Byzantium Resurrected: A Second Alexiad

[Eparkhos]

Sounds good! It's short, snappy, and besides, you did mention early on that this TL is written in the style of the Alexiad itself, so the title works.

Same here, should continue with your title @Eparkhos .

oh god i have a bad feeling

*evil chuckles* I have not even begun....

1297, Pt.3

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE CAPITAL, things were going badly. Really, really badly.

As you might imagine from his previous behavior, Geōrgios Tágaris was a greedy bastard, and while he would certainly toe the line set by the basileus he was also going ‘above-and-beyond’ in his duties by seizing the estates and wealth of the upper nobility, the prime criterion for receiving a nighttime visit from the kryptandroi (effectively secret police) being having too much money or having pissed off Tágaris in the past. This spawned a massive current of discontent running through the ranks of the pronoia, but given that Aléxios had come to the throne over a trail of their fallen social equals few of the pronoiai were willing to directly ask him to stop.

However, after the emperor (and more importantly, the soldiers he had camped outside of the land walls) departed for the west to deal with the Latins in the March of 1297 and left Grēgórios in charge of the city, a group of provincial noblemen decided that this could be the very opportunity they had been desiring and assembled in the capital in late-April. The lion’s share were from Thrákē and Makedonía, but there were several from Bithynía or even further afield. The group created a unified petition, requesting that Tágaris be sacked and the lands which had been seized be returned to their owners. All in all, the demands weren’t especially extreme.

On 30 April, the large crowd of several hundred pronoiai and their retainers gathered in the Strategión, opposite of the Palace of Votaneiátēs (I don’t recall if I mentioned this earlier, but the Imperial residence was moved to the Palace of Votaneiátēs in 1295 because it was cheaper and easier to maintain than Blakhérnai). Unsure of how to proceed, three of the noblemen politely knocked on the front gate and asked to speak with Grēgórios. The sevastos took one look at the giant mob gathered outside and bolted for the tunnels under the palace, only to find that they had been flooded out by heavy rains the previous week. Unable to run, Grēgórios reluctantly strode out to the gate.

He asked what the pronoiai wanted. They began shouting that they wanted Tágaris sacked and their lands returned. However, as Grēgórios’ response was given the chant began to mutate. They were no longer just calling for the Protokrypteros’ exile, they now wanted him blinded, or even dead. Grēgórios shouted that he would have him sacked and blinded, but he couldn’t order him executed. A spear was shoved through the gate at him and Grēgórios turned and fled. The noblemen then began to hack at the gate with axes and hammers, and after a few minutes it gave. The crowd surged forward, spilling out onto the grounds of the palace complex.

It is important to understand that the Palace of Votaneiátēs was unique among Rhōman palace in that it was not a single massive building with several wings, but instead consisted of several buildings (more specifically, five residences, two for servants, two churches, a guards barracks and a feast/meeting hall) arranged around the edges of a raised, walled platform with an open yard and trees that formed the center of the complex. Mental picture formed? Great.

As the baying mob charged after him Grēgórios ran for his life and began darting through the buildings. The mob spread out through the complex and began breaking into and looting the nearer buildings. However, a more determined group kept after the sevastos, who by now had been locked out of his own building by the panicking servants. After failing to get the door open he scrambled up one of the nearby trees and tried to break open a second-story window with a rock. Unfortunately for him, before he could get in the branch collapsed and dropped him straight into the mob, where he was promptly hacked apart.

Meanwhile, at the far end of the complex the Imperial tutor, Stéphanos Rangabé, had realized what was going down and rushed his wards out through a side gate. Rangabé, the princes and two guards made their way through the chaotic city, out of the Second Military Gate, and then on to the Trivoúnalíon, where the Eleutheroi were being trained. Rangabé tried to convince Namejs to retake the palace and expel the usurpers, but the elder man balked at the prospect of street fighting and instead ordered his men north-east. While this may seem like a blunder because most of the rebelling nobility were from the region, it in fact made the direction more appealing because there would be no one there to defend it.

Back in the palace complex, the more level-headed of the rioters seized and then closed off the women’s quarter. The basilissa was captured and imprisoned, as was Eirénē Libádaria and her son (At this point, while the official story was that it was Nikēphóros’ child; However, most people believed that he had been conceived before her marriage to the emperor was annulled) Sávvas. As this was a noble rebellion, very few of the noblewomen were assaulted (records in regards to the middle and lower classes are nonexistent, but you can probably guess), and the building was put under relatives light guard. The rebels soon finished stripping the palace complex of most of her valuables, and then turned their attention to securing the regime’s other prominent figures.

Aléxios Kyparissiōtēs, the protovestarios, was warned by a friend amongst the rebels and took to his heels, escaping into the crowds in Galata before he could be blinded, as did the protoexodromonos. The other asēkrētonoi were not so lucky, with the hated protokhartoularios Khristóphoros Lapardás being scourged with lead-tipped whips before blinded, and the protopapias Pavlos Notarãs tonsured himself rather than suffering Lapardás’ fate. However, the worst of the mob’s fury was reserved for Tágaris, who had been blissfully unaware of the ongoing events in his home on the Mángana. The luckless Anatolian was dragged from his study and tied to the back of a cart, which then pulled him through the notoriously filthy (it smelled so strongly of rotten fish that it was nicknamed the Psarígana, or fish oil district) streets of the district while he was pelted with stones and beaten with cudgels. When the macabre procession reached the Gate of Saint Barbara at the end of the district, Tágaris was shoved into a weighted sack with three cats and thrown into the Golden Horn.

The only high-ranking member of the Philanthrōpēnós regime to remain free and in the capital, was ironically enough, a member of the Philanthrōpēnós family. Nikēphóros was a notorious drunk, and the night before the gates to the palace were beaten down he had been getting drunk off his ass in the red-light district of Xerólophōs. He spent the entirety of 30 April face-down in a gutter outside of a tavern, being missed entirely by the search parties. Upon being sobered up by a group of loyalists he was quickly shuffled out of the city and fled to Pontoērákleia in Anatolia.

For the rest of 30 April the chaos continued across the city, but by dawn the next day the pronoiai had realized that they needed a functioning government to have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the inevitable civil war. The rebels met in the only slightly burned palace grounds. After several hours of deliberation, the charismatic and somewhat experienced general Léōn Maurokatakalōn was elected as emperor. Only a few hours later Maurokatakalōn was crowned as emperor Léōn VII in a hurried ceremony in the Agía Sophía, making him only the second emperor to make the questionable decision of usurping the throne while the previous emperor had an army in the provinces.

Léōn leapt into action. He extracted a promise from all the pronoiai present to return to their estates and raise their paroikoi in arms to join him. He then sent a courier to the Eleutheroi, requesting a parly, and then another one to the Isfendiyarid beylik in Anatolia. Namejs agreed to negotiations, and a few miles north of the city the two leaders met in the clearing. While the Eleutheroi were hypothetically loyal to Aléxios, in reality this manifested (at least among the officer corps) as loyalty to the throne, who held the power to free them. As such, Namejs was more than willing to defect over to Léōn, but only for the right price. Their tenure was to be shortened to ten years, and their pay increased. The princes were to be turned over to the usurper the next day. However, Namejs instead hedged his bets and sent the princes on to Mesēmvría, so that even if Aléxios somehow won he could always say that he had remained loyal for the whole time and was only going along with it to save his own head. Needless to say, when the leader of the Eleutheroi then claimed the next day that they had escaped, Léōn was irritated and sent what little cavalry he had after them. Ultimately, the princes managed to escape and seemingly vanished into the wilds.

Over the rest of the month the various pronoiai brought up their levies and gathered on the plains west of the city. A deal was struck with the Isfendiyards, where in exchange for Pontoērákleia the Turks would supply 2,000 horsemen to counter Aléxios’ advantage in cavalry. By the time he marched west in early June, Léōn had eight allagia of infantry (most of extremely poor quality that were barely worth the supplies they needed), six allagia of pronoiai cavalry and four allagia of Turkish horse, a host far greater than any the former basileus could hope to assemble….

