Over the past week DusanUros and I have been speculating over the progression of Basileus Giorgios's time line, Isaac's Empire. When our extrapolations turned out to be along the wrong line of thought, we thought that we should create what we have dubbed an 'alternate-alternate history'. Therefore with the consent of BG we have written our version of events in the empire.
This is the link to BG's 'historical' Isaac's Empire:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=93323
I suggest that any prospective readers should check his TL out before reading this, considering this takes off almost immediately after the events that BG has already posted.
Thanks to Basileus Giorgios for allowing us to do this and now, on with the show. . .
There are a few points of divergence between this time line and the one followed in BG's time line. The first is, in our version of events, the death of Michael Efthisiou in 1679. The secound is the speedy removal of Trichomanis by David Marianas and his swift take-over of power. The third, somewhat smaller POD, is the replacement of Tsar Michael with his cousin Ivan in Russia. With those established, let's begin.
A Sinister Turn of Events: An Alternate-Alternate Timeline.
It is early 1679. The Roman Republic in Constantinople is beset by enemies. In the north, the Russian Tsar Michael III, humbled and broken, has been replaced by his energetic cousin Ivan who also assumes the throne of Bulgaria, even if it is firmly under Republican control. To the north west, the Triple Alliance, spear-headed by Hungary, is encamped in Zagreb, menacing Republican Serbia. To the south, across the sea, the old Roman Empire sits, biding its time, waiting for the new order to fall. Her forces hovering in the Red Sea, she is ready to grab Egypt at any given time and the Republican forces there are barely strong enough to resist, even with the brilliant leadership of Efthisiou, that crippled old man whose mental faculties were rapidly abandoning him. The leadership of the Republic was left mainly to his two deputies and rivals, the implacable Marianas and the scheming Trichomanis. It was these two vultures that circled the moribund corpse that announced the victory of the Republic and the suppression of the Uniate church.
It was this declaration that convinced the leaders of the Republic that Efthisiou was rapidly losing his grasp on reality. Nonetheless, the order still went out and within weeks the effects were felt. The worst rioting was in Nazareth, where crowds blocked the soldiers advancing on the church of The Church of Our Lady. The Holy City burnt for three days before order was restored, with the soldiers retreating to their garrisons, the churches untouched and open for Mass that Sunday.
In Mesopotamia the effects were less widely felt due to the large Muslim population, some of whom actually supported the soldiers in quashing the church. However, the reaction across the Republic was one of outrage, with many garrison commanders refusing to enforce the order, instead simply ignoring it, as Marianas and Trichomanis hoped, for the leader’s mental degradation was becoming apparent even to the lower echelons. This is what happened in Egypt and it was here that Trichomanis went, the grand schemer, hoping to cement the loyalties of the generals there so that, once Efthisiou died, as almost everyone was predicting, he would have the edge against Marianas. He said that they should not rely on one person’s mental faculties for the wellbeing of the state- he reminded them that this was why they had toppled the Emperor, even though they knew full well that the Emperor had been exiled not for personal shortcomings but their own greed. They played along however, and by April most of the Republican Levant was loyal to Trichomanis.
It was in April, however, that disaster struck the plot. On the 14th April, 1679 Efthisiou died. He had been afflicted with a terrible wasting disease for months that had wracked his body with a cold sweat and a burning beneath his skin, his face lost in blotches of angry red and purple. On his deathbed, surrounded by Guardsmen he breathed his last, clutching Marianas’s arm, asking not to be buried with the Emperors in Hagia Sophia (as he felt he deserved) but instead to be buried in his home town away from church lands. He then fell back. His wishes were obeyed to a certain extent, for that afternoon his putrefying corpse was dumped in the Golden Horn by Guardsmen loyal to Marianas, and no one else. The upstart moved fast, securing the loyalty of the Guard and the city battalions as well as the Danube frontier, any general who opposed him was replaced with a more malleable figure. He also sent word to Trichomanis that Efthisiou was dead and to return to Constantinople. This Trichomanis did, aboard his personal steamer, along with most of his supporters and 800 soldiers.
