Yep and I expect a Teutonic Africa and Arabia within 50 yearsrcduggan said:well, I'm glad you're enjoying THIS AAR...
nah just kidding but it would be cool to see.-
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nah just kidding but it would be cool to see.
I'm not sure if it'll take THAT short, but you might not be dissapointed.Sematary said:Yep and I expect a Teutonic Africa and Arabia within 50 years
will do.Dorkius Maximus said:DEUS VULT! spread the one true faith into all of turkey and the holy land!
Chapter VII, Part II – Werner König von Insterburg (1497-1511)
After the Ottoman declaration of war, things started to quickly go down hill for the Teutonic Knights. In another of the countless battles over the Sinai Peninsula, the exhausted troops of the order were defeated, being driven back into the Holy Land by the numerically inferior Mamluks.
As the troops retreated through April and into May, the situation became even worse. The state of Tunisia, which had been a Teutonic vassal state for decades, broke free and declared war on the Ordenstaat, whose position in the area had disintegrated.
On the same day, the Kingdom of Denmark (part of the Kalmar Union) also declared war upon the Ordenstaat. This was mainly due to Sweden (the superior member of the Kalmar Union) having territorial ambitions in Prussia and other Teutonic territory.
Although now at war with the Kalmar Union, von Insterburg countered this by finally making peace with the Mamluk Sultanate. The new Sultan al-Ashraf Janbalat was inexperienced and was more eager for peace than his predecessor had been. So he agreed to cede all of Jerusalem, Judea, Beirut, and much of the rest of the northern Levant. So war on that front was closed, but several more had yet to be resolved.
By August, the Ottomans (after fueling the rebellion in Edirne) had mounted enough strength for an offensive across the Bosporus into the Balkans. However, by this time von Insterburg was ready for them. He sent around six thousand troops (around a quarter of them ethnic Bulgarians or Grecians) to attack Constantinople. The Ottoman troops had been pulled back for a planned attack from Bursa across the Aegean Sea to Edirne, so only one regiment, one thousand strong, defended the capital. The Teutonic soldiers, ecstatic with the thought of liberating the Second Rome, were able to overwhelm and rout the Turkish defenders. However, most of the regiment retreated inside the city to join forces with the garrison there. What would happen next was a siege eerily like that of Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
The Teutonic Knights also attempted to land troops in Anatolia itself, but two defeats at the hands of the Ottoman Navy (in which nine Teutonic ships were sunk and one captured, while no Turkish ships were lost) ended these plans.
By September, the city of Constantinople was under siege and artillery bombardment. An army of Teutonic Knights had been landed on the coast of Tunis to lay siege to the capital and only major city of the nation of Tunisia. By the end of September, von Insterburg had also managed to secure peace with Tripoli, going back to the status quo (although neither side had taken military action against each other).
Several days later, the Karaman Beylik followed Tripoli’s example, and sued for white peace, which the Ordenstaat accepted.
In late November, von Insterburg decided to finally attempt to retake Granada (Gibraltar included), which had been under the control of the Moroccan Sultanate for months. Using all the troops the Ordenstaat could spare (only one thousand), an army was landed in Cordoba and marched east.
They met a Moroccan army of equal strength, and the Knights were defeated, thanks mainly to the noncompliance of the Spanish locals, as well as weather conditions.
As 1501 began, Algerian troops marched across Northern Africa to lay siege to the city of Sirt, part of the Ordenstaat. As usual, von Insterburg could do nothing to assuage the conflict there, because there were no troops available. At the same time, rebellion was gripping the Balkans. Edirne and Bulgaria were in open revolution, and had sent militias to attack the Teutonic fortresses in Silistria. The only beacon of hope in the area was the Siege of Constantinople. By late March the city’s defenses were crumbling, and the Turks inside were beginning to lose hope. They could not hold out for long.
And indeed, on March 31st Constantinople fell to von Insterburg’s Knights. Some of the commanders were veterans who had taken place in the liberation of the city in 1494. They were especially happy to return to the city at last. In the six years since its occupation, the Turks had converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Under von Insterburg’s directions, the massive structure was forcibly turned into a Catholic church, the clerics replaced with priests. There was another massacre of Muslims and Turks, which did little more to deepen the Turks’ hate for the Germans.
With their capital fallen, the Ottomans were desperate for peace. Since von Insterburg could not handle any more territory, he simplified his demands. The Ottoman Empire was to renounce its claims on all of Greece, Macedonia, and Edirne. This would give the Turks no legitimacy for claims west of Constantinople, and greatly restrict their ability to wage war with the Ordenstaat.
After peace with the Ottomans, the Ordenstaat now had enough troops to deal with the Algerian Sultanate. In the weeks after the end of the Fourth Ottoman-Teutonic War, both Algiers and Morocco sent peace offers to the Ordenstaat. Morocco wanted Teutonic Granada (which included Gibraltar) and parts of Tunisia, while Algiers wanted the parts of Tunisia not occupied by Moroccan troops.
Von Insterburg rejected both offers, ready to fight the Muslims back into their own homelands. He loaded troops into a fleet, ready for the retaking of Tunisia. But the Algerians kept marching across North Africa, capturing the undefended city of Cyrenaica. The besieged city of Sirt was now completely cut off. The defenders of the city were desperate, but von Insterburg, convinced it was a trap, refused to send troops to break the siege. The Algerians once again demanded Tunisia (and this time Tripoli as well), which the Knights refused.
Von Insterburg countered with the offer of just Cyrenaica, knowing that if the Algerians accepted it would be territory they could not defend, and he could easily seize in a later war. But the Algerian Sultan Abu Abdallah Muhammad VII at-Thabiti discovered this ploy and refused the offer.