 

[CastilloVerde]

Nice update.

a host far greater than any the former basileus could hope to assemble….

Will Alexios make a deal with Floris? That would certainly be interesting.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

1293

On 12 May, a midwife named Maria Lakhana accidentally burned the bread she was baking [smelled her loaf of baking bread starting to burn] and becomes distracted while trying to salvage it [saved it]. She refers a request for help to another midwife, but the delay results in [is able to respond to a call, and keeps] the mother, one Magdalēnē Hágiotheódoritessa[1], [from] passing during labor.

The next day, her husband Mikhaēl, a farrier in the Imperial Stables crawls into work while very, very hung over [from celebrating the birth of his son].

FTFY. (There's no reason for for the butterfly to be a tragedy, even a a small one.)

 

[Raferty]

Keep up the good work!

Any sort of alternate take on the Byzantines is going to require a different late period army, and this has already gone towards that

 

[Eparkhos]

Keep up the good work!

Any sort of alternate take on the Byzantines is going to require a different late period army, and this has already gone towards that

I intend to keep the good work up for a long time.

In address to the second part of your comment, the Philanthropic army will have a much larger ratio of infantry, with the pronoiai cavalry being mostly replaced with much cheaper and loyal(er) horse archers. While they won't be able to meet the Latins with the previous number of heavy cavalry, with enough space the light horse should be able to run rings around the knights.

1297, Pt.4

As previously mentioned, the Latins, while poor in foot combat and defensive cavalry operations, were masters of both offensive and defensive siege warfare. Even if the Rhōmaíōi were able to arrive outside of a fortress undetected by her Latin defenders, it was entirely possible that the defenders would be able to bar the gates and force them to either try and storm the stoneworks or starve them out. In order for the Rhōmaíōi to successfully take any such Latin fortress they needed to move with surprise and overwhelming force to secure all gates and citadels of the fortification.

This had been accepted Rhōman doctrine since before the Fourth Crusade, and no doubt it was bouncing around Aléxios’ head as the little flotilla made its way across the Gulf of Kórinthos in late June. He didn’t have very many valuable men, as light horse was worse than useless in siege warfare, leaving him with only a thousand infantry for any set-piece actions. The emperor already had his target--the coastal fortress of Vostítsa, which was connected to the rest of the peninsula only by a few narrow, easily cut roads--and as the ships lumbered on he began to plan.

On 3 July, Hugues II d’Charpigny, Baron of Vostítsa, was woken from a midday nap by a panicked servant. Several transports carrying Turkish horsemen had landed at Trápeza, a few miles down the coast from his citadel. Presuming them to be raiders, Hugues gathered his household guard and marched out to drive them off. In doing so, he left only a skeleton garrison to defend Vostítsa, as he believed that the Turks were acting alone.

Two hours after Hugues and his men departed, six fishing boats entered the harbor at a tilt. The harbormaster signaled for them to slow but received no response. Fearing them to be pirates he began to shout for the city’s militia to turn out. Before they could assemble the three ships had reached the docks and been tied off. Rhōmaíōi swarmed out of the fishing boats, rushing out into the city and making for the gates. When the militiamen realized the professional nature of their opponents most deserted and ran to defend their homes, leaving two dozen or so to be swatted aside by Aléxios’ men. The soldiers in the citadel saw what was unfolding beneath them and barred the gates. However, when the Rhōmaíōi began shouting that they were Imperial soldiers here to take the city, not sack it, and that they wouldn’t be harmed if they surrendered, someone in the citadel defected and opened a sally port to the Imperials. The gates were then swiftly taken, and in less than half an hour Vostítsa had been secured. The rest of the flotilla then entered the port, rapidly unloading the rest of the infantry and horsemen.

Aléxios, nursing a halberd wound across his lower leg, hurried his men into formation and, leaving a hundred soldiers behind in the city, marched out to confront Hugues. A messenger was sent to the Latin, telling him that he had been outmaneuvered and that his best hope was to surrender. These couriers reached Hugues while he was still on the road to Trápeza, and the young baron was unsure of what to do, as it could very well have been an attempt to get him to turn back by the Turks. He ordered his men to keep moving on towards the reported landing site, while he and a small escort road back to determine what was actually happening. This proved to be a poor decision, because less than an hour later Hugues and his men stumbled directly into the on-rushing Rhōmaíōi. After a brief scuffle he was captured, and while some of the cavalry moved on to meet his army, the baron himself was taken back to his erstwhile capital. As for his army, when the Thessalians arrived in their rear the force more or less imploded, men fleeing for their lives in a chaotic scrum.

Back in Vostítsa, Hugues had a blank letter shoved into his hand and was told to write a dispatch to Floris, telling him that he (Hugues) had an urgent dispatch for the eyes of the Prince only that needed to be given to him directly by the messenger. After it was separately read over by three local priests, Hugues was forced to seal it before being shuffled off to the harbor, where he was chained to the inside of one of the boats, surrounded by guards on orders to kill him if he tried to escape. The next morning, Aléxios and a hundred and fifty picked men mounted up and rode out of the city. They had no supply train beyond what they carried on their backs, as it was deemed such a train would only slow them down and jeopardize the speed and secrecy needed to carry out their mission.

On the 7th of July, the small force camped in a thicket outside of Pátrai while a spy was sent into the city. This spy learned that Floris was going to take part in a feast arranged by Heinrich von Aleman, the city’s baron, the next night. He returned to the thicket and the group began preparations for a raid into the city.

Shortly after nightfall on the 8th, a breathless courier arrives outside the city’s north gate, presenting a message from Hugues. After a cursory examination by the guards the gates are opened. The Rhōmaíōi burst from the nearby countryside and rush in, taking the gatehouse before they are locked out again. They then rush onwards into the city, reaching the main hall and breaking in. Von Aleman is seized and many of the guards are killed, but Floris is no where to be found. After a brief torture, von Aleman breaks and reveals the presence of secret tunnels leading beyond the walls. Floris had made it to one while the Rhōmaíōi had been battering down the doors and by now was outside of the city. The baron is then shuffled out to the center of the town, where he orders (with a both literal and figurative knife to his throat) the Latin garrison to throw down their arms. Few do, but most of the rest fight their way out and flee into the countryside.

The city’s defenses are turned over to a hastily-organized citizen’s militia led by a charismatic deacon named Iákōvos before the Rhōmaíōi once again clear out of the city. The strike force links back up with the cavalry and the combined force moves west onto the Ēlidan plain, where the Achaean capital of Andreville lies.

Meanwhile, Floris emerged from the rat lines surrounding Pátrai and immediately made due south, making for the castle at Calandrice, near the Rhōman town of Khalandrítsa and presumably cursing the day he decided to invade Thessalia. As he is on foot he arrives in Calandrice on the 12th, thoroughly exhausted and begging the local baron for help. However, unfortunately for him, the loyalist baron Louis d’Tremolay had passed a month previous and been succeeded by his much more ambitious son Noe d’Tremolay. Noe imprisoned Floris and sent a courier to Andreville, telling Isabella that he will release her husband in exchange for a payment of either three castles of 2,000 Venetian ducats.

This rider reachers Andreville on 17 July, by which time the Rhōmaíōi had already reached the city in force and began erecting siege works around the city. The defender’s morale was already poor because of how severely they were outnumbered, and Aléxios allowed the rider to pass through the lines to further demoralize them.

Isabella d’Villehardouin was not in a good position. Her rule was viewed as barely legitimate by many of her barons, and she was only kept in power by the strength of the Neapolitans. While she had been the de facto governor of Andreville since her father’s death, she had never been especially concerned about any possible sieges and as such the city’s defenses were of poor quality and the city’s militia had rarely drilled, leaving her household guard as the primary defenders of the capital. She had hoped that Floris was out gathering an army to drive off the Greeks, but the arrival of d’Tremolay’s messenger sunk that particular desire. Knowing that she would be unable to hold out against an extended siege, on 21 July she sued for peace.

