The Eternal Empire: Emperor Maurice dies before being overthrown

How much did Alexios I conquer? I thought he was famous of overdoing it in the Nubian war.
Yes, that’s it. But from a “map of the Empire at its greatest extent” for this time period his addition of the Nubian theme pushes the borders larger than anyone else managed.
 
Part 53: Oh Come, Oh Come E. Manuel
No I didn't create this entire project just to use that terrible pun. And I'll hate your forever for suggesting it.

Part LIII: Oh Come, Oh Come Emperor Manuel​

The first thing to understand about the early years of Manuel II’s reign is that his situation wasn’t quite as dire as it might first seem. Yes, the Empire had just lost a huge portion of both its territory and revenue. Yes, the army had basically lost half its total manpower in less than thirty years. And yes, a former Emperor did hold the capital against his claims. Manuel had little money, a lot of enemies, and seemingly few allies.

But that does rather overstate the situation somewhat. Despite the dreams of Romanos and his supporters their support was basically non-existent. His defeats in Anatolia and Italy had made the populace leery of his rule, even if they had been happy to see the unpopular John removed. Even the nobility who will go on to be Manuel II’s greatest foe were only willing to toe the line, not actually assist him in ruling. When the Western mercenaries John III had been hiring for his campaign in Anatolia showed up they privately met and agreed to not get involved in this Roman civil war. It wasn’t worth it to alienate either side.

On a wider scale, the Empire still had the largest standing army in Europe with close to sixty thousand men still under arms. While this was a fraction of what it had been a century before this still represented a powerful force. Additionally, while much has been made of the financial difficulties that Emperors faced the Roman tax system was the only one of its kind in Europe. The government suffered these difficulties because they could afford to. A Roman Emperor could issue notes of future payment because there was always going to be more money coming into the treasury. Someone like say Louis in the Frankish Empire didn’t have that. His wealth was built solely on the land he directly controlled. Even if tax revenues were falling the Emperor still had more cash to work with than anyone else he might go up against.

Finally, and most importantly, the Roman Empire’s population was still huge. While not the heights it had been there were still nearly fifteen million people living within its borders. Those people were mostly scattered across the countryside, but due to the Imperial tax collection there was still an accurate grasp of where they were, who they were, and what they could contribute to the Imperial war effort. These people represented a great untapped source of manpower for an Emperor ready, willing, and capable of exploiting it. And Manuel II was someone who fulfilled these requirements.

First however, Constantinople had to be retaken. Manuel was comfortable in Theodosiopolis however, and so taking a leaf from his father’s book he dispatched the well-respected Romanos Abbasios to take command of the forces in Eastern Anatolia. Abbasios set up a headquarters at Nicaea, from which he could respond to either attempts from the capitol to secure the Asian side of the Hellespont, or further Turkic attempts to break off of the Anatolian Plateau.

From his position he began dispatching messages to Greece, and after a few flurries of communication the fleets of both Corinth and Attica were pledged to support Manuel over Romanos I. Attempts to secure the loyalties of Dacia and Moesia were rejected by the local leaders. The Magyar however were more amenable to Manuel’s offers of alliance, and agreed to support his bid for the throne if he granted them additional autonomy. The Emperor agreed, and soon a standoff began along the Danube as local Romans found themselves unable to march south to support the capitol with the Magyar present. The soldiers in Syria were also supportive of John’s son, but they were too far away to be involved in settling the succession crisis.

The Attic and Corinthian fleets departed their bases and sailed north to Pergamum, where the local ships joined the growing loyalist navy. Romanos then ordered them to strike at the island of Lesbos, and seize the Imperial outpost there. Such an attack would demand an answer from the main Imperial fleet in Constantinople. When that fleet appeared the loyalist forces were to scatter and draw as many ships away as possible. All of this was in service of the real goal, which was to drain away as many of the capitol’s defenses as possible. To this end a ground force was also dispatched from Thessalonika, and laid siege to the city of Adrianople. Romanos I dispatched a force to reinforce the city, but when they arrived it was discovered that the siege had been lifted when their presence was noted.

