Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
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?
Pretty good, I'd say. Sabbatius would need an extremely serious distraction to keep him from taking advantage of the Rouran-Hephthalite clash, which is basically inevitable at this point - the Rouran are a proto-Mongolic people after all, and nothing good ever comes of a Persia-based empire killing off Mongol diplomats. Especially given his own deep grudge against Toramana for killing his friend and derailing his eastern ambitions.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Well you saw the Romano-Brits win again, aided by poor leadership among the Anglo-Saxon forces. However Beowulf had what would have been considered a good death and worked in a link to OTL's legends for it. I suspect the RBs days are numbered now with Raedwald very likely converting in the not too distant future. That will give a strong religious incentive for the empire to support him against the heretics to his south. In this future England York is going to be the primary see of the English church even if Canterbury is lasting under English control.

I would argue that developing their own cavalry arm is probably not the best bet for the Anglo-Saxons. Their opponents have a long established system so it would take a fair amount of time and effort. Possibly quicker and less disruptive to their own forces to develop a more disciplined force and also specific anti-cavalry tactics.

It sounds like Toramana has failed to learn the lesson of his father - or was it his grandfather? - and has made an enemy his empire, which I fear will be hard pressed soon - can ill afford. I can't see the eastern Hephthalites 'reunifying' the empire again, at least not for long as it would be simply too large and complex to come under a single rule, even if he developed a more decentralised system, say like the old Persian satraps.

Also the Franks are going to be in for some 'interesting times' by the sound of it. Would it be possible to get a small map of the Frankish partition please as it would make it easier to visualise.

Axum has gained success against the Yemenis although Dhu Nuwas is still holding firm in the interior.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Also the Franks are going to be in for some 'interesting times' by the sound of it. Would it be possible to get a small map of the Frankish partition please as it would make it easier to visualise.
Sure thing :)
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1. Kingdom of Ingomer (Lutetia/Paris)
2. Kingdom of Chlodomer (Noviodunum/Soissons)
3. Kingdom of Childebert (Durocortorum/Reims)
4. Kingdom of Chlothar (Tornacum/Tournai)
 

ATP

Well-known member
About money - kauri schells was used as money in Africa,India and even China,in OTL arab monopolised taking it about 900AD to get richer.Portugeese and later England take over that.
So,what about India or Persia trying to monopolize it,too ? best schells were from Malediwy islands.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Sure thing :)
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1. Kingdom of Ingomer (Lutetia/Paris)
2. Kingdom of Chlodomer (Noviodunum/Soissons)
3. Kingdom of Childebert (Durocortorum/Reims)
4. Kingdom of Chlothar (Tornacum/Tournai)

Many thanks. Comes up a bit blocky on my screen but I have a reather elderly PC. However gives the basic details so very useful. :D
 
523-525: Renovatio urbis Romae

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
When 522 ended and 523 began without any immediate outbreak of violence in the Frankish lands or elsewhere, Emperor Constantine III was able to let out a great sigh of relief. The peace within and along the borders of his empire might be a little more tenuous than usual, but still it endured. So long as it did that, he could finally turn his attention to a pet project he had been planning for some time: the revitalization of Rome itself. The Eternal City had begun the fifth century an overpopulated and squalorous drain on the empire it used to be the capital of, only to be mitigated by Stilicho & Eucherius I and then accidentally excised by Attila and his Huns: in the 70 years since it was sacked it had since been rebuilt, of course, but was still far from its former glory – many of its ancient monuments and grandest edifices remain lost or damaged, their repairs often superficial and limited.

Well, no longer, Constantine declared. He would now wield the empire’s resources, carefully replenished and guarded in the stretches of peace the Stilichians were able to secure after foiling the Second Great Conspiracy and installing Sabbatius in Constantinople, to heal its namesake and heart, with hopes of one day removing his court from the swampy fortress-city of Ravenna back to the hallowed halls of its palaces. The urban prefect Gaius Papirius Carbo and his brother Gnaeus, both esteemed Senators who had never caused the Augustus offense and were known to have considerable architectural experience, were trusted with the honor of carrying out this great urban renewal project in close cooperation with Pope Caelius & the rest of the Senate, whose younger and more energetic members were convinced that this would be a fantastic way to rebuild the institution’s prestige and worth in the eyes of the empire.

Initially much of the funds allocated to the reconstruction of Rome went into (re-)elevating the living standards of its citizenry. Extensive repairs were made to the city’s aqueducts, sewers and pipes (alas not everyone had the luck of getting ceramic pipes installed, and had to deal with leaden ones instead), with the aim of supplying running water & sanitation even to the insulae inhabited by Rome’s poor & lower middle classes. Those of the city’s thermae which were still inoperable (particularly the grand Baths of Diocletian, severely damaged by the Huns who’d been a little too impressed by its size) were also finally repaired and reopened, and a new bathing complex supplied by a branch of the Aqua Appia was constructed on the Aventine Hill – long associated with the plebeians and foreigners, this particular hill was certainly a fitting choice for the populist Romano-Vandalic Stilichians to lay down part of their physical legacy, whether Constantine intended it or not. Numerous churches and chapels were also constructed, both to serve the citizens’ spiritual needs and to impress upon all the known world that Rome’s purification of paganism and sin had been completed in the flames of the Hunnish sack: the Eternal City would now stand forevermore as one of Christendom’s brightest and most beautiful lights if Constantine III and Pope Caelius had anything to say about it.

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The Baths of Constantine on the Aventine Hill on its opening day

In Britannia, an odd realignment of sorts was taking shape. Even as the Anglo-Saxons welcomed Ephesian missionaries to their lands and sought to grow their ties with both the continental Romans & the Irish across the western sea, from Londinium the Romano-British dowager queen Seaxburh hatched a plot to undermine the alliance tightening a noose around her son’s kingdom. Meanwhile the Saxon half of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom had been on the losing end of many wars both domestic and foreign in the past few decades, and though the scions of Ælle sought to retake their ancestor’s crown they knew they were too weak to do so on their own.

So perhaps it was no surprise that, despite the historical and existing animosity between their peoples, at the very least a splinter faction of Saxons proved receptive to Seaxburh’s (who after all was still an Ælling princess by birth) whispers that they should work together to undermine their mutual rivals, the Angles. Saxon privateers began to operate from Romano-British ports from this year on, solely targeting traders sailing between Angle and Roman ports, and keeping two-thirds of the plunder for themselves – per the terms of the agreement they’d reached they owed only the actual ships, assuming the enemy vessels were captured and not sunk, as well as Christian clerics and a third of all the other material loot to the Romano-British.

From captured Ephesian clerics and the consistently large volumes of horses among the plunder presented as their share, Seaxburh and the Consilium Britanniae managed to piece together the picture (and their worst fear) fairly quickly: that the Western Empire was now actively Raedwald against them. Of course, actually doing anything about it with their limited resources (which ruled out retaliatory stunts such as trying to invade Gaul, for example) was another question to which they had no answer at this moment.

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Difficult times make for strange alliances: Saxon pirates operating out of Romano-British shores to attack Angles and continental Romans

While the Western Roman Empire was reconstructing its old capital, its Eastern brother was busily de-constructing its rebellious Egyptian provinces. The urban centers were secured this year, even those in remote Upper Egypt, but insurgents continued to plague the countryside with the assistance of sympathetic Coptic peasants and Monophysitism continued to gain ground against both Ephesian orthodoxy and the more moderate Miaphysites among the ranks of the poor, helped significantly by the ferocity of this latest round of repressions. Since Sabbatius (apparently still rattled by the attempt on his life in Alexandria the year before) returned to Constantinople in the summer and privately swore he’d never return unless absolutely necessary, it fell to the fortunately considerably talented Narses and Belisarius to maintain imperial order in the chronically restive region. Indeed it was thanks to Narses’ administrative ability and Belisarius’ budding military genius that Hesychius and his fellow rebels never managed to find an opening for a diocese-spanning comeback or even to eliminate the Ephesian Patriarch Peter III of Alexandria, despite their best efforts.

Beyond the Roman world, this year marked the first time the Eastern Hephthalites struck south of the Vindhya Range in force. Lakhana allowed his son Mihirakula to take up independent command of a 16,000-strong force (of whom only 6,000 were actually White Huns, the rest being local Indian volunteers or conscripts) with which he was to assail the Aulikaras, former feudatories of the Gupta who had since re-asserted their independent kingship in the Malwa region – previously raided and devastated several times by the Eftals, but never fully conquered. Mihirakula did his father proud by pummeling the Aulikaras into submission early into the monsoon season, defeating their elephants with his own and handily overwhelming their cavalry in three battles across the plateau[1]: by securing the Mahārājadhirāja’s suzerainty over this local dynasty, he extended Huna power to the northern banks of the Narmada River for the first time, and brought his people one step closer to the Deccan.

524 brought with it heightened ambitions on the part of the Augustus Constantine. As the reconstruction of Rome’s infrastructure was proceeding smoothly, he turned his sights to grander things – a palace worthy of an imperial dynasty, to start with, and one for the Bishop of Rome as well. The great Palace of Domitian up on the Palatine Hill had been severely gutted by the Huns, and Constantine tried to rebuild it to match its former majesty as much as he could with expensive imports of Dacian and Spanish gold and silver, Hymettian marble and Lebanese cedars from the Eastern Empire. Where he could, he tried to preserve and repair old frescoes and statues out of respect for the old Roman legacy; where he could not due to extensive fire or other physical damage inflicted by Attila’s horde, he commissioned replacements which frequently bore a Christian theme (frescoes depicting Biblical scenes, for example, or statues of angels to replace those of gods & nymphs stolen or destroyed by the Huns). Constantine did not spare any expense even for the palatial garden (the ‘Stadium of Domitian’), for which he imported flora ranging from African woolflowers to Persian and Gallic roses, and also installed fountains and pavilions for his enjoyment.

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Constantine's loftiest ambition was to restore the Palace of Domitian to its former splendor, so that it might serve as the home and seat of his dynasty as it had to most previous emperors until Diocletian moved the capital to Mediolanum in 286

What Constantine did try to spare expenses on was the Pope’s palace, which was intended to neighbor the Basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican Hill. Pope Caelius complained that the emperor allocated far fewer funds to its construction than he did the reconstruction of the Palace of Domitian, a decision doubtless aided by the fact that he had been the Papal candidate of the Blue faction and the treasurer Faustus was a staunch Green. Constantine’s retort was that being a servant of God, even though he was first among the bishops of Christendom, Caelius should be satisfied to live humbly in a modest residence, after which the offended Pope called into question his lavish spending on his palace (including religious-themed sculptures and frescoes) instead of building a humbler edifice for himself and honoring God with grander structures for the Patriarch of the West, which he insinuated was a sign of hypocritical piety on the emperor’s part.

Eventually the pair settled on a design for a twelve-room suburban villa of sorts with a grand garden that would be attached to Saint Peter’s Basilica, a compromise between their dueling visions. To further decorate the Vatican quarter, the emperor also assented to the creation and placement of a huge statue of the Archangel Michael over the aforementioned Basilica, for the Roman masses had come to increasingly revere the generalissimo of the Heavenly Host after the Western Romans’ victory over Attila in the Seven Days’ Battles and consequent deliverance of the slaves he took – victories attributed to the martial archangel. Armored much like a legionary of the Scholae Palatinae, with his sword drawn and wings spread over the holiest district of the Eternal City, the imposing statue of the archangel would stand proudly as if protecting Rome (and certainly be looked up to by the citizenry as something which would prevent future sackings) for centuries to come.

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The Archangel Michael was often attired as an elite legionary, in a tunic and cuirass (lorica musculata or lorica plumata) with pteryges & greaves, in Christian Roman icons & other art; the statue of him set over Saint Peter's Basilica was no exception

524 was also the year in which Constantine of Britannia was declared to have achieved his majority, terminating the regency of his mother and the Round Table. The youthful Riothamus did not lack his father and grandfather’s formidable energy, and immediately set himself to the challenging task of somehow responding to the Anglo-Roman axis threatening to strangle his kingdom between them. Constantine’s ambitious plan to deal with this dreadful strategic situation was threefold: first and foremost, he would try to revive the Classis Britannica (‘British Fleet’) – a standing navy, built off the skeleton of the squadrons inherited from Roman times when Constantine of Camulodunum raised his standard in rebellion against Eucherius I. Due to financial constraints, the mainstay of this navy had to be small, agile liburnae[2] equipped with a ram and harpax (ballista-launched grappling hook) which were built or, more often, fashioned out of merchant vessels captured by the Saxon privateers Seaxburh had hired (and who Constantine continued to employ), with larger vessels universally serving as flagships. In Constantine’s and Seaxburh’s estimation, without a strong fleet Britannia wouldn’t even have a prayer against the dual threat of the Western Empire and the improving Anglo-Saxons.

The second part of Constantine’s strategy was to embark on a grand fortification spree across his kingdom. He dedicated much of his resources (that he wasn’t already pouring into his fleet) to strengthening the fortifications of every town of note in his realm and rebuilding every Roman fort within his reach, to the best of his ability. The British nobility was authorized to not only maintain private retinues & militias but also to fortify their own residences with their own resources as well, so that their villas were increasingly referred to in official correspondence as castella – ‘castles’, or fortlets in Latin. The same privilege was extended to the Pelagian clergy, who rushed to fortify their churches and monasteries with walls and gatehouses to protect themselves and their flocks, and preached an increasingly militant doctrine to all who would hear them: the noblest thing a man can do is to follow the examples of the past Pendragons & British Constantinians, heroically dying in battle against pagans and heretics, and whether they perished in victory or defeat God would surely smile upon anyone who died fighting to protect their people’s freedom from enemies who sought to enslave them. That this obviously empowered local magnates against the Riothamus’ central authority was not unknown to the Pendragons, but Constantine believed it a necessary evil to ensure Britannia’s survival in the wars to come.

The third and final part of Constantine’s strategy was to broaden the national levy, with the hope that he could somewhat offset the inevitable numerical superiority of a hypothetical Anglo-Roman invading army by mobilizing a larger proportion of his own people for battle. Since all men within Britannia were free by law regardless of whether they were Romano-Britons, Britons, Anglo-Saxons or Irishmen, they were now all considered eligible for conscription in times of crisis if they were between the ages of 15 and 65. If a kingdom-wide call to arms were ever issued, all would have to do their part with whatever weapons and armor they could afford. Dukes and counts were mandated to drill a minimum of between a fifth & a sixth of their subjects (depending on the size of their estates) with spear and bow and sling every Saturday, and even the poorest of peasants were no longer exempt from the draft – if needed, they would have to fight as unarmored skirmishers with javelins & slings, classified as leves (not dissimilar to the poorest-quality troops in Roman armies from early Republican times). Efforts were also made to expand the royal legions anchored around Londinium, Camulodunum and a few other major forts with recruits from the cities.

Shocking nobody but the Riothamus, these exceedingly ambitious programs were far beyond the actual ability of Britannia – already among the least developed of the Roman provinces before breaking away from the Stilichians – to support at this point in time. For years to come he would constantly fall woefully short of his quotas, sometimes (nay, often) even his most pessimistic ones, as his kingdom simply did not have the resources or manpower to meet them, or else he would be frustrated by local resistance to taxation, conscription drives and the imposition of the opera publica (corvée labor to build ships, forts, roads or whatever else their overlords demanded of them at the time). More often than not the high king grudgingly assented to his mother’s and the Consilium’s advice to make concessions and moderate his reforms, so as to avoid being painted as a tyrant and sparking off another destructive civil war like that which his predecessors had fought against Medraut, which the Romano-British could not afford in this increasingly precarious strategic situation. Still, Constantine and his court determinedly persisted with what meager resources they could muster in a bid to defend their independence from the ambitions of the Anglo-Saxons & the continental Romans both, well aware that their margin for error was much smaller than that of their enemies and that every little bit they could scrounge up would help in Britannia’s bid to survive against this tightening encirclement.

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Liburnae of the new Romano-British navy, or 'Classis Britannica', closing in against Angle pirate ships. Note that they are armed not only with rams, but also ballista-launched grappling hooks for boarding, called the harpax

Meanwhile in Egypt, Belisarius managed to finally corner and kill Hesychius in a skirmish near Augila with the aid of the Nasamones, a nomadic Berber tribe related to the Garamantes who Narses had managed to persuade into renewing their oaths of service to Constantinople. Narses, for his part, managed to defuse an Easter riot in Alexandria (which had threatened to become an annual occurrence between Ephesians and Miaphysites) and arrest the Miaphysite ringleaders once they’d been isolated in the tense calm that followed. For these feats in restoring some semblance of law & order to Egypt, an elated Sabbatius made Narses the Eastern praepositus sacri cubiculi, a promotion which made him the highest-ranking eunuch in the Eastern Roman Empire, while Belisarius was authorized to raise a regiment of bucellarii with which to support the Eastern legions (who he promptly furnished with bows, lances and heavy armor to the greatest extent that his personal finances would allow). For saving his life and the territorial integrity of the empire in the Battle of Callinicum several years prior, Sabbatius also rewarded Belisarius with the hand of his elder daughter Lucina, propelling the able young general toward the top echelons of the empire – and doubtless inflaming the jealousies of better-established noblemen who fancied the princess and the power & connections she represented, as well.

524 also marked a change of power in China. Emperor Ming of the Chen dynasty died of a bad chill on the eve of winter this year, and was bitterly mourned by his friend Kavadh in addition to his family and people, who fondly remembered him as the capable emperor who shattered the power of the Rouran only half a decade prior. The succession was somewhat rocky, as Ming’s designated heir Crown Prince Lin was almost immediately challenged by his ambitious half-brother Youqiu. In accordance with the late emperor’s final wishes Kavadh lent his aid to Prince Lin, who he had helped educate when the latter was still a child, and monks from one of his monasteries reported on Prince Youqiu’s attempt to reach and subvert the northern garrisons to him a few weeks later; he of course immediately told Lin, whose agents waylaid and killed the rebel and his entourage before they could reach the forts of the Great Wall. Crowned Emperor Huan in peace just before the year ended, Chen Lin expressed his gratitude by continuing his father’s pro-Buddhist policies, though this in no way stopped him from aspiring to succeed where Ming had once failed by conquering the Tarim Basin from the Buddhist Hephthalites of India.

The renovation of Rome continued steadily in 525. While insulae continued to be constructed to house the poorer citizens of the Eternal City, notably more domus began construction as well. While obviously not everyone, or even a plurality, in Rome could be defined as middle-class, many of the less well-off families living within the Aurelian Walls had either been killed off or dispersed into the countryside between the Hunnish sack 75 years prior and the land redistribution programs of the Stilichian emperors. While most of those who migrated into the city in the years since (and especially nowadays) were workers seeking to become part of the emperor’s reconstruction effort in exchange for a steady wage, no small number were also better-off provincials and even sufficiently Romanized barbarian petty nobility, coming to the city in search of opportunities with the imperial bureaucracy and army or the Church: these families were both used to a higher standard of living than the average urban slum-dweller of yore, and had more room in which to build their new homes with so much of Rome’s former population having gone either into the countryside or the afterlife.

These higher-class newcomers had been gentrifying entire depopulated neighborhoods of the former capital, building and expanding single-family homes (with room for slaves & servants, unless they themselves were thoroughly lower-middle-class types) over the ruins of empty insulae, and now the process was accelerating with imperial sanction. While very few of them were rich enough to decorate their domus to afford all the amenities and ornaments of a Senator’s house, even the poorest of them invariably enjoyed cleaner, less cramped and less hazardous housing than the insulae which preceded their coming. Upscale popinae[3] and thermopoliae[4] catering to this growing middle class’ more refined tastes inevitably cropped up to do business with the ‘new Romans’, while new churches were built and lupanariae[5] forced away from the newly settled & rebuilt neighborhoods as part of a moral drive to tidy up Rome’s streets. Constantine also re-instituted the vectigal ex capturis, or tax on prostitution originally instituted by Caligula, both in support of that aforementioned moral drive and to finance his ongoing construction works.

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The final touches being applied to a newly built domus in Rome, fit for a family of provincial equestrians moving in to take up positions in the bureaucracy, officer corps or the Church

One significant incident did temporarily distract Constantine III from the affairs of Rome the city in September of this year, some ways into the harvest season. While returning from an apparently entirely friendly banquet and hunt at Tornacum, King Chlodomer of Noviodunum and his party were attacked by brigands on the road and mostly wiped out. Suspicion of foul play arose immediately, as the few survivors reported that their assailants were too well-equipped and ordered to be any ordinary bagaudae, and as Chlodomer’s sons were still underage all of his brothers immediately pounced on his fiefdom in the days after his demise – almost as if they had planned for this.

Although theoretically Merobaudes could have stopped the latter given his strong ties to the Merovingians, he and his son Aloysius both did absolutely nothing. By the time news of the chaos had made it to Ravenna and Constantine called Merobaudes in to explain the situation in greater detail, Ingomer had already captured Ambianum and was besieging Chlodomer’s family in the praetorium of Noviodunum while his youngest brothers had annexed the north and east of his kingdom; and by the time the Romano-Franks actually arrived, Chlodomer’s widow had capitulated, saving her sons only by agreeing to shuffle them off into a monastery while their eldest uncle claimed what little was left of their kingdom for himself.

While the Western Augustus was outraged at this breach of the imperial peace and how his ruling on the Merovingian partition just a few short years ago had gone up in flames, the fog of intrigue and the danger of the northern third of his empire exploding into rebellion if he misstepped compelled him to proceed with caution. His investigation found almost no trace of the supposed bagaudae who had attacked Chlodomer, save a few helmets and mail shirts belonging to those of their fallen who they’d failed to recover – all of a Frankish design. This and the fact that the most likely suspect was Chlothar of Tornacum, a Green ally at a time when Constantine was beginning to realign with the Greens against the overmighty and bluntly ambitious Blues, while the firmly Blue-aligned Ingomer had been the greatest beneficiary of the assassination raised further questions. Merobaudes swore that he had no idea of any plot, that he’d done nothing because he was caught completely off-guard by the rapidity of the developments among the Franks much like Constantine himself had been, and that if he was lying God should strike him dead; since he did not in fact drop dead immediately, and the agentes in rebus could not find any evidence implicating him in any plot, the emperor decided to drop the question by mid-October.

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Ingomer of Lutetia leads his Franks into battle against those still loyal to Chlodomer's family on the road to Noviodunum

That the children of Chlodomer had been committed to a monastery complicated the situation even more. Constantine’s first instinct was to restore their father’s kingdom to them, but Ingomer had compelled them to swear oaths on the Bible to give up any claim to the throne of Noviodunum and the Church was reluctant to give up monastic novices of such high birth. Forcing the issue would inevitably cause conflict with the Frankish kings reluctant to part with their gains, and since Ingomer was a Blue partisan while his youngest brothers were Theodoric’s newest additions to the Green camp, there was a genuine concern in the imperial court that they could end up fighting both of the great cliques – meaning nearly all of their foederati, save the Africans, would be in rebellion – if they were not careful.

Ultimately Constantine came to a decision in the early weeks of December, not even primarily because of factional considerations or the scant evidence available to him, but because of personal tragedy. The passing of his mother Natalia at the age of 67, while not unexpected, still hit the emperor hard – being the youngest of her sons, he had also been significantly closer to her than his brothers. Wishing to take some time to mourn the empress dowager and to focus the rest of his energy on the renovation of Rome rather than continuing to chase this case (and possibly sparking a major rebellion or civil war), the Augustus decided to declare the case closed, to move Chlodomer’s heirs to Italy for their own safety and (together with Pope Caelius) that since they’d been forced into a monastery at swordpoint, they should be given the chance to decide whether to fully commit themselves to monastic life or to grow out their hair in Merovingian tradition and bring their claim before the imperial court once more when they were older. He also sent six legions, a mix of southern Gallic and Italian troops, from Arelate to Durocortorum with orders to help keep the peace among the Franks: their commander Eucharius Syagrius was a trusted scion of the Afranii Syagrii clan, a known descendant of Aegidius and Syagrius, and a man Constantine could rely on not to be swayed by the Greens or Blues. This done, the emperor promptly withdrew into a state of private mourning, such that he initially missed Merobaudes’ own passing on December 31 – and by then had certainly forgotten any connection the magister peditum’s death might have had to his last oath.

