An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania

Seems like the situation is ripe for the Romans to embrace Total War and the levée en masse. There's no other way to combat the 2 huge armies closing in on the Western and Eastern front.

What do they expect to accomplish? The Allies have at least 30,000 more men. To buy time for them to beat back Shah Ibrahim's smaller army?

 

Levee en Masse is a bit anachronistic. The Regimental Cantons system maybe as a natural evolution of the Theme System as a force of conscription for all able bodied men rather than recruitment and upkeep. But even then that's still a century removed institution and one unique to a nation who by necessity needed a proportionally large army to even survive, alone compete, in the European world of the 18th century. We're in the midst of the 30 years war era of warfare, and that shit ain't pretty or efficient.

 

The Romans used the levee en masse earlier in the story. Only in a limited area, Syria and Antioch I think, and as a strategy it was discarded in the post war period. So the Romans know what it is and have an idea of how to do it they’ve just never had the need until now.

 

The Romans have enough administrative efficiency to pull off a levee en masse already. They've only held off on doing it because of the memory of the Time of Troubles, when they saw that mass levies tended to cause horrific civilian casualties because the enemy can no longer distinguish soldiers from civilians.

Analogy to Prussia is apt for the Empire, in that it is surrounded by hostile powers on multiple sides and is at a quantitative disadvantage. If the standing Imperial Armies start to falter, I can see Demetrios implementing modern style mass conscription to make up.

 

Local implementation is a bit different from a national one. Though it's possible we could see the Balkans bring this sort of mass mobilization once again like it did in Syria.

I don't quite recall that, this TL has been going on for a while after all, but I could certainly see that being a concern if we were in the era of the Cabinet Wars, but we're not, this is a period when civilians are always going to be targets.

Just a simple change of having the themes conscript all able-bodied men instead of recruiting them as professionals would be enough. A 3.6% of the population army, like in Prussia, would be utterly unstoppable coming from an Imperial Heartland of "20+ million" as B444 said recently would give 720,000 soldiers. If that could even be financially supported I don't know. Even just 1% would be more than 200,000 men.

 

Link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...val-of-rhomanion.217912/page-440#post-7905741

The Empire already has a mobilization plan drafted up. It just needs to be dusted off a bit.

That's going to throw a wrench into things. Imagine the shock and terror among the Germans when they see the Romans barrelling down on them with an order of magnitude of soldiers more than they ought to have.

 

They are about to invent the fiscal-military state. Which means oh being able to keep on the field armies comparable to these of Louis XIV. France in the Dutch war in 1672 did mobilize 280,000 and by the time of the Nine years war this had grown to 340,000. The empire probably is already better organized financially than France of 1670, with comparable or higher population. That's more than sufficient to keep the Germans and Triunes at bay while teaching Ibrahim the error of his ways. Of course within the next couple of generations the western powers and possibly the Ottomans will be following suit but that's then not now.

 

Definitely seems like the only way the Romans will win this war. IIRC B444 made comparisons between this war and the OTL War of the Austrian Succession. Perhaps it could be better compared to Prussia in the Seven Years War? A materially smaller state utilising its discipline and administration to beat off a coalition of bigger enemies? Demetrios definitely has what it takes to be a proto-enlightened despot.

 

Because he can't feed them otherwhise. It's been already stated that the logistics situation is not that great, so living off the land is the usual method to supliment the food supply.
Also, a spot of pillage and rape was one of the perks of being a soldier. Denying his men that, especially when they're already having supply issues would invite unrest and mutiny.