The House of Iron: Chips and Cheese
The mobilization of Roman industry and society for the efforts required in the Great Latin War/War of the Roman Succession was unprecedented and a truly remarkable effort, made possible only by the economic advancements from the Flowering combined with the administrative reforms of Demetrios III Sideros. Yet it was hardly a perfect sweep, with plans rushed, leading to inevitable sloppiness, and even those well implemented would be subject to growing pains.
Most of Demetrios III’s limited energy in the late 1630s would be focused on internal affairs. Foreign policy would be left adrift as a result, which explains the rather poor Roman performance in this area in this period. For example, Demetrios’ ‘wait and see’ policy regarding the Ducal War in Italy was definitely left on the stove too long. Furthermore the lack of clear directives from the top allowed a clique of ultra-war hawks to form in government circles. In numbers they weren’t that many, but they made up for that and more in volume, and they knew how to use the burgeoning Roman press to spread their message. Their brazen greed, contemptuous indifference to the concerns of others, and sheer bloody-mindedness was tailor-made to alienate foreigners. Demetrios III in his history makes it quite clear that their rhetoric provided opportunities for both Henri II and Ibrahim that they never would’ve received otherwise, and which they skillfully exploited to Rhomania’s detriment.
Some historians have criticized Demetrios III for this lapse, with some fairness. Demetrios himself acknowledged that a lot of his own rhetoric from the war provided the intellectual underpinnings for the war hawks. But in his defense, the damage done by the war hawks wasn’t truly apparent until it was largely too late. Furthermore, leaving aside the Emperor’s bad health, internal affairs were a large enough plate to deal with already.
Not all of that was specifically to do with the various administrative reforms. By the end of 1637 most of the serious spade work had been finished and it was mostly a matter of smoothing off any edges. But then the three great financial scandals of the late 1630s started to break and Demetrios was left scrambling to clean up the mess.
The scandals broke in order of severity, going from mildest to worst. The first, which became clear in early 1638, is known as the ‘Trebizond Yard Scandal’, although the name is more specific than the extent which was hardly exclusive to Trebizond.
Naval procurement was a particularly good field for cultivating corruption. This was hardly exclusive to Rhomania. The quantity of money needed to construct battle-line ships, the vast array of materials and technical sophistication involved which meant numerous contractors, all provided plenty of opportunity for graft, from high to low.
One of the ubiquitous examples is that of ‘chips’, a common tradition in shipyards across all of Christendom. Shipwrights, in addition to their regular compensation, were also allowed to keep any ‘chips’, which meant any leftover timber pieces (or other pieces like rope or sailcloth, although lumber was by far the most common) were theirs to take. These chips were sold on the side for extra money, and since any sales were pure profit, this was a highly valued and fiercely guarded practice. The only restriction was that the chips had to be carried out by the shipwright personally. The issue was that ‘leftover’ tended to get broadly interpreted and sometimes shipwrights would walk out with a fully worked ship-timber plank; so long as they could balance it on their shoulders and walk out of the yard, this was technically allowed. [1]
Chipping is an example of low-level graft that was constantly active in the background, and generally accepted as the price of keeping skilled craftsmen happy. Any one of the naval powers would be happy to poach qualified shipwrights from competitors. But it shows how naval construction was a field in which a lack of corruption would be far more surprising than its presence.
The Trebizond yard scandal was on a much larger scale, but in its own way was typical of a naval procurement scandal. What made it special was its size. There had been a massive wave of naval construction for the war effort, both beforehand in preparation and during to keep fleet levels up. The constant blockading of the Italian coast had taken its toll on Roman hulls, and this is before the naval powers knew how to copper bottoms to protect hulls against marine life. (There had been some experiments with lead sheathing, but these made the iron nails underneath rust and fall out, which was obviously a problem for structural integrity. The experiments were quickly discontinued, but that meant more building to repair or replace the ships compromised.)
Shipbuilding timber needs to be properly seasoned, meaning left to dry after being cut, for up to three years before actually being used in construction. Many of the largest structures at naval yards were vast drying sheds in which timber would season. This was expensive because it was large long-term storage and it was especially important that the timber not get wet in the process since that would defeat the whole point; a ramshackle shed would not do.
However timber, once fully seasoned, wouldn’t leak nearly as much as green timber, substantially lengthening the longevity of a vessel before it needed major rebuilding or replacement. Considering the expense of building a battle-line ship, this was extremely important to Admiralties. One could build a warship from green timber, but it was an expensive choice best avoided unless absolutely necessary. The Roman Admiralty’s 1627 regulations state that a seasoned warship is, assuming normal operational wear and tear and proper maintenance, expected to last around 25 years, a green-timbered ship only 5 years, at most.
Private contractors had been used to build warships for the Roman navy, as was usual, but in the unprecedented urgency and volume of orders, quality standards had lapsed. Several contractors were paid to build warships with seasoned timbers which they claimed to have on hand. However what they actually had were timbers in the drying shed that had not completed the process and those were what they used to build the warships.
Ploys like this are expected, which is why the Roman Admiralty prefers to build warships from its own yards where quality control is easier to enforce. However the Imperial Arsenal, while effective for churning out galleys in the 1400s, is too cramped to build very many of the much larger battle-line ships at any one time. The Venetian Arsenal suffers from a similar problem. Thus private contractors are all the more important.
Another factor encouraging the use of private contractors is the growing difficulty of procuring naval supplies. Contracts to build warships places the onus of getting the material on the contractor rather than the government, much to the relief of the latter. For example, mandates to protect the remaining Pontic forests for ship-building timber are two centuries old by this point. However the skyrocketing demand for lumber required by 17th-century battle-line ships compared to 15th-century galleys plus the other calls for timber from a growing population mean that those mandates are now distinguishable mainly by their glaring ineffectiveness. It is much simpler, from Constantinople’s perspective, to pay the contractor and let them deal with getting the literally acres-worth of trees needed to build just one battle-line ship from wherever in Russia to the Pontic yards.
Naval maintenance in early 1638 reveals that nine of the Roman battle-line ships were made with the green-timber, well over 10% of Rhomania’s entire battle-line. [2] The Piraeus Yard superintendent reports of one 64-gunner that if it were to sail to Spain, the Spanish wouldn’t need to do anything to make it sink other than sit back and watch. (Unbeknownst to him, the Spanish navy is suffering similar procurement-corruption scandals from their own unprecedented naval buildup for the Andalusi War.)
In order to maintain the navy at current strength, substantial and unexpected and expensive construction is needed. Fines from the private shipyards responsible help some, but they are limited as the level of fines is dictated by the original contract. The yards were paid to furnish seasoned-timber warships, and since they delivered green-timber ships they must pay back the difference from what they would’ve been paid for delivering a green-timber ship in the first place. In addition they must pay a breach-of-contract fine which was already specified in the original contract. Beyond that the Roman government cannot go without jeopardizing relations with the other private yards, whose expertise and resources they need.
This unexpected budget item comes at the same time the treasury is doling out a large outlay to the Ethiopians for their services in the east. Which also happens simultaneously with another demand on the Roman exchequer that, while not permanently affecting Roman-Vlach relations, serves as a useful example that for small states, having even a friendly great power as a neighbor can be constricting.
Large subsidies from Rhomania kept the Vlach state from going bankrupt from military expenses during the recent war, but that was all they did and they ceased after the fighting stopped. By 1638 the Vlach state is broke. The Banat estates that helped fund the royal exchequer, stripped and ruined by the Germans, are still well below pre-war production levels, wounded veterans unable to work are demanding disability payments, and many would-be taxpayers and laborers are crossing the Danube south into Rhomania.
The Vlach Diet that assembles in Targoviste knows that things need to change. An earlier royal effort to get some more Roman subsidies goes nowhere as it unfortunately arrives just after the Trebizond Yard scandal breaks. More debits is not what Constantinople wants right now. The Vlachs are irritated by this, feeling they are ill-compensated for the pivotal role they played in the Ruse campaign.
