1444, Byzantium Resurrects

Chapter 392 Orange Revolution
Time flies, and the spring of 1478 arrives quietly.

For the Eastern Roman Empire, this was a festive season. The rapidly developing big cities produced huge quantities of goods. The improvement of agricultural technology, the introduction of new crops and the development of the new village movement brought agricultural prosperity to the vast rural areas. The Eastern Roman Empire passed on most of the costs of development to other countries, and the sky above the empire seemed to be clear.

However, for the only remaining Islamic countries in the Mediterranean world, this is another dark and gloomy season. Not long ago, the most powerful monarch in the Islamic world, King Uzum Hassan the White Sheep, passed away suddenly. This monarch, who was once regarded as the savior of Islam, ultimately failed to reverse the decline of Islam in the Mediterranean world. Granada has been destroyed, Morocco is lingering on, and central North Africa centered on the city of Carthage is being re-Christianized at a very fast pace. Intense panic and anxiety permeate the hearts of every Mediterranean Muslim.

Of course, Uzun Hassan still made a lot of efforts. A large number of Muslim craftsmen and Muslim scholars from the Ottoman Empire fled to the East. Tabriz, Diyarbakir, Konya and Ankara all ushered in development and prosperity. With his support, the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria successfully overthrew the weak old government and established a Mamluk military government. The new Mamluk Sultan is rebuilding the national strength with the most violent means.

With the death of Uzungol Hassan, the prosperity of the White Sheep Dynasty collapsed. The glory of defeating the Black Sheep and the legend of conquering Persia in one battle all disappeared with the departure of this chosen monarch in the spring of 1478. His son Khalil temporarily sat on the throne of Tabriz by virtue of his age and bloodline, but the other princes would not sit idly by. They sharpened their knives and reorganized their troops. A civil war was about to come.

At the same time, the armistice agreement between the Eastern Roman Empire and the remaining Turkic states in Anatolia, including the Ottoman Sultanate, the Karaman Bey State, and the Ramazan Bey State, officially expired this year. Several Turkish monarchs sent envoys to Constantinople almost at the same time, demanding the renewal of the treaty and even requesting tribute, but they were all firmly rejected and they were not even able to see the emperor.

In April 1478, at the foot of Mount Maltepe outside Constantinople, the Purple Parade Ground was completed after three months of day and night work by thousands of engineers and tens of thousands of slaves. A large number of comfrey and lavender were planted on both sides of the parade ground. During the flowering season, this place would become a sea of ​​royal purple.

Over a period of three months, troops from all over the empire arrived here in wave after wave, and after being reviewed by the emperor at the Purple Parade Ground, they marched to Anatolia. The military power of the Eastern Roman Empire in Anatolia expanded rapidly. By April 1478, 4 Guards Corps and 7 Purple Guard Corps had arrived in western and northern Anatolia, and the number of conscripts was even greater, with a total of nearly 10.

At this point, the Eastern Roman Empire's ambition to recover Anatolia was fully revealed, and the remaining Turkic countries held emergency talks and were busy signing an agreement to fight the powerful enemy together.

They knew very well that the Aq Qoyunlu Dynasty, which was in the midst of civil strife, could not provide them with any substantial support. The newly unified Mamluk Dynasty was even weaker. The only remaining Marin Dynasty in the western Mediterranean was also struggling with the Portuguese. Ultimately, they could only save their own destiny.

However, they were also well aware that the Eastern Roman Empire was no longer what it used to be. Apart from insufficient population, it had almost no weaknesses. Whether in terms of economic level, military technology, military system or cultural cohesion, it was already at the forefront of the Mediterranean and was a well-deserved "great power".

In any case, a storm is rapidly forming over the Anatolian Peninsula, and millions of people will be swept into it actively or passively. Their survival or death depends on their own choices and efforts.

On the southern Russian steppes on the northern shore of the Black Sea, the spring sunshine melted the snow, and the major rivers gradually thawed, pouring into the sea with sparkling waves.

After the fall of the Crimean Khanate, the former Crimea was occupied by the Crimean Governorate, the Azov Governorate and the Cossack Kingdom respectively. The Crimean Governorate was controlled by the Gavlas family, who managed the farming areas of the Crimean Peninsula. The Azov Governorate belonged to the Gatiluciu family, who were relatives of the royal family. They mainly managed the city of Kaffa and surrounding cities and were deeply involved in the Black Sea trade. The Cossack Kingdom was established on the steppe, from the Dnieper River to the Kuban.