As the summer of 1501 began, von Insterburg focused most of his time on trying to build up enough supplies and war material that would be needed for three simultaneous naval invasions: Gibraltar, Tunisia, and Tripoli. He allocated around eight thousand troops for the Gibraltar campaign, five thousand for the Tunisian campaign, and three thousand for Tripoli. This left around four thousand troops to quash the rebellion in the Balkans, as well as hold onto the Holy Land.
In late August, Tunisia sued for peace, returning to the status quo. Von Insterburg reasoned that by accepting peace, he would free up five thousand troops and tens of ships for use elsewhere. And he could always return to conquer the small country later. But unfortunately, his advisors overruled him, and the war with Tunisia continued.
On the last day of August the Sultan of Morocco once again demanded Granada and Gabes, and the Grand Master refused. He spent all of September building up the invasion forces. In early October an advance regiment of a thousand troops was landed in Tunis, where they defeated the Tunisian army and laid siege to the city. This regiment was not in fact the first there, though. For almost seventeen months before, an irregular army of Teutonic Knights and loyal Tunisians (converted to Catholicism) had been maintaining a siege around the city. So the new regiment was actually just reinforcements for a siege that had been ongoing for a year and a half.
On the domestic front, von Insterburg took steps towards freeing the peasantry of the Ordenstaat from serfdom. He reasoned that this would lead to higher crop yields as farmers were allowed to voluntarily work rather than forced into it. It would also facilitate the spread of the German langue and culture amongst the Old Prussians, with the eventual goal of homogenizing them into the German culture.
After beginning the siege of Tunis and his domestic actions, von Insterburg did not undertake any more major actions that year. In late January of 1502 the city of Tunis fell to the Ordenstaat. The defenders had held out for six hundred and seventeen days, or around twenty months. This made it one of the longest sieges in Teutonic history.
Only days later, von Insterburg brought it to an end. He issued the order for Tunisia to become a vassal once again. The Tunisians were helpless, and accepted this offer. However, to deter them from rebelling again, the Teutonic soldiers burning many mosques in Tunis and killed a large number of Muslims. This did little except infuriate the leaders of Tunisia.
In March, a problem arose in the Holy Land. Muslim rebels, angered at the new Catholic regime, incited a peasant revolt in and around Beirut. With the Algerians marching ever closer to Egypt, von Insterburg feared that this could incite even more rebellions, so he diverted the five thousand Tunisia-bound troops and half of the troops heading for Tripoli. He relocated them to Egypt and the Holy Land to protect the vital areas from revolt. Meanwhile, the armies already deployed in the Balkans were making strong headway against the Turkish rebellions there.
After holding out for almost a year, the Turkish rebels at the Edirne fortress were finally defeated, leaving the city once again under Teutonic control. With this victory, the rebel spirit in the Balkans began to crumble. Several thousand soldiers in Edirne were loaded onto ships for an upcoming invasion of Granada. But on July 3rd, disaster struck. The Teutonic fleet, which consisted entirely of transport ships, was intercepted by an Algerian fleet. Modern historians have questioned why von Insterburg would be so careless as to not send any warships with the fleet, and the reason is unclear. It may have been an error on someone’s part, or more likely, the fleet may have been trying to use speed to outrun the Algerian and Moroccan fleets to Granada.
No matter what the reason was, it was a disaster. This part of the Lordsgroßartigemarine was intercepted off the Barbary Coast. No ships were sunk, but out of the eight cog transport ships, three (von Arfberg, Goldingen, and von Trier) were captured. But there was an upside. Only half of the cogs had been used to transport soldiers, the other half being decoys. Two of the captured ships were decoys, but the von Trier was a real ship, containing one thousand Teutonic Knights, who were brought to Algiers as prisoners.
After this setback, von Insterburg decided on a different strategy. He landed several thousand troops in neutral Castile (who had granted military access) to attack Teutonic Granada from the north. This move was successful, and a third of the Moroccan troops were killed while the Knights sustained minimal casualties. The city of Granada came under siege, although it would hold out for a long time.
As the troops retreated through April and into May, the situation became even worse. The state of Tunisia, which had been a Teutonic vassal state for decades, broke free and declared war on the Ordenstaat, whose position in the area had disintegrated.
On the same day, the Kingdom of Denmark (part of the Kalmar Union) also declared war upon the Ordenstaat. This was mainly due to Sweden (the superior member of the Kalmar Union) having territorial ambitions in Prussia and other Teutonic territory.
Although now at war with the Kalmar Union, von Insterburg countered this by finally making peace with the Mamluk Sultanate. The new Sultan al-Ashraf Janbalat was inexperienced and was more eager for peace than his predecessor had been. So he agreed to cede all of Jerusalem, Judea, Beirut, and much of the rest of the northern Levant. So war on that front was closed, but several more had yet to be resolved.
By August, the Ottomans (after fueling the rebellion in Edirne) had mounted enough strength for an offensive across the Bosporus into the Balkans. However, by this time von Insterburg was ready for them. He sent around six thousand troops (around a quarter of them ethnic Bulgarians or Grecians) to attack Constantinople. The Ottoman troops had been pulled back for a planned attack from Bursa across the Aegean Sea to Edirne, so only one regiment, one thousand strong, defended the capital. The Teutonic soldiers, ecstatic with the thought of liberating the Second Rome, were able to overwhelm and rout the Turkish defenders. However, most of the regiment retreated inside the city to join forces with the garrison there. What would happen next was a siege eerily like that of Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
The Teutonic Knights also attempted to land troops in Anatolia itself, but two defeats at the hands of the Ottoman Navy (in which nine Teutonic ships were sunk and one captured, while no Turkish ships were lost) ended these plans.
By September, the city of Constantinople was under siege and artillery bombardment. An army of Teutonic Knights had been landed on the coast of Tunis to lay siege to the capital and only major city of the nation of Tunisia. By the end of September, von Insterburg had also managed to secure peace with Tripoli, going back to the status quo (although neither side had taken military action against each other).
Several days later, the Karaman Beylik followed Tripoli’s example, and sued for white peace, which the Ordenstaat accepted.