On 3rd May Trichomanis’s ship arrived in the sea of Marmara. It was with shock, therefore, that the people of Constantinople watched the shore batteries to the south open fire, scoring a direct hit to the steam engine. In a secound it was over, Trichomanis and all his supporters dead, sent to join Efthisiou. An hour later Marianas announced that he was to be addressed as Grand Logothete of the Republic of Rhomania.
His timing was, to say the least, horrific. On May 5th the Roman Imperial army landed in Egypt and occupied Alexandria before marching north to Jerusalem. They were greeted as liberators by the populace and the leader of the expedition, Christopher Andreou proclaimed local Bishop Steven as interim Patriarch, pending a general church synod to decide the future of the beleaguered Uniate church.
Meanwhile in Paris the Pope Michael V, seeing the weakness of the Uniate church, declared himself the ‘One True Pope and leader of Christendom’. This unlikely show of courage and anti-Uniate message that worried Marianas. He feared that the Holy German Emperor was behind this denunciation, he feared that maybe the Germans wished to swoop once more into Lombardy as they had almost seven hundred years ago. It was these threatening noises that prompted Marianas to reverse his predecessor’s policy towards the church, reinstating the Patriarchs, if filling the roles with puppets. He wished to purge the church yet realised that this could not be done with such ham-handiness. It was the puppets that endorsed the Republic from the pulpit, much to the chagrin of the Imperialists who were hoping to turn their conflict into a religious war. The Parisian Pope maintained his insistence as the leader of the Christian world yet was generally ignored, even by the Holy German Empire who was regretting his hot-headedness as he saw that the Republic was a good deal stronger than it had been a few weeks previously, under a strong central leadership and with clerical authority restored.
Marianas decided, therefore, to move tactfully. He called a general synod of all bishops, Patriarchs and the pope himself, the more manageable Innocent. They sat for four months, from May through to September, with many sessions presided over by Marianas himself, speaking as a ruler and a theologian. They discussed many things, whether the Mass should be conducted in Latin or Greek, whether transubstantiation was literal or metaphorical and other theological nuances. However, for most of the time they hammered out the form of the new Roman Uniate church. It was finally decided that the Pope would reside in Constantinople, directing theological matters from there. There would then be five Patriarchs- Rome, Thessalonica, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria beneath him and beneath them would be various bishops and lower orders of clergy. This centralised hierarchy made it easy for Marianas to oversee theological matters, especially as the apartments occupied by the Pope would adjoin his own. It did, however, cause uproar, with many saying that the throne of St Peter was in Rome and that Constantinople should remain a Patriarchate. However, Marianas replied that the interpretation was not literal- Peter had entrusted his successors the Romans, not the city itself, which, he was keen to remind any waverers, was a smouldering ruin. It was also a stroke of great convenience when several documents were found in the archives beneath St Peter’s in Rome, remarkably undamaged by the fire which had destroyed much of the basilica itself.
With all disputes quieted, on September 22nd 1679 High Mass was celebrated in the Hagia Sophia by all attending the synod as well as the general populace. The solution pleased most, except the old Patriarchs who were, without exception, phased out over the period of the next three months, replaced by more compliant mouthpieces. It also infuriated the Empress of Calula who had previously enjoyed the blessing of the church and who now found herself theologically condemned. The Tsar was furious as well as his pledge to uphold the integrity of the Uniate church was broken by the centre, with the Patriarch of Kiev barely mentioned except to exclude him from the Roman Uniate church.
Marianas then turned his attention to the outside world. He needed a show of strength to maintain Republican dominance, to deter the Russians and the Hungarians from invading again. With Portugal in Naples and Sicily he decided that they would be the best target of his attentions. He first mustered his fleet. He amassed five hundred ships and thirty thousand men and set sail for Republican Venice. Here he joined with the catapan of Italy with his own 10,000 men and they marched south, passing through Rome to receive the Patriarch’s blessings and then into Portuguese Italy. He took Naples in a week and had driven them back to Sicily in three. He then crossed over the straits of Messina and moved west.
