Luis3007: Good, good. Your hate has made you powerful.
Stark: The HRE Emperors can only do direct taxes in their own territories and in Saxony and Austria especially have restrictions in what they can get away with given the terms of those territories entering the Wittelsbach patrimony. The rest of the Imperial princes can and do contribute, but only in matters regarding common Imperial interests and of course the princes’ definitions of that do not always agree with the Emperor’s.
So the HRE is like a bigger version of 18th century Austria. It’s undoubtedly a great power with huge reserves of manpower and material resources but somewhat brittle when it comes to the financial side.
RogueTraderEnthusiast: Theodoros IV was the original troll Emperor.
I could see the Romans trying out a camel corps in the Idwait realm. Recruiting the southern Anizzah to fill its ranks would be a good way to bring them into the Roman client network (which would also have the advantage of getting a buffer against Ottoman-vassal Hedjaz).
1626 continued: Emperor Andreas III immediately faces a challenge. Despite his youth he is effectively the senior monarch despite the fact his mother is an Empress in her own right, as Helena II continues to be essentially a paperweight. So it is up to him to resolve the mess that has been stewing ever since the treaty of Mashhadshar.
The senior bureaucracy is still in a shambles as the whole affray between Eparch Sideros and Protospatharios Cheilas has continued to stew. The positions of the Logothetes tou Dromou, Kouaistor of Thrace, Eparch of Constantinople, and Protospatharios of the Office of Barbarians have been vacant for almost two years since Megas Logothetes Thomas Autoreianos suspended all of them in an effort to calm things.
Autoreianos has had his hands full administering the empire without the support of these offices and the ill health and then deaths of Emperor Demetrios II and Helena I meant there was no clear drive to resolve the matter. Andreas’ first order of business is to resolve that. A special investigative commission is set up, led by the Megas Kouaistor Alexios Komnenos (a descendant of Alexeia, the illegitimate daughter of Theodoros IV, the line legitimized in 1569), one of whose assistants is Leo Sideros [1] (son of the Duchess of Dalmatia and Istria and nephew of Eparch Demetrios) who is working on his law degree at the University of Constantinople.
Reportedly it is Leo who uncovers the skeleton in the closet. It turns out that Petros Cheilas has been using his post as Protospatharios more to line his pockets than serve imperial interests. Using the spy networks he oversees Petros has been able to use the garnered intelligence to play the market. His annual salary is 50,000 hyperpyra but a thorough examination of his accounts reveals that Cheilas in 1621 made over 360,000 hyperpyra. When he was not informing the Mashhadshar delegation of Iskandar’s manpower situation and Indian problems, he was using intelligence on the year’s Sumatran pepper harvest to make advantageous preliminary buys on the Constantinople market, earning himself a windfall of 120,000 hyperpyra.
Andreas is absolutely livid when this is revealed. Cheilas isn’t guilty of treason; there is no evidence he was in the pay of the Shah. So he is charged with ‘treasonous negligence’, all of his assets seized, and the eyeballs knives promptly dusted off and used on him. It is the first time they’ve been used as judicial punishment in over fifty years.
With Cheilas out of the way, the charges of treason against Demetrios, Logothete Sarantenos, and Kouaistor Trikanes, are dropped. That said, the influence of the latter two has drastically dropped since Mashhadshar. Although Cheilas’ actions had denied them vital intelligence many feel that they still could’ve driven a harder bargain. Sarantenos retorts with justice that the court had been in the same state of malaise as they had in those post-Nineveh times and that the court had ratified their terms without even a token debate.
Andreas, on the advice of Demetrios, just wants the matter dropped. The three are all restored to their positions and resume their duties. Also with Andreas in power, Leo Neokastrites is brought back out of retirement although he is assigned as Strategos of the Chaldean tagma rather than back as Strategos of the Akoimetoi due to the resistance of the new Megas Domestikos Nikolaios Mouzalon who argues that Leo’s retirement voided his seniority. As the most ‘junior’ strategos on the list, it would be highly inappropriate for him to be posted to the guard. Andreas, not wanting to risk a split in the army by pressing the issue considering the news from Persia, doesn’t push the matter.
