Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Das, I enthusiastically support you modding this after your current NES ends.
Very. Enthusiastically.
Or I could...possibly.
Very. Enthusiastically.
Or I could...possibly.
Alternate History Thread II...
- Thread starter Xen
- Start date
- Status
das
Regeneration In Process
Good, because I like to torture enthusiastic people by restarting ITNES I instead. 
That's the spirit.
That's the spirit.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Of masochism...probably. Could you make stats?
Disenfrancised
Beep Beep
Well right now its in the middle of the Lincoln Wolds, the most inaccessable and difficult terrian on the east coast, plus is a region lacking somewhat in the fresh water requirements of a major city .
I'm just nitpicking however - don't mind me
.
I'm just nitpicking however - don't mind me
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
So what's with asia? 
Another Qing-Ming-Japanese three way thing?
Another Qing-Ming-Japanese three way thing?
das
Regeneration In Process
Security considerations?
After all, a capital is supposed to be well-defended. Not quite Song, but they did survive longer than in OTL. Yuan is indeed in. Japan, however, is but a pawn - a minor Chinese ally in the struggle with the Mongols.
Swissempire
Poet Jester
Das, this map made me scream in excitement, which freaked out my brother.
If whomever mods thid nes stops me from getting Ireland, i swear to GOD!
If whomever mods thid nes stops me from getting Ireland, i swear to GOD!
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
*Makes vague noises about how Zanzibar would not likely have been able to conquer Kerala*
Kozmos
Jew Detective
Bloody truks, always conquering the balkans in any alt. Or it the Byzants? Either way Argh against foreign multinational empires.
Kozmos
Jew Detective
Why they always get in the way of forming the great Socialist+/-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It doesnt matter it's 1500s YAARRRRR!!!
Byzantium FTW!!! 11111
Guys, I am seriously thinking about stopping work on my timeline right now. I don't want to degrade it through my constant pro-Byzantine bias (which does sort of stop as the war drags on, but it's been a pain so far) and the Norman bits. I mean, the war just sort of...fizzles after awhile, and then, I don't know what to do to get the world to an appropriate point for a possible NES.
And about the map: I love to draw maps, but it's the cities that drive me insane. There's so many...
Guys, I am seriously thinking about stopping work on my timeline right now. I don't want to degrade it through my constant pro-Byzantine bias (which does sort of stop as the war drags on, but it's been a pain so far) and the Norman bits. I mean, the war just sort of...fizzles after awhile, and then, I don't know what to do to get the world to an appropriate point for a possible NES.
And about the map: I love to draw maps, but it's the cities that drive me insane. There's so many...
das
Regeneration In Process
Just do the war and move on until you think its a good point for the althist to stop and the NES to begin.
Here's the remainder of the war. Not much surprising, I'm afraid...
1093’s campaigning season opened with two armies facing each other on the Adige River. The combined Norman-Byzantine armies of Bohemund and Alexius sat on the south, unable to cross; the German horde of Otto IV, King of Germany, was on the other, unwilling to cross. Otto was outnumbered, true enough, but he was also opposed by a coalition of disparate partners, and if he could break that coalition, he’d be able to reassert his control over Italy and win his rightful crown of Holy Roman Emperor. He (correctly) blamed his current war and misfortunes on his incompetent father, who had ruined the German empire that Henry IV had built with such care, and by rights wouldn’t ever want to make war on the Pope. Burgundy definitely, and Byzantium possibly, but the young German King was a devout Christian, and his excommunication in May of the previous year had hurt him badly, in the spiritual sense anyway. Although his troops’ morale was high due to victories over the Venetians and parts of the Norman army, he knew his own strategic situation was desperate, and he knew just where to turn to gain his own ally, with whom he could defeat the coalition and gain his throne. He contacted Philip of France.
King Philip, he knew, was angered at the increasing independence of the Hauteville-controlled territories in his kingdom, which spanned over virtually half of France – the southern half. Truly, the Pyrenees did not exist any longer, for Norman land lay on both sides the whole way through. (Except for the large polar bear base in what is in an alternate universe called Andorra, which was, naturally, unknown to Normans, French, Iberians, and Germans alike.) He – Philip – had tried to enlist Robert Guiscard’s help against the family of Guy of Burgundy, but Guy’s descendant Eudes had been defeated by the English without Robert lifting so much as a finger. Upon Robert’s death, relations between the King and his nominal vassal Bohemund decreased even further, as Bohemund during the previous winter had decreased his control of his Hauteville relatives – and vassals – who began to run rampant throughout southern France, with little to stop them even in the Royal demesne. This was, of course, a war measure, but Philip was already seething at the young pup. When Otto’s ambassadors arrived in France in the winter of 1092-3, the King jumped at the chance to punish his vassal.
King Philip of France led an army against the Hautevillian domains in southern France in spring of 1093, as Bohemund sat on the Adige, waiting for Otto to make a move. When word reached the King, he was forced to withdraw the large – 15,000 men – army from Italy, leaving only a few troops to garrison his fortresses in the Po valley. As Bohemund’s men filtered through the Mt. Cenis and St. Bernard’s Passes back towards Burgundy and Philip’s army, Otto continued to gather his reinforcements from Germany. He now, having achieved a diplomatic masterpiece, prepared for his military one. The only thing that stood in his way was a little water. He aimed not for Alexius, impatiently sitting on the other side of the Adige, with no way to cross, but for Vitale Morosini. Otto was going to assault Venice.
Operationally, it made a good deal of sense. He would keep the Byzantine army deadlocked on the river, and use his reinforcements to hold him, still commanded by steadfast Conrad of Styria. With his army from last year, now experienced in the art of the siege, and with his various engines, he would endeavor to first reach the city of Venice, and then assault it and seize that great city. However, Otto was also thinking strategically. With the Venetian navy – most of which was now out of reach, sailing in the Adriatic, too far to interfere in the coming siege – he could take on that of Byzantium, and attempt to land troops behind the Adige deadlock. Alexius had no such option: the Germans didn’t control enough seacoast for him to land on, and a route through the Adige mountains or the Alps could easily be countered by Otto. Ironically, only with the success of the siege of Venice could Alexius gain more options to fight the Germans.
