Isaac's Empire 2.0
- Thread starter Basileus Giorgios
- Start date
No, there's not a story only thread. The link to the AH.com wiki page in my sig has a mostly complete list of chapters, though.
Oh sure, there are more Byzantinophiles than Turkophiles: but I'd suggest that Turkophilia probably has more to do with the relative ignoring of Armenia than does Byzantinophilia.
That said, there aren't really any TLs on Georgia either, so maybe it's just a lack of love for the Caucasus in general without any ulterior motive.
You're right. I don't think I've ever seen a Caucasus TL at all, even though its a comparatively screwed over region. I think one would be cool.
No great empires were ever based out of the Caucasus
It's a problem of geography, I think.
While Armenia had a reasonable amount space to expand Georgia on the other hand is squashed between the Black sea and the Caspian sea and the land in between is mountainous.
With the UK General Election now out of the way, I can finally get back to work on IE!
Yay! I can't wait to see how the opposition between Pope Samuel and Xanthis will go
New update is written: I'll be posting in a few hours!
Chapter Twenty Seven: Springtime of the Devil
A reminder of the past political generation...
Following the defeat of the Jurchen warlord Akutta Khan at the walls of Constantinople in 1281, Rhomanian rule rapidly expanded into the chaos left by the collapsing Jurchen Empire, eventually culminating in the incorporation of the Holy Land and Egypt into the imperial orbit. A relative golden age followed under the Emperor Constantine X Palaiologos, grandson of the usurper George of Genoa and his wife Zoe Komnena. Constantine, however, left no obvious male heir, only a multiplicity of nephews and great nephews by his three sisters. In 1301, one of these nephews, Constantine Maleinos, led a major revolt that saw him acclaimed as Emperor for a single day in the capital, before being cut down by the general Michael Photopoulos, conqueror of Egypt back in the 1280s.
Photopoulos would ultimately succeed the by-now mad Constantine X in 1306 as Michael IX, marrying Eirene Palaiologina, the half-forgotten daughter of Constantine's long-dead brother George. He ruled relatively well, but died in December 1311 after less than six years on the throne, to be succeeded by the relatively hapless aristocrat Alexander IV Iasites. Alexander hoped to be remembered as a military conqueror, but his main achievements were to provoke a major revolt in Bulgaria, and then die fighting a revived Jurchen Empire in 1314. Following his death in battle, the throne was taken by David I Pegonites, an officer in the Eastern army who was married into the influential Chryselios family, descendants of one of the sisters of Constantine X and thus George of Genoa and the great Komnenid Emperors of the twelfth century.
David was a ruler of vision and energy, but he quickly proved himself to be extremely unpopular, with an attempt to come to theological understanding with the long separated anti-Chalcedonian churches of Armenia, Syria and Egypt earning him great opprobrium. Religious and political revolts broke out quickly. Those these were put down by David's capable eldest son Alexios, the Emperor continued to lack respect or popularity, with opposition to his rule focusing around the gifted Italian churchman Samuel of Grado. Following the death of Alexios in Bulgaria in 1319, David gripped onto power by heavy-handed military rule alone, which was enough to sustain him until his sudden death in 1327. Though his rule had held the Empire together, it had in no way seen any major advances, and most of his reforming efforts had come to naught.
A rapid turnover of Emperors now followed. David was succeeded by his two surviving sons, Damianos and Romanos IV, who continued to face instability. In an attempt to counter this, Romanos was married to the aristocrat Anna Dasiotissa, with her extremely wealthy father joining them as a third Emperor, George II. Shortly after, however, Romanos sickened and died, and Damianos too was exiled by George II and his allies, leaving only a single Emperor again. Anna was shortly after delivered of a daughter, Sophia Pegonitissa, posthumous daughter of Romanos IV. George was well-liked and intelligent, and began to bridge the gaps in Rhomanian society that had opened up under David I, but he too was short-reigned, dying in 1331, and leaving his daughter and granddaughter under the protection of Samuel of Grado, now Pope of Rome and an active player in imperial politics.
Samuel travelled to Constantinople and there was behind the ascension of George's elderly cousin Basil III, a move greatly opposed by the remaining loyalists of the Pegonites military regime. One of these, Andronikos Xanthis, stirred up popular unrest against Samuel and his allies, and engineered the toppling of Basil III with the unexpected help of Anna Dasiotissa, who feared that she and her daughter would be sidelined. The widowed Anna instead married Xanthis' brother-in-law Constantine the Syrian, himself a widower, and a new regime, aiming to compromise between Church, army and aristocracy thus took power in the capital.