Abbasios’s actual plan was to avoid Constantinople’s defenses entirely. A bridge stood across the Hellespont between Chalcedon and the capitol, one that was heavily guarded, but did provide the single easiest route through the city if that route could be secured.

With a cadre of loyal men Abbasios departed Nicaea, ordering another two thousand men to follow him afterward. The group were able to sneak into Chalcedon before an alarm could be raised, and that night they opened the gates for the rest of the forces Abbasios had on hand. Without pausing the troops rushed through the city, and were across the bridge with no one realizing what was happening. Stealing through the city the men secured key points in the city, including the gates, and then two hundred entered the palace. There was fighting inside as Imperial bodyguards fought provincial soldiers, but in the end surprise won out. Romanos I was captured and hauled through the city in chains to encourage his supporters to give up. Most of them did so, and word was sent to the young Emperor of the victory.

Manuel thus entered Constantinople just over a year after his crowning in Theodosiopolis. The common soldiers who had followed Romanos I were pardoned and sent to Anatolia to serve in the defenses there, though by his own admission he expected many of them to die. Word was also sent of the occurrences in the capitol to the Danube, where the men were informed they could avoid getting sent to Anatolia by showing evidence of their loyalty to the Emperor by removing the disloyal from their ranks. The messengers who informed the men of this then pointed at the disloyal, their upper level officers.

The men took the offer, and the officers were forced to do so.

When Magyar officers were then put in place there was significant dissension, but this was quickly brought under control by a crackdown undertaken by Magyar troops. Soldiers who complained to much were rounded up and sent to Anatolia. This will of course come back to haunt Manuel II down the road, but for now it silenced most of the mutinous mutterings of his border defense forces.

Shown less mercy was Romanos I and his supporters. To a man they were brought before the Emperor on charges of treason, and forced to confess their crimes before a crowd in the hippodrome. Then each was executed and their heads put on spikes in front of the city gates. Their bodies were dumped into sea.

The domestic situation mostly dealt with Manuel turned his attention to the economic one. It was bad, very bad, but as he set about trying to put Imperial finances back on solid ground another one of the people who will define the next fifty years enters the scene. Maria Kommenos was the youngest daughter of the former Strategos of Antiocha, and she will be the Emperor’s right hand at home the same way that Romanos Abbasios will be his closest advisor on the battlefield, and Gregorios will be for religious.

Maria was an eager student of mathematics, and took a keen interest in financial matters. At this point she was still a fourteen year old girl, and prone to all the mistakes that teenagers make, but once she has had time to grow and learn she will more or less completely control the Empire’s finances for forty years. At this time however she enters the story far more simply. Her family had been highly involved in Romanos I’s coup, being promised land in Thrace for their support. When her father and eldest brother were arrested and found guilty she personally went before the Emperor and begged for them to be pardoned.

Manuel heard her pleas, listened carefully to her arguments and…gave the order to carry out the execution. As he did so he demolished every argument that Maria had made, until in the end the girl herself was persuaded of the necessity of the order, though the Emperor did agree not to confiscate the family’s property the way he had done to several other families. The two departed on amicable, if not affectionate terms.

The cold-blooded pragmatism that ran through Maria’s life’s work is on full display here. From her later writings its clear that she fully agreed that her family was guilty, and understood the need for their punishment, but felt it was her duty to attempt to intercede. Her failure was something she had expected. She had however made a favorable impression on Manuel, and the pair met regularly over the course of the next year, until in June 1017 they were married. Maria was expecting her first son soon after.

These executions however were not just about punishing traitors. No, Manuel needed money. A lot of money. He wanted to rebuild the Roman army completely, and for that he would need cash, and more importantly he needed land. Land to promise poor peasants as a reward for military service. Breaking up noble estates was the best way in his view to get hold of that land, and to weaken his biggest rivals inside the Empire at the same time. At this point it was treason trials, and when the treason runs out it will be heresy trials. One way or another, the power of the Magnates would be broken.

