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A note from the Author

Well its been a long time since I updated, I see.

*wipes cobwebs away*

Ye of little faith may feel that I have abandoned this AAR... but rejoice! For I have not!

It is just that, after surviving Swine Flu my school work came back with a vengeance. Even now I am just finishing up one of several papers for finals, which are in addition to the tests themselves. Once the winter rolls around I will have time to really catch up. Especially considering that for a few weeks I will be stuck in my home recovering from jaw surgery and have nothing but free time in front of my computer. :D

And just to let everyone know where I stand:
  • I have already started the next chapter (I had a few minutes a while back), and should have it up soon.
  • With Victoria II a reality (Woo-hoo!), I have more reason to keep on writing because I always wanted this AAR to span multiple games.
  • I really do need to figure out how I am going to settle the other-story regarding the author and his companion. I've started by posting more updates without his letters, so that I can slow the bastard down a bit. I need more time, Krieger!

So anyway, happy holidays and all that!
 
A) Good to hear you've survived your tangle with the lovely H1N1 (yes, it's kind of a no-brainer, but it should still be said. If for no other reason that everything else depends on it).

B) Nice to hear you are planning to continue this tale.

C) Good luck with the upcoming surgery. If you're going to be at home for a few weeks, it sounds like it will be a rather involved procedure...
 
Nice to hear from you...will be waiting for updates patiently, whenever they arrive.
 
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Part Thirty-five
The Tsar Ascendant

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How beautiful every nightingale sings
That I might live a hundred lives and never tire
Of such divine wonderment


-Sample from incomplete poetry piece attributed to Sultan Ali

Sultan Ali spent much of his time supporting the artistic elite of Ottoman society; visiting Constantinople’s new coffeehouses, writing correspondence with poets, and financing the construction of the first western-style theatre in the Ottoman Empire. Under his rule Constantinople saw a true transformation as lavish public works sought to improve the beauty of the city. The primary architect of the Sultan, Mimar Sinan, was directly responsible for hundreds of structures throughout the empire: his influence over Ottoman architecture cannot by understated. Having visited Constantinople multiple times during my lifetime I can state without reservation that the mark of Sinan and Ali is still present wherever one looks.

Yet while the Sultan busied himself with paving roads and building mosques the enemies of the Ottoman Empire were gathering their forces. The two greatest threats to the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom of Russia and the Sultanate of Persia, were increasing their military presence along strategic regions vital to the empire’s security and economic vitality. Since I have already explored the role the Silk Road trade routes played in Ottoman-Persian relations in a previous chapter I beg the readers indulgence as I skip over repeating it here.

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Instead I will use this space to help describe the reasoning behind Russia’s fascination with the Ottoman Crimea. Russia, having spent centuries in the shadows of its neighbors, was finally coming into its own as a regional power by the 16th century. The bane of the earlier Muscovite state, the Khanates of the steppes, were splintered and divided. While the occasional raid would upset some of Russia’s border provinces it was nothing compared with the days when Mongol Kings extracted taxes from the Russian people at spear point. With Poland slowly disintegrating under the weight of rampant social upheaval and foreign invasions, Russia was able to consolidate its power and begin to look beyond the needs of imminent survival for the first time in its history.

Trade was a lucrative business within northern Europe: it was a time when the Hanseatic League (or Hansa) of merchant states and trading cities was able to muster enough power and influence to rival monarchies. When Ivan III conquered the Novgorod Republic during the late 1400s it gave Russia ports along the Baltic and for the first time allowed Russian merchants access to markets outside of Russian lands. Yet that small sliver of land south of Finland was not well suited or developed enough for large scale trade. Instead Russia found itself beholden to the Hansa by having to conduct its trade through their coastal cities where the infrastructure was in place to support significant levels of trade.

Over time the Russian merchants and nobility grew more vocal in their demands for greater trading opportunities. By having Russian merchants paying taxes and tolls, they were at a disadvantage when coming up against their Hansa rivals. At the same time there was a growing belief that Russia was God’s chosen nation and thus had a duty to push back the Muslims of the steppes and claim their lands for God (and the Kingdom). This was very attractive thinking for the young Tsar Ivan IV, whom history would eventually label “the terrible”.

