To be fair, from my view, kinda hard to argue that your son should inherit when you yourself came to power by overthrowing the previous emperor with force. And with the example of all those emperors coming to power the same way, it somehow becomes the defacto succession law.
The eagle's left head
- Thread starter Lascaris
- Start date
That happens in almost all societies. Chinese dynasties are born by overthrowing the previous one. Yet, they tend to last over two hundred fifty years, generally succeeded between father and son. Ironically, only the last Roman Dynasty reached anywhere near that length because there was nothing to fight over anymore, and the Palaiologos staffed the remaining governorships with their family members.
Problem is their society and system is structured that way. When the previous dynasty is overthrown, it is usually in a mess of wars, plagues,natural disasters (most of the time is usually all three together, sounds like a great time to live in). The new dynasty can then claim the old dynasty has 'lost' the mandate of heaven, the Confucian scholars and bureaucracy will simply shrug their shoulders and serve the new guys. Try doing it while the old dynasty is still somewhat functioning and not dunked in a cesspit of incompetence and corruption, and you have illegitimacy shrouding your new dynasty, and the scholars and bureaucracy will definitely start plotting to overthrow you.
The romans ( from what I see) just need to whack their enemies, speedrun to the capital, get the senate(if this thing still exists in the eastern roman empire) to proclaim them emperor, and voila, no problem no illegitimacy. So really shitty succession law if the guy overthrowing the emperor can usually get away with no problems if he succeeds.
With how the civil war ended as per otl, with the Ottomans in the strait and Serbia ready to conquer everything west of Thrace, the ERE's finished as per otl. I just wanna see how the ERE ends ittl instead.
I think with how Barlaam moved to Syracuse that a bunch of intellectuals from not-Thrace would be moving to Syracuse, or at least a bunch would due to the University of Syracuse being a viable option. It would be good for the Lascarids to poach intellectuals in general...
And Turkish sea power is broken here.
I do think that that's good for the Lascarids to deal with the turks first, this will free their navy to be used against Charles and Stefan Dusan in the future. Considering that the pretender in Achaea is dead too. That's just good news for the Lascarids, and I'd wager the navy in Greece would be very good when Dusan comes to fight the Lascarids.
This is the victory they needed. Crushing Charles' army is a very fortunate thing indeed, and even though Charles isn't dead, such a defeat will be very disheartening to the armies of Naples in general. I'd think the nobles would have less want to fight except the tarantines.
Yeah the despotate is just asserting its power over Constantinople at this point, and frankly I don't think the remaining Greeks would choose the ERE considering that the despotate would be the only group that could restore the empire.
The Serbians will very quickly become a problem too. Let's just see how they manage against the Despotate. I do think they'll have the army advanatage, but I think the Despotate could deploy enough troops to do guerrilla warfare until their war in Sicily is finished and push Dusan out of Greece proper I'd think.
Also, when Thessaloniki defects to the Despotate it's going to be a huge prestige blow to the remnant ERE, who is stuck in Thrace and Constantinople at this point. There is no way that the court is seen as fucking incompetent, and history will remember Kantakozenos as one of the worst emperors due to Despotate writings, especially by Palamas in the University of Syracuse. He's literally teaching Syracuse's best, who'll write down a bunch of things that will be remembered by the people in the future.
And the remainder of Sicily rises up against the Angevins. I just wonder if we'd see the Palermitians wanting to form their own state, or the city commune allying with the Despotate and gaining boons (and a short war) due to it. Long term acquiescing to Despotate suzerainty will be advantageous to them. It may be a tough pill to swallow...
With Louis being nudged into war, I wonder if we'd see Louis ally with the Despotate for Basilicata and Aquila/Puglia. It would be good for the Despotate to take those areas, since there're significant Greek minorities in Aquila, and the despotate could persuade Louis by claiming that stripping Aquila of their Tarantine masters by Lascarid hands would be a more permanent solution to weaken them. Basilicata is ofc for defence.
nonetheless why did he think its a good idea to use his Turkish allies to wrest control over the ERE? They're foriegn state actors that had already shown they would conquer roman lands a la Anatolia.
