Duke of Nova Scotia: Only specific major construction projects I can think of are the White Palace, the Herakleian Walls, the Smyrna palace built by Demetrios Megas, and the Muses’ Theater of Smyrna. New Constantinople and Pyrgos are created pretty much from scratch in the east. But there definitely have been lots of churches, monasteries, nunneries, along with secular buildings, in the background. All of the universities had to come from somewhere. The Emperors have been the major patrons but building is always a good way for the dynatoi to show off.
A bridge over the Golden Horn would have to be tall enough for a three-decker ship of the line to pass underneath. That’s a pretty tall order (yes, the pun was intentional, leave me alone
). Plus they would probably be security issues since it’d be a way to bypass the land walls.
A Corinth canal would be a good idea. There’s the Pharaoh’s Canal in Egypt from Suez to Cairo that’s passable by flat-bottomed barges. A full-blown Suez Canal I don’t think is technically feasible yet and won’t appear until steamships are a running theme. According to my research the Red Sea’s winds and currents apparently are not kind at all to sailing ships which is why Aden was such a major port. Ocean sailing ships would transfer their goods to oared vessels for the Red Sea leg in Aden. So building a canal from Med to Red big enough for an ocean-going vessel doesn’t make sense until you can guarantee it can get all the way through the Red Sea safely.
Do you have any ideas for specific land reclamation projects in Greece/Anatolia? Any suggestions would be helpful. One thing arguing against agricultural innovation though is that the Empire can get cheap grain from Egypt and Scythia, plus Vlachia is making a pretty penny supplying Constantinople with foodstuffs and animal products.
Lascaris: Those are lots of good ideas. Church and monastery building is still going strong. Thanks too for the hyperpyron-gold francs-pound sterling info too.
'Our quivering lances shaking in the air
And bullets like Jove's dreadful thunderbolts
Enrolled in flames and fiery smoldering mists
Shall threat the gods more than Cyclopian wars;
And with our sun-bright armor, as we march,
We'll chase the stars from heaven and dim their eyes
That stand and muse at our admired arms'
-Timur the Great in the eponymous play*
1616: So at last the Empire is at peace…mostly. The border war with the Ottomans continues, albeit at a relatively lighter tempo. The largest pitched battle has four thousand total participants, compared to the record 13,500 three years earlier. With the widespread devastation of the frontier districts, there is little more to wreck. Despite the multiple Roman/Anizzah successes in battle in the category of stuff-to-loot the Ottomans have had a generally better time. Some morbid satisfaction though is derived in Constantinople from the fact that most of those suffering from Ottoman raiders are Syrian Muslim villagers.
As hard as this fighting is on the border provinces, the conflict is barely more than a pinprick for either Empire. Despite the occasional pitched battle numbering in the thousands, the vast majority of warfare is done by flying columns of light cavalry/mounted infantry. At most a couple of hundred, maintaining them is no hardness.
A larger dispatch of Roman troops goes, of all places, to Vlachia. The new King Roman I Musat is facing a serious rebellion led by Mircea cel Mare, the leader of that famous family. One branch of the family emigrated to the Empire in the early 1400s but the bulk stayed in Vlachia where they are extremely prominent landowners. There is a small but powerful stratum of mega-landowners in Vlachia that have grown rich by feeding Constantinople’s gargantuan and continuous appetite for grain, mutton, and leather. At this stage Mircea is the unofficial leader.
However there are some serious allegations circulating in Targoviste that Mircea was in treasonous correspondence with the King of Poland during the Hungarian war. When summoned to the capital to explain himself, Mircea refuses, instead raising an army to march on the capital. Many of his fellow great landowners join him, spying an opportunity to curb Roman and his centralizing desires. Mircea believes that with a cousin on the throne of Rhomania he has a very good chance.
There are two things wrong with his hypothesis. Firstly Roman is also related to the Roman Imperial family; he is a grandson of Theodora Komnena Drakina via her eldest daughter Anastasia. More importantly, given Demetrios II’s willingness to disregard family ties when they are politically inconvenient, is the parallel Mircea’s revolt makes in Roman society.
Those in the Roman government cannot help but view this as a Vlach version of the dynatoi rising up and attempting to overthrow the legitimate monarch. Demetrios has no interest in that. Leo Neokastrites thus leads the Akoimetoi and the Thracian tagma into Vlachia in support of the King. In the one battle the rebels are crushed despite the valor of Mircea, who is described by Demetrios Sideros as “brave as a bull and with about as many brains”. Captured three days later, on the advice of Demetrios II he is executed along with his father, two brothers, and two adult sons. All of the property of his family is confiscated, the surviving members reduced to beggary. Mircea’s sister tries to move to Constantinople to get a pension from one of the Drakoi but Demetrios II has her arrested and expelled.
Leo returns to the capital after the brief campaign, taking a detour to escort Elisabeth, granddaughter of Emperor Friedrich IV, on the last stage of her journey to the White Palace. Eleven years old when she arrives, per the contract she is to spend the next three years learning the language and customs of Rhomania. When both her and her betrothed, Kaisar Andreas, turn fourteen, they will wed. One gift she brings, well calculated to soothe Roman nerves, is the reliquary of Limburg looted from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
Another prominent woman crossing the Roman European frontier is Theodora, the hapless Dowager Queen of Hungary. She pointedly stays away from the capital, refusing to speak with her family that has pretended she hasn’t existed for the past several years. Retiring to a small estate on Lesbos, living on rents that total about as much as Demetrios Sideros’ salary as Kephale of Skammandros, the last daughter of Helena the Elder dies in such obscurity that historians are unsure of what year that happens.
