Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!

Praetorium of Mediolanum, evening of December 31 424

“Father!” Flavius Eucherius shouted as he hurried up the stairs and flung open the door to Stilicho’s quarters, but immediately quieted down when he caught his aged mother’s reproachful glare and saw that everyone else gathered around the older man’s bed had done so in grim silence. He swept the Pannonian cap off his head and approached more slowly with his head bowed, as if he were an official and his father the Emperor rather than the other way around, slipping into a space between his dark-haired wife and eldest son – no doubt they had already said their farewells to the imperial generalissimo earlier, and his younger children had equally certainly been sent to bed by this late hour. “Forgive my tardiness, I came as quickly as I could, but the snows have made the Alpine passes treacherous at best.” Other than the high civil officials of court standing about the room, such as Joannes, he could see that they were joined this day by Alaric the Goth and his son Theodoric, both of whom were sitting in the corner with rather grim expressions on their faces.

“No worries, my son.” That Stilicho said these words in a thin wheeze, and that the old magister militum was bedridden and visibly pale beneath the candlelight, made Eucherius worry all the more. All his life, his father had seemed to him the very image of strength and vitality; that he had been reduced to this state, unable to even rise from his bed and bound beneath many blankets for fear that a cold breeze could blow his life away, was both almost incomprehensible and terrifying. “What matters is that you are here, now, while I still draw breath.”

“Nay, what matters is that you still draw breath at all, father.” The shaky quality to Eucherius’ own voice alerted Stilicho in turn, and he released his grip on the hand of his sole surviving daughter Thermantia – now garbed in a nun’s habit, having retired to a convent after the death of her husband Honorius – to instead grasp his son by the wrist. His grip was much weaker than it had been even a year or two ago however, and so it was far less reassuring a gesture than he had thought it would be. “What has the medicus found? Is this but a fleeting illness?”

Galla Placidia shook her head next to him, even as she gently placed one hand on her lordly husband’s shoulder. “A severe imbalance of humors, specifically of blood – that is what he said. He has already let out some more blood for the day, and instructed us to keep the blankets on to induce sweating.” The empress could not hide her grimace at the sight of her visibly weakening father-in-law. Was the medicus’ treatment not working? That could not be; it matched up perfectly with all she, and everyone else in the room, knew of Galen’s writings on humors. A feverish state, being both hot and moist, was clearly caused by an excess of blood, and the solution was to drain said excess by bloodletting and sweating…

“I cannot say I feel any better now than I did when the treatment began.” Stilicho shook his head without lifting it from his pillow. “But if the worst should transpire, and I fail to see tomorrow – “

“You will. You must!” Eucherius could not hide the note of desperation in his voice, returning his father’s grip with a much stronger one on the latter’s own wrist. “Rome still has need of you, father, as do I. We all do. We both know the last few years of peace you have won us cannot last forever, and indeed will likely not last much longer.”

“I remember well what we discussed last we set foot in the war room, son.” Stilicho coughed, needing a moment to settle down. “But my life is squarely in the hands of our Lord. If it is His will that I live to see another sunrise, I shall; if not, then I shall not. Only the rebellious Britons are so haughty and presumptuous to defy the destinies He has marked for each of us.” He sighed and looked up squarely into his only son’s eyes, taking notice of the trace of tears at their corners; something he had not seen since Eucherius was a boy. “Why do you grieve, Eucherius? Rome is finally secure from all threats. If I am called to our Father’s judgment tonight, I can face Him and give an accounting of all my triumphs and failures both without fear or regret, counting the state of the Empire among the former and certainly not among the latter.”

“Those rebel Britons you speak of, the barbarians stalking outside our gates, the East – they’ve all been quiet for too long.” Eucherius asserted, unwilling to let go of his father’s arm and inhaling deeply to steady himself. “No doubt they have been rebuilding their strength just as we have, father. When they strike – and we know they will – we must face them together, as we always have.”

“Yes…no doubt, indeed.” Stilicho sighed again. When he closed his eyes to blink, a wave of weariness struck him, and he had to fight a strong temptation to not open them again. “But when they strike, they will face you, Flavius Eucherius Augustus. The empire will be safe in your hands, you have proven that already. Martial strength, leadership on the battlefield and in peacetime both, the humility and patience to listen to those trying to help you…you’ve shown me you are capable of all these things.” He groaned and shifted slightly, wanting to prove to himself as much as his family and court that he was still strong enough to move. “Just exercise a healthy degree of caution in all your statecraft and battles both, and I am certain you will do fine, with or without me. You have many other worthy companions still to aid you in the battles ahead…”

“Aye, that he does. Including myself.” Came the gruff voice of Alaric, who had arisen from his seat and walked up to the emperor with surprisingly light steps for a man of his size. His hair had gone all gray now, just like his rival-turned-friend’s, and his own eyes had grown increasingly clouded, though fortunately for his remaining enemies Theodoric was still in his prime and able to remind all around of the fury of the fire-haired Balthings with a mean look. The barbarian king clapped Eucherius on the shoulder as the latter was inhaling deeply to contain his emotions and continued, “Have no fear, old friend. I am proud to have fought both against and with a worthy man like yourself, and will be just as proud to fight for your son against anyone who might challenge us.”

“…yes indeed, Alaric.” Stilicho looked just as surprised at the Visigoth’s display of friendship as his imperial son. The Goth typically wore his heart on his sleeve and was about as subtle as a warhammer to the face, and he’d be lying if he said the tribulations of the past decades had not forged ties of genuine companionship between the two old enemies – not to mention that, as he felt these were probably his final hours, he wished to avoid thinking uncharitable thoughts before facing God the Father – so he truly did not want to think Alaric was lying to gain their confidence in his final hours. But some old doubts die harder than the men carrying them. “I will pray that the bond of friendship between our peoples will endure for another thousand years. I must confess that I never expected to have a barbarian at my side in my last hours, however...”

“Oh?” If Alaric was offended, he didn’t show it, instead grinning beneath his silver beard. “Then what about a friend?”

“Now that, I was hoping for.” Stilicho matched Alaric’s deep laughter with a weak chuckle of his own and raised his other hand to shake the barbarian king’s one last time, while Eucherius and the other Romans present stood nonplussed. They’d all witnessed Alaric and Stilicho interacting on increasingly friendlier terms over the years, and it made sense considering how often the pair had fought together against threats to both their lives and peoples, but this was the first time any of them had heard the latter actually call the former his friend.

“Myself, I never expected to ever say this, either – but I will miss you, Flavius Stilicho.” Since pulling the magister militum into a manly embrace was not possible in the latter’s current condition, Alaric settled for clasping Stilicho’s raised hand with both of his own and giving it a firm shake. He did not notice the glance Stilicho shot toward the emperor, all but warning the latter not to completely lower his guard around the Visigoths even after this display. However, the gesture was not missed by Theodoric, who – never having been as close to Stilicho or even Eucherius – had been content to observe from his seat, and narrowed his eyes at the three older men. Was it even possible to get the Romans to fully trust him and his people, ever?

“Great general, the confessor has arrived.” Joannes cut in, having greeted the priest at the door to spare his overlord from the interruption. That was the cue for the Roman court to begin leaving Stilicho’s side, for his confession could not be heard by any other than God (through said confessor). Last to leave, of course, were Serena, Eucherius and the immediate imperial family.

To his grandson Romanus, Stilicho left a few words of wisdom. “Remember what I told you the first time your father allowed you to sit at the war table, Caesar: if you ever face the Huns, try to corner them against the geography of the battlefield, and if they should flee before you, think carefully over whether you should pursue them or not.”

To Thermantia, Eucherius and Galla Placidia, he left some final praises. “To think, I have watched you grow from toddlers at my feet to the fine man and women you are now. I do not wish to sound uncharitable towards your brother, my good-daughter, but it is equally important that I am honest as I prepare to face the Almighty: you and Eucherius have been – and, I am sure, will continue to be – far finer rulers of the Occident than he was. May God continue to watch over you, the Roman People, and I suppose even the Senate as well…”

To his wife Serena, the magister militum had the least to say. Theirs had been a political marriage arranged by the elder Theodosius as a reward for Stilicho’s loyal and competent service, and had initially been as frosty as most political marriages tended to be. But the two increasingly warmed up after the birth of their son and daughters, and through the various political crises they navigated together. When she kissed him on the cheek for the last time she heard him say, “I love you,” with sincerity in his voice, and lingered by his bedside for longer than she thought she would.

Not long after the priest heard his final confession of sins and administered the last rites, Stilicho closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. This time he truly would not open them again, though it took till morning for anyone to find that the longtime savior of the Occident had – despite the hopes of his son – passed away. Thus ended one of the most important chapters in the history of the Western Roman Empire...

