Basileus Alexios I Komnenos
(1081-1108)
Married to:
Sired:
- David
- Agne
- Andronikos
- Margarita
The reign of the glorious Alexios I Komnenos was like the man itself; impressive. It was also cut short.
Basileus Alexios I Komnenos’s reign started in a precarious situation. The Empire, once covering all of the Mediterrainean, only consisted of the Balkans, with the City of Men’s Desire – Constantinople - at the border of a mighty enemy.
The Sultanate of Rum covered all of Anatolia, once the power base of the Empire. It could muster almost 5k high quality troops, with the Byzantine Empire only able to muster a little under 2k – of which most were low quality troops. The Empire surely was at an all-time low.
But Alexios I would within a few years turn the situation around. Investing all his money into greatly enlarging the men-at-arms, the army quickly grew. Meanwhile, he also married his family into the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary, thus securing both potential allied troops in a war all too possible in the east, as well as securing the western border.
Eight years later, in 1089, the Empire itself could muster over 6k troops, half of it high quality, as well as having the HRE’s 9k and Hungary’s 4k strength for their cause. The next four years were used growing the treasury and securing the stability of the Empire. And in 1093 Alexios struck, invading Rum with almost 7k troops and the HRE’s 9k. Their combined might would have been enough in itself, but Alexios, wise as he was, struck as Rum descended into civil war. In 1094, less than a year after hostilities started, the Sultan sued for peace.
Conventional wisdom would now have had Alexios to let peace reign for a while, but when he heard rumors of the struggling situation the Shi’ite Caliph of Egypt found himself in, constant in civil wars and low on manpower, he ordered his army to sail for Alexandria. Together with him, the HRE armies followe. The war was won within months, having started in 1096 and ended the same year.
As he came home, he did not hesitate to march northwards, where the Moldavian heathens posed a threat slowly diminshing in domestic struggles. Midway in the war, which started early 1097, the enemy split in half, but war kept on, now with Alexios negotiating peace with the northern half of his enemy, and focusing on beating the Wallachian armies. In 1099, after a series of chasing the fleeing, yet hesistant to give up, armies of the Wallachians, he cornered the enemy Khan, captured him and forced peace upon him.
By now, the Caliph in Egypt had died, and left his weak and underage son in charge as the new Caliph. Egypt could barely field an army, and Alexios struck, gaining complete control over the Lower Egypt Nile Delta. As 1102 came around, the child Caliph was forced to sign peace.
But Alexios’ luck struck again. As he was about to depart from Alexandria to Constantinople, word came that the Sultanate of Rum – after years of instability – had collapsed on itself. In its place were a large amount of small beyliks, ready for the taking.
The Seljuks were also eying the now defenseless Anatolian lands, and indeed would start invading soon after, so Alexios knew he had to strike fast. From 1102 to his death he would invade one beylik after another, slowly securing control over the previous lost lands. He would invade, win, and give the defeated enemy a choice: Submit, and convert to Christianity, and keep control over your lands. Or don’t, and face extinction. All beyliks he conquered chose to convert.
But, finally, his luck ran out. As Alexios I was leading his army in the conquest of the Anatolian coast around Ephesos, he chose to take a bath in a local river. He had chosen to let his guard be close by, but not close enough to discover that he slipped, fell, struck his head and ultimately drowned.
With that, the glorious reign of Alexios I Komnenos – reclaimer of Roman glory – ended. His young son David, only 21 years of age, quickly seized power in Constantiople, and ordered the army to complete the war of his father while he secured power back home in the capital.
The world as David I rose to the throne:
