Chapter V: Interregnum with Mongols at the Gates
Emperor Alexios VI still appeared in splendid health in early 1238, when, at the helm of the vast Imperial fleet, he sailed up the Adriatic, blowing out of the sea with Greek fire meager Venetian resistance at sea. Shorn of it's advanced bases, scorned by the Latins and deprived of it's allied Republics; Venice's fortunes had fallen on hard times since the heady days, when, 35 years before, they had successfully schemed to divert a great Host from sacred purpose, to lay siege to the beacon of civilization. It was perhaps Alexios' crowning achievement to have turned the tables on this tragedy in only one generation. His justification for war was simple; as de-jure Imperial land, the Great Doge of Venice had to swear fealty to the Imperial crown, or face destruction.
Arrayed in full order of battle, purple standards in the wind, the finest armies of the Empire utterly annihilated Venice's mercenaries. The Republic bent it's knee.
Facing overwhelming power at sea and with the island under Imperial sway, four of the great houses of the Republic quickly distanced from the fallen dynasty of the old Doge Enrico Dandolo. In time, it's a distant branch of the Komnenos family that would join them in the never-ending game of mercantile politics. For now, Venice, the rich jewel of the Adriatic, and it's vast network of trading posts extending from the World's Desire to Sicily, was an Imperial vassal, and in accordance with the Harsh City tax laws enacted by the Council, an important portion it's vast wealth would help fund future campaigns. It would all be direly needed.
In Anatolia, the death of the Sultan in the last war had finally caused the full collapse of 'Rum'. Invading from all sides, Imperial forces sought absolute control.
One by one, the Emirs of Anatolia were overran by vastly superior forces coming from all sides. The brief civil war in Rum essentially prove to be it's end. In the next 18 months, it's rebellious Emirates fell like dominoes until only a short-lived rump state managed to stand, clinging for a few years still, to a semblance of independence.
Back in the City, the Emperor was weary from his battles, and his Medicus recommended rest. It was a difficult order to obey, thanks to the sudden death of the King of Bulgaria, and the sudden arrival of the second son pleading for intervention in yet another conflict; a full blown succession crisis for control of Bulgaria. For once, Alexios did not rise to go to battle. There were whispers he was ill, rumors he was writing a long will. But nevertheless, the cause was worthy.
Strategos Julius Komnenos - Dux of Moldau, and older cousin to Prince Augustin - rode with the Varangian guard after the young Bulgar prince had sworn to recognize once more Rome's De-Jure authority over 'his' crown. Julius was barely over 30, but his skill at tactic and strategy was unmistakable, and he could be called without blushing the finest military mind in the Empire. Bulgaria was not what it had once been; a relatively small kingdom, deprived of many of it's ancient provinces, and it was high time to reassert Imperial rule. Siege operations took awhile, but actual enemy resistance was minimal.
By late '42, the new king, Aleksandr of Bulgaria, swore allegiance to Rome. Now the Latin usurpers were truly surrounded on all sides.
This was news for about three days, until word spread all over the City that the exhausted Emperor had passed away in the night!
Even as a great Triumph was held to celebrate Alexios VI's great achievements and Julius' subjugation of the Bulgars, Court was assembled hastily for the Ecumenical Patriarch to read the wills of the Emperor. By ancient tradition, his word held deepest weight in determination of his heir, and this favor was placed solely and entirely, on Augustin, still only 14 at the time. The oldest son's surprise was only feigned, as he had known for years. He stepped forward to announce he would gladly do his fraternal duty by acting as Regent until his brother was 'older', but the Patriarch was not done. Strategos Julius, the man commanding the most respect amongst the Legions, was so appointed.
There were whispers and murmurs in the court. Manuel may not have been born of the purple, but he was a charismatic diplomat, of considerable ability... and ambition. He was much older, better known, and had many friends. The young Augustin had no power base to speak of, except lengthy letters from his father. Later that night, the young heir and his Regent read them, in the unusual presence of his promised bride, the young Princess Dilla. Alexios had stashed away a large secret reserve in gold and made lists of every notable landholder or warrior in the Empire; what they were to be bribed with, essentially. Instructions were to keep half the gold to prepare to raise every free banner in the land' in defense of the eastern Crown when the perilous storm would arrive', and to keep his brother Manuel at arm's length. The Strategos even had posthumous orders from the old Emperor regarding the defense of the realm and internal unity until his heir came of age. His final instruction to his son was that he, too, should do as he had done to ensure an orderly transition when the time would come. The old man, it seems, had thought of everything.