As news spread of Stilicho’s death, so too did boldness to act against the empire he could no longer protect. First to act were several Alamannic and Suevic tribes, who moved to cross the Rhine toward the end of the spring of 425. After receiving reports of their coming from Arbogast and the garrison commanders of Augusta Treverorum and Mogontiacum, Eucherius, Aetius and the rebuilt Gallic legions (as well as a 5,000-man contingent of Frankish federates under their king Faramund[1]) hurried to respond, meeting the new threat in battle near the latter city where the late Arigius had fought off a larger and meaner horde nineteen years before.

There the 17,000-strong Western Roman and Frankish army met a Germanic horde nearly three times their size, and proved their worth just as their Emperor did on the same crossings. Eucherius formed his infantry into stiff shield-walls at each and every crossing the Germans thought to cross, personally commanding the defense of the widest of the fords where the heaviest Germanic offensive fell, while Aetius led their cavalry reserve and raced to reinforce any point where it seemed the Western Roman defense was faltering throughout the day. Eventually the Alamanni and Sueves had had enough and dispersed back into their forests under the weight of Roman spears, swords and plumbatae, leaving behind nearly 6,000 dead compared to barely 1,000 Western Romans. Eucherius had proven, at least to the barbarians on the other side of the Rhine, that he was not to be taken lightly even without his father at his side.


Out east, Alaric petitioned Eucherius for the office of magister militum now that Stilicho was dead, and both out of respect at the man’s ability in his father’s service and so as to not antagonize the king who could flip the allegiance of his eastern provinces on a whim, the emperor assented in the spring. The Gothic king had only just gotten word of his appointment before the Huns, having also heard the news, decided to test the strength of the Stilicho-less Western Empire with their own 10,000-strong incursion. Combining the Illyrian legions under Marcellinus with his own Visigoth army for a total strength of 20,000, Alaric marched to meet Khagan Octar near Bononia[2] on the border. Here too the Romans and their federate allies were victorious, and without even actually fighting – Octar decided the Western Romans were still too strong to contend with immediately after Stilicho’s death, and retreated both to avoid a battle he was not entirely confident of winning and to ensure no harm came to his nephew, still a hostage at Ravenna.

The Western Empire thus bought itself a little while longer to continue recovering and rebuilding in peace, while the Huns decided to seek out easier pickings and assail the Eastern Empire starting in 426: Bleda had informed his uncles of the East’s fabulous wealth and the splendor of Constantinople after returning from Syria, and after the standoff outside Bononia Octar & Rugila decided that the half of the empire which had lost every war they fought against Stilicho would probably be easier to extort than the Occident. In that same year Bishop Augustine of Hippo, by now in his seventies, published his magnum opus: De Civitate Dei, or ‘The City of God’. Inspired by Stilicho’s stalwart defense of the Western Roman Empire from all threats – Roman and barbarian, internal and external – and the so-far quite solid reign of Eucherius, he laid out his argument that Christianity, far from bringing about an age of Roman decline as pagan critics of the post-Theodosian regime claimed it would, had instead rejuvenated the empire and made it mighty again.

The aged bishop further asserted that the history of the world was one of eternal conflict between the ‘City of God’ – the righteous who have forsaken the luxuries of the world to instead devote all their energy to God – and the ‘City of the Devil’ – the opposite, godless hedonists who have entirely lost themselves in the fleeting pleasures which Satan provides and have no interest in divine truth. In-between was the ‘Earthly City’ or ‘City of Man’: the morally neutral authority of the state, which could be swayed in either direction. Naturally, Augustine asserted that the City of God would eventually triumph in conjunction with a strong and faithful City of Man (as demonstrated by Christian victories at the Milvian Bridge, the Frigidus and then over the pagan Priscus Attalus). Furthermore it was the duty of every Christian to ensure that not only would the City of Man be firmly allied with that of God to crush the City of the Devil while rooting out the latter’s agents (the pagans, as well as any non-Nicene barbarians and heretics), but that they put in the effort to strengthen a righteously-aligned Earthly City to accelerate the Lord’s final victory.

These all added up to a most welcome message for both Roman imperial courts indeed, for they both absolutely wanted their subjects to pay their taxes, join their legions and not constantly rebel against their emperors. Eucherius and Theodosius II further welcomed any reinforcement of the idea that their rule and the integrity of the Roman Empire were sanctioned by God, as well.


Speaking of the Earthly City, Alaric (who Augustine would not have considered one of the righteous, on account of his lifelong Arianism) would not get to enjoy his office for long nor to hatch whatever conspiracies and plots he may have thought up once Eucherius named him magister militum, for he also died of old age in January of 427 – having held that honor for just below two years. His successor Theodoric petitioned Eucherius for the same office, but the Western Augustus chose the African count Boniface (with whom he had secured Hispania from Theodosian usurpers in the War of Four Emperors) instead. Theodoric did not take this slight lightly. He raised his banner in revolt almost immediately, quickly gaining control of the countryside of northeastern Illyricum and boxing Marcellinus and the loyal legions in Thessalonica & the southern parts of Diocese of Macedonia.

By the time Eucherius & Boniface had amassed a sufficiently large suppression force in Salona and prepared to march, the Visigoths had occupied Larissa and raided as far as Thebes. And while the imperial army had soundly defeated Theodoric at Scupi[3] and Stobi[4], the Visigoths turned the tables on the emperor at Rampi[5], using the nearby lakes to bottleneck Eucherius’ legions into unfavorable terrain. Theodoric’s victory at Rampi ensured that the conflict could not be wrapped up before the end of 427, and that a military solution would be more expensive than Eucherius had initially bargained. The biggest bit of good news Eucherius received this year, therefore, was that his father's mausoleum in Mediolanum was finally complete.

However, the Huns managed to secure a favorable settlement with the Eastern Roman court in early 428 after first pillaging the Thracian countryside and even briefly menacing Constantinople (though they lacked the siege weapons to take the Queen of Cities), as the eunuch Chrysaphius persuaded Theodosius II it would be less dangerous to just pay them off instead of trying to fight them in the field so soon after their wars with Persia and the Western Romans. While Octar and Rugila were counting their gold, emissaries from the Western imperial court arrived to ask them if they’d be willing to attack the Visigoths from the north. Since they had just won an annual tribute of 300 pounds of gold from the Eastern Romans, they instead demanded the return of their nephew Attila from Ravenna, a request which Eucherius – happy to not have to pay any price in gold or soil to the Hunnish rulers, and still blissfully unaware of the dark destiny which Attila had looming ahead of him – granted.

To their credit, the Huns actually kept their word and directed their recently victorious warriors to flank the Visigoths instead of immediately returning over the Danube. Theodoric was not prepared for this sudden onslaught, and sued for peace after Rugila and Bleda came within sight of his capital of Serdica. Eucherius, for his part, did not want to completely destroy the Visigoths because they were a genuinely valuable source of manpower when loyal and for fear that it’d leave his border with the Eastern Romans & Huns vulnerable.

Instead, the terms they hashed out were that: Theodoric and the Visigoths should pay restitution to any Romans who they had wounded, whose property they had damaged and/or whose kin and friends they had killed, in addition to releasing any Romans they had carried off; that on top of the financial damages, 15,000 Visigoths should be made available for corvée labor for the empire’s benefit for the next five years, followed by another 15,000 for the 5 years after the first group’s term was up; and that his eldest son and daughter, Thorismund[6] and Theodesinda[7], should be sent to Ravenna, to be raised as hostages under Eucherius’ wing. In return, while Eucherius was still not going to make him magister militum, he did assent to the betrothal of his own heir Romanus to Theodesinda, who would undergo a second baptism to become a member of the Nicene Church before the wedding and who in any case was much closer to the barely pubescent Caesar in age than Eucherius’ initial choice for a daughter-in-law, the Eastern Roman princess Licinia Eudoxia.


The latter half of 428 and 429 passed without much incident, barring two fortunately contained incursions: one from beyond the Rhine in the early winter of 429 which was seen off by Count Arbogast and Faramund of the Salian Franks, and another by the Juthungi across the Danube in the summer of that year, which was repelled by Marcellinus and Gothic federates under Sigisvultus[8]. Eucherius now felt he had enough strength to try to reclaim Britannia, as he had been pressured to do by a growing number of Nicene Romano-British exiles to Gaul. He organized a force of three Gallic legions, backed up by another 3,000 volunteers drawn from the ranks of those exiles, and directed them to sail across the Oceanus Britannicus under the leadership of Bishop Germanus and general Sebastianus[9], the latter of whom had been recommended by his father-in-law the magister militum. The Western Roman army landed at Anderitum[10] in April of 430 and quickly forced the hugely outnumbered garrison of the fort to surrender before marching further inland.

But Constans had not been idle over the past eight years. He too had been rebuilding his army in addition to the infrastructure (most importantly the British fabricae, which were crucial to supplying his legions without mainland help) and defenses of Roman Britannia, conscripting the slaves & coloni of Nicene and pro-Eucherius landowners in exchange for their eventual freedom in imitation of Eucherius’ recruitment tactics and having his veteran legionaries serve as drill instructors to the new recruits. Immediately after hearing of Germanus and Sebastianus’ arrival, he gathered an army of 5,000 and marched southeast from Londinium to oppose them; the Britons and Jutes were by this point engaged in full-scale warfare across the northeastern British countryside, so he knew well that neither would have bothered to answer his call to arms. The two armies met southwest of the village of Deorc[11] on May 18, with the Romano-British taking up positions on a high hill and ridge as the Western Romans emerged from the forest cover of the great Weald.

