Lo, how can such cruel misery be? How can God the Father permit his chosen people to be extinguished so? Weep, for Rome is fallen, and with her, falls the world! Nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo!
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Well, most historians and scholars note that Arab civilization is a derivative of Roman culture and civilization since, in their expansion and conquest, they subsumed much of Roman/Greek legal custom and law. The Turks also subsumed this. Granted, like Russia, not remotely the same as the strict Roman way, but like European civil law, it has roots in Roman legal and jurisprudence customs and traditions.
Suleiman, in this timeline, is more interested in subsuming for political propaganda purposes. But as I played, I deliberately had to reload 3 times to lose Constantinople. I thought, considering the things that happened over the last 15 years with a long regency, some rebellions, and then a DoW from the Turks soon after Constantine XII came of age, "this is it, this is my ending to fulfill the promise of fall." That said, I had a save where I won this war (naturally) and continued playing as the Byzantines because, why not? I was ranked 11 in points in 1544. But then, for my "Long Ending" plans, I continued playing first as the Ottos then as Russia for ("The Heirs of the Roman Legacy"). Part 2 of this Third Volume was meant to detail what transpired with playing as the Ottos and Russians, so I will be detailing some of that next.
More like @volksmarschall finally deciding this was the moment to make the fall happen and discharge the promise to my AAR title. I take full responsibility for the fate of Constantinople.
Chapter XXXIV
The Heirs of the Roman Legacy
The Heirs of the Roman Legacy
With the Turkic conquest of Constantinople complete, the Roman Empire rapidly fell into a quarrelling quagmire of legacy states. The most prominent were the Despotate of Morea, as mentioned, led by the general and nobleman Manuel Philes. The Despotate of Morea was, in a certain sense, the closest reflection of the continuation of the Roman Empire since it was governed with the same laws and former Roman aristocracy.
The “Long War” between Morea and the Turks reached a pitched moment during the four month Siege of Athens, where Athens was spared with the combined might of Philes’ army and a Venetian expedition that “liberated” Athens. The Venetians, although wounded by Rome during the Italian Wars, had, by the 1550s, recovered itself and replaced the Roman Empire as the second largest naval force in the Mediterranean behind the Turks. In their own self-interest, the Venetians helped prevent the fall of Athens and the quick consummation of the Turkic empire over Southern Greece.
Nevertheless, three years later the Turks would manage to reconquer Athens and drive Philes into the foothills of Southern Greece where he would hold out another 9 full years. The Long War, lasting 12 years, from 1544-1556, saw the eventual collapse of the Despotate. Nevertheless, the battle-hardened and veteran soldiers would prove indispensable at the later Battle of the Sea of Malta in 1563.
Besides Philes’s rump kingdom in southern Greece, the Komnenoi restored their claims to be the continuation of the Roman empire and the legitimate inheritors of Augustus caesarism in 1545. The Empire of Trebizond, so proclaimed, held much greater territory than any time prior to its conquest from the hands of the Palaiologoi. Holding Trebizond, Georgia, and Armenia, the Orthodox imperium in the Caucasus Mountains proved a long standing thorn in the side of Turkic expansion. Between 1545 and 1627, the “Empire of Rome” (which was Trebizond) waged a defiant struggle for the retention of its sovereignty.
During the three wars, Trebizond was aided by the Tsardom of Russia, another of the claimants of the Roman legacy. Eventually, however, Trebizond fell – but not without its honor and glory preserved. As it stands today, The “Roman Orthodox Church” still exists[1] in this part of Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains, alongside the Miaphysites in Armenia. Of course, the Roman Orthodox Church still stylizes itself as the one true patriarch establishment of Christ and the direct continuation of the church legalized by Constantine and established as state religion by Theodosius. Nevertheless, the fall of Trebizond ended the last legal and geographic inheritor of the Roman Empire.
An engraving of the city of Trebizond, seat of the Empire of Trebizond, and the Komnenoi claim of being the rightful and legal heirs to the empire of Augustus Caesar.