The Diet thus raises export duties on cereals, cheese, mutton, beef, wool and leather, all commodities Vlachia exports in bulk to Rhomania, particularly to feed hungry Constantinople. The great landowners are, in a sense, voting against their interests since this will raise their own expenses. However their Vlach pride has been affronted and they also reason that the White Palace, which needs to feed Constantinople, will pony up the extra cash needed for the price markup. (Vlachia can’t provide all the food for the Queen of Cities and the other cities of the Aegean basin, hence the need for Scythian and Egyptian grain, but its proximity makes Vlachia the ‘first-call’ breadbasket for Constantinople.)
Another issue the Diet wishes to address is a limit on emigration. Vlachia is a poor, under-developed, and under-populated country, with less than 2 million people even after its post-war acquisitions; its capital Targoviste is the largest city, more than twice the size of the next biggest, but it has only 16,000 people, one-twentieth that of Constantinople. And the main cause for this is Rhomania.
Low import duties on Roman products mean that Vlach artisans are faced with a tidal wave of Roman wares that are often of higher-quality and comparable or even cheaper in price. Textile workers are especially hit hard. Extremely limited capital means it is practically impossible for artisans to finance expanded operations (export of bullion out of Rhomania without a license can result in the death penalty), so Roman economies of scale swamp them. Many, rather than struggle against the tide, prefer to immigrate to Rhomania where wages are higher anyway.
Large landowners, who profit from feeding the hungry masses of Roman cities, expand their holdings at the expenses of smaller landowners who can’t compete. Many of the latter are forced to become either tenant farmers or landless laborers. For those farmers who do not care for that their choices are limited. They can try to go into forestry or mining, but the guilds fiercely guard their privileges and independence and one way they do that is not to antagonize the great landowners (who comprise the Diet) by poaching laborers. They can try to enter the church but that often costs money (monasteries are some of the biggest landowners in Vlachia).
The best option is to emigrate to Rhomania, especially after the Empire has a major de-population event, such as losing 800,000 in a war with Latins and Ottomans. In those situations Constantinople sets up lots of incentives to entice new blood, and poor Vlachs are always the first ones to answer and in the greatest number. Georgian laborers are a common sight in Anatolia, but they come and work for a few years, save up money, and then return home with their earnings to marry and start a family. Vlachs though usually never go back to Vlachia, and remittances are rare. Rhomania is effectively a vampire sucking Vlach lifeblood away when it is feeling depleted. The Diet wishes this to stop.
The Roman government is most displeased by what it hears is transpiring in Targoviste. Simultaneously trying to raise the cost of provisioning Constantinople and restricting the flow of new labor to recover from a de-population event is hitting the White Palace in two very sensitive areas. The Roman ambassador immediately starts putting pressure on the Diet members and the Vlach government behind the scenes.
An agreement is eventually reached, although one weighted heavily toward Rhomania, unsurprisingly considering the disparity in power. The proposed increases on customs duties and emigration restrictions are both dropped. In exchange, the Romans will pay the disability payments requested by Vlach veterans since the injuries were incurred in defense of the Empire. This helps some of the Vlach financial issues, but hardly resolves them.
To do that, the Vlachs must turn to other methods. One is to step up the pressure on the Székelys minority in Transylvania, whose loyalty inclines more to Buda and whose faith is Catholic. Lands and properties are stripped away as penalty for minor infractions, and if those aren’t available trumped-up charges will do. The Hungarians protest, but the final part of the agreement is that the Romans back the Vlachs in this dispute.
Another reform the Diet makes is a different tax increase from the one initially proposed. The customs duties increase would’ve fallen predominately on the major landowners who produce for the foreign market, not the smallholders. Instead the Vlach people get increased consumption taxes on various items, a form of taxation that falls more onerously on the already suffering poor. They are also burdened by new laws restricting internal movement for the agricultural poor designed to circumvent Roman disapproval of emigration limits. Off the estates they have to have a passport from their landlord and can only move away if they are debt-free, a rarity, and even then only during a fortnight period after the harvest. Effectively they are staked to the land.
[1] This is all from OTL.
[2] The 91 battle-line ships mentioned in the ‘Wooden Walls’ update include 18 Sicilian vessels.