Gallipoli

Now that the royal family was reunited, they began their final leg of the journey home.

Everyone boarded a Venetian galley and headed north for Gallipoli.

This was the entrance into hostile territory.

But ever since Tamerlane, the siege had been lifted and the Ottomans no longer concerned themselves with fighting the Romans, for they were now concerned with their own lives.

Just a decade before, his nephew had staged a coup, and now he had to hope that John's taste for power hadn't consumed him.

Manuel must have thought it just as likely that John VII would keep the throne and possibly lock up his entire family.

So when John VII met him at Gallipoli, there was no guarantee what would happen.

Well, it turns out that John VII was a man of his word.

Or we could continue to push forward with an army.

And so they decide to continue and to land troops, of course, at Gallipoli to try to take the forts out.

Of course, understanding that the physical geography here is is entirely against them because the troops are landed near a beach.

They have to go way, way, way up and then attack forts at the top of a hill.

Actually, they do serve a little bit in the war before they go back to Europe.

So they're actually part of the operations at Gallipoli.

Okay, interesting.

So yeah, my great-grandpa, in fact, was in the Indian Army, and he went to Gallipoli.

So they used a lot of troops based in India, the India garrison, both the forgotten campaign of the First World War, which is the Mesopotamian campaign in modern Iraq, which was a, well, at points was a disaster, a very embarrassing setback for the British Empire.

That was a lot of Indian troops there.

And then Indian troops, troops from India, both Indian and British in terms of ethnicity, if you like, were brought up through the Suez Canal and were deployed in Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire, the famous Dardanelles Straits campaign that went disastrously badly as well.

Yeah, and actually another little plug because we did a series on the Dardanelles campaign a few months ago on the pod.

You just close your eyes, particularly here in the ocean as we are, here at this natural cove.

And what it must have been like there at Gallipoli.

What's it like standing here before sunrise on Anzac Day?

Well, it's just really moving.

Perfect.

So, I think, folks, the territory in light yellow, that is what the Ottomans kind of started acquiring when they began expanding, especially across the, like, you know, crossing the Gallipoli Peninsula, heading into Europe.

Because right now, they are fighting wars on literally multiple fronts.

They are It's really a balancing act because the moment they focus a bit more on the Anatolian Turks and their rivals there, you are going to have dissent in the Christian regions of the Balkans.