Hi, guys, as always, thanks for the kind words, for the support and for the constructive criticism! The latest installment was a momentous one and interesting to write. Now, let's go for the posts, starting from
#2,791.
@Quinkana (
#2,791) - Cutting the long story short, that's exactly it!
@Reyne (
#2,792) - Thanks for the compliment! They will certainly have fight their way out, being right in the heart of enemy territory.
@TickTock The Witch's Dead (
#2,793) - That's very much probable. The Fatimid regime falling into the pitfalls of religious persecution (but still having sizeable Christian and Jewish minorities), they will be more likely to be sympathetic to the invaders, who, in other circumstances, would be very much despised as hostiles.
@Damian0358 (
#2,794) - Byzantine succession is secure indeed. No real chance for Andronikos
Misophaes to come to the throne, and neither the Angeloi. The Komnenoi will continue reigning for far longer than OTL (and, to be fair, they did remarkably well in Trebizond after 1204 C.E.), but the issues for the new Basileus to tackle are indeed serious.
@cjc (
#2,795) - That's good that you point out the issue about the manpower of the Crusader State. Its an important aspect that now I believe should have been addressed in better detail (when I revise the installment, I'll be sure to look at this).
See, these 300 knights and 3000 infantrymen mentioned in the Chapter are CERTAINLY NOT the whole manpower of the Principality, but rather those mustered by Prince Raymond III himself, and likely those are the men levied from his own domains in Palestine, and those of his immediate allies, as well as the retinues of the Frankish nobles who came to the expedition. The total manpower available to the Crusader State is far larger than this. I don't have a precise figure in mind, but, using OTL's numbers as a comparison, in the historical battle of Hattin, pitting the Franks against the Ayyubids - which was the largest muster of troops in the History of Jerusalem - the Christian side had about 18.000 to 20.000 men, including those from the KOJ, of Tripoli and Antioch, as well as the military orders (Templars, Hospitallers, Lazarus and Montjoy), I believe we can extrapole the alt-Crusader State as having perhaps as much as some 28.000 to 35.000 men available.
These are evidently high numbers (considering that the Franks control the populous and wealthier regions of Damascus and Hauran, Homs and Shayzar, and are thus generally more attractive to European settlers), and it is unlikely that, unless the very survival of the state is in question, they will be levied in full, especially due to the logistical contraints. However, to see that the Prince of Jerusalem, to such an important campaign, levied something like the tenth of the realm's manpower to fight in it, demonstrates how weak he is from a political standpoint, and how far more autonomous the Frankish lords have become since the reign of Bohemond, for example. The nobles simply refused to join or to commit to the campaign (and for this Manuel was beyond pissed), and there is nothing that Raymond (nor Manuel, for the time being, considering that he was all too concerned with Egypt) can really do to compel them.
But your final conclusion is correct, indeed. The Latin-Levantine Franks lack the necessary political cohesion and military homogeneity necessary to undertake the conquest of Egypt by themselves. The fall of Egypt will result from the Third Crusade, and the developments leading to it and its actions and consequences will be the subject of the Act VI of the narrative.
@hitcho11 (
#2,796) - Thanks! I hope they continue to be like this
@avernite (
#2,797) - Thanks again! Well, I can say from the start that they will be able to retreat and preserve their unity, but the outcome of this won't be really pretty. Neither will be the next few years for Egypt.
@Revalus @Curtain Jerker - LOL, I honestly hadn't this (unwilling) pun. I was trying to emulate the more old-fashioned historians and I got this (rather escatological) piece by accident.
@St. Just (
#2,800) - Indeed! But there's still some stuff in story for the Byzantines, regardless of the situation for the Franks having become a little much better than they themselves might expect.
About Ibn Khaldun, I hope to do him and his work some justice, but the mention in the TL will be more of a brief synopsis of the concept of the cycle of dynasties, because I think its interesting to see it applied to the period, where we'll see the collapse of the Fatimids, of the Seljuks and later of the Almohads and Abbasids (and have already seen the end of the Almoravids, for example).
And as for the chapter about the Jews (subject of the Interlude 5, after Chapter 68), I also hope to do it justice. I've been researching a lot about the history of the Jews in the High Middle Ages, and it has been a fascinating read.
@DanMcCollum (
#2,801) - Indeed, Egypt has seen a lot of better days. You are right about the fact that the Egyptians (at least the Christians) are more likely now to be favorable to the Crusaders than in other circumstances.
On the other hand, I did not understood the "Starbow" reference, ><
@Oda @Cryostorm @Quinkana (
#2,804),
@DanMcCollum (
#2,806) - Regarding the debate of about the Anatolian Turks and their relations with Byzantium, those are great points you guys raised. I'll give just a few words about the topic for the time being.
