The Undying Empire: A Trebizond Timeline
- Thread starter Eparkhos
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I'd like to see what's going on with the Crimean Khanate with reduced Ottoman influence.
I'd also like to see how Andalusia is faring before the death blow.
The effects of a surviving Trebizond has on the Italian Renaissance, and how it effects politics, such as the Borgias
Politics in Venice after getting destroyed by a non naval power, especially one they easily destroyed just a few years ago. Alternatively the Georgian war that happens in a decade.
Also,is the last update title a sabaton reference?
Also,is the last update title a sabaton reference?
I’m actually really interested in the differences in the 100 years war that you hinted at. Did England keep more of the mainland? What concessions were the French trying to get from England by expelling their merchants? Are any early colonial areas controlled by different powers?
Also burgundy in general lol.
Also burgundy in general lol.
The Hundred Years War either ends with the Plantagenêts as Kings of France or limited to Calaisis as to continental holdings.
And with a POD after Joan of Arc, the first one is not an option.
The only question is how long it lasts, but well, the Treaty of Picquigny was basically a way for the English to save face.
Internally, they were nominating the Valois King as their viceroy for France and drawing an income. For the King of France, he spent less paying the English for over ten years, than he would've spent in one year of war.
The Burgundian inheritance thing is much more interesting IMO. Does Charles the Bald wind up King of Burgundy, with Savoy and Lorraine as his vassals ? How is the inheritance dealt with ? Does Marie de Bourgogne marry Maxi von Habsburg per OTL ? Do the Habsburg die out because of the absolute madman Matyas Korvin (the son of Hunyadi) ?
Eparkhos
Banned
Angelovic and Mehmed will definitely being an interesting topic in the future, that's for sure. Denliner's theory has given me an idea, actually...
Trapezous was on its last legs at that point, and a third Ottoman invasion would've been catastrophic. Alexandros chose the least risky option, giving up an uncontrollable vassal in exchange for a vital peace.
Hope does still live for the Anatolian Greeks, which is all you can ask for in some cases. Your remarks about tribute have given me an idea, though.
Have you heard the word of our Lord and Savior, the Planetary Bird?
Eparkhos
Banned
Not really. Their voyages to Brazil were sped up by the discovery of Brasil, so they reached the new world in 1497. Other than that, they're right on track for India.
Well, Andalusia died in 1489. The Crimean and Golden Hordes, however are quite interesting. I haven't decided if the Great Stand went as OTL yet, so Russian history could be radically altered.
Not sure yet, it'll probably get included in the Trapezuntine Renaissance posts.
Yes it is.
Burgundy is very different, to say the least.
Part XXIII: Recovery (1486-1495)
Eparkhos
Banned
Part XXIII: Recovery (1486-1495)
Notaras’ War had done an immense amount of damage to the Trapezuntine Empire. Several years of armies criss-crossing the narrow Pontic coast had destroyed much of the infrastructure there and caused the dispersing of the agricultural centers which were scattered across the long and winding coast of Trapezous. Dozens of villages had been leveled and their inhabitants carried off in chains, leavin large swathes of the country depopulated. It would take the better part of the next decade to recover from the devastation, and these efforts would come to define the popular conception of Alexandros’ long reign. In spite of the destruction of Notaras’ War, the Trapezuntines would emerge once again….
Throughout the war, bands of Turkmen raiders had ranged along the Halys and the Lykos valleys, utterly devastating those regions These raids had not ended with the war either, as most of these raiders were either from independent bands, mercenary hosts run amok, or nominal vassals of either the Karamanides of Samtskhe. As such, Alexandros was forced to turn his army southward to face these raiders. Across the campaign seasons of 1486 and 1487, the Trapezuntines repulsed several assaults on the exposed valleys, driving the nomads back onto the plateau from whence they came. The Trapezuntines then set about reestablishing the Alexandrian fort system through the ridges and hills that formed their southern border, which in turn took several years to be completed. All-in-all, the costs of reforming and consolidating the southern region came to several thousand neahyperpyra per year, not including the costs of maintaining the forts and their garrisons. Supposedly, Alexandros even considered abandoning everything south of the mountains and pulling back to Pontos proper, but quickly dismissed this notion.
Withdrawal wouldn’t have been completely absurd, however. Half a decade spent at the tender mercies of the Turkmen with the bandons in the field elsewhere had seen the population of the Lykos and Halys valley almost completely extinguished. The total number of residents in the valleys had crashed from around 75,000 to 10,000, many of the survivors being members of the bandons who had been at arms when the raids had occurred. Faced with this great swathe of land that had far more bachelors than there were single women across the Empire, Alexandros had to get creative to turn the region into a productive area once again. The first step--inviting Armenians from Cilicia and Circassians from the north shore of the Black Sea to settle there--brought in a great deal of potential subjects, but just wasn’t enough to fully settle the land. So Alexandros and Patriarch Kyrillos, who had taken office after Funa’s death a few years before, put their heads together.
The result was a series of slave raids into Turkmen territory to capture potential wives for the soldiers. Nominally, of course, this was to secure new converts for the church and exact revenge for the ravages of the previous years, but to call it anything other than slaving is putting lipstick on a pig. However, it was a successful campaign, with several thousand Turkmen (Turkwomen?) being captured, forcefully baptized and then married off to various bandonoi. These operations would begin in 1488 and would continue until 1493, when the needs of the state had been met. This practice would be revitalized several more times in Trapezuntine history.
Similar depredations had languished against the great breadths of Pontos proper, but they never caused nearly as much destruction. True, roads (and in some cases entire villages) had to be rebuilt at great cost to the state, but they did not require the extraordinary methods that the lands of rivers had. In most cases, Lazes from more densely populated areas were brought in to farm the abandoned territory, or the usual mixture of Armenians/Circassians/Western Greeks were settled in the region. Amisos, notably was settled by a group of Genoese exiles, who turned their mercantile ability to the benefit of the Trapezuntine Empire.
