her earlier reputation, and she knew her husband. While he had been willing to overlook her past for the sake of the Russian alliance, he wouldn’t overlook the present if it emulated her past. And after that, there was no one that Nikolai could send her to, save Andreas.

Would she miss Buda? Not really. She didn’t hate Ladislaus. He wasn’t cruel, just…cold. She missed Andreas’ smile, his laugh, his warmth. Ladislaus didn’t give her any of those; he wouldn’t sit with her in the garden and talk history with her as Andreas had, the conversation always ending with them exploring each other rather than history. Her lip curved upward as she remembered the time when a duck of all things had come to sit and watch them as they made love. ‘That is one dirty bird,’ Andreas had said. ‘He’s here to get some ideas,’ she’d replied. ‘Well then, let’s not keep him waiting,’ had been the response. And they hadn’t.

As for her children, Andrew and Julia…they aren’t really my children when you think about it. Aside from birthing them, she had had very little contact with either of them. They were constantly in the care of wet nurses, nannies, and tutors. Ladislaus had been adamant about them receiving a Catholic education, and Kristina had absolutely refused to abandon her Orthodox faith (a resolution that had been amply backed by blood-curdling threats from Novgorod). So she had been completely cut off from having any influence on their upbringing. At most she saw them once a week, for a few hours at most, being addressed as ‘Empress’ the entire time.

No, if she wanted to actually be a mother, it would not be in Buda. Constantinople, then. But that would never happen so long as Maria remained. Kristina dipped her quill in the ink well and began to scratch out a note. Vlad had undoubtedly guarded his daughter well from the Blachernae, but she doubted he had done so against Buda. She still had contacts in the Queen of Cities, and though she had no official authority, her position as Hungarian Empress did give her access to Buda’s spy service, which had a large and capable spy ring in the Empire.

She finished writing and looked out the window. Christmas in Buda. Almost four years to the day since my wedding. But God willing, if all goes to plan, next Christmas will be different. Next Christmas, Constantinople.


marylarge.jpg

Kristina Arpad, Empress of Hungary. Unlike Andreas, who has been able to bury himself in work, Theophano, and Maria, Kristina has had little to do in Buda save planning for her return to Constantinople. Using contacts in Novgorod, Constantinople, and now Buda, she has managed to build up a respectable network of spies that report to her as well as to their titular masters.

Many of the funds are actually from Andreas, either in the form of gifts before her departure in 1460 or money discreetly sent to her via Andreas' agents in Hungary after that date. A sizeable piece was actually most of Andreas' share of loot from Selinus, which had been another reason he had started a war with Aragon-Sicily. The prize money he gained from that war could be disposed outside the usual money channels, the revenues from his estates and the Imperial treasury, which could have been observed by Vlad.


1465: April 6 is a momentous day for the Imperial navy, as on that day the first warship produced by the Imperial Arsenal is launched. It is a monore, a light ship, but by the end of the year it builds its first purxiphos. Four days later news comes from Epirus; the monk who had been Emperor Ioannes V Laskaris, son of Maria of Barcelona, is dead.

In Sicily there is an incident when several priests in Agrigento and Trapani begin inciting their parishioners to harass the heretical Orthodox clergy. Seriously annoyed by this, Andreas dispatches a warning that the mercy he has shown the Sicilians ‘is a privilege I have bestowed because I value your lives and prosperity. But if you bite the hand that guards you, you have only yourself to blame if it turns and strikes you.’ When the warning is ignored, Andreas arranges accidents for all of the priests in question. This sparks a series of riots in the two cities, only quelled when grain shipments are deliberately blocked.

During this whole time, the Apulians remain quiet, and in fact there has not been any similar incidents ever since Andreas’ agreement with Alfredo. The conclusion Andreas draws is that Roman Catholics can’t be ruled by the Empire, not without great difficulty. But his decision is not to reinstitute persecution, as that would guarantee a revolt on the level of the Sicilian Vespers.

Instead his policy is somewhat similar to the one followed by Manuel II Laskaris with the Muslim Turks, a process of subtle conversion and assimiliation. Andreas lowers the taxes on the Sicilian lower class, but raises those on the middle and upper to encourage them to emigrate, leaving room for Greek settlers. His end goal, one fervently supported by the expansionists, is the ‘restoration of Magna Graecia’.

In the east, fighting continues in the Ferghana Valley, where two pitched battles between Mahmud and Jahangir both end in the defeat of the former. Still with his poor supply situation, Jahangir is unable to press his advantage. Nevertheless Babur is uneasy, as he is increasingly becoming convinced that his nephew will never become Khan of Samarkand if his brother-in-law Mahmud continues leading the war effort.

Though as Babur prepares the game of knives in central Asia, it is already afoot in Constantinople as Kristina’s work comes to fruition. On September 2, the Empress Maria goes into labor with her fourth child (it is Andreas’ seventh, as Theophano gave birth to a son Zeno six weeks earlier, making it two bastards by Theophano and one-Andrew-by Kristina). By early afternoon, she is dead, along with the child, who would have been another son. The investigation makes it very clear though that it was not an accident. She was murdered.


* * *

Blachernae Palace, September 3, 1465:
Andreas looked up as Andronikos Angelos entered the room, taking off a rain-drenched cloak. He’d been working with the Office of Barbarians which was investigating the murder as a matter of state security, part of their purview since its reorganization by Demetrios Megas. Andreas had been too busy trying to distract Demetrios and Leo from the fact that their mother was gone.

“One of the staff didn’t show up for work today. A Vlach named Mircea, one of Maria’s cook,” Andronikos said. He knew Andreas would want to dispense with formalities at a time like this.

“Have you found him?” That was Vlad speaking.

Andronikos’ face twisted. “Yes, what’s left of him. He’s dead. Stabbed and left in an alley. We searched his apartment. It had shoots of hemlock, wolfsbane, and this hidden.” He tossed an open purse onto the table. It fell over, several coin spilling out. Andreas stared at the gold. Venetian ducats.

Andreas snarled. “I am going to kill them. First my mother, and now the mother of my children. They are asking to be exterminated.”

“Why?” Vlad asked.

Andreas jerked upward. “How can you ask that?”

“No, I’m asking why would the Venetians kill…” He blinked a few tears away. “…Maria. Why would they be so conciliatory and then do this?” Just a few days earlier news had arrived that Venetian warships had beat off pirates that had been attacking a Roman convoy off Calabria.

“So that we wouldn’t suspect them.”

“No. There’s something more going on here. Did you find anything else?”

Andronikos’ eyes darted over to look at Andreas. I’m not going to like this, the Emperor thought. “Show us,” Andreas ordered. “We must have all the facts.”

Slowly Andronikos pulled out another purse, setting it down and untying it. At a nod from Andreas, he pulled out some of the coins. Like the ducats they were gold and shiny, but they were not the same. Roman hyperpyra, fresh from the Constantinople mint. “Leave us,” Andreas said. “No one is to disturb me and the Megas Domestikos under any circumstances. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your majesty.” Andronikos left the chamber, his hand on his sword.

“You rat bastard,” Vlad snarled, glaring. His own hairy, wrinkled hand was wrapped around the pommel of his own weapon. “You killed her.”

Andreas resisted the urge to grasp his blade. “I did not kill her.”

“Do you think I am an idiot? You’ve threatened to kill her before. All of this was just an act to put me off my guard.”

Andreas felt his throat tighten. “It was not an act,” he rasped. While he hadn’t loved Maria, and doubted he ever would, he didn’t hate her anymore. Their relationship had, in the last three years, been mostly a physical one, maintained by their lust for each others’ bodies, but it hadn’t been a bad one. And there was another reason.

“Why should I believe you?”

Tears clouded his eyes as he remembered a courtyard in Smyrna, and dead eyes staring at him from a pool of blood. “Because I know what it’s like to lose a mother as a child, and there is no way I would do that to Demetrios, Leo, or Eudoxia. They should have their mother.”

Vlad stared at him. “That’s it!” Andreas exclaimed.

“That’s…what?” Vlad asked, his eyes narrowing.

“That’s why the Venetians killed her. They wanted this to happen. If we fight, the consequences could be disastrous.” Before the Sicilian campaign, Vlad had possessed a clear ascendancy in the hearts of the troops. But after the whirlwind conquest of that island, loyalties of the strategoi were evenly split between the son of the dragon and the little Megas.

“Then what about the Venetian ducats? Why didn’t they get rid of those?”

“Perhaps Mircea got greedy and hid it from his contacts. Or they made a mistake. But this is what they wanted, us fighting.” Vlad blinked. He’s not buying this. Andreas took a deep breath. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.”

Vlad’s hand was still on his sword. Andreas knew that if he drew it, he was dead. He wasn’t a good swordsman by any means. With no guards in the room, Vlad could kill him if he wanted. That was why he had sent Andronikos away; he was at Vlad’s mercy, and he wanted the Megas Domestikos to know that. Seconds passed.

Vlad blinked again, and finally spoke. “I believe you.”

Andreas breathed again. “Thank you.”

“Four years,” Vlad said.

“Huh?”

“When the treaty was signed with Venice, you gave them ten years. Four years remain. And then they will pay for this.”

“Yes, they will.”

* * *


After her death, which is proclaimed to be a regular death in childbirth, Andreas orders the whole court into mourning for six months. Many are startled by the long length, but explain it as Andreas postponing the moment when it comes time to discuss his next marriage, as well as to conciliate Vlad. With Andreas twenty years of age it is expected that he will marry again and soon, as an Imperial marriage is too useful of a diplomatic tool. Within a few weeks proposals begin coming in, the most attractive ones the hands of either an Arletian or Georgian royal princess. For now, Andreas does nothing, stating that he will reserve his decision to when the period of mourning is over.

In December a new offer is made available, the hand of a Russian royal princess, Kristina. In early November she had been found cavorting with one of the palace guardsmen, and a furious Ladislaus immediately forced a divorce. In Hungarian eyes, the value of the Russian alliance had been lessening ever since news had arrived early in the summer that Russian horse had actually been transferred east to raid across the Volga into the Khanate of Perm.

Kristina is no longer useful as a political tool. She has served her purpose of producing a heir to the throne and Ladislaus does welcome the opportunity to put her aside so he can spend more time with his Croatian mistress. Kristina’s refusal to convert to Catholicism, as well as Novgorod’s threats if such an issue were forced, had also ensured that she was unpopular in Buda.


* * *


Blachernae Palace, February 25, 1466:

Andreas sighed, looking over the sheets of paper, the compilation of the marriage proposals. There was even one from Norway-Scotland. He knew Haakon VII had used his numerous daughters to forge marriage alliances across Europe in an effort to bolster his state’s defenses against the Danes and Plantaganets, but this was ridiculous.
“So who are you going to pick?” Zoe asked.

“I’m thinking the Arletian offer. They’re strong trading partners, they make a good flank threat against the Milanese and Julius, and it should help improve relations with Avignon.”

Zoe jabbed him in the bicep. “Wrong answer.”

“You think I should take the Vlach offer instead? It’d be a major feat for them…and it would provide a good flank threat against the Hungarians if they decide to cause trouble. Hmmm, maybe you’re right.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Still…wrong…answer,” she said, jabbing his bicep as she spoke each word.

He knew what answer Zoe had in mind. Kristina. “It’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“What will Vlad think? His daughter dies, there is evidence that I arranged it, and then I marry the reason I wanted to kill her in the first.” While the news of the assassination had been kept quiet, Andreas had told Zoe earlier. “I might as well just wear a sign saying I killed her.”

There was a knock at the door. “Enter,” Andreas said.

Lorenzo opened the door. “I apologize for the intrusion, your majesty, but the Megas Domestikos wishes to speak to you.” His eyes darted over to Zoe. “Alone.”

Zoe nodded, looking at Andreas. “This conversation isn’t over.” She left the chamber and Vlad entered. Andreas gestured at Lorenzo to close the door.

Vlad sat down. “You wished to see me,” Andreas said.

“Yes. If I may, I would like to talk about the marriage proposals.”

“Very well.” Didn’t I just have this conversation?

“May I ask which one your majesty is most considering?”

“The Arletian proposal seems to be the most beneficial in our mind.”

“If I may, your majesty, I disagree.”

“What do you propose then?”

“Another state has made a proposal, and they both have stronger trade ties with us, are significantly more powerful, and share the same faith as we do.” Is he talking about Georgia? Andreas thought. But only the third is true. The other two are debatable at best. “I think you should accept the Russian offer.” Andreas blinked. “You should marry her.”

Andreas shot to his feet. “Why didn’t you say that seven years ago?! It could’ve-” He sat back down again, clenching his fists. Shut up, you idiot.

“It was your idea at first to marry Maria, not Kristina. Why? Because it was the right thing to do for the Empire.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Damn you!” Vlad paused, clenching his own fists. “My apologies. You knew it was the right thing to do. The Russians would never have gone to war over that. It insulted the Shuiskys, but not Novgorod the Great, and that is what the veche cared about, that and the fact that war would have cut off the sugar and grain trade. But if you had not married Maria, how many more troops would’ve joined Anastasia and Alexios if they had not been certain I supported you?”

“You could have just been regent. That would’ve been enough.”

“Would it? Regent is one thing, grandfather of an emperor is another. At Drama, Anastasia had nearly a tagma more than we did. If she had had just a few thousand more troops, and us a few thousand less, she wouldn’t have even accepted the envoy. She just would’ve attacked, and likely won. And you would be dead.”

“Before now you wanted Kristina as far away from me as possible. What’s changed?”

“Before I was concerned that you would kill Maria so you could be with her. Then the Venetians murdered her. And with my daughter gone, I must now look to the safety of my grandchildren.” He looked squarely at Andreas.

I can read in between the lines. He was willing to accept Kristina as Empress, provided he got an assurance that one of his sons would inherit. “An Imperial marriage is a momentous occasion,” Andreas said. “And since everybody would be there already, it would be a good time for another ceremony, I think. Given the recent difficulties regarding succession, I think it would be wise to set mine in order as soon as possible. If Demetrios is proclaimed Kaisar, I assume the rest of the proceedings would have your blessing.”

Vlad smiled. “They would, your majesty.”


* * *


1466: On April 23, two great ceremonies take place in Constantinople. The first is the proclamation of Demetrios Drakos Doukas Laskaris Komnenos as Kaisar, the heir to the Roman throne. The second is the marriage of Andreas and Kristina, and her coronation.

sarahbolger.jpg

Kristina Komnena, Empress of the Romans

Blachernae Palace, April 23, 1466:

Kristina took a deep breath to slow her pounding heart. This is ridiculous. Why am I so nervous? Nothing new here. That wasn’t true. She had made love to Andreas multiple times, she didn’t know how many, but never before as his wife. The day had finally come, seven years later, but it had finally arrived.

The door opened and Andreas stepped in. Kristina felt better about her own nervousness looking at the ridiculously huge grin on Andreas’ face.

Her plan to get here had been more difficult than she had expected. She’d nearly had a heart attack when Andronikos Angelos had reported that her agent had been discovered with new hyperpyra alongside the planted ducats. He’d upped his fee at the last second, and his contact, one of the officials at the Imperial mint, had paid it with the nearest source of money that wasn’t his. Which would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that it made Andreas, not the Venetians, look like the murderer.

She said another prayer of thanks to the Virgin. Andronikos had moved fast, arranging the deaths of the assassin and the mint official so they couldn’t talk, and planting more Venetian ducats on the body of the latter. When it was discovered three days after Maria’s death, it looked like the Venetians had bribed him to get access to the hyperpyra. And Andreas had managed to talk Vlad down, although how she did not know.

Andreas sat down on the bed, his back to her, starting to undo his shirt. She moved in to help. “What are these?” she asked a second later, moving forward to sit next to him. His back was covered with dozens of tiny little scars, which looked nothing like the massive one running under his ribcage.

“They’re from Maria.”

Kristina jerked back. “She did this to you?! Why, that little bi-”

“I didn’t mind.”

She didn’t like that response, but she heard herself speaking the question anyway. “Do you miss her?”

“Some, mainly when I’m with Demetrios…” He looked at Kristina. “That’s my firstborn son.” No, he’s not. That’s Andrew! But she had seen the way he looked at his and Maria’s children, and now…I won’t tell him about Andrew. There’s no point. “…he has her eyes.”

“You made him Kaisar.”

“I made a promise, to Vlad.”

“Vlad?! But why? After what he’s done to us, why is he still here?”

“The Empire needs him. And that was what he wanted. Demetrios as Kaisar, you as Basileia.”

“He wanted me as Empress?”

“He did. So long as his grandchildren are secure, he has no quarrel with you.” So long as he doesn’t know I killed his daughter. And it would be best if Andreas doesn’t know that either. Too much risk.

“Andreas? What’s wrong?”

“His grandchildren,” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “My children. I failed them.”

“How?”

“I didn’t protect them. I didn’t now…just like Smyrna.” His eyes were dead; he was back at the Black Day.

She needed to move fast. She pressed herself against him, kissing him squarely on the lips, hoping that might jolt him out of it. For a second there was nothing, and then he moved, kissing her back and wrapping his arms around her. She pressed harder, too hard, and Andreas lost his balance. They toppled over onto the pillows, Kristina on top of Andreas, breaking the kiss. They stared at each other for a second, and started shaking as they laughed silently.

“Did Maria do anything like this?”

Andreas laughed again, stroking her cheek with his right hand. “No, no she didn’t.” Tears started welling in his eyes. “I’ve missed you, so much. That’s why I have so many claw marks from Maria, why I was with her so often. It was to help me…forget.”

Kristina’s vision blurred as her own tears formed. “Did it work?”

“For a time.” Kristina could feel the tear trickling down her cheek, and then the caress of Andreas’ rough hand as he wiped it away. “But only for a short time, no matter how often I tried. I am sorry, Kristina, for trying to forget, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t-”

Kristina kissed him again, a brief one this time. She settled down on top of him, just enjoying the feel of his body next to hers, his arms wrapped around her. “There is nothing to apologize for. I understand.” She pushed herself up again so she could look him squarely in the eyes. “And your children will have a mother, I promise you. I will care for Demetrios, Leo, and Eudoxia as if they were my own. You have not failed them, Andreas, and you will not.”

Andreas rubbed the tears from his eyes. “Thank you, Kristina. Thank you.”

Quack.

Startled by the sound, the two looked for its source. A duck was standing on the ledge outside the window staring at them. Quack.

“Is that the same duck from the garden?” Andreas asked. He squinted and laughed. “It is. Dirty, dirty duck.”

The duck stomped its webbed feet. Quack. Quack. “I think that means ‘get on with it’,” Kristina said.

Andreas scowled at the bird. “I don’t like having an audience.”

Kristina smiled mischievously at him. “I know how to fix that.” And she grabbed the covers and pulled them over herself and her husband.

Lateran Palace, April 3, 1466:
His back hurt. That was nothing new, but that fact did not dull the pain. He heard the patter of Alessandro’s feet in the chamber; time for breakfast. Strawberries, my favorite. “Come help me get dressed, Alessandro, please,” he said.

“Of course, your Holiness.” A second later Alessandro pulled aside the bed curtains, causing Pope Julius I to blink in the sudden brightness. “My apologies, Holiness.”

“Oh, stop being so apologetic,” Julius muttered as Alessandro helped him sit up. “You’re just doing your job. No need to be sorry.”

Julius unbuttoned his nightshirt, Alessandro pulling it off, his face blank. That was why Julius kept Alessandro as his manservant. He hated new help. When they saw him, his back, the result was always unpleasant.

To say his back was scarred was not true. His back was a scar. Not a single patch of skin was not covered in scar tissues, scars atop scars atop scars, a mass of serrated ridges crisscrossing the flesh. Not the back of a man, but of that of some foul beast. Alessandro had asked how many there were. Julius had replied that he’d lost count after the five hundredth lash. It had been a miracle he had survived those months on Cyprus.

He was dressed now, and started walking slowly to his chair. Alessandro walked beside him, but he did not help. Julius did not want it. As the sun touched his wrinkled skin, he could feel it, see it all over again.

The hot Cypriot sun beating down on him mercilessly from a cloudless sky, stands of sugar stretching to the horizon, and a young man tied to a tree, his back to the jeering crowd. It was bleeding. “Seven, eight,” the Greek overseer said. The whip cracked twice more, the bits of jagged metal stuck in the leather gouging out the man’s flesh, his flesh. A mirror was set next to him so he could see the carving of his body.

He sat down in the chair, and took a bite of strawberry, a driblet of juice running down his chin. “Fourteen, fifteen,” the overseer said. He wiped away the juice. A moment later a piece of bread with honey was in his mouth. Another sweet thing to go with the taste of blood. “Twenty two, twenty three.” On that stroke he had bit his tongue so hard that it bled to keep from screaming. The bread was gone. Now for another strawberry. “Twenty nine.” Then he had screamed, a wave of bloody spittle flying from his mouth. A piece of cheese now to go with the last strawberry. “Thirty five.” Breakfast was gone. “Forty.” The man’s body was limp now, held up only by the ropes strapping him to the tree, but he was still conscious.

Alessandro took the dishes away as Julius laid his head back on the chair headrest and closed his eyes. He was so tired. He just wanted to rest. But he couldn’t. “Your Holiness?” Alessandro said. Julius opened his eyes. “The archbishop of Canterbury is here to see you. He has an appointment.”

“Yes, of course. Show him in.” He had been little more than a boy then, his only crimes the desire to defend his people and city and bad luck. He had not been a boy when the Romans were through with him. But then, he had not exactly been a man either by that point. The archbishop entered the chamber. No, no time to rest now. Not until justice is done. Then, only then. And perhaps, maybe, his back would finally stop hurting.

popepauliii14681.jpg

Julius II, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church

1466 continued:
Three weeks after the two ceremonies, another is held at the Imperial Arsenal when its first purxiphos is completed, a twenty four gunner christed Basileia Helena. Orders are placed for no less than ten more like her, along with a hundred galleys and one hundred and fifty troop and horse transports, to be ready for action by spring 1469.

Meanwhile Andreas orders the Imperial navy out on constant maneuvers in the Black Sea practicing a new exercise, an amphibious landing supported by offshore bombardment from the fleet. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of monores mounting only a few light pieces, as with their short draft they are able to operate in shallow environments such as lagoons.

At the same time the army reforms continue, with Andreas much more actively participating. A surprising but welcome source of ideas is Andronikos Angelos, one of the two eikosarchoi that are Andreas’ chief bodyguards now that most of Manuel’s time is taken up commanding a tourma of Athanatoi.


cliveowend.jpg

Andronikos Angelos. He is a new kind of Roman officer, a breed that does not remember the War of the Five Emperors or the Dragon, but one that has been born and raised in the era of gunpowder. Andronikos has already demonstrated significant skill with the weaponry in the Athanatoi exercises and is certain to rise high in the Roman army. For not only does he enjoy the favor of the Emperor, but due to his position as Kristina's chief agent in Constantinople while she was in Buda, he is the only one besides the Empress to know who really murdered Maria.


One major change is the creation of a new formation, the kentarchia (known in English as the century) and commanded by a kentarchos, designed by Andreas and Andronikos. Andreas is becoming concerned about how well elite heavy cavalry had performed against skutatoi, particularly at Kosovo Polje where Serbian knights killed his father.

The kentarchia marks the first widespread use of the pike, which before had been rejected as its wielders could not maneuver rapidly on a battlefield and would be highly vulnerable to missile fire, particularly horse archers. Thus the formations are intended only for use in Europe, not Asia.

The core of the formation is eighty sarissoforoi, pike-bearers. There is a deliberate classical connection drawn to the Macedonian sarissa of Alexandros Megas, although the ones used by the Romans are 15.5 feet long, not 18 in order to make the troops less unwieldy. These men are not drawn from the tagmata, but are instead militia troops who are given six months of regular training, and then have monthly reviews, often with the local tagma soldiers. Besides the sarissa, they are protected by a helmet and leather lamellar, and also equipped with a dirk.

They are supported by twenty mauroi, who are also militiamen, trained in the same manner and at the same time as the sarissoforoi. However these are different than the professional mauroi who are trained and equipped to charge into melee after discharging their shot. The professional mauroi are akrites with handguns; the kentarchia mauroi are much more akin to toxotai, lightly equipped and trained as skirmishers. They are to provide the sarissoforoi with a screen and to lay down missile fire to disrupt enemy formations in preparation for the sarissa assault.

Together the hundred militiamen make up the hundred that is the basis for the name kentarchia. However the formation is also to be supported by regular troops. The kentarchos is not a militia soldier, but a professional officer. Also in battle the kentarchia is to be supported by two skutatoi brazoi (twenty men squads with an officer each for a total of forty two skutatoi) drawn from the tagmata. In the training exercises skutatoi brazoi are drilled alongside the militia so they are capable of supporting them in battle. The skutatoi act as flank and rear guards and provide a more mobile melee component capable of supporting distressed mauroi and outflanking enemy units pinned by the press of pike.

These militia troops are trained in the full expectation of them being used on offensive campaigns. Their weapons are provided free of charge by the government (although they are responsible for maintaining them to pre-set standards) and they are paid for the days they spend drilling. On campaign they are also to receive the same wages as skutatoi, including the active-duty bonus.

A total of ten kentarchiai are created in the initial order, drawing from urban militias across Roman Europe. Three from Constantinople, two from Thessaloniki, two from Dyrrachium, two from Bari, and one from Taras (Taranto).

The second major reform has to do with upper-level army command structure. The tagma-theme system did not provide any sort of chain of command beyond the tagma strategoi, and Andreas is determined to rectify that, considering how rare it is now that tagma operate alone on a battlefield. His promotion of Vlad to Megas Domestikos was the first step.

Vlad is now the senior commander of all combat soldiers. If he is in the field, he outranks any and all strategoi, and reports directly to the Emperor. Under him are the new offices of Domestikos tou Dutikou (Domestic of the West-meaning Europe and including the Crimea) and Domestikos tou Anatolikou (Domestic of the East-all Asian troops). They command all strategoi located in their assigned regions and report to the Megas Domestikos. Then there are the regular strategoi, who command not only their tagma but also all kentarchia, banda (professional troops that are not part of a regular tagma, composed of mauroi, turkopouloi, and akrites used as advance border guards), and allagions (city militias).

However only combat troops report to the Megas Domestikos. The Stratopedarchos (Quartermaster General), Strategos ton Archiatron (Surgeon General), Primmikerios ton Skholeion (Director of the Schools-the War and Artillery Schools), and the Ploiarchos tou Poliorkies (Master of Sieges-Commander of the Imperial artillery train which contains the Empire’s heavy guns, the tagma trains only have light pieces) all report directly to the Emperor.

The navy is organized on a similar basis. The naval equivalent to Megas Domestikos is the Megas Doux, who commands the Strategos of the Imperial fleet as well as the droungarioi of the Bari, Chandax (Candia), Trebizond, and Antioch squadrons. Also under him is the Strategos ton Tessarakontarion (General of the Marines, named after the old Macedonian unit). The Primmikerios tes Oplostasio (Director of the Arsenal) on the other hand reports to the Emperor. His is a very important position as he not only oversees this important naval facility, but also is responsible for the construction, refitting, repairing, and supplying of the entire navy. As a result, his pay and staff is actually larger than that of the Megas Doux.

But besides the reforms, all is quiet in the Empire until December, when two special events occur. The first is minor except as an opportunity for court gossip, when a female medical student is allowed to dine with the Imperial family. Her name is Talibe; she and Andreas had met in a basement in Smyrna. She is the eldest daughter of ‘Prince’ Nazim.

Because of the actions of her father, Theodoros and then Andreas had ensured that their whole family was cared for, including the university expenses when Talibe had decided to go into medicine. Her special interest is actually dentistry, a field which is starting to draw attention in medical circles, particularly after Cretan and Sicilian production begins to enlarge the already sizeable quantity of sugar in the Roman diet (despite its very high value as an export, at least two-thirds of Roman sugar is consumed by Roman citizens).

The second is more usual and actually quite familiar to the Imperial court, but still very momentous. Empress Kristina is with child.

1467: In Rhomania it is quiet, even in the Blachernae Palace. Although Theophano remains in Constantinople as Andreas’ mistress, he does not touch her during Kristina’s pregnancy. According to rumor, that is because Kristina had joked that ‘Roman women are the world’s best poisoners’. Despite her condition, the Empress oversees the destruction of a Lotharingian spy ring in the city.

That the spy ring is caught is due to the new form of torture invented, a joint creation by Andreas, Kristina, and Zoe. One of its members had been caught copying Roman pay records (which could be used to determine the current strength of formations). He had been suspended from the ceiling with ropes tied to his wrists and told that if he did not confess, worse would follow. He was then left in the dark while horrific screams poured in from adjacent chambers. After an hour, he broke down, not realizing that the screams had come from people paid to do just that.

The same method is used to hunt down the remaining members of the cell, all of whom are tortured in the same manner and confess. As they are all Roman citizens and therefore traitors to the state, Andreas is not inclined to show mercy. All sixteen members are hung. Four months later Kristina gives birth to her and Andreas’ first legitimate child, a son. He is named Theodoros.

In contrast, all of Asia is astir. In the Ferghana, the brutal slugging match continues as Mahmud throws men at Jahangir in a futile effort to halt his brother’s advance. Then in June Mahmud himself is slain, killed by his brother-in-law Babur. The men are eager to be led by a man far more capable than their former master, so Babur has little difficulty imposing himself as regent for Mahmud’s three-year-old heir Mirza, who is also Babur’s nephew. Now in command of the Timurid armies, Babur strikes at the Tieh weak point, their supply lines, and at the same time encourages revolt in Urumqi. Jahangir’s offensive grinds to a halt.

But with the earlier casualties, Babur does not have military forces to spare for other fronts. Peace is formally made with Kashmir in August, recognizing the Swati state’s independence, although all Timurid captives and booty taken in the earlier offensive remain in Timurid hands.

It also means that he can do nothing when Russian armies cross the Volga in force to attack the Khanate of Perm. The Russian archontes lead the way, the heavy horse archers cutting a swath in the Permese light horse. Yet although the Khanate’s power center is in the north, with Kazan now acting as the capital, the Russian offensive is concentrated in the south in the lands just northeast of the Caspian Sea.

The reason for that is the Ukraine. The region has grown immensely since the fall of the Blue Horde thirty years earlier. Draconovsk, its chief city, now has a population of almost eleven thousand. The primary basis of the Ukrainian economy is the grain trade, which is sent south along the Don and Dniepr rivers to the Black Sea and on to feed the cities of Rhomania. While low profit, it is a dependable and immense business.

Also important is the trade northward from Rhomania to Russia. The bulk of the Roman exports are silk, sugar, and jewelry, most of which is intended for the Russian market but a sizeable minority is shipped on to Scandinavia. As a result Novgorod is booming, reaching a population of 60,000 in 1465.

In addition to the north-south trade is the eastern Volga-Don route, through which an increasing number of Silk Road products are sent. Despite the Timurid-Tieh war, trade still continues on that thoroughfare, even if less than in times of peace. It is this trade, most of which ends up in the fabulously wealthy Genoese colony of Tana at the Don river mouth to go on to Rhomania and the west, that is the reason for Draconovsk’s position as Russia’s sixth largest city. It has also had the side effect of lessening Trebizond’s importance as a trade center, bringing its earlier rapid growth to a halt, but the city still thrives as a shipbuilding center. It is on Trebizondian ships that most Ukrainian products, including those of the Don-Volga, are shipped out.

It is these incredibly strong trade ties between the two greatest Orthodox powers (Rhomania and Russia are each other’s largest trading partner-the value of Roman imports to Genoa, its second largest trading partner, is 80% of Russia’s, Arles, the third, is 50%) that ensure good relations between the two states, even if those between the dynasties are fouled. In fact there are many in the Novgorodian veche who believe that in the event of a war with the Romans, the Ukraine would actually side with the Empire.

Another effect of the trade ties is increasing Roman influence on the Russians. Knowledge of Greek is considered essential for Russians involved in diplomacy, and many Romans had traveled north to offer their services as tutors. Russian students too have become frequent at Roman universities, and in 1464 an University of Kiev is founded on the Roman model, although at its start it was only half the size of the University of Bari, Rhomania’s smallest, and three-fifths of its faculty were Romans.

The Russian advance is hotly but ineffectually harried, with distance and disease the main hindrance. Because of the need to keep an eye on the Bonde in Finland, who have recently forged marriage ties with the King of Denmark, Megas Rigas Nikolai settles for only a limited land grab, with the main goal being to secure the Don-Volga trade route from any possible Tatar interference.

When the smoke clears, the lightning, four-month campaign has moved the Russian border to the Yaik (Ural) River, from its mouth all the way to where the Chogan joins it. At that confluence a border fort is set up, given the name of Yaitsk after the larger river (same location as modern OTL Oral, Kazakhstan). Out of the four thousand Russian casualties, less than an eighth were caused by enemy action. The vast majority were from accidents, supply issues, and an outbreak of dysentery.

1468: In February Emperor Ladislaus dies in Buda. With his successor Andrew IV ‘Arpad’ only six (almost seven) years of age and his mother in Constantinople, the regent is the voivode of Transylvania, Janos Arpad, Ladislaus’ nephew through his younger brother. Eager to secure his position, he arranges papal dispensation and then has Andrew bethrothed to his first cousin, Janos’ youngest daughter Sara, nine years old.

Another way Janos secures his position is the creation of a new type of army unit. It is a full-time mercenary contingent, made up of professional soldiers who exist solely to make war. Although composed of a mix of foreign and local mercenaries, it is heavily inspired by the Roman army and made up of supporting infantry, light and heavy cavalry, and artillery units. Eight thousand strong at its inception, fifteen hundred of them are equipped with handguns, with half of them trained to fight like Roman tagma mauroi. Their wages come from the taxes levied on Hungarian copper and silver mines, both of which have been extremely productive in recent years. Because of the distinctive black armbands the soldiers wear, Janos’ creation becomes known as the Black Army of Hungary.

At the same time King Henry IV of France and England institutes the creation of a handgun militia throughout his French domains. As these are just peasant levies who drill with their weapons three weeks out of the year (after an initial two-month drill period), they are only good for ranged combat, not melee like tagmatic or Black Army mauroi. The main reason for this reform is that Henry is desirous of lessening his requirement of English troops, as Parliament has little interest in an Arletian war.

In fact Parliament would prefer a war with Lotharingia. King Philippe I has been making things difficult for Flemish merchants in his effort to consolidate his hold over the Low Countries and their overpowerful burgher classes. That has been damaging the English wool trade, a vital pillar of the English economy. Henry’s failure to make his close friend stop is also another major English grievance against their monarch.

Lotharingia’s army does not have the professionalism of its Arletian or Bernese neighbors. Its once effective artillery arm has been allowed to dwindle after the end of the Ninety Years War, with most of its stock sold off to the Danes and Norwegians and its gunmasters departed to greener pastures.

Its cavalry on the other hand shines. The Lotharingian court in Dijon is considered the most prestigious in Europe, famous for holding great pageants, feasts, and jousts (paid from the wealth of the Low Countries), a center of chivalric tales and courtly love. Here Philippe makes regular proclamations that one day he ‘will dine and drink in the Blachernae, and call that palace my own’. Andreas’ response is that if ‘that Burgundian fool does not curb his tongue, I will cut it out’.

Also at this time the term ‘Byzantine Empire’ is coined by a Lotharingian scholar to distinguish between the ‘true’ Roman Empire, the Empire of Caesar and Trajan, from the current state centered around Constantinople.

Lotharingian cavalry, because of the high acclaim of its chivalry and its frequent jousts is viewed by most to be the finest in Christendom (a claim that is met with contemptuous scorn by Russian archontes, Polish knights, and Roman kataphraktoi). The infantry, on the other hand, are a mishmash of peasant levies. The only good infantry are German zweihanders, mercenaries from the Palatine and Alsace, and increasingly Swiss pikemen.

Although the Swiss provide Lotharingia with a good (albeit expensive) source of infantry, it also has the effect of driving the Bernese League into the Arletian camp. It is a move that starting in 1468 does not need any help. Charles I is dead, and his son Louis now rules in Marseille. And at his side sits the first Habsburg Queen of Arles. She had converted to the Avignon faith upon her marriage, and on her accession to the throne her family does so as well, causing a ripple effect that before long as caused the entire Bernese League, which is on bad terms with its Roman Catholic neighbors, to transfer their ecclesiastical allegiance to Avignon.

But as kings and armies and Emperors stir in Europe, something far more innocuous, something far more unimpressive, and something far more dangerous is moving in Africa. The years since the Battle of Soba have not been kind to Ethiopia, despite the assistance of the numerous Roman artisans now living in the country. Casualties among the Axumos had been high in that battle, making Ethiopia vulnerable to renewed threats all along its borders.

While the Shilluk migration had been effectively trounced, now the Oromo, the ones who had originally driven the Shilluk north, are moving into the Sennar. More numerous and organized than the Shilluk, they face an Ethiopia whose greatest weapon against this kind of foe, the cavalry of the Ethiopian Royal Guard, was largely destroyed at Soba. To the southeast, the Somalis have regrouped and resumed raiding the frontier, joined by ghazis from Arabia and the Kilwa Sultanate. All of these raids and the damage caused by them mean that Ethiopia, for all its increasing technical sophistication, has been unable to replenish its manpower reserves.

But fortune is fickle. With one hand she takes, and with another she gives. As a young woman enters the streets of Gonder, the new permanent Ethiopian capital, the winds begin to change. Rhomania’s age of miracles is long since past. But for Ethiopia, it is about to begin.


* * *

Gonder, March 18, 1469:
Yonas stretched his arm and looked over at his fellow guard, Dawit. “I’m bored.”
“I am too. Wait, maybe not.” He gestured toward a figure walking towards them, a tall, young woman, alone. That was unusual.

She stopped in front of them, looking at Yonas. “I am here to see the negusa nagast.” Yohannes I was holding open court today, allowing petitioners to come in without an appointment. It had been a sudden whim of his, not announced well beforehand, so they hadn’t been very busy yet.

“And you are?”

“Brihan of Merawi.”

“And why are you here?”

“Because all is not well in Ethiopia.”

“Uh, huh.” He wasn’t paying much attention to what she said. He was distracted by Dawit’s impish grin. Since she was talking with Yonas, he would be the one to pat her down for weapons. Brihan’s eyes darted over to the grin. “And who sent you?”

Brihan’s eyes locked onto Yonas. He could feel his back stiffening under that gaze. It was as if she was peering through him, into his soul, and it had been found wanting.

Then she spoke, one word. “God.”
 
Last edited:
The End of the Middle Ages

Part 9

1469-1472

"Lords, Nobles, and Soldiers of the Army of Christ.​

You are about to embark on this Great Crusade, towards which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of the people of Christendom everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers on the sea, you will bring about the destruction of the Greek Empire, the elimination of the unjust and unrighteous rule of that false and heretic people, and security for ourselves in a Christian world.​

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.​

But this is the year 1471! Much has changed since the Greek triumphs of 1469! No longer do they stand against small nations, but against the assembled might of the great powers of Christendom! No longer are they the giants, but together we are. The tide has turned! The Christian men of the world are marching together to Victory!​

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!​

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessings of almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking." - Pope Julius I​


Blachernae Palace, February 22, 1469:

Alexeia Komnena entered the chamber and curtsied. “Your Majesty, you wished to see me?”

Andreas stood up. “Such formality, sister.” He arched an eyebrow.

Alexeia smiled. “Hello, brother.”

“That’s better,” Andreas replied and wrapped her in a hug. A moment later they broke the embrace. “Sit down, sit down.” He gestured at a chair. They both sat.

“You look well.”

“You’re a bad liar,” Alexeia replied. She sighed. Gray was starting to creep into her once bright blond hair, and wrinkles now lined her eyes. She grew tired in sword-fighting far easier than before. Manuel too was aging, his pepper beard starting to get salty, and he had his own wrinkles. His sword work was also getting slower; he had just turned forty, one year older than her.

“The kitchen wenches believe me when I say that.”

“I’m sure they do. Now what did you want to see me for?”

“This.” Andreas gestured at the chrysobull he had been drafting. Alexeia watched his eyes as he picked it up. Before they had been those of a person, but now they were cold, dead. She had seen that before, but this was different, deeper. “Venice has a population of approximately 125,000 people. It is logistically impossible to kill them all, and it would be a significant disease hazard. I was wondering what portions should be allowed to live.”

Alexeia gulped. “I believe that it would be good for the Empire’s good standing amongst Christian nations if the Venetian people were to be spared. Of course the Doge and the Venetian upper class, the ruling body, should be brought to justice. But a show of mercy would be wise, in my opinion.”

The door opened and Zoe entered. She glanced at the chrysobull, and then locked eyes with Andreas, that terrible, horrific memory flashing before both of them. But the demon did not seize them this time; their anger was too strong for that. As the gaze broke between brother and sister, Alexeia again saw the dead eyes. They were Zoe’s. She sat down.

“There will be no mercy,” Zoe said. “Mercy is something given to men, not dogs.”

“Why not?” Alexeia protested, looking at Andreas. “Mercy can be a weapon. Demetrios Megas used it at Nicomedia. You used it in Apulia. Why not now?”

“Because Zoe is right. Not all of us are children of God. There will be no mercy. Now, as I said, 125,000 people. We can’t kill them all. Eighty thousand, I’d say, is the maximum. So who do we spare? Ah, Kristina, do you have the figures?”

“Yes, Andreas,” the Empress replied, kissing him briefly and then sitting down between him and Zoe. A moment their hands intertwined. “For starters, I was thinking the Jewish Ghetto and the Croatian Quarter.”

Andreas smiled. “Good suggestion. Add the Muslim district.” The six thousand Mameluke soldiers hired as Venetian mercenaries during the Smyrnan War had remained in the city, joined now by their families from Egypt. “The men will likely be killed; they’ll be part of the city defenses, but the women and children should be spared.”

Kristina scratched at a piece with an ink quill. “Not good. It’s not enough. We’ll have to spare some of the Venetians. At least eighteen thousand.”

“What?!” Zoe yelled. “Why?! Let them die; let them all die. Good riddance, should’ve been done it a long time ago.”

“I agree,” Andreas said. “I cannot in good conscience allow the Venetian race to continue. The non-Venetians in the city are another matter, but if there are simply not enough…” He shrugged. “…then we will simply have to find a way to deal with the extra bodies.”

“Wait!” Alexeia cried. “The children. Spare them, everyone under the age of fourteen.” That would be all Venetians born after the Black Day.

For a moment there was silence, and then Andreas shrugged. “That could work. We’ll deport the lot, but that’s doable. But not fourteen. Nine. Anyone ten and over is to be killed.”

“Nine?! Why nine?”

“I was ten on the Black Day. The Venetians did not kill me. I will not make the same mistake. I will be a Timur to the state of Venice.” A pause. “Would that meet our requirements?” he asked Kristina.

Kristina scribbled some more. “Yes, yes it would.”

Andreas smiled, squeezing her hand. “Excellent.” She smiled back. Alexeia watched the exchange, her stomach knotting. Before, Kristina had tried to temper Andreas’ ruthlessness. According to Manuel, she’d played a large role in stopping the Apulian massacres. But now, after Buda, she was different, harder, darker. Like Andreas, she talked of death with the same easy grace of one who had already killed, not in passion or battle, but deliberately, like a general or spymaster.

“Well, now that that’s done,” Andreas said. “Zoe, there was a new musical piece I hear you’ve been working on with your lyre that you wanted to show us.” He gestured at the door. “Shall we?”

Zoe grinned, getting up. “Yes, of course.” And they left, Andreas carrying the chrysobull until they passed a scribe whose job would be to clean it up and make an official chrysobull out of the text, the death warrant for eighty thousand souls.


Constantinople, February 26, 1469:

Isaakios looked at the old woman. “Do you have any eggs too? I’d like four.”

“Ah, yes, I do, one moment please.” She shuffled over to a basket she had in the back of her vendor.

A voice boomed out over the marketplace. “People of Constantinople! Hear the word of the Emperor Andreas, first of that name!” Voices stilled. The herald had a scroll in his hand as he sat atop his horse. He began to read it. “Today is the birthday of the blessed Empress Helena Komnena, may she rest in peace, mother of Emperor Andreas. She who was most vilely raped and slain by the Venetians.” A growl swept through the crowd, not at the herald, but at the memory of those lagoon dwellers.

This was a poorer district of town, one that had benefited from Helena’s charity. Both an orphanage and hospital built by her lay down the street, and many of the young men and women in the crowd, now working vendors, forges, or workshops, had been raised in her establishments. Their entire livelihood, the arrangement of apprenticeships and dowries for them, had come from her work.

“In memory of her death, and of all those slain on that blackest of days, Emperor Andreas has decided this: the bells of Saint Sophia, Saint Irene, the Church of the Holy Apostles, Saint Anne, Saint George in the Cypress, Saint Athanasius, the Church of the 40 Martyrs, Saint Barbara, Saint Nikolaios, Saint Isaiah, Saint Giorgios, and Saint Mary of Blachernae, shall toll, one time, for every one slain on the Black Day. So it has been said, so shall it be done. That is all.”

The crowd immediately started buzzing, and just a few seconds later the bells began to toll, from those churches scattered across all of the City, the bells ringing, ringing, the sound rolling over the streets, the marketplaces, the harbors, so that all could hear, and all could remember. The bells rang again, and again, and again.

Isaakios looked at the woman. “Did you lose someone, to the Venetians?” she asked.

He nodded. “Not at the Black Day. But my brother was killed at Thessaloniki.” The woman nodded back. “Do you lose anyone?”

“I had two sons and three grandsons. They were all killed during the siege. Are you, by any chance, serving in the fleet?”

“Ah, yes. Just a regular skutatos.” She placed six eggs in front of him. “I only asked for four.”

“Keep the extra.” She held a hand up as Isaakios started to dig through his moneybag. “Don’t. They’re free. Least I can do for a soldier in that fleet. Just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

She grabbed his hand, surprising him by the strength in that wrinkled, thin limb. She looked him in the eye. “Promise me that you will wipe those butchers out.”

Isaakios smiled and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. We will.”

The bells tolled, not just in Constantinople, but in Antioch, Thessaloniki, in every city and town in the Empire, in every monastery and village church, the call went out, from Bari to Theodosiopolis, from Theodoro to Tripoli. Again the bells rang, again and again and again, through the day, through the night. They had begun in the morning of February 26. They did not end until the evening of February 27.


* * *


1469: On March 6, the Roman Empire declares war on the Most Serene Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Naples. The reason for the first is obvious; the reason for the second is that Andreas wants to wipe out the blot of having ceded most of his grandfather’s south Italian conquests. Pope Julius, unable to stir any of the great powers to action, remains out of the fray.

Venice is the one to feel the bulk of Roman might. The armada that makes its way out of the Golden Horn the day the declaration is delivered to the Doge numbers one hundred and eighty eight warships, including twenty five purxiphoi, along with transports carrying thirty thousand soldiers and eighty siege guns. Arrangments had already been made beforehand to ‘rent’ the mainland next to the lagoon so that the Romans will have a place to encamp, and both the Milanese and Hungarians are setting up markets to help provision the Romans once they arrive.

It is a fearsome, awe-inspiring force, a magnificent sight, the great purxiphoi rounding the Golden Horn, ringed by dromons with their streams of banners, armored soldiers atop their great transports. But all is not as well as it seems.

The Empire still has not recovered from the 1450s. Out of the fifteen tagmata, only four are at full strength. The thirty thousand men comprising the army portion come from thirty seven tourmai, while only half the sailors are actually from the Imperial navy. The remainder are merchant seamen pressed into service for the campaign, and an equal portion of the marines are regular tagma soldiers placed in that position, not the specialized troops of the Tessarakontarioi. And given the expenses both of building the great fleet and restoring Smyrna and Alexandria to their former glory, there is not much money left in the treasury.

As a result, the attack against Naples rests heavily on diplomatic, not military means. Facing the Neapolitans is the Apulian tagma under Alfredo of Lecce, supported by the Bari archontate, a mauroi bandon, and three kentarchiai, a total of 11,500 men, against a foe that can muster at least half again as many soldiers. However Alfredo has been given orders that not only ensure Apulian loyalty to the Roman cause, but that also significantly strengthens their chances.

Alfredo is authorized to grant the Neapolitan peasantry the same conditions he granted the Apulians, rights to their own fertile smallholdings, freedom of worship so long as they follow Avignon and not Rome, and for those willing and able, the opportunity to become tagma soldiers. In order to provide enough estates for the cooperating farmers is the function of the second order.

The aristocracy of Naples, the great landowners, are to be annihilated, their estates dissolved and handed over to their serfs, orders that the former peasants of the Apulian tagma are happy to obey. When Alfredo crosses the border, he sends light cavalry flying across the countryside spreading the offer. Coming from any other Roman strategos, or even from Andreas himself, it would have been met with great suspicion. But coming from Alfredo, whom many of the Neapolitan peasants know, they believe.

Life under Naples had not been the great boon they had hoped for. While the Roman tax collector was gone, the Neapolitan noble had arrived with his own list of crushing taxes, to which had been added labor services. They had been allowed to keep their children, unlike under the Romans, but ‘only so we can see them starve while our lord is so fat he can’t mount a horse’. Once again across Campania, Calabria, and Basilicata the peasants rise in revolt.

It is not enough to stop the Neapolitan forces, but it does slow their concentration. Alfredo strikes, smashing isolated detachments, slashing at larger contingents with light cavalry and a new weapon. Providing his mauroi with spare horses, he has turned them into a small, but fast and hard-hitting force. Firing dismounted, they can ride away to reload and relocate to trouble spots as needed, where their handguns do good service blowing holes in Neapolitan knights. The kentarchiai too perform well in these minor engagements, although Alfredo points out that in a major battle ‘at their current strength, they would be worthless.’ By mid-May, Alfredo commands all of Basilicata, is in the process of securing Calabria, and is making preparations for the march on Salerno. In the process, he has inflicted over five thousand Neapolitan casualties, and received less than six hundred in return (discounting losses amongst the Neapolitan peasantry).

Venice proves to be a much harder target. When the Roman armada anchors in the harbor of Ancona, they have yet to be challenged. After her losses in the Smyrnan War, the Lion of St. Mark can only muster a force of sixty galleys and three purxiphoi, making a head-on confrontation with the Romans suicidal. But while the Romans sleep, eight fire ships burst into the harbor.

Fortunately monores offshore had spotted the attack, so the Romans are not caught off-guard. Two bomb ships filled with gunpowder are ignited and thrown at the Venetian vessels, shattering four of them, although flaming debris is sent flying across the harbor. Two more are towed away by monores before they can hit, but the last two are able to strike targets. To help put out the fires, Andreas orders warships to start shooting the surrounding waters so that the geysers will help put out the flames. That, along with more conventional fire-fighting tactics, stop the impending disaster.

The Romans lose nine ships, including four dromons, while twenty one more are damaged, mostly by flying debris from the bomb ships. Eight purxiphoi have to order fresh canvas to replace their severely holed sails from the Ancona dockyards. The Venetian fleet, informed by agents in Ancona, realize that their attack has failed and retire to Venice to aid in the city’s defense.

Three days later the Romans follow, and on April 18 the lead units began landing troops on the mainland, setting up a complete blockade of the lagoon both by land and sea, something which the Hungarians under Andrew III were never able to do. The next day the purxiphos Basileia Helena, the Imperial flagship, drops anchor at the headquarters of the naval blockade, the island of Albarella located just off the Po Delta. The siege of Venice has begun.

Whatever can be said of the Venetians, it cannot be said that they are cowards. Three times the Romans hurl themselves at the island of the Lido, the chief guardian of the lagoon, and three times they are thrown back. On the Lido, Venetian companies that have lost two-thirds of their strength have to be ordered not to go back into the fight. Every time the Venetian fleet sallies, hammering at the troop transports as they pull back.

It is during these engagements that most of the naval battles occur, as Roman warships rush in to defend the troop carriers. During the second battle, the Basileia Helena loses all of her masts, is struck by seventy eight cannonballs, including six two-hundred-pounders which punch through both sides of the ship. They had been hurled from great bombards purchased during the downsizing of the Lotharingian arsenal for the express purpose of sinking Roman purxiphoi. The warship remains afloat though, eventually towed out of range by a pair of dromons.

After the third assault, which chews up over three thousand Roman soldiers by itself (although almost forty two hundred casualties were inflicted on the Venetians), Andreas orders a stop to the attack. Instead he tries to outflank the lagoon defenses. Warships are portaged over the mainland and placed in the lagoon near the mainland village of Jesolo. But before they can move, the Venetians launch an attack with their fleet, a diversion for the three bomb ships hurled at the Roman squadrons. The sixteen Roman ships are smashed to matchsticks.

Andreas decides to try a different tack. He knows that the main reason for the Venetians’ fanatical resistance is that they expect to die. So he has dromons armed with catapults hurl bundles of pamphlets (printed by contracted Urbinese and Anconan presses) onto the Lido. The Jews, Croatians, and Mamelukes (most had brought their families from Egypt to Venice once they were hired to stay there) are promised amnesty and full rights as Roman citizens if they choose to remain in the Empire. His hope is that at the very least, the Venetians will no longer trust those groups. At best they might defect or start a civil war.

The Venetians do not fall for the trap, but nevertheless they can no longer count on those groups’ loyalty. The Egyptians are pulled from the Lido, where they had been the chief reserve, and sent to the less critical Chioggia front to the south. Andreas had made some demonstrations there.

On May 27, a fourth assault is launched at the Lido, while simultaneously more warships are hauled overland into the lagoon. When the Venetian reserves move to attack, massed cannon fire throws them back. At the Lido, the Roman warships advance closer then they ever have, even as Venetian shot rips into them. Monores stagger back as cannonballs shatter their oar banks. Shuddering dromons advance, their newly installed rocket launchers hissing and spitting fire at the beaches. Five purxiphoi ground themselves, one of them breaking their back in the process, slamming their volleys into the Venetian defenses at point-blank range even as waterspouts taller than their masts rise around them.

It is an awesome, terrible sight. The Adriatic is boiling as the Venetians artillery roars. And from the walls of angry, frothing waters balls of flame boom out, the air stinking of sulphur as the massed batteries of the Roman fleet tear at that bloody, sandy island. From the Konstantinos Megas, the new Imperial flagship, an especially heavy hail of fire sweeps out as Andreas himself throws himself into the task of firing the guns.

The transports hit the beach, the attack led by Varangians. Crossbow bolts and bullets plow into their ranks, but they charge, bellowing “Saint Theodoros!” as four thousand Roman handguns sing. Behind them monores dig their prows into the sand, their light guns throwing whistling shot just above the heads of the infantry. More men pile onto the beaches, dismounted kataphraktoi, skutatoi. The call now has changed. “For Smyrna!”

Even now, the Venetians fight with desperate bravery. They throw themselves forward. Their handguns and crossbows may be empty. They fight with swords. Their swords may be broken. They still have teeth. They know that it is their time to die, but they will die fighting. And they do. It is nightfall before the Lido is declared secure.

The next day, May 28, is relatively quiet as ships begin to pour into the lagoon. An attempt to stop them with fire and bomb ships is thwarted by the Roman mainland batteries coupled with the captured Lido artillery. The lagoon has fallen. The Venetian fleet has been smashed to pieces during the fierce naval fighting. In the early morning of May 29, the bells of Saint Mark, soon joined the rest of the churches, begin to toll. The end has come.

Once again massed artillery roars out, and once again Roman ships smash back, a hail of fire sweeping ahead of the transports. The Roman troops land, and the people of Venice, all of them, sally, a great wave of humanity plowing into the silver line. For a moment, it buckles, and then with an indecipherable, inhuman roar, Andreas Komnenos enters the fray.


* * *​


Saint Mark’s Square, Venice, May 29, 1469:

Lorenzo ripped his blade out of the man’s intestines, dodging a slash from a halberd that clattered off his cuirass. Andronikos felled the wielder a second later.

Andreas was in front, hammering at the enemy. He was no longer roaring, but the way he moved…Lorenzo had never seen him move like that. The Emperor had never been a good swordsman, or even a decent one. But now he was cutting down Venetians as if they were hay, not with skill or speed. While Andreas’ skinny frame was stronger than one would suspect, the strength he was showing now, was unnatural, inhuman, insane. Andreas shattered his opponent’s shield with a mace blow, crushing his jaw a second later.

It was too much for the Venetians. They had fought, and fought well, far more than honor demanded, but even they could bear only so much. As Varangians slammed into them with handguns and axes, they broke, some flying down the streets, others into Saint Mark. Lorenzo relaxed, maybe now the Emperor would calm down. With a roar, Andreas pounded after them, his mace smashing the skull of a Venetian who ran too slow. Shit.

Lorenzo and Andronikos charged after the Emperor as he hacked down anyone within reach, chasing after them. They entered Saint Mark’s, the saints in their mosaics staring down at them, so much like a church back in Constantinople. And still the Emperor killed, hacking, smashing, crushing as his black mace killed and killed and killed, blood staining the holy floor as Andreas roared all the way. The two eikosarchoi were behind him, fending off attackers as the Emperor bulled his way to the altar. Andreas smashed aside another, raising his mace above a young woman cowering, clutching at the altar.

Andreas’ bellow halted in mid-roar. For a moment he stood there, his brain-splattered black mace hanging in the air over a figure covered head-to-toe in plate armor coated in blood. From outside the church came the howls of soldiers and scream of civilians as the Roman army began to purge the city. From inside came the sobs of broken women and children; the three Romans had killed all of the men.



* * *



Once again, the courtyard in Smyrna flashed before his eyes. But this time it was different. He was a man now, in armor, armed, and now it was the Venetians that screamed, and bled, and died. Again the scene flashed before his eyes. Again he killed. Again the Venetians died. Again the scene. Again he killed. Again. Again. Again.

He blinked. Below him cringed a woman, her terrified eyes gazing up at his bloody visage. She looked like Zoe. He blinked. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. This wasn’t right. Again the scene. He raised his mace.

The courtyard again. But this was different, wrong. He blinked. There were no Venetians. There was only him, and Zoe. She was screaming. Why? It was only him. Then he realized what he was wearing. Venetian clothing. Then he realized where he was. He was inside her. He was raping his own sister! No! He threw open his helm, collapsing on all fours as he vomited all over the floor.



* * *


Lorenzo held the Emperor’s shoulders as he shuddered, retching over and over. More soldiers poured into the church. Andronikos gestured at them to block the entrances. Finally he stopped. “Your Majesty, are you alright?”

“No,” Andreas moaned. “I am not.” Outside the howls and screams were getting louder. “Tell the men to stop. Please. There has been enough killing today.”

“Yes, your majesty.” Lorenzo looked at Andreas, who nodded and took off running as fast as he could.



* * *


He was in the courtyard again. But this time, he was in the simple smock of a peasant, and it was empty, save for him, and the smiling bearded figure of Nazim. “Is it over?” Andreas asked.

Nazim stopped smiling. “I’m afraid not. You will always have demons, Emperor Andreas. So do we all, but yours are stronger than most.”

“So there is no hope for me.”

“There is always hope.” Andreas whirled around. The speaker was his mother.

“Mom!” he shouted, running over and hugging her tightly, burying his head in her shoulder. She hugged him.

“There is always hope,” she repeated. In the distance he could hear the howls and screams of Venice. “Nazim is right. You will always have demons.” She stepped back, Andreas breaking the embrace to look at her. “But it is possible to cage them.”

“No, it’s not. I’m not strong enough.”

“Yes, you are.” Helena smiled. “You have the blood of both Theodoros and Demetrios Megas. You have demons, strong ones. Be stronger. But know this above all.”

“What?”

“That I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

Andreas blinked. He was in Saint Mark’s again, on all fours as Lorenzo nervously clutched his shoulders. He didn’t move. From outside the church he heard…nothing. No howls, no screams, nothing.

The demon had been caged.

The killing had stopped.

* * *​

1469 continued:
Despite the best efforts of the Roman officers, it takes over two hours before all of the rampaging troops are brought under control. In between starvation, the siege, the battles, and the cut-off massacre, Venice’s population has dropped from 125 to 85 thousand. Out of the menfolk between the ages of 15 and 60, less than one third survived the months of April and May. The remainder are executed.

Roman casualties are also horrific. Forty nine ships, including five purxiphoi, were destroyed, while the combined expedition took 20% losses. The Tessarakontarioi, the Roman marine corps, has been gutted with over 50% casualties. Their third tourma had a pre-siege strength of 978; it is now 170. Included in the butcher’s bill are fifty nine soldiers hung in Saint Mark’s Square on May 30 for failing to heed their officers’ orders to stop looting.

Andreas has decided, at the last second, to spare the people of Venice. But every vestige of the Serene Republic is to be completely and utterly expunged from existence. The day after the city’s fall, Andreas is already drawing up orders for the Venetian population to be deported to eastern Anatolia. The only exceptions are the Croats, Jews, and Muslims. The Egyptians at Chioggia had surrendered in the late afternoon of May 29, and Andreas grants them, their families, and possessions immunity provided they surrender all of their weapons.

Roman soldiers comb the streets, smashing every edifice of a winged lion. They are followed by agents with a list of all known items taken during the Fourth Crusade, with the very first item on the list the four bronze horses, the final one the pair of granite pillars next to the Doge’s Palace where criminals were executed. Aside from the items on the list, and the three exempted districts, the remainder of the city is handed over to the soldiers, Andreas forgoing any share of the loot.

They are given an entire week to ensure that the city is completely and utterly stripped of all her wealth, with Andreas going through spy reports and Venetian government documents to help them locate the loot. In that respect, he is significantly added by his father, who had drawn up a scheme for the most efficient looting of Venice a few months before his death.

As celebrations erupt all across the Empire at the news, Andreas receives a dispatch (for which he had been intriguing for over five years) that enables him to take the first step of creating a Venetia in the place of Venice. His mother has been officially declared a saint in the Orthodox church, something which many of the laity had considered her already. On June 26, the Basilica of Saint Mark is rechristened the Basilica of Saint Helena.

At the same time, Andreas issues a decree of his own. The date of May 29 has seen the Empire triumph in Europe (the fall of Venice), Asia (the final day of the battle of Second Manzikert) and Africa (the fall of Alexandria). Henceforth that day is known as the Day of Victories. To this day, Romans consider it the luckiest day of the year.

As the Venetians are deported, Andreas arranges for Roman colonists to be brought in to fill the city. For city defense, the reliance is on local militias rather than professional troops, although the Venetian arsenal, which is turned into a naval base just like its Imperial counterpart, has a substantial naval garrison. But the lagoon’s main defense is its own squadron of ten warships, maintained by professional, full-time crews.

Supplying the city however is much more difficult, even though the population transfers (which are not completed anyway until next year) reduce Venetia’s numbers to 30,000, a quarter of Venice’s. One proposal is to rent or buy a hinterland from the Milanese, a policy Andreas finds distasteful. It would also be exceedingly difficult to defend in the event of war with Milan.

So when the Emperor lands in Romagna in early July, his goal is the conquest of the whole region, not just Ravenna. His legalistic argument is that as Venice’s conqueror, he has conquered her claims to the area as well, are accepted only by Milan, Hungary, and the brand-new Romanophilic Pope Martin V in Avignon, who has noted that as the Empire expands in Italy, he gets more adherents.

The Romagna, a patchwork of microstates who are third-rate powers even by Italian standards, is completely incapable of offering any serious resistance. By the end of the year Andreas is master of it all, including the Republic of San Marino. Here he plans a series of garrisons to keep the locals in line, to be maintained by rotating contingents from the various themes.

When he sailed for the Po Delta, Andreas had also sent ten thousand men and forty siege guns to bolster Alfredo. But when the reinforcements arrive, they find they have little work to do. The Neapolitans had finally managed to assemble twelve thousand men at the town of Ariano, where they were attacked by Alfredo, despite the fact that he had only seventy five hundred. In a five-day running series of raids and ambuscades, the Apulians completely destroy the Neapolitan force, the mounted mauroi shooting down the heavily armored knights.

King Rene escapes back to Naples despite having three mounts shot out from under him, but he has nothing else with which to fight. With the reinforcements, the rest of Alfredo’s campaign is a mopping-up action which ends on Christmas Eve. On that day, Naples capitulates to Alfredo, Rene fleeing to Dijon. Southern Italy, the land that sustained Robert Guiscard and Charles of Anjou, is once again in Roman hands.

1470: Andreas remains in Italy over the winter, organizing the vast conquests of the last few months. Unlike Apulia, not enough Neapolitan peasants from the rest of the region come forward to form a new theme. Those that do are actually sent to Sicily to speed the Sicilian tagma’s acquisition of full-strength status (it is currently only at 55%). The remainder of the territory is to be defended in the same way as the Romagna, a series of garrisons maintained by rotations from the tagmata.

At the moment, this leaves Roman Italy with the exception of Apulia seriously under-defended, but Andreas makes more arrangements for Roman colonists to be brought in, mainly for the cities (Naples has a population of 6,500, a quarter of its pre-war strength) where they can serve as militia. Based on Alfredo’s recommendations, Andreas decides to create no less than thirty more kentarchiai, still all concentrated in Europe.

On March 12, his twenty-fifth birthday, Andreas has his triumph in Constantinople. Just like the Sicilian procession, Strategos Alfredo of Lecce rides at Andreas’ right side. In the procession are carried the spoils of Venice, Naples, and the Romagna, accompanied by elephants and to the thrill of the crowd, a rhinoceros. One of the favorite moments is when the animal defecates in the street. Right behind are the Venetian prisoners, the Doge and all the survivors of the Great Council, Signoria, and the Council of Ten. The quick-thinking guards force the Doge and the Signoria members to walk through the dung.


black20rhino20close.jpg

The rhinoceros, acquired through the Ethiopians, proved to be a hit not only with the crowd, but with almost-nine-year-old Prince Demetrios. After the triumph, the animal was actually kept on an Imperial estate near Antioch, regularly visited by the Prince, where it lived in captivity for over three years.​


The triumph halts at Saint Sophia for a service of thanksgiving, and then it is on to the Hippodrome, crammed with over 120,000 spectators, even though by now it is dusk. As the sky darkens, tens of thousands of torches are lit, brightening the Hippodrome as the four bronze horses are restored to their places. As soon as they are fixed, Andreas himself lights a rocket that lances into the sky.

The Roman fleet, scattered across the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara, opens fire. Thousands of fireworks blaze in the night sky of Constantinople as the crowd roars. Again the fleet fires, the entire sky lit with color and flame as rockets rise from Galata, the Arsenal, and Chalcedon.

When the installation ceremony is complete, vendors go into the stands to hawk their wares as the Doge and the members of the Council of Ten are brought forward. The first race of the evening is not with chariots, but with horses. That is because those prisoners are tied up in a sack and thrown into the racetrack to be trampled by the competitors. Afterwards the traditional chariot races are held, with the intermissions filled with the hanging of the members of the Signoria and Great Council.

After that extraordinary day, Andreas engages in a much more ordinary activity. After being gone from her side for a year, no one is surprised when shortly afterwards it is announced that Empress Kristina is pregnant.

Just a week after that proclamation, two ceremonies are held with great pomp in Constantinople. First Andreas decides, for the sake of easing administrative difficulties and to placate Ancona and Urbino to split off part of the old Kingdom of Naples as a vassal, the Duchy of Abruzzi. Despite their small size, Ancona and Urbino control the land connection between Roman Italy and the Romagna, and thus their goodwill is important to the security of Andreas’ conquests.

Because of his huge role in bringing them about, the new Dux of Abruzzi is Alfredo of Lecce (although he still keeps his rank of Strategos of the Apulian tagma). After the promotion, the Apulian becomes Andreas’ brother-in-law when he weds Zoe Komnena. Everyone is on their best behavior at the wedding, since three courtiers, including the Inspector of the Imperial Forests, who clucked at the impropriety of the match, have suffered mysterious and fatal accidents.


alienaandjackusethisone.jpg

Alfredo and Zoe on one of their numerous outdoor outings. Being married to Andreas' favorite sister is not a role for the timid. According to rumor, Andreas had actually warned Alfredo at one point that if he hurt Zoe, Andreas would kill him. Alfredo responded that if he hurt Zoe, Andreas was welcome to do so.​

Even as the relationship between Alfredo and Zoe grew, Andreas and Zoe remained very close. Ironically after Maria's death, old rumors that had been quiet during her rapproachment with Andreas, have begun to stir. Despite two particularly grisly 'accidents' the rumor that Andreas and Zoe have slept together refuses to die, particularly after a spell in 1467 where Zoe was absent from court for over six months, visiting Alexeia in Coloneia as well as spending time at her latest birthday present from Andreas, a Georgian Black Sea villa.​

Meanwhile Asia settles down as war ends between Babur and Jahangir after the former retook Urumqi. The pre-war status quo is restored, with Urumqi returning to its status as a vassal of Samarkand. Aside from killing Mahmud and tens of thousands more, the fighting has changed nothing, except to confirm that the dream of Shah Rukh is dead, and that it died with him. The vast empire he forged was broken, and it shall remain that way. The peace merely confirms what his death had set down, a Timurid Empire based around Samarkand, and a Tieh Empire around Beijing. The latter is the stronger, but the vital link to restoring Shah Rukh’s domain, the loyalty of the Kingdom of Urumqi, is out of Tieh hands.

But as Asia quiets, except for the immediate upswing in Silk Road trade, Europe is astir as all of the great lords of Roman Catholicism meet in Mainz. The initial reason for the council had been the alarming growth of the Hussite heresy, which has spurred a rash of other would-be church reformers, especially in northern Germany and the Low Countries. Many of them are quite radical, some criticizing the institution of the papacy in general (making them unpalatable to Avignon as well). With the spread of the printing press, by now over forty years old, their calls are becoming increasingly irksome.

Yet for all the annoyance caused by the Hussites and their theological cousins, the heresy that most alarms the crowned heads of Europe is Orthodoxy. Much to Julius’ annoyance, the fall of the Serene Republic and its massive death tolls are not what concerns them. Instead it is the gruesome and humiliating executions of the Doge and Venetian councilors, the destruction of one of their number (the Kingdom of Naples) accompanied by class warfare against the aristocracy through the formenting of peasant revolts, and the land grab of the Romagna.

Against the Hussites, there is some success, with the monarchs agreeing to persecute any in their domains. Although it must be pointed out that Bohemia and Milan, the two countries with the largest Hussite populations (in the latter they’ve merged with the local Waldensians), are both conspicuously absent and thus do not join the accord.

Julius though wants action against the Romans. Despite their concerns, the Catholic monarchs will not move. Until finally on September 4, in desperation Julius does something he has never done before. Tearing his pontifical robes with his bare hands, he reveals for all to see the twisted, horrific thing that is his back. The lords of Christendom recoil in horror at the sight as Julius recounts in gruesome, meticulous detail what was done to him.

And then he tells them to imagine their own sons in Julius’ place. “The Romans have shown by their actions in the Romagna and Naples that they have no respect for the sanctity of nobility. The King of the Greeks has shown that his greed knows no bounds. If we do not act now, before it is too late, this is the fate that will befall us,” Julius said.

“Our Lord Christ said that if we wanted to obey him, we must take up our cross and follow him. He also said that greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend. Christ is calling you to do that now. If you do not, then what will you say when you are called before the Throne of God? What will you say, when he asks ‘Where were you, when my children were slaughtered? What did you do? Did you strive nobly to save them, or did you stand by and do nothing? How many of my children must I mourn because of you?”

Trembling, with tears running down his face, his horrid bare back exposed for all to see, Pope Julius II asks the fateful question. “So I ask you, Lords of Christendom, will you answer the call of the cross?”

For a moment there is silence, and then men begin to stand.

Florence will answer.

Pisa will answer.

Saxony will answer.

Poland will answer.

Lotharingia will answer.

France-England will answer.

The Holy Roman Empire will answer.

The Tenth Crusade has begun.


europe1471.png

Map Legend:​

1) Kingdom of Lotharingia
2) Kingdom of Arles
3) Minor German and Italian States
4) Duchy of Oldenburg
5) Duchy of Milan
6) Republic of Genoa
7) Republic of Florence
8) The Roman Papacy
9) Duchy of Bavaria
10) Duchy of Saxony
11) Kingdom of Bohemia
12) Principality of Presporok (Polish vassal)
13) Kingdom of Poland
14) Teutonic Order
15) Serbian Principalities (Roman vassals)
16) Kingdom of Vlachia
17) Persian Empire
18) Ottoman Empire
19) Khanate of Perm
20) Duchy of Abruzzi​

(Note that I'm considering Prince Edward's 1271-72 campaign in the Holy Land as the Ninth Crusade)​

* * *​

Blachernae Palace, November 1, 1470:

Lorenzo sighed. Andronikos was muttering again. “When are we going to get a break? We take Venice, the Romagna, and almost as soon as we’re back we’re off to break a few Mamelukes who can’t read a map, and then that, that…thing starts this. Screw the Pope.”

Lorenzo stared out at the audience hall, filled with officials, officers, and clerics from across the Empire. All wanted to hear what the emissary had to say. He started smiling. “I’d rather not.”

Andronikos started. “Why not?”

“He’s not my type.”

“And why is that?”

“He’s old and wrinkly.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“One of your objections wasn’t that he was male. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Lorenzo squinted. “And why is that?”

Andronikos smirked. “Your family is from Florence. And Florentines really seem to like their statues of nude males, particularly little boys.”

Lorenzo scowled. “My tastes do not run in that direction.”

“You’re right. I know far too much about what direction your tastes run. If it has a vagina and it moves, and sometimes the second is optional, you’re into it. Seriously, you’re worse than the Emperor.”

“In what way?”

“He has taste. His women are beautiful. Yours are…well, not. Take Athena for example. Ugh.”

“Athena is a fine woman.”

“Ha! That’s a laugh. She looks like a horse, a Thessalian mare.”

“That’s not true. Just becau-”

“I’m afraid Lorenzo’s right.” Both Lorenzo and Andronikos turned and bowed to the speaker who had just appeared from the adjoining chamber. “Oh, get up,” Andreas ordered. He looked at Andronikos. “But Lorenzo is right. Athena does not look like a Thessalian mare.” Lorenzo smirked. “Her nose is too wide, more like a Thracian mare.” Andronikos laughed.

Andreas gestured toward the chamber. “Shall we?”

The three entered, the herald booming, “By the Grace of God, Emperor Andreas, first of that name, Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, Vicegerent of God!” The assembly bowed as Andronikos and Lorenzo took their stations and Andreas sat in his throne. The Emperor gestured at the herald as the crowd rose. “Miguel de Talavera, Grandmaster of the Hospitaller Order!”


hannibalz.jpg

With his paternal grandmother and mother Moors, Miguel de Talavera is one of a growing number of Iberians who could pass for Saracens due to mixed-blood ancestry, rising from unions between Castilian soldiers and Moorish women in the borderlands conquered during the Gunpowder Crusade. Many of these mestizos, who help bridge the gap between Muslim and Christian, have joined the Hospitaller Order, which is playing an increasingly important role in bridging the gap between Avignon Catholicism and Orthodoxy.​

The tall, dark man, clad in black with a white cross emblazoned on his chest, marched into the chamber. Lorenzo saw that his left hand was missing a finger. He had lost that to a Timurid mace at Taji, where Miguel had routed an entire enemy company by himself by cleaving their commander in two. His one eye roamed the faces of the Roman crowd; the other he had lost a few seconds after becoming the first soldier to storm the ramparts of Jerusalem. He bowed to Andreas.

“Rise, Grandmaster,” Andreas intoned. Miguel did so. “We thank you for your rapid response to our request to meet. Once again, circumstances require that the bulk of the Empire’s might be summoned to the west. We ask for your oath that your Order will remain in Syria and not join forces with the crusaders.”

“No.” A snarl rippled through the crowd. “We will not remain in Syria,” Miguel said. “If you will provide us with supplies and pay, we will march with you in Italy.”

A murmur swept the crowd. “Why?” Andreas asked.

“Because, your majesty, these false crusaders disgust me. We risked our lives to see the Holy City freed from the infidel, restored to Christian rule. We succeeded, and then it was for nothing, because of that false pope, Lord of Babylon, Julius. I am a true Crusader, and I will not have my name sullied by these dogs who would usurp it.”

“Do your brothers feel as you do?”

“They do, your majesty.”

Andreas smiled. “Then I would consider it a honor to fight beside you.” The smile vanished. “And I swear to you that, God willing, I will see Jerusalem a Christian city again.”


* * *


Andreas leaned over to kiss Kristina on the lips, taking care not to press against her pregnant belly. She broke it. She had called him from the audience hall in her usual manner, appearing suddenly and scratching the left side of her nose.

“I have news.”

“From one of your ravens, I assume.” Kristina nodded. The Empress used specially trained ravens instead of courier pigeons. They were smarter, and far tougher. Since she trained many of those used by the Eyes, she was sometimes called the Empress of Blackbirds.

“There was an assassination attempt, in Campobasso.” That was the new capital of the Duchy of Abruzzi. “Poison. Both Alfredo and Zoe ingested it.”

“What?! Are they alright?”

She gripped his arm. “Don’t worry. They’re alive, if barely. The stew was thickened at the last minute, Zoe’s orders, which diluted the poison.”

“Who did it?”

“Philippe I.”

“You’re sure?”

Kristina nodded her head. “Agents in Dijon heard him say…” She stopped, pursing her lips.

“Tell me.”

“They heard him say that he killed the whore of Babylon and her peasant dog husband. And that he would do the same to the rest of the filth from which they sprang.” Andreas’ eyes were dead. “Do you want me to tell the agents to try and kill him? They probably won’t get a chance but-”

“No. That would be too quick. When I get my hands on him, it’ll take a week for him to die. Tell the Apulians what Philippe said. That should fire them up.”

“I will,” Kristina said, flinching.

“Any other news?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is.”

“What?”

“This.” Kristina grasped Andreas’ right hand with both of hers and placed it on her belly.

“Is that, is that, a kick?”

Kristina grinned. “Yes, it is. Ah. He’s a feisty one.”

“He? You think it’s a boy?”

“I do. Have you thought of a name for our son?”

Andreas took his eyes off her belly to stare Kristina in the face. “There is one in particular.”

“And what is it?”

“Nikephoros.”

“Bringer of Victories. May it be a propitious name.”

“Oh, it will be. It will be.” Kristina stared at her husband; she knew what he was thinking. These barbarians do not just face Andreas. For though they may be gone, the hands of Demetrios Megas and Theodoros IV reach out from beyond the grave.


* * *​


1470 continued:
As soon as the proclamation is heard in Constantinople, Andreas begins to gather allies for the oncoming storm. But Julius has a head start on him, with the rest of the year seeing a series of diplomatic reverses. As soon as King Henry IV of France and England declares for the crusade, Norway-Scotland takes the opportunity to declare war on Denmark over the small piece of southwest Norway they’ve held since the 1350s.

With his most powerful ally unavailable, Louis I of Arles proclaims neutrality in the coming conflict, although he warns that if any crusader forces violate his borders he will consider it an act of war. At the same time in Buda, Janos Arpad issues an identical warning. Alone, Louis dares not challenge the Plantaganets and Lotharingia, especially as events in northern Italy and Iberia make it certain that the Romans will not be able to intervene north of the Alps.

1471: In January, a coup deposes Alessandro Alessi as Doge of Genoa. It is led by a group of disgruntled wealthy merchants who have been increasingly annoyed by the monarchial trend of the Alessi dogeship, and which had been subsidized by Julius. Immediately afterwards the coup members transfer their allegiance to the Roman Papacy and join the crusade, partly as a reaction to the anti-Roman sentiments stirred up by the close relations the Alessi had with the Komnenoi, and promises of massive trading opportunities in the new Latin Empire to be set up. The coup members are all wealthy from trade with Tunis and the Low Countries, but the Alessi had blocked all of their attempts to break into the eastern market.

The Genoese entry in the crusade places the colonies at Modon and Coron (in southern Greece), Vospoda (in the Crimea), and Tana (at the mouth of the Don) in a quandary. Their economies are heavily dependent on Roman trade, and their odds of surviving the Roman attack which begins assembling as soon as word reaches Constantinople nonexistent. Also particularly in Modon and Coron, many of the population speaks Greek and has Greek ancestry.

When Alessandro Alessi arrives to seek asylum in Constantinople, all four colonies have requested to join the Roman Empire instead. As part of Andreas’ conditions for promising to restoring Alessandro to the dogeship, he formally acknowledges the transfer, as well as forsaking the reduced import-export duties the Genoese had paid. At that moment, all traders, both Roman and foreign, have to pay the same duties as everyone else.

It does not last very long. Aside from his father’s looting plan, Andreas has discovered several more economic policies Theodoros had planned but had not had time to implement. The first is the abolition of all taxes on inter-theme trade. By doing so, an entire bureaucratic division becomes unnecessary, allowing the government to cut costs. Theodoros’ argument is that also the money from the lost taxes would be made up in the increased profits of the merchants, resulting in higher gains from property taxes.

Another change, done in a similar vein but also to secure the loyalty of both Roman merchants and the new Genoese subjects, is an adjustment of the import-export duties. All foreign subjects still have to pay the regular 10% duty, but all Imperial citizens now have to pay only a 7% one. Again the rationale is that increased profits by the merchants, all of which will go into Roman hands this time, will led to higher property tax revenues.

At the same time, the Roman governmental presses are operating at full speed, printing booklets of The Latin Fury, a short piece that contains Niketas Choniates’ accounts of the sacks of Thessaloniki in 1185 and Constantinople in 1204, as well as a multitude of posters and pamphlets encouraging Roman citizens to join the military. Even though waves of volunteers do respond, Andreas still is forced to resort to conscription in his bid to restore Roman military might to full strength.

However this leads to money issues, especially as Andreas wants to conduct an armament reform before the war begins in earnest. Even with the Silk Road and the Don-Volga trade doing well, the transfer of taxpayers to the tagmatic rolls results in a shortfall. The Emperor negotiates loans from Arles, Avignon, Georgia, and a few of the leading merchant families of the Empire, including the incredibly wealthy Plethon family. They have intermarried heavily with the Medici exiles, and the combined financial acumen of the two families has resulted in a massive commercial empire, with agents trading in silk, sugar, spices, books, grain, salt, furs, and iron in ports as far afield as Malacca and Antwerp. Their property taxes alone pay for the Varangoi.

Even so, it is not enough. Andreas turns yet again to the work of his father. On March 3, the palace presses churn out two thousand certificates. In exchange for a set amount of cash paid upfront, the Roman government pledges to pay a 5% interest on the principal, with the principal itself to be repaid in 1476 with the possibility of renegotiation at that time.

Targeted at the middle classes (unlike the loans procured from dynatoi) they actually prove to be a big success, particularly as Andreas’ propanganda drive whips up the war fervor of the populace. More notes are printed and sold (they soon become known as popes because one famous poster showed a Roman merchant cutting down a figure in papal regalia with a giant note), and combined with the more traditional means Andreas gets the money he needs.

Besides the monetary need to pay for new soldiers, ships, and artillery, Andreas is also conducting some new reforms based on the lessons from the Italian wars. First is the outfitting of the Athanatoi, Varangoi, and Scholai kataphraktoi with complete sets of plate armor. The second is the expansion of the kentarchiai program, with ten kentarchiai being combined into one chilliarchos, which has a total of eight hundred sarissoforoi and two hundred mauroi, all militia, in its ranks. It is to be supported by four skutatoi droungoi in battle. By June there are five chilliarchoi, but none of them are of high quality as over two-thirds of their men are raw recruits.

Yet the biggest change deals with the akrites, the heavy skirmishers of the Roman tagmata. Due both to his use of mauroi in Sicily and Alfredo’s in southern Italy, Andreas has decided that he wants to increase the number of mauroi dramatically. Due to the expenses in both money and manpower, he does not want to add them to the existing structure. Given the similarity in fighting tactics between akrites and tagmata mauroi (the former use javelins, the latter arquebuses), he elects to have the akrites take up firearms.

It takes months to equip them, and also time to conduct tagma drills so that the other troops will be accustomed to the changes. Also many of the mauroi are provided with horses so they can fight in the Alfredan manner. They become known as maura aloga, black horses. But Andreas gets the months he needs.

One of the biggest problems the crusaders face is the question of leadership. Seventeen sovereigns of varying ranks participate, but eventually the Big Three, Emperor Frederick III Wittelsbach of the Holy Roman Empire, King Henry II/IV of France and England, and King Philippe I of Lotharingia, form a command council of themselves. Each sovereign commands his national contingents, but only the three can decide matters for the whole army. They swear that if two support an order, the third will acquiesce, with Julius issuing a warning that a violation of that oath will result in immediate excommunication.

The first decision reached by the Big Three is the date of assembly. It is agreed that an autumn campaign will be conducted, both so that the harvest will be available for provisions and so that northern European troops won’t have to fight in an Italian summer. That latest reason is pointed out by Henry II/IV. Chastened by his near-death experience in the Two Months War, he has tried since then to do more to involve the English in the Plantaganet Empire. While French lands do receive the bulk of his attention, England is no longer completely ignored. English troops make up half of the Plantaganet contingent, and the King of England has assembled an artillery train greater than any seen in the Ninety Years’ War.

In April Milan receives a joint demand from the Big Three, as well as the Papacy. Milan must allow free passage of any and all crusader armies and provide markets for provisions, sold at fair prices. If the demands are not met, the first target of the crusade will be Milan. Given the wealth of the duchy, the monarchs are confident that they can convince their men to attack a Catholic state. Not willing to bet their existence on Roman help, the Milanese capitulate. The crusader plan is to march down Italy, seize the south (which would blow a hole in the Calabria-Sicily-Malta cordon the Romans use to bar the eastern Mediterranean against hostiles), then cross the Adriatic to Epirus, and fight their way down the Via Egnatia until Constantinople is taken.

At the same time, the naval pendulum swings heavily against the Empire. Despite its allegiance to Avignon, Aragon joins the crusade to regain Sicily, adding another fifty warships to the rolls of the Franglian, Lotharingian, Genoese, Pisan, and Florentine fleets. On April 20, Portugal joins as well. Due to a couple of diplomatic reverses with the potentates on the Senegal, the recent growth in the slave, gold, and salt trade has stalled, making many Portuguese argue that it’d be easier to blast their way into the eastern Mediterranean than try to find a way around Africa, especially since it shows no sign of ending.

Both states can do so as the Hammer, now in his late sixties, is failing fast. His younger brother, Sultan of al-Maghreb and al-Ifriqiya, had already predeceased him, so when Mohammed al-Hasan ibn Abu does perish, a Marinid civil war between the Hammer’s successors who would have had all of the Marinid domain normally and those currently in Marrakesh is certain.

Although Portuguese purxiphoi have less firepower than Roman ones, they have a faster rate of fire due to the use of smaller guns, and they are far more maneuverable and seaworthy. Plus Lisbon has no less than fifty four of them, compared to Constantinople’s twenty two. When the news reaches the City, Andreas institutes a massive popes drive to raise money for the fleet, and receives an equally massive response from the merchants of the Empire. He has been working to give them complete control over the eastern markets, so now they back him to the hilt to defend that privilege.

With the Imperial Arsenal working at full speed, along with the Venetian original, the Roman fleet is able to lessen the numerical gap somewhat, bringing the total of purxiphoi by August to forty, compared to the crusader total of seventy. Supporting the gunships are one hundred and fifty Roman and one hundred and ninety crusader galleys. To man the fleet, Andreas relies heavily on conscription of merchant sailors, as well as using tagma soldiers for marines.

Basing from Sardinia and Tunis, starting in August, the crusader armada repeatedly hammers at the Sicily-Malta cordon thrown up by the Roman fleet. Back and forth the fleets smash at each other, both sides fighting with courage and skill. Particularly dangerous are the Portuguese purxiphoi, whose broadsides prove particularly damaging when aimed at the oar banks of dromons. But the Romans, with shorter supply lines and more developed bases, hold, if barely. One advantage they have, much like in the Smyrnan War, is that the crusaders have committed the totality of their naval strength, even as the Romans feed more ships and men in the maelstrom, although their quality rapidly declines as the battles continue.

Before the naval campaign though, Andreas finally sees some successes. No less than three plots to ignite Sicilian revolts are nipped in the bud through information gained via the new torture method. On June 26, the Serbian Prince of Macva, who had been intriguing with Julius, is killed along with his entire family when his palace blows up. The other Serbian lords take the hint.

Both the Sicilian and Serbian operations had been undertaken by the organization called the Emperor’s Eyes. In reality, they should be called the Empress’ Eyes, as Kristina is their leader and it is an extension of her personal spy network. Paid with revenues directly from imperial estates, not the Roman treasury, they are loyal only to Kristina. The main reason for their creation was that Andreas wanted a spy network that could not be subverted, unlike the Office of Barbarians which had several Vlad appointees.

While Andreas no longer has a problem with his Megas Domestikos, he has no desire to be in a similar position ever again. Responsible for internal security, while the Office of Barbarians still oversees foreign operations, they have also proved quite useful in ferreting out courtiers spreading inappropriate rumors and disposing of them.

* * *​

Constantinople, July 4, 1471:

Alexeia stared at the figure in the center of the courtyard, a skinny man of about thirty. He was tied to a table, his arms pinned to his side as he lay on his stomach. His head would have hung off the edge, but his forehead was strapped to a block of wood, the back of his neck hanging exposed in between.

She looked at Andreas. “This isn’t a good idea.”

He stared back at her with his empty eyes. “And why not?” He replied.

“Andreas, don’t kill that man, not this way. It’s torture.”

“So? He’s been convicted of fourteen counts of rape. Fourteen. If Zoe were here, she’d kill him herself. This piece of shit doesn’t deserve a clean death.”

“Fine! But for God’s sake, don’t have Demetrios do it! He’s not even ten years old.” He wouldn’t be for another two months.

“And?”

“He’s too young for that!”

“I was ten when I learned to kill. If I hadn’t, I probably would not be here today.”

“This is different.”

“Is it? Someday Demetrios will be Emperor, and when he is, he must be ready to kill. And it may be that that day will be soon. But when it comes, he must be ready.”

“If you are concerned you’ll be killed, stay in Constantinople. Let Vlad lead the army. But leave Demetrios out of this, please.”

Andreas shook his head. “No. The Empire will need every ounce of strength in this fight. I must be there. To stay here, safe, while they die in my name…No, I will not do that. But if the worst should happen, Demetrios will be ready. He must be ready. That is why I am doing this.”

Alexeia sighed, and then looked over as Kristina walked up to Andreas’ side, scratching the left side of her nose. “Kristina,” she said. “Help me here, please. Tell your husband that this is unnecessary.”

“It is necessary,” Kristina replied, placing a hand on her massive belly. She would give birth to her and Andreas’ second child any day now. “The Emperor of the Romans must be strong,” she continued, sitting down on a bench and breathing a sigh of relief.

Alexeia sighed, one of despair. She had hoped that Kristina’s maternal instinct would intervene, but Demetrios wasn’t her son; he was Maria’s.

Andreas turned, unsheathing his sword. He held it out for Demetrios, who stared at his father with eyes wide. Her nephew was the very image of Andreas at that age, a short, skinny boy with light brown hair and a lot of freckles. He had the same disposition as Andreas at that age too, quiet, bookish, gentle. She’d just finished making a blanket for him decorated with rhinoceroses.

Demetrios took the blade, hefting it in two small, trembling hands, and turned toward the strapped-down man. Next to him, his younger but stockier and just-as-tall brother Leo watched, his eyes moving between his brother and his father. Alexeia looked again at her brother, his eyes blank and cold, but with the same bony frame and freckled face of his eldest son. She felt, not anger, but sadness, regret, for the brother she had had before the Black Day, before he had learned to kill.

“Kill him,” Andreas ordered.

Demetrios bit his lip, raising the sword over the man’s neck, his body shaking. The man whimpered. The Prince froze, Andreas still staring blankly. He dropped the sword, staring at his hands. “I, I can’t.”

“Damnit, boy,” Andreas hissed. “You have to. Do you want to be Emperor someday?”

“No.” Andreas blinked. As he did, Alexeia thought she saw a wolfish grin dart across Kristina’s face.

For a few seconds there was silence. Alexeia closed her eyes, bracing for the coming explosion. What was that? She opened them again. Andreas was chuckling. He squatted, staring his son in the eyes and squeezed his shoulder. “Then you are wiser than most,” the Emperor said. “Perhaps…” The look in Andreas’ eyes was different, far-off. Perhaps he too remembers, the way it was before. “Perhaps.” Alexeia stepped forward.

The man screamed, blood splattering both Demetrios and Andreas. Leo ripped the blade out of the prisoner’s neck, and then brought it down again. Demetrios cringed, wheeling around to bury his face in the folds of Alexeia’s dress. Leo swung again. His older brother whimpered, Alexeia holding him tightly. A fourth stroke. Finally the neck broke. Leo held up the bloody blade and beamed at Andreas. “I did it, I did it, father.” Demetrios looked out again.

Andreas smiled back, but it was a thin one. “Kristina!” he yelled. A puddle was forming at her feet. As Andreas started bellowing for the midwife, Alexeia saw, out of the corner of her eye, Leo stick his tongue out at Demetrios.

* * *​

1471 continued:
As September begins, crusader contingents begin crossing the Alpine passes to assemble in the plains of Lombardy. Julius too has been using the printing press as a propaganda tool, promising mass indulgences to those who take up the cross. Also tales of the fabulous wealth of the east lure many to join the call, while the personal participation of many monarchs only more encourages the European nobility to participate. The threat posed by Andreas’ fostering of peasant revolts and anti-aristocratic policies cannot be tolerated.