Negotiations continued on for the next several days until a meeting place was chosen, in the no man’s land between the walls and the works. The first round of negotiations stretches over three days, but is ultimately broken off when Isabella refuses to cede the fortresses Aléxios wants, and the emperor refuses to lower his demands. The Latins retreat back into Andreville, while the Rhōmaíōi began bombarding the walls with catapults.

During the brief truce, Isabella had slipped out a series of messengers to the barons of the western regions. However, most were intercepted during their return, further bolstering Rhōman morale. On 2 August, Aléxios marched these men out under a flag of truce and had them call out that there would be no relief force coming. After this, the emperor shouted that this was their last opportunity to surrender, and that from the next day every man, woman and child in Andreville would be put to the sword. To reinforce his point the catapults were directed at the gate, splintering them and rending the portcullis.

Isabella sues for peace yet again, giving up the fortresses. The Treaty of Andreville is signed after less than two days of negotiations, reducing Latin rule to Ēlida and ceding the following fortresses and cities to Rhōman rule;

Patras, Vostista, Calandrice, Kalavryta, Korinthos and Akrokorinthos, Mostenitsa, Polyphengos, Angelokastron, Argyrokastro, Argos, Nauplia, Damala, Moukhli, Karytaina, Agios Georgios, Andritsaina, Siderokastron, Kyparissia, Androussa and Nisi.

Isabella also drafts messages to the garrison commanders telling them to peacefully surrender to Aléxios.

That night, the Rhōmaíōi, joined by many of Andreville’s whores and bards, got roaringly drunk inside their camp. (Which was, to their credit, heavily fortified and picketed to prevent a surprise attack) It was shortly after midnight on 3 August that news of the coup back home was given to the emperor and his companions, the communication having been severely delayed by a myriad of factors, mostly weather.

Aléxios was apoplectic. The normally jovial emperor flew into a fit of blind rage, striking anyone within swinging distance, smashing a table and two chairs to bits before upending several wine caskets and chasing a servant who he believed resembled Léōn out of the camp entirely. He swore that he would end the line of this usurper, destroy the House of Maurokatakalōn and feed his rival to feral dogs, the opinion of the Patriarch be damned. He would crush the usurper and all of his supporters, and drive their rotten families from Rhōmaíōn forever. He would strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those who had threatened his empire, his family and his own life! He would lay the same fate they would put upon him onto the usurper and all of his supporters, tenfold or even more! Léōn Maurokatakalōn would die screaming, rueing the day he and his cronies marched on the capital! He would….pass out mid sentence.

When he woke up the next morning, presumably with a massive hangover, he showed no sign of anything other than grim determination to do the above mentioned dog-feeding and great avenging. However, he was back to his usual cagey self and knew that the army he had with him wouldn’t be enough to retake the capital in the face of stiff resistance. Instead, he would solidify his gains in Mōriá, raise another army, and then march to retake the throne.

While many of the castles were resistant to their new lord, most were betrayed by Rhōmaíōi servants who opened the gates to the Imperial army. Over the rest of the year the fortresses were subdued, most with only brief sieges followed by a sack. Aléxios was nearly killed while taking Argos, when an Argive woman threw a bedpan at him from a roof. While soaked with diarrhea, the emperor remained otherwise unharmed and was able to continue the consolidation. By November, nineteen of the twenty fortresses had been reduced, with only Androussa holding out under a light siege. With most of the new territory under his control, Aléxios was in a position to begin recruitment in the spring of 1298.

 

[Eparkhos]

The original update ran too long, so here's the first part.

1297, Pt.5

While the deposed emperor was busy laying the groundwork to raise a new army from Mōriá, the other surviving Philanthrōpēnói were attempting to rally support for a bid at the throne, all in honor of Aléxios’ shade. Due to the poor communication networks of the period, many of the provincial generals had been completely unaware that the emperor had departed the capital with a field army before the coup had taken place, and as such many assumed that Aléxios was either dead or blinded, both of which would require avenging. Many of the provincial generals and governors had been appointed by Philanthrōpēnós, and on top of the natural incentive of gaining power most of them wanted to avenge their former leader. It is also important to understand that, unusually for such a short-reigned emperor, many soldiers in both Europe and Anatolia supported him as a welcome relief from the moribund palace regime of Andrónikos II.

The most prominent and powerful of these rebel generals and governors was Davíd Psarímárkos, who commanded a combined force of six allagia in the Thrákēsion. In mid-June he declared himself regent for Iōánnés--who had been the heir presumptive since Aléxios’ victory at Amphípoli two years previous--and began preparations for a march on the capital. By mid-July he had his forces mustered at Pérgamon and the only thing between him and Kōnstantînoúpoli was the Propontís. However, Psarímárkos had been far from subtle about his preparations and the month-long window of troop movements had given Léōn the opportunity to send a dispatch to the Menteşids, who ruled the regions of Karía and Lykía, promising them large payments of gold if they were to raid in force into the Ermos Valley. Mesud, the emir of the Menteşids, readily agreed and descended into the valley with a force of 2,500 horsemen. They ravaged the outlying farmland and raided up to the walls of Philadélpheia. The city fathers of the walled cities in the region sent frantic messages to Psarímárkos, begging him to come to their aid. The general reluctantly turned his army about and pursued the Menteşids, driving them out of the Ermos Valley and back onto the plateau. However, by this point the crops destroyed meant that the region was facing a famine. The self-proclaimed regent allowed the local units to temporarily disband and return to their homes in hopes of salvaging the fall harvest, after which he moved on to Laodíkeia Lykon, so he could react to any additional incursions, and spent the rest of the campaign season there.

There was a secondary rebellion during the same time period in northern Anatolia. If you recall, after escaping the capital in early-May Nikēphóros had fled east to Pontoērákleia. Once in the city, he had been able to rally Pontoērákleia to support his claim to the throne, being crowned as emperor Nikēphóros IV on 21 May. Although he later claimed that he believed his brother had been killed or blinded at about the same time he fled the city, he should have been well aware of the fact that Aléxios was in the west. However, given his brother’s policy towards previous usurpers it can be argued that he was confident that he (Aléxios) would not retake the throne, as it was entirely possible that having risen in revolt, even against a usurper, while his brother was still alive would result in his own blinding. However, to some this rings of hindsight, as doing so would’ve seemed out of character for the basileus prior to his restoration.

Either way, the so-called Nikēphóros IV had secured himself in Pontoērákleia by late May. While he was never one of his brother’s greatest lieutenants, he still must’ve been capable enough to realize he could not take the throne with only the support of a single city. As such, he made diplomatic contact with his uncle, Iōánnés Tarkhanéiōtēs. Tarkhanéiōtēs had at one time been a companion of Andrónikos II, but had converted to Arsenitism (A schismatic branch of Orthodoxy that disputed the abdication of Patriarch Arsénios, and was generally more of a folk religion with practices varying from region to region rather than the uniformity of the Orthodox) in the 1270s and made himself the de facto ruler of rural Bithynía after being elected as Patriarch by a council of Arsenite clergymen.

Nikēphóros asked Tarkhanéiōtēs to support him as emperor, in exchange for which he would appoint him Patriarch. Tarkhanéiōtēs testily replied that he would rather be dragged down to Hell than become the leader of the heretics, instead demanding that Nikēphóros would end the persecution of the last two decades and that the Arsenites not be subject to tithes to the Orthodox Church. Nikēphóros readily agreed, and in early June Tarkhanéiōtēs led five allagia of footmen, a mixture of skirmishers and spearmen, down to the city. There they met Nikēphóros and the allagion he had raised from Pontoērákleia, and the combined force moved west into the heartland of Rhōman Bithynía. On 2 July the combined force arrived outside of Nikomēdeia, where Nikēphóros demanded that the city surrender to him. Unsurprisingly, the garrison commander refused as he believed that Léōn had an army waiting in Kōnstantînoúpoli and began preparations for a brief siege. A fast boat was sent to the capital, but when it returned it brought word of the ongoing struggle in Thrákē. The commander was able to put two to two together and realized that there would be no reinforcements coming, and hastily re-opened negotiations with Nikēphóros. In exchange for clemency for the garrison and their families, the city would be turned over to the Philanthrōpēnói intact. Nikēphóros readily agreed, and on 5 July the Arsenites paraded in through the main gate.

If they had immediately moved on the capital, Nikēphóros and his supporters could have easily seized it. The city was still rife with supporters of the dethroned emperor, especially among the garrison, and finding a defector willing to open a side gate would’ve been no difficult task. However, Tarkhanéiōtēs was too cautious and recommended that they instead move south and take Níkaia to shore up their flank before trying to force a crossing of the Propontís. Nikēphóros wanted to attack the Imperial City, but Tarkhanéiōtēs threatened to walk out and take all of his soldiers with him, and the emperor reluctantly acquiesced. On 8 July most of the army departed south, leaving a small garrison behind. They arrived outside the city on 14 July, whence the city threw open her gates and was swiftly occupied. After spending a week there, the army then turned back north, arriving at Khalkēdōn on 3 August. By this time, Léōn had managed to convince a group of Italian traders in the capital to blockade the straits, stranding Nikēphóros and his army on the far shore. Despite several attempts to break the blockade, the Anatolians remained on the Anatolian side of the shore for the rest of the year.

 

[Eparkhos]

Sorry for the long delay, I've been working on an alt-Colonization scheme and got seriously distracted over the last couple of days. On the bright side, though, I have a new desk that should make concentrating on writing easier.

1297, Pt.6

As you might remember from before my brief break, Aléxios had adopted Iōánnés and Theódōros, the sons of the late basileus, as his sons. When the pronoiai had stormed into the palace the Imperial tutor had managed to get them (as well as himself) out of the city before the mobs had reached them, after which they had made a break, under the escort of the Eleutheroi, for the coastal city of Mesēmvría. Even after Namejs turned his allegiance to Léōn, he sent the princes onwards with a small group of horsemen as an insurance policy in case the old emperor ever retook the throne. However, a force of cavalry loyal to the new usurper pursued them and the two factions fought a running battle from the suburbs of the capital far out into the Thrákēoi plains. The loyal Eleutheroi were slowly worn down by exhaustion and combat, and by the end of 8 May the loyalist forces were exhausted, both physically and numerically. However, there looked to be a refuge nearby: The small fortress town of Saránta Ekklēsiés, smack dab in the center of Thrákē

Unfortunately, once they reached Saránta Ekklēsiés, the dyogénoi princes found the gates standing wide open. The harried boys and their few remaining escorts rushed through, only to barrel into the city square and find it surrounded on all sides by the town’s garrison. You see, the éparkhos of the city before the Pronoiai Revolt had been Léōn Maurokatakalōn himself, and he had left it under the command of his brother, Nikólaos. Nikólaos arrested the exhausted young princes and left them in the dungeons of the city for the better part of a week while he and his lieutenants got roaringly drunk in a premature celebration of victory. During this interval, Rangabé, who had also been captured, was able to bribe a guard into dispatching a letter for him.

After recovering from his no doubt raging hangover, Nikólaos Maurokatakalōn marched the two princes out of the city on 15 May, under a heavy escort of several hundred infantry and a few dozen cavalry, i.e. most of Saránta Ekklēsiés’ garrison. The force set out south-east, moving along an old, poorly maintained road towards Kōnstantînoúpoli. The poor road conditions slowed the movement down severely, and on 20 May they were still only halfway to the capital when they camped for the night. The soldiers, exhausted by the long march, slept soundly, that is, all except for Nikólaos. The brother of the usurper emperor was woken shortly after midnight with a spear to his throat, after which he was manacled and tied to a horse. The Imperial princes were hurriedly unchained and themselves loaded onto horses, after which the whole group vanished into the darkness.

Now you might be wondering, who were these mysterious liberators? You may recall that back in 1295, Aléxios had left three allagia under the command of one of his more obscure lieutenants, Iákōvos Agiotheodōrítēs, to garrison Adrianoúpoli. Agiotheodōrítēs was still in command of the city and its forces, but had no desire to revolt unless he had a good chance of victory. As such, when he received Rangabé’s desperate letter he leapt at the opportunity to secure the Imperial princes and dispatched his son Thōmás with a small force of horsemen to free them. Thōmás easily freed the princes, who were held in one of the outlying tents, but then made the risky decision to try and capture the brother of the usurper. He succeeded, and the small force then turned and raced back to Adrianoúpoli, arriving on 26 May.

Upon arriving in the city, the young men were cheered by the enthusiastic crowds and the veterans of Aléxios’ army. The Metropolitan of Adrianoúpoli re-crowned the two as co-emperors--Iákōvos wisely avoiding the office of co-emperor to improve his chances if or when the former basileus was restored--after which they were hailed by the crowds. Agiotheodōrítēs began preparing for war, conscripting three allagia of militia and forging an agreement with the Vlakh tribes of the mountains west of the city, recruiting four allagia of light horse. After two weeks of recruiting and rudimentary training, he set out from the city on 3 June.

Now, you might be wondering what the hell Agiotheodōrítēs was thinking. He had only 3,000 footmen and 2,000 cavalry to face off against Maurokatakalōn’s force of 4,000 footmen and 6,000 cavalry, which made any offensive action against the usurper borderline suicide. However, most of the usurper’s infantry were undisciplined conscripts, while his own militia were a mixture of hardened veterans or at very worst militiamen who had trained twice a week for the last two years. In a one on one fight between the two armies’ infantry components, Agiotheodōrítēs’ soldiers would win every time. However, he was still gambling that his enemy’s cavalry wouldn’t be functioning at full capacity, which there was actually a surprisingly chance of being true; The Turks were motivated solely by money and would likely break off to loot the surrounding countryside, while the pronoiai were notoriously fractious and would likely be more focused on fighting each other than his own forces. As such, he was somewhat confident when he marched out from the city that he would be victorious in the coming battle.

Léōn VII was equally, if not more so, confident in the capabilities of his enemy. While his host was indeed very, very large, it was even more disunified than Agiotheodōrítēs believed it to be. Immediately after he had set out from the capital infighting had begun, with the Anatolian pronoiai threatening to walk if the Turks, who had ransacked their estates and homes several times within living memory alone, weren’t expelled. As there were only a few dozen Anatolians in the entire force, he had called their bluff and allowed any of them who wanted to go home to do so. Thirty of the Anatolians stormed off to the other side of the Propontís, only to be immediately executed by a group of rouge Arsenites. After this little spat, the disjointed force had continued west for the next few days without incident. However, in early July the new basileus was greeted by a rider from the port town of Raídestos. This rider informed him that in Raídestos a local man named Aléxios Komnēnós Attaleiátēs had exploited his distinguished surname and declared the restoration of the Komnēnói to the throne. Given the location of Raídestos, if this wasn’t put down quickly it was entirely possible that the Italians could swoop in and annex it during the turmoil. Léōn’s showdown with Aléxios VI would have to be postponed to deal with the self-proclaimed Aléxios VII.

On 2 July, Léōn’s army arrived outside the gates of Raídestos and set about erecting siege works. A wide trench, edged with spikes, was erected around the landwalls, while construction began on trebuchets and the fishing fleets of nearby villages were conscripted to form a blockade. Léōn was a patient man, and he was more than willing to just starve out the rebels. However, two weeks after beginning the siege, word reached him of Agiotheodōrítēs’ army moving on the capital. Presumably slightly annoyed, the new basileus detached 1,500 footmen to keep up the siege while he was away.

