Guns and Byzantium.

We get a lot of WI Byzantium survived threads, bla, bla, bla, so what.

What I would like to know is how would Byzantium have fared if it had guns when it was a reasonable size with reasonable resources?
 
We get a lot of WI Byzantium survived threads, bla, bla, bla, so what.

What I would like to know is how would Byzantium have fared if it had guns when it was a reasonable size with reasonable resources?

Not necessarily that much better than its OTL triumphs, as the core of the state's strength was organizational, and to the extent that faltered, so did its power.

I think they'd be more useful for the 1204-1281 or so period than earlier.
 
There are theories that cannon led to the development of centralised, absolute monarchies in Western Europe as only Kings could afford cannon and with cannon no subject could defy the King. Byzantium already had the centralised monarchy capable of raising the taxes to pay for cannon.
 
OTL Roman Empire DID have guns - they were used to defend Constantinople against the sieges of 1422 (successfully) and 1453 (unsuccessfully).

Can someone explain exactly why Nicomedia and Chalcedon fell to Turks by 1338?
 
OTL Roman Empire DID have guns - they were used to defend Constantinople against the sieges of 1422 (successfully) and 1453 (unsuccessfully).

Can someone explain exactly why Nicomedia and Chalcedon fell to Turks by 1338?

Military and economic exhaustion in the Empire, plus growing decentralization making it difficult to collect taxes and Italians sucking up all the trade tolls. One attempt to use western mercenaries, the Catalans, to push the Turks backfired incredibly badly and ended with more Byzantine soldiers dead and territory ravaged. Sometime in the early 1300s Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos was trying, and failing, to recreate a standing army of a mere 3,000 men.
 
Battle of Bapheus was 1302, and the ravages of Catalans before 1310 - but Prusa hels on to 1326 and Nicaia to 1331. The Ottomans of 1310s, 1320s could ravage the countryside but they had problems taking fortified cities.

Bursa fell to prolonged blockade, so it does not mean Ottomans were good at taking fortresses then. Both Bursa and Nicaia are inland - Ottomans could blockade them without resupply by sea.

Nicomedia is coastal, though. How could Ottomans take it without a navy in 1337?
 
OTL Roman Empire DID have guns - they were used to defend Constantinople against the sieges of 1422 (successfully) and 1453 (unsuccessfully).

Can someone explain exactly why Nicomedia and Chalcedon fell to Turks by 1338?

I didn`t know that but it does fit, however by the 1400s a lot of countries had cannon and Byzantium was a shadow of its former self. It`s possible that Byzantium could have gotten a handful of cannon in the late 1200s when it still had some resources.
 
I didn`t know that but it does fit, however by the 1400s a lot of countries had cannon and Byzantium was a shadow of its former self. It`s possible that Byzantium could have gotten a handful of cannon in the late 1200s when it still had some resources.

What would be the effect of the change in different direction - Rome keeps a lot of resources for a few more decades (when it gets a handful of cannon)?
 
What would be the effect of the change in different direction - Rome keeps a lot of resources for a few more decades (when it gets a handful of cannon)?

Better to be able to support ten thousand men (infantry and cavalry) than get a handful of cannon, but if it can get both, that could be very, very good.

Looking at the mid-late 13th century.

Rome with cannon earlier . . . how much earlier?
 
Hardly my field of expertise but I think its not the cannon that made for the drive towards centralization but rather the fortresses required to resist them. No longer could individual cities be expected to be able to pay for their own defence unless they were massively rich and even then only for a short while. Simply the old city walls that was cheap enough for each city of importance to pay for and maintain of their own became obsolete.
 
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