This is what happened next.
Few could have predicted in the early months of 1332 that the rapid turnover rate of Emperors seen over the past four years would continue. Constantine XI, if a little overweight, was only forty years old, and seemed in good health. His sons, moreover, securely buttressed the new Syrian dynasty, with the eldest two, Michael and John, showing particular promise.1 And if five sons were not enough, by the summer of that year, (a particularly golden one, if the Bulgarian writer Ivalyo of Naissos is to be believed) it was clear that the Empress Anna was pregnant with her second child. In December, the child was delivered: a sixth boy for Constantine, named Andronikos for the Domestikos Xanthis.
It was a joyful time: but it would not last. In March, Constantine departed the City to accompany his eldest son Michael to Epirus2, where the seventeen year old would take up the position of Strategos. The party, however, had barely made it out of Thrace, when terrible news arrived from Constantinople: the baby prince Andronikos had sickened and died. Distraught, his father hastened back to the capital, only to receive word that was yet more terrible. Michael too had died shortly after his father's departure, mauled to death by an angry bear he had been hunting.
The pain that Constantine must have felt is almost unimaginable: within the space of a month, he had lost his oldest and youngest sons. Paralysed by grief, the Emperor denounced the “springtime of the devil”. It was a phrase that would soon come to extend to more than just March of 1333.
Pope Samuel’s response to the horrors that had befallen the Emperor was to send a number of relics to Constantinople, in the hope that their presence would help the Empress Anna conceive a new child: but the Pope’s gesture was seen as at best ham-fisted by Constantine, at worst, an insult. Wracked by grief, he retreated from the Great Palace, and holed himself up at Blakhérnai, refusing to speak to anyone but Andronikos Xanthis and clergymen. Xanthis, for his part, took up the office of Caesar, and for all intents and purposes, ruled as Emperor in his friend’s stead, supervising the education and welfare of his younger nephews.3
One figure, however, had been left conspicuously alone. Anna Dasiotissa was no less grief-wracked than her husband, and now she found herself a distinct afterthought to both Constantine and Andronikos Xanthis. Wandering the corridors of the Great Palace, leading her two year old daughter Sophia by the hand, she cut a sad sight.4 But at the age of twenty two she had lost none of her legendary beauty and indeed, a select few saw in her grief an even more surpassing loveliness. For one young man, it was enough to risk all the laws of both man and God, and the two soon began to hold secret meetings late at night. The Empress’ suitor was her sixteen year old stepson John.
What exactly went on between John and his stepmother that spring can never be known: and it should be pointed out that some writers at the time emphasised that the two had done nothing more immoral than pray together, a tradition that would be vigorously quashed by the next generation.5 What can be stated with absolute certainty is that Constantine XI was convinced that he had been betrayed in the most horrendous way possible. Only the intercession of Xanthis allowed John to keep his eyes. The young man was banished to Italy, his imperial honours withdrawn, his name stripped from the ecclesiastical diptychs.6 As for Anna, her wronged husband settled upon tearing out her tongue and sending her to a convent in icy Theodosia.7
Yet this extraordinary woman refused to accept punishment. In a daring flight from Constantinople, Anna boarded a ship and fled to Italy together with little Sophia, there to seek out the protection of her “guardian”, the Patriarch of Rome. The three refugees from Constantinople had arrived in Rome during a particularly broiling summer, and found that Samuel had retreated to the sumptuous mountain residence of Arischia.8 Built up at great cost by Samuel’s predecessor Victor VI in the 1310s, Arischia loomed high above the surrounding mountains and valleys. The fortified palace was a shining monument to the wealth and power of the Uniate Church in Italy, largely built through busily harvesting ancient Roman buildings for their marble and using the latest in modern technology to assemble the great walls and towers. The Pope greeted the visitors from Constantinople half a mile away from his great stronghold, and rode with them into Arischia’s mighty central citadel.9
This was about as close to an ouright declaration of war as Samuel could have possibly made. Already deeply mistrusted by the regime in Constantinople, the Pope had confirmed all of the fears about him. A final messenger was dispatched in haste by Andronikos Xanthis to Arischia, demanding that the fortress be surrendered to the troops of the Italian Katepánō and its inhabitants immediately return to the Bosphorus for trial. The ultimatum was scornfully rejected, as the Caesar must surely have known it would be. Before the courier returned to the capital, he bore witness to the coronation of John of Syria as Emperor and Autocrat at the hands of Pope Samuel. Bloodletting would now begin in earnest.
