On the day after Manuel III Gavras's death in 1500, his grandson and great-grandson, Alexander, officially ascended to the throne as Alexander IV Gavras, at the age of 22.
Less than two years after his ascension, a new master emerged on the Iranian Plateau in the East, replacing the White Sheep Dynasty: Shah Ismail I of the Safavid Dynasty, a follower of the Twelver Shia branch.
Out of caution and a desire for internal stability, both parties signed a "Permanent Peace Treaty" in Trabzon, which maintained peace for several years.
Subsequently, during the first 12 years of Alexander IV's reign, the young emperor continued the policies of the previous two Gavras emperors, guiding the Roman Empire on a steady course.
This was also partly due to his birth in the "Purple Chamber" and his need to win over the people.
During these 12 years, the Roman Empire did not undertake large-scale campaigns to reclaim lost territories, but instead exercised restraint, even actively seeking reconciliation with the Catholic world, with whom relations had been at rock bottom since his great-grandfather's time.
The Empire's administrative agencies, protected by the army and compliant tribes, re-penetrated deep into Anatolia, severely damaging several Turkmen tribes that opposed the Empire.
In the north, leveraging the excellent terrain of the Tauris Peninsula, the powerful Roman Empire used a combination of soft and hard tactics, secretly manipulating the borders between the Slavs and Tatars, forcing them to rely on Roman authority.
At sea, the emperor kept a close watch on the Mamluk Sultanate, which had been considered a major enemy of the Empire for years, attempting to find a way to decisively defeat this great Muslim nation that had lost its influence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aleppo.
The only noteworthy military action was Alexander's deployment of the fully developed Imperial Navy, which officially expelled Venetian forces from the Eastern Mediterranean, with the Dalmatian region, excluding the Istrian Peninsula, also falling under Imperial control.
The undercurrents continued for another 10 years—
In early 1510, the emperor noticed that the cost and losses of the Roman Empire's pacification efforts in the Anatolian interior were higher than ever before.
Alexander IV keenly sensed a crisis in this situation, so he immediately dispatched a group of imperial envoys, escorted by a field army legion, to investigate the East.
Upon investigation, Constantinople was surprised to discover that these hostile tribes, which were once again causing considerable obstacles to the Empire, were either Shia or had close ties to Shia.
Sensing trouble, the emperor, seeing the situation, simply dispatched three garrison legions stationed in Anatolia to cooperate with this field army legion in a large-scale bandit suppression campaign.
After capturing a large number of leaders from the rebellious tribes and interrogating them, Alexander IV, who had just completely annexed Serbia, learned a dangerous truth: the Persians had intervened.
The following year, 1511, the Roman Empire and the Safavid Persian Empire exchanged envoys, condemning each other: the former furiously accused the latter of breaking the previous peace treaty and interfering in its internal affairs; the latter accused the former of betraying its promises and harming the normal lives of Muslims.
Furthermore, both sides surprisingly united in accusing each other of wanting to preemptively invade.
Consequently, relations between the two sides quickly deteriorated.
In April of the same year, Rome and Persia entered a de facto state of war.
At the end of the same year, Ismail I dispatched three thousand Qizilbash cavalry, supplemented by conscripted Turkmen, to march west into Eastern Anatolia.
They were repelled by the Roman Empire's border general, George Komnenos, the youngest son of David Komnenos, a veteran of the Empire's frontier regions.
After thwarting this Safavid offensive, Alexander IV, furious about the situation, decided to personally don armor and take to the field, determined to completely blockade the Persians in the Iranian Plateau.
A year later—
In the summer of 1512, in a small village called Chaldiran on the Azerbaijan Plateau, Alexander IV watched Shah Ismail I and the remnants of the Safavid forces flee towards the Iranian Plateau, and he let out a sigh of relief.
This tough battle was harder than he had anticipated, but fortunately, the long-term adherence to the previous generations' policy of emphasizing firearms had led to a qualitative leap in the military capabilities of the Roman army compared to its eastern neighbors.
Even the Venetians, who were highly vigilant of the Empire, risked using the trade routes of Syria and Mesopotamia to try and support the Persians, but this did not cause an irreversible change in the situation.
Alexander, about 9 years older than his enemy, gazed at the enemy, who looked like a stray dog, his brown eyes filled with joy and excitement at having won this decisive battle; at this moment, the emperor even thought of his own place in history.
It was not until his subordinates asked him how to deal with the captives that the still young emperor realized that his surroundings were filled with an unignorable number of corpses from both sides.