In late November, von Insterburg decided to finally attempt to retake Granada (Gibraltar included), which had been under the control of the Moroccan Sultanate for months. Using all the troops the Ordenstaat could spare (only one thousand), an army was landed in Cordoba and marched east.
They met a Moroccan army of equal strength, and the Knights were defeated, thanks mainly to the noncompliance of the Spanish locals, as well as weather conditions.
As 1501 began, Algerian troops marched across Northern Africa to lay siege to the city of Sirt, part of the Ordenstaat. As usual, von Insterburg could do nothing to assuage the conflict there, because there were no troops available. At the same time, rebellion was gripping the Balkans. Edirne and Bulgaria were in open revolution, and had sent militias to attack the Teutonic fortresses in Silistria. The only beacon of hope in the area was the Siege of Constantinople. By late March the city’s defenses were crumbling, and the Turks inside were beginning to lose hope. They could not hold out for long.
And indeed, on March 31st Constantinople fell to von Insterburg’s Knights. Some of the commanders were veterans who had taken place in the liberation of the city in 1494. They were especially happy to return to the city at last. In the six years since its occupation, the Turks had converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Under von Insterburg’s directions, the massive structure was forcibly turned into a Catholic church, the clerics replaced with priests. There was another massacre of Muslims and Turks, which did little more to deepen the Turks’ hate for the Germans.
With their capital fallen, the Ottomans were desperate for peace. Since von Insterburg could not handle any more territory, he simplified his demands. The Ottoman Empire was to renounce its claims on all of Greece, Macedonia, and Edirne. This would give the Turks no legitimacy for claims west of Constantinople, and greatly restrict their ability to wage war with the Ordenstaat.
After peace with the Ottomans, the Ordenstaat now had enough troops to deal with the Algerian Sultanate. In the weeks after the end of the Fourth Ottoman-Teutonic War, both Algiers and Morocco sent peace offers to the Ordenstaat. Morocco wanted Teutonic Granada (which included Gibraltar) and parts of Tunisia, while Algiers wanted the parts of Tunisia not occupied by Moroccan troops.
Von Insterburg rejected both offers, ready to fight the Muslims back into their own homelands. He loaded troops into a fleet, ready for the retaking of Tunisia. But the Algerians kept marching across North Africa, capturing the undefended city of Cyrenaica. The besieged city of Sirt was now completely cut off. The defenders of the city were desperate, but von Insterburg, convinced it was a trap, refused to send troops to break the siege. The Algerians once again demanded Tunisia (and this time Tripoli as well), which the Knights refused.
Von Insterburg countered with the offer of just Cyrenaica, knowing that if the Algerians accepted it would be territory they could not defend, and he could easily seize in a later war. But the Algerian Sultan Abu Abdallah Muhammad VII at-Thabiti discovered this ploy and refused the offer.
As the summer of 1501 began, von Insterburg focused most of his time on trying to build up enough supplies and war material that would be needed for three simultaneous naval invasions: Gibraltar, Tunisia, and Tripoli. He allocated around eight thousand troops for the Gibraltar campaign, five thousand for the Tunisian campaign, and three thousand for Tripoli. This left around four thousand troops to quash the rebellion in the Balkans, as well as hold onto the Holy Land.
In late August, Tunisia sued for peace, returning to the status quo. Von Insterburg reasoned that by accepting peace, he would free up five thousand troops and tens of ships for use elsewhere. And he could always return to conquer the small country later. But unfortunately, his advisors overruled him, and the war with Tunisia continued.
On the last day of August the Sultan of Morocco once again demanded Granada and Gabes, and the Grand Master refused. He spent all of September building up the invasion forces. In early October an advance regiment of a thousand troops was landed in Tunis, where they defeated the Tunisian army and laid siege to the city. This regiment was not in fact the first there, though. For almost seventeen months before, an irregular army of Teutonic Knights and loyal Tunisians (converted to Catholicism) had been maintaining a siege around the city. So the new regiment was actually just reinforcements for a siege that had been ongoing for a year and a half.
On the domestic front, von Insterburg took steps towards freeing the peasantry of the Ordenstaat from serfdom. He reasoned that this would lead to higher crop yields as farmers were allowed to voluntarily work rather than forced into it. It would also facilitate the spread of the German langue and culture amongst the Old Prussians, with the eventual goal of homogenizing them into the German culture.
After beginning the siege of Tunis and his domestic actions, von Insterburg did not undertake any more major actions that year. In late January of 1502 the city of Tunis fell to the Ordenstaat. The defenders had held out for six hundred and seventeen days, or around twenty months. This made it one of the longest sieges in Teutonic history.
Only days later, von Insterburg brought it to an end. He issued the order for Tunisia to become a vassal once again. The Tunisians were helpless, and accepted this offer. However, to deter them from rebelling again, the Teutonic soldiers burning many mosques in Tunis and killed a large number of Muslims. This did little except infuriate the leaders of Tunisia.
In March, a problem arose in the Holy Land. Muslim rebels, angered at the new Catholic regime, incited a peasant revolt in and around Beirut. With the Algerians marching ever closer to Egypt, von Insterburg feared that this could incite even more rebellions, so he diverted the five thousand Tunisia-bound troops and half of the troops heading for Tripoli. He relocated them to Egypt and the Holy Land to protect the vital areas from revolt. Meanwhile, the armies already deployed in the Balkans were making strong headway against the Turkish rebellions there.
After holding out for almost a year, the Turkish rebels at the Edirne fortress were finally defeated, leaving the city once again under Teutonic control. With this victory, the rebel spirit in the Balkans began to crumble. Several thousand soldiers in Edirne were loaded onto ships for an upcoming invasion of Granada. But on July 3rd, disaster struck. The Teutonic fleet, which consisted entirely of transport ships, was intercepted by an Algerian fleet. Modern historians have questioned why von Insterburg would be so careless as to not send any warships with the fleet, and the reason is unclear. It may have been an error on someone’s part, or more likely, the fleet may have been trying to use speed to outrun the Algerian and Moroccan fleets to Granada.