Also assisting in his efforts to fill the treasury was one of the primary policies that will mark Manuel’s reign: Iconoathiato. This policy, literally against the icons, was one of the key tenets of the Jacoboi heresy, and Manuel was by now a firm believer. He argued that the icons of saints and even of Christ represented idols, banned by God, and encouraged pagan-style worship rather than Christian. To the horror of many then, his men marched into churches of the city, dragged out the gold statues of saints, and melted them down. When the Patriarch tried to object, he was charged with heresy, found guilty, and was replaced by our final player, Gregorios. Or as we know him now, Pope Gregory the Great.

Gregorios was by birth an Armenian, and had grown sympathetic to the Jacoboi heresy in its early days. Entering the priesthood at a young age the boy quickly gained knowledge of theology, and became a priest as the persecutions of Alexios III were going on. The persecution radicalized him, and he railed in his sermons against the corrupt neo-Pagans polluting the true faith in the capitol. By the time that Manuel met him Gregorios had risen to the rank of bishop of Theodosiopolis, and had been the man to crown the young Emperor. As time goes on Gregorios will be instrumental in completely overturning the Christian order and setting it back on the right path.

For now however, Romanos Abbasios was put in charge of actually rebuilding the Roman army, and over the next two years he would do just that. Thousands of poor peasants who had been on the grain dole were rounded up, and put into army camps to train. Here discipline was strict, and attempted desertion common. In a rare move of leniency however Abbasios did not execute deserters. Instead they were simply given harder duties around camp. But he also was methodical in hunting them down. It soon became clear to everyone that desertion simply wasn’t an option. Sentries and patrols were thorough.

It became easier to simply go along with your training and ready for the invasion of Anatolia. These men were not expected to charge the enemy, only to stand their ground behind their defenses. They were given crossbows as their primary weapon, as well as large shields, and were to be used as an anchor against the nomad archers. The shields used by these soldiers were of the style of the old legions, and hence adopted the old name, the scutum. From this the crossbowmen became the Scutarii with which we are more familiar today. The spearmen who defended the soldiers from cavalry assaults adopted the name hoplites to differentiate themselves.

Notably however, while the names were different the hoplites carried the same style of shield that their brethren carried, just to ensure that Imperial naming conventions have always been deeply arbitrary and confusing. At this point however these soldiers were not the primary striking arm of the Imperial army. Those remained the horse archers hired from among the steppe nomads, and a new contingent of heavy cavalry hired from the West.

Landless Frankish knights had rarely come to the Empire before the Italian War. The Romans were willing to pay, but not willing to pay what these men demanded, as Roman military thought still revolved around mounted archers rather than heavy cavalry. Instead these men had served in Germani, where they often fought border wars against pagans to secure wealth and land for themselves if possible, and at least some pay if not.

They had received a golden opportunity in the 990s when the Normans of Alba and the Danes of Saxeland had begun fighting, and many knights crossed the sea to join up with one side or another. When the Danes were ultimately defeated in that war and the Saxeland petty kings forced to swear allegiance to the Norman High King the Franks had once again been out of a job. But the legacy they left behind was immense. The Norman nobles were so impressed by Frankish style heavy cavalry that they hired several knights as permanent retainers, and began adopting the method of fighting for themselves.

Those of you familiar with world history know that this adoption is a key reason behind why the country of Normandi is currently across an ocean from their homeland.

When the Italian War broke out landless knights eagerly lined up behind Louis’s campaign, hoping to take valuable Italian lands for themselves. While Louis paid well for a non-Roman ruler his land distributions left much to be desired in these men’s eyes. Louis’s generous terms of surrender to cities that offered it freely left little new land to be taken, and once again they were disappointed.

