An Age of Miracles Continues: The Empire of Rhomania

[Basileus444]

That's assuming they know what to do with the flood of foreign money. They might turn out like Venezuela, where the incredible concentration of foreign cash reserves crushed domestic industries because everyone could import foreign goods willy nilly. Or like OTL Persia, which had a bunch of weak and shortsighted Shahs sell off concessions for peanuts.

Are we finally seeing the start of the Anglo-French split? How are the Plantagenets doing in terms of fostering a hybrid Anglois culture TTL?

I mean, the Habsburgs never tried to create a hybrid German-Hungarian culture, and it didn't stop them from being a major force for several centuries. If nationalism develops similarly in this timeline, the Plantagenet realms might come to rely on a form of civic nationalism and loyalty to their shared dynasty, while the romantic nationalist ideal of a shared ethnicity would be anathema to them. Nevertheless, the French language has probably continued to spread across the Channel, keeping the "Anglo-Normaund" dialect alive, so in that sense there would be more cultural similarities in the government and upper classes.

Ottoman oil can go many ways, but that’s all well in the future so haven’t committed to anything yet.

Won’t speak here about Anglo-French because, well, see update for a hint.

Should this be "against Phillip and for Elizabeth" or "against Phillip and Henri"?

Fixed to second. Thanks.

What would be the key factors preventing Henri from simply cutting this loses and leaving Philip on his own?
He’ll lose the buffer states that he wants but will still retain all the conquests.

If Henri were to back down now, I would assume it would lead to a loss of prestige and legitimacy as his subjects see him. After all, how could our 'glorious emperor' (Is Henri an Emperor or just a King?) have lost to a handful of Germans...

This is all assuming that the Ottomans can keep their hold on the Gulf for another few centuries. I have a difficult time believing they'll get through the revolutionary era unscathed.

Thanks for another great chapter Basileus!

There’s the matter of prestige. And sunk cost fallacy. More substantially, if Henri did so, he would lose any opportunity to influence and shape how things settle out east of the Rhine. A HRE under Leopold that consolidates back to a level comparable to that of Theodor in 1630, when this whole thing started, is going to be a problem. And in this scenario, the Triunes have no buffer east of the Rhine.

_ _ _

The lands of Germany (and neighbors), 1652 part 1:​

Exactly how many Germans rose up against Henry and Philip Sigismund is one of those debates that historians love to have but will never resolve. Much future nationalist rhetoric makes much of the claim of ‘twenty million Germans’ but these are grossly exaggerated. Even the most popular uprisings and revolutions never galvanize 100% of the population. But clearly a lot did rise.

Much of the same nationalist rhetoric also seeks to express the uniqueness of the event, but that is also exaggerated. The Glorious Uprising as it is styled was largely a peasant rebellion, rising against depredations and exactions and in defense of their Church. The mid-1600s would see many such rebellions, from Spain and England to Champa and Japan.

However, there was one key aspect that did make the German example almost unique. Except for Mesopotamia, these popular uprisings were directed against the ruling authorities as opposed to foreigners. The German peasantry had many grievances, as can be witnessed by the recent Raven Uprising, and those had not gone away, but with the Triune invasion their anger was directed largely away from the German princes and toward the foreigners and their lackeys. In that sense, Henri probably did many of the German princes a favor.

The Triune Army of the North, commanded by the Duc d’Orleans, has the target of Saxony, and is the larger of the two armies and has the benefit of being directly supported by Philip Sigismund, whose landholdings are in north-central Germany. At the outset it is said to muster 60,000 Triunes and 25,000 Imperials, although that may be an exaggeration. And even if true, for reasons that will become apparent, it was a total not held for long.

The Triune Army of the South, commanded by the Duke of Nemours and accompanied by the Dauphin Louis, is appreciably smaller at only 45,000 Triunes and no Imperials. Earlier expeditions in the south, such as the attack that had originally driven the Wittelsbachs from Bavaria and the more-recent attack on Austria, had been accompanied by at least some Imperial troops to add some veneer of Imperial approval. Henri, in his growing frustration with Philip and Germans in general, is finding it increasingly difficult to care about such symbolism. It’s not like the pretense was fooling anyone before anyway.

The campaign in southern Germany is the most conventional of the two. Elizabeth doesn’t want to rely on popular enthusiasm and focuses on utilizing regular structures and authorities and forces. Between what she can gather from Bavaria, the Russian expedition, and a contingent of Spanish mercenaries (some of them formerly in Stephen’s employ), she can muster a force of just over thirty thousand.

She and her commanders don’t consider this enough to risk a field engagement, so a strategy of scorched earth and delay is implemented. Western Bavaria is stripped as much as possible as the Triune army advances, while Munich is heavily garrisoned and provisioned. The bulk of the field army retreats slightly to the southeast of Munich, hovering nearby to harass the Triunes. Nemours, not wanting to leave the powerful Munich garrison in his rear, ideally placed to cut his lines of communication with France, settles down for a siege of the Bavarian capital. Vauban may not be present, but Nemours has many siege engineers trained by Vauban and the typical skilled artillery train.

This does not mean the siege will be easy. Commanding the Munich garrison is once again Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemburg, reprising his role from the mid-1630s; he had returned to Wittelsbach service after Stephen left the coalition and Elizabeth retook Bavaria. Also, the Lady Elizabeth is there in person, walking along the battlements and encouraging her soldiers, sparking memories of the city’s successful resistance against Hungarians and Romans.

The supply situation for the Triune army turns out to be poorer than expected. Between Elizabeth’s scorched earth tactics and the use of Bavaria to support the Triune attack against Vienna, the area has been picked clean. Foraging efforts further afield are hampered by the Bavarians and Russians to the southeast. Even if there is no fighting, their mere presence forces Triune units to concentrate, sharply curtailing efforts to extract supplies from the land.

The weather also turns decisively hostile. It is cool and wet, very wet. Torrential heavy rains pour down, making conditions in the siege camp utterly miserable and sodden, which then encourages the spread of disease. Dysentery quickly becomes rampant. The rain also hampers bombardment, given the need to keep powder dry. The defenders of Munich are better equipped to do that.

Dysentery eventually becomes so bad that even the Dauphin Louis is stricken with it, but nearly all who see him on this campaign approve heartily of his conduct. The teenage prince shows himself willing to endure all the hardships of his men, earning their affection, and showing himself to be brave. Perhaps he is a little excessive here, as he is at the age when many young men consider themselves indestructible. There are at least three occasions when soldiers or officers have to politely insist he remove himself to a safer location, but they only like Louis the more for having to do so.

But not all feel that way about him. At the beginning of the campaign, Louis castigates an English unit for ransacking a monastery and quartering their animals there. The soldiers, who think he is trying to make them give up their loot, react angrily, and their chaplain, one Cotton Mather, a firebrand Puritan, also reacts with venom. (It is unclear if the English recognize Louis for who he is.) The Dauphin eventually gives way and retreats, but strongly resents the abuse.

The entire incident took place through interpreters, as Louis does not speak English. This illustrates a serious problem in the Dauphin’s education. As Louis’ presence and appearance reminded Henri too much of his Queen, the Dauphin had not been raised in Le Havre du Roi (King’s Harbor), with its mix of French and English. He had been raised in Paris and surroundings. There he had received an excellent education, and the young Louis can speak and write fluently in French, Latin, and Greek, and has moderate competence in Spanish and Tuscan-Italian. His tutors thought that he should be conversant in all ‘tongues of literary merit and intellectual value’. English did not make the list.

Despite much suffering and effort, the Triune siege simply bogs down in the mud and excrement. In one disturbing episode, Triune foragers succeed in rounding up twenty hogs. Returning to camp late in the day, the hogs are penned up with some forty donkeys from the baggage train with the plan of butchering the pigs the next morning. In the morning it is discovered that the hogs have eaten the donkeys. [1] Morale is not helped by this incident.

Faced with a growing sanitation nightmare, a lack of food, and a lengthening sick list, eventually the Duke of Nemours abandons the siege and retreats westward out of Bavarian territory. The muddy, hungry, dysenteric march is miserable, but at least largely unhampered by Bavarian-Russian attacks. Elizabeth’s forces are suffering from similar problems, although not to the same extent.

The Bavarians’ pain unfortunately does not end there. The torrential rains had done much to thwart the Triune siege, but they also ruined the harvest, many of the sodden crops rotting before they could ripen. The result is famine, with disease taking advantage of the malnutrition. More than one priest visiting their parishioners mention seeing houses full of the dead and dying, the occupants too weak to even answer the door. In the 1650s, it is estimated that the Bavarian populations drops by at least ten, and perhaps even fifteen, percent.

The war is hardly over, with the campaign in the north dissolving into an all-consuming vortex of blood and chaos, but for the moment the Dauphin Louis is out of it. Stricken by dysentery, he retires to Strasbourg over the winter to recuperate. As his body shudders as his dysentery-wracked bowels rage, it is unsurprising that his mood is not the most amicable.

Louis is a Frenchman by culture and outlook, and as he looks on the developing war, his thoughts are in-line with many other Frenchmen. He has proven his valor on the field of Mars, and valor recognizes and respects valor. Though frustrated with the course of events, he does not fault the Germans. They are fighting for their lands, and while Louis would prefer French victories with minimal loss of French blood, he will not fault the Germans for thinking otherwise.

Yet he thinks it did not have to be this way. It is clear to him, and many other Frenchmen, that the German people had been roused overwhelmingly by the threat to their faith. Now it is clear on historical grounds that assaults on the Catholic Church in Germany had been committed by both English and French soldiers, but the English seem disproportionately involved, and get most of the blame. The Germans and the French (the latter in an admittedly self-serving way to absolve themselves) associate such behavior with the English.

So, Louis and many other Frenchmen see the ultimate cause of this maelstrom as the English. This mess is their fault, and now it is the French that are paying the price. And at the same time, Henri is having serious difficulties with an intransigent Parliament which doesn’t see why “Yorkshire should pay for defending Brunswick”.

Louis’ growing antipathy towards the English, following this train of thought and the humiliation at the monastery, is further reinforced once he recovers. He takes a mistress, the daughter of a goldsmith and town notable. An English Puritan preacher, one John Winthrop, then proceeds to loudly and publicly denounce and excoriate the Prince for his sin until he is ejected from Strasbourg, after which Winthrop condemns the Dauphin for defying the will of God. (Louis caustically notes that it is rather convenient that God’s will aligns so well with Winthrop’s.) Winthrop soon finds it healthy to relocate to the New World, but he is not silenced.

Since its inception, the composite monarchy of France and England has been discordant between the French and the English. But it is clear that by the mid-1600s, that discordance, fueled by the growing religious divergences, is in many circles ramping up into disdain and hatred. Earlier Triune monarchs had been able to bridge the gap. Even though mostly French, they still could present at times an English face. But the gap is widening, and the young Louis lacks the ability and the will. He is French and “will treat that stiff-necked people as they deserve”.

[1] Supposedly this incident took place IOTL. In the fighting in German East Africa (future Tanzania) in WW1, British foragers captured twenty hogs and penned them up for the night with forty of their donkeys, with this result. See World War I-The African Front: An Imperial War on the African Continent by Edward Paice.

 

[Basileus444]

Are there any Roman mercenaries or so participating in the fighting in the HRE?

Technically no, since 'Roman' is a political label/identity. That means anyone serving a sovereign/state that is not the Roman Emperor/Empire becomes not-Roman. So, a former Roman in service of, say, the Vijayanagara Emperor, stops being a Roman and becomes a Greek, but if they returned to serving the Basileus, they would be a Roman again.

Having said that, there are former-Roman mercenaries in the fighting, but they're spread out and not in solid and significant blocs. For example, there might be 3000 former-Romans, but it is 3000 individuals as opposed to a contingent of 3000.

(I feel the need to be precise here since the subject of Roman and Greek identity regularly pops up in the comments, and it just doesn't mesh with our OTL modern concepts of national identity.)

@Basileus444 can we get an updated map of the world? i'm kinda curious to see who has what

I know maps are very useful, but I don't like making them. If someone would be willing to make an updated version of the 1635 map (DracoLazarus made that one) that would be great, but I don't have the patience or inclination to make sure that I've precisely outlined the borders of the Duchy of Berg, for example.

I know that's not helpful, but that's where I am.

* * *

The lands of Germany (and neighbors), 1652-1655:​

Despite the presence of the Dauphin, it is the northern Triune offensive that draws the most attention. While Elizabeth may have started this new phase with her appeal to the Russians, Leopold has become the face of German resistance to Henri. Furthermore, given that Leopold owes his position as Duke of Saxony entirely to Henri’s generosity, there is a personal element in Henri’s desire to crush the Habsburg.

Due to supply considerations rather than symbolism, Orleans invades Saxony via the same route as Philip Sigismund has, and is so challenged at the same place, the field of Breitenfeld. Yet Second Breitenfeld is quite a different affair from the First.

For starters, it is at least three times larger. Numbers vary, but also Leopold has at least a 3 to 2 advantage in numbers, although these are unbloodied recruits drawn from the uprisings. That dictates Saxon tactics, organized by Andreas Hofer but clearly copied from Raven practices.

The Triunes seem surprised by the sheer number of opposing forces. Initial scout reports had been accurate but not believed, the Duc calculating that an army that size cannot be sustainably maintained. German columns hurl themselves at the Triune lines, moving fast under galling Triune gunfire, not returning it but closing as fast as they can into melee. Casualties are horrific, but enough columns make it, and where they do their concentration and weight means they invariably break through the Triune line. With his gunline fragmenting, the Duc orders a retreat, ceding the field. Again, Breitenfeld marks a German victory.

But at a heavy cost. Unusually, the victor’s casualties are over double that of the vanquished. A large reason for that was the lack of any effective follow-up after the Triune line was breached. Too mauled, disorganized, and green, the columns were unable to swivel about and encircle the fragmented Triune line after the Germans had broken them, so the Triunes, remaining disciplined and controlled, simply retire. One Triune regiment, forming square, beats off at least six separate assaults as it moves off the field. The success of the retreat is clearly illustrated by the fact that they lose only one cannon, which is spiked before it is abandoned.