The Dnieper River is the fourth longest river in Europe and the second longest river in Eastern Europe. It originates from the southern foot of the Valdai Hills and is the mother river of southwestern Russia. It connects many major Russian cities including Smolensk, Chernihiv, Zhitomir, Gomel, and Kiev. The river channel is wide, the water flow is gentle, the navigable distance is extremely long, and the shipping value is very high. It has been a busy commercial river since ancient times.

During the Kievan Rus period, this river connected the scattered Russian principalities. Wheat, fur, rosin, honey, amber... a large amount of goods flowed into the Black Sea through this river, and entered Constantinople and the more distant Mediterranean. Since amber was the most representative trade commodity on the route, this trade route that relied on the Vistula River and the Dnieper River to connect the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea was also called the "Amber Road". Similar to the Silk Road, it also had Constantinople on the Black Sea as its final destination.

By the end of the 15th century, the once prosperous Amber Road was no longer what it once was. The revived Eastern Roman Empire had always adhered to mercantilism, levied high taxes on foreign goods, granted tax reduction privileges for exported goods, and attempted to form an "Eastern Roman market" including core areas, border areas, autonomous regions, colonies and friendly allies, and engaged in trade barriers and commercial unilateralism.

Of course, in its external rhetoric, the Eastern Roman Empire was a consistent supporter of "free trade" and firmly opposed any form of trade blockade.

In this context, the Eastern Roman Empire would generally seek "parallel substitution" within the market for goods that were urgently needed. Even if there were external orders, they had to be given to friendly forces, and those hostile countries would never be allowed to earn a penny.

Due to the always bad relations between the Eastern Roman Empire and Poland and Lithuania, the trade between the two sides decreased year by year. The amber, fur, wood, honey and grain needed by the Eastern Roman Empire came either from the Grand Duchy of Moscow or from Bulgaria. After more than ten years of development, Bulgaria has gradually become the most important agricultural and pastoral base of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Balkan Peninsula.

But even if the Amber Road is no longer prosperous, the Dnieper River's shipping value remains the same.

On the west bank of the Dnieper River, in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a team of more than 200 people was heading southeast. Judging from their attire, they were obviously Russians who believed in the Orthodox Christian religion.

The snow was melting and the plains were covered with mud. They moved very slowly. Their ragged clothes could not keep out the still cold north wind. Their mud-soaked leather boots transmitted the biting cold to everyone's body. The few mules were either carrying simple supplies or children and the wounded.

In the center of the team, a priest who was also dressed in tattered clothes was carrying a boy on his back. His appearance was very different from that of the Russians, with dirty black hair tied in knots and hopeful black eyes under his thick black eyebrows.

This was a young man. Although he was as hungry and cold as the others in the team, his physical fitness was obviously much better than others. He had a straight back, a well-proportioned figure, and strong muscles... It was obvious that he had never been hungry since he was a child.

"Father, how long do we have to go?"

The child on his back asked weakly, his little face was red from the cold, his eyes were half open and half closed, he was suffering from a severe cold.

"We will be there soon. Once we cross the river, we will have bread, milk, hot water, and a doctor."

The young priest comforted him, speaking in Russian.

"We can all enjoy a free and stable life. Believe me, we will."

The child nodded, closed his eyes, and soon fell into a deep sleep.

The child's father walked beside the priest, looking ahead and at his son worriedly.

"Sergey, how many of us are left now?"

the young priest asked.

"We're almost there, don't get lost again."

"Two hundred and three people, not scattered, all gathered around you, respected Father Trabelsi."

Sergei said respectfully.

"Not long ago, I thought people in the south were afraid of the cold. I didn't expect you to be able to withstand the cold wind here and be in better shape than me."

"Hehe, I'm only twenty-two, younger than most of you."

Trabelsi smiled.

"Believe me, if your children grow up like me, they will grow up to be healthy and strong men."

Sergei nodded firmly, believing in Trabelsi's words.

These days, they fled all the way here from their original village. Sometimes they had to hide during the day and move at night to avoid pursuers, and they didn't even dare to raise torches. Trabelsi's eyesight at night was much better than that of other Russians, and the navigation almost depended on him.

Sergei didn't understand science, but he knew that in his hometown, only the noble lords could see clearly at night. Many lower-class people suffered from night blindness of varying degrees due to lack of adequate supplementary food.