The German army crossed the Brenta and moved rapidly to the Lagoon, where they began constructing field fortifications. Indeed, the only problem seemed to be getting across the Lagoon, which held many Venetian ships, which would have to be defeated by any navy Otto might employ. That, of course, was a very big problem. Otto decided to try what Alexander had done at Tyre: build a causeway to Venice. This would be a serious undertaking, but the Lagoon wasn’t that deep, and it wasn’t that far to Venice itself. This way, too, the Germans would be able to keep from engaging the Venetian navy. Doge Vitale Morosini had devised a plan to counter such an occurrence, of course (divert the rivers flowing into the Lagoon to make it even deeper), but with the Germans in control of the land and their attack so unexpected, the Venetians had been unable to accomplish their mission. Otto’s troops actually managed to divert much of the water flowing into the Lagoon away from it (which didn’t have any effect; the Venetian Lagoon let out into the Adriatic, and so was replenished from there), and soon began bringing large rocks down from the Adige quarries. Their causeway, since they didn’t have any particularly skilled architects, was simply to put enough rocks in the water to make a mole. The comparative lack of current in the Venetian Lagoon would make this job even easier.
The building job was epic; its effects amazing. A constant barrage of arrows was maintained by the Venetian galleys that sailed close to the causeway, to try to keep the workers from putting the stones in their place. Some Italian ships even rammed the growing mole, to try to break it up and ruin the German work. Otto responded by employing trebuchets to hit the galleys and dissuade them from attempting to attack the mole. Soon, the causeway was within range of the walls, and trebs inside Venice itself began to hit the causeway, slowing work considerably. Inexorably, though, the causeway lengthened and finally reached the islands on which Venice stood. Otto’s army began flowing towards the walls, which barely held a few days before the attackers, who broke in and began pillaging the city. The Doge was killed, his city despoiled, and the naval contingent that had guarded Venice either switched allegiances to Otto – and there were many of them who did – or fled for the protection of Byzantium. Venice’s Adriatic domains, upon hearing of the home city’s collapse, asked for reinception into the Eastern Roman Empire. A pretty important power had suddenly been destroyed, and now things were becoming critical for the Allied side. Indeed, with this new defeat in the east came news of other fights in France, with results seen below.
Bohemund’s Norman army had fought with fairly lackluster results in the 1092 campaign, as the soldiers therein mostly wanted to plunder and get rich, and there was limited wealth to be found in the cities of the Po valley, and what was there had been taken north by Henry V upon his departure from the Italian peninsula a few years prior. Now the Normans could focus on a relatively worthy cause, that of defending their land and families. By the time Bohemund crossed the Alps and began to concentrate his army in northern Burgundy, the situation was dire. Philip’s army had seized Bordeaux and incorporated virtually all of Aquitaine into the Royal demesne. The Normans marched to engage the French army, crossing the Loire at Le Puy and making their way through the Massif. While Philip’s troops continued their depredations throughout western Hauteville control, the Normans continued to advance against their unaware enemies, who still thought that Bohemund’s troops were in northern Italy, moving rather sluggishly. When the Normans hit the French at Moissac in mid-May, the French army was nearly shattered, and only saved by a fortuitous cavalry charge by the King and his personal bodyguard. Philip moved back north to regroup and plan a counter-strike. Bohemund followed close on his heels.
The King didn’t even try to hold Bordeaux, which was an obvious failure in judgment: Bohemund, who had to go after the city in any case, was delighted to find it virtually devoid of a garrison, and a potential obstacle to the Normans and a way to gain time was thrown away by the French king. Pressing his attack, Bohemund moved further north towards Brittany, but became bogged down in a siege of Nantes (which the King had actually managed to garrison well), which didn’t fall until late autumn, whereupon he was forced to winter there, confronted with the news that Philip, taking advantage of his absence from Brittany once more, had seized a large part of the Norman Massif, taking the fortress of Le Puy and controlling all of the routes the Normans had with the rest of their domain, excepting the ones through Septimania, or Narbonne. Even so, it was a perilous situation indeed that confronted the allies as the winter of 1093 loomed. Alexius had kept from sitting on the Adige for too long, and took the opportunity to move back into southern Italy and get the Pope to recognize his control of Campania and the rest of south-central Italy, which was pacified that autumn. Still, this round would have to go to the Germans and French.
Otto IV was riding high in 1094. He had managed to turn the tables on the Byzantines and Normans (although neither was out of the war yet), annihilate one of his enemies (at heavy loss, though, especially among his best-trained troops), and was preparing to widen the campaign in Italy. Alexius was racing north with as many troops as he could to prevent the Germans from crossing the Adige, and Bohemund was isolated in western France, nearly completely cut off by King Philip’s dagger thrust into the heart of the Norman territory. The allies desperately needed a victory against the Franco-German armies, and they needed it quickly.
Bohemund made the first move by moving out of Nantes as soon as possible as the winter snows cleared, and in early April was moving southeast towards Limoges. This he quickly occupied after a brief blockade and siege, then moved further, towards Clermont, which would cut Philip himself off from France. The King, realizing that the defense of Clermont was critical to his own survival, rushed his fastest troops there as soon as he heard of the siege of Limoges, and he himself followed behind with his slower main body. Bohemund, realizing upon arrival below the walls of Clermont that he couldn’t hope to block Philip, instead moved back to Limoges and decided to wait and see how things played out, while harassing the withdrawing French with missileers and cavalry. Philip managed to pull his army back with some loss out of the Massif, and reached Bourges in late May after something of a struggle. His path of retreat had been covered by the formidable fortress at Clermont. Bohemund decided on a course of action that followed his objective (the destruction of the French field army and the death, capture, or flight of the King and his men from Norman Burgundy), which was, of course, “leave enough men around Clermont to blockade it and wait things out, until the fortress finally surrenders; with the rest of the army, pursue and defeat Philip”. He set out from Limoges in June with high hopes.