Speaking of trade, Notaras’ War and the sack of Genoa had both had massive impacts on the world of Mediterranean trade. One of the great trading centers of the known world had been burned to the ground and the Venetians, who would’ve been best posed to exploit this, had been effectively expelled from the Black Sea and northern Aegean due to the war. Two other major trading ports, Trapezous and Damascus, had also been shuttered to trade due to siege and plague, respectively. Merchants across the Meditteranean suddenly found themselves having to pay exponentially more for eastern goods, and merchants in Arabia found themselves having to pay far more for western goods. This created a mercantile vacuum, especially in the Ligurian Sea, which had a number of interesting effects, most notably the creation of the Tabriz--Vatoume[1]--Caladda (Galati) route, which cut the Ottomans off from a great deal of their trade revenue by eliminating the need to pass through the straits.
Enter one Cristoffa Corombo, or as he is known in the Anglophone world, Christopher Columbus. Corombo was practically born with salt in his veins, having first gone to sea in 1460 at the age of nine. He had spent his young adulthood as a business agent of the wealthy Spinola family, earning him a great deal of money and fame as a veteran merchant. He was absent from Genoa at the time of its sack, carrying a cargo of silks back from the Levant, and saw an opportunity for personal advantage. He turned his ship eastwards towards his home town of Savona. The Savonese had been unwilling subjects of Genoa for centuries, and so when Corombo sailed into the city harbor and announced its downfall, the people erupted into cheers. In a makeshift election, Corombo was elected the first Doge of Savona.
With the command of the town, Corombo leapt into action. In the following weeks, he led a small armada along the Ligurian coast, seizing former Genoese holdings and forcing them to acknowledge the Savonese as their new overlords. In this way, he was able to assume the mantle of overlord of the Ligurian cities, cementing Savona as a major trading center. He also made peace with the Milanese, securing his landward face and allowing him to turn his gaze to the sea. Savona quickly blossomed into a large center of trade, nearly as large as old Genoa had once been. The Savonese stepped into the shoes of the Genoese, negotiating the old republic’s privileges from both the Ottomans and Mamluks, which helped them to extend their trade network across the eastern Mediterranean. Of course, they had several problems with the Venetians, but the Savonese were able to hand the Venetians an upset victory at the Battle of Ustica in 1492, which forced the Adriatic republic to acknowledge the Ligurian upstarts as equals. However, while the Savonese spread their net wide, they failed to extend their network to the old Genoese holdings in the Black Sea. The cause of this was quite simple: The Trapezuntines.
The Snowy Peace had made a non-aggression pact, in the closest modern sense, between the Trapezuntines and the Ottomans to last for the next quarter century. Alexandros believed that after this elapsed--and quite possibly before--the two states were doomed to war against each other once again. As such, he intended to do everything in his power to weaken the Sublime Porte’s position. The diplomatic aspects of these efforts will be covered in the next part, so for now let us focus on the maritime and mercantile efforts that the aftokrator made to improve his own position. Firstly, the navy was built up massively, with most of the small remaining treasury being poured into the construction of new vessels to expand the fleet. Secondly, every effort was made to reduce the amount of trade that was passing through the Bosporus. Tariffs and sound tolls on the straits were one of the great boons afforded to the rump Ottoman state, and these needed to be reduced to the lowest feasible amount. Obviously, direct attack against the port was suicidal, but there were still many indirect courses of action that could be taken.
Most importantly, an emphasis was placed on alternate routes to the west. As aforementioned, during the siege and Notaras’ War a secondary trading route had begun to develop, with unblockaded Vatoume serving as a jumping-off board for the Crimea, from which merchants would sail due west and eventually up the Danube to the river ports of Moldova and Wallachia. This route had a good bit of potential, most notably because it significantly cut the travel time to markets in Central Europe by traveling directly there along the Danube. Alexandros tweaked this route slightly, promoting trading in the capital city itself to reduce the inherent corruption in collecting tariffs. He also reduced mooring fees for the Crimean port of Caulita and founded Alexandria[2] Khersoneia in a strategic bay on the western end of the peninsula[3]. Traffic was encouraged to pass through Sinope, which significantly cut the amount of time they had to spend in open water as well as funneling merchants from across Paphlagonia into a Pontic-controlled city. Perhaps most importantly, in 1487 the Trapezuntines negotiated a treaty with the Moldovans and Wallachians that allowed merchants coming from Caulita or Alexandria to pay a mere half of tariffs merchants from other ports did. This had its intended effect, and within a few years Caladda had expanded greatly. Its rival city, Proliava[4], cut its own rates even further to try to draw trade and settled a number of German and Jewish craftsmen and traders (respectively) to further make itself more attractive. As a result, Caladda and Proliava would become centers of the Vlachian Renaissance in the following decades. The Ottomans saw their total income fall as trade on the northern route increased, but there was little they could do but try to attract trade themselves. Constantinople remained an important trading center, but lost its mantle as gateway between the East and West to Trapezous and the Wallachian ports.
All of this trade income was an important substitute for falling tax revenues. In order to restore the realm’s population size to what it had been before the war (and in many cases, to avoid all-out famine), hearth taxes had been dramatically lowered. The taxes on livestock, which had been reinstituted by Mgeli, had also become impossible to enforce, as many herders or headsmen hid their stock before surveying and claimed that they had been made off with by a horde of Turkmen. Throwing up his hands, Alexandros II did as his grandfather had and abrogated the taxes altogether.
All of these economic developments, of course, took a back seat to the ongoing diplomatic efforts, which occupied the bulk of the attention of both the aftokrator and the Empire at large….
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Batumi was renamed to the Pontic ‘Vatoume’ upon its conquest in 1481, but I have neglected to display this in my writing up to this point. My apologies.
[2] Supposedly named after Alexandros I, the naming of this city caused a great deal of scandal at the Trapezuntine court, as many believed that Alexandros II had named it after himself. In particular, there was a great deal of contrast between the all conquering Alexandros the Great and Alexandros II, whom had barely survived the war with the Ottomans. This actually caused the publication of the first printed book in Trapezuntine history, Ho Polemoi ton Alexandros Megalos ke oi Strategou Tou in 1485, but that is a story for another time.
[3] Alexandria was founded at modern Sevastopol, on the ruins of the ancient colony of Khersonesos
[4] Proliava is modern Braila. At this time, there was a growing rivalry between the Moldovans and the Wallachians, and the city received a great deal of money from the Voivode in an attempt to spite the Moldovans of their trade.
This is twelve words to make a round two thousand word total.
