A Different Chalice - A Hussite Timeline
- Thread starter Salvador79
- Start date
Cont.:
While both rivalling sultans, respectively the strong men behind them, managed to keep the cores of their empires together in spite of attempted subversion, control over the periphery began to crumble after a few years. For the now early adolescent Bayezid II. and Gedik Ahmet Pasha, this meant only a certain degree of instability in Anatolia. For Sultan Orhan and his Grand Vizier Iskender, though, the situation, while still better than their opponents`, aggravated faster, threatening to turn their relative advantages into disadvantage. A new sort of unrest shook Moldova [1] and threatened to spread. Serbian and Wallachian contingents, indispensable for the Western half`s military prowess, were increasingly needed “at home”. The decision was forced upon Iskender.
And Iskender decided ingeniously. Instead of wasting energies on attempting to suppress the novel type of rebellion, he skimmed off the fat of the situation and recruited quite a lot of these “rezış” [2] as auxiliary forces in his Anatolian invasion of September 1460.
Iskender mustered over 40,000 soldiers, and his topçular had an impressive array of cannons. Genoese ships, who had sold weaponry, gunpowder and the like to both sides over the past couple of years, helped secure the crossing of the Hellespont by Iskender`s army. Gedik Ahmet had long been made aware of the invasion plans by his spies, and he had prepared blockades on the way to Bursa. Repeatedly, small contingents attempted to ambush the baggage train, attempting to prevent Iskender from arriving at Bursa with his heaviest artillery. But to no avail: Iskender was far too cunning to fall into such traps, and on September 22nd, he laid siege to his rival`s capital.
Bursa fell after three weeks to Iskender`s superior weaponry and numbers and to internal indecision, too. Gedik Ahmet and the young sultan and his brother were, once again, able to escape to the East. But as Iskender secured the coastline, subduing town after town, a number of beys hitherto loyal to Bayezid switched to Orhan`s side in the last months of 1460, and as 1461 dawned, and Iskender`s army began to close in on their rivals` holdouts, Gedik Ahmet and the now 14-year old Bayezid II. fled for a last time – this time to Mamluk-controlled Cilicia and from there across the Levante to Egypt.
By 1461, the Ottoman Empire was reunited under Sultan Orhan, an utterly uncharismatic person who had Iskender to thank for for his new position of power and glory, and who soon assembled a new court in Edirne, relying to a great extent on the administrative structures which his predecessors had created and which had survived the years of the interregnum relatively untouched at least in the Thracian, Thessalian and Western Anatolian core lands of the Empire. Ultimately, Orhan got himself up to orchestrating Iskender`s assassination one year after their common victory over Gedik Ahmet and Iskender - the man simply had too much of an agenda, and his mere charismatic presence threw too sharp a light on the pale sultan. Orhan would reign for another seventeen years, which saw only very few fundamental changes to the structure of Ottoman state and society. Orhan - who had grown up and lived for decades in Constantinople in a position of comfortable idle waiting - concentrated on other things, things he felt more at home with than the cutthroat politics of his place and time. He wrote a number of philosophical, legal, and theological treatises. And in spite of his relatively advanced age, he still fathered three sons with two wives. When he died in 1478, another regency, strife, and factional warfare ensued, in what had become, by now, an unfortunate pattern of Ottoman succession.
[1] More on that in the last regional update.
[2] Again, more on that in the next update. Anyone`s free to speculate on what they are, though ;-)
* * *
While things had gone exceedingly well for the usurping sultan and his scheming general Iskender, the same cannot be said for the latter`s namesake, the Grand Duke of Lithuania. A lasting division of the Ottoman Empire would have served Lithuania`s interests in the region perfectly, especially its attempt to control as much of North-Eastern Europe`s trade with the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean as possible. To this end, Aleksandras had loyally supported Bayezid II., not only with words, but also with men and weaponry, because he, adequately, deemed the latter`s forces as weaker than the Rumelian ones. But having been unable to maintain the Ottoman stalemate, Aleksandras now saw a hostile group of men in control of the entire Ottoman Empire. In addition to that, the Vlach-speaking lands had begun to turn into a powderkeg, and the friendship with the Khan of the Crimea had faltered, too. And in 1463, the Khanate of Kazan and the Republic of Novgorod, still allies at this point, began coordinated attacks in the form of large raids deep into Lithuanian territory – both from the North and from the East. Aleksandras was able to beat these irregular armies back after a few months, first the Novgorodian ushkuyniki, then the Tatars. But now he faced the necessity of stepping up the measures to secure the borderlands – which meant either collecting taxes to have a permanent mobile centralized force available which could quickly and competently beat back and pursue even massive raids on several fronts at once. This would be the Ottoman model, and it would anger primarily the urban population. Or he could redistribute land grants and titles from people who had been evidently incapable of holding the line at the border, and give them to capable fighters and their leaders. The latter was the classical medieval option, and it would anger a lot of the established post-Rus` nobility of the East, who were close of kin to Aleksandras in many cases and who stood by him most loyally.
Thus, Aleksandras chose the former option in 1464 – and sowed the seeds of wrath, which would wash over his empire when he died three years later, his Eastern Strategy a political failure, and his realm, too, infiltrated by a new “virus”…
The next update is definitely going to be on what I´ve been alluding to. Unfortunately, we`ll be moving to a different town over the next weeks, so in all likelihood, it will take quite a while for that update to be written.
Still, the Ottoman Empire has diverged significantly from OTL by now. Constantinople still limps on (I haven`t mentioned them post-1453 because they`re really not all that important geopolitically and because there`s certainly no need for a prolonged-Byzantium story sequence on this board, especially since mine would have been rather superficial. Let your imagination run wild as to what Constantine XI does, who follows him, and how things develop there.). This means the status of Ottoman sultans isn`t quite as glorious and formidable as IOTL. The tradition of killing all your brothers has not been successfully established - instead, Ottoman succession takes on a pattern which even contemporaries must have considered dysfunctional. Also, besides no Ottoman Constantinople, there`s also no Sephardic Jews arriving in the Ottoman lands like IOTL. In conclusion, the Ottoman Empire of TTL looks a lot less urban.
While both rivalling sultans, respectively the strong men behind them, managed to keep the cores of their empires together in spite of attempted subversion, control over the periphery began to crumble after a few years. For the now early adolescent Bayezid II. and Gedik Ahmet Pasha, this meant only a certain degree of instability in Anatolia. For Sultan Orhan and his Grand Vizier Iskender, though, the situation, while still better than their opponents`, aggravated faster, threatening to turn their relative advantages into disadvantage. A new sort of unrest shook Moldova [1] and threatened to spread. Serbian and Wallachian contingents, indispensable for the Western half`s military prowess, were increasingly needed “at home”. The decision was forced upon Iskender.
And Iskender decided ingeniously. Instead of wasting energies on attempting to suppress the novel type of rebellion, he skimmed off the fat of the situation and recruited quite a lot of these “rezış” [2] as auxiliary forces in his Anatolian invasion of September 1460.
Iskender mustered over 40,000 soldiers, and his topçular had an impressive array of cannons. Genoese ships, who had sold weaponry, gunpowder and the like to both sides over the past couple of years, helped secure the crossing of the Hellespont by Iskender`s army. Gedik Ahmet had long been made aware of the invasion plans by his spies, and he had prepared blockades on the way to Bursa. Repeatedly, small contingents attempted to ambush the baggage train, attempting to prevent Iskender from arriving at Bursa with his heaviest artillery. But to no avail: Iskender was far too cunning to fall into such traps, and on September 22nd, he laid siege to his rival`s capital.
Bursa fell after three weeks to Iskender`s superior weaponry and numbers and to internal indecision, too. Gedik Ahmet and the young sultan and his brother were, once again, able to escape to the East. But as Iskender secured the coastline, subduing town after town, a number of beys hitherto loyal to Bayezid switched to Orhan`s side in the last months of 1460, and as 1461 dawned, and Iskender`s army began to close in on their rivals` holdouts, Gedik Ahmet and the now 14-year old Bayezid II. fled for a last time – this time to Mamluk-controlled Cilicia and from there across the Levante to Egypt.
By 1461, the Ottoman Empire was reunited under Sultan Orhan, an utterly uncharismatic person who had Iskender to thank for for his new position of power and glory, and who soon assembled a new court in Edirne, relying to a great extent on the administrative structures which his predecessors had created and which had survived the years of the interregnum relatively untouched at least in the Thracian, Thessalian and Western Anatolian core lands of the Empire. Ultimately, Orhan got himself up to orchestrating Iskender`s assassination one year after their common victory over Gedik Ahmet and Iskender - the man simply had too much of an agenda, and his mere charismatic presence threw too sharp a light on the pale sultan. Orhan would reign for another seventeen years, which saw only very few fundamental changes to the structure of Ottoman state and society. Orhan - who had grown up and lived for decades in Constantinople in a position of comfortable idle waiting - concentrated on other things, things he felt more at home with than the cutthroat politics of his place and time. He wrote a number of philosophical, legal, and theological treatises. And in spite of his relatively advanced age, he still fathered three sons with two wives. When he died in 1478, another regency, strife, and factional warfare ensued, in what had become, by now, an unfortunate pattern of Ottoman succession.
