Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!

[Circle of Willis]

Mount Cangyan, April 26 561

“General Luo Huiqi submits to the righteous rule of Emperor Xiaowen, and bids him welcome to Mount Cangyan!” With these words, the sentries threw open the gate barricading one end of the rickety wooden bridge which presented the only way to reach the rebel general’s fortress[1].

“Hmph. It’s about time Luo saw reason.” Emperor Xiaowen, as Prince Bian of Chen called himself following the demise of his brothers, huffed to his officers. “A pity he did not do so sooner, or hundreds of men in both our army and his would still be alive. He was a fool not to yield immediately after dear brother Chao was treacherously slain by brother Junliang.” They had been besieging him at this mountain for a week, quickly crushing the troops he’d left at the foot of Mount Cangyan on the first day but then expending the next six fighting their way up the stone steps and fortlets built into the mountainside, and were preparing their siege weapons to break through this final gatehouse when the rebel officers leading its defense suddenly called for parley and proclaimed their master’s willingness to surrender.

The imperial generals all nodded without protest. Following his decisive final victory at Hefei, the emperor no longer needed to keep the men whose loyalty he was less sure about than their abilities, and so had scattered them across China’s provinces under the guise of rewarding them with assorted high offices. The sycophants he surrounded himself with now were not as capable in battle or in administration, true, but he hardly needed them to be when all that was left to do was to crush minor holdouts like General Luo here at Mount Cangyan. Only one of the generals responded to his emperor’s words: “Glorious Son of Heaven, I suspect his judgment was addled by his son’s death at the hands of your murderous brother. But indeed it is good that he yields now, rather than force us to squander even more blood to tear him from his last holdfast.”

Xiaowen turned to look at the man who spoke. Ah, General Zhen – a man who was not even present in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hefei, having been wounded in the Battle of Anqing weeks before and left behind to recuperate, and one who should not have been able to learn the truth of what happened that day from the rest of these lickspittles. Still, that he mentioned the incident at all just now attracted the emperor’s suspicion, and regardless of whether his paranoia was justified or not he immediately made up his mind on how to both test the general’s loyalty and protect himself from any potential rebel traps on the bridge.

“Perhaps that is the case, General Zhen. We will find out soon enough, once I am able to ask General Luo to his face what his motive for opposing Heaven’s choice was. But to do that, I must cross this bridge; and I can think of no man I would sooner trust to bear my banner before me and herald my arrival than you, who have already shed much blood and lost fingers for my righteous cause.” At these words Zhen bowed, and proceeded to do as he was commanded – carrying Xiaowen’s personal standard in his good hand and shouting news of the emperor’s approach from atop his horse, riding just ahead of the first detachment of Chen soldiers to cross the bridge with him while imperial musicians played their instruments around him.

Xiaowen relaxed at the sight, pleased not only at Zhen’s willingness to demonstrate his allegiance without complaint (whether he even noticed that this task was not assigned with the intent to ‘honor’ him, the emperor did not know or care overmuch) but even more-so at the bridge not suddenly falling apart beneath him and his column. In case Luo had set an ambush on the other end however, the emperor still did not cross even after Zhen had made it, sending another hundred-strong detachment ahead of him. Only when they too had made it to the far side of the bridge without incident did he cross it himself, surrounded by his most trusted guards, and he remained on guard for any arrows or javelins to come flying out of the fortress above or the kneeling ranks of Luo’s troops at any moment all the while.

Only when he personally dismounted from his steed before the entrance to the fortress, surrounded by a mass of armored soldiers to protect him from any conceivable trap on Luo’s part, did Emperor Xiaowen finally relax and let out a deep breath. “Send this message to your master,” He grunted with a wave at the same rebel officer who had offered up Luo’s surrender an hour and a half before, “He called upon me to receive his surrender before I could break the last night’s fast, and kept me waiting for almost too long. If he is truly prepared to accept his place as my humble servant, then he can begin to demonstrate his fidelity by preparing a feast for me and my officers with whatever supplies he has left.” Even if Luo did not deny him lunch at his own expense, the emperor was keenly aware that he had to exercise the utmost caution at the table – his shrew of an empress had only given him a son for the first time three years ago, and that boy was in no way prepared to hold China together so soon after his uncles were finally put down.

When Xiaowen finally deigned to pass into the Cangyan fortress, having again instructed scores of his soldiers to proceed ahead of him and ensure that all was well first, he was greeted with the sight of the wrinkled rebel general and his aides in the entrance hall, unarmored and unarmed. Wordlessly the emperor assumed a stiff regal posture, waiting for his surrendering opponents to present to him a sign of their submission, and only after they had kowtowed before him to the fullest extent – kneeling thrice, and bowing so low as to touch their foreheads to the floor three times between each time they took a knee – would he allow them the privilege of hearing him speak. “Arise, Luo Huiqi,” Xiaowen began with a flourish of his hand, “You were wise to determine that you had no chance before Heaven’s will, and to yield your fortress to me before I had to storm it. For this I pardon your earlier transgressions against me, including your exceedingly foolish decision to continue standing against me when Heaven determined that I should be Emperor rather than my brother Prince Chao, and welcome you back into the fold.”

“You are too kind to this wayward subject, righteous Son of Heaven.” Xiaowen resisted the temptation to scoff. He could tell from the silver-haired general’s eyes that the man did not feel nearly as sycophantic as he sounded. Ah well, no matter – if he couldn’t be bought (and Xiaowen doubted he could buy this particular man off considering the circumstances in which his son died), fear would keep him in line as it did other other reluctant supporters of the new regime, fear of the earth-shaking might of his innumerable armies and the punishments he could mete out at a whim, not only to Luo personally but also to anyone unfortunate enough to be related to or even tangentially associated with him. Let him burn in the fires of his own hatred, so long as he feared and obeyed. “To further express my sincere intentions, I have expended the last of my provisions to prepare a feast for you, as you commanded of me.”

“Splendid. This affair distracted me before I could break my fast this morning, and now I must admit I hunger. Let us not waste any more time here…” Xiaowen and his officers followed Luo deeper into the fortress, inspecting his remaining troops to make sure that they were not carrying arms of their own in the process. In the dining hall they found that a mid-day meal had indeed been prepared by Luo’s cooks: rice, beans, mutton, pork, fried dumplings and shaobing[2], with rice-wine and steaming tea available to drink. Not as good a meal as the lavish banquets the Emperor could have back in Jiankang, but not bad for a besieged fortress’ officers, and in any case he was hungry enough that he could almost eat a Western camel raw at this point.

Still, Xiaowen was determined to remain in control of his appetite and never consume anything he did not see his own officers and Luo eat first. As he ate, slowly and carefully, he looked around for any sign of treachery on the part of Luo’s men – and found none, although they were observing him and his own generals just as closely. Imperialist soldiers had followed them into the dining hall and, while keeping a respectful distance from the table, were the only men who were supposed to be armed here; still, Xiaowen would not let his guard down. Not even as it made the luncheon unnaturally quiet and tense, the silence broken only by the over-loud chewing and tearing of meat on the part of General Zhen and other less restrained (and less cautious) elements of the imperial entourage. Well, that those men did not show any signs of having been poisoned as time went on was a good sign, at least.

It was only when they were nearly done that Xiaowen finally said anything more to his host. “I thank you for your hospitality, General Luo,” The emperor began after setting down a cleaned chicken bone, “And I wish to express my condolences for the demise of your son Huining. A good, loyal man and valiant warrior, who died trying to defend his master from our treacherous brother Junliang. China is poorer without him.” There, he had laid out his final test of loyalty for the older warlord. Could he bear the insult of hearing the emperor talk about his son so fondly, when both of them almost certainly knew how he really died? Moments passed in silence as they locked eyes, and Xiaowen was just about prepared to fight his way out of Canyang when Luo called for the best of his wine to be brought forth.

“Your kind words warm my old heart, noble emperor.” Luo stated, smiling thinly as he personally poured out two cups of the stuff. “Allow me to warm yours in return with this – the very best and sweetest huangjiu[3] I have to offer. May you live for ten thousand years[4]!” Xiaowen gingerly took his cup and toasted the general in dead silence, his suspicion inflamed once more. It didn’t seem as though he’d be accosted by disguised assassins at this point, nor were any of Luo’s men carrying hidden weapons with which to suddenly attack him. Could Luo be trying to poison him instead? The emperor’s doubts were allayed only when Luo drank his wine first, downing his entire cup in one enthusiastic go. As he swallowed the wine himself, Xiaowen could not taste anything but its promised sweetness and warmth – no poison, as far as he could tell.

The emperor did not experience any symptoms of poisoning in the minutes or even an hour after he drank Luo’s final offering. They exchanged meaningless farewells and well-wishes, and a more meaningful oath of allegiance, immediately after the luncheon, following which Xiaowen left without another word – save to one of his runners, who he commanded to summon a physician to stand-by at his next planned stop to the northeast, Changshan[5], just in case. Alas only two more hours passed by without incident before the Son of Heaven began to feel a pounding headache and nausea, by which point Mount Cangyan was but a distant fixture in the horizon and Changshan was still too far to be sighted by his army’s forward elements.

As his vomit increasingly acquired a reddish hue, it occurred to Xiaowen that he had not been paranoid enough – until now, he’d failed to consider the possibility that Luo might have detested him so intensely as to willingly poison himself just to have a chance at taking his son’s killer down with him. "Hurry on to Changshan," Had been some of his last words before his headache and shaking got bad enough to force him to lie down in his palanquin and close his eyes for some rest, "It would be absurd of Heaven to will me to die so soon after giving me its mandate. When I wake, I will raze Mount Cangyan and exterminate that hundred-fold-accursed Luo's entire clan for this treachery!"

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[1] Mount Cangyan famously hosts a Buddhist temple complex, the Fu-qing Shi or ‘Fortune Celebration Temple’, accessible via a stone bridge built over a great gorge. However the temple was not yet built in the 6th century, and its place is occupied by a fort being used by anti-Xiaowen rebels at this point ITL.

[2] A sesame-sprinkled flatbread, traditionally believed to have been first brought to China from Central Asia in the time of the Han dynasty.

[3] ‘Yellow wine’, a traditional Chinese cereal wine fermented with a starter called jiuqu. It is believed to have been produced (replacing beer) since Shang times.

[4] A phrase used to address the Chinese Emperors since the time of the Han Dynasty. ‘Ten thousand years’ (wansui) is to the Chinese what, for example, vivat (‘long live’) might be to a Roman.

[5] Shijiazhuang.

Phew! Sorry for the delay, everyone. I've got both good news and bad. Unfortunately it turns out my old motherboard and GPU have finally given up the ghost, and will take a while to replace. The good news is that my hard drive is fine, and now that I've fished out an older but still functional computer, I'm able to continue writing. I wish I had gotten that done sooner so I could've finished this update & released it right on the Chinese New Year, but 'later in the week of the Chinese New Year' will have to do I guess. Regardless, I'll be returning to the weekly update schedule from now onward.

 

[Circle of Willis]

561 was a year in which the Roman world’s attention, temporarily freed from conflict with the Avars and Turks, was fixed on Africa, where they had just entered negotiations with the migrating Garamantes. Aemilian, Aretion and Amêzyan hammered out the terms of a Garamantian federate agreement which would appease all three parties: the Garamantes would be settled in the Limes Tripolitanus, augmenting and dwelling alongside the existing Romano-Moorish garrisons there, and would be granted port access in both empires’ territories at Berenice[1] in the east and Thubactis[2] in the west. For his part, Amêzyan pledged to send one of his sons to Rome and the other to Constantinople as hostages; to fight against bandits, Donatists and any more of his own people who might threaten the Roman frontier; to support both empires when called upon; and to maintain neutrality in the case of any inter-Roman hostilities.

Aside from dealing with the Garamantians, the Romans also had cause for concern with other African peoples living further to the south. The Patriarchate of Carthage was especially concerned by reports borne by trans-Saharan merchants that Donatist missionaries were making headway with the Aethiopian peoples[3] beyond the Atlas Mountains, and soon after peace was reached with Amêzyan Patriarch Maurus successfully advocated for the departure of two missions to try to bring the orthodox Christian teachings to the Aethiopians. One would travel through the Limes Tripolitanus and the old homeland of the Garamantes, who would be their first target for conversion; the other had the far more unenviable task of slipping through Hoggar, to reach the distant oasis towns past it and even further beyond if they can.

The mission to and through the Garamantians proved a great success, for many among the pagans perceived the collapse of their agricultural system and the pressures of the ensuing droughts & migrations to be a sign that Gurzil[4] and their other gods had failed or abandoned them. Although Amêzyan himself did not accept baptism at this point, as a nominal Roman subject he did nothing to hinder the missionaries while they were converting his subjects en masse. The furthest-ranging of the missionaries, Egrilius, followed the footsteps of the Augustan-era explorers Septimius Flaccus and Julius Maternus to eventually end up on the shores of the ‘Lake of Hippopotamus’, which the Kanuri locals called Lake Chad[5]. The western mission was considerably less lucky: of the thirteen missionaries Maurus sent, the Hoggari martyred twelve and spiked their heads at strategic points along their own side of the Atlas Mountains to taunt their hated Ephesian enemies. Only one, Lucas of Thysdrus[6], made it past the Donatists, so it was unto this sole survivor that old Maurus entrusted his hopes of converting the westernmost Aethiopians as he lay in his deathbed.

Romano-Punic missionaries in the court of Amêzyan, who had newly established himself in the Limes Tripolitanus​

As for the Eastern Romans, they too viewed events on their southern flank with increasing concern. The Blemmyes were taking up arms against their nominal overlords, the joint Nubian monarchs Hoase and Epimachosi. Aksum did not openly intervene, per the generally conflict-averse foreign policy being pursued by the Baccinbaxaba Tewodros and his mother Cheren, but the opportunity to weaken their strongest remaining regional rival was too good for Cheren to pass up and she persuaded her son to allow the Blemmyes to use northeastern Ethiopia as both a shelter from the Nubians and a recruiting ground. Blemmye warriors crossed through Aksumite territory to assail southern Nubia with increasing frequency while the Aksumite army protected them from Nubian reprisals, and near the year’s end Queen Epimachosi traveled to Constantinople to personally appeal to Anthemius for assistance in suppressing the insurgents or at least in pressuring the Aksumites to stop aiding them.

Further to the east, the Turks’ peaceful split threatened to become significantly less peaceful when Issik and Illig clashed over control over the Silk Road. The lucrative oases of the Tarim were a bone of contention between the brothers, and war was averted only by the diplomatic efforts of their shamans and wives, who managed to get them to split control of the cities by geography: the Northern Turks would attain suzerainty over the cities closest to them – Turfan (formerly Gaochang), Karashahr, and Kucha – while the Southern Turks secured Khotan, Yarkand and Kashgar within their sphere of influence. The sore point was Aksu, whose ownership the Khagans ultimately agreed to settle by a duel between their champions that summer. Illig’s man slew Issik’s, much to the latter’s disappointment, and while he was bound by honor to cede Aksu to the Southern Turks (for now) he made no secret of how much he resented his big brother for the loss.

Fortunately for Issik, developments in China would soon provide him with a less fratricidal outlet for his anger. Barely a year after defeating his brothers, Emperor Xiaowen of China was poisoned by Luo Huiqi, a general who had previously served Prince Chao and initially refused to kowtow before him: as it so happened this general’s son had been Chao’s ill-fated bodyguard, killed in the same melee that claimed his master’s life, and Xiaowen unwisely insisted not only on compelling the older man to serve him lunch after his surrender but also on bringing up said son to his face. After experiencing the first symptoms of poisoning and lying down to rest, the emperor never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead by the physician summoned to treat him almost immediately after reaching Changshan, his only ‘comfort’ in death being the knowledge that his killer had to commit suicide by the very same poison to get at him.

The sudden demise of Emperor Xiaowen threw China, still in turmoil from his fratricidal civil war and his father's last-minute defeat at the hands of the Turks, into a new period of violent upheaval​

Xiaowen’s road to power required the short-lived emperor to ensure that he was the last one standing out of Emperor Xuan’s sons; worse still, he was survived only by a single, underage son of his own. No sooner had this toddler been enthroned as Emperor Aiping did the Chen court begin to spiral into murderous factionalism as the Empress Dowager Gou contended with the court eunuchs and her late husband’s ministers for control, compounded by a drought induced by the chilly conditions of 561 which threw several prefectures into famine. Whispers, then furious shouts that the Chen had lost the Mandate of Heaven rapidly echoed across China and by the year’s end, rebellions had broken out against their shaken authority in the north and west, with Chengdu and Yecheng being the largest cities to fall almost immediately into the hands of (respectively) the peasant insurgent Fei Gong and the rebellious general Wang Ye, the latter of whom had recruited the late Luo Huiqi’s nephew Luo Honghuan to fight for him. Issik naturally took advantage of the situation to begin intensifying his raids into northern China and probing the situation to determine how much deeper he could push into the crumbling Middle Kingdom.

562 brought good news to the Western Romans from distant Aethiopia, though by then Patriarch Maurus was no longer alive to hear it and had since been succeeded by Samaritanus. Late in the year, Lucas of Thysdrus re-established contact with the Carthaginian Patriarchate through a convert who also happened to be part of a northbound caravan, and informed them of not only his survival but also his travels, failures and successes. According to Lucas, he had been driven away from the Berber trading hubs of Taghazza and Aoudaghost, where Donatist missionaries had turned the people against him and orthodoxy, but managed to find safety in the gold-mining town of Kumbi, seat of the Wagadu[7] tribe: their king, the ‘Kaya Maghan’ or ‘lord of the gold’, gave him permission to stay and preach to his people[8]. It was his hope that Christianity of the right-believing sort would flower in the hearts of the ebon-skinned indigenes, and from there spread to the Berbers to the north – or else that a Christian Wagadu kingdom could help squeeze the heretics from Aoudaghost to Hoggar between themselves and the Western Empire.

Depiction of the Kaya Maghan who welcomed Lucas of Thysdrus, and with him Ephesian Christianity, into the lands of the Wagadu – and with luck, the rest of West Africa from there​

This news was most welcome to Patriarch Samaritanus and Emperor Romanus, who needed it even more after events earlier in the year. In the early summer of 562, tensions between his Carantanian and Ostrogoth federates nearly boiled over after a riot in Tarsatica, sparked by Ostrogoth traders who complained that their Slavic counterparts were undercutting them, killed 17. The Ostrogoths resented the Carantanians for settling in lands which were formerly theirs and acquiring sea & market access at Tarsatica, which they still officially controlled as part of their new allotted territories; meanwhile, the Slavs perceived this incident to be an unprovoked assault on their people and Duke Ljudevit retaliated by harrying several Ostrogoth border villages with his warriors, killing an Amaling kinsman in the process. King Viderichus believed this to be a good excuse for him to go and teach his new neighbors a harsh lesson and promptly invaded Carantania with 6,000 men.

Ljudevit answered the incursion by amassing a 5,000-strong force of his own, and warfare between the two peoples seemed imminent until Romanus personally intervened. Frederica had tried to intercede on behalf of her nephew, arguing that the Slavs had brought this mess on their own heads and that Romanus should leave them to fight it out (with the expectation that her more numerous and better-equipped people would prevail): but her august husband would have none of it, and was further supported by Aemilian (who had taken the side of his traditional Bavarian allies in earlier arguments between them and the Carantanians, but saw Ljudevit as a useful ally against the Greens in this case). The emperor landed at Tarsatica with 2,000 heavy horsemen and enough gold to bribe the rival kings into standing down before they could engage in more than a few preliminary skirmishes, averting a proper war among his easternmost federates for the time being, but noted with concern that imposing a more permanent peace settlement would be necessary in the future: he could hardly have his vassals fighting each other when they were on campaign against the Avars.

A Carantanian warband attacking an Ostrogoth fort in the Julian Alps, weeks before Romanus stopped their fighting from spiraling out of control​

To the southeast, Anthemius placed extra levies on Aksumite merchants traveling through Eastern Roman lands in a bid to pressure Cheren into cutting Aksum’s support for the rebel Blemmyes. Cheren and Tewodros retaliated by reducing the amount of spices they would allow to reach Roman markets, driving the already steep price of that luxurious good further upward. While this trade war raged between the two larger empires, in Nubia itself King Hoase scored several bloody victories over the Blemmyes, but every time the vanquished party would just retreat to and recover in Aksumite territory. Not even the Nubians’ sack and burning of the Blemmye capital of Kalabsha[9] in December ended the revolt, as the Blemmye leadership had already fled into Aksum and continued to wage war from under the protection of the Baccinbaxaba.

Anthemius gained an additional threat to worry about in mid-summer, for the Mazdakites began raiding into Roman Mesopotamia and the lands of his vassal in Padishkhwargar at that time. They did so under the neglectful eye of Illig, who was content to let these Buddhist fanatics harass the Eastern Romans in preparation for their inevitable next round of hostilities while he personally continued to consolidate his rule and build up his forces deeper in the Persian heartland. In turn the Eastern Roman Emperor authorized the Daylamites and Lakhmids to launch reprisals against the western borderlands of the Southern Turkic Khaganate, while also moving legions back out of Egypt (now that the Garamantian issue had been settled and his troubles with Aksum appeared unlikely to escalate into open bloodshed) to reinforce his easternmost frontier and ordering Vologases to increase recruitment efforts in Mesopotamia.

A Daylamite noble horseman from Padishkhwargar, of the sort that Anthemius counted on to combat Mazdakite raiders from the Zagros Mountains​

Meanwhile on the other end of the Silk Road, China’s internal situation continued to destabilize. The rebels in the north and west of the country were increasingly joined by a rash of smaller uprisings in the southeast, of which the most successful was in the mountains of Fujian. The rebel chief Huang Huo, a descendant of both Han Chinese settlers and the Shanyue indigenes of the hilly region, ambushed and decisively routed a 20,000-strong suppression force in the Wuyi Mountains this spring, after which he proclaimed himself ‘King of Min’ and besieged the provincial capital of Changle[10]. This defeat exacerbated infighting in the Chen court as all involved sought to pin the blame on their enemies and that in turn delayed them from sending relief to the unprepared city, dooming it to fall to the Min army shortly before 562’s end.

The loyal general Mao Yan brought young Emperor Aiping some relief by blunting the eastward advance of Fei Gong in the combined land-and-river Battle of Xiling Gorge, but the Chen dynasty’s failure to decisively stop or even contain the other rebellions encouraged even more such risings against them all over the country. Worst of all, Wang Ye now felt sufficiently emboldened to proclaim himself Emperor Wu of Qi in the northeast: the first of several new imperial claimants who directly challenged the Chen’s rule over all China. Fei Gong – clearly undeterred by his recent defeat – followed a few weeks later, declaring himself Emperor Gao of Shu in November. It now certainly seemed as though the century of peace and power which the Chen had afforded China was at an end, as the terminal stage of the dynastic cycle came to assert itself.

563 was a mercifully peaceful year for the Roman world after the tensions and troubles of 562. Besides continuing to steadily make preparations for a future war with the Avars, the Western Empire was primarily concerned with its proselytization efforts in Britain and West Africa this year. Gregory, the newly installed Bishop of Eburacum (as the Romans still called Eoforwic), happily reported to the Papacy that Ephesian Christianity was spreading like a wildfire among the pagan Anglo-Saxons this year, especially in the north; in the south its spread was blunted by the persistence of the Pelagian heresy, which also found converts among the South Angles, but unlike the British creed it enjoyed the royal patronage of Eadric to push it forward. Pope Pelagius, who had recently succeeded the late Pope Paschal and was not unaware of the irony that a man with his name should preside over the (re)Christianization of northern Britain, reportedly remarked ‘non Angli, sed angeli’[11] at the news.

Eadric Raedwaldssunu, King of the North Angles, with Western Roman missionaries in the fortress of Bamburgh​

East of Rome, the Hunas were about to make central India a much less peaceful place. 563 was the year in which Baghayash initiated his southern adventures, hoping that he would be able to match the deeds of his illustrious forefathers Khingila and Akhshunwar by conquering all India as they had done to Persia. His northwestern border secured by the peace deals struck with the Turks and Belisarius, the Samrat assembled an army of 40,000 at Gwalior after the monsoon season and led it through the Vindhya Mountains against his first opponent in this direction, the Vishnukundinas[12] – a century-and-a-half old dynasty which was still recovering from a recent war of succession. Initially sacking several towns with little effective resistance, Baghayash met the first major Vishnukundina pushback head-on near the village of Achalpur late in the year.

The Vishnukundina king Deva Varma had nearly twice the Samrat’s numbers, but the Indian army was inexperienced and decidedly obsolete compared to the immensely battle-hardened Hunas: they even still fielded a corps of rathas (chariots) instead of proper horse-riding cavalry. Consequently, the Battle of Achalpur ended in a resounding victory for the Hunas. The Eftal and Indian halves of their army managed to work in synergy under Baghayash’s leadership, allowing them to rout the Vishnukundina host in a double-envelopment after crushing their chariots – 2,000 Indian soldiers were killed in the battle, and ten times as many in the pursuit of their routing ranks. Deva Varma was able to limp back to his strongholds in the southeast, but most of Maharashtra rapidly submitted to the Hunas following this severe defeat.

Further east, China’s woes continued unabated. The so-called Emperor Wu crossed the Yellow River, having consolidated his control over the North China Plain, and threatened fortresses on the Huai by autumn. General Mao’s rear was threatened by another major uprising around Yucheng, which soon came under the leadership of the bandit chief Hao Jue: after capturing Yucheng in a daring night attack, in which he personally led a small party to scale the walls and open the gate immediately prior to signaling the start of the assault, this brigand declared himself Emperor Wucheng of Later Han. As if that weren’t bad enough, the success of the Kingdom of Min in resisting Chen efforts to crack down soon threw most of southern China into anarchy: the indigenous landowner Pham Van Liên proclaimed the independence of a new kingdom in Jiaozhi (to which the Chinese promptly gave an old name, Nanyue) while the general Zhao Wei proclaimed himself Emperor Shang of Later Liang in the rest of the Lingnan region[13], and the governor Qiao Dai similarly declared himself Emperor Yang of Chu in Changsha.

Before this avalanche of disasters, and with their army crippled by innumerable defeats & desertions, Empress Dowager Gou and her cohorts had little option but to pull back and try to consolidate the Chen dynasty’s position in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, around their capital of Jiankang. Mao joined fellow pro-Chen generals Cang Jin and Pan Pi in holding back Qi armies as they tried to cross the Huai in winter, buying Gou time to stabilize her position as her son’s regent and the Chen as a whole a longer lease on life. Despite their short-term survival however, the Chen’s authority over most of China had disintegrated and their road to restoring it was a long and winding one, if they even had the strength to walk across its cobblestones. Thus, 563 could rightly be said to be the dawn of China’s Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms period…

As China continued to spiral into anarchy, powerful regional warlords from both highborn and common or even criminal backgrounds proclaimed themselves Emperor in direct challenge to the fading Chen. Above, Hao Jue is being 'crowned' Emperor Wucheng ('martial and successful') of the Later Han dynasty by his bandit and peasant followers​

China’s turmoil brought great opportunity for its neighbors. Since his raids went largely unopposed and it became obvious that the Chen dynasty’s hold on the Middle Kingdom was rapidly collapsing, Issik Khagan launched a major invasion of northern China in September, putting him on a direct collision course with the Qi. The Korean kingdoms, meanwhile, decided this was a good time to settle old scores: Baekje and Goguryeo both attacked Silla in hopes of recovering the territories they had previously lost. Baekje also appealed to the Yamato across the ocean for aid, and the Great King Heijō was happy to answer. He appointed Kose no Muruya, the main Shintoist magnate who had previously led opposition to his attempts at centralizing the Yamato polity, in charge of an expeditionary force which was to sail to Baekje’s aid near the end of the year…while also quietly seeking to reconcile with Muruya’s uneasy Buddhist peer and rival, Yamanoue no Ishikawa, in his absence.

564 brought with it a new cause for celebration in the Occident: the Caesar Constans and his wife Verina had their first son, Florianus, late in the spring of this year. Though normally a frugal man, Romanus welcomed his first grandson into the world by sponsoring a round of lavish games in the Circus Maximus, culminating in a spectacular chariot race featuring all four of the colored teams using six-horse chariots and tens of thousands of solidii in prizes. To the emperor’s own dismay, although he had placed equally considerable bets on the Red and White teams traditionally sponsored by the Stilichians, both were left in the dust of the Blues and the Greens after getting tangled into an equally spectacular crash; leaving the Red racer dead and the White crippled. Meanwhile the Blues went on to prevail over the Greens in a nail-biting finish, thrilling Aemilian (who had bet a year’s salary on their victory) while frustrating Augusta Frederica and Viderichus.

The Reds and Whites get into a catastrophic crash (also known as a 'naufragia', or 'shipwreck'), to the great irritation of their imperial sponsor and the excitement of Blue and Green fans​

Elsewhere in Western Europe, the Anglo-Saxons went to war against an opponent that the Roman observers in their midst did not expect. While Æþelric remained in a state of watchful peace with regard to the Romano-Britons, focusing instead on entrenching his people’s settlements and spreading the Gospel across South Anglia for now, Eadric led the North Angles to war against the Picts, who had been raiding his northern frontier with increasing intensity in the years since they partitioned their father’s kingdom. In what the Picts and Gaels would call the Battle of Camlann[14], the North Angles engaged a large Pictish warband of 2,500 just north of the Antonine Wall’s ruins with a similarly-sized army of their own and prevailed: the undisciplined but ferocious woad-painted Pictish infantry drew their English counterparts into wild woodland and overcame them there, but then made the mistake of chasing them into an open field, whereupon the North Angle king stabilized the situation with his household reserve and committed his cavalry to a devastating flanking attack against the disordered and lightly-equipped Picts. Eadric personally sought out and killed Drest VI, the rival Pictish king, in a duel celebrated by English bards from Edinburgh to Lincylene[15].

However, the English had barely begun to establish outposts north of the Bodotria[16] when they faced a renewed threat from the Britonnic holdout in Alcluyd. Wasting no time, the irrepressible Eadric swept southward to meet the invaders head-on in the Pentland Hills (as the Angles called those hills which the men of Alcluyd called ‘Pen Llan’) in the last days of summer, kicking them out of his kingdom and pursuing them into theirs. He went on to sack Guovan[17] and threaten Alt Clut itself, but the Britons’ formidable Roman-era fortifications and increasingly heavy snowfall compelled him to negotiate a settlement at this point rather than try to finish the Britons off once and for all. Consequently Alcluyd would recognize the suzerainty of the North Angles, pay tribute, and further submit to the marriage of their princess Ceinwyn to Eadric’s son and heir Eadwine.

Far off to the east, while tensions and tit-for-that raids continued to ratchet up between the Eastern Romans and Southern Turks, the Hunas were making continued progress through India. Baghayash did not let up on his attacks against the Vishnukundinas, pursuing them all the way to their capital of Amarapura[18] and terrorizing all those in his path into rapid submission if he didn’t simply burn their towns down and massacre or enslave them. Shortly after coming under siege in May, Deva Varma attempted an ill-advised night-time sally against the Huna forces and was utterly defeated, after which Baghayash chased the remaining Indians back into Amarapura and sacked it.

Huna power now extended as far as Andhra, but this did not satisfy Baghayash. His next objective would be Karnataka, presently divided between the Kadamba dynasty of Banavasi; the Chalukyas of Badami; and the Gangas of Talakadu, the only ardent Jains among the three. These Carnatic kingdoms were alarmed by the speed with which the Hunas had crushed the Vishnukundinas, however long-in-the-tooth the latter power might have been, and set aside their old grievances against one another so as to form an alliance against the Samrat’s designs. Their combined armies managed to fight Baghayash to a standstill in the Battle of Raichur that December, forcing the Hunas to retreat for the time being, but Baghayash’s ambitions were not deterred in the slightest and he swore he would return in a few years’ time to try to bring Karnataka to heel once more.

The Carnatic kingdoms did much better than their Vishnukundina neighbors in resisting the southward offensive of the Hunas, but Baghayash survived his defeat at their hands near Raichur and swore revenge​

Over in China, the Northern Turks moved rapidly against the Qi, who in turn had to let up on their southward offensives against the Huai in order to respond effectively. Issik Khagan killed Emperor Wu and vanquished his army in the Battle of Jinyang[19] that May, but a complete collapse of the Qi state and the fall of the North China Plain in its entirety to the Tegregs was averted by Luo Honghuan, who rallied his master’s shattered forces to repel the Turkic advance at Baozhou[20] three months later. The only one of Wu’s sons to survive the disaster at Jinyang was briefly enthroned as Emperor Wenxuan of Qi, but did not long survive his wounds; after he died of said injuries a month later, Honghuan – having married his sister, Princess Yuan, with his assent during his brief reign – took control of the Qi remnants as Emperor Xiaojing and continued the struggle against the Northern Turks.

These affairs gave the Chen some breathing room, but otherwise bore little relevance to the goings-on in central and southern China. With the Chen nearly eliminated, the various rebel factions began to fight amongst themselves: Chu and Shu came to blows over the Middle Yangtze, while Min invaded Later Liang-controlled Guangdong. The Shu were further battered by Qiang tribes descending from the great mountains of the west to invade their territories in the summer, around the same time that the Bai and Yi tribes of the southwest revolted against their rule under the leadership of the chieftain Meng Shelong, giving the Chu a major advantage in their struggle. The Chen loyalists in Jiankang could not immediately take advantage of these inter-rebel conflicts, as they had to rebuild their devastated and dispirited army after having just barely fended off the Qi in the previous year. As for the remaining major rebels, the Viet kingdom and Later Han were content to isolate themselves from the fighting, with the latter continuing to observe the Qi-Turkic and Chu-Shu wars in search of opportunities to expand their territory.

Large-scale conflict was beginning to rear its head in the New World, as well. Óengus and Amalgaid had expanded their kingdoms, attracting their share of settlers from Ireland (mostly additional young warriors looking to make a name for themselves, and more of these flocked to the banner of Óengus rather than the better-established and more native-friendly one of Amalgaid) and subordinating additional native Wildermen, over the past few years. By this point however, the friction between their statelets was beginning to reach a boiling point: Amalgaid did not approve of Óengus’ men fishing and hunting on his territory, and furthermore felt that Óengus should acknowledge him as the High King of the Blessed Isle on account of him having arrived first, while Óengus in turn thought any such claim on Amalgaid’s part must be a bad joke because even though his kingdom was founded later, it was by far the larger and more populous of the two.

Thus the latter king decided to dispense with the formalities and launch an outright attack on the former in June of 564, thinking to claim control over all of the Irish on the Insula Benedicta by right of might. At first he caught Amalgaid off-guard with the strength and ferocity of his assault, burning several of the Northern Irish camps and presenting numerous families of settlers under Amalgaid’s rule with the choice of whether to either accept his own or die beneath the sword. Wildermen friendly to Amalgaid were treated even more harshly, typically being enslaved or killed if they didn't manage to flee ahead of Óengus' advance. But before he could reach Amalgaid’s capital at Termonn (as the town which sprang up near the site of Brendan’s monastery came to be called), old Brendan himself rode forth to urge that both parties sheathe their swords and enter a ceasefire, for there was more than enough land and plenty for everyone on the Blessed Isle to enjoy and no reason but pride was justifying their shedding of each other’s Christian blood. Apparently Óengus still respected Brendan enough to listen, and agree to a ceasefire: but he continued to insist that Amalgaid should acknowledge him as over-king, and the other Irish prince decided he would rather use the ceasefire to call up his Wilderman allies (Ataninnuaq chief among them) and reorganize his forces for a counterattack rather than bow down before his rival.

Gaelic warriors of Óengus' warband​

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

[1] Benghazi.

[2] Misrata.

[3] The ‘Aethiopia’ of the Romans refers to all of Africa beyond the Maghreb and Upper Egypt.

[4] An ancient Berber war god, equated to Saturn/Cronus by the Romans. He was depicted as a bull or a horned man in Berber idols.

[5] Roman expeditions did indeed reach Lake Chad in the time of Augustus, having previously passed through the Tibesti Mountains and the Garamantian kingdom (then at the height of its splendor) to get there. The lake would have been much larger in Roman times than it is today.

[6] El Djem.

[7] ‘Ouagadou’ in Soninke, these are the founders of the future Ghana Empire.

[8] Koumbi Saleh.

[9] Near Aswan.

[10] Fuzhou.

[11] ‘Not Angles, but angels’ – a pun historically attributed to Saint Gregory the Great, the Pope who initiated the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, upon encountering Anglo-Saxon slaves in the market of Rome.

[12] Established in present-day Andhra Pradesh around 420, the Vishnukundinas were historically rivals of the Vakatakas for control of the northern Deccan and survived until the early 7th century.

[13] Now known as the Liangguang region, this area is roughly comprised of modern Guangdong and Guangxi.

[14] Camelon.

[15] The Old English name for Lincoln.

[16] The Firth of Forth.

[17] Govan.

[18] Amaravati.

[19] Taiyuan.

[20] Baoding.

 

[Circle of Willis]

565’s arrival brought with it the renewed Turkic attack on the eastern Roman Empire which Anthemius had been anticipating for some time. Illig Khagan crossed into Roman territory in March with 25,000 men, relying on the Mazdakites to secure his northern flank against Armenian and Daylamite counterattacks. Vologases had done what he could to build up Eastern Roman forces in Mesopotamia over the past two years, but his best was not enough: he and his Lakhmid auxiliaries were still overcome by the Turks’ stampeding lancers and horse-archers at the Battle of Jalula[1] on April 1 and beat a hasty retreat to Babylon soon after. The situation clearly required Anthemius to lead a response, which the emperor did starting in May – marching from Antioch on down the Euphrates with 20,000 men, he arrived to relieve the besieged Prince of Mesopotamia in July and chased Illig back to Ctesiphon, where he defeated the Turkic Khagan in a furious battle outside the city that dramatically pitted his cataphracts against the latter’s heavy lancers.

While the Eastern Augustus and the Khagan were duking it out in Mesopotamia, the aged Belisarius fought his last battles in defense of Roman Paropamisus. Illig had sent 12,000 men under his Sogdian general Gurak to eliminate this isolated Roman exclave, but Belisarius whittled down the invading force in the mountain passes and valleys of Paropamisus with the aid of Varshasb & his other tribal allies before annihilating its remnants and killing Gurak before his capital of Kophen on May 15. The great general and Duke of the Furthest East passed away exactly a month after achieving this final victory at the age of 65, after which he was immediately succeeded in the latter capacity by his son (and Anthemius’ cousin) Porphyrus. While manifestly not his father’s equal, the totality of Belisarius’ last victory and the Turks’ greater focus on Mesopotamia fortunately meant that Porphyrus’ comparatively limited martial ability would not be tested overmuch, yet.

Belisarius bids farewell to his family in Kophen before departing on what would turn out to be his last campaign​

Anthemius having to redirect his attention against the Turks also meant that he had to hurriedly make amends with Cheren and Tewodros to the south. Both sides mutually agreed to lower tariffs to their previous level and to get trade flowing through the Red Sea again, and the Aksumites agreed to stop supporting Blemmye rebels against the Romans’ Nubian ally. However, in return Hoase of Nubia had to grant amnesty to the Blemmyes, to accept Aksumite ‘aid’ in rebuilding their towns and fortresses, and to tolerate the marriage of their king Tophêna to Tewodros’ sister Magdala, with the thinly veiled promise that Aksum would still have his back the next time the Blemmyes caused trouble. Regardless of the inevitable troubles this settlement would inflict on the region, Anthemius had achieved his short-term priorities in the south – preventing the Nubian crisis from escalating and resuming trade with India through Aksumite waters – and would not spare Nubia any further thought until he had dealt with Illig.

In China, the flames of war burned ever brighter. The Shu managed to defend their capital of Chengdu from the attacks of Chu, the Bai-Yi confederates and the Qiang, but lost considerable territory to both over the course of 565. In particular, the Bai and Yi tribes were able to carve out the Kingdom of Yi for themselves under Meng Shelong’s able leadership, centered around Dali; while the Qiang who overran the Qinling Mountains and parts of western Ba-Shu[2] established for themselves the ‘Kingdom of Qin’ with its capital at Lizhou[3], acclaiming their great war-chief Ma Jian (as the Chinese called him, his Qiang name was Manu) their first king. Their relatives, the Di, soon followed in their footsteps by striking north against both the Later Han and the Turks, establishing a ‘Kingdom of Chouchi’ on the upper reaches of the Han River.

This Di attack distracted Issik Khagan from continuing to pursue hostilities against the Qi, giving their own Emperor Xiaojing valuable time to recover and regain his state’s footing while the Turks were busy fending off the latest interlopers from the south. The outcome of that war was not in doubt, given the disparity in strength between the Di and the Northern Turks; but in the months it took Issik to crush Chouchi, whose remnants quickly submitted to the Qiang-Qin for protection, Xiaojing was able to raise new armies, repair the fortifications of his cities and recapture Jinyang from the Tegregs. When Issik returned to attack Jinyang once more in December, he was put to flight by a determined Qi defense, and Xiaojing entered talks with Emperor Wucheng of Later Han to form an anti-Tegreg alliance immediately afterward.

In southeastern China hostilities broke out between the Kingdom of Min and Emperor Shang of Later Liang, as the latter sought to impose his authority over the former on the road to Jiankang. But the scrappy mountain-men of Fujian derailed his ambitions, ambushing and delivering the Later Liang forces a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Nanxi Creek in their territory’s southwestern reaches, and then pursuing the foe into their own lands. By the year’s end Huang Huo had conquered Liang territories down and east of the length of the Ting River, terminating at the fishing towns of Tuojiang[4] and Yi’an[5], and elevated himself from merely being ‘King of Min’ to King of Minyue. Huo’s triumph solidified the last of the ‘Four Kingdoms’ of the ‘Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms’ period: his own Minyue now avoided the fate of the short-lived Chouchi to join Pham Van Liên’s Nanyue, Meng Shelong’s Yi and Ma Jian’s Qin.

The Min army marching to war under Huang Huo. They are notably much more ragged and lightly-equipped compared to their Liang adversaries, not that they will allow this to stop them from prevailing​

On the other side of the planet, as it became apparent that the Northern Irish kingdom on the Insula Benedicta was not about to knuckle under the demands of their Southern Irish cousins, Amalgaid broke the truce before Óengus could. He launched a surprise attack on Óengus’ camp with a large force, comprised of both Gaels and Wilderman allies; most of the latter still did not have iron weapons, as Amalgaid was wary of giving away too many iron spears and axes to Ataninnuaq’s people, but they gave the Northern Irish forces an important numerical advantage as well as by revealing an unprotected woodland path which the Southern Irish remained unaware of. In the chaotic, fire-lit night engagement which followed, Amalgaid was victorious and slew Óengus in single combat (rather unfairly, as his surprise had been so total than Óengus had to face his well-armed and mailed self in undergarments and wielding a chair) in addition to 70 of his warriors.

Now it was Óengus’ son Ólchobar who was on the back foot, and Amalgaid ruthlessly pursued him back down the eastern coast to his seat at Tríonóid[6]. But once more Brendan intervened before one Irish king could finish off the other, and negotiated a settlement in which Ólchobar would acknowledge Amalgaid as his overlord. Amalgaid’s elevation to High King of the Blessed Isle was not welcome news back in much of Ireland outside of his home in Munster, being especially poorly-received in the court of the court of the King of Tara and High King of Ireland Eógan mac Muiredaig who perceived this proclamation as a challenge; however, given the distances between the Emerald and Blessed Isles, there was little he and the other Uí Néill could do about it beyond forbidding those under their authority from traveling west. More importantly, as the chief counselor to the new High King in the Far West (in both spiritual and temporal matters) and the one man who was still universally respected among both the New World Irish and the Wildermen as a peacemaker, Brendan found himself becoming the power behind Amalgaid’s throne whether he liked it or not.

Amalgaid, visibly aged since he first set foot on the Blessed Isle, now High King of the Irish across the Atlantic​

566 brought two important pieces of good news to the Western Augustus. Firstly, his heir sired another child, a daughter who was baptized as Maria. Secondly, his Balkan archenemy Qilian Khagan died of old age at winter’s end. Qilian’s own son Fúliánchóu (or simply ‘Fulian Khagan’ to the Romans) did not enjoy a smooth ascent to the Avar throne; several of the Turkic tribes within their confederacy seized the chance to rise up against Rouran domination and try to take the helm themselves. Romanus could not believe his luck at first, and waited a few months to see if one side would quickly overwhelm the other; when this did not happen, with the Rouran and rebel Turks shedding each other’s blood in several inconclusive battles across Pannonia and Dacia instead, he resolved to strike in the summer.

Unfortunately, the Eastern Romans’ distraction with the latest Turkic attack prevented them from immediately collaborating with their Western counterparts against the Avars. But then, with the Avars divided and his army fully built up to his desired specifications in the years since their nearly-disastrous first expedition, Romanus may not have needed their help to achieve a victory anyway. Starting in May, Aemilian and the Caesar Constans crossed into Avar-held Illyria at the head of a great host of 30,000, half-Roman and half comprised of various federates; of these the largest contributors were the Franks, Bavarians and Carantanians, for Viderichus’ Ostrogoths had been greatly reduced in number by their past defeats at Avar hands. The Ostrogoth king himself retained a command position over the 3,000-man contingent he did manage to contribute to this army, although he had to first swear an oath not to disobey Aemilian’s commands or turn his blade against his allies – especially not the Carantanians with whom he had nearly come to blows just two years prior.

Aemilian and Constans first met and scored a victory over the Avars (then led by Pihouba, a kinsman and loyal supporter of Fulian’s) in the Battle of Andautonia. The Romans already enjoyed a greater-than-three-to-one numerical advantage over this first Avar army, but the battle also revealed the utility of their reforms and the upgrades they had made to their equipment to be so great as to constitute overkill: the manufacturing of larger and heavier arcuballistae allowed their crossbowmen to effectively stop the Avar charge dead in its tracks before falling into danger of being overrun, after which the Caesar led their massed heavy caballarii in a furious counter-charge of their own to mop up the bloodied and disordered opposition. Pihouba himself was unhorsed and killed in the fracas, and what remained of the Avar presence on the field was annihilated soon after while their Sclaveni infantry – far from deciding to get involved in what was now an obviously one-sided massacre – stood by and surrendered as the Roman legions advanced upon them.

One of the lessons the Western Romans took away from their new army's first outing against the Avars was that the older arcuballistae they were using was too light to stop an Avar charge outside of short range, something they have since rectified in the lead-up to this latest renewal of the conflict​

The Sclaveni leader Radimir hoped that by not helping the Avars and yielding before costing the Romans any more lives, he would be able to achieve similar terms of vassalage as Ljudevit had. These were granted by Romanus at Constans’ suggestion (by which he butted heads with his mother and cousin) and the Slavic chief was promised a principality centered on the newly-reconquered Andautonia: the Romans identified their new allies as the ‘Horites’ whom Paulus Orosius had written about early in the fifth century, itself a Latinized translation of their true name – the Hrvati, or Croats, who had ‘White Croat’ kindred living in the Carpathians along the northern edges of the Avar domain[7]. To keep the Ostrogoths on-board, Romanus promised Viderichus further monetary compensation and the restoration of territories along the Dalmatian coast in the event of a Roman victory. Their numbers augmented by these Horites, the Western Romans used the Savus to anchor their northern flank for now and advanced further east with due caution, clearing Siscia and much of the western Dinarides by the time snow fell.

While the Western Romans were fighting to retake as much of Illyricum from the Avars as they could, Anthemius continued to not only fight in defense of his own eastern frontier but also to begin his own incursion into territories previously lost to the Southern Turks: truly after a number of reverses in the last 15 years, the middle of this decade was beginning to prove quite fruitful for both Roman Empires. After maneuvering and skirmishing against one another throughout the spring, the Eastern Romans decisively expelled Illig Khagan from Mesopotamia in the Battle of Dastagird in June of 566; there the Turkic cavalry managed to overcome their Roman counterparts after drawing them out of formation with a feint retreat, only to fall into a trap of the Romans’ own where they were felled by Anthemius’ infantry and Vologases’ archers by the thousand.

The Southern Turks fell back into the mountains of Media, where Anthemius wisely desisted from pursuing them. Instead, he turned his attention to Khuzestan and Meshan, which he invaded in late July. His first attempt to besiege Susa was thwarted by Turkic counterattacks from the east and south, while his Armenian and Daylamite allies were tied up in the Zagros Mountains by Illig’s own Mazdakite allies just as the latter had planned. The necessity of a tactical retreat back into Mesopotamia did not dissuade him, and after turning around to smite the Turks once more on the eastern edges of the Mesopotamian Marshes in the first week of September he resumed his offensive into Khuzestan. By the end of 566, the Eastern Augustus had placed Susa back under siege and detached his Arab federates to sail and ride a ways down the Choaspes[8] and Coprates[9] Rivers, so that they might guard his southern flank against another potential Turkic assault from out of Meshan.

Heavy Romano-Persian horse-archers clashing with the Southern Turks on the muddy edge of the Mesopotamian Marshes​

Far to the east, Illig’s brother too was having a difficult time. Issik now had to contend with the Qi-Han alliance, which threatened to drive him out of northern China. Emperor Wucheng of Later Han struck first, trying to trap his army south of the Nanshan Range[10] shortly after they crushed the Di of Chouchi. In this he was ultimately unsuccessful, as his troops were unable to construct the fortifications necessary to effectively obstruct the larger Turkic horde’s routes of retreat before they broke through his lines, but battling through those mountains was not an easy feat for the largely mounted Turks and they sustained significant losses (both in terms of manpower and time) before they managed to fight their way back northward.

Issik and his men found no safety even after escaping Han territory, however, for now Emperor Xiaojing of Qi was moving quickly to attack them before they could recover from their struggles against the Later Han. Understanding that Wucheng was reorganizing his forces for a second attack, he resolved to hasten northeastward and engage the Qi on the confluence of the Wei and Yellow Rivers, in hopes of catching them before they could finish crossing past the town of Weinan. In this the Khagan was nearly successful: on June 26 his vanguard arrived at the crossings while only part of the Qi army had made it over the Yellow River, just as he had hoped, and he launched an immediate attack which devastated this forward element of the Chinese troops, killing thousands and driving the rest back over the Yellow River in a bloody rout.

However, Emperor Xiaojing did not give up and continued to press his troops into an attack over the bridges and fords surrounding Weinan. The Tegregs used their mobility to quickly secure each of these crossings and repel the bottle-necked Qi time and again as the day wore on, but late in the afternoon the Later Han army finally arrived and attacked them from behind. The tide turned against the Turks as the Sun began to set, as Issik did not have the numbers to both hold the crossings and fend off Wucheng’s assault. Ultimately he was able to escape northward, crossing the Wei River before the Han and Qi could stomp his army flat between their own, but lost 12,000 men in the chaos – nearly half of his remaining field army. These losses made it impossible for him to hold his conquests beyond Jincheng[11], and over the rest of the year the Qi-Han alliance continuously pushed the Turks almost all the way back to the Hexi Corridor.

Contemporary Chinese depiction of the Battle of Weinan​

In the south of China, following the many reverses which plagued his dynasty in recent years Emperor Gao of Shu was overthrown and killed following a brief civil war with his dissatisfied subordinates, of whom the most successful – Zhang Gongyan – proclaimed himself Emperor Zhi of Cheng atop his former master’s corpse. He went on to successfully defend Chengdu against an opportunistic Chu attack, ensuring his own survival and securing the Cheng’s place as the seventh of the Eight Dynasties who lent their name to this era in Chinese history. Meanwhile the Chen took the opportunity presented by Qi’s focus on fending off the Turks to attack them from the southeast starting late in the year, with the faithful and capable Mao Yan in command.

To the northeast, the war in the Korean peninsula was winding down. Battered by Goguryeo attacks from the north and a combined Baekje-Yamato onslaught from the south and west, Silla had to sue for peace and yield much of its previously-gained territory to the two, who promptly began to fight over the spoils. Ultimately the Baekje and Yamato achieved a major victory over the Goguryeo at the Battle of Hanseong, allowing the former to secure the Han and Imjin River valleys and establish itself as the dominant Korean kingdom for now.

However, the Japanese commander Kose no Muruya could hardly look forward to a hero’s welcome on the other side of the Straits of Tsushima; his overlord Heijō had solidified an alliance between his rival, Yamanoue no Ishikawa, and the Yamato dynasty itself. Together they had moved to denounce him as an overambitious traitor looking to create a kingdom of his own across the sea and to dispossess & purge his kindred & allies back home while he was fighting in the latter’s name in Korea, an unforgivable affront to his honor. Consequently, as the year wound down towards its end Kose prepared to sail back to Japan with his army, hellbent on avenging this disgrace and not only retaking what his family had lost but ideally also crushing the Yamanoue clan utterly and making the Kose into the premier peers among the Yamato.

Kose no Muruya and his officers planning their return to the islands of the Yamato​

567 initially went well for the Western Romans, who continued to face limited and scattered opposition as they advanced throughout Dalmatia and towards Moesia. The Avars remained primarily concerned with their internal tensions all this time and by the start of summer, Aemilian and Constans felt sufficiently comfortable to divide their troops: Aemilian would focus on mopping up resistance in the north while Constans swept southward to clear Macedonia and Greece. Aemilian also tried to get the Gepids to revert their allegiance, but was stymied by the fact that Fulian Khagan had the foresight to keep King Gesimund’s heir Remismund hostage at his court: the father’s decision to keep faith with the Avars was one the magister militum considered unfortunate and understandable in light of this, but he would not allow such sentiment to keep him from retaking the ruins of Sirmium and crushing the Gepids.

However, things began to change in mid-summer. Fulian finally crushed his enemies in a bloody battle on the Pannonian plains east of Aquincum in June, and could now turn his full attention to dealing with the Romans. Near the end of the month he descended on Aemilian’s army as it besieged Singidunum; his own host was battered from the battles of the recent civil war, but he partially replenished his ranks by offering amnesty to the surviving Turkic tribesmen who would fight for him (and gave them the ‘place of honor’ in his front lines against the Romans) and by compelling the Gepids to lend him all of their remaining strength. The Western Romans were forced to retreat back over the Savus under Avar harassment, and to call for aid from their fellows in the south – who by this time had taken Diocleia and Scodra, and were clearing out the recently-established Slavic strongholds in Epirus & Aetolia on their way to Athens.

By the time Constans returned to the north with 8,000 men, Aemilian had been pushed away from the lower banks of the Savus and was preparing to make his stand outside of a surrendered Sclaveni settlement south of that river’s confluence with the Drinus[11], which the locals and his Slavic allies called ‘Bijeljina’ in Slavonic. The battle which followed pitted 22,000 Western Romans against 25,000 Avars, and was much harder-fought than previous engagements against Fulian’s kin and generals. At the battle’s climax, the Avars managed to temporarily scatter the Roman cavalry after a furious clash; however they lost sight of their foes and took some time to sack the Roman camp in a breach of discipline, allowing the caballarii to regroup and rout them in a counterattack before relieving the infantry under Aemilian, who were being hard-pressed by the Gepid and Sclaveni infantry in Avar employ; the fighting between the Carantanians and Horites on one hand, and the various Sclaveni still in Avar service on the other, was particularly vicious. Such was the chaos and closeness of the fighting that initially it had been reported (by men who had fled the attack on the Roman camp) that the Avars had actually triumphed and possibly killed the Caesar, while Constans needed a few days to disprove the reports of his demise.

Radimir and the Horites at camp on the morning of the Battle of Bijeljina, or as their new Roman overlords called it, the Battle of the Drinus​

The Western Romans pursued their adversaries back over the Savus and took Sirmium once more after it had been previously taken back by the Avars in Aemilian’s first retreat. However, Fulian had managed to preserve the better part of his forces and turned to fight the Romans once more near Bassianae toward the end of summer. He caught Aemilian & Constans off-guard by eschewing the usual order of things – having his horse-archers skirmish with the Roman bowmen and crossbowmen before committing to a more serious attack – and instead launching an immediate charge at the head of his lancers, scattering the Roman skirmish lines before they were repulsed by the infantry legions and Frankish federates. Although Aemilian maintained discipline and prevented the Romans from chasing the retreating Avar cavalry into a probable trap, this just gave Fulian time to regroup, after which harassment and flanking maneuvers by the more numerous Avar riders eventually forced the Romans to withdraw from the field. 567 ended with the battle-lines drawn from Sirmium to Larissa, and although the Western Romans still held a clear advantage (to the extent that Constans was able to return to Rome and spend the winter with his family without incident), the war could hardly be said to be over yet.

As for the Eastern Empire, they finally succeeded in starving out the defenders of Susa this spring, advancing Roman control back into parts of Khuzestan. Illig Khagan had not been idle while Anthemius was receiving the Susan garrison’s surrender however, instead steadily rebuilding his strength further to the east. Not long after the Eastern Romans crossed the Coprates at Andamaska[12], the Tegregs raced back into Khuzestan to engage them at Gundeshapur, where Illig had previously painstakingly restored as much of the old Persian academy (devastated by the Hephthalites’ wars with the Sassanids and later Sabbatius) as he could.

The Battle of Gundeshapur went poorly for Anthemius, whose cavalry was defeated and put to flight early in the clash after their commander, the Lakhmid prince al-Qays was killed by a Turkic arrow. Unlike the Avars the Stilichians had faced far to the west, the Turks remained focused on assailing the Eastern Roman infantry still on the field, and a disaster was averted only by the strength of Roman discipline and the Emperor’s determined leadership. Eventually the Ghassanid and Roman cavalry rallied and returned to attack the Turks from behind as they surrounded the Roman infantry, allowing Anthemius and his men to begin cutting their way out of the trap.

From Gundeshapur the Romans fell back to Andamaska, where they used the bridge over the Copratus to fend off the Tegreg pursuit, and Vologases was sent back to Babylon to recover from the serious injuries he had incurred over the previous battles. The Eastern Augustus offered to negotiate at this point, hoping to shift the Romano-Turkic border at least marginally in his favor, but was rebuffed by Illig. His victory at Gundeshapur had encouraged the Khagan to settle for nothing less than the status quo antebellum, and he was well aware that losing a war he had started (even if the only territorial losses were small) would gravely undermine his standing with both his Turkic and Persian subjects, so he determined that the war would have to continue until he recovered Susa at the very least.

Contemporary Babylonian art depicting Vologases moments before being struck on the head by a Turkic heavy cavalryman. Note that the Turk is wearing a Persian-style helmet, complete with aventail: a sign of early Persianization among the Southern Turks​

Further still to the east, Issik Khagan too was finding his second wind. It certainly helped that over the winter, the Chinese offensive against him stalled as the Qi and Later Han began to fall out over the spoils of their earlier victories and were unable to draw up a mutually-satisfactory division of the territories they’d just retaken from him. The Qi were further distracted by Mao Yan’s attack from Chen territory, which crossed the Huai in February and threatened to cut Shandong off from the rest of his domains by April. It was then that the Northern Turks sprang their counterattack through the Hexi Corridor, obliterating the ramshackle and poorly-coordinated defenses which the allies had set up on the Corridor’s eastern end and were as fraught with infighting as the rest of their empires were.

Since the Chen were directly threatening the core of his lands and the residence of his family, Emperor Xiaojing of Qi decided to throw everything he had at them in the hope of rapidly overpowering them and to ‘magnanimously’ concede his various claims in northwest China to the Later Han, who now had the unenviable task of facing down the Turks with almost no Qi support as their ally pulled nearly all of their troops eastward to fend off Mao Yan. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in the Han experiencing severe reverses over the course of 567 and Issik overrunning even Jincheng[13] on the Yellow River before Emperor Wucheng and his generals were able to stabilize the situation. Their (increasingly strictly nominal) Qi allies outflanked the Chen to score a major victory at Dezhou in August, but this brought them no actual relief as Xiaojing decided he’d rather take the chance to finish off the Chen (and in so doing fully avenge his uncle and cousin) rather than lend the Han a hand.

Bereft of aid from Qi, these Later Han troops have decided to retreat to a safer position rather than defend the Hexi Corridor in the face of a major Northern Turkic counterattack​

Across the sea, Kose no Muruya returned to the lands of the Yamato with his army behind him and vengeance on his mind, having first passed through friendly Tsushima to resupply. After tricking the royalist forces into thinking he would land at Shimonoseki using a fake fleet comprised of commandeered Tsushiman fishing boats and captured Silla vessels which the Baekje freely gave up as part of his share of the plunder, the rebel army made an unopposed landing in Izumo instead. The denizens of that western province were among the last to fall under Yamato rule, and the Kibi clan which governed them were certainly not predisposed to ceding any more authority to the centralist Heijō, so they too joined Kose’s rebellion.

Kose proceeded to tear a bloody swath across western Honshu on his way to Asuka, where Heijō had entrenched himself and built a new wall around his palace over the last two years, while Yamanoue no Ishikawa and the larger royal army set out from Shimonoseki to pursue him. By the year’s end he had besieged the Great King of the Yamato in Asuka, but was himself being besieged by Yamanoue’s royalists, who were still more numerous than his own army even in spite of the Kibi joining him. Kose attempted to secretly appeal to the other magnates in Yamanoue’s army to join him and even the odds or even undo the royalist cause altogether, while Yamanoue in turn correctly feared that at least some of his fellow royalists may be less firm in their allegiance to Heijō (ironically, at least some of them were Heijō’s original supporters in his first civil war and were miffed that Yamanoue – once their opponent in said conflict – now enjoyed the Great King’s favor) and increasingly considered mounting an assault on Kose’s camp before they could decide to break away.

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[1] Jalawla.

[2] Sichuan.

[3] Guangyuan.

[4] Shantou.

[5] Chaozhou.

[6] Trinity, Newfoundland.

[7] Croats or at least proto-Croats seem to have lived near the Sea of Azov since the 2nd-3rd centuries AD, when Bosporan Greeks from Tanais recorded their presence under the name ‘Horoáthos’ in the Tanais Tablets. They were originally counted among the Antae and among those pushed westward by the initial advance of the Avars; some Croats migrated as far as Dalmatia, becoming known as the ‘Red Croats’, while other ‘White Croats’ may have lingered in a territory ranging from Galicia to eastern Bohemia.

[8] The Karkheh River.

[9] The Dez River.

[10] Now the Qinling Mountains.

[11] The River Drina.

[12] Andimeshk.

[13] Lanzhou.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Constans returned to the front early in 568, having not only impregnated his wife for the third time in the winter months (as a result their second son, Otho, would be born in August of this year) but also met with his parents. The Caesar’s mother put him up to the task of trying to persuade his august father to replace Aemilian with his father-in-law Carpilio (at the time an infantry commander in the army of Aemilian & Constans), but they were bluntly rebuffed: Romanus remembered all too well what happened the last time he took this sort of advice and switched out his primary field commanders mid-war, no matter that unlike Frederica’s past sycophants, Carpilio was a man of both proven competence and loyalty.

At first, the Caesar had no reason to suspect that Aemilian had learned of his mother’s machinations upon returning to their field headquarters at Sirmium, where the magister militum hailed and feasted with him in an entirely friendly manner before resuming campaigning once the unusually heavy spring rains had let up. However, in the Battle of Singidunum which followed in May, Carpilio was killed and the two infantry legions he was directing sustained heavy casualties when Aemilian inexplicably ordered the rest of the Roman line to fall back, leaving them exposed to an Avar-Gepid onslaught. The battle itself ended in a Western Roman victory after Constans overcame the Avar cavalry, allowing Aemilian to push back against the Avar infantry and retake control of the ruined Singidunum, but the Caesar’s suspicions were inflamed by the manner in which his father-in-law died.

Mutual suspicions aside, both men were able to continue working together throughout the rest of 568 – when it came to defending lands which they had already taken back. Notably the Western Romans did not push past the Dravus into Pannonia or east of Singidunum into Avar-held Moesia, instead fighting purely defensive battles at Aelia Mursa[1] and Acumincum[2] to hold the line against Avar probing attacks. Ostensibly the joint commanders of the Roman host were united on assuming a defensive posture, well aware of the dangers of recklessly overextending themselves from the last round with the Avars, but visiting messengers from Rome brought back an impression of heightened – though always subtle – tensions at their luncheons and suppers, and whispered to the aging emperor that his son & generalissimo might both be too concerned that the other would set them up to die to take further bold action. For his part, Fulian Khagan was happy to seize the opportunity to rebuild the Avar forces in peace.

Aemilian, Constans and an attendant on a hunt, as the former two struggle to reconcile with one another​

To the east, Vologases died of his injuries soon after arriving in Babylon, despite the best efforts of his physicians: a hard loss for his imperial cousin, made even more-so because his son Zamasphes (as his Persian name, Djamasp, was rendered in Greek and Latin) was a completely inexperienced leader who had just barely reached manhood in the previous year. Worse still for the emperor, Illig Khagan led the Turks onward to engage the Eastern Romans at Andamaska again in April, having gathered reinforcements from the Zagros Mountains for a decisive blow aimed at Susa. This time Anthemius ceded the crossing, as he lacked the strength to hold it and was awaiting reinforcements from the west.

Anthemius continued to pull back into Mesopotamia as the full size of Illig’s host was revealed to him by his scouts and eventually his own eyes, leaving a 2,000-strong garrison to defend Susa against nearly 30,000 Tegregs. For his part, Illig was aware that his adversary was amassing reinforcements with which to relieve the siege and take Khuzestan back for the Roman Empire, so he planned a night-time assault to retake the city before Anthemius could press him so. On the evening of May 8, some of the Khagan’s men identified a poorly-guarded section of Susa’s walls and brought this to his attention: consequently he committed to an immediate attack on the city and particularly at that spot, which he would lead personally. In the resulting battle the Turks prevailed, annihilating the Roman garrison over five hours of fighting across the walls and streets of Susa, but Illig himself was badly injured after being shoved off the wall by a legionary: he regained consciousness after two days (during which his uncontrolled troops sacked the city, contrary to his intentions) and had broken both legs, an arm and several ribs from the fall.

While Illig remained bedridden as a result of his severe wounds, the Romans went back on the offensive. Anthemius met the Turkic army at Bayan[3] in August, his own army having been reinforced to a more respectable 24,000 by contingents from Thrace, Egypt and the Kartvelian kingdoms in the meantime, and prevailed against them there. The recently rain-soaked marshland which comprised the battlefield hindered the more heavily-armed Romans, to be sure, but crucially it also neutralized the Turks’ cavalry advantage, while the fierce eastward winds softened the sting of their arrows. The Persian officer whom the Khagan had appointed to command his army, Hormuzan, nevertheless managed to put up a stiff fight but was eventually killed at the climax of the fighting – abandoned by the Turkic contingent whose tarkhan he had a rivalry with – sealing his side’s fate. By the end of the year the Southern Turks had been pushed into full retreat and Anthemius had besieged Illig in Susa, at which point the maimed Khagan finally decided to sue for terms.

Illig Khagan's Persian physicians visibly aghast at the extent of his injuries, and surprised that he is even still alive after such a fall​

In China, as the Chen’s element of surprise wore off and ever-larger numbers of Qi soldiers flooded back to the east, the Qi made headway in not only stopping the Chen forces but actively pushing them back toward the Huai River throughout the spring and summer. Emperor Xiaojing secured a critical advantage over his adversaries by killing Mao Yan, by far the most capable general still left to the Chen court, in the dramatic Battle of Lake Hongze in July: the 15,000-strong Chen army was trapped by 40,000 Qi troops against the lake’s northern shore while trying to retreat back over the Huai, and considering the situation to be hopeless, Mao bravely challenged Xiaojing to a duel rather than surrender. He put up enough of a fight to earn the rival emperor’s respect and an honorable funeral at the latter’s expense, but the same could not be said of the various Chen officers and lesser kinsmen captured after his demise, who were summarily executed while their soldiers were given the choice to either join the Qi or die as well.

While the Qi began to besiege Jiankang towards the year’s end, the situation south of the Yangtze was also beginning to heat up. Embarrassed by his earlier defeat at the hands of the Minyue, Emperor Shang of Later Liang sent a second army to thrash them and managed to recapture most of eastern Guang Province[4] from Huang Huo, but once again ran into trouble once he tried to pursue the Minyue army into their mountainous homeland. As Shang’s forces were increasingly worn down by Minyue ambushes and raids in Fujian, Emperor Yang of Chu launched an opportunistic attack against his northern flank (not dissimilar to how he’d taken advantage of Shu’s troubles to assail that neighbor previously), leaving the Liang stuck between a rock and a hard place as 568 drew to a close.

In Honshu, Yamanoue no Ishikawa launched his assault on Kose no Muruya’s rebels under the cover of a mid-February snowstorm. The ferocious winds and poor visibility brought on by the inclement weather hindered the large royal army almost as much as it did the defenders, and only when the snowfall briefly abated did the garrison of Asuka see the signal fire which Yamanoue had set to tell them when to sally forth through the capital’s gates. In the confused fighting, Yamanoue and Kose stumbled across each other and engaged in a duel, one noted to have been a vicious and desperate struggle even in the most romantic retellings.

At the end of their clash, Yamanoue apparently won by slicing his opponent’s stomach open with his warabitetō[5], only to slip in the mud, snow and Kose’s innards and fall; at which point the still-living Kose managed to stab him to death with a dagger before also expiring. Word of their leaders’ mutually fatal fight demoralized both armies but excited Heijō, for the Great King thought himself rid of two of his most troublesome magnates in a single evening. Playing the part of a magnanimous sovereign, he called for a truce to clear the field, collect the bodies (including those of Kose and Yamanoue) so that they could be returned to their families, and not only offered the rebels amnesty if they would just go home but even promised that he would return the Kose clan’s estates to them out of respect for their mighty patriarch. Despite this entire chain of events having started because of Heijō’s dishonorable actions towards the Kose clan, his leaderless and dispirited lieutenants believed it was a good idea to take the Great King at his word, perhaps thinking he spoke truly when he lamented the extent of the bloodshed around Asuka and how he wished they could’ve avoided all that.

Yamanoue no Ishikawa, attired in gilded armor, issues his final orders to the other royalist generals at the dawn of the Battle of Asuka, 568. In his left hand, he holds the warabitetō which he will use to fatally wound his adversary Kose no Muruya hours later​

The Avars launched their counterattack early in March of 569, hitting the Western Romans from Sirmium to Thessalonica before the winter frost and snow had fully cleared away. Fulian Khagan’s plan was to use the greater mobility of his primarily-mounted forces to isolate the Romans in the towns and forts where they had garrisoned themselves, then bring in his masses of Gepid and Slavic infantry to defeat the Romans in detail. However Aemilian and Constans’ unwillingness to overextend and disperse their forces across many small forts or villages, instead keeping the troops they had detached to secure their (re)conquests relatively concentrated in or around major sites such as Singidunum and Dyrrhachium, greatly blunted the efficacy of this strategy.

For their part, whatever misgivings the two Roman commanders had for each other were not yet at a point where they could no longer work with each other at all. Aemilian and Constans retained enough of a professional relationship to effectively coordinate a response against the Avar onslaught, managing the orderly retreat of outlying Roman garrisons toward recaptured provincial capitals and fortresses while also amassing as many legions and federates as they could around their Moesian headquarters for a major push of their own. The 1-3,000 strong cavalry detachments which Fulian had sent out to encircle Roman outposts and raid the countryside were usually too quick for the main Roman army to catch, but the same was not true of the bulk of their infantry, which the Caesar and the magister militum engaged at Bederiana[6] in late May. The Western Romans achieved a major victory there, mauling the slightly smaller Avar host and killing Gesimund of the Gepids.

Fulian recognized that now it was he whose armies were in danger of being crushed in detail by the Western Romans: in response, he lifted his siege of Thessalonica and recalled his men to his side, amassing his troops around Serdica – and the speed with which the mounted Avar parties did so, in turn, surprised the Roman generals. Following this, a number of furious, hard-fought engagements erupted across the territories of the Dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia throughout the summer and autumn. The Avars won most of the early engagements, preventing the Western Romans from getting a foothold across the Margus[7] and eventually counterattacking into Roman Moesia to take Singidunum yet again after first tricking their enemies into thinking that they were massing for an attack further south, but Aemilian and Constans succeeded in preserving an overland connection to Thessalonica and fending off follow-up Avar attacks aimed at Sirmium, Diocleia and Ulpiana.

The most dangerous Avar maneuver, a surprise combined assault on Lissus[8] in which they were aided in navigating through the nearby mountains by Sclaveni that had settled in northern Epirus and threatened to cut the Roman forces in half, was repelled in September by the audacious young captains Ferreolus and Honestus. The sons of Carpilio and Constans’ brothers-in-law, these two made a name for themselves by rallying the nearby hill-tribes of the Albanenses[9] to support their legions in achieving this major victory. Following the Battle of Lissus and early snowfall, Romanus offered to negotiate with Fulian Khagan only to fail to agree upon a settlement this year, so the Augustus instructed his generals to prepare a knock-out blow to force Fulian back to the table & secure a favorable peace in 570.

A chieftain of the Albanenses exhorts his warriors to fall in line with the Western Romans of Ferreolus & Honestus. His equipment still resembles that of his Illyrian predecessors​

While the fires of war would continue to rage in the West throughout 569, the same fires were beginning to at least slightly simmer down in the East. Anthemius initially sought to rebuff Illig Khagan’s offer of peace and continue the siege of Susa, but the outbreak of rebellion among Nestorian remnants in Mesopotamia (against which the untested Prince Zamasphes was not expected to perform well) and yet another Samaritan rising in Palestine compelled the Augustus to accept the Southern Turks’ olive branch in the spring. Consequently the two sides agreed to a peace which would restore the status quo antebellum, and the Turks would pay a hefty indemnity in gold, silks and spices to compensate for having started the war in the first place: the only peace settlement which was mutually agreeable to both sides, as Anthemius sought to replenish his coffers and Illig still feared that even mild territorial losses would lead to his deposition.

Having secured peace with the Turks and recouped his financial losses from this war, Anthemius hurried back to the west. He arrived in time to assist Zamasphes, who had proven incapable of controlling the Nestorian uprising: the rebels did not have the strength to attack Babylon or any other major Mesopotamian city, but did viciously harass anyone living outside the safety of the cities’ walls and target shipments of food from the farms to the urban areas for theft or destruction, something neither Zamasphes nor Anthemius could tolerate in the greatly cooled climactic conditions of the mid-to-late sixth century. Together they were able to contain the rebellion to the Mesopotamian Marshes once more closer to the year’s end, after which Anthemius left Zamasphes with an additional 6,000 men to shore up the local suppression forces while he continued on westward to beat the Samaritans (who had used this time to carve out for themselves a territory stretching from Tiberias to Neapolis[10], and were threatening both Nazareth and Jerusalem) back down.

On the other end of the Eurasian continent, while the Qi siege of Jiankang continued, the Northern Turks continued to enjoy greater success than their Southern brethren. Issik Khagan’s forces finally recaptured Jincheng from the Later Han in the early weeks of 569’s summer, and from there pushed eastward and southward past the upper Yellow River. By August they threatened the Han capital at Luoyang, but had overextended themselves and were finally defeated before the city’s gates by Emperor Wucheng’s reserves, after which the Han pushed them back (and they themselves retreated) to the northwest. A final Han victory at Xianyang to the west compelled the Turks to hasten their withdrawal starting in October, and the year’s end found Issik barely holding both banks of the Yellow River’s upper reaches, although he still had more territory than he had started the year with.

Mounted Later Han troops pushing the Northern Turks away from Luoyang​

In southern China, as Chu forces pushed through Guangxi and threatened Jinxing[11] while his own army suffered another stinging defeat outside Longyan, Emperor Shang of Later Liang reluctantly made peace with Huang Huo of Minyue. He acknowledged the latter’s control down the course of the Ting River and as far as Yi’an, but not Tuojiang, and in so doing freed up the rest of his forces for the struggle with Emperor Yang of Chu, who he drove away from Jinxing in a bloody battle in the summer. Shang also arranged an alliance with Emperor Zhi of Cheng, the rump and successor of Shu, sealed with the marriage of his heir Zhao Yingqi to one of Zhi’s daughters. Consequently, Cheng forces began to push into Chu’s western frontier in hopes of recovering some of the former Shu lands, adding to the pressure against Yang and drawing some of his forces away from the embattled Liang.

Come 570, both sides in the Roman-Avar war waited until the last of the winter snows had cleared and the spring rains abated somewhat before committing to their final battles, using that time to instead rest and call up reinforcements. That the Iazyges and Continental Saxons had by now noticed the thinning of the Western Empire’s frontier garrisons and were beginning to make more serious probing attacks against them added to the pressure on Aemilian and Constans to seek a decisive battle and end things quickly, though they could otherwise have taken their time dealing with the less numerous Avars. The Avars struck first, launching a diversionary attack on Sirmium from the north so as to draw Western Roman troops away from Singidunum and capture the latter ruined settlement with ease instead. In response, Constans persuaded Aemilian to mass their forces around Ulpiana and sweep toward Viminacium behind the Avar front line. As his scouts reported that his enemies were mustering to the south, Fulian Khagan raced to engage them before they could realize their designs.

On May 17 the 28,000-strong Avar host met the 33,000 Western Romans on a large field northwest of Ulpiana, bounded by rivers which the Sclaveni had dubbed the ‘Sitnica’ and the ‘Lab’[12]. The flat expanse which comprised the battlefield gave both sides’ cavalry – in which the Avars still had a numerical advantage, though it had been mitigated by Romanus having supplied his son with two freshly raised caballarii formations amid the rest of the Roman reinforcements – plenty of space to maneuver and fight. In the initial exchange of missiles which occurred as both sides’ infantry and heavy cavalry were forming up, the Avars’ horse-archers were evenly matched by the Moorish federates in Roman service in skill but not in number, and drove the latter back with significant losses.

However, the Avars were in for a rude shock when they gave chase and began to skirmish with the Romans’ foot-archers, including the arcuballistarii. Following the Battle of Lissus, the sons of Carpilio had suggested the provision of scuta, manufactured in the style of the earlier imperial legions’ ‘tower’ shields rather than the round ones used by today’s legionaries, to their arcuballistarii, and Constans put his weight behind their plans. While not nearly enough such shields had been produced to outfit the whole of their crossbow corps in the relatively short time since that previous battle, enough had been made and transported either by ship or by the recovered Roman roads in Dalmatia to make an impact in this clash. The improved Roman crossbows’ greater draw weight made it possible for their wielders to more closely match the range and power of the Avars’ arrows than ever before, while those fortunate enough to be supplied with scuta found their biggest weakness – a lack of armor, save the occasional helmet, and longer loading and reloading times to worry about than their adversaries – neutralized.

Though no longer in use by the Roman infantry, the old tower-shield design of the scutum was recycled as a pavise and proved a lifesaver for those crossbowmen lucky enough to be supplied with one ahead of the Battle of the Dardanian Plains​

After the Avar horse-archers fell back, their ranks thinned by the losing exchange with the Roman crossbowmen, the main engagement began. Fulian had concentrated his cavalry on the left, intending to crush the Roman right head-on, while expecting the Slavic and Gepid infantry to tie down the rest of the Western Roman army long enough for him to roll them up after routing the Romans’ right wing. The Caesar accordingly massed his own horsemen into two large wedge formations and led them on a counter-charge supported by the legions, Franks and Burgundians assigned to the right wing, kicking off the most dramatic part of the Battle of the Dardanian Plain.

Twice did Fulian and Constans cross lances, and twice they were separated by the shifting tides of battle before one could decisively overcome and kill the other. They never got a chance to fight for a third time however, as their battle would be won in the center rather than on the right. While the Western Roman left successfully pushed back against the small Slavic contingent forming the Avar right, the center buckled when the Gepids and Sclaveni assaulting them were joined by Turkic heavy lancers previously held in the Avar reserve, and both Dux Ljudevit and Carpilio’s oldest son Ferreolus perished beneath their onslaught. Aemilian responded by leading the Romans’ own reserve, comprised of elite palatine legions and a detachment of Scholae from the imperial guard, into the fray, which proved sufficient to rout the Avar center. Seeing two-thirds of his army crumbling, Fulian himself withdrew soon after rather than attempt to force a foolhardy third match with the heir to the Western Roman Empire.

The survival of many of the Avar horsemen, who had fallen back in reasonably good order and would immediately go on to hinder the Roman pursuit in a series of rearguard actions, prevented the total destruction of the Khagan’s army that day. But the Battle of the Dardanian Plains was still unmistakeably the major Western Roman victory which Aemilian and Constans had sought, with the Avars losing more men – 9,000 out of 28,000, compared to about 6,000 out of 33,000 Romans – and Fulian decided to sue for peace at this point, aware that trying to continue the war not only risked even greater territorial losses but also put serious strain on his still-new and fragile hold on his father’s throne.

In their first unambiguous victory over the Avars, the Western Romans gained all the territories which they had retaken and held over the past four years: Dalmatia up to the Dravus and Drinus, the now-not-so-former province of Praevalitana, southern Dardania, northern Epirus, western Macedonia and Thessaly, creating an overland connection from Rome to Thessalonica and Athens. Avar exclaves persisted in the mountains of southern Epirus and Aetolia, comprised of Sclaveni who had dug in there and been reinforced by those among their fellows who fled the restoration of Roman rule in Macedonia and Thessaly rather than accept it. Ljudevit’s son Borut was confirmed as the new Dux of the Carantanians and rewarded with more land up to & including Aquae Iasae[13], while the Horites were settled in the rest of the Dalmatian hinterland – Radimir built a new capital for himself northwest of the ruins of Andautonia, near the new border with the Carantanians, and called it ‘Zagrab’ – and the Ostrogoths were awarded the coast and adjacent areas, as far as the remains of Ulcinium[14] and Diocleia. Macedonia and Greece, for their part, would now be populated by a mixture of Sclaveni settlers who acknowledged the rule of the Augustus and returning Greek refugees from Thessalonica and Athens.

The triumphant Horites taking a breather by the Savus, wher ethey would soon set about building their new capital, along with a Western Roman officer​

Though the victory was imperfect, for besides these exclaves the Avars still dominated in Pannonia, Moesia and Macedonia beyond the Axios River, it was enough to revitalize Western Roman morale after the battering they’d been through over the past twenty years. Aemilian and Constans were treated to a joint triumph upon returning to Rome, after which the magister militum returned to the March of Arbogast to fend off the Iazyges and Saxons before they got any bolder. As for the fifty-four-year-old emperor himself, Romanus died in his sleep exactly six months after his son (who was swiftly enthroned as Constans II before the year’s end) and generalissimo had prevailed on the Dardanian Fields: but he perished with the satisfaction of knowing that though he never expected nor had he prepared to take the purple, he rose to meet the many challenges of his thirty-year reign and guided the Western Roman Empire through both the Pelusian Plague and the Avar invasions with a steadier hand than even he had thought he’d be able to muster. Indeed, though the Western Augustus was usually a nervous and tightly-wound man owing to the many pressures he was under, virtually everyone who saw him (from the Augusta Frederica to the palace servants) between May and November of 570 noted that he seemed vastly less stressed than they could remember since his coronation, as if a great weight had finally been lifted off his shoulders shortly before his death.

In the Eastern Empire, Anthemius remained busy with the Samaritans, who had been racking up such great successes in his absence that even the Galilean Jews were increasingly tempted to join them, despite their historical rivalry. The Eastern Augustus put a stop to their winning streak and scored his first big victory over the insurgents in the Battle of Mount Carmel in April, where he had driven the rebels (previously prone to harassing Christian villages and attacking churches beneath the mountain) away from the lowlands and trapped them in an old fort on the slopes of the eponymous mountain, formerly built and used by the Essenes. Since the Samaritans spurned all offers to surrender and receive an imperial pardon, the Eastern Romans put all 3,000 of the rebels within to the sword after storming their fortress.

Anthemius pressed on against the Samaritans after Mount Carmel, and employed a divide-and-conquer strategy to play upon the ancient rivalry between them and the Jews as he did so. He met some success, bribing the Galilean Jews into abandoning all thought of aiding the Samaritans by relaxing taxes upon them for a five-year period (made possible by the influx of Turkic indemnities into his treasury), distributing gifts to their elders and selling provincial bureaucratic offices in Palaestina Secunda to them at lowered prices. Consequently, when the Romans finally laid siege to the Samaritan bastion at Neapolis late in 570, they did so without any Galileans threatening their rear and had even picked up a few Jewish auxiliaries hoping to pillage Samaritan lands.

East of Rome, the Hunas were stirring again. Baghayash had spent several years quietly resting, meditating and rebuilding his forces, and felt now would be a good time to strike once more into Karnataka. In the years since his earlier defeat, the alliance of the Carnatic kingdoms had broken down, with the Kadambas coming to blows against both the Chalukya and Ganga kingdoms. The Samrat led his army against the isolated Kadambas first – their position between the northern Chalukya and southern Ganga kingdoms meant that him overrunning their lands would also split the remaining two allies apart geographically – and crushed them over the last six months in 570, while the Chalukyas and Gangas focused on grabbing as much Kadamba territory as they could in the meantime. By the year’s end, Baghayash had achieved his initial objective and was making preparations to roll the two remaining kingdoms over separately, while the Kannada kings were aware of the danger they were now in and hoped to coordinate a joint counterattack into the former core of Kadamba territory to stop the ascendant Hunas.

In China, while the Liang began to push the Chu back in the southwest and achieved a major victory in the Battle of Jinxing in June, by far these events were overshadowed by explosive developments to the east and north. Firstly, Qi forces stormed the walls of Jiankang on June 30 (assisted by traitors within the Chen ranks who were dissatisfied with Empress Dowager Gou’s regime and feared their imminent demise at Qi hands enough to try to win favor with Emperor Xiaojing of Qi) and overcame the half-starved defenders in fierce street-to-street fighting which lasted eleven hours, burning large parts of the imperial capital down in the process.

The child-emperor Aiping and his court tried to flee down the Yangtze in a prepared boat, but Empress Dowager Gou had insisted on taking so much treasure with them that said boat sank near the river’s mouth when it was unexpectedly buffeted by a storm. This disastrous turn left the Chen dynasty’s remnants very dead – and some inquisitive local brigands & fishermen very wealthy when they investigated the wreck in the days and weeks to come. After a century-long reign, the Chen dynasty was now officially no more, and the Middle Kingdom’s future would be decided by one of the other contenders which had risen across the land instead. Of those, the Qi certainly seemed the likeliest to reunify China now, and Emperor Xiaojing had the additional satisfaction of knowing that he had avenged the outrages visited upon his family by the Chen with his latest victory as well.

Emperor Xiaojing of Qi is fêted in Jiankang after taking the city from the last of the Chen dynasty, toppling the latter altogether in the process​

Secondly, a major peasant uprising broke out behind Tegreg lines in July, sparked by the abuses inflicted upon the local Chinese populace of the northwestern provinces and the reality that neither the Qi (too busy with securing their hold in the east) and the Later Han (struggling to defend their own core territories) would be coming to save them sinking in. The former soldier Han Zheng rose to lead them, and was acclaimed as ‘Emperor Shenwu of Later Zhou’ by his followers immediately after liberating Liangzhou[15] and killing every Tegreg found there. The rise of Later Zhou – eighth and last of the Eight Dynasties who lent their name to this turbulent period of Chinese history – created a new headache for Issik Khagan, whose position in northwestern China was now even more unstable and vulnerable to encirclement, while further encouraging the Later Han to push the Turks even harder from the south.

While China fully realized its Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms era (though the 'Eight Dynasties' never did coexist altogether at the same time), Japan was not about to get left behind in the headlong rush into a renewed time-of-troubles. Having given his enemies a year to simmer down and think themselves safe, that he truly was going to let bygones be bygones and avoid further persecuting them, the Great King Heijō struck against the clans he deemed troublesome in the dead of 570’s winter. Two detachments of his finest and most reliable soldiers, commanded by promising officers from lesser families whose loyalty he did not doubt, fell upon the residences of the Yamanoue and the Kose both, decimating the two clans in a bloody purge.

The Great King did spare the children of these clans, including their new patriarchs: Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito, both under the age of ten. These were ferried back to Asuka, where Heijō treated them courteously (for a man who had just killed their parents, aunts and uncles) but never allowed them to forget that he was ultimately holding them hostage, and expected to be able to control them well into the future. He did not believe they could cause him any real trouble in the short term on account of their youth, so he would deploy the army he’d been quietly assembling at Asuka to cow the rest of the kabane into absolute obedience – as he planned to do over the next few months and years, now that he had expended the element of surprise on the largest and most obvious roadblocks to his centralist designs – and to set the Sun of the Yamato dynasty firmly above all Japan.

Heijō, the first historically attested Great King – and tyrant – of Japan​

Spoiler: Map of the known world, 570 AD

1. Western Roman Empire
2. Eastern Roman Empire
3. March of Arbogast
4. Franks
5. Burgundians
6. Alemanni
7. Bavarians
8. Thuringians
9. Lombards
10. Ostrogoths
11. Visigoths
12. Aquitani
13. Carantanians
14. Horites
15. Altava
16. Theveste
17. Romano-British
18. South Angles
19. North Angles
20. Britons of Alcluyd
21. Picts
22. Dál Riata
23. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta & Connachta
24. Frisians
25. Continental Saxons
26. Vistula Veneti
27. Antae
28. Iazyges
29. Avars
30. Gepids
31. Hoggar
32. Kumbi
33. Garamantes
34. Nubia
35. Aksum
36. Quraish & Yathrib
37. Caucasian kingdoms of Lazica, Iberia & Albania
38. Armenia
39. Padishkhwargar
40. Ghassanids
41. Lakhmids
42. Southern Turkic Khaganate
43. Northern Turkic Khaganate
44. Indo-Romans (nominally Eastern Roman subjects)
45. Tír na Beannachtaí
46. Hunas
47. Later Zhou
48. Later Han
49. Qin
50. Qi
51. Cheng
52. Chu
53. Minyue
54. Yi
55. Later Liang
56. Nanyue
57. Champa
58. Funan
59. Goguryeo
60. Southern Korean kingdoms of Baekje, Gaya & Silla
61. Yamato
62. Papar

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

[1] Osijek.

[2] Stari Slankamen.

[3] Khorramshahr.

[4] Now better-known as Guangdong.

[5] A very early Japanese sword, predating even the tachi (which in turn preceded the famous katana).

[6] Lebane, Serbia.

[7] The Morava River.

[8] Lezhë.

[9] Early Albanians of the Komani-Kruja culture. The most popular theory for their ethnogenesis is that they were the last extant descendants of the Illyrian tribes.

[10] Nablus.

[11] Nanning.

[12] Kosovo Field.

[13] Varaždinske Toplice.

[14] Ulcinj.

[15] Wuwei.

 

[Circle of Willis]

571 proved a peaceful year for the Western Roman Empire (barring a few border clashes with the Saxons and Iazyges), a much-welcome break from the constant (however well-handled) turmoil of Romanus II’s reign. Constans II soon proved to be a man more like his uncle and grandfather than his father: a confident and energetic sort who had already proven his mettle in battle, but whose true passion laid in glorious architectural projects – as well as the centralization and consolidation of imperial power into his hands. Both Stilichian ambitions, though carried by Constantine III and Theodosius III, fell by the wayside in the reign of Romanus II as the Western Romans were forced to prioritize their survival against the maelstrom of plague, internal unrest and Avar invasions battering them, but now that they had seemingly overcome those troubles, Constans was determined to pick up the torches which his father had dropped.

The new Augustus of the West had the wisdom to not immediately jump to firing Aemilian from his post, as his mother persistently counseled him to do, for fear that it would bathe his reign in an inaugural bloodbath. Instead, he took advantage of it being a warmer year than most of the past 35 had been – and consequently one with a relatively abundant harvest – to build goodwill shortly after his coronation with chariot races, gifts of bread & flour to the masses, and banquets for the Senate & the federate kings, who he kept unaware of his intentions. When old Pope Pelagius died in May, Constans saw him off with a suitably dignified funeral and sponsored the construction of a new tomb in the atrium of Saint Peter’s Basilica to serve as his final resting place, while also carefully engineering his first major political appointment-of-sorts: he leaned on every connection he could count on, from friendly clerics in Rome to the revitalized fan-clubs of the Red and White chariot-racing teams traditionally favored by the Stilichians, to sway the Roman people in favor of the archpriest Ioannes of the Basilica of Saint Sabina[1], an independent candidate unaffiliated with the Greens and Blues. At the same time, the emperor also leaked information that the Green candidate had tried to bribe him in an act of simony, while the Blue candidate’s reputation was damaged by rumors that he had celebrated Easter using the wrong calendar. Thus, when he accepted the Roman people’s election of the archpriest as Pope John I, he seemed magnanimous and uninvolved in the decision, which in any case was beyond the reproach of the other factions due to the discrediting of their own candidates.

The election of Pope John set the tone for Constans' reign: one of careful intrigues and maneuvers to increase imperial power, while also struggling mightily to avoid pushing either the Blues or Greens too hard as his uncle Theodosius III once had​

Constans also began his building programs quite modestly, committing to repairing everything from statues to bath-houses which had been damaged by the Avar incursion into northern Italy early in his father’s reign. However, he proposed the expansion of future construction & repair works into the realms of the federates at his banquets with increasing insistence, arguing that doing so would not only bring lasting glory to himself but also prosperity (and, of course, pleasing classical aesthetics) to the Roman lands now in barbarian hands. Secretly the Augustus hoped to not only impress and appease his federates with these projects, but also entice more Romans to move to their territories (particularly getting Illyro-Roman refugees to return to their forefathers’ homes, now in lands controlled by the Ostrogoths or Sclaveni) and create local nexuses of Roman citizens that he could count on to press against the barbarians from the bottom-up in case they caused him trouble, while also slipping his agents (in the guise of engineers and foremen) into their courts as advisors.

To the east, the Eastern Romans finally brought the siege of Neapolis to a successful conclusion on June 21. Anthemius had starved the defenders so severely that the surviving Samaritans were beginning to turn to cannibalism, at which point he decided it was time to storm the walls and finish them off before they could re-enact the deeds of the Zealots at Masada[2] on a larger scale. With a ram and siege towers the Romans and their allies broke into the city, putting any resisting Samaritan they found to the sword in a battle which (in itself a testament to the determination of the Samaritans) lasted five hours. The Eastern Caesar Arcadius (now a man of nineteen) first distinguished himself in this assault, being one of the first men off the first of his father's siege towers to reach the walls and the first to raise the labarum over Neapolis' battlements.

Having taken the city, the Eastern Augustus allowed his troops to pillage Neapolis and further ordered the enslavement of the non-Christian population as punishment for their stubborn defiance. He was more measured in his treatment of the remaining Samaritan resistance, who were now dispirited and leaderless after the fall of their provisional capital: once more he repeated his offer of pardon to any Samaritan who would turn himself and his weapons in to the Roman authorities. That said, for having caused the Eastern Empire so much trouble over so many decades, Anthemius also levied additional punishments by banning them from living in any city other than Sebastia[3] and imposing a stiff tax on any Samaritan who wished to worship on their holiest site, Mount Gerizim – where they additionally had to tolerate the continued presence of a Christian church[4]. The first of the collected indemnities were used to fortify that very church, to better protect it against any mob of angry Samaritan pilgrims, as well as to repair others damaged or destroyed by the Samaritans in their initial offensive. It was the emperor’s hope that this treatment would be enough to put a stop to such rebellions in the future, a hope which more hard-line elements among the Eastern Roman officer corps and clergy thought to be vain.

From left to right: the Eastern Caesar Arcadius, a signifer of the elite Excubitores, and the prematurely-aged Flavius Anthemius Augustus Tertius standing victorious in the hills of Samaria​

East of Rome, the Samrat Baghayash moved against the northern Chalukyas early in the spring, hoping to sweep them off the board altogether before they could coordinate a counteroffensive against his army in Karnataka with their Ganga allies. In this endeavor, things did not proceed entirely according to plan: the Hunas did manage to defeat the Chalukya army in the field, but never decisively, and their royal court was able to flee their capital of Vatapi[5] with most of their subjects ahead of Baghayash’s capture of the city. The arrival of the monsoon season in June & July ground the Huna onslaught to a halt, and once the heavy rains lifted in October the Samrat was forced to turn away to deal with a major Ganga incursion into his southern flank, allowing the Chalukyas to retake their capital and wipe out the garrison he had installed toward the end of 571.

Further to the northeast, over the Himalayan Mountains, China as a whole was beginning to gain reprieve from the Northern Turks. Under heavy pressure from both the Later Han to their front and the newly-risen Later Zhou to their rear, Issik Khagan spent the spring and summer executing a great retreat from western China, abandoning his remaining conquests in the area and whatever chance he might still have had at knocking the former out of the war to avoid encirclement. His withdrawal briefly took him into Qi territory, where his warriors avoided the fortified cities but despoiled the countryside to sustain themselves – much to the annoyance of Emperor Xiaojing, who found the Turkic incursion an unwelcome interruption of the festivities following his elevation of his dynasty to the Great Qi in Jiankang.

In the autumn the Turks fought their way into the Hexi Corridor – now controlled by the Later Zhou – to return to their homeland: they succeeded at that but nothing more, sustaining grievous casualties (Issik himself was injured by a Chinese crossbow bolt to the shoulder) and managing to limp back home in fragmented groups. Not only had Emperor Shenwu of Later Zhou managed to survive the Tegregs’ wrath, but their losses were so high that the Chinese would not have to fear another Turkic attack for at least another decade. All in all, Issik’s first adventure into China had ended nearly as poorly as his brother’s into Roman Mesopotamia: his only lasting success lay in the Turkic breaching of the Great Wall and conquest of several northeastern territories around it, from which the Great Qi (busy consolidating their new conquests in the south and increasingly mired in skirmishes with the Minyue and Chu) had yet to expel them.

The Northern Turks eventually succeeded in cutting their way past Later Zhou efforts to trap them in front of the Hexi Corridor, but only at a great cost to themselves​

Over the seas, Heijō wasted no time in moving against his remaining rivals among the kabane. He struck westward from the Kinai region with his well-prepared army, bowling over the magnates of the western provinces who were still in shock from his successful decapitation strikes against the Kose and Yamanoue clans: those who did not submit swiftly and give him hostages, he treated much in the same way, and often before they could amass enough armed retainers to even slow him down. The Great King encountered serious resistance chiefly from the Kibi clans of Izumo, but he shattered their outnumbered force at the Battle of Tonbara[6]. By September, his lieutenants had crossed over into Shikoku and Kyushu to compel the submission of the magnates there, increasingly returning to Honshu with hostages from the clans which bowed – and plunder from those which refused to do so.

When the spring of 572 dawned, it did so over a still-peaceful Western Roman Empire. Constans continued to busy himself with internal affairs and the further improvement of his army, which in this year meant the provision of ever-more scuta to his crossbowmen – the increased odds of survival that the shielded crossbowmen (or arcuballistarii scutarii) enjoyed at the Battle of the Dardanian Plains, compared to their less fortune unshielded comrades, was impossible to ignore. He also appointed Honestus to the rank of Comes Illyrici, intending on making his brother-in-law into the first of a core of high-ranking military officers who he could be assured were loyal to him above (and ideally entirely to the exclusion of) the Green and Blue cliques.

Instead, the main bout of violence in Western Europe this year came from Britain. Now it was the South Angles’ turn to go on the warpath: their king Æþelric perished shortly after the end of winter, and his son & successor Æþelhere was eager to start his reign with a glorious war of conquest. Within a few months of his coronation, the new king launched an attack on the Romano-British kingdom to his south, which was still led by a now-greatly-aged and increasingly ailing Riothamus Constantine. Through a clerical Anglo-Saxon mission to Rome he reported not only the pace of Christianization of his kingdom but also his decidedly optimistic assessment of his prospects in the war, which persuaded Constans to send a small force led by the military count Jovinus – 1,000 crossbowmen and 200 horsemen, mostly to see how they would fare against a different and non-nomadic foe in the Romano-British – by sea to assist the English war-host.

The refined British strategy, in turn, was to withdraw their vulnerable civilian populations (with all the supplies they could carry, naturally) to increasingly well-fortified castellae as the English advanced – thereby forcing Æþelhere to either detach elements of his larger army to besiege each fort he came across or risk having his rear needled by their garrisons. This gambit of Constantine’s worked well to reduce the strength of the main English army and buy time for him to organize his own, considerably evening the odds for his core legions and the aristocratic forces he was able to call up to support them, ultimately leading to his successful repulsion of Æþelhere in the Battle of Verulamium that September.

When it came to fort-building, the Romano-Britons still adhered to the standards of their forefathers as best they could. Consequently their castellae and castra consistently proved very difficult for the English to take, especially the ones fortified with stone rather than wood​

However Constantine’s success did not come without a cost, as secondary English detachments were able to scour much of Icenia in the meantime and even threatened Camulodunum toward the year’s end. The Western Roman contingent’s crossbows gave the heavy British cavalry and infantry a nasty shock and would probably have cost them the battle if Æþelhere had requested more such men, much to his frustration. Constans however was satisfied by their performance, and in his report back to Rome Jovinus correctly identified weaknesses in the crossbow’s shorter range and longer reloading time compared to the longbows preferred by their British adversaries, reinforcing the importance of providing them with scuta.

Elsewhere, while the Eastern Romans were enjoying a restoration of peace between the defeat of the Samaritans last year and the surrender of most of the Nestorian insurgents trapped in the Mesopotamian Marshes in this one, the Hunas were still busy bringing war to the Carnatic kingdoms. Baghayash engaged the Ganga army in the Battle of Surabhipura[7] early in the year and prevailed there, overcoming the obsolete and inexperienced Ganga forces despite the terrain advantage conferred upon them by the Dandavati River coursing through the battlefield; but his pursuit was hindered by the Kyanasur Forest, where stronger elements of the Ganga host rallied and turned to ambush the Hunas.

Though these sporadic counterattacks only irritated and slowed down the larger Huna army rather than turn the tables on them altogether, Baghayash was forced to break off his counterattack against the Gangas altogether after being warned by his rearward garrisons and scouts that the Chalukya were now advancing on him. Since the Gangas had managed to escape his fury relatively intact and were clearly rallying for another round, the Samrat prudently decided to retreat and spend the rest of the year amassing reinforcements rather than risk getting caught in a pincer attack. This gave time for the Chalukyas and Gangas to unite their own armies, certainly, but he had taken his measure of both and found them wanting in an all-out clash: Baghayash expected to engage and crush them both in a decisive battle or two next year, thereby allowing him to impose his yoke on all Karnataka without getting bogged down in any further silly cat-and-mouse games.

In China, Emperor Xiaojing of Great Qi sent a modest expeditionary force northward to drive the Tegregs out of the lands belonging to him which they still occupied, intent on bringing the bulk of his strength to bear against Chu. However, far from spending most of their time fighting the Turks, his northern detachment ended up battling the Goguryeo instead, for the northern Korean kingdom took this opportunity to attack the Qi’s remaining holdings around the Liao River. In the time it took for these reinforcements to turn around, they seized the double cities of Xuantucheng & Gaimoucheng[8] and destroyed most of the Qi garrisons east of the Liao, driving the survivors toward Sanshan[9] where the latter were able to huddle behind the stronger town walls and receive supplies by sea to hold out against their besiegers.

Goguryeo cavalry descending upon the outnumbered and surprised Qi defenders of northeastern China​

South of the Yangtze, the Chu were facing trouble in almost every direction: the Liang were pushing them back from the southeast, the Cheng were invading their western territories, the Yi raided their southwestern border and now the Qi were attacking from the east. Their only relief was that the Later Han didn’t also add to the dogpile by attacking them from the north, for Emperor Wucheng was doubtless still angry over the Qi practically abandoning him in the war against the Turks.

Against this massive pile-up of threats, Emperor Yang frantically raced to first halt the Liang counterattack in the Battle of Guizhou[10] while also dispatching reinforcements to fend off Yi raiders, then spent the summer struggling to hold back the Cheng – preventing them from marching on his capital at Changsha, though he couldn’t keep Jiangzhou[11] out of their hands. With that done and the vengeful Cheng army knocked back on its heels by August, he hurried eastward to beat back the Qi offensive as autumn and winter set in. Thanks to the severely embattled emperor having pushed himself & his men to their utter limit and achieving several hard-fought victories, Chu was still (barely) standing by the end of 572, although Yang found himself forced into unfavorable negotiations with Emperors Xiaojing of Great Qi and Shang of Liang anyway.

Across the Tsushima Strait, the Great King Heijō set about imposing his long-desired reforms on the lands of the Yamato. Chiefly he monopolized most kabane offices within the Yamato clan, appointing his various cousins kuni-no-miyatsuko (local governor) of numerous small fiefdoms throughout the land so that they might supervise and if need be, undermine the established clans which had bowed (or been made to bow) before last year’s offensives. Almost as importantly, he also awarded the title of sukune (military commander) exclusively to unlanded kin of his or officials from lesser families who had nevertheless demonstrated unwavering faith toward the royalist cause.

Although generally accepted at the time out of shock and fear of his loyal army, Heijō’s choices would prove short-sighted – and increasingly disastrous – over the next years. By selecting his appointees based solely on their loyalty and blood ties to himself, he quickly saddled Japan with a surfeit of new officials & nobles who were more often than not corrupt, oppressive and/or inept (if nothing else, due to being thrust into roles in which they had little to no prior experience or training), prone to extracting even more than the already-heavy taxes he assigned to them (necessary to sustain his large core army) so they could skim some rice and valuables off the top for themselves and to harshly overreact to any signs of resistance. Thus, the Great King’s heavy-handed efforts to suppress resentful opposition to his rule among the provinces would ironically contribute to a groundswell of it instead. Worse still, some of his extended Yamato kin harbored ambitions of their own and were more independent-minded than he would’ve liked – and now he had inadvertantly given them power-bases of their own to cultivate.

The early 570s heralded the dawn of Heijō's reign of terror, a period considered to have been a dark age for Japan even by the majority of Yamato loyalists in later times​

In 573, all eyes in the West moved back onto Britannia once the winter snows began to clear. Constans provided his English ally with additional reinforcements, including trained engineers and sappers; however not all of these were able to reach English-occupied Branodunum[12], as several of their ships were lost in a storm soon after departing Gaul and more were sunk by the Romano-British fleet in the Battle off the White Cliffs. Although that battle was overall a defeat for the Western Romans, enough of their vessels managed to escape and continue northward to dock at their intended destination, including the ones bearing the majority of the Roman engineers. These men covered one of the Anglo-Saxons’ principal weaknesses – siege engineering – and helped them capture Camulodunum by storm in mid-summer, where they oversaw the construction of siege towers which the English went to use to overcome the city’s Roman walls.

The loss of the Pendragon dynasty’s birthplace was a grievous affront which the Riothamus had to answer, forcing Constantine of Britannia to depart from Londinium with nearly the full strength of his kingdom – 11,000 men – to engage Æþelhere’s army of 14,000 (including about 2,500 Western Romans under Jovinus) near Caesaromagus[13] that July. In an immense stroke of luck for Constantine, a sudden rainstorm descended upon the battlefield while both sides were arraying for combat: his own archers could (and did) simply unstring their bows while waiting for the rain to let up, but the Western Roman arcuballistarii were not so fortunate, and many of their crossbows were taken out of commission by water damage to the sinew bowstrings.

Unwilling to retreat and risk being branded a coward just one year into his reign, Æþelhere remained committed to the fight even without the majority of Jovinus’ crossbowmen. Consequently, the Anglo-Romans got the worst of the initial exchange of missiles, and the heavier British troops were able to close in for the melee without having to fear the armor-piercing bolts of the arcuballistarii at close range. The English infantry still acquitted themselves well, as did Æþelhere himself – he dueled Constantine’s heir, King Maximus of Dumnonia, and eventually slew him with an ax-blow to the head – but the battle was decided by the victory of the British cavalry under Constantine’s personal command over the Anglo-Romans, who were sorely missing the additional Roman horsemen who had been sunk with their transports in the Battle off the White Cliffs months earlier. The English were forced to fall back under threat of encirclement, leaving Camulodunum’s skeleton garrison trapped under siege by the victorious Romano-British in the process, and Jovinus was injured in a rearguard action days after the battle.

Wax sculpture of an early British longbowman of the sixth century, of the sort that Constantine I of Britannia would have fielded at the Battle of Caesaromagus. That battle demonstrated the strengths of their weapon, picked up from their Cambrian auxiliaries, and the limitations of the crossbow increasingly favored by the continental Romans​

Fortunately for the Anglo-Roman allies, the death of Constantine’s son left a deep crack in his heart and also threw the line of succession into confusion: Maximus had left behind an eleven-year-old son of his own, Artorius, who Constantine now favored to succeed him, but the Riothamus also had other sons and sons-in-law who were sure to contest their underage nephew’s claim if their elderly father/father-in-law were to perish before he came of age (and quite possibly even if he were of age to rule in his own right). He sued for terms in August and came to an agreement with Æþelhere & Jovinus, ceding Icenia[14] to the South Angles in exchange for the return of Camulodunum and the betrothal of Arviragus to the English king’s own daughter Beorhtflæd. Thus could Æþelhere still claim victory, albeit of a far more limited sort than he had originally hoped for, and send his allies home with some satisfaction, though they had both been humbled in this war’s final battle.

It took Jovinus until November to heal from his wounds in Lincylene and return to Rome, in which time the Empress Dowager successfully pressured her son to appoint Green-aligned Senators to the recently-vacated high offices of magister officiorum and quaestor sacrii palatii. His final after-action reports convinced Constans of the necessity of both maintaining a large number of sagitarii armed with conventional bows, rather than outfitting most or all of his missile troops with crossbows, and of manufacturing oiled-leather bowstrings for the arcuballistarii which could better withstand any sudden rains. As a reward the Augustus deigned to grant him the honor of Consulship for the year 574, alongside the young Visigoth king Hermenegild.

Far to the east, Baghayash’s conflict with the Carnatic kingdoms was approaching its climax. Reinforcements from northern India and his new conquests in Andhra had swelled the size of his host to nearly 70,000 men, though his rapidly-inflated ranks were also now much more fractious than before, with many of the Indian lords (especially the Andhrans who had only reluctantly begun to accept his rule) holding little love for him and even less for any orders he or his subordinate Huna rajas might give them. Against this formidable (at least on paper) horde, the Chalukyas and Gangas presented their full combined strength – 40,000 men, outnumbered nearly 2:1 by the Hunas but much more unified and eager to fight in defense of their homelands.

Once Baghayash resumed his offensive, targeting the lands of the Gangas first, Rajas Vishnuvardhana of the Chalukya and Harivarma II of the Ganga awaited him in the Western Ghats and managed to engage the Hunas beneath Mount Brahmagiri. The Indian allies had occupied highly advantageous terrain, further leveling the playing field between their armies and that of the Samrat; but though his Indian advisors counseled retreat, Baghayash was undeterred. While drawing up his army for battle he even placed his heir, the sixteen-year-old Mahasenapati Harsha, in the Huna vanguard, apparently under the belief that the boy should prove himself a man worthy of carrying the Hephthal dynasty’s legacy into the future or die and make way for another son who can.

Harsha, the young Mahasenapati of the Hunas, grimly accepting his father's order to fight in the vanguard on the morning of the Battle of Brahmagiri​

Though the Indians on Brahmagiri’s ridge had a comfortable place from which to loose their arrows upon the Hunas below, the latter’s more numerous archers were assisted by a strong gale which blew into the Indians’ faces and the steel bows wielded by the elite elements among their ranks, keeping the exchange of missiles between the two armies from becoming lopsided in the allies’ favor. Harsha’s vanguard advanced beneath the cover of their side’s arrows, but were fiercely rebuffed by the Kannada infantry and pushed back downhill early in the fighting. Some of the Indians gave chase, but were rudely shocked when Harsha managed to rally his troops and turned around to annihilate them on the low ground with the help of other surging Indo-Hunnic contingents, much to his father’s satisfaction.

Following these early (but quite sanguinary) clashes, the Kannada kings resolved to remain on the mountain and fight defensively until they could be absolutely sure that they had gained an overwhelming advantage over their opponents. For his part, Baghayash considered his son’s turnaround to be a sign of victory and weighed withdrawing to find more favorable ground to fight on at this point, but ultimately decided that the opportunity to destroy the Chalukyas and Gangas here and now was too great to forsake. The Hunas launched several fruitless attacks on the allied lines throughout the day, and after beating back the sixth such assault Vishnuvardhana and Harivarma finally decided it was time they counterattacked.

Instead of an undisciplined, piecemeal attack which could be easily overwhelmed (as Harsha’s pursuers were earlier), the entire Kannada host descended from Brahmagiri in a furious downhill assault which routed much of the Huna army, especially its Indian contingents. Their victory seemed imminent at this point, but Baghayash personally waded into the fighting with his reserves and trump card – a force of sixty war elephants – to hold back their onslaught, eventually turning the tables once Harsha and his other generals beat his routing men back into line and scattering the Kannada toward twilight. The allies had lost 10,000 men and killed nearly twice as many Hunas before being defeated, but with his far larger empire & population the Samrat was better able to absorb the loss of a quarter of his army than his enemies were. The two kings withdrew to the summit of Brahmagiri, where they expected to have to mount a last stand and go out in a blaze of glory no later than the next morning, but were surprised when Baghayash offered terms at sunrise instead of trying to finish them off.

On the ropes in the final stage of the Battle of Brahmagiri with much of his army on the precipice of disintegration, Baghayash nevertheless managed to turn the tables on the Kannada kings by deploying his powerful reserve​

In acknowledgement of their valor and to avoid further needless bloodshed when he would rather preserve his remaining strength to assail the Tamil kingdoms instead, the Samrat declared his willingness to allow Vishnuvardhana and Harivarma to not only live but to also continue to govern their ancestral lands, in exchange for a healthy tribute; recognition of his suzerainty over them; and the installation of modest Huna garrisons in their capitals. Believing that these were the best possible terms they could have gotten for themselves and their people under the circumstances, the two kings accepted, securing Huna overlordship across Karnataka after a much more challenging war than the one against the Vishnukundinas and freeing Baghayash up to turn his attention to the subcontinent’s southernmost tip.

North of India, there was trouble stirring in the lands of the Turks. Having failed to secure more than the most marginal of conquests in China, Issik Khagan faced a challenge from several tribes within his confederacy in the spring of 573, spearheaded by the Göktürks. His loyal Tegregs managed to swat these upstarts down in the Battle of the Plain of Mubalik[14], but the Khagan understood that he had to do something to shore up his position and restore his followers’ faith in him very soon or face other, likely more successful rebellions against his rule. To that end he began to lead his warriors westward, assailing the lands of independent Turkic tribes such as the Onogurs and later the Slavic Antae, and eventually reaching the northeastern shores of the Euxine Sea; but though these conquests afforded the Northern Turks new grazing lands, tributaries and slaves, they were insufficiently glorious to restore the Turks’ confidence in him. Accordingly Issik next prepared to challenge his brother for control over the latter’s half of the Tarim Basin and the profits of the Silk Road, putting the two Turkic Khaganates on a collision course with one another.

Issik Khagan out hunting on the Pontic shore with several of his new westernmost vassals: the chiefs of peoples such as the Oghurs, Onogurs, and Khazars​

East of them both, Emperor Yang of Chu reached terms with the Liang and Great Qi, paying indemnities to the former for having invaded their territories first and ceding land as far as Wuchang[15] to the latter for peace. With that done and the Qi armies redirected to drive the Koreans out of their northeastern domains, Yang could now turn his full attention to his one remaining active front with the Cheng. There he achieved considerable success, recapturing Jiangzhou and successfully defending it against Emperor Zhi’s army in a great battle before its gates in July. Though he lacked the strength to completely push the Cheng out of his lands and had to acknowledge as much in the peace treaty he would sign near the year’s end, Yang’s victory here ensured the Chu would survive past 573, despite his earlier mistakes in making enemies out of most of his neighbors.

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[1] Also known by its modern Italian name Santa Sabina, this historic basilica is located on the Aventine Hill and has famously come to serve as the mother-church of the Dominican friars.

[2] A Jewish mountain fortress in the eastern Judean Desert. It was the site of the famous last stand of nearly a thousand Zealot rebels and their kindred during the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73, where they committed mass suicide (leaving only two women and their children alive in a cistern) just as Roman engineers were about to overcome their previously-impregnable defenses.

[3] The city of Samaria, not to be confused with the region as a whole.

[4] The Samaritans have still gotten off more lightly than they did following their last failed rebellions against the Byzantines IOTL – Justinian outlawed Samaritanism and killed hundreds of thousands of Samaritans in response to major uprisings in 529-531 and 556, and the last revolts in the 570s seem to have resulted in such a thorough genocide of the Samaritans that they were rendered a non-factor in the region (after which they have continued to dwindle until today).

[5] Badami.

[6] Now part of Iinan.

[7] Soraba.

[8] Now united as Shenyang.

[9] Dalian.

[10] Guilin.

[11] Chongqing.

[12] Brancaster.

[13] Chelmsford.

[14] Ordu-Baliq.

[15] Now part of Wuhan.

To answer some of the previous queries:

@Butch R. Mann Constans' situation is going to be a complicated one, though not as challenging as the one his father had to navigate (at least, not yet), as I hoped to shed some light on in this chapter. He's certainly more favorably inclined toward Frederica and the Greens than he is toward Aemilian and the Blues, but he also has no desire to become their puppet, and will probably spend much of his reign trying to walk the tightrope of undermining factional influence and centralizing the WRE without sparking a civil war. If it does come to violence though, he's already shown signs of preferring to back up the Greens over the Blues.

@stevep At present, Constantinople has too much value (economically, politically, sentimentally) for the Sabbatic dynasty to want to leave it. If they manage to maintain their current borders and decide to move their court elsewhere down the road though, I think Antioch would probably make the most sense for a new capital.

@gral Yes.

@ATP Oops, didn't see your edit until I returned to this thread to start finalizing today's update. Per the last couple of maps, the Iazyges have moved into an area including modern-day Lesser Poland/Malopolska after deserting the WRE in the face of the initial Avar invasion ~25 years ago, and have since set themselves up as the overlords of the local Slavs (who Roman geographers would probably classify among the Vistula Veneti tribes). Good chance Krakow would be around as one of the small Slavic strongholds under their suzerainty at this time. The Western Romans would love to punish them for their treachery, but distance and the continued existence of greater threats like the Avars (who also pose a danger to Iazyges) and Saxons will probably keep them from doing so themselves. So if the Iazyges are brought down in the future, it will more likely be at the hands of the Avars or a proto-Polish rebellion rather than a Western Roman expeditionary force.

 

[Circle of Willis]

The middle of the 570s was a generally peaceful time in the Roman world, but not an entirely uneventful one: Hermenegild of the Visigoths, who had been raised at the imperial court in Rome itself and was made Consul this year alongside the military count Jovinus, promulgated a new legal code heavily based on the Corpus Iuris Civilis in the summer of 574. Dubbed the Codex Visigothorum (‘Code of the Visigoths’), the new laws of the kingdom notably abolished all remaining legal distinctions between the Visigoths and their Hispano-Roman subjects and neighbors; incorporated the Corpus’ more humane legislation on women and slaves; and mandated the emancipation of Christian slaves owned by Jews, while imposing a new head-tax on the Judaic community in Gothic Hispania in an effort to induce conversions[1]. Though Hermenegild was less outwardly brutal toward the Jews than his father Fritigern had been, evidently the apple had not fallen all that far from the tree.

While Constans was pleased that the the cultural assimilation of the Visigoths (who after all were the oldest of the West’s foederati) into Romanitas was now more or less complete with the promulgation of this new law code, the Codex Visigothorum did raise two pressing issues. First and most obviously, although the Visigoths were now virtually indistinguishable from Hispano-Romans, they still retained significant political autonomy (as represented by the sustained rule of the Balthing kings and the Visigothic nobility in their lands) which their adoption of much of Roman law did little to undermine. Second and even more urgent, although the Codex incorporated many aspects of canon law and the Corpus’ insistence that being an Ephesian Christian was necessary to enjoy the full protection of the law (among other benefits of citizenship), it also sought to empower the Hispanic bishops who were now more involved than ever in the daily affairs of the kingdom.

These privileges Hermenegild believed should be within his power as an autonomous king, and a just reward for the Visigoths’ century of able service as part of the Western Roman army (periodic disastrous defeats and rebellions aside). The question of whether a federate king should have the ability to call synods and appoint bishops within his borders, without consulting the Emperor or the Patriarch under whose authority his kingdom’s clerics fell – in other words, whether the federates should have their own autocephalous ('self-headed') church within the greater Ephesian framework – was raised for the first (and certainly not the last) time in Roman history.

Although he certainly harbored centralist intentions, the Western Augustus was pragmatic enough to call an ecumenical council in Rome to answer the Hispanic Church’s question and offer up a bare minimum of concessions to Hermenegild rather than bluntly rebuff the king: he had no desire to provoke a conflict which could give the Avars an opening so soon after having just scored a major Roman victory over them. Since Hispania had no tradition of autocephaly – quite unlike the Cypriot Church, whose independence from the Antiochene Patriarchate was confirmed in the First Council of Ephesus – the entire Heptarchy (even the See of Constantinople, which initially favored granting the Hispanic Church autocephaly to undermine Rome) favored Rome’s position that the Hispanic bishops should remain under its authority and that though Hermenegild and his heirs could recommend episcopal candidates within his borders, the Emperor and the Pope still had the final say in their appointment. The support both Constans and Anthemius expressed for the Heptarchs’ decision ensured that Hispania would not be elevated to autocephalous status anytime soon.

A fresco in the Domus Laterani/Lateran Palace, where the Lateran Council to decide matters of autocephaly and autonomy in the federate kingdoms (itself actually only the first of several Lateran Councils) was held, which was finished early in the reign of Constans II​

However, this Lateran Council was not a total loss for the Visigoths: in acknowledgment of the Visigoths’ embrace of Ephesian Christianity and deep steeping in Roman customs over the past century & a half, the Heptarchy also afforded the Hispanic Church a degree of autonomy from its Roman mother-church. The Archbishop of Toletum was recognized as the Primate (first & highest-ranking prelate) of Hispania, and Hermenegild’s authority to call synods regulating affairs within his kingdom was recognized, so long as the laws they established did not contradict general Ephesian doctrine of course[2]. In effect, the Visigoth kingdom now enjoyed a measure of official ecclesiastical and legal autonomy from the Roman Empire and the Church, although in that regard the council’s immediate and obvious effects were limited to the preservation of a few aspects of Germanic law (such as sanctioning judicial duels) within the Codex Visigothorum and making life for Jews harder in Visigothia than anywhere else in the Western Roman Empire.

A faithful Ephesian and among the most Roman of Visigoths, Hermenegild accepted the Lateran Council’s rulings in the winter, although he would continue to try to widen the Hispanic Church’s autonomy for some time to come. The Lateran Council itself did not conclude after reaching a decision on the status of the Hispanic Church, and would instead drag out for two more years: the Ephesian leadership decided that these peaceful years, when they were already assembled in one place, would be a good time to sort out the greater question of who had the authority to grant a codex, or ‘tomos’ in Greek, of autocephaly/autonomy. The Gothic king’s example would inspire other federate rulers to seek similar status, starting with the recently-enthroned Frankish king Clovis II who (much like Hermenegild) believed that his people’s major contributions to the Western Roman Empire’s various campaigns over the past century meant that there was no way the Emperor and Church could rightly refuse his requests.

A statue of King Hermenegild, who is revered by the descendants of the Visigoths for striving to balance his personal Christian zeal and adherence to civilized ways with preserving a healthy measure of self-governance in western Hispania​

Further to the east, Anthemius III had to deal with a peacetime matter among his own vassals. The Laz king Bakur (Pacorus) III perished from a chill in February of this year, and as he had no sons who survived into adulthood, the Lazic succession was immediately contested between the husbands of his daughters: Iberia’s king Mirian IV claimed his crown by right of primogeniture, for his wife Elene was the elder daughter, but the powerful magnate Archil of Phasis[3] cast aspersions upon the latter’s paternity and claimed the Lazic throne through his marriage to Salome, the younger princess. Archil appealed to Anthemius to judge the matter himself, but Mirian and the Iberians pre-empted any decision in Constantinople by invading Lazica in May and seizing the royal capital of Archaeopolis[4].

Presented with this fait accompli and reluctant to shed any more blood without pressing need after the numerous wars that immediately followed his grandfather’s death, the Eastern Augustus agreed to acknowledge Mirian as king over all the folk of Kartlos[5] in exchange for the doubling of tributary payments for the rest of the decade, and bribed Archil with both the position of sacellarius (state treasurer of the East) at court and a palatial estate in Chersonesus. While the newly united Caucasian realm was called ‘Sakartvelo’ in the tongue of the Kartlians, it soon became better-known abroad as ‘Georgia’ owing to Mirian’s zealous patronage of Saint George, after whom he had named his & Elene’s eldest son and in whose honor he would eventually build 365 churches across his unified kingdom – one for each day in the year.

As a result of the greater Kartlian kingdom's dedication to Saint George under Mirian IV/I and his successors, the dragon-slaying saint lent his name to the entire country​

While Anthemius was dealing with his Caucasian vassals and Issik Khagan was in the middle of moving forces from his realm’s northwestern frontier to the border with his brother, Baghayash was already racing off to secure new conquests in southern India. At first he had a deceptively easy time toppling the nominal hegemon of Tamilakam, the Kalabhra dynasty, which had been declining for over a century by the time he kicked their rotting door in. With just those forces which had survived the Battle of Brahmagiri the Hunas destroyed the Kalabhra army in the Battle of Kodumanam[6] in May of this year, after which their Mahārāja Karunandan surrendered without further delay and was taken prisoner (but nonetheless treated courteously) all the way up north to Indraprastha.

But as it turned out, this was only the beginning of the Huna-Tamil conflict. As with the Kannada, the Samrat next faced a triumvirate of Tamil kings in his push to the tip of the Indian subcontinent: the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas – so called the Muvendhar, or ‘Three Crowned Kings’, of Tamilakam, who had been increasingly loosely bound beneath Kalabhra rule until he helpfully eliminated their overlord. They had never been subjugated by an outsider, not even by the Mauryas at the height of their power, and evidently had little desire to bend their knees now before the Hunas when the Samrat first sent emissaries demanding submission to their palaces.

After almost effortlessly crushing the Kalabhras, Baghayash moved on to besiege Karur, the ancient seat of the Cheras. He was mistaken in his initial assumptions that the Muvendhar would be as easy to subdue as their former master and that the monsoon season would deter them from campaigning, however; for the Pandyas and Cholas had observed the manner in which the Carnatic kings were brought low by the Hunas, then the rapidity with which their former suzerain was toppled, and now hurried to the relief of their neighbor. The Tamils converged upon the Huna siege camp on a dark and stormy July night, attacking under conditions which prevented the northern invaders from utilizing their primary strengths – their bows and horses – and, coupled with the Chera forces sallying from Karur’s gates after the night sentries on the city wall reported signs of battle to their king Thennavan, routed the army of the Samrat. Baghayash himself would have been killed or captured were it not for the valor of his son Harsha, who helped him fight his way out of the increasingly disastrous battle before the Hunas' situation became untenable. As he had after his initial defeat in Karnataka, a seething Baghayash withdrew to the north and (far from being humbled by this battlefield rebuke) immediately began to prepare for a second assault on the last of the surviving Dravidian kingdoms to defy him.

Backed by the element of surprise and a heavy downpour from above, the Tamil alliance was able to scatter Baghayash's larger host and put his pan-Indian ambitions on pause in the Battle of Karur​

Finally, to the east of India, the victories of the Later Han & Later Zhou over the Turks in the north and the Chu’s success in fending off their various neighbors in the south brought to most of China a brief respite from the violence common to the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms period. Only in the northeast did the flames of war continue to burn, as the Great Qi furiously fought to repel Goguryeo from their territories around the Liao River. In this year, Emperor Xiaojing’s armies broke the Korean enemy’s siege of Sanshan in the spring and steadily drove the Goguryeo back toward the Yalu River over the course of the summer & autumn, culminating in a decisive Qi victory in the Battle of Posuo[7] at the end of September. King Yeongnyu of Goguryeo was slain in this battle, and his son Yeongyang sued for peace immediately afterward; however the vindictive Emperor Xiaojing felt he was on the precipice of a total victory, and spurning the advice of his councilors to simply restore the northern Korean kingdom’s traditional vassalage beneath Chinese rule and to collect hostages & tribute, he chose to instead cross the Yalu & finish Goguryeo off.

575 dawned on the Lateran Council’s attendees before they knew it. The church council first and foremost tried to grapple with the question of where the power to grant autonomy and autocephaly lay: did it lie with the individual Heptarchs, or with a general ecumenical council? Pope John advocated the former course, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Elias of Jerusalem and Thaddeus of Babylon, citing the need to respond quickly if additional federates were to approach him with a request for autonomy or even autocephaly; however Patriarch Raziel of Antioch, whose see hqad been forced to recognize Cyprus’ autocephaly by nothing less than an ecumenical council, led the charge in favor of the latter position, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Theodosius of Constantinople, Aaron of Alexandria and Samaritanus of Carthage on grounds ranging from simply upholding tradition to keeping the Heptarchy and the greater body of Christian believers balanced. In the end, the Lateran Council could not reach a decision in this year and agreed to continue debating the issue into 576.

The Lateran Council did make real progress on the other question its attending prelates had to answer, however. Clovis II’s request was not granted in full, much as Hermenegild’s had not been, but a concession was made – not just to appease him and the Blues in general, but to also pre-empt any desire for legal and ecclesiastic autonomy on the part of the Burgundians as well – with the elevation of Aegidius, Archbishop of Lugdunum and kinsman to the Syagrii clan which counted his namesake among its most illustrious forebears, to become the first ‘Primate of the Gauls’[8], referring to the three traditional Gallic provinces of Lugdunensis (now effectively administered entirely by the Franks and Burgundians), Aquitania and Narbonensis.

Also akin to Hermenegild, Clovis II’s right to call a council of the bishops within his kingdom to solve matters of law (so long as their solutions did not challenge official church doctrine) was similarly upheld. Though the Frankish king was considerably less willing to accept such small concessions than his Visigoth counterpart, he was kept in line by Aemilian and Constans considered the outcome a victory, having continued to tread the tightrope between the Greens and Blues while conceding only the bare (and largely symbolic) minimum to both to keep them on-side.

The Merovingians' dream of an autocephalous Frankish Church, answering to none under God save themselves and the Archbishop of Durocortorum who crowned them in His name, may have been delayed by the decision of the Lateran Council; but it was not (and would not be) altogether denied as far as Clovis II and his heirs were concerned​

Across the sea from Francia, the old Riothamus Constantine passed away in April of this year. His grandson, who would soon turn thirteen years of age, ascended to the British throne as Artorius III; but despite Constantine’s best efforts to secure the line of succession, he could not head off a coup from the grave, which was exactly what happened almost as soon as his body turned cold. Early in June, a week before the boy-king could be crowned his uncle Arviragus overthrew him with the support of a majority of the Consilium Britanniae, soon after which he coerced the Bishop of Londinium into crowning him Riothamus instead.

However, Artorius’ position was not entirely hopeless. The young prince’s faithful servants were able to spirit him away to South Anglia before his usurping uncle could arrest and arrange a fatal ‘accident’ for him, and he was generously received by King Æþelhere in Lincylene. There he was summarily married to his betrothed Beorhtflæd, and acknowledged as the legitimate Riothamus of Britannia by both the English and the Western Roman envoys in attendance: though both kingdoms still needed more time to recover and rebuild their armies from their last bout, this turn of events all but guaranteed another round of warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Romano-Briton sometime in the next few years.

Princess Beorhtflæd of the South Angles on her way to marry the equally young Riothamus-in-exile Artorius III. Although already distantly related through their Ælling ancestors, theirs was the first direct dynastic link between the Pendragons and Raedwaldings​

While the Turkic brothers were making their final preparations for their inevitable conflict with one another this year, east of their lands the Great Qi who had (albeit only partly) helped repel the younger of the two were celebrating another rousing victory. Emperor Xiaojing’s much larger army mopped up the remaining Goguryeo resistance, and King Yeongyang was forced to flee into hiding after his capital of Pyongyang fell to the besieging Qi forces in May. Rather than install a kinsman of Yeongyang’s or even his own family, Xiaojing sought nothing less than to incorporate the lands of Goguryeo into his empire, and because they had the nerve to opportunistically attack him while he was distracted on other fronts he imposed stiff taxes & took many slaves from the Koreans. Unsurprisingly, this decision did not endear him to his new subjects and Yeongyang had little trouble inciting a rebellion against the occupiers toward the end of the year.

The destruction of Goguryeo did not seem to phase Heijō across the waters, for in 575 the Great King did proclaim himself Tennō – ‘Heavenly Sovereign’, the Japanese Son of Heaven and equal to the Emperor of China – and rename his country from Wa to Nippon, the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. This proclamation was regarded with disbelief and mockery in the Qi court, where Japan continued to be referred to as ‘Wa’ for many years to come and Heijō himself was dismissed as a megalomaniacal dwarf-barbarian[9] who clearly thought far too highly of himself. Truly, the Romans were not the only imperial civilization which had to deal with 'barbarians' seeking to rise above their station in these years.

Regardless of what the Chinese thought, the first Emperor of Japan did treat his self-proclaimed ascent to imperial godhood with the utmost seriousness and retroactively applied the title Tennō to his predecessors, mythical and otherwise. Such was Heijō’s commitment to his own elevation that he now refused to grant any of his subjects an audience without a screen between them (so that said subject could not look upon him directly), demanded that these subjects kowtow in his presence, and made referring to himself or his now-hallowed predecessors by their given names (as opposed to their imperial title) punishable by death unless first granted explicit permission to do so (an honor which Heijō only gave to his mother & his wife).

As part of his self-elevation to imperial rank, Heijō also strongly emphasized his family's claim to descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu to further build legitimacy for his autocratic rule​

Half a world away, a grimmer and less questionable sign of divine displeasure struck the Blessed Isle – or as its Irish settlers were calling it, Tír na Beannachtaí (‘Land of Blessings’). Though many Gaels who answered to an Uí Néill overlord heeded the High King of Tara’s order not to sail across the Atlantic, there was no shortage of Irishmen from Munster, Connaught and Leinster who cared not what he thought, and were motivated to cross the sea in search of adventure and lands by the messages brought back to Ireland by Papar returning for supplies or to report developments far in the west to their fellow monks and abbots back home. These people helped Amalgaid and his vassals expand their borders to include ever more of Brendan’s island, but the livestock they brought over transmitted another plague which further decimated the native Wildermen and killed both the rival High King himself & Chief Ataninnuaq.

Amalgaid’s half-Wilderman son Pátraic claimed kingship over the Land of Blessings and was immediately challenged for supremacy by Ólchobar mac Óengus: this new generation of New World leaders wasted no time in perpetuating the rivalry of their fathers. The intercession of the elderly Brendan prevented open warfare for now, and Pátraic’s wedding to Ólchobar’s sister Máel-Muire was even a somewhat joyful relief for the people of the island from the ravages of plague. Alas it was clear to all who attended the festivities that Brendan was not long for this world, despite his heroic efforts to exert his waning (though still surprisingly formidable) energy via not only the negotiations, but also missionary works and church-building in his advanced age; and when he should perish, it was highly likely that the tenuous peace which he had just arranged would follow him in short order.

Come 576, the Lateran Council finally reached an answer to the question of who was supposed to be able to grant autonomy and autocephaly to the daughter-churches of the Heptarchy. Pope John executed a tactical retreat from his position after losing the support of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Babylon – brought about by pressure from agents of Emperor Anthemius, who had little desire to grant any of the Patriarchs any additional rights and powers; especially not the primary Patriarch of the West. Thus, for now it was affirmed that a grant of autocephaly/autonomy could only be issued by the unanimous decision of an ecumenical council.

The Western Augustus Constans and Pope John both accepted this ruling & brought the Lateran Council to a close, having determined that upsetting the balance of power at this point in time was not worth the costs (up to and including mutual excommunications if they’d pushed things too far) they were estimating. They would have to wait for the Eastern Empire to grow weaker before they could make any plays to further strengthen their half of the Roman world – temporally or spiritually – at the former’s expense, but were confident that either they or their successors would have other opportunities to push the envelope in the future. That the Lateran Council’s decision also made it more difficult for the Christians of the federate kingdoms to increase their autonomy from Rome – if the Pope could get even one of the other Patriarchs on his side, he could lawfully block any such move from the monarch and bishops of the vassal kingdom in question – was further considered a silver lining. In the meantime, Constans strove to negotiate the betrothal of Caesar Florianus to the daughter of King Boniface of Altava, the princess Dihia (Dihya), with the hopes of finding a quicker and more feasible way of shoring up Stilichian power.

East of the Roman world, 576 also marked the beginning of the long-awaited fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern Turks after years of buildup and a decade of rising tensions. In March, Issik Khagan sent envoys to his brother Illig demanding the immediate handover of the latter’s Silk Road bastions; but since he knew full well that his demand was completely unacceptable, he launched his attack before those messengers even reached Illig at Samarkand, where the Southern Turk leader had moved his residence to better direct his northeastern armies. First blood was drawn between the Turkic Khaganates in the Battle of Khotan, where a surprised force of 4,000 Southern Turks and their local Tocharian allies put up a stiff fight – but were still ultimately routed and almost completely destroyed by the 12,000-strong vanguard of the Northern Turkic horde.

Issik Khagan in the Tarim Desert, where he has gone to challenge his brother for control of the central Silk Road​

After sacking Khotan, Issik moved on to besiege Kashgar, one of the largest Tarim cities under his brother’s suzerainty. The petty-king of the city refused to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, and his resolve to resist was further hardened when Issik bluntly threatened to wipe Kashgar off the face of the earth for his impudence. Unfortunately for the Northern Turks, the city was not only wealthier than Khotan but also sufficiently well-fortified and provisioned to withstand a siege, and managed to hold out until Illig arrived to relieve them with 25,000 men in tow (including many Persians and Bactrians). Issik and his similarly-sized army retreated to more favorable ground around Tumshuq[10] to the east, but were still defeated in a great battle there anyway and pursued back toward Khotan, which the Southern Turks would recapture by the start of June.

Illig now went on the offensive, seeking to not only repel his brother’s invasion but to also do what the latter had planned and seize the Northern Turks’ half of the Tarim Basin for himself. The Southern Turks proceeded toward Kucha and took the city by storm, relying on their Persian engineers to build siege weapons capable of overcoming its defenses. The more civilized Illig expressed greater restraint in his treatment of Kucha than Issik had when he captured Khotan, limiting his troops’ pillaging to a few districts rather than allowing them to run amok across the entire city and only explicitly demanding the deaths of the Kuchan royal family’s adults for refusing to open their gates and prostrate themselves before him when he gave them the chance to do so.

From Kucha Illig advanced toward Karashahr, but in a mirror image of the earlier fighting around Kashgar and Tumshuq, he was assailed by Issik after the latter had gathered reinforcements from his northwestern-most vassals at Urabo[11]. At the Battle of Karashahr which followed, the Khazars and Oghurs excelled and made names for themselves among those western Turkic tribes, while the tide of combat went poorly for the Southern Turks; they sustained 4,000 losses and were driven back to Kucha. After being beaten in another engagement near Bharuka, Illig fell all the way back to his own territory, and Issik pursued him as far as Khotan and Tumshuq before stopping to consolidate his (admittedly highly limited so far) conquests. Both Khaganates took the autumn and winter as an opportunity to rest and plan their next moves, which would certainly expand the war beyond the Tarim Basin come 577.

The Battle of Karashahr marked the emergence of previously-obscure Turkic peoples recently subjugated by their much better-known Tegreg cousins, such as the Khazars, onto the pages of history​

Still further eastward, the Great Qi were turning their attention to their former ally in the west. Emperor Wucheng of Later Han took Emperor Xiaojing’s preoccupation with Goguryeo to repay the Qi’s abandonment of him in the middle of their war against the Northern Turks with an invasion of his own, and had just sealed an alliance with Later Zhou – who the bandit-emperor considered a truer friend for having aided him all the way to the end of the struggle against Issik – to carve up the Qi realm between themselves. The Han army stormed out of Luoyang and down the Yellow River while Zhou forces moved in from the northwest, eventually crossing the Sanggan River in the summer.

Emperor Xiaojing left 30,000 men behind to pacify Goguryeo while he hastened back west with the rest of his army, raising additional troops from the liberated Chinese populace of the northeastern provinces and recruiting Mohe[12] mercenaries to replace his earlier losses as he went. By the time he had himself crossed over the Sanggan, the Zhou army had breached Yanmen Pass and divided to lay siege to Baozhou & Jicheng. The Great Qi wasted no time in rolling these two armies up separately over the summer, dealing a severe blow to the Later Zhou and forcing their Emperor Shenwu to retreat southward with his remaining men to join Wucheng and the Later Han.

It took until July for the combined hosts of Han and Zhou to meet the Great Qi near Yecheng. Having arrived ahead of Xiaojing’s larger army, Wucheng demonstrated no small amount of cunning in preparing the battlefield, littering it with caltrops and pits full of wooden spikes while also setting up additional rows of sharpened stakes to protect his archers in the hours before the Qi host’s arrival. His intrigues were not intended to hurt only his enemy, either: Wucheng persuaded Shenwu to place the already bloodied and weary Zhou troops in a gap between his stakes and other traps, claiming that the narrowness of the gap would give them a better chance to withstand the Qi assault when the reality was that his various traps would inevitably funnel more Qi troops into the Zhou ranks than they could handle.

The Battle of Yecheng which followed proceeded almost exactly as Wucheng had hoped. The allied armies defeated the Qi, though not as decisively as the bandit-emperor would have liked; Xiaojing had the sense to retreat with the better part of his force intact after witnessing his forward-most contingents getting mauled between the Han traps and the tenacious defenders themselves. The Zhou suffered the brunt of the fighting and soaked up crippling casualties, including their Emperor Shenwu, which left them more dependent on the Han than ever. Shenwu’s teenage son and successor, Xianzong, suspected nothing and took up Wucheng’s offer to not only study under his wing but also marry his sister Princess Zhenyuan to the latter’s own heir Hao Jian. While he had succeeded in reducing Later Zhou to a puppet state of Later Han, Wucheng was aware that the Qi were far from finished, and decided not to take the next logical step – eliminating young Xianzong and annexing his northern neighbor altogether – until he had first seen the much more threatening Xiaojing off.

Emperor Wucheng of Later Han overseeing the Battle of Yecheng from a hilltop and directing his reserves to fend off the few Qi troops who managed to break through his array of booby-traps and stakes​

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[1] Historically, it took until 654 (65 years after their adoption of Catholicism) for the Visigoth kings to legally equalize their Gothic and Hispano-Roman subjects with the Liber Iudiciorum, although they did take some steps toward achieving that throughout the 6th century.

[2] A step toward a status comparable to autonomous (though not auticephalous, or wholly self-governing) Orthodox churches.

[3] Poti.

[4] Also known as Nokalakevi, near Senaki.

[5] The legendary ancestor of the Georgians. According to Caucasian tradition he is the son of Togarmah; grandson of Japheth; great-grandson of Noah; and also brother to Hayk, the equally legendary forefather of the Armenians.

[6] Kodumanal.

[7] Near Jiuliancheng, which is now part of Dandong on the Sino-Korean border.

[8] This honor was historically accorded to the Archbishop of Lyon…in 1079.

[9] ‘Wa’ was rendered in Chinese using the character for ‘Wo’, meaning ‘dwarf’ or ‘pygmy’. The Japanese’s supposedly shorter stature remains a popular subject for mockery in China even to this day.

[10] Tumxuk.

[11] Urumqi.

[12] A Tungusic people living in what is now Manchuria. One of their largest tribes, the Heishui who lived along the banks of the Amur River, are thought to be the ancestors of the Jurchen and by extension, the modern Manchus.

 

[Circle of Willis]

577 proved a more fruitful year for the Augustus Constans’ schemes than the previous ones had been. In the spring he successfully arranged the union of his heir Florianus to the African princess Dihya (whose name was rendered ‘Dihia’ in Latin) of Altava, and the thirteen-year-old Caesar formally married his slightly younger betrothed in a lavish ceremony come autumn. Since Dihia’s father Boniface had no other children, any grandsons he would get out of this marriage were fated to succeed him: or in other words, the Stilichians would eventually acquire Altava – the larger and more powerful of the two great Moorish kingdoms – as a permanent addition to their power-base. King Boniface would have preferred his daughter marry Otho, the younger of Constans’ sons, but was denied this by the machinations of the Empress Dowager Frederica, who fought to set Otho up with a daughter of the Anicii clan instead.

To hopefully preserve some measure of Altavan autonomy, Boniface added a condition to his assent: if the union of his daughter and Constans’ son were to produce more than one son, then Altava would be passed to a younger brother of the future Caesar. This arrangement did not overly concern the emperor at the time, since he could still comfortably live with the prospect of a Stilichian cadet branch ruling in Africa so long as (ideally) they remained loyal to their cousins in the Eternal City. Indeed, he seemed to quickly set aside any concerns about the implications of a Stilichian African kingdom (as well as the more morbid consideration that it could provide refuge to his dynasty in case the future decades or centuries went pear-shaped for them) in favor of praying that Florianus would give him a grandson or two as quickly as possible, so that he could next arrange a match between that grandson and a Thevestian princess to bring both African kingdoms into Stilichian hands.

The wedding of the Caesar Florianus to Dihia of the Mauri was expected to bind Altava's destiny to that of the Stilichians, whether through direct absorption or a cadet branch​

Further south in Africa, the Kaya Maghan of Kumbi who had welcomed the Ephesian missionary Lucas of Thysdrus 15 years prior died at the end of June. His son and successor, Bannu, had long been sympathetic to the Christian teachings and underwent baptism at Lucas’ hand days after his coronation, inviting his family and several of his trusted loyalists to do the same: thus did West Africa receive its first Christian monarch. Still necessity compelled Bannu to tolerate the still-considerable pagan majority of his modest kingdom – and he himself had not shaken off certain pagan superstitions, chief among them a belief in sorcerous and divinatory rites.

News of this ‘Baptism of the Blackamoors’ (as the Mauro-Romans of northwestern Africa, seeking a term to better differentiate these ‘Aethiopians’ from ‘Moors’ like themselves, referred to black sub-Saharan Africans) was met with widespread celebration in churches across Carthage, Altava and Theveste alike. For bringing this state of affairs about, Lucas would be canonized by the Ephesian Church years after his own death. But his conversion in no way endeared him to his Donatist Berber neighbors immediately to the north – quite the opposite.

Warriors from Aoudaghost and Taghazza began to raid villages on Kumbi’s border with increasing ferocity and ruthlessness, while in more distant Hoggar the Donatist regime imposed heavier tariffs on shipments of gold from Kumbi. Bannu retaliated with equal violence against the Donatist heretics he could reach, and in his correspondence to Patriarch Samaritanus Lucas made no secret of his wishes that Kumbi would one day grow strong enough to coordinate a great cleansing of the Donatist strongholds with the Western Roman Empire. The prospect of such a holy war brought a smile to the Patriarch’s lips and heartened the Ephesians of Africa, for by this point they had been longing to pull the thorn called Hoggar from their side for over a century.

Depictions of Mary and the infant Jesus with dark skin (also known as a 'Black Madonna') became popular with the growing mass of Ephesian converts in West Africa not only for obvious aesthetic reasons, but also as a challenge to their increasingly iconoclastic Donatist enemies​

Far east of Rome, the war between the Turkic Khaganates was widening. Issik Qaghan not only launched a renewed drive on Kashgar in the Tarim Basin, but also marshaled additional forces for an attack into Southern Turkic-controlled Chorasmia. Over the course of the spring and summer the Northern Turks would sack Gurganj, Kath and Hazarasp and ride as far as Baykand[1], alarming Illig who feared that if left unchecked this secondary army could endanger his supply lines in Sogdia. He allayed his fears by personally charging forth to thwart their advance in the Battle of Bukhara that July, but the mass of mostly lightly-equipped Northern Turkic raiders avoided destruction in that single battle and continued to not only occupy Chorasmia but carry out destructive raids further into Persia and Transoxiana.

While Illig had to depart the Tarim Basin to deal with these additional headaches in Chorasmia & Transoxiana, by no means would his brother allow the conflict in the war’s original theater to be put on pause while he was gone. Issik pressed his advantage to once more sack Aksu, take Khotan and burn down Tumshuq, then fanned out to simultaneously place Kashgar and Yarkand – the two major Tarim oasis-cities still remaining under Southern Turkic control – under siege. As before, the ever-redoubtable Kashgar stood firm against the threats and arrows of the Northern Turks, but Yarkand’s royals only held out for a few weeks before reconsidering and taking Issik’s offer to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, having witnessed the fall of the rest of the Tarim Basin while Illig remained preoccupied with fending off other Northern Turk forces to the west and north. With Yarkand having yielded mostly bloodlessly, Issik was free to concentrate his forces in the Tarim against Kashgar, which he did shortly before winter came.

In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han pressed his advantage against the Great Qi as soon as the weather permitted it. While the snows were still melting he advanced to capture Shangdang[2], Taiyuan and Zhao[3] with the help of the remaining Later Zhou forces, then made a move early in the summer to seize Qingzhou and cut the northern third of the Great Qi realm from the rest of Xiaojing’s lands. The rival emperor recognized this danger and recalled over a third of the troops he had previously left in Korea to help push the Han-Zhou host away from Qingzhou, but Wucheng dove into the opening this movement of Qi troops created and pushed to seize towns as far as Mayi[4], securing the headwaters of the Sanggan River.

Xiaojing did manage to reverse some of these successes late in the year, containing the Han-Zhou coalition to the mountains of Shanxi after his Mohe mercenaries helped him deal them a serious defeat at Shanggu in October, but soon had to redirect his eyes to Korea. There, his withdrawal of a good chunk of his occupying forces gave the Goguryeo considerable breathing room, and King Yeongyang had begun to not only defeat the remaining Qi troops there in the field but to liberate towns in his own name. As winter began to set in, the Emperor of Great Qi resolved to hurry back to Korea, crush Yeongyang once and for all, and then return his full attention to the Han and Zhou, who he judged would need at least most of the next year to lick their wounds and reinforce their armies after the Battle of Shanggu anyway.

A Mohe chief arriving at the Qi court to negotiate the terms of his people's employment as mercenaries​

578 saw a renewed outbreak of violence in Britannia. After seizing the throne, Arviragus wasted precious little time in rewarding his allies with land, coin and high offices – but he never quite managed to reconcile with his nephew’s partisans, and this year the rancor between them finally exploded into open violence when he attempted to arrest Aradoc ap Maelgwn, the King of Gwynedd and chief among the Cambrian princes known to be sympathetic to young Artorius’ cause. Unfortunately for the Riothamus in Londinium, Aradoc’s kin and warriors cut down his soldiers in an ambush before they could leave the mountains of Cambria, after which the freed petty-king immediately denounced him as a tyrant and instigated an open rebellion to restore Artorius.

This revolt did not come at a particularly good time for Artorius himself, for he had just fathered a daughter named Clarisant, nor for Æþelhere of the South Angles, who did not feel his armies had sufficiently recovered from the last Anglo-British war to strike again so soon. Further complicating the picture, the pro-Artorius rebellion found many supporters among those wronged by Arviragus, but these partisans were scattered all over Britannia with little ability to communicate and coordinate the war effort with one another: the chief rebels were Aradoc in Gwynedd, Dux Alban of Durovernum Cantiacum[5], and Drystan II of Cornovia, all located on the periphery of the British kingdom and separated by the territories of Arviragus’ loyalists. Still, the opportunity was too great for Artorius to ignore and at his urging Æþelhere eventually agreed to move against his usurping uncle in the next year, having secured a promise of renewed military assistance from the Western Roman Empire in this endeavor early in the autumn.

Also in Britain, the North Angles waged a war of their own against the local Britons. Their King Eadric passed away in April of 578, after which his son Eadwine succeeded him; and although Gereint of Alcluyd was content to continue to survive as a tributary to his newly ascended brother-in-law, over-bold elements in the Brittonic court violently disagreed and murdered him, after which his cousin Gyllad seized that kingdom’s throne and renounced all ties to the North Angles. This proved to be a dire mistake, as an irate Eadwine promptly led a large army of 5,000 to ravage the Cumbric countryside and besiege Alt Clut. Seven months later, Gyllad capitulated to the English after exhausting the last of his rations under the promise that he would ‘keep his head’, which Eadwine honored by drowning him in an icy lake. Thus did the last independent principality of the Britons meet its end.

Gyllad took the throne of Alcluyd on the promise that he would lead the Britons to a new, glorious chapter of their history. Instead, his recklessness wound up closing the book on them altogether​

In the Turkic lands, Illig Qaghan launched his riskiest maneuver yet. Faced with the prospect of Kashgar (and with it any control he still had in the Tarim Basin) falling while the Northern Turks were redoubling their assault into Transoxiana and Persia this year, he swept eastward to deal with the former threat first. In the great Battle of Kashgar which followed this May, he prevailed and scattered his brother’s Tarim army days before the oasis-city’s supplies ran out – at the cost of the other Northern Turkic armies breaking through his weakened defenses in the west. Bukhara fell to their advance, and by mid-July they even threatened the Southern Turk ruler’s temporary capital at Samarkand.

At this point, with Illig in danger of losing his capital and being trapped in the Tarim Basin, Issik Qaghan sought terms. His reasoning was that even though he had just been defeated at Kashgar, his brother’s position was clearly so disadvantageous that the latter would negotiate and allow the Northern Turks to at least keep their gains just to extract himself from the trap being closed around him. In that he was mistaken, as Illig pushed his army back over the Tian Shan Mountains and raced across Ferghana to surprise and crush the secondary Northern Turkic army in the Battle of the Sughd River[6], which the Indo-Roman chroniclers of Kophen would record as the ‘Battle of the Polytimetus’ in their report to Anthemius III, on the first day of snowfall in 578 – not bad for a man who had nearly been crippled by the Romans several years prior. As the year came to an end, Illig took his turn to call the stunned Issik to the negotiating table instead.

Further to the east, 578 initially appeared as though it would be a more successful year for Emperor Xiaojing of Great Qi than 577 had been. Just as the resurgent Goguryeo threatened to expel the Chinese from their lands altogether, he arrived to deal them a stinging rebuke at the Battle of Gungnae[7], driving Yeongyang’s army back south of the Yalu and spending most of the spring & summer recapturing towns as far as Pyongyang. However, as they besieged Pyongyang once more and stood on the cusp of victory, disaster struck: an outbreak of plague devastated the Chinese siege camp, and Xiaojing himself was one of the many casualties.

Yeongyang sallied forth from Pyongyang and scattered the leaderless, decimated & demoralized Qi army the day after Xiaojing’s death, but the Goguryeo’s third wind was rapidly becoming the least of the latter’s problems. Xiaojing’s son Luo Xie was enthroned in his stead as Emperor Mingyuan, but as he was but a boy of ten, a regency council jointly headed by his mother the Empress Dowager Yuan and the general Xing Yu arose to govern the realm in his name. The Later Han were emboldened by this turn of events and began pushing eastward out of Shanxi once more in the autumn months, hoping to succeed where they had failed before and sever the Qi realm at Shandong. The Qi were now in danger of falling in a manner similar to how Xiaojing had toppled the Chen, and it remained to be seen whether young Mingyuan’s regents could handle their crumbling situation better than the ill-fated Aiping of Chen’s had handled theirs.

Weakened by plague and the sudden death of their emperor, the Qi army was promptly routed by the resurgent Goguryeo outside the latter's capital of Pyongyang in 578​

579 saw the Western Roman Empire rocked by the death of its magister militum. Although not entirely unexpected – Aemilian was approaching seventy by the time he was found to have passed away in his sleep – the loss was hard-felt nonetheless, for he had ably led the Western Roman legions in many wars, become a major fixture in both the army and government, and proven his loyalty after initially participating in his father Aloysius’ failed rebellion against Theodosius III (to the point that when he was temporarily sacked, unlike his old man, he did not rise up against then-emperor Romanus II). His demise also left a vacuum to be filled at the highest echelon of Roman military leadership: immediately his son Genobaudes petitioned the Augustus to be appointed to succeed him, while the Greens pushed the candidacy of King Viderichus of the Ostrogoths.

Constans surprised both cliques by naming his brother-in-law Honestus the new magister militum instead. While he considered the loss of such an able and experienced generalissimo to be a hard blow indeed, the emperor also saw opportunity in Aemilian’s death – that is, an opportunity to greatly hamper the influence of the federate factions and reinforce his own. By appointing Honestus, a man he knew to be absolutely loyal to himself and unaffiliated with either the Blues or Greens, and allowing him to begin pushing out and marginalizing the officers Aemilian installed over his lengthy tenure in favor of others whose fidelity to the House of Stilicho above any other faction was not in doubt, Constans could now be certain that the Roman army could never be turned against him.

Of course, the Augustus was not entirely blind to the potential issues that snubbing the Blues and Greens so overtly could cause, and made moves to allay their anger. He called on his mother to use all her influence to calm the Greens, reminding her that not only was he her son but that he had granted her many a favor in the past, while the Blues he compensated with gold and civil offices of prominence across Gaul. Constans was pleased to see that no open rebellion broke out against him from either faction’s ranks for the rest of 579, although lingering concerns that troops controlled by the Blues or Greens might abandon him and his faithful legions– as well as, arguably even more concerning, Genobaudes and Viderichus meeting and feasting cordially with greater frequency than any Blue and Green leaders before them – compelled him to adopt extreme caution in his foreign policy and indeed to avoid conflict, even with the likes of the Avars, as much as he could, even if it meant forgoing opportunities to expand the Western Empire.

Honestus, Constans II's brother-in-law and now magister utriusque militiae, who the emperor hopes to not only be a loyal servant but as also as close to his ancestor Aetius in martial ability as possible​

The first such chance which he passed up on out of paranoia (whether justified or not) was not one against the Avars however, but rather the Romano-British. Although the civil war which pitted Artorius III’s supporters against those of Arviragus created an opening through which the Western Romans could have theoretically invaded in force and reabsorbed southern Britannia, Constans decided to instead work entirely through his Anglo-Saxon allies to exdploit the situation instead of committing either himself or the bulk of his strength to an expedition over the Oceanus Brittanicus, for fear that a still-irate Genobaudes and the Blues might stab him in the back if he should turn away from them. To that end he dispatched half-a-dozen legions (including 2,000 missile troops – half sagittarii, half arcuballistarii – plus a thousand heavy horsemen and a complement of engineers) to aid Æþelhere and Artorius, once more commanded by Jovinus.

This assistance was most welcome among the South Angles, and indeed had been all they were waiting for before going on the offensive against Arviragus. Alas, in the time it took for the Western Roman reinforcements to join them at Gariannonum[8], Arviragus was able to crush Drystan of Cornovia and set his head on a spear to be carried at the forefront of his army, eliminating one of Artorius’ three primary loyalists. Undeterred, the Anglo-Roman army pressed into Romano-British territory and inspired risings among the people who had grown weary of Arviragus’ arbitrary and tyrannical ways; notably Camulodunum welcomed young Artorius without a fight, although its castellan may have been motivated by the state of its fortifications (still not fully repaired since Æþelhere last overcame them with Roman help in the last Anglo-British bout) as much as he was by any sentiment he may have had for the rightful Riothamus.

Still, the Anglo-Romans’ advance on Londinium was slowed by the many castellae which still stood in their way: Arviragus had expended much of his wealth to ensure that the magnates and captains who manned these forts would not break faith with him, and there were few cases like Camulodunum’s as the Anglo-Romans tried to close in on the capital. While they fell one after another thanks to Roman engineering and Anglo-Saxon bravery & numbers, overcoming these castellae still cost the allies valuable time and blood, preventing them from wrapping the war up as quickly as Æþelhere and Constans had hoped. Arviragus took the opportunity to contain the Cambrian loyalists of Artorius led by the King of Gwynedd; push the Cantiaci back into Britannia’s southeastern corner; and portray himself as a righteous defender of the Pelagian teachings and of British liberty against the barbaric South Angles, Western Roman slavers and their puppet in his nephew, all in an effort to win back the Romano-British populace and enthuse his soldiers into giving their all against the odds.

Cross-section of a Romano-British castella's entrance as its defenders are being warned of the oncoming Anglo-Roman army​

Over in what Illig Qaghan’s Persian courtiers termed ‘Turkestan’, negotiations between the two Qaghans of the Turks extended over the spring of 579, but ultimately broke down over an inability to agree on new boundaries for their respective empires. Since Illig was still of the mind that he could restore the status quo antebellum following his victories in 578, Issik Qaghan decided he would have to first disabuse his big brother of that notion on the battlefield before resuming talks. While they were still at the negotiating table, he surreptitiously re-concentrated his forces against Kashgar, and amassed significant reinforcements to join his army in the Tarim Basin – including conscripted Tocharians and even Chinese engineers from the distant east, captured either in his previous rampage against China or on more recent wintertime raids against settlements around the Great Wall while the Great Qi, Later Zhou and Later Han remained distracted with each other.

With this army Issik was finally able to capture Kashgar, forgoing a prolonged siege in favor of simply breaching its walls and storming its streets in a blood-soaked frenzy out of fear that Illig’s own army could return at any moment to undo his besieging force as had already occurred several times in this war. The city’s defenders fought back fiercely, unhorsing and wounding even Issik himself in the process, but they were eventually still overcome by the greater numbers and ferocity of the Northern Turkic host, which then proceeded to massacre most of Kashgar’s citizenry and cart the survivors (including most of the women and children of the royal household) away as slaves. Ironically, this ran contrary to Issik’s intention and in fact undermined his purpose for attacking the city in the first place: he had wanted to capture Kashgar intact, since sacking it would destroy its value as a Silk Road hub for years to come, but the seriousness of his wounds forced him off the battlefield and kept him from maintaining discipline among his ranks in the critical hours following the city’s fall.

The Northern Turkic horde storming Kashgar​

By the time Northern Turkic messengers arrived to relay Issik’s offer of renewing peace talks to Illig, the Southern Turkic Qaghan had cleared out the weakened Northern Turkic forces in Chorasmia, saving Transoxiana and Persia proper from further harassment for the time being. Far from being impressed by the Sack of Kashgar, Illig was now determined to crush his troublesome little brother once and for all, and sent the envoys back to their master with a counter-offer of a duel to the death to settle their dispute. Issik was able to refuse without shame on grounds of his recent injuries, so as 579 drew to a close, Illig rode forth to contest the Tarim Basin the old-fashioned way instead.

In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han succeeded in his intended goals, going so far as to overrun the north of the Shandong Peninsula in a spring & summer of furious campaigning. Indeed, the Han absorbed the northern third of the Great Qi’s territories over this year – because the Qi leadership, finding their situation untenable, wisely decided to move their court and armies southward toward Jiankang, breaking through Han attempts to trap them north of the Yellow River in an oft-harried but consistently disciplined retreat. Unlike their Chen predecessors, Empress Dowager Yuan and her generalissimo Xing Yu were able to work together effectively to steward the Qi realm in Emperor Mingyuan’s minority, and though the Qi lost their original homeland the retreat which these two oversaw ensured that the dynasty as a whole would survive 579. By abandoning the north they also left Wucheng with the unenviable task of dealing with the resurgent Goguryeo, who dared push past the Yalu again and got as far as the Liao River before the Han-Zhou armies were able to hold them back.

On the other side of the Earth, the greatly aged Brendan breathed his last on May 16[9] this year, having survived to celebrate his 95th birthday. He was buried on the grounds of the monastery which he built and which would soon bear his name – the first of its kind in the New World – and greatly mourned by the people of the Tír na Beannachtaí, who had come to rely greatly on his wisdom and diplomatic ability for generations now, while the Ephesian Church would canonize him in short order for his many feats, not only as an explorer but also as a peacemaker and builder of communities.

Though it was widely feared that High King Pátraic and his rival sub-king Ólchobar would immediately come to blows without Brendan’s calming influence, both felt bound by a promise to not fight one another which they swore by his bedside a few days prior to his death. After all, he had been a mentor to both of them when they were younger, and Ólchobar recalled that Brendan had saved him from Amalgaid’s fury as an adolescent while Pátraic had named his own oldest son after the soon-to-be saint. Even these two felt sufficient grief over his death and respect for his legacy that they formalized their promise, jointly swearing an oath on his Bible (one of two on the entire island as of 579) to preserve the peace until at least a year had passed since his death.

The final resting place of Brendan, soon-to-be patron-saint of explorers and mariners, on the coast of Tír na Beannachtaí​

580 saw the war in Britannia approach its climax. The Anglo-Roman army and its pro-Artorius auxiliaries continued their slow but steady progress toward Londinium, aided by Artorius III himself taking a leading role in striving to win his subjects over: he urged his allies to treat his future subjects leniently and to avoid despoiling those towns and castellae which they were forced to capture by force, while also proclaiming that – far from being a Roman stooge and crypto-Ephesian – he was born & would die a Pelagian, and also would never infringe upon the liberties and privileges which the Romano-British had established for themselves over the past century and a half. The pretender’s insistence on pushing himself to the forefront of the allied army, so that the Romano-Britons could see he was no coward as they marched, and on personally distributing relief to prisoners-of-war and civilians alike whenever they took another village or fort also went a long way to combating Arviragus’ efforts to slander him and undermine his reputation in Britannia.

Conversely, Arviragus was beset by a riot in Londinium after he attempted to simultaneously levy additional taxes and conscript the populace to expand his army before winter’s end. Although he managed to put down the unrest, the Riothamus now had reason to worry that the capital’s populace might actually open the gates to his nephew even if the Consilium Britanniae remained mostly loyal, especially as word of Artorius’ generosity spread while his own name was increasingly associated not with the defense of British liberty and religion but rather with miserly tyranny. As a result, in mid-April he decided not to take any chances with a siege of Londinium and instead sallied forth to meet the Anglo-Romans on the field of battle.

Despite the odds, Arviragus chose the battlefield and his moment to strike quite well. The Cantiaci under Alban attempted to march on Londinium again as soon as they heard he had left the city, but their ranks had been thinned by earlier defeats and their approach was disorderly: he had good reason not to fear them. As for the main enemy to his front, the Riothamus chose a great forest for the place where he would meet the advancing Anglo-Roman army. Against the 16,000-strong Anglo-Roman army outside what both British and Roman chroniclers would call the Battle of Silva Tiliarum[9], or the ‘Lime Forest’ after the many linden trees therein, Arviragus would field 9,000 soldiers: given his severe numerical disadvantage, he counted on not only the terrain to help balance the odds in his favor but also heavy rainfall (of which there was much in the days leading up to the battle) to debilitate their dreaded arcuballistarii, as had been key to his father’s victory at Caesaromagus years before.

Unfortunately for the Riothamus, the improved oiled-leather bowstrings on the Roman crossbowmen’s weapons did turn out to be waterproof and these men were able to fight even despite the constant rain and heavy mist which afflicted Britannia in the spring of 580. Fortunately for him though, the ground had turned to mud thanks to the aforementioned rain, which impeded the arcuballistarii considerably – since their crossbows had been made larger and heavier to better combat the Avars, they could no longer simply press the weapon to their belly while reloading but had to press it into the ground with one foot instead, inevitably fouling the crossbow when the ground it was being pressed into was wet and muddy. Still, the presence of Roman archers equipped with conventional composite bows and pro-Artorius British longbowmen gave the alliance the upper hand in the initial exchange of missiles, while the outward-most line of Arviragus’ troops (into which he had pressed his least dependable troops, including the conscripts from Londinium) quickly buckled under the three-pronged assault of the Anglo-Roman infantry and cavalry.

Only once the Anglo-Romans pursued this weak first contingent into the woods did Arviragus commit the rest of his army to a forceful counterattack, catching his more numerous opponents by surprise. The ambush led to a ferocious battle under the trees, in which Jovinus was injured – this time fatally – by a British legionary’s javelin and Arviragus himself came to blows with his nephew. Usurper and tyrant though he may have been, the former’s courage could not be doubted after he threw himself against the pretender & his bodyguards with a shield-cleaving fury, and he fought manfully until he tripped over a tree root and exposed himself to a fatal blow from Artorius’ sword. Following their leader’s ironic demise in the heavily wooded terrain he himself had chosen in hopes of gaining an advantage, the remainder of the British army quickly surrendered, though the fighting had been quite even up until then.

While Jovinus lay dying and distant Constans remained aloof to the prospect of directly integrating Britannia, Æþelhere proved himself to not only be a (finally successful) glory-seeker but a man of honor by allowing his son-in-law to take the British throne rather than backstabbing him in this moment of triumph. Pragmatism probably played a role in his decision next to his own conscience however, as the Ephesian Angle king must have been aware that the still overwhelmingly Pelagian Romano-British would react poorly to any attempt on his part to rule over them directly, and neither he nor the Western Augustus particularly wanted to invest the amount of blood and treasure that would have been needed to keep them down at this moment in time; they both judged their interests to be better-served by installing a friendly Riothamus instead. In any case, the Anglo-Saxon king was present along with a Western Roman delegation a few months later when Artorius and Beorhtflæd were crowned in Londinium.

Artorius and Beorhtflæd visiting a Romano-British village to try to build goodwill for their new regime – and their conciliatory policies toward Pelagian Britannia's historical enemies, the Romans and Anglo-Saxons​

The new Riothamus had to immediately issue a number of concessions to both his foreign backers and his new subjects to survive in his new position: thus did he grant a general amnesty to his uncle’s supporters, sign treaties of friendship with the Angles on top of agreements to restore and widen trade with the Romans, and (though he could not countenance conversion to the Ephesian rite) further grant his protection to the first Ephesian church to be built in Londinium in over a century. To steward over this church (whose attendees in 580 consisted entirely of Roman merchants who decided to set up shop in Londinium and their families) and begin preaching orthodox doctrines to the British Pope John appointed a missionary from Gaul, Gratian of Suindinum[10], who would debate with the city’s Pelagian bishop Appius II that November.

The debate changed nobody’s minds, but it was received as a sign that Artorius was following through on his promise of greater tolerance for non-Pelagians without fatally compromising his own standing among the Pelagian faithful. Indeed it served to justify all three parties’ optimism that Artorius’ assumption of power also meant the turning of a new page in Britannia’s relations with its Anglo-Saxon and Roman neighbors, which had ranged from cold at best to (quite frequently) openly hostile and violent since the time of Stilicho and Claudius Constantine. Over in Rome, Constans further dared to hope that plugging Britannia back into the Roman-controlled Mediterranean trade network and the gradual efforts of Ephesian missionaries who could now operate in Artorius’ kingdom once more would allow his descendants to more smoothly reintegrate the long-lost British provinces while expending only a minimum of Roman blood in the future.

Off in the east, Illig returned to the Tarim Basin in May, having first spent the winter and spring months driving the last of Issik’s western forces out of Chorasmia and decorating his yurt with the skulls of the Oghur, Khazar and Türgesh chiefs who Issik had entrusted with leading that secondary army. With his western flank secured the Southern Turkic Qaghan focused his attacks on Kashgar, which the Northern Turks decided to try to defend in open battle rather than a siege on account of the damage they had done to its walls. Issik’s lingering wounds ensured he would remain bed-bound in Khotan this year however, and without his leadership his primary army was defeated in the ensuing battle on June 1 this year; Illig’s cavalry mercilessly pursued them as far as Khotan, only breaking off the chase when they entered the range of the city garrison’s arrows – and Issik’s own eyes.

With Kashgar retaken and the gateway back into the Tarim Basin reopened, Illig began to reassert Southern Turkic power in the desert, pushing up the Yarkand River to retake Tumshuq and Aksu. In retaliation for his brother’s excesses he also sent his Turkic and Persian horsemen forth to aggressively raid those parts of the Basin which were still controlled by Issik, pillaging numerous villages & caravans on roads which had managed to stay relatively safe until now and further disrupting trade along the Silk Road. The violence, and its impact on the profits of everyone involved, was now escalating to a point where emperors Anthemius III and Wucheng both sent embassies to the feuding brothers this year to request that they cease fighting, or at least cease allowing their troops to behave like bandits.

In China, while the Later Han were still busily struggling to consolidate their gains in the northeast and the Great Qi continued to manage the retreat of their forces and associated refugees south & east of the Yellow River, matters were beginning to heat up once more beyond the Yangtze after several years of peace. Emperor Shang of Later Liang mounted a new offensive against Chu, managing to penetrate almost all the way to Changsha before being turned back in the Battle of Liuyang east of the Chu capital. Nevertheless the Liang forces were able to remain in control of significant parts of Chu’s eastern and southern territories, while Emperor Yang of Chu was reluctant to peel large amounts of troops away from his other borders for a proper counterattack out of fear that all his other neighbors would take it as an invitation to dogpile him again.

Lastly, across the Atlantic Pátraic and Ólchobar’s truce actually held until exactly a year had passed after Brendan’s death, defying the pessimistic expectations of the rest of the islanders. Even though both kings notably began to stockpile resources, erect new palisades and repair old & damaged ones, and assemble bands of warriors in the weeks and months leading up to May 17, such was the respect which the soon-to-be-saint’s legacy commanded that neither attempted a direct pre-emptive attack on the other. Only once precisely one year and one day since their beloved mentor perished did Ólchobar raise the standard of rebellion, finally lighting the kindling which he and Pátraic had been stacking for some time.

Now in the fashion typical of the petty wars of the Gaels of this time, both men avoided attacking the other’s increasingly well-fortified villages in favor of engaging in cattle raids and crop-burning, while occasionally challenging the other to pitched battles (though they always disappointed one another this year). Settlers not fervently loyal to either faction began to flee further into the Blessed Isle to avoid the fighting and set up new, more remote settlements. Thus did the Irish extend their reach across more and more of the Tír na Beannachtaí – and build the foundations for additional petty kings who would reject the rule of the more established contenders to the east and north, ironically fragmenting the Gaelic hold on this island even as they expanded it at the same time.

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

[1] Poykent.

[2] Changzhi.

[3] Now part of Shijiazhuang.

[4] Shuozhou.

[5] Canterbury.

[6] The Zeravshan River.

[7] Ji’an.

[8] Burgh Castle.

[9] In the vicinity of modern Epping Forest, which would have been part of a much larger woodland and dominated by linden trees in pre-Saxon times.

[10] Le Mans.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Capital: Londinium (Bretanego: Lundeinéo)

Religion: Pelagian Christianity. A fading minority of Celtic pagans still survives in the remotest reaches of Cambria’s mountains: however they are very few nowadays, face constant encroachment by Pelagian missionaries while their former patrons among the petty-kings of that land now shun or even actively persecute them, and they will probably not survive the end of the sixth century. Conversely, Ephesian Christians are (very slowly) beginning to return under the reign of Artorius III.

Languages: Bretanego – ‘Britannic’, or Early British Romance – has evolved from the old Vulgar Latin (itself a dialect most closely related to Gallo-Roman Latin) of Britain to become the primary language spoken by the people of southern Britain. Amidst the mountains of Cambria, where Roman culture and the Latin tongue had always struggled to establish itself even before Britannia gained its independence from the Western Empire, an eponymous dialect of Brittonic[1] is still spoken with some regularity, though Bretanego has been slowly spreading there thanks to the Pelagian Church.

Britannia at the close of the sixth century is a nearly unrecognizable place compared to the Britannia which existed at the beginning of the fifth. It no longer answers to the Emperor in Ravenna or Rome but to its own line of kings, the Pendragons who have had to work themselves to the bone (and often bounce back from hazardous positions of weakness) to keep their kingdom safe and free. While it remains Christian, Britannia adheres to Pelagianism, a form of Christianity which is considered heretical by the Ephesian Romans; a feeling which is assuredly mutual. And any feeling of certain security, such as it was between the many usurpers who arose to contend for the purple from the isle and the barbarians battering its shores, vanished between the departure of its legions in Claudius Constantine’s ill-fated challenge to Stilicho and the final severance of ties with the mainland under Ambrosius I.

Still, for all that, Britannia still survives as of 580 AD as an exemplar of sub-Roman civilization, no longer quite bound to Rome but rather building off the basis inherited from it and evolving into something altogether new. As British bards put it in their poems and songs, does an apple that falls from a tree remain part of that tree forever? Though beset by challenges and tragedies, the Pendragons have persevered through trials that would have shattered weaker dynasties and kingdoms, and laid down the foundation for national legends with their valiant deeds in battle and in peacetime alike. And that they and their kingdom have managed to stand apart from and against the Western Roman Empire for over a century and a half, without also being swallowed up by their hostile barbarian neighbors, is considered by many of the British themselves to be nothing less than a miracle and proof of God’s reward for their good works.

The Britannia of 580 has just emerged from fertile soil for another one of those national legends, and into one more crucial turning point in a century-old history already full of such decisive moments. In the span of a few years their new Riothamus, Artorius III, has had to flee his kingdom before his uncle Arviragus could arrest and/or kill him; married Beorhtflæd Æþelheresdohter, a princess of his people’s traditional and most persistent enemies the Anglo-Saxons; secured an alliance both with the aforementioned Anglo-Saxons and his people’s other traditional enemy, the Western Romans; and retaken his rightful crown with the help of these former enemies, in the process slaying Arviragus in combat. No doubt there is enough material here for any minstrel to work with, even if the rest of Artorius’ reign should prove disastrous.

But now he must rule a kingdom that, while (for now) preferring him over his tyrannical usurper of an uncle, is also at best suspicious of him, his wife and his choice of friends. It remains to be seen whether this third Artorius can live up to the legacy of his namesake – not necessarily with battlefield feats against foreign enemies, but more-so by stabilizing his position, bringing peace and prosperity to his subjects, and especially by making his temporary friendships with the English and Romans into something more permanent without compromising himself or the independent traditions which the British have come to cherish amid their struggles. A tall order to be sure, but it can be argued that Ambrosius and the first Artorius faced worse, and in any case it is one which this Riothamus – if he is truly a Pendragon at heart and not the sort of weak puppet Arviragus tried to paint him as – will not run away from.

Spoiler: Government

The political structure of the Romano-British state can perhaps be best-described as ‘proto-feudalistic’ – a patchwork of autonomous lords and petty-kings with hereditary fiefdoms and private armies, who protect their peasants in exchange for taxes which are increasingly collected in kind rather than in coin, of whom the monarch is but the first and most prestigious peer. These monarchs, titled Riothamus or ‘Great King’ (though in 580’s Bretanego his subjects call him the Réiotamo) and addressed as dominus rex (‘lord king’, Brt.: dominò réi) since Britannia first won its independence from the Western Roman Empire more than a hundred years ago, have managed to maintain the dynastic continuity of their venerable House of Pendragon (‘chief dragon’, Brt.: Pendraiguno, and rendered as Penn Draig in Brittonic by their Cambrian subjects from whom the moniker originated in the first place) for as long as Britannia has stood. Administratively the kingdom is still nominally organized into three of Roman Britain’s five remaining provinces – Maxima Caesariensis (the new northernmost province, though more than half of it has been lost to the English), Britannia Prima (southern Britain) and Britannia Secunda (Cambria) – but these provinces functionally only exist on paper and their appointed praesides[2] (Brt.: présedes) are more like peers of and mediators for the local nobility rather than true governors.

The Pendragons serve a higher purpose than just their hereditary role as Britannia’s temporal sovereigns. In line with Pelagian doctrine, they are required to serve as moral exemplars who virtuous nature is beyond reproach so as to inspire their social inferiors, and sinful conduct that is practically permitted if not expected of their continental counterparts – such as keeping mistresses or throwing lavish banquets – is not only frowned upon, but actively chips away at the legitimacy forming the foundation of their reign. As well behavior considered tyrannical such as imposing overly high taxes, tolerating corrupt favorites, and undermining the privileges and liberties of the nobility, the Pelagian Church and the cities invariably (and very conveniently for the offended parties) frequently gets interpreted as conduct unbecoming of a divinely-sanctioned Riothamus and an excuse by disgruntled lords to overthrow the responsible monarch, as Arviragus can attest to.

Artorius (Brt.: Arturo) III, the young Riothamus of Britannia as of 580 AD. Retaking his rightful throne is only the beginning of his true struggle: reconciling with his people's ancient Roman and English adversaries while preserving the identity they have forged for themselves over the last 150 years of struggle​

Among the most important duties of a Riothamus is the ‘March of Good Example’: a sort of royal progress which he is expected to undertake every few years. He must tour Britannia (accompanied by his wife, any royal children old & healthy enough to travel, and the Bishop of Londinium), directly interacting with & aiding his people – distributing alms, arbitrating local disputes, investigating corruption, and personally executing criminals whose crimes merit the death penalty among other duties, all while displaying exemplary personal conduct – before returning to Londinium. Failing to undertake a scheduled March of Good Example is considered a very poor omen for a Riothamus. Leading the British army into battle, in so doing living up to the example set by the founders of their dynasty and setting an example of manly courage for their own troops to follow, is another duty of the Riothamus and certainly a much more hazardous one at that: of Britannia’s six monarchs since independence, half have been killed in battle (Artorius I, Artorius II and Arviragus), as has one royal heir (Maximus of Dumnonia, father of the current Riothamus Artorius III).

Although the Riothamus is understood to be the single most powerful temporal authority in Britannia, the kingdom’s magnates collectively outweigh his might by a fair margin. They still go by the old Roman titles of comes (Brt.: còmété) and dux (Brt.: doí), but invariably these men are the patriarchs of aristocratic families (many of which can trace their origins to old Brittonic aristocratic clans which accepted Romanization, or the families of prominent Roman settlers who did not flee to the mainland in the fifth century) which control and tax hereditary fiefs from a castellum or local fortress, a privilege which comes with the sworn responsibility of fighting in defense of their subjects and overlord. To that end they maintain private armies, paid for by the peasants who depend upon them for protection.

In more recent decades, as Britannia’s position grew more precarious the kings have taken to carving out smaller fiefs (with attendant villages to oversee, tax and protect) for trusted retainers, and the counts & dukes have increasingly done the same with royal authorization. These lesser lords are usually titled baronés (‘military official’) or caballarii (‘knight’, Brt.: cavallerés) based on whether they are professional footmen or horsemen. While their fiefs are supposed to be life honors rather than strictly hereditary and thus to revert to the overlord upon their death, in practice they tend to pass their roles and their livelihoods down to their sons (who often serve them as armigers from a young age) with the permission of the aforementioned overlords. Naturally, this has made Britannia a much more decentralized and politically fragmented kingdom than the Western Roman Empire (even counting its many barbaric federates), although it does also mean a charismatic and well-regarded Riothamus can still call upon a pool of professional and motivated soldiers. It could always be worse – at least all of Britannia’s nobility owe their immediate allegiance to the Riothamus, and not to one another in a complicated feudal hierarchy[3].

A Romano-British villa which has since been converted into a castellum (Brt.: chastelo), as has become necessary for its owners and tenants to survive in these times. The outer wooden wall has been replaced by one of bricks and a gatehouse has been erected to better protect the entrance​

On the other hand, the most powerful of the magnates are the petty-kings of Britannia (mostly found in the west of the country, especially Cambria), whose dynasties in some cases even predate Roman rule. To counterbalance both these and the newer grandees of the realm, the Pendragons have secured one such petty-royal title for their dynasty – the kingship of Dumnonia – and established a tradition of granting it, along with all its attendant lands and sworn subjects, to the heir of the Riothamus. This serves to give said heir a power-base of his own, and a chance to get practical governing experience before succeeding his father.

Aside from the magnates, the Pelagian Church is the second great pillar of Pendragon rule. The Bishop of Londinium has been its formal head since Pelagius himself usurped the office with the backing of Claudius Constantine and his sons in 418, though he and the rest of the Pelagian Church also owe solemn allegiance to the Riothamus (who in turn bears the duty of defending Pelagianism against all its enemies, be they pagans or the orthodox Ephesian Christians). The Pelagians repay the Crown for its protection by preaching in support of it, frequently portraying the Riothamus as Britannia’s first and greatest line of defense against the aggression of foreign barbarians and Romans alike in their sermons, and supplying the British kings with literate bureaucrats & civil officials (not dissimilar to the Ephesian Church on the mainland, ironically).

Notably the Pelagians do not have a strong monastic tradition, with few monasteries and convents compared to the continent. Instead most of their holy men and women live spartan lives as mendicants, swearing vows of chastity & poverty and wandering the kingdom, subsisting off the generosity of those they meet and performing good deeds (such as preaching the Gospel, healing the sick and assisting other women in childbirth, in the case of Pelagian mendicant sisters). To the Pelagians, embracing God’s world and actively seeking out to help others living in it is a far more pleasing way of approaching Him, both in His eyes and their own, than isolating oneself in a cloister.

Pelagians can be identified by their extensive use of the eight-point cross in their iconography​

Britannia’s few remaining cities worth the name form the third pillar propping up the Pendragons. Londinium, Camulodunum (Brt.: Camelod) and Glevum (Brt.: Glouvé) are the only relatively large and wealthy cities left in southern Britain, their thousands of citizens protected by the stone Roman walls and towers which British engineers and stonemasons work hard to maintain. They are jointly governed by urban prefects appointed by the Riothamus and locally-elected assemblies, and provide more in a year’s taxes – in coin (minted exclusively at the old Roman mints in Londinium and Camulodunum), no less, and not in crops – than most of their neighboring villages combined. As trade with the continent has been restored, their merchants and craftsmen – previously languishing in poverty compared to their continental counterparts as their trade partners were limited to fellow Romano-Britons, the Irish kingdoms and occasionally the Anglo-Saxons in peacetime – will likely grow in wealth and prominence again soon.

The magnates, the Church and the people of the cities come together in the Consilium Britanniae, or ‘Council of Britain’. Originally established in 430 to support the regency of the underage Ambrosius I, the Consilium has since evolved into a semi-permanent institution comprised of lords, leading clergymen and representatives selected by the urban councilors. When called into session (typically once every three to five years, but sometimes annually in times of great distress and once a decade in times of extended peace & prosperity), the Consilium meets around a great round table in Londinium’s palace (formerly the Roman praetorium, or governor’s residence) to bring whatever grave concerns they might have to the Riothamus and to counsel him on legislative matters, the granting or revocation of fiefs, settling disputes between British society’s greats, the appointment of new Bishops of Londinium and matters of taxation & warfare, among other questions of importance to the kingdom.

Crucially, their aristocratic and clerical components must also approve the ascension of a new Riothamus after the old one has perished: usually they grant their approval to the King of Dumnonia quite automatically, but in cases of egregious immorality on the part of the royal heir or other grave questions surrounding their legitimacy (such as questionable paternity, or simply the existence of a wealthy and well-armed usurper) the Consilium can and will look for other, more fitting successors to the legacy of Ambrosius I and Artorius I. Most recently, Arviragus was able to usurp the British throne for several years by bribing and intimidating most of the councilors into electing him Riothamus in place of his nephew, the rightful heir.

Meeting around a round table reinforces the impression that the Riothamus is but the first peer among the realm's peers, not an overbearing absolute monarch as the continental emperors are (at least in theory)​

Spoiler: Society

British society is a decidedly sub-Roman one, and it shows. Their descent – and, in the eyes of the ‘proper’ continental Romans living across the Oceanus Britannicus, degeneration – from Romanitas can be seen in everything from their language and religion, to the manner in which their society is organized and the wares that they manufacture. As one can call federate peoples such as the Goths and Franks ‘Romanized barbarians’, so too would it be accurate to describe the Romano-British as ‘barbarized Romans’, children of the Roman world who have had to grow up surrounded by (and adapting to) various Celtic and Germanic barbarians who have at times come close to destroying them utterly.

It is impossible to discuss just how ‘sub-Roman’ the British are without the first two items mentioned above: their language, and their religion. Of these, the first – called ‘Bretanego’, or Britannic – is a Romance language which quite clearly evolved out of vernacular British Latin, itself a regional dialect of the Roman mother-tongue most closely related to the Romano-Gallic dialect still widely spoken across the sea. The survival and continued supremacy of Romano-British institutions over the southern reaches of Great Britain, even in forms denounced by the Romans themselves as ‘degenerate’ and ‘mangled’, has allowed them to absorb terms from their Brittonic and Anglo-Saxon neighbors without many drastic phonological or orthographic changes (one major exception being Bretanego’s habit to stress the penultimate syllable in many Latin-derived words – represented with an acute accent in writing – which is a feature it picked up from Cambrian Brittonic).

The result is a language that greatly resembles a simpler, bastardized Latin offshoot rather than something that immediately looks much more Celtic or Germanic. For example, in Bretanego the Latin title Riothamus (‘Great King’) has not reverted to its original Brittonic name Rigotamos or the Cambrian Riatav, but rather become Réiotamo in the mouths of its speakers; if given a few more centuries, this title will probably further evolve into the even shorter and simpler Ríodam. As another example, take the originally Roman name ‘Artorius’, borne by the most famous Pendragon of them all and still intensely popular among his dynasty (including the current Riothamus). In Bretanego it is now rendered ‘Arturo’[4], a sort of midpoint between its Latin origins and the Cambrian ‘Arthwr’; again, if the British manage to survive a few additional centuries and further distance their tongue from its Roman roots, ‘Arturo’ will likely evolve into simply ‘Artur’[5].

Londinium, or 'Lundeinéo' as the Romano-British call it nowadays, near the end of the sixth century. The city's decline from its Roman heights to half its former population and wealth, at a generous guess, matches the post-fifth-century trajectory of the Romano-British kingdom itself​

The other elephant in the room is the Pelagian Church, considered by the Ephesians to be a heretical offshoot of orthodox Roman Christianity which broke away when the British provinces did and has now led several generations of Romano-Britons straight to Hell. Conversely, the Pelagians claim that they are the only truly free people on God’s Earth, and that the Ephesian Church has enthralled many more unfortunate Romans into falling in line beneath the whips of slave-drivers (and then, after dying, falling into Hell). Structurally the Pelagian hierarchy is flatter than the Ephesian one: they have only three bishops, of which the Bishop of Londinium is considered a first-among-equals between the bishops of Britannia’s other cities (Glevum and Camulodunum), and each leads the priests of the parishes of central, western and eastern Britannia respectively. Their services are carried out in Bretanego, not Latin, and even their largest and most prominent churches tend toward simpler, less ornamented designs than the grand edifices to God’s glory which the Ephesian Romans have built in Rome, Carthage and other metropolises.

But if churches be ‘bodies’ of believers, this is a difference of the flesh compared to the Ephesians, not of the soul. To address that, it is necessary to delve into questions of doctrine – and that of the Pelagians dates back to when Pelagius first put his heterodox thoughts to parchment in the fifth century. The core teachings of Pelagianism are the same as what he wrote then: original sin, and more generally the notion that God would create anyone or anything that is inherently, irredeemably evil, is an Augustinian corruption of the true faith, borne out of the Manichaeism which Pelagius’ archenemy in life had dabbled in. To create humans with an inherently fallen nature, inclined toward sin, and then demand of them lives of virtue is unreasonable in the eyes of a Pelagian, and thus impossible for God to have done as an entity of perfect reason and compassion. And if sin were unavoidable, then how could it be fair or logical to call it sin?

Rather, the Pelagian position is that the Most High gifts to (and continues to tolerate in) humans absolute free will, which does however come attached with absolute responsibility for one’s actions – ultimately, it is up to humans to decide whether they go to Heaven or Hell when they leave their mortal coil behind. Thus to the Pelagians, it is not only possible for humans to choose God over Satan and achieve a perfect, sinless existence under their own power, but in fact that is God’s true design and wish for humanity. In the Pelagian retelling Adam and Eve made poor choices of their own volition, which got them expelled from the Garden of Eden and set a poor example that all their descendants ought to reject; by contrast Jesus Christ is above all an exemplar and instructor of the pure life which all Pelagians ought to aspire to. To that end it is essential to live humbly in perpetual modesty and moderation, exerting a conscious effort to spurn temptation, to conduct oneself irreproachably at all times and above all to perform good works, which are critical to cultivating virtue and gaining entry into Heaven. As Pelagius himself (elevated to sainthood in the Pelagians' reckoning even as the Ephesians continue to consider him a dangerous heretic) wrote in the treatise On a Christian Life[6]:

“He is a Christian

who shows compassion to all,

who is not at all provoked by wrong done to him,

who does not allow the poor to be oppressed in his presence,

who helps the wretched,

who succors the needy,

who mourns with the mourners,

who feels another's pain as if it were his own,

who is moved to tears by the tears of others,

whose house is common to all,

whose door is closed to no one,

whose table no poor man does not know,

whose food is offered to all,

whose goodness all know and at whose hands no one experiences injury,

who serves God all day and night,

who ponders and meditates upon his commandments unceasingly,

who is made poor in the eyes of the world so that he may become rich before God.”

Truly to the Pelagians, James 2:14-26[7] must be among the most important passages of the Bible. The notion that a truly just and benevolent God would allow a hypocrite who claims to believe, but does nothing to better the lives of his fellow man, into Heaven simply for bleating about his supposed zeal like a clanging cymbal is laughable to these British Christians; and the idea that the same God would destine some souls for salvation and others for damnation, no matter what their deeds in life were, strikes them as madness. No, to them, if one has true faith then it will show in their exercise of free will to adopt an ascetic lifestyle, perform good works and behave in a manner so honorable and virtuous towards others as to be beyond reproach – that is, to eventually live a sinless life and earn entry to Paradise. This doctrine is to be reflected in their government, ecclesiastic and temporal alike: to be sure no less is expected of the clerics and princes of the realm, who must live as faultlessly as possible (and entirely faultlessly at that, if possible) to set an example which their parishioners and subjects will follow.

Just as importantly, the decentralization of the British realm and the autonomy afforded to the realm’s magnates is considered important to the spiritual health of Britannia under the Pelagian tenets. Without the capacity for virtuous self-regulation (a capacity that would have been stifled by an emperor with theoretically absolute power, such as those which the continental Romans have much to their own misfortune), how can the British elite and their subjects say they are free and pursue Christ’s example to become free of sin? As God gave man free will so that he may choose to walk the easy path of license and sin or the hard path to purity and true liberation from the shackles of this world, so too must the Riothamus who rules by His authority allow his subjects their choices.

Alas in practice, the Pendragons, their magnates and their prelates are all only human, with all the flaws and fallibility that that entails. When they stumble, they make the Ephesians’ rebuttal for the latter much more succinctly and obviously than any doctor of the Church can. The Ephesians challenge the Pelagians’ assertion on human sinlessness thus: if humans are not sinners by nature, then there is no need for Christ to have come at all, and the Pelagians have reduced the Savior of Mankind to little more than a self-help guru – they are essentially arguing that humans can save themselves, after all. As for the primacy which the Pelagians have afforded to good works over faith, the Ephesian position is that both are of equal importance to attaining salvation, and having faith in Christian teachings should naturally lead one to perform good works: against the Pelagians’ reliance on passages from James 2, the Ephesians raise (fittingly) Ephesians 2:3-10[8].

The Pelagians’ teachings, already considered excessively prideful and prone to performative Pharisaic self-righteousness in the eyes of Rome and the other centers of orthodoxy, further reduce rituals such as infant baptism (which the Pelagians still practice per the guidance of Pelagius, who believed it was unnecessary for the infant’s salvation but would bring him closer to God nonetheless) and the veneration of saints (for whose intercession the Pelagians do not quite pray for, as Ephesians do – merely for guidance in imitating their virtues) to hollow mockeries without meaning in the Ephesians’ estimation, as well. All these points were raised by Gratian of Suindinum against Appius (Brt.: ‘Appeo’) II, Bishop of Londinium, in their debate with each other in November of 580, and will likely be echoed many more times in the future as the Ephesians once again contend with the Pelagians for the souls of the British people.

Though it had been put on hold for almost two centuries by the final Roman departure from Britannia in the 430s and the Pendragons' hard-won successes in preserving their independence afterward, the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius is likely to resume between their spiritual successors since the Romans have installed a friendly regime in Londinium​

The rest of British society bears a passing resemblance to the Roman one from which it grew – and not even the Roman society of today, but the one which existed between Diocletian and Stilicho. True, there are no slaves in Britannia. But the majority of Romano-Britons live as tenant farmers, tilling the land of their proto-feudal overlords and paying them with a cut of their produce in exchange for protection from the various threats that have constantly probed and pushed against Britannia’s borders over the past century and a half. Among this group are the descendants of Anglo-Saxons who settled too far south, too quickly when it seemed as though Ælle had been on the verge of total victory against Artorius I, only to end up on the wrong side of the Anglo-British border when the Ællingas and Pendragons made peace: they have been allowed to live beneath the returning Romano-British landlords, at the cost of assimilating to the sub-Roman social order and eventually, culture. Whatever their origin these peasants have more rights than the Roman coloni do, such as the ability to terminate their contract and leave to work for another nobleman at any time, but theirs is a difficult life regardless, which can easily be ended by a bad harvest or illness long before they even see a single English, Roman or Gaelic raider. And for all their lord’s military protection and the right to shelter in his castellum when attacked, in times of crisis these tenant farmers could stil be conscripted to fight in the British army anyway.

Freeholders who manage to afford their own personal plot of land to live on & farm (no matter how small and poor it might be compared to the greater estates of the nobility, which might at least come close to recapturing the grandeur of a continental latifundium) don’t even get the ‘luxury’ of being exempt from conscription unless Britannia’s back is against a wall, being required to be able to maintain at least a spear, shield and helmet at all times in case the Riothamus goes to war and calls them up – or raiders assail their homestead, always a possibility even in peacetime. The urban craftsmen produce works of a typically lower standard than those produced by their forefathers or the Roman workshops on the continent, while the merchants have a limited (and literally insular, what with trade with the continent being difficult at best before the time of Artorius III) set of partners to sell these wares to; they are both fewer in number and poorer than their continental counterparts.

But with trade picking up again in recent times, who knows? Perhaps under Artorius III, Britannia will regain some of the wealth and luster it had as a Roman province (or set of provinces). And perhaps, one day, her people will be able to make their mark in a new world, where they can try to make their own fortune without kings & lords always taking a bite out of their produce and realize the Pelagian ideal – to become men capable of choosing not to sin, and actually managing to stick to it – without any Romans, Gaels or Anglo-Saxons breathing down their necks. One day…

A Romano-British village in 580. The past century and a half has been a very difficult time for these people, but tomorrow is always a new day and now, there is finally a reasonable chance that it will be a day filled with prosperity and fewer barbarian raids to worry about​

Spoiler: Military

The British military of the sixth century is a tripartite beast, divided by economic and political necessity. Its core remains the royal legions of the Riothamus, consisting almost entirely of heavy horsemen paid by him in coin or (increasingly) in grants of land, and supported by the private armies (considered by the Romans who battled them & took their measure to be oversized bucellarii contingents) of the nobility. Though these have emerged as the primary fighting forces of Pelagian Britannia, the Romano-British can and do at times issue orders for a general levy of every able-bodied man in their kingdom regardless of actual skill, combat experience or equipment, for whatever good that might do during the crises which would justify such a move.

The royal legions are, as mentioned above, mostly comprised of cavalry. These caballarii (Brt.: cavallerés) swear lifetime oaths of service to the Riothamus in exchange for small grants of land, mostly concentrated around Londinium or in the valley of the Tamesis, and still greatly resemble the heavy cavalry of the Western Roman Empire in both tactics and equipment: armored in mail and ornate ridge helmets, and armed with a thrusting spear, spatha and round shield (typically painted sky-blue with a white chi-rho, white with a blue eight-point cross, white with the red dragon of their overlords, or the colors of the long-defunct Britones Seniores and Secundani Iuniores legions – wheel-like designs in red & green and yellow & red, respectively). Until Artorius III’s war to reclaim his rightful throne they had fallen behind their continental counterparts, lacking stirrups and proper lances, but that is changing quickly under his direction. As of 580 the Riothamus has only 1,500 of these men left to count on, organized into one-and-a-half legions further comprised of a total of fifteen hundred-man detachments (each capable of independent action to repel small raids, or launching their own into enemy territory) akin to the Roman ala or cuneus.

The other element of the Riothamus’ personal legions, and certainly the one which makes them stand out more compared to the continental Roman legions of this time period, are the royal longbowmen. Recruited from the mountainous region of Cambria in the west and paid in gold rather than land, these men bring with them early forerunners to the mighty longbow, lovingly crafted from a single block of yew or elm and ‘only’ nearly as tall as the bowmen themselves, which has already proven to be a formidable weapon against the English and Romans – capable of outranging even a heavy arcuballista, and more easily proofed against inclement weather. The patronage of the Riothamus affords these early longbowmen greater protection than the ‘common’ British archers in the form of a helmet & mail coat, for which Roman observers classify them as sagittarii graves (‘heavy archers’) while the Romano-British themselves simply refer to them as sagitarés réigale (‘king’s archers’ or ‘royal archers’). As of 580, Artorius III has about 600 of these men left in his employ, a mix of Arviragus’ reconciled veterans and new recruits sent by the Cambrian kings to win goodwill with him.

Reenactor clad as one of the King's Archers. He's definitely going to need a bigger bow for the coming centuries​

Though these royal legions form the core of the British armies, the bulk of their fighting strength comes from the nobles great & small. All landowners in Britannia, from free peasants who own a hovel & small plot of land which they work with their families and a few hired laborers to the great magnates who oversee pseudo-latifundiae worked by hundreds of tenant farmers, are legally obligated to maintain fighting equipment and to always be at the ready to defend Britannia’s freedom at the command of the Riothamus. After assembling at the appointed time & place, these men are organized into hundred-man cohorts by their province’s praeses, invariably based on which part of the province they came from and with the most prominent local magnates (typically a duke or count) appointed to command them. It is not unheard of for the neighbors and subjects of a hated great lord to kick up enough of a fuss that the praeses ends up appointing someone else to command the cohort, though. Once organized, the responsible praeses then leads this ad-hoc legion to await further orders from the Riothamus, whether to operate on their own or to join his army and march beneath his dragon-standard. The Romans have found that these men mostly fight on foot and struggle to imitate the discipline of their forebears, and have taken to describing them as imitationes legionarii ('imitation legionaries') or, less disparagingly, Brito bellatores (‘British warriors’).

The poorer end of this body of warriors tend to wear no armor beyond a helmet, while the middle of the group are usually able to afford a byrnie to protect their torso. In any case their typical armament would consist of a spécolo – a weapon equally capable of being thrown like a javelin or used in melee combat like an ordinary spear, based on the Anglo-Saxon angon & the Roman spiculum[9] and deriving its name from the latter – and a shield (painted either with a chi-rho, eight-point cross or some other distinctive symbol associated with their family to set them apart from their neighbors), with an ax or long dagger called the saechso (doubtlessly based on the seax wielded by their neighbors) as secondary weapons in case the spécolo is thrown or proves unwieldy in close quarters. The nobility often wear ornamented ridge helmets, carry spathae as their secondary weapon and ride horses (all the better to command the footmen from, and to flee a losing battle on…) to distinguish themselves from their lessers. In combat, the more heavily armored warriors typically form the front-and-center ranks of a British shield-wall, while the lighter and poorer spearmen form a reserve behind them to serve as supernumeraries – stepping forth to fill in any gaps that might open up in the front-line – or a mobile force capable of quickly moving to shore up the formation’s flanks against surprise attacks.

A Romano-British 'imitation legionary'. Note his spangenhelm (this man is neither sufficiently wealthy nor high-ranking to afford a traditional ridge helmet) and spécolo​

The tribal warriors from Cambria are a different bunch compared to their Romano-British counterparts, always being led by their native kings & princes and organized however they please with no real input from the praeses of Britannia Secunda. Their equipment tends to be lighter than that of the Brito bellatores too, with many Cambrians fighting unarmored or wearing only a helmet for protection. The late Count Jovinus and the Western Romans have little regard for most of these troops, considering them undisciplined rabble for the most part, but have made note of three types of Cambrian warriors they considered to be an actual threat: the well-armored and aristocratic campwyr or ‘champions’ who proved formidable individual fighters with sword & javelin but tended to be too few in number to make a significant impact against a legion, the bêrfelawyr or ‘long-spearmen’ who could pose a real challenge (especially to cavalry) were it not for their lack of armor making it trivial for sagittarii and arcuballistarii to turn their formations into pincushions, and the saethwrabhyr or ‘longbowmen’ who were the only Cambrian force they had no easy counter to.

Last and least of all were the unfortunate leves, or ‘general levy’ of the British people. These are the paupers and tenant farmers drafted in emergencies, pressed into combat with little to no training and only whatever equipment they can afford – or, more likely, scrounge up from their surroundings, ranging from hunting bows to literal sticks and stones. The Riothamus Constantine, who had first envisioned them to be an all-consuming tide on the battlefield capable of overwhelming any English warband or Roman legion with their numbers when he thought up this idea, has found out the hard way that these low-class conscripts were too poorly equipped and organized to be of any great use in battle, and are virtually always the first to flee under even mild pressure: in other words, a quantity with no quality attached, not even quantity itself. When they are called up, the British kings and lords prefer to send them forth as marauding mobs to burn the enemy’s crops and damage whatever infrastructure they come across, while also hoping that they do not run into any real opposing warriors (such engagements have always ended disastrously for the leves unless they have literally every possible factor, from the terrain to an overwhelming numerical superiority to the element of surprise, going their way).

The high kings of Britannia also maintain a modest standing fleet, based out of Londinium's harbor and (like the royal legions, particularly its archers) wholly under their control. In this they have no choice, since without it their kingdom would certainly have been buried long ago. As it is, while not quite an impenetrable 'wooden wall' yet (else Arviragus would still be Riothamus), this early British navy has proven instrumental to fending off coastal raids and at least blunting the strength of Roman expeditionary forces which have made it to British shores, as they did in the twilight years of the Riothamus Constantine's reign. As they had at the beginning of the sixth century, the British still favor the small and swift liburna design: biremes armed with a ram and harpax, or ballista-launched grappling hook, capable of keeping up with the longships of the English and outmaneuvering the larger galleys of the Western Romans.

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[1] Old Welsh.

[2] The Late Roman title for governors in the British provinces.

[3] Somewhat comparable to the historical Anglo-Norman setup, where all nobles are pledged to the king regardless of rank rather than, for example, having barons answer to earls who answer to dukes. Unlike the Norman kings, the Riothamus is not considered the supreme landowner of every inch of British soil and their various lords are not merely their tenants.

[4] Also the RL Spanish & Italian rendition of Arthur.

[5] The rendition of Arthur in many other RL languages, both Romance (such as Portuguese) and non-Romance (such as Norwegian).

[6] This was brought up at the Council of Diospolis as a sign of Pelagius’ slip into heretical teaching.

[7] Source of the ‘faith without works is dead’ quote.

[8] Source of the ‘you have been saved by faith, not by works, so that no-one can boast’ quote.

[9] A Late Roman javelin and thrusting spear, itself based not only on the famous pilum which it succeeded but also the angon used by Frankish & other Teutonic foederati who were entering Roman service in increasing numbers from around 250 onward. It was longer & heavier than the plumbata & lancea but shorter than the pilum, and seems to have been used as a thrusting spear more frequently than the latter.

 

[Circle of Willis]

581 was a largely uneventful year for the Western Roman Empire, which welcomed its expeditionary force back from Britannia with pomp befitting a victorious army and mourning for its lost commander. For the Augustus, the most important news this year was a report from his Sclaveni foederati in the autumn that the Avars were beginning to mass their armies and intensify their attacks along the Savus, indicating that Fulian Khagan had finished licking his wounds and would be seeking revenge for his past defeat soon. In response Constans and Honestus moved reinforcements eastward to face the renewed Avar threat, and also commanded Viderichus, Borut of the Carantanians and Radimir of the Horites to prepare accordingly.

In addition to his military preparations, Constans also reached out to the Eastern Roman court for support against the Avars, suggesting that this would be a great time for them to retake the majority of Thrace. As Anthemius III was finally un-occupied with any other major threats to his half of the Roman Empire for the time being, he was finally able to agree and join forces with the Western Romans for the first time in his reign. To solidify their alliance, the two emperors agreed to betroth their grandchildren; Constans’ daughter-in-law Dihia began to show signs of pregnancy in the winter of 581, so it was determined that if she should give the Western Emperor a grandson he would be immediately betrothed to one of the Eastern Caesar Arcadius’ daughters, and if she birthed a granddaughter instead then a match would be arranged with Arcadius’ son Leo.

The renewal of the Eastern-Western alliance and the Caesarina's pregnancy were cause for lavish celebrations in Rome to cap off this peaceful and untroubled year​

To the south, the Aksumite empress-dowager Cheren died in the summer of this year, leaving her son Tewodros to stand on his own. The Baccinbaxaba was promptly tested by an uprising in southern Aksum a few months later, for his kinsman Wazabe decided that Cheren’s demise created a good opportunity to challenge him for the throne. The Roman-backed Nubians watched the civil war unfold with interest for several months before beginning to move against the Blemmyes, as Tewodros had to withdraw the Aksumite garrisons he had previously installed in their towns to reinforce his armies against Wazabe’s attacks.

East of Rome, the war between the Turkic brothers continued unabated. Issik’s wounds had healed sufficiently for him to take to the field once more, and he immediately began to lead counterattacks against the Southern Turks which halted their attempts to capture Khotan and Aksu. In July Illig Qaghan concentrated his forces for a major offensive aimed at the former city, but Issik overcame him in the ensuing Battle of Yarkand by drawing out the majority of his Turkic heavy horsemen (including his household troops) with a feint before counter-charging through the gap in his lines to rout his poorer-quality Persian and Sogdian troops. However with reinforcements brought over the Tian Shan from Samarkand, Illig turned the tables and stopped Issik’s own advance south of Kashgar in September before he could once more capture that devastated city, dragging this fratricidal conflict (and its detrimental effects on Silk Road trade) out for at least another year.

Further still to the east, while the Liang and the Chu remained at a stalemate in the south, further north the Great Qi managed to reorganize and consolidate their positions beyond the Yellow River to begin counter-attacking against the Later Han – who were still overextended and in the process of consolidating their own recent conquests north of the same great river – in comfort. The battles which followed unsurprisingly mostly went poorly for Emperor Wucheng and his soldiers, who suffered an especially grievous defeat in the Battle of Xiangguo[1] in June. However, toward the year’s end Wucheng began to reverse the tide, secure some of his gains and reverse those of the resurgent Qi with an almost equally resounding victory in the Battle of Dongyuan[2] in November, soon after which the onset of a fierce winter forced the fighting to a halt. The Han were more consistently successful against the Goguryeo, who they held back at the Yalu over the course of multiple smaller battles and skirmishes this year.

Most of 582 came and went without the Avars launching their attempt at vengeance, no doubt because Fulian Khagan was informed of the repaired alliance between the two Romes and frantically had to search for allies of his own to even the now-considerably-lopsided odds he was facing. In that endeavor he had few options, and ultimately had to settle for the Iazyges to his north, who he intimidated into compliance with a 15,000-strong incursion from over the Carpathians. In exchange for not having his kingdom burned down, herds seized and people slaughtered or enslaved by his much more powerful southern neighbor, Saitapharnês of the Iazyges agreed to assist Fulian by attacking the March of Arbogast at the latter’s signal.

Heduohan, eldest son and heir of Fulian Khagan, making a move on an Iazyges noblewoman while his father browbeats her king into submission​

In the first recorded case of an important interaction between Romans and the Vistula Veneti, this news was made apparent to the Western Roman court by one Sviatopolk, a Veneti attendant of Saitapharnês’ who in turn learned it from his sister Ludmila – one of the Sarmatian king’s bedwarmers, with whom he had gotten too drunk for his own good after barely averting the annihilation of his kingdom at Avar hands. Naturally, in response to this development Constans commanded Genobaudes to undertake preparations for the Iazyges attack, and to reward Sviatopolk with a place in his retinue & a reasonably wealthy match for his sister. When the Avars and Iazyges finally launched their assault in winter – Fulian crossed the frozen Savus with 30,000 men while Saitapharnês moved into Lombard territory with fewer than half that – the Western Romans would be ready from Augusta Treverorum to Aquileia, while the Eastern Romans began to launch probing attacks and scouting expeditions out of Constantinople and into Avar-held Thrace.

Aside from their ongoing efforts to build up their forces for the inevitable next round of contention with the Avars, the Western Romans also dealt with their share of domestic fortunes and tragedies this year. Shortly after the emperor congratulated the Riothamus Artorius on the birth of his first son Ambrosius in July, the Stilichian household welcomed his first grandson into the world: Romanus, the first son of the Caesar Florianus and Dihia of Altava, who was immediately betrothed to Anthemius III’s own granddaughter Anastasia (a girl five years his senior) per the pre-existing arrangement between the emperors. A month after that, they also had to mourn the death of the Empress-Dowager Frederica: while she had caused more than her fair share of trouble for both her husband (and great-grandson’s namesake) and son, she was after all still both an Ostrogothic princess and Constans’ mother in addition to having helped him maintain positive relations with her people in the last years of her life, and so he felt obligated to give her the honor of a state funeral.

Off in the east, the Turks continued to exchange blows, though by now even their respective elders and sages were counseling them to seek a truce with one another. Illig Qaghan was the one to spend most of this year on the offensive, pressuring the Northern Turkic forces in Khotan and Aksu until they withdrew in June. He pursued his brother’s forces across the Tarim sands, capturing Kucha and Ronglu[3] along the way, until the latter turned to defeat him in the Battle of the Taklamakan Desert that August – having managed to whittle down the Southern Turk army’s water supply with incessant raids over the previous days. However, despite this victory over the Southern Turks in the field, Issik was unable to eject the garrisons Illig had installed in his conquests due to their size and the haste with which their Persian and Bactrian elements had been able to fortify themselves, meaning that Illig got to end the year with the overall advantage.

To the south, Baghayash felt sufficiently confident in his reconstituted armies to strike at the Tamil kingdoms once again, in hopes that this time he would bring them to heel and fully unify the Indian subcontinent under the Huna standard. However, realizing that ambition would quickly prove to be more of an uphill challenge than his subjugation of the Kannada kingdoms, as unlike the Chalukyas and Gangas the Muvendhar of Tamilakam (no doubt remembering well how the Hunas had taken advantage of the Kannada kingdoms' division to defeat them) had wisely not turned against one another in the interbellum. Indeed, if anything, over the past several years they had deepened the ties between their dynasties and marshaled their resources in full expectation of another Huna attack.

The Samrat Baghayash in the later years of his reign, here seen exhorting his troops on their eve of their second invasion of Tamilakam​

The sight of a unified Tamil coalition opposing him did not deter Baghayash, for he was determined that nothing short of the Buddha himself re-appearing to warn him away from his course should prevent him from trying to conquer the subcontinent’s southern tip. In an effort to prevent the Muvendhar from consolidating their forces against his own, the Samrat divided his larger host into three smaller ones which he sent against each Tamil kingdom, trusting that Eftal ferocity and the greater numbers of each of his divisions compared to the Tamil kingdoms’ own armies would gain him the victory in the end. He and his son Harsha personally led the force sent against the Cheras, and achieved the greatest success against that particular Tamil kingdom: this time, they were able to capture and sack the capital of Karur, although the Chera court had already relocated to the port city of Muchiri[4] ahead of the siege. The armies sent against the Pandya and Chola were far less successful however, and after turning those particular Hunas back in a number of smaller engagements, the two other Tamil kingdoms began preparing to move to the aid of their compatriot as they had during Baghayash’s first invasion of Tamilakam.

Beyond the Himalayas, and further still past the warring Chinese dynasties, the Land of the Rising Sun was increasingly visited by renewed trouble this year. For over a decade the Emperor Heijō had been able to rule as an autocrat and living god virtually unchallenged; what resistance the Japanese nobility had been able to muster against him was consistently disorganized, scattered and easy for his army, which was expensive to maintain but had proven worth every ounce of gold powder he was paying them, to repress. But by 582, the emperor had grown arrogant and complacent in his twilight years; so much so that when his second cousin Ōama launched a rebellion against him in Bizen Province, he thought nothing of sending his longtime hostages Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito – who he thought he’d decisively moulded into loyal servants – to lead an army against the rebels.

Well, Kose and Yamanoue did certainly prove themselves to be capable commanders much like their fathers by putting Ōama’s rebellion down quite swiftly. They even followed Heijō’s instructions to not kill him with their own hands once they cornered him, for even though he was a rebel he was also still of Yamato blood and should not have that blood spilled by lesser men, albeit by accident; rather than risk humiliation in captivity or a public execution, Ōama responded to the commanders’ demand to surrender by offing himself with his warabitetō. But rather than immediately return to Asuka after vanquishing Ōama, they raised their own standard in rebellion, having bribed their soldiers to remain loyal to them personally rather than Heijō. Furthermore Kose’s sister Ōta-Gozen had accompanied her brother in the guise of a soldier, and took this opportunity to reveal herself & wed Yamanoue in order to forge a strong new tie between their clans.

For having disguised herself in armor to escape Asuka and riding as part of her brother's and fiancé's army, Ōta-Gozen won fame in Japanese history as one of the first great onna-bugeisha (female warriors)​

Their revolt quickly attracted support from the western provinces, starting with the locals, and even Ōama’s surviving retainers elected to join them after the two revealed that Heijō had originally ordered their deaths (since they were not his kinsmen, and therefore far less important in his eyes than Ōama himself). That Ōama had committed suicide threw a wrench into their plans, for Kose and Yamanoue had actually been planning to talk him into becoming the new Emperor once they toppled Heijō; so instead the insurgents decided to settle for demanding his abdication in favor of his weakest son, the young and sickly Prince Shigi, who they were sure they could most easily control. Heijō, of course, was stunned and enraged by this unexpected (at least to him) betrayal and immediately began to call his loyal armies to his side to destroy the rebels, even as Kose and Yamanoue’s own force snowballed thanks to the numerous recruits they’d found among the disaffected, overtaxed and vindictive populations on their eastward marching route toward Asuka.

The early winter of 583 saw the eruption of the first large-scale battles between the Avars and Western Romans in a little over a decade. As Fulian Khagan’s horde moved through the territory of the Horites, they had to overcome delaying actions by Radimir’s men at Cibalae[5] and Serbinum[6], which bought time for Constans, Honestus, Viderichus and Borut to fully consolidate their forces for the coming confrontations. Against Fulian’s 30,000 Avars the Western Augustus brought to bear a great host of 40,000 that spring, of whom about 15,000 were Italic legionaries – the rest came from Africa and Hispania, or else were federate auxiliaries of (mostly) Ostrogoth and Slavic origin.

In the Battle of Zagrab that March, this large Roman army scored its first victory and successfully relieved the besieged Radimir, with the Ostrogoths in particular fighting hard to redeem their honor after multiple past defeats at Avar hands. Though Viderichus must have had growing misgivings over Constans’ efforts to increase Stilichian influence in government and reduce that of his Greens, fear & hatred of the Avars who had cost his people so much already and the lingering influence of his late aunt (as well as Constans’ efforts to avoid seeming overbearing) kept him on the emperor’s side...at least, for now. Together, they threw Fulian onto the back-foot and halted an attempt by the Khagan to once more cut Macedonia & Greece off from the rest of the empire with another victory in the Battle of Saloniana[7], where after their recent lackluster performance in Britannia the arcuballistarii scutari redeemed themselves in action against the enemy they were best-trained and equipped to fight.

Up north, the Iazyges invasion of the March of Arbogast rapidly proved to be far less of a surprise than Fulian and Saitapharnês had hoped for. With Sviatopolk among his bodyguards, Genobaudes hastened to stop the invaders at the head of a mixed force of legionaries and federates which numbered nearly 16,000; and though the Iazyges and their own Veneti auxiliaries were able to overrun most of the Lombard realm at first, the Romans threw them back in the Battle of Campus Langobardi[8] (as the Romans called the capital of the Lombard kings, which could generously be described as a ‘large village with a palisade’ rather than anything resembling a proper capital city in their eyes). By the year’s end, the Dux Germaniae had entirely routed the Iazyges from Lombard lands and his own – hindered only by poor weather and the lack of advanced infrastructure in that frontier territory – and was weighing whether to launch a counter-attack into the Sarmatic lands to overthrow Saitapharnês entirely.

The Iazyges (and a Veneti auxiliary) set off on their ill-fated invasion of Rome's northernmost federates​

To the south, the Eastern Caesar Arcadius led the Thracian and Anatolian legions to a rousing victory over Fulian’s own oldest son Heduohan in the Battle of Adrianople in April. Fending off an Avar counterattack a few weeks later, he then proceeded to secure a northern perimeter before pushing along the coast to connect with the Western Romans, recapturing Trajanopolis and Maximianopolis in the early summer months. Plans to capture Philippopolis were delayed by the death of his father Anthemius III in July: although Arcadius was duly acclaimed Augustus by his legionaries in the field and the Senate of Constantinople recognized his succession a week later, trouble almost immediately began to erupt in the empire’s easternmost and southernmost reaches.

Marking a rather rocky start to Arcadius II’s reign even outside of the Avar war, the Jews now took their turn to revolt both in Galilee and Mesopotamia, while distant Porphyrus deciding that – with both the Hunas and Turks distracted – this would be a great time to do as his father-in-law Varshasb had been counseling him to, and declaring himself an independent king in Kophen. However, the new emperor was committed to at least retaking all of Thrace before he would even consider making peace with Fulian: so he trusted local governors and their armies to deal with this latest Jewish revolt, and while disappointed that Belisarius’ progeny were not as loyal as he had been, this move on Porphyrus’ part was not altogether unexpected and Arcadius had no problem writing off the new Indo-Roman state as something that was now not even nominally his problem. With all his energies still directed against the Avars, by the year’s end he would indeed have succeeded in wresting Philippopolis back from the barbarians and was now looking at the reconquest of Marcianopolis and northern Thrace.

As Porphyrus had anticipated, his neighbors were too busy with their own wars to snuff out his newly-declared mountain kingdom. To the north, Issik Qaghan had adopted a new strategy to defeat his brother: simply bribing his generals and garrisons in the Tarim Basin to defect, which at first worked splendidly in allowing him to recapture Kucha, Aksu and Ronglu without bloodshed. However, the commandant of Khotan was a man who could not be bought (at least not with the gold, silks and slaves the Northern Turks were offering), so Issik was forced to besiege that city even as he flipped the allegiance of Gausthana[9] and Karakash[10]. The siege of Khotan bought Illig time to raise & organize additional reinforcements from beyond the Tian Shan Mountains and return to the Tarim Basin with a vengeance: by the year’s end he had massacred the populace of Karakash and inflicted especially torturous deaths on its captains & garrison for their betrayal, relieved Khotan (and lavishly rewarded its governor for his loyalty) and was once more fighting his brother across the southern Tarim sands.

A Tocharian coin from Kucha, of a sort patterned after Chinese cash coins and produced for many hundreds of years by the Tarim oasis-kingdoms. Issik Qaghan would have expended many such coins in an effort to steal his brother's cities and supporters out from under him​

Meanwhile to the south and east of Kophen, Baghayash was forced to lift his siege of Muchiri by the arrival of a unified Pandya-Chola army. However, this soon proved to be a ruse on the part of the Samrat: once the Cheras emerged from the city to join their allies, he baited the Tamils into pursuing him onto more favorable ground before turning around to engage them. The Battle of the Palghat Gap[11] which followed ended in a major Huna victory, in which Baghayash inflicted especially heavy losses on the Chera contingent and personally slew their Raja Irumporai, while the Mahasenapati Harsha also distinguished himself by striking down the Pandyas’ own Raja Vira-Goda. The Hunas proceeded to overrun the Chera lands in the aftermath of their triumph, although the onset of the monsoon season gave the remaining Cheras some relief: remembering that the last time he fought the Tamils in a monsoon ended disastrously for him, Baghayash was reluctant to press his advantage under those heavy seasonal rains, giving Irumporai’s successor Vira-Kerala an opportunity to evacuate as many of their people and resources to Pandya territory as he could.

In China, 583 was a year of truces. In the north, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han was able to reach a peace arrangement with Yeongyang of Goguryeo, affixing the border between their realms at the Yalu after years of back-and-forth skirmishing: the Later Han may have failed to hold on to Goguryeo after the Great Qi had initially conquered it, but they also successfully prevented the Koreans from regaining any ground in northeastern China, and now they were free to concentrate entirely against the Qi. By the end of the year, Han forces had crossed the Yellow River in several places and were slowly but surely pushing the Qi toward the Huai.

In the south, Emperor Shang of Liang died at the age of seventy-six and was succeeded by his grandson Prince Yi, whose first act as Emperor Wenxuan was to seek peace with Chu: he returned the territories which his grandfather had occupied in exchange for hostages and a hefty indemnity, since after all Chu did start their latest round of hostilities. Emperor Yang of Chu would not get to enjoy this peace for long though, for his western adversaries – the Cheng dynasty and the barbaric kingdom of Yi – had entered an alliance with the aim of partitioning his dynasty’s territories between themselves. While Liang making peace rather earlier than they’d hoped threw a large rock into those plans, they still proceeded anyway in the hopes that the fighting had weakened Chu to the point where they could easily prevail over Emperor Yang.

Finally, across the sea from China and Korea, the rebellion of Kose and Yamanoue was making steady progress. The rebels’ initial hope for a swift and triumphant march on Asuka, in which they could dethrone Heijō with a minimum of bloodshed, was dashed when a strong force of imperial loyalists under Hatsusebe (another Yamato kinsman) proved impossible for them to bribe or intimidate into staying out of their way: the Battle of the Yodo River which followed resulted in a defeat for the rebels, who found the imperialists’ position on the fords too strong to overcome and withdrew after both Kose and Yamanoue had led attacks which ended in failure, rather than continue wasting time and lives in further futile assaults. However, by retreating the two managed to preserve enough of their army to eventually salvage their followers’ morale and the future of the rebellion that winter, when they led a daring snow-bound assault on Hatsusebe’s camp in the Battle of Yokawa[12]: there they inflicted crippling losses on the pursuing imperial army, and in turn gave chase to Hatsusebe as he began to retreat eastward in a hurry.

584 was a year of continued successes for the Romans. Once winter’s snows and the spring rains had receded, the Western Romans launched an offensive which took them over the Savus, and while their attempt to capture Sirmium was frustrated by stiff Gepid and Avar resistance, they struck a major blow in Pannonia by inducing the defection of another group of Sclaveni – the Dulebes[13], who had come to settle around Lake Pelso and across much of western Pannonia over the past decades. The Dulebian chieftain Beloslav’s brother Gradislav, who was being kept hostage in Fulian Khagan’s court, had died early this year of a fever; Beloslav promptly leaped at this pretext to defect, accusing Fulian of murdering Gradislav to punish him for the earlier defeats in Dalmatia and executing the Avar emissaries sent to demand he send his son Vidogost as a new hostage to make his shift in allegiance clear.

Beloslav negotiating his place in the order of the Roman world with a Western Roman legate shortly after renouncing his allegiance to the Avars​

This betrayal, done in so insulting a fashion, was clearly not something Fulian Khagan could allow to slide. He assailed the Dulebes in force, driving Beloslav and his people from their homes by Lake Pelso with great bloodshed, but having to deal with this new threat behind his lines also compromised his chances of holding the Romans off at the Dravus and he lost a son and a nephew to Honestus' vanguard in the Battle of Verucia[14] early in the summer. The Western Romans promptly advanced into Pannonia itself, as far as the ruins of Sopianae, and made contact with Beloslav after the latter had retreated to Savaria on the border with the Bavarians.

A little further to the north, Genobaudes had decided to spring a counter-invasion of the Iazyges’ territories after all, in so doing charting a new frontier for the Roman world. For the first time Roman legions, however few in number and actually comprised of Romanized Franks and other Teutons rather than ‘proper’ Romans from the Mediterranean they might be, would now tread on the forested soil of the Veneti and Iazyges. There they did considerable damage to the Iazyges polity, sacking many villages (including ‘Campus Iazyges’[15], Saitapharnês’ seat) and putting to the sword almost as many people as they took away in chains, but two factors prevented them from dealing the death-blow to the last of the Sarmatians at this time.

First Sviatopolk, who Genobaudes had hoped to impose as a friendly puppet-king over the Veneti, was killed in an ambush near Campus Dadoseani[16]; and secondly, Constans commanded he take his army and come to the rescue of their new allies, the Dulebes. Genobaudes might have ignored the latter were it not for the former coming to pass, but with no client ruler to install he instead did as he was told and ended the year by saving Beloslav from Fulian Khagan’s wrath. That said, although the Iazyges had survived this punitive expedition, Genobaudes did such crippling damage to them that Saitapharnês would be murdered by his dissatisfied chiefs before 584’s end and they would not mount any further raids or incursions into Roman territory for many more years; all involved were now keenly aware that if subjected to one more such assault, their principality would almost certainly be brought to an end.

Genobaudes may not have been able to completely destroy the Iazyges in the 580s due to circumstances outside his control, but he could certainly teach them that angering the Khagan may be less dangerous than stoking the wrath of the Augustus​

As for the Eastern Romans, they too saw considerable success this year before outside factors finally forced them to pull their eyes away from the Avars. Arcadius II recaptured Marcianople in the spring and pressed the Avars all the way to the Danube by summer’s end, only to be pushed into seeking peace by events in Mesopotamia and Palaestina: the Jews had once again proven more difficult a nut for the Romans to crack than originally expected, and the aged Prince Vologases met his end beneath a well-aimed rock thrown from the walls of Pumbedita. At the request of Vologases’ successor Sapor (Shapur), Arcadius began sending legions away from the Danubian frontier to assist in putting down the Jewish revolts in the east, and the pressure he’d been putting on the Avars’ southeastern flank slackened accordingly.

Heduohan of the Avars took advantage of the lull in the fighting to ride to his father’s aid, and to consolidate Avar strength against the Western Romans. Arcadius, meanwhile, now recommended Constans seek peace as soon as possible. The Western Romans remained confident of their ability to defeat the Avars as Genobaudes, his Germanic federates and the Dulebes were now adding their own numbers to the main imperial army under Constans to match Fulian Khagan’s and Heduohan’s own combined host, but the Western Augustus was naturally gravely disappointed by this turn of events (to put it mildly) nonetheless.

In great and war-torn Turkestan, 584 would be a year of temporary respite. Pressure from their own elders, merchants, foreign emissaries and now even their wives and children, coupled with their severely depleted treasuries (a bigger problem for Issik Qaghan than his brother, as he had expended a fortune to bribe Illig’s various tarkhans and governors the year before) making the restoration of trade an even more urgent matter, forced the squabbling brothers to agree to a truce and start negotiating after frittering the spring away on inconclusive skirmishes across the Taklamakan Desert. These negotiations did not produce an end to the war just yet – both Qaghans were still determined to seize complete control over the Silk Road cities of the Tarim Basin – but at the very least, they were able to agree on the inviolability of traders and certain trade routes in exchange for paying higher road tolls at sporadic points along each of the aforementioned routes: in this the poorer Issik had the advantage, since he still controlled more of the Tarim than Illig did.

For all that they had suffered in the crossfire of the Tegreg brothers' war, the Tocharians finally found a little relief (and the ability to trade again) in 584​

Down in the south, Baghayash now pursued his enemies into the lands of the Pandya kingdom in the heart of Tamilakam. Battling past fierce resistance on the part of the Pandyas, Cholas and Chera remnants, the Huna sovereign went so far as to briefly visit Kanyakumari – the utter-southernmost tip of the subcontinent, where holy Hindu men and women bathed and pledged themselves to celibacy to honor Mahadevi’s incarnation Devi Kanya Kumari – before attempting to envelop and besiege the Pandya capital at Madurai. The allied Tamil kingdoms, for their part, threw all of their remaining strength into defending Madurai; the Samrat was happy to give them the decisive battle they were looking for, believing that if he could crush them there, he could compel all three of them to bend the knee at once rather than having to also terrorize and occupy the Chola lands in another campaign.

The Battle of Madurai proved as brutal and hard-fought as the one at Brahmagiri, where Baghayash brought the Kannada kings to heel more than a decade ago. Just like that previous battle, the outnumbered Tamils took advantage of a factor outside of the Samrat’s control – not the terrain in this case but the weather, for although it was not monsoon season, an unseasonal downpour afflicted the battlefield and greatly hindered the superior Huna cavalry while the strong winds blew in the invaders’ faces – to even the odds, and pressed the Hunas to the point where Baghayash had to unleash a reserve force of armored elephants in a last-minute attempt to tip the scales back his way. Unlike Brahmagiri however, his final gambit did not pay off this time, and the Huna emperor himself fell; he managed to survive having his elephant killed by javelineers, only to be finished off by one of their number while he lay stunned on the ground, for which his killer would be immortalized in Tamil song and legend. Harsha, now the new Samrat, gathered up what remained of his father’s army and struggled to retain those parts of Tamilakam which the Hunas had already conquered in the face of the resurgent Muvendhar.

While the Later Han bore down on the Great Qi north of the Yangtze and the Chu fought to hold back the Cheng and Yi south of it, a new dawn was on the verge of rising over Nippon. Emperor Heijō spent most of the year fighting tooth and nail against the now-ascendant rebels, even as many thousands of his overtaxed and oppressed subjects flocked to their standard while his own men increasingly deserted him in the face of defeat and for fear that Kose and Yamanoue would show them no quarter in victory. When the insurgents were but a few days’ march away from Asuka, Hatsusebe and his remaining partisans tried to persuade him to surrender, only for him to threaten to execute them for disloyalty in response; the Emperor was then astonished to find himself beset by a rapid mutiny, in which Hatsusebe gutted him and claimed the Chrysanthemum Throne.

This however was not the proper way to go about things in the eyes of the rebels, who would still have favored the succession of the sickly and malleable Prince Shigi over the man who had been leading the imperialist armies in the field against them even if he hadn’t just broken the one oath all Japanese expected him to uphold to the bitter end and usurped his cousin. Though he claimed the name ‘Emperor Yōmei’, Hatsusebe’s appeal for recognition was ignored and the rebels drove him out of Asuka so that they could enthrone Shigi instead. The new emperor also determined that he should be referred to as ‘Emperor Yōmei’, so history records him as the ‘True Emperor Yōmei’.

The man who would be remembered as ‘False Emperor Yōmei’ would be dead within the year, betrayed to the victorious Kose and Yamanoue by a peasant family with whom he had sought refuge, which his soon-to-be executioners found fitting considering how he in turn had betrayed Heijō (nevermind that they also felt the latter deserved it and much worse). Regardless, although they allowed Yōmei to retain the imperial dignity, now that they were the true masters of Japan Kose and Yamanoue were both determined that there would have to be many changes in this new era they were inaugurating. At the very least, the Emperor would not be allowed to rule in the autocratic manner that his father had, that much was certain.

Last of all, on the other side of the world, some of the Irish settlers fleeing the continuing battles and raids between Pátraic and Ólchobar took to the sea this year. They were not the first Irishmen to try to leave Tír na Beannachtaí behind, but they were the first to do so and survive to find new soil: in their case, another island to the south, blanketed in apple trees which seemed to thrive even in the cold spring months[17]. Naturally they dubbed this land Tír na nÚlla, or the ‘Land of Apples’, and their leader Gilla-Brígte mac Báetán (a scion of the Uí Enechglaiss of Leinster, a clan displaced by the conquering Uí Néill, and thus not kindred to either Pátraic or Ólchobar who were both of Eóganachta stock) declared himself king there. By the year’s end they would build their first settlement near the high sandstone cliffs (from which they got its name, Ard Aille – ‘High Cliff’) overlooking the cape where they first landed[18], and also make contact with the native Wildermen of this island, who called themselves the Mik’maq.

Gilla-Brígte mac Báetán did not believe it was a coincidence that they should find the Land of Apples exactly fifty years since Saint Brendan discovered the Land of Blessings, and praised God accordingly​

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

[1] Xingtai.

[2] Zhengding.

[3] Niya.

[4] Kodungallur.

[5] Vinkovci.

[6] Gradiška.

[7] Mostar.

[8] Leipzig.

[9] Keriya.

[10] Karakax.

[11] The Palakkad Gap in the Western Ghats.

[12] Now part of Miki, Hyōgo Prefecture.

[13] Historically, the Dulebes or Dulebians dwelled between the Vitava River in the north and the Drava in the south. They were probably the core population of the Slavic Balaton Principality, a Frankish vassal state which was destroyed (and with them the Dulebians as a distinct ethnic group) by the Magyars in the 9th century.

[14] Virovitica.

[15] Syców.

[16] Głogów. ‘Dadoseani’ refers to the Dziadoszanie, a Lechitic or proto-Polish tribe (classified by the Romans as belonging to the Veneti) which lived in the vicinity of the modern city.

[17] Prince Edward Island.

[18] East Point, Prince Edward Island.

 

[Circle of Willis]

585 was the year in which the Fourth Avar-Roman War approached its climax. The Western Roman armies spent the early winter and spring months consolidating in western Pannonia, while the Avars did the same now that they no longer had to worry about any further major movements on the part of the Eastern Romans. By mid-April, both sides were ready to engage in one of the largest battles in fifth and sixth-century Europe, outdone only by the Seven Days’ Battles where the combined might of both Romes and many barbarian peoples finally laid Attila low and shattered the power of the Huns: on one side the Augustus Constans commanded close to 50,000 men – including about 20,000 Roman legionaries (from Italy, Gaul, Africa, Hispania or the March of Arbogast’s core around Augusta Treverorum) and 2,000 Dulebes under Beloslav on top of another 25,000 Gothic, Frankish, Burgundian, Alemanni, Thuringian, Lombard, Carantanian & Croatian federates – while on the other, Fulian Khagan and Heduohan had a little over 40,000 warriors, of whom perhaps half were Gepids and Avar-aligned Sclaveni.

The two great armies clashed near the ruined Roman town of Morgentianae[1] on April 29, the Western Romans having been baited there by Avar feints: well-informed of the disparity in numbers between their hosts, Fulian knew he had to secure a terrain advantage to maximise his men’s strengths while diminishing those of the Romans. He had chosen the battlefield well, situating himself and his reserve atop defensible hills[2] overlooking flat grassland where his cavalry could fight unhindered. Constans and Honestus did not feel as though the terrain around Morgentianae was difficult enough as to make fighting here inadvisable, and accepted Fulian’s challenge to fight there. As another sign of the battle’s importance, many royals from both sides involved themselves in the fighting: on the Roman side Constans was accompanied by both of his sons, while on that of the Avars virtually every Yujiulü clansman of note & fighting age stood with Fulian, of whom none were more prominent than his heir Heduohan.

The Battle of Morgentianae began with the typical exchange of missiles between the Roman crossbowmen & equites sagittarii on one hand and the Avar horse-archers on the other, followed by a clash between both sides’ large ‘secondary’ forces: the assorted federate contingents on the Roman side, with overall command being assigned to Viderichus, and the largely unmounted Gepids and Slavs on the side of the Avars. In this opening stage the Romans’ allies had the advantage, using their greater numbers & especially the mobility of their more numerous mounted warriors to envelop their adversaries, who in turn slowly but surely fell back toward the hills as it became increasingly clear that they were going to lose this sanguinary first phase of the battle. When the Gepids and Sclaveni began to break at the feet of the Avar-held hills, Heduohan thundered down the slopes with two-thirds of the Avar cavalry (mostly from the confederacy’s constituent Turkic tribes), rallying his father’s flagging infantry and hurling Viderichus’ own men back toward the legionary lines with great bloodshed.

Ostrogoth foederati falling back after being rushed by Heduohan's Avar cavalry in the hills around Morgentianae​

Constans directed Honestus and Genobaudes to unite with the retreating foederati under Viderichus, and to have their legions – who had been advancing behind the Ostrogoth king as he pushed forward – brace for the Avar onslaught. The Avars demonstrated a near-Roman discipline in breaking off their pursuit of Viderichus’ men to reorganize for a proper charge, even while under fire from the Roman archers and crossbowmen (and then by braving the plumbatae of the legionaries once they truly began their charge), and Heduohan further eschewed their traditional deployment in a double or triple-line in favor of copying the Roman wedge formation. The dramatic charge which followed managed to tear open gaps in a few places along the Roman lines, which Heduohan ordered the Gepids and Slavs into in a bid to overwhelm and collapse the Roman infantry formation. The Caesar Florianus frustrated his hopes by leading his father’s infantry reserves into those gaps alongside Beloslav’s modest Dulebian contingent, and together they managed to grind the Avar assault to a halt.

It was at this point that Fulian had to concede that he had made a mistake: by nearly routing the non-Avar half of his army, the Romans had managed to force him and his son into springing their trap too early, mauling the federate forces which were already committed to the fight but not the still-fresh iron core of the legions behind them. Nevertheless Heduohan had exceeded his expectations in pressuring the Romans so hard, and the battle clearly hung in the balance, so he led his retainers and remaining cavalry – the Rouran leaders of the Avars – downhill to try to outflank the pinned-down Roman formations on the plain. In this he would have been successful had Constans not led his own household cavalry, the venerable scholae, to counter the Avar attack, kicking off the bloodiest and most exhausting phase of the battle.

Many thousands perished in the sanguinary maelstrom which had now completely filled the plains outside Morgentianae, with the sorest loss on the Roman side being the magister utriusque militiae himself. Amid the battlefield chaos Honestus was felled by a javelin to his head, an angon that was probably thrown either by a Gepid – or an Ostrogoth or Frank, in which case just how ‘friendly’ this bit of fire was must be an open question, as Genobaudes and Viderichus both considered the man an obstacle in their road to Rome’s highest military office (not that either would ever admit to ordering such a hit if they were indeed responsible, obviously). Whether it was genuine enemy action, an honest accident or a very well-timed assassination, the demise of Honestus nearly caused the Roman lines to buckle; but Florianus, Genobaudes and Viderichus all played a role in holding their respective subordinates together, and in the end the Avars’ ferocity gave out before Roman discipline and determination did.

The magister militum Honestus throwing a plumbata at the Battle of Morgentianae, shortly before he is killed when someone responds with an angon aimed at his head​

Toward sunset the Avars retreated back to their hills, the cavalry doggedly fighting to cover the withdrawal of their infantry first. Conveniently for Fulian, between this rearguard action and Heduohan’s earlier charge the heaviest losses fell upon his Turkic subjects, while he and his fellow Rouran did not shed too much of their own blood. The Romans tried to pursue but could not evict them from the aforementioned hills before dark, being quite thoroughly exhausted and disorganized themselves. Constans himself had been injured in the fighting, his shield-arm broken by a mace-wielding household retainer of Fulian’s (though his younger son Otho had saved him from being killed by that same retainer), and noted that there were still many Avars capable of putting up a fight if he insisted on continuing the next day; so instead when both armies had withdrawn to their respective camps, he sent an envoy to offer a truce & peace talks that night, an offer which Fulian (seeing no way in which he could turn the situation around at this point, as his own defeated army was also dead-tired and had sustained even worse losses than the Romans) agreed to. 7,000 Romans and 9,000 Avars, nearly a fifth of the total combatants who battled outside Morgentianae’s ruins that day, did not live to see whatever settlement the Augustus and the Khagan would reach.

Proceeding from the Battle of Morgentianae, the treaty which ended this latest round of Avar-Roman hostilities was one decidedly favorable to the Roman Empires, although the East’s need to suppress Jewish uprisings on the other side of their dominion had removed the complete destruction of the Avar Khaganate from the realm of possibility at this time. The Western Romans regained chunks of Moesia (although Singidunum remained in Avar hands) and most of Pannonia, with a new boundary affixed at Sirmium – finally recaptured by Rome after forty years – and the eastern shores of Lake Pelso: for achieving this victory Constans acquired the honorific Pannonicus, 'victorious in Pannonia'. The Dulebes were settled to hold the western Pannonian plain, and the newly-minted Dux Beloslav re-established his court at the lakeside town of Mogentianae[3] (not to be confused with the site of this war’s final decisive battle, Morgentianae), where a modest community of Pannonian Romans[4] (including the descendants of Orestes and Bleda the Hun) had managed to endure under Avar occupation. The Eastern Romans meanwhile regained the entirety of the Diocese of Thrace, restoring their part of the Lower Danubian frontier.

A Pannonian Roman girl from Mogentianae, newly liberated from Avar rule after 40 years​

Speaking of the Jewish uprisings in the Eastern Empire, the legions Arcadius redeployed from the Avar front made a significant difference in Galilee and Mesopotamia. The infusion of experienced manpower allowed Gregorius, the governor of Palaestina Secunda, to break the Jewish siege of Scythopolis and also secure Nazareth, where the insurgents had overrun most of the town and trapped the remaining Christians around the Church of the Annunciation over the winter of the previous year. In Mesopotamia, Prince Sapor was able to push the Jews back to Pumbedita, from where they had pushed forth after killing his father and scattering his demoralized local Romano-Persian besieging army in 584. Arcadius resolved to ride to the Levant and personally assume command of the suppression efforts in the next year, as he needed the rest of 585 to consolidate his control over the newly-regained Thracian provinces.

East of Turkestan, where Illig and Issik were still busy rebuilding their forces after the nearly-nonstop battles and skirmishes of the last years which had seriously depleted both their coffers and their manpower, Harsha continued to contend with the Tamils. Reinforcements from the north of India helped him staunch the bleeding, so to speak, in the aftermath of his father’s final defeat and death: the Muvendhar recaptured the southern half of Chera territory, including the port of Muchiri, but the Hunas managed to hang on to the north and east, including their old capital of Karur. Still, mounting losses and the risk of a Brahmanist Indian uprising compelled the new Samrat to begin searching for a peaceful solution to his troubles rather than attempting to outdo the fallen Baghayash with a second go at conquering Tamilakam.

In Japan, the youthful and victorious Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito set about consolidating a new order. They did not demand that the newly-enthroned Emperor Yōmei forsake the imperial dignity or the claim to being Amaterasu’s descendant which his father had taken up, nor did they deny him the ceremonial honors due to his position (such as the kowtow and never referring to him by his birth name). They did, however, force the disbandment of the remnants of the imperial army and a great decentralization of authority away from Asuka: the kabane offices were mostly removed from Yamato hands and apportioned to the victors, with Kose and Yamanoue claiming the dignity of ‘Ōomi’ to mark themselves as the greatest of Japan’s grandees, higher even than many of the remaining Yamato relations (titled simply ‘Omi’).

Aside from reaching a compromise on Buddhism’s presence – the Buddhist Yamanoue successfully pushed his Shintoist brother-in-law and by extension the Emperor into tolerating the presence of Buddhist temples outside of their fiefs, and allowing Buddhists such as himself to invite monks & gurus from the mainland – the dual Ōomi instituted what would be known as the ‘gōzoku’[5] system. Powerful and wealthy clans (the titular gōzoku) from each of Japan’s provinces were made responsible for the maintenance & leadership of armed retinues who could enforce justice in peacetime and answer an imperial call to arms in wartime. How many warriors each clan was expected to maintain depended on just how wealthy they were judged as being, based on the size of their estates and the number of peasants who tilled their fields. Naturally this martial responsibility came with privileges of local self-governance, with each clan essentially becoming masters of their own domains (and by extension the village headsmen under their direction, masters of their own hamlets) once again – direct imperial oversight of fiefs outside of Asuka’s immediate surroundings was terminated under Kose and Yamanoue, which coupled with the elimination of most taxes (now that there was no longer a central imperial army to pay for or an extravagant lifestyle for a certain autocrat to enjoy), came as a massive relief to most Japanese of this time regardless of station.

Being a young man with a sickly constitution at the time of his enthronement, Emperor Yōmei was not expected by his subjects to amount to anything more than a figurehead for the victorious magnates who had just toppled his father​

In the Occident, 586 was a year dominated by the question as to who should succeed the fallen Honestus as magister militum. Naturally Genobaudes and Viderichus positioned themselves as the leading candidates with the backing of their respective factions, with Genobaudes pointing to his victories against the Iazyges and in defense of the Dulebes to justify his appointment while Viderichus highlighted how he had led the Ostrogoths back to glory on the battlefield and done his part in washing away the stains of the Avars’ triumphs over his father & uncle with the blood of Fulian’s warriors recently to do the same. However Constans was loath to appoint either man to become the West’s generalissimo, fearing that both would undo all of his and Honestus’ efforts to cleanse the army of factionalism in favor of loyalty to the Augustus alone, and was further spooked by his heir Florianus’ insistence that he’d witnessed how the javelin which killed Honestus to begin with came from somewhere within the Roman army rather than the Avar one.

Though he had no definitive proof that Honestus had been murdered rather than simply falling in honest battle, Constans ultimately decided this lingering suspicion was a good enough excuse to first delay making a decision, and then to appoint Florianus to succeed his slain brother-in-law shortly after the former’s second son (and now heir-presumptive to the Altavan throne) Constantine was born in October. The Caesar’s first order of business was to launch a covert investigation into Honestus’ death, but he too could not discover conclusive evidence that either Viderichus or Genobaudes was guilty of arranging an assassination: either the federate chiefs had covered their tracks well, the evidence (mainly the actual assassin) had been lost in the nearly 90,000-man whirlwind of battling and bleeding soldiers, or they really weren’t guilty of killing his uncle at all, though Florianus personally refused to believe the latter to be true. Meanwhile to buy off the Blues and Greens, Constans took a most generous approach to the dispensation of plunder and financial bonuses, and awarded Genobaudes with the annual Consular honor while also appointing Viderichus Rome’s urban prefect for 587-588.

While this approach continued to keep the factions from open revolt, both Genobaudes and Viderichus did not consider their rewards to be sufficient to outweigh the loss of supreme command over the Roman army for the second time in a row, and their quiet resentment of the Stilichians only grew – especially as both men did not fail to notice Florianus’ investigation efforts (which further painted a target on his back in their eyes, on top of him having had such an important role in ensuring neither of them acquired the office of magister utriusque militiae), thanks to their own informants within the military and civil government alike. In this regard Viderichus was better-positioned to oppose Stilichian intrigues with his own, as Otho was already wed to a woman of the Anicii clan closely aligned with the Greens and also resented his father for showering Florianus with accolades when he himself had saved the former from certain death on the battlefield of Morgentianae. It was only natural, then, that the younger of Rome’s princes should draw ever closer to his mother’s faction in this year and the years which followed.

Caesar Florianus, newly promoted to take Honestus' place as the Western Empire's generalissimo. While his appointment kept the office out of the hands of the Greens & Blues who he & his father both distrusted, it also increasingly alienated both factions from the Stilichians​

Elsewhere, the Avars were undergoing their own change in government. Having started and lost his second war with the Romans, the confidence of even the other Yujiulü in Fulian Khagan’s rule was irreparably shaken, and it was only a matter of time before he was removed from power – which was exactly what happened in the early autumn months of 586, as the servants tasked with waking him found he had been poisoned one September morning. The kurultai found his youngest wife Karacik, a noblewoman of the Turkic Kutrigurs, guilty of bringing him the poisoned cup of kumis[6] the night before and sentenced her to be dragged to her death by horses for the crime.

However, it was quietly understood that she did not, and probably could not, act alone. The likeliest co-conspirators were judged to be either her family (the Turks within the Khaganate had long resented Yujiulü overlordship and now must especially be outraged by their recent treatment as crossbow-bolt-fodder at Morgentianae) or Heduohan himself, who may have wanted to accelerate his succession to the Khaganate in the wake of his father’s failures and had been suspected of being Karacik’s lover himself (certainly he was much closer to his stepmother in age than old Fulian had been, and they had enjoyed a good rapport until now). Still, nobody particularly liked Fulian after his failures in leadership and on the battlefield, so after Heduohan ascended to the throne under the name Dòuluófúbádòufá (‘Illuminating Ruler’, to the Romans simply ‘Douluo Khagan’) he allowed the matter to close after presiding over Karacik’s execution and his father’s funeral, to only muted complaints among the Avars.

Karacik and Fulian Khagan, the morning after the latter experienced the fatal consequences of failing his Avar subjects one too many times​

In the Orient, Arcadius II took command of the legions sent into Palaestina Secunda as he intended and accelerated the suppression campaign against the Galilean rebels. He cut all remaining overland links connecting the insurgents around the Sea of Galilee to those in the hills and mountains to the south, and steadily destroyed the former group over the course of an eight-month campaign while increasingly trapping and besieging the latter atop Mount Tabor. An appeal made to the Samaritans was promptly laughed out of Sebastopolis (and the Jewish emissaries who brought it to the Samaritan sages turned over to the Roman authorities for execution) – as far as the Samaritans were concerned, the Galilean Jews must have some nerve to request their help after doing absolutely nothing for them during, and actually aiding the legions of Anthemius III toward the end of, the last Samaritan uprising.

South of Rome, the Emperor Tewodros managed to hold on to his throne and his life after his rival Wazabe was murdered by a disgruntled officer with whose wife he’d been having an affair, bringing the Aksumite civil war to a conclusion in his favor by default. Still this was a victory achieved through pure luck rather than any particular competence on Tewodros’ part, as without his mother’s guidance he had proven to be a rather lacking ruler and reliant on the ‘help’ of increasingly ambitious & overmighty counselors. Under his continued rule, Aksum’s masāfint (‘princes’, or regional magnates) increased their power at the expense of the central authorities, paying less in taxes than he meekly demanded of them and raising armies which were loyal to them alone.

And off to the southeast, Harsha reached a truce with the Muvendhar early in the year, and spent most of the remaining months in 586 negotiating a lasting peace settlement with them. He agreed to acknowledge the independence of the three great Tamil kingdoms and to return Karur to the Chera, although the northern fringes of their realm and that of the Pandyas were annexed to the Huna Empire. The Tamil kings further agreed to pay tribute to the Samrat, with the Cholas paying the largest amount to compensate for the total preservation of their realm’s territorial integrity and the Cheras paying the second-most via a special levy on the maritime Silk Road trade flowing through Muchiri, although they did not formally acknowledge him as their suzerain.

Between this agreement and additional treaties to guarantee trade & peace with the Indo-Romans, Harsha had brought some much-needed peace to the Indian subcontinent after the decades of constant fighting in which the Eftals toppled the Guptas and set themselves up as the new hegemon of the land. He could now pursue other priorities, such as keeping the Indians from rebelling against him, sponsoring new Buddhist monasteries, and patronizing scholars & temples of the Śvētāmbara Jainist tradition[7], having gained a certain respect for the Jains in general while campaigning in southern India (in large part because they remained committed to their pacifist ways in the face of Huna raiding parties, and boasted that they had experience fasting when their food supplies were threatened) even as he found the ‘white-clad’ Śvētāmbara friendlier and more comprehensible than their ‘sky-clad’ or Digambara brethren.

A Śvētāmbara Jain sadhu (monk) under Harsha's patronage. He wears not only the white robes of his sect but also a muhapatti: a white cloth donned over the mouth to prevent him from dribbling saliva onto the scriptures he is reading, and also to keep himself from violating ahimsa (absolute non-violence) by accidentally swallowing insects if he ever opens his mouth​

587 was another quiet year for the Western Roman Empire, where Constans’ attention was primarily divided between continuing efforts to consolidate his authority over the reconquered territories and managing the quiet resentment & tensions bubbling beneath the surface among both the Blue and Green cliques. The death of Pope John on July 1 gave him an opportunity to rebuild some bridges with both factions through the selection of the next Pope – a process in which the Augustus resolved to back Anastasius ‘of the Gardens’, so-called because he was one of five sons from a well-connected family whose home on the Quirinal Hill neighbored the Gardens of Sallust: thanks to his familial connections the priest had friends among both the Blues and Greens, routinely dined with Senators, and had even tutored Prince Otho in the latter’s childhood. As a compromise candidate amenable to both federate factions and trusted by the imperial household, he had little difficulty winning support from the Roman establishment in his bid to become Pope Anastasius II, though he was not as popular with the urban masses who perceived him as an aloof aristocrat. To decisively win them over Constans had to host chariot races and theatrical plays, though the pompa circensis (opening parade) preceding the first of these races at least gave him, Viderichus and Genobaudes opportunities to show off the Avar loot which they could not fit into their earlier triumph.

The Eastern Empire, meanwhile, was resolving its latest internal issue in a rather different way this year. In Mesopotamia Pumbedita finally surrendered to Sapor’s reinforced army, having run out of provisions after he completed encircling the city and cut the last of their smuggling routes over the winter. The Jewish leadership had yielded on the assurance that they would be pardoned, but after they laid down their arms the Sassanid Prince of Mesopotamia immediately broke his word and sacked the city anyway to avenge his father. Already greatly damaged in the turmoil which plagued the later years of Sabbatius’ reign, Pumbedita’s limited recovery was reversed by this sack and the city never got another chance to regain its former luster: with its sister-city Nehardea already having been destroyed by Sabbatius, only Babylon now remained standing as a (fortunately non-devastated, thanks to the prudence of its Nasi and elders so far – though certainly the duplicitous devastation of their kindred in Pumbedita must have worn their patience thin indeed) center of Judaism in the eastern Levant.

The Eastern Augustus himself broadcast a signal that his reign would be far less tolerant and lenient than his father ever had been with his treatment of the Galilean Jews. The rebels had descended from Mount Tabor during a spring storm, apparently in hopes of springing a surprise attack the Roman encampment and replicating the feat of the ancient Judges Barak & Deborah, but Arcadius was no Sisera and the Romans not only had no iron chariots to be washed away in the rain, they had undertaken considerable preparations to deal with an ambush. Suffice to say this particular Battle of Mount Tabor did not end as its architects had hoped, and the Romans finished off the survivors of the Jewish rout a few days later once the rain had abated: though they fought hard, the casualties they had incurred from their failed surprise attack made it impossible for them to hold the legions back even with the terrain advantage. After decimating the fighting-age men on Mount Tabor, Arcadius duly sent the tens of thousands of surviving women & children to the slave-markets, and also levied a special head tax on the Jews who hadn’t rebelled to pay reparations to the churches damaged and communities attacked by the insurgents throughout Galilee.

A Galilean insurgent launches a desperate attack on an Eastern Roman legionary and Ghassanid camel-rider as part of the Jews' last stand on Mount Tabor​

In Central Asia, the two Turkic Khaganates had rebuilt their hordes to a sufficiently satisfactory point that they decided 587 would be a good year in which to resume hostilities. Issik was a little quicker on the draw, breaking the truce with attacks in both the Tarim Basin and in Chorasmia: he had more success in the latter than the former, once again overrunning the region and pushing down both the Oxus & Jaxartes to threaten Bukhara & actually capture Chach[8] even as his Tarim offensive stalled in the face of a prepared Southern Turkic defense. Illig’s counteroffensive secured Bukhara, retook a considerable amount of ground and trapped lead elements of Issik’s western army in Chach in the late summer & autumn months, however. As winter began to set in, both brothers began to amass troops in and around Chorasmia for what they hoped would be a decisive battle (and which their supporters also hoped would be the last battle of this particular round of Turkic fratricidal bloodletting) next year.

East of Turkestan, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han and a barely-mature Emperor Mingyuan of Great Qi reached a peace agreement after the former inflicted a stinging defeat on the latter’s army at the Battle of Jianxi[9], securing Later Han control over the length of the Huai River, but were then turned back from their bid to end Great Qi altogether when the younger emperor led a bold sally out from Jiankang. The peace settlement they reached recognized the Huai as the new border between the rival dynasties, and included an exchange of gifts and hostages in hopes of ensuring that the new state of peace would last. Later Han was now clearly in ascendancy, becoming the largest and most powerful dynasty in northern China, but the aging Wucheng would assuredly need to exercise a healthy amount of caution and restraint to keep it that way – just last decade it was the Great Qi were in a similar position, yet clearly that in no way made them immune to taking a nasty tumble or several (much to the Han’s benefit) and ending up in the rather less-than-stellar position they were in now.

Last of all, the Gaels in the New World made a new major discovery quite soon after their last one. This time the discovery was made by the Connachta of western Ireland, as a party of thirty men (plus the wives and children of about a dozen of these colonists) sailed from Ólchobar’s kingdom on the eastern shore of Tír na Beannachtaí to eventually reach another island neighboring the recently-discovered Tír na nÚlla. Their leader Brían mac Tigernán (a clansman of the Ua Cadhla of Connaught) dubbed it Tír na Ceo[10] – the ‘Land of Mist’ – after nearly running aground on its rocky shores, due to the dense mist surrounding it.

In a missive to the monks around Saint Brendan’s Monastery, he complained that wood was scarce and that the isle’s poor soil & weather made agriculture difficult, but explained that he had nevertheless found a large natural harbor to dock & set up camp at[11] (which he dubbed ‘Tearmann Oighir’, his ‘sanctuary in the ice’) and that the surrounding seas were teeming with fish. Now only the men of Ulster, long held back by the Uí Néill and to a lesser extent their Ulaidh rivals, had yet to attain the honor of discovering a part of the New World: they need only escape the dictates and petty feuds of their overlords, and the temptation to settle on the lands already discovered by their cousins to the west and south (though admittedly there was enough new lands to keep the Gaels as a whole busy charting & settling for some years to come). In truth the greatest discovery of all – a landmass far larger than all of the islands discovered by their neighbors to date put together – awaited them only a stone’s throw away from Tír na nÚlla and Tír na Ceo.

Brían mac Tigernán's daughters trying to enjoy themselves amid the fog and fierce gales which troubled their new home​

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[1] Tüskevár.

[2] Part of the outermost Bakony Hills.

[3] Keszthely.

[4] The ‘Keszthely culture’ of Pannonian Romance-speakers historically managed to survive the fall of the Western Roman Empire and repeated Germanic, Slavic, and Avar depredations. They maintained a presence around Lake Balaton until the 9th and 10th centuries, leaving behind 6,000 tombs and many artifacts, only to fade away (alongside the Dulebes) after the coming of the Magyars.

[5] An early term for the powerful, landholding Kofun and Asuka-era clans who preceded the samurai proper. It literally means ‘prominent family’.

[6] A drink made by fermenting mare’s milk, popular with the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian Steppes since ancient times.

[7] One of Jainism’s two major sects, the other being the Digambara. The Śvētāmbaras are distinguished by their wearing of seamless white clothes (as opposed to the ‘sky-clad’, or nudist, Digambaras), more colorful iconography, less strict lifestyle and more egalitarian teachings (believing that women can attain moksha or enlightenment and break free from Samsara, while the Digambaras believe that only men can achieve this state and thus female practitioners must first be reincarnated as males).

[8] Tashkent.

[9] Now part of Mingguang City.

[10] Cape Breton Island.

[11] Sydney, Nova Scotia.

 

[Circle of Willis]

588 was a year free of both military and political troubles for the Western Roman Empire, and indeed one with great cause for celebration: the Stilichians were visited by the stork twice in rapid succession. Firstly the Caesar Florianus fathered a third son in the early weeks of August, duly named Constans after his grandfather the incumbent emperor, and days later Otho (ever-striving to catch up to his older brother) and his own wife Juliana welcomed into the world their first child, a girl who they named after her mother. The ecstatic Augustus hosted a chariot race on October 12 (the day of the traditional Augustalia festival, suspended after the Christianization of Rome) with an especially large winner’s purse to celebrate, though in a poor portent that marred an otherwise great year for the imperial family, their favored Red and White teams were defeated early on by the Greens and Blues – these charioteers momentarily set aside their long-time rivalry and worked in concert to eliminate their competition before turning on each other.

South of Rome, the Ephesian Christians of Kumbi began to really flex their muscles with an expedition against Aoudaghost, the nearest Donatist city-state, after more than a decade of back-and-forth harassment. Citing their massacre of a Kumbian caravan returning from the salt mines of Idjil as his specific casus belli, King Bannu led a force of just over 2,000 warriors along the western trade route to Aoudaghost in the autumn months and caught the Berbers of the town by surprise. They had not expected a forceful response of this scale, and a haphazard effort at stopping it around the mountain overlooking their capital was quickly routed.

The Kumbians went on to sack Aoudaghost, killing or enslaving the vast majority of its populace and dragging its riches back home with them, not only for revenge’s sake but in a conscious bid to redirect trade to Biru[1] – another town much closer to Kumbi which was already under Bannu’s power. Other Berber towns to the north which had previously resisted efforts by the Donatist kingdom of Hoggar to incorporate them, most importantly Taghazza, now actively sought the protection of the Hoggari in response to Kumbi’s victory. Bannu, for his part, hurried to fortify Kumbi & Biru and to deepen ties with the Ephesian Moors in expectation of a Hoggari-led punitive expedition sometime in the years to come.

Bannu, first Christian Kaya-Maghan of Kumbi, at the beginning of his campaign against Aoudaghost. Note the crosses carved into the shields of the Soninke warriors, a sign of their increasing conversion to Ephesian Christianity​

Beyond the Eastern Roman Empire, where Arcadius II and his cohorts were occupied with reconstruction efforts in Galilee and Mesopotamia, the fate of the Tarim Basin was being decided on the fields of Chorasmia. Illig launched a counterattack early in the year which brought him a ways up the Oxus and all the way to Hazarasp, where Issik had concentrated his own forces for what both sides hoped would be the decisive battle in their fratricidal war. Against Illig’s 24,000 soldiers – a mix of Turks, Persians and Sogdians, plus half a dozen war elephants – stood some 25,000 Northern Turks, a majority of whom were not even Tegreg after years of attrition had worn them down, but rather tribesmen gathered from other subject Turkic peoples such as the Khazars and Karluks.

The Battle of Hazarasp initially went well for the Southern Turks, whose elephants gave their Northern kindred a rude surprise – breaking up the first Northern Turkic charge and felling several of Issik’s tarkhans. However, the Northern Turks rallied and shot the beasts down one-by-one under their Qaghan’s direction: Illig had clearly failed to muster enough of the pachyderms to carry his starting momentum and win the battle outright, and squandered those he did have by committing his elephant corps to the battle almost immediately. Though shaken by this opening engagement, the Northern Turkic cavalry went on to overcome their still-slightly-smaller Southern Turkic counterpart, and dealt a decisive blow when Illig himself was felled by a Tegreg lancer belonging to his brother’s household reserve.

The Southern Turkic infantry largely scattered as word of their Qaghan’s demise spread, and were pursued with great bloodshed by the resurgent Northern Turks. One notable exception was a troop of 500 heavily armored Mazdakist warrior-monks from the Zagros Mountains, who had sworn an oath to achieve victory or die and chained themselves together at the feet to prove their seriousness: unable to retreat and unwilling to break their word, they fought to the last man, and Issik was so impressed by their valor to hold his troops back from mutilating their corpses (which he would later return to the Mazdakites of the Zagros). Regardless of any doomed last-minute heroics however, the Northern Qaghan did stand decisively victorious and proceeded to spend most of 588’s remaining months devastating a now-defenseless Transoxiana, sacking previously-safe cities such as Bukhara, in addition to compelling the surrender of the remaining Southern Turkic garrisons in the Tarim Basin. Only in wintertime did he cease his attacks after Illig’s oldest surviving son and successor, Qutlugh Qaghan, agreed to formally cede these regions to the Northern Turks in full and to set the boundary between their Khaganates at the Oxus – largely because he now had to contend with his brothers, who were challenging him for their father’s throne and driving the defeated Southern Turkic realm toward a full-on implosion.

A Tegreg retainer of Issik's takes aim at the chained Mazdakites making their last stand in the name of the fallen Illig in the final stage of the Battle of Hazarasp​

In China, 588 was a year of consolidation. In the north, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han (no doubt having learned a lesson from the near-downfall of Great Qi) continued to prove himself a cunning and prudent ruler by avoiding the temptation to annex Later Zhou immediately or to push his luck against any number of foreign adversaries, from the Koreans to the war-weary Northern Turks, in favor of securing the already impressive gains he had won over the past decade and a half. In the south, the exhausted and battered realm of Chu finally conceded defeat to its Cheng and Yi adversaries, who respectively extended their reach into the fertile Jianghan Plain and expelled the Chu from the Sichuan Basin. However, Emperor Yang of Chu did manage to avoid the destruction of his empire thanks to his peace agreement with Emperor Wenxian of Liang holding: the latter was more interested in cultivating the cultural and economic renaissance taking off in his realm than throwing himself headfirst into another war just five years after reaching an accommodation with the former.

Come 589, the Eastern Roman Emperor Arcadius continued to embark on markedly different policies compared to his predecessor – this time, a reversion to attempts to assert religious uniformity on his half of the Roman Empire, as his great-grandfather Sabbatius had done. From Syria to Egypt the Augustus confiscated churches belonging to Miaphysites & Monophysites and placed them under the care of Ephesian clerics, while new taxes were imposed to refill the imperial coffers after the recent wars with the Avars and the Jewish revolts; taxes which always seemed to be heavier on non-Ephesians’ backs than the orthodox Ephesians. The public celebration of non-Ephesian rites even (nay, especially) on holy days, chiefly Easter and Christmas, also came under official harassment in an effort to drive the heterodox Christians into celebrating exclusively alongside Ephesians. To the non-Ephesian sects, Arcadius’ reign must have appeared as two steps back to the bad old days after the one step forward unto respite they had enjoyed under his more tolerant father.

The riots which this reversion to Sabbatius’ policies provoked among the heterodox did not deter Arcadius, who responded to them with an iron hand while also looking to enforce religious orthodoxy among his nearby vassals. Following the death of their king ‘Amr III this spring, the succession was contested between his sons Al-Aswad and ‘Alqama, with the former prevailing and driving the latter into exile with the Romans a few months later. In Constantinople ‘Alqama pleaded with Arcadius for support in taking the Lakhmid throne, and offered to convert to the Ephesian rite to acquire imperial backing; Al-Aswad had offered to renew Lakhmid allegiance to the Eastern Empire, but drew a line at actually converting to the orthodox Roman Church when it was asked of him, at which point Arcadius agreed to recognize ‘Alqama as the legitimate King and Phylarch[2] of the Banu Lakhm. ‘Alqama married the Ghassanid princess Souzan in July in a bid to reconcile their long-feuding clans, and toward the end of the year he would invade his brother’s kingdom with four Roman legions (4,000 men) and 10,000 warriors provided by the Ghassanids backing his claim.

A Monophysite-led riot in Emesa, Syria​

Just east of this half of the Roman world, the Southern Turkic Khaganate continued to disintegrate in the fires of another round of fratricidal fighting, this time between Illig’s sons. Qutlugh Qaghan maintained a hold on southern Persia, centered around Istakhr, with the continued backing of the local Zoroastrian elites; to the west, the Buddhist-inclined Qilibi Qaghan had set himself up in Isfahan to rule over the lands lying between the Alborz Mountains, the eastern reaches of the Zagros and the sands of the Dasht-e Lut; and to the north and east, their younger half-brother Qapaghan Qaghan – an open adherent to Manichaean teachings – ruled the remaining outer rim of Illig’s dominion, from the plains & hills of Khorasan to the Gedrosian desert and the shores of Makran, from Merv. The Mazdakites once more asserted themselves as an independent power in the western and Zagros Mountains, as well. An opportunity to exploit Southern Turkic disunity was lost on the part of the Eastern Romans due to Arcadius’ inward turn, although even if he had not, whether he would have wanted to potentially overextend himself as Sabbatius had is a fair question.

The Northern Turks, meanwhile, were trying to (re)build on the ashes they had won with their costly victory. Issik stood triumphant over his fallen brother, to be sure, but to achieve this outcome he had repeatedly devastated the Tarim Basin and Transoxiana – in other words, the very lands he had just secured for his half of the Turkic empire. Brigands (many of whom were former Turkic soldiers) plagued the caravan routes, the burned-out shells that many of the Tarim’s oasis-cities had been reduced to (sometimes more than once) could hardly provide much of anything in the way of taxes, and all but the most intrepid merchants were reluctant to travel & peddle their goods in these dangerous territories on account of all of the above factors. To restore mercantile confidence in and vitality to the Silk Road, Issik would spend all of 589 and the next several years continuing to ride about the damaged trading routes, exterminating & publicly displaying bandits and returning much of their plunder to their victims (while keeping some of it for himself and his warriors), while also sending diplomatic missions to Constantinople and Luoyang with gifts & news that the fighting had ceased.

The demands of reconstruction, which soon extended past bandit-clearances and to the realm of actively assisting the bloodied native Tocharians in rebuilding their cities, took Issik’s eyes off his non-Tegreg vassals – all the worse for the Tegregs, as the casualties they had incurred over the past decades of war (against both China and their Southern Turk kindred) was swinging their Khaganate’s internal balance of power away from them and toward these other Turks. Peoples such as the Khazars and Karluks were now rapidly building up their own smaller confederations within the greater Northern Turkic Khaganate, absorbing or subordinating lesser tribes and even beginning to independently expand their nomadic domains beyond the Khaganate’s official borders: the Khazars were having the greatest success in this regard, harassing rival Turkic tribes who had long avoided Tegreg domination such as the Bolghars into either submitting to their suzerainty or fleeing for greener, safer pastures elsewhere. With the Tegregs having considerably exsanguinated themselves through their fratricidal infighting and the survivors focused in the south, these increasingly powerful and independent ‘lesser’ Turks in the west began to position themselves to eventually challenge their eastern overlords, and if possible throw their yoke off entirely.

Brigands accosting Sogdian traders almost as soon as they have stopped for water in a Tarim oasis, an all-too-common occurrence along the Silk Road's middle length in the years before Issik Qaghan could fully re-establish order there​

When 590 arrived, the first year of the sixth century’s last decade brought with it a major shake-up in Roman-controlled Africa. King Boniface of Altava died this year from drunkenly falling off his horse, paving the way for the Caesar Florianus and Caesarina Dihia to succeed him as the king & queen of the western (and greater) Moorish kingdom on account of the latter being his only child. No sooner had they docked in Iol Caesarea were they informed that Garmul, a regional potentate who was distantly related to Dihia’s family, had raised the standard of rebellion and occupied Altava supposedly to prevent the kingdom from falling under the rule of a woman and a foreign prince, though the pair had repeatedly issued assurances that they would uphold the agreement made between their fathers to keep Altava from being absorbed into the Western Roman Empire and to pass its throne to one of their younger sons when they pass away.

As Dihia was already heavily pregnant by the time they made their journey from Ostia to Iol Caesarea, Florianus remained at his wife’s side for several months to witness the birth of, and then help tend to, their fourth and last son Venantius. This gave Garmul time to organize a defense and root out partisans of the original Altavan royal family in the Atlas Mountains where Roman influence had always been thinnest, but also allowed the Caesar to summon legions and federate reinforcements from other parts of the empire to assist him in pressing his & his wife’s lawful claim. Dihia also did what she could, even while still bedridden, to reach out to the Thevestian Moors and not only re-affirm ties of friendship with them but also secure their assistance in suppressing Garmul’s revolt.

When Garmul did send raiders forth from his mountain bastions to assail the more thoroughly Romanized populations closer to & along the Mediterranean coast, they were thrown back with great force by Florianus, who had amassed a host of 20,000 men – mostly local legionaries and militias, but also five legions (5,000 men) sent from Italy by Constans and contingents supplied by Hermenegild of Gothia and his new Thevestian neighbors. This large Roman army began to move into the mountains toward 590’s end, while the Hoggari to the south were also hurriedly mustering their own armies to take advantage of the opening Garmul’s rebellion had created for them.

Dihia, nominal Queen of Altava following her father's demise (though subject to challenge by her distant kinsman Garmul) and wife of the Caesar Florianus – which also made her key to the Western Romans increasing their control over her kingdom​

While the Western Romans were contending with the outbreak of a new rebellion, the Eastern Romans brought the one they were dealing with at this time to an end. Thanks to his much larger army, ‘Alqama defeated his brother Al-Aswad in the field and pursued him to the Lakhmid capital of al-Hirah shortly before the heat of the Arabian summer descended upon all parties. Al-Aswad refused to surrender even when offered leniency and a comfortable exile amid the growing tea-plantations of Pontus, so the Eastern Roman sappers built siegeworks with which their army could storm the city & put him to the sword.

Though ‘Alqama had made it very clear that he wanted his capital & hometown taken with minimal bloodshed, his Ghassanid rivals-turned-‘friends’ had other ideas and started sacking the seat of their ancient enemy after driving Al-Aswad’s men from its walls, while the Roman contingent soon followed out of frustration with the Lakhmid resistance and the scorching weather. Despite ‘Alqama’s efforts to limit the looting, he could not even prevent his allies from pillaging the palace from which he hoped to rule the Lakhmids. And though in the end he stood victorious while Al-Aswad was slain, he was now king of a populace that despised him as an interloper propped up by an oppressive foreign regime (worsened still by Arcadius’ insistence that he fulfill his promise to spread Ephesian Christianity and purge Nestorianism in the Lakhmid kingdom) while being subordinated to an ‘ally’ he really did not care for at this point, yet could not survive without.

Far to the east, the Indo-Romans were beginning to assert their strength as an independent kingdom by exploiting the disintegration of the Southern Turkic Khaganate. King Porphyrus and the elderly Varshasb led their army from Kophen through the sheer mountains of the Caucasus Indicus, first negotiating the defection of Bamiyan (whose Turkic garrison had left to join the army of Qutlugh Qaghan, leaving the town entirely populated & defended by the local Paropamisadae) before splitting up: Porphyrus took 7,000 men north while Varshasb continued westward with 4,000 other warriors. With his army Porphyrus marched to Bactra, one of the few Sogdian cities still loosely controlled by the Southern Turks (in this case it was part of Qapaghan Qaghan’s patrimony), and placed it under siege, while Varshasb did the same with Harev (which had recognized the authority of Qilibi Qaghan).

An Indo-Roman soldier of Porphyrus' army. While his helmet is based on the Roman ridge helm design, the rest of his equipment is clearly derived from local Bactrian smiths​

Even further eastward, as tensions cooled in Japan and the various Chinese dynasties and kingdoms took this moment in time to prepare for their next round of hostilities, a new power was rising south of the latter with the indirect assistance of the Liang dynasty. There floated some twenty-five thousand islands, strung out in two massive archipelagos across the Pacific Ocean, home to numerous petty-kingdoms and tribes, some of which had been touched by Indian cultural influences brought by vaishya[3] traders who sought the gold and spices which these isles had in plenty. One of these increasingly ‘Indianized’ kingdoms was Kuntala[4], located on the large island of Sumatra in the western reaches of the southernmost (and larger) of the great Pacific archipelagos, which its Malay inhabitants called ‘Alam Melayu’[5].

By 590, Kuntala was already a fairly prosperous and advanced statelet (especially by the standards of its neighbors), hosting a modest but thriving community of Indian traders and boasting several opulent palaces in addition to both a Gupta-style Hindu temple complex and, in much more recent times, a Huna-style Buddhist monastery. But they took great leaps toward the apex of their power and prominence this year thanks to the intervention of the Liang dynasty, whose Emperor Wenxuan sought to build new trade ties near and far to bring wealth to his dynasty’s war-torn territories. Kuntala’s king Dewawarman, whose very name was an indicator of the Indian influence on his kingdom, welcomed the Chinese embassy (which recorded his kingdom’s name as ‘Kantoli’) and found that what they were offering would lay the groundwork for a most profitable trade agreement.

In exchange for gold, tin, ivory, spices and other raw materials from Sumatra, the Liang would ship high-end goods far beyond the locals’ ability to produce themselves, ranging from porcelain wares to jade jewelry, fine silks and artwork which made Dewawarman weep the first time he saw it. As Dewawarman’s wealth grew, so did his influence over neighboring Sumatran tribes and petty-kings, who were awed by his wealth and sought to involve themselves in trade with China – as well as his ambition. The Kuntalan king in turn would expend some of his newfound riches into building walls around his capital with the aid of Chinese engineers, so as to safeguard said riches from jealous rivals, and would aspire to turn his seat into the entrepôt for Chinese trade in Alam Melayu – or better still, the springboard for a new maritime empire.

A wall carving depicting the arrival of the first Chinese diplomatic mission in Kuntala​

591 was a year of continued conflict in Africa, where the Western Caesar was busy taking the fight to Garmul. The Berber insurgents found that they could not defeat Florianus’ large army in open combat following the Battle of Mina[6], where he inflicted a disastrous defeat upon them, after which Garmul switched to a strategy of guerrilla warfare. The Western Romans slowly yet steadily advanced regardless, aided not only by their superior numbers & equipment but also by local sympathizers, who – whether motivated by loyalty to Dihia’s dynasty or (more often) the gifts which the Roman treasury made available to them – helped the Romans navigate the Atlas Mountains or outright joined them against the usurper. The Augustus Constans was reluctant to expend more of his dwindling fortune, having exhausted much of it between his own wars & festivities and buying the loyalty of the Greens & Blues, but Florianus had insisted that bribing the Moors back into line would greatly accelerate his progress against Garmul and the results showed him to be entirely accurate in that assessment.

About halfway through 591 however, both sides’ plans were upset by a Hoggari invasion. Taking advantage of the emptying of the Limes Mauretaniae by Garmul, the Donatist king Takfarin (whose name was translated into Latin as ‘Tacfarinas’, much like the Berber warlord who battled Emperor Tiberius’ legions nearly six hundred years prior) led a host of 12,000 to overcome the token garrisons still left in the Atlas border-forts and advance upon Altava. Caught between two threats he could not possibly defeat, Garmul tried to open negotiations with the one that wouldn’t execute him for treason and offered to become a client of Hoggar’s if they would assist him in winning Altava’s independence from the Western Roman Empire.

Unfortunately for him, Takfarin was about as inclined to compromise as the average Donatist and turned on him as soon as the Hoggari army had made it past the gates of Altava: the invading king personally killed Garmul for being (in his eyes) a heretic as well as a nuisance who had previously helped his distant cousin Boniface fend off Hoggari raids, and sacked the seat of Hoggar’s primary enemy for the past hundred years. Though outraged at the devastation of his wife’s nominal capital, which also represented the furthest the Hoggari had ever gotten against Rome to date, Florianus recognized that this development could actually be turned to his advantage, and together with Dihia he issued (in his capacity as King of Altava jure uxoris) amnesty to those among Garmul’s followers who he hadn’t bribed to join him yet, in exchange for turning their spears and arrows against the hated Donatists. Thus despite continuous harassment by the Hoggari, the Mauro-Roman army was able to slowly but methodically resume its advance from Mina toward Altava as the year drew to a close.

Takfarin of Hoggar about to enter (and sack) Altava​

Altava was not the only target of Takfarin’s aggression in 591. The King of Hoggar also dispatched a much smaller army, about a sixth the size of his own, under the leadership of his brother Yattuy to assail Kumbi before they could start thinking about aiding their fellow Ephesians. Aided by the other Donatist Berbers of the Saharan trading cities (most importantly Taghazza and Tamentit), who swelled their numbers to 3,000, Yattuy managed to travel as far as Biru and sack that town – derailing Bannu’s hopes of turning it into a trading hub to replace Aoudaghost – before being repelled by the Ephesian Soninke outside of Kumbi itself exactly a week before Christmas. Undeterred by this defeat, Yattuy spread his remaining troops out to lock down all the Saharan oases he could reach and to prey on caravans leaving Kumbi in an effort to make Bannu and his people suffer.

Meanwhile in the Eastern Empire, Arcadius had found a use for the many thousands upon thousands of Sclaveni who had settled in Thrace while it was under the rule of their previous Avar overlords, and who still posed something of a nuisance to the Greco- and Thraco-Romans trying to return to their grandparents’ homes now. To simultaneously replenish the ranks of his armies and uproot them from Thracian soil, from where a Slavic rebellion could open the Danubian frontier to the Avars once more and menace nearby Constantinople, the Eastern Augustus initiated a huge recruiting drive in this region, promising to allow the Sclaveni warriors’ families to stay in exchange for no less than a decade’s military service.

Some of these Sclaveni (mostly those from already-prominent families) were recruited straight into the legions proper, but most were formed up into separate light & medium infantry units designated as numerii or auxilia Thraeces (Thracian auxiliaries). Since sending them to man the partly-restored Danubian limes would run counter to his intentions behind recruiting them in the first place, Arcadius instead deployed his new Slavic soldiers to the other side of his empire, where they were set about garrisoning the Turkic border and suppressing mounting unrest in Egypt, Syria & Mesopotamia. As the vast majority of the Sclaveni were still pagan, they had no stake in the bloody theological disputes between the Ephesians and rival Christian sects, and proved to be generally reliable and hardy troops as long as they were paid regularly and neither they nor their kin at home were excessively mistreated – besides, it wasn’t as though the Avars were in any shape to come back for them any time soon.

A Thracian Slav auxiliary of Arcadius' army. His possession of a sword and hauberk indicate that he is not a lower-class 'numerus', but one of the wealthier and better-equipped 'Auxilia Thraeces'​

On the extreme eastern end of the Roman world, the Indo-Romans started the year with successes at both Bactra and Harev, whose meager garrisons surrendered several weeks apart after depleting their already-low provisions. Porphyrus was fortunate in that Qapaghan Qaghan was physically cut off from reinforcing Bactra by the Northern Turks’ Transoxianan conquests and thus did not respond to him at all, instead focusing entirely on the war against Qilibi Qaghan to the west (from whom he would capture Nishapur this year). However, Varshasb had less luck against Qilibi, who did send an army to retake Harev (which the Romans called by its ancient Macedonian name, Alexandria Ariana) and soon placed him under siege there.

While his son-in-law squandered time in snapping up the remaining Southern Turkic possessions to the north, finishing with Drapsaka in September, a disease outbreak killed Varshasb and decimated his men in the south, after which Qilibi’s Turks retook Alexandria Ariana and put the survivors there to the sword. Porphyrus had little choice but to hurry back to Kophen and organize a defense of his mountain kingdom against the Southern Turks of Qilibi Qaghan, who now sought to erase the impudent Indo-Romans off the map for pestering him & forcing him to divert resources against them at a time when he would rather be concentrating entirely on combating his brothers.

Beyond the lands of the Romans and Turks alike, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han finally made his move against his ally-turned-client-state, the Later Zhou, in mid-summer of 591. He invited their Emperor Xianzong to a week-long festival in Luoyang to celebrate the birth of his newest grandson (and the latter’s nephew), Prince Chengyou, only to get him drunk enough to pass out at the last day’s banquet and take him hostage. Xianzong was compelled to abdicate to Crown Prince Hao Jian, his brother-in-law and Wucheng’s heir, who ‘held’ the crown of Later Zhou long enough for a sham coronation before handing it off to his father. Wucheng duly gave Jian the title of Prince of Zhou and also granted Xianzong (now just Han Xizai once more) the honorary title of Prince of Zhao & a comfortable estate on the northern banks of the Huai, far away from the core Later Zhou territory, for his rapid submission.

Wucheng’s bloodless victory, though long expected by all (except it seems the former Emperor Xianzong himself), put the Great Qi in a dire position. The Later Han now ruled nearly all of northern China, and only they stood in the way of Wucheng’s complete dominion over all Chinese territory north of the Yangtze River. Knowing that further conflict was an inevitability, Emperor Mingyuan of Great Qi heeded the counsel of his advisors to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Later Han while they were still securing their rule over the Later Zhou lands in the distant northwest, in the hopes that they could catch the Han off-balance and at least secure enough territory to even the odds between the two dynasties. Thus did war erupt in northern China once more after a few years had passed for the various combatants to catch their breath, with Qi troops surging across the Huai while Wucheng marshaled his armies around Luoyang to respond to this incursion – and, he hoped, to defeat the Qi once & for all, thereby completing the unification of at least northern China before he died of old age.

Xianzong of Later Zhou kowtowing to Wucheng of Later Han, uniting their realms and affirming the latter as the most powerful ruler in northern China as the sixth century approaches its end​

Past the shattered Middle Kingdom, two of the petty-kingdoms of Korea were back at each other’s throats. Frustrated by their earlier defeat at the hands of Baekje and still coveting the fertile Han River valley, Silla launched an attack on their western neighbor just as the spring of 591 was ending. The first battles of this latest Baekje-Silla War went Silla’s way, compelling King Heon of Baekje to once more appeal to his traditional allies in Japan for help. Of the two Ōomi who ruled Japan in all but name Yamanoue no Mahito was eager for a Japanese return to Korea so that he might aid his Buddhist co-religionist and patron, while the Shintoist Kose no Kamatari was more indifferent to Baekje’s plight.

In the end Yamanoue agreed to go alone, while Kose would remain in Asuka to ‘hold the fort’ and keep Japan well under the diarchy’s control. In this first test for their gōzoku system, Yamanoue was only able to call up a modest force of 3,500 warriors (almost entirely drawn from his domains and those of his allies) and relied on the Baekje fleet to transport them over the Korean Strait. Unfortunately for the Buddhist half of the Ōomi regime, not many of the gōzoku (especially the ones who held to Shintoist ways) had any particular interest in Korea which would motivate them to fight there, requiring Yamanoue to compel them to do so in his capacity as their overlord.

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[1] Oualata.

[2] A Greek title meaning ‘tribal ruler’, traditionally given to Arab allies of the Eastern Roman Empire such as the Ghassanids.

[3] The merchant caste in Brahmanic society.

[4] Near Palembang.

[5] The 'Malay World', sometimes also phrased as 'Dunia Melayu'.

[6] Rezilane.

 

[Circle of Willis]

The Western Roman Empire remained focused on their intensifying African war throughout 592. While Otho celebrated the birth of his son Julianus in Rome itself, his brother continued to lead the Roman army against Hoggar’s forces across the Atlas Mountains and the coast of Mauretania – a more difficult endeavor than his earlier war against Garmul, for the Donatists were fiercely motivated fighters who battled to the last man for every mountainside village and Atlasian pass. While he took advantage of the rough terrain to hold off the lumbering Roman advance with a fraction of his forces, Takfarin massed the rest of his men for a dramatic breakout from the mountains toward spring’s end and captured Siga[1] on the shoreline at the climax of his advance.

However, with this victory Takfarin exposed himself to Roman counterattacks outside the favorable ground in the mountains, and Florianus was quick to call on Hermenegild of the Visigoths to cross the Pillars of Hercules & assist in setting up a pincer-trap for the Berber invaders. It took the Romans several months to redeploy their army and for the Visigoths to land in force in western Mauretania, during which Takfarin devastated as much of the Mauretanian coast as he could and shipped the plunder and slaves (for the Donatists, not recognizing Ephesians or indeed anyone else as true Christians, believed the local Moors were fair game for their slave markets) back toward Hoggar through the western Atlas mountain-passes which he still controlled. However, he failed to either stop Hermenegild from landing at all – he sent a 4,000-strong detachment to secure Tingis[2] ahead of the Visigoths’ arrival, but the garrison was able to hold out until Hermenegild’s landing compelled the Hoggari to retreat – or to keep Florianus from marching the bulk of his army out of the Atlas Mountains, as their greater numbers, discipline and heavy equipment allowed them to weather multiple Hoggari attempts to attack & knock them off-balance.

As the two armies closed in on Takfarin, he reordered his host for a frantic assault on Florianus’ legions before they could unite with Hermenegild and stomp him flat between them. At the Battle of Portus Divinus[3] the Hoggari fought ferociously, but they could not halt the relentless advance of the well-armored legionaries nor their equally fanatical and vengeful Moorish auxiliaries (who together outnumbered the men of Hoggar by a comfortable margin – 16,000 to about 9,000), and Takfarin ordered a retreat after having to break off a desperate charge against the Western Caesar’s position in the face of his valorous bodyguards and the bolts of his crossbowmen. The Hoggari fell back into the western Atlas Mountains, struggling to raze & torch as much of Mauretania Caesariensis as they went and enduring continued harassment from the Altavan light cavalry in Florianus’ service in the process, while Florianus united his host with Hermenegild’s in preparation for scouring the mountains clean of the Hoggari and of Donatism once & for all.

A loyalist Altavan nobleman, attendant and lower-class foot skirmisher. Men such as these would have comprised a large part of Florianus' army as they took the fight to the Hoggari​

Off in the distant east, in a mirror to the Western Empire’s conflict with the Berbers, the Indo-Romans were ironically waging an asymmetrical war against a superior enemy themselves. Like Takfarin was doing against his distant kindred, Porphyrus had dispersed elements of his army across the mountains of western Bactria, trying with all his might to wear down the oncoming Southern Turkic army with needling jabs in the form of constant hit-and-run skirmishes concentrated against their vanguard and supply line. Unlike Takfarin, he had the good fortune to be facing a much less organized and energized enemy with less local support than Florianus’ legions, and the Southern Turks – already exhausted from their earlier defeat by their own wayward cousins and ongoing civil war – faltered more quickly in the face of this strategy. When the Indo-Romans made their stand at the Battle of Turquoise Mountain[4], they overcame the much-weakened Turkic host and routed them back toward Alexandria Ariana, which Porphyrus now besieged once more.

Further still to the east, the Great Qi made considerable progress early on against the Later Han, who still needed time to concentrate the bulk of their armies (dispersed over their northern and especially northwestern lands) onto the Central Plains of China. Both banks of the Huai River had fallen under Qi control by the end of spring, and Qi hosts had captured both the ancient capital of Chang’an in the west and the bustling market town of Kaifeng in the east by summer’s end. However, Emperor Wucheng was able to rally sufficient forces to defend his capital of Luoyang from a two-pronged Qi attack at the start of September and stabilize his position, after which he began to mount counterattacks against his rival Mingyuan’s overextended armies in a great effort to push them from the Yellow River.

In Korea, the arrival of Yamanoue no Mahito’s army proved a welcome boon to the flagging Baekje, which had been on the verge of losing the entirety of the Han River valley to Silla prior to their coming. Together with the Japanese, King Heon was able to prevail at the Battle of Hanseong[5] after which they began to drive the Silla army out of Baekje, and by the end of 592 they had begun to push into Silla territory themselves. Following another defeat in the Battle of the Donggang River that autumn, King Dongryun of Silla appealed to his northern neighbor Goguryeo for aid, offering to split the Han River’s course with the latter and claiming that the Yamato were looking to conquer all of Korea through Baekje (which he further characterized as a Japanese puppet). Yeongyang of Goguryeo was up for the fight, believing that the Baekje-Japanese alliance should be a pushover compared to the Chinese who previously nearly overran his entire kingdom before he drove them out, but he certainly was not thinking of sharing any spoils with Silla even as his army began to cross the Imjin River to aid them.

A Baekje warrior of King Heon's army. Though Baekje metallurgical techniques greatly influenced Japan's smiths, the Yamato left their own influences on their allies in the exchange, as can be seen in this man's helmet​

593 saw continued Western Roman progress in the Atlas Mountains, although the terrain and dogged Hoggari resistance ensured that it would be slow and grinding. Their greatest success came in the Battle of Aquae Sirenses[6], where Takfarin’s men made a major attempt to stop their advance amid the town’s devastated baths and nearby hills. Florianus led his Italic and Afro-Roman legions to crush the Berbers in the town ruins in a straightforward battle, while leaving the Visigoths and Altavan auxiliaries to contain the men in the hills until after he had put the bulk of Takfarin’s army to flight: he then drew them out of their positions by having the federate troops execute a feigned retreat following an inevitably-failed attack on their defenses, after which the Caesar led his reordered caballarii in a devastating charge to rout them.

While their Western Roman allies far to the north were slogging through the Atlas Mountains, across the Saharan caravan routes Bannu and the men of Kumbi were waging their own, much more difficult struggle against the Berbers of Hoggar. Dividing his own army up into small detachments to try to counter Yattuy’s raiders had proven to be a losing strategy for the king of Kumbi, for his warriors were mostly footmen and thus less mobile than their nimble & mounted Hoggari adversaries, so this year he pulled his men back together and launched a concentrated counterattack against the Berbers occupying Biru instead.

The following battle went well for the Soninke, but Yattuy and his troops simply fled on horseback once they saw the tide turning against them while most of Bannu’s men were unable to follow, and Bannu wisely forbade his few horsemen from pursuing the Berbers far out of fear that they would simply turn around and destroy the now-outnumbered Soninke riders once they were far enough from Biru. An attempted offensive targeting distant Taghazza failed to even get halfway to its destination, as Yattuy’s own horsemen relentlessly harassed the Soninke host every day they spent walking on the northward caravan road and disappeared back into the Saharan sands before a proper counterattack could be mounted against them, until finally the exasperated Kaya-Maghan of Kumbi ordered his army to turn back and defend what they had already retaken before he lost too many warriors to Berber arrows or thirst.

Hoggari Berbers launching a hit-and-run attack on the men of Kumbi in the sands of the Sahara​

In Central Asia, the Indo-Romans recaptured Alexandria Ariana after its already rather weak Turkic garrison was, ironically, devastated by a disease outbreak much like Varshasb and his army had been before them. The bigger picture of the conflict favored Porphyrus’ kingdom as well, as Qilibi Qaghan had clearly not sent enough men to try to crush him but did send more than he could afford to lose: he was now certainly on the losing end of his war against his brothers, as Qapaghan Qaghan advanced to Sarakhs this year while Qutlugh Qaghan attacked from the south to occupy Yazd and Arrajan, threatening his own capital at Esfahan from the south and east. Porphyrus accordingly took advantage of the middle Turkic brother’s predicament to launch a renewed drive into his fringe territories to the east, leaving the Paropamisus Mountains behind to capture Marwarudh[7] to the north and Taybad & Pashang[8] to the west.

Well beyond the mountain homes of the Paropamisadae, the war in northern China continued to grow in intensity as Emperor Wucheng of Later Han pressed his new advantage against the Great Qi. By far the greatest victory of the Han forces was won in mid-spring: the Battle of Xuchang-Luohe, actually two battles which are nevertheless often counted as one due to being fought at different points on the same day and the close proximity of their respective battlefields to one another. Here around the capital of Cao Cao and his heirs the Cao Wei, Wucheng led his host of 60,000 to victory over two smaller Qi armies (the first of 45,000 at Xuchang, and a reinforcing 25,000-strong force at Luohe immediately to the south a few hours later) before they could merge, dealing a severe blow to Mingyuan’s strength and forcing the remaining Qi forces between & along the Hong and Quan tributaries of the Huai River into a precipitous retreat.

Wucheng was determined not to give his opponents any chance to rest & reorganize, and pushed his sons and generals hard to pursue the Qi back to the Huai. For this the Han were dealt an embarrassing reverse at the Battle of Bozhou in late June, where the Han general Liu Tong was killed and his 18,000 troops routed after launching an over-bold attack on Emperor Mingyuan’s 40,000-strong army rather than pull back to regroup with Crown Prince Hao Jian as the latter had commanded him to. Mingyuan went on to consolidate his previously-scattered armies and establish a defensive line of sorts from the eastern bank of the Quan River to the lower Guo & Hui, stretching to (and anchored by) Lake Hongze to the east. In response, Wucheng sent Hao Jian to cross through the Dabie Mountains and over the upper Huai River in wintertime with 50,000 men so that they might circumvent Mingyuan’s defenses north of and on the Huai – a task made difficult by the rough terrain of those forested mountains, the snowfall and the heavy sheets of seasonal freezing rain which lashed the Han soldiers as they marched.

Hao Jian's army on their arduous march through the Dabie Mountains in the winter of 593​

Meanwhile in the Korean peninsula, the Goguryeo attack did not come as a total surprise for the Baekje-Yamato alliance, but they had failed to fully prepare for it anyway: Yeongyang stormed over the Imjin River during winter when both Heon of Baekje and Yamanoue no Mahito were expecting an attack in the spring. The Japanese-supported Baekje counterattacks came in a disorganized and piecemeal fashion, allowing Goguryeo to crush their scattered detachments in detail than have to face one or two large concentrated armies south of the Imjin, and Dongryun of Silla also took the chance to counterattack in a bid to drive his adversaries out of his kingdom & the upper reaches of the Han River.

Baekje was driven out of the Han River valley altogether by summer’s end, and Heon & Yamanoue incurred great losses in stopping the unified Goguryeo-Silla onslaught in the Battle of Choryong Pass[9] on August 28 this year. Yamanoue had played a part in preventing Baekje from being totally overrun by its enemies, but now neither he nor Heon had the manpower to go back on the offensive and reconquer the lost northern half of the Korean kingdom. Since it would have been a disgrace for Baekje to lose so much more territory than just the Han River valley, and their defeat would bring shame to Yamanoue’s name as well, he appealed to Kose no Kamatari for additional assistance as 593 drew to a close, though it was all but certain that even if Kose would entangle his half of Japan in this Korean war he’d certainly crave considerable concessions at home from Yamanoue’s faction in return.

The summer of 594 finally brought the Western Romans to Altava’s gates. Takfarin had continued to slow their advance throughout the spring months with traps, ambushes and hit-and-run skirmishes, and used the time those tactics bought him to repair the mountain city’s fortifications to the best of his ability. Against the walls and surrounding mountains which protected his wife’s rightful capital, Florianus in turn deployed the power of Roman engineering, assembling not only battering rams and siege towers around Altava itself but also ordering the construction of siege engines in distant Iol Caesarea, which then had to be carefully brought through the Atlas Mountains and guarded against the attacks of stay-behind elements of the Hoggari army which continued to cause trouble in those passes.

It took the rest of the year for all the pieces to fall into place for Florianus, but when they did, there was little Takfarin could do to stop him from retaking Altava after all these years. The Western Caesar had not been sitting idle as he waited for his onagers and ballistae to be brought to him, but actively contested the hilltops and mountains around his target: slowly but surely, the more numerous and better armed Romans wrested these strategic positions away from Takfarin’s Berbers over the weeks and months. Despite the efforts of the Donatists in the countryside, more than half of the heavy siege weapons Florianus had commissioned finally reached his camp in the first week of December, and he immediately had them positioned on hill-top or mountainside vantage points from where they could effectively reduce Takfarin’s fortifications.

Since the men of Hoggar responded to a final Roman demand for their capitulation by riddling the Caesar’s envoy with arrows, Florianus ordered the assault to begin on December 22 of this year and for no prisoners to be taken. Though the Hoggari were able to destroy one Roman ram with oil & flame and neutralize the other with a successful sally, the Western Roman onagers flung boulders to breach Altava’s walls while the ballistae cleared them of Berber warriors with their bolts, and those defenses which were not reduced to rubble were scaled by the legionaries in siege towers. A third ram succeeded where the first failed and broke open the main gate shortly after midnight on the 23rd, after which the rest of the Roman army poured in and set about annihilating the Hoggari defenders, although it took them until the evening of the 24th to eliminate the last pockets of fanatical resistance in furious house-to-house fighting.

Roman artillery pummeling Takfarin's warriors in Altava from their vantage points outside the city​

Despite having sustained severe casualties (of the nearly 30,000 Romans, Goths and Moors who besieged Altava, a fifth were killed or injured to the point where they wouldn’t be able to fight again for months or even ever in this assault), the Western Romans had won a decisive victory, completely wiping out the defending Hoggari army and allowing Florianus to return his wife’s capital (burnt out as it may have been) to her as a Christmas gift. Although the Romans discovered that the Donatists had tried to dig an escape tunnel leading out of the city in the months leading up to the final assault, Takfarin never used it himself and was instead found lying among the dead, felled by a plumbata and multiple sword-strokes on the steps of Altava’s church: Florianus had to concede that in the end, he was no coward or hypocrite, even as he had the Berber king’s corpse put on display. (Besides, Takfarin must have known that if he had fled and managed to survive all the way back to Hoggar, the Donatist elders would surely have declared him a lapsus[10] for such an outrageous act of cowardice.)

Thus were the Donatists finally driven out of their last major strongholds in Roman Africa (although they still had control of several of the forts on the Limes Mauretaniae), this time – the Western Romans and their Moorish subjects hoped – for good. Yet, the war was not over, for the victorious Caesar was determined to now destroy the threat they posed once and for all by driving on to its source in Hoggar and obliterating the enemy kingdom which had troubled his people for almost two centuries. Yattuy had succeeded his brother there and pledged to continue fighting to the last man, terms which Florianus found absolutely acceptable.

Far away in the orient, Qilibi Qaghan was finally defeated by his brothers in the first six months of this year, his domain extinguished and partitioned between them: the middle son of Illig Qaghan himself was slain in a final battle with his senior, Qutlugh Qaghan, a day’s ride south of Esfahan, which immediately capitulated to the latter after its remaining defenders were shown their former overlord’s body. Qutlugh absorbed the southern and western parts of Qilibi’s central Persian realm, while the north and east (including the ports on the Gedrosian shore) was taken over by their last remaining brother Qapaghan. Porphyrus and the Indo-Romans raced to grab as much of Qilibi’s easternmost territories as they could in the first few weeks after his death, and managed to push as far as Zarang, Zabol and Phrada[11] before Qapaghan’s fist came down. As he had already offended Qapaghan by seizing Bactra years before and now shared a land border with him, Porphyrus naturally sought an alliance with Qutlugh to keep the youngest of Illig’s sons at bay.

Porphyrus and his Paropamisadae wife, Parwane, treating with Qutulugh's envoy in the recently-recaptured Alexandria Ariana​

In the furthest east, while Yamanoue no Mahito continued to plead for reinforcements for home and the Japanese and Baekje forces in Korea were increasingly pushed toward the peninsula’s southwestern corner, the war in northern China was headed for a turning point. Hao Jian had made his way through the Dabie range despite the poor conditions and descended from Mount Jigong in spring, having lost thousands of men in his arduous march – but not nearly enough to cripple his host, which made their presence south of the Huai known by seizing Xinyang and clearing a path on the Huai River’s southern banks for the reinforcements Emperor Wucheng was sending.

This development sent the Qi court into a panic, for Hao Jian was now in position to bypass their defenses along the Huai, and resources were hastily amassed for a major counterattack in the hopes of pinning and crushing the Crown Prince’s army before more of his father’s troops could join him. The First and Second Battles of Xinyang followed: against 80,000 and then 90,000 Qi soldiers, Hao Jian dug in and held his ground in both the spring and summer of 594, aided in-between the battles by a trickle of supplies and reinforcements from over the Huai. Wucheng meanwhile did not send him more than 15,000 new soldiers, instead concentrating the bulk of his strength into a series of attacks on the Qi forces still north of the Huai, while his rival Mingyuan saw the writing on the wall after his generals’ defeat in the First Battle of Xinyang and began to withdraw southward over the river from mid-spring onward.

In the end, Hao Jian’s victories firmly shifted the tide of this war in Later Han’s favor. The Great Qi were able to avoid an early encirclement and annihilation by committing to a major second attack on Xinyang, which kept his army bottled up by the Huai’s upper banks and prevented him from simply pushing east to cut off their route of retreat and destroy the battered & disorganized troops who had managed to make it over the river. However, the Qi had also now lost all of their initial conquests and the Han had a foothold beyond the Huai, allowing them to advance on two axes: Emperor Wucheng would surely attack all along the river while his heir pressured the Qi’s western flank. Since the Qi’s strongest defenses were along or directly beyond the Huai, once those were overcome by this inevitable two-pronged offensive, there would be little left to stop the Han from pushing all the way up to their capital at Jiankang. In Wucheng’s estimation, his victory was now just a matter of time and bloodshed.

The Later Han army bound their own wagons together to create an impromptu field fortification with which to hold back the Great Qi attack in the First Battle of Xinyang, 594​

Early in 595, Florianus was marshaling reinforcements and resources for a punitive expedition into the heart of Hoggar when disaster struck the Western Roman Empire. Amid the chilly April downpours, Rome itself was struck down by an outbreak of disease: not the bubonic plague again, fortunately for the Roman citizenry and everyone living around the Mediterranean in general, but rather typhoid fever. Among the casualties were Florianus’ father Constans and eldest son Romanus, both of whom perished despite the imperial household physicians’ efforts to cure them with ice-baths and cold compresses (inspired by records of how Antonius Musa once cured Augustus of the same illness nearly six centuries prior).

The Western Roman offensive against Hoggar had to be put on pause as Florianus hurried home for his coronation, for not only did he have to mourn his father and son, but he was also concerned that his brother Otho might be plotting to seize his rightful throne from him. His worries were justified – Otho did not dare to openly claim the purple himself (at least not yet), but instead worked through Green-affiliated Senators to lobby for his claim in a roundabout fashion, and was also quietly assured of the support of his childhood mentor Pope Anastasius II, who remained conspicuously silent on the matter of the succession and whether he would crown Florianus Augustus. On the other hand, Florianus secured the support of Patriarch Marius of Carthage (who had recently succeeded Samaritanus, and greatly approved of Florianus’ commitment to finishing off Hoggar) before sailing from that great city, and was backed at home by their mother Verina as well as a faction of loyal Senators and Scholares.

Florianus arrived in Ostia on July 21 to find that, to his great relief, Otho had yet to become emperor. His presence in Rome galvanized his supporters and discouraged those of his brother, who were getting dangerously close to hatching a coup against Verina as she tried to maintain order in the Eternal City and keep its gates open to her eldest son. Not even a week after his arrival Florianus was informed by Martinus, the tribune of the Scholae Palatinae still in the city, that the Senators Petronius Probianus and Anicius Rufinus (a second cousin of Otho’s wife Anicia Juliana) tried to bribe him into supporting their scheme to overthrow Verina & the civil government. Moreover, Genobaudes was concerned that the younger of Constans II’s sons was too close to the Greens, and so instructed the Blue partisans in Rome not to lend him any support at this time.

The rightful new emperor ordered Martinus to arrest Probianus and Rufinus, and also to bring his brother before him. Otho vehemently denied any connection to the pair, claiming that they were rogue Senators acting entirely on their own initiative and that he had no plan to usurp the throne; still Florianus was not convinced, in part because Probianus and Rufinus protested against this attempt to throw them beneath the chariot of imperial justice and denounced him as the conspiracy’s true mastermind, and would have killed him on the spot but for the intervention of the empress dowager. Verina’s tearful entreaty to keep her sons from shedding each other’s blood gave Otho a stay of execution, for Florianus agreed to commit him to house arrest in Ravenna rather than follow in the footsteps of Caracalla and kill him in their mother’s arms, although the decision went against his instincts and he privately feared he would regret this instance of clemency in the future. Pope Anastasius went along with the flow and crowned Florianus & Dihia Augustus & Augusta a month later, with the full approval of the Senate – minus Probianus and Rufinus, who were found guilty of treason and executed alongside a few others they had implicated under torture, and an especially foolish peer named Phoebus Infortunus who managed to alienate both camps by recommending that Florianus and Otho divide the West and rule as co-emperors.

Verina protecting Otho from Florianus' wrath​

Florianus II’s distractions, first with fending off his brother’s prying claws in the rush for the purple and then with arranging his new Caesar Constantine’s betrothal to the Eastern Emperor Arcadius’ daughter Anastasia in place of the now-dead Romanus, gave Yattuy some breathing room in Hoggar. Having been warned by his scouts and stragglers from Takfarin’s army that the Romans and their various allies remained on guard under the overall leadership of Hermenegild, Yattuy used this valuable time to strengthen his grip on the captured border-forts of the Limes Mauretaniae and prepare his people to defend his kingdom of mountains & deserts, determined to make the Romans pay for every grain of sand with blood. As Yattuy’s orders to concentrate the Hoggari armies in the Hoggar Mountains required them to leave the distant south, Bannu and the Kumbians enjoyed a respite from constant Berber harassment late this year, and marshaled another expedition of their own to seize Aoudaghost for good sometime in the next.

To the east, Qutlugh and Porphyrus had just agreed to an alliance against Qapaghan when the latter burst through his oldest brother’s new borders, aggressively pushing to Qumis[12] & Ardestan over the spring & summer before being halted by the Alborz and Karkas Mountains. Both brothers had also made overtures to the militant Mazdakites of the northwest, but in the summer of 594 they finally chose to favor the seemingly victorious Qapaghan. Unfortunately for the Qaghan they didn’t pick, their numbers and martial might outweighed the commitment of the Indo-Romans.

With Qapaghan’s horde and the Mazdakites closing in on Esfahan while Porphyrus besieged Dozzaab[13] but lacked the strength to truly distract the former, Qutlugh dared turn to Arcadius for aid. The Eastern Roman Emperor was intrigued by the possibility of creating a friendly Turkic client state to serve as a buffer against their much less friendly cousins further to the east & north, but preferred to focus on internal developments & the suppression of heterodoxy. Ultimately he decided to outfit Sapor with an army of 15,000 to bolster Qutlugh’s position, but would wait a year before dispatching these men – both to give himself and Sapor time to repress a Nestorian uprising in Hulwan, and to let Qutlugh bleed a bit more so that he really would be in no position to rebuff Roman demands once they came in to save him, in spite of the risk posed by the speed and ferocity with which Qapaghan was advancing.

Further still eastward, while the Later Han had begun their slow but steady push across & around the Huai against the Great Qi, the war in Korea was experiencing a dramatic turnaround. Kose no Kamatari had agreed to support his brother-in-law and co-regent after the latter capitulated to his demands, allowing him to exclusively appoint his allies to new ministries & court positions and to restrict Buddhism to a few select provinces in the western shoreline of Honshu. By late summertime Heon and Yamanoue were pinned down in the Honam[14] region, having lost even the Baekje capital of Ungjin[15] to the combined strength of Silla and Goguryeo, and were then besieged in Gwangju.

A Baekje delegation presents Kose no Kamatari with gifts for finally arriving in Korea to rescue them, and not a moment too soon at that​

It was then that Kose arrived to their rescue, landing with some 13,000 Yamato warriors on the Yellow Sea coast[16] and sweeping southeastward to attack the allied Silla-Goguryeo armies from behind. The northern and eastern Koreans were taken by surprise, and routed with great loss between Kose’s host and the sallying Baekje-Japanese defenders of Gwangju: kings Yeongyang and Dongryun were both among the allied dead. It would be no exaggeration to say that this more forceful Japanese intervention had reversed the course of the war almost overnight, putting Baekje back in position to go on the offensive while leaving their adversaries reeling.

Far to the south, Kuntala was beginning to flex its Chinese-enriched muscles against its neighbors. With his newfound wealth Dewawarman had no trouble recruiting mercenaries from as far as Funan, after which he turned his expanded army against rival petty-kingdoms on both sides of the Melayu Straits[17]. Kuntalan warriors subjugated the kings and tribes of Jambi to the north, then crossed the straits to bring the Lingga islands to heel and end 595 by conquering Kedah, compelling the ruler of that port city to do obeisance before Dewawarman and pay him tribute. Not only did Kedah give the Kuntalans a safe and prosperous trading port with which they could secure control over the Melayu Straits, but it would also serve as a foothold on the Malay Peninsula and a launching pad for further expeditions against stronger regional rivals to the east and north – Kelantan and Langkasuka, Dewawarman’s next and most natural targets for continued expansion.

Kuntalan laborers building a new ship for Dewawarman, one (among many more) that will sail abroad not to trade but to conquer​

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

[1] Near Aïn Témouchent.

[2] Tangier.

[3] Mers El Kébir.

[4] The former site of Firozkoh, near Chaghcharan.

[5] Seoul.

[6] Bou Hanifia.

[7] Marw al-Rudh.

[8] Now Deh-e Pashtak.

[9] Near Chungju.

[10] ‘Lapsed’ – originally a term for Christians who renounced their faith under Roman persecution but later returned to the Church. Although the majority of Christians forgave them & welcomed them back, the Donatists considered them to be absolutely unforgivable, and the readmission of these apostates into the Church formed the root of their schism away from the orthodox Christians in the first place. By this point, to be denounced as one of the lapsi in Donatist Africa would have been tantamount to being excommunicated and outlawed: in Takfarin’s case, for such a calamitous failure capped off with the cowardly abandonment of his men, he would have been considered no better than a traditor (the worst category of lapsi) who gave up the scriptures and his fellow Christians to Roman hands.

[11] Farah, Afghanistan.

[12] Near Damghan.

[13] Zahedan.

[14] An ancient term for southwestern Korea – now divided into North & South Jeolla provinces, as well as the city of Gwangju.

[15] Gongju.

[16] In modern-day Gochang County.

[17] The Straits of Malacca.

 

[Circle of Willis]

For the newly enthroned Florianus II, 596 was a year in which his African adventure had to be suspended in favor of the continued consolidation of his position and the arrangement of strategic marriages for his three remaining sons. Aside from forcefully impressing upon the Senate and Pope Anastasius that their wavering loyalties may be forgiven but would not be forgotten and certainly would never again be tolerated in the future, the Augustus of the West also finalized his Caesar Constantine’s betrothal to the Eastern Roman princess Anastasia; set up the betrothal of his third son Constans to the Visigoth Adonsida, daughter of Hermenegild; and finally arranged his youngest son Venantius to marry Thiyya (whose name was Latinized as Tia) of Theveste, and for him to be brought up alongside his betrothed at the Thevestian court at Arris.

Florianus’ primary intention with these marriages was to strengthen his ties to the Eastern Empire and the federate kingdoms, in particular not only befriending Hermenegild but also hopefully driving a wedge between him and his Ostrogoth cousins in the Green camp (who he still heavily distrusted following the collapse of the Anicii plot to enthrone his brother). However, he also harbored a secondary intention: enabling his younger sons to subvert said federate kingdoms and bring them under imperial control by supplanting their native barbarian dynasties with Stilichian cadet branches. This would be his way of building on and extending his father’s (admittedly more subtle and much more gradual) plans to re-centralize the Western Roman Empire.

Now the emperor expected this to be much more easily done with Theveste, for the blood of the Silingi Vandal kings was wearing thin there just like that of their kindred in Altava and young Tia was the sole child & heiress of her father Iaudas. Once he passed away, Theveste would fall first under a Stilichian-aligned queen regnant and then, hopefully, become part of the greater Stilichian patrimony in Africa under her children with Venantius, as was happening with Altava under Dihia and himself. The two of them jointly agreed that Venantius should succeed the former as the King of Altava once she passed on, which meant that if he in turn had at least one son with Tia, all of Moorish Africa would be reunited under a Stilichian king – a most fitting outcome in Florianus’ eyes, that the Romano-Vandalic Stilichians should eventually come to directly rule over all the kingdoms populated by the descendants of their people. Visigothia would be a tougher nut to crack, as Hermenegild already had two sons who were approaching maturity, but the Emperor was confident he could sideline or otherwise permanently deal with them at some point in the future and clear the way for Constans, too, to bring all Hispania back under full imperial control.

Emperor Florianus discusses his future designs with Constans, while his wife Dihia takes up the attention of her new auburn-haired daughter-in-law Adosinda​

The Augustus also had to fret about his northern federates in his first and rather busy first year in power. The old Frankish king Childeric II died in September of this year, and once again his kingdom was set to be partitioned between his heirs. His oldest son Chilperic had already predeceased him, so his younger son Chlothar claimed the entirety of the Frankish kingdom; however Chilperic’s son Clovis contested his uncle’s claim, and demanded part of his grandfather’s dominion in his late father’s stead. The Dux Germaniae Genobaudes favored Chlothar, who had fought at his side as first a legionary commander and a leader of autonomous Frankish contingents for decades, but Florianus preferred to keep Francia as divided as possible and considered cultivating Clovis to serve as a counterweight against the Blues, loyal only to the Stilichians.

Consequently the Western Emperor appeased Genobaudes by finally appointing him to the office of magister utriusque militiae which he had been coveting for almost as long as he had been Chlothar’s friend, in exchange for talking (and bribing) Chlothar into accepting only half of the Frankish kingdom. Francia was again divided in twain, this time along the Samara[1] River and the upper reaches of the Esia[2]: Chlothar would rule the eastern kingdom of ‘Austrasia’ from Noviodunum, while Clovis II was given the western half or ‘Neustria’ to govern from Lutetia. The partition was shaky from the start – Chlothar attempted to poison his nephew before the year was even over, and Clovis retaliated by having assassins disguised as brigands try to waylay Chlothar the week after Christmas – but similar to his sentiments on Hispania, Florianus believed he had secured a lid on the potential of a Frankish civil war which would devastate northern Gaul and could now afford to turn his eyes away from that region.

And where would he cast his gaze now, but the African theater? Florianus authorized Hermenegild to finally begin the invasion of Hoggar proper late in the year after both securing his signature on Constans’ betrothal to Adosinda and resolving the issue of the Frankish inheritance, in which he would be aided by Iaudas and the Moors of Theveste. Yattuy and his warriors were well-prepared however, and in the face of their numerous ambushes, raids and formidable defensive positions, the great Roman-Gothic-Moorish host lumbering southward from the Atlas Mountains barely made any progress toward the Hoggar Mountains at all in the last months of 596. Rome’s Aethiopian allies far to the south had greater success, as Bannu and his army were able to conquer Aoudaghost once again and add it to the Kumbian domain, this time permanently they hoped; while it certainly helped greatly that Aoudaghost was closer to Kumbi than Taghazza had been, and thus their host’s supply line was both shorter and less vulnerable to Berber attacks than that of their previous expedition, they also benefited from Yattuy having pulled all of his strength away from the Berber trading hubs of the Sahara to defend Hoggar from the Western Empire’s onslaught.

While the Occident was preoccupied with internal stability and marriage games this year, the Oriental half of the Roman world was preparing to finally intervene in the Southern Turkic civil war. As promised, Sapor crossed the Tigris into Qutlugh Qaghan’s territory with 15,000 soldiers – a mix of legionaries, auxiliaries from Armenia and Georgia, and including both a troop of camel-riders from Ghassanid lands and a contingent of elite archers from Sapor’s native Mesopotamia – in mid-summer, having allowed their ally to take a severe beating first per Arcadius’ design. Said beating included the loss of his very capital of Esfahan to the joint advance of Qapaghan Qaghan and the Mazdakites, so that by the time the Eastern Romans arrived he had already been driven into the marshes of Khuzestan: not even able to hold Susa, he had fallen back to Aginis[3] further toward the south of that region.

Qapaghan Qaghan riding across central Persia, newly wrested from the hands of his brothers, at the head of his Tegreg vanguard​

It was on a hot and humid July afternoon that Sapor arrived to break the siege of the river city, just in the nick of time – hunger, the heat and attendant disease had placed a grave strain on the defenders’ ranks. The Battle of Aginis which followed saw Qapaghan forced to withdraw before he could deliver the killing blow to his older brother’s neck, as wedges of Eastern Roman cataphracts backed by the Arab camelry managed to break through the ranks of his own heavy horsemen & Mazdakite warrior-monks to threaten his encampment while Qutlugh had sallied forth from his gates with all those among his men who could still stand or ride a horse. By the year’s end, Sapor had gotten Qutlugh to agree to recognize Arcadius as his suzerain in exchange for continued Eastern Roman support against his brother, and together the two had retaken Susa and turned Khuzestan’s border into their new defensive perimeter before carrying their campaign further into Persia.

Beyond the Tian Shan, the Later Han continued to methodically drive the Great Qi back toward Jiankang. The spring and summer saw hard-fought and increasingly desperate battles at Huainan, Bengbu, Datong[4] and Gaoyou, each of which ended in progressively costlier Han victories. Although Emperor Wucheng was in position to attack Jiankang by the end of July, he ruled out an immediate assault on the metropolis due to how much the previous battles had bled his army and resolved to besiege it until either Emperor Mingyuan of Great Qi surrendered or died of starvation. To fully surround Jiankang however, he had to cross the Yangtze, which promised to be an even costlier endeavor after the Qi had used the delays they’d won with their previous battles to construct numerous fortlets and fortified grain-houses across the Yangtze Delta in preparation for the defense of their capital. It took the rest of the year for Wucheng’s flanking force, again led by Hao Jian, to even clear a path to cross the great river, which he did with a pyrrhic victory in the Battle of Chaohu[5] in December after the Tongyang River linking the lake[6] which that village was named after to the Yangtze froze over and allowed him to bypass the defenders’ fortifications.

Closer still to the Rising Sun, its warriors and those of its ally Baekje spent nearly all of 596 on the offensive against their bloodied and disoriented enemies. Goguryeo and Silla were still reeling from the loss of their kings and thousands of soldiers in the Battle of Gwangju, and were unable to prevent Baekje from pushing them all the way back to the Han River by the end of this year. Seeing that their enemies were in utter disarray while China remained consumed by the struggles of the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms, Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito both persuaded King Heon not to accept any settlement that would merely restore the status quo antebellum, but to dare attempt to unite the entire Korean peninsula under Baekje’s banner while the window of opportunity was still open – and of course, Yamato warriors would continue to help him every step of the way. Win or lose, they had now firmly affixed the Yamato state to its first major continental entanglement, and linked its destiny (or at least the destiny of their regime) to that of Baekje.

In the West, 597 marked a shift back toward foreign affairs – chiefly the ongoing war with Hoggar – as Florianus’ confidence in his hold on power grew. Alas, Hermenegild, Iaunas and his other generals were still having serious difficulty as they slogged through the rocky deserts on their way to Hoggar, battered not only by sandstorms and the blistering Saharan heat but also constant Hoggari raids as they went. In order to avoid dying of hunger or thirst in the desert sands, Hermenegild also had to disperse more and more of his soldiers to secure the Western Roman supply lines and build the occasional fortified watchtower (which would then require its own garrison) to anchor & safeguard these aforementioned routes, further costing the Romans time and manpower before they even reached the Hoggar massif. The only positive he could count on was that the Augustus, having personally fought the Donatists before and grown wise to their tricks, was quite understanding of the challenges he faced and did not urge him to throw caution to the wind or threaten to remove him from his position for not advancing quickly enough.

A Hoggari warrior attacks one of Hermenegild's Visigoths in one of many, many desert ambushes​

Just beyond the Roman world, there was another shift in borders and the regional balance of power among the realms of their Angle allies. King Eadwine of North Anglia perished of old age in the autumn months of 597, and according to both his will and the judgment of his Witan, his realm (itself only a fragment of the formerly united English kingdom) was duly partitioned between his sons. The border between the two successor-kingdoms was set at the River Tinan[7] (or, as the Romans still called it, the Vedra): Eadwine’s elder son Eadberht ruled everything south of that river and kept Eoforwic as his capital, while the younger son Eadwald ruled from Bebbanburh[9] over the lands extending from the Tinan’s northern banks to the shores of the Bodotria, where Anglo-Saxon control was anchored by the fortress their father had built at Striuelin[8].

The senior North Angle kingdom was dubbed ‘Dere’ (Latin: ‘Deira’), for the Britons living there who had since been extirpated or assimilated by the Angles called it ‘Deifr’ in their day, while the junior one was called ‘Beornice’ (Lat.: ‘Bernicia’), which again was a translation of its former Brittonic name ‘Bryneich’. While Eadwald and the Bernicians focused on continuing to settle north of the Bodotria, which brought them into ever-intensifying conflict with the native Pictish clans, Eadberht and the Deirans had to contend with Æþelhere of South Anglia, who – on account of his peace agreement with Artorius III still holding, and thus keeping his southern border quiet – now considered striving to reunify the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms once more. The issue of reckoning Easter’s date, in which the South Angles believed their northern kin were in error for celebrating the holiday alongside their Celtic neighbors and thus being out of step with Rome’s calculations, gave the king in Tomworðig further reason to turn his gaze northward, even if his course should escalate to the point of a less-than-peaceful ‘fraternal’ correction of the northern Angles.

Eadwald, King of Bernicia, visits a monastery north of the Bodotria on his way to fighting Picts who had been raiding Anglo-Saxon settlements in the region​

Elsewhere, the Eastern Romans and their new Turkic allies/vassals began to stumble into reverses as they attempted to go on the offensive against Qapaghan Qaghan. Sapor had expended the element of surprise at the Battle of Aginis the year before, and Qapaghan was now not only on guard against the new interlopers but aggressively marshaling his resources against them & their weakened proxy. In this the rival Turkic warlord had a little inadvertant help from the Indo-Romans, who sued for peace after he defeated Porphyrus at Bost[10] in the spring: he allowed the Indo-Roman kingdom to keep most of their gains save Dozzaab, deciding that those fringe eastern territories were not worth the manpower needed to retake & hold them when he could be redeploying those troops against his brother and the Eastern Romans instead.

After being harried by Mazdakite detachments for months, Sapor and Qutlugh engaged their elusive foe in another major battle outside Khurha[11], south of the village of Qom where Qapaghan had established his headquarters for the time being. Now however, it was they who were leading a bloodied and weary host while their enemy was not only well-rested, but had a nasty surprise in store. To crack the ranks of the Roman & pro-Qutlugh Turkic cavalry and the Ghassanid camelry, Qapaghan had bought a troop of Indian elephants from the Huna lands with the treasure he’d gained from sacking Esfahan several years ago, and at the Battle of Khurha they proved to be worth every ounce of gold & gems he had spent on them. Sapor’s lines were broken by the elephants who spearheaded Qapaghan’s attack, and he was forced to retreat back southward, sustaining further losses under continued harassment by the Mazdakites and pro-Qapaghan Turks on the long road back to Khuzestan as he went.

To the east, Later Han progress against the defenses of the Great Qi continued incrementally in 597. Hao Jian crossed the Yangtze west of Jiankang in the spring, having spent the first months of the year mopping up lingering resistance north of the river – and almost immediately ran into further Qi defenses at Jiuzi[12], just east of his crossing at Tongling. Attempting to bypass the strong Qi fortifications here was rendered impossible by the similarly stout defense of Wanling[13], and the deeply frustrated Emperor Wucheng began moving more and more troops across the Yangtze at Tongling for a major offensive in the next year. He assigned Hao Jian with the intimidating task of taking Hangzhou, a town on the Qiantang River which the Qi had converted into a major port and fortress since they captured it from the fading Chen: as the southern anchor of the Qi defensive network, Wucheng hoped that taking the city would unmoor Jiankang’s outer defenses and accelerate the war’s conclusion.

In Korea however, the progress of Baekje and Japan against their enemies was anything but sluggish. This year Heon, Kose and Yamanoue would feast in Seorabeol[14], the capital of Silla, after overcoming its frantic defenders and sacking it in mid-summer. Dongryun’s successor, King Geumryun, had fled not only the country but the entire Korean Peninsula ahead of the allies’ arrival (demoralizing his remaining soldiers and contributing to the city’s faster-than-expected fall before their assault), sailing to Goguryeo lands and then traveling all the way to China to seek aid. The embattled Emperor Wucheng had informed Silla’s young exiled king that there was no way Later Han could render any help to him at present, but promised to host him at the Han court for now and to more seriously entertain the prospect of backing his claim with a Chinese army once the Great Qi were dealt with. Until then, the three men who had triumphed over Silla got to celebrate their victory amid its ruins and to concentrate their undivided attention against King Dojeol of Goguryeo, whose armies they drove beyond the Imjin by December of 597.

Geumryun of Silla asking Emperor Wucheng of Later Han for assistance against Baekje and its new Japanese ally​

598 was the year in which Hermenegild and Iaunas finally, at long last, reached the Hoggar Mountains. Between the losses incurred in Donatist ambushes and the troops dispersed to protect the Roman supply lines however, their army had fallen to half its strength; they now faced the challenge of rooting Yattuy and his warriors out of the mountain fortresses where they’d ensconced themselves, and had years to prepare for this moment, with only about 15,000 soldiers, a task which both kings considered to be nearly impossible. Unfortunately for them Florianus had invested a great deal of time and resources into this campaign, even taking the unpopular move of raising taxes to continue financing the punitive expedition, and was adamant that his vassals and generals could not return to Roman territory without first securing something resembling a victorious outcome. Hermenegild occupied the village of Arak at the mountain range’s northwestern entrance while Iaunas took Illizi in the northeast as his staging ground, and waited for the scorchingly hot summer to fade into the slightly less blistering autumn – after which they began their arduous incursion into the vast desert gorges, where thousands upon thousands of Yattuy’s Berbers awaited them with slings, arrows and javelins.

Meanwhile in distant Aginis, Sapor had warned his overlord Arcadius of the threats facing his army and gotten what he asked the Eastern Emperor for: a shipment of carroballistae, originally assembled in Edessa, with which he could more effectively combat Qapaghan Qaghan’s elephants, as well as two legions’ worth of reinforcements and twice that number in accompanying Caucasian auxiliaries. With all this additional help, the Sassanid prince felt confident in taking the fight back to Qapaghan, who in any case was storming into Khuzestan after spending the early winter and spring months resting & gathering reinforcements of his own.

The Eastern Romans and their allies selected Shushtar as the place where they would make their stand, as the fortified island-city and the rivers surrounding it made for excellent defensive ground – and Sapor wanted every advantage he could get over Qapaghan’s army which, at 40,000 strong, was twice the size of his own. The Romans ably defended the crossings of the Karun River & its tributaries which protected their chosen headquarters, using their carroballistae as mobile platforms with which to snipe the Turkic war elephants and throwing back one Turkic attack after another over four days: only once did a Turk contingent manage to force a crossing just north of Shushtar, led by Qapaghan’s son and heir Heshana, but they were driven back with great loss by a counterattack involving large numbers of Georgian and Armenian auxiliaries. That said, Heshana did manage to kill his uncle Qutlugh in the initial fight for the ford, in so doing eliminating the Romans’ preferred claimant.

Prince Heshana takes an arrow to the eye as he leads his men to storm across the Karun​

This development did not overly trouble Arcadius II, who was feeling the financial pinch from this conflict and had always been leery of the prospect of reviving his great-grandfather’s borders (even if only indirectly). He sued for peace immediately after the Battle of Shushtar and found Qapaghan receptive, for the last Qaghan standing was exhausted by years of warfare against first his Northern Turkic cousins and then his own brothers, and needed time to recover & rebuild the kingdom which he had now won by default. The two emperors agreed to a truce in which the Eastern Empire kept Khuzestan, but Qapaghan would be recognized as sole sovereign over the rest of the Southern Turkic Khaganate from the Zagros to the edges of the Indicus Caucasus. Arcadius savored his victory (and avoidance of imperial overstretch) by mixing sugar from the newly-won plantations of Khuzestan into his Pontic tea, but even this limited triumph had made him enemies for life in Qapaghan and especially the young Heshana, who had lost an eye to a Roman arrow during the Battle of Shushtar.

To the south, while Arcadius and Sapor had been busy directing the war against Qapaghan Qaghan and his Southern Turks, a certain merchant family in Mecca celebrated the birth of their first son. Muhammad ibn Abdullah[15], a nearly thirty-year-old scion of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe which dominated that city, and his wife Khadijah[16], a Christian (though of an Ebionite[17] persuasion deemed heretical by the Ephesians) and prosperous caravan-master in her own right, welcomed into the world a healthy boy named Qasim[18] in January of this year. Whatever future impact they may have on the course of history however, at the time this occasion was largely forgotten outside the circles of Quraysh clan elders and traders, as this family was utterly beneath the notice of the emperors and princes to their north and the Quraysh themselves were engaged in one of their endemic wars with the neighboring Hawazin tribe.

In China, Hao Jian worked to surround and properly invest Hangzhou, an assignment made all the more difficult by the fact that detachments of Great Qi troops had fortified and garrisoned themselves in numerous small villages on the road to the larger city while also evacuating the former inhabitants behind its walls. The Han nevertheless advanced, slowly but steadily, with the assistance of siege weapons carried from beyond the Yangtze, and the Crown Prince also fought off a secondary Qi army which marched out of Jiankang to try to attack him from behind while he was establishing part of his siegeworks. By the year’s end Jian had finally achieved his objective of fully surrounding and laying siege to Hangzhou, aided by several diversionary attacks which his father the Emperor of Later Han had staged on Jiankang to draw the Qi’s attention and keep them from sending any more armies to relieve the southern city. As Hangzhou’s fortifications were newer and less formidable than those of Jiankang (relatively speaking – it was strong enough to deter Prince Jian from ever attempting to storm the walls), the Han expected it would fall before the capital did, and in the meantime Wucheng continued to try to negotiate a victorious peace settlement with his counterpart Mingyuan.

Hao Jian overlooking his army as they begin the Siege of Hangzhou​

In Korea, the Japanese and Baekje were running into their first serious difficulties as they pushed deeper into Goguryeo territory across the Imjin, for King Dojeol expended a small fortune to bolster his flagging armies with many thousands of Mohe mercenaries. They earned their keep almost immediately, proving to be horsemen of greater skill & ferocity than their Goguryeo employers and routing the allied armies in the Battles of Solme[19] and Busogap[20]. King Heon, Kose and Yamanoue retreated first to the Imjin, then back down to the Han after the Goguryeo-Mohe host defeated them a third time in the Battle of Panmunjeom[21], where they were able to finally manage a successful defense on the riverbanks to keep their adversaries back.

The Yamato regents realized that they could not defeat Goguryeo without additional reinforcements from their island home: now at this point Kose was prepared to cut his losses and negotiate a truce with Dojeol, but Heon and Yamanoue persuaded him to raise additional troops by offering large boxes of rice (or koku) from their granaries to families willing to send an additional male to fight for them, and to attempt one more push across the Han once the new volunteers were ready. If it failed, Yamanoue promised that he would support suing for peace with the Goguryeo, assuming of course that the Japanese were not routed off the peninsula altogether in defeat.

Dojeol exhorts his horsemen and Mohe mercenaries to drive the Baekje-Japanese army back over the Imjin River​

The Western Romans spent the first half of 599 in a valiant effort to push toward the core of the Hoggar Mountains, where Yattuy awaited them at his capital of Abalessa. Hermenegild had the larger share of Roman troops and thus got close to their objective first, pushing past increasingly numerous and savage Berber attacks to do so – only to realize, once he had the mountain city in sight, that it was truly impossible to take with the 6,000 men he still had at that point. The defenders outnumbered him, he had no means of constructing siegeworks without exposing himself to further attack, and on top of it all his army was on the verge of running out of food and water, his already slim supplies having been further thinned by Hoggari night-raids.

Faced with a situation that was no longer ‘almost’ impossible, the Visigoth king decided he would rather face Florianus’ wrath and the possibility of death beneath a Roman executioner’s ax than the certainty of death here in the Sahara. He sued for terms, offering to turn right around and leave the Hoggar Mountains if Yattuy did not pursue him and provided him with enough food and drink to escape the Donatist kingdom: else he really would stage a suicidal attack on Abalessa, and although both kings knew he would be defeated, Hermenegild boldly declared that he could still cost Yattuy gravely before falling. To his shock, Yattuy appeared to fall for his bluff at first and gave him everything he asked for – not only an escape route, but sacks of grain and water.

Unsurprisingly, just like his brother, Yattuy was not about to keep any promise made to outsiders and almost immediately attacked the Romans as they tried to retreat through the Hoggari gorges. Hermenegild for his part did not actually think the Donatists would honor their word either, but the speed and ferocity of their attacks still proved too much for his battered and heat-exhausted army. Their discipline eventually collapsed under the strain of constant Hoggari raids, and the troops largely dispersed by mid-June; barely over a thousand of these men (sans Hermenegild, who died of thirst after being trapped in a cave-in while hiding from the Berbers with a few bodyguards) managed to limp back to Illizi, where Iaunas had managed to retreat in relative safety with most of his contingent intact long ago, and from there they withdrew further back north to Roman territory, collecting the Saharan garrisons they’d left earlier to protect their supply lines. All in all, some 12,000 Western Romans (out of the nearly 30,000 who participated in this campaign) made it back to the Atlas Mountains in a clear and costly defeat for the empire: Florianus had succeeded in saving Roman Africa from the deadliest Hoggari attack to date, but he had also overreached in his failed attempt to destroy Hoggar altogether and paid for it, the distractions of his first years in power having given Yattuy far too much time to prepare for his assault.

A Thevestian Moorish horse-archer takes aim at pursuing Hoggari warriors in a rearguard action​

When Iaunas sent heralds to inform Florianus of the disaster, however, they found he took his defeat exceedingly well. It did not take them or their master to find out why: with Hermenegild missing deep in Hoggari territory and as good as dead, the Western Augustus now swung his plan for Hispania into action. His messengers descended upon the Visigothic Thing being held in the Baurg, interrupting the Gothic nobility as they debated the fate of the kingdom and which of his sons should succeed him or whether it should be partitioned between them, to inform all gathered that the Emperor of the Occident believed his son Constans was entitled to kingship over the Visigoths by right of his marriage to Hermenegild’s daughter Adosinda.

That the couple should have the largest share of the inheritance would not be up for debate; however, if the princes Liuveric and Theodoric complied, they would be allowed to retain modest kingdoms in Gallaecia and Celtiberia. Obviously they did not agree to having this arrangement forced upon them, deeming it a most unwelcome and unlawful intrusion by the imperial authorities into the internal matters of the Goths, and raised the standard of rebellion – at which point Florianus sent the Italian and Gallic legions in to help those of Hispania in subjugating them. With many Visigoths having died in the Saharan sands with their previous king it was not difficult for the Romans to drive the remaining Balthing loyalists into the mountains and plateaus of the northwest, and having branded the princes treasonous outlaws for their defiance, Florianus now expected to crush them utterly and seize the entirety of the Visigoth kingdom for his third son (newly installed in Carthago Nova) in one fell swoop.

However, the Emperor’s brazen, opportunistic (for his original intention with Constans' marriage was to befriend Hermenegild and turn the Visigoths against the Ostrogoths, not usurp their kingdom) and frankly rather unjustified power-grab (at least he could have argued that his wife was the rightful sovereign of Altava by Moorish custom and the will of her father, unlike what he was now trying to pull with his Visigothic daughter-in-law) greatly angered and worried every single one of his other federates. Even the normally friendly and loyal Iaunas was now on edge, having witnessed how quickly his overlord could turn to usurping a vassal’s kingdom – especially when that vassal was a man like himself, for Hermenegild had similarly never gone against Rome’s commands until the last desperate weeks of his life. In particular, old Viderichus and the Ostrogoths now gave up any thought of continuing to work under him and began to actively plot his overthrow (again), while Genobaudes loudly protested the decision in Rome’s halls.

Viderichus' nobles pledge their swords and a Green-aligned Senator toasts to his brewing plot against the Augustus Florianus​

Far off to the east, south of both China where the Later Han continued their Siege of Hangzhou and Japan where the regents continued to amass their reinforcements for what they hoped would be their final Korean offensive, Dewawarman of Kuntala was making further moves to strengthen his control over the Malay Straits and Peninsula. In this penultimate year of the sixth century he marched on Kelantan from his foothold at Kedah, having first secured his northern flank by arranging the marriage of one of his many sons to a daughter of Langkasuka’s king Adiputra, and with his far greater resources & recruitment of sellswords from as far as eastern Java to reinforce his army and fleet, his victory was a matter of time. Kelantan’s own king Indrashangar yielded after being defeated in the Battle of Bukit Gua Musang[22], where the Kuntalans bribed a local hunter into showing them a secret tunnel into the eponymous ‘Civet Cat Mountain’ that allowed them to bypass the Kelantanese defenses: in exchange for his submission and tribute, Dewawarman allowed Indrashangar to retain his crown as another local vassal of Kuntala, in accordance with the ‘mandala’ political model[23] which he was pioneering.

And on the other side of the Earth, Pátraic mac Amalgaid finally managed to overcome and slay his adversary Ólchobar this year, allowing him to realize his ambition of becoming the undisputed High King of the New World Gaels. Or so he thought: in the years it took for the two to arrange and fight a decisive battle, numerous petty-kingdoms had sprung up all over southern and western Tír na Beannachtaí, and none of these were particularly inclined to recognize Pátraic as their suzerain – much less pay him tribute in fish, berries and other foodstuffs, when they needed every ounce of food they could get their hands on to survive the harsh winters. Pátraic himself tried to assert his authority over them, but by now he was an aged and weary old man and while his kingdom was the largest on Tír na Beannachtaí, the petty-kings who could normally only call upon as few as a dozen fighting men apiece had the strength to oppose him if they worked together, which they did when he went about declaring himself their overlord. Thus the Irish of the New World remained politically fragmented, even as they spread to overtake the entirety of Tír na Beannachtaí and then (over the decades to come) the other outlying islands discovered by their kindred from Connaught and Leinster.

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[1] The Somme.

[2] The Oise.

[3] Ahvaz.

[4] Now part of Tianchang.

[5] Now in eastern Hefei.

[6] Chao Lake, Anhui Province.

[7] The River Tyne.

[8] Stirling.

[9] Bamburgh.

[10] Lashkargah.

[11] Khowrabad.

[12] Wuhu.

[13] Now part of Xuancheng.

[14] Now part of Gyeongju.

[15] The first of the three butterfly-proofed religious figures of this timeline I’ve mentioned in the past, the soon-to-be Prophet of Allah surely needs no introduction.

[16] ‘Youm-e Maadar’ – ‘Mother of Believers’ – to Muslims, she was Muhammad’s first wife and first follower.

[17] Denounced by the other Christians as ‘Judaizers’, the Ebionites were an early Christian sect who rejected Saint Paul’s efforts to distance the then-new religion from Judaism. Among their teachings were an adoptionist belief, that Jesus Christ was not the literal Son of God but a biological son of Joseph and Mary who was later chosen by God to be the Messiah; the perpetuation of mandatory circumcision, ritual ablution (mikvah) and the celebration of Passover; and denouncement of animal sacrifices, coupled with a commitment to vegetarianism and apostolic poverty (their name literally meant ‘the poor ones’). Although they had gone extinct in the Roman world by the end of the 5th century, some Ebionite communities were known to have survived into the 7th in Arabia (their final disappearance coinciding with the rise of Islam) and probably had an influence on Islam’s view of Jesus.

[18] Muhammad and Khadijah’s first son, he historically did not live past the age of three. As neither Qasim nor any of his younger brothers survived childhood, Muhammad’s lineage would ultimately be transmitted strictly through his daughters.

[19] Songrim.

[20] Kaesong.

[21] Part of Paju.

[22] Now in Malaysia’s Gua Musang district.

[23] Influenced by Hindu and Buddhist concepts imported from India, the empires of Southeast Asia tended not to be centralized polities like the Roman or Chinese empires were, but loose federations (arguably even less centralized than the Holy Roman Empire) of assorted autonomous tributaries which recognized a single powerful kingdom as their overlord – in other words, they are the periphery of the eponymous ‘mandala’, or circle, with their overlord sitting at its core.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Having concluded their African war in a sanguinary stalemate the year before, the Western Romans spent 600 concentrating on their new war against the Visigoths in Hispania. Prince Constans was placed in command of the legions in Hispania, so that he might lead them to victory and seize the Visigothic crown with his hands, but the Balthing brothers remained a step ahead of him in their mountain holdfasts and were further aided by the defection of those Gothic foederati who hadn’t marched to and died in the Sahara with their father. By the autumn of 600, Constans had managed to defend the two-thirds of Hispania which was still under Roman control and repelled a major offensive on the part of Liuveric & Theodoric in the Battle of Toletum, but had himself been defeated when he attempted to push into the Iuga Carpetana[1].

In light of this lack of progress, the Augustus tasked Genobaudes with assisting his son in subduing the Visigoths. However, between his vocal protestations against the Stilichians’ attempt at usurping the Gothic crown in the first place and his poor relationship with Constans, the magister militum almost immediately drew negative attention – and suspicion – to himself. Matters were not helped by his failure to muster more than a few hundred volunteers from the Frankish kingdoms (whose rulers were justifiably concerned that they could someday experience what the Stilichians were doing to the Balthings now) and the Balthing brothers launching a more limited offensive in the early winter months, in which they seized the fortified hill-town of Bursao[2], after he had told Constans that no winter offensive could possibly be forthcoming and thus they should not worry about or make preparations against it.

While the Visigoths were openly locking blades with the Western Roman army in the mountains of Hispania, their Ostrogoth cousins continued to sharpen theirs in Italy itself. This year Viderichus prioritized amassing allies in Ravenna, where he sought to spring Otho from his prison: while unable to bribe his guards to simply let him out of the villa where he was being held in comfort, Ostrogothic agents were able to bribe some of the legionaries posted for the prince’s ‘protection’ to let messages from Viderichus through, and Otho naturally welcomed the offer to become Augustus with the Gothic king’s help. Viderichus also continued to build up support among the Senators, in particular winning over the Consul for 599-600 Anicius Symmachus (who was brother-in-law to both Florianus II and Otho by virtue of having married their sister Maria, and whose first cousin Juliana was also Otho’s wife) by promising to also make him Emperor.

Florianus and his household were not unaware of the dangers they had placed themselves in thanks to his seizure of the Visigoth patrimony, and were making moves to secure their own position. The Emperor himself reminded Clovis II of the Western Franks that he would likely be dead or forcibly cloistered by now if it were not for imperial intervention in his favor and against his Arbogasting-backed uncle, and also began appointing Sclaveni nobles to patronage positions for the first time in Roman history to strengthen his ties to the Carantanians and Horites. Dihia meanwhile not only worked to rebuild her kingdom, but also to repair ties with neighboring Theveste and reassure its king Iaunas that his allegiance to Florianus was not misplaced, aided (accidentally) by the friendship between their children: late this year her efforts seemed to bear fruit, as Iaunas moved his court back from the fortress of Arris deep within the Aurès Mountains to the capital of Theveste itself, much closer to & more accessible from the Roman cities on the coast.

Though there is no way they could have understood it at age ten, the friendship which had grown between Tia of Theveste and Prince Venantius would prove helpful to keeping Africa firmly aligned with the Stilichian cause in the troubles to come​

In the Northern Turkic Khaganate, Issik Qaghan died in February of this year of a bad chill, and much as his brother’s throne had been to the south, his own crown was immediately contested by his own sons. His elder son Muqan had the support of the majority of the Tegreg chiefs and warriors, so his younger son Tardush ran to the vassal peoples of the west for aid: the Karluks, Kimeks and Khazars chief among them, and to a lesser extent some of the Oghuz as well, though no doubt their assistance would not come cheap. In exchange for gifts, the hands of his daughters and additional privileges (most crucially the ability to tax trade moving through their lands without any Tegreg oversight whatsoever) these tribes committed themselves to Tardush’s side and gave him a fighting chance against his big brother, turning what would have been a very one-sided rebellion into a full-blown civil war among the Northern Turks and threatening Tegreg hegemony within their own Khaganate.

Southeast of Turkestan, Hao Jian found an unexpected ally in the Siege of Hangzhou: rats. An infestation of them contaminated & ate through the Qi defenders’ supplies of grain, and although the Qi turned to catching and roasting most of these rats for food instead, the damage had been done – the fall of the city was greatly accelerated, both by the looming threat of starvation and the outbreak of disease which followed the garrison & citizens’ consumption of the vermin who troubled them. The news that Hangzhou would probably fall in months rather than years was most welcome in Emperor Wucheng’s ears as well, for his latest round of negotiations with his counterpart Mingyuan had fallen through after the Emperor of Great Qi insisted on keeping his realm independent of the Later Han with its boundary set along the Yangtze.

Suffice to say the defenders of Hangzhou will not be celebrating the Year of the Rat for quite some time, if not the rest of their lives​

In Korea, the sixth century ended with the Baekje and Yamato launching their great northward offensive out of the peninsula’s southwestern corner, the latter having managed to muster over 15,000 reinforcements and the former providing them with enough ships for transport in the late spring months. Heon, Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito succeeded in breaking the Goguryeo lines to their north and east, pushing their now-outnumbered adversaries back toward the Han River and scoring a major victory in the Battle of Sabi[3]. However, their effort to pursue the Goguryeo over that river was halted in the Battle of Dongducheon on account of the Goguryeo calling in Mohe reinforcements of their own, and King Dojeol had pushed them back south of the Han by the year’s conclusion. Both sides were now determined to decide the outcome of the war in the next few battles, which were sure to further soak the Han River valley where this all began in yet more blood.

The dawn of the seventh century saw Florianus still embattled between both his war against the rebellious Visigoths on one hand, and the schemes of the Ostrogoths on the other. Increasingly concerned that Rome may no longer be a safe residence for his family, the Western Augustus took his heir Constantine’s marriage to the Eastern Roman princess Anastasia in the summer of this year as an opportunity to also get the former out of the Western Roman Empire altogether. He proposed to his counterpart Arcadius II that his Caesar should live in Constantinople for a time, not only to leisurely tour the Orient and allow his homesick new wife to stay close to her family for a while longer, but also hopefully to gain some fighting experience as part of the Eastern Roman army. Arcadius for his part was happy to host his new son-in-law for a few years, believing doing so would allow him to increase his influence over the West in the years to come.

In Hispania, Constans and Genobaudes were having a little more success against the Visigoths this year than they had in the last. Their combined forces, aided by a 3,000-strong detachment sent by Prince Enneco of the Aquitani, recaptured Bursao after a four-month siege early in the year and used it as a springboard for attacks into the Iuga Carpetana and beyond from the east. Although slowed by the terrain, increasingly frequent & forceful Gothic counterattacks, and continuous disputes between the two commanders, by the year’s end Genobaudes and the Aquitani had captured Vareia[4] along the Hiberus[5] while Constans was steadily pushing in from the south. As of Christmas 601, he had partially broken through the Iuga Carpetana and captured Segobriga on the Gothic side of those mountains.

As for the Eastern Romans, a few months before his daughter’s wedding Arcadius II had to deal with a substantial Southern Turkic incursion into Susiana (as the Romans once again renamed Khuzestan), though it had not even been half a decade since he inked his peace treaty with Qapaghan Qaghan. Fortunately for him, the raiders were halted by the auxilia Thraeces in the Battle of Gotvand: though they had been part of Sapor’s army before, this time 2,000 of the Slavic warriors had to fight alone for several days without Roman support, and yet they managed to fight the Tegregs to a standstill at Gotvand despite being outnumbered thanks to seasonal flooding of the Karun making the river’s upper banks more treacherous than usual for the Turks to cross. They were able to hold the 10,000 Tegregs at bay for three days before being relieved by Roman reinforcements, proving to Qapaghan that taking Khuzestan back from the Romans would not be an easy affair at this time.

Arcadius demanded of Qapaghan an explanation, at which point the latter claimed one of his more restless vassals had launched the attack without his authorization. Unconvinced but also unwilling to start up hostilities again so soon, the Eastern Augustus agreed to settle for financial reparations (including the return of the meager loot the Turkic pillagers had been able to collect before being stopped by his Sclaveni auxiliaries) and the marriage of his own Caesar Leo to Ayla, one of Qapaghan’s daughters, who would be further required to undergo baptism before the wedding could go through. Heshana bitterly opposed this attempt at upholding the peace between the two empires but was overruled by his father, who determined that the Southern Turks really weren’t ready to go back to war yet, and would later be further angered by the news that he’d been saddled with a half-Roman nephew named Constantine on the last day of the year.

The Tegreg princess Ayla seemed to be more or less content to convert to Christianity & become the first Turkic Roman Empress. A pity for both their peoples that her brother could not be happy for her, to put it mildly​

Well south of the Roman world, Kumbi continued to consolidate its gains and grow in power, taking advantage of its distant neighbor Hoggar being too worn-out from repelling the latest Roman invasion to mount any serious raids south which may have compromised Bannu’s efforts. King Bannu replaced his capital’s wooden wall with one of mud-bricks, modeled after the opus africanum style of masonry popular in Roman Africa, and with the help of the late, sainted Lucas’ disciples among the men of Kumbi he also worked to adapt the Latin alphabet to the Soninke language, so that his people might communicate in (and learn & spread the Gospel using) a written language for the first time. In Aoudaghost he had the town’s Donatist church rebuilt, reconsecrated by an Ephesian priest, and oversaw the baptism of the surviving residents into the orthodox rite – those opposed were either dead or had fled to join their fellow Donatists in Taghazza to the north, where they were no doubt seething and denounced the converts back home as lapsi. Taghazza, for its part, now formally accepted Hoggar as its suzerain for protection against Kumbi.

Over in Turkestan, while the Southern Turks seethed at their latest defeat in-between continuing to rebuild their tattered realm and armies, their Northern kindred continued to tear themselves apart with the assistance of the various other Turkic peoples who were now increasingly only nominally subjugated under their hold. The Tegreg loyalist forces under Muqan Qaghan racked up a number of small victories in the first half of 601, but these were undone by a major victory on the part of Tardush and the rebel Turks in the Battle of Beshbaliq[6]. By far the largest battle fought between the two brothers, it pitted 30,000 Tegregs against a 40,000-strong assortment of pro-Tardush insurgents (mostly Kimeks and Khazars), and ended in a heavy defeat for the former – between the actual battle itself, the rout and their dispersal into the Gurbantünggüt Desert they sustained 16,000 casualties, a little over half their fighting men and a severe blow not just to Muqan now but to the Tegregs as a people in the longer term.

In China there was a sea-change: Hangzhou’s starved defenders surrendered to the Later Han forces besieging them in mid-summer of this year after exhausting the last of their rations, and Hao Jian not only enforced discipline to prevent his troops from sacking the city but even personally oversaw relief efforts to feed the citizenry after the Qi men had stood down. This great victory had the desired effect of unmooring the Great Qi defensive lines around the Yangtze and finally drove the rival Emperor Mingyuan to capitulate to his father, who triumphantly paraded into Jiankang on the first of July and magnanimously awarded Luo Xie (as Mingyuan was now back to being known as) with the title ‘Prince of Qi’ after the latter formally kowtowed to him & recognized his overlordship. The Qiang kingdom of Qin, the most obvious next target for Later Han, sensed the way the winds were blowing soon after news of Great Qi’s defeat reached them, and decided it would be better to stand at the side of China’s new likeliest unifier than to be trampled beneath their feet: instead of risking probable defeat in the near-future they voluntarily became a Han vassal, for which their ruler Ma Jun was similarly awarded the hereditary dignity of ‘Prince of Qin’.

Emperor Wucheng was able to savor his unification of northern China for only a few months before expiring of old age in December of 601, leaving Crown Prince Jian – or rather, Emperor Yang of Later Han now – with the task of bringing China’s southern half to heel. This was unlikely to be easy, for the dynasts and kingdoms of the south reacted with alarm to Later Han’s triumphs and Chu, Cheng and Minyue formed a coalition to oppose any move on Emperor Yang’s part in their direction. However, all of these states had a bitter history of frequent clashes between them which they had to overcome if this alliance were to last at all, and Yang expected he would be able to exploit their past bad blood to divide & conquer them in the years to come.

In Korea, the Goguryeo and Baekje-Yamato coalition were also moving toward the decisive battles with which they hoped to resolve their war. They would fight three such major battles along the Han River this year: first the Battle of Michuhol[7], in which Goguryeo was triumphant, then the Battles of Hanseong and Usooju[8], which were Baekje-Japanese victories – brought on by the clever use of iron caltrops to break up a Mohe cavalry charge in the former, and the Han River itself conveniently flooding immediately before the Goguryeo army tried to cross it in the latter. The latter two victories gave a critical edge to the Baekje-Yamato, allowing them to trap & besiege 12,000 Goguryeo troops in Michuhol while also sweeping the rest of the bloodied & demoralized Goguryeo army toward the Imjin River.

Baekje and Japanese troops routing the Goguryeo infantry toward the end of the Battle of Hanseong​

By the end of 601 King Dojeol had to admit defeat and sue for peace. In the negotiations which followed the Imjin was made into the new border between Baekje and Goguryeo, securing the former’s control over the Han River, and the latter also agreed to pay tribute to the Yamato. Kose and Yamanoue returned to their island home covered in glory and bringing with them much plunder, having scored Japan’s first major continental victory and assisted (not that they even really needed to) the Baekje in effortlessly vassalizing the small Gaya confederacy in southern Korea which had remained neutral this entire time, although the domestic balance of power back on the Home Isles now favored Kose’s faction as a result of his deal with Yamanoue and Yamanoue’s own considerable losses in Korea. The regents may have celebrated prematurely however, for Geumryun of Silla continued to advocate in Luoyang for his kingdom’s restoration and with the Great Qi defeated at last, the Later Han were now free to consider that project with greater seriousness…

If 601 was a year in which Western Roman forces in Hispania were able to take a step forward, alas 602 was one in which they were driven two steps back. Constans attempted to launch a drive toward the Baurg (or, as it had come to be called in the vernacular speech of the Hispano-Romans, ‘Burgos’) where his brothers-in-law had established their capital, but his offensive was undone by Genobaudes’ failure to support it from the east. Instead, his forces were ultimately halted and rolled back all the way to the slopes of the Iuga Carpetana in the five-day Battle of the Durius[9] this summer, while Genobaudes took almost no action at all in the east despite being informed, and then ordered, to advance with increasing desperation by Constans’ messengers.

The Balthing brothers Liuveric and Theodoric, who waged a determined struggle not only to secure their inheritance but also to preserve their people's autonomy​

The Western Roman prince complained of Genobaudes’ inaction to his father, who subsequently recalled his magister militum with intent to sack him for this latest failure. However Florianus changed his mind after recalling how Genobaudes’ great-grandfather Aloysius had revolted against his own granduncle Theodosius III after being fired from that office, and decided to head off the possibility of history repeating itself by arranging his assassination instead. Several agentes in rebus gained access to Genobaudes near Caesaraugusta in August of this year, claiming that they bore an important missive from the Augustus, and promptly strangled him to death.

The magister militum’s demise was officially blamed on agents of the Balthing brothers, but few in the elite Roman and federate circles bought that story. Though he initially feigned submission in order to be confirmed as the next Dux Germaniae, Genobaudes’ son Teutobaudes first pointedly refused to send his elder son Aloysius to Rome, where he would have served as a hostage, claiming the child was too young and sickly to make the trip. Secondly, before the year ended he would also arrange the marriage of his sister Hilaria to the Ostrogoth prince Theodemir, Viderichus’ younger son.

The Augustus must have realized then that he had gravely erred, and that by attempting to continue his father’s efforts to centralize the Western Empire & weaken the federate kingdoms with little to none of the latter’s caution or subtlety, he had brought his realm to the brink of a major federate revolt of a sort not seen since (and probably exceeding) the Second Great Conspiracy of the 470s. Realizing that he had averted an immediate rebellion in the north but at the cost of driving the Blues and Greens together – an unprecedented event – Florianus now hurried to shore up the support of his other federates in preparation for a civil war he could see coming. Most importantly this year, he named Iaunas his new magister utriusque militiae on account of being the strongest of the federate kings whose loyalty he could still count on, one of a very short list indeed in these days (which, the emperor had to admit, was his own doing).

Far to the southeast, 602 marked the outbreak of another civil war in Aksum. The Baccinbaxaba Tewodros was by now an old man, and even feebler than he had been in the prime of his life: power in this African empire, previously increasingly dispersed between his magnates, had in past years become concentrated in the hands of two of the greatest of their houses – that of Tessema of Begemder, a magnate whose power-base was in the western & central Aksumite highlands around Lake Tana, and Gadara of Adulis[10], whose lands and clients lay much closer to the imperial capital. Tessema’s sister had married Tewodros in their youth, while Gadara’s daughter married him in his old age after his first wife had predeceased him; both marriages produced issue, and naturally both magnates sought to place their kinsman on the Aksumite throne when Tewodros expired.

When the old emperor did finally die in his sleep on a hot August night this year, Gadara made the first move. His supporters, financed by the great merchant families of the coast and of Himyar, seized control of the capital with a minimum of bloodshed and declared his grandson Gersem the new Baccinbaxaba, putting to death those few who they could not bribe or coerce into kneeling before the young man. This was of course an unacceptable state of affairs to Tessema, who pronounced his nephew (and Gersem’s considerably older half-brother) Ioel to be the rightful ruler of Aksum and called the other highlander lords to arms for his sake. Though Gadara’s partisans were more numerous, those of Tessema proved to be the more skilled warriors and the first stage of this new Aksumite civil war mostly went in their favor, their advances toward the capital only coming to a halt when Gadara successfully incited the Jews of Semien[11] into rising up against Tessema.

The disorder in Aksum weakened their control over their vassals, such as the Quraysh clans of Mecca and the Macrobian city-states along the eastern coast of the Horn of Africa​

On the other side of the world, the Northern Turkic civil war was winding down just as the Aksumite one was beginning to heat up. Muqan Qaghan’s partisans had increasingly abandoned him in the wake of the Battle of Beshbaliq for fear that he would soon be defeated and they would go down with him unless they cut ties, making his defeat a self-fulfilling prophecy. By September he and one of his last field armies had been slaughtered on the shores of Lake Gagan[12], where he was trying to raise a new army after being forced out of the Tarim Basin but was betrayed by several of his tarkhans, who revealed his whereabouts to Tardush in hopes of finding rewards in the new order.

On his way to the Northern Turkic throne, Tardush rewarded those traitors with a relatively quick death in the form of beheading. That done, he received the submission of Muqan’s remaining adherents among the Tegregs and could finally call himself the undisputed Qaghan of the Northern Turks, but soon found that his victory was nothing short of pyrrhic. His people had further bled themselves for nobody’s gain but his, while his non-Tegreg ‘friends’ in the west had grown so greatly in power that they were now virtually independent entities in their own right – their tribute payments were now smaller and more tardy than ever, and although they still feigned respect whenever he visited their camps the Khazars, Kimeks and Karluks did as they pleased the instant he turned away. At this time, Tardush could do little but focus on rebuilding Tegreg strength in the east, understanding that attempting to reassert Tegreg rule in more than just name over the Western Turks could only end in disaster given how weak they were at this time.

Further still to the east, while the Later Han and Yamato savored their recent victories, Dewawarman of Kuntala attempted to gain another such triumph over his next and greatest obstacle to consolidating control over the Malay Peninsula: the kingdom of Langkasuka, which dominated the north of said peninsula and the Kra Isthmus connecting it to the rest of mainland Asia. The Langkasukans proved a more difficult adversary to overcome than Kedah and Kelantan had been, however, and its king Bhadagatta III used his own not-inconsiderable treasury to reinforce his army with 6,000 Funanese[13] mercenaries from the north.

Those sellswords earned their pay late this year in the Battle off Patani[14], where Dewawarman led 18,000 warriors aboard 80 ships in an attempt to circumvent the hostile terrain of the northern Malay Peninsula and were met by Bhadagatta’s 60 ships and 14,000 warriors (including the Funanese) before they could reach the Langkasukan capital of Ligor[15]. Though the Kuntalans had the edge in numbers, the Langkasukans proved to be more ferocious fighters and were further aided by favorable winds, allowing them to quickly close in and board many of the bulkier Kuntalan warships early in the battle. Ultimately Dewawarman retreated after barely fighting off an attack on his flagship, and 50 of his ships followed – the rest having been sunk or captured by the Langkasukans. Frustrated but in no way deterred from pursuing his ambitions of complete maritime dominance over the entirety of Alam Melayu, he fell back to Kuntala to lick his wounds and more thoroughly plan a second invasion of Langkasuka in the future.

603 was a year of mixed fortunes for the Western Roman Empire. In Hispania, efforts by Liuveric and Theodoric to strengthen their armies in the spring with a campaign of taxation & forcible conscription was especially poorly received in the mountainous highlands of northwestern Hispania. There the Visigoths were driven out by the local Celtiberian tribes which had troubled both them and Rome in the past: the Callaeci, Astures and Cantabri, whose persistence and ferocity in defending their ancient homelands had won them a measure of autonomy even at the height of the Empire. An attempt by Theodoric to snuff out the uprising before it firmly established itself was ambushed and routed in the Battle of Asturica[16] later that summer, around the same time that his brother held Constans’ renewed advance back outside Salmantica[17].

Their rising was a most welcome boon to the Stilichians, who hurried to take advantage of this insurgency exploding in their Gothic enemies’ rear by cutting a deal with the rebels. Western Roman envoys traveling by ship from Burdigala offered to acknowledge the elevation & organization of their lands into a federate principality spanning the former borders of the province of Gallaecia, similar to the privilege which had been extended to the Aquitani, in exchange for their full co-operation with Constans to defeat the Visigoths. The tribal chieftains and warlords agreed to this proposal on winter’s eve and elected one Vismaro, strongest of the Gallaeci chiefs, to be their first Prince, a decision which Constans and Florianus II recognized.

Vismaro, prospective Prince of Gallaecia, stalking the forests of his putative realm for Visigoth stragglers​

Elsewhere, the Western Caesar Constantine fathered a daughter with his wife Anastasia this year, who was baptized Verina after her grandmother in Constantinople. The news came as a welcome respite to Florianus, who continued to live in (entirely justified) fear of a coup, rebellion or assassination attempt. Such was his worry that he denied his mother Verina’s requests to have Otho brought to her all the way up to her dying day in September of this year, and then further ordered Otho to remain confined in Ravenna rather than allow him to travel to Rome for her funeral. All the while the Greens and Blues continued to secretly muster military resources in their lands as they plotted his downfall, with Viderichus and Otho himself working to subvert the garrison of Ravenna in particular.

These efforts in fact were how Otho managed to avert an attempt on his life near the year’s end, as he was able to sway his guards to intervene when his brother sent agentes in rebus to kill him now that their mother was no longer around to protect him. At that same time the Augustus was not even in Italy, having traveled to the lands of the Sclaveni with no fewer than four legions (or 4,000 men) for protection, to once more assure himself of their support and in turn promise the Carantanians and Horites imperial support against the Ostrogoths – culminating in him promising the hand of his niece Juliana to Seslav Radimirović, a younger son of the aging Prince Radimir of the Horites, while simultaneously trying to kill her father (who obviously was not about to consent to the match) back in Italy. It was clear that he would need their ardent support, for between the assassination attempt against Otho and the tensions which had been building up to boiling point over the past years, matters from Augusta Treverorum to Ravenna were imminently about to come to a head…

Off in the east, there was trouble and subterfuge in the lands of the Southern Turks. Qapaghan passed away in the autumn of this year, supposedly gored to death by an old wild boar on a hunt; his heir Heshana did not mourn him overmuch, but then neither did most Southern Turks in light of his embarrassing defeat by and the loss of his daughter to the Eastern Romans. Having accelerated the succession, the newly enthroned Heshana Qaghan set out to pursue his two priorities – firstly rebuilding Persia, which required him to ruthlessly purge banditry from Persia’s roads to make them safe for trade on top of normalizing relations with his weakened Northern Turk cousin Tardush and the Hunas of India, and secondly pursuing revenge against the Romans, though he understood the importance of patience and refilling his coffers before rebuilding the Southern Turkic army. Heshana also took the time & resources to try to revitalize Manichaeism, his faith in which he’d inherited from his father, and to have it fill the void left by the greatly-diminished Zoroastrianism following the numerous invasions of Persia and the rise of Mazdakite Buddhism in the west of the country, sponsoring the elevation of the friendly Parthian exile Mihrdad to be the faith’s new Archegos[18] in Esfahan and building Manichaean temples wherever he could afford to.

A Manichaean fresco commissioned by Heshana Qaghan early in his reign, depicting himself and the Archegos Mihrdad (among other clerics & courtiers) worshiping at the Tree of Life​

603 marked a changing of the guard in India as well, though not necessarily a change in outlook, for the Samrat Harsha died at the age of sixty late this year. He was succeeded by his middle son and Mahasenapati Megavahana, who immediately had to fend off challenges by both his older and younger brothers for the throne: this he had done by the end of the year, arranging the former’s assassination and defeating the latter in battle near Girinagar[19] to secure his hold on the Huna crown. That bloody start to his reign aside, Megavahana was a man more like his father than his grandfather – inclined toward economic & artistic development and harmonious relations with his neighbors, rather than viciously fighting to expand & conquer like their Eftal forefathers had been best known for, and unlikely to start large wars unless provoked.

Aside from upholding the reputation of the Huna imperial court as a lavish patron of the arts, Megavahana also continued Harsha’s policy of support for both Buddhism and Śvētāmbara Jainism throughout northern India, and sought to strengthen trading ties both in the west and east. To the west he made moves to enter a rapproachment with Heshana Qaghan, culminating in successful negotiations to clearly delineate their border (which also served Heshana’s plans to concentrate Turkic power against the Eastern Romans in the future) and secure the betrothal of Heshana’s three-year-old first son Bumin to his own five-year-old daughter Karmavati, as well as to sponsor Nasrani Christian merchants involved with the trading routes to the Roman world. To the east, Megavahana sought to improve ties with and win trading concessions from the rising power of Kuntala, where Dewawarman was quite happy to facilitate (and profit from) increased maritime commerce between India and China in order to refill his coffers and accelerate his preparations for another conflict with Langkasuka.

Spoiler: Roman imperial family trees of the sixth century

Spoiler: Map of the known world, 603 AD

1. Western Roman Empire
2. Eastern Roman Empire
3. March of Arbogast
4. Neustria
5. Austrasia
6. Burgundians
7. Alemanni
8. Bavarians
9. Thuringians
10. Lombards
11. Ostrogoths
12. Visigoths
13. Aquitani
14. Celtiberians
15. Carantanians
16. Horites
17. Dulebes
18. Altava
19. Theveste
20. Romano-British
21. South Angles
22. Deira
23. Bernicia
24. Picts
25. Dál Riata
26. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta & Connachta
27. Frisians
28. Continental Saxons
29. Vistula Veneti
30. Antae
31. Iazyges
32. Avars
33. Gepids
34. Georgia
35. Caucasian Albania
36. Armenia
37. Padishkhwargar
38. Ghassanids
39. Lakhmids
40. Garamantes
41. Nubia
42. Aksum (Tessema's faction)
43. Aksum (Gadara's faction)
44. Quraish & Yathrib
45. Hoggar
46. Kumbi
47. Southern Turkic Khaganate
48. Indo-Romans
49. Hunas
50. Kannada kingdoms of the Chalukyas & Gangas
51. Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Pandyas & Cholas
52. Sogdians & Tocharians
53. Khazars
54. Kimeks
55. Karluks
56. Oghuz Turks
57. Northern Turkic Khaganate
58. Later Han
59. Cheng
60. Chu
61. Minyue
62. Later Liang
63. Yi
64. Nanyue
65. Champa
66. Funan
67. Goguryeo
68. Baekje
69. Gaya
70. Yamato
71. Kuntala
72. Irish of Lesser Paparia, Greater Paparia & the New World

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

[1] The Sistema Central mountain range.

[2] Borja.

[3] Now in Buyeo, Buyeo County.

[4] Logroño.

[5] The Ebro River.

[6] Near Jimsar.

[7] Incheon.

[8] Chuncheon.

[9] The Douro River.

[10] Zula.

[11] Better known as the ‘Beta Israel’, and pejoratively called the ‘Falasha’ (‘wanderers’) by Christian Ethiopians back in those times, the Ethiopian Jews primarily inhabited the defensible Semiem Mountains of what’s now northwestern Ethiopia and from there often challenged Christian rule after Aksum’s conversion in the mid-4th century. They historically reached the apex of their power under Queen Gudit/Judith, who ruled in the 10th century.

[12] Lake Alakol.

[13] A collection of Indianized, Hindu/Buddhist petty kingdoms which stretched from the Mekong Delta into modern-day southern Thailand, with the richest and greatest of their cities being located in modern-day Cambodia. They were probably an Austroasiatic people related to the modern Mon and Cambodians, as the Tai peoples had yet to migrate this far south.

[14] Pattani.

[15] Nakhon Si Thammarat.

[16] Astorga.

[17] Salamanca.

[18] The title of the head of the Manichaean faith, first borne by Mar Sisin who was the prophet Mani’s foremost apostle and preached in both Roman lands & Central Asia.

[19] Junagadh.

 

[Circle of Willis]

The dawn of 604 brought with it the beginning of the latest Western Roman civil war which virtually everyone with any measure of power or awareness of its deterioriating political situation around the western Mediterranean had been expecting for years, and it came about in a suitably bloody fashion for a conflict that future historians would name ‘Aetas Turbida’ – the Time of Troubles. As the soon-to-be-literally embattled Augustus Florianus returned from the Sclaveni lands in April, having added to his escorting army some 2,000 warriors from the three great Slavic tribes who had just reaffirmed their oaths to him, he found the road to Italy obstructed by nearly 20,000 Ostrogoths and Bavarians near the mountain village of Nemas[1], led by the former’s King Viderichus himself. Suffice to say, they were not there to offer the emperor a friendly greeting.

Battle was joined almost immediately on the foggy morning of April 10, as the Gothic archers had taken up positions in the hills surrounding the town and greeted the approaching Romans with a flurry of arrows. The elite legionaries and Slavic noble warriors Florianus brought – many of them veterans of earlier wars with the Avars and Hoggari – proved their skill and experience in the rapidity with which they arrayed for combat, refusing to panic under the sudden fire of the treacherous federates and swiftly presenting a dense, disciplined shield-wall as the Bavarian infantry led the rebels’ assault. Despite their greater numbers, the Bavarians streaming down from the hills broke against the Western Roman line like a river against a mighty boulder, and were soon sent fleeing in disarray before their bristling spears, swords and plumbatae after failing to make much of an impact at all.

The Teutons rallied and soon attacked again under Viderichus’ direction, this time with the better-equipped and more disciplined Ostrogoths leading the way. Regardless, they still failed to break the elite Western Roman troops, and Viderichus sent in his horsemen to try to outflank them. Florianus anticipated such a maneuver and duly led his Scholae cavalry to repel them, in which – mirroring the infantry engagement – their superior skill at arms and the top-notch quality of their weapons and armor allowed them to hold their own against the larger number of Ostrogoth cavalrymen. The Battle of Nemas was still going nowhere by high noon, leading the frustrated Viderichus to order his archers to begin firing directly into the clashing masses of men on the plain below even knowing that casualties from friendly fire was inevitable.

Ostrogoth and Bavarian troops attacking Florianus' domestici pedites, or household foot guards, at the Battle of Nemas. Some of the Goths are armored exactly like the Romans, wearing ridge helmets rather than their traditional segmented helmets, distinguishing themselves as the elite Romano-Gothic infantry in Viderichus' employ​

The arrows felled as many Goths and Bavarians as they did Romans, and it took all of Viderichus’ experience as a statesman to persuade the Bavarian prince Agilolf not to try to kill him on the spot when the latter loudly accused him of treachery. It still wasn’t enough to break the Romans anyway, but one of the Ostrogoth arrows did find its way to Florianus’ neck in the confusion. The Scholae raced to shield their overlord as he swayed in his saddle, and managed to keep the attacking Goths from killing him on the spot; indeed, the Teutons would soon retire due to exhaustion and their complete inability to vanquish either the Roman cavalry or infantry. But the damage was done to Viderichus’ satisfaction, and despite having held his ground the wounded Florianus died later that night, having failed – as Theodosius III had long before him – to live long enough to set things right after provoking a civil war with his own actions.

While Florianus’ elite army withdrew to friendly Carantania, Viderichus spread the word that the Western Augustus was no more. Now by this time Otho had already incited the garrison and people of Ravenna to rebellion, and they had proclaimed him Augustus either in protest of the taxes Florianus had been levying upon them to finance first his ill-fated Saharan adventure & then his Hispanic war or simply because Otho and the Ostrogoths had bribed them with gold & promises of higher office; but until now the situation in Rome itself was still fluid. Pope Anastasius led Green and Blue efforts to sway the city to Otho’s side, but the urban mob and a number of Senators remained loyal to Florianus until news of his death arrived and dispirited them. The Senator Anicius Symmachus took advantage of this shift in the tide to call for a debate on the Senate floor, at which point he and his allies revealed that they had brought daggers into the Curia Julia with the connivance of the guards on his & Viderichus’ payroll and proceeded to massacre the opposition.

By April 30, Rome’s gates were open to Otho and Viderichus. Symmachus dared remind Viderichus that the plan was to make him Emperor, not Otho. Viderichus simply laughed in his face, but allowed him to live because with the decimation of the pro-Florianus Senators, he still needed Symmachus around to serve as a Green figurehead in that bloodstained body and lend their cause a hint of legislative legitimacy. With no other choice (on account of the Ostrogoth blade pressed to his throat), Symmachus led what remained of the Western Senate in acclaiming Otho as the new Augustus of the Occident, and Pope Anastasius crowned him as such the day after. As he donned the purple Otho was confident that he could at least count on Gaul, Germania, most or all of Italy and the Visigoths in Hispania in the bloody struggle ahead.

Of course, although it may have been supported by most of the federate kingdoms in the West their coup was denounced in Constantinople and Carthage, where the Eastern Augustus Arcadius and the widowed Augusta Dihia recognized Florianus’ Caesar and eldest surviving son with the latter, Constantine, as the lawful Western Emperor instead. As Florianus’ last magister militum and overall generalissimo of the loyalist forces in Africa, it fell to Iaunas of Theveste to coordinate the response of loyalist forces in the western Mediterranean. His first move was to rally the legions of Africa and call up Moorish warriors from both his own kingdom and Dihia’s Altava to support them; his second was to rush the wedding of Prince Venantius to his daughter Tia, both of whom turned fourteen this year, though the little joy the teenage royals could find in the hurried ceremony was further marred by the fact that the bridegroom’s father had been killed almost immediately before and the outbreak of civil war gave them no time for a proper honeymoon.

Iaunas leading a column of Thevestian recruits in the African desert. The majority of the Silingi Vandals settled in or around the Aurès Mountains almost two centuries ago, and it shows in their Moorish descendants, many more of whom tend to still harbor Teutonic features such as fair hair & skin compared to their Altavan neighbors​

With that done and his forces consolidated around Carthage, Iaunas moved to seize Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica with the assistance of the faithful Carthaginian fleet, with Venantius accompanying him as an aide. By the year’s end he had landed some 18,000 troops at Rhegium, whose magistrate and people yielded & recognized Constantine as their ruler without a fight. Around the same time, Arcadius had given his own son-in-law and claimant an army with which he was sweeping into Macedonia, swiftly receiving the submission of Thessalonica and moving to link up with the Sclaveni who maintained their loyalty to his side of the Stilichian dynasty. Lastly, Florianus and Dihia’s middle son Constans was withdrawing into Baetica to link up with a secondary African army that had crossed over the Pillars of Hercules, even as the Balthings went on the offensive to pursue him.

The eruption of fratricidal bloodletting was not limited to the Roman parts of Western Europe this year. Across the Oceanus Britannicus, Æþelhere of South Anglia went to war against Eadberht of Deira, seeking to bring Eoforwic under his rule as his first big step toward reunifying the Anglo-Saxons. Although both sides fielded armies which were very similar in size and composition, Æþelhere’s cultivation of positive relations with the Romano-Britons had not only freed him up from having to watch his southern flank but also given him access to a market of mercenaries from the British lands, and so to his ranks he had added a complement of Cambrian long-spearmen and longbowmen.

The efficacy of these troops (especially the latter) came as a rude shock to Eadberht, whose cavalry could not overcome the former while his remaining troops failed to withstand the withering fire of the latter, the result being that the South Angles achieved a major victory in the Battle of Donneceaster[2] (which the Roman embassy in Æþelhere’s court still recorded by its old Latin name, Danum). By the year’s end, South Angle forces had won another battle at the village of Fulford and were investing Eoforwic. King Eadberht was not present to lead the defense, having fled his capital for Bebbanburh and taken his family with him, in hopes of finding assistance from his brother Eadwald of Bernicia. He had no such luck in 604 though, for Eadwald was busy fending off efforts by the exiled Pictish King of Fib[3] to retake his kingdom from Bernician settlers who called that land ‘Fifeshire’.

Elsewhere, Heshana Qaghan continued the arduous process of reconstructing the war-torn Persian territories. While there was still no shortage of brigands for him to hang or impale and farmers to reassure about how safe it was now to plant their crops regularly across the devastated countryside, he also took steps to actually rebuild the cities and towns of Persia directly, distributing plunder from his personal treasury and the pockets of slain bandits to finance the repair of walls, wells and temples or just to buy food from abroad to give out to the masses. The Manichaean clergy, whose small numbers and obscurity had given them a measure of protection from the various armies which rampaged across the Land of Aryans since the Hepthalites first shattered the Sassanids a century & a half prior, provided Heshana with a cadre of literate bureaucrats and engineers who helped him rebuild Persia in his image.

Turkic Manichaean priests, newly trained under the patronage of Heshana Qaghan, now forming the nucleus of his new royal bureaucracy​

From 605 onward, the Western Augustus Otho found that seizing the purple was only the first step in a long and difficult journey: now he had to not only defend his throne from his rightfully angry nephews, but also carefully balance the competing Blue and Green factions comprising the coalition propping him up, a task that could be as difficult as it was tedious. Naturally his primary ally Viderichus demanded and promptly had to be awarded the office of magister utriusque militiae, but this appointment immediately attracted the ire of the Romano-Frank Teutobaudes, who believed he should have that office instead by virtue of it having been held by his unjustly murdered father Genobaudes immediately before the eruption of hostilities.

To appease Teutobaudes and prevent his supporters from fragmenting in the first year of the civil war, Otho declared him the Western Consul for 605-606 (this nomination was naturally not recognized by the Eastern court) and appointed the candidates he nominated to various civil offices in Italy. He also arranged the marriage of his son Julianus to Renata, daughter of the Blue Senatorial leader Agricola Avitus, at the same time that he wedded his older daughter Juliana to Viderichus’ eldest son Theodoric, a widower twice her age. Most of these offices were vacated for Blue cronies by way of bloody purges targeting the supporters of Florianus and his family, which were largely carried out by the Italic legionaries who had sworn allegiance to Otho or private militias raised by pro-Otho Senators while the Ostrogoths concentrated on combating the advancing loyalists of Constantine on all fronts.

The wedding of the Western Roman princess Juliana to Theodoric, heir to the Ostrogoth kingdom, who has clearly refused to shave his beard but at least bothered to dress in a traditional Roman toga for this occasion​

Aside from the political struggles in Italy, the military side of the Time of Troubles’ first stage remained highly mixed and unstable. Othonian forces were most successful in Gaul, where Teutobaudes assailed the pro-Constantine Franks of Neustria with his Austrasian allies; there, Clovis II had attempted to knock his adversaries off-balance with a counterattack but was resoundingly defeated and killed by the larger Othonian army in the Battle of Compendium[4], soon after which his kingdom was overwhelmed, Lutetia captured by treachery and his family sent fleeing to Britannia, from where Artorius III allowed them to continue onward to the South English court at Tomtun[5]. The Othonians also had some success in southern Italy, where Viderichus successfully marched to relieve the siege of Neapolis by Iaunas’ army.

However, the Florianic forces were in ascendancy in Hispania, where despite the Balthing brothers’ best efforts Constans managed to link up with his African reinforcements at Hispalis and defeat the Visigoths in a battle north of the city. Liuveric and Theodoric were forced into retreat back toward the Iuga Carpetana and split up under pressure from their Roman pursuers, with Theodoric continuing along their original northward route while Liuveric holed up in the recaptured Toletum with 5,000 men and promptly came under siege. Constantine himself was having success in the east, where all Macedonia and Achaea fell in line behind him in short order and the aging Croat Prince Radimir assisted him in recapturing the cities of the Dalmatian coast from their mostly-Ostrogoth garrisons.

Alas, starting in the autumn the Avars came to the realization that this was a full-blown civil war tearing their western enemies apart, not some simple coup or provincial revolt, and acted accordingly to keep things from being too easy for either the Othonian or Florianic factions. Dulo Khagan began with raids and limited probing attacks into the lands of the Dulebes, Horites and Carantanians, but by wintertime he was forcefully crossing over the frozen Danube into Roman Moesia with a respectable host of 25,000 behind him. As this attack threatened Constantine’s rear he had little choice but to respond, and while the Slavs backed him up and Arcadius authorized his Eastern Roman troops to help defend against the Avar invasion, it still cost him valuable time and manpower that he could have been using to push against Viderichus and Otho before they could fully harden the defenses of Italy & western Dalmatia against his advance.

A seventh-century Dulebian lancer from the Pannonian frontier. No doubt has trained extensively on the flat plain of his new homeland to better combat the Avars, ever preparing for the return of his people's former overlords & tormentors​

Further to the north, Eoforwic’s demoralized defenders surrendered the Deiran capital in the early summer months, having lost their resolve to fight on without their king and accepted Æþelhere’s promise of leniency despite still having enough food in their stores to last the rest of 605. Æþelhere accepted their surrender and followed through on his offer, even recruiting several hundred of the city’s thousand-strong former defenders into his own army. These defectors were put to the test later in the year, as Eadwald finally defeated the men of Fib and spiked their king’s head in September, after which he could finally turn his attention southward.

Æþelhere demanded that Eadwald turn over Eadberht, to which he responded by marching south to confront the South Angles on the battlefield – with his brother by his side as a claimant, not a prisoner. Their armies met near Dunholm[6], where the junior Raedwaldings led the veteran Bernician infantry stoutly held out on a hill against the arrows of Æþelhere’s Cambrians and threw back a massed South Angle assault before launching an unexpected downhill countercharge, routing the more numerous South Angles. Following the battle, Eadberht personally oversaw the execution of any and all former members of Eoforwic’s garrison in their custody for treason. Æþelhere himself fell back to Eoforwic for the winter, irritated that this reversal had cost him his chance at a quick victory but still determined to pursue his plans of conquest nonetheless.

Off in the distant east, the presence of Christianity in China was definitively recorded for the first time this year. As the middle length of the Silk Road became increasingly secure and overland trade naturally picked up with the restoration of peace & safety across the Turkic lands, a Paropamisadae convert and missionary named Sophagasenus (a Latinization of his original Sanskrit name, ‘Subhagasena’) accompanied a caravan from Kophen which made several stops in western China before finally reaching its final destination at the Han capital of Luoyang, and in addition to selling handmade wares crafted in or around the solitary church of the Indo-Roman capital he preached the Gospel at every stop along the way to all who would hear.

Sophagasenus leading the first Chinese Christian converts in a modest Palm Sunday procession​

Emperor Yang found Sophagasenus’ presence and teachings curious, and invited him to translate some of his texts (which in turn had already been translated from Greek into Sogdian previously) for the benefit of a Chinese audience. While not swayed to convert himself, the Emperor was an open-minded and generally lenient man, and allowed Sophagasenus to reside & continue preaching in Luoyang, where he would slowly amass a modest audience of converts. At the very least Yang believed that Sophagasenus could help him cultivate stronger trade relations with the ‘Houyuan’[7] or ‘Later Ionians’, as he called the Indo-Romans dwelling in the Caucasus Indicus, as well as the still-mighty and rich Daqin whose customs bore some resemblance to theirs and who lived even further west beyond the lands conquered by the Turkic barbarians.

Speaking of Emperor Yang, he and the Later Han were also beginning to make their moves in Korea, which would have been of far greater consequence in his mind than allowing a novel preacher from the distant western mountains to stay in Luoyang. Emperor Yang decided to focus his attention northward to allow his rivals in the south some time to pick at the lingering wounds between them, in hopes that they would eventually turn against one another and self-destruct in the absence of any Later Han offensive. The situation in Goguryeo provided him with an excellent place to start: having been defeated and compelled to pay tribute to Japan, King Dojeol did not have the money to pay his Mohe mercenaries, who promptly began to rampage across his lands in the belief that conquering their former employer's kingdom would amount to sufficient compensation.

Thus the northern Korean king had little choice but to accept Yang’s offer of assistance in restoring order to his kingdom, and by the end of 605 Han troops had assisted the Goguryeo in suppressing the Mohe – of the survivors who did not simply flee back into their wintry homeland, some 6,000 were killed and three times that number enslaved. Goguryeo thus moved back into the Chinese orbit, ironically only a few decades after fighting to remain independent of Great Qi’s grasp, and gave Yang a platform from which he could strike into Silla in the near future. The Yamato did not seem to take the growing threat seriously at this time, as the regents Yamanoue and Kose had by now gone back to jostling for power at home – the former seeking to undermine and reverse the latter’s growing influence in the aftermath of their Korean adventure.

Goguryeo soldiers welcome a column of Later Han reinforcements to their lands, previously devastated by the Han's immediate precursors the Great Qi and now by their own unpaid Mohe sellswords​

606 was another year of mixed fortunes for both sides of the Western Roman civil war. Developments in Italy and Dalmatia were mostly favorable to the sons of Florianus: firstly Iaunas and Venantius threw back an attempt by Viderichus to pursue them into Lucania at the Battle of Grumentum[8]. Soon after the pair received reinforcements from Africa, with which they resumed their advance and once again attacked Neapolis. Though still young and inexperienced at warfare, Venantius showed a spark of martial cunning when he proposed using the section of the Aqua Augusta – an old aqueduct network which had fallen into disuse due to damage from Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in the late fifth century – which once serviced Neapolis to push into the city, and circumvent its defenses before Viderichus and Otho could march to its relief again. The energetic young prince had in long-past summers inspected the ruined aqueduct for no reason beyond Iaunas' daughter daring him to on an Italian vacation, and recalled that part of its channel had pierced solid rock beneath Neapolis' walls: with the water long gone, the passage had become a tunnel which, if expanded, would be traversable for an army.

Iaunas exploited Venantius’ suggestion to capture Neapolis by storm toward the end of May, much to the shock of Otho and Viderichus who were still amassing troops with which to relieve the city. Instead they would end up leading that army to do battle with Iaunas and Venantius outside Teanum Apulum[9] to the east – the first serious test of arms between Florianic and Othonian forces in Italy, with both sides pitting around 25,000 men against the other. Though the Africans dominated the initial stage of the battle, effortlessly outshooting the Gothic and Othonian Roman archers both on foot and horseback, the Othonians proved to be too much to overcome once their armies collided for the melee engagement and Iaunas ended up ordering a withdrawal to Neapolis, which the Florianic host managed to carry out in an orderly fashion thanks to an effective rearguard action waged by their cavalry reserve.

A veteran African caballarius fends off Ostrogothic pursuers of Iaunas' and Venantius' army following the Battle of Teanum Apulum​

Though he had won a major battle in southern Italy and prevented his adversaries from attempting a swift march on Rome however, Otho was confronted by more bad news when he returned to the Eternal City. While he was out fighting Iaunas and Venantius, Pope Anastasius had died in his sleep; while it was not altogether unexpected due to the man’s age, his demise was still spun by Florianic propagandists into a sign that God favored their cause and would punish the ‘corrupt’ clergy who took the side of Otho. Worse still, the Roman clergy and mob favored the candidacy of a priest named Lucius, who had initially preached in favor of Florianus (in so doing butting heads with the late Pope) and only changed his tune after news of the latter’s death reached Rome; in other words, someone who promised to be a lukewarm supporter of Otho’s, at best.

This choice was unacceptable to Otho, who bluntly exercised the imperial privilege of jus exclusivae – the ‘right of exclusion’, or the theoretical right of the Emperor (as head of the Roman Church) to veto a Papal selection[10] – to stop Lucius from assuming office. Instead he declared another cleric named Lucretius, the runner-up in the Papal election (and a much more reliable Green partisan), to be the next Pope. Otho’s maneuver went down about as well as expected with the people of Rome: large riots exploded and took several weeks to fully stamp out, and during the chaos not Lucius himself escaped to Neapolis. The emperor had to waste troops doubling Rome’s garrison for some time to ensure security in the capital, thereby dashing any hope the Ostrogoths might have had of launching a counterattack in Dalmatia while Constantine’s army was still freshly bloodied from fighting the Avars. Speaking of which, the sons of Florianus honored the runaway papabile as the rightful Pope Lucius II, denouncing Lucretius as an antipope with the support of the rest of the Heptarchy.

There was more bad news to the northeast, where Constantine had managed to link up with the faithful Sclaveni and the remnants of his father’s elite army. To Otho’s relief this array of unified Eastern & Western Roman and Slavic forces could not drive into northeastern Italy immediately due to the Avar attack, but their combined forces did manage to hold Dulo Khagan back in the Battle of the Ulca[11], albeit at considerable cost to themselves – among whom Constantine was not counted, happily for the senior Stilichians and unhappily for his uncle. As a result of his defeat, Dulo halted his westward offensive and reoriented toward Macedonia instead, while Viderichus took the time bought by this Avar-Roman clash to dispatch his sons to Aquileia, from where they were to shore up Ostrogoth and Othonian defenses in southwestern Dalmatia & northeastern Italy.

Constantine's Roman and Slavic soldiers in the process of pushing the Avars and their Gepid thralls back over the Ulca. The imperial claimant can be seen personally leading this effort from horseback in the background​

The Othonians did get a break in the far west, however. Theodoric re-emerged from the mountains of central Hispania: prioritizing saving his brother over fending off Vismaro’s thrust from the north and linking up with Teutobaudes, who was leading a large number of Gallic and various Teutonic troops (mostly Franks and Burgundians, the latter being his wife Burgundofara’s people) to capture Barcino and other Hispano-Roman cities in the northeast loyal to the sons of Florianus throughout the summer months, in August he descended upon Constans’ army outside Toletum where Liuveric was continuing to hold. Facing a substantial disadvantage, Constans sought to retreat away from the city but was caught and killed in a battle near the headwaters of the Flumen Anas[12]. Toward the year’s end, Iaunas would dispatch Venantius to take command of his slain brother’s shattered forces and try to hold the line in southern Hispania, in which he would be assisted by additional Altavan reinforcements scrounged up by their heartbroken and vengeful mother – who, at this point, had now lost fully half of her children.

Beyond Roman waters, the conflict between the Raedwalding branches continued to rage in northern Britain. Eadwald and Eadberht advanced upon Eoforwic in the late winter and early spring months while Æþelhere was still in the process of recruiting and moving new troops from his domains further south, and as a result he found himself besieged in the Deiran capital at the start of summer. In July his reinforcements marching up from Tomtun & Lincylene achieved a significant victory over part of the North Angle besieging force in the Battle of Cyningesburh[13], compelling the Raedwalding brothers into fleeing back northward while he was able to break out of Eoforwic and begin harrying them on their retreat.

Æþelhere's South Angle reinforcements colliding with the Deirans & Bernicians along the River Dun, near Cyningesburh and Donneceaster​

However, the North Angles again surprised Æþelhere when they turned and engaged him at Gainford. The battle went poorly for the core South Angle army, as many of Æþelhere’s soldiers had dispersed across the countryside to chase down their foes, and once again the King of the South Angles found himself in a southward retreat. Fortunately, by the time he collected his forces around Eoforwic, he found that his losses – though stinging – had not been crippling. Worse, however, were the reports from his southern sentries of Romano-British troops beginning to amass around the larger castellae across the border: perhaps Artorius III too was noticing that he seemed unable to deal a deathblow to the North Angles, and despite having established the only positive relationship between the Romano-Britons and Anglo-Saxons in over a century, considered the latter’s continuing troubles to present too good an opportunity to pass up. With that in mind, Æþelhere committed to a major offensive against Bebbanburh come 607 in hopes of ending the war quickly, before the Pendragons could be emboldened any further.

On the other side of the continent, while the Later Han continued to undertake preparations for a great expedition to Korea and the alliance between their enemies in the south grew increasingly frayed as old border conflicts & rivalries began to flare up once more, Dewawarman was making a second go at Langkasuka. This time he had built up an even larger army and fleet (reckoned at 22,000 troops and sailors spread over a hundred ships of varying sizes) over the previous years, and when the Langkasukan fleet tried to stop him before he could sail through the Malay Strait in June of 606, he smote them in the Battle off Lansura[14]: with both sides enjoying calm weather and calmer seas, the clash was a straightforward one in which neither the Langkasukans nor Kuntalans deployed any innovative tricks, simply brute force in a series of ferocious boarding actions – of which the latter’s advantage in men and ships proved decisive.

Having secured the seas with his resounding victory, Dewawarman pressed on into Langkasukan soil and disembarked with his army on the other side of the Malay peninsula two months later. After detaching 5,000 soldiers to take control of the port of Patani and capture the partially finished second Langkasukan fleet there, the majority of the Kuntalan host went on to lay siege to their enemy’s capital of Ligor. Dewawarman would not live to see his victory, as he was killed by a Langkasukan arrow early in the siege, but by December the Langkasukan king Adiputra had been forced to capitulate following an outbreak of disease behind his defenses and the capture of part of his sea-wall in an amphibious Kuntalan escalade. Dewawarman’s son and successor Suryawarman allowed him to live and did not sack Ligor since it had yielded before an overly costly assault became necessary, but he did impose upon the Langkasukans a tribute quota twice that of Kedah’s in memory of his father. Kuntala now completely controlled the maritime trade route which flowed from Chinese ports toward Indian ones through the Malay Strait – a pity that the overland Silk Road had recently been reopened through the now-relatively-peaceful Turkic lands, making Suryawarman’s conquest a little less lucrative than he and his late father had hoped.

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

[1] Nimis.

[2] Doncaster.

[3] Fife.

[4] Compiègne.

[5] Tamworth.

[6] Durham.

[7] The ‘former’ Ionians in this context would have been the ‘Dayuan’, or Great Ionians: a Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the Ferghana Valley with their capital at Khujand, noted for their excellent wine & horses, which was subdued by the (original) Han dynasty in 101 BC. Like the Dayuan, the ‘Later Ionians’ would have seemed to the Later Han a remnant of an advanced and powerful western-based empire (in their case the Daqin, or Romans) almost equal to China itself, who briefly held but then retreated from the mountains they now call home.

[8] Grumento Nova.

[9] San Paolo di Civitate.

[10] Aside from universally recognized Roman Emperors, this privilege was historically exercised by the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors, and sometimes the French king as well. Although the Popes themselves never recognized the existence of such a right, they generally lacked the power to resist its exercise by secular monarchs in more recent centuries. The last time it was exercised was by Franz Josef, to shoot down the candidacy of Mariano Rampolla in the 1903 conclave, after which the newly elected Pope Pius X explicitly forbade the practice for the first time in history (prior Popes had just tried to restrict it).

[11] The Vuka River.

[12] The Guadiana River. The site of Constans’ fall would have been near modern Villarrubia de los Ojos.

[13] Conisbrough.

[14] Langkawi Island.

 

[Circle of Willis]

607 saw continued movement on all fronts of the Western Roman civil war, with the results generally favoring the sons of Florianus. The heaviest fighting occurred in Dalmatia, where Constantine sought to push on toward the Ostrogoth seat of power at Aquileia and also seize Ravenna, where Otho II had first begun his campaign to usurp the purple. In this, the young pretender might have made more progress against King Viderichus’ sons were it not for the continued Avar attacks in his rear – which by mid-year threatened Thessalonica – forcing him to detach elements of his army eastward to shore up his Macedonian garrisons, which were contained to their cities and forts while Dulo Khagan rampaged across the countryside. Ultimately he ended up asking his father-in-law the Eastern Augustus to send more Eastern Roman reinforcements to defend the Balkan provinces, which Arcadius proved awfully happy to do.

After the Avar assault was blunted by a large Eastern Roman army under their Caesar Leo in the Battle of Scupi in July, Constantine felt sufficiently confident to keep pushing westward in strength. He met the Amaling princes in the Battle of Burnum[1] at the start of September, and there overcame them – with his greater numbers he was able to use his heavier Roman infantry to fix the Goths defending the crossings of the nearby Corcoras[2] in place, while his Slavs and the ultra-heavy clibanarii cavalry Arcadius had loaned him crossed at an unguarded ford further upriver and outflanked the Othonian army. The younger Ostrogoth prince Theodemir was one of the casualties of the bloody rout which followed – struck down by Constantine’s own hand – and Viderichus felt compelled to march to the defense of his kingdom as a consequence of this defeat.

The Eastern Roman heavy cavalry loaned to Constantine smashing through the Italo-Roman legionaries among the Othonian infantry in the Battle of Burnum​

The Othonian magister militum’s decision to leave Italy was a perilous one, as Iaunas had gone on the offensive once again starting in May. Bolstered by local recruits raised across southwestern Italy in the preceding winter & spring months, the Florianic magister militum now went on his own warpath across central Italy and this time defeated the forces Otho sent out of Rome to challenge him at Beneventum and Luceria[3]. By the time Viderichus had left Italy to challenge Constantine in Dalmatia, the Africans had occupied Praeneste (well within striking distance of Rome itself) and there was sufficient fear within the Othonian camp that Iaunas could just walk into Rome with the aid of Florianic partisans within the walls, that Otho continued to concentrate a large number of troops within the Eternal City (allowing Iaunas’s men to push as far as Interamna[4] by the year’s end with little contest) and remained present there himself.

In Hispania, Venantius arrived at Cartago Nova in time to rally what remained of his slain middle brother’s forces and prevent the complete collapse of the Florianic position in the peninsula. He turned back the onslaught of Teutobaudes and the Balthing brothers in the Battle of Hispalis early in the year, where his Moorish horse-archers proved too formidable a foe for even the heavy Gallo-Roman cavalry under the former’s direction, then fought further fierce battles at Corduba and Aurgi[5] to safeguard his family’s hold on the southern rim of the Iberian Peninsