Book 2; 1367 to 1370 - The First Great Roman-Latin War, Part Two
The Prince of Hellas marched up, and down, the lines of his forces as they stood; besieging the fortress of Candia--the beating heart of the Venetokratia, and their strongest bastion in Crete. Each step the Prince could hear either the sound of a trebuchet loosing a stone, or one being loaded in preparation.
This siege had gone on for months; the fact that the Latins well-knew how to out-fortify everyone else, on even the most minute spec of land, quite obvious.
Out at sea the Imperial Fleet, aided by that of Montferrat, too bombarded the city and blockaded it in equal measure; a great aid in this long, drawn-out, siege.
Andronikos was 21 now; 6 years of which he'd spent at war--a full fourth of his own life.
And as the Prince of Hellas' gaze drifted up, and his hands rested on his blade's pommel, the young Prince reflected on the fact that it had been just that long since he'd seen his wife, or his father, mother, brother and sisters.
Irene would have been old enough to marry Basil of Trebizond by now, he figured, and that meant it was likely he'd never see her again. He couldn't help but wonder how different Constantinople would look when he returned? How different would his father look, now 39?
As his gaze focused on the crumbling walls of Candia, and the sight of defenders being killed, the Prince decided he didn't care; he would focus on the here, and the now.
1367 to 1369
Andronikos found Athens an ancient, but changed city; one could clearly see the Latins had changed it, building new fortifications, and tearing down old ones--they hadn't quite defaced it as they had Constantinople, and elsewhere.
The first thing the Prince would do was claim the city as his Princely Seat [1] in early January 1367 in his capacity as Prince of Hellas; taking to the Acropolis, and casting the Catholics from the Parthenon, who had designated it the Seat of their Archbishop under the name of 'the Church of Our Lady'. In their place, Andronikos would refound it as an Orthodox Church, with the in-hiding Metropolitan of Athens, Anthimus I, restored to the 'Church of the Parthenos Maria' on January 26th 1367.
Andronikos, and the healing Reynard, would stay in Athens for a month, as men and material were mustered once more with the goal of taking to Crete; the news of the Revolt's mounting losses forcing their hand.
Finally, in early March the Prince of Hellas would depart; leaving Reynard to once more play at being Regent, as Andronikos and his men were ferried by the Imperial Fleet to north-western shores of Crete.
There they met little resistance at first, allowing Andronikos to send several scouts to get the lay of the land before finally being intercepted by Venetian raiders; forcing the Romans onto the offensive to defend themselves as they made to push deeper into Crete.
Rather than make south, Andronikos chose to keep going north-east, and make for the fortified Chania; building a siege camp and putting it to siege in late March.
The siege would drag on for 2 months, before finally the Romans broke through the Firkas Bastion of Chania in late May, and took the city by storm. Andronikos would do very little to stop his men from brutalising the Venetians, yet stepped in at every turn to keep his Roman kinsman safe [2].
Thereafter Andronikos would set up a garrison, and redistribute Latin wealth to the Roman citizens of Chania, as well as to his men; organising a Roman shipping route from Hellas to Crete for the first time in 163 years.
The Prince would depart from Chania less than half a month later; encountering the forces of Venice led by the Condottieri Luchino dal Verme in pitched battle within the side-valleys of the White Mountains--a pitched battle that the Romans would lose, as dal Verme rode at the head a superior cavalry; forcing the Andronikos to order an orderly retreat back towards Chania.
This retreat would turn out to be a feint though, as the Venetians chased after them for what felt like an eternity--only to be beset upon by arrowfire from the lesser hills of the White Mountains, and caught off guard.
Andronikos would charge in, unexpectedly, and cut down much of dal Verme's forces--in turn, forcing the Condottieri to flee with what remained of his men; taking an arrow to the back in his flight.
This event, having blooded the Romans, forced Andronikos to muster more men from Hellas, who would take time to arrive in Chania in June 1367, led by Reynard's now-bloodied son Roger Durand. From this, Andronikos would rebuild his forces, and march south for Paleohora; putting it under siege.
A siege that would drag on for the next 4 months, and during which the Romans would be hit with the news that the Knights Hospitaller, of Rhodes, would join on the side of Venice, and Sicily--not wanting to allow the Romans to garner any more power and thus potentially threaten them.
The Knights quickly put the Roman-Montferrat fleet on the back foot come August; forcing Basil of Lesbos to rely on hit-and-run tactics throughout the many isles of the Naxos region, while too relying on a skilled militia to see off any naval invasions attempted by the Hospitallers.