Yep, Philantropenos was a great general, and his descendants will carry the torch and fight for the survival of nova Roma.
I just hope they keep their capital in Syracuse just to ensure that the new empire will be run differently than the ERE.
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The Chinese dynasties had a period like this as well during the Five Dynasties period where any random joe with the support of the army could be emperor. It was not so much caused by shitty succession laws(the succession law had nothing to do with a general rising up against an incumbent emperor, defeat him and purging all of his supporters through military force with a tradition of getting away with it) as opposed to structures in government and society like having a regular army who would be paid locally by the governors, an imperial guard that was controlled by one or two individuals.
The solution? The military was almost completely divorced from the civil government. Provinces had not two governors, but THREE. One guy in charge of the judiciary, one in charge of the military and one in charge of finances. The prefectural government under the provincial one similarly had two governors who could counteract each other. Logistics were organised centrally by the civil government. All of these governors were regularly rotated between provincial and court appointments. Similarly, army units were also frequently rotated around the country including to the capital to prevent local loyalties or attachments to individual commanders.Often, the senior most command would be dominated by bureaucrats who be far less respected by the troops, hence reducing the chance of them rebelling. A powerful central army was organised(at least 200k around the capital), and it’s command was heavily fragmented such that it could be used to put down any revolting generals but it’s command would be too busy dogfighting each other to usurp the throne. The Imperial guard and the central army was divided between four different commands in the capital for instance to pre-empty coups(five if you include the ministry of military affairs).Hostages were taken from senior officers of major commands such that even if their troops wanted to revolt, they would rather kill themselves than to risk their families getting executed.The provincial forces would also be supervised from a distance from two of these commands which included the ministry of military affairs. Generals and soldiers were extremely richly rewarded but put under extreme monitoring by civil officials. Why risk rebellion making another dude emperor if you are already rich?Crack down on big families by introducing the printing press such that knowledge could be taught cheaply, lessening reliance on a few selective families that could have individual means to organize revolts.Promote service in the civil administration greatly such that the most ambitious lot would seek joining the civil administration instead of the army. In order to revolt, you would need structures to be tore down due to chaos first.
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Other way around, Its Barlaam of Calabria(or I guess Syracuse TTL) that is in Syracuse, Palamas and his followers are all buddy-buddy with Kantacouzenos as per OTL and the Vatatzes are pro-Barlaamites/latin rite in the hesychast controversy, heck the synod in Athens denounced the patriarch in Constantinople as a usurper, which is by the way, a possible route to favor with the Pope.
RIP Alexios
Things are heating up for the Regno. These 2,000 mercenaries, that's practically an open alliance even if that's not official.
They never learn, do they?
The new disaster at Imera river is crippling but hardly fatal in itself, since we saw Mela river the year before a huge blow as well.
But add to that the crushing defeat at Capo d'Orlando giving the Lascarids de facto control of the Tyrrhenian sea - with it the ability to interdict any communication between Palermo and Naples -, and the Second Vespers, and you get yourself a promenade into the Val di Mazarra.
The Angevin have not coherent standing army left to oppose Lascarid advance in Sicily after the twin blows of Mela and Imera, and what's left is stuck in garrisons defending against either rebels or Lascarids, without possibility of relief and reinforcement from the Regno, and so left to be picked up one by one through 1348. With benefit of hindsight as well, I surmise that come 1348, Charles III will be busy dealing with the Hungarians, so won't have much to spare for Sicily and will have to write it off; besides, raising a third army, after two crushing defeats and the Florentine bankruptcies will surely be very, very hard to pull off.
The only thing that would significantly slow down the Lascarids would be the bubonic plague, but as long as Grypaios keeps control of the Tyrrhenian sea, it's more or less a settled affair.
