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WI: John II Komnenos focuses on the Turks, 1142-1143

History Learner

Well-known member
While listening to an episode of the History of Byzantium podcast the other day, I was intrigued by a rather interesting idea put forth by the host: We don't know for sure what the original intent of John II's final campaign was. Ostensibly, the Emperor was seeking to finally settle the issue of Antioch for the Empire, by forcing the subjection of the Latin rulers there to Imperial Roman rule. If such was the case, certainly the start to the endeavor was rather odd, in that the Emperor spent most of 1142 destroying Turkish fortifications scattered around the lakes on the approaches to Konya. The sudden focus shift to Antioch only seems to come about after the Emperor's son and heir Alexios dies, followed shortly by his second eldest son, Andronikos. Perhaps, as the podcast suggests, the death of his two sons was the real cause of the campaign's focus change, as John saw it as necessary to settle accounts with the wayward Principality to better secure the now much more concerning succession to his rule. Ironically, this change of course would also remove the exact circumstances that led to his own death, thus increasing the length of his own reign.

Now, whether that's true or not, let's assume it is and that the Emperor's two eldest sons don't die and thus he remains focused on attacking the Sultanate of Rum. Having cleared a line of attack on Konya, the strategic situation is certainly more than fitting for such. In December of 1141, the Danishmend Emir has died, resulting in his realm descending into a three way civil war between his sons and brothers, the Sultan of Konya Mus'ud sought to take advantage of by claiming territory from the divided Danishmends. John II, having thus cleared the way for an advance by taking the aforementioned forts and with a substantial siege train already attached to his army, was in a perfect position to retake Konya for the Empire and deal a serious blow to the Seljuk Sultanate.

I, for my own opinion, see this as arguably the best opportunity the Romans had to achieve such a result in the 12th Century in one go. Such a victory wouldn't have been decisive, but it would've weakened the Turks to such an extent that John II, with his methodical approach, could've capitalized on it to make serious further gains over the last years of his life. Gaining-and maintaining-serious gains on the Anatolian plateau would've seriously reduced Turkic raids into core Roman territory, and created a virtuous cycle of continuously weakening the Sultanate by reducing its territory and thus strengthening the Romans. John II most likely will die before this can be completed, most likely around 1150 or so given he was already 55 in 1143, but it seems likely the death blow for the Sultanate could be achieved by Alexios in tandem with the coming Second Crusade. At that point, the only organized Turkish power of serious note in Anatolia would be the prior mentioned Danishmends, who would like the capacity to threaten the Romans as the Sultanate of Rum did. Thus, the entirety of Byzantium's history is changed, with the most likely long term result being a survival.

What say you, denizens of the forum?
 
This is more or less the argument that I lay out in the first chapter of my forthcoming next ebook with Sealion, 'Rampart of Christendom: Later Byzantine 'What Ifs' ', where I deal with various scenarios that enable the Eastern Roman/ Byzantine Empire to survive for centuries more - in an optimistic scenario right to the C20th, with it in the place of the OTL Ottoman Empire but on the Allied side in the First World War. As to John II, I see that at the very least his using his main army to break up the Seljuk Sultanate in the 1140s and retake its capital Konya - and possibly taking the Danishmend emirate's capital in NE Anatolia after that - prevents any centralised leadership for or offensive by the Turkish and Turcoman tribes in the region throughout the next decades. The uplands of central Anatolia are more suitable for pastoral farming than arable,hence the pre-1071 Byz landowners mostly using them as 'ranches' for livestock including breeding horses for the cavalry and the way that the early Byz small farming communities and family farms there kept on going bust economically and selling up to big landlords with more resources in the C10th.

So the Comnenian stat establishing any new influx of small farmers there and/or arable and mixed farms as a source of a new version of the old Byz 'theme' system army - which Manuel I is often criticised for not doing in Anatolia to defend it better - is going to be problematic. (The real life new 'small farmers plus grass-roots-organised army' system that worked so well for the Nicaean state govt in W Anatolia in the C13th was in the more fertile western river valleys, not on the uplands.) But if we get an Emperor, probably John into the 1150s and then one of his older 3 sons in place of Manuel (Alexius and Andronicus both died in 1142 and the 3rd son Isaac was passed over by the generals when John d on campaign in 1143, as not present at the camp and probably not dynamic enough), the Byz state can keep the remaining Turkish nomads who had moved into the region disunited and leaderless and hopefully force them to sign up as stock providers for the Byz urban markets and mercenary recruits to the army - and any who resist would be driven out by a revived local Byz cavalry system managed from aristocratic horse-studs on the upland plains E of Ankyra and in Cappadocia N of Konya.