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- Tsar Ivan IV

Ivan IV was a very talented and ruthless monarch, and one of the most influential of all Russian Tsars. He had enacted a number of reforms early in his reign, the most pertinent of these being the establishment of the first Russian standing army in history, the streltsy. Ambitious and eager to expand his domain, Ivan saw the Ottoman Crimea as his next logical target: conquering it would give Russia access to large ports, lucrative markets, and would destroy Ottoman influence north of the Black Sea.

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Yet Ivan was no fool. The history of the Ottoman Empire was one of military success on the battlefield, and with the Black Sea controlled by the Ottoman navy the Tsar knew that the Turks would be capable of transporting large bodies of troops to the front quickly. Lacking any naval forces of his own, the Tsar began seeking European aid in his planned war as early as 1548. Few nations possessed the naval strength to combat the Ottomans in their home waters, and fewer still were interested in helping what was widely considered a backwater region of the world. The Ottoman Empire’s old foes, Genoa and Venice, were engaged in a war to secure the throne of Milan and could not be spared to fight the powerful Ottomans.

Russian diplomats eventually did find an interested party in a very unlikely place: the Kingdom of Portugal. Portugal was a true naval and commercial power, with colonies across the globe. While Spain was consumed with the riches of the New World Portugal was establishing trade routes with the east to bypass the slow Silk Road (and cut-out the Ottoman middleman). To protect and resupply their ships traveling along these waters the Portuguese conquered a number of strategically located ports during the early years of colonization. Muscat, situated along the south-eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, was one such port and fell to the Portuguese in the first decade of the 1500s. Portugal fortified the city and turned it into an important stop for their merchants carrying the silks and spices that formed the lifeblood of the Kingdom.

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- King John III of Portugal

As the colony of Muscat grew in importance for Portuguese traders so did concerns over its safety. The Ottoman Empire controlled the bordering lands and had a number of small garrisons in the region, nominally for keeping the tribal nomads from disrupting the empires merchants and tax collectors. With Muscat in such a vulnerable and isolated position so far from the homeland, Portugal knew that it needed some way of securing aid if the Ottoman’s invaded. Thus the King’s began making entreaties to the Persian Sultan, using Portugal’s economic ties to the region and the Persian’s own antagonism towards the Ottoman Empire to bring about an agreement between the two monarchies that would bring them both into war with the Ottoman Empire if conflict erupted.

So when Tsar Ivan contacted King John III of Portugal about a war with the Turks, the King saw a perfect opportunity to deal a savage blow to the Ottoman Empire. While the Russians invaded from the north and the Persians invaded from the east, the Portuguese navy would keep the Ottoman ships bottled up inside their ports. It was a masterful plan that would be able to counter a number of the Ottoman Empire’s greatest strengths and, ironically enough, bring a nation dedicated to the destruction of its Islamic neighbors into an alliance with one of the strongest Muslim nations of the day.


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The war would be known by a number of different names. The Russo-Ottoman War (1550-1553), The War of Northern Crimea, and even my colleague Herr Doktor von Neumann’s fanciful The War of the Triangle Alliance (named after the geographic location of Portugal, Russia, and Persia in relation to one another). For the sake of clarity and consistency I will be using the first, which is the standard amongst history scholars such as myself. Beginning in the late summer of 1550 the Russian forces crossed over the border into Ottoman Crimea, swiftly overcoming the few border posts the Turks had erected to keep a watch on their own nomad Tartars as much as their Russian neighbor.

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Tsar Ivan was cautious about invading the Ottoman Empire: he knew that their army was better equipped than his own and, if either of his new allies failed to engage the Turks on their own, he would be at the mercy of an angry Padishah. It didn’t help his confidence that his newly raised streltsy were not tested in a major conflict while the Janissaries were a byword for martial skill and professional soldiering. Thus the beginning phase of the war was muted: the leading elements of the Russian army captured isolated and otherwise easy targets within the northern reaches of the Crimea, fortifying their gains to wait out winter before the rest of the army followed them the following spring, giving Ivan more time to finish drilling his soldiers and collecting supplies.