Orleans retreats to reconsider his strategy. Leopold gathers up more recruits to make up his losses and pursues. As the southern army rots in the mud and excrement around Munich, the Duc and Duke clash four more times in massive field battles. Each one plays out the same. The Triunes are forced to retreat westward, but always in good order and after inflicting massive casualties on the Germans. As a saying soon goes: the Duc can be moved, but only after ten thousand casualties.

The sheer intensity and carnage are not necessarily intentional, but inevitable given the constraints. Leopold’s advantage is in numbers, but to assemble an army big enough to defeat the Triunes is to assemble an army too big to be fed. It has to be used immediately before it wastes away, hence the extremely aggressive tactics. While the lack of supply forces immediate battle, the green nature of most of his soldiers means that subtle and sophisticated tactics on the field are too much to ask, hence the reliance on compact columns (cohesion is easier to maintain in such a mass as opposed to a thin gun line) and frontal attacks. That pattern thus created is also a self-perpetuating one. The heavy losses mean that few soldiers survive long enough to gain more experience and skill which would allow more options, requiring a continuation of the mass and highly-offensive army.

The system truly breaks down in 1653. To counter German tactics, Orleans and Nemours both emphasize more firepower, especially field artillery, which is murderously effectively against attacking columns. But artillery trains require much in the way of draft animals which impose a massive logistical burden; horses require lots of fodder, feed, and water. And these more effective Triune armies means that Leopold needs even larger masses of infantry to compensate.

The strain is too much, and logistical systems on both sides break under the effort. Strategy is reduced mainly to provisioning armies, with forces moving not to where they can damage the enemy’s political or military center, but simply to relatively unravaged districts that might sustain the host for another month or two.

The most absurd example of this comes in 1654. After intense fighting has burned and eaten out much of central Germany, the combat shifts south to more edible regions. Bavaria at least is involved in the fighting but hunger doesn’t care much about political lines. Both armies, needing to feed their hosts somehow, crash into western Austrian territory, devouring the landscape. An absolutely ballistic Stephen rallies an army to halt them from marching eastward (and has much more success this time around as even the most dovish Bohemian nobles are outraged).

Blocked that way, now the alarm is that the combatants may march south across the Alps. The Lombards marshal an army of their own to guard the Brenner Pass, reinforced by Tuscan and Romagnol contingents. The Sicilians also send 6000 troops of their own to help, although before they get there the Triune and German forces both turn back. [1] The march back, over districts already wracked and ruined, is a disaster, with both sides losing as much as 20% from disease, desertion, starvation, and vengeful peasants. [2] Stephen stands down his army afterward, with no follow-up other than a series of curses on both houses.

But there is a strategic trend in play. While the fighting wobbles back and forth, overall the Triunes and their German allies are gradually pushed west toward the Rhine. When the Triunes win, they lack the logistics to effectively use those victories. The large artillery trains and guerrilla attacks on supply wagons (some nationalistically or religiously motivated, some by revenge, and some by hunger), combined with the increasing wastage of the German countryside and people, make even a repeat of the attempted Munich siege impossible.

Death tolls for the Triune soldiers are heavy. By 1656 it is said, with some but not much exaggeration, that there is not a noble family in France who has not lost some family member serving as an officer.

Yet their losses are as nothing compared to German casualties. Even though the strategic trend is tilting toward Leopold and Elizabeth, the blood count is incredible. Some observers, who were veterans of fighting in Bulgaria as well as in Germany and so are in a position to know, claim that the Triunes have killed more Germans on the battlefield in five months than the Romans did in five years. Much of that is due to the intensity of the fighting and the crude frontal tactics of Leopold, but even so it testifies to the tenacious skill of the Triune forces. The Germans can shove the Triunes backwards, but cannot break them, and their losses are too high, even in victory, to make decisive use of their successes.

Leopold, in a spirit of youthful optimism when the German uprising was in fresh flower, had dreamed of pushing all the way to the Rhine and even beyond, back to the pre-war border. Elizabeth remarks in 1655 that at this rate, by the time Leopold reached Verdun, Germany would be inhabited mainly by carrion eaters and not much else.

These high losses, and the rather limited progress for which this blood has paid, sharply curtail popular enthusiasm that had been so high earlier in the decade. The large masses are getting harder to sustain and refill, while peasant anger is rising against princely authorities and the ever-increasing demands for blood and grain. On the bright side from the perspective of many princes, the bloody carnage has killed off many of the most ambitious and aggressive peasants who might’ve caused trouble otherwise. Still, the situation clearly cannot endure for long.

Yet the suffering of Germans is even more lopsided than the above suggests, since those are military comparisons. Triune losses are entirely on foreign soil, among soldiers and their camp followers. There are no cavalry columns roaming the Loire valley, plundering villages, burning what they cannot take, and raping the villagers too slow to get away. There are many in Germany.

The level of destruction and death is impossibly to quantify and highly variable. Certain areas such as northwest Germany along the North Sea coast see very little fighting. In areas along the Lotharingian border where a lively trade in cattle and related products thrive, one might not realize a war is going on. Yet at the same time, a Thuringian priest records that in 1650, he had 542 parishioners. In 1660, he has 97.

These are numbers though. Statistics are bland, and large numbers are not easily conceptualized. But behind each number was a someone, a person. Those 445 Thuringians that vanished between 1650 and 1660 were 445 individuals. They had names and hopes and dreams and fears, loves and hates and annoyances and quirks, perhaps an ugly face and an aversion to the color green, but an infectious laugh and an always-comforting embrace. History cannot know these, but they existed.

The high hopes of 1651 had failed by 1655; too much had been lost, on all sides, for those to endure. For this cannot endure. The struggle must end. The price for total victory is just too high. But until that blessed peace, any peace, comes, the suffering must continue.

History cannot know the voices of most of the dead, on both sides. But that makes it even more necessary to let those who few speak who can. The bells had rung for Vespers in 1651, but the spirit four years later is embodied by the final words Heinrich said to his wife Angela before he was conscripted. “Farewell my love. We will meet again, under the ground.” [3]

[1] Although this operation shows all the major Italian states acting in concert, little should be made of it. The various Italians may agree that keeping hairy and hungry trans-alpine barbarians out is a good idea but agree on very little else.

[2] Most of the enlarged German armies come from peasant stock, but now they have guns and are starving. In such conditions, former sympathies and empathies find it difficult to survive.

[3] OTL quote, although different context. See Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. The need to remember that behind the numbers, the statistics, were people, individual people, was from the conclusion of this work.

 

[Basileus444]

What about Odysseus? Marching all the way to Bengal is an unmatched feat, and Panipat has sheer volume in the size of the victory.

He might make the list. That's an impressive feat. But he did that with Iskandar the Younger, and when he was sole commander, that was the still impressive but bloody slugging match in Mesopotamia. So, there are also counterarguments to including him in a top 10.

* * *

The lands of Germany (and neighbors)-The Arrival of Peace, part 1:​

By the end of 1655, all parties involved want peace, and yet peace is hard to find. There are too many players involved, each with their ideal version of peace. Some might want to wait and see if events will improve their bargaining position, but if that happens, their rivals then feel the exact same urge for the exact same reason. Thus, while negotiations begin in earnest in the winter of 1655-56, it is not until 1658 that the guns finally, mercifully, fall silent.

Roman historiography varies in what it calls their conflict, the Great Latin War, Theodor’s War, or the War of the Roman Succession. Latin historians do not have such division; there is only the War of the Roman Succession. But they group the entire conflict from 1631 to 1658 as one war, with the 1631-34 period as a very distinct phase with the fighting. The nature of the war radically alters in 1635 with the Triune invasion of the Rhineland and Lotharingia, but the war after 1635 makes absolutely no sense without including 1631-34. Roman historians, for their part, usually stop paying attention after 1635, when their involvement ends.

And it truly ends there. The Romans are a great power and recognized as such, but for such a titanic conflict they are, after 1635, extremely conspicuous by their absence. The attendance at the peace talks in Cologne [1] are massive in scope. The German princes and their representatives are there in abundance, as are the Triunes, Lotharingians, Poles, and Hungarians. Due to the associated conflict in the Baltic, the Russians, Prussians, and Scandinavians are present with their own peace talks. The Spanish, Arletians, Bernese, and Lombards are also here, invited as observers. It is argued that they have an interest and should be involved in the peace-making process, to ensure that the result is acceptable to them as well and that they will support the peace and not try to destabilize it after the fact. The biggest player in Europe not represented is Rhomania, with the next biggest being Sicily. After that it is the likes of the Aragonese, Tuscans, Serbians, and Vlachs.

The Romans are not invited. None of the major combatants think Constantinople has any relevant involvement or interest, and the Germans in particular have no desire to see Romans getting mixed up in their business. The Roman massacres such as the Field of Knives, Dachau, and Ulm have not been forgotten. The White Palace doesn’t press the issue. (Whether or not that would have made a difference is unknown.) Athena at this stage is highly distracted by internal matters and any major diplomacy with Latins would be fraught considering war hawk agitation. She just doesn’t see enough profit in it to justify the pain.

Fighting continues throughout 1656 and 1657 as the negotiations bicker and dicker, but despite brief tactical triumphs going to both sides at different points, these mainly just serve to increase the body count even higher. One incident of note though is the young but now battle-tested Louis rallying successfully a wavering gun-line with possibly his most famous quote: “Stand, men! We are Frenchmen! Fools we may sometimes be, but cowards, never.”

The war in the Baltic had been a parallel conflict to that in Germany, but there had been connections. The most obvious had been the Russian expeditionary force to distract the Triunes in the Holy Roman Empire, but Scandinavian intransigence had also been heavily based on the hope of aid from Henri. Given the tide of battle in Germany, that intransigence has failed.

Notably, one of the breaking points had been a shift in Russian strategy. Moscow had been secretly communicating with Finnish nobility, promising the Finns entry into the federal Russian Empire as a “free and equal principality, with all the rights and privileges thereto”. Essentially, Finland would join as another Novgorod or Scythia. This was an attractive prospect, which held out the good possibility for more Finnish say in their broader state than they currently held in the Scandinavian realm. The Empire of All the North was overwhelmingly a Danish-Swedish affair, with the Finns, Norwegians, and Scots feeling rather neglected and ignored. Faced with this threat, Malmo wanted the war to end before the Finns got a chance to act on said proposal.

With the admittedly large exception of the existence of the Prussian state, the Treaty of Cologne marks the destruction of the legacy of the Great Northern War. Reval is ceded to Prussia and St. Petersburg to the Russians, who also take the Vyborg district of Finland adjacent to St. Petersburg. Furthermore, both Prussian and Russian merchant vessels will only have to pay half of the typical Sound Tolls.

This is a sharp blow to the Scandinavians, whose previous near-monopoly of Baltic trade and all those custom duties of just a few decades earlier now lies completely in ruins. There is some compensation within the Holy Roman Empire though. In the articles of the Treaty of Cologne relating to land redistribution, the Principalities of Schleswig-Holstein, formerly Wittelsbach lands wrested from the Danes, are ceded to Peter II, who rules them through personal union with all his other titles.

That is far from the only change in the borders in the Holy Roman Empire and the bulk of the negotiations and treaty articles are focused on these. Most of the changes, while significant to the parties involved at the time, are not significant on the historical stage, but there are some exceptions. One of these is a noticeable simplification and consolidation of the Holy Roman Empire’s political structure. In 1630 there were over three hundred Imperial principalities. In 1660 there are seventy-one.

Some of the disappearances come from west of the Rhine, where all former lands of the Holy Roman Empire are ceded to Henri. This cession, while painful, is unsurprising. More disappearances come from the eastern bank, where most of the contentions that drag out the negotiations for years take place.

In the end, Henri II walks away from the peace conference with practically all of what he wanted. He wanted subservient buffer states on the east bank to protect his west bank conquests. Given the extent of Leopold’s losses, the Saxon Duke is unable to press all the way to the great river as he had hoped. But his show of strength over the past several years means that Leopold’s legitimacy can survive agreeing to such cessions, even though Philip Sigismund’s would not have in making even the exact same concessions. Leopold cannot be mistaken for a Triune stooge.

Most of the east bank of the Rhine is consolidated into several medium-sized states; Henri wants buffer states with some heft. In the north is the rump kingdom of Lotharingia, whose status is unchanged from its own peace agreement with Henri years earlier. Proceeding south are the Duchy of Cleves, the Duchy of Berg, the Archbishopric of Trier, the Principality of Nassau (shifted westward, losing its eastern territories), and finally the Duchy of Baden, the largest of these.

All of these are Triune vassals, but are also recognized as Imperial principalities, with representation and rights in Imperial organizations, in much the same way as Peter II of Scandinavia is an Imperial prince by virtue of being Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. This is in contrast to lands west of the river, which are by treaty considered outside of Imperial law and organization.

The exceptions to this are the Archbishoprics of Cologne and Trier. Both remain as Imperial states and are not Triune vassals. As two of the Imperial electors, they are too significant to be allowed to be humiliated such by the Triunes. But both suffer massive territorial losses. The clerics lose all their holdings west of the river, something like 95% of their pre-war territories. They get some lands east of the river to make up for this, but even so, the archbishops’ portfolio drops around three-quarters in value. The two clerical states make for some chinks in Henri’s buffer zone, but Henri is willing to make these concessions, necessary to conclude the war.

The new Duke of Baden is Philip Sigismund. Henri, Leopold, and Elizabeth can all agree in throwing him under the bus, and the Guelph loses his ancestral lands in central Germany, which are largely parceled out as compensation to the various dispossessed Rhineland princes. But he is given Baden as compensation.

Philip Sigismund also loses his Imperial title. As part of the negotiations, the Imperial electors all meet and formally strip him of the title, electing Leopold of Saxony as his successor. This promotion, approved by Henri, makes Leopold both willing and able to make all the previously mentioned Rhineland concessions which Henri required.

