Alternate History WI: Andronikos II Killed at Tralleis?: The Timeline

[Eparkhos]

Copied over from the general thread. The basic premise is that Andronikos II is killed in battle against the Turks at Tralleis in 1284 and the Byzantine Empire is spared his reign of mass stupidity.

Table of Contents:
I - 1284-~1300
II - ~1300 - ~1400 (political)
III - ~1300 - ~1400 (social)
IV - ~1400 - ~1520 (political)
V - ~1400 - ~1520 (social)
VI - ~1520 (Iskandarid invasion)

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis?

In 1284, Andronikos II campaigned against Turkic bands in Thracesia, culminating in Andronikos' defeat (or draw, sources differ) at Tralleis. What if he had been killed instead?

- The throne is taken by Michael IX, who is only 7 years old at this point. Michael's parents are both dead, leaving the logical regent as Patriarch Gregory II. Gregory is somewhat popular, but he has little support from the army and bureaucracy, which gives Constantine Palaiologos, Michael's uncle, to elbow his way into the regency. Constantine appears to have been a good general and had the support of the army and much of the common people, so the likely outcome is either Constantine displacing Gregory or forming a power-sharing agreement with Constantine running the army and Gregory running the state.

- Militarily, the Byzantines will be in a better place than OTL. The navy has yet to be disbanded and so Constantinople can control its own shorelines and isn't dependent on the Italians. The Sicilian Vespers has already started, so the Neapolitans won't be a factor for several decades.
- Constantine, and the upper ranks of the army as well, will likely be quite upset by the Turks killing Andronikos and so will launch campaigns across the Anatolian frontier to push them back. However, this won't be the most effective, as the Byzantines would be grabbing cities and valleys only for them to be overrun the second the army goes someplace else, similar to OTL efforts. However, I suspect that Constantine, or at least one of the Anatolian military governors--the connections that got Philanthropenos and Tarchaneiotes into power will remain ITTL, so the Byzantines will have several very effective generals/rulers--will cotton on to this and embrace the ideas of Constantine Lakharnes, an obscure OTL figure who proposed creating lines of forts and fortified settlements to defend and expand the frontier but was shot down because of cost. The Byzantines will successfully push back into the interior, probably pushing back to the rim of the Plateau. Philanthropenos' OTL habit of allying with some Turks against others and creating Turkish auxiliaries will probably be continued, which will help with on-the-ground control and hopefully divide the Turks against each other.
- OTL Constantine seems to have had an interest in Macedonia, and it seems possible that, with more resources, he will embark on campaigns in Europe against the Francocratia. Without Andronikos' hiring of the Catalan Company, the Latins will still be squabbling amongst each other and will lack outside support, making them easy to conquer or vassalize. The Byzantines will pick up more land, revenue, and control over the Aegean, all good.

- Economically, the Byzantines will still be struggling with expansive noble control through corrupt pronoia (tax grants). However, without refugees from Anatolia to exacerbate tensions and fuel the creation of an urban underclass, internal tensions will be reduced, and with more control over trade thanks to the surviving navy the central authorities will be able to exert themselves without being dominated by the pronoiars. However, with existing trends continuing, this will just be kicking the can down the road as the nobility tries to exert more and more influence. It will likely take some scare in the majority reign of Michael IX to disrupt this pattern....

Thoughts?
Should I keep going?

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part II

I'm going to zoom out a bit to cover broader trends because I don't want to get stuck in the minutia.