Notaras’ War had done an immense amount of damage to the Trapezuntine Empire. Several years of armies criss-crossing the narrow Pontic coast had destroyed much of the infrastructure there and caused the dispersing of the agricultural centers which were scattered across the long and winding coast of Trapezous. Dozens of villages had been leveled and their inhabitants carried off in chains, leavin large swathes of the country depopulated. It would take the better part of the next decade to recover from the devastation, and these efforts would come to define the popular conception of Alexandros’ long reign. In spite of the destruction of Notaras’ War, the Trapezuntines would emerge once again….
Throughout the war, bands of Turkmen raiders had ranged along the Halys and the Lykos valleys, utterly devastating those regions These raids had not ended with the war either, as most of these raiders were either from independent bands, mercenary hosts run amok, or nominal vassals of either the Karamanides of Samtskhe. As such, Alexandros was forced to turn his army southward to face these raiders. Across the campaign seasons of 1486 and 1487, the Trapezuntines repulsed several assaults on the exposed valleys, driving the nomads back onto the plateau from whence they came. The Trapezuntines then set about reestablishing the Alexandrian fort system through the ridges and hills that formed their southern border, which in turn took several years to be completed. All-in-all, the costs of reforming and consolidating the southern region came to several thousand neahyperpyra per year, not including the costs of maintaining the forts and their garrisons. Supposedly, Alexandros even considered abandoning everything south of the mountains and pulling back to Pontos proper, but quickly dismissed this notion.
Withdrawal wouldn’t have been completely absurd, however. Half a decade spent at the tender mercies of the Turkmen with the bandons in the field elsewhere had seen the population of the Lykos and Halys valley almost completely extinguished. The total number of residents in the valleys had crashed from around 75,000 to 10,000, many of the survivors being members of the bandons who had been at arms when the raids had occurred. Faced with this great swathe of land that had far more bachelors than there were single women across the Empire, Alexandros had to get creative to turn the region into a productive area once again. The first step--inviting Armenians from Cilicia and Circassians from the north shore of the Black Sea to settle there--brought in a great deal of potential subjects, but just wasn’t enough to fully settle the land. So Alexandros and Patriarch Kyrillos, who had taken office after Funa’s death a few years before, put their heads together.
The result was a series of slave raids into Turkmen territory to capture potential wives for the soldiers. Nominally, of course, this was to secure new converts for the church and exact revenge for the ravages of the previous years, but to call it anything other than slaving is putting lipstick on a pig. However, it was a successful campaign, with several thousand Turkmen (Turkwomen?) being captured, forcefully baptized and then married off to various bandonoi. These operations would begin in 1488 and would continue until 1493, when the needs of the state had been met. This practice would be revitalized several more times in Trapezuntine history.
Similar depredations had languished against the great breadths of Pontos proper, but they never caused nearly as much destruction. True, roads (and in some cases entire villages) had to be rebuilt at great cost to the state, but they did not require the extraordinary methods that the lands of rivers had. In most cases, Lazes from more densely populated areas were brought in to farm the abandoned territory, or the usual mixture of Armenians/Circassians/Western Greeks were settled in the region. Amisos, notably was settled by a group of Genoese exiles, who turned their mercantile ability to the benefit of the Trapezuntine Empire.
Speaking of trade, Notaras’ War and the sack of Genoa had both had massive impacts on the world of Mediterranean trade. One of the great trading centers of the known world had been burned to the ground and the Venetians, who would’ve been best posed to exploit this, had been effectively expelled from the Black Sea and northern Aegean due to the war. Two other major trading ports, Trapezous and Damascus, had also been shuttered to trade due to siege and plague, respectively. Merchants across the Meditteranean suddenly found themselves having to pay exponentially more for eastern goods, and merchants in Arabia found themselves having to pay far more for western goods. This created a mercantile vacuum, especially in the Ligurian Sea, which had a number of interesting effects, most notably the creation of the Tabriz--Vatoume[1]--Caladda (Galati) route, which cut the Ottomans off from a great deal of their trade revenue by eliminating the need to pass through the straits.
Enter one Cristoffa Corombo, or as he is known in the Anglophone world, Christopher Columbus. Corombo was practically born with salt in his veins, having first gone to sea in 1460 at the age of nine. He had spent his young adulthood as a business agent of the wealthy Spinola family, earning him a great deal of money and fame as a veteran merchant. He was absent from Genoa at the time of its sack, carrying a cargo of silks back from the Levant, and saw an opportunity for personal advantage. He turned his ship eastwards towards his home town of Savona. The Savonese had been unwilling subjects of Genoa for centuries, and so when Corombo sailed into the city harbor and announced its downfall, the people erupted into cheers. In a makeshift election, Corombo was elected the first Doge of Savona.
With the command of the town, Corombo leapt into action. In the following weeks, he led a small armada along the Ligurian coast, seizing former Genoese holdings and forcing them to acknowledge the Savonese as their new overlords. In this way, he was able to assume the mantle of overlord of the Ligurian cities, cementing Savona as a major trading center. He also made peace with the Milanese, securing his landward face and allowing him to turn his gaze to the sea. Savona quickly blossomed into a large center of trade, nearly as large as old Genoa had once been. The Savonese stepped into the shoes of the Genoese, negotiating the old republic’s privileges from both the Ottomans and Mamluks, which helped them to extend their trade network across the eastern Mediterranean. Of course, they had several problems with the Venetians, but the Savonese were able to hand the Venetians an upset victory at the Battle of Ustica in 1492, which forced the Adriatic republic to acknowledge the Ligurian upstarts as equals. However, while the Savonese spread their net wide, they failed to extend their network to the old Genoese holdings in the Black Sea. The cause of this was quite simple: The Trapezuntines.
The Snowy Peace had made a non-aggression pact, in the closest modern sense, between the Trapezuntines and the Ottomans to last for the next quarter century. Alexandros believed that after this elapsed--and quite possibly before--the two states were doomed to war against each other once again. As such, he intended to do everything in his power to weaken the Sublime Porte’s position. The diplomatic aspects of these efforts will be covered in the next part, so for now let us focus on the maritime and mercantile efforts that the aftokrator made to improve his own position. Firstly, the navy was built up massively, with most of the small remaining treasury being poured into the construction of new vessels to expand the fleet. Secondly, every effort was made to reduce the amount of trade that was passing through the Bosporus. Tariffs and sound tolls on the straits were one of the great boons afforded to the rump Ottoman state, and these needed to be reduced to the lowest feasible amount. Obviously, direct attack against the port was suicidal, but there were still many indirect courses of action that could be taken.