[1] More on that in the last regional update.
[2] Again, more on that in the next update. Anyone`s free to speculate on what they are, though ;-)
* * *
While things had gone exceedingly well for the usurping sultan and his scheming general Iskender, the same cannot be said for the latter`s namesake, the Grand Duke of Lithuania. A lasting division of the Ottoman Empire would have served Lithuania`s interests in the region perfectly, especially its attempt to control as much of North-Eastern Europe`s trade with the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean as possible. To this end, Aleksandras had loyally supported Bayezid II., not only with words, but also with men and weaponry, because he, adequately, deemed the latter`s forces as weaker than the Rumelian ones. But having been unable to maintain the Ottoman stalemate, Aleksandras now saw a hostile group of men in control of the entire Ottoman Empire. In addition to that, the Vlach-speaking lands had begun to turn into a powderkeg, and the friendship with the Khan of the Crimea had faltered, too. And in 1463, the Khanate of Kazan and the Republic of Novgorod, still allies at this point, began coordinated attacks in the form of large raids deep into Lithuanian territory – both from the North and from the East. Aleksandras was able to beat these irregular armies back after a few months, first the Novgorodian ushkuyniki, then the Tatars. But now he faced the necessity of stepping up the measures to secure the borderlands – which meant either collecting taxes to have a permanent mobile centralized force available which could quickly and competently beat back and pursue even massive raids on several fronts at once. This would be the Ottoman model, and it would anger primarily the urban population. Or he could redistribute land grants and titles from people who had been evidently incapable of holding the line at the border, and give them to capable fighters and their leaders. The latter was the classical medieval option, and it would anger a lot of the established post-Rus` nobility of the East, who were close of kin to Aleksandras in many cases and who stood by him most loyally.
Thus, Aleksandras chose the former option in 1464 – and sowed the seeds of wrath, which would wash over his empire when he died three years later, his Eastern Strategy a political failure, and his realm, too, infiltrated by a new “virus”…
The next update is definitely going to be on what I´ve been alluding to. Unfortunately, we`ll be moving to a different town over the next weeks, so in all likelihood, it will take quite a while for that update to be written.
Sorry to disappoint you here. There were a few interregna and struggles for the throne in Ottoman history, but no lasting partition. The centripetal forces of the state apparatus, and the self-concept and identity of the military elite, not to speak of the important factor of a centralised elite infantry like the janissaries, all made such a partition somewhat unlikely. Not quite impossible, which is why Aleksandras of Lithuania had the same hope which you espoused. But I thought the more likely outcome would be the stronger side prevailing over the other and reuniting the two parts.
Still, the Ottoman Empire has diverged significantly from OTL by now. Constantinople still limps on (I haven`t mentioned them post-1453 because they`re really not all that important geopolitically and because there`s certainly no need for a prolonged-Byzantium story sequence on this board, especially since mine would have been rather superficial. Let your imagination run wild as to what Constantine XI does, who follows him, and how things develop there.). This means the status of Ottoman sultans isn`t quite as glorious and formidable as IOTL. The tradition of killing all your brothers has not been successfully established - instead, Ottoman succession takes on a pattern which even contemporaries must have considered dysfunctional. Also, besides no Ottoman Constantinople, there`s also no Sephardic Jews arriving in the Ottoman lands like IOTL. In conclusion, the Ottoman Empire of TTL looks a lot less urban.
Here`s a last text I´ve managed to put out before the big break and my family`s move - a first part of a new update, highlighting a region perhaps not too well-known, so I´ve given a bit of OTL background description, too.
The Răzeşii and Other Radical Groups in Central and Eastern Europe 1458-1500
The 15th century was uniquely ripe with radical, revolutionary religious heresies across the Christian world. The Hussite revolution, which culminated around 1420, and the Cusanist Schism a good decade later, in whose tidal wave new radical groups had formed, too, would not be the last such eruptions.
It is important to stress both the inter-relatedness of these different religious revolutions AND their spatio-temporal separateness, which caused each revolution to take on distinct cultural, social and political characteristics. While, for example, it is beyond doubt that Radical Reformism in South-West Germany and in Frisia were influenced by Hussite thoughts, especially on direct popular rule and control over the clergy, but also concerning the questions of the lay chalice, of transubstantiation, and of liturgy in the vernacular, the differences between the Bohemian movement, which had clear proto-nationalist overtones in an environment where a German minority had enjoyed privileges and power of Slavic-speaking majorities, and their Swabian or Galician or Frisian successors, whose revolutions carried no such nationalist overtones in ethno-linguistically homogeneous environments.
The revolution which broke out in 1458 in Moldova was, likewise, influenced by various preceding movements: by the Hussites (and their Slovakian and Rusynian equivalents, the Bratrici), who had found new Eastern bases of operation and nuclei for expansion in the post-Babolna Transilvanian state officially established in 1439, from the West, but also by wandering Strigolnik preachers from the Orthodox North, and even by Muslim heretics from the Dobrugea in the South-East, sons and daughters of escaped adherents of Sheikh Bedreddin, the leader of an egalitarian revolt in Anatolia during an earlier Ottoman interregnum.
At once, the phenomenon of the rebellious group who would soon come to call themselves “răzeşii” (Romanian for “free men” or “yeomen”) was also a result of the specific socio-political circumstances found in the short-lived Principality of Moldova.
150 years earlier, the region which would become the Principality of Moldova towards the end of the 14th century was a peripheral territory of the Golden Horde, inhabited by an extremely heterogeneous mixture of transhumant herdsmen and agriculturalists who spoke Turkic (mostly Cuman and Pecheneg), East Slavic, or Romance languages.
With the reconsolidation of the Hungarian Kingdom and its attempt to create a buffer zone against nomadic invasions from the steppe, new groups were settling East of the Carpathians at the invitation of the Kings who wore the crown of Saint Stephen. Among them were a few speakers of Hungarian and German, but the majority of these newcomers were Vlachs [1] from Maramaros / Maramureş.
Since the lands they settled were border marches, or in fact a march beyond the fixed Hungarian border which ran through the Carpathians, and by no means uninhabited, the newcomers were a defiant lot: armed shepherds and farmers who were willing and able to defend their village communities and new-claimed territories [2], led by people who may with good reason be called warlords.
Their arrival in the lands which they would call Moldova, after the Vlachian name of a river which ran through it, cannot have been of a peaceful nature, but we have very little textual or archeological sources speaking to us about this period, so any judgment on this period is questionable.
The social and political structures which resulted from these occupations, though, are well-documented and explained. The warlords of Moldova, following a similar shift in the meaning of the word in the slightly earlier founded Principality of Wallachia, called themselves “boierii” (boyars), a term which had traditionally meant “wealthy people” or “village leaders” [3]. In the (likely frequent) military confrontations (whether both in internal land-grabbing conflicts or only in defense against “Tatar” raids is unclear), the boyars needed trained warriors, too, beyond the peasant militia they would frequently call upon. Often, the resources needed for keeping up a standing force of retainers were drawn from the villages of those previous inhabitants of the land who had been subdued in military conflicts, their village and lands being transferred into the boyar`s property, and they themselves reduced to the inferior status of “miobagi” (serfs).
With these economic and military resources at hand, the boyars became an extremely powerful group of people. To sanction and legalise their land-grabs, they elected, from the very beginning, supreme leaders from among themselves, in whom they invested the juridical power to award property to themselves, to settle property disputes and other feuds, and to lead their combined forces in times of major war. These supreme warlords they called, by a name used by their West Slavic speaking neighbours, “voievods”.
The first of these voievods are given to us by the sparse sources from the 14th century as Dragoş and Bogdan. As the new structures consolidated in Moldova, though, more and more sources speak of evidently more self-confident voievods of Moldova: beginning with Petru who, in 1387, renounced Hungarian overlordship and forged an alliance with Poland instead, in an attempt to increase the country`s independence by pursuing swing diplomacy. Hungarian expeditions seeking to bring the unruly march back under Hungarian control repeatedly failed. Thus emerged as an independent state the principality plainly named “Ţara Moldovei” (land of the Moldova).
As the new country consolidated its structures under the reign of voievod Alexandru, the boyars held onto their lands, privileges and powers – and after Alexandru`s death, they increased their power with every conspiracy which brought down a voievod who sought to concentrate too much power on himself. Below them, the răzeşii (yeomen) initially still retained their liberties, while the Southward expansion of the country down to the Black Sea coast (“Ţara de Jos”, the low country) brought a greater number of unfree serfs under the power of Moldovan boyars and voievods. Around this time, the first groups of foreigners the likes of which these lands had never seen before, who appear in the sources as “aţigani” or “aţingani”, appear, too: some of them as free craftsmen with renowned blacksmithing skills, others as slaves brought from skirmishes, raids, and purchases in Southern regions.
