And I assume the same could be said of a scenario where Romanos decided to conquer the three post-Frankish Kingdoms?Eh, somewhere between the conquest under Leo and the disaster under Julian probably.
More likely somewhere closer to Leo's. The Turks are rather preoccupied by a certain neighbor they've suddenly found themselves with, and Romanos is a pretty good commander with a large army. The most likely problem that would have made him fail would have been revolt at home though, since the sudden departure of the unpopular Emperor and his army would have given people more courage to act on their ideas earlier. Julius for instance did want to revolt, he just sized up his chances and decided that if he led Italy and Africa in revolt then he was going to get crushed. But when the rest of the Empire went up too, well that changed things.
The Eternal Empire: Emperor Maurice dies before being overthrown
- Thread starter wcv215
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And so the rise of the Caesarii Dynasty to replace the Thalassans begins.
Probably. The Turks (at the moment) are weaker than the combined German lords. But how United the Germans are varies based on how much they’re squabbling. Right now they’re pretty unified though under a strong and dynamic king.
More conquerable in theory simply because it has roads, maps, proper cities and towns, estates and farms, and etc. There’s an actual state to fight against basically instead of a hundred chieftains that just happen to share a label that’s been put on them.
If an invader could beat the king badly enough they could do what Manuel did to the Franks, make them desert the ruler and either defect or look to some alternative strongman.
If a separate western Empire emerges in Italy would they be able to well and properly conquer Gaul? In other words was the main problem with Manuel's attempt more in terms of distancing and communication or the entrenched position of the powerbases already present?
No. Gaul is too populated and too developed for long-term conquest without the investment of a ton of resources. A seperate empire based in Italy might be able to retake Aquitaine, but the region isn’t really defensible at all.
It seems both TTL Manuel and OTL J. Caesar found a "way" around this. I guess Italians wouldn't be able to politically preform such atrocities against fellow Christians in the same way (or worse) Manuel did.
But seriously, couldn't Italy take the Mediterranean coast portions that roughly align with the old province of Gallia Narbonensis?
Julius Caesar slaughtered vast sections of the population, including outright genocide on the peoples of Belgium. And then later the region was flooded with Roman colonists and retired soldiers. Manuel abandoned the region in about a decade due to more important priorities everywhere else. And the problem isn't taking that region, its holding it against a kingdom to the north from the far side of the Alps.
Microsoft Paint. I don't have any other image editing software.
The Romans control most of it, with their outer control being around Lake Geneva. The rest is split between the three Frankish successor states.
Wait, so is Genghis going to attack the Romans without going through Khorasan and Persia first?
Even for a nomadic steppe horde that sounds like they're going to run into supply issues.
Even for a nomadic steppe horde that sounds like they're going to run into supply issues.
The Turks are currently having...difficulties on the eastern border.
Rip Turks then. Just gpt a state runnig and now the first challenge they face are the freaking Mongols. That’s gonna be fun
You could always have them replace the Mongols when they are inevitably defeated. The fact that the Roman Empire exists in TTL's modern-day implies that either they defeated the mongols or reconquered Constantinople, and the moment an all-conquering genocidal empire loses a battle everything goes to shit.
So more of a prolonged revenge then instead of an initial invasion then? At least until Persia and Mesopotamia falls
Part 88: The West in 1246
Part XLVIII: The West in 1246
Since our last look at the situation in the West little has changed in much of the region. The distant settlers of Transmere have been driven from their initial dwellings in the north by a combination of climate change and declining trade with Gronland, and have now settled to the south, and also severing the last links they had to Europe. The results of this are quite tragic, as an outbreak of smallpox occurred in 1241, and rapidly spread to the indigenous population. This was the first of a series of massive outbreaks that will sweep across the entire continent over the next two hundred years, killing close to half of the entire population.
These people, who will soon enough redub themselves the Kingdom of Nyttland, as well as the ravages of plague that swept south from their holdings will be covered later however.
Our attention instead will briefly turn to the island of Brittania and Hibernia, where Brittani control over Saxeland is solidifying. The Caledonians meanwhile in the north have been pulled away by an internal struggle between the Highlands and the Lowlands, which has resulted in a major civil war that was waged from 1215 all the way until the late 1230s. The upshot of this civil war was that it was a major victory for the king, based in the lowlands. And it effectively ended resistance to the king’s reign over the entire country, for a few decades at least.
Hibernia meanwhile had reunified for a short time in the late 1100s, but weak successors reversed virtually all gains he had made. In other words, the islands remain about as stable as they ever have been.
It is of course in the old lands of the Franks that the majority of our interest lies, as they will provide most of the resources which will eventually be called on by Rome. In the middle of all this of course was the Frankish kingdom, still at this stage the whipping boy of the West. Since the successful military campaigns of the past century the kingdom of Franki has been on a downward spiral. Two less than successful kings led armies to major defeats, with the worst being in 1198, 1205, and finally in 1222 which basically destroyed the confidence of the Frankish Senate in their king to wage war. All of that paled in comparison to their own efforts though, as in 1231 a major battle was fought at Aachen itself against a force of Marcher lords from Gael. And the Franks lost. Badly.