Most importantly, an emphasis was placed on alternate routes to the west. As aforementioned, during the siege and Notaras’ War a secondary trading route had begun to develop, with unblockaded Vatoume serving as a jumping-off board for the Crimea, from which merchants would sail due west and eventually up the Danube to the river ports of Moldova and Wallachia. This route had a good bit of potential, most notably because it significantly cut the travel time to markets in Central Europe by traveling directly there along the Danube. Alexandros tweaked this route slightly, promoting trading in the capital city itself to reduce the inherent corruption in collecting tariffs. He also reduced mooring fees for the Crimean port of Caulita and founded Alexandria[2] Khersoneia in a strategic bay on the western end of the peninsula[3]. Traffic was encouraged to pass through Sinope, which significantly cut the amount of time they had to spend in open water as well as funneling merchants from across Paphlagonia into a Pontic-controlled city. Perhaps most importantly, in 1487 the Trapezuntines negotiated a treaty with the Moldovans and Wallachians that allowed merchants coming from Caulita or Alexandria to pay a mere half of tariffs merchants from other ports did. This had its intended effect, and within a few years Caladda had expanded greatly. Its rival city, Proliava[4], cut its own rates even further to try to draw trade and settled a number of German and Jewish craftsmen and traders (respectively) to further make itself more attractive. As a result, Caladda and Proliava would become centers of the Vlachian Renaissance in the following decades. The Ottomans saw their total income fall as trade on the northern route increased, but there was little they could do but try to attract trade themselves. Constantinople remained an important trading center, but lost its mantle as gateway between the East and West to Trapezous and the Wallachian ports.
All of this trade income was an important substitute for falling tax revenues. In order to restore the realm’s population size to what it had been before the war (and in many cases, to avoid all-out famine), hearth taxes had been dramatically lowered. The taxes on livestock, which had been reinstituted by Mgeli, had also become impossible to enforce, as many herders or headsmen hid their stock before surveying and claimed that they had been made off with by a horde of Turkmen. Throwing up his hands, Alexandros II did as his grandfather had and abrogated the taxes altogether.
All of these economic developments, of course, took a back seat to the ongoing diplomatic efforts, which occupied the bulk of the attention of both the aftokrator and the Empire at large….
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Batumi was renamed to the Pontic ‘Vatoume’ upon its conquest in 1481, but I have neglected to display this in my writing up to this point. My apologies.
[2] Supposedly named after Alexandros I, the naming of this city caused a great deal of scandal at the Trapezuntine court, as many believed that Alexandros II had named it after himself. In particular, there was a great deal of contrast between the all conquering Alexandros the Great and Alexandros II, whom had barely survived the war with the Ottomans. This actually caused the publication of the first printed book in Trapezuntine history, Ho Polemoi ton Alexandros Megalos ke oi Strategou Tou in 1485, but that is a story for another time.
[3] Alexandria was founded at modern Sevastopol, on the ruins of the ancient colony of Khersonesos
[4] Proliava is modern Braila. At this time, there was a growing rivalry between the Moldovans and the Wallachians, and the city received a great deal of money from the Voivode in an attempt to spite the Moldovans of their trade.
This is twelve words to make a round two thousand word total.
I love your worldbuilding chapters. Could the trapezuntiens maybe "reraid" some of the enslaved populace of paphlagonia ?
Maybe we could see a minor city state arise in the Danube delta, the region is pretty empty in OTL, but it’s not worse than Venice, such a city state would push for increased trade along the Danube. Another aspect with the weaker Ottoman maybe Poland would be stronger position along the Dnieper and we could see the Black Sea trade also increase there.
Thinking on it, there are interesting advantages here as a tribute paying state. The Trapezuntines, can claim to be under the protection of the Ottomans which should offer them local protection. They can also expect the protection of being within the 'house of Islam' and not being subject to ghazi raids for loot or slaves but having protected status as 'people of the book'. A fairly independent governance is also expected.
Whether it's actually respected is another matter. Ottmoans are probably satisfied for now, and they'll probably look the other way if other Muslim bands raid Trapezous.
Being brought into the fold rather than being an infidel would allow the Trapezuntines the ability to operate diplomacy much more warmly with the surrounding Muslim states though.
Offering auxillary soldiers for Ottoman campaigns, taxation and maybe sons would be the price, but subverting influence should be possible if timed right. Especially, if they couple it with moving and taking advantage of the northern trade routes.
Whether it's actually respected is another matter. Ottmoans are probably satisfied for now, and they'll probably look the other way if other Muslim bands raid Trapezous.
Being brought into the fold rather than being an infidel would allow the Trapezuntines the ability to operate diplomacy much more warmly with the surrounding Muslim states though.
Offering auxillary soldiers for Ottoman campaigns, taxation and maybe sons would be the price, but subverting influence should be possible if timed right. Especially, if they couple it with moving and taking advantage of the northern trade routes.
That's horrible, Trebizond can't afford to look weak against its neighbours. Giving some tribute is ok but sending auxiliary and your own sons to the ottoman military? Are you out of your mind? You can make use of your own people better than being cannon fodder against the enemies of the Ottomans.
Subverting influence can be done via other ways, what you're proposing is equal to making Trebizond de facto vassal of the Ottomans. No sane ruler would do it unless they've been thoughly defeated. And Trebizond is far cry from being totally defeated.
Really kudos for Colombo as doge of Savona, and Savona rising as the pre-eminent city of Liguria. Those are things you rarely see in alternate Italian history (I admit: you really took me of surprise).
Is horrible to say, but the war had as first long standing effect for Trebisonda to repopulate east Galatia with an Orthodox and not Turk majority. And foreshadowing how the Empire is going to be ruthless with Muslim and Turks populations... But indeed the Anatolian Greeks couldn't afford to rule lands with majority Turks.
Maybe if the demographic scales would revert drastically in the next centuries, maybe eventual Turk communities may accept - or to better say, be accepted - to live under the Empire as long they are minority and respect the Trapezuntine laws.
Is horrible to say, but the war had as first long standing effect for Trebisonda to repopulate east Galatia with an Orthodox and not Turk majority. And foreshadowing how the Empire is going to be ruthless with Muslim and Turks populations... But indeed the Anatolian Greeks couldn't afford to rule lands with majority Turks.