Geopolitical:
- In the Balkans, the Byzantines will be the dominant power from the early 14th century onward. Historically, the Bulgarians were extremely weak from the late 13th-early 14th centuries and could have been dominated by any emperor other than Andronikos II (I can list 4 ways the Byzantines could've de facto vassalized the Bulgarians from 1280-1320 off the top of my head). Whether this leads to vassalization or outright conquest is more up in the air, but I'm inclined to say that the most likely is increased integration until Bulgaria is a province with a different name by 1400 or so. The Serbs would be fighting a civil war at the time of PoD, and the Byzantines ought to be able to play them off of each other and expand their influence. Control over Serbia would be periodically broken by Neapolitan/Venetian/Hungarian incursions and revolt, but these would be limited in duration while the natural center of gravity for Serbia leans towards Byzantine influence and so the broader trend would be towards vassalization. The Frankokratia are doomed in the long run, not that that's much of a loss, as their main benefactor, the Neapolitans, are caught between two fires with the Byzantines and Aragonese/Papal States, and probably swallowed up or made provinces in all but name, again by 1400. As an interesting side note, a Naples bogged down fighting the Byzantines/Aragonese won't be able to influence the Hungarian succession, so the Hungarian throne goes to either Bavaria or Bohemia-Poland and the Hungarian elective monarchy never gets off the ground. Interesting knock-ons, no?

- In Anatolia, the Byzantines had an excellent crop of leadership, and so long as the central government doesn't fuck with the Lakharnes system everything should work out relatively well. The Byzantines would conquer the coastal rim and parts of the interior of Anatolia, while the interior would be filled with a bunch of warring petty beyliks that can be safely played off of each other to maintain Byzantine hegemony. Cilicia and Armenia are likely out of reach, just like Trebizond, but the Crimea might be taken as part of a trade war against the Genoese, to secure resources or project power over the Black Sea, all of which are good reasons to go for the low-hanging fruit.

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part III

Social:
- The Byzantine nobility became increasingly entrenched throughout this period IOTL, as the state grew smaller it became weaker and more malleable by the pronoiars. This won't happen ITTL, but the nobility's power will likely remain constant--none of the Palaiologoi ever showed interest in curbing their power--just reduced in comparison to the power of the expanding state. The result will be something like an undetected cancer, metastasizing unbeknown to anyone else. The likely assimilation of vassalized Frankokratia will also introduce or expand ideas of noble sovereignty that nothing good can come of.
- The rural peasantry will be much better off, with less competition for land and more overall bargaining power in relation to the nobility because of the lack of refugees/murderous ghazi raids. The radicalism of the OTL Palaiologian Civil War won't form, instead the existing trends of tension between upper and lower class fluctuating with time continuing. Population pressures will be relieved by migration to new conquests in Anatolia. On a side note, the quality of life for the herding peasantry in the Balkans will be worsened by
- The influence of the merchant/middle class will increase dramatically. With less Italian influence, a home-grown merchant class will expand to fill parts of the void, generating wealth and keeping it within the bounds of the Empire at a greater rate than OTL. Historically, the middle/merchant class was the basis of state recruitment, and so I expect that the overall quality of administration will increase with a wider pool of talent to draw from. This increasing influence will likely cause increased resentment of the Italians/Armenians/Jews, which will have significant effects outside the Empire.

Economy:
- Agriculture will remain the dominant economic sector, and overall production will be expanded because of more farmland, increasing state revenues and influence. Of course, there will still be significant gaps in production/taxation because of the pronoiai, but these will be a limiting, rather than halting, factor.
- The currency devaluation of OTL will be avoided, as the Byzantines will have a better overall economy, access to gold mines in the Chalkidike and Thrakesion and no shortage of hard foreign currency for exchange. The result is Byzantine merchants have higher buying power and can be more competitive with outside rivals, as well as the lower classes maintaining their buying power and not being driven towards poverty and radicalism.
- The expansion of the trading class increases overall economic prosperity and wealth, as well as Byzantine soft-power influence across the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.
- In the early 14th century, grain surplusses produced in Anatolia, Crimea and the Balkans can be sold westward at great profit; once the Black Death hits, this means that the Byzantines will be worse hit, but will recover along lines roughly similar to what they had before, with the influence of the lower classes expanding even more.
- The expansion of trade with the Anatolian plateau--be it grain, wine, or, most likely, sheep and textiles--may result in better relations along the frontier, but this is neither here nor there.