First of all, the Byzantines are very much overstretched. They did reconquer important core territories lost after Manzikert, but many of these places (notably in Armenia) are gravely underpopulated, and there are still a fair share of Turkish warbands making a living there by plunder. Its a wild frontier in its most pure definition. In fact, I'll go beyond and say that the Byzantines are more liable to focus in the defense in-depth by fortifying Mesopotamia and Armenia to be able to recover the economic and demographic potential of the eastern Anatolian (Cappadocia, Chaldia, Sebasteia and Charsianon) and Syrian
themata.
Second, while some of the Anatolian Turkish states have been completely destroyed from a political and military standpoint, such as the Rûm Seljuks and the Danishmends, in the reigns of Alexios I and John II, they are still a significant minority in eastern Anatolia due to their sheer size. Their military elite might have been decapitated, but there are still various Turkish families around, and their clan-based organization has not been disrupted, meaning that they still have a sense of common cultural identity of sorts. I believe that many are still Muslims and speak their own languages, regardless of the Rhômaîon dominance. This is even more considerable when talking about those other groups who were brought into fold as whole peoples, in expectation of cultural assimilation and military replenishment, such as the Saltukids and the Mengujekids, and some of the Artuqids, because they, even some 40 years after the *Second Crusade, are far from assimilated. Their relation to the Empire is much more similar to those of the ancient Roman
foederati.
I won't go down in much detail about this for the moment, because I intend to explore it in the TL itself (in Chapter 67, which will focus in the Islamic Near East, and in Chapter 68, which will focus in the reign of Emperor Alexios II), but I will say that the issue of the assimilation of the Anatolian Turks will be a very important one, as will the fact that the gradual collapse of the Seljuk empire will facilitate another wave of migration of the Oghuz Turks from Central Asia to Western Asia. But, again, these will be topics to be addressed later on.
Cryostorm raised a good point in
#2,808 in regards to the Franks, albeit to a much lesser extent, because there are not a lot of Turkish settlers in Palestine, only some in Syria. But it certainly applies to the Palestinian and Syrian Muslims, who are not so pliable to Christian proselytism.
The idea of reverting the jizya tax is an interesting (and logical) one, but on the other hand I don't think the Franks are above taxing their own Catholic subjects (even though they will certainly enjoy a more privileged position than the non-Catholic Christians, and much better than the Jews and the Muslims). The privilege of Muslims from the jizya, I believe, has religious basis. In Catholic Christianity there is no such argument, the economic system is more grounded in the class-distinction, with the temporal and spiritual aristocracy being the privileged ones, and the "commoners" the supporters of the system.
@DanMcCollum (
#2,809)
@JLan1485 (
#2,810) - Goods point too! I admit I too am not knowledgeable about the Frankish proselytism in the Levant during the Crusader period. From what I recall from Christopher McEvitt's excellent
"The Crusades and the Christian world of the East : Rough Tolerance", there were some native Christians, Armenians and Syrians, who advanced in the social ladder in the KOJ and in the County of Edessa and the Principality of Antioch, and this ascension was not necessarily predicated in the conversion to Catholicism, but rather in the "usefulness" to the Frankish elite - for example, Armenian nobles and wealthy Syrians were much more likely to exert some influence in the Frankish regime than impoverished or rural ones.
@TickTock The Witch's Dead (
#2,811)
@Noblesse Oblige (
#2,812) - Good question about the Copts. I still have to research more about it.
@Sarufiyyun (
#2,813) - Interesting idea indeed. I've been thinking about this, in fact, but with a Muslim successor state. To have a Christianized Turkish one is a very interesting possibility. I'll think more about it too.
@Icedaemon (
#2,814) - Thanks for the constructive criticism, this is a reasonable point you raised. To be honest, I don't have a satisfying answer to the problem you addressed, and I recognize it falters in plausibility. Even though it is not impossible to happen, if we go by OTL's situation of an apogee under Manuel to a complete collapse under the Angeloi, barely 30 years after Myriokephalon, this serves to demonstrates that the contextual and structural problems of the Komnenoi state were far-reaching, and ITTL they wouldn't have been really overcome. But this is another aspect altogether, unrelated to what you said.
It is obvious that I have a narrative agenda in works here, and sometimes I might push the pro-Crusader side too far. I'll be sure to address the issue better once I get to revise this installment. Perhaps to stress that the logistical network of the Empire still functions well, and whatever problems might have during this campaign have other causes.
@DanMcCollum (
#2,815) - That's a fascinating idea indeed, even more so because they will certainly be seen as "alien" to the Byzantine worldview, shared religion notwithstanding. OTL, the Axouches, a Turkish family who rapidly rose to proeminence under the reigns of John and Manuel, were implicated in a supposed plot to depose Manuel, and thus executed. There is some precedent, then, for a Turkish family close to the imperial dynasty, who would be liable to succeed them upon the fall of the Komnenoi.