What if the the Byzantine Empire had won or not have the Battle of Manzikert, assuming that history plays out similar to our timeline with the exception of events influenced by the fall of the Byzantine Empire and such (The Crusades)?
>>1217831
It would have been known as the battle of Theodosiopolis then
>>1217831
If the battle of Manzikert had been won then the Byzantine Empire would've remained a powerhouse, there wouldn't have been the crusades in the first place and who knows how different history would've been.
Here's another question, how would this alternate Byzantine fare against the Mongols?
>>1217912
How the fuck did 1 battle kill an empire.
The roman republic brushed off Cannea, yet the "ERE" basically collapsed after manzikert.
>>1217831
Judging by CK2 they go on to blob all over the place until the Mongols show up and WW1 breaks out.
>>1217968
The battle caused a domino of shitty events to occur and fuck Byzantine's shit up, such as the Crusades.
>>1217928
The Mongols probably would have won.
But I doubt they would have taken any significant gains as happened with Hungary.
>>1217831
Franks and Normans crusade into Spain and Morocco?
>>1217968
The ERE by this point was corrupt as fuck and generally a total administrative shitshow, it wouldn't have taken much to bring the whole thing down.
Had succession fell to someone more interested in ruling than Constantine VIII decades earlier it might have been in better shape to handle a defeat.
>>1217831
>Byzantine army estimates during the battle from 40,000 to 70,000
>half of them desert before the fucking battle began, mostly French and Normans
catholics, not even once
>>1218014
Romanos the VII was the shit Commander in Chief of the Campaign who decided to split up the troops. It also didn't help that the large amount of mercenaries were more loyal to the Seljuks even more had to be dismissed because of acting like local bandits.
>>1218086
Romanos was a retard.
But he was simply one of a long line of retards.
>>1218099
agreed on your historical dubs
>>1218086
>>1218099
It was Romanos IV. And calling him a retard is a bit unfair, he was literally one of the only people left in Constantinople willing to do fuck-all about the Seljuks while the Doukids were more interested in standing around watching everything go to shit.
Attaleiates was with him on most of his campaigns and even though everybody basically agreed that the thematic armies in the 11th century had gone to shit, Romanos was dynamic and capable enough of a military emperor to re-invigorate them to some degree and could've been in a good spot to shore up the sorry state of the themes in Anatolia.
What he did that made him "a retard" was to think that the Doukids were loyal to him. Manzikert was a complete stalemate before the miscommunication/betrayal happened and Andronikos just ditched with the reserve and turned an organized retreat into a panicked rout since.
Even after that, casualties weren't exceptionally high and most of the men loyal to Romanos rejoined him when he was escorted back home. Alp Arslan's terms were extremely generous to the Byzantines and left the most important parts of Anatolia unmolested. But Arslan's assurances weren't going to keep Byzantine holdings from getting whittled down by constant Seljuk encroachments and migrations.
What really fucked the Byzantines over was how destabilizing the events afterward were: Romanos getting defeated, deposed, and blinded, and the awful civil wars that followed long afterward.
>>1217831
Had they won Manzikert, the Turks who fled the Seljuks would have been more politically isolated and become closer vassals to the emperor than they already were. Instead you'd have had a mass rebellion in the Balkans and Sicily, this time precipitated by a sudden mass desertion of Turkic vassals instead of Franks, and possibly creating a chaotic flow of Turks into the Balkans to create a sort of Turkish version of the Crusader States.
>>1217831
The turks and Venice would still slowly grind it down, and the internal corruption and political backstabbings would still happen.
You'd need to undo the entire 11th century crisis, not just Manzikert. Even then, Byzantium had declined in several fields, not just land/warfare. Without Manzikert and subsequently Alexios' rise to power some years later, there would be no Komnenian Restoration, which reinvigorated and restored the Empire in several fields in which it had declined, not just land and influence. Without the Komnenian Restoration, Byzantium could have probably fell apart quicker.
One upside is the fact that without the Crusader States, Near-Eastern Islam may have never unified as it gradually did under Zengi, Nur ad-Din, Saladin and the Mamlukes. Whilst this would make it easier for Byzantium to exert influence over and annex various lands, it would mean there would be nothing to stop the Mongols later on, as the Mamlukes did.
>>1217968
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Rome's strength was never as much in brilliant generals as their ability to recover from any defeat and bring more and better trained enemies to the field than the enemy. The Byzantines simply no longer had this ability due to decaying administration, corruption and a lack of patriotic vigor.
A drastically different future
Impossible to predict. Manzikert wasn't even that catastrophic on it's own. What was catastrophic were the events that followed it.
ERE didn't fall just because of enemies, it fell because of infighting.
More Romans.
They would have most likely be here today
>>1217831
>Battle of Manzikert
This is an overrated battle.
>casualties were low
>most units suffered very few dead and were fighting elsewhere within months
>all the commanders survived
It was the civil war that gave Anatolia away, not this battle.