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part IV:

Geopolitical:
- The 15th century is a very good century for the Byzantines. With the Latins distracted by wars in Italy/the HRE/Central Europe and no great Muslim power rising in the East (Timur is butterflied by any PoD this early), the Byzantines essentially have a free geopolitical hand, and the logical target for this is the reconquest of Anatolia. With the only outside force backing the Turks being the Cairo Mamluks, who are well past their prime by this point, the Byzantines are able to swallow up most of Anatolia piecemeal by the end of the century, with small bands of ghazis holding out in some of the more difficult regions but being unable to pose a serious challenge. Trebizond, Cilicia and Cyprus are all annexed, and all of them provide massive financial boons that further enrich the state and increase power projection. These conquests are relatively easy, but there remains a large, un/partially assimilated Turkish population throughout much of the region that takes time to 'digest', so to speak, so little effort is made to expand past the Tauruses.
- On an ideological level, the proto-Hellenism that screwed over the Byzantines from the mid-13th century onward is shaken by the de facto incorporation of the Bulgarians and Serbs, as well as renewed (successful) conflict with the Turks and borrowings from the ideologies of the ghazis, intentional or not. The Byzantines, or at least the upper classes, return to viewing themselves as The Orthodox Empire rather than The Greek Empire, restoring ideas of universal emperorship and painting themselves as the natural protector/center of Orthodox Christianity. This leads to increased efforts to influence Georgia and the Caucasus, which likely succeeds in pulling Georgia into the Byzantine orbit a la Serbia, and increased hostility towards Latins, Armenians and Muslims which definitely won't come back to bite them by making needless enemies.

NB:
This ought to go in a society section, but I'll put it here before I forget. The conquest of Anatolia and the partial assimilation of the Turks will have immense impact on Byzantine beliefs and society. As with many other 'martial minorities' in Imperial history, Hellenized Turks will have outsized influence in the army, and I can easily see a ghazi-influenced idea of being the 'Shield and Sword of Christendom' or something similar crop up and becoming gradually embraced by the upper classes in tandem with the Orthodx Hegemony ideology.

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part V:

Society/Economy:

I'm going to go over this quickly because I've already kind of mentally moved on to later in the TL.
- The expansion and incorporation of Anatolia would relief Byzantine (Greek/Serbian) population pressure by opening new land to settlers, increasing overall agriculture output and thus increasing overall quality of life among the lower agricultural classes by relieving famine risks, and improving the quality of life among the urban population by lowering food prices and likely fueling an expansion of overall urban population. This increase of urban population will increase overall economic production, as there are increased markets and opportunities for merchants/producers to support themselves, leading to the further expansion of the middle class. Speculating in commodities would generally be a waste of time, but economies of scale makes textile (read: carpets) and fine goods (read: glass, metal objects, etc.) the primary industrial goods produced, while wine and grains will be produced en masse. Pontus will probably specialize into tea/opium plantations with an outside food source to relieve need for local food production.
- The power of the centralized state will continue to increase, with the new lands parceled out between freeholders (likely all former soldiers) and Central Anatolia coming under a system of state-backed grazing similar to the Castilian meseta, which will also expand overall textile production/middle class. However, this is only an expansion relative to the power of the regional nobility, rather than an actual curbing of noble power, and as the ever-expanding state will increase the influence of the middle class at their expense, the nobility will become more and more pissed off towards the state as time goes on.
- The conquest of non-Orthodox lands will change the Byzantine ethnic/religious hierarchy. At the top are Orthodox Greeks, the dominant ethnic group, then Orthodox TURKS/BULGARIANS/SERBS, Tzakones, Goths, etc., then Armenians/Latins, then Muslim Turks. This is unlikely to be formally entrenched a la the millet system, but it does create an incentive for some Turks (almost all urbanized) to convert to Orthodoxy, dividing a state-supporting Turkish population from a broader, ambivalent-to-hostile Turkish population. It also does nothing but alienate the rural Turkish population and most Armenians, essentially creating a large population of restive subjects throughout the East (cough cough).
- I imagine that Byzantine monasticism will continue along its 13th century course, with Hesychasim being a brief schism that gets papered over, with monasteries functioning as major market centers and centers of social life throughout the countryside, likely functioning as an alternative to the manorial estates of OTL's 14th-15th century.
EDIT:
- High culture/art will undergo a major flowering, as the rising middle class commissions art to display their wealth/ape the existing nobility. Following existing trends, this will be expressed through iconographic art, painting and murals, with iconography going down a more Russian-esque course without the rise of 'eclectical' painting in the Crete school. There will also be an increase in monasteries being founded, resulting in a feedback loop as monastic centers increase market reach into the countryside, which in turn creates more wealth for the middle class, and so on.