Maybe if the demographic scales would revert drastically in the next centuries, maybe eventual Turk communities may accept - or to better say, be accepted - to live under the Empire as long they are minority and respect the Trapezuntine laws.
Eparkhos
Banned
Unfortunately, most of them were sold off at a great distance from Anatolia.
The Trapezuntines will have to be clement with the Muslims for the time being, if only out of self-interest. I also have some ideas about renaissance Italy and it seems you know a great deal about it. Can I PM you later?
Part XXIV: The Spider's Web (1486-1493)
Eparkhos
Banned
Part XXIV: The Spider’s Web (1486-1493)
Much has been made of the ancestral alliance between Trapezous and Kartvelia. The former state had come into existence (and some might say continued to exist) by the discretion of the latter, and the two Orthodox realms had fought alongside each other many times, be it against heathen or heretic. One of the more notable of these conflicts was Notaras’ War, which saw the imperiled Trapezuntines rescued from destruction by the Turks by the force of Kartvelian arms. This alliance would be the ideal to which Alexandros would aspire in the many treaties which he concluded after this close call with the Ottomans, though only time would tell whether any of them would reach it.
The first of these treaties would be concluded with the Qoyunlu. While the combined force of Trapezuntine and Kartvelian arms had repulsed the Turkish horde, it had been the threat of intervention by the other Turkish horde that led the grand vizier to foolishly accelerate his plans. The alliance between Trapezous and Tabriz was by now a long-lasting one, the two states having pledged to protect the other since Alexandros I had taken the throne all the way back in 1449. Multiple marriages had been conducted between the two states in the intervening span of time, and the houses of Hasan and Komnenos were thoroughly tied together. Skantarios correctly identified this alliance as being crucial to his state’s continued survival and so worked to improve relations with his cousin’s realm. A series of envoys were dispatched to Ya’qub Beg’s court in Tabriz between 1486 and the end of Alexandros II’s reign, and these did much to improve relations between the two states.
It was a crucial time to be shoring up their relationship, for the Qoyunlu Horde was swiftly transitioning into a proper empire. The reign of Uzun Hasan had seen the promotion of native Persians and Arabs to positions of high power, and his son had not seen fit to curtail this trend. Indeed, Ya’qub Beg had fully embraced the fact that he ruled over the ruins of a bureaucratic empire and begun to shift power away from the traditional tribal elders towards his newly-created (and constantly expanding) palace corps. This saw the power of his state increase every year, as intensive and all-encompassing tax codes were drafted and the mobilization of landed soldiers became increasingly easy. Obviously, this didn’t go over well with everyone--see the Khorasani Revolt of 1482--but many of the Turkmen were willing to go along with it, as Ya’qub Beg lavished increasing privileges upon them. Unbeknownst to them, however, their liege was plotting to have them done away with. The Turkmen tribes were rowdy and chaotic, equally likely to treat their subjects well as they were to massacre or enslave them wholesale. As the 1480s drew on, they became increasingly agitating, with many of the smaller tribes waging undeclared war against each other for prestige and personal gain. All of this struggle came down hardest on the sedentary farmers, as they were unable to migrate away from the war zones as the Turkmen could. A quick overlook of his empire revealed that there were far more Arabs and Persians than there were Turkmen, and so Ya’qub Beg concluded that the former would be a far better base of support than the latter. As such, he and his immediate supporters plotted to crush the Turkmen and thus solidify the power of the sultan over his sedentary (and hopefully sole) subjects.
The crushing of the Turkmen began in 1491, when Ya’qub provoked one of the northern tribes, the Ergani to revolt. The Ergani were liked by many of the other tribes, and so for a time the north-western corner of the Qoyunlu empire was rocked with civil war as tribes either revolted in support of their brethren or held true to their liege. Ya’qub looked on from Tabriz, letting the subject tribes bleed each other for two years before finally stepping in to end the madness. The region, which was the home of the lion’s share of the Turkmen tribes, had been utterly devastated by the years of turmoil, and so Ya’qub and his loyal forces were able to easily sweep the Turkmen out of it. Most of them were either enslaved or fled west into the Karamanid realm. Ya’qub did not pursue them--a decision that would come back to bite him--and instead fortified the border with the Turkish emirate. After this was secured, settlers from Mesopotamia were brought north to populate the region. The remaining Turkmen tribes were sufficiently cowed and could be safely removed from power with only some minor outbreaks of violence. With the ancient tribes subdued or dispersed, Ya’qub Beg was free to crown himself Shahanshah of the (Qutlughid[1]) Persian Empire, taking the regnal name Arslan II[2]. All the while, the alliance with Trapezous remained intact.
Meanwhile, Skantarios also looked to the west for help. The Venetians and Ottomans had been standoffish at the best of time, but the humiliating defeat of Notaras’ War had sent the Italians into a furious bout of military expansion. The Venetian navy had been massively expanded to more than two hundred galleys, while the number of permanent mercenary contracts had rosen dramatically as the garrisons of their holdings in the eastern Meditwerannean were expanded. It was an open secret that the Venetians were preparing for another war with the Ottomans, which they hoped would return control of the Northern Aegean to them. Alexandros had no intention of actually joining this conflict, but he still hoped than an agreement with the Venetians, as distasteful as it would be to the Ponts, would deter Ottoman aggression. The Venetians initially rebuffed him, but they were brought around to an alliance with the trading empire after their defeat at the hands of the Savonese at Ustica in 1492. Their negligence in not immediately crushing Coromba’s upstart republic had cost them their network on the western side of the Straits of Messina, and they now would do everything in their power to hold on to their empire on the eastern side of it.
They conducted an official defensive alliance as part of a trade deal in 1495, with both states promising to come to the other’s aid if they were attacked by the Ottomans. However, the main goal of the treaty was a trade deal, which would allow Venetian merchants to trade at lower tariffs than the other Latin merchants. Comparatively lower, that is, the Komnenoi had given the Venetians too much on far too many occasions for Alexandros to give more than what he considered the bare minimum to the perfidious Italians. The hope on the part of the Venetians was that they would be able to trade directly with the Trapezuntines then return through the straits without having to dock in Constantinople (and thus pay their tariffs there). At best, the Ottomans would be completely confounded and forced to give up some of their gains, and at worst they would find themselves engaged in a war on two fronts. However, this plan was spoiled in 1496, when Mehmed III closed the straits to the Venetians. The merchants of Venice were forced to fall back on a far less efficient trading strategy, splitting their monies between a Mediterranean fleet and a river fleet for trading on the Danube and Sava, from whence goods would be portaged overland to Dalmatia. The whole affair caused profits to plummet, and the Venetians were soon struggling to maintain their fleet and army at their standing size. However, Alexandros still kept up the alliance as they armed forces shrank in both size and quality, hoping that they would be a sufficient deterrent to further Ottoman aggression.