After giving proper orders for the disposal of the corpses, Alexander IV, still immersed in victory, suddenly called for the civilian officials accompanying the army, and after saying a few casual words, ordered: "Let these great achievements be recorded in the history books, and portray me as a great man!"
Speaking of this, Alexander couldn't help but think of the history books that were still popular in the Roman Empire from about twenty years ago.
Besides his aunt Justiana's "Biography of Manuel," Justinian Serenus's "History of the Anatolian War" was the most widely circulated.
The latter, hailed as "the last man of the Restoration Era," died of illness approximately 5 years after his grandfather, "the restorer" Manuel III Gavras, passed away.
This historian, in addition to leaving behind "History of the Anatolian War," also authored "Records of Imperial Etiquette" and a collection of unpublished manuscripts and other valuable historical materials.
Incidentally, it is rumored that this elder had also written records that his great-grandfather had expressed reservations about, but since the other party never publicly published them until his death, the imperial family treated it as if nothing had happened.
By the end of 1512, the Roman army, led by Alexander IV, successfully captured all of Eastern Anatolia and Armenian, and even pushed some of the front lines into the Iranian Plateau and the Mesopotamian basin.
However, due to logistical limitations and the hostility of the local non-Muslim population, after two years, Shah Ismail was eventually forced to sign a treaty at Tabriz, and the border between the two sides was set along the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from Edessa and Mardin to Lake Van.
After severely weakening the Persians, who had just managed to regain their strength, Alexander IV set his sights on the infidel nemesis to the south—the Mamluk Sultanate.
During his previous war with the Safavids, the Mamluks had dispatched some Mamluk Heavy Cavalry units, under the guise of foreign mercenaries, to support their co-religionist heretics.
Their vassal state, the Dulkadir Beylik, had even joined the Persians at the behest of Cairo.
Of course, as a punishment, the Roman Empire gladly annexed Dulkadir after the war.
In response, the Mamluks did nothing substantial except send envoys to Constantinople to protest and threaten to blockade trade with Rome.
This allowed the Roman high command, led by Alexander IV, to see the current weakness of the Mamluks.
Coupled with the knowledge that the Mamluks had suffered significant losses in trade revenue due to the new Eastern trade routes opened by the Iberians of Western Europe, the Basileus, believing the time was ripe, officially began to plan for the complete recovery of the lost Eastern territories.
Thus, in mid-1516, to punish the Mamluks, who had always been hostile to Rome, Alexander IV, having made up his mind, personally led the Roman army to officially declare war on the Mamluk Sultanate.
In 1516, the Roman Empire, mobilizing a hundred thousand troops, decisively defeated the Mamluk forces, numbering less than a third of their own, on the plain of Marj Dabiq near Aleppo.
The 75-year-old Mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri was killed by the emperor in this battle, leaving the entire Northern Levant leaderless.
When Alexander IV believed he had achieved great feats and intended to temporarily withdraw his troops to consolidate the territory, many astute new nobles rushed to persuade the emperor not to miss this excellent opportunity.
For example, Selim Osmanlis, the current head of the Osmalis family, now a noble of the Empire, and the Empire's General of Ankara, advised Alexander IV: "Your Majesty, the Mamluk army is quite traditional, still mainly composed of archer cavalry; while our army, especially the Imperial Guard, has long been heavily equipped with matchlock guns.
The most ignorant of those Mamluk cavalry even pride themselves on their traditions, disdaining the use of firearms.
Furthermore, they have now been defeated in Syria, their Sultan is dead, and they are fragmented and disunited internally, they can be swiftly taken down!"
After listening to these new nobles, Alexander IV's ambition to rebuild a great empire immediately drove him to consider the possibility of continuing the war.
After some thought, the Basileus decided to lead the army to continue advancing into Egypt!
On October 28, 1516, the Romans crushed the remaining Mamluk forces throughout the Levant on the outskirts of Gaza, declaring the change of ownership of the Levant;
On January 14, 1517, the Battle of Suez erupted, where the Mamluk Sultan Tuman Bey II, who had been appointed in a time of crisis, organized the last remaining 20,000-strong army the entire Sultanate could muster at that time, attempting to hold the strategic Isthmus, but was decisively defeated by the numerically and qualitatively superior Romans;
On January 20, 1517, Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, fell.
Sultan Tuman Bey II, as the last Sultan, was captured and hanged by the Romans on the city walls of Cairo, while the Sunni religious leader, Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutawakkil III, was escorted to Constantinople.
