As requested --
1169 – 1188 Rollup Timeline:
1169:
Manuel Komnenos’ wife Maria of Antioch gives birth to a daughter. Manuel begins to accelerate the process of grooming Béla of Hungary for the throne of the Empire as his adopted son and betrothed of his eldest daughter, Maria Porphyrogenete.
1170:
Without any significant deviation from historical in events, Manuel begins to take some measures to prepare for following through with the succession. It is then he decides on the method of first crowning Maria as Co-Emperor and then Béla as Alexios to give time for the people to become used to them and blunt the impact of his decision while he is still alive and can exert his influence on the situation.
1171:
In 1171 after Maria of Antioch gives birth to a second daughter, Manuel begins to execute his strategy. He resigns himself to the succession of Béla and resolves to see it through. First, he has his daughter Maria Porphyrogenete crowned Co-Emperor at his side, a remarkable gesture of endorsement of the succession through her. Immediately after her crowning in the Blachernae, she is married to Béla-Alexios, who is not yet made a Co-Emperor to Manuel as Manuel works to placate and intimidate by equal turns the nobility into accepting the arrangement. Amalric pledges loyalty to the Empire as King of Jerusalem, but this is almost immediately irrelevant.
1172:
In 1172, Maria Porphyrogenete gives birth with Béla-Alexios’ first son. The pregnancy puts Manuel in an impossible situation when Béla’s older brother unexpectedly dies without heirs. While marching to campaign against a minor rebellion of Slavic lords in the Balkans, a delegation from Hungary meets the Emperor and Béla at Sardica and begs for the return of the rightful King of Hungary. Béla refuses to choose between the thrones, and instead proposes the daring plan to the Emperor of ruling both as King of Hungary and Emperor of Rome alongside his wife. Béla-Alexios assents to the idea of ruling from Constantinople—Manuel insisting that it would be impossible otherwise—and Manuel reluctantly assents to the plan, but insists that if it is to be, they will cross the Rubicon—and gamble strongly. The first son shall inheirit both nations.
1173:
Béla's brother, Géza, is his primary rival to his rule, and despite his relatively quick acclaimation in Esztergom, his brother has the support of their mother and of Duke Henry of Austria, and mobilizes an Army to contest the throne against his brother. Béla raises an Army of five thousand men to face him quickly, and they meet on the fields of Gyor in western Hungary. The King's Army is victorious and he captures and imprisons his brother and mother, but the Archbishop Lucas of Esztergom still refuses to crown him as King, whipping up propaganda under the pretext of schismatic tendencies. Privately he demands that Béla first promise to reunify the Churches on Roman terms once he is Emperor of the East. Béla refuses to commit even in secret and instead simply promises to support another Church council; in the end the Pope permits the Archbishop of Kalocsa to crown Béla King of Hungary.
1174:
Béla spends the entire year in Esztergom, administering Hungary, including undertaking reforms to the Court based on his experience in Constantinople and the Empire. As a practical matter these reforms serve to improve the crown revenue; in certain respects, Hungary is almost as centralised as the Empire under the Komnenian Dynasty. Relaxing defensive requirements in the border-lands facing the Empire, he creates conditions for improvement in the wealth of the Székelys (borderers) and improvements in the level of fortification on other frontiers.
Inside the Empire, Manuel is preoccupied dealing with several conspiracies against the decision to elevate Béla into his presumptive heir with the marriage, the birth of the heir of Béla-Alexios and Maria, and the elevation of Maria to nominally Co-Regnant. Because Manuel’s position is very secure, these plots come to nothing, however, they distract his attention, allowing Maria to carve out actual authority for herself in the management of the Imperial household and court. Whereas Manuel had begun to reduce the numbers of eunuchs and allow the “bearded” officers into the eunuchs’ offices of state, Maria feels the eunuchs will be more reliable to the Crown in the context of the rule of herself and her husband; she begins to increase their number again.
1175:
By midyear, Manuel calls Alexios to campaign with him. Alexios calls the Hungarian troops he has at his disposal, leaving enough to secure the Kingdom, and rides to Constantinople. There, Manuel is concentrating a considerable Army. The objective of the campaign is nothing less than the reconquest of central Anatolia. Equipped considerably with engines of war, it is one of the largest Armies in recent times raised by the Empire, 40,000 men or more. Meeting his son in law, the two armies cross over into Anatolia and winter near Philadelphia before continuing the campaign.