No matter what the reason was, it was a disaster. This part of the Lordsgroßartigemarine was intercepted off the Barbary Coast. No ships were sunk, but out of the eight cog transport ships, three (von Arfberg, Goldingen, and von Trier) were captured. But there was an upside. Only half of the cogs had been used to transport soldiers, the other half being decoys. Two of the captured ships were decoys, but the von Trier was a real ship, containing one thousand Teutonic Knights, who were brought to Algiers as prisoners.
After this setback, von Insterburg decided on a different strategy. He landed several thousand troops in neutral Castile (who had granted military access) to attack Teutonic Granada from the north. This move was successful, and a third of the Moroccan troops were killed while the Knights sustained minimal casualties. The city of Granada came under siege, although it would hold out for a long time.
That was quite a lot of back and forth. Nice work sacking Constantinople (even if you had to give it back after the peace was signed.) And I admit, you've extricated yourself from these wars easier than I thought you might. So how badly are the Scandanavians beating you in the north, if at all?
coz1 said:
denmark hasn't really done anything except stick a small fleet in the baltic, and as for the rest of scandanavia, they haven't taken any military action against me.. yet...
This is very good. I assume it means that the Order will become peaceful for awhile after these wars?
relatively peaceful.... for a crusading military order based around war....Sematary said:
Enough for your badboy to go down and your manpower (which I imagine is almost constantly depleted) to go up?rcduggan said:relatively peaceful.... for a crusading military order based around war....
the Knightly Order mod gives a boost to manpower.... so it hasn't been TOO much of a strain, but yes, it has been getting tight.Sematary said:
and the peace should reduce the badboy, HOPEFULLY.
Well I am pulling for you. You will notice in my AAR that the Order has been pretty much destroyed.rcduggan said:
Being a Teutonic Knight seems a stressy job... But indeed everything currently seems to be going well...
But indeed everything currently seems to be going well...
thanks,... that seems to be happening in every AAR except this one...Sematary said:
probablyt because they did get destroyed in real life...
thanks.!Murmurandus said:Being a Teutonic Knight seems a stressy job...
I really should read this af home, just noticed that the Proxy server at work cut almost all the pictures out ....
Beside that nice job in the Outremer or die Übersee (I should have keept awake in the German classes back in school )
A Kalmar union under Sweden that must be broken up !
Beside that nice job in the Outremer or die Übersee (I should have keept awake in the German classes back in school
)A Kalmar union under Sweden that must be broken up !
oh yes, it's very stressful. XDgrayghost said:Oh hell, just being rcduggan is a stressy job...
it does get broken up, but not by me.orlanth2000 said:I really should read this af home, just noticed that the Proxy server at work cut almost all the pictures out ....
Beside that nice job in the Outremer or die Übersee (I should have keept awake in the German classes back in school
A Kalmar union under Sweden that must be broken up !
Chapter VII, Part III – Werner König von Insterburg (1497-1511)
In early August 1502, the peasant rebellions in the Holy Land spread to Damascus. Werner König was once again forced to divert troops from true military action, and delegate more men to pacify former Mamluk territory. The troops landed in Judea in late September 1502. By October they had reached the outskirts of Damascus. But the Knights would find themselves wholly unprepared for the type of rebellion they found there. In Beirut, where much of the population was Catholic (or at least non-Muslim), the peasant revolts had been half-hearted and under-strength.
But in Damascus, almost all of the population was Muslim. They resented being under foreign rule, especially from a Catholic Knightly Order who most of the population viewed as a crusader force. So the Mamluk spies who organized the peasants found a great amount of support. All along the roads to Damascus, partisans harried the Teutonic soldiers. Their baggage trains were attacked, bridges over rivers burned. This culminated with a clash against several thousand well-armed peasants outside the city itself, but the Muslims were routed. In retaliation, dozens of mosques in Damascus were burned, and many Muslims were forcibly converted to Catholicism. This is viewed by many as the beginning of the three-century process by which the Holy Land, Egypt, and much of North Africa was Catholicized by the Ordenstaat.
As fierce battles raged in and around Damascus, the year 1502 came to an end. In early January, a minor crisis arose, concerning one of von Insterburg’s many Teutonic landholdings in Europe. A minor estate in Utrecht (in the Lotharingian Netherlands) came under attack by Dutch separatists who were beginning to pose a problem to the Kings of Lotharingia. Some of these revolutionaries assaulted the Teutonic estate. Although the guards were skilled and fended off the attack, it almost led to war and would significantly cool Teutonic-Lotharingia relations for much time to come.
Near the end of January, von Insterburg paid a visit to Pope Alexander VI in the Papal capital of Rome. On the surface this was a journey of goodwill, demonstrating the Order’s loyalty to the Papacy, as well as their promise to continue the spread of Catholicism. Under the surface though, it was to pay a visit to one Cardinal Wilhelm von Kniprode, who had fallen on bad terms with the Ordenstaat. Through gifts of good faith and (some speculate) death threats, von Insterburg managed to “convince” Cardinal von Kniprode to return to putting forth the views of the Grand Master at the curia.
As von Insterburg returned to the helm of the Teutonic Order, the Knights finally recaptured Granada after a siege of 211 days. The troops then marched on Gibraltar, where they defeated the Moroccans and forced the Muslim armies off the Iberian Peninsula. This marked the last time in history that a major Muslim army would set foot in Iberia. It was the end of and era. The Reconquista (although having ended much earlier) was over.
With the Moroccans kicked out of Castile, the threat of that Sultanate was significantly diminished. Von Insterburg now turned his full attention to southern Tunisia and Tripoli, where the Algerians were running unchecked. At the end of April he made peace with the Danes, promising a return to the status quo. The same day a peace offer arrived from Algiers, demanding all of Tunisia and greater Tripoli. Needless to say, von Insterburg refused this offer. He pulled several thousand troops from Damascus and Constantinople to add to the army to retake Tripoli.
