Eparkhos
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Part XIX: Protas Nika (1481-1484)
To any outsider, the entry of the Trapezuntine Empire to Notaras’ War would have seemed deluded at best and suicidal at most. Trapezous in the war has been a topic that has intrigued and perplexed generations of academics, for good reason. The story of Alexandros II’s foolhardy intervention and the following series of events that nearly destroyed the Trapezuntine Empire is a long and complicated one, so it would be best to start from the beginning.
The general consensus amongst the court of Trapezous in the latter half of the 15th Century was that the state would either expand or die. The Trapezuntine Empire had a problem with strategic depth, as its comparatively small size and coastal expanse meant that there was little room for defenders to maneuver and even less that could be recovered if lost. Their problem with strategic depth was softened somewhat by the rough hills and forests of the region, but these could only go so far. Instead, as many believed, Trapezous must expand until she was large enough to resist any invasion. This in and of itself was not unusual--the problem of strategic depth is a common one, especially for small feudal realms--but Trapezous’ geopolitical situation amplified it. The alliance with and the power of Qoyunlu made expansion to the south--which would have been the ideal route for expansion, increasing the distance from the frontier to the coastal cities--impossible, which left westward and eastward expansion as the only viable routes. However, going east would endanger their alliance with the Kartvelians, while going west would bring them closer to both the Ottomans and the Karamanids.
For the first decade of the reign of Alexandros II, the question of westward and eastward expansion dominated the court, with neither faction able to completely sway the aftokrator. They had an unfortunate tendency to spiral out into assassination attempts that set back any advances that they made, more often than not sending them right back to square one. However, this deadlock abruptly ended in 1481, when word reached Trapezous of the arrival of the aforementioned Venetian armada in the Aegean. The advocates of westward expansion, foremost among them Princess Keteon, took this as an opportunity to press for the entry of Trapezous into the war. This was aided by the suspicious death of Ioannes Gabrades, one of the chief advocates of eastward expansion, and the subsequent splintering of his faction. Nominally, Gabrades was killed in a duel, but many quietly questioned the truth of this story. Nonetheless, by 1482, the Trapezuntines were preparing to make war upon the Sublime Porte.
However, not all of the court backed this plan. Alexios Mgeli, by now in early sixties, insisted that attack the Ottoman Empire was a foolish mistake. This was dismissed by many as simple fear, as Mgeli was one of the few who still remembered the Ottoman attack on Trapezous some forty years previous. However, it was not simply fear that Mgeli based his argument upon. He drew on previous Trapezuntine campaigns in the west during the reign of Alexios I, of how conquests on the western side of Paphlagonia had withered away due to long supply lines and inaccessibility, and of how the same would happen to any advances they made. They would be fighting a war where victory would bring little and defeat would mean great loss, if not the loss of everything. They could not strike directly at Constantinople due to the breadth of the Black Sea and due to supply problems inherent within, but the Ottomans could strike directly at Trapezous, and because of this they would be at an inherent disadvantage. He also cautioned against the common belief that the Trapezuntine navy was impregnable and would defeat any Turkish force handily, in spite of the fact that the Ottomans now outnumbered them four-to-three[1]. Of course, speaking such bleak reality was not exactly popular, and Mgeli was hated by many because he spoke the truth.
Unfortunately, this period happened to coincide with a sharp decline in Mgeli’s position at court. Kantakouzenos Philanthropenos, who by now was competing with him for the post of megas domestikos, and Konstantinos Makrali (a Greek and a Laz, respectively), who was one of the primary advocates of westward expansion and was competing for position in court, conspired to remove him from power. They successfully convinced Alexandros that Mgeli had been involved with the death of Gabrades, for which the aftokrator’s stepfather was exiled to a monastery in the Lykos valley. This and related intriguing occupied much of the attention of the Trapezuntine court, and so with Mgeli’s absence the cry for war went up again. This time, Alexandros agreed, and in August 1482 the aftokrator dispatched an official declaration of war to Constantinople. Hoping to steal a march from the Turks, he dispatched 500 eleutheroi and twenty-five bandons to advance into north-west Paphlagonia and secure ports for the next year’s campaign under the campaign of the obscure moriarkh, Basileios Mikhaelakos.