In Italy, things were going not so well for the allies. Otto crossed the Adige and sent another, smaller army through the mountains to the north, and began to grab the chains of fortifications Bohemund had established in northern Italy. Brescia and Mantua fell, and the hence victorious Germans moved threateningly towards Milan. Where was Alexius during all of this? Confined south of the Po, unable to move north, in a situation similar to the Adige deadlock of previously. Prevented from keeping Otto from besieging Bohemund’s vital fortress cities, the Byzantine army watched helplessly as the Germans moved on Milan, virtually garrisonless after Bohemund pulled men out to assist him in the French campaigns. Eventually, the Byzantines were able to cross the Po with the help of their navy near the mouth at Ferrara, and exultantly Alexius moved north, realizing that he had the Germans trapped. After crossing the Adige, Alexius left a small contingent under George Palaeologus to move toward Venice, which it would threaten, while he took the main army to engage Otto.
The German garrisons of the newly taken fortresses slowed the Byzantines down, and as Otto reached Milan he received word of Alexius’ approach, and frantically he began to move his army north, away from Milan, towards the St. Gotthard Pass. Alexius rapidly seized the fortresses left in his path, and reached Milan, where a grateful populace resupplied his army before he moved north to halt the German withdrawal. Otto managed to get through the Pass with his great lead before Alexius; he then garrisoned the pass with enough troops to make it untenable for Alexius if he assaulted and took it. Reluctantly, the Byzantines withdrew and moved back around the Alps toward George Palaeologus and his army at Treviso. The summer campaign had ended with virtually the same situation as before.
Leaving George Palaeologus in front of Venice, Alexius began to move into southern Carinthia, with an eye towards irrupting into southern Germany and forcing Otto into a peace. However, another danger menaced Alexius: that from within. Unrest began to spread in Constantinople and throughout the empire, worried that the war wasn’t gaining them anything off in far Italy and Germany, wondering why they should stick out their neck for the Pope, and why on earth their Emperor was risking his life and his army for all of this? By the early part of 1094, the situation was growing dire. Alexius, preparing for a campaign to invade Otto in Germany itself, was now confronted with the news of a capital and empire seething with unrest. He sent George Palaeologus back as a trusted friend to govern the Empire as his absence became more and more prolonged, although he knew that this was little more than a stopgap measure, and then began his march into southern Germany.
Meanwhile in France, the situation was becoming somewhat desperate for the French. Bohemund, pressing his advantage, was able to take Bourges due to Philip’s unwillingness to engage, until he finally was back at the Loire, engaged in an epic siege of Orleans. Threatened with the loss of one of his major cities, Philip had to act. The French army crossed the river at Tours and began to move to Bohemund’s rear. Overjoyed at the opportunity to trap and defeat the King, Bohemund’s army began to drive south. The King stood and fought at Bourges. The Norman troops, exhausted from the constant marching, countermarching, and fighting they had been doing for months now, without rest, and with little plunder, stood opposite the French, who blocked their way south. In a desperate struggle where both commanders nearly lost their lives in the heavy fighting, the French were driven off the field. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for Bohemund. His excellent Norman knights were exhausted and heavily depleted; he is said to have suffered some 8,000 casualties there – casualties the King of Burgundy could ill ignore. He had been fought to a standstill, and was forced to winter in Bourges.
Swinging wide around the Alps through Carinthia and emerging in the Ostmark, Alexius’ Byzantine army advanced up the southern shore of the Danube, with no trace of Otto’s army. Realizing that his supply system was being greatly endangered, and that he was wasting troops guarding a strong rear bastion that could threaten his lines of supply and communication, the Emperor decided to neutralize Venice not through land but naval means. The drungarios, one Basil, sailed with a large fleet – including the remnants of the Venetian one – and blockaded Venice, finally moving into the Lagoon and engaging the German navy. Though a relatively minor action whose issue was never in doubt, it was decisive. The threat to his rear was eliminated, and the troops there were now withdrawn to guard the supply lines of his army, and partly reinforce it.
Alexius, stopped and laagering near Passau, waited for his reinforcements to arrive to free him to advance. His opponent, though, was relatively unconcerned about the Byzantine advance, even into his peripheral territories. Otto IV was leading an army to fight the allies, all right – but he was in France. King Philip, scenting victory, had urged his ally to cross the Rhine and fight Bohemund out of France, defeat him, and bring the enemy to the brink of destruction. The German King agreed, and with 50,000 men he marched to join the French at Orleans and then south. Bohemund, realizing he was now hopelessly outmatched, left a few men in Bourges to deter them and moved south, to gather more men from Burgundy and his brother in Iberia. Unfortunately, Tancred was unable to come to his rescue. He needed all the men he could gather, for Ali bin Yusuf was back, and both sides were fighting desperately around Toledo, the main object. Due to Almoravid pressure, Tancred was actually thinking of asking his brother for some knights to assist when he was himself queried. With his last source of men gone, Bohemund began to scrape the bottom of the barrel, gathering as many men as he could from all of Burgundy and arming them in any way he could. With a last army of 20,000 men, he stood in the path of the advancing enemy troops at the small river town of Issoure.
A ridge, part of the great Massif Central, dominated the field of Issoure, bounded on the east by the Allier River. After heavy fighting during the day of May 8, 1094, Otto’s Germans managed to secure the ridgeline, which overlooked the rather weak position the Normans held. The French troops were drawn up opposite the Normans on the field. Otto and Philip held a war council the night of May 8 – 9, and determined that the French would engage and fix the Normans, while the Germans would then descend from the heights and take the Norman army in flank. Bohemund, realizing that he had little hope, decided on an all-out charge against the Germans on the ridge, to try to gain the high ground and vanquish all comers. The morning of May 9 was unusually foggy, and the armies formed up, unaware of what the others were doing. By the time the sun burned through the fog, near 10:00, the Norman and French armies were on the move. Rapidly attacking up the hill, the Normans through sheer élan and courage managed to defeat Otto’s first echelon, unprepared for such a blow. Outnumbered by many thousands, though, the further the Normans hewed into their enemies, the more surrounded their army became. The pursuing French decided the issue. Trapped, the Norman cavalry tried a last ditch charge to open a hole and allow the army to escape. Bohemund, leading the charge, was almost immediately killed by a German horseman. The Norman army disintegrated. Most of them were killed outright there. It was a slaughterhouse, with only 6,000 Normans and Burgundians making their way across the Allier.