Agiotheodōrítēs was aware of the usurper’s movements thanks to a few members of the Anatolian pronoiai who were in fact loyal to Aléxios VI and had only joined the new army to act as a fifth column. These men sent a stream of messengers to the Adrianoúpolitans, updating them on the movements of the usurper host and postulating as to its course. Knowing precisely where his enemy was, the Adrianoúpolitan army put the hammer down on the road to the capital, believing that they could make it to the land walls before Léōn did. However, in mid-July there was a mistake in communications that resulted in the train being separated from its escort, after which it was stripped to the bone by the locals. Agiotheodōrítēs had to halt his army while the train was repaired, slowing his advance dramatically. Word of this halt quickly reached Léōn, who detached his infantry to speed his movements and raced on to block the road to the capital. He made it to Egrískē, five days’ march west of the capital, on 17 July, from which he dominated two of the three inbound roads, the other being so far to the north as to be impractical.

Meanwhile, Iákōvos had gotten his train back in order and was hot-footing it towards the City of the World’s Desire in vain hope of reaching it before the road could be fully closed. However, he reached Egrískē two days after Léōn did, and found himself having to fight to reach the capital. However, all was not lost; the terrain surrounding the city was a mixture of hills and lowlands, and if he could draw the usurper into combat on the hills, his infantry advantage could win him the day. He never got the opportunity to, as on 21 July, while out scouting, he was killed by a stray arrow. Command of the army passed to his young son, Thōmás, whom the army was much less confident in him than in his father. Tipped off to this fact, Léōn forced a battle on the 23rd....

 

[Eparkhos]

Sorry for the long delay, the internet was out at my house. On the upshot, it gave me plenty of opportunity to write, as ye shall see.

1297, Pt.7

Shortly after dawn on 23rd July, the forces of the usurping emperor Léōn VII marched out onto the plains on the eastern side of the small town of Egrískē with his great host of 6,000 horsemen, a third of them highly mobile Turkish horse archers. He had no need to fear for his rear, as he was certain that there would be no relieving army coming to rescue his opponents, and even if they did he had 2,500 footmen guarding his camp. While the infantry were of, at best, extremely low quality, the same could not be said of his heavy cavalry, who were practically the entirety of the European pronoiai, nor of his light horse, who were all veteran raiders seasoned by dozens of years of campaigns against the Empire’s own subjects. With the early morning son glittering off their armor, the basileus shouted a war-cry which quickly spread up and down the line line. Men began to drum on their shields and horses were spurred into the air with screeching whinnies. Then, at a single cue, the entire formation fell silent. Léōn shouted that if the enemy would throw down their weapons they would be forgiven and allowed to return to their homes unmolested, but that if they resisted their treatment would be much less gentle. Several minutes of silence passed, and then the emperor raised his sword and ordered the riders forward. The Battle of Egrískē had begun.

Léōn’s show of force had done exactly as intended, and the already low morale within the Adrianoúpolitan camp went through the floor. They were exhausted from their long march from the aforementioned city and had little faith in their untested commander, who was not even twenty years of age. Even worse than that they were outnumbered, with a nominal force of 5,000 foot and horse, reduced by desertions and diversions to 4,000, against an enemy outnumbering them at very best two to one. The only semi-redeeming factor was that Egrískē’s rear was a six-hundred foot cliff that made being flanked nigh-on impossible; However, many amongst the lower ranks despaired that this meant only that they had no direction in which to flee in when the inevitable route occurred.

As the forces loyal to the usurper began to circle around the exposed sections of the town, Thōmás Agiotheodōrítēs, the newly-empowered strategós stepped up on an overturned bucket in front of his gathered men. With him stood Iōánnés Dyogénos*, the biological son of the former emperor Andrónikos II and the adopted son of the deposed (and assumed killed) Aléxios VI, who at the tender age of eleven faced the prospect of blinding if the battle was lost. Agiotheodōrítēs opened his speech referencing the usurper’s previous ‘parley’ as showing that their opponents would not accept their surrender even if they threw down their arms. After all, if he had shown no hesitation in executing his predecessor, then what hesitation would he show in executing paroikoi such as themselves. There was nowhere else to run, as their backs were to the steep ridge and there were no nearby shelters to flee to; They would either fight or die, right here. He then appealed to his men’s history in the service of the latter emperor, and asked if any of them would turn their backs on Ho Strategós, to flee from the man who had exhibited on so many occasions that he would endure every hardship they did with no complaints. The response was as expected a collective no--they may be from the underclasses of society, but they were not without honor. Agiotheodōrítēs then gestured to the prince, stating that since Aléxios had been slain--by the same men who now prowled outside the town, no less--the most they could honor their general would be by protecting his heir and restoring him to his birthright. And said birthright would not be that difficult to obtain; While the forces arrayed against them were great in numbers, this betrayed the fact that it was the last army the usurper could raise. The capital was only a week’s march away, and if they could wear down the enemy they could then sweep in and pluck the Imperial City (and all of its riches and young women) out of the usurper’s cold hands and take the lands of the dead nobles for themselves. He then invited anyone who wanted to dishonour their family, lose the wealth that everyone else was going to get and then get chopped up by the pronoiai out on the plains to leave the town; he didn’t care how many of them went, they were as good as dead anyway. This single speech encapsulates the three primary motivators of the soldiers of the Palaiológoi armies; fear of death, desire to get rich, and finally a sense of honor. While very on the nose in all of its points, the speech succeeded in sufficiently rallying the Adrianoúpolitans to man the stockades that had been erected across the entrances to the villages. The forces of the usurper had offered battle, and the forces of the old emperor would accept it.

About an hour after Léōn had first ordered his horsemen forward, the first action of the battle occurred on the left of the town, when a group of Turkish horse archers swung partway up the ridge to fire down on the defenders below. However, this was foiled when crossbowmen concealed in the houses near the contact appoint began firing from holes in the domed roof, causing heavy losses due to the angle of fire and driving the attackers back with a dozen horsemen dead and a single loyalist injured. Similar actions occurred for the next two hours as the nomads probed the village’s defenses, incurring much heavier losses than they dealt. Nonetheless, this prompted the defenders of Egrískē to shore up their position by reinforcing the furniture-based barricades with building materials, fences and bags of grain. Notably, the eves of the buildings around the major exits were left intact and sometimes even reinforced with planks and tarps to extend the protection offered from plunging arrow fire. The civilians were evacuated to the center of the town while their homes were alternatively cannibalized or shored up.

As previously mentioned, Egrískē’s rear lay beside a strong ridge that anchored its flank. It was surrounded on all sides by a wooden fence more for keeping out wandering herds than anything else. There were two major gaps in the huddled buildings, one leading north-west out of the city and the other exiting due east. The former was flanked entirely by houses, the latter by houses on one side and the town church on the other. There was then a central plaza where the two roads met, on the other side of which was the rest of the town, under the shadow of the ridge. Given the small size of the settlement, it was densely packed with both the civilians and soldiers, and as such the moving of materials and the wounded was extremely complicated. By contrast, the wide open plains afforded Léōn plenty of room to maneuver, thus putting Agiotheodōrítēs at yet another disadvantage.

After the early morning hours of probing contact, the usurper was quickly growing tired of the back-and-forth that yielded seemingly no results, and so ordered a column of pronoiai towards the eastern ‘gate’. The Turks rode forward once again and fired a volley at the defenders to suppress the pikes and spears, after which the heavy cavalry began their charge. However, they were too far out and before they could make contact the loyalists had already restored their line, prompting the abortion of the attack. Always quick on the uptake, Léōn ordered the Turks forward yet again and had them stay put to keep up the suppressing fire while the native horsemen were once again rallied. Three hours after dawn, the Latinoid cavalry thundered forward, shaking the ground with the thunder of weighted hooves. They hit the barricade but failed to dislodge it, incurring more losses amongst their own ranks than they did the enemy. This particular maneuver put the cavalry directly in front of a rank of murder holes and in spite of their heavy armor well placed quarrels fell many of the proniai, prompting a mass retreat as the overstuffed nobles meet sterner adversaries than the typical badly-organized militia. This angers the emperor--I mean come on, it’s just a bunch of chairs stacked on top of each other, you’re on an animal that literally weighs a ton not even counting you and your panopolies, how hard is this?--and he orders another column of horsemen forward against the barricade. This attack is somewhat more successful and pushes through the barricade in spite of losing their momentum, only to be met by ‘ranks of unsmiling provincial veterans with axes and billhooks’ who slaughter the quagmired front ranks and force the rest back. Frustrated by the inability of the supposed warrior aristocracy, Léōn orders another charge, this time directed at the north-western gate. While this does break through, like the previous attack it is turned back without most of its front ranks, albeit in exchange for a sizeable number of the defenders. Encouraged by this success but not wanting to throw away all of his heavy cavalry, the usurper orders a section from the camp detachment be brought forward.