There could be no delay. John stormed northward through Italy at the head of a militia army recruited (some said press-ganged) from the city states and descended south through Dalmatia, receiving reinforcements from the Croats and Hungarians as he went. By the time the first winter snows arrived, he ruled everything west of Thessalonica. Xanthis, zigzagging across the Haemic peninsula, had attempted to corner him in Serbia, but had been humiliatingly blockaded in an isolated valley by a small force raised by an obscure Serbian duke. Once again John was crowned, this time, in an innovation, as Emperor of the Bulgars in Ochrida, former capital of the Bulgarian Empire.10 There he spent his Christmas, ruling from the old palace of the Tsars and issuing various edicts. He entered Thessalonica in April 1334, and there welcomed the arrival of a number of relics sent from Rome by his backer Samuel to inspire the young Emperor’s men ahead of the final confrontation with his uncle.
Andronikos Xanthis had suffered a terrible winter. Finally escaping from Serbia in October, he had limped back across northern Bulgaria, suffering poor weather and a mutinous population that clearly supported John. Upon his return to Constantinople, he was greeted with more bad news. Only a trickle of the promised reinforcements from the East had arrived, and his close friend the Emperor was sinking into ever deeper misery and despair. There were riots in the capital that winter, with an increasingly panicky populace fearing the consequences of an Italian victory in the war.
Despite all of this, however, Xanthis had considerable advantages. The standing field armies of the Haemic peninsula had broadly remained loyal thanks to considerable cash bribes and a long-standing disdain for Bulgarians: it should be remembered that the ranks were still full of professional soldiers who had fought Bulgarian rebels up until 1320. In addition, Xanthis was an experienced and capable commander, in stark contrast to the young pretender John, who he dismissed as a boy who had only just reached his eighteenth birthday. In truth, while the two forces were probably of roughly equal size, Xanthis’ army was much the more professional.
John began the march from Thessalonica just three days after the arrival of provisions and Holy relics from Rome. Aiming to cut him off, Xanthis tried to reach Mosynopolis on the north coast of the Aegean, but John moved his army surprisingly quickly, his enthusiastic troops undertaking forced marches with only a minimum of grumbling. He was additionally supported by the wily Croat mercenary commander Matko Talovać, a veteran of several European wars, and an expert on the rapid movement of troops. The rebels met a largely unprepared loyalist army at Adrianople where an extremely fierce battle ensued, with both sides suffering considerable casualties. In the end Xanthis’ veterans prevailed, but it was a very close run thing: it was said the fields of Adrianople ran red with blood, and the town itself took a generation to recover. Both armies backed down to lick their wounds, and hope for reinforcements.
Events elsewhere in the Empire would dictate the movement of the second phase of the war. In Italy, still largely comprised of a patchwork of notionally independent cities, the only standing troops available to the loyalists had been the armies of the Katepánō of Italy, based in Syracuse. These were the troops that Xanthis had hoped would nip John’s rebellion in the bud early on, but they had been successfully prevented from joining up by the intervention of a Genoan fleet, backed by reinforcements sent by King Charles II of Aragon, who saw an opportunity to expand his nascent Mediterranean empire.11 In March, the Sicilian and mainland elements of the Italian army had finally been able to combine, and they had duly marched on Arischia but, in a remarkable turnaround, were successfully persuaded by Pope Samuel to switch sides and join the rebels. Wasting no time, the soldiers, some five thousand in all, were shipped across to Epirus by the Genoese fleet that had just months previously opposed them.
Meanwhile, in Syria confusion reigned. A large army was slowly wending its way west when news arrived of the battle of Adrianople, and with it, a rumour of the death of Andronikos Xanthis. The cautious Eastern commander Adrianos Lekkas12 opted to halt his troops at Ankyra to await further clarification. The decision would ultimately prove to be the correct one, but at the time, it was calamitous: for the next piece of news was brought to Lekkas by Andronikos Xanthis himself.