Though Sebastianus was reluctant to give battle on such unfavorable terrain, Germanus insisted that the Western Romans push forward immediately for God and the true emperor. Thus did the slightly more numerous Western Roman force commit to a fight, attacking uphill and being pushed back several times throughout the day. After the fourth such retreat, Constans believed victory was at hand and ordered his army to pursue the Western Romans back downhill, clearly intent on sweeping them off the field altogether. At that moment Sebastianus committed his reserves to the fight, and the last phase of the battle began at the foot of the hill. This final fierce engagement could have gone either way, but it was ultimately decided when Germanus was sent into a coma by a mace to the head and borne away by his closest bodyguards, precipitating a general rout of the Western Romans. Constans would not long enjoy the victory, for he in turn received a severe stomach injury from a desperate legionary spearman while attempting to pursue his fleeing enemies.

While the Western Romans returned to their ships and crossed back over to Gaul, Germanus never awoke from his coma and passed away on the very day that the fleet docked at Rotomagus: having fallen while battling heretics, he was swiftly commemorated as a martyr by the Nicene Christians. Constans meanwhile managed to limp back to Londinium, but his condition too had rapidly worsened on his return trip from the battlefield outside Deorc and he died on June 16 after lingering for nearly a month of increasing agony. While he still lived, the dying usurper managed to compel the magnates and southern Briton petty-kings who still answered to him to swear that they’d respect his son Ambrosius as his successor, and to create a regency council – the Consilium Britanniae, or ‘Council of Britain’ – to rule in his name while he was still young. This high council included his wife, ‘Augusta’ Artoria Casta, as well as Bishop Celestius of Londinium and representatives from Britannia’s remaining cities.


Of course, when Constans actually died, virtually none of his remaining tribal vassals kept their promises. Thus, in no time at all the twelve-year-old ‘Augustus’ in Londinium and the Council which governed in his stead found even the pretense of their authority collapsing outside of the most heavily Romanized parts of Constans’ realm. Within weeks they had been left with only a further-reduced core stretching from the partially rebuilt Lindum in the north to Noviomagus Regnorum[12] in the south, and from Verulamium[13] in the west to Camulodunum in the east, as well as whatever places their more distant legions could still defend; namely two increasingly obviously indefensible exclaves around Eboracum and Deva Victrix[14] and a few other large, well-fortified towns tenuously connected by old Roman roads to the aforementioned core territories, such as Glevum[15] and Aquae Sulis[16].

Outside of these lands, the word of Romano-British magistrates and Pelagian bishops had no bearing, as the various tribal British kings reasserted their authority and did as they pleased from Gwynedd[17] to Dyfneint[18]. Ironically because they now controlled the western coast of the isle of Britain, it was these breakaway kingdoms which bore the brunt of Irish raids, which only grew in frequency & intensity from this point onward. Patricius had made significant headway in converting not just common Irishmen but also their kings and princes to Nicene Christianity, and they saw no problem with raiding pagan and Pelagian Britain; however, out of a twisted respect for Patricius’ staunchly anti-slavery teachings, unlike the still-pagan Scotti these Christian ones took no slaves back to Ireland, instead simply killing anyone they found outside the protection of the dwindling Nicene clergy on Britain. This was for example the fate meted out to Deva Victrix, which was sacked by Nicene Scotti raiders just before the end of 430 and whose ruins fell under the authority of the nearby King of Powys afterwards.

Further north, after years of fighting and raiding the Britons and Jutes held a peace conference at Cair Daun[19] in December of 430, only for it to end in disaster when Hengist and his men murdered Coel and over a dozen other great chieftains of the northern Britons over dinner with seax daggers hidden in their shoes and successfully seized the fort amid a winter storm. The very next morning however, Coel’s many outraged sons avenged this ‘Night of Long Knives’ in turn by storming Cair Daun before Hengist could summon enough reinforcements to make his position unassailable, retaking the fortress and hanging the Jutish king’s corpse from its highest tower. Fortunately for Hengist’s own son Oisc, those very same sons of Coel soon quarreled over the division of their inheritance while tribes not led by Coelings refused to recognize their leadership: so did northern Britain dissolve into a patchwork of even smaller and weaker tribal kingdoms before any of them could finish the Jutes off, allowing his fiefdom between Eboracum and the River Lindis to continue surviving.


Through all this, Eucherius had been disheartened by the defeat of Sebastianus and Germanus, but believed that Britannia slipping into anarchy would make it easy for another Western Roman army to continue where they failed and retake the isle. Any plan he had for the reconquest of Britannia had to be suspended, however, when Attaces and Rechila led their people into rebellion in Africa, having convinced some of the local Berber tribes to ally with them against Rome than to continue fighting each other to serve Roman interests. Only the Silingi Vandals, now ruled by Fredebal’s son Fredegar, remained loyal to the imperial court and provided advance warning of the uprising, whether motivated by their kinsman Stilicho’s example or simple fear of Eucherius’ remaining power; but they could not possibly defeat the rebels on their own and were indeed soon forced away from their settlements in the Aures Mountains by the Alans & Suebi. In turn, Eucherius and Boniface had to spend the last months of 430 organizing their forces to crack down on these rebels – who were steadily spilling northward, toward Carthage and the rest of the African coast – instead of following up on the matter of Britain.

Off to the east, the Sassanids had troubles on their Central Asian frontier to worry about. The Kidarites, a powerful Bactrian nomad empire often mistaken for Huns, had long demanded tribute from Persia in exchange for not attacking them, and Yazdgerd I had obliged for decades. In a further break from his father’s policy, Bahram – already emboldened by his victory over the Eastern Romans, marred though it may have been by the death of his marshal Kardar – defiantly proclaimed that the Kidarites would not get a single speck of gold dust from him and marched to attack these nomads.

The outraged Kidarites struck first, crossing the Oxus River with 35,000 warriors in 427 and pillaging as far as Merv. There Bahram met them with his larger army of 45,000 and scored a decisive victory: his elephant corps swept away their numerous cavalry and even killed their Šao[20], whose wife he also captured while ransacking their camp. The Kidarites hastily fled back over the Oxus, while the victorious Shahanshah built a column on the banks of the Oxus to commemorate his victory. Since they continued to raid Khorasan however, Bahram ended up invading their Transoxianan homeland in 429 and his generals spent the next year devastating it, crushing the Kidarites to a point where they could no longer threaten Sassanid Persia any longer. However, by weakening the Kidarites so greatly Bahram also unintentionally rendered them unable to resist the growing incursions of an even larger and more powerful horde to their north, the Hephthalites[21]…


While the Roman world settled back down into a familiar routine of barbarian incursions and internal uprisings, far to the east another major conflict was brewing. Emperor Wen of Liu Song, whose father had toppled the long-declining Eastern Jin at the beginning of the decade, had proven himself to be a highly capable and frugal administrator; however, as of 430 he began to set his sights on expanding his borders, and reuniting China beneath his banner if the opportunity arose. Striking an alliance with the Xiongnu-founded state of Helian Xia, he marched to attack Northern Wei – the rival dynasty of Sinicized Xianbei which dominated northern China – and did so successfully. Song forces retook the cities of Luoyang, Hulao, Huatai[22] and Qiao’ao[23].

Although Emperor Wen’s first instinct was to cautiously hold back and fortify the positions he held on the Yellow River, he was eventually persuaded by his bolder generals Zhu Xiuzhi & Mao Dezu – as well as the apparent lack of Northern Wei resistance – to push further north[24]. Liu Song and Helian Xia effectively coordinated their troop movements against Northern Wei throughout the entire year, so much so that by autumn they were laying siege to the Wei capital of Pingcheng[25]. Noticing the success of the allies, both of Northern Wei’s remaining regional rivals – Northern Yan to the northeast, and the Mongolic Rouran Khaganate to the west – decided this was the moment to pounce and carve out their own slices of the Xianbei pie, as well.

Now Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei was a capable ruler in his own right who had beaten back the Rouran at the start of his reign, but he was not such a genius that he could deal with a simultaneous four-pronged assault on every one of his borders; so when the year ended so did his realm, partitioned between its many enemies. Liu Song had seized the lion’s share of Northern Wei’s territory and was thus the big winner of the war, though they had had to cede Pingcheng itself to Helian Xia. Of course, without a common enemy in Northern Wei, the alliance between their kingdoms broke down almost immediately - but that suited Wen just fine, because Helian Xia was now the next immediate obstacle standing in the way of him reunifying China.


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[1] First recorded king of the Salian Franks, grandfather of Merovech and thus great-grandfather of the famous Clovis.

[2] Banoštor.

[3] Skopje.

[4] Near Gradsko.

[5] Laimos.

[6] Thorismund was Theodoric’s heir, historically fighting with him at the Catalaunian Plains and succeeding him on the battlefield after his death at the hands of the Huns & Ostrogoths. However, the new king was assassinated and usurped by his younger brother Theodoric II only two years later.

[7] Theodoric had at least one daughter who was historically wedded to Huneric, the son and successor of the Vandal king Gaiseric. However, Huneric later decided he wanted to marry Valentinian III’s daughter Eudocia instead, so he falsely accused this Visigoth princess of conspiring to kill him, mutilated her and sent her back to her outraged father in 444. Her name wasn’t recorded in the pages of history, so for this TL I’ve named her ‘Theodesinda’.

[8] Sigisvultus was an Arian Visigoth general in Western Roman service who historically fought Boniface in 427, seizing Hippo Regius & Carthage and directing an Arian bishop named Maximinus to debate Augustine of Hippo. He eventually attained consular and patrician honors in the 430s and 440s.

[9] This Sebastianus was indeed the son-in-law of Boniface of Africa. Historically he briefly served as the Western magister militum after Boniface defeated Aetius at the cost of a mortal injury in 432, but was overthrown and exiled to Constantinople when Aetius returned at the head of a Hunnish horde. He later joined the Vandal court to avoid falling to the typical Byzantine intrigues, but was executed by King Gaiseric there around 440.

[10] Pevensey.

[11] Dorking. Specifically, the battle is being fought on and around Leith Hill, the summit of the Weald’s Greensand Ridge.

[12] Chichester.

[13] St Albans.

[14] Chester.

[15] Gloucester.

[16] Bath.

[17] Northwestern Wales.

[18] Dumnonia – modern Devon, plus eastern Cornwall & western Somerset.

[19] Doncaster.

[20] The Bactrian title for ‘king’.

[21] The Hephthalites, also known as the Eftals or White Huns, were a mixed confederation of Sogdian, Turkic and possibly proto-Mongolic tribes who historically lived in northern Transoxiana and the Tarim Basin. Despite the ‘White Hun’ name, they may not have been related to the Huns at all, unless one were to accept the theory that some elements of their horde were Xiongnu remnants separated from their kin and forced south of the Altai Mountains after the Han’s final victory over the latter. Historically, they replaced the Kidarites in the mid-5th century and terrorized the Persians & Indians for a good hundred years after that before eventually being crushed between the former and the Gokturks.

[22] Anyang.

[23] Liaocheng.

[24] Historically Liu Song made good progress against Northern Wei in this war, but Emperor Wen did not press his advantage and just camped on the Yellow River while Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei rallied and crushed Helian Xia, after which he retook all the lost ground and went on to unify northern China.

[25] Datong.

As soon as spring began, Eucherius and Boniface set sail from Italy with 12 legions – a total of about 13,000 men – and collected more African reinforcements with which to face the Alans and Suebi over April & May. By the end of the latter month, though the barbarians had taken control of much of the African hinterland, Eucherius was moving to confront them with nearly 30,000 men, including 9,000 loyal Vandals under Fredegar. For their part, Attaces and Rechila had expanded their alliance with the inland Berber tribes in the same timeframe, swaying to their side all but one of the great Moorish chieftains: the King of Altava[1], known to the Romans by his Christian name Caecilius[2], remained loyal to his imperial suzerain and kept the coast of Mauretania Caesariensis safe against his rebellious cousins. Efforts by the rebels to ally with the Donatists failed due to their mutual inability to compromise over religious matters, with the underground Donatist leadership in particular considering the Arian and pagan barbarians to be no better than their Nicene oppressors.

Lead elements of the Western Roman and Alano-Suevic armies first clashed at the town of Tricamarum, some 30 miles southwest of Carthage. Here the Western Romans (led by Fredegar and Sebastianus, who was hoping to redeem himself after the failed British expedition the year before) were victorious, their own heavy cavalry and Gothic and Silingi Vandal federates overpowering those of the Alans in a short but ferocious horseback clash. Following the Battle of Tricamarum, the rebel leadership was divided on what to do next: Attaces was reluctant to risk further field engagements against the overpowering bulk of the Roman army and advocated attempting a guerrilla war against Eucherius as rebellious Berbers and Donatists had in the past, but Rechila considered a strategy of retreating into the mountains or dispersing into the countryside to be both dishonorable and counterproductive – it would make it impossible for them to quickly achieve their objective of ousting the Romans from Africa quickly, and expose their own forces to defeat in detail. In the end the latter carried the day, having also argued that the hostile Donatists were unlikely to share their turf in the countryside with their armies anyway, and so the rebels massed for a major confrontation outside Zica[3] by the Dorsale Mountains.

Eucherius was happy to oblige, considering a pitched battle to be both where his heavier troops would excel and a prime opportunity to finish the rebellion in a single stroke. In any case the rebels’ occupation of Zica also put them in position to exert control over the source of Carthage’s aqueduct, so as Boniface claimed, arguably he had no choice but to attack them even if he hadn’t wanted to, so as to prevent the diocesan capital from dying of thirst. When the emperor arrived he found that although Attaces and Rechila’s army was smaller than his at about 20,000 men, they held the terrain advantage, having occupied a ridge directly in front of the town of Zica and set up their headquarters within the town itself. It was also June 12, a blazing hot summer day, which further disfavored the more heavily-armored Romans.

Undaunted, the Augustus organized his legions into offensive wedges while directing his federates to assault the rebel lines first. This they did, but their barbaric fury floundered against the heights and the defensive works which Attaces and Rechila had thrown up in the days leading up to the battle. At one point the Fredegar came across Rechila himself, and while the Vandal king was a younger and more energetic man, he was still defeated by his more experienced Suebi counterpart and forced to flee for his life; the rest of the Vandals soon followed, to the amusement of the Suebi king who then ordered his men to chase them with him. Little did he know that events were proceeding according to Eucherius and Boniface’s strategy, though a little more quickly than they had thought: they sought to pull the rebels off their ridge with a feint and then to crush them on the low ground, though Fredegar had retreated more quickly than they anticipated and for real. Boniface led the best-prepared of the Western legions into action while the emperor got the rest into formation.

The resulting clash on the low ground went largely the Western Romans’ way, as despite the heat, they were still well-rested and hydrated while the Suebi were already worn out from the earlier battle on the ridge and pursuit, exposed on the lowland, and completely out of formation themselves. Furthermore Fredegar had regained his courage and rallied the Silingi Vandals, after which they threw themselves into the increasingly dismayed Suebi’s ranks and completed their encirclement on the flats before Zica. The Suebi might have had a chance to at least turn the battle into a draw if Attaces had committed to the attack early on, but past defeats had made the aged Alan king – once eager to rush headlong into battle over the Rhine, when his Hasding Vandal allies had already been defeated – indecisive and overcautious, and he held his men back out of fear of the Roman trap which now enclosed fully around the Suebi. By the time Attaces changed his mind and sprang a massive downhill rush of Alan and Berber cavalry, Rechila was already dead, though the mighty Suevic warrior had died in a manner worthy of being sung about by Germanic bards for years to come: he had first slain Sebastianus with a throwing ax, and upon trying and failing to approach Boniface himself, fended off half a dozen legionaries in his berserk rage before finally being brought down by a spear to the back of his head.


Despite Sebastianus’ death, the fall of Rechila and the destruction of the Suebi contingent had decisively turned the tide of battle in Rome’s favor, and Eucherius was determined to see it through to the end. The emperor ordered a countercharge against Attaces’ men on the foot of the Zica ridge and the Alan king sought him out for a bout of single combat, knowing that the odds of conventionally defeating the Western army at this point were slim, but an officer of the Scholae named Domninus[4] stepped in first – slaying the latter’s horse with his lance when they charged at each other, and then finishing off the barbarian warlord with his sword afterward. The Berbers quit the field soon after, while most of the Alans (particularly their fiercest and most hardened troops) fought on vainly to try to avenge their king, in so doing demonstrating more valor than he did in the eyes of the Romans and Vandals both, and take as many Romans to the grave with them. They were finally entirely destroyed at dusk.

The sanguinary battle had left 5,000 Romans and federates dead alongside 12,000 of the rebels, definitely hurting the former but shattering the power of the African Alans and Suebi forever; the remnants of their warriors and peoples bent the knee and were subsumed by the loyal Vandals in the following months and years. Fredegar took Rechila’s daughter as his wife to secure his status as king of not only the Vandals but also Alans and Suebi, which Eucherius allowed both as a reward for his loyalty and a recognition of the new political reality among the African barbarians. As for Domninus, for presenting the Alan king’s head the emperor rewarded him with promotion to the ranks of the candidati, the white-garbed imperial bodyguards and by admitting his eleven-year-old son Majorian[5] into the imperial household, where the energetic boy quickly befriended the slightly older and more laid-back Caesar Romanus. Eucherius himself would have little rest however, for the corpses of Attaces and Rechila had barely cooled when he received news of another uprising to deal with in Spain under a local named Maximus – quickly denounced as Maximus ‘Tyrannus’, or Maximus the Tyrant, both for his treason and open Priscillianist sympathies[6].

Speaking of heresies like Priscillianism, 431 also brought another major Christian theological dispute to shake the entire Roman world. The longstanding dispute over how many natures Christ had and what the relationship between his divine and human natures, if any, might have been once more exploded toward the middle of the year, as Patriarchs Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria openly challenged one another over this Christological controversy. Fundamentally, Nestorius’ position was that Jesus’ divine and human natures were separate because an eternal and immortal God could not have ever been born like a mortal, adding that Mary should not have the title Theotokos or ‘God-bearer’ as a result; Cyril argued for the opposite position, that Jesus’ two natures were one in a hypostatic union, therefore that God the Son was consubstantial with God the Father, and thus Nestorius was a pseudo-adoptionist for essentially claiming that the man Jesus is God only because of divine grace – an adoption of sorts – and not birth. The conflict between the two patriarchs, much like the question it was trying to answer, also had a dual nature; the obvious religious one, and a political rivalry between Constantinople and Alexandria coupled with that of Nestorius’ theological Antiochene School against Cyril’s Alexandrian one.

As tensions flared within the clergy and general populace of Constantinople, Emperor Theodosius called for a church council in Ephesus to resolve this dispute. Some 250 bishops were in attendance, including a Papal delegation representing the interests of the Roman See and Eucherius. The latter supported Cyril’s arguments, for Pope Celestine firmly shared the Alexandrian Patriarch’s belief that Nestorius’ position had crossed the line into heresy. Theodosius and his representative at the ecumenical council, an officer named Candidianus, were initially sympathetic to Nestorius; but when the assembled clergy ultimately took Cyril’s side, so did they. Nestorius was condemned as a heretic and he was furthermore deposed from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, while the old denunciations of Pelagian teachings and their figurehead Celestius of Britain were reaffirmed. The council also denounced all deviations from the Nicene Creed established in 325 and recognized the Cypriot Church’s autocephaly, weakening the Patriarchate of Antioch which had claimed authority over Cyprus – and, of course, had mentored Nestorius in the first place.


Since Nestorius refused to recant his position after both Theodosius and Eucherius endorsed that of Cyril, he ended up being banished to remote monasteries in Syria and later Egypt – replaced in his clerical office by the orthodox Maximianus – while Patriarch John of Antioch was compelled by imperial authority to drop his support for the fallen Patriarch of Constantinople. Politically, the 431 Council of Ephesus reinforced the dyophysitic orthodoxy (that is, the position that Jesus’ divinity and humanity are in perfect unity within his person) of the Christian Church and the ties binding said Church to the Roman state, as demonstrated not only by the downfall of Nestorius for persisting in his heresy after the Emperor recognized it as such but also the redoubled condemnation of the Pelagian Celestius & all who followed him – meaning of course the Romano-British rebels still outside Roman authority. The Church in Persia however continued to advocate for Nestorianism, not only out of genuine conviction but also because they were being pressured by the fiercely anti-Roman Shah Bahram to differentiate themselves from Roman Christianity as much as possible, and openly entered schism with the orthodox Roman Church[7].

Come 432, Eucherius set out to deal with Maximus Tyrannus. He allowed the Silingi Vandals to leave his side and consolidate their control over the other African barbarians’ territories, picking up Caecilius and the loyal Moors of Altava along the way to compensate. The rebels had actually taken Abula over the winter, unlike Didymus and Felix before them, and installed their own Priscillianist bishop there; however Eucherius smashed them in a battle outside a ruined shrine to Jupiter on the banks of the Tagus[8], his heavily-armored legionaries carving a bloody swath through their attempted defense on the crossing, and retook Abula before the year was half-done, in the process restoring the city’s orthodox bishop after driving out the Priscillianist interloper. Maximus Tyrannus himself survived these defeats and retreated into Gallaecia where he continued to mount an insurgency against the emperor with the support of the local Callaeci tribes, forcing Eucherius to stay in Spain for another year. Only after the capture and execution of the Spanish usurper following the Battle of Legio[9] in the next spring would this part of the Western Empire know peace again.

While Eucherius was battling Maximus Tyrannus, far to the north the Ripuarian Franks were once more causing trouble on the Rhenish frontier, and Faramund’s successor as ruler over their Salian cousins, King Chlodio[10], took the chance to try to break away from Roman imperial authority. Aetius ordered Arbogast to hold the Ripuarians off while he and Aegidius dealt with Chlodio, which they did at the victorious Battle of Triectensis[11] on July 24, 432. After receiving Chlodio’s submission, they hurried to aid Arbogast against the Ripuarians, crushing the latter before the walls of Augusta Treverorum a few weeks later together with his sallying army. Once more, Rome’s northern frontier was secure – for a little while, at least.


Over in the British Isles, Patricius was rewarded for his missionary efforts by being promoted to bishop in 432; he was not the first Irish bishop – that honor went to Palladius, a Gallo-Roman cleric sent to the Emerald Isle the year before – but he was by far the more influential, with an especially strong following in the north of the island while Palladius entrenched himself in Leinster. Meanwhile the Frisians too began to raid Britain, and unlike the Irish, they were in position to harry the Romano-British on the eastern coast of Britannia. For now, their first expedition was seen off by the aged general Iustinianus in two small battles around Anderitum and Portus Dubris, with the fourteen-year-old rebel ‘Augustus’ Ambrosius present and in observance.

On the other end of the Eurasian landmass, Emperor Wen of Liu Song went to war with his former ally Helian Xia, initiating hostilities by using his realm’s far greater wealth to bribe the defenders of Pingcheng into going over to his side. The more numerous armies of Liu Song overcame those of Helian Xia time and again, capturing their capital of Shanggui[12] early in 433. Helian Ding, the ‘emperor’ of Xia, submitted to Liu Song authority and effectively became a protectorate of theirs soon after this final defeat, allowing Wen and his generals to focus on eliminating the even weaker state of Northern Yan.

The dawn of 434 brought with it a sea-change in European politics in the form of Rugila’s death. Octar, his brother and co-khagan, predeceased him as had their other brother Mundzuk, leaving him sole ruler of the Huns for a few short years; now Mundzuk’s sons, Bleda and Attila, ascended to become joint khagans like he and Octar were before them. Bleda had cultivated an odd friendship with Aetius over their battles against various Western usurpers and the Burgundians, not dissimilar to Alaric and Stilicho before them, and was also content to sit on the tribute he was collecting from the East – but Attila was a much more aggressive and dynamic leader, one said to worship and sacrifice to the dark god Erlik[13] (which essentially made him a Satanist in Romans' eyes when they applied interpretatio Christiana to Hunnish Tengrism), and set on waging wars of conquest against the civilized world. Later chroniclers would write of Attila’s assumption of power even being heralded by a brief eclipse, murders of crows going berserk around the world, a snake being born of an ass near Jerusalem and Pope Sixtus coming down with an illness, although these are almost (or actually) certainly embellishments of a historical figure whose future deeds would ensure he did not need it.

The brothers began their joint reign by demanding the flow of tribute from Constantinople continue, as well as the return of several prominent nobles who had supported rival candidates for the khaganate and fled to the Eastern Roman court to avoid their vengeance. This Theodosius was prepared to grant, but Chrysaphius once more whispered in his ear and advised him to actually double said tribute to 600 pounds of gold in exchange for the Huns once more fighting with them against the Sassanids. Bleda cheerfully took up the offer over Attila’s objections that they should enter Roman territory as conquerors, not mercenaries, and asserting his primacy as the senior khagan, he joined the Eastern Roman army with 25,000 Hunnish warriors[14].


Emboldened, Theodosius now declared war on Persia and sent Bleda & the rest of his armies out to retake the territory he had lost a decade before, while a frustrated Attila was left back home with the lesser part of the Huns’ strength. Though his initial plan of immediately attacking the Western Empire which had humiliated his people and killed his granduncle had been derailed by his brother’s willingness to be a sellsword for the Eastern Romans, he hatched a new one to weaken the Western Romans ahead of his next opportunity to assail them. Instead of facing Eucherius, Boniface, Aetius and the rest of the West’s generals head-on, he began to expand the reach of the Huns westward, attacking and terrorizing various Germanic tribes with the intent of either subjugating them under Hunnish authority or driving them into Western Roman territory; no matter which outcome transpired, he would come out firmly on top. He'd learned well from the Romans' use of barbarians against their enemies indeed!

This strategy worked well, for by the end of the year the entirety of the Limes Germanicus was ablaze from Colonia Agrippina to Castra Regina[15]. While some of the Alamanni, Suebi, Juthungi, Thuringii, Rugii and Scirii had bent the knee to Attila, other elements of these tribes were viciously struggling to migrate into Western Roman territory ahead of his raiders and warriors. This onslaught left the Western Empire and its various foederati hard-pressed throughout the entire year: Aetius had to dedicate all of his resources and martial prowess to hold the Rhine frontier with Aegidius, Arbogast and the chastised Chlodio, while Eucherius had to postpone his son’s wedding to Theodesinda so he could instead defend the Alpine passes and the Upper Danube with Boniface and the Burgundians well into the winter.

And through it all, Attila watched, pleased as the Western Romans expended their carefully rebuilt strength and pulled legions from the Illyrian frontier to reinforce the others, while he was massing his own horde along that very same border...

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[1] Ouled Mimoun.

[2] Historically, a Mauro-Roman kingdom emerged with its capital at Altava around 429 thanks to the Vandal invasion causing the collapse of Roman authority across Africa. It included both Berber and Roman subjects, who most likely spoke African Romance in addition to the native Berber languages, and its monarchs styled themselves ‘Kings of the Roman and Moorish Peoples’ (Rex gentium Maurorum et Romanorum). The names of its first few kings have been lost to history, so I’ve named this loyal vassal king Caecilius after a famous Christian Romano-Berber leader in the 7th century.

[3] Zaghouan.

[4] The father of Majorian.

[5] The historical Western Roman Emperor from 457 to 461, Majorian was an extremely competent commander and administrator – indeed, perhaps the ablest and most energetic of the post-Theodosian emperors of the 5th century – and managed to reverse many of its territorial losses in the course of his four-year reign. Him being betrayed and tortured to death by Ricimer almost completely sealed the fate of the WRE, as his reign was that empire’s penultimate chance to turn its deteriorating situation around (the absolute last chance being Anthemius’ failed invasion of Africa with the ERE a few years later).

[6] There was in fact a ‘Maximus Tyrannus’ who rebelled in Spain historically, though he was a completely different person (and possibly a relative or even son of fellow rebel Gerontius) who did so in 409 as part of the chaos that followed Stilicho’s death and did not seem to be a Priscillianist. I didn’t intend for this Maximus Tyrannus to be the same person, though he does share the cool name.

[7] All of this has unfolded pretty much exactly as the historical 431 Council of Ephesus did, with the exception of Eucherius being Western Emperor & Celestius and Pelagianism being stronger than they were when the RL Council denounced them.

[8] Referring to Aranjuez, which may have been originally called ‘Ara Jovis’.

[9] León.

[10] Son of Faramund and father of Merovech.

[11] Maastricht.

[12] Tianshui.

[13] The god of darkness, death and sin in Turco-Mongol mythology, said to have been the son of the supreme sky-god Tengri and rebel against his benevolent brother Ulgan. Believers make sacrifices to him to keep him from sending sickness and death upon them, or else to ensure that he does not torment them when they have to pass on to the underworld which he rules.

[14] Historically, the Huns actually did attack Persia instead of either Rome in the earliest years of Bleda & Attila’s kingship, although they did so independently rather than as part of the ERE’s forces and were eventually defeated in Armenia.

[15] Regensburg.

At first, the year 435 seemed like it could be a better one for Eucherius and his empire than 434 had been. On January 19 he overcame harsh winter conditions to lead his legions to a major victory over the Juthungi at Mediana[1], where his son Romanus proved his mettle by leading an infantry shield-wall to pin the barbarians down while the rest of the Italic and Rhaetian legions descended on their flanks, finally putting an end to their incursions for the foreseeable future. Having won himself a respite from constant battles on the frontier, he was able to host the wedding of Romanus and Theodesinda in Rome (as well as Theodesinda’s much-publicized conversion to Nicene orthodoxy just before) as spring began, hopefully binding the Visigoths ever more closely to his dynasty and the Western Roman cause.

Then, just days after the wedding, he received news that his mother Serena had died in her sleep at the age of seventy-two. And while the emperor was still trying to process that personal tragedy, he further received reports that Attila had invaded Illyricum with 15,000 men, savagely sacking Aquincum[2] and Sopianae[3] among other major towns as they devastated Pannonia before moving on to Dalmatia. Meanwhile Marcellinus, left with far too few troops to oppose the Huns, had retreated to Sirmium, though he still dared venture forth with his cavalry from time to time in attempts to mitigate the Huns’ pillaging. At the same time, where the Juthungi had failed the Rugians were now trying their luck, marching a horde headed by some 20,000 warriors into Rhaetia.

Though he had barely even gotten to start mourning his mother’s death, Eucherius resolved to stop the Rugians while dispatching Boniface and Theodoric to stop Attila’s rampage. He left Romanus in Ravenna not just to enjoy the affections of his new Gothic wife (who would give birth to their first child, christened Honorius with hopes that he’d redeem that name by ruling more wisely than the last man to have it, in December of this year), but also to acquire practical experience in governance under the eye of the treasurer Joannes, while taking his seventeen-year-old second son Theodosius along to replace the latter’s elder brother on the battlefield. Boniface in turn moved to amass troops at Aquileia, while Theodoric hastily boarded a ship bound for Thessalonica to gather his own Visigoth warriors with plans to then march to Sirmium and link up with Marcellinus’ Dalmatian legions. Their overall strategy was to coordinate their army movements to trap Attila in Dalmatia between them, and hopefully eliminate him in or around the Dinaric Alps.

Unfortunately for the Western Romans, things did not go according to plan. Attila’s far-ranging scouts quickly reported the magister militum’s growing army around Aquileia and the march of the Visigoths to Sirmium to him, and the junior khagan deduced what the enemy was planning shortly before Theodoric joined Marcellinus. Instead of sitting around to allow the Romans to consolidate their strength against him, he rode to attack them while they were still separated, starting with Boniface shortly after the latter began moving eastward.

Attila caught Boniface on April 28 while the latter was still crossing the Savus at Siscia[4] and fell upon him there, leading the first charge of his heavy cavalry with his ‘Sword of Mars’[5] held aloft in such a way that it seemed afire within the Sun’s light; but the magister militum was a capable and experienced soldier, and despite sustaining heavy losses from Attila’s first devastating charge into the ranks of the men who hadn’t crossed the Savus yet, used the river crossing itself to blunt the effect of the Hunnic assaults while withholding his remaining legionaries from any reckless pursuit. The day was not decided until a 2,000-strong detachment of Hunnish cavalry, who Attila had sent to cross further upriver and circle round the enemy legions in anticipation of their fierce resistance, emerged to cave in Boniface’s flank and rear. The Western Romans were then routed and Attila pursued them for some time even after night fell, in the process killing Boniface; by the time the Huns broke off their pursuit, out of Boniface’s 10,000 men fewer than half had survived to meet Theodoric and Marcellinus’ host at Marsonia[6].


Attila next moved to engage this second army, meeting them at Incerum[7] later in the summer. Confident in the larger numbers of the Western Roman army, Theodoric massed the bulk of his forces into a massive offensive column spearheaded by his own noble cavalry, intent on scattering the Hunnish army in one ferocious charge. He got his wish, and then some – Attila’s cavalry did indeed seemingly split apart beneath the weight of his assault, but the Hun infantry (actually comprised of the khagan’s subject peoples, including some of the Visigoths’ own Ostrogoth cousins) put up a stronger fight than Theodoric anticipated. Even so, the Romans and Visigoths would probably have prevailed had Attila not reformed his horsemen to attack their flanks and nearly encircle them, forcing Marcellinus to intervene with the reserve to save Theodoric. Eventually the main body of the Western Roman army was able to extract itself from Attila’s trap, but they left the field in the Huns’ possession. Once more Attila had bested the Western Roman Empire.

But as summer drew to an end, it became apparent that Eucherius himself was prepared to put a stop to the Huns’ ravages. While Attila was thrashing his generals he was busy grinding the Rugian invasion to a halt, eventually dealing them a decisive defeat between the forts of Parrodunum[8] and Venaxodurum[9]. As news of Boniface’s death and the defeat of the combined armies of Theodoric & Marcellinus trickled into his camp, the alarmed emperor concluded a peace treaty with the young Rugian king Flaccitheus[10] to allow his people to settle in Rhaetia as foederati. Having added those Rugian warriors he hadn’t killed yet to his army, Eucherius next named Aetius to succeed Boniface as magister militum of the West (and also promoted Aegidius to Aetius’ old post as commander of the Gallic legions at the latter’s recommendation) even as he hurried eastward to face Attila before the latter could expand his rampage past Illyricum.

When his scouts reported in, Attila was frustrated to learn of the considerable strength of Eucherius’ army, which included sizable Burgundian and Rugian contingents in addition to many Italian and Dalmatian legions. Numbering at about 24,000 men, this new Western Roman host outnumbered the troops he still had after the earlier battles at Siscia and Incerum by almost 3:1. Regardless, he decided to engage in an attempt to preserve his conquests and to determine the full extent of the Western Emperor’s strengths & weaknesses, meeting the advancing army as it tried to cross the Colapis[11].

If the khagan was expecting a rerun of the Battle of Siscia however, it was his turn to be disappointed. Eucherius’ most elite legionaries, including Theodosius and backed by the champions of the Burgundian and Rugian peoples, spearheaded his attempt to cross the river and crunched through even the best of Attila’s own men, who simply lacked the numbers to hold both their weight and that of the less experienced Western Roman troops marching pushing them forward at the fords, while the emperor himself personally commanded the cavalry to keep any errant Hun horsemen from crossing onto the Roman side of the river and replaying Boniface’s defeat. As the sun set and Western Roman troops took control of both banks of the Colapis, Attila had to admit defeat and fall back: to cover his army’s retreat he personally led his all-mounted reserve against the Western Romans, reportedly fighting like a man possessed and successfully thwarting Eucherius’ pursuit as night fell. Theodoric and Marcellinus were further encouraged by news of their overlord’s victory and also moved on the offensive again, and so by the end of 435 Attila had been forced out of Dalmatia – though he still held the Pannonian provinces he had conquered in his initial onslaught.


Far to the east, Bleda was having a similar rash of early successes in Syria and Mesopotamia. Together with armies under Procopius, Aspar and al-Nu’man IV[12] he smashed the Persians at Samosata[13], Zeugma and finally Carrhae[14], steadily pushing the Persians out of the Eastern Roman territories they had previously conquered all throughout the year. At each of these battles, Bleda’s Huns once more proved indispensable in helping their Roman allies fend off the Persians’ own cavalry, while the aged Procopius effectively countered the Sassanid war elephants with carroballistae[15] previously put together in Antioch specifically for this purpose. The Sassanids and their Lakhmid allies had rallied under the latter’s ruler al-Mundhir to finally stop their advance at Callinicum, where the Lakhmids’ camels frightened even the horses of the Huns, but by then it was September and the rising power of the Hephthalites, who had crushed and absorbed what Shah Bahram had left of the Kidarites in previous years, had taken the opportunity to assail the distracted Sassanid Empire’s northeastern border.

As these Eftals were pouring over the Oxus in far greater numbers and with far more ferocity than the Kidarites ever mustered, in the process destroying the monument Bahram had erected there to commemorate his victory over the Kidarites, the Shah hastily concluded a peace treaty with Theodosius to restore the pre-422 borders between their empires so he could focus on countering this new nomadic threat to Khorasan. Even so however, the Hephthalites proved to be a larger threat than the bloodied Sassanid armies could handle: they crushed the Persians’ largest eastern army at Amol early in the war, laid waste to the Khorasani countryside, smashed a second army sent from the Mesopotamian front just east of Merv in August and ended the year by beginning to lay siege to Bactra[16], having forcibly conscripted no small number of Persian engineers and builders to construct siege weapons & works for them under the threat of a torturous death for themselves and their families. In any case, with this latest Roman-Persian war over Bleda began to make his way home, laden with his hefty salary from Constantinople and plunder from the Persian cities now being returned to the Eastern Romans but vexed at the news that his little brother had started a war with the Western Empire without his knowledge.

Meanwhile, Ambrosius of Britain had by now attained his majority and was prepared to rule with his Consilium. He immediately proved his worth as a monarch by going to war against the Atrebates and Belgae (two closely related and certainly allied tribes) to the southwest: despite his inexperience, he was able to secure victory thanks to the disciplined & well-equipped army (particularly its cavalry wings, which the enemy tribe lacked) in a battle north of the Atrebatian capital at Calleva[17], capturing that tribe’s king and killing the ruler of the Belgae. As he received both tribes’ submission soon after, he reestablished Romano-British authority as far as Venta Belgarum[18] and Portus Adurni. This done, Ambrosius went on to spend the spend the next few years consolidating his gains and fending off Briton, Jute and Frisian raids along his borders & coasts.


436 brought some relief to the Western Romans, for Bleda finished his return trip from the Orient early in the year. Far from aiding Attila as the latter requested, he denounced his younger brother as a fool for attacking the Western Romans and immediately opened negotiations with Ravenna. Aetius seized the chance to help negotiate a favorable peace, in which the Huns would immediately depart from their remaining conquests in Roman Pannonia and also return the goods & captives they had taken in the previous year’s campaign. These terms naturally enraged Attila, who physically brawled with Bleda when his brother informed him ahead of the actual talks with Eucherius & Aetius; but, as his army had taken a beating at Eucherius’ hands and Bleda’s was still comparatively stronger, he ultimately had to take the humiliating blow on the chin and bottle up his increasingly fratricidal thoughts for now. The Western Romans were able to begin rebuilding and fortifying western Illyricum, while the Limes Germanicus also stabilized as northwest-ward Hunnish attacks also came to a stop with Bleda’s return.

The younger Hunnish king found a ready outlet for and ally to support his vengeful thoughts in the Eastern imperial court. Theodosius II’s first victory in many years had left him wanting more, while Chrysaphius – ever the champion of anti-Western Roman foreign policy – had so far been impressed by the Huns’ conduct in Eastern Roman service and thought they’d make fine allies against the Western Empire. The chief eunuch, by now Theodosius’ cubicularius, reached out to Attila and promised to carve up Illyricum with him if only they stood together against Eucherius; Attila, ever eager for revenge, in turn agreed to divide the Illyric diocese by returning its eastern half to the East while retaining Pannonia and Dalmatia for the Huns if they should prevail, and Chrysaphius advised Theodosius to agree to a secret alliance based on these terms.

Theodosius’ sister Pulcheria, being a devout Christian, argued against this scheme to lay waste to their fellow Christians and Romans with the help of not just any pagan, but the most dangerous and destructive one to live in their day. Alas the death of the more level-headed Ardabur later this year also opened the way for his son Aspar to be named magister militum in his stead, and the Alan general was of a similarly anti-Western Roman and pro-Hun bent as Chrysaphius, ensuring the victory of the eunuch’s faction over that of the princess in the contest for control over her weak-willed brother. Of course, it had become clear that to realize their master plan they first had to manipulate or eliminate Aetius’ friend Bleda…

Conversely, Aetius increasingly suggested eliminating the ‘problems’ posed by Attila in his private correspondence with Bleda. The junior khagan’s irreconcilable hostility against Rome made it unlikely that there would ever be a lasting peace between the Western Empire and the Huns so long as he lived, after all. And if it was gold Bleda was after, he would always find more of it in the Eastern Empire than the West; he could certainly go after it without the risk of Attila ruining things by starting a war with Ravenna behind his back again should that younger brother of his meet an unfortunate ‘accident’ somewhere. Two things became increasingly obvious as the year wound toward its end, the Hunnish brothers’ visions for the future of the Huns were too different to coexist and the ill-feelings built up between them were sure to come to a head soon.

While all this was happening in Europe, over in Central Asia the Hephthalites successfully concluded their siege of Bactra and made it into their capital. They frustrated Persian efforts to expel them, inflicting a particularly heavy defeat on the Sassanid army at Shaporgân[19] in June where they sabotaged the town’s bridge over the Sari Pul River to collapse while the Persians were crossing and just before they launched their assault. Toward the year’s end, Shah Bahram had to admit defeat and negotiate a peace treaty with these conquering nomads, allowing them to keep their significant territorial gains in Bactria and western Transoxiana. No doubt he was kicking himself for having fatally weakened the more manageable Kidarites all the way back to Ctesiphon.


In China, 436 saw continued Liu Song victories in their campaign to reunify China. Emperor Wen laid Northern Yan low this year, capturing their capital of Longcheng[20] in November after eight months of battles. The fall of Northern Yan extended their frontier to the Liaodong Peninsula. Around the same time, the Rouran invaded from the northwest and overran not just the westernmost of the former Northern Wei territories which Liu Song had acquired, but also the remnants of Helian Xia. This was considered a blessing in disguise by Wen’s court, since the nomads had essentially done their job for them by eliminating Helian Xia before they had to manufacture some excuse to absorb that statelet, though they would have to spend some years expelling these Mongolic nomads from northern China before they could properly enjoy their success.

Come 437, Bleda apparently tried to reconcile with his irreconcilable brother by inviting him to a grand hunt in the Carpathians on April 30, and out of respect for the memory of their mother – who did not survive the past winter – Attila had accepted his offer. What transpired next was a question with many answers. According to Attila (whose words were repeated by the chroniclers of the court in Constantinople), he had aided his elder brother in slaying an especially huge and powerful boar which would otherwise have gored him to death, and Bleda thanked him by trying to murder him along with all his attendants – thereby forcing Attila to slay them all in self-defense. According to the sole surviving attendant of Bleda (whose accusation was recorded & repeated by the Western imperial court), Attila allowed the boar to fatally maim Bleda before killing both it and his brother with the help of his own hunting party, after which he tried to eliminate all the witnesses to his treachery[21].

