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Constantine seems to have used his superb shock value to turn things around. This time seems that the heavens smile on him and he wont be remembered as the last Roman emperor.
Been a Greek myself and understanding what this specific chant tells us, knowing the story why it was written and having the secret hope that one it will be chanted again inside Hagia Sophia, not as reconquered/liberated territory but as a restored Orthodox church as it ought to be, it makes my eyes watery.
Been a Greek myself and understanding what this specific chant tells us, knowing the story why it was written and having the secret hope that one it will be chanted again inside Hagia Sophia, not as reconquered/liberated territory but as a restored Orthodox church as it ought to be, it makes my eyes watery.
That's encouraging!
Could you put some more screenshot? I haven't bought EU4 yet and would like to see how you play your game!
Could you put some more screenshot? I haven't bought EU4 yet and would like to see how you play your game!
Man, why is this not further along.
Just caught up and really enjoying it, now I have to pressure you for an update.
Thanks for the backstory to the empire, to think that without human greed the empire would have been in a far stronger position.
Just caught up and really enjoying it, now I have to pressure you for an update.
Thanks for the backstory to the empire, to think that without human greed the empire would have been in a far stronger position.
This is the biggest truth there is. Not only the external threats, but the interior. It is known that when the latin gunsmith (dont remember his name) came to the city to offer his services, to build some major artillery pieces to defend it, the emperor was begging the merchants and nobility to help him fund the project, but they pretended to have no money to spare and they were sending whatever they could to Venice and hoarding the rest, believing the city will never fall. The gunsmith ofc after almost starving to death he offered his services to the Ottos with the known results, the merchants wealth was later found and seized by the Turks. Irony much?
There were also many young men who afraid or not wanting to join the army were enrolling in the clergy, leaving the already depleted manpower of the city further more lacking.
Men are like that I guess.
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Good place for a cliffhanger. The kingdom is shaping up...bigger, stronger navies are the key, especially when a large enemy force is kept from crossing so they can't attack Constantinople...sort of like divide and conquer.
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Pilot I do think this is something that really needs to be incorporated into the game.
Empires usually failed due to the internal fighting and reluctance of groups within to change the status quo or put the nation/state/city before their own vested interests and if this could be incorporated into the game I think it would be much richer for it.
Empires usually failed due to the internal fighting and reluctance of groups within to change the status quo or put the nation/state/city before their own vested interests and if this could be incorporated into the game I think it would be much richer for it.
But surely Skanderbeg wants to join the glorious Roman Empire!
I think John (err, I) want Skanderberg and Albania to join the Roman Empire...
His stats value is 0/5/0/0 (Fire: Shock: Maneuver: Siege). Thankfully the 15th Century is predicated on firepower and no one has extensive cavalry armies yet, so that shock of 5 comes in handy for the most bloody rolls of combat!
(mostly helps out, although sometimes, the zeroes in the other categories do come to hurt, just like what happened at Edirne.Well, if it remains a Museum and doesn't return to be a mosque, I think that is the best compromise we will see anytime soon. Although, I would like to be at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Easter sometime for the "Miracle of the Holy Fire."
While it is not customary for me for the sake of history-driven AARs to include many screenshots, the next update does have one to be included!
I have a handful of "appropriate" screenshots that will be applied to the various updates when "appropriate." I think I've been more lucky than anything else! :happy:
Welcome BBBD316!
Why is this not further along...err, my instance of writing a "history" AAR has something to do with it! hahaha. Well, all empires fall, even without the civil wars, the empire would have likely not been able to go on much longer than it did imo. I am currently writing a long paper on the Byzantines for a conference and lecture I have to give in May. Coincidence that I am also writing an alternative history at the same time!
Gotta make sure I keep my facts straight!Urban the Cannon maker! And contrary to popular opinion, the Byzantines did have some cannons during the siege of 1453, just rather small ones. From my study of the siege, they used the cannons on the walls and actually helped to weaken them from the recoil of their own cannons. But the genius and ability to preserve the walls for as long as they did - in one account they used a primitive plastic to patch up cracks in the walls to great effect! Plus, I think it would have been very cool and frightening (if you were the defenders) to see the transportation of the Turkish navy over land into the Golden Horn!
Divide and conquer...you just summed up a future update I have on the Late Period Army!
Although I love grand strategy games, I always, perhaps because of my historical training, never liked the "Conquer the World" playing style that many people enjoy (and lo the game itself is set up for). All empires have their moments and then decline. The 15th and 16th Centuries were Ottoman centuries. The 16th a Spanish one, etc. I much prefer to play what I call "semi historical" (no WC, but try and become the most powerful so I can "win"). To lose battles (and sometimes lose deliberately to keep the game balance interesting) and to play like the rulers I have I find to be much more enjoyable! I mean, anyone can still conquer the AI with a king whose a 1-1-1, but I like to think if he was ruling rather than me playing, how would he go.
But alas, I guess the bad random events like loss of stability and uprisings is the best game developers can do.
To All: In the coming month I have preparations for two conferences I will be attending in Pittsburgh and Chicago where I will be presenting on Islamic political philosophy and Environmentalism on the Chinese Protestant Church. In light of this, my presence of updating (as well as spending time on the forum) will likely begin to decline for the next month or so until I complete these tasks at hand.
Chapter V
While the direction of the Macedonian War by late 1460 was still in doubt, although to be fair, we only have three more major engagements to cover before the conflict draws to a close; the pressure being thrust upon the Roman Empire was immense. As mentioned, a powerful Tunisian army had set sail for the Peloponnese, almost unopposed. The Roman navy was busy conducting periodic raids in the Bosphorus to prevent the Turks from crossing, and the majority of the Roman-Athenian army was besieging cities in Thessaly and Epirus. Thus, there was nothing preventing the Mohammedans from invading from the south, except a very crudely organized force of Roman soldiers hastily gathered to defend the coasts.