The Italian reinforcements had arrived in the camp of John around ten days after he had retreated from Adrianople, and brought with them ready supplies of food, wine and morale. Heartened, within a couple of days, the rebel army was on the march again, and this time, Xanthis could do little to oppose them. He marched instead to the Hellespont, there to await the Eastern armies, and instructed Constantinople to prepare for a siege. Militarily, the plan was sound, given the city’s impregnable status and the large size of the Eastern army, but it proved a disastrous miscalculation. Thinking themselves abandoned, the Byzantines opted to throw themselves on the mercy of the rebels, and John entered Constantinople without a fight on the 29th of July 1334.
His younger brothers fled, in separate directions to avoid attention. Though the two youngest siblings, Rōmanos and Manuel, both managed to escape and link up with Xanthis, now himself in full flight across Anatolia, the middle brother Alexios was not so lucky. Caught by a group of Italian sailors, Alexios suffered an unspeakably cruel end that, we are told, made the new Emperor John III publicly vomit. Captured also was the family patriarch, the Emperor Constantine XI, who died very soon after John entered Constantinople.
John III was swiftly crowned by that experienced weather-vane Patriarch Christopher I13, but the war was far from over. In Ankyra, his uncle Andronikos Xanthis was once more in command of a large and formidable army of fresh veterans, and accompanied by Constantine's remaining legitimate heirs Rōmanos and Manuel. In Italy, Anna Dasiotissa and her daughter Sophia waited at Arischia for the new Emperor’s summons, with their allies in the nobility growing increasingly uneasy at their absence. Along the Empire’s European fringes, lesser rules greedily eyed the situation, and dreamt of increasing their sovereignty. And in Asia Khan Ghazan, a monarch mightier than all of them put together prepared to move in to restore to his rule the territories lost by his forebears.
War raged across the world: and few could foretell who might end up the eventual victor.
________________________________________________
1 There is a debate in the IE Universe as to whether Constantine and his sons should be considered “true” Syrian Emperors, in view of what would happen to them.
2 Approximately modern OTL Albania.
3 Constantine’s surviving sons are aged between seventeen and twelve.
4 See the previous chapter: Sophia is the posthumous daughter of Anna’s first husband Rōmanos IV Pegonites.
5 The regime in power in Constantinople in the 1360s is extremely hostile to most of the major players of the 1330s.
6 These were hung up in churches, directing those for whom the faithful should pray. IOTL, the name of the Pope was stripped from them at numerous points, culminating in the 1054 schism.
7 In the Crimea.
8 In modern OTL Abruzzo, Arischia is a small village.
9 In truth, this is an insult, coming from the ancient practise of Roman Senators travelling many miles to welcome the Emperor into the city.
10 Also once the seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, dissolved by Basil II, and periodically revived at politically opportune moments.
11 Aragonese seapower has developed noticeably in the fourteenth century, with the kings of Aragon holding sway over the Balearics and even a couple of fortified port towns on the African coast. The nobility have largely participated in this naval venture, and now the surest mark of ascent is not a host of cavalry and peasants, but a contribution to the royal fleet.
12 Strategos of Mesopotamia under David I, we firstly met Lekkas in Chapter Twenty Five.
13 Initially backed by Samuel and his puppet-Emperor Basil III three years previously, Christopher quite happily accepted the changed situation and worked closely with Constantine XI during his brief reign, before backing away to his country estates during Andronikos Xanthis’ effective regency.
Following the defeat of the Jurchen warlord Akutta Khan at the walls of Constantinople in 1281, Rhomanian rule rapidly expanded into the chaos left by the collapsing Jurchen Empire, eventually culminating in the incorporation of the Holy Land and Egypt into the imperial orbit. A relative golden age followed under the Emperor Constantine X Palaiologos, grandson of the usurper George of Genoa and his wife Zoe Komnena. Constantine, however, left no obvious male heir, only a multiplicity of nephews and great nephews by his three sisters. In 1301, one of these nephews, Constantine Maleinos, led a major revolt that saw him acclaimed as Emperor for a single day in the capital, before being cut down by the general Michael Photopoulos, conqueror of Egypt back in the 1280s.