1176:
With Béla as the second in command of the combined Army, the force advances on Iconium with the engines necessary to put the city to siege. West of the city, the Hungarian scouts locate the Turkish Army positioned at Myriokephalon. Béla prevails upon the Emperor to deploy into battle formation and force the siege engines through quickly under a cordon while assaults by the leading divisions are carried onto the heights on each flank of the pass before the Turks can deploy into order of battle. In a day of doubtful struggle, Béla clears the Turks from the left, scaling the heights on foot to dislodge them from their position in the rocks, and the Imperial-Hungarian Army is victorious. Regrouping beyond the pass, it becomes clear the Turks were weaker than had been expected and cannot muster again to oppose their march on Iconium, which falls to the Imperial siege engines. The Sultan of Rum flees as a refugee with his family, and is ultimately granted asylum at Saladin’s court, several years hence.
1177:
Through 1177 and into the summer, Béla and Manuel campaign together in central Anatolia, suppressing resistance to the reimposition of Imperial rule. They reduce strongholds and defeat resisting bands and forces of Turkish cavalry. As they do, they settle behind them the second sons of Hungarian Lords and other Hungarian men eager for lands of their own, using the pronoia system to integrate them into the new frontier of the Empire. Leaving behind troops to continue the campaigning and settlements, the Emperor and the King return to Constantinople, where Béla meets his second son Constantine. There, he talks Manuel out of considering an expedition to Egypt, and proposes his own to eastern Anatolia and Georgia, but in the end they decide to conduct no expeditions and focus on securing and settling central Antolia as best as they can, where considerable armed resistance continues.
1178:
Having returned to Constantinople victorious against the Turk with Anatolia regained, Manuel takes the great favour of the people for himself and Béla-Alexios and arranges for Alexios to be crowned as Co-Caesar of the Empire like his wife. This cements and confirms Alexios’ position as Manuel’s heir and definitively settles the succession, though again it presses Manuel into dealing with schemes and opposition amongst the magnates of the Empire.
1179:
The Matter of Hungary had necessarily needed to be settled. Béla, to rule both Kingdom and Empire, needed a steady and reliable hand on the tiller. Béla travels back to Esztergom to deal with the administration of the Kingdom. To this he arranged the marriage of his sister Helen to Baldwin of Antioch, the son of Constance of Antioch and the Knight Raynald of Chatillon. The young man, only twenty-four years of age at Myriokephalon, had nonetheless been one of the ablest of Manuel’s commanders and had become a true bosom friend of Béla’s, a pure knight, but competent enough to restrain himself when needed, and much favoured by the old Emperor. Married to Helen of Hungary, the two become co-Viceroys just as Béla and Maria are to be co-Sovereigns. In Constantinople, Manuel is mired in the last theological dispute of his reign over the wording of the anathemas that must be said by Muslim converts to Christianity.
1180:
The Emperor Manuel dies in his bed in Constantinople. At his great funeral, the man who succeeded in the reconquest of Anatolia is honoured, and henceforth it is Béla and Maria who alone sit side-by-side as Co-Sovereigns, moving from the old Bucoleon which Manuel gifted them into the primary Imperial residence of the Blachernae. A rough division of responsibilities between the happy spouses occurs with Béla focusing on the military, religion and foreign policy and Maria on the domestic civil administration.
1181:
Béla launches his Trans-Oltenia campaign, combining forces of the Hungarian and Imperial forces to conquer the Trans-Olt for Hungary, organising it as part of the Crown of Hungary as the Banat of Severin. This lightly peopled area begins to fill in the area in the Balkans which neither Hungary nor the Empire controls and starts to secure trade routes from the Empire into Transylvania for merchants traveling between the two unified crowns. Preoccupied in the campaign, it is his wife Maria who takes the lead in negotiating with the Venetians to end the contention with them that her father began.
Reaching an agreement which allows a Venetian settlement further up the Horn from Galata, she gains the support of the Venetian merchants in the city which allows her to respond to the beginning of conspiracy against her and her husband. The conspiracy takes the form of an uprising organised by Isaac Angelos. Alerted by one of the eunuchs of the Imperial Post on essentially counter-espionage duty, she is able to deploy loyal troops first. Using the Vardariotai to break the crowd with whips, she locates the majority of the conspirators and has them interrogated and blinded, but Isaac Angelos himself escapes to Italy.