From then on, the Mamluk Sultanate officially ceased to exist, having lasted for 267 years.
The Levant and Egypt thus returned to Roman rule, shocking the entire Mediterranean world and most of the Islam world.
But what somewhat surprised the Muslims afterward was that the Roman Emperor did not execute their Caliph or accept the Prophet's Sword offered by the Caliph to the Basileus, but rather "graciously" preserved his Caliphate status, title, and relics of the Prophet—however, the corresponding condition was that he remain in Constantinople as a symbol of Roman rule over Muslims, continuing to command Muslims in his capacity as Caliph.
Most Muslims, while feeling indignant, found it difficult to accept such actions by the Romans, because according to doctrine, a Caliph controlled by non-believers did not have the legitimacy to rule over them.
But after the Roman legions' heavy cavalry were all deployed, most Muslims who were unwilling to leave their ancestral lands and unwilling to convert were forced to accept this established fact, and began to outwardly revere this Caliph controlled by the Romans, and this action by the Romans caused a sectarian split within Sunni Islam that was almost as significant as the one that began with the death of the Fourth Caliph Ali…
But these are all stories for later.
"This is just the first step, the Mediterranean will once again be our sea!" These were the words uttered by the Roman Empire's Basileus, "the Great" Alexander Gavras, after reclaiming Egypt, as he galloped and cracked his whip before his grand army at the mouth of the Nile, a declaration that echoed through history.
After the war, the Roman Empire dispatched bureaucrats to the coastal Levant to implement its direct rule, which differed little from that in the Anatolian Peninsula, Aemos Peninsula, and Tauris Peninsula.
As for Egypt and the inland and mountainous areas of the Levant, after the local magnates nominally converted to orthodox, they were pre-assigned to continue assisting in administration as tax farmers.
Considering the situation in Egypt, Alexander ultimately chose to send governors to control the local magnates and nobles, forming a layered feudal system, as an expedient measure.
The biggest change the Empire brought to Egypt was still in religion. In addition to the return of orthodox to the East, the indigenous Coptic orthodox heresy in Egypt also gained the favor of the Empire's high-level officials, receiving the same status as the Eastern Orthodox; in addition, the Maronites of Lebanon also received such treatment. However, before this, Simeon VI El-Hadathi, the Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronite Church (Ecclesia Maronitarum) of this generation, was personally dragged out of the mountains by the Emperor, who forced him to issue a patriarchal decree, publicly denying the decision of communion with the Roman Curia in 1182 during the time of Patriarch Butros III of Antioch, and instead acknowledging the authority of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, entering into communion with the orthodox while maintaining its rituals and internal doctrines. Incidentally, this indirectly froze the process of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, which only resumed after the death of Alexander IV.
The most unique part of the recovered territories was Palestine. Alexander IV meticulously planned for the Jewish people within its borders to be encouraged by the imperial government to relocate to Jerusalem, on the condition that they retain their faith and receive normal treatment. Other minority heresies and pagan religions within the Empire also received this treatment. This was not because the Emperor was kind to these pagans, but because he decided to dilute the local Sunnis by moving in a large number of non-Islam followers, given that Eastern Orthodox believers did not constitute a majority in the Holy City. Simply put, he was stirring the waters to facilitate the Roman Empire's administration and rule.
After consolidating his rule over Egypt, Alexander IV continued to wield his sword, launching reconquest military campaigns from Egypt as the center.
In 1518, Roman forces entered Nubia, persuading the two ancient kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia, which adhered to Coptic orthodox, to voluntarily accept the Empire's protection, on the condition of tolerating the Coptic heresy.
In 1520, the two holy cities of the Muslim fell under Roman control. To appease the Muslims within its borders, Alexander IV, apart from ordering the construction of an orthodox church in each of the two cities, did not take any excessive actions. Instead, he appointed those from the holy lineage of the Islam, the Zatoum family, who were willing to submit to him, as Sheriffs to continue governing the local area. In the same year, the Kingdom of Bosnia was partitioned and destroyed by the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary.
In 1522, the camel cavalry of the Roman Empire invaded the Kingdom of Fezzan, annexing the coastal and oasis regions, including its capital, and expelling the last Malik of the Fezzan Banu Khattab dynasty into the vast desert. This tragic last monarch eventually disappeared from historical records. When the future Tripolitanian generals of the Empire sent exploration teams south to survey the terrain, they encountered a tribe in the southern desert oasis that called itself Awlad Muhammad and was subservient to a desert empire named The Kanem Empire.