Elizabeth agrees to this, as she secures what is most important to her. The Duchies of Bavaria and Wurttemberg are recognized as the rightful possessions of her son, Karl Manfred, who finally returns to Germany shortly after the announcement of peace, accompanied by his new wife, the Princess Yevgenia, the youngest daughter of the Russian Tsar Basil I. It is a sharp fall in Wittelsbach fortunes as compared to the beginning of the war but compared to the threat of extinction that had loomed during the middle of the war, Elizabeth is satisfied. The future is uncertain. A Habsburg may be Emperor now, but the Wittelsbachs had once just been Dukes of Bavaria. What was may come again. But for now, survival and peace are needed.

Karl Manfred also gets an unplanned bonus. As part of the reshuffling of the Rhineland, the Palatinate ends up being destroyed in all the land-trading. The Palatine Wittelsbachs who’d ruled the territory had gone extinct during all the fighting, with Karl Manfred being the closest heir. However, a Bavaria-Wurttemberg-Palatinate inheritance would create a large south German Wittelsbach power bloc that neither Leopold nor Henri want, and so the Palatinate was dissected instead. The electoral title is transferred to Bavaria as a sweetener to make up for this.

There are some more clauses in the treaty relating to Imperial security. Henri, in order to ensure there is no diplomatic backlash against a maneuver he is currently enacting, agrees to two noticeable concessions. Firstly, the borders between his east-bank vassals and the rest of the Holy Roman Empire are guaranteed by the Russians. If the Triunes march east beyond what they have gained here, the Russians will be treaty-bound to aid the Germans in their defense.

Exactly why the Russians agree to this is somewhat unclear, with two possible motives. One is the simple matter of prestige. It is a solid indicator that the Russians are back as a major European power. The other is that this gives Moscow an Imperial connection, which may prove useful in flanking the Scandinavians in future Baltic wars, rather than slugging it out in the Finnish borderlands.

Meanwhile, the border between the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary is also guaranteed, this time by the Triunes. While Stephen’s territories outside the Empire are not covered, in the event that a Roman attack breaches the Imperial frontier from the east, the Triunes will be treaty-obligated to march to Germany’s defense. (Athena does not protest when she hears this, astutely observing that it would only be taken as Roman bad faith and proving the necessity of the clause. One only protests a ‘no invasion’ rule if one intends to invade, she reasons.)

Leopold wants these guarantees to help his new Imperial credentials. His first acts as Emperor have been to sign away significant chunks of the Empire and so he needs to do something to show that he is taking the matter of Imperial security seriously. By these guarantees, he shows that he is working to protect the Germans against their two most recent threats, the Triunes and the Greeks. (The Russians have an extremely good reputation in Germany at the time and are not in the least viewed as a danger.)

In exchange for accepting these requirements, Henri gets the approval for a diplomatic coup of his own. The Dauphin Louis is to marry the twelve-year-old Princess Joanna, currently the only child of King Leo II of Arles. Leo is just thirty-three years old in 1658 but he suffers from occasional bouts of malaria, having contracted the disease while a teenager.

Furthermore, Queen Eleonora’s first childbirth with Joanna had been a very difficult one and given the years since Joanna’s birth have not been followed by any other pregnancy, there are fears that the complications made her incapable of giving birth again. Despite these concerns, Leo remains adamantly devoted to his wife, refusing to divorce her. Unlike possibly every other male monarch in Christendom at the time, except for Henri II, Leo II even refuses to take a mistress.

Thus, there is a very real possibility that when Leo II dies, Joanna will be his heir, giving Louis a very strong claim to the Arletian kingship. There is the matter of Salic law not allowing inheritance to go through the female, but the Plantagenet claim to the kingship of France is based on ignoring that legal quibble.

The Spanish protest the match, but they are isolated. That is why Henri decided to bring this matter up at Cologne, even though really it has nothing to do with the conflict, not even in a tangential way as had the Scandinavian-Russian disputes. Henri already has Arletian support, as the pro-Triune faction there is dominant. The Germans, Hungarians, and Russians all are not willing to speak against the match. It is not viewed as a big concern to them, and moreover Henri makes it clear that their support for this marriage is required for him to make the concessions regarding Imperial frontiers that the Germans, Hungarians, and Russians view as big concerns. The Sicilians and Romans, for the same reasons as the Spanish, would oppose the match, but they are not at Cologne.

In the autumn of 1658, Leopold is crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Cologne Cathedral by his uncle the Pope. Rome, for obvious reasons, was not available. It is a stunning ceremony, with dignitaries and notables from Lisbon to Moscow. Two weeks later it is followed by another stunning ceremony, the marriage of Louis and Joanna, with a similar exalted guest list. The ceremony is also officiated by the Pope. Henri wanted that, to make sure the marriage carries as much legitimacy as possible in the eyes of Arletian Catholics. But to English Puritans, concerned about the laxity of Bohmanism south of the Channel, it is another, and disturbingly prominent, sign of the religious degeneracy of the French.

[1] A long time ago, I made a reference to these, but I referred to them as Westphalian in a nod to OTL at the time. When I wrote that, I had only a vague idea of the details and hadn’t nailed down a location. So, I am engaging in a slight ret-con here, but Cologne feels like a better fit after looking at events.

 

[Basileus444]

Found the source:
Notitiae Episcopatuum (in German and Greek)

Thank you.

The lands of Germany (and neighbors)-The Arrival of Peace, part 2:​

The Treaty of Cologne of 1658 is often presented as a pivotal moment in European diplomatic and political history, and the treaty and the war that led to it profoundly shaped much of Europe, albeit in diverse and regional ways.

The new unified Russian state came out quite well, brimming with prestige. The war had not been as short as expected, but it had been victorious and, for them, rather cheap. The conflict, both in Germany and in the Baltic, brought Russians from across all the principalities and engaged them in a common project. The humiliation of the Great Northern War had been largely erased and Russia now stood proud as a major influential power. The Russian presence at Cologne, combined with the Roman absence, also marks a shift whereby the Russians start to take precedence in Latin Europe as the premier Orthodox power instead of the Romans.

The Romans are still politically significant in Europe, but their absence at Cologne does mark a marginalization. However, as they loom less large politically, their cultural cachet grows. Greek had been one of the international languages of diplomacy at the negotiations and the second half of the 1600s sees increased interest in Greek culture, not just ancient but also ‘Byzantine’.

In the 1680s, there will be a popular trilogy of plays on Leo III the Isaurian. The first two, on his life as a frontier general and accession to the throne, and then on his defense of Constantinople in 717-18, likely would’ve gone over well with Roman audiences. The third, which presents him as an enlightened religious reformer dealing with closed-minded and corrupt priests who use fraudulent miracles and pretty icons to gull gullible laity, probably would not. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that someone had used foreign history to critique their contemporary scene, but it is still noteworthy that this instance was borrowing from medieval Roman history.

It must be stressed that the Treaty of Cologne marks the beginning of these shifts and would not become truly noticeable until the end of the century. At the Treaty, Rhomania still loomed quite large and menacing, as evidenced by the clause guaranteeing the Holy Roman Empire’s frontier at Austria. Furthermore, the interest in Byzantine history was mostly a French, Spanish, and Scandinavian phenomenon and was noticeably absent in most of the Holy Roman Empire.

Scandinavia came out battered and bruised. The defeats exacerbated the underlying issue of the Empire of All the North, the tension between the Danish-Swedish center and the Scottish-Norwegian-Finnish periphery. The attempted Russian wooing of the Finns had been a serious threat and could’ve borne significant fruit had it been given more time.

The regions most affected by the conflict were, of course, the Triple Monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire. When Henri II departed Cologne, he had accomplished practically all he had desired when he formed his cynical alliance with Theodor nearly thirty years earlier. He had avenged the humiliation of the Second Rhine War, when his father’s armies had been crushed by Wittelsbach forces which included a much younger Blucher. He had extended the frontiers of France to the great Rhine itself, conquering some of the richest and most developed territories in all of Christendom. And these conquests were mostly buffered by client states on the other side of the river. Any Imperial counterattack would find it tough going.

Yet the cost had been high, much higher than Henri had expected. Whether he would’ve made the decisions he had if he’d known the true cost is unknown, but he had made them. The French in particular had been squeezed in comparison to the English to pay and feed the war, because Le Havre du Roi found it easier to squeeze the French. The one silver lining was that except for coastal raids from Lotharingian ships early in the conflict, the war had not been fought on pre-war Triune soil.

The key issue affecting the Triple Monarchy, like that of the Empire of All the North, had not been created by the war. This was the constant tension between the English and French components. At the beginning of the war, there were signs that it might be lessening, with the use of French becoming more common at least in the upper and middle classes of southern England, and some glimmerings of a shared Anglo-French culture.

By the end of the war, that was not the case. There was a growing religious divergence with the increase in Puritanism in English Bohmanism, and even while many Englishmen were not fully Puritan themselves, in general English religiosity was more distinct from French and Irish practices which were closer to Catholicism. (Despite this, Puritan claims that Frenchmen were crypto-Catholics were almost all false.)

The religious divergence paralleled a cultural one, as this period also saw the beginning of the English Renaissance. The increase in French cultural influence as well as French cultural chauvinism, as evidenced by Louis’ tutors, sparked an English backlash. English poets and playwrights and artists celebrated what they viewed as a unique English heritage, in deliberate contrast to the French. A common theme was the Ninety Years War, when doughty Englishmen had humbled and conquered the might of France, with French vanity and decadence and numbers no match for English valor.

These elements were independent of the war; they were already stirring when Vauban marched with Theodor down the Danube. However, the war exacerbated and encouraged those trends as the war effort put increased strain on both English and French society. The English resented the demands placed on them, seeing no benefit to them. The benefit was supposed to be Bengal, but that had been lost and Henri had done nothing as he was too busy in the Rhineland. Meanwhile, the French were resentful because they viewed the English as largely responsible for the German rebellions that had cost so much French blood, and shirking their burden in the war effort. The war had not created the fire, but it certainly fed the flames.

Henri had not helped the situation either. As the war continued and became more expensive, he had leaned more and more on France. This was understandable by itself. France could supply more resources; there were seven Frenchmen for every two Englishmen, and it was easier to get conscripts and taxes and supplies out of them. But while Henri made more demands on the French, he also paid more attention to their interests and concerns. Military commissions, trade concession, tax farming contracts, government positions, and the like became more and more the purview of Frenchmen, even in areas that were not exclusively French such as overseas trade and colonialism. Henri might have married Louis to an English noblewoman, which might’ve helped win over English grandees who were being attracted by the English Renaissance, but instead he made the match with Arles.

An uglier aspect of the English Renaissance was a renewed denigration of the Irish, which the English had a centuries-old tradition of despising as savages. A common strain in nationalist thought the world over is to praise one’s own group by tearing down others designated as the Other. Much English rhetoric against the Irish was extremely similar to that used against Terranovan natives, of primitive savages who didn’t use their land properly and so could be justly dispossessed of said land. English emigration to Ireland at this time was literally an order of magnitude higher than to the New World at the time, but the hunger for land and contempt for the claims of the locals was the same.

Many Irish naturally protested at the loss of land, often through legal or financial chicanery. This was the Little Ice Age and a bad time for on-the-margin agriculturists, which gave the better-capitalized English many opportunities to take advantage of Irish bad luck. And the English-dominated law courts in Dublin could be reliably counted upon to favor English claims, even if the law itself didn’t.

So, the Irish appealed to Henri, those that could anyway. And here they got a sympathetic response. From Henri’s point-of-view, the Irish had not nearly been as difficult as the English and had provided many good soldiers for the war who had, importantly, not been in the habit of enraging the locals by desecrating their holy sites. This infuriated many of the English involved in this practice, who felt that if they couldn’t have Bengal, they should at least have Ireland. This was ‘tyrannical interference in the rights of private property and of contract’.

Henri was a strong monarch, the strongest of his age in Europe. He set his own stamp on his age to a decree no other Christian sovereign could. During his lifetime these tensions would be kept somewhat in check, because no one wanted to take things too far, for to cross Henri and live was not a likely outcome. But he would bequeath them to his son Louis, who because of his staunchly French upbringing and outlook, would be poorly equipped to handle them.

Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire had been sharply changed. On the one hand, it was more consolidated and concentrated, with three-fourths of its constituent members gone, absorbed by various neighbors. The victims were overwhelmingly the various microstates, although there were some larger exceptions. The former lords might have been compensated with property elsewhere to maintain them in fine lifestyle, but mostly they forfeited their sovereignty.

But it was less united. The Wittelsbachs at their height had dominated the Holy Roman Empire, in part because of their massive landholdings that put them far above any prospective peers. Theodor at his accession possessed Bavaria, Austria, Saxony, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and various smaller packets scattered across the Empire. Ottokar of Bohemia was the only other Imperial prince who came even relatively close, and even he was not that close. Theodor could thus fairly easily direct the Holy Roman Empire to a common cause, even if said cause was one that was to Wittelsbach, not Imperial, benefit.

Leopold came nowhere close to such dominance. He just had Saxony. As peers and near-peers he had Stephen with Austria and Bohemia, Karl von Hohenzollern with Brandenburg, and Elizabeth/Karl Manfred with Bavaria and Wurttemberg. He was a First Among Equals in reality, for all of his fancier title. Furthermore, while Elizabeth hadn’t contested the Imperial crown now, the House of Wittelsbach was unlikely to be quiescent on that matter. Foreign involvement in the Holy Roman Empire was now easier too. Aside from the Hungarian-Austrian connection, which was old news, there were now the Scandinavians in Schleswig-Holstein, the Triune buffer states on the Rhine, and also the Russians had a finger in the pie as well. The Holy Roman Empire would, when unified in a common cause, still prove to be extremely formidable, but that unity would be substantially harder to create than had been the case when Theodor took the Imperial crown.

The many Germans who had risen up in hope of betterment of their condition were overall to be disappointed. Many of them had died in the fighting or in connected conditions, which cynically was to the benefit of the princes. Those who survived and returned to their homes might benefit by taking the vacant properties and goods of the dead, which dampened down some of their social discontent.

