alternatehistory.com

One of the wealthiest, most populous and most militarily powerful nations on the planet not too long ago, the Ottoman Empire was slowly, but surely, entering a state of decay. Once the great Scourge of Europe, threatening to spill into all of Central Europe if not for Visegrad's valiant defense, this 600 year old Turkish sultanate was now barely able to keep up with it's contemporaries.

The reasons for this weakness were vast. For one, the empire's vast conquests were hard to keep in control. The Ottomans stretched from the Maghreb in the west to Baluchistan in the east, from Wallachia in the north to Yemen in the south. If counted purely by size, the Ottoman Empire was safely in the top three nations of the planet, next to the Mughals and the Shun dynasty. And such a vast territory composed of dozens of nationalities required a massive administrative apparatus - and not only is it very expensive to maintain, but it is prone to corruption, ineffectiveness and decentralization, all three of which happened in the Ottomans. Paradoxically, despite the massive population and many wealthy cities like Constantinople, Alexandria and Baghdad, the empire was barely able to balance it's budget - expansion and thus new wealth stopped coming, the European powers crushed the Barbary pirates and cut off that source of income, while both the military and the bureaucracy were growing more and more costly every day. The decadence of the monarchy should also not be underestimated - instead of focusing on how to run the country better or reforming it, the Sultans were more interested in court intrigue, harems and the conflicts between the Janissaries and the Sipahi. In addition, the empire's neighbours caught up on their military technology, and in many cases surpassed it.

The first territories of the empire to fall were the Maghreb states - Morocco, Algeria and Tunis. These autonomous Sultanates were never fully integrated into Ottoman state, but rather simply declared their allegiance to Constantinople and paid a yearly tribute. Because of the corsair business in the form of the Barbary Slave Trade that the three statelets undertook, they brought a reasonable amount of income to the Sultan, but during the 17th and 18th centuries, the combined efforts of France, Spain, Portugal and a number of Italian states managed to destroy the pirate network, often by taking the fight back at the Maghrebi rulers themselves, for example, by shelling cities to force them to sign peace treaties. Eventually, due to European influence, Ottomans being tied down in other fronts and the large distance between the nations, the Maghreb states parted their own ways, some, like Morocco, cutting their ties without blood shed, others, like Tunis, having to fight a tough conflict before kicking the Turks out.

The Turks had more important matters to deal with, however - for example, the bloody wars they had to fight with their neighbours around this time. In the second half of the 18th century, the Ottoman-Mughal Wars took a turn for the worst, as the Indian forces managed to stop a Turkish invasion at the Battle of Lahore and eventually managed to turn the tide, even reconquering Baluchistan. Subsequent Ottoman attempts to reconquer the lost territory resulted only in failure and more deaths. The industrializing Mughal Empire was becoming more than a match to the Ottomans, but before they could even challenge the Sultan's authority, an another threat arose from the West.

In 1834, after a number of diplomatic mishaps and a rebellion in Banja Luka, the Visegrad-Ottoman War began. In the next three months, the modern Visegradian force easily overwhelmed the poorly trained Turkish conscripts, while the elite forces, like Janissaries, were just not numerous enough to turn the tide. After the siege of the region's capital, Sarajevo, where almost 40 000 Ottoman troops were taken as prisoners of war, the Sultan, Abdülaziz I, agreed to sue for peace, handing over the region of Bosnia to the Visegradians. The vultures above him did not go away, however, as less than a year later, Žygimantas II, the Emperor of Lithuania, rallied his own nation to war with the Ottomans. The Lithuanian-Ottoman War took a slightly different turn - thanks to Lithuania's position as the last powerful Orthodox nation on the planet as well as it's prestige of claiming the title of "Third Rome", the Orthodox peoples under Turkish rule began to rebel. Already exhausted by the war with Visegrad and weakened by opposition in countries like Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, the Turks yielded very quickly, albeit some of their armies put up a tough challenge to Lithuanian forces at the Danube. In the end, Turkey had to cede Dobruja and relinquish control over Wallachia, and both of these territories were merged into Moldavia, a long-time Lithuanian vassal, to create the semi-independent Duchy of Wallachia-Moldavia. An outsider might even start feeling like the Ottomans are being partitioned between the two powers.


However, the Lithuanian-Ottoman War also caused an another event to happen. While the Serbians and Bulgarians were easily calmed down after the war, Greece did not yield so quickly, Even after the war was finished, the Greeks continued fighting, leading to the Greek War of Independence, lasting from 1834 to 1840. At a time, the Greeks controlled most of the Peloponnese and Attica, but Turkish reinforcements pushed them out from the major cities. It was a brutal resistance war that led to thousands of deaths, but at this time of need, the powers of Europe showed their backs to tiny Greece. Outside of a few volunteers, Europe gave no help to tiny Greece, most of the governments would have much rather preferred a strong and stable Ottoman Empire rather than setting the precedent for future rebellions that could destroy the stability in the region and give Visegrad an unfair advantage. Not even Lithuania gave much help, but in their case they were also limited by the logistics - there was no way the Ottomans would let them go through the Bosphorus. France, meanwhile, was more interested in keeping the Paris System intact. Director Edouard de Tassigny famously stated this:

"The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Burgundian chasseur"

After six years of grueling warfare, the rebellion in Greece faded, and the Ottoman rule over the Balkans remained. Despite the defeats against Visegrad and Lithuania, the Ottoman sultans did not consider enacting reforms - it looked like a potential threat to their authority. Industrialization was slow, public resentment against the monarchy was growing, both Republican and Unitarian ideas were growing popular, but the reign of the Turkish emperor continued.

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The next chapter will be a country united without a single drop of blood shed.

It will be the last chapter about foreign countries, and after it, we will move on to art, technology and then some bits about Lithuania.