- Yet another Byzantine AAR. I just restarted my EU3 playing and bought Chronicles since I discovered that numerous expansion packs (and beautiful sprite packs) have been released in the last few years. Downloaded MEIOU and fell in love. Decided to make an attempt to write a chronicle of my Roman Empire game. I'm up to the 17th century in game time but plan on replaying some of the saves in order to get some screenshots. Since I am quite busy in RL I can only update this in the weekends. Hopefully one ruler at a time. I made some sort of a prologue but it is not nearly as detailed as I would have liked and probably pretty unhistorical at times. But as it is pretty unhistorical to start with to imagine a scenario where the Roman Empire survived I dont feel sorry.
Goals: expand and spread the faith to the infidel.
In the year of 1356 the Roman Empire was in a desperate situation. The first of the Palaiologos dynasty, Mikhaēl VIII had reclaimed the City from the Latin emperors in 1261 and restored some of the lost provinces. But the Constantinople had seen better days. Its population was around 35 thousand when it was retaken but at the end of Mikhael‘s reign it stood at 70 thousand. Mikhael struggled to restore the city to some semblance of its former Imperial glory. He rebuilt churches and restored buildings. The effort of reconstruction took a huge toll on the economy so the currency was devalued.
Mikhaels foreign policy was one of a survivor. He married his five year old daughter to the middle aged king of Serbia and gave provinces already held by the Serbians as a dowry. He used one of the few remaining diplomatic cards left and offered to unite the churches of Constantinople and Rome. He and his family embraced Catholicism which was understandably not popular among the people. The cultural differences between the Orthodox and the Catholic faith had shown itself in the reign of the Latin emperors and the people wanted nothing to do with the Schismatics in Rome.
Mikhael retook parts of the former Anatolian heartland but his successors failed to hold on to it. His son Andronikos II campaigned in Anatolia mostly without success and hired a company of Aragonese adventurers to fix the situation.
They had some successes but then turned on their employer and devastated the heartland in Macedonia and Thrace, marched to the Dutchy of Athens which they conquered and established themselves there.
To try to restore the Imperial finances Andronikos reduced the size of the army and virtually disbanded the navy (at the time 80 galleys). He counted on the Genoese to defend the city with their navy. He also raised direct taxes and by the end of his reign free peasants were nearly non existent in the empire. Large chunks of land were either owned by monasteries or the nobility. The landless peasantry fled to the cities.
He died of grief in 1320 after his son Andronikos III had “accidentally” murdered his brother Manuel.
Andronikos III left the running of the state mostly to his wealthy and energetic megas domestikon Iōannēs Kantakouzēnos.
Ioannes took an army to Anatolia in a yet another attempt to dislodge the turks but was defeated at Nicomedia in 1329. He was sent running to the Bosporus and afterwards he gave up the Anatolian holdings and focused on holding on to what was left of the Empire in Europe. The Turks used this opportunity and took city after city eventually establishing their capital at Bursa.
When Andronikus the third died in 1341, a civil war immedietly broke out over who should serve as regent for the 9 year old Ioannes VI. The struggle lay between Ioannes Kantakouzenos and the empress Anne of Savoy. The civil war lasted for 6 years and devestated the country. Ioannes Kantakouzenos was victorious after he had hired a band of turkish mercaneries from Aydin. He made his entry unopposed into Constantinople in 1347. Shortly therafter another more deadly menace came knocking.
The Black Death came with Genoese warships in May of 1347. The death toll was catastrophic, three quarters of the population of the city where dead within months of the outbreak.
In the wake of the civil war Serbia took Thessaly and Epirus without opposition in 1348. Four years later Gallipoli was lost to the Ottoman mercenaries Ioannes Kantakouzenos had hired to win the civil war.
War broke out between Genoa and Venice in 1350 in which the remnants of the Roman navy took part (12 out of 14 galleys remained afloat). The Genoese won that conflict and the Roman Empire had to pay humiliating indemnities as a result.