But on September 1, the Empire strikes back. On that day, the war is transformed as for the third time the Orthodox Alliance awakens. On that day, twenty eight Georgian warships dock at Piraeus on their way to join the Roman squadrons at Malta. On that day, Russia and Vlachia both declare war on Poland. And on that day, the armies of Hungary storm across the frontier with Presporok.

The Polish contingents immediately head for home, but the remaining crusaders stay where they are. Julius has organized a mass supply depot system to provision the host, but only for an Italian operation. Alfredo and his Apulians have been raiding Umbria and Tuscany all throughout the summer, carting away peasants, livestock, and foodstuffs, and fighting numerous petty engagements with Florentine and Papal armies. But that has been counterbalanced by the shipments of Andalusi and Marinid grain shipped by the Genoese to feed the army. The need to eat overrides any religious qualms.

In fact, the Polish withdrawal proves to be a blessing in disguise, as it lessens the number of mouths to feed. Due to the sheer size of the crusader army, the Romagna is abandoned without a fight. The antiquated, outdated fortresses of the region would be death traps for their garrisons if challenged by the English artillery. Onward the soldiers march, joined by Florentine and Papal detachments.

Andreas, now in southern Italy, has far fewer men than he would like due to the need to garrison Sicily against sea raids, as well as the massive manpower demands of the fleet. He has decided to fight here, in order to spare the Roman heartland. If the worst should happen, the Roman fleet has complete control of the Adriatic so he can retreat, but he is not willing to abandon Roman Italy without a fight.

However he is outnumbered almost two to one. Even when the crusaders take Naples after an eight-day siege, Andreas refuses to engage, harassing the foe with lightning attacks, typically mixed squadrons of light cavalry and black horses. But the crusaders, in need of supplies, completely ransack the countryside, devouring every scrap of food they can find. The Romans are able to repeatedly maul the foragers, yet there are always more. Annoyed by these stings, and viewing the south Italian peasants as rebels and traitors to their rightful lord, King Rene of Naples, who is in the crusader camp, the armies begin exterminating the peasantry.

After garrisoning Naples, the host marches for Bari, slaughtering everything in its path (the crusaders, due to the need to forage and because of Roman light cavalry do not attempt a systematic sweep of the land, but most of the peasants who escape suffer terribly from starvation and famine). Even so, Andreas does not engage, despite the enraged howls of the Apulians.

Andreas had hoped that his raids on the crusader supply lines would cause the various contingents to fight between themselves over food and break up the crusade without a great battle. But the Big Three effectively squash all-infighting, and due to Julius’ depot system, the crusaders are not starving, even if they are not eating well.

But as the crusaders near Bari, Andreas is forced to fight. Bari is an university town, with forty thousand people, just as Roman as Thracesia or Bithynia, and a wealthy port, a perfect target for a juicy sack. A perfect naval base for striking at Epirus, it also houses most of the supplies for the Roman armies in Italy. If it goes, so does the rest of southern Italy, including Calabria, which would make Sicily untenable.

Thus on November 18, the Crusader and Roman armies meet head-on for the first time. The former contains twenty three thousand Franglians, nineteen thousand Lotharingians, eighteen thousand Bavarians, fourteen thousand Saxons, plus twelve thousand more crusaders, eighty six thousand strong in total. The Romans number fifty thousand. Where they meet has already seen a battle, a battle more ominous, more gruesome, more terrible for Roman arms than Manzikert, than Yarmouk, than Adrianople.


cannae.jpg

Cannae​


* * *​


Cannae, November 18, 1471:

Andreas stared out at the clouds of longbowmen and crossbowmen swirling in front of the approaching crusader host, already trading bolts with the turkopouloi who were in full retreat. “Damn, they’re faster than I expected,” he muttered.

He was mounted atop his favorite horse, a dark brown charger that had been a birthday gift from Kristina. At his side were Vlad and Alfredo, also mounted. Just in front, Roman soldiers grunted and officers yelled as they frantically tried to get at least some makeshift fortifications up. Andreas gazed up into the sky. It was a clear, sunny day, a light breeze nipping up from the east. There were a couple of small clouds riding the wind, but they were nothing compared to the battalions of blackbirds massed overhead. They knew what great hosts of armored men and horses meant. Dinner.

“How long till the guns are ready?” Andreas asked Thoros. The squat Armenian with his stubby salt-and-pepper beard was the Ploiarchos tou Poliorkies, the Master of Sieges, commander of the Imperial artillery train, as opposed to the individual tagma batteries. For some reasons Armenians were good with artillery.

“Two hours.”

“Not good enough,” Vlad replied. “Can you move any faster?”

“Sure I can. I could have the guns in place in forty minutes. They just won’t have any ammunition. Unless you want to blow out the warhorses before the battle by making them tow the wagons.”

“That wouldn’t help,” Andreas replied, looking again at the crusaders. They were ready for a fight. They weren’t starving, but they were hungry, and they knew that beyond the Roman army lay Bari, packed with provisions. And they had been harassed, harried and raided for the past two and half months, ever since they crossed the Po River. But now they had a battle, a chance to end the incessant stinging.

Andreas knew the enemy would be aggressive, had planned his entire battle strategy on that. The crusaders would come at the Romans, and come hard. And given the sheer numerical disparity, and the quality of many of those troops, the result would be an Adana. Unless they had the support of the guns. Massed on the flanks, they would, in concert with the battle line, break that charge. There weren’t enough to cover the whole line with the amount of fire it would need, but the wings could be secured.

“The wings matter, gentlemen,” he said. Both armies were tough and brave. Frontal attacks would be horrendously bloody. It was the flanks that mattered. Whoever got turned first would almost certainly lose. The crusaders could do it easily; they had far more men. But the Romans had to flank a host that outnumbered them almost two to one. However, if the center broke, at least enough to draw the crusaders in, it could be done, so long as the Roman flanks held.

The turkopouloi were flying backwards. They were vastly outnumbered by the hordes of crusader skirmishers with half of their number hovering on the wings, ready to check any flanking maneuvers. Even if all had been committed forward though, the sheer mass of crusaders would bull through the screen, especially since both Romans and crusaders had figured out that in open country, longbowmen were very, very good at cutting down lightly armored turkopouloi. They needed to stall the attack, with something heavier than light horse.

The grin on Vlad’s face was feral, predatory, like that of a wolf…or a dragon. The Megas Domestikos’ gaze darted from the ranks of kataphraktoi to the crusader lines, where the obscenely large, brilliantly golden banner of Lotharingia was flying. “I say we give them what they want.”

Andreas nodded his head. “I agree. Do it.”

Alfredo spoke. “The black horses are ready, Megas Domestikos.”

“Good.” Vlad turned his horse, trotting over a few steps to the trumpeters. And then he roared those, plain, simple words, the words that had seen many a Roman enemy crumpled, many a foe slain, and had seen the rise of a dragon.

“KATAPHRAKTOI, READY KONTOI!”


* * *


William loosed another arrow at the Roman horse archers. He, along with a wave of English longbowmen and Florentine crossbowmen, had been chasing them back across the field, until now he was within extreme longbow range of the Roman line. He dared not go further. A few companies had; he had never seen such thick, black sheets of arrows, and he had no desire to be under that kind of rain. A few feet to his right, Alfred lobbed a missile of his own.

“They’re moving,” Alfred muttered.

William squinted. He could see things shifting back and forth behind the glistening ranks of the armored spearmen, but he couldn’t make it out. And then the Roman line moved, eleven thousand Roman heavy cavalry marching out through sudden gaps opened by the infantry, a clean, precise movement. For a moment the cavalry hung there just in front of the infantry, dressing their lines. They only needed a little. And then trumpets sounded, the great assembly of armored horse and men advancing at the trot.

To the left a crossbowman shrieked as an arrow stabbed him in the eye. More rained down from the sky. The Romans had stationed their light horse archers behind the kataphraktoi, where they could rain down plunging fire while protected by the plate and steel lamellar of the heavy cavalry. Alfred swore as one nearly skewered his foot. The rain was dribbling down, but now William could see the shafts launching skyward behind the approaching crash of the kataphraktoi. “Let’s get out of here,” Alfred said. William nodded, turned, and ran. With them came the entire wave of crusader skirmishers.


* * *


Philippe laughed. “Ha! The Greeks do have some spirit after all! Knights of Lotharingia, mount up!” As he looked, he could see that that order was unnecessary. Already they were clambering up, moving out to meet that charge in one of their own. It would be a great charge, a glorious charge, a charge for the ages, and no one, no good noble, would forsake this chance.

“Your majesty, what about the skirmishers?”

Philippe sneered. He could see the black scrawl that was them, already in full flight, fleeing back to the crusader camp. “They do not matter!” he bellowed. “If they get in the way, ride them down as well! Forward!”

As the knights clambered through the ranks of infantry, Philippe could see that though the Lotharingians and Saxons were moving, the Bavarians were not. No matter. More glory for the Knights of Lotharingia. And with a great rolling crash, fifteen thousand knights rushed forward.


* * *


Ludwig swallowed, staring at the smashed, crumpled bits that had been a knight and his horse fifteen seconds earlier. Above what was left of them stood the towering, red-bearded figure of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, holding his bloody, brain-splattered mace. Though the man was only twenty four years old, younger even than the Greek Emperor, Ludwig had never seen even an experienced combat veteran, never mind one so big, move so fast. “Anyone else want to charge without my orders?” the Emperor asked.

Ludwig was not alone when he answered no.


* * *


Alfred whooped. “Here comes the cavalry to the rescue!” A ragged cheer rose up. It was a brilliant sight, the plate-armored men and horses blazing in the sun, banners and pennants flying. The horses were covered in cloth barding, on which was emblazoned their coats of arms, adorned with silk ribbons and gold thread. In contrast, the Roman horse, garbed only in armor, seemed so plain in comparison.

William frowned. But there were more differences. The knights had come through the infantry lines more unevenly than the Romans, and they had not paused to dress their ranks, instead moving forward as soon as they were clear. As a result some squadrons were far ahead of the ones on their flanks. The kataphraktoi, on the other hand, were a solid silver wall.

The knights sped up, now in a canter, heading straight for the Roman horse. “Uh, where do we go?” William muttered. In front of him, as far as he could see, were horses. Behind him, as far as he could see, were horses.

With a bellow, the first knights slammed into the skirmishers, the infantry shrieking as they were trampled. A lance skewered Alfred. “FRENCH BASTARDS!” William roared, whipping out his hammer. A horse charged, he sidestepped, and slammed his weapon into the animal’s left eye.


* * *


Vlad smiled. The knightly cavalry charge had already been ragged, but now after chopping through their own skirmishers, virtually all semblance of organization was gone. It was now just a pell-mell rush forward. He raised his kontos, his lance. Trumpets blew, and they moved into a canter. Some of the knights started galloping, a good number of them tangling up with their comrades who remained in a canter, further fouling their lines.

More trumpets sounded, and some of the Roman horses leapt to the gallop. The turkopouloi swept around from behind the kataphraktoi, moving forward to envelop the knights. As they started loosing their bolts into their sides, the skythikoi, stationed in the wings of the heavy cavalry lines, began shooting as well. A few moments too they began to gallop, peeling off from the melee cavalry.

It had taken some arguing to get here. He wasn’t a cavalry tourmarch anymore, like he had been at Adana, so long ago. But he had insisted. This charge had to work, and no one knew better how to handle cavalry in the field than the Dragon. He wasn’t available.

But his son was. There had been a time when being called the son of the Dragon had bothered him. He had wanted to be known for his own deeds, not his father’s. Now though it didn’t. He had seen it once, at Taji, when men outnumbered two to one had charged the Lord of Asia and all his hosts. And it was doing so here again. He knew why now, and he accepted it.

Legends mattered. “Blessed are we above all men, for we live in an age of dragons,” he whispered. Then he raised his lance and yelled. “Archangel Saint Michael, defend us in battle!” Trumpets blew, and now, finally, the kataphraktoi leapt to the gallop just as the black horses bellowed their booming cry as they fired, then scurrying out of the way.

The earth was shaking as over thirty thousand horses charged. In his mind’s eye, he could see the turkopouloi enveloping the ranks of knights, pelting their rear with arrows. And the skythikoi, wheeling around to deliver their slashing waves of arrows before slamming into their flanks. And the kataphraktoi and knights, coming at each other head-on. The crusaders yelled their infernal, accursed call, “Deus vult!” The kataphraktoi answered. “Saint Theodoros!” The earth shook, trembling as the lines grew closer, closer, closer.

Impact.


* * *


Again the crash of thunder swept across the field of Cannae as another section of the akrites vomited flame and lead balls, toppling knights from their saddles. Crossbow bolts snapped back. “They’re falling back,” Alfredo reported.

“Good,” Andreas replied. “I was worried they’d try and punch through.” Most of the guns were ready for battle now, but if the crusaders had come hot on the heels of the retreating kataphraktoi, the Romans wouldn’t have been able to use them anyway for the risk of friendly fire.

The kataphraktoi and skythikoi had been outnumbered three to two by the Lotharingian and Saxon knights, but that had not mattered, not when the knights had been pricked and bled by the turkopouloi and black horses, and when they charged into the engagement they had come squadron by squadron, sometimes horseman by horseman. Many had been slaughtered piecemeal.

Only then, when the crusaders had been locked in a tightening vise of heavy and light cavalry, had the Bavarian and English knights sallied. That charge had been different. Although decked out far more gallantly than the kataphraktoi, they had charged in ordered, ranked squadrons. They had not had anything like the turkopouloi, but they had been supported by crossbow equivalents to the black horses.

To avoid being caught between two forces, Vlad had been forced to disengage, although not before mauling his original opponents. He’d managed to wheel away in time, covered again by the turkopouloi and another black horse volley. Most importantly though, he’d accomplished his mission. The entire cavalry engagement had stalled the imminent crusader attack, and by the time they had regrouped their horsemen and positioned for a second, all the Roman batteries would be on line.

The Megas Domestikos cantered up, his mount panting, but the Vlach had a huge grin on his face. “Some of the sorry bastards got away, but not the big one.”

Andreas furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“Your majesty! I present to you your royal cousin, King Philippe of Lotharingia!”

Two guards dragged the bruised, battered monarch forward. Philippe slowly, wincingly stood up. “Your prisoner, sir,” he growled.

“No, you’re not,” Andreas replied.

Philippe blinked. “You’re letting me go?”

Andreas rolled his eyes. “No. You are simply not my prisoner.” He stretched out his hand to his left. “You’re hers.” Philippe looked over at the figure, immolating him in her gaze. It was Zoe Komnena.

She had been in Abruzzi when the campaign began, and had refused to leave her brother and husband. Andreas knew he would remember that conversation until the day he died. He had entreated her to go to safety. Her response: “We ran at Smyrna. What good did that do us?” And then their eyes had locked, the nightmare flitting before them. “It is time to end this. And I will be there when it does, one way or another.”

“A woman? What is thi-” Zoe’s dagger slashed open Philippe’s left cheek in a spray of blood. The two Roman soldiers caught the Lotharingian as he staggered backwards.

Zoe waved the bloody weapon in front of Philippe’s face. “You killed my daughter, you son of a bitch!” she snarled. The assassination attempt on Alfredo and Zoe had in fact claimed a life, the little baby girl forming in her belly, her first child. The plan had been to announce the pregnancy at the end of the banquet where the couple was poisoned.

“As I said,” Andreas spoke. “You’re not my prisoner. You’re hers. You really shouldn’t go after my family.” He looked at the guards. “Now get this piece of shit out of my sight.”

* * *


“That miserable, stinking bastard!” Henry, King of France and England, yelled. “He’s fortunate he got captured by the Romans. I’d kill him myself!” Over two hundred English longbowmen had been trampled by the Lotharingians, although the Romans had avenged those losses over tenfold.

Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure how much of the display was genuine or an act. He knew Henry had had some issues with his English subjects, so he could be putting on an act. In the end though, it didn’t matter. “Philippe has paid for his foolishness. But now we must look to the army. The scouts’ reports have already been relayed. Is England ready?”

The two monarchs looked over at Charles Tudor, commander of the royal artillery train of the King of England. He nodded. “Then do it,” Henry ordered.

Charles turned around, his gaze sweeping across the mass of cannon. He bellowed. “For Saint George and England! Open fire!” The call echoed down the line as torches were lit. A few seconds passed in silence, save for the cawing of the blackbirds, and then an earth-shattering roar as one hundred and thirty seven English guns opened fire.


* * *


Andreas saw the bursts of flame, the rising of powder smoke pillars, and then the shriek as cannonballs screamed overhead. He looked over at Thoros. “Master of Sieges,” he said. “Wake the guns.” Moments later ninety one Roman cannons answered the call.


* * *


“Lie still, men!” Alfredo yelled, walking to and fro along the line as English cannonballs whistled overhead. One smashed into a wagon, sending wooden shrapnel flying everywhere. “There’s no safe place here. One spot’s as good as the next.”

The air reeked of sulfur, the powdery smoke clinging to him like a blanket. All along the front balls of fire and blasts of thunder erupted as the Roman batteries vomited back their own metal rain upon the crusader lines.

An drungarios disintegrated into a bloody mist as a culverin shot hit him squarely in the torso. A few, like Alfredo, were on their feet, but most of the Roman soldiery had flattened on their stomachs once the bombardment began. They were trained to be used to gunpowder, but never had any of them experienced a barrage so heavy and so accurate before. He’d had to use the flat of his blade on a few who tried to run.

But not all Romans were on the ground. Alfredo looked over to his right. Emperor Andreas was atop his horse, his two chief guardsmen mounted on theirs as well, staring out at the crusaders. One skutatos scurried over. “Basileus, please come down. We cannot spare you.”

Andreas looked the soldier in the eye as two cannonballs skipped across the field just to his left as three more sailed overhead. “There are times when an emperor’s life does not count.”

Alfredo dropped to the ground as another English shot screamed by just past him. As he hugged the earth, a pair of soft, small feet appeared in front of him. “Showing me your best side?” Zoe asked, staring down at him.

He grabbed her hand, pulling her down as well. “What are you doing here?”

“Philippe blacked out.”

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.”

“I thought you just said there is no safe place here.” Alfredo opened his mouth. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.” He closed it. He knew she didn’t blame Andreas for leaving her at Smyrna; there was nothing he could have done for her. But that fear, of being alone, helpless, still haunted her. That was why she clung so tightly to her brother. He’d seen it at least half a dozen times, when she’d awakened, screaming in the night, and somehow Andreas had known and been there to still the nightmare. And she had done the same for him just as many times. Even now, for them, the Black Day still lived. Even now, he could see the darkness reflected in her eyes.

He reached over, a rough, scarred hand brushing her smooth cheek. “You’ll never be alone, Zoe. That I promise you.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said, a tear trickling down her cheek. And as cannonballs screamed down nearby, Alfredo smiled as he looked into his wife’s eyes. The darkness was gone.


* * *


Vlad coughed. Not only was the air thick with powder smoke, but also steam clouds as workmen frantically poured buckets of water on overheating barrels. The only hope of matching the greater number of English guns had been to overwork the Roman cannons. But now the ones that hadn’t been knocked out by counter-battery fire were beginning to break down under the strain. Two had literally exploded under the pressure.

He turned to look at the Emperor. Lorenzo was off his horse now, running after a rolling cannonball, waving his arms like some kid playing a game. Finally the ball stopped, Lorenzo putting one foot atop and raising his arms in triumph. “Score!” he shouted. Andreas burst out laughing.

As men looked at the scene, they did not see a silly guardsman. They saw their Emperor, laughing as shot roared down from the sky, grinning as the largest artillery bombardment in the history of the world fell around him. That caused Vlad to smile.

Legends mattered.


* * *


Henry squinted, looking across the field. “Looks like they’re giving up.” Roman fire had been increasingly intermittent over the last half an hour, and now it had stopped entirely.

“Could be a ruse,” Frederick replied. “He could be waiting for us to move closer, and then hit us in the face.”

“Yes. But we’re going to have to let off anyway, or some of the barrels will start bursting. We also need to gather up the usable Roman shot to replenish our ammunition.”

“Of course. How many batteries will be ready to fight in an hour?”

“Ninety five, possibly a hundred.”

The Holy Roman Emperor stroked his beard. “The Romans will have at most half of that.”

“A third is more likely. Charles had his best gun masters hitting those emplacements.”

“Let’s assume half, just to be on the safe side.” He squinted. “It won’t be enough. Are your men ready?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Good. Your men will be crucial to the coming maneuver.”

“Thank you, your majesty. Your confidence will not be misplaced.”

Frederick nodded. “Very well, then. It’s time to begin.” He turned to his squadron of couriers. “Inform the captains. Execute Gaugamela.”


* * *


“I like my women smart and my enemies dumb,” Andreas muttered. “I’m not getting the second.”

Alfredo nodded, looking across the field as once again crusader skirmishers pricked and prodded at the Roman lines. As they demonstrated, he knew that the crusaders had sent out two large forces, ten thousand strong each and supported by longbowmen to keep turkopouloi at bay, to both wings, maneuvering to flank the Roman army. With two-thirds of the cannons out of action, defense of the wings had fallen to the horse archers who were moving to block the thrusts. Meanwhile in front, the great host of the west was beginning to move forward.

A turkopoulos galloped up, his mount spewing foam. “Your Majesty! The enemy flankers have split up. Five thousand continue to maneuver around the army, but-”

“But the other five thousand have turned and are coming straight at our flanks,” Alfredo continued. The courier nodded, his eyes bulging out. He knew what that meant. If the screen covered the first group, the second group would be perfectly positioned to stave in their flanks. If the screen covered the second group, the first could either wheel around and smash the screen to bits with the second acting as the anvil or shift unmolested to hit the army in the rear. And if the screen split up to guard against both, it’d be too weak to prevent either from just bulling their way through in any event. And the reserves were needed to cover the weakened front.

“If we attack, hit them now,” Alfredo said. “We might have a chance. Their flanks are exposed too. They’ve sent most of their remaining cavalry to the flanking maneuvers. If we get in there and maul their center…”

“Not enough time,” Andreas muttered. “Look. They have Swiss pikemen anchoring the wings. It’d take too long to either flank them or smash them aside. We’d have Bavarian knights up our ass before we’d hurt them enough.”

“If we just sit here, we’ll be crushed. Without the cannons, we can’t hold this position.”

“I know. And plan beta isn’t available yet. Damn. I didn’t think those Englanders would be so good at taking out our guns. Idiot.”

“So what are your orders?”

For a moment, Andreas was silent, though his lips moved. Alfredo thought he could make out one word. Ramsar?

“ATHANATOI WILL ADVANCE!” Andreas roared. Men’s heads snapped around to look at the Emperor. If just the Athanatoi was being ordered forward, that meant Andreas was going forward as well. He wouldn’t use one of the elite guard units as a forlorn hope to stall the crusader attack.

Alfredo grabbed the reins of Andreas’ horse. “Your majesty, what are you doing?”

“Let go of my horse,” Andreas growled.

“What are you doing?” Alfredo repeated, but he let go.

“What needs to be done. If I attack the crusader line, they’ll focus on me, not the army.” Vlad galloped up. “Megas Domestikos, you are to be regent upon my death, until Demetrios comes of age. Take care of him.”

“I will, your majesty.”

“Incoming!” an eikosarchos shrieked. Great crashes roared from the crusader line as the English guns again opened fire, cannonballs screaming down on the toxotai. Alfredo sighed. He knew what they were doing. The barrage was forcing the archers to stay down, meaning they couldn’t harass the incoming horde with missile fire.

“Your majesty!” Thoros yelled. “Request permission to return fire!”

“Denied! Ready your pieces to fall back!” Andreas looked at Vlad. “Retreat. The Athanatoi will cover your withdrawal.”

Caw! Caw! From the swirling array of blackbirds in the sky, one raven swept down to land on the top of Andreas’ horse’s head. It snorted, but the bird did not move, staring at Andreas. Caw! Andreas rubbed its chin. “I was worried you wouldn’t show up,” he muttered. “I may not have dumb enemies, but at least I do have smart women.”

He looked up. “Master of Sieges!”

“Yes, your majesty!”

“I want fire on that hill.” He pointed at a hillock in the center of the crusader ranks. “As much fire as possible. I want hell itself to seem pleasant in comparison.”

“Yes, your majesty!” Thoros turned around. “You heard the Emperor. Time to send these Latin bastards back to hell!”

Andreas turned back to Vlad and Alfredo. “Change of plans. The tagmata will advance. Alfredo, refuse the line. No need to make it easy for the crusaders to flank us.” The Emperor nodded at Vlad, who trotted over to start barking at the couriers.

“Nervous?” Andreas asked.

Alfredo arced an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, don’t worry. My Apulians will watch your back.”

“I do not have Apulians in my army.” Alfredo blinked. “I have Romans.”

“Well, then, my Romans will watch your back.”

“Good. Take care of yourself, Strategos. Stay alive.”

Alfredo nudged his horse forward so he was right next to the Emperor, just as the first of the Roman guns opened up. He believed there were thirty five working. “Do the same.”

Andreas nodded, and then turned and yelled at Vlad. “Megas Domestikos! Summon the bands! I want march music!” That was a new innovation, the creation of military bands to play music during the march to help pass the time and keep morale up.

As trumpets sounded, drums clattered, and artillery roared, Alfredo whispered a small prayer to himself while he moved to hold the flank. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; The toxotai were standing, even though shot was slamming into their ranks, loosing their whistling volleys of death. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. The thudding footsteps of armored men and horses beat across the battlefield, even as Roman shot started smashing at the crusader ranks. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. In front, thunder rolled as the akrites opened fire.


* * *


“Look out!” a page yelled a moment before a Roman cannonball flattened him.

“So he does have some guns still working after all,” Frederick muttered.

“Yes, he does,” Henry said. “And they’re all shooting at us.” He turned to one of his pages. “Order Charles to have thirty of the guns shift to counter-battery fire.” The boy galloped off.

Five more balls of fire burst from the Roman ranks. Frederick could see the cannonballs flying through the air. Four were off, but one was coming straight at him. Around him, all the men, including Henry, started to back off. But Frederick kept watching as it came closer, closer, closer. He nudged his horse to the left. The ball crashed into the ground, stopping in the earth, two feet to his right. Frederick looked at Henry. “They missed.”

The Romans were moving now, charging at them. He could hear the music of their bands, he could see their perfectly ordered formations. It was a magnificent sight, a glorious sight, a futile sight. There was no way they could break his center before he flanked them, but they were going to try. Brave men. Good men.

“The army will advance,” he ordered.

And as the two hosts hurtled towards their deadly embrace, no one noticed as up above, one lone raven broke away from the battalions of blackbirds, flying north.


* * *


Miguel de Talavera, Grandmaster of the Hospitaler Order, stretched out his left arm. “Hello, Julius.” The raven landed on his forearm. “Did you deliver the message?” Caw! “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, feeding the raven a piece of raw meat. “Alright, up you go.” He raised his arm and the bird took off, a second later Manuel flicking his gloved hand.

Julius was the Empress Kristina’s best bird; her unofficial title ‘Empress of Blackbirds’ was an appropriate one. She’d spent the last six months making sure that Julius would obey him, all for this maneuver.

Miguel adjusted the patch covering the hole where his left eye used to be, taken by a Mameluke arrow at Jerusalem. A loss that had been in vain, because of men like these in front of him, false crusaders, who took the oath he had dedicated his life to and then spat and trampled all over it, who rose their swords against Christians, the ones who could make the liberation of the Holy Land possible. “Time to kill some scum,” he muttered.

He looked to his side. Six thousand horsemen stood with him, one thousand of them knights of the Order. The rest were Romans, eight hundred of them Muslims. At least half had been at Jerusalem, had stormed the walls along with Miguel and his knights. They’d been ferried behind the crusader lines, with the mission of taking the enemy in the rear. It had taken longer than expected to get here; a supply convoy had to be ambushed and all survivors hunted down to maintain secrecy before they arrived.

In front was the fabled field of Cannae, sloping down in front of him. Both sides were fully engaged, the Roman fist digging into the crusader center, but he could see black cavalry columns sweeping around the flanks. Cannon fire had ceased from both sides, but thick clouds of powder smoke hung in the air.

“Tourmarch Melissenos,” he said. “Take the right three tourma and hit there.” He pointed at the crusader right wing, where the banner of France-England was flapping. “I’ll take the rest and strike there.” He pointed at the center, where the Imperial eagle, the standard of the Holy Roman Emperor, was.

The officer and historian nodded. “What about the left wing?”

“There are no royal banners there, and we don’t have enough to hit all three at the same time. The Emperor is keeping the bastards busy, but even so we’re going to have to let some go.”

“Perhaps they’ll put the fear of God in the Catholics.”

Miguel grinned wolfishly. “Perhaps. But I doubt it. They’re even more thick-headed than you Greeks.”

Matthaios smiled. “You’re just jealous that we’re tougher than you.”

A snort. “Yeah, right. We’ll see about that. Are your men ready?”

“Oh, they’re ready, alright.”

Miguel nodded. “Then let’s go.” As the Roman rode off, Miguel turned to his brothers, his fellow knights. “True Soldiers of God, it is time! It is time to crush these barbarians, those who would sully your name with the blood of the faithful. Jerusalem will one day be free, but not so long as these dogs live. Show no mercy, for they are oath-breakers, traitors to the cause of Christendom. And when we are done, let there be naught but true soldiers of the cross here!” He turned around again. “Knights, advance!” Trumpets sounded, and together, six thousand cavalry marched forward.

They came at a trot first, as both sides continued to smash each other, oblivious to the arrival of a new force. But then crusaders began to move, men spilling out from the back, frantically trying to form a rear guard. The turkopouloi shot forward, slamming out arrows into the staggering formations, targeting officers. For a moment, the rearguard wavered, and then with a great cry of “For Saint George and England!” the longbowmen opened up. Light horse went down screaming.

And then the skythikoi were upon them, their approach blocked from view by the swirling array of turkopouloi. The longbowmen were veterans. They were used to Roman cavalry charges. They were accustomed to the calls to saints, even the grim, eerie silence of the kataphraktoi. But nothing had prepared them for the inhuman howl as the enraged skythikoi swept over them.

One charge was enough, the few survivors shrieking back in panic as the turkopouloi fell on them as well, while the heavy horse archers unfurled their bows and commenced slamming arrows into the crusader formations. The knights and kataphraktoi sped up to a canter. Men started to collapse, even as crossbows began to snap back. From one section of the line, covered by Palatine banners, a hail of arquebus fire roared out. More Romans toppled out of their saddles, but then a black fist of arrows shredded the Palatines.

More and more crossbows and arquebuses were being brought to bear on the skythikoi and turkopouloi, but they remained at their posts, scourging their assailants, drawing fire down on them as the kataphraktoi, the true fist of the attack, remained untouched. They burst into a gallop. The shaking earth finally alerted the crusaders to the danger, and a sickly volley leapt out. It had as much effect as pebbles thrown at a charging elephant.

The horse archers were wheeling out of the way, the turkopouloi still loosing arrows as the skythikoi unsheathed their maces. Miguel smiled. He could smell the fear, the terror, the stench of emptied bowels. He raised his lance, and from the charge, came the terrible call, the call of Orthodoxy, of Islam, and of Catholicism.

“Saint Theodoros!”

“Allahu ackbar!”

“Deus vult!”

Together. Perhaps there was something on earth that could stop such a force. But the shredded, ad-hoc remnants of the crusader rearguard was not that something. And from the ranks of black knights, their white crosses blazing, once again came the call.

“Deus vult!”

Pebbles before elephants.


* * *


Frederick stared at the body lying in front of him. It wasn’t one of his own men, but a Roman tourmarch. He had been commanding one of the sections of the refused Roman right flank, one of the sections that had been overrun. He could have surrendered, had been about to, but then he had seen Frederick. Manuel of Kyzikos had been cut down before he reached the Holy Roman Emperor, but he had tried, wagering his life on the small chance that he could slay Frederick and cripple the crusader army. He failed, but Frederick had taken the body with during the retreat, so that he could pay his respects.

The battle had been going well, until that cavalry charge had come out of nowhere and annihilated the right flank and center of the army. He’d been on the left, away from his banner. Knowing Andreas, he would have been the prime target of anything hidden up the Greek’s sleeves. He’d been right. If he’d stayed with his standard, he would be dead along with King Henry, killed while defending his own, according to the few survivors of that action.

Frederick had withdrawn the left wing in good order, and been joined by the flanking forces that hadn’t engaged yet. Reinforced by survivors, he still had numerical parity with the Romans, although he’d lost the entire English artillery train. But there was no point in fighting here. It wouldn’t help Bavaria. It was Germany that mattered now. Both France-England and Lotharingia were in the hands of minors, while Saxony’s army was gutted. And then there were the Russians. Already their cavalry scouts had been reported on the Oder, and the Megas Rigas had publicly declared that he ‘would water his horse in the Rhine.’ There were opportunities, and dangers, aplenty, but in Germany. There was nothing for him here in Italy.

Frederick looked up at another Greek captive, a priest, captured at Naples. “He is to be buried according to the rites of your faith. See to it.” The priest nodded.

Next to him, the papal legate squawked. Frederick couldn’t remember the name of the Italian midget. Nor did he care. He called him Pasta. “What?! He’s a heretic. Just throw him in a hole and be done with it. You need to star-urk!”

Frederick’s hairy hand was clamped around his throat. “I said, he is to be buried according to the rites of his faith.” He tightened his grip. “Is that a problem?” Pasta gurgled. “I take that as a no.” He let go, Pasta collapsing on the ground rasping. Frederick turned to a page. “Get a flag of truce and go over to the Roman camp. I wish to speak with the Emperor of the Greeks.”


* * *


Frederick looked at Andreas, who stared back at him. They were alone, their generals and bodyguards thirty feet away warily eyeing each other. To the east, the setting sun was dappling the clouds on the horizon.

“So you will withdraw?” Andreas asked. “And what of your holy crusade?”

“I say that if it’s God’s war, he can fight it himself.”

“All crusaders will withdraw?”

“No. I cannot compel the Florentine and Papal forces. But the remainder will withdraw, provided you agree to my terms.” They were simple terms. Both sides would return all prisoners without ransom, and the crusaders would be provided enough supplies to see them to the pre-war Roman Italian border. In exchange, France-England, Lotharingia, and the Holy Roman Empire would formally quit the crusade. What happened between the Greeks and the remaining crusaders would be none of Frederick’s business.

“And you swear that your forces will take no part in whatever comes next? I am going to deal with that bastard once and for all.”

“Rome means nothing to me.” In fact, take it, please. Expel the Papacy. Where is it going to go? Germany, of course, and my pocket. And kill Pasta while you’re at it.

Andreas smiled, a thin smile. “Good, then we are agreed.”

Frederick nodded. “Excellent. There is one more thing though.” Should I ask about Philippe? Nah. “The tourmarch, Manuel of Kyzikos, I believe he was a friend of yours?”

“Is he, is he, alive?”

“I am sorry. He fought bravely, and was killed in the line of duty. I arranged for him to be given an Orthodox burial. If you like, I can show you where he is buried.”

“Thank you,” Andreas rasped. “I would like that very much.”


* * *


Andreas stared at the mound of earth covering Manuel’s body. Behind him, over twenty feet away, stood Lorenzo and Andronikos. The ground was cold, but he did not care. Although his body sat there, illuminated by the last fading light of the setting sun, his mind was not. He sat there, and remembered.

He remembered the first time he had met Manuel. He had been a boy of six, wondering at who this strange giant was (of course, back then all men had been giants). He’d been afraid of him The next day, the giant snitched two sugar cookies while Andreas’ mother wasn’t looking, one for himself, and one for Andreas.

There was a rustle of grass as Zoe sat down next to him. There was silence as they both stared, remembering together. A blade, whirling, twirling, holding back a tide of Venetians. Smyrna. The Black Day. And the man who had made sure that it lasted for just one day. The man who had been at his side through it all. The Black Day. The siege of Constantinople. The regency. Sicily. But no more.

“They all die, and yet we live,” Zoe whispered. “I sometimes think it is a curse.”

“It is. But soon, soon, it will be over.” He looked at Zoe. Helena stared back at him. Andreas blinked. It wasn’t his mother; it was Zoe. He brushed a tear from her cheek. “You look like mother.”

A smile flitted across Zoe’s face. “You don’t look like father.” Andreas smiled weakly. “But you are right. Time to lay this to rest. All of it.”

Three days later:

Andreas stared at the other occupants of the tent. Vlad, Thoros, Miguel, the strategoi, including Alfredo and his broken left arm, and Zoe at his side. He knew what they were thinking. Now what? Frederick and the forces under his command had stood aside as the Romans fell on and destroyed the Florentine and Papal armies, and were now being escorted to the Umbrian border.

The Roman army had been hammered. Out of the fifty six thousand engaged, fifteen thousand were casualties. Some were in favor of standing down. With Frederick gone, the teeth of the crusade was gone as well. Once the French-English and Lotharingian fleets withdrew, the Roman-Georgian flotillas would have the advantage on the sea as well.

No, Andreas thought. We should have ended this twelve years ago. This time, no distractions, no delays. This road began at the Black Day. It is high time it ended. His eyes locked with Zoe’s. She smiled. And Andreas spoke. “Tomorrow we march on Rome.”

* * *

1471 continued:
For both sides, Cannae is a bloodbath. The Roman casualties number fifteen thousand, the crusaders twenty two thousand (the battle with the Papal and Florentine forces after Frederick stands down adds another fifteen hundred crusader and two hundred Roman). The hardest hit are the Lotharingians, who lost half of their forces as well as their monarch, presumed dead. Both Lotharingia and France-England are now in the hands of regents, the first under Charles I (age eight) and the second under Edward VII (age ten).

The crusader totals would have been much higher if Frederick had not offered peace terms during the evening of November 18. The Romans, after the complete shattering of crusader morale after the Hospitalier (and company) charge, had taken over twenty thousand prisoners, including the entirety of the English artillery train. Andreas planned to execute them all during the evening as with Frederick still in the field he could not afford to guard them. Per the agreement they are released, but forfeit all their arms and armor. Andreas also keeps the captured English guns, hiring many of the gun masters and crews to man them, although only for the campaign. He has no intention of keeping his artillery in the hands of foreigners.

The Florentine and Papal forces refuse to obey Frederick when it becomes clear he is negotiating a ceasefire. Fearful that since they are squarely in the path of the Roman counterattack, Andreas will force them to disarm, they instead begin retreating while Frederick parleys with Andreas. The next day, the Roman army catches up and destroys the Italian crusader army while the remainder under Frederick stay encamped.

After taking care of the wounded, repairing equipment, and gathering supplies from Bari, on November 22, the Roman army moves. Naples, garrisoned by Papal soldiers, capitulates after the first volley. Onward the Romans march, receiving news that Frederick has crossed the Umbrian border and is now driving north at breakneck speed.

Poland’s finest, outnumbered almost two to one, had met the main Russian army, under the personal command of the Megas Rigas, at Plock in mid-October. With a great cry, the nobility of Poland had charged valiantly, and was butchered valiantly, cut apart by cannons, horse archers, and halberdiers. Virtually the entire Polish aristocracy is annihilated in the course of the afternoon. After the battle, Polish resistance is nonexistent.

Wealthy Russian landowners, particularly Lithuanians, immediately begin pouring into Poland, bidding to take control of the vacant Polish estates. Megas Rigas Nikolai makes a huge amount of money from the sales, as meanwhile two smaller Russian armies overrun Estonia and Prussia and cavalry raids fly westward. On the same day as the Battle of Cannae, the outskirts of Dresden are ravaged by a flying column.

Only in the Baltic do the Russians face serious opposition, as their squadrons are challenged by the ships of the Hanseatic League (there is naturally little fighting in the Baltic in winter, but Hansa blockade runners do make several appearances, particularly during the siege of Riga before it falls on Christmas Eve). Novgorod had been a member of the League, but as its interest turned from mercantile city-state to Imperial capital, relationships have cooled.

Yet Lord Novgorod the Great is determined that the profits from Russian commerce remain in Russian hands, and Novgorodian merchants have been increasingly aggressive and successful in the Baltic markets due to their easier access to Roman wares. The Hansa will not tolerate a complete Russian domination of the Baltic. If that happens, they are finished.

Frederick is having difficulties returning to Germany. The Alpine passes are closed for the winter, and Hungary and Arles both refuse him entry. Seriously irritated, he demands that the Swiss Confederation provide him with provisions and guides, so that he can reach Lotharingia. The Swiss refuse, and Frederick immediately invades with the former crusaders from Germany (the remainder have since disbanded and scattered). The Holy Roman Emperor’s belligerent attitude is due both to a desire to cripple Lotharingia’s staunchest ally, but also to punish the cantons for their refusal to render proper feudal dues, as well against their repeated aggressions against other German states (and in theory also Bavarian vassals).

The cantons plan for a spring campaign, assuming Frederick will be stuck rotting in Milan for the winter, where he and his hungry army have long since worn out their welcome. But the Bernese League immediately dispatches companies of engineers (Bernese units responsible for the quick construction of battlefield fortifications, as well as bridges and roads off the battlefield) to aid Frederick, who is also helped by the unusually warm weather and the lighter snowfall.

Before the Swiss realize what was happened, Frederick has stormed the Monte Ceneri Pass and is into Uri, one of the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation. At Altsdorf, Frederick and the five thousand men with him (even with Bernese help, supplies are limited) meet a hastily assembled canton army of six thousand. The battle lasts all of that clear, cold day, and ends with a bloody Swiss defeat, their pike squares torn apart by mass arquebus and crossbow volleys.

Two smaller engagements take place as Frederick squashes Swiss detachments attempting to concentrate, until finally the remaining cantons pledge to obey Frederick as vassals, as well as giving a sizeable tribute. Using the money to purchase safe passage for the rest of his army through Arles, as the new year dawns, Frederick descends into Burgundy, reinforced by Swiss troops (as part of their feudal dues) and five hundred Bernese handgunners he has hired.

As Frederick marches through the cantons, more of their countrymen are under attack by the other Emperor. Julius has managed to purchase the services of three hundred former Swiss crusaders as mercenaries to help defend Rome, but there is little more that he can do. Andreas’ main advance is slow but inexorable, although waves of light cavalry prowl the countryside looking for cardinals. They capture two, as well as the papal legate of the former crusade, and force the curia to remain holed up in Rome. The cardinals are kept for ransoming, but Pasta is executed, reportedly by Andreas’ own hand.

Umbria capitulates without contest, largely through the connivance of members of the wealthy Colonna family with whom the Emperor’s Eyes have made contact. Meanwhile flying columns are dispatched northward to harry Florence and restore Roman control of the Romagna.

When Andreas took Naples, he was met by representatives from Portugal, who request a ceasefire, a request quickly granted as it gives the Roman-Georgian fleet a clear advantage over its foes. Portugal’s involvement with the crusade has only served to strengthen Lisbon’s ‘Africa’ party. The huge expenses in coin and blood in the Mediterranean and its nonexistent results compares poorly with what has happened elsewhere that autumn.

As the fleets battled around Sicily, the largest Portuguese expedition southward was dispatched to the Senegal, sixteen ships and two thousand men. The local potentates, incapable of matching Portuguese firepower, were brought to heel, allowing Portuguese traders into their realms, trading horses for gold, ivory, salt, and slaves at a much more favorable exchange ratio than before. The nominal overlord of the region, the Jolof Emperor, does nothing to aid his vassals, instead using the Portuguese presence to purchase some cannons and handguns for his own troops (when the expedition returns in the new years, such sales are forbidden except with royal license under pain of death).

Andreas does not know of this, and he would not care anyway. What matters is that the Roman-Georgian fleet takes the offensive, raiding Sardinia, carrying off over five thousand of its inhabitants to be eventually resettled in Bulgaria. More importantly though, it imposes a naval blockade of the Papal States, preventing the Papacy from fleeing by sea. On December 23, Andreas arrives before the Eternal City, with an army of thirty four thousand and one hundred guns. The defenders of Rome can muster, including militia, forty seven hundred men and seven cannon.

The next day, Christmas Eve, at the hour of terce (9:00 AM), Andreas himself fires the first cannon shot, a fifteen-pound Roman culverin ball. The siege of Rome has begun.

1472: Frederick enters Burgundy, heartland of Lotharingia, at the head of fifteen thousand men. In Dijon, control over the regency for Philippe’s heir Charles I is fiercely contested by his mother Joan and his uncle Antoine, Duke of Brabant. With the losses of Lotharingian chivalry at Cannae, Antoine has the advantage with his access to Brabantine halberdiers and handgunners, but Joan is far more popular in Burgundy proper than the Duke, who speaks French with a thick accent (Dutch is his first language).

Antoine is the first to meet Frederick and immediately pledges to be the Emperor’s man, thus winning his support. The Emperor and the Duke march into Dijon unopposed, and Joan is banished to a monastery. As the Russian advance has halted for the time being, the light cavalry raids ceasing for the moment due to lack of supplies, Frederick is able to spend the next six weeks in Burgundy. The duchy, of course, foots the bill.

The territories of Lotharingia that are part of the Holy Roman Empire, including those of the royal demesne, are forced to reaffirm their oaths of vassalage, and are also forced to pay ‘late fees’ for their lapses. Brabant is the one exception, as Antione acts as Frederick’s enforcer in the Low Countries while the Emperor works in the south. On February 20, Antione is formally promoted to Archduke of Brabant and given the title Lord of the Westmarch, making him captain-general of all Imperial forces in the Low Countries.

As spring dawns, Frederick marches east, his forces swelled by levies from the Low Countries. At the same time the Russians move, their cavalry pillaging Saxony mostly, although some parties make it into Bavaria as well. A few even raid as far as Altmark, but there they are met by the Duke of Oldenburg, Lord of the Northmarch, captain-general of all Imperial forces in northern Germany, Christoph I, personal friend of Frederick and veteran of Cannae and Altsdorf. The Russians are annihilated.

In Bohemia too they get a sharp reception from the Hussite settlements, who ambush three columns and savage them with hastily-converted agricultural implements, of which the most prominent is the war-flail. But while plumes of smoke rise above eastern Germany, the Russian armies themselves (according to one chronicler numbering 666,000-in reality around 35,000) remain in Poland and the former lands of the Teutonic Order (Marienberg falls on February 2). The first reason is logistics.

The second is that the new ‘King’ of Poland (he has yet to be crowned) Aleksander Piast has issued a proclamation, that all peasants who rise up in the name of their God and King shall be granted their own estates, free of the hated feudal tolls due to their lords (who in most cases are dead, but payments had been resumed and enforced by their new Russian and Lithuanian landlords). Poland, which had hitherto been quiet, immediately explodes into revolt, Aleksander noticing that the peasants inconvenience the Russian forces far more than the nobility did.

By this point, Hungary has reduced most of the Principality of Presporok save for its defiant and well fortified capital, but as soon as spring arrives, a mass wave of dysentery cripples the Hungarian army, save for the Black Army itself which had followed Roman procedures in waste disposal, although even they are not immune. Janos’ proposal is thus light. Presporok shall remain a vassal state, but owe its allegiance to Buda, not Krakow, rendering the same duties to the Hungarians as it had to the Poles. Aleksander and the Slovaks accepts the offer.

Shortly afterwards he manages to buy off the Vlachs (who are now nervous of prosecuting a war while Hungary is unengaged) with the cession of Galicia, hoping that it will cause tensions between the Vlachs and the Russians sometime in the future, making it possible for him to retake it. According to local chroniclers, the Vlachs have little difficulty in mollifying the Galicians once they bring in women from Odessos, already famous amongst sailors of the Black Sea for their beauty.

Finally in May, Frederick begins his counteroffensive, while at the same time Permese horse sneak across the Volga to begin ravaging Russia in its eastern domains. For two months Nikolai and Frederick snap and snarl at each other, the latter moving to draw the Russians to the north, away from the Bavarian lands. Russian horse harry and probe the German forces, incidentally further ravaging the lands of Saxony. On May 24, the wooden town of Berlin is burned to the ground. It is not until late July, bolstered now by contingents commanded personally by Antoine and Christoph and well supplied by the Hanseatic fleet, which has secured naval dominance in the Baltic, that Frederick starts advancing aggresively.

Nikolai falls back, gathering his forces. On August 18, a hot, steamy day, the combined might of Germany and Russia meet at Tannenberg. For two days the hosts battle, back and forth, neither side gaining an advantage, only slaughter. The main Russian advantage, their horse archers, are countered by Frederick’s deployment of mixed heavy cavalry-black horse formations. When the horse archers approach close enough so that their arrows can penetrate the armor, the black horses dismount and return fire with their handguns.

On the morning of August 21, both sides agree to peace talks out of mutual exhaustion. In the east Permese horsemen are getting bolder due to the light resistance, while Russian rule in Poland is unraveling as Aleksander gathers the peasantry into an army. In the treaty of Gdansk, Poland is restored to its pre-war borders, save for Galicia. But all the lands of the Teutonic Order, including the land of Prussia, go to the Russians, exempt from any feudal dues to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Three weeks later, to the great joy of the Polish people, Aleksander is crowned King of Poland in Krakow. For his role in their liberation, at the end of the ceremony, King Aleksander kneels before the Emperor Frederick and pledges to be his man. At least by law, the twenty-five year old Bavarian now rules a domain from the Seine to the Oder, although only Bavaria is under his direct control, the rest bound by ties of vassalage of varying strength.

At the same time, Denmark and Norway-Scotland make peace. The dual kingdom is the victor, having successfully wrested the contested Norwegian provinces away from the Danes. Yet while they fought, Gustav, great-grandson of Olaf Tordsson, returns to Finland, bringing with him the knowledge of Rhomania on how to build an empire.

During the height of the Polish war, King Louis I of Arles invades Aquitaine with one hundred companies, one thousand lance fournies, ten thousand men in total, plus an additional four thousand mercenaries and levies, supported by thirty four guns (twenty seven of which are Roman-built). While the Gascons had largely not participated in the crusade, resistance is not as fierce as might be expected.

The Gascons had repeatedly favored England over France, but with an English king in Paris, that has changed. England is no longer such a distant overlord. In that regard, Arles cannot be considered an improvement. However bordering Arles and Iberia, the Gascons are much more open to the Avignon church, and Gascon and Occitain have more in common with each other than with the French of the north. Thus Louis is able to count on a respectable minority of the Gascons to support him, rather than the French-English.

The Plantaganet war effort is hampered by a serious spat between the French and English parts of the union, with the councils of both kingdoms playing the leading role due to the current weakness of the monarchy and court. Parliament chooses this time to demand that Edward VII, eleven years old, place his court in England, while the Estates General counter-demands that he remain in Paris. Calais finally becomes a compromise capital at the suggestion of Henry of Monmouth, Duke of Lancaster.

Another is the issue of funds to pay for troops. Parliament desires that France help pay for the rebuilding of the English artillery, a source of national pride as well as military might, but the Estates General refuses unless at least half of the peacetime artillery parks are outside of England or Normandy, to be available for the defense of French lands. Eventually Parliament agrees, with the understanding that England has no responsibility to pay for the defense of France, save for Calais (because of the wool staple) and for Aquitaine (the wine trade is a sizeable portion of the English economy). But the rest of France, where English interests are minimal where they exist at all, is to be defended by French blood and coin.

To the south, the siege of Rome lasts only for twelve days. The people are seriously outnumbered, outgunned, and under-supplied (most of the provisions had been eaten by the crusader army) while agents of the Colonna, long rivals of the popes for the leadership of the Eternal City, are busy stirring up dissension and despair amongst the populace. It is they who open a pair of sally ports before dawn on January 4, allowing the Romans entry.

As the Romans pour into the city, resistance collapses, especially after Andreas’ announcement that those who surrender immediately will be spared, but only so long as it is immediate. Those who do not are to be exterminated. The few that are inclined to fight back soon lose their appetite when one company fires one last volley of crossbow bolts, surrenders immediately afterwards, and is torn to pieces by the enraged Roman soldiery.

Only when the Romans approach the Lateran Palace, official residence of the Pope, do they face serious fighting. Outnumbered almost twenty to one, the Swiss Guard stand and fight, holding off three attacks by the Athanatoi. When they finally fall, it is only because they are all dead. With them gone, Pope Julius is now defenseless.

* * *

Basilica of St. John Lateran, January 4, 1472:

Julius sighed, as he listened to the priest reading the psalm as part of the terce service. The basilica was empty, save for himself and the few priests with him. He’d already dismissed his servant Alessandro with two bags of gold coins. Hopefully he would make it out of the city.

He closed his eyes as the priest read. It had all been for nothing. Venice destroyed, his people scattered to the wind, and now Rome itself had fallen. The great crusade, the mightiest that had been seen since the days of Barbarossa, had failed. Frederick, the supposed Defender of Christendom, had betrayed him. He had been tempted to excommunicate the Emperor, but he hadn’t. There’s no point. It’s over. All that matters now is honor, and death.

The priest finished and looked at him. “Holy Father?” he asked. It was his turn to read a psalm. As he got up, his back protesting as it always did, he could no longer hear sounds of fighting. Won’t be long now. He began to read Psalm 121. I lift my eyes to the mountains-where does my help come from?

The doors crashed open. “So-called Bishop of Rome!” an eikosarchos with a brain-splattered sword yelled. “You are under arrest for crimes against the Roman people!”

My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. He will not let your foot slip-he who watches over you will not slumber.

“I said! You are under arrest!” the Roman yelled, advancing, waving his weapon.

Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber or sleep.

The man raised his sword. “Hold!” a voice bellowed. “He is mine!” A young man strode into the chamber wearing fine but blood-stained plate armor, followed by a slightly older woman who shared the same eyes and nose. Andreas and Zoe.

The Lord watches over you-the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Imperial blade was at his chest. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Andreas growled.

The Lord will keep you from all harm-he will watch over your life.

“I said, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Julius looked up from the bible, looking into his hate-filled eyes. He knew they mirrored his own. “Do the work of men, boy, if you must, but let me do the work of God.”

The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.

“This is the work of God,” Andreas said, and plunged his sword into Julius’ belly, ripping it out a second later.

He collapsed on the ground. I can’t believe how much this hurts. But something wasn’t right. No, something wasn’t wrong. My back, it, it doesn’t hurt! Andreas looked confused, while Zoe and some sandy-haired freckled strategos gaped at him.

Pope Julius II, once known as Giovanni Loredan of Venice, died laughing.

* * *

1472 continued:
The death of Pope Julius sparks a host of legends. By far the most popular though does not include him. In that one, it is said that after the death of the Holy Father, Andreas turned on two of the priests with Julius, who vanished into the west wall. The legend says that they will return, resuming the service at the precise moment they were interrupted, when the day comes that Rome is once again a Christian city.

The next day Luigi Colonna publicly converts to Orthodoxy, along with the bulk of his family, and is proclaimed Dux of Latium, ruling all of the former Papal States as a vassal of Constantinople. As for Avignon’s continued use of the title ‘Bishop of Rome’, Andreas follows a policy of ‘no comment’ although no invitation is offered to Pope Martin V to move back. He does not request one either, both out of fear of looking like a Roman puppet and because Martin is supreme in Avignon and does not relish the prospect of dealing with the Colonna.

For the interim, no Orthodox Bishop of Rome is created, but Patriarch Maximus III calls for an Ecumeniacal Council of the Roman bishops to discuss the new administrative organization of the church in the wake of the conquests. Andreas, who is not very religious in any event, has no desire to deal with the headache of central Italy and the competing claims of Avignon, Constantinople, and ‘Rome’.

The college of cardinals is allowed to leave, but only after Andreas forces them to exchange clothing with an equal number of randomly chosen beggars. Those rags are all that they are allowed to take with them as they trudge northward. They are sheltered by the Duke of Milan until they can cross the Alps, where Frederick takes them under his wings and conveys them to Mainz, seat of a powerful German archbishopric which also happens to be well within the Bavarian sphere of influence. There a Bavarian is elected, who deliberately takes the same name as the Avignon Pope, Martin V, and maintains the title Bishop of Rome.

Andreas only remains in Rome for ten days, signing a peace treaty with Aragon that restores the status quo, before he marches on the final members of the crusade, Florence, Pisa, and Genoa. Tuscany is pillaged thoroughly, over thirty thousand inhabitants taken away to be resettled in Anatolia. Unsure of his ability to impose effective obedience this far from home, Andreas does not demand any ties of vassalage from the city, but contents himself with extracting a mass cash payment, as well as several smaller ones from leading Florentine families. The Medici family, which was a political rival of many of those families, plays a leading role in telling Andreas where to squeeze.

In late March, Andreas arrives in Ravenna, restoring the Romagna to Roman rule. Here he establishes the new Duchy of Romagna, with its capital at Ravenna, rather than returning it to direct Roman rule. For its dux, Andreas turns to a member of another family of Italian exiles, Niccolo of the House of Este, driven out of Modena by the Milanese. Given their hatred of the Visconti dukes, they are a perfect candidate for this duchy.

While in Ravenna, Andreas also convinces Ancona and Urbino to kneel as Roman vassals as well. In exchange for their allegiance and tribute, the leaders of the two realms are granted the title of dux. While they were already dukes, they had been granted those titles by their communes, not the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor, and thus their titles were not as impressive. The new rank of dux fixes that.

They are also given sizeable pensions and estates in Anatolia, and their merchants are treated as Roman citizens for the purposes of charging import-export duties. However taking merchandise from Imperial-administered territory to a vassal realm is considered crossing Imperial borders, and thus incurs a 7% value tax, not an inter-theme transfer which is untaxed.

Pisa drops out the same time as Florence, paying an indemnity, as well as forfeiting any rights to rent-free trading quarters in the Empire. In Genoa, the republican government is thrown out by the populace to avoid a siege and potential sack, Alessandro Alessi returning not as Doge, but as Duke (as a gesture of goodwill to Andreas, Frederick confirms the title when he receives the news). The new Duke is not a vassal of the Empire, but he is required to confirm the transfer of the colonies in the east to Roman control as well as the loss of all special Genoese trading privileges.

The only exception is that the Alessi family remains eligible for the five certificates allowing non-Romans to trade in alum and mastic, but Andreas demands 300,000 hyperpyra to renew them. Given Alessandro’s need to bring Tunis and Corsica to heel (with which Andreas refuses to help, saying ‘enough Roman blood has been shed’), he desperately requires the money the certificates would bring in, but cannot afford them. The revenues from the confiscation of his political enemies’ estates are not enough. Andreas does understand, and so instead of a lump sum, Alessandro agrees to take responsibility for paying some of Andreas’ debts, with the principals of the transferred loans adding up to the demanded total of 300,000 hyperpyra.

Andreas returns to a triumph in Constantinople, where the great loot taken from Rome is on full display, including a chest of jewels given to Vlad that is almost identical in worth as the spoils his father took from Ameglia. The most splendid part of the ceremony is when the sarcophagus of Justinian, desecrated and ransacked by the members of the Fourth Crusade, is restored with the spoils of the Catholic church. Deliberately, the Emperor returns just in time for his youngest son Nikephoros’ first birthday. Five weeks later it is announced that Kristina is pregnant.


europe1472.png

1) Kingdom of Arles
2) Duchy of Genoa
3) Duchy of Milan
4) Republic of Florence
5) Italian vassals of Rhomania: Abruzzi, Latium, Ancona, Urbino, Romagna
6) Serbian Principalities, vassals of Rhomania
7) Principality of Presporok-Hungarian vassal
8) Ottoman Empire
9) Shahdom of Persia

And so the Middle Ages come to an end. By the most common reckoning, they had lasted for nine hundred ninety six years, from 476 to 1472. They had begun with the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, and ended with the fall of the Roman Papacy. Yet while there is much symmetry to recommend this model, history is rarely so neat.

Many of the trends that characterize the early modern era had already begun in the medieval era, the rebirth of the Roman Empire, the fragmentation of Christendom, the rise of Russia, were decades or even centuries old. Even some that are held to be quintessentially modern had already begun. In the New World, Norwegian and Scottish fishermen at their cleaning shacks occasionally caught sight of locals and raised at least one of them as their own. In the east, a member of the Plethon-Medici mercantile empire purchased nutmeg from a vendor in Malacca.

Even those that only truly begin in the modern era cannot be separated from their medieval roots. The growth of Champa and Wu can only be understand with knowledge of the time of Shah Rukh, and that of the Ottoman Empire with the era of Timur.

Yet it is Africa that best illustrates this continuation. In the Senegal, Portuguese gunships were already giving a taste of the future, but they had been spurred on their course by the rising power of Rhomania. And in the eastern reaches of that vast continent, Ethiopia too was stirring. It had already begun to move over the course of the last sixty years, with the aid of Roman advisors. That too belongs in the medieval era.

That said, one of the first acts of the modern world would be the Ethiopian explosion. To explain that requires more than just trade with Rhomania and administrative improvements. That requires a woman who stood firmly in the medieval past, but who helped build one of the great powers of the modern era: Brihan the Blessed, the Scourge of Islam.

* * *

Somewhere south of Harer, March 19, 1472:

“Four thousand,” Dawit said.

“Four…thousand,” Yonas replied, his eyes bulging. They had three hundred cavalrymen.
“What are we going to do?”

“Simple, stay out of their way. If we fight, we’ll be flattened.”

“No.” Both men turned to look at the speaker. “No,” Brihan of Merawi repeated. The look in her eyes made Yonas shiver.

She had had her audience with the negusa nagast, and though Yohannes had been skeptical, she had obviously made some sort of impression. So she was here, with three hundred men of the Ethiopian royal guard, the greatest recipients of the knowledge and products of the Roman artisans, on the southern march of the Ethiopian realm.

Somali raids had been distressingly common for the last fifteen years, and they were gaining in ferocity and strength as Yemeni and Kilwa ghazis joined the annual raids against the Christian kingdom. But four thousand, that was unheard of, perhaps during a campaign that saw three or four raiding parties at the same time, but never one Muslim force of that magnitude alone.

“There is nothing we can do here,” Dawit said. “We are outnumbered over ten to one.”

“You are wrong,” Brihan replied. She tapped the steel lamellar that protected his mount’s neck. “Our Roman brothers have armed us, taught us, and shown us the way. They fought their way from darkness into light, and now they have come to help us do the same.”

“I don’t see a Roman tagma around here.”

Brihan nudged her horse, backing away from him and raising her voice. “I tell you the truth, it would take only two to destroy that infidel army.”

Two!!” Yonas was mildly surprised that Dawit’s eyes did not pop out of his sockets.

“Two,” Brihan repeated. “One willing to fight…and God.” She looked at Adamu, commander of the force, who was himself half-Greek. He stared back. Brihan sighed. “Very well. I will destroy them myself, but I insist you at least come and watch.” She turned and trotted south, towards the Somali army.

Dawit looked at Adamu. “Are we done now?”

“No. We’re going.”

“What?! Why?”

“Because if she is right, I want to be there.”

Twenty or so minutes later, they crested a rise, which sloped gently downward to the east where the ghazi army was marching, mostly infantry, but ringed by light cavalry. They were lightly clad, unlike the Ethiopian cavalry protected by the finest Roman lamellar. A slight breeze gusted, blowing at the backs of the Ethiopians, as the sun rose behind them.

Brihan turned around. “Are you willing to fight for God and Ethiopia?” she asked. Nobody answered. “Very well then.” And she charged down the slope, all by herself.

“This is embarrassing,” Dawit muttered. “She doesn’t even have a real lance or mace, just a big javelin and a sword.”

“KATAPHRAKTOI, READY KONTOI!” Adamu yelled.

“What are you doing?” Dawit sputtered.

“I don’t know how many battalions God commands,” Adamu replied. “But she is right, or at least close. Prepare to charge.”

“This is insane!”

“Shut up, soldier. You have your orders. We charge.”


* * *


“What is that?” Hashim muttered, his sandaled feet beating the ground.

“I have no idea,” Talha muttered as the army came to a halt, staring at the one lone, silent horseman charging at them.

“This is different.”

“Yeah.” The earth shook. “What was that?”

It shook again. “I don’t know.”

Something came over the hill, after the first rider. “What is it?!!”

“I can’t see!!”

Sunlight was stabbing into Hashim’s eyes. Whatever great thing was thundering down the slope, the sunlight was blazing off of it, a great white mass. “What is it?!!!”

“I don’t know!!!” Whatever it was, it was getting closer, thundering and crashing, the earth trembling as it approached, something too bright, too terrible to behold.

“Demons!!!” someone shrieked. “It is demons!!! Run for your lives!!!” Hashim still could not see, the bright blaze tearing at him as the terrible, horrible sound grew ever closer.

Then he heard the voice. It sounded like a…woman? “For God and Ethiopia!” Then a man yelled the same thing. And then a great booming cry as the bright thundering monster roared. “For God and Ethiopia!” Hashim never saw the javelin that impaled him.
 
The Lord of the North, the Lady of the South

Part 10.1

1473-1495

"Birth control is a wonderful thing,"-one of my students, on what we can learn from the reign of Andreas I, Professor Stefanos Iagaris, University of Trebizond​


1473: Throughout most of the year, Andreas is not in the capital, which is abuzz with the church council. Aside from his devotion to his mother St. Helena the Kind, he is not a religious individual, and one of the main reasons he vassalized rather than annexed central Italy is that the religious makeup of vassal states is of far less concern than Imperial territories. While Kristina recuperates in the restored Komnenid palace at Smyrna after giving birth to a daughter, named Helena, Andreas surveys the army units in western Anatolia.

After attending the Optimatic, Opsician, and Thracesian tagma reviews, he goes on a hunting excursion along the upper Meander. During the trip, he is thrown by his horse, a recent gift by Ioannes Kaukadenos, one of the greatest rural dynatoi and landowners in the empire. In excruciating pain from a leg broken in three places and two cracked ribs, he is drugged with poppy and taken to a nearby estate of the Angelos family, where Andronikos’ younger sister Anna, is staying.

* * *

Angelos Family Estate, eastern Thracesia, September 19, 1473:

Andronikos entered the master bedroom, looking at the skinny figure buried under rumpled blankets. He frowned; the messiness was inappropriate. He had stepped in to check on the Emperor while the new attendant that was supposed to come on duty relieved himself. “How are you, your majesty?”

“Isss gooodd,” Andreas slurred. Andronikos sighed. They had definitely misjudged the dosage. But willow bark tea certainly wouldn’t have helped, not with Andreas’ wounds. “Buttt hot.” Andronikos moved the covers.

“Thanksss, Andrrronikosss.”

“You’re welcome, your majesty.”

“Krisssttttinaa sure got here fasttt.”

What? The Empress can’t be here yet. The courier won’t reach Smyrna till tomorrow at best. He must be delirious. Then he saw it, a long brown hair, draped across the thin silk sheet atop Andreas’ upper thigh. Shit.

He’d heard from the guard on duty that his sister Anna had come to attend the Emperor just a little while earlier. Good, he’d thought. Nice to see she’s taking some initiative that doesn’t involve bedding some man. Apparently he’d been wrong, and if Kristina found out…He shuddered. Theophano and her children were safe from the Empress’ wrath, as Andreas had clearly demonstrated his affection for them, even he had not touched Theophano since the death of Maria. But Anna, she may have been little more than a dumber version of Maria, but she was his sister.

“What did you do?” Andronikos asked.

“What dooo yoouu think?” Great, just great.

The doctor entered the chamber. “I will take over here, eikosarchos. Thank you for covering me.”

Andronikos nodded, walking out of the chamber, barely controlling the urge to run. A few minutes later he found his sister, pulled her into a chamber, and slammed the door close. “What were you thinking?!!”

“How did you find out?”

“I know you. And the Emperor is drugged, not unconscious. Now why did you do it?”

“I wanted to see…”

“See what?”

“If Emperors have, you know, special qualities.” She pouted. “They don’t. He was a clumsy oaf. I had to help him get in. Sheesh.”

Maybe the poppy messed up his aim?...I have definitely been around Lorenzo too long. “And?”

“And what? I was curious, that’s all. It was easy too. All I had to do was pretend to be his wife.”

“That’s all?!! What about what happens next? Did you think about that?” Stupid question. Of course not.

“Oh, don’t get so worked up. I won’t do that again, for sure. And what are the odds that I get pregnant from this one time?” Knowing Andreas, you’ll have twin boys.

“I don’t know. But if the Empress finds out what you’ve done, she’ll kill you.” And if you do have a son…He shuddered. It wasn’t just Kristina being jealous of her husband since she’d nearly lost him before. It was the damn succession. She wanted one of her sons to become Emperor, but Demetrios was already Kaisar and Leo was busy doing everything he could ingratiate himself with his father. Meanwhile Kristina’s eldest, Theodoros, though only six, showed every sign of becoming a brainless twit, and Nikephoros was still too young to tell. She’d be especially twitchy if another imperial bastard entered the lists, considering how Zeno was developing.

edmundpevensie.jpg

Zeno, bastard son of Andreas and Theophano. Although only nine years old, he has become quite popular amongst the Athanatoi and has already observed three tagma reviews. Andreas has been grooming him to become a student at the School of War, envisioning him as the strong right arm of his best friend, Kaisar Demetrios.


“Kill…me?”

“Yes, kill you.” She’s done it before. “So keep your mouth shut.” Oh, and that will last for what…two weeks? “You know what, I’m taking you to Constantinople.”

She blinked. “Constantinople?”

“Yes, Constantinople.” There’s something like 200,000 men, and you’ll sleep with at least a tenth of that. That should cover your tracks.

She squeeed. “Oh, yes, yes, yes! This’ll be so much fun!” She hugged him. “You’re the best big brother ever.” He hugged her too, patting her on the back. May God forgive me.

catherinehowardtudors.jpg

Anna Angelina, mother of the future Andreas Angelos, son and namesake of the Emperor, from whose line would come Isaakios III Angelos, Emperor of the Romans.

* * *

In Bari, a new beggar dies. Normally it would be completely unnoticed, but this was a special beggar. He had no eyes or nose, but still had his ears. Whether it was the horrific wounds that mutilated him or the shrieks of horrified women and children at the sight of him that drew him mad, nobody knows. But amidst the insane babble could be heard one phrase over and over, “I was once a king.”

At her personal request, so that she can keep busy after the death of her husband Manuel, Alexeia Komnena is assigned to be the new permanent ambassador in Baghdad. She arrives just in time to congratulate the new sultan, Mehmed III, on his accession.

His father, Bayezid II, had not had an easy reign. Shortly after the end of the War for Asia, he had invited back the Turkmen chiefs in exile in the Hedjaz to bolster the dangerously depleted Ottoman military strength. But upon their return they immediately went back to old ways, intriguing with elements of Ottoman society such as more conservative ulema who were apprehensive about the pro-Roman course the state had been taking.

Bayezid had been forced to walk a tightrope, keeping them satisfied while at the same time not provoking a Roman offensive, an act that had not been helped by the Empire’s weakened state. But he had managed it, barely, particularly with the boon represented by Anastasia and her two sons Basileios and Konstantinos. Yet the strain, exacerbated by a drinking problem (one criticism was that he was altogether too fond of Malvasia, a dark red wine from the Morea), took a serious toll on his health. He dies in March, three months short of his forty-seventh birthday.

Mehmed III, twenty years of age, is nothing like his father. Alexeia called him (not to his face, but in correspondence with her half-brother) “little more than a rabid dog in human skin.” Her opinion gains credence when in August, he declares war on the Shahdom of Persia by executing Qasim’s representative in Baghdad.

That old Shahanshah Qasim is not all-powerful in Persia has nothing to do with the Ottomans. Despite extensive expenditures in coin and blood, the Shah has been unable to bring the recalcitrant emirs of Yazd and Tabas to heel. The two threatened emirs have cooperated fully against their common enemy, receiving sizeable funds and military support from Khorasan, which is fearful of the prospect of having the Persian state as a neighbor.

Mehmed moves fast after the declaration, storming the Zagros mountains before they can be blocked, and falling upon the surprised Persian army at Asadabad. Scattering the enemy with coordinated sipahi charges and janissary handgun volleys, Mehmed then offers the survivors the chance to join his army, an offer many take. The city itself however is much more stubborn, holding out for over three weeks. When the garrison surrenders, Mehmed has them all executed, the officers by his favorite method, sawing them in two.

In Constantinople, the Ottoman advance to the east is viewed with relief. Andreas is aware of how desperately the Empire needs a long spell of peace. The main event of the year is the Council of Constantinople (Andreas is there to open it as part of his role as Vicegerent of God, but he immediately leaves the city after that), whose main purpose is to come up with a religious administration for Italy. The situation there is quite confused, as both Avignon and Mainz claim the title of Pope as well as Bishop of Rome.

While there is an incontestable need for an Orthodox Bishop of Rome, there is the issue of whether or not that individual should be considered a Patriarch, and whether they should be granted the ‘first among equals’ status that the Orthodox were willing to accord the Popes (this position should in no way be considered an acceptance of papal supremacy, it is a purely honorific, ceremonial distinction that is not considered good enough by the popes). Eventually it is decided that a Patriarch of Rome should be created, but without any ‘first among equals’ status, and that all sees in Italy and Sicily will report to him.

Martin V of Avignon is enraged at the news. He had been willing to tolerate an Orthodox bishop of Rome, but not a Patriarch. The Patriarch of Constantinople Maximus III’s response is that they would be willing to recognize Martin V as Patriarch of Rome, provided that he dropped the claims to papal supremacy and the filioque clause. It would essentially be a conversion of Martin V to Orthodoxy, a proposal he naturally rejects.

He at least gets a response. The letter of Martin V of Mainz is read (the demand that he be recognized as the sole Patriarch of Rome is identical to Avignon’s) and then burned in front of the envoy who delivered it.

Naturally this does not clear up the religious chaos that is Roman Italy. There Bari is Orthodox, along with the ruling families of all five vassals by this point, while Apulia is Gregorian, with the rest answering to Mainz (in the latter case only local individuals are allowed as priests or bishops, papal appointments are denied access to their sees). Part of the Council’s decisions in later sessions is to train and encourage knowledgeable young priests and monks as missionaries.

These young men’s primary mission is to convert heretics to Orthodoxy, but they ingratiate themselves by also teaching Roman medicinal and agricultural practices (a move Andreas supports as a way to bring up Southern Italy and Sicily’s economy), and they are supported by an expanded network of church printing presses producing bibles and religious pamphlets. Shortly afterwards, it is suggested that the church also operate a series of primary schools in Roman Italy that will teach reading, writing (both in Greek), and basic arithmetic, as well as the Orthodox faith.

Yet while the Orthodox church is progressive in some ways, it is reactionary in others. The last business of the council is the trial for heresy of Iason Kokkinos, a professor of astronomy at the University of Thessaloniki. He is accused of teaching that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. With the Patriarch himself arguing against him, pointing out that Joshua ordered the sun, not the earth, to stand still, Iason loses the case and is banished to a monastery near Amasra.

* * *​

West of Zeila, November 1, 1473:

“We’re outnumbered, again,” Yonas muttered.

“How bad?” Brihan asked.

“Oh, only four to one.”

She took a drink. “We’ve had worse.” They had been in three more engagements after the first big one, every time outnumbered at least five to one by the ghazi raiders, and every time they had won. The Oromo migration into the Sennar was slowing down as Ethiopian light cavalry units had taken to butchering their cattle, so now their unit numbered eight hundred total, three hundred heavy cavalry, three hundred melee infantry, and two hundred missile troops.

“Not quite. They have crossbows in their line. Venetian stuff. Good quality.”

Brihan grimaced. They’d run into Venetian steel crossbows before, Mameluke equipment purchased from the Serene Republic before ending up in the hands of a Yemeni ghazi. The Roman artisans in Gonder had identified them, weapons just as good as those turned out by the Ethiopian workshops. But thanks to the Romans, the Ethiopians could make them, as well as better things. The Yemeni couldn’t.

“We could just charge them,” Dawit said. “Worked before.”

Brihan glared at him. “God gave you a mind…I think. Use it. It would not please God to spill the blood of his children so blithely.”

Adamu belched, announcing his presence. “Those crossbows will foul any charge we launch, and against those numbers the infantry won’t stand a chance.”

“Unless…” Brihan whispered, drumming her fingers on the table.

“Do you have a plan?” Yonas asked.

“I always have a plan.”

“Let me rephrase that. Do you have a good plan?”

Brihan smiled. “Now you’re just being difficult.”

Adamu grinned too. “We’re in trouble, boys.”

“We’re always in trouble,” Dawit moaned.


* * *


She could hear the sound of men fighting, dying. And she sat there, safe and sound. Her muscles tensed; it was all she could do to stop herself from charging out there. Easy, girl, she thought. Stick to the plan.

So she continued to sit, praying as men screamed and wept and bled. Crossbows snapped, horses charged, and infantry yelled as a Somali-Yemeni host hammered at an Ethiopian force conducting a desperate fighting retreat.

She looked out across the men with her, holding their weapons. She smiled. Their Roman brothers had taught them much. She had heard much of them, their ways. She had heard of their emperor, a young man skilled at arms. She hoped one day to meet him.

The noise was getting louder. She clutched her sword tighter, waiting, waiting. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Now!

“For God and Ethiopia!” she yelled. “Fire!”

The first Ethiopian handgun volley erupted from ambush.

Thirty seconds later the Royal Guard sallied.

The ghazis broke.

* * *​

Map of the Realms of Asia and Africa, 1475

world1475.png

Legend
(T) denotes rule by Timurid dynastic member

1) Marinid Sultanate
2) Jolof Empire
3) Sultanate of Yao
4) Kingdom of Kongo
5) Mameluke Sultanate
6) Kingdom of Ethiopia
7) Kilwa Sultanate
8) Emirate of Yemen
9) Emirate of Oman
10) Roman Empire
11) Great Kingdom of the Rus
12) Kingdom of Georgia
13) Khanate of Perm
14) Khanate of Sibir
15) White Horde
16) Ottoman Empire
17) Shahdom of Persia
18) Timurid Empire (T)
19) Emirates of Yazd and Tabas
20) Greater Khorasan (T)
21) Swati Kingdom of Kashmir
22) Kingdom of Tibet
23) Delhi Sultanate (T)
24) Empire of Vijayanagar
25) Kingdom of Kotte
26) Kingdom of Bihar
27) Northern Yuan (Mongols)
28) Neo-Jurchens
29) Tieh China (T)
30) Kingdom of Lanna
31) Kingdom of Ayutthaya
32) Malay states
33) Majapahit Empire
34) Khmer Kingdom
35) Kingdom of Champa (Tieh vassal)
36) Southern Wu​


1474: The destruction of the Somali-Yemeni force west of Zeila opens the way for an attack on the city. Over the winter troops are assembled, and an Ethiopian force of seven thousand men sets out in the spring, accompanied by the siege train with its eighteen trebuchets and five bombards, all produced by Ethiopian workshops who have also made the requisite powder and shot. Zeila’s fortifications are not designed to defend against gunpowder weapons, so even with Ethiopian inexperience, the city falls after a siege of thirty one days.

Ethiopia now has a port, although a surprise attack by a Yemeni fleet nearly succeeds in burning the harbor. As a makeshift flotilla is assembled to defend the city, Brihan goes with the army that gradually conquers all the shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura, including the city of Djibouti. While on land the operations are a complete success, at sea the Ethiopian ships and sailors are little match for the Arabs. The Roman artisans cannot help, as none of them are sailors or shipwrights.

Meanwhile Andreas eventually makes a full recovery, despite the severity of his wounds, although he is forced to go to the Anatolic tagma review carried in a litter rather than a horse. In the meantime, Ioannes Kaukadenos is charged and found guilty of attempted regicide, purportedly giving Andreas a horse trained specifically to throw him. Despite the severity of the charge, which warrants the death penalty, the dynatos only suffers the confiscation of three-fourths of his land and assets, although he gets the horse back.

Attended by Kristina throughout most of the ordeal, the Empress gives birth to another girl, Basileia, in September (three months earlier Anna gives birth to a son, Andreas, in Constantinople). Meanwhile in Abruzzi, Zoe gives birth to a healthy baby boy, Manuel.

As the Komnenid family does its part to boost the Imperial population, Permese horse continue to raid the Volga valley, even after the cessation of the Polish war, assuming that Russia’s military might was bled white on the field of Tannenberg. The attacks have seriously disrupted trade along the Don-Volga route, much to the annoyance of Andreas, who has placed high hopes on the tolls from the fabulously rich, former Genoese colony Tana, situated at the Don river mouth.

Yet Nikolai has not been still. His pride wounded by the repulse from Poland, the Megas Rigas has merely been biding his time as he prepares an utterly massive counter-stroke. With Roman ships ferrying supplies up the Don as part of a diplomatic arrangement, he is ready. In May the Russian bear counterattacks along the entire breadth of the frontier. Kazan falls after a siege of twenty days, while two columns drive for the Aral Sea, skirting the lands of the Timurids. A few light cavalry bands even cross the Ural mountains.

The Russian advance to the east is mirrored by Ottoman offensives. Mehmed III defeats another Persian army at Hamadan, and then a smaller force at Bahar. While Persian soldiers are well equipped, the Ottoman sipahis and janissaries are more disciplined, and there is much greater cooperation between the Ottoman cavalry, infantry, and artillery compared to their Persian counterparts. During the campaign, both Konstantinos and Basileios Komnenos, the fourteen-year-old twin (and only) sons of Anastasia, serve as pages, each one distinguishing themselves for bravery in battle.

1475: Andreas spends most of the year in administrative duties. The most pressing concern is the need to pay back the loans used for the crusade war, as the popes (OTL bonds) come due next year. First he confiscates Novo Brdo and its rich silver mines from the Serbian Prince of Pec under suspicion of intriguing with the Hungarians, but that is not nearly enough to cover his expenses.

So Andreas decides to try and do away with one of the largest pieces of government expenditures, one that has also caused a good deal of strife within the Empire, the construction subsidies. To do so, he offers to raise the limits on how high city governments can tax their citizens, allow them to levy wine, salt, and beef taxes, and give them the authority to issue their own popes. In exchange, the civic governments must assume all responsibility for the subsidies. They accept the ‘proposal’.

Besides stopping a major outflow of currency, this reform also helps to bolster the image of the central government in the eyes of the Imperial citizenry. Before they would complain about the lack of imperial construction subsidies, and that their tax hyperpyra were going to other provinces. Now that their local governments have assumed that responsibility, their complaints go to the provincial capital, not Constantinople. In fact, they may very well go over the provincial government’s head directly to Constantinople. Thus the Imperial administration is able to play the role of the protector of the little people, earning their loyalty as well as keeping the local elites in line.

Another source of income is the sale of war materials to the Arletians, particularly powder and shot. Despite Genoa’s restoration of control over Corsica and Tunis, since the loss of its eastern colonies its volume of trade with the Roman Empire has shrunk dramatically. The Kingdom of Arles is now Rhomania’s #2 trading partner after Russia, with the ties strengthened by connections between both states’ large Jewish communities.

In southern France, the Arletian armies are still advancing, but at a steadily slower pace. While the English longbowmen and artillery are still a pale shadow of their former selves, the French lands of the Plantaganet Empire can still bring to bear a far greater manpower pool than Arles. In between the needs of garrisoning fortresses, guarding supply lines, and maintaining a credible field army and siege forces, sustaining the economy and agriculture is proving to be quite difficult. Roman trade and grain imports are not enough to cover the gap, and the drain of bullion is alarming to Louis I.

For support, he turns south to Barcelona, contracting several loans with Catalan merchants and encouraging others to invest in Provencal vineyards. Beside providing him with enough money to both pay for imports and Bernese mercenaries (the alliance between the Kingdom of Arles and the Bernese League is only good for an offensive war against Lotharingia, not France-England with whom the League has no quarrel), the expanded commercial relations do much to draw the two states together.

The hired Bernese contingents, though they number only three thousand total, prove to be highly valuable on the battlefield. Very well disciplined, with close cooperation between heavy infantry, handgunners, and cavalry, they are a formidable force. Andronikos Angelos, there as a military observer, states that ‘formation for formation, they are the equal of any Roman unit’.

Also Andreas formalizes the military structure of Roman Italy. There are two tagmata stationed there, the Apulian and Sicilian. However that still leaves the lion’s share of mainland Roman Italy outside of the theme system. Normally a new theme would simply be created to cover the difference, but that is not a strategy that appeals to him.

Since 1400, the size of the Roman military establishment has increased by over 70%. Yet at the same time, the population of the Roman Empire has only grown by 25% (from 12 to 15 million), and all that growth is due to conquests during that period. If Bulgaria and southern Italy are exempted from the rolls, the Imperial heartland only has 11.3 million, a loss of six percent since 1400. In fact, if population growth had continued a pattern consistent with that of the late Laskarid period, the Imperial heartland by itself should have 15.5 million inhabitants (it should be noted however that the majority of the losses are not deaths but missed births).

Most of the losses are concentrated in Roman Europe, while Anatolia was almost entirely untouched (blazing exceptions like Smyrna to the contrary). On the Black Day, the Roman territories in Asia contained just over double those in Europe (excluding Bulgaria and Italy). Twenty years later, if one excludes those same territories, Asia has just over a three-to-one advantage. Admittedly not all of this is a complete loss to the Empire, as much of Anatolia’s growth is due to refugees from Europe settling in safer provinces.

Nevertheless, the trend is alarming. To help boost population growth, the head tax is to be no longer levied for individuals less than six years old (while the head tax for younger children was lighter than for adults, there was still some charge before). Also families that have five children on which the head-tax is still levied receive across-the-board reductions on their head-tax requirements.

Also of concern is the huge disparity between population and military growth. To avoid enlarging it is why Andreas refuses to establish a new theme. Instead the efforts to encourage Roman immigration to southern Italy is encouraged. Here Anatolia’s surplus turns out to be useful, as many immigrate to Italy and Sicily. From these dependable populations are drawn militias, and they are to be supported by a series of garrisons. The garrisons are tagma soldiers, rotating onto active duty shifts and then returning to their home themes. Besides being less expensive in manpower, it is also much cheaper as paying an existing tagma soldier active duty rates costs far less than creating a new one.

The downside is that the non-theme territories, although capable of maintaining order with the militias and garrisons, are much less protected than a theme. Simply relocating some of the heartland tagmata is not an option, as that would require multiple confiscations of land to create the necessary estates and ruin the goodwill built up amongst the peasants.

It is a sacrifice Andreas is quite willing to make, abandoning the Laskarid policy of trying to be strong everywhere (something that would have been possible if the army-population ratios of the Laskarid period had been maintained) with a strong heartland, weak periphery policy. The forces at play in the non-theme territories are enough to stall an attack, until such time as a Roman counterattack using the massed forces of the heartland can take place.

It is a policy that Andreas welcomes, as it opens the vista to maintaining a larger and cheaper empire than the Laskarid model. It also has the side benefit of increasing the professionalization of the army, as troops are called up for active duty at garrisons, rather than remaining on their farms. But more importantly, it makes sustaining Roman expansion much more feasible so long as the garrisons can be supported by militias from a dependable minority, such as the Greek settlers in Italy or the Copts in Egypt.

During the summer, Sultan Janbulat dies. Alive, even in his frail state, he had kept the storm clouds hanging over the Mameluke Sultanate at bay. It is a rare moment of unity as together Muslim and Copt stand side by side and mourn for their fallen leader. A respected military commander, he had also been known for the compassion he had shown both to the poor and to the Copts, the latter at the cost of much political opposition.

Yet as soon as his body is cold, civil war erupts between his two sons, Ismail and Shaban. Both draw the majority of their troops from Sudanese slaves (since the usual sources from Georgia and the Ukraine are no longer available) and Egyptian levies. For the moment they are evenly matched and many in Constantinople push for an invasion, but Andreas refuses, reportedly saying ‘let there be at least one generation without war’.

On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Hammer of al-Andalus perishes in the Alhambra. In contrast to the Mamelukes, his son Yusuf has a trouble-free succession, acclaimed both by the palace regiments and the Jund (the Andalusi version of the tagmata). Yet while it is calm in al-Andalus, storm clouds are also stirring in the lands of the Marinids. The Hammer had been content with the Iberian domains, but Yusuf has not forgotten that by right all of the Marinid Sultanate should be his.

For now though he is silent. Supreme in al-Andalus he may be, only in the port cities of Ceuta and Melilla does he have support in Africa. And al-Andalus cannot hope to challenge the Maghreb, at least not yet. In September Andalusi purxiphoi blast their way into the Senegal to enforce trading privileges, much like the Portuguese before them.


1476: Early in the year Shah Qasim dies and is succeeded by his son Husain, who performs equally poorly against the Ottoman advance. Persian counteractions are hampered by repeated raids on the eastern frontier by the emirs of Yazd and Tabas, which though unable to even think of threatening fortified settlements prove highly damaging to the countryside.

Mehmed decides to shift the focus northward, to the Gilan province, the first of the lands to fall in his grandfather Osman II’s drive to the east. During the campaign, both of the Komnenid sons continue to distinguish themselves, and the youngest, Konstantinos, begins forming a close friendship with Mehmed’s younger brother Prince Suleiman, also serving in the Ottoman army.

By this point the entire Khanate of Perm has been overrun, Russian soldiers washing their swords in the Aral Sea. There is substantial fear amongst the states of central Asia that the Russians will push onward, since their light cavalry have been none too scrupulous about respecting the boundaries of the White Horde and Sibir. But then Babur, Regent of the Timurid Empire, storms across the frontier with sixteen thousand men.

Here in the wilds of Asia he has the advantage, overrunning a Russian force outnumbered four to one at Aktobe, although their massed gunfire proves highly damaging to his cavalry. Despite the victory, Babur has no desire for a full-fledged war with Russia. Baku has been rebuilt and is home for a small but powerful Georgian naval squadron. Samarkand may be mighty, but not mighty enough to take on both Novgorod and Tbilisi.

Nikolai too has no desire for a war either. Despite the raids, the sheer distance means that the offensive is running out of steam. Russia far outmatches the Khanates in military might, but it cannot secure central Asia at this time. Peace is made with Babur on the basis of the status quo, while the raids cease. Perm however is annexed, although Russian control over the region, save for the city of Kazan and its new Russian colony, is threadbare at best.

To help secure the region, as well as to defend against the Timurids, bands of poor farmers are transported to the Yaik basin and Mangyshlak and settled into communities. Small in number, these new communities band together for mutual defense, trade, and government. Theoretically subservient to Novgorod, the new settlements in fact pay little more than a token tribute to the Megas Rigas due to the difficulty of enforcement. Quickly becoming skilled and ferocious horse warriors in their harsh environment, the new organization soon becomes known, based on a Turkic word for ‘free man’, as the Cossack Host.

1477: While Russia has stopped, the Ottomans continue. But the strain of campaigning is taking its toll on Sultan Mehmed III, both mentally and physically. Three times in succession, he violates oaths of safe-conduct and executes garrisons who surrendered (the officers typically by impalement or sawing in half), enslaving capitulated cities who were promised liberty and property. Before Persian fortresses had been inclined to surrender after their walls had been breached, but now it is known that the Great Turk’s word is useless, and resistance intensifies.

As the Ottoman Empire is enlarged, so is Sultan Mehmed III. Always prone to corpulence even as a child, the campaigning has done nothing to offset it. By the end of the year, when the complete capitulation of Gilan province is recorded, he is unable to mount a horse and has to be moved in a litter. Still he remains in the field, executing two beys, one for failing to ambush a Persian relief column for the siege of Qazvin, and the other for not capturing the city of Lahij.

At the same time, peace is made between France-England and Arles. Overall it is an Arletian victory as the border has been expanded to the town of Aiguillon, near where the Lot flows in the Garonne, roughly half of the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Yet it is not as well as Louis had hoped, as he’d dreamed of controlling Bordeaux.

The effects of the war are far-reaching. It is apparent that Arles cannot decisively beat even a weakened France-England without the support of others. Norway-Scotland had been uninvolved because of the Danish war, meaning that England had been free to support Aquitaine without distraction. To bolster Arles’ fighting chances for the next round, Louis orders the construction of a series of canals to improve navigation on the upper Garonne and its use as a supply line (financed by a mix of local, Catalan, and Plethon-Medici capital). In the same vein, he also embarks on a program of internal improvement, draining swamps for farmland, building roads and mills, and encouraging the peasantry to have more children.

While England had been badly damaged at Cannae, France had not, and so it had mostly fallen on that part of the union to defend Aquitaine. The respectable showing of French troops does much to dispel the contempt Englishmen had felt after the victories of Edward VI, and the experience of fighting side by side against a common enemy has also improved relations between the two kingdoms.

Of course Europe is never quiet for long. Imposing his will on the far-flung, independently-minded territories of the Frederickian Empire has been an uphill battle for the Holy Roman Emperor. For the past several years Frederick has focused his efforts on strengthening the Bavarian lands (the only lands he controls directly) as much as possible, while keeping the major powers (Lotharingia, Saxony, Bohemia, and Poland) weak as he cows the numerous minor states.

To further assert his control, he decides he needs a war. By forcing states to provide contingents, supplies, and money for the effort he will further accustom them to obedience, and failure to serve would give him a perfect excuse to assume more direct control. There can be only one target for such a war, the one place in the Holy Roman Empire where his writ does not have even token sway, Danish Germany.

From the Seine to the Oder, the call goes out to all the princes of the Reich. Fearful of what Frederick or his march-wardens Antoine and Christoph will do, they come. Zweihanders from the Palatine, arquebusiers from Brabant, pikemen from Swabia, artillery from Moravia, in all over thirty thousand men. Frederick could potentially field an army more than twice that size, but he lacks the logistical capabilities to maintain such a host. One fly in the ointment though is that the Polish troop numbers only 200, Aleksander pointed out that if he denuded his lands of soldiers, it would be an open invitation to Hungary or Russia to invade.

He attacks in autumn, so that the harvest can feed his men. Well supported by ships of the Hanseatic League (the Hansa had been quite alarmed by the growth of Danish might and its repeated encroachments on League members’ trade and sovereignty), the vastly outnumbered Danes are in full retreat in less than a month. On September 19, Hamburg is placed under siege by a column under the command of Duke Christoph of Oldenburg, whose father had been a Danish vassal for a few years in the 1440s before breaking free.

In Constantinople, Emperor Andreas’ thoughts are far from war. While in the areas of financial and administrative reform he has drawn heavily on the works and ideas of his father Theodoros IV, he has wanted for some time to begin a project first contemplated by his illustrious grandfather Demetrios Megas. The time is propitious. Thanks to the financial reforms, along with the discovery of a massive alum deposit at Tolfa in the Duchy of Latium which is in the complete hands of Roman merchants and taxpayers, all of the popes (bonds) have been paid on schedule, while those loans that could not be repaid have been satisfactorily renegotiated.

With the end of local construction subsidies, Andreas has just a few main projects in mind. Rebuilding Smyrna is one (currently it has 52,000 people compared to its pre-Black Day of 75,000) as well as improving Venetia (30,000) and Alexandria (32,000). But his main focus is his grandfather’s vision. While still in good condition, both the Bucoleon and Blachernae palaces have been tainted by Latin presences, the first by the Latin Empire and the second by Maria of Barcelona.

Thus on June 18, the birthday of Demetrios Megas, it is declared that a new palace shall be built upon what was the old acropolis of Byzantium (eventually known as the White Palace for its white columns inlaid with gypsum crystals). To illustrate the power and prestige of the Komnenid dynasty and the Roman Empire, the palace compound is to be vast, over 500,000 square meters when completed, with four great courtyards. The church of Saint Irene is to be in the first courtyard.

Construction begins as soon as possible, but before that it is done one of the government clerks working on the project is publicly thrown in a sewer and stripped of all his possessions. The Emperor’s Eyes discovered that he had been forcing some of the people required to relocate to sell their properties below the market price and pocketing the difference. Those who had suffered from his greed are reimbursed by the proceeds from the auctioning of the clerk’s possessions, including the money he embezzled.

The second major project begun at this time is a joint idea between Emperor Andreas and Kaisar Demetrios, the creation of a grand exhibit titled The History of the Roman Empire in Art. Dozens of the Empire’s finest artists (pride of place goes to Leo Drakos) are commissioned to create an artistic narrative of the Empire, since the days of Romulus and Remus to the current era.


thethroneroominbyzantiu.jpg

The Court of Emperor Justinian by Leo Drakos, 1477. Historians have noted that Andreas post-Cannae paid a great deal of attention to this imperial predecessor. That same year the most heavily-armed Roman purxiphos ever created up to that point (30 cannons) was launched and given the name Justinian, becoming the Imperial flagship.​


1478: In all, eight hundred and four paintings are created for the exhibit which is held in the Bucoleon Palace. Opening in April, it is open to the public for free for the rest of the year. Previously invitations had been sent to all the major courts of Europe, with representatives coming from Calais, Munich, Milan, Novgorod, and Tbilisi. The monarchs Dragos I of Vlachia, Louis I of Arles, and Wali (Governor-often translated into English as Lord) Yusuf of Al-Andalus come in person.

All three are not just there to admire the artwork, but to discuss expansion of trade with the Roman Empire. Overall the talks go well, with the Roman trading quarters in both Odessos and Marseille gaining the rights to have their own bakery and tavern, although in both cases the establishments have to pay the same taxes as any local business of the same type. Yusuf however wants more, and requests that the church sent a bishop to Cordoba to oversee the Orthodox churches there. It is a proposal immediately accepted, with the bishop placed under the Patriarch of Rome.

Andreas also receives a delegation from Ismail, the eldest son of Sultan Janbulat, asking for help in the Mameluke civil war. He has been steadily loosing ground for the past fifteen months, and his prestige has been badly shaken by a successful revolt in the Hedjaz led by Najd tribesmen under the command of Ali ibn Saud. In May he declares himself Sharif of the Hedjaz, Defender of the Holy Cities of Islam.

Although the Emperor is not ready to invade the Sultanate, yet, he does not hesitate to get involved when invited, but his price is high. In exchange for Roman military and economic aid, once he regains his throne Ismail must cut the export duties on grain, slaves, and kaffos carried out by Roman (or Roman vassal) merchants by two-thirds, expand the borders of Roman Egypt from the gates of Alexandria ten miles outward (finally giving the city a hinterland capable of providing the city with at least some of its foodstuff requirements), and recognize Andreas as ‘Defender of the Syrian and Coptic Christians’, a title originally claimed by Theodoros IV, with the right to intervene (what exactly that means is left vague) on their behalf in the Sultanate. Ismail, with his back to the wall, accepts.

Both fifteen-year-old Leo and fourteen-year-old Zeno accompany Strategos Alfredo, commander of the thirteen thousand men dispatched to aid Sultan Ismail. As the Apulian defeats a Mameluke army of sixteen thousand, Kaisar Demetrios arrives in Egypt to perform a ceremony he had arranged with his father’s approval once he’d heard the terms of the Roman intervention. As Roman guns begin bombarding Cairo, the Kaisar solemnly transfers the relics of St. Mark, stolen from Alexandria by the Venetians in the ninth century, back to the keeping of the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria.

Shaban races back to defend his capital, but is caught and crushed in between Alfredo and Ismail, with Leo in particular demonstrating extraordinary bravery participating in a kataphraktoi charge against the Sultan’s personal guard. Although wounded in the leg, he makes a complete recovery save for a scar. It is behavior of which Andreas approves, stating that ‘though not always, there are times when a good prince must be willing to fight alongside his men’. Ismail keeps his end of the bargain, especially since Alfredo refuses to leave until he does.

Shortly afterwards, an Ethiopian delegation (not including Brihan) arrives in Constantinople to ask for shipwrights and sailors to help improve their navy. They had been unable to come earlier due to the civil war in Egypt. The armies of Ethiopia have managed to capture a coast and ports, but holding them has proven far more difficult. The Yemeni, seeing the obvious threat against their control of the Bab el-Mandeb, have been throwing everything they have at the Ethiopians. Although far smaller than the Christian kingdom, they are far more experienced in maritime warfare.

And they do not fight alone. As the faithful undergo the hajj imams in the Holy Cities preach. They are well aware of the threat an Ethiopian fleet on the Red Sea would pose to Medina and Mecca, and so the ranks of the Yemeni are bolstered by Muslims from all over the Islamic world. The most important are ships and seamen from the Swahili coast, who are inspired not only by religious fervor but also the desire to prevent a potential trade rival from appearing.

Old Negus Yohannes, aggravated at fighting a war in which he can only defend (attempts to combat the Muslim fleets on the open sea have all ended in disaster and slaughter), vents his frustration in the west. In the Sennar, several massive counterattacks are hurled at the Oromo tribesmen, who have continued raiding and migrating into the region. Yohannes, taking the field for the first time since the Battle of Soba almost thirty years earlier, is determined to end the threat once and for all, so that Ethiopia might direct all her energy to the struggle with the House of Islam.

Every Oromo male above the age of twelve, regardless of the circumstances of their capture, is killed on sight. The women are sold into slavery, while the children are taken to be raised as Ethiopian Christians. In his zeal, Yohannes takes his army further south than any Ethiopian army has gone before, pitching his tents in the land of the Turkana (who are forced into vassalage while he is there). Although the Oromo are not completely destroyed, they never recover from the campaign.

The Ethiopian delegation in Constantinople is pleasantly surprised when they are greeted in (heavily accented) Ge’ez by Kaisar Demetrios, who had been taught by two Ethiopian monks from the Holy Land. Ever since he saw the rhinoceros at the Venetian triumph, Demetrios has been fascinated by Africa, and has studied and learned much about it. Andreas has encouraged him in his studies, helping to arrange texts and tutors, as well as focusing the prince’s attention on the Copts. After questioning the delegates about all facets of Ethiopian life, Demetrios convinces his father to agree to all of the envoys’ requests (admittedly Andreas did not need much convincing).

In the south, people try to take to the sea. In the north they already have. The armies of the Reich have already overrun all of Danish Germany and are now pushing into Denmark itself. No one is quite sure of Frederick’s goals here, and numerous rumors abound. Some say that he is angling to place Christoph as King of Denmark, others that he wants it as a vassal or even desires the crown for himself, or that he intends to break it up into several minor duchies. One of the loudest, trumpeted by the Danes to all the peoples of the north, is that the Hansa to secure complete and utter dominance of Baltic trade have convinced the Emperor to take over the whole of the Baltic lands.

There is indeed great fear amongst the Nordic peoples that Denmark may only be the beginning of a general Teutonic attack. The vast size of the Frederickian realm by itself inspires trepidation. In Sweden, the peasant militias are ordered to be ready to muster at a moment’s notice. At the same time, Gustav, great-grandson of Olaf Tordsson, leads Finnish volunteers in a series of fierce naval raids on the Pomeranian coast, striking with fast and light ships much like the Vikings of old. The Hansa vessels, seeing no commercial advantage to defending the area, do little to stop him, while Russia allows the raiders to shelter and supply in Prussia.

1479: Ever since the Council of Constantinople, there have been grumblings in the Queen of Cities. Patriarch Maximus III, who desires to raise the power of the patriarchy to that enjoyed by the Popes of Rome in their heyday, has been gaining enemies because of his heavy-handedness. Many clergy argue that the sentencing of Iason Kokkinos was unjust, that the bible cannot be treated as an astronomical text, and that the Patriarch’s argument that Joshua ordered the sun, not the earth, to stand still in no way proves the astronomer’s heresy. “Joshua was not an astronomer,” the Bishop of Chonae said, “So his opinion cannot be taken as a scriptural proof of an astronomical theorem. That the miracle took place can be explained by the fact that God, Creator and Knower of all, understood what Joshua desired, even if his request was inappropriate to achieve that end’.

According to the Patriarch’s enemies, Iason’s only crime was calling the Patriarch ‘an illiterate bore who wouldn’t know Aristotle if it hit him in the face’. Nevertheless Maximus has continued to prosper, as Andreas has no interest in intervening in church affairs, especially since the Patriarch has backed off commenting on the Emperor’s personal life, even when Kristina gives birth to another son, Herakleios.

But now Maximus decides to take on hesychasm, which though rare amongst the upper classes and in the cities, is extremely popular in rural areas and amongst the peasantry. His hope is that such an attack will rally the urban bishops to his side. In a short series of sermons, he questions the orthodoxy of the practice, and immediately incurs the enmity of an enemy that can make even Patriarchs tremble, the monks of Mount Athos.


mountathosbycodgabriel0.jpg

Mt. Athos, the Holy Mountain of Orthodoxy.​



In the furor over the controversy, several of the monks come into the city to whip up opposition against the Patriarch with demonstrations, one of which devolves into a riot. During said riot, many take the opportunity to start looting, a few starting fires. Before the blaze can be put out, much of the district surrounding the church of St. Mamas is burned to the ground, with over eight thousand dead and thirty thousand homeless.

Andreas, who had been in Macedonia, returns to Constantinople in a rage. Those found guilty of starting the fires are publicly burned at the stake, with the statement that ‘the punishment should fit the crime’. The two monks responsible for the incident that started the riot are thrown into prison, which sparks another round of protests until Andreas releases them, but only after decreeing that they are barred from ever entering Constantinople again. He then turns on the Patriarch, who has lost his last major ally.

Vlad Dracula has passed away at the age of sixty nine on his estates in Bithynia, giving all his earthly possessions in his will to his grandson Demetrios. As a gesture of respect, Andreas commissions two special paintings, one of Vlad in his duel with Sultan Barsbay at the Battle of Adana, and another of him leading the attack on Shah Rukh at the Emperors’ Battle. The new Megas Domestikos is Krikor Zakari, scion of a noble Armenian family that emigrated to the Empire in the mid 1300s.

Andreas has a new Megas Domestikos and is determined to get a new Patriarch as well after this incident. Faced with an unified opposition consisting of the Emperor, the monks of Mt. Athos, and many of his own bishops, Maximus is forced into involuntary retirement and sent to a monastery in Epirus. The bishop of Chonae is elected the new Patriarch, taking the name Photios II.

His first act, at Andreas’ insistence, is a re-trial of Iason Kokkinos where the astronomer is found innocent of any charges of heresy, ‘as a certain ordering of the celestial spheres is not a belief necessary for the Christian life, on which all Orthodox believers must obey to be considered a part of the one true Church.’ His second is to officially recognize hesychasm as orthodox (before it had merely not been condemned as unorthodox).

As the situation calms down in the Empire, the Reich has continued to advance, with Schleswig-Holstein now completely under Frederickian control. Logistics and outbreaks of smallpox are the most dangerous enemies the Holy Roman Emperor faces. Only Gustav’s continued raids into Pomerania pose a serious military threat, but one that is guaranteed to continue now that Gustav is the Danish king’s son-in-law (both as a reward and a means to keep him fighting, Gustav was offered the hand of the youngest Danish princess in marriage during the winter).

In August peace arrives in the Baltic. Denmark is stripped of all her German territories and vassals, Frederick keeping Schleswig and Holstein for himself. The close proximity of such a powerful foe helps bring Denmark and Sweden closer together, and the latter takes a couple of Russian loans to help expand iron production and reduce the need for German imports. At the same time Gustav and his Bonde family members in Finland begin casting their own cannons.

Six weeks later the guns fall silent in Persia. Persia hands over Hamadan, Gilan, and the western half of Mazandaran to the Ottoman Empire. Although both Husain and Mehmed want to keep fighting, both have their reasons to desist. Husain’s poor performance is causing the recently cowed emirs and tribal chieftains of Persia to start intriguing again, and he will need all his resources to keep his young and still only semi-centralized state together. Meanwhile the Ottoman pashas have been growing increasingly alarmed with their sultan’s bloodthirsty tactics, which have cost both the Persians and Turks dearly.

During the siege of Lahij, an attempt to storm the fortress was being thrown back, when the enraged sultan ordered all artillery batteries to fire upon a particular gate. The volley annihilated the Persian troops there, along with two companies of janissaries fighting to hold the gate. At the peace negotiations, Husain agrees to exchange all prisoners without any ransom. He hands his over and learns that Mehmed had executed all of his the day before the signing.

As Sultan Mehmed returns to his court in Baghdad, tensions grow between the Turks and Romans. During the final stages of the war, the Sultan had executed several Roman merchants who had fallen into his hands, and he has refused to pay compensation. In retaliation Andreas ordered the deaths of all Ottoman smugglers currently in Roman custody. Alexeia remains there as ambassador, despite several letters of protest sent to Constantinople by Mehmed. He wrote that ‘such a great empire as yours should be represented by a person of quality, wisdom, nobility, and strength, not traits to be found in women.’ Andreas’ response is ‘that woman slew Galdan of Merv. But do not bother thanking her. The ingratitude of the Turk is already legendary.’

* * *

Population of the Roman Empire in 1480: 15 million

Italians/Sicilians: 3 million
Bulgarians: 800,000
Armenians: 1.1 million
Vlachs: 300,000
Greeks: 6.4 million
Turks: 2.1 million
Arabs/Kurds: 1 million
Others: 300,000

Note that the Roman matrix encompasses Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Vlachs: 9.9 million


Orthodoxy: 64%
Islam: 8% (nearly all Arabs, majority of Kurds, minority of Turks)
Catholicism: 20% (virtually all Italians)
Judaism: 1%
Others (primarily noble heresies): 7%

800,000 Armenian rite-5.33% remaining 1.67% of noble heretics = 250,000

* * *​

The Children of Andreas Komnenos, 1480

By Maria:

Demetrios: Born 1461, 19 years old. Married. No children. Quiet and bookish, he is very interested in Africa and has become Andreas’ unofficial liaison to the Copts. Has demonstrated no military ability whatsoever. As Kaisar, he is to succeed Andreas upon his death.

Leo: Born 1463, 17 years old. Betrothed to Francesca d’Este, sister of the Dux of the Romagna. Famous for his prodigious capacity for eating meat, and also for his temper (broken noses are an occupational hazard for his servants), he has already proven himself to be a brave soldier, although an unimaginative officer.

Eudoxia: Born 1464, 16 years old. Similar in temperament to her oldest brother, she is known for her plain looks and her collection of books, mostly on history. Future author of the Andread. Compared to its usual companion volume in bookstores, the Alexiad, her work is usually more accepted by historians as it was written while its subject was alive.

By Theophano:

Simonis: Born 1463, 17 years old. Married to Federico da Montefeltro, son and heir to the Dux of Urbino.

Zeno: Born 1464, 16 years old. Currently enrolled in the School of War, where his marks are amongst the highest yet recorded in the institute. Commanded a tourma in a war game against his father in March of that year, and although he lost, he did save almost half his men from a mock ambush.

By Kristina:

Andrew ‘Arpad’: Born 1461, 19 years old. Emperor of the Hungarians, King of Austria and Croatia. Married to Sara Arpad, one child-a girl, with another on the way. Every week he washes the feet of some of the beggars in Buda, and feeds a dozen of them at his table. Is an avid collector of maps, particularly those of northern Italy…

Theodoros: Born 1467, 13 years old. Based on historical descriptions, many believe he had Down syndrome. He will however have two children, but a common rebuttal to that is ‘he is Andreas’ son’.

Nikephoros: Born 1471, 9 years old. A mischievous troublemaker, he most resembles Andreas physically out of all his children. He is the one who coined the famous line ‘I am a Prince of Rhomania, and above grammar’ in response to a tutor’s criticism. Quick-thinking and intelligent, he is Kristina’s best chance of seeing one of her sons as Emperor. She has already begun grooming him in the way of the spymaster.

Helena: Born, born 1473, 7 years old.

Basileia: Born 1474, 6 years old.

Herakleios: Born 1479, 1 year old. As Kristina had him at the age of 34, he is likely to be Andreas’ and Kristina’s last.

By Anna:

Andreas: Born 1474, 6 years old.

* * *​

1480: It is a quiet year in Constantinople save for the marriage of Kaisar Demetrios and Aspae Bagrationi, niece of the King of Georgia. In Alexandria things are a bit busier as full restoration of the Pharos Lighthouse begins. The ancient wonder had been badly damaged by earthquakes in the 1300s, but had been somewhat restored by the Mamelukes (largely with Roman capital from merchants interested in maintaining Alexandria as a port). Nevertheless it had still been a bit shaky, so Andreas has ordered a full restoration and repair.

In the west, Venetia’s star is rising fast. In the last ten years, it has grown from 25,000 to 36,000 souls. A perfect outlet into Italy for Roman and eastern goods, the quays along the lagoon are filled with transport ships hauling silk, sugar, and spices (also causing Bari to decline in importance as a port, and increasing Corfu’s significance and prosperity because of its role as a waypoint). Money also comes from more mundane sources, the salt pans. Venetia is fed by Romagnan grain and meat, and a respectable meatpacking industry is developing as Romagnan beef, pork, and mutton is paired with Venetian salt. The wealth coming into the city helps finances a wave of church buildings adorned with paintings created by Italian (emigrants from the other parts of Roman Italy, mostly Urbinese and Romagnans) and Greek artists, the finest synthesis of the two traditions ever seen.

Elsewhere in the Empire it is also a time of creativity…and other things. Photios II finishes a pet project of his that he has worked on since he was a boy, a history of the Persians from Cyrus to the Arab conquests, which he dedicates to the Emperor. The school of astronomy at Smyrna produces two new works, one on comets and the other on eclipses, as Leo begins work on his masterpiece The Battle of Manzikert. At the same time, four Neapolitan clerics who are too friendly with Mainz all have accidents along with a Tatar chieftain who has been criminally negligent in policing the approach to Tana against brigands, while the Office of Barbarians sets up a new spy ring in Lisbon partly to investigate the reasons for all those naval expeditions, as well as their findings. Their focus however is on Portuguese shipbuilding and navigational techniques, to be potentially used for a new model of purxiphoi on the drawing board even more powerful than the Justinian.


thetudorsl.jpg

Andreas as he entered middle-age ruled a sprawling empire of 15 million souls (19 million if the vassal states were included), which compared favorably to France-England's 12.5 million. Only the far less cohesive Frederickian Reich outmatched the Roman Empire in this area. Ruling such a vast array was taxing, but he still continued in his thrice-weekly practice of the Circuit, his ride around Constantinople when anybody, even the lowliest beggar, was allowed an audience with his imperial majesty. Besides ensuring him the complete loyalty of the lower classes, it also kept Emperor Andreas in good physical condition.



Andreas is not the only one building and patronizing the arts. The court of Bernabo Visconti, Duke of Milan, has become a haven for Italian artists, the Duke using them to decorate palaces at Pavia and Modena. He also has agents prowling all of Europe and even into the Middle East, looking for new manuscripts to add to his already famous library. Although the invention and proliferation of the printing press (in this year the number of non-Roman presses first exceeds that of Roman ones) has made the value of individuals texts go down significantly, many in his collection are still incredibly valuable because of their magnificent and ornate illustrations.

In Avignon too, Pope Martin V is busy raising funds for a grand new Basilica of St. Peter. He is determined to make Avignon a truly splendid city, to help compensate for the political weakness of the Avignon ecclesiastical realm compared to Mainz with its Frederickian Empire and Constantinople with its Roman Empire. One of the most common fundraising methods is indulgences, mass produced by the nineteen church-owned presses in Avignon.

At the same time though, Martin makes a momentous decision, authorizing the translation and printing of bibles in the vernacular. Done primarily at the ‘request’ of the Hungarians, who have been heavily influenced both by the Hussites and Orthodox, the Latin Vulgate is still considered the true and proper version of the Bible, taking precedence over any vernacular edition.

1481: In Baghdad, tension is thick, as is the growing pile of bodies as Mehmed’s mood swings become more abrupt and violent. During one dinner, he quotes a line of poetry and asks a scholar who wrote it. The scholar guesses wrong and is executed on the spot by a janissary. Mehmed then asks another, who admits he doesn’t know. He is killed too. Then the Sultan reveals that he himself had created the poem just a few hours earlier.

Even without the coin secretly passed on to prominent courtiers and officials by Alexeia Komnena (provided by Andreas for that purpose), Mehmed is becoming increasingly unpopular. But he is absolutely secure in his position after he raises the daily pay of the janissaries from four akce (silver coins) to six. To finance the increase, he demands that all old akce be handed in, to be replaced by new akce with only two-thirds the previous silver content. When there is an immediate riot, the janissaries are let loose (they are explicitly to be paid with old akce and know the reason for the devaluing) on the mob and cut them to pieces.

A poisoning attempt in May fails, as the dosage proves to be too small, only making the obese sultan violently ill for a day. The only ones to die are three members of the kitchen staff and the sultan’s physician. Three days later Prince Suleiman, along with Basileios and Konstantinos Komnenos, leaves during the night for Basra.

Setting himself up in the Ottoman Empire’s second city, he ingratiates himself with the local Arabs and Shiites (here in the south Turkish influence is much weaker compared to the center and north) to secure his power base, and refuses a demand from his older brother to return to Baghdad. If Mehmed were to die, Suleiman is the obvious successor since Mehmed has no children, which makes him a grave political threat.

The de-facto independence of Basra is somewhat counterbalanced by the pasha of Mosul, Iskender Bey, who is a close friend of Mehmed and similar in temperament. According to Alexeia, over dinner one night they discussed the merits of impaling compared to sawing in half, with two prisoners executed, one in each manner, during the meal so that they could argue more accurately. Despite the peace with Persia, Iskender, who also controls Gilan and Mazandaran, has repeatedly dispatched raids eastwards, hauling away captives and spoils. In September, one raid nets a caravan of Roman merchants, but when a Persian counterattack surprises the Ottoman column, the merchants are killed for slowing them down. Andreas’ demands for reparations to the families are summarily rejected.

* * *

Baghdad, November 4, 1481:

The doors crashed shut, and Alexeia Komnena, Princess of Rhomania, Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, was alone in the audience hall with Sultan Mehmed III. She ignored the protests of her fifty-one-year-old back, angry at not being in bed at this hour. He glared at her. “Your government continues in your absurd demands.”

She stiffened her back, her vertebrae muttering, as she glared back at the Sultan. She had her orders from Constantinople, and she saw no reason to disobey them. We do not yield. “Is justice absurd?” she asked, stepping forward. “Is it absurd to insist that a murderer pay for his brutality, at the very least providing money for the widows and orphans left defenseless because of his savagery?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Persia is mine by right, and all that is in it. Whatever I do with them is just, for they are mine to do with as I please.”

“We disagree. The people of Rhomania are not yours to command, wherever they may be.”

He leaned forward, glowering. “You are wrong. All Persia belongs to me, and whatever she holds. If I choose to do it, then it is just.”

“The laws of God and men say otherwise.”

Mehmed’s bloodshot eyes bulged. “How dare you!!” He staggered up, advancing on her. “You dare defy me?!!” His hot breath blasted her in the face, and she winced at the twin onslaught of the smell of grappa and opium.

“No,” she replied. “Rhomania defies you.”

Mehmed’s face twisted into a paroxysm of rage. “Damn you!!!” he roared, and slammed a jeweled dagger into her belly. Alexeia staggered back, Mehmed letting go and grinning.

She did not scream, or even wince. Her contempt was too strong for that. I faced Galdan of Merv. Do you think I fear the likes of you? “No,” she said, pulling the weapon out, ignoring the guts spilling out of her. Her hand trembled; she was weakening fast, but she only needed a few seconds. Mehmed was no Galdan. “Damn you.” And she plunged the blade into his heart.

* * *​

1482: No one ever knows what happened exactly between Sultan Mehmed III and Alexeia Komnena, only that the pair killed each other. In Baghdad there is confusion, but Prince Suleiman is immediately summoned from Basra, although many of the more prominent imams and qadis are concerned by his pro-Shiite policies; he even has four of them as members of his ‘court’ in Basra.

The situation is far different in Constantinople. Kristina counsels patience. She suggests that in the chaos, the Romans prop up Iskender Bey as the new sultan. Without any blood ties whatsoever to the house of Osman, and militarily weaker than Suleiman if the prince gains control of Baghdad, he would be in debt to the Romans and likely dependent on them as well for his position, so he would be expected to be very, very grateful. There is also a quite large chance of extinguishing the Anastasian line.

While the last prospect temporarily brings Andreas up short, it does not last for long. Three hours after the news arrives, orders are dispatched to the navy to prepare to ferry the Athanatoi and Varangoi to Trebizond. The Chaldean tagma is ordered to muster as well, while the Syrians are to commence raiding operations immediately. Due to the logistical difficulties of a winter campaign, Andreas does not muster any more men. When it is pointed out that against the entirety of the Ottoman Empire, he would be outnumbered, Andreas responds “I’m used to fighting outnumbered.” The next day he leaves, accompanied by Leo and Zeno.

While the Emperor/Empress’ Eyes have crippled the Ottoman spy network in Constantinople, Iskender Bey does have contacts of his own in the eastern themes, so he knows of the Syrian and Chaldean assemblies. It places him in a quandary. He wants to make a bid to become Sultan, but if Suleiman gets into Baghdad, his chance will evaporate. But if he marches south, he’ll be exposing his power base in the north to Roman attack.

So he sends money, not men, to Baghdad, given to janissary commanders so that they will bar Suleiman from entering the capital. The janissaries are the true masters of the city at the moment, as the court and religious officials are divided on accepting Suleiman. Then Iskender turns north. His plan is to hit the Romans before they hit him. If he strikes fast, he can defeat them in detail, and help give him the military prestige he will need to challenge a direct male descendant of both Osman I and Osman II.

The Turk does strike fast. Waves of akincis, bands of irregulars, sweep across the frontier, burning, pillaging, raping, and murdering. Paid only in booty, they have no reason to stem from slaughter, and are completely indiscriminate in their efforts. Some of Iskender’s officers protest, saying that the Kurds might be convinced to join the side of the Turk. The tough tribesmen have no reason to be disloyal to Rhomania, but no reason to be loyal either. Iskender rejects the advice with a sneer. “What have the Kurds done since Salah al-Din?”

Thinking that all Iskender has are the akincis, the Syrian tagma spreads out to savage the raiders. Ill trained, poorly disciplined, and badly equipped, they stand no chance against the Roman soldiers and are slaughtered in droves. No quarter is given. But then Iskender himself crosses the frontier at the head of 15,000 men, his household cavalry (second in size only to that which belonged to Sultan Mehmed III), urban azabs, timariots, and a few squadrons of janissaries and sipahis from garrisons stationed in the north. Iskender fights four separate engagements against vastly outnumbered Roman detachments and wins them all.

Freed from the pressure, the akincis resume their raids as Roman refugees flee to the city of Edessa, whose population swells from 21,500 to over 40,000. Iskender places it under siege. Though he only has six guns, they are some of the finest guns and crews in the Ottoman Empire and soon punch three breaches in the fortifications, which have not been upgraded to defend against gunpowder weapons.

After the mauling the Syrian tagma has suffered, Edessa itself is defended mostly by militia and hastily conscripted civilians, bolstered by Kurdish tribesmen who have brought their families here to shelter behind the walls (their hill forts prove distressingly vulnerable to the new light Ottoman guns based off the mikropurs). As a result the Turks are very confident. When the assault is launched, many have equipped themselves with sacks to carry away loot and ropes to bind their expected captives. Then at 2 AM, with a great blowing of trumpets they hurl themselves at the breaches.

And are thrown back. They may not be soldiers, but the defenders of Edessa are well aware of the horrors that will befall their families if they fail. The first Turkish attack is bloodily driven back, but they regroup and attack again. The fighting is thick and savage, the Kurds in particular distinguishing themselves for their bravery and taking frightful casualties, but the Edessans are gradually hammered back.


* * *​

Edessa, January 23, 1482:

It was dark. The gibbous moon was close to setting, and it would be an hour before the dawn. But that didn’t matter; they were in position. Before the darkness might have hampered them, but now it gave them strength.

Leo smiled; he could hear, he could smell the battle. His stallion danced beneath him. Like him, it was spoiling for a fight. Good. He had trained it personally to kick and bite in battle. Such mounts were usually dangerous to their owners, but not him. He could handle it, and besides, he wanted a horse with fire in its soul.

To match the fire in his own. He felt alive, just like he had at Cairo. Battle. This was where great deeds were done and legends made. Everyone knew of his great-grandfather Demetrios Megas, vanquisher of Timur. Everyone knew of his father, Scourge of the Latins. By contrast, who knew of his grandfather, Theodoros the Hard Bargainer?

“Zeno,” Emperor Andreas said. “Deploy to the left and skirmish with the enemy there. Do not engage. Just keep them pinned there, and make it look like there are lots of you.” Zeno nodded. “Go.” His bastard half-brother galloped off.

What? Why does he get that assignment? He’s just a bastard, son of some Messinian washer woman. I’ve the blood of the Dragon and Demetrios Megas!

“Leo.” He jumped at his father’s voice. “With me.” The Emperor pointed to his right. “Here. Ready your kontos.” That caused Leo to grin. He’d be in the thick of it then, alongside his father, where legends would be made. His father knew how to fight, to lead, by example, with his men. Not like Zeno who liked to hang back and observe. Father did that too, of course, but when the time came to fell the hammer blow, he would be there alongside the kataphraktoi.

Of course, even Zeno was better than Demetrios. Just the thought of his older brother made his mouth twist into a sneer. Zeno at least had the stomach to go near a fight, but Demetrios…he was a coward. He knew tavern wenches who would be better in a brawl than his older brother.

Screams blossomed to the left. “Good,” Andreas muttered. “Zeno’s faster than I expected.” Leo frowned. “KATAPHRAKTOI, READY KONTOI!”

The prince pulled his lance from where it was strapped to his mount’s side, pointing it up at the night sky. The horse flared its nostrils, time to fight, time to kill. “SAINT THEODOROS!” Andreas bellowed. “AND NO QUARTER!”

Leo grinned. “NO QUARTER!” the men shouted, a chill running down his spine.

“FORWARD!”

The trumpets blew, a deep, throaty roar, and then a great crash as Rhomania’s finest hurled themselves into the fray.

* * *​

The sudden onslaught in their rear at the very moment of victory unhinges the Turkish army. When it becomes known that the Roman Emperor himself is leading the attack, consternation turns into full-blown panic as the soldiers believe he must have brought the vast host camp rumors have mentioned (with one extreme one saying that Andreas was marching east with 500,000 men). By dawn, it is a rout.

For the rest of the day, the Ottoman army is pursued and effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Iskender Bey survives the battle and pursuit, but is wounded in the groin during the late afternoon and dies three days later. The second day after the battle, Andreas enters the city of Edessa to the rapturous applause of its inhabitants, along with the 2,000 cavalry he had force-marched from Trebizond. The rest of his army has not even left the Chaldean theme yet.

Despite the much heavier than expected losses to the Syrian tagma, as soon as the Athanatoi, Varangoi, and Chaldeans arrive Andreas marches south. His ‘vast’ host is twenty two thousand strong. The undermanned but formidable Ottoman fortress at Harran is taken after a siege of only three days, a feat droungarios Andronikos Angelos plays a sizeable role in for his expert placement of the guns. The entire garrison is put to the sword.

Since Edessa has virtually annihilated Ottoman strength in northern Mesopotamia, at least for the time being, after the fall of Harran Andreas splits his forces both to ease logistics and to increase the number of fortresses taken during the window of vulnerability. While the Emperor continues to work his way down the upper Euphrates, Zeno swings east with nine thousand men to secure the Khabur river valley.

At Tal Abyad, the garrison surrenders to Andreas as soon as the Roman guns are in position. For their capitulation without resistance, Andreas spares their lives. The message is clear to the remainder of the Turkish forts; surrender and live, or resist and die. The vast majority choose the former. The two most prominent captures are the cities of Al-Raqqa (by Andreas) and Nisibis (by Zeno). To garrison them, the Emperor calls up units from the Coloneian tagma so as to not weaken his field army.

Once the two forces reunite, their new target is nothing less than Mosul itself. Yet as they move, scouts and spies report that the main Ottoman army is finally headed north.

Thanks to Iskender’s intrigues, Suleiman is unable to enter Baghdad until he promises to raise the Janissaries’ salaries from six to eight akce (meaning that in the past two years their pay has doubled), at which point the men force their bribed officers to open the gates. Winning over the rest of the Ottoman elite is more difficult, and the price Suleiman pays for their support is the abandonment of the Shiites. The members of his court are expelled, and he pledges never to favor them as he had in Basra. However in the future, Sultan Suleiman I “the Magnificent” does go after officials who persecute Shiites, charge them with another crime (dereliction of duty usually, as while they are persecuting their official duties suffer, according to Suleiman), and sack them.

Now officially sultan, he marches north with an army of 35,000. Despite his over 3-to-2 numerical superiority with the Roman army, Suleiman is concerned. Andreas’ reputation for winning despite heavy odds was famous in E-raq even before Edessa. When the two armies begin skirmishing west of Mosul, the attacks of the turkopouloi are fierce and well coordinated, supported by skythikoi and black horses (the latter quickly become the bane of the sipahis).

Besides the Roman attacks, tensions are rising in the Ottoman camp between the janissaries and urban azabs. The latter are particularly annoyed at the rapid increases in pay the janissaries have received, while the janissaries are extremely suspicious of the only other Ottoman formations that are capable of taking over the janissaries’ role as heavy infantry and making them unnecessary. Already there have been a couple of brawls, leaving one azab dead.

Thus Suleiman asks for peace. Andreas is willing to listen, since now with Iskender Bey, the best friend of the one who murdered Alexeia, dead he has lost most of his interest for the campaign. Still he wants all of the land west of the Khabur along with Nisibis, plus the indemnities demanded from Mehmed III to pay the families of those Romans he killed are to be paid with double the original amount. Also the ‘upkeep’ the Romans pay for the Anastasian line are to be canceled.

Andreas does not demand the Anastasian line itself. With both Basileios and Konstantinos married to Turkish girls and rumors that Basileios has converted to Islam, Andreas sees little threat from that quarter. He is also aware that Suleiman will need to maintain the line as a potential bargaining chip to keep the anti-Roman faction in Baghdad in check.

Reluctantly Suleiman accepts the terms. Though not a great loss in terms of territory, several major fortresses watching the Roman border are now in Roman hands. But his position is still shaky, and there are still the Persians to worry about. Shortly afterwards, he is greatly relieved that he did so, for he discovers that during the pre-battle maneuvers, Zeno had snuck around the Turkish lines with four thousand men. If Suleiman had fought, the battle would’ve been another Cannae.

Both monarchs are back in their capitals by the height of summer. Many in Baghdad are angry over his capitulation, but an enraged Suleiman turns on them. In a tirade, he lambasts them, saying that if they truly wanted a fight with Rhomania, what they should have done was back the conquest of Persia to the hilt, so that the Ottomans might have the strength to wage such a war. But by their intrigue and warmongering, they have hampered rearmament by stifling trade with the Romans, and caused many a Turkish soldier to die unnecessarily.

He makes the intentions of his reign clear when he places his horsetail banners, the Ottoman symbols of leadership and authority since the days of Osman I, to the east of Baghdad. He will settle for nothing less than the complete conquest of Persia. To that end, when some company commanders raid across the Persian border, Suleiman has the officers responsible beheaded, their heads sent to the emirs whose lands were ravaged, and also dispatches money to help pay for the damages. Suleiman knows that for Persia to stay Ottoman, instead of the vacillating it has done over the past sixty years, the Persians must want to become part of the Ottoman realm.

Andreas’ return to Constantinople is less turbulent, but before he does he stops at Alexeia’s old estates in Coloneia to bury her. Suleiman had returned the body as a preliminary to the negotiations. But the ranks of the Komnenoi are soon replenished, for he is a grandfather. Demetrios and Aspae have a son just two weeks after his return, Andreas.

levantafter1482war.jpg

The Roman-Ottoman border. Red is for the pre-war frontier, blue for post-war.​

* * *​

March 16, 1483, off the coast of Zeila, Ethiopia:

“There they are!” Yonas shouted, pointing to the east. It was the Arab-Kilwa fleet, its sails covering the horizon. It was moving, a vast wooden wall coming towards them.

She could hear the drums. Brihan shifted the light shield on her left arm and winced at the pain. Her arm had been broken in a melee at sea three years ago and had never truly healed. Yonas stared at her with concern in his eyes. “I’m fine, Yonas.” He looked at her for another second, and then turned to gaze around him.

It was a marvelous sight, the new Ethiopian fleet. It had taken a long time, over four years, to build it, much longer than expected. The construction had been delayed by Yemeni attacks on the shipyards at Zeila and Djibouti, as well as punitive raids against the Somalis. Kebri Beyah had been taken and was being colonized by Ethiopians, as well as some of the inhabitants of the vassal states of the Sennar, to hold the region. Slowly but surely, the Somali were being overrun.

But the killing blow could not be made until the threat to Ethiopia’s flank was gone, the threat from the sea. Hopefully now, if God wills, today would be the day that it finally happened.

“They’re coming hard,” Dawit muttered.

“They always do that,” she replied. “They have always won on the sea, and so they think they always will.” She smiled wolfishly, patting a cannon positioned in the bow of their galley. “They are wrong. It takes only two to win a battle, God and artillery. We have both.”

As she finished, the Solomon and the Yekuno I, the first two Ethiopian purxiphoi ever created, opened fire.

* * *

1483: After the flurry of activity last year, the calm in Constantinople comes as a welcome relief. Though there are some who are dismayed by Andreas’ actions, stating they were too lenient (Kristina is one of them), in general the people of the Empire are grateful to be spared the trials of a long war.

Construction on the White Palace continues, as Smyrna’s population reaches 55,000, meaning it has regained half of the population lost on the Black Day. Alexandria too is showing signs of population gain, passing 35,000 now that its hinterland is producing foodstuffs.

Nearly all of the growth is from the Copts, whose segment expands far beyond anything provided by new births due to the Imperial government’s pro-Copt policy. Copts are listed as one of the noble heresies, while self-identified Christian Arabs are viewed with skepticism as since the almost-complete conversion of the Turks to Christianity compared to almost non-existent conversion of Muslim Arabs (admittedly due to far less effort on the part of Constantinople) Arab is often treated as a synonym for Muslim. As a result, many Christian Arabs are now identifying themselves as Copts. At the same time, a small revival of the Coptic language is taking place thanks to the patronage of Demetrios Komnenos. Andreas is skeptical of this, as he would prefer the growth of Greek, but goes along with it as it will at least disassociate the Copts from the Arabs.

The growing size of Alexandria, along with its militia forces of four thousand (seventh-eighths are Copts, eight hundred of which are armed with arquebuses and trained like kentarchiai mauroi), increases the need for good government there. With imperial permission (necessary for such decisions) the city council of Alexandria, which is similar in composition to other Imperial cities, is enlarged by almost one third, with all of its new members Copts. As a result, Copts now dominate Alexandrian government, although Imperial officials resident in Alexandria remain Greek.

Andreas also begins offering scholarships to bright young Copts to attend the University of Smyrna. While free to use their native tongue, the students must learn Greek as part of their schooling if they have not already, so this is Andreas’ roundabout way of introducing Greek to Alexandria’s non-Greek populace. While he has used the more direct method of importing Greek settlers, the much larger and less behaved Italian minority means that south Italy and Sicily are the priority destinations for Greek settlers.

At the same time, he is encouraging Albanian and Kurdish young men to join the School of War as potential officers, to increase the participation and loyalty of these hardy peoples. Also more join the army as regular tagma soldiers to help fill vacant estates. Given the small size of both peoples, it does not make a large difference to the recovery of the army, but it does much to bond them to Constantinople’s side, which is Andreas’ intention.

In Germany, Munich is the site of an absolutely massive tournament financed by Emperor Frederick III to showcase his wealth and power. While the princes of the Reich are not obligated to attend, it is the social event of at least the decade, potentially the century. Thus very few do not make an appearance. The attendees see besides great pageantry and pomp, splendid jousts and fine feasts, well disciplined, well armed Bavarian troops, modeled after the Black Army of Hungary but organized in a manner similar to the Arletian lance, professional multinational mercenaries organized in squads of ten, half cavalry, half infantry, one fifth of them armed with handguns.

During the festivities, Frederick announces the absorption of Tyrol into the Bavarian domain, as its ruling line has failed and the Wittelsbachs have the greatest claim on the empty title. Legally Frederick is in the right, although even so he waited until the princes would not be able to complain before he announced it. It is granted as an appanage to his three-year-old son and heir Manfred, but all know who the real ruler of Tyrol is.

As the Germans joust, the Ethiopians fight. The Ethiopian armada, product of many years of toil, is at last ready and puts out to sea in March. It is immediately engaged by the Arab and Kilwa fleet prowling the Bab el-Mandab. Manned by jihadists from all over the Muslim world, alongside Yemeni and Kilwa fearful of a new rival on the sea, it has the numerical and seamanship advantage.

But what the Ethiopians lack in numbers and seamanship, they make up for that with courage and cannon. They charge into the fray, firing their cannons at point-blank range, and storming the enemy ships seconds after the volley. The fighting is savage and brutal, no quarter asked or given on either side. Ships list out of the battle, their oars slack, everyone of their crews dead, wounded, or missing. Others become great focal points for the confused melee. One Ethiopian galley changes hands eight times; the bodies of the slain completely covering the deck so that not a single piece of wood can be seen.

The bloodbath lasts all day, until finally the Muslims break, although the gutted Ethiopian fleet is too torn up to pursue. Nevertheless it is a major victory for the Ethiopians, shattering the blockade of their new coastline and removing the flank threat keeping the kingdom from deploying its full might against the Somalis. More importantly, it ensures the sea will not be denied to the Ethiopians.

1484: Now fighting alone, the Somali stand little chance against the more numerous and advanced Ethiopian forces. In August, a combined Ethiopian land-sea attack in which Brihan participates and earns her fourth battle wound seizes Aluula near the tip of the Horn of Africa. While the coast is directly annexed to Ethiopia (although the hot climate means very few Ethiopians are inclined to emigrate) the interior is left under the control of vassal chieftains, who provide tribute and men to Gonder.

Although Ethiopians may outnumber Somalis, the former are not populous enough to absorb the latter. If Ethiopia is to retain her conquests, and build on them, she must weld the Somalis to her side. Historically the Christian kingdom has had little issue with Muslims, provided they were her Muslims and not foreigners. That tolerance policy is followed by the new negusa negast of Ethiopia, Kwestantinos I (the name itself, the Ethiopian version of Konstantinos, shows the strong Roman influence at court), and supported by Brihan who says “killing is a bad way to convert.”

The tack the Ethiopians take with the Somalis resemble the manner the Romans took with the Turks in the early 1300s. Somali men are called up for military service, where they are required to learn Amharic, the common Ethiopian tongue (Ge’ez is the language of court and church, in a similar manner to medieval Latin), and are introduced to Christianity by their fellow soldiers. They are encouraged to bring their wives and children if they have any so that they too may be introduced to Christianity, and if they have none they are also given incentive to marry Christian girls.

The creation of an Ethiopian-Somali state is imperiled before it can begin by the news from the north. With the Ethiopian fleet now supreme in the Bab el-Mandeb, nothing stands between them and the holy cities of Islam. Ali ibn Saud, Sharif of the Hedjaz, swallows his pride after the fall of Aluula and asks Sultan Ismail for aid.

And the Mameluke Sultan answers. Ismail is determined to revive the Mamelukes as a great power, and while challenging Rhomania would be foolish, Ethiopia cannot summon even a quarter of the strength of the Empire. He joins the jihad, planning a two-pronged attack. An army shall march down the Nile from Nubia and invade the Sennar, while a naval expedition will travel down the Red Sea to join the regrouped Yemeni to attack the coast, and at the same time agents will stir the Somali into revolting. Against such an array of foes, Ethiopia’s chances are very small.

But Ethiopia does not stand alone. On November 12, before Mameluke preparations have gotten very far, an ultimatum is delivered to Cairo. As Defender of the Coptic Christians, Emperor Andreas will not stand by while they are slaughtered. Thus if the Sultanate conducts any offensive operations against Ethiopia, he will consider it an act of war against Rhomania.

Andreas is not bluffing. Four purxiphoi and twenty galleys put into Alexandria the same day the envoy delivers the ultimatum, carrying war materials for the Alexandrian garrison and militia. In Constantinople, the Emperor is drawing up battle plans for a two-pronged campaign of his own. There would be an overland invasion of Mameluke Syria, its first target Damascus, under his personal command, while another column under Strategos Alfredo would base out of Alexandria and harry Egypt. But the plans are shelved before Andreas implements them. On November 17, Ismail stands down.

1485: Despite the Mamelukes backing down, for the moment Arabia is safe. Ethiopia has another target in mind, the great port of Mogadishu, the last credible Somali state outside of Ethiopian dominion. Dissidents have been flooding into the city, and Kwestantinos is determined to end the threat they pose to his control over the Somali chieftains. However to attack Mogadishu is no easy affair. The distance is great, and supplying the attack force would be exceedingly difficult considering the battered condition of the Ethiopian fleet and the laughable state of the nearest naval “base” at Aluula, currently a stretch of cleared beach and a couple of run-down warehouses.

It is now that the Omani enter the scenes. The rulers of Muscat have long profited from their strategic position on the Persian Gulf trade route, and are now interested in expanding their horizons, particularly in Africa. Ivory is a highly valued commodity in Arabia and southern Persia (as is rhinoceros horn, used both as dagger handles in Yemen and Oman, and when ground used as medicine as far away as China), so control of its embarkation points on the Swahili coast would prove most valuable.

Thus when Mogadishu falls in September, it is to an Ethiopian-Omani combined assault. Oman gains custody of the city, installing a Wali (governor), but hands over the dissidents to Ethiopian custody and pledges to ‘bar all enemies of his august majesty, the negusa nagast of Ethiopia, from the realm of the Wilayah of Mogadishu’. The Ethiopians are also granted their own street, with a church (to be constructed), bakery, well, and the right to use their own weights and measures.

1486: Northern Italy sees war this year, as the Milanese invade Piedmont. In January, the House of Montferrat had failed, leaving their county contested between a member of the House of Savoy and a Visconti claimant (Montferrat had been under Milanese control in the early 1400s, but following a period of instability in the Duchy in the 1440s it had reverted back to the House of Montferrat). The Savoyard contestant has a greater legal claim, as the Visconti ‘Count’ traces his lineage through a bastard, not a legitimate child.

But what the Visconti lack in legitimacy, they make up in firepower. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but cannons are greater than both. The Savoyard army, outnumbered almost five to three, is decisively defeated at Trino, and the new Visconti count is installed in Montferrat. Immediately after his accession, the count pledges fealty to the Duke of Milan.

In Roman Italy, the battlefield is not some village in Piedmont, but the souls of its inhabitants. Due to Andreas’ refusal to allow any Mainz appointees access to their sees, the local Mainz Catholics have been forced to draw priests and bishops from their local population, which has led to a significant decrease in their quality due to the lack of educated candidates (the only university allowed to operate in Roman Italy is the University of Bari).

The new crop of clerics compare extremely unfavorable to the Orthodox monks and priests sent as missionaries to these lands, and it is leading to substantial Orthodox inroads in both Sicily and Campania. Apulia, because of its affiliation to Avignon, whose appointees are allowed access, is somewhat more resistant. However that is counterbalanced by the pull of young men to the very Orthodox city of Bari for work and study.

Islam too is having its own share of difficulties. Off of Tenerife, the greatest of the Canary Islands, a Portuguese fleet inflicts a crushing defeat on an Andalusi flotilla. Smelling blood in the water, Lisbon begins intriguing with Castile and Aragon, both of which have recovered from the Sicilian war, to reawaken the Reconquista. Marrakesh too begins to stir, spying a perfect opportunity to bring an overmighty vassal to heel.

Yusuf’s back is against the wall. Against such an array of forces, Al-Andalus’ chances are non-existent. While the Marinids and Iberians would certainly come to blows, they would be over the Andalusi, and his, corpse. His attempts to stir up support in north Africa have failed, many remarking that his views on succession seem awfully Christian. With nowhere else to turn, he dispatches envoys to Constantinople.

On June 9, they deliver their message. In it, in exchange for protection, Yusuf pledges to become a vassal of the Roman Empire. Andreas accepts the offer, immediately dispatching a fleet of fifty warships to Almeria as a show of force, publicly accompanying the fleet as far as Salerno where he oversees joint exercises of the Apulian and Sicilian tagmata.

Per the vassal agreement, Al-Andalus is not required to provide manpower to the Empire, only a yearly tribute (an amount 1.5 times that paid by all other Roman vassals combined, but Al-Andalus’ military and economic disparity is similarly large), as Andreas is concerned about how well he could trust them fighting other Muslims (he trusts Roman Muslims in that regard, but he knows them far better), and the diplomatic fallout that would occur if he used them against Christians. In exchange for the payments, Rhomania will defend Al-Andalus against all her enemies, including the Marinid Sultanate, although Al-Andalus will be required to pay and supply her own soldiers, and supply Roman forces fighting in Iberia.

All of Al-Andalus’ enemies are exceedingly annoyed, at best, by this arrangement. But neither Aragon nor Castile is eager for a repeat of the Sicilian War. Meanwhile Marrakesh grudgingly accepts a guarantee from Constantinople that Al-Andalus will press no claims to the Sultanate as it is distracted by the chaos in the Jolof Empire across the Sahara. As a symbol of this change, Yusuf takes a new title, Malik (King) of Al-Andalus.

Lisbon is bought off by a watershed moment in European diplomacy (some historians consider this to be the end of the Middle Ages, although they are in the minority). Madeira and the Canary Islands are recognized as Portuguese territory, but what is important is the following clause. Rhomania will defend Andalusi interests, except ‘beyond the line’. The line is drawn fifty miles south of the Canaries, and fifty miles west of the Azores (also a Portuguese colony). Beyond that line, the Portuguese and Andalusi can do whatever they desire to one another, without Roman interference. Yusuf is aggrieved by these terms, but Andreas does not desire a war on the other end of the Mediterranean which would do absolutely nothing to serve Roman interests.

Islam does gain a victory in sub-Saharan Africa, when the pagan Jolof Emperor is toppled from his throne by a Muslim rebellion. The decentralized empire immediately begins breaking up into smaller states, most of which were simply vassals of the Emperor and are now independent. Many are ruled by Muslim elites, and some of the weaker pagan states convert to stay alive. Portugal benefits as well, as it can deal with petty emirs the expeditions can bully around without fear of their overlord retaliating.

But to the east, the news is far more dire and terrible. With Mogadishu eliminated and the Omani now Ethiopian allies, the Christian kingdom turns its gaze, and its fleet, upon Arabia itself. Aden is burned to the ground in April, Asir a month later. The emir of Yemen capitulates, paying a vast lump sum and promising a yearly tribute for the next twelve years. The payment spares Yemen from further destruction, but does nothing for the Hedjaz. In October, news comes that shakes the entire Muslim world. Brihan has taken Jedda, the port of Mecca itself.

1487: Mecca is not placed under close siege, but it is blockaded. Ali ibn Saud, operating from Najd, still has access to the holy city, but the coastal roads are cut, making it impossible for pilgrims to complete the hajj. The only exceptions are pilgrims from Rhomania and Oman, who are allowed passage, the Ethiopians even setting up a hostel and market to help service them (this does have the effect of filtering some supplies into Mecca, but done anyway to avoid alienating either state).

Kwestantinos has no desire to actually take or seriously threaten Mecca, fearful of having the entire Muslim world fall on him, but he is interested in making the Muslims back off, and pay lots of coin. So the blockade remains, Ethiopian light cavalry dueling with Najd riders under the House of Saud. Not all of the blockaders are in fact Ethiopians or vassals of Gonder. One hundred and fifty are Kannadas from the Empire of Vijayanagara, sent both to convey the Emperor’s congratulations and to help in the blockade.

In Egypt, Sultan Ismail begins to move, calling up levies and contracting Arabic tribesmen for logistical support. Before he can get very far though, a Roman squadron puts into Alexandria, Prince Leo among the two thousand soldiers disembarked. At the same time the Cilicia-Phoenician and Syrian tagmata are called up for ‘special exercises’ near Aleppo. Ismail again stands down under the veiled threat, although he does take the opportunity of using the summoned levies to chastise some Libyan tribesmen who have been behind in rendering tribute.

In Arabia rumors amplify the Roman maneuvers into a vast host. In the northern Hedjaz, there is panic in fear that the Lord of the North is marching to join the Lady of the South in toppling the Kaaba. A wave of ghazis sweep southward from Medina, recruited from pilgrims attempting to undergo the hajj, and led by fiery imams. At Badr, site of a famous battle between the Prophet Mohammed himself and the Quraysh of Mecca, they met an Ethiopian force outnumbered two-to-one, Brihan among them.

The battle lasts for three hours, and is an absolutely crushing victory for the Ethiopians. The ghazis have nothing to match the volleys of gunfire and heavy cavalry charges and are cut to pieces, the remnants being pursued all the way to Medina. Shortly afterwards, Ali ibn Saud comes to terms, paying Ethiopia a similar amount of tribute as that pledged by Yemen.

Andreas does not notice the sudden calm over Arabia, as the spring is a hard season for him. Two marriages take place in Constantinople, both of them unplanned and unwanted. First is Nikephoros. Taking after his father, the prince has already cut a swathe through most of the girls on the palace staff, something Andreas does not mind, but he has arranged for his son to marry a niece of the Coptic Patriarch of Egypt. Instead Nikephoros is discovered making love to Theodora Kantakuzena, daughter of the largest owner of sheep (after Andreas himself) in the Empire, and one of the most powerful of the rural dynatoi. As a result, Nikephoros is married to Theodora instead, who becomes pregnant very quickly.

The second is Theodoros. Just two weeks later, he is discovered with Irene Mouzalon, daughter of one the wealthiest silk merchants in the Empire. Because of Demetrios, who Theodoros adores, the prince has a great interest in zoology (the study of animals). Apparently Irene was helping him ‘study the female of the species’. Shortly afterward that couple too is married.

Then that winter tragedy strikes. While in Nicaea the sixteen-year-old Nikephoros catches smallpox and dies. Nine days later, after thirty hours of labor, Theodora gives birth to a son. Eight hours later she is dead as well, but not before naming her son. Like his father, he too is named Nikephoros.

The Baptism of Nikephoros Komnenos.
tudorsedwardbaptism.jpg

Despite the fact that Kristina was now 42 years old, like her predecessor Helena she was well known for her graceful aging. Andreas too aged slower than his father, whose hair was all gray, unlike Andreas', by his early 40s.

The presence of the banner of France-England is due to the recent arrival (the day before) of a delegation from Calais.

As he was orphaned shortly after birth, the boy who would become known as the "Spider Prince" would be raised by his grandparents.

Image taken from The Komnenoi, Ep. 63, "Lord of East and West"

1488: In Ethiopia, there is silence. While the past decades of campaigns have brought power and glory to the kingdom, they have also been costly in both blood and coin. Ethiopia needs time to rest, to heal her wounds. Brihan retires from the field of battle for the time being, purchasing a house in Zeila where she begins writing her memoirs.

But Kwestantinos is not entirely idle. Using Omani pilots and navigators, he sends an emissary of his own to Vijayanagara, the great capital of that empire, a city almost as large and populous as Constantinople (340,000 vs. 385,000), to thank the Hindu Emperor for his aid in the Meccan campaign.

At the same time, he is also stirring up dissidents in Nubia and moving agents into the petty principalities and chiefdoms scattered across the band of unclaimed territory between Mameluke Nubia and the northern border of Ethiopia. Cairo lacked the logistical ability to extend its power further south, while Gonder wanted a buffer zone between it and the Mameluke Sultanate. But now Kwestantinos does not feel the need for such a zone, and this is his first step in reducing it.

Meanwhile in Constantinople, Andreas is again a grandfather as Leo and his wife have a son, Matthaios. It is a joyous occasion, although for Leo it is somewhat dissipated when a week later Zeno is married to Anna of Lesbos, an alum merchant’s daughter, but one of the greatest beauties in the Empire.

As bells toll in celebration, Eudoxia begins her famous piece the Andread. Her inspiration for such an endeavor actually comes from her youngest brother Herakleios. Now nine years old, after a bad bout of pneumonia when he was three, he is a short, sickly boy. Rarely going outside, he spends most of his time in the now finished library of the White Palace, reading tales of old. The one closest to him is Eudoxia, who introduced him to both Herodotus and Xenophon.

Although she is now twenty four years old, Eudoxia is still unmarried. She has little inclination to change that, and due to her plain appearance, particularly in comparison to her younger half-sisters Helena (15 years) and Basileia (14 years), she is not highly sought. Andreas too is not pressuring her, as in many ways Eudoxia takes after her aunt Zoe.

Zoe too is prospering in southern Italy. Her and Alfredo’s son Manuel is now a tall lad of fourteen, taking after his mother in looks and his father in personality. While Andreas has accepted Manuel being the heir to the Duchy of Abruzzi, he has decreed that he cannot join the Roman army without forfeiting that inheritances. Andreas trusts Alfredo, but he is not willing to countenance someone holding the title of Dux and Strategos at the same time.

1489: In Baghdad, Suleiman I holds a great banquet for many of the leading nobility of the Ottoman Empire. During the festivities, the Sultan is urgently called away with news that the Janissaries are rioting. He leaves but orders the meal to continue. An hour later he returns at the head of a battalion of Janissaries, who storm the hall on the Sultan’s orders and kill all of the occupants.

What is left of the Ottoman elite is utterly enraged by this, but they are weak with their leaders dead. Many of the slain are descendants of Turkish chieftains who had emigrated from Anatolia under the banner of Osman. Although they recognized the supremacy of the House of Osman, the tribal chiefs had been growing into a hereditary aristocracy, and had been the center of anti-Roman intrigue ever since the Battle. Conquests in Persia are divvied up according to the sultan’s whim. But if conquests were made in Anatolia, these nobles would have old claims to those lands, significantly boosting their chances of gaining said territory.

Suleiman also has the support of the merchants of Baghdad and Basra, due to his rescinding of Mehmed III’s devaluing of the currency. While expenses were tight with the Janissaries’ substantially increased pay, Suleiman’s exchequer managed to squeak by. Now however the economy is booming, as Suleiman has helped sponsor trade with Rhomania and Georgia, and improved irrigation works across central Mesopotamia to increase rice cultivation. In the south, sugar plantations are beginning to rise again as in the glory days of the Abbasid Caliphate, worked by slaves from east Africa. Although unable to compete with Roman sugar in the Christian world, exporting the commodity to Muslim lands still brings much income.

On the other side of Rhomania, Kaiser Frederick would very much like to emulate that maneuver, but is unable to do so. Pope Martin V of Mainz has not proved to be nearly as compliant as Frederick had hoped. Stirring up intrigue against the Emperor in Lotharingia and Poland, Pope Martin has also criticized Frederick for his failure to defend Christendom from the heretics surrounding her.

It is almost certain that Martin is subtly suggesting an attack on Rhomania to retake Rome, but if so, Frederick deliberately chooses to misinterpret it. Instead he gathers the Bavarian army and storms into Bohemia, heart of the Hussite heresy. Over the past few years, some of the more extremist Hussites, encouraged by their victory over Russian raiders in the Great Crusade (the common term by this point for the crusade against the Romans due to the involvement of nearly all of Europe as combatants), have been growing more militant. Several monasteries have been sacked.

The Hussites, terrified of the Emperor’s progress, heralded by pyres of heretic villagers and villages, gather at the unofficial center of their movement, the town of Tabor. Renamed only three years before after biblical Mount Tabor (although the town itself is 60), it has become a major settlement for Hussite scholars.

Frederick meets them there, outnumbered four to three by the Hussite mob. But they have a mob; he has an army. With a roar of cannon fire, followed by waves of crossbow bolts and arquebus bullets, and a finale of a heavy cavalry charge, clad in Gothic plate armor, the Hussites are swept aside in less than a hour. Tabor is burned to the ground, its inhabitants slaughtered. In one day the Hussite heresy has been gutted.

Only one thing saves the remaining Hussites in Bohemia from oblivion. On the same day as the battle of Tabor, Hungarian hussars stab into Tyrol as Russian archontes ravage northern Poland, seeking to take advantage of Frederick’s preoccupation. Neither raid attempts to conquer, only pillage and burn, but they are enough to draw Frederick away. As soon as news arrives of the Emperor’s maneuver, the raiders withdraw from Imperial territory.

Frederick retaliates, but due to the manpower needs of the raid into Hungary, much of the attack on Russia is done by Polish troops. Thus Krakow gains most of the loot from that expedition. After the round of skirmishes, all three empires decide to stand down rather than escalate the hostilities.

1490: Europe is quiet after the flurry of activity in central Europe. To the east, the Cossacks periodically duel with their Muslim neighbors, some of them taking to the Aral Sea on boats to raid lands on the other side. In Persia, Suleiman begins making contact with certain low-ranking nobles and minor chieftains, individuals with some power, but only a little. Together, they are numerous enough to be a substantial boon to Ottoman strength, but their individual weakness and nonexistent chances for advancement means they have little attachment to the current order in Persia.

Far to the west, Portuguese caravels anchor in a huge natural harbor, an estuary of a river (the OTL Sierra Leone). Realizing the value of the anchorage, a small fort is set up to serve both as a naval base for further exploration down the African coast and to trade horses for ivory with the inland peoples. Demand for Portuguese mounts is incredibly high amongst the locals, hard pressed both by refugees from the collapsed Jolof Empire and from their Hausa neighbors to the east.

1491: In the Duchy of Genoa, a Milanese-backed coup ousts the Alessi family from power. A few days later a Milanese army is allowed into the city by the conspirators, who have been promised vast estates near Brescia for their cooperation. The Genoese possessions in Italy are overrun without firing a shot, as many of the garrison officers have been suborned by Visconti agents. Corsica puts up a half-hearted struggle, but soon acquiesces after the fall of Ajaccio to a Milanese fleet (made up of Genoese ships and sailors hired by the Visconti). To secure the island, and to conciliate powerful factions in Genoa to Milanese rule, Corsica is placed under the control of the Bank of St. George, in exchange for an annual tribute.

Simone Alessi, the expelled Duke, flees to Tunis, ruling it as an independent state. But his position is precarious at best. There is always the risk that the Milanese will try to take this last outpost of the Genoese realm, and without the trade networks in northern Italy from which comes naval supplies, the Marinids have much less of a reason to keep Tunis free.

So Simone appeals to Andreas to restore his position. Having already restored one Alessi to power after losing it in a coup, he is in no mood to repeat the endeavor. Instead Andreas offers to recognize Simone as a vassal, an offer the duke accepts. The Milanese allow this, as it comes with a tacit Roman acceptance of their Ligurian and Corsican conquests, while Tunis in Roman hands brings a great deal of trade into North Africa (it also quickly becomes a great slave market-the fall of the Jolof Empire has created a glut on the market, so Marinid slave traders welcome the chance now available to supply the Roman sugar plantations). In November, Simone travels to Constantinople to be invested in his new office, where he is proclaimed Dux of Carthage.

1492: Simone returns to Tunis/Carthage accompanied by the new Bishop of Carthage. Pope Martin V of Avignon immediately protests, since as of right now, the only Christians in the new Duchy are followers of Avignon. Constantinople’s response is that the new bishop is for the inevitable influx of Orthodox followers, merchants, sailors, diplomats, and converts.

Martin V is all too aware of the last category (especially since he has just lost Liguria and Corsica to Mainz). Although most of the converts to Orthodoxy in Italy have been from Mainz’s side of the western schism, at least one quarter are from among his own flock. A major reason for that is while Avignon appointees are allowed access to their sees, the Occitan, Iberian, or Hungarian bishops have little connection to their Apulian congregations, and given their recent conversion to Avignon, they have few ties to the Gregorian faith.

To try and counterbalance this, Martin begins funding a program (taken from the charity projects) to encourage young Apulian men to come to Avignon to study to become priests. Andreas’ response is to increase the number of government scholarships for the University of Bari by over forty percent.

1493: With Norway-Scotland temporarily distracted by a border squabble with Sweden, English forces under the command of the Duke of Norfolk, Edward de Mowbray, land in Ireland to avenge several raids of cattle rustlers. Backed by a formidable artillery train as well as a large war chest to suborn Irish lords, Edward quickly captures Dublin and then swings south, overrunning much of southern Ireland. Cork falls after a siege of eleven days. In less than five months, Edward has almost tripled the size of Ireland under English control.

To help secure the new regions, many of the lands are confiscated from their Irish owners (who are expelled) and given to settlers, mainly English, but also some Frenchmen from Normandy and Anjou. The new system of colonizing Ireland with English and French settlers becomes known as the plantation system, although it is not officially referred as such until a royal decree in 1507.

A substantial part of the booty from the expedition is armor and coins that are clearly of Arletian making, proving what Calais has suspected for quite some time. Proof that Arles has been interfering in matters that clearly impinge on English security substantially alters the view of the English people toward the matter of Arles. Before they had been content to view that state as a problem for the French part of that union, but now that has changed.

1494: In April, a Korean fleet along with seventeen thousand soldiers strikes Tsushima Island, the main base for the Wokou, Japanese pirates. Ever since the collapse of the Ashikage Shogunate, piratical raids against the lands of east Asia have steadily increased without any central authority in Japan to keep them in check. Six years earlier Hainan was attacked.

Due to the need to maintain forces to keep an eye on the northern Yuan, the Jurchens, Tibet, Bihar, and the most dangerous of all, the Timurid Empire, as well as garrisons in southern China to overawe its increasingly independent Champan vassal, Tieh China has little manpower to defend its coasts. Thus naval defense has been almost entirely delegated to its Joseon Korean vassal.

Tsushima falls after three weeks of fighting, and immediately Korean forces begin building up the island as a naval base of their own, to be used against Japan itself. Already some of the daimyos of southern Honshu are speculating on how they might use the Koreans against their rivals in Kyushu.

1495: To discuss the defense of Christendom, Pope Martin V of Mainz meets with Emperor Frederick in Munich. The fact that the meeting is held there and not in Mainz is already a blow to the Pope’s prestige. Frederick had refused to go to Mainz, stating that important Imperial business required that he remain in Bavaria, but that the Holy Father was free to visit him, unless he did not feel the situation warranted such a journey.

Pope Martin came, congratulating Frederick on his recent victories over the Hussites. While some still remain in Bohemia, the heart there has mostly gone out of the movement. Many of the survivors have fled, most settling in Saxony or Pomerania. Parma, part of the Duchy of Milan, is now the center of the Hussite movement. Some Hussites emigrate to Italy, although Milan only allows skilled craftsmen and scholars to do so. Most prominent of the new wave are dozens of Hussite gunsmiths from Moravia, who quickly find profitable employment in the services of the Duke.

Still Martin is unsatisfied. Against stronger, more powerful heretics, the Gregorians (Hungarians), and Orthodox (Russia and Rhomania), he has done nothing. The Pope points out that God has given him much, wealth, health, and an empire greater even than that of Charlemagne. But the purpose of God’s benevolence is so that Frederick will have the strength to fight and destroy God’s enemies. Martin says ‘it is to do God’s work for which you have been called, not the work of men.’

To which Frederick replies ‘If it is God’s work, then he should do it. Or is he like his priests, an old man sitting around demanding others do his job for him?’ Frederick then suggests that if the church were to consistently financially back his army (meaning pay regular taxes like lay subjects), he would have sufficient strength to do what Martin asks. The Pope refuses, of course, and the meeting ends with Frederick announcing that if the church will not do her part to defend Christendom, he should not and will not. Many of the German burghers, aware of what Frederick had suggested, support their Emperor as taxes on clergy would lighten the burden on themselves.

As Frederick talks, Andreas travels. For the past twenty years, he has conducted two annual circuits around the Empire, alternating between one through the Asian and one through the European territories. There he observes tagma reviews and rides through the major cities, where like the circuit in Constantinople anyone may approach and make a petition. In every European tour, he stops and spends a few weeks in Campobasso with his sister Zoe, and every year where he doesn’t she comes and visits him in Constantinople, where he has set up a special wing of the White Palace just for her.

Meanwhile in Constantinople itself, Leo is annoyed. Part of that is continued irritation at his half-brother Zeno. Their father has instituted a new custom to recognize upcoming leaders, where well-performing officers are given a congratulatory banquet at the White Palace to be recognized and applauded by the elite of Constantinople and the Empire. Zeno is included among those honored; Leo is not.

A new grievance Leo has with Zeno has nothing to do with the military, but instead Zeno’s wife, the stunningly beautiful and passionate Anna of Lesbos. His wife is Francesca d’Este, sister of the Dux of Romagna. Mildly attractive, her personality compares even worse to Anna than her appearance. According to recently promoted Tourmarch Andronikos Angelos, ‘she has as much fire as a dead fish’. Frigid, interested only in praying and sewing, she is hardly enough to sate a son of Andreas.

Another subject of Leo’s jealousy is unexpected, his sixteen-year-old half-brother Herakleios. Still a quiet, sickly bookworm, the prince has proven to have a sharp mind and a very good memory. Andreas says he reminds him a lot of his father Theodoros. Although Herakleios’ health does not allow him to take the field, in strategy exercises in the last year he has also shown great potential at organizing campaigns, particularly logistics. According to rumors, Andreas is considering making Herakleios Kaisar, as several servants report hearing the Emperor say to Kristina ‘Demetrios would make a good governor of Egypt. Herakleios, if it were not for his health, would make a good Emperor.”

In June, partly as an effort to give Herakleios more government experience (at Herakleios’ request to see foreign lands of which he has read), the prince is sent to Tbilisi as part of a special embassy to discuss trade on the Don River. He also is going to meet his new bride, Venera of Abkhazia, a member of one of the most powerful Georgian noble families, who can trace her descent back to the Grand Komnenoi of Trebizond, and has inherited the legendary beauty of their daughters. Accompanying him at the head of two tourmai of the Athanatoi is Zeno, who has also been given orders to inspect the Chaldean tagma en route. Also among the tourmai is a new eikosarchos recently graduated from the School of War, Nikolaios Drakos, youngest son of Leo Drakos and grandson of Vlad Dracula.

Leo is beside himself with rage at the news, and is taunted a couple of times by his nephew Nikephoros about it. Two weeks after they leave, he emerges from his cups of ouzo and pays a visit to his sister-in-law Anna, and rapes her.

* * *

Constantinople, July 4, 1495:

Kristina trudged into the room; she was tired. But she had to be here. Andreas’ dead eyes had returned when the news arrived. As she stifled a yawn, Leo was hauled into the chamber by two guards. Andreas stood in front of his second son, his face blank.

Leo stared up with bloodshot eyes. “Father,” he whispered. For a moment there was silence.

The shriek that erupted from Andreas’ throat was…inhuman. Kristina stiffened, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end as she closed her eyes in terror. It was not the scream of a man; it was that of a demon bursting out of hell. It was all she could do to not run and huddle in a corner. The one small part of her mind that was not petrified by the sound heard the rasp of Andreas’ blade sweeping out of its scabbard.

She opened her eyes. Andreas’ sword was pointed at Leo’s chest, the blade shaking. The look in his eyes wasn’t dead, or angry; they were insane. She saw the muscles in her husband’s shoulder tense. “Get out,” he growled, the blade still shaking.

“Father,” Leo whispered.

“GET OUT!” Andreas screamed. The guards let go of the prince’s arms. He ran. A moment later Andreas gestured curtly with his head at the guards to leave.

The Emperor was still holding his sword. “Andreas,” Kristina whispered, reaching out to touch him, to hold him, to banish the demons, as she had when they were young.

“Don’t,” he moaned, not looking at her. “I’m not safe to be around right now.”

“Andreas…”

He turned, looking at her with his eyes full of tears. “Please, leave. Before I do something I regret.”

Kristina nodded, turned around, and almost jumped in surprise. Her eight-year-old grandson Nikephoros was staring blankly at her. He had been there the whole time and she hadn’t noticed, an usual occurrence. She pointed angrily at the door. He went without protest and she followed, closing the door behind her.

Nikephoros looked up at her, his face still blank, and then his lips crept upward into a small smile. “One down,” he said.

* * *

Leo flees into exile, Andreas appropriating all of his possessions and banning him, under pain of death, from ever returning to the Empire. Eventually the prince makes his way to Arles, which is quite happy to have a man with Roman military experience. France-England has not yet moved on the southern kingdom, distracted by Welsh and Irish discontent, but in Marseille the attack is held to be a question of when, not if.

Andreas does not protest the arrangement in Marseilles, for he is distracted by a far greater concern to him. Just three weeks after Leo’s exile, Kristina is thrown from her horse during a countryside excursion with Andreas. Although she starts to make a clean recovery, in her weakened condition she is vulnerable and catches measles. On August 20, at the age of fifty, Kristina of Novgorod, a Princess of the Rus, former Empress of Hungary, Empress of the Romans, wife of Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, breathes her last. According to Eudoxia, her last words, to her grief-stricken husband, are “I love you.”

In the funeral procession, the people of Constantinople turn out in numbers to mourn, but not so much for their fallen Empress, but for their Emperor. Eudoxia, an eyewitness, writes it best. “It was as if he had died with her. The people had seen him hundreds, thousands, of times. A great general, a kind judge, he had been to them in the past. But not now. Now he looked like a tired, broken, old man, worn out by his years of pain and loss. And so the people mourned. They had lost an empress. The Emperor however had lost his soul.”

For the rest of the year, Andreas does not leave the White Palace.
 
The Lord of the North, the Lady of the South

Part 10.2

1496-1501

"The reason is theological. The Muslims believe that if they die on jihad, they get 72 virgins in heaven. However closer study has revealed that that is not true. What they are promised is one 72-year-old virgin. Naturally this has dampened enthusiasm."-Andreas Angelos, explaining the House of Islam's response to the jihad

1496: Even as the new year dawns, Andreas does not emerge. The Empire continues on without him. Ships fill the quays of Venetia and Alexandria, merchants ply their wares in Thessaloniki, Trebizond, and Antioch, artists paint in Bari and Constantinople, and in Smyrna a new treatise is written arguing for a heliocentric (sun-centered) view of astronomy. Still, Andreas is nowhere to be seen. Administration is largely in the hands of Kaisar Demetrios, although Prince Herakleios as well as Prince Theodoros’ formidable wife Irene Mouzalon (who not only is a mother of two but also completely dominates her husband) play a huge part in overseeing the Empire.

It is not until June, ten months after his wife’s death, that Andreas again appears and makes a thunderbolt announcement. Given recent events, he feels the need to look to the state of his own soul. To that end, he is taking a two-year vacation at the monastery of Theodoros Megas at Manzikert. In the interim, Kaisar Demetrios is to be in charge of the Empire. The very next day he leaves Constantinople, but not before issuing the blood-curdling threat that if either through incompetence or malice he has to return before the two years are up, heads will roll, literally.

* * *

Village of Simena, Lycia Province, southwest Anatolia, August 19, 1496:

Sophia looked up as the door creaked open. The man who entered was short and skinny, his face covered by a silver beard, his skin moderately wrinkled. She guessed he was a few years younger than her age of fifty two. He was dressed in low-quality silks, Bithynian from the looks of it. Probably a low-level merchant, she thought. He’d tied up a horse in front of the inn, so he definitely had money, if not a lot.

He walked over to her. “May I speak to the innkeeper?” he asked. Spotting a plain, but well maintained dirk strapped to his belt, she revised her opinion. Maybe a retired skutatos.

“You are now,” she replied. It had been her husband’s, before he’d died of the plague six years earlier. Now she ran it with the help of her daughter Veronica, whose own husband had died a year later.

“Very well then,” he said. “I’d like a room for the night.” He pulled out eleven copper folloi and placed them on the counter. The man wanted a private room, not a bunk in the common sleeping area. Hmmm, not a skutatos then, most likely. Maybe a retired koursore.

She looked at the face on the coins, and then up at the man. They looked similar…could it be? The man stared at her blankly. Nah, don’t be ridiculous. She scooped up the coins. “I’ll get a key for you,” she said, turning around.

And for the first time in a year, a smile appeared on the face of Andreas Komnenos.

* * *

Constantinople is shaken by Andreas’ departure, but Emperor Andrew I of Hungary is shaken by another piece of news. A Hungarian agent, a maid in Kristina’s household, had discovered an entry in Kristina’s diary. In it the Empress had written about her happiness regarding news of her son in Hungary, but at the end she had writ “I wish I could tell Andreas the truth about Andrew, that he is his son. But after keeping the secret for so long, I cannot bear the pain and shame that would come from revealing it now.” (There had been some other points where she may have written similar notes but had been scratched out). It had been the very last entry before the Empress’ riding accident.

Andrew is stunned by the news, but considering the source of the information and the rather short time between Kristina’s marriage to Ladislaus and his birth, he sees no reason to doubt the news that he is, in fact, a Komnenos, not an Arpad. He keeps this to himself, arranging the death of the operative who secured the note on the grounds that he has suspicions she may be compromised. After this, he makes arrangements to enlarge the spy network in Constantinople, as well as dispatching operatives to Arles, not to keep an eye on the Arletians but on Leo Komnenos.

Leo comes to Arles with his eight-year-old son Matthaios but not his wife. Old King Louis, interested in his services, appoints the Komnenid Prince as commander of ten companies, one thousand men, stationed along the Garonne near the Aquitaine border. Aware that a war is coming with France-England, Leo throws himself into preparing for the battles to come; here is his chance to outdo Zeno and perhaps his father himself. He ruthlessly drills his men in his signature tactic, a frontal but utterly ferocious coordinated charge, with missile infantry cracking open an enemy line just before a lancer charge rips it apart. His emphasis on the heavy cavalry quickly makes Leo quite popular among the Arletian nobility.

Louis is well aware of Leo’s character, and the reason for his exile. As a way to help secure the prince’s loyalty, as well as strengthen ties with the Bernese League, he arranges a new marriage for Leo (the fact that technically Leo is still married is ignored by everyone). His new bride is Klara, of the House of Habsburg, an illegitimate daughter of a bastard son, but a petite blond beauty who is quite vigorous in the bedroom. For Leo, she is the perfect bride. Louis comments on this, remarking that “Give him a good screw and a good fight, and he’s happy.”

Meanwhile in Constantinople Demetrios is trying to run the Empire. Irene Mouzalon is his biggest problem, publicly criticizing every decision he makes, from his choice for a new grain monitor for Constantinople to his amount of tax remittances for Epirus when it suffers an outbreak of disease that wipes out a good percentage of its sheep. Herakleios, on the other hand, is quiet, diligently doing his bit to keep the bureaucracy running smoothly, while gleaning the notes of Theodoros IV for any more unused good ideas. Also he and his new wife Venera are largely taking care of Nikephoros.

At the same time Zoe is staying in Constantinople, helping to care for Anna of Lesbos. It is largely due to her counsel and friendship that Anna does not go insane after what happened to her. Alfredo remains in Abruzzi as rumors that the Hungarians are eyeing northern Italy again demand his attention. Zeno is on the eastern frontier, inspecting the tagmata there, although he objects to his presence there. He would much rather be at his wife’s side after what happened, an idea Herakleios supports wholeheartedly, yet Demetrios wants someone he trusts out on the frontier.

The Kaisar is concerned that with him in charge, and not Andreas and his military reputation, the Ottomans or Mamelukes might get ideas. There have been reports of Suleiman massing armies in southern Mesopotamia, as well as a fleet, and the Kaisar is concerned that it might be the prelude to an Ottoman attack on the Ethiopians.

* * *

Simena, August 22, 1496:

Andreas sniffed the wine and winced. “You want six folloi for this crap?!”

“Yes, I do. Attaleia doesn’t care much about this part of Lycia. Meaning my costs go up, meaning…” The vendor owner pointed a pudgy finger at him. “…your costs go up.”

Andreas sighed. “Fine. Do you have any good stuff?”

“Sure,” the man grinned. He was missing two teeth. “If you can afford it.”

“Let me see what you’ve got.” The man plopped down another jug, Andreas popping the cork and sniffing. “It’s decent. How much?”

“That’s my best stuff!”

“And it’s decent. How much?”

“Seventeen folloi.”

“You’re a crook, you know that?” The man grinned even wider. Andreas sighed, starting to count out seventeen folloi. He spotted movement in the marketplace to his right and glanced over.

It was Veronica, the innkeeper’s daughter. She was a young woman, in her mid twenties, almost two inches taller than Andreas. Skinny and lithe, with short brown hair, much like Theophano (who had died of natural causes three years earlier), she was quite an attractive woman, although a long scar on her right forearm, a knife wound, marred the skin. Unmarried, though she was a widow. She was coming this way.


* * *


Her stomach was growling. Just a few more minutes, she told it, winding through the marketplace. Simena was officially a village, but it was the chief settlement in this area of Lycia, so on market days it grew to be a town.

“Good day, m’lady.” Startled, she stopped and looked at the speaker. It was the retired koursore staying at her mother’s inn. She thought his name was…Andreas, yes, that, after the emperor he had said.

“I’m sorry, but I am not a lady.”

He smiled slightly. “Not so. Is not God the Emperor of Heaven, and are we not all children of God?” She nodded. “Then you are a princess, and therefore a lady.”

She could feel herself blushing. Stop that! “I never thought of it that way. When did you think of that?”

“Oh, it’s not mine. A man I knew told me that long, long ago.”

He had a far off look in his eyes. What have those eyes seen? Much.

His eyes focused again. “Anyway, I was wondering if you could help me with something. You’ve lived here a while, so can you tell me if there are any wine vendors that are cheaper than this crook?” He jabbed a thumb at the stall owner.

She shook her hand. “Cheaper than Ioannes, no. He’s the best. If you want fancy stuff, you’ll have to go to Attaleia.”

“Great,” the man muttered, plunking down three more folloi on the counter. “Definitely need to make a ten and five folloi coin.” He pushed the pile forward.

Ioannes counted, nodded, and handed him the jug. “Thank you. Come again soon.” He grinned. Andreas shuddered.

He looked at her again. “Thanks for your help. I was going to get lunch.” He pointed to a cookhouse down the street. “Care to join me?”

“At Nikolaios’ place? No, he always overcooks the meat. If you want good stuff…here, come with me. I’ll show you.”

East of Simena, October 3, 1496:

Andreas inhaled the crisp air and sighed contentedly. Under him his horse snorted as she trotted along; he reached down and stroked the mare’s neck. He’d been staying in Simena for six weeks now, having come to a long-term business arrangement with the innkeeper. To make money, and help keep up his disguise, he’d been hunting in the local forests and selling the meat to the village butchers. He was coming back into town just now, with he figured about ten stavratoi, or two hundred folloi, worth of meat.

“Oooff!” Ioannes grunted up ahead. Andreas reined his horse into a halt. Old Ioannes, seventy two years old, was on the side of the road, heaving a heavy box off the back of his wagon onto the ground. The wagon’s right wheel had fallen into a pothole.

Andreas dismounted, pulling his mare forward. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Ioannes placed his left hand on his lower back, winced, and looked at him. “Oh, hi, Andreas. Philippa…” He gestured at his scrawny, old mare. “Can’t pull this out while it’s fully loaded. So I’m lightening it.” He reached over to pick up another box.

“Wait, there’s another way.” Andreas pushed aside his waterproof case for his bow. It was a composite bow, the kind used by skythikoi, the main reason he could hunt so well. No puny wooden self bow for him. He’d been asked a couple of times about it, but explained that while he was a koursore, he had a younger brother in the skythikoi of the Thracian tagma.

“Aha, here we go,” he said, pulling out a stretch of rope from his saddlebag. Pulling his horse forward, he hitched her to the wagon. Nodding at Ioannes, both tugged their horses forward. A whinny, a groan, and the wagon creaked onto the road. Andreas loosed his horse. She snorted, twitching her head and glowering at him. You’re used to tagma reviews and the Circuit of the City, not being a pack animal.

Ioannes laughed. “Got a feisty one there, don’t you?”

Andreas chuckled too, stroking her nose. She still glared at him. “I like them that way.” He walked over and hefted one of the boxes onto the wagon. “Anyway, there is the matter of my fee,” he said blankly.

Ioannes’ face fell. “What?”

Andreas smiled. “Some of Helena’s sugar pastries.”

Ioannes grinned. “Come tomorrow for dinner. They’ll be there.”

The White Palace, Constantinople, February 17, 1497:

“Can’t sleep?” Venera asked, looking worriedly at her husband of the last eighteen months, Prince Herakleios. He’d just come out of his bedroom, trying to get an afternoon nap after spending all day since dawn overviewing supply requisitions.

“No,” he replied, his face stiff.

Venera frowned. She knew why her husband’s face was always stiff and hard; it was the pain. She knew from the winces and grimaces he let through the mask when he thought others weren’t looking. “How bad is it?” she asked.

He winced, dropping the mask for a second. It was something he did only for her “Bad.” Winter was always the worst.

“Come here,” she said, patting the couch next to her, and nodded at the question in Herakleios’ gaze.

Slowly he moved over, lying down on the couch, laying his head down on her right thigh. “Comfortable?” she asked.

“Yes,” Herakleios replied, smiling, life entering his eyes for the first time.

She smiled back, then looked ahead, her right hand absentmindedly stroking his hair as she began to sing. It was a lullaby, long and low. She did not look down at her husband’s face as she sang, but she could hear his breath slowing and feel his body relaxing. Finally the last note sighed out of her.

Then she looked down. The stiffness was gone, his face relaxed, his chest slowly moving up and down as he slept. The face of a young man now, her husband, not that of a stiff old man, the man his broken body made him. The man torn constantly by pains. Winter was the worst, but all the seasons saw them to some degree. But for now anyway, the pain was gone.

andreanfamilytree1497.png

Thrace, Six miles west of Constantinople, April 23, 1497:

Zeno squinted, trying to see the outriders of the ‘hostile’ Thracian army. The tagma was maneuvering on the flanks of the Athanatoi and Varangoi, trying to cut them off from the Queen of Cities, so far without success.

“Here they come,” Nikolaios Drakos, great-grandson of the dragon, reported. Dust clouds were rising, thrown up by Zeno’s rapidly retreating light cavalry and the hotly pursuing Thracian screen.

It was the last day of the war games, and so far Zeno had managed to keep the Thracian tagma away from the Queen of Cities. That was why they were coming so hot now; if they didn’t shove him aside, he would win. All that Zeno had to do to claim the prize was dance around some more, shielding Constantinople. But I don’t want just that, I want a victory.

He squinted again, growling at the blur. He knew what the blur was, but it was still frustrating as his thirty-three year old eyes began to fail. Some of the Thracian turkopouloi were fanning out, probing potential ambush points. There were several available, and Zeno had squadrons in half of them, just waiting to be discovered.

A volley of gunfire roared out from one copse of trees. The akrites hiding there were firing blanks, and several horsemen wheeled out of line as observers assigned casualties. Behind them, heavy koursores came up, dismounted, and started storming the grove, akrites spilling out the other side. Two droungoi of light koursores rushed forward to support the retreating infantry, the Thracians counter-charging. Zeno had no trouble hearing the crack of blunted blade against blunted blade.

He also had no trouble hearing the horse whinny next to him. Kaisar Demetrios cursed his mount, trying to keep the skittish mare under control. The animal wasn’t normally so temperamental, but it could sense the nervousness of its rider. Zeno opened his mouth to suggest his half-brother return to Constantinople, but then snapped it shut. Let him embarrass himself. He had not forgotten being ordered from his wife’s side to inspect the eastern tagma, just because maybe, possibly, there was a threat to his precious Copts/Ethiopians.

Demetrios was sweating, the droplets beading on his forehead. It’s not that hot.

Andronikos Angelos, the new Master of Sieges, galloped up. “Strategos, I have four batteries on line and ready for action.” Damn, that was fast. I wasn’t counting on more than three. Then he smiled. Strategos. He was the new commander of the Athanatoi, promoted by Demetrios. Then he frowned. I still haven’t forgotten it.

“How many rounds do you have?” Both Zeno and Andronikos swiveled to look at the speaker, Prince Herakleios. He was mounted on a small, docile gelding, just returning from defecating behind a tree. Although as summer dawned, his appetite returned (the Prince had stayed beyond the soup course at dinner in nine of the last twelve days Zeno had been at the White Palace), Zeno was still surprised to see his younger half-brother here. He rarely left the White Palace, and his constitution was far too delicate to tolerate rough army food.

Even now Herakleios pulled a hunk of cheese out of a knapsack and nibbled at it. It was not an unusual occurrence in spring and summer, although he never seemed to eat much at regular meals. Herakleios saw Zeno looking at him, their eyes met, and Zeno saw the iron in his brother’s eyes. Three weeks earlier a priest had criticized Herakleios for his hedonistic ways to his face, particularly his gluttony. Their father would’ve arranged an accident; Herakleios had just punched the man.

dukeofsuffolk.jpg

Prince Herakleios Komnenos. Based on contemporary accounts, particularly that of his sister Eudoxia, historians believe that the Prince did not 'gain' his wasting disease until he was in his early teens after an early and large growth spurt, making him much taller than the usual patient with Herakleian Syndrome.


Rarely leaving the White Palace, the youngest son of Andreas Komnenos and Kristina of Novgorod has spent much of his time reviewing his grandfather's notes on governance. His excursion to the war games comes as a surprise to the entire Imperial court, many of whom are worried that he is turning into another Demetrios. He has developed a sudden intense interest in Lycia after all.


Image taken from The Komnenoi Ep. 90 "The Cat's Away: Part 1."


The prince shivered, even though on this fine spring day he was still clad in thick furs and silk. Zeno didn’t wear that much even in January. Still, he wasn’t sweating nervously like Demetrios. His gaze was steady on the Thracians, who had cleared three ambush points and were now bringing up their heavy units. “How many rounds?” he repeated.

“Five,” Andronikos grimaced.

“Sounds like enough to me,” Demetrios said.

Herakleios shook his head; Zeno saw him wince, but the expression lasted no more than a blink. “It’s lousy. The guns at Adana had thirty five rounds, were twice as numerous, and still weren’t enough to stop the Mamelukes. They’ll overrun the guns. Unless…” Herakleios stared off into the distance. “They’re bait, aren’t they?” he asked Zeno. He nodded. “The Thracians have cleared three ambushes, and scattered your screen. The batteries look like part of an ambush gone horribly wrong, but…”

The prince was interrupted by a roar of trumpets. Kataphraktoi and skythikoi sallied out, aiming at the left wing of the Thracians. Herakleios coughed, a deep, wracking cough that shook his whole body. Zeno noticed. Demetrios was too busy keeping his horse from throwing him off. “That’s it, I’m done here,” the Kaisar said once he succeeded, and trotted off.

Herakleios looked at Zeno. “So where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Your real ambush.”

“When people think ambushes today, they think of mountain passes like Myriokephalon or tree groves like the dragon used at Lodeve. I used something older.”

Herakleios pursed his lips. “Brush covered streambed? Trebia, Hannibal?”

Zeno grinned. “Exactly.” And a sudden roar of gunfire swept across the field as the Varangoi sprang from ambush.

Simena, Lycia, May 25, 1497:

Andreas burped. “This is really good, Veronica.”

“Thank you,” she replied, taking the empty plate and adding it to the pile she was carrying.

“Join me when your shift ends?”

“Sure.” She headed back behind the counter. The inn had an attached cookhouse that served dinner to the tenants. Andreas usually cooked his own meals when he was out hunting, but every time he ate here he’d spend a few hours with Veronica. There was nothing sexual about the meetings; they were entirely in the cookhouse. She was an attractive woman, and while there was a part of him that hungered for physical satisfaction, it was a small suggestion compared to the blaring demand of his youth.

