Look to the West: The Word of Peace
The ugly aspect of this concession is that the commoners of Genoa who’d sided with the Romans are not allowed to leave. The terms are that the Roman garrison will simply vacate their men and material but everything else must remain. Demetrios, recognizing that Genoa is the trigger issue and that here he must give way utterly, accepts the demands, although personally reluctant since he can see what will come. The Genoese commoners are completely exposed to the wrath of the Genoese grandees-Lisbon branch who take charge of the city. They conduct an utterly ruthless and bloody reign of terror, slaughtering anyone who they suspect of having harmed their relations or collaborated with the Romans.
Another effect is that shortly after the affair, several up-and-coming officials eager to make a name for themselves publish an influential report. In it they argue strenuously against the idea of any territorial expansion for the Imperial heartland, with the exception of minor (and they stress minor) adjustments for fortress holdings to lock down Northern Mesopotamia.
The crux of their argument is that “a two-front war is an inevitability; the only question is details, but not concept. This cannot be avoided, only managed. The frontiers must be placed in positions where it can be reasonably be expected that they can be held during a two-front war.” They assert that the imperial heartland frontiers are largely at those positions, with further conquests only weakening, not strengthening border security. Further extensions of the border simultaneously make it harder for the military to defend (longer logistics) and easier for enemies to attack (correspondingly shorter logistics). This has a double effect, in that by making the frontier easier to attack, it will also make it more likely to be attacked, which will encourage other frontiers to be attacked by opportunists, and so on.
The report is done in tandem with a major War Room study which sets up the following strategy game. There are three teams, a Roman team that in this scenario is assumed to control all of Italy, with 180,000 men, including 30,000 Sicilians and 30,000 Egyptians. It is opposed by an Ottoman team with 80,000 men and a Latin team of 120,000 men. The game is run 5 times, the members of the teams rotating.
In every single game, the Roman team loses Italy. If the Romans put enough troops into Italy to reliably defend it against the Latins, the Ottomans aren’t effectively opposed, eventually chew through the fortress belt, and start running wild in Asia until troops are rushed from Italy to stop them, at which point the Italian front collapses. If the Romans put enough troops in Asia to keep the Ottomans from making any headway in the first place, the outnumbered Italian front gets overrun.
Efforts to crush one front and then rush reinforcements to the other are of no help. Sealift limitations mean that reinforcements have to be fed in small enough amounts that the defenders just rip them up piecemeal. In Game 4, the Roman team decisively crushes the Latin team with overwhelming force, but that took time and resources away from Asia, allowing the Ottoman team to really run wild. By the time the Latins are defeated, the Ottomans are besieging Smyrna and Nicaea.
The Romans land a max sealift effort of troops from Italy in western Anatolia, but the Ottomans obliterate it before the second wave arrives. Not only does this eliminate the Roman numerical advantage, it frees the Ottomans to wipe up the rest of Anatolia. The Roman army is then massed at Constantinople to keep it from being defeated in detail, but the concentration means the only offensive option is an assault across the Bosporus in the teeth of Ottoman defenses. This is a debacle, the Ottomans routing the Romans, seizing their landing craft, and sweeping across the Bosporus themselves to take Constantinople.
This is just a war game, not a prognostication, and some have criticized the setup. The first to do so was the War Room itself, which argued that the scenario was unfairly generous to the Roman team. Notably both Italy and Sicily are presumed to be loyal in the scenario and the Latin team is barred from operating outside of Italy. The War Room considers both criteria to be extremely unrealistic.
The contrast between the game results and the recent war are heavily analyzed in the game report. It is noted that in the war, the Lombards’ supply lines were long and exposed to seaborne raids. With the cockpit of conflict placed in northern Italy, that disadvantage vanished. Furthermore during the war the enemy was the Lombards, while in the games the Latins were stand-ins for the Arletians, League, and Spanish, and while the scenario did not game this, the Latin category could include the Triunes as well. The latter grouping was vastly more dangerous than the former. Like the officials, the War Room considers greatly expanded borders, in the context of a two-front (or worse) war, to be a liability, not a benefit.
