The leadership of western Europe is disgusted and disappointed on the one hand, and intensely disinterested on the other. The Papacy officially decries the capture of Constantinople and the Venetians who helped make it possible, but beyond that most of the western European leadership, especially in places like France, Iberia, and the Holy Roman Empire, are simply not concerned in the slightest. The HRE specifically is facing its own difficulties in this period, which have taken their focus away from outside affairs. However, Poland has its eyes firmly fixed on the Balkans, which is something I will be detailing further in future!
The Sultanate of Rumistan: An Alternate Anatolia
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The leadership of western Europe is disgusted and disappointed on the one hand, and intensely disinterested on the other. The Papacy officially decries the capture of Constantinople and the Venetians who helped make it possible, but beyond that most of the western European leadership, especially in places like France, Iberia, and the Holy Roman Empire, are simply not concerned in the slightest. The HRE specifically is facing its own difficulties in this period, which have taken their focus away from outside affairs. However, Poland has its eyes firmly fixed on the Balkans, which is something I will be detailing further in future!
I remember reading the first few installments of this TL and loving the concept. Sadly I lost track of it and only just recently found this TL again and have finally caught up. It's amazing! I'm so glad you are continuing this story and I can't wait to see what Rum gets up to next!
Thank you so much! I will be releasing an update tomorrow that details the beginning of the next century for the Sultanate, so you just might be interested in what Rum gets up to next hehehe
Part 36: The Polish Caesars
Zdislaw Czapla, the Polish Caesar
Part 36: The Polish Caesars
After his death, there was a need to select a new King to rule over Poland, and Georgy Corwin, the scion of Valentinus Corvinus and head of the conspiracy to kill Zdislaw Czapla, rose to the position. While an effective conspirator, he was an ineffective ruler, handing out concessions to his noble allies and doing little to stop the spread of banditry in the country. As Burilgi’s hold over his expansive empire waned with his age, raids by Turcs and Russians alike grew in frequency into Poland, and while garrisons on the border were increased to respond to this, most of the military activity was delegated to Corwin’s friends in the knightly houses. While both Czapla and Corwin were self serving and power hungry men, Corwin was primarily turned to giving back to the people who supported his candidacy to the Kingship, as well as those who assisted in the assassination of the former King. He had widespread support among some sections of the nobility, but little in the populace, who felt that the benefits of Czapla’s kingship were snatched from them by aristocratic machinations.
In 1409, with Burilgi’s empire collapsing to the east, a group of peasants rose up in Lesser Poland, demanding the forgiveness of debts and the redistribution of land. After a few years of rebellion, their demands shifted: Georgy Corwin must step down as King of Poland. The peasants initially faced difficulties from knightly suppression, but as their message spread to some of the other regions, namely Greater Poland, Polish Silesia, and Mazovia, the authorities had a harder and harder time keeping them down. Some historians today believe that the peasants may have enjoyed support from the Bohemian Crown, in an effort to weaken their eastern neighbor, but this is not academic consensus. Georgy Corwin’s popularity among his supporters waned as his inability to handle the peasant uprising grew more obvious, and by 1414 he was forced to step down, with the rebels eager to see their plans reach fruition. The process to select a new King began almost immediately, but the peasants did not end their rebellion, in an attempt to force the hand of the nobles in the Sejm in their favor. Due to this, for a period of three years there was no King in Poland, with the nobles unable to agree and the peasants perennially rising up in the agrarian regions. Ultimately, the younger half brother of Zdislaw Czapla, Wadem Czapla, was selected to be the next King of Poland. He took after his dead brother, attempting to centralize control under his own figure, and the greatest opportunity for this came in 1419: an attempted invasion of Poland by the Sloboda Khanate of Ali Alp Arslan, the half-Circassian that was made sovereign of Ukrajina. Margrave Josef Kapolka, appointed to a position on the border of Poland by Zdislaw Czapla, took up the charge to defend Poland from yet another eastern invasion, and Wadem reached out to him to make a closer alliance. Kapolka was entrusted with the defence of the state, and he did this well, pushing off general Ghuzz Mahmoud and keeping the eastern cities which Poland had seized in the collapse of the Burilgid Empire. He was paraded into Warszawa as a victor, but then sent back to the eastern borderlands in 1421 in order to head the Polish push into the still pagan land of Lithuania, which had been taking advantage of the disunity and chaos in eastern Europe to expand its reach and control. A few years earlier, one of the Lithuanian chiefs, by the name of Diviriks, had reached out to the Teutonic knights to potentially convert to the western rite, but he was overthrown by many of the rebellious tribal nobles under him, with his brother Kirnis installed as a new pagan sovereign over Lithuania. Poland and the Teutons joined together in a war against Lithuania in 1421, which would ultimately end in failure, and the death of Wadem Czapla in 1426. An independent and pagan Lithuania would continue to survive, for the time being at least.