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- Pre-war Ottoman deployment

When news of the invasion reached Ali he responded by dispatching the Imperial Army, the largest body of the Ottoman military, north to aid the Army of the Crimea. The Imperial Army, with its large body of Janissaries and other standing troops, was much more capable of military action on short notice than the other Turkish formations, which relied on drafts and volunteers to fill out the ranks. It seems evident from official documents from within the Sublime Porte that the war had come as a surprise to the leading echelons of the Empire who had failed to realize just how strong the Russian Tsardom had become.

But even as the military giant that was the Ottoman Empire slowly roused itself for battle, the Ottoman’s were in for another surprise when Portuguese ships appeared of the coast of Egypt and destroyed a number of Turkish galleys in a fight so one sided that for the rest of the war many Ottoman captains would refuse to leave the safety of the fortified harbors.

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While evidence suggests that the number of actual ships lost was relatively minor, its effect on Ottoman military preparations was devastating. General Ottoman strategy at the time was to use ships to move the Imperial Army to the most threatened region while the other armies and corps of the Ottoman military finished building up to full strength. The loss of the ships then became more than just a physical blow; it also worked to destroy the confidence of mariners throughout the Empire. Hearing about the loss in Egypt many Ottoman merchants set sail, deciding to take refuge in distant ports to keep their vessels from being seized by the Padishah for the war effort.

By early 1551 the Ottoman Empire was struggling to respond to its enemies. Limited to using only the few naval vessels that had been moored within the safety of the Black Sea before the war for naval resupply and redeployment, the Imperial Army was forced to trek up along the coastline to reach the Crimea, an effort that took months and thus gave the initiative to the Russian forces. The Portuguese, with absolute control over the eastern Mediterranean, likewise began to shift soldiers around, raiding weakly guarded ports and seeking to work at the peripheries of the Ottoman Empire. Persia, the last of the three allies, was eager to retake the lands of Iraq and help hamstring their western nemesis. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, the Ottoman Empire was struggling desperately to fight off a defeat that could break its back.


- Johannes Krieger, The Sublime State: A History of The Ottoman Empire; vol. 1

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Wow. Ju-just wow. I have to say, if ever there was an event that could kick up the excitement of Ottoman history, it would be this. Though I have tremendous fate in your abilities... I wouldn't be surprised if the Ottoman Empire here ends up having to shell out of a few territories to one of these three rivals.

Best of luck to you.
 
I'd be a bit disappointed if it wasn't a titanic struggle, but the good Sultan, i truest, will defend his borders. Or most of them.

And hey, at least it was just Portugal and not, say, France.
 
A challenge worthy of the might of the Ottoman Empire. Losing command of the seas is definitely a pain, but I have all the confidence that you can find enough troops (and march them overland) to teach that upstart Tsar a lesson. I'm sure he's known to history as 'The Terrible' due to his terrible decision to cowardly strike the Ottoman Empire, right?

Even with the overall discrepancy in forces in favor of your enemies, you should be able to force them out of the war one by one. Assuming you can hold the line against the others while you're at it... But then again, maybe you didn't - Doktor Krieger states that the war lasted from 1550 to 1553 - and we're already in 1551. That seems like a short time to crush all your enemies. But it could be long enough to deal some sharp blows, throw some ducats at your enemies and get a reprieve from the war.

Guess we'll wait and see. :)
 
Ouch. With such a long and vulnerable coastline, the allies will find it easy enough harassing your troop movement. But who knows? Maybe the AI will dumb out excessively and use the Portuguese ships to go angling off Macao.
 
Wow. Ju-just wow. I have to say, if ever there was an event that could kick up the excitement of Ottoman history, it would be this. Though I have tremendous fate in your abilities... I wouldn't be surprised if the Ottoman Empire here ends up having to shell out of a few territories to one of these three rivals.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks!

