1453: Revival of Byzantium

"Rivalry and personal vanity should have no place among you, but you should humbly reckon others better than yourselves. You must look to each other's interest and not merely to your own"

-        Paul of Tarsus

The 'Champion Mauro' gloriously saved a town from the Ottomans, earning him both a prestigious title but also a piece of land. When Constantine, who is now lying on a cart, heard about Mauro's brave deeds, granted this piece of land to him, and so now Mauro, like Giovanni, is officially a noble man. This instantly changed Mauro's social statues from a mercenary that every one despises to a nobility. Now the offspring of Mauro can proudly declare themselves carrying the blood lines of a noble even when they are at their poorest moments.

It would take centuries before the idea of nobility becomes a thing only observable in history and achieve a total equality between every men and women.

However, there are people who are unhappy, actually fuming about the news of Mauro's success, especially the elder senator Innocentius. These hatred and annoyance came from one very obvious reason, in his perspective of view Mauro used him as a ladder, he got nothing but shame and humiliation from the others in making this decision. And he does not think that this bad decision making is his mistake, it is only due to misinformation and miscalculation, furthermore it is no doubt still the best way to evade any more casualties.

This event, combined with all those misunderstandings, argument and hassles accumulated working together during the entire battle, with the element of stress and envy as a supplement, pushed Innocentius towards the far end now no longer seeing Mauro as a man that that he can work with, but a traitor who jumped the stairs of the system using him as a ladder, a rival who disgraced and mocked him almost every single day, and an enemy within the court. Also, he did not just stop there seeing Mauro as a rival of him, he now sees Constantine, as well as the entire gang of Latins in the city as potential enemies because they can form a closer bond with Mauro.

Despite all the hate, Innocentius is still unable to do any thing being the leader of the oppositions who does not really hold any important office or powers, the only thing he could do is to urge the senate in to starting a new round of investigation on Mauro and Giovanni, but of course these urges are not being taken seriously by his fellow senators. Which reasonable senate in the world would start to launch an investigation on a national hero who have saved a town from the enemies? At least not the Roman senate at this point of time.

Constantine's second expedition in Thrace finally ended as time steps in to the month of February. Is it a victory for the Romans? Indeed it is, the Basileus finally set his foot outside the Theodosian walls reclaiming a giant piece of land that is all the way until the regional city of Selymbria, the are of the newly acquired lands is almost seven hundred square miles, even larger than a hundred Constantinople combined together. The population of the empire in Thrace expanded from less than fifty thousand people to more than a hundred thousand people, and most importantly it creates a buffer zone between the Ottomans and Constantinople, so that next time a siege by the Ottomans would not be so sudden as they would need to break through these thirty six Roman outposts first before approaching the Theodosian walls.

But it can be also counted as a failure, the empire spent more than three years worth of revenue endangering her to go bankrupt, lost a good thousand plus lives of strong independent men who are able to raise kids, feed families, pay taxes and be drafted for labour. Due to the years of war, the entire region now entered a scenario where by there are much more women than men, forcing women to be independent too raising kids by themselves while working in the fields and looking after the elderlies, replacing a man's traditional roles and jobs in the family.

Tough times produce strong women. But still in this era they cannot replace men's  roles in wars due to natural causes.

And also, because of the battle, the leader of the Romans, their beloved and respected emperor Constantine who is the only person that is able to put the disjointed government, churches and army together and maintaining a relatively corporative relationship with the western states using his diplomatic skills, is now knocked in to unconsciousness by the Ottomans. Now the emperor is no longer able to fulfil his usual tasks serving as the supreme leader, and the already disjointed government organisation showed even more signs of separatism and disunity. If the emperor still do not recover soon, it would soon bring a much more serious internal crisis in Constantinople, potentially leading to a full out confrontation between the so called 'home countrymen' the citizens of Constantinople and the 'outsiders' represented by Giovanni and his Latin faction.

The worst out of the worse, is that Constantine did not appoint a successor when he was awake. People might not have realised it, but their Basileus is now in his grey haired years. The emperor married twice but has no offspring, so who shall be the next emperor? Or shall there be a new dynasty? Nobody knows, and this too might, no foreseeably become a succession crisis.

Nevertheless, the war in Thrace is now over and the region is back to a fragile peace.

…

Antonius has been quite busy for the past four months ever since he started laying hands on the governance of Drama by himself, and it has been even busier for him when the war between Constantine and Edirne started as hundreds or even thousands of refugees decided to flee from their home town and flock in to the domain of Antonius seeking protection through all means possible. The refugees have a relatively similar language, culture background and belief with the original inhabitants of Drama so they are able to blend in quite well in a short period of time. But still there are trouble with their arrival, and it turned out to be a sweet trouble for Antonius as he tried his best to make use of these fresh population, filling up the unallocated lands of Drama, turning them in to independent farmers working for him instead.

Because of this sudden increase of local population, most of the arable lands in Drama has been filled up with the food production next year expected to have a surge of surplus, filling up the warehouses in preparation for the next war. The local government too managed to rebuild itself while being engaged in the work of allocating land to these people; The population census is remade with a far better accuracy, the government now has a clearer understanding on the region's geography and agriculture situation, roads and trades are being re-established because of the increase in population which brought more taxation too.

There is one unexpected outcome of the sudden increase of population, that is they squeezed the raiders and rogues occupying the fields and hills off from their hideouts in a series of minor clashes and fights. These refugees are not just some ordinary obedient farmers found any where else. They are refugees who fought their way through the Ottoman blockades, and most of them knows how to kill. With an advantage in the number of blades they squeezed the bandits and robbers off their lands, forcing them to either flee to another state, or abandon their lives as bandits and return to the lives as farmers, or wait there until they get put off by the patrolling forces of Antonius. Either ways the civil stability and social order of Drama improved dramatically in the last few months.

Antonius did not know all of these though, instead he felt incredibly positive about himself. From his perspective the previous government of Drama screwed up their jobs so damn badly, after he arrived the situation of Drama turned to a totally opposite direction towards the better future. Now Antonius sees himself as a master mind of provincial governance and social politics, taking up an active position in the daily running of Drama's government, and due to his self complacency and confidence even in fields that he is unfamiliar with, it created many jokes in the process among the civil workers and officials.

Antonius did not mind about the jokes at all, and in some occasions he would even laugh with the people when he heard these jokes. He seems to have found a new interest in life going around in the various sectors of government every day with the bitter faced Yuri, instructing people on how to do their jobs in government statistics despite him having never really studied statistical mathematics before in his life.