Some 6,000 Tunisian soldiers landed and promptly rampaged through much of Achaea, shattering the small 1,000 man Roman force that had been assembled upon the realization that the Mohammedans were going to invade by sea – but they were cut off and destroyed before linking with Constantine’s forces in the north. Panic swept across southern Greece, and it storm of hysteria entered Athens when news reached the Mohammedans were marching to take the city. Indeed, the Mohammedans had entered the city after a small section of the city defenses had been penetrated, and chaos erupted in the streets of Athens as the Mohammedans stormed into the streets.
Constantine promptly gathered his forces and marched south to counter the new Mohammedan threat, and in the streets of Athens, the Roman army assaulted the Mohammedans who had decided to lay siege to the progenitor of democracy and Western civilization. The fight was symbolic. Defeat at Athens would mean the spiritual home of western civilization would have been held hostage to a foreign civilization that had arisen from the deserts of Arabia, who ironically in the eighth and ninth centuries were the beacon and purveyors of Greek science and philosophy. As Constantine marched into the city streets to attack the assailing Mohammedans, the carnage was fierce, blood stained the very streets that Plato and Aristotle debated and walked. During the battle, several districts of the city caught fire, and buildings were torn down by the retreating Mohammedans.
A painting depicting the Battle in the City of Athens, where Roman forces defeated the Mohammedan allies and saved southern Greece from destruction.
By nightfall, 29 March, 1461, the Tunisians had been expelled from the city and were fleeing south back to Achaea, pursued by Constantine’s forces. Near Corinth, sometime in early April, the Roman army defeated the remaining Mohammedan soldiers and had effectively ended the Tunisian threat. At the same time, Admiral Tornikes took a bold and risky decision – sailing from the Bosphorus – undetected, and engaged the Tunisian fleet north of Crete. Nearly the entire Roman fleet, 18 warships and some 20 auxiliary ships attacked the Mohammedan fleet of 13 warships and about 30 auxiliary vessels. Tornikes’s was pressed for time, and needed to score a major victory to boost the morale of the Roman navy, who had largely been relegated to the peripheries during the war.
The battle was a stunning and crushing victory for the Romans. The entire Tunisian fleet was destroyed, and 3 major warships were captured. The Romans lost 3 auxiliary ships during the entire 4 day battle [1]. After achieving his great, and some say needed, victory, Tornikes set sail back to the Golden Horn before the Turkish fleet, which had set sail to intercept, could arrive. Within a month, the situation which was just moments ago dire, had turned into the triumph the Roman Empire needed to preserve itself in this war. Although some defeats and the loss of many irreplaceable soldiers hit the empire hard, including the manpower shortage that followed, the turnaround was of the upmost important.
In late October, Sultan Mehmed had died. Rumor has it upon hearing the news of the utter destruction of the Tunisian fleet and the failure of the Turkish navy to catch the Romans; he died of a heart-attack because of shock. Of course, such rumors should not be taken at face-value. He most likely died of natural causes at old age. He was succeeded by his son. Ahmed, who became known as Sultan Ahmed I. Unlike his father, who harbored an absolute hatred of the Romans and sought to strangle them into the dustbins of history, Ahmed did not have his father’s militaristic nature, and was quick to seek an end to the war, if possible.
As mentioned, the Greek and Albanian uprisings were to the Roman benefits, and the Romans ensured they would aid the rebels at any and all cost. In 1462, the Romans and Greek rebels were breaking the back of the Turks in Europe, but the Turks were slowly seizing what remained of the Roman despotate of Trebizond. In March, Georgia had fallen without much opposition. However, on June 15, the province of Thessaly had been liberated by the Romans. This was soon followed by the liberation of all of Eprius, the home of the great Greek general Pyrrhus who rivaled Alexander in skill and courage.
With the Romans rampaging through the Turkish lands in Europe, a Turkish delegation entered Constantinople in January to negotiate an end to the war. By February, Emperor John had agreed to relatively generous peace terms, but that is largely because the war, although successful by Rome’s very standards, had left Rome financially and military crippled, crippled in the sense that the many dead were not easily to be replaced by a small and dwindling population. Although the Turks occupied all of Trebizond, and the Romans had Epirus and Thessaly under their control, the terms of peace only transferred the former Roman province of Thessaly back to Roman control.
The peace was concluded, and the war officially over. Through skill, luck, and fortune, the Roman Empire had managed to avert destruction, but how much longer could this last? The Roman treasury and manpower pool were pressed against the walls. To find replacements for the army, many recruiters and nobles simply carried young Roman children from their homes with the option to fight for the empire or die. Such a practice might sound cruel to us today, but in a way, it is just a cruder form of conscription, just not with the threat of death.
The Peace that ended the Macedonian War brought small acquisitions to the Roman Empire, but more importantly, temporarily shattered Turkish dominance in Europe.
Many in the young Sultan’s circle were displeased. The Turks, for all intents and purposes, performed very well given the circumstances. Undermanned, they held out much longer than expected in Europe, even scoring a major defeat upon the Romans and nearly killing Constantine himself in pitched battle. The proper Turkish navy was not defeated, and the Mohammedan coalition had conquered Trebizond and Georgia. But in the end, what did they have to show for their efforts? Some within the Sultan’s circle began plotting for a new war with Rome as soon as possible, learning from the mistakes of the Macedonian War, and vowing not to make the same mistakes again. As soon as the war end, a large contingent of Mohammedan soldiers soon made their way across the Bosphorus and into Europe.
The new peace developments prompted a shift in Roman policy. The navy was no longer the focus of the new militarization program, the army was. Constantine lobbied to his brother that it was imperative that the Romans quickly expand their small standing army into a competent force large enough, if not able to defend Constantinople from attack, at least be large enough to put up a gallant fight to the very last. Plus, Constantine had other motives, how much longer could his brother remain emperor? Yet, the salvation of the empire was now in view – and John VIII became an imperial hero for his struggle for survival against the Mohammedan powers seeking to bring about the destruction of the greatest civilization the world has ever seen.