Josef Kapolka, Margrave of Halich, King of Poland
A new King had to be chosen, and it would seem that yet again, a man who had defended the east from Tatar onslaught would be selected: Josef Kapolka, margrave-general of the east. While not of the same noble family as the Czapla brothers, Kapolka was, and still is, considered part of the same general alliance of notables headed by the now long dead Zdislaw Czapla. Kapolka, however, would finally pull off what Zdislaw and Wadem Czapla could not accomplish: a complete takeover in Poland. His rule began simply enough, with a general strengthening of forces in the border regions (which remained under his direct control as Margrave of Halich) and money spent on improving the defensive capabilities of the city of Warszawa itself. Behind the scenes, Josef Kapolka was making deals and alliances with many nobles and soldiers, undermining the Sejm with decrees which he hoped would land well, and inviting bands of mercenaries into the country from Hungary and the Alps. By 1430, everything was well set, and Josef Kapolka pulled off what may very well have been the dream of the Czapla brothers: a coup against the Polish Sejm. Over the course of a single week, soldiers marched into the citadels of many of the noble and knightly houses opposed to Kapolka’s rule, while the carriages of those attempting to flee the country for a hopefully friendly Bohemia or Hungary were intercepted by landsknecht brought in with promises of shares of the spoils. When many of the nobles were captured, Josef Kapolka executed half of them. While he was popular among the people for reviving the land reforms of the Czapla brothers, King Josef Kapolka gained the title of Josef the Bloody for his savage treatment of his opponents in the coup of 1430.
Josef Kapolka then led a relatively long and prosperous reign, improving relations with the Kingdom of Hungary and reaching out to the small Russian principalities to protect them from the expansionist direction of the Sloboda Khanate. In his February Edict of 1431, King Josef Kapolka, first of his name, abolished once and for all the Polish Sejm, re-establishing rule by the King of Poland and defining in specific the procedures for the succession to the Polish throne, establishing agnatic succession in Poland. He maintained his title of Margrave of Halich, and added onto it Duke of Greater Poland, founding a military order centered on Warszawa to defend the Polish capital from any threats, both internal and external. The land redistribution policies were put to an end, which would eventually prompt another peasant rebellion in 1442, violently put down by the massively strengthened army of Josef Kapolka. His reign is known as one of the bloodiest in Polish history, and while Poland grew closer to many of its neighbors, internally it was marred by the deaths of many nobles and the suppression of the peasantry. Many Polish soldiers were committed to the defense of Hungarian interests in the Balkans, while smaller contingents were sent to Ukrajinan cities in the hinterlands between Poland and the Sloboda Khanate, but by far the majority of military action in the period of 1430 to 1452, the death of King Josef Kapolka, was within Polish territory.
The Baptism of Alexander, depicting the conversion of Lithuania to Eastern Orthodox Christianity
TIMELINE OF POLISH KINGS
Casimir III Piast (1330-1347)
Polish Civil War and Interregnum (1339-1359)
Polish Sejmate (1359-1431)
Valentinus Corvinus (1359-1383)
Zdislaw Czapla (1383-1399)
Georgy Corwin (1399-1414)
Peasant Uprising and Interregnum (1409-1417)
Wadem Czapla (1417-1426)
Josef Kapolka (1426-1452) (February Edict 1431)
Dobrogost Kapolka (crowned 1452)
And so the last pieces of Europe are filled in. The new king's eye towards the Balkans is... interesting.
On another note, with Lithuania now Orthodox, will there be a push to make Vilnius(?) the Third Rome?
On another note, with Lithuania now Orthodox, will there be a push to make Vilnius(?) the Third Rome?
Yes, there are still Buddhist Oirats on the upper Itil (Volga).