From the 1420s on, and especially after Alexandru`s death in 1432, the country became more and more of a buffer state between Hungary, the Ottomans and Poland/Lithuania. Here, the interests of the greater powers colluded with the interests of the boyars, who were bent on maintaining and increasing their privileges and power. And so, one boyar coup supported by Ottomans which removed a voievod who had been a vassal of Hungary was followed by another boyar coup supported by Poland which removed the Ottoman vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by Hungary which removed the Polish vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by the Ottomans to remove the Hungarian vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by the Lithuanians to remove the Ottoman vassal, followed…. [4]
Almost three decades of incessant coups and counter-coups saw frequent shifts in property allotments to boyars – and increasingly also land grants which encroached on the rights of the răzeşii, right down to the allotment and consequent enserfment of entire former yeomen villages who had supported one voievod by the next voievod.
First bouts of unrest erupted in the 1430s and 1440s, but they were all soon absorbed by one faction or another who recruited rebelling peasants in their civil war, swapping the fates of liberty and servitude of one village against another. [5]
It was not until the 1450s, though, when Hussite / Bratrici preachers and especially groups belonging to the Hussite military Orders from Bohemia and Moravia, from Slovakia, from the Carpathian Rusyn communities and from post-Babolna Transilvania arrived in greater number in Moldova after the Great War of Confessions, in which many of them had fought, had ended in the West, that an awareness of their genuine position in society, of their very real possibility of changing this fate of theirs, and of ways to rule and govern themselves, to teach each other and pray together without the need for a privileged class above them, was growing among the current and especially the former yeomanry of Moldova. [6]
When a new round of boyar conflicts escalated in 1456/57, caused by the Ottoman Civil War, which detracted Edirne`s attention away from its peripheral vasssals, tithe and tribute collections as well as drafts undertaken by the boyars were opposed by a few isolated villages and hamlets in the North-West of Moldova at first. At first, these seditious acts were ignored by the boyars in favour of concentrating their forces on their internecine struggles. In the autumn of 1457, though, after several warnings had been ignored and negotiations attempted by the abbot of a nearby monastery failed, too, a band of heavily armed men led by the boyar Lăpuşnean fell onto the seditious village of Ciuburcea, burned down all houses, huts, and barns, killed all men, raped the women and girls, carried off their children (allegedly to sell them to the Tatars, in other legends to the Turks, as slaves), and declared the village unholy and dissolved for all time, its lands being annexed into the Lăpuşnean domain.
Tales about the horrendous events at Ciuburcea travelled fast across the Vlach-speaking population of North-Western, Northern and Central Moldova. Calls to reprimand the boyar Lăpuşnean for his deeds remained unheard by the new voievod Petru, who owed his position in no small measure to the former. The monasteries, who were major landowners and slaveholders themselves, attempted to enforce the official view that the Ciubucenii had been “possessed by the devil” and killed each other, on the local priests (popi). Many popi complied – but not all of them.
Among those who stood up and spoke out was one popă whom the world would know as Ion of Mălini (or, in the English version of his name, John of Malin).
To be continued – later in August, unfortunately…
[1] I`ll stick with this term, for it`s been more widely used around that time period. “Romanian” might still have been somewhat confusing, since at this time it can be taken to refer to both Vlachs and to the Byzantines and maybe even to Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. No derogatory meaning intended, thus.
[2] This type of yeomen defiance is even ingrained in the Romanian word for village, “sat”, which is etymologically derived from “fsat” --> “fossatum”, an area surrounded by a trench.
[3] Literally, it meant “people with cattle”.
[4] So far, all OTL, except that instead of Lithuania participating, too, it was always Poland who contended with Hungary and the Ottomans.
[5] The coups and counter-coups last longer and are more intense ITTL because a strong Lithuania is exerting a more direct influence here. Likewise, consequences are more severe.
[6] Here, things are greatly diverging of course.
The Răzeşii and Other Radical Groups in Central and Eastern Europe 1458-1500
The 15th century was uniquely ripe with radical, revolutionary religious heresies across the Christian world. The Hussite revolution, which culminated around 1420, and the Cusanist Schism a good decade later, in whose tidal wave new radical groups had formed, too, would not be the last such eruptions.
It is important to stress both the inter-relatedness of these different religious revolutions AND their spatio-temporal separateness, which caused each revolution to take on distinct cultural, social and political characteristics. While, for example, it is beyond doubt that Radical Reformism in South-West Germany and in Frisia were influenced by Hussite thoughts, especially on direct popular rule and control over the clergy, but also concerning the questions of the lay chalice, of transubstantiation, and of liturgy in the vernacular, the differences between the Bohemian movement, which had clear proto-nationalist overtones in an environment where a German minority had enjoyed privileges and power of Slavic-speaking majorities, and their Swabian or Galician or Frisian successors, whose revolutions carried no such nationalist overtones in ethno-linguistically homogeneous environments.
The revolution which broke out in 1458 in Moldova was, likewise, influenced by various preceding movements: by the Hussites (and their Slovakian and Rusynian equivalents, the Bratrici), who had found new Eastern bases of operation and nuclei for expansion in the post-Babolna Transilvanian state officially established in 1439, from the West, but also by wandering Strigolnik preachers from the Orthodox North, and even by Muslim heretics from the Dobrugea in the South-East, sons and daughters of escaped adherents of Sheikh Bedreddin, the leader of an egalitarian revolt in Anatolia during an earlier Ottoman interregnum.
At once, the phenomenon of the rebellious group who would soon come to call themselves “răzeşii” (Romanian for “free men” or “yeomen”) was also a result of the specific socio-political circumstances found in the short-lived Principality of Moldova.
150 years earlier, the region which would become the Principality of Moldova towards the end of the 14th century was a peripheral territory of the Golden Horde, inhabited by an extremely heterogeneous mixture of transhumant herdsmen and agriculturalists who spoke Turkic (mostly Cuman and Pecheneg), East Slavic, or Romance languages.
With the reconsolidation of the Hungarian Kingdom and its attempt to create a buffer zone against nomadic invasions from the steppe, new groups were settling East of the Carpathians at the invitation of the Kings who wore the crown of Saint Stephen. Among them were a few speakers of Hungarian and German, but the majority of these newcomers were Vlachs [1] from Maramaros / Maramureş.
Since the lands they settled were border marches, or in fact a march beyond the fixed Hungarian border which ran through the Carpathians, and by no means uninhabited, the newcomers were a defiant lot: armed shepherds and farmers who were willing and able to defend their village communities and new-claimed territories [2], led by people who may with good reason be called warlords.
Their arrival in the lands which they would call Moldova, after the Vlachian name of a river which ran through it, cannot have been of a peaceful nature, but we have very little textual or archeological sources speaking to us about this period, so any judgment on this period is questionable.
The social and political structures which resulted from these occupations, though, are well-documented and explained. The warlords of Moldova, following a similar shift in the meaning of the word in the slightly earlier founded Principality of Wallachia, called themselves “boierii” (boyars), a term which had traditionally meant “wealthy people” or “village leaders” [3]. In the (likely frequent) military confrontations (whether both in internal land-grabbing conflicts or only in defense against “Tatar” raids is unclear), the boyars needed trained warriors, too, beyond the peasant militia they would frequently call upon. Often, the resources needed for keeping up a standing force of retainers were drawn from the villages of those previous inhabitants of the land who had been subdued in military conflicts, their village and lands being transferred into the boyar`s property, and they themselves reduced to the inferior status of “miobagi” (serfs).
With these economic and military resources at hand, the boyars became an extremely powerful group of people. To sanction and legalise their land-grabs, they elected, from the very beginning, supreme leaders from among themselves, in whom they invested the juridical power to award property to themselves, to settle property disputes and other feuds, and to lead their combined forces in times of major war. These supreme warlords they called, by a name used by their West Slavic speaking neighbours, “voievods”.
The first of these voievods are given to us by the sparse sources from the 14th century as Dragoş and Bogdan. As the new structures consolidated in Moldova, though, more and more sources speak of evidently more self-confident voievods of Moldova: beginning with Petru who, in 1387, renounced Hungarian overlordship and forged an alliance with Poland instead, in an attempt to increase the country`s independence by pursuing swing diplomacy. Hungarian expeditions seeking to bring the unruly march back under Hungarian control repeatedly failed. Thus emerged as an independent state the principality plainly named “Ţara Moldovei” (land of the Moldova).
As the new country consolidated its structures under the reign of voievod Alexandru, the boyars held onto their lands, privileges and powers – and after Alexandru`s death, they increased their power with every conspiracy which brought down a voievod who sought to concentrate too much power on himself. Below them, the răzeşii (yeomen) initially still retained their liberties, while the Southward expansion of the country down to the Black Sea coast (“Ţara de Jos”, the low country) brought a greater number of unfree serfs under the power of Moldovan boyars and voievods. Around this time, the first groups of foreigners the likes of which these lands had never seen before, who appear in the sources as “aţigani” or “aţingani”, appear, too: some of them as free craftsmen with renowned blacksmithing skills, others as slaves brought from skirmishes, raids, and purchases in Southern regions.