In the Eastern Roman Empire, Sabbatius was satisfied that his scribes had finished their assignment to compile all the Roman legal texts and judicial opinions known to man, and that the bureaucrats of the West had done the same elsewhere. The next step was to harmonize and modify them into an appropriate, streamlined & coherent legal code for the times, free of contradictions. For this purpose the Augustus of the Orient reached out to his Occidental counterpart in the summer, suggesting that they create a joint legal commission to accomplish this herculean feat and codify a new civil law to govern both halves of the Roman Empire, which Constantine agreed to. Their commission was comprised of twenty of the brightest legal and religious minds in East and West, ten from each empire, jointly led by two presidents drawn from their ranks: Sabbatius appointed the experienced quaestor Tribonian[6] to be the Eastern Empire’s president on this commission while for the West, the candidate could be none other than Boethius. As to when their work would be finished, for all their talents both men had to honestly give their emperors an optimistic estimate of ‘at least’ a decade, based on how long it had taken Theodosius II to finish his own legal reforms in the past and how they had the additional challenge of creating a law code acceptable to both East and West.

East of Rome, while the Rouran continued to inch toward Western Hephthalite-controlled Chorasmia, the Eastern Hephthalites faced a major Turkic incursion into the Tarim Basin this year, instigated and supported by China. Yami Khagan led a force of 21,000 Tegreg Turks and 7,000 allied Chinese troops into the Basin just as summer was ending, a horde which the Tocharian petty-kings and existing Eftal garrisons were ill-equipped to handle. For their part, the Khagan of the Turks had already prepared a partition of the Tarim with Emperor Huan of Chen: the Tegregs were promised overlordship of the westernmost and northernmost oasis cities, or ownership of them in case of overly stiff resistance by the locals, while the Chinese would consolidate control over the eastern and southern oases and the routes attached to them. By 525’s end the Tegregs had sacked Kashgar and compelled the surrender of Khotan, a good start (for them) in this first great clash of White Hun and Turk. Lakhana meanwhile had died of a heart attack while leading 30,000 reinforcements out of India to respond to this new threat, so it fell to his son Mihirakula to take up his father’s lance and sort this invasion out: a tough beginning to the new Mahārājadhirāja’s reign, even though he did not lack prior experience in battle and administration.

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A Tegreg champion felling his Hephthalite counterpart in a duel, demoralizing the Tocharian troops behind the latter just as battle is joined

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[1] Historically the Hephthalites did have a king named Mihirakula, though he was the son of Toramana, and in spite of his successes against the Guptas the Aulikaras under Yasodharman crushed him at the Battle of Sondani in 528, bringing a halt to the advances of the Hunas into India.

[2] A small, speedy bireme originally designed by (and named for) the Liburnians, an Illyrian tribe hailing from what’s now the western Croatian coast, who used it to engage in piracy & scouting. The Romans adopted and improved upon the design, as they often did, and used it to great effect in battles such as Actium. It remained the lightest warship in Roman fleets for centuries afterward.

[3] Ancient Roman wine bars, often associated with the lower classes of society.

[4] Ancient Roman restaurants, also known as cauponae.

[5] Ancient Roman brothels. One of the most famous and best-preserved is the Lupanar of Pompeii.

[6] Historically, Tribonian was Justinian’s most prominent jurist and helped him codify the Corpus Juris Civilis. However he seems to have not been entirely honest, as his corruption was apparently one cause for the Nika riots of 532.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
WRE is safe,if they want relatively easy money for more palaces all they need is sail to Baltic and get amber.
ERE is safe,too,and when they pacyfice Egypt they could send ships around Africa to India.Money would be good,but it is far more risky.
Britain is screwed,and nothing would safe them now.Fleet and castles are good ideas,but making army from entire population never really worked,they get weak cannonfodder and bankrupt themselves.
Unless...something cripple WRE. Nothing less would safe them.War with ERE? BUT HOW ? Maybe some german invasion...but,there was no strong enough tribes left for that.If Rouran come there and used slavic people as cannonfodder...too late for that,they would destroy Persia.
Maybe pelagians missionaries creating powerpuff slavic state to attack WRE ? it would need not one,but series of miracles.

Well,that would be all.Here,song about Beowulf.They could even sing something like that.
 
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stevep

Well-known member
Well the current dynasty started with a powerful general marrying into the previous dynasty. Is this going to happen again in the east? Belisarius has the advantage of not only being a great general but he's also a genuine 'Roman' rather from a mistrusted barbarian tribe.

It sounds like both Hephthalite empires are facing problems especially since with his father dead and troubles distracting him on the northern frontier Mihirakula could find others seeking to test his metal, both externally and possibly internally as well.

The Romano-Brits are in a dire situation and the new king's obsession with the military, while understandable in the circumstances is likely to weaken his state and throne in the longer term, especially since its likely to weaken internal unity and also economic development.

On the other hand Constantine could have problems developing as he's spending a hell of a lot on beautifying Rome and that gold could be needed come a crisis especially since I suspect that the green/blue feud and FRankish infighting aren't over yet. Plus you can't have most of the city being middle class in this time period as it will need a lot of people to do the hard, dirty and unpleasant work.

The eastern empire seems to have secured a large measure of peace for the moment and if that lasts it could boost its strength, economic and social as well as militarily.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Without giving the spoilers away, I'll say that you guys are right in that there are deficiencies hobbling both the Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British reforms, and that as a result their militaries might not necessarily evolve in the most obvious way which their high kings have laid out. It'll be some years before they're ready to fight again since they're both going to need that time to reorganize and adapt to the new ways, but when they do, I hope to surprise you guys with how they'll be duking it out.

In general this past chapter was a slower & more peaceful break after a series of rather war-heavy ones. But we'll be returning to wars, and big ones at that, shortly. I'm putting off updating the map on account of the coming conflicts - let's just say that there will be some significant changes from the last map I posted.

That next update should come by Halloween, BTW. This is shaping up to be a slightly busy week for me but at the rate I've been chopping through assignments, I'm pretty sure I can fit enough time to work on the next chapter in my schedule to get it done just before the end of the month. Though work might have to slow a bit more after that until the end of November, but I'll remain committed to never allowing more than 10 days to go by without an update.
 

ATP

Well-known member
I read book about wars in medieval Italy - according to that,even 50% of gathered levies could be made of almost unarmed peasants which only goal was to burn enemy crops.If other city send real soldiers,they could be beaten in small numbers,if not,enemy lost its crops.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Thinking about the Romano-British situation further their best bet might be seeking to undermine the Angle-Imperial link. Not just playing with Saxon resentment at the Angle dominance but also there must be concerned among the traditionalists about the king's welcoming of Christianity. Possibly a bit of gold or a few hints that result in some rebellion? If it doesn't work it at least weakens the northern threat both materially and possibly structurally with lasting mistrust of the defeated rebel elements.

If it works then both the R-B and the Anglo kingdoms have reasons to see the western empire as hostile and seek to establish better relations in the fact of that common threat. The basic if we work together we have a better chance than if we're fighting each other approach.

Its only going to work for a while but gives some time for something else to happen, such as a period of weakness/distraction for the western empire or division in the Ephesians church. The latter is pretty much certain to happen sooner or later and might just be a game changer for the R-Bs.
 
526-529: Avars, enter stage right

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
The dawn of 526 brought with it the appointment of Flavius Aloysius to succeed his father Merobaudes as magister peditum per Germaniae – much to the disappointment of Theodoric and his Greens, who had hoped to install the Ostrogoth crown prince Theudis in that office. In truth, and despite whatever misgivings he might have toward the Blues, Constantine III felt he had no real choice in the matter. Despite the Arbogastings’ increasingly brazen ambitions and the cloud of suspicion which still lingered from the apparent assassination of Chlodomer, Aloysius was still his brother-in-law and a well-connected man even besides that, a proven warrior and captain of men who had cultivated friendships with his father’s de facto vassals among the northern Germanic federates both on the campaign trail (usually against Slavic raiders these past few years) and in peacetime. The Augustus was also both keen on tipping the factional scales too strongly in favor of the Greens, and on continuing to avoid a revolt so he could continue focusing all of his energies onto working on Rome.

Merobaudes’ demise at the very end of the previous year may also have been connected to the latest outbreak of fratricidal hostilities among the Merovingians this year. This time Ingomer butted heads with Childebert: the former considered a raid which devastated several farms on his side of their shared border to be the work of the latter’s warriors, while Childebert claimed this black deed had been carried out by yet more unidentified brigands. The two kings clashed at Otmus[1] with small armies, comprised only of their household retainers and whatever levies they could summon on their way, and Ingomer proved victorious over his little brother. However, Eucharius Syagrius intervened with his legions to prevent the conflict from escalating and reported the matter to Constantine, who then ordered Aloysius to sort it out in a test of his worth as magister peditum. Although sympathetic to the cause of Ingomer, Aloysius was also keen on retaining the emperor’s trust after having only just secured his job and (after first twisting Ingomer's arm into going along with his plans) mediated a truce in which both sides would pay a weregild to the families of each other’s fallen warriors in accordance with Frankish custom, and Childebert would also pay restitution to Ingomer’s farmers: a mutually satisfactory outcome, if only barely in Ingomer's case, which prevented further bloodshed and territorial losses, and thus kept him in Constantine’s good graces months after he took office.

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Ingomer and Childebert departing from Aloysius' presence after negotiating an end to their latest brotherly squabble

Far to the east, the Rouran finally reached the northern frontier of the Western Hephthalite realm. Mioukesheju Khagan had been looking forward to enacting revenge for the massacre of his envoys during the many years he spent riding through the uncharted wilderness beyond Chorasmia, and now his chance had arrived at long last. The Rouran stormed past the Syr Darya near spring’s end like a horde of men possessed, obliterating the Eftal tributary kingdom of the Afrighids on the southern shores of the Aral Sea with the suddenness of a thunderclap and utterly destroying their capital of Kath[2] before moving on to the Hephthalite lands proper.

The initial Rouran rampage caught Toramana off-guard: the Mahārājadhirāja had been busy juggling his vassals while also keeping an eye on his western frontier, where he had learned Sabbatius had finished dealing with his own rebellious Miaphysite population, and so had reason to worry about a future Eastern Roman invasion. The task of organizing the first Hephthalite response to the Rouran invasion fell instead to his local vassals and governors, who proved to be utterly unsuited to the task. The local Mazdakite militias and Hephthalite warbands were unwilling to answer to the Parthian lords of the Houses of Varaz and Isfandiyar, who in any case held them in contempt as peasants who’d gotten too big for their britches and foreign interlopers little better than this newest nomadic invader, and their disjointed armies promptly marched into disaster against Mioukesheju Khagan at Āmul[3].

As the Rouran swung southward from the smoldering ruins of Kath and Hazarasp[4] and rode along the Amu Darya, they crushed each of the three disparate hosts which had marched against them and now foolishly camped separately out of hatred for one another, starting with the Parthian vanguard and then annihilating the Mazdakites: only a few hundred of the fastest Hephthalite riders were able to escape the calamity, with the rest who did not die beneath Rouran lances and arrows being forcibly conscripted into their ranks as arrow fodder under the threat of an even more painful death. The escapees sounded the alarm wherever they went, spreading news of an all-destroying race of terrible half-man, half-horse creatures which had burst from the wilderlands to sate their appetite for human blood and tears, and who knew neither enlightenment nor the very concept of mercy. These Rouran nipping at their heels seemed to live up to their tall tales by laying waste to the countryside, slaughtering thousands and enslaving thousands more wherever they could, and they fell upon any attempt by the local Hephthalites to rally and organize a new army in the northern lands with the swiftness of an arrow; so it was natural for the people of Parthia, southern Khwarazm and Khorasan to flee to their walled cities for shelter.

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The Chinese mangonel: once adopted by the Rouran to attack the walls of Chinese cities, upon their arrival in Central Asia it became the reason why they could laugh at Hephthalite fortifications

Alas, that too proved to at best provide momentary relief from the invaders’ depredations. The Rouran might be savage, but in no way did that mean they were totally ignorant of their surroundings. Centuries of fighting the Chinese had taught them the value of siege warfare, and they had learned the secrets of Chinese siege weapons such as the mangonel – a sort of primitive trebuchet where men pulled on cords attached to a lever to hurl the projectile on the other end – from captured engineers and bureaucrats long ago, without which they would never have been able to menace the fortified cities of the Han half as thoroughly as they did. Kushmahan and Merv learned this lesson the hard way when the Rouran built such weapons from local trees to knock holes in their walls, then put their garrisons and every man above the age of twelve within to the sword while carrying the rest of the survivors off as slaves. Other cities and Parthian nobles in Mioukesheju’s way began to surrender in hopes of receiving lenient treatment, while the Hephthalite nomads who’d settled in the area raced westward to answer the alarmed Toramana’s call to arms.

It took the Mahārājadhirāja some months to finish putting together a sufficiently formidable army. In truth he could have immediately ridden out to confront Mioukesheju with the Hephthalite warbands and his household cavalry, but age and experience had made Toramana more cautious, and what he’d learned from his scouts led him to believe that such a course of action would be suicidal. So it was the case that, though the Rouran had gutted or otherwise received the submission of much of Khorasan by the time the royal Eftal host set out to stop them, Toramana brought with him no fewer than 35,000 warriors – Fufuluo, Persians both Mazdakite and Zoroastrian, Parthians, Daylamites, Lakhmid Arabs and Assyrians, a fractious coalition but one which he was able to hold together with his personal presence, charisma and formidable reputation.

Toramana’s decision to exercise a healthy degree of caution paid off, as he defeated Mioukesheju and put the Rouran to flight for the first time in the Battle of Nishapur on July 30; there the Eftals not only found that the Rouran could be beaten, but also identified their chief weakness – their own considerable losses from their disastrous final bout against the Chinese and Tegregs, as well as attrition over the long march from their homeland to Persian soil, also forced the Khagan to fight with quite a bit of caution himself, and to beat a hasty retreat when the winds of battle turned against him. Mioukesheju struck back with all of his pent-up hatred and pushed Toramana back in further battles at Abiward[5] and Sarakhs, showing that the Rouran’s initial onslaught was not a fluke and that they could not easily be driven out of Persia either, but against such a strong enemy army in increasingly mountainous territory his options were limited. As the year wore on he added the strength of Parthian houses that had flipped their allegiance to his horde and started conscripting Chorasmians & Khorasanis to further bolster his numbers, but these could only compensate for so much.

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Mioukesheju Khagan preparing to lead his army into battle against the Hephthalites on Persian soil

While his increasingly distant cousins were trading blows with the newcomers from the north, Mihirakula was busy contending with their old enemies to the northeast. After finally crossing through the Pamir Mountains the new Mahārājadhirāja of the East first clashed with the Tegregs at the occupied oasis town of Karghalik[6], which the Chinese called Piaosha, and scored a rousing victory there. He followed up by retaking Khotan from the Turks, putting the garrison which Yami Qaghan had installed there to the sword, and also reinstalled the pro-Hephthalite Tocharian king of Yarkand.

However, Mihirakula began to run into problems when he moved against Kashgar, where Yami Qaghan was also riding with the bulk of the Tegreg army to blunt his advance. The Turkic cavalry proved to be every bit equal to the finest of the Hunas, while their infantry contingent of Chinese spearmen and crossbowmen were more than equal to the Eftals’ own inferior Bactrian and Indian footsoldiers despite being outnumbered by the latter. As Yami Qaghan repelled him from Kashgar and called forth reinforcements through the Hexi Corridor, Mihirakula dug in at Khotan and prepared to fight a longer war than he initially expected.

While the Hephthalite-Rouran war raged on through 527, a third party was beginning to take interest in the former’s distraction by the latter. Sabbatius was kept well-informed of the developments to his east by both the spies on his payroll and merchants traversing the Silk Road, who saw firsthand how the Rouran – or, as the Romans came to know them, the ‘Avars’ (after ‘Uar’, the name of an unrelated historical people living in the area who had long ago been subsumed into the ranks of the Eftals) – were laying waste to Chorasmia and Khorasan and how it was taking all of Toramana’s energy just to keep up with his new foes. The Eastern Augustus dispatched a diplomatic mission comprised of Narses’ most trusted and most diplomatic servants to cross through the Caucasian kingdoms and over the Caspian Sea to greet Mioukesheju Khagan near the devastated city of Hazarasp, which the Rouran chieftain received gracefully – though the envoys’ first impressions were also shaped by what they saw of Hazarasp itself. Suffice to say that between the burnt-out shell of the town, the mass graves and the pieces of Hazarasp’s notables decorating stakes around the Rouran camp, the Eastern Roman delegation was torn between the Rouran’s apparent usefulness in battling the Western Hephthalites and worries that partitioning Toramana’s realm with them might end as poorly for the Orient as allying with Attila against the Occident did eighty years before.

Regardless, the envoys came to Mioukesheju’s tent with a mission and whatever their misgivings, they were determined to carry it out to the best of their ability. After exchanging gifts, they pitched their proposal for an alliance against Toramana, which the Rouran khagan – feeling quite pressured by the fierce and more numerous Eftals himself, in spite of his early battlefield successes – was quite happy to accept. Sabbatius accordingly began a new empire-wide recruitment drive and to mass troops on the Mesopotamian frontier, including Belisarius and his growing bucellarii corps, while his diplomats explained to Mioukesheju that it would take the Eastern Empire some time to marshal enough resources & armies to intervene due to their recent difficulties with rebels – but also that the emperor was a man of his word, and help would inevitably come if they could just hang in there for another few months, or a year at most. Though the Eastern Empire had been battered by its fair share of violence in recent years, Sabbatius simply could not allow a fantastic opportunity to crush Toramana like this one to slip through his fingers.

To further secure his western frontier and completely eliminate the risk of an attack from that direction while he was busy in Persia, Sabbatius offered to marry his younger daughter Theodora to the Caesar Theodosius. He knew that there was little chance of such a backstab from the Western Augustus of course, especially with the latter being tied down by the reconstruction of Rome, but figured it never hurt to make sure. In any case, Constantine III welcomed the proposal to tie the Western & Eastern imperial dynasties closer together: thus the young heir to the Occident was wedded to the even younger princess of the Orient on July 27 of this year. The festivities provided the perfect backdrop for Anastasia, the Eastern empress’ sister, to suggest the marriage of her other daughter Anastasia Junior to Sisenand of Baetica, who had recently succeeded his father Sisebut as lord of that land: suspecting nothing of his elder brother’s demure widow and one of his most consistently loyal vassals, the amiable Constantine agreed over a cup of strong wine.

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Theodora Junior is prepared for her wedding to Theodosius, Caesar of the Occident, while her mother and namesake watches over her with two handmaidens

The Romans were not the only great powers playing marriage games in 527, of course. Toramana spent the entirety of this year in the saddle, leading his armies back and forth to counter the unrelenting strikes of the Rouran and attempting a partially successful counteroffensive toward Merv in June, but his courtiers kept him informed of the Eastern Romans’ budding alliance with Mioukesheju Khagan. Aware of the noose tightening around his realm, he sought to reconcile with his estranged cousins to the east and offered the hand of his only remaining unmarried daughter Anzaza to Mihirakula.

For his part, Mihirakula was too busy battling the Tegregs and Chinese to assist Toramana against the Rouran this year. He started 527 well by withstanding Yami Qaghan’s assault on Khotan in the spring, matching the bolts of the latter’s Chinese crossbowmen by lining the city walls with his own Indian longbowmen and boldly sallying out with his cavalry to drive back the Tegregs in a contest of bows & lances, then pursued his foes to Kashgar, which the Tegreg host gave up without a fight. It soon became apparent why they had done that however, as Yami Qaghan had pulled his men east to link up with reinforcements trickling in over the Silk Road and returned to attack the Eastern Hephthalites while they were investing Bharuka[7].

Mihirakula received Toramana’s marriage proposal while retreating from his severe defeat at Bharuka, and though he was clearly in no shape to help against the Rouran at present, accepted it anyway with the promise that he would ride to the Western Hephthalites’ aid as soon as he got the Turks off his back. There were encouraging signs that he was accomplishing this as the seasons changed, as Yami Qaghan unwisely divided his armies to go after both Kashgar and Khotan (over the Tarim’s northern and southern routes) following his latest victory only to promptly be beaten back at both cities by the Eftals, with Mihirakula rallying his men at Kashgar to repel the Tegregs’ first army in August before running them ragged to catch and kick back their secondary army at Khotan in September. As the year wound down, both sides engaged in back-and-forth skirmishing while awaiting reinforcements – Indians from over the Upāirisaēna and Pamir Mountains for Mihirakula, and yet more Turks and Chinese from over the Silk Road for Yami.

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Very soon after Lakhana's conquest of northern India Indian troops, such as war elephants and these longbowmen, came to comprise a large and increasingly critical element of Eastern Hephthalite/Huna armies

528 brought with it a shakeup in the Green camp, for Theodoric of the Ostrogoths did not live to see the start of summer this year. His loss was greatly mourned by his people, who had massively multiplied both in numbers and influence under his long and able reign, and by Constantine III as well: though on occasion his ambition and power had intimidated the Augustus, Theodoric had also ably served three generations of emperors (Constantine himself, his father Eucherius II and his grandfather Honorius II) as their longtime magister militum since 484, and never did threaten open treason against them. His only son (and Constantine’s maternal cousin) Theudis was his lawful and natural successor, being already a grown man and a seasoned captain.

However Theudis was also known to be highly sympathetic to Ephesians, a product of his closeness to his Roman mother Domnina Majoriana and his education at the court of Ravenna (including Ephesian clerics as his tutors), and many among the Arian Ostrogoth nobility felt he was more Roman than Goth – if they didn’t just suspect him of being a crypto-Ephesian altogether. These rebellious elements gathered behind a kinsman of the Amalingian main line, Optaris, who they acclaimed as their true king. Obviously, this could not stand: Constantine was determined to ensure his cousin’s smooth succession and commanded Aloysius to assist Theudis in putting down the rebels, which Aloysius did without enthusiasm, feeling that the less proven and certainly less trusted Optaris would be much less of an able leader for his rival Greens. To both men’s surprise, Constantine next rewarded Aloysius with the office of magister militum rather than Theudis, who had expected to also inherit his father’s rank in the Roman government in addition to his crown but found himself without room to complain after having just enjoyed imperial support in suppressing Optaris’ revolt.

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Theudis meets Optaris' lance with his sword in close combat

While the West was putting down the small fire which had flared up in Pannonia this year, the East was finally in position to light a much bigger one to the east. Sabbatius completed his preparations for another war with the White Huns by mid-April and immediately launched an offensive down the Tigris to start, aimed at overrunning the Nineveh Plain before Toramana could dispatch sufficient reinforcements to the area. As it turned out, Toramana had detached several thousand troops from his main armies in the east to shore up the garrisons of his Assyrian cities – but they were far from enough to successfully resist the onslaught of Sabbatius’ army, which numbered 40,000 strong (although only about 20,000 of those were actual Romans, the other half being comprised of allies, federates and mercenaries: the Armenians, Kartvelians, Ghassanid Arabs, Moesogoths and even a few Sclaveni).

Within six months, the Eastern Romans had once more retaken the whole of Assyria, capping off their initial slew of conquests with a victorious storming of Nineveh itself at the end of August. One of Toramana’s many sons with Nanai, Bagayash, attempted a last stand in its citadel and was felled by an arrow shortly before the surrender of the surviving defenders: archers serving under Belisarius and Basil quarreled for some time over who had scored the kill. Meanwhile Sabbatius himself had not forgotten the treachery of Patriarch Shila and the Nestorians of the city, which directly contributed to the chain of events which culminated in his friend Theodosius’ death, and although Shila had been dead for half a decade by this point his family was still around to suffer the emperor’s ire.

Although the Augustus did not outright sack Nineveh or other Assyrian towns he did condemn Elisha, Shila’s son-in-law and successor to the Patriarchate, to be burned at the stake while his brothers-in-law were beheaded, followed by a broader purge aimed at the Nestorian clerical and aristocratic elite of Assyria (in which Basil’s archers, being Ephesian Assyrian exiles almost to a man, were the most enthusiastic participants). The emperor’s catharsis came at the cost of giving the Nestorians many new martyrs, of course – and it even brought him veiled criticism from his wife, who had hoped to reconcile the Nestorians of her homeland with the Ephesian orthodoxy dominating her husband’s empire – but in his hour of victory he could no more pass up on such a fine chance to get vengeance for their infuriating betrayal and his ensuing defeat in his second great bout with Toramana, as well as those Ephesians who the Nestorians had themselves martyred in the past decades, than he could the chance to ally with the Rouran newcomers against the Eftals to begin with. With Assyria subjugated for the time being, the Eastern Romans ended the year by preparing to march into Mesopotamia so that they might tear out the heart of the Western Hephthalite state.

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Ioannes the Moesogoth leading barbarian federates and mercenaries beneath the walls of Nineveh, awaiting only the siege tower under his cousin the emperor's direction to roll into position

The Eastern Roman invasion could not have come at a better time for their new ‘Avar’ allies, who were really starting to feel the weight of attrition from their running battles with Toramana across Khorasan. The Mahārājadhirāja had been on the verge of gaining the upper hand when he made the mistake of detaching several thousand soldiers under Bagayash to defend his western frontier: not enough to actually hold Assyria against the Eastern Romans, it turned out, but too high a number for him to afford in the war against Mioukesheju Khagan. The Rouran regained the initiative and recaptured Merv late this year, once more crossing the Murghab River[8] and increasingly threatening Media & Fars.

Mihirakula grew concerned as reports of his fellow Hephthalites’ struggles worsened over the course of the year, and he made up his mind to quickly resolve his struggle with the Tegreg Turks and Chinese so he could rush to their aid. In this endeavor he was off to a poor start, as his effort to march against pro-Chinese Kuqa ended in a bloody defeat against Yami Qaghan’s reinforced host. The Tegregs went on to recapture Kashgar in another furious battle, nearly trapping Mihirakula inside the Tarim Basin by severing his connection to the Pamir Mountains. However, the Eastern Mahārājadhirāja managed a limited turnaround at the eleventh hour after collecting a last spurt of Indian reinforcements and gave Yami Qaghan a stinging blow in the Battle of Yarkand that November, after which he sued for peace and received a favorable response from the increasingly frustrated and tired Tegreg chieftain. Negotiations between the Chen court, the Tegregs and the Eastern Hephthalites would drag on into the next year, during which Mihirakula had little choice but to grimly look on as his kindred’s situation continued to deteriorate to the west – and to direct his Indian and Sogdian forces to move to his western border in hopes of aiding them once an agreement was made with his present enemies to the north and east.

Last of all, 528 was also the year in which Aksum and Himyar went to war once again. This third conflict between Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas was instigated by the latter, who seized on the opportunity provided by the former’s distraction by Macrobian[9] raiders harassing his eastern frontier to launch a long-prepared invasion of the Aksumites’ Najrani protectorate. Dhu Nuwas was absolutely brutal in his treatment of the Christian Arabs of Najran, who he viewed not only as heathens but also traitors who’d fatally compromised his efforts against Kaleb (together with the Banu Qurayza) in their previous war half a decade ago, and openly burned many hundreds of them in their churches on top of the thousands he had killed through more conventional means. At the same time he also sent several of his sons and cousins to attack Muza with 10,000 men, which they did successfully – though contrary to his orders, they sacked the great port city for its riches, adding to his notoriety. The Baccinbaxaba was enraged by this attack and the black deeds which followed, agreeing to take up Dhu Nuwas’ challenge that this should be the last bout between their kingdoms: only one of either Aksum or Himyar would survive this war if he had anything to say about it.

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A Himyarite executioner making martyrs out of Najran's Christians following Dhu Nuwas' reconquest of the region

529 was a relatively quiet year in the West, as both Aloysius and Theudis needed time to consolidate their control over their respective territories in the north and east of the Western Roman Empire. On Aloysius’ part, besides arranging matches between his children with various Alemanni, Bavarian and Lombard royals to secure these federates’ continued support (not only for the Western Empire in general, but for him and his family specifically) the new magister militum also sought to complete his father’s project to subjugate the rest of the Thuringians, which Merobaudes had been unable to accomplish over the past quarter-of-a-century. This Constantine allowed after Aloysius carefully phrased his arguments to give him the impression that the Thuringians (or rather, the half that Merobaudes had failed to subdue up till now) were not a particularly strong people, and their addition would further secure the empire’s northern borders but not drastically alter its internal balance of power.

The same could hardly be said of Sabbatius’ ambitions, which only grew grander as he realized that the Eftals were in such poor shape that he might be able to grab a lot more than just Assyria. The Eastern Emperor managed to tear a swath down the Euphrates and Tigris in the first half of this year, subduing one poorly defended city after another either through siege or (more frequently) through coercive negotiations, and bringing him to the gates of Ctesiphon once more by the start of July. Toramana could not ignore such a threat to his seat of power and hastened west with all the strength he had left, leaving behind scattered Hephthalite tribes and Mazdakite fortresses to defend themselves against the resurgent Rouran as best they could. To prevent the entire eastern half of his empire from falling to Mioukesheju Khagan overnight, he did leave the eldest of his grandsons – Narayana – behind with 5,000 armored horse archers to lead & stiffen local resistance, keeping for himself 25,000 troops with which to confront Sabbatius.

At first the Mahārājadhirāja achieved some success in battling the Eastern Romans. In a great battle before Ctesiphon that September, despite being considerably outnumbered Toramana was able to draw out a large Roman infantry contingent under the reckless Ioannes with one of his classic feigned retreats and nearly annihilate them; only the intervention of Belisarius and his bucellarii saved the emperor’s reckless cousin from his demise at the business end of Toramana’s lance, and his corps from total destruction. Still, the casualties the Eastern Romans incurred and Toramana’s second charge through the gap created in their line, which threatened Sabbatius himself, compelled them to withdraw northward from Ctesiphon.

However, though they had won the day and some time to survive, the White Huns did not get to enjoy their reprieve for all that long. Toramana could not sit in Ctesiphon and wait for Sabbatius to come to him, as the Eastern Romans were quickly rallying at Samarra while Narayana was hard-pressed by the Rouran to the east: Mioukesheju took advantage of the Mahārājadhirāja’s distraction to immediately go on the offensive once more, and had not only already sacked Nishapur but was beginning to cross the central Persian deserts by the time he won the Battle of Ctesiphon. Hoping to knock Sabbatius out of the war quickly so he could focus his full attention against the Rouran once more, Toramana set out to challenge him as he marched his legions back south from Samarra for a second go at the Eftal capital.

The two grand armies of the eastern powerhouses – 35,000 Eastern Romans and 24,000 Hephthalites – met at a largely abandoned hamlet north of Ctesiphon called Baghdad on October 31, just before the start of the rainy season which would surely inhibit their maneuvers until April of 530. The battle at first favored the Hephthalites, whose horse archers devastated the lightly armored ranks of Slavic skirmishers sent forth by Sabbatius at the beginning and outshot even the best of the Ghassanids and Belisarius’ bucellarii, and the furious charge of their heavy cavalry – led by Toramana himself and three of his oldest sons – broke through the legions composing the Eastern Roman center as they were still forming up for battle in front of their camp. However, as they surged toward said Eastern Roman camp in a bid to eliminate Sabbatius and end the war in a single stroke there, the Hunnish cavalry fell into a trap prepared by Sabbatius at Belisarius’ counsel: ditches dug and filled with sharp stakes, which not only felled the Hephthalite riders foolish or unlucky enough to charge directly into them but also (combined with the typical palisades erected around the Roman encampment) funneled them into narrow avenues and gateways defended by the Excubitores and other elite palatine legions under Sabbatius’ personal command.

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In their attempt to avoid Belisarius' stakes at the climax of the Battle of Baghdad, the Eftal heavy cavalry found themselves charging directly into the prepared ranks of Sabbatius' best legionaries and palace guards instead

A terrible slaughter followed, leaving the flower of Western Eftal nobility almost entirely shorn of its petals. Toramana managed to survive thanks to the sacrifice of his son Ghatifar, but was badly wounded and barely conscious by the time he managed to return to his lines. Alas, upon his return he found that those lines were crumbling anyway, as the heavy Eastern Roman, Gothic and Arab cavalry & camelry commanded by the Caesar Anthemius squaring off against his left and the Caucasian division which formed the Eastern Romans’ own left wing had caved in his flanks. The Lakhmids were the first to flee the battlefield in disarray and terror, kicking off a broader rout in which the Hephthalite army (in particular its infantry, comprised of both Zoroastrian and Buddhist Persians as well as a Daylamite contingent) was mostly destroyed. Of the 24,000 men which Toramana had brought to the Battle of Baghdad, only 6,000 managed to make it back to Ctesiphon a week later with their Mahārājadhirāja, whose wounds had become infected: delirious and feverish, Toramana was clearly in no shape to command the defense of his capital as the year drew to a close and Sabbatius closed in to establish siegeworks around him.

About the only silver lining to the calamity the Western Eftals found themselves in was that Mihirakula had finally concluded his drawn-out negotiations with the Tegregs and Chinese. Those negotiations had gone on for so long that an impatient Yami Qaghan actually broke the truce in mid-year, thinking Mihirakula was stalling to buy himself time and reinforcements, and only returned to the table after being defeated at Niya (having circled his army around to take the southern Tarim route in a failed attempt to catch Mihirakula off-guard). In November the belligerents settled on the cession of Kashgar to the Turks, who would install their own vassal king there, and by extension the submission of the northern Tarim Basin to Tegreg and Chinese suzerainty: the Eftals would retain Khotan and Yarkand in their own sphere of influence however, and control over the southwestern passes of the Silk Road in the Basin.

It was not unreasonable of Narayana (now effectively the leader of his people, as the oldest of his father’s male descendants to still be alive, at liberty and not in Ctesiphon) to suspect his distant relative of having purposely drawn out the talks to let the Western Hephthalites get beaten into a position where they’d have to submit to their Eastern kin for protection, though Mihirakula insisted the delay was due to Chinese and Turkic intransigence – if he’d had his way, he claimed, they’d have kept on fighting to ensure that there would be no reduction to the Eftal sphere of influence in the Tarim, so Narayana and Toramana had better be grateful that he was willing to concede Kashgar to his new enemies for their sake in the first place. Regardless of the truth of the situation, the situation was dire enough that Narayana knew he could not afford to offend Mihirakula and turn him away. Thus did 529 end with the Eastern Hephthalites finally beginning to move to assist their Western brothers, while Yami Qaghan and the Tegregs took note of how their newest acquisitions brought their western border right up to the Rouran who’d just escaped their judgment a decade before.

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Prince Narayana riding on a Persian plain with what few Western Eftals remain to accompany him

Lastly, the Aksumite-Himyarite war continued to proceed to Dhu Nuwas’ advantage this year. Himyarite forces successfully cleared southwestern Arabia of the remaining Aksumite garrisons there while Kaleb remained distracted by the Macrobians. Dhu Nuwas then swept northward, bribing the Banu Quraish into defecting to his side with the riches he plundered over the previous year and so gaining Mecca bloodlessly, before laying siege to Yathrib. This time he won over the allegiance of the Banu Qaynuqa, another Jewish Arab tribe living in and around the city, but was fiercely resisted by the Banu Qurayza who (correctly) feared that he still sought revenge on them for their past treachery.

However, late in the year the tide began to turn, as Kaleb finally subdued the Macrobian tribes and hurried to cross the Red Sea before Yathrib fell. He landed in the Tihamah with an advance force of 8,000 warriors, of whom 4,000 were Alodians under the command of his son (and their king) Ablak, and despite being outnumbered he went on to catch Dhu Nuwas by surprise and break the siege of Yathrib in December. The Himyarites fell back to Mecca and prevailed against the Aksumites in a hotly contested battle outside the city with the help of their new Quraish allies, whose cavalry proved indispensable in outmaneuvering the Aksumites and whose camels scared the Ethiopian and Nubian cavalry away. However, the Aksumite fleet was ferrying more troops over the Red Sea every day to reinforce Kaleb’s army and Dhu Nuwas came to the conclusion that he had to go on the offensive again, and soon, to crush the Aksumites before their army swelled to a size that he could not possibly match.

====================================================================================

[1] Château-Thierry.

[2] Beruniy.

[3] Türkmenabat.

[4] Hazorasp.

[5] Dargaz.

[6] Kargilik.

[7] Aksu.

[8] The Bartang River.

[9] Historically, the actual Macrobian kingdom known to Herodotus had fallen no later than the 1st century AD. ‘Macrobian’ survives as a pre-Islamic name for the Somali people, who at this time lived both in fairly sophisticated coastal city-states capable of competing with Aksum and Himyar in the Red Sea commercial arena and as nomadic inland pastoralists.
 
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PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Eastern Persia just can't catch a break, can it? I wonder how much can Eastern Hephthalites send to their Western cousins, due to their own casualties and need to keep back forces to keep an eye on Turks and keep India under control.

To further secure his western frontier and completely eliminate the risk of an attack from that direction while he was busy in Persia, Sabbatius offered to marry his younger daughter Theodora to the Caesar Theodosius.
At what point did the Church put down it's foot regarding the marriage of the cousins? Not that it didn't look away when it came to nobility (dat Hapsburg chin)

so gaining Mecca bloodlessly
Had to remind myself that this is still a century before that newfangled religion.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
Great chapter.
It seems,that it is end of Parthian - either Avars made them part of their tribe,or Hephalites would wipe them out for treachery.
Mecca was arleady saint place,not only with black stone,but many lesser gods,with war/or moon/ god Allah among them.

What is now - i see one Hephalite state,but Avars could have their own there.Bigger ERE,and WRE.Both could assimilate as much slavic tribes as they could,becouse there was no any slavic state,or even proto-state,yet.

What about sea battles between ERE and Persia ? both have good navies in OTL.And China could now ally with ERE.Enemy of my enemy etc.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Eastern Persia just can't catch a break, can it? I wonder how much can Eastern Hephthalites sendto their Western cousins, due to their own casualties and need to keep back forces to keep an eye on Turks and keep India under control.


At what point did the Church put down it's foot regarding the marriage of the cousins? Not that it didn't look away when it came to nobility (dat Hapsburg chin)


Had to remind myself that this is still a century before that newfangled religion.
Good question re: royal marriages. My understanding is that the canon law of the Church forbids marriage within four degrees of consanguinity (parent-child, brother-sister, aunt-nephew/uncle-niece and first cousins), which was elevated to seven degrees in the 8th or 9th century historically. Right now Theodora Jr. and Theodosius are fine by that first reckoning, since they aren't first cousins (Theodosius is the son of Constantine III and his Frankish wife Clotilde, while Theodora's sister Anastasia had married Constantine's older brother and the Western Caesar's namesake but only had daughters by him). I know that can be confusing (I had to double-check it myself!) so as I've done before, I'm going to post a family tree to clarify everyone's relation to everyone sometime in the future.

If this marriage holds and bears fruit, it will actually be the first lasting match between the Eastern & Western imperial dynasties in 3 or 4 generations - the last time that happened was with the Neo-Constantinian sisters Euphemia (wife to Honorius II, great-grandmother of the Caesar Theodosius) and Lucina (Sabbatius' mother and thus Theodora Jr.'s grandmother). Circumstances have caused the Stilichians to marry a lot more often with barbarian royalty or Western Roman aristocrats than with their Eastern Roman brethren this past century, which has helped keep their inbreeding to a minimum so far.
Great chapter.
It seems,that it is end of Parthian - either Avars made them part of their tribe,or Hephalites would wipe them out for treachery.
Mecca was arleady saint place,not only with black stone,but many lesser gods,with war/or moon/ god Allah among them.

What is now - i see one Hephalite state,but Avars could have their own there.Bigger ERE,and WRE.Both could assimilate as much slavic tribes as they could,becouse there was no any slavic state,or even proto-state,yet.

What about sea battles between ERE and Persia ? both have good navies in OTL.And China could now ally with ERE.Enemy of my enemy etc.
The Eftals aren't especially great at seafaring while the ERE has yet to make it to the Persian Gulf, so naval battles between the two are unlikely in the short term. That said, the ships the Hephthalites have inherited from the Sassanids (as well as any merchant vessels they can conscript) will be useful in moving their people from Mesopotamia to safer ground in Persis proper & Gedrosia. In the medium term though, battles between the Roman navy and that of the Eastern Eftals (a combination of Indian ships and whatever Persian ones might still be around) are possible on either side of the Strait of Hormuz.

Good catch on China, BTW. They (and their Turkic proxies) will definitely have an interest in allying with the ERE against their mutual enemies. The only major complication, besides existing Huna influence over both the overland Silk Road routes in Tocharia and the seaborne ones hugging India's coast, are our new Avars who just allied with the ERE while remaining bitterly hostile to the Turks/China. But, I do have some plans on how that might shake out in the future...
 

stevep

Well-known member
The festivities provided the perfect backdrop for Anastasia, the Eastern empress’ sister, to suggest the marriage of her other daughter Anastasia Junior to Sisenand of Baetica, who had recently succeeded his father Sisebut as lord of that land: suspecting nothing of his elder brother’s demure widow and one of his most consistently loyal vassals, the amiable Constantine agreed over a cup of strong wine.

Now why does this sound ominous to me? ;)

Last of all, 528 was also the year in which Aksum and Himyar went to war once again. This third conflict between Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas was instigated by the former, who seized on the opportunity provided by the latter’s distraction by Macrobian[9] raiders harassing his eastern frontier to launch a long-prepared invasion of the Aksumites’ Najrani protectorate.

I think you mean latter rather than former?

Sounding very grim for the western Hephthalites. Even if they survive the eastern Roman/Rouran onslaught, although that comment about the latter now having a common border with the Tegregs could be a saving grace. However it sounds likely that they will end up dependent on, if not formally annexed by their eastern cousins if they pull through. It could be especially bad for the Nestorian population given Sabbatius savage revenge for their earlier opposition to his rule. Along with just about everything in the east given the Rouran attitudes.

Again fighting in Arabia with savage encounters and massacres but I suspect that Dhu Nuwas has pushed his luck too far this time.

Those Indian lowbows might be a useful addition to the eastern Hephthalites but I can't see them being much use at high altitudes or anywhere outside of India in winter unless they wear a lot more than that.

Anyway a lot going on and have to see what develops.

Steve

 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Now why does this sound ominous to me? ;)



I think you mean latter rather than former?

Sounding very grim for the western Hephthalites. Even if they survive the eastern Roman/Rouran onslaught, although that comment about the latter now having a common border with the Tegregs could be a saving grace. However it sounds likely that they will end up dependent on, if not formally annexed by their eastern cousins if they pull through. It could be especially bad for the Nestorian population given Sabbatius savage revenge for their earlier opposition to his rule. Along with just about everything in the east given the Rouran attitudes.

Again fighting in Arabia with savage encounters and massacres but I suspect that Dhu Nuwas has pushed his luck too far this time.

Those Indian lowbows might be a useful addition to the eastern Hephthalites but I can't see them being much use at high altitudes or anywhere outside of India in winter unless they wear a lot more than that.

Anyway a lot going on and have to see what develops.

Steve
Oops, that was indeed a typo - fixed now, thanks for catching it.
 
530-533: Hephthalites, exit stage left

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
530 was one more good year for the Roman world. In the West Aloysius embarked on his planned campaign against the Thuringians, having amassed a 14,000-strong army out of the northern legions, his own bucellarii, the Franks, the Alemanni and the Lombards – a significant force by the standards of the wild, sparsely settled Germanic frontier. Against this host the Thuringian king Hermanafrid was hoping to bet on an alliance with several neighboring Saxon tribes, but the Saxons never came through due to a combination of their own petty feuds distracting them and being intimidated by the power of Aloysius’ host. Eventually he surrendered in mid-summer of this year, though for honor’s sake he did not do so until after he’d first fought (and lost) a battle on the river which Aloysius dubbed the ‘Weraha’[1] after his Teutonic auxiliaries’ own name for it.

Having lost fewer than a hundred men in the clash and witnessed his eldest son Aemilian slay one of Hermanafrid’s champions with a plumbata dart, the Romano-Frank magister militum was in a good enough mood to offer generous terms. Hermanafrid would have to come to Rome to recognize Constantine III as his new suzerain, Thuringian warriors were expected to fight for Rome when called upon while Roman garrisons were installed across their territory, and of course Thuringia would have to welcome Christian missionaries. But other than that they would retain their autonomy, Hermanafrid his crown, and Aloysius assured the defeated king that Roman overlordship would bring its share of material benefits in the form of infrastructure (such as the roads his men had already dug as they marched through Thuringian territory) and trade. The Augustus congratulated his generalissimo on completing the work which Merobaudes had previously left half-done, and awarded him a triumph near the end of the year: as Rome was a rather thoroughly Christian empire now, the ceremony could no longer involve gladiator games or a sacrifice to Jupiter, but rather terminated much more modestly with prayers in Saint Peter’s Basilica and Aloysius prostrating before his august brother-in-law.

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The Romano-Frank Aemilian, son of Aloysius and nephew of the Emperor Constantine III, here seen pairing the traditional long hair & francisca ax of Frankish nobility with his otherwise thoroughly Roman attire & panoply

The East fared just as well, if not better, against a much larger foe. Sabbatius’ army fanned out to completely surround and besiege Ctesiphon for most of the year, and as the Rouran continued to press hard against Narayana’s army this time no new host would be riding in from the east to save the besieged. Toramana died of his infected wounds on June 24 and his eldest son still inside the city, Kidara, had claimed his throne, as had the distant Narayana some months later. However unlike his nephew Kidara was not half the warrior Toramana had been, and for all his boasting of how he’d resist the Eastern Romans to the death, he secretly entered into negotiations to surrender the city to Sabbatius almost immediately.

On November 3, as supplies ran dangerously low the Mahārājadhirāja in Ctesiphon gave the order for his heavily outnumbered garrison to stand down and open the city gates; some men loyal to his brother Atamaita turned their lances against him instead and temporarily besieged him in his palace, but most were sufficiently tired, starved and demoralized to go along with his command and let the Eastern Romans in. Tragically for Kidara, Ioannes and the rest of the Roman advance party who’d been the first to enter the city failed to save him from being lynched by Atamaita’s warriors – all they could do was avenge him by killing Atamaita next and mounting his head on a Moesogoth’s spear. A Roman emperor now stood victorious in Ctesiphon for the first time since Carus’ reign over 200 years prior, and with all that remained of Toramana’s household in the city being some women and underage grandchildren & great-grandchildren, there was conveniently no Hephthalite leader left to resist him west of the Zagros.

Sabbatius was quick to consolidate his victory. He mostly prevented his soldiers from sacking Ctesiphon, limiting the damages to a few hundred rowdy federates plundering the White Palace of the Sassanids and White Huns and damaging the great Taq Kasra arch, and assured the locals that there would be no violence and pillaging as long as they complied with the new regime. Over the winter he dispatched messengers across Adurbadagan, Asoristan and Meshan, offering gifts to the Eftals’ governors in exchange for their submission and warning them that the White Huns no longer had any hope of victory in this war, and also treated with the Lakhmids who were now in a hurry to reach accomodations with the new master of the Levant before their Ghassanid rivals were allowed to annihilate them. Sabbatius was content to accept them as his newest vassals and signed an accord with their king al-Mundhir III on Christmas Eve so as to avoid having to waste resources fighting them to the last man and besieging their capital at al-Hira, although to appease the Ghassanids he demanded the Lakhmids cede their western territories almost all the way up to al-Hira itself: the ‘Ibad, a major Christian Arab tribe under their authority, and several others also switched their allegiances to Bostra in light of the Roman ascendancy, further empowering the Ghassanids at their expense.

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In order from the top: Sabbatius about to enter Ctesiphon, Ephesian Christians emerging from hiding to welcome the Eastern Roman Emperor, and the Lakhmid king al-Mundhir III prostrating himself before the victorious Augustus

While even Charax had yielded to Sabbatius without further resistance by the year’s end, Narayana was still valiantly fighting as the de facto ruler of his people in Persia proper. A steady trickle of Indian and Bactrian troops from over the Upāirisaēna Mountains over the year allowed him to finally start effectively holding ground against the Rouran, stabilize his position in Persis & Gedrosia, and even retake Veh-Ardashir[2] in September after it had been sacked by the Rouran five months before. The Fufuluo also did not break faith with him, allowing him to retain control over eastern Media, although the Christian Amardian king Gushnasp XII was quick to yield Padishkhwargar to the Romans and so give the Romans their first foothold east of the Zagros. However the garrisoning of cities such as Veh-Ardashir by Eastern Hephthalite troops, while freeing Narayana and his main army up to campaign against Mioukesheju in the countryside, also meant increasingly placing these towns and their environs under Mihirakula’s authority rather than his own.

Far to the south of the great war consuming the Western Hephthalites, Aksum and Himyar continued to do battle with one another throughout 530. Kaleb held off Dhu Nuwas’ counterattacks against Yathrib while transporting an increasing number of reinforcements across the Red Sea, then launching an attack of his own once he felt he had enough troops to rout the Himyarites – 30,000 men in all, divided into the 12,000-strong force he was leading with his son Ablak around Yathrib (including allied Arabs such as the Banu Qurayza and Najrani survivors) and an 18,000-strong secondary host in Charmutha[3] on the coast. Dhu Nuwas moved to engage the larger army with his own 16,000-strong one, not wanting to risk a more difficult engagement in the Hejaz Mountains, and actually succeeded in putting them to flight in the Battle of al-Juhfah[4], where despite his slight numerical advantage and the fierce resistance of his foes, he was able to rout the Aksumites after slaying their general Abraha[5].

However, Abraha had left a not-insubstantial mark (about 3,000 in fact) on the Himyarite army before his death, weakening it considerably for Dhu Nuwas’ next inevitable clash with Kaleb’s own host. After learning of Abraha’s demise the Baccinbaxaba changed directions, attempting to steal a march on Dhu Nuwas and capture Mecca by swinging in from the east, and while Dhu Nuwas was able to forcibly march the Himyarites to intercept him he did so at a poor location: beneath the fortified mountain town of Ta’if, whose Banu Thaqif inhabitants had opted not to resist the coming of the Aksumites, which gave Kaleb an important terrain advantage over his own slightly larger but battered and weary host. The resulting battle was a severe defeat for Dhu Nuwas, and would have been a more mountainous replay of the Himyarites’ own victory against Abraha had the king’s bodyguards not managed to pull him off the battlefield before the young and strong Ablak of Alodia could physically reach him. As the Himyarite army lost nearly 5,000 men compared to 600 Aksumites and Dhu Nuwas hurried back toward his strongholds in the south to collect a new army, Kaleb was able to march into Mecca and receive the submission of the Quraish by the end of the year.

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King Ablak of Alodia, eldest son and heir-apparent of the Baccinbaxaba Kaleb, standing by as Quraish pilgrims – now his father's vassals once more – head toward the Kaaba's sanctuary in Mecca

While 531 was another happily uneventful year in the West, in the East it was one of continued campaigning. Several cities across Mesopotamia did not yield to Sabbatius as most had done: Dastagird, Jalawla and Nippur stood out among those who still refused to bend their knees before the Eastern Roman Emperor. His various generals spent the first half of the year besieging them, and when they fell the Roman legionaries were authorized to properly sack each city for their continued defiance. While that was going on, Sabbatius himself moved to Babylon (which had been one of those cities that surrendered in a timely fashion) and summoned the bishops of the Church of the East there in the last days of April. The Augustus demanded the bishops cooperate with him regardless of their theological leanings until the fighting was done, promising to respect their flocks & churches (also regardless of theological leanings) until then and to call a great ecumenical council to hopefully definitively address the Nestorian controversy when the empire returned to a state of peace.

After securing the nominal allegiance of most of the bishops of the East (and arresting those who refused his proposal, such as the Bishop of Kashkar, although as they had done him no personal wrong and he wanted to avoid martyring more Nestorians Sabbatius killed none of them) the emperor began to continue striking east, finding it impossible to resist the opportunity to go further than any Roman emperor ever had before him. He divided his army in two in the summer: the actual Roman legions and some of Basil’s Syriac archer corps he kept for himself (the rest of the archers he left in Ctesiphon with Basil himself to secure Roman control there) while his barbarian federates, mercenaries and the Caucasian contingents were detached into a secondary northern army, which he placed under the joint command of Kings Samvel of Armenia and Levon of Iberia (with Narses the eunuch assigned as their chief advisor). Sabbatius led his main army into Khuzestan, quickly wresting Susa from its token garrison and compelling the surrender of Gundeshapur while also sending Belisarius to sweep toward the Persian Gulf. By the year’s end, all Khuzestan had fallen (last to submit was the city of Dauraq[6] near the coast) and Sabbatius was considering whether to push north into Media or continue eastward into Persis itself.

Speaking of Media, Narses and the Caucasian kings could not be said to have enjoyed such rapid success in its mountains. The tribes of the Fufuluo, Eftals and Kurds had banded together to resist their advance and made excellent use of the Zagros Mountains to harass the Eastern Romans’ march until it had slowed to a crawl. Gushnasp of Padiskhwargar boldly declared that to demonstrate his loyalty to his new emperor, he would march to their aid and cave in the stubborn Hephthalite loyalists’ northern flank, but actually proved to be of very little help – his initial attempt to march on Ecbatana was swiftly defeated by a smaller force under the princeling Chashtana, a cousin of Narayana’s, and he proceeded to spend the rest of the year on the defensive. Although his own mountain strongholds in Mazandaran could not be overcome by either Chashtana’s men or the local Daylamite tribes who had pledged their continued loyalty to Narayana in a bid to unseat the Amardians as masters of Padishkhwargar, neither could Gushnasp sally forth to render any actual aid to Narses, who ended the year by calling upon his emperor to aid him out of frustration.

As for Persis and the rest of the Persian territories still definitively under Narayana’s control, 531 saw the continued reinforcement of their cities and forts by the Eastern Hephthalites, as well as enough battlefield successes to give Narayana himself a little hope for the future. Despite Mioukesheju Khagan’s initial victories in the first half of the year, in which he recaptured Veh-Ardashir and Sabzvārān[7] (putting all surviving Eftal defenders to the sword in both cases), Mihirakula and Narayana jointly defeated him in the Battle of Gulashkird[8] on September 13 after amassing a 14,000-strong army – the largest single Hephthalite army in the field since the destruction of Toramana’s host between Baghdad and Ctesiphon, though more than half of it was comprised of Indians from Mihirakula’s realm. In no small part to the Eftals’ retaliatory orders to take no prisoners Mioukesheju lost 2,500 of the 11,000 men he brought to the clash, a stiff loss that he would find difficult to replace, and so he retreated back across the salt deserts of central Persia to lick his wounds for the rest of the year. As the Hephthalites did not expect the Rouran would be able to mount another major offensive anytime soon after such significant casualties, Narayana began to not only push back ever harder against them but also to look at the western border of Persis, seeking opportunities to push back against the Eastern Romans next.

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A Rouran/Avar rider looking rather sour as he retreats in defeat from the battlefield of Gulashkird

Down in Arabia, the Aksumites continued to press their advantage against Himyar. Kaleb stormed down the Tihamah lowlands, not even bothering to wait for reinforcements to arrive from across the Red Sea and instead counting on flipping the allegiance of the coastal Arab tribes and clans back toward Aksum through a combination of bribes and intimidation. Dhu Nuwas meanwhile had personally retreated into the mountains to raise a new army in the safety of his heartland, but left behind several thousand men scattered into garrisons across the southwestern coastal cities to slow Kaleb down while he did that. This strategy paid off as Kaleb spent the entire latter half of 531 besieging cities such as Muza and Kraytar, allowing Dhu Nuwas to rebuild his strength and fortify his mountain bastions some more unmolested.

The first half of 532 made it seem as though the year would be no different than the past few, a blessedly peaceful one of quiet reconstruction and growth for the Western Empire. This tranquility was disrupted in June when the Alemanni king Leuthari raised his standard in rebellion, claiming that Aloysius had cheated him out of his share of plunder in the campaign against the Thuringians by making peace with them and having spent the previous year carefully provisioning & building up his forces for the fight. The magister militum had difficulty putting the rebel king back in his place thanks to said preparations, so he requested Constantine’s assistance in crushing the Alemanni with another army from the south.

As it so happened, once Constantine did involve himself and enter Alemannia with the legions of Italy and southeastern Gaul (as well as Burgundian and Bavarian federates), the Alemanni were no longer a problem. Even with all his preparations Leuthari could not withstand Aloysius’ northern host & the emperor’s southern one and was decisively crushed between them at the Battle of Arae Flaviae[9] in late August, after which the irate Constantine placed his head on a spike and left his Christian son Butilinus in control while also ordering Aloysius to take his grandsons (Butilinus’ sons) back to Augusta Treverorum as hostages. No, what happened to be the real problem was disease – the emperor contracted dysentery and died a few weeks later while still on the road back to Rome, aged 47.

ROthrzA.jpg

Imperial physicians debating the merits of an experimental snake-bite therapy in treating Constantine's severe dysentery

The ascent of the Caesar Theodosius to his father’s throne was almost immediately contested by King Felix of Altava, who claimed the purple by right of his wife – Theodosius’ cousin Eucheria, daughter of his long-deceased uncle and namesake – at the instigation of Anastasia, the new emperor’s aunt, who in so doing showed her fangs. Anastasia’s other son-in-law, Sisenand of Baetica, also joined the revolt and pledged his swords to the cause of Felix. As Theodosius was being crowned in Rome the rebels moved quickly to consolidate their home regions that autumn, with Felix overwhelming those cities along the Numidian coast which did not immediately acknowledge him as Augustus (including Hippo Regius) by surprise while Sisenand fell upon the Visigoths of Carthaginensis and crushed them before they could gather their troops in any significant number: in his ruthless ambition he slew their petty-king Thorismund and the rest of his male Balthing kindred there while keeping the women under lock and key, so that he might annex their realm into his own without fear of future resistance.

However even as Felix dispatched his brothers Capussa and Cyprian to, respectively, cross the Pillars of Hercules and invade the islands of the western Mediterranean, Theodosius III was not without allies who could constrain the Altavans and Baeticans before they truly started steamrolling their way toward Rome. In Africa itself, the Thevestian Moors remained faithful to the Stilichians and rode out to confront their Altavan cousins behind their own king Vandalarius, managing to thwart his effort to capture Carthage before the year’s end in a furious battle before the town of Salaeca near Utica. And in Iberia, the Balthings of Baurg and Lusitania rallied to crush Sisenand, both to avenge their New-Carthaginian kin and divide his kingdom between themselves; the year’s end found the kinslayer pressed hard and saved only by the arrival of Capussa’s host, as well as a growing feud over who would get what out of Baetica between the over-hasty kings Fritigern (crowned King of the Visigoths in Baurg just a year before after the death of his father, Alaric II) and Vidigoia.

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The Altavan king Felix urging his warriors to continue advancing against Vandalarius of Theveste's lines at the Battle of Salaeca

Off in Persia, Narayana and Mihirakula continued to hold the line. Chashtana expertly used the rough Median terrain to offset his extremely limited numbers, slowing Sabbatius’ advance through the region to a crawl all year and preventing the Eastern Romans from assisting the Rouran in Persis. This in turn gave the main Hephthalite armies the opportunity to further reverse the tide against Mioukesheju, and by September 532 Narayana had recaptured Yazd and seemed to be well on his way to clearing central-eastern Persia of the Rouran. Mioukesheju meanwhile had been avoiding battle and constantly retreating to preserve his diminished forces, and appealed to Sabbatius for help. The decision was made for the Eastern Augustus when Narayana, confident that the Rouran were not going to recover any time soon, struck into Khuzestan at the head of a 15,000-strong host near the year’s end and threatened the Eastern Roman army from behind: Sabbatius dispatched Belisarius to aid Narses in destroying Chashtana while he headed back south to counter the White Huns.

In Arabia, Dhu Nuwas left the mountains of Himyar with his new army to do battle with Kaleb in the lowlands. He first relieved the siege of Kraytar, scattering the Aksumites there in a surprise night assault. The Aksumite general Ariat[10] withdrew west with the tatters of his host to rejoin Kaleb at Muza and warn him of Dhu Nuwas’ coming, compelling Kaleb to storm the city (and massacre its Himyarite defenders to the last man) before the rival king could threaten his siege camp from behind. This done, the Baccinbaxaba marched on to engage Dhu Nuwas: said engagement came sooner than he expected, as the Himyarites set an ambush for him which would kick off the Battle of Dhubab on August 21.

This was an especially fiercely contested engagement, as both sides understood the war would be decided by this last great throw of the dice on Dhu Nuwas’ part: his Himyarite veterans strove mightily to overcome the Aksumites’ superior numbers with their ferocity, and at the battle’s climax Kaleb himself was wounded by a javelin. However a rout was prevented when the old Ethiopian emperor personally rallied his troops, exhorting that he still lived and had no intent of leaving the battlefield so long as that continued to be the case. Eventually the Aksumites’ numerical strength gave them the victory, as the Himyarites’ attacks slackened over the course of the day and the comparatively green recruits Dhu Nuwas had raised over the past year had to take on an increasing extent of the fighting – which they could not handle, as proven by the Himyarite army’s final collapse late in the afternoon. Of the 20,000 Aksumites who fought that day, a not-inconsiderable 3,500 were killed; but of the 11,000 Himyarites 5,000 were slain by nightfall, losses which they could afford much less than their foes. Dhu Nuwas survived to limp back into his mountain fortresses, but it was widely understood that barring some miracle or ten, his defeat was now inevitable.

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Kaleb riding back into Muza after the Battle of Dhubab, in need of treatment for his wounds but ultimately victorious

The latest Western Roman civil war (and the first of its kind in several decades) continued to escalate throughout 533. Vandalarius attempted to pursue Felix westward after his victory the year before, but the Altavans turned and decisively smote him in the Battle of Thabraca that spring, sending him reeling back into the Aurès Mountains. Nevertheless the loyal Thevestians had bought Theodosius III valuable time, which other loyalist legions had used to successfully defend Sicily from rebel landing parties (though Sardinia and Corsica still fell to Cyprian’s fleet and army) and ferry enough reinforcements to Utica and Carthage that Felix could not easily take either city. The redoubtable Bishop of Carthage, Sisinnius – previously best-known for being a ferociously militant opponent of heresy like the other luminaries of the African church – had pledged undying loyalty to the young Augustus in Ravenna and made every effort to hold the regional capital for him, raising the defenders’ spirits with fiery sermons and personally overseeing the equitable rationing of Carthage’s provisions across the garrison & population.

Alas, the loyalist cause was not half so successful in Hispania. There Capussa’s army split apart and crushed the loyal Visigoths of Fritigern and Vidigoia, driving the former to retreat back toward the Baurg and capturing the latter. Naturally, Sisenand killed his other cousin almost as soon as Capussa transferred the Lusitanian leader into his custody. Aloysius left Augusta Treverorum to personally restore order to the Spanish provinces, adding provincial legions and levies to his core force of 4,000 Romano-Frankish legionaries and bucellarii on the road, and arrived in time to break the rebels’ siege of Toletum in June. However the magister militum was sorely defeated on the Baetis River, near Corduba, when he tried to follow up his advantage, and by mid-autumn the rebels had regained ground as far as Emerita Augusta[11] and the Flumen Anas[12].

Frustrated at his uncle’s lack of progress, Theodosius sacked Aloysius in a fit of pique and replaced him with Theudis of the Ostrogoths at the instigation of the latter & the treasurer Faustus, against the frantic advice of his mother Clotilde and the old magister officiorum Boethius. Aloysius at first seemed to take his dismissal in stride and stiffly handed off his duties in Hispania to Theudis’ son Theodemir when the latter was sent to take over from him, returning to Augusta Treverorum with only his personal forces. Theudis however suspected his rival was planning to rebel against Theodosius and sent a band of hired Heruli mercenaries to ambush him on the road back north, only for the Romano-Frank to annihilate his would-be assassins.

It is unclear whether Aloysius was actually going to rebel once he returned to his seat, but if he wasn’t going to before the assassination attempt, he certainly would afterward: upon arriving in Augusta Treverorum on November 1, he too proclaimed he would challenge his reckless and inexperienced nephew for the purple, raising up his wife – the emperor’s aunt Maria – as well as his considerable military experience as tokens to legitimize his cause. The Germanic federates of the north joined him almost to a man, being quite used to serving the Arbogastings first and the Stilichians second for decades now, with only the Green-aligned Franks of Durocortorum and Tornacum remaining loyal to Ravenna.

By the year’s end the full extent of his blunder had sunk in for Theodosius, as Burgundian and Alemannic raiders were adding to his northern Italian subjects’ wintertime woes while Bavarians and Lombards were threatening Pannonia. Aloysius himself was amassing a large army to crush the loyalist Franks and invade Gaul in force. Though he angrily dressed down Theudis for attempting to assassinate his uncle without informing him (much less asking him what he thought of such a scheme, which Theudis did not do because he knew the emperor would never have signed off on it in the first place until & unless Aloysius had already rebelled), Theodosius acknowledged the reality of the situation – namely that he had accidentally placed himself in a corner and could not get out of it without the help of the Greens. He assented to the marriage of his middle brother Romanus to Theudis’ daughter Frederica, and ordered the Ostrogoth king to prioritize keeping Italy safe from the Romano-Franks while trusting Eucharius Syagrius to defend Gaul from Aloysius, his new brother-in-law Theodemir to oversee efforts against Cyprian & Sisenand in Hispania, and Bishop Sisinnius & Vandalarius of Theveste to hold the line against Felix in Africa.

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The Western Roman prince Romanus with his new Gothic wife Frederica, who he had to marry to make up for his big brother's mistakes

While the Western Romans were grappling with new struggles, their Eastern brethren were making considerable strides in solving their current one. Belisarius proved that his growing reputation as something of a troubleshooter for his overlord was well-earned, as he was able to trick Chashtana into ambushing a large supply convoy ostensibly headed for his & Narses’ headquarters at Ecbatana, only to then ambush the ambushers and inflict heavy casualties on them – the Hephthalite prince included. He left it to Narses to negotiate the surrender of the Fufuluo and other Eftal remnants in the region, for his imperial father-in-law recalled him to the south soon after; and not a moment too soon, as the younger man’s battlefield successes and growing list of honors was beginning to arouse the envy of the older eunuch. Only Mazdak and his fanatical followers continued to remain defiant, holing up in their mountain citadels (with Mazdak himself sheltering at Rudbar) with all the provisions they could gather and periodically sallying to raid the surrounding countryside for more supplies.

In the meantime, Sabbatius had been outmaneuvered and pushed back by Narayana at Samangan[13], driving him toward the island-city of Shushtar on the Karun River. There, however, he rallied and threw the Hephthalites back in the early summer before being rejoined by Belisarius and receiving news of how the Fufuluo and other holdouts in Media were suing for peace & offering submission. After dispatching a messenger authorizing Narses to seek mild terms in hopes of ending the war in the Zagros Mountains quickly, the Augustus counterattacked and decisively defeated Narayana at Rostag Kavad[14]. There, recent heavy rains had rendered the ground so muddy that the Hephthalite cavalry struggled in it, and when the frustrated Narayana ordered a retreat after seeing them fail miserably against Sabbatius’ infantry or fall beneath his arrows, Belisarius rushed in with his own mounted bucellarii and the Ghassanid cavalry – the resulting engagement crippled what was left of his army. Once more the tide had shifted against Narayana, this time decisively and likely permanently.

While Sabbatius left his son Anthemius behind with a garrison to organize the new Roman administration of Khuzestan, he did not hesitate to pursue Narayana as the latter limped back east, soaked and defeated, with the bulk of his forces, with the Eastern Roman and Ghassanid horsemen (now under Ioannes and al-Harith V while Belisarius was assigned to start taking cities) leading the way. The Eastern Roman army fanned out to secure the submission of Persis’ cities as they swept eastward, which Narayana might have been able to take advantage of if his defeat at the Battle of Rostag Kavad and further attrition from Sabbatius’ pursuit had not left him with barely 3,000 men at this point. As the Augustus toured the ruins of Persepolis soon after receiving the capitulation of nearby Istakhr, his childhood dreams of matching Alexander the Great’s conquests were reawakened in full – he did not expect the Hephthalites to crumble and allow him to come so far in the first place, but now that he did, he decided that he might as well go all the way, if he can. A pity that his Avar allies happened to stand in the way of those ambitions, as they still held ground in northern and central Persia and were unlikely to give that up to him if he asked nicely, but as he stalked those ruined halls and gateways he formulated a plan to deal with that issue…

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Ghassanid Arabs harrying the Hephthalites as they desperately attempt to retreat eastward through Khuzestan and Persis

Speaking of the Avars, Mioukesheju Khagan did not fail to notice his adversaries’ attacks slackening, then halting altogether as Sabbatius crushed them at Rostag Kavad. Following the spring and early summer he went back on the offensive, mercilessly crushing the scattered and increasingly demoralized garrisons Narayana had left behind before going on his ill-fated march west, eventually linking up with the Eastern Romans at last in the city of Yazd, which (fortunately for its citizens) had surrendered to the latter, in the first week of December. Sabbatius informed Mioukesheju of his intent to send a diplomatic embassy to China, ostensibly to discuss the Silk Road trade and to assure them about how any disruptions on the western route to Constantinople would soon cease, to which the Rouran khagan agreed to allow passage through his conquered territories.

As for the Hephthalites, happily Narayana did make it to Mihirakula’s court (temporarily encamped at Patala[15] at the mouth of the Indus) by the end of the year. Less happily, Mihirakula was well aware of the extremely dire straits his distant cousin had been reduced to and decided this would be a fantastic time to reunify the Hephthalites under his leadership. He declared that he was willing to continue fighting against the Eastern Romans and Rouran, and even do most if not all the fighting himself – on the condition that Narayana acknowledge him as the one and only Mahārājadhirāja of the Hephthalite people. Otherwise, since the Western Hephthalites would technically still not be his subjects, he would not recognize any duty to continue protecting them in a war they very obviously had no hope of winning on their own.

Narayana had little choice, knowing that even if he refused he was utterly powerless in this situation and would be lucky if Mihirakula just arrested him instead of killing him on the spot and claiming rulership over all Eftals over his corpse. In turn Mihirakula immediately ‘gracefully’ acknowledged Narayana as his vassal ‘Xoadeo of the Western Lands’[16], which were understood as any land west of the Indus which they could hold on to. The Hephthalites were now reunified and could face the hopefully-overextended Eastern Romans and Rouran as one, at least in theory, with the lineage of Akhshunwar ascendant over the more senior bloodline of Khingila and Toramana.

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Mihirakula and Narayana standing together (though not all that happily) against the various threats bearing down on their newly-reunified people

Last of all, Aksum’s armies spent the first half of the year overrunning the last Himyarite holdouts on the coast of Hadhramaut before turning their blades and arrows against the mountains. If Dhu Nuwas had not started this war by attacking and decimating the Najrani Christians under his protection, Kaleb would have been inclined to offer him terms at this point rather than expend an ungodly amount of blood, iron and treasure on rooting out every last outpost of Arab resistance in the Jabal Haraz; but because he had, and had consistently proven to be the most dangerous and persistent threat to Aksumite hegemony over the Red Sea for decades, the Baccinbaxaba resolved to not stop fighting until he had completely ground Himyar to dust beneath his sandals. Dhu Nuwas, for his part, did not intend to suffer the indignity of becoming his archenemy’s prisoner (especially not after the massacres in Najran, which he knew guaranteed him an unimaginably painful death the instant Kaleb tired of humiliating him) and had long ago prepared to fight to the last man in Himyar, that last man being himself, if necessary. Aksumite forces laid siege to Zafar, considered the gateway to Sana’a, and other cities on the outskirts of the mountains as 533 drew to a close.

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[1] The Werra River.

[2] Kerman.

[3] Yanbu.

[4] Rabigh.

[5] Historically, Abraha was the commander who led Aksum’s armies in their conquest of Himyar. However, after prevailing he rebelled against Kaleb and made himself into Himyar’s independent, Christian king. Soon after the Sassanids drove out his sons and made Himyar into a tributary of theirs, ending Aksumite hopes of retaking complete control over the Red Sea.

[6] Shadegan.

[7] Jiroft.

[8] Faryab.

[9] Rottweil.

[10] Historically, Ariat was the name of the general Kaleb sent to crush Abraha after his rebellion. However, Abraha reportedly manipulated Ariat into fighting a duel which he won, allowing him to maintain Yemeni independence until the end of his days.

[11] Mérida.

[12] Guadiana River.

[13] Ramhormoz.

[14] Band-e Qir.

[15] Thatta.

[16] ‘Xoadeo’ is a Bactrian title that can mean ‘lord’ or ‘king’, known to have still been used by the historical Khingila (possibly to refer to one of his vassals, if not himself) in the 5th century AD.
 
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PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
It's been a long time since Rome had a proper civil war. It is good to see the ancient tradition is still alive.

As the Augustus toured the ruins of Persepolis soon after receiving the capitulation of nearby Istakhr, his childhood dreams of matching Alexander the Great’s conquests were reawakened in full – he did not expect the Hephthalites to crumble and allow him to come so far in the first place, but now that he did, he decided that he might as well go all the way, if he can. A pity that his Avar allies happened to stand in the way of those ambitions, as they still held ground in northern and central Persia and were unlikely to give that up to him if he asked nicely, but as he stalked those ruined halls and gateways he formulated a plan to deal with that issue…
This will not end well, the rational course of action would be to bring the war to some kind of end and keep the Rourans as the buffer zone between him and Hephthalites, while he consolidates his hold over Persia. But then humans are not particulary rational creatures.
 

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