Regardless of what actually happened up on that mountain, the outcome was the same: Bleda lay dead and Attila seized full control of the Hunnic Empire to rule as its sole khagan, beginning his reign with a bloody purge of all those among his brother’s family & supporters who would not bend their knees to him. Those who escaped his wrath did so by fleeing over the border into Western Roman territory, where they were welcomed by Eucherius and especially the infuriated Aetius. Attila sent a demand to Ravenna that these exiles be returned to face his judgment, which Eucherius rejected out of hand. Though the Hun ruler did not feel he had strength enough to guarantee victory over the Western Roman Empire at that moment, not after his last defeat at their hands, he nevertheless pocketed the slight as a convenient casus belli for when the time was right and informed his Eastern Roman allies of his success in seizing absolute power over the Huns. In turn, Theodosius and his generals similarly began undertaking preparations for war against the West once more, Pulcheria and her anti-Hun ally Paulinus having been sidelined by Chrysaphius at this time.


Also in 437 Ambrosius experienced a setback – and a heavy one at that, though it was something he and all Romano-Britons had been expecting for years – when a new breed of Germanic invaders arrived on British shores, intent on conquest. In this year’s summer the similarly young and ambitious warlord Ælle[22] led over 7,000 Saxon warriors and their even more numerous families into the estuary of the Abus[23], advancing further inland from there as the months wore on and compelling the surrender of most of the Briton and Jute settlements in his path; those which tried to put up a fight, he of course put to the torch. By mid-autumn he had reached Eburacum, that great last seat of Romano-British power in northern Britannia. But though the city had never fallen to Briton, Jute or Pict up to this point, it had few souls still living behind its walls and fewer still manning those defenses, for the vast majority of the citizens and rural refugees who’d gathered there in the chaotic first years of Constans’ reign had long ago left for safer pastures in southern Britannia while they still could.

As it was obvious Ambrosius could not send relief to the exclave, on account of it being completely surrounded by hostile territory and the Abus now closed by the Saxons, and that the Saxon army was larger and more formidable than the usual raiding parties its depleted garrison had to deal with, the city magistrates decided to surrender to Ælle rather than fight to their senseless deaths. Thus was the final vestige of Roman presence in northern Britain extinguished. Ælle, for his part, was pleased at this latest addition to his string of victories and made Eburacum – known as ‘Eoforwic’ in the tongue of his people – into the capital of his new kingdom, which he was determined to expand against anyone who stood in his way: be they indigenous Britons, or his Jutish cousins.


In early 438, the plans of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Huns were temporarily derailed when Bahram broke his peace treaty with the former and attacked in a bid to regain political capital after being defeated by the Hephthalites. Theodosius II was forced to send Aspar to reinforce the Syrian frontier with the army they had originally planned on sending against Eucherius and Theodoric, and Attila was unwilling to take any chances against the proven strength of the West at this point. Thus, instead of starting another war against the Western Romans Theodosius’ main accomplishment this year was the publication of the Codex Theodosianus, a compilation of laws dating back to the reign of Constantine the Great over a hundred years prior.

Out east, Aspar proved himself to be a cunning and vicious commander in his first proper outing as magister militum. Linking up with the Eastern Empire’s faithful Ghassanid allies outside Antioch, he informed King al-Nu’man IV that he had a better plan in mind than waiting around for additional carroballistae to be put together in the city while the Persians ravaged eastern Syria & Mesopotamia. When the Eastern Roman and Ghassanid army met the larger one of the Sassanids and Lakhmids near Callinicum[24], which Bahram and his generals had been besieging, Aspar allowed the Shah to send forth his 45-strong elephant corps (including 20 fully armored ones with iron-tipped tusks) and even allow them to come quite close to his lines before unveiling his brand new anti-elephant weapon: hundreds of camels provided by al-Nu’man, loaded down with straw which he then had his men ignite. The sight of burning camels being driven toward them so frightened the war elephants that they stampeded back toward the Persian army, causing a general rout and a trivial victory for Aspar. Bahram himself was one of the casualties of the disaster, thrown by his horse into a swamp along the Euphrates while fleeing from the battlefield and drowning thanks to his heavy armor[25]. Nevertheless the successor to the Persian throne, Yazdgerd II, refused to make peace with the Romans.

Eucherius, for his part, was not blind to the dangers gathering on his eastern border and spent both this year and the preparing as best he could for the war which he too believed was imminent. Most importantly he fortified Aquincum once more to improve the West’s chances of stopping a Hun crossing of the Middle Danube there, while also ordering Theodoric’s Visigoth troops to amass in several prominent fortress cities along the borders with the Eastern Empire and the Huns; Sirmium, Singidunum, Ratiaria, Viminacium and Serdica were among the most important of these. He also had some 6,000 Visigoths fortify themselves in the western Rhodope Mountains to block the Eastern legions’ most direct route to Thessalonica. Finally, taking advantage of the abatement of barbarian incursions along his western frontiers, the emperor redirected eight of the Gallic legions under Aetius’ oldest son Carpilio[26] to join the Dalmatian comitatenses and expand his mobile reserves in Illyricum.

439 opened with the Eastern Romans actively counterattacking against Persia. Aspar led his army to expel the last of the Sassanid forces still on Roman soil at Circesium[27] by the start of summer, then advanced down the Euphrates toward the ruins of Dura-Europos. There he outmaneuvered and crushed another Sassanid army, capturing the Lakhmid king al-Mundhir, and turned his light cavalry & Ghassanid auxiliaries loose, allowing them to pillage as far as al-Hirah and into Asoristan for months before Yazdgerd finally admitted defeat. The Eastern Romans extorted 3,000 pounds of gold, hundreds of bolts of silk cloth and crates of spices, as well as the cession of the border fortress-cities of Nisibis[28] and Sisauranon, in exchange for peace. An elated Theodosius recalled Aspar to the capital, where he and the rest of the Eastern high command were making final preparations to go to war with the Western Empire…


In Britain, Ambrosius continued his campaign of reconquest by attacking Dumnonia, the largest and most powerful of the southern British kingdoms which had rebelled after his father’s death. After some smaller skirmishes in the spring and early summer, the rebel emperor marched west at the head of a 4,000-strong army to face King Uthyr and a similar number of Dumnonians at Guoloph[29]. Here he was victorious, routing the Britons with a well-timed cavalry charge into their flank while they were busy fighting his infantry, and captured Uthyr as he scoured the latter’s men from the field. Instead of killing the rival king however, Ambrosius allowed him to live as a vassal in exchange for his baptism and that of his family into the Pelagian Church. Furthermore the betrothal of Uthyr’s younger sister Eigyr to Ambrosius himself was arranged, though due to the bride still being a child at this time, the marriage ceremony itself was postponed until she had grown older.

Also in 439, the forces of Liu Song finally chased the last of the Rouran out of their territories back over the Great Wall. With this, Emperor Wen had nearly completed the reunification of China, for his realm now stretched from the aforementioned Great Wall to the province of Jiaozhou[30] in the south. Only two weak kingdoms still stood in his way: Northern Liang and Western Qin, both located in the remote northwest. To ensure he’d have a free hand to eliminate them without having to worry about the Rouran attacking his northern flank, Wen agreed to buy them off with many sycees of gold & silver as well as the marriage of his eldest daughter, Princess Dongyangxian, to the Rourans’ own Qilian Khagan.

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[1] Gnotzheim.

[2] Budapest.

[3] Pécs.

[4] Sisak.

[5] Supposedly Attila first discovered his sword when one of his subjects’ sheep cut itself on the blade while grazing, and he declared the weapon to be a gift from above. The Romans interpreted whichever god gave Attila this weapon to be the Huns’ equivalent to Mars, so most likely Attila intended it to be either the ‘Scythian Ares’ worshiped by Indo-European steppe pagans like the Alans or Kyzaghan, the Turkic war god and grandson of Tengri.

[6] Slavonski Brod.

[7] Požega.

[8] Burgheim.

[9] Neuberg an der Donau.

[10] The first king of the Rugians whose name was known to history, father to the Feletheus who was later vanquished by Odoacer.

[11] The Kupa River.

[12] The Ghassanid king from 434 to 455.

[13] Samsat.

[14] Harran.

[15] Cart-mounted ballistae which served as the light, mobile artillery of the late legions, recorded by Vegetius in De Re Militari.

[16] Balkh.

[17] Silchester.

[18] Winchester.

[19] Sheberghan.

[20] Chaoyang.

[21] Historically, Bleda did not die until almost ten years later.

[22] Historically the first named king of the South Saxons, who were also the first actual Saxons known to have settled in Britain instead of just raiding its shores.

[23] The Humber River.

[24] Raqqa.

[25] Historically Bahram did die, possibly from drowning in a swamp, in 438, though obviously under very different circumstances – there was no war between the ERE and Sassanid Persia that year IRL.

[26] Aetius’ firstborn son from his first wife, a daughter of another Carpilio (presumably his namesake), about whom nothing is known other than his name and that he was born at some point before 425.

[27] Al-Busayrah.

[28] Nusaybin.

[29] Nether Wallop.

[30] Northern Vietnam.