Most of the navy survived though which would be crucial in the years to come. A young captain of one of the Roman ships had his first experience in naval combat in the Battle of the Bosphorus (an indecive battle between the fleet of Venice and Genoa). His name was Philemon Mikrulakes and he managed to rescue the Roman fleet by organizing the crew of his ship (Basileos Andronikos) when they were boarded by two Venetian galleys. By holding out in the melee for three hours and finally repelling them the Roman fleet managed to crawl back to Constantinople.
Overwhelmed by the failures and the stress of ruling a declining empire, Ioannes Kantakouzenos abdicated in the year of 1354 and retired to a monestary. From there he would watch Ioannes V Palaiologos restore the Empire.
The reign of Ioannes V, the restorer of Romaion.
Ioannes the fifth was 24 years old when he finally succeded to the throne. His “empire” consisted of provinces around Constantinople and Adrianople. The imperial finances were dreadful after successive civil wars and the population of the empire was half the size of decades past after the advent of the Plague. The plague was seen as a message from god to punish the Romans for their efforts to turn to Catholicism. Ioannes rescinded from the policy of his father and embraced the Orthodox faith along with his family.
His armies consisted of a force of perhaps 2000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, the infantry was practically useless as an offensive force but the cavalry, mostly mercenaries from Genoa, Venice and a contingent of the Knights of Rhodos was useful and would prove its worth in wars to come. The navy consisted of 12 galleys and a contingent of transports. The navy was under the command of a young, brilliant, commander which had climbed the ranks of the navy after his feats in the Battle of the Bosphorus, Philemon Mikrulakes.
So the odds were tightly stacked against the young emperor when in 1356 the Ottomans declared war. Outnumbered ten to one on land the Romans only hope lay in the navy. And there Philemon pulled of a miracle. Before the Ottoman army could cross the Bosporus they had to defeat the Roman navy. And in a decisive battle in January of 1356 Philemon not only sunk half of the Ottoman fleet but captured six Ottoman galleys.
The Emperor himself took command of the Roman Army and marched on Gallipoli which fell after a 10 month siege. After further naval actions, in which the Roman navy (now totalling 24 vessels after the capture of the Ottoman galleys) managed to prevent the huge Army of the Sultan from crossing over the Bosporus strait, the Ottomans signed a peace treaty in 1358.
Ioannes had pleaded to western Europe for aid against the Ottomans but only succeeded in brokering a loan from the Florentines, the loan had an interest rate of 9% which is low given that everyone expected the Romans to be wiped out. The money was put into use strait away to hire mercenaries from Albania and Bulgaria. By the end of 1359 the Roman army now numbered 23000. And Ioannes meant to conquer. He knew that the only hope to repopulate Constantinople was to recover some of its lost hinterland in the Balkans and then forcibly move people to the capital.
So in the month of March 1359 he marched off to war in Serbia, to recover Makedonia from the Serbians. The war was a success and in the Peace of Kosovo of 26th of April 1361 the Serbian King Stefan gave up the provinces of Makedonia and Ohrid.
After gathering strength for the next four years Ioannes turned to the south and attacked the Latin duchy of Epirus in 1365. That war lasted four years since the Castilians came to the aid of Epirus and had to be defeated. They landed armies in Greece which were destroyed by the invigorated Roman armies. Epirus sued for peace and the Roman Empire annexed Thessaly. Castile sued for peace shortly after. The armies then marched north.
Ioannes again attacked Serbia in 1369 and after he led the Roman army to victory against the weakened Serbian army he besieged southern Serbia in the winter of 1369-1370. On November 5th 1370 Serbia agreed to terms where the Roman Empire annexed the province of Nisava.
With a large army which had been on campaign for a decade and was by now a battle hardened force without a match in Eastern Europe Ioannes again launched a campaign, he turned to the League of Lezhe and declared war with the intent to subjugate them. Unfortunately Hungary and Tarnovo decided to come to the aid of Lezhe and sent a large force from Serbia towards the Aegan coast. Although outnumbered, the Roman army, under the able command of Ioannes Rhodocanakis destroyed the Hungarian army in the battle of Makedonia. The Roman armies then marched north to Bulgaria and forced Tarnovo to cede half of its possessions in april of 1372. The league of Lezhe swore fealty to the emperor and the Hungarians sued for white peace in 1374.
After nearly 15 years of war in the years from 1356 to 1374 the Empire thus had recovered large swathes of its former Balkan heartland. Much was still left.
After his victories in the Balkans the Emperor decided he had the necessary forces to invade Anatolia. Although outnumbered, his veteran army had not known defeat in 20 years and was by now no mercenary army. In a speech to his gathered army in Constantinople in late 1374 he gave promises of land grants in Anatolia to his soldiers. He declared war on the Ottomans in November 1374.
Admiral Philemon had advised the emperor to let the Ottomans come to him instead of following the steps of his forefathers and landing armies in Anatolia which were destroyed by the Turks. This he did and the Ottomans took the bait. They sent over 30 thousand men over to Greece which besieged Constantinople and Gallipoli. When the armies had crossed the fleet left Constantinople and engaged the Turkish fleet which was destroyed, again, by Philemon. In the winter of 1374 the Roman general Theodoros Boumbalis managed to win a decisive victory when he broke the siege of Constantinople and put two Turkish armies to the sword. The Turks had larger armies but had foolishly decided to split them up to besiege both Gallipoli and Constantinople.
The Roman armies then were ferried over the Sea of Marmara into Anatolia proper in the spring of 1375, after the loss of the bulk of the Ottoman army the campaign went as planned and the Sultan accepted terms in November of 1377. After this defeat the Ottomans were finished as a regional power, rebellions and intra Turkish wars decimated what was left of the Ottoman lands in Anatolia. Karaman became the dominant Turkish mamelake after 1377.
In the aftermath of the Anatolian campaign of Ioannes the Patriarch of Constantinople sent missionaries to convert the Turks to the one true faith. That was a process which would continue for the next 200 years. Conquest of muslim lands by the Romans and subsequent conversion efforts by the Patriarch.
After the Anatolian war Ioannes, 45 years of age in 1377 and having been nearly continously on campaign since 1352 in the civil war when he ousted his co emperor Matthias, decided to consolidate his gains. He came to Constantinople in 1378 from Anatolia and held 200 days of continuous chariot races (Arrange Festivals). He dispanded the bulk of his war weary armies and gave them large land grants in the newly conquered Anatolian lands (Favor resettlement).
But after three years his plans of peace were interrupted by the outbreak of the Aragonese-Napolitan trade war. Ioannes had allied with the Kingdom of Napoli in 1379 to ensure his right flank against a Venetian attack. Venice joined the war on the side of Aragon along with Epirus.
Ioannes marched off to war once more in the spring of 1382, having recalled the army back from Anatolia. There he moved to Magnesia to besiege the Duchy of Athens which had been in the hands of the Aragonese since the mercenaries of Andronikos II had taken it. The army of Aragon and the army of Ioannes clashed in Magnesia in the fall of 1382 where in course of the fighting Ioannes was killed. The Romans won the battle but had lost their most successful emperor since Basil the Bulgar-slayer.
The eldest son of Ioannes, Mikhael X was crowned Basileus Rhomaiôn. It fell on his shoulders to continue the revival of Romaion.
The reign of Ioannes V from 1354 - 1382 was nothing short of a miracle. He was at war for almost every year of his reign. He defeated the Ottomans, destroyed Serbia, humiliated Hungary, Castile and Venice and in the last battle of his life, his army defeated the army of Aragon. What set him apart from his forebears was his energy and personal charisma. His army of mercenaries which were bankrolled with Florentine loans quickly became his personal army. This army fought its way up and down the Balkans and then avenged Manzikert outside of Constantinople in 1375. The army never lost a battle. The army based its success mostly on good reconnaissance and superior tactics. Ioannes lead numerous cavalry charges with his life guard contingent which ultimately led to his death in 1382.
Although a strong individual emperor he also managed to ensure the loyalty of his commanders and the imperial administration so that his great war machine that he had built would prove as loyal to his son as it was to him. This was done partly with land grants but mostly with personal friendships with his generals.
The rejuvenated empire had its weaknesses, its navy could not compete against the Western Mediterranean powers and its economy was weak with escalating inflation since Ioannes had debased the currency by waging continuous war and borrowing money from Florentine banks at sinful interest rates.
Goals: expand and spread the faith to the infidel.
In the year of 1356 the Roman Empire was in a desperate situation. The first of the Palaiologos dynasty, Mikhaēl VIII had reclaimed the City from the Latin emperors in 1261 and restored some of the lost provinces. But the Constantinople had seen better days. Its population was around 35 thousand when it was retaken but at the end of Mikhael‘s reign it stood at 70 thousand. Mikhael struggled to restore the city to some semblance of its former Imperial glory. He rebuilt churches and restored buildings. The effort of reconstruction took a huge toll on the economy so the currency was devalued.
Mikhaels foreign policy was one of a survivor. He married his five year old daughter to the middle aged king of Serbia and gave provinces already held by the Serbians as a dowry. He used one of the few remaining diplomatic cards left and offered to unite the churches of Constantinople and Rome. He and his family embraced Catholicism which was understandably not popular among the people. The cultural differences between the Orthodox and the Catholic faith had shown itself in the reign of the Latin emperors and the people wanted nothing to do with the Schismatics in Rome.
Mikhael retook parts of the former Anatolian heartland but his successors failed to hold on to it. His son Andronikos II campaigned in Anatolia mostly without success and hired a company of Aragonese adventurers to fix the situation.
They had some successes but then turned on their employer and devastated the heartland in Macedonia and Thrace, marched to the Dutchy of Athens which they conquered and established themselves there.
To try to restore the Imperial finances Andronikos reduced the size of the army and virtually disbanded the navy (at the time 80 galleys). He counted on the Genoese to defend the city with their navy. He also raised direct taxes and by the end of his reign free peasants were nearly non existent in the empire. Large chunks of land were either owned by monasteries or the nobility. The landless peasantry fled to the cities.
He died of grief in 1320 after his son Andronikos III had “accidentally” murdered his brother Manuel.
Andronikos III left the running of the state mostly to his wealthy and energetic megas domestikon Iōannēs Kantakouzēnos.
Ioannes took an army to Anatolia in a yet another attempt to dislodge the turks but was defeated at Nicomedia in 1329. He was sent running to the Bosporus and afterwards he gave up the Anatolian holdings and focused on holding on to what was left of the Empire in Europe. The Turks used this opportunity and took city after city eventually establishing their capital at Bursa.
When Andronikus the third died in 1341, a civil war immedietly broke out over who should serve as regent for the 9 year old Ioannes VI. The struggle lay between Ioannes Kantakouzenos and the empress Anne of Savoy. The civil war lasted for 6 years and devestated the country. Ioannes Kantakouzenos was victorious after he had hired a band of turkish mercaneries from Aydin. He made his entry unopposed into Constantinople in 1347. Shortly therafter another more deadly menace came knocking.
The Black Death came with Genoese warships in May of 1347. The death toll was catastrophic, three quarters of the population of the city where dead within months of the outbreak.
In the wake of the civil war Serbia took Thessaly and Epirus without opposition in 1348. Four years later Gallipoli was lost to the Ottoman mercenaries Ioannes Kantakouzenos had hired to win the civil war.
War broke out between Genoa and Venice in 1350 in which the remnants of the Roman navy took part (12 out of 14 galleys remained afloat). The Genoese won that conflict and the Roman Empire had to pay humiliating indemnities as a result.
Most of the navy survived though which would be crucial in the years to come. A young captain of one of the Roman ships had his first experience in naval combat in the Battle of the Bosphorus (an indecive battle between the fleet of Venice and Genoa). His name was Philemon Mikrulakes and he managed to rescue the Roman fleet by organizing the crew of his ship (Basileos Andronikos) when they were boarded by two Venetian galleys. By holding out in the melee for three hours and finally repelling them the Roman fleet managed to crawl back to Constantinople.
Overwhelmed by the failures and the stress of ruling a declining empire, Ioannes Kantakouzenos abdicated in the year of 1354 and retired to a monestary. From there he would watch Ioannes V Palaiologos restore the Empire.
The reign of Ioannes V, the restorer of Romaion.
Ioannes the fifth was 24 years old when he finally succeded to the throne. His “empire” consisted of provinces around Constantinople and Adrianople. The imperial finances were dreadful after successive civil wars and the population of the empire was half the size of decades past after the advent of the Plague. The plague was seen as a message from god to punish the Romans for their efforts to turn to Catholicism. Ioannes rescinded from the policy of his father and embraced the Orthodox faith along with his family.
His armies consisted of a force of perhaps 2000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, the infantry was practically useless as an offensive force but the cavalry, mostly mercenaries from Genoa, Venice and a contingent of the Knights of Rhodos was useful and would prove its worth in wars to come. The navy consisted of 12 galleys and a contingent of transports. The navy was under the command of a young, brilliant, commander which had climbed the ranks of the navy after his feats in the Battle of the Bosphorus, Philemon Mikrulakes.
So the odds were tightly stacked against the young emperor when in 1356 the Ottomans declared war. Outnumbered ten to one on land the Romans only hope lay in the navy. And there Philemon pulled of a miracle. Before the Ottoman army could cross the Bosporus they had to defeat the Roman navy. And in a decisive battle in January of 1356 Philemon not only sunk half of the Ottoman fleet but captured six Ottoman galleys.
The Emperor himself took command of the Roman Army and marched on Gallipoli which fell after a 10 month siege. After further naval actions, in which the Roman navy (now totalling 24 vessels after the capture of the Ottoman galleys) managed to prevent the huge Army of the Sultan from crossing over the Bosporus strait, the Ottomans signed a peace treaty in 1358.
Ioannes had pleaded to western Europe for aid against the Ottomans but only succeeded in brokering a loan from the Florentines, the loan had an interest rate of 9% which is low given that everyone expected the Romans to be wiped out. The money was put into use strait away to hire mercenaries from Albania and Bulgaria. By the end of 1359 the Roman army now numbered 23000. And Ioannes meant to conquer. He knew that the only hope to repopulate Constantinople was to recover some of its lost hinterland in the Balkans and then forcibly move people to the capital.
So in the month of March 1359 he marched off to war in Serbia, to recover Makedonia from the Serbians. The war was a success and in the Peace of Kosovo of 26th of April 1361 the Serbian King Stefan gave up the provinces of Makedonia and Ohrid.
After gathering strength for the next four years Ioannes turned to the south and attacked the Latin duchy of Epirus in 1365. That war lasted four years since the Castilians came to the aid of Epirus and had to be defeated. They landed armies in Greece which were destroyed by the invigorated Roman armies. Epirus sued for peace and the Roman Empire annexed Thessaly. Castile sued for peace shortly after. The armies then marched north.
Ioannes again attacked Serbia in 1369 and after he led the Roman army to victory against the weakened Serbian army he besieged southern Serbia in the winter of 1369-1370. On November 5th 1370 Serbia agreed to terms where the Roman Empire annexed the province of Nisava.
With a large army which had been on campaign for a decade and was by now a battle hardened force without a match in Eastern Europe Ioannes again launched a campaign, he turned to the League of Lezhe and declared war with the intent to subjugate them. Unfortunately Hungary and Tarnovo decided to come to the aid of Lezhe and sent a large force from Serbia towards the Aegan coast. Although outnumbered, the Roman army, under the able command of Ioannes Rhodocanakis destroyed the Hungarian army in the battle of Makedonia. The Roman armies then marched north to Bulgaria and forced Tarnovo to cede half of its possessions in april of 1372. The league of Lezhe swore fealty to the emperor and the Hungarians sued for white peace in 1374.
After nearly 15 years of war in the years from 1356 to 1374 the Empire thus had recovered large swathes of its former Balkan heartland. Much was still left.
After his victories in the Balkans the Emperor decided he had the necessary forces to invade Anatolia. Although outnumbered, his veteran army had not known defeat in 20 years and was by now no mercenary army. In a speech to his gathered army in Constantinople in late 1374 he gave promises of land grants in Anatolia to his soldiers. He declared war on the Ottomans in November 1374.
Admiral Philemon had advised the emperor to let the Ottomans come to him instead of following the steps of his forefathers and landing armies in Anatolia which were destroyed by the Turks. This he did and the Ottomans took the bait. They sent over 30 thousand men over to Greece which besieged Constantinople and Gallipoli. When the armies had crossed the fleet left Constantinople and engaged the Turkish fleet which was destroyed, again, by Philemon. In the winter of 1374 the Roman general Theodoros Boumbalis managed to win a decisive victory when he broke the siege of Constantinople and put two Turkish armies to the sword. The Turks had larger armies but had foolishly decided to split them up to besiege both Gallipoli and Constantinople.
The Roman armies then were ferried over the Sea of Marmara into Anatolia proper in the spring of 1375, after the loss of the bulk of the Ottoman army the campaign went as planned and the Sultan accepted terms in November of 1377. After this defeat the Ottomans were finished as a regional power, rebellions and intra Turkish wars decimated what was left of the Ottoman lands in Anatolia. Karaman became the dominant Turkish mamelake after 1377.
In the aftermath of the Anatolian campaign of Ioannes the Patriarch of Constantinople sent missionaries to convert the Turks to the one true faith. That was a process which would continue for the next 200 years. Conquest of muslim lands by the Romans and subsequent conversion efforts by the Patriarch.
After the Anatolian war Ioannes, 45 years of age in 1377 and having been nearly continously on campaign since 1352 in the civil war when he ousted his co emperor Matthias, decided to consolidate his gains. He came to Constantinople in 1378 from Anatolia and held 200 days of continuous chariot races (Arrange Festivals). He dispanded the bulk of his war weary armies and gave them large land grants in the newly conquered Anatolian lands (Favor resettlement).
But after three years his plans of peace were interrupted by the outbreak of the Aragonese-Napolitan trade war. Ioannes had allied with the Kingdom of Napoli in 1379 to ensure his right flank against a Venetian attack. Venice joined the war on the side of Aragon along with Epirus.
Ioannes marched off to war once more in the spring of 1382, having recalled the army back from Anatolia. There he moved to Magnesia to besiege the Duchy of Athens which had been in the hands of the Aragonese since the mercenaries of Andronikos II had taken it. The army of Aragon and the army of Ioannes clashed in Magnesia in the fall of 1382 where in course of the fighting Ioannes was killed. The Romans won the battle but had lost their most successful emperor since Basil the Bulgar-slayer.
The eldest son of Ioannes, Mikhael X was crowned Basileus Rhomaiôn. It fell on his shoulders to continue the revival of Romaion.
The reign of Ioannes V from 1354 - 1382 was nothing short of a miracle. He was at war for almost every year of his reign. He defeated the Ottomans, destroyed Serbia, humiliated Hungary, Castile and Venice and in the last battle of his life, his army defeated the army of Aragon. What set him apart from his forebears was his energy and personal charisma. His army of mercenaries which were bankrolled with Florentine loans quickly became his personal army. This army fought its way up and down the Balkans and then avenged Manzikert outside of Constantinople in 1375. The army never lost a battle. The army based its success mostly on good reconnaissance and superior tactics. Ioannes lead numerous cavalry charges with his life guard contingent which ultimately led to his death in 1382.
Although a strong individual emperor he also managed to ensure the loyalty of his commanders and the imperial administration so that his great war machine that he had built would prove as loyal to his son as it was to him. This was done partly with land grants but mostly with personal friendships with his generals.
The rejuvenated empire had its weaknesses, its navy could not compete against the Western Mediterranean powers and its economy was weak with escalating inflation since Ioannes had debased the currency by waging continuous war and borrowing money from Florentine banks at sinful interest rates.