There might have been talk abut how ungrateful the world was when a new source of money came calling. The Romans were now ready to talk price. Having seen Frankish knights in action Emperor John was ready to pay up if he could recruit a force of knights to be deployed against the Turks in Anatolia. And he was ready to pay well, not just in cash but in tangible promises of Anatolian land. His negotiators had maps of lands in Anatolia that were just ready to be divided among the soldiers just as soon as the Turks were out of the picture.

So some five thousand Frankish knights packed up, and eagerly loaded onto Roman ships to sail to Greece. They arrived in Dyrrachium, were met by the Emperor’s men with carts of copper coins to buy provisions, and led off to Constantinople.

At least, that was the plan. On the way there word came that Emperor John had been assassinated and there were solid odds on a civil war breaking out. There was debate among the Franks about what to do, but in the end Roger of Aachen, remembered today as Roger Amorion, stood up and announced that he hadn’t come this far to fight a succession war. He’d come to fight a war of conquest against the Turks, and to win land he’d been promised at the same time.

Therefore, rather than getting involved Roger would be staying out of the Roman infighting. When it was over they’d approach the winner and work out a new deal, or even get to keep their old one. When Manuel won out then they sent messengers to Constantinople asking for a meeting to discuss future terms. The Emperor, or rather his commander Romanos Abbasios, was happy that the men he’d wanted to hire were still available and confirmed that their initial deal was still in effect so far as he was concerned. Land in Anatolia would be given to the men who went on campaign with the Emperor.

The men cheered this news, as well as the new wagons of coins that were sent along to speed them on their way. Many were shipped to Nicaea of Dorylaeum to prepare for the campaign, while others stayed behind to train Imperial cavalry forces, or even to train infantrymen who had never seen a battle and give much needed wisdom to the well-trained, but very inexperienced officer corps that Manuel was assembling.

It wasn’t until 1018 that Abbasios felt his force was ready, and led thirty thousand men out of Dorylaeum and back onto the Anatolian Plateau. With him went the Emperor, all of the gold that could be gathered, and the best hope for Roman revival.
 
On a wider scale, the Empire still had the largest standing army in Europe with close to sixty thousand men still under arms.
Larger than the Frankish army still? Although I'd suppose they're of higher quality on average.

It's also very good to see the Romans are willing to adopt the heavy cavalry tactics of the Franks, perhaps we'll be seeing native kataphraktoi soon?
 
Also assisting in his efforts to fill the treasury was one of the primary policies that will mark Manuel’s reign: Iconoathiato.
Are we witnessing a successful Iconoclasm? I’m assuming Manuel will have a long successful reign so it’ll be really integrated with the help of his Pope.
 
Are we witnessing a successful Iconoclasm? I’m assuming Manuel will have a long successful reign so it’ll be really integrated with the help of his Pope.
Judging by the fact that the in universe author is still calling it a heresy, I'd say a reversal is probably coming some time after manuel dies.
 
Judging by the fact that the in universe author is still calling it a heresy, I'd say a reversal is probably coming some time after manuel dies.
Forgot about that! Will be interesting to see how they reverse it, given that it’s a legacy of one of the greatest emperors.
 
Is there a slim chance that the Frankish-Roman Empire splits up upon the ruler's death and the Thalassans can recover Italy from Aachen?
 
Judging by the fact that the in universe author is still calling it a heresy, I'd say a reversal is probably coming some time after manuel dies.
That’s just because it’s still a heresy at the moment. Easier to just keep using the term rather than either constantly using the name or trying to apply anachronistic language.
 
Forgot about that! Will be interesting to see how they reverse it, given that it’s a legacy of one of the greatest emperors.

Easy. Even great men are fallible. Bible has dozen of examples of otherwise exemplary men doing bad things.
I don't think outright iconoclasm could've triumphed in the long end, because you cannot ditch all icons without ditching veneration of saints, and to to ditch veneration of saints you have to adopt sola scriptura, and to adopt sola scriptura you need to ditch most of church hierarchy: eg protestantism.
 
