I didn't respond to some comments because they'll be covered in the update below.
Off topic but I’m thinking about how the current Rhomanian emperors are descended from Timur and how the OTL Mughal dynasty was descended from him. Any Siderot equivalents to the OTL Mughal emperors because of this?
Demetrios, younger brother of Heraklios III is currently in the northern India, so maybe that's gonna be a start of the new dynasty.
I've been waiting for someone to notice that the Sideroi are effectively TTL's equivalent of Mughals in terms of relations to Timur. But I haven't been basing any characters off of OTL Mughals-no Greek Akbar for example.
Are there any lingering effects of the brutal treatment of civilians around Smyrna? I know it caused issues last campaign season, but didn't see it mentioned this time around.
There are lingering effects (northern Thrakesia is a right mess now) but they aren't as significant this time around.
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Rhomania’s General Crisis, Part 18.1-Shall the Sword Devour Forever? Part 2:
Grammatikos marches hard but it is a long way from Smyrna to Nicaea, even on some of the best roads in the Empire. And he has been delayed by the failed negotiations with the Thrakesians and the subsequent pause when he decided how he should act. A few raids by Thrakesian cavalry don’t help, although Andronikopulos quickly shifts most of his energy against the forces remaining in his theme, rather than those exiting it.
These delays might not have been significant if Nicaea had defenses comparable to that of the typical border fortress on the western or eastern frontiers. But the last time Nicaea’s fortifications were substantially improved were with earthen redoubts piled up during the Time of Troubles and those have long since been allowed to erode away. (This is a major weakness of earthen fortifications, their brevity.) The extant fortification at Nicaea in 1663 predate the Black Death and these are no longer complete, with breaches punched in them to facilitate access as the early modern city expanded well beyond its medieval bounds.
Exactly what happens prior to the Army of Suffering’s attack on Nicaea is unclear. Accounts more sympathetic to the Anatolikon uprising claim that negotiations were proceeding well, with the city pledging to pay an admittedly hefty ransom in exchange for being left alone, when word arrived that Grammatikos was on his way with a relief force. With this, the Nicaeans reneged on their agreement.
In some versions, the Nicaeans compound this by treacherously murdering the envoys of the Army of Suffering who had been sent to negotiate the ransom, a group which includes Stefanos Karamanlis. Stefanos is the last of the ‘big three’ leaders of the Army of Suffering, an elderly cousin of the Grand Karaman. He had been instrumental in the formation of the Army of Suffering as an army, with long experience as a Roman drill dekarchos with turning farm boys into soldiers. Much of the cohesion and organization of the Army of Suffering, such as it is, is due to his person.
According to other accounts less sympathetic to the rebels, the ire of the rebels had only increased as they entered Bithynia. These lands were richer and more bountiful than what they were used to in Anatolikon, the sight only increasing their greed and rage at those who had hoarded such bounty. They were no mood to let Nicaea off; they wanted to sack and loot it most thoroughly. In these versions, Stefanos is killed by Nicaean defenders somewhere in the approach to the city, the details varying but all agreeing it was before the rebels had entered the city proper.
All agree on what happens next. Help was on the way but it was not fast enough, the Army of Suffering pouring over the paltry defenses and into the city. The rebels are condemned, then and now, for what follows, but by all the laws of war as they existed at the time, what follows is predictable. Cities that have to be stormed can expect, and are due, no mercy; that’s the incentive to surrender beforehand.
Nicaea in peacetime has around 100,000 inhabitants although in these circumstances the population has been swelled by refugees from the countryside, but historians dispute by how much. There is more consensus on the number slain, somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand. The worst carnage is on the shore of Lake Askania, where panicked city dwellers desperately seek out boats to escape. Some boatmen make huge sums of money by demanding exorbitant fees to take on passengers while other boats are swamped by too many people and capsizing. Very few can swim and it is reported that islands and coastal hills of corpses form in places before decomposition works them away.
Those who flee north on the Nikomedia road have better luck since the Army of Suffering hadn’t fully invested the city before attacking. Their attention moreover is focused on the opportunities for plunder. By Anatolikon standards, particularly those of these straitened years, Nicaea is incredibly well-stocked with all kinds of foodstuffs and the wine cellars are also in good condition as well. Also, by the standards of the poor Anatolikon peasantry, who can’t even afford a personal fork back home and have possibly never tasted any meat other than pigeon, if that, even mesoi Nicaean houses are incredibly well furnished. Even though they may have grown cotton, this is the first time most have had the chance to wear cotton clothes.
After five days of carnage, the Army of Suffering has mostly calmed down from the storm and sack, but that is not the end of the matter. Both Konon and the Grand Karaman show signs of depression. Both genuinely, particularly Konon, were interested in reweaving the fabric of Roman society but the Army of Suffering is not being the tool for that task they want it to be.