No, it wasn’t her body that he wanted. She was uneducated, barely literate, but she was smart. He smiled. And a vocabulary of curses that would make even a drill dekarchos blush.

He blinked. There was a young man at the entrance of the cookhouse, arguing with a group of four other, shabbily dressed young men. That can’t be right. That’s me! The man was a mirror image of Andreas when he was twenty or so. “Hey, what are you looking at?” the leader of the four men said, glaring at Andreas.

Andreas’ eyes narrowed, feeling the buzz of his three cups of wine in his veins. “I was thinking, you have that dull, vacant look, the look that says ‘hold my head up to your ear, and you will hear the sea’.” The man’s face twisted as the young man who looked like Andreas grinned.

“I don’t like insults,” he growled.

“Funny,” Andreas’ look-alike said. “With a face like that, I’d think you’d be used to it.” He sounds just like Nikephoros, Andreas thought. The man pulled out a knife.

“Hey!” Veronica yelled. “If you want to fight, you have to deal with the bouncer first.” She pointed a loaded crossbow at the man. “This is him.”

The man grinned sheepishly, putting away the weapon. “Go, go!” he said, pushing the rest of his gang out the door. A few seconds later they were gone.

“Thanks,” Andreas said to Veronica.

She glowered at him, setting down the crossbow. “You’re a damned idiot. Bar fights are for young men.”

When I was young, I had to act old. So now that I’m old, I get to act young. At least for a little while. Besides, I could take him. He had his dirk under his cloak, and he’d spotted a blade on the young man, and the knife-man had, by his grip, clearly never been in combat before.

He wasn’t dumb enough to say any of that out loud; he didn’t want to give Veronica a reason to dig into her repertoire of swear words. “He is a young man!” Ioannes yelled from his corner, scratching his head covered in white hair; Andreas’ was silver. Many of the men in the establishment laughed.

Veronica rolled her eyes, clearly muttering something under her breath. Andreas ignored that, calling out “A jug of wine.” He wanted to know who this man was. He looked at the person in question. “Buy you a drink?”

He smiled. “Certainly.” They sat down and a moment later Veronica thumped a jug down on the table. “Waitresses here are cranky.” Veronica muttered something else under her breath.

The man quaffed a cup; Andreas sipped his. He had had enough for the night. “So what’s your name?”

“Andreas.” Great. “After the Emperor?”

Andreas Jr. downed another cup. I need to pass a law forbidding people to name their children after me. This is starting to get ridiculous. At least a fifth of the men here are named Andreas. “Yup. I’m Andreas Angelos.”

“Angelos. Any relation to Tourmarch Andronikos Angelos?”

Another cup. He’s thirsty. “Yes. He’s my uncle.” Meaning he’s the son of…Anna, that’s the name. His little sister. Strange, he never mentioned a nephew.

“What are you doing here in Simena?”

“Oh, traveling. On my way to Attaleia to visit some friends. And to get away from my mother. Her latest lover has a laugh that sounds like a screeching donkey.”

“So, who’s your father?”

“I never met him before.”

“But do you know his name?” Andreas pulled out a flask, pouring a shot of ouzo into an empty cup and pushing it forward. Andreas the Younger drank that too, wobbling a bit.

“I do.” Andreas gave him another shot. I never have more than one shot a night, and never when I’ve had wine as well.

“So who is he?”

Andreas Jr. leaned forward. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he whispered.

“Oh, I’ve heard a lot of strange things.”

Andreas Jr. smacked his lips. “My father…is the Emperor.”

Andreas blinked. “Do go on.”

“The Emperor got wounded in a riding accident, and was taken to one of my family’s estate, where mother was. While he was there…” he shrugged. “Nine months later…”

Andreas felt the cool steel of his dirk’s hilt. He remembered the incident, and remembered, vaguely, making love to Kristina, even though looking back he knew it was impossible for that to have happened. He’d assumed that it had been the poppies, but now… His mind’s eye flashed away, away from Simena, from Constantinople, to a courtyard of Smyrna. A hot breath blasted his left ear. “Relax, boy. You’ll get your turn,” the Venetian sergeant said. I did get my turn.

His palm hurt, and suddenly Andreas realized his right arm was shaking, the hilt of his dirk clenched between his fist. He let go. No. It’s over. The courtyard flashed again before his eyes, as if mocking him. He mashed his palm down on the pommel of his dirk, focusing on the pain. It hurt, but the pain was in Simena, not Smyrna, and right now that was all that mattered.

“Are you alright?” Andreas Jr. slurred.

Andreas looked at him, a voice howling in his mind to draw his sword and cut down this, this thing in front of him. No. Andreas blinked. He had not heard that voice in forty years, the voice of his father, Theodoros IV Komnenos.

Again the courtyard. But this time it was different. The ground was covered in bodies. Andreas recognized the slain, the inhabitants of an Apulian village. My fault. “Yes, your fault,” Theodoros IV said. “We have both committed the same sins. There are villages in the Holy Land where I did the same thing. But those are my sins, not yours. Do not condemn the son for the sins of the father, or in this case, mother. Now debts, on the other hand…”

Andreas chuckled. “Some things never change.”

“Of course not. They still overcharge for things in heaven. Jesus charged me production costs for turning water into wine. Greedy bastard. Now that God’s on my payroll though, things will change.”

Andreas could feel someone shaking his shoulder. “Looks like I’ll have to go now,” Theodoros said. He scrunched his face. “Or not.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a voice in your head. I can’t really go anywhere your head doesn’t.”

“This is giving me a headache.”

“Either this or the wine.” The shaking was getting stronger. “You should quit the habit. Crazy people usually spend more money.”

“I’ll keep that…in mind.” Bad choice of words.

Theodoros smiled. “Good. Just remember one thing.”

“What?”

“They’re overcharging you for the food.” And he and the courtyard were gone.

Veronica was shaking his shoulder violently. “Andreas?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” Veronica looked at him skeptically, but turned to head back into the kitchen. Andreas looked at Andreas Jr., now asleep on the table. No, not his fault. He is innocent. And he is my son. That’s what matters.

The White Palace, Constantinople, August 9, 1497:

Herakleios looked down at the sheet of paper on his desk. Bad idea. He looked straight ahead, holding the sheet in front of him so he could read it. He gulped, forcing his lunch to stay down; it had taken a lot of effort to eat it, and he was not going to let it be for nothing. Fortunately his stomach was only being mildly difficult and settled.

Thanks in large part to his mother, Herakleios had numerous contacts both among the Emperor’s Eyes and the Office of Barbarians. He wasn’t in charge of either branch, but he did see most of the reports they produced. This was from the latter. Sweden had a new king, Gustav of the Bonde family, great-grandson of Olaf Tordsson and related by marriage to the house of Estridsen, lords of Denmark.

Owner of substantial estates in Gotland and Finland, with numerous trading contacts in Russia (many involving the export of Roman silks from Novgorod), he was a fabulously wealthy man. And somehow he had convinced the recalcitrant Swedish peasantry to agree to an ‘arms tax’ to help furnish ships and professional troops to guard against the Frederickian Reich and the great Hanseatic fleets it could muster in the Baltic.

But even that threat had not been to convince all of those hardy, independent men who inhabited that northern realm. The men of Orebro had turned out in force with halberd and crossbow in revolt. Supreme in their cold forests, they had no fear of challenging this latest attempt to squeeze taxes out of them. It would have been better for them if they had. Somewhere in the woods, they had been ambushed by Gustav’s household troops, heavy skirmishers fighting with handgun and mace much like Roman mauroi, and chopped to pieces.

Herakleios set down the report. It was interesting, but not particularly important. A strong Sweden could do nothing either for or against Rhomania.

He picked up the next sheet of paper, acid burning his throat as lunch again attempted a comeback. This time he couldn’t hold it, hurling into the pot he kept at his side. He groaned, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. Some spittle had landed on his bible, set on the corner where it could be prominently seen by petitioners. He angrily swiped it off, including the thick layer of dust. Father Isaakios would consider that a sin…you know what, screw him. If God didn’t want me to vomit on his “holy” word, maybe he shouldn’t have made me sick.

Fortunately he hadn’t gotten any on a document he cared about, namely the report from one of the Emperor’s Eyes. It was from Lycia. Herakleios had been suspicious of his father’s alleged motives for his voluntary exile; he suspected it was some kind of test. And if he wanted to pass, he needed all the information he could get.

It had been easy to determine that the Emperor had not, in fact, gone to the monastery of Theodoros Megas at Manzikert. But finding him in the mass of fifteen and a half million souls that inhabited the Empire was a virtual impossibility, even for the Eyes. He had to narrow it down somehow.

As was typical, he’d come up with an idea while on the toilet. Andreas was well known in many places of the Empire due to his provincial tours, so he would have to stay someplace off the beaten track. And he would need currency. So Herakleios had had his Eyes search for newly minted coins being used in provincial towns and villages off the circuits, where their use was much less prominent due to the lack of mints and great markets. Even that proverbial haystack had been huge, but after eight months of looking he had finally located his father in the large village (small town on market day) of Simena, west of Attaleia in Lycia province.

It appeared that there had been an incident, a large incident, at Simena. Herakleios smiled; now would be the perfect time to intervene.

But first things first; he had to take care of his vomit bowl.


Thirteen miles south of Toulouse, August 10, 1497:

Smack! Rene, Knight of the Var, screamed. Leo Komnenos pulled the Provencal lad’s head back from the bench he had him bent over. “I said, do not break formation during a charge,” Leo growled, his meaty, hairy fist clamped around the back of Rene’s neck. Around them were the men of Leo’s company. Many watched blandly, as they’d seen similar sights before.

But the new recruits, men from the lands of the Var and the Gardon, looked on in fear, yet none dare drew a weapon to defend their fellow knight and countryman. Three had dared to do so last week. Even though they had done so simultaneously, one had been crippled, and the other two would not be able to mount a horse for the rest of the year. Leo had not gotten a scratch.

Despite the tales, and their commander’s temper, many of the young nobility had come to learn from the Roman prince. While his personal life was…distasteful, he was from an empire that had shaken the world, and son of the man who had faced all of Europe in her martial glory, and won.

And he favored cavalry. That was the main draw for most of the young knights. Because of English influence, and because of the Aquitaine war with its numerous sieges and few pitched battles, infantry and artillery were currently foremost in Arletian tactics, much to aristocratic disgust. But while Leo loved the thunder and crash of the heavy cavalry charge, woe to the man who thought his lance was free.

Fat drops of rain were starting to fall on the gathered men. Leo Komnenos ignored them. “So,” he said. “We are going to this again, until…” Slam! “…we…” Smack! “…get…” Thud! “…this…” Crack! “…right.” Bam! The third shove had broken Rene’s nose, blood streaming down his face as his glazed eyes rolled in their sockets. Leo dropped the man on the ground.

“Mount up!” he yelled. “Exercises will continue.”

“But…” another recruit spluttered. “The weather.” Lightning crashed across the sky. The rain began coming down in sheets.

“You do not punch a man like this.” He held up his fist, the middle finger pointed upwards alone. “You would break your finger. A charge is the same.” He unfurled his black, six-flanged mace as once again lightning cracked across the sky. Thunder boomed three seconds later. “And until you maggots can figure out that simple truth, the exercises will continue. And if anyone breaks ranks, I will use this…” he hefted the mace. “…not my fist. Is there a problem?”

Nobody spoke, but again lightning flashed. As the thunder rolled across the field two seconds later, Leo’s voice swept across the field.

“LANCERS, FORM RANKS!”

Simena, August 2, 1497:

Andreas Angelos squeaked. Andreas Komnenos had not known that about his son until yesterday, but his hiccups came out as squeaks. He smiled as Andreas Jr. squeaked again.

The lad glowered at him as the pair rode east down the road to Simena, beginning to ascend a small hill. He had not spent the whole time in the village, but had traveled to Attaleia to visit friends and was now returning home. Andreas was glad for his company, and his assistance on this hunting trip. There was no way alone he could’ve brought down the she-boar whose bagged haunches were thrown over the back of both their horses. The first shot from his composite bow, enough to maybe penetrate plate armor at that range, had merely made her mad. It had taken four arrows, plus Junior’s deft use of the javelin and the boar-spear to finally bring her down.

He smiled again, but not at the sounds coming from his left. Isaakios had finally produced his masterpiece, becoming a master blacksmith, and was marrying Zoe, the miller’s daughter and his childhood sweetheart. The upcoming marriage was the talk of the entire village, and the she-boar, a dish fit for the White Palace itself, would be the main course of the celebratory feast.

Andreas scratched the top of his head. “Don’t worry, it’s still there,” Andreas Jr. snickered. Squeak. Thankfully like his father, although supposedly unlike his grandfather Demetrios Megas, Andreas still had a full head of hair, albeit all gray by now. Whether or not Junior would take after him in that regard, Andreas had no idea. He had not even informed the young man of their true relation.

A breeze gusted, Andreas sighing in contentment. It had been unpleasantly hot and dry the last three weeks. “Might rain tonight,” he said, nodding at some dark clouds off to the southeast. “Could use the moisture.”

Junior sniffed. “Do you smell something?”

You. And… “Yes.”

Junior’s eyes widened. “That’s smoke.” They reached the top. “God’s wounds.” The fields were on fire, a great sheet of flame sweeping across the dry grains, almost ready for harvest. The wind was blowing it towards Simena.

For a second, Andreas froze. He had seen such a sight before, at Smyrna, the Black Day. A visage of hell, the fire screaming like an immense, insane demon loosed upon the world of men, caring nothing for the quarrel of Venetian and Roman. To the inferno, all that mattered was the kill.

But only for a second. Manuel of Kyzikos had been at Smyrna too. With only a blade, he had held back the tide of death that had threatened to wash over him. A blade would be no good against that red tide, but…I’m used to being outnumbered. He whipped his horse into a gallop. Three seconds later Junior did the same with a shout, as the bells of Simena’s two churches began to toll, calling her children to arms.

They were already moving. Women and children were racing to the river and wells to form bucket brigades, while blacksmiths and carpenters made dirt fly, trying to form an earthen rampart to slow the fire. Others were throwing ropes onto a row of warehouses and shops on the outskirts of the village.

Andreas skidded to a halt. Nikolaios, the village judge, was in the center of the road, barking orders. “Nikolaios, where do you need us?!” he shouted. A second later Junior skidded to a halt beside him, sending dirt and rocks flying that splattered the old magister.

Nikolaios ignored it. “Get your mounts there now!” he yelled, pointing at the row of buildings that were being torn down, to create a dead space where the fire would have no food and so not get loose in Simena itself.

Andreas nudged his mare to turn, just as a great howling wind swept up, and Andreas Komnenos saw something he had not seen on the Black Day. Demons can jump. The fire leapt, hissing and hungry, enveloping a stable at the end of the line with its tongues.

Zoe and Helena, the widowed sisters who owned the stable in question, shrieked, along with the three dozen horses inside now screaming in terror as the flames consumed the dry wood. They had saved all their money to purchase them, expecting to make a sizeable profit at the nearest tourma review fair. Andreas had told Junior about that as they were heading out, since he’d been interested in getting a new mount.

“Andreas!” he shouted as his son ran to the building, grabbing the crossbar and hurling the door open. The horses stampeded out, knocking Junior to the side as his legs caught fire. A second later Andreas grabbed and hauled him onto his back, running toward the center of the square as Andreas screamed, beating at his burning limbs. Have to get away from the fire first.

“Water!” he shouted as he dropped his son on the ground, throwing his cloak on his legs to smother the flames. His own legs were on fire now, but he ignored them, beating at the fire on his son. Have to put that out first.

They were almost out when he felt strong hands wrapped in a blanket beating at the fire on his own legs. A second later they were out. It was Veronica.

Junior looked at him, then at her, and smiled weakly. “Not fair. You get a pretty woman to put you out, and I get an ugly, old man.”

Andreas’ mouth twitched upwards, just as a burst of thunder swept across the square. The sky was dark. Again Smyrna, again the Black Day. But not the courtyard, not the roaring wall of fire. Evening. Manuel of Kyzikos stood next to him, sword in hand. Veronica knelt beside him, holding the blanket swaddled around his legs.

It began to rain.

The White Palace, Constantinople, August 15, 1497:

Tap. Tap. Tap. Stop that. Herakleios placed a hand on his lower thigh to still his twitchy leg. He got up and paced instead, biting his thumb nervously.

It had been done. His father should be seeing the results soon.

He’d considered kidnapping his father. Andreas was vulnerable, and this would be the perfect time to gain concessions. Too risky. If he could keep it quiet, it could work, but the odds of nobody hearing about this were virtually nonexistent. He’d already found two of Irene’s spies on his estates, but he knew she had more. And if word got out, it’d be a race between the army and the Constantinople mob to tear him to pieces. No, Andreas was untouchable. Killing him…a large part of him shrank at the thought. The other part, the ambitious part, thankfully rejected it as well. Neither Demetrios or Herakleios had much support from the army, but the fact that Demetrios was Andreas’ choice of heir gave the Kaisar the advantage.

Again he bit his thumb. Truth be hold, it was not his father that had him so concerned, that was tying his stomach up in knots, albeit not in a way to which he was used.

A piercing, wailing cry leapt out from the next room. Herakleios wheeled around to face the door, which opened. The archiatros looked at him and smiled. “Your Highness, I beg to report that the Lady Venera has given birth…to a healthy son.”


* * *

Sunset over Anatolia. Nikephoros leaned over the railing, the wind breezing through the balcony. The orange light dappled the Golden Horn, as the wind carried the sounds and smells of the Queen of Cities, City of Men’s Desire, city of half a million souls. At the arsenal, the first of the megali purxiphoi were about to be launched. Across from Galata, the fishmongers were plying the last of their wares. Taverns and cookhouses were lighting their fires to prepare the evening meal, as brothels awaited their customers.

So his uncle had found his grandfather; Nikephoros could not say he was surprised. He knew he’d been looking for Andreas since he regularly stole into Herakleios’ study. His uncle destroyed any incriminating documents, but his sick bouts gave Nikephoros opportunities, and he exploited every one he could. He couldn’t blame his uncle for being cautious; he’d do the same thing. Do not challenge the lion, unless one wishes to die.

No, he would wait. He had time. Once Andreas was gone, then he could move. Now he did not have the strength to challenge Herakleios, or Irene, or Demetrios. Give me ten years.

The bells of the White Palace began to toll, announcing the birth of a new Komnenid prince. Nikephoros already knew about it, and shrugged. One more obstacle to remove. And if it’s a baby, so much the better. Easier to cover up. It did not matter. He looked out again on the Queen of Cities. Someday, this will all be mine.

Sunset over Anatolia.

Simena, August 20, 1497:

Andreas grimaced in pain as he shifted in his chair. The mood in the cookhouse was equally grim. The storm had put out the fire, saving the village, but almost three-fifths of the year’s crop had been ruined. The villagers might live through the winter, but there was no way any of their animals would. And without plow horses, livestock to sell at the markets, even if the village survived the first winter it was impossible to survive the second.

Importing food would allow Simena to survive, but seed grain would also be needed, and the expense would bankrupt over three-quarters of the village. And when the tax collectors came to demand their due and found they could not pay, they’d squeeze the richer villagers to make up the shortfall. One year could be paid for, but then the remainder would be ruined. Fighting was out of the question. Five droungoi were within a week’s ride, and putting down tax revolts counted as active duty when their pay was calculated. That was in fact where soldiers got most of their active duty bonuses in times of peace.

I need to go to Attaleia. Some of the villagers who could ride a horse, unlike himself or his son at the moment, had gone to ask for aid, but it was doubtful they’d be heard. Tax remissions were never granted to single villages. Larger settlements maybe, or multiple villages, but it was far too much work and expense verifying the validity of every little request for tax exemptions, so the small ones were always rejected.

But he couldn’t go to Attaleia. His burned calves did not have enough strength to let him mount or dismount a horse, and his singed buttocks made a saddle pure torture. Eventually he would ride, but…His right hand grasped the top of the rough wooden cane. He would need that to walk for the rest of his life. A small price to pay, for the life of my son. Junior had been wearing thick riding pants, unlike Andreas’ thinner cloth, couldn’t stand the heat, so while he too couldn’t ride a horse he’d make a full recovery, including the use of his legs. He was off resting. A small price to pay, but still…the cane made him feel old. He was now older than Theodoros IV had been when he died, and Demetrios Megas had died at the age of sixty.

He sighed, alone in his thoughts. Junior reminded him much of Nikephoros, his son, not the grandson. He too had liked to joke and laugh, but there were times, many a time, when he had the look, cold eyes, dead eyes, staring out of a face far too young to have such eyes. It was the look his grandson always seemed to have. The look Andreas knew he had held, the gaze of his demons staring outwards. I gave my children life, but I fear I gave them my demons as well. An image flashed in his mind, the courtyard in Smyrna, and a man raping a woman. Him and Zoe, the scene from the fall of Venice. And then the messenger, his terrified face, his shaking body, as he delivered the news of Leo’s crime. Not fear, I know.

He took a swig of ouzo to dull that thought, and winced as his leg complained when he shifted. None of that would help the people of Simena, but neither could he. Even if he could ride to Attaleia, the governor would not obey him. The governor had seen him, but as Emperor. And Andreas looked nothing like an emperor. No fine purple silks, no golden, jeweled pendants, no droungoi of kataphraktoi and skythikoi, not his fine bastard sword, a gift from Kristina, or his great black destrier or splendid silver palfrey. No, the governor would see a rough old man, clad in leather and poor silk, a plain dirk at his side, leading a small cantankerous mare.

The door crashed open, and magister Nikolaios burst into the cookhouse, a huge grin on his face. “Veronica!” he shouted. “A round of drinks on me!”

Andreas gaped, as did most everyone in the room. Nikolaios never bought drinks for others. “You heard me!” Nikolaios yelled. “Start pouring!” Veronica started, nodding at Andreas that she’d get him a cup.

“What’s this about?” old Ioannes rasped.

“We’re saved!” Nikolaios pulled out a sheet of paper and began to read. “By decree of Prince Herakleios, son of Andreas, first of that name, Emperor of the Romans, the village of Simena is hereby declared exempt from paying the head and land tax for the following year.” A burst of cheers swept the chamber. “And, and, to secure the prosperity of Simena and her people, a shipment of seed grain is to be sent, free of charge, so that her crops and fields may be restored to their full potential.”

“To Prince Herakleios!” Matthaios the butcher shouted, raising his cup in a toast. “To Prince Herakleios!” the crowd toasted, Andreas included.

“And to Prince Konstantinos!” Isaakios the blacksmith shouted, entering the room as well. Andreas scrunched his face. Who? He was not the only one confused. “The Lady Venera has given birth to a son, Konstantinos.” Some hooted, and a new toast went up. “To Prince Konstantinos!”

Andreas did not join in that one. Wheels were turning his mind, a small smile creeping across his face. This changes everything. Veronica sat down next to him and looked at him quizzically. “You have that look. You’re up to something.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just thinking of what I’ll need to do when I leave.”

Veronica’s face fell. “I…I don’t want you to leave.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not for a while.” Next spring, and I have no intention of going to Constantinople alone.

Smyrna, April 10, 1498:

The city was teeming, once again a city of seventy five thousand souls, finally recovered from the Black Day. But here, every year on that day, starting at noon, the bells of all the churches would toll, one time for each of the dead. It would last for a day and a half, but towards the end it would be joined by the call of the muezzin, lower, sadder, than the call to prayer, one time, for the dead of the followers of Islam. Bell and muezzin would call together, Christian and Muslim, united as nowhere else, in their grief and loss. Some had asked how long the Smyrniotes would keep up the custom. ‘Till the world ends,’ was the answer.

Veronica had never been to Smyrna, so she rode around, her mouth gaping at the great mansions and churches, the vast marketplaces larger than five Simenas, teeming with peoples and goods from the known world and beyond. Burly porters from the land of the Zanj, smooth-talking Nestorian Christian cloth merchants from Kashmir, staggering (and often hung over) astronomy students from Russia mingled within a few dozen feet of each other, the air filled with the babble of a hundred different tongues and the smells of a hundred different lands. The sight made Andreas smile, once again Smyrna was the marketplace of the world, the way it should be. The scar of the Black Day would remain for all time, but at last the wound had healed.

Then he frowned, as his mare’s horseshoes clicked on the cobblestone streets. Veronica’s gape made her look younger; he didn’t like that. It also made her look stupid, which he liked even less. He didn’t want a brainless twit with a nice body. As Emperor of Rhomania, he could’ve had thousands of them; he’d had at least a dozen in his youth, and at least three sired bastards by him. Unlike Theophano’s children, he’d not kept them at court, although he’d arranged apprenticeships for the boys and dowries for the girls.

What he wanted was Kristina back. Thinking of her, seeing her laugh and smile in his mind’s eye, still made him hurt. Just yesterday, he’d turned to ask what she thought of this line of Herodotus, and for a second couldn’t remember why she wasn’t there. And the memory of her death had come flooding, as fresh as if it’d been yesterday, the pain raw and red.

The horse snorted, Andreas looked up, and froze. He’d never approached the Smyrna Palace this way before. Here it was again, the courtyard, not just in his mind, but here before him. He could see the stone where Zoe had been raped, his mother killed, where he had stood, pinned as hot foul breath clawed at his ear.

A hand touched his arm. Veronica. “Andreas,” she asked, the concern in her voice and eyes. “You…”

“It’s nothing. I’m just a bit lost, that’s all.”

He’d never walked alone, even after the Black Day. Manuel had been with him, and Zoe, and Alexeia, and Kristina. But one by one they had fallen. Zoe alone remained, and she was nearing sixty. And he knew for certain he could not walk his road alone. If he did, he knew his companion would be his demons…the courtyard in his mind’s eye changed, strewn with the dead of the Apulian villages laid waste, the slain of Venice…my fault, my fault, for no one could cage the demon save himself, and if he did not…a dark chamber flashed before him and he saw himself, young, Kristina and Zoe at his side, Alexeia off a little ways, pain and horror on her face. “I will be a Timur to the state of Venice.” Again the chamber. “I will be a Timur…”

“Andreas?” Veronica again.

Andreas shook his head. “Ah, it’s this way.” He pointed, and they trotted across the yard, pedestrians moving to the side, muttering all the way. No, he would not be alone, God willing. And if he’s not, he’d better have all the angels mustered when I storm the gates of heaven. He’ll need them…

Veronica had agreed to marry him, but before they did, Andreas had said he needed to show her something in Smyrna. She and her mother had consented. Before they wed, Andreas would tell her the truth about who he was. With the typical woman that would guarantee she’d marry him, but not Veronica. She was not drawn to wealth or titles, which was why he wanted her. He had enough ambitious men and vultures waiting for him to die in Constantinople. He didn’t need another.

They rounded the bend, approaching the south gate to the Smyrna Palace. Veronica gasped, spying the statue of an eagle clasping a winged lion in its talons. “Do you work here?”

“Halt, who goes there?” the skutatos dekarchos shouted, pointing his spear at Andreas’ horse’s heart before he could answer.

“Hello, Ioannes. How’s Maria? Has Alexios made bishop yet?”

Ioannes squinted. He was a soldier, his soldier. He did not need fine silk or great war horses to see; he had seen his emperor plain, and knew him. His eyes widened, and he dropped on one knee. “Your Imperial Majesty, we were not expecting you.”

“Oh, get up. Open the gate, and tell the servants to prepare a light lunch for two in the garden.”

“Yes, of course.” Ioannes’ head bobbed up and down.

Andreas rode in, Veronica numbly following, too surprised to speak. He dismounted, hitching his horse to a post near the entrance to the stable, then did the same to Veronica’s, helping her down. “Your…Imperial…Majesty?” Veronica asked, her eyes wide in shock.

Andreas nodded, grasping his cane. “My name is Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos. I am Emperor of the Romans.” Veronica collapsed, bowing before him. “Not you too,” he muttered, hauling her to her feet.

She kept her eyes fixed on the ground. “Why, why the secrecy? Why did you not tell me?”

Andreas reached over, and gently lifted her chin until she was looking at him. “Because if I had, I would not have seen your eyes, and I would like to.” He paused. “I wanted you to know Andreas the man, not Andreas the Emperor. Because then, because then I would know where I stand.”

“I, I know not Andreas the Emperor, but I do know Andreas the man, and I love him.”

“Then you will marry me?”

Veronica shrunk. “Before I would have said yes in an instant, but now…God’s wounds, your Imperial Majesty…”

“Andreas.”

“…Andreas, you are Emperor of the Romans, heir of Konstantinos Megas. The blood of Theodoros and Demetrios Megas flow through your veins. I’m an innkeeper’s daughter.” They were often provided to clientele for an extra charge. “I got my scar from a drunken pimp. What would people say?”

“They would say that Andreas Komnenos is a very lucky man.” He paused, pondering. “We dynatoi live our lives for appearances, possessions, power, titles. These are the things by which we define ourselves. But when I look beneath the mask I am forced to wear, I see only emptiness.” Once Kristina filled the void, but she is gone. You will never be Kristina, but…you do not have to be. You just have to be Veronica. “And then I look at you and I say, to hell with appearances.”

Silence. “In that case then…to hell with appearances,” Veronica smiled. “I will marry you, Andreas Komnenos.”

Andreas grinned. “Shall we?” he said, gesturing at the garden as the memorial bells began to toll. Together they went into the grove, where Helena had sung on the morning of that terrible day, before the nightmare. Now there were no tears, but laughter. And the bells tolled, again, again. Mournful, yes, but more than sadness was in those bells. They called the names of the dead, but they called more than that. Not only grief, but defiance.

They said, Smyrna lives.

Till the world ends, they would say, Smyrna lives.

1498: Andreas’ arrival at the Smyrna Palace is deliberately kept secret, and so is his arrival in Constantinople. The first place he visits are the barracks of the Athanatoi and Varangoi, who are overjoyed to see their Little Megas again. They also vigorously welcome his new fiancée, who reminds many of their own wives. With great cheers, the Imperial couple is raised on the shields of the guardsmen, as if Andreas is being crowned again. The message is clear; the army is utterly loyal to Andreas.

His children are startled to see him back; they had not been expecting him for a few more months. Even Herakleios is surprised. The only one who is not is Theodoros, who is busy tending the newest addition to his menagerie, a baby elephant. When Andreas visits the vast garden network that is sometimes called Theodoros’ Empire, the Prince is instead feeding a fox that he raised from a cub. He looks up and says, “Welcome home, father. We’ve been expecting you.”

Herakleios is greeted with a warm embrace, and Andreas’ estimation of his youngest child by Kristina rises when his wife Venera of Abkhazia is the daughter-in-law who is the most welcoming of Veronica. Many of the highborn of Constantinople, including the bulk of the Imperial family, make fun of Veronica’s provincial accent, although no one dares do it to Andreas’ or Veronica’s face. Venera’s acceptance is due to the fact that she comes from rural Abkhazia and has a very strong provincial accent of her own (there was mocking of that as well, until Herakleios brained one obnoxious courtier with a plate).

Andreas and Veronica are wed three days after their entrance into Constantinople. Like the dynatoi, the clergy are unhappy with what is now Andreas’ third marriage, which is doctrinally questionable in Orthodox eyes. But Andreas’ other traditional supporter, the people of Constantinople, are also out in force, and by their thundering cheers make it clear that anyone who challenges their Emperor or their new Empress will have to answer to the mob.

* * *

The White Palace, Constantinople, May 6, 1498:

Andronikos Angelos rounded the corner and spotted the Emperor speaking with a young man, somewhere in his early twenties, he guessed. Limping from the kick his horse had given him a week earlier, he started toward Andreas, and stopped. The young man was his nephew. Shit. Wheels began turning in his mind, not those of carriage designs or barrage patterns, but how he was going to get out of this. Fast ship to Odessos, that’s the quickest.

The Emperor had seen him. Great. And he was coming towards him, his rough wooden cane tapping the cobblestones. If he ran or fought now, he would be dead in less than two minutes. There were ten guardsmen within eyeshot, and Andronikos knew how good they were; he’d trained them himself. The two archers on the low wall overlooking the courtyard would loose their arrows before his sword was even out of his scabbard.

Andreas was dressed plainly, as usual, looking much like his father according to the old kitchen ladies. The Emperor never had had much taste in finery, unless it pertained to martial matters. And that was the one area where Andreas clearly looked like an emperor. Often he carried the plain dirk he had wielded during the siege of Constantinople, identical to that used by akrites or skutatoi.

But now he had his bastard sword hitched to his belt, a wedding gift from Kristina. The blade had tasted blood at Venice, Cannae, and Edessa. Its hilt was engraved with silver, the lines etching out the leaves of a tree; he believed there was a duck in there somewhere, although he did not know why. The pommel was gold-plated steel, showing an eagle grasping a winged lion in its talons. Andreas only wore that on the road to war.

“Master of Sieges,” Andreas said, his voice cold and empty.

“Your majesty,” Andronikos said, kneeling on one knee.

“Get up.” Andronikos did so, and Andreas made as if to walk around him, and then clamped his right hand down on Andronikos’ right shoulder. “You did what you must to protect your sister. I cannot fault you for that, and I have need of your skills. But…” He hissed. “If I ever see your sister, I will kill her myself. Is that clear?” Andronikos nodded. “Good. Now I want a report on the readiness of the artillery train by dinner tomorrow. Go.”

Andronikos did, as fast as he could while maintaining his dignity. He would rather face the entire English artillery train again than an enraged Andreas. The scene from the Plaza of Saint Mark flashed before his eyes as if it was yesterday. A young man howled, smashing with black mace, crumpling plate armor and shattering shields with demonic strength. So that’s where Leo got it from. He shuddered. He had only seen it happen once, and prayed to the Virgin that he would never see it again. The cruelty and violence of Leo, coupled with Andreas’ skill for war…from such things did Timurs come.

Laughter echoed across the yard, prompting Andronikos to turn around. It was Prince Herakleios who had suddenly appeared, howling as Andreas Jr. gestured wildly. The Emperor too had a huge grin on his face.

Then Andronikos’ eyes swept onward. Nikephoros was in the corner, watching, always watching, his eyes boring into the back of his new bastard half-brother. To the right, Theodoros sat in the shade of a peach tree, a fox cuddled onto his lap sleeping while the Prince leaned back, a raven whispering in his ear.

* * *

Two days later, he orders the minting of the copper folloi, the most common coin used in marketplaces, to be tripled. Also since the silver stavrata is hoarded for paying taxes (which can only be paid in bullion), he orders the creation of new five-folloi and ten-folloi coins. These would supersede the silver coins, which were deliberately devalued to act as a bridge between gold and copper currency. The end result, once Andreas is finished, is the following revision of Roman currency.

Hyperpyron-gold: 20.5 karats, worth 84 to an one pound bar of gold.
Semissis-gold: value of 2 to the hyperpyron
Stavraton-silver: value of 5 to the hyperpyron
Dekafollis-copper: worth 10 to the hyperpyron
Pentefollis-copper: worth 20 to the hyperpyron
Follis-copper: worth 100 to the hyperpyron
Sefollis-copper: worth 200 to the hyperpyron
Tesfollis-copper: worth 400 to the hyperpyron

The miliaresion is disbanded to provide silver for the increased value of the stavrata, while the tesmissis is discontinued because of its infrequent use (too small for big items, too big for small items) and to free up bullion.

After that, Andreas issues a summon for Alfredo di Lecce to report to Constantinople. Simultaneously the presence of Grandmaster Miguel de Talavera is requested. When asked why, Andreas simply replies, “I have a promise to keep.”

1499: The Empire is abuzz with preparations. Andreas meets with the Megas Domestikos Krikor Zakari, Strategos Alfredo, his son Zeno, and several other major military officials to plan for the coming campaign. This is nothing unusual, but after the decisions have been made and appropriate edicts issued, Andreas arranges for his sons Zeno and Herakleios, along with a bevy of assistants, to draw up battle plans for wars against all of Rhomania’s enemies, and a few of her friends just in case.

Working in a villa on the outskirts of Chalcedon, the arrangement is done primarily to improve the relations between the half-brothers (as well as their wives, who accompany their husbands), but its permanent setup marks this as the first glimmering of the famous War Room. Over the spring and summer and early autumn before Herakleios, too ill to effectively work, returns to the White Palace, the pair produce eighteen different scenarios.

Each one posits a different type of war against a different enemy, and are designed to take into account current military and diplomatic reports, as well as what can be termed anthropological studies, where the characters of varying people are analyzed for weaknesses to exploit. This taps into an ancient Roman tradition stretching back all the way to Maurice.

Another sign of innovation comes from the navy, which now has four Megali purxiphoi ready for action. These are the first Roman warships to be equipped with gun ports, and mount a total of forty four guns each, twelve heavy guns in the hull, eight more on the deck, and twenty four light guns on the fore and aft castles. Rather than constructing new warships, the Imperial Arsenal is busy retrofitting the older purxiphoi.

Early in Andreas’ reign, gun ports had been suggested both as a way to add firepower and to improve the seaworthiness of warships (by placing heavy ordnance lower in the ship making it less top heavy) but there were grave concerns about such a vessel’s ability to absorb damage. However the grievous wounds the Basileia Helena sustained and survived during the Battle for Venice, along with spy reports on Portuguese ship building techniques, have changed the minds of Roman shipwrights.

Another improvement is the brainchild of Andronikos Angelos. Up to this point, cannons have been secured in place to guard against recoil, and then winched back to present the muzzles for reloading. This is a slow process, and the braces holding the pieces can only take so much punishment. During one of the battles off Sicily during the Tenth Crusade, a fifty pounder broke free after firing, killing two soldiers and grievously wounding four more before punching through the railing and falling into the sea.

Andronikos has devised a more flexible restraint system. The cannons are mounted on wheeled carriages and secured by ropes, designed so that the recoil throws the piece back to where it can be reloaded. The limited freedom of maneuver allows much of the recoil energy to dissipate harmlessly, and the removal of the need to winch the gun back significantly improves the rate of fire.

Andronikos had also suggested that the fifty pounders used as heavy guns be replaced by a lighter thirty six pound piece, to further increase rate of fire as well as magazine capacity. However the fifty pound cannons are the same as that used by the army, and the next smallest artillery is a twenty-five pounder, which Andronikos rejects as too light. As his proposal would require the retooling of gunsmiths to create new weapons and shot, an expensive undertaking, it is rejected. The navy will continue to use the same kind of weaponry as the army.

1500: And it is a formidable array of weaponry that Andreas leads south. Though the Syrian road has oft been worn by the soles and hooves of the Roman tagmata, Andreas intends this campaign to be different. Of the great host of enemies that encircled Rhomania, that inflicted on her the Smyrna War, most have fallen. Naples, Venice, and Bulgaria are gone, the Serbs kneel in vassalage, and the Pope is in exile in Germany. Yet the mightiest, the one whose strength had made the whole thing possible, without whom the others never would have dared, remains. So Andreas marches, not like his predecessors, eyeing a province here, a port city there. No, he is determined that Cairo shall never, ever, challenge Constantinople again.

Five thousand to attack Cyrenaica, fifteen thousand under Alfredo di Lecce to base out of Alexandria and harry Egypt, ten thousand more to savage the coast of Palestine, and forty thousand under the Emperor himself. And the Romans do not fight alone. The Hospitaller Order has mustered its entire assembled might, calling on all able-bodied men from its Chapter Houses across the Gregorian World, thirty four hundred men, four hundred of them knights, old Grand Master Miguel de Talavera at their head. Riding a silver destrier, clad in gleaming plate and wielding an evil-looking black mace and a bastard sword, the white-bearded man is determined to again be the first man over the ramparts of Jerusalem.

The Knights are not the only ones to gather in Syria. Five hundred Vlach cavalry, garbed in lamellar and armed with black lances, three hundred Russian archontes, with massive steeds and fearsome composite bows, and twelve hundred Georgians, skutatoi, akrites, and kataphraktoi armed in the Roman manner, alongside two hundred Alan light cavalry in leather lamellar and wielding scimitar and mace, and four hundred Christian tribesmen of the White Sheep Turks, vassals of the Kingdom of Georgia, and eager to liberate the Holy City of their new faith.

Many come because of their faith, others to gain assurance from the Roman government that the rights of their respective monasteries in the Holy Land will be respected. Andreas readily grants those assurances, and welcomes the troops, particularly the archontes, Alans, and White Sheep Turks, superb at the art of raid and ambuscade.

Catholicism’s response is muted at best. Western Europe is distracted by her own affairs, while Kaiser Frederick is not inclined to waste his strength in the eastern Mediterranean, especially with reports of Hungarians mustering in Austria. He does ‘convince’ a few troublesome princes to go crusading, but the retinues they bring make for a very poor showing compared to that mustered by the Knights and the lands of Orthodoxy. Andreas, rather annoyed by their presence, places them in the van, unsupported by Roman light troops, hopefully so they will die and get out of his hair as quickly as possible.

As Roman light troops pour across the border, heralding the advance of the main Roman force, supported by the Roman fleet (which due to little naval opposition mainly supports the convoys of massive grain haulers requisitioned over the winter to help haul supplies), once again the call of jihad rises from the cities of the Hedjaz.

It gets an answer. Sultan Suleiman musters the janissaries and sipahis, calls up the timariots and azabs, recruiting companies of akincis and gathering supplies. The Ottoman artillery train is readied to move, the small fleet of galleys in the Gulf puts out to sea, and finally the Sultan gives the order to march…east. As turkopouloi begin harrying the environs of Damascus, Turkish galleys blockade Hormuz.

But the Roman and Ottoman Empires are not the only ones on the move. Sultan Ismail has not been idle. Battalions of Sudanese mercenaries swell the ranks, alongside Mameluke soldiery trained in the old style as heavy cavalry and armored horse archers. However by this point, with the traditional sources of the steppe no longer available, the Mamelukes are now largely African in origin, whether Sudanese or procured from the Swahili coast. A minority come from lands further afield, India, or even Indonesia, taken captive in childhood and sent to the other side of the Muslim world. Joining them are ranks of Egyptian levies, an utterly vast source of manpower, albeit not one of a particularly skilled or warlike caliber.

The armies of Cairo may be largely African in origin, but they are not the only forces in Africa on the march. In the Hedjaz, the terror spreads like wildfire. The Lord of the North is on the move with a million men, they say. Yet then the call goes up from the harbors and quays of Arabia. So too is the Lady of the South, with half a million.

* * *

Zeila, Ethiopia, January 16, 1500:

Menas pulled on the reins, bringing his horse to a halt outside the squat, unimpressive mud-brick structure. It looked more like the home of a carpenter or other low-level artisan, not that of a famous war hero.

She was ready for him. He did not know how, but she was seated on the ground, casually sharpening a dirk, her gear packed and her horse ready to ride. Though she was fifty, she bounded to her feet. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Menas gulped. “Brihan of Merawi, I’ve been sent to summon you to Gonder.”

She tsked. “So formal. And I’m not being called to Gonder, but rather the army camp outside. Correct?” She mounted her horse.

Menas nodded. “If you’d come with me, milady.”

She scowled at him. “I am no lady. Ladies do not have seven battle scars, or ride around on bad-tempered stallions whacking people with maces.” Menas cringed. Brihan’s face softened. “My apologies. I did not mean to be so harsh. I’ve just been waiting for this day, a long time, a very long time. I was beginning to doubt it would ever come.”

“What day?”

“This day. The day when the long night of Ethiopia ends.”

“What? The long night is over. You ended it. Look, Ethiopia is strong again. The Somali have been crushed. Even the Arabs fear us.”

Brihan shook her head. “You’re wrong. Look at the harbor. It’s empty, no sailors, no ships. Ethiopia was once a nation of the seas. Our traders were seen, our currency used, in far India itself. The Muslims took that from us, shut us up, left us alone in a Muslim sea. We are still in that sea.” She flicked the reins, starting her horse forward. “But not for much longer,” she whispered. Then she turned her head to look at Menas. “Come. It is time to make Islam howl.”

Just north of Alexandria, April 18, 1500:

Demetrios inhaled, breathing in a lungful of salt air. Sea gulls glided overhead, calling in the wind. Behind him, the drums beat, keeping the rhythm of the oars steady as the dromon glided across the water. To the side, the purxiphoi and grain haulers had their full spread of canvas out, easily keeping pace with their oared brethren.

He smiled. He could see it now, the gleaming spire of the Pharos Lighthouse. He could not see anything else yet, but in his mind’s eye he saw the Mameluke siege lines. Alexandria was defended by a professional garrison of two thousand, supported by over sixty five hundred militia, mostly Copts, and that was leaving out the crews for the twenty seven mikropurs and culverins defending the walls.

There was no real danger of the city falling except if attacked by the whole Mameluke army, even without Alfredo’s fifteen thousand men, but Sultan Ismail knew that Alexandria was a knife pointed into Egypt’s vitals. He could not leave it uncovered, but to take the city would take either too much time or too many bodies if he was to stop Andreas from overrunning Syria. So the force was, according to the captain of the monore who’d brought the news, a mere blocking force of eleven thousand, mostly levies.

Armor glinted from men on one of the nearest dromons. Those levies might hold a trench against Copt militia, but they would stand no chance against tagmata. And then…the day I have been waiting for, for so long, will finally be here.

Two dromons and two monores were beating their way out of Alexandria harbor to challenge them. Just a little while longer. He’d been fascinated by Africa ever since the triumph after the fall of Venice, when that lumbering rhinoceros had looked a ten-year old boy in the eye.

His lip twitched upward. I’m probably the only man who doesn’t desire the City of Men’s Desires. Constantinople was grand certainly, but it did not call to him, not like the metropolis before him, and the vast continent behind it. He’d been waiting, preparing, for this day for twenty years. His network of contacts was limited to Africa, but it extended from Alexandria to the Wilayah of Mogadishu; he was the one that had arranged the communiqué to the Ethiopian court so the two Christian nations could attack simultaneously.

The four Alexandrian warships were falling alongside, escorting the convoy into the bay. Soon, soon. Let Herakleios or Irene have Constantinople. I care not…so long as Egypt is mine.

Constantinople, April 24, 1500:

Nikephoros chewed his lip, absentmindedly turning the page of The Strategikon. His brown eyes glided over the words, but he did not read. The wind rustled through his long black hair, but he ignored it. He couldn’t decide whether or not to be happy, or worried.

Herakleios’ assassination attempt on Leo had failed. The poison had not been strong enough, only making Leo sick, and unusually cranky, even for him, for a few days. It’d also done nothing to stop the birth of his new baby son, Basileios. The name was a good sign. I need Leo alive, and someday, when I’m ready, to be marching on Constantinople with an army.

What had him worried was a successful assassination attempt. His aunt Irene, wife of Theodoros ‘the Cow’, as he called him for the dull, mindless look in his eye, was dead, and Nikephoros did not know who killed her. Demetrios doesn’t have the stomach, and even if he did, it’d make more sense to have killed her two years ago, when the Emperor was off bedding peasant girls. That brought a smile to Nikephoros’ face. He’d already had his first, a slightly plump but lively fifteen-year-old serving girl. Being an Imperial prince certainly had its benefits.

Herakleios probably didn’t do it. What’s the point? All it would do is make the Emperor suspicious. So who? Andreas himself? That was a possibility, him taking care of a potential impediment to his plans for the succession. He’d never been fond of the sharp-tongued woman who’d schemed her way into the Imperial family by exploiting the stupidity of his eldest son by Kristina.

Andreas. It must be Andreas. But still, something didn’t seem right. And that was what worried him.

* * *

Andreas sweeps south, driving hard for Damascus, clouds of light cavalry in front of him, ranging as far south as Jerusalem. He has less men under his direct command than his father Theodoros did in the 1450s, but Andreas has learned from that campaign and his father’s mistakes. Theodoros had dispatched twenty six thousand men to Egypt, compared to Andreas’ fifteen thousand (and five thousand to Cyrenaica). The smaller number of men involved places less strain on the logistics.

Logistics had been the main problem Theodoros had faced, and the reason his progress had been so torturously slow. He could feed his men, but not his cannons at the same time. Thus the sieges had been conducted in the medieval manner. Andreas however can feed his men and guns at the same time, due to less of the former and the mass waves of light cavalry he has screening his troops and protecting his supply lines.

He has also established contact with Arab tribesmen living on the fringes of the desert, contracting their services to transport supplies and purchasing livestock from them. The idea though was Herakleios’, who had been studying the Ottoman military machine for the war scenarios, and saw a way to utilize the peripheral tribes in campaigns against both the Ottomans or Mamelukes.

This time Damascus, under the fire of Andronikos’ artillery, holds out for nineteen days. Andreas does not stay to relish his victory; almost immediately the army moves out, its destination Jerusalem.

Far to the south, the Ethiopians march up the Nile, forcing the petty states in between Ethiopia and Mameluke Nubia to kneel. Many of them had already been suborned by Kwestantinos, and the rest are soon forced into line by the spears of the eighteen thousand soldiers under the command of Brihan of Merawi.

At Soba, where the Blue and White Nile met, site of a major Ethiopian defeat at Egyptian hands, they encounter their first serious resistance. A fort has been erected there, guarded by two hundred men. They beat back the first assault, but when the Ethiopian artillery is brought into action, they quickly surrender. The captives are sent south to be worked in mines, while Brihan orders the construction of a small chapel. When it is done, she tells the men to rejoice, for the time has finally come to avenge the Massacre of the Innocents. The Ethiopians enter Nubia.

As Andreas marches south, the Roman navy has been active demonstrating off the Palestinian coast, and it is from their reports that the Emperor first gets word of the Mameluke host, marching up the coastal road from Egypt. When it camps at Jaffa, it numbers sixty five thousand strong.

It is a fearsomely large force, but half are at best moderately trained levies, little more than cannon fodder. Yet many are armed with crossbows, giving them a bite even kataphraktoi must respect. And they are corseted by battalions of Sudanese infantry, fighting with javelins and swords, lightly armored but fast and fearless. And behind them are eleven thousand Mameluke cavalry, armored in steel lamellar and trained since boyhood in the use of bow, lance, and mace.

Sultan Ismail is staking everything on one all-out throw of the dice. The Sultanate cannot stand up against the Empire in a long struggle; the only way to win is to knock it down hard and fast. The best way to do that is to kill Andreas. So Ismail ignores the Ethiopians, the Roman fleet, Alfredo di Lecce; if Andreas falls, they can be dealt with.

Given the overall poorer quality of his troops plus Andreas’ reputation as a general, Ismail needs the great host he has assembled. But feeding it is an impossible task, with Roman cavalry constantly nipping at his flanks and cutting down foragers. Even without the harassment, it is doubtful he would be able to do so. The army does not kill any of the local peasantry directly, but many starve to death after their food stores are appropriated.

Their plight is increased when Andreas orders his light cavalry to also ‘appropriate’ as many consumables as possible to deny them to the Egyptians. The Mamelukes march north into a land of scorched earth, hunger gnawing at them. And every day come the pinpricks of the turkopouloi. Numerous attempts are made to drive them off, most of which end badly as the turkopouloi are supported by skythikoi and black horses eager to let fly, and behind them are squadrons of kataphraktoi. Only the Mameluke heavy cavalry can stand up to their thunderous charges.

As the dance begins around the Sea of Galilee, news arrives from the south. Alfredo has broken the cordon around Alexandria and is moving south along the Nile river. In the countryside he faces little opposition, the local militia retreating to small forts. Due to the lack of stone, these small redoubts are protected by earthen embankments. Ironically that is a source of strength as they are highly resistant to Alfredo’s light artillery. Because of the need to provision Alexandria as well as his army, and the nature of his mission in Egypt, Alfredo does not have any larger ordinance.

As a result, Alfredo’s progress is rather slow, even if cavalry outriders harass caravans within eyesight of Cairo itself. Each fort must be reduced, either by fair means or foul. One is taken by Copts who betray the bastion to the Roman army, but the news gets out, prompting a savage retaliation by the Muslims upon any Christians within reach. This does cause many local Christians who do view Rhomania skeptically to drift towards Roman arms, but in the short-term it ensures that the Mameluke forts are garrisoned solely by Muslim soldiers, making progress even more difficult.

The Muslims, though usually poorly equipped and trained, fight well, for here the spirit of jihad burns brightly. The imams have been preaching constantly, presenting the struggle as an existential crisis for Islam itself. Ethiopia by herself was able to harry Medina and Mecca. Ethiopia and Rhomania combined would be far, far more dangerous.

The word is heard too by the Muslims of the Empire. Yet Andreas has not forgotten the use of pamphlets and posters during the Last Crusade. Over the past year, the Imperial presses have been flooding the Empire. Herakleios has laid out a plan to build a network of roads, hostels, ports, and shipping schedules designed to make the hajj easier and more affordable to Muslim pilgrims. To mollify the church, Herakleios has also expanded the plan to include Christian holy sites from Edessa to Alexandria, thus making Christian pilgrimage much easier as well. The program, while expensive, is projected to bring in sizeable quantities of revenue.

More importantly though, Andreas has publicly stated on numerous occasions that he has no intentions on the Hedjaz. There are no pressing political or economic reasons for seizing the region, and Andreas has already made contact with Ali ibn Saud, promising to recognize him as Sharif of the Hedjaz provided he not aid the Mamelukes (these negotiations are kept secret).

Admittedly most Muslims find the word of the Vicegerent of (the Christian) God a bit sketchy, but the most important subset of that demographic do not. The Muslims serving in the Roman tagmata adore their Little Megas as much as their Christian comrades. For them, his word is enough.

The Little Megas by this point is also again a grandfather. When the Roman army encamps on the shores of Lake Galilee, Andreas washing his sword in the biblical waters, word comes that Zeno is a father. His wife Anna of Lesbos has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Her name is Athena.

As classical Greek works have been translated in ‘modern’ Greek, printed, and sold, they have been slowly growing in popularity. While still looked down upon for their pagan and democratic ways, compared to the ‘Imperial and Christian’ Romans, the ancient Greeks are exerting a cultural influence. Patriarch Photios II said two years earlier that ‘God made both Athens and Jerusalem’, a rejoinder to Tertullian’s famous phrase ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’

Zeno does not have much time to enjoy his good fortune, as the Roman and Mameluke armies dart around each other, Ismail trying to pin the Romans down so he can bludgeon Andreas to death before his army starves away. The Emperor too is having supply difficulties, as the fast marches means he cannot rely on his well-organized but slow supply wagons. Mule and camel trains help make up the shortfall, but even so he is forced to rely heavily on the local countryside.

Unusually for him, Zeno is staying with the main army. After the burns to his legs, Andreas is no longer such a nimble rider, so he wants his bastard son close to help him coordinate the main force. His other bastard son Andreas Jr. is also with him, serving as a member of his bodyguard.

Meanwhile, many of the officers serving in the two guard tagmata are members of a new group calling themselves ‘the Young Dragons’. They have only known Andreas as Emperor, and do not remember the bloody 1450s, the Black Day, the Siege of Constantinople, or the Last Crusade. For them Rhomania has always been bright, brilliant, and victorious.

Trained at the School of War, where their marks had been high, they were assigned to the Imperial bodyguard so that Andreas could give them additional personal training. The most prominent are the brothers Stefanos and Petros Doukas, the one commanding the Athanatoi kataphraktoi and the other the skythikoi.

But skilled subordinates does not change the fact that with around one hundred thousand soldiers eating the landscape bare, the peasantry are starving along with the Mameluke soldiery. Andreas finds this distasteful both on a political and personal level, so he finally gives Ismail what he wants, a battle. In the Jezreel valley, the army arrays for battle, the Athanatoi, Varangoi, the Scholai, and the bulk of the Thracesian and Optimatic tagmata, alongside the Order of Hospitalers, in all 37,800 men.

Ismail’s troops are hungry, and not as well equipped or trained. But they know that the only source of provisions large enough to sustain them within leagues of their position lie in the Roman camp. So they fight with the desperate bravery of men who know they must conquer or die.

On August 4, the armies meet on the slopes of Mt. Tabor. The Mamelukes number 54,600.


valleywmttaborccheatker.jpg

The Jezreel Valley today, Mt. Tabor in the backgroud, site of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ

* * *

Mount Tabor, August 4, 1500:

They were coming hard and fast, their ululating screams riding the wind, a great chorus. “Allah! Allahu ackbar!”

There were no calls from the Romans, no yells of men. From there only came death. Gently a black sheet lofted into the sky, and then down, down, whistling, a soft, quiet thing. Zeno could hear it still, his ears trained since boyhood to hear the sounds of battle. Down. The whistle ended, and came the screams, the shrieks of men as the steel arrowheads found their mark, meaty smacks as the tips feasted on man flesh.

The toxotai were letting fly with everything they had, but a sound was missing from the battlefield, one far more obvious than the whistle of arrows. There was no roar of gunpowder. The artillery train numbered a mere eighteen pieces, all of them mikropurs, and both they and the mauroi had little ammunition, the consequence of the earlier supply difficulties. So they’d been ordered to hold their fire.

“Here comes another wave,” his half-brother Andreas said, pointing a skinny finger covered in a leather gauntlet at the onrushing wave of infantry, a big one, flanked by squadrons of Mamelukes. Ismail was hitting them primarily with his infantry, mostly levies, but he had Sudanese mercenaries corseting them. Those buggers were fast with their blades, and were quite skilled in finding gaps in the steel lamellar of the skutatoi.

And every attack was supported by his heavy cavalry, which would wheel and strike, wheel and strike, letting the infantry pin the Roman line down and tear open small holes. The horsemen would then plunge into the hole, wedging it open just a little more, pummeling with their great mounts coated in steel barding, smashing with their maces and sabers.

“They’re ugly bastards.” Andreas Jr. continued.

“You’re not so pretty yourself,” Zeno replied, smiling. Junior glowered at him. Then Zeno squinted. Damn my lousy eyes. “They’re going to get through.” The entrenchments were being worn down, covered in corpses. The men tired by onslaught after onslaught. Killing takes a lot out of a man.
Behind every wave came companies of sappers, tearing down stakes and filling in entrenchments. They were unarmed, but they were clearing the way for a full-scale assault by the Mamelukes.

Not one in ten of those mighty armored horsemen had the blood of the steppe in them, or seen the Caucasus mountains, or dwelled in the land of Circassia. Most were from Africa, the Swahili coast in particular. But none could doubt their courage, their skill at arms, or their devotion to their cause.

“Eh, what’s the worst that can happen?” Junior said. Zeno blinked at him. “They break through, kill us all, the Christian Empire of God falls, and we show up before a very pissed off deity sitting on the throne of heaven. No big deal.”

“So what would be a big deal?”

“Missing my lunch.” Junior looked into the sky. “Speaking of which…” His eyes widened. “I am missing my lunch. Mameluke bastards.” He drew his sword, gesturing toward the Egyptian lines. “Yes, those are brave men. Let’s kill them.”

“Good idea,” Emperor Andreas muttered, turning his head to call to one of his signal men, standing with their great flags, but not before Zeno saw the look in his father’s eye. He means to lead the charge himself. He grabbed the reins of Andreas’ horse. The Emperor’s head snapped back. “What are you doing, strategos?”

“What are you doing?” Zeno repeated. He had never understood why his father, the great leader of men, the Scourge of the Latins, felt the need to charge into battle like a common kataphraktos. But he looked into his father’s eyes as arrows whistled and men screamed, and now, after all these years, he knew why.

Zeno was a bastard. His mother was not from the line of the Dragon, or a princess of the Great Rus. She had been a camp follower, a washer woman from Messina, chosen because of her physical similarity to the woman who would one day be the Empress of Blackbirds. But despite that, he suddenly realized, he was the most like his father.

Both had been raised for war, Zeno on purpose, Andreas accidentally. Both had killed in combat, both had led armies, seized great citadels and overthrown enemy hosts. Both had protected the Empire and her people. And we have both failed. He had failed to protect his love, his wife. She had been violated, raped, and he could not stop it. He had not even been in Constantinople at that time. I was supposed to protect her. But I did nothing.

In his father’s eyes, he saw the same guilt, the same shame that he saw in the mirror, whenever he thought of Anna. And he remembered, a story of a day, the day, the Black Day of Rhomania. He too failed. “There was nothing you could have done,” Zeno rasped, speaking not only to his father but to himself.

Tears were glistening in Andreas’ eyes. “My head knows that. But my heart does not.” It is the same with me.

Nine cannon blasts echoed across the valley, Zeno’s ears easily picking out the scream of shells. The mikropurs aren’t authorized to fire!

“Incoming!” a skythikos yelled. Blood sprayed Zeno’s face as one of the Mameluke shots took off the head of Andreas’ horse. When he blinked it away from his eyes, he saw Andreas sprawled on the ground.

“Are you alright?” Zeno asked.

Andreas nodded, his destrier snorting. “I’m fine too,” Junior muttered, sprawled on the ground next what was left of his mount. “Thanks for your concern.”

“Fine, are you alright?”

“My ankle; it’s broken.”

“If only it were your tongue instead.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” the Emperor said. “Order two kataphraktoi droungoi to counter that push, and tell the mauroi to open fire.” He smiled thinly. “Time to set the trap.”

* * *

The mauroi open fire with a great crash, clouds of powder smoke covering the battlefield, but everyone can hear the rumble as Ismail commits the bulk of the Mameluke heavy cavalry. The heavy balls of the mauroi are the most dangerous threat to their heavy lamellar armor, but now they have at least four minutes before the mauroi can fire again. The Mamelukes come sweeping up the hill.

And the Roman left wing comes sweeping down, swinging like a door toward the center of the line, supported by the bulk of the reserve and all of the mikropurs, who now add their fire to the fray. The Mameluke charge is compressed, the center getting packed as the right wing elements are pushed over, and then the mauroi open fire again. Part of the reason for the few cannons was that Andreas had brought double the handguns as he had mauroi, and both pieces had already been loaded when the first volleyed.

The heavy horsemen are hit by over five thousand balls at point-blank range. Mounts topple, their heads blown off, survivors crashing and careening off the corpses. For a moment, the morale of the Mamelukes waver, but no more volleys come crashing down on them. The left wing attack, hampered by rough terrain, begins to stall, as squadrons of Mamelukes reform, lashing back with flights of arrows. Bit by bit, order is being restored.

And then Miguel de Talavera and Stefanos Doukas plow into their left flank. Ismail had deployed squadrons of Arab light cavalry to screen his flanks, and the turkopouloi, poorly suited for the slugging match, had been harrying them all morning. Keeping them distracted, disoriented, too busy defending themselves to scout, to see the four thousand riders curling around them.
Three thousand of their comrades in arms pay for their failure. What is left of the Mameluke attack is shattered, the armored riders thrown back upon their infantry. Ismail manages to restore order with his reserve, and a quick counterstrike swiftly deters the Grandmaster and Young Dragon from attacking the Mameluke camp. Andreas’ main army, well positioned for defense, is poorly suited for attack, as demonstrated by the left-wing’s lack of progress after the initial advance.

Ismail is allowed to retire, although forced to abandon his artillery and mercilessly harried by Roman light cavalry. He leaves eight thousand casualties on the field, compared to twenty one hundred Romans. It is the march back to Acre, his nearest supply base, that is the true killer. Andreas follows, gnawing at his periphery, stinging him with raids and ambuscades, cutting down stragglers, foragers, and screeners. Three times Ismail wheels around to engage, and three times Andreas backpedals out of reach, only to resume being the shadow as soon as Ismail turns away.

At Acre Ismail encamps with thirty five thousand men, receiving news that Tyre has fallen. That means Andreas will soon have another two thousand men, nearly making good his losses at Mt. Tabor. Grimly he marches south, not willing to be holed up in Acre where he can be blockaded and besieged.

But for Andreas, there is little joy in Syria. For the victories at Mt. Tabor and Tyre are overshadowed by a greater loss, not from the Mamelukes or any kingdom of man, but by that most inexorable and irresistible foe, time itself. Alfredo di Lecce is dead.

Alfredo is succeeded in his capacity as strategos by Tancredi di Sava, who is young enough to have only the most fleeting memories of the Apulian revolt against Roman revolt. Although Apulian is his first language, his Greek is almost accent-free, he follows the Orthodox rite and has studied and graduated from the School of War. He is one of an increasing number of Apulians who are steadily being Hellenized, due to the presence of Bari with its university, and the Apulian tagma. In Sicily too, the tagma is having a great effect on Hellenizing the population, particularly the cities of Syracuse and Messina. Already there is talk of establishing an university in Syracuse.

The new Dux of Abruzzi is Alfredo’s oldest son Manuel, who is twenty six years old. Married to the daughter of a wealthy silk merchant from Palermo, he used her dowry to establish several vineyards that produce fine wine, considered some of the best in southern Italy. Inheriting his father’s look, he also spends much time training his retainers. Abruzzi maintains two thousand men, four hundred of them cavalry, which Alfredo had organized similarly to a theme, a model imitated by all of the Italian vassals. Together they maintain an army of eleven thousand men of good quality, although not the equal of the tagmata due to no schools of war or warehouse systems.

Although Alfredo’s death of natural causes is a sizeable blow to morale, Roman progress in Egypt remains unimpaired, although still slow due to the numerous earthen forts. Brihan’s march up the Nile is similarly painstaking, not because of Mameluke resistance which is limited at best, but because of exceedingly difficult terrain and laborious supply lines.

It is the Holy Land where operations move fast. Andreas leaves most of his infantry besieging Acre and Haifa, setting out with the bulk of his cavalry supported by some infantry, primarily akrites and toxotai, riding on spare horses but dismounting for battle. His goal is the destruction of the Sultan’s army. Dividing his forces presents the possibility of Ismail destroying his forces piecemeal, but Andreas is moving too fast to be pinned down, while the besiegers are well entrenched. Attacking them presents the risk of being trapped between the anvil of the Roman infantry and the hammer of the Roman cavalry.

For three months Andreas harries Ismail incessantly as one by one the Roman infantry and artillery takes city after city. Andronikos Angelos personally commands the capture of Acre and Jaffa, while other forces capture the interior as far south as the Horns of Hattin, where Miguel de Talavera prominently plants eighteen pikes adorned with the rotting heads of captured Mameluke commanders.

Meanwhile Ismail is bleeding. Andreas and his army are both suffering from the hot climate, the forced and frequent marches, and the supply difficulties, but both are holding up. Physically Ismail is doing better than Andreas, but his army is disintegrating as starvation, disease, and desertion add their blows to those of Rhomania. Realizing that his once great host could not win another Mt. Tabor type engagement even if he could force one, Ismail decides on an extreme action.

Palestine is abandoned. Sultan Ismail will make his final stand in the heartland of Mameluke power, Egypt. He returns to Africa with one third of the men he had when he departed. Once more the call for jihad goes out, but it is depressed and resigned. From the Marinid Sultanate, whose coffers grow fat from the slave trade going through Carthage and which is more concerned with Portuguese and Andalusi encroachment on the lands beyond the Sahara, there is silence.

There is plenty of noise coming from Mesopotamia and Persia, but none of it is helpful for Egypt. In what is becoming a tired routine, Sultan Suleiman has led the Turkish host east, but that is where the similarity ends. “I aim to build an empire,” Suleiman declares when Hormuz falls in September. Unlike his predecessors, who had merely invaded, trusting in steel to secure their realm, Suleiman has established multiple contacts with minor Persian nobility, men who have power and influence, but not so much as to desire the status quo. With their support, his advance is vastly more rapid. When the year ends, he has claimed Gilan, Mazandaran, and all of the Persian Gulf coast as far as Hormuz. It had taken Osman II a decade to take the same territory.

So again the House of Islam does not respond, even as the greatest blow falls. On December 24, the assault on Jerusalem begins, heralded by the roar of seventy guns. The first over the walls are the Hospitalers, their armor blazing in the sun. Unlike the first attack on Jerusalem in the 1450s, Miguel de Talavera is not the first. He is the fifth.

The garrison counterattacks fiercely at the first sign of breach, and then history begins to repeat itself. Like the first time, a Mameluke arrow hits Miguel in the eye, his one remaining eye. The utterly enraged Knights shred the defenders and turn with full fury upon the counter-attackers. Three hundred of them put two thousand Mamelukes to flight.

Miguel de Talavera lives for three hours, long enough to receive word that the city has fallen. The tetragram flies from the Dome of the Rock. “He kept his promise,” the Grandmaster says; they are his last words. He is buried next to the section of wall he had stormed both in 1455 and 1500, just inside the city. It is a simple tomb, with a Hospitaler cross serving as the only decoration. On it is writ, in Latin, Greek, and Arabic “A soldier of God, who gave his life that Jerusalem may once again be a Christian city.” The tomb is still there to this day.

At around the same time, Andreas receives the news as well. A priest responds that “God’s work has been done. His city is free.” Supposedly the Emperor snorted in response. “God had little to do with this. He gave the life of one man for this city. I have given thousands.” Eudoxia repeats the tale, adding the following. “And the blood of a woman. My mother. If this is God’s city, he did a lousy job of defending it.”

Eudoxia explains the addition as follows: For he cited Jerusalem as the reason for drawing the Emperor Theodoros IV so far south, bringing his army so far from the Imperial heartland. It had left Rhomania exposed, raised the spirits of the Latins, and dared them to strike. So came the Black Day.

Though no one comes forward to confirm the camp rumor, it spreads rapidly. The soldiers do not care; they are the ones who have bled and died for the Holy City, and the Emperor has been with them all the way, sleeping on the hard ground beside them, eating the same rough fare as them, demanding no privilege beyond that granted to the lowest skutatos. And he has led them to victory after victory. Compared to that, nothing else matters.

Though it remains at the level of a persistent camp rumor, some of the Empire’s clergy take offense, since if true it would be heresy of the highest order, denigrating the contribution of Christ’s sacrifice. There are many who still disapprove of Andreas’ religious policies in Europe, while many more are concerned for the solidity of the faith in an Empire that has literally conquered millions of heretics and infidels in recent years.

But the populace are instead overjoyed at the news of Jerusalem’s fall, tales abounding that their Emperor (as they call Andreas) was the first over the wall. Some disagree, saying that he broke the wall with a thrust of his lance, or a blow of his great sword.

However at the White Palace, the Bishop of Ohrid does ask what Herakleios thinks of the matter. The prince, who has just returned from a bowel movement stained with blood, is in no mood for theology. When the bishop asks what he thinks of the supposed remarks, the Prince stuns the whole court when he declares, “I agree.”

1501: While Ismail licks his wounds in Egypt, his agents are at work in southern Palestine and the lands beyond the Jordan, using promises of gold and glory to stir the local tribes to harry the Romans. They are minor pinpricks, doing little damage as the raiders face not only the Roman cavalry but other tribesmen taking coin from Constantinople, but they do slow Andreas down in his efforts to organize Palestine.

The Emperor’s ruling on mosques is that structures originally built as Christian churches must be converted back into churches, but buildings originally constructed as mosques are allowed to remain as such. In exchange for their existence, they must pay taxes on all their assets and incomes, to be evaluated in the coming census.

Meanwhile the Order of Hospitalers is allowed to establish a barracks and hospital in Jerusalem, adding to the ones they operate at Constantinople and Malta. Their new Grand Master, Jaime de Tarragona, is elected in the Holy City. Jaime is a mestizo like his predecessor, the product of mixed Spanish-Arab parents, a rapidly growing (in both numbers and powers) group in Iberia.

The peninsula also dominates the Order, with sixty five percent of the recruits coming from there. With expansion against Al-Andalus stalled, the Order presents a clear relief valve for crusading fervor. Iberian commanderies are also the main pillar of the Order’s finances, as Portugal, Castile, and Aragon have granted the Order numerous and vast estates along their southern frontier to act as a buffer against the Andalusi.

Despite that aid, Order finances had been tight since they could only draw on the Gregorian sphere. But the fall of Jerusalem immediately leads to a wave of pious donatives, including some particularly fine Arletian vineyards in the Rhone river valley (which are incidentally squarely in the path of a likely Plantagenet invasion).

As money flows into the Order’s coffers, Andreas begins making arrangements for the creation of a new theme of South Syria (the original Syrian theme to be renamed North Syria) with its capital at Damascus and stretching south to include Acre and skirt the Sea of Galilee. The new soldiers are to be drawn largely from relocated Albanians and Orthodox Italians (primarily from the regions of Calabria and Campania), along with local Christians. Andreas has no intention of organizing all of Palestine and Egypt into themes, as it would be prohibitively expensive. The themes are to serve as the foci for Roman control and defense, with rotating garrisons from the heartland themes and urban militias to fill the gaps.

The Sultan uses his small respite wisely, administering a check on the Roman forces in Egypt at El-bagour. Although the casualties are small (750 Roman, 380 Mameluke), the result is decisive, bringing that prong of the Roman attack to a halt. That is due largely to the concurrent efforts of Ismail. It is known that the Coptophilic Kaisar Demetrios is in Alexandria, and Ismail takes advantage of that fact.

With his army, he turns on the Copt population of Egypt, confiscating their possessions and driving them from their lands into the Nile delta (two-thirds of which is under Roman control). Demetrios is unwilling to abandon them and welcomes them with open arms. But with more mouths to feed, there are fewer supplies available for the army, particularly for the artillery vital in reducing the Mameluke forts.

To help alleviate this problem, Demetrios retaliates against the local Muslim population in the lands under his control. They are driven out into the Mamelukes lines, their lands and possessions bestowed on the Coptic refugees. While this does much to alienate the Egyptian Muslims, it also greatly endears the Copts to Roman rule, and very quickly turns the Copts into far and away the dominant people group in the Nile Delta.

Egypt is not the only cockpit of war. In Persia, Konstantinos Komnenos, honored with the horsetail banner that is the regalia of an Ottoman governor (in his case the new rich and fertile province of Mazandaran) inflicts three sharp defeats in as many weeks on Persian armies. Admittedly in the second and third instances he is aided by mid-battle defections from the Persian side, but he was well on his way to winning before they occurred. When the dust clears, he is in position to threaten Fars itself, further than any Ottoman army has ever penetrated.

In the rear echelon, Sultan Suleiman is busy organizing his new conquests. Aside from Mazandaran, given as a gift to his best friend Konstantinos, minor Persian nobles who have joined the Ottoman cause dominate the administration. Many are appointed as commander of new azab and sipahi contingents, while others are hired on as timariots with all the rights and responsibilities entailed. Suleiman is determined to create a Turco-Persian state, modeling his efforts on how the Romans have welded the Anatolian Turks to their side.

Yet the most dramatic movement in the spring comes far to the west, as the armies of Hungary ford the Piave River and invade the Duchy of Milan. It is the culmination of twenty years of planning on the part of Andrew of Hungary and the forces he brings to bear are utterly massive. Three to one superiority in heavy cavalry, ten to one superiority in light cavalry, two to one superiority in both infantry and artillery. On the other side of Italy, the Savoyards are also on the march, invading the County of Montferrat with the leader of the exiled house in the vanguard.

That said, the disparity is not quite so overwhelming. Milan is, per capita, one of the richest states in Europe. Even after the conquest of Liguria, Genoa remains a thriving port city, her merchants plying the waves from Alexandria to Antwerp (although in the Roman Empire their niche has mostly been absorbed by Carthaginian traders). The armament factories of Lombardy are second to none, producing the best plate armor on Earth as well as superb long-range light cannons. Roman production in those areas is copied entirely from Milanese models.

Andrew makes his move now while the Roman Empire is occupied in the east, which is the reason why he has stayed his hand till now. Although relations between Milan and Constantinople are cordial at best, the Empire has no desire to see a moderately powerful neighbor replaced by a exceedingly powerful one. But with the tagmata in Egypt, there is nothing the Empire can do.

Meanwhile the other Empire is not so securely distracted from Buda’s point of view. For years, Hungarian agents have been stirring up trouble in the realms of Frederick, bearing much fruit particularly in Lotharingia, but a war with a foreign power would be more preferable. Although none are available, Andrew elects not to wait.

Neither does Duke Francesco Laskaris-Visconti. Advance units of the Milanese army commence skirmishing with the Hungarians near Padua and are quickly joined by the Duke himself. On one misty cool morning, Francesco leads a column of cavalry out on a reconnaissance-in-force, mauling a contingent of Hungarian gunners, but is soon ambushed by a host of hussars. He is quickly enveloped and captured.

Brought before Emperor Andrew I himself, Duke Francesco has little choice but to capitulate. Andrew’s terms are harsh; the Duchy is to kneel as a vassal to the Hungarian Empire, the County of Montferrat is to be returned to the House of Montferrat as a vassal of Savoy, who is also awarded western Liguria. Modena and Mantua are also carved from Milan to be given as counties (vassals to Buda) ruled by Andrew’s two bastard sons. They are each granted two thousand Hungarian soldiers to keep order in northern Italy, while Andrew turns east as soon as he receives the Milanese hostages and the first installment on Milan’s tribute in gold, guns, and plate armor.

On the way, he stops in Veneto where he is met by the archbishop of Aquileia and a Milanese envoy bearing the final element of the treaty. On May 2, Andrew is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, acclaimed by the Grace of God, Emperor of Hungary, King of Italy, Croatia, Dalmatia, Austria, and Bosnia, Grand Prince of Transylvania.

It is a direct challenge to the Holy Roman Emperor, but it does not matter. Frederick is already on the march, invading Austria with three armies, a combined strength of sixty thousand men. The quickness of the German princes to rally around the Emperor’s banners are a heartening sign to Frederick, especially as the protests of the entire army being overseen by Bavarian officers are muted at best. The princes may bring their soldiers to camp, and even lead them in battle, but they are always ‘assisted’ by Bavarian officials, usually of low or middle class origins and absolutely loyal to Frederick.

The fortress of Linz manages to hold out for eighteen days, an impressive feat considering that Frederick has fifty eight Moravian cannons in his train. The Kaiser’s joy at the capitulation though is dampened at news from the west. Germany may bow to him, but the rest of his vast domain is another matter.

Lotharingia is in full revolt, King Charles I repudiating his ties of vassalage to the Empire and demanding that the lands of the Holy Roman Empire that once paid homage to Dijon resume doing so. Antoine, Archduke of Brabant and Lord of the Westmarch, marches against the rebels, but his forces have been seriously depleted by the needs of the Hungarian campaign. Also virtually all of Lotharingia outside of Brabant is hostile to him, particularly what should be his power base, the Low Countries. The inhabitants there fiercely resent being lorded over by Brabantines. In addition the huge port of Antwerp, city of a hundred thousand souls, is antagonistic, resenting Antoine’s strict and numerous tariffs enacted to help pay for Antoine’s expenses.

Frederick dispatches twelve thousand men back to the west to aid his lieutenant in the west, but no more, not even when news arrives that Edward VII, King of France, England, and Ireland, has launched his long-awaited war against Arles. The Bernese League, though on paper an Imperial vassal but in reality an independent state (reward for their help in Frederick’s campaign against the Swiss), honors its alliance with Arles, declaring war on Calais and mustering its companies, not knowing that they will not be still for thirty years.

On June 9, the siege of Vienna itself is in its third day. Northern Austria is almost entirely in Imperial hands and two sharp defeats inflicted on Hungarian detachments. Arrangements have already been made with Targoviste; if Frederick enters Hungary proper the Vlachs will declare war on Buda, promised Transylvania in full in return. Against the Holy Roman Empire and the Vlachs, the Hungarians stand no chance.

But fate is fickle, and history and the world turns on a few seconds of tragedy or glory. Shortly after midday, Frederick is observing two newly emplaced batteries placing ranging shots on the ramparts of Vienna. One battery fires high, corrects, reloads, and fires again. This time the shot is too low, much too low, plowing into the ground, sending a wave of rock fragments flying back on the emplacement. The crews, sheltered by earthen ramparts, are unscathed, but their mounted Emperor is not so lucky. A fragment hits him in the left eye; he is dead before he hits the ground.

As western Europe falls into war and the blood of an Emperor stains the ground, Emperor Andreas arrives on the Nile to find the river running red with blood. The sky is black with crows, tens of thousands of them, gnawing on the flesh of the tens of thousands of rotting corpses jamming the channels of the Nile delta. From shore to shore the dead fester, until mercifully the current pushes them out to sea and scatters them across the eastern Mediterranean.

Sultan Ismail had checked the Romans in the delta, but he had not counted on the speed of Brihan’s advance from the south. The Ethiopians have been marching hard, excited to meet up with their Roman allies for the first time, so when they encamp just south of Cairo it is only then do they learn of El-bagour. Reinforced by new arrivals from Ethiopia, including four hundred Orthodox Somalis and Nubian volunteers, Brihan’s army numbers nineteen thousand.

Ismail does not given Brihan of Merawi much time to ponder her next move, as he strikes with twenty nine thousand men. Six thousand of them are heavy Mameluke cavalry, and half of the rest are hardy, tough Sudanese. Lightly armored and equipped to fight other lightly-clad foes, they had had much difficultly against lamellar-clad skutatoi, but against the Ethiopians who lack the wealth of Rhomania (and who, used to their highland homeland, extremely dislike the prospect of wearing heavy armor in an Egyptian summer) are much more dangerous. Thus Ismail has every expectation of victory when he hurls his army forward.

The Ethiopian campaigns of recent years, though of enormous consequence for the future, are still not well known (save for the Mecca campaign) outside east Africa. It is on the sandy, bloody field south of Cairo that the world learns why Ethiopia never, ever, has been conquered.

The roar of the Mameluke charge is overwhelming, a vast wall of light and sound sweeping across the earth, a huge behemoth of death, opposed by lines of light spearmen and crossbowmen, interspersed with gunners. From the sidelines, it looks like a picket fence trying to stop a rampaging bull elephant.

The pickle fence buckles, but does not, will not, break. The Ethiopian front ranks take horrific casualties, but they hold, their comrades racing forward to take up the duties of the fallen. Ismail throws in more troops, trying to curl around the exposed Ethiopian flank (the right is anchored by the Nile). The flanking attack is delayed by the Nubian volunteers, as Brihan leads the Royal Guard forward into the fray.

Armored in lamellar, veterans of a dozen campaigns, fighting along Brihan for a generation, the Ethiopian Royal Guard are the finest soldiers in the kingdom, every bit the equal of Mamelukes or kataphraktoi. With Brihan at their head, they are more. It does not matter that they are outnumbered three to two. They have Brihan with them, and naturally that means God is with them, but the first is more important. Slowly, steadily, bloodily, the Mamelukes are driven back.

Then a lance spears Brihan’s mount in the neck, toppling the animal. The effect is decisive. The Ethiopians had been tremendously brave, but now, now they are utterly enraged. With an inhuman roar they charge forward, heedless of pain or death, so long as they have a chance to kill. It is too much. The Mamelukes break.

Ismail is killed sometime in the sudden rout, by who no one knows. The Ethiopians are too busy pursuing the refugees into Cairo to check. The Cairenes try to close the gates in time; they fail. At around 3 PM, the howling, berserk Ethiopian soldiery storm the city.

Cairo is given over to an absolutely horrific orgy of violence, rape, and slaughter. The House of Islam has not seen its like since the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols. Even Timur in all his butchery would be hard pressed to outmatch what the Ethiopians do to the city of a thousand minarets. Supposedly the screams of the dying city can be heard in Alexandria, as soldiers wade through the thigh-deep gore.

Three droungoi of Roman cavalry had been shadowing the Mameluke army since before the battle. When Cairo falls, they too enter the city. If their original intentions were to try to stem the slaughter, once inside the city they do not even try. They join in, so that the first combined Roman-Ethiopian operation is not a grand battle or a glistening procession, but a savage, systematic butchery.

Cairo had a population of about 400,000 souls. The fury of Ethiopia cannot breach the walls of the Citadel, but the rest of the city is doomed. When finally the rage fades, choked out by the stench of bloated corpses and caws of ravens, it is somewhere around 150,000.

And for what? Late in the evening after the battle, Brihan awakes. Though the sack has only begun, it has already taken on a life of its own. It cannot be stopped, not even by her. It can only exhaust itself in blood. Only a handful is Brihan’s. She has a broken arm.

The Roman droungoi that entered Cairo had numbered two hundred and eighty one strong. Of them thirty three had refused to join in the sack, instead wheeling north to bring the news to Andreas. The Emperor’s approach had been slow and methodical, and he had been about to leave for a short rest in Alexandria with Empress Veronica, who had arrived at the city.

Meanwhile the Ethiopians have just begun preparations for the siege of Cairo’s citadel. Her walls have remained intact during the massacre, sheltering the Abbasid Caliph Al-Qa’im who at great personal risk had ordered the gates open to admit over forty five thousand refugees. This had saved them from certain slaughter or slavery, but with the mass influx the Citadel’s stores are alarmingly inadequate in the face of a siege.

The siege does not get very far. With a huge dust cloud, Andreas plunges down from the north with ten thousand cavalry. The two hundred forty nine Roman soldiers are summoned to camp, their accounts heard, and then every single one, including the commanding officer, are hanged. It is a small measure of justice for the survivors of Cairo, but Andreas’ statement on the matter makes it clear that his mercy has limits. For he says “I did not order you to kill, therefore you are murderers.”

* * *

Just North of Cairo, June 15, 1501:

It does not look like the tent of an emperor, Brihan thought, dismounting from her horse. The canvas structure was no different than the hundreds surrounding. There were no silken pavilions, no bright, emblazoned banners, no scent of incense or glint of gold. Only its sheer size distinguished from that of a toxotai kontoubernion.

But those tents did not have fully armored infantrymen in front under an awning, clad entirely in plate, brandishing poleaxes in rough hands. She could see the calluses covering those hands, the results of thousand of hours handling those weapons, and she could see in their eyes that they could handle them well.

A slight breeze gusted from the south. Brihan was grateful for the coolness, but not the stench of rotting flesh that came with it. Nearby flies buzzed, already gnawing at the swinging corpses of the Roman Emperor’s own soldiers, executed for their crimes.

She looked back at her own guards. She could not have done the same, for the sad truth was that she’d have to hang her whole army, an obvious impossibility. “Wait here,” she ordered.

“Is that wise?” Yonas asked. His face was worn and wrinkled now, his eyes tired. They were not the boyish eyes, the laughing face, he had had all their years ago, when she had come to call on the King of Kings. He too had seen much of war and slaughter. Time for this to end. My work is almost done. Now it is time. Time for the killing to stop. Please, God, please. Please make it time. I am so tired.

She stiffened. I am a daughter of Ethiopia, a soldier of God. Soon there will be time to rest. Not now. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it is my will.”

Yonas’ mouth tightened. “Very well.” A second. “But be careful. This emperor…” His voice trailed off, his eyes staring at the guards who looked back impassively.

Brihan nodded silently, turning to enter. They had heard tales of the Emperor of the Romans. She remembered those from the early days, of his amazing military prowess even as a boy. But she remembered those later ones as well, of a man who would brook no harm to his people. One told of a king from…Lotha-something, tortured until he was completely insane.

And if the inhabitants of Cairo were to be anyone’s people after the fall of the Mamelukes, they would be the Emperor’s. Kwestantinos, not even in his wildest imaginations, would have dreamed of laying claim to Cairo. It was too far away from the Ethiopian highlands, impossible to hold. The quarter of a million men, women, and children slaughtered were future Roman subjects.

She had asked Alexios, the old Roman blacksmith who’d lived in Ethiopia the last ten years, what the Roman Emperor would do if a people had killed 250,000 of his subjects. Alexios had grimaced and held out a finger and thumb just half an inch from each other. “The Venetians killed 30,000 on the Black Day. For that, he came this close to killing them all, including the children.”

“And if one had killed not 30,000, but 250,000?” she had asked, her heart trembling.

“When he would be done, that people’s tongue would be spoken only in hell.”

Spoken only in hell. The words reverberated in her mind. Was this to be the end of the long night, or the beginning of something far more terrible? She entered the tent.

There were only three men in the room. Two stood, both clad in light armor, hands resting easily on the hilts of their swords. One was middle-aged, the other a lad, but the shape of their faces was identical. Father and son?

The third man, an old one with a heavily wrinkled face but shaped much like the other two men, topped with silver-white hair, was seated on a plain wooden chair, devoid of any adornment, a chair a poor carpenter might have used. His face was locked into a twisted frown. At his side rested an equally plain cane. He wore no armor, only thin, light-brown silk. She knew the type from the Romans who lived in Gonder. In Ethiopia it would have fetched a handsome sum, but she knew that here in the north a moderately-successful artisan could afford such a garment. This cannot be the Emperor.

Then she saw the sword, set on the rough table next to the man. Its scabbard was leather, etched with silver thread, tracing a pattern of leaves across its entire length, a duck peeking out from behind the branches about two-thirds of the way up. The rim was gold, studded with precious jewels, a diamond, ruby, and sapphire, in sequence, repeated three times just on the side she could see. The pommel of the blade was also gold, a figurine of a diamond-eyed winged-lion caught in the talons of a ruby-eyed double-headed eagle. With that sword, she could afford to outfit three, maybe four galleys. The sword of an Emperor.

“It is customary for petitioners to kneel before the Emperor of the Romans,” the middle-aged man said.

Brihan stiffened. “I kneel only before God and my Emperor. And I do not come as a petitioner. I come as an ally, to pay my respects.”

“Some ally,” the man in the chair muttered. “Can you smell that?” he waved nonchalantly in the air. Brihan knew what he meant; there were no scents in here to block out the lingering stench of rotting human flesh.

“I have been a soldier all my life,” the Emperor continued, staring off into the distance. “I killed my first man when I was ten.” He looked her in the eye, and all of a sudden it was as if she had known this man her whole life, and he had known her all of his. He too has spent his whole life fighting. He did not ask for this task, no more than I did. But he has done it nonetheless. But now it is past time to rest, for both of us.

“You have made things very difficult for me here.” Both the middle-aged and the young man looked confused. They did not understand the change in conversation; they had not heard the years that had passed between Brihan and the Emperor.

“That I have,” Brihan replied. “And I cannot undo it, though I fervently wish I could. But there is something I can do to help alleviate the damage.”

“And that is?”

“We have around seventy thousand slaves taken from Cairo. I freely hand them all over to you.”

“You would do this? The ransoms would be quite large.”

“I do. For a leader must look after her, his, people. They are your people now.”

“Thank you, Brihan of Merawi.”

“You are welcome, your majesty.”

“My name,” the Emperor said, beginning to smile for the first time since Brihan had entered. “Is Andreas.”

The long night of Ethiopia had finally ended.

* * *

With the fall of Sultan Ismail and the city of Cairo, the Mameluke Sultanate is effectively dead with only a few mopping-up operations left. Between Brihan and the Emperor, it is decided that the border shall be fixed at the city of Luxor, which shall be in Roman hands. This gives Ethiopia control of Nubia and most of southern Egypt, but the heart of Egypt herself belongs to the Empire now.

The Citadel surrenders, but pointedly to the Romans, not the Ethiopians, its inhabitants allowed safe passage. With the city largely in ruins, and the survivors’ memories of this place too full of pain and fear, Andreas decides to relocate the bulk to the site of Damietta, to rebuild that city. Cairo still endures, but of her four hundred thousand children, only forty seven thousand remain.

The Abbasid Caliph is one major exception. With the addition of the Mameluke territories, the Roman Empire has twenty one million subjects (twenty eight with vassal states). Of them over six million are Muslims, plus three million Catholics. That Orthodoxy can maintain a slim majority in its own Empire is due entirely to the fact that prosperous Anatolia, untouched by war since the War of the Five Emperors, can muster double the population of Egypt.

But the huge Muslim and Catholic minorities still present problems, which Andreas attempts to resolve in his Cairo Proclamation, creating the polis of the Catholics and the polis of the Muslims, which includes all the members of these faiths in all Imperial territories (although not vassals).

The creation of the two poleis are not too dissimilar from the earlier creation of religious categories dating back to the reign of Manuel II Laskaris (r. 1316-1324), but much more formal. The polis of the Muslims is to be led by the Abbasid Caliph, who will have jurisdiction over all the Muslims in the Empire. He will be their intermediary to the Roman court (as emphasized by his title of Omiletes-Speaker) , and the community will be allowed to organize itself based on Muslim laws and principles. Interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims will be regulated by Roman law though, and the polis, like any Roman city, is granted limited taxation abilities, carefully spelled out in both type and quantity allowed.

However, not everything in the Proclamation goes in favor of the minorities. All members of the polis are required to pay a polis tax, and are not allowed to enter the rolls of the tagma or standing army formations (those already in are allowed to remain). This is done to help allay the concerns of the clergy, whose feathers have been severely ruffled by Herakleios’ heretical comment (about which Andreas personally cares not one bit).

Muslims though are still allowed to enlist in militias, enroll in university, and own arms (except gunpowder weapons) and horses. Many clergy had pushed for these privileges to be revoked, but Roman Muslims have long been accustomed to them and would fiercely resent their loss, while Andreas feels that to discriminate against only the new Muslims would serve to alienate them.

With these changes, it is guaranteed that the two new tagmata of Egypt (capitals at Alexandria and Damietta) will be Coptic tagmata (the restrictions do not apply to members of the noble heresies), for now officered by Greeks, but several dozen promising young men picked out by Alfredo before his death are sent to the Schools of War and Artillery. For the tagma of southern Syria, local Christians are supplemented by Albanian and Italian immigrants.

Although the Abbasid Caliph is the new Speaker of the Muslim polis, after the sack of Cairo Andreas decides it would be too unsettling to the Muslims (who’ve just had another tax added to their rolls) to bring the Caliph to Constantinople. So instead Al-Qa’im is escorted in great pomp to Alexandria, where he is bequeathed an elegant palace and estate, on which he has to pay no taxes. It is a fateful decision for the future history of Egypt.

