Perhaps. Just showing some of the things going around at the time and which is more interesting.
Though honestly I think the Russia and Steppes could be summed up in a very short post.
Politeia tōn Rhōmaiōn: The Restored Roman Republic
- Thread starter DominusNovus
- Start date
Perhaps. Just showing some of the things going around at the time and which is more interesting.
Though honestly I think the Russia and Steppes could be summed up in a very short post.
Britain and Scandinavia are more interesting to me, I want to see how things have evolved in the Frankish Empire of Britannia thingie you constructed.
So, as I head off for the night, with one more day of voting:
4 votes for Britain and Scandinavia
3 votes for Russia and the Steppes
4 votes for Britain and Scandinavia
3 votes for Russia and the Steppes
Welp, tied, not counting EmperorOfTheNorthSea’s ‘perhaps’ vote. So, unless anything happens in the next 90 minutes, Britain reached 4 votes first, so they win.
The North Sea into the 12th Century
The North Sea into the 12th Century
Though the Danes and English played small parts in the Crusade proper, they were thoroughly motivated by the zeal of their Christian brethren. To be fair, it was the Englishman Stephen who was the pre-eminent Crusader in Egypt, but proportionally, few Crusaders came from the shores of the North Sea. The Christian Danes were eagerly establishing fortfied trading posts along the Baltic coast, in lands inhabited by the many pagan tribes of the region. There, they hoped to exert political, economic, and military pressure on the locals to convert, but the effort never rose to the level of the Crusade. Though the Popes of the period looked favorably upon their endeavors, they never were willing to sanction the expansion into the Baltic as on the same level as the Crusade itself.
On the island of Britain, the Kingdom of England was pre-eminent, as it had been since the days of Edgar Norsebane. Though King Edgar himself had consolidated his kingdom to such a degree that, by some measures, it could not be properly called feudal, this arrangement did not last long past his death in AD 944. England was divided up into shires, with no intermediaries between the sheriffs and the king. Each sheriff served at the pleasure of the king, with their positions requiring regular renewal from the crown. However, with the large number of shires, Edgar’s successors found themselves not nearly up to the task of managing so many nobles. It was Edgar’s successor, his son Charles, who revived the office of Earl to govern larger regions and overseeing their sheriffs. Cognizant of the importance of keeping such power under royal control, however, Charles restricted the position of Earl to members of the royal family, establishing three Earldoms, two of which went to his younger brothers, and one which went to a nephew of a deceased brother. Though Charles intended to keep the majority of the shires under direct rule from the crown, by the end of the century, virtually the entirety of the country was divided into Earldoms, an each Earl could trace direct agnatic descent from Edgar. Though these cadet branches would strengthen the position of the dynasty, there was also a looming threat of having so many nobles with royal descent.
The main line of the dynasty died out in AD 1089, with the unexpected passing of Edgar III, who had no sons. Though his eldest daughter, Mary, was of marriagable age, and she was wedded to Eric, Earl of Kent, Edgar III had not named an heir. Without taking into consideration his daughter’s - and, by extension, her husband’s - claim, Eric was fifth in line for the throne at the time of Edgar’s death. First in line was Henry, Earl of Northumberland. Eric quickly put forward his claim to the throne, with the support of both Princess Mary and the Dowager Queen, Anne. However, Henry was able to secure the support of more of the nobility. The civil war that followed was likely inevitable under the circumstances, with Eric securing London and Henry rallying a large army to march on the capital. While Henry laid siege to London with the his army, Eric used his smaller army, under the command of his brother Alfred, to take a few castles of Henry’s supporters, capturing several hostages, which allowed Eric to flip Charles, Earl of Cornwall, to his side, and encouraged other nobles to send men back to their holdings to defend against Eric. Feeling that he had momentum on his side, Eric sent for Alfred to relieve the siege. A battle ensued, in which Alfred was killed, but Henry’s forces were scattered.
As Henry re-united his army, Eric, acting from a position of strength after his victory in London, offered to meet with Henry and come to a compromise, suggesting some possible power sharing arrangements to entice his rival to come to the table. However, while Henry was at the meeting, Eric’s spies moved amongst Herny’s army, sowing discord, buying those that could be bought, and spreading the rumor that Henry had died. While Eric was negotiating with Henry, word arrived that the Earl of Northumberland’s army had disintigrated, and was less than a third its former size, giving Eric the larger army in the field. Though Henry leveled accusations of treachary at the Earl of Kent, Eric pointed out that neither he nor his men had attacked Henry or his men, and Henry was free to break of negotiations and return to his army, if he wished to continue fighting. The offer Eric had originally made to Henry was no longer on the table, of course, but he still was quite magnanimous in his terms. Henry would renounce his title as Earl of Northumberland, in favor of Eric’s second brother, while he would become Earl of Dublin, instead - a nearly empty title, as England had only recently come to control the city of Dublin, which was the lone outpost in the entirety of Ireland. Still, it was a hereditary title, and Eric even would grant Henry the honor of being the crown’s permanent envoy to the Roman Republic. As exiles went, it didn’t get much better than Constantinople. Henry grudgingly accepted and, aside from one abortive attempt by his partisans to derail Eric’s coronation on Easter of AD 1090, Eric’s victory in the civil war was complete. The House of Kent - as Eric’s dynasty came to be known - now ruled England.
Across the North Sea, the dynasty of Harald the Bloody was still going strong, and his descendents had continued to rule, despite a level of intrigue and infighting that was not seen in the rest of Europe. Blood ties did not stop three kings - Gorm the One-Eyed, Harald the Giant, and Haakon Blackshield - from being murdered by their own kin, and those were only the most notorious murders in the Haralding dynasty at this point. Despite this, the dynasty had secured the crowns of Norway and Gotaland for themselves, and the king of Svealand was a tributary in all but name by AD 1100. Knut II was king, and he had arranged for the marriage of his eldest daughter, Sigrid, to the crown prince of England, Christopher, a wedding which took place on the feast day of Saint Valentine, that year. When Knut died in AD 1102, everyone assumed that his young brother, Harald, would be crowned king. However, Sigrid, all of 17 years old, sailed back to Denmark with her husband, arranging for Harald’s coronation to be delayed until she could pay her respects to her father. When she reached Denmark, she wasted no time in consolidating her supporters in the Danish court. Prince Christopher, 2 years younger than her, personally slew several of Harald’s retinue when tensions between the opposing sides boiled over, and it was Sigrid herself that dealt the killing blow to her uncle. When the royal councilors convened to restore order, Sigrid presented them with Harald’s head, proclaiming that her uncle had poisoned her father and had sought to deny her her birthright as Knut’s firsborn and heir. With her own bloody spear in hand, her prince at her side, and her retinue of eagerly violent supporters behind them, not one of the notables in Denmark disputed her version of events.
Sigrid was crowned the first Queen Regnant of Denmark, and became known to history as Sigrid the Dauntless, though her detractors preferred Sigrid the Murderess or Sigrid the Butcher. Supposedly, she was said to have enjoyed those sobriquets herself. Her first order of business was to ensure that both her husband and his father understood that she had no interest in merely being a stepping stone to either of them ruling her kingdom. That may have suited Queen Mary of England, but not Sigrid, Queen of Denmark, Norway, and Gotaland. She was loyal to her husband and would support him when it came time for him to rule England, but she ruled in her lands. Eric was said to be content with this, ecstatic that his dynasty had lucked into such a union, even if neither he nor his son could see the crowns united. Christopher, meanwhile, was smitten with his bride, in the way that youth often are, and his harshest critics claim not that he wished to usurp Sigrid, but that he didn’t have the cunning to even consider it an option, despite that being exactly how his father came to his throne.