More immediately, a vengeful Grammatikos is now approaching. The Army of Suffering has not confronted a regular force of such size head-on and its earlier experiences confronting Theosterikteros at the Cilician Gates are not promising. If they fight around Nicaea, they risk being pinned against the city and destroyed. Furthermore, the rebel soldiers are interested in safeguarding their newly acquired plunder by transporting it home.
The Army of Suffering retreats from Nicaea seven days after the initial attack, its progress slowed by a massive baggage train of plunder from the city as well as the surrounding countryside. But for his part, Grammatikos is slowed by columns of refugees clogging the roads and seeking shelter behind his army, making it hard for him to move forward. As a result, despite some clashes between forward and rear units, the two forces never seriously engage before the Army of Suffering crosses back into the Anatolikon, with Grammatikos breaking off the pursuit.
He does that so he can immediately pivot and march hard west back the way he came; his gamble to try and keep his earlier gains in Thrakesia before the Army of Suffering invaded Bithynia has failed dramatically. Andronikopulos had massed men and guns and broken the siege of Smyrna, defeating the Constantinople-loyalist force again after it consolidated north of the city. They are now in full retreat, hotly pursued and harassed by Thrakesian units. Despite Andronikopulos’s best efforts he is unable to bring them to battle again before they can link up with Grammatikos, although he does snap up a decent amount of baggage, artillery, and over two thousand prisoners, many of them wounded left behind in the rush to keep moving.
What follows is another series of desultory marches and skirmishes which do little beyond tiring the soldiers and growing the casualty lists. Both sides are showing clear signs of demoralization. The movement of troops and refugees with the attendant disruption of trade and agriculture is causing food shortages and also spreading outbreaks of disease, including the dreaded plague. The shattered survivors of the sack of Nicaea are hit the hardest, with a comparable number dying of deprivation and disease over the rest of the year as were killed in the sack. But they are unique only in extent, not in concept. Western Anatolia, more geared toward producing for the market than for self-sufficiency, is more vulnerable to food shortages caused by disruption in trade.
Similar issues are present across all the Empire with almost no area being spared entirely. The coast of Hellas is hit repeatedly by naval raids while even Pontus is struck by Ottoman forays. Trying to defend the entire length of the Pontic mountains is a good way to be defeated in detail and while some are driven back, others break through. The coastal cities themselves can defend themselves and can rely on still-dependable Scythian imports for basic foodstuffs, but the countryside is more vulnerable. The inhabitants of Kerasous pay a hefty ransom to an Ottoman column to spare their valuable suburban market gardens and orchards from burning.
The situation in Syria is also degenerating into a series of raids, with the objective of plundering an often plague-wracked countryside rather than of changing the strategic situation. Troop and refugee movements are also spreading disease through Syria and then to Egypt. To make matters worse, the arid conditions of the Little Ice Age (more moisture locked up in ice) makes the 1663 Nile flood a devastatingly paltry one, hammering Egyptian agriculture, which has knock-on effects for areas of the Imperial heartland accustomed to being fed by Egyptian grain. In Crete, which only produces one-third of its cereal needs (growing wine is much more profitable), there are reports of cannibalism with a poem later saying ‘the flesh of a son was more welcome than his love’. [1]
The situation in Syria is still dangerous enough to Sophia-loyalists that Theosterikteros is forced to send many of his newest recruits to bolster the line against the Egyptians, denying him the reserves he feels he needs to push further into the Anatolikon. He had hoped to strike into the heart of Karamanid Isauria, possibly with the goal of sponsoring a new Grand Karaman by finding an ambitious cousin, but marching into that area without plentiful rear-echelon guards is an expensive but effective way to commit suicide.
The year 1663 is often taken as the nadir of the Roman General Crisis. While disease outbreaks and food shortfalls are nothing new, even without the Little Ice Age, the Little Ice Age and the War of Wrath sharply exacerbate their effects. To be accurate, years surrounding 1663, particularly the next couple, are probably comparable in terms of deaths from disease and deprivation. Yet the memory of those years is partly compensated with events of high drama and import, with things clearly moving toward resolution, while 1663 just feels mired. Theosterikteros’s inability to do anything in Anatolikon because of the need for damage control in Syria that year is an example of that malaise which only breaks the next year.
Both sides are looking for a way out, with some groups trying to find a way to a negotiated compromise. The most significant of these is an effort sponsored by the Patriarch of Russia who manages to get delegates to meet under his auspices in his palace in Kiev but even his august presence and earnest cajoling can get nowhere. The Tourmarches and Sophia have committed too much to be able to compromise; one must destroy the other.
But both sides are too evenly matched for any military victory to come quickly and cheaply. New weights must be added to the scales if the balance is to be tipped. Accusations of foreign collusion are already old hat in propaganda by this point, particularly that of Constantinople against Sophia, but with no basis in fact. Neither side has been willing to take that step. Yet now, as 1663 spirals toward its end, the unthinkable is looking more and more essential.
[1] The poetic quote is taken from a poem about a south Indian famine around this time IOTL.