- On a final note that should probably go under the military section, the Byzantines will make some use of gunpowder weapons, but not completely embrace them like the Ottomans OTL--except for the navy, which becomes increasingly important as a means of projecting power/maintaining supply/communication to Anatolia, and modernizes to counter the Italians/corsairs--because why bother? They've been beating the shit out of the beyliks/Caucasian statelets (their only real/frequent enemies at this point), so clearly their existing army is fine. A string of easy victories lets the Byzantine army grow complacent and ossified, based on pre-gunpowder weapons and light cavalry recruited from Turkish and Vlach minorities, all while their geopolitcal situation changes beneath their feet....

....

In short, the period from roughly 1350 to 1525 is a golden age that lays the foundations for a coming downfall.

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part VI:

Geopolitical:
- By the early 16th century, the chaos in the Middle East would've started to settle down, likely coalescing around one of the post-Mongol warlords in Greater Persia, who I'll call Iskandar. After defeating the other warlords of Greater Persia and Iraq, Iskandar is in need of funds to repair infrastructure and such that had been damaged in the preceding decades, and a means of dealing with the tens of thousands of experienced warriors who might stir up trouble if allowed to spend time by themselves. After decades of Byzantine expansion and overall conflict there is no small amount of anti-Byzantine sentiment in the region, and Iskandar sees a means of solving his problems.
- The Iskandarids invade after some proxy issue involving the Muslims of one of the eastern border towns. Bands of ghazis, often driven into exile or in hiding within the empire after previous conflicts, lead the charge across the frontier, acting as a thousand roving bands stirring up revolt in the countryside along religious lines and cutting Byzantine logistics into ribbons behind the frontlines proper. The Turks and Armenians are mostly ambivalent and do nothing, allowing the Iskandarids to maintain their own logistics while the Byzantines' go to hell. The frontier armies are caught out of place and destroyed piecemeal, while a string of cities are taken through revolt, surrender or are besieged. Within a few short months, the eastern empire has disintegrated.
- The emperor is forced to an early battle, marshalling as large an army as possible and marching eastward to meet Iskandar with all possible force. The result is a narrow Byzantine defeat, with the superior artillery of the Iskandarids carrying the day. The Byzantines then retreat to defensive lines along the Western passes, only to be defeated and the sitting emperor killed.
- The Iskandarids then push to the Bosphorus, but leave pockets of Byzantine forces in the west coast south of the Troad, the southwestern highlands, the northern coastal highlands and the Cilician plains. The Iskandarids camp on the far side of the Straits, petrifying the people of Constantinople, but the Byzantines are strong enough to hold the Straits. After a long pseudo-siege, Iskandar decides that he's pillaged as much as he can pillage and pulls back. The Iskandarids occupy Central and Eastern Anatolia, leaving a coastal fringe under the Byzantines subject to frequent raids and pillaging.

@stevep Bad timing on my part, but everything you said was right.

 

[Eparkhos]

Now that it's been caught up:

@History Learner, @stevep, @ATP, @Skallagrim

Hope y'all don't mind being @'d, I saw you like in the main thread and didn't want y'all to miss out.

For those who want to see the original, the posts were on pages 104-106.