Alexios Gabras hopes for a restoration too but there he is disappointed. Although the reports from India vindicate his post-Nineveh statements, which if believed at the time, would’ve made it possible for the Romans to drive a much harder line at Mashhadshar, nobody wants him back. Leo, and by extension Andreas, have been offended by Gabras’ attacks on Leo’s conduct at Mount Alfaf. Everyone else is fine to have the former Domestikos be the designated scapegoat.
One thing is clear after the dust has settled from this. Although as Eparch of Constantinople Demetrios Sideros is really one of the most junior of the senior bureaucrats working out of the White Palace, unofficially he is one of the most important officials. The closeness of Emperor Andreas with Odysseus, referring to him as ‘little brother’ in public, is a major factor. In fact in May a rumor starts going around the court that the Emperor, in answer to Demetrios’ essay question, is not only planning on designating Odysseus as his heir in case of no legitimate issue (since Andreas hasn’t been in his wife’s bed since his accession the odds of any issue arising look decidedly small) but is trying to find a way to ‘adopt’ Odysseus as his little brother officially to strengthen his younger cousin’s hereditary claim.
Another cause of Demetrios’ favor with his Emperor is connected to the reason why any legitimate children of Andreas III are looking unlikely. Anna of Amida is no longer in the picture. Although all three of his bastard sons are being raised together in Chalcedon (Zeno of Volos, age 4; Theodoros of Nineveh, age 3; Alexandros of Baghdad, age 2) Anna has been married off to the new Kephale of Gallipoli; although she is decidedly lowborn, she is a very pretty woman according to all accounts, Andreas provides a rather impressive dowry (much from Cheilas’ ill-gotten assets), and the Kephale recognizes that this gets him the Emperor’s favor.
Maria of Agra though is not going anywhere. In fact one of Andreas’ first official acts is to order construction of a new small wing to the White Palace, to be built and decorated in the ‘Indian style’, to give her a small piece of home. Some attribute her hold on the Emperor to sorcery, some to her great beauty and smart and kindly manner (no account claims she was otherwise), and some to her use of what are euphemistically called ‘zigzags’ in bed [2].
The Imperial ambassador, the hawk-nosed and perceptive Count Philip von Stadion-Warthausen has another theory. He notes that Maria of Agra frequently visits the villa at Chalcedon where Andreas’ bastards are raised, which isn’t that surprising since one of them is her own son. However the Count notes that she treats all three boys lovingly as if they were all her sons. He points out that Andreas, who clearly cares for his children (the yearly stipend for their maintenance would cover the annual payroll of a line tourma), cannot help but be touched. In contrast, Elizabeth is seemingly incapable of hiding her disgust, sometimes being rude and abusive to individuals who do nothing more than acknowledge the bastards’ existences. In a report to his sovereign he writes ‘in view of the contrast in their behaviors, it would be a rare man who would forsake the tender and open-hearted compassion of his mistress for the vicious jealousy of his wife.’ It is a bold report since his sovereign is Empress (Elizabeth of Bavaria had been crowned as such a week after Andreas) Elizabeth’s older brother.
Most court officials are smart enough to keep their mouths shut about the whole affair but Demetrios is openly supportive of the Emperor. Andreas understands why and immediately repays the debt. At a court banquet Demetrios arrives at his usual place but is accompanied not by his wife but by his long-time mistress Eudoxia of Chios.
She was formerly head of the Prostitutes’ Guild in Smyrna, where they’d met. As Eparch, Demetrios had pulled some strings so that now she runs the Shah’s Harem, the most luxurious restaurant and brothel in all of Constantinople. Although some silver is starting to creep into her floor-length golden hair, according to the Chartoularios [3] Pavlos Kinnamos she ‘does not possess the graceful and exotic beauty of Maria of Agra or Lady Jahzara of Axum, but is still a handsome woman with a full and ample figure’ and goes on to remark that she is also ‘extraordinarily flexible and acrobatic’, although how he gains that information he leaves unmentioned.