This wave of infantry rushes up the slope towards the village, coming under fire from the defenders most of the way up--the loyalist archers had previously been pinned down by the Turks, but they had pulled back to restock on arrows at the time of this assault. They swarm around three of the outlying houses, hacking away at the outside wall. The murder holes unleash a storm of quarrels that whittle away at the attackers, quickly replaced with knives and polearms to save ammunition, the fighting is taking place at such close range. While casualties on the attacking side are truly atrocious, the full-frontal serves its purpose and breaks through two of the houses. With the defenders focused on the rabble, few notice the dismounted pronoiai who are calmly strolling up the hill towards the breaches. By the time the light infantry are repulsed, their heavier cousins have already hit the outskirts and broken through into the houses. Fresh and well-rested, the pronoiai appear almost as supermen to the exhausted defenders, their armored plate shrugging off blows from left and right as they push towards the plaza. Given the hectic nature of the village moving fresh reinforcements up to meet them is nearly impossible, and the nobles make serious headway into the town. If they had been supported with another charge it is almost certain that the Loyalist line would’ve shattered there and then, leaving the entire force to be mopped up. But by either God’s grace (according to later accounts) or, more likely a scuffle between the remaining Anatolian pronoiai and the Turks (as recorded in an Isfendiyarid regnal chronicle) turned Léōn’s gaze from the action, and the supporting attack never materialized. Instead, Agiotheodōrítēs and his bodyguards (as well as the elder prince, as recorded in an Italian chronicle of the next century) plunged into the fray and, in a chaotic battlefield duel hacked down Thōmás Rállēs, who had been leading the advance into the town, and then charged further into the scrum. This act of personal bravery rallied the flagging loyalists and they pushed the attackers out, repairing the reduced walls with the bodies of the fallen.

This defeat seriously disquieted the pronoiai, and they demanded that the emperor stop sending them in to die for seemingly no gain. Frustratingly close to victory but knowing he was a dead man if he pissed off the nobility at such a crucial junction, Léōn reluctantly agreed and ordered a formation of Turks to swing all the way around the ridge and ride up the rear to fire down on the defenders of Egrískē. Within half an hour--by now about 1 PM, for your consideration--the Muslim horsemen were secured on the heights and pounding the positions below them with a constant stream of fire. This sudden bombardment panicked the remaining defenders and they scrambled to take cover, squishing into the houses with remaining roofs and crawling under mounds of corpses to take shelter from the storm of arrows. After two hours of quiver-dumping into Egrískē, the Turks ran out of ammunition and retired back to the camp, where they reloaded and prepared for another bombardment.

This time, however, when they ride out they are followed by another wave of poorly-armed footmen. They hold back until the Turks resume their position on the heights and then rush forward towards the town once again. With no defenders firing at them they make it to the damaged walls with few losses and begin throwing themselves at the pile of bodies, successfully caving it in. However, as the defenders are now pinned down in their individual buildings they fight with a ferocious energy, cutting down many of their attackers before they even cross the threshold and then selling each ell of the floorspace with liters of blood. In spite of this desperation-born valor, the defenders are slowly but surely being whittled down, with no way to move reinforcements in without coming under a storm of shafts. Then, prince Iōánnés gets an idea. Spying a pile of building materials that had been abandoned when the attack had begun he secured a firebrand and raced into the plaze, setting the pile alight before diving into another house. The fire catches and spreads to the nearby corpses, releasing clouds of thick, greasy smoke into the air that obfuscate the view of the archers, giving the cover the defenders so desperately need. Fresh men flood into the embattled houses and hurl themselves into the action, casting the attackers out and slaughtering them almost to a man. With the attack definitively repulsed, the remainder of the human wave retreats, ceding the land beneath the heights to their beleaguered defenders.

By now it is three, and the greatest threat to Egrískē has suddenly shifted from the enemy to the fire that has now engulfed a third of the town. The city’s water supply lies firmly in No Man’s Land, and trying to form a bucket brigade would be practically asking for a cavalry charge. The Egrískēoi and their makeshift confederates have only buckets of dirt and thick blankets to fight the fire with, and these are swiftly proving to be inadequate. As the blaze pushes them back towards the walls, someone remarks that they are going from the fire into a frying pan.

And then God smiles upon the beleaguered defenders of the small town, as the thick clouds which had hung overhead for the past few days explode with water, gallons of the pure liquid sweeping down the side of the ridge and through the town, quenching the flames before speeding down into the lands below and causing a small mudslide. Fearing the loss of his camp Léōn pulls his men back, including the Turks on the ridge. With their encirclement suddenly gone, the defenders realize that this may be their only chance at escaping with their lives. A stampede occurs as the people attempt to rush out through the north-west gate, but are stopped by the city priest, known to history only as Pétros of Egrískē. Pétros gives his laity a thorough tongue-lashing, bluntly telling them that the only way their sacrifice will make a difference is if the princes escape the clutches of the usurper and resume the shell game. While this shames the townspeople into calmness, many of the soldiers ignore him and push on through the crowd. Then Agiotheodōrítēs steps up beside Pétros and tells them all that he will stay behind to defend the town to his last dying breath. This shames the rest of the would-be deserters into remaining behind, and the two boys and five of Agiotheodōrítēs’ bodyguards are put onto the last living horses and sent out from the city, while the women and children are sent out the other with a dozen men. Then the rest of the city begins their preparations for a final assault.

Deciding not to risk action in the dusk, the Imperial army remains in their relocated camp. At dawn on the 24th they march out onto the flooded out plain. Tired of the previous day’s erratic fighting, the emperor orders the most heavily-armored pronoiai into a line with the other infantry behind them and then advances uphill on foot. They are met with a storm of arrows and javelins as the remaining defenders, not having to concern themselves with further actions, exhaust the last of their stores on the attackers. Most of the first wave falls under the withering hail before they even reach the gates and/or the houses, where they begin to batter away at the makeshift defenses. Armored men laboring away at shifting corpses suddenly become them as spears and pikes are shoved through the macabre defenses. Nonetheless the Imperials break through and fighting once again resumes in the houses and in the streets. The Loyalists sell their lives dearly but are still slowly, steadily pushed back into the plaza and then into the houses beyond. By noon, the town seems to be covered in a sheen of blood and the smell of copper and sulfur hang heavy in the air. The defenders have been reduced to a single root cellar in the far corner of the town. Not wanting to loose more men to the slaughter, Léōn orders them smoked out. The last five defenders of Egrískē charge out of the cellar with swords drawn, hurtling into the surrounding spear wall seemingly without care.

After the bloody battle ends, the usurper retires to his camp to count his losses. Out of his initial force of 4,000 pronoiai, 2,500 footmen and 2,000 Turks, he had last 1,500 footmen either dead or so wounded they could no longer campaign, 1,012 of the pronoiai to a similar fate and about two hundred Turks, all in exchange for only what could’ve been at most 4,500 defenders. The bloody debacle that was the Battle of Egrískē had thoroughly convinced the usurper that city fighting was far too costly to justify almost any engagement, a rule that while generally true would prove to ultimately lose him the civil war due to misapplication. The disturbingly heavy losses taken by soldiers of the upper class thoroughly shook the confidence many had in the upstart, and as we shall soon see it caused a slow but steady trickle of defection to the camp of the Loyalists over the rest of the year. After his men had sufficiently recovered he broke camp and marched to join the siege of Raídestos, as he needed to make good his losses before rejoining campaigning. He wound up spending the rest of the autumn reducing the city and raising new soldiers, thus freezing his advances against his many, many rivals.

