[BTS] [RFC/DoC] The Legacy of Byzance: An Eastern Roman Tale

[trexeric]

No, Grue, No!

 

[constantinople]

Dang Persians.

 

[Gruekiller]

Just for the record, at the point at which the story is now, I had culture-flipped Damascus, Budapest, Rome, Jerusalem, Tabriz (twice) and Baghdad. Byzzie culture is ridiculous.

 

[trexeric]

Just look at the culture flips in constantinople's Venice story... those were something...

 

[A.Caesar]

Just look at the culture flips in constantinople's Venice story... those were something...

Indeed.

 

[strijder20]

Just look at the culture flips in constantinople's Venice story... those were something...

Indeed.

That always happens in RFCEurope because of the bazillion independents there (independents can always flip to their closest neighbour, apparently, even if he is twenty tiles away).

 

[constantinople]

It's because in RFCE++, culture is expanded. So Lombardy could have culture in Frankfurt even if it's cultural borders don't reach the city.

 

[Gruekiller]

1.21 - Alexander the Grand​

Rather unlike her father, Maria I was content to busy herself with more peaceful affairs, establishing diplomatic relations with the new Persian state and financing Greek education in the Slavic regions of the northern Balkans. Her health declined rapidly, however, and she was frail for much of her last decade on the throne. She at last passed away in 1517, leaving the crown to her young son, Alexandros.

Alexandros' reign was to prove reminiscent of his ancient namesake - he took the throne at a young age, showed great promise as a commander and warrior, and would soon contend with the powerful Persian state. Further echoes would come after his reign had passed, for Alexandros V would forever be remembered as Megaleiodis - the Grand.

Alexander the Grand, painted 1522.
​

Determined to continue the conquests which his grandfather Manuel and Anastasios the Dread had begun, Alexandros stopped pursuing the diplomatic line his mother had drawn with the Persians. A series of snubs from the Roman court were too much for Persia to ignore, and soon the shah, Abbas, had sworn to free the Muslims of Mesopotamia and the Levant, and had crossed the Tigris.

​

The Persian host was of a size unseen by the Romans since the Mongol invasions. Drawn from the vast and populous Persian heartland, the Persians drove north towards Ctesiphon, determined to capture what had once been their capital. The siege, however, did not last long, as it was lifted by the Army of Syria, commanded by Alexandros' brother, the prince Andreas, after two weeks. Like Darius III 1,800 years before, Abbas was forced to retire from the field of battle, and what Persians survived retreated back across the border, pursued by the Romans.

​

As the Army of Syria advanced upon the Iranian Plateau, the Army of Armenia likewise moved eastward, entering the formerly Roman lands surrounding Tabriz. A small Persian army was defeated in a fierce battle south of the city, and the Romans took possession of the local copper mines. Tabriz was placed under Roman siege, although, for now, the Romans made no move to occupy the city itself.

​

Reluctantly, Alexandros had stayed behind in Constantinople, at the insistence of his advisers and of the people not to put himself in danger's way. However, when the chance came, he took the opportunity to jump into the fray himself. The Norwegian crusaders had vacated Egypt a decade before, leaving the region to be feuded over by petty Abbasid remnants, which began to raid Roman Palestine. Alexandros decided to finish what Anastasios had begun by reconquering Egypt.

The Roman army, Alexandros at its head, landed in Cyrenaica, where they occupied the city of Paraitonion, which still had a largely Greek populace. Here, the army split in two, with a cadet force under Skantarios Phokas, the katepan of Italy, heading west to Benghazi. The Emperor himself made for Alexandria, visions of conquest dancing in his eyes.

​

The disorganized and undisciplined armies of the petty states were unable to stand up to the Romans. For the past century, the Roman army had grown increasingly professional and well-trained, and new developments like advances in cannons and handheld guns offered a distinct technological edge as well. Before the end of the year, Cyrenaica and Lower Egypt as far as Cairo were under Roman rule for the first time since the 7th Century. The remaining Egyptian nobles and hardliners took up residence in Luxor, from which they harassed the new Roman border, but their resistance could only continue for a few decades more.

From the new regional capital in Alexandria late in 1533, Alexandros uttered a sentence which would prove immortal:

"Let the world tremble. Rome rises anew."
​

This moment, although the reconquest of Palestine and Syria is often cited, is commonly recognized as the beginning of the Roman Resurgence.

​

The Roman armies had done well in the east as well. Andreas Kantakouzenos and the armies of Syria and Armenia had pushed east to the Zagros mountains, forcing the Persians to hole themselves up in the highlands of the Iranian Plateau and uselessly raiding Roman positions. The mines and farms of western Persia were out of reach to the beleaguered Persian state, which stubbornly clung to the conflict, refusing to make peace. The Romans began the long occupation of western Persia - the war was effectively won.

​

His legacy secured, Alexandros remained in Alexandria to manage his new possessions, dying two years later of a mysterious illness. Although many enterprising young officers lost their careers (or their lives) in the following years as investigation into Alexandros' death went on, in the end it seems apparent that Alexandros' killer was not an assassin's poison, but the bacterium Plasmodium - malaria.