 

[Eparkhos]

WI: Andronikos II killed at Tralleis? - Part VII:

Geopolitical:

- The Palaiologian dynasty is a dead letter. With this catastrophic failure, the disintegration of the field armies, probably some sort of succession dispute, and the near-complete alienation of nearly every part of society, the dynasty is doomed. I don't think this will turn into a true civil war, but perhaps a palace coup or one of the armies marching on Constantinople and deposing the sitting empire.
- The collapse of Central Anatolia has massive geopolitical ramifications. The coastal heartlands of the Empire are now open to raiding, and there's no reason why Iskandar or his successors can't use the Byzantines as a legitimacy/loot piggy bank to be attacked whenever they need funds/appease militants within their empire. The result is the Byzantines having to spend ungodly amounts of money to build and maintain defenses/armies to guard the long frontier, modernize their army with gunpowder, and so on, as well as there being a constant low-level war along the Anatolian frontier.
- Byzantine influence in Georgia/the Caucasus will be sharply curbed, resulting in a Georgia struggling between holding off the Muslims and meeting the demands of an increasingly powerful nobility that likely results in a breakup and domination by the Iskandarids.
- Cyprus gets snatched up by the Egyptians while the Byzantines are distracted with the Iskandarids, giving the Egyptians a forward base to harass southern Anatolia, demanding more resources to defend the region. With Cyprus lost, Cilicia is as well, either to the Iskandarids directly or to some breakaway warlord.
- The one saving grace is that the Latins will be distracted by the Reformation--despite what ATP said, I fear that the Reformation is inevitable from the Black Death onward with the Church following historical trends, which I don't see why not--and so won't take advantage. Except for the Venetians, who will find their own rivals in Italy distracted and see an excellent opportunity to restore economic influence in the East, likely sparking a series of naval wars in the Eastern Med.

I'll fill social/economic in tomorrow, something's just come up.

 

[History Learner]

Now that it's been caught up:

@History Learner, @stevep, @ATP, @Skallagrim

Hope y'all don't mind being @'d, I saw you like in the main thread and didn't want y'all to miss out.

For those who want to see the original, the posts were on pages 104-106.

As Chief Keef once said: Yes Sir.

 

[Eparkhos]

Social/Economic:

Again, massive changes
- The collapse of Byzantine Anatolia sends a tidal wave of refugees to the surviving urban centers in Europe/the defended coastal regions. With the massive loss of land, the land/population ratio will have become radically skewed, leaving nowhere for these refugees to go and few economic opportunities because of the ongoing economic collapse, these refugees will form a dispossessed urban economic underclass, which is great for stability and political climate. The overall quality of life for the lower classes will also fall as most non-farmers suddenly become replaceable and have to undergo worse and worse conditions to get by, which again increases overall dissent and unrest.
- Grain and wool prices skyrocket without access to Central Anatolian production. The result is the price of bread skyrocketing just as demand increases in urban centers, leading to bread riots, unrest and growing hated of the upper classes, as well as any surviving textile industry taking a massive hit as raw good supply dries up.
- The middle class nearly collapses in on itself. Without the pax byzantica which allowed trade to flourish, local markets start to close themselves off to preserve what they can, while raw resource supplies become much more limited overall, hurting production and secondary industries, the lifeblood of the middle class. The widespread destruction and pillaging of monasteries (and monastic markets) results in much trading wealth being transferred to the Iskandarids or destroyed. The existing trends of investment involving monastic investments also destroys immense amounts of generational wealth, crippling many prominent trading families. All in all, with rising food prices and limited economic activities, the middle class is much reduced.
- The nobility actually does well for itself. Control over large estates (expanded by leaning on neighboring small holders+economy of scale allowing out competition of smallholders), access to a large pool of cheap labor and increased prices for just about everything allows the landed class to flourish. This wealth allows the nobility to increase their political influence and garners resentment from the lower classes, which in turn garners fear of losing their wealth/power. Tensions between rural and urban populations increase overall.
- The power of the state fluctuates wildly as finances vary sharply and social unrest rocks major cities. The state is charged with maintaining a long, suddenly hostile frontier and policing its own internals with a suddenly shrunken budget and increasingly unstable society, and the result is a great deal of back-and-forth, probably a bunch of regime change and infighting that does nothing but burn through more of the economy and make things worse. In the short-term, the result is probably a noble coalition forming, preserving their own power at the expense of the lower classes and worsening tensions.