On the other side of the divide, pro-Philanthrōpēnói propagandists had an absolute field day with Egrískē, condemning the godless dogs who had slaughtered an entire village to get at a pair of children. After all, if the armies of Léōn VII were willing to (supposedly) massacre an entire village of God-fearing Rhōmaíōi while they were huddled in a church and then do unspeakable things to the corpses of all the men and sell those of the children to the Turks and or the Jews (don’t think about it too hard), what else could they do? When the Princes arrived to Philippoúpoli after being kicked out of Adrianoúpoli by the last living scion of the Agiotheodōrítēs in September, they found a force of militia men drilling under one Basíleios Kaballários, a distant maternal cousin of Aléxios. Kaballários was….well, we’ll get into the character of Kaballários in the next section, but what’s important is that his rise was symptomatic of a change in popular opinion amongst the upper classes that he felt would support him in his rise to power.

In the next update, the spring of 1298 comes and the empire explodes back into civil war; Psarímárkos and Nikēphoros raise to secure the crossings into Europe, Léōn tries to rally his flagging emperorship and Aléxios embarks on his roaring rampage of revenge.

 

[CastilloVerde]

Woohoo great update! Excited to read about Alexios' plans.

 

[Leonidas]

Wow, that was an utter bloodbath. How many competing emperors are in the game at this point again?

 

[Eparkhos]

Wow, that was an utter bloodbath. How many competing emperors are in the game at this point again?

Well, for emperors there are;
Alexios VI
Nikephoros III
Leon VII
Ioannes V
Both Psarimarkos as Kaballarios claim to be regents for the latter 'basileus'

 

[Paschalis]

man, one civil war is immediately followed by the next this is a worrying trend

 

[unix_fan]

It's a wonder this empire hasn't collapsed, really.

 

[Eparkhos]

man, one civil war is immediately followed by the next this is a worrying trend

Don't worry, this'll be the last one for a while

It's a wonder this empire hasn't collapsed, really.

That sums up most of Byzantine history fairly well.

 

[Eparkhos]

1298, Pt.1

As previously mentioned, at the close of 1297 the dethroned basileus Aléxios VI has captured and asserted his control over most of the eastern and central portions of Mōriá, so much so that by the spring of 1298 he had reduced the last Latin hold-outs in Messēnía and could thus draw on the region’s fairly large manpower reserves, a mission upon which he enthusiastically embarked upon when the passes through Arkadía became passible in mid-March. Bear in mind that the former basileus still has most of the six allagia that he led out of the capital the previous year, two infantry and four horse.

After spending a week crossing the Taŷgetos Mountains, Aléxios and his army descended into the plains of Lakōnía--more accurately, the slightly less mountainous rolling hills of Lakōnía which can only plains compared to the surrounding mountain ranges. However, upon exiting the Pass of Agíos Geōrgios and Agíos Iōánnés just north of Myzēthrãs the Imperial army was met by an equal force of local militia units under the command of our old friend and governor of Mōriá, Iōánnēs Kantakoúzenós. Kantakoúzenós had been left entirely out of the loop for the last four years with his only information of events in the rest of the empire coming from Italian merchants stopping over in Monemvasía on the Italy-Black Sea run. While he had been informed of the events surrounding the Siege of Andreville the previous year, the freezing over of the passes had delayed any further news reaching him. As such, the sudden emergence from the Pass of Agíos Geōrgios and Agíos Iōánnés of an undeclared army spooked him, and he gathered what few forces he had at his disposal so early in the spring and marched to meet them.

The two forces had a brief stand-off at Trypē, only three miles north of Myzēthrãs, on 21 March. However, when the other two-thirds of the Imperial army emerged from the passes Kantakoúzenós realized how screwed he was and ordered his men to throw down their arms and fly the field while he tried to negotiate with the interlopers. He was taken before Aléxios, but rather than punishing him for taking up arms against the basileus, he was instead embraced as a stalwart defender of Rhōmaíōn who had sought to maintain his post even when cut off from the rest of the state. He was quickly brought up to speed on the strangeness of the last few years and how the originally anti-Palaiológoi insurrectionaries had now become the most pro-Palaiológoi faction and thus he didn’t have to worry that joining Aléxios would break the oath he had made to the previous royal family. This, along with a bribe collected from the newly-conquered Latin keeps and promises of being reassigned to somewhere more relevant than Mōriá, assuaged Kantakoúzenós and the governor threw in his lot with the former basileus.

Overnight, Myzēthrãs was turned from a backwater fortress to equal parts headquarters and supply depot. Kantakoúzenós was sent out to regather the provincial militias and gather the garrisons of secondary hardpoints. Given the rather limited manpower of the constantly-harassed province, he was even given license to recruit penal brigades from the prisons of Myzēthrãs and Monemvasía, a step that had been taken at only a few previous points in Rhōman history. The defenses of the city, which were still very impressive due to the sheer amount of coinage that had been poured into them by the Latins back in the 1260s, were quickly shored up with stone cut from the nearby mountains. The garrison was propped up with a hurriedly organized militia so the trained soldiers could be transferred to combat duty.

With efforts being undertaken to maximize the resources of the Rhōman territories, Aléxios then reached out to traditional sources of auxiliaries and mercs in the region, the Tzakonoi, Maniáteoi and the Melingoi. As you might remember from all the way back in 1294, these three people lived in the mountains that flanked Lakōnía on either side and were for the most part both extremely insular and hostile to Rhōman governance. Most of the time their interaction with the local peasants was limited to raiding or the occasional market day. Their chiefs payed a yearly tribute of sheep and cheese to the basileus, and in exchange they were left alone to wander the isolated crags. However, after the Latins had stormed into Mōriá earlier that century warriors from all three groups had become sell-swords for their erstwhile oppressors.

However, while they would normally be more than eager to join Aléxios on a campaign against, well, against anybody whose corpses they could loot, they were still very leery of any interaction with the Empire because of how badly they had gotten screwed over by the previous recruiters during the Theódōran Rebellion, with over half of the young men who had departed with the despotēs winding up dead floating down the Sperkheiós and few of the survivors returning. As such, when the couriers to the Melingoi and the Tzakonoi arrived in the respective groups’ camps they were turned away with little more than laughs. However, the rider that went to Palaiá Maïna successfully opened diplomatic channels to the Grand Arkhon of the Maniáteoi, and so the two leaders met for further negotiations in the town of Passavás, on the border between the ‘lowlands’ and the mountains.

The Grand Arkhon was still Iōannēs Niklanē, who had first negotiated with Theódōros Palaiológos four years previously. Niklanē was more than a little suspect of the basileus’ good faith for obvious reasons, but after several days of intense negotiations he agreed to allow the Imperials to recruit volunteers from his subordinates as well as promising to enforce a two-year moratorium on raids into Lakōnía in exchange for a sizeable yearly payment from the Imperial treasury, something which Aléxios knew he couldn’t pay for with the current state of the Imperial treasury. This is usually regarded as a statement of intent for the aftermath of the end of the civil war.

By the end of April, the Maniáteoi produced an allagion of infantry, which joined the three others that Kantakoúzenós had raised from the Imperial province total, bringing their combined force up to ten allagia. Factoring reinforcements that could be conscripted from the rest of the empire, Aléxios felt that this force would be enough to embark on a campaign to retake the throne. However, the long march back north would leave them exhausted and in enemy territory, a nightmarish combination. As such, he hoped to launch a seaborn strike on the capital, hopefully sailing as far into the Propontís as Eudoxioúpoli before landing and attacking the Imperial City. Once again, he was handicapped by the lack of a Rhōman fleet and he thus needed to look abroad for transports. The Genoese were still engaged in their civil war, leaving only the (shudders) Venetians as a potential ally.

