Eparkhos
Well-known member
As the center of this timeline will be an Empire of Trebizond revived by the 1472 revolt, which is an extremely obscure event (I have scrounged together this information from two articles and a passing reference on the Wikipedia page for the Metropolitan of Trebizond), I will provide a brief recount of OTL events:
The Ottoman conquest of the former Trapezuntine Empire had been a patchwork affair, with the only real concern being the rich trading port of Trebizond itself and a few coastal mines, and as such a number of former Trapezuntine landowners had been allowed to keep their land and their arms in exchange for fealty, taxes and campaigning against the Turkmen tribes of the region, which were an unholy terror and threat to both the Ottomans and the Ponts. Dotted throughout all of this were a handful of minor fortified cities and estates, most notably the silver-producing fortress-city of Tzantza-Torul, which were completely independent and paid no tribute to either the Ottomans or the local Turkmen tribes, and the numerous Laz clans which were nominal vassals of tribal councils in a half-dozen strongholds but in practice answered to no-one. Bear in mind that most of the Turkmen tribes were also subject to the Aq Qoyunlu Horde, whose summer capital was on the high-steppe (grasslands above the treeline) near nearby Erzincan. The point I’m trying to get across is that everything was super chaotic, which is why the narrative I’m giving is more of a rough guestimate based on parsing out conflicting sources than gospel truth.
In the late spring / early summer of 1472, revolt broke out across Ottoman Pontus. Nine of the ex-Trapezuntine landowning families, known collectively as the Nine Sipahis, revolted and likely executed the few Ottoman officials in the interior valleys, proclaimed a certain Alexios Komnenos--more on him later--as the true emperor and marched on Trebizond.
Why they did this isn’t attested, but what I suspect is that they revolted at the behest of Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu. In 1463, Hasan had led the Aq Qoyunlu in an attack on Trebizond that had taken and sacked the city, but had been forced to retreat when a large Ottoman army arrived to chase them off. Now that Uzun Hasan was marching westward on a campaign intended to destroy the Ottomans, or at the very least reduce them to tributaries, I suspect that he saw a revolt in Pontus as an excellent way of diverting Ottoman attention and resources from his main campaign. It should also be noted that one of Uzun Hasan’s wives, and supposedly his favorite, was Despina Khatun or Theodora Megalokomnene, a niece of the last Emperor of Trebizond and a woman of great intelligence and determination who supposedly wished to reestablish Trebizond as a client of her husband’s empire, which lends support to my theory.
Anyway, the Nine Sipahis come down out of the mountains and lay siege to Trebizond. They are (supposedly) led by Alexios Komnenos--again, more on him later--but the real leader of the revolt is a member of the Tzanichidis family referred to only by the honorific ‘sebastos’ in contemporary records, which I suspect to be a bastardization of the given name Sebastianos, which is the name that will be used for him from here-on. Sebastianos Tzanichidis was likely middle-aged, having appeared on tax roles since the 1450s, and was evidently a rather influential and charismatic man. However, he was not operating with the full support of his family behind him, as his brother Konstantinos Tzanichidis, the ruler of Tzantza-Torul, survived the post-revolt purge and held power until 1480, which suggests that he did become involved. The conclusions which can be drawn from this are…varied, and I have spent a great deal of time puzzling over this, but suffice to say that the Revolt of the Nine Sipahis had limited support from the surviving Pontic nobility, most of whom likely adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. However, the revolt was back wholeheartedly by the common people of Matzouka (Degirmendere Valley), who formed their militias and came down out of the highlands in great numbers to assist the siege. At the height of the revolt, the rebels succeeded in driving the Turkish garrison of Trebizond out of the unwalled city and quite possibly out of the walled lower town, but I can’t establish that for sure.
Then things fell apart. Due to unknown reasons--though I suspect they did so at the behest of the Ottomans, as they escaped the later purge--two of the nine sipahis broke off and abandoned the siege, significantly lowering strength and morale. The remaining force tried to maintain the siege, but by the middle of summer Uzun Hasan had begun to retreat and the Ottomans felt safe enough to dispatch a fleet led by the Kapudan Pasha to retake Trebizond. The Ottomans landed on the plains east of the city and attacked the rebel army from the rear, driving it up towards the walls, and either a secondary landing or a sally from the garrison then appeared from the west and closed the trap, resulting in a slaughter. Some of the nobles survived and were stripped of their lands and enslaved, but most of the rebels were ultimately killed. Any hope of a Trapezuntine restoration was thus crushed, and the remnants were then ground up and disposed of after Uzun Hasan was defeated at Otlukbeli the following year.
The final twist is that Alexios Komnenos did not exist, or at the very least was not Alexios Komnenos. The penultimate Trapezuntine emperor, Alexios V, had been a mere nine years old and reigned for a month before being deposed by his uncle, held prisoner briefly and then captured with the rest of his family in 1461 and executed with them two years later, at which point the Megalokomnenoi appear to have gone extinct in the male line. What I suspect, but cannot prove, is that the ‘Alexios Komnenos’ that participated in the revolt of 1472 was an impostor, likely also a minor so that there was no risk of him getting out of Tzanichidis/the Aq Qoyunlu’s hands. My evidence for this is Alexios V’s earlier death under distant circumstances, which would have meant the general population could have been led to believe that he was the old emperor, and that Uzun Hasan had previously tried to raise a figurehead Komnenos during his invasion of 1463, which had caused the execution of the male Komnenoi in the first place.
With these circumstances--a noble revolt to install an imposter child-emperor at the behest of a foreign empire--established, let us go on into allohistory.
The Ottoman conquest of the former Trapezuntine Empire had been a patchwork affair, with the only real concern being the rich trading port of Trebizond itself and a few coastal mines, and as such a number of former Trapezuntine landowners had been allowed to keep their land and their arms in exchange for fealty, taxes and campaigning against the Turkmen tribes of the region, which were an unholy terror and threat to both the Ottomans and the Ponts. Dotted throughout all of this were a handful of minor fortified cities and estates, most notably the silver-producing fortress-city of Tzantza-Torul, which were completely independent and paid no tribute to either the Ottomans or the local Turkmen tribes, and the numerous Laz clans which were nominal vassals of tribal councils in a half-dozen strongholds but in practice answered to no-one. Bear in mind that most of the Turkmen tribes were also subject to the Aq Qoyunlu Horde, whose summer capital was on the high-steppe (grasslands above the treeline) near nearby Erzincan. The point I’m trying to get across is that everything was super chaotic, which is why the narrative I’m giving is more of a rough guestimate based on parsing out conflicting sources than gospel truth.
In the late spring / early summer of 1472, revolt broke out across Ottoman Pontus. Nine of the ex-Trapezuntine landowning families, known collectively as the Nine Sipahis, revolted and likely executed the few Ottoman officials in the interior valleys, proclaimed a certain Alexios Komnenos--more on him later--as the true emperor and marched on Trebizond.
Why they did this isn’t attested, but what I suspect is that they revolted at the behest of Uzun Hasan, the leader of the Aq Qoyunlu. In 1463, Hasan had led the Aq Qoyunlu in an attack on Trebizond that had taken and sacked the city, but had been forced to retreat when a large Ottoman army arrived to chase them off. Now that Uzun Hasan was marching westward on a campaign intended to destroy the Ottomans, or at the very least reduce them to tributaries, I suspect that he saw a revolt in Pontus as an excellent way of diverting Ottoman attention and resources from his main campaign. It should also be noted that one of Uzun Hasan’s wives, and supposedly his favorite, was Despina Khatun or Theodora Megalokomnene, a niece of the last Emperor of Trebizond and a woman of great intelligence and determination who supposedly wished to reestablish Trebizond as a client of her husband’s empire, which lends support to my theory.
Anyway, the Nine Sipahis come down out of the mountains and lay siege to Trebizond. They are (supposedly) led by Alexios Komnenos--again, more on him later--but the real leader of the revolt is a member of the Tzanichidis family referred to only by the honorific ‘sebastos’ in contemporary records, which I suspect to be a bastardization of the given name Sebastianos, which is the name that will be used for him from here-on. Sebastianos Tzanichidis was likely middle-aged, having appeared on tax roles since the 1450s, and was evidently a rather influential and charismatic man. However, he was not operating with the full support of his family behind him, as his brother Konstantinos Tzanichidis, the ruler of Tzantza-Torul, survived the post-revolt purge and held power until 1480, which suggests that he did become involved. The conclusions which can be drawn from this are…varied, and I have spent a great deal of time puzzling over this, but suffice to say that the Revolt of the Nine Sipahis had limited support from the surviving Pontic nobility, most of whom likely adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. However, the revolt was back wholeheartedly by the common people of Matzouka (Degirmendere Valley), who formed their militias and came down out of the highlands in great numbers to assist the siege. At the height of the revolt, the rebels succeeded in driving the Turkish garrison of Trebizond out of the unwalled city and quite possibly out of the walled lower town, but I can’t establish that for sure.
Then things fell apart. Due to unknown reasons--though I suspect they did so at the behest of the Ottomans, as they escaped the later purge--two of the nine sipahis broke off and abandoned the siege, significantly lowering strength and morale. The remaining force tried to maintain the siege, but by the middle of summer Uzun Hasan had begun to retreat and the Ottomans felt safe enough to dispatch a fleet led by the Kapudan Pasha to retake Trebizond. The Ottomans landed on the plains east of the city and attacked the rebel army from the rear, driving it up towards the walls, and either a secondary landing or a sally from the garrison then appeared from the west and closed the trap, resulting in a slaughter. Some of the nobles survived and were stripped of their lands and enslaved, but most of the rebels were ultimately killed. Any hope of a Trapezuntine restoration was thus crushed, and the remnants were then ground up and disposed of after Uzun Hasan was defeated at Otlukbeli the following year.
The final twist is that Alexios Komnenos did not exist, or at the very least was not Alexios Komnenos. The penultimate Trapezuntine emperor, Alexios V, had been a mere nine years old and reigned for a month before being deposed by his uncle, held prisoner briefly and then captured with the rest of his family in 1461 and executed with them two years later, at which point the Megalokomnenoi appear to have gone extinct in the male line. What I suspect, but cannot prove, is that the ‘Alexios Komnenos’ that participated in the revolt of 1472 was an impostor, likely also a minor so that there was no risk of him getting out of Tzanichidis/the Aq Qoyunlu’s hands. My evidence for this is Alexios V’s earlier death under distant circumstances, which would have meant the general population could have been led to believe that he was the old emperor, and that Uzun Hasan had previously tried to raise a figurehead Komnenos during his invasion of 1463, which had caused the execution of the male Komnenoi in the first place.
With these circumstances--a noble revolt to install an imposter child-emperor at the behest of a foreign empire--established, let us go on into allohistory.