But between reducing holdouts in Val di Mazara and retaking lost ground in Calabria, I don't see the Lascarids being able to shift back their resources in full to Greece and face the Serbs before the campaign season of 1349. They will have to play for time as well as they did so far, and they don't lack castles and fortified cities to tie down the Serbs in siege (it still took eleven months for 20,000 Serbs to besiege and take Durazzo in 1344-1345), and Lascarid commanders won't be as easy to coerce into submission as Byzantine governors left to their own devices and demoralized/disaffected/disillusioned by civil war and decades of overall decline.
Plus, now that the Lascarid are officious allies of Hungary, they can potentially open a second front in the north.
That should not escape Dusan, even if Louis is momentaneously distracted in Naples, but he won't be able to ignore it forever, and if he gambles his way into invading Lascarid Thessaly, he would need to hope he can overwhelm it fast, before Louis returns from Naples.
And if things go similarly to OTL, there will be political stability for the next 20 years.
So the lost islands are or soon will be recovered.
And the Genoese will have to depend on the Despotate without a base in the Aegean. At this point, with half of Sicily and Chios in lascarid hands, the Black Sea Slave Trade is even more important for Genoa. And the only rival in this trade route is Venice.
That's the proper end for the Belisarius of the Palaiologan (in TTL Lascarid) Era. To go with a bang with his greatest victory.
Interesting... Very very interesting.
The Lascarids have naval supremacy, if the Angevins stay in the cities they will die either from the plague or the rebels and if they venture against Theodore they will have to take on a vastly superior army. All and all, it seems that in a few months, all of Sicily will be in Theodore's hands.
There was a time when Venice could have been a mortal threat and that time has passed by the arrival of the Black Death. Let me elaborate.
Everybody will greatly suffer from the plague. Every state will face demographic collapse. But some states will fare worse. When a state is highly urbanized, with most of the population living in a huge urban center, that state will suffer more. Venice is a prime example of that. Even before the plague, Venice would use extensively greek and dalmatian naval manpower. Right after the plague, Venice absolutely depends on it. In contrast, the more rural and wide-spread demographics of the Despotate would mean that it will suffer somewhat less compared to the Serenissima.
We don't know details, but I bet that the War of the Straits was fought with the majority of the crews being from Dalmatia, Euboea, Crete, Cyclades and mercenaries from the many neutral states around the Aegean: the Principality of Achaea, Duchy of Athens, County Palatine of Cephalonia, Angevin Apulia and Corfu, even the Hospitaller Dodecanese. Now Apulia and Corfu have been taped out to assist the angevin war effort, Cyclades belong to Theodore and all the rest of the latin statelets have been incorporated to the Despotate. The Venetians cannot access that naval manpower.
In OTL the Genoese could not seriously threaten Euboea and Crete. Not the Lascarids though. Euboea would be very tough to defend against the mainland, unless a major squadron is permanently in Negroponte. Post-plague Venice simply cannot afford such luxury, since they would have to fight for the Straights and the Black Sea trade, for Crete and for Modon and Coron. So, Euboea is the weak link. And then we have Crete that I expect to have some sort of revolt if Venice fight the Despotate. If anything it will be a resource sinkhole trying to hold it and not a net resource provider.
And then there is the nail on the coffin: Lajos. Since we didn't have an update on the Siege of Zara, I guess that Lajos was defeated as in OTL. He didn't take well that defeat that only increased his Adriatic ambitions. In 1358 he would return and recover Dalmatia for the Crown of St Stephen. If there is an earlier major war between Venice and the Despotate, he may very well return sooner.
The 1350s Venice will be in its weakest it has been in a very long time.
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In this timeline, I think he's going to be extremely highly regarded among historians (not least because he never made any moves to seize the throne for himself despite the enormous level of power and influence that he was given). The fact that his final battle had such a one-sided outcome is only going to add to his reputation. The Belisarius of the 14th Century for sure.
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There have been two major battles against the Anatolian Beyliks. I guess Philanthropenos has hundreds or even a few thousand Greek rowers and sailors as prisoners. Is Theodore adhering to the policy of settling Greek prisoners in Sicily ?