The capital city itself was captured and briefly turned into a duchy of the Gaelic Kingdom. It was looking for all the world like that was it, 1231. The end of Franki. But the coastal regions held on. And in 1234 a new king, Philip II, maternal nephew to one of the two disasters that had gotten the kingdom into this mess, was able to win a decisive victory over a combined German-Gaelic army at the Battle of the Golden River. So called because in this battle the German king was killed, as were all of his personal guard. And the gilded armor of the king and his closest knights fell into the Rhine, where soldiers spent two days after the battle trying to find pieces of it to take as booty.
The tactics used in this battle were a testament to the Frankish focus on infantry in the coastal regions, as well as their resilience which will be demonstrated over and over again. Basically what happened was that Phillip lured nearly seven thousand knights and another ten thousand men at arms onto a low-lying plain, and then he broke the levees keeping the plain dry, flooding it. This immediate flash flood in the middle of the knight swamped the allied camp, and it was here that the German king drowned. Over the next three days Philip launched multiple strikes at isolated sections of the enemy army and slaughtered them. When the campaign season ended Philip was able to resecure the entire coast and significant portions of the Rhine river, successfully retaking Aachen in September. But he was able to do little to retake the upper rhine, which would remain out of Frankish hands for the remainder of the century.
But who cares about that, because we now get to talk about my favorite person in all of Frankish history, Heloise the Great, first female bishop of Aachen, who is just a joy to read about. Heloise was born in 1196, and she actually came from Gael rather thank Franki. The daughter of a minor Soissons lord Helois impressed all of her tutors growing up, but none moreso than Paul of Troyes, a traveling scholar hired by Helois’s wealthy uncle to teach the precocious girl Latin and rhetoric. The pair quickly became inseperable, and by her own admission Heloise seduced her tutor and convinced him to marry her.
This they did, and promptly ran away together. But there was to be no happy ending. Her uncle caught up with them short of the Frankish border, and had her would-be husband beaten, and he subsequently died of his wounds. Furious over this treatment Heloise promptly escaped and made it into the relative safety of Franki, where she was taken in by a Cathari community just across the border. Her uncle pursued, but came into conflict with the locals, and was killed.
Now safe from further pursuit Heloise entered a convent in 1213, still only 17 years old. In this position she rapidly adopted the Cathari positions, and quickly became one of the movement’s staunchest defenders, writing numerous letters to lords and city leaders defending her branch of Christianity eloquently. Seriously, if you haven’t read any of the letters of Heloise go and do that now,
In 1218 the abbess of the convent, seeing Heloise primarily as a troublemaker for all the writing sent her off to Aachen to aid the bishop there. He promptly sent her off to another church to help the priest, a woman, and in a stroke of fortune, at least for Heloise, that priest promptly died of a fever just before she arrived. Suddenly the most senior church official in the area, despite being a grand total of 22, Heloise took up the position of priest with the authority of precisely no one. But she impressed the congregation with her rhetoric, Paul had in fact been quite good in his own right after all, and gained a following across the local area.
An attempt to replace her in 1220 led to the congregation actually threatening to try and vote out the bishop, and he was forced, at least temporarily to back down. He tried again in 1221, but this time his selected replacement died on the way. A third attempt in 1223 backfired even more spectacularly when, not able to force the issue this time, the local lord, who was himself a Cathari sympathizer, went to the king and got the decision overturned.
At this point the bishop threw up his hands and decided that so long as Heloise didn’t cause too much trouble she could stay. To say that Heloise promptly caused trouble would be an understatement. She launched into a full-blown letter-writing campaign to every congregation she could think of, making a variety of arguments and points which were always well thought out, well written, and well argued, and also irritated pretty much everyone who got them.
The king finally ordered her to knock it off in 1230, only then guess what? He lost control of Aachen just six months later. The new lord of the region was in absolutely no mood to put up with this irritating woman, and he had Heloise thrown out of her church and sent her back to the convent. Undettered Heloise ditched the convent, went back to Aachen and began preaching underground. Attempts by the lord to once again arrest her failed, and in 1234 King Philip recaptured the city. Waiting for him were the Cathari, eager to return to legal status, and at their head was Heloise.
The king was magnanimous and returned to the Cathari their old status, and restored Heloise to her position as priest. And that is where she stayed for the next ten years. But then in 1244 the bishop died, and elections were set to be held to put a new one in place. The subsequent election took place over the next six months, overseen by the papal legate and the king. To their shock Heloise won an outright majority, which was absolutely not allowed. They ran the election again, and got the same result.