From the European perspective, the war was but further evidence of the over exaggeration of the power of the Turks. However, European powers were also eager to see the collapse of the Roman empire, not as the bulwark of Christendom against the Mohammedans, but so they could divide the spoils of the empire of the beacon of light and civilization. Ironically, the successful defense of the empire against the Mohammedans earned Rome precarious and watchful “friends” in the West, who were waiting for the right moment to strike at the empire, that is – if the Turks didn’t finish Rome off first!
The Roman defense of the empire brought a renewed vigor of confidence among the Roman elite. The independence of Albania, a former territory that had long been at the heart of the empire, and the small Sultanate of Candar were very enticing targets for the emperor to seek and restore his dominion over. A year after the war with the Turks had ended, the Romans marched on Albania, and quickly seized the kingdom, although George Skanderberg was deposed as King of Albania, he was a popular and useful figure for the empire to retain loyalty among the people. Just as “Emperor” John IV Komnenos was deposed as Emperor of Trebizond and reinstated as Duke of the region, a similar policy was pursued in Albania. George Skanderberg became Duke George of Albania, and like the Despotates of Morea and Trebizond, although the territories he presided over, and he himself, swore allegiance to the emperor in Constantinople, the real power in the region rested upon his shoulders.
It wasn’t long after the Roman occupation of Albania that the region was hit by a terrible flue, or perhaps influenza or plague. Records aren’t entirely clear, outside of the fact that tens of thousands died and the coastal ports were quarantined.
This, in of itself, indicates something remarkable – that the Roman understanding of medicine was better than that of their Latin neighbors, who generally though such terrible plagues or other diseases were sent by God to punish the people for their sins. By contrast, the Romans apparently understood that by quarantining the infected area, there is a high probably of containing the illness – and while many may die, many more will survive because they will be unaffected. While not perfect by any means, this practice of quarantine seemed commonplace in the eastern Mediterranean world. In the fourteenth century, the Mamluks employed the same policy when an unknown trade ship entered Alexandria [2].
With Albania back into the realm of imperial holdings, the Romans looked back to Asia Minor where the Mohammedan kingdom of Candar stood without friends, and with the unfortunately privilege of being under the thumb, or more appropriately, the eye – of the Romans. While the regions have since been depopulated by Christians and populated largely by Mohammedans, there was still a significant minority of Greek Christians in the regions, and the city of Sinope, had once been a major outlet in the Black Sea for the empire centuries ago before the rise the Seljuks and Ottomans. Like the Albanian campaign, the Romans largely marched in unopposed with minor fighting against the Mohammedan defenders.
The Roman successes in war sparked a new age of the arts and philosophies with Constantinople. Starting in the late 1460s, the initial movement was spearheaded by Philosopher Eirenaios Tornikes, who had since taken a lighter tone toward Christianity than in the past, and the Macedonian artist Nikolas Komnenos (of no relationship to the Komnenian royal family). Their efforts would spark the beginnings of the “Greek” Renaissance, which predated the Italian and European Renaissance by about 20 years. I will cover the Greek Renaissance in a later section of my work.
The Mediterranean World in 1468. Roman re-conquests of Albania and Candar led to the expansion of the Despotate of Trebizond and the establishment of a new Despotate, Albania.
[1] It was much longer in-game, about 30 days or so. But again, for the sake of more historically driven text, I decided to turn the battle into 4 days (the first 4 of the days that battle occurred in-game).
[2] This is a true story from our timeline. I wrote an essay about the Decline and Fall of the Mamluks last year tracking a series of 14 plagues that historically decimated the empire and crushed their economy. In one reference work I used, the number of textile workers in Cairo fell from 14,000 to 600 in five years! The Egyptian records do not state a nationality or origin of the ship – it remains a mystery to this day.
The Battle of Athens and the End of the Macedonian War
While the direction of the Macedonian War by late 1460 was still in doubt, although to be fair, we only have three more major engagements to cover before the conflict draws to a close; the pressure being thrust upon the Roman Empire was immense. As mentioned, a powerful Tunisian army had set sail for the Peloponnese, almost unopposed. The Roman navy was busy conducting periodic raids in the Bosphorus to prevent the Turks from crossing, and the majority of the Roman-Athenian army was besieging cities in Thessaly and Epirus. Thus, there was nothing preventing the Mohammedans from invading from the south, except a very crudely organized force of Roman soldiers hastily gathered to defend the coasts.
Some 6,000 Tunisian soldiers landed and promptly rampaged through much of Achaea, shattering the small 1,000 man Roman force that had been assembled upon the realization that the Mohammedans were going to invade by sea – but they were cut off and destroyed before linking with Constantine’s forces in the north. Panic swept across southern Greece, and it storm of hysteria entered Athens when news reached the Mohammedans were marching to take the city. Indeed, the Mohammedans had entered the city after a small section of the city defenses had been penetrated, and chaos erupted in the streets of Athens as the Mohammedans stormed into the streets.
Constantine promptly gathered his forces and marched south to counter the new Mohammedan threat, and in the streets of Athens, the Roman army assaulted the Mohammedans who had decided to lay siege to the progenitor of democracy and Western civilization. The fight was symbolic. Defeat at Athens would mean the spiritual home of western civilization would have been held hostage to a foreign civilization that had arisen from the deserts of Arabia, who ironically in the eighth and ninth centuries were the beacon and purveyors of Greek science and philosophy. As Constantine marched into the city streets to attack the assailing Mohammedans, the carnage was fierce, blood stained the very streets that Plato and Aristotle debated and walked. During the battle, several districts of the city caught fire, and buildings were torn down by the retreating Mohammedans.
A painting depicting the Battle in the City of Athens, where Roman forces defeated the Mohammedan allies and saved southern Greece from destruction.
By nightfall, 29 March, 1461, the Tunisians had been expelled from the city and were fleeing south back to Achaea, pursued by Constantine’s forces. Near Corinth, sometime in early April, the Roman army defeated the remaining Mohammedan soldiers and had effectively ended the Tunisian threat. At the same time, Admiral Tornikes took a bold and risky decision – sailing from the Bosphorus – undetected, and engaged the Tunisian fleet north of Crete. Nearly the entire Roman fleet, 18 warships and some 20 auxiliary ships attacked the Mohammedan fleet of 13 warships and about 30 auxiliary vessels. Tornikes’s was pressed for time, and needed to score a major victory to boost the morale of the Roman navy, who had largely been relegated to the peripheries during the war.
The battle was a stunning and crushing victory for the Romans. The entire Tunisian fleet was destroyed, and 3 major warships were captured. The Romans lost 3 auxiliary ships during the entire 4 day battle [1]. After achieving his great, and some say needed, victory, Tornikes set sail back to the Golden Horn before the Turkish fleet, which had set sail to intercept, could arrive. Within a month, the situation which was just moments ago dire, had turned into the triumph the Roman Empire needed to preserve itself in this war. Although some defeats and the loss of many irreplaceable soldiers hit the empire hard, including the manpower shortage that followed, the turnaround was of the upmost important.
In late October, Sultan Mehmed had died. Rumor has it upon hearing the news of the utter destruction of the Tunisian fleet and the failure of the Turkish navy to catch the Romans; he died of a heart-attack because of shock. Of course, such rumors should not be taken at face-value. He most likely died of natural causes at old age. He was succeeded by his son. Ahmed, who became known as Sultan Ahmed I. Unlike his father, who harbored an absolute hatred of the Romans and sought to strangle them into the dustbins of history, Ahmed did not have his father’s militaristic nature, and was quick to seek an end to the war, if possible.
As mentioned, the Greek and Albanian uprisings were to the Roman benefits, and the Romans ensured they would aid the rebels at any and all cost. In 1462, the Romans and Greek rebels were breaking the back of the Turks in Europe, but the Turks were slowly seizing what remained of the Roman despotate of Trebizond. In March, Georgia had fallen without much opposition. However, on June 15, the province of Thessaly had been liberated by the Romans. This was soon followed by the liberation of all of Eprius, the home of the great Greek general Pyrrhus who rivaled Alexander in skill and courage.
With the Romans rampaging through the Turkish lands in Europe, a Turkish delegation entered Constantinople in January to negotiate an end to the war. By February, Emperor John had agreed to relatively generous peace terms, but that is largely because the war, although successful by Rome’s very standards, had left Rome financially and military crippled, crippled in the sense that the many dead were not easily to be replaced by a small and dwindling population. Although the Turks occupied all of Trebizond, and the Romans had Epirus and Thessaly under their control, the terms of peace only transferred the former Roman province of Thessaly back to Roman control.
The peace was concluded, and the war officially over. Through skill, luck, and fortune, the Roman Empire had managed to avert destruction, but how much longer could this last? The Roman treasury and manpower pool were pressed against the walls. To find replacements for the army, many recruiters and nobles simply carried young Roman children from their homes with the option to fight for the empire or die. Such a practice might sound cruel to us today, but in a way, it is just a cruder form of conscription, just not with the threat of death.
The Peace that ended the Macedonian War brought small acquisitions to the Roman Empire, but more importantly, temporarily shattered Turkish dominance in Europe.
Many in the young Sultan’s circle were displeased. The Turks, for all intents and purposes, performed very well given the circumstances. Undermanned, they held out much longer than expected in Europe, even scoring a major defeat upon the Romans and nearly killing Constantine himself in pitched battle. The proper Turkish navy was not defeated, and the Mohammedan coalition had conquered Trebizond and Georgia. But in the end, what did they have to show for their efforts? Some within the Sultan’s circle began plotting for a new war with Rome as soon as possible, learning from the mistakes of the Macedonian War, and vowing not to make the same mistakes again. As soon as the war end, a large contingent of Mohammedan soldiers soon made their way across the Bosphorus and into Europe.
The new peace developments prompted a shift in Roman policy. The navy was no longer the focus of the new militarization program, the army was. Constantine lobbied to his brother that it was imperative that the Romans quickly expand their small standing army into a competent force large enough, if not able to defend Constantinople from attack, at least be large enough to put up a gallant fight to the very last. Plus, Constantine had other motives, how much longer could his brother remain emperor? Yet, the salvation of the empire was now in view – and John VIII became an imperial hero for his struggle for survival against the Mohammedan powers seeking to bring about the destruction of the greatest civilization the world has ever seen.
From the European perspective, the war was but further evidence of the over exaggeration of the power of the Turks. However, European powers were also eager to see the collapse of the Roman empire, not as the bulwark of Christendom against the Mohammedans, but so they could divide the spoils of the empire of the beacon of light and civilization. Ironically, the successful defense of the empire against the Mohammedans earned Rome precarious and watchful “friends” in the West, who were waiting for the right moment to strike at the empire, that is – if the Turks didn’t finish Rome off first!
The Roman defense of the empire brought a renewed vigor of confidence among the Roman elite. The independence of Albania, a former territory that had long been at the heart of the empire, and the small Sultanate of Candar were very enticing targets for the emperor to seek and restore his dominion over. A year after the war with the Turks had ended, the Romans marched on Albania, and quickly seized the kingdom, although George Skanderberg was deposed as King of Albania, he was a popular and useful figure for the empire to retain loyalty among the people. Just as “Emperor” John IV Komnenos was deposed as Emperor of Trebizond and reinstated as Duke of the region, a similar policy was pursued in Albania. George Skanderberg became Duke George of Albania, and like the Despotates of Morea and Trebizond, although the territories he presided over, and he himself, swore allegiance to the emperor in Constantinople, the real power in the region rested upon his shoulders.
It wasn’t long after the Roman occupation of Albania that the region was hit by a terrible flue, or perhaps influenza or plague. Records aren’t entirely clear, outside of the fact that tens of thousands died and the coastal ports were quarantined.
This, in of itself, indicates something remarkable – that the Roman understanding of medicine was better than that of their Latin neighbors, who generally though such terrible plagues or other diseases were sent by God to punish the people for their sins. By contrast, the Romans apparently understood that by quarantining the infected area, there is a high probably of containing the illness – and while many may die, many more will survive because they will be unaffected. While not perfect by any means, this practice of quarantine seemed commonplace in the eastern Mediterranean world. In the fourteenth century, the Mamluks employed the same policy when an unknown trade ship entered Alexandria [2].
