silver 2039
Deity
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Dar-Al-Islam is the greatest.
Alternate History Thread II...
- Thread starter Xen
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das
Regeneration In Process
Figured you'd ask that. Sadly, he is too obscure for any daughters to be mentioned anywhere I checked...
North King
blech
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Invent one. Italian names aren't too hard.
Please notify me of any glaring errors or probability issues.
Basil II, called the Bulgar-Slayer, was, if not the greatest basileus the Eastern Roman Empire ever had, at least in the top three. He presided over what some Roman historians called the First Apogee an inherently contradictory term, but Roman historians always were an odd bunch wherein he ruled a vast empire that stretched from Italy to the Caucasus. He crushed the formerly terrifying enemy to the north, the Bulgars, at the Battle of Clidium in 1014, and the Saracens in the south at Beroea in 995. Its probable, though, that he could not have defeated Tsar Samuels Bulgars without the help of his nominal vassal, the Republic of Venice.
In 1000 he concluded an agreement with the Doge, Pietro Orseolo II. Simply put, it stated that in order to guard Dalmatia from Bulgar armies, the Venetian Doge would be given the title of dux Dalmatianorum and allowed to rule over the seacoast villages and ports in protectorate, and in exchange, Basil would take a noble Venetian woman (who would be baptized into the Orthodox Church as Eudocia) as his bride. Venice would now have a source of timber for ships and ports for collecting duties, and Basil would have the protection of the coast from a nation that could actually maintain it, with fewer interests to get in the way anyway.
Basil wasnt a ladies man in his later days (despite his conduct as a young man): he didnt even want to get married originally. But it was obvious that, given a weak successor like his co-Emperor, Constantine VIII, the Empire would begin to decline from its current dizzying height. He probably wouldnt spend that much time with Eudocia anyway, and go off on campaign for the most part; shed be perfectly fine without him. Some contemporaries described him as ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, philistine and almost pathologically mean: not exactly the best companion. However, the good of the Empire was at stake, and in 1005, following a brief pause in the Bulgarian campaign, Eudocia was delivered of a young boy in the Porphyra of the Great Palace. He was christened Romanus in St. Sophia, and upon the early death (from what many suspect to be cirrhosis) of Constantine VIII at age fifty in 1010, he was declared co-Basileus as Romanus III with his father, who was off in Bulgaria again.
After his expedition to the East in 1023 left Byzantium with eight new Themes, stretching in an arc from Antioch north-east to the Vaspurakan Theme in Armenia, which had joined the Empire voluntarily three years previously to escape the threat of the Buwayhids (they neednt have worried: the Buwayhids were fighting for their lives against the forces of Mahmud of Ghazni), Basil began to plan an expedition to liberate Sicily from Arab control (under the Fatimid caliphate, ruled from Egypt) and restore it to Byzantine hands. For the first time he went with Romanus, who landed with him and 40,000 other troops at Taormina in April 1026. Slowly expanding his beachhead, Basil overwhelmed the Saracen defenders at Catania that summer, and compressed the enemy into a small triangle defined by the cities Palermo-Trapani-Agrigento by late 1027. As the Byzantine troops continually pushed back the Saracens through the winter (capturing Agrigento in January 1028 and winning a battle at Motya the following month), Arab vessels tried to gain command of the sea to keep the defenders alive with supplies. Basils navy crushed the Muslim one off Palermo in spring that year, and with the defeat of the navy, the Fatimid armies began to capitulate. Palermo finally fell after two more years, by which time Romanus was in sole command. Basil had had to rush to Italy after Motya to defeat marauding Norman knights, who, dismayed after such an easy defeat, began to leave for better opportunities for marauding in Iberia, which seemed an easier place in which to adventure. Indeed, Norman knights began to make trouble with Sancho III of Navarre, establishing a minor kingdom along the Duero River and resisting all attempts to dislodge them.
Basils death in 1031 left the Empire with the greatest security it had had since Heraclius had defeated the Persians, with an far less likelihood that some new enemy would smash the defenses of Byzantium. With the Arabs fighting each other more often than not (the Ghaznavid emirate desperately fighting off Seljuk Turks and the Fatimids beginning to have internal trouble following defeat in Sicily), Romanus began to seize frontier territories on the sly, beginning by seizing his vassal the Emirate of Aleppo (or Beroea) outright. Good relations with the Venetians continued, and Italy was (for once) quiet, with Pope John XIX dealing more with the Roman Church than the eastern one, and allowing the seizure of Bulgaria and Basils act of downgrading the Bulgarian Patriarch to an archbishop to pass with little argument. Hungary was going through a reorganization by its first King, Stephen I, who consolidated his Kingdom and also got involved with Pietro Orseolo: his sister married the Venetian Doge, and upon the death of his (Stephens) heir Imre in 1031 Stephen made his nephew, Peter Urseolo, his heir.
All in all, the security of the Empire was assured for awhile, and Romanus used this to begin a building project in Constantinople, improving the first Basils Nea and strengthening the Land Walls. During this decade, his cousin Zoe began to try to make trouble. As the heiress-presumptive to the throne until the birth of Romanus, Zoes marriages had fallen through, especially the one to Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, who had died before Zoe could reach Italy for the marriage. Angry at being denied both Eastern and Western Roman thrones, and annoyed that Romanus curtailed her spending by only allowing her access to the treasury in the presence of a eunuch, she first tried to incite rebellion, but there was no real reason to rebel. Eventually Romanus couldnt ignore her increasingly seditious actions and ordered both Zoe and her sister Theodora off to a convent in 1036. The next year, though, saw some startling developments in the East.
The Seljuk leader, Toghrul Beg, had initiated a new campaign against the Ghaznavids in late 1036. Masud, the Ghaznavid leader, led an army against Toghrul that was handily defeated the following year outside Balkh by the quick-moving Seljuk raiders. Desperately raising another army, Masud cried out for help from other Saracen leaders, aiming for Buwayhid support. The Shia Buwayhids of Fars were reluctant to help the son of Mahmud, whod ruined their Persian lands decades before, but agreed to help, figuring that the control of Ghaznavid and Seljuk lands would assist them in the ongoing struggle against the other Buwayhids in Mesopotamia. Abu Kalijar moved to engage the Seljuks, who retreated in the face of his troops. Toghrul began to raise an army in the steppes capable of challenging Abu Kalijar. As soon as the Seljuks retreated to Bukhara, the Buwayhids turned on the Ghaznavids openly, defeating Masuds hastily raised army at the Helmand River in 1039. Ghazni fell, and Abu Kalijar amassed a small empire in control of Persia and Seistan. Using this newfound power, he marched on his enemy Jalal al-Daula in Baghdad and forced the Caliph and Jalal to recognize him as senior emir and Shahanshah, King of Kings. The dissenting emir of Mosul was crushed at Ash Sharqat by 1042, and Abu Kalijar began to consolidate his rule of the Middle East.
In Byzantium, the Basileus looked on these recent events with dismay, and decided to come to a preclusive agreement with someone who would fight this huge Buwayhid Empire and challenge their power. Emissaries were sent far into the steppe of Central Asia to contact Toghrul and offer Byzantine assistance in destroying the Shia schismatics. The Turks agreed to Romanus proposition and began to amass an army capable of challenging the Buwayhid hold on Khorasan, the first step to defeating Abu Kalijar. Emperor Romanus began to prepare, as well: from the Themes, he gathered an army of 70,000 soldiers, one of the largest in Eastern Roman history.
These preparations in the East shadowed those in the West. Iberia was beginning to come apart at the seams.
Upon Sancho IIIs death while fighting the Normans in their Iberian Kingdom near Valladolid in 1041, his son Ferdinand took the throne. Ferdinand was a better diplomat than fighter, and two years later convinced the Muslims of Cordoba that the Norman threat was too great to ignore and what was thought impossible happened: the Iberian leaders allied with the Saracens of the southern taifas and began a concentrated assault on the Normans. William of Hauteville, the leader of the Norman knights, tried to get the Muslims to fight Ferdinand instead, insisting that they had more to gain there than by defeating a tiny Norman colony. In doing so, he stalled for time while more Northmen emigrated from France. By 1045, Williams ragtag army numbered enough to mount an attack against Ferdinand, who was besieging the Norman city of Burgos. A battle beneath the walls of the city ended in Ferdinands defeat and retreat to Pamplona. By this time, the long-awaited Muslim offensive finally began as fifteen separate taifas around the Guadiana River sent an army under the ruler of the Toledo Taifa north towards the Duero. William met it with his full force, returning from the region around Pamplona, where he had been conducting operations against Ferdinands cowering army, stuck in cities under siege dotted across northern Iberia.