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Larger than the Frankish army still?
The Frankish forces are not a standing army. Like OTL its a mixture of professional forces and peasants with minimal training and experience. You have the Emperor's personal forces which consist of a solid core of professional troops. But from there you get into the retinue of retinues that he calls up from his lords. The Frankish Emperor can call on a total of maybe equal size but many of those would be men with minimal equipment and training, and if all of the Frankish lords were to fully mobilize their forces you'd end up with a larger force, but the structure of the Frankish Empire ensures that's extremely hard to do.
 
That’s just because it’s still a heresy at the moment. Easier to just keep using the term rather than either constantly using the name or trying to apply anachronistic language.
If that’s the case I am extremely disappointed, I can understand slightly with Iconoclasm popping up in heresy form because there are always those who hate any form of ostentation but Iconoclasm itself was only taken up formally due to the success of the Muslim invasions and their religious influence. There would be no reason for this to become a permanent state of affairs in the Orthodox Church with the Muslim‘s crushed so early on. Iconoclasm was objected to constantly from all corners of the empire and those Emperors who enforced it were some of the most hated in the history of Rome.

I don’t think you have given adequate reasoning in this story for such a state of affairs to last beyond Manuels lifetime, the jacobite’s have until this point been portrayed as a minor heretical group who took advantage of the turmoil in the empire to force their views on the general population, not as a major force with large support within the empires population, especially not any where near Rome where the Pope lives, if anything I would have expected Manuel to be Criticised by the church establishment and then when he resorted to violence to have suffered riots by the pops of Constantinople. If anything if the writer is writing from a future perspective he would be able to say (Due to temporal distance) Manuel was a good emperor for his military and civic work and have his religious beliefs glossed over, but closer to his lifetime he would have been viciously attacked by theologians and political opponents for desecrating the house of God. He wouldn’t be able to kill or imprison them all, without bringing his people’s anger down on his own head.
 
If that’s the case I am extremely disappointed, I can understand slightly with Iconoclasm popping up in heresy form because there are always those who hate any form of ostentation but Iconoclasm itself was only taken up formally due to the success of the Muslim invasions and their religious influence. There would be no reason for this to become a permanent state of affairs in the Orthodox Church with the Muslim‘s crushed so early on. Iconoclasm was objected to constantly from all corners of the empire and those Emperors who enforced it were some of the most hated in the history of Rome.

There's no evidence that Islamic belief brought about Byzantine Iconoclasm. On the contrary, icon usage had been on the rise even before the Islamic Caliphate rose to power, and the development of opposition to these icons within the church developed seemingly organically from a dislike of them. That's even assuming that the iconoclastic controversy was nearly as important as our sources seem to think it was, which is highly doubtful. Far from being objected to constantly from all corners of the Empire and being the most hated Emperors in history, the actual result seems to have been that the iconophiles rewrote history to make the iconoclasts seem far more hated than they were. And objections don't seem to have been particularly strenuous. The only reason that it seems so horrible in hindsight is because ALL of our Byzantine sources that write on the topic were iconophiles. Every. Single. One. And the biggest sources on the controversy were right in the middle of the whole thing, and they had won out.

I don’t think you have given adequate reasoning in this story for such a state of affairs to last beyond Manuels lifetime,

We're barely into Manuel's reign. Literally only a few years into a reign that's going to last for decades upon decades. Claiming that no adequate reasoning has been given for the state of affairs to continue at this point is like complaining that there's no reason for Octavian's work to last as soon as you've reached Philippi.
 
There's no evidence that Islamic belief brought about Byzantine Iconoclasm. On the contrary, icon usage had been on the rise even before the Islamic Caliphate rose to power, and the development of opposition to these icons within the church developed seemingly organically from a dislike of them. That's even assuming that the iconoclastic controversy was nearly as important as our sources seem to think it was, which is highly doubtful. Far from being objected to constantly from all corners of the Empire and being the most hated Emperors in history, the actual result seems to have been that the iconophiles rewrote history to make the iconoclasts seem far more hated than they were. And objections don't seem to have been particularly strenuous. The only reason that it seems so horrible in hindsight is because ALL of our Byzantine sources that write on the topic were iconophiles. Every. Single. One. And the biggest sources on the controversy were right in the middle of the whole thing, and they had won out.