I’m not going to go into details on the deal that was struck because I think it’ll be better if the exact terms are kept quiet until a dramatic reveal later on, but suffice to say that they were extremely bad. With no other reasonable alternative, Aléxios agreed and in the first week of May ships from all across the Venetian Aegean gathered in Monemvasía, loaded the Imperial army aboard and then set out for Thrákēoi. The fate of the Empire the last time a Venetian fleet had ferried a Rhōman usurper to the capital must’ve weighed heavily the back of everyone’s minds and indeed whether or not history would repeat herself was yet to be seen….

 

[Eparkhos]

I'm sorry to have to announce this, but the thread is going on hold for the next week due to the beginning of my fall semester. I hope that I can get back to writing this soon, until then I hope all of you keep safe.

 

[Leonidas]

I'm sorry to have to announce this, but the thread is going on hold for the next week due to the beginning of my fall semester. I hope that I can get back to writing this soon, until then I hope all of you keep safe.

Good luck with your classes!

 

[Eparkhos]

Good luck with your classes!

Thanks!

Because of my new schedule, I think that I'm going to reduce updates to once a week. I think I'm also going to start a post-apocalyptic thread in FH, so if you're bored you can always check that out.

1298, Pt.2

Bullet points again, because my mapping project ate up most of my freetime

• Leon splits his forces in March, sending 1,500 to fortify the capital while the other 3,000 move north into Thrake in an attempt to reach Adrianoupoli and fortify it against any attacks from further north.
• This movement prompts the Anatolians to begin preparations to cross the Propontis; Feelers are sent out to the Patriarch, the eparkhos of Konstantinoupoli and various garrison commanders. Ioannes XII, being the political operator that he is, sees this as an opportunity to jump off of the sinking ship that is Leon’s faction and strikes a clandestine agreement with Nikephoros, promising to open the gates of the capital to him when he lands in Thrake.
• However, the previous eparkhos had died (of old age, no foul play on this one) in the interim and his replacement was a close supporter of Leon. Suspecting that the Patriarch would agree to surrender the city to the Philanthropenoi, he and his retainers move on the Agia Sophia during the night of 2-3 April.
• The Leonid forces, having no experience in what is essentially SWAT-team tactics or street-fighting, blunder into the Aygustaion disorganized and loud. The Patriarch, realizing what is happening, orders the toscins of the cathedral to be struck. Panicking and confused citizens pour out into the streets, throwing the already chaotic mess of a strike into pure anarchy.
• While the madcap scrum rages in the Aygustaion, the Patriarch slips out a runner to the Kampos Tribounaliou, where the Eleutheroi had been left after a mutiny over the winter. While the officer corps had been gutted, word of a possible return to the throne by one of the Philanthropenoi--Leon had never made any promises of freedom at the end of their term as Alexios had, and most of the soldiers felt that their best bet was with the old emperor--sparks an uprising in the ranks. The Leonid officers are either killed or fled and elected commanders lead the force into the city.
• The arrival of another professional force in their rear panics the garrison soldiers and most of them throw down their arms and fly from the city. The Eleutheroi run them out, then take up positions on the land walls to make sure they don’t come back. Meanwhile, the now disturbed crowds spread out into the city, burning and looting as they go. They move into the trading quarters along the Golden Horn and tear down the great trading stations, whose guards beat a hasty retreat across the water to Galata in fear of another Massacre of the Latins.
• Ther chaos on the Golden Horn prompts the small flotilla of Genoese ships that had previously been keeping Nikephoros and Tarkahneiotes at bay to run in for Galata, leaving the channel unprotected.
• Pickets on the Anatolian side pick up on this and rush to alert their commanders. However, they find Nikephoros passed out drunk and Tarkhaneiotes nowhere to be found (later to be proved that he was meditating in a cave along the seashore). Fearing that they will miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity a la Leon Tornikios, a junior officer named Demetrios Abronezēs, the father of the more famous warrior-philosopher, rallied half an allagion, commandeered a small group of fishing boats and pushed off for the capital.
• Abronezēs’ force arrives in the city half an hour later, proclaiming the restoration of the Philanthropenoi. They seize the palace, but with so few men they don’t bother trying to put down the riots, instead white-knuckling onto the Votaneiates complex and the nearby port.
• The next day, the rest of the Loyalist army crosses the Propontis. Nikephoros enters the capital in a triumphant procession--the looters by now having scurried back into their hovels after realizing that a large(ish) force was in the city. On 3 April, Nikephoros is crowned as Nikephoros IV.
• Meanwhile, back in Thrake, Leon’s army is banging their heads on the walls of Adrianoupoli. The youthful Mikhael Agiotheodorites (who, ironically enough, had initially supported the usurpation) was certain that when Leon arrived outside the city on 22 March that the usurper intended to punish him for the actions of his father and siblings, and so had had the gates of the city barred against him and raised the militia of the city to garrison the walls. Leon, overestimating the resources and manpower available to Agiotheodorites, had considered bypassing the city too great a risk to take with his already divided forces, and had instead set up siegeworks while scheming to take the city by treachery.
• Enter Vasileios Kaballarios. In mid-March, the self-proclaimed regent swept down the Evros Valley. Upon learning of the presence and size of the Leonid army outside of Adrianoupoli, he set-up a counter siege. Utilizing night raids, he harried the paroikoi out of a twenty-mile ring surrounding the city, burned all crops and houses in that area and slaughtered all the animals to support his own army. He then established a blockade around that ring, where in anyone who tried to enter would be flogged, have their right hand cut off and then turned back without any of their property, and anyone who drove a cart or pack animals in would be executed as a traitor (It is for a good reason that Planoudes would later refer to Kaballarios as ‘The Rabid Dog’.) This caused Leon’s supply chain, which was already overextended and based mostly on foraging to collapse overnight, and by the beginning of April the Leonid army was almost entirely starving. Order in the siege camps became impossible to enforce, and as the chaos in the usurper’s army became more apparent his contacts within the city stopped all communication.
• The death blow came on 11 April, when word of Nikephoros’ taking of the capital arrived in the camp. Leon was forced to recognize that his position was completely unsalvageable, and that his only hope was to escape to the lands of the Mongols and persuade a Khan that he could be a good puppet. In the dead of night, he and a few diehard retainers quietly mounted up and slipped through the blockade, riding north at a breakneck pace. Four days and several stolen horses later, the party entered the Haemic Mountains. Leon remained in exile in the court of Todor Svetoslav for the next twelve years, and although his extradition was a frequent bargaining chip in relations between the two states, he died in his sleep in early 1311.
• Meanwhile, Kaballarios advanced onto Konstantinoupoli, where he surrendered the regency and custody of Ioannes and Theodoros to Nikephoros in late April, in exchange for a large stipend, of course. With his control of Europe secure, Nikephoros sent orders to Asia ordering Psarimarkos to stand down, which he reluctantly did. However, Nikephoros’ reign would prove to be short-lived--indeed, the shortest in Byzantine history to this point--because Alexios and his army landed at Eudoxioupoli on 28 May. Their strategos seemingly returned from the dead, supporters flocked to his banner. With blinding the only alternative, Nikephoros hurriedly abdicated the next day, ending a reign of 55 days. He was spared any disfigurement and retook his place at his brother’s side when the latter was re-crowned the same day.
• Now, with power returned to the Philanthropenoi, the Venetian’s bill would come due. Alexios set out to collect it--and thus the Massacres of the Pronoiai began….

 

[Paschalis]

"the garrison soldiers and most of them throw down their arms and fly from the city " fly ?

 

[Eparkhos]

"the garrison soldiers and most of them throw down their arms and fly from the city " fly ?

Flee, retreat, withdraw, etc...