The state of Norman Burgundy had been annihilated. Otto and Philip swept through the former duchy, unopposed but by a few diehard Norman knights, who eventually defected for a hefty sum. Alexius, now alone, decided to retreat to Italy, where he’d remain the Pope’s protector. Retreating back into the Po Valley, the Byzantines were just in time to meet Otto’s victorious army, sweeping through the Alpine passes and occupying Milan. The Eastern Roman army was now Otto’s only obstacle to the Imperial crown. Otto, flushed with victory and confident in his ability, pressed Alexius south, until the Emperor could finally not retreat much farther. Just north of the Arno, with his back to the river, Alexius gave battle, reluctantly ready to fight the German horde. The Battle of Lucca was joined in the afternoon of August 15, 1094.
Alexius deployed in a typical Byzantine formation, with his infantry in two lines and his cavalry to either side. The Germans organized their army into three wings (right, left, and center), of mixed composition in ordered lines of type, with the order light infantry-cavalry-heavy infantry-archers. Otto commanded the right, Conrad of Styria the left, and the center was under a Norman mercenary (who’d fought for the Germans since 1092) named Roger of Havre. Alexius exercised more or less total control of his army, and kept himself and his Varangian Guard back as a final reserve. Both sides didn’t really have much of a special tactical idea in mind; they would just advance and let their set troops fight and the battle develop with them there. The Emperor knew, though, that Otto’s lack of reserve handed him a slim advantage. All he needed to do was tire the enemy out with the first line of his men, and the second would mop them up.
The Germans advanced, determined to break the enemy line at a point, any point. About a minute before the moment of contact, Alexius ordered his troops to charge at the enemy. The added impetus from the last-minute charge momentarily stunned the Germans, who recovered and began to slog through the fight. After that initial clash, the two sides traded blows for an hour in the heat of the day, slowly beginning to tire. Otto, trying to restore some movement to the battle, attacked with a scratch collection of cavalry, charging the Byzantine cav. As the Eastern Romans began to buckle, the Emperor led his Varangian Guard into the midst of the fray and pushed the Germans back, restoring the situation, then retreating back to the rear to await the decisive moment. Finally, as the evening of August 15 began to turn into twilight, the German front started to visibly tire. The exhausted Byzantine first line was replaced by their fresh cohorts in the second line, and Otto’s troops were now being forced back. As the Germans began to break and run, Alexius led his Varangian Guard into the pursuit, mopping up with deadly efficiency. Otto was forced to flee with the remnants of his troops north, back across the Po, where he seethed in Milan and gathered more reinforcements from a slowly decreasing manpower base. 1094 had seen a crucial Franco-German victory, but the Byzantines managed to pull through again. Otto was still not the Holy Roman Emperor yet, and the Pope still had him excommunicated.
1095 opened with Otto mustering more men for an attack south, but in April he was confronted with the news of Venice’s surrender and reoccupation by the Byzantines and their navy. Disgusted, he crossed the Po and moved south, to reach Rome and hopefully bring to an end this pointless war. The Byzantines, depleted from the battle of Lucca, were unable to resist on the Arno and fell back towards Rome. When Alexius asked Pope Celestine to evacuate Rome and flee south, he was met with an emphatic no. Grumbling that this was the wrong time to grow a backbone, the Byzantine Emperor reluctantly collected garrison troops from the south, whereupon he was met with the news that virtually all of southern Italy was erupting in revolt, throwing the catapan out of Bari and forcing what few garrison troops that were still there to go north. Faced with a revolt in his rear and a determined enemy to his front, the Emperor prepared to face the irate German King, preparing for a final struggle in front of Rome itself.
Alas, it was not to be. As Otto’s army approached, Pope Celestine died suddenly of unknown causes – nobody had any clue how or who poisoned him. Otto continued inexorably towards Rome, but in conclave, the cardinals made a quick decision and boosted a pro-German Pope in, who took the moniker Paschal II. Pope Paschal, in an effort to save Rome and his papacy, quickly lifted Otto’s excommunication and promised him his Imperial crown. Feeling betrayed (rightly so), Alexius angrily withdrew from the war, after being forced to give away Campania and Salerno, as well as Venice, which lost its sovereignty and became part of the HRE. Otto had his victory, and it was impressive indeed. As for Alexius, despite never losing a battle, he ended up losing the war. Returning to Constantinople in disgust, he forswore any further friendly interaction with the Western Church, much to the happiness of his own people.
As for the victors: Otto IV was crowned Emperor of the Romans in July 1095, and controlled a vastly expanded Empire stretching from Burgundy to the Baltic and from the Ijsselmeer to Naples. The formerly powerful Italian maritime cities, such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, were all absorbed with their navies into the HRE as well. Polish troops, which had fought with distinction at such battles as Issoure and the Siege of Venice, were now highly in demand across Europe as mercenaries. With his external security ensured through the protection of the Emperor, the Duke of Poland began to hire them out, and enriched Poland through their victories. France, which gained a significant chunk of Burgundy and all of the rest of the French Hauteville demesne, was now riding higher than it had in decades. King Philip had unexpectedly presided over a French Royal renaissance. With his south secure, he began to vie with the English over Normandy and Flanders, causing many minor incidents and making a nuisance of himself.
What of the rest of the world by 1100, a hundred years after Basil got married? England hadn’t really done much during the remainder of Harold Ulf, although Scotland had begun to decline again after the death of the King and the almost perfunctory civil war. Tancred of Iberia, through his unwillingness to help his brother, managed to hold onto Toledo, getting the better of the Almoravids through several engagements in south-central Spain. The peninsula was greatly polarized between this last of the Norman Kingdoms and the great western Muslim Empire. Hungary, after its loss of the Sirmium Theme to Alexius in his expedition of just prior to the war, began to expand throughout the Carpathian Mountains, fighting against the remnants of the Cumans, now called the Kipchaks. Scandinavia was still split between a feuding Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, none of which could really break the stalemate between them. Kievan Rus, now almost completely disintegrated, was now dominated by the various feuding principalities, none of which really paid attention to the grand prince of Kiev. A brief pickup in trade occurred toward the end of the century, but it was largely marginalized by the lack of a central authority.