Yet there were areas that were an exception to this, and the Russians played a key role here. Russian soldiers were mostly peasants and were sympathetic to the plight of German counterparts. Russian officers were overwhelmingly from the middle and upper classes, but were also more sympathetic to the idea of a stronger German peasantry as they were used to that back at home in Russia. That the princes had been so slow to come down on the coalition side meant many Russian officers were not so sympathetic to princely concerns.

In many of the smaller states in southern Germany where the Russian expedition had been active, the Russians had armed and trained peasant levies. Rulers who had been found lax in war contributions had been forced to engage in land redistribution ‘to facilitate the war effort’, and others had been bullied into making political reforms to avoid ‘accidents’. These reforms included the abolition of various dues and duties, primarily corvee, removing landlord-controlled courts, and broadening the franchise to ensure peasant representation in local councils, assemblies, and estates.

None of these were drastic or extreme; the Russian goal here was to make the German states look more like what the Russians were used to back home, where there was still a strong social and economic hierarchy, but where the lower orders had more protection and power. Some of the princes went along with the reforms, recognizing that some of them could be used to strengthen their authority vis-à-vis aristocratic landowners. Others didn’t think so and wanted to push back once the Russians left.

Those who felt that way soon ran into problems. The peasants were armed and knew how to use said arms and were not inclined to return to old ways. Documentary evidence of said old ways was also scarce as the Russians and the German peasants had made sure to burn said documents. These minor princes, because of the small size of their states, didn’t have much in the way of military force and so appealed for outside help.

Their first call was Elizabeth of Bavaria. She was similarly inclined but had been strong enough to keep the Russians from making any adjustments in Wittelsbach lands. However, that had cost her points with the Russians, and even with the marriage alliance of her son to a Russian princess, she did not want to do anything more to endanger the Russian connection. Said Russian connection had proven far too valuable to Wittelsbach fortunes in the past and if the family was to rise again, possibly back to the Imperial crown, they would likely need it.

So, Elizabeth would not help. The next choice would be Emperor Leopold, but Elizabeth blocked that too. The princes asking for assistance were in southern Germany in what could be considered the Wittelsbach sphere-of-influence. She did not want the Habsburgs messing around in the Bavarian backyard and bolstering their authority and prestige at her expense. Thus, Leopold couldn’t intervene either. The adjustments would stand.

It is impossible to say with precision how many died in the course of the war. The area of the Holy Roman Empire in 1630 is estimated to have lost between 10 to 15 percent of its population by 1660 [1], between 2.5 and 4 million. Three million two hundred thousand is the most commonly cited figure, which includes an estimated quarter-million for Triune losses, with half of those dying during the 1650s when the fighting was most intense, and added to the eight hundred thousand estimated dead from the first phase makes for an even four million, over 3% of Europe’s population at the time. [2]

These are big numbers, and the human brain tends to not register such things fully. Instead of tragedies, they become statistics. Let us put it another way. There is a monument in Nuremberg commemorating the rising against the Triunes. One historian calculated that if the dead, all the dead, were mustered in a column four abreast and marched by the monument, it would take fifteen days for the column to pass.

At least the years after Cologne would be easier on the people of the Holy Roman Empire. They were still in the Little Ice Age, but the heavy loss of life reduced population pressure on the land which provided some silver lining. After the Raven Rebellion, the Glorious Uprising, and the war there was little energy for social upheaval and military adventures, so despite some flare ups here and there overall the years after Cologne were socially stable ones for the Holy Roman Empire.

It was a very different story elsewhere.


[1] This is still better than the OTL 30 Years War. The high-end TTL estimates are comparable to the low-end estimates for OTL. The variance is due firstly to the slightly shorter duration of the war and, more significantly, to the varying intensity. Much of the 1630s and 1650s saw high-intensity fighting and destruction, but the 1640s were much less intense. In that respect, think of it as a hybrid between the OTL 30 Years War and 100 Years War.

[2] Comparable proportionally to French losses in WW1.

 

[Basileus444]

Rhomania in the 1650s, part 1-Seeds, Ships, and Stars:​

The period of Roman history from the death of Andreas III to the end of the Army of Suffering has been compared to the 7th century or the late 11th or the early 13th. The analogy is not entirely accurate, as unlike those earlier periods the continuation of the Imperial state as an entity was not seriously jeopardized, at least after the defeat of Theodor. But it is not entirely inaccurate either. The era was a period of considerable suffering and upheaval for the Roman state and society, a fact that can be seen even in the bones of the time. The Romans of this age were shorter than both their forebears and descendants. As a people, they would endure this period, and they would also change.

Throughout the 1640s and 50s, Rhomania was clearly suffering from the effects of the Little Ice Age. In 1650, the Imperial administration listed 174 kephalates in the heartland territories, an increase of three with the addition of northern Mesopotamian lands taken by Odysseus. Previously in the 1600s, in any given year, even a good one, 15-20 kephalates would suffer from a failed harvest. The year 1614 was singled out as an exception because only 13 kephalates were afflicted, a fact officials found remarkable. This was due to the precarious nature of agriculture prior to the developments of modern farming, and most of the Empire’s land was not endowed very well for agriculture.

There were safeguards in place to alleviate the issue. A failed harvest could vary in severity; not all failures were equal. These certainly hit the affected people hard, especially the landless, but the effects could be mitigated. Tax exemptions were one of the most effective. A region that regularly produced a 4:1 crop yield would be rated a failure if the year’s take was 2:1. But the peasantry could potentially live (barely) with that lower yield, if they could direct all of what they reaped into seed corn and feeding their families. But to do so, no surplus would be available, either for taxes or the market. Hence the need for tax exemptions. As for the markets, the shortfall could often be alleviated by imports from other regions, since failed harvests tended to be local. Neighboring kephalates could assist, subject to the limitations of transport technology. And there were grain reserves, maintained for such emergencies, since everyone knew they were a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

So, the system could handle a certain failure rate, but crucially only so much. In 1639, 29 kephalates had failed harvests, and in all of the 1640s and 50s, the lowest failure rate was 35 kephalates, double the average at the beginning of the century. Furthermore, these failures tended to be greater, more likely to recur year after year, and cluster. These factors seriously undermined the safeguards. Repeated failures used up reserves, both private and public, and made it impossible to replenish them. Failed harvests over wider areas made it more difficult to send aid to afflicted regions, a problem especially in inland regions. And the tax exemptions to ameliorate the effects also meant the government was drawing in less revenue, precisely when it needed said revenue to bolster the draining public grain reserves.

Simultaneously, the grain from Scythia, southern Pronsk, and southern Lithuania (typically called Scythian for short, because it was all shipped south from the Principality, but the agricultural area was much larger than the Principality) became less reliable due to erratic weather patterns. Scythian grain also fed Russians to the north, and when shortages meant it was impossible to meet all demands, the concerns of fellow Russians took priority.

To make up for this, recourse was taken to the other two prominent non-heartland sources of foodstuffs, Vlachia and Egypt. Vlachia, by the vagaries of climate, was not usually as badly affected during this period (situations would reverse later in the century). Vlach landlords, in response to increased demands, expanded production via the method available to them, squeezing their peasants even harder. Peasants often had to work 5-6 days a week on their landlord’s holdings, leaving them precious little time to work on their own plots from which their families fed. [1]

Egypt was also having difficulties. The Nile was just beginning to recover from the salinization problems from the now-sealed canal, but the process was not far advanced. In addition, any ice age means that more of Earth’s moisture is locked up in ice caps and glaciers, which leaves less for everything else. With Ethiopia suffering from aridity, Egypt’s Nile floods weakened, with harsh consequences for the harvest.

The Roman government had to prioritize, with anger inevitably coming from those left out. Egyptian grain shipments that in normal times went to Thessaloniki, Smyrna, or Antioch were diverted to Constantinople, which typically was fed by Scythia and Vlachia. From the White Palace’s perspective, it was only logical to prioritize feeding and thereby keeping order in the capital, but it was also only natural that the denizens of those other cities to not be sympathetic with said logic.

Despite the increase of market agriculture in the last century, the market was of little help. It followed money, not need. Poor peasants listened to their children crying from hunger while watching foodstuffs being shipped away to better-capitalized regions that could pay higher prices. Instances of hijacking of food shipments in 1650 were quadruple those of 1610 (a trend matched elsewhere, although statistical evidence is better for Rhomania).

That was the constant background activity, but other things were happening as well. In 1654, there is a massive public ceremony in Constantinople, a great sendoff for the Princess Jahzara, the youngest daughter of Athena (and youngest grandchild of Demetrios III). As she is turning fourteen, she has reached the age when she is to wed the Prince of Texcoco, heir to the throne of Mexico.

The journey across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, in a small mixed Mexican-Roman convoy, is mercifully noneventful, as is the travel into the interior. Before she can go to her new home in Texcoco, she travels to Teotihuacan, which is where the wedding ceremony takes place with nearly 50,000 spectators. It is a new tradition of the Mexican court to have major ceremonies take place in Teotihuacan, an effort to stress older Mesoamerican traditions that predate the Aztecs.

Despite the use of the term ‘Mexico’, the Aztecs, “enemies of the human race”, are utterly despised and hated. ‘Those who did not bow’, the descendants of David and his men, the Texcocans, the Tlaxcallans, and the Tarascans, have a higher social standing in Mexican society partly because they ‘did not bow’. This hatred of the Aztecs has other consequences as it strongly colors the Mexican view of other ‘northern savages’ like the Chichimeca, taken as similar to the early Aztecs prior to their arrival in the Valley of Mexico.

Entirely coincidentally, at the same time as Jahzara and her entourage are crossing the Atlantic, a much bigger population movement is also traversing that ocean. It is the start of the Great Migration, when over a thousand emigrants a year for over a decade moved from England to the New World. The numbers overall don’t seem big, but they are in comparison to the pre-existing mainland Triune colonial populations, which had been around sixty thousand in 1650. With those colonies now more firmly established and out of their precarious beginnings, this marks the start of a stunning population increase.

The emigrants are overwhelmingly English and mostly Puritan, although not all. Dismayed by what they view as the increasing moral corruption and tyranny of church and state at home, they seek to create a new home for themselves in the New World. They are not the first to think so; even many Puritans specifically predate the Great Migration in emigrating to Terranova. But the rapid influx creates even more demand for land, naturally at the expense of the natives. The emigrants see themselves as a New Israel in their own Promised Land, which mean the natives are the Canaanites in this analogy, to be treated as such.

Other ships are in motion elsewhere. The Lotharingians had been highly active merchants throughout the Atlantic world, moving Baltic grain to markets in western Europe, transporting tropical goods from the Caribbean, and supplying the marked English appetite for eels. East of the Cape of Storms though they had been present but as a relatively minor player.

That has changed after their defeat by Henri II. While the kingdom was divided with the southern lands being annexed to France, commercially the split halves still largely cooperated. The defeat freed up many Lotharingian ships and seamen, while now they had access to Triune networks and bases in eastern waters, which whetted ambitions.

The Lotharingians did not start making waves until the 1640s, but they quickly were making big ones. They began concentrating on the waters of the western Indian Ocean, with its trade routes between Africa, Arabia, and India. Exports of ivory, slaves, and horses were valued commodities in India, particularly in the Empire of Vijayanagar, and the Lotharingians began to muscle in on the trade formerly dominated by the Ethiopians, Omani, and to a lesser extent the Spanish.

However, the Lotharingians found the going tough as many of the Indians preferred their older contacts to the new arrivals. But the Lotharingians took advantage of political turmoil; if established Indian rulers wouldn’t cooperate, perhaps new ones would. In 1648, the Lotharingians, in cooperation with an ambitious local ruler, destroyed the Ethiopian trading outpost at Thatta at the mouth of the Indus.

Several more naval victories over Ethiopian and Omani forces followed. The Lotharingian policy with their Ethiopian captives was to sell them into slavery in Indian markets, whether out of religious intolerance, racial bigotry, or desire for profit.

The Romans tried to help their Ethiopian allies, but there was little they could do. The fight with the Spanish had destroyed much of the Roman shipping in the east and the losses had not been made good. Two Roman ships as well as two Egyptian did take part in the defense of Ethiopian Aden against a Lotharingian fleet in 1653, which was a bloody defeat for the attackers.

Despite that success, the Lotharingians largely succeed in destroying Ethiopia as a naval and overseas power over the 1640s to 60s, save for outposts on the Swahili coast. Ethiopian attentions and ambitions thereafter focus on the continent of Africa, where they have remained to this day. Omani maritime strength also declined drastically, although relatively not as much as their Ethiopian allies, and never recovered to its pinnacle in the early 1600s.

Meanwhile, the death of the long-lived Venkata Raya plunges the Empire of Vijayanagar into turmoil, providing more opportunity to the Lotharingians. In 1658, just as Prince Demetrios is settling down in Kabul, a Lotharingian fleet, in cooperation with Deccan rebels, storms and sacks Surat, the oldest Roman holding in India.

The loss of Surat sparks Roman reprisals against Lotharingian merchants in the Mediterranean, but Lotharingian merchants were not heavily active in the eastern Mediterranean where these measures have the most effect. Retaliating against the Lotharingian metropole is impossible due to geography. Simultaneously, efforts to combat the Lotharingians in eastern waters, where they are expanding their activities into Island Asia, are hampered by the lack of ships and credit to fund new ones. Credit from the Imperial heartland has dried up, while Indian moneylenders (the main source for credit in Rhomania-in-the-East anyway) are focusing on the troubles in Vijayanagar.

But not everything everywhere was all strife and suffering. Take the great trade fair of St. Demetrios outside Thessaloniki in 1655, for example. This massive trade fair drew in peoples and goods from all over, with twenty different languages heard along the market stalls. Trade items ranged from ice from Mt. Chortiatis and local wines and cheeses to the finest silks and porcelains from Suzhou and Hangzhou, with designs customized for the Roman market. Even the new pineapple, the ultimate symbol of luxury and decadence, could be bought by those with enough coin.

For those who thronged to the trade fair, there was more than just commerce. The wrestling match between Little Ali (stage name: he was actually a giant Arvanite from Euboea) and Markos the Rhino drew in over thirty thousand spectators, a fifth of Thessaloniki’s normal population. Reportedly over three hundred thousand hyperpyra changed hands in gambling on the outcome. One person who made bank during the fair, although through different activities, was the sex worker known as the Dark Gothic Princess; she made over forty thousand hyperpyra during the week.

If one preferred more lofty activities, while the Dark Gothic Princess was making her money, Konstantinos Meletios was finishing up the construction of his observatory near Argos. Using his self-constructed telescope, he studied the world of Mars. He noted the Hourglass Sea, the first surface feature discovered on that planet, and calculated its size as being 60% that of Earth, with a day-length nearly identical to Earth. Given the tools at his disposal, his results are impressively accurate. After his calculations were complete, he mused about what beings dwelled upon that world, and pondered if while he was looking at them, they were looking at him.


[1] OTL Polish serfs would immediately recognize the system. This was how the early modern Netherlands got all those Baltic grain shipments that fed Dutch cities. See Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism. This is a personal observation, but to me this seems like a good case study to explain the underdevelopment of eastern Europe vis-à-vis western Europe during this period.

 

[Basileus444]

Rhomania in the 1650s, part 2-Slaves, Spain, and Science:​

Exactly how it happened is unclear, but the end result was not. In May 1656 several slaves snuck into Ft Odysseus on the island of St. Giorgios, the largest of Rhomania’s two Caribbean Island possessions. Using cane knives, they killed several soldiers and took control of the fort. Using that as a base and now substantially better armed, the free slaves attacked over twenty plantations on the island, freeing more slaves and killing more Romans.

It was seven months before a small Roman expedition, reinforced by local planters (mostly from neighboring St. David) and provided with vital logistical support by the Spanish on Puerto Rico, retook the fort. Forty-one free slaves taken captive during the battle were executed afterwards, in a variety of brutal and painful methods. A popular favorite was shoving gunpowder into anuses or vaginas and setting off the charges. [1]

Order had been restored and Rhomania in the West quickly resumed its sadistic and profitable existence as a small sugar plantation society. The plantations were rebuilt by aspiring planters with imports of new slaves, and to avoid a repeat tighter and more brutal regulations were imposed on African laborers. From the point of view of the state, the whole affair had been annoying but hardly threatening or important. (The blacks likely would’ve held a different opinion, but nobody asked them.) When the initial news arrived in Constantinople, the Patriarch had been startled to learn that the Empire had any holdings in the Caribbean.

Yet the whole affair had been embarrassing. Slave rebellions or planned uprisings were quite common, but the Ft Odysseus rebellion was by far the most successful Caribbean slave uprising to that time. In terms of numbers involved, even by the 1650s, it was hardly the largest. But no other rebellion had seized and held a ‘major’, by the standards of the colony involved, fort for so long. The tiny nature of Rhomania in the West and difficulty of reinforcement played a key role in the rebels’ success, but that hardly make the Romans look better in the aftermath. Spanish aid had not technically been essential, but without it the Roman response would’ve taken even longer and been substantially more expensive. While this was a niche case due to geography, the entire episode made the Romans look impotent.

An aspect that got many of the war hawks’ hackles up was the support of the Spanish. In their ambitions for western expansion, Italy was the glimmering prize, for historical and economic reasons; Milan would be a much greater prize than Buda. But the chief barrier to such ambitions were Spanish arms. The Lombards or Arletians alone were not a threat, but combined with the Spanish they were a danger. (Ironically, one reason for the high estimation of Spanish arms in Roman eyes is that many Spaniards have served in the Roman army, gaining a reputation for valor and tenacity, particularly as line and light infantry.)

As a result, they oppose any rapprochement with Spain. After the Treaty of Cologne, some propose an alliance with Henri, arguing for supporting Louis’ claim to Arles in exchange for Triune support for a Roman conquest of Italy. Others are outraged by the idea, pointing out that Henri had no quarrel with the Romans when he supported Theodor’s invasion, and that Theodor’s invasion likely wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as it did and did so much damage if not for Vauban and his siege skills.

There is a new Spanish King, Joao I, succeeding his father, Ferdinand, in 1653. Despite some concerns, the transfer of power went smoothly, an important milestone in the history of Spain. That is not to say all is well with Spain. The rigors of the Little Ice Age are biting hard, and the ‘surfeit of young angry men’ in Iberia bears a marked resemblance to that in Rhomania. There is the issue of lingering massive debts from the Andalusi war, plus the losses to the Romans in the east, and now the Lotharingians are pressing hard against what remains of Spanish power, wealth, and influence in those far waters. And now there is the loss of influence in Arles and the worrying prospect of sharing a border with the Triple Monarchy.

Joao is not blind to those issues, and one way he seeks to resolve them is to restore and improve relations with the Romans. His willingness to aid the Romans in the Caribbean was a part of that. Unlike the Dauphin Louis, rather poorly equipped and poorly inclined to deal well with Englishmen, Joao is well prepared for dealing well with Romans. His chief governess as a child, who he adored and as king supports with a hefty pension, was a Sicilian Greek and he speaks Greek with a perfect Messina accent. As part of his education, he was given a thorough tutoring in the history of the Mediterranean and its nations, including Rhomania, and he is fond of the writings of Theodoros II Laskaris, although in Spanish translation.

In 1659, Spanish and Roman ambassadors sign the Treaty of Saluzzo, which had hosted the negotiations as a central and neutral location. This treaty is not significant in diplomatic history or replete with major shifts in land holdings like its near-contemporary the Treaty of Cologne. It is overwhelmingly concerned with commercial matters. In it, the Spanish are granted more and expanded trading facilities throughout much of the Imperial heartland, with the opening of more Spanish consulates and allowing more Catholic clergy to fulfill the spiritual needs of the Spanish community. The Spanish are also given more opportunities to trade in Rhomania-in-the-East, in exchange there for helping to defend the area against growing Lotharingian pressure.

The Romans don’t get similar concessions in Iberia, because they don’t ask for them. For the Romans, the benefit is getting support and defense for colonial holdings in the Caribbean and Island Asia, and expanded trade with Spain. The Romans are hungry for New World products, especially sugar and cocoa, and most of that imported comes from Spanish ships. They want more Spanish, with those goods, to come to them; they are not interested in going to Spain. Rare is the Roman merchant ship that ventures west of Sardinia these days.

The gain for Joao is that the expanded commercial opportunities will please the merchant communities, the source of much of the restiveness in Spanish society, and generate needed revenue. Cooperation with Rhomania in distant waters should also improve relations, making the Romans more likely to support Spanish policy goals in Europe. Joao is disappointed that he wasn’t able to negotiate the return of Malacca at Saluzzo, but he still holds that goal and is hopeful that the possibility will present itself down the line.

There is one way he might’ve gotten Malacca back at this stage, but he is not willing to pay it. As far as Joao is concerned, the Italian settlement as established by the Treaty of Constantinople in 1639 is set in stone and he is not willing to change it. Roman expansionism in Italy is seen as a threat to Spanish security, and on this he will not compromise.

This makes many of the war hawks in Rhomania despise Joao. The new King is aware of this, but is savvier regarding the Roman scene than his father. He knows this is just one element of Roman society that feels this way, and at the moment not the dominant one. But he also knows this is a situation on which he needs to stay informed.

Most of the Treaty of Saluzzo is bland and insignificant to most students of history, but there is one element that stands out. Per normal diplomatic practice, both sides walk away with a copy of the treaty written in their main tongue, in this case Greek and Spanish. In the Greek version, Herakleios III (the official sovereign), is listed as Emperor of the Romans. This is normal. In the Spanish version, Herakleios III, is also listed as Emperor of the Romans. This is not. Normally in the non-Greek version, the title is rendered as something else, usually ‘Emperor of the Greeks’. In the eyes of the Latin West, the only Roman Emperor is the Holy Roman Emperor. But by doing this, the Spanish are formally recognizing Herakleios as Roman Emperor, and not just ‘a’ Roman Emperor, but ‘the’ Roman Emperor. There are no qualifiers in the Spanish text.

There are two reasons for this. The first is simple. Joao, who knows the Romans well, is aware of how significant this matter is in the eyes of the Romans. This acknowledgment costs him nothing materially, but psychologically massively improves Spanish standing in Roman eyes. In terms of his goals in improving Spanish-Roman relations, this is a massive achievement.

The other is somewhat more complicated. Joao is bothered by the elevation of a Habsburg to the office of Holy Roman Emperor. He is used to them as being a significant player in the Bernese League, but no more. This jump in status seems rather presumptuous to him. If it had been his decision, he would’ve preferred Karl Manfred to be the new Emperor.

By itself, that might not have been enough. But Joao is annoyed by Leopold. He is irritated with the Habsburg for not backing him when the Spanish protested the proposed Triune-Arletian match, which as a member of the Bernese League (due to his Habsburg ancestry) Joao feels he should have. That Leopold had justified the lack of backing on the grounds of the lack of Spanish support in Germany only irritated Joao more. Because the Spanish had contributed, in the form of the Army of Observation in 1635. And for that, thousands of Spanish had died, including Joao’s elder half-brother Alfonso, who Joao had adored as a child.

So, for Joao, the clause is both a way to improve relations with the Romans and insult Leopold at the same time, a nice two-for-one deal.

There is no serious diplomatic backlash for this. A Wittelsbach Emperor from 1630 or earlier would’ve been too dangerous a foe to insult like this, but Joao ignores the protests from Leopold. Leopold’s uncle the Pope is someone that Joao takes more seriously, but he politely but firmly informs his Holiness that these are secular diplomatic affairs for which he is responsible, not the Pope. The archbishopric of Toledo, the richest in Iberia, is also vacant, and Joao agrees to approve the Pope’s preferred candidate, which also inclines the Pope not to continue to make an issue of Roman titling.

Another way for the Spanish to improve relations with the court in Constantinople is with special gifts. Joao is aware of the Roman interest in exotic animals, a tradition that really gained force under Demetrios III and has continued under Athena. Frozen wooly mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses have already made their way to Constantinople. Joao adds Galapagos turtles, a baby female gorilla, and Capuchin monkeys to the list.

The descendants of those Galapagos turtles can still be seen in the Imperial gardens today, not many generations removed because of their lifespan. One of them, Socrates, is the oldest known living land vertebrate.

The baby female gorilla causes a stir. She becomes famous for wanting to be held just like a human child, holding her arms up when she wants it, and making sad faces if this is denied. Sadly, the climate in Constantinople does not agree with her and she does not live to adulthood.

The Capuchin monkeys last longer, although not to the extent of the tortoises. In a famous incident a year after their arrival, some drunk young men decide the monkeys would make good target practice and shoot at them, wounding several before they are disarmed. The monkeys gather around their injured comrades, clearly distressed, with some pressing their hands to the wounds to staunch the bleeding while others mash and chew plants to use as poultices for the injuries. Onlookers are shocked by this very-human reaction. [2]

Another animal arrival at this time in Constantinople, although not from Spain, is a pair of aurochs from Poland. Historians believe these might have been the only breeding pair extant at the time of that ancient species, the ancestors of domestic cattle. At the time, there doesn’t appear to have been any concept of extinct species, with many believing that living wooly mammoths and rhinoceroses are out somewhere in the wilds of Siberia, although dinosaur bone discoveries are making some learned Romans to start hypothesizing about the concept.

What is clear is that the Romans are determined to ensure the aurochs survive and reproduce. And somehow, they manage it. Some biologists argue that the ‘new aurochs’ don’t count, since the process involved mixed breeding with Phrygian cattle, needed to increase genetic diversity, but others disagree. And as a result, when one visits the ruins of [Çatalhöyük] and looks out across the landscape, one can see herds of aurochs, almost as it had been there, nine thousand years ago.

The behavior of the Capuchins and the aurochs program, combined with the discovery of dinosaur bones earlier in the century, start to mark a shift in how the Romans view the natural world. The concept of extinct species, alongside the concept of extinct civilizations (an insight fueled by the decipherment of hieroglyphs and cuneiform later in the century), plus the behavior of the Capuchins, blurs the line between humanity and nature. And it opens the possibility of viewing nature not as something static and unchanging, but an evolving and changing world, fluid and alterable, with a history of its own of change and growth and death, just like humanity.

[1] This is largely copied from an OTL slave revolt in the Danish West Indies in 1733. See The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, pgs. 201-02. And while I don’t know if that particular execution method was used in the aftermath of this particular revolt, it is a historical method used against rebels.

[2] Reportedly this was the behavior of Capuchins when wounded by muskets in the 1600s. See Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty.

 

[Basileus444]

Persia under Iskandar the Younger:​

The year 1658 marked the fifteenth year since Iskandar the Younger took the throne of the Ottoman Empire. It was a reign that could’ve started out very badly, with unflattering references to the beginning of Khusrau II’s reign. His brother Ibrahim had been defeated in large part due to Roman arms, and Mesopotamia had been lost. (The shared vassalage and tribute were a far cry from pre-existing Ottoman control.)

Two factors ensured that his rule did not begin under such a potential black cloud of illegitimacy. The first were the provisions for the protection of the hajj under Persian auspices. Due to geography the pilgrims had to move through Roman territory, since sustaining large pilgrim caravans deep in the desert was impossible. But the pilgrims were organized and guarded by Persian soldiers, even while transiting Roman territory. Roman-allied tribesmen were paid to also provide protection against desert raiders, who viewed the slow-moving and often heavily-endowed caravans as lucrative prey. However, the Persian soldiery were the main defense, with the caravan guard always commanded by a senior Ottoman official.

Some Romans had protested at allowing a substantial Persian military force repeated and regular access to Roman border territories, viewing it as a security risk. Political and diplomatic concerns won out though. To have Muslim pilgrimages participating in the hajj being escorted primarily by Christians was an unacceptable humiliation and would’ve been a massive, potentially destabilizing, blow to the Shah’s prestige. Sustaining and protecting the hajj pilgrims, on the other hand, was a massive boon to the Shah’s prestige. For the Romans to threaten or undermine that would’ve been an incredible insult demanding a violent and forceful response. That Iskandar had secured such concessions for the hajj redounded greatly to his credit.