Considering the fact that the Hospitallers were complicating things in the Aegean, it is little wonder that the Sicilians were able to land troops once more in Morea come late August, forcing Reynard to ride out and once more eject them from the peninsula--again with heavy losses in men, and the further razing of the land.
October came, and the Romans were still embroiled in the siege of Paleohora. It would be here that Roger Durand distinguished himself; leaving a successful counter-assault against a combined sally from the city, and a raid by Venetian forces.
Thus, with the permission of his father, Andronikos would Knight the young Roger Durand as the 26th Knight of the Golden Fleece later that month, outside the walls of Paleohora; with Prince Nicolae I Alexandru of Wallachia having died the previous year, thus opening a position.
Finally though, as October moved into November, the Romans would break into the city, and a repeat of Chania would occur--with Andronikos quickly thereafter hearing news that Sfakia had fallen to Roman loyalists around the same time. He would ride out, leaving Roger to man the new Roman 'region' forming, to confirm this, and accept Sfakia into the control of the Romans in late November.
Andronikos would spend Christmas 1367 in Chania; having turned 19 that year.
1368 would be a year of mostly monotony; with a stalemate battle at Amorgos between the Roman-Montferrat and Hospitaller fleets giving enough breathing room for a planned invasion of Roman-held Crete by the Sicilians to be sunk in early March near the isle of Kythera.
As this occurred, Andronikos would be completing the siege of Rethymnon; finally breaking through the Fortezza Bastion in late March, and bringing roughly 1/3rd of Crete under Roman control.
In June 1368 the first new vessels commissioned by Basil of Lesbos would take to the sea from the environs of Thessaloniki; increasing Roman potency, and decreasing their reliance on the Montferratian ships, even though by now the two groups were well and truly close-knit.
Andronikos would, in late June, welcome Basil for a short time in Rethymnon, before the two broke off to go about their duties.
Durres, the last holding of the Angevins in the Balkans, would fall around this time to an Albanian Warlord, Karl Thopia, who would quickly be subjugated and brought to heel by George of Aeolia under orders from John V.
The mainland Balkans were now entirely free of Latin influence.
June would become July, and then August, before Andronikos had made considerable gains again; forced to fight tooth and nail with dal Verme over the midlands of Crete--only relieved, and then able to finally bring Candia, the capital of the isle, to siege after the surviving elements of the Revolt broke through the 'screen' of the eastlands of the isle to defeat dal Verme in battle come August.
Andronikos would meet Marco Gradenigo, leader of the Revolt, outside the walls of Candia in September; accepting his supplicancy, and gaining for the Romans all of Crete except Candia... which would prove itself a firm thorn.
The Hospitallers, having decided that direct battle with the Romans was a poor idea, instead turned to running the blockade of Candia; regularly resupplying the city for months--a year. They would only be soundly forced off by Basil in April of 1369.
The siege of Candia had been harder, and more costly, than any previously on the isle; with dal Verme regularly leading skilled sorties, and night raids, to keep the Romans off balance--buying the city more, and more, time when combined with the aid of the Hospitallers.
It would be also in 1369 that, as Andronikos and the Romans sat outside the walls of Candia, Charles V of France, who had succeeded his father 5 years prior, would repudiate the Treaty of Bretigny--reigniting the 100 Years War in May 1369; in quick succession burning Portsmouth, and defeating the Black Prince in battle to retake much of Aquitaine.
Of all of this, Charles would only fail in one endeavour; attempting to finance a Welsh revolt would turn to nothing, as a storm sunk the ships and scattered his payments.
What would finally break the siege of Candia would be the death of dal Verme after Andronikos brought in ship-based artillery as a force multiplier; Candia was spent, and tired, and on the condition of fair treatment the city would be given over.
Fair treatment they got--as they were ejected from the isle with all they could carry come early December.
Crete was, after 3 years of constant fighting, back under Roman control--and Andronikos rested well in Candia.
1370
With the war with Venice effectively over, the only power that still openly challenged the Romans was the Hospitallers--who still regularly sent corsair raids across the Empire while its fleet was distracted. This would only grow worse after John II of Montferrat was forced to draw back his navy in order to defend Corsica from Spanish raids--thereby putting extreme pressure on the Imperial Fleet that was only offset by the slowly regrowing shipbuilding industries of the Empire under Basil of Lesbos' guiding hand.
John would recall Andronikos to Constantinople in March, naming Reynard Durand as the new Governor of Crete thereafter--with the Metropolitan Anthimus I taking over his duties as effective Regent of Hellas.
Andronikos would be given a triumph by the Emperor upon his arrival back in the city; a joyous occasion that would only end in private infighting.