It was outside Palermo that he and the Portuguese met, his 30,000 against the Portuguese 24,000. The Portuguese was a mercenary army, recruited mostly from North Africa and the Basque region. They were used to fighting with lightning tactics- hit and run attacks with light cavalry and withering light artillery fire. These tactics were to prove completely ineffective on the wide plain on the north coast of Sicily where only scrub grew. To their right rose steep hills and on their left the sea. With so little room for manoeuvre they formed up, with two lines of infantry supported by their artillery, short-range, light cannons that were hitched to horses for manoeuvrability. Screening them was the cavalry, a mixture of Portuguese knights in plate armour and armed with the finest Toledo steel and with the best horses taken from the stables of the Emir of Morocco. Then there were the Tuareg camel riders, fearsome desert nomads armed with spears and javelins on their huge, stinking camels that had to be positioned down wind from the horses so as not to disturb them.
Facing them was the Republican army led by the tactically able Marianas. Since the disastrous battle of Ancyra the armies of the Republic had been completely refitted with the latest weapons and new uniforms that were to replace the outdated Byzantine ones. In his last months, Efthisiou had ordered all munitions works to be nationalised and their products go directly to the armies so within weeks over 100,000 men had received new uniforms and weaponry.
He drew up four attack columns of his infantry, armed with the newest fire-lances and with the latest socket spathogens. These were supported on the wings by the cavalry, some of whom carried the new, smaller fire-lances that could be fired from the saddle. Behind them was the artillery, field-pieces that were a compromise in size between the small, mobile horse-drawn ones and the huge siege-mortars that were still in the baggage train. Their first barrage sounded at ten o’clock on the morning of October 13th 1679. With this as their cue the infantry advanced, marching in step with their new blue uniforms not yet muddied. The cavalry advanced with the infantry, closely guarding the column flanks. The Portuguese, however, rashly sent their cavalry ahead of their infantry who advanced slower, keeping their close-knit ranks in order. The cavalry, seeing the exposed infantry, bared their swords and spears and were expecting an easy victory. It was then that double disaster struck. First- the wind changed. The horses, smelling the camels and hearing their hideous noises, panicked and couldn’t be persuaded to advance any further. The charge stalled, with the Tuareg advancing alone. It was then that the columns fanned out into a long line, three men deep. With an almighty crack they fired all at once and the Tuareg were broken, leaving many of their dead where they fell. The stalling cavalry charge, therefore, broke and ran, back through their own lines, trampling through the ranks and disrupting the artillery. It was through this chaos that the Republican infantry advanced, stopping to fire once before getting closer and firing again. With disorder among the ranks, the Portuguese infantry were barely able to get any shots off before the Republicans charged, gutting them with their vicious blades and shattering their morale. The mercenaries fled, leaving their guns to be captured. They fled pell-mell back to Palermo where they boarded their waiting ships and set sail immediately, not even bothering to lock the gates behind them, so that the triumphant Republican army could march into Palermo unmolested with only light casualties. That afternoon Marianas held mass in the cathedral along with the new Republican bishop who had been in his baggage train since Rome, the old one hanging from a gibbet in the city square.
The fleeing Portuguese had hardly left the harbour when disaster struck. On the horizon two shapes were spotted, coming towards them. Terror struck the demoralised mercenaries as the too familiar shapes of Xenonic- Dromons came into focus. Out on open water, unable to out-run the airships who had the wind behind them, they were sitting ducks. They could only watch as spouts of Greek Fire burnt through the flotilla. They returned fire with arrows and firearms yet the airships were too high. Some of the ships had cannon mounted on them and these were brought above deck to add to the counter-barrage. One, lucky shot, pierced the fabric of the balloon and within instants the great metal superstructure was exposed as fire burnt through the insidious device, the great ship falling down to earth. The beleaguered mercenaries were about to celebrate when reality dawned on them. They could do nothing as the burning wreckage fell down atop the remains of the ships, burning the very water with the unspent Greek Fire it had carried on board. Only three ships out of 100 survived. It was the greatest military disaster Portugal had ever faced in the Mediterranean. Marianas watched all this from the castle battlements with grim satisfaction, his senior officers surrounding him, enjoying a late-afternoon drink after their successful day. Two days later the peace terms arrived- Portugal would secede all possessions in the western Mediterranean in return for peace and a five year alliance. Marianas agreed and, once the fleet arrived from Naples, returned to Constantinople triumphant.
