king of ros

Chapter 586 Extra Story: Andronica Conquers Again

At the funeral of Rostislav, the appearance of Andronika Komnenos was very eye-catching. Although the protagonist of this funeral was Rostislav, to be honest, he was not a real person in practice. main character.

It is very rare for so many princes from the Christian world to gather together. For these monarchs and nobles, this funeral actually provided them with a platform for communication.

At Rostislav's funeral, countless political deals were concluded, and countless marriages were concluded. On the surface was the sad funeral of the European grandfather, but under the surface there were various activities with their own ulterior motives.

Since so many princes attended the funeral, a series of political events that occurred in almost the whole of Europe in the next few decades were considered to be achieved at this funeral, so there are many studies on it in later generations.

However, Andronika, the monarch of the Eastern Empire who was supposed to be the center of the conspiracy vortex, actually did not participate in these messy things. He was one of the few people who truly mourned the death of Rosti.

After the funeral, the universal Patriarch who came from Constantinople canonized Rostislav as a saint, and the Catholic envoys present also agreed with this. After all, as a person who lived a full 107 years plus European His grandfather status is more than enough to make him a saint.

Afterwards, the Patriarch distributed Rostislav's corpse soaked in water, which is a Christian tradition. The water soaked in the saint's corpse is considered to have magical effects, and Rostislav, as a saint with so many legends, , His body soaking water immediately won the crowd's eagerness to drink it.

After Rostislav's funeral, Andronika returned to Constantinople, and his reign had begun.

The Roman Empire that Andronica I took over has many problems at the moment. Although John II left a stable empire and a full treasury, it still cannot cover up the icebergs under the water.

The first is the seriousness of land annexation. Since the Komnen family actually used their own family's private property to govern the empire and acted as the largest land annexer, other people naturally followed suit and began to merge wildly, let alone Komnene In order to reward meritorious persons, the Ning family also allocated a lot of land.

It is true that there is nothing wrong with the Comnenos family doing this back then, but times have changed now. These nobles who devoured the land like Leviathans have actually become an unstable factor in the empire, and they are constantly running The resulting bankruptcy of the yeoman will also have a great impact on the rule of the empire.

The second is the chaos and corruption of the imperial bureaucracy. When the Komnenos family took over the empire, the entire empire had lost its eastern half, and the western half was also dilapidated under the flames of war. The idea of ​​continuing to use it is driving this state machine, and it has indeed helped the emperors a lot.

But now, the disadvantages of doing so have also emerged. Huge, bloated, and corrupt have become synonymous with imperial bureaucracy. Although it is okay to continue driving broken cars in the era when everyone drives broken cars, Andro Nika couldn't bear it.

Finally, there is the opposition of Andronica. Manuel still has some invisible supporters all over the empire, and there are also separatist forces that are ready to move because of the independence of the Syrian kingdom.

Faced with these problems, Andronica adopted the method of using strong medicine for serious illnesses. On the one hand, he strongly curbed and even attacked the land annexation of the nobles, forcing them to spit out all the recently annexed lands, and at the same time, he carried out a large-scale attack on the bureaucratic system. On the other hand, he attacked opponents and separatist forces heavily, and the Syrian Kingdom, which was independent under Manuel's stupid policy, became his important target.

While carrying out various reforms, Andronica did not mind using superstitious means to increase his legitimacy, and he took advantage of a prophecy that Manuel had received from the seer: Alexios I. How long can the dynasty rule?The response given is "αιμα" (word), whose first three letters list in order the initials of the Komnenian emperors, Alexios I, John II, Manuel I , the last "α" letter would belong to the emperor after Manuel, namely Andronica.

However, at the same time, there is also an explanation among the people about this αιμα. Alexios’ initial letter is A, John’s initial letter is I, Manuel’s initial letter is M, and Andronika’s initial letter is also A, AIMA together means "blood". Although historians believe that this is just a historical invention of later generations, it does predict the reign of Andronica and the chaos and killings after his death. Therefore, this statement is still accepted by people.

While carrying out vigorous reforms, Andronika did an important event that made the era after his death known as the Age of Blood. He published the pamphlet that Rostislav gave him that year, "Ancient Political Forms" discuss".

As a child brought up by Rostislav, Andronika has one thing that Rostislav thinks very much, that is, he wants to do some social practice, and wants to see if society can be better in different forms , but unlike Rostislav who knew what would be released when opening the box, Andronika was not afraid of tigers as a newborn calf.

And "Discussion on Ancient Political Forms" will therefore be regarded as a banned book after the Age of Blood, and church scholars call it "it must be something written by Satan, just looking at it will cause you to fall, and it will bring endless disasters. "

But now it is still far from that moment, let us continue to discuss the rule of Andronica. With the kingdom of Syria perishing again, the Latins in Syria were either expelled or massacred, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was defeated by Andronica, and after the soldiers approached the city for a time, all this was considered to have come to an end.

After vigorous reforms, the empire has radiated unprecedented vitality. The people generally feel that the burden on their bodies has been lightened and their lives have improved. However, the dignitaries including the church feel very uncomfortable. They were cruelly beaten by Andronica. They dug up a large piece of meat, but they didn't have the courage to resist, because those who resisted were quickly suppressed.

And it was also during these eight years that Andronika combined what she had learned from Rostislav to complete a big job with several highly respected monks.

This great work is quietism (in Rostislav language), the essence of which is that the essence of religion is the embodiment of divine power, and God transmits divine power to the world through thought—"logos", accepting it and influencing people The daily life of God, and God's thought—"Logos" is manifested by endowing people with divine energy, prompting God's will to act on people, and as a result, there is a phenomenon of worshiping a certain person as a god.

The so-called divine power refers to illusory things. In the political and economic ideology of the subjects of the empire, the mention of divine power will immediately produce spiritual reflexes.For example, when a subject receives a reward from the emperor, the preamble of the reward certificate will mention divine power and explain that this divine power can play an important role in managing daily affairs.

In the final analysis, this set is the divine right of the monarch, but Andronika has played a new trick on the basis of his predecessors, and this new trick will be an important way for Andronika to realize his political ideals.

However, if you want to attach such a sacred halo to yourself, you can't just improve the lives of the people. Andronika needs military exploits, which are still great military exploits, but this is exactly what Andronika wants , he wanted to revive the Roman Empire more than anyone else, and his next series of actions allowed him to complete his ideas.

In 1156, Andronica launched the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily. On the battlefield of southern Italy, the monarch of the Eastern Empire demonstrated his unparalleled military capabilities, even with the Kingdom of Sicily having a large amount of assistance from the Catholic world. He still conquered the country and snatched Croatia from the Kingdom of Hungary at will.

At the same time, he abolished the economic privileges of the Latins and expelled the Latins from Constantinople, which brought his popularity to a peak in the empire.

And just when everyone thought that Andronika would stop temporarily, the monarch's next operation made everyone feel fear.

In 1162, Andronica began a large-scale offensive. The number of troops he mobilized directly exceeded 8, and the target was Rome.

As a result, northern Italy became a battlefield, and the Catholic world could not sit back and watch the Eastern Empire take over Italy, so the Holy Roman Emperor and the consuls of northern Italy put aside their disputes and fought against the "tyrant of Constantinople" together Well, as for the Italian city-states headed by Venice, their interests have been damaged, and they have long had sex with the emperor. France, England, and northern Europe also come to some volunteers from time to time.

The Catholic and Orthodox worlds are at war, but the other two powerful Orthodox countries, Ross and Georgia, are slow to respond to this. They do not want to participate in distant wars, and at most let some mercenaries and volunteers participate in the war.

In northern Italy, due to the fact that the two sides invested equal numbers of troops on the battlefield, it was once a stalemate. Both sides built a fortress network, and there were constant battles between ships on the sea. After making sure there were no problems at the front, he moved on to other fronts.

In 1168, in North Africa, the army of the Eastern Empire first took over the occupied area left by the Normans, and then Andronica ran all the way to the east, including the eastern coastline, and they did not stop until Algiers The Carthaginian province of the former empire had been largely recovered.

In 1170, Andronica landed in Spain with 3 people. The Eastern Empire army directly defeated the two most powerful Taifas on the peninsula. All the Taifas of Leah have turned to the imperial army. They have been constantly retreating under the pressure of the Catholic kings in the north. The two powerful Taifas who were defeated before could not stop this trend at all, so now there are stronger ones coming. Moreover, this strong man didn't care much about their Muslim identities, so the Taifas surrendered to the Imperial Legion one after another. In this way, the Empire owned half of Spain in less than a year.

These feats are so brilliant that it reminds people of the distant Justinian era, but Andronica still guides people to Aurelian and think of the "World Restorer".

In the Eastern Empire, due to this series of miraculous achievements, Andronika was regarded as a person favored by God, and the theory of the Silence School was also widely accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that Andronika is now the The gods of the people of the empire, the true gods.

In 1175, Andronica held a grand celebration ceremony on an unprecedented scale in Constantinople, because after so long a bitter battle, the imperial army finally invaded Rome, and the heart of the Roman Empire was recovered!
With Andronica forcibly announcing the merger of the Eastern and Western Churches, once again, Andronica's prestige reached its peak, but what no one expected was that this was the beginning of a change in form.

After regaining Rome, the imperial army marched northward, and the Italian states continued to surrender. Andronica didn't even go to Italy in person, because he thought that there were only rotten fish and rotten shrimps left there. Things changed when it was a matter of time.

The Catholic world did not lose its ability to resist because of the fall of Rome. On the contrary, the Catholic monarchs who still had reservations clearly realized that the "tyrant of Constantinople" really intended to be the "restorer of the world". "!"
This caused great uneasiness in the Catholic world, recalling the rumors of the might of the Roman Empire, and adding to the rumors of the wickedness of Andronica, nobles, towns, peasants, all of whom were concerned about "Constantine The Tyrant of the Fort" was filled with terror.

A new Catholic coalition was organized, and they decided to prevent the resurrection of the monster named Rome. Under such circumstances, Andronica's army continued to suffer defeat.

The news of the failure spread to Constantinople, and the entire capital was in an uproar. Andronica immediately went to Italy to collect it, but continued to suffer failures, and was forced to return to Rome not long after.

The failed Andronica thought about all the reasons, and he finally came to the conclusion that there was a traitor!There must be traitors!And who is the traitor?Of course the nobles!
Andronika returned to Constantinople. He announced that the nobles had betrayed him, and then began to mobilize the masses to attack the nobles. The nobles of the Eastern Empire were shocked by all this. Although they did not like the emperor, they did not As for betraying the emperor.

But the empire has been angered by Andronica, and the pressure of years of war has actually made the people miserable. If it weren't for Andronica's strong prestige and aura of deification, the people would have turned against it long ago.

But now the emperor told everyone that it was because of the nobles that they lived so hard, and it was also because of the nobles that the war was so difficult, and the flame was directly ignited.

What happened in Constantinople was the climax of this incident. The top dignitaries of the empire such as the Dukas family became the main targets of the shock. Many top dignitaries were dragged to the street and killed like dead pigs. Many wealthy businessmen were also wiped out.

In other parts of the empire, many nobles were also hit, but the losses were not as severe as those in Constantinople, and these shocks quickly changed, targeting not only the nobles, but "all rich people" ", and the definition of the rich is very subtle.

After the incident a little later, Andronica used the forcibly collected noble wealth and heavy noble tax to organize a new army. As this army reached Italy, the total number of imperial troops reached 10, and They faced about the same number of Catholic troops.

This is the army that Andronica bought at the cost of using violence to forcibly amass wealth, and if this fails, Andronica's choice is to return to Constantinople, and then try to see if he can keep what he already has. territory.

The battle broke out outside the city of Rome. Before the battle began, Andronica hung the catholic corpses on the road that the catholic army was going to pass. His original intention was to scare them, but the result made the catholic army fight It was even thicker, which made them firmly believe that it was precisely because of everything in front of them that they couldn't resurrect the monster named Rome.

In 1183, more than 20 troops started fighting outside the city of Rome. Both the emperor and the Pope came to the front line. This would be a bloody day, and it would also be a day that would determine the fate of the Christian world.

The battle lasted from 9:6 in the morning to [-]:[-] in the evening. When the sun was about to set, the Catholic army withdrew from the battlefield, and the Orthodox army was unable to continue fighting. The number of wounded is uncountable.

Andronica was considered victorious, but then he discovered that his army could not advance at all. The huge casualties, or in other words, the continuous fighting over the years made the soldiers unable to hold on.

The emperor found that there was only one option before him, which was to retreat. He was very unwilling to retreat because he had a strong feeling in his heart that if he left, all this would be over, but the form was in front of him.

While the whole Latin world was terrified by the outcome of the Roman War, they found that the armies of the Eastern Empire began to retreat, and the tyrant of Constantinople returned to his country.

He even took the initiative to send envoys to express peace, and he didn't want much, just the existing empire territory, and the surrender in name of the Catholic world, and everyone didn't think much about it, just surrender, at least there is no need to fight, everyone With such a promise, the war is finally over.

And three years later, in 1186, the tyrant of Constantinople died, and his era ended.

But everyone in the empire did not expect that the empire after his death would get worse and worse, so that it ushered in the bloody age of blood...

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(End of this chapter)