Byzantium and the Sadaqids both lost some territory to a resurgent Khwarezm, which under Shahanshah Muhammad I regained Mesopotamia from the Sadaqid Emir, Abdulaziz al-Din, and in Alexius’ absence conquered virtually all of the Vaspurakan Theme, with its fortresses of Aghtamar and Manzikert (a relatively unknown fortress, it was now the lynchpin of the Khwarezmian western frontier) from George Palaeologus, busy in the west with annoyed citizens. In the southern portion of the Sadaqid domains, the Emir managed to conquer a significant portion of the remainder of Makkura and then established a stable frontier there. To the north of Khwarezm, the Seljuks continued to grow and prosper, and even began to seize lands east of Lake Balkhash, extending its influence into what had long ago been western Tang China.
Europe had been almost completely cleansed of its Norman stain, the Holy Roman Empire had regained its prominence, and Byzantium struggled along as usual. The Muslim world lay in relative quiet, a calm that was almost disturbing. With the end of the 11th century and the War of the German Succession came relative peace throughout the world, apart from low-level warfare in some slowly disintegrating regions of the world. The peace would not last. It remained only to see who would break – nay, shatter – it first.
1093’s campaigning season opened with two armies facing each other on the Adige River. The combined Norman-Byzantine armies of Bohemund and Alexius sat on the south, unable to cross; the German horde of Otto IV, King of Germany, was on the other, unwilling to cross. Otto was outnumbered, true enough, but he was also opposed by a coalition of disparate partners, and if he could break that coalition, he’d be able to reassert his control over Italy and win his rightful crown of Holy Roman Emperor. He (correctly) blamed his current war and misfortunes on his incompetent father, who had ruined the German empire that Henry IV had built with such care, and by rights wouldn’t ever want to make war on the Pope. Burgundy definitely, and Byzantium possibly, but the young German King was a devout Christian, and his excommunication in May of the previous year had hurt him badly, in the spiritual sense anyway. Although his troops’ morale was high due to victories over the Venetians and parts of the Norman army, he knew his own strategic situation was desperate, and he knew just where to turn to gain his own ally, with whom he could defeat the coalition and gain his throne. He contacted Philip of France.
King Philip, he knew, was angered at the increasing independence of the Hauteville-controlled territories in his kingdom, which spanned over virtually half of France – the southern half. Truly, the Pyrenees did not exist any longer, for Norman land lay on both sides the whole way through. (Except for the large polar bear base in what is in an alternate universe called Andorra, which was, naturally, unknown to Normans, French, Iberians, and Germans alike.) He – Philip – had tried to enlist Robert Guiscard’s help against the family of Guy of Burgundy, but Guy’s descendant Eudes had been defeated by the English without Robert lifting so much as a finger. Upon Robert’s death, relations between the King and his nominal vassal Bohemund decreased even further, as Bohemund during the previous winter had decreased his control of his Hauteville relatives – and vassals – who began to run rampant throughout southern France, with little to stop them even in the Royal demesne. This was, of course, a war measure, but Philip was already seething at the young pup. When Otto’s ambassadors arrived in France in the winter of 1092-3, the King jumped at the chance to punish his vassal.
King Philip of France led an army against the Hautevillian domains in southern France in spring of 1093, as Bohemund sat on the Adige, waiting for Otto to make a move. When word reached the King, he was forced to withdraw the large – 15,000 men – army from Italy, leaving only a few troops to garrison his fortresses in the Po valley. As Bohemund’s men filtered through the Mt. Cenis and St. Bernard’s Passes back towards Burgundy and Philip’s army, Otto continued to gather his reinforcements from Germany. He now, having achieved a diplomatic masterpiece, prepared for his military one. The only thing that stood in his way was a little water. He aimed not for Alexius, impatiently sitting on the other side of the Adige, with no way to cross, but for Vitale Morosini. Otto was going to assault Venice.
Operationally, it made a good deal of sense. He would keep the Byzantine army deadlocked on the river, and use his reinforcements to hold him, still commanded by steadfast Conrad of Styria. With his army from last year, now experienced in the art of the siege, and with his various engines, he would endeavor to first reach the city of Venice, and then assault it and seize that great city. However, Otto was also thinking strategically. With the Venetian navy – most of which was now out of reach, sailing in the Adriatic, too far to interfere in the coming siege – he could take on that of Byzantium, and attempt to land troops behind the Adige deadlock. Alexius had no such option: the Germans didn’t control enough seacoast for him to land on, and a route through the Adige mountains or the Alps could easily be countered by Otto. Ironically, only with the success of the siege of Venice could Alexius gain more options to fight the Germans.
The German army crossed the Brenta and moved rapidly to the Lagoon, where they began constructing field fortifications. Indeed, the only problem seemed to be getting across the Lagoon, which held many Venetian ships, which would have to be defeated by any navy Otto might employ. That, of course, was a very big problem. Otto decided to try what Alexander had done at Tyre: build a causeway to Venice. This would be a serious undertaking, but the Lagoon wasn’t that deep, and it wasn’t that far to Venice itself. This way, too, the Germans would be able to keep from engaging the Venetian navy. Doge Vitale Morosini had devised a plan to counter such an occurrence, of course (divert the rivers flowing into the Lagoon to make it even deeper), but with the Germans in control of the land and their attack so unexpected, the Venetians had been unable to accomplish their mission. Otto’s troops actually managed to divert much of the water flowing into the Lagoon away from it (which didn’t have any effect; the Venetian Lagoon let out into the Adriatic, and so was replenished from there), and soon began bringing large rocks down from the Adige quarries. Their causeway, since they didn’t have any particularly skilled architects, was simply to put enough rocks in the water to make a mole. The comparative lack of current in the Venetian Lagoon would make this job even easier.