The world, shocked at the success of the floundering Republic, responded in their own way. Tsar Ivan moved more soldiers to the Danube frontier and flooded Bulgaria with his propaganda. Britain seized the island of Malta from the local Muslim ruler and made it an extensive naval base from which they threatened Greece and Italy. The Shah of Persia sent his congratulations and withdrew his forces from Armenia once Marianas returned to Constantinople. There was stability for twenty years in the Republic, with her armies strong and well-equipped, and the military rule exercising authority effectively and, to say the least, ruthlessly.
It was in 1680 that Athanasius Hagiolanus, better known as Atanasiy Hilendarski, writer, economist and critic of the old Imperial system, with the help of the Miner’s Relief Force, began action in and around Varna, signing up miners and other members of the so-called ‘proletariat’ to their organisation which, by 1681, had over 900,000 members. It was therefore renamed the ‘Worker’s Council and Relief Force’. It was, in many ways, the world’s first union and the members paid towards helping their fellow workers who may have fallen on hard times. They became more and more powerful as the Bulgarian coalfields closed, one by one, due to competition from Mesopotamian oil. By 1682 unemployment in Bulgaria and the Republican Balkans was estimated at 4.1 million out of a population of 30 million. On March 4th 1682 the miners of the Basileus Isaac II pit went on strike, protesting closure and mass unemployment for all of its 4,000 workers. Although not authorised by the central body, the Council supported them, with Atanasiy himself going there to encourage the striking miners. On 6th March, 400 local guardsmen arrived to force the miners back to work. When they were told of the miner’s plight and their refusal to cease, they opened fire. Over a hundred miners were killed on that day, their funeral in the local church was attended by 4,000 fellow workers and eulogies were given my Atanasiy and other leading figures of the council. The next day, a march of 10,000 workers descended on Sredets (Sofia) demanding that the culprits for the 5th March massacre be punished and, yet more revolutionary, for the unemployed miners to be given state support until they could find work. Hearing of their coming, the governor blocked their way with guardsmen who read out the riot act, as they were legally obliged to do before any attempt at dispersal was made. When the response came that they were not rioting, the guard fired a warning shot. This caused panic at the rear, who thought they were being fired on, and a general rout ensued. Once order was restored, the march continued to the guard who once more read out the riot act. This time the march continued and this time the guard fired into their ranks, killing many. This time, however, when shots were heard, the marchers at the rear forced their way forward so that the march turned into a charge which broke through the guards while they reloaded. Several guardsmen were killed yet many dozens of marchers were killed. When mounted reinforcements arrived, the march broke down once more into a rout as people tried to escape. Many were trapped however, and over a thousand were put in prison, including Atanasiy himself, who was locked in Sredets prison for two years. Thus the first miner’s strike was broken, with the leaderless and broken Union forced back to their headquarters in Varna where yet more were thrown in jail for varying periods of time.
All this was happening in Bulgaria when in the Indian Ocean Empress Eirene, despairing of regaining her possessions in the Mediterranean, withdrew all forces from the Red Sea and instead sent them south to Africa where an expeditionary force was sent west, through the savannah and jungle where they received deputations from many tribes who had heard of the Empress to the East. Seeing the power of the Roman’s guns they pledged themselves to the Empire. It was in this way that much of central Africa was opened to colonisation and many thousands of refugees, fleeing the war and unrest in the Mediterranean, were settled there in a string of cities along the Nile And the Congo, with the most famous being New Calula and New Constantinople. The indigenous people profited from their arrangement as a trade was organised- the Empire would supply a ruler with guns and armour and he would use them to catch slaves which would be shipped up the river Congo and then overland to the coast where they were packed onto great hulks and sent across the Empire and beyond. The slave trade had been extensive beforehand yet this was on a whole new scale- the Xethapolos family, for instance, in one year, sold 24,000 slaves from across Africa making a profit of over 150 million drachma. This was the beginning of the great families that were to arise in the Empire over the next century. They would be the richest, most powerful people outside of the world’s palaces. In years to come some would be generals, some would be despots and one, eventually, would rise to the throne.
