Rhomania’s General Crisis, part 10.0-Not a Threat, Just an Anecdote:
The summer of 1661 in Constantinople is, weather-wise, one of the more pleasant ones in recent years, but this does little to improve the mood. Strain and tension in the halls of power are evident everywhere, in the wrinkled lines and aging hairs of officials, never mind the increased consumption of wine, opium, and marijuana apparent in preserved bills of lading. Merchants of Monemvasia, as well as Spanish traders, who fulfill these orders certainly enjoy the business.
Lady Athena’s health, which has been poor since the assassination attempt, is worsening. Rather than traveling to the Sweet Waters of Europe or Asia, she remains in the White Palace to avoid the strain of travel. According to some rumors, she no longer has attendants helping her at toilet in order to hide the blood in her stool. Sticking mostly to her apartments, she is able to indulge in her bibliophilic tendencies, a clear inheritance from her father; there are frequent deliveries of heavy cases of books.
She is also spending more time with her daughter Sophia. This could seem innocent, but considering Sophia’s rank as Empress, might not be. Sophia has been barred from leaving the city limits of Constantinople, ostensibly to have a member of the Imperial dynasty in the capital. The real reason is that the Tourmarches are concerned about Sophia fleeing the city and ending up in Thessaloniki, where Domestikos Pirokolos is based.
While Athena is reading books, Strategos Gyranos is writing one. His focus on this work, in addition to his duties as Commandant of the War Room, mean that he is neglecting his other major function, that of being Strategos of the Akoimetoi guard tagma. Most of his duties there he has delegated to his First Tourmarch.
The manuscript, which is never published or even finished, was never given a title by its author, and is usually known by the rather bland heading of Means of Defense of the Empire of the Romans. Admittedly, the material as presented hardly makes for the most exciting reading; years of writing War Room reports has hardly prepared Gyranos to become a bestselling author. The extant papers bear all the hallmarks of a rough first draft, and handwriting analysis indicates an author under increasing stress, particularly later on the work.
The Regime of the Tourmarches were the tip of a wider movement known to history as the war hawks. They believed that to defend the Roman Empire in a hostile world, expansionism, and extremely vigorous expansionism was needed, and urgently. The Empire needed more resources, and buffer zones to protect those resources, and everything else was to be subordinated or shoved aside.
This had been countered by the defensivists, who argued ardently against any expansionism as being unjust, and that good diplomacy and fair dealing with other nations, combined with current military and economic structures, would secure the Empire’s defense. Had Georgia been allied with the Romans at the start of the Great Latin War, or Lombardy convinced to stay out of it, that conflict would likely have gone far differently, and much less painfully, for the Romans.
Gyranos’s new analysis doesn’t mark a complete conversion from war hawk to defensivist. He is now critical of the wars of expansion championed by the war hawks, viewing them as likely to produce potentially unmanageable blowback, to use the modern term. The diplomatic blowback from the war in Mesopotamia has, at least internationally, been minimal. The Roman-Persian border is far away from any courts that the Romans need be concerned. But a similar venture in the far more crowded playing field of Europe is unlikely to be so undisruptive.
This is standard defensivist criticism of the war hawks and Gyranos’s work here is cursory. The Strategos thinks that the rampant expansionism of the war hawks is dangerous, but also unnecessary, yet he also thinks the defensivists are naïve and complacent. Certain reforms need to be made, and his writing is all about the reforms the Strategos thinks need to be made.
The crux of his argument is that Rhomania is a large and powerful state, but one that is surrounded by other large and powerful states. These pose a threat to Rhomania that must be countered, but not by expansionism, which is too risky. Gyranos argues that Rhomania can be defended, even in the current geopolitical environment, but that requires investing internally, rather than externally. The Empire must work to cultivate what he calls ‘civic solidarity’.