But it might not be enough. Showered with gold and titles as he was, Manuel was jealous and humiliated, and his influence was considerable.
Treasonous missives calling for 'Prince Manuel for the Empire' were being written or intercepted all over the Empire. A few Dux changed their minds as a chest of gold or a flattering invitation to eat at the heir's side in the Great Winter Feast reached their hands, but unity was beyond precarious, and neither Augustin nor Julius had all the information they needed. The Prince's trust of his Mystigos was dwindling everyday as spotty reports and broad reassurances that didn't add up piled on. Then one night, there was a mysterious fire in his office - a diversion - as Princess Dilla took to her Prince the real contents of his treacherous spymasters' coffers. The extent of the faction ready to stage the coup was terrifying; almost half the realm was willing to take arms. Quickly summoned, the Strategos summarized that such a rebellion could be defeated, painfully, but that the civil war would leave the realm wide open for barbarian invasion.
After summarily dismissing and blinding the treacherous spymaster, a council was summoned in all haste. An underage Ethiopian Princess sitting in the seat of the Mystigos must have raised the eyebrows of the Ecumenical Patriarch, but there were more pressing matters. The Magistros was not present. Besides attendance, there are unfortunately no minutes of the council that were kept, clerks not being allowed in the room. Given the circumstances, it would not be surprising assassination was discussed, but it did not come to that. There was now evidence that Manuel himself was leading the faction to seize the throne, and in addition to his command of the Legions, Strategos Julius' youth in the Praetorian Guard had not been forgotten. Seized in the night by a hundred elite blades, and dragged to the deepest dungeon of the City, the Dux of Antioch fell prey to both the ambition and jealousies so common in heady days of succession. "May no such thing comes to pass among our children", the heir told his ebony princess; unbeknownst to him at the time, she was likely already carrying his first male heir.
With the plot thrown wide open and it's figurehead disgraced and in irons, there was quiet everywhere. No other faction formed, no other real opposition to succession rose it's flag. All for the better, because there was frankly no more time to waste. In the north, scouts brought reports that the Golden Horde had essentially finished off the immense Cuman state! The Mongols were clashing with Rus on the Volga, and with the submission of the Cuman High Chief, only a few isolated Chiefs still maintained independence from the armies of Genghis Khan. The Regent himself sailed the next morning with the objective to subjugate these last tribes before they fell, thus blocking the Horde's path westwards. A dangerous gamble if he had ever played one. Simultaneously, it was time to end the very last bastion of Rum in Anatolia.
1244. Coloneia, Azov, Galich, and even Kiev, fell in a matter of months. Every fortress the Khans would look at, they'd see purple banners fluttering in the wind.
The great eastern war approached, but it was not here yet. Emperor and Empress were now of age, and celebrating the birth of their first heir, Niketas. In In the Hagia Sophia, the great Imperial coronation wiped away the last doubts, the last fears of internal conflict.
Maybe not yet quite the man his father was, Augustin was already proving himself Imperator. With zeal and conviction, he swore to defend his mother's land.
The enigmatic ebony beauty by his side remained still as she was adorned in purple, blending in the shadows. Could anyone then know, who she would become?
The great festivities of the coronation lasted ten days, both in the Empire, and in the Empire... to the south. Abyssinia celebrated alongside Rome their sacred union. The old Abyssinian Emperor had conquered all from Nubia to Kenya, his ships brought silks from India - but his great pride then was to know his favored daughter was sitting at the side of Rome.
The first true test of the new Emperor was a difficult strategic decision. For long his father had awaited for cracks to show in the west; the Latin usurpers still occupied the heartland, and Imperial strategy was to use every opportunity to weaken them. But the threat looming in the east, meant war could come at any moment to Georgia. Still, when the lords of the Aegean, Epirus and the Morea rose against Beaudoin's young son, he did not hesitate. With the Imperial Knights busy in Morea, Augustin sent the fleet to occupy the islands in rebellion, and - in the name of the Dux of Dyrrachion and his longstanding claim to Epirus, occupied the Albanian coast as well. The swift conquest did involve one major battle near Athens, where the fabled Latin Knights, in proper order of battle, were defeated fair and square by Strategos Julius and pushed back to Thessaly. This crushing victory established for good that the Latins were no longer the major military threat they were assumed to be.