Always nice for a Byzantophile like me to see the Otto's beat up a little. :D

I seem to get that alot. . .

I'd be a bit disappointed if it wasn't a titanic struggle, but the good Sultan, i truest, will defend his borders. Or most of them.

And hey, at least it was just Portugal and not, say, France.

Always look on the bright side of life, eh?

A challenge worthy of the might of the Ottoman Empire. Losing command of the seas is definitely a pain, but I have all the confidence that you can find enough troops (and march them overland) to teach that upstart Tsar a lesson. I'm sure he's known to history as 'The Terrible' due to his terrible decision to cowardly strike the Ottoman Empire, right?

Even with the overall discrepancy in forces in favor of your enemies, you should be able to force them out of the war one by one. Assuming you can hold the line against the others while you're at it... But then again, maybe you didn't - Doktor Krieger states that the war lasted from 1550 to 1553 - and we're already in 1551. That seems like a short time to crush all your enemies. But it could be long enough to deal some sharp blows, throw some ducats at your enemies and get a reprieve from the war.

Guess we'll wait and see. :)

Fingers crossed!

Russia allied itself with Persia and Portugal? the AI is that smart?

I was suprised when it happened: my two biggest enemies are united in a war against me, while Portugal steps in to harass me in ways neither of them could.

Ouch. With such a long and vulnerable coastline, the allies will find it easy enough harassing your troop movement. But who knows? Maybe the AI will dumb out excessively and use the Portuguese ships to go angling off Macao.

I don't think the Portuguese have used their entire fleet against me, but its still enough big ships to keep me from fighting back.

luckily it's only MMP1, no nasty blockade modifiers

seems like Ad Infinitum is at -excellent- work

it's weird but somehow i side with the invaders... :p

Actually, I upgraded to MMP2 a while back.

I hate being navally outmatched. :(

And thanks for the support, gabor! :p
 
Now just send pirates to break the Portuguese homeland.
Raid for raid. :cool:

Yeah, that could work, although I don't imagine it would do much good against their massive naval strength.

Never mind the blockade, take Muscat from those pesky Portuguese! Hopefully you can keep the Persians busy besieging in the desert while the bulk of the Imperial army marches against the Russians...

It is tough. I was a little over extended: without naval transport it takes months to get from one side of the empire to another. Just before the war I started a mini-reorganization of the army which might inspire another Sultan to begin his own full-blown reform.

And we all now how easy military reforms are to the Ottoman Empire! ;)

- - - - -

Ok, time for a situation/status update.

My X-mas was spent getting jaw surgery, which sucked. I was stuck far from my computer with a lot of pain and very weak pain killers. But now that I am back in school (and I can open my mouth again) I'm starting to feel the urge to resume my AAR.

Not to mention that I have planned on making a Vicky2 mini-mod for my AAR once I get through EU3's timeframe, so I need to get moving!
 
I hope your jaw is pain free from now on.

Not to mention that I have planned on making a Vicky2 mini-mod for my AAR once I get through EU3's timeframe, so I need to get moving!

Don't get ahead of yourself, you still have to get to 1820 first :D
 
Don't go too fast, Paradox might need a few months to get the worst bugs out of the product, as usual. :)

Meanwhile, I will happily follow the endeavours of the Ottoman sultans.
 
I was overcome by ecstasy when I read this. :D

Thanks! It's not going to be a comprehensive mod, but I will be including some changes and custom events/decisions.

the bad is behind you (pain, suffering and boredom), the good is ahead of you (and us!): aar writing! ;)

Yeah, but I still can't chew. . .

I hope your jaw is pain free from now on.

Don't get ahead of yourself, you still have to get to 1820 first :D

Thanks, and yes I do.

Don't go too fast, Paradox might need a few months to get the worst bugs out of the product, as usual. :)

Meanwhile, I will happily follow the endeavours of the Ottoman sultans.

Ah, thanks! Hope I don't disappoint.