He turned his attention to the Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluks had long loomed over the affairs of Anatolia, waiting to descend upon any who threatened their power like a bolt from on high. They jealously guarded their northern border, as the nature of the region meant that the Mamluks were essentially insulated from attacks from any other (landward) direction, and so they were able to focus the vast resources of their great realm on their northern border. Any warlord who seemed to pose a threat would be unseated either by a direct assault or by more subtle means, be it the assassin’s dagger or funds given to a local rival. The Mamluks had been suspiciously eying the expansion of the Ottomans for some time, giving a great deal of money and weapons to the Karamids, whom they hoped would act as a buffer. The shock collapse of Ottoman Anatolia in the face of the beyliks had upset the situation in the region to such an extent that the Mamluks has turned their attention to the north-east, where the Qutlughids now posed the greatest threat. Skantarios and his agents lobbied heavily in the court of Cairo, trying to persuade Sultan Qaitbay that the Ottomans still posed more of a threat than the Qutlughids did. This had little effect--the garrisons on the far side of the Euphrates had been skirmishing with Qutlughid irregulars for nearly every year since 1480--and this had the sole effect of getting the Trapezuntines and their merchants expelled from Egypt and Syria.
With any hope of alliance with the Mamluks gone, Alexandros tried for the next best option, an alliance with the Karamanids. The death of Ishak in a skirmish with Qutlughid raiders in 1486 had led the divided Karamanid beyliks to unite once again under the rule of Pir Ahmet. The bey was not ambitious and seemed perfectly content to rest on his laurels, essentially ignoring his neighboring principalities except for the occasional raid against them. However, the merciless destruction of the Second Çandarid Beylik by a large Ottoman army in 1489 had severely spooked Ahmet, and he looked abroad for allies against the great enemy to the west. In 1492 he conducted a defensive alliance with the Trapezuntines in hopes of preventing further expansion into Anatolia, and in 1496 he made a second alliance with Tabriz to do the same as well as securing his eastern border. The alliance between Trapezous and Konya was tenuous at best due to the constant raids by many of the Turkmen tribes, but Alexandros chose to ignore these in favor of bettering his odds in the case of war with the Ottomans.
Throughout the entirety of this period, Trapezuntine agents were crisscrossing western and central Europe. As previously mentioned, Alexandros was a Latinophile and hoped to raise a crusade that would finally drive the Ottomans out of Europe or at the very least weaken them enough to collapse. In 1488, he himself made a personal visit to the Hungarian court, traveling there along the Danube trading routes. At this time, Ladislaus VI Hunyadi had recently died without an heir, and the kingdom was beset in a civil war between his brother, Matyas Hunyadi[3], and the Archduke of Austria. Alexandros visited Hunyadi’s court in Esztergom and the Austrian court in Vienna, trying to persuade both to put aside their differences and crusade against the Ottomans. Neither of the monarchs were persuaded, although Hunyadi made some vague promises in hopes of getting the insolent Greek to screw off and leave him alone. Unfortunately for him, Alexandros remained in Esztergom for the next sixth months, during which time he participated in several jousts with Hungarian knights, winning all but one. In early 1490, he departed Hungary, unknowingly leaving a scandal in his wake[4].
He next went to Krakow, the seat of the Kingdom of Poland. The King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania at this time was Kazimierz IV, an ambitious but not especially capable ruler. Alexandros attempted to recruit him for a crusade as well, and Kazimierz was quite receptive to the idea. This was less due to any genuine piety and more due to a desire to upstage Hunyadi, whom he despised with a burning passion. Alexandros found Kazimierz a distasteful man whom he fundamentally disliked, but concealed these feelings for the greater purpose of unity between the two realms. Kazimierz began making plans for a crusade to be launched in 1492, but his death due to disease scuppered these plans. His successor, Jan I, politely told Alexandros to bugger off, but after a great deal of inveighing promised to protect the Trapezuntines from any Ottoman invasion. This was partly due to self-interest, as the Polish march of Moldova had grown immensely wealthy off of the trans-Black Sea trade, and partly out of a desire to prevent the Ottomans from getting any more dangerous than they already were. A small number of Polish and Lithuanians knights who had prematurely taken the cross followed Alexandros back to Trapezous, but there were no more than a few dozen of these.
Upon his return to Trapezous, Alexandros was greeted by an embassy from Kartvelia. The Samtskheotes, whom had so brazenly betrayed them before the Battle of Saint Eugenios, had gone unpunished for far too long. Alek’sandre asked that his cousin join him in an expedition to reward them for their impunity, and Alexandros agreed….
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[1] Named after the founder of Aq Qoyunlu and Arslan II’s great^5 grandfather
[2] Ya’qub considered the Seljuks to be a Persian Empire, and under his patronage this would become a common view in Persia and Mesopotamia
[3] Known OTL as Matthais Corvinus
[4] Both Matyas and his wife, Katerin, were fair-haired. As such, the birth of the dark-haired Prince Ladislaus in 1490 caused a great deal of scandal in the Hungarian court, with some speculating that the father was Alexandros. He became a convenient scapegoat as A) he was not around to defend himself and B) Trapezous was essentially diplomatically irrelevant. The scandal was never officially addressed, although it would come back to undermine the legitimacy of Ladislaus once he ascended to the throne in the 1520s.
Much has been made of the ancestral alliance between Trapezous and Kartvelia. The former state had come into existence (and some might say continued to exist) by the discretion of the latter, and the two Orthodox realms had fought alongside each other many times, be it against heathen or heretic. One of the more notable of these conflicts was Notaras’ War, which saw the imperiled Trapezuntines rescued from destruction by the Turks by the force of Kartvelian arms. This alliance would be the ideal to which Alexandros would aspire in the many treaties which he concluded after this close call with the Ottomans, though only time would tell whether any of them would reach it.