Val di Mazara is incredibly lucky. Frederick's msimanagement, the constant wars and now the plague will result in a naster demographic collapse than in OTL. I guess there will be a trickle of settlers from across the Ionian Sea for years, decades even.
It just dawned me that some of the potential butterflies of having a Holy Synod in Athens condemning Palamas will influence the Zealots. The Zealots had a certain religious aspect. They had attacked the kantakouzenists while bearing Crosses as symbols instead of flags. They were enemies of the hesychasts and they would forcefully re-baptize opponents in the middle of the streets. By all means they considered themselves as true Orthodox and their enemies close to heretics. Now there is a Holy Synod that condemns the mystics. We know that Zealot Thessaloniki controlled at least the western half of Chalkidiki for some time. The hesychast Athos monasteries were by far the biggest landowners of Chalkidiki , controlling much of the province. The Zealots have now the perfect legal excuse to take this land and distribute it to army pronoias. I can also see them trying to reclaim the rest of Chalkidiki , perhaps with Philanthropenos assistance.
I will only note that Venice is about to be hit by a 6.9 Richter earthquake in January 1348.
Possibly though I wonder how that is affected by the composition of the Turkish fleets, ie the propensity of light craft in them. Which would mean in most of the smaller ships the marines double as rowers as well.
Val di Mazzara ends up with a post black death population of 21,037 hearths in OTL. Its 1277 population was 69,830 hearths... this is going down from roughly 350,000 to just over 105,000.
Let me note the synod took place in Hagios Stefanos monastery (no idea where that was I'd presume in the village outside Constantinople) in July 1347 in OTL with 22 bishops participating. Isidorus promptly called a new synod in August that deposed all anti-Palamite bishops. Only TTL the anti-Palamites have political support of their own unlike OTL.
With the war still raging and the dangers of moving large numbers of people from the Aegean over to Sicily I would've thought they'd be dropped off either on Rhodes or mainland Greece
ah tru, I changed the name. I was talking about Barlaam, not Palamas.
Yeah, Grypaios is basically going keep the seaways between Italy and Greece under lock and key, and take the rest of the Aegean that was once Turkish.
tbf is all of angevin Greece taken by the lascarids at this point?
I think the Lascarids commanders in Greece would hold out (with a substantial army around 10000 to 20000 strong) to hold out until the Lascarids get rid of Charles and co in mainland Italy (and maybe conquer Basilicata and Aquila), and then they go on the offensive. It's not like Serbia has any navy to prevent these movements, and the Lascarids can strike behind the lines especially with their new cannonry and land armies behind Serbian lines too (and in Thessaloniki too).
Yeah, I think Dusan would gamble that he'd be able to crush the lascarids before they finish with Louis, which isn't a bad gamble at all. Dusan would be harder to deal with than Charles, and the only thing is more 'when' he would act against the despotate than 'if'. I just hope the Lascarids get Bari and Puglia before Dusan comes down to deal with them.
He really would be compared to belisarius wouldn't he? He was one of the architects of the early despotate, and fought against multiple groups in Sicily and Greece to build the nucleus that would become the (new) new Rome.
I think a bunch of ppl would think he's better than Belisarius. After all, Belisarius' conquests were lost quickly after his death. Alexios' fights in Greece cemented the despotate in the Balkans, and will ensure that the Lascarids could strike back when the time is right.
Yeah I think the zealots would probably become more and more close to the Despotate, to the point where Zealot-controlled areas are basically Despotate areas too, since Dusan would be coming down, and if they're holed up in Thessaloniki I'd think the Despotate would have enough pull to just make the city under their control. After all the zealots would be isolated if the Despotate ditches them.
I don't think it'll get to that point tho. I think the Zealots will join the despotate gladly at the end.
How would things change if that's the case? An anti-constantinople kinda autocephalous church in Syracuse?
I wonder if Sicily would become more Greek after this bc a lot of the original inhabitants died while greek settlers come in, and settlers of different Romance languages come in and use greek as a mutual lingua franca.
