OOC: First off, this little article is supposed to apologize for the horrible thing I wrote last time, and to create numerous excerpt of books and poems and stories throughout.
Secondly, in war do you send battle orders, kept secret just to keep up suspense and for strat, to the big GM on top(Joe) or the battle GM(Owen)?
Tokyo's 2006 AP Serbian History Translated to English
First off, this is a real historian's manual to Serbia, not the Serbian
The Modern's Historians Account of an Empire propaganda.
Secondly, this will not blanket the truth with broad general ideas and generalizations, forgetting major issues, and only seeing some broad view that simply is not the truth. And with that, the we begin.
First off, Serbia was not some Grand Empire at the beginning, nor was it some one entity under Maximilian I. From its roots of civil war, with warlords, and occasional small nations under a council of warlords, and its shadow plays of the court, Serbia, a small country, was born. Here is a map generally regarded as accurate as history can attest to for the situation in 1742.
{OOC: Still can't find the cut tool in paint
mad
, so just the area in Greece and such marked with a black circle is relevant.}
The Byzantine "Empire" in yellow was a decaying monarch holding only on to Constantinople, a city now wrecked by war and by disuse, and its war-torn areas farther out. For as long as the ages of medieval kings and knights, the Seljuq Turks, now just roving war bands in Turkey, as opposed to the legitimated power they once were. Indeed, the map gives too much credit to them, and if it was not for the Byzantine's weakness, all of Turkey could be theirs. For truth, many of the families in Turkey pledged allegiance to Byzantine, not to the Seljuq Turks, and the Turks were merely war bands at this point, wreaking Byzantine even more so.
The Light Blue is oft recalled as the Greek Confederacy, a series of city states in the Southern Greek peninsula who traded, fought, and acted as a power in the region, but whos scope was limited to Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. The Confederacy never had a central ruler, weakening the potential powerhouse, and keeping it in the cities and in the area. War with the Byzantines, as well with Serbia bove, was common however despite the lack of a single army entity.
Yugoslavia in pink was a minor power held on by the genius diplomacy and war tactics of their monarchies, one after one. Indeed, the lack of a Nero was very fortuitous for the Yugoslavian's, who beat back a combined Serbia-Byzantine-Macedon attack in 1706 by sheer genius of use of artillery in the field, and massacres of the enemies while sitting on hills. Macedon is light purple is an ally of Serbia and Byzantine, and is in a near constant state of battle with Yugoslavia, in which it currently is losing, having lost the the coastal area south of their current holdings in the spring of last year.
Serbia in brown is a traditional ally of the Byzantine in the wars against Macedon and Yugoslavia, and the first power in the region that could be considered without a doubt a strong nation state. The monarch of Serbia at the time however was a weak, incompetent leader and general, that led to many complications in the near future.
The three northern countries, from left to right, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, were largely neutral in the conflict of the rest, except for minor skirmishes with the Serbian-Macedon-Byzantines thus far. The alliances of this point are a strong Serbia-Byzantine, with Macedon currently friendly with both, with Macedon losing a war against Yugoslavia currently. The Greeks are neutral in the conflict as of now, as well as Croatia, Hungary, and Romania. The Turks are a non-entity.
A series of events that could only be considered the rarest of the rarest however changed the fragile balance of the peninsula forever.
OOC: That kinda went off in a direction I'm not sure I'll peruse. Whatever.
)