On May 21st, the 7600 Knights in Granada successfully defeated an invading force of Algerian troops, sustaining light casualties while inflicting a great amount on the enemy.
As the assault on the Granada fortress died down, the Algerians struck at another Teutonic holding in the Mediterranean: The castle in Janina came under attack by a large Algerian fleet and some amount of foot soldiers. Von Insterburg had not been expecting an attack this far from the main theaters, so the city was almost entirely undefended. But within two weeks of the landings, two regiments of troops had been marched to Janina where they defeated the thousand Algerians besieging the city.
As June progressed, the Algerian survivors of the first battle of Granada had regrouped in the farmlands of neutral Castile, who could not suppress them. Numbering only around six hundred, these hardcore soldiers marched on Granada, determined to take it. However, this was a futile effort: by this time, the troop strength in Granada and Gibraltar numbered 7800 men. In the battle, no Teutonic troops were killed. This was in stark contrast to the Algerians, who fought valiantly – if not suicidally. All six hundred and four Algerian troops were killed in the regiment’s last military attack. Even their commander was killed in the final charge on the walls of Granada.
Even though the battle was victorious, it still was a partial loss for the Knights. For in the Prussian homeland, much of the population was becoming disillusioned with the war and all the troubles it had brought. In early July of 1503, the population of Kurland (a large amount being Polish) revolted. They tore down the black crosses flown over Teutonic-controlled towns, and burned armories. The Komtur of Kurland retreated with several hundred troops into the walled fortress of Mittau. The Polish rebels surrounded the fortress and tried to break down the walls, but were repulsed. The situation collapsed into a standoff, where the Komtur was trying to hold out for as long as possible, waiting for a regiment to put down the insurrection.
At the end of July von Insterburg sent an emissary to the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Zakariya Muhammad al-Saih al-Mahdi (Abu Zakariya). This emissary carried with him a peace offering that was extremely generous towards the Moroccan Sultanate. Since Morocco was the senior member of the alliance with Algiers, Abu Zakariya was the one to negotiate with. The Ordenstaat offered him the cities of Sirt and Cyrenaica (and all the surrounding territory), which constituted all of Teutonic Tripoli.
Under urging from Algiers – who wanted Tunisia as part of the peace deal – Abu Zakariya declined the offer. Both sides vowed to fight on, each viewing the war as heavily slanted in their favor.
In the days after the failed treaty negotiations in Tunis, the Algerians attempted to take Granada. But by then the Knights had reinforced the area up to eight thousand troops, and the Algerian regiment was beaten back, taking heavy casualties, while the Knights sustained minimal losses.
With another failure at invasion of Iberia, the Algerians turned their attention to the eastern Mediterranean once again. They decided that a successful campaign in Greece might compel the Teutonic Knights to withdraw from the Balkans for good. So several thousand troops were landed in Morea. The Greeks there did not take kindly to a foreign invasion (and a non-European, non-Christian one at that), and put up great resistance. Under heavy partisan attack, the Algerians thinned the troop strength to around two thousand elite soldiers. They laid siege of the entire Morea peninsula, cutting it off from the rest of Greece.
This situation was rectified a month after the invasion, when an army of 3000 Knights attacked the Algerians. He defeated them, driving the Muslims back onto their ships in defeat. However, it was the epitome of a pyrrhic victory. Seven hundred Teutonic troops were killed in the fight, while the Algerians fighting on the defensive only lost around a hundred men. Even so, they were driven out of Greece.
August rolled in to September, and September to October. Treaty discussions stalled once again, in two separate negotiations. One with the entire anti-Teutonic alliance was unsuccessful. The other, taking place in Constantinople, was more so. The Ottoman Empire, wracked by civil war and military incursions from the Kara Koyunlu, found themselves unable to take any military action against the Ordenstaat. So they agreed to a temporary truce, which was to last until January 1504.
But as the year pressed on, the Lordsgroßartigemarine faced disaster. In the Strait of Gibraltar, a massive combined – Moroccan-Algerian fleet intercepted the Teutonic Navy, which consisted of ten cog transports guarded by an assortment of warships. The two fleets met, and the incompetence of the Teutonic admirals was exposed. Even though the enemy fleet was comprised entirely of outdated ships and equipment, they still crushed the Teutonic fleet. In the devastating Second Battle of the Gibraltar Strait, all ten cog transports were sunk – at a cost of around nine thousand Teutonic soldiers. All but five of the warships were destroyed as well, leaving the Lordsgroßartigemarine crippled once again.
With their entire invasion force destroyed, the Ordenstaat’s plans for an invasion of Algiers and Morocco was collapsed. Von Insterburg found that he was unable to lift a finger against the Sultanate of Morocco. The war, should it continue, would only slide more and more in the favor of von Insterburg’s enemies. So when Sultan Abu Zakariya approached von Insterburg with a peace offering, he took it.
This was a slightly unfavorable peace for the Knights in one aspect, because it cut off Gafsa and southwestern Tunisia, which was still in Teutonic hands. It also left the small Tunisian vassal state in a weak position. But it also benefited the Knights. Because Algiers had been going on a rampage in Northern Africa, they would have been able to strike a much harsher peace with the Ordenstaat. But because Sultan Abu Zakariya (who was head of the alliance) had settled for peace, the Algerian offensives were halted.
The Teutonic-Moroccan-Algerian War ended on December 23, 1503. Now Von Insterburg was ready at last to deliver the final blow to the Ottoman Empire. He marshaled a grand army of thirty thousand men to be commanded by him personally, as well as two additional armies of ten thousand each to be commanded by the Vizemeister (Vice Master) and his subordinate.