The building job was epic; its effects amazing. A constant barrage of arrows was maintained by the Venetian galleys that sailed close to the causeway, to try to keep the workers from putting the stones in their place. Some Italian ships even rammed the growing mole, to try to break it up and ruin the German work. Otto responded by employing trebuchets to hit the galleys and dissuade them from attempting to attack the mole. Soon, the causeway was within range of the walls, and trebs inside Venice itself began to hit the causeway, slowing work considerably. Inexorably, though, the causeway lengthened and finally reached the islands on which Venice stood. Otto’s army began flowing towards the walls, which barely held a few days before the attackers, who broke in and began pillaging the city. The Doge was killed, his city despoiled, and the naval contingent that had guarded Venice either switched allegiances to Otto – and there were many of them who did – or fled for the protection of Byzantium. Venice’s Adriatic domains, upon hearing of the home city’s collapse, asked for reinception into the Eastern Roman Empire. A pretty important power had suddenly been destroyed, and now things were becoming critical for the Allied side. Indeed, with this new defeat in the east came news of other fights in France, with results seen below.
Bohemund’s Norman army had fought with fairly lackluster results in the 1092 campaign, as the soldiers therein mostly wanted to plunder and get rich, and there was limited wealth to be found in the cities of the Po valley, and what was there had been taken north by Henry V upon his departure from the Italian peninsula a few years prior. Now the Normans could focus on a relatively worthy cause, that of defending their land and families. By the time Bohemund crossed the Alps and began to concentrate his army in northern Burgundy, the situation was dire. Philip’s army had seized Bordeaux and incorporated virtually all of Aquitaine into the Royal demesne. The Normans marched to engage the French army, crossing the Loire at Le Puy and making their way through the Massif. While Philip’s troops continued their depredations throughout western Hauteville control, the Normans continued to advance against their unaware enemies, who still thought that Bohemund’s troops were in northern Italy, moving rather sluggishly. When the Normans hit the French at Moissac in mid-May, the French army was nearly shattered, and only saved by a fortuitous cavalry charge by the King and his personal bodyguard. Philip moved back north to regroup and plan a counter-strike. Bohemund followed close on his heels.
The King didn’t even try to hold Bordeaux, which was an obvious failure in judgment: Bohemund, who had to go after the city in any case, was delighted to find it virtually devoid of a garrison, and a potential obstacle to the Normans and a way to gain time was thrown away by the French king. Pressing his attack, Bohemund moved further north towards Brittany, but became bogged down in a siege of Nantes (which the King had actually managed to garrison well), which didn’t fall until late autumn, whereupon he was forced to winter there, confronted with the news that Philip, taking advantage of his absence from Brittany once more, had seized a large part of the Norman Massif, taking the fortress of Le Puy and controlling all of the routes the Normans had with the rest of their domain, excepting the ones through Septimania, or Narbonne. Even so, it was a perilous situation indeed that confronted the allies as the winter of 1093 loomed. Alexius had kept from sitting on the Adige for too long, and took the opportunity to move back into southern Italy and get the Pope to recognize his control of Campania and the rest of south-central Italy, which was pacified that autumn. Still, this round would have to go to the Germans and French.
Otto IV was riding high in 1094. He had managed to turn the tables on the Byzantines and Normans (although neither was out of the war yet), annihilate one of his enemies (at heavy loss, though, especially among his best-trained troops), and was preparing to widen the campaign in Italy. Alexius was racing north with as many troops as he could to prevent the Germans from crossing the Adige, and Bohemund was isolated in western France, nearly completely cut off by King Philip’s dagger thrust into the heart of the Norman territory. The allies desperately needed a victory against the Franco-German armies, and they needed it quickly.
Bohemund made the first move by moving out of Nantes as soon as possible as the winter snows cleared, and in early April was moving southeast towards Limoges. This he quickly occupied after a brief blockade and siege, then moved further, towards Clermont, which would cut Philip himself off from France. The King, realizing that the defense of Clermont was critical to his own survival, rushed his fastest troops there as soon as he heard of the siege of Limoges, and he himself followed behind with his slower main body. Bohemund, realizing upon arrival below the walls of Clermont that he couldn’t hope to block Philip, instead moved back to Limoges and decided to wait and see how things played out, while harassing the withdrawing French with missileers and cavalry. Philip managed to pull his army back with some loss out of the Massif, and reached Bourges in late May after something of a struggle. His path of retreat had been covered by the formidable fortress at Clermont. Bohemund decided on a course of action that followed his objective (the destruction of the French field army and the death, capture, or flight of the King and his men from Norman Burgundy), which was, of course, “leave enough men around Clermont to blockade it and wait things out, until the fortress finally surrenders; with the rest of the army, pursue and defeat Philip”. He set out from Limoges in June with high hopes.
In Italy, things were going not so well for the allies. Otto crossed the Adige and sent another, smaller army through the mountains to the north, and began to grab the chains of fortifications Bohemund had established in northern Italy. Brescia and Mantua fell, and the hence victorious Germans moved threateningly towards Milan. Where was Alexius during all of this? Confined south of the Po, unable to move north, in a situation similar to the Adige deadlock of previously. Prevented from keeping Otto from besieging Bohemund’s vital fortress cities, the Byzantine army watched helplessly as the Germans moved on Milan, virtually garrisonless after Bohemund pulled men out to assist him in the French campaigns. Eventually, the Byzantines were able to cross the Po with the help of their navy near the mouth at Ferrara, and exultantly Alexius moved north, realizing that he had the Germans trapped. After crossing the Adige, Alexius left a small contingent under George Palaeologus to move toward Venice, which it would threaten, while he took the main army to engage Otto.
The German garrisons of the newly taken fortresses slowed the Byzantines down, and as Otto reached Milan he received word of Alexius’ approach, and frantically he began to move his army north, away from Milan, towards the St. Gotthard Pass. Alexius rapidly seized the fortresses left in his path, and reached Milan, where a grateful populace resupplied his army before he moved north to halt the German withdrawal. Otto managed to get through the Pass with his great lead before Alexius; he then garrisoned the pass with enough troops to make it untenable for Alexius if he assaulted and took it. Reluctantly, the Byzantines withdrew and moved back around the Alps toward George Palaeologus and his army at Treviso. The summer campaign had ended with virtually the same situation as before.