From the 1420s on, and especially after Alexandru`s death in 1432, the country became more and more of a buffer state between Hungary, the Ottomans and Poland/Lithuania. Here, the interests of the greater powers colluded with the interests of the boyars, who were bent on maintaining and increasing their privileges and power. And so, one boyar coup supported by Ottomans which removed a voievod who had been a vassal of Hungary was followed by another boyar coup supported by Poland which removed the Ottoman vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by Hungary which removed the Polish vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by the Ottomans to remove the Hungarian vassal, followed by a boyar coup supported by the Lithuanians to remove the Ottoman vassal, followed…. [4]
Almost three decades of incessant coups and counter-coups saw frequent shifts in property allotments to boyars – and increasingly also land grants which encroached on the rights of the răzeşii, right down to the allotment and consequent enserfment of entire former yeomen villages who had supported one voievod by the next voievod.
First bouts of unrest erupted in the 1430s and 1440s, but they were all soon absorbed by one faction or another who recruited rebelling peasants in their civil war, swapping the fates of liberty and servitude of one village against another. [5]
It was not until the 1450s, though, when Hussite / Bratrici preachers and especially groups belonging to the Hussite military Orders from Bohemia and Moravia, from Slovakia, from the Carpathian Rusyn communities and from post-Babolna Transilvania arrived in greater number in Moldova after the Great War of Confessions, in which many of them had fought, had ended in the West, that an awareness of their genuine position in society, of their very real possibility of changing this fate of theirs, and of ways to rule and govern themselves, to teach each other and pray together without the need for a privileged class above them, was growing among the current and especially the former yeomanry of Moldova. [6]
When a new round of boyar conflicts escalated in 1456/57, caused by the Ottoman Civil War, which detracted Edirne`s attention away from its peripheral vasssals, tithe and tribute collections as well as drafts undertaken by the boyars were opposed by a few isolated villages and hamlets in the North-West of Moldova at first. At first, these seditious acts were ignored by the boyars in favour of concentrating their forces on their internecine struggles. In the autumn of 1457, though, after several warnings had been ignored and negotiations attempted by the abbot of a nearby monastery failed, too, a band of heavily armed men led by the boyar Lăpuşnean fell onto the seditious village of Ciuburcea, burned down all houses, huts, and barns, killed all men, raped the women and girls, carried off their children (allegedly to sell them to the Tatars, in other legends to the Turks, as slaves), and declared the village unholy and dissolved for all time, its lands being annexed into the Lăpuşnean domain.
Tales about the horrendous events at Ciuburcea travelled fast across the Vlach-speaking population of North-Western, Northern and Central Moldova. Calls to reprimand the boyar Lăpuşnean for his deeds remained unheard by the new voievod Petru, who owed his position in no small measure to the former. The monasteries, who were major landowners and slaveholders themselves, attempted to enforce the official view that the Ciubucenii had been “possessed by the devil” and killed each other, on the local priests (popi). Many popi complied – but not all of them.
Among those who stood up and spoke out was one popă whom the world would know as Ion of Mălini (or, in the English version of his name, John of Malin).
To be continued – later in August, unfortunately…
[1] I`ll stick with this term, for it`s been more widely used around that time period. “Romanian” might still have been somewhat confusing, since at this time it can be taken to refer to both Vlachs and to the Byzantines and maybe even to Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. No derogatory meaning intended, thus.
[2] This type of yeomen defiance is even ingrained in the Romanian word for village, “sat”, which is etymologically derived from “fsat” --> “fossatum”, an area surrounded by a trench.
[3] Literally, it meant “people with cattle”.
[4] So far, all OTL, except that instead of Lithuania participating, too, it was always Poland who contended with Hungary and the Ottomans.
[5] The coups and counter-coups last longer and are more intense ITTL because a strong Lithuania is exerting a more direct influence here. Likewise, consequences are more severe.
[6] Here, things are greatly diverging of course.
I´m still terribly short of time, unfortunately.
During the holidays and the house-moving, I´ve thought a lot about the Razesii and how things should pan out in Eastern Europe, but I can`t foresee when I´ll have time to write it down. Sorry! Whenever I find the time, I´ll try to squeeze out at least small updates.
Hello everyone – I´m back from a long abstinence, which was due both to our family`s moving home and a particularly slow introduction of our youngest son into kindergarten, followed by a bout of chickenpox, which meant I`ve been hardly able to do the work I´m due for the uni, my employer, let alone pastimes like althist…
But now I´m back with at least a small update.
No, this timeline is not dead yet!
Cont.:
Throughout 1457, Popă Ion was earning himself a reputation, which went beyond his little village of Mălini, as a bright, charismatic and vociferous firebrand. In his sermons, he condemned the lies and justifications for the atrocities committed at Ciuburcea as evil, unholy, and an unforgivable fall from grace for the clergy who partook in it.
John of Malin, as he is known in English, had studied in the Peri Monastery in Săpânţa – which lay in the Principality of Transilvania, at that time a cultural and theological melting pot and hotbed of new religious ideas. At Peri, Malin had witnessed the intense disputes. Some Orthodox Transilvanian Vlachs practiced a close alliance with Hussite groups and sought to legitimize shared communion and common meditational practices. Even more radical minds sought to apply impulses coming from Pikard “ambassadors” from the West and from mendicant Strigolniki from the North. They dreamed about an Orthodox church which was not divided between lay people who pay at every turn for every sacrament, and a clergy who grows fat and idle on these gratuities. Up to this point, Malin subscribed to their views. Where he disagreed was when they fired their endless theological salvoes against “simplistic” understandings of the Eucharist and against what they called “idolatry”. Still, that made Malin a radical overall, clearly opposed to the conservative minds who considered all these foreign influences as heretical and hoped, against all hope, for some sort of intervention from Constantinople, which would restore the security of the old faith.
Popă Ion had returned to Mălini only little more than a year before the unrest began. He had had little time to grow accustomed to the “friendship” with which local boyars tended to shower local clerics so that the latter would lead their sheep in the ways the former saw fit. When he had heard of the atrocities committed in Ciuburcea, he was outraged. But it was the reaction of his fellow priests and monks which really incited white hot rage in him. He remembered the discussions in the dark rooms and idyllic gardens at Peri. And he acted in accordance with a conviction which he was only just about to form in this very process.
John`s political sermons attracted listeners from way beyond the village of Mălini, and after the popular popă was assaulted and battered by a gang of ruffians hired by a local boyar, some of these listeners and supporters began to become first guards, then disciples of sorts. His call behind which many more than just reduced răzeşii / yeomen farmers rallied, was that for a “grand trial of justice” in which the truth about Ciuburcea would be reveled and the Lăpuşnenii would have to face their deserved sentence.
It was under these circumstances that Malin led a march of several hundred people towards Neamţ Monastery. Malin was, at this time, still convinced that they would find, in the monastery`s archives, some evidence as to the true nature of the events in Ciuburcea. Thus he initially even declared his march a “pilgrimage”. It was the way in which the monks of Neamţ Monastery, together with the Voievod`s men at Neamţ Fortress, reacted to their arrival, which turned the pilgrimage into a siege and later a plunder.
To be continued [hopefully after a shorter interval – once again, sorry guys, and thanks to everyone who`s still reading!]
But now I´m back with at least a small update.
No, this timeline is not dead yet!
Cont.:
Throughout 1457, Popă Ion was earning himself a reputation, which went beyond his little village of Mălini, as a bright, charismatic and vociferous firebrand. In his sermons, he condemned the lies and justifications for the atrocities committed at Ciuburcea as evil, unholy, and an unforgivable fall from grace for the clergy who partook in it.
John of Malin, as he is known in English, had studied in the Peri Monastery in Săpânţa – which lay in the Principality of Transilvania, at that time a cultural and theological melting pot and hotbed of new religious ideas. At Peri, Malin had witnessed the intense disputes. Some Orthodox Transilvanian Vlachs practiced a close alliance with Hussite groups and sought to legitimize shared communion and common meditational practices. Even more radical minds sought to apply impulses coming from Pikard “ambassadors” from the West and from mendicant Strigolniki from the North. They dreamed about an Orthodox church which was not divided between lay people who pay at every turn for every sacrament, and a clergy who grows fat and idle on these gratuities. Up to this point, Malin subscribed to their views. Where he disagreed was when they fired their endless theological salvoes against “simplistic” understandings of the Eucharist and against what they called “idolatry”. Still, that made Malin a radical overall, clearly opposed to the conservative minds who considered all these foreign influences as heretical and hoped, against all hope, for some sort of intervention from Constantinople, which would restore the security of the old faith.
Popă Ion had returned to Mălini only little more than a year before the unrest began. He had had little time to grow accustomed to the “friendship” with which local boyars tended to shower local clerics so that the latter would lead their sheep in the ways the former saw fit. When he had heard of the atrocities committed in Ciuburcea, he was outraged. But it was the reaction of his fellow priests and monks which really incited white hot rage in him. He remembered the discussions in the dark rooms and idyllic gardens at Peri. And he acted in accordance with a conviction which he was only just about to form in this very process.
John`s political sermons attracted listeners from way beyond the village of Mălini, and after the popular popă was assaulted and battered by a gang of ruffians hired by a local boyar, some of these listeners and supporters began to become first guards, then disciples of sorts. His call behind which many more than just reduced răzeşii / yeomen farmers rallied, was that for a “grand trial of justice” in which the truth about Ciuburcea would be reveled and the Lăpuşnenii would have to face their deserved sentence.
