PART 36: Doukes? Nuke ’em. (1453-1458)

Excerpts from the diary of Bosporios Gobroon. The youngest son of one of the stakeholders in Constantinople’s famed House of Gobroon, Bosporios, having no hope of inheriting a share in the merchant enterprise, instead enrolled in the civil service program, excelled at his exams, and joined the Committee of Venice. He quickly rose through the ranks of the understaffed ministry, and became one of the leading foreign policy advisors to the Senate.


The Byzantine Senate declined to accept Heraklios of Paphlagonia’s ultimatum.

Shocking, I know! Why wouldn’t the Senate want to destroy two of the pillars of the Byzantine state (the imperial throne, the civil service) and empower their most implacable enemies, the feudal nobility?

Well, I can think of one reason: their own worthless hides. Altuntekin promised that the Senate’s lives, offices, and dignity would be respected in the new regime if they deposed Yaroslavovna.

Fortunately, they were aware that their offices and dignity would mean very little with a Branas emperor on the throne, that it would destroy the whole Monternos project.

And so the dispute would have to be settled through strength of arms.

The rebellion broke out in Greece, the traditional stronghold of support for the old feudal order. Doux Heraklios has taken the field in person. He had a candidate of marginally imperial pedigree lined up to serve as a puppet emperor should Basillike have abdicated, but– apparently– plans on taking control of the empire personally if his forces take Constantinople.

His army is made up of levies from all the doukes of Greece and the Greek sections of Anatolia. Apparently his troops hoisted him on their shields and proclaimed him the true emperor of Rome. It’s all very crisis of the third century. Very barracks emperor.

The rebel forces march under a strange red and black flag. Most of them are unadorned, ad-hoc affairs, but “Emperor” Heraklios’ personal standard combines the old Greek Cross used by Komitas Branas with the arms of Paphlagonia on a field of black (rather than the traditional green)

While Heraklios runs rampant in Greece, however, the western side of the Adriatic remains solidly in our hands. My colleagues in the Phanariote Committee has continued its work to restore civil Byzantine government to the former territories of Venice.

I’ve heard that some of Heraklios’ supporters have stooped so low as to secretly send money to the Pope, in hopes that a sudden offensive by the Church Militant could keep imperial forces tied up in Byzantine Italy.

I’m sure the Pope was happy to simply deposit their gold in Orbetello and do absolutely nothing, though.

The King of Sicily remained the most potent force in Italy, however– and they have taken pains to tie themselves in ever closer to the imperial family, marrying one of their younger sons to some de Mowbray cousin or other. All those Anglo-Norman brats look the same to me, I’m sorry to say.

The Varangian Committee has had immense difficulty rebuilding the military after the horrendous losses it suffered at the hands of the French. Intervening in the Savoyard affair was their idea, though. So if Heraklios wins and we all get put to the sword, I’m going to blame them. Posthumously.

Now, though, in December of 1454– more than a year after Heraklios’ ultimatum– we finally have an army ready to take the field. An army from Italy arrived here in Constantinople, and, reinforced by mercenaries recruited in Anatolia, has marched overland to Adrianople, with a forward detachment stationed in Macedonia.

I do hope that the army that marches back carries the white and red banners of the Yaroslavoviches, and not the black and red banners of the Altunekins.

But Monastir has fallen. And I am told we do not have the military strength to launch an offensive.

We’ve continued work as normal at the Committee of Venice. With the Varangian Committee currently in favor, and the empire at war, there is very little we can do except continue work on our existing projects, and hope we shall live long enough to see them bear fruit.

The empress did some diplomacy of her own, concluding a deal to formally integrate the Kingdom of Sicily into the centralized imperial government. The di Chios have always been the closest of allies to the Empress and her forebears, and the prospect of going it alone as a quasi-independent vassal seemed especially dicey given Italy’s proximity to France. And now, more than ever, the empress needed all the support they could muster.

Momentous developments at the front! It’s very difficult to keep up with exactly what is happening, even just two provinces away, but I shall try to set it all down here:

The Alutekins continued to consolidate their hold on Greece, taking the all-important city of Athens in June, 1455, and more or less bringing administration of the imperial exams to a screeching halt.