Poland sure is on the up and up, thats for sure! Lithuania's expansionist ability is somewhat curbed by the more successful Poles and a resurgent Sloboda Khanate, which is just unfortunate for the new Orthodox Grand Dukes. Poland is probably Lithuania's greatest competitor, and Novgorod its greatest benefactor.
And thank you so much to all of the people who have been following and reading this TL, especially to all of y'all who stuck with it and picked it back up after my somewhat bothersome hiatuses! Expect another update fairly soon!
Part 37: The Turcish Crusade
Pope Pius III, holder of the Papal Office in the time of the Turcish Crusade
Part 37: The Turcish Crusade
However, desperation came with conquest, and Boris, kniaz of the Bulgarian principality, reached out to the Polish garrisons in Wallachia for aid when Sultan Ibrahim’s invasion forces began the push northwards. With the assent of King Yaroslaw, a meager force of only a few thousand Poles joined the Bulgarians in the fight against Ibrahim, crossing the Danube in 1480. Ultimately, Polish aid did very little, and that was ultimately what Yaroslaw wanted: to commit just enough to show support for the anti-Seljuq cause while maintaining distance from the conflict in the Balkans. Then, two years later, he was shocked (but not surprised) by the fall of the Theodosian Walls, and he saw an opportunity. Yaroslaw, King of Poland, would not just be the great monarch of the Polish state, but the head of Christendom! He would call a crusade!
His ties with the Papacy were well placed, with a Genoese bishop with ties to Italian banking families that had made loans to Polish allies before on the holiest of seats, petitioning the patriarch was an easy affair. The Pope was knee deep in debt from commissioning works of art to beautify his city and having to give away concessions to merchants in the north of Italy, and he was already struggling to hold onto legitimacy following his excommunication of Doge Carlo of Venice, which failed to prompt the Venetian leadership to kowtow to Papal command. When a Polish delegation arrived in 1483, he was more than happy to declare a crusade to defend Christendom from the Saracens and Turcs that had oh so sorrowfully destroyed the last remnant of the Eastern Roman Empire. Thus began the last feeble attempt at a crusade, and the second phase of the war which consumed eastern Europe during the end of the 15th century.
The first phase of this war is the short War of Ibrahim, from 1479 to 1482, wherein Sultan Ibrahim defeated both the Eastern Roman Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria, subsuming both states into his ever expanding empire. There would be two more phases, occurring almost simultaneously but in differing geographical contexts: Yaroslaw’s Crusade (also known as the Turcish Crusade) from 1483 to 1491, and the Bohemian Crusade, from 1485 to 1497. This description of events will focus on the former, the Turcish crusade that lasted only around 8 years. Poland, with King Yaroslaw Kapolka at its head, was put at the front of the Catholic forces, with a number of Italian and German contingents under his command, and the Kingdom of Hungary dedicated its army to the invasion. Venice, while still in the close alliance with the Sultanate of Rum, chose to remain out of the war, joining neither side in the conflict. This was, in effect, solely Poland and Hungary against the Turcs, despite the somewhat symbolic involvement of the Crown of Bohemia, the Republic of Genoa, the Kingdom of France, and the Danes.
A modern depiction of Polish forces in the northern Danubian lowlands of Bulgaria
The Polish-led coalition forces initially met serious difficulties in the push into the Balkans, setting Wallachia and Vojvodina as their centers of operations within their own lines and sending forces under the leadership of nobles whose exploits have since become half legend in their respective countries (Laszlo the Lancer, Fine Pietrowik, Miklos the Son of Christ, Iwanovic the Faithful, etc.). The most significant force was that under the leadership of Yaroslaw Kapolka’s younger brother Pawel Kapolka, made up of Polish knights and volunteers from the Holy Roman Empire, but even this notable force faced a struggle against the still present and increasingly entrenched garrisons left by Sultan Ibrahim after the conquest of the northern Balkans only a year prior. Repeated offensives across the Danube from Wallachia faced failure throughout 1483 and early 1484, until a Hungarian force under the leadership of the famous Laszlo the Lancer was able to negotiate passage through the Serbian principalities and push into Bulgaria through the western mountain passes. Now fighting on two fronts, the Turcish garrison, de facto under the leadership of the Kurdish general Evindar Zagros, was pushed back into the foothills of the Balkan mountains, leaving the entire lowland territory surrounding the Danube to the Polish and Hungarian forces. 1485 is the year that Kniaz Vladimir of Bulgaria returned to his homeland under the protection of the Hungarian forces, crowned as Kniaz of Bulgaria in the city of Vidin, establishing a short lived Hungarian puppet Bulgarian principality.