In 1525, Solomon, a eunuch representing the Emperor's will, led a team of over a thousand elite explorers eastward out of the Red Sea. At the end of the year, as they were about to return home, they felt the hostility of the local Tahir dynasty in the Gulf of Aden. The explorers, without further ado, bribed the border guards of Aden with gold and, under the cover of night, seized the strategically important island of Perim, adjacent to the port of Aden. Their actions naturally angered the Sultan of Yemen, Abdal-Malik bin Muhammad, but his repeated attacks were repelled.
The following spring, upon receiving news from the expedition, the Empire immediately dispatched five thousand soldiers from Jeddah port, occupying the islands along the Red Sea coast and the northwest corner of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. They captured Zabid, the capital of Yemen, dragged the last Sultan of Yemen, Abdul, from his palace, and escorted him to Constantinople for execution. With this, the Sultanate of Yemen fell. However, Al-Mutawakkil Yahya Sharaf ad-Din, the Zaydi Imam who had been retreating to the highlands, quickly took action, took over the remaining forces of the Sultanate, and established the Imamate of Yemen by the end of the year. Because the Zaydi sect, to which he belonged, and the Twelver Shia sect, to which the Safavids adhered, both belonged to the Shia branch, Yemen, directly threatened by the Romans, soon naturally became entangled with the Persians, troubling the Roman Empire for about a hundred years.
Over the next ten years, the Roman Empire continued its external expansion and internal reforms under the rule of Alexander IV: it seized the Bosnian region under Hungarian rule, forced Wallachia and Moldavia into submission, fought several inconclusive battles of varying sizes with the Hafsid dynasty of Tunisia, launched probing attacks on Sicily, expanded its colonial presence in the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Indian Ocean, maintained stability on its western border by instigating conflicts between the Habsburg dynasty and the Hunyadi dynasty, and formally incorporated most of inland Anatolia under direct rule…
In 1540, the "Great" Alexander IV, beloved by the vast majority of Romans, passed away at the age of 68. During his 40-year reign, he fully utilized the national strength Manuel had left him, bringing the Roman Empire back to its rightful place.
As his eldest grandson, Constantine, was still young, Alexander left a will, entrusting his close friend, Solomon of the Osmalis family, to assist the young Emperor until he came of age. This Solomon was the great-grandson of Muhammad Osmalis, the founder of the Osmalis family, and also the son of Selim Osmalis, who had advised Alexander to attack Egypt.
But in the autumn of 1540, Solomon, who harbored considerable ambition, boldly took a step his old friend had never imagined. On September 27th of that year, he launched a coup, swiftly eliminating political rivals in the capital, and on the morning of October 1st, he was crowned co-Emperor with Constantine XII, taking the title of Co-Basileus Solomon.
During the reign of Co-Emperor Solomon, the Roman Empire formally allied with the Kingdom of France to jointly confront their formidable common enemy, the Habsburg Monarchy. Overseas, he also successfully dispatched people to occupy a section of Cape Blanc, naming it Cape Manuel. Furthermore, after two Tripolitanian campaigns, the Hafsid dynasty of Tunisia and the Zayyanid dynasty of Tlemcen finally declared their demise in 1554, and the Province of Africa once again returned to Roman rule. Incidentally, Hidir Barbarossa, who achieved great feats in these campaigns, was appointed general by the Emperor and entrusted with governing the local area.
At the same time, to curb the expansion of the Rus' people in the Eastern European Great Plains, Solomon intervened in 1550, sending troops north to preserve the Kazan Khanate. This was the first time the Romans had directly intervened to prevent the Rus' expansion eastward.
However, good times did not last long. In 1556, with the support of the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy, a large-scale Muslim uprising erupted in Africa, and Tunisia and Tlemcen regained their independence. Co-Emperor Solomon was furious and dispatched troops to suppress it, but the Central Mediterranean Fleet was annihilated by the Spanish Armada, and the stationed troops, after their fleet was destroyed and they could no longer receive supplies, mutinied on the spot with separatist forces and Mamluk nobles, establishing the independent Kingdom of Cyrenaica.
Facing such changes, the young Emperor Constantine, who had been sidelined for 16 years, launched a coup, overthrowing Solomon, who had held power for 16 years. After being forced to relinquish his position as Co-Basileus, Solomon stepped down, and spent the rest of his life in a monastery in Prusa. At this point, Constantine XII Gavras, then 25 years old, finally officially took power and assumed the highest authority of the Empire.