Photopoulos would ultimately succeed the by-now mad Constantine X in 1306 as Michael IX, marrying Eirene Palaiologina, the half-forgotten daughter of Constantine's long-dead brother George. He ruled relatively well, but died in December 1311 after less than six years on the throne, to be succeeded by the relatively hapless aristocrat Alexander IV Iasites. Alexander hoped to be remembered as a military conqueror, but his main achievements were to provoke a major revolt in Bulgaria, and then die fighting a revived Jurchen Empire in 1314. Following his death in battle, the throne was taken by David I Pegonites, an officer in the Eastern army who was married into the influential Chryselios family, descendants of one of the sisters of Constantine X and thus George of Genoa and the great Komnenid Emperors of the twelfth century.
David was a ruler of vision and energy, but he quickly proved himself to be extremely unpopular, with an attempt to come to theological understanding with the long separated anti-Chalcedonian churches of Armenia, Syria and Egypt earning him great opprobrium. Religious and political revolts broke out quickly. Those these were put down by David's capable eldest son Alexios, the Emperor continued to lack respect or popularity, with opposition to his rule focusing around the gifted Italian churchman Samuel of Grado. Following the death of Alexios in Bulgaria in 1319, David gripped onto power by heavy-handed military rule alone, which was enough to sustain him until his sudden death in 1327. Though his rule had held the Empire together, it had in no way seen any major advances, and most of his reforming efforts had come to naught.
A rapid turnover of Emperors now followed. David was succeeded by his two surviving sons, Damianos and Romanos IV, who continued to face instability. In an attempt to counter this, Romanos was married to the aristocrat Anna Dasiotissa, with her extremely wealthy father joining them as a third Emperor, George II. Shortly after, however, Romanos sickened and died, and Damianos too was exiled by George II and his allies, leaving only a single Emperor again. Anna was shortly after delivered of a daughter, Sophia Pegonitissa, posthumous daughter of Romanos IV. George was well-liked and intelligent, and began to bridge the gaps in Rhomanian society that had opened up under David I, but he too was short-reigned, dying in 1331, and leaving his daughter and granddaughter under the protection of Samuel of Grado, now Pope of Rome and an active player in imperial politics.
Samuel travelled to Constantinople and there was behind the ascension of George's elderly cousin Basil III, a move greatly opposed by the remaining loyalists of the Pegonites military regime. One of these, Andronikos Xanthis, stirred up popular unrest against Samuel and his allies, and engineered the toppling of Basil III with the unexpected help of Anna Dasiotissa, who feared that she and her daughter would be sidelined. The widowed Anna instead married Xanthis' brother-in-law Constantine the Syrian, himself a widower, and a new regime, aiming to compromise between Church, army and aristocracy thus took power in the capital.
This is what happened next.
Chapter Twenty Seven: Springtime of the Devil
Few could have predicted in the early months of 1332 that the rapid turnover rate of Emperors seen over the past four years would continue. Constantine XI, if a little overweight, was only forty years old, and seemed in good health. His sons, moreover, securely buttressed the new Syrian dynasty, with the eldest two, Michael and John, showing particular promise.1 And if five sons were not enough, by the summer of that year, (a particularly golden one, if the Bulgarian writer Ivalyo of Naissos is to be believed) it was clear that the Empress Anna was pregnant with her second child. In December, the child was delivered: a sixth boy for Constantine, named Andronikos for the Domestikos Xanthis.
It was a joyful time: but it would not last. In March, Constantine departed the City to accompany his eldest son Michael to Epirus2, where the seventeen year old would take up the position of Strategos. The party, however, had barely made it out of Thrace, when terrible news arrived from Constantinople: the baby prince Andronikos had sickened and died. Distraught, his father hastened back to the capital, only to receive word that was yet more terrible. Michael too had died shortly after his father's departure, mauled to death by an angry bear he had been hunting.
The pain that Constantine must have felt is almost unimaginable: within the space of a month, he had lost his oldest and youngest sons. Paralysed by grief, the Emperor denounced the “springtime of the devil”. It was a phrase that would soon come to extend to more than just March of 1333.
Pope Samuel’s response to the horrors that had befallen the Emperor was to send a number of relics to Constantinople, in the hope that their presence would help the Empress Anna conceive a new child: but the Pope’s gesture was seen as at best ham-fisted by Constantine, at worst, an insult. Wracked by grief, he retreated from the Great Palace, and holed himself up at Blakhérnai, refusing to speak to anyone but Andronikos Xanthis and clergymen. Xanthis, for his part, took up the office of Caesar, and for all intents and purposes, ruled as Emperor in his friend’s stead, supervising the education and welfare of his younger nephews.3
One figure, however, had been left conspicuously alone. Anna Dasiotissa was no less grief-wracked than her husband, and now she found herself a distinct afterthought to both Constantine and Andronikos Xanthis. Wandering the corridors of the Great Palace, leading her two year old daughter Sophia by the hand, she cut a sad sight.4 But at the age of twenty two she had lost none of her legendary beauty and indeed, a select few saw in her grief an even more surpassing loveliness. For one young man, it was enough to risk all the laws of both man and God, and the two soon began to hold secret meetings late at night. The Empress’ suitor was her sixteen year old stepson John.
What exactly went on between John and his stepmother that spring can never be known: and it should be pointed out that some writers at the time emphasised that the two had done nothing more immoral than pray together, a tradition that would be vigorously quashed by the next generation.5 What can be stated with absolute certainty is that Constantine XI was convinced that he had been betrayed in the most horrendous way possible. Only the intercession of Xanthis allowed John to keep his eyes. The young man was banished to Italy, his imperial honours withdrawn, his name stripped from the ecclesiastical diptychs.6 As for Anna, her wronged husband settled upon tearing out her tongue and sending her to a convent in icy Theodosia.7
Yet this extraordinary woman refused to accept punishment. In a daring flight from Constantinople, Anna boarded a ship and fled to Italy together with little Sophia, there to seek out the protection of her “guardian”, the Patriarch of Rome. The three refugees from Constantinople had arrived in Rome during a particularly broiling summer, and found that Samuel had retreated to the sumptuous mountain residence of Arischia.8 Built up at great cost by Samuel’s predecessor Victor VI in the 1310s, Arischia loomed high above the surrounding mountains and valleys. The fortified palace was a shining monument to the wealth and power of the Uniate Church in Italy, largely built through busily harvesting ancient Roman buildings for their marble and using the latest in modern technology to assemble the great walls and towers. The Pope greeted the visitors from Constantinople half a mile away from his great stronghold, and rode with them into Arischia’s mighty central citadel.9
This was about as close to an ouright declaration of war as Samuel could have possibly made. Already deeply mistrusted by the regime in Constantinople, the Pope had confirmed all of the fears about him. A final messenger was dispatched in haste by Andronikos Xanthis to Arischia, demanding that the fortress be surrendered to the troops of the Italian Katepánō and its inhabitants immediately return to the Bosphorus for trial. The ultimatum was scornfully rejected, as the Caesar must surely have known it would be. Before the courier returned to the capital, he bore witness to the coronation of John of Syria as Emperor and Autocrat at the hands of Pope Samuel. Bloodletting would now begin in earnest.
There could be no delay. John stormed northward through Italy at the head of a militia army recruited (some said press-ganged) from the city states and descended south through Dalmatia, receiving reinforcements from the Croats and Hungarians as he went. By the time the first winter snows arrived, he ruled everything west of Thessalonica. Xanthis, zigzagging across the Haemic peninsula, had attempted to corner him in Serbia, but had been humiliatingly blockaded in an isolated valley by a small force raised by an obscure Serbian duke. Once again John was crowned, this time, in an innovation, as Emperor of the Bulgars in Ochrida, former capital of the Bulgarian Empire.10 There he spent his Christmas, ruling from the old palace of the Tsars and issuing various edicts. He entered Thessalonica in April 1334, and there welcomed the arrival of a number of relics sent from Rome by his backer Samuel to inspire the young Emperor’s men ahead of the final confrontation with his uncle.
Andronikos Xanthis had suffered a terrible winter. Finally escaping from Serbia in October, he had limped back across northern Bulgaria, suffering poor weather and a mutinous population that clearly supported John. Upon his return to Constantinople, he was greeted with more bad news. Only a trickle of the promised reinforcements from the East had arrived, and his close friend the Emperor was sinking into ever deeper misery and despair. There were riots in the capital that winter, with an increasingly panicky populace fearing the consequences of an Italian victory in the war.
Despite all of this, however, Xanthis had considerable advantages. The standing field armies of the Haemic peninsula had broadly remained loyal thanks to considerable cash bribes and a long-standing disdain for Bulgarians: it should be remembered that the ranks were still full of professional soldiers who had fought Bulgarian rebels up until 1320. In addition, Xanthis was an experienced and capable commander, in stark contrast to the young pretender John, who he dismissed as a boy who had only just reached his eighteenth birthday. In truth, while the two forces were probably of roughly equal size, Xanthis’ army was much the more professional.
