07. Palaiologos ANABASIS part one.

I first heard the shocking news on the last day of November. The crushing Ottoman defeat was undoubtedly more than welcomed. Shah Rukh's victory from the other side was more than alarming, especially with the rumors of plans sieging Constantinople. That made me thinking about the future. The Ottoman collapse is something absurd! Utterly different from what I knew from the history of my previous life. Heh, the future is entirely changed, even before my major plans put in action.

For all I know, even an insect could bite Shah Rukh and make him more irritable and thus act differently. Ahh, I wish I could have the chance to share all this with my uptime friends in AH...

In late February, while preparing my relief force for Constantinople, I was utterly relieved when I heard the news reports. It seems that Shah Rukh's plans for a siege were canceled, and he already departed from Bursa back to central Asia(1). I also got news about the chaos in the ex Ottoman lands in Europe. Turahan Bay in Thessaly, Sinan Pasha in Macedonia, and Mehmed Pasha in Edirne seem to be the major players in this Ottoman interregnum(2). Rumors of rebellions in Albania, Bulgaria, and Serbia were also pleasant and alarming at the same time. With this news, I realized that I am not going to find a better opportunity to "liberate" lands from Ottoman control. So I continued my preparations, but with a change of plans.

Glarentza March 1431 A.D

By the middle of March, I marched with my newly reformed army(3) of six tagmata(4), and a total of three thousand six hundred men, in Kalavryta, where I joined forces with my brother Thomas and his two thousand troops. The contrast between my forces and my brother's forces was funny. My soldiers, especially the tagmata, were the most advanced force in the world carrying flintlock muskets, and field artillery and Thomas troops were still a rather typical late Medieval army.

Despite his constant asking for new guns, only a few Thomas officers had received flintlock pistols from me so far, and that's just a few weeks ago. Oh boy, I can't wait to test my army in action against those somewhat, similar to my brother Thomas, medieval armies. Its time to roll baby! I said to myself several times to cover my stress...

From Kalvryta, we marched swiftly to the Hexamilion wall, and from there, we took Megara without any resistance. In fact, in Megara, we were approached by some of the locals who wanted, clearly influenced by the propaganda text of Ieros skopos, enthusiastically to join our ranks. When we left the town, crowds even cheered us by chanting "Ieros skopos." I was sure that my propaganda ideas would work, but this was phenomenal. The Ieros skopos was spreading like fire. Shortly after, we reach the outskirts of Athens, where the army of Duke of Athens, Antonio I Acciaioli was waiting to face us.

"Steady"

The bulk of the Duchy of Athens soldiers, was around two hundred meters away, coming at full speed. Most of them with spears and fewer with swords. No more than two hundred horses came ahead of the pack, most of them in full armor.

"Steady," I replied again.

The sound of their feet and screaming was close now.

"Ready," I said firmly.

The front rank knelt. The second rank raised their muskets and thumbed the flintlock hammers back. I then draw my sword and raised it high.

"Fire!"

One thousand two hundred muskets and forty Drakos cannons fired almost simultaneously.

The flash and the sound that followed my command was stunning. The noise stayed in my ears for minutes. By the second barrage of the muskets, the battle was over. Poor man Acciaioli, he and most of his seven thousand troops died within literally minutes. The Drakos canister shots were extraordinarily effective and brutal. I puked twice in the sight of some of the bodies on the battlefield. Poor bastards... They literally never saw it coming... Such a cruel death.

This time I was more cynical than my first battle near the straights of Messina. I didn't go in trance mode, but instead, I felt miserable for all the death I provoked. My thoughts interrupted by my brother Thomas, who came and hugged me, extremely happy with our crushing victory.

"Ieros skopos!" " Ieros skopos!" Chanted the troops, several times delighted.

The small Acciaioli garrison in Acropolis, after the promises of amnesty, surrender without resistance and abandon the Acropolis. Ah, the magnificent Acropolis of Athens! Such a marvelous sight!

While in Acropolis, we also confiscate the treasury of Acciaioli. Nearly twenty thousand gold florins. Not bad, not bad at all. With Acciaioli now dead, the Duchy of Athens collapsed entirely. Thebes and the rest of the Duchy felt in my hands in a couple of weeks. The local population again was quite friendly and supportive of the holy war. The orthodox bishops of Athens and Thebes were among the strongest supporters. We continued North, and we captured Bodonitsa, Neopatras, and Zetouni. When we reached Halmyros, we got ambushed from a small group of Turahan bay forces. I must confess, the ambush was well planned. If it weren't for our guns, we would have big problems. We lost almost forty men before we killed most of the intruders.

We marched North. Bellow us; the great Thessalic plain opened up—the core lands of Turahan bey, a land ideal for his based on cavalry army. The first engagement in Thessaly was against a small Ottoman garrison in Velestino. Another one, followed the next day when Turahan bay himself arrived with the bulk of his forces. Four thousand Sipahi cavalry and several thousands of Bashi-bazouk light infantry. Turahan Bey, confided by the size of his army, and pretty much unaware of our firepower and tactics, tried to flank us with his overwhelming superior, in numbers, cavalry on both flanks. At the same time, his infantry of irregulars charged us in the middle. That proved to be an unfortunate judgment of the situation. Once again, the firepower of our muskets and cannons were no match for the enemy forces. In another, as it turned out, short battle, more than six thousand Ottoman troops were lying dead on the battlefield. Our losses were less than fifty killed and wounded, and most from random arrows shots. Turahan bey managed to flee with the remnants of his Sipahi cavalry forces. A sound victory once again!

We spent the next month "liberating" Thessaly from the few Ottoman garrisons while installing new ones in Trikala and Larissa. Meanwhile, my text-based posters propagandizing the cause of "Ieros skopos" were wall-mounted even in the smallest villages of Thessaly. Soon hundreds of volunteers started massing in our temporary headquarter in Larissa.

(1) Shah was furious with the Genoese and Venetians, as their ships not only ferried the remaining Ottomans to safety in Europe but guarded the Bosporus straits. As Apostolos Turkan reported in The Timurid chronicles, the Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not. While Shah invaded Anatolia, A Persian pretender assaulted Isfahan and captured it in 1430. Shah returned to Persia from Anatolia and sent one of his sons to reconquer Isfahan, which he proceeded to do. Shah then spent some time in Astarabad. Subsequently, he marched to Herat and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months celebrating and preparing to invade India.

(2) Civil war broke out among the reaming Ottoman warlords upon Murad II death in 1430. Mehmed Pasha, with his capital at Edirne, ruled parts of Bulgaria and most of Thrace. Sinan Pasha, established himself as an independent ruler at Thessalonica and Turahan Bey formed a Beylik at Thessaly.War broke out soon between Mehmed Pasha and Sinan Pasha, both claiming the Ottoman Sultan title.

(3) Palaiologous military reforms.

The training of the army was especially crucial to Palaiologos. Previous generals had made use of drill and exercise to instill discipline or to keep the men physically fit, but for Palaiologos, the fundamentals of tactics were crucial. This change affected the entire conduct of warfare, since it required the officers to train men and lead them, decreased the size of the basic infantry unit for functional purposes since more specific orders had to be given in battle, required more initiative, and more intelligence from the average soldier. One significant contribution was the introduction of volley fire, which enabled soldiers to compensate for their weapons' inaccuracy by firing in a large group and withdraw behind the lines of pikes. He introduced light mobile guns for the first time on the battlefield. These were grouped in batteries supporting his more linearly deployed formations.

In consequence, his forces could redeploy and reconfigure very rapidly, confounding his enemies. Among the other innovations, he installed an early form of combined arms in his formations. The cavalry could attack from the safety of an infantry line reinforced by cannon, and retire again within to regroup after their foray.

(4) The reformed TAGMA (Greek: τάγμα, pl. τάγματα) is a military unit of the Byzantine empire, formed by Byzantine emperor Constantine XI and comprising the main standing army of the Byzantine Empire. The Tagma consisted of two hundred musketeers, two hundred pikemen, and one hundred cavalry with a supporting cannon battery of 5 Drakos.