The Emperor's younger brother, Andreas, inherited the throne, newly-conquered Egypt, and an ongoing guerrilla campaign against the Persians. Although more a warrior than an administrator, Andreas nevertheless did a fine job of pacifying newly-conquered Egypt and maintaining martial order in occupied Persia. It wasn't until near the end of his reign that the Persians at last saw reason and accepted offers of peace. Persia's manpower and economic base were crippled, and the state itself reduced nearly to a tributary for the Romans. The Persians would not have another chance at revenge upon the Romans for 300 years.

​

Andreas passed away two years later, at the age of 69, having left behind a long but unremarkable reign. Greatness, it seems, skips a generation - his brother conquered Egypt, and his son would do little of note, but his grandson would be perhaps the greatest Emperor the Romans had ever seen...

The Empire in 1569.​

 

[trexeric]

Who's his grandson? I MUST KNOW!!!!

 

[Gruekiller]

You will find out in the next, dramatic update: The Lion of Rhomania and the War of the Tripartite Alliance (1569 - 1616).

 

[Gruekiller]

1.22 - The Lion's Roar​

In 1569, the throne passed to Manuel IV Kantakouzenos, the eldest son of Andreas I. The beginning of the new emperor's reign was marred by political strife and rumors of conspiracy, as Manuel's brother, Constantine, passed away of mysterious circumstances at about the time that Manuel took the throne. Although no significant evidence has ever been found that Manuel was somehow responsible for Constantine's death, the stigma haunted this ruler's name for decades afterwards.

Manuel IV Kantakouzenos, painted as Imperial prince in 1558.
​

The most noteworthy event of Manuel's reign was the abolition of the theme system. As the Empire had expanded in recent centuries, the important urban centers of Hellas and Anatolia had finally been secure at the Empire's core, safe from outside invasion for the first time in centuries. The need to maintain military governance of these territories was thus diminished, and the day-to-day running of the Empire's core territories was turned over to civilian authorities, with only restive or recently-conquered territories remaining themata. The governors of these new provinces were appointed by the Emperor, but at the local level, limited democracy had started to take root.

Another consequence of the increasing importance of urban culture in the Roman Empire was the continuing intermeshing of local, Greek culture with that of Turks, Arabs, Magyars, and other minority groups from around the sprawling Empire. This process reached the peak of its growth during Manuel's tenure as Emperor, particularly in the flourishing playwright community in Constantinople and Athens. The perennial classic Abdul and Styliane, a tale about the forbidden love between a Muslim man and a Greek woman, was especially popular in the late 16th Century.

The Roman Empire was thus entering a new period of societal, cultural, and economic growth during the later stages of the Kantakouzenid Dynasty. The rest of Europe, wracked by continuing religious conflict since the Protestant Schism 200 years earlier, had continued to slip further into decay and population decline, especially in France, Germany, and the British Isles. It seemed only natural for the ire of the Protestant nations of Europe to turn away from their own internal problems (whose fault they were reluctant to accept), and instead towards the prosperous, and Uniate, Empire which was quickly reclaiming its Mare Nostrum.

Thus, even as Manuel quietly passed away in the palace at the age of 63, ambassadors from the three greatest Protestant kingdoms, Germany, England, and Portugal, had hammered out an alliance to end the rise of Roman and Uniate power in Europe, once and for all...

​

This Tripartite Alliance had perhaps thought that the change of rulers meant a good opportunity to strike - several border fortresses in Hungary were seized by the Germans, Rome was placed under siege, and the English and Portuguese navies descended upon the Mediterranean, harassing Roman trade convoys and blockading the Straits of Tunis.

Unfortunately for the Protestant alliance, the new Emperor of the Romans was not the type to be cowed by such a surprise attack. Ioannes VI Kantakouzenos was the Emperor now, and the Protestants had awoken the Lion.

Ioannes VI, the Lion of Rhomania, painted ca. 1610
​

Russia and Norway joined the Romans against the so-called Tripartite Alliance, forming a Catholic bloc which would have offered stiff opposition, even if Ioannes' considerable military skill wasn't at its head. Trained at the military school in Constantinople, the new emperor was the product of centuries of Roman military tradition, and it showed in his eagerness to join his generals in plotting the course of the war from behind the battle lines. Ioannes could be said to be a bit of an anachronistic emperor, for the age of leading troops on the battlefield had passed for the sovereigns of Europe. It was, in fact, his obsession with military matters which would cause the Empire such detriment after his death.

First on the minds of the Romans, however, was the war that needed to be won. Ioannes instructed the Roman admiralty to pursue an aggressive strategy against the Allied navies in the Mediterranean and ending the naval war before striking against the Germans on land. The Roman armada left the port at Dyrrachion Komnenion [1] on 12 August 1589, moving west to Italy where Allied naval forces were harassing coastal towns in Calabria and Sicily. Though it took a while for the squabbling admirals of the two Allied nations to coordinate, the Allies mustered their combined navies to head off the advancing Roman navy off the small Sardinian island of Asinara. It was here that the greatest naval battle of Roman history would be joined.