The victory left Theodoros of Dyrrachion in control of a considerable amount of land. His distant ties to the Angelid usurpers had long been tolerated, but seeing him as a Grand Dux was too much an affront to most rulers of the growing House of Komnenos. At the behest of the Dux of Charsianon, Epiros would ultimately be taken from him and reassigned weeks before his death - but regardless, it was out of Latin hands.
He had been loyal and fair. But the stigma of one's tainted names carried through generations, and Rome's memory is eternal.
The troubles in southern Greece were yet one more sign that Latin grasp was slipping. The new Emperor dreamed of recovering the heartland entirely.
The gambit paid off; Imperial armies made the gains they had sought to make in time. The fleet and the armies returned home triumphant, the Latins beaten. But in early 1447, the true battle that we had dreaded for so long finally came.
The Union of the Crowns his father had worked for would amount to nothing, if there were no Georgia left. This was it. The Hordes on the march against Rome!
As the Strategos marshaled every levy, every soldier, every Praetorian, every Varangian, every mercenary from the corners of the eastern world to defend the eastern Throne, another call to arms came. Despite the brutal loss of Mesopotamia, the Sunni Caliph of the Abbasid was clearly not beaten. Knowing that Rome's gaze had turned east, he called a great Jihad against Jerusalem once more, seeking to wipe the Catholics from all of Judea. The Emperor's half-sister was the Queen, and it was a difficult decision. But the true threat lied east. The Caliph had gambled correctly. The Crusaders of the west stood alone against his desert riders, intent to see the Mediterranean again.
The Empire's gold allowed it to raise the greatest mercenary army that Europe had ever seen. Julius said he needed 200,000 soldiers to defeat the Mongols in Georgia, and the time it took to gather so many, organize them, load them on fleets with supplies, give them proper commanders... well, by the time the greatest armada yet in the history the Empire sailed, the Mongols were already in control of most of Armenia. The Emperor's mother had done all she could, of course. But her armies had been utterly ineffectively at even delaying the enemy, despite favorable terrain. Preparations had to be hurried. Less men, less ships, less supplies. It was a race. A battlefield had to be picked, and few reliable options remained. The strategos chose to fight from seashore near mountainous terrain, hoping this would prove crippling to Horde's numberless cavalry.
170,000 troops, including 50,000 mercenaries. Short of what Julius wanted. 185,000 crazed Mongols. Too many horse archers. Bad weather. Lack of supplies.
It would be foolish to sell it short, despite great leadership and adequate tactics, it was the greatest defeat in the field that the Empire had endured since Manzikert. Less than a 100,000 Imperials managed to board back their ships and flee; the losses of the Mongols were substantial but not nearly as crippling. Despite the mountainous terrain, their leaders were able to effectively use their horse archers and their terrible composite shortbows to tremendous effect. Mercenaries proved to be utterly inadequate, and fell like flies. It's not so much that the threat was underestimated; it was not. It's that even by throwing everything the Empire had at it, it was not enough. And they were not even facing half of the Hordes that dreadful day.
The day she heard of the catastrophe at Batum, Queen Rusudan, the Empress-mother, surrendered all of Armenia. That ought to have been tragedy enough...
The next night, she fell from the cliffs at the fortress at Tao. Surely the shame, pressure, stress, despair... The Emperor would mourn half a year.
On one hand, her sudden death realized his father Alexios' ambition to see the two Crowns united, but at what cost? Augustin mourned, as the loss of a mother in such unbearable circumstances would trump any son's ambitions...
In the dead of night on the banks of the Black Sea, the noblest of young ladies, with skin too dark to shine in moonlight, shredded a piece of paper and fed it to the sea as she dismissed two sunkissed men cloaked in black. That is one moment that would never be recorded in history and never be spoken of again. She shed a single tear for her betrayal of the man she loved - the betrayal that might yet just save the Christian world from the horrors to the East. The pieces of paper sunk into the salty sea - along with the seal of the Hashishin.
The tragic loss of Armenia, the Imperial armies in disarray, the Horselords ravaging the East - but thanks to the Union of Crowns, the Empire stood still.