The first of these treaties would be concluded with the Qoyunlu. While the combined force of Trapezuntine and Kartvelian arms had repulsed the Turkish horde, it had been the threat of intervention by the other Turkish horde that led the grand vizier to foolishly accelerate his plans. The alliance between Trapezous and Tabriz was by now a long-lasting one, the two states having pledged to protect the other since Alexandros I had taken the throne all the way back in 1449. Multiple marriages had been conducted between the two states in the intervening span of time, and the houses of Hasan and Komnenos were thoroughly tied together. Skantarios correctly identified this alliance as being crucial to his state’s continued survival and so worked to improve relations with his cousin’s realm. A series of envoys were dispatched to Ya’qub Beg’s court in Tabriz between 1486 and the end of Alexandros II’s reign, and these did much to improve relations between the two states.
It was a crucial time to be shoring up their relationship, for the Qoyunlu Horde was swiftly transitioning into a proper empire. The reign of Uzun Hasan had seen the promotion of native Persians and Arabs to positions of high power, and his son had not seen fit to curtail this trend. Indeed, Ya’qub Beg had fully embraced the fact that he ruled over the ruins of a bureaucratic empire and begun to shift power away from the traditional tribal elders towards his newly-created (and constantly expanding) palace corps. This saw the power of his state increase every year, as intensive and all-encompassing tax codes were drafted and the mobilization of landed soldiers became increasingly easy. Obviously, this didn’t go over well with everyone--see the Khorasani Revolt of 1482--but many of the Turkmen were willing to go along with it, as Ya’qub Beg lavished increasing privileges upon them. Unbeknownst to them, however, their liege was plotting to have them done away with. The Turkmen tribes were rowdy and chaotic, equally likely to treat their subjects well as they were to massacre or enslave them wholesale. As the 1480s drew on, they became increasingly agitating, with many of the smaller tribes waging undeclared war against each other for prestige and personal gain. All of this struggle came down hardest on the sedentary farmers, as they were unable to migrate away from the war zones as the Turkmen could. A quick overlook of his empire revealed that there were far more Arabs and Persians than there were Turkmen, and so Ya’qub Beg concluded that the former would be a far better base of support than the latter. As such, he and his immediate supporters plotted to crush the Turkmen and thus solidify the power of the sultan over his sedentary (and hopefully sole) subjects.
The crushing of the Turkmen began in 1491, when Ya’qub provoked one of the northern tribes, the Ergani to revolt. The Ergani were liked by many of the other tribes, and so for a time the north-western corner of the Qoyunlu empire was rocked with civil war as tribes either revolted in support of their brethren or held true to their liege. Ya’qub looked on from Tabriz, letting the subject tribes bleed each other for two years before finally stepping in to end the madness. The region, which was the home of the lion’s share of the Turkmen tribes, had been utterly devastated by the years of turmoil, and so Ya’qub and his loyal forces were able to easily sweep the Turkmen out of it. Most of them were either enslaved or fled west into the Karamanid realm. Ya’qub did not pursue them--a decision that would come back to bite him--and instead fortified the border with the Turkish emirate. After this was secured, settlers from Mesopotamia were brought north to populate the region. The remaining Turkmen tribes were sufficiently cowed and could be safely removed from power with only some minor outbreaks of violence. With the ancient tribes subdued or dispersed, Ya’qub Beg was free to crown himself Shahanshah of the (Qutlughid[1]) Persian Empire, taking the regnal name Arslan II[2]. All the while, the alliance with Trapezous remained intact.
Meanwhile, Skantarios also looked to the west for help. The Venetians and Ottomans had been standoffish at the best of time, but the humiliating defeat of Notaras’ War had sent the Italians into a furious bout of military expansion. The Venetian navy had been massively expanded to more than two hundred galleys, while the number of permanent mercenary contracts had rosen dramatically as the garrisons of their holdings in the eastern Meditwerannean were expanded. It was an open secret that the Venetians were preparing for another war with the Ottomans, which they hoped would return control of the Northern Aegean to them. Alexandros had no intention of actually joining this conflict, but he still hoped than an agreement with the Venetians, as distasteful as it would be to the Ponts, would deter Ottoman aggression. The Venetians initially rebuffed him, but they were brought around to an alliance with the trading empire after their defeat at the hands of the Savonese at Ustica in 1492. Their negligence in not immediately crushing Coromba’s upstart republic had cost them their network on the western side of the Straits of Messina, and they now would do everything in their power to hold on to their empire on the eastern side of it.
They conducted an official defensive alliance as part of a trade deal in 1495, with both states promising to come to the other’s aid if they were attacked by the Ottomans. However, the main goal of the treaty was a trade deal, which would allow Venetian merchants to trade at lower tariffs than the other Latin merchants. Comparatively lower, that is, the Komnenoi had given the Venetians too much on far too many occasions for Alexandros to give more than what he considered the bare minimum to the perfidious Italians. The hope on the part of the Venetians was that they would be able to trade directly with the Trapezuntines then return through the straits without having to dock in Constantinople (and thus pay their tariffs there). At best, the Ottomans would be completely confounded and forced to give up some of their gains, and at worst they would find themselves engaged in a war on two fronts. However, this plan was spoiled in 1496, when Mehmed III closed the straits to the Venetians. The merchants of Venice were forced to fall back on a far less efficient trading strategy, splitting their monies between a Mediterranean fleet and a river fleet for trading on the Danube and Sava, from whence goods would be portaged overland to Dalmatia. The whole affair caused profits to plummet, and the Venetians were soon struggling to maintain their fleet and army at their standing size. However, Alexandros still kept up the alliance as they armed forces shrank in both size and quality, hoping that they would be a sufficient deterrent to further Ottoman aggression.