It was under these circumstances that Malin led a march of several hundred people towards Neamţ Monastery. Malin was, at this time, still convinced that they would find, in the monastery`s archives, some evidence as to the true nature of the events in Ciuburcea. Thus he initially even declared his march a “pilgrimage”. It was the way in which the monks of Neamţ Monastery, together with the Voievod`s men at Neamţ Fortress, reacted to their arrival, which turned the pilgrimage into a siege and later a plunder.
To be continued [hopefully after a shorter interval – once again, sorry guys, and thanks to everyone who`s still reading!]
Hey guys,
I´m very sorry, but I can`t wrap this timeline up the way I wanted to. I`ve written this timeline in much greater detail than I had intended to (see my OP), and this has cost me a lot of time of which I have unfortunately run out now. Also, my enthusiasm has waned a little, unfortunately. I´ve begun this timeline over a year ago, and while I still have a few ideas in my head, I´ve also run out of narrative steam with regards to situations which must necessarily recur when you describe similar developments over the course of a few decades in different contexts.
But I don`t want the last threads to just hang loose. So I thought, if I don`t have the time and energy to write a decent last historybook installment about the Răzeşii and the remaining developments in Eastern and Central Eastern Europe in the second half of the 15th century, I´ll just tell you straight away what I had in mind. A sketch, still imbued with my open questions about it all, instead of a finished update. I know it´s not as cool, but it`s all I can do right now to bring this timeline to some form of closure.
So, for the Răzeşii…
As you may have anticipated, my plan here was to create an Orthodox equivalent to the Hussite revolution. The context is very different, of course. Discussions on the question of a “Protestant Reform of Orthodoxy” here and elsewhere often stress theological differences as reasons for why it´s unlikely to happen. But TTL´s Hussite Revolution, being much more Taborite than OTL´s (to put it bluntly), is more of a social-transformative project than a theological quarrel anyway. And I´ve set the precedent for it with an alt-Babolna rebellion.
Now, the situation in Moldova is different from Transylvania insofar as we don`t have the (Catholic) Hungarian Kingdom as an overlord in revolt against whom very heterogeneous groups could rally. The Răzeşii, thus, had to be, at the core, a peasant revolt, led by a (necessarily small) group of simple priests and maybe a (very) few monks.
I had intended them to march on Neamţ Monastery, be intercepted by boyar cavalry from Neamţ Fortress, but miraculously resisting and overcoming the small group of horsemen. Antagonised and thrilled by their success at the same time, they arrive at the monastery, where the monks are in panic and have barricaded themselves in. The monasteries at this point in time – in contrast to those of OTL`s 16th century, for example – were not very well-fortified places, though, and thus I thought a successful storming of the monastery was not implausible. While some monks would flee and others might fall victim to the hostilities, a few might choose to collaborate with the Răzeşii and their leader, Popă Ion. Their quest for records of what really happened at Ciuburcea would be futile, of course; they won`t find any such documents in the monastery. That doesn`t have to stop them, though: there were a few more monasteries in Moldova they could “visit”, too. At the same time, marching against and achieving control over these monasteries would inevitably radicalize the whole thing.
At that point in time, the Răzeşii`s prospects are not so great. Some peasants might give up and return to their fields. There are few highly educated people around who could quickly lay out a new and expanded agenda for their revolt and cloak the social rebellion in the necessary theological cloth. And the wider the rebellion spreads and the more existential the threats to the boyars` power and wealth, the more desperate will the latter react. At that juncture, the rebels could either rally behind one boyar faction against the others. That would make their revolt just a footnote in history, since such revolts had occurred in countless numbers, and they may even have come with religious overtones, but they all boiled down to one group of armed people with a strict hierarchy between boyar leaders and răzeşii followers, with a voievod from among the former and primarily acting in the interests of the former, lording over the defeated rest.
Or they could decide against this option, on the theologico-ideological grounds which I associate with the charismatic figure of Popă Ion. If they do that, the boyars will stop their infighting and unite against them. Which leaves them with dim prospects…
… unless we consider foreign intervention. And the conflicts in the Vlach-speaking principalities of that time almost always involved some sort of foreign intervention. Since the Ottomans are busy with internal strife, they`re temporarily out of the picture, at least as an intervening force (but that`s not the only way one can become relevant for the conflict, of course). Which leaves Lithuania under its Grand Duke Aleksandras, who plays the conservative Orthodox card (and has done so in his intervention in favour of Constantinople already) in order to appeal to his support base among the nobility of the former Rus` (and perhaps also because he sees himself as a kind of successor to Constantinople as the protector of Orthodox Christianity – and its integrity and defense against heresies – akin to how Muscovy around that time began to style itself as Third Rome…). So, under Aleksandras, Lithuania is going to be on the boyars` side.
But to the West and North-West of Moldavia, there`s the revolutionary hotchpotch which is TTL`s Transylvania, and there are Bratrici groups in the Rusynian Carpathians already. In the spirit of the Hussite “manifest destiny” which I´ve described earlier, they`re bent on expansion and proselytization, and they won`t let an opportunity such as Popă Ion`s revolt pass.
The support they can give to the revolt is manifold: intellectually, by providing a blueprint for a defiant egalitarian society with a strong popular militia and a bunch of new religious traditions to explain and justify it; militarily, by providing battle-hardened fighters, pištalas and gun know-how; and even economically, by helping out a little when peasant groups are worst hit by scorched earth policies.
That won`t turn the tide immediately, which means that over the course of a few years, Popă Ion`s revolt is going to be transformed into a protracted social war. A lot of the initial peasant followers are going to be either dead or deserting the cause by this point, especially since Hussite / Bratrici / Pikard aid comes with theological and ideological strings attached, which not everyone might find palatable. The rebel forces will look much more cosmopolitan (like they did in OTL Hussite Bohemia, too).
And there was another imagine in my mind for this war which, although I don`t have time to really describe in greater detail, I have to get off my chest. It begins with the need for the rebels to have fortified strongholds of their own. All the castles are in boyars` hands, and it will take long for an underequipped rebel army to take them. In the meantime and throughout the fighting, the only other relatively solid and large buildings in Moldavia, which are also conveniently located in the midst of rural areas and often atop hills or at the end of valley gorges, are the monasteries, which the rebels will have stormed early anyway.
Sooo… I had this image in my mind of the monasteries becoming strongholds of a new social group. Let´s call them Orthodox Hussite peasant warrior monks. In their ideal, they rotate with some working the fields and others involved in preparation, weapon-production and combat, then they change. And when they are on their military service, they live together in one of the monasteries (and later perhaps also conquered castles), which they`ll fortify. Yet, they`ll still be somewhat sacred places for them which neatly suit their ideal of praying, working, and fighting together. When a hostile force arrives, the population of the villages can ultimately find refuge in the monasteries, but they`ll of course also simply hide in the woods and they´ll have their villages protected to some degree, too. Such militarized zealot village communities would most likely take on and politicize the old Vlachian word “obşte”, which describes an autonomous rural commune and is a cognate to the Bohemian “obec”.
Maybe that would have overdone things, though. Too much rule of cool? I´m not sure. One could argue that militant orders were a regular thing in the European Middle Ages. One could point to the religious and military zeal of the early janissaries. And, last not least, one can ask themselves how voievods like Stefan cel Mare / Stephen the Great could mobilise so many men so fast to fight so many wars against the Ottomans. Yet, it might still stretch the imagination, I admit.
This rebellion may fail, or it may prevail and succeed in transforming Moldavian society from one governed by boyars and a voievod into one organized into obşte and defended by semi-monastical militia with close connections to similar groups farther West, forming a heretical continuum that spans both sides of the Western – Eastern church schism.
Either way, even if such a rebellion occurs and it ultimately fails, you`ll still end up with hundreds or maybe thousands of veterans dispersed among the neighbouring countries. (Just think of OTL where ex-Hussite warbands played an important role for decades after Lipany, e.g. Jan Jiskra of Brandys.) For a few years, win or lose, some or even many of them might serve one side or another in the Ottoman Civil War. If my historical instincts are right, it would be Skanderbeg / Iskender Bey who`s more likely to be able to recruit such Western Christian fighters. If that`s the case, then they come out on the winning side.
And ultimately, Lithuania`s Grand Duke Aleksandras is going to die.
IOTL he died around 1467. Let`s leave that unchanged. Even if no serious rebellion against him may happen during his reign: His account is not going to be a glorious one, when compared to his predecessors Švitrigaila and Vytautas. His “Eastern strategy” has brought him pains from the Tatars, a war against Novgorod, no stable alliance with the Ottomans and thus also no safe access to the Black Sea, and an alienation from Poland.
His son (or sons) is going to want to claim the throne – but not all of Lithuania`s powerful might back him. And by that, I mean a wide variety of groups. Lithuania had a history of succession disputes turning into civil wars. 1467 might be occasion for such an event ITTL. Involved in it, we have the traditional warriors from the Baltic heartland and the aristocratically led forces from the East; there is the Baltic Sea shore to account for, and by 1467, there are also a lot of weird militia in the Southern (Carpathian) periphery with more or less close ties to the wider cause of Hussitism. They, too, might play an active role in this mess. Not to speak of properly foreign intervention (Novgorod, the Kalmar Kingdoms, Poland…)
And… 1467 ITTL is one year before the Reformist Schism. Especially in Poland, the Joß-Zateckyist Anabaptists are going to be defeated – thousands of them might be driven into exile. And what better exile than one which is close by and where all parties in a violent power struggle are looking for voluntary fighters?
