-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Thanks! Just waste a whole week with the back and forth of revision, acceptance/dislike of editorial changes, revision, and contract signing.
We'll be off to seeing the frantic scenes in Constantinople next, as long as hours playing Stellaris doesn't get in the way...
Thanks! Sadly, what free time I have for writing is going to my "professional" writing. Shameless self promotion, but I have an editorial being run in Forbes!
An editorial in "Forbes"? That sounds like quite an honor, volksmarschall.
It's actually kinda funny you mentioned Forbes, considering what I'm doing with good old Malcolm.
Sophia’s Spy Network
The extent of Empress Sophia’s spy network has been of much fascination and scrutiny. Her consolidation of power was entirely centered on the vast spy network that her husband had built up before his assassination—to which she inherited and, most likely, expanded. The nature of the spy network is much less well known.
Likely, the spies came from the lower strata of Constantinople’s urban society—those with no future, given a future by the emperor (and now empress), and therefore fanatically loyal to the regime in power rather than possible pretenders and contenders for the throne. They were, according to several late imperial historians, well-fed, clothed, and given decent quarters—far exceeding the muck and sewage-filled streets they had grown up in, and would have likely remained if not for their joining the shadow ranks.
Thus, the spy network that stretched across the empire was devoted to their empress, if not for any other reason than material benefits. And a lucky few would, of course, rise up the ranks for their information and arrests. And not just protecting the empire from dissidents from within—the spies played a natural role in observing the borders, penetrating deep into the heart of Egypt, Anatolia, and the Turkic occupied Balkans to report on troop movements and the potential dangers of an impending war.’
The State of Roman Society in the Long Regency
The state of the imperium was, in 1534, one of great potential and decadence all in one. The Imperial Army numbered about 21,000 soldiers—scattered yes, but the largest it had been in some time. Of course, there was a problem with the loyalty of the soldiers. Roman society was extremely decadent, a society of haves and have nots. The aristocrats, at least those who were steadfastly loyal to the regency, possessed great wealth and wanton luxury. They presided over feasts of the like not even the Industrial era capitalists could have ever dreamt of. Their material pleasure, and lust, led most to renege on any military and civil service—rather, they drank and ate their lives away in their villas and castles. And yes, the spies still observed even the most mundane and gross aristocratic practices.
Whereas Western feudalism had begun to develop the sense of noblesse oblige, such dispositions were largely absent in the east. Hording and the fulfillment of wanton desires took up the time of all aristocrats. They were hated, and rightfully so.
A depiction of a late period feast among nobles.
The urban centers fared little better. A sweeping series of plagues had crushed Constantinople, which, in the days of Emperor John, had experienced a sort of miniature renaissance that rivaled the intellectual and cultural activity in Italy. Great works of poetry, the arts, and theology were being published and constructed. But now, that intellectual activity had largely vanished. Once again, the only light of intellectual and philosophical curiosity rested in the churches and seminaries—but theirs was a purely theological and philosophical inquisitiveness rather than material and scientific.
The squalor of Constantinople had reached a tipping point. The efforts to restore the running sewage system had failed. No efforts were remade to change this. The few garbage men that were employed by Sophia, were not up to par to keep the streets cleaned. For this reason, the plagues likely had a longer lasting effect than normal.
Yet, despite these diseases, the people were largely well-fed. The wealth of the empire had rebounded, to some extent, and the ever pragmatic Sophia kept—at least those within Constantinople—content with their current situation. There may not have been the social mobility that some of the northern Italian city-states had started to experience over the past few decades, but there was little reason for revolt. And as the Protestant Reformation in Central Europe took a more radical turn, leading to peasant rebellions and uprisings in an upsurge in millenarian fever, the religious homogeneity of the Roman Empire kept sectarian conflict to a minimum—largely the domain of a few scattered Mohammedan revolts every decade or so.
The one group that was, however, benefiting from the exploits of the Italian Wars and the conflicts in Syria between the Turks and Mamluks were the merchants. The merchant quarter of Constantinople was bustling. Perhaps not at the same levels it was before 1204, but it was lively and once again a major hub of commerce and trade. The waters guarded by the Roman Navy too, were safe to travel—unlike the territorial waters of Egypt that were constantly raided by Turkic naval captains.
While Venice and Genoa, even after the deadly Italian Wars, remained the main epicenters for Mediterranean trade, Constantinople’s open harbor ensured that the contents flowing from the Silk Road and Russia remained in the city rather than entirely leaving for Italy. Thus, one could say, in the midst of hardship—the merchants were doing fine, some even thriving.
But the stability of Roman society rested upon the regency itself. Whereas the more autonomous Europeans orchestrated concerts between families, guilds, aristocrats, and peasants, the stability of Rome rested on military and political power. Fear was the most important linchpin for Roman hegemony and content—it had always been this way.
The Third Syrian War
But once more, in the foothills of Syria, armies were on the march. Sophia’s spies reported yet again, a Third Syrian War between the Turks and Mamluks was about to break out. More worrisome however, was the increasingly hostility towards the imperium both powers had recently been showing. The minimal gains by the Turks in Syria and the larger Near East were problematic. While they had offset their minor gains by conquering Bosnia and Serbia, Turkic eyes focused once more on the illusive prize of Constantinople.
In Egypt too, there was discontent. The Mamluks had entrusted a certain sense of their security to the Roman emperors. John had good relations with the Egyptians, but neither Manuel or Sophia built upon this. Syria was the graveyard of many tens of thousands of soldiers. And internal discontent over the constant wars had sapped Mamluk strength. The “alliance” between the two powers was being tested. The Mamluks had long thought that the Romans would aid them in war against the Turks—after all, it was to both of their benefit to do so—but after two wars, no such promise had been fulfilled. And it didn’t look like the third war would bring about any change in Roman policy. It was, according to one Mamluk historian, “an alliance in name only.”
Last edited:
Sounds like it's time for some social revolution. Or maybe rebuilding the economy. Perhaps both?
Though I suspect the Romans will have time for neither.
Though I suspect the Romans will have time for neither.
I'm curious to know how a garbage man in the 1500s went about his business.
Rome needed a social revolution a millennium ago! To quote our economic sages, the economy is doing fine! When people drop out of the labor market they are no longer counted as "unemployed!" So everything is just fine...
Picking up human waste with a shovel and putting them in carts that dumped the crap outside of the city or into a river causing pollution! Doesn't seem like we've made much progress after 500 years...
Due to a general disinterest of motivation from the author, for the time being, we're once again going on an indefinite hold.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Yeah. Thanks. I just have no desire to write any new updates. I'm moving to a new apartment. Playing too much Stellaris and HoI4, and have to pay for the new academic year and get ready for that too. LOL.
We're still on schedule to beat Gibbon though!
Until then, Cheers!
Picking up human waste with a shovel and putting them in carts that dumped the crap outside of the city or into a river causing pollution! Doesn't seem like we've made much progress after 500 years...
Well, according to MythBusters, you can grind human waste into a powder and use it as rocket fuel. That counts as progress.
Chapter XXX
The Third Syrian War
The Third Syrian War
In our final push in analyzing the decline and fall of Roman civilization, it would be without proper consideration that I give weight to the wars of the east besides those that Rome was engaged in. After all, in the middle sixteenth century, the Mohammedan world was embroiled in a brutal series of wars between the Mamluk Empire in Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire based in central Turkey.
The Roman revival in Greece marked a problematic turn for the Ottoman Turks, who straddled a disconnected empire from the Balkans and Macedon through Anatolia and Asia Minor. The loss of the Greek lands to the Romans, especially during the reign of Emperor John the Great, forced Turkic expansion into the Balkans and a power contest in Syria. With the limits of Balkan expansion on the horizon, and without the resolve to mount a war against Constantinople, the Turks looked south into Syria where two previous wars of stalemate had been fought.
The Mamluks were probably the most powerful civilization in the early sixteenth century. They possessed the largest navy in the Mediterranean, and had seemingly limitless resources of material and men to draw upon. In addition, they were allied—nominally—with Rome to ward off possible Turkic aggression. The Turks were equally a rival. Although diminished in prestige over the past century by their failures to destroy the Romans and take the title of emperor of Rome for themselves in accordance to Turkic mythological prophecy, the Turks possessed the third largest army on record at the time. They also possessed a moderately powerful fleet, rivalling that of the Romans but smaller than the Mamluks. In addition, the Turks suffered logistical problems—their armies were spread between Europe and Asia Minor while the Mamluks were unified in Egypt and could swing rapidly northward into Syria-Palestine with the full weight of their war economy.
The Third Syrian War is important in understanding the final collapse of the Roman Empire, thus I will give it considerable weight for the reader as any good historian should.
The rivalry between the Turkic Mohammedans and Mamluk Mohammedans was less about religion as the case with the later conflicts between the Sunnite and Shiite in Mesopotamia and Persia. It was a rivalry squarely born out of politics and expectations of grandeur and sublime prestige. The Turks, who after their defeat of the Christian crusader army at Varna, were seemingly invincible only a century ago. They had rapidly expanded to be the equal of the Mamluks in claiming to be the most powerful and prestigious of the Mohammedan nations. The late Palaiologoi revival had diminished that reputation. And as I’ve stated before, the loss of the Greek lands pushed the Turks to expand into Bosnia and Servia.
(Incidentally enough, this also reduced Roman rivals—for the Kingdom of Servia, or Servian Empire, was a major rival following the Palaiologoi restoration. When Czar Stefan Dušan crowned himself emperor of the Servians and Greeks, let alone by taking the title Czar (or Caesar), he was making a claim to be the successor and inheritor of the Constantinian legacy.)
Emperor Stefan Dušan "the Mighty." He was a major thorn in the side of the Palaiologi in the middle 14th century. In 1533, the Kingdom of Servia finally fell to the Turks. The fall of Servia was unintentionally caused by the Palaiologoi revival.
But in the Turkic expansion, running up against the Hapsburg lands in Hungary marked a wall too high for the Turks—at least at that moment—to try and scale. Thus, they turned southward and eyed Syria and the Levant Holy Lands currently controlled by the Mamluks. The two earlier wars were marked by indecisive stalemate, but the third war was to be a mark of coincidental advantages for the Turks.
First, the Mamluk “alliance” with Rome was tentative at best. With a regency in place, there were no guarantees of a formalization of military cooperation between the court in Constantinople and the despotate in Cairo. Second, the Mamluks had just come off a bloody and turbulent civil war between rival claimants after the death of Sultan Jamal. The victory of his bastard son, out of wedlock, Sayf, ensured the continuity of the Burji dynasty, but the uprising by the general Nasir Achmad—in the tradition common of the Mamluks—had crippled the Mamluks military and political capacity.
Thus, when Turkic soldiers crossed the border and rapidly captured Aleppo, it would take another three months before the Mamluks could effectively respond, and even their response was not up to par as in the earlier two wars. Admittedly, if we are to criticize Sophia’s Regency—beyond the point that we have many aspects to criticize—the short sightedness of the conflict was a harbinger of things to come. The Mamluks were somewhat dependent upon the Romans curtailing the Turks to give them a major advantage in the warfare in Asia Minor. The Romans, after all, could rely upon the walls of Constantinople couldn’t they? The balking, and subsequent refusal, of aid to the Mamluks gave the Turks the ability to concentrate their forces against the Mamluks and potentially score a decisive victory.
Outside of modern day Beirut, a Turkic army of Suleiman Pasha numbering anywhere around 45,000 to 50,000 men and artillery had encamped themselves in an advantage position before marching southward to conquer Jerusalem. A Mamluk army of 39,000 under Sultan Sayf was marching northward, and a smaller army of 22,000 was marching westward from Mesopotamia. The plan was to link up and destroy the Turkic army and launch a counter offensive to retake Syria.
Suleiman’s scouts had alerted him to the potential danger, and the daring Turkic general who became even more famous in the years to come for his brutality during the Siege of Constantinople, rapidly moved east to counter the smaller of the two Mamluk armies. At Damascus he overtook the smaller army in a brief but violent struggle. After this victory, he marched through the Golan Heights and into Palestine, planning to intercept Sayf at the important crossroad village of al-Majdal—a famous little town that the famous historian general Josephus fortified during the Zealot War against Rome in the first century.
Although the battle was between the Mamluks and Turks, the outcome also had great ramifications for the Romans. Unbeknownst to Sayf, when he encamped outside of the village, the Turkic army was waiting to strike. At dawn, the Mamluk army was awaken to thunderous cannon fire and the roaring cries of charging Turkic horsemen and warriors falling upon their unsuspecting enemies. Sayf quickly rallied his men to put up a resistance, but it seemed too late and ultimately futile.
The Turkic cannon fire was fairly accurate—considering the technology of the sixteenth century—and the Turkic soldiers killed many thousands of Mamluks in their sleep or sleeping robes and clothes. Mamluk soldiers, emerging from their tents and sleeping rags, were either gutted or fled to save their own lives. The flight of the forward wing of the army alerted the rest of the Mamluks, whom, as I said, rallied with their Sultan and military command to counter the brilliant dawn assault. However, in the midst of this brief counterstrike, Sultan Sayf was struck by a bullet in the neck. Falling from his horse, the sight of the dying sultan broke the morale of the Mamluks. The soldiers that had rallied soon broke and fled.
A Turkish depiction of the Battle of al-Majdal depicting the charge of the Ottoman forces. The battle was a decisive victory and marked the eclipse of Mamluk power and the restoration of the Turks as the preeminent power of the Mohammedan nations.
The “slaughter at al-Majdal” commenced. By the early hours of the afternoon, the entire Mamluk army was put to flight. Of the near 39,000 men, at least half were slain—both nobly and ignobly. Another 7,000 were taken prisoner. In the span of just 10 days, the Mamluk army was broken. Not only was the road to Jerusalem open, the road to Cairo was open. Meanwhile, byzantine schemes were once again opening back in Constantinople.
Last edited:
- 1
An Ottoman revival is definitely not good for the Romans, especially if they have sudden internal conflict to deal with.
Also, it's nice to see another update!
Also, it's nice to see another update!
Nice update, I should think this spells the beggining of the end for Constantinople. That Ottoman general sounds interesting, from the hints you're giving, I assume he plays a pivotal role in the fall/further decline of Byzantium?
Yeah. Finally on Fall break. Finished editing another paper, now under review. Don't have to read 400 pages in a week. All that means is for a brief moment I have some spare time! hahaha. I'm just really on edge. This project has been so time consuming. For the sake of my sanity and promise to all you wonderful readers, I think it's due time that the ball gets rolling again and we start to round the final stretch.
Well, the entire AAR was meant to spell the end!
Yeah, one of the odd things about how I've gone about constructing this AAR is the double ego. I, volksmarschall, am but the editor. A second "Edward Lamillar" was the historian who's "history" I've just edited together. I find it fun that I know the outcome, and that the writing hints like the readers know the outcome too, but simultaneously I have to be reserved in what I put out so not to entirely spoil the apocalyptic end! Like Montesquieu's history of the Romans, my devoted interest has admittedly deterred. I just want to see this titanic project through to the end. I suppose I can thank the readers for the little push over the top!
Like Montesquieu's history of the Romans, my devoted interest has admittedly deterred. I just want to see this titanic project through to the end. I suppose I can thank the readers for the little push over the top!
Having loyally followed your AAR since the beginning, I really want to see how it ends (while being patient of course as you deal with your busy life).
You. Me. And hopefully many others!
I want to conclude it too. But as you note, there's a lot of other stuff going on that take priority writing time for me. And when I do have spare time. Well, sometimes the burnout is real, and I don't feel like I would be doing this AAR justice to produce a half baked update just because I have the time to do so.
I'm not going to pull a Montesquieu, "I do not have the courage to speak of the calamities which followed" was his way of not wanting to write the last 100 years of his history. I always laugh when I read that from Montesquieu. Such a great thinker and writer, completely bored and un-motivated to detail the final century of the Byzantines for obvious reasons.
Chapter XXX
The Third Syrian War
The Fall of Syria and Palestine
The Third Syrian War
The Fall of Syria and Palestine
The Turkic victory at al-Majdal was a major turning point in the history of the modern Near East, allowing it to take the form that we currently see it in today. The Turkic empire, which had been stifled by the new resolve of the Romans in the 15th and 16th centuries, was unable to amass the forces and power necessary to overrun the Mamluks in the first two wars in Syria. Like the Ptolemy’s and Seleucid’s in the disintegration of Alexander’s empire, the two great powers in the Near East were fighting to a battle standstill. However, the Turks had finally won a massive victory and were sweeping south.
Syria fell, as did Palestine. The fall of Jerusalem was particularly traumatic for the Mamluks. A new Mamluk army had been hastily assembled, perhaps around 50,000 men in total, and marched out into Gaza to relieve the Turkic invasion of the Levant. The battle of Gaza, like al-Majdal, ended in a Turkic victory.
The battle itself marked the apogee of Turkic conquest in the Third Syrian War. The Turkic army, bristling with muskets, swords, horses, and cannons, overwhelmed the inferior Mamluk army that possessed few cannons and muskets. It was another slaughter. The Mamluk army was utterly routed in two days of battle, with some 40,000 casualties including 15,000 prisoners. The Turks, by contrast, lost fewer than 7,000 men killed, wounded, and missing. The victory at Gaza marked the eclipse of Mamluk power in the Near East.
To make matters worse, a smaller but highly resolute Turkic navy scored a major victory off the coast of Alexandria against the larger but more cumbersome Mamluke fleet. The Mamluk navy, at the time one of the largest in the world, and the largest in the Mediterranean as the Venetians were still recovering from their losses in the Italian Wars, was now on the ropes. As the ships that survived fled back to Alexandria, the Turks regained regional Mediterranean supremacy, ultimately leading to full supremacy in 1581 when—off the coast of Crete, the Turkic navy of some 71 warships defeated a combined Holy League (Venetian and allies) fleet of 86 warships.[1]
The Battle of Alexandria, where the Turkic navy defeated the Mamluk navy to gain naval dominance in the eastern half of the Mediterranean.
For the Romans, the fall of the Mamlukes in 1539 was a major shift in the power dynamics in the Near East. Mamluk Anatolia, and Syria, were lost. Palestine was also in ruins. The base of Mamluk power had been relegated back to Egypt proper. Not to mention, the Kingdom of Persia was growing in power, and also moving into the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. From the reign of John X, it was his foreign policy of mutual constriction that had aligned Rome with Egypt. To curtail the Turks was in the interest of both powers. Now, however, the problematic chaos that ensued from the Third Syrian War would have consequential ramifications for Constantinople. It is for this reason, among other reasons, that the death of John X—assassination—marked the eclipse of the Roman revival of the 15th and 16th century. The Long Regency, despite having some talented individuals (albeit bloodthirsty) like the Empress Sophia, simply could not match the long-run view of Emperor John. Internal discontent, civil war, and petty squabbles distracted Empress Sophia from helping the Mamluks in their time of need.
Murder in Byzantinum
This was made more problematic when certain nobles once again conspired against Empress Sophia. News of the Mamluk defeat brought shock and joy. For hard-liners, the alliance with Egypt was one of John’s great flaw. According to them, the alliance distracted Roman interests by directing Roman attentions to helping the Mamluks rather than pursuing strict Roman expansionism. The defeat opened an opportunity for Rome to reclaim her own interests without need of helping others. For the realists, Sophia among them, the Mamluk defeat signaled a new terrible reality. The Turks, who had been held at bay for the past century, were once again rising in strength. Their army was rejuvenated by success. So too was her navy. It wouldn’t be long until they set their sights back on Greece and Macedon, Trebizond, and ultimately Constantinople. And to make matters worse, the triumvirate civil war had been sapping Roman soldiery and moral—it couldn’t have occurred at a worse time.
However, for the hard-liners, more byzantine scheming was approaching. While the Mamluk defeats at Gaza and off the coast of Alexandria were troubling, the Mamluks were still a proud people willing to fight the Turkic invaders. Sophia was also moving toward intervention on Egypt’s behalf, the imperial army of 15,000 men in Constantinople, and the loyalist levies in Anatolia, about 25-30,000 men, stood in a poised position to strike the open heartlands of the Ottoman Empire.
News of this reached the Prince regent of Athens, Andronikus. He was, like many of the Greek nobles, a scheming man. He was among the few loyalists in Greece that had supported John X, but he was an ardent Romanist if there ever was one. He fancied himself the new Augustus, and while Constantine XII was finally nearing ruling age, he saw an opportunity to take the throne for himself.
Like Bathsheba, Sophia was a seductive and beautiful woman. Many claimed she suffered from nymphomania, after all, she was not only married to John, but carried on an affair with General Melissinos at the same time. She was rumored to have more lovers than him too. As regent, she had fallen for a young and dashing Italian aristocrat who was among the Genoese contingent in the city. The two were rumored to be madly in love. More likely, he was madly in love with her, while he satisfied Sophia’s needs. Prince Andronikus got word of this, and had paid a hefty price to learn of their whereabouts. When he did, he hired various assassins to move forward with a plot to “save Rome and restore the August legacy.”
In Constantinople, on the night of August 19, 1539, both Sophia and the Genoese aristocrat were found dead. It was the classic murder-suicide, or so we are told. The reality seems more the opposite, both were murdered by the orders of Prince Andronikus, who was summoned to Constantinople for the funeral. He escaped suspicion, having been a loyalist all his life, but a loyalist hardliner. Sophia’s death marked the last moment to help the Mamluks. When peace was settled between the Mamluks and Turks, it was a lost opportunity for Rome.
Left, a painting of the discovery of the dead body of Empress Sophia, the regent of the Roman Empire for the young Constantine XII who was not yet of ruling age. Observers considered it a murder-suicide. New evidence has begun to suggest otherwise. Right, my in-game excuse for killing off a regent for literary purposes!
[1] As I’ve promised the “Decline and Fall,” I never stopped playing the campaign. Read into that as you will. INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH AND COLLAPSE WE GO AT LONG LAST!
Last edited:
- 1