There's the first part, all comments, suggestions and denunciations welcome, especially from fans of the original TL.
This is the link to BG's 'historical' Isaac's Empire:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=93323
I suggest that any prospective readers should check his TL out before reading this, considering this takes off almost immediately after the events that BG has already posted.
Thanks to Basileus Giorgios for allowing us to do this and now, on with the show. . .
There are a few points of divergence between this time line and the one followed in BG's time line. The first is, in our version of events, the death of Michael Efthisiou in 1679. The secound is the speedy removal of Trichomanis by David Marianas and his swift take-over of power. The third, somewhat smaller POD, is the replacement of Tsar Michael with his cousin Ivan in Russia. With those established, let's begin.
A Sinister Turn of Events: An Alternate-Alternate Timeline.
It is early 1679. The Roman Republic in Constantinople is beset by enemies. In the north, the Russian Tsar Michael III, humbled and broken, has been replaced by his energetic cousin Ivan who also assumes the throne of Bulgaria, even if it is firmly under Republican control. To the north west, the Triple Alliance, spear-headed by Hungary, is encamped in Zagreb, menacing Republican Serbia. To the south, across the sea, the old Roman Empire sits, biding its time, waiting for the new order to fall. Her forces hovering in the Red Sea, she is ready to grab Egypt at any given time and the Republican forces there are barely strong enough to resist, even with the brilliant leadership of Efthisiou, that crippled old man whose mental faculties were rapidly abandoning him. The leadership of the Republic was left mainly to his two deputies and rivals, the implacable Marianas and the scheming Trichomanis. It was these two vultures that circled the moribund corpse that announced the victory of the Republic and the suppression of the Uniate church.
It was this declaration that convinced the leaders of the Republic that Efthisiou was rapidly losing his grasp on reality. Nonetheless, the order still went out and within weeks the effects were felt. The worst rioting was in Nazareth, where crowds blocked the soldiers advancing on the church of The Church of Our Lady. The Holy City burnt for three days before order was restored, with the soldiers retreating to their garrisons, the churches untouched and open for Mass that Sunday.
In Mesopotamia the effects were less widely felt due to the large Muslim population, some of whom actually supported the soldiers in quashing the church. However, the reaction across the Republic was one of outrage, with many garrison commanders refusing to enforce the order, instead simply ignoring it, as Marianas and Trichomanis hoped, for the leader’s mental degradation was becoming apparent even to the lower echelons. This is what happened in Egypt and it was here that Trichomanis went, the grand schemer, hoping to cement the loyalties of the generals there so that, once Efthisiou died, as almost everyone was predicting, he would have the edge against Marianas. He said that they should not rely on one person’s mental faculties for the wellbeing of the state- he reminded them that this was why they had toppled the Emperor, even though they knew full well that the Emperor had been exiled not for personal shortcomings but their own greed. They played along however, and by April most of the Republican Levant was loyal to Trichomanis.
It was in April, however, that disaster struck the plot. On the 14th April, 1679 Efthisiou died. He had been afflicted with a terrible wasting disease for months that had wracked his body with a cold sweat and a burning beneath his skin, his face lost in blotches of angry red and purple. On his deathbed, surrounded by Guardsmen he breathed his last, clutching Marianas’s arm, asking not to be buried with the Emperors in Hagia Sophia (as he felt he deserved) but instead to be buried in his home town away from church lands. He then fell back. His wishes were obeyed to a certain extent, for that afternoon his putrefying corpse was dumped in the Golden Horn by Guardsmen loyal to Marianas, and no one else. The upstart moved fast, securing the loyalty of the Guard and the city battalions as well as the Danube frontier, any general who opposed him was replaced with a more malleable figure. He also sent word to Trichomanis that Efthisiou was dead and to return to Constantinople. This Trichomanis did, aboard his personal steamer, along with most of his supporters and 800 soldiers.
On 3rd May Trichomanis’s ship arrived in the sea of Marmara. It was with shock, therefore, that the people of Constantinople watched the shore batteries to the south open fire, scoring a direct hit to the steam engine. In a secound it was over, Trichomanis and all his supporters dead, sent to join Efthisiou. An hour later Marianas announced that he was to be addressed as Grand Logothete of the Republic of Rhomania.