***
The most significant and important claimant to the Roman Empire was Russia. The Russian Tsardom claimed for itself the title of Third Rome when the young Princess Zoe Palaiologoi, the last surviving member of the Palaiologoi Dynasty, married Dmitri of Moscow. As mentioned, the Russian alphabet, and indeed, Russian Christianity, owes itself to the Roman missionaries of Byzantium of the 7th and 8th centuries – and the eventual baptism of the Kieven Rus’ people in the early days of the Middle Ages.
Russia’s claim to the inheritance of Rome was more of an indirect legacy than a direct one. Of course, the Roman Church in Rome claimed itself to be the actual Roman Church of the late empire, and that Eastern Orthodoxy, which includes the Russian Church, broke away in the 11th century. Russia’s culture, civilization, and language, while all derivative from the interactions between the nascent Rus’ people with Byzantium, nevertheless is unique to the Russians rather than the direct continuation of Roman ways. In fact, a stronger legacy of Rome to Western and Central Europe can be made on the principles of Catholic religion and Roman law – both of which became the foundation for the future tribal kingdoms of Franks and Germans becoming France and the Holy Roman Empire.
That said the inheritance of Roman influence in Russia cannot be understated. The current royal family has a direct bloodline to the last imperial dynasty of the continuation of the Roman Empire in the east.* Russian Christianity, in its own style and ornate form, does harken back to a unitive aesthetic and early theology that was common to the Christianity of the Roman Empire. And, of course, civilized Russia was civilized by Roman customs, law, and religion emanating from Constantinople.
To be sure, “Third Rome” was always propaganda and theologico-political proclamation by the Russians. It seemed, in some way, unfitting for the Mohammadan Turks could claim the inheritance of a Christian Rome. First, they were not Christian. Second, the House of Osman had no bloodline inheritance to its claim as Caesar. Thus, for the newly established Russian Tsardom, it made sense to proclaim its transformation into imperium along the same lines as Rome – its transformation legitimated by Dmitiri’s marriage by Zoe, and the mantle passed onto Moscow because of this. Russia, that bastion of autocracy, Christianity, and feudalism, was the “True Rome” into modernity from the Russian perspective, and, from a Whig perspective coming out of Western Europe, why not?
Russia (in-game) in 1545, after the marriage of Duke Dmitri of Moscow to Princess Zoe "of Rome."
A painting of Princess Zoe, now Queen and Empress of all the Rus. Her marriage to Dmitri solidified the Russian claim to being the "Third Rome."
***
The final claimant to the Roman legacy was the Arabs. The Arab Conquest of the 7th and 8th centuries brought forth a radical transformation. The Rightly Guided Caliphs presided over an important maturity stage of the believers’ movement. Soon after the death Ali ibn Abi Talib, the final of the these caliphs in 661, the Islamic community of believers had encompassed nearly all of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, the Levant, and Egypt, and parts of North Africa. After his death, and the successful and astonishing conquests against the Byzantines and Sassanid Persians, the road had been laid for the emergence of the pure Islamic Muslim identity during the Umayyad Caliphate.
The Umayyads were an ancient family or tribe from the Arabian Peninsula. Initially opposed to Muhammad in his early years, they had become his most ardent supporters and skilled leaders in the diverse religious community that was born in the aftermath of Muhammad’s successful conquest of Mecca. In part, this past history of the Umayyads having opposed Muhammad fueled the war between the Sunni (who followed the Umayyads) and the Shi’a (who supposedly followed Ali and his descendants). It was during the consolidation of power under the Umayyads that a distinct Muslim identity was formed apart from the ‘community of believers,’ a certain elevation of the followers of the Prophet above the Jews, Christians, and even the Zoroastrians who had been included as fellow believers in the One, True God (since they were monotheists).
