>Basil II was preparing to launch a massive campaign in Italy at the time of his death
JUST
>Basil II was preparing to launch a massive campaign in Italy at the time of his death
>Basil II was preparing to launch a massive campaign in Italy at the time of his death
JUST
It's better that he died before the failure tarnished his legacy.
This.
The Byzantines needed to spend less resources on trying to retake Italy and more on not getting Rolled by the Seljuk Turks.
Had they done that they might not have need the Papacy to come save them.
The Seljuk Turks were nobodies in Central Asia at the time of Basil's death retard.
Did you want him to read the future with his crystal ball?
Steppe tribes came and went, Constantinople stood. Why would the Turks be any different?
Many such cases!
Maybe instead of planning another invasion he should have planned out his succession a little better.
I've heard the suggestion that he had a deal with his brother Constantine that he would remain celibate after taking power and focus on the armies of the empire while his brother would cmanage the court and reate children for the succession, but all those ended up being women.
3 daughters too so cosmically bad luck.
Cringe they were making the same mistake as the Ottomans in focusing on europe
They should have instead aim for the middle east
That was Basill II's idea.
He believed areas with heavy Muslim populations were extremely costly to integrate and rule over so his idea of grand strategy was to sign treaties and keep the balance in the Middle East between Byzantium and the Fatimids while he would expand the empire's territory and influence over Christian areas.
Get your backyard in order and then we may start thinking about Italy old man
So, how would the pope and holy roman emperor react?
>Thank you for finally defeating the Saracens in Sicily oh great Roman emperor! Yes of course South Italy belongs to you haha just please don't kick me out of Rome...
The Emperors (males) make out and form a commonwealth
The Pope would have been brought in chains back to Constantinple to answer for his crimes.
>Implying that the pope wouldn't bolt north and give the holy roman emperor a shitload of gold to fight the Byzantines
Why? Byzantines still had solid chunk of South Italy and this was merely reclaiming Sicily after a governor there went rogue in 9th century (I think because he married a nun or something) and invited in Arabs to help him. From then on, Sicily was used as pirate hq all along the Italian coast. Pope would be pretty fucking happy and this was before West/East divide was really antagonistic
>Unironically believing Byzantium would be able to overcome the Germans
They have been doing this for literal centuries up to this point even with the Carolingians in Southern Italy and were incapable of stopping initial Carolingian expansion into the region and were unable to dislodge their influence through many campaigns and many deals. The Lombards of Southern Italy acknowledged the Holy Roman Emperor and sided with him overwhelmingly against Byzantium when push came to shove. This being a time when Royal power in Germany was at an all time high and Italy being their main stomping ground.
Wasn't it to take back Sicily? Michael IV did the same thing but fucked everything up by screwing over Maniakes+the norman/lombard mercenaries (which then later led to Norman conquest of Byzantine south italy)
To take back Sicily and consolidate the South of Italy.
The campaign that did end up happening a decade later was much downscaled in scope due to happenings in other regions of the empire.
Well it was going great until basedboys cried and accused Maniakes of treason
He literally called the emperor a homosexual.
Did he? I thought he just beat up and mocked Stephen for being an incompetent nepotism admiral, and then Stephen exaggerated to his brother in law emperor?
His "mockery" of Stephen was that the only reason he had received the position of admiral was because he had performed sexual favors on the emperor.
Based Maniakes, if only he lived long enough to take the throne, what could've been...VGH. I'll have to resort to larping the scenario in crusader kings in the future.
>tfw your wife's boyfriend gives you a foot massage while he's visiting your palace
>doesn't know what a turk is
Avars were Turks. And the Byzantines had been in active contact with the Gokturks in their endless Persian wars to arrange the classic two front war (which the Persians replicated with Slavs, Goths and anybody else they could find the Balkans at the time).