These elections I should note were public, so short of threats and bribery there was little that could be done to overturn the results. And both of those worked quite badly against a group as zealous as the Cathari. At least at this point. Frustrated the papal legate put everything in limbo and sent off word to Rome to find out what Julian had to say on the subject. But when the messenger got to Rome he found the city currently gripped by the ongoing near rebellion that marked the end of Romanos’s reign. Julian had no help to give, and the messenger returned empty handed.
The legate now returned himself, but he got there just before Julius’s coup, and had not yet departed when that coup took place. As one of Julian’s advisors he was promptly locked by by the exarch, now self-proclaimed Imperator, and would be executed two weeks later. Still no answer had been given. The king, starting to get nervous about not having a bishop and with the local choice made very clear finally just said that Heloise was the bishop, at least until he got countermanding orders from Rome.
Those orders would never come, because in 1247 word came out of the East. The Emperor was dead. The armies of Syria, Moesia, and Anatolia were destroyed and Julius had turned his full attention in that direction. And then messengers arrived making it very clear barbarians were on the way, the Romans could not stop them, and soldiers were needed to save Christendom. And they were needed quite literally right NOW. Whatever issue the locals had wanted dealt with in their letters to Rome, find it was done. The pope would give them literally anything, so long as the new bishop gave support to their endeavor. Heloise agreed, and so on November 12, 1247 the new papal legate gave Heloise the official position of bishop of Aachen.
Heloise would go on to reign as bishop of Aachen for the next thirty years, and her writings continued until her death, but now with significantly more weight behind them. She was instrumental in making the Cathari not just a significant force in Frankish Christianity, but in pushing it to the forefront, though its eventual position as dominant faith in the West was still many centuries away.
And again, if you have not read the collected writings of Heloise then go and do that. The woman was a genius with words and was incredibly influential across the centuries since her death.
But I unfortunately can’t devote any more time to her now. So, we will instead look East, to Germani. There little has overall changed, but one key development has occurred. The kingdom is currently going through a significnat high point in central power under the rule of its king, Henry. Yes, that Henry. The Western Imperator, supreme military authority granted unto him by the pope and with all the armies of non-Roman Christendom at his command. But he had not begun that way. Henry had been a young man, in his mid twenties when his uncle a marcher lord along the western border with the Franki had ridden forth to battle the Franks under the German king, and been slain alongside his lord. Suddenly finding himself inheriting his relative's lands Henry had set about jockeying for additional power, before managing to use the significant wealth and power under his command as greatest of the border lords to achieve election as King of the Germans in 1238, just before the age of 30. But his election was marred by accusations of fraud, threats, blackmail, and other problems which led the Eastern marches to declare a seperate king.
These accusations I should note were probably absolutely true, and this situation was not exactly unprecedented in Germani history. But Henry called his own lords and waged a four year war against his rebellious vassals. In that war he crushed them all, and brought the kingdom more fully under the central government's control than anyone in Germani history had ever managed before, or would again before the kingdom was swallowed by its stronger and more united neighbors. Not wanting to risk a full war with Philip at this stage Henry turned his attention east, and briefly warred against the Moravi, securing some measure of fealty from them before returning home once more. Now more fully confident in his realm he set about laying preparations for his ultimate war against Philip, and possibly against Gael beyond. But that war would never come. Even as both sides readied themselves for a struggle the same word came to Henry as had come to Heloise. And unlike my favorite bishop Henry will be playing one of the most pivotal roles in all of European history during what is to come.
Past Germani we move to the Polani. Now last time we focused on the West we briefly focused on the Polani conversion to Christianity and subsequent Westernization. Little has changed in that regard except in one key way, the king who commanded it has died, and his kingdom was subsequently divided between all his sons, rendering the position of king far weaker than it had been back then. The land is still unified, and will remain so, but the dominant position achieved in the early days by the king is no more.
Notably however, while the division process continued after his successors deaths a number of reform enacted put forward a primogeniture succession system in much of the kingdom in 1235, over strenuous objections that lasted the next four years (that is to say, civil war). In that time period the Baltic pagans also took advantage of the division and seized a number of border regions from Polani lords distracted by internal affairs. By 1246 however that period of instability is over and the country is relatively united once again, looking outward for more land to give to noble sons who suddenly have few prospects at home. Primarily of course the Polani will look north, for now at least.
South of Polani are the Bulgari, whose civil war is now officially over and who are now unified under Barba, a descendant of Roman settlers in the region during the time of Trajan, called a Vlach by locals at this time. The Vlach period of rule will last for the next one hundred-twenty years in Bulgari, and will oversee the final shift of the Bulgari military from a mixture of cavalry forces into almost pure heavy infantry forces that will define them until heavy infantry itself became obsolete in the 18th century.
That concludes our look at the West in 1246. As I noted, not a significant amount has changed politically at this time, but the same is absolutely not true of the place we will be looking next, the Far East.
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