His timing was, to say the least, horrific. On May 5th the Roman Imperial army landed in Egypt and occupied Alexandria before marching north to Jerusalem. They were greeted as liberators by the populace and the leader of the expedition, Christopher Andreou proclaimed local Bishop Steven as interim Patriarch, pending a general church synod to decide the future of the beleaguered Uniate church.
Meanwhile in Paris the Pope Michael V, seeing the weakness of the Uniate church, declared himself the ‘One True Pope and leader of Christendom’. This unlikely show of courage and anti-Uniate message that worried Marianas. He feared that the Holy German Emperor was behind this denunciation, he feared that maybe the Germans wished to swoop once more into Lombardy as they had almost seven hundred years ago. It was these threatening noises that prompted Marianas to reverse his predecessor’s policy towards the church, reinstating the Patriarchs, if filling the roles with puppets. He wished to purge the church yet realised that this could not be done with such ham-handiness. It was the puppets that endorsed the Republic from the pulpit, much to the chagrin of the Imperialists who were hoping to turn their conflict into a religious war. The Parisian Pope maintained his insistence as the leader of the Christian world yet was generally ignored, even by the Holy German Empire who was regretting his hot-headedness as he saw that the Republic was a good deal stronger than it had been a few weeks previously, under a strong central leadership and with clerical authority restored.
Marianas decided, therefore, to move tactfully. He called a general synod of all bishops, Patriarchs and the pope himself, the more manageable Innocent. They sat for four months, from May through to September, with many sessions presided over by Marianas himself, speaking as a ruler and a theologian. They discussed many things, whether the Mass should be conducted in Latin or Greek, whether transubstantiation was literal or metaphorical and other theological nuances. However, for most of the time they hammered out the form of the new Roman Uniate church. It was finally decided that the Pope would reside in Constantinople, directing theological matters from there. There would then be five Patriarchs- Rome, Thessalonica, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria beneath him and beneath them would be various bishops and lower orders of clergy. This centralised hierarchy made it easy for Marianas to oversee theological matters, especially as the apartments occupied by the Pope would adjoin his own. It did, however, cause uproar, with many saying that the throne of St Peter was in Rome and that Constantinople should remain a Patriarchate. However, Marianas replied that the interpretation was not literal- Peter had entrusted his successors the Romans, not the city itself, which, he was keen to remind any waverers, was a smouldering ruin. It was also a stroke of great convenience when several documents were found in the archives beneath St Peter’s in Rome, remarkably undamaged by the fire which had destroyed much of the basilica itself.
With all disputes quieted, on September 22nd 1679 High Mass was celebrated in the Hagia Sophia by all attending the synod as well as the general populace. The solution pleased most, except the old Patriarchs who were, without exception, phased out over the period of the next three months, replaced by more compliant mouthpieces. It also infuriated the Empress of Calula who had previously enjoyed the blessing of the church and who now found herself theologically condemned. The Tsar was furious as well as his pledge to uphold the integrity of the Uniate church was broken by the centre, with the Patriarch of Kiev barely mentioned except to exclude him from the Roman Uniate church.
Marianas then turned his attention to the outside world. He needed a show of strength to maintain Republican dominance, to deter the Russians and the Hungarians from invading again. With Portugal in Naples and Sicily he decided that they would be the best target of his attentions. He first mustered his fleet. He amassed five hundred ships and thirty thousand men and set sail for Republican Venice. Here he joined with the catapan of Italy with his own 10,000 men and they marched south, passing through Rome to receive the Patriarch’s blessings and then into Portuguese Italy. He took Naples in a week and had driven them back to Sicily in three. He then crossed over the straits of Messina and moved west.