The polis of the Catholics is similar in organization and regulation, but as an olive branch Andreas extends the following deal to Avignon. He will allow the Pope there to choose three potential legates to be sent to Constantinople, where the Emperor will select one of them to be the Catholic Speaker. The choice then must be allowed to serve for three years, but after that point can be dismissed for any reason. Pope Martin V of Avignon accepts the arrangement, since it places all of the Mainz communities in Roman Italy under his jurisdiction.

Meanwhile bands of Turkish ghazis, outraged by the reports of Cairo, have taken it upon themselves to wage jihad against the Empire. Andreas, who has had to rely more and more on his cane whilst walking during the campaign, has absolutely no patience for this sort of thing. He has not forgotten that the Great Turk had delayed his fateful campaign against Venice, and that the previous Sultan had murdered his half-sister Alexeia. So his note to Sultan Suleiman is blunt and bloodthirsty. “Either control your subjects, or I shall visit the fate of Cairo upon Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra.” No historian, even his daughter Eudoxia, believes that Andreas is bluffing.

Suleiman has absolutely no desire to fight a war with Andreas; he still remembers how easily he was outmaneuvered twenty years earlier. With his attention focused on the east, where Konstantinos is tightening the noose around Fars with an army 55% Turk and the rest Persian, Suleiman immediately capitulates. He does send a large sum of money to ransom the Cairo captives, only later to learn that it is not necessary. Nevertheless Andreas personally arranges for the coinage to be divvied up amongst the survivors.

Andreas returns to Alexandria as Brihan, laden down with gifts and some more Roman advisors (with an emphasis on shipbuilding) and the Ethiopians begin the march south, establishing garrisons once they pass Luxor. One of the first things that happens when he gets back is the formal investment of Demetrios as Katepano tes Aigyptou (Governor of Egypt). In exchange, Demetrios relinquishes the title of Kaisar, as Andreas proclaims Herakleios Co-Emperor of the Romans.

It is soon followed by a triple wedding. Demetrios’ son Andreas, Andreas Angelos, and Nikephoros Komnenos (who is not present but married in absentia) are wedded to three young Coptic women. The first two brides are nieces of the current Coptic patriarch, while the third is the daughter of an exceedingly wealthy and Romanophilic Coptic landowner and grain merchant.

Also the Emperor finally gets his long-delayed reunion with Empress Veronica. It is at this time that Andreas’ famous sword finally gets its name, coined by Veronica, David. The son that follows nine months later is given the same name as well.

edwardtudor.jpg

David Komnenos at the age of four, last and most famous of the sons of Andreas Komnenos.


europe1501.png

Map Legend:
1) Kingdom of Lotharingia-at war with the HRE
2) Duchy of Milan-vassal of the Empire of Hungary
3) Italian vassals of the Roman Empire
4) Serbian vassals of the Roman Empire
5) Kingdom of Sweden
6) Swati Kingdom of Kashmir
7) Sultanate of Delhi
8) Kingdom of Poland
 
The Lion in Winter

Part 11

1502-1516


"Andreas I Komnenos had 8 sons, and 150,000."-A History of the Rhomanian Army (note that Roman historians do not consider Andrew of Hungary a son of Andreas Komnenos)​


religiousmap1502small.jpg

Religious Map Legend


Brown- 80+% Orthodox
Green- 80+% Muslim
Tan- 80+% Noble Heresy
Yellow- 50 to 75% Orthodox
Orange- 33 to 49% Orthodox
Red- 21 to 32% Orthodox

Note that the dominant religion in Cilicia is the Armenian Church, and in the Nile Delta is the Coptic faith. In Italy, the two major centers of Roman culture are Bari, Venetia, and Syracuse. Venetia is too small to appear on the map, but would be brown. The red in the Crimea is the former Genoese colony of Vospoda, and Tana (off map) would be red as well. The Serbian vassals are overwhelmingly Orthodox, Al-Andalus is overwhelmingly Muslim, and the Italian vassals are overwhelmingly Catholic. But the Italian ducal families are all Orthodox, and the creed is starting to trickle down amongst the major landowners and merchants, but the farmers and artisans remain completely untouched.

1502: The sack of Cairo sends ripples throughout the Muslim world. Everywhere there are at least some rumblings, but the main explosions come from opposite ends of the House of Islam. In India, it helps trigger a mass Muslim revolt against the Vijayanagar Empire in the coastal cities of Gujarat and Maharashtra. There has already been much dissent against the oppressive and discriminatory Hindu rule (for starters, Muslims are not allowed to own horses or buildings with more than one story, and are taxed three times more heavily than Hindus). Vijayanagar’s collaboration with Ethiopia in the Meccan campaign is also remembered, and not forgiven.

The Sultanate of Delhi invades to support its co-religionists, making as far as Pune before it is met by the assembled might of the Vijayanagar Empire, forty thousand infantry, sixteen thousand cavalry, and two hundred and ninety armored war elephants. The trumpeting behemoths are decisive in the smashing victory, coupled with the mercenary Timurid gunners in their howdahs.

But four days later the Muslim fleet annihilates the Vijayanagara navy off Kozhikode with the first known use of bomb ships outside of the Mediterranean. Without naval support, the Vijayanagara army is unable to reduce the coastal cities as Ottoman and Omani vessels make huge profits ferrying in food and armaments.

In North Africa, something too is stirring. Ali al-Mandari, one of the leading men of Tetouan, who had been ruined by Roman merchants in Al-Andalus and moved to Africa to rebuild, takes five galleys out into the Mediterranean to wage the jihad fil-bahr, the Holy War at Sea. In six weeks, he takes one Roman transport, laden with silk and sugar, and two Aragonese galleys. His example is immediately followed by sailors and tribesmen from Safi to Bizerte.

The overlord of all these jihadists, the Marinid Sultan in Marrakesh, does nothing to curb these raids, but instead encourages and shelters the raiders in exchange for a cut of the profits. With peace in Egypt, Carthage’s brief ascendancy as the premier supplier of plantation slaves for Rhomania is over, so he has little incentive to not harass Roman traders. These raids also serve to bolster his prestige as well as his coffers. The effective loss of al-Andalus without a fight is extremely embarrassing, and enforcing payments from the corsairs is a good way of reasserting his authority.

The rhetoric is couched in that of holy war, and for most of the participants, it is a holy war. But the jihadists soon begin attacking Andalusi vessels as well, viewing them as traitors to Islam. For they willfully exchanged a Muslim for a Christian ruler, and not only that, they chose the one responsible for the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of Cairo (in the Maghreb Andreas is viewed as the destroyer of Cairo due to ignorance about the Ethiopians). As such, they are treated as Christians; captives are impressed as galley slaves.

The Andalusi do not take kindly to being on the receiving end of a jihad. When two corsair ships are captured off Almeria in September, the crews are slapped into chains and then thrown into the sea.

In Constantinople, on April 19, Herakleios is crowned as junior Co-Emperor of the Romans, with the imperial mint issuing new coins showing both Andreas and Herakleios. Present are his two older sisters, Helena and Basileia, Crown Princesses of Russia and Georgia respectively. Almost immediately Andreas turns over much of the Imperial administration into his son’s hands.

There is relatively little dissent. Few of Vlad’s appointees remain after all this time, and the few that do are part of the army and have long since come over to Andreas’ side. The clergy mutter, but for the most part are appeased by the Cairo Proclamation’s restriction on Catholics or Muslims in the tagmata. Also smoothing their feathers are several grants of land in the Holy Land to the church, including the Biblical towns of Hebron, Jericho, and Nazareth. All of them are placed under the authority of the church, providing taxes after a four-year remittance period are paid.

There is also the fact that there is no clear better choice. Some prominent priests, including the bishops of Adrianople, Dyrrachium, and Larissa, believe Demetrios to be a closet Copt. Others suggest Theodoros, and while Andreas has done much to support his son’s menagerie, he states that anyone placing Theodoros on the throne of Rhomania will do so over his dead body. A rumor spreads that the bishop of Adramyttion remarked that the suggestion wasn’t so bad. The next day a mob wrecks his house in Constantinople.

Andreas is not in the Queen of Cities when that happens. He spends most of the year back in Syria, overseeing the first major training exercises of the south Syrian tagma. His primary mission now is to get them and both Egyptian tagmata into fighting shape as soon as possible, as he is alarmed by the rapid increase in Ottoman domains. He also finds the warmer climate of Syria and Egypt to be much pleasant than Constantinople.

In Persia the formal investment of Fars begins in May, Konstantinos Komnenos again commanding, as Andrew of Hungary drives the last of the demoralized German forces out of his domains. The new twenty-two year old Holy Roman Emperor Manfred I Wittelsbach has managed to rally his Bavarian troops, but is having more difficulties in keeping the other German princes in line, particularly after his loyal ally and vassal Archduke Antoine, Lord of the Westmarch, is resoundingly defeated by a relief Dutch army at the siege of Rotterdam.

But it is in southern France that sees the most action of the year. The armies of France-England move rapidly, even as Louis I moves equally as fast to marshal the Arletian lances. The French-English offensive is focused on the west, both to avoid the war in Lotharingia and to forestall a rumored Arletian plot to seize the main convoy bearing Bordeaux wine to England with the help of the Castilian navy. Their primary target is Toulouse.

Louis’ son and heir, Prince Charles, commands the main Arletian army, seventeen thousand strong accompanied by thirty Bernese battle cohorts, three thousand men. Leo Komnenos, commanding another three thousand men, has orders first to spoil a large raiding party rampaging along the Rhone before meeting with the main body. This he does quickly, smashing the two thousand French-English at Valence and inflicting quintuple the number of casualties he receives. Marching hard, he has almost joined Charles at the town of Merles when thirty thousand French-English assault Charles.

The heavily outnumbered Arletians and Bernese are quickly thrown on the defensive, even though three sharp ripostes from the cohorts stagger the Plantaganet right. The roar of the battle comes as a surprise to several of Leo’s officers, as it is coming east of the expected rendezvous point. When they ask Leo what to do, he replies in words forever remembered by the Arletian people. “We march to the sound of the guns.”

Ninety minutes into the fray, Prince Charles has been outflanked and the Bernese are on the verge of being surrounded, though they bitterly contest every inch of ground. The French-English commander, the Duke of Berry, has every expectation of victory when the west explodes with a mass crescendo of hellfire. Three arquebus volleys blast the Plantaganet right flank at point-blank range, trumpets screaming as Leo charges at the head of twelve hundred heavy Arletian lancers.


leokomnenosatmerles.jpg

A modern rendition of Leo Komnenos at the Battle of Merles, for the game Century of Blood


The French-English line does not waver, bend, crack, break, crumple, or shatter. Instead it ceases to exist. As Leo rolls up the Plantaganets, Charles and the Bernese immediately counterattack, the onslaught of the Habsburg knights killing the Duke of Berry as he desperately tries to restore order. When he dies, all hope of saving the army dies with him. Between the battle and the five-hour pursuit until sunset that follows, the French-English host is effectively destroyed as a fighting force.

Still the Arletians and Bernese suffered heavily, over twenty five hundred casualties. One of those is a man whose arm was broken by Leo for looting. His crime was not the looting itself, but that he had dismounted whilst the enemy was still on the field to do so. Once they have been cleared though, Leo has no problems with his men pillaging the enemy camp and raping the camp followers.

Though somewhat disgusted by Leo’s post-battle activities, Charles does concede that the Roman prince turned certain defeat into a smashing victory. And the Bernese League also remembers its sons who were saved, including no less than nineteen scions of the Habsburg family. So two months after the battle, Maximilian von Habsburg, Count of Breisgau, Zurichgau, Thurgau, and Aargau, formally legitimizes Leo’s wife Klara.


rickonstarkinfobox.jpg

Basileios von Habsburg-Komnenos, son of Leo Komnenos and Klara.

1503: The defeat at Merles is a harsh blow to Plantagenet hopes of an early victory, but it is by no means a fatal blow to the war effort. As spring dawns, levies are gathered across southern England and northern France. The quick start to last year’s campaign comes as a hidden blessing, as the majority of the formidable artillery train and the bulk of the French aristocracy had not been assembled and committed.

As Arletian forces move up the Garonne, the Plantagenet counterstrike gathers in Normandy when two balingers put into Calais with news from the north. Northumberland is burning.

A Scottish army has crossed the frontier burning and pillaging, the shires mustering in response, only to be caught completely flatfooted when a Norwegian fleet of nine thousand men and a hundred and twenty ships falls upon the coast. Caught between two fires, the men of Northumberland are engaged at Flodden Field and utterly annihilated. The combined Norwegian-Scottish army flies south, the Norwegian navy joined by fifteen Scottish vessels including two small purxiphoi, harrying the coast as far as Kent.


scotsnavy.png

Scots warship in action off East Anglia

Newcastle-upon-Tyne defies the invaders, hurling back one attempted assault with hastily fabricated catapults made from the timber of torn-down houses. But everything else north of the River Tees is at the mercy of the Norwegian-Scottish army. Haakon VIII, King of Norway and Scotland, had skillfully exploited the marriage ties forged by his father Haakon VII with his twelve daughters to gather artisans and soldiers from across all of Europe. The result is that the Norwegian artillery train, though comparatively small, is one of the finest in all of Europe.

As Scots and Norwegian warships prowl the North Sea and even raid into the Channel, mopping up every English or French vessel they can find, Alexander MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, chief vassal of the King of Scotland, puts out to sea with his own armada. Almost immediately he turns the Irish Sea into his private lake, his galleys raiding the coasts of Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall.

King Edward VII, faced with the alarming possibility of losing control of the sea, authorizes the sailors of England and France to wage war by privateer (some had already started). The men of the West Country, the Cinque Ports, and London respond vigorously. The ships from London, large and well-armed (many with royal armaments illegally purchased from corrupt Tower officials), prove particularly dangerous. However the privateers have a tendency to turn pirate, and Danish and Hansa merchant ships soon become a preferred target. More alarming though is three attacks by men from Portsmouth and Plymouth on Castilian carracks bearing cargoes of wool for Antwerp.

The inhabitants of the Low Countries are also annoyed by the transformation of the Channel and surrounding seas into a war zone. In the first six months after Edward authorizes privateering, thirteen Dutch vessels are taken. This is somewhat compensated by the fact that Scots and Norwegian vessels typically sell their prizes and cargo in Dutch ports rather than take them all the way home.

Almost all of the French-English naval effort is waged by private citizens. The embarrassing fact is that the royal navy is extremely under-strength. Most of the funds have gone into the army, in particular to restoring the artillery lost at Cannae. Half of the king’s ships are leaky, and all are undermanned. On paper they are at full-strength, but the ships’ masters have been skimping on their crews and pocketing the extra wages.

There is similar corruption amongst the quartermasters. Provisions are universally late, often too small, and frequently corrupt. Provided with rotten meat, moldy bread, their pay at least six months in arrears, and forced to run a ship that needs a hundred men with seventy, it is little surprise when most of the crews mutiny. Five ships do sail, but turn pirate when they spot a small convoy carrying pay for the army in France. The chests of gold and silver, containing 60,000 pounds sterling, over an annual year’s revenue for the Kingdom of England, is stolen.

France-England is not the only one suffering, as Andrew of Hungary launches his invasion of the Holy Roman Empire. Sharply defeated at Linz and Passau, Emperor Manfred is swiftly losing control over his realm. An epidemic of dysentery that cripples his army forces him to abandon Munich without a fight. Andrew seizes the city, but then drives west instead of north after the fugitive Kaiser. His rationale soon becomes clear. On September 12, Mainz surrenders to the Hungarian armies, Pope Martin V of Mainz fleeing north to join Manfred in Schleswig.

Two days later, a papal legate from Avignon formally crowns Andrew in the cathedral of Saint Martin. He is now, by the Grace of God, Imperator Romanus Sacer, Apostolic (added at this time) Emperor of Hungary, King of Italy, Croatia, Dalmatia, Austria, and Bosnia, Grand Prince of Transylvania. The fact that none of the electors support this coronation is ignored.

It is the fulfillment of a century-old dream of the Arpad kings, who have been fighting for the Imperial Eagle since the War of the Five Emperors. But Andrew, his appetite whetted, is looking for more. In Mainz, he tells his heir Stephen the truth of his parentage, telling him “I have won the Roman Empire in the west. It will fall to you, as firstborn son of the firstborn son of Andreas Komnenos, to win it in the east, to restore the one, indivisible Empire of the Romans.”

1504: The Holy War at Sea continues in the waters of the western Mediterranean, the African corsairs striking at any ships that come within reach. In July the first purxiphos constructed in North Africa joins the fray, participating in a combined operation with twenty other ships. The expedition captures a Genoese convoy loaded with naval stores (for the Castilians), seizes three textile-laden barques out of Antwerp and eight other vessels, including an armed (five guns) Roman carrack, and raids the coast of Menorca, carrying over fifteen hundred inhabitants into slavery.

The only significant success against the jihadists scored that year is by the smallest of their victims, Carthage. The city-state maintains a total of fourteen galleys, although only seven are ever mobilized at once for financial reasons. On September 3, five of those galleys meet seven corsair ships off Cape Bon who immediately attack.

The Carthaginians accept the challenge, charging into battle. Just before both sides smash together to board, they fire…with Roman-army-grade Vlach shot. The charges, packed with hundreds of arquebus balls, scythe down the Muslim boarders in bloody swathes. The complements of two of the corsair ships are virtually annihilated. In the end three corsairs escape, another sinks, and the other three are towed back in triumph, to the cheers of Carthage’s people. Outsiders though have some difficulty in understanding the chorus, as the Italian of the Genoese is being steadily Berberized, along with some Greek influence.

In Persia, Fars at last falls to Konstantinos Komnenos. Although the Shah escaped before the end, and is organizing resistance in a new capital at Damghan, it is a tremendous victory. Not even Osman II made it this far. But it is soon marred. An Ottoman army marching on Damghan is ambushed and destroyed, not by a Persian force, but by a Timurid column that had swooped down from the north. The captured cannons and crews are carried back to Samarkand, where the Khan Ulugh Beg puts them to work creating his own gun foundries.

Although the nomadic tribes of Central Asia make up an important part of his powerbase, Ulugh Beg is no warlord in the vein of Genghis Khan or Timur. His capital of Samarkand is a thriving, bustling city of 120,000, with famous madrasas and one of the finest observatories in the world. There subsidized scholars write treatises on both trigonometry and spherical geometry. In 1495, Ulugh Beg had suggested an exchange of astronomers with the Roman Empire (specifically the University of Smyrna) to foster study, but the envoy had arrived during the confusion after Empress Kristina’s death and eventually returned to Samarkand empty-handed.

Construction on the first foundry has just begun when two children are born. The first is far to the northwest, and unknown to the Timurids. And even if they did, they would not care. For what does it matter that King Charles Bonde of Sweden has a daughter named Catherine? She will never amount to anything. Their new prince, on the other hand, is a different story. For he has been given the name, the name that has been silent for a hundred years, a name to make all the nations tremble. Once again, there is a Timur in Samarkand.

1505: In April, four ships offload their cargo into warehouses along the Golden Horn. It is three hundred tons of kaffos, by itself the equal of all the kaffos shipped into the Empire in the sixty years before the fall of Egypt. It is expected that a similar amount will be offloaded in other Imperial ports throughout the year. Ethiopia also provides ivory and slaves (taken from raids against pagans in the interior), but kaffos makes up four-fifths of the value of all Ethiopian exports to Rhomania.

The importance of this trade to both empires cannot be understated. Although still unknown in the rest of Christendom, Rhomania has known about kaffos for sixty years and it already has gained a market, limited only by the exceedingly high costs of the drink. In the four years since the fall of Egypt, the price of kaffos has dropped to a tenth of its former amount, placing it at a level that even carpenters or blacksmiths can afford the occasional drink. In that time the number of kaffos oikoi (coffee houses) in Constantinople has jumped from three to forty eight, serving the hot beverage in winter and iced kaffos in summer.

Besides providing Herakleios with a host of new establishments and imports that can be taxed, the kaffos oikoi will play an important role in Roman culture. Heavily frequented by students and scholars, the oikoi are important in fostering new developments in science and philosophy by providing a common and popular place for people to meet. They also prove to be a veritable fount of information, one that the Spider Prince quickly and effectively taps, although it is by no means his only or primary source.

The university kaffos oikoi (by this point all of them have at least one) are the first to introduce the newsletter. A sheet of paper, or on prominent occasions a pamphlet, the newsletters contain information about important university events and also news from throughout the Empire.

For all the future significance of the trade, which will eventually lead to the modern stereotype of the kaffos-chugging Roman, the greatest impact is on Ethiopia. It has been argued by some scholars that it made the modern Ethiopian Empire possible. Seeing how much kaffos is being exported, Kwestantinos slaps a huge export duty on it, but even that does little to stop the flow. He also legalizes its secular consumption in Ethiopia proper; previously the Ethiopian church had frowned on it due to its role in pre-Christian religious ceremonies.

Meanwhile money flows into Gonder’s coffers. The negusa nagast puts the money to good work, financing the construction of roads, bridges, towers, and ports designed to speed communications and transportation throughout his vast realm. After negotiations are completed with Katepano Demetrios, construction begins on a grand Roman highway from Alexandria to Gonder.

The owners of kaffos plantations find themselves making tremendous amounts of money, and immediately begin looking for how to make more. They quickly discover that it is faster and more cost-effective to transport the kaffos to the coast and then by ship to Suez. To that end, they foster the construction of ports, warehouses, and ships, creating the Ethiopian merchant marine virtually singlehandedly. For crews they turn to the numerous decommissioned sailors from the downsizing of the Ethiopian fleet.

With newfound wealth comes newfound taste. Having numerous contacts with Rhomania gives them an appetite for Roman goods, in particularly silk textiles, jewelry, and sugar. In particular, low-quality Roman silks are extremely popular, despite their comparative expense (on average, a Roman textile costs three to five times more than it would in Constantinople) beyond the class of kaffos merchants. The combined result is that already Ethiopia is Rhomania’s third most important trading partner, after Arles (number 2) and Russia (number 1, whose trade is worth is more than Arles’ and Ethiopia’s combined).

1506: The North African corsairs expand their range of operations, raiding the island of Elba, although an attempt to harry the coast of Provence is literally blown out of the water by the Arletian fleet. The Aragonese fleet, which is the premier power in the western Mediterranean, has like the French-English been suffering from a wave of graft and corruption, as King Jaime VII’s failing health makes it difficult at best for him to keep an eye on his officials.

Yet there is little response to the pirates from the east. In March, Herakleios issues orders for ten monores to reinforce the naval squadrons at Palermo and Malta, while four more plus a dromon are assigned to Valencia. Andreas does not intervene in the arrangements; he is in Jaffa with Empress Veronica and Prince David, commanding joint exercises of the south Syrian, Egyptian (more properly West Egypt), and Augoustamnikai (East Egypt) tagmata.

The reason is that the vast majority of the funds for the navy are being poured into a new project. A primary fleet base has been established at Suez, along with a support base at Aqaba, as well as a forward anchorage for lighter warships at Marsa Alam. The importance of these bases to Herakleios is clearly shown by the fact that the second full-fledged naval dry dock to be built is at Suez (the first is of course at Constantinople, receiving its first ship in 1501).

Besides building and paying for the necessary docks, warehouses, workshops, and barracks for the new bases, it is also quite expensive getting ships from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. The rehabilitation of the Pharaoh’s Canal begins as well, an expensive, labor-intensive operation. Although it will take many years before it is ready, and be far too small to accommodate even the smaller warships, it can be used by flat-bottom cargo barges. To supplement it, the canal is flanked by a series of roads.

An unwelcome side effect is the boon the whole project is to Cairo’s revival, since the crippling of a Muslim metropolis that could rival the Queen of Cities was a welcome side effect of the Sack of Cairo. The importance of cities in Hellenizing the countryside, by drawing in young men and women searching for work and study, is evidenced by the fact that the region of Orthodox Antioch is also majority Orthodox, while the area surrounding Muslim majority Aleppo is also mostly Muslim.

A few light vessels are constructed at Suez, but all the heavier warships are made at the Arsenals. The galleys, with their prefabricated components, are relatively easy to dismantle, portage, and reassemble at Suez. To support this operation, a road network springs up linking the two Red Sea ports and the Mediterranean coast. The much larger purxiphoi, some of which like the Justinian weigh 1200 tons, are significantly more difficult.

To help solve the issue, Herakleios turns to a promising young shipwright and sailor named Kastor Diogenes, who had sailed on Genoese carracks on three Antwerp runs, Portuguese caravels on two visits to Madeira, and on a Norwegian barque that was part of the annual Greenland convoy. Admittedly that is not what caught the Emperor’s eye; it was his jibes that the only god he worshipped was Poseidon, which had earned the ire of the Arsenal priests.

Despite his unorthodox religious beliefs, when it comes to building ships those priests cannot deny that Kastor knows what he is doing. In 1500, his rebuilding of the old purxiphos Autokrator took only forty five instead of the projected fifty five days, with a corresponding decrease in cost. When Herakleios gives him this new assignment in 1504, it is a chance for him to put the lessons he learned in the Atlantic to practice.

The result, which first slides into the Golden Horn in August 1505, is confusingly for naval historians called a dromon (a shortened form of Kastor’s original term ‘great dromon’), the same as the oared battleships that make up the bulk of the Roman fleet. They are skinner and longer than purxiphoi, which makes them better sea handlers but also enables them to sail further up the Nile than purxiphoi, reducing portage costs.

To decrease weight, the aft castle is shortened, while the forecastle almost completely disappears. Portuguese vessels have been moving steadily in that direction for forty years, finding the less top-heavy vessels more seaworthy. The reason that the forecastle shrinks much more than the aft castle is that it is common practice in all European navies to place some of the heaviest guns as bow chasers.

Before that was done, it was found that galleys, which mounted their biggest cannons in the prow because of the oars, had the advantage in the initial approach to battle, which could be decisive. With the emphasis on reducing top-heaviness, it is natural that the forecastle with its heavy weapons shrinks more than the stern castle laden with smaller guns. This also gives the bow a more galley-like look, which is why the new design is called a great dromon.

fleetataqaba.jpg

The Fleet at Suez by Andronikos of Kotyaion, 1511

1507: The reason for all the naval buildup and innovations is not a pressing need for Roman sea power in the Red Sea. With the Ethiopian fleet very friendly and the Omani one moderately so (both because of Ethiopian intermediation and Omani desire for Rhomania to act as a counterweight to the Ottomans), the ships of the Hedjazi and Yemeni are no threat. It is not the Red Sea or Arabia that draws Herakleios’ interest, but India itself.

The wealth pouring in from the kaffos trade has opened Herakleios’ eyes to the possibility of a similar onrush of even more valuable and exotic goods, spices and pepper. These commodities have been a significant part of Roman trade for centuries, and the prospect of controlling the source, or at least cutting out some of the middlemen, is extremely tempting. Using Indian and Arab merchantmen as sources of information, it becomes plain that the time to strike is now.

India has never been united, ever. A vast, diverse region, even its great empires have been decentralized states, prone to fracture into smaller, more cohesive components. Though just a few years earlier, India only mustered three states, they seem to be in the process of fracturing. The Muslim ports of Gujarat and Maharashtra are all independent city-states, squabbling with each other as long as Vijayanagar is not immediately breathing down their neck. Bihar is troubled with revolts in Bengal and Assam.

Meanwhile long-suffering Delhi has not had its fortunes improved by its Timurid Sultans. Facing powerful, hostile neighbors and entrenched corruption and nepotism in the administration, plus a falling-out with their Timurid cousins in Khorasan over Vijayanagara hires of Khorasani mercenaries, the Sultans have been hard pressed at best.

Currently the Sultanate is in an unwanted, unplanned border war. With the news of the Sack of Cairo, several bands of ghazis had decided to strike back for the House of Islam, and picked the nearest target, Swati Kashmir. The Kashmiri were not amused. The retaliation spurred more raids, which spurred more retaliatory strikes, and now not a month goes by without some skirmish in the Punjab.

To help finance the operation, Herakleios arranges for other financial backers to contribute, in exchange for a prearranged percentage of the profits. The Argyropouloi and Eparchoi families, some of the wealthiest jewelry and silk merchants respectively in the Empire provide some of their wares as trading goods. The Rhosoi of Trebizond, major shipwrights, equip two ships in the Red Sea at their own expense.

There are some issues on the part of the private backers in transferring money for their workers in the Sinai. To alleviate the risk and difficulty involved in shipping large amounts of bullion, Herakleios allows them to deposit their coinage at the Imperial Mint in Constantinople. The clientele are then given a certificate, which can be used to redeem the same amount of currency at the Alexandrian mint. This service comes at the cost of a holding fee, but soon takes off in popularity with numerous merchants using the mints and certificates to transfer capital throughout the Empire.

The result of all this nautical and financial engineering comes to fruition at the end of the year, and is known to all Roman schoolchildren as the Pepper Fleet.

Sebastokrator: A purxiphos of eight hundred tons, forty guns.
Aghios Nikolaios: A great dromon of four hundred tons, twenty five guns.
Aghios Giorgios: A great dromon of four hundred tons, twenty five guns.
Aghios Loukas: A great dromon of three hundred sixty tons, twenty two guns.
Nike: A great dromon of three hundred sixty tons, twenty two guns.
Anna: A carrack (similar to a purxiphos but intended as a cargo, not combat vessel, although capable of being armed) of two hundred forty tons, ten guns.
Petros: A carrack of three hundred thirty tons, fifteen guns.
Helena: A carrack of six hundred tons, eighteen guns.

1508: The Pepper Fleet, riding the monsoon winds, departs in the spring, joined by the Ethiopian purxiphos Solomon off Zeila. Their port of landfall in India is Surat, one of the largest and most powerful Gujarati city-states. Despite the heavy armament of the fleet, the focus is on trade, not conquest. Using the Plethon-Medici agent (the ludicrously rich family has agents as far away as Antwerp and Malacca as part of their mercantile network) already in port as an intermediary, the traders set up shop to sell their wares and purchase local goods, primarily pepper.

But things very quickly get out of hand. The Muslim merchants are not enamored of this new, strange competition. One or two Roman agents was acceptable and unthreatening, but this heavily-armed squadron is another matter. When a few Ottoman merchants spread a few words about exactly whose these newcomers are and what their countrymen were doing in Egypt a few years earlier, the tense situation immediately explodes.

A riot overruns some of the Roman stalls but is quickly dispersed by a few volleys of gunfire into the crowd. The westerners retreat to their ships, but negotiations with the Emir of Surat go nowhere. On May 1, a few dozen bravos try to light the Pepper Fleet on fire during the night, a brave but futile attempt. Those who are unfortunate enough to be captured by the enraged sailors are weighed down and thrown into the harbor. That morning, the fleet sets sail but not before shelling the waterfront.

As the monsoon winds are still against them, and their cargo holds largely bereft of pepper, the Fleet sails south. Similarly hostile receptions come from the other free city-states, who dislike the combination of religious and economic competition. Off Kozhikode a small squall temporarily scatters the ships, and the Aghios Loukas is beset by a squadron from that port. Although outnumbering the Roman warship nine to one, the Kozhikodan paraus, comparable in size and capability to a cannon-less monore, have absolutely no answer to her thunderous broadsides. Two of the paraus are roughly handled, at which point the squadron withdraws.

Finally the Pepper Fleet arrives at Alappuzha. A picturesque port crisscrossed by canals, it is called by some of the Venetian sailors the ‘Venetia of the East’. More importantly, the Vijayanagara Emperor Deva Raya II is there. His agents among the free cities have given him some word of the Pepper Fleet’s action, and he is eager to see this new force for himself.

He is delighted by what he finds. The massive size of the warships, dwarfing anything seen in India, and their gleaming arrays of cannons, are very appealing. Although India is no stranger to gunpowder or cannons, the Roman and Ethiopian pieces hold sizeable advantages in range and hitting power. He immediately begins negotiating with the Roman commander, Iason Laskaris.

As the admiral and Emperor talk, the merchants get to work. Roman jewelry sells rather well, but the silk textiles face stiff competition from native manufactures and do not fetch nearly as much of a profit as expected, but the lower-quality garments which are specifically designed to be affordable for the lower classes make some headway (the high-quality items are fighting against upper-tier Indian and Chinese silk and thus seriously disadvantaged). Also Ethiopian ivory and kaffos prove to be quite successful, so steadily the holds of the Pepper Fleet are filled with cloves, nutmeg, and pepper.

As the monsoon winds begin to shift, an agreement is made. The Romans are to be granted trading quarters in Alappuzha and Pondicherry, with their own church, well, and bakery, to be administered by their own laws, weights, and measures amongst themselves, in exchange for an annual payment. But that is not the most important part of the agreement, although it is something Iason had no authority to negotiate.

In exchange for Roman military aid in conquering the free cities of the west coast, they are also to be granted quarters in Mumbai, and the cities of Surat and Kozhikode in full, with complete sovereignty to be vested in Constantinople. It is an extremely, dangerously in the eyes of some courtiers, generous offer, but it is mitigated by the proviso that the transfer will only take place when the whole coast between Surat and Alappuzha is once more in Vijayanagara hands. Deva Raya II’s generosity is due to the fact that he has no chance of regaining those lands without a powerful fleet, which he no longer has.

With the monsoon now with them, the fleet departs for home, leaving behind four merchants and fifty soldiers in Alappuzha, along with a pile of trading goods. It is the merchants’ responsibilities to sell those goods for spices, storing them until they can be picked up by ships from the west.

After being gone for eight months, the Pepper Fleet sails into Suez. The cargoes are sold on the market, and the Empire goes wild. Even with the silks’ mediocre performance, the venture has garnered a sixteen hundred percent profit. Herakleios publicly censures Iason for exceeding his authority, but then appoints him commander of the Second Pepper Fleet and doubles his salary.

Although it will take a few years before it is ready, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that it will not be a fearsome force. The number of private backers for the Second Fleet is quadruple that of the First Fleet, the Rhosoi alone agreeing to pay for four carracks. And for every hyperpyra the merchants pledge, Herakleios matches.

1509: War continues in the west, poorly for France-England. A smallpox outbreak cripples the first Plantagenet army assembled after Merles, giving the Arletians a critical few years where they are not faced by any serious opposition in the field. The main thrust is concentrated on the Garonne, with the goal of securing all of Aquitaine. Of particular concern to Edward VII is the number of Gascon fortresses that capitulate without a fight. As fellow inhabitants of the lands of the langue d’oc, in contrast to the lands of the langue d’oeil, the Provencals and Gascons have much in common, and King Louis I has been skillfully exploiting the fact.

But in Calais, the only explanation can be treason, plus an angry God. So in April Edward VII decides to kill two birds with one stone, and orders the formal expulsion of all Jews in his domain. The Provencal coast is home to a sizeable Jewish population, and there are rumors that the French and English Jews are Arletian agents in disguise.

With Germany in chaos, most of the refugees flee to Iberia, as the way to Arles is blocked by the reforming Plantagenet armies. Neither Castile or Portugal give them a warm welcome. Al-Andalus is another matter, but when four hundred Jews are captured by African corsairs just eight miles from Cartagena, the ardor of the refugees for this new land is significantly weakened.

The blatant seizure so close to a major Andalusi naval base is a testament to the amazing growth in power of the corsairs. Their ranks swelled by renegades from Europe, the pirates have been steadily expanding their pillaging. Settlements on the Canary Islands have been sacked, and steady sweeps of the powerful Portuguese fleets have proven to be of little use.

Mighty squadrons can temporarily clear an area of pirates, but as soon as they depart the raiders return. The only way to stop them is to ruin their harbors and smoke out their bases of operation. But the African coast is dotted with small harbors and the interior filled with thousands of tribesmen just waiting to fall on any European army. The Aragonese attack on Oran, one of the most prominent corsair ports, last year was an unmitigated disaster. The fleet was smashed to pieces by an autumn storm, while the army wasted away under the triple assault of dysentery, smallpox, and Algerians. The loss of over thirty ships and twelve thousand men (at least half of which now swell the ranks of African galley slaves) make it the greatest military disaster in Aragonese history since Selinus.

So the Jews look further afield, to Rhomania. Despite the dangers, at least one hundred thousand over the next decade will emigrate to the Empire from France-England via Al-Andalus, nearly all of them settling in Calabria. Due to overzealous transfers of Orthodox Calabrians to Syria, the region is somewhat depopulated and is therefore an ideal place in Herakleios’ eyes to settle the newcomers. Thus begins the famous Calabrian Jewry, of such profound importance to the history of Italy.

At least six thousand are taken captive by the Barbary pirates en route. But although Roman naval efforts are focused on the exceedingly expensive (and equally profitable) Indian ventures, Constantinople is not completely blind to what is going on in these waters. Improvements in Roman blast furnaces have raised production of cast iron, and Herakleios has funded much research into the development of cast iron cannons.

Although heavier, and prone to much more catastrophic failure, cast iron cannons cost a mere fraction of bronze weaponry, hence Herakleios’ interest. When he begins issuing orders for the outfitting of the Second Pepper Fleet, Herakleios also arranges for greater production of cast iron cannons, with the view of having iron mikropurs and culverins, and bronze great guns.

However he also makes the iron guns available for sale, and sells the designs to several gunsmiths who begin producing for the open market. The much cheaper weapons, combined with a fifteen percent cut in the cannon tax, mean that Roman ship-owners can afford much heavier armaments for their vessels.

In Germany the situation is confused, as usual. Even though Emperor Andrew is obviously in the ascendant, his flagrant disregard of the rights of the electors has alienated most of any potential princely support he could have gained in Germany. Southern and central Germany are muttering, yet under his control, but northern Germany is effectively independent of either Emperor. The other Holy Roman Emperor, Manfred, is holed up in Schleswig, clearly the leader of a doomed cause. In March Denmark invades his domains.

By mid-May Manfred is billeting his troops in the houses of Aarhus. As soon as Danish troops had rolled across the border, he had fallen on and scattered them with an army of his own, three times larger than anyone expected he had, including twenty five hundred Russian archontes, the dowry of his Russian bride. Supplementing the finest cavalry in the world were hosts of mercenaries, paid for by Roman subsidies.

Herakleios was seriously annoyed by Andrew’s self-elevation, and the chancery of Constantinople addresses him merely as the Emperor of the Germans and Hungarians. Buda’s protests have been answered by a joint exercise of the Epirote, Macedonian, and Bulgarian tagmata in Serbia (also has the benefit of cowing the Serbian princes), and the betrothal of the Vlach Crown Prince Mircea (age five) with Princess Theodora (age two), the daughter of Emperor Andreas and Empress Veronica.

Roman marriage alliances mean little in the Baltic, but Manfred’s lightning campaign shakes Scandinavia, for one of those slain was the King of Denmark himself. His successor is King Christopher III, a boy of four. The situation for the kingdom is grave; Andrew has his hands full dealing with rebellious Bohemia and a recalcitrant Saxony, so he is no help, while the fleets of the Hansa, loyal to Manfred, are beginning to lick their lips. So the Danes turn to the mightiest Catholic power in the region, Sweden.

King Charles II (note that the OTL instance of creating fictional King Charles of Sweden has not occurred) has made great steps in centralizing his northern kingdom. His own succession was a significant victory for the hereditary monarchial principle, and he has skillfully used his estates in Finland to fund schools for scribes to administer the state. The remainder of his profits have been devoted to troops modeled after Roman akrites, quite adept at fighting in woods and crushing peasant tax revolts.

He is quite happy to intervene, but not without being paid a steep price. His initial demand is angrily rejected, but two weeks later news arrives that Russian warships are assembling at Riga. No one can forget that the Emperor in the North is the son-in-law of Megas Rigas Nikolai, who can add another fifteen thousand archontes to the twenty five hundred already in Manfred’s armies.

So Denmark accepts Charles’ demand. King Christopher is to betrothed to Princess Catherine of Sweden, to be wed when Christopher turns fifteen. At the same time, Charles is appointed head of the regency council to ‘ensure the safety of his new son’. Manfred, who has no desire for war with Sweden, withdraws from Denmark after the accord, laden with spoils and significantly more prestigious than before.

* * *

The White Palace, Constantinople, April 13, 1510:

Venera walked into the bath room, the steam immediately dampening her thin silken shift. Flicking off her sandals, she pattered across the stone floor towards the hot tub, heated by stones taken from the nearby bakery ovens. Herakleios was already in there.

She was not surprised by that. Her husband, junior Emperor of the Romans, was extremely fond of the hot tubs. When he was ill, it was almost impossible for him to stay warm, save in the tubs.

His eyes had been closed, but they flicked open as she approached. He had been doing better though these past couple of weeks, as spring blossomed. He’d eaten twice a day the past three days in a row, much improved from that worrisome spell in January where he ate a mere three times in ten days.

“Are the servants gone?” she asked innocently as Herakleios stared at her hungrily, her thin shift clinging tightly to her body. The look in his eye answered the question. “Good.” Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to strip, peeling the silk from her thighs. A giggle caught in her throat as she saw the boyish grin on her husband’s face.

This is ridiculous; we’re both adults, a part of her thought as she gently starting peeling the garment from her shoulders, going teasingly slow. That’s true, another part thought, and I don’t care. In between their responsibilities as Emperor and Empress, and the strain of Herakleios’ disease, they had to be so serious, so often. Her hand started trembling in rage as she remembered having to listen to the Bishop of Nicomedia prattle on about Herakleios’ habit of skipping services. That’s because he’s too busy bleeding out the ass! If God wanted him to go to church, maybe he should fix that first!

“Is something wrong?” Herakleios.

“No…I don’t think so,” Venera replied, revealing her naked breasts. “Do you?” she cooed. Herakleios shook his head no hurriedly. This is our time, and if we want to be silly, so be it.

“So did you hear what Andreas Angelos did?” she asked, shrugging off the shift. Again Herakleios shook his head no. His bastard half-brother was in Syria, fighting some Arab tribe that had pillaged the frontier. “He stole his commander’s underwear…” she pulled her own off… “…attached it to a kite and flew it toward the enemy’s camp.” She tossed it aside.

Sliding into the tub opposite from Herakleios, she continued. “Three days later the tribe surrendered to him, not his commander. Andreas contends the events are related.”

Herakleios nodded. “He’s probably right,” he said, his eyes following Venera’s hand as she dappled some water on her cleavage.

“He’s quite a character, don’t you think?” she asked, stretching her legs so that her toe traced his calf. “He still calls the Empress Veronica ‘that tavern wench’, except when she has that crossbow handy, of course.”

“Mm, hmm,” Herakleios grunted.

Venera smiled; she loved playing this game, seeing how long her husband could hold out with her teasing him. “Surrender already?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

For a second, Herakleios was silent, but then his will to resist crumbled. “Oh, yes.”

Venera grinned, sliding over towards him. “That was easy,” she said, settling onto his lap. “I don’t think you’re putting up much of a fight.”

“You don’t fight fair.”

“And you like it that way,” she replied, kissing him. “Now what do I want, now that I’ve won? Hmmm…” She thought, scratching her chin and sliding forward. Herakleios was relatively tall, but Venera was even taller, more than even most men, so her breasts were right up in his face. “Hmmm, I just can’t decide.”

“Women,” Herakleios muttered.

She put a hand under his chin and tilted it upward so their eyes met. “What was that, honey?” she asked, coyly.

“Oh, nothing.”

Venera nodded, kissing him on the forehead. “Now, where was I? Ah, I was deciding what I wanted. I just…” She nipped at his ear. “can’t…” Nip. “decide.” Nip. “Ah, the hell with that, I’ll just take you.”

“Finally,” Herakleios muttered, sighing in relief.

Venera burst into laughter, her body shaking. “Worried that I’d keep that up for, oh, twenty minutes?” she teased, caressing his cheek. He nodded, exasperated. “Oh, you’re too easy.” A pause. “You’re also cold.” The water was cooling, since with the servants gone there was no one to add hot stones to replace the cool ones. “But don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm.”

They kept each other very warm.


janeseymour.jpg

Venera of Abkhazia, Empress of the Romans, from The Komnenoi, Episode 103, "The Twins"

* * *

1510: The court at Constantinople does not pay much attention to the developments in the north. For in late April, Prince Konstantinos, son of Herakleios and Venera, catches tuberculosis. For a while, it looks like he might live, but on May 3, the end comes swiftly. At the hour of Vespers, the prince dies in his mother’s arms.

* * *

Constantinople, May 7, 1510:

Nikephoros was happy. Konstantinos was dead, killed by poison in his medicine. Without an heir, Herakleios looked less useful as an Emperor. And now it was time to celebrate.

He rounded the corner, and there it was, The Captain’s Daughter, one of Herakleios’ brothels. Nikephoros would give that to his uncle, he knew how to make money. The Emperor owned over two hundred brothels across the Empire; most were in the old Mameluke Sultanate, taking advantage of the fact that they were filled with young, bored garrison soldiers far from home. But there were some in the Imperial heartland, and no less than four in Constantinople. But this one was Nikephoros’ favorite.

He opened the door, but then his eyes darted over to a nearby dentist’s shop. He felt like he was being watched. There was no one there, but a man blandly glanced at him, then continued on his way. He looked familiar. Do I know him? The squeal of a girl inside distracted him. Nah. He entered.

Immediately Fatima, an old Arab battle-axe, a former prostitute and head of the establishment, looked at him. He held up a finger and she nodded him toward the room. She knew what he wanted. Fatima had a wide variety, which is why Nikephoros liked the place, including two girls from the Zanj and one from far Cathay, whom he’d all tried. But he had one particular woman that was his favorite.

He opened the door and sat on the bead, seeing the shape of Natasha’s voluptuous body behind a silk curtain. She came out, absolutely nothing on, but she’d carefully arranged her long raven hair so that it covered her breasts. “Milord wants me tonight?” she purred, sitting on his lap. Even though his silk pants, he could feel her body heat.

“Yes. You have done very well.” She’d successfully completed her third assignment, stealing the land deeds of the Macedonian tax prefect, proof of the official’s illegal purchases of estates outside the capital. Her next would be an assassination. If she was as skilled with the knife as she was in bed, he would have much use for it. He squeezed her breasts, the Russian moaning. “Oh, yes. Very well indeed.”

* * *

But whatever joy the Prince of Spiders feels at the death of Prince Konstantinos soon dissipated. For at the beginning of the next year, two women give birth. The first is the wife of Andreas Angelos. The jokester has a son, who is given the name Isaakios. The second woman is Empress Venera herself. On January 17, 1511, she gives birth to twins, the oldest a girl and the youngest a boy. They are Alexeia and Alexios.

1511: The fortunes of war continue to blow against the Plantagenets. Fate seems to smile on them when Leo Komnenos is ambushed near Bordeaux, and then frowns again when Leo proceeds to hack his way out. Despite the heavy losses to Leo’s column, it serves to bolster the Prince’s prestige as he demonstrated impeccable bravery in the melee. Six days later the garrison of Bordeaux surrenders to the Arletians after news arrives of the bungled ambush. To honor Leo, the new King of Arles, Charles II (his father died a year earlier), makes Leo’s eleven-year-old son Basileios one of his squires.

In the north, the situation is little better. Newcastle-upon-Tyne has fallen, and although logistics have stopped the Norwegian-Scottish advance short of York, their raids are ravaging northern England. Privateers are both sides continue to turn the Channel, Irish, and North Sea into a war zone, attacking each other and anyone else within reach. Five more Castilian carracks have been attacked, along with twenty Dutch vessels. Pride of place goes to the privateers operating out of Yarmouth, patronized by the Duke of Norfolk, which have, in addition to the usual Iberian, Italian, Hansa, and Scandinavian targets, seized three Roman carracks laden with silk, jewelry, and sugar. The hauls are enough to pay for the squadron’s expense for the next decade.

But Rhomania has not been entirely (admittedly mostly) blind to the piracy in the west. On May 4, four Barbary galleys attack a Roman vessel off Sardinia, surrounding her and closing to board. They are almost in range when her gun ports slam open and she delivers a double-shot broadside at point-blank range. One galley is literally blown out of the water, while the second is stormed by waves of marines wielding a new and deadly invention. It is called kyzikoi, matchlock handguns small enough to be held in one hand and named after Kyzikos, their city of origin (largely deserted in earlier years, it was reestablished by European refugees from the Smyrna War). The corsair ship is overwhelmed, the other two fleeing.

The ship is called the Moldy Wreck, named by its commander, Andreas Angelos. Rather discontented with playing second fiddle on the eastern frontier (hence his underwear prank), he had asked his father for a more independent assignment. Given a new, unnamed great dromon, fresh from the Imperial Arsenal, four hundred tons and twenty seven guns, his mission is to ply the trade routes from Sicily to Antwerp, killing any pirates of any nationality he finds.

Andreas Jr. faithfully carries out his orders, sinking another Barbary galley off Gibraltar, and forcing an English barque to cast off her two prizes (one Portuguese, one Castilian) near Galicia. But it is off Flanders when his most famous action occurs, the rescuing of a to-be princess.

Her name is Mary of Antwerp, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Reynaerd van Afsnee, the richest non-royal man in Christendom after Andronikos Plethon. Besides being the only child of such wealth, she is also considered one of the most beautiful women in Christendom. After months of negotiations, she is to be married to Crown Prince Arthur, the five-year-old eldest son of King Edward VII.

Reynaerd van Afsnee and his family have based their wealth for over a hundred and twenty years on trading contacts with Rhomania. Long-time trading partners of the Plethon family since before the War of the Five Emperors, that has enabled them to have first access to all high-quality Roman silk exported outside of the Mediterranean. That has not only made them supremely wealthy, but also done much to spur the rise of Antwerp, the silks’ port of disembarkation. By this point the van Afsnees have their fingers and agents in everything from the Neva to the Senegal. So at one stroke, Edward VII can get the greatest of the Dutch ports on his side, and draw on an absolutely huge financial network (the van Afsnee and Plethon-Medici commercial empires) for loans.

It is that wealth that compensates for her lack of nobility. The bullion content initially comes off as insulting, 100,000 florins of gold and sixty thousand of silver. But they are accompanied by 460,000 florins-worth of high-grade Roman silk and 70,000 florins-worth of Chinese. To that is added 80,000 florins-worth of Imperial silk, the finest quality of Roman silk, of the level worn by the Emperors themselves, forbidden by law to be exported outside of the Empire, on the grounds that the barbarians are not worthy of it. The final sweetener are the offer of six carracks plus ten thousand florins each for their outfitting as warships, to be delivered after the wedding.

Yet it is the loan offers that finally convince Edward. An immediate loan of 250,000 florins, with interest at half the current market rate, is provided in the dowry. Reynaerd’s Plethon friends, interested in marrying up possibly through the French-English royal family, offer a sweetener loan of another 75,000 florins in the dowry. Plus Reynaerd holds out the possibility of another loan of equal magnitude from himself, plus another 350,000 from the Antwerp burghers once the wedding occurs. Again the Plethon intervene, and based on their projections on the gathering Second Pepper Fleet (in which they are the second largest shareholders), offer an absolutely immense loan, one million florins, over fifteen times Edward’s revenues as King of England.

But an event of this magnitude cannot be hidden, and the value of the prize is immense. Off of the Flemish coast Mary’s transport is attacked by three English privateers.

The ship is well armed and manned, but the English know what and who is on board, and are willing to fight hard to get it. The tide is turning against the Dutch when a ship appears on the horizon, a full spread of sail out, bearing down on them at an unbelievable speed. The second volley from her great bow chasers dismast one of the English vessels. The Brabantines, holding out in the aft castle, launch a counterattack as the Moldy Wreck grapples the second English ship, the marines storming across with the cry of “For God and Emperor Andreas!”

Although Andreas Angelos is wounded in the left eye, the Englishmen take flight. The badly damaged carrack is escorted back to Antwerp, during which Andreas loses the eye, and torture of the prisoners reveals that the pirates were in the pay of the Duke of Norfolk, the most preeminent of the English grandees.

When they sail into Antwerp, the Romans are treated to a massive triumphal procession. The tale of the battle is immediately turned into a ballad, called Perseus of Rhomania, where Andreas is turned into a modern-day Perseus, Mary playing the role of Andromeda, today one of the most famous pieces of Dutch literature. Reynaerd, grateful for the rescue of his only child, gives the gold of the dowry to Andreas Angelos personally and divides the silver amongst his crew.


sirfrancisbryan.jpg

Andreas Angelos. Unique among the children of Andreas Komnenos, he is making quite a name for himself for his exploits at sea.

The engagement to Arthur is cut off, as Reynaerd is enraged over the assault on his daughter’s life by no one less than an English grandee and instead Mary marries recently-widowed King Charles I of Lotharingia for the same dowry, for which he had been negotiating. Three weeks after the marriage, it bears fruit when a combined Lotharingian-Dutch army annihilates Archduke Antoine at Utrecht. Participating in the battle are three companies of Hungarian hussars, part of an alliance arrangement between Charles and Andrew. The Emperor in the South (as he is known to distinguish him from Manfred) agrees to recognize full Lotharingian sovereignty in its pre-Cannae borders, in exchange for a twelve-year payment of tribute (used to pay for Hungarian garrisons in Bavaria).


mariatheresa.jpg

Mary of Antwerp, Queen of Lotharingia, 1519. It is her life that is the origin of the phrase "Hell hath no fury like a woman betrayed".

1512: The situation for the Emperor in the North is improving, despite the defeat of his preeminent vassal in the west. The birth of a son by his Russian bride significantly strengthens the alliance with the Great Kingdom, as old Megas Rigas Nikolai quite likes the idea of a grandson as Holy Roman Emperor, to go with his nephew as Roman Emperor. To pave the way for any necessary intervention, a treaty is arranged with Vlachia whereby Russian troops will be allowed to march through Vlach territory, provided they respect all local laws and pay for all supplies.

One immediate benefit is that Sweden-Denmark dares not move against Manfred, now that he has withdrawn completely from Danish territory. King Charles II of Sweden is uncomfortable aware of how vulnerable his Finnish estates are to Russian incursions. And unlike a war with Rhomania, Lord Novgorod the Great would savor a conflict with Sweden. But Nikolai will not act without provocation, as his attention is fixed to the trans-Volga, where the Cossacks have been trouncing the Khanates of Sibir and the White Horde.

Andrew too is slowing down. With Germany muttering at best, he has had to rely greatly on Magyar troops and officials to keep his German territories in line, which only serves to further aggravate the princes. Manfred has been waging, thanks to the great print shops of Lubeck, a continuous propaganda war, harkening back to the days of the Ottonian Emperors and their war against the Magyar menace, exhorting ‘the German people to stand united behind their true Emperor, so that a new Lechfeld can be won, and Germania made safe, free and prosperous.’ Obviously something is working, for in August, an assassin makes an attempt on Andrew’s life, wounding although not killing him.

In these troubled times, it is hardly surprising that thoughts of the afterlife are never far from people’s mind. Saxony has been an oasis of calm for the past few years; the most powerful of the German states after Bavaria, its strength means both Manfred and Andrew must treat it with respect, even though it has been following a policy of de facto independence from either Emperor.

All that changes on September 14. On that day, Heinrich Bohm, a doctor of theology from the University of Prague, nails a list on the door of the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary (in OTL, the site of the Dresden Frauenkirche). It is a list of criticisms of Catholic theology and practice, strongly influenced by Hussite beliefs. An usual method to start an academic debate, what is special is that Bohm posts a copy in German next to the Latin original. He wants a bigger audience for the debate, as there is a vacancy on the Dresden university faculty, and Bohm wants the position.

The reaction is not exactly what Bohm expected. By September 17, there are at least two thousand copies of the 75 Criticisms circulating in the city. By the end of the month, they are in Bohemia and Bavaria. Heinrich is summoned to the court of the Saxon Duke Johannes V, but not for a condemnation; he wants to hear more. He is particularly interested in the arguments about how the secular power should be wielded only by secular rulers, namely the princes, and that in the secular sphere good Christians owe the same devotion and loyalty to their prince as would be due to the Pope in religious affairs.

The Saxon court on the other hand is horrified. Bohm’s criticisms in many cases flirt with heresy at best, but when the word ‘heresy’ is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is Avignon. There is fear that this is the vanguard of a heretical attack, with Hungary constituting the main wave. Their concerns are not helped when several squadrons of hussars skirt the Bohemian border, enforcing tax payments from the villages. At the same time, the Elbe, swelled by autumn rains, overflows its banks and floods several villages, along with a part of Dresden itself. Many think it is a sign from an angry God.

So on November 12, the conspirators, a mix of clergy, pious nobles, and Johannes’ sister Amalie strike. Duke Johannes V is seized in the coup, but Heinrich Bohm manages to flee the city, eventually making his way to Gdansk. From there he takes a ship to Antwerp, and from there on to England. Although the troublesome scholar is gone, none of the conspirators are quite sure what to do next. Andrew is clearly massing on the border, thinking that with Saxony in an uproar, now is the time to strike. Then on December 1, Johannes dies under mysterious circumstances (many believe poisoned by Amalie).

Without even a puppet duke, only a council of confused old men and a women to lead a duchy filled with agitated people, Saxony seems right for the picking. So the council of Saxony turns to the one leader who has stood against heresy and won, his most Catholic Majesty, Emperor Manfred. On Christmas Day, at the very cathedral where Bohm nailed his criticisms, he is crowned Duke of Saxony. Although he appoints Amalie as his viceroy, and pledges to respect the rights and privileges of the Saxon nobility, the importance of the coronation for the history of Germany cannot be understated. For in Manfred are legally united the domains of Bavaria, Tyrol, Schleswig, Holstein, Brandenburg, and Saxony (although the first two are currently in Hungarian hands).

The Saxons do what they do not for the benefit of Saxony, or Germany, but for the beleaguered Catholic faith. They have no doubt that they have done for the right thing, for on December 31 the news arrives. Andrew of Hungary is dead, slain by infection from his assassination wound. But to the Saxons, the answer is that God has smiled on them for the faith, and delivered them from their enemy.

The Hungarians mourn their fallen Emperor. All of Buda goes into mourning, for his concern for the poor and his military victories abroad ensure that he is loved by all of Magyar society. Fifty thousand attend the procession as his body is carried into Buda, to be buried in a mausoleum next to that of Andrew the Warrior King. His son Stephen ascends the throne without any difficulty, pledging to finish the work his father has left undone. There is no doubt that Stephen will have the wholehearted support of the Hungarian people in that task, for he is the firstborn son of the most beloved of the Arpad kings.

1513: In Buda Stephen is crowned Holy Roman Emperor, in flagrant disregard of all the customs of the Reich, and without the approval of any of the Electors. His first action is to the north, where the fervor of fanatical Catholics has turned into violence against the Hussites of Bohemia, Saxony, and Pomerania. The hard-pressed heretics turn in desperation to Stephen, who responds vigorously and dispels the attacks.

However the whole operation does much to solidify the strengthening view in northern Germany that the war against the Magyar Emperors is a war against heresy. The new Pope in Hamburg (the place of exile after the fall of Mainz) Leo X fully supports the view, allowing Manfred to tax a fifth of clerical income in his domains, and ordering sees from outside Germany to commit to the fund. This causes an immediate spat with Edward VII, who is also fighting heretics but was never granted a similar privilege, because ‘my heretics are not threatening the person of the Holy Father’.

His position in northern France seems to be stabilizing, despite the failure of the Antwerp betrothal. The Arletian offensive, after the fall of Aquitaine, managed a lightning rush that moved the border to the Loire valley, but has slowed down significantly due in large part to the stout resistance of Tours and Orleans. In the lands of the langue d’oeil the Arletians can count on far less turncoats. Most of the fighting is concentrated in the Loire valley, and although the semi-professional Arletian lances give better then they get, sheer attrition is starting to show in France-England’s favor.

This is helped somewhat by Leo’s conduct. After the Bordeaux ambush, he has commanded seven different engagements and won them all, but through courage and ferocity rather than skill, piling up a horrendous Plantagenet body count, but also quite a high Arletian one. Plus his refusal to rein in his troops post-battle ‘antics’ is further complicating Arletian efforts to win over the region. Reminders that King Charles of Arles is a direct male descendant of Francis ‘the Butcher’ whisper in the wind.

That said, Arletian policy in the lands of the langue d’oeil is not the most conducive to earning the love of the French people. That Arles has been heavily influenced by Rhomania, there can be no doubt. At any given day, there are at least a thousand Roman merchants in the harbors of Provence. The centralized administration of Arles’ largest trading partner is the envy of the court in Marseille, and Charles is attempting to establish it in his new conquests. Provencal is to be the language of the courts and laws, which are to be organized on Provencal custom, instead of local tradition. The exception to this rule is Aquitaine, for Gascon custom is viewed as ‘close enough’ to Provencal to pass muster.

The taille is levied on all Frenchmen, including the local nobility and clergy, and breaking with French tradition, Charles sets the taille at a standard and very high rate and then leaves it there, without the usual annual adjustment. Naturally this imposition of an extraordinary tax now being treated like a regular occurrence angers many, particularly the nobility of France (Charles is intent on making France pay for the war, with the Arletian and Gascon tailles set at two-thirds the French rate). The war in Germany also exerts some influence on the war in France, as the clergy emphasize the heretical nature of the Arletians, plus the influence of the heretic Romans on Arletian policy, with some radical peasants and townsmen taking up the cry ‘taxation is heresy’.

Although the French are finding Marseille more burdensome than Calais, that does little to help Edward VII. In July the hammer blow falls. Lotharingia declares war on the third day of the month. Although the actions of Mary of Antwerp play a significant role (supposedly she refused to make love with her husband the king until he made war on England) it is also an easy way to gain the support of the long-suffering Dutch. Nine days later Castile declares war as well, contributing ten thousand men and thirty ships.

In the Mediterranean, Andreas Angelos is at it again. Off the African coast, he spots a Barbary galley bearing down on a Roman carrack. Chasing it off, he pursues, grappling and boarding the corsair within range of the port batteries of Algiers itself, the greatest of the Barbary cities. Two more galleys sally to support their Muslim brothers; the first is blown apart by the Moldy Wreck’s bow chasers, at which point the second withdraws.

Nonetheless, his would-be triumphal return to Constantinople is marred. The day before he arrives, his uncle Andronikos Angelos, dies of old age. Emperor Andreas returns to the capital for the funeral, for despite the row over Andreas Angelos’ parentage, the Master of Sieges has nonetheless been Andreas’ bodyguard, companion, and friend for sixty years.

While the west is at war, Russia is calm and peaceful, save for the low-level rumble along the eastern frontier. In May, an university is founded at Draconovsk, the largest city in Scythia (OTL Ukraine) with twenty thousand inhabitants. It is the second in Russia, and like the one at Novgorod it is a near copy of a Roman institution. But of the faculty, a quarter are Romans, another quarter Russians educated in the Empire, and half from the University of Novgorod.

Although the importance and number of Russian intellectuals are rising, Roman scholars still retain much importance in the Great Kingdom, particularly in the Novgorodian sphere (due to the division of Russia into Novgorod, Lithuania, Pronsk, and Scythia all of which have significant local autonomy, the Great Kingdom of the Rus is often classified as a ‘federal empire’). Many Roman university students are hired as tutors for Russian upper-class children, since speaking Greek is considered a sign of high culture.

At the same time, the intellectual current generated by the two universities is challenged by a new movements, the Monks-Beyond-The-Volga. As peasant emigration is concentrated south towards Scythia, the Orthodox church has taken the lead in developing the trans-Volga, where on paper Russia rules, but reality is a different story. It is a harsh, wild existence, living on the fringes of the known world, carving a place in the wilderness, both physically and spiritually. The monks are mostly Russian, although about 10% are Greeks, followers of a strong mystical Orthodox tradition heavily influenced by hesychasm and extremely popular amongst their Cossack neighbors.

Many of the monks also accompany the Cossacks on their raids against the Tatars to the east and south. Sibir, the Timurid Empire, and the White Horde all suffer from the attacks of the disciplined Cossack hosts, divided into polki (regiments) five hundred strong, each one with at least one battery of artillery. The White Horde suffers the most from the annual incursions, as it lacks the strength of the Timurid Empire or the distance of Sibir.

1514: Deva Raya II has been quite annoyed at the delay in the Second Pepper Fleet. Every year since the First Pepper Fleet, a few Roman vessels, along with a couple of Ethiopians, have ridden the monsoon winds, but these are traders, interested in spices, not warfare. His mood substantially improves when the Second Pepper Fleet sails in Alappuzha.

It is twenty two ships strong, including thirteen great dromons and two purxiphoi, along with fifteen hundred Roman soldiers. The largest of the great dromons, a five hundred tonner with thirty two guns, is the Hikanatos, commanded by Andreas Angelos. His father had had him transferred to the Indian Ocean during the winter, while his old ship continued its anti-piracy patrol in the west.

India as well as Rhomania is astir at the news from Persia. Aside from a handful of raids that have since died down, the Ottomans and Timurids are not fighting each other, allowing the Turks to concentrate their energies on the Shah, who is no more. With the fall of Damghan all of the former realms of the Shahanshah are either in Ottoman hands, or that of the Emirs of Yazd or Tabas. Their combined armies are resoundingly defeated at Meybod, although that victory is somewhat marred by a smaller defeat at Khorasani hands near Bafq. But the battle of Bafq does not stop the massive ceremony staged in Baghdad.

Suleiman is officially proclaimed Shahanshah, Sultan of E-raq and E-ran, and Caliph. The last title is taken on the grounds that the Ottoman Empire, as the most powerful Muslim state in the world, bears the responsibility for defending the Muslim faith against her enemies. This is especially important as in Baghdad’s eyes, the Hedjaz is a Roman vassal. Legally it is not, as Sharif Ali ibn Saud has no treaty obligations with Constantinople but as a gesture of goodwill sends a biannual shipment of three Arabian stallions to the Roman capital.

Suleiman is willing to practice what he preaches, and to aid the Muslims of Gujarat and Maharashtra he dispatches thirty galleys, virtually the entirely of the Ottoman fleet, to Surat to reinforce the gathering Muslim armada. Andreas Angelos had been dispatched to Kolkata, where he successfully negotiated with the Bihari king for a trade quarter in Kolkata with similar rights to the ones held by Romans in Vijayanagar. But he returns in time for the planned offensive, the Roman fleet providing naval support for the Vijayanagara army.

The Hindu Emperor can muster over fifty thousand men, forty cannon (although of a very poor quality compared to Roman artillery), and three hundred elephants, but without a fleet he stands little chance of seizing the port cities. Everyone involves knows that the contest will be decided at sea. On August 1, the fleets meet at Ratnagiri.

The Romans muster fifteen warships, joined by three Ethiopian vessels. The government in Gonder has negotiated successfully for trading quarters in Alappuzha, and made an arrangement with Rhomania that in exchange for military support in India they shall receive quarters in Surat and Kozhikode once they are Roman. Just before the battle, the Romans and Ethiopians are joined by an unexpected defector, the commander of the Ottoman contingent.

He is Basileios Komnenos, son of Anastasia Komnena and twin brother to Konstantinos Komnenos (both take their far more prestigious maternal family name). His time in Ottoman service has not been nearly as beneficial as his brother’s. Largely ostracized from the Ottoman court due to his refusal to convert to Islam (there were rumors in Constantinople that he had converted, but they were false), he also expected to be appointed governor of Hormuz. He only had commanded the fleet that starved the great port into submission, but the city had been given to an Arab from Basra. The fact that his star has risen this far is Sultan Suleiman’s desire to keep his best friend Konstantinos happy.

But Basileios has had enough of E-raq and E-ran. In exchange for asylum in Rhomania, he provides a complete order of battle for the Muslim fleet. They number a hundred and forty strong.

The battle begins at dawn, and is a slaughter. Only the Ottoman galleys can match the Roman and Ethiopian artillery in quality, and the two purxiphoi alone mount as many pieces as all thirty galleys combined. Most of the Indian attacks are blown out of the water before they can press home their attacks, although the sheer number of vessels mean the less maneuverable Roman and Ethiopian purxiphoi are grappled and boarded. But even there the odds are against them, for their Orthodox opponents are far taller than them.

The battle lasts all day and ends in a crushing Roman-Ethiopian victory. Both Basileios Komnenos and Andreas Angelos are the heroes of the day. The former identifies the flagship of the Ottoman contingent and leads the boarding party that seizes it, personally cutting down the ship’s pilot. Andreas Angelos meanwhile tracks down the ship carrying the fleet’s pay and takes it and its cargo.

The battle is nothing less than a disaster for the Muslims of India. With the sea in Orthodox hands, their re-conquest by Vijayanagar is only a matter of time and Deva Raya II sets to it with a vengeance. At the same time he dispatches waves of Rajput cavalry, descendents of emigrants, north of the Narmada river to pillage the Delhi Sultanate so there will be no aid from that quarter.

It is also a significant blow to the Ottomans, who have lost the bulk of their naval strength, just after news arrives that Khorasan and the Timurid Empire have signed a defensive anti-Ottoman alliance. The defection of Basileios Komnenos is a major surprise as well, since the Roman was very good at hiding his dissatisfaction. Some of Konstantinos’ political enemies use the opportunity to move against him, the new governor of Damghan accusing him of complicity in his brother’s treason. A few days an assassin tries and fails to kill the Roman prince.

Konstantinos’ enraged Persian soldiers immediately put the assassin to the rack, who finally shrieks out his master’s name in exchange for a quick death. It is the governor of Damghan. The troops without delay storm his villa, killing his attendants and presenting the governor’s head to Konstantinos. Quite pleased with the demonstration of his soldiers’ loyalty, the Roman sends the pickled remains to Baghdad.

Suleiman immediately presents the head to the court, publicly supporting Konstantinos and warning that any attempts on the prince’s life will be regarded as an attack on the sultan’s own. As for the possessions of both Basileios Komnenos and the governor of Damghan, all are given to Konstantinos Komnenos, who turns it all over to his Persian troops for pension funds. The only item he keeps is the governor’s fine sword, as a birthday gift for his eight-year-old son.


branstark2.png

Osman Komnenos (named after his maternal grandfather), first of the Eastern Komnenoi.

1515: The year is relatively quiet. In Germany the fighting has settled down due to mutual exhaustion, although in France the combined Arletian-Castilian-Lotharingian armies are overrunning the countryside. Edward VII returns to England to put at least that kingdom in order, where some progress is being made. In April, a Scottish raid in Yorkshire is cut to pieces by Henry Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, who follows up the victory by trailing the survivors to an anchored Norwegian squadron, which he burns.

Three months later Prince Arthur is betrothed to Margaret, daughter of Grace O’Malley, the Sea Queen of Connaught. Her dowry is her mother’s fleet, plus significantly more enthusiastic support from the Irish. The Connaught squadrons promptly make the Irish Sea much more hazardous for the squadrons of the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, and the Irish troops help Edward VII nip a Welsh revolt in the bud.

In Smyrna, Princess Zoe, elder sister of Andreas, dies in her brother’s arms. At her insistence, just before the end, she is taken to the courtyard where Helena was murdered. There she perishes. According to Eudoxia, who was there, her final moments were as follows:

The Princess Zoe lay on the ground, and she asked her brother, the Basileus Andreas “Isn’t, isn’t she beautiful?” And the Basileus asked, “Who, sister, who?” The Princess then spoke one word. “Mom.” And so passed Zoe Komnena, daughter of Basileus ton Basileon Theodoros IV Komnenos and Helena Doukina.

To the west, the Barbary corsairs grow more bold, particularly when the Moldy Wreck is sunk by four galliots off Sardinia, even though Andreas Angelos is still in India participating in the siege of Mumbai. Late in the year they do something they have never done before, establishing a land blockade of Carthage and striking Roman territory itself. Twenty six ships from Bizerte strike Sicily, pillaging several villages and carting over four thousand Sicilians into slavery.

In March of 1516 the Roman riposte comes. The panicked cry goes out that sixty thousand Romans have landed at Carthage. Shortly afterwards a revised report comes in; it is only ten thousand Romans, commanded by Emperor Andreas himself. The Emir of Tlemcen, regarding the revision, speaks for many when he
responds, “Same thing.”


oldhenryviii.jpg

Emperor Andreas I Komnenos, followed by Emperor Herakleios II Komnenos. Although the people of Constantinople are overjoyed to have their Emperor back, many in the Imperial court are concerned over Andreas' decision to personally command the African expedition. His health has been slowly but surely declining since the Egyptian campaign, and a long sea voyage and stint in Africa are unlikely to help matters.


Andreas himself ignores such concerns.



komnenidfamilytree1516.png



andreidfamilytree1516.png


1516: The Second Pepper Fleet returns victorious, riding the autumn monsoon winds. All of the rebel cities have capitulated, and Deva Raya II has been true to his promises. Both Surat and Kozhikode are Roman cities, garrisoned by six hundred men and a great dromon each. Despite the grounding of one vessel off Socotra (which has become an Ethiopian province that spring, the first overseas Ethiopian province), breaking its back in the process, the flotilla wields a seventeen fold profit. There are no more plans for great fleets in the near future, but the number of ships making the India run are steadily rising.

Andreas Angelos and Basileios Komnenos return to a shaken Constantinople. The two are received by Emperor Herakleios, not Emperor Andreas as expected. Basileios’ request for asylum is granted, and he is bequeathed an estate (and staff who are clearly in Herakleios’ pay) in Paphlagonia for his upkeep, on condition that he use his paternal, not maternal, family name, Palaiologos. Basil accepts. Then the two learn what has transpired in Africa and at home.

Despite the fact that he cannot mount or dismount without assistance, or walk without a cane in each hand, Andreas insists on campaigning as he as always done, as plainly as the lowest soldier. His personal physician, his lieutenants, and even many of the rank and file protest his actions, but Andreas is adamant.

The army moves along the coast, accompanied by the Imperial fleet while powerful battle squadrons sweep the Mediterranean. Very few corsair ships are actually sunk, but they do remain in port. There is little support from the Iberians. Firstly it is because the speed of the Roman response meant there was no time to coordinate activities. Plus Aragon is still licking its wounds from the Oran debacle, Castile is raiding Cornwall (although a Cornish-Irish fleet does maul a squadron off Brittany), and Al-Andalus and Portugal are engaged in saber rattling.

Portugal’s African expeditions are gaining unexpected fruit. First, contact has been made with a large and powerful African state, the Kingdom of Kongo, a hub of a bustling slave trade that is quite eager to do business with Portugal. Lisbon provides guns, horses, and armor in exchange for ivory and slaves, the latter extremely useful on the new Portuguese sugar plantations in the Canary Islands and Madeira. Also three ships have blundered into a large and apparently virgin landmass to the west. One of the vessels though was captured by Andalusi warships on the European side of the line (so claim the Portuguese; the Andalusi claim it was beyond the line).

Andreas does not really need their help. A Berber army from the local tribes, numbering twenty thousand, shadows the Roman army. At Sidi Thabet, Andreas steals a night march on them and falls on their camp at dawn. The ensuing battle is little more than a slaughter, the survivors chased into the desert, where most perish from lack of provisions. After that, the Romans face no opposition until the siege of Bizerte begins.

Bizerte is a thriving metropolis, one of the greatest cities of north Africa, and a major rival of Carthage. It is also a thriving corsair port. It has a population of twenty nine thousand, plus nine thousand Christian slaves taken in the plundering expeditions. About half of that number are Romans, mostly Sicilians taken in the raid that sparked Andreas’ intervention.

It is a well armed, well fortified city, and the Roman army and fleet settle down for the siege. The corsairs, heavily outnumbered, are unable to contest the Roman control of the seas so supplies are no difficulty. Nevertheless it is clear that the strain is taking its toll on Andreas, who for the first time in his life has difficulty staying awake in strategy meetings, and many days he has to forgo his daily inspection of the camp and siege works.

Slowly but surely the siege continues. On the fifteenth day, the Christian slaves rise up, attempting to throw open the gates of the cities in conjunction with a Roman assault on the walls. Just barely, the men of Bizerte stop the double-pronged assault. And then Sinan Pasha, titled thus for his command of a pirate fleet, Emir of Bizerte, makes a terrible mistake. The next day, the heads of all the slaves, women and children included, are catapulted into the Roman encampment.

Andreas responds by tying all his prisoners to the embankments protecting his artillery, so the Bizertians’ fire will kill them. Eleven days later, a special shipment from Sicily arrives. Two days later, the city falls, and Andreas gives the order.

Bizerte is to be annihilated, its people slaughtered, its buildings torn down, its fields sown with salt, its existence completely effaced from the earth. The special shipment is the salt. To this day, nothing lives where Bizerte once stood. Ironically Sinan Pasha is one of the handful of Bizertians to survive, running the blockade in a galliot.

* * *

Roman Camp outside Bizerte, May 18, 1516:

Andreas groaned, leaning back in his chair. Outside the tent he could hear the death screams of Bizerte. He had heard those screams, o so many times. He looked at the man sitting across from him, sharpening his sword on a whetstone. “It never ends,” Andreas whispered.

Manuel of Kyzikos stopped and set down the whetstone, examining the blade. “No, no it doesn’t. The blade is sharpened, is used, then needs to be sharpened again. It never ends.”

Andreas rubbed his forehead. “Empire are the same way. One enemy falls, and another rises to take its place. It never ends, and I am tired. Tired of war, tired of rule, tired of life.”

Manuel, still looking at the sword, shrugged, slid the blade into his scabbard, and stood up. “Then rest.” He walked out of the tent.

“I cannot.”

“Why not?” Alexeia asked, seated where Manuel had just been.

“You look well, sis.”

“You’re still a bad liar. Why can’t you rest?”

“The Empire needs me. There is too much work to be done.”

Alexeia shook her head sadly, rising to her feet. “Let someone else do it. You have done enough.” She strode out.

“No, it needs to be me.”

“Why does it have to be you?”

Andreas looked at the person now seated in that chair, and his heart skipped a beat. It was Kristina, his Kristina. Crow’s feet nestled against her eyes, and only a strand or two of brown stood out in a sea of cascading gray hair. “You look beautiful.”

“You look wrinkly.” Andreas stared for a moment, and then chuckled, wagging his finger at her. Kristina grinned, but then her face grew serious. “Why does it have to be you?”

“Our son needs me. He would make a good ruler, but his body is weak. Once I am gone, his enemies will come out looking for blood.”

“Then kill them now.”

“I cannot. They hide in the shadows. That was your area of expertise. I’m a soldier, not a spymaster. I cannot-” Tears clouded his vision. “God’s wounds, Kristina,” he rasped, clenching his fists. “I miss you. You were my better half. Apulia loves me, but it was you, you who taught me mercy. By God, I miss you.”

She was close to him now, crouched down, but just out of reach. “I know, my love. I know. But soon, soon we will be together again.” Outside Bizerte shrieked; Kristina shuddered. “In a place where no demons lie.”

“And once I am dead, my enemies will reveal themselves,” he moaned. He stopped. “Once I’m dead, my enemies will reveal themselves,” he repeated. Kristina was biting her lip, an impish gleam in her eyes, the kind she always got when she had thought of a new scheme.

Andreas Komnenos laughed.

* * *

The campaign ends after the annihilation of Bizerte, Andreas returning to Constantinople. It is clear that his health has declined even further, to the point that he has to ride a litter back to the White Palace, an unheard of event. On June 30, he announces that he is retiring to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, near Philippopolis.

On July 27, the news arrives in Constantinople. Andreas Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans, is dead. Per his final request, he is to be buried in an unmarked tomb, in a nearby graveyard where soldiers slain during the Smyrna war lay buried.

The next day, Herakleios II Komnenos is proclaimed sole Emperor. Overall he is accepted, but the reclusive Herakleios is not loved like Andreas. He does not conduct the circuits as his father did, and the army views him as a weak leader, poorly suited to command. The support of Megas Domestikos Zeno does however do much to allay the strategoi’s concerns.

But it not enough. On September 13, Leo Komnenos lands in Epirus after traveling via Hungary. News of his victories in France have proceeded him, and many in the European tagmata view him as an ideal leader for future campaigns against the Catholics. The Epirus and Helladic tagmata go over to him immediately, granting him control over all of Greece west and south of Thessaloniki.

Immediately Zeno prepares to march west, gathering the Athanatoi, Varangoi, and the Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Thracian tagmata. On September 24, in Buda, Emperor Stephen formally announces the truth about his parentage, and that he is marching to claim his birthright, the crown of Rhomania. The Hungarian people are shocked, but it is pointed out that Stephen is still just as much an Arpad as he is a Komnenos, and a successful campaign against the Empire will be quite lucrative.

Herakleios is torn. Leo is the closer threat, but Stephen is the most dangerous. His situation grows even more grave on October 1. Zeno is dead, killed by an assassin with a kyzikos bullet to the heart. He blames Leo, but many point out that assassination is not Leo’s style, and a rumor sweeps Constantinople that Herakleios had murdered his half-brother, out of fear that Zeno would use his position in the army to usurp Herakleios.

The Macedonian tagma immediately defects to Leo. On October 10, when the Bulgarian tagma tries to do the same, the Athanatoi, Varangoi, Thracians, and the Constantinople archontate fall on them just ten miles from the Queen of Cities, and maul the Bulgarians. A total of thirty five hundred Romans are killed or wounded in the battle.

On October 14, the Hungarian armies ford the Danube, invading Serbia. The princes of Raska, Srem, Macva, and Backa join them.

The Time of Troubles has begun.


thodor2.jpg

This painting, by Pavlos of Avlona, is considered by art historians to be one of the pinnacles of sixteenth century Roman art. The battle it depicts, an action between Roman great dromons and Barbary galleys, never occurred. Instead it is a representation of the Empire in the Time of Troubles, for it was painted at the beginning of the final stage.


Overall the painting is grim, but there is hope. The two great dromons, representing the duo of generals that it was hoped would restore the Empire of Andreas, sail under a darkened sky, but the sun is rising. This sense of hope, even in the midst of civil war and invasion, can be most clearly seen in its name:


Rhomania Endures.


kristinaofrus.jpg

Kristina of the Rus, the Empress of Blackbirds. Like her husband, she would cast a long shadow over the Empire in the Time of Troubles.

Although Stephen is clearly rushing things, hoping that the Leo-Herakleios rivalry will cripple the European tagmata, he has not left his flanks completely unsecure. Three thousand men are left guarding the Transylvanian march. They are not enough to stop the whole Vlach army, but with the fortifications in the region, the Vlachs will have a hard time advancing. At the same time, thousands of Magyar cavalry roll north, savaging the domains of Manfred to keep him off balance.

Most importantly, the Milanese are fully on his side, as Stephen promises that any conquests in Italy will be theirs to keep. Milan particularly desires the Romagna, ruled by the d’Estes, hated rivals of the Visconti.

But Roman Italy is not such an easy target. A Milanese attempt to cross the Po is thrown back, although with heavy Romagnan casualties, while Florence makes it quite clear that any Milanese soldier entering the Republic’s territory will be killed on sight. In the Adriatic, the Serene Republic may have entered the pages of history, but that sea still has her queen. On November 20, the Venetian fleet sacks Pola.

The defection of the Macedonian tagma and the crippling of the Bulgarian places Herakleios in a tight spot, a situation not helped by his poor health. The season is unusually cold, and his bowels have been very bloody of late. Eating at most every other day, if that, it is difficult for him to combat the rumor that he arranged Zeno’s assassination.

While the Imperial presses are working overtime reminding people that Leo is a bigamist, a rapist, and a possible Catholic, all the Constantinople mob can think of is the fact that under Andreas, justice was brought to them. In contrast, audiences with Herakleios have to be gained at the White Palace, and oftentimes he is indisposed. Leo too is known for his victories in France and the fact that he grants himself no more privileges than that given to the lowliest of his men, just like Andreas.

Herakleios can depend on the merchants though, who view Leo as bad for business, and, thanks to his half-brother Andreas Angelos, the support of the navy. Neither though is of much use at the moment; Herakleios needs the army, the area precisely where he is weakest. Thus when the Opsician and Optimatic tagmata arrive, he announces that he will accompany the army on its march to challenge Leo.

* * *

The White Palace, Constantinople, November 1, 1516:

It was snowing. She could feel the flakes landing in her hair, on her cheeks. She could feel them melting, the moisture trickling down her face, indistinguishable from her tears. She looked out, her hands resting on the balcony railing, staring at the cloudy haze enveloping Constantinople and the Sea of Marmara.

“Venera?” It was Herakleios. “Venera?” he asked again. No. No, I cannot look back.

Snow crunched behind her, and then a hand was on her shoulder, turning her towards him. A part of her cursed herself, for forcing her husband out into the cold. Another part, a much louder part, was not so apologetic. Why? Why should I be sorry? If he’s going to be traipsing around Serbia, he can damn well come out on the balcony!

“Venera, why will you not talk to me?”

Crack! Her hand stung from the slap she had just given him “Why?” she snarled. “Why are you doing this?!” He did not answer. “Why?!” she cried. Crack! He could have stopped that blow. He hadn’t. Her hands bunched into fists. “Why! Why! Why!” she screamed, pounding his chest with every word, wanting him to say something, to show that he hurt as much as she did. But he just stood there, taking every blow silently, making no move to defend himself as she hit him.

The world was a blur now. “You’re going to die!” she sobbed, collapsing. And then Herakleios’ strong arms were around her, holding her up with that inner strength that no one but her knew he had, the strength that kept him sane amidst the pain. “You’re going to die,” she moaned, her eyes squeezed as she cried into his chest. His health was poor even in the White Palace. An army campaign in this winter, could be, would be fatal with his condition. “Why?” she whispered.

“I have to. I do not fear my death. Death and I are old companions. But I do fear your death, and the death of the children. If I don’t go, you will die, and Alexeia and Alexios will die.”

She wanted to hit him again, to scream at him that he was wrong, but she couldn’t. Instead she clenched her eyes more tightly, trying unsuccessfully to stop the tears, gripping his jacket in her hands. He is right. There is no other way.

Herakleios did not have the loyalty of the Roman army. He was too much unlike his father, and Leo was too much like his father, at least in the areas that counted in the soldiers’ eyes. Damn them. Damn all those idiots to hell. The only armies that Herakleios could count on were those of his and her relatives, the Russian and maybe the Georgian. But they could not come; the Kalmyk horde, displaced by Timurid activities, had crossed the Ural mountains and was moving on the lower Volga. Until that vast Buddhist army was dispersed, neither Georgia or Russia could move on Rhomania.

So Herakleios had to go with the army. If he stayed in Constantinople, there was a very good chance the remaining tagmata would defect to Leo, and then they would be doomed. At least if he went, there was a chance for Venera and the children, if Leo was defeated. But none for him.

She stood up. “No, no. There must be, there has to be another way.”

Herakleios shook his head. “There isn’t.” He pried her fingers loose, cupping them in his own hands. “I’ve made arrangements for you to go home if the worst should fall.” With Hellas in Leo’s hands, the route to Egypt was too dangerous. Demetrios had little love for his little brother; he had already guaranteed Empress Veronica and Prince David’s safety as news as Leo’s landing had reached him. “But if you have to promise me.”

“No, I can’t.” The tears were coming again.

“Promise me,” he hissed.

“Herakleios, you’re hurting me.” You’re stalling.

“Promise me. Promise me you will not wait to flee if I am dead before Leo is.”

“I…I promise.” Damn you. No, damn me.

“Thank you.” Herakleios let her hands go. “I am so sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“You deserved so much better, better than this, better than me. A whole man.”

She saw the regret flash in his eyes, and knew what the regret said. If you were a whole man, none of this would be happening. You could go on campaign just like Leo, just like Zeno, just like Andreas. Then no one would challenge your right to rule, and you wouldn’t need to abandon your wife and children to go on a suicide mission in the small hope that you can save them before you die.

She would not have those words. Not now, not ever. “I have a whole man, for a husband and for an Emperor. And if these…people…” She spat the word. “…are too stupid to realize that, then damn them for being fools.”

Herakleios smiled, a small one, but a real one. “Thank you. Goodbye, my love.” They kissed, a long, lingering kiss, the snow falling on them, chilling them, but it did not matter. Venera never wanted it to end, but it did. And then he was gone.

She did not know how long she stood there, silent, as the snow gathered in her hair. He will return. He must return. If there is any justice in this world, he will return. And if he doesn’t…God, you had better start hiding, for I will tear you down from your throne and damn you to hell as well.


queenjaneseymour.jpg

Venera of Abkhazia, Empress of the Romans. Often the strong one of the family due to her husband's physical weakness, she is fiercely protective of her family and what is rightfully theirs.


The White Palace, Constantinople, November 2, 1516:

Herakleios had left the city. Nikephoros would have smiled, if it weren’t for the oncoming headache he could feel gathering. He sighed, setting down the book to glare at the source of said headache, his wife.

God, I hate that woman, he thought as he took a drink of hot kaffos. She wasn’t an ugly woman; he’d concede that much. She might have done decently well at a mid-level whorehouse catering to lower-grade artisans and the like. But in a lineup at Fatima’s, she stood absolutely no chance.

She was still nattering at him, about how he should get off his fat ass and kill Herakleios already. That was her worst trait; she was an idiot, an ambitious, blatant, bland idiot. She reminded Nikephoros of his aunt Irene…I still don’t know who killed her. She hadn’t always been this brazen though, thankfully. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t touched her since their wedding night, and that the bodies of her three lovers had never been found.

But it was so frustrating. He couldn’t divorce her without risking the ire of Emperor Andreas who arranged the match, and he couldn’t let her hang herself with her own rope. Having his wife accused of high treason would lead to too much unwanted attention.

She was still going on about killing Herakleios and taking over Constantinople. Have you forgotten the last phase of this plan, woman? The part where Leo tears me from limb to limb for being between him and the throne?

He’d thought about killing his uncle, but ironically Herakleios’ poor health made it harder, not easier to kill him. Like all offspring of the Empress of Blackbirds, Herakleios had been given small doses of poison in his childhood meals to build up an immunity. The regime had been slower on account of his health, but no less effective. Even in his current state, it would take a dose of poison strong enough to kill a healthy man twice his size to put Herakleios down.

Obviously such a large dose would be difficult to disguise, and because of his sensitive stomach, Herakleios went easy on the flavoring of his dishes. There were no spices or strong sauces to hide the scent of toxin, and there was no poison known to man that could kill a son of the Empress of Blackbirds in just a few bites. Of course, the same can be said about me. Grandmother was very thorough.

His wife may have ‘ideas’ of her own, but he had his own plan, which he’d already begun. The death of Zeno crippled Herakleios, making his military defeat at Leo’s hand virtually inevitable. If Herakleios called the Russians in against the Hungarians, it still wouldn’t help him against his half-brother, and if he called in the Russians against Leo, his life expediency would be measured in minutes. An Emperor that used barbarians against his own people was no Emperor at all. That the Russians couldn’t move even if Herakleios asked was just sugar on the pastry.

And Leo would be much easier to deal with than Herakleios, provided Nikephoros made a sufficient show of loyalty at the start to throw him off guard. Give Leo a year or two on the throne, and he would alienate all his supporters, making it ludicrously easy for Nikephoros to swoop in and displace him.


004karioangruffudd024.jpg

"Any idiot with a strong sword arm can seize power. It is holding power that is the difficult part. And the manner in which one seizes power can determine whether or not one holds it."-Nikephoros "the Spider" Komnenos​


At least that had been the plan, but then had come the newest report from one of his best spies. There was another player in the game. If Nikephoros revealed himself as a contestant, with this new opponent in the field, he risked everything. No, it was time to withdraw, to watch and wait. Time was on his side, and he had backup plans. They would take longer, but he could afford to wait.

She was still talking. Nikephoros rubbed his forehead. The roar of Theodoros’ trained bear Ares outside wasn’t helping. Willow bark tea. And Fatima’s tonight. Definitely Fatima’s.

Edessa, Macedonia, November 13, 1516:

Stefanos Doukas, Strategos of the Epirote tagma, Megas Domestikos to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Leo VI Komnenos, entered the chamber. Leo was in the center, unarmed, faced by five recruits armed with blunted blades. Stefanos strolled over to the bench next to the roaring fire, pouring himself a cup of hot kaffos.

Although winter had come early and cold, causing demand and the price of kaffos to shoot upward, Leo’s men did not lack for the brew. The Emperor had lost little time in levying the Emperor’s Cup, a tax paid in kind with the best kaffos, on the territories under his control. Leo had then promptly turned around and distributed it to the men. Stefanos took a sip, savoring the warmth.

By that point it was over. All five recruits were on the ground, Leo standing over them with a practice blade in each hand. “Bah,” he muttered, tossing the weapons aside and walking over to Stefanos. His newest attendant, the strategos thought it was Leo’s fourth, or maybe fifth, handed the Emperor a wine skin.

“What is this?” Leo asked pleasantly. Stefanos braced himself.

“Hot spiced wine, your majesty,” the trembling lad said. “Your favorite.”

“And what is the wine ration for the men right now?”

“One a day, your majesty.”

“THEN WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME ANOTHER SKIN TODAY?!” Leo bellowed. “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU IDIOT! AND LEAVE THAT WITH THE GUARDS ON YOUR WAY OUT!” He slammed the wine skin into the lad’s chest, nearly knocking him over. Leo must be in a good mood. He didn’t break the boy’s nose, unlike the last two. Or was it three? No, the first had had his wrist broken instead.

“Good day, your Imperial majesty,” Stefanos said.

“Eh, is it?” Leo glowered at the moaning recruits picking themselves off the floor. “Worthless wretches. Basileios could take them all with one arm tied behind his back.”

Leo’s son by his Habsburg wife had remained with his mother in Arles, where he still served in the Arletian army, to whom he’d already given good service by capturing two knights banneret and an English earl before his sixteenth birthday. Other than guaranteeing the safety and security of his family and possessions, Arles was not aiding Leo, which he had wanted. If he came in with Arletian backing, it would be too easier to tar him as a foreign invader, not a son of Andreas and a Roman prince coming to claim his birthright.