Charles III may not be finished yet, but the last setbacks and the probable doom of the last Angevin holdings in Sicily (Val di Mazara) and Greece (Corfu at least), the Hungarians getting more hostile, and with the succession and Joanna's reign looking to be as troubled as OTL, mean all that in the near future, the Despotate will be secure from threat in Italy, and thus free to focus its energies in the Balkans, the Aegean and eventually Anatolia.
That means dealing with the Serbs (where they stand to gain at least Epirus and the remains of Byzantine Thessaly, Thessaloniki's hinterland ie a good chunk of southern Macedonia and Chalkidiki), with the Ottomans after them (John V might well ask Lascarid protection instead of swearing fealty to the Ottomans), and the Turkish beyliks (interest of seizing pirate bases in Smyrna, Ephesus, etc).
That means dealing with the Serbs (where they stand to gain at least Epirus and the remains of Byzantine Thessaly, Thessaloniki's hinterland ie a good chunk of southern Macedonia and Chalkidiki), with the Ottomans after them (John V might well ask Lascarid protection instead of swearing fealty to the Ottomans), and the Turkish beyliks (interest of seizing pirate bases in Smyrna, Ephesus, etc).
I think for the Lascarids it's about keeping Lascarid Greece rn bc they just have finished dealing with Charles and will have to (or will) have to deal with the Venetians soon after.
I think waiting until Stefan's death and subsequent fragmention of his empire to conquer it all will be better. It allows for Lascarid lands to recover post Angevin and Venetian wars and the black death, and to sieze opportunities when they present themselves.
I feel like this should not just be glossed over... Kantakouzenos has just seen his reforms he had done with Andronikos III turn away a marauding army on its own. I wonder whether his reforms in Thrace were continued by Apokaukos? Would we see Thrace more centralized to the point that an Ottoman landing is butterflied away, or at least contested physically rather than diplomatically?
Uhg, Andronikos III is turning in his grave... @Lascaris don't suppose you know if Anchialus is one of the 'forts' turned over in the exchange with Bulgaria?
I think the Zealots would just straight up become part of the Despotate instead as Dusan has conquered most of the hinterland.
I mean his wife and best friend fought a civil war and said best friend brought so many turks over I wonder why don't more people see Kantakozenos as one of the worst leaders of the empire. Frankly, I think that he'd be happy that his aunt's descendants will revive the empire.
Remembering this. Now that John VI has emerged on top, I'm curious to see what happens to that debt and to the crown jewels as well.
That's not like we are short one or two motives of contention between Syracuse and Constantinople.
Also, considering that attack by Vignoso, and the end of the civil war in Genoa, is it possible to consider that the OTL Byzantine-Genoese war of 1348-1349 breaks out a year early ITTL?
@X Oristos, I think, made a good point of how weaker Genoa's position in the Aegean due to the Laskarids and the importance of the Black Sea Trade. The attack on Lesvos may have been a development of this, but I don't imagine that Ioannis VI will let it pass unanswered, and Genoese positions in Galata might become precarious and tempting a target for retribution.
On one hand, if that happens that early, Ioannis VI would have much less time to rebuild a fleet to take on the Genoese, but on the other, Vignoso has just been defeated and the Genoese can only operate in the region at the pleasure of Theodore and his Katepan in Hellas. Will he able to take on that window of opportunity to take on Galata?
I'd think that given current relations between the Laskarids and the Kantakouzenos family, and since Genoa has been a good ally worth cultivating, Athens will not mind letting the Genoese use Chios. In turn that would only incite Ioannis VI to get in touch with the Venetians, even though after the siege of Zara, the plague and an earthquake hitting them in short succession, one might wonder what help they might actually offer (Neapolitan Angevins would be happy to help, but they'd also have to account for the Hungarians in this equation).
Will he also press and support Dusan to attack, or divert, into Lascarid Hellas in retribution for Lascarid support of Genoa (and of Thessaloniki Commune, and the anti hesychast synod in Athens, ...) ? Or put otherwise, are the bridges burned between Theodore and Ioannis VI?