The second was the Panipat campaign. There had been no long-term political benefits such as reestablishing control over the Punjab districts that had been held under Iskandar the Elder and early in Ibrahim’s reign, but Iskandar the Younger had accrued immense amounts of gold and glory. The invasion of northern India had clearly been a joint Persian-Roman affair (although chauvinistic historians on both sides have a long tradition of emphasizing their own and minimizing the other). Iskandar had asserted his own authority as an independent agent on the battlefield and won the loyalty of many military elements in the Ottoman state.

Iskandar, when he took the throne, had many plans for Persia, and due to his high prestige after Panipat is in a good position to implement them. Drawing inspiration from models he had seen in Rhomania, he encourages and subsidizes (in some cases) improved agricultural and industrial projects. Several swamps are drained to provide more cultivable land, roads are built, and the harbor facilities at Gamrun are enlarged. Said harbor facilities and roads help facilitate more commerce and thereby production, with an increase in raw silk, carpet, ceramic, and glass production. None of the increases are noteworthy by modern standards, but by those of the pre-industrial era they are significant.

Another area of growth is in iron production, although here the focus was on military and not economic implications. By 1660 all Persian musketeers had iron ramrods for loading, replacing wooden ramrods that broke more easily. Given that a broken ramrod makes a muzzle-loading firearm useless as a firearm, this is a noticeable improvement. Increased iron production also meant greater provision of iron tools to Persian troops, particularly spades and picks. The Ottoman military tradition, in response to Roman firepower, had emphasized field fortifications (and in siege tended to rely more on tunneling than cannonading) and this strengthened that already formidable ability.

That is not to say all was smooth sailing. Persia, like the rest of the world, is suffering from the effects of the Little Ice Age, with more erratic and extreme weather patterns. Given the lack of water transport options and Persia’s rugged terrain, maintaining control over such vast areas and funneling resources from where they are available to where they are needed is difficult at best. Grain riots and disputes between settled folk and the many pastoralists interspersed throughout the Ottoman domains are common, a constant low-level expression of discontentment and suffering.

However, the low-level rumbling, while insistent and draining, never coalesces into something more destabilizing and explosive, as is the case elsewhere. The same elements that make it difficult for the government to send troops and grain to places also make it hard for disparate dissatisfied elements to cohere. The average Persian, in contrast to her contemporary Roman, is much less informed about and interacts with others less outside her immediate regional sphere. Angry peasants and angry tribal nomads are both angry with the Ottoman government, but also angry with each other, and so cooperation between the two is hard to arrange.

Under a weaker and less responsive monarch, it is quite possible these factors could’ve been overcome. But Iskandar was not such a monarch and was able, through a mixture of carrot and stick policies, to keep the many and inevitable brushfires from flaring into anything larger. The call of Islam might’ve been the one thing that could have overpowered even this constraint, in much the same way the defense of Catholicism was what really rallied most of the German participants in the Glorious Uprising, but for several reasons to be discussed shortly, that never got off the ground, despite the efforts of some to launch it.

Another innovation Iskandar introduces is the printing press which sets up in Hamadan in 1649. Muslims were aware of printing, but up to that point the only presses in the Dar al-Islam had been set up, managed, and patronized by local Jews and Christians. [1] Even though the technology was over two hundred years old after its development in Trebizond in the early 1400s, its adoption in the Muslim world had been delayed by two major factors.

The first was the resistance to using the printing press for producing religious works. In Christendom, religious texts of all kinds, from the Bible to pamphlets to transcribed sermons, made up the bulk of printed material, even if historically these are largely forgotten. Any sort of restriction of this type in Christendom would’ve certainly starved the industry in its cradle, and had done so until now in the Dar al-Islam. The second was cultural. Arabic and Persian writing were prized for their elegant calligraphy, and printed work lacked the class of a beautiful handwritten calligraphy.

Iskandar had no patience for either of these concerns. He had greatly enjoyed the relative cheapness and wide selection of reading material in Rhomania, where the phrase ‘two-book man’ was an insult. The availability of educational material was an obvious benefit for developing the large and often technical infrastructure investment projects Iskandar desired to improve the Ottoman economy.

But he also recognized his limitations. He did not insist that the presses produce religious material; they would only be used to produce secular writings. This was a much smaller market, but with dedicated state support Iskandar was able to get the industry going. This did nothing to resolve the calligraphy issue, but since the goal was to produce educational and technical materials, the lack of elegance here was, if not desirable, at least excusable.

There is the matter of how Iskandar funded all of this. Part of it was from the confiscation of property from Ibrahim loyalists and the injection of loot from India. While much of the former ended up going out again as rewards to Iskandar loyalists or to turn people into said loyalists, much of the latter was invested in these various projects.

Another was an increased availability of credit, in contrast to the contraction in Rhomania. The Persian army in India had partially depended on Indian moneylenders to provision itself, but after returning Iskandar maintained contact. These Indian moneylenders provided one source of financing and were particularly important in funding the expanded facilities at Gamrun. Persian exports of horses to India nearly doubled between 1640 and 1660.

More credit came from Armenians and Jews, with Iskandar encouraging emigration of both groups from Rhomania to Persia during his reign. Relations between Armenians and the Romans had cooled because of disputes over religious landholdings in the Holy Land and over rights at the Holy Sepulcher in recent years, which was some inducement for Armenians to look elsewhere.

However, that factor should not be exaggerated. It did not apply at all to the Jews, for starters. As people of the Book, their rights in Persian society were roughly comparable to their status as “noble heresies” in Rhomania (unsurprisingly, since the Islamic concept had been the inspiration for the Roman), with only some details varying. So, emigration did not result in an improvement in social status. But it did, usually, result in an improvement in economic status. In Rhomania, Armenian and Jewish artisans, merchants, and moneylenders were competing in a large and diverse environment, with many competitors who did not have their social disadvantages. The Ottoman Empire was simply a much more open environment for them.

Armenian and Jewish emigres maintained contact with friends, family, and business partners that remained in Rhomania, which facilitated increased trade between Rhomania and Persia. Commerce flow increases went both ways, with the amount of custom duties for both parties slightly more than doubling between 1645 and 1660, even with a small reduction in the rates negotiated in 1655.

One increased Persian export to Rhomania was alcoholic drinks. The Muslim prohibition against wine is one that is often honored in the breach, with early modern Persia being an exceptional example. Wine was produced in large quantities by both Christians and Muslims, and taxes on its production and sale paid for much of the Ottoman army. Iskandar in 1657 said that if he abolished wine consumption in his realm, he’d lose forty thousand infantry.

Much as in Serbia, Bulgaria, and northern Macedonia, the effects of the Little Ice Age had a serious effect on wine production, with many previously marginal producers unable to sustain vines. Persian producers developed the same solution, although almost certainly independently, growing other types of fruits that would still grow such as plums and turning them into brandies. In the Aegean basin, plum brandy from Serbia and Bulgaria becomes quite popular, while plum brandy from Persia fills a similar niche in Roman Syria and Egypt.

This Persian connection is partially responsible for why Greek-speakers usually call this specific type of plum brandy raki, which is not Greek but Turkish in origin. The most successful brandy producers in Persia were of Turkish origin, and their term ‘raki’ stuck to their product. Its export to Rhomania popularized the term. Furthermore, while raki was made across a large spread throughout the Haemic Peninsula, the best raki was said to come from certain districts in Upper Macedonia. These areas had been heavily settled by Turks transported from Anatolia during the late 1200s by the Laskarid Emperors, and even in the 1600s these districts maintained a strong Turkish flair. Thus, their product was also styled raki, as a mark of quality to distinguish it from other brandies produced elsewhere. (The exotic term also made for a good marketing ploy, even though it might’ve been made just a few dozen kilometers away.) Gradually, the term raki overpowered all other competitors in the Roman lexicon, to the point where today it refers to all plum brandies and not just specific brands as was the case in the mid-1600s.

Iskandar faced opposition in these reforms and changes. Conservative ulema were highly critical of the alcohol production and consumption, were suspicious of the printing press with its Christian origins, and resented the arrival of heathen Armenians and Jews. Iskandar was able to parry this threat for several reasons.

The Shah had strong Islamic credentials for his patronage and protection of the hajj. It was done in cooperation with the Romans, but for most Muslims the key factor was being able to undertake the pilgrimage, and Iskandar had ensured that. Furthermore, with his revenues Iskandar had also endowed many waqfs, Islamic charitable endowments, that provided soup kitchens, hospitals, and madrasas.

With these, Iskandar had won the support of other ulema. They approved of the charitable endowments (and were willing to overlook the wine, largely because they liked to imbibe themselves) and were not against innovations simply because Christians had originated them. They argued that while a Christian was wrong on religious grounds, that didn’t mean a hammer they’d made was a bad hammer.

Opponents of Iskandar were painted as puritan killjoys who were also greedy, resenting the waqf endowments going to the poor and needy rather than themselves. (The latter accusation is true in some cases, and false in others.) With the ulema divided and the counter-message not having deep resonance outside of small circles, there was no broader unifying narrative that might have bound up the localized discontent and turned it into something broader and deeper.

As a result, Persia avoided the level of social upheaval that rocked many other states across the world in the mid-1600s. That is not to say it was good times in Persia. Historians estimate that between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand Persians (5 to 8%) of the population died from famine or disease during this period, beyond what would be considered the usual demographic rates. It is a chilling testament to the age, of this “world of shaking”, that this constituted a brilliant success.

[1] This is following OTL. The earliest Muslim printing presses, in the Ottoman Empire, were nearly three centuries after their development in Germany.

 

[Basileus444]

When I made that oil comment, I was mainly doing it so the Shah could make a Palpatine reference... But one of the more established 'future facts' is modern Rhomania being a pioneer in nuclear and green power sources, initially largely to avoid resource dependence on others for fossil fuels, and later for environmental reasons.

I wonder when we hear back from Leo Kalomeros. Considering he's literally napoleon I'm kinda hyped for when he eventually does something that propels him to that level of legend. How old would he be at this point in the TL anyway

It'll be a little while, but that stuff that gets him to being a big name in the history books is coming up. It's what he does as Admiral that makes him famous; so far, he's just been a junior officer up to Captain. In 1656 he turned 40.

* * *

Rhomania’s General Crisis, part 1-A Matter of Timing:​

Historians sometimes speak of the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, a period of great upheaval and turmoil across Eurasia. Nowadays the General Crisis is typically linked with the Little Ice Age as a crucial, perhaps decisive, contributing factor, but the term predates the rise in environmental history. Other historians criticize the term, noting that wars and rebellions and turmoil are hardly rare phenomenon, and so the period is not really that unique. But even the naysayers do not argue that the mid-1600s were not a period of upheaval.

From the Highlands of Scotland to the Kanto Plain, the middle of the seventeenth century would see popular uprisings shuddering state structures. All of these areas were inflicted, in one way or another and in varying degrees, by the rigors of the Little Ice Age. Whether or not those by themselves would’ve triggered these explosions is hotly debated by scholars, but most agree they were important but not decisive. Even under the much more benevolent climate of the 1550s, it is doubtful Germany could’ve sustained the armies crashing through it during the last phase of the War of the Roman Succession.

As one historian of the period put it, “all explosions were alike in the sense that all were explosions, but each exploded in its own unique way”. Persia did not explode at all, even though the fuel was there, but it smoldered. The Rising of the North in Vijayanagar, in its bid to resurrect the Bahmani Sultanate, would have made absolutely no sense to an angry fishmonger in Naples named Masaniello. The Army of Suffering and the Edo Regime both appealed to a vision of an Emperor, but they imagined quite different Emperors.

Rhomania’s General Crisis is an excellent example of this. The way its crisis played out was profoundly shaped by the contexts of Roman society and the personal decisions Romans made in those contexts, and the ensuing reactions.

Rhomania in 1659 was at a similar state to what the Ottoman Empire would be throughout this whole period, a state of smoldering tension due to climate problems, with frequent flare-ups but nothing big and catching. However, Rhomania in 1659 was not the Ottoman Empire of 1659. There was much greater communication and flow of information between the various regions (even if paltry by latter standards), meaning that the average Roman in, say, Attica, was more likely to hear of grain riots and food shipment hijackings in Pontus than their Persian equivalent. That information might very well inspire that Attica-dweller to partake in similar actions.

Furthermore, with the many printing presses and university-educated men, there was much more articulation of ideas that were not state-approved. Elites who identified with the state apparatus were simply not the only game in town when it came to the dissemination of ideas.

These alternative ideas had greater traction in Rhomania compared to Persia because the former was, to put it one way, more ‘modern’ than the latter. The growth of a market economy with its effects on wider society were significantly more advanced in Rhomania than in Persia. Farmers who raised for the market rather than for subsidence were much more heavily impacted by economic downturns, and there were more of the former in Rhomania.

Producing for the market undermined traditional peasant support mechanisms, where surpluses were feasted out on the neighbors to create ties of obligations for times of need. If the surplus grain went out to market, it couldn’t be gifted to neighbors. Now the money from market sales could be gifted out in an effort to create those ties of obligation, but peasants had no banks or investment opportunities. And in times of food scarcity, food prices went up, meaning that the money would be worth less precisely when it was needed most.

Roman society was thus in a very awkward position when the height of the Little Ice Age struck. The growth of a market economy had destabilized some of the traditional support mechanisms and disoriented people, but since this was all still prior to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolution, there were none of those massive production increases that could’ve made up for the loss of those support mechanisms. Traditional society certainly wasn’t all roses. It had its own inequalities and abuses and famines, but at least they were familiar. Now there were new inequalities and abuses, and there were still famines.

None of this was especially unique in kind in Rhomania, although perhaps in degree. But while the Roman state faced this pressure from below, there was also a threat from within, with a dissident element within the broader elite of Roman society. These were the war hawks.