With Albania back into the realm of imperial holdings, the Romans looked back to Asia Minor where the Mohammedan kingdom of Candar stood without friends, and with the unfortunately privilege of being under the thumb, or more appropriately, the eye – of the Romans. While the regions have since been depopulated by Christians and populated largely by Mohammedans, there was still a significant minority of Greek Christians in the regions, and the city of Sinope, had once been a major outlet in the Black Sea for the empire centuries ago before the rise the Seljuks and Ottomans. Like the Albanian campaign, the Romans largely marched in unopposed with minor fighting against the Mohammedan defenders.
The Roman successes in war sparked a new age of the arts and philosophies with Constantinople. Starting in the late 1460s, the initial movement was spearheaded by Philosopher Eirenaios Tornikes, who had since taken a lighter tone toward Christianity than in the past, and the Macedonian artist Nikolas Komnenos (of no relationship to the Komnenian royal family). Their efforts would spark the beginnings of the “Greek” Renaissance, which predated the Italian and European Renaissance by about 20 years. I will cover the Greek Renaissance in a later section of my work.
The Mediterranean World in 1468. Roman re-conquests of Albania and Candar led to the expansion of the Despotate of Trebizond and the establishment of a new Despotate, Albania.
[1] It was much longer in-game, about 30 days or so. But again, for the sake of more historically driven text, I decided to turn the battle into 4 days (the first 4 of the days that battle occurred in-game).
[2] This is a true story from our timeline. I wrote an essay about the Decline and Fall of the Mamluks last year tracking a series of 14 plagues that historically decimated the empire and crushed their economy. In one reference work I used, the number of textile workers in Cairo fell from 14,000 to 600 in five years! The Egyptian records do not state a nationality or origin of the ship – it remains a mystery to this day.
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Cyprus or Rhodos would make equally nice targets for the Romans - no friends, foreign rulers, Greek populace yearning for reunification with the Empire...
Ah yes that was the name
I haven't touched my byzantine books for almost a year (ever since I retired from teaching the medieval history classes). The small scale bombards they had though was nothing compared to the scale the gunsmith provided the ottos with and what was the part of the deal. Interesting enough, did you knew that he was a student of the University of Constantinople? I also seem to remember that it was not plastic but a formula for quick drying cement that they used, and the ottos could not damage the walls fast enough. Ofc I believe this tales to be widely exaggerated, but imagine how much awe would such a thing would inspire in contemporary men. And they say that the Empire of the time, didnt produce any science of note...
Well, if it remains a Museum and doesn't return to be a mosque, I think that is the best compromise we will see anytime soon. Although, I would like to be at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Easter sometime for the "Miracle of the Holy Fire."
There is still hope, I believe they wont turn it back into a mosque due to Turkeys 'westernization' attempt. But it would truly be a very noble act on their part (to allow the restoration), dreams never die eh?
I have never visited the holy lands and I too want to make such a pilgrimage sometime in my life. Heres to second hoping
From what I see on the map Cyprus seems occupied by something. Rhodos most likely is guaranteed or allied to Venice.
In my games Korfu, Rodos Naxos and Crete are either to revolt and join me or it will take a war with Venice to end their relations or hand them over. Cyprus can be handled easily, you just wait like a shark for the Mameluke guarantee to end and you immediately ship troops to occupy it before the mams land.
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I guess we'll have to wait a while to find out what he will do next. Interesting updates.
Hmm, you survived the first test!
Have you thought of allying with some of the Muslim enemies of the Ottomans?
Have you thought of allying with some of the Muslim enemies of the Ottomans?
I would love to DoW the Knights for a quick victory, but they are buddies with Venice and I am not in any position to take up that challenge at present. Although Cyprus is looking like a great target because they are no longer protectorates or allied or whatever they have at the beginning of the game with the Mamluks! They are occupied presently by rebels...
That's right, I couldn't think of it on the spot. The siege was truly incredible by the accounts left, although certainly without their degree of concerning descriptions!
Yes, Rhodes (the Knights) are allied to Venice so nothing is going to happen there anytime soon. The Cypriotes are occupied by rebels, but they are a very tempting target!
I think several other posters/readers have infiltrated my mind as to what to do next!
Of course, I am still sandwiched with limited areas to move to!Luckily survived the first major test...although I could have easily DoW'd the Ottomans when they were busy fighting in Asia Minor - I consider that too much a gamey tactic! I want to fight and claw for survival and revival - not wait for the Ottoman armies to all be in Anatolia fighting the Anatolian Minors or the Mamluks or something like that and have free running over Ottoman Europe (I am weird like that!
)I would love to ally with the Mamluks, and have very good relations from me to them, but I am still -10 on their board so no alliance is feasible until they improve relations with me, which will likely not happen anytime soon I'm afraid...
I never allied myself with the Mams in my Byz games. I always found the Catholic cannon fodder....Erhm, I mean allies, to be quite reliable. Poland and by extension Lithuania, take care of Creamea for me and the Hungarians usually rival the Ottos and send some troops. I also ally Castile or Aragon and many times I have been surprised by their cogs bringing doomstacks of 30k men in Anatolia and dealing with the Mediterranean Muslim navies.
Hindsight is 20-20, I never really considered the powers on the other side of the Mediterranean!
Although the Mamluk-Ottoman rivalry is the most tempting reason for my diplomatic efforts with the Burji Mamluks since they will inevitably get into conflict (they already have) with one another and I can be the beneficiary of such an alliance system...For Castile being a "lucky nation" I am truly amazed at how many times I play with lucky nations (historic) on I never see them form Spain because Aragon usually does so well for itself (I prefer Aragon over Castile myself although Castile does have the +1 colonist bonus with the Reconquista Idea which is nice).
Hindsight is 20-20, I never really considered the powers on the other side of the Mediterranean!
For Castile being a "lucky nation" I am truly amazed at how many times I play with lucky nations (historic) on I never see them form Spain because Aragon usually does so well for itself (I prefer Aragon over Castile myself although Castile does have the +1 colonist bonus with the Reconquista Idea which is nice).