To illustrate what he means, he brings up two case studies. The first is the recent battle of Baghdad; the second is that constant specter, Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. In the battle of Baghdad, if it had just been a matter of Roman regulars versus Mesopotamian regulars, even with all the constraints under which the Armeniakon were operating, they almost certainly would’ve been able to take the city. (Whether they would’ve been able to hold it against Ottoman reinforcements until a Roman relief effort arrives is a topic he does not address.) But mass civilian resistance, while not very effective individually, on a mass scope, had been able to tilt the scales, with the painful and well-known end result.
In contrast, in Constantinople in 1203-04, the Romans had possessed an incredible advantage in numbers, if looking solely at bodies, but that had been irrelevant. The Roman leadership had proven utterly incapable of rallying and organizing the people, with the result that opposition to the crusaders was brittle. Furthermore, broader Roman society had shown a distinct lack of civic solidarity. Gyranos draws attention to the passages in Niketas Choniates’s history where Roman provincials mock the refugees from Constantinople. The former had been alienated by the corruption, greed, and poor leadership of the center and did not view its fall with great sorrow. It is unsurprisingly then that they had not rallied to the Queen of Cities earlier.
He brings up other examples, from both Roman and foreign history, of popular resistance that had been able to cause serious problems for foreign invaders. Some are from fairly recent events, such as Roman partisans against the Germans in Upper Macedonia and German peasant rebellions against the Triunes in the Third Rhine War. Others are more distant, such as Cretan rebellions against Venetian rule or the Sicilian Vespers. Some are less successful than others; the Cretan rebellions all failed, largely because the Cretan rebellions coincided with moments where Constantinople’s energies were focused elsewhere and unable to aid effectively.
But that, in Gyranos’s mind, proves his greater argument. In Crete, civic solidarity ensuring popular resistance had existed, but been unable to link up with regular military forces, ensuring defeat. But the Sicilian Vespers had been joined by an Aragonese armada, while Roman and German partisans had eventually been reinforced by forms of regular armies, and both had been victorious. (At least in the areas of civic solidarity, as goes the argument. The Triunes succeeded west of the Rhine, in Gyranos’s analysis, because the acquiescence of the population meant the Triunes never faced this dual threat, unlike east of the Rhine.)
Gyranos argues that raw expansionism, as advocated by the war hawks, will fail, because it will end up stirring up more enemies than in creating new resources for the Empire. But the defensivist mode is also inadequate, because Rhomania does need to expand its defensive capability, and focusing solely on diplomacy is dangerous. More civic solidarity needs to be developed, he insists.
The ways to do this are familiar from Gyranos’s earlier comments, but it is here where they are most organized and consolidated. He argues again for universal child education, to make all Romans think and feel as one, to consider themselves as one people. He wants this for girls as well as boys, since he thinks excluding one half of the population would ruin the unifying effect. Furthermore, as future mothers, the educated girls will encourage this common identity in their offspring, reinforcing it.
He also argues against economic inequality, or at least too much of it. He hardly argues for pure economic equality as Konon does, (in this he seems to have scaled back at least somewhat from his earlier statements, possibly in reaction to the Army of Suffering) but he asserts that extreme differences will build anger and resentment, fueling a sense of injustice, which undermines civic solidarity. People are used to a certain amount of economic inequality, but the growth of a market economy, enriching winners and impoverishing losers, has been widening the gap between rich and poor in Roman society, and anger at this had been feeding much of the resentment festering beneath the surface. Gyranos again references the Roman provincials mocking the Constantinople refugees in 1204. Peasants were hardly going to be sympathetic to the sufferings of those who had previously sucked them dry.
This aspect is certainly unpopular among many of the war hawks. The Regime of the Tourmarches has loosened up some more of the laws regarding just price and just profit. Those able to benefit thus approve of the Tourmarches’ leadership, but dislike the idea of said laws being reimposed or even tightened. The already-wealthy elites who are the main beneficiaries of such policies constitute the main public support for the Tourmarches; the Tourmarches can’t afford to annoy them. (It should be noted that breaking down support simply along class or wealth lines would not be accurate.)
One particularly important supporter, whose support is becoming more important, is the Megas Tzaousios, who is head of the Imperial police forces and the various intelligence services. Iakobos Makres was appointed to this post by Athena but ideologically has tended to lean toward the war hawk program, although only moderately. His much stronger support for the Tourmarches now has a largely personal basis.