The two men, father and son, had drifted over the years; John saw war as a means to an end, Andronikos had been shaped by it--effectively at his father's own insistence, and thus their views on what to do next differed greatly.
John wished to rest and reconcile the Empire with its gains--Andronikos couldn't see that as possible without wiping the Hospitallers from the map.
Finally, in September, as the Black Prince led his counter-attack in France, Andronikos would convince his father to allow him to lead a force to Rhodes--and that he did; arriving there in October, and leading a long fight for the isle that would drag on into November before the city of Rhodes itself was put under siege.
Casimir III would die at this time, and Poland would pass into Hungarian-Croatian hands under Louis I and his wife, the daughter of Casimir.
The siege held, with the well-fortified city of Rhodes, a millennia-long stronghold, continuously throwing back the Romans all throughout the rest of the year--up until December.
In the Battle of Pontvallain, which took place around the time of a Roman rally on Rhodes, the English would be badly routed in France--as Andronikos himself mustered his Romans for one final push on the Hospitallers.
They would finally breach the walls with mines stolen from the Venetians of Candia a year ago; their unfamiliarity with sapping resulting in several deaths--yet the Romans pushed on into the city; grinding against the Hospitallers day, after day, until finally it seemed as if they would give in come December 20th.
On that day, Pope Urban V [3] would die, and so would Prince Andronikos the Eagle.
While leading a charge of his best men through the rubble he would be struck in the shoulder, and then the neck by bolts from Hospitaller crossbows, and thereafter pushed into a fight as the Knights charged from the city against the Romans.
Andronikos would bleed out, slumped on the pommel of his sword--just as the Romans and Hospitallers were both forced back and away.
On December 25th, his body would be led out of the city by the Hospitallers, with full Knightly honours, and given to his men, who promptly left the isle.
He was only 22 years old, 7 years of which he'd spent at near constant war.
Back in Constantinople, his wife, Margaret of England, was 7 months pregnant with what would turn out to be his daughter; Sophia.
---
[1] While it had been an unofficial assumption, Athens had always been the intended 'Seat' of the Prince of Hellas, if only due to its central location between Morea and Upper Attica and so forth.
[2] Andronikos would be noted for his dislike of what he considered 'non-Roman Latins'--especially the Venetians, which many would claim clouded his judgement in later years. Many attribute such an attitude to a mixture of natural historical hatred, and as a consequence of facing off against them in what would turn into years worth of war.
[3] Urban's failed attempts to relocate the Papacy back to Rome would leave him a broken man, and in the end, the Papacy itself would never return to Rome.
This siege had gone on for months; the fact that the Latins well-knew how to out-fortify everyone else, on even the most minute spec of land, quite obvious.
Out at sea the Imperial Fleet, aided by that of Montferrat, too bombarded the city and blockaded it in equal measure; a great aid in this long, drawn-out, siege.
Andronikos was 21 now; 6 years of which he'd spent at war--a full fourth of his own life.
And as the Prince of Hellas' gaze drifted up, and his hands rested on his blade's pommel, the young Prince reflected on the fact that it had been just that long since he'd seen his wife, or his father, mother, brother and sisters.
Irene would have been old enough to marry Basil of Trebizond by now, he figured, and that meant it was likely he'd never see her again. He couldn't help but wonder how different Constantinople would look when he returned? How different would his father look, now 39?
As his gaze focused on the crumbling walls of Candia, and the sight of defenders being killed, the Prince decided he didn't care; he would focus on the here, and the now.
1367 to 1369
Andronikos found Athens an ancient, but changed city; one could clearly see the Latins had changed it, building new fortifications, and tearing down old ones--they hadn't quite defaced it as they had Constantinople, and elsewhere.
The first thing the Prince would do was claim the city as his Princely Seat [1] in early January 1367 in his capacity as Prince of Hellas; taking to the Acropolis, and casting the Catholics from the Parthenon, who had designated it the Seat of their Archbishop under the name of 'the Church of Our Lady'. In their place, Andronikos would refound it as an Orthodox Church, with the in-hiding Metropolitan of Athens, Anthimus I, restored to the 'Church of the Parthenos Maria' on January 26th 1367.
Andronikos, and the healing Reynard, would stay in Athens for a month, as men and material were mustered once more with the goal of taking to Crete; the news of the Revolt's mounting losses forcing their hand.
Finally, in early March the Prince of Hellas would depart; leaving Reynard to once more play at being Regent, as Andronikos and his men were ferried by the Imperial Fleet to north-western shores of Crete.
There they met little resistance at first, allowing Andronikos to send several scouts to get the lay of the land before finally being intercepted by Venetian raiders; forcing the Romans onto the offensive to defend themselves as they made to push deeper into Crete.