In my first Byzantine game (very first ever so I didnt know what I was doing) I had all 3 Iberians allied as well as Hungary and Poland. Yes I had no idea there were max relations, not how to take ideas or what to spend my monarch points on (when I did i was cheering like mad that I could increase mil tech
). Anyway as I said they were destroying the Otto navies and shipping forces to Anatolia regularly. When I managed to recover Anatolia and the middle east, I am called to a war of succession because: "The king of Aragon wanted in his will, the Byzantine empire to inherit his crown" !?!?!?!?!!?!?!? So I went into a succession war allied with Castile against Portugal. I never shipped any troops down there, the Castillans did so for me. I PU Aragon, integrated them some time after and I was the happy owner of half Iberia, Corsica, Scicily and Naples. Yey Latin fools...Erhm...Yey our allies. Needles to say Castile was furious after I ruined their Iberian wedding and stole the bride, which lead to further war over colonial possessions in Africa and....I am stopping there. Best campaign I ever had.The only downer in this, was that the Illustrious Imperator was a Trastamara from then on...Or might have been before but I didn't notice...Sneaky emperors...
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Belatedly subscribed out of interest and courtesy
Well, hopefully you find the content very light reading since I think I have about 70 pages of word text from the introduction to present update(s)!
I don't know what I would consider my best campaign, maybe when I formed Netherlands with Gelre because it was also the campaign that really allowed me to learn the finer mechanics of the game and appreciation hitherto. Although, your campaign sounds so illustrious in of itself...
I don't think the people of Constantinople would've consented very easily to a Latin Catholic on the throne of Constantine... :rofl:
Chapter VI
Before we continue in the history of the Late Period Empire in the final stretches of the reign of Emperor John, I would like to take this time to discuss the nexus that preserved the empire during his reign – the Late Period Army. During the height of the Palaiologoi Army, the Imperial forces never exceeded more than about 30,000 professional soldiers [1]. This was, of course, far short of the numbers and scales of the old legions of the Roman Empire during the height of the empire’s glory and prestige during the reign of Trajan or even Constantine.
Yet, this is also not too uncommon for the armies of the late medieval and early modern period in the Renaissance Era. Most medieval armies were nothing more than rabble-raised levies that were called up during times of war or crisis. Even the more professional armies of the medieval period lacked the prestige and lore that the armies of Antiquity had during the Punic-Wars or Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul. The greatest of soldiers in medieval society were not even soldiers in the manner by which we understand armies today – the feudal knight. In Western Europe, the knight was a member of the aristocracy who had the ability to afford a horse – which had long been the sign of the landed nobility outside of nomadic tribes or society. The horse, moreover than any other animal in human history, has had an important impact in the development of human civilization and warfare. While the knight would be replaced by more formal cavalry units in the latter sixteenth century – those who served in the more contemporary cavalry units were often still from the upperclasses of European society for the heightened prestige that came with being, in particular, an officer of the horse (it also implicitly implied some form of equestrian mastery). This tradition dates back to the Republican era of Rome itself.
The minor Roman aristocracy who owned horses and land farms were often called upon in times of war or military defense to form the cavalry arm of the Roman republican armies. The word equestrian derives from Equite, Latin for horseman. While the upper nobility often owned horses as well – such individuals in society were generally seen as the men whom would lead the Roman armies into battle. The early cavalry units of the Roman republican era were nothing more than noblemen who owned a horse, some weapons, and would serve the state riding a thunderous animal that was more dangerous than the man who was riding it. The French Knights, the most famous continuation of this Roman tradition, were most visible in serving in this role during the High and Late Medieval Age. Thus, cavalry units in medieval period were not like the cavalry units we are more familiar with – actual professional soldiers trained to fight on horseback, rather, medieval cavalries were privileged members of the aristocracy who had the means to afford a horse, armor, and weapons – which they often trained with in the sense of jousting in the case of Western Europe.
Roman aristocrats, like the ones depicted above in this manuscript, formed the backbone of the Late Period Cavalry - they hardly resembled the fearsome Kataphractoi of times past, or the more contemporary Knights of Western Europe.
During the reign of Emperor John, the Roman cavalry arm, which was still recruited from the old Roman tradition of assembling horsemen from the privileged Roman nobility, never exceeded more than 2,000 men. Even under the reigns of latter emperors, the cavalry arm of the Roman army was generally small as the nobility rejected the administrative reforms to formalize cavalry corps and only thereby recruitment for the cavalry was always limited to those members of the Roman aristocracy. From this tradition of recruitment from the nobility, even after the formalized cavalry units of Europe by the eighteenth century (long after the cavalry had lost its shock and awe capabilities with the advent of gunpowder), the cavalryman always had a sense of hubris about them in relationship to the more lowly foot soldier who were generally recruited, if not conscripted against their will, from the dregs of society. While cavalry had ceased being the armored wrecking balls of the ancient world or medieval age, cavalry still had important services to perform in war, and when used properly in battle, a cavalry charge could be just as devastating as it had been during the glorious days of the Knights thundering down the hill toward the enemy to deliver the final blow to a depleted and tired enemy.
Thus, the Imperial Army of John was primarily made up of foot soldiers. As mentioned earlier in Chapter One, it would be wrong to equate the soldiers of the Late Period Empire with the soldiers of the Roman legions of a bygone. Although the Imperial Army still saw itself as the heir to the Roman legionary corps, the realities of the Imperial Army under the Palaiologoi Dynasty, and particularly in the reign of Emperor John, was far different than the mythological lore of the soldiers of Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Army was just like any other army of Europe at the time, if not perhaps slightly below the caliber and quality of the men-at-arms fighting in Western armies of the time period.