I have no clue how such a Lithuanian civil war might turn out (I would have left that open to a poll). Whoever succeeds, though, will still inherit a formidable power, in spite of any possible devastation of the war, but of course a divided and heterogeneous one. Is a full-blown alliance with a federation of militant zealots really a viable option for such a state?
I don`t know and I would certainly appreciate your ideas on that subject – including feedback on earlier, more cautious hints at such a Hussite-Lithuanian alliance (see Svitrigaila`s employment of Polotskian Strigolniki, or Lithuanian support for the Babolna rebels).
The Hussite Realm and its threats
What I know, though, is that from the other perspective, i.e. that of the Hussite polities from Bohemia to the Carpathian bend, having a guardian power like Lithuania would be worth a lot, even if it means the contribution of some type of permanent military support. The Hussite lands – Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, parts of Transilvania, a few pockets across the Rusynian Carpathians, and maybe even Moldavia – are a thin strip of land. If you`re a bunch of wild rebels, those are good mountainous woodlands to retreat into, but decades after their establishment, especially in the Western half of the Hussite strip, there`s going to be a lot you want to defend and not leave vulnerable to scorched earth campaigns. Now, the various Hussite polities are highly fractured and very loosely allied. And that´s only the political side. The geographical side isn`t much better (the flip side of the hideout advantage): while all Hussite polities taken together might have, at maximum mobilization, some 150,000 to 200,000 militiamen and -women under arms, there is no way in hell for even a significant fraction of them to a) get politically mobilized and b) get moved around in time for any single region to be defended with the help of many others. Sure, your buddies can retaliate, but is that enough to deter larger neighbors from invading these lands of the outcasts? Specifically, I think the Habsburg Archstewards, the Hussites` Southern neighbours from Bavaria across Austria to Hungary, are going to be a recovered and consolidated state in the last third of the 15th century, with a large military, a lot of anti-Hussite hatred, and various inherited claims on the lands currently squatted by Hussites.
Let´s make the fun even greater and say that a Habsburg army attempts to seize upon the divisions within the Reformist camp after the Council of Worms in 1468, so that in that year, one does not only have the inner-Reformist war between Briconnetists and Joß-Zateckyists and the Lithuanian Civil War, but also a Habsburg campaign. Regardless of where it strikes – Hungary, Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia –, it´s bound to penetrate deep and cause severe devastation, but, like earlier campaigns, I don`t see them as being able to reincorporate much of the Hussite heartlands or even the mountainous periphery into their state and control it in the long run. Any occupation would be faced with guerilla resistance by highly coherent groups who won`t have their religious, political, social and economic freedoms taken away from them. But such a war – and it would be naïve to expect that no such war ensues for the rest of the 15th century – would nevertheless be traumatic, and it might drive the Hussite confederacy (or parts of it) into a more formalized alliance with the Grand Duke of Lithuania (especially if he came to the throne with the help of Hussite exiles who fled from the Habsburgs….?!).
Like the earlier decision of the moderate Hussites to embrace Reformism and the protection of the Polish King, such a step might cause frictions and even a fracturing of the Hussite confederacy. Difficult to say. I`ve always had the plan to let the Hussites – or at least most of them – stand on their own and defy all attempts to reincorporate them into a usual late medieval-early modern polity. But once the greater powers of the continent have recovered from the Great War, this splendid isolation might no longer work. And if there`s one major power on the continent which might qualify because it is neither decidedly Briconnetist Reformist, nor Catholic, then it´s Lithuania, with its Orthodox Eastern half and its superficially Christianised Western centre of power. Its leaders may have good use for a bunch of skilled, martially-minded yeomen militia, and they might care very little about their religious beliefs. (But their propaganda might yet be too disruptive for the social fabric on which hegemony over such a wide territory rested?) @Augenis, what`s your opinion?
Anyway. I´ve been alluding to a number of hypotheses, with which I´d sketch what may lie beyond 1500, without having to flesh out the world`s development in greater detail. I´ve been toying with quite a number of such hypotheses, and I´ve dismissed a lot of them. The Americas colonized only very slowly? That´s how it has begun so far, but nothing is determined once vast warm fertile lands and precious metals are discovered, and @Archangel has convinced me that it´s tougher than I thought at first to cripple the naval explorations and expansions of the Iberian kingdoms for very long. Scandinavia looks united and strong? But a dynastic union can always fall apart.
Thus, I settled on only two hypotheses which I feel are close to what I perceive as the core and centre of this timeline. Here they come:
1.) If there`s an alt-Max Weber in this timeline, he´s going to theorise about how capitalism was brought about by “Catholic trade ethos” and a respect for private property espoused by Catholic states and societies.
He`ll make quite a compelling argument that, while Briçonnetist Reformism was the faith of centralizing kingdoms who built a strong state early on and Hussite cantons were decentralized but extremely egalitarian, Catholic territories, bishoprics, and cities clung to the contracts and law codes which defined the old medieval order for a longer time. He´ll argue that Hussitism and, to a lesser degree, Briçonnetist Reformism emphasized an idealized version of early Christianity and attempted to emulate this ideal of a commune without stark differences (between poor and rich, for example), while at the same time their biblical literalism led them to condemn usury very strictly, thus creating the public banks and the mutual insurance networks of these countries. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, respected the body of traditions carried across the centuries, which included various pragmatical compromises on the question of usury on the one hand, and on the other hand applied analogously to private heritage, agreements and contracts, too, which, he´ll argue, were the prerequisite for economic dynamics and thus capitalism. Reformers and especially Hussites emphasise social cohesion, collectivity and equality, and they created strong state structures of various sorts to enforce these ideals across their societies. Catholics, on the other hand, emphasise the integrity of property, private enterprise, and a reliably stable legal framework for society and the market removed from everyday political interventionism. This caused Catholic societies to be much more dynamic and its populations more ambitious and individualistic, he´ll argue, which were all essential to capitalism`s development and thriving, he`ll think. What`s more, the Hussite Revolution of 1419/20 is going to remain a source of inspiration for socially revolutionary movements ITTL throughout the centuries. These movements have targeted and often disrupted or derailed the development of capitalism, alt-Weber will continue to argue, and they sprang up primarily all across countries which were already Reformist.
Alt-Weber`s critics will argue that, of course, many of the countries which remained Catholic in the 1430s were the richest on the continent (Flanders, England, Northern Italy), and that capitalist banking developed there and remained firmly rooted there. They will also point at counter-examples of wealthy Reformed and poor Catholic nations, which are bound to exist, of course, too.
2.) There is most certainly not going to be an era of “second feudalism”, or let´s say, the least likely place for it to happen is in Central Eastern Europe. IOTL, many things came together to condemn what is now Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and even parts of Eastern Germany to a socio-economic model where all economic initiative and resources are basically concentrated in the hands of the nobility, towns lose or never gained their independence, peasants live in rather harsh servitude, and production is generally geared towards export-oriented agriculture. ITTL, a lasting Hussite movement has spread, in its radical form, mostly to the East (and taken on pan-Slavic overtones). What this means is that, regardless of how the peasantry of Western, Northern or Southern Europe is coming out of the 15th century (IOTL, it came out badly, what with all of its revolts failing) ITTL, Eastern Central European peasantry has already become and becomes more and more imbued with a spirit of rebelliousness, and not just a spirit, but also a model society of free peasants who may even sometimes undertake a “beautiful ride”… assisting fellows in rebellion (at least when they choose the right confession). At the same time, both Hussite militia warfare and the increasingly centralized conscripted armies of the Great War, along with a faster spread and enhanced importance of hand-held firearms for the infantry all only contribute to threaten the position of the nobility. They`re not needed as knights so much anymore. Ideas of chivalry will not be culturally influential.
Even though I have no fleshed out ideas as to how religious, social, economic, political, military etc. developments proceed beond 1500, I feel relatively safe in saying that the alterations of the 15th century described so far have changed enough in this area in order to postulate far-reaching socio-economic consequences. TTL´s Europe need not see the West-East imbalance in urbanization, craft skill development, technological development and social modernization we witnessed IOTL from at least the 18th century onwards.
What do you think of the two hypotheses?
So, that was what I still had at the back of my head – all pressed into one long rant. Sorry for that, and for not being able to forge it into a series of properly thought-out updates.
I would like to thank everyone who participated to this timeline – by providing their feedback, by voting in polls, by contributing information and ideas and so on -, and especially you, @Archangel. Knowing you were there and read my stuff made writing feel just so much more worthwile.
And of course I´d be very grateful if you could provide me with feedback, now that the timeline has come to its end, not just on today`s wall of text, but on the entire timeline: What did you like, what could have been better? What struck you as implausible or questionable or interesting or … just tell me.
I´ll probably take some time off from active and systematic writing. Maybe I´ll be back next year, though, in which case watch out for my attempt at some alt-pre-history...
I´m very sorry, but I can`t wrap this timeline up the way I wanted to. I`ve written this timeline in much greater detail than I had intended to (see my OP), and this has cost me a lot of time of which I have unfortunately run out now. Also, my enthusiasm has waned a little, unfortunately. I´ve begun this timeline over a year ago, and while I still have a few ideas in my head, I´ve also run out of narrative steam with regards to situations which must necessarily recur when you describe similar developments over the course of a few decades in different contexts.
But I don`t want the last threads to just hang loose. So I thought, if I don`t have the time and energy to write a decent last historybook installment about the Răzeşii and the remaining developments in Eastern and Central Eastern Europe in the second half of the 15th century, I´ll just tell you straight away what I had in mind. A sketch, still imbued with my open questions about it all, instead of a finished update. I know it´s not as cool, but it`s all I can do right now to bring this timeline to some form of closure.
So, for the Răzeşii…
As you may have anticipated, my plan here was to create an Orthodox equivalent to the Hussite revolution. The context is very different, of course. Discussions on the question of a “Protestant Reform of Orthodoxy” here and elsewhere often stress theological differences as reasons for why it´s unlikely to happen. But TTL´s Hussite Revolution, being much more Taborite than OTL´s (to put it bluntly), is more of a social-transformative project than a theological quarrel anyway. And I´ve set the precedent for it with an alt-Babolna rebellion.
Now, the situation in Moldova is different from Transylvania insofar as we don`t have the (Catholic) Hungarian Kingdom as an overlord in revolt against whom very heterogeneous groups could rally. The Răzeşii, thus, had to be, at the core, a peasant revolt, led by a (necessarily small) group of simple priests and maybe a (very) few monks.
I had intended them to march on Neamţ Monastery, be intercepted by boyar cavalry from Neamţ Fortress, but miraculously resisting and overcoming the small group of horsemen. Antagonised and thrilled by their success at the same time, they arrive at the monastery, where the monks are in panic and have barricaded themselves in. The monasteries at this point in time – in contrast to those of OTL`s 16th century, for example – were not very well-fortified places, though, and thus I thought a successful storming of the monastery was not implausible. While some monks would flee and others might fall victim to the hostilities, a few might choose to collaborate with the Răzeşii and their leader, Popă Ion. Their quest for records of what really happened at Ciuburcea would be futile, of course; they won`t find any such documents in the monastery. That doesn`t have to stop them, though: there were a few more monasteries in Moldova they could “visit”, too. At the same time, marching against and achieving control over these monasteries would inevitably radicalize the whole thing.
At that point in time, the Răzeşii`s prospects are not so great. Some peasants might give up and return to their fields. There are few highly educated people around who could quickly lay out a new and expanded agenda for their revolt and cloak the social rebellion in the necessary theological cloth. And the wider the rebellion spreads and the more existential the threats to the boyars` power and wealth, the more desperate will the latter react. At that juncture, the rebels could either rally behind one boyar faction against the others. That would make their revolt just a footnote in history, since such revolts had occurred in countless numbers, and they may even have come with religious overtones, but they all boiled down to one group of armed people with a strict hierarchy between boyar leaders and răzeşii followers, with a voievod from among the former and primarily acting in the interests of the former, lording over the defeated rest.
Or they could decide against this option, on the theologico-ideological grounds which I associate with the charismatic figure of Popă Ion. If they do that, the boyars will stop their infighting and unite against them. Which leaves them with dim prospects…
… unless we consider foreign intervention. And the conflicts in the Vlach-speaking principalities of that time almost always involved some sort of foreign intervention. Since the Ottomans are busy with internal strife, they`re temporarily out of the picture, at least as an intervening force (but that`s not the only way one can become relevant for the conflict, of course). Which leaves Lithuania under its Grand Duke Aleksandras, who plays the conservative Orthodox card (and has done so in his intervention in favour of Constantinople already) in order to appeal to his support base among the nobility of the former Rus` (and perhaps also because he sees himself as a kind of successor to Constantinople as the protector of Orthodox Christianity – and its integrity and defense against heresies – akin to how Muscovy around that time began to style itself as Third Rome…). So, under Aleksandras, Lithuania is going to be on the boyars` side.
But to the West and North-West of Moldavia, there`s the revolutionary hotchpotch which is TTL`s Transylvania, and there are Bratrici groups in the Rusynian Carpathians already. In the spirit of the Hussite “manifest destiny” which I´ve described earlier, they`re bent on expansion and proselytization, and they won`t let an opportunity such as Popă Ion`s revolt pass.
The support they can give to the revolt is manifold: intellectually, by providing a blueprint for a defiant egalitarian society with a strong popular militia and a bunch of new religious traditions to explain and justify it; militarily, by providing battle-hardened fighters, pištalas and gun know-how; and even economically, by helping out a little when peasant groups are worst hit by scorched earth policies.
That won`t turn the tide immediately, which means that over the course of a few years, Popă Ion`s revolt is going to be transformed into a protracted social war. A lot of the initial peasant followers are going to be either dead or deserting the cause by this point, especially since Hussite / Bratrici / Pikard aid comes with theological and ideological strings attached, which not everyone might find palatable. The rebel forces will look much more cosmopolitan (like they did in OTL Hussite Bohemia, too).
And there was another imagine in my mind for this war which, although I don`t have time to really describe in greater detail, I have to get off my chest. It begins with the need for the rebels to have fortified strongholds of their own. All the castles are in boyars` hands, and it will take long for an underequipped rebel army to take them. In the meantime and throughout the fighting, the only other relatively solid and large buildings in Moldavia, which are also conveniently located in the midst of rural areas and often atop hills or at the end of valley gorges, are the monasteries, which the rebels will have stormed early anyway.
Sooo… I had this image in my mind of the monasteries becoming strongholds of a new social group. Let´s call them Orthodox Hussite peasant warrior monks. In their ideal, they rotate with some working the fields and others involved in preparation, weapon-production and combat, then they change. And when they are on their military service, they live together in one of the monasteries (and later perhaps also conquered castles), which they`ll fortify. Yet, they`ll still be somewhat sacred places for them which neatly suit their ideal of praying, working, and fighting together. When a hostile force arrives, the population of the villages can ultimately find refuge in the monasteries, but they`ll of course also simply hide in the woods and they´ll have their villages protected to some degree, too. Such militarized zealot village communities would most likely take on and politicize the old Vlachian word “obşte”, which describes an autonomous rural commune and is a cognate to the Bohemian “obec”.
Maybe that would have overdone things, though. Too much rule of cool? I´m not sure. One could argue that militant orders were a regular thing in the European Middle Ages. One could point to the religious and military zeal of the early janissaries. And, last not least, one can ask themselves how voievods like Stefan cel Mare / Stephen the Great could mobilise so many men so fast to fight so many wars against the Ottomans. Yet, it might still stretch the imagination, I admit.
This rebellion may fail, or it may prevail and succeed in transforming Moldavian society from one governed by boyars and a voievod into one organized into obşte and defended by semi-monastical militia with close connections to similar groups farther West, forming a heretical continuum that spans both sides of the Western – Eastern church schism.
Either way, even if such a rebellion occurs and it ultimately fails, you`ll still end up with hundreds or maybe thousands of veterans dispersed among the neighbouring countries. (Just think of OTL where ex-Hussite warbands played an important role for decades after Lipany, e.g. Jan Jiskra of Brandys.) For a few years, win or lose, some or even many of them might serve one side or another in the Ottoman Civil War. If my historical instincts are right, it would be Skanderbeg / Iskender Bey who`s more likely to be able to recruit such Western Christian fighters. If that`s the case, then they come out on the winning side.
And ultimately, Lithuania`s Grand Duke Aleksandras is going to die.
IOTL he died around 1467. Let`s leave that unchanged. Even if no serious rebellion against him may happen during his reign: His account is not going to be a glorious one, when compared to his predecessors Švitrigaila and Vytautas. His “Eastern strategy” has brought him pains from the Tatars, a war against Novgorod, no stable alliance with the Ottomans and thus also no safe access to the Black Sea, and an alienation from Poland.
His son (or sons) is going to want to claim the throne – but not all of Lithuania`s powerful might back him. And by that, I mean a wide variety of groups. Lithuania had a history of succession disputes turning into civil wars. 1467 might be occasion for such an event ITTL. Involved in it, we have the traditional warriors from the Baltic heartland and the aristocratically led forces from the East; there is the Baltic Sea shore to account for, and by 1467, there are also a lot of weird militia in the Southern (Carpathian) periphery with more or less close ties to the wider cause of Hussitism. They, too, might play an active role in this mess. Not to speak of properly foreign intervention (Novgorod, the Kalmar Kingdoms, Poland…)
And… 1467 ITTL is one year before the Reformist Schism. Especially in Poland, the Joß-Zateckyist Anabaptists are going to be defeated – thousands of them might be driven into exile. And what better exile than one which is close by and where all parties in a violent power struggle are looking for voluntary fighters?
I have no clue how such a Lithuanian civil war might turn out (I would have left that open to a poll). Whoever succeeds, though, will still inherit a formidable power, in spite of any possible devastation of the war, but of course a divided and heterogeneous one. Is a full-blown alliance with a federation of militant zealots really a viable option for such a state?