It was outside Palermo that he and the Portuguese met, his 30,000 against the Portuguese 24,000. The Portuguese was a mercenary army, recruited mostly from North Africa and the Basque region. They were used to fighting with lightning tactics- hit and run attacks with light cavalry and withering light artillery fire. These tactics were to prove completely ineffective on the wide plain on the north coast of Sicily where only scrub grew. To their right rose steep hills and on their left the sea. With so little room for manoeuvre they formed up, with two lines of infantry supported by their artillery, short-range, light cannons that were hitched to horses for manoeuvrability. Screening them was the cavalry, a mixture of Portuguese knights in plate armour and armed with the finest Toledo steel and with the best horses taken from the stables of the Emir of Morocco. Then there were the Tuareg camel riders, fearsome desert nomads armed with spears and javelins on their huge, stinking camels that had to be positioned down wind from the horses so as not to disturb them.
Facing them was the Republican army led by the tactically able Marianas. Since the disastrous battle of Ancyra the armies of the Republic had been completely refitted with the latest weapons and new uniforms that were to replace the outdated Byzantine ones. In his last months, Efthisiou had ordered all munitions works to be nationalised and their products go directly to the armies so within weeks over 100,000 men had received new uniforms and weaponry.
He drew up four attack columns of his infantry, armed with the newest fire-lances and with the latest socket spathogens. These were supported on the wings by the cavalry, some of whom carried the new, smaller fire-lances that could be fired from the saddle. Behind them was the artillery, field-pieces that were a compromise in size between the small, mobile horse-drawn ones and the huge siege-mortars that were still in the baggage train. Their first barrage sounded at ten o’clock on the morning of October 13th 1679. With this as their cue the infantry advanced, marching in step with their new blue uniforms not yet muddied. The cavalry advanced with the infantry, closely guarding the column flanks. The Portuguese, however, rashly sent their cavalry ahead of their infantry who advanced slower, keeping their close-knit ranks in order. The cavalry, seeing the exposed infantry, bared their swords and spears and were expecting an easy victory. It was then that double disaster struck. First- the wind changed. The horses, smelling the camels and hearing their hideous noises, panicked and couldn’t be persuaded to advance any further. The charge stalled, with the Tuareg advancing alone. It was then that the columns fanned out into a long line, three men deep. With an almighty crack they fired all at once and the Tuareg were broken, leaving many of their dead where they fell. The stalling cavalry charge, therefore, broke and ran, back through their own lines, trampling through the ranks and disrupting the artillery. It was through this chaos that the Republican infantry advanced, stopping to fire once before getting closer and firing again. With disorder among the ranks, the Portuguese infantry were barely able to get any shots off before the Republicans charged, gutting them with their vicious blades and shattering their morale. The mercenaries fled, leaving their guns to be captured. They fled pell-mell back to Palermo where they boarded their waiting ships and set sail immediately, not even bothering to lock the gates behind them, so that the triumphant Republican army could march into Palermo unmolested with only light casualties. That afternoon Marianas held mass in the cathedral along with the new Republican bishop who had been in his baggage train since Rome, the old one hanging from a gibbet in the city square.
The fleeing Portuguese had hardly left the harbour when disaster struck. On the horizon two shapes were spotted, coming towards them. Terror struck the demoralised mercenaries as the too familiar shapes of Xenonic- Dromons came into focus. Out on open water, unable to out-run the airships who had the wind behind them, they were sitting ducks. They could only watch as spouts of Greek Fire burnt through the flotilla. They returned fire with arrows and firearms yet the airships were too high. Some of the ships had cannon mounted on them and these were brought above deck to add to the counter-barrage. One, lucky shot, pierced the fabric of the balloon and within instants the great metal superstructure was exposed as fire burnt through the insidious device, the great ship falling down to earth. The beleaguered mercenaries were about to celebrate when reality dawned on them. They could do nothing as the burning wreckage fell down atop the remains of the ships, burning the very water with the unspent Greek Fire it had carried on board. Only three ships out of 100 survived. It was the greatest military disaster Portugal had ever faced in the Mediterranean. Marianas watched all this from the castle battlements with grim satisfaction, his senior officers surrounding him, enjoying a late-afternoon drink after their successful day. Two days later the peace terms arrived- Portugal would secede all possessions in the western Mediterranean in return for peace and a five year alliance. Marianas agreed and, once the fleet arrived from Naples, returned to Constantinople triumphant.
