1634 continued: Prior to the summit at Belgrade, there is some ‘housekeeping’ to be done in Serbia. King Durad and Emperor Demetrios certainly agree that Despot Lazar needs to go. The Serbian people, whether from an honest preference for Durad or a desire to be on the winning side, feel the same way.
Durad, to emphasize that he is not a Roman puppet, marches into Serbia with just the Serbs originally under his command, plus new additions. The various Serbian defectors and prisoners gathered in over the summer and fall, both in Macedonia and those taken by Mauromanikos, were all remanded to Durad’s custody. He made a simple offer, join him and receive food and pay as soldiers in his army, or they can die as traitors. Few quibbled. But nevertheless all in Serbia know that if needed, there is a scarily-large army behind him.
Lazar knows of the might behind his younger brother. For good reason, he does not come off well in the history books; at best he is impetuous and prone to panic at the sign of trouble. But the prospect of impending doom here concentrates his mind wonderfully. Fleeing to the Holy Roman Empire isn’t practical or even promising, and knowing his brother he is unlikely to survive long in his custody. Yet he is not inclined to go out meekly.
No one in Serbia is going to support him now against Durad and Lazar knows it, planning accordingly. When members of his own personal guard come to arrest him in Durad’s name, he is seated at a table in his personal study, wearing his usual baggy clothing. He hurls curses upon them as oath-breakers, for they swore allegiance to him on his accession to the throne. While some look embarrassed, others seem less bothered.
The captain of the guard, whom Lazar had appointed just a few days into his reign, starts lecturing Lazar on his failings as a ruler. The Despot/King seems to agree, and then pulls a kyzikos out from under the table and shoots the captain in the face. He is dead before he hits the floor. Pulling out more weapons from under the table, he attacks the rest of the surprised guards.
Not expecting any resistance, much less this, the guards are even more surprised when they find out that under his baggy clothing Lazar is wearing Macedonian plate armor, impervious to their swords. Aside from the captain, Lazar kills or wounds four more guards before he is cut down, but his final words before he dies are that he will report their betrayal of a king to the King of Kings.
As an exit, it certainly has its advantages compared to the fate of the rest of his family. His three young children, two boys and a girl, none of whom are more than nine, and his wife were to be smuggled out of the country. Lazar had stayed behind deliberately to divert attention away from them. An Arletian ship has been chartered, with the assistance of the Prince-Bishop of the Black Mountain, to carry them to safety. But the children’s personal tutor betrays them, pocketing a sizeable fee for his troubles. By the end of 1635, all of Lazar’s family are dead, reportedly of illnesses contracted in captivity. Given the young age of the children, there is some plausibility to this, but more than a few then and now suspect foul play.
As for the tutor, in 1637 he travels on a business trip to Constantinople. Three days after arriving, his body is found lying face-first in a ditch with multiple stab wounds. Apparently there had been an argument in a nearby gambling house over accusations of cheating and things had escalated.
The conference at Belgrade is not just between Emperor Demetrios III and King Stephan VII. Both King Durad I of Serbia and King Roman I of Vlachia are also present, plus a representative of the Sovereign Prince-Bishop of the Black Mountain.
Demetrios wants security on Rhomania’s European frontier. As the War of Mohacs and now this have clearly shown, the current system needs to be changed from Constantinople’s perspective. Many have called for the annexation of territory in the west, as a buffer zone against future Latin aggression. Yet Demetrios, for all his desire to ‘break the cycle’, is not in that number.
With Serbia, he has already opted for a friendly independent neighbor as opposed to a disgruntled vassal, electing against conquest. Hungary would’ve been far worse. The Serbians were at least Orthodox, there are 3 times more Hungarians than Serbians, and Hungary is far better placed to receive aid from co-religionists. In short, it’d be another and bigger Syria, and the Emperor wants nothing to do with that.
Demetrios sees another way. While he included Hungarian attacks in his wars of Latin aggression, he is also aware that those are of fairly recent occurrence, and were not always the case. In 1396 the Roman Empire and Kingdom of Hungary signed the Treaty of Dyrrachium, which had outlined spheres of influence and the maintenance of Serbia and Bulgaria as buffer states, to ensure that the two powers never came to blows.
The Treaty had been fundamental to good Hungarian-Roman relations throughout the 1400s. It was a Hungarian attack on Venetian territory that broke the Venetian siege of Constantinople in 1456. When Pope Julius II had called for the Tenth Crusade against Rhomania, Hungary had refused to join the call. But the treaty has been dead for a long time now, and it must be admitted that it was the Romans that broke it, not the Hungarians.
Demetrios wants to create a new Treaty of Dyrrachium, but better and more durable, which is why he wants the Serbians and Vlachs on board as well. And right now he has very good leverage.
The first step is to soothe the ruffled feathers of the Vlachs. They’ve done excellent service as a Roman ally and naturally expect rewards for it. Plus the Hungarians are their historical enemies and much of the Vlach war effort was spent raiding the Hungarians and vice-versa. The tool used is naturally money, firstly subsidies to Targoviste in recognition of her war efforts. Demetrios also grants King Roman several Roman titles that come with yearly retainers that he can distribute to his notables as rewards and recognition as he sees fit, plus some granted directly to Vlach commanders by the Emperor. Demetrios also makes promises regarding Galicia.
For starters, all four states agree to recognize the antebellum borders of all the parties in the Haemic (Balkan) peninsula. Furthermore all signatories will guarantee said borders against any power violating said frontiers, whether that be one of the signatories or a non-Haemic power. This is a great boon to Hungary, Serbia, and Vlachia as it gets them formal Roman backing, while the Romans now have a cordon of buffer states.