Leo walked over to the massive oak table that was set up in the left of the hall. It was covered with maps, the nearest that of Roman Europe. “The Kastrioti have joined your cause, Majesty.”

That caused Leo to smile. “Most excellent.” As soon as Leo had heard that the Hungarians had crossed the Danube, three hundred light cavalry had been sent to harry their march and report their movements. At the same time, envoys had gone to the Albanian chieftains to ask for their support (although nominally under Roman rule, one did not order the independent-minded Albanian lords around if one wanted compliance). The aid of the Kastrioti, the greatest of them, would be of great help in slowing the Hungarian advance. “Any news from the east?” Leo asked.

“The usurper has left Constantinople.”

“Herakleios is coming out of his hot tub? Perhaps he did get some of father’s blood after all.” Stefanos nodded. Several of the Serbian princes had gambled that since Herakleios couldn’t stomach food much of the time, he couldn’t stomach the killing of their children being ‘educated’ in Constantinople. It had taken the Sick Man of Europe less than twenty minutes to prove them wrong.

“Still, his advance is extremely slow, less than twelve miles a day.”

Leo snorted. “That’s it? Good. It’ll look really good when he finally arrives in Thessaloniki, only to see me with that Magyar bastard’s head atop my lance.” Leo clenched his hairy fists, shaking in rage. “Those…creatures never would have dared tried this while my father was still alive. He isn’t, but I will still send them screaming into hell for sullying my father’s name.” Even after all this time, he still worships Andreas.

But then, there wasn’t a soldier in the Roman tagmata that did not. He had always been their commander, their leader, their father. A man who had always shared their pain, their hunger, their trials, never sparing himself from the lot of his basest recruit. And he had always given them victory. In those regard, Leo was his father’s son.

Stefanos’ eyes brushed the other maps, Tuscany, northern Italy, Iberia, the Maghreb. He knew the plan, Leo’s grand design once he was on the throne, and the reason Stefanos supported him. First Tuscany, weak, divided, and in the way. Then the north. The lush fields of Lombardy and the great foundries of Milan would be a useful boon to the Empire, and a perfect support base for an invasion of Iberia.

Aragon was weak, Castile distracted, Al-Andalus a vassal, and Portugal was formidable at sea but negligible on land. Once the peninsula was secure, to secure the Iberians’ loyalty, the Barbary pirates would be annihilated and the Marinids crushed. The end result would be Mare Nostrum restored, save for Arles, a close Roman trading partner.

kingrobert.jpg

Leo Komnenos reviewing members of the Dyrrachium garrison. His vision is to build on the conquests of his father, to restore all the lands of the Mediterranean to the rule of Constantinople.​


And while Leo is off conquering those western lands, he will need to keep a trusted advisor and soldier at home, to keep an eyes on things. And when the time comes…

The door opened, and a guard stepped in and bowed. “Your Majesty, the delegation from Thessaloniki is here.”

“Send them in at once,” Leo ordered. Control of that great metropolis would help secure their supply lines and their right flank against Herakleios, giving them time to crush the Hungarians.

Stefanos smiled pleasantly. It wouldn’t do to be rude to the delegates. It wasn’t fake though, for he finished his earlier thought.

House Doukas will rise again.

* * *​

Andreas Angelos slowly stepped into the room, making sure that the hooded old man clinging to his left arm didn’t stumble. The man’s rough wooden cane tapped on the stone floor as the five Thessalonians followed.

He had been sent to Thessaloniki to try and make sure that city, the third city of the Empire, did not defect to Leo. The carrack he had rescued off Algiers had been Thessalonican, the ship and cargo paid for by a consortium of prominent merchants. Herakleios hoped that would give him some leverage.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” a smiling, well-trimmed man said. “If you would come this way…” he gestured to where several seats had been set up near the fire. “We have kaffos and hot spiced wine.” He looked at the old man. “And who is this?”

“He speaks for us,” Andreas Angelos said. “If you would be so kind.” He nodded at the nearest chair. Stefanos Doukas nodded and pulled the chair out, helping the man sit down. He rattled a sigh of relief.

“And who are you?” Stefanos repeated.

Instead the man pointed a trembling hand at the kaffos. “A cup please.” Andreas started to get one. Then the elder pulled down the hood.

Leo’s cup shattered on the floor. “Father?”

“Hello, son,” Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos said. “I’ve come to give you this.” Slowly he pulled out a dagger and dropped it on the table with a clunk. He nudged it in Leo’s direction.

“What for?” Leo asked cautiously, his hand gripping the pommel of his sword. The guards’ eyes were darting back and forth between Andreas and Leo, the recruits in back holding their tourney blades.

“It’s simple. It’s for killing me.”

“Wha?” Leo said. Andreas Angelos’ eyes widened. What the hell is he doing? Just arrest and kill him, and be done with it.

“You have no problem with invading my Empire when I am dead. What difference does it make that I’m only mostly dead?” The end of the last sentence came out in a rasp, and Andreas Komnenos collapsed into a series of hacking coughs, shaking his whole body.

“Well, go on. Do it,” Andreas continued. “I’m not wearing armor under the coat. I can’t bear the weight anymore.”

Leo slowly picked up the dagger, hefting it in his hand. Andreas Angelos tightened his hold on his own sword. Looking around the room, he could see that all of Leo’s men in the room were watching their leader, including the Doukid strategos. All of them, except for Stefanos, were ready to draw their blades, even the recruit with a black eye and a broken nose.

If Leo attacked Andreas, he would die shortly afterwards, killed by his own men for daring to attack the Little Megas. He has to know that. He has to. But Leo had never been the most stable individual. And if he did attack…Leo was still considered one of the best melee fighters the Roman army had ever seen, and Father had not been lying about the armor.

Leo glanced at the dagger, then at his father as he lifted a shaking cup of kaffos to his lips. A look of horror flashed onto his face and he hurled the weapon into the stone wall, sparks flying. “I can’t.”

Angelos resisted the urge to smile. We’ve won. Although I don’t know why we didn’t just show up and arrest him. He’d met his father, accompanied by a retinue of monks, just short of Thessaloniki. The archimandrite at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity had sent in false reports of Andreas’ death and burial on the Emperor’s order. The Thessalonicans had immediately pledged their loyalty to Emperor Andreas, who had insisted on coming west even though the hard ride from the monastery to Thessaloniki had badly worn him out.

Andreas Komnenos looked at the dagger, then pulled the map of Serbia towards him. “I knew that I had hidden enemies, but I never suspected this, that the Hungarians would resort to these…” His hands clenched, his gaze fixed on Serbia, ignoring everything else in the chamber. “Perverse lies. I should, I should…” Angelos thought he could see the glean of madness in his father’s eyes. Andreas punched himself, whispering silently. He thought he could hear the word ‘Kristina’.

“Strategos!” Emperor Andreas snapped, suddenly his voice sharp and clear. Everyone stiffened. “I want a status report on the army, and the current disposition of all our forces within the hour. Go.” Stefanos Doukas almost ran from the room. Silently, his head down, Leo turned to follow. “Leo.” Angelos stiffened. Now. Now we arrest him. Leo stopped. “I am an old man, and it is hard for an old man to change his ways. I am accustomed to having a son accompany me in battle. I already have one…” He nodded in Angelos’ direction. “But two is better than one.” He, he can’t be doing this. Andreas pointed at a chair. “Sit.”

Edessa, Macedonia, November 14, 1516:

Zoe sprawled over the chair, juice dribbling down her chin. She wiped it up with a finger before it splattered her purple silk dress. You’d think she’d be cold in that, Andreas thought. He was covered in furs, and even that didn’t seem to be enough. His kaffos ration was small and he’d already used it up today. “You let him live,” Zoe said.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“He’s my son.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Wrong answer, little brother. You can’t lie to me…” She paused. “Or Alexeia for that matter, or Kristina,” she continued, grinning. Then she stopped. “So why?”

“I told you, he’s my son.”

“God’s wounds, Andreas!” Zoe shot up, pacing back and forth angrily. “He raped his own sister-in-law!” She stopped, facing Andreas and pointing out at the courtyard. “Why are the crows not eating his eyeballs right now?! The very first man Leo killed was a condemned rapist. Why are you not doing the same here? Where is your justice?”

“I can’t kill him.”

“And why not?”

“Because if I kill him, then there is no hope for him.”

“So?”

Andreas looked away, sighing. “And if there is no hope for him, there is no hope for me.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“A commander is responsible for the crimes of his men…and a father is responsible for the sins of his son.”

“What? No…” Zoe was down on her knees, holding his hand. Her warmth was welcome. “Andreas, don’t do this to yourself.”

“It’s my fault,” he said, ignoring her. The memories flashed in front of him. Andronikos’ horse stepping in the bloated body of a murdered eight-year-old Apulian boy, the shrieks of what was left of a Lotharingian king, the screams of Bizerte. And a bellowing young man, clad in plate, in the square and basilica of Saint Mark, killing, killing, killing, so much killing. “I have done things far more terrible than Leo. So there has to be hope for him, for if there isn’t, there is none for me.”

“What you did you did for the Empire. Leo just did it for himself.”

“You’re right. But that does not change the fact that my crimes are far greater than his.” He shrugged, wincing. “Perhaps we are both damned. We probably are. But I have to try.”

Belgrade, November 15, 1516:

They were watching him. They were always watching him. The most familiar was Andrew the Warrior King, the supposed namesake of his father. The hand-held portrait, an expected accompaniment of all Hungarian generals on campaign, stared at him. The looks were relatively easy to ignore. Not so the whispers.

Not worthy.

That was what the whispers said, over and over, and they could not be ignored. The Arpad dynasty had existed since the birth of the Magyar kingdom itself. Not any more.

Yes, it does!

Prove it.

Stephen sighed. He was just as much an Arpad as a Komnenos. Not really. He was Arpad, but by his mother, and she from a cadet branch. The imperial branch had died out, slain by an embittered Russian princess torn from her lover’s side.

Revenge. That was why he moved so fast. To conquer the city that Kristina of Novgorod had desired so much, and to wipe out the legacy of her lover. I am Stephen, of House Arpad. I will restore its honor and its pride. And forever blot out the shame at being usurped by House Komnenos.

Prove it.

And maybe then the whispers would stop.

Xanthi, November 26, 1516:

Herakleios sighed, settling in his chair. The warmth thrown off by the roaring fire felt good, although he was still clad in his furs. This is the first time I’ve felt warm since I left Venera. The march here had been bitterly cold and he had eaten at most every third day. So thankfully his bowels were mostly still, although even now he could feel a dull, constant ache.

He wasn’t sure what to expect from this meeting. Leo had raced east from his base at Edessa, and Herakleios had heard that supposedly his half-brother wasn’t in command, that the real leader was Emperor Andreas, returned from the grave. Probably some old man dressed up to gather support from idiots. Although that would be unusually clever for Leo. Perhaps Stefanos Doukas?

Herakleios glanced over at Petros Doukas, Stefanos’ younger brother and senior tourmarch of the Thracian tagma. He was just one of the forty men in the room, Herakleios’ strategoi and senior tourmarches, along with his new Megas Domestikos, Demetrios of Kyzikos, son of Manuel of Kyzikos and her Serene Highness Alexeia Komnena, the slayer of Galdan of Merv and Emperor Andreas’ half-sister.

demetriosofkyzikos.jpg

Demetrios of Kyzikos. According to Andreas Komnenos, "once he fixes his line, not even Genghis Khan could move him." His popularity amongst the eastern Anatolian tagmata helps boost Herakleios' position in the army, and his skill at defense makes him a perfect counter to Leo's ferocious frontal attacks.​


He could feel his eyes drooping, so he jabbed the tip of his sheathed dagger into his inner thigh to try and wake himself. He was tired, so tired. But he couldn’t sleep now; there was too much to do. Even with Demetrios helping him, he had to stay with the army to ensure their loyalty. These were European and west Anatolian tagmata; Demetrios was from the east.

First I have to deal with Leo. If it was a choice between Herakleios and the Hungarians, the tagmata would choose Herakleios. There was no doubt of that; the cavalry contingents Herakleios had dispatched north to slow Stephen were openly cooperating with Leo’s same soldiers against the Magyars, temporarily shelving the civil war until the barbarians were dealt with. Unfortunately though he could not do the same with Leo’s main force. I have to break him first, keep him away from Venera. Then I can go home…if I’m not dead yet.

It had been four days since his last meal, and he still wasn’t hungry. His physician said that he could last at most a month under his current conditions, if that. If he increased his firewood ration though, so he could have a steady supply of hot soup and warmth, the archiatros said he could last three, more than enough to deal with Leo. But if I do, I may lose the army. I must be a son of Andreas, even if it kills me.

Venera’s words flashed through his mind. “I have a whole man, for a husband and an Emperor.” This will kill me, but so be it. So long as she lives, then this will have been worth it, all this struggle and pain. That was why he had fought for the throne, that was the reason for his ambition. If he could, he would have loved nothing more than to retreat to the library, just as Theodoros did with his parks. But he couldn’t, not if he cared for Venera. As Emperor, he could keep her safe. If he wasn’t and a succession crisis wracked the Empire, she would be at the top of the list of rivals to be eliminated, particularly if Leo was the usurper.

The guards pushed the door open, nodding at Herakleios. They seems agitated. It was time. He didn’t want to move, but he had to. For her, he thought and stood.

Then he gasped. “Father?”

“Hello, son,” Andreas Komnenos said. He had been the first to enter, leaning heavily on Andreas Angelos. If it weren’t for him, he probably couldn’t walk. His father had lost weight, a lot of it, along with most of his hair. His wrinkles had grown deeper and more numerous. If one didn’t know Andreas well, they might think this was a different person. But one did not forget the eyes of Andreas Komnenos, and these were the same. The body may be broken, but the will, the iron will that had broken Venice, the Last Crusade, the Mamelukes, was still there. “Please sit. And could somebody get me a chair?”

The question was a whisper, but every man save Andreas Angelos, Herakleios, and Leo, who was off in the corner, rushed to obey. I will never have that. A moment later both Andreas and Herakleios were seated. “You are all soldiers,” Andreas said. “You know the feeling, that of a blade just out of sight, waiting to strike.” Men were nodding. “I have had that feeling for quite some time. That is why I faked my death, in the hope that my enemies would reveal themselves. They have, and they are the Hungarians.”

Herakleios opened his mouth. What about Leo? He closed it when his father’s gaze fell on him, and then on Leo. “We are all Romans. We do not serve a man, we serve the Empire.” He tugged on Angelos’ sleeve, who helped him up. Herakleios stood. “So let all those who would serve the Empire follow me.”

Herakleios knelt down on one knee. “What would you have me do, your majesty?”

Andreas looked at him. “Rise.” Herakleios did, and Andreas embraced him, Angelos supporting his back. Andreas Komnenos stepped back. “I would have you go home, love your wife, raise your children, rule justly, and give the Empire peace. As for me, I shall lead the army against Stefan.” A murmur of surprise swept through the room. “But first…I should have done this a long time ago.”

Andreas drew his sword. The blade sung, the steel shimmering in the air, almost as if it were alive. It was David, the sword he had always carried to war since Venice. None could fail to see the change. Before Andreas’ arms had shaken, but now with the blade, they were firm, strong, as if they were a part of each other, the sword and Andreas. “Your mother gave me this as a late wedding present. I have taken it on every campaign since. But all things must come to an end. David is yours, your majesty.” He handed the blade to Herakleios.

Herakleios held it, his eyes widening. It was one of the very last things Andreas had of Kristina. He did not think Andreas would have ever given it up. There was a tear in his father’s eye, and Herakleios knew that this was one of the hardest things Andreas had ever done.

Andreas whispered something in Angelos’ ear. Angelos’ eye widened, looking over at Herakleios and then back at Andreas. Andreas nodded. And then Andreas Komnenos “the Undefeated” did something he had never done before.

He knelt.

Central Serbia, December 17, 1516:

Andreas Drakos was cold. The icy wind from the north was certainly not helpful. At least it’s stopped snowing for now.

His best friend Giorgios Laskaris scratched furiously at his face. “Ugh, my snot has frozen.”

“Save it for later,” Andreas Angelos said, riding next to his father just behind them. Both Andreas Drakos and Giorgios were eikosarchoi, members of the Emperor’s Guard.

robbandtheonrobbstark29.jpg

Giorgios Laskaris (left) and Andreas Drakos (right).​


“Why?” Giorgios asked.​

“Because then you can use it to thicken your soup.”​

Giorgios shuddered as Drakos smirked. “You cannot be serious!”​

“Yes, I can,” Angelos replied. “I just choose not to be.”​

“Just ignore him, Giorgios,” Drakos said. He was right though, it was bloody cold.​

The Hungarians had kept coming, even though they had to have heard the news about Andreas’ return. Maybe they don’t believe it. That must be the reason. Now the Romans and Hungarians were dancing around each other, snipping and snarling, Stefan trying to force an engagement, but never quite succeeding. He had forty thousand men.​

The Roman army numbered thirty two thousand; although Andreas had more available, the logistics in this winter would’ve made supplying more extremely difficult. Even at the current numbers, supplies were scarce, with a cup of kaffos per man per week, and the personal firewood ration meant only one hot meal a day. The Emperor, as usual, had refused to grant himself more.​

It was clear that the cold was very hard on the Emperor. He was covered in so many furs that he looked almost like a furry ball. Drakos had tried to sneak a few logs of his own ration into the Emperor’s a few days ago, but Andreas had caught him. The Emperor returned the logs, and then gave his own firewood as well to Drakos.​

Andreas sighed atop his mount, and toppled over. “Father!” Angelos yelled, jumping off his horse and catching the Emperor before he hit the ground. Snow crunched as both Giorgios and Drakos leapt from their mount. “He’s freezing,” Angelos said.​

“Cold, so cold,” Drakos could hear the Emperor moan.​

Angelos was clutching his father, trying to warm his body with his own. “Get the tents up! Get a fire going! And where’s the archiatros?!”​

“We’re still four hours from sunset!” A man shouted.​

“We camp here!” Angelos shouted. And then to his father, he whispered, “Live, damn it. Live.”​


* * *​

Andreas Drakos entered the Emperor’s tent along with Giorgios Laskaris, relieving the other two guards. The Emperor was awake, although still pale, covered in blankets and seated next to a fire. That should be larger, much larger. It was little more than a campfire, and it was clear that only one man’s ration of firewood had gone into making it. Andreas’.

“Your Majesty, if you keep this up, you will not live much longer. You must have more hot food to keep you warm,” his archiatros, Andronikos Lukaris, said. “And more wood, so you can have a bigger fire and to heat the hot water bottles to keep you warm.”​

“I cannot squeeze anymore out off my ration,” Andreas said.​

“Then increase your ration.”​

“No. I will not take from my men.”​

“Perhaps we should find you a pretty maiden to keep you warm at nights. I can ask around the villages,” Angelos said. Drakos was pretty sure Angelos was, in fact, being serious, but he wasn’t sure.​

Andreas smiled. “I like that idea. But no, another mouth to feed.”​

“Uncle,” Demetrios of Kyzikos said. “This weather is not good for you. Return to Constantinople. Let us deal with the Hungarians.”​

“No,” Andreas repeated. “I will not leave my men in the field while I sit in the White Palace.”​

“Then at least let us attack the Hungarians. We can take them. Let’s end this campaign quickly, so there is no need to be in the field.”​

“No. We are having supply difficulties, but the Hungarians have it worse. Let them starve some more before we give battle.”​

“We are losing men from frostbite,” Angelos pointed out.​

“And for every man we lose, the Hungarians lose four. For every week we delay the battle, four hundred Romans that would die in that battle live instead.”​

“If we delay three weeks, you will not be one of those living!” Andronikos blurted.​

Andreas fixed the archiatros with his stare. His body may be failing, but the will endured. “So be it.”​


* * *​

Andreas Drakos entered the tent. “The Emperor has refused our offer of firewood rations,” a Opsician tourmarch said. There were over sixty officers clustered in the tent, a small fire crackling in the center, but in the corners every breath could be seen. Giorgios and himself were the two lowest rankers, but they were both members of the Imperial bodyguard, reserved for the finest graduates of the School of War. And Andreas had his family name, Drakos, the House of the Dragon, his great-grandfather.​

“He’s going to get himself killed!” a Macedonian droungarios shouted.​

“He refuses to take from the general reserve,” Stefanos Doukas said. The Emperor Andreas had taken him along to keep an eye on him, and the strategos was an excellent battlefield commander.​

“The fact of the matter is that if the campaign continues, Emperor Andreas will die,” Petros Doukas continued. “For real this time. Which means that this campaign must end, soon.”​

“And how do you propose to do that? Surrender?” a Thracian tourmarch jeered.​

“No, I say we attack,” Demetrios of Kyzikos said.​

“Against orders?” the tourmarch asked. “The Hungarians are growing weaker. The longer the campaign lasts, the easier finishing them off will be.” There was a rumble of assent.​

“The longer we delay, the greater the likelihood the Emperor will not live to see it.”​

“It is his choice.”​

“He is willing to die for you!” Andreas Drakos blurted. All eyes fixed on him, and he realized that he now had the attention of a lot of officers, all of whom outranked him, one of them the Megas Domestikos and Emperor’s nephew. He gulped, and then began to speak. “He is willing to die for you, for all of us. He has every right to be in Constantinople right now, with his wife and family, warm and safe. But he isn’t. He is here, freezing his ass off in Serbia like all of us. He doesn’t have to, but he is.​

“He has never asked anything from us that he wouldn’t ask of himself. For fifty years he has starved, and froze, and bled with us and for us. And this is how we repay him?” Some of the men hung their heads in shame. “No, I say we smash these Magyar bastards to powder, and give the Emperor what he has always tried to give us, a chance to die in bed, old and full of years, surrounded by his loved ones.” His eyes were fixed on the Thracian tourmarch. For a moment, there was silence, and then he nodded.​

“Then it is decided,” Demetrios said. “We attack.”​

The White Palace, Constantinople, December 14, 1516:

Nikephoros settled under the sheets, the light of the fire flickering off the ceiling. Herakleios had returned. Minor setback, but nothing I cannot handle. Plan Beta is slower, but no less sure.

There was the hope that plan beta might not even be necessary, but Nikephoros was not so stupid to not prepare for it anyway. Still…

Herakleios had returned to the White Palace with as little fanfare as possible, only coming out of his litter to meet Venera privately. Nikephoros had been watching, of course.​

His uncle looked horrible. His skin had been incredibly pale, the gray in his hair must have doubled in size, and it was clear he was too weak to mount a horse. Venera in her excitement at seeing him alive had nearly knocked him over. Fortunately for him, his wife had little trouble catching him before he fell, for in the last six weeks Herakleios must have lost at least twenty pounds. Herakleios was a tall man, five feet, nine inches, but coming out of that litter Nikephoros would’ve been surprised if he weighed more than a hundred and fifteen pounds. A lot of that he would regain come spring, but not all. And his uncle could expect to lose more before this winter was out.​

So maybe he’ll die without me having to do a thing. Nah, not likely. Too convenient. The covers shifted. I’ll have to work for the throne. Natasha slid next to him, her large breasts just under his chin. “Is it done?” Nikephoros asked.​

Her hand reached down as she smiled. “Yes.” Her latest mission had been the assassination of the eleven-year-old son of a wealthy grain merchant. The boy had done nothing to Nikephoros, but his father, who was one of the largest traders in the Scythian cereal market (and thus indispensable for maintaining Constantinople’s grain reserves), had required more money to stay bought. Nikephoros did not like to renegotiate, and he made a habit of securing clients with children. Parents were more vulnerable to threats.​

Nikephoros arched his back as Natasha’s hand found its target. “Oh, oh.” She let up and Nikephoros grinned. She’s her best just after a kill.

Nantes, Brittany, December 22, 1516:

“Sebastien! Sebastien!” the men shouted, crashing their spears against their shields. The man they cheered raised his forty pound mace one-handed and roared. Sebastien leered at the Arletian-Castilian army. He was known as the Goliath of Brittany, standing eight feet, eight inches tall.​

“So where is your champion?!” he roared. “Or is he afraid to face me?” The Arletians didn’t answer. “Then he is a wise one. No one can stand against me!”​

Still silent, the Arletians opened their ranks, and Sebastien saw their ‘champion’. He spat. “This, this is your hero?! This is the best you have? A boy? Why, he stopped sucking his mother’s teats just a few weeks ago.” The Bretons jeered. The boy ignored them, throwing off his fur cloak to free his arms. Sebastien did the same, although his garment must have weighed more than the ‘man’ in front of him.​

“So what is your name, boy? Tell me, so when I screw your mother I can tell her how I killed you.”​

The boy snarled at him, and answered.​


jonsnow107.jpg

"My name is Basileios, son of Leo, grandson of Emperor Andreas, the Shatterer of Armies, and I am the last thing that you will ever see on this earth."​

* * *​

The steady trend of the Roman maneuvers have been to cut off Stephen from his lines of supply with Hungary. Originally the Hungarian Emperor had intended to supply his troops via river barges down the Danube, but the winter has turned so bitterly cold that even the mighty Danube itself has frozen.​

The cold takes a terrible toll on Emperor Andreas. On December 19, he cannot mount a horse even with help. Finally at Andreas Angelos’ suggestion, he agrees to ride in a litter where at least he will be out of the wind, but only when his son orders a guardsman to attend Andreas in the litter at all times to keep him warm. Getting out of the elements helps, but is counterbalanced by Andreas’ actions on December 21, when he orders his wood ration distributed to the guardsmen, on the grounds that with the litter he no longer needs them.​

Two days later Andronikos Lukaris tells Andreas Angelos, Leo Komnenos, and Demetrios of Kyzikos that the Emperor will likely not live to see next month, and that if there is any chance of him dying in Constantinople, the campaign must end now. They cannot wait any longer.​

So on Christmas day, advance tourmai of the Opsician and Epirote tagmata engage the Hungarian vanguard. The battlefield is near the Serbian village of Golubac, but it is not the village that gives the battle its name. That honor instead is instead given to a range of gorges that begin just downstream on the frozen Danube.

irongates.jpg

The Iron Gates in summer.​


The initial attack is poorly coordinated due to the lack of a clear chain of command, and soon thrown back in disarray when the Hungarian reserves are committed. But before the Hungarian counterattack strikes, Andreas is up. In fact, he is up before news arrives that the battle has begun.​

The Hungarians are not much slower. Hard on the heels of the retreating Opsicians and Epirotes come the Magyars. Their morale is extremely good. Although Stephen and the Hungarian officers have ridiculed the notion of Andreas’ return, the rumors had nevertheless discouraged the men. The poor performance of the initial attack though makes for a very potent argument that ‘the Shatterer of Armies’ is not present.​

So the Hungarians come, their blood up and their spirits high, and then they run into something hard. Demetrios of Kyzikos only has time to bring up the initial reserve, six hundred men, but for thirty minutes they hold off nine thousand Magyars. They lose half of their number, but they hold. By that point the Opsicians and Epirotes are back into action, with the Roman battle line secure, cavalry charges and horse archers flying forward to harry the Magyar lines, and the Varangoi curling round the Hungarian flank.​

For it is as if the Andreas of old is back. No longer a broken old man, he is everywhere on the battlefield atop his warhorse, pulling out the fatigued and committing reserves to replace them, orchestrating charges and volleys to distract and harass the Hungarians. Leo’s initial attempt to take the flank is thwarted by the hard-bitten men of the Black Army of Hungary, who crack but do not break under the ferocious onslaught. But even so light cavalry and skirmishers advance to cover the withdrawal immediately, bleeding the Black Army and pinning them in place.​

The Romans are not the only ones to note the difference. The Hungarians can see that the coordination of the Roman army is now pristine, the blows fierce and perfectly timed and supported. Men report seeing an old man on a horse, and so the Hungarians begin to wonder ‘Has the Scourge of the Latins return?’ Their line begins to waver.​

But it is not the only thing. For though the will against which a continent contended in vain may still be strong, the flesh is not. After all that has happened, the body of Andreas Komnenos cannot take the strain. As Stephen commits his reserve in an all-out offensive, it breaks.​

* * *​

The Iron Gates, December 25, 1516:

“Steady, steady.” Andreas Drakos said, both to reassure the men near him, and himself. A volley of gunfire snapped out at the incoming Hungarian vanguard, a flight of arrows streaking out above them. Crossbows and arquebuses vomited back. He squinted. Croat axemen in the front. Good infantry, there’ll be knights coming up next to exploit the gaps.

Booms echoed across the valley, a series of immense whistles shrieking above his head. “Incoming rounds!” someone bellowed as the Hungarian artillery plastered their position. Men and horses went down screaming.

As Andreas jumped off his mount, he heard, he saw, the bullet slam into Giorgios’ plate cuirass. His friend toppled over into the snow. Andreas scurried over as the Croat axes began to hack at the spears of the skutatoi. “Giorgios, Giorgios!” he screamed. Not like this, not like this.

They’d known each other since they were thirteen, when they become roommates at the School of War. Now three years, on their very first campaign, to end like this. “Ow,” Giorgios moaned. “I feel like I’ve been kicked by a mule.”

“Are you, are you, alright?”

Giorgios whipped out his kyzikos and fired, the bullet blowing off half the head of a blood-drenched Croat. That was the end of the attack, which apparently had not been pressed. “Uh, I’m fine. Help me up.” Andreas did, Giorgios wincing in pain. “Armor deflected it. God, that hurts.” He looked at Andreas. “You look terrible.”

He started to reply when a man screamed. “THE EMPEROR’S DOWN!” The Emperor was now on the ground, cradled in Andreas Angelos’ arms. He was shouting for the archiatros, who was racing across the field, leaping over a man on a stretcher, bag in hand. Drakos and Giorgios skidded to a halt next to Angelos. The Emperor was breathing, just barely.

There’s no blood. It wasn’t an arrow or bullet that felled him. The news was spreading up and down the line. He could hear the whispers of consternation, and beyond the Hungarians readying for a more serious assault. This was a crucial moment. “Sorcery, it has to be sorcery.”

Angelos looked at him. “Yes, sorcery. That will solve two problems in one.” He wasn’t sure what the son of Andreas meant by that. Angelos looked up at the crowd of men staring anxiously at the body of their sovereign. Andronikos Lukaris bent over, taking his pulse. Angelos stood, Andronikos taking the body, and he began to speak. “The Emperor has fallen. The Hungarians could not take him in battle, so they have resorted to the black arts. This is the work of sorcery!” Murmurs swept the men, murmurs of anger. “Spread the word! This is what kind of men the Magyars are! Spread the word, and tell them, tell them no mercy for the Magyar dogs!”

* * *​

The news of Andreas’ collapse spreads rapidly, and how. Fear quickly fades, to be replaced by anger. The Hungarian attack barely gets any momentum, dissolving into savage hand-to-hand combat with no quarter asked or given. Meanwhile horse archers and mauroi swirl around the periphery, pouring arrows and bullets into the fray. Some of the newer companies, desperate to get away from the maelstrom, start falling back. The resulting gaps are immediately exploited by crack Varangian brazoi who wade in with handgun and axe also dismounted kataphraktoi.

Hell then crashes into the Hungarian right flank. It is Leo. Never a calm man, his earlier explosions are like candles compared to the supernova that now erupts. His cavalry charge meets a squadron of Hungarian knights head-on, and flattens them. Leo’s first blow, clearly seen by both armies, decapitates the head of a huge fourteen-hand destrier in one stroke.

Then it is again the turn of the Black Army. The professional mercenaries kill the prince’s mount, only to have Leo single-handedly cut a path through them on foot. According to one account, Leo is shot at point-blank range in the chest. He then proceeds to beat the arquebusier to death with his own weapon.

When the reserves are committed, it is too much, and the Black Army begins to break, fleeing towards the frozen Danube. Leo ignores them, grabbing a riderless horse and chasing after his original target, Emperor Stephen.

* * *​

Three Magyars were coming at him. Leo snarled, slamming his horse to the left at the last second as he plunged his lance through a chink in the armor protecting the neck of the horse. The animal collapsed as he dropped his broken lance, Leo braining the rider with his mace as he swept past. The other two swirled around, chasing after him.

Leo was racing ahead, where the great silken banners of the false emperor were flying. Time to pay, bastard. “NO MERCY!” There would be two emperors dying on this battlefield.

He was alone. What was left of his cavalry was regrouping or pursuing the Hungarian army, which was beginning to fold, flying to the Danube. At least a dozen crossbow bolts were embedded in his armor, and the rest was covered in dents from mace blows and glancing bullet strikes. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now, not the battle, not his life, nothing at all. Nothing except the kill.

Another Magyar fell, then a second, a third. He lost his first mace. Out came a throwing axe, shattering the face of a fourth Hungarian. The snap of bone, the scream of man, as Leo’s second mace found a ribcage. Blows were falling on him; he could feel them strike, but he felt no pain, even as a crossbow bolt mangled his left shoulder. My right is my sword arm anyway.

And then there he was, Stephen himself. The first blow splintered the false emperor’s shield; the second disintegrated it. Leo raised his arm for a third, and then his horse screamed. The animal toppled, a bullet in its brains. Both of Leo’s legs snapped.

He blinked, staring up at the sky, flat on his back. Struggling to rise, his right hand reached for a dirk. A shadow fell over him. “You’re dead, Greek,” the Magyar sneered.

Leo shot up, the dagger stabbing upward under the cuirass into the man’s bowels. He twisted. “So are you,” he growled. He never saw the blow that took off his head.

* * *​

Although Leo fails in his quest to kill the Hungarian Emperor, the Hungarian army is collapsing. With the Black Army itself routing, there is nothing Stephen can do to stop it. Most of the fugitives choose the quickest apparent route to safety, across the Danube. And then the Roman artillery finally roars into action.

Not a single Magyar soldier is killed or wounded by that volley. Then the ice breaks. The heavily armored Magyar cavalry suffer the most, but even for the more lightly-clad infantry who escape drowning, the shock of the freezing cold water or the resulting frostbite and hypothermia in many cases prove fatal.

The Battle of the Iron Gates is, regarding the percentage of participants, one of the bloodiest in Roman history. Out of thirty two thousand Romans, over seven thousand are casualties. But for the Hungarians the situation is far worse. Out of their forty thousand, only twenty five thousand return to Hungary (over half of the lost drown in the Danube). To this day the Iron Gates are known in Hungary as the Graveyard.

Although Stephen escapes, albeit with a shield arm broken in five places, Hungary is effectively out of the war. The day before, the Venetian fleet sacked Zadar, and Leo had already drafted orders for the Apulian tagma to cross the Adriatic and besiege Ragusa. They had not been issued, but all they require is Andreas’ seal.

That however could be a problem. Andreas was not felled by sorcery, but by a massive stroke. His left side is paralyzed, and although he wakes shortly after the battle, he soon slips back into unconsciousness. While the army goes into winter quarters watching the Danube (after replacing several Serbian princes), Andreas is rushed back to Constantinople.

During the journey the Emperor slips in and out of consciousness, and is clearly delirious. He talks with individuals from Vlad Dracula to Pope Julius II (the latter is more yelling than talking). It is surprising that he even makes it back to the Queen of Cities. On examination, it is the learned opinion of the School of Medicine of the University of Constantinople that Andreas Komnenos will at most live three more days.

For ten weeks Andreas holds the dread foe at bay, and it seems that not even death himself can conquer Andreas Komnenos. But eventually even he must yield.


The White Palace, Constantinople, March 7, 1517:

“Father?” Eudoxia whispered, stroking his hand. “Father?” Andreas Komnenos moaned softly under the pile of blankets covering him, but he did not answer. For Andreas Komnenos dreamed.

“Ow!” he yelped, dropping his wooden sword. Andreas looked down on the red spot covering most of his eight-year-old hand where Manuel had whacked it. That would leave a bruise.

Manuel of Kyzikos lowered his own practice sword. “I think that’s enough for today.”

Andreas was about to nod, but instead he opened his mouth. “No.” He picked up his weapon and pointed it at Manuel. “No,” he commanded. “Continue.”

Why this memory?

Again there was a blade in Manuel’s hand. But this was not wooden, but steel, and it flashed, it sung. Blood flew as Venetian after Venetian fell from those strikes, but still they kept coming, too many. One got through.

He came at him and Zoe, screaming, his sword raised high as a cursing Manuel ripped his weapon out of a ribcage. Then Andreas moved, shoving his dirk into the Venetian’s belly. He stopped, his hot blood flowing, sticking, to Andreas’ trembling hands, the air ripe with the stench of loosened bowels, his fading eyes locking onto Andreas’, his killer’s, face as if it were an anchor holding him to life.

Why this memory?

Crusader cannonballs screamed down all around him. Wagons shattered, guns burst, and men died. The lethal rain continued, but he remained atop his horse, watching, waiting.

A crouching skutatos came to him. “Basileus, please come down. We cannot spare you.”

Andreas looked out as another ten bursts of flame leapt out from the crusader lines, and down at the soldier. “There are times when an emperor’s life does not count.”

Why this memory?

The memories came, sixty years of memories, memories of war. Smyrna, Constantinople, Sicily, Apulia, Venice, Cannae, Rome, Edessa, Mesopotamia, Mount Tabor, Cairo, Bizerte, the Iron Gates. So much war, so much death, so much loss. The faces of the lost floated before him, his mother, his father, Manuel, Alexeia, Kristina, Alfredo, Andronikos, Zoe, Zeno. Again Smyrna.

This time there was only one word.

Why?

He remembered his sister Zoe screaming in the night. He remembered holding her desperately, trying to calm her down, telling her she was safe. And he remembered screaming in the night, and Zoe holding him desperately, trying to calm him down, telling him he was safe.

Why?

He remembered the courtyard in Smyrna. The look on the man’s eyes as he rutted inside Zoe, the stench of the sergeant’s breath, the blood on his mother’s dress.

WHY?!!

Andreas Komnenos dreamed.

He saw himself reading a book in the library, a boy on the cusp of manhood. It was him, but not. He seemed different somehow, softer. A woman came into the room. She kissed the boy-that-was-not-quite-him on the cheek, took his hand, and led him away.

He saw children. Some looked like his own. Some did not. They laughed and played, with the man-that-was-not-quite-him and the unknown woman.

He saw the man-that-was-not-quite-him grow old and full of years. This man looked a lot more like him, but Andreas could see the difference between himself and this man. It was the hands; his hands had never held a sword. And then the man-that-was-not-quite-him died, the unknown woman at his side and his children, all of his children, surrounding him.

Tears clouded Andreas’ eyes. Why? Why couldn’t that have been me instead?

He smelled the answer before he saw it. It was a smell he knew all too well, that of fire.

Constantinople was burning. The Queen of Cities was screaming as the flames clawed at her, dancing their macabre dance of death. They lapped around the Aghia Sophia, darting up her walls, rising higher, higher, ever higher, until they towered over the dome itself. NO! The cupola collapsed, a rain of stones falling down as the flames danced ever higher, fanned by the breeze. He could hear words on the breeze. He could not make them out, but he knew the tongues, the tongues of those he had vanquished. They were many, they were vast and diverse, but here they were one. They were cheering.

He was in a blacksmith’s forge. The man beat on a red-hot blade, striking it with his hammer over and over. Andreas started. That’s my sword! It was not his famous bastard sword, his wedding gift from Kristina, adorned with gold and jewels. No, this blade was as plain as any sword could be, a common dirk. Andreas had taken it from a slain Roman soldier in Smyrna, on the Black Day.

A plain sword, an ordinary sword. He saw a little boy, held in his mother’s arm, sniffling as his father departed for a war. A plain boy, an ordinary boy. Me.

The blacksmith kept pounding on the dirk, and it changed. It grew, snaking outward, its contours shifting as the blows fell on it. It was David, his gleaming bastard sword. The blacksmith stopped, looked up at Andreas, and nodded.

Andreas did not even have to pick it up; David flew into his hand. He could smell the fires again, so he turned around and raised the sword. The wind was still blowing, and Andreas could hear the tongues on the breeze, still one. They were screaming.

“Now you know why.” Andreas spun around. The sword was gone, but he did not need it. The speaker was Nazim of Smyrna. But that was to be expected; they were in his house.

Andreas Komnenos remembered.

It was a cool, brisk day, near the outskirts of Drama. His eldest sister Anastasia sat atop her horse glaring at him. At her side were Petros and Alexios Palaiologos. The next few minutes could plunge the Empire into civil war.

Better that only one should die, rather than thousands. The boy Andreas took the diadem in his small hands and held it out to Anastasia. “Take it,” he said. “It’s yours.”

“You gave up the crown,” Nazim said. “Why?”

“It was the only way to avoid civil war.”

“You were willing to die for the Empire. Instead you were required to live for it. A far more burdensome task, I will admit, but also far more noble.” He looked at Andreas. “You disagree?”

“I feel that I could’ve done more, done better.”

Nazim nodded. “Yes. You could have. But you could have done far worse.” Constantinople burned. “In the end, you did the best you could. No one can ask for more. But now it is time to rest.” He stood up, opening the door. “Come.”

Andreas rose. He felt different somehow, lighter. The pain from his old, worn body was falling off of him like a tattered coat as he walked out.

He had been here before, a thousand, ten thousand times. It was the courtyard in Smyrna. The Venetians were raping his mother and sister. He walked, looking at the scene he had seen so many times. He felt different though. There was no anger, no rage, simply sadness, regret. He kept walking, Nazim alongside him.

The gate to the garden opened. Andreas paused, uncertain for a second, and looked back. The Venetians were still at it.

A cool hand touched his forearm, and Andreas looked to see the warm, kind face of his mother. There were tears in her eyes. “Welcome home, son.” The gate closed behind them, and together they went into the garden, not looking back, never looking back. But it would not have mattered, for there was nothing to see.

The courtyard was empty.

The demons of Andreas Komnenos were finally at rest.

From Empire of Blood and Gold: A History of the Second Komnenid Dynasty

Even after death, Andreas I was extraordinary. He was not buried in a grand tomb amongst the Emperors of old, or even in the environs of the White Palace. Instead he was buried, per his orders, in a more run-down district of Constantinople, in a common graveyard. But that graveyard was for those who had died in the siege of Constantinople in 1455-56. So it was with those with whom Andreas had first fought and bled that he chose to rest for all eternity. His mausoleum is still there.

He is one of the most contentious Roman Emperors, as can be reflected by the multitude of epithets he possesses. The original was the Little Megas, but he was also known as “the Vanquisher of all Rhomania’s Foes”, “the Scourge of the Latins”, “the Undefeated”, and most popular in his final days, “the Shatterer of Armies”.

It is unsurprising that modern historiography has often continued the trend to emphasize Andreas’ military exploits. For the most part, the contemporary terms have remained in use although varying in popularity. However by most historians he is known as Andreas Niketas, Andreas Victor.

Of course, when one turns away from Andreas the strategos, the names vary considerably. To the Lotharingian school, he is Andreas the Mad, a barely sane ruler kept only in check by those of his brilliant advisors, of whom pride of place goes to Alexeia Komnena. The Lombard school continues this trend, and it is altogether ironic, considering the actions of his progeny, that it emphasizes the contribution of Alfredo di Lecce. Professor Silvio Berlusconi even goes so far as to credit Strategos Alfredo with planning the Venetian, Cannae, and Egyptian campaigns.

In feminist literature, on the other hand, Andreas is known as Andreas the Wise. Some schools of thought in this field view Andreas as a sort of male proto-visionary for the rights of women. That is due to the importance he placed on women in his administration, namely his wife Kristina, his sisters Alexeia and Zoe, and his daughter Eudoxia, and his consistent anti-rape efforts throughout his entire reign.

The truth likely contains bits of all the names. No epithet can fully encompass a man, much less a man like Andreas Komnenos.

One of his most famous, arguably the most famous, of his exploits is his supposed return from the grave and the Iron Gates campaign. But for all the drama of that act, one thing is clear. Andreas Komnenos failed.

It is true that his return derailed the first round of the Time of Troubles. In all, five thousand casualties were inflicted what could have been a far more serious war. And while it ended the threat Leo posed and ensured the Hungarians would never have the strength to intervene later, it did not avert the coming disaster.

Even the brief winter campaign crippled Herakleios’ already poor health, to the point that most scholars agree that during his reign, it was Empress Venera who in fact ruled the Empire. But more importantly, neither Leo or the Hungarians were the hidden enemy Andreas had tried to lure into the open by his fake demise. The architects of the Time of Troubles still remained, delayed, but not defeated.

But Andreas also did not fail. It is true that the man Andreas by his actions and inactions helped cause the Time of Troubles. But it is equally true that the legend of Andreas would be crucial to seeing the Empire through to the other side.

There is one name of Andreas that has remained constant throughout the centuries, immune to the vicissitudes of scholars and historians. It is the name given to him by the Roman people themselves. To them, Andreas was their Emperor, a man who walked among them, fought beside them, bled for them, shared their pain and sorrow. They remembered an Emperor who had offered to give up his crown, his life, to spare them civil war, an Emperor who would charge into battle and sacrifice himself so that their sons might live, an Emperor who would stand in the freezing rain to see that even the lowliest crone could get justice.

The Roman people remember that, and so their name for Andreas has remained constant. To this day, they do not call him by name. Instead they simply call him “The Good Emperor.”

No greater honor can be given to a sovereign.
 
Empire of Blood and Gold

Part 12.1

1517-1527
"The kangaroo fried rice was good, but it made me realize that we need to give the Wu silver, specifically silver forks,"-Andreas Angelos
1517: Herakleios’ first order of business is the war with Hungary and Milan. With the arrival of spring, large offensive operations are possible and many in the European tagmata are eager to get underway. However the Emperor has different thoughts. First, Andreas’ last instructions to him were ‘to give the Empire peace’. And second, Herakleios has no desire for a war that would serve to strengthen many of those who had sided against him in favor of Leo.

Thus Herakleios elects to pursue peace come April. His position is stronger than it was a few months earlier. With the arrival of spring, he is no longer losing weight (although he is still alarmingly thin), and now large-scale maneuvers of the Anatolian tagmata are possible. With Demetrios of Kyzikos as his Megas Domestikos, the Anatolian tagmata are significantly warmer both to Herakleios and the idea of peace. The eastern strategoi view the Ottoman Empire as the chief danger to Imperial security, and see an European war of conquest as pointless at best, reckless at worst.

Herakleios (or more properly Venera, who in actuality conducts most of the Emperor’s business) is also helped by prompt peace proposals from both Buda and Milan, so he can truthfully say he did not go begging for peace. Milan pays a large cash settlement as reparations, but is otherwise untouched. Hungary too makes a large payment in bullion, plus a pledge of 51,000 hyperpyra for the next eight years. At the same time the city of Ragusa is ceded to the Roman Empire, although to avoid enlarging the Epirote theme (whose strategos is Stefanos Doukas) it is granted vassal status.

Stephen’s position back in Buda is shaky at best. Manfred immediately capitalizes on Hungarian weakness, launching a bold drive to reclaim his ancestral Bavarian lands. But even after the Iron Gates, Hungary will not go down easily. The main army is too weak to challenge Manfred in the field, but the wave of hussar raids triple in tempo. Fast and light, they are difficult to engage and exceedingly thorough in their work of destruction. Their scorched earth tactics are what brings Manfred’s offensive to a crawl before it can make much headway.

Yet indirectly the Hungarian hussars benefit Manfred’s cause. Their devastation convinces the German princes to contribute on a consistent, quarterly basis to a common war chest, the outlays of which are controlled by Manfred. When several raiding parties are destroyed and their booty recaptured, a common court under Manfred’s directive is established to arrange speedy and proper return of the goods. Also for the first time the phrase ‘the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ is used in official documents.

Despite the strengthening foundations of Manfred’s German state, the hussars’ military success temporarily stabilize Stephen’s position. That is until August, when Milan repudiates its ties of vassalage.

Despite the fact that its only major operation was a failure, the Duchy of Milan has done rather well out of the War of the Iron Gates. Its new, young Duke Tommaso Laskaris-Visconti (named after his paternal ancestor Emperor Thomas I Laskaris) has used the intervening time to weed out several incompetent officers and promote more promising leaders from their ranks. While the peace settlement with the Empire strained the Duchy’s finances, its manpower losses are rather minor.

Tommaso’s first move is to overrun Modena and Mantua, both granted to Stephen’s bastard brothers by Emperor Andrew when he vassalized Milan. Both operations take place on the same day and quickly overrun their targets with little opposition due to careful maintenance of surprise and well-coordinated angles of attack that rapidly overwhelm the defenses.

Milan is capable of performing such a feat because after Rhomania and the Papacies its bureaucracy is the most advanced in Europe. It was the Milanese who first invented double-entry bookkeeping, and under Tommaso’s influence the widespread Roman practice of the printing press and standardized forms is being imitated.

Modena and Mantua are not the sole extent of Tommaso’s ambitions. Although his repudiation of the vassalage arrangement is an act of war, the Duke does not strike against Hungary. Instead four thousand men are directed to hold the Piave River against Magyar raids while the main Milanese army invades Piedmont.

The Duchy of Savoy is not a formal ally of Hungary, but Tommaso has no desire to leave his back exposed. The well armored Milanese, splendidly equipped with handguns and cannons, defeat the Savoyards in three sharp engagements, and Tommaso celebrates Christmas in Turin, the Count of Montferrat’s wife and daughter serving some of the dishes.

Constantinople is not idle either. Although Herakleios lacks the strength to do much governing, he is able to make a momentous decision in the history of the Roman army. The War Room had been instituted by Andreas, but its staff had been rather arbitrarily selected from amongst the regular officers. Herakleios does not trust said officers, and it is his desire to gain supporters amongst the army that spur his reforms, rather than questions of military efficiency.

First, the official ‘War Room’ and the reason for its name is established, a large chamber in the White Palace (the original ‘War Room’ had been a country villa) where it remains to this day. The War Room is staffed by full-time specialists, who are not officers taking a break from regular command but dedicated staff officers, whose sole job is the creation and fine-tuning of the multitude of war plans.

Since the work in the War Room is an academic exercise conducted indoors, Herakleios is able to participate. He personally drafts two war plans against the Ottoman Empire, one of which draws very heavily on the campaigns of Herakleios I, and quickly wins the loyalty of the War Room officers. Herakleios then institutes his second reform in December, where an officer is sent to each tagma to brief the strategoi on their place in the war plans. They also serve as Herakleios’ eyes amongst the tagmata.

Herakleios needs them, as his second foreign policy move is exceedingly unpopular. Reports from the Office of Barbarians have been flooding in that Malik Said of Al-Andalus is contemplating repudiating his vassalage. The Andalusi have been growing discontent over the lackluster Roman response to the Barbary pirates, with Andreas’ abortive African campaign only serving to heighten tension because of the lack of any follow-up to the sack of Bizerte.

Herakleios’ decision shocks everybody. He confronts the Malik’s representative with what he knows, and offers to release Al-Andalus for a price. The Emperor reckons that holding Al-Andalus against its will would be prohibitively expensive, with the Andalusi tribute not worth enough to justify the cost. On November three Andalusi carracks sail into the Golden Horn with the price. It is 11 million hyperpyra, more than eleven times than Mary of Antwerp’s dowry worth (including the attached loans). Herakleios publicly burns the vassalage treaty, and welcomes Said’s envoy as the new ambassador of Al-Andalus.

Many though are disgusted by the action, with the almost casual abandonment of a province won by Andreas. Venera counters that Andreas had won Al-Andalus with a few drops of ink and no blood, and that eleven million hyperpyra is a rather high profit margin considering that kind of investment.

Venera is the one that puts the money to good use, as she is the one truly running the Empire. Herakleios has strength for his War Room activities, but little else. She commissions the upgrading of several eastern border fortresses, as well as the construction of several more along the Ottoman border. At the same time the defenses of Constantinople are given an absolutely massive upgrade.

A new set of walls is planned, stretching from the village of Kyklobion (OTL Zeytinburnu) to the Imperial arsenal, whose defenses are incorporated into the design. The walls, which are known as the Herakleian Walls, are a far larger version of the Maltese star forts. With squat, sloping walls studded with bastions, plus a network of nine redoubts set before them, the Herakleian Walls once completed will be to the early modern era what the Theodosian Walls were to the medieval period. At the same time those ancient fortifications are upgraded, with several towers reinforced to support heavy artillery, with others rebuilt in triangular form to eliminate blind spots.

herakleianwalls.jpg
The red marks the approximate location of the Theodosian Walls, with the purple marking the Herakleian.

The sheer scale of the construction project quickly eats through the Andalusi payment, and taxes have to be raised. Despite that, Venera’s project is surprisingly well supported. The Hungarian invasion has once again exposed the vulnerability of Constantinople to attack, and the Roman people are feeling insecure now that Andreas ‘The Vanquisher of all Rhomania’s foes’ is no longer with them.

Ethiopia too suffers the loss of a great war hero. In July an Ethiopian delegation arrives in Constantinople to sign what is known to history simply as The Accord, a mutual defense alliance between the Roman Empire and Ethiopia. Although in its initial form it is directed solely towards their joint competitors in the Indian Ocean, it is, despite certain intermissions and misunderstandings, one of the most enduring political agreements in the history of the world.

One of the signatories is Brihan of Merawi. However it is the last thing that she does. The long voyage had been very hard on her health, and on August 7 she dies in Constantinople. At her request she is buried there, where her simple mausoleum remains to this day, an enduring reminder that the long lonely night of Ethiopia has ended. It is just down the street from where the body of Andreas Niketes rests.

However there are many who would dispute that. Many of the lower class believe that Andreas actually returned from the dead to fight the Hungarians and that his story of faking his demise was just a ruse. Inevitably the story goes that just as Andreas returns once from the grave to fight the enemies of Rhomania, so shall he return when the Roman people need him most. Even many merchants believe the tale, and they spread it on their travels.

Many of them spread it in the east, but a new development appears that year. Thus far Ethiopian expansion has largely been on riding the coattails of Romans, but in July the Ethiopians forge ahead. They are the first westerners to sail into Malacca on their own vessels, setting up a trading post. At the same time, encouraged by the gold and ivory trade with the Omani Wilayah of Mogadishu, Ethiopian traders begin working their way down the east African coast, an area untouched by Roman ships.

There are also some Ethiopian merchants who are interested in further fields. Some of the more ambitious kaffos merchants would like to expand their operations into the rest of Europe, but they would like to cut out the Roman middlemen, preferably by sailing around them.

Non-thematic and tagmatic Roman troops of the late Andrean Period:

When one thinks of the Roman army of the Laskarid and Second Komnenid period, one typically imagines the thematic tagmata and the professional guard tagmata, the Athanatoi, Varangoi, and the Scholai. It is a reasonable assumption, as for most of that period they were the Roman army. Theodoros II Laskaris Megas had always emphasized quality over quantity in his military reforms, and the trend was continued well into the fifteenth century. When Demetrios Megas, in his need to save money after the massive increase in size of the Roman army after the War of the Five Emperors, had to cut something from the military budget, it was the civic militias that were slashed.

The reign of Andreas I Niketes changed that. During his reign militia troops more than quintupled in number. Much of this growth came from the first twenty years of his rule, during the unsettled 1450s to 1470s when the need for defense was ominously clear, yet the Imperial government could not effectively provide due to financial constraints and battle losses. At the same time the cities of Rhomania gained increased power to raise and maintain militia, since their powers of taxation were expanded and they were given the power to issues certificates of popes (OTL bonds).

Also Andreas’ conquests, due to their sheer size, were garrisoned mostly by militias, rather than the earlier practice of establishing new themes, which would’ve been prohibitively expensive.

By Andreas’ death, the non-thematic, non-tagmatic units of the Roman army were as follows:

Vigla: Definitely not a militia troop, this formation is known throughout most of the world (and even in the Empire itself) usually as the Imperial Guard. Up to the War of the Five Emperors, the Athanatoi had been the Emperor’s bodyguard, but since then had become an elite battle formation. The regular Imperial Guard became a largely ad hoc organization until Andreas’ reforms in the 1480s.

Its size was expanded to 700 men, its responsibilities that of guarding the Emperor’s person and selected dependents, as well as protecting the grounds of the White Palace. The elite of the elite, its eikosarchoi were chosen from the highest scoring graduates from the School of War to be personally trained by Andreas himself. Officers from the Vigla were also given precedence when it came to promotions. Stefanos and Petros Doukas, Giorgios Laskaris, and Andreas Drakos all began their military careers as Vigla eikosarchoi.

Kentarchiai: These troops fall between the militia and thematic-tagmata in terms of quality. Raised and maintained as militia troops, they conducted regular exercises with the tagmata and were intended for field, rather than defensive use. As their original organization proved too small for field use, the program was expanded on the eve of the Last Crusade with ten kentarchiai combining to form one chilliarchos. Each chillarchos contained eight hundred sarissophoroi and two hundred mauroi, all militia, to be supported by four skutatoi droungoi in battle. By 1517 there were fourteen chilliarchoi, all of them in Europe.

Allagions: Far and away the most numerous militia troop type. Originally they had been maintained by the Imperial government, but responsibility for their maintenance was handed over to the cities in the early years of Demetrios Megas. Thus these were dominated by the urban dynatoi who organized and paid said militias. Varying in quality and size depending on the city, their numbers are a source of some debate amongst historians as civic records have not survived nearly as well as the Imperial Archives. Estimates vary from thirty to a hundred and fifty thousand.

Some of the allagions, mostly those established by Andreas I in Syria and Egypt, are what are now called Imperial allagions. Their start-up costs were paid for by the Imperial government, and their size and quality determined by Imperial statutes. Both were periodically checked by Imperial auditors, although these like the regular allagions were controlled by the local dynatoi through the civic governments.

Teicheiotai: The civic militia of Constantinople, this unit was maintained by the Imperial government. Numbering eighteen thousand by 1517, it was established after the siege of Constantinople in 1455-56. Regularly training with the Constantinople archontate, their quality was between that of the allagions and the kentarchiai.

They were the main defense force of Constantinople along with the local archontate, although in battle they could be joined by the Athanatoi and Varangoi, barracked in Constantinople, as well as the Tessarakontarioi, the Imperial marines. Also all units of the Thracian and Optimatic tagmata were stationed within a week’s march of Constantinople, so in theory the Queen of Cities could draw on no less than fifty thousand men in her defense.

1518: The bells toll across Scythia and Georgia, as the Kalmyk Horde crosses the Volga. The Buddhist nomads had defeated a Russian army in the trans-Volga and fended off a couple of Cossack raids, leaving the path clear for them to ford the great Volga. A sign that Orthodox Christianity is somewhat thin on the grounds (many of the local tribes were pagan in living memory) comes from when some of the Cossacks sacrifice the daughter of a captured Kalmyk clan chief to the great Volga in the hopes that the river might repel the invaders.

The Kalmyks drive south, heading for Georgian territory as both the Russians and Georgians scramble to respond. In support, Herakleios dispatches supplies and gunships up the Don. Their fire support proves crucial when the combined Georgian-Russian armies meet the Kalmyks on famous ground, the site of the Battle of Draconovsk.

The battle lasts all day. Around noon the Buddhists seem to be gaining the upper hand, but an apparition of a mighty horseman dressed in white, identified as the Dragon himself, rallies the tiring men. By nightfall, the Kalmyks have been utterly vanquished, the remnants of the horde fleeing in all directions. Many of the Kalmyk women and children are taken as slaves (still practiced in the region), although most are eventually sold to the Ottoman Empire, many of the young boys to become janissaries.

Very early in the new year, Patriarch Photius II dies in Constantinople. A good friend of Andreas, he had always avoided harassing Herakleios out of respect for his father and had tried to stop the clergy from doing the same, although with declining success in his old age. Despite that, he is genuinely missed by the clergy and the Roman people.

Despite Venera’s attempts to secure a more pliable and silent candidate, the Bishop of Ohrid, the very cleric who had asked Herakleios’ opinion regarding his father’s alleged blasphemy outside Jerusalem, is elected Patriarch Isidore II. Part of that is due to judiciously placed bribes on the part of Nikephoros, but also to the articulate, charismatic oration of a new arrival in Constantinople.

thomasmore.jpg
Ioannes of Avlona, half-Albanian by birth, Bishop of Messina.
He and others like him are the main reason for the rapid growth of Orthodoxy in southern Italy. University educated at Thessaloniki, he has always striven for the earthly as well as spiritual well-being of his flock. Besides teaching the precepts of Orthodoxy to the Sicilians, he has also arranged for new agricultural and mining techniques to be brought to Sicily to improve the lot of the peasantry. Plus he has used his contacts amongst the south Italian clergy to promote the sale and export of his flock’s products, particularly oranges and wine.

With his support and patronage, the average income of Messina and the surrounding territories has increased by over forty percent in the last fifteen years. Ioannes has also helped fund the construction of textile mills and blast furnaces with bellows powered by water wheels, to diversify Messina’s exports. With economic prosperity, the number of Orthodox adherents has increased dramatically. In a special Orthodox Easter ceremony in 1513, he and four assistants baptized more than three thousand Sicilians.

However now Ioannes returns to Constantinople, confident in the success of Sicilian Orthodoxy. What concerns him now is the growth of impiety at the Imperial court, which he regards as a clear and present danger to the Empire.

Nikephoros soon begins meeting regularly with Patriarch Isidore and Bishop Ioannes, telling them all kinds of tales regarding Herakleios’ religious beliefs. Supposedly Herakleios challenged the validity of the Bible, exhorting his children to treat it with no more respect than any other manuscript written by men, and ‘in this case, stupid men, for the Israelites were a primitive, backward people even for a primitive, backward time’. He also questioned the justice and mercy of God, who ‘if he were all-powerful, could’ve found a way to save the world without torture. So either God is all-powerful, or he is a sadist’.

The clergymen are both shocked by Nikephoros’ tales, but what disturbs them the most is the report that Herakleios said ‘There is no God.’ Isidore at first takes that to mean Herakleios is a Muslim and that he was saying ‘there is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ Nikephoros corrects him; Herakleios is not a Muslim, but an atheist. Historians are uncertain about how much, if any, of Nikephoros’ stories are true, but it is clear that both clerics believe the Prince of Spiders.

Venera does not catch wind of these conversations, which are kept secret. An increasing amount of her time is spent caring for her husband, with the result that the Imperial bureaucracy moves along, running the Empire without significant Imperial guidance. The only major item is Venera’s institution of random audits on several high-ranking officials.

Several grain monitors are taken in for questioning, and via Kristina’s torture method a plot to sabotage Scythian grain shipments is discovered. To what end Venera does not discover, as a rash of assassinations take out the primary witnesses and investigators. By the time Venera can begin looking for the culprit again, the trail is cold.

At this time, Princess Eudoxia, only daughter of Andreas Komnenos and Maria Drakina, author of the Andread, begins work on the Herakleiad. It is to be a biography of her favorite baby brother, and although never finished, it is the main pro-Herakleian primary source available to historians today.

In Alexandria, business is booming. All of the kaffos and the produce of the India trade flow through the major port. The city has grown to fifty five thousand souls, mostly Copts and Greeks, with a new university charter. Katepano Demetrios’ court patronizes Copt artists, architects, and scholars, as well as a small menagerie regularly visited by Prince Theodoros. In his latest visit, the Zookeeper Prince gets a baby Sumatran rhinoceros from his half-brother Demetrios, a gift from Ethiopian traders returning from Malacca. At the same time Theodoros gives Demetrios a young female African black rhinoceros, which had been born at Theodoros’ second animal park near Aleppo.

Also present at the court is Empress Dowager Veronica and sixteen-year-old Prince David Komnenos. Already well-loved by the girls of Demetrios’ court, he is also respected amongst Demetrios’ guard. Speaking Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and Coptic fluently, Demetrios has also noticed certain mannerisms of his youngest half-brother that are disturbingly like those of his father. That is not too surprising though, as David was personally raised by Andreas and Veronica throughout their tours in Syria and Egypt.

* * *
Constantinople, November 3, 1518:

Nikephoros grunted happily as he pulled out of Natasha and flopped down on the sweat-stained bed beside her. He cupped her left breast with his hand and squeezed gently. “You were quite good tonight.”

“So were you, milord,” she purred. Her hand started to reach down. “Would you like to go again?” she smiled mischievously as Nikephoros let go, reaching back behind him.

“I do,” Nikephoros replied. Natasha jolted. “But I can’t.” He pulled out the knife he had just put in her breast. Natasha tried to speak, blood spluttering from her mouth. “Shh, shh,” Nikephoros said, putting a finger to her bloody lips.

“This isn’t personal, you understand?” Nikephoros said softly. “It’s just that you know too much, and I can’t take the risk of you telling on me. But don’t worry…” he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “You were awesome.”

He got up as Natasha gurgled, wiping his bloody finger on the pillow case. As he dressed he rang for his tongue-less, they wouldn’t talk, servants to come and clean up the mess.

It was a pity; Natasha had been a superb spy, assassin, and mistress. Not many women can say that. But he couldn’t take the risk. Tomorrow his plan went into operation. The loss of the grain monitors had only been a minor inconvenience. But until then…

Fatima’s had just gotten a set of identical Vlach triplets from Odessos. That should be different, having them all at once. He smiled, leaving the room as the servants entered. Tonight is going to be fun.

* * *
On November 4, Emperor Herakleios eats a light lunch and then watches his children Alexeia and Alexios play for half an hour. Kissing Empress Venera, he retires to take a nap. A hour later he is discovered dead, a fired kyzikos in his hand.

Nikephoros moves rapidly. By the hour of None (3 PM) he is crowned Nikephoros IV Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans, Vicegerent of God on Earth. Patriarch Isidore and Bishop Ioannes publicly hail him as a loyal son of the church and a mighty Christian monarch, warning that any Romans who do not recognize him as Emperor will be excommunicated. The army and people make no opposition.

Herakleios is to be buried in unholy ground as he died in sin, not a true follower of the Orthodox church. As son of a man who committed suicide, Alexios Komnenos is formally barred by church decree from ever assuming the throne of Constantinople. Nikephoros though is not willing to take any chances, and orders Venera, Alexeia, and Alexios to be placed under arrest. But they are already gone.

* * *
The Black Sea, November 4, 1518:

The sun was setting over Constantinople. The light was dappling off the gypsum walls of the White Palace, a beautiful sight, a glorious sight, a horrible sight. Venera stared at it, even as the image grew blurry as tears flowed from her cheeks. That is where my husband died. That is where my husband was murdered. She knew Herakleios. He had been tempted, she knew that, but for her sake, for their children’s sake, he never would have committed suicide. No, she knew the truth, and she knew the one responsible. “Nikephoros,” she hissed. How could I have been so blind? She had always suspected that her first son, Konstantinos’, death was not an accident. He killed him too.

“Excuse me, Empress,” a sailor said, maneuvering around her. She stepped aside to let him pass. The drum beat sounded rapidly as the oars sliced through the water, the sails snapping in the breeze. They were making good time, and thanks to Andreas Angelos there would be no naval pursuit. Soon they would be in Georgia, and safety.

Empress, she thought. Is that what I am? She looked at the White Palace, squaring her shoulders. Yes, I am. She looked back at her seven-year old children, Alexeia and Alexios, twins, clinging to each other. She looked back at the White Palace. I am Venera of Abkhazia, Empress of the Romans. Wife to a murdered husband, mother to a murdered son. Her gaze sifted to the gleaming dome of the Hagia Sophia. And I will have my revenge.

* * *
Lords of the Great South: The Early Years of the Southern Wu
The first few years after landing had been hard times for the people of Wu. The tropical north of the land of Nan (also the name of their first settlement) had been rather inhospitable, with rice cultivation having only limited success. So the people of Wu turned once again to the sea.

To both east and west the ships sailed, some poking their way along the coast of Nan to the east, while others made landfall on Papua and the Aru Islands. From the latter the Wu learn how to make and eat trepang, an edible sea cucumber. But it is from the former that the Empire of the Great South owes its survival.

The Papuans were amazed by the great ships of the Wu, but quickly saw the value of trading agricultural knowledge in exchange for steel tools. From them the Wu learned how to cultivate yams, taro, the pitpit plant, bananas, breadfruit, coconut, and sago, at last allowing the refugees to adequately feed their settlement at Nan.

Meanwhile their ships continued eastward and southward. Out of fourteen ships, only seven made it to Xi Wang, the site of the second city of Wu (located where Sydney is IOTL). It was here that the Empire of the Great South took its form.

More temperate than Nan, and far easier on the livestock brought by the Wu, sheep, pigs, and cows, by 1445 about two-thirds of Wu’s population lived in Xi Wang or in neighboring villages. Besides the use of food crops from Papua, the Wu subsisted on their livestock as well as fishing. Seafood became a huge portion of the Wu diet, due to its availability as many of the Wu refugees had been fishermen back in China. Also the climate around Xi Wang was much more amenable to rice cultivation, which quickly worked its way back into the Wu diet although never to regain the importance it once held in ‘the old land’.

Besides seafood, sheep grew in importance as their wool became the main source of textiles; silk cultivation had been a miserable failure. Aboriginal raids on their herds were a significant problem in the early years of Xi Wang as the local peoples quickly spotted the value of these animals. But disease and Wu discoveries of local iron deposits (allowing them to start forging steel weapons again) even more quickly pushed them back.

But the Qianlong Emperor, the first to rule in Nan, saw a way to use the aboriginal people to his advantage. He gave them some herds of sheep and cattle, in exchange for which the aborigines would provide some of the animals back from time to time. In essence, he subcontracted the ranching work to the local tribes, allowing the Wu to focus on agriculture and seafaring. The tribes were tied to the Wu core by trades and gifts of Wu manufactures, along with marriage alliances at a later date, in much the same way that the early Ottoman Empire or the Kingdom of Urumqi welded the local Arab or Uyghur tribes to the state.

The move proved to be a substantial step forward in improving aboriginal-Chinese relations. Although it started very slowly, and initially only amongst the Wu peasantry, there was intermarriage between the newcomers and the natives. Cultural exchange was mostly in favor of the Wu, but there were a few exceptions. The smoking ceremony was commonly performed at Wu births by 1500, even for those without any aboriginal blood, while the ancestral creator-spirit Baiame made it into the celestial hierarchy.

Although the Wu beheld a vast land, the sea remained vitally important to them. Besides the high importance of seafood, maintaining communications between Nan and Xi Wang required a fleet. Stocks of local timber allowed the construction and maintenance of a small fleet, although one far less grandiose than the armada that had set out from Guangzhou in the fall of China.

Inevitably the thoughts of the Wu turned again to commerce. Starting in the 1470s the sprawling Majapahit thassalocracy began to falter and crack, so the Wu could not be militarily kept out. There was certainly incentive. Luxury goods such as spices, silk, and porcelain (Wu produced an incredibly small pittance of the latter, but of poor quality at this point) were desired by the Wu court and the upper class. That class, growing in importance by 1500, was comprised of large landowners, mine owners, and aboriginal chiefs who had leveraged their control of herds into political power. The latter in particular were very interested, as possession and gift of Wu manufactures were a primary means of securing the loyalty of their followers.

Wu’s main problem was not inability to trade, but inability to pay. Steel wares and wool textiles might be good enough to woo aboriginal tribesmen, but the merchants of southeast Asia were not impressed. The discovery of gold in Nan helped a great deal, not only providing a valuable trade item but allowing the Wu to reestablish a monetary economy. Nevertheless the outward flow of bullion was a source of aggravation in Nan.

One solution was to simply take the desired goods at the point of a rocket launcher. Occasionally done after 1500, it was not supported by the Wu court because of the potential diplomatic fallout. Another solution was trade with Champa, which needed high-quality steel weaponry both to maintain its hold over its empire and to help ward off its ‘master’ Tieh China, with whom relations were deteriorating. Wu could provide that, and this endeavor was eagerly followed by the Wu court as a potential first step in the reconquest of the old land.

A third was to use the other major resource the Wu had, their ships. Wu captains would offer to ferry spices from the Moluccas to India in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Another method was to try and dominate the carrying trade in low-value goods amongst the Spice Islands. Exceedingly unglamorous, it was though a large and open market, offering chances to establish contacts and regain lost bullion. It was to that end that three ships of the Empire of the Great South sailed into Malacca harbor on October 4. There they met something, and someone they did not expect. Five ships from Rhomania, armed with bristling arrays of cannons that put the Wu batteries to shame, and a smiling, one-eyed prince named Andreas Angelos.

* * *
The White Palace, Constantinople, November 5, 1518:

“By the Grace of God, His Imperial Majesty, Nikephoros, fourth of that name, Doukas Laskaris Komnenos, Emperor of the Romans, Vicegerent of God on Earth, Equal of the Apostles, Lord of Space and Time!” the herald boomed as Nikephoros entered the chamber.

Everyone prostrated themselves. Good, Nikephoros thought as he ascended the throne, his purple slippers brushing against the fine Kashmiri rugs. I don’t need a trained bear for that. Although I have to admit it did make a nice touch. He sat down, and then frowned. The obedience wasn’t from fear, but simple caution. Herakleios had been known to be weak, and therefore he could be defied. Nikephoros though was an unknown, so for now, until they had their measure of him, they were being careful. Soon though, you will kneel out of fear. He already knew of mutterings regarding his revival of the old titles of Equal of the Apostles, Cosmokrator, and Chronokrator. That would not last for long though.

They were still prostrated. Nikephoros waited a few more seconds. “Rise,” he commanded. They did, some no doubt grumbling that Andreas had never demanded such groveling. He was a strategos, really, at heart, a soldier, an incredibly good one certainly, but not an Autokrator. They may dislike the command, but they could not ignore it.

He had always been ignored. He had never known his parents, and his grandmother, the one person who hadn’t, died when he was eight. His father had been her favored son, and with his passing Nikephoros had assumed his place. But then she was gone and he was alone, forgotten. Herakleios had his wife, Demetrios Egypt, and the great, mighty Andreas had his peasant empress and his wars. But he had nothing. Nikephoros had turned being ignored into a weapon, but that didn’t mean he liked it. Now though they cannot ignore me, not if they wish to live.

“Bring in the second petitioner,” he ordered.

The herald opened his mouth and then confusedly at Nikephoros. “The second, your majesty?”

“Yes, the second.”

“What of the first?”

“He will wait.” A second. “I am the Emperor. Do as I command.” As the herald called for the man, Nikephoros smiled. It’s good to be Emperor.

* * *
1519: Venera, Alexeia, and Alexios make it safely to Georgia, where they are given shelter by King Alexei Bagrationi, who is himself a grandson of Theodoros IV Komnenos. Over seventy percent of Herakleios’ vast private fortune (over 15 million hyperpyra) is confiscated by Nikephoros, but the remainder had been invested in foreign lands and business ventures (nearly all in Georgia and Russia) that he cannot touch, but Venera can. Even though she can only draw on a quarter of her husband’s estate, she is the second richest soul in Georgia after the King himself. Emperor Nikephoros quickly finds out where they have gone, but Alexei politely but firmly rebuffs the extradition demands.

Venera does not use her family’s or coin’s influence to push Alexei to invade, because it would be futile. Besides the fact that Rhomania outweighs Georgia almost five to one, returning at the head of a foreign army, even an Orthodox one, is a surefire way to have the Roman people and army join ranks behind Nikephoros. So for now she waits, looking for opponents to Nikephoros in Rhomania.

Her first choice though is not available. Nikephoros is suspicious of Andreas Angelos’ involvement in Venera’s escape, so Andreas departs for Suez along with his wife and eight-year-old son Isaakios.

Stefanos Doukas is placed under observation by no less than four of Nikephoros’ agents, all of them capable of assassinating the strategos, but the Emperor stays their hand. Unless Stefanos displays clear signs of disloyalty, Nikephoros does not wish to needlessly anger the army, as it is the main threat to his rule. However he does implement plans to gain its support, sending orders to begin the preparations for the Third Pepper Fleet.

Administratively, Nikephoros’ early reign is virtually indistinguishable from Herakleios’. The institution of the War Room continues without a change, as Nikephoros quite likes the opportunity the War Room officers pose to keep a further eye on the strategoi. The bureaucracy is allowed to function on its own with little Imperial involvement, although Nikephoros dramatically intensifies the random audits instituted by Venera. Having used corrupt officials to his advantage against Herakleios, Nikephoros has no intention of having the same happen to him. The process immediately begins bearing fruit, although Bishop Ioannes is disturbed that in addition to the usual sackings and forfeiture of properties, the most grievous offenders are executed.

At the same time knives begin to flash in Alexandria. Demetrios has remained silent about this whole affair, but with Demetrios and David both in Egypt Nikephoros cannot afford not to have eyes in the province. Unfortunately Demetrios seems quite good at plucking them out. The eldest legitimate son of Andreas Niketes may have no interest in Constantinople, but in Africa he is not to be challenged lightly. Overall though the game of knives is a win for Nikephoros, as he does place some agents in Demetrios’ court, but not as many as he would like.

* * *
Alexandria, March 22, 1519:

Andreas smiled, feeling the hot Egyptian sun on his face. In a few minutes it would annoy him, but right now it felt good after that cold, dank dungeon. He looked over at his father, Demetrios Komnenos, Katepano of Egypt. “You look unhappy,” Andreas observed.

Demetrios grunted. “I would think you would be pleased,” Andreas continued. I am. This shows Alexandria is not to be trifled with. Nikephoros’ newest spy had been made of sterner stuff. Unlike the first few, the Kristinan torture had not broken him, so they’d resorted to more…orthodox methods. He had broken, although the quivering, bloody sack of flesh that they had just seen bore little resemblance to a man anymore. His pleas for death would soon be granted. But they had the names of all his contacts now. Rats, all of them, with their master the Rat Emperor. I think Egypt would be well rid of him.

It wasn’t as useful as it looked. Nikephoros had his spies organized in cell groups, so that the loss of one wouldn’t compromise the whole. That was why, even after months of trying, they still did not know how the Emperor was getting them into Alexandria. He could send officials down from Constantinople, which he had, men too prominent to be disappeared without awkward questions, but that same prominence made them easy to observe and corral. It was the ‘nobodies’ that lurked unseen that were the real danger. And some of them had just been ratted out. A small victory perhaps, but a victory nonetheless.

“Walk with me,” Demetrios said. Andreas did, and they traveled in silence for a few minutes. They walked amongst flowering hedges lining the banks of ponds filled with fish and frogs, the light breeze carrying the music of songbirds and the laughter of children as two brooks babbled happily whilst meandering through the park. Ahead a short Copt, his brow furrowed, sat atop a dais, his gaze darting back and forth from his canvas and paints to the vista stretched out before him.

And what a vista. The port of Alexandria was abuzz with activity, warehouses brimming with cloves and nutmeg from the east, kaffos from Ethiopia, silks from Bithynia, wines from Thracesia and the Morea, ivory from Zanzibar, carpets from Kashmir, amber from the Rus. That proverb said ‘if it exists on Earth, it can be found in Constantinople’, but once again, as in ancient times, the same could be said of Alexandria. A hundred tongues could be heard on her wharves, Coptic, Greek, Arabic, Italian, German, Russian, Turkish, even the tongues of far off Varangia and Thule, the list went on and on.

Demetrios gestured back towards the dungeon entrance. “That was why I don’t want to rule,” he said. “It reminded me of that terrible thing.” Andreas nodded; his father had mentioned it several times, but he had never gone into detail. “I was a boy of nine,” Demetrios continued, relaxing as the shade of a cypress grove fell on them. He stopped walking. “I was ordered by my father the Emperor to kill a man, a rapist. I couldn’t. I refused. So Leo killed him. That man was evil, no doubt about that, but the sound, that sound the man made as he died…There was nothing righteous about that sound. That was when I learned the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That to be a ruler one must be evil. That is why I rejected the throne. To be the ruler of such a great empire, one must be of great evil oneself. Back there, that man, what was left of him, reminded me that even here there is evil, just not as much of it.”

“But these evils, they are done for the good of the state…”

“Does not matter. The motive does not matter. Only the act. The death of a rapist is no different than that of a priest. The blood of both runs red, and both, both make that sound.” Demetrios gestured around him, at the garden, the children, the painter, the harbor. “This is what I want to be remembered for, not that.” He nodded at the dungeon.

“But wouldn’t you have been better remembered as Emperor of the Romans, not Katepano of Egypt?”

“Yes, yes I would be. But history, ah history, the verdict of men not yet born. I do not understand why so many intelligent men turn into fools to gain its approval. No, I would rather a few remember me as a good man, than a multitude remember me as a monster.”

Andreas opened his mouth. “I do not agree.”

Demetrios smiled sadly, looking at him and clasping his left shoulder. “I know, son, I know. And as much as I hate to admit it, the time is coming, very soon, when Egypt will need not men like men, but men like you.”

* * *
In Mazandaran, thirteen-year-old Osman Komnenos gets his first taste of battle when the Cossacks launch a raid via a flotilla of boats along the coast of his father’s province. Initially the Cossacks have the advantage of surprise, but their large haul of booty encourages them to stay longer than was wise. Konstantinos Komnenos, his son there as a page, annihilates them near Roodsar, with the teenager praised for his steadiness under fire and the skill with which he controlled his mount.

In Italy, Duke Tommaso has finished his conquest of the Piedmont, although he failed in his goal of capturing the Duke of Savoy and his family. Nevertheless, it is a near complete win for him as negotiations with Arles and the Bernese League prove quite fruitful. Milanese control of all Savoyard lands south of the Alps will not be contested, with Savoy proper becoming a vassal of Arles. Nice and Saluzzo are to be maintained as independent buffer states between Arles and Milan.

Tommaso had his eye on the two small states, but is willing to forego them to avoid a confrontation with Arles, as events are moving forward in Germany. Manfred resumes his offensive, liberating Mainz in June, the church bells ringing through Germany. Three weeks the new “Roman” Pope Victor IV arrives in the city, accompanied by twenty members of an order both new and old, the Templars.

The old order of the Templars had been disbanded after charges of heresy in the early fourteenth century. Victor IV finds it appropriate that the new order is designed specifically to combat heresy, with extra incentive for the name from Hospitalier support of the Avignonese Popes.

However these are not soldiers, but scholars, modeled after the mold of Orthodox clergy exemplified by Bishop Ioannes of Avlona. Educated in the new Templar University of Hamburg, they are skilled in theology, philosophy, and oratory to make them skilled debaters and Catholic apologists, also specializing in agriculture, metallurgy, or mathematics to make them more useful in converting heretics by providing earthly as well as spiritual benefits. They are fiercely loyal to the Pope and serve under monastic discipline.

The Templars have already struck a major blow for the Reich, in the person of Johann Gansfort. Captured by the Hungarians in Austria, where he had been combating the expansion of the Avignon rite amongst the populace, he is brought to trial for heresy in Vienna. According to the German (and very likely highly embellished) account, Johann, in the worn habit of a monk, is presented by all the glittering, splendid might and majesty of the Hungarian Empire. Pointing at a table covered in pamphlets Johann had written in the German tongue denouncing the Avignon faith, Emperor Stephen gives Johann a choice, recant or die. Johann refuses to abandon his faith, ending his response with the most famous one-liner in German history, “Here I stand, I can do no other.” An hour later Johann is burned at the stake.

Besides the Templars, the Kaiser is accompanied by new battle formations, the landsknechts. Fierce pikemen, also armed with a kriegsmesser (war knife-in actuality a slashing sword), supported by zweihanders and gunners, they are organized into banners of 1,000 men commanded by an Oberst. Well disciplined, they are a formidable force particularly against Hungarian cavalry. Starting sometime in May, they gain their own distinctive battle cry, “Hier stehe Ich!”, ‘Here I stand!’.

At the same time, the situation for the Hungarians turns into a nightmare, as Vlach forces invade Transylvania. The Magyar nobility have had enough, and on June 3 the hapless Stephen is deposed in a coup and killed, to be replaced on the throne by Miklos Hunyadi, who to maintain some form of dynastic connection marries Erzsebet Arpad, youngest daughter of Julia, a trueborn daughter of Ladislaus Arpad and Kristina of Novgorod. It is rather ironic that it is the Vlach invasion that catapults the Hunyadi family to the throne, considering that they originated in Wallachia but moved to Austria after it was conquered by the Warrior King.

Far to the east, Andreas Angelos is the first Roman commander to sail into Malacca harbor. The Ethiopians have already established a trading post there (one of their ships is loading cloves when Andreas arrives) and the Romans have little difficulty in getting their own. Four days later three black ships, as large as the Roman vessels, sail into the harbor. They are Wu.

Andreas soon makes contact with them, intrigued by these newcomers, so far the only ones in the east to build ships that rival those of Rhomania and Ethiopia, although he does note that their cannons would have fit right into the Roman arsenal of Demetrios Megas.

Attempts to establish trade relations founder though on the lack of any Wu goods to trade save bullion. The Wu are quite willing to pay with gold for Roman armaments, but both Imperial and Ethiopian law, aware of how the firepower advantage benefits both countries, make selling armaments a capital offense, punishable by hanging.

Then the Wu discover someone else they are willing to pay for with bullion, Roman silks. Due to fierce competition from Indian textiles and Chinese silks, Roman silks have to be sold somewhat cheaply in order to compete in the east, with the high-quality Roman garments making little to no headway in the market. Many Roman cargoes in the east consist of low-quality silk garments, which are designed to be cheap and worn by non-upper class individuals, thus filling a niche left by high-quality Indian and Chinese textiles designed for upper-class consumption.

However the Wu do not mind the lower quality, thanks to the lower price. Silk is of great importance to them, both because of its popularity amongst aboriginal chiefs and its connotations with the splendor of the ‘old land’. So the Romans and Wu strike a deal, silks for gold, although later Andreas expands the agreement, with the Wu also trading iron, copper, and timber, which Andreas intends to use to make the Roman trading posts in the east more self-sufficient.

Whilst in Malacca, Andreas Angelos hears news of the adjacent lands. The ancient and mighty Kingdom of Champa, which bestrides the lands south of China like a colossus, dominates the region with its well disciplined army, and is having increasing difficulties with its titular master Tieh China, due to Beijing’s alarms about its overmighty vassal.

To the west of Champa are the rump kingdom of Khmer, a Champan vassal in all but name, and Ayutthaya. Its splendid capital, which gave the name to the Siamese kingdom, is a major regional center of trade and a fierce rival to Malacca. There has already been one attempt by the Siamese to take Malacca thirty years earlier, but with the growing might of Champa the threat has diminished, although the great port of Vijaya, the Champan capital, is also a trading rival of Malacca.

Far to the north the isles of Japan remain divided into over a hundred and fifty petty states, often fighting with each other, although the states of Kyushu at least are hard pressed by Korean raids. These are in retaliation for the attacks of the wokou, Japanese pirates. The effectiveness of the Korean attacks are limited, due to an alliance pact between the neo-Jurchens and the northern Yuan requiring most of the peninsula’s might to guard the Yalu. The wokou have been quick to take advantage of Korean distraction and Tieh naval impotency. As the Wu ships sail into Malacca, the wokou sail up the Yangtze and sack Yangzhou, on the way out detonating the immense magazines. The resulting explosion hurls debris three miles away.

Tieh China of course dominates the scene in east Asia. Originally Muslim, the Islamic elements of the court have since dwindled away under demographic and cultural pressure from the far larger Confucian majority. An example is that Chinese court Muslims do not pray in the direction of Mecca, ‘a dusty provincial town of unwashed barbarians’, but in the direction of the Emperor’s throne, on the grounds that Mohammed was really a Chinese immigrant in Arabia!

Despite the wokou raids, the Tieh hold on their vast domains is secure as the main threat, the Yuan, Jurchens, and the Timurids/Urumqi are effectively contained by provincial Wei troops, who resemble Roman tagmata although not as well trained or equipped. They are supported by the Eleven Banners, eleven full-time professional armies paid in cash. Varying in size, the largest is stationed in Beijing as the Emperor’s Guard, with the other ten scattered amongst the provinces. Incidentally the Eighth Banner, the one best situated to keep an eye on Champa has grown over forty percent in the last fifteen years.

Despite that, over three-fourths of China’s might is deployed watching the northern and western frontier. They are there to face familiar threats, unaware that behind them something is stirring. In the recently established kaffos oikoi of Draconovsk and Novgorod, frequented by university students, a new phrase is beginning to be uttered, ‘Russia the Great’.

1520: Miklos Hunyadi immediately has his work cut out for him. The German nation is marching through Bavaria to the cheers of the local populace, the Vlachs are overrunning Transylvania with its lucrative silver and copper mines, and the Milanese have crossed the Piave. The local militias, of low morale and massively outnumbered are nonchalantly swept aside.

Tommaso’s problems though begin once he leaves the Friuli and enters Croatia. The Croats make it very clear that he is not welcome, a sentiment that is only reinforced when the Duke starts forcibly requisitioning supplies from the people. While the Venetians have been selling provisions to Tommaso, they are well aware of their advantageous market position and have been exploiting it thoroughly, to the discomfit of Milanese coffers.

Miklos decides to concentrate on Manfred, as he poses the greatest threat to the Hungarian heartland. Outside Bayreuth what is left of the Black Army of Hungary mauls a German column, killing the Count Palatine of the Rhine. His heir is a fourteen-month-old boy. Manfred immediately swoops into the territory, depositing a governor and garrison ‘to safeguard the security of the new Count Palatine in these trying times’.

Despite the war fervor, the German princes are growing wary of Manfred’s increasing autocratic tendencies. In June, the Margrave of Baden, the Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, and the Counts of Hoya, Diepholz, and Nassau declare that they will no longer provide men, arms, and money for the war effort. Their justification (which is legitimate) is that Imperial agents have been placing levies on their lands and peoples without any regard or input from the sovereign princes, a blatant violation of their privileges.

As soon as word of the rebellion reaches Mainz, Pope Victor IV excommunicates the princes and all their supporters, ‘for their treachery to the Catholic, German, faith’. Templars are immediately dispatched to the region to woo away supporters from the princes while Manfred prepares his riposte. It is not long in coming.

Thanks to large emergency taxes on his sizeable north German domains, the landsknecht are wholly in the Emperor’s pocket. Supported by the highest-quality Saxon cannons and three thousand Russian mercenaries, including nine hundred of the fearsome archontes, Manfred can muster a vast and formidable host without drawing on a single coin or man from the princely domains.

At Bad Hersfeld, Manfred completely and utterly annihilates the rebel army, winning a complete and total victory. Backed to the hilt by Pope Victor, Manfred annexes the rebels’ land, disenfranchising their heirs (who are given the opportunity to prove their loyalty as carefully-watched soldiers in Manfred’s armies), and granting Hoya and Diepholz to the church, while Victor provides trained, educated clerks to Manfred for help in administering his new territories.

badhersfeld.jpg
The thriving spa town of Bad Hersfeld today. Many scholars consider the battle fought just west of the town to be the beginning of the history of modern Germany.
Many students of history are confused by Pope Victor IV’s actions, which did much to strengthen Imperial authority in Germany, a trend contrary to typical papal action. However Pope Victor, himself a German born in Cologne, is a very staunch church reformer, who views virtually all of the church’s problems as being caused by ‘degenerate, lascivious, hedonistic, greedy Italians’. His solution to the problem is to Germanize the church. Even before his accession, sixty percent of the cardinals were German.

Victor continues the trend. The Templar Order is ninety five percent German, and its officers are all German. However his defense of a strong Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation is inspired more by the Romans. He attributes the large growth of Orthodoxy to the fact that that faith has a very large and powerful Imperial protector, and he aims to raise up the Holy Roman Empire in a similar fashion. Nevertheless his insistence on and acquisition of sizeable estates from the fallen rebels show that he has no intention of having the Catholic church subordinated to the Holy Roman Emperor.

Meanwhile in Kalmar King Christopher III of Denmark, fifteen years old, and Princess Catherine of Sweden, sixteen years old, are wed. Just two months later she is Queen of Sweden when her father passes away. Her accession is immediately challenged by a peasant revolt, spurred by her father’s heavy and regular taxation, administered by educated clerks from the new university at Uppsala.

Her response is quite similar to Manfred’s, a sharp, fast and absolutely overwhelming military response. Her father King Charles II had already used his sizeable Finnish estates, along with new iron foundries and timber exports to finance a small professional army four thousand strong, fighting much like mauroi and skilled in forest combat, making them the perfect counter to the Swedish peasant militias.

Also supporting Catherine is an unexpected but extremely generous windfall of cash, low-interest loans both from the van Afsnees and the Lotharingian court, courtesy of Mary of Antwerp. As Norway and Scotland stagger from the hammer blows of a resurging England, she is determined to maintain a terrible northern enemy to bleed England. Though likely apocryphal, her famous saying thoroughly sums up the Lotharingian queen’s position, “I will raise up a great and mighty foe that will vex England for a thousand years.”

The rebellion is quickly and bloodily crushed, making it the fourth peasant tax revolt in the last eleven years, all of which came to a similar end. In Denmark though, there is discontent over this potent reminder of Swedish strength, where it is remarked that Catherine is “the only man in the House of Estridsen.”

catherinev.jpg
Catherine I of Sweden, from the series The Iron Queen
King Christopher III, Catherine’s new husband, cuts a very poor figure in contrast to his wife. Short and skinny, easily intoxicated and extremely fond of perfume and makeup, the only reason he is not considered a catamite is because of his numerous and exceedingly clumsy (and usually drunken) attempts to chase skirts (although the few that he does manage to catch typically complain of poor royal performance afterwards). In one infamous episode, on Christmas Eve a drunken Christopher starts groping one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting in full view of Catherine, the Swedish and Danish courts, and the lady’s fiancé, the son of the Roman ambassador.

The woman cries, begging Christopher to stop, but Christopher, even more drunk than usual (perhaps because early that evening both the Roman and Rus ambassadors bowed to Catherine first and more deeply, a major and obvious political snub), angrily refuses, tearing her bodice. This attempt ends even more badly than usual for Christopher, as the humiliated woman turns and knocks him to the ground with one well-placed punch. There is silence, save that of the lady’s fiancé covering her with his cloak, until a blubbering Christopher staggers to his feet, ordering her arrest. A couple of guards start to step forward, until Catherine, who has remained silent all this time, speaks one word, “No.” The guards stand down.