Leaving George Palaeologus in front of Venice, Alexius began to move into southern Carinthia, with an eye towards irrupting into southern Germany and forcing Otto into a peace. However, another danger menaced Alexius: that from within. Unrest began to spread in Constantinople and throughout the empire, worried that the war wasn’t gaining them anything off in far Italy and Germany, wondering why they should stick out their neck for the Pope, and why on earth their Emperor was risking his life and his army for all of this? By the early part of 1094, the situation was growing dire. Alexius, preparing for a campaign to invade Otto in Germany itself, was now confronted with the news of a capital and empire seething with unrest. He sent George Palaeologus back as a trusted friend to govern the Empire as his absence became more and more prolonged, although he knew that this was little more than a stopgap measure, and then began his march into southern Germany.
Meanwhile in France, the situation was becoming somewhat desperate for the French. Bohemund, pressing his advantage, was able to take Bourges due to Philip’s unwillingness to engage, until he finally was back at the Loire, engaged in an epic siege of Orleans. Threatened with the loss of one of his major cities, Philip had to act. The French army crossed the river at Tours and began to move to Bohemund’s rear. Overjoyed at the opportunity to trap and defeat the King, Bohemund’s army began to drive south. The King stood and fought at Bourges. The Norman troops, exhausted from the constant marching, countermarching, and fighting they had been doing for months now, without rest, and with little plunder, stood opposite the French, who blocked their way south. In a desperate struggle where both commanders nearly lost their lives in the heavy fighting, the French were driven off the field. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for Bohemund. His excellent Norman knights were exhausted and heavily depleted; he is said to have suffered some 8,000 casualties there – casualties the King of Burgundy could ill ignore. He had been fought to a standstill, and was forced to winter in Bourges.
Swinging wide around the Alps through Carinthia and emerging in the Ostmark, Alexius’ Byzantine army advanced up the southern shore of the Danube, with no trace of Otto’s army. Realizing that his supply system was being greatly endangered, and that he was wasting troops guarding a strong rear bastion that could threaten his lines of supply and communication, the Emperor decided to neutralize Venice not through land but naval means. The drungarios, one Basil, sailed with a large fleet – including the remnants of the Venetian one – and blockaded Venice, finally moving into the Lagoon and engaging the German navy. Though a relatively minor action whose issue was never in doubt, it was decisive. The threat to his rear was eliminated, and the troops there were now withdrawn to guard the supply lines of his army, and partly reinforce it.
Alexius, stopped and laagering near Passau, waited for his reinforcements to arrive to free him to advance. His opponent, though, was relatively unconcerned about the Byzantine advance, even into his peripheral territories. Otto IV was leading an army to fight the allies, all right – but he was in France. King Philip, scenting victory, had urged his ally to cross the Rhine and fight Bohemund out of France, defeat him, and bring the enemy to the brink of destruction. The German King agreed, and with 50,000 men he marched to join the French at Orleans and then south. Bohemund, realizing he was now hopelessly outmatched, left a few men in Bourges to deter them and moved south, to gather more men from Burgundy and his brother in Iberia. Unfortunately, Tancred was unable to come to his rescue. He needed all the men he could gather, for Ali bin Yusuf was back, and both sides were fighting desperately around Toledo, the main object. Due to Almoravid pressure, Tancred was actually thinking of asking his brother for some knights to assist when he was himself queried. With his last source of men gone, Bohemund began to scrape the bottom of the barrel, gathering as many men as he could from all of Burgundy and arming them in any way he could. With a last army of 20,000 men, he stood in the path of the advancing enemy troops at the small river town of Issoure.
A ridge, part of the great Massif Central, dominated the field of Issoure, bounded on the east by the Allier River. After heavy fighting during the day of May 8, 1094, Otto’s Germans managed to secure the ridgeline, which overlooked the rather weak position the Normans held. The French troops were drawn up opposite the Normans on the field. Otto and Philip held a war council the night of May 8 – 9, and determined that the French would engage and fix the Normans, while the Germans would then descend from the heights and take the Norman army in flank. Bohemund, realizing that he had little hope, decided on an all-out charge against the Germans on the ridge, to try to gain the high ground and vanquish all comers. The morning of May 9 was unusually foggy, and the armies formed up, unaware of what the others were doing. By the time the sun burned through the fog, near 10:00, the Norman and French armies were on the move. Rapidly attacking up the hill, the Normans through sheer élan and courage managed to defeat Otto’s first echelon, unprepared for such a blow. Outnumbered by many thousands, though, the further the Normans hewed into their enemies, the more surrounded their army became. The pursuing French decided the issue. Trapped, the Norman cavalry tried a last ditch charge to open a hole and allow the army to escape. Bohemund, leading the charge, was almost immediately killed by a German horseman. The Norman army disintegrated. Most of them were killed outright there. It was a slaughterhouse, with only 6,000 Normans and Burgundians making their way across the Allier.
The state of Norman Burgundy had been annihilated. Otto and Philip swept through the former duchy, unopposed but by a few diehard Norman knights, who eventually defected for a hefty sum. Alexius, now alone, decided to retreat to Italy, where he’d remain the Pope’s protector. Retreating back into the Po Valley, the Byzantines were just in time to meet Otto’s victorious army, sweeping through the Alpine passes and occupying Milan. The Eastern Roman army was now Otto’s only obstacle to the Imperial crown. Otto, flushed with victory and confident in his ability, pressed Alexius south, until the Emperor could finally not retreat much farther. Just north of the Arno, with his back to the river, Alexius gave battle, reluctantly ready to fight the German horde. The Battle of Lucca was joined in the afternoon of August 15, 1094.
Alexius deployed in a typical Byzantine formation, with his infantry in two lines and his cavalry to either side. The Germans organized their army into three wings (right, left, and center), of mixed composition in ordered lines of type, with the order light infantry-cavalry-heavy infantry-archers. Otto commanded the right, Conrad of Styria the left, and the center was under a Norman mercenary (who’d fought for the Germans since 1092) named Roger of Havre. Alexius exercised more or less total control of his army, and kept himself and his Varangian Guard back as a final reserve. Both sides didn’t really have much of a special tactical idea in mind; they would just advance and let their set troops fight and the battle develop with them there. The Emperor knew, though, that Otto’s lack of reserve handed him a slim advantage. All he needed to do was tire the enemy out with the first line of his men, and the second would mop them up.
The Germans advanced, determined to break the enemy line at a point, any point. About a minute before the moment of contact, Alexius ordered his troops to charge at the enemy. The added impetus from the last-minute charge momentarily stunned the Germans, who recovered and began to slog through the fight. After that initial clash, the two sides traded blows for an hour in the heat of the day, slowly beginning to tire. Otto, trying to restore some movement to the battle, attacked with a scratch collection of cavalry, charging the Byzantine cav. As the Eastern Romans began to buckle, the Emperor led his Varangian Guard into the midst of the fray and pushed the Germans back, restoring the situation, then retreating back to the rear to await the decisive moment. Finally, as the evening of August 15 began to turn into twilight, the German front started to visibly tire. The exhausted Byzantine first line was replaced by their fresh cohorts in the second line, and Otto’s troops were now being forced back. As the Germans began to break and run, Alexius led his Varangian Guard into the pursuit, mopping up with deadly efficiency. Otto was forced to flee with the remnants of his troops north, back across the Po, where he seethed in Milan and gathered more reinforcements from a slowly decreasing manpower base. 1094 had seen a crucial Franco-German victory, but the Byzantines managed to pull through again. Otto was still not the Holy Roman Emperor yet, and the Pope still had him excommunicated.
1095 opened with Otto mustering more men for an attack south, but in April he was confronted with the news of Venice’s surrender and reoccupation by the Byzantines and their navy. Disgusted, he crossed the Po and moved south, to reach Rome and hopefully bring to an end this pointless war. The Byzantines, depleted from the battle of Lucca, were unable to resist on the Arno and fell back towards Rome. When Alexius asked Pope Celestine to evacuate Rome and flee south, he was met with an emphatic no. Grumbling that this was the wrong time to grow a backbone, the Byzantine Emperor reluctantly collected garrison troops from the south, whereupon he was met with the news that virtually all of southern Italy was erupting in revolt, throwing the catapan out of Bari and forcing what few garrison troops that were still there to go north. Faced with a revolt in his rear and a determined enemy to his front, the Emperor prepared to face the irate German King, preparing for a final struggle in front of Rome itself.
Alas, it was not to be. As Otto’s army approached, Pope Celestine died suddenly of unknown causes – nobody had any clue how or who poisoned him. Otto continued inexorably towards Rome, but in conclave, the cardinals made a quick decision and boosted a pro-German Pope in, who took the moniker Paschal II. Pope Paschal, in an effort to save Rome and his papacy, quickly lifted Otto’s excommunication and promised him his Imperial crown. Feeling betrayed (rightly so), Alexius angrily withdrew from the war, after being forced to give away Campania and Salerno, as well as Venice, which lost its sovereignty and became part of the HRE. Otto had his victory, and it was impressive indeed. As for Alexius, despite never losing a battle, he ended up losing the war. Returning to Constantinople in disgust, he forswore any further friendly interaction with the Western Church, much to the happiness of his own people.
As for the victors: Otto IV was crowned Emperor of the Romans in July 1095, and controlled a vastly expanded Empire stretching from Burgundy to the Baltic and from the Ijsselmeer to Naples. The formerly powerful Italian maritime cities, such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, were all absorbed with their navies into the HRE as well. Polish troops, which had fought with distinction at such battles as Issoure and the Siege of Venice, were now highly in demand across Europe as mercenaries. With his external security ensured through the protection of the Emperor, the Duke of Poland began to hire them out, and enriched Poland through their victories. France, which gained a significant chunk of Burgundy and all of the rest of the French Hauteville demesne, was now riding higher than it had in decades. King Philip had unexpectedly presided over a French Royal renaissance. With his south secure, he began to vie with the English over Normandy and Flanders, causing many minor incidents and making a nuisance of himself.
What of the rest of the world by 1100, a hundred years after Basil got married? England hadn’t really done much during the remainder of Harold Ulf, although Scotland had begun to decline again after the death of the King and the almost perfunctory civil war. Tancred of Iberia, through his unwillingness to help his brother, managed to hold onto Toledo, getting the better of the Almoravids through several engagements in south-central Spain. The peninsula was greatly polarized between this last of the Norman Kingdoms and the great western Muslim Empire. Hungary, after its loss of the Sirmium Theme to Alexius in his expedition of just prior to the war, began to expand throughout the Carpathian Mountains, fighting against the remnants of the Cumans, now called the Kipchaks. Scandinavia was still split between a feuding Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, none of which could really break the stalemate between them. Kievan Rus, now almost completely disintegrated, was now dominated by the various feuding principalities, none of which really paid attention to the grand prince of Kiev. A brief pickup in trade occurred toward the end of the century, but it was largely marginalized by the lack of a central authority.
Byzantium and the Sadaqids both lost some territory to a resurgent Khwarezm, which under Shahanshah Muhammad I regained Mesopotamia from the Sadaqid Emir, Abdulaziz al-Din, and in Alexius’ absence conquered virtually all of the Vaspurakan Theme, with its fortresses of Aghtamar and Manzikert (a relatively unknown fortress, it was now the lynchpin of the Khwarezmian western frontier) from George Palaeologus, busy in the west with annoyed citizens. In the southern portion of the Sadaqid domains, the Emir managed to conquer a significant portion of the remainder of Makkura and then established a stable frontier there. To the north of Khwarezm, the Seljuks continued to grow and prosper, and even began to seize lands east of Lake Balkhash, extending its influence into what had long ago been western Tang China.
Europe had been almost completely cleansed of its Norman stain, the Holy Roman Empire had regained its prominence, and Byzantium struggled along as usual. The Muslim world lay in relative quiet, a calm that was almost disturbing. With the end of the 11th century and the War of the German Succession came relative peace throughout the world, apart from low-level warfare in some slowly disintegrating regions of the world. The peace would not last. It remained only to see who would break – nay, shatter – it first.
North King
blech
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Interesting, though I rolled my eyes at the result of Lucca.
Yeah, well, what can you expect? Besides, OTL Alexius was a pretty good general - only ever lost the 1081 Battle of Dyrrhachium to the Guiscard out of all of his battles. There was a brief argument about making him a Great Captain of History a few decades back, when they were compiling the list, but it fell through because he didn't really innovate anything, and a lot of his reign wasn't fighting per se at all. He was more of a diplomat, ironically. Just like our Alex(ius).
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
wait... are you trying to imply me???
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