Exactly five days after the bull had been dispatched, word of the Battle of Imbros reached Trapezous, throwing the court into panic. Several ships were sent to recall the one carrying the message, but through a string of errors it was just barely missed every time. With the sudden realization that he was going to have to deal with the full strength of the Ottoman Empire, Alexandros leapt into action, working around the clock solely on fear and adrenaline. Mikhaelakos, who had taken the small port city of Amastris without a fight in mid-September, was hastily recalled to Sinope. The aftokrator quickly decided that his best shot at victory would be to follow his grandfather and stepfathers’ defense plans and force the Ottomans to advance across miles of hostile terrain. He planned to clear a path--well, more accurately, leave one path somewhat cleared--for the Turks that would lead them through the wilderness while leading them open to attack from all sides. Over the winter of 1482-1483, he undertook a crash course in defensive works a la Mgeli, shutting down or flooding out many of the side roads to force any invaders onto a few selected roads, which were then fortified and made ready to be closed down at a moment’s notice. The bandons were also drilled heavily in preparation for combat, while mercenaries were contracted from every available source. The Trapezuntine navy was also recalled from Perateia and various other ports to act in a more defensive role, as Alexandros would correctly determine that they would be overwhelmed if left scattered in their positions across the Black Sea.
In 1483, the specter that had hung over the Trapezuntine empire for decades finally manifested. Even as Ağa Paşa pushed into Greece once more, Angelović Paşa turned his attention towards the insolent state which had challenged him so. With the Venetian fleet a scattered mess, Gedik Ahmed Paşa was dispatched into the Black Sea with fifty galleys to sweep the waters of the Trapezuntine fleet. They met surprisingly little opposition, as the Trapezuntine fleet had for the most part retreated to the capital. Ahmed Paşa installed garrisons in the fortress ports of Perateia before turning south and making for the Trapezuntine Empire proper. As soon as peace was signed with Venice, an Ottoman army marched eastwards. Mustafa himself commanded this force, Angelović Paşa having encouraged the sultan to legitimize himself (and thus the grand vizier) by leading from the front. He mustered a host of some 40,000 infantry, larger already than the entire Trapezuntine army, and with a massive siege train with dozens of cannons following behind it. The sultan and the vizier were determined to crush the last remnant of Rome and solidify their own claim to the ancient empire.
After crossing the breadth of Ottoman Anatolia in mid-spring, the Ottoman army arrived at Amastris on 26 May. The city’s small garrison surrendered without a fight and the port was swiftly occupied, significantly shortening any prospective supply lines. After taking Amastris, Mustafa then advanced eastwards along the coast road towards Sinope. He met a surprising amount of resistance, with his column coming under surprise attack several times and having to halt on the road to advance cannons to destroy fortresses guarding the roads, then re-organize the army’s formation to continue the march, then halt at the next fortress, etc, etc. After four days of marching, Mustafa quickly deducted that this was going to be a pattern and realized that he needed to find a work-around. He withdrew back to Amastris to mull over the problem, sending a number of emissaries to Trapezous to conduct negotiations in hopes of distracting his enemies while he planned. Alexandrios, while welcoming this as a potential solution to his conundrum, remained guarded and kept his soldiers in place. This would prove to be a mistake.
One of the central tenets of Alexandros’ plan was that the Çandarid beylik would remain loyal and serve as a distraction or, at the very worst, stay neutral. As such, he had no contingency plan when a Çandarid army attacked Mersyphon in early July. The city had been assumed to be far enough in the rear to be secure from attack and thus its garrison had been siphoned off to serve more important causes. As such, the Çandarids took the city completely flat-footed and stormed in through an untended gate. Their sacking was limited, as they intended to use it as a supply center, and after a garrison was installed the Çandarids turned westwards to ravage the lower Halys Valley. In their wake came the Ottomans, moving with shocking speed and agility that swept down the Halys to the sea. Suleyman, sensing that the Trapezuntines were up a creek, had jumped ship to the Ottomans in exchange for protection and a promise that he and his descendants would rule as vassals for the next century. In return, Suleyman allowed the Ottomans to move through the Çandarid beylik to attack the Trapezuntines in their flank. Mustafa had managed to quietly transfer his soldiers around while the aftokrator was distracted with false negotiations.
The sudden appearance of 40,000 Turks in the center of the Trapezuntine Empire threw the Trapezuntine camp into disarray. Nearly half of the Trapezuntine army had been positioned on the far bank in various manners, and they were now cut off from the vulnerable capital. Alexandros caught completely flat footed with only 20,000 men still available to him, and decided that he should try and continue his plan to wear down Turkish forces while he thought up a better one. Swallowing his pride, he summoned Mgeli back from his exile and begged the experienced general to help him, for the sake of Trapezous and the Empire. Mgeli accepted, and took over central planning for the Trapezuntine army. However, he wouldn’t have the time to affect any change before the Ottomans forced his hand.