1521: In Constantinople, Nikephoros divorces his Coptic wife on the grounds of her alleged infertility, packing her off to a nunnery in the Crimea. He wanted to do that earlier but had stayed his hand, both to mollify the church and because of a lack of a suitable bride. His new wife is named Sophia (taken at her pre-marriage baptism), but that is not her birth name; that is Sarica, of the House of Osman, the seventeen-year old daughter of Sultan Suleiman “the Magnificent”.

Baghdad is bustling, with a hundred and fifty thousand souls. Rice and sugar cultivation is expanding rapidly and profitably along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, while cotton, silk, and tea are starting to be grown in Mazandaran. Basra, the second city of the Ottoman Empire, is a thriving port of sixty five thousand. Roman/Ethiopian expansion into the eastern markets though is beginning to threaten that prosperity, and some merchants are agitating for Baghdad to do something. Hormuz, the third city with fifty thousand inhabitants, is in the same position.

Many of the ulema are outraged by handing over a Muslim girl to a Christian monarch, but given the loyalty of both the janissaries and urban azabs to Suleiman (the occasional fight between the two groups non-withstanding) the Sultan is not overly concerned. While Persia is behaving, although many Persians’ loyalty seems more directed to Konstantinos Komnenos than Suleiman himself, the Sultan still wants his western flank secure.

The western Mediterranean meanwhile, continues to be a hazardous place. The destruction of Bizerte hampered the raiders who typically operated off the Italian coast but the vast majority of corsairs are completely undamaged. The Marinid Sultanate is decidedly benefiting from the pirates, as the influx of loot and slaves fills Marrakesh’s coffers. The Sultan takes a cut of all corsair booty in exchange for providing naval supplies, chiefly gunpowder. The limited reactions of the Iberian peoples, the most victimized, is due to a lack of military supplies.

The primary lack is saltpeter, the crucial ingredient of gunpowder. Morocco is at this time one of its largest producers and Barbary raids have made it quite difficult for Iberians to purchase it. The Arletians and the Milanese, although both have been hit as well, are the main customers, with their wars eating up the market shares not consumed by the north Africans themselves.

Iberia partly makes up the shortfall by exports from Syria, another major source, but the preferred counter is local production. The Kings of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon along with the Malik of Al-Andalus all divide their territories into districts, sending a ‘peterman’ to each. Besides locating and exploiting sites for saltpeter production, the petermen are accompanied by assistants who act as the monarchs’ eyes and ears in the provinces, also providing the people the chance to appeal directly to the sovereigns via the assistants whilst bypassing the local nobility and estates.

To the north Manfred takes Munich after a twenty five day siege, and it is there in his father’s old palace that he meets Duke Tommaso and representatives of the Vlach King Vlad II Musat. Although the Milanese are having difficulties with the Croats, with the Vlach conquest of Transylvania complete, all three parties are posed to invade Hungary itself.

But then comes a bolt from the blue, as Emperor Nikephoros IV offers to ‘mediate’ the conflict, with a not so subtle threat of the Romans intervening on the Hungarian side if the offer is rejected. With the growing power of both the Holy Roman Empire and Milan, Constantinople is quite interested in maintaining a powerful Hungary as a buffer state to the former and a flank threat to the latter. Incidentally, what is viewed as simple real politick is viewed by many in the west as an example of Greek fickleness and treachery.

Manfred, the most isolated from Rhomania and the most powerful coalition member, does not want a war with the Empire. It could undo all his work towards centralizing Germany. And without him, neither Tommaso nor Vlad would stand a chance. So all agree to stand down, in November signing the treaty of Buda.

Though Hungary survives, it is sorely humbled. Vlachia receives all of Transylvania (although the Vlachs are still incensed over the lost opportunity to destroy their traditional enemy), Milan all of the Friuli and the county of Gorizia, and the Holy Roman Empire all Imperial titles and regalia usurped by the Hungarians. As payment for his efforts, Nikephoros acquires all of the Dalmatian coast from Ragusa to Split, including the latter city, and a concession that when the Hungarian Emperors refer to themselves in Greek, they will no longer style themselves Basileus but merely Megas Rigas.

But the Hungarian Empire survives. It still retains Austria, although Nikephoros had to buy Manfred off to accept that point. After giving Transylvania to the Vlachs (done to conciliate the church interested in expanding the scope of Orthodoxy), Nikephoros did not want any more large pieces carved away from Hungary, weakening its usefulness as a buffer. Buda also has all of Hungary itself, Bosnia, most of Croatia including Istria and half of Dalmatia and the Principality of Presporok remains its vassal.

Tommaso had had his eye on Istria and Dalmatia, and is exceedingly annoyed by Nikephoros’ interference, whom he calls ‘a Komnenid usurper’. But there is still cause for satisfaction as Manfred has sent him a gift. Once again the Iron Crown of Lombardy is in Milanese hands.

1522: In Rhomania whispers are heard, voices coming from the mausoleum of Andreas, sightings of an old man with a magnificent bastard sword. How much of this is the imagination of a superstitious age, nostalgia for a beloved sovereign, or a subtle political protest against Nikephoros’ ostentatious and arbitrary court is a matter of debate amongst historians. In response, Nikephoros begins wearing his grandfather’s famous blade, both to dispel rumors of a man wearing it in Lycia and to emphasize his illustrious lineage.

At the same time, the revived Emperor’s Eyes are at work tracking down the rumors. Several prominent rumor-mongers, including but not limited to the representative of Smyrna to the Imperial court, a professor of mathematics at Constantinople, and the chief grain monitor of Antioch all suffer mysterious accidents. Nevertheless the whispers continue, joined by something even more ominous in August as Nikephoros’ healthy, beautiful, young wife still shows no signs of pregnancy. For the new rumor is true; the Emperor has syphilis. Besides a great blow to his pride, prestige, and health, it also weakens Nikephoros’ relationship with the church as Bishop Ioannes of Avlona begins to wonder.

But Nikephoros has not been idle, as news from the east comes in November. The Third Pepper Fleet, launched that spring, had not gone to India like the other two. Instead it veered south, its complement of four thousand soldiers storming Colombo, chief port of the island of Taprobane (ancient Greek name for Sri Lanka). The island, united under a shaky hegemony for most of the fifteenth century, has since fractured into six smaller states, and is an easy target. That the Romans have a hundred year lead in gunpowder technology also helps a great deal. By the time news of the fall of Colombo reaches Constantinople, one-third of the island is in Roman hands, although it is estimated it would take at least a theme’s worth of soldiers to secure and hold all of Taprobane.

That would be an exceedingly expensive undertaking, but it is worth it in Nikephoros’ opinion. Taprobane is a perfect waypoint on the path to the Spice Islands, and more secure from Vijayanagar than Surat and Kozhikode. Both cities are thriving ports with a small but growing Roman populace, largely through intermarriage with the local Hindus, whose religion is tolerated except for the conversion of a few temples into churches, and the banning of sati, the (irregularly practiced) immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre. The native Muslims have mostly left, pushed out economically by Greeks and Ethiopians.

Taprobane also produces gemstones and cinnamon on its own, and it is believed that kaffos production, which still has resisted all attempts to grow in Imperial territory, is possible there. Also the seizure of such a wealthy island, comparable in size to Sicily, will enhance Nikephoros’ prestige and divert attention to the east.

There are more stirrings even further along than Taprobane. As the Third Pepper Fleet launches its attack, Andreas Angelos with three great dromons sails into Guangzhou harbor, chief port of southern China. The mood in the former Wu capital is tense. The growing tensions with Champa, the boldness of the wokou, and the reports of massive Wu warships in Malacca have the provincial authorities on edge. And then come these strange-complexioned barbarians with ships much like the description of the Wu vessels.

It is three days before the Romans are allowed to leave their ships and go on shore, even though one of the Roman sailors was badly injured in an accident and needs medical care the ship cannot provide. The sailor dies as a result, and thus when Andreas Angelos and eight of his officers are summoned to the governor’s palace, he and they are in an ugly mood.

The mood of the Chinese isn’t much better. Guangzhou is a massive metropolis, far outshining Ayutthaya, Vijaya, or even Malacca herself, with a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. But the Romans have seen Antioch and Thessaloniki, which match Guangzhou in size, while Constantinople’s 490,000 souls positively dwarfs the Chinese port. In fact, only Beijing itself with 650,000 inhabitants can exceed the Queen of Cities. The barbarians’ lack of awe is quite irksome.

At the palace the Romans are ordered to prostrate, not before the Chinese Emperor, not before the provincial governor, but before the governor’s assistant. Andreas explodes, shouting “I did not kowtow to Andreas Niketas, and I will not do it before a clerk!” He storms out, followed by his men.

They are allowed to return to their ships without incident, but again refused permission to leave their vessels, even to purchase supplies. For six days there is an impasse, until the Romans make preparations to leave, at which point the authorities order the Roman ships to be impounded. The Romans leave anyway, blasting a coast guard junk out of the water when it tries to bar their path. Nevertheless the journey is not a complete loss, as the squadron stops in the Champan capital of Vijaya, filling their holds with nutmeg and pepper, where Andreas speaks for his crew when he says “I like the Wu much more than the Tieh.” Already Roman policy in east Asia is being set.

From Small Packages: The Thirty Years War from 1515 to 1522
In 1515, Edward VII Plantagenet, King of France, England, and Ireland, returned to the second of his kingdoms. The situation was grim. He was at war with Arles, Lotharingia, Castile, and Norway-Scotland, and losing ground against all but the last. In France, the tide could not be stopped, and by the spring of 1518, all of France had fallen to his enemies.

france1518.png
1) Bernese League
2) County of Saluzzo
3) County of Nice
4) Duchy of Savoy (Arletian Vassal)
White in Arles is Avignon Papacy

But in England, the tide is already beginning to turn as Edward puts his second kingdom in order. Initially help comes from the Emerald Isle. Prince Arthur is betrothed to Margaret, eldest daughter and child of Grace O’Malley, the Sea Queen of Connaught. The formidable woman has built up a sizeable pirate state and fleet, inheriting the considerable resources of her father after shouldering aside her two older brothers along with her husband. Originally she had expanded her power by imposing her will on neighboring Irish clans, but she also increased her income by imposing tolls on ships using her waters and seizing those who refused to pay. None were spared this imposition, not even English vessels.

But with her daughter poised to be Queen of France, England, and Ireland (the marriage does much to enhance Plantagenet authority in Eire, coupled with a halt in the plantation system and Edward’s promise to recognize Irish lords as nobility in exchange for service) Grace turns on Edward’s enemies with a vengeance. Typically leading boarding parties herself, most of 1516 she spends smashing the fleets of the Scottish MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles, to kindling. By the time Basil Komnenos slays the Breton Goliath, she has substantially expanded her operations, and is starting to be joined by Plantagenet Royal warships.

graceomalley.jpg
Statue of Grace O'Malley

The majority of the raids are in the North Sea or the Bay of Biscay (sometimes the latter are done in coordination with Barbary corsairs) but about a quarter are to the west. These attack the Norwegian-Scottish fishermen on the Grand Banks. Usually a toll is imposed, but those who cannot pay (most since bullion isn’t typically carried on these voyages) have their ships and cargoes seized. Although not very glamorous, it is a serious blow to Norway-Scotland’s economy.

Upon returning the Irish and English report a vast landmass to the west, covered in great forests, a perfect source of naval stores. Edward knows about the connection between Mary of Antwerp and Sweden-Denmark, and if the Baltic unites against him, naval supplies will be a serious problem. For now exploitation of that west-land will have to wait, but it is a possibility that must be explored.

The next source of aid comes from Parliament, whose members’ pride has been seriously stung by having to depend on an Irish woman for protection. Thus Parliament proves to be extremely open to Edward’s request. On January 4, 1517 the Act for the Defense and Preservation of the Realm is passed. It is commonly known as the Ship Money Act.

What is special about the Act is that it is designed to provide for a standing army and navy not only in wartime but also peacetime, on the grounds that if the realm’s defenses had not been so rotten, the current straits would’ve been avoided. England is divided into districts, based on the shires, upon which are levied new taxes to pay for the upkeep of ships and men. The coastal districts which provide the ships are the first mentioned, and the taxes for their maintenance are referred to as ‘ship money’.

Each district’s taxes are levied at a rate designed to support a certain amount of men or ships, with the total being fifteen thousand men and thirty two warships in peace, and double that in war. Having the districts provide money rather than ships or men directly as is customary is Edward’s way of ensuring the quality and loyalty of the new formations. These new formations are to be full-time professionals, and although paid for by the district are designed to be used in the field rather than as a garrison force.

Officers for the new tours (the name given to the standing army units from each shire, a corruption of the Roman tourma) come from the English and émigré French nobility who have fled France to escape ‘the rule of Arletian and Dutch clerks’. Even before the Act the English army under Henry Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had started scoring successes against the overextended Scots.

With the support of the tours, a third armed with arquebuses due to the decline of skilled longbowmen, the successes continue. Winning particular distinction is Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, who as commander of the Nottinghamshire tour oversees the capture of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1519. Exhausted by their losses, both the Norwegian and the Scots are unable to put up an effective defense, and in July of 1521 Edinburgh falls. However despite a smashing victory at Stirling Bridge five weeks later, which prompts Parliament to grant Louis the title ‘the great Conde’, his advance stalls after that point due to the lack of naval logistical support.

The Royal Navy and the fleets of Grace O’Malley are busy. Administration for the new Royal Navy is in the hands of the Navy Board, responsible for all non-combat operations associated with the fleet. William Hewer, first chair of the Navy Board, is extremely important, coming down hard on corrupt contractors, aided in large part by Edward pushing through legislation whereby corruption regarding the war machine can be legally treated as treason.

In three years’ time William Hewer and the Board have worked a miracle. With the ship money, they have managed to regularly procure pay and supplies, and refurbished naval yards at Chatham, Woolwich, and Portsmouth. Producing dedicated warships, manned by sailors lured from the privateer squadrons, by 1521 twenty two Royal warships, each one mounting at least twenty guns, are in action.

Their first major battle, in 1520, is an amphibious assault in conjunction with Grace O’Malley on the Isle of Man and is a complete success. A major base for Scottish privateers, the campaign nets significant booty and provides a major incentive for privateers to change their paymaster from noble patrons to the Royal government.

Most of their activities though are concentrated along the Dutch coast, in conjunction with the remaining privateers. The greatest prizes can be found there, and both the Royal sailors, through the institution of prize money, and the privateers make a substantial profit. As a result there are no lack of volunteers, even though the Dutch prove quite capable of giving as well as they get, although they are handicapped by their smaller warships, necessary for navigating the shallow Dutch coast.

englishwarshipvanguarda.jpg
Action between English and Dutch warships off Frisia

At the same time Edward strikes specifically at the van Afsnees, by offering incentives to Roman silk merchants to go to England rather than the Low Countries and break their silk monopoly. That is the secondary reason for the concentration on the Dutch, to make the area too hazardous for Roman traders.

Even with the new taxes from the Act, the crown’s share of prize money, and some success in luring Roman merchants, cash remains a serious issue. There Edward runs into a problem with Pope Victor IV. Already alienated by the Germanization of the church, and with Heinrich Bohm finding a fertile audience for his preaching, Victor’s attempts to divert English coffers to pay for the Templars do not help in the least.

To Victor’s credit, he did try to negotiate, allowing Edward to tax a fifteenth of the clergy’s income in Plantagenet domains. However many monasteries in the north had made difficulties over the taxes, claiming poverty caused by Scottish raids (a claim with justification by some, but by no means all cases). Edward protests to Victor, demanding that the Pope discipline the monks. Victor, offended by the King’s imperious tone, drags his feet in the matter.

Emperor Nikephoros, not liking what he sees in the Reich and smelling an opportunity, jumps into the fray. On May 4, 1520, three heavily-armed Roman vessels put into London, carrying a gift for Edward VII, two hundred thousand hyperpyra and a Plethon-Medici loan of five hundred thousand. Ostensibly this is in gratitude for Edward’s efforts at curbing attacks on Roman merchants and encouraging their ventures in England, but in reality it is a bribe designed to loosen Edward from the Mainz church.

It succeeds brilliantly. Proclaiming that the Patriarch in Constantinople cares more for them than the Pope in Mainz, Edward convinces Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy on August 22, 1520, declaring Edward the Supreme Head of the Church of France, England, and Ireland. Bohmanism is now the official religion of the church.

Bohmanism is the new creed espoused by Heinrich Bohm. It draws heavily from Hussite theology, celebrating the mass in the vernacular and allowing the laity to participate in Communion. At the same time, it is different as Bohm has tailored his doctrine to suit the political climate in England. The ‘King is Pope in his land’, the traditional church hierarchy is maintained except for the monasteries, and the doctrine of transubstantiation is maintained.

Victor immediately excommunicates Edward and places his realm under interdict, but the edict has little effect. Most of the English clergy, cowed by Edward and/or caught up in nationalist fervor, do not protest the Act of Supremacy, and the few who do are soon ‘encouraged’ to change their minds. Ireland makes surprisingly little fuss as Grace O’Malley publicly converts to Bohmanism in Dublin, since ‘the Pope in Mainz is just a smelly old man with a stupidly large hat. Why would I follow such a man as him?’

Three weeks later the Act of the Dissolution of the Monasteries is passed. It does exactly as the name suggests. Although there are several local uprisings, particularly in the north in protest over this, they are quickly put down by Henry Tudor and the great Conde. The monasteries’ assets, extremely substantial, prove most useful to the Plantagenet war effort.

On the Continent, the allies are having a rougher time. The Dutch are starting to get aggravated over the loss of trading revenues, as the Royal Navy begins going after the herring fleet and imposing tolls on the fishermen. In France, both Lotharingian and Arletian rule is viewed with disgust and annoyance. It is not only the nobility that dislike the ‘rule of clerks’ as both Marseille and Dijon, heavily influenced by Roman models, attempt to ram centralization based on the customs of their capital provinces down French throats.

A poor harvest in 1520, followed by early spring rains that ruin the early crops of 1521, do not help matters. In Normandy, Anjou, and even in the Ile-de-France, bread riots chant “Plantagenet! Plantagenet!” The rioters are dispersed, sometimes bloodily, but it is clear that an undercurrent of resentment is flowing strongly amongst the populace.

Matters are not helped further by the brewing dynastic crisis in Arles. By 1521, it is clear that King Charles of Arles, because of injuries from a riding accident when he was sixteen, is impotent. Given the losses incurred by the House of Valois in the final stages of the Ninety Years’ War, the dynasty will fall when he does. So the question is, who will succeed him?

One major contender is Henri I, Duke of Montmorency and Tolosa (Toulouse). The former title is his family’s title from when they lived in the north before fleeing south in the Ninety Years’ War, with the second granted in 1435. At the same time the county was raised to a duchy.

Another is Arnaud d’Albret, Duke of Albret. Or at least, he would be a contender if it weren’t for the fact that he is a homosexual. It is shocking to modern readers to learn that he is well liked by the Arletian nobility. However Arnaud has distinguished himself in battle many times, and always taken great care in his relations. He is always ‘the man’ in a relationship, meaning he is dominant physically.

Contrary to more modern views on homosexuality, in early modern times penetrating other men was considered the ultimate sign of virility (same as OTL). What mattered most was that one was the mounter, not what was being mounted, as mounting was an assertion of superior worth and power. Incidentally while women were considered weaker vessels, those who were dominant in the sexual relationship, acting like a man, were viewed more like men. It is these women from which the term ‘virago’ originates. Grace O’Malley is a classic example.

He also makes sure never to mount little boys or the sons of fellow nobles. Also aside from his inclinations towards other men, the church cannot fault his behavior as he consistently gives to the poor, endowing four orphanages, three soup kitchens, and a hospital. Nevertheless his homosexuality means it is extremely doubtful he will sire an heir, making him ineligible for king, but he can easily play kingmaker.

The next choice is Basileios von Habsburg-Komnenos. Wealthy from the land endowments granted to his father, plus further estates granted for his own combat service, he is extremely popular amongst the rank and file and has the support of the Bernese League via his Habsburg relatives. Nevertheless most of the Arletian nobility is wary of him, both because of his father and due to Basil’s regular insistence that due to his Imperial lineage, he should take precedence over all the nobility save the royal family itself.

Despite the intrigue, pacifying France takes first priority. By late 1521, Marseille and Dijon both view that France will never be secure unless England is broken first, so that it cannot be rallied behind by malcontents. The time seems propitious, for on February 26, 1522 King Edward VII dies from smallpox, and is succeeded by his sixteen-year-old son King Arthur. In April the demand for the boy’s surrender arrives.

The Palace of Whitehall, London, April 14, 1522:

Arthur felt small. He shouldn’t, as he sat atop a gilded throne staring down at the Arletian envoy, but he did. The great portrait of King Edward VI, Conqueror of France, stared down at him. He seemed to be frowning, as if he were displeased that this boy sat atop his throne, in his palace, in his kingdom.

The Arletian envoy, robed in fine black Roman silk, a gold chain hanging from his neck, scowled at him. “What is your answer?” he demanded, leaving the word ‘boy’ unspoken.

The lords and ladies, the assembled panoply of Ireland, England, and France-in-exile, glared back, but Arthur could not miss the stares of disdain occasionally thrown his way. They hate the Arletian, but they agree with him. I am weak.

The envoy cleared his throat; he was waiting. Silence filled the hall. The lords and ladies were also waiting. The terms were insulting, but news had been spreading of the great masses of ships gathering on the Dutch coast and Aquitaine, of Castilian artillery trains marching north to Normandy, of Lotharingian agents and coins in Sweden, even rumors that the Holy Roman Empire was assembling a Hanseatic fleet and German army at Bremen.

France was to be renounced, its territories granted to Arles and Lotharingia. Ireland was to be set free, whilst Scotland was to receive all of England north of the River Trent. What was left, along with Wales, was to be given to Henri of Montmorency. Arthur himself would be granted sizeable estates in Aquitaine for his upkeep, as befitting his station.

Whether I say yes or no though, I lose. We cannot stand against the hosts assembling against us, but if I say yes, Parliament will denounce me, and I will be removed, most likely permanently. And in the confusion afterwards, Arles will get what it wants.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. I don’t know what to say. For a moment his eyes darted to the right, first over his wife Margaret seated next to him, a short, perky brunette who loved to tickle him. But now there was no smile on her face. His eyes moved on, to the little and at the same time gigantic figure of his mother-in-law. She felt his eyes on her and she looked at him. Her face was grim, but then she softened. A second later her callused, scarred hands tossed him a coin.

He caught it, one-handed. It was a Roman hyperpyron, old and worn. But he could still make out the Imperial portrait; it was of a beardless boy. Very old indeed. He knew who the ruler was; he knew his story. A story of a boy, even younger than he, hard pressed on every side. A boy who had grown up to become one of the greatest warlords in history, a man whose mere frown could shake kingdoms, a man whose name was spoken in Constantinople in a hushed, awed whisper.

He knew why Grace had tossed him that coin. If he could do it, so can I. He opened his mouth. Blessed Virgin Mary, give me strength. Give me words. “Your offer is most gracious,” he said. A murmur of confusion swept the audience. Arthur leaned forward. “Since by such loathsome insults, I would be within my rights to take your head!” Another rumble swept the crowd, a growl of satisfaction. The Arletian started looking uncomfortable.

Arthur leaned back. “But I am generous. You may keep your head, so that it may convey my reply.” He paused. Now I have to think of one. He glanced again at Margaret, who smiled nervously at him. He reached over, taking her hand in his, intertwining his fingers with hers. I have one. He looked back at the Arletian, down at the Arletian. “Tell your master.” He swallowed. “Tell him, that these united kingdoms will know no peace save victory!”

The roar of acclamation from the audience was unanimous.

* * *
1523: In Scania, Queen Catherine gives birth. It is a girl, named after her mother. Although nobody says it, there is considerable confusion over who the father is. Her husband Christopher is the least likely candidate, and it is by no means certain that their marriage has even been consummated.

Many believe that the father is Olaf Tausen, a large and simple-minded Danish nobleman, third in line to the Danish throne. He is Catherine’s lover, and she makes absolutely no effort to hide the fact. Olaf is described ‘as big and strong as an ox, and about as smart’. Catherine has him completely wrapped around her little finger.

In actuality, the father is Michael Laskaris, commander of the Roman ambassador’s guard. He is a Chonae Laskarid, a member of the poorest and least important branch of that family, with little but their name to distinguish them from their artisanal neighbors. His fifth cousin is Giorgios Laskaris, eikosarchos of the Imperial Guard. Michael’s relationship with Catherine is a carefully guarded secret, and one based on actual and reciprocal feelings of both parties. The flagrant relationship with Olaf is a cover for this liaison.

To the east, despite the heavy losses incurred by the Kalmyk invasion and the failed Cossack raid on Mazandaran, Russian influence is slowly expanding into Siberia. Many of the Kalmyk survivors, pledging loyalty to their Russian and Georgian conquerors, are settled in Russia and Georgia, although both Novgorod and Tbilisi take great care in placing them far from the steppe.

Taking the lead in Siberian expansion is the Stroganov family, a wealthy family of merchants and miners. Exploitation of the fur trade was the original source of their wealth, but discovery and development of copper, iron, and gold mines have catapulted them to being the wealthiest family in Russia after the Shuiskys. Some of their profits they put into the port of Archangelsk, hoping to find a way to export furs, Roman, and Chinese goods shipped through Russia to the west without paying the Sound Toll.

To the south, Nikephoros is busy securing his political position. Not willing to risk infecting his wife with a STD (the marriage was consummated but did not produce any offspring before he was infected) for appearances’ sake, he arranges for a surrogate to sleep with her. The man is carefully selected, both for looking like Nikephoros and for having a large family the Emperor can ‘oversee’ to maintain the man’s silence. Sophia becomes pregnant, but gives birth to a girl, Kristina.

Meanwhile reports from Abkhazia have Nikephoros on edge, so he wants a heir to allay concerns about the succession. Two choices are Theodoros’ sons, Alexios and Ioannes, twenty nine and twenty seven years old respectively. However neither are good Imperial material and unlucky to inspire confidence amongst the army and dynatoi. Alexios is a cranky hunchback with a taste for humiliating priests, while Ioannes’ main claim to fame is branding himself after a tenth shot of ouzo.

Another is rejected as being too old. That is Andreas of Egypt, son of Demetrios, born five years before the Emperor himself. He is also showing a dangerous streak of competence, which is why his three-year-old son Demetrios is also rejected. In February thirty five hundred Libyans raid the environs of Egypt, netting a sizeable catch of loot and captives.

troyhector.jpg
Andreas of Egypt, dressed in half-kit armor, a common practice amongst Roman troops in hotter climes when combat is possible but not expected. The Coptic militia accompanying him, drawn from the Alexandria allagion, were also equipped with at least a half-kit of lamellar armor. With the sizeable proceeds from Alexandria's great port, the militias of Katepano Demetrios are well armored, armed, trained, and disciplined, almost the equal of the two Coptic tagmata of Egypt.

Andreas, along with six hundred Copt militia cavalry, sets off after them. Supported by local guides and a camel-borne supply train, he finds the Libyans’ encampment and in a night attack mauls them despite being outnumbered almost six to one. All of the captives are rescued, returning with Andreas to a triumphal procession in Alexandria thronged with cheering Copts.

The Emperor cannot ignore such valor, especially when conducted by the eldest grandson of Andreas Niketas. However Nikephoros sees an opportunity to neutralize Andreas. Despite the fact that he has never attended the School of War, the Emperor promotes his cousin to strategos of the Egyptian tagma.

It is a seemingly curious decision, placing more power in a potential rival’s hands. But ‘due to our good cousin’s unfamiliarity with proper army protocol’, Nikephoros assigns five instead of the usual two War Room officers as Andreas’ assistants. At the same time, Nikephoros gives the new strategos a mission, to expand Roman influence westward into Libya, where the ‘border’ with Marinid Africa is little more than a legal fiction, ignored by everyone, particularly the locals.

Andreas’ hands are also tied by restrictions. The Imperial Fleet is not available for logistical support, and Roman Libya, whose only ‘city’ of any size is Cyrene with 2200 inhabitants, is not capable of supporting a force of credible size. He is also not to push too openly and risk a breach with the Marinids, and his financial backup is extremely limited.

As Andreas embarks on his thankless task, Nikephoros settles on another candidate, his uncle David. Twenty one years old, he seems an excellent candidate. Son of the peasant Empress, he has no power base since he has spent most of his life on the move or in Demetrios’ court. Although he does show signs of military skills, they are not known outside of Egypt, and Nikephoros can make sure David does not have a chance to showcase them. Plus the spectacle of having his uncle, fifteen years his junior, at his side will be a powerful image showing how Nikephoros is the most capable of the blood of Andreas Niketas.

His grandfather, even though he is dead, still proves to be extremely popular. Revered by many as a saint, his mausoleum is heavily frequented by pilgrims, above all soldiers. Nikephoros though is not too concerned, and even sometimes welcomes the crowds; the travelers often frequent Constantinople’s well-stocked and exotic brothels, many of which are owned directly by Nikephoros, although all of them were originally Herakleian establishments.

Of far greater concern to Nikephoros are the rural dynatoi, the great ranchers of central Anatolia, particularly since they just tried to kill him. On April 20, during a procession to Nicaea, a gunman fires on the Emperor. The bullet knocks Nikephoros from his horse, breaking his right shoulder, the arm in four places, and two ribs plus giving him a major concussion. But it fails to kill him.

The would-be assassin is captured by Giorgios Laskaris and Andreas Drakos, who are promoted on the spot to droungarioi. The man, who is put to the rack, with some of the ministrations performed personally by Nikephoros, quickly breaks. He was paid by Andronikos Kantakuzenos, the largest cattle rancher in Rhomania and its fourth wealthiest individual in the Empire (after Nikephoros, Andronikos Plethon, and Katepano Demetrios).

Nikephoros immediately begins digging, his suspicions piqued by the mysterious death of Petros Apokaukos the printing magnate. Supposedly he died of an illness, but considering that dysentery, smallpox, and the Black Death have all tried and failed to fell him, that is doubtful.

What he finds alarms Nikephoros, for he has discovered nothing less than the greatest challenge to Imperial authority since the Nobles’ Revolt. The Kantakuzenos, Kaukadenos, and Mouzalon families, who between themselves own over fifteen percent of all non-church lands in the Empire, have been conspiring to topple the House of Komnenos and place one of their own on the throne, one who is more ‘receptive’ to their needs and doesn’t have the Laskarid-Komnenid habit of favoring the middle class and urban dynatoi.

To Nikephoros’ chagrin, the conspirators have been working on their plan for quite some time, bribing officials and army officers with grants of land, money, and daughters, placing the scions of their houses in position of authority in the provinces, and slowly stockpiling arms, much pilfered from the warehouses designed to furnish the tagmata.

Yet the dynatoi are not completely in position, but Nikephoros soon ferrets out contacts between Apokaukos and the conspirators. Believing that Petros had refused to join, for which the conspirators had murdered him to keep him silent but then panicked and struck early, the Emperor puts out the word that the assassin was in the employ of Venera of Abkhazia. Now with an eye on the conspirators, Nikephoros can tell they think they are in the clear, and consequently relax. Meanwhile the Emperor moves his pieces into position, determined to root out the whole conspiracy and annihilate it in one fell swoop.

Obviously he misses something. Prince David and his mother the Empress Veronica had consented to Nikephoros’ proposal, but then there is another assassination attempt on David whilst still in Alexandria. The prince is unharmed, but the assassin is killed whilst attempting to escape. Veronica is convinced Nikephoros is the one responsible, although Demetrios is skeptical; he believes that if Nikephoros wanted David dead, he would wait until his uncle was in Constantinople where he could guarantee success.

So, before an enraged Nikephoros can stop them, Veronica and David quit the Empire. David does it not so much out of fear, but a desire to make a name for himself. There is no opportunity for that in Egypt or Constantinople. But there is plenty available where he is going. On All Saints’ Day, Prince David and Empress Veronica are welcomed with open arms to the court of Basileios von Habsburg-Komnenos.

1524: In springtime, Andreas Angelos goes to war. Last year he had negotiated successfully for access to the tin and gold mines of Pahang. The value of the gold is obvious, while the tin can be used in the construction of bronze cannons, something that would go a long way toward making Rhomania’s eastern possessions capable of supporting themselves. However the Sultan of Pahang got greedy, imprisoning the Taprobane miners and Roman merchants to extort ransoms and better conditions.

Andreas is quite happy to trade, offering a special on cast-iron cannonballs, delivery included. For manpower he can draw some from Roman Taprobane. Half of the great island is under Roman control, including all of the coast. However they lack the soldiers to secure the interior, and by this point an uneasy truce exists between the Romans and locals. Trade is developing nicely though, as the Ceylonese grow cinnamon and trade for Roman textiles and imported Indian foodstuffs.

He is also assisted by two Ethiopian and one Wu vessel. The former joins for access as well to the mines, the latter because the ship’s owner, the Wu Emperor, is very interested to see Roman weaponry in action.

They have much to see. The ships of Pahang are well armed with gunpowder weapons, by southeast Asian standards. The result is still an one-sided slaughter, as the westerners possess a sizeable advantage in range and punch. The invasion of Pahang itself proves much more difficult, with one Roman vessel running aground whilst providing fire support. Andreas’ thirteen-year-old son Isaakios earns much distinction during the engagement, rescuing two sailors from drowning whilst in range of Pahang’s shore batteries.

Still the operation is a complete success. The treacherous Sultan is led away in chains while Andreas places a more ‘accommodating’ ruler on the throne. At the same time he arranges for almost complete mine ownership for the Romans, Ethiopians, and Wu, with most of the tin and gold going straight into the westerner and Wu coffers without the Sultan seeing one ingot.

Meanwhile in Constantinople the cult of Andreas Niketas is starting to give his grandson a headache, for the movement has gained a powerful speaker who cannot be ignored or made to peremptorily disappear. That speaker is Bishop Ioannes of Avlona. Due to both the severe bouts of syphilitic pain and the needs to track down all the strands of the rural dynatoi’s conspiracy, Nikephoros has been neglecting his other duties as Emperor.

Appeals to the Emperor are now almost impossible to get, the exact opposite of Andreas Niketas who went out of his way to provide opportunities for his subjects to gain an audience. Also the Emperor has not been getting involved with the administration, allowing the bureaucracy to make the decisions regarding the maintenance of the Empire. For example, the remittance of some taxes in Mysia due to a drought is a decision entirely taken by Roman officials, Nikephoros doing no more than rubber-stamping the decisions. While Roman bureaucracy is capable of administering the Empire, no Emperor has been so uninvolved since the days of the Angeloi.

Bishop Ioannes speaks on this quite often. He is tactful enough never to do it directly, but he is also expounding on Andreas’ just and Christian rule, a study in contrast that is clearly a criticism of the current regime. Nikephoros regards this as a serious threat, but he lacks the strength and time to both arrange for a heir, put down the conspiracy, and govern in the manner Ioannes demands.

One day in July, Nikephoros in a fit of pique loses control for a moment and says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” In this case history doesn’t repeat itself, but he does begin planning Ioannes’ removal, dispatching agents to whisper in the Patriarch’s ear.

Another reason for his momentary loss of control (to be fair, unlike Herakleios’, it was done much more privately, and the two servants who heard and gossiped it suffered mysterious accidents within three days of the incident) is the news from Chaldea. Trebizond and Sinope have been suddenly flooded with pamphlets accusing Nikephoros of murdering Herakleios and making it look like a suicide. He quickly squashes the propaganda campaign, making a public example of several of the printers, but the damage is already done.

In western Europe the war continues to blaze brightly. With Arthur’s refusal to surrender, the allies have begun planning an invasion of England, a momentous undertaking that is fraught with difficulty. The logistical requirements are enormous, and made more difficult by the division of the efforts amongst the allied nations. A series of disagreements that in one case devolve into full-fledged arquebus volleys between Bernese and Lotharingian troops does not help in the least.

The rumors that the Germans were planning to aid their weight against the Plantagenets are soon proved false; Manfred has no interest in the project whilst Pope Victor wants to build up the Templar Order before going on the offensive against heretics.

The English are not included to wait and let the enemy come to them. In early May Grace O’Malley and the Great Conde, joined by four Barbary corsairs who join up for plunder en route, sack A Coruna, the chief port of Galicia in the Kingdom of Castile. The raid is a tremendous success, burning fifteen carracks loaded with provisions for the allied armada, including over five thousand hoops for the construction of wine and water casks. The loss of the last item alone is estimated to delay the armada by at least a year.

In the end the raid stops the threatened attack altogether. Castile has had enough of war, seeing little opportunity for gain but much for loss. A Coruna is only the icing on the cake. Three months later Castile and England formally sign a peace treaty, restoring the pre-war status quo, with Arthur pledging to hand over all his subjects who attack Castilian property or persons to Castilian justice, and paying twenty seven thousand pounds sterling for damages inflicted on Castilian shipping before the war.

It is expensive, but is worth it. The anti-Plantagenet coalition loses a respectable, well-armed fleet and its best artillery train and light infantry in a single blow. Without Castilian support, any naval invasion of England is a flat-out impossibility. Arles’ ships are needed in the Mediterranean where the Barbary pirates are getting bolder, the Gascons want peace with England to restore the profitable wine trade, and the Norwegians and Scots are bled white. That leaves only the Dutch, who too are interested in restoring peace and trade, much to the annoyance of their queen.

But while there are good reasons for Mary of Antwerp to be vexed, there are also god reasons for her to smile. In Scania, Catherine gives birth to a second child, this time a boy who is named Christian. Nine days later King Christopher is found dead in his villa outside Copenhagen, smothered by a pillow. Rumor says it was a prostitute who Christopher had short-changed that murdered him, although in actuality it was almost surely Michael Laskaris (the much later rumor that Catherine and Michael made love in her husband’s still warm bed is almost certainly a fiction).

Backed by the Swedes, the Roman and Russian ambassadors, and vast quantities of van Afsnee gold, Catherine has herself and her lover Olaf appointed as heads of the regency council for Christian. Eric Estridsen, who is the second in line to the throne, objects, with some legal weight since Christian was not elected King of Denmark upon his father’s death (technically Denmark is an elective monarchy, if de facto hereditary). At Aarhus, the Danish nobility elect him instead as King Eric VII of Denmark. The election is not done out of love for Eric, who is a squat man inclined to obesity, with a stutter and a propensity for nervous eye twitching. It is from the nobility’s refusal to be ruled by a woman.

It is this chauvinism that prompts the Danish army to cross into Scania against Eric’s advice that they force Catherine to fight on their power base, not that they fight on hers. He is quickly browbeat by his ‘subjects’ into seeing things their way. However as soon as the Danes land at Malmo, their progress bogs down for lack of support. Technically Scania is still a part of Denmark, but in the last fifteen years the machinations of Catherine, building on those of her father before her, have made it Swedish in all but name. At the port of Malmo, a major city by Scandinavian standards with 4,000 souls (Athens, a sleepy provincial backwater by Roman standards, is twice that size), the Danes stop for supplies to be brought up.

The Swedes, accompanied by Catherine, met them east of the city on July 17, both sides mustering about eleven thousand men. The initial Danish charge routs the Swedish cavalry on their left, exposing that flank. However Sven Horn, a Finnish noble and commander of the Swedish army, quickly refuses the line, sending gunners forward to pour a hail of fire into the Danes before committing his reserves.

The Danish attack breaks, falling back to their own lines in confusion. A general advance of the Swedish army, heralded by three squadrons of black horses, suffice to send the whole array flying back to Malmo. During the rout Eric is killed, rather conveniently; some say he was captured alive and executed in secrecy.

The Danes try to close the gates of Malmo, but the Finnish light cavalry are too close behind them. Malmo itself, which never tried to resist the Danes at all, is sacked for its treachery. Meanwhile Catherine produces a list of sixteen Danish nobles, the chief leaders of the rebellion, pronouncing that any soldier who brings a head of one of those listed will receive the head’s weight in gold. She has all sixteen by nightfall.

After the fall of Malmo, Catherine is supreme in Sweden and Denmark. In the latter, the rebels who did not forfeit their lives are still made to pay dearly. As a means of breaking the Danish nobility and reassuring the Swedish peasantry, Catherine breaks the back of Danish serfdom, with many noble estates broken up and granted with full ownership to the former serfs. The tenants that remain on those estates left intact however have all of their debts to their landlords as of that year rendered null and void, ruining several more of the minor nobility. The influence of Michael Laskaris on these reforms of Catherine are still a subject of much debate, since as a Roman he held feudalism and serfdom in contempt as a ‘backward, barbaric method of ruling’.

1525: In early March, King Charles of Arles is in Brittany when his column is attacked by ‘brigands’. The raiders are beaten back, but Charles is wounded in the leg. Initially the injury does not appear to be serious, but it stubbornly refuses to heal.

In England, preparations are underway for the invasion of France, now that the threat of the allied armada is gone. However Arthur does not wish to commit himself with a threat still at his back. Much of the Scottish lowlands is in English hands, but the spirit of the Scots is far from broken, with guerrilla raids on isolated English detachments and garrisons as far south as Northumberland. So first Arthur decides that Norway-Scotland will be knocked out.

A peace proposal is rejected, as Arthur and the nobility of France-England demand to keep all of Scotland south of the Firth of Forth, so that a repeat of Arles’ and Norway-Scotland’s two-front offensive is not possible. So it is decided that Norway will be knocked out by military means. A campaign into the Scottish Highlands is rejected as it would be impossible to both victual the expedition and maintain sufficient naval forces facing the Dutch.

* * *
Avadhara, Abkhazia, February 24, 1525:

Venera shivered, clutching her ermine coat closer to her body. For a moment she entertained herself watching the flickering shapes in the fog produced by her breath. Her homeland was beautiful, and lush, and wild, but her aging body longed for the warmth of Rhomania. Sunrise over Lake Ritsa was dazzling, the gleam of glaciers reflecting the ray stupendous, but she longed for the soft, majestic glow of the Marmara at sunset. Soon, though, soon. Her agents had been nudging Bishop Ioannes for quite some time. He should be exploding any time now.

lakeritsa.jpg
Beautiful, lush, wild Abkhazia. Lake Ritsa today viewed from the Venera Museum.

Then she turned and looked at the cause of all the commotion. Her son Alexios was sparring with Prince Zviad, second son of the King of Georgia and betrothed to Alexios’ twin Alexeia. Both boys were just a few months shy of fourteen. Alexios grunted, blocking a hard blow but staggering back. Despite the chill, he was covered in sweat, his leather armor stained with it.

Both Alexios and Alexeia took after her in looks, much to Herakleios’ delight, inheriting her tall frame and blond hair. In many ways, Alexios reminded her of a young version of her own father.

joffreybaratheon.jpg
Alexios VI Komnenos, rightful Emperor of the Romans. He is well aware of his illustrious heritage, and equally aware of what his ancestors require of him.

Crack! Alexios staggered back another step.

“Do you yield?” Zviad asked.

“No,” Alexios growled.

He’s going to lose, Venera thought. He had been practicing for over four hours now, whilst Zviad was fresh. But she knew why he wouldn’t yield. Andreas Niketas never yielded. Alexios began and ended every day with the same prayer, “Grant me the strength to be worthy of my grandfather.”

Zviad shrugged, swinging at Alexios. He blocked the blow, but barely. Behind his opponent Alexeia glided up, her riding pants covered in dirt and moss up to her knees. Her girlish frame was becoming that of a woman’s, and a beautiful one at that. She was to be wed to Zviad on her fifteenth birthday. Oh, Herakleios, I wish you could see them, see how they’ve grown. But that was impossible. However she would see them take what was rightfully theirs, what was stolen from them, by that, that thing, sitting on the throne of Caesars.

sansastark.jpg
Alexeia Komnena, Alexios' twin sister and elder by four minutes. The two are virtually inseparable.

Zviad’s blade cracked against Alexios’, but it sounded different somehow. Venera looked as Alexios parried another blow. Though he was still covered in sweat, panting, his blade almost effortlessly blocked Zviad’s attack this time, almost as if he knew it was going to happen before it did. Venera looked over at Alexeia, whose face seemed a bit twitchy.

She grinned, wolfishly. Her daughter could read her fiancé like an open book, and she was signaling her twin, in their own, secret way, what Zviad was thinking. Parry, and now Alexios was on the attack. Crack. Crack. Crack. And Zviad’s blade flew from his hand.

* * *
On May 12, Nikephoros decides to cancel all audiences. However Bishop Ioannes is there and protests, since with the removal of several judges in Bithynia for corruption, there is an usually long line of petitioners seeking an Imperial appeal. Nikephoros, whose syphilis is acting up, hisses “So you would command me?”

No one is sure what came over Bishop Ioannes, but he roars back “I would have you do your duty!” The court stops in shock. Not only did the Bishop have the temerity to shout at the Vicegerent of God on Earth, but the voice sounded eerily like that of Andreas Niketas.

That evening Bishop Ioannes is arrested on the charge of high treason; the Emperor cannot tolerate such a direct affront to his authority. Patriarch Isidore II, whose mind has been poisoned against the Bishop by Nikephoros’ whispers, assents. Viewing Ioannes as a potential rival, the Patriarch is now glad to be rid of him. Nevertheless Nikephoros makes sure the Church is well compensated for sacrificing one of its number, receiving various land grants whose annual revenues equal 250,000 hyperpyra, a law forbidding the further construction or repair of any non-Orthodox churches (with the exception of Armenian churches, as that group is vastly overrepresented in the upper echelons of Roman society), and another edict requiring weekly attendance at mass.

Ioannes’ ‘trial’ is short, and he is sentenced to death by beheading. The Bishop goes to his end with dignity and courage, forgiving the executioner who begs absolution for what he is about to do. His final words before placing his head on the block are ‘Tell the Emperor I died his good servant, but God’s, and the Empire’s, first.’

His death is not well received. The riot in his former see of Messina has to be put down by elements of the Apulian tagma, since the Sicilian cannot be trusted, with similar but smaller demonstrations in Thessalonica, Smyrna, and Nicaea. That one is avoided in Constantinople is only due to the Athanatoi and Varangoi patrolling the streets for the next week.

A month later is the Night of the Long Knives. On June 14, over six thousand souls from Apulia to Armenia are arrested on a single night, as Nikephoros lands on everyone even slightly tainted with the rural dynatoi conspiracy. The arrested include the rural dynatoi themselves, their attendees, army officers they have suborned, officials they have bribed, ranging the whole gamut of Roman society. Charged with high treason as well, they are all executed the next day, the implement giving the name to the event.

guillotinew.jpg
A Long Knife
1526: Despite the great success of the Night of the Long Knives, it does not clear the field for Nikephoros. At least five hundred of his intended targets manage to escape, mostly mid-level officials and officers with enough resources to have contingency plans, but not high-profile enough to be easily observed. Most of them come from the Chaldean and Bulgarian themes, as their escapes are facilitated by the closeness of Georgia and Vlachia respectively.

As a brief aside, the name of Bulgaria is becoming increasingly inappropriate. After the Black Death, the anarchy of the early 1400s, the Roman invasions and mass deportations, the ethnic/cultural Bulgarian population is approximately at the same level as it was in 800 (the deportees are not included in these calculations as they have been culturally absorbed by this point). While Church Slavonic and the Cyrillic script are allowed free reign, with the upper and artisanal classes, plus the urban centers and their corresponding wealthy sees almost wholly Greek, the Bulgarian tongue and literature are restricted to the countryside.

There it is subject to no official Hellenization, but Greek domination of higher education and the poor to nonexistent training for Bulgarian village priests has resulted in the almost complete extinction of a literate Bulgarian culture. What few writings that are produced in Bulgarian are done in a Cyrillic script, but with a vocabulary and grammar that is increasingly Greek.

Many of them are soon contacted by Venera’s agents. As these are not members of the rural dynatoi and a threat to Imperial power Venera is willing to restore them in exchange for their support. Not only do they help expand Venera’s network, particularly in those two provinces via the refugees’ contacts, but they also provide a conduit for Venera to influence Targoviste.

Nikephoros is aware of these trends. His agents are busy sniffing out those responsible for his targets’ escape, and the Long Knives are kept busy dispatching all those the Emperor finds suspicious. His actions certainly make the Emperor feared, but they also make him hated. Even though one can make the argument that the Night of the Long Knives was justifiable, even reasonable, coming right after the execution of Bishop Ioannes the people of Rhomania see things different. To them, these are the actions of a bloodthirsty, arbitrary tyrant, whose is given the sobriquet ‘the Bloody Emperor’.

Three prominent figures to avoid Nikephoros’ purges are the Doukid brothers Stefanos and Petros and the Megas Domestikos Demetrios of Kyzikos (originally appointed by Herakleios II). All three have been well behaved, although in Nikephoros’ agitated, aggravated state of mind (reports are reaching him that Venera and the Russian ambassador to Tbilisi have been spending much time together, including going over the portfolios of prominent Russian noblewomen) that might not have been enough. But they are all extremely popular with the tagmata, who are somewhat displeased since over two hundred and fifty army officers, plus another four hundred dekarchoi, were caught up in the Night of the Long Knives.

At this time, the first of the Iron Gates of the Herakleian Wall is put into place. It has four dents in it, from twenty-two pound culverin balls fired at point-blank range, but its structural integrity is intact. Every gate will be subject to the same level of testing, and only put in place if it passes.

Meanwhile Andreas Angelos is visiting another great empire, that of Majapahit, a vast thassalocracy with vassals from central Sumatra to Halmahera. He, and the five Roman and one Ethiopian vessel accompanying him, arrive in time for the Majapahit event of the year, the first day of the month of Caitra when the seventy three vassal rulers present their tribute to the King of Majapahit. It is an impressive array, with gold and spices abounding, although somewhat dimmed by the fact that twenty years earlier ninety one rulers presented tribute. Andreas Angelos waits until the next day to present his gifts to the king.

Here the negotiations go far better than at Pahang or Guangzhou. Roman silk and jewelry prove to be popular commodities with the Javan merchants and court, and soon profitable trade relations are set up. A Roman and Ethiopian quarter are granted in Majapahit itself, with their vessels allowed to trade with the spice islands to the east that are part of the Majapahit vassal network. However the westerners are required to purchase provisions at selected ports at prices set by the Javan court, which also help Majapahit officials in levying duties. Both Roman and Ethiopian currency are accepted as legal tender, as both lack the Chinese currency used throughout the region.

majapahitpiggybank.jpg
Although not as grand as it used to be, Majapahit Indonesia as first encountered by the Romans was still a vibrant culture and state, with a well-developed monetary economy. Above is a Majapahit terracotta piggy bank.

Andreas continues on from Majapahit to Ceram, and on the way is attacked by one of the factors that is causing the Majapahit to decline, pirates from the Sulu Sultanate. Forty years earlier Javan writ stretched all the way to Palawan, but the rapid rise of the Sulu Sultanate terminated that outstretch of the empire. Their pirates, southeast Asia’s equivalent to the wokou, periodically terrorize the islands of Indonesia. The attack is beaten off by Roman cannonades, but Isaakios again earns much respect for calmly sharing a bowl of grapes with his father on the open deck whilst cannonballs and catapult shots rain down around them.

Around the same time, two Portuguese vessels, having rounded the Cape of Storms, set eyes on the Indian Ocean.

In late March the Royal Navy annihilates Oslo. The king of Norway Haakon VIII and his only heir are killed in the battle, ending the House of Sverre. To Arthur and Parliament’s amazement though, still the Norwegians and the Scots refuse to surrender, proclaiming that ‘so long as one hundred of us remains alive, we shall never submit to the domination of the English’. Besides Oslo, there is the ruthless guerrilla war in central Scotland and the savage naval war in the North Sea, where mercy is rarely asked and never given, to bred resentment amongst the combatants. But it is clear that Norway-Scotland no longer has the strength to fight.

So on May 1, twelve Norwegian nobles, all of whom have lost family in the sack of Oslo, arrive at Malmo, Catherine’s capital. For two weeks there are a series of intense negotiations, mostly about safeguards for noble power in both Norway and Scotland. One major element is the elevation of Finland to the status of a kingdom, a move done to conciliate Norwegian, Scot, and Danish concerns over Swedish might. Papal dispensation and a crown are already prepared.

The final, public audience is kept to a short but poignant script. Catherine asks the nobles what they want. They answer with one word, “Vengeance.”

Catherine’s reply is almost as brief. “Then I will give you vengeance.”

“Then to you we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Three hours later the Kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, and Finland declare war on the Kingdoms of France, England, and Ireland.

The news catches Arthur by surprise, as he is hip-deep in the preparations for the invasion of France. The original plan had been to wait until Norway-Scotland was down, but the French will not wait any longer. A riot in Rouen against a Arletian tax on cheese is the spark to an explosion, within two weeks turning into a mass revolt, known to history as the Rising of the North.

On June 6, the Royal flagship Juno anchors at Courseulles-sur-Mer in Normandy, King Arthur coming ashore with the first wave of troops. The first Plantagenet unit ashore are the Queen’s Own, four hundred Irish and Welsh gunners paid by Queen Margaret from her estates.

Initial progress is extremely rapid with the complete support of the locals. The detached Lotharingian garrisons either surrender or are destroyed with ease. A counterstrike is hampered as the Bernese, who accuse the Lotharingians of providing them substandard supplies, refuse to cooperate and withdraw south to protect the Essonne river valley, where numerous estates have been granted to the Bernese as payment for their services.

On August 21, the Plantagenet and Lotharingian armies meet outside Paris. Both sides distinguish themselves with valor and skill, but the greater weight and accuracy of Arthur’s artillery train proves decisive. Three days later Arthur rides into Paris in triumph, although the jubilation is interrupted the next day when three Bernese cohorts shred an English column half again their size near Yerres.

Arletian aid to their allies is completely nonexistent at this time as the House of Valois is no more. Henri, Duke of Montmorency and Tolosa, moves fast after the death of King Charles, proclaiming himself King Henri in Marselha. However Basileios Komnenos refuses to bow to Henri, as his blood is far more regal. Although he has little support in Arles proper, he has the backing of the Habsburgs (and through them the Bernese League), the Gascons, many of whom have fought alongside him, and Arnaud d’Albret, the homosexual Duke of Albret.

It is Arnaud who first kneels to Basileios as the true king of Arles. It is a claim completely devoid of any legal or dynastic rationale, but that inconvenient fact is ignored. Basil gains an unexpected boon when the Avignon Papacy backs him. Besides papal preference for Arnaud, a loyal son of the church besides for his homosexuality, over Henri, known for his blasphemies whilst drunk, Pope Nicholas V is also enthralled by the prospect of a Komnenid Arletian sovereign. Through King Basil, he believes he can exert greater influence for preferential treatment of Avignonese in Rhomania.

As Arthur is overrunning Normandy and the Ile-de-France, Henri and Basil are skirmishing in the upper Garonne.

1527: As the Arletian civil war continues, Arthur plunges into Burgundy. Although the Lotharingian army does not challenge him to pitched battle, resistance is stiffening. Particularly dangerous are the actions of Dutch black horses along his lines of supply, which are cramped by the Bernese army stubbornly anchored to the Essonne valley. Two attempts to move them are bloodily repulsed.

In May, Arthur sends a parley to King Charles I of Lotharingia, who is in the field with the Lotharingian army, not with his queen who is in Antwerp. Arthur’s primary concern is to end the war with Lotharingia fast, as the Bernese League has intervened directly in Arles in support of Basil. The window of opportunity in Arles is closing. Also there are reports that Emperor Manfred is looking to hire out his landsknechts.

Charles, accompanied by Reynaerd van Afsnee, his father-in-law, meet with Arthur, who deliberately chooses Autun, site of Francis the Butcher’s most heinous crime, as the rendezvous. Arthur wants a complete restoration of the pre-war status quo. Both Charles and Reynaerd, with Mary absent, are interested but wish to see some profit from their investment in blood and gold.

Their counter-proposal is the restoration of the pre-war status quo, save for the Pas-de-Calais, which is to remain in Lotharingian hands. At the time of the meeting it is still garrisoned by Lotharingian troops. Meanwhile the wool staple is to be moved to Antwerp, where it will help make up for lost trade.

Arthur is opposed to giving up any territory, even after Conde points out that a Lotharingian garrison at Calais would be quite useful in convincing Parliament to keep paying for the Royal Navy and the tours. Charles though decides to sweeten the pot. In exchange for Calais, he will declare war on the Bernese League, with whom there has been several incidents.

That gets Arthur’s attention. Right now the Bernese League itself is almost defenseless, its armies in Arles or the Ile-de-France. A threat against the Habsburg counties, in the direct path of a Lotharingian advance, is certain to compel the withdrawal of its armies, both of which are threatening Plantagenet interests. There is also the matter of denying Dutch naval strength to whatever Catherine is forging in the Baltic. So Arthur accepts the terms.

Mary flies into a rage when she hears the news, but quickly composes herself. Reports from Scandinavia are promising, and she still has sizeable assets of her own she can commit to the fight against England. So both Basil Komnenos and Queen Catherine receive sizeable grants of cash.

At this time, David Komnenos is finally getting his chance to win some glory, leading a flying column raiding northern France. Although he can only speak in broken sentences with a horrible accent, the fact that he is at least trying to speak French, and that he pays for and not ‘requisition’ supplies means the French don’t despise him, unlike most of the Arletian cavalry commanders. But on July 22, he is thrown from his horse and breaks his leg, putting him out of action.

After the peace with Lotharingia, Arthur takes a brief respite to spend some time with his wife, time that proves to be quite productive as Margaret conceives. Meanwhile the Prince of Conde probes the central Loire valley, but does not push on. Arthur makes contact with King Henri, negotiating for a restoration of the pre-war frontier in exchange for aid against Basil. But receiving news of a Komnenid injury and believing it to be Basil (it is David), Henri rejects the proposal.

In Bordeu (Bordeaux) Veronica tends her son, who is soon making a clean recovery. She has found Arles to be quite to her liking, as here no one knows about her provincial Greek accent or her title of the Peasant Empress. Here she is known as the widow of Andreas Niketas, making her voice one that even great captains must respect. Unintentionally she has become a major boon to Basil’s popularity amongst the Bordelais, for her frequent and generous almsgiving to the poor.

The shadow of Andreas Niketas stretches far to the east as well. Surprisingly of all the great nations that he battled, it is amongst the Turks, the one he injured the least, that his specter is most feared. That is due to the manner of his war. He did not destroy the Ottoman army, merely showed that he could. So whilst the Hungarians, Germans, Aragonese, and so on can tell themselves that the Shatterer of Armies has done his worst, the Turks lack that comfort.

The tales of Andreas’ return are common knowledge in the streets of E-raq and E-ran, feeding a sort of superstitious awe towards the former Roman Emperor, an attitude perpetuated by the fact that Sultan Suleiman holds that view. There is at least one exception to this though, Crown Prince Bayezid, Governor of Hormuz. Determined to rid this ridiculous attitude amongst his fellow Turks, disgusted at his sister’s conversion to Orthodoxy to wed Nikephoros, he is fiercely opposed to anything Roman. That includes Konstantinos and Osman Komnenos, who he views as far too powerful of subjects.

Konstantinos, through his friendship with Sultan Suleiman and the need to guard against the Timurids, has built a respectable state-within-a-state stretching from Mazandaran to Qom in the west and Tabas in the east, the bulk of northern Persia. Though he has shown no signs of disloyalty or legally exceeding his authority, Bayezid is intensely suspicious. The Crown prince even goes to the extent of believing Konstantinos is in collusion with Samarkand.

It is as Governor of Hormuz that Bayezid reluctantly is host to Andreas and Isaakios Angelos, who are headed west. During the meal, which is insultingly sparse, Isaakios has to go relieve himself. In the privy, there is a picture of Andreas Niketas. Isaakios finishes his business and returns, eating as if nothing was amiss. After a while, Bayezid can contain himself no longer and asks Isaakios what he thinks of the arrangement. Isaakios replies that he thinks it is quite appropriate, as ‘nothing would make Turks crap faster than the sight of Andreas Niketas’.

In Constantinople, the Long Knives chop their ten thousandth head, this one a Damascene imam for inciting his neighbors against Roman provincial authorities. Despite the loss of some of his best agents in various accidents, the situation for Nikephoros is looking up. The health of Katepano Demetrios is clearly failing, making the threat from that over-mighty subject decidedly less potent. Andreas of Egypt, hip-deep in Libya, is making respectable progress there due to joint diplomatic and military efforts with Carthage, but is too occupied to replace his father as a menace.

On February 22, Constantinople is treated to the greatest fireworks show since the fall of Venice. Nikephoros has a heir, Konstantinos. He is the son of Nikephoros but not of Sophia. The mother is a peasant girl from Melitene chosen for physical similarity to Sophia, who carried the baby to term whilst Sophia under Nikephoros’ orders faked a pregnancy. The girl shows signs of syphilis when she is ‘disposed of’.

By this point, Nikephoros’ condition is one of the worst kept ‘secrets’ in the world, even with the Emperor acting more and more reclusive. It is highly damaging to his prestige as the Vicegerent of God is not to have any obvious physical blemishes (with a few exceptions like Justinian II). However if he can ‘miraculously’ provide a healthy male heir, it will still shore up his position. In between Konstantinos and his secret police, Nikephoros has every confidence he can be another exception like Justinian II, albeit with a happy ending for him, provided he deal with a rapidly growing threat.

* * *
Avadhara, Abkhazia, Night of March 16, 1527:

“See, I told you I’d find our way back,” Zviad said, pulling on the reins of his horse.

Alexeia scowled at him. “You still got us lost in the first place,” she said as she slid wearily from her horse. Around them the rest of her attendants were dismounting, the pair of guards closing the estate gates.

They’d been out on one of Alexeia’s usual rides. Her new husband had come with, which wasn’t usual, but he had wanted to show her a special place. They’d never found it, and come in over five hours after sunset because he’d lost the trail. But she’d gone out that morning and would sometimes be gone for several days, so nobody was out looking for them.

She bent down to scratch Comes behind the ears. She was an old tough bitch of a dog, a gift from Uncle Theodoros just before her father was murdered. Her name was her ‘title’. Uncle Theodoros always was a bit weird, but he knew his animals. Comes was the finest, most loyal, hunting dog she had ever seen.

“Ugh, I need a bath,” she said, pulling a clod of dirt out of a blond lock. “Not with you,” she continued, throwing the clod at Zviad’s hopeful expression and hitting him squarely on the nose. Nice.

Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention as Zviad spluttered. That’s different. It was the dead of night, with only a crescent moon and a few torches for illumination; the only people up and about should be the handful of guards and the few stable boys taking care of their horses. But there were five or six men whispering in the corner, out of eyesight of the guards. Something doesn’t seem right.

She started walking over there, humming softly to make it look like a random wandering. One of the men shrugged and whispered that they would see to the smithy tomorrow because…she couldn’t make out the rest. But there was something about that voice, she just couldn’t place. Then she knew. That accent was one she had not heard since she was a little girl, the accent of Constantinople, the Queen of Cities, the accent of her father’s murderer. She gasped.

It was a mistake, that gasp. They heard that gasp, and they knew what it meant. She turned and ran, the ring of swords jumping out of scabbards following her, just ahead of the assassins. “TREACHERY!!!” she screamed. “TO ARMS!!!”

Zviad’s sword rang from his scabbard. “Get away from her!” he shouted, charging towards her. Hands grabbed her cloak. She turned, kicking him in his manhood as Zviad’s blade cracked against an assassin’s, and screamed as two of her toes broke against the armor protecting his crotch.

The hand grabbed her by the hair, yanking her up just in time to see the sword rip out Zviad’s bowels. “No!” she screamed.

“Quiet!” the man snapped. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS, OR THE PRINCESS DIES!” The dirk at her throat pricked the skin.

“Do as he says,” the guard dekarchos shouted at the guards and her attendants that had weapons out. They clattered to the ground.

“Now get the false Empress and Emperor out here.”

“You mean the Empress Dowager and the rightful Emperor, don’t you?” Alexeia said.

He pressed the flat of the blade tight against her throat, choking her. “Listen, missy, now is not the time to get snippy.”

“Get my mother and brother,” Alexeia ordered.

One of her ladies-in-waiting started forward to try and tend Zviad, who was already unconscious, surrounded on all sides by a pool of blood. “Ah, ah, ah,” the man said, yanking on Alexeia’s hair. Zviad’s body was close to one of the assassins.

“Please,” Alexeia whispered.

“No.”

They were out in less than a minute, both in night clothes but fully alert, Alexios with a blade girded to his belt. With them were over twenty guards, most only in woolen shifts but all armed. Venera looked at Zviad’s body, but one of the attendants shook his head; the prince was gone. Alexeia bit her tongue to stop from screaming again.

“I assume you work for my nephew,” Venera said, talking to the group holding her daughter hostage.

“That is correct,” the assassin holding Alexeia said.

Alexios stepped forward. “Then take me.”

“What? No!” Venera said, grabbing her son’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

Alexios pushed his mother’s hand off. “What I have to.” He undid his belt, tossing it and his sword aside. “I am the main threat to your master. Take me in her place.”

“Alexios, don’t do this,” Alexeia whispered. “They won’t kill me; I’m more useful as a hostage.”

“Perhaps. But there is no telling what a thing like Nikephoros will do to you. I will not take the chance.” He looked at the chief assassin. “Do we have a deal?”

“We do.”

Alexios took a step forward, and Alexeia saw into her brother’s eyes, and knew why he was really doing this. To be worthy of his grandfather. “No, no,” she squirmed in the man’s grip. His dirk nicked her throat, blood trickling down.

Comes leapt, the man’s forearm snapping in her powerful jaws. He screamed, Alexeia lurching out his grip, leaving a good bit of hair behind as the assassins lunged forward. She knocked Alexios over as crossbows snapped overhead.

Silence. “Is it, is it over?” she asked.

Alexios hugged her, ignoring the dribble of blood soaking into his night shirt as he stroked her ruined hair. “It’s over, it’s over.”

“The Empress is down!” Venera had collapsed, a dagger in between her ribs.

* * *
Both Alexeia and Venera live, although the Empress Dowager is bedridden for the next three months and never regains her former strength. But she is still active, milking the murder of Prince Zviad for all it is worth. King Alexei is of course enraged over the death of his son, but is still wary of challenging the Bloody Emperor. Nikephoros, unable to get at the assassins who botched this important operation, settles for executing their families.

But it soon becomes clear that Georgia does not stand alone. On November 18, Venera provides two documents to King Alexei. The first is a statement acknowledging that Herakleios was murdered by the usurper Nikephoros, and recognizing Alexios as rightful ruler of the Romans. It is signed by over three dozen prominent Roman officials. If Nikephoros possessed the document, their lives and that of their families would be forfeit.

The second is written in flawless Greek, from the chancellery of Novgorod. All stavropegic monasteries in Russia, monasteries under the direct control of the Patriarch of Constantinople, are to be transferred to the Metropolitan of Kiev. Many boyars have been using the stavropegic monasteries as loopholes to get around inheritance taxes, which Novgorod is eager to close. In exchange for that, numerous trading concessions, and the city of Tana, ‘the entire awesome might of the Russian state, land, and people are pledged to the cause of restoring Emperor Alexios, sixth of that name, to his rightful throne’.

On December 12, the Kingdoms of Georgia and Russia declare war on the Roman Empire. Three days later the Kingdom of Vlachia joins them.

Round Two has begun.
 
Part 12.2

Empire of Blood and Gold

1528-1535

"If only he had been this kind of Emperor five years ago we could have avoided this whole debacle. I'll probably have to clean up this mess. Sigh. I'm getting too old for this."-Prince Theodoros Komnenos to Ares, his Megas Domestikos

1528: The various allies join for a multitude of reasons. Russia joins for the previously mentioned concessions, and its military aid also covers the dowry for Anastasia, sister of the Megas Rigas Mikhail III (grandson of Nikolai, brother of Kristina), fiancé of Alexios VI Komnenos.

Russia is bought mainly with gold, but both Georgia and Vlachia want Roman blood and iron. In exchange for having his debts to them forgiven, King Alexei makes Venera give several major Georgian armorers armament contracts for supplying goods for the tagmata warehouses. They are extremely lucrative contracts, and the first awarded to any non-Roman firm; it is a policy that is explicitly contrary to Roman policy set down by Theodoros Megas himself.

The main form of payment though is the future promise of Roman armies. Within fifteen years of his claiming of Constantinople, Alexios is pledged to support Vlachia with fifty thousand men against Hungary, and to support Georgia with no less than eighty thousand against the Ottoman Empire.

Initially Nikephoros is not concerned. The War Room already has a prepared war plan for such an eventuality. In fact the War Room does not view a combined Russian-Georgian-Vlach offensive to be a serious threat, provided certain safeguards are taken to ensure no other foreign participants.

It is confusing to students of military history, but the fact is that a war between Rhomania and Russia, two predominantly land powers, hinges largely on the navy. Neither Vlachia nor Georgia possess even close to the number of troops necessary to challenge the Roman Empire. Vlachia can put into the field close to 17,000 men, of which ten thousand are good quality, but at the expense of stripping the Transylvanian border forts (the vulnerability is covered by a Russian guarantee of Vlach borders).

Georgia can field thirty five thousand tagmata soldiers. Improvements in Georgian armaments, the expansion of the printing press, and the frequent habit of Roman veterans retiring in Georgia to teach their skills means that by this point the gap in quality between Roman and Georgian troops is almost nonexistent.

But Rhomania can field more than double the combined Vlach-Georgian armies, meaning massive Russian reinforcements are imperative. Eight thousand Russians overrun Tana and the Crimea without a fight, whilst a great host, styled the Army of the North, march south for Bulgaria. Supplying such a force is extremely difficult, and seaborne provisions from all three nations essential to keep the force intact, meaning control of the Black Sea is vital. Without it, Russian contribution is effectively nil.

Russia also insists on an immediate full-effort offensive into Thrace to knock Nikephoros out of the war quickly. Novgorod does not want a long war with the Empire, since Scythia’s economy is built almost entirely on Roman trade. That offensive will be conducted by the Army of the North, supported by the Vlachs and Roman European tagmata loyal to Venera/Alexios. The Georgians, along with Asian tagmata, will invade Anatolia to draw away Nikephorean loyalists from the decisive theater of Thrace.

On March 23, the Imperial Navy, one hundred twenty two warships strong, puts out to sea as the Army of the North assembles at Ryazan. It outnumbers the combined Russian Black Sea-Vlach-Georgian fleets almost five to two. Venera had hopes that the Megas Doux, the commander of the Roman navy, would side with her and Alexios, but old Ioannes Laskaris, who first earned his battle scars as a fourteen-year-old at the Lido, refuses to support one who would bring foreigners into the Empire.

The failed defection of Ioannes is compensated somewhat when Katepano Demetrios declares for Venera, along with the two Egyptian tagmata, albeit for a price. Demetrios does not have much longer to live, and he demands that his son Andreas be promoted to Katepano while he steps down, whilst retaining his title as strategos of the Egyptian tagma. It is a dangerous combination of civic and military power in a single individual, but Venera has little choice.

With Demetrios comes Andreas Angelos, who can now enter the Empire since the Turks barred his intended route to Georgia. It is indeed unfortunate for the Allied cause, and the Roman Empire that he could not reach the Black Sea in time. His prestige might have been enough to impel the Imperial fleet to defect despite the Megas Doux if he had been physically present. But prior to the battle of Odessos, only two of the five squadrons defect to Venera and Alexios, leaving both sides evenly matched.


en-greek-fire2_zps8346cbab.jpg
The Battle of Odessos was fought just outside the Vlach port, which was serving as the main supply depot of the Army of the North. To compensate for their lack of cannons, some of the Vlach ships were armed with 'dragons' heads', flamethrowers modeled after old Greek firethrowers although lacking the liquid fire. Despite some spectacular short-range success against Roman dromons, they proved to be of limited utility in battle.


When the bloody day of April 8 ends, the allies have command of the Black Sea, but at a terrible cost. Out of eleven Vlach ships, only four are seaworthy, and out of the eleven captains, only one, minus an arm, lives. The news is far worse for Rhomania. Out of the one hundred and twenty two warships that sailed out of the Golden Horn six weeks earlier, half are no longer fit for service, with losses in personnel even more devastating, especially amongst trained officers. Roman policy of stationing snipers in the rigging to pick off enemy officers has backfired badly.

The bloodiness of the fighting comes as a surprise to many students of history, but both sides are waging a very thorough propaganda war. The partisans of Venera know that they can expect no mercy if they fail, so are inclined to show none. Their resolve is strengthened as Nikephoros’ agents terrorize Targoviste, Novgorod, and Tbilisi. Although the various royal families are safe, it is remarked that in February a Siberian chain gang member had better survival odds than a member of the Novgorodian veche.

Nor are Nikephoros’ actions limited to mere assassinations. On February 27, arsonists set fire to the magazines in Smolensk, completely destroying them along with half of the city. Two thousand are killed, six thousand left homeless.


greatfireoflondon_zpsf7f0e803.jpg

Smolensk burning.


Venera makes sure Nikephoros’ atrocities are known far and wide, particularly the death of Zviad. It leads to an informal German offer of support for Venera, in Manfred’s words ‘in defense of the inviolability of monarchy and in defense of my to-be relative’. Venera very reluctantly declines the promise of twenty five thousand landsknechts, as those would be more than countered by a hundred thousand Roman tagmata soldiers turning against her.

In the propaganda war, Nikephoros has the upper hand. The truth is that many of his ‘victims’ were legitimate traitors; it is just that many of his contemporaries doubted the validity of the charges. But the invasion helps prove that Nikephoros was right all along, that there were traitors in their midst.

It also helps immensely that Nikephoros has far easier access to the opinions that matter, that of the Roman people, and that he can easily out-print the allies. Nicaea alone has more printing presses than all of Vlachia. Publishing allegations that Venera is also in collusion with Latin powers and the Timurids, Nikephoros crafts a convincing narrative of a woman obsessed with power and revenge, a cross between Maria of Barcelona and Julius II.

He also takes advantage of the ambiguous wording in the Vlach declaration (who have the disadvantage of comparatively less familiarity with the Greek language than the Russians or Georgians), which is directed ‘against the Roman state as commanded by Emperor Nikephoros’. In the Vlach original the word ‘state’ is meant in the sense of government apparatus, the Nikephorean government. In the Greek it could be construed as ‘people’.

Venera’s use of it in Sinope and Trebizond four years earlier alerted him to the importance of the printing press, something he had heretofore been neglecting. Recent discoveries of Nikephoros’ writings show that he came to some far-reaching conclusions that give the Bloody Emperor the dubious honor of inventing the modern police state.

Nikephoros’ plans dictated complete government control of the press, to ensure that ‘proper and edifying material for the state’ were the only ones distributed. Also he planned complete governmental control and provision of education at all levels, to instill proper values in new generations. In particular he emphasizes the state education of women, as they would help reinforce the lessons in their children, as ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world’.

Nikephoros also intends a major construction project, building stadiums and theaters in cities across the Empire. Besides normal functions, they are also to house events and ceremonies to build up proper reverence for the state and the personage of the Emperor. Nikephoros is extremely aware of the power of a cult of personality.

But this time the cult of personality is on his side, for Nikephoros invokes the specter of Andreas Niketas, making this war not a war of succession, but a struggle for the survival of the Roman state and people.

On April 9, news of the battle of Odessos reaches Constantinople; Nikephoros knows that now he has an existential fight on his hands, and all gloves come off. The next day he admits to the people of Constantinople that based merely on blood, his and Alexios’ claims are equal. They are both grandsons of Andreas I. His speech from the Imperial box in the Hippodrome is considered one of the finest pieces of oratory in human history:

“But there is more than blood at stake here! There are deeds as well, deeds that must be answered for. And I ask you, would any true son of Andreas Niketas bring down foreigners upon this Empire?! NO, I say. For did not Andreas Niketas spend his whole life fighting against that?! Did he not shed his blood, his tears, from the Black Day to the Iron Gates, that all Romans might live in peace, safe from foreign arms and tyranny? And yet Alexios, his so-called heir, would bring those things upon those his grandfather once sheltered!

“But do not fear, for this treachery to the name, to the memory of Andreas Niketas will not be tolerated. We shall avenge it, all of us! For are we not all children of Andreas? We are his sons, his daughters, and together we shall ensure that he did not suffer in vain!

“We are well equipped for this momentous task. The armies of the Empire are those of Andreas Niketas, built and trained by himself for one purpose, the vanquishing of all Rhomania’s foes. My trust in them is unshakeable. When I called up these forces and when I now ask sacrifices of the Roman people and if necessary every sacrifice, then I have a right to do so, for I also am today absolutely ready, as we were formerly, to make every personal sacrifice.

“I am asking of no Roman more than I myself am ready at any time to do. There will be no hardships for Romans to which I myself will not submit. My whole life henceforth belongs more than ever to my people. I am from now on just the first soldier of the Roman Empire. I have put on that coat that is the most sacred and dear to me, the coat of Theodoros and Demetrios Megas, of Andreas Niketas, the coat of the defenders of the Roman Empire. I will not take it off again until victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome.

“As a Roman I enter upon this struggle with a stout heart. My whole life has been nothing but one long struggle for my people, for its safety and peace, and for Rhomania. There is only one watchword for that struggle: faith in this people. One word I have never learned: that is, surrender.

“If, however, anyone thinks that we are facing a hard time, I should ask him to remember that once a boy with a tired, bloodied state, opposed a continent, and came out successful because that state had that stout heart that we need in these times. I would, therefore, like to assure all the world that a Black Day will never be repeated in Roman history. Just as I myself am ready at any time to stake my life – anyone can take it for my people and for Rhomania – so I ask the same of all others.

“Whoever, however, thinks he can oppose this national command, whether directly or indirectly, shall fall. We have nothing to do with traitors. We are all faithful to our old principle. It is quite unimportant whether we ourselves live, but it is essential that our people shall live, that Rhomania shall live. The sacrifice that is demanded of us is not greater than the sacrifice that many generations have made. If we form a community closely bound together by vows, ready for anything, resolved never to surrender, then our will shall master every hardship and difficulty. I would like to close with the declaration made by Demetrios Megas, on the eve of the second invasion of Timur: ‘We face the possible twilight of our Empire. But so long as we Romans stand together, in common cause with one purpose, that of victory, then we shall not face twilight, but dawn’.”

That afternoon Nikephoros, as a personal example, begins auctioning off Imperial property, the proceeds given to the war fund. Within the next six weeks it will raise over 4 million hyperpyra.

Two days later the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch excommunicate all supporters of Venera and Alexios, and them as well. Within the next ten days, the Vlach and Georgian armies cross the frontier to begin the war in earnest. The allies estimate that out of the sixteen Roman tagmata, eleven will defect to them. It would still leave Nikephoros with sixty thousand men (five tagmata plus the Athanatoi and Varangoi), making him a formidable but manageable threat.

They are wrong. A mere five defect, the two in Egypt, the Chaldean tagma under Iason Rhagabe, and the Epirote under Stefanos Doukas, and the Bulgarian. The remainder, one hundred and ten thousand men, joined by the Athanatoi, Varangoi, and the Scholai, are for Emperor Nikephoros IV.

On April 22, the new rocket batteries, called fire lances, of the Chaldean and Coloneian tagmata begin trading bolts outside Amaseia.

The initial allied drive into Anatolia goes well, the Georgians and Chaldeans scattering the Coloneian tagma before them. Casualties on both sides are relatively light, but the fire lances quickly prove their worth. Though extremely unwieldy, difficult to maneuver, and quite difficult to aim (although compensated by a broad impact zone), once in position their rain of screaming bolts loaded with Vlach shot (canister) is horrendously lethal.

Although the allies in Anatolia are supposed to act merely as a distraction from the decisive battle in Thrace, the Georgians are not inclined to sit idly by and be mere spectators. King Alexei, eager for revenge, is also well aware that he is demanding a lot from Venera/Alexios, and that he should provide an appropriate contribution to the war effort.

There is also the need to prevent the Roman troops from the south from linking up with the western Anatolian tagmata. Captured couriers reveal that the Phoenician, Syrian, and South Syrian tagmata are marching north rather than proceeding against Egypt. With Andreas Angelos in Alexandria, most of the Roman navy in the Mediterranean has defected to the allies. And Roman doctrine states that if an attack on Egypt cannot be made without naval superiority and logistical support, it should not even be tried.

Europe is a whirlwind of activity. The Athanatoi and Varangoi, plus the Thracian and Macedonian tagmata storm into Bulgaria. The War Room, under Nikephoros’ watchful but non-interfering eye, through the use of bi-weekly reports, keeps track of the maneuvers on a huge map with colored figurines representing formations. To assist the War Room officers scurrying about the map, they are equipped with staffs which span the average one-day march for a tourma on the map, with different lengths for each season.

Nikephoros’ reasons for not intervening are two-fold. Firstly, he is aware of his military inexperience, and considering that much of the apparatus set before him was devised by Andreas Niketas (although formalized by Herakleios), is disinclined to tamper with it. Second there is the matter of physical strength. For the past two years, he has been exaggerating the extent of his fatigue to make his enemies complacent. Even so the burst of activity, including his historic Hippodrome Speech, has taken a serious toll.

However the War Room fails to take into account Stefanos Doukas. One of the Young Dragons, tutored by Andreas Niketas himself in the art of war, Stefanos proves that he has been a brilliant student. Through skillful use of interior lines and a series of forced marches seldom equaled in the annals of military history, he cuts apart three Macedonian tourmai, bloodies a Helladic invasion of Epirus, and then drives the Apulian tagma into the sea when it lands in his rear. Outnumbered three to one, he inflicts five times the number of casualties he receives.

His performance is almost matched by his brother Petros in Anatolia, strategos of the Thracesian tagma and fighting on the side of Nikephoros. House Doukas is determined that come what may, they will come out on the winner’s side. Advancing with his tagma and supported by the Opsikians (the Optimatic tagma is transferring to Europe), he scoops up the scattered remnants of the Anatolic and Coloneian tagmata, which have been thrown back in considerable disarray by the Georgians. In a series of fierce running battles, he flattens the allied forward units and throws them out of the central Anatolian plateau.

South of the Taurus mountains though the news is not good for Nikephoros. To the surprise of Venera, who has been concentrating her propaganda efforts on Thrace and western Anatolia, it is in Syria that defections appear. On May 2, an Ottoman column ‘accidentally’ crosses the frontier and is torn to shreds by Basil Palaiologos, brother of Konstantinos Komnenos, and commander of the frontier banda in the region.

The incursion, besides disinclining Suleiman from trying again, enrages Bayezid in Hormuz, who demands that an example be made of Basil’s family, who have been under house arrest since his defection. His father refuses to do so for the same reason it has not been done already, to avoid alienating Konstantinos.

At the same time, it causes the South Syrian tagma to stop marching north. Well aware of their status as Orthodox islets in a Muslim sea, the soldiers and officers are especially concerned about Ottoman intervention in the borderlands. Their decision is to be neutral in the war, returning to their theme but making several demonstrations in force along the Ottoman border. That way it can be said they are serving the Empire, even if it is not clear which Emperor has their allegiance.

As Stefanos is forced to withdraw into Epirus as the Helladic tagma, reinforced by the Apulians and Sicilians who have landed at Corinth, invades his theme, Andreas Angelos puts out from Alexandria. Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus fall without a fight. Ten days after the last surrenders, Antioch defects to the allies. The Phoenician tagma is forced to besiege its capital, but the siege is very lax, with it clear to anyone there that both sides are staging a fake confrontation to stay out of the real war.

As Roman Syria effectively drops out of the fight, Andreas begins operating in the Aegean. The maritime peoples of the region flock to his banner. Army princes are no novelty to the world or Rhomania, but a prince who is a sailor and captain of ships, who is one of them, is a new phenomenon. Even with their support, he is unable to force the Dardanelles, which are guarded by the Great Old Ones, the name given to Thomas Laskaris’ giant bombards, hopelessly obsolete by field standards but capable of breaking a purxiphos’ back in half with one shot.

Still his raids on the Aegean coast (on one Isaakios ‘liberates’ a chest of precious stones, including a ruby the size of his nose) do pin Nikephorean militias in place so that they cannot support the tagmata, and he safely escorts the Egyptian tagmata, commanded by Andreas of Egypt, to the Peloponnesus. Demetrios has formally retired, with his son invested as Katepano. Pressed from both sides, the Helladic, Apulian, and Sicilian tagmata dig in around the Isthmus of Corinth.

A lot of Stefanos’ offensive strength is by this point provided by the Albanian clans. The reason for that lies to the north in Serbia. The princes there have not been idle; Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, Prince of Raska, declared immediately for Venera, and using weapons and advisors from Vlachia has overrun the Principalities of Pec and Toplica, both of which were supplying Nikephoros with bullion. He now commands well over forty percent of the old Serbian kingdom. Venera pledges to recognize all of his conquests, provided he also lean on the Albanian chiefs to support Stefanos. This he does with alacrity.

In Constantinople, the populace is undergoing what has been exaggerated as a hygiene crisis. To conserve timber for the navy, merchant marine, and construction projects, many of the cities’ bathhouses have over the past twenty years started using Bulgarian coal for fuel, a source cut off by the war. More importantly for the Roman people, both the Scythian and Egyptian grain shipments have been cut. There are enough local stores and shipping to keep the capital and armies sufficiently supplied, but the provinces are suffering.

To boost the Constantinoplitans’ morale, Nikephoros publicly awards Andreas Drakos and Giorgios Laskaris with the Order of the Iron Gates; they are the first two recipients. The Order of the Iron Gates is a new Roman military decoration to be granted to ‘those soldiers who show exceptional bravery, skill, and devotion in the task of defending the One and Indivisible Empire of the Romans’ (some historians believe the phrasing is a direct snub to Manfred for his landsknecht offer to Venera).

The award is for a serious of ambushes the two droungarioi conducted in central Bulgaria. Using scratch forces hastily assembled from thematic and militia troops, the inseparable duo inflicted over a thousand casualties on the Bulgarian tagma and Vlach troops, whilst suffering only a little over a hundred and fifty themselves. In their greatest coup, they snuck behind enemy lines and burned a supply depot to the ground, including enough rations to feed three tourmai for six months.

Still for Andreas the season is one of sadness. His wife, Elisa da Montefeltro (great-granddaughter of Andreas Niketas through his bastard daughter Simonis), has miscarried. Giorgios does his best to cheer him up, although he is also busy reveling in being Constantinople’s most eligible bachelor.

Another change in Constantinople is that no longer great crowds gather at the mausoleum of Andreas Niketas. The people are too scared, for there are terrified whispers of the most terrible roars of rage coming from the tomb at night. There is one exception to this. Every day Prince Theodoros, accompanied by his ‘court’ visits the grave of his father and mother. Kristina, the Empress of Blackbirds, originally lay separate from her spouse, but in the first year of Nikephoros’ reign he arranged for her to lie beside her husband.

More obvious on the streets is the almost tripling in size of the Teicheiotai, the civic militia of Constantinople, which numbers fifty thousand strong in July. Responsibility for recruiting, organizing, and leading the new contingents falls mainly on the Roman Senators, as the Imperial bureaucracy is busy trying to keep order in the provinces. Under normal circumstances, the expansion would have been kept under Imperial supervision, but the rapid, emergency growth requires Nikephoros to use more unorthodox methods. Many of the Senators and newfound militia commanders are also recent purchasers of imperial estates from Nikephoros’ auction for the war fund.

It is important to remember that whilst Rhomania has a high number of university graduates to staff its bureaucracy compared to its contemporaries, it still has a pitifully small number by modern standards; it is estimated that in 1525 one in nine hundred and seventy Romans has at least a year of university study. Meanwhile Milan’s ratio is about 1:1200, with Germany, France, and England standing at about 1:1400.

Despite significant progress in Hellas, July begins difficultly for the allies. The army of the north is staying intact with little loss of manpower, but at the cost of torturously slow progress. Abysmal roads in Vlachia which in many cases do not deserve the name is one cause; torrential rains that wash out many of the ‘roads’ do not help either. The main cause though is lack of supplies to feed the host. Vlachia cannot both feed the Army of the North and its own forces at the same time, forcing massive amounts of provisions to be brought down from Scythia.

It was expected that Black Sea shipping would compensate, but whilst after Odessos the allies have command of the sea, they do not have control. Megas Doux Ioannes Laskaris survived the battle, and now with the regrouped remnants of the Imperial fleet has been staging a fierce privateering campaign out of Burgas. Supporting him are the Roman maritime peoples of the Black Sea, most operating out of Amasra, a near impregnable harbor with an uncanny similarity to ancient Tyre. Because of disputes over fishing grounds, the presence of the Megas Doux, and the absence of Andreas Angelos, they side with Nikephoros.

To try and curb these raids, the Vlachs along with the Bulgarian tagma, supported by some Serbian, Albanian, and Cossack units drive hard for Burgas, which lies on the border between the Bulgarian and Thracian themes. They number about twenty thousand. Outside of the city they are attacked by the Thracian, Macedonian, and Optimatic tagmata, plus the Athanatoi, thirty thousand strong.


* * *


Off the coast of Bulgaria, July 10, 1528:

The sea was calm, the waves gently slapping the oaken sides of the purxiphos. Alexeia looked up into the cloudless sky, seagulls gliding on the breeze, and then at the coast.

The land was not calm. She could hear the roar of cannon and arquebus, the shriek of fire lances, their fiery brilliant streaks arcing across the sky. The grey clouds of powder smoke, interspersed by black sheets of arrows.

“Lower the boats!” the captain yelled. Their ship was part of a convoy of eighteen warships, carrying Georgian reinforcements and the Imperial suite to Bulgaria. Now they were going to land the troops in the usurper’s army’s rear. All but one.

She leaned against the railing, some of her blond locks slipping out of her headdress in the breeze. Her brother Alexios was next to her, his eyes locked on the battle, a pained expression on his face. He was clad in leather lamellar, a short sword and mace strapped to his belt, but he would not be using them.

She placed her hand on his, covering his white knuckles as he clenched the wood. “Mother is right; it’s too dangerous. If you…” She gulped. The image of Zviad lying in a pool of his own blood, his intestines peeking out of his belly, but this time the body had Alexios’ face. No!

“Ow!” Alexios exclaimed, jerking his hand away. His hand was trickling blood from where she had dug in her nails.

“Ah! Alexios, I’m so sorry! Here.” Alexios wrapped the silk around his hand, then smiled a bit. “Theophano is going to get after you for that.” She’d torn off part of her sleeve to give her brother the bandage.

“You’re right,” she replied, but Alexios’ eyes were already returning to the battlefield.

“It isn’t right,” he hissed. “I should be there.”

Caw! Caw! A raven swooped down out of the sky. Old Theodoros of Kaffa, the head of Venera’s guard, originally one of Andreas’ own Imperial guardsmen, whistled and stretched out his arm. Alexeia could see a roll of paper tied to its right leg. She scrunched her face in confusion; they weren’t expecting a raven. Nikephoros IV was after all the most expert in their use, taking after his grandmother.

“What does it say?” Alexios asked as Theodoros unrolled it. The soldier skimmed it, and then his face turned as white as a skeleton. “It is for you, your majesty,” he said in a quaking voice, handing the note to Alexios with a shaking hand.

Alexios read, out loud so Alexeia could hear. “To Alexios of Byzantion, now is the time. Either rule or stand down. One or the other, or you will become my enemy.

“Signed…Andreas Doukas Laskaris Komnenos.

“What?!” Alexeia yelled, snatching the note from Alexios’ hand. “This is ridiculous! This is a forgery of some kind.”

“It’s not,” Theodoros said. “I saw Andreas Niketas write or sign ten thousand pieces of paper. His hand wrote that.”

“But how?! He’s been dead almost fifteen years.”

“Alexeia, can I have that back?” Alexios asked. She gave it to him. “He’s coming back,” he said, staring at the signature. “Or threatening to anyway.” Fire lances shrieked out behind them. He stormed aft.

“Alexios, Alexios!” Alexeia yelled, chasing after him. “Stop! Think! This is insane, will you-”

Alexios pushed aside the flap. “Mother-” he said, and stopped as Alexeia entered.

Venera of Abkhazia, Dowager Empress of the Romans, looked even worse than she had yesterday. Her skin was white as snow, her eyes sunken and drowsy. The dagger hadn’t killed her quickly, but the wound was killing her slowly. She had held up well for several months afterwards, but the strain of the war and the sea voyage were taking its toll. “Mother, I’m going ashore with the men.”

Venera’s eyes snapped open. “No, you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“I must, Mother.” Venera opened her mouth. “It is time for me to rule.” He walked out.

“Alexios, Alexios!” Venera yelled, and hacked, the coughs convulsing her body. “Alexeia,” she said, looking at her daughter.

“I’m here, Mom, I’m here,” she said, cradling her mother’s cold hand.

“You have to stop him, Alexeia. You have to stop him.”

“I can’t. He has to do this.”

“No, he doesn’t. The Empire-”

“He needs to do this for himself.”

“I can’t lose him. Do you hear me? I can’t lose him.” Alexeia winced; now she was the one being clawed. She was surprised at the strength in her mother’s long, skinny arms. “I lost your father. I almost lost you. I can’t lost him. I can’t.” She slumped back in her bed, letting go of Alexeia. “O God, I am so tired, so very tired.” Alexeia started to leave. “Why, God, why? Why was it so much to ask for?”