Heraklios realized, however, that sooner or later he’d need to march on Constantinople– and the longer he waited, the more time the Varangians would have to knit the shattered imperial armies back together. He ordered his main army into Macedonia. Hugh de Mowbray rushed to relieve the forward guard before they were overwhelmed by the rebels.

The resulting battle could have gone either way– the imperials had the advantage of being on the defensive, but Hugh’s competence as a commander was questionable given his repeated defeats at the hands of King Martin de Valois-Vexin in the Savoyard affair.

But then, apparently, a miracle happend– another 13,000 soldiers (mostly cavalry, I’m told) arrived from the Republic of Ragusa.

The timely arrival of the Ragusans changed a closely-fought slugfest into an utter rout for Altunekin.

His army fled southwards, to what it hoped would be the relative safety of Greece. His other armies were continuing to consolidate their hold on the region, with rebels taking Achaea even as their emperor was beating a hasty retreat from Macedonia.

Before Heraklios could reunite with his other armies, however, he was caught by Hugh, and his army was totally destroyed.

The body of Heraklios Altunekin was found on the fields of Thessaly the next day, still clutching his sword in one hand and his black and red banner in the other, an arrow lodged in his heart.

And as he had made the fateful choice to have himself crowned emperor, rather than a puppet, the entire rebellion fell apart following his death.

A minor rebellion in Belgorod, instigated by opportunistic feudal nobles against the vassal republic and banking on imperial troops being tied down fighting Altunekin was instead put down by Belgorod’s own troops before Hugh could even arrive with a relief force.

After this last footnote to the Altunekin Rebellion, the empire was finally at peace.

While there was some agitation among the Senate– and the Phanariote Committee– to dissolve the theme system entirely, Basillike ultimately decided this was still unfeasible. Still, the decisive defeat suffered by the rebellion meant that relatively harsh conditions could be enforced:

I. Iouliana the Great’s reforms to the theme system, in abeyance since the overthrow of Dobrava Yaroslavovna, were restored. Doukes once again served at the empress’ pleasure, with imperial government free to revoke or dole out themes as it pleased.

II. Doukes would no longer be responsible for raising levies for the imperial army, which would instead be fully centrally administered. As the standing army had been steadily growing throughout Basillike’s reign, levies from the themes were less important to the military than they had been even a few decades ago, but by depriving the doukes of the right to raise levies on their own authority, she cut them off from a major source of their power.

III. All doukes would now execute the powers of their offices with the help of civil servants from the Committees of State– hopefully, the first step in a transition from feudal themes to proper provincial governments.

Meanwhile, my committee initiated an ambitious project to develop the trade infrastructure around Byzantion by building new marketplaces.

And with the military crisis over, the Varangian Committee fell from favor among the civil service. The Committee of Venice was now the most prestigious of all the committees of state.

And, together with the Senate, we’ll lead the empire out of the morass of feudalism and into something new. Something better.

Change is in the air.

Well, change is always in the air. Everything is always changing. Humans are fascinating creatures, seldom content with the status quo. Some states might appear inert– but so does a barrel of Chinese gunpowder before it catches aflame.

But I have a very real sense that one era is ending and another is beginning– that the Near West is on the precipice of a great rebirth of cultural, political, artistic, and philosophical life.

Of course, not everyone in the empire realizes this.

And many of the great names which defined the old world are likely to be snuffed out before they can join the new one.

Rome is among the oldest and greatest names of all. In antiquity, Romans strode the Mediterranean like giants, with an empire stretching from Lai Ang to Da Qin. More recently, the Komnenoi stitched an empire on the precipice of utter annihilation at the hands of Rum, restored Anatolia and Italy to the empire, and encircled the Black Sea. St. Valeria single-handedly rearranged the religious map of Europe in ways I’m sure were quite important to Christians, even if they’re none of my concern.

And then, under the Yaroslavoviches, Rome endured through centuries of chaos, plague, war, and destruction, avoided destruction at the hands of the Ming Frontier Army, and played a key role in the liberation struggle of the Hungarian League.

A past any people can be proud of.

But the future lies ahead, full of possibilities we can scarcely even imagine.

Ours for the taking, if we’re bold enough.