By the end of Antiquity in the eighth or ninth century, the formally trained armies of Rome had largely been replaced by conscripted levies to be raised in times of war. Even the famous Varangian Guard were not a proper military force as we think of our armies today – but a collection of Viking mercenaries who were barbarous in nature and conduct, serving the person of the emperor because they had been bought by gold. Indeed, the Varangian Guard, which had been disbanded in the mid fourteenth century, was nothing more than a mercenary band of Russians or Swedes who had little formal military training themselves. In fact, the idea of formalized military training had all but declined after the reign of the Emperor Justinian. The encroachments of feudalism ensured that the well-trained men that had populated the Roman legions that had conquered much of the Mediterranean world were but a figment of the imagination in the minds of the men who came to replace them in the more feudalistic armies that held the empire together from the Komnenoi to the Palaiologoi.
While still assembled in battle dress, the mere appearance of a well-dressed man does not necessarily equate to a fighting man capable of the accomplishments of the well-trained soldiers who conquered Carthage or Jerusalem. While much the pomp and tradition of the Roman legions were preserved, it was more in name only, and such tradition was merely symbolic. As mentioned earlier, the Roman eagle, the standard to which the armies of the legion was fixated upon – had been replaced by the banner of the tetragrammatic cross as the means of identification of military units (as well as flags and banners with the images of Christ or the Virgin Mother). Regimental standards among European armies also were born out the Roman standard – but to suggest that the regimental standards that united men in the armies of the English, French, or Habsburgs to have the same power as the standard of the Roman legions would be a laughable and dubious claim.
The discipline of the stout legions of old had been replaced by the same zeal of the barbarians whom had been defeated by legions. Medieval warfare was not one of grand strategy of the scale of the warfare of Antiquity, but often revolved around Darwinian survival of the fittest (to which the Barbarians who fought the Romans were like). Soldiers were not part of well-organized and disciplines fighting units, but rather would fight against their opponent with the only purpose of killing the man opposite of you so that you could live. Medieval warfare often descended into a barbarous brawl in which those who were strongest emerged the victor.
The public virtue and patriotism shown by the ancients was all but eroded by the Late Period Empire. That patriotism that manifested itself in the desire for the preservation and expansion of a public way of life had been replaced by a virtue of selfishness in which the means for war was to only protect that which one had. It should come as no surprise that the despotic princes of the Late Period Empire were hardly admired by their men, and in the rare case that they were, their loyalty to the local despot rather than the emperor would cause military division and derision among what remained of the centralized system of military control that had come to typify the Roman armies until the death of Justinian.
Like the feudal levies of Europe, the Palaiologoi Army was not this great and heroic band that had preserved the traditions of the Roman legions, but mirrored the poor farmer who had been recruited and given a weapon and limited training, if any at all, of Western Europe. This was one of the key advantages of the Mohammedans, whose force of Janissaries were a properly trained military unit in the modern understanding of what it means to be in an army. Furthermore, the lack of manpower due to the continuous collapse of land to the Mohammedans meant that the empire was forced to hire mercenaries to serve as the fighting force of the Romans.
A depiction of early Turkish Janissaries, the elite fighting force of the Mohammedan Turkish armies - among the most potent and powerful soldiers ever to be deployed on the battlefield.
While this temporarily solved Roman problems, it created a long run crisis by which the Roman state would never recover from. The lore of the Varangians is overrated and mythologized. Mercenaries were never reliable, the death of the leader or the emperor to whom the Varangians had pledged their loyalties to was often followed by disbandment or the devolution toward a brigand lifestyle where the mercenaries who had been hired to serve the Roman state were now ransacking through the provinces – and since the mercenaries were the majority arm of the Imperial forces the Empire often never had the means to counter the chaos they were inflicting over the region.
[1] In actuality (OTL), the Palaiologoi Army never exceeded 20,000 men. By the time of the empire’s demise in 1453, the Imperial Army numbered no more than 2,000 men.
*Having finished my re-reading of Gibbon (and among other historians, Lecky, Montesquieu and Voltaire for my work), I felt compelled to write this Chapter as a complete tribute to Gibbon's first chapter of his magisterial (albeit flawed - imo) work!
The Late Model Roman Army, Cavalry, Noblemen, and Femininity in the Ranks of the Armies
Before we continue in the history of the Late Period Empire in the final stretches of the reign of Emperor John, I would like to take this time to discuss the nexus that preserved the empire during his reign – the Late Period Army. During the height of the Palaiologoi Army, the Imperial forces never exceeded more than about 30,000 professional soldiers [1]. This was, of course, far short of the numbers and scales of the old legions of the Roman Empire during the height of the empire’s glory and prestige during the reign of Trajan or even Constantine.
Yet, this is also not too uncommon for the armies of the late medieval and early modern period in the Renaissance Era. Most medieval armies were nothing more than rabble-raised levies that were called up during times of war or crisis. Even the more professional armies of the medieval period lacked the prestige and lore that the armies of Antiquity had during the Punic-Wars or Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul. The greatest of soldiers in medieval society were not even soldiers in the manner by which we understand armies today – the feudal knight. In Western Europe, the knight was a member of the aristocracy who had the ability to afford a horse – which had long been the sign of the landed nobility outside of nomadic tribes or society. The horse, moreover than any other animal in human history, has had an important impact in the development of human civilization and warfare. While the knight would be replaced by more formal cavalry units in the latter sixteenth century – those who served in the more contemporary cavalry units were often still from the upperclasses of European society for the heightened prestige that came with being, in particular, an officer of the horse (it also implicitly implied some form of equestrian mastery). This tradition dates back to the Republican era of Rome itself.
The minor Roman aristocracy who owned horses and land farms were often called upon in times of war or military defense to form the cavalry arm of the Roman republican armies. The word equestrian derives from Equite, Latin for horseman. While the upper nobility often owned horses as well – such individuals in society were generally seen as the men whom would lead the Roman armies into battle. The early cavalry units of the Roman republican era were nothing more than noblemen who owned a horse, some weapons, and would serve the state riding a thunderous animal that was more dangerous than the man who was riding it. The French Knights, the most famous continuation of this Roman tradition, were most visible in serving in this role during the High and Late Medieval Age. Thus, cavalry units in medieval period were not like the cavalry units we are more familiar with – actual professional soldiers trained to fight on horseback, rather, medieval cavalries were privileged members of the aristocracy who had the means to afford a horse, armor, and weapons – which they often trained with in the sense of jousting in the case of Western Europe.