1182:
After returning to the capital to help Maria secure the political situation there, in the next year, Alexios begins to campaign in Muntenia, the cis-Olt region of Wallachia. While campaigning across the Danube, emissaries from the Kingdom of Georgia arrive to meet with him, and he holds an audience for them in Varna on the coast of the Black Sea. Abandoning prior thoughts of forcing the Georgians back into a tributary position, he negotiates an agreement for a joint campaign in eastern Anatolia against the Muslims, instead.
1183:
Alexios leads his army through Anatolia in early 1183, campaigning to destroy bands of Turkish bandits and warriors which still harass the new Christian settlers in the central Highlands. At Charpete in the east, the Imperial and Georgian armies combine, having easily crushed several of the armies of the eastern Anatolia Emirates. They then advance upon Diyarbakr (Amida) and put the city to siege. By that point, Saladin has responded to their presence, and puts aside his quarrels with the Emir of Mosul to lead a large Army north.
In debates between Alexios’ generals and Lord Sargis, the commander of the Georgian Army, the Imperial-Georgian forces end up building lines of Circumvallation and Contravallation around Amida, just for Saladin to refuse to face them directly and instead spend the next months harassing their supply lines. They have enough food and canals to carry water to their lines, but the Muslims work to contaminate them and to prevent the Imperial-Georgian Army from gathering fodder, which weakens the cavalry. Rather than risk the continued weakening of their cavalry, Alexios changes course and attempts to break out.
Saladin offers battle to contain them, but the Imperial horse is still hale enough to break through and secure the survival of the Army, though much of the siege train is lost. Retreating from Amida, Saladin is unable to break through the Imperial lines, which maintain good order as they fall back north of the city, looking forward to a field battle to overturn the result of the failed siege. Instead of offering battle, Saladin negotiates and, conceding the Imperial and Georgian gains in the northern part of eastern Anatolia as vassals to the Christians, a five-year truce with the Empire and the Georgians is agreed to.
1184:
On his return through Anatolia, Alexios leads his Army and the local Hungarian pronoia on campaign against the Turkish bands which have been steadily ground down to little more than large forces of organised bandits. If anything this duty is more important to the stability of the Empire than the campaign against Amida, and it concludes with Béla-Alexios returning to his wife in Constantinople. There they discuss the need for a new quarter of the city to address the weakness of her father’s expanded walls around the Blachernae and provide a place of settlement for the large population of Hungarians which has begun to move to Constantinople to be near their King and form a court overseas for him. It is agreed to call this the Quarter of the Vardariotai and place a new, larger barrack for that force—which is to be expanded--within it. Construction begins, though the pace is slow.
1185:
The Normans remain cautious with regard to the strength of the Dual-Monarchy, though they grow harassing in their communiques about trade privileges within Imperial land. Considering the diplomatic situation in Italy with the King of Germany on the ascendancy against the Pope and rumours of negotiations to marry his son to the aunt of the King of Norman Sicily, Béla organises an Imperial army, with some Hungarian adventurers, to sail to Ancona, where a Byzantine garrison has been in place since early in Manuel’s reign. This small Army, under General Branas, is assigned to face the Imperial troops in the Marche.
1186:
Alexios leads another campaign into Multenia to subdue a renewed rebellion of the Cumans and local Vlach petty Lords, in the spring of the year. After returning to Constantinople in the summer, he goes on a tour to Anatolia where the Army continues to campaign against the Turkish in the central part of the country as well, making attempts to induce them to convert and surrender in exchange for employment in the Army and land in Multenia.
In the Marche, General Branas feints and counter-marches and moves his army from town and city and hill and valley, facing Markward von Annweiler. The redoubtable soldier of the Staufer is still outmatched by the legendary Imperial General, who at Teramo inside the borders of Norman Sicily within the old Duchy of Spoleto, overthrows completely the small army of von Annweiler with his own forces. Markward escapes, but the better part of the German force is destroyed and Branas consolidates a loose Imperial control over the Duchy of Spoleto to the north and the southermost part of the Marche around Ancona.
1187:
The Army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is overthrown at Hattin and Saladin sweeps through the Kingdom, conquering all the castles and cities within in it except a thin strip of the coast. A desperate plea for help travels from one end of Christendom to the other, but it is not until news of the fall of Jerusalem reaches him that Béla, busy with the administration of the Empire and campaigns in Wallachia, considers responding, in particular respecting his five-year truce with Saladin.
1188:
When Béla-Alexios decides to respond to the plea for help from Jerusalem, it is by reaching out to Queen Tamar of Georgia. It is by diplomatic agreement with the redoubtable Queen of the Georgians that the Empire draws up its plans for a campaign in support of Outremer.