By the end of the 1650s, they were getting more and more frustrated. The cession of Malta to Sicily and the concessions to Spain in the Treaty of Saluzzo bothered them. The end of war in Germany made their ideas for expansionism in Europe more dangerous. They felt that opportunities were being squandered.

Some of the war hawks’ ardor had cooled over the decade as the rigors of the Little Ice Age hit. Given agricultural difficulties, engaging in foreign adventures seemed like a bad idea. With this argument, some acolytes from the earlier 1650s began to fall away. Time had also helped to heal old wounds; it was now over twenty years since the Roman phase of the great war had ended, so for some these issues no longer mattered as much.

But this did not apply to all, and in the manner of these things, the loss of some acolytes tended to make those who remained more determined in their belief. The remaining war hawks acknowledged that material factors made foreign wars more difficult, but that was immaterial. The foreign wars were necessary. The Romans had been snubbed by not being invited to Cologne; it was clear the Latins did not respect or fear them. It was required to change their attitudes. The mutilated victory, as they viewed the end of the Roman phase of the War of the Roman Succession, was not enough.

Many also argued that renewed war with the Latins was inevitable. Based on Latin success in the last war, bigger buffer zones were needed. Now the better time to secure those buffer zones would’ve been 5-10 years earlier when the Latins were smashing each other to pieces in Germany. But the next best time would be now, when the Latins were only starting to recover from their bloodletting. Since war was inevitable, better sooner rather than later.

An addendum to this argument asserted that a smaller war now might actually nullify the inevitability of a bigger war. A victorious smaller war now, if it was successful enough, might elevate Roman prestige and military reputation enough to scare off the Latins. But Thessaloniki had not been enough per this argument.

To be fair to the war hawks, Roman historiography even at this time pointed to a long history of Latin aggressions against the Empire, going back at least to the Normans in the mid-eleventh century. Clearly the Romans did need to guard their western borders well. The flaw was that their worldview presented the Latins as a monolithic bloc, constantly and implacably hostile to the Romans. This was not the case. The Romans had suffered from Latin aggression in the past, but the motivations and contexts of Norman, Venetian, and Theodor’s attacks had all been quite different from each other, even if all of them had been Latins in the Roman terminology.

This flaw was pointed out at the time by opponents of the war hawks. Most war hawks took this at first to be a sign of naivete, even though the actions of Joao I regarding Roman Imperial titling clearly illustrated that Latins did not all think alike when it came to Romans. But as they grew more urgent and feeling that time was not on their side, many war hawks viewed such counter-arguments as cowardly, perhaps even treacherous. If the Imperial glory and prestige was to be revived as they felt it must be for imperial survival, those cowards and traitors needed to be removed.

The Ottomans occupied an ambivalent state in war hawk mentalities. There was much less rancor with the situation in the east than in the west, but there were concerns of a Persian spoiler. The War of the Roman Succession had been made appreciably harder for the Romans because of Ibrahim’s assault on Syria. A Roman campaign in Europe would have much better chances if there were no distractions in Asia. Persia had been left too strong and would need to be neutered. Here too the feeling was that time was not on the war hawks’ side, as Iskandar was clearly doing too good of a job as Shahanshah. Every year that passed, it would be harder to force the Persians to submit to the castration.

The use of the terms ‘neuter’ and ‘castration’ are deliberate. Much war hawk rhetoric had a highly masculine component. There were concerns over the Latins viewing the Romans as effeminate, which encouraged Latin assaults on Rhomania. (There was much historical evidence for this.) Thus, Romans needed to show manly vigor and prowess, with some war hawks making far too many references to the size of cannons. That it was a woman, Athena, who blocked them and pursued a path of peace and diplomacy, only encouraged this mentality.

Initially, the war hawks had hoped and expected that when Herakleios III came of age, he would take power from Athena, and he would be much more sympathetic and supportive of their goals. But on December 12, 1658, he had turned twenty-six years old and showed no signs of asserting his authority. Athena, meanwhile, was a healthy forty-two-year-old who showed no signs of going anywhere.

On February 9, 1659, Athena is returning to the White Palace from the theater, a regular practice of hers. Her carriage is forced to stop because the road up ahead was blocked; a cart had overturned and spilled its contents, barrels of pickles, all over the street, blocking it. Her cavalry escort moves ahead to help clear the obstacle while Athena’s carriage waited. The carriage windows are covered, to help retain heat, but the only occupants are Athena, seated on the right, and Alexeia Kukuritzia, one of those women who’d dressed up as men to fight in the War of the Roman Succession and who had made Athena’s acquaintance during the Siege of Thessaloniki, entering her service after the war, sitting next to Athena.

A man emerges from the crowd, pulls out a wheel-lock kyzikos from under his coat, and fires at the footman still at the right door of the carriage, shattering the man’s left ribcage. Dropping the gun, he then pulls out a dirk, yanks open the carriage door, and while screaming “Death to the Whore of Babylon!” stabs Athena three times. Alexeia, finally managing to get her own weapon free in the confined space of the carriage, then stabs the man in the face, who is then apprehended by the cavalry escort.

Athena is stabbed once in the neck and twice in the upper chest, one strike barely missing her lung. Athena loses a great deal of blood but fortunately Alexeia’s battlefield experience gives her the knowledge she needs to stop the loss in time before it becomes fatal.

Athena does not die, but her recovery is promptly hampered since in her weakness she contracts a bad case of pneumonia. She manages to recover from that as well, but it is clear to all, and especially herself, that her health has been radically undermined. Out of weakness, she has to delegate more authority to the Emperor Herakleios III, who despite himself is forced to properly begin ruling.

The would-be assassin is subject to all the tortures the Romans can imagine, but to the end he persists in claiming he acted alone and of his own accord. Given the context of the age, people then and now are highly suspicious of that.

 

[Basileus444]

I was wondering about the state of some of ancient architecture of constantinople. Areas further out from the centre like forum of Arcadius will have long fallen into disrepair and probably built over but the augustaion, hippodrome, mese, and forum of Constantine should still retain alot of their classical greco-roman appearance. The Column of justinian, valens aqueduct and column of Constantine (the inscriptions on them would be in Latin too, funny if you ask me) might still be around too. If this is the case Constantinople (at least these parts) would be one of the most beautiful cities in the western hemisphere and probably the only place (and I guess other agean cities) where one can really have a glimpse back into antiquity.

Can't give specifics. A lot of damage was done by the fires of 1203 and 1204, which are pre-POD, plus there's TTL damage from fires and earthquakes. So, while a lot has survived or been repaired, there's also a lot that has been lost.

Is Classical Latin still considered prestigious among Roman high society? Perhaps its slowly falling behind Russian, French and Persian in terms of popularity?

Knowledge of Latin largely disappeared in OTL Byzantine times (pre-POD). I'd have to look it up to be sure, but I remember Theodoros II Laskaris making some disparaging comments about the Latin language in one of his OTL writings. ITTL society, knowledge of classical Latin is rare and not highly valued, with the three languages you mention being far more widely spoken as a second language. Plus Spanish for commercial reasons.

* * *

Rhomania’s General Crisis, part 2.0-Enter the Tourmarches:​

Herakleios III himself does not have much desire to rule, but that means others can rule through him. Until early 1659 that had been Athena, but her precipitous decline in health after the attempt on her life made it impossible for her to continue. That said, she did not depart entirely from the halls of power, but as soon as she stopped being dominant, she was significantly handicapped even in her comparatively minor efforts to exert influence later.

That was because she had had no institutional authority. She was the Emperor’s aunt, which meant precisely nothing in terms of legal power. She had acted as Regent for Herakleios when he was underage but that was long since passed. She had retained the power and authority she’d held as Regent, but that had been due to Herakleios’s inactivity and the force of inertia. But once the spell had been broken, even for a bit, it could not be put back together, even in a lesser form.

Those surrounding Herakleios III now, starting in the spring of 1659, would not make the same mistake. The small clique that developed around Herakleios III and ruled through him are usually known as the Tourmarches, with the system labeled as ‘The Regime of the Tourmarches’. They were called that because the majority were Tourmarches when the Regime began (although promotions happened). They were all war hawks of varying degree, but it must be noted that the Regime Tourmarches were a much smaller subgroup of the much larger ideological faction of the war hawks.

That was because the sheer power and influence the Tourmarches possessed is due to their personal proximity to the monarch, Emperor Herakleios III. A small group could do that, while a broad faction couldn’t. Unlike Athena, the Tourmarches would ensure some institutional authority for themselves and for war hawk fellow-travelers, but here they would have some success but also run into serious limitations. At the end of the day, what really gave them power was their connection to the Emperor.

That was made quite clear in probably the most famous of the Tourmarches, who was quite obviously not a Tourmarch. This is Anastasia Laskarina, Herakleios III’s mistress, whose fame admittedly largely comes from being fourteen years older than her lover. This has inspired, to put it nicely, much psychoanalysis in interpretations of Anastasia and of this period of Roman history, some good and much more not so good.

Anastasia is sometimes presented as the dark genius behind all this, the ultimate femme fatale. Other historians have argued against this, viewing such claims as another example of the tendency to blame the woman for all the bad things, especially if the woman is foreign in some way. Due to ancestry from Crusader nobility from the Principality of Achaia, Anastasia is described as rather French-looking, although no details about what that means are given and are in the contexts of other criticisms, in which this is added as an afterthought. Still, she is an intelligent and forceful woman in her own right and even those hostile to her and her relationship with Herakleios admit that she helps make Herakleios less boorish and obnoxious.

Anastasia’s only sibling is her older brother Isaakios, Tourmarch of the 1st Thracian. As a teenager, he fought at Thessaloniki and was wounded in the left leg, giving him a permanent limp. Suave and sophisticated and a prosperous landowner, whose estates near Adrianople and Komotini are possibly some of the most advanced agriculturally in the whole Empire, he is often the Tourmarches’ diplomat and friendly face, especially in dealing with elite Roman society. However, he is most important as the conduit between the Tourmarches and Anastasia and thus to Herakleios.

Isaakios is a fervent war hawk, strongly believing in the need to militarize society and expand the Empire, but he is also interested in the prosperity and prestige of himself and his family, but nothing more than that. He is loyal to the Sideros dynasty, with no interest in reviving the Laskarid claim to the throne, at least explicitly. (Given the proliferation of Laskarid lines from cadet branches, with frequent intermarriages, trying to figure out the dynastically rightful Laskarid claim is the sort of task tailored to drive genealogists insane.) On the other hand, he is interested in what has been labeled the Fujiwara plan, and it is possible he was aware of the Japanese exemplar.

Herakleios is married to his first cousin Sophia, an arrangement by Demetrios III in an effort to unite many of the varied dynastic claims in a neat bow. This marriage has not produced any offspring though by 1659. Anastasia, now entering her forties, is unlikely to produce any children with Herakleios, and there are concerns that Sophia will turn out too much like her mother Athena and pose political challenges. Isaakios and Anastasia wish to remove Sophia, one way or another, and have Herakleios wed a young and pliant Laskarid cousin who will produce heirs and otherwise stay out of the way.

The other Tourmarches are not supportive of this, but are not opposed to it either. Replacing the Sideros dynasty outright would’ve been a touchy subject, even among many war hawks frustrated with Imperial action, but this ‘Fujiwara’ plan doesn’t raise hackles. And if that is the price of doing business, that is a price they are quite willing to pay.

The most intelligent is Andronikos Gyranos, 1st Tourmarch of the War Room, and the one who is the closest to envisioning a complete system and vision for the Empire. He has served at the War Room for all of his career, as a junior officer helping to arrange the logistical efforts that sustained the mass army at Thessaloniki. This is rather unusual for the Roman army, which prefers to rotate officers between staff and field work to ensure understanding and cooperation between the two groups. This is possibly because his superiors noted that for all his intelligence and formidable analytical and organizational ability, he lacks that gambler’s instinct, that willingness to take risks, if necessary in the moment, required of all good field commanders.

Gyranos desires a forward and expansionistic foreign policy, which he believes vital for the security of the Empire, which he regards as too small demographically to sustain itself in geopolitical competition. He recognizes the strain this will place on Roman society though, and to enable society to endure such costs he wants to completely jettison all concepts of just price and just interest and just profit. It was big farms and big manufacturing processes that produced most of the supplies and materials that sustained the armies of the War of the Roman Succession. He believes that these legislations limit the ability of such institutions to grow and expand.

He is quite aware that this will put pressure on the small folk, but tiny workshops and farms cannot feed and equip the tagmata efficiently, and so it is a price that must be paid. Hopefully, expansionism and growth will create new opportunities and resources for the small folk to make up for what they must sacrifice at the beginning.

Many dynatoi who would benefit financially from the elimination of these legislations are attracted to this idea. They like his other ideas much less. Gyranos also wants an extremely harsh inheritance tax, allowing only 120 modioi of land or equivalent in capital assets to be passed down to each inheritor. Any surplus from an estate after filling these bequests is to go to the state. Gyranos wants this proviso to prevent the consolidation of a large and wealthy dynatoi class that may then use its resources to resist the demands of the state. The example of 1203-04, where Constantinople had much wealth but the state was unable to utilize it for defense, looms large and ominous in Gyranos’ mind.

He also advocates for universal primary education, ensuring that all Roman children have at least a basic level of reading, writing, and mathematics. He views this as a good in and of itself, but also sees this as a means to inculcate values of loyalty, patriotism, and militarism in youth. These are to be the future soldiers and officers of the Roman Empire. Since it will be difficult, if not impossible, to match numbers with the likes of Latin coalitions, quality must be as high as possible to compensate, and so it would be best to start young. Also, as new discoveries, both geographical and scientific, show, there is a lot of information out there in the world, much of which may be useful both to the Roman state and society. The more minds able and trained to process that, the greater the likelihood that information will be discovered and utilized.

This proposal, while not widely supported, has many advocates, not all of them war hawks, although those with different motivations would seek to adjust the program. Where Gyranos is truly unusual, especially among war hawks, is that he wants the universal education to be for girls as well as boys, with the same level and kind of training. (There is speculation that he was inspired by the model of ancient Sparta on this point, but there is no conclusive evidence of that. Meanwhile, Gyranos does criticize the Spartan system since, being based on a massive resentful population of helots held in check entirely by terror, it was constantly handicapped in trying to do literally anything else.)