The sound of the child's sleeping breathing came from behind him, and the rumbling sound of his stomach sounded at the same time. Trabelsi took a breath, slowed down his pace, looked up at the sun hiding behind the clouds, and squinted his eyes.

As a North African Orthodox Christian born in 1456, Trabelsi grew up in a prosperous era. As far as he could remember, he had never felt hungry or even the pain of war. His hometown is located in Derna, Cyrenaica Province. The Green Mountain in the south blocks the dust from the Sahara Desert, which has preserved a piece of farmland for the residents. There were traces of volcanic activity here, and the soil is relatively fertile. Provincial officials organized people to plant trees on the southern foot of the Green Mountain to block the wind and sand, and dug underground channels inside the Green Mountain to store mountain spring water and winter precipitation to supply large coastal cities and agricultural areas around the city.

Aqueducts were the traditional strength of the Romans. From the "Eternal City" Rome to the "World's Desirable City" Constantinople, aqueducts built the backbone of the Roman Empire. The annual precipitation in the Green Mountains exceeds 600 mm. The province of Cyrenaica built quite a number of water conservancy projects here, making use of the gifts of nature. This greatly changed the "summer drought and winter floods" situation in the Green Mountains, allowing the province of Cyrenaica to not only meet food self-sufficiency, but also have the ability to export surpluses to the Balkan Peninsula.

At the end of the 15th century, the coast of North Africa had not yet experienced the serious ecological disaster caused by the extreme outbreak of Muslim population in the mid-to-late 20th century in the original time and space. The first twenty years of the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire caused a sharp decline in the population here, and there was still room for improvement in the natural environment.

You know, long ago in ancient Rome, Africa was the granary of the empire, and it provided more grain to the Apennine Peninsula than even Egypt.

As for the funds needed to improve the environment, although the province of Cyrenaica had a small population and relatively scarce resources, the province's tax revenue even exceeded that of many agricultural provinces - the slave trade has always made money, especially for a country like the Eastern Roman Empire that lacks labor.

Trabelsi, who grew up in Derna, witnessed the beauty brought by the prosperity of the Eastern Roman Empire, how the Orthodox Church took root and grew again in North Africa, and how a series of livelihood projects fundamentally made fresh water more abundant, food cheaper, and kept out the sandstorms.

As the second son of a manor owner, he had never been hungry, suffered hardship, or felt cold. The cooling climate studied by university professors would not cause him much trouble. For North Africans, the summer weather was not so hot, the evaporation of fresh water became less, and some seasonal rivers even never dried up all year round.

Later, Trabelsi left his hometown and went to study at the Constanta Seminary, which was the first modern-style seminary in the Eastern Roman Empire. Students there not only had to study the Bible, but also had to learn a technology, either medicine, administration, science, or navigation and colonization. After graduation, these students would often enter the government or other institutions and become political priests in the Eastern Roman Empire.

These people were different from the old-school priests who longed for meditation and advocated devout service to God. They were advanced forces supported by the emperor. There were especially many priests who studied navigation and colonization. The seminaries would teach them how to spread religion to the indigenous people, how to promote the Greek language to the indigenous people, and how to make them spontaneously abandon their barbaric customs and join the large group of the Eastern Roman cultural circle.

Although the Roman Orthodox Church did not have the "holy fool" concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, its mysticism was still very strong. Some priests did not like to preach, did not like to preach, and did not even like to interact with ordinary believers. They took the money of the Orthodox Christians and indulged in their own spiritual world all day long. For a country like the Eastern Roman Empire, which had a huge demand for missionary work, this set of concepts was destined to be severely restricted.

The so-called Eastern Roman Orthodox Church is just a special government agency of the Eastern Roman Empire. You have to do whatever the emperor and the government ask you to do.

After successfully graduating from the Constanta Seminary, Trabelsi became a clergyman at the Eastern Roman Empire Immigration Bureau, a newly established government department under the guidance of the Ministry of the Interior and specifically responsible for managing immigration affairs.

Trabelsi was assigned to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His task was to use his identity as a missionary to spread advanced ideas to the Russian Orthodox Christians in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, calling on them to escape the exploitation and oppression of the serf owners and go to the Eastern Roman Empire to start a new life.

Before going to Lithuania, Trabelsi received a series of preliminary training and gained some basic understanding of the system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the life of local Orthodox Christians. He also knew what they yearned for, needed and hated.