Demetrios’ greatest concern for the stability of this treaty is the Hungarians and Vlachs coming to blows. Also the antebellum borders are unfavorable to the Hungarians and the Basileus is well aware of the resentment still felt by the Magyars against the Romans.
During the negotiations, Demetrios agrees to provide men, material, and money for a Vlach re-conquest of Galicia, controlled by Targoviste between the Tenth Crusade and the Time of Troubles, and a Hungarian re-conquest of Austria. Once retaken, both Galicia and Austria shall be included in the territories guaranteed by the treaty. This has the advantage of focusing both powers’ attentions away from each other.
To help secure those conquests, the Empire also pledges to provide a two-thousand-strong garrison for both Vienna and Halych, which had served as the capital of Vlach Galicia. Rhomania shall provide the men and pay, while the Hungarians or Vlachs will provide provisions. Demetrios views both Austria and Galicia as ‘forward bastions’ for European Rhomania, while the Hungarians and Vlachs like the idea as it serves as a tripwire that will ensure Roman intervention in the case another power tries to retake said lands.
In a side negotiation with Durad, Demetrios also ‘convinces’ the Serbian king to lease the Belgrade citadel to a Roman garrison. The Romans will repair the Belgrade city defenses and citadel at their own cost, and start paying an annual installment for the lease of the citadel in 1639. The Empire shall be responsible for paying and provisioning the garrison, but any provisions for the garrison imported into Serbia shall be exempt from any Serbian customs. Durad isn’t happy about these, but he can’t refuse and Demetrios is insistent; Belgrade is too strategically important. There are the face-saving gestures though that the Serbian banner will still fly above the fortress at equal level to the Roman tetragram and that the Roman kastrophylax will personally present the annual installment at the Serbian court.
King Stephan had not been aware of Demetrios’ exact plans prior to the summit. The terms for Hungary’s change of alliance had merely been that Hungary would not forfeit any territory, including in Croatia, and that any Roman armies marching through Hungary would be disciplined and orderly and pay for provisions and lodging at fair rates. So while the confirmation of the losses from the War of Mohacs is painful, this is a welcome surprise.
But he had an inkling. King Stephan is commonly known now as “the Silent”, not just for his laconic nature, but also ability to keep secrets and to hide his feelings. He’d been sidelined ever since he became King at the tender age of seven in 1614 after the disaster of Mohacs, overshadowed by his regents. Used to being ignored and underestimated, he’d turned that into a strength. He’d also learned to carefully research potential allies and enemies, and that included one Demetrios III Sideros.
It was Demetrios’ treatment of King, not Despot, Durad that convinced Stephan he could get a fair treatment from the Roman Emperor. And Stephan had brought up the Treaty of Dyrrachium when discussing the post-war order, although Demetrios seems to have already been thinking around those lines.
Stephan also sent Demetrios, as gifts, several histories and also texts on the latest astronomical discoveries, having heard of the Emperor’s stellar observations with Athena. They include the first work to document sunspots, a description of Saturn’s ring system and recently discovered moon Titan, and also a star that is later revealed to be the planet Uranus. Reciprocating, Demetrios at Belgrade returns some of the books and artwork looted from the Royal Palace in Buda, with the promise to return the remainder in the spring, a gesture which pleases Stephan and the Patriots greatly. They view those losses as a national disgrace and humiliation; that is a sentiment the Romans, looking back at 1204, can easily understand and appreciate.
That is not the only thing to be returning to Hungary in the spring. While all Hungarian prisoners are kept at their work stations, dating from the battle of Thessaloniki they are paid the going rate for that labor as done by Roman workers. In the springtime they will be released and provided transport to return to Hungary.
Finally, the Treaty of Belgrade includes provisions to improve navigation along the Danube, with reduced “most-favored-nation” tariff levels on certain products shipped along the waterway, and an agreement to bar merchants from non-signatory powers (Dalmatia is listed as a signatory for this purpose). Many of these are agricultural and animal products in high demand in the cities of the Aegean basin. This is another effort by Demetrios to tug the other R-SHV (Rhomania, Serbia, Hungary, Vlachia) powers into the Roman orbit, but with a light touch, in the way Vlachia already, plus Scythia and also Georgia, became Roman satellites.
Demetrios III uses an astronomical analogy to illustrate his goal. “The Empire shall be like Jupiter, the lord of the planets, with the signatory powers, alongside the Despotates, vassals, Russian principalities, and Georgia, as a greater number of Avashvilian [Galilean] moons. The exact nature of their orbits are determined by their distance from Jupiter and their own innate mass, but they are indisputably satellites of some nature.”
Continuing, he says “But there are other planets as well within the universe. Perhaps the Triple Monarchy can be represented by triple-bodied Saturn. (Early observations of Saturn with a dalnovzor were unable to identify the rings of Saturn as such, Saturn appearing as one large central and two smaller adjacent objects. Demetrios had not yet read the book explaining Saturn’s form as a ring system that had been sent by King Stephan when he wrote this.) It has its own path and place, and so long as it does not cross paths with Jupiter or attempt to steal its satellites, all will be well.
And finally, it must be noted that both Jupiter and Saturn, and the other planets as well, orbit the Sun, as far above Jupiter as Jupiter is above the Avashvilian moons. A reminder that for all the mightiness of Empire, there is always at least one being greater.”