Amisos, a road hub who connected the western and eastern halves of the Trapezuntine Empire, was taken by the Ottomans with shocking speed. Mustafa raised his cannonade on a hill opposite the city’s harbor and opened up, smashing through the wall in a few short days. The city was then taken by storm, hundreds of Turkish soldiers rushing into the breach against only a few Trapezuntine defenders. With this city fallen, the division of Trapezuntine forces was effectively solidified, allowing the sultan a free hand for most of his army. Suspecting that similar traps as had been arrayed in Paphlagonia awaited him on the coast road to Trapezous, he opted to take an alternate route. In mid-August, 20,000 Ottoman soldiers moved with a shocking speed up the Lykos valley, brushing aside the garrisons and fortresses therein. Their sole goal were the passes over the Pontos Range, which needed to be seized before the winter snows set in.
Mgeli sees the troop movement and anticipates where the attack is coming. Mgeli and Alexandros rush to guard the passes with most of their army, leaving only a small force to defend the coast road. The dash for the pass is manic, with the supply situation being thrown to the curb in a time of panic and desperation. However, the roads which they themselves had intentionally sabotaged hold them up, and the Trapezuntine army reaches the pass only to see horse-tail banners streaming above it. They withdraw northwards towards Trapezous in a fighting retreat, destroying bridges and further worsening the roads to stall for time. Meanwhile, Alexandros desperately ordered food and other supplies to be brought in from every available quarter and extra soldiery to be brought in to reinforce the garrison. Civilians are organized and shuttled east to Kapnanion, with the exception of some manual laborers and the gunsmiths of the city. After three weeks of skirmishing, the aftokrator and his generals are forced back into the capital on 16 September with only 15,000 soldiers, some 20,000 civilians and fifty galleys against 40,000 or more Ottomans and more galleys.
The Siege of Trapezous had begun…..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] There had been a steady stream of ship-building since Alexandros I’s reign, but this had only sufficed to maintain the size of the fleet.
To any outsider, the entry of the Trapezuntine Empire to Notaras’ War would have seemed deluded at best and suicidal at most. Trapezous in the war has been a topic that has intrigued and perplexed generations of academics, for good reason. The story of Alexandros II’s foolhardy intervention and the following series of events that nearly destroyed the Trapezuntine Empire is a long and complicated one, so it would be best to start from the beginning.
The general consensus amongst the court of Trapezous in the latter half of the 15th Century was that the state would either expand or die. The Trapezuntine Empire had a problem with strategic depth, as its comparatively small size and coastal expanse meant that there was little room for defenders to maneuver and even less that could be recovered if lost. Their problem with strategic depth was softened somewhat by the rough hills and forests of the region, but these could only go so far. Instead, as many believed, Trapezous must expand until she was large enough to resist any invasion. This in and of itself was not unusual--the problem of strategic depth is a common one, especially for small feudal realms--but Trapezous’ geopolitical situation amplified it. The alliance with and the power of Qoyunlu made expansion to the south--which would have been the ideal route for expansion, increasing the distance from the frontier to the coastal cities--impossible, which left westward and eastward expansion as the only viable routes. However, going east would endanger their alliance with the Kartvelians, while going west would bring them closer to both the Ottomans and the Karamanids.
For the first decade of the reign of Alexandros II, the question of westward and eastward expansion dominated the court, with neither faction able to completely sway the aftokrator. They had an unfortunate tendency to spiral out into assassination attempts that set back any advances that they made, more often than not sending them right back to square one. However, this deadlock abruptly ended in 1481, when word reached Trapezous of the arrival of the aforementioned Venetian armada in the Aegean. The advocates of westward expansion, foremost among them Princess Keteon, took this as an opportunity to press for the entry of Trapezous into the war. This was aided by the suspicious death of Ioannes Gabrades, one of the chief advocates of eastward expansion, and the subsequent splintering of his faction. Nominally, Gabrades was killed in a duel, but many quietly questioned the truth of this story. Nonetheless, by 1482, the Trapezuntines were preparing to make war upon the Sublime Porte.