The two other Tourmarches, Konstantinos Plytos and Thomas Nereas, have overlap with Gyranos but are more similar to each other than each with Gyranos. Both are tourmarches in the guard tagmata and field veterans of the War of the Roman Succession, fighting throughout the Danube and Macedonian campaigns, and highly decorated for their deeds.

Furthermore, while they agree with Gyranos on abolishing any ‘just economics’ legislation to free up commerce, for the same reasons, they disagree on all the other aspects, viewing them as unnecessary and likely to alienate potential supporters such as wealthy dynatoi. While they like the idea of universal education to inculcate appropriate values, they are concerned that too-educated small folk might start getting ideas. (Gyranos wanted the education partly to give small folk new opportunities to make up for their losses in improving the efficiency of production.)

In this regard, there’s also the matter of the Orthodox Church, responsible for much of the primary education that exists in Rhomania currently. Best not to step on those toes if not necessary; Gyranos envisioned the confiscation of church property to fund his educational initiatives, because he believed a government-run organization would ensure better quality of teaching.

Here though they see Gyranos’ points and respect his motivations, even if they don’t agree. But his desire for female education is just bizarre, with Nereas finding it potentially degenerate. Gyranos’ wife Irene is an excellent equestrian, a half-head taller than her husband, and reportedly enjoys wrestling as foreplay. One ‘joke’ for why the couple has no children despite their passion for each other is that, in lovemaking, she’s always on top. Given the general war hawk belief that part of the problem is too much feminine influence in government, this side of Gyranos’ life is viewed, at best as silly, at worst as suspicious.

Gyranos has his own annoyances. He views his ideas for reform as a complete set, a system, and doesn’t like the prospect of having only pieces of it implemented. To him that undermines its value and he thinks his colleagues are focusing too much on short-term gains and not enough on long-term strategy. But some is better than nothing. Still annoying though.

Plytos is the closest the Tourmarches have to being a ringleader, although his status is informal and based on his personality. He is good at managing people, even if they might not get along, and getting them to work together for a common cause. He is the glue that keeps the likes of the Laskarid siblings, Gyranos, and Nereas together. The latter two in particular often rub each other the wrong way.

Said to resemble a short brick wall physically, he is also credited with having the best singing voice in the Roman army, although that might not be a stiff competition. One of his favorite pastimes is to get together with a small group of friends, where they play musical instruments and he sings. Like Isaakios Laskaris, he is a wealthy landowner utilizing the most advanced techniques, including widespread cultivation of corn and tomatoes alongside the usual vines, olive, and fruit trees.

Thomas Nereas is the most infamous to the modern Roman. His war experience had been tragic even by the standards of the time and place. His family estates were destroyed and his entire immediate family, even down to second cousins, died during the war years. Many of these were directly related to the war, although not all. Both of his sisters died in childbirth, one at the same time as the Third Battle of Ruse and the other a month before the battle of Thessaloniki.

As a result, he was largely cut off from any life outside of the Roman army, and the Roman army effectively became his life. It was the army life that sustained him during his dark night, and in return he gave the army his all. Nothing else mattered. Some said that for him, the Roman army was God. He is known as a hard driver of his men, but scrupulously fair to them and concerned for their livelihood. His men may not like him personally, as Nereas is not the most likeable personality, but they would storm hell if he asked it, and he’d be in the breach himself.

Another aspect of Nereas’ war experience also shapes his personality going forward. During the early phases of the Macedonian campaign, in the fighting for Skoupoi, he was part of the flying column detached from the main Roman army with the mission of taking up position north of Blucher and attacking the Germans from that direction. After the main Roman army had been defeated at Skoupoi and retreated south during the Twelve Days, the column still tried to perform its mission.

The plan was to utilize local knowledge and trails to surprise the Latins while they were still tangling with the main Roman army, and the column had hired a local hunter and trapper who could show them the needed secret shortcuts. But the man made them lost and then demanded a huge sum of money before he would show them the way out, at which point the enraged column commander killed the hunter. The column had to find its own way out of the mountains, by which point it was too late for them to do anything.

Those events Nereas remembers well. The column might’ve changed history, but instead might as well have been on Saturn. Treason and sabotage had ruined that chance. Nereas will absolutely not tolerate such a thing happening again. Like that greedy hunter, the traitors and saboteurs that stand in the way of his mission must be wiped out, totally and without mercy. It is the only way to survive.

 

[Basileus444]

Rhomania’s General Crisis, part 2.1-The Regime of the Tourmarches:​

Ironically, one of the first things the Tourmarches do is to promote themselves to Strategoi. Plytos, Nereas, and Gyranos all become Strategoi of the Athanatoi, Varangians, and Akoimetoi respectively. The elevation of the first two isn’t unusual, considering their service records, but Gyranos going from a career staff officer to commanding a guard tagma is. The new Strategos himself is wary and uncertain of the move, but his colleagues argue that it would be better politically if he commanded a guard tagma rather than remaining in the War Room.

The political aspect is also why they go for guard tagmata rather than the larger theme tagmata. The latter would put more troops directly under their command, but they’d be stationed away from the capital, and proximity to and influence over the Emperor is the true basis of their power. Meanwhile Isaakios Laskaris also moves up, becoming Strategos of the Thracian tagma. Although the Thracian theme recruits from Constantinople, the capital is not part of the theme and the headquarters is in Adrianople. However, that is close to the capital, with regular carriage service, and Isaakios is quite frequently in Constantinople, not Adrianople.

The Four ‘Tourmarches’ also rely on placing friends and ideological supporters in key positions, or the support of ones already in place. Examples of the latter include the Strategos of the Armeniakon and the Megas Tzaousios; the last is particularly helpful, since that is effectively the Imperial Chief of Police and Intelligence Services. Examples of the former are the promotion of war hawks to be Strategoi of the Optimatic and Opsikian themes, meaning that three of the five guard tagmata and all three theme-tagmata next to the capital are commanded by Tourmarches or their close allies.

Timing here helps the Tourmarches out, given the passing away of old guard elements whose prestige might’ve hampered them. Between 1655 and 1659, Thomas Amirales, Manuel Philanthropenos, Iason Tornikes, and Konstantinos Mauromanikos, all prominent leaders from the War of the Roman Succession, die. A changeover in leadership was thus necessary anyway, with the Tourmarches perfectly placed to take advantage.

That does not mean the Tourmarches have carte blanche. Even though all of these arrangements are legal, since they are decreed by Emperor Herakleios III who is the authority, many still feel that there is something shady about all this. It smacks too much of political appointments, which disparages the honor of the Roman army, and there are many Roman soldiers and officers who’ve had quite enough of that. This is the case even among some war hawks who support the Tourmarches’s agenda. Plus, there are many officers and officials who while not hostile to the Tourmarches or their agenda are not necessarily supportive of them either. These neutrals need to be wooed or, at the very least, not alienated, so a clean sweep isn’t possible.

There might’ve been more pushback, if not for the nature of much of the early pushback. Much of the criticism came from civilian officials who disliked the non-bureaucratic nature of the promotions. Some more came from newspaper editors, who eagerly covered the controversy as a way to boost sales in a stale but competitive news environment. Per their usual practice, the Roman newspapers exaggerated and exacerbated the issue. Personal and scurrilous attacks and vicious prose were more exciting, which mattered more than accuracy.

This pricked at sensitive nerves. Military-civil relations in Rhomania had been shaky since the War of the Roman Succession, and these opened up old wounds. They resented what they viewed as slanderous and unqualified civilian interference. The Tourmarches were fellow soldiers, at least, and so officers and soldiers supported them against the criticism, or at minimum kept silent on the matter.

The phrase ‘mutilated victory’ is commonly used to describe the war hawks’s attitudes to the peace that followed the War of the Roman Succession, and they certainly wished to redress what they viewed as its shortcomings. But much of the bitterness and anger was directed less at the Latins but at what many military men viewed as the stupid and ungrateful civilians behind them. The bitterness aroused in many an officer’s breast by the calumnies against them in Roman newspapers during the war was the wound that proved most stubborn to time’s effort to heal it. Even many officers who were no longer interested in expansionist policies still expressed strong resentment against Roman civil society.

It should be noted that discussions of military and civil society here are concentrated in the uppermost quintile of Roman society. For most Romans, the rural poor, politics continues to be that of the village. Also, the expansion of candidates able to get into both military and civil ranks has weakened another previous bond across this divide. Individuals are less likely to have family relations working on the other sides, removing that earlier connection, while the lingering tensions of Mashhadshar and the War of the Roman Succession hamper the creation of a collective corporate identity to replace it.

This attitude had festered in Roman military culture, spreading down the ranks from the officers and dekarchoi who’d served in the War of the Roman Succession. For the moment it was useful, since it made it harder for army recruits from the peasantry to find solidarity with peasants staging grain riots, but some were concerned that if this kept up, Rhomania might turn from ‘a state with an army’ into ‘an army with a state’. Others, including Nereas, seemed to like such an idea.

Roman print media (which includes not just early newspapers, which get much historical attention, but the more common broadsheets and pamphlets devoted to one specific topic or event), not content with alienating military and civil society, were also trying to fragment and alienate Roman civil society. It is extremely unlikely that this was their conscious intention, but in their writings it is clear that dramatics took serious priority over accuracy. While the market was small by modern standards, it was huge by the standards of the mid-seventeenth century, but also an extremely competitive one. Invective was a good way to get attention, and so many indulged in it. It sold well.

A good example is the coverage of grain riots during this period. The beginning of the Regime of the Tourmarches had, of course, done nothing to mitigate the effects of the Little Ice Age and the pressures they were putting on society. Riots and uprisings related to food availability, price, and distribution were increasing in number and scope as support systems failed. But these grain riots could vary quite widely.

Many ‘riots’ barely deserved the name, since they were surprisingly nonviolent. If grain merchants attempted to ship food out of an afflicted district, likely because other better-capitalized regions offered more profit, they would be stopped and their goods confiscated. Oftentimes, they weren’t even just taken away by the rioters. The rioters would pay for the confiscated grain, but at a price that the rioters considered just and within their means.

This is not to say that violence couldn’t happen. It did, but oftentimes it was triggered by resistance to the demands of the rioters. Local officials were frequently in sympathy with the rioters, especially in the more orderly ‘riots’, since they viewed those demands as just. Nobody could expect fathers and mothers to be silent as food was shipped away in front of them while behind them their children cried from hunger.

But that made for a boring read, especially as the story repeated itself. So, the tales were improved. They grew more violent, the behavior of the rioters more bestial. Taking imagery from the War of the Roman Succession, they even became cannibalistic, reportedly murdering babies and mixing their blood with the flour made from the stolen grain. Interestingly, none of these lurid atrocities took place in close proximity to where they were reported, but were always at least ‘one theme over’. People knew their neighbors well enough to not believe they’d engage in cannibalism and child sacrifice, but people further away were a different matter.

Historians debate over how significant these accounts were in shaping attitudes. Athena, when Regent, did little to curb them, because she saw them as utterly ridiculous and thought that no one intelligent would believe such tales. The Tourmarches thought they were useful as they emphasized the need for law and order, for a strong and firm hand at the helm which they could provide. Others, such as the Patriarch of Constantinople, thought that they contributed to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear and anger.

It is probable that this issue loomed larger after the fact than during. The papers had been more significant earlier, during the War of the Roman Succession, in alienating army officers, who kept a memory of grievance. While their circulation was widespread during this period by the standards of the time, that still left many millions of Romans who infrequently or with noticeable delay were exposed to the print media. In the aftermath of the War of Wrath and the Army of Suffering, the print media was exposed to intense criticism for its perceived role, partly because of that precedent, and the popular narrative has largely copied those criticisms.

After solidifying their power base, the Tourmarches convince Herakleios III to pass a decree that nullifies all legal restrictions on land sales and purchases, the first step in removing any just profit provisions. All land sales are to be solely on contracts between the parties, freely negotiated with no infringements by other parties. Previously, many land sales were limited by rights of preemption. A peasant couldn’t sell their plot to a village outsider without the relatives or village neighbors having a right to preempt the sale. Those are now gone, and the land price can be whatever is negotiated between the parties.

Given the recent harvest failures, now is a very bad time to be a smallholder. Desperate for money to feed their families, many are forced to sell their land, with speculators taking absolutely as much advantage as possible. Notably, both Isaakios Laskaris and Konstantinos Plytos expand their landholdings by more than 40%, while paying only 15% of what the lands were worth based on 1650 tax assessments. They are far from the only example. This is not to say that the only beneficiaries were dynatoi. Even peasants slightly wealthier than the neighbors could and did take the opportunity to enlarge their holdings. But for the recipients, who’d lost their source of livelihood and sustenance (and gotten very little for it), it was absolutely devastating.

Those who had lost their land might stay on as tenant laborers if that was an option, but that was not always the case. Marginal farms could be converted into pasture, which needed much less labor, and in that case the former occupants were just in the way. (And it should be noted that the owners of marginal farms were the ones most likely to be driven to the wall by the Little Ice Age and forced to resort to such desperate measures.)

The dispossessed head for the cities hoping for food and jobs. They are mostly disappointed in those hopes, and their presence exacerbates sanitation issues, with issues of overcrowding and waste removal. Many don’t have to endure ruined hopes for long as endemic urban diseases ravage the newcomers. Others head in the opposite direction, to the highlands, where they often become brigands.

The consolidation of land into larger agricultural estates is a good thing from the Tourmarches’s perspective. These larger estates are more effective at producing large surpluses that can be used for the army, since they focus on efficiency rather than security as subsidence small-scale farming does, and they have the advantage of economies of scale. Furthermore, the mass of dispossessed poor is the ideal recruiting ground for an army.

 

[Basileus444]

An Age of Miracles III: The Romans Endure is now live. The latest update has been posted so please direct your attention there. Thanks for reading and supporting this TL.