We're barely into Manuel's reign. Literally only a few years into a reign that's going to last for decades upon decades. Claiming that no adequate reasoning has been given for the state of affairs to continue at this point is like complaining that there's no reason for Octavian's work to last as soon as you've reached Philippi.
Fair enough. I admit I am heavily invested in this due to my own faith, so I'm rather biased in favour of icons. I'll let it go for now at least and see what you've got.
 
I could believe that banning depiction of Jesus would went mainstream, but only if Church also went Monophysite, because they believed divine nature of Jesus had wholly swallowed and subsumed human one: Cannot depict God as a Man. Otherwise ban on graven images would have no basis in remaining practices of faith. Banning depiction of Saints as well would be outright incoherent doctrine if veneration of saints wasn't also outright banned.

the actual result seems to have been that the iconophiles rewrote history to make the iconoclasts seem far more hated than they were
I find iconoclasts being hated believable for the simple reason that enforcement of icon ban would by it's very nature be repressive and intrusive. Enforcing permission of icons is effortless. Enforcing ban on them is not. You have to sack churches, destroy statues. News spread and people take some of the icons from their local church to hide them in their houses to protect them, so now you gonna have to do arbitrary searches, and generally mess with people who try to mind their own business. This breeds resentment. Why wouldn't it? You literally go around breaking peoples stuff.
 
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I find iconoclasts being hated believable for the simple reason that enforcement of icon ban would by it's very nature be repressive and intrusive. Enforcing permission of icons is effortless. Enforcing ban on them is not. You have to sack churches, destroy statues. News spread and people take some of the icons from their local church to hide them in their houses to protect them, so now you gonna have to do arbitrary searches, and generally mess with people who try to mind their own business. This breeds resentment. Why wouldn't it? You literally go around breaking peoples stuff.
Because there's no evidence any of that ever happened. While icons were clearly present and prayed too before the iconoclast controversy, it was the iconophiles who apparently rewrote their own history to make it seem like icons were such a huge part of the faith beforehand. This has not happened ITTL, where those who oppose the icons are only now becoming important. And compared to some of the other changes that the Jacoboi are aiming to enforce, the icon ban isn't going to be the big controversy that will dog the coming religious fights.
 
Because there's no evidence any of that ever happened. While icons were clearly present and prayed too before the iconoclast controversy, it was the iconophiles who apparently rewrote their own history to make it seem like icons were such a huge part of the faith beforehand. This has not happened ITTL, where those who oppose the icons are only now becoming important. And compared to some of the other changes that the Jacoboi are aiming to enforce, the icon ban isn't going to be the big controversy that will dog the coming religious fights.
depends where and when the church was more local in its earlier years , by 600 AD saint intercession the belief in the importance of physical presence also joined the belief in intercession of saints with the use of relics and holy images in fact they had done so for about 300 years before first in places than relics heck icons by the time of justinian where very common and acheiropoieta became a thing by this time as well , the iconoclastic movement rise was mainly due to islam ie the expansion of the caliphate viewing that the byzantines had offended god and like you mentioned but it was a lower scale the theological representation of the caliphate not using icons at least to them since from 630 to 690s the rise of icons became more prevelant . ( but since leo was from syria there is a chance that he was inspired by the muslims )

so yes icons where something very important byt the time of Leo I had the iconoclast movement occured in 400 or heck even 500 ad then it would have made more sense and while yes the icnophiles did change something they did not change the fact that icons where a central part of the church by the 8th century, even if we take the pod icons are very well established and the trand would continue to grow i mean if an icoclast movement show up 200ish years later than in our i think it would cause even more figths since well the faith now has had 300 years more from 600 ad for icons to even become more important
 
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