Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
As far as salt goes, I think supplying that's not too much of an issue for the WRE. They may have lost the great salt mines of Britain to the Romano-Britons long ago (and those guys have only recently recaptured the Cheshire salt mines from the Anglo-Saxons in turn), but still have the traditional saltworks and sources on both the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts of Italy (connected by the ancient Via Salaria) to rely on as well as salt ponds in Dalmatia and mines in Africa, plus the Turda salt mine in newly recovered Dacia.
Plus they can also restart the salt mining at Salzburg if the prices go up.

You spoiled us rotten with both the frequency and the quality of the updates, so the less frequent updates will be a hard blow, but I think we will be able to manage. Something about building up the character I think.
 
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510-512: Ride of the White Huns

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
The new decade opened with the Eastern Roman armies converging upon and laying siege to Nineveh, whose defenders opted to surrender when they saw Sabbatius’ men constructing siege towers and rams throughout the spring – the deployment of which would have surely meant the city would be sacked if they were successful in storming the walls. Only the sheer number of Ephesian-aligned Eastern Roman and Caucasian troops prevented the Miaphysites who joined up with Sabbatius from simply sacking Nineveh anyway. However, this would prove to be the last major success the Eastern Augustus would be scoring up to this point, as Toramana began to bring the Buddhist Persians stirred up by Mazdak to bear in significant number from the end of spring onward.

The first clash between their armies this year occurred near Hdatta, where the enthusiastic but inexperienced Mazdakites (as these Amidist Buddhist followers of Mazdak were called) were swept away by the heavy Eastern Roman and Armenian cavalry. However, while Sabbatius was besieging Hdatta, Toramana returned on June 26 with an army swollen to nearly 40,000 men by further Mazdakite reinforcements, who comprised over half his numbers. The Mahārājadhirāja took advantage of his numerical superiority to restrict the Eastern Romans’ ability to maneuver on the battlefield, personally leading the elite Eftal warriors in his reserve to push them back whenever it seemed like they might achieve a breakthrough, and ultimately forced them to retreat further up the Tigris late in the afternoon.

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The Buddhist Mazdakite infantry whom Toramana had mobilized were not the greatest fighters, but what they lacked in experience & quality equipment, they made up for numbers & enthusiasm - allowing them to cover the Eftals' numerical weakness

When Sabbatius returned to Nineveh, he found that Patriarch Shila had induced the Nestorians to revolt after receiving news of his defeat in the Battle of Hdatta, and that they’d massacred the small garrison he left behind and closed the gates in the name of Toramana. Cursing the heretics and swearing revenge for this treachery, the emperor nevertheless had to retreat even further north while being harassed by the White Hun cavalry. He did turn and attempt to engage his pursuers in late July once he thought he had more favorable ground at a river crossing near Balad, only for Toramana to dispatch his Fufuluo riders to circle around the Eastern Roman ranks and attack them from behind; the Eastern Romans managed to fight his way out of that trap, but not without sustaining grievous losses including nearly the entire Miaphysite contingent (whom Sabbatius left behind to serve as his rearguard, while Toramana and his warriors were positively eager to make martyrs out of them) and Vakhtang, King of Caucasian Iberia.

Their losses were so great, in fact, that Sabbatius soon had to abandon his Mesopotamian conquests, and the destruction of his Miaphysite corps also meant there would be no chance of them reviving their insurgency any time soon. While Toramana took the chance to start razing their remaining undermanned refuges and carry their women & children off as slaves to other parts of his empire on his road to Nisibis, his Roman counterpart appealed to the Western Caesar for help. Although this conflict had nothing to do with the Western Empire’s interests at all, Theodosius was not about to let his best friend down and prevailed upon his father Eucherius to let him set out for the Orient with eight legions: a modest commitment which didn’t entirely make up for the 10,000 casualties the Eastern Roman army had sustained at the Battle of Balad, but was sufficient to buy them time to rebuild their strength – if they could just reach Sabbatius quickly enough – and, being another show of unity between the two empires in this new age, also boosted the morale of the Eastern Romans.

Meanwhile in Britannia, Gwenhwyfar gave birth to another son on April 14. However, to everyone’s shock and horror, this child looked nothing like either of his parents – being dark of hair and eye. Artorius demanded answers, for neither his family nor Gwenhwyfar’s own were known to have those features, instead being mostly light-haired and eyed. As his queen was not forthcoming with answers, he had her and the bastard imprisoned in a tower near Verulamium: but no sooner had he left the area did a force of over 100 well-armed men launch a surprise night attack on the tower, decimating the guards he’d stationed there and springing his wife from confinement with her newest child.

As it turned out, Gwenhwyfar had been carrying on an affair with Llenleawc, the Riothamus’ trusted left arm, since he saved her from the clutches of the Saxon rebels of Lindum eight years prior. Her previous daughter, Norwenna, had in truth also been Llenleawc’s, but having inherited her mother’s looks, she could pass for another one of Artorius’ and made Gwenhwyfar confident that she could disguise her next child with Llenleawc the same way. Obviously, she miscalculated and now her lover had been forced to commit an even more blatant act of treason – attacking a royal fort and killing the Riothamus’ soldiers – on top of having slept with the queen, in order to save her and their younger child. Artorius was livid at the news of his wife’s escape and his greatest lieutenant’s betrayal, and prepared to march against Llenleawc’s domain to punish them both: however, as he was not completely certain that young Norwenna was Llenleawc’s daughter and not his, and in any case believed himself above killing children, he dictated that the probably-not-a-princess should immediately be entered into a convent for the rest of her days, just to keep her – and his certainly trueborn elder children – safe.

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Sadly for the ascendant Pendragon dynasty, it turned out that their queen had been rather more than just friends with the Riothamus' chief lieutenant

The Battle of Venonae on May 13 was a brutally lopsided one. Though Llenleawc was a proven leader and mighty warrior, Artorius had mustered nearly the full might of southern Britannia to avenge his cuckolding – some 9,000 men – and outnumbered Llenleawc’s army 3:1. The rebel dux was not even given a chance to try talking things out before his king descended upon him with a terrible fury, crushing through his lines, taking no prisoners (and indeed warning Llenleawc’s army at the start of the battle that anybody who stuck by their outlawed overlord would be shown no quarter) and nearly killing him in single combat. Only the former’s own great skill at arms saved his life, and so Llenleawc was able to limp off the battlefield at that day’s end with grievous injuries (including a grisly facial scar, deliberately inflicted by Artorius to mar his good looks) and fewer than 700 men. Knowing his lands to be indefensible and the wrath of his former friend unquenchable, Llenleawc decided to flee Britannia with Gwenhwyfar, their infant son Galahad and a few trusted retainers, thinking he could offer his skills to his old Anglo-Saxon enemies in exchange for refuge.

Unfortunately for the adulterous couple, the Anglo-Saxons were having troubles of their own. In the wake of the failed campaign against Alcluyd, Cissa’s son & successor Cenwulf had raised the standard of rebellion against the Angles in an attempt to retake the crown of the Bretwalda for his family, and many of his Saxon kindred joined him. While the renegade Hiberno-Briton initially believed this outbreak of chaos would make him into an even more attractive hire for Icel, he never got the chance to meet either the Angle king or his Saxon rival, for he and Gwenhwyfar were waylaid by Beowulf (whose liege was loyal to Cenwulf) as they emerged from the Pennines and traveled through the lands of Elmet on their path to Eoforwic. Beowulf naturally insisted on dueling his father’s killer as a precondition to letting Gwenhwyfar and Galahad go without further harassment, despite Llenleawc’s wounds being half-healed at best, and so easily vanquished him in a complete reversal of their first fight. The Geatish champion did keep his word after the duel and even allowed Llenleawc a worthy burial at the church of the mostly-ruined and sparsely inhabited Cambodunum[1], after which the disgraced Queen of the Romano-Britons and her bastard son faded into obscurity amid the Saxons’ hills for some time.

While Llenleawc was fleeing through Saxon lands, Artorius rampaged through his fiefdom and placed his lawful wife, Gwenhwyfar’s sister Gwenhwyfach, as well as their legitimate children under arrest. Medraut seized the chance to once more advocate that he be made heir, claiming that the paternity of all of the royal children was now in question, but the Riothamus rebuffed him. As Artorius the Younger and the majority of his younger siblings all took after Artorius the Elder’s looks, the latter reasoned that they must actually be his children and that Gwenhwyfar must have started her affair with Llenleawc after the birth of Lecatus, the last of their sons who resembled him. This argument did not satisfy Medraut, who promptly began stirring up a conspiracy to imprison his father – whose judgment, he claimed, was addled by age and lingering feelings for the wife who had just given him horns – then force him to declare him heir to the Romano-British throne, followed by eliminating the half-siblings he now insisted were more disgraceful bastards than himself on the road. The King of Dumnonia found allies among the Britons of the west, who were growing concerned about Romano-British and Christian encroachment into their lands as settlements like Venta Silurum ballooned in size and wealth, though King Gwydre of Gwynedd proved more faithful to Artorius than his sister Gwenhwyfar had been: so much so that Medraut was terrified he’d pick up on the subtle implications of his first attempt to reach out to him, and would never try to involve him in the plot again.

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Agents of Medraut of Dumnonia and the Uí Liatháin of Demetia exchange their masters' well-wishes and next steps

Lastly, in India the front-lines of the latest Eftal-Gupta war stabilized, while in Arabia those of the Aksumite-Himyarite conflict remained mostly static this year. Bhanugupta pushed Lakhana almost all the way back to Gandhara and the Indus River, leaving behind pockets of Hephthalite and Indo-Saka resistance trapped in Gujarat and Malwa. As the year drew to a close, Lakhana made preparations for an audacious counterattack to try to reverse the tide, while Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas were both preparing their own gambits to break the stalemate in Arabia: Kaleb drew up plans for a diversionary advance on Ma’rib from the coast to cover another large invasion of the Himyarite mountains from the north, while Dhu Nuwas placed his bets on an extremely ambitious strategy of clearing away the Aksumite navy and mounting amphibious landings near Muza and other ports behind the Ethiopians’ lines with smaller forces while the bulk of his army would descend upon them from said mountains.

As of the spring of 511, Theodosius and his legions had crossed the Hellespont and were well on their way to reaching Sabbatius. Their help could not have come at a better time, for by this point the emperor had retreated back to Nisibis and was besieged there by Toramana’s army. Linking up with a second Eastern Roman army amassed at Antioch by Narses the eunuch, Theodosius moved to relieve the siege and dealt the Hephthalites a stinging defeat before Nisibis on April 29, assisted by Sabbatius’ men firing onagers and scorpions mounted on the city’s mighty walls the entire time.

Having united their armies, the Eastern Augustus and Western Caesar pursued Toramana southward, driving the Eftals out of Zabdicene and sending Levon (now King of Iberia) at the head of a detachment to recapture the re-ruined fort of Singara as spring gave way to summer, while they themselves marched down the Euphrates rather than the Tigris this time to try to surprise Toramana. However, the Mahārājadhirāja rallied at Nineveh and brought up further reinforcements from the rest of his own empire to compensate for the losses he’d taken at Nisibis: besides several thousand more Mazdakites and smaller contingents drawn from the other great Hephthalite & Parthian clans, as well as a small corps of 10 war elephants. These elephants proved a nasty shock for the Romans when they met again, and as Sabbatius & Theodosius (having never seen the Eftals make use of elephants as the Sassanids had, and perhaps thinking the means to command such beasts was beyond them on account of their barbarism) had not made adequate preparations for dealing with them, they decisively contributed to the White Huns’ victory at Diacira on June 1.

The Romans fell back to the once-formidable fortress city of Dura-Europos, abandoned and ruined since it was sacked by the Sassanids in the 3rd century, and Narses was dispatched back to Syria to procure anti-elephant carroballistae while they hurriedly entrenched themselves ahead of Toramana’s arrival. There they held out against the Hephthalite cavalry, which had raced ahead of the lumbering infantry and elephants of the Mahārājadhirāja’s army to harass them, and were rewarded when the Armenian eunuch returned with the horse-drawn scorpion carriages assembled with great haste in Callinicum. When the two armies properly fought again around Dura-Europos a month later, on July 17, their field artillery proved a game-changer as it had against the Sassanids. The White Huns were badly mauled as the scorpions’ bolts shot down most of their elephants and drove two others mad with agony, causing them to stampede back into the their own formations. Over the rest of 511 Toramana was chased down the Euphrates as far as Diacira, while Levon moved from Singara to recapture Balad and place Nineveh under siege yet again.

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Detail of a carroballista from Trajan's column. Unlike the legionaries' equipment, the weapon's design had not changed significantly in the centuries which had passed between then and the Battle of Dura-Europos in 511

Over in India, Lakhana enjoyed far better fortunes than his cousin. During the spring he baited Bhanugupta into invading Gandhara, while actually swinging his main army through the Upāirisaēna Mountains – collecting Bactrian and Arachosian reinforcements as he did – and re-emerging at Shalkot, from where he stormed over the Indus and raced to destroy the secondary army the Samrat had detached to finish off the Eastern Eftal and Indo-Saka contingents trapped in Gujarat. Lakhana’s maneuver had caught the Indians entirely by surprise and he shattered this smaller army at Vallabhi, where they had been besieging the largest such pocket of trapped Hephthalites, who promptly rejoined Lakhana’s army with much fanfare.

Lakhana next swung back north to engage Bhanugupta, who had been caught as off-guard by his rival’s latest move as his father had been by Lakhana’s own father at the Bolan Pass and Kapisa nearly thirty years before. At their first battle this year, fought near Jabalipura[2] on May 25, Bhanugupta was victorious and Lakhana beat a retreat southward before he could lose too many men, giving the Samrat the impression that he could now trap his foe in Gujarat and finally end him there. But the Eastern Mahārājadhirāja had a plan in mind: he turned the tables and engaged Bhanugupta in the great Rann of Khachchh, something Bhanugupta had no more expected than his southward swing through the Upāirisaēna in the spring since he’d assumed the marshy battleground would hinder the Hunnish cavalry.

That it did, but the swamps bogged down Bhanugupta’s more heavily armored troops and elephants even more badly, and would only get worse as monsoon season arrived to flood the region. Lakhana’s lightly equipped Sogdians and Indo-Saka warriors outmaneuvered and ambushed the Indian host as it slogged through the marshy woodland of this region, and he himself led his full army to a resounding victory against them by attacking during a storm and driving the Indians into the path of a seasonal flood on June 18. Bhanugupta himself was nearly killed after his personal elephant was killed from underneath him by Sogdian javelineers and axemen, barely surviving only to be dragged out of the ruins of his howdah and taken captive: however, his injuries were too severe for him to live long despite the best efforts of Lakhana’s Persian physicians (for the Mahārājadhirāja wanted him alive so they could negotiate a favorable peace treaty), and he perished on June 30. Once more the Gupta realm unraveled as he’d left no sons, only a daughter, and so his succession was contested by various cousins and rebellious vassals – although Lakhana was determined not to repeat his mistake of helping one claimant defeat all the others and consolidate power this time around.

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Lakhana and the Eastern Hephthalite cavalry crossing the Rann of Khachchh

In southern Arabia, the Aksumites and Himyarites were busy setting their own complicated strategies into motion. As planned, Kaleb sprang a southward march into the Himyarite highlands while a token force attacked from the west to divert Dhu Nuwas’ attention, while Dhu Nuwas in turn massed the bulk of his army in said mountains with plans to descend to the coastal lowlands once his smaller amphibious detachments made landfall and secured the territories they were supposed to. Of the pair, Himyar’s gambit was more successful: the Aksumites moved a little too quickly, resulting in their diversionary force being smashed as it approached Ta’izz and one of the surviving Ethiopian captains giving up what he knew of his emperor’s plan under torture.

Trusting that the garrisons Kaleb had left along the coast would be too small to expel his amphibious forces, Dhu Nuwas gathered up his host and stormed northward to engage the Aksumites before they could reach Ma’rib, inflicting a significant defeat on Kaleb’s army in the Jabal Haraz range that summer. His assumption as to the Aksumites’ strength on the coast proved accurate as well, for Kaleb had nearly emptied his garrisons to pad out his own core army. The Baccinbaxaba sued for peace in light of his heavy losses, returning Muza and the other ports to Himyar in exchange for a payment in gold and incense. The first time the two giants of the Red Sea clashed had ended in a victory for Dhu Nuwas, who had finally recovered his kingdom’s long-lost western coast even as Kaleb swore revenge.

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Dhu Nuwas, famed for his sidelocks - and for winning Himyar's first victory against Aksum in nearly 50 years

The spring of 512 brought with it a renewed Roman offensive. Sabbatius and Theodosius defeated a small 6,000-strong Eftal delaying force at Peroz-Shapur[3], but Toramana used the time his men bought him to bring up ever more reinforcements from eastern Mesopotamia and Persis. In May he confronted the Romans at Nehardea with an army of 42,000 men which included 15 elephants, over 20,000 Mazdakites and a Jewish contingent levied at that city, and was victorious in the furious clash which followed, derailing Sabbatius’ hopes of ending the war quickly by marching on Ctesiphon. The Romans nevertheless surprised Toramana by swinging north and retreating up the Tigris through hostile Western Hephthalite-held territory, living off the land (and thus devastating it) as they went.

The White Huns were not far behind, and forced another engagement outside the ruins of the Babylonian city of Sippar[4] on June 9. This time the Romans prevailed, using their carroballistae to once more thwart the onslaught of the Eftal elephants while their legions broke through the Mahārājadhirāja’s attempt to encircle them, allowing them to continue retreating northward while Levon the Iberian abandoned his siege of Nineveh and hurried south to reinforce his overlord. However, the Hephthalite cavalry continued to harass their flight from Mesopotamia, culminating in Theodosius taking a fatal arrow to the neck which the offending Eftal horse-archer intended for Sabbatius in a skirmish shortly after the Romans passed Samarra six days later.

The death of his best friend since childhood enraged Sabbatius, and while he was rational enough to continue retreating north instead of turning and launching into some mad dash for Ctesiphon, when the Hephthalite cavalry once more fully caught up with him at Tikrit on June 25, he was all too happy to give battle. The Hephthalite horse-archers outshot their counterparts among the Eastern Roman army, but they were forced to retreat by Basil’s Syriac archers and the battle between the Roman and Eftal cataphracts favored the former in part thanks to Sabbatius’ leadership. The emperor fought alongside his troops rather than commanding from behind as he usually did and personally killed the Hephthalite field commander, Toramana’s father-in-law Sagharak, in his rage. Still, Sagharak had managed to stab Sabbatius in the leg even as the Augustus crushed his helm and skull with a mace, and the Eastern Romans would have been defeated thanks to the emergence of the Eftal infantry had it not been for the timely arrival of Levon’s weary reinforcements soon after.

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The Western Caesar Theodosius is shot to death by a Hephthalite horse-archer after pushing the Eastern Emperor Sabbatius out of the way

As the Battle of Tikrit turned into a stalemate, Toramana sued for peace, and the injured Sabbatius grudgingly assented to negotiate terms in spite of his fury and grief. The Hephthalites were willing to cede Singara, Dura-Europos and their immediate environs to the Eastern Romans in exchange for a sum of gold & silver and a cession of all Roman backing to insurgents on their territory, which the Mahārājadhirāja considered to be exceedingly generous given the precarious situation of the Roman army in Mesopotamia. Sabbatius did not think it so charitable, since all he was getting to show for the death of his friend and thousands of his soldiers was a pair of ruined fortresses and worthless, sparsely inhabited land far from the great Mesopotamian rivers – hardly the grand reconquest of, at minimum, all Assyria that he envisioned at the start of his campaign, considering all the advantages he thought he enjoyed then. But a sense of pragmatic realism guided him now, as it had when he refrained from seeking revenge on his own heterodox subjects after defeating Trocundus and in his continued retreat from Samarra, so he took Toramana’s deal rather than try to see the battle (and afterward, the war) to its end.

While Toramana spun this meager Roman victory into further proof of his greatness, that the Western Hephthalites were here to stay and could not be vanquished even when undermined by a large-scale rebellion, and planned to retake all that he’d lost in the next few years, these developments were obviously much more poorly received in the Roman world. Sabbatius’ efforts to trumpet his extremely limited gains as a victory largely fell flat, for few Eastern Romans were convinced that the reward had been worth their losses. A comedian in Antioch who mocked the emperor as a failed Alexander mourning his Hephaestion was executed for his words in August, but killing him obviously did little to restore Sabbatius’ prestige in the eyes of his subjects – the only way to do that (and also avenge Theodosius), he believed, would be to fight the White Huns once again and crush them utterly.

In Ravenna the news went down even more poorly. Eucherius II suffered a fatal heart attack upon hearing of his eldest son’s death, and as Theodosius left behind only two young daughters, the Occidental throne passed on to his sole surviving brother Constantine over his widow Anastasia’s protests. In turn the newly crowned Constantine III, who (as a third son) had never expected to become Augustus of the West, spent the rest of the year giving out donatives to his legions and assuring his officials, generals and factional leaders that he appreciated their service and that they were not in danger of losing their offices, so as to allay any rebellious thoughts.

To secure the allies he and his late brother had made, Constantine also assured King Augustine of Altava that he’d continue to uphold the betrothal of his niece Eucheria to the latter’s heir Felix, while following through on his own betrothal and marrying the Frankish princess Clotilde on December 20 this year. He would need that marriage to reinforce his alliance with the Franks and Merobaudes, for the winter of 512 brought with it yet another barbarian invader: the Lombards migrated from their lands under pressure from the Veneti Slavs and entered territories assigned to the March of Arbogast and the Bauivarii. The emperor’s honeymoon would have to wait, for he had to leave Italy almost immediately after his wedding to join his in-laws in responding to this threat despite the suggestion of his magister militum that it was probably nothing more than the periodic raiding force.

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Flavius Aloysius, son of Merobaudes and brother-in-law to the newly crowned Emperor Constantine III, inspects the damage done to a hamlet in his father's March by the migrating Lombards

In Britannia, brewing tensions between the native Silurian Britons and Romano-British settlers in Venta Silurum & Isca Silurum finally exploded into open violence in the harvest season following a rash of murders related to land disputes, which the Romano-Britons blamed on the Britons since Artorius and his magistrates had more frequently ruled in the former’s favor. Gundleus, the greatly aged King of the Silures, resolved to punish the Romano-British by burning their towns down following lynchings and mob violence in which the settlers prevailed thanks to the help of Artorius’ garrisons in said cities, who after all were their kin from eastern Britain. Obviously, the Riothamus could not approve of Gundleus’ attack on his Romano-British subjects and, while insisting that he would dole out impartial justice if both sides would just calm down, return to their homes and present their cases to him like civilized men, ensured his words would be backed up with steel by bringing an army with him to re-enforce order in Siluria.

However, soon after arriving to relieve the siege of Venta Silurum in early winter, Artorius was warned by messengers from Glevum that Medraut had taken the opportunity to begin marching east out of Dumnonia, seizing Aquae Sulis and Camalet and proclaiming his half-siblings to be bastards: he was now challenging his father to recognize him as the one true heir to the British throne on grounds of being the one Pendragon prince whose paternity nobody could dispute, and had brought swords of his own to make his case for him if Artorius would not acknowledge his ‘rights’. He was further aided by old Myrddyn, the druid who had guarded Caliburnus while it was still stuck in the stone, who found in the bastard King of Dumnonia a ruler more sympathetic to the old ways than the staunchly Pelagian Artorius.

Gundleus, revealing his true colors as one of Medraut’s conspirators, refused all attempts by Artorius to negotiate and attacked the royal army. The Riothamus defeated and killed him in retaliation, but found himself dangerously isolated as many of his Britonic vassals revealed their allegiance to his bastard in turn (the sole exception among the western Britons was the faithful King of Gwynedd, now trapped behind these traitors). It fell to Artorius the Younger and Lecatus to organize the remaining Romano-British legions and levies in the southeast of their kingdom to stop their half-brother’s eastern advance, which was being held up at Venta Belgarum: the Belgae, being one of the more Romanized and Christianized of the remaining Britonic peoples, followed the example of Gwynedd rather than that set by most of their cousins, and under their King Melwas they’d elected to fight alongside their Romano-British neighbors. The only silver lining for the Romano-British kingdom was that the Anglo-Saxons were still too distracted with their own civil war to take advantage of how quickly their situation had taken a turn for the worse: by the end of 512, the Ællings were in control of Eoforwic, while Icel remained in control of the northern half of their people’s shared lands and was struggling to expel them from the city.

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A Romano-British horseman in Artorius' service clashing with Gundleus' Silurian warriors in the opening battle of the latest British civil war

In India, Lakhana focused on clearing out the few Gupta garrisons that hadn’t been recalled to the east from the lands which he’d lorded over before the outbreak of this newest war. He stayed out of the civil war which said garrisons’ comrades had been summoned back to fight in, content to allow the Indians to destroy each other before he swooped in to crush whoever was left standing. In the meantime, he would content himself with recovering the lands he’d lost to the late Bhanugupta and sending out horsemen to raid Indian countryside around the lower Ganges.

Lastly, in East Asia, the Rouran civil war ended with the final defeat of Fumingdun Khagan, whose defeats and unappealing combination of cruelty and cowardice drove his few remaining followers to desert him in the spring: he was duly captured, turned away even by the Chinese who’d finally written him off as a disgusting liability, and executed by his cousin Yujiulü Futu[5], the eldest son of the very same Houqifudaikezhe Khagan defeated by Emperor Gong of Chen nearly two decades before. In truth it could barely be called a ‘civil war’ for the past decade and a half anyway, as the majority of the Rouran preferred to follow Houqifudaikezhe’s sons rather than their tyrannical Chinese-appointed ruler and Fumingdun soon became wholly reliant on help from his overlord’s border armies to maintain his pretense of overlordship over the Rouran.

With his cousin’s demise, Futu was free to proclaim himself Tuohan Khagan – his father’s rightful successor in name as well as in fact – and that the fight to free the Rouran from China’s shackles was just beginning, for he could have gotten rid of Fumingdun long ago if it were not for Jiankang’s support for the tyrant. Emperor Ming of Chen welcomed the challenge, thinking the Rouran to be gravely weakened from their civil war and that this would be an excellent opportunity to destroy them once & for all, thereby securing China’s northern flank permanently. Tuohan set out to prove his enemy’s estimates wrong, forcing kidnapped Chinese engineers (whether taken from Fumingdun’s side in earlier battles or in raids on the Great Wall) to construct mangonels for him and also to teach their skills to the Rouran under threat of torture or death. By the first snowfall this winter, Rouran riders had streamed through the Great Wall – breached again, so soon after it had just been patched up by the Chen, by their new artillery corps – and began to ride roughshod over northern China even as Emperor Ming and his generals were marshaling another behemoth of an army around the Yangtze to crush them.

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Having broken out of containment, Rouran pillagers were free to start attacking villages in northern China yet again from the end of 512 onward

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[1] Slack Roman Fort, near Huddersfield.

[2] Jalore.

[3] Near Fallujah.

[4] Near Yusufiyah.

[5] Historically, the man who would become Tuohan Khagan died fighting the Gaoche in 508. Of course, this could not happen ITL and so instead of succeeding his father in 506 only to die two years later, Futu has survived to wrest the Khaganate from his similarly much longer-lived cousin Fumingdun/Yujiulü Doulun in 512 instead.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Damn, I had high hopes for Theodosius, hopefully Constantine will prove to be an adequate leader.

Indeed.But,Constantine should not have problems with Lombards,in OTL both Goths and Franks had no problem beating them.
Only question is,if they start money lending after they get defeated,or not.After all,their only contribution to modern cyvilisation are lombards in our cities.

Mordred and Artur would probably kill each other,but Arhur son should keep his kingdom - till whatever win saxon-jutes war become orthodox christian.That would be death sentence for his rule.

ERE lost,but at least their heretics are wiped out.And we had Narses,but Bellisarius could be not born here.

P.S i remember some viking saga about viking which fo to Vinland,and meet viking who lived among natives and told him about"white people country" where irish/probably/ settlers lived.
So,irish could do that here for real.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Well a lot going on there and somewhat of an set back for both parts of the empire with the western empire losing both emperor and Caesar so causing a sudden succession and possibly a period of instability. Coupled with the Lombard invasion, although that will be falling largely on the Germanic federalies and the combined strength of the empire should be strong enough to crush them although the leaders of the latter could end up being dangerously over-confident.

In the east Sabbatius has had a poor time, losing his friend and also failing to make the conquests he desired while the Miaphysite are no longer a factor he can use against Toramana and his state. He will seek revenge but whether that will prompt him to success or gambling too much and failure we will have to see.

At the same time its provided a breather for the two Hephthalites states, with the eastern one looking in good condition with a vital period of peace while the Gupta empire seems to have fallen into chaos and the Chinese are distracted by a Rouran revival. Unless this prompts Lakhana to decide its time to regain the lands he lost to the Chinese earlier, which might be successful or could turn out to be a disaster.

Toramana has done less well but does have peace and a time to recover. Also between him and Sabbatius the Miaphysite have been largely destroyed as a factor in the region. It does depend on how much influence that the Mazdakites want and whether they will in turn cause unrest and division.

In Britain everybody pretty much is suffering. Artorius's state is suffering from bitter infighting and is unlikely to last much longer, as probably will be the same for the king. He has been saved by the infighting among the Anglo-Saxons although I suspect that they will end up winning in the end. Especially with a deep division in the Romano Brits and Brits and their religious isolation.

Axum has suffered a set-back that will delay their dominance of the Yemen region, or possibly stop it completely if something else occurs.

Many thanks for another fascinating episode and some interesting twists. As you might have gathered I'm developing a soft spot for the Hephthalites although both have run on luck several times against markedly larger forces.

Steve
 
513-515: The Hill of Swords

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
The early winter and spring of 513 saw the Lombards continuing to migrate across the sparsely populated forests of the March of Arbogast, while the magister peditum Merobaudes was amassing his legions and auxiliaries around Augusta Treverorum and Emperor Constantine was hurrying to join him with additional forces from Italy, southern Gaul, the Burgundian kingdom and Alemannia. By April the Western Romans were ready to take the fight to the Lombards, who meanwhile had come within striking distance of the Rhine and were menacing Borbetomagus when Constantine and Merobaudes marched to meet them. In the battle which followed the Western Romans continued to demonstrate their revitalized military might, resisting the furious charges of the Lombards – spearheaded by wild berserkers and well-armored champions who could’ve easily scattered a lesser foe – with their well-prepared and disciplined infantry ranks (which was further backed by thousands of Alemannic and Frankish auxiliaries) under Merobaudes and his son Aloysius, while Constantine led the Gallic and Burgundian cavalry to victory over their less numerous and experienced counterparts. Now threatened with encirclement after his meager horsemen were put to flight, the Lombard king Ildichis chose this time to capitulate and sue for terms.

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A Frankish federate auxiliary and Gallo-Roman light cavalryman corner one of Ildichis' Lombard warriors at the end of the Battle of Borbetomagus

At first, Constantine was skeptical of the worth of adding yet another vassal to the ranks of the Western Empire’s numerous federate kingdoms and concerned that he might dangerously overextend his frontier as a result, influenced by the advice of the magister militum Theodoric: his first inclination was to send the Lombards packing back to their homeland after collecting a tribute of slaves and silver to compensate for the devastation they had caused on their path. Merobaudes won him over by pointing out the hypocrisy of Theodoric issuing such advice while being a federate king himself and having incorporated the Gepids, whose gold mines had been nothing but beneficial to the empire, as well as by assuring him that they could carve a reasonably defensible homeland for the Lombards out of the eastern reaches of the March of Arbogast and the westernmost corners of the old Lombard territory which had yet to be completely overrun by Slavic migrants[1]. Such a territory, Merobaudes argued, was not only covered in dense woodland and river valleys which would provide a strong natural barrier against invasion, but it could be easily reinforced from the March or the lands of the Baiuvarii in times of war (and trade with them in times of peace, with the help of Roman engineering to carve out roads and fortify Lombard towns of course), and in any case the Lombards settled there would serve as a buffer against any Veneti who might think of taking their chances against the Empire.

Satisfied with Merobaudes’ arguments and after having proven his worth on the battlefield, Constantine III returned to Italy soon after, leaving his magister peditum to finish settling the Lombards and securing the territories promised to them. Once he returned home the emperor still had little room for rest, as Pope Leo II had died and in his absence factional politics marred the election to replace him: the archdeacon Caelius had been elected in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, while another archdeacon named Postumius was also acclaimed Pope by a different mob at the Basilica of Saint John in the Lateran around the same time. As Postumius was the favored candidate of the imperial treasurer Faustus and the Greens, the Blues fell in behind Caelius, and so did the imperial family which had by now tied itself firmly to the latter’s leaders by marriage. Accusations of simony and mob violence between the papabiles’ partisans had erupted in the emperor’s absence, so his first order of business upon returning (besides commanding some of the legions which returned with him to aid the cohortes urbanae and vigiles[2] in restoring public order) was to call a synod of the Western clergy where he mediated a resolution favoring Caelius. To appease the Greens, Constantine also steered the synod into bestowing recently vacated bishopric of Aquileia upon Postumius, binding him and that diocese more closely to the Ostrogoths who dominated Dalmatia and Pannonia.

Across the Oceanus Britannicus, Medraut was preparing to contend with his half-brothers while his father found his own road to Londinium blocked by a large Briton host from Powys and Pengwern, which numbered about 11,000 strong and forced him to seek his own reinforcements from Gwynedd before testing them in battle. The Dumnonians withdrew after Artorius the Younger and Lecatus arrived to relieve the siege of Venta Belgarum with 4,500 men (mostly recruited from around Londinium itself or Cantia), but this was only a tactical retreat aimed at avoiding encirclement between the Belgae and the trueborn sons of the Pendragon.

At the advice of Myrddyn Medraut turned to engage the princes’ host in the more favorable terrain of the Hills of Mened[3] in May, where fake defectors from his own army (also sent forth by the elderly druid) tricked the brothers into recklessly charging into a trap between two great hills. The royalists were badly mauled and while Artorius Junior was able to escape, Lecatus was not so fortunate: Medraut caught up to and ruthlessly killed him at the mining town of Iscalis[4], hellbent as he was on eliminating his competitors to their father’s throne. The Riothamus did not hear about his youngest son’s demise at the hands of his eldest until much later into the summer, by which time he had already subdued the Uí Liatháin and linked up with the army of Gwynedd under faithful Gwydre to bring his host’s strength up to 8,000 men.

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Future artists immortalized the image of Medraut's slaying of his half-brother Lecatus as a vicious 'black knight' ruthlessly killing a hapless child, though in reality Lecatus was already 18 and a combatant in the Battle of the Hills of Mened immediately prior

His wrath inflamed to heights even Llenleawc never reached by the terrible news, Artorius swore he would take no prisoners in the battles to come and proved he was not jesting after smashing through the rebel Britons at Corinium, where the Romano-Britons slew 3,000 Britons in the rout (twice as many as they had killed in the actual battle itself) and the high king – wounded in the battle while recklessly charging ahead of his troops – rewarded Gwynfyr of Powys’ attempt to surrender by relieving him of his head with a stroke of Caliburnus. Around the same time, Medraut had sacked Venta Belgarum in his eastward rush to Londinium and was laying siege to the royal capital. However, his effort to storm part of the city and open its gates was frustrated in the smaller Battle of Caesar’s Well[5], where Artorius Junior had unexpectedly sallied out from the city with a troop of heavy cavalry and massacred the detachment he’d sent out to attack Londinium’s southern defenses in the early hours of a September morning. News that the elder Artorius was returning from the north after crushing another Briton army at Durocornovium[6] forced Medraut to lift the siege and withdraw back toward Dumnonia, where he was certain he could regain the advantage, as winter descended upon Britannia.

Off to the east, Sabbatius’ recent defeat by the Hephthalites gave the Miaphysites, Nestorians and Jews of the Eastern Roman Empire reason to begin causing trouble once again with the belief that they could more easily get away with it. No major rebellions flared up to take cities and fortresses in the name of a usurper this year, but magistrates and legates from Antioch to Alexandria began to report increasing dissent and disobedience among the heterodox and non-Christian citizens under their purview, ranging from grudging and minimal compliance with the law to acts of theft and property destruction, or ‘hunnery’[7]. In the latter metropolis, a religious procession even degenerated into a riot between Ephesians and Miaphysites. This state of affairs posed yet another headache for Sabbatius to nurse even as he struggled to cope with his best friend’s death and to plot his revenge against Toramana.

Speaking of Toramana, even further east the Mahārājadhirāja found that he now had to pay Mazdak his due for the aid of his Buddhist mobs, without whom his victory over the Eastern Romans would have been much more difficult or downright impossible. Mazdak demanded that he be appointed to a new office of ‘Advocate of the Poor’ (driyōšān jādag-gōw ud dādwa in Parsig), with which he could challenge the dictates of both the established Persian/Parthian nobility and the tribal Eftal leadership alike in the name of the poor masses, and that some lands all over Persia be set aside for monasteries where his followers could meditate in peace and aid the local communities. While Toramana conceded on both counts, Mazdak rapidly gained the enmity of both the Persian and White Hunnish aristocracy for his fervent advocacy on behalf of the commons, while the monasteries and their attached lands (of which the one in the mountains of Rudbar[8] was the most famous, and where Mazdak himself chose to reside) would rapidly transform into what were effectively self-governing theocracies over the next decade.

In their allotted territories the Mazdakites would reign as a law unto themselves, driving out landlords and seizing their land & goods for equitable redistribution among the peasant masses – so long as those masses elected to walk the road to enlightenment paved by the Buddha, of course, and the monks would doubtless take a cut too to cover their own maintenance costs. That the Mazdakites remained organized into their own armed militias, clashing with the private armies of Persian lords and wandering Hephthalite or Fufuluo marauders alike and bullying local Zoroastrians or other non-Buddhists with increasing severity, was another inevitable development. Ironically, despite his victory Toramana would find these militant, populist Amidist Buddhists almost as troublesome for his empire’s internal stability as the heterodox Christians in Sabbatius’ lands, even though they were ostensibly firmly on his side.

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A land dispute between the Mazdakite monks & their militia on one hand, and the local Persian aristocrat's war party on the other turns deadly

Further east still, Lakhana continued to bide his time and consolidate his territories while the Guptas tore one another asunder. Bhanugupta’s closest cousin secured Pataliputra, where he declared himself to be the Samrat Kumaragupta II and promptly married the former’s young daughter Anantadevi to try to secure his rule, but later in the year he was defeated and put to flight by a more distant kinsman who claimed the Indian throne as Budhagupta. This Budhagupta took control of Pataliputra near the year’s end, but Kumaragupta II fled to the half-ruined Prayaga with Anantadevi in tow and – having failed to interest Lakhana in an alliance – struck a temporary deal with yet another pretender, the so-called Pushyagupta who was being backed by the Varman dynasty of Kamarupa[9], to eliminate Budhagupta before turning their swords against one another.

In the uttermost east, Tuohan Khagan pillaged and burned as far as the walls of Luoyang before Emperor Ming of Chen and his generals managed to get their forces into position to finally counter him. An attempt to encircle and crush the Rouran at Chang’an in mid-summer would have succeeded but for the sudden and unexplained withdrawal of the northernmost blocking division under Chen Xiao, one of Ming’s cousins, which allowed Tuohan to escape. Infuriated at this lost opportunity and suspecting his cousin of disloyalty, the emperor had Chen Xiao killed without allowing him to even try to explain himself and pursued Tuohan, but the khagan turned around and defeated him in the mountains around Yan’an soon after. Kavadh advised Ming to repent for and meditate over his cousin-slaying episode in order to overcome his recklessness and ill temper so that he might be better prepared to fight Tuohan the next time they crossed paths, which the emperor did even as Tuohan continued to harass his armies and strike at targets of opportunity out of his forward base in northwestern China.

In 514, despite having just shaken hands with Theodoric’s bishops and aristocratic supporters at the Roman synod last year, Constantine launched a new effort to undermine Ostrogoth control over the Gepids. To win the Daco-Germanic barbarians’ loyalty without a middleman (and thus bring the Dacian gold mines more firmly under imperial control) he set about promoting Gepid officers of high birth into the army, encouraging the recruitment of Roman tutors from Italy & Dalmatia to educate the children of the Gepid royalty and aristocracy on their territories, and locally training Gepid workers to help tend to the imperial mints making use of their gold. Theodoric countered by arranging a record number of marriages between Ostrogoth and Gepid nobles this year to shore up his influence: most importantly he betrothed his young grandson Ovida to the Gepid princess Gudeliva, daughter of their king Mundus.

Meanwhile in the Eastern Roman Empire, the imperial couple ruling there conceived a second son who was born in November of this year, and who could bear no name but Theodosius. His father could not be there for the childbirth in the porphyry chamber of Constantinople’s Great Palace however, for yet another Jewish revolt had broken out – this time in Galilee during the summer, but the threat of this latest uprising was compounded by opportunistic Samaritans who sprang their own rebellion to the north. Sabbatius would spend the rest of 514 in Jerusalem, working with the Dux Palaestinae to coordinate local Eastern Roman forces and reinforcements he’d brought with him from the capital to keep Christian holy sites, such as the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, safe and to suppress the Jewish & Samaritan insurgents: though disunited, the persistent rebels made good use of the rough Galilean and Samarian terrain to elude and frustrate the far more numerous and better-equipped Eastern Romans to no end, as always.

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Jewish rebels ambush an Eastern Roman patrol as they make their way through a Galilean village

In Britannia, Medraut’s rebellion was fast approaching its climax. Having failed to take Londinium, and now pursued both by his father’s reinforced army from the north and his half-brother who was sallying forth from the capital to give chase, the King of Dumnonia resolved to make his stand outside Sorbiodunum[10], very close to a great henge of standing stones erected long before Rome and Christianity came to British shores. There Myrddyn promised to conduct rituals which would bring the might of the old gods to bear and ensure Medraut’s victory, and dispatched his acolytes to bring thirteen mythical treasures from their hiding places; Medraut himself was nominally a Pelagian Christian, but he had never been a particularly devout man and at this point he was desperate enough to take whatever help he could reach, knowing full well that if the trueborn Pendragons defeated him he would find as much mercy at their hands as he’d shown to Lecatus. In the meantime, to reassure Medraut the druid gave him a long, thin dagger dipped in the foulest poisons he could concoct, which he promised would be fatal for anyone who felt its sting: an emergency weapon for the usurper to use, either to spitefully kill one more foe before his own end or to take his own life in case of defeat.

Battle followed when the royalist armies converged on Medraut’s position on May 13, his father’s birthday no less, and before Myrddyn could complete his pagan rituals to (supposedly) bring the old Celtic gods back and win the war for his chosen candidate. Artorius Junior arrived first, but was content to avoid giving pitched battle until Artorius Senior arrived to make the royalists’ numbers insurmountable. Medraut was all too aware that this was what his half-brother was counting on, so after some preliminary skirmishing he committed his troops to a furious assault in the hope of routing the eastern Romano-British host before the northern one could join them. From morning to late afternoon the brothers fought on a chalk-marred plain near Sorbiodunum which Medraut’s Briton soldiers called ‘Cambo-landa’ or ‘twisting land’, but though the Dumnonians were more numerous the royalist shield-wall – reinforced by Artorius Junior’s cavalry, who he had ordered to dismount and add their strength to the infantry – proved too strong and disciplined for Medraut to overcome, until it was too late and the fabled red dragon standard of the Riothamus was sighted on the northern horizon.

Artorius Senior’s arrival turned what had previously been an evenly-matched stalemate into a much more one-sided slaughter, as the first charge of the Pendragon’s elite heavy cavalry shattered the still-engaged Dumnonian lines and all his infantry (including the loyal men of Gwynedd) had to do afterward was mop up the surviving stragglers. Alas, counted among the royalist casualties was King Gwydre, treacherously cut down by Vortipor the Demetian, one of the younger Uí Liatháin who fled to join Medraut’s army even as his kin yielded to Artorius and had now faked his surrender: certainly Gwydre’s guards killed him immediately afterward, but their vengeful blows could not save their king from death. Informed that Myrddyn had fled the Stonehenge after witnessing Artorius Senior’s entry onto the scene and evidently deciding that his death on that chalk plain was inevitable, Medraut spurned his retainers’ advice to flee and instead frantically sought out his half-brother in an attempt to at least take his hated younger sibling down with him, cutting his way past the prince’s bodyguards to reach the blood-soaked hill where the latter had established his command post and managing to wound the younger Artorius in the duel that followed. However, the trueborn heir to Britain’s throne was no helpless milksop himself and ably staved off Medraut’s killing blows until Artorius Senior reached them, at which time Medraut doubtless cursed himself for staying Ælle’s own killing blow aimed at their father fourteen years prior.

The duel which followed is more-so the subject of legend than history, and indeed a key part of the evolving world of Arthurian myth as it grew over the next centuries. It could very well have been the case that the estranged father and son had nothing to say to each other before immediately lunging at one another (indeed the monk and royal chronicler Cadoc of Camalet, a contemporary of all involved parties, reports no dialogue), but most retellings dramatize the pair’s fatal clash by giving them one final exchange of words before their exchange of steel. Christian clergy, especially Pelagians, tend to favor the legitimate Pendragons and depict Medraut as little more than a petulant, monstrously overgrown brat railing against his patient father for not giving him the crown he’d always felt entitled to; Briton bards paint a picture more sympathetic to the rebel king as an anguished estranged son, demanding to know why he was never good enough to be Artorius’ heir and what his siblings had that he never did (other than the obvious answer of ‘legitimacy’) before committing to his final battle against an uncaring father. Regardless of the author’s sympathies, the story always ends the same way: Artorius Senior ran his bastard son through not even with Caliburnus but rather with his lance Rhongomyniad (itself probably one last gesture of contempt toward Medraut, whose 'unclean' blood now would not defile the Riothamus' signature weapon), though not before a fierce fight and at the cost of aggravating his own earlier half-healed injury from the Battle of Corinium last year, while Medraut expended the last of his strength to bury Myrddyn’s dagger through the rings of his father’s lorica hamata and into his side.

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No matter the tale's author and when it is told, the story of Medraut and Artorius I's deadly clash on the hill of Camlann always ends with the son slain by the father's spear rather than his famous sword, and badly wounding him with a cursed and poisoned dagger in retaliation

So did the Battle of Camlann, as Cambo-landa is more popularly remembered by later generations of Britons and Romano-Britons alike, end in a victory for the two Artoriuses. But the elder of the two would not long enjoy his hard-won victory on that hill of broken swords, for the Pendragon’s last wound was fatal and there was no physician in his entire army who could treat Myrddyn’s deadly poison. He expired the day after the battle, having failed to even leave the hill due to the gravity of his injuries, his last moments spent passing Caliburnus on to his only remaining son and urging his remaining champions – both Romano-Britons and the remaining loyal Britons of note such as Bedwyr Bedrydant of the Setantii, comes of Bovium[11], and Sanddef of the Ordovices, who had married Artorius’ eldest daughter Artoria – to continue to loyally serve his dynasty long after he took his last breath. Having done this the Riothamus who had so ably protected his people across the southern half of old Roman Britannia for decades in life, and who now lent his nickname to his descendants in death, drew that last breath at high noon on May 14. He was fifty years old at the time of his death.

While in India the shifting tides of civil war saw Budhagupta crushed between Kumaragupta II and Pushyagupta, the Chinese were getting back on the warpath against the Rouran. Emperor Ming decided that rather than rely purely on brute force to crush Tuohan Khagan (though he certainly still had plenty of that), he would attempt to incite an uprising among the Tiele Turks who already had a record of rebellion against their Rouran masters, as demonstrated by the Fufuluo and Gaoche uprisings in the past. Even as Chinese armies ground down the main Rouran horde in a number of battles across northwest China this year, agents connected to the eunuchs and officials of the imperial palace in Jiankang slipped through Rouran territory to consult with the chiefs of the Tiele, present them with lavish gifts and persuade them that if they rose up against the Khaganate now, they would be rewarded with not only freedom but also the Rouran lands and the eternal friendship of the Chen court. This was an attractive proposal to many of these chiefs who had chafed under Rouran overlordship for generations, made all the sweeter by mounting news of Chinese victories, and by the year’s end the chieftains Yifu and Yieju were spearheading a major Turkic rebellion in the western & southern territories of the Rouran Khaganate even as Ming himself dealt Tuohan a stinging defeat at the Battle of Juyong Pass.

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Tiele Turkic chiefs setting out to summon their warriors after agreeing to fight with the Chen dynasty against their Rouran masters

While 515 saw the Eastern Romans still bogged down with the Jewish and Samaritan insurgencies in Palestine, the new year brought with it an heir for the Western Roman Empire: the first son of Constantine and his wife Clotilde, also named Theodosius after his fallen uncle, was born in February. To differentiate this purple-born infant from the Eastern Theodosius born the previous year to Sabbatius and Theodora, he is usually referred to as Caesar Theodosius, on account of being titled the Western Roman Caesar soon after his birth. (In the Orient, the Caesar was Sabbatius’ own first son Anthemius, who was considerably older than the newborn heir to the Occident) Evidently Emperor Constantine sought to make up for the time he’d lost dealing with the various issues troubling the start of his reign, for his Frankish-born Augusta showed signs of pregnancy again by Christmastime.

Artorius II could not be said to be having nearly as easy a time in Britannia. His first years in power would be spent picking up the pieces left by his half-brother’s failed uprising, appointing replacements for the counts and dukes slain while either fighting for or against his father: in many cases when dealing with the rebels he strove to begin his reign with clemency, allowing the sons of rebel lords to succeed their fathers in exchange for hostages and extra taxes atop the usual oaths of loyalty sworn on the Bible. The new Riothamus applied this same policy to the Briton kings, though for those who were not already Christians he made his royal pardon conditional upon conversion to Pelagianism in a bid to ensure religious uniformity across Britannia and spite the still-missing Myrddyn – he would respect the free will of those Briton royals who refused by not forcing them to convert at swordpoint, but also delivered unto them the consequence of their decision by skipping them over for relatives who were willing to take up his offer. Some Britons previously subdued by Artorius I, notably the Powysians and Demetians, resisted this demand, forcing Artorius II to ride forth to beat them into submission all over again.

Furthermore, when a royal vacancy appeared due to a king having died without a male heir immediately related to themselves (sons, grandsons or brothers) Artorius II seized the chance to increase royal power by installing one of his kin or friends on that vacated Brittonic throne. In his most obvious power-grab for the Pendragon dynasty, he had his seven-year-old son Constantine crowned King of Dumnonia to replace the deceased Medraut, who had left no children of his own; this decision established the tradition of the kingship of Dumnonia being conferred upon the Riothamus’ heir, and the place of the Dumnonian king as the foremost of the Romano-British vassals. While troubling even some of his loyal vassals, none had the strength or will to oppose the Riothamus immediately after his victory on the battlefield of Camlann, and Artorius himself believed this was a necessary step to consolidate southern Britain under his family’s control with no more room for ‘errors’ like Medraut.

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Artorius II sought to prevent another civil war by empowering proven loyalists and consolidating ever more of southern Britain under his family's direct control, starting by making Dumnonia into the traditional fief of Britannia's royal heirs

Uneasy vassals looking for ways to constrain his newly expanded royal authority were not the only issue Artorius II would have to take into consideration as time marched on, however. This year also saw the end of hostilities between the Angles and the Saxons, with the former ascendant – Icel took Eoforwic by storm and personally buried his ax in Cenwulf’s skull, but allowed the surviving Ællings to keep on living in exchange for their renewed loyalty and married his son Cnebba to Cenwulf’s daughter Beorhtgifu to further restore goodwill between the royal clans. His hold on the crown of the Bretwalda reinforced, the Anglo-Saxon king would turn his ambitious gaze back onto war-weakened Britannia in the years to come.

In India Pushyagupta had prevailed over Kumaragupta II by June, and in turn the defeated pretender fled to the lands of the Eastern Hephthalites with his young wife in tow. This time Lakhana was happy to receive them, because he knew Kumaragupta’s defeat had left him wholly reliant on Eftal might to continue asserting his claim to the Indian throne and utterly lacking in means to stab the White Huns in the back yet again. So when Kumaragupta promised to acknowledge the Mahārājadhirāja of the Hunas as overlord of Gujarat and even more lands down the Ganges in exchange for reinstalling him in Pataliputra, Lakhana agreed and rode forth with his armies – rested, reinforced and repositioned on the eastern frontier of the Eastern Hephthalite kingdom while the Guptas threw theirs at one another – with the intention of crushing Pushyagupta…and making the Hunas into the new masters of India.

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Lakhana, son of Akhshunwar and Mahārājadhirāja of the Eastern Hephthalites or 'Sveta-Huna', in his middle years

Lastly, in East Asia the latest Sino-Rouran war continued to develop favorably for the Chen dynasty. Despite initial Rouran victories in the spring, Tuohan Khagan found it much harder to replace his casualties than Emperor Ming, and the rebellion of the Tiele Turks increasingly threatened the very heart of Rouran power on the Mongolic steppes. Finally Ming’s generals dealt the Rouran two severe defeats at Jincheng[12] and Linqiang[13] in the summer, pinning down the Rouran cavalry with their massed heavy infantry and crossbowmen at the former and actually managing to outfight said cavalry with the sheer weight of their own horsemen’s numbers at the latter, from which the Khagan was unable to recover while the Tiele continued to press northward. Faced with such insurmountable odds and feeling great walls closing in around him as 515 approached its end, Tuohan decided to take his chances with the unknown west and flee as far as he could with his people before the Chinese and Turks could completely annihilate them.

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[1] Roughly a territory spanning eastern Hesse, southern Thuringia and southwestern Saxony up to the White Elster.

[2] The police forces of Rome. The cohortes urbanae or urban cohorts were considered legionaries and thus more heavily equipped & trained to fight in battles outside the city if needed, making them essentially highly militarized riot police, while the vigiles also doubled as the city’s fire brigade.

[3] The Mendip Hills.

[4] Charterhouse, Somerset.

[5] Keston.

[6] Wanborough, Wiltshire.

[7] Something’s going to have to replace the term ‘vandalism’ in a timeline where the Vandals are considered to be one of the most faithful and unambiguously heroic barbarians, thanks to Stilicho and the cooperation of the Silingi Vandals in Africa.

[8] Alamut.

[9] An ancient name for Assam.

[10] Old Sarum, north of modern Salisbury.

[11] Tilston.

[12] Lanzhou.

[13] Xining.

By the way guys, you may notice that in addition to the slower pace of updates, I'm responding less to your comments nowadays. It can't be helped – assignments are starting to pile up as we head into October (in fact, I have one due this coming Monday). But rest assured that I do still read & appreciate your feedback whenever I can, even if I no longer have the time to drop any bigger reaction than a Like.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Great chapter,as always.
Rourans would attack white Hunns,but which one ?
Myrddin failed to deliver even one small god.Such a loser.Maybe if he killed few black goats or hens in noon on crossroad....
WRE would eventually take over wened/slavic people,unless another cyvil war prevent that.Or war with ERE.
ERE want fight Persia - if Rourans attack it,they could even win.
And Eastern Hephatities,unless Rourans attack them,would become rulers of India - till they become indian themselves.
Only true heritage which remain would be buddhism in India - maybe it prevent caste system from fucking that country in this TL ?

P.S Rourans could also become Avars,just like in OTL,conqer slavic tribes and attack ERE,WRE,or both.But it would be boring - sending them to Persia or India could made more fun.
 
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stevep

Well-known member
Well a lot happening here. Relative peace for the western empire and more territorial gains, although how well many of those lands north of the Danube can be developed without improved technology I don't know and supplying/trading with them so far from basic river lines is going to be a pain.

In the eastern empire again relative peace although the Jews and Samaritans feel driven to rebellion again, which is unlikely to end well for them.

East of them Toramana can't seem to get a break. One attempt at religious tolerance turned poisonous with the Miaphysite and now his realm is plagued by Mazdak's fanatical supporters. I get the feeling he will have to turn on them at some point before they tear his state apart.

Things are looking a lot better for Lakhana, who is set to make himself the defacto ruler of most of India, although as ATP says that's likely to end up with the rulers at least becoming overwhelmingly India in a few generations. In the short term assuming he succeeds does Lakhana rest on his laurels or does he look for more adventures, possibly against his western cousin to 'unite' the sundered Hephatities empires or possibly turn to revenge against the Chinese. Or possibly having the decision taken for him by either the fleeing Rourans or a Chen attack seeking to secure more of the Silk Road.

In the north the long story of Artorius I is over but his son looks secure in his state for the moment, although there are likely to be new clashes with the dominant Angles to his north.

Anyway best of luck with the studies and write when you can.

Steve
 

stevep

Well-known member
Great chapter,as always.
Rourans would attack white Hunns,but which one ?
Myrddin failed to deliver even one small god.Such a loser.Maybe if he killed few black goats or hens in noon on crossroad....
WRE would eventually take over wened/slavic people,unless another cyvil war prevent that.Or war with ERE.
ERE want fight Persia - if Rourans attack it,they could even win.
And Eastern Hephatities,unless Rourans attack them,would become rulers of India - till they become indian themselves.
Only true heritage which remain would be buddhism in India - maybe it prevent caste system from fucking that country in this TL ?

P.S Rourans could also become Avars,just like in OTL,conqer slavic tribes and attack ERE,WRE,or both.But it would be boring - sending them to Persia or India could made more fun.

Well its definitely going to make differences to the legend with Myrddin/Merlin on the 'dark' side of the civil war that ends Artorius/Arthur's reign.
 

ATP

Well-known member
So the King of Dummnonia will be a similar title as Prince of Wales was?

It seems so.But,not for long - Brittania would last only till some Angles King decide to become orthodox christian.Then he could take most of it,and Dumnonia would become independent,part of WRE,or part of Ireland.

P.S about Rourans becoming Avars just like in OTL - in Poland our older city is Kraków,unfortunatelly we do not knew how old becouse oldest part is full of old buildings.
But,we had 3 mounds/now 2 remained/ which was supposed to be made by mythical king Krak.One which supposed to be his grave was checked before WW2 - there never was any bodies there,but they found some Avar accesories.
So,if Avar come,they would create first slavic proto-states - becouse what we had under Hunns was only tribes.
 
516-519: Sveta Huna

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
516 proved to be a good year for the Roman world overall. In the West, not only did the Germanic frontier remain quiet since the defeat of the Lombards but Empress Clotilde gave birth to a second son, who was named Romanus after the second Stilichian emperor. Out east, Sabbatius finally brought the Galileans and Samaritans to heel once more after bringing in thousands of Ghassanid Arab auxiliaries to help: he captured the former’s stronghold at Mount Meron in the summer (indirectly aided by the Samaritans, who decidedly did not play the role of the Good Samaritan and refused to mount any major attack against the Romans while they besieged the Jews on the mountain), and followed up by compelling the latter to capitulate with decisive victories near Nablus and at the feet of Mount Ebal in the autumn. This time the Eastern Augustus cracked down harder than he had before: while he had yet to engage in any large-scale campaign of expulsion or massacres as past irate Roman emperors had, he did execute the rebel chiefs and sell their families into slavery along with the surviving rebels and their kindred, and levied harsh new taxes on the rest of their peoples to finance the repair of Christian churches destroyed and offer restitution to Christian families mauled by the insurgents’ advances.

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Among the many damaged Christian sanctuaries which the Jews of Galilee & the Samaritans had to pay extra taxes to repair was the Church of the Annunciation built at Mary's Well in Nazareth by Constantine I and his mother Helena

However, things began to sour for both empires toward the year’s end. The West faced the first major incursion on its southern border in December of 516, when an unusually large force of Hoggari Berbers (having spent the last third of the year crossing the Sahara) began to wind through the Atlas Mountains and attack the Afro-Roman outposts there. Fortunately for the Western Empire, the African Church and kings had done such a thorough job of purging Donatist remnants over the past decade that no rebellions broke out north of the Atlas to support the invaders, but those few Donatist holdouts who had managed to survive in these mountains naturally hurried forth to join their co-religionists against the hated Romans: by December 31 King Augustine of Altava reported to Constantine III and Theodoric that the invading army probably numbered 7,000 strong, not nearly large enough to overrun all of Roman Africa to be sure, but more threatening than most raiding parties and no doubt taking advantage of any intelligence about the local terrain the local Donatists might have offered.

Meanwhile off in the orient, hostilities were beginning to heat back up between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Hephthalites. The Lakhmids took advantage of their Ghassanid rivals being called away to assist in the suppression of the Galilean and Samaritan revolts to step up their attacks into Ghassanid territory, while White Hun and Fufuluo raids into the Eastern Roman frontier also found their defenses in Mesopotamia to still be incomplete and rather weak. When Sabbatius’ emissaries demanded a cession of and reparations for the raids, Toramana instead demanded the Eastern Empire pay him tribute to compel the raiders to stop. Knowing full well that the proud and vengeful Augustus would scorn such demands, the Mahārājadhirāja made preparations for renewed warfare, including calling up the Mazdakites who had barely settled into their new fortress-monasteries, with the expectation that he’d be able to quickly defeat the Eastern Romans & recover what little territory he had ceded to them thanks to the mounting struggles with rebels they'd faced in the interbellum.

East of Persia, the Eastern Hephthalites waged a far less even war against the badly depleted Indians, who had been quite badly mauled both by Lakhana’s earlier battles with Budhagupta and now by their ill-timed civil war. Pushyagupta’s exhausted and badly battered armies were unable to stop Lakhana’s sweeping advance down the Ganges and indeed were trounced on the occasion that they tried, culminating in the Eastern Mahārājadhirāja trapping him in Pataliputra and putting the great Gupta capital (damaged though it may already have been from all the times it changed hands in the recent Gupta civil war) under siege by the year’s end. Lakhana demanded an exorbitant sum of bullion and slaves which Pushyagupta could not afford due to the depleted state of his treasury and the likelihood of revolt within the walls if he caved in, so the siege would continue for the time being.

Further east still, Tuohan Khagan gave the order for his people to pull up their tents, saddle up and ride for the unknown west with him to avoid annihilation between the Chen armies and their rising Turkic subjects. The Rouran were able to outride their Chinese pursuers, who in any case were quite satisfied with just having made these ‘unpleasantly wriggling maggots’[1] finally go away, but had less luck with the Tiele, who set an ambush for their hated former masters as they headed for the Altai Mountains. The two great nomadic hordes fought an extraordinarily brutal battle in the shadow of Sutai Mountain that autumn: ultimately the Rouran, driven by a furious desperation, managed to claw their way out of the Tiele trap and scatter their pursuers, but at great loss – including Tuohan Khagan, who was actually killed near the beginning of the battle by a well-hidden Tiele archer, and many of his children. He was succeeded by the eldest of his surviving sons, Yujiulü Zuhui, who assumed the title Mioukesheju Khagan[2] – ‘Silent Khagan’ – in mourning for his fallen kin and the plight of his people even as he continued to lead them westward through the Altai range, a migration which would eventually take them into territories held by the White Huns…

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Mioukesheju Khagan and the Rouran were in for quite a few tough winters to come

517 began in the West with the first battles between the Hoggari and Western Roman forces in Africa, chiefly the men of Altava. Delays in mobilizing his people for war prevented King Augustine from simply bottling the marauders up in the Atlas Mountains, so instead he had to confront them as they emerged from the freshly-looted mountain town of Cuicul[3] in March. He had used his time well and assembled a larger army of 10,000 men however, and with this force he managed to defeat the Hoggari despite the terrain disadvantage: his Roman legionaries and Vandal-descended federate infantry easily crushed the far inferior Hoggari foot, while his own Berber cavalry put theirs to flight in a brutal but quick clash.

The Hoggari retreated back into the Atlas Mountains with haste, abandoning much of their plunder and all of their slaves in their hurry to get away from their foes. The recovery of what had been pillaged from his lands and his victory at Cuicul had made Augustine overconfident however, and he did not wait for his brother Hilderic of Theveste to join him with 6,000 reinforcements before giving chase. The Hoggari promptly turned around and ambushed him in a canyon outside Macomades[4], where one of their slingers gave the Altavan king a fatal injury to the head (even despite him wearing a helmet) with a particularly well-aimed rock.

Augustine’s son Felix retreated to nearby Constantina[5] with the Hoggari in pursuit, but this time his uncle was able to come to his rescue and they crushed the rival Berber host between their armies in a great battle outside the city on May 2. That done, they pursued the Hoggari through the Atlas Mountains more carefully, while Donatist elements of the Hoggar Kingdom’s army native to Roman territories began to disperse and once more hide in said mountains. A second victory at Legis Volumni[6] on the very edge of the Sahara sent what remained of the Hoggari – some 2,000 ragged survivors – packing, and placed Felix in Constantine III’s favor. As Hoggar’s king Amêzyan refused to pay any sort of restitution to the Western Romans later that year the irate Western Augustus authorized a raid of their own to punish the Hoggari Berbers, though the horsemen Felix sent proved less adept at crossing the Sahara than Amêzyan’s warriors had and little came of this endeavor, much to the Romans’ frustration.

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A Western Roman clibanarius from Carthage, backed up by an Altavan nobleman and light horseman, moments before running down a fleeing Berber warrior of Hoggar

While the Western Empire wrestled with Berbers, the East was not only undertaking preparations for another round of warfare with the Hephthalites this year, which included the assembly of more carroballistae in Antioch to counter any elephants Toramana might field and the training of new recruits in the Anatolian & Syrian provinces. The rather disorderly state of imperial law had long irritated Sabbatius, and now even though he stood on the precipice of another war, he had resolved to at least begin tackling the problem. At this point, both halves of the Roman world were governed by three codices of often-contradictory laws: the Codex Gregorianus (a collection of legal decrees, edicts and rescripts issued by various emperors between 130 and 290), the Codex Hermogenianus (a collection of such ‘constitutions’ promulgated by the Tetrarchs) and the Codex Theodosianus (compiled out of the legal pronouncements of the Christian emperors following Constantine I, compiled by Sabbatius’ great-grandfather Theodosius II).

The Eastern Augustus contacted his Western counterpart in the summer of this year, seeking to begin compiling these three codices as well as the myriad legal opinions of Roman jurists dating well into the Republican period, even centuries before the birth of Christ. Only once that was done could the even more arduous work of harmonizing them begin. As the West was in a state of peace after weathering the Berber incursion, Constantine III was on board with Sabbatius’ plans – doubtless motivated as much by the prospect of being able to govern his empire even more efficiently as he was by the opportunity to reignite even a flicker of his brother’s friendship with the ruler of the East – and so it was agreed that they’d open new departments of bureaucrats to work on this matter in their respective empires, with Constantine’s men collecting the laws and legal opinions of the West while Sabbatius’ collected those formulated in Thrace and eastward. A project of this scale promised to take years, especially with the imminent war with the Hephthalites being sure to distract the Eastern Empire, but the two emperors hoped that by dividing the labor they could get it done within at least a decade.

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An imperial scribe pores over a newly collected legal text at Sabbatius' order

In India, thanks to the pressure of the Huna blockade and resulting starvation, Pushyagupta was able to finally persuade the notables and great merchants of Pataliputra to cough up most of the gold and silver which Lakhana was demanding (and to send his army to extort the remainder from the populace, even looting the city’s temples for valuables), and presented this princely sum to the Eastern Hephthalite Mahārājadhirāja as a peace offering. However, Lakhana was dissatisfied and continued to demand the slaves as well. When Pushyagupta tried to collect these slaves from the city’s population, a revolt erupted and he was ultimately killed by a mob in June after his own men deserted him.

The people of Pataliputra raised up an even more distant relative of the imperial house, Govindagupta, as their new Samrat on the condition that he’d resist the Hephthalites to the bitter end. Lakhana was all too happy to deliver that end, and while his first two attacks on the city walls failed in the face of desperate Gupta resistance, the third succeeded thanks to an outbreak of disease which left nearly a third of the garrison dead alongside thousands of civilians, allowing the Hephthalite army to overrun a practically undefended section of Pataliputra’s western wall and fan out to overwhelm the rest of the city from there. The Hunas promptly subjected the Gupta capital to a vicious sack which went on for six days and spared not even invalids in the city’s hospitals, after which Lakhana left with a train of as many as 150,000 slaves – over half of Pataliputra’s remaining population – and virtually all the valuables which Pushyagupta had not turned over to him.

Govindagupta fell on his own sword and his widow burned herself atop his corpse in an impromptu funeral pyre than suffer the indignity of becoming Lakhana’s captives. While disappointed at his failure to capture the enemy leaders, Lakhana settled for making Kumaragupta II ruler over the ashes that remained of the Gupta Empire; nominally the latter still retained the imperial title Samrat, but all knew it for a hollow pretense. The Guptas’ power was broken by the defeats and civil wars of late, now limited to much more modest borders extending from the region of Magadha around Pataliputra to the Bay of Bengal. It was also clear that this Gupta rump state was a client of the ascendant Hunas who were now the new overlords of northern India, still challenged only by various smaller tribes and kingdoms which had escaped Gupta suzerainty as the latter empire spiraled into its steep decline, and who further demanded a considerable annual tribute from the Kumaragupta in exchange for not simply finishing him and his people off right then and there.

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An Eastern Hephthalite roars with triumph following the fall of Pataliputra

Meanwhile, despite their failure to utterly annihilate the Rouran the year before, the Tiele Turks were overjoyed to find themselves effectively masters of the abandoned Rouran territories north and west of the Great Wall – naturally they celebrated by fighting for the spoils and for control among themselves, with chieftains Yifu and Yieju being the strongest of the contenders. Having removed the Rouran from his list of concerns, Emperor Ming was quite content to sit back and let the Turks maul each other, planning to compel the eventual winner to be a pliant vassal who’d surely keep his northern frontier quiet for generations to come.

518 was a return to peace and quiet for the Western Roman Empire, with the most notable event this year being the wedding of King Felix of Altava to the now-thirteen-year-old niece of Constantine III, the orphaned princess Eucheria, as had been arranged by her father Theodosius over a decade prior. The same could not be said for the Eastern Romans, who finally had to face Toramana’s anticipated invasion after little over half a decade of peace and found less luck against the Eftals than their Western cousins had against the Berbers the year before. Toramana had once more assembled a strong army of Hephthalites, Fufuluo and Persians (Buddhist and Zoroastrian), and once he sprang his offensive he proved to be as ferocious and unrelenting as ever. Meanwhile, despite his frantic efforts to rebuild the defenses of Singara and Dura-Europos, Basil’s work on the frontier was far from complete when the White Huns struck and he was quickly put to flight by the Mahārājadhirāja’s onslaught.

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Basil the Sassanid just barely manages to fight his way past a swarm of Western Hephthalite pursuers

Sabbatius stuck around in the capital for the birth of his younger daughter, who was named Theodora after her mother, before setting out to join Basil with 20,000 reinforcements at Callinicum in April – reaching him soon after Circesium had also fallen to the surging Western Hephthalites. Together they managed to blunt Toramana’s advance in a battle along the Euphrates that summer, and were further reinforced by the arrival of Armenian, Lazic and Iberian troops in Syria as fall began. Though he was pushed back by this reinforced Eastern Roman army at Thannuris[7] on August 30, Toramana rallied to repel Sabbatius’ effort to recapture Singara a few weeks later and took advantage of the majority of the Armenian army having joined their imperial overlords to turn his sights onto southern Armenia and southeastern Anatolia. A series of increasingly destructive raids, starting with the sack of Cepha[8] and building up to daring winter raids against towns on the southern shore of Lake Van. King Artavazd Mamikonian requested leave from Sabbatius to depart and force the Eftals away from his lands, but the Eastern Augustus refused out of concern that dividing the Eastern Roman army like so would play right into Toramana’s hands.

In India, 518 was a year of consolidation for the Hunas. Lakhana still harbored ambitions to eventually reunite his people under his banner, but long before that he had to first ensure that his newfound hegemony would not be overthrown the instant he crossed west of the Indus to contend with his cousin. To prove his commitment to solidifying his people’s supremacy over the subcontinent he began by moving his capital from Bactra to Indraprastha[9], the ancient capital of the Pandavas of the Mahabharata. While this city may be long ruined, the Mahārājadhirāja fortunately had many new slaves on hand with which to rebuild and repopulate it, on top of all the Bactrians and Indo-Saka he would command to migrate to his new Indian seat of power over the next years.

In time, the Hephthalite migrants would more permanently settle down to replace the broken kshatriya clans which had spearheaded Gupta efforts to defend against the Hunnish advance in northwest India and paid the price, becoming known as a new martial aristocracy called the raja-putra (‘sons of the king’, for many of the Bactrians in particular were nobles with ties to the royal Hephthalite house) or simply ‘Rajputs’. The Buddhist White Huns also adopted a more flexible approach to caste politics where they ruled in line with the Buddha’s teachings, recruiting many vaishyas (merchants) to help administer their conquests and shudras (workers) to pad out their armies, while also repealing anti-caste-intermarriage statutes imposed by the Guptas.

Even further east, the Tiele Turks surprised the Chen court when Yifu defeated Yieju and absorbed the latter’s confederation into his own in the spring of this year, much quicker than Emperor Ming and all but the most pessimistic of his advisors had predicted. They were divided on how to respond: the army’s commanders and court eunuchs advised Ming to attempt a divide-and-conquer strategy, propping up the lesser Turkic chiefs against Yifu with the aim of keeping the Turks perpetually divided, while the magistrates and Buddhist monks counseled trying to work with Yifu rather than senselessly antagonizing him by aiding the lesser chiefs and tribes who they thought had little chance against him anyway. In the end the choice was made for them by Yifu, who went on to subdue his remaining opponents over the summer and autumn while the Chinese bickered among themselves – his victory over Yieju and the lack of immediate Chinese support for his foes began a snowball effect, where the other Turkic peoples (such as the Göktürks and Uighurs) increasingly chose to submit peacefully and acknowledge him as their overlord one after the other rather than fight what seemed to be a futile struggle.

By the winter of 518, Yifu had proclaimed himself Yami Khagan of the Turks, something which he presented as a fait accompli to the Chen court. As the Tiele called themselves the ‘Tegreg’ in their native Turkic, their rising empire came to bear that name as well. At the encouragement of Kavadh, Emperor Ming graciously acknowledged him and his Tarduš clan as the rightful overlords of their people by way of a fine gift of silver and the arrangement of a marriage between his second-youngest daughter Princess Linchuan & Yami’s grandson Istämi, promising many years of shared prosperity so long as the friendship between Turk and Han Chinese held. For now Yami Khagan was content to accept the emperor’s offer and remain at peace with China, turning his gaze west unto the fleeing Rouran and lands which no Turk had ever ruled before. Meanwhile the anti-Turkic faction in the Chen court fell silent for now, though there was little doubt in Ming’s and Kavadh’s minds that they’d advocate dissolving this alliance and working to break up the Tegreg Khaganate if the able Yami Khagan were to ever leave the picture.

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A Göktürk chief bends the knee to Yifu of the Tiele/Tegregs, now Yami Khagan of the Turks

519 seemed to start well for the Eastern Romans, who attempted a second push onto Singara and Dura-Europos early in the year and succeeded, driving the Hephthalites back in a number of battles along the Saokoros[10] and Euphrates. As White Hunnish raids into eastern and southern Armenia did not cease despite these victories, Sabbatius – now confident in his victory – agreed to release King Artavazd to secure his homeland from the marauders, confident that they now had the advantage and he could afford to lose the Armenians for a while. As it turned out, the emperor was wrong on both counts: in truth Toramana had staged the withdrawal of his armies from the frontier to trick the Eastern Romans into wrongly thinking that they had him on the ropes, and kept up the attacks on Armenia to try to force them into dividing their armies at this supposed moment of triumph.

Having succeeded on both counts, the Mahārājadhirāja marshaled his reinforcements along the middle Tigris & Euphrates to spring his counteroffensive in July. Sabbatius had continued to make use of Ghassanid scouts in this time, so he was not caught completely off-guard, but he had still slightly underestimated the strength of his counterpart’s remaining armies and could not match their numbers without the Armenians. Toramana proceeded to inflict a major defeat on the Augustus at the Battle of Telassar[11], where despite the latter’s carroballistae striking down many of his elephants he was able to overwhelm their cavalry with his own and badly maul their infantry, and hounded the Eastern Romans out of his territory and back into their own over the next three months. The emperor’s Armenian bodyguards Aratius, Isaac and Narses Kamsakaran, champions of Sabbatius and kindred of the similarly named eunuch Narses, were all slain covering his retreat.

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Toramana leads his heavy lancers in a crushing charge against the Eastern Roman lines at Telassar

Toramana did not stop pursuing Sabbatius once they were back on Roman soil, defeating him again at Circesium and Thannuris (this time winning at the latter site) before he could rally his scattered and bloodied armies and slowing down only to detach a 12,000-strong force to besiege Nisibis. Worsening matters for Sabbatius, mounting Copt resistance in Egypt exploded into open rebellion at the sight of all these reversals, which emboldened the Miaphysites of that land into declaring one of their own magnates – Olympiodorus of Oxyrhynchus[12] – in the provinces of Arcadia and Thebais, while revolt in the cities of the Lower Nile and the Delta rendered those areas ungovernable even where the Roman garrisons & governors nominally managed to retain control.

The only saving grace for Sabbatius was that Toramana was unable to finish him off, despite the latter’s efforts. What was supposed to be the great Hephthalite deathblow was blunted in the Battle of Callinicum on November 30, where a young and previously-obscure captain named Belisarius[13] rallied wavering Thracian and Moesogoth contingents to secure his emperor’s left flank against a furious Eftal charge even as Narses the eunuch (that flank’s overall commander) was advising Sabbatius to flee behind Callinicum’s walls and consider suing for peace. After witnessing this display of valor on his left the Augustus resolved to continue fighting in the field, and managed to grind the White Huns to a standstill after twilight. Even better news came soon after the heartening victory at Callinicum, as Artavazd was on his way back from Armenia and had routed Toramana’s second army at Nisibis after marching through Corduene. The capitulation of Alexandria to the Egyptian rebels on December 31 following the naval evacuation of the city’s governor and Patriarch reminded the emperor that his situation was still dire, but at the very least he had managed to parry Toramana’s finishing attacks and now had hope and time with which he could still (he hoped, anyway) turn the situation around.

While the flames of war continued to burn across the Middle East in 519, those same flames were just beginning to burst into life anew in Britannia. After years of rebuilding and re-consolidating his power over the Saxons, Icel began to march against Artorius II and the Romano-British once again. This summer, he led a large force of 8,000 men towards Lindum while dispatching his son-in-law Raedwald to attack Deva with a second army half the size of the first: no doubt the Bretwalda’s hope was to compel his opponent to divide his forces. In response Artorius, who saw through this gambit, issued a call to arms to his various counts & dukes, and added their levies to his core cavalry force as he moved to eliminate Raedwald’s smaller force before turning his sights on Icel.

As Raedwald found himself facing nearly 3:1 odds that July, he beat a hasty retreat back onto his king’s territory. Artorius II gave chase and mauled him in the Battle of Heleshala[14], where the outnumbered and outmaneuvered Anglo-Saxons were rapidly put to flight after the Romano-British horsemen outflanked their shield-wall and pursued for another two days; half the Anglo-Saxon army was destroyed, while Artorius sustained only about 200 losses – a tenth of Raedwald’s. Satisfied that Raedwald would no longer pose a threat in his rear after this thrashing, the Riothamus moved on to confront the Bretwalda.

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Romano-Britons corner an Angle (or 'English') warrior of Raedwald's army following their engagement at Heleshala, which proved disastrous for the latter

Alas, by the time he reached Lindum, most of the city had fallen once again to the Saxons: only the fortified praetorium and a few adjacent buildings remained under the garrison’s control. Artorius’ arrival on August 2 prevented Icel from sacking the majority of the town, and indeed placed him in an extremely precarious position: but the able Angle king caught his counterpart off-guard with a nighttime breakout attempt, successfully puncturing a hole in the Romano-British lines as they set up camp and escaping into the darkness before Artorius could reorganize his troops to pursue. Three days later the two armies fought another battle in a hilly valley west of Luda[15], where Artorius attempted to stop the Anglo-Saxons from reaching their fleet and evacuating safely back to their territories by sea. There, despite a severe disadvantage in cavalry Icel prevailed by holding back the Romano-Britons’ footmen and horsemen both atop a hillcrest, then countercharging down the slope once he had worn them out. Though significantly aged since his last real battle with the Romano-Britons nearly twenty years prior, old Beowulf continued to superbly acquit himself in the front line of Icel’s shield-wall.

The year ended with the Anglo-Saxons back on their feet and their soil, having successfully extracted themselves from a potentially disastrous blunder, and both sides continuing to skirmish throughout the summer and fall as they built up their forces for another major confrontation in the next spring. On the British side, the Pelagian clergy began painting this as a holy war against the pagan Anglo-Saxons in a bid to drum up volunteers to follow their Riothamus' example in his ‘good march’, while Icel awaited the arrival of another batch of Saxon migrants from the continent.

Elsewhere, in West Africa the Hoggari were up to something the Romans would not have expected of their puritanical and violently zealous Donatist enemies: engaging in peaceful trade. Little of it was done with the Ephesians they considered heretics, of course, but with heathen peoples far to the south across the great sand sea that was the Sahara. Their scouts mapped out the most accessible oases (of which Tamanghasset[16] came to house the kingdom’s southernmost town of any note) and the safest desert trails, while their warriors secured these paths from less-organized rival Berbers and charged tolls on any caravan passing through for ‘protection’; such fees they demanded almost all the way up to the Atlas Mountains which marked the Western Empire’s southernmost frontier.

As had been the case since Punic times, the trade which flowed along these desert roads was chiefly in four things: gold, salt, ivory and slaves. Of these salt was the hardest to come by, as even the Hoggari lacked the manpower to consistently secure and work the great salt mines of the Sahara. They also had to fiercely compete with their fellow Berbers, the Garamantians, to profit off ivory and slaves – only gold flowed through the routes they’d locked down in an uncontestably great volume. There was especially great demand for slaves in the market of Carthage, despite the stern disapproval of the African Church, which in any case meant nothing to the Donatist men of Hoggar. But the Hoggari did not solely trade goods with the people of the far south: they also began sending missionaries southward as 520 approached, seeking to evangelize their particularly rigoristic take on the Christian teachings to the heathen peoples of the Sahara and Sahel, and in time they would find some measure of success.

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Camels were first introduced to North Africa in the 3rd century, and the Berbers took to them as readily as they did to the sands of the Sahara. They would prove instrumental in ferrying both merchants and missionaries southward for centuries to come

On the other side of Africa, Aksum was stirring once more. In September rebellion broke out among the Banu Qurayza, one of the Arab tribes around Yathrib which had previously bent the knee to them, and Dhu Nuwas was all too happy to help them, for they were his co-religionists (nevermind that in the past, they had fulfilled their obligations to the Baccinbaxaba and furnished his army with auxiliaries & supplies in wars against Himyar) and in any case gave him an obvious way to further undermine his rival’s power. For his part, Kaleb obviously could not let this stand and wasted no time in assembling an army for transport across the Red Sea, this time taking his son and heir Ablak of Alodia with him.

By the year’s end Kaleb had reached Yathrib and threw back the Himyarite and Banu Qurayza forces jointly besieging its garrison of Aksumites and loyal Arabs (mostly the Banu ‘Aws, Banu Khazraj and the Jewish Banu Qaynuqa). Even as Dhu Nuwas’ captains reordered their forces in the ‘Asir Mountains, a secondary Aksumite army was crossing the Bab el-Mandeb and moving to recapture Muza, requiring the Himyarite king’s direct attention. This second war between Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas had now evolved well beyond the Banu Qurayza, instead increasingly centering on the renewed contest for control over the Bab el-Mandeb and the lucrative trade routes which flowed through it.

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[1] The Chinese often transcribed the Rouran’s name as ‘Ruanruan’ or ‘Juan-Juan’, which indeed meant ‘unpleasantly wriggling maggots/worms’. Suffice to say this was not intended to be a term of endearment, and demonstrated how much of a headache the Chinese found the Rouran to be.

[2] Historically this title was held by Yujiulü Poluomen, who ruled the Rouran from 521 to 524 IOTL.

[3] Djémila.

[4] Oum-El-Bouaghi.

[5] Constantine, Algeria.

[6] Lioua.

[7] Tell Tuneinir.

[8] Hasankeyf.

[9] Delhi.

[10] The Khabur River.

[11] Tal Afar.

[12] Al-Bahnasa.

[13] Famed as one of the greatest Byzantine commanders who routinely won great victories despite a lack of resources and the distrust of his overlord Justinian, (Flavius) Belisarius restored Roman rule over Africa and Italy after crushing the Vandals and Ostrogoths in the span of a few years (though it was Narses who finished the latter off after they got a second wind under Totila). He also won major battles against the Persians and Kutrigurs. Despite increasing mistreatment by Justinian, he remained adamantly loyal to the Eastern Roman Empire, regularly crushing rebels against the emperor and at one point refusing to become the Western Roman Emperor with Ostrogoth backing.

[14] Halsall.

[15] Louth. The specific battlefield in this case is known to us as Hubbard’s Hills.

[16] Tamanrasset.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Well the western empire is doing better but the east is holding out and it sounds like Toramana could soon have family issues with his eastern kin.;) Who might in the end prove a bigger threat to the eastern empire if they reunite the Hephthalites realms, which would be huge, stretching from N India [and including much of that] and parts of the western silk road as well as much of the former Sassanid empire. If they can hold that together for any length of time it would be a very formidable state but ruling such a vast realm would be very difficult. On the other hand, unless Sabbatius gets as stupid as Justianian he will have Belisarius, which is a massive advantage to an eastern empire willing to support him properly.

Love the idea of a Sassanid general called Basil defending the eastern empire against invasions from his ancestor's homeland. ;)

The idea of a combined and updated legal code would be a great benefit but there are always issues where it could cause division between the two empires.

An expansion of Donatism into the Sahel, let alone possibly deeper into west Africa could be an interesting twist. No doubt they will want to expand their faith after all but how well it would fit in with tribes to the south would be interesting. Plus once you get past the Sahel and into the rain forests there are going to be huge disease as well as cultural barriers but a Christian/Donatist W Africa and Sahel would prove interesting. Not to mention if they became successful in the northern region their likely to spread eastwards and come into contact as well as conflict with the Nubian states. This is also going to be interesting if one of the three people you mention will be butterfly protected is who I think it is as that would mean interesting clashes in eastern Africa if not elsewhere. Although possibly the stricter Donatist viewpoint could fit in well with his ideas?

Things in Britain are getting rather monotonous with the rounds of fighting with no great progress for either side although it seems like the Romano-Brits did the better of this round. Either they need to decline somewhat or the Anglo-Saxon improve in numbers, organisation, leadership or whatever to break the stalemate in their favour.

We need to see what happens to the Rouran as they flee westwards. They could end up as a plague to Lakhana or if he takes a leaf from his cousin's ancestor and offers them refuge that could be a big boost to his strength.

Going to be interesting how long the 'alliance' between the Tegreg Khanate and the Chinese empire. Although potentially both could clash with the eastern Hephthalites, which would be a distraction to Lakhana.

Anyway many interesting developments - nearly forget the new round of Axum - Arab wars starting.

Steve
 

ATP

Well-known member
i read about partially Berber tribes in current Nigeria.So,Hoggari,if they manage to hold for longer,could made it at least as far.
According to what i read,what really stopped them were tse-tse flies,which killed their horses.

Romans need money - and i have good sources for both empires.
1.WRE - roman fleet knew about Baltic sea.and goths had legends about Gotland island they use to sail through Baltic.They also remembered about amber.
Using that knowledge,WRE could take Gotland and use it to ferry amber from prussian tribes.Much money,no risk - prussian never united,even butchered by Teutonic knights.So,they would not unite now.
WRE could even gradually conqer Prussia.

Another route - they knew about phoenixan sailors working for Egypt which sailed araund Africa - they could use it to get to India.Money,again,althought more risk.
They visit Madagascar on the road - people started colonize it about 500AD,so WRE probably could take most islands for themselves.And let their historian wrote about big fauna before it get excint.Maybe even few skeketons would be send to Rome.


2.ERE - if they retake Egypt,they could go through red sea to India.Althought Aksumities could made problem.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Yes - Britain is, so far, the area with the least progress made (in terms of dramatic developments) as the Romano-British have been able to hang on with superior strategy & tactics even after Camlann. You can definitely expect the Anglo-Saxons to start looking for ways to revamp their fighting style and force composition soon, not immediately but probably a couple more chapters down the road (either a ways into this latest bout of hostilities or some after it's over), as it's becoming pretty clear even to themselves that their infantry-centric warfare suffers from serious deficiencies against the Pendragons' regularly practiced combined arms (outside of cases where they enjoy absolutely overwhelming numbers and/or luck, anyway).

Also, to clarify an answer to the question raised over the previous update, indeed Arthur's dynasty is now treating the kingship of Dumnonia as their early answer to the Prince of Wales in our timeline. Riothamus remains the title of their actual ruler.

Anything else & everything else, as always, is spoiler material ;)
 

ATP

Well-known member
Yes - Britain is, so far, the area with the least progress made (in terms of dramatic developments) as the Romano-British have been able to hang on with superior strategy & tactics even after Camlann. You can definitely expect the Anglo-Saxons to start looking for ways to revamp their fighting style and force composition soon, not immediately but probably a couple more chapters down the road (either a ways into this latest bout of hostilities or some after it's over), as it's becoming pretty clear even to themselves that their infantry-centric warfare suffers from serious deficiencies against the Pendragons' regularly practiced combined arms (outside of cases where they enjoy absolutely overwhelming numbers and/or luck, anyway).

Also, to clarify an answer to the question raised over the previous update, indeed Arthur's dynasty is now treating the kingship of Dumnonia as their early answer to the Prince of Wales in our timeline. Riothamus remains the title of their actual ruler.

Anything else & everything else, as always, is spoiler material ;)
Russians started fighting byzantinum as vikings with infrantry and schield wall only,and always get beaten.Result - they eventually get their own calvary.
Artur should now made alliance with picts - and help them every time saxons try conqer more there.Maybe with some irish tribe,too.
 

ATP

Well-known member
i found great book - Warfare in the medieval world by Brian Todd Carey.Especially interesting for me were first chapter,about byzantine victories/for example Casilinum battle - frankish heavy infrantry army wiped out thanks to calvary and archers,byzantines lost only 80 soldiers./

Other thing - Persia could made money,too - they control silk road,and their ships could go at least to India,probably to China,too.
When/if ERE/WRE/both get to India by sea,i see sea battles betwen romans and persians.Who win,i wonder ? in OTL portugees easily win over arabs and turks thanks to superior technology,but here both sides would have the same level.
 
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520-522: Dragonslayer

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
When 520 dawned, while the Western Roman Emperor Constantine celebrated the birth of his third son Honorius, his Eastern counterpart Sabbatius busily went to work to exploit the stay of execution that his and young Belisarius’ victory at Callinicum had won for him. As rebellion consumed Egypt, he redoubled his efforts against Toramana in hopes of driving the Mahārājadhirāja to concede a remotely advantageous peace, after which he’d be able to turn his undivided attention against the Miaphysites. Toramana for his part tried to face the Armenian army creeping up on his flank before striking against Sabbatius again, but the Augustus of the Orient sent Narses, Belisarius and the Ghassanid king Jabalah IV forth with his remaining cavalry to harass & delay the Hephthalite host until they instead decided to withdraw southeastward onto their own soil out of fear that they’d missed their opportunity and would be caught between the two hostile armies if they fought.

Having spooked Toramana into withdrawing and missing his real chance to crush the Armenians, Sabbatius hastened to unite with them and give chase. The reinforced Eastern Roman host was delayed by the Eftal rear-guard near Circesium in May, allowing Toramana to escape back onto friendly territory and unite with reinforcements mustered over the past seasons by Mazdak at the cost of the 6,000 men he left behind being annihilated. Sabbatius pursued him further into Hephthalite territory, but his longtime rival showed that not all the fight had yet gone out of him by turning the tables and inflicting a major defeat on the Eastern Romans at Is[1] that July: now it was once more Sabbatius’ turn to retreat back into his empire while being pursued and harassed by the Hephthalites.

The White Huns and Eastern Romans fought their final battle at Zaitha, near Circesium, on November 20. Despite the Hephthalites gaining the upper hand early on by driving away the Eastern Romans’ cavalry, King Artavazd of Armenia and Belisarius managed to rally the scattered horsemen and ride to the rescue of the infantry under Narses and Ioannes the Moesogoth, who had been fighting a desperate defense against repeated Eftal charges for nearly two hours before they came back. Toramana’s attacks slackened under the renewed pressure of the returning Roman, Arab and Armenian cavalry on his exposed flank and crumbled altogether when Sabbatius personally led his reserve to support the infantry’s counterattack: meager though it may have been, this force – including the elite Excubitores who had survived up to this point – proved to still be too much for the bloodied, depleted and increasingly panicked Eftals to handle.

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The Eastern Augustus Sabbatius, flanked by two Scholares, overseeing the Battle of Zaitha and awaiting the right moment to order his reserve into action

A few days later the frustrated Mahārājadhirāja sued for peace, demanding the formal return of Singara and Dura-Europos (both of which he still occupied) in exchange for paying reparations both for the war itself and the raids which had preceded it. Sabbatius presented a counter-offer where the Eastern Romans would return Singara but retain Dura-Europos in exchange for reduced reparation payments, which Toramana agreed to after he realized that he could not bring up more reinforcements quickly enough to stop Sabbatius from forcefully retaking Dura-Europos (which was much closer to Zaitha than Singara) following the sanguinary losses he’d sustained in their last battle. Thus ended this third Roman-Hephthalite war, in what could be said to be almost as hollow and limited a victory for Toramana as the last round had been for Sabbatius – his only real grace was that none of the Hephthalite losses were as intensely personal to him as his rival’s was in 513.

The Levant was not the only hot spot in the Roman world this year. In Britannia, the Romano-British and the Anglo-Saxons agreed to a six-month truce in the first half of the year to rest & reinforce their armies. When they began moving against each other once more in July, the former’s army had been swollen by many thousands of lower-class recruits convinced that their golden Riothamus would lead them to a resounding victory in time for them to return to their farms & collect their harvest, while the latter was developing a new strategy to take advantage of the fresh wave of warriors who’d recently landed on their shores.

Against the advice of Raedwald to march as a concentrated force, Icel of the Angles decided to split his army again, sending nearly all his Saxons to attack Icenia by sea ahead of the consolidated Angle half of his host. Artorius II moved to crush them, expecting to deal with them as easily as he had Raedwald’s detachment the year before, but he was to be disappointed this time. The Saxons under Ceolwulf, brother of the fallen Cenwulf, were so numerous and destructive that the Romano-British could not easily defeat them this time around, and what’s more Icel himself landed east of the Fens shortly after the Romano-British had entered Icenia.

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Artorius II, flying the dragon standard of his illustrious father, exhorts his men to keep up with him as they march along the Icenian coast to counter the Saxons

The three armies converged for battle outside Venta Icenorum[2] that August, with Ceolwulf’s Saxons engaging first and attempting to pin Artorius down while Icel and Raedwald moved to attack him from behind with their Angles. Raedwald, a more innovative strategist than his overlord and father-in-law, recommended that they keep a proportion of their warriors mounted to counter the Romano-British cavalry which had so often been the Anglo-Saxons’ undoing in the past, and this was a suggestion that Icel approved of. However it was to no avail: the English horsemen were sent ahead of their infantry to try to relieve Ceolwulf’s position, but not being nearly as experienced or properly trained in horseback combat as their Romano-British counterparts, they were swiftly defeated once Artorius’ own cavalry (who were not only more skilled, but considerably more numerous) got over their surprise at the sight of mounted Saxon warriors.

By the time Icel arrived on the scene, Raedwald had fled the field entirely while Ceolwulf’s warriors had made a valiant stand and killed many thousands of Romano-Britons, but still crumbled in the end beneath the pressure of the Romano-British infantry (whose heavier warriors were pushed ever forward by the great mass of peasant volunteers behind them). They might have rallied had Ceolwulf not been shot in the eye by a Briton longbowman, ensuring the complete collapse of his division and their massacre by the Romano-British cavalry soon after. Despite the disaster which had taken place Icel committed his remaining forces to the attack anyway, thinking he could defeat the battered and exhausted Romano-Britons; he in turn may have been right, had Artorius not managed to pull his cavalry back and reform them into wedges which sprang into devastating charges against his infantry formation, eventually cracking the Angles toward sunset. The Bretwalda was among the casualties of the rout which followed, as were his eldest sons.

It fell to Raedwald to collect the stragglers of the Anglo-Saxon army and organize the retreat, back to and then aboard their boats. Naturally the Riothamus was eager to pursue, despite the raggedness and considerable casualties inflicted upon his own host, in hopes of extinguishing the Anglo-Saxon threat for a generation. But in that, he would be disappointed even more than he had been when he thought he could defeat Ceolwulf’s Saxons as easily as he’d beaten Raedwald in 519. Old Beowulf commanded best, most spirited and most organized remnants of Icel’s army – fewer than a thousand men – as a rearguard at Raedwald’s command, and made a legendary stand against six times his number in the marshes of northern Icenia[3] to cover his folk’s retreat. The Romano-British cavalry was much less useful here than they had been at Venta Icenorum, and although the Anglo-Saxons were eventually overwhelmed, they not only managed to maul the Romano-Britons even further but Beowulf himself managed to kill Artorius the Younger after Wiglaf gave up his life to wound the Riothamus: as this deed happened beneath the high king’s very own banner, the red dragon on white which his mightier father had flown before him, English bards would sing of how he’d slain the terrible dragon which had menaced their people for generations to come, a worthy conclusion to a long life of valorous deeds and heroic combats.

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As the legend of Beowulf grew in size and scope, accounts of his death were no exception - generations later, his mythic self would be remembered for fighting a literal dragon in defense of his people, rather than the very human Pendragon in a war his king started

The Romano-Britons broke off their pursuit to mourn the loss of their second Riothamus, considered nearly equal to his father in death after managing to defeat two Anglo-Saxon armies in one day, and the Consilium Britanniae once more assumed regency over an underage successor – the widowed Seaxburh, being both a Christian & a Saxon, was involved as queen-mother to the new high king Constantine, though she was mistrusted by much of the Consilium Britanniae. Fortunately the young new Riothamus had already seen his thirteenth birthday, ensuring a short regency of only a few more years before he could rule in his own name. On the other side of the border, as Icel’s own younger sons & grandsons were still underage Raedwald put himself forth as a better candidate for his crown when a folkmoot[4] was called to determine the issue of the succession. Despite his defeats in battle (which he blamed on the inflexible Icel’s poor choice of strategies rather than any fault of his own), he was still the premier magnate among the Angle nobility and married to Icel’s daughter, making him the best-positioned for the role. And although Icel’s strategy had failed rather comprehensively, it definitely succeeded in crippling the Saxons to the point where they could do little to oppose Raedwald and try to recapture the throne for their Ælling favorite sons: so it was that 520 ended with the Iclings replaced at the head of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom by a new dynasty, the Raedwaldings, with the support of the Angle and Saxon peoples and the new Bretwalda promptly entering into negotiations with the Romano-British court to settle their outstanding accounts.

In Arabia, Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas continued to maneuver against one another. The secondary Aksumite army recaptured Muza before Dhu Nuwas could stop them, and his efforts to besiege them there were jeopardized by Kaleb’s march down the Tihamah[5]. Himyarite forces managed to delay the main Aksumite host’s advance through the ‘Asir Mountains, but Dhu Nuwas found himself undone by two unexpected acts of treachery: first the Banu Qurayza, fearing defeat, began to negotiate with Kaleb behind his back and agreed to submit to the Baccinbaxaba once again and to offer up hostages in exchange for lenient treatment, and secondly the Christian Arab tribes of the Najran region took advantage of the changing tide of war to revolt in support of Aksum. The Himyarite king mounted a fighting retreat back into the mountains and made it back to Sana’a, but Ma’rib fell to the Najranites and was sacked while Kaleb entered Muza. Despite his obviously deteriorating situation, Dhu Nuwas refused to make peace and began to plan his next moves from the safety of his mountain capital as 520 came to an end.

Early in 521, King Clovis of the Franks was found to have died – bleeding heavily from his nose and mouth – in his bed a few years short of his sixtieth birthday, having consumed a surfeit of wine at a feast the night before. Poisoning was considered as a possible cause, and certainly the similarly-aged Merobaudes was quick to whisper that his ally and brother-in-law had been assassinated by agents of their rival Theodoric, but he was unable to dig up any concrete proof to support his allegations. Regardless Theodoric declared that he welcomed an imperial investigation into the matter because he was sure it would find him innocent of the crime he was accused of, and his words were proven true by the agentes in rebus Constantine assigned to the case by the year’s end: either the Ostrogoth had covered his tracks very well, paid off the investigators with coin provided by his ally the comes sacrorum largitionum, or Clovis’ death really was nobody’s fault but the Frankish king’s own. Constantine ordered the matter dropped with that investigation, regardless of his own misgivings and alliance with Merobaudes' Blues, since he had no wish to provoke one of his mightiest vassals to rebellion by trying to arrest him without proof.

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Clovis I of the Franks making his way back to the banquet table in February of 521, the last time anyone other than his bedchamber's guards saw him alive

Instead, the question soon turned to the Frankish succession. Clovis’ eldest son Ingomer sought to succeed him as the sole King of the Franks and was supported in this endeavor by Merobaudes and Aloysius, but their ancient customs (first codified by Clovis himself with the aid of Gallo-Roman scribes) demanded that the domains of the Franks be divided among him and his many younger brothers, whose cause found champions in Theodoric the Ostrogoth and his partisans – eager to divide and weaken the most prominent faction within the Blue camp. This matter wound up in the court of Constantine III, who ultimately decided in the latter’s favor: not only were the Franks still being governed by their Salic law code as autonomous subjects of the Western Empire rather than fully integrated citizens living under Roman law, not only did he feel bound to follow the precedent of partible inheritance among barbarians set with the division of the African kingdom between Altava and Theveste, but he also felt the Blues were getting too powerful and Merobaudes too bold in recent decades (all the more-so after subjugating the Lombards) – and that if allowed to continue on their current trajectory, they would soon think themselves superiors to rather than vassals and partners of the Stilichian imperial house. In addition, Constantine further worried that favoring and elevating the Blues even more than he already had would antagonize the Greens into an open revolt, and indeed had been warned (or threatened?) about this possibility by his Green-aligned treasurer Faustus.

So it was that the Augustus of the Occident dictated that ‘Francia’, as the Frankish kingdom was known in Latin, should be divided between the sons of Clovis, thereby somewhat diluting the power of the Merovingians and the Blue faction as a whole. Ingomer, as the eldest of the brothers, laid claim to Lutetia and the nearby lands between the sea, the Sequana and the Axona – the westernmost portion of his father’s kingdom and also the wealthiest, most urbanized and most Roman; the second son, Chlodomer, received a kingdom centered around Noviodunum on the Axona and Ambianum[6] on the Samara[7] as his allotment, extending as far as the Scaldis[8]; the third, Childebert, secured the eastern domains of the Franks and made Durocortorum[9] his capital; and to the youngest son, Chlothar, the old Frankish homeland in the north (largest of the fiefs, but also the poorest and least developed) was apportioned, with his seat set in Tornacum.

To allay Ingomer’s and Merobaudes’ tempers, Constantine agreed that he would recognize the former as ‘King of the Franks’ and allow only him the privilege of being addressed as dominus rex (‘lord king’) in official correspondence like the other federate monarchs, while his brothers were to be considered sub-kings who were lesser in stature than he. All in all, the situation of the Franks was now not dissimilar to that of the Visigoths in Hispania, where only the Baurg-based seniormost line of Balthing rulers descended from Roderic could claim the dignity of ‘King of the Visigoths’ to the chagrin of their junior cousins. When his wife Clotilde confided in him that this compromise was sure to disappoint her oldest brother and the Arbogastings while also leaving Theodoric and the other Merovingians not entirely satisfied, Constantine japed that that meant it was a good compromise – and, more seriously, that he could stand the factions’ disappointment and resentment so long as it didn’t boil over into open hostility.

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The children and grandchildren of Clovis in happier times, before they began squabbling over his legacy

The Franks were not the only barbarians Constantine would have to deal with in the far west this year. Across the sea, as restitution for the Anglo-Saxons having started the war they just lost Raedwald had conceded territory up to the lower Lōn[10] and the Arus[11] across the central Pennines, expanding Romano-British authority into parts of Elmet. The Romano-Britons themselves were reluctant to press their advantage any harder and potentially risk dragging the conflict out, having been saddled with yet another underage Riothamus and sustained grievous losses at the defiant hands of Ceolwulf and Beowulf the year before. Having cracked his teeth on that particular bullet, he immediately began to plan his revenge – and doing so required him to seek out the nearest continental power capable of not only intervening against the Romano-British, but also instructing his warriors on how to fight in the most successful style in Europe at this time, for their own tactics had proven rather lacking against their longtime foes time & again. Thus did he surprise the Western Emperor with a diplomatic mission to Noviodunum, which caught Constantine just before he returned to Italy after mediating the succession dispute among the Franks.

The Anglo-Saxon emissaries at first regaled Constantine with the possibility of recovering Britain in a joint expedition, but the emperor expressed little interest. The British provinces were among the poorest and most remote before their abandonment, after all, and dangerously exposed to both ambitious rebels and foreign raiders & invaders like the Anglo-Saxons themselves – hence why the Romans gave up on them in the first place. Constantine also noted that the Anglo-Saxons were occupying the northern provinces of Valentia and Maxima Caesariensis (well, less of the latter since their territorial losses to young Constantine of Britannia earlier this year) and unlikely to peaceably return those lands to the Western Empire even should they eliminate the kingdom of the Pendragons together. So it was decided early on that there would be no formal Anglo-Roman alliance against the Romano-Britons: instead the Bretwalda would limit his aims to overhauling his army to counter the combined-arms tactics of the Romano-Britons, and he & his envoys thought the best teachers would be found among the latter’s progenitors.

The thought of actively assisting pagan barbarians (who may very well end up raiding continental Roman shores in the future at that) against Latin-speaking Christians, even if they were heretics who spoke a rustic and increasingly degenerated dialect of Latin in his eyes, must have dismayed the emperor, for he was hesitant to agree to the Englishmen’s proposal. Eventually Constantine did come around to allow the Anglo-Saxons to recruit willing veterans of the Western imperial army as mercenaries straight out of Western imperial territory: in particular Raedwald sought cavalrymen, who could both serve as his cavalry arm and help train his own nascent cavalry wing to an acceptable standard. Trade agreements to import growing quantities of higher-quality Gallic war-horses into Angle-land were also reached, in exchange for not only a worthwhile price set by the Roman horse-merchants but also Ephesian missionaries being allowed to travel and proselytize freely through said kingdom under Raedwald’s royal protection. It would likely take more than a few years for the Anglo-Saxons to fully reform themselves, but as far as Raedwald was concerned, better that he get that ball rolling rather than simply sit around and change nothing in time to lose another war to the Pendragons down the road.

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The Bretwalda Raedwald and his queen, Icel's daughter Cynehild, exchange greetings with Germanus of Ambianum, the Romano-Gallic prelate leading the first formal Ephesian mission to evangelize among the Anglo-Saxons

The eastern half of the Roman world, meanwhile, was busy putting down the latest Egyptian insurrection. Having managed to escape a total defeat at Toramana’s hands by the skin of his teeth, Sabbatius now sent a force of 10,000 men to subdue the more numerous but less organized Egyptians, led overall by Narses with Belisarius as one of his direct subordinates. The highly capable pair routed Olympiodorus’ host in the Battle of Pelusium on May 15, though he had twice their numbers, and not only scattered his surviving troops but also cut him down in Tanis a few weeks later. The cities of the Nile Delta capitulated by the end of June, but the usurper’s lieutenant Hesychius of Hermopolis took up his fallen master’s cause and continued to resist in the Upper Egyptian countryside for some time to come.

In the meantime, Sabbatius’ triumphant re-entry into Alexandria on July 1 was derailed first by Miaphysite hecklers (further angered by the sight of Olympiodorus’ head decorating a spear brought in front of the Eastern Augustus) who threw dung and refuse at his legionaries as they paraded in the city streets, then by assassins who would have killed him had his sharp-eyed heir Anthemius not noticed them first and pulled him out of the way of their arrows. Suffice to say whatever inclination to mercy the emperor might still have had died with the assassination attempt, and he decided that if the Egyptians would repay the forgiveness he showed them the first time they rose against him with rebellion and murder attempts, then he would beat them back into line with an iron fist this time.

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Sabbatius parading in Alexandria, aware that the locals resented his arrival and the re-assertion of his rule from Constantinople but not that some of them planned to murder him when he rounded the next corner

Thus did the Eastern Roman legions reenact Caracalla’s infamous massacre of the Alexandrians that night, and wherever the legionaries went they killed anyone pointed out to them by local Ephesians as being traitors or associates of other rebels, collected hostages from the families of local gentry & nobility, and were authorized to plunder and sack towns which expressed even the slightest resistance. Known Miaphysite clerics were arrested or killed on sight, those who had been made bishops (either before or during the rebellion) stripped of their office and replaced with committed Ephesians. Unsurprisingly this approach hardly mended bridges between the emperor and his heterodox subjects, although in his opinion they had brought this harsh treatment upon themselves with their obstinancy. One side effect was that the Augusta Theodora began to influence her husband toward seeking a theological reconciliation with the Nestorians of Syria and her native Persia (and toward whom she had a considerable, the zealously orthodox might even say suspicious, degree of sympathy), for they had proven slightly less treacherous and troublesome than the Egyptian Miaphysites; another was that the more extreme Monophysite doctrine founded by the heresiarch Eutyches began to attract greater support in the Egyptian countryside, where anti-Roman resistance was more bitterly sustained.

Far to the south, Dhu Nuwas mounted a desperate counteroffensive against the many enemies closing in around him. He was victorious against the rebellious men of Najran, driving them out of Ma’rib in a surprise attack and spiking many hundreds of their heads outside the recaptured city, and also achieved a measure of success against the Aksumites early on. However, he was unable to dislodge Kaleb’s warriors from Muza, making it impossible for him to stop the Ethiopian emperor from ferrying over sufficient reinforcements from Alodia and Aksum to turn the tide over the course of the year. 521 ended with Kaleb marching deep into the Himyarite mountains at the head of a host of nearly 30,000 – Aksumites, Nubians and Arabs (including the Banu Qurayza and surviving Najranites) all – while Dhu Nuwas tried to delay them with traps and ambushes even as he frantically tried to improve the fortifications of Sana’a in the time his outnumbered troops were buying him with every skirmish.

In 522, while the first Ephesian missionaries from Gaul & Italy were greeted by Raedwald in Eoforwic and legionaries from Thrace & Syria continued fighting to suppress Miaphysite insurgents in rural Egypt, the first of a set of new visitors were arriving east of the Roman world. Toramana took a break from planning his next war against Sabbatius and mediating between growing disputes among his Mazdakite, Zoroastrian Persian and Eftal subjects to meet with a Rouran delegation into one of his lesser palaces at Susa. The emissaries requested land for their people to settle, promising to help defend Western Hephthalite territory from the Tegreg Turks who were now ascendant in the far east and who they warned would ride west in search of new conquests sooner or later.

However, Toramana had been observing the increasingly violent disputes over land, grazing rights and the social hierarchy gripping his realm, and did not think it would be a good idea to drop a new player in the form of this Rouran horde into an already explosive mix where he was struggling to keep the pillars holding up his regime away from one another’s throats. His decision was poorly received by the Rouran envoys who were desperately seeking a livable new homeland for what remained of their people; their reaction was even more poorly received by the Mahārājadhirāja, who found them to be overly haughty and petulant in manner.

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Toramana entertaining the Rouran delegation in Susa with an equestrian show, days before their negotiations went horribly wrong

His temper inflamed, Toramana had the Rouran delegation arrested and executed for insulting him, believing that if their people were as battered and in such dire straits as they’d claimed then he could easily finish them off once – if – they made it to his lands. The bulk of the Rouran meanwhile had nearly exited the Altai Mountains by this time, having escaped the grasp of the Tegregs for now, and lead elements of their tribes were preparing to cross the upper Irtysh when they received news of the massacre of their diplomats, months after it occurred. Mioukesheju Khagan swore revenge, but it would some years yet before he got close enough to the Hephthalites to make good on his threats.

A dissident faction of Rouran stragglers who’d been disillusioned with their Khagan’s leadership under the pressure of the Altaic winters and Tegreg raiders nipping at their heels had also diverged from the main horde to try striking southward through the Tien Shan Mountains, bringing them into conflict with the Eastern Hephthalites. These dissidents had some initial success looting towns and caravans in the Tarim Basin and Sogdia, but were ultimately crushed and annihilated or sold into slavery in the autumn of this year once Lakhana redeployed enough troops into the area to support his Tocharian and Sogdian vassals. News of the Eftal victories in their homeland further reinforced Toramana’s confidence in his ability to resist the oncoming Rouran, though in truth the Rouran his first-cousin-once-removed had thrashed probably did not represent more than a fraction of their people.

Last of all this year, the Aksumites finally managed to fight their way to Sana’a by spring’s end. However, they were unable to take the city in the face of its strengthened defenses and valiant Himyarite defenders: not by siege, as Dhu Nuwas had carefully provisioned his capital well in advance of his enemies’ arrival, and not by storm either. After an attempt to undermine part of Sana’a’s walls failed due to the effort of Himyarite counter-miners while Dhu Nuwas’ cavalry outside the walls escalated their attacks on his supply lines, Kaleb sued for peace rather than keep on trying to finish his enemy off. Dhu Nuwas, in turn, acknowledged that Kaleb’s army was still too large for him to defeat and that the war had developed too poorly for him to turn things around at this point. Their peace treaty, signed in the fall of 522, returned Muza to Aksum but nothing south of it, and acknowledged Najran as an independent tribal principality under the protection of the Baccinbaxaba. Thus did the second bout between Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas end in victory for the former, who avenged his defeat in their first contest of arms, while leaving the latter alive to lick his wounds and work towards his own vengeance: if there should be a third war between Aksum and Himyar, Dhu Nuwas intended it to end in his crushing victory or his death.

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An Aksumite musician entertains some local youths in the newly liberated Najran

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[1] Hit, Iraq.

[2] Caistor St Edmund.

[3] The Cley Marshes.

[4] The Anglo-Saxons’ first counterpart to the continental Germanic Thing, or assembly of nobles & freemen. It is the precursor to the later Witanegamot of the more established English kingdoms (and, eventually, post-Viking but pre-Norman Conquest united kingdom).

[5] A term for the Arabian Peninsula’s western coastal plain, stretching from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Bab el-Mandeb. It comes from the proto-Semitic word ‘Tihamat’ (‘sea’), itself probably related to the name of the Babylonian sea goddess Tiamat.

[6] Amiens.

[7] The Somme.

[8] The Scheldt.

[9] Reims.

[10] River Lune.

[11] River Aire.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Persia would probably fall now - especially,if eastern Hephalities join Rouran attack.Bad thing for ERE - they would face united empire then.Maybe they could ally themselves with China ? there were roman merchants who get there by sea.
Sea routes - we could see interesting battles over it.

P.S i read few books about India - apparently there existed kind of natural bridge connecting Ceylon and India till 1480 /of course,according to locals,made by Hanuman/
If Hephalities ever go so far,they could take Ceylon by land.
And they truly belived that their ancestors made kind of UFO/wimana/ which was used by Rama in war against some island cyvilisation.Which had UFO,too.
If Hephalities found few wimanas and use it,they would rule the world !
If not,inventing ballons would be enough.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
It will be interesting to see how the fragmentation of the Franks will play in the future.

What are the chances that Rouran will hit the Western Hephthalites just as Toraman will be fighting Sabbatius again?
 

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