"The place that everyone longs for is either heaven or a canteen. The place that everyone flees from is either hell or a prison. If the country's doors are fully opened, the direction of human flow will be the direction of civilization."

Thinking of this, Trabelsi couldn't help but recite the propaganda slogan of the Immigration Bureau. This slogan was formulated by the emperor himself and soon became the most impressive sentence of the Eastern Roman Immigration Bureau, especially in Italy, which has a higher level of cultural literacy. Many Italians who yearn for the Eastern Roman Empire often recite this sentence and regard it as the truth of life.

However, Trabelsi was an excellent student in the Colonial Department of the Theological Seminary. He knew very well that this sentence could only deceive those Italians who thought they had read some books. It could not stand up to analysis at all. Even the emperor himself sneered at it.

Now, the Immigration Bureau of the Eastern Roman Empire is mainly divided into four departments, responsible for the introduction of immigrants to Italy, the Black Sea, Iberia and the colonies. The first two departments are the top priorities.

Italy has a population of over 10 million and is experiencing the dual dilemma of the collapse of feudal agriculture and the downturn of urban handicrafts. The population has a high quality and a large number of industrialists and businessmen, who are generally attracted to cities and become an important force in urban production.

The Black Sea coast is the area with the highest concentration of Orthodox Christians. Wallachia and Moldavia together have more than one million Orthodox Christians who speak Vulgar Latin. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania has millions of Russian Orthodox Christians. They live in poverty, have a very low level of education, and are at the bottom of Europe in terms of civilization. They are very fanatical in their religious beliefs and have an inexplicable yearning for the only Orthodox empire. They are the best and easiest ethnic group to assimilate.

By 1478, after decades of attraction, recruitment and purchase, the number of Russian citizens in the Eastern Roman Empire had exceeded , making them the largest foreign ethnic group. They also performed much better than the Turkic converts in integrating into the mainstream group. There was basically no rebellious phenomenon, not to mention the Russian national sentiment that was not even in its infancy.

In the original time and space, the construction of the Russian nation was related to the smashing of the Tatar yoke, the intensification of external expansion and the demise of the Eastern Roman Empire, especially the latter. The Orthodox concept of destiny and messianic complex brought by the "Third Rome" ran through the Russian nation and became an important tool for the ruling class to build legitimacy.

But in 1478 in this time and space, none of these three conditions were met. The Russian nation would certainly be built up, but it would definitely be very different from the original time and space.

Of course, the Russian citizens who had just arrived in the Eastern Roman Empire did not understand the core and nature of this country. These poor people who had been worn down by cruel exploitation and oppression were just accustomed to obeying their masters. If their masters could treat them well, if their masters could set them free, if their masters happened to be the Orthodox emperor approved by God, they would be even happier.

However, the same religion enabled them to share the same values ​​as the Greco-Romans, which provided a fairly good soil for subsequent complete assimilation.

When targeting these Russians with extremely low cultural levels, the Eastern Roman Immigration Bureau did not come up with any high-sounding propaganda slogans. Instead, it chose to send a large number of missionaries across the Dnieper River into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, preaching between Russian villages, using "bread, jam, and faith" as the main slogan, calling on Russian Orthodox Christians to rebel against their masters, leave the land that had been killed by the nobles, enter the Eastern Roman Empire or the Cossack Kingdom, and fight for their own better lives.

The missionaries sent by the Eastern Roman Empire would often accuse the Poles and Lithuanians of brutality, tell them about the freedom and fairness of the Eastern Roman Empire, and tell them in the name of God that all Orthodox Christians could find a place in the Eastern Roman Empire, that the abuse they were currently suffering was unfair and unjust, that God would not allow such exploitation, that their lords were not serf owners authorized by God, and that their priests were merely accomplices of the nobles.

In addition, a considerable number of Russian immigrants would be encouraged to act as such missionaries, using their own personal experiences to dispel the suspicions of the Russians and guide them to join the army of immigrants.

You said you were afraid? You said immigration was difficult? The Eastern Roman Empire was invincible on the water. Any fleet it could take out was capable of bombarding Kiev along the river. As long as you reached the river, freedom was within your reach.

At this time, Eastern Europe was undergoing a major change that had not been seen in hundreds of years. Due to the cold climate and good coping measures, Poland, Lithuania and the Principalities of Rus did not suffer too much loss in the wave of the Black Death, and the population maintained a high growth rate. However, their feudal land system did not collapse one after another like Western and Southern European countries. Instead, it continued to evolve into a serfdom system that imprisoned the people. They relied on oppressing the lower classes to become a major grain exporting country, the nobles and wealthy businessmen made a lot of money, but the lower class people obviously did not get much dividends.