I don`t know and I would certainly appreciate your ideas on that subject – including feedback on earlier, more cautious hints at such a Hussite-Lithuanian alliance (see Svitrigaila`s employment of Polotskian Strigolniki, or Lithuanian support for the Babolna rebels).
The Hussite Realm and its threats
What I know, though, is that from the other perspective, i.e. that of the Hussite polities from Bohemia to the Carpathian bend, having a guardian power like Lithuania would be worth a lot, even if it means the contribution of some type of permanent military support. The Hussite lands – Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, parts of Transilvania, a few pockets across the Rusynian Carpathians, and maybe even Moldavia – are a thin strip of land. If you`re a bunch of wild rebels, those are good mountainous woodlands to retreat into, but decades after their establishment, especially in the Western half of the Hussite strip, there`s going to be a lot you want to defend and not leave vulnerable to scorched earth campaigns. Now, the various Hussite polities are highly fractured and very loosely allied. And that´s only the political side. The geographical side isn`t much better (the flip side of the hideout advantage): while all Hussite polities taken together might have, at maximum mobilization, some 150,000 to 200,000 militiamen and -women under arms, there is no way in hell for even a significant fraction of them to a) get politically mobilized and b) get moved around in time for any single region to be defended with the help of many others. Sure, your buddies can retaliate, but is that enough to deter larger neighbors from invading these lands of the outcasts? Specifically, I think the Habsburg Archstewards, the Hussites` Southern neighbours from Bavaria across Austria to Hungary, are going to be a recovered and consolidated state in the last third of the 15th century, with a large military, a lot of anti-Hussite hatred, and various inherited claims on the lands currently squatted by Hussites.
Let´s make the fun even greater and say that a Habsburg army attempts to seize upon the divisions within the Reformist camp after the Council of Worms in 1468, so that in that year, one does not only have the inner-Reformist war between Briconnetists and Joß-Zateckyists and the Lithuanian Civil War, but also a Habsburg campaign. Regardless of where it strikes – Hungary, Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia –, it´s bound to penetrate deep and cause severe devastation, but, like earlier campaigns, I don`t see them as being able to reincorporate much of the Hussite heartlands or even the mountainous periphery into their state and control it in the long run. Any occupation would be faced with guerilla resistance by highly coherent groups who won`t have their religious, political, social and economic freedoms taken away from them. But such a war – and it would be naïve to expect that no such war ensues for the rest of the 15th century – would nevertheless be traumatic, and it might drive the Hussite confederacy (or parts of it) into a more formalized alliance with the Grand Duke of Lithuania (especially if he came to the throne with the help of Hussite exiles who fled from the Habsburgs….?!).
Like the earlier decision of the moderate Hussites to embrace Reformism and the protection of the Polish King, such a step might cause frictions and even a fracturing of the Hussite confederacy. Difficult to say. I`ve always had the plan to let the Hussites – or at least most of them – stand on their own and defy all attempts to reincorporate them into a usual late medieval-early modern polity. But once the greater powers of the continent have recovered from the Great War, this splendid isolation might no longer work. And if there`s one major power on the continent which might qualify because it is neither decidedly Briconnetist Reformist, nor Catholic, then it´s Lithuania, with its Orthodox Eastern half and its superficially Christianised Western centre of power. Its leaders may have good use for a bunch of skilled, martially-minded yeomen militia, and they might care very little about their religious beliefs. (But their propaganda might yet be too disruptive for the social fabric on which hegemony over such a wide territory rested?) @Augenis, what`s your opinion?
Anyway. I´ve been alluding to a number of hypotheses, with which I´d sketch what may lie beyond 1500, without having to flesh out the world`s development in greater detail. I´ve been toying with quite a number of such hypotheses, and I´ve dismissed a lot of them. The Americas colonized only very slowly? That´s how it has begun so far, but nothing is determined once vast warm fertile lands and precious metals are discovered, and @Archangel has convinced me that it´s tougher than I thought at first to cripple the naval explorations and expansions of the Iberian kingdoms for very long. Scandinavia looks united and strong? But a dynastic union can always fall apart.
Thus, I settled on only two hypotheses which I feel are close to what I perceive as the core and centre of this timeline. Here they come:
1.) If there`s an alt-Max Weber in this timeline, he´s going to theorise about how capitalism was brought about by “Catholic trade ethos” and a respect for private property espoused by Catholic states and societies.
He`ll make quite a compelling argument that, while Briçonnetist Reformism was the faith of centralizing kingdoms who built a strong state early on and Hussite cantons were decentralized but extremely egalitarian, Catholic territories, bishoprics, and cities clung to the contracts and law codes which defined the old medieval order for a longer time. He´ll argue that Hussitism and, to a lesser degree, Briçonnetist Reformism emphasized an idealized version of early Christianity and attempted to emulate this ideal of a commune without stark differences (between poor and rich, for example), while at the same time their biblical literalism led them to condemn usury very strictly, thus creating the public banks and the mutual insurance networks of these countries. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, respected the body of traditions carried across the centuries, which included various pragmatical compromises on the question of usury on the one hand, and on the other hand applied analogously to private heritage, agreements and contracts, too, which, he´ll argue, were the prerequisite for economic dynamics and thus capitalism. Reformers and especially Hussites emphasise social cohesion, collectivity and equality, and they created strong state structures of various sorts to enforce these ideals across their societies. Catholics, on the other hand, emphasise the integrity of property, private enterprise, and a reliably stable legal framework for society and the market removed from everyday political interventionism. This caused Catholic societies to be much more dynamic and its populations more ambitious and individualistic, he´ll argue, which were all essential to capitalism`s development and thriving, he`ll think. What`s more, the Hussite Revolution of 1419/20 is going to remain a source of inspiration for socially revolutionary movements ITTL throughout the centuries. These movements have targeted and often disrupted or derailed the development of capitalism, alt-Weber will continue to argue, and they sprang up primarily all across countries which were already Reformist.
Alt-Weber`s critics will argue that, of course, many of the countries which remained Catholic in the 1430s were the richest on the continent (Flanders, England, Northern Italy), and that capitalist banking developed there and remained firmly rooted there. They will also point at counter-examples of wealthy Reformed and poor Catholic nations, which are bound to exist, of course, too.
2.) There is most certainly not going to be an era of “second feudalism”, or let´s say, the least likely place for it to happen is in Central Eastern Europe. IOTL, many things came together to condemn what is now Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and even parts of Eastern Germany to a socio-economic model where all economic initiative and resources are basically concentrated in the hands of the nobility, towns lose or never gained their independence, peasants live in rather harsh servitude, and production is generally geared towards export-oriented agriculture. ITTL, a lasting Hussite movement has spread, in its radical form, mostly to the East (and taken on pan-Slavic overtones). What this means is that, regardless of how the peasantry of Western, Northern or Southern Europe is coming out of the 15th century (IOTL, it came out badly, what with all of its revolts failing) ITTL, Eastern Central European peasantry has already become and becomes more and more imbued with a spirit of rebelliousness, and not just a spirit, but also a model society of free peasants who may even sometimes undertake a “beautiful ride”… assisting fellows in rebellion (at least when they choose the right confession). At the same time, both Hussite militia warfare and the increasingly centralized conscripted armies of the Great War, along with a faster spread and enhanced importance of hand-held firearms for the infantry all only contribute to threaten the position of the nobility. They`re not needed as knights so much anymore. Ideas of chivalry will not be culturally influential.
Even though I have no fleshed out ideas as to how religious, social, economic, political, military etc. developments proceed beond 1500, I feel relatively safe in saying that the alterations of the 15th century described so far have changed enough in this area in order to postulate far-reaching socio-economic consequences. TTL´s Europe need not see the West-East imbalance in urbanization, craft skill development, technological development and social modernization we witnessed IOTL from at least the 18th century onwards.
What do you think of the two hypotheses?
So, that was what I still had at the back of my head – all pressed into one long rant. Sorry for that, and for not being able to forge it into a series of properly thought-out updates.
I would like to thank everyone who participated to this timeline – by providing their feedback, by voting in polls, by contributing information and ideas and so on -, and especially you, @Archangel. Knowing you were there and read my stuff made writing feel just so much more worthwile.
And of course I´d be very grateful if you could provide me with feedback, now that the timeline has come to its end, not just on today`s wall of text, but on the entire timeline: What did you like, what could have been better? What struck you as implausible or questionable or interesting or … just tell me.
I´ll probably take some time off from active and systematic writing. Maybe I´ll be back next year, though, in which case watch out for my attempt at some alt-pre-history...
tfw you have become the main authority on your country's history in AH.com
Medieval Lithuania wouldn't really care for what religion these refugees follow as long as they are useful and don't try anything stupid. Their hegemony over Eastern Europe was not based on any religious ground (and it couldn't have been, knowing just how multi-religious Lithuania was).
Yeah, why not, Lithuania can definitely accept the Hussites. In the OTL Hussite Wars, they even offered Vytautas the crown of Bohemia, and he accepted and sent his relative Žygimantas Kaributas as a regent, so there is definitely OTL precedent.