John began the march from Thessalonica just three days after the arrival of provisions and Holy relics from Rome. Aiming to cut him off, Xanthis tried to reach Mosynopolis on the north coast of the Aegean, but John moved his army surprisingly quickly, his enthusiastic troops undertaking forced marches with only a minimum of grumbling. He was additionally supported by the wily Croat mercenary commander Matko Talovać, a veteran of several European wars, and an expert on the rapid movement of troops. The rebels met a largely unprepared loyalist army at Adrianople where an extremely fierce battle ensued, with both sides suffering considerable casualties. In the end Xanthis’ veterans prevailed, but it was a very close run thing: it was said the fields of Adrianople ran red with blood, and the town itself took a generation to recover. Both armies backed down to lick their wounds, and hope for reinforcements.
Events elsewhere in the Empire would dictate the movement of the second phase of the war. In Italy, still largely comprised of a patchwork of notionally independent cities, the only standing troops available to the loyalists had been the armies of the Katepánō of Italy, based in Syracuse. These were the troops that Xanthis had hoped would nip John’s rebellion in the bud early on, but they had been successfully prevented from joining up by the intervention of a Genoan fleet, backed by reinforcements sent by King Charles II of Aragon, who saw an opportunity to expand his nascent Mediterranean empire.11 In March, the Sicilian and mainland elements of the Italian army had finally been able to combine, and they had duly marched on Arischia but, in a remarkable turnaround, were successfully persuaded by Pope Samuel to switch sides and join the rebels. Wasting no time, the soldiers, some five thousand in all, were shipped across to Epirus by the Genoese fleet that had just months previously opposed them.
Meanwhile, in Syria confusion reigned. A large army was slowly wending its way west when news arrived of the battle of Adrianople, and with it, a rumour of the death of Andronikos Xanthis. The cautious Eastern commander Adrianos Lekkas12 opted to halt his troops at Ankyra to await further clarification. The decision would ultimately prove to be the correct one, but at the time, it was calamitous: for the next piece of news was brought to Lekkas by Andronikos Xanthis himself.
The Italian reinforcements had arrived in the camp of John around ten days after he had retreated from Adrianople, and brought with them ready supplies of food, wine and morale. Heartened, within a couple of days, the rebel army was on the march again, and this time, Xanthis could do little to oppose them. He marched instead to the Hellespont, there to await the Eastern armies, and instructed Constantinople to prepare for a siege. Militarily, the plan was sound, given the city’s impregnable status and the large size of the Eastern army, but it proved a disastrous miscalculation. Thinking themselves abandoned, the Byzantines opted to throw themselves on the mercy of the rebels, and John entered Constantinople without a fight on the 29th of July 1334.
His younger brothers fled, in separate directions to avoid attention. Though the two youngest siblings, Rōmanos and Manuel, both managed to escape and link up with Xanthis, now himself in full flight across Anatolia, the middle brother Alexios was not so lucky. Caught by a group of Italian sailors, Alexios suffered an unspeakably cruel end that, we are told, made the new Emperor John III publicly vomit. Captured also was the family patriarch, the Emperor Constantine XI, who died very soon after John entered Constantinople.
John III was swiftly crowned by that experienced weather-vane Patriarch Christopher I13, but the war was far from over. In Ankyra, his uncle Andronikos Xanthis was once more in command of a large and formidable army of fresh veterans, and accompanied by Constantine's remaining legitimate heirs Rōmanos and Manuel. In Italy, Anna Dasiotissa and her daughter Sophia waited at Arischia for the new Emperor’s summons, with their allies in the nobility growing increasingly uneasy at their absence. Along the Empire’s European fringes, lesser rules greedily eyed the situation, and dreamt of increasing their sovereignty. And in Asia Khan Ghazan, a monarch mightier than all of them put together prepared to move in to restore to his rule the territories lost by his forebears.
War raged across the world: and few could foretell who might end up the eventual victor.
________________________________________________
1 There is a debate in the IE Universe as to whether Constantine and his sons should be considered “true” Syrian Emperors, in view of what would happen to them.
2 Approximately modern OTL Albania.
3 Constantine’s surviving sons are aged between seventeen and twelve.
4 See the previous chapter: Sophia is the posthumous daughter of Anna’s first husband Rōmanos IV Pegonites.
5 The regime in power in Constantinople in the 1360s is extremely hostile to most of the major players of the 1330s.
6 These were hung up in churches, directing those for whom the faithful should pray. IOTL, the name of the Pope was stripped from them at numerous points, culminating in the 1054 schism.