However, it is with the rise of the Umayyads and the fostering of this unique Muslim identity, that the influence of Rome is also seen. The Umayyad court practices and rituals were simply borrowed from the Byzantines and molded to fit the new dynasty in Damascus. Taxes and laws, all of which were inherited from their conquests of the Byzantine territories, were kept and simply renamed in Arabic. Even before the rise of the Ottomans many centuries later, already, by the late seventh and early eighth century, there seemed to be an understanding among the Umayyads and the Islamic community that they were part Roman, at least, heirs to the Roman tradition.
As we shall find out later, with the Abbasid Golden Age, Roman and Greek art, philosophy, and mathematics will flourish under the reign of the Umayyads and Abbasids whereas it had been curtailed, stymied, and rejected by the Byzantines through theological controversy, and a complacency among the Byzantines – who, like their Roman forebears, saw all who were not “Roman” (or in this case Greek) as Barbarians not worthy of civilization. Yet, the rise of the Umayyads is pivotal in the evolution of Islam and Islamic history. As mentioned, the Sunni-Shi’a divide has its roots with the Umayyad rise to power and the backing of the Umayyads by a majority of the community (the Sunni) while a small minority opposed them (the future Shi’a). The roads were now leading to the terrible Battle of Karbala, and the schism of the community of believers in this terrible event.
Furthermore, during the height of the Umayyad Empire, the Umayyads would claim to be the inheritors of the Roman tradition. They presented themselves as Roman (Byzantine), adopted Byzantine court customs, laws, and architectural practices. However, by 750, the Umayyads in the east had all but disappeared. A small remnant of the Umayyad Family, remaining in Spain, would rule over Iberia and Northern Africa, whereby the Europeans would refer to them as the Moors. Strictly speaking, there was no “Moorish Empire.” The Moors were just a term used to designate Muslims from Spain, North Africa, and Italy (mostly in Sicily). The “Moors” were nothing more than various dynastic families that ruled over the lands of the west that had remained in Umayyad hands after the ascent of the Abbasids in Egypt and the Middle East.
All of this made its way to the Turks long before the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1544. Turkish law, customs, and imperial practices, its administrative divisions and polity, were, in a way, all Roman anyway. Thus, from a strictly legal and polity perspective, the Turks were just as much Roman as Europe was in its adoption of Roman civil law. This, of course, conflicted with Islamic law, which posed problems between the primacy of (Roman) civil law and Islamic law. This tension has not yet been resolved.
When Suleiman claimed the title “Caesar of Rome” for himself, he embarked on conquests of the rump Roman states: Morea and Trebizond. He conquered Morea, but failed to conquer Trebizond. In failing to conquer Trebizond he pushed his sights into Hungary, and the long Habsburg-Turkic wars erupted over Southern Hungary – ending in 1643 during the Turkic defeat at Budapest. That said, Suleiman’s death in 1562 marked the eclipse of Turkic imperial hegemony.
The following year, Sultan Mehmed was defeated at the Battle off of Malta. A combined Venetian, Neopolitan, and Spanish fleet, with the aid of some 4,000 veterans of the Long Rome from Morea, did battle to save Malta from Turkish conquest. They succeeded, which brought forth an uneasy “truce” between Catholic and Turkic naval forces in the Mediterranean. Never again would the Turks threaten the western seas of the Great Sea, but Turkic pirates in North Africa remained a thorn in the side of Spain, France, and European sailing powers.
The Battle off of Malta, 1563, helped turn the tide of Turkic naval supremacy to a more even handed balance. An alliance of Spanish (Aragonese) and Italian ships, called upon to defend the "holy and Christian lands of Europe" by Pope Eugenius, met the Turks during the Siege of Malta and achieved a decisive victory. The Turks would never again threaten the western Mediterranean, but continued to push into Central and Eastern Europe, and Southern Russia over the next century and half until the Russians defeated the Turks, with the help of the Austrians, during the Siege of Kiev in 1703.
***
In final bid to discuss the Roman legacy, it is also fair to say the Western Europe, especially Catholic Europe, is also an inheritor of the Roman tradition. As all historians know, the Roman Church preserved and inheritor, and retrenched, Roman law and political theory with the collapse of Rome in the west in 476. In fact, the term “Diocese,” which the Roman Church uses for its administrative divisions, is a Roman legal and political term. The fall of Roman civil authority, which was shared with the church after 395, meant that the Roman clergy inherited all responsibility. They preserved the Roman legal tradition and Roman jurisprudence as best they could, and in this, Roman civil law was preserved and became the basis of later European civil law.
Now, the Protestant Reformation changed much of this for the nations that would come to adopt the faith of Luther and Calvin and the Anabaptists, but the continuation of Latin well into the Middle Ages, Roman legal and judicial jurisprudence, and the Catholic religion, permeated and expanded late Roman customs and organic legal traditions to England, Sweden, and the Baltics. So while Rome, as a political entity fell in the west in 476, Rome, as a legal and jurisprudence tradition, continues to be with us today.
I can write more, but, dear readers, I believe I have now discharged the promises I had laid out from Volume I. I wish to thank all of my readers who have taken the time to purchase a copy of this work, or read this book at a library – or, if you are cruel in your ways, read this while on the John in your home.
- Edward Lamillar, July 25, 1906.
* This reflects the fact that “my writing persona” was one of an early 20th century English historian. Thus, the Russian Tsardom still “existed” when this history was composed.
[1] As mentioned long before in this AAR, the “Roman Orthodox” church is the nationalized “Greek Orthodox” church. It would be the equivalent of Greek Orthodoxy.
THE END
It is now that I discharge my promise of bringing you the social, economic, religious, political, and military history of the Late Period Empire. As we have undoubtably discovered, there was no glory of Rome, and what “glory” that was inherited by the Late Period Empire, ruined by its constant division, civil strife, and imperial politicking -- ultimately brought her final ruination. Indeed, the very verdict of history is that the eastern Roman Empire was the lowest and most despicable form that civilization has ever assumed. In her history, Rome suffered a total of 128 civil wars and revolts against her leaders.[1]
I must confess, that this has been an arduous chore and journey that has tested my capacity of writing, research, and enthusiastic vigor. I now wish to thank the readers for their time in making this work such a great success. I truly hold you all in great esteem for your constant patronage and for making this work worthwhile.
In the annals of civilization, Byzantium will no doubt go down as the most decrepit people to have ever inherited the earth. It is not a matter that one should be surprised that the empire fell, as all empires inevitably fall – but we should be surprised that it lasted so long! If not for the genius reign of John X, who was tragically cut short in his prime, it’s not a matter of if the empire would have survived – it is how long could it have lasted had he completed his reforms? As a people, the Late Period citizens had cherished and loved liberty at even a lower grade and level than the Pagans!
Thus, the great -- or rather, tragic decline and fall of Roman civilization is complete. Long eclipsed by the light and toleration of the Mohammedans, their light extinguished many centuries ago, and the torch of civilization passed to the Mohammedans and Europeans during the Dark Ages.[2] From here, I hope that I have delivered upon my promise to an extent satisfactory to the reader and to my publisher.
Of all the pilgrims in this history, and for all the readers, the final verdict will be that the final decline and fall of Roman civilization is the most awful scene in the history of humanity. Not because the Romans finally collapse, but because to have lived through this time of turmoil, civil war, cruelty, barbarity, only to be put out of its misery by the fires of an invading culture, civilization, and army; although perhaps fitting of a peoples who had little integrity themselves, is not even a suffering that the lowest of peoples should have had to deal with. Standing in the ruins of the Hippodrome at Constantinople, I felt compared to write the history of how the stones of a once great city had come tumbling down. Having accomplished this at long last, I leave my work to the candor and reception of the public. As for myself, it is time that I return to the inward journey of the sage.
~ Edward Lamillar. London, 1906. Distinguished Professor of Byzantine Studies, University of London.
***
I hope that the reader has found the history The Decline and Fall of Roman Civilization to be a novel read, and an engrossing narrative of the final century of the Roman Empire. Certainly, Mr. Lamillar was influenced by the great Edward Gibbon, and his work - The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Having set off to read both in my youth, I thought it was fitting to finally give Mr. Lamillar’s timeless classic a new life. Long overshadowed by Gibbon’s work, Mr. Lamillar’s work will certainly stand out for the extensive and thorough examination of the character of the Late Period Empire in its final years. The work itself has been partially edited by me, but the text of his work has been preserved - I hope, for generations to come. During Mr. Lamillar’s tenure at the University of London, 1889-1921, he was the author of six other books on the Roman Empire. None, however, were as timeless and flawless as this masterpiece, which has been out of print since 1952, until now.
- volksmarschall, editor-at-large at the Byzantine Research Institute. New York, 2017.
[1]126 in real life, 128 is the running total when adding in the two civil wars of this timeline: the overthrow of Theodoras, and the “Long Regency’s Civil War.” The historical Byzantine Empire suffered 105 of these civil wars and revolts, or, on an average of every 10.5 years.
[2]For those of you who know me, I do not share the belief that there was a “Dark Ages” in history (and very few professional historians now do either). However, this AAR was conceptualized to be written in a turn of the century prose -- when the Dark Ages was still very much a fixture of the Enlightenment historical project (the Dark Ages, as a historiographical school of thought, was displaced in the late 1970s with the rise of “Late Antiquity”, owing itself to discovering the great philosophical, theological, and cultural advancements made in this period of time). Dr. Peter Brown remains the foremost historian of Late Antiquity, I highly recommend his The World of Late Antiquity and Rise of Western Christendum: Triumph and Diversity, Peter Wells’s Barbarians to Angels for further readings in Late Antiquity studies.
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It feels weird that this is at an end, after so long. Yet all good things must come to an end, must they not?
In all seriousness, thank you, @volksmarschall, for this wonderful, memorable AAR. A masterpiece in so many ways, not least in its ability to keep me interested and awaiting the next instalment for what, 3 years now? Kudos to you sir, your tale of the fate of the Byzantines is one I shall remember, and perhaps be influenced by in mine own works, for quite some time to come.
Valete.
In all seriousness, thank you, @volksmarschall, for this wonderful, memorable AAR. A masterpiece in so many ways, not least in its ability to keep me interested and awaiting the next instalment for what, 3 years now? Kudos to you sir, your tale of the fate of the Byzantines is one I shall remember, and perhaps be influenced by in mine own works, for quite some time to come.
Valete.
I know! and Thanks NM for joining us here. I believe you came in at a later date than the earlier readers, but all readers helped make this possible. In part, my promise to finish was more for you all than for me.
Yes sir, 3 1/2 years of my life have been devoted to this, and I will say that it's somewhat special to me, even as someone who is published in a related field to Byzantine studies. It is both saddening, but also relieving. This is finished, sans the photobucket problem but that'll be rectified in the coming months to get the images working again. I do feel like a bit of my soul died when I posted the closing remark. I'm happy to count this as my fifth completed AAR, and, I think, one that is very dear to my heart.
Cheers!
Thank you for this AAR! It was long one of my favorites, and it's nice to see it come to a conclusion.
That I did, though I must admit to lurking for quite a while before I began commenting, and I'm glad that I did -- we've had some interesting discussions, over the years
Well done, volksmarschall! This has been quite the AAR and now it is completed. The Turkic conquest of Constantinople in particular was awesome to read and imagine.
That is cruel.
That is cruel.
After years, I have finally caught up with this magnificient AAR.
Félicitation!
It was a great adventure. Now, I want to reinstall EU4 and save the Byzantine Empire again!
Félicitation!
It was a great adventure. Now, I want to reinstall EU4 and save the Byzantine Empire again!