In 1650 Iakobos wanted to marry his twelve-year-old niece. Roman inheritance patterns follow a partible inheritance pattern and he wanted the substantial property portfolio associated with his niece to stay with the family, rather than leaving with her marriage to an outsider. The Patriarch had blocked the marriage with highly critical commentary, ensuring Iakobos’s permanent enmity. When Adam II came out openly against the Tourmarches, that ensured the Megas Tzaousios came out in favor of the Tourmarches. He also doesn’t like Father Andronikos Hadjipapandreou, who criticizes similar practices (for the same reasons), and who he views as the aging and ailing Patriarch’s backbone.
* * *
The White Palace, August 4, 1661:
Andronikos Gyranos exited the doorway, squinting his eyes momentarily as the evening sun streamed into his eyeballs. He turned away from that to see the back of his wife Irene, who was standing next to a bench set up against the wall of the building. Her black hair, streaked with silver just about to the point where that was the dominant color, glinted in the light. “Muffin,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but there…”
His voice trailed off as she turned toward him, letting Gyranos see a shorter man to whom she’d been talking. His hair and beard were silver-turning-white, surrounding big green eyes and a nose with a slight bend in it. “Megas Tzaousios, I didn’t expect to see you here.” Although both of them worked in the White Palace, their offices were on opposite ends, about as far apart from each other as they could possibly be and still remain in the complex.
“Ah, Strategos, it’s good to see you,” Iakobos replied. “I was on my way home and I saw your lovely wife all alone waiting for you and thought I’d keep her company until you arrived.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“She is quite a lovely woman,” Iakobos continued. “You’re a very lucky man. It would be a great pity if anything happened to her.”
Gyranos kept his expression blank. “Yes, it would. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Probably something stupid and destructive. Did you know, Megas Tzaousios, that when I was a junior officer, I was also an explosives expert? The original design for the suicide bomb that Domestikos Laskaris used to kill General Mackensen outside Skoupoi-I helped design that.”
Gyranos had to admit Iakobos did a really good job of keeping his own expression blank. “I did not know that, Strategos, but that is an interesting piece of information. I will definitely be certain to keep that in mind.”
The two men stared at each other for a moment, which seemed much longer than that. “Well, I know you boys are enjoying measuring your dicks, but I’m hungry,” Irene said. She took Gyranos’s arm.
“Yes, food sounds good,” Gyranos added. “Good day, Megas Tzaousios.”
“Good day to you, Strategos. Lady Irene. If you’re going to the Silver Pagoda, I recommend the chicken pho. Most excellent.”
“Thank you,” Gyranos replied. “But I prefer the shrimp one.”
“Suit yourself. But remember what else I said.” He turned and walked away.
Gyranos stared at his receding back for a moment, and then he and Irene turned and headed in the opposite direction, towards the Silver Pagoda. It was one of the new restaurants set up just outside the White Palace, partly to cater to government workers after their stints. This path wasn’t as direct, cutting through a corner of the parklands, but there would be less people this way, and he was in the mood for that. “Well, that was unpleasant,” Irene said after a moment as they walked, arm in arm.
“Indeed. I’m sorry for being late. If I’d known…”
“I know. But he would’ve delivered his message somehow anyway. At least that bit is over.”
“Yes, that bit. But just that bit.”
They walked on, the sound of their footsteps on the cobblestone path echoing amid the bird song and leaves rustling in the wind.
“What are you thinking?” Irene asked.
“Our course. I think the best way is forward, damnit, forward.”
“I agree. But wherever our course takes us, we’ll take it together.” A pause. “And if he kills one of us, the other will murder him.”
Gyranos laughed, stopping to look at his wife. “I love you when you’re violent.”
She bit her lip. “Just when I’m violent?”
“Especially. But I love you always.” The two of them kissed, right in the middle of the public pathway. But no one was watching them, save for one Galapagos tortoise nestled in the bushes, and he did not care.
