1313
Winter
Tagaris, hoping to reach Namen before Glemboux falls, decides to risk the early-spring crossing of the Mediterranean and sets out from Messina on 12 February. Nature is with the Rhomans, however, and they are not troubled by storms as they sail. The Rhomans sail west along the northern coast of the island before jumping across to Sardinia, landing there on 23 February. They then sail up the coast of that island and Corsica, pausing on Bastia on 14 March to ride out a storm before carrying on.
On 25 February, the Brabanters use the coming of the local peasants to mass to attack Gembloux, briefly taking the vestibule before being driven back. This defiling of the local sanctuary only worsens the relations between the Brabanters and the local Namenese peasants.
Spring
King Phillippe departs Montpellier on 11 March, sailing east along the coast with his entire force. However, the same storm that forced Tagaris to hold on Bastia hits the French and drives them ashore on the Ile de Levant. Roughly a thousand of the Crusaders, mostly knights, drown and a good deal of the fleet is heavily damaged. While completing repairs, Tagaris’ fleet happens to pass by going the opposite way. The Rhoman commander briefly puts ashore, seeing an opportunity to shorten his voyage. He introduces himself as a representative of Alexios leading an army to put down a peasant revolt in Namen, playing up the likeliness of said rising spreading into France and offering the French king an opportunity to establish a Latin mission in Konstantinoupoli in exchange for access to the Rhone. Philippe accepts, issuing a decree allowing the Rhomans access to ‘...the rivers of western France..’. Tagaris then continues on, reaching the mouth of the river on the 15th.
Jaime II lands on Sicily with 500 knights and 12,000 infantry on 17 March. However, wary of depleting the island’s foodstocks, he sends a message to Alexios asking for permission to land his army on Kriti and then travel to Konstantinoupoli with a small group of retainers. Alexios accepts as soon as he gets the message.
Nikolya crosses the Tauruses with 15,000 horse archers and 20,000 infantry in mid-April. He quickly storms through the mountains, reaching Sivas on 21 April and taking it by storm two days later. He then sweeps down the left bank of the Kizilirmak River towards Konya, scattering the few militias that try to oppose him. Mesut, frantic to hold the Mongols off long enough for the populace of Konya to evacuate and having flashbacks to the last invasion, rides with the ~300 palace guards of the city and 4,000 light infantry to reinforce the primary fortress between the invaders and the capital; Kayseri. Sardar Orhan, the 35-year old crown prince, rides west to gather an army to repulse the invaders.
The Turks arrive in the city on 26 April, only a day before Nikolya and his entire host arrives. An initial assault fails with heavy Mongolian losses, and the Il-Khan orders siege works to be set up. That night, Nikolya’s generals are able to convince him not to bypass the city and push on to Konya, reminding him of what happened the last time he bypassed a Turkish fortification. He reluctantly agrees to begin a siege, but orders daily assaults to speed up progress. During the first week, the Mongols almost break through the walls several times only to be driven back by desperate charges from the garrison, twice joined by the women and elderly of Kayseri. On the 5th of May, the Mongols prepare for a final assault and begin launching flaming projectiles over the walls directly across from the gate and undermine that section of the wall, hoping to divide the garrison’s efforts. Mesut swears the entire city’s populace to die before surrendering.
But then, on the dawn of the 6th, a frantic rider enters the Mongolian camp. The governors of Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Dihistan, Gilan and Tabaristan had risen in a religious rebellion against the Il-Khan in late April and were currently beating down the gates of Tabriz. Nikolya flips out and turns and marches back to Eran, leaving his brother Khitai and 10,000 infantry behind to continue the siege.
Khitai was very different from his elder brother; he was known in most of the Il-Khanate for his caution and timidity. Rather than assaulting the city on the 6th as Nikolya had planned, he instead orders more flamming objects chucked over the wall in an attempt to smoke the defenders out, encircling the city with 5,000 men and keeping the other half in reserve to jump on any breakout attempts. On the 8th, after two days with no-one emerging from the city, Khitai orders the reserves to enter the city through the gates, on the northern side of the city. A few minutes after they do, the population of the city, roughly 15,000 including the garrison, bursts out of the southern entrance and through the inattentive Mongols. The soldiers spread out and form a circular perimeter around the civilians, then start moving as quickly as they can for the nearby cave-riddled Mount Erciyas three miles to the south. Khitai barrels after him with what little cavalry he had, but they are almost all melee and are unable to close under heavy arrow fire. The infantry are unable to catch up with the fleeing Turks until they reach the lower slopes of the mountain, when Khitai orders them back in fear of an ambush.
With the city in Mongolian hands, Khitai orders the few remaining buildings burned and the walls pulled down to avoid having a hostile fortress in his rear. He then marches north-east along the Kizilirmak towards Lake Tuz. They reach the lake on the 14th, freshly out of water. Khitai had ordered the army to carry little water to try to speed their advance across the plateau. Upon realizing that Lake Tuz was salt water and they could not replenish their reserves, the Mongolians turn and race back to the river. It was only a day’s march away, but with the high temperature and little shade of the plateau, several hundred men die of heatstroke before they are able to return.
This delay in movement allows Mesut and his men to book it for Konya, arriving on the 18th. The Sultan expels the civilians of the city and orders them to march west to the mountains, then gathers up the garrisons and militia of the surrounding cities and countryside into the city. The buildings outside the walls are torn down and the materials dragged inside to reinforce the gates and walls. There were 7,000 men within the walls, and enough food to hold out for five months, more than long enough for Orhan to arrive with a relief force.