1485 is also the year that two major developments would redefine the slow crusade. The first of these was the petitioning of the Georgian court by Sultan Ibrahim, requesting the unthinkable of the knights of the resurgent Kingdom of Georgia: an expedition across the Caucasus and into the Kingdom of Poland from the east. Kurdish and Turcoman auxiliaries would be supplied by the Sultanate of Rum, and a delegation was already on its way to the court of the Sloboda Khans in Kiev to negotiate passage for the Georgians. Sultan Ibrahim made one final statement to leverage the Georgians into assisting in this endeavor: pointing out and emphasizing the lack of involvement of the Georgians in the earlier war against the Roman Empire. The Georgian expeditionary force departed in the spring of 1486 and reached the Polish hinterland by early 1487. At the same time as negotiations were under way between the Turcs and Georgians, an enterprising and rather mysterious Italian by the name of Albertus Napolus accomplished something that had been planned by him and his close allies since the beginning of the crusade: an attempt at a naval invasion of the Balkans via the Adriatic Sea. Knowing that the majority of the Turcish forces would be arrayed against the Hungarians and Poles in the region of Bulgaria, Albertus Napolus took advantage of the undefended region of Albania, storming it with a collection of Neapolitans, Calabrians, Romans, Lombards, and Landsknechts. Much of the coastal regions were captured almost immediately, with a push up into the Albanian highlands made easier by the well applied use of black powder weapons and a deal made with a local tribal leader named Skerdian to ensure the loyalty of the Albanian tribes.
Under attack from ever increasing fronts, the forces of the Sultanate of Rum were bolstered by levies called up by Sultan Ibrahim from the iqta holders of Anatolia and the loyal Kurdish tribes of the Jazira, with the number of soldiers on the Bulgarian front almost doubled by 1486. However, following a rather harsh winter, supplies began to dwindle to a thin stream through the Balkan mountains that provided the bulwark for the Turcoman forces, leaving an opening for the forces of Laszlo and Pawel. The push southwards began in the winter of that year, but while it was rapid and effective, with Hungarian-Polish forces almost reaching Macedonia and Thrace within the span of half a year, it was not sustainable. The fact that the push began during the harsh winter, when food and morale was rather low for both sides, and the mountainous terrain both meant that the hold of the crusader forces was weak, and they began to fall back to their lines along the Balkan mountains by 1487. Around the same time, the Georgian-Turcoman force reached the borderland between Poland and the territory under the Sloboda Khans, beginning an occupation of the Ukrajinan territories of Poland, bolstered by additional auxiliaries from Kiev. Distracted from the Balkan front, some soldiers were siphoned out from across the Danube and brought to Halich to begin a defense against the Georgians. With smaller numbers defending Bulgaria from the forces of Ibrahim and Evindar Zagros, the emboldened Kurdish and Turcish forces of the Balkans began the offensive, taking back swathes of Bulgarian territory and forcing Kniaz Vladimir to once again flee, this time first to Buda, then to Warszawa, where he would ultimately die. There was no hope any longer for Bulgaria, and by 1489 there was no hope for Serbia either, and a push had begun into Wallachia.
That is the narrative that is pushed by Polish and Hungarian historians and by most historians up until recently; a hopeless struggle of repressed Christians against the forces of the Turcs and Kurds. In truth, the forces of the Sultanate of Rum were likely made up mostly of Christians, and the status of the Slavs in the Balkans is rather harder to interpret than the quite nationalistic eastern European narratives of repression at the hands of Muslim tyranny. In addition, there was no real concerted effort to cross the Danube on the part of the Seljuq forces, with a few failed battles in 1488 and a half-hearted attempt to push into Vojvodina the only signs of any real push northwards. Ultimately, the flimsy crusade that only existed as an excuse to strengthen the Polish presence would end with no bang, but rather it would fizzle out slowly, dragging on until all the sides simply gave up. Conflict between the Polish-Hungarian coalition and the Sultanate of Rum ended in 1491, and a ceasefire was signed with the Italian Albanian adventurers later that same year. Poland refused to formally end the war with Georgia until 1504, although actual fighting between Polish and Georgian forces had ceased decades prior.