However, not all of the court backed this plan. Alexios Mgeli, by now in early sixties, insisted that attack the Ottoman Empire was a foolish mistake. This was dismissed by many as simple fear, as Mgeli was one of the few who still remembered the Ottoman attack on Trapezous some forty years previous. However, it was not simply fear that Mgeli based his argument upon. He drew on previous Trapezuntine campaigns in the west during the reign of Alexios I, of how conquests on the western side of Paphlagonia had withered away due to long supply lines and inaccessibility, and of how the same would happen to any advances they made. They would be fighting a war where victory would bring little and defeat would mean great loss, if not the loss of everything. They could not strike directly at Constantinople due to the breadth of the Black Sea and due to supply problems inherent within, but the Ottomans could strike directly at Trapezous, and because of this they would be at an inherent disadvantage. He also cautioned against the common belief that the Trapezuntine navy was impregnable and would defeat any Turkish force handily, in spite of the fact that the Ottomans now outnumbered them four-to-three[1]. Of course, speaking such bleak reality was not exactly popular, and Mgeli was hated by many because he spoke the truth.
Unfortunately, this period happened to coincide with a sharp decline in Mgeli’s position at court. Kantakouzenos Philanthropenos, who by now was competing with him for the post of megas domestikos, and Konstantinos Makrali (a Greek and a Laz, respectively), who was one of the primary advocates of westward expansion and was competing for position in court, conspired to remove him from power. They successfully convinced Alexandros that Mgeli had been involved with the death of Gabrades, for which the aftokrator’s stepfather was exiled to a monastery in the Lykos valley. This and related intriguing occupied much of the attention of the Trapezuntine court, and so with Mgeli’s absence the cry for war went up again. This time, Alexandros agreed, and in August 1482 the aftokrator dispatched an official declaration of war to Constantinople. Hoping to steal a march from the Turks, he dispatched 500 eleutheroi and twenty-five bandons to advance into north-west Paphlagonia and secure ports for the next year’s campaign under the campaign of the obscure moriarkh, Basileios Mikhaelakos.
Exactly five days after the bull had been dispatched, word of the Battle of Imbros reached Trapezous, throwing the court into panic. Several ships were sent to recall the one carrying the message, but through a string of errors it was just barely missed every time. With the sudden realization that he was going to have to deal with the full strength of the Ottoman Empire, Alexandros leapt into action, working around the clock solely on fear and adrenaline. Mikhaelakos, who had taken the small port city of Amastris without a fight in mid-September, was hastily recalled to Sinope. The aftokrator quickly decided that his best shot at victory would be to follow his grandfather and stepfathers’ defense plans and force the Ottomans to advance across miles of hostile terrain. He planned to clear a path--well, more accurately, leave one path somewhat cleared--for the Turks that would lead them through the wilderness while leading them open to attack from all sides. Over the winter of 1482-1483, he undertook a crash course in defensive works a la Mgeli, shutting down or flooding out many of the side roads to force any invaders onto a few selected roads, which were then fortified and made ready to be closed down at a moment’s notice. The bandons were also drilled heavily in preparation for combat, while mercenaries were contracted from every available source. The Trapezuntine navy was also recalled from Perateia and various other ports to act in a more defensive role, as Alexandros would correctly determine that they would be overwhelmed if left scattered in their positions across the Black Sea.
In 1483, the specter that had hung over the Trapezuntine empire for decades finally manifested. Even as Ağa Paşa pushed into Greece once more, Angelović Paşa turned his attention towards the insolent state which had challenged him so. With the Venetian fleet a scattered mess, Gedik Ahmed Paşa was dispatched into the Black Sea with fifty galleys to sweep the waters of the Trapezuntine fleet. They met surprisingly little opposition, as the Trapezuntine fleet had for the most part retreated to the capital. Ahmed Paşa installed garrisons in the fortress ports of Perateia before turning south and making for the Trapezuntine Empire proper. As soon as peace was signed with Venice, an Ottoman army marched eastwards. Mustafa himself commanded this force, Angelović Paşa having encouraged the sultan to legitimize himself (and thus the grand vizier) by leading from the front. He mustered a host of some 40,000 infantry, larger already than the entire Trapezuntine army, and with a massive siege train with dozens of cannons following behind it. The sultan and the vizier were determined to crush the last remnant of Rome and solidify their own claim to the ancient empire.