On January 1, 1504, thirty thousand Teutonic soldiers landed in Bursa, in Anatolia proper. Von Insterburg decided that instead of besieging Constantinople yet another time, he would bypass the city, leaving the capital surrounded and isolated. So he landed all fifty thousand troops in Anatolia proper. The 1st Army under von Insterburg stayed to capture Bursa, while the 2nd and 3rd Armies moved inland.
The 2nd Army raced to the Beylik of Karaman, where they laid siege to the city there. The Teutonic 3rd Army moved south to Smyrna to lay siege to that city.
Ottoman morale was crumbling due to an ongoing war with the Kara Koyunlu (that hard started half a year previously), so the soldiers were not eager to fight for their dying empire. The siege of Karaman was over by March, and the siege of Smyrna by April.
The fall of Karaman was quickly followed by the annexation of the Beylik for the last time. It would be under Teutonic domination for centuries.
For the next several months, von Insterburg would find himself working together with one of the most unlikely of allies – Jahan Shah II, leader of the Black Sheep Turkomen. For both of these leaders had smelled the stench of the rotting Turkish corpse, and decided to feast on it.
City after city fell. First Smyrna in April, then Adalia in May, Ánkyra in July, then Adana in early August. By mid-September all of Anatolia was in enemy hands, be they Teutonic or Black Sheep.
The situation in Anatolia, September 1504. Full color denotes owned territory, slashes indicate occupied territory.
On October 15, 1504, three leaders met in Constantinople. They were Grand Master Werner König von Insterburg, Sultan Bayezid II, and Caliph Jahan Shah II. In the Treaty of Constantinople, Bayezid saw his Ottoman Empire face complete collapse and utter ruin.
In the terms of the treaty, the Turks would cede Bursa, Smyrna, Adalia, Ánkyra, and Karaman (and all the surrounding territory) to the Ordenstaat. The cities of Konya, Bithynia, Mus, Kastamon, Sivas, and Sinope were to be ceded to the Kara Koyunlu. The ceding of Konya itself was a rare oddity: the territory was entirely enclosed by that ceded to the Teutonic Knights. The only reason it was not given to the Ordenstaat was that the Caliph himself was commanding the armies there, and refused to give the territory up.
Map taken from archives of the Encyclopædia Germanica, circa 18th century.
In any case, this exclave would have long-term complications for the future of Anatolia. Beginning in the mid-16th century and lasting until the 20th, the Ordenstaat would carry out a policy of Kulturverschiebungen (literally “culture shifts”) in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Holy Land, North Africa, and later their Atlantean colonies.
This culture shifts policy began after the Treaty of Constantinople. Many of the Muslim Turks living in territory now ruled by the Catholic Ordenstaat viewed this as unbearable. So they fled en masse, migrating to Konya. Over the centuries, the Turks in Anatolia would be forced to re-settle in a Turkish state (within the Ordenstaat) in central Anatolia, with its capital at Ánkyra. Their vacant homes and villages would be filled with either Greek or German settlers. The Ordenstaat (and later the Gottreich) would carry out similar policies in the Holy Land, Teutonic Africa, and Atlantis, although to a lesser extent.
The KVB policy also coincided with the founding of another famous Teutonic institution, the Untersuchung. Known in English as the “Teutonic Inquisition,” this institution would be instrumental in many aspects of life in the Ordenstaat and worldwide up until the 20th century. Similar to the Spanish Inquisition founded sixty years earlier, the Untersuchung was devoted to the spread of Catholicism – especially the conversion of non-Catholics in the Ordenstaat to the One True Faith, the suppression of heretical Christianity, and the survival of the catholic Teutonic Knightly Order. The Untersuchung would prove to be one of the most important factors in global history.
But at the beginning of the 1500s AD, the culture shifts had not begun. Werner König von Insterburg had engineered the most successful crusade in history. He had driven the Muslim Mamluk infidels out of the Holy Land. He had been an instrumental part – if not the most important player – in the fall of the Sublime Ottoman Empire, the last great Turkish empire. Even though the Ottomans would hold out for some time in Constantinople, they were a spent force, and their years were numbered.
These two great successes did well to hide the darker aspects of von Insterburg’s rule. He had plunged the Ordenstaat into countless wars, not all of which were successful. But the victories over the Ottomans and Mamluks bolstered the crusader spirit of the Knights, and reinvigorated the rationale of the Größtekreuzzug. After the Treaty of Constantinople, the Greatest Crusade would eventually be extended into Algeria as far west as Constantine, and into the Sudan and Darfur.
But in Damascus, almost all of the population was Muslim. They resented being under foreign rule, especially from a Catholic Knightly Order who most of the population viewed as a crusader force. So the Mamluk spies who organized the peasants found a great amount of support. All along the roads to Damascus, partisans harried the Teutonic soldiers. Their baggage trains were attacked, bridges over rivers burned. This culminated with a clash against several thousand well-armed peasants outside the city itself, but the Muslims were routed. In retaliation, dozens of mosques in Damascus were burned, and many Muslims were forcibly converted to Catholicism. This is viewed by many as the beginning of the three-century process by which the Holy Land, Egypt, and much of North Africa was Catholicized by the Ordenstaat.
As fierce battles raged in and around Damascus, the year 1502 came to an end. In early January, a minor crisis arose, concerning one of von Insterburg’s many Teutonic landholdings in Europe. A minor estate in Utrecht (in the Lotharingian Netherlands) came under attack by Dutch separatists who were beginning to pose a problem to the Kings of Lotharingia. Some of these revolutionaries assaulted the Teutonic estate. Although the guards were skilled and fended off the attack, it almost led to war and would significantly cool Teutonic-Lotharingia relations for much time to come.