Rather than make south, Andronikos chose to keep going north-east, and make for the fortified Chania; building a siege camp and putting it to siege in late March.
The siege would drag on for 2 months, before finally the Romans broke through the Firkas Bastion of Chania in late May, and took the city by storm. Andronikos would do very little to stop his men from brutalising the Venetians, yet stepped in at every turn to keep his Roman kinsman safe [2].
Thereafter Andronikos would set up a garrison, and redistribute Latin wealth to the Roman citizens of Chania, as well as to his men; organising a Roman shipping route from Hellas to Crete for the first time in 163 years.
The Prince would depart from Chania less than half a month later; encountering the forces of Venice led by the Condottieri Luchino dal Verme in pitched battle within the side-valleys of the White Mountains--a pitched battle that the Romans would lose, as dal Verme rode at the head a superior cavalry; forcing the Andronikos to order an orderly retreat back towards Chania.
This retreat would turn out to be a feint though, as the Venetians chased after them for what felt like an eternity--only to be beset upon by arrowfire from the lesser hills of the White Mountains, and caught off guard.
Andronikos would charge in, unexpectedly, and cut down much of dal Verme's forces--in turn, forcing the Condottieri to flee with what remained of his men; taking an arrow to the back in his flight.
This event, having blooded the Romans, forced Andronikos to muster more men from Hellas, who would take time to arrive in Chania in June 1367, led by Reynard's now-bloodied son Roger Durand. From this, Andronikos would rebuild his forces, and march south for Paleohora; putting it under siege.
A siege that would drag on for the next 4 months, and during which the Romans would be hit with the news that the Knights Hospitaller, of Rhodes, would join on the side of Venice, and Sicily--not wanting to allow the Romans to garner any more power and thus potentially threaten them.
The Knights quickly put the Roman-Montferrat fleet on the back foot come August; forcing Basil of Lesbos to rely on hit-and-run tactics throughout the many isles of the Naxos region, while too relying on a skilled militia to see off any naval invasions attempted by the Hospitallers.
Considering the fact that the Hospitallers were complicating things in the Aegean, it is little wonder that the Sicilians were able to land troops once more in Morea come late August, forcing Reynard to ride out and once more eject them from the peninsula--again with heavy losses in men, and the further razing of the land.
October came, and the Romans were still embroiled in the siege of Paleohora. It would be here that Roger Durand distinguished himself; leaving a successful counter-assault against a combined sally from the city, and a raid by Venetian forces.
Thus, with the permission of his father, Andronikos would Knight the young Roger Durand as the 26th Knight of the Golden Fleece later that month, outside the walls of Paleohora; with Prince Nicolae I Alexandru of Wallachia having died the previous year, thus opening a position.
Finally though, as October moved into November, the Romans would break into the city, and a repeat of Chania would occur--with Andronikos quickly thereafter hearing news that Sfakia had fallen to Roman loyalists around the same time. He would ride out, leaving Roger to man the new Roman 'region' forming, to confirm this, and accept Sfakia into the control of the Romans in late November.
Andronikos would spend Christmas 1367 in Chania; having turned 19 that year.
1368 would be a year of mostly monotony; with a stalemate battle at Amorgos between the Roman-Montferrat and Hospitaller fleets giving enough breathing room for a planned invasion of Roman-held Crete by the Sicilians to be sunk in early March near the isle of Kythera.
As this occurred, Andronikos would be completing the siege of Rethymnon; finally breaking through the Fortezza Bastion in late March, and bringing roughly 1/3rd of Crete under Roman control.
In June 1368 the first new vessels commissioned by Basil of Lesbos would take to the sea from the environs of Thessaloniki; increasing Roman potency, and decreasing their reliance on the Montferratian ships, even though by now the two groups were well and truly close-knit.
Andronikos would, in late June, welcome Basil for a short time in Rethymnon, before the two broke off to go about their duties.
Durres, the last holding of the Angevins in the Balkans, would fall around this time to an Albanian Warlord, Karl Thopia, who would quickly be subjugated and brought to heel by George of Aeolia under orders from John V.
The mainland Balkans were now entirely free of Latin influence.
June would become July, and then August, before Andronikos had made considerable gains again; forced to fight tooth and nail with dal Verme over the midlands of Crete--only relieved, and then able to finally bring Candia, the capital of the isle, to siege after the surviving elements of the Revolt broke through the 'screen' of the eastlands of the isle to defeat dal Verme in battle come August.
Andronikos would meet Marco Gradenigo, leader of the Revolt, outside the walls of Candia in September; accepting his supplicancy, and gaining for the Romans all of Crete except Candia... which would prove itself a firm thorn.
The Hospitallers, having decided that direct battle with the Romans was a poor idea, instead turned to running the blockade of Candia; regularly resupplying the city for months--a year. They would only be soundly forced off by Basil in April of 1369.
The siege of Candia had been harder, and more costly, than any previously on the isle; with dal Verme regularly leading skilled sorties, and night raids, to keep the Romans off balance--buying the city more, and more, time when combined with the aid of the Hospitallers.
It would be also in 1369 that, as Andronikos and the Romans sat outside the walls of Candia, Charles V of France, who had succeeded his father 5 years prior, would repudiate the Treaty of Bretigny--reigniting the 100 Years War in May 1369; in quick succession burning Portsmouth, and defeating the Black Prince in battle to retake much of Aquitaine.
Of all of this, Charles would only fail in one endeavour; attempting to finance a Welsh revolt would turn to nothing, as a storm sunk the ships and scattered his payments.
What would finally break the siege of Candia would be the death of dal Verme after Andronikos brought in ship-based artillery as a force multiplier; Candia was spent, and tired, and on the condition of fair treatment the city would be given over.
Fair treatment they got--as they were ejected from the isle with all they could carry come early December.
Crete was, after 3 years of constant fighting, back under Roman control--and Andronikos rested well in Candia.
1370
With the war with Venice effectively over, the only power that still openly challenged the Romans was the Hospitallers--who still regularly sent corsair raids across the Empire while its fleet was distracted. This would only grow worse after John II of Montferrat was forced to draw back his navy in order to defend Corsica from Spanish raids--thereby putting extreme pressure on the Imperial Fleet that was only offset by the slowly regrowing shipbuilding industries of the Empire under Basil of Lesbos' guiding hand.
John would recall Andronikos to Constantinople in March, naming Reynard Durand as the new Governor of Crete thereafter--with the Metropolitan Anthimus I taking over his duties as effective Regent of Hellas.
Andronikos would be given a triumph by the Emperor upon his arrival back in the city; a joyous occasion that would only end in private infighting.
The two men, father and son, had drifted over the years; John saw war as a means to an end, Andronikos had been shaped by it--effectively at his father's own insistence, and thus their views on what to do next differed greatly.
John wished to rest and reconcile the Empire with its gains--Andronikos couldn't see that as possible without wiping the Hospitallers from the map.
Finally, in September, as the Black Prince led his counter-attack in France, Andronikos would convince his father to allow him to lead a force to Rhodes--and that he did; arriving there in October, and leading a long fight for the isle that would drag on into November before the city of Rhodes itself was put under siege.
Casimir III would die at this time, and Poland would pass into Hungarian-Croatian hands under Louis I and his wife, the daughter of Casimir.
The siege held, with the well-fortified city of Rhodes, a millennia-long stronghold, continuously throwing back the Romans all throughout the rest of the year--up until December.
In the Battle of Pontvallain, which took place around the time of a Roman rally on Rhodes, the English would be badly routed in France--as Andronikos himself mustered his Romans for one final push on the Hospitallers.
They would finally breach the walls with mines stolen from the Venetians of Candia a year ago; their unfamiliarity with sapping resulting in several deaths--yet the Romans pushed on into the city; grinding against the Hospitallers day, after day, until finally it seemed as if they would give in come December 20th.
On that day, Pope Urban V [3] would die, and so would Prince Andronikos the Eagle.
While leading a charge of his best men through the rubble he would be struck in the shoulder, and then the neck by bolts from Hospitaller crossbows, and thereafter pushed into a fight as the Knights charged from the city against the Romans.
Andronikos would bleed out, slumped on the pommel of his sword--just as the Romans and Hospitallers were both forced back and away.
On December 25th, his body would be led out of the city by the Hospitallers, with full Knightly honours, and given to his men, who promptly left the isle.
He was only 22 years old, 7 years of which he'd spent at near constant war.
Back in Constantinople, his wife, Margaret of England, was 7 months pregnant with what would turn out to be his daughter; Sophia.
---
[1] While it had been an unofficial assumption, Athens had always been the intended 'Seat' of the Prince of Hellas, if only due to its central location between Morea and Upper Attica and so forth.
[2] Andronikos would be noted for his dislike of what he considered 'non-Roman Latins'--especially the Venetians, which many would claim clouded his judgement in later years. Many attribute such an attitude to a mixture of natural historical hatred, and as a consequence of facing off against them in what would turn into years worth of war.
[3] Urban's failed attempts to relocate the Papacy back to Rome would leave him a broken man, and in the end, the Papacy itself would never return to Rome.
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