The Empire could then keep control of the main towns (eg Niksar/ Neocaesarea and Amasya in the NE) and main roads across all Anatolia, not just in the W, and keep open the old military road SE via Konya/ Iconium to Cilicia to provide an easier and quicker access route to Syria - for passing Crusaders as well as themselves. Possibly the Empire is too busy to tackle those isolated but nuisancesome Turks in the SW (between Ionia and Adalya) who in OTL ambushed and annoyed the French royal Crusade expedition there in 1147-8, causing ructions with Louis VII and his elite who blamed the Byz (probably unfairly) for putting them up to this , so the Second Crusade still has problems - but John II would then have tackled these Turks which Manuel, busy fighting in Sicily and Apulia after 1148 to try to retake the local Byz province there, did not. But we would get John II managing to take Antioch on schedule in 1143 and installing a Byz governor, possibly his Latinophile 4th son Manuel (in OTL Emperor 1143 - 80 and probably engaged to a German princess pre-1143) , and then John or a surviving older son of his keeping to the original plan to give the ex-Antioch Frankish elite reconquered lands up the R Orontes (Shaizar or Homs?) which the Byz would help them take c. 1144. If there is a major Byz expedition in the area in 1144-5 it may even put the Zangids off risking their wrath by taking Edessa, so there is no need for a Second Crusade then - though a later Arab attempt on it or a Western offensive up the Orontes or on Aleppo may lead to an alternative Second Crusade c. 1148-50. A 'one more push' strategy by the Papacy and the Kingdom of Jerusalem to take Damascus and make all their Eastern states secure?

Manuel often gets the blame for the Byz leaving the Seljuks unmolested at Konya and just accepting them as the Empire's titular vassals, though his war in Sicily was a reaction to attacks by Roger II by sea in the mid-1140s on Greece (which it would have needed a stronger build-up of the Byz navy by Alexius I as well as John and less reliance on Venice to counter) and R might have attacked John II's Empire too if John was busy inland in Anatolia in the mid-1140s. But the cautious and methodical John was very unlikely to have tried to reconquer all of S Italy or Sicily, though he could have lent aid to resentful autonomist barons there in starting a civil war, and ditto if Alexius or Andronicus, his elder sons, had succeeded him. Manuel's faults were more a lack of long-term planning and a greater emphasis on 'show' and prestige projects, esp involving the 'Franks' whose lifestyle he engaged with (as with holding tournaments and inviting Westerners to his court), eg involvement in Italy plus his late 1160s and 1170s ideas for attacking Egypt. Arguably this led to local Orthodox anti-Catholic feeling and resentments of Western traders, and to the early 1180s massacres of the Westerners in his capital in the internal crises after M's death which helped to stir up trouble ahead of the Fourth Crusade - and the Westerners would have had a lower profile under John and his two elder sons, both of whom married Orthodox women, one Russian and one Byz, not Westerners. An Emperor who concentrated on crushing elite resistance to the Empire by repeated campaigns, against Turkish tribal leadership in Anatolia and also against Serb princes in the inner Balkans , could not have altered the ethnic makeup of the regions that much given the hostile geography as obstacles to Byz settlement and the Turks had an open uland frontier to migrate across with no major obstacles. But a different Byz trajectory would have left the Empire with a precarious hold on something like the old pre-1071 frontier in Asia , ready to be swept away by the Mongols in 1243, and greater influence on the Syria-Palestine region. Arguably we get Manuel as Prince of Antioch doing his fighting to assist his and his brothers' 'vassals' in retaking Aleppo or Damascus (or trying to) , and a hybrid Byz-Latin state in Antioch aiding Jerusalem to hold back Saladin in the 1170s -1180s.

So there is no need for a Third Crusade unless the death of Baldwin IV without an adult heir in 1185 leads to Manuel (now in his mid-late 60s) or his half-Latin son, the new ruler of Antioch, dragging the Byz into a civil war there or into propping up the Holy City's defences or attacking Saladin at Damascus to make him pull back. This could end in an isolationist Byz emperor from John's elder sons' family, possibly facing a Bulgarian revolt as in OTL, pulling out of supporting the endless fighting for the 'ungrateful Frankish barbarians' and the rulers of Byz Antioch fighting him in retaliation in a Byz civil war. The faction-prone feuding of the huge Comnenus dynasty is one of the weak points of scenarios of a seemless Byz revival in the mid-late C12th, once the line of strong rulers like the first 3 Comnenes ends - and one of my other arguments is that even if a successful Manuel had won at Myriocephalum in 1176 and taken Konya then , and d. only when his son was adult so Andronicus I never becomes Emperor, M's half-Antiochene son Alexius II (b 1169) could easily have dragged the Empire into the Third Crusade in 1190. He would have had a far better press in the West than the 'treacherous' Byz did in real life pre-1204; but he could wear the Empire's resources out retaking Jerusalem and then faced a coup by his relatives later in the 1190s. To really make the Empire stay powerful, you need to keep the Angeli off the throne and/or somehow get either the OTL capable rulers of Trebizond post-1204 (ie Andronicus I's grandsons) take over in Constantinople instead or get the OTL Emperors of Nicaea, Theodore I Lascaris and John III Vatatzes, in power before the Mongols arrive.
 
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