Demetrios Sideros, grandson of the Empress Helena, is in contrast moving up. Much to his annoyance he is promoted to Kephale of Smyrna, one of the most prominent provincial governorships in the entire Empire. In order of precedence he ranks as #3 after the Kephales of Antiocheia and Thessaloniki. It is quite an impressive achievement for a man who turns 31 just after his promotion. It is a promotion he could do without in his opinion. Although it comes with a substantial pay raise it is also a more difficult job.
Smyrna, now at 110,000 inhabitants, is the fourth-largest metropolis in the Empire and in terms of port volume and revenue comparable only to Alexandria and the capital itself. Its civic government can be rightly styled as a commune, the city enjoying substantial self-rule. The Kephalate of Smyrna is larger than the city itself and beyond the walls the commune has no jurisdiction, but nevertheless the Kephale has a significant local power with which to deal. The Kephale ranks as senior and the Imperial government is practically guaranteed to back its appointee in the event of a serious quarrel but the political situation is nevertheless much more complicated than the Skammandros.
As a member of the Imperial family, Demetrios is allowed to live in and work from the Jade Palace, the palace originally erected by Demetrios Megas himself and a favored residence throughout the Second Komnenid dynasty. The young Andreas and his mother and sister were staying there when the Venetians attacked.
Somewhat of a scene though is caused when Jahzara insists on giving birth in the Purple Room of the palace, the room in which Demetrios Sideros himself was born. If Jahzara had been a granddaughter by blood of the Empress she might’ve been allowed but she is only one by marriage. Thus she gives birth to a daughter, named Athena due to her father’s eccentric classical tastes, in the Tea Room instead, a new pavilion modeled on Japanese architecture.
Much to Demetrios’ relief, along with that of future historians, the promotion comes just after he finishes a brief history of the Laskarid dynasty, which begins being published in installments shortly after Athena’s birth. It is surprisingly popular, earning him a respectable supplement to his income. He is helped there by a recently passed copyright law, whereby authors are to receive a percentage of all profits from sale of their works for the first fifteen years after initial publication. It is a frequently flouted law, poorly enforced, Demetrios’ family name and governmental rank serving as better protection in this instance.
One advantage of his work is that rather than a capital-centered narrative the piece has a provincial perspective as his source material is drawn overwhelmingly from the Opsikian and Thrakesian theme archives. Like many histories, the Muslims are presented as typically honorable foes with the Turks particularly based for the valor and steadfastness. Osman, the founder of the Ottoman state, is praised as “brilliant in war, magnanimous in peace, the humbler of the proud, the champion of the poor, few are the monarchs who have equaled him in the annals of empires, and only one has surpassed him”. In contrast the Latins are, almost without exception, portrayed as vicious brutes, incredibly brave but with no other virtues.
This is nothing out of the ordinary. Roman histories will sometimes speak well of Latin kings of earlier times such as Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa (the latter inspired by the works of Choniates) but Latins after 1204 are almost irredeemably stained by the crime of the Fourth Crusade.
What is more unusual is the praise for Timur the Great and the criticism of Theodoros III Laskaris, who repudiated his father’s tribute to Timur. Theodoros had been criticized for provoking Timur and losing; Demetrios criticizes Theodoros for provoking Timur at all. It was “stupid vainglory, worthy of an empty-headed Frank, for while great things would be lost in such a conflict, all victory would bestow would be empty accolades and the weeping of widows”.
It is quite possibly a subtle criticism of Demetrios II’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the Ottomans. Even if the Romans seized Mesopotamia, given the extreme difficulties of keeping Syria quiet, keeping it would be impossible. Even Hadrian did not believe it possible. Wrecking Mecca, whilst emotionally satisfying, earned the Empire nothing but Muslim hatred.
One exception to the perceived pointlessness of the conflict is the question of the trans-Aras lands seized from Georgia. In correspondence with his sister the Duchess of Dalmatia and Istria he points out that Iskandar might have written off those lands to focus on his Indian desires. (The counterargument that Iskandar with fifteen extra years to establish dominion in northern India would be a vastly more dangerous foe is left unmentioned.)
Demetrios is apparently not the only one feeling that way. In this year in the Muses’ Theater of Smyrna the play
Timur the Great is performed for the first time. Aside from the criticism of Theodoros III (who is the chief villain of the piece) there is also a whiff of atheism about the play. Timur usurps the role of Ares, makes Zeus fear for the safety of his throne, and even threatens to topple Mohammed if he dares to stand in the way of his glory.
Roman culture is certainly thriving at this time. Dmitri Romanov, the great Russian playwright, already famous for his plays on Mikhail Shuisky, first King of Novgorod, and Queen Thamar the Great of Georgia, moves to Constantinople. Here his most renowned works, including
David, Lord of Mexico, are writ.
He is not the only immigrant to Rhomania this year as the Lombards move on Genoa in alliance with the Kingdom of the Isles. It is a rather easy conquest given the substantial fifth column in the city itself but many of the Ligurian nobility prefer to make sail, the bulk making their way to Egypt where both the Kephale of Alexandria and the Despot are desirous of new subjects. Thus it comes to pass that Napoleone di Buonaparte is born on the docks of Alexandria.
*Quotation taken from Christopher Marlowe's play