Now having an affair isn’t uncommon amongst the court officials, but bringing them to court is. Then to bring a mistress to an official Imperial banquet, and this mistress of all mistresses, that is not just unheard of; that is beyond the pale. But instead none other than Emperor Andreas III personally welcomes Eudoxia to the White Palace. At the Emperor’s side is not the Empress but Maria of Agra.
The Empress Elizabeth is absolutely ballistic at this and Demetrios Sideros receives a full broadside of her fury. She refers to him openly as a pimp at court and in a long stream of letters that go to her brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Theodor I in Munich, complaining of her treatment she goes into much abuse of the Eparch.
Around Demetrios is coalescing a faction of the bureaucracy, some of whom see him as a path to favor with the Emperor and others who are interested in some of his reform ideas that he has expressed, both recently and in his younger days. Chief amongst these are the Logothete Sarantenos and Kouaistor Trikanes, both of whom are very grateful for his support in restoring them to their former ranks.
Forming around Elizabeth is what can be called an anti-Demetrios faction. Elizabeth wants Maria of Agra gone so that she can be Empress in actuality. Supporting her are the Patriarch Isidore III, who strongly disapproves of both Demetrios’ and Andreas’ affairs, and the Logothetes tou Genikou (Chief Finance Minister) Romanos Xiphilinos, who sees most of Demetrios’ ideas as encroaching upon his turf.
Both profess their loyalty to the Empire and to the Emperor Andreas III but it is clear to all where his sympathy lies. In June he directs Demetrios to begin drafting a new tax code using his ‘tax level’ system, much to the protest of Xiphilinos who argues rather reasonably that such a task should be his responsibility. Andreas responds that the Logothete will have a chance to review and revise once Demetrios is done, but does not transfer responsibility or cancel the project, leaving Xiphilinos fuming. He is even angrier when Demetrios taps Thomas Vatatzes (cousin of Andreas’ bodyguard commander), Dioiketes [4] of Nicaea, as a personal assistant. They’d worked together while Demetrios was both Kephales of Skammandros and Smyrna.
Andreas has some other projects going at the same time. A top priority is a thorough purge of the Office of Barbarians. Cheilas’ rot had sunk in deep; he had been in the post for fifteen years. Many of the agents were complicit in his activities, while many others had taken a cue from their leader and taken to feathering their nests above all else. Andreas doesn’t quite gut the organization but its rolls are drastically shrunk. Naturally the Office’s abilities are severely weakened at the same time. To make up the shortfall Andreas pulls agents from the Emperor’s Eyes, at the same time making de jure the de facto division of responsibilities that has existed between the Office of Barbarians and the Emperor’s Eyes since the death of Andreas II. The Office of Barbarians will oversee foreign espionage while the Eyes take care of internal security.
The Emperor also wants to expand the training budget for the Roman army, with a specific aim of improving the quality of the dekarchoi. At Nineveh the heavy casualty rates amongst the officers had seriously weakened unit effectiveness. In many cases the dekarchoi had stepped into the breach, but in many they had not. The aim is to improve their training and morale, the latter by a pay increase. Andreas also wants to streamline procurement, hopefully to minimize snafus like the one that sent the Athanatoi into battle with half-kits of ammunition. Plus there is this new Spanish invention, a ring ambrolar that allows it to be used while still enabling the user to fire his musket. That should help even the odds when facing Persian infantry in melee. Given the course of the Persian civil war, such abilities may be needed sooner rather than later.
[1] Mistakenly referred to as Leo Drakos in the 1620 ‘game update’.
[2] A reported maneuver of Josephine, first wife of Napoleon IOTL.
[3] “general term for lower-ranking official with fiscal and archival duties in various bureaus in both central and provincial administration;” see The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, pg. 887.
[4] Individual responsible for tax collection within a district; naturally as such Xiphilinos is his boss.