Battle was joined on the last day of August, and after a day of fierce combat, the outcome was clear - the larger, more oceanically suited galleons of the Latin navies were outmaneuvered by the fleeter frigates and galleasses of the Romans, and set aflounder in the rocky Sardinian shoals. Hundreds of English and Portuguese soldiers were washed ashore on the beaches of nearby Alghero, the survivors hunted down by the vengeful locals whose homes they had recently been raiding. Fed by the timber of galleons, Greek fire burned on the horizon for almost a week afterwards.

Never again would a major power contest Rome on the high seas.

The Battle of Asinara, by a contemporary of the battle, Fransisko Vassanos.
​

Although scattered Ally squadrons would accost Roman merchant ships for a while yet, the war at sea was over. No armies from the British Isles or Portugal would be forthcoming, and so Germany stood alone against the Empire and its allies.

The Army of Egypt was transported across the Mediterranean to Naples, whereafter they marched north and raised the siege of Rome. The German army was pursued northward, and defeated outside of the town of Florentia. The Germans holed themselves up in the passes of the Apennines, stalling a full Roman advance into Lombardy and German Italy. Here the Italian front stalled for now; but another major campaign threatened to break through German lines further to the east.

The Austrian-Hungarian border had been the site of fierce fighting since the conflict broke out, German troops nearly reaching the outskirts of Voudapest in the earliest days of the war. The front line had stabilized by 1591, to the point that the Germans had felt safe focusing most of their efforts on breaking through in Italy, in the hopes of reclaiming Rome and forcing a peace. Ioannes had other ideas. The Armies of Hellas and Asia had been assembling in secret at Debrecen in preparation for a strike on the German heartland. That winter, under the command of the Imperial prince Constantine [2], the army broke through the front lines and crossed the Danube, which had frozen over on the night of 31 December 1591.

The fighting was fierce, and what German forces could reach the city on time fought a desperate holding action against the Romans. Ultimately, their efforts were futile, and despite the fighting spirit of the defenders, the Germans were routed as dawn broke on 1592. The Romans celebrated the New Year in the city of Vienna, but the celebration was a hollow one - Prince Constantine had perished during the worst of the fighting, and Ioannes had no heir.

The Battle of Vienna.
​

Despite this personal tragedy, the Romans had achieved a great national victory. Austria was under Roman occupation, with cavalry units raiding freely as far as Pfalz and Brandenburg with little opposition. Russian troops joined the fray in the east, and German resistance was crumbling. By 1593, Russian troops, ferried across the Adriatic from Dalmatia, had seized the important port city of Venice, and soon thereafter the front lines in Italy moved northward, into Lombardy.

​

The final major blow of the war was struck when Roman forces seized the Portuguese-aligned city of Tripolis in Africa, ending the war in the Mediterranean theater. Sporadic fighting continued in the Alps for a few years afterwards, but at last the Alliance sued for peace.

​

At a steep cost, the Roman Empire and its Uniate allies had proven their superiority. The Peace of Paris [3] saw the end of the wars of religion in Europe, and placed a terrible cost upon the aggressors. Portugal and England were placed under strict maritime restrictions, their combined navies to equal no more than half of the Roman navy at any time. Germany, as the prime orchestrator of the conflict, paid even more dearly. The former capital at Vienna was ceded to the Roman Empire, and much of Austria and Bohemia placed under Imperial occupation. All of Italy, too, would return to Imperial control, bringing the first total Roman domination of the Peninsula since the 6th Century.

More importantly, the first major war in generations had forged the bonds of the various peoples of the Empire in fire. The first examples of what we would identify as modern propaganda were produced by the Imperial presses during this period, and Rhomanian nationalism as we know it was born. No longer would people speak of being subjects of an Empire of the Romans, but of the Rhomanian nation, and its people.

These bonds would be tested when the Lion of Rhomania died without a legitimate heir in 1612, and the Empire was thrown into chaos once again...

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[1] - Founded by Iason I Komnenos, and renamed in honor of the dynasty which the citizens saw as their greatest benefactors.

[2] - Named for his deceased uncle.

[3] - The parties involved in the conflict met in the capital of neutral France to reach a peace deal.

 

[trexeric]

Oh no, not chaos!

 

[constantinople]

Hey, I used that ship battle painting as the background of a Horatio Nelson LH.

EDIT: You can still see the British and French flags on the ships.

 

[Gruekiller]

I have no idea what you're talking about

 

[constantinople]

What I mean is, there is a British general LH and I added him to a civ mod. I named him Horatio Nelson and changed his background (the still image behind the leader) to a painting of the Battle of the Nile, the picture you used for the Battle of Asinara.

 

[Gruekiller]

And what I mean is, I haven't any idea you mean. There is no war in Ba Sing Se. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

Nice update.

 

[constantinople]

And what I mean is, I haven't any idea you mean. There is no war in Ba Sing Se. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

And what I mean is:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH​

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

And what I mean is:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH​

And I mean

2+2=5​

 

[NinjaCow64]

And I mean

2+2=5​

And I mean

Doubleplusgood.​

(Ah, this spam brings back good memories)