Roman aristocrats, like the ones depicted above in this manuscript, formed the backbone of the Late Period Cavalry - they hardly resembled the fearsome Kataphractoi of times past, or the more contemporary Knights of Western Europe.
During the reign of Emperor John, the Roman cavalry arm, which was still recruited from the old Roman tradition of assembling horsemen from the privileged Roman nobility, never exceeded more than 2,000 men. Even under the reigns of latter emperors, the cavalry arm of the Roman army was generally small as the nobility rejected the administrative reforms to formalize cavalry corps and only thereby recruitment for the cavalry was always limited to those members of the Roman aristocracy. From this tradition of recruitment from the nobility, even after the formalized cavalry units of Europe by the eighteenth century (long after the cavalry had lost its shock and awe capabilities with the advent of gunpowder), the cavalryman always had a sense of hubris about them in relationship to the more lowly foot soldier who were generally recruited, if not conscripted against their will, from the dregs of society. While cavalry had ceased being the armored wrecking balls of the ancient world or medieval age, cavalry still had important services to perform in war, and when used properly in battle, a cavalry charge could be just as devastating as it had been during the glorious days of the Knights thundering down the hill toward the enemy to deliver the final blow to a depleted and tired enemy.
Thus, the Imperial Army of John was primarily made up of foot soldiers. As mentioned earlier in Chapter One, it would be wrong to equate the soldiers of the Late Period Empire with the soldiers of the Roman legions of a bygone. Although the Imperial Army still saw itself as the heir to the Roman legionary corps, the realities of the Imperial Army under the Palaiologoi Dynasty, and particularly in the reign of Emperor John, was far different than the mythological lore of the soldiers of Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, or Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Army was just like any other army of Europe at the time, if not perhaps slightly below the caliber and quality of the men-at-arms fighting in Western armies of the time period.
By the end of Antiquity in the eighth or ninth century, the formally trained armies of Rome had largely been replaced by conscripted levies to be raised in times of war. Even the famous Varangian Guard were not a proper military force as we think of our armies today – but a collection of Viking mercenaries who were barbarous in nature and conduct, serving the person of the emperor because they had been bought by gold. Indeed, the Varangian Guard, which had been disbanded in the mid fourteenth century, was nothing more than a mercenary band of Russians or Swedes who had little formal military training themselves. In fact, the idea of formalized military training had all but declined after the reign of the Emperor Justinian. The encroachments of feudalism ensured that the well-trained men that had populated the Roman legions that had conquered much of the Mediterranean world were but a figment of the imagination in the minds of the men who came to replace them in the more feudalistic armies that held the empire together from the Komnenoi to the Palaiologoi.
While still assembled in battle dress, the mere appearance of a well-dressed man does not necessarily equate to a fighting man capable of the accomplishments of the well-trained soldiers who conquered Carthage or Jerusalem. While much the pomp and tradition of the Roman legions were preserved, it was more in name only, and such tradition was merely symbolic. As mentioned earlier, the Roman eagle, the standard to which the armies of the legion was fixated upon – had been replaced by the banner of the tetragrammatic cross as the means of identification of military units (as well as flags and banners with the images of Christ or the Virgin Mother). Regimental standards among European armies also were born out the Roman standard – but to suggest that the regimental standards that united men in the armies of the English, French, or Habsburgs to have the same power as the standard of the Roman legions would be a laughable and dubious claim.
The discipline of the stout legions of old had been replaced by the same zeal of the barbarians whom had been defeated by legions. Medieval warfare was not one of grand strategy of the scale of the warfare of Antiquity, but often revolved around Darwinian survival of the fittest (to which the Barbarians who fought the Romans were like). Soldiers were not part of well-organized and disciplines fighting units, but rather would fight against their opponent with the only purpose of killing the man opposite of you so that you could live. Medieval warfare often descended into a barbarous brawl in which those who were strongest emerged the victor.
The public virtue and patriotism shown by the ancients was all but eroded by the Late Period Empire. That patriotism that manifested itself in the desire for the preservation and expansion of a public way of life had been replaced by a virtue of selfishness in which the means for war was to only protect that which one had. It should come as no surprise that the despotic princes of the Late Period Empire were hardly admired by their men, and in the rare case that they were, their loyalty to the local despot rather than the emperor would cause military division and derision among what remained of the centralized system of military control that had come to typify the Roman armies until the death of Justinian.
Like the feudal levies of Europe, the Palaiologoi Army was not this great and heroic band that had preserved the traditions of the Roman legions, but mirrored the poor farmer who had been recruited and given a weapon and limited training, if any at all, of Western Europe. This was one of the key advantages of the Mohammedans, whose force of Janissaries were a properly trained military unit in the modern understanding of what it means to be in an army. Furthermore, the lack of manpower due to the continuous collapse of land to the Mohammedans meant that the empire was forced to hire mercenaries to serve as the fighting force of the Romans.
A depiction of early Turkish Janissaries, the elite fighting force of the Mohammedan Turkish armies - among the most potent and powerful soldiers ever to be deployed on the battlefield.
While this temporarily solved Roman problems, it created a long run crisis by which the Roman state would never recover from. The lore of the Varangians is overrated and mythologized. Mercenaries were never reliable, the death of the leader or the emperor to whom the Varangians had pledged their loyalties to was often followed by disbandment or the devolution toward a brigand lifestyle where the mercenaries who had been hired to serve the Roman state were now ransacking through the provinces – and since the mercenaries were the majority arm of the Imperial forces the Empire often never had the means to counter the chaos they were inflicting over the region.
[1] In actuality (OTL), the Palaiologoi Army never exceeded 20,000 men. By the time of the empire’s demise in 1453, the Imperial Army numbered no more than 2,000 men.
*Having finished my re-reading of Gibbon (and among other historians, Lecky, Montesquieu and Voltaire for my work), I felt compelled to write this Chapter as a complete tribute to Gibbon's first chapter of his magisterial (albeit flawed - imo) work!
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