He turned his attention to the Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluks had long loomed over the affairs of Anatolia, waiting to descend upon any who threatened their power like a bolt from on high. They jealously guarded their northern border, as the nature of the region meant that the Mamluks were essentially insulated from attacks from any other (landward) direction, and so they were able to focus the vast resources of their great realm on their northern border. Any warlord who seemed to pose a threat would be unseated either by a direct assault or by more subtle means, be it the assassin’s dagger or funds given to a local rival. The Mamluks had been suspiciously eying the expansion of the Ottomans for some time, giving a great deal of money and weapons to the Karamids, whom they hoped would act as a buffer. The shock collapse of Ottoman Anatolia in the face of the beyliks had upset the situation in the region to such an extent that the Mamluks has turned their attention to the north-east, where the Qutlughids now posed the greatest threat. Skantarios and his agents lobbied heavily in the court of Cairo, trying to persuade Sultan Qaitbay that the Ottomans still posed more of a threat than the Qutlughids did. This had little effect--the garrisons on the far side of the Euphrates had been skirmishing with Qutlughid irregulars for nearly every year since 1480--and this had the sole effect of getting the Trapezuntines and their merchants expelled from Egypt and Syria.
With any hope of alliance with the Mamluks gone, Alexandros tried for the next best option, an alliance with the Karamanids. The death of Ishak in a skirmish with Qutlughid raiders in 1486 had led the divided Karamanid beyliks to unite once again under the rule of Pir Ahmet. The bey was not ambitious and seemed perfectly content to rest on his laurels, essentially ignoring his neighboring principalities except for the occasional raid against them. However, the merciless destruction of the Second Çandarid Beylik by a large Ottoman army in 1489 had severely spooked Ahmet, and he looked abroad for allies against the great enemy to the west. In 1492 he conducted a defensive alliance with the Trapezuntines in hopes of preventing further expansion into Anatolia, and in 1496 he made a second alliance with Tabriz to do the same as well as securing his eastern border. The alliance between Trapezous and Konya was tenuous at best due to the constant raids by many of the Turkmen tribes, but Alexandros chose to ignore these in favor of bettering his odds in the case of war with the Ottomans.
Throughout the entirety of this period, Trapezuntine agents were crisscrossing western and central Europe. As previously mentioned, Alexandros was a Latinophile and hoped to raise a crusade that would finally drive the Ottomans out of Europe or at the very least weaken them enough to collapse. In 1488, he himself made a personal visit to the Hungarian court, traveling there along the Danube trading routes. At this time, Ladislaus VI Hunyadi had recently died without an heir, and the kingdom was beset in a civil war between his brother, Matyas Hunyadi[3], and the Archduke of Austria. Alexandros visited Hunyadi’s court in Esztergom and the Austrian court in Vienna, trying to persuade both to put aside their differences and crusade against the Ottomans. Neither of the monarchs were persuaded, although Hunyadi made some vague promises in hopes of getting the insolent Greek to screw off and leave him alone. Unfortunately for him, Alexandros remained in Esztergom for the next sixth months, during which time he participated in several jousts with Hungarian knights, winning all but one. In early 1490, he departed Hungary, unknowingly leaving a scandal in his wake[4].
He next went to Krakow, the seat of the Kingdom of Poland. The King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania at this time was Kazimierz IV, an ambitious but not especially capable ruler. Alexandros attempted to recruit him for a crusade as well, and Kazimierz was quite receptive to the idea. This was less due to any genuine piety and more due to a desire to upstage Hunyadi, whom he despised with a burning passion. Alexandros found Kazimierz a distasteful man whom he fundamentally disliked, but concealed these feelings for the greater purpose of unity between the two realms. Kazimierz began making plans for a crusade to be launched in 1492, but his death due to disease scuppered these plans. His successor, Jan I, politely told Alexandros to bugger off, but after a great deal of inveighing promised to protect the Trapezuntines from any Ottoman invasion. This was partly due to self-interest, as the Polish march of Moldova had grown immensely wealthy off of the trans-Black Sea trade, and partly out of a desire to prevent the Ottomans from getting any more dangerous than they already were. A small number of Polish and Lithuanians knights who had prematurely taken the cross followed Alexandros back to Trapezous, but there were no more than a few dozen of these.
Upon his return to Trapezous, Alexandros was greeted by an embassy from Kartvelia. The Samtskheotes, whom had so brazenly betrayed them before the Battle of Saint Eugenios, had gone unpunished for far too long. Alek’sandre asked that his cousin join him in an expedition to reward them for their impunity, and Alexandros agreed….
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Named after the founder of Aq Qoyunlu and Arslan II’s great^5 grandfather
[2] Ya’qub considered the Seljuks to be a Persian Empire, and under his patronage this would become a common view in Persia and Mesopotamia
[3] Known OTL as Matthais Corvinus
[4] Both Matyas and his wife, Katerin, were fair-haired. As such, the birth of the dark-haired Prince Ladislaus in 1490 caused a great deal of scandal in the Hungarian court, with some speculating that the father was Alexandros. He became a convenient scapegoat as A) he was not around to defend himself and B) Trapezous was essentially diplomatically irrelevant. The scandal was never officially addressed, although it would come back to undermine the legitimacy of Ladislaus once he ascended to the throne in the 1520s.
Relax.
Doing it that way would imply both the Vizier and Alexandros got tossed an idiot ball.
Of course neither side has to or would follow those terms to the letter. I'd say its risky for both to do so. And as I said, Alexandros has enough leverage to screw with the Ottomans, and they know it.
The Vizier should be smart enough to know using any men or sons (likely from unruly peasants or muslims )-given to him as canon fodder would be short sighted and backfire. He's better off using them for prestige or in limited operations to the Candar or Karaminids. He'd probably crow about the sons offered up to him, and probably be aware they are mostly orphans or Muslim children dumped on him. I highly doubt the Vizier would embarrass himself asking for a royal sons, knowing it's out of the question.
He'd probably use them and the soldiers to show how great tribute payers are treated under the Ottomans. And I say it because of the strategy for dealing with the collapsing Candarid Beylik was to intervene after overwhelming local calls for it.
I don't see why the Ottomans wouldn't try the same elsewhere.
As for Alexandros, he can point to his fulfillment of the above obligations and retaliate against some of the more zealous raiding bands from the surrounding Muslim Polities without risking escalation. And he can do so because the local rulers will actually be able to look the other way or punish raiders themselves.
Guess that Crusade won’t be happening anytime. Alexandros got dealt a pretty shit hand when it came to diplomacy in Europe but his alliances with most of the Beyliks definitely make up for it.
love the personal and awesome friendship Trapezuntine and Kartevlia has. Cant wait till Trapuzuntine aids Kartevelia. That will be a hype moment
love the personal and awesome friendship Trapezuntine and Kartevlia has. Cant wait till Trapuzuntine aids Kartevelia. That will be a hype moment
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