7 In the Crimea.
8 In modern OTL Abruzzo, Arischia is a small village.
9 In truth, this is an insult, coming from the ancient practise of Roman Senators travelling many miles to welcome the Emperor into the city.
10 Also once the seat of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, dissolved by Basil II, and periodically revived at politically opportune moments.
11 Aragonese seapower has developed noticeably in the fourteenth century, with the kings of Aragon holding sway over the Balearics and even a couple of fortified port towns on the African coast. The nobility have largely participated in this naval venture, and now the surest mark of ascent is not a host of cavalry and peasants, but a contribution to the royal fleet.
12 Strategos of Mesopotamia under David I, we firstly met Lekkas in Chapter Twenty Five.
13 Initially backed by Samuel and his puppet-Emperor Basil III three years previously, Christopher quite happily accepted the changed situation and worked closely with Constantine XI during his brief reign, before backing away to his country estates during Andronikos Xanthis’ effective regency.
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Great update, BG. Wasn't really expecting the imperial family to rip itself apart, but then again Pope Samuel's involved
Just how did he do that though?
I think yo mean West. Though, considering you were on a dodgy computer, it's probably a typo.Basileus Giorgios said:
Now, that's the Samuel I remember from IE1Basileus Giorgios said:
Just how did he do that though?Poor boy. Though why did the Italian sailors killed him?Basileus Giorgios said:
How did Constantine XI died exactly? Did John III executed him?Basileus Giorgios said:
Something tell me these two woman are going to play an even more important role later on.Basileus Giorgios said:
Formatting partly edited, as is the typo edited by Yorel. As it's been a while since the last update, I've also added a brief summary of the past fifty years, to give context to this update and remind readers where we're up to in the story.
Indeed! Thanks for pointing it out, amended now.
Remember that Samuel is a man of great piety and spiritual force, and this is an extremely religious society. The Pope used an arsenal of religious arguments to persuade the troops of the rightness of John's cause, in addition to liberal cash bribes and his own personal magnetism and authority. By this point, also remember that it's quite clear that Xanthis has failed to nip John's revolt in the bud, and joining in with it could easily be a path to great prestige and power that would not be the case if the soldiers (and more importantly, their commanders) simply keep on business as usual under Xanthis and Constantine XI.
I'm afraid both of these are details lost to the historical record. In all likelihood, Constantine was executed on the orders of his son, but given the historians of the period are generally writing in the 1360s under Isaac IV, a man we'll meet in more detail in future, it's somewhat puzzling that more isn't made of this.
They're a bit Chekov's Gun-ish, aren't they?
Thanks guys!
Great update, BG. Wasn't really expecting the imperial family to rip itself apart, but then again Pope Samuel's involved
I think yo mean West. Though, considering you were on a dodgy computer, it's probably a typo.
Indeed! Thanks for pointing it out, amended now.
Yorel said:Now, that's the Samuel I remember from IE1
Remember that Samuel is a man of great piety and spiritual force, and this is an extremely religious society. The Pope used an arsenal of religious arguments to persuade the troops of the rightness of John's cause, in addition to liberal cash bribes and his own personal magnetism and authority. By this point, also remember that it's quite clear that Xanthis has failed to nip John's revolt in the bud, and joining in with it could easily be a path to great prestige and power that would not be the case if the soldiers (and more importantly, their commanders) simply keep on business as usual under Xanthis and Constantine XI.
Yorel said:
I'm afraid both of these are details lost to the historical record. In all likelihood, Constantine was executed on the orders of his son, but given the historians of the period are generally writing in the 1360s under Isaac IV, a man we'll meet in more detail in future, it's somewhat puzzling that more isn't made of this.
Yorel said:
They're a bit Chekov's Gun-ish, aren't they?
Good update, BG!
Yes it is back. Another wonderful update.
Thanks guys!
Thanks for the short summary BG, really helped bring me up to speed. I assume this is just going to escalate even further, since there's only 30 or so years until the reign of the next regime I assume we'll be seeing the ascension of a certain Pope-Emperor soon?
Escalation, sure. But there'll be several more changes of Emperor before the return of a degree of stability: which also covers your second question...