The worst is yet to come....

 

[ATP]

I do not think,That Reformation would happen - and,if so it would be crushed.
Only reason why HRE do not did so in OTL was turks - now,without ottomans armies on border,they would took their sweet time crushing Luder and his followers.

But,in tat case,for next 20-30 years HRE would have no time for taking ERE.
Hungarian,on other hand,would have both will and money for that.
I see Serbia and Bulgary vassalized by them.

P.S Since Moscov could not cosplay as third Rome here,and never get byzantine princess and her money,they would be much weaker.
Lithuania could be strong independent orthodox state here,as well as Great Nowgorod.

 

[WolfBear]

The worst is yet to come....

What are the odds that we get a later fall of Constantinople to some Muslim force in this TL?

- The Iskandarids then push to the Bosphorus, but leave pockets of Byzantine forces in the west coast south of the Troad, the southwestern highlands, the northern coastal highlands and the Cilician plains. The Iskandarids camp on the far side of the Straits, petrifying the people of Constantinople, but the Byzantines are strong enough to hold the Straits. After a long pseudo-siege, Iskandar decides that he's pillaged as much as he can pillage and pulls back. The Iskandarids occupy Central and Eastern Anatolia, leaving a coastal fringe under the Byzantines subject to frequent raids and pillaging.

Basically a Turkification of the Anatolian interior, but several centuries later than in real life:

 

[stevep]

Ah, seem to have missed this move but just caught up.

On the Reformation there are a couple of points that come to mind.
a) How much does it rely on input from the Renaissance? True it was decades back so ideas may well have changed but what I was taught at school was that the Renaissance was largely driven by new ideas spreading from refugees from the collapse of the eastern empire.

b) Without Catholicism being as dominant as OTL with a powerful Orthodox empire being so successful to the east - at least until the shit really hits the fan - would the Papacy suffer less from hubris and corruption that was such a driver for the Reformation?

Of course the other factor that was important was the development of printing which undermined the monopoly of the clergy on knowledge which is likely still to occur I suspect.

I think that because the basic drivers are then and will be reinforced by the collapse in the east there will be pressure for reform and even if a reactionary bloc manages to suppress such pressure in the early 16thC that will only mean another probably bigger one later on. Plus you still have the same political drivers for support for such ideas from princes.

You hint that for the empire its going to get worse rather than bounce back. At worse as WolfBear says the OTL collapse and conquest may have just been pushed back a couple of centuries, although if it gets that bad things could fall apart quicker with more developed canon's meaning old style defences are a lot less effective against well organised armies.

ATP does raise one point in terms of the development of the Rus and their descendants. Moscow can't claim the title of the 3rd Rome but what are its relations with the empire before the recent set-back? If friendly then it could gain a lot of trade and knowledge possibly. [Assuming of course its still Moscow that emerges as the centralizing power in the northern plains], If nothing else I could see them gaining some support from the empire while its so powerful in terms of finishing off the remains of the Golden Horde. A lot could well be different here.

Thinking that in the medium term the butterflying of Tamerlain could be a bad thing for the empire as a serious threat and some defeats while it was at its military and political peak, or approaching that, could be more recoverable and probably having prompted reforms, especially in the military to meet the challenge>

Since we're talking of the early 1500's here when the disaster hits the east the obvious question is have western Europe started looking for sea routes to the east? With Egypt and Antioch outside imperial control the empire won't have the same monopoly that the Ottomans were developing at this point OTL - but then the big initial steps were emerging prior to those Ottoman conquests OTL. A lot would depend on political and social developments in the west and possibly especially Iberia but if either the discovery of the Americas or the route around Africa, let alone both as OTL have or will shortly occur then that changes a lot in the balance of economic power even if it will take some decades to really take effect.