Near the end of January, von Insterburg paid a visit to Pope Alexander VI in the Papal capital of Rome. On the surface this was a journey of goodwill, demonstrating the Order’s loyalty to the Papacy, as well as their promise to continue the spread of Catholicism. Under the surface though, it was to pay a visit to one Cardinal Wilhelm von Kniprode, who had fallen on bad terms with the Ordenstaat. Through gifts of good faith and (some speculate) death threats, von Insterburg managed to “convince” Cardinal von Kniprode to return to putting forth the views of the Grand Master at the curia.
As von Insterburg returned to the helm of the Teutonic Order, the Knights finally recaptured Granada after a siege of 211 days. The troops then marched on Gibraltar, where they defeated the Moroccans and forced the Muslim armies off the Iberian Peninsula. This marked the last time in history that a major Muslim army would set foot in Iberia. It was the end of and era. The Reconquista (although having ended much earlier) was over.
With the Moroccans kicked out of Castile, the threat of that Sultanate was significantly diminished. Von Insterburg now turned his full attention to southern Tunisia and Tripoli, where the Algerians were running unchecked. At the end of April he made peace with the Danes, promising a return to the status quo. The same day a peace offer arrived from Algiers, demanding all of Tunisia and greater Tripoli. Needless to say, von Insterburg refused this offer. He pulled several thousand troops from Damascus and Constantinople to add to the army to retake Tripoli.
On May 21st, the 7600 Knights in Granada successfully defeated an invading force of Algerian troops, sustaining light casualties while inflicting a great amount on the enemy.
As the assault on the Granada fortress died down, the Algerians struck at another Teutonic holding in the Mediterranean: The castle in Janina came under attack by a large Algerian fleet and some amount of foot soldiers. Von Insterburg had not been expecting an attack this far from the main theaters, so the city was almost entirely undefended. But within two weeks of the landings, two regiments of troops had been marched to Janina where they defeated the thousand Algerians besieging the city.
As June progressed, the Algerian survivors of the first battle of Granada had regrouped in the farmlands of neutral Castile, who could not suppress them. Numbering only around six hundred, these hardcore soldiers marched on Granada, determined to take it. However, this was a futile effort: by this time, the troop strength in Granada and Gibraltar numbered 7800 men. In the battle, no Teutonic troops were killed. This was in stark contrast to the Algerians, who fought valiantly – if not suicidally. All six hundred and four Algerian troops were killed in the regiment’s last military attack. Even their commander was killed in the final charge on the walls of Granada.
Even though the battle was victorious, it still was a partial loss for the Knights. For in the Prussian homeland, much of the population was becoming disillusioned with the war and all the troubles it had brought. In early July of 1503, the population of Kurland (a large amount being Polish) revolted. They tore down the black crosses flown over Teutonic-controlled towns, and burned armories. The Komtur of Kurland retreated with several hundred troops into the walled fortress of Mittau. The Polish rebels surrounded the fortress and tried to break down the walls, but were repulsed. The situation collapsed into a standoff, where the Komtur was trying to hold out for as long as possible, waiting for a regiment to put down the insurrection.
At the end of July von Insterburg sent an emissary to the Sultan of Morocco, Abu Zakariya Muhammad al-Saih al-Mahdi (Abu Zakariya). This emissary carried with him a peace offering that was extremely generous towards the Moroccan Sultanate. Since Morocco was the senior member of the alliance with Algiers, Abu Zakariya was the one to negotiate with. The Ordenstaat offered him the cities of Sirt and Cyrenaica (and all the surrounding territory), which constituted all of Teutonic Tripoli.
Under urging from Algiers – who wanted Tunisia as part of the peace deal – Abu Zakariya declined the offer. Both sides vowed to fight on, each viewing the war as heavily slanted in their favor.
In the days after the failed treaty negotiations in Tunis, the Algerians attempted to take Granada. But by then the Knights had reinforced the area up to eight thousand troops, and the Algerian regiment was beaten back, taking heavy casualties, while the Knights sustained minimal losses.
With another failure at invasion of Iberia, the Algerians turned their attention to the eastern Mediterranean once again. They decided that a successful campaign in Greece might compel the Teutonic Knights to withdraw from the Balkans for good. So several thousand troops were landed in Morea. The Greeks there did not take kindly to a foreign invasion (and a non-European, non-Christian one at that), and put up great resistance. Under heavy partisan attack, the Algerians thinned the troop strength to around two thousand elite soldiers. They laid siege of the entire Morea peninsula, cutting it off from the rest of Greece.
This situation was rectified a month after the invasion, when an army of 3000 Knights attacked the Algerians. He defeated them, driving the Muslims back onto their ships in defeat. However, it was the epitome of a pyrrhic victory. Seven hundred Teutonic troops were killed in the fight, while the Algerians fighting on the defensive only lost around a hundred men. Even so, they were driven out of Greece.
August rolled in to September, and September to October. Treaty discussions stalled once again, in two separate negotiations. One with the entire anti-Teutonic alliance was unsuccessful. The other, taking place in Constantinople, was more so. The Ottoman Empire, wracked by civil war and military incursions from the Kara Koyunlu, found themselves unable to take any military action against the Ordenstaat. So they agreed to a temporary truce, which was to last until January 1504.
But as the year pressed on, the Lordsgroßartigemarine faced disaster. In the Strait of Gibraltar, a massive combined – Moroccan-Algerian fleet intercepted the Teutonic Navy, which consisted of ten cog transports guarded by an assortment of warships. The two fleets met, and the incompetence of the Teutonic admirals was exposed. Even though the enemy fleet was comprised entirely of outdated ships and equipment, they still crushed the Teutonic fleet. In the devastating Second Battle of the Gibraltar Strait, all ten cog transports were sunk – at a cost of around nine thousand Teutonic soldiers. All but five of the warships were destroyed as well, leaving the Lordsgroßartigemarine crippled once again.
With their entire invasion force destroyed, the Ordenstaat’s plans for an invasion of Algiers and Morocco was collapsed. Von Insterburg found that he was unable to lift a finger against the Sultanate of Morocco. The war, should it continue, would only slide more and more in the favor of von Insterburg’s enemies. So when Sultan Abu Zakariya approached von Insterburg with a peace offering, he took it.