Two years into Sigrid’s reign, the King of Svealand, Karl, rebelled against her, putting his own dynastic claim to the Danish throne forward. His men burned the town around Sigrid’s castle in Roskilde, but were defeated in battle and slaughtered, with Karl brought before Sigrid before being executed, his dismembered body sent back to his country, a gift from the Sigrid, the new Queen of Svealand. The Swedish nobility did not take kindly to Sigrid’s pretentions to rule their land, and she spent the next half decade enforcing her rule. By AD 1110, they had either come to accept her, or been replaced by those that would.
Her conduct in war did not sit well with the Church, particularly in light of her sex. Though she herself had not directly been involved in any of her battles since her execution of her uncle, Sigrid overall command always tended toward a theatrical sort of brutality. When she asked the Archbishop of the Danish Church what the Church’s position on her rule was, he equivocated so much that she had him jailed and requested a new Archbishop from Rome. The replacement, one Julius of Ancona, did not fear her and did not hesitate to condemn her actions thoroughly. Sigrid was pleased with his fearlessness, and made Julius her closest advisor. She offered to do penance in the best way she knew how: to lead her soldiers and ships against the pagans and pirates of the Baltic, defending the faithful against their depredations and ensuring that the merchants of the Danish trading posts on the Baltic coast did not have the fear the heathens. So began the campaigns that have been referred to as Sigrid’s Baltic War, or, at least in the lands of the Mediterranean - those lands far beyond her reach -mockingly called Sigrid’s Little Crusade.
End
I have more, but its late, and I couldn’t bear to not post this just because there’s more to post.
Though the Danes and English played small parts in the Crusade proper, they were thoroughly motivated by the zeal of their Christian brethren. To be fair, it was the Englishman Stephen who was the pre-eminent Crusader in Egypt, but proportionally, few Crusaders came from the shores of the North Sea. The Christian Danes were eagerly establishing fortfied trading posts along the Baltic coast, in lands inhabited by the many pagan tribes of the region. There, they hoped to exert political, economic, and military pressure on the locals to convert, but the effort never rose to the level of the Crusade. Though the Popes of the period looked favorably upon their endeavors, they never were willing to sanction the expansion into the Baltic as on the same level as the Crusade itself.
On the island of Britain, the Kingdom of England was pre-eminent, as it had been since the days of Edgar Norsebane. Though King Edgar himself had consolidated his kingdom to such a degree that, by some measures, it could not be properly called feudal, this arrangement did not last long past his death in AD 944. England was divided up into shires, with no intermediaries between the sheriffs and the king. Each sheriff served at the pleasure of the king, with their positions requiring regular renewal from the crown. However, with the large number of shires, Edgar’s successors found themselves not nearly up to the task of managing so many nobles. It was Edgar’s successor, his son Charles, who revived the office of Earl to govern larger regions and overseeing their sheriffs. Cognizant of the importance of keeping such power under royal control, however, Charles restricted the position of Earl to members of the royal family, establishing three Earldoms, two of which went to his younger brothers, and one which went to a nephew of a deceased brother. Though Charles intended to keep the majority of the shires under direct rule from the crown, by the end of the century, virtually the entirety of the country was divided into Earldoms, an each Earl could trace direct agnatic descent from Edgar. Though these cadet branches would strengthen the position of the dynasty, there was also a looming threat of having so many nobles with royal descent.
The main line of the dynasty died out in AD 1089, with the unexpected passing of Edgar III, who had no sons. Though his eldest daughter, Mary, was of marriagable age, and she was wedded to Eric, Earl of Kent, Edgar III had not named an heir. Without taking into consideration his daughter’s - and, by extension, her husband’s - claim, Eric was fifth in line for the throne at the time of Edgar’s death. First in line was Henry, Earl of Northumberland. Eric quickly put forward his claim to the throne, with the support of both Princess Mary and the Dowager Queen, Anne. However, Henry was able to secure the support of more of the nobility. The civil war that followed was likely inevitable under the circumstances, with Eric securing London and Henry rallying a large army to march on the capital. While Henry laid siege to London with the his army, Eric used his smaller army, under the command of his brother Alfred, to take a few castles of Henry’s supporters, capturing several hostages, which allowed Eric to flip Charles, Earl of Cornwall, to his side, and encouraged other nobles to send men back to their holdings to defend against Eric. Feeling that he had momentum on his side, Eric sent for Alfred to relieve the siege. A battle ensued, in which Alfred was killed, but Henry’s forces were scattered.
As Henry re-united his army, Eric, acting from a position of strength after his victory in London, offered to meet with Henry and come to a compromise, suggesting some possible power sharing arrangements to entice his rival to come to the table. However, while Henry was at the meeting, Eric’s spies moved amongst Herny’s army, sowing discord, buying those that could be bought, and spreading the rumor that Henry had died. While Eric was negotiating with Henry, word arrived that the Earl of Northumberland’s army had disintigrated, and was less than a third its former size, giving Eric the larger army in the field. Though Henry leveled accusations of treachary at the Earl of Kent, Eric pointed out that neither he nor his men had attacked Henry or his men, and Henry was free to break of negotiations and return to his army, if he wished to continue fighting. The offer Eric had originally made to Henry was no longer on the table, of course, but he still was quite magnanimous in his terms. Henry would renounce his title as Earl of Northumberland, in favor of Eric’s second brother, while he would become Earl of Dublin, instead - a nearly empty title, as England had only recently come to control the city of Dublin, which was the lone outpost in the entirety of Ireland. Still, it was a hereditary title, and Eric even would grant Henry the honor of being the crown’s permanent envoy to the Roman Republic. As exiles went, it didn’t get much better than Constantinople. Henry grudgingly accepted and, aside from one abortive attempt by his partisans to derail Eric’s coronation on Easter of AD 1090, Eric’s victory in the civil war was complete. The House of Kent - as Eric’s dynasty came to be known - now ruled England.
Across the North Sea, the dynasty of Harald the Bloody was still going strong, and his descendents had continued to rule, despite a level of intrigue and infighting that was not seen in the rest of Europe. Blood ties did not stop three kings - Gorm the One-Eyed, Harald the Giant, and Haakon Blackshield - from being murdered by their own kin, and those were only the most notorious murders in the Haralding dynasty at this point. Despite this, the dynasty had secured the crowns of Norway and Gotaland for themselves, and the king of Svealand was a tributary in all but name by AD 1100. Knut II was king, and he had arranged for the marriage of his eldest daughter, Sigrid, to the crown prince of England, Christopher, a wedding which took place on the feast day of Saint Valentine, that year. When Knut died in AD 1102, everyone assumed that his young brother, Harald, would be crowned king. However, Sigrid, all of 17 years old, sailed back to Denmark with her husband, arranging for Harald’s coronation to be delayed until she could pay her respects to her father. When she reached Denmark, she wasted no time in consolidating her supporters in the Danish court. Prince Christopher, 2 years younger than her, personally slew several of Harald’s retinue when tensions between the opposing sides boiled over, and it was Sigrid herself that dealt the killing blow to her uncle. When the royal councilors convened to restore order, Sigrid presented them with Harald’s head, proclaiming that her uncle had poisoned her father and had sought to deny her her birthright as Knut’s firsborn and heir. With her own bloody spear in hand, her prince at her side, and her retinue of eagerly violent supporters behind them, not one of the notables in Denmark disputed her version of events.
Sigrid was crowned the first Queen Regnant of Denmark, and became known to history as Sigrid the Dauntless, though her detractors preferred Sigrid the Murderess or Sigrid the Butcher. Supposedly, she was said to have enjoyed those sobriquets herself. Her first order of business was to ensure that both her husband and his father understood that she had no interest in merely being a stepping stone to either of them ruling her kingdom. That may have suited Queen Mary of England, but not Sigrid, Queen of Denmark, Norway, and Gotaland. She was loyal to her husband and would support him when it came time for him to rule England, but she ruled in her lands. Eric was said to be content with this, ecstatic that his dynasty had lucked into such a union, even if neither he nor his son could see the crowns united. Christopher, meanwhile, was smitten with his bride, in the way that youth often are, and his harshest critics claim not that he wished to usurp Sigrid, but that he didn’t have the cunning to even consider it an option, despite that being exactly how his father came to his throne.
Two years into Sigrid’s reign, the King of Svealand, Karl, rebelled against her, putting his own dynastic claim to the Danish throne forward. His men burned the town around Sigrid’s castle in Roskilde, but were defeated in battle and slaughtered, with Karl brought before Sigrid before being executed, his dismembered body sent back to his country, a gift from the Sigrid, the new Queen of Svealand. The Swedish nobility did not take kindly to Sigrid’s pretentions to rule their land, and she spent the next half decade enforcing her rule. By AD 1110, they had either come to accept her, or been replaced by those that would.
Her conduct in war did not sit well with the Church, particularly in light of her sex. Though she herself had not directly been involved in any of her battles since her execution of her uncle, Sigrid overall command always tended toward a theatrical sort of brutality. When she asked the Archbishop of the Danish Church what the Church’s position on her rule was, he equivocated so much that she had him jailed and requested a new Archbishop from Rome. The replacement, one Julius of Ancona, did not fear her and did not hesitate to condemn her actions thoroughly. Sigrid was pleased with his fearlessness, and made Julius her closest advisor. She offered to do penance in the best way she knew how: to lead her soldiers and ships against the pagans and pirates of the Baltic, defending the faithful against their depredations and ensuring that the merchants of the Danish trading posts on the Baltic coast did not have the fear the heathens. So began the campaigns that have been referred to as Sigrid’s Baltic War, or, at least in the lands of the Mediterranean - those lands far beyond her reach -mockingly called Sigrid’s Little Crusade.
End
I have more, but its late, and I couldn’t bear to not post this just because there’s more to post.
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Definitely. Props to you, @DominusNovus, for pushing the envelope of what we see in medieval TLs. I enjoyed this update a lot.
England's result from flirting with centralisation ended on an unfortunate note. I'm wondering if keeping Earl an appointed title similar to sheriff would use been better, but even that runs into a thorny issue in allowing Earl's to appoint their local sheriff's and create a new power base.
How unfortunate, really? A brief civil war, with relatively low casualties. Ultimately, I was inspired by combining elements of historical English and French feudalism (particularly the abundance of Capetian cadet branches).
Sigrid’s Little Crusade
Sigrid’s Little Crusade
Queen Sigrid was determined to expand her influence over those lands watered by the Baltic Sea, though no amount of wrangling with the Pope ever achieved her desired goal of sanctioning her efforts as a proper Crusade. The best she could achieve was to commission her army to the goal of protecting the Christian settlers and recent converts to Christianity. The Danes’ trading posts were not the only Christian settlements along the Baltic, but they were the most numerous. They were joined by the occasional German, Polonian, or even Russian settlements. Sigrid saw the opportunity to incorporate many of these settlements into her growing empire.
Sigrid sent envoys to every settlement, ensuring that her court was fully informed as to the conditions in these Christian footholds in the pagan lands. On any occasion in which there were any disputes with the pagans, no matter how minor, Sigrid offered men and material to support the Christians. When needed, Sigrid was not opposed to pressuring the locals until satisfactory disputes arose. Though the ultimate rationale for the expansion was religious in nature, there was no concerted effort at conversion among the locals. Conversion was a major goal of Sigrid’s Danes, but it was unorganized for the most part, particularly when compared to the military action. Instead, missionaries were largely self-organized and lacked any central coordination. Sigrid apparently declined to coordinate missionary efforts directly with her military campaigns, ostensibly to avoid the appearance that she was attempting to convert the locals by force, though her detractors found it callous and prone to leading to greater conflict.
The primary focus of Sigrid’s attention was the great island of Osel. On its own, it was relatively unimportant, but it was a popular base for Estonian pirates, and threatened the string of coastal settlements that Sigrid claimed were under her protection. Though she focused her attentions on the island, it was one thing to say that the Danes wanted to invade the island, and another to hold it against the pirates. Sigrid’s men would attack a pirate base and move on, only for the pirates to re-establish themselves when the Danes left. After three years of little progress, Sigrid had to commit the resources to actually build castles in key harbors and coves, but the Estonians would attack those castles relentlessly. All in all, it took nearly a decade for the pirates to be neutralized, and Sigrid could focus her efforts on areas in the mainland around the year AD 1120.
There was no rush to expand, just a relentless outward pressure. Each year, the Danes would send soldiers and artisans to bolster the defenses of any settlement that would recognize Sigrid’s authority. More than anything else, she was expanding into areas that were largely a political vacuum. The kingdom of Germany was centered far to the west and south, Polonia was content with their corridor to the sea, and the Russian principalities were engaged in their own concerns to the east. When Olaf, one of the leaders of a tribal confederation, known as the Obotrites, offered to accept Sigrid as his feudal lord, she lept at the opportunity, proclaiming him as the Duke of Pommerania in AD 1122, also known as Pommermark.
The Danes spent much effort in trying to subdue the warlike Prussians, with little success, even after Pommerania fell into their hands. The campaigns into Prussian land were continually repulsed, until focus was shifted further north and east, as the lands of the Livonians were targeted as several smaller tribes started to accept Christ. Sigrid had churches and castles built in their lands, eventually establishing a duchy based in Riga to govern the locals, in AD 1125. Though the land under Danish control would hug the coast, with the support of some locals, the Danes were able to gradually push inward. To the south, another duchy over the Christian Curonians was established in AD 1126, based in the city of Memelborg. Prussia still resisted Danish attacks, but Sigrid was largely satisfied with her successes so far, and worked to extend her control over more of the Livonians, Estonians, and Curonians.
When Queen Sigrid died in AD 1137, predeceased by her husband, King Christopher of England, their son, Henry, would rule over a vast empire that reached from England to the borders with the Russians, all under his rule. Henry, who governed from London and the new capital of Denmark, that came to be called Sigridhagen, did not attempt to expand his realm as his mother had. He looked at the relatively poor lands that he now had to govern, and instead focused on consolidation, sponsoring various monastic orders to establish themselves in his lands, building up ports, and establishing friendly relations with the Russians and Poles, so as to hold onto his mother’s gains. Further warfare for such meager prizes seemed pointless, and governing such a diverse land was difficult enough.
When Polonia asserted hegemony over the Prussians in the 1140s, Henry welcomed the development as the most likely way to pacify the warlike tribe. The Prussians would only very gradually ease back their heathen and warlike ways, continuing to raid the lands of Pommmerania and Curonia, but the Polonian influence began to tell, even if the Prussians persisted in being a nuisance long after Henry’s death.
End
I probably would have done better to put this in the last update, but here it is. The short version is that much of the Baltic Crusades happen about a century early, largely due to an overall more prosperous Europe (between the introduction of maize and the Romans stabilizing the Mediterranean littoral, things look better than in our history). Its not really touched on much here, but just as a reminder, this Germany is a far cry from our Holy Roman Empire. Their borders are contracted on in almost every direction, and they don’t even border the Baltic (but they do have a good chunk of the Netherlands), so thats why I think they wouldn’t be contributing much to the alt-Baltic Crusades here.
Queen Sigrid was determined to expand her influence over those lands watered by the Baltic Sea, though no amount of wrangling with the Pope ever achieved her desired goal of sanctioning her efforts as a proper Crusade. The best she could achieve was to commission her army to the goal of protecting the Christian settlers and recent converts to Christianity. The Danes’ trading posts were not the only Christian settlements along the Baltic, but they were the most numerous. They were joined by the occasional German, Polonian, or even Russian settlements. Sigrid saw the opportunity to incorporate many of these settlements into her growing empire.
Sigrid sent envoys to every settlement, ensuring that her court was fully informed as to the conditions in these Christian footholds in the pagan lands. On any occasion in which there were any disputes with the pagans, no matter how minor, Sigrid offered men and material to support the Christians. When needed, Sigrid was not opposed to pressuring the locals until satisfactory disputes arose. Though the ultimate rationale for the expansion was religious in nature, there was no concerted effort at conversion among the locals. Conversion was a major goal of Sigrid’s Danes, but it was unorganized for the most part, particularly when compared to the military action. Instead, missionaries were largely self-organized and lacked any central coordination. Sigrid apparently declined to coordinate missionary efforts directly with her military campaigns, ostensibly to avoid the appearance that she was attempting to convert the locals by force, though her detractors found it callous and prone to leading to greater conflict.
The primary focus of Sigrid’s attention was the great island of Osel. On its own, it was relatively unimportant, but it was a popular base for Estonian pirates, and threatened the string of coastal settlements that Sigrid claimed were under her protection. Though she focused her attentions on the island, it was one thing to say that the Danes wanted to invade the island, and another to hold it against the pirates. Sigrid’s men would attack a pirate base and move on, only for the pirates to re-establish themselves when the Danes left. After three years of little progress, Sigrid had to commit the resources to actually build castles in key harbors and coves, but the Estonians would attack those castles relentlessly. All in all, it took nearly a decade for the pirates to be neutralized, and Sigrid could focus her efforts on areas in the mainland around the year AD 1120.
There was no rush to expand, just a relentless outward pressure. Each year, the Danes would send soldiers and artisans to bolster the defenses of any settlement that would recognize Sigrid’s authority. More than anything else, she was expanding into areas that were largely a political vacuum. The kingdom of Germany was centered far to the west and south, Polonia was content with their corridor to the sea, and the Russian principalities were engaged in their own concerns to the east. When Olaf, one of the leaders of a tribal confederation, known as the Obotrites, offered to accept Sigrid as his feudal lord, she lept at the opportunity, proclaiming him as the Duke of Pommerania in AD 1122, also known as Pommermark.
The Danes spent much effort in trying to subdue the warlike Prussians, with little success, even after Pommerania fell into their hands. The campaigns into Prussian land were continually repulsed, until focus was shifted further north and east, as the lands of the Livonians were targeted as several smaller tribes started to accept Christ. Sigrid had churches and castles built in their lands, eventually establishing a duchy based in Riga to govern the locals, in AD 1125. Though the land under Danish control would hug the coast, with the support of some locals, the Danes were able to gradually push inward. To the south, another duchy over the Christian Curonians was established in AD 1126, based in the city of Memelborg. Prussia still resisted Danish attacks, but Sigrid was largely satisfied with her successes so far, and worked to extend her control over more of the Livonians, Estonians, and Curonians.
When Queen Sigrid died in AD 1137, predeceased by her husband, King Christopher of England, their son, Henry, would rule over a vast empire that reached from England to the borders with the Russians, all under his rule. Henry, who governed from London and the new capital of Denmark, that came to be called Sigridhagen, did not attempt to expand his realm as his mother had. He looked at the relatively poor lands that he now had to govern, and instead focused on consolidation, sponsoring various monastic orders to establish themselves in his lands, building up ports, and establishing friendly relations with the Russians and Poles, so as to hold onto his mother’s gains. Further warfare for such meager prizes seemed pointless, and governing such a diverse land was difficult enough.
When Polonia asserted hegemony over the Prussians in the 1140s, Henry welcomed the development as the most likely way to pacify the warlike tribe. The Prussians would only very gradually ease back their heathen and warlike ways, continuing to raid the lands of Pommmerania and Curonia, but the Polonian influence began to tell, even if the Prussians persisted in being a nuisance long after Henry’s death.
End
I probably would have done better to put this in the last update, but here it is. The short version is that much of the Baltic Crusades happen about a century early, largely due to an overall more prosperous Europe (between the introduction of maize and the Romans stabilizing the Mediterranean littoral, things look better than in our history). Its not really touched on much here, but just as a reminder, this Germany is a far cry from our Holy Roman Empire. Their borders are contracted on in almost every direction, and they don’t even border the Baltic (but they do have a good chunk of the Netherlands), so thats why I think they wouldn’t be contributing much to the alt-Baltic Crusades here.
The Restititio of 1204
The Restitutio of 1204
The Roman Republic of the 12th century was in the process of retrenchment and centralization, in the wake of the Centralist faction's pre-eminance in Constantinople (the broad political faction that traced its roots to Domenicus Zeno). Their policy of collecting as much power within the confines of the capital was popular, of course, within the city, though it was less so in the outlying regions of the Republic, for self evident reasons. Centralizing power in the capital made more sense for the Romans than almost any other state in history, given the near-perfect situation of that capital. Sitting abroad key trade routes and almost impregnable, it made sense to make the city the cornerstone of the entire political machine. The majority of the Republic did not strain too much under this arrangement, and many border regions actually favored the Centralists, due to their general peaceful foreign policy. With the coup of allying the entirety of the Crusader states at the dawn of the 12th Century, and the diplomatic successes in the Iberian peninsula, it was no small wonder that many saw the idea of the Republic being first and foremost about Constantinople in a favorable light.