The world, shocked at the success of the floundering Republic, responded in their own way. Tsar Ivan moved more soldiers to the Danube frontier and flooded Bulgaria with his propaganda. Britain seized the island of Malta from the local Muslim ruler and made it an extensive naval base from which they threatened Greece and Italy. The Shah of Persia sent his congratulations and withdrew his forces from Armenia once Marianas returned to Constantinople. There was stability for twenty years in the Republic, with her armies strong and well-equipped, and the military rule exercising authority effectively and, to say the least, ruthlessly.
It was in 1680 that Athanasius Hagiolanus, better known as Atanasiy Hilendarski, writer, economist and critic of the old Imperial system, with the help of the Miner’s Relief Force, began action in and around Varna, signing up miners and other members of the so-called ‘proletariat’ to their organisation which, by 1681, had over 900,000 members. It was therefore renamed the ‘Worker’s Council and Relief Force’. It was, in many ways, the world’s first union and the members paid towards helping their fellow workers who may have fallen on hard times. They became more and more powerful as the Bulgarian coalfields closed, one by one, due to competition from Mesopotamian oil. By 1682 unemployment in Bulgaria and the Republican Balkans was estimated at 4.1 million out of a population of 30 million. On March 4th 1682 the miners of the Basileus Isaac II pit went on strike, protesting closure and mass unemployment for all of its 4,000 workers. Although not authorised by the central body, the Council supported them, with Atanasiy himself going there to encourage the striking miners. On 6th March, 400 local guardsmen arrived to force the miners back to work. When they were told of the miner’s plight and their refusal to cease, they opened fire. Over a hundred miners were killed on that day, their funeral in the local church was attended by 4,000 fellow workers and eulogies were given my Atanasiy and other leading figures of the council. The next day, a march of 10,000 workers descended on Sredets (Sofia) demanding that the culprits for the 5th March massacre be punished and, yet more revolutionary, for the unemployed miners to be given state support until they could find work. Hearing of their coming, the governor blocked their way with guardsmen who read out the riot act, as they were legally obliged to do before any attempt at dispersal was made. When the response came that they were not rioting, the guard fired a warning shot. This caused panic at the rear, who thought they were being fired on, and a general rout ensued. Once order was restored, the march continued to the guard who once more read out the riot act. This time the march continued and this time the guard fired into their ranks, killing many. This time, however, when shots were heard, the marchers at the rear forced their way forward so that the march turned into a charge which broke through the guards while they reloaded. Several guardsmen were killed yet many dozens of marchers were killed. When mounted reinforcements arrived, the march broke down once more into a rout as people tried to escape. Many were trapped however, and over a thousand were put in prison, including Atanasiy himself, who was locked in Sredets prison for two years. Thus the first miner’s strike was broken, with the leaderless and broken Union forced back to their headquarters in Varna where yet more were thrown in jail for varying periods of time.
All this was happening in Bulgaria when in the Indian Ocean Empress Eirene, despairing of regaining her possessions in the Mediterranean, withdrew all forces from the Red Sea and instead sent them south to Africa where an expeditionary force was sent west, through the savannah and jungle where they received deputations from many tribes who had heard of the Empress to the East. Seeing the power of the Roman’s guns they pledged themselves to the Empire. It was in this way that much of central Africa was opened to colonisation and many thousands of refugees, fleeing the war and unrest in the Mediterranean, were settled there in a string of cities along the Nile And the Congo, with the most famous being New Calula and New Constantinople. The indigenous people profited from their arrangement as a trade was organised- the Empire would supply a ruler with guns and armour and he would use them to catch slaves which would be shipped up the river Congo and then overland to the coast where they were packed onto great hulks and sent across the Empire and beyond. The slave trade had been extensive beforehand yet this was on a whole new scale- the Xethapolos family, for instance, in one year, sold 24,000 slaves from across Africa making a profit of over 150 million drachma. This was the beginning of the great families that were to arise in the Empire over the next century. They would be the richest, most powerful people outside of the world’s palaces. In years to come some would be generals, some would be despots and one, eventually, would rise to the throne.
There's the first part, all comments, suggestions and denunciations welcome, especially from fans of the original TL.
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