This was a slightly unfavorable peace for the Knights in one aspect, because it cut off Gafsa and southwestern Tunisia, which was still in Teutonic hands. It also left the small Tunisian vassal state in a weak position. But it also benefited the Knights. Because Algiers had been going on a rampage in Northern Africa, they would have been able to strike a much harsher peace with the Ordenstaat. But because Sultan Abu Zakariya (who was head of the alliance) had settled for peace, the Algerian offensives were halted.
The Teutonic-Moroccan-Algerian War ended on December 23, 1503. Now Von Insterburg was ready at last to deliver the final blow to the Ottoman Empire. He marshaled a grand army of thirty thousand men to be commanded by him personally, as well as two additional armies of ten thousand each to be commanded by the Vizemeister (Vice Master) and his subordinate.
On January 1, 1504, thirty thousand Teutonic soldiers landed in Bursa, in Anatolia proper. Von Insterburg decided that instead of besieging Constantinople yet another time, he would bypass the city, leaving the capital surrounded and isolated. So he landed all fifty thousand troops in Anatolia proper. The 1st Army under von Insterburg stayed to capture Bursa, while the 2nd and 3rd Armies moved inland.
The 2nd Army raced to the Beylik of Karaman, where they laid siege to the city there. The Teutonic 3rd Army moved south to Smyrna to lay siege to that city.
Ottoman morale was crumbling due to an ongoing war with the Kara Koyunlu (that hard started half a year previously), so the soldiers were not eager to fight for their dying empire. The siege of Karaman was over by March, and the siege of Smyrna by April.
The fall of Karaman was quickly followed by the annexation of the Beylik for the last time. It would be under Teutonic domination for centuries.
For the next several months, von Insterburg would find himself working together with one of the most unlikely of allies – Jahan Shah II, leader of the Black Sheep Turkomen. For both of these leaders had smelled the stench of the rotting Turkish corpse, and decided to feast on it.
City after city fell. First Smyrna in April, then Adalia in May, Ánkyra in July, then Adana in early August. By mid-September all of Anatolia was in enemy hands, be they Teutonic or Black Sheep.
The situation in Anatolia, September 1504. Full color denotes owned territory, slashes indicate occupied territory.
On October 15, 1504, three leaders met in Constantinople. They were Grand Master Werner König von Insterburg, Sultan Bayezid II, and Caliph Jahan Shah II. In the Treaty of Constantinople, Bayezid saw his Ottoman Empire face complete collapse and utter ruin.
In the terms of the treaty, the Turks would cede Bursa, Smyrna, Adalia, Ánkyra, and Karaman (and all the surrounding territory) to the Ordenstaat. The cities of Konya, Bithynia, Mus, Kastamon, Sivas, and Sinope were to be ceded to the Kara Koyunlu. The ceding of Konya itself was a rare oddity: the territory was entirely enclosed by that ceded to the Teutonic Knights. The only reason it was not given to the Ordenstaat was that the Caliph himself was commanding the armies there, and refused to give the territory up.
Map taken from archives of the Encyclopædia Germanica, circa 18th century.
In any case, this exclave would have long-term complications for the future of Anatolia. Beginning in the mid-16th century and lasting until the 20th, the Ordenstaat would carry out a policy of Kulturverschiebungen (literally “culture shifts”) in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Holy Land, North Africa, and later their Atlantean colonies.
This culture shifts policy began after the Treaty of Constantinople. Many of the Muslim Turks living in territory now ruled by the Catholic Ordenstaat viewed this as unbearable. So they fled en masse, migrating to Konya. Over the centuries, the Turks in Anatolia would be forced to re-settle in a Turkish state (within the Ordenstaat) in central Anatolia, with its capital at Ánkyra. Their vacant homes and villages would be filled with either Greek or German settlers. The Ordenstaat (and later the Gottreich) would carry out similar policies in the Holy Land, Teutonic Africa, and Atlantis, although to a lesser extent.
The KVB policy also coincided with the founding of another famous Teutonic institution, the Untersuchung. Known in English as the “Teutonic Inquisition,” this institution would be instrumental in many aspects of life in the Ordenstaat and worldwide up until the 20th century. Similar to the Spanish Inquisition founded sixty years earlier, the Untersuchung was devoted to the spread of Catholicism – especially the conversion of non-Catholics in the Ordenstaat to the One True Faith, the suppression of heretical Christianity, and the survival of the catholic Teutonic Knightly Order. The Untersuchung would prove to be one of the most important factors in global history.
But at the beginning of the 1500s AD, the culture shifts had not begun. Werner König von Insterburg had engineered the most successful crusade in history. He had driven the Muslim Mamluk infidels out of the Holy Land. He had been an instrumental part – if not the most important player – in the fall of the Sublime Ottoman Empire, the last great Turkish empire. Even though the Ottomans would hold out for some time in Constantinople, they were a spent force, and their years were numbered.
These two great successes did well to hide the darker aspects of von Insterburg’s rule. He had plunged the Ordenstaat into countless wars, not all of which were successful. But the victories over the Ottomans and Mamluks bolstered the crusader spirit of the Knights, and reinvigorated the rationale of the Größtekreuzzug. After the Treaty of Constantinople, the Greatest Crusade would eventually be extended into Algeria as far west as Constantine, and into the Sudan and Darfur.
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that was an experiment for me, trying out a new style of graphics... anyone havve some feedback?
Hey duggy ! Sorry if I haven't been around much lately , mid-terms are killing me ! As for your graphics , so that's what you were asking about on Myth's thread ! I think it looks kind of quirky actually , what if you tried putting the parchment like thing AND the burnt paper thing on those ? That might work . Oh and great maps ! I can see the hand drawn occupation lines haha , very cool ! XD Keep it up !