After crossing the breadth of Ottoman Anatolia in mid-spring, the Ottoman army arrived at Amastris on 26 May. The city’s small garrison surrendered without a fight and the port was swiftly occupied, significantly shortening any prospective supply lines. After taking Amastris, Mustafa then advanced eastwards along the coast road towards Sinope. He met a surprising amount of resistance, with his column coming under surprise attack several times and having to halt on the road to advance cannons to destroy fortresses guarding the roads, then re-organize the army’s formation to continue the march, then halt at the next fortress, etc, etc. After four days of marching, Mustafa quickly deducted that this was going to be a pattern and realized that he needed to find a work-around. He withdrew back to Amastris to mull over the problem, sending a number of emissaries to Trapezous to conduct negotiations in hopes of distracting his enemies while he planned. Alexandrios, while welcoming this as a potential solution to his conundrum, remained guarded and kept his soldiers in place. This would prove to be a mistake.
One of the central tenets of Alexandros’ plan was that the Çandarid beylik would remain loyal and serve as a distraction or, at the very worst, stay neutral. As such, he had no contingency plan when a Çandarid army attacked Mersyphon in early July. The city had been assumed to be far enough in the rear to be secure from attack and thus its garrison had been siphoned off to serve more important causes. As such, the Çandarids took the city completely flat-footed and stormed in through an untended gate. Their sacking was limited, as they intended to use it as a supply center, and after a garrison was installed the Çandarids turned westwards to ravage the lower Halys Valley. In their wake came the Ottomans, moving with shocking speed and agility that swept down the Halys to the sea. Suleyman, sensing that the Trapezuntines were up a creek, had jumped ship to the Ottomans in exchange for protection and a promise that he and his descendants would rule as vassals for the next century. In return, Suleyman allowed the Ottomans to move through the Çandarid beylik to attack the Trapezuntines in their flank. Mustafa had managed to quietly transfer his soldiers around while the aftokrator was distracted with false negotiations.
The sudden appearance of 40,000 Turks in the center of the Trapezuntine Empire threw the Trapezuntine camp into disarray. Nearly half of the Trapezuntine army had been positioned on the far bank in various manners, and they were now cut off from the vulnerable capital. Alexandros caught completely flat footed with only 20,000 men still available to him, and decided that he should try and continue his plan to wear down Turkish forces while he thought up a better one. Swallowing his pride, he summoned Mgeli back from his exile and begged the experienced general to help him, for the sake of Trapezous and the Empire. Mgeli accepted, and took over central planning for the Trapezuntine army. However, he wouldn’t have the time to affect any change before the Ottomans forced his hand.
Amisos, a road hub who connected the western and eastern halves of the Trapezuntine Empire, was taken by the Ottomans with shocking speed. Mustafa raised his cannonade on a hill opposite the city’s harbor and opened up, smashing through the wall in a few short days. The city was then taken by storm, hundreds of Turkish soldiers rushing into the breach against only a few Trapezuntine defenders. With this city fallen, the division of Trapezuntine forces was effectively solidified, allowing the sultan a free hand for most of his army. Suspecting that similar traps as had been arrayed in Paphlagonia awaited him on the coast road to Trapezous, he opted to take an alternate route. In mid-August, 20,000 Ottoman soldiers moved with a shocking speed up the Lykos valley, brushing aside the garrisons and fortresses therein. Their sole goal were the passes over the Pontos Range, which needed to be seized before the winter snows set in.
Mgeli sees the troop movement and anticipates where the attack is coming. Mgeli and Alexandros rush to guard the passes with most of their army, leaving only a small force to defend the coast road. The dash for the pass is manic, with the supply situation being thrown to the curb in a time of panic and desperation. However, the roads which they themselves had intentionally sabotaged hold them up, and the Trapezuntine army reaches the pass only to see horse-tail banners streaming above it. They withdraw northwards towards Trapezous in a fighting retreat, destroying bridges and further worsening the roads to stall for time. Meanwhile, Alexandros desperately ordered food and other supplies to be brought in from every available quarter and extra soldiery to be brought in to reinforce the garrison. Civilians are organized and shuttled east to Kapnanion, with the exception of some manual laborers and the gunsmiths of the city. After three weeks of skirmishing, the aftokrator and his generals are forced back into the capital on 16 September with only 15,000 soldiers, some 20,000 civilians and fifty galleys against 40,000 or more Ottomans and more galleys.
The Siege of Trapezous had begun…..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] There had been a steady stream of ship-building since Alexandros I’s reign, but this had only sufficed to maintain the size of the fleet.