Alexeia left, looking for her brother. He was talking with Theodoros, the note tucked into his belt. I know why it was too much to ask for. For not all men can be giants, nor should they. But no one knows that. She walked briskly over, gripping her brother’s arm. “Don’t go, Alexios,” she said. Please don’t go. I don’t want you to die just because a dead man liked to lead from the front.

“I’m going,” he said.

“But why?! One more body won’t make a difference-”

Alexios held up his hand. “Because…because there are times when an Emperor’s life does not count.”

You were a brother and a son before you were an Emperor. But she knew she had lost him; she could not challenge those words, his words. She gulped. “Very well. And may God go with you and protect you, brother.”

He smiled, squeezing her shoulder. “And with you, sister.”

He started down the ladder. May God go with you and protect you, she repeated. Another volley of fire lances shrieked across the sky. And may the Devil take you, Andreas Niketas.


* * *

Empire1538_zpsbfd8bd3d.png

Current status of the Roman Empire. Purple is Nikephoros, light purple is allies, green is neutral. Note that out of the defenders of Constantinople, only 25,000 are capable of field operations.


The battle of Burgas ends up an inconclusive draw, although a strategic victory for Nikephoros. The Georgian landing behind their lines forced the Nikephoreans to withdraw before destroying the Vlach-Bulgarian army, but not before crippling its ability to launch an assault against Burgas. They withdraw in good order, although to be on the safe side they do not take the risk of encamping in Burgas to avoid being pinned down.

Alexios participated vigorously (although recklessly is a possible adjective as well) in the battle, with one horse killed under him and a second wounded, although he is unhurt. Afterwards his mother and sister land inside the Empire for the first time in ten years.

But soon the Army of Thrace, the title given to the Nikephorean army in the region, advances in an attempt to smash the allies in Bulgaria before the Army of the North arrives. Earlier attempts to do this had been hampered by the need to guard their left flank against Stefanos Doukas. Now though he is wholly occupied by the attempts of Nikephorean forces in Attica to break out of the cordon thrown around them by Stefanos and Andreas of Egypt.

The allies fall back, as the sizeable numerical superiority of the Army of Thrace is growing as militia contingents are mobilized and dispatched to the area. This is the work of Megas Domestikos Demetrios of Kyzikos. Although appointed by Herakleios, he has faithfully served Nikephoros, but was laid up most of the spring and summer with an illness yet has now returned to work. In the meantime, the War Room had delayed deploying militia for field duty, both on the grounds of supply limitations and a prejudice amongst the staff officers against non-tagmatic troops, who view their use in a purely defensive role.

Most of them come from the Aegean basin, but Demetrios has spent most of his adult life in Coloneia. In that large, but lightly populated province, most of the people live in scattered villages, with almost no towns and no cities to speak of. The environment encourages banditry, which is occasionally joined by raids from tribes living on the fringes of the Ottoman, Roman, and Georgian Empires. In operations against these foes, Demetrios has made much use of Kurdish auxiliaries and thus does not have the same view of militia troops.

As the Armies of Thrace and Bulgaria spar in southern Bulgaria, Alexeia leaves the army to ride to Thessaly (one of her attendants is a new arrival, Fyodor of Yaitsk, one of the Monks-Beyond-the-Volga), joining the forces under the command of Stefanos Doukas. She is met there by her cousins Andreas of Egypt and Isaakios Angelos and her uncle Andreas Angelos. Through skill, hard fighting, and Syrian neutrality the allies have managed to harry Nikephoros down to a strength of near-parity, but even with the Army of the North entering southern Vlachia with its much better roads, victory will almost certainly go to whichever side successfully concludes one of the three theaters of battle.

For the allies, the best choice is Hellas, as it is the only place where they have numerical superiority and where their naval superiority has a significant effect on Nikephorean supplies. Alexeia comes in the hopes that she can persuade the loyalists there to surrender quickly and cheaply. It turns out that her trip was unnecessary; the day before she rides into Livadeia, the forces in Attica, Thessaly, and the Peloponnesus surrender unconditionally.

The presence of a son and two grandsons of Andreas Niketas, plus one of the Young Dragons, are a large factor in their capitulation. Another is Venetia’s declaration ‘for Andreas Angelos, son of Andreas I, and Basileus Alexios VI Komnenos, grandson of Andreas I’. Venetia has about 60,000 inhabitants, mostly Greeks with a large Croat minority. Heavily involved in printing, salt production, and eastern trade, the city is once again indisputably Queen of the Adriatic, and her fleet is more than capable of shutting down that sea, in this case the supply line to Apulia.

The city had six months prior to the outbreak of war won significant prestige by defeating the city of Smyrna in a major lawsuit. It was Smyrnan practice that whenever a felon convicted of multiple counts of rape or murder was executed, the civic official would say ‘So another enters the ranks of the Venetians’. The Venetians charged that the ritual unfairly maligned them, as there was absolutely no connection between them and the Serene Republic. After the Venetian victory, the Smyrnans revised the ritual, saying ‘So another enters the ranks of the old Venetians’.


* * *


Livadeia, Hellas, July 28, 1528:

Alexeia Komnena, Princess of Rhomania, was nervous. Breathe, she told herself, stopping herself from fidgeting in her chair. She needed to be composed, to assert authority and strength, which would be difficult considering she was a seventeen-year-old woman about to face two battle-hardened droungarioi. You don’t have to do this.

Yes, I do. For Alexios. Rhomania had not had a civil war for over a hundred years, and once this one was done she was determined that at least another century would pass before another came. And to do that I need to send a message. She caressed the tome atop her lap, enjoying the feel of the leather adorned with gold thread, The Good General. Let them have their hero Andreas Niketas; I do not need him. She would rely on someone much older, who had faced foes far more terrible than Andreas Niketas, Demetrios Megas.

The doors opened, the guards ushering in the two prisoners. They were unarmed, clad in leather, and per her orders were not in chains. They stopped, their backs stiff, their look defiant. “Kneel,” the guards growled. Slowly, very slowly, they got down on one knee, but that is all they did.

“Droungarios Giorgios Laskaris,” Alexeia said. “Droungarios Andreas Drakos.” The two had transferred to the theater just a few weeks before she had, just in time to be caught up in the mass surrender.

Her eyes darted over both of them, well-built men in their late twenties. On their left shoulder was a clasp, a silver arch with an iron gate. It was the Order of the Iron Gate; they had been placed there by Nikephoros himself, the…the man who had murdered her father, who had…the image of Zviad’s butchered body swam in front of her, and for a second she almost ordered the guards to cut the pair down where they knelt.

No! She exhaled, giving herself a moment to recompose herself. No one gave any sign that they had noticed anything. “Have you come to confess your crimes?” she asked.

“No,” Giorgios answered. “We are guilty of no crimes.”

“The only thing we are guilty of is defending the Empire,” Andreas continued. Alexeia noticed that the two did not even need to look at each other. It almost reminded her of her and Alexios.

“From me, and those who support me and my brother,” she said.

“Yes,” both said simultaneously. There was no hesitation, no fear, no shame, in their voices, even though she was not bound by any terms to spare their lives. She looked at the iron. Iron gates for iron men.

“You are guilty,” she said. “Of ignorance, which is no crime. My brother and I did not come to conquer Rhomania, but to set her free. Your actions are noble and righteous, but misguided.” She paused. “I can see you are skeptical. No matter, I did not bring you here to discuss the merits of my brother’s claims over Nikephoros. I brought you here because I would like two more guards for my retinue, you.”

She suppressed a smile; she’d managed to startle them. Demetrios Megas had shown mercy at Nicomedia, but even he had not appointed famous enemy commanders where they could kill him at a moment’s notice. But the moment passed quickly, now they were calculating. Neither needed to fear for their families. Both House Drakos and House Laskaris were far too powerful for Nikephoros to challenge in his current situation.

“I am not asking you to serve me, but to serve the Empire. The civil war will eventually end, and when it does the two sides will need to come together. I would have that start here. How about you?”

Giorgios and Andreas glanced at each other, and then looked at her. “Very well,” Giorgios said.

“Good,” Alexeia said. “Rise.” They did. “Dekarchos, take these two and see that they are properly fitted as Droungarioi of the Vigla. And return their swords.”

“Yes, your highness.” A moment later they left.

“Yes,” Alexeia hissed, grinning. I did it. They might try to kill her later, but she doubted it. She knew assassins, o so very well, and they were not assassins. Men of iron. And iron does not lie.

She opened up the book to read the passage her right thumb had been touching the entire time. She had underlined it. “For sometimes the most powerful weapon is mercy. Against it even Emperors can be made to tremble.”


* * *


Alexeia’s induction of Andreas Drakos and Giorgios Laskaris is very highly approved of by the Roman soldiery on both sides. Despite their low rank, they are well known in the army, especially for their role at the Iron Gates. Due to it, many of the troops captured in the Hellas pocket end up defecting to Alexeia. A week later they begin to march on Constantinople.


walking_the_plank_zps0e793723.jpg

It was during the Orthodox War that 'walking the plank' entered the general European vocabulary. Although now viewed as a means of execution, which it never was historically, it began as part of a swim test.


Andreas Angelos required that every one of his crew could swim half a mile, and had to demonstrate that every year (a rule he followed as well). A plank would be extended from the ship, onto which the sailor would walk, jump off the end into the water, and swim to a moored boat that marked the distance. One of the first duties of Andreas Drakos and Giorgios Laskaris as Alexeia's bodyguards was attending her at Isaakios Angelos' swim test. Her cousin had been swimming since he was four and passed without a problem.



Meanwhile on August 5, Petros Doukas meets the Georgian army and the Chaldean tagma at Sebastea, whose population is still one-sixth of its pre-Timur level. The bloody fray lasts all day, and completely and utterly destroys the allied force. King Alexei had anchored his flank with a grove that he believed was impassable to artillery. The blaze of fire lances and mikropurs at 1 PM that completely obliterates his left wing proves him wrong, whilst a follow-up kataphraktoi charge sweep the allies from the field.

Out of the thirty six thousand allied soldiers, Petros kills five thousand and captures another seventeen thousand due to a vigorous pursuit by fresh koursores that lasts all afternoon. Two days later the blasted remnants of the Chaldean tagma defect to Petros, with the gutted wreck of the Georgian army retiring to their own country harried by Roman light cavalry. The only good thing about the debacle for the allies is that Petros’ sheer number of prisoners mean that it will take some time for him to organize and march west.

On August 6, the vanguard of the Army of the North reaches the Danube river. It takes the Russian host four days to cross the bridges set up by Vlach engineers, and according to its muster rolls it numbers 54,239 men, from its original strength of seventy thousand. In the face of such a foe the Army of Thrace immediately backpedals, abandoning Burgas to concentrate all its strength on defending Constantinople. On August 30 it encamps just outside gun range of the Herakleian Walls.

The war hangs in the balance. The Allied army is immense, the Army of the North, ten thousand Vlachs, four thousand Serbians, twenty five hundred Albanians, and forty thousand Romans. Two hundred and three cannons and thirty four fire lances support them.

But the Queen of Cities does not stand alone. The moat has not even begun to be built, and the Herakleian Walls are only up to half their planned height and width except for a few places, but they are manned by thirty five thousand tagmatic and thematic troops, plus sixty thousand militia, although only a third are of decent quality. And there is Petros Doukas, poised to be the hammer to Constantinople’s anvil.

On September 2, the allies hurl themselves forward and are immediately thrown back as a hundred fire lances explode in their faces. Shredded by rockets, lashed by arrows, torn by cannonballs, the assault lasts a mere forty minutes and leaves fifteen hundred dead allies in its wake. The next day a herald arrives at the allied lines for ‘the Lady Venera, Alexios and Alexeia of Byzantion, and Prince Andreas Angelos’; the Lord of Constantinople would like to meet.

Meanwhile in the west:
Believing that the Scandinavians are still gathering their forces, Arthur launches an invasion into Poitou in a bid to distract Basil and convince Henri to accept his initial offer. Although it initially makes significant progress in conquering the region, it does nothing to deter Basil from his offensive. By May, Henri’s authority is limited to Provence proper.

To the east, the initial Lotharingian offensive against the Bernese League commences. Due to lack of preparation and a narrow front (infringing on Imperial territory almost guarantees a German intervention, since the Bernese League members are still de jure Imperial vassals), the invasion is scattered by a hastily-assembled scratch League force which attacks them at Pontarlier.

Troops from Basel and Lausanne particularly distinguish themselves during the fray, including a company of Lausanne grenadiers (armed with hand-thrown pomegranate-shaped bombs called grenades after the French word for pomegranate) which takes over eighty percent casualties leading a furious attack on the barricades defending the Lotharingian camp.

Still the situation for the Bernese League is grave, since casualties at Pontarlier were prohibitively high and Lotharingia has reserves. So the Bernese League troops in the Essonne begin their long march home. Not in nineteen hundred years, since the days of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, has the world seen such a feat. They begin fifty five hundred strong, fighting their way across half the breadth of France, to arrive at Nyon. They only number thirty eight hundred strong by that point, but they retain all their standards and artillery, having won four pitched battles and over twenty five skirmishes involving a total combatant strength of at least two hundred men.

Arthur soon has cause to regret his Poitevin incursion, which takes both him and Conde away from England as Catherine launches her attack. First six thousand men are landed in Scotland, where the Highlanders immediately join them to come sweeping out of the north as the Lowlands explode. The Plantagenet garrisons are quickly overrun, but when the Scots press south they are heavily blooded at Berwick and forced to retire.

One key formation that distinguishes itself in the battle is the 3rd Tour of Yorkshire Foot, known as the Green Howards after their colonel, Sir Henry “Green” Howard, Earl of Essex. He is known as ‘the Green’ for a battle in Normandy where despite serious illness he rose to fight an Arletian assault upon the camp. It was said that his green face terrified the Arletians who thought he was an ogre.

Berwick is a significant victory, but it represents only a fraction of Catherine’s strength, and more importantly, the Royal Navy is not in position to repel the hammer blow. Most of the Plantagenet fleet is in the Bay of Biscay defending the Loire River supply line from unexpectedly large numbers of Arletian privateers which wreak havoc on the supply barges, hamstringing Arthur’s advance into a torturous crawl that is only maintained by significant and fiercely resented forced requisitions.

The seriously outnumbered Royal squadron left to guard the east coast of England in the interim is smashed contemptuously aside by the Scandinavian armada. Finnish cavalry squadrons land all along the coast, spreading terror and confusion in their wake, whilst riding circles around the local levies. Amidst the general mayhem, they cut the cables guarding the fleet anchorage in the Medway, allowing the Scandinavians to capture three Royal warships, including the forty-eight gunner Neptune, and burn three more.


Medway_zps5f897404.jpg

The Raid on the Medway was a humiliating blow to Plantagenet prestige, although one significantly helped by lackluster English performance. The best commanders and troops were in France, the second-raters in the north, leaving only third-tier formations to face the assembled might of the North.


Thinking that the attack on the Medway is the main assault, the local levies concentrate there when on July 10 the fort at Gravesend on the mouth of the Thames falls to a coordinated night-time assault between the Scandinavian fleet and the Finns. Capturing several local pilots to navigate the Thames, the fleet pushes up the river, supported on both banks by the Finns joined now by contingents of Norwegian and Swedish gunners. An attempt to stop the advance is flattened at the Battle of Romford. On July 15 London falls.

The city of eighty five thousand souls is thoroughly looted, with an immense haul of gold, silver, jewelry, and silks from the thriving merchant town, valued at over fifteen million hyperpyra. By comparison the Andalusi payment to nullify their Roman vassalage was only eleven million. Still Catherine does not tarry or try to hold the city, abandoning it three days later.

Yet she can negotiate from a position of strength when she sends peace envoys to Arthur. She is not interested in further war, now that the Norwegian thirst for vengeance has been somewhat slated. At the same time she is also aware that Arthur’s military might is still intact and undamaged, whilst there have been a couple of recent spats with Poland over Baltic trade.

Her offer is the establishment of the River Tweed as the border between England and Scotland, but with the town of Berwick and the Isle of Man going to England (and the spoils of the Thames Raid remaining in Scandinavian hands). It has the advantage of mirroring the situation on the ground, meaning that she can redeploy her forces quickly to the Baltic. There she has hopes of leaning on the Poles, both to assert her authority and also improve relations with Russia. There is also the matter of money; even with Mary of Antwerp’s help the expense is chewing through her exchequer at an alarming rate.

Arthur is disinclined to grant the request, as he wanted a larger piece of Scotland and now he wants revenge. But news has arrived that the Habsburgs have secured the Var valley for Basil, and that the Komnenid has won a prominent victory at Orange, capturing thirteen guns. The Arletian Civil War is winding down, and alarming reports are reaching him that Basil is negotiating with the Kaiser via Saluzzese agents. Thus reluctantly Arthur agrees to the terms, and while his legendary statement ‘this is not over’ is likely apocryphal, it accurately sums up the mood on both sides.

Meanwhile Italy is a land of (mostly) peace and tranquility, its most shining example the Duchy of Milan, currently in what is known historically as its Little Golden Age. Developments in industry and agriculture, particularly the widespread adoption of rice cultivation, has led to a booming economy. With a population of four million, the state is, acre-for-acre, the most powerful in Europe.

The Duchy’s administration is also very highly developed, with a thorough and efficient (by the period’s standard) tax-gathering apparatus. Although the number of university-educated clerks relative to the population is slightly lower in Milan than in the Roman Empire, their task is easier due to the compact nature of the territory. Plus the ratio is better than anywhere else in Europe.

The wealth coming in from industry, agriculture, and trade tolls (in this regard Milan is more like the rest of Europe than Rhomania, with numerous internal duties that stifle commerce, but not enough to cripple it) makes Duke Tommaso the second-richest sovereign in Christendom after Nikephoros IV. The Bank of St. George also proves an useful source of low-interest loans. Using the money, Tommaso has turned his court into the sixteenth-century equivalent of the Golden Court of Lotharingia.

Much of that goes into cultural patronage, an area in which art lovers must thank his wife, who he married in 1521, Lucrezia Borgia. Considered one of the great beauties of the era, she is a quiet, faithful aide to her husband, but also responsible for helping to stoke his ambitions. But she also adorns her favorite Palace of Te in Mantua with some of the greatest art works made in the Italian Peninsula.

The Hall of Giants and Hall of Horses are both well known amongst artists, but her husband’s favorite is the Hall of Jason. In it are fifteen great tapestries depicting the journey of Jason and the Argonauts to find the Golden Fleece. It is noted that Jason looked a great deal like Tommaso. Also commissioned for the Palace is the famous, twelve-foot statue of St. George.

Much of the paintings and statues deal with subjects from ancient mythology, and many of them imitate the form of ancient statues, including nudity. The painting Venus of Milan dates from this period. This extends even into artwork of a Christian subject matter, with a nude marble statue and a nude bronze of David produced within three years of each other. The reason for this is twofold. First the Milanese are harkening back to their Roman past by imitating its art forms, and secondly they are thumbing their noses at the prudish Germans, whose influence over the church is fiercely resented.

The cultural innovations are not limited to art and architecture. Theater performances are extremely popular and common (with a strong hint of anti-clericalism in the use of dwarfs to play priests), and in dance the moresca is particularly well-loved by the court. An Andalusi dance, it was transmitted via Provence and typically conducted to music and singing. In music the frottola is also extremely fashionable and is soon exported. A composition of one leading vocal line mixed with three or four instrumental lines, it requires its participants to sight-read, greatly expanding the skill amongst the court.

Unlike the Golden Court, Tommaso’s is not militarily feeble. Milan’s foundries are large and skilled, and with his money he can equip sizeable formations of drilled troops, well armed with armor and gunpowder weaponry. The Ducal Guard is by this point eight thousand strong and comparable in quality to a Roman tagma. Through Genoa, he also has a small but well-armed fleet of galleys, supported by a few purxiphoi and two of the new-style ‘galleon’ warships, as called by the Portuguese (or ‘great dromon’ by the Romans).

Tommaso also uses what he jokingly calls his ‘artisans of love’. Maintained by Lucrezia (taking over from Tommaso’s mother), these are skilled female courtesans, breathtakingly beautiful and trained to wrap men around their little fingers and extract information via pillow-talk. They are very good at their job; the one called the Mooress singlehandedly gets the entire Florentine order of battle to Tommaso. Incidentally they are also responsible for the modern stereotype of the beautiful Lombard ‘man-eater’.

With the Apulian and Sicilian tagmata in Hellas, Tommaso decides to use his arsenal. Besides using his artisans to wheedle information out of the Pisans and Florentines, he also forms an alliance with Siena. The second-greatest power in Tuscany, the city is also a bitter rival of Firenze and always looking for an opportunity to kill Florentines. Against the Milanese-Sienese alliance, the Tuscan League of Firenze, Lucca, and Pisa stands little chance.

At Pistoia the League army is shattered, the Milanese having a three-to-one advantage in gunners, a four-to-one advantage in cannon, and a six-to-one advantage in heavy-armed troops. Still the fierce defense of Pisa delays Tommaso’s advance, so it is the forces of Siena that take Firenze. The Sienese immediately establish a garrison, drawing up plans for two fortresses to keep an eye on the city. An ultimatum to desist and withdraw by the Colonna Dux of Latium and the d’Este Dux of Romagna is rejected as an empty threat, but is enough to ensure that Siena remain within the Milanese orbit for fear of the Romans.

Tommaso has reason to be proud, for in less than four months he has conquered Tuscany. Aside from Saluzzo, all of Italy either answers to him or the Romans. And he has plans to change that. He is learning Greek, and secretly getting instruction in the Orthodox faith from a Cypriot priest, for “only a Greek can rule in Byzantium”. He knows who he is named for, and with his ambition fanned by Lucrezia, he is determined to wrest what he considers his.

But he is also aware of the danger. Rhomania with its vassals outnumber his subjects by over five to one, and the strength and sophistication of his own bureaucracy only makes him appreciate the power of the Roman administration even more. So he stays his hand, even when word reaches him of the Russian host crossing the Danube. The time will come, and in the meantime he has Jewish aides who speak Turkish.

* * *


Outside Constantinople, September 4, 1528:

Alexeia’s horse whinnied, shuffling back under her. “Shh, shh,” she cooed, patting the mare on the neck. Alexios’ mount was also fidgety. I don’t like this. This whole thing smells rotten.

If her uncle Andreas Angelos was nervous, he showed no sign of it. He was sprawled on a chair, calmly peeling an orange. With one hand he plopped a slice into his mouth while the other flattened a fly that landed on him just above the eyepatch. He’d rejected the use of a horse during the negotiations, arguing that he wasn’t used to vehicles that crapped.

Her mother was on a sedan chair, covered by a silk awning that shaded her from the sun. Being off the ship had returned some of the color to her cheeks, but she still remained very weak. It was a warm, clear day with a light breeze blowing off the Marmara. A fine day, a pleasant day. Then she looked forward.

The squat, brooding mass of the Herakleian Walls, her father’s walls, stared back. They were within gun range, facing the first Iron Gate, centerpiece of the one section of wall that was completed to the original specifications, save for the moat and glacis. Her mother had almost not agreed to meet here given the obvious danger, but Nikephoros had provided nineteen hostages, Senators, army officers, senior bureaucrats, even two bishops. If Nikephoros tried to kill them, he would have the entire upper strata of the Empire howling for his blood.

“Belch!” Alexeia looked down at her uncle, who placed his right hand on his stomach and then looked up at her. “Never eat Russian cooking. It comes back to- Ah, look’s like my nephew has arrived.” The tetragram had been raised above the gate, the signal that the usurper was on the other side. She could hear shouting, but couldn’t make out the words.

“Just don’t say ‘we come in peace, we would like to leave in one piece’, all right,” she said to Andreas.

He stuck out his lower lip. “But I was looking forward to using that.”

“Children,” Venera said, her face crinkling. It’s good to see her smiling again. Now if only she’d eat.

The gate began to open, and there was no more talking. The great iron door groaned, almost as if it were alive, a massive beast arising from a slumber. It had been struck at least six times by culverin-balls and shrugged off every blow.

“Sloppy,” Alexios tsked. “The hinges should be better oiled.” Or maybe this is deliberate. Nikephoros did choose this location. Perhaps he wanted an imposing sound to go with an imposing sight?

“What the?” Andreas said, standing up. The orange peels piled on his lap tumbled to the ground. The men coming through the gate were massive, thick and tall. “They must be as tall as your mother,” he continued, looking at Alexeia. The wind gusted, and suddenly both her and Alexios had to concentrate on controlling their mounts.

“What’s gotten into them?” Alexios said, jerking on the reins. “Is the usurper on a camel?”

“No, something worse,” Alexeia said, struggling to stay atop her mare. Two creatures were coming through the gate, the fattest horses she had ever seen. “What are they?”

“Rhinoceroses,” Andreas said, grabbing her horse’s bridle. She took the opportunity to jump off; Alexios stubbornly stayed on his. Taking the bridle from her uncle, she saw he was right. Both were marching towards her, flanked by the guards, and one turned its head slightly so she could see the two horns. “They’re bigger than the ones I saw in Majapahit.”

Alexios finally had his mount calmed down. “Those guards have glaives,” he scowled. It’s an insult, and he knows it. Glaives were for crowd control or for fighting brigands; the light blades were useless against armored troops. He’s saying we are nothing more than a band of ruffians.

“Those guards are also bears,” Andreas said.

What is going on here? The bears were wearing red silk jackets, with gold thread and silver cuffs. The rhinoceroses were also draped in silk, which looked to be adorned in precious stones, the swaying tassels hanging just above the ground. She managed not to jump as the last creature left the gate, trumpeting its presence. “Bull Elephant,” her uncle said. “Those things are even crankier than your mother.”

The bears, rhinoceroses, and the elephant, with a rider on top, approached. A monkey perched on one of the rhino’s back scampered ahead of the pack, pulled out a scroll, and ‘read’ it whilst jabbering in its monkey tongue. When the elephant came to a stop, the animal used its trunk to help its rider down. As soon as he reached the ground, the monkey shrieked and scampered up onto his shoulder.

“Theodoros,” Venera said. “I cannot say I expected to see you here.”

“I felt it would be rude if I and my court did not come to greet you. You have been away for so long. Did you like Andronikos’ speech?” He scratched the monkey’s chin. “He’s been working on it for three weeks. Truth be told, I think his references to Plato need a bit of work, although I found his commentary on Euclid to be fascinating.”

“Where is the usurper Nikephoros?” Alexios snapped angrily. “We are to meet him here.”

“Are we?” Alexeia asked, staring at her uncle intently. “The message just said the Lord of Constantinople wished to meet.”

“Quite right,” Theodoros said, looking at her. But then he stared dully at his nephew. It is like the gaze of a cow. But… Emperor Nikephoros IV, grandson of Andreas I Komnenos, is dead,” Theodoros said.

“What?” Venera exclaimed. “How?”

“It appears his health was more fragile than expected. The suspense of your attack on the wall proved to be too much. He collapsed and died a few hours later.”

Alexios grinned wolfishly. “Then the Empire is mine.”

One of the rhinos took a large, pungent dump. Alexios, Alexeia, and Venera scrunched their noses. Andreas started peeling another orange. Theodoros licked his lips, then spoke. “The first soldier of the Roman Empire is dead. One hundred thousand more still stand between you and Hagia Sophia. Why should they stand aside?”

“Because this is my birthright.”

Theodoros picked his nose, flicking a bit to the side. “Many have said that, for that is true of many.” He started walking toward the defecating rhino. “Constantinople is a magnificent creature. It requires a magnificent rider. Andreas was such a rider.” He scratched the animal behind its left ear. “So far you fall far far short of him.”

“What?” Alexios barked, starting forward, his hand on his sword. “How dare you talk to me like that? Who do you think you are?! Let go!” he growled. The latter was aimed at Andreas Angelos who had grabbed his horse’s bridle and yanked it to a halt.

“He is a son of Andreas Niketas,” Andreas answered, his tone low and ominous. “As am I.”

“Enough, Alexios,” Venera said, looking at Theodoros. “The son of Herakleios would like to enter his father’s city. May he?”

For a second Theodoros looked pained, and he sighed. “His father was always kind to me. For his name, he may. You all may.” He looked at Alexios. “I only hope you have the strength and wisdom to remain.” He turned around again, scratching one of his rhinos behind the ear like a dog.

“Excellent,” Alexios said, looking at his mother. “We must prepare a grand triumphal procession immediately.”

Alexeia sidestepped over to her mother. “I don’t like this.”

“Oh, Theodoros is just cranky the war disrupted feeding his menagerie. We’ll need to get him another rhinoceros but then he’ll be happy.”

Alexeia looked over at her uncles. Andreas had the monkey on his shoulder and was waving a piece of orange in front of its nose. It grabbed for it, but he darted it out of reach. He glanced at Alexeia and winked.

Theodoros looked just as ridiculous. He was wagging his finger at the rhino who had defecated, scolding it like a child. It was even hanging its head in shame. Still… “I don’t like this,” she repeated. “Nikephoros’ death is so, so convenient. I think Theodoros killed him. He’s a menace.”

Venera burst into laughter. “Oh, Alexeia, Theodoros a murderer!” She took a moment to collect herself. “You don’t know him, so it makes sense you’d be suspicious. But trust me, he’s harmless. I mean, seriously, look at him.”

Alexeia did. The whole getup did look absurd, especially the bears with their far too small jackets. But maybe that is what he wants. The bears looked silly now, but if they bared their teeth, it would be a different story. Perhaps Mother is right, but…

Theodoros glanced at Alexeia and winked.

Constantinople, September 5, 1528:

The guard bowed before her, trembling. “Your Imperial highness.”

“Dekarchos Ioannes,” Alexeia said sharply. She was seated, Droungarioi Drakos and Laskaris flanking her, while the soldier kneeled on the bare stone floor. The dreary evening light did little to illuminate the room. Mother and Alexios were busy preparing for the coronation, but she smelled a rat, and she wanted it found, and dead.

“You were with the usur…I mean Emperor Nikephoros IV when he died,” she said. Much to her mother’s rage, Nikephoros had already been given a Christian burial, befitting his station, and the mood of the Constantinople mob made exhuming his body for any reason impossible. Already the outbreaks of plague were being blamed on the ‘unwashed, diseased barbarians’ that had been brought to the Queen of Cities. She had the uneasy feeling of sitting on a powder keg, although thankfully the pair of matches that were Nikephoros’ wife and son had been apprehended.

“No, your Highness.” She frowned. “Ah, I mean, I was not there when he died, but I was the first on the scene.”

“Any signs that he had been murdered?”

“No, your highness.” Poison perhaps? But he was a grandson of the Empress of Blackbirds, and she personally oversaw his anti-poison regime. Both her and Alexios had gotten a similar treatment, but she doubted that it matched the effectiveness and thoroughness of that of Empress Kristina.

Maybe he did die naturally. But that does not answer all my questions. “How did Theodoros come to take command of Constantinople after Nikephoros’ death?”

“He commanded it, your highness.”

He commanded it?” I know he’s the son of Andreas Niketas, but he’s also known to be an animal-loving simpleton recluse. Surely Imperial Guardsmen won’t follow that without question. Will they?

“My apologies, your highness. I was not clear. Theodoros did not command it. The Emperor Andreas commanded it.”

“What?!” Alexeia said, jerking forward in shock. Then she remembered herself, leaning back and crossing her legs. “That is impossible. He has been dead for eleven years.” I’m half tempted to exhume HIS body, just to prove he is dead. But I’m sure that’ll go over well.

“The Emperor Andreas commanded it,” Ioannes repeated. “It was the body of Theodoros, certainly, but it was the spirit of Andreas Niketas that possessed him then. It was the only explanation.” He looked at the droungarioi. “You knew him. If you had been there, you would agree. Ask anyone who was there, and they will say it was Andreas Niketas. He was dressed like him, with his sword, not David, but the dirk he had from the Black Day. He talked like Andreas Niketas, he even moved like him. In every way. If the prince had been a few inches shorter, and his nose a bit skinner, I would swear before God Almighty himself and all the saints that it was Andreas Niketas in flesh as well, not just in spirit. It was he who commanded that Theodoros take charge. No one else.”

“Thank you, you may go,” Alexeia said, waving her hand in dismissal. He left, his boots calling on the stone floor. Do I smell a rat, or a rhinoceros?


* * *

“Alexios?” Alexeia called.

“Come in,” he said.

She did, closing the door to her brother’s bedroom. She was dressed in an evening gown, her slippers brushing the fine Kashmiri rug. Alexios was in a knee-length white silk shirt, covered by a purple robe decorated with gold thread. A robe for an Emperor. He was reading; she didn’t need to look to know what book it was, The Art of War by Andreas Niketas.

“How go the preparations for the coronation?” she asked.

“Everything is set for tomorrow morning. Mother managed to ‘convince’ the Patriarch to see things our way.”

“Somehow I think it would still be best if he was replaced as soon as possible.” Alexios nodded in agreement. “Anyway I didn’t come to talk about smelly old men. I came to bring you this.” I want it to be me that does it. It’s what he’s wanted as long as I can remember. She pulled it out from behind her back, holding it outward horizontally in both hands.

Alexios jerked to his feet, staring at it with undisguised awe and wonder. “David,” he whispered. He took the brilliant scabbard from her, his eyes locked on it. It is beautiful; I won’t deny that. He drew it, the blade flashing in the moon and candle light. But that was not all. The blade sung.

Her twin looked at her with tears in his eyes. “We did it.”

“Yes, yes we did,” she sniffed, her own vision blurry. “Welcome home, brother.”

“Home,” Alexios repeated in a whisper, staring at the shimmering blade.

Three weeks later comes the news. Basileus Petros Doukas is on his way west.


* * *


Petros comes west with a considerable host, over fifty five thousand men. Most are Romans, but through smooth talk and promises of gold and land grants he has managed to convince many of his Georgian prisoners to defect to him. The coup is helped considerably by the image in many Georgian minds of Rhomania as ‘the land of silk and gold’, so the soldiers welcome the opportunity to switch paymasters.

His primary weakness is the lack of a fleet so he cannot threaten Constantinople itself. However western Anatolia with its great workshops, forges, ports, plantations, and seven and a half million souls is a different story. Fortunately for Emperor Alexios VI and the Empress Dowager Venera, their sister/daughter has served them well. Alexeia’s pardoning and honoring of Giorgios Laskaris has ensured that House Laskaris supports them. Scattered all across Anatolia, they ensure that Petros cannot claim the peninsula as his own.

In Constantinople itself though the mood is much more ugly. A serious plague outbreak has begun in both the allied camp and the city, and almost immediately the populace blames the allied soldiery (the University of Constantinople inflames the situation by issuing a paper citing poor sanitary conditions in the non-Roman camps; the Serbs are the most conspicuous offenders according to the report). Beginning with the butchers, the people take their revenge by deliberately jacking up prices to all those who speak Greek with a non-Imperial accent.

Alexios wants Russian troops to help take the fight against Petros (the Vlachs are spent as a combat force), but the Russian commander Pyotr Romanov (ancestor of the famous playwright) is not inclined to cooperate. The Army of the North has lost over twenty thousand men, a third of its strength, since it left Ryazan in the spring, and technically their war was only with Nikephoros. An initial offer for aid in exchange for the Crimea is rejected without hesitation.

Convincing the Russians is not helped when on September 14 Alexios demands that thirteen Cossacks be handed over to Roman justice. They are all known to have raped Roman women whilst on the march south and Alexios is determined that they pay for their crimes. Pyotr, enraged over the fact that the cost of his provisions has increased over 50% in the last week, refuses point-blank. At which point the Emperor orders the Russians out of the Empire.

Although the altercation does win Alexios some support with the masses by demonstrating he is not a foreign lackey, it is fatal to the alliance. Venera manages to calm things down and arrange for the Russians to garrison Thrace until the spring, since marching home this late in the season could prove hazardous. But there is no chance for Russian aid against Petros.

It is one of the Empress Dowager’s last acts, as she is infected by the Black Death. Her last official act, on September 23, is to appoint Andronikos Diogenes as Kephale (provincial governor-less impressive and more common variant of Katepano) of Antiocheia Province. The next morning, attended by her children, she dies.

She is given a public funeral, alongside one for her husband Herakleios II, who is given a proper burial for his station. The Patriarch had made a proclamation that Herakleios had not committed suicide, only that his death unfortunately appeared that way, but he does not go so far as to accuse Nikephoros of the murder.

The Black Death is by no means content with only one empress. Before September is out, it claims the lives of Nikephoros’ wife and son. Both Baghdad and Hormuz, particularly the latter, are skeptical of the cause of death.

Finally on October 3, Emperor Alexios VI crosses into Asia, accompanied by Andreas of Egypt and Andreas Angelos. He leaves behind Stefanos Doukas, whose loyalty he doubts (partly from his relation to Petros, and because Venera had repeatedly reminded her son of Stefanos’ patronage of Leo during Herakleios’ reign), with what is left of the Epirote and Bulgarian tagmata to ‘support the Russians’. Due to the inroads of the plague and Alexios’ refusal to bring non-Roman troops, he is outnumbered by five thousand men. Two-fifths of his army were brought at a high price, as Andreas of Egypt refused to commit his tagmata before he was publicly proclaimed Katepano of Egypt in the White Palace.

Marching hard down the Sangarius River valley into Phyrgia, on October 10 Alexios’ army encamps near the town of Kotyaion. Meanwhile Alexios is out on personal reconnaissance, accompanied by droungarioi Giorgios Laskaris and Andreas Drakos (loaned by her sister). Whilst at full gallop, Alexios’ mount trips in a rabbit hole and throws him, who lands on his neck. He is dead before his guards reach him; his reign had lasted thirty four days.

Three days later the army of Petros Doukas surrenders to Andreas Angelos, for their sovereign too is dead. The night of October 11 he collapsed at a strategy meeting, complaining of intense stomach pains, and perishes during the night. His cause dies with him. Thus, rather anticlimactically and bloodlessly, the Orthodox War comes to an end, but nevertheless at a high price.


* * *


The White Palace, Constantinople, October 18, 1528:

It was dark, the only light that of two flickering candles. She could get more, she was the Empress now after all, but…I don’t care. Nothing mattered, not the ache in her knees from kneeling on the stone floor of the chapel, not the darkness, not the icon of the Madonna and Child in front of her. The only thing that mattered was this…

“Why?” she whispered.

The Madonna was silent. The church was silent. The world was silent. They had always been silent. Such a simple question, such a hard answer, easily asked, never answered. Never, ever answered.

“Why?” Still no answer, still no damn answer, the Madonna staring blankly at her.

She shot to her feet, hurling her prayer beads at the icon. “I AM THE EMPRESS OF THE ROMANS! ANSWER ME! WHY DID THEY HAVE TO DIE?! WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?! WHY?!” Still nothing, save the smell of freshly dug earth, and the touch of two rough, strong hands, gripping her shoulders gently, comfortingly.

She wheeled around. “WHY?!!!” she screamed, hitting the person as hard as she could. She didn’t know who it was, nor did she care. She just wanted to hurt someone, anyone. “WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!” she shrieked, beating the person with all her strength. “WHY DID YOU TAKE MY FATHER, AND MY MOTHER, AND MY HUSBAND, AND MY BROTHER?! WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!”

She collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably, the only thing keeping her up the arms of the person. “Why?” she moaned as she cried into the chest.

“Shhh, shhh,” the person said, stroking her hair gently, just like her mother had when she was little and afraid. Alexeia knew who the person was now. “It’s over, my child,” Fyodor of Yaitsk, one of the Monks-Beyond-the-Volga, said. “It’s over.”

“It’s never over,” she sniffled. “They all die, every one. Why did they have to die?”

“Do you really want to know the answer?”

She got up and stepped back, looking at the Russian, a stocky man with a badly trimmed beard. She snorted. “You churchmen are all alike. I want no more platitudes of how the ways of God are unfathomable to man. I want answers.”

“I am not a perfumed bishop. I do not have platitudes for you. But I do have answers, if you want them.”

“Tell me.”

“Who was the last Emperor to die peacefully in his bed?”

“Andreas Komnenos.”

“Why?” Before she could come up with an answer, he continued. “Because he did his duty. Look at the nations he threw down, the Neapolitans, the Venetians, the Papacy, the Mamelukes, heretics and infidels all. Nikephoros resumed using a title, but it is one that has always been assigned to the Emperors of Rhomania. Do you know of the title I speak?”

She nodded. “The Vicegerent of God on Earth.”

“Yes. And just as you have the right to punish, even to kill, one of your officials, for failing their duty, so does God have the same right. And that is what he has done. Your mother and father both questioned the will of God, your brother would have done the same. And note how Nikephoros fell down into dust once he married the Great Turk’s daughter.” He stepped forward. Alexeia wanted to flinch, to look away from the monk’s gaze, but she couldn’t. “Why did they die? It is because they failed to do their duty, and so brought down the wrath of God. And now, my Empress, you are the Vicegerent of God on Earth, and it is your task.”

“What task?” she asked.

“To be the Hammer of God unto the infidels and heretics.”


* * *


On October 19, Alexeia is crowned in Hagia Sophia, Alexeia, by the grace of God, Empress of the Romans, Vicegerent of God on Earth. But in private she always styles herself, Alexeia, by the wrath of God, Empress of the Romans.

1529: The Orthodox War is nothing less than a disaster for the Orthodox world. For starters, it spells the end of the First Orthodox Alliance. Although it will be resurrected in time as the Second Orthodox Alliance in the War of Wrath, it will be a noticeably different creature and its lack during the interim will be sorely felt by its would-be members.

Both Georgia and Vlachia are effectively crippled as military powers for at least the next decade, although both retain enough troop strength to mount a decent defense. Their weakness means that Alexeia is confident enough to repudiate the agreements made with their governments by her mother, to the immense but impotent outrage of Targoviste and Tbilisi, although she does hold open the possibility of renegotiating the terms in the future.

Russia however is another matter. The Army of the North took heavy casualties during its intervention, but the bulk of Russian might is undamaged, and there are at least ten thousand soldiers garrisoning the Crimea and the city of Tana. Alexeia signs over the stavropegic church lands and Tana as agreed, but Pyotr Romanov attempts to extort money out of the Empress before withdrawing troops from the Crimea.

In response, she personally presents the Russian ambassador with a note that unless the Russian troops are withdrawn from the Crimean peninsula by the Feast Day of the Seven Apostolic Men (May 15), it will be considered an act of war. The contents are announced publicly to the cheers of the populace. Russia withdraws before the deadline.

Nevertheless the Roman ability to wage such a war is questionable. Out of the one hundred fifty five thematic and guard tourmai (not counting the twenty neutrals) who participated in the Orthodox War, the War Office Report of April 1 lists thirty nine as unfit for active duty. The worst hit is the Bulgarian Fourth Tourma, which had a pre-war strength of 982, but now counts 77 in its rank.

The navy is in even worse shape. Only forty percent of the pre-war hulls in the Imperial Fleet are salvageable, and there have been high casualties in trained sailors and marines. Also there are heavy losses amongst the maritime peoples along the Black Sea after the fall of Burgas allowed the allied navies to concentrate their efforts on the Bithynian privateers. Thus one major source of replacements has been damaged.

At the same time Alexeia is replacing some of her officials. She is merciful; the Megas Doux Ioannes Laskaris is forced into retirement but otherwise unpunished. He is replaced by Andreas Angelos. A bigger issue is who will replace Megas Domestikos Demetrios of Kyzikos, who is demoted to commander of Theodosiopolis fortress. Militarily speaking, Stefanos Doukas is the clear choice but Alexeia does not trust him. For his services he is instead awarded a pay raise and some estates in Lycia.

Eventually Alexeia settles on Konstantinos Gabras, Nikephoros’ former Stratopedarchos (Quartermaster General). Although not known for any skills on the battlefield he has a keen organizational mind and his appointment is a gesture of conciliation to Nikephorean loyalists. His orders are to get the Roman army back into fighting condition as soon as possible, and he is authorized to convert civilians into thematic soldiers to fill in gaps.

This obviously runs into the matter of manpower. Both sides succeeded in supplying their forces in Roman territory, but the movement of armies plus the disruption of grain shipments, both internal and from Scythia and Egypt, has been very hard on the cities. An estimated 250,000 are dead because of starvation. Plus Alexios’ campaign in Asia spread the plague, but the damage was mercifully kept short by the onset of winter. ‘Only’ 150,000 are dead, half of them in Constantinople which loses fifteen percent of its population.

Money is an even more serious issue. Rebuilding the army and navy costs, and there is less revenue available. Disturbances of trade links, including the major trade fairs, has led to a major disruption of the economy. The trade fairs are depended upon by numerous businesses to stay solvent, and so have gone into bankruptcy. Besides the loss in tax revenue, it swells the ranks of the urban poor thereby placing a greater strain on the Empire’s ‘social services’. The network of hostels, orphanages, hospitals, work programs, and soup kitchens report a fifteen percent increase in expenditures whilst at the same time the Megas Sakellarios (Chief Finance Minister) reports a twelve percent loss in tax revenue.

Whilst not fatal, the shortfalls are extremely irritating. To cut expenses, Alexeia orders the halving of subsidies for the construction of a new observatory in Smyrna, and cancels those for university expansion programs in Thessaloniki, Nicaea, and Trebizond. Other projects which are cut significantly are the construction of the new eastern fortresses, the upgrades to the Hellespont fortifications, and even the Herakleian Walls which loses a third of its work crews.

The austerity measures are not limited to fortifications and universities. A plan to dredge the badly silted harbor of Piraeus, a scheme to revive the limp Attica economy, is shelved until further notice. Twelve galleys from the provincial squadrons are decommissioned, a quarter of their strength, at the same time as Milan lays down two galleons and eight galleasses in Genoa. Also a project to transfer five great dromons to the Red Sea is reduced to two instead.


galleass_zps350c0a69.png

The galleass, or Andrean dromon, was Megas Doux Andreas Angelos' solution to reviving the Imperial Navy. Although more expensive to construct than regular dromons, their maintenance costs were not much higher whilst their far greater firepower justified fewer hulls, a move which fit quite well in the crunch for money and trained sailors (note that given the nature of Mediterranean waters an entirely sailed fleet was not considered desirable).

The result would be a sixty-hull Imperial fleet, a forty percent reduction in ship strength over the pre-Orthodox war totals, but one with only a fifteen percent reduction in the number of gun barrels. Still its smaller size meant it would be much less capable of absorbing heavy casualties, and Andreas' modifications did nothing to address the lack of a trained pool of sailors from the merchant marine.


The last reduction is fiercely contested by Andreas Angelos in light of news from the east. During the war, an Ottoman fleet put out from Hormuz headed for India. The Omani spotted the flotilla and alerted the Romans and Ethiopians in Surat; the Omani dislike the Ottomans who have been diverting Gulf trade away from Muscat and have ill-disguised designs on the Emirate. Surat is thus well guarded by a formidable Roman-Ethiopian-Omani fleet.

But the Ottomans do not attack Surat as expected, attacking the more distant but wealthier city of Kozhikode, the other Roman possession in continental India. Taken completely by surprise, the city is sacked. The Turks plan to maintain the city as their own foothold in India, but reject a demand by the Zamorin of Cochin, the Vijayanagara vassal ruler in charge of the region, for tribute. He responds by placing the city under siege.

The Turks sally out to scatter the besiegers. Although the Western Ghats impede the arrival of the formidable Vijayanagara armored elephants, the Zamorin has amassed a considerable force of infantry and cavalry, backed by twelve guns (two of which despite prohibitions are of Roman origin). The Ottomans are roundly trounced and barely escape back into the city with their lives. Reports that the fleet at Surat is southward bound to trap them impel them to leave.

Despite the unceremonious eviction of the Turks, there is little cause for joy in Rhomania. The Zamorin occupies the city with his troops and is soon joined by Emperor Deva Raya II, who bluntly informs the Romans that since they cannot guard Kozhikode, he is taking it back. He will allow a Roman quarter such as they have in Alappuzha though, in exchange for the traditional fees.

Alexeia is much concerned about the Mediterranean Sea, so Andreas Angelos’ protests fall on deaf ears. It must be said though that he does not have a counter to the fact that a warship on the Mediterranean costs half that of one in the Red Sea or Indian Ocean (because of cheaper construction costs and no portage).

The Empress also raises taxes in addition to cutting costs. The ship, press, book, and cannon taxes are all raised between 10 to 30%. Plus the inheritance tax is increased by 20%, its activation level halved, and the changes retroactively dated to January 1528, netting a handsome though ghoulish profit for the government from all the deaths caused by the Orthodox War.

The most important tax hike for the future is the first of what are called the Nullification Acts. On May 20, Empress Alexeia signs an order increasing the taxes owed by all Muslims in the Empire by a factor of 175%, with the rates on Muslim madrasas and religious endowments raised 250%. The tax riots and the bloody suppression by thematic troops kill another sixty five hundred, with the property of the dead Muslims confiscated by the government and auctioned off to the highest bidder.


Ambassador_Hall_Dolmabahce_zps395cb7ca.jpg

The Ambassadorial Hall of the White Palace. It is believed that here is where Alexeia signed the First Nullification Act.


Alexeia’s reasons for choosing Imperial Muslims as the target of her wrath are multi-fold and largely personal. Having lost all of her immediate family, the one closest to her is Fyodor of Yaitsk. Living beyond the Volga, in a land where Orthodoxy and Islam battle for the souls of people only barely removed from the pagan ways of their forefathers, he has little inclination for toleration. But his own ire, shaped in an environment over which the Timurids loom the most ominously, is fixated mainly on Muslims.

The Empress knows that the Empire is in no shape for offensive action anytime soon, so her gaze turns to those infidels and heretics inside the Empire. The Muslims are the most numerous, the most resistant to Orthodox conversion, and they are concentrated in Andreas’ most stunning conquests. Given her general distaste for her overbearing (in her eyes) grandfather, the irony of completing something he ‘failed’ to do is appealing.

Also disturbances in the Muslim polis have the effect of weakening Alexandria. Protests from the Abbasid Caliph are ignored, even when they are accompanied by similar notes from Katepano Andreas. Alexeia does remember though to send a consoling note to the Katepano on the death of his father Demetrios on August 19. He was 68.

Whilst one can criticize Alexeia’s actions as intolerant and counterproductive, such views have the benefit of hindsight and also ignore the fact that Alexeia is in this case largely acting out the will of her people. The ‘Long Laskarid Empire’, the term attributed to the 1205-1517 Empire, was unusually tolerant by Roman standards. Historically Muslims were tolerated in vassal states but not in imperial territory proper, whilst tolerance of heresy was never a Roman virtue. The example of the Paulicians is one of the most extreme, but by no means unique example.

Long Laskarid tolerance was almost entirely the work of Manuel II (r. 1316-24) and Anna I (r. 1324-81). Manuel put them in place, and his daughter Anna maintained them throughout her long rule. By the time of her death the tolerance edicts were somewhat traditional, whilst the staunch followers of Orthodoxy could be appeased by the sizeable inroads of the faith amongst the Anatolian Turks.

The edicts remained, sustained by the fact that the religious minorities were by the late 1300s comparatively small and mostly converting. However Andreas’ conquests of massive Muslim territories and populations changed that. Note that the below does not apply to coastal Syria and northern interior Syria (centered around Aleppo), which was conquered in smaller bits prior to the reign of Andreas Niketas and has large Orthodox minorities, plus Antiocheia Province which is entirely Orthodox.

In Italy, Orthodoxy made substantial inroads due to Greek dominance of urban life, trade, and higher learning, thus Catholics were ironically by the early 1500s viewed better than Muslims (as Roman subjects, as foreign states it is the reverse, maintaining the fifteenth century paradigm). In 1529, there were 800,000 Orthodox Italians, but there were so few Christian Arabs that the word ‘Arab’ became a synonym of Muslim (many of the Arab conversions to Christianity in the period were to the Coptic Church, although even those were a small fraction of the Italian converts).

Thus increased pressure on the Muslims is supported by the bulk of the Roman populace. Always profoundly spiritual, they have viewed tolerance at best as a gift to be extended towards heretics and infidels to give them time to see the error of their ways. The ‘obstinacy’ of the Arabs in Andreas’ conquests has exhausted their patience though, which in this instance was never great as the long Mameluke collaboration with the Serene Republic is remembered.

For now the other religious minorities are left alone, for neither the Roman people nor Alexeia are keen to go after them. The Catholics understand the meaning of Roman tolerance, and so tolerating them is considered a good thing. The Copts, concentrated in Egypt, are largely a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The Armenians (in the religious, not ethnic sense), the majority of which dwell in Cilicia, are somewhat similar, but also have the virtue of being extremely prominent in Imperial society. It was originally to accommodate them that the concept of noble heresy was invented in the first place.

The Jews, although infidels like the Muslims and also very resistant to conversion, nonetheless are much better treated and viewed. In the pre-Islamic period they were horribly treated, but since then have prospered under Roman rule. Prominent amongst the silk and glassware industries of Hellas, Jews make up many of the leading citizenry of the Peloponnesus, Attica, and Thessaly.

They play an important economic role (but not one so guaranteed to antagonize as the Jewish moneylender stereotype of western Europe, for which Rhomania has no analogue) which directly and obviously benefit many Romans. That cannot be said of Muslim farmers or small artisans in Syria. When that is added to the fact that they are much less numerous than Muslims (at most they number 350,000 including the Calabrians, less than a tenth of Roman Muslims), it is not surprising they are given a comparative pass. Documentary evidence shows no sign that Alexeia even considered persecuting the Jews beyond the extra taxes they already paid, a ‘blind spot’ shared by Fyodor as the lack of Jews in the trans-Volga makes him not consider them a threat, unlike Muslims.

1530: As Rhomania simmers, France burns. King Basil of Arles had entered Marselha in late August last year after Arnaud d’Albert captured Henri Montmorency. Basil’s would-be sovereign is castrated, tonsured, and packed off to a monastery.

With the end of the Valois War, so called as it was precipitated by the extinction of the dynasty save for one feckless, obese scion everyone prefers ignoring, Basil turns with full fury upon the Plantaganets, just as Arthur is readying to resume his own offensive. Basil is briefly weakened as his Bernese allies depart to defend their homeland, but is soon more than compensated by the arrival of thirteen thousand German landsknechts.

They march via the Bernese League, which promptly provides sufficient supplies and is rewarded when the Lotharingians curb their attacks, fearful of provoking the wrath of the Holy Roman Empire. However that is somewhat marred by the second battle of Pontarlier, which is a Lotharingian victory (mainly secured by gunners from Utrecht and Frisia), with the League retiring in good order but abandoning six guns. By spring 1530, the carnage of France is juxtaposed by a de facto (although not de jure) peace along the Alps.

The fighting between Arthur and Basil begins with the reaping of the autumn harvest of 1529 and continues unabated, although slowed, all throughout winter. There are no major pitched battles, but countless raids, skirmishes and ambuscades all across the breadth of central France. Unfortunately for the peasantry, the fighting causes significant destruction of winter stocks, sometimes on purpose and sometimes accidentally. One heavy blow is the loss of seed corn.

In spring the fighting intensifies, both sides dancing around each other, constantly jabbing at the foe. With Basil and Arnaud on one side, and Arthur and the great Conde on the other, neither is able to land a hammer blow. It is death by a thousand cuts. While opaque to laymen, the campaign of 1530 is intensely studied by military tacticians as an exemplar of rapid marches with dispersed but coordinated forces.

The high quality of the maneuvers is made possible by the Plantagenet Tour and the Arletian Lance, which produce semi-professional soldiery of comparable quality, although slightly inferior, to the Roman thematic tagmata. That said, Roman forces would still have significant advantages in a fully professional and meritocratic officer corps, a much better logistical train and medical support, and significantly superior numbers of high-quality soldiers.

As a brief aside, a qualifier must be made to the concept of the meritocratic Roman officer corps. There is a significant economic barrier to joining the School of War, whose entrance exams require a high (and expensive) degree of learning, to at least the introductory university level. Thus it is effectively limited to the upper and the bulk of the middle class. At best, the son of a prosperous urban blacksmith might make it. However once ‘in the system’, it is a meritocracy.

The warfare in France is brutal, with many perishing from exhaustion and disease aside from the usual combat losses. David Komnenos distinguishes himself in one ambush where with sixty soldiers he routs a French force that outnumbers him over six to one; however he is equally respected for his fair and humane treatment of his prisoners, including giving his wine ration to the captured French commander. When asked why, he replies with his father’s words about how mercy and savagery are the two sides of the same blade, that of war.

But the tempo cannot be maintained. Both Arles and France-England are utterly exhausted, and the lack of seed corn caused by the winter destruction means the 1530 harvest across central France is virtually nonexistent. It is said that ravens congregate from as far as Poland to feast on the corpses of the peasantry of Poitou and Berry. Faced with the disintegration of their armies from hunger, disease, and exhaustion, both Basil and Arthur sue for peace.

The conference is to be held in Saluzzo, recognized by both sides as neutral territory. Neither is willing to hold it on their rival’s territory, whilst a location in the Bernese League or Lotharingia is considered too partisan. To secure Arthur’s safety during transit, Basil’s new and pregnant thirteen-year-old wife Emma, daughter of the Bishop of Sion, is transferred to Plantagenet custody for the duration. Also Kaiser Manfred, looking for chance to cheaply expand his prestige, guarantees the safety of Emma and Arthur.

The Treaty of Saluzzo ending the Thirty Years War is based on the situation on the ground. France is divided in half, Basil keeping the south and Arthur the north, with Arletian La Rochelle marking the border. However Arthur does get a preferential treatment for the shipping of Gascon wine to England (helped in large part by the Gascons themselves who sorely miss the English market), and both sides drop all claims to each other’s territory. The Lotharingian-Bernese war peters out shortly afterwards, the treaty also signed at Saluzzo with Manfred, as Saluzzo’s feudal sovereign, guaranteeing safe passage for the delegates.

The war caused at least five million deaths, a tenth of the Irish and English, and almost a quarter of the French. In 1500, the French population (of the geographical region, not the Plantagenet kingdom) numbered sixteen million. In 1530, it is 12.5 million (900,000 less than the estimated 1525 total), just slightly above that of Greece and Anatolia combined, and its lead is only due to the losses from the Orthodox War.


2c8585d5-ac62-49df-b839-331f457ba2a3_zps0f6f2987.png

Map Legend:

1) Bernese League 2) Saluzzo 3) Nice 4) Savoy-Arletian vassal

The war leaves Arles with a population of circa 5 million, with the Plantagenet Empire at about 9.5 million (6 million French), making it demographically the weakest of the great powers after Rhomania, the Holy Roman Empire, and Russia in that order.


1531: One of the first things Arthur does after peace is to increase ties with Rhomania. It is well known that a serious deficit in organization at the beginning of the war led to the early Arletian superiority. But another major factor was the much greater access Arles had to Roman capital, allowing it to finance and equip large numbers of conscripts and mercenaries. Admittedly at the end of the war, this is a large disadvantage as King Basil owes 1.2 million hyperpyra to Venetian creditors alone.

Still Arthur wants access to that money market, both for himself and to deny it to the Arletians. With Roman approval, he establishes the first full-time Plantagenet ambassador in Constantinople, plus consuls in Antioch and Alexandria. Also in both cities Plantagenet merchants gain a very small quarter, but both have their own bakery and well. The merchants are required to maintain their zones on their own currency, submit all legal disputes with Romans to a Roman court, and defend them in the event of a foreign (Ottoman) attack. Despite these obligations, the profits lure many merchants to the area, and the arrangements result in kaffos arriving in England the next year.


cardinal-richelieu-3-sized_zps3d51c7b2.jpg

Armand Jean du Plessis. One of the émigré French nobility, he had faithfully served King Arthur as commander of His Majesty's Second Tour of Colchester Foot. Appointed the first Plantagenet Consul in Antioch, his journal is one of the most valued historical sources of the events that would transpire there.


At the same time, Arthur begins establishing the Tour system in France, although for the moment withholding it from Ireland. His decrees from his court, which deliberately rotates throughout his realm, are issued in French, English, and Gaelic. Arthur can personally read, write, and speak the first two fluently, and is moderately proficient at speaking the last, albeit with an atrocious accent. To try and overcome regionalism, King Arthur relies heavily on the Tours, typically assigning French officers to English tours and the reverse in France.

In August, Ivan Stroganov arrives in London. Thirty one years old, he has run afoul of the Megas Rigas who believes that he is selling Russian state secrets, specifically the output of iron and copper mines, to the Georgians and the Poles. Since the Russian acquisition of Tana, tensions between Russia and Georgia have been rising over disputes regarding the Don-Volga trade route, since Rhomania is no longer present as an arbiter.

Despite Novgorod’s serious annoyance over Arthur’s granting of asylum to Ivan, it does mark the beginning of Anglo-Russian trade via Archangelsk. Both are interested in cutting out the Scandinavian middleman, with Russia providing timbers, amber, and furs in exchange for Plantagenet wines (many of which are Gascon re-exports), grain, and fish.

In Carthage, the first official grammar of the Carthaginian language is published. A mixed Ligurian-Berber hybrid, with a few Greek loan words, it is incomprehensible to outsiders. It is to solve that problem, as well as to codify the language, that the grammar is created. Copies are dispatched to Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Syracuse, Messina, Bari, Venetia, and Valencia in that order with all haste, their distribution an useful map of Carthaginian activities and priorities.

Carthage is not the only busy port. Already Roman-Russian trade has resumed its pre-war level, with sugar and grain ships crisscrossing the Black Sea. Whilst amongst Roman and Russian statesmen and soldiers there is much rancor over recent events, to their mercantile counterparts peace means the restoration of normalcy, and a status that, if they have anything to say about it, will never again be interrupted.

In the Queen of Cities, Empress Alexeia regularly dines with Andreas and Isaakios Angelos, as she is desirous of her uncle’s support for her government. This helps give Andreas more power then would technically be available to him as Megas Doux. It is he who chooses the first Bishops of Surat and Colombo.

Despite concerns after the loss of Kozhikode, Vijayanagar has made no moves on Roman Surat. Deva Raya II rules over the largest South Indian empire in history, but it is a decentralized structure. Kozhikode in the south is near his power base, but Surat in the north is surrounded by the quasi-independent vassal states of the Deccan and southern Gujarat. Still the tin of Pahang is put to good use, helping to make sixteen bronze cannons which guard the walls of the city.

Due to the very limited number of Roman women in India, most of the Roman men have taken Indian brides. Provided that they learn Greek, the mixed offspring are viewed as Roman, and are beginning to make up a small but noticeable part of the population. At the same time there is no persecution of Hindus save for the abolition of sati in no uncertain terms, which given its infrequency is not a major issue. Andreas’ selection is to continue the current state of affairs.

Still there is proselytizing in India, with some of the more creative clerics trying to draw connections between the avatars of Vishnu and the nature of Jesus Christ, God on Earth. Meanwhile in Taprobane connections are being drawn between Christian and Buddhist monastic traditions as a way to bridge the two faiths.

Overall, the focus of these efforts is to ensure public order, and it is recognized that this can only be done with the support of the locals. Even with superior artillery, the extremely limited number of Romans (at this point estimated to be about ten thousand, at least half in Taprobane, across the entire east) means that trying to keep down the locals by force is guaranteed to fail badly. The Romans are there to make money, and the best way to do that is to not have to pay for police work. Also in the interest of effective communication to ensure steady trade and the quick and agreeable solutions to problems, there is a significant focus on the dissemination of the Greek language.

To that end, printing presses are set up in Surat and Colombo at the same time as the bishoprics. They produce Greek manuscripts, chiefly bibles, but the flow is not entirely one-sided. Indian literature begins to appear in Roman bookstores, the most successful by far the Kama Sutra. To serious clerical disgust, the very thorough sex manual is highly popular amongst the dynatoi (within five years an Italian translation will appear in Milan), especially the edition that appears with Roman copies of the illustrations.

The book affair marks the first serious confrontation between Fyodor and Andreas. The Russian monk is disgusted by the trend, and demands that all copies be burned and all shippers and printers heavily fined. Andreas argues that not only would that cost money and destroy tax revenue, it would also ruin a very effective method of boosting the Empire’s population.

On September 8, a sudden storm off Lesbos smashes to pieces nine warships of the Imperial Fleet, with the loss of over fourteen hundred sailors and sixty two guns. Fyodor argues that it is the wrath of God striking against Andreas’ sailors. An utterly enraged Andreas points out that if God had a problem with him, he should have struck the Megas Doux down, not his innocent subordinates.

The argument cinches Alexeia’s decision, on the side of Andreas Angelos. Her justification turns Fyodor’s own argument against him. ‘God has the right and duty to punish his lieutenants. But just as I would not punish the assistant for the crimes of his superior, neither would God punish the sailors of the Megas Doux if it were the Megas Doux at fault’.

At the same time though she also signs into law the Second Nullification Act. Muslims are barred from making loans to Christians, and on any extant loans the interest due is halved. Intended as a salve for the increase in the ship tax, since many of the loans were to Roman shipowners, it also helps distance the Copts from the Arabs, since the act benefits the former as well. When the letter of protest arrives from the Abbasid Caliph, an accompanying document from the Katepano of Egypt is conspicuously absent.

1532: The armaments of Surat are mainly aimed at Vijayanagar, but not entirely, as the past few years have seen a significant power shift in the region. In the fall of 1530, a two hundred year old dream was realized when the Bihari captured Delhi, decapitating the old Sultanate which had once bestrode India like a colossus.

At the same time, Ottoman forces overran Khorasan. The Timurid-Khorasani alliance was by this point a dead letter, due to mutual suspicions between the dynastic branches and Timurid troubles with Uyghur tribes in Urumqi. Supplied by the fleet returned from India, the operation goes well save for the blatant rivalry and contempt between Crown Prince Bayezid and Konstantinos Komnenos.

Bayezid had opposed the whole affair from the start, preferring an action to the west or a return to India, arguing that any eastern land operation would benefit Konstantinos. Sultan Suleiman though is content to leave most military matters in the east to his good friend, allowing him to preside over a reign of significant magnificence and prosperity for the Ottoman people.

Besides sponsoring a new codification of the law to make it more up-to-date and consistent, Suleiman is mostly known for his architectural projects. The chief one is the Topkapi Palace of Baghdad, but equal care is given to the over five hundred mosques and madrasas established all throughout E-raq and E-ran. At the same time he oversees a major improvement in the Mesopotamian irrigation network, restoring the region to a level of prosperity unseen since before the Mongols. He is rewarded by an impressive demographic boom, and it is estimated that the Ottoman Empire has by this point at least twelve million inhabitants, although only a quarter dwell in E-raq (It must be noted though that demographic estimates for this time period hold a high margin of error, due to significant future destruction of relevant documents).


topkapi_palace_istanbul-1_zpsfdac401b.jpg

Part of the Topkapi Palace of Baghdad.


When it becomes clear that he cannot stop the attack on Khorasan, Bayezid instead jumps in, trying to run the whole thing and claim all of the credit, much to Konstantinos’ annoyance. After the fall of Ghayen, Bayezid’s janissaries and Konstantinos’ Persian urban azabs nearly come to blows, and the crisis is only defused when Suleiman personally arrives at their camp.

The Sultan’s solution is to exploit the confusion in north India. The Bihari may have sacked Delhi, but they lack the ability to secure it or the remains of the Sultanate. An offensive there could reap great rewards, and has an appeal for both Konstantinos and Bayezid. Konstantinos can expand his influence in populous and wealthy provinces, whilst the pious Bayezid can defend the faithful against the infidel Hindus, position the empire for a strike against Roman Surat, and gain valuable demographic resources with which to challenge Rhomania. That the Ottomans have managed to vex the Romans despite a severe numerical disparity is due to superb organization and training, but obviously it has been by no means enough to effectively challenge them.

It takes time to prepare for the operations, but when the blow falls it still comes as a complete shock to the Bihari, who have not even contemplated Ottoman intervention. The Kashmiri stay out of the way of the combatants, but make it clear that any violation of their territory by either side will be sorely punished.

In 1532, an army under the command of Konstantinos and his son Osman debouch from the Khyber Pass, whilst another under Bayezid pours out from the Bolan Pass. To the latter’s annoyance, the only significant opposition is at Peshawar and is easily swept aside by Konstantinos. For the most part, the region goes over to the Ottomans without putting up a serious struggle. Less than three months later the Punjab is under Turkish control, centered on Multan, the planned provincial capital, and supply ships are headed up the Indus under the instruction of local pilots.

At this point Konstantinos is content to stop, arguing that the Sutlej river makes for a good border, but Bayezid is anxious to come to grip with the infidel and crosses the river. Konstantinos follows shortly afterward since if there is glory to be won, he is not inclined to let Bayezid have all of it, and if there is any disgrace he can blame the Osmanli prince for it.

The Bihari response has been building for some time, but the crossing of the Sutlej removes the budding Bihari plan to arrange peace based on that river as the border (since the Bihari couldn’t hold it even without Ottoman intervention). Instead an utterly immense host, drawn from the vast peoples of the Gangetic plain, is assembled. Estimates of its size vary from 50,000 to four million, but all agree that the Turks are heavily outnumbered.

Yet the Bihari could have chosen a less auspicious battlefield. The battle is joined at Tarain, within cannon shot of the site where Mohammed of Ghor annihilated the Chahamana army in 1192. Despite the disparity, the fight initially goes well for the Turks, the armored sipahi and Persian lancers sweeping the Bihari cavalry from the field and exposing their infantry’s flanks.

But then the one hundred and twenty war elephants roll forward, the howdah gunners (many of them ironically Muslim mercenaries from Khorasan) pouring shot into the Turkish infantry. The shrieking Turkish horses, petrified by these massive, unfamiliar beasts, are completely useless as the pachyderm avalanche slams into the weak point of the Ottoman army, the chink between Konstantinos’ and Bayezid’s forces.

Units immediately begin routing. The quality of Ottoman azabs varies proportionally to the size of their originating population center, as larger settlements get more tax money for equipment and their drill is more thoroughly enforced. Unfortunately for the Turks, several of the lower quality azabs were stationed there, and their flight rips open a huge breach in the Ottoman lines. The Bihari cavalry, heartened by the sight, return to the attack against a now disorganized and distraught Ottoman horse, whilst the Bihari infantry pour into the gap.

The disaster is averted by Osman Komnenos, who manages somehow to get three batteries into position and pours a hail of fire into the elephants’ ranks. They go berserk, many crashing backward to trample the Bihari infantry, who are immediately thrown into disarray. One pack though tears into Bayezid’s force, until they are brought down by the prince’s janissaries. Meanwhile Konstantinos reorganizes the Ottoman cavalry, returns to the attack, and sweeps the enemy counterparts from the field. The isolated and unsupported Bihari foot soldiers are then chopped to bits.

It is a very bloody but total victory for the Turks. But it is by no means decisive. Bayezid immediately claims credit for defeating the elephants due to his janissaries’ role in bringing them down, much to Osman’s disgust and rage. Fuming, they continue with Bayezid to the Jamuna river where they receive alarming news. The Bihari, equipped with vast reserves of manpower, are assembling another host whilst there are rumors that Deva Raya II is marshalling ten thousand elephants to march against them. There is also the decidedly-not-rumor of an Ethiopian-Omani fleet (accompanied by three Roman warships) that has blasted its way into the Indus, and is therefore poised to cut the Turkish supply lines.

Faced by such an array, Bayezid and Konstantinos withdraw to behind the Sutlej, neither the Bihari or the fleet on the Indus contesting the move. There is no formal peace between Bihar and the Ottomans, just as there was no formal war, but the Ottoman border has been decisively moved forward to the Indus-Sutlej line.

1533: Ethiopia had challenged Ottoman dominion in north India, but that is by no means its only concern. With hired Portuguese navigators, Ethiopian vessels have successfully rounded the Cape of Storms two years earlier, and now they establish contact with the Kingdom of Kongo. Wealthy, powerful, and pagan, the Kongolese are immediately intrigued by the Ethiopians and trade relations are soon set up.

The Kongolese want Ethiopian manufactured goods and armaments. Thus far they have been dependent on the Portuguese, and welcome the opportunity to play the two off each other to bring prices down. Quickly though the Ethiopians gain preference, as their fewer ships and numbers make them less overbearing than the Portuguese (who by this point have reached Zanzibar, where a role-reversal of the Ethiopians and Portuguese is starting to play amongst the cities of the Swahili coast).

The Kongolese provide slaves, highly valued by the Ethiopians. Slavery is extremely common in Ethiopia and the moneyed classes growing rich off trade with the east and Rhomania are clamoring for slaves of their own. Local sources though have to compete with demands from the Roman sugar plantations, so alternative sources are highly valued. Kongolese slave exports to Ethiopia will overtake those to Portugal before the decade is out.

In Constantinople, Alexeia signs the Third Nullification Act. There had been a ruling on the books that no mosque could be taller than the tallest church in the settlement, which had caused a great many problems throughout Syria and Egypt, where great mosques service the huge Muslim populace, whilst small neighborhood churches were all that were necessary to service the Christians.

To get around that, some creative methods had been used. One common solution was sticking a large pole on top of the church and declaring the top of the pole to be the height of the building. The most common though was to flatly lie about the heights, a tactic used by both Christians and Muslims in the interests of civic harmony, the most egregious example the Great Mosque of Damascus, reported to be only a third of its actual height. Local Roman officials, concerned more with maintaining proper tax revenue and public order than enforcing every little statue, ignored these subterfuges.

The Third Act explicitly abolishes such loopholes, and orders now that mosques cannot be more than half as tall as the tallest church. Those mosques that exceed the requirement are to be confiscated and converted into churches. When the Scholai take over the Great Mosque of Damascus accompanied by the Bishop of Iconium to convert it into a Basilica of St. John the Baptist (the mosque had been built on the site of such a basilica), the ensuing riot takes four days and two thousand lives to put down.

Similar riots across Syria and Egypt claim at least another fifteen thousand. In Egypt, many of the riots turn ugly with attacks on the Copts. The incentive is partly religious, but also economical. Copts have monopolized the administration, the University of Alexandria, all but the most local trade, printing, now money-lending after the Second Act, and are using their capital to gradually take over the construction and artisanal industries. The use of Coptic thematic and militia troops to put down the riots only serve to widen the growing rift. As an example, the Caliph and Katepano regularly have dinner once a week, but after the Cairo riots which killed fifteen hundred, the Caliph refuses to see Andreas of Egypt for five months.

Historians debate about the motives of the Third Act, whether it was solely an act of religious persecution designed to limit Muslim worship, or also an attempt to weed out a potential Ottoman fifth column. The Turkish incursion into India has alarmed Constantinople, and at the same time as Alexeia signs the act, the first full-time Roman ambassador takes up his office in Samarkand.

The dispatch also causes another row between Fyodor, who opposes the move, and Andreas who supports it. Whilst the fray over the Kama Sutra had been largely between the two men personally, in this instance Andreas is backed by the totality of the Office of Barbarians. All precedent argues for the move, and Andreas skillfully uses case history from the reign of Demetrios Megas, chiefly trade envoys to the Marinids, to get his way.

At the same time, Theodoros hires a young musician, Andronikos of Chalkis. Two of his rhinos are sick, and he wants the musician to play for the animals to soothe their nerves. An excellent singer as well as musician, he soon catches the attention and favor of Empress Alexeia. He is regularly ‘borrowed’ from Theodoros to play for her over dinner, and he is even granted on a couple of occasions as a reward for excellent performance the honor of eating from the empress’ plate.

Also concurrent with these events is a sign that religion is not necessarily a barrier to empathy. On October 4 the city of Smyrna dispatches 50,000 hyperpyra to ‘our brothers and sisters in pain and sorrow, the Spanish’.

1534: The money arrives in an utterly enraged peninsula, for the greatest of its cities, mighty Barcelona, with 60,000 souls, is no more. Last year there had been another Aragonese attack on Oran, but again was wrecked by storms and dysentery. Taking advantage of the casualties, the corsairs of Oran sailed forth to sack the now undefended great port of Catalonia.

In volume of trade Barcelona was the fourth greatest port in the Mediterranean, after Constantinople, Alexandria, and Venetia. It would have been better for it if it had been a dirty hovel, or otherwise it would not have been subjected to a savage sixteen-day holocaust. Incited by greed and convinced that the locals are hiding more, the unfortunate people of Barcelona are tortured, raped, and massacred in prodigious quantities, the piles of corpses sometimes higher than the buildings.

Greed is the explanation for the atrocities, not faith. Learned ulema from the Roman, Ottoman, and Timurid Empires all condemn the brutality, even those inflicted on Christians and Jews. But it is not only Christians and Jews that suffer. All of the Iberian states, including Al-Andalus, have thriving trading quarters in Barcelona, the Castilian is the smallest with a population of 1800.

The Sunnis of North Africa for the most part follow a variant of Islam called Hayyatism after its founder, Mohammed Hayyat al-Sindhi, which has grown quite popular over the last fifty years. A very strict brand of the faith, it focuses entirely on the Koran and Hadith and rejects all other innovations in the Muslim faith, regarding them as the cause of the misfortunes of the Dar al-Islam and has an extremely dim view both on infidels (thus helping to fuel and justify the jihad fil-bahr) and heretics.

The Andalusi are most definitely viewed as heretics. Islam in Al-Andalus is heavily involved with Sufism, which is made even worse in Hayyatist eyes by the influence exerted by Orthodox hesychasm, the Jewish Kabbalah (extremely popular amongst the Calabrian Jews), and the Catholic ecstasy movement of Castile. Thus the Andalusi suffer in equal measure the fate visited on all the other peoples of Iberia residing in Barcelona.

The rape of Barcelona is the impetus of King Pedro II of Castile to arrange a meeting at Toledo to coordinate a response to the corsair threat. All of the Iberian monarchs are invited, including the Malik of Al-Andalus Mohammed II, and all come.


KingPedro_zps00f11df2.jpg

Painting of King Pedro II of Castile, from the Cathedral of Santander


The Kingdom of Castile is clearly the major military power on the peninsula. Good management of agriculture and husbandry gives Pedro 4.3 million subjects, the equal of Al-Andalus (2.3 million), Aragon (900,000), and Portugal (900,000) combined. The growth in population is accompanied also by a rise in the standard of living and the health of the Castilian economy.

Difficulties in getting wool to the Dutch markets during the Thirty Years War has helped prompt the beginnings of a cottage textile market. Although still small and dependent on heavy tariffs for its survival, it is growing, with Castile acting as a secure market due to the tariffs and it is making expansions into Aragon and Portugal. Although the youth of the industry make Castilian textiles more expensive than they have to be, the much smaller shipping costs and cheaper material mean that they perform quite well against their most serious competitor, Roman silks.

With the help of German and Hungarian experts, copper and iron mines in Castile have been opened and expanded, removing a major cause for the outflow of bullion in trade. Meanwhile the skill sets necessary to maintain the fearsome Castilian artillery, which though smaller than the Plantagenet or Roman trains matches them in quality of armament and ability, have expanded into the civilian economy to good benefit.

With skilled carpenters and metalworkers, Castilian workshops are producing a growing number of furniture, utensils, and tools. Although decidedly unglamorous, it is a decent money maker and ensures that bullion does not leave the country to pay for these essential products. For the most part the trade is internal to Castile, but like the textiles it is starting to branch out in Portugal and Aragon. Al-Andalus, which despite its independence is solidly in the Roman economic sphere, is much more resistant.

Still Castile operates under serious economic handicaps, namely few resources and in particular good farmland. These improvements represent the most Castile can make out of its low-grade position, but while it cannot be said the Kingdom is poor, neither can it be said that it is rich. But even that has, with the advantage of hindsight, turned to Castile’s advantage.

For the past fifteen years, Castile has also been exporting adventurous young men along with woolen textiles and iron tools, mostly to Portugal. The result is that the expeditions to the east are by this point more properly described as Castilian-Portuguese. The Portuguese provide the ships, expertise, and capital, whilst the Castilians foot the manpower and furnishings.

Castile has, despite its position, suffered from corsair raids. In 1531 an abortive attack was made on Santander, which failed but started fires which burned a third of the town down. Thus Pedro is inspired both by revenge but also by images of him leading an Iberian league against the accursed African foe.

The Andalusi, Aragonese, and Portuguese are well aware of Pedro’s ambitions. But for Aragon and Al-Andalus, they are equally and painfully aware that they need Castilian strength to effectively battle the corsairs. Portugal potentially could go it alone, but at the costs of abandoning its far-flung expeditions. The news from Ethiopian ships regarding the situation in India, plus the size and armament of said vessels, is disconcerting in Lisbon. Also the western expeditions are bearing fruit as well.

The meeting barely begins when word arrives that two Carthaginian ships have put into what’s left of Barcelona. Their cargo are two hundred captives rescued from the corsairs off Sardinia, women and children taken as slaves during the attack on the Catalan port. Purely by accident, although viewed by the Iberians as a message from God, the returned captives come from all the Iberian kingdoms.

The meeting at Toledo lasts six weeks, arguably the most important six weeks in the history of the peninsula after the initial landing of the Arabs. Envoys are sent all across the Mediterranean, announcing the formation of the ‘Grand Alliance of All Spain’. The use of the term ‘Spain’ is a deliberate harkening back to the ancient Visigothic Kingdom. Such might be expected to alienate the Andalusi, but the narrative is framed not as a ‘Christian vs. Islam’ conflict, but as a ‘Europe vs. Africa’, expressly to accommodate the Andalusi. The best inspiration for such a narrative is supposedly the last time the peninsula stood united against foreign rule, the age of the Visigoths.

Yet while the monarchs look to the past, it is clear that something new has been born. Avignon declares the struggle a crusade, and across the land church bells toll calling the faithful to arms. In the south the muezzins sound, summoning the soldiers of Islam to the jihad. It is a scene the peninsula has seen many times, but never before have the calls been made side by side, not against each other, but together.

The finishing remarks of the Alliance charter make the Iberian position clear.

It is time that Africa answer for her crimes against the Spanish peoples. For a thousand years she has wantonly raped, pillaged, and murdered all in her path, sparing no distinction for age or sex or creed. Her cruelties cannot be counted, and her savagery is not bound by any laws of God or man.

But no more. The line has been drawn, and it shall not be crossed. With justice at our side and righteous anger in our hearts, we, the Kings and Peoples of Spain, do declare that Africa shall never, ever be a threat to us again.

The report by the Roman ambassador in Cordoba is prescient. “For all its drama and rhetoric, I do not think it will last,” he says. “But so long as it does, Africa will bleed.”

1535: For the moment, there is no great Spanish onslaught on the North African coast. But preparations are underway for an utterly immense ‘Spanish Armada’, and the first hurdle of the allies is quickly passed. There is no doubt as to the first target: Oran. As supplies and men are gathered, Castilian and Portuguese galleons join the Aragonese and Andalusi galleys in the Mediterranean. The Castilian warships are quickly feared, some of the Africans believing that the Castilians must use sorcery; it is the only reason they could fire their guns so rapidly and accurately.

Two important events for the Ethiopian Empire take place this year. First the Alexandria-Gonder highway, on which construction had begun shortly after the fall of the Mamelukes, is finally complete. Overall it does little to boost trade between Egypt and Ethiopia, which is mostly conducted by sea. But it is a clear example of the growing Ethiopian infrastructure in Nubia, and the highway is the main artery for maintaining Ethiopian control in the region.

Second, the first printing press is set up in Gonder. Although run by Greeks, with Ethiopians acting as manual labor, it is an important step in developing an Ethiopian literary class. At most, only 3% of the Ethiopian population can read or write (the press is set up primarily to cater to Romans in Ethiopia), a significant handicap in creating a centralized bureaucracy on the Roman model. Even Brihan, officially declared a saint the previous year, could not so much as sign her name.

The Ottoman expansion in India soon starts to impact the subcontinent, but not always in expected ways. The handful of border skirmishes between Ottoman and Kashmiri forces is not unusual, as Ottoman control of the Punjab runs contrary to Kashmiri ambitions. With Konstantinos beginning to finally feel his age (he is 76) and retiring to his luxurious palace in Mazandaran, Bayezid has control of the region. Already he is establishing effective alliances with the local tribes, the most important of which is with Sher Khan of the Sur clan with his nine thousand formidable light cavalry.

What is unexpected is the trade items that make their way down the temperamental Indus. The melons of Kabul prove to be a large success amongst the Romans of Surat, whose biggest complaints regarding India are the heat, the poor baths, and the lack of fruit.

The melons stay in south Asia, but ma’joun does not. A cannabis candy, it arrives in Surat in the spring and is in Constantinople by the end of the year. Although it will take time for the trade to grow, it will be a common sight in kaffos houses by the end of the century. The effect of this on Roman intellectual thought is a subject of great debate.

One of its first uses is one of the most famous. In a service at St. Irene, Giorgios Laskaris arranges for the incense smoke to be replaced by cannabis. The result is, in the words of Andreas Angelos ‘a sight that shall vex me for the rest of my life; I wish I’d thought of it first.”


theon_greyjoy_zps7b5bbb99.jpg

Giorgios Laskaris, still Constantinople's most eligible bachelor, has not had his sense of mischief dented by his rank or station. Although much of the time, including at St. Irene, he is helped in his plans by Andreas Drakos. Both are censured for the deed by the Empress personally, but her chastisement is accompanied by an immense fit of giggling. Andreas Drakos remarks that it was the happiest he had ever seen the Empress.

Image taken from The Komnenoi, Ep. 188 "Towards the Brink"


Unfortunately ma’joun is not the only thing to arrive in Constantinople late that year. On December 9 a fire begins in Constantinople, started by Muslim fanatics, which soon rages out of control. Sweeping through the large urban slums that have grown up in the last century, it kills over a hundred thousand people. It is far more devastating than the last natural disaster, the earthquake of 1509, which has absolutely no historical significance. Constantinople’s population of 491,000 in 1525 is now 322,000.

Prince Theodoros, visiting the grave of his parents, is heavily injured by a panicked crowd just outside the mausoleum. The only reason he is not killed is the elephant, rhinoceros, and bear tear into the crowd, leaving sixteen dead.


* * *


The White Palace, Constantinople, January 5, 1536:

Alexeia took a sip of the hot kaffos. The warmth felt good. It had been cold ever since the great fire, and today had been the first day when she couldn’t smell the soot in the air. She flipped the page, reading…A state that cannot tax its rich is weak. A state that will not tax its rich is stupid. There was a knock. “Enter.”

The door to her chamber opened and Andreas Drakos stuck his head in. “Empress, Prince Theodoros is here to see you as requested.”

“Send him in,” she ordered. As the droungarios left, she closed the book. It was a partial compilation of the notes of Theodoros IV, assembled by her father; he died before he finished.

A moment later the door opened again and Prince Theodoros, eldest living son of Andreas Niketas, hobbled into the room on a wooden cane. He looked…old. Which would seem rather obvious, since he was just a few months shy of his 69th birthday, but somehow Theodoros had always seemed younger than he really was. Perhaps the lack of any chittering entourage? It was the only time Alexeia had seen him without any animals, not even a blackbird perched on his shoulder whispering in his ear. Which is an ominous image when you think about his mother…

He bowed, and Alexeia nodded in the direction of a cushioned chair set up for him. He fell into it with a grunt of relief and pain. They were alone in the room; Giorgios Laskaris and Andreas Drakos were just outside. Her uncle had requested it that way. That had almost made her reject the idea immediately, but…Curiosity; I want to know what this is about. He’s never done anything like this to my knowledge.

“Would you like some kaffos, Uncle?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” Theodoros coughed. The cloth he coughed into now had specks of blood on it.

Alexeia pushed off the blanket, slinging it over the armrest, as she got up and walked to the fire crackling in the fireplace. There was an iron plate placed over it, on which she kept her pot of kaffos to keep it hot. Picking up a pair of tongs to hold the container, she poured herself another cup. She could’ve had servants do that for her, but she didn’t much see the point of that. Her great-grandfather wouldn’t have approved for certain; he hated paying for superfluous servants.

She turned to Theodoros, starting to take a sip…and almost dropped the cup. A few hot drops sloshed out, landing on her hand. Ignoring them, she nonchalantly walked back to her chair, set the cup down on her nightstand, and wiped off the droplets. Sitting down, she pulled the blanket over herself as if nothing were amiss, took a drink, and said, “Prince Theodoros Komnenos, a pleasure to meet you. The real you, that is.”

Theodoros smiled briefly. The dull, vacant look he had shown the world for over sixty years was gone. No longer did a cow stare out from those gray eyes; now it was a wise, old cat. “You are a smart one,” he said. “Nikephoros had an inkling, every now and then, but no more than that.”

“Well, you did seem to slip up every now and then, but I’d bet that was deliberate.”

“A little reward for your intelligence, Empress. People here are idiots. I have the reputation for being a fool, so people think I’m a fool. I can barge in, order troops and officials around like I’m Andreas Niketas reborn, and people still think I’m a fool. Morons.”

“So why the act? Your claim to the throne is stronger than mine. Stronger than my father’s, for that matter.”

“I was under orders.”

“Whose?”

“My mother’s.”

Alexeia blinked, and frowned in puzzlement. “She arranged this. Why?”

Theodoros smiled again, the unsettling grin of a lion. “She wanted her line on the throne. When I was young, the duo of Demetrios and Zeno seemed unassailable. So instead of raising up a normal son, she raised me up to be her secret weapon. To ensure that somehow, someway, her line would be on the throne.”

“But why not come forward later, once my father was Kaisar?”

“Because he was of the blackbird’s line. As was Nikephoros, as are you. Therefore it was not necessary to come forward. Better to remain in the shadows.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been playing us from the start.”

“Yes, yes I have.”

Alexeia took a deep breath to calm herself down. “Father was ill. Even if Nikephoros had not murdered him, he wouldn’t have lasted much longer. And with no Nikephoros, if my brother and I were usurped, it would not be by a member of Kristina’s line.” Theodoros nodded. “So I take it you arranged the death of Petros Doukas.”

Theodoros grimaced. “Yes, I did. Unfortunately not fast enough, but I did.”

“We understand,” Alexeia said coldly. “And you are dismissed.” Theodoros started to rise, but first hacked another bloody cough into his handkerchief. “But first, why did you tell us?”

“Because for once, I didn’t feel like playing the idiot. And I thought you should know that I am not your enemy. I’m leaving Constantinople, and I have no intention of ever coming back.”

She squinted at him. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

“Of course. Would you expect it otherwise?”

She smiled faintly. “No. Very well then, you may go.” Theodoros shuffled off, but just before he reached the door Alexeia spoke again. “But I’m still going to keep an eye on you.”

Theodoros smiled. “I would be disappointed in you if you didn’t.”

As her uncle exited, Alexeia turned again to the words of her great-grandfather. On Foreign Policy: If one does business with someone who does not speak German, learn a few key phrases and say them during negotiations. Even if one is actually saying ‘I am a cute, fluffy bunny,’ the German tongue will still intimidate your opponent and help to bend them to your will. It is a funny language that way.


* * *


Theodoros winced as he exited the chamber. Neither guard made a move to help him. Good. That is not their duty. He started walking, leaning heavily on his cane. His niece was right; he hadn’t told her the whole truth, about why he’d exposed his lifelong secret. He had keep his mother’s task, her great assignment for him, but at a terrible cost. He had killed Irene, his wife, personally because she threatened to push him into the limelight. He still remembered that nightmarish day. It was a terrible thing he had done, but he couldn’t bear to arrange for someone else to kill her. Yes, her ‘exploitation’ of him had not been planned, but there had been some feelings for her.

And for his two sons. But a fool could not make a good father, so he left them. He had not killed them, like he had their mother, but he had abandoned them. Not having a family was the price he had for his great disguise. He looked back at the Empress’ chambers. But if I had had a daughter…

That wasn’t an entirely fair train of thought. He had chosen to remain in this life, partly because he cared to. Only four people had thought him simple and still called him friend and brother, Demetrios, Eudoxia, Herakleios, and Andreas Angelos. All shunned by society, too un-ambitious, too weak, too illegitimate, they said. Yet it was only them, and his animals, who had treated him well.

He was tired of that, so very tired. He coughed again into his handkerchief, a few more specks of blood staining it. He no longer had the strength to be the Empire’s Atlas. He had nudged Nikephoros towards the dynatoi plot, helped make it surface before it was ready. And he was tired of that. He wished Alexeia well, but at the same time…I am sick of this place.

Fyodor was a problem, and there was always Stefanos Doukas lurking in the shadows. Alexeia might handle them, with some help. He had arranged for some help, but no more. Let the line of Kristina rise or fall on its own merits. And if the worst should come…

For it was not just for his mother that he had been the fool for sixty years, but his father as well. Andreas had thought him simple as well, but woe to anyone who dared say so in his presence. And it always to him that Andreas first gave presents and greetings when he returned from his provincial circuits.

But it was more than just that. He had seen his father on his battlefield, and he knew, in a way no historian or chronicler could ever hope to understand or convey, why the soldiers of Andreas adored and worshipped him. For on the battlefield, Andreas Niketas was nothing less than great, the way his voice cut through even the mightiest enemy volley, the way he maneuvered troops and formations, as easily as if he was rearranging furniture. Theodoros had seen that, and swore to maintain his legacy, no matter the vanities and foibles of weak and petty creatures.

So men did not just seem like fools to him, but shadows as well. He looked back. He too had made special arrangements, not as grand or cruel as his mother, not for her, but for his father. Nothing much but the mere planting of a seed. But it would grow, if need be. The Empire always conjured up a hero in her hour of need. And if the House of Komnenos should fall, there were equally grand and noble lines to take up the Empire’s banner. For are we not all children of Andreas?

Theodoros looked at Giorgios Laskaris and Andreas Drakos. Most men seemed like shadows to him, but not all.
 
Last edited:
Top