The Sardar, meanwhile, had sent riders to the garrison commanders of all of the south-west to gather every man they could and meet at Saporda (Isparta). He himself carried on to the Rhoman border, where he sent a frantic messenger to Konstantinoupoli begging for aid, dated 1st of May. In said message, he offered a quarter of the Sultanate’s annual revenue in exchange for sending help. This may seem unusual, but keep in mind that Orhan was unaware of Nikolya turning away and still believed that 35,000 Mongolian fanatics were bearing down on the capital. Alexios sees the message but dismisses it, remembering what happened the last time he helped the Turks against an invading Mongolian horde. After waiting a month for a response, Orhan turns and rides back to Saporda, where an army of 18,000 had gathered. However, rather than marching west to assault the Mongols, he instead chose to hold at the city. He justified this to his men as trying to trap the invaders between a rock (Konya) and a hard place (the army), but this did not stop rumors of cowardice from spreading through the ranks.
Meanwhile, Khitai brought more water on his second march on Konya, arriving outside the city on 22 May. He sends a message to the Sultan, offering to spare his life and that of his family if he surrenders. Mesut returns the man via catapult. Rather than attempting to batter down the walls, Khitai sets up for a siege.
Summer
Jaime II and his entourage, 20 knights and ~125 servants, arrive in Konstantinoupoli on 11 June. They are housed in the Mangana Palace with the Imperial family, as the only other non-ruined palace in the city was occupied by the Serbians. The Aragonese settle in fairly well, and with some persuasion by Jaime Alexios agrees to allow the Crusader lords to stay in the capital, if they are willing to leave their armies on Kriti. The emperor also pointed out that Jerusalem was held by a (demi-)Christian, so Egypt would probably be a better target.
Philippe reaches Kriti in late June, following after Jaime. However, he suspects a trap and refuses to move on to Konstantinoupoli, staying on Kriti with his army. He is unwilling to let the Aragonese king have sole access to the Emperor, however, so he dispatches his son Philippe the Tall to the capital with a small group of retainers. The Prince arrives on 7 July.
On 11 July, Khitai and his men are woken by Orhan’s army just outside their camp. The Mongolian camp was semi-fortified, but even with these defenses they were soon overwhelmed. Khitai orders his men to retreat towards a nearby creek-bed, setting fire to their tents to slow down the Turkish advance. However, the Turkish light horse are able to swing out from the city walls and into the creek bed, dividing the retreating Mongolian line in two. The leading edge, roughly 300 men, are able to continue their flight; the ~1500 other men of the retreating group are massacred, Khitai among them. The Mongolian defense quickly dissolves, the soldiers scattering across the land around Konya. Over the next week, many are ridden down or die of thirst, but a group of 800, mostly Vainakhs and Azeris, are able to regroup on the Kizilirmak. They elect a commander, a minor Vainakh noble named Ramzan khant Axmad-Xazi. Knowing that they would likely be punished for the expedition’s failure, the survivors instead begin moving north along the river’s left bank, hoping to reach the Empire and a refuge from the Turks.
In far-off Bulgaria, the Tsarina gives birth to a son, named Ivan, on 27 July. This is a proverbial shock to the system, as it had been believed that Sofiya Asen was infertile since 1301. There is, of course, speculation that the actual issues were on the Tsar’s part and the new heir was the product of an affair, but these are pointedly ignored by the government. The birth of an heir also destabilizes the domestic political situation, as there was an unspoken agreement that Georgi Terter’s son Todor would ascend the throne after Sofiya’s death. Both pro-Asen and pro-Terter noble factions begin to form.
In early August, a group of Mamluk slavers raid Kypros. The island’s small garrison isn’t able to drive them off, and they withdraw after a week with roughly 1,000 captives.
The Empress gives birth to another son on 27 August. He is, like Sabbas, named after an Anatolian folk hero, the supercentenarian saint Kharalampos of Magnesia. Patriarch Nikolaos is cajoled into allowing Jaime to stand as godfather, and the christening is set for 4 October.
Autumn
Over the course of late summer and early to mid-autumn a slow trickle of Crusader knights arrives in Konstantinoupoli. Most are landowners at the heads of Crusader armies, which are left on Kriti. Food on the island begins to run low, and in late August grain ships begin to travel from the fertile western coast to the island, feeding Rhoman and Latin alike.
On 14 September, Tagaris lands at Pairelle, a half-mile south of the city of Namen. The landing occurs at night, and the Rhomans quickly advance up the left bank of the river towards the city. Three cannons had been brought with the expedition, and these were set up on the heights across the Sambre from Namen. At dawn they open fire, raining large balls of led down on the city. They are targeted at the walls, as Tagaris was unwilling to damage the city’s weaving facilities. However, the destruction of the walls demoralizes the Brabanter garrison enough to surrender. The Rhomans occupy it, then Tagaris detaches the Turkish auxiliaries and rides for Gembloux. Duke John, suspecting that these were only the front riders of a much larger force, withdraws from Gembloux on the 15th and asks to treat with Tagaris. In exchange for surrendering his claim to Namen, the border between Brabant and Rhomaion would be redrawn along the Burdinal Creek, giving Brabant an extra ½ mile of land. Even though Tagaris has no authority, John agrees and withdraws back across the border.
Tagaris then turns back and crosses the Meuse, attacking the Louxembourgish in their camp. The Rhomans route them, which is enough to discourage Heinrich from further fighting. Tagaris cedes the land south of Boreuville to Louxembourg before retiring to Namen on the 21st.
