Better Byzantine Outcome in the First Crusade

Byzantine PoD, people like those! Short and sweet: Can Alexius Comnenus regain all of Anatolia with a PoD AFTER the Council of Clermont?

Alexius obviously wanted to retake Anatolia which had only recently been lost. He succeeded in taking the west and the coasts to an extent but the interior remained in the hands of Kilij Arslan. Kilij Arslan's losses to the crusaders at Nicea and Dorylaeum destabilized his alliances and eventually he just let them through. However he became more familiar with the westerners after that and crushed the 1101 crusade.

One possible PoD might be the death of Arslan. At Dorylaeum the rest of the Crusader army caught up to Arslan as he was hammering the vanguard. He only pulled back because he was in danger of being encircled. What if he is encircled and is killed in 1097? After all the 1101 crusaders were able to capture Ankara before going on to be massacred, so lack of good leadership counts for a lot.

By Anatolia I mean a border there like this:

ByzantineEmpire867AD4lightpurple.PNG
 
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The thing is that didn't the Byzantines evacuate a huge portion of their population from Anatolia. The hinterland is mostly settled by Turks.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The italian border is not quite possible short of war with one of the, if not the single most relevant country on the catholic side of the crusades.
EDIT: Nevermind, I realized what you meant; the anatolian border...

IIRC the main problem with these borders is that they're on a nearly indefensible plateau.
 
A better performance of the Crusade of 1101 would help, IOTL 3 armies were destroyed for no result. I don't know if it was within Alexios' power to do anything about this, but basically a mobilised army was marching through the territory of the Turks and any damage it could do to thew Turks could only help the Byzantine cause.

I think this is true for the other Crusader passages across Anatolia in the 2nd and 3rd Crusades, giving the Turks a hiding can only help the Empire.
 
I think a seriously good outcome would be to avoid the Crusader messengers telling Alexius to retreat to Constantinople when it appeared all was lost at Antioch. If the Emperor arrives with a large army to support the Crusaders there, he'll get back Antioch and Cilicia then and there. These can then be used as a base to mop up the still shattered Turks in central Anatolia, by attacking them from both east and west.
 
Very simple you see find some way to get Alexius the the byzzies work and cooperate with crusaders and the two sides come to an understanding. In otl the crusaders were uber pissed at Byzzies because every time they laid siege to a city the byzantines would send emissiaries into that city and take it for themselves. Thus crusaders felt betrayed and likewise at Antioch like BG said the byzzies did not help crusaders. So if we see a greatear cooperation among the two armies the crusaders wouldn't lose their trust in the Byzzies and like otl conquer jerusalum as well, however unlike otl most of the lands will be under Byzantine control.


IMO this is near AsB scenario due to all the uncounted variables like looting, betrayal, etc however it is one idea. Btw the reason this is implausable is because
1: two competing christian faiths
2:crusaders were rabble out for gild and plunder(Byzzies don't want looted cities)
3: west views byzzies as snobs while byzzies view west as barbarians.
4: the byzzies kept on betraying the crusaders at every turn
5: Incredible amount of luck for crusade to succeed
6: Bad treatment of orthodox Christians by westeners
... IMO these are just a couple factors to take into account a POD is tough but doable.:)
 
First Crusade

Check with the excellent work by Speros Vryonis, "The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor", for conditions in Asia Minor at this time (and possible outcomes).
 
The Crusaders were barbarians with little to no sense of historical perspective or diplomatic sense.

The Crusaders would have been at least twice as effective in combating Islam had they been willing to make friends, divide and conquer.

However, Alexius rolled the dice when he asked for help from the West, and the result was the hastening decline of the Greek Orthodox east, and its eventual submission and almost total assimilation into the House of Islam.

That the Greeks were civilized, preferred diplomacy to war, and rejected the use of religion to justify war and conquest, was one of the means of their own demise.

I find the crusades and their ultimate result to be a very sad and melancholy bit of history.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The Crusaders would have been at least twice as effective in combating Islam had they been willing to make friends, divide and conquer.

This, there, is one of the basic mistakes IMO. The initial impulse for it was not just saving Byzantium from the muslims. It was also saving Byzantium from the normans. And going for kneejerk byzantinism is not going to help: Sicily was a vibrant country, Italy was about the wealthiest part of christendom short of Constantinople itself.
 
To return to the original point:

Reconquering Anatolia would be a generations long endeavor, one that I think had reached equilibrium during the reign of Manuel Comnenus. While his martial effectiveness against the Turks is debatable (especially when compared to his father, John), the tide only turned decisively against Byzantium during the political instability and weakness preceding the Fourth Crusade.

I have always wondered how Byzantium would have reacted to the annihilation of the Seljuk state at Iconium in the middle of the 1200's.

Perhaps adept diplomacy could have deflected Mongol raids, and a stable government in Constantinople could have 'rehabilitated' fleeing Turks.

I have always wondered if Byzantium could have not simply absorbed the Turks into the 'Roman' cultural and religious melange had events turned out even a little differently.
 
To return to the original point:

Reconquering Anatolia would be a generations long endeavor, one that I think had reached equilibrium during the reign of Manuel Comnenus. While his martial effectiveness against the Turks is debatable (especially when compared to his father, John), the tide only turned decisively against Byzantium during the political instability and weakness preceding the Fourth Crusade.

I have always wondered how Byzantium would have reacted to the annihilation of the Seljuk state at Iconium in the middle of the 1200's.

Perhaps adept diplomacy could have deflected Mongol raids, and a stable government in Constantinople could have 'rehabilitated' fleeing Turks.

I have always wondered if Byzantium could have not simply absorbed the Turks into the 'Roman' cultural and religious melange had events turned out even a little differently.
Considering how Byzantinized the Ottomans ended up I don't see why not. It does indeed seem like John at the end had brought things to a make or break point which is why I was wondering what happens if Alexius makes more progress on that front even earlier.
 
I have always wondered if Byzantium could have not simply absorbed the Turks into the 'Roman' cultural and religious melange had events turned out even a little differently.

I think, in a world without Myriokephalon, and then the disasters of the early thirteenth century, this is probably what would have happened. The Sultanate of Rum was already well on the way to becoming a vassal state of the Empire with no more independent power than Croatia, Serbia or Cilician Armenia. If you avoid the troubles of the period 1174-1204, this will probably continue.
 
First Crusade

The crusaders were too short sighted to realize the importance of pushing the Turks out of Anatolia. They considered the Greeks to be heretics anyway. Even during the stable Nicean period, the Greeks were very good at maitaining the territories in western Asia Minor that they already possessed, but did not really expand much. The Turks were too numerous and mobile to allow them to.
 
The Crusaders didn't care about Anatolia, that they struck a blow at Doryleum was a sidebar of their journey to Jerusalem.
 
First Crusade

The Crusaders didn't care about Anatolia, that they struck a blow at Doryleum was a sidebar of their journey to Jerusalem.
I agree. The Turks came into eastern Europe after they finished with Asia Minor...
 
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