However, whether in Poland, Lithuania or the Russian states, their serfdom had not been fully formed in 1478 and was still in a state of rapid transformation. Faced with the imminent confinement and exploitation, the peasants were bound to feel dissatisfaction and disgust.

In order to suppress Poland and Lithuania and cause further unrest in their Rus settlement areas, the Eastern Roman Empire also launched a series of economic offensives, targeting their most important export commodity - food.

At this time, Poland and Lithuania were the largest grain exporters in Europe, and grain trade was the top priority of the Polish-Lithuanian economy. They defeated the Teutonic Knights and began to seek to establish direct trade ties with Western European countries, eliminating the middleman behavior of the Hanseatic League.

As a result, the Eastern Roman Empire brought corn and potatoes that could be grown in harsh conditions to Europe decades in advance, as well as advanced agricultural technology, and eliminated the food demand that would have otherwise existed in North Africa and Anatolia through physical means. It also exported food to Western European countries through the Elysium colony, causing European food prices to fall all the way.

Therefore, the Eastern Roman Empire proposed the "Hanseatic League Revival Plan", using a large number of handicrafts and colonial goods to help them regain their trade competitiveness. In a very short period of time, they helped them initially complete a warship upgrade. The "Heinrich" built by the Carthaginian Naval Shipyard of the Roman Arsenal became the most powerful warship in the Baltic Sea. The Hanseatic League was on the verge of revival, and the fight against smuggling pirates became easier.

As a result, the Eastern Roman Empire established a military alliance with the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the arch-enemy of the Lithuanians, and helped the Grand Duchy of Moscow to become rich and strong through trade, enabling them to annex the feudal oligarchic Republic of Novgorod two years earlier than in the original time and space, and to join the Baltic grain trade and compete with the Poles.

The obstruction of grain trade caused losses for many Polish and Lithuanian nobles. In some areas, the profits from grain sales were not even as high as the transportation costs. It was impossible for these serf owners to distribute the excess grain to the lower-class people for free. In order to get more money, they could only do their best to levy more taxes, using huge amounts to make up for the lack of average profit, and the exploitation and oppression of the lower-class people were even more cruel.

Although the Eastern Roman Empire intervened in Poland and Lithuania with the idea of ​​protecting all Orthodox Christians, in reality, under the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Eastern Roman Empire, the living standards of the Rus Orthodox Christians in Poland and Lithuania dropped sharply.

This series of political, propaganda, religious and economic means did not involve the use of a single soldier, and did not cause the Eastern Roman people to shed a drop of blood, but it had initially achieved the Eastern Roman Empire's goals, causing the Russian Orthodox Christians to feel dissatisfied and defect to the ruling class, causing their trust in the government to drop to freezing point, forcing the rulers to resort to violence to suppress the people, resulting in a vicious cycle.

This project is hailed as a great "revolution" in the history of Eastern Roman diplomacy. Since it was mainly carried out around the Lithuanian Kiev Province, the project was also named after the "chestnut flower", the symbolic plant of Kiev. This revolution was also called the "Chestnut Flower Revolution" and the "Orange Revolution", and was as famous as the "Iris Revolution" and the "Purple Revolution" in Florence in 1474. It became a template case for the Eastern Roman Empire to interfere in the politics of other countries through bloodless means.

The villagers recruited by Trabelsi came from a small village in the south of Kiev Province, Lithuania. The local lord tried to completely serf the village by relying on the laws of his superiors, prohibiting the people from migrating, levying high taxes, and even prohibiting the people from using traditional public land including woods, streams and open spaces for free. People had to pay taxes for cutting wood, fishing, grazing, getting married, inheriting an estate, and having children... A large number of people were on the verge of death.

However, even though such heavy taxes were levied, the lord would not regard these people as his own people. They would not normally live in poor small villages, which provided a lot of convenience for Trabelsi's actions.

After more than a month of preaching and persuasion by Trabelsi, several young and brave men in the village finally made up their minds. They killed the officials who came to collect taxes again, killed the elders in the village who colluded with the lord, took away everything they could take away, and burned everything they could not take away. Thus, they embarked on the road to a better life.

(End of this chapter)