However, it was the other core regions of the Empire, particularly Italy, that chaffed under the new order. They were naturally safe from most foreign concerns, and the cities of Italy had been prospering almost continuously since the Lombards and Franks were completely expelled from the peninsula, and the borders of the Roman Republic restored to the Alps. Despite their population and wealth, however, the whole of Italy - just like the rest of the Republic - played second fiddle to Constantinople. Ironically enough, Domenicus Zeno himself was from Italy, before he made his mark in the capital. Because of this dissatisfaction, Italy in particular - and other secure coastal regions within the Mediterranean in general - became gradually more and more restive, as their concerns became increasingly set aside by the political leaders in the capital. A new faction began to coalesce around the interests of several of the maritime cities of the Adriatic, in particular, Venetia, Ragusa, and Ancona, which became known, appropriately enough, as the Adriatic faction. Despite the name, they soon found much support in other regions of Italy and Africa. Their general goal was to reverse the centralizing reforms of the Centralists, and increase the power of the outlying prosperous and heavily Roman regions of the Republic. Their power increased, ironically enough, due to the stability brought by the Centralists, and the large increase in trade that accompanied the re-securing of the Mediterranean, after the success of the Crusades.
The Adriatic and Centralists factions were not the only two power blocs of the era, and there were no less than three different, mutually hostile, factions broadly dedicated to expansionism, either to the east, against the Muslims, to the northeast, against the Cumans (who had by now replaced the far more friendly Pechenegs as the main steppe confederation along the Black Sea coast) and the Rus, or further into the old Roman parts of Europe, either through force of arms or diplomacy, as needed. Though the expansionists could have been considered powerful as a whole, their divided goals meant they played a minimal role in the politics of the era.
The Centralists were not ignorant of the discontent among many powerful people across the Republic, and they did their best to assert a broadly popular foreign policy. When the Cumans began pushing the Pechenegs out of their lands along the coast, around the 1130s, the Republic took in many Pecheneg refugees as mercenaries, settling them along border regions, and the Thematic armies fought a few inconclusive battles in order to blunt the Cuman advance. When the government in Baghdad adopted a more hostile posture towards the Roman client states in Armenia, the armies defended those territories and even managed to secure a sizable indemnity from Baghdad after the Battle of Mosul, in AD 1147. A brief war with Persia was fought in AD 1154 and, while it was not the victory that the Mosul war was, the Thematic armies did still acquit themselves well, and the border was adjusted slightly in favor of several of the pro-Roman Armenian border princes. All these solid performances on the field of battle helped stem the growing calls for a different type of reform than the Centralists were gradually pursuing.
However, the victories couldn't last forever, and the leading figures of the Centralists faction dug their own grave, when war broke out in response to Rus raiding along the Black Sea, in AD 1176. The pre-eminant statesman of the time, Markos Argyros, lead an expedition into the Rus lands, and suffered an ignominous defeat north of the ruins of the ancient Pontic city of Olbia. Argyros' army was cut off from its supplies and trapped against a river, unable to form a solid pike and shield square on the river flank. The Rus had plenty of ships on the river, and were able to disrupt the Roman formation enough from the river itself that the Rus army could then defeat them. Argyros died in the fighting, along with a large portion of the army, the remnants of which limped to Cherson. Adding onto the woes of the Romans, the Cumans took advantage of the weakness and forced the remnants of the Pechenegs to their authority, removing the last vestiges of a key buffer state the Romans had, east of the Carpathians and north of the Danube. From that point on, Roman Thracia was exposed to raiding, and the Romans were fighting against the ever-persistent steppe tribes on their home turf. Their current military structure was based on fighting a heavily cavalry-based army, but was less well suited to facing down raiders that were specifically avoiding them.
Argyros' death was a blow for the Centralists, but he was not the only major figure in their party, and, despite his pre-eminence, he was no monarch, whose death could throw an entire state into disarray. Stepping up to lead the faction, after some brief infighting, was Konstantinos Kamytzes. Kamytzes himself was killed in battle, while successfully defending against the Cumans, in AD 1184, but ably kept the Centralists' agenda from falling apart. After his death, the Centralists began to splinter, though the cracks had been showing even before his death, and historians generally disregard the narrative that they fell from power solely due to the deaths of their leaders.
In the power vacuum, the politics of the Republic began to become increasingly unstable, and the pendulum of policy began to swing back and forth between various extremes. When, in AD 1196, an army led by Konstantinos Taronites was able to trap a large contingent of Cumans and defeat them - partly with the help of a more pro-Roman leadership now in power in Kiev - and secure a reasonable peace with the nomads, many thought that the instability would settle down, particularly after Taronites was elected as Consul following his victory. However, peace only exacerbated the growing factionalism, and political violence began to rear its head in Constantinople and in major cities of the Empire: Rome, Antioch, Nicomedia, Tunes, Venetia, and others. Even the major factions themselves largely broke down by AD 1197, with a brief period of re-organization between AD 1199-1200, as political loyalties were re-oriented.
Though, for the time being, nobody could decide what needed to be done, the consensus was that something did, in fact, need to be done. It was only the instability of the time, so far, that had prevented power from being consolidated enough in the hands of a few leaders to re-institute an Imperial system of government - and even that had some advocates. Ultimately, an assembly of leading jurists, historians, philosophers, clergy, merchants, and magnates from across the Roman world came together, in Thesalonica, in order to see what improvements could be made to the current system. As they decided to work on fixing the flaws in the system, much note should be made to the fact that, ever since the fall of the Empire, in the dark days of the early 8th century, the Republic had run on the gradual formalization of what had been an ad-hoc power sharing agreement in the political turmoil of the time. That organic legacy of political growth had led to all sorts of problems over the years, that were papered over and fixed with short-term solutions, and the Restitution Council - as it came be known by later scholars - noted how that sort of 'quick fix' constitutional evolution led directly to the fall of the First Republic, in the first century, BC.
The Council first noted that there were several key power groupings within the Republic: the landed magnates, the thematic armies, the Church, and the various mercantile and craft interests and guilds. However, the factions of the day themselves did not line up neatly with these power bases, so the general decision was made to find a new structure that would appeal to these power blocs, rather than the existing factions, which were blamed for the chaos of the era. Ultimately, the Church's role was moved to an apolitical mediator between other power blocs - a sensible decision, since the Church structure itself was not synonymous with the borders of the Republic, and there were concerns of putting too much power into the hands of clergy that might not even be Roman, or even speak good Latin or Greek. Thus, the general balance of powers was between the magnates, army, and guilds.
On a geographic scale, the decision was made to reform the organization of the Republic's administrative division, the Theme. By this time, there were around 70 major themes, not counting tiny border regions and other such ad hoc territories, and their use as both civil and military administration was cumbersome in the best of times. The basic unit of a theme would be kept, though they'd be restructured and their borders adjusted (in fact, there was a net gain of official themes by the end of the reforms). Taking a page from Diocletian's reforms, the Council revived the old administrative division of the Prefecture. Each prefecture would have multiple themes, and would be responsible for administering them. The prefecture would be lead by two Prefects, one civil and one military, harkening back to the old days when the civil and military administrations were more separate, and both were appointed by the central government in Constantinople. The themes, meanwhile, would similarly have their authority divided between two men, a Strategos handling military authority, and a Governor handling civil authority, but only the Strategos would be appointed by Constantinople, with the Governor being appointed by the Prefectural administration. Further, each Theme was to maintain an assembly to govern in conjunction with its Governor and Strategos, and each Prefecture was to maintain a similar assembly, from the ranks of the thematic assemblies, to govern in conjunction with the Civil and Military Prefects. In this way, the territories of the Republic were given a tightly controlled channel from which power could flow up to the capital, instead of strictly down from it.
The prefectures established at this time were:
- Mauretania, comprising the western reaches of the North African coast
- Tunes, stretching from Hippo (or Annaba), stopping before Sabratha
- Libya, stretching from Sabratha to the border with Egypt
- Lombardia, the northern part of Italy, centered on the Po
- Latium, the central and southern portion of Italy, centered on Rome
- Dalmatia, similar to the old Diocese of Pannonia and Moesia
- Dacia, covering the trans-Danubian regions, up to the Carpathians
- Thracia, similar to the old Diocese of Thracia, without the Aegean coastline
- Anatolia, covering roughly the western half of the Anatolian peninsula
- Cappadocia, covering the northern portion of the eastern half of the peninsula, into the Caucasus
- Cilicia, covering the southern portion, and into Syria
- Palaestina, covering the small region around Jerusalem that was under Roman control
The territory along the Aegean coastline, including Constantinople, as well as the entirety of Greece, was structured similar to a prefecture, but was titled the Capital Region, and had no prefects, since it was administered directly by the government in Constantinople, and the thematic governments, though identical to their counterparts in the rest of the Republic, had no intermediary between them and Constantinople.
The central government in Constantinople would consist of the Senate and three Assemblies, in addition to the Consulate. The Assemblies would be:
- The Prefectural Assembly, with members sent by the Prefectural administrations
- The Urban Assembly, with members drawn from the leading men of the mercantile and craft interests of Constantinople
- The Military Assembly, with members drawn directly from the military
Thus, respectively, the assemblies represented the interests of the Magnates, Guilds, and Military, more or less directly.
The Consulate, as it had been more or less since the founding of the city of Rome, still consisted of two Consuls (Hypatoi in the Greek), but their election was now a much more elaborate process. The office of Praetor (Praitor) was fully re-instituted, and was composed of 6 men, to serve as junior executives under the 2 Consuls, as in the days of the First Republic, when the Praetors were effectively the workhorses of the government. Each Assembly would elect 3 Praetors, annually, with 1 each eliminated by lot, for the total of 6. From the 6 Praetors of the previous year, 3 would be elected, and 1 eliminated by lot (though the Consul-elect eliminated could not have been originally elected as Praetor by the same assembly whose Consul-elect was eliminated the previous year), to serve as Consuls for the year. A sitting Praetor or Consul was not eligible to be elected Praetor, but that was the only restriction against continuous service, so the more ambitious men could just sit out a year in the Senate and then be elected again.
In addition to the elimination, by lot, of 3 of the Praetors-elect, and 1 of the Consuls-elect, the election process itself incorporated several rounds of voting. Each assembly would have a set number of electors drawn, by lot, from their number, who would vote for the next round of electors, who were reduced by lot again, and who would then vote for another round of electors, again to be reduced by lot. This final group of electors would then elect their 3 Praetors-elect, but each assembly was required to elect 1 of that number from one of the other two assemblies (in even numbered election years, the prefectural assembly had to send one candidate from the urban assembly; the urban, one from the military; the military, one from the prefectural. In odd numbered election years, the order was reversed). Through this rigorous system, factionalism and corruption were weeded out - as well as could be in this time period.
The Senate, meanwhile, was composed of 300 men (one retained the rank of Senator for life, but only 300 sat at any given time). The previous year's Consuls and Preators (those not elected to be Consul) were automatically enrolled into the Senate, as were those Consuls-elect and Praetors-elect that had been eliminated by lot. Thus, each year, 9 new Senators entered the ranks of sitting Senators, and the 9 longest-serving Senators left the body. Any vacancies were filled by vote by the Senate itself. The 5 Patriarchs held Ex Officio seats in the Senate, and usually filled them by proxy; these seats were exempt from the rule of the longest-serving rule, but also did not formally confer the rank of Senator (though the proxies of the Patriarchs were generally Senators in their own right, and it was not unheard of that the Patriarchs themselves were Senators in their own right).
These three branches, Consulate, Senate, and Assemblies, had to work in conjunction with each other. A law could originate in any of the Assemblies, and required the approval of all 3, and then review by the Senate (what, exactly 'review' meant, was a debate not solved for some time), before it could go into effect. The Consulate was responsible for overall executive authority such as the implementation of laws and overall administration and the command of the military. The Senate was the body responsible first and foremost in diplomacy, and had the power to declare war or peace. Each branch had consultative checks on the others, designed to slow, rather than to stop, any action that was deemed unwise.
The Restitution Council presented their proposed reforms to the Republic in the spring of AD 1203, and they were largely accepted by all those in authority at the time. Officially, they went into effect on January 1st, AD 1204 - hence the moniker of 'The Restitutio of 1204.' Overall, the result was a stunning success. It gave each power bloc in society a well structured way to advance their agenda, while also serving to break up concentrated factions within the government. Indeed, by isolating each main power bloc into its own assembly, the Restitutio effectively divided up each power bloc into two rival parties, with little in common with their counterparts in the other two assemblies. Even then, these parties were very transitory and weak, made all the weaker by their lack of reliable access to the Consulate. The Restitutio would endure, with modest changes, as the basic Roman Constitution for several centuries after this time.
End
Don't hate me for being too cute with the year, it just lined up close enough that I had to do it. Basically, I took some elements of the Classical Roman Constitution and Venetian Constitution, as well as a few touches from the American Constitution, and whipped something up. I had more fun composing this entry than any other post in the entire timeline, I think. I might need to draw one of those hand gov't org charts that Wikipedia has, but I hope I conveyed the structure well enough.
The Roman Republic of the 12th century was in the process of retrenchment and centralization, in the wake of the Centralist faction's pre-eminance in Constantinople (the broad political faction that traced its roots to Domenicus Zeno). Their policy of collecting as much power within the confines of the capital was popular, of course, within the city, though it was less so in the outlying regions of the Republic, for self evident reasons. Centralizing power in the capital made more sense for the Romans than almost any other state in history, given the near-perfect situation of that capital. Sitting abroad key trade routes and almost impregnable, it made sense to make the city the cornerstone of the entire political machine. The majority of the Republic did not strain too much under this arrangement, and many border regions actually favored the Centralists, due to their general peaceful foreign policy. With the coup of allying the entirety of the Crusader states at the dawn of the 12th Century, and the diplomatic successes in the Iberian peninsula, it was no small wonder that many saw the idea of the Republic being first and foremost about Constantinople in a favorable light.
However, it was the other core regions of the Empire, particularly Italy, that chaffed under the new order. They were naturally safe from most foreign concerns, and the cities of Italy had been prospering almost continuously since the Lombards and Franks were completely expelled from the peninsula, and the borders of the Roman Republic restored to the Alps. Despite their population and wealth, however, the whole of Italy - just like the rest of the Republic - played second fiddle to Constantinople. Ironically enough, Domenicus Zeno himself was from Italy, before he made his mark in the capital. Because of this dissatisfaction, Italy in particular - and other secure coastal regions within the Mediterranean in general - became gradually more and more restive, as their concerns became increasingly set aside by the political leaders in the capital. A new faction began to coalesce around the interests of several of the maritime cities of the Adriatic, in particular, Venetia, Ragusa, and Ancona, which became known, appropriately enough, as the Adriatic faction. Despite the name, they soon found much support in other regions of Italy and Africa. Their general goal was to reverse the centralizing reforms of the Centralists, and increase the power of the outlying prosperous and heavily Roman regions of the Republic. Their power increased, ironically enough, due to the stability brought by the Centralists, and the large increase in trade that accompanied the re-securing of the Mediterranean, after the success of the Crusades.
The Adriatic and Centralists factions were not the only two power blocs of the era, and there were no less than three different, mutually hostile, factions broadly dedicated to expansionism, either to the east, against the Muslims, to the northeast, against the Cumans (who had by now replaced the far more friendly Pechenegs as the main steppe confederation along the Black Sea coast) and the Rus, or further into the old Roman parts of Europe, either through force of arms or diplomacy, as needed. Though the expansionists could have been considered powerful as a whole, their divided goals meant they played a minimal role in the politics of the era.
The Centralists were not ignorant of the discontent among many powerful people across the Republic, and they did their best to assert a broadly popular foreign policy. When the Cumans began pushing the Pechenegs out of their lands along the coast, around the 1130s, the Republic took in many Pecheneg refugees as mercenaries, settling them along border regions, and the Thematic armies fought a few inconclusive battles in order to blunt the Cuman advance. When the government in Baghdad adopted a more hostile posture towards the Roman client states in Armenia, the armies defended those territories and even managed to secure a sizable indemnity from Baghdad after the Battle of Mosul, in AD 1147. A brief war with Persia was fought in AD 1154 and, while it was not the victory that the Mosul war was, the Thematic armies did still acquit themselves well, and the border was adjusted slightly in favor of several of the pro-Roman Armenian border princes. All these solid performances on the field of battle helped stem the growing calls for a different type of reform than the Centralists were gradually pursuing.
However, the victories couldn't last forever, and the leading figures of the Centralists faction dug their own grave, when war broke out in response to Rus raiding along the Black Sea, in AD 1176. The pre-eminant statesman of the time, Markos Argyros, lead an expedition into the Rus lands, and suffered an ignominous defeat north of the ruins of the ancient Pontic city of Olbia. Argyros' army was cut off from its supplies and trapped against a river, unable to form a solid pike and shield square on the river flank. The Rus had plenty of ships on the river, and were able to disrupt the Roman formation enough from the river itself that the Rus army could then defeat them. Argyros died in the fighting, along with a large portion of the army, the remnants of which limped to Cherson. Adding onto the woes of the Romans, the Cumans took advantage of the weakness and forced the remnants of the Pechenegs to their authority, removing the last vestiges of a key buffer state the Romans had, east of the Carpathians and north of the Danube. From that point on, Roman Thracia was exposed to raiding, and the Romans were fighting against the ever-persistent steppe tribes on their home turf. Their current military structure was based on fighting a heavily cavalry-based army, but was less well suited to facing down raiders that were specifically avoiding them.
Argyros' death was a blow for the Centralists, but he was not the only major figure in their party, and, despite his pre-eminence, he was no monarch, whose death could throw an entire state into disarray. Stepping up to lead the faction, after some brief infighting, was Konstantinos Kamytzes. Kamytzes himself was killed in battle, while successfully defending against the Cumans, in AD 1184, but ably kept the Centralists' agenda from falling apart. After his death, the Centralists began to splinter, though the cracks had been showing even before his death, and historians generally disregard the narrative that they fell from power solely due to the deaths of their leaders.
In the power vacuum, the politics of the Republic began to become increasingly unstable, and the pendulum of policy began to swing back and forth between various extremes. When, in AD 1196, an army led by Konstantinos Taronites was able to trap a large contingent of Cumans and defeat them - partly with the help of a more pro-Roman leadership now in power in Kiev - and secure a reasonable peace with the nomads, many thought that the instability would settle down, particularly after Taronites was elected as Consul following his victory. However, peace only exacerbated the growing factionalism, and political violence began to rear its head in Constantinople and in major cities of the Empire: Rome, Antioch, Nicomedia, Tunes, Venetia, and others. Even the major factions themselves largely broke down by AD 1197, with a brief period of re-organization between AD 1199-1200, as political loyalties were re-oriented.
Though, for the time being, nobody could decide what needed to be done, the consensus was that something did, in fact, need to be done. It was only the instability of the time, so far, that had prevented power from being consolidated enough in the hands of a few leaders to re-institute an Imperial system of government - and even that had some advocates. Ultimately, an assembly of leading jurists, historians, philosophers, clergy, merchants, and magnates from across the Roman world came together, in Thesalonica, in order to see what improvements could be made to the current system. As they decided to work on fixing the flaws in the system, much note should be made to the fact that, ever since the fall of the Empire, in the dark days of the early 8th century, the Republic had run on the gradual formalization of what had been an ad-hoc power sharing agreement in the political turmoil of the time. That organic legacy of political growth had led to all sorts of problems over the years, that were papered over and fixed with short-term solutions, and the Restitution Council - as it came be known by later scholars - noted how that sort of 'quick fix' constitutional evolution led directly to the fall of the First Republic, in the first century, BC.
The Council first noted that there were several key power groupings within the Republic: the landed magnates, the thematic armies, the Church, and the various mercantile and craft interests and guilds. However, the factions of the day themselves did not line up neatly with these power bases, so the general decision was made to find a new structure that would appeal to these power blocs, rather than the existing factions, which were blamed for the chaos of the era. Ultimately, the Church's role was moved to an apolitical mediator between other power blocs - a sensible decision, since the Church structure itself was not synonymous with the borders of the Republic, and there were concerns of putting too much power into the hands of clergy that might not even be Roman, or even speak good Latin or Greek. Thus, the general balance of powers was between the magnates, army, and guilds.
On a geographic scale, the decision was made to reform the organization of the Republic's administrative division, the Theme. By this time, there were around 70 major themes, not counting tiny border regions and other such ad hoc territories, and their use as both civil and military administration was cumbersome in the best of times. The basic unit of a theme would be kept, though they'd be restructured and their borders adjusted (in fact, there was a net gain of official themes by the end of the reforms). Taking a page from Diocletian's reforms, the Council revived the old administrative division of the Prefecture. Each prefecture would have multiple themes, and would be responsible for administering them. The prefecture would be lead by two Prefects, one civil and one military, harkening back to the old days when the civil and military administrations were more separate, and both were appointed by the central government in Constantinople. The themes, meanwhile, would similarly have their authority divided between two men, a Strategos handling military authority, and a Governor handling civil authority, but only the Strategos would be appointed by Constantinople, with the Governor being appointed by the Prefectural administration. Further, each Theme was to maintain an assembly to govern in conjunction with its Governor and Strategos, and each Prefecture was to maintain a similar assembly, from the ranks of the thematic assemblies, to govern in conjunction with the Civil and Military Prefects. In this way, the territories of the Republic were given a tightly controlled channel from which power could flow up to the capital, instead of strictly down from it.
The prefectures established at this time were:
- Mauretania, comprising the western reaches of the North African coast
- Tunes, stretching from Hippo (or Annaba), stopping before Sabratha
- Libya, stretching from Sabratha to the border with Egypt
- Lombardia, the northern part of Italy, centered on the Po
- Latium, the central and southern portion of Italy, centered on Rome
- Dalmatia, similar to the old Diocese of Pannonia and Moesia
- Dacia, covering the trans-Danubian regions, up to the Carpathians
- Thracia, similar to the old Diocese of Thracia, without the Aegean coastline
- Anatolia, covering roughly the western half of the Anatolian peninsula
- Cappadocia, covering the northern portion of the eastern half of the peninsula, into the Caucasus
- Cilicia, covering the southern portion, and into Syria
- Palaestina, covering the small region around Jerusalem that was under Roman control
The territory along the Aegean coastline, including Constantinople, as well as the entirety of Greece, was structured similar to a prefecture, but was titled the Capital Region, and had no prefects, since it was administered directly by the government in Constantinople, and the thematic governments, though identical to their counterparts in the rest of the Republic, had no intermediary between them and Constantinople.
The central government in Constantinople would consist of the Senate and three Assemblies, in addition to the Consulate. The Assemblies would be:
- The Prefectural Assembly, with members sent by the Prefectural administrations
- The Urban Assembly, with members drawn from the leading men of the mercantile and craft interests of Constantinople
- The Military Assembly, with members drawn directly from the military
Thus, respectively, the assemblies represented the interests of the Magnates, Guilds, and Military, more or less directly.
The Consulate, as it had been more or less since the founding of the city of Rome, still consisted of two Consuls (Hypatoi in the Greek), but their election was now a much more elaborate process. The office of Praetor (Praitor) was fully re-instituted, and was composed of 6 men, to serve as junior executives under the 2 Consuls, as in the days of the First Republic, when the Praetors were effectively the workhorses of the government. Each Assembly would elect 3 Praetors, annually, with 1 each eliminated by lot, for the total of 6. From the 6 Praetors of the previous year, 3 would be elected, and 1 eliminated by lot (though the Consul-elect eliminated could not have been originally elected as Praetor by the same assembly whose Consul-elect was eliminated the previous year), to serve as Consuls for the year. A sitting Praetor or Consul was not eligible to be elected Praetor, but that was the only restriction against continuous service, so the more ambitious men could just sit out a year in the Senate and then be elected again.
In addition to the elimination, by lot, of 3 of the Praetors-elect, and 1 of the Consuls-elect, the election process itself incorporated several rounds of voting. Each assembly would have a set number of electors drawn, by lot, from their number, who would vote for the next round of electors, who were reduced by lot again, and who would then vote for another round of electors, again to be reduced by lot. This final group of electors would then elect their 3 Praetors-elect, but each assembly was required to elect 1 of that number from one of the other two assemblies (in even numbered election years, the prefectural assembly had to send one candidate from the urban assembly; the urban, one from the military; the military, one from the prefectural. In odd numbered election years, the order was reversed). Through this rigorous system, factionalism and corruption were weeded out - as well as could be in this time period.
The Senate, meanwhile, was composed of 300 men (one retained the rank of Senator for life, but only 300 sat at any given time). The previous year's Consuls and Preators (those not elected to be Consul) were automatically enrolled into the Senate, as were those Consuls-elect and Praetors-elect that had been eliminated by lot. Thus, each year, 9 new Senators entered the ranks of sitting Senators, and the 9 longest-serving Senators left the body. Any vacancies were filled by vote by the Senate itself. The 5 Patriarchs held Ex Officio seats in the Senate, and usually filled them by proxy; these seats were exempt from the rule of the longest-serving rule, but also did not formally confer the rank of Senator (though the proxies of the Patriarchs were generally Senators in their own right, and it was not unheard of that the Patriarchs themselves were Senators in their own right).
These three branches, Consulate, Senate, and Assemblies, had to work in conjunction with each other. A law could originate in any of the Assemblies, and required the approval of all 3, and then review by the Senate (what, exactly 'review' meant, was a debate not solved for some time), before it could go into effect. The Consulate was responsible for overall executive authority such as the implementation of laws and overall administration and the command of the military. The Senate was the body responsible first and foremost in diplomacy, and had the power to declare war or peace. Each branch had consultative checks on the others, designed to slow, rather than to stop, any action that was deemed unwise.
The Restitution Council presented their proposed reforms to the Republic in the spring of AD 1203, and they were largely accepted by all those in authority at the time. Officially, they went into effect on January 1st, AD 1204 - hence the moniker of 'The Restitutio of 1204.' Overall, the result was a stunning success. It gave each power bloc in society a well structured way to advance their agenda, while also serving to break up concentrated factions within the government. Indeed, by isolating each main power bloc into its own assembly, the Restitutio effectively divided up each power bloc into two rival parties, with little in common with their counterparts in the other two assemblies. Even then, these parties were very transitory and weak, made all the weaker by their lack of reliable access to the Consulate. The Restitutio would endure, with modest changes, as the basic Roman Constitution for several centuries after this time.
End
Don't hate me for being too cute with the year, it just lined up close enough that I had to do it. Basically, I took some elements of the Classical Roman Constitution and Venetian Constitution, as well as a few touches from the American Constitution, and whipped something up. I had more fun composing this entry than any other post in the entire timeline, I think. I might need to draw one of those hand gov't org charts that Wikipedia has, but I hope I conveyed the structure well enough.
Last edited:
Don't worry, I'll only give you some light torture for it...
I’ll respectfully decline your offer, while appreciating the spirit in which is was made.
Finally, a Roman Government that doesn't make me twitchy...
Out of curiosity, what specifcally was so twitch-inducing about the others?
MAP: The Prefectures
For your convenience, I've whipped up a map of the Prefectures. As always, take the precise borders with a grain of salt, I'm just using EU4's map for convenience, not perfect accuracy.
I'm re-listing them, just to save scrolling back and forth. Note that, in the original post, I forgot to include the area around Jerusalem, though that has been fixed.
- Mauretania, comprising the western reaches of the North African coast
- Tunes, stretching from Hippo (or Annaba), stopping before Sabratha
- Libya, stretching from Sabratha to the border with Egypt
- Lombardia, the northern part of Italy, centered on the Po
- Latium, the central and southern portion of Italy, centered on Rome
- Dalmatia, similar to the old Diocese of Pannonia and Moesia
- Dacia, covering the trans-Danubian regions, up to the Carpathians
- Thracia, similar to the old Diocese of Thracia, without the Aegean coastline
- Anatolia, covering roughly the western half of the Anatolian peninsula
- Cappadocia, covering the northern portion of the eastern half of the peninsula, into the Caucasus
- Cilicia, covering the southern portion, and into Syria
- Palaestina, covering the small region around Jerusalem that was under Roman control
- Capital Region (not properly a prefecture) comprising of Greece and the Aegean coastal territories.
I'm re-listing them, just to save scrolling back and forth. Note that, in the original post, I forgot to include the area around Jerusalem, though that has been fixed.
- Mauretania, comprising the western reaches of the North African coast
- Tunes, stretching from Hippo (or Annaba), stopping before Sabratha
- Libya, stretching from Sabratha to the border with Egypt
- Lombardia, the northern part of Italy, centered on the Po
- Latium, the central and southern portion of Italy, centered on Rome
- Dalmatia, similar to the old Diocese of Pannonia and Moesia
- Dacia, covering the trans-Danubian regions, up to the Carpathians
- Thracia, similar to the old Diocese of Thracia, without the Aegean coastline
- Anatolia, covering roughly the western half of the Anatolian peninsula
- Cappadocia, covering the northern portion of the eastern half of the peninsula, into the Caucasus
- Cilicia, covering the southern portion, and into Syria
- Palaestina, covering the small region around Jerusalem that was under Roman control
- Capital Region (not properly a prefecture) comprising of Greece and the Aegean coastal territories.