The Muslim and Norman armies met at Zamora in 1046. Williams troops gained a quick ascendancy over the Toledan left flank, where the Christians under Williams brother Drogo captured a hill and began to fire sheets of arrows down upon the beleaguered enemy army. His knights began to encircle the Muslim army, which became a densely packed mass. Soon, the enemy forces began to separate into individual taifa groups, fleeing from the carnage. William unleashed his horsemen against the running Toledans and completed the rout. This was the beginning of a great march south, culminating in a siege of Toledo and its capture by the Norman troops from 1049 to 1052. By then, William had to race north to defend his north from Ferdinands recuperating troops in Pamplona, who had begun to overrun Norman strongholds. Through coercion, diplomatic and military skill, and not a little bit of luck, the Norman armies restored the situation and defeated Ferdinand for the last time in a great siege of his capital, Pamplona itself, in 1056. The north half of Iberia, sans the Kingdom of Leon, belonged to Williams kingdom, led from Valladolid. William himself was crowned William I and recognized by the Pope himself, a considerable victory for a Norman adventurer.
Back East, Romanus and his best general, George Maniakes (who had cut his teeth in the capture of Beroea in 1033) waited for the Seljuks to open their attack, but they were suddenly preempted by Shahanshah Abu Kalijar, whose army marched from Mosul in 1047 and attacked the Eastern Roman fortress of Aghtamar in the Vaspurakan Theme. The Buwayhids encountered the army led by Romanus as it moved across their supply lines; the siege was abandoned and Abu Kalijar had to beat a hasty retreat. He concentrated on defending his fortresses along the frontier and moved to attack the Seljuks as the Byzantines mounted a siege of Edessa and Maniakes began to ravage north Mesopotamia. Toghrul rode hard south as soon as word came of Abu Kalijars imminent approach, and crossed the Amu Darya unopposed as he drove towards Balkh and captured it without a siege through guile and craft. Abu Kalijar reached Merv and began to try to maneuver the Seljuk army away from its lines of supply, but he died suddenly in spring 1048 of disease. His son, Abu Mansur Fulad Sutun (hereafter called Abu Mansur), killed his brother, Abu Nasr, and took over the army. He was not as skilled as his father, though, and while attempting to catch Toghruls retreating army fell into an ambush at Dandanqan and died. Leaderless, the carefully crafted Buwayhid Empire fell into chaos. Desperate to retain something, Fatimid generals grabbed Mesopotamia but were forced to try to defend their new gains from advancing Eastern Roman and Seljuk armies, and fled their gains in 1050. Those who benefited most from the abrupt collapse of Abu Kalijars empire were not the Romans, who regained much land in northern Mesopotamia and even snuck control of Syria from the Fatimids, but the Seljuks. Toghrul Begs new empire, upon his death in 1056, stretched from Baghdad and Baku to the edge of the Punjab, Lake Balkhash, and the Gulf of Oman.
When Romanus III Porphyrogenitus died in 1053, he had already worked out a succession plan. Of his five sons by Empress Anna, two died in infancy and one of disease in 1041. The two remaining sons, Michael III and John II, were to be co-Basilei. In practice, though, Michael would be the real ruler; John had shown that, already in his twenties, he was prone to drunkenness and skirt chasing. Michael would rule the Empire, and John would abuse his title of Basileus to keep his bed from being empty. As soon as the young Emperor had been crowned in St. Sophia, though, his attention was drawn elsewhere. Italy was beginning to show signs of turning into an inferno, and only an Emperor could restore the situation.
Pope Leo IX had decided that the strength of the Eastern Roman Empire in southern Italy needed to be remedied. The south was almost completely worshipping in the style of the Eastern Church as decided by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, who had ascended on the death of his predecessor (Alexis) in 1051. Immediately, Cerularius had quarreled with the Pope on such practices as use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Leo had pondered excommunication of this annoying Patriarch, but decided on a different route: since Byzantine power in Italy was so essential to the well-being and security of the Empire, he would destroy that power by force to demonstrate Eastern Roman folly. He led an army under the Papal banner from Naples into Apulia and besieged Bari, which fell as Michael assembled an army east of the Adriatic, and then moved on to Hydruntum on the tip of the Apulian peninsula.
Michaels army left Dyrrhachium and landed at Metapontum in summer 1055, and quickly moved to block off the Papal army at Hydruntum. With control of the sea, the Papal army was effectively hemmed in on the peninsula, and the Basileus used the opportunity to recapture Bari and move troops into Campania while the Pope tried to extricate himself. When word of Michaels troops besieging Rome reached Pope Leo, he hurriedly asked for and got an armistice. Much Papal land now belonged to Byzantium, essentially everything from Rome south. Cerularius wouldnt let the Pope go, though, and although his attempt to force the Pope to order the West to accept Eastern practices fell through (nobody but him wanted to even try), he managed to poison East-West relations almost as much as Michael had salved them by his clemency. Naturally, these would have serious consequences later on.
Michael III now set to protecting his southern and eastern frontiers. Syria and Mesopotamia were now critical to imperial security, and a chain of fortresses was erected from Laodicea to Beroea and thence to Amida, famed site of the siege Ammianus Marcellinus chronicled in his history of the Roman Empire. Dara and Nisibis were garrisoned as well. Mosul, just across the Seljuk border, now became a thriving center of trade. However, Toghrul Begs successor was not as philhellenic as he was. Suleiman, his nephew, saw land ripe for the taking that, in his opinion, would best be governed by the Great Seljuk. Accordingly, he began to prepare for invasion in 1058, not long after defeating a rival, Alp Arslan, one of his uncles generals. Michael tried to head off the invasion by inducing him to fight the Shia Fatimids in Egypt and Palestine, but the Byzantine envoys were returned within a week with no answer. The answer came at the same time their heads did, about a week later. Michael had tried to delay Suleimans invasion and gather troops from the Anatolian Themes, but after such a massive operation as Romanus invasion of north Mesopotamia a decade prior Anatolian manpower reserves were not enough to amass equal strength. Eastern Romes only hope was that the expensive fortresses along Suleimans path were enough to delay him and bring him to battle.
It worked beyond all reasonable expectations. Suleiman was not a particularly imaginative general; hed beaten Alp Arslan by having him assassinated, not in battle. As Michael prepared his army, the Seljuks busied themselves besieging Dara, where Suleiman, becoming impatient, ordered a massive assault and lost much of his strength storming the city. By the time he reached Nisibis, Suleiman was low on strength, heavy on supplies, and irate at the inordinate amount of time the attack was taking. Michaels arrival beneath the walls of Nisibis in 1059 with an army half the size of the Seljuk one even as weakened as the Turks were was met with both joy and horror on the part of the fortress garrison. Ecstatic at being saved, they were horrified to see the Roman sovereign in a battle with a vastly superior enemy. Michael, however, had learned the ropes fighting with Romanus III in this country, even at the siege of this very fortress a decade prior. His disciplined and well-formed army smashed the Seljuks against the walls of Nisibis, where an unknown soldier shot Suleiman in the temple with an arrow. The tiny remainder of the vast Seljuk host rode dejectedly back to Mosul with Roman cavalry on their heels, and Michaels troops filled out the Nisibis garrison, captured Dara (garrisoned by only a token Seljuk force), and then followed on the heels of the cavalry to Mosul, where Suleimans Persian vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, assumed the title of Great Seljuk (Suleiman, promiscuous as he was, died with no issue) and agreed to peace, paying a vast indemnity. Nizam would not be able to enjoy being Great Seljuk for long, though: rebel groups, seeing the temporary absence of a powerful leader, rallied around a banner of restoring the Seljuk family to rule. Civil war raged for the entirety of the 1060s, and when the dust settled the Seljuk successor states lay in a chain of weak Sunni emirates from Baghdad through Persia to the Punjab. Only Turkestan was still under Seljuk control, under the banner of Alp Arslans son, Malik Shah, whod been exiled there upon his fathers death. Constant low-level internecine warfare would continue among these states for the next few decades.
To the south, the Fatimids were in no condition to grab formerly Seljuk territory. Al-Mustansir, the current Fatimid caliph, became something of a sacker, getting rid of his viziers rapidly after the first years of his reign. His immense incompetence as a leader soon led to revolts throughout Libya and southern Egypt; as the rebel armies, under a Turkish adventurer, Qutulmush, approached Cairo, the city began to suffer from famine. Rebel armies burned crops throughout the Nile valley, seeking to destroy the caliphs weak hold on his last city. Eventually, al-Mustansir was murdered by a mob of his own people, and the rebels broke into the city, completely destroying it. With word of the collapse of Great Seljuk, rebels all over Egypt, Libya, and Ifriqiya tried to consolidate power fast enough to try for a grab for ultimate power; they all failed. Eventually, Egypt was consolidated by the Sunni; everything west of that was ruled by Qutulmish from Tripoli, and Palestine was controlled from Jerusalem by the Shia Sadaqid family, which ably kept the Byzantines from advancing past their Syrian fastness. The Muslim world had been torn up by the simultaneous deaths of the Fatimid and Seljuk empires; it needed to rest, and rebuild from the destruction of the 1060s.
Michael III, following his glorious victory against Suleimans Seljuks, took to diplomacy and building for the last years of his reign. By 1064 he was dead, fighting against the Sadaqid emirate in Palestine. He had no male successor; unfortunately, the Emperor was now John II in sole rule. Johns misrule only lasted a few more years, as would the Macedonian dynasty. With no legitimate children (though plenty of illegitimate ones), Johns death at the hands of an infuriated mob later that year left the Empire briefly leaderless. A general, Isaac I Comnenus, took the throne and was made Basileus with much popular support. By 1069 he had managed to win several minor victories against the Sadaqids and at one point threatened Damascus, but was forced back to the border and ended his 1060s campaign inconclusively.
The West had been relatively quiet the past few years as the Arab empires tore themselves to shreds following the Battle of Nisibis. Iberia had been maintained at its current control levels, the Kingdom of Leon resisting all Norman efforts to capture it and the taifas continuing their internecine strife following the defeat at Zamora and the fall of Toledo, with Granada emerging predominant (narrowly; it was not much more powerful than the other states, perhaps it could take on and defeat any two of them, but not much else). Italy had settled down somewhat with the (possibly premeditated) death of Michael Cerularius clearing the way for improved East-West relations. Hungary was initially hostile to the Byzantines and invaded the Holy Roman Empire under Levente I, but largely the Crown Lands of King Stephen were involved in internal organization and stomping out various uprisings by the former inhabitants of the plains up to the late 1050s.
The Holy Roman Empire, in contrast to its cousin in the East, suffered an initial loss of power at the death of Henry II in 1024, but his successor Conrad II managed to get Germany back under his control and prove the inherent vitality of the HRE. He first adopted the term imperator Romanorum, causing something of a diplomatic faux pas. His reign, during the two decades after Henrys death, was largely spent in diplomacy to maintain the status of the Empire and its domain, although when Rudolph III bequeathed the Kingdom of Burgundy to Conrad, a Norman adventurer (they were spreading all over France due to their relative success in establishing the Iberian Kingdom around the same time), Drogo of Hauteville, seized the land with his Norman knights and asserted his suzerainty. Conrad invaded to try to secure what he viewed correctly - as a kingdom that rightfully belonged to him. With the help of some timely reinforcements from Norman Iberia, Drogo forced the HRE back and landed a victory at Zurich in 1044. After concluding a peace, by which terms the Holy Roman Empire recognized King Drogos right to rule Burgundy, Drogo himself went to Iberia, where his knights played a key role in helping his brother, William I of Valladolid, defeat both Ferdinand and the taifa alliance. Upon his return to Burgundy in 1055, King Drogo prevented an Imperial invasion of Burgundy under the new Emperor, Henry III, son of Conrad. Henry, who had spent much of his reign consolidating his control and defeating a brief uprising in Styria, was now beset by raids from Hungary and quickly agreed. Henry marched to Gran on the Danube and crushed troops under the Hungarian king, Levente I. Upon insistences from the Hungarian nobility, Henry played king-maker and enthroned Magnus, from the original Hungarian line of kings, which had deviated into a more Venetian-ruled group on the accession of Peter Urseolo years previously.
Leaving Hungary, Henry decided to invade Italy to force the Pope to adopt a more anti-Byzantine stance, as the Venetians, Byzantiums ally, were causing havoc in Carinthia in an effort to gain a landward counter to its seaward empire. Henrys army reached Aquileia and invaded Venetian lands in 1061, but he was kept from crossing the Lagoon by the powerful Venetian navy. Dismayed, he launched a few attacks on the cities of the Po Valley, which, desperate for security, formed a League to beat him off, then relapsed into fighting between Lombards and those allied with Verona. Henrys failure at Venice was disconcerting, but he tried to make good on it by invading Burgundy again in 1065. He died on the way to Zurich, a broken old man. In reality, it is likely that Henry saved the Empire with his elimination of the Hungarian threat and his interruption of Venetian bids for power. With such encroachment upon the southeast frontier, the HREs landowners and newly created dukes would have tried to seize power for themselves, emboldened by the apparent failure of the emperor to maintain the frontier.
Norman adventurers had largely emptied Normandy by 1050, most of them going to Iberia or Burgundy. Norman armies had defeated great leaders all over Western Europe and were highly sought as mercenaries. Emigration from Normandy accelerated when the Duke William, the son of Robert II the Magnificent (called the Devil by those who had been attacked by Norman knights) failed to defend his territory from rebel lords and was killed at the battle of Caen in 1047 by overwhelmingly larger numbers. There is even some suggestion that the King of France, worried about the power William was trying to amass for himself, egged on the rebels, led by Guy of Burgundy, who became the new Duke upon Williams death and immediately pledged fealty to the King as his vassal. Guy established something of a Burgundy-in-exile for those displaced by the Normans there, and something of a switch between the two lands took place, with large numbers of Normans finally leaving Guys land for that of Drogos half-brother and successor, Robert Guiscard (who had originally harbored designs on Byzantine Apulia but saw the folly of such an expedition and stayed in Burgundy), and vice versa.
Anglo-Saxon control of England continued after the fall of Canute the Greats empire after his death. After Edward the Confessor gained the English throne, the Norman influence in England was strong, but opposed by someone equally as strong, Harold Godwinson, originally Earl of Wessex, then Earl of Hereford. Godwinson gained glory in campaigns against roving bands of Normans in his territory, then invaded Wales and defeated Gruffydd, ruler of those lands. Apparently Gruffydd had sought help from the Normans Godwinson antagonized but after he lost battles against Harold the Normans killed him and tried to establish control of Wales themselves, similarly to Burgundy and Iberia. Unfortunately, the Welsh resisted the Normans mightily, and efforts to establish a Norman principality failed, and Wales degenerated into clan warfare. With Englands flank so protected, Godwinson had enough clout with King Edward the Confessor to gain the throne upon the latters death in 1064, whereupon he had his brother Tostig, ruler of Northumbria and now his vassal, removed due to Tostigs overtaxation of his people. Tostig fled England and sought help from Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, who invaded England in 1065. At the battle of York in that year, Harold decisively defeated Hardrada and managed to kill the other in single combat. From then on his domain of England was assured. A foray into the territory of Guy of Burgundy in the later 1060s met with disappointment, but Harold still had a sizable navy left over, and in the process hed captured the Channel Islands.
East of there lay Scandinavia. An alliance of Norway and Sweden against the Danish king Canute the Great ended with the initial defeat of Norway and its occupation by the Danes; later, though, King Olaf II raised an army in Sweden in exile and marched to Trondheim, but in the end was defeated at Stiklestad. Anund Jacob of Sweden kept control of the country during this minor crisis and is widely viewed as the greatest Swedish king for the next few hundred years. On his death, his brother Emund the Old succeeded, and Sweden began to decline, especially after Emunds death (and that of all the male lineage) in 1060. At this juncture, two prospective suitors for Emunds daughter caused a civil war in Sweden. Eventually the forces of the Norman adventurer Roger of Montgomery, fleeing Guys Normandy, triumphed over Stenkil the Swede. Roger, however, was now faced with a populace who didnt especially like him, associating Normans with France and Norway, not Sweden. Another civil war in 1064 broke out, where the victor, Eric I, established a dynasty by marrying into Stenkils line.
Kievan Rus continued to grow under Yaroslav the Wise, who established excellent relations with Romanus III and the Hungarians. Trade continued here, and the nation prospered, especially with goods intended for the East going north of the massive civil wars in the Near and Middle East. Byzantine land in the Chersonese prospered, and Michael III saw fit to increase his holdings there to include land surrounding the Sea of Azov. The Riurikid family continued to control Kievan Rus with great success, and the prestige that came from the vast amounts of money they controlled kept rebellious attitudes from developing amongst those over which they ruled.
As 1070 dawned, Europe and the Near and Middle East recovered from the wars that had shaken them thus far, and nations prepared not only for renewal and regeneration but revanche as well.
Basil II, called the Bulgar-Slayer, was, if not the greatest basileus the Eastern Roman Empire ever had, at least in the top three. He presided over what some Roman historians called the First Apogee an inherently contradictory term, but Roman historians always were an odd bunch wherein he ruled a vast empire that stretched from Italy to the Caucasus. He crushed the formerly terrifying enemy to the north, the Bulgars, at the Battle of Clidium in 1014, and the Saracens in the south at Beroea in 995. Its probable, though, that he could not have defeated Tsar Samuels Bulgars without the help of his nominal vassal, the Republic of Venice.
In 1000 he concluded an agreement with the Doge, Pietro Orseolo II. Simply put, it stated that in order to guard Dalmatia from Bulgar armies, the Venetian Doge would be given the title of dux Dalmatianorum and allowed to rule over the seacoast villages and ports in protectorate, and in exchange, Basil would take a noble Venetian woman (who would be baptized into the Orthodox Church as Eudocia) as his bride. Venice would now have a source of timber for ships and ports for collecting duties, and Basil would have the protection of the coast from a nation that could actually maintain it, with fewer interests to get in the way anyway.
Basil wasnt a ladies man in his later days (despite his conduct as a young man): he didnt even want to get married originally. But it was obvious that, given a weak successor like his co-Emperor, Constantine VIII, the Empire would begin to decline from its current dizzying height. He probably wouldnt spend that much time with Eudocia anyway, and go off on campaign for the most part; shed be perfectly fine without him. Some contemporaries described him as ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, philistine and almost pathologically mean: not exactly the best companion. However, the good of the Empire was at stake, and in 1005, following a brief pause in the Bulgarian campaign, Eudocia was delivered of a young boy in the Porphyra of the Great Palace. He was christened Romanus in St. Sophia, and upon the early death (from what many suspect to be cirrhosis) of Constantine VIII at age fifty in 1010, he was declared co-Basileus as Romanus III with his father, who was off in Bulgaria again.
After his expedition to the East in 1023 left Byzantium with eight new Themes, stretching in an arc from Antioch north-east to the Vaspurakan Theme in Armenia, which had joined the Empire voluntarily three years previously to escape the threat of the Buwayhids (they neednt have worried: the Buwayhids were fighting for their lives against the forces of Mahmud of Ghazni), Basil began to plan an expedition to liberate Sicily from Arab control (under the Fatimid caliphate, ruled from Egypt) and restore it to Byzantine hands. For the first time he went with Romanus, who landed with him and 40,000 other troops at Taormina in April 1026. Slowly expanding his beachhead, Basil overwhelmed the Saracen defenders at Catania that summer, and compressed the enemy into a small triangle defined by the cities Palermo-Trapani-Agrigento by late 1027. As the Byzantine troops continually pushed back the Saracens through the winter (capturing Agrigento in January 1028 and winning a battle at Motya the following month), Arab vessels tried to gain command of the sea to keep the defenders alive with supplies. Basils navy crushed the Muslim one off Palermo in spring that year, and with the defeat of the navy, the Fatimid armies began to capitulate. Palermo finally fell after two more years, by which time Romanus was in sole command. Basil had had to rush to Italy after Motya to defeat marauding Norman knights, who, dismayed after such an easy defeat, began to leave for better opportunities for marauding in Iberia, which seemed an easier place in which to adventure. Indeed, Norman knights began to make trouble with Sancho III of Navarre, establishing a minor kingdom along the Duero River and resisting all attempts to dislodge them.
Basils death in 1031 left the Empire with the greatest security it had had since Heraclius had defeated the Persians, with an far less likelihood that some new enemy would smash the defenses of Byzantium. With the Arabs fighting each other more often than not (the Ghaznavid emirate desperately fighting off Seljuk Turks and the Fatimids beginning to have internal trouble following defeat in Sicily), Romanus began to seize frontier territories on the sly, beginning by seizing his vassal the Emirate of Aleppo (or Beroea) outright. Good relations with the Venetians continued, and Italy was (for once) quiet, with Pope John XIX dealing more with the Roman Church than the eastern one, and allowing the seizure of Bulgaria and Basils act of downgrading the Bulgarian Patriarch to an archbishop to pass with little argument. Hungary was going through a reorganization by its first King, Stephen I, who consolidated his Kingdom and also got involved with Pietro Orseolo: his sister married the Venetian Doge, and upon the death of his (Stephens) heir Imre in 1031 Stephen made his nephew, Peter Urseolo, his heir.
All in all, the security of the Empire was assured for awhile, and Romanus used this to begin a building project in Constantinople, improving the first Basils Nea and strengthening the Land Walls. During this decade, his cousin Zoe began to try to make trouble. As the heiress-presumptive to the throne until the birth of Romanus, Zoes marriages had fallen through, especially the one to Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, who had died before Zoe could reach Italy for the marriage. Angry at being denied both Eastern and Western Roman thrones, and annoyed that Romanus curtailed her spending by only allowing her access to the treasury in the presence of a eunuch, she first tried to incite rebellion, but there was no real reason to rebel. Eventually Romanus couldnt ignore her increasingly seditious actions and ordered both Zoe and her sister Theodora off to a convent in 1036. The next year, though, saw some startling developments in the East.
The Seljuk leader, Toghrul Beg, had initiated a new campaign against the Ghaznavids in late 1036. Masud, the Ghaznavid leader, led an army against Toghrul that was handily defeated the following year outside Balkh by the quick-moving Seljuk raiders. Desperately raising another army, Masud cried out for help from other Saracen leaders, aiming for Buwayhid support. The Shia Buwayhids of Fars were reluctant to help the son of Mahmud, whod ruined their Persian lands decades before, but agreed to help, figuring that the control of Ghaznavid and Seljuk lands would assist them in the ongoing struggle against the other Buwayhids in Mesopotamia. Abu Kalijar moved to engage the Seljuks, who retreated in the face of his troops. Toghrul began to raise an army in the steppes capable of challenging Abu Kalijar. As soon as the Seljuks retreated to Bukhara, the Buwayhids turned on the Ghaznavids openly, defeating Masuds hastily raised army at the Helmand River in 1039. Ghazni fell, and Abu Kalijar amassed a small empire in control of Persia and Seistan. Using this newfound power, he marched on his enemy Jalal al-Daula in Baghdad and forced the Caliph and Jalal to recognize him as senior emir and Shahanshah, King of Kings. The dissenting emir of Mosul was crushed at Ash Sharqat by 1042, and Abu Kalijar began to consolidate his rule of the Middle East.
In Byzantium, the Basileus looked on these recent events with dismay, and decided to come to a preclusive agreement with someone who would fight this huge Buwayhid Empire and challenge their power. Emissaries were sent far into the steppe of Central Asia to contact Toghrul and offer Byzantine assistance in destroying the Shia schismatics. The Turks agreed to Romanus proposition and began to amass an army capable of challenging the Buwayhid hold on Khorasan, the first step to defeating Abu Kalijar. Emperor Romanus began to prepare, as well: from the Themes, he gathered an army of 70,000 soldiers, one of the largest in Eastern Roman history.
These preparations in the East shadowed those in the West. Iberia was beginning to come apart at the seams.
Upon Sancho IIIs death while fighting the Normans in their Iberian Kingdom near Valladolid in 1041, his son Ferdinand took the throne. Ferdinand was a better diplomat than fighter, and two years later convinced the Muslims of Cordoba that the Norman threat was too great to ignore and what was thought impossible happened: the Iberian leaders allied with the Saracens of the southern taifas and began a concentrated assault on the Normans. William of Hauteville, the leader of the Norman knights, tried to get the Muslims to fight Ferdinand instead, insisting that they had more to gain there than by defeating a tiny Norman colony. In doing so, he stalled for time while more Northmen emigrated from France. By 1045, Williams ragtag army numbered enough to mount an attack against Ferdinand, who was besieging the Norman city of Burgos. A battle beneath the walls of the city ended in Ferdinands defeat and retreat to Pamplona. By this time, the long-awaited Muslim offensive finally began as fifteen separate taifas around the Guadiana River sent an army under the ruler of the Toledo Taifa north towards the Duero. William met it with his full force, returning from the region around Pamplona, where he had been conducting operations against Ferdinands cowering army, stuck in cities under siege dotted across northern Iberia.
The Muslim and Norman armies met at Zamora in 1046. Williams troops gained a quick ascendancy over the Toledan left flank, where the Christians under Williams brother Drogo captured a hill and began to fire sheets of arrows down upon the beleaguered enemy army. His knights began to encircle the Muslim army, which became a densely packed mass. Soon, the enemy forces began to separate into individual taifa groups, fleeing from the carnage. William unleashed his horsemen against the running Toledans and completed the rout. This was the beginning of a great march south, culminating in a siege of Toledo and its capture by the Norman troops from 1049 to 1052. By then, William had to race north to defend his north from Ferdinands recuperating troops in Pamplona, who had begun to overrun Norman strongholds. Through coercion, diplomatic and military skill, and not a little bit of luck, the Norman armies restored the situation and defeated Ferdinand for the last time in a great siege of his capital, Pamplona itself, in 1056. The north half of Iberia, sans the Kingdom of Leon, belonged to Williams kingdom, led from Valladolid. William himself was crowned William I and recognized by the Pope himself, a considerable victory for a Norman adventurer.
Back East, Romanus and his best general, George Maniakes (who had cut his teeth in the capture of Beroea in 1033) waited for the Seljuks to open their attack, but they were suddenly preempted by Shahanshah Abu Kalijar, whose army marched from Mosul in 1047 and attacked the Eastern Roman fortress of Aghtamar in the Vaspurakan Theme. The Buwayhids encountered the army led by Romanus as it moved across their supply lines; the siege was abandoned and Abu Kalijar had to beat a hasty retreat. He concentrated on defending his fortresses along the frontier and moved to attack the Seljuks as the Byzantines mounted a siege of Edessa and Maniakes began to ravage north Mesopotamia. Toghrul rode hard south as soon as word came of Abu Kalijars imminent approach, and crossed the Amu Darya unopposed as he drove towards Balkh and captured it without a siege through guile and craft. Abu Kalijar reached Merv and began to try to maneuver the Seljuk army away from its lines of supply, but he died suddenly in spring 1048 of disease. His son, Abu Mansur Fulad Sutun (hereafter called Abu Mansur), killed his brother, Abu Nasr, and took over the army. He was not as skilled as his father, though, and while attempting to catch Toghruls retreating army fell into an ambush at Dandanqan and died. Leaderless, the carefully crafted Buwayhid Empire fell into chaos. Desperate to retain something, Fatimid generals grabbed Mesopotamia but were forced to try to defend their new gains from advancing Eastern Roman and Seljuk armies, and fled their gains in 1050. Those who benefited most from the abrupt collapse of Abu Kalijars empire were not the Romans, who regained much land in northern Mesopotamia and even snuck control of Syria from the Fatimids, but the Seljuks. Toghrul Begs new empire, upon his death in 1056, stretched from Baghdad and Baku to the edge of the Punjab, Lake Balkhash, and the Gulf of Oman.
When Romanus III Porphyrogenitus died in 1053, he had already worked out a succession plan. Of his five sons by Empress Anna, two died in infancy and one of disease in 1041. The two remaining sons, Michael III and John II, were to be co-Basilei. In practice, though, Michael would be the real ruler; John had shown that, already in his twenties, he was prone to drunkenness and skirt chasing. Michael would rule the Empire, and John would abuse his title of Basileus to keep his bed from being empty. As soon as the young Emperor had been crowned in St. Sophia, though, his attention was drawn elsewhere. Italy was beginning to show signs of turning into an inferno, and only an Emperor could restore the situation.
Pope Leo IX had decided that the strength of the Eastern Roman Empire in southern Italy needed to be remedied. The south was almost completely worshipping in the style of the Eastern Church as decided by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, who had ascended on the death of his predecessor (Alexis) in 1051. Immediately, Cerularius had quarreled with the Pope on such practices as use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. Leo had pondered excommunication of this annoying Patriarch, but decided on a different route: since Byzantine power in Italy was so essential to the well-being and security of the Empire, he would destroy that power by force to demonstrate Eastern Roman folly. He led an army under the Papal banner from Naples into Apulia and besieged Bari, which fell as Michael assembled an army east of the Adriatic, and then moved on to Hydruntum on the tip of the Apulian peninsula.
Michaels army left Dyrrhachium and landed at Metapontum in summer 1055, and quickly moved to block off the Papal army at Hydruntum. With control of the sea, the Papal army was effectively hemmed in on the peninsula, and the Basileus used the opportunity to recapture Bari and move troops into Campania while the Pope tried to extricate himself. When word of Michaels troops besieging Rome reached Pope Leo, he hurriedly asked for and got an armistice. Much Papal land now belonged to Byzantium, essentially everything from Rome south. Cerularius wouldnt let the Pope go, though, and although his attempt to force the Pope to order the West to accept Eastern practices fell through (nobody but him wanted to even try), he managed to poison East-West relations almost as much as Michael had salved them by his clemency. Naturally, these would have serious consequences later on.
Michael III now set to protecting his southern and eastern frontiers. Syria and Mesopotamia were now critical to imperial security, and a chain of fortresses was erected from Laodicea to Beroea and thence to Amida, famed site of the siege Ammianus Marcellinus chronicled in his history of the Roman Empire. Dara and Nisibis were garrisoned as well. Mosul, just across the Seljuk border, now became a thriving center of trade. However, Toghrul Begs successor was not as philhellenic as he was. Suleiman, his nephew, saw land ripe for the taking that, in his opinion, would best be governed by the Great Seljuk. Accordingly, he began to prepare for invasion in 1058, not long after defeating a rival, Alp Arslan, one of his uncles generals. Michael tried to head off the invasion by inducing him to fight the Shia Fatimids in Egypt and Palestine, but the Byzantine envoys were returned within a week with no answer. The answer came at the same time their heads did, about a week later. Michael had tried to delay Suleimans invasion and gather troops from the Anatolian Themes, but after such a massive operation as Romanus invasion of north Mesopotamia a decade prior Anatolian manpower reserves were not enough to amass equal strength. Eastern Romes only hope was that the expensive fortresses along Suleimans path were enough to delay him and bring him to battle.
It worked beyond all reasonable expectations. Suleiman was not a particularly imaginative general; hed beaten Alp Arslan by having him assassinated, not in battle. As Michael prepared his army, the Seljuks busied themselves besieging Dara, where Suleiman, becoming impatient, ordered a massive assault and lost much of his strength storming the city. By the time he reached Nisibis, Suleiman was low on strength, heavy on supplies, and irate at the inordinate amount of time the attack was taking. Michaels arrival beneath the walls of Nisibis in 1059 with an army half the size of the Seljuk one even as weakened as the Turks were was met with both joy and horror on the part of the fortress garrison. Ecstatic at being saved, they were horrified to see the Roman sovereign in a battle with a vastly superior enemy. Michael, however, had learned the ropes fighting with Romanus III in this country, even at the siege of this very fortress a decade prior. His disciplined and well-formed army smashed the Seljuks against the walls of Nisibis, where an unknown soldier shot Suleiman in the temple with an arrow. The tiny remainder of the vast Seljuk host rode dejectedly back to Mosul with Roman cavalry on their heels, and Michaels troops filled out the Nisibis garrison, captured Dara (garrisoned by only a token Seljuk force), and then followed on the heels of the cavalry to Mosul, where Suleimans Persian vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, assumed the title of Great Seljuk (Suleiman, promiscuous as he was, died with no issue) and agreed to peace, paying a vast indemnity. Nizam would not be able to enjoy being Great Seljuk for long, though: rebel groups, seeing the temporary absence of a powerful leader, rallied around a banner of restoring the Seljuk family to rule. Civil war raged for the entirety of the 1060s, and when the dust settled the Seljuk successor states lay in a chain of weak Sunni emirates from Baghdad through Persia to the Punjab. Only Turkestan was still under Seljuk control, under the banner of Alp Arslans son, Malik Shah, whod been exiled there upon his fathers death. Constant low-level internecine warfare would continue among these states for the next few decades.
To the south, the Fatimids were in no condition to grab formerly Seljuk territory. Al-Mustansir, the current Fatimid caliph, became something of a sacker, getting rid of his viziers rapidly after the first years of his reign. His immense incompetence as a leader soon led to revolts throughout Libya and southern Egypt; as the rebel armies, under a Turkish adventurer, Qutulmush, approached Cairo, the city began to suffer from famine. Rebel armies burned crops throughout the Nile valley, seeking to destroy the caliphs weak hold on his last city. Eventually, al-Mustansir was murdered by a mob of his own people, and the rebels broke into the city, completely destroying it. With word of the collapse of Great Seljuk, rebels all over Egypt, Libya, and Ifriqiya tried to consolidate power fast enough to try for a grab for ultimate power; they all failed. Eventually, Egypt was consolidated by the Sunni; everything west of that was ruled by Qutulmish from Tripoli, and Palestine was controlled from Jerusalem by the Shia Sadaqid family, which ably kept the Byzantines from advancing past their Syrian fastness. The Muslim world had been torn up by the simultaneous deaths of the Fatimid and Seljuk empires; it needed to rest, and rebuild from the destruction of the 1060s.
Michael III, following his glorious victory against Suleimans Seljuks, took to diplomacy and building for the last years of his reign. By 1064 he was dead, fighting against the Sadaqid emirate in Palestine. He had no male successor; unfortunately, the Emperor was now John II in sole rule. Johns misrule only lasted a few more years, as would the Macedonian dynasty. With no legitimate children (though plenty of illegitimate ones), Johns death at the hands of an infuriated mob later that year left the Empire briefly leaderless. A general, Isaac I Comnenus, took the throne and was made Basileus with much popular support. By 1069 he had managed to win several minor victories against the Sadaqids and at one point threatened Damascus, but was forced back to the border and ended his 1060s campaign inconclusively.
The West had been relatively quiet the past few years as the Arab empires tore themselves to shreds following the Battle of Nisibis. Iberia had been maintained at its current control levels, the Kingdom of Leon resisting all Norman efforts to capture it and the taifas continuing their internecine strife following the defeat at Zamora and the fall of Toledo, with Granada emerging predominant (narrowly; it was not much more powerful than the other states, perhaps it could take on and defeat any two of them, but not much else). Italy had settled down somewhat with the (possibly premeditated) death of Michael Cerularius clearing the way for improved East-West relations. Hungary was initially hostile to the Byzantines and invaded the Holy Roman Empire under Levente I, but largely the Crown Lands of King Stephen were involved in internal organization and stomping out various uprisings by the former inhabitants of the plains up to the late 1050s.
The Holy Roman Empire, in contrast to its cousin in the East, suffered an initial loss of power at the death of Henry II in 1024, but his successor Conrad II managed to get Germany back under his control and prove the inherent vitality of the HRE. He first adopted the term imperator Romanorum, causing something of a diplomatic faux pas. His reign, during the two decades after Henrys death, was largely spent in diplomacy to maintain the status of the Empire and its domain, although when Rudolph III bequeathed the Kingdom of Burgundy to Conrad, a Norman adventurer (they were spreading all over France due to their relative success in establishing the Iberian Kingdom around the same time), Drogo of Hauteville, seized the land with his Norman knights and asserted his suzerainty. Conrad invaded to try to secure what he viewed correctly - as a kingdom that rightfully belonged to him. With the help of some timely reinforcements from Norman Iberia, Drogo forced the HRE back and landed a victory at Zurich in 1044. After concluding a peace, by which terms the Holy Roman Empire recognized King Drogos right to rule Burgundy, Drogo himself went to Iberia, where his knights played a key role in helping his brother, William I of Valladolid, defeat both Ferdinand and the taifa alliance. Upon his return to Burgundy in 1055, King Drogo prevented an Imperial invasion of Burgundy under the new Emperor, Henry III, son of Conrad. Henry, who had spent much of his reign consolidating his control and defeating a brief uprising in Styria, was now beset by raids from Hungary and quickly agreed. Henry marched to Gran on the Danube and crushed troops under the Hungarian king, Levente I. Upon insistences from the Hungarian nobility, Henry played king-maker and enthroned Magnus, from the original Hungarian line of kings, which had deviated into a more Venetian-ruled group on the accession of Peter Urseolo years previously.
Leaving Hungary, Henry decided to invade Italy to force the Pope to adopt a more anti-Byzantine stance, as the Venetians, Byzantiums ally, were causing havoc in Carinthia in an effort to gain a landward counter to its seaward empire. Henrys army reached Aquileia and invaded Venetian lands in 1061, but he was kept from crossing the Lagoon by the powerful Venetian navy. Dismayed, he launched a few attacks on the cities of the Po Valley, which, desperate for security, formed a League to beat him off, then relapsed into fighting between Lombards and those allied with Verona. Henrys failure at Venice was disconcerting, but he tried to make good on it by invading Burgundy again in 1065. He died on the way to Zurich, a broken old man. In reality, it is likely that Henry saved the Empire with his elimination of the Hungarian threat and his interruption of Venetian bids for power. With such encroachment upon the southeast frontier, the HREs landowners and newly created dukes would have tried to seize power for themselves, emboldened by the apparent failure of the emperor to maintain the frontier.
Norman adventurers had largely emptied Normandy by 1050, most of them going to Iberia or Burgundy. Norman armies had defeated great leaders all over Western Europe and were highly sought as mercenaries. Emigration from Normandy accelerated when the Duke William, the son of Robert II the Magnificent (called the Devil by those who had been attacked by Norman knights) failed to defend his territory from rebel lords and was killed at the battle of Caen in 1047 by overwhelmingly larger numbers. There is even some suggestion that the King of France, worried about the power William was trying to amass for himself, egged on the rebels, led by Guy of Burgundy, who became the new Duke upon Williams death and immediately pledged fealty to the King as his vassal. Guy established something of a Burgundy-in-exile for those displaced by the Normans there, and something of a switch between the two lands took place, with large numbers of Normans finally leaving Guys land for that of Drogos half-brother and successor, Robert Guiscard (who had originally harbored designs on Byzantine Apulia but saw the folly of such an expedition and stayed in Burgundy), and vice versa.
Anglo-Saxon control of England continued after the fall of Canute the Greats empire after his death. After Edward the Confessor gained the English throne, the Norman influence in England was strong, but opposed by someone equally as strong, Harold Godwinson, originally Earl of Wessex, then Earl of Hereford. Godwinson gained glory in campaigns against roving bands of Normans in his territory, then invaded Wales and defeated Gruffydd, ruler of those lands. Apparently Gruffydd had sought help from the Normans Godwinson antagonized but after he lost battles against Harold the Normans killed him and tried to establish control of Wales themselves, similarly to Burgundy and Iberia. Unfortunately, the Welsh resisted the Normans mightily, and efforts to establish a Norman principality failed, and Wales degenerated into clan warfare. With Englands flank so protected, Godwinson had enough clout with King Edward the Confessor to gain the throne upon the latters death in 1064, whereupon he had his brother Tostig, ruler of Northumbria and now his vassal, removed due to Tostigs overtaxation of his people. Tostig fled England and sought help from Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, who invaded England in 1065. At the battle of York in that year, Harold decisively defeated Hardrada and managed to kill the other in single combat. From then on his domain of England was assured. A foray into the territory of Guy of Burgundy in the later 1060s met with disappointment, but Harold still had a sizable navy left over, and in the process hed captured the Channel Islands.
East of there lay Scandinavia. An alliance of Norway and Sweden against the Danish king Canute the Great ended with the initial defeat of Norway and its occupation by the Danes; later, though, King Olaf II raised an army in Sweden in exile and marched to Trondheim, but in the end was defeated at Stiklestad. Anund Jacob of Sweden kept control of the country during this minor crisis and is widely viewed as the greatest Swedish king for the next few hundred years. On his death, his brother Emund the Old succeeded, and Sweden began to decline, especially after Emunds death (and that of all the male lineage) in 1060. At this juncture, two prospective suitors for Emunds daughter caused a civil war in Sweden. Eventually the forces of the Norman adventurer Roger of Montgomery, fleeing Guys Normandy, triumphed over Stenkil the Swede. Roger, however, was now faced with a populace who didnt especially like him, associating Normans with France and Norway, not Sweden. Another civil war in 1064 broke out, where the victor, Eric I, established a dynasty by marrying into Stenkils line.
Kievan Rus continued to grow under Yaroslav the Wise, who established excellent relations with Romanus III and the Hungarians. Trade continued here, and the nation prospered, especially with goods intended for the East going north of the massive civil wars in the Near and Middle East. Byzantine land in the Chersonese prospered, and Michael III saw fit to increase his holdings there to include land surrounding the Sea of Azov. The Riurikid family continued to control Kievan Rus with great success, and the prestige that came from the vast amounts of money they controlled kept rebellious attitudes from developing amongst those over which they ruled.
As 1070 dawned, Europe and the Near and Middle East recovered from the wars that had shaken them thus far, and nations prepared not only for renewal and regeneration but revanche as well.
Insane_Panda
Deity
I've read about half, but its quite good thusfar. 
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
It's good, but I dislike the Norman conquest of Basqueland (if the Arabs couldn't do it, and Charlemange couldn't do it...), and the Byzantines seem to have Lady Luck favoring them a little much. Of course, I'm anti-Byzantine in alternate histories, so don't mind me. 
Oruc
Reactionary
North King why do you like the Basques so much?
Only for the next few years. The seventies will remain a bad decade.North King said:the Byzantines seem to have Lady Luck favoring them a little much. Of course, I'm anti-Byzantine in alternate histories, so don't mind me.
@Azale: Maybe when I'm done. I can't stop now, right?
Symphony D.
Deity
Rather nice, Dachs, though it took me awhile to read it all. Can't say I can contribute much, though.
Related to my earlier thought, I've been doing some thinking on how a gunpowderless world would evolve militarily, either in our own world or some other entirely. In the case of a much earlier PoD or different setup, it seems likely that melee warfare will wind up at a state approximating Medieval Earth's in terms of a dominance of cavalry after a long period of infantry dominance. Whether this takes the form of heavily armored knights or lightly armored archers, or somewhere in between, is dependent on regional situations, however, I'd assume a generally more armored approach. Much of my thoughts follow European paradigms but could probably be re-envisioned form elsewhere easily.
Given armored cavalry warfare tends to require a high degree of skill to practice and is essentially a fulltime occupation, it seems reasonable to assume it will typically come with a feudalistic setting and large peasant or mercenary armies to back it up. Everybody's familiar with that. Now, with no guns, the simplest, but simultaneously the most effective weapon a person can be armed with is the crossbow.
Among footsoldiers, it, along with the pike or halberd, are likely to become the predominant weapons, since all of them give them a capable of countering lance-totting knights. Skirmishers armed with swords, axes, and so forth will probably also be around, along with other assorted weapons like flails and maces. Though not as effective as the gun, the crossbow can still pierce chain and plate mail, and is as much as twice as strong as the ordinary bow, and much easier to use. The bow will likely decline. Armor will get heavier. The ability to equip commoners with a weapon they can use almost instantly will likely lead to a gradual rise in their employ and a decrease in knights.
This may or may not correspond with a return of centralized authority and standing armies, but not necessarily (with a weapon anybody can pick up in minutes, it'd be possible to field large numbers of soldiers easily assuming they could be massproduced, however, they still wouldn't be as good). It's likely the crossbow will see continued refinement, such as better triggers and tensioning systems, as well as repeating variants and perhaps even bayonnets, at which point it might surpass the pike. Despite this, melee weapons and armor with both still have a use, as only so many bolts can be had, armor can only sometimes be defeated, and in the invariable melee combat, armor conveys its definite set of unique advantages.
Fast forward. Not having trival pursuits such as astronomy, alchemy, or medicine so readily focused upon, engineering will likely be the name of the day. Some crazy fool will probably invent steam power sooner - after all, it's not that hard. At first it will be noticed as a labor saving device but after a few steam engine explosions, amongst other things such as steam organs and steam whistles, somebody will probably have the strange idea that if you gather up steam in a chamber and release it, you can probably shoot something out of a tube. Probably pretty violently. Steam Artillery is born. It's rather impractical at this stage to use it for much else since the steam engines themselves are so big, though somebody might figure out how to make smaller, back-portable ones later. Trains, both civilian and armored military ones, are likely to follow, and depending on the crazy inventors around, possibly steam Tanks too. Given these use a steam engine to move around, they might have steam guns aboard, possible both large and small. Scalding is a significant problem when facing these, but they're mostly just cannons, so armor and cavalry retain their focus. Stone fortifications likely start to decline here, gradually advancing to earthworks.
At some point, having used the idea of steam as a propulsion system, and with the advancement of metal working forges and blast furnaces using bellows, it seems likely somebody will happen upon the idea of compressing air. The first weapons are liable to be hand-pumped and of little threat in real war, but will possibly be developed. Various systems and gases might eventually come to be tried. In our own world, certain air gun systems are capable of achieving armor-piercing (wearable armor, anyway) velocities, though this would take quite awhile to achieve. These would likely develop along two lines: long-barreled, smooth-bore "rifles" for distance shooting (think something like a lethal airsoft gun) and short range, rapid-fire "boltguns" designed to spray lethal projectiles, or as contact-fire guns perfect for piercing armor (think something like a nailgun designed to kill people). These will enable greater accuracy, range, and volume of fire than crossbows after awhile, and will gradually surplant them. Their main drawback will be the bulk of carrying two "ammo types" around (the propellant gas and the projectile), leading to lowish ammo for all but dedicated gunners, the problems that happen when the containers holding the propellant are breached, and the fact that when you're out, you're out. Melee weapons will at this point likely enter a sort of back-up role, though they will still be very prominent. Armor will still be capable of deflecting glancing shots, and the horse provides greater carrying capacity than a single human, allowing far more shot potential for cavalry than infantry.
Meanwhile, given the familiarity with plumbing in warfare because of these strange guns, and because of the history of incendiary warfare (fire-arrows, oils of various sorts, perhaps a molotov cocktail analogue) it will probably come as a natural occurence to these people to use develop and use flamethrowers. A very nasty backup should your enemy come in with a melee charge too. Armor will provide limited protection against this (and only for short durations) but will also give the user limited protection should something very bad happen to the containers (though, given the lack of "bullets", they are less likely to explode catastrophically so much as soak the user in flammables). Given the commonplace practice of lugging tanks of gas around, it might occur to someone to make smaller tanks that are less easily targetable, or double-walled holding tanks to resist penetration and rupture.
Lastly, on the chance the electric motor is ever discovered, and steam power is miniaturized or batteries are discovered, a whole host of new and deadly melee weapons come into creation resembling what would occur if power tools were reassigned to anti-personnel duty, from chainsaws to sawblades to anti-armor drills. Should it become practical to wear a steam engine on one's back ("toy" ones can easily fit on a desktop, so a somewhat upscaled version capable of doing some damage is not entirely out of the realm of possibility), it is liable that wholly new and very cruel weapons could be devised. Say, perhaps, a steam pike; the shaft of the weapon is hollow and has numerous small vents. While slashing or stabbing at somebody you can trigger off large quantities of hot air to try and scald them, or after impaling your opponent, discharge it to ensure their demise by searing their innards.
Throughout this, until the latter stages, cavalry will be able to field better systems due to their greater carrying capacities. Towards the end though, it seems likely infantry will begin to rise as systems are downsized and refined, as they are both cheaper to maintain and easier to field. The increasing use of steam-driven vehicles will also likely decrease the importance of the cavalry. In short, it is likely for there to be a large body of light to medium armored basic infantry, a small core of heavily armored infantry or cavalry, and an assorted range of fighting vehicles. Kind of like if the Medieval Age went on indefinitely.
A lot of this is dependent on the surrounding socio-political conditions in terms of how it would pan out in practice, but from a purely technological perspective, the weapons all but guarantee the continuation of medium-to-close range warfare of the very bloody and brutal sort. For the record, this is what I will be using with "Ice" as I won't be bothered with figuring out what sorts of effects it has on preexisting society. So, if the above sounds appealing to anyone, it'll be around eventually.
Any comments? Suggestions? Is the above totally daft?
----------
Related to my earlier thought, I've been doing some thinking on how a gunpowderless world would evolve militarily, either in our own world or some other entirely. In the case of a much earlier PoD or different setup, it seems likely that melee warfare will wind up at a state approximating Medieval Earth's in terms of a dominance of cavalry after a long period of infantry dominance. Whether this takes the form of heavily armored knights or lightly armored archers, or somewhere in between, is dependent on regional situations, however, I'd assume a generally more armored approach. Much of my thoughts follow European paradigms but could probably be re-envisioned form elsewhere easily.
Given armored cavalry warfare tends to require a high degree of skill to practice and is essentially a fulltime occupation, it seems reasonable to assume it will typically come with a feudalistic setting and large peasant or mercenary armies to back it up. Everybody's familiar with that. Now, with no guns, the simplest, but simultaneously the most effective weapon a person can be armed with is the crossbow.
Among footsoldiers, it, along with the pike or halberd, are likely to become the predominant weapons, since all of them give them a capable of countering lance-totting knights. Skirmishers armed with swords, axes, and so forth will probably also be around, along with other assorted weapons like flails and maces. Though not as effective as the gun, the crossbow can still pierce chain and plate mail, and is as much as twice as strong as the ordinary bow, and much easier to use. The bow will likely decline. Armor will get heavier. The ability to equip commoners with a weapon they can use almost instantly will likely lead to a gradual rise in their employ and a decrease in knights.
This may or may not correspond with a return of centralized authority and standing armies, but not necessarily (with a weapon anybody can pick up in minutes, it'd be possible to field large numbers of soldiers easily assuming they could be massproduced, however, they still wouldn't be as good). It's likely the crossbow will see continued refinement, such as better triggers and tensioning systems, as well as repeating variants and perhaps even bayonnets, at which point it might surpass the pike. Despite this, melee weapons and armor with both still have a use, as only so many bolts can be had, armor can only sometimes be defeated, and in the invariable melee combat, armor conveys its definite set of unique advantages.
Fast forward. Not having trival pursuits such as astronomy, alchemy, or medicine so readily focused upon, engineering will likely be the name of the day. Some crazy fool will probably invent steam power sooner - after all, it's not that hard. At first it will be noticed as a labor saving device but after a few steam engine explosions, amongst other things such as steam organs and steam whistles, somebody will probably have the strange idea that if you gather up steam in a chamber and release it, you can probably shoot something out of a tube. Probably pretty violently. Steam Artillery is born. It's rather impractical at this stage to use it for much else since the steam engines themselves are so big, though somebody might figure out how to make smaller, back-portable ones later. Trains, both civilian and armored military ones, are likely to follow, and depending on the crazy inventors around, possibly steam Tanks too. Given these use a steam engine to move around, they might have steam guns aboard, possible both large and small. Scalding is a significant problem when facing these, but they're mostly just cannons, so armor and cavalry retain their focus. Stone fortifications likely start to decline here, gradually advancing to earthworks.
At some point, having used the idea of steam as a propulsion system, and with the advancement of metal working forges and blast furnaces using bellows, it seems likely somebody will happen upon the idea of compressing air. The first weapons are liable to be hand-pumped and of little threat in real war, but will possibly be developed. Various systems and gases might eventually come to be tried. In our own world, certain air gun systems are capable of achieving armor-piercing (wearable armor, anyway) velocities, though this would take quite awhile to achieve. These would likely develop along two lines: long-barreled, smooth-bore "rifles" for distance shooting (think something like a lethal airsoft gun) and short range, rapid-fire "boltguns" designed to spray lethal projectiles, or as contact-fire guns perfect for piercing armor (think something like a nailgun designed to kill people). These will enable greater accuracy, range, and volume of fire than crossbows after awhile, and will gradually surplant them. Their main drawback will be the bulk of carrying two "ammo types" around (the propellant gas and the projectile), leading to lowish ammo for all but dedicated gunners, the problems that happen when the containers holding the propellant are breached, and the fact that when you're out, you're out. Melee weapons will at this point likely enter a sort of back-up role, though they will still be very prominent. Armor will still be capable of deflecting glancing shots, and the horse provides greater carrying capacity than a single human, allowing far more shot potential for cavalry than infantry.
Meanwhile, given the familiarity with plumbing in warfare because of these strange guns, and because of the history of incendiary warfare (fire-arrows, oils of various sorts, perhaps a molotov cocktail analogue) it will probably come as a natural occurence to these people to use develop and use flamethrowers. A very nasty backup should your enemy come in with a melee charge too. Armor will provide limited protection against this (and only for short durations) but will also give the user limited protection should something very bad happen to the containers (though, given the lack of "bullets", they are less likely to explode catastrophically so much as soak the user in flammables). Given the commonplace practice of lugging tanks of gas around, it might occur to someone to make smaller tanks that are less easily targetable, or double-walled holding tanks to resist penetration and rupture.
Lastly, on the chance the electric motor is ever discovered, and steam power is miniaturized or batteries are discovered, a whole host of new and deadly melee weapons come into creation resembling what would occur if power tools were reassigned to anti-personnel duty, from chainsaws to sawblades to anti-armor drills. Should it become practical to wear a steam engine on one's back ("toy" ones can easily fit on a desktop, so a somewhat upscaled version capable of doing some damage is not entirely out of the realm of possibility), it is liable that wholly new and very cruel weapons could be devised. Say, perhaps, a steam pike; the shaft of the weapon is hollow and has numerous small vents. While slashing or stabbing at somebody you can trigger off large quantities of hot air to try and scald them, or after impaling your opponent, discharge it to ensure their demise by searing their innards.
Throughout this, until the latter stages, cavalry will be able to field better systems due to their greater carrying capacities. Towards the end though, it seems likely infantry will begin to rise as systems are downsized and refined, as they are both cheaper to maintain and easier to field. The increasing use of steam-driven vehicles will also likely decrease the importance of the cavalry. In short, it is likely for there to be a large body of light to medium armored basic infantry, a small core of heavily armored infantry or cavalry, and an assorted range of fighting vehicles. Kind of like if the Medieval Age went on indefinitely.
A lot of this is dependent on the surrounding socio-political conditions in terms of how it would pan out in practice, but from a purely technological perspective, the weapons all but guarantee the continuation of medium-to-close range warfare of the very bloody and brutal sort. For the record, this is what I will be using with "Ice" as I won't be bothered with figuring out what sorts of effects it has on preexisting society. So, if the above sounds appealing to anyone, it'll be around eventually.
Any comments? Suggestions? Is the above totally daft?
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
*raises eyebrow* While that ideal may work in Europe, the idea is kinda preposterous in China where gunpowder was actually invented 
For all the power of heavy cavalry, the infantry ruled in China with their massive numbers, and was in addition much more cost effective. In addition, the Chinese did have a primitive flamethrower.
That said, your idea could actually work for in Europe
EDIT: IN our world that is, in another world, *shrug*
For all the power of heavy cavalry, the infantry ruled in China with their massive numbers, and was in addition much more cost effective. In addition, the Chinese did have a primitive flamethrower. That said, your idea could actually work for in Europe
EDIT: IN our world that is, in another world, *shrug*
Kozmos
Jew Detective
me likes, me likes a lot
Symphony D.
Deity
Actually, Alex, I presumed gunpowder was never invented by anyone originally, then expanded it to other worlds.
North King
blech
- Joined
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The searing spears don't sound very practical, as a) the strength of the spearhead would be somewhat diminished (though admittedly smaller openings wouldn't be too much of a problem), and b), the searing of internal organs might well cauterize the wound... If you have an abdominal wound, you're going to die anyway. Head, same. Limb, you're not a threat. The most use I could see would be blowing the steam directly in your enemy's face.
Kozmos
Jew Detective
Steam grenades?
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