At this time, Spain, which had expected to achieve its goals smoothly, was met with a fierce blow from the young but shrewd Roman Emperor. Constantine XII first incited France to continue the Italian Wars, diverting Spain's attention. Then, in a critical moment, he appointed Barbarossa as Grand Admiral, assembled the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet, and sent it to the Central Mediterranean, regaining naval supremacy. And then—
In 1558, the Kingdom of Cyrenaica's independence failed, and the Roman Empire recaptured Cyrenaica;
In early 1560, the Hafsid dynasty was once again annihilated; in mid-year, the Zayyanid dynasty was partitioned by the Moroccan Sultanate and the Roman Empire, and once again fell. To consolidate control over the Barbary Coast, Constantine established the Principality of Algiers there, posthumously awarding the late Barbarossa brothers the titles of I and II respectively, and appointing Hidir's son, Harun, as Grand Prince, known as Barbarossa III, to govern the area hereditarily for the Empire.
From then on, the African crisis that had plagued the Empire finally ended.
After resolving the African crisis, the Emperor, realizing that the governor of Egypt dispatched from Constantinople could no longer fully control the situation in Egypt, began to plan to separate the Mamluks from Egypt.
In 1563, Constantine XII issued an edict, declaring the region of Egypt to be under direct rule and raising taxes on the local powerful families. In July of the same year, local Egyptian forces launched a large-scale rebellion, declaring their secession from the Empire and the establishment of the Sultanate of Egypt, and civil war erupted.
This civil war lasted for about ten years, and its intensity exceeded the Emperor's initial expectations. Even after taxes were announced to be reduced to their original levels three years later, the intensity of the rebellion did not decrease at all. During these years of civil war, other Muslim-majority regions within the Empire also erupted in rebellions against Constantinople. Foreign powers such as Safavid Persia, the Habsburg Monarchy, Hungary, and Morocco also became involved, and the Roman Empire once again stood at a historical crossroads. During this period, to acquire enough gold, Constantine XII also sold the title of "Caesar" to Russia, and in 1565 sent the Ecumenical Patriarch to Moscow to personally crown Ivan IV as Emperor.
But finally, in 1570, the last Egyptian Sultan to be called a Mamluk was captured by the Nubians in Akuria and handed over to the Roman Empire, and this civil war finally came to an end.
In 1572, the Roman Empire finally extended its reach to the Ethiopian Plateau, and in 1575, it helped the Ethiopian Empire destroy the Adal Sultanate.
In 1578, to punish Morocco for its interference in the civil war, the Roman Empire dispatched its vassal, Grand Prince Barbarossa III of Algiers, to declare war on Morocco alongside Portugal. On August 4th of the same year, the Battle of the Four Kings erupted on the Wad al-Makhazin River. The Moroccan army achieved a great victory, and King Sebastian of Portugal, the former Sultan of Morocco Al-Mutawakkil, and Grand Prince Barbarossa III of Algiers were killed. However, Sultan Malik of Morocco also died from severe wounds the following night, forcing Constantine XII to abandon further plans to attack Morocco.
In 1580, facing a plea for help from the remaining forces of the childless Portuguese Aviz dynasty, Constantine XII, whose throat of the Strait of Gibraltar was choked by both infidels and Spain, implicitly accepted King Philip II of Spain's annexation of Portugal in order to reconcile with Spain.
In 1585, the Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Spain jointly sent troops to Morocco; the former took Cape Melilla, and the latter captured the port of Ceuta.
In 1588, the Spanish Armada was completely annihilated while attacking England. Constantine XII immediately turned around and continued to repair relations with France, sending troops to Italy and further complicating the Italian Wars, which had lasted for over a century. In the same year, the Emperor dispatched an army of ten thousand to Moldavia to prevent Poland and Lithuania from directly intervening again in the chaotic period of Russia.
In 1590, the Roman Empire's expansion in the Indian Ocean achieved a breakthrough. The "Seven Islands of Mumbai" were purchased by the Empire from the Sultanate of Gujarat and renamed "Heptanesia," the ancient Greek name for them. By the end of the same year, Portuguese Goa was captured by the Romans, and the Roman Empire temporarily enjoyed the exclusive benefits of Indian Ocean trade.
In 1600, Constantine XII, who had once turned the tide of battle, then faced mixed reviews, but ultimately proved himself, passed away at the age of 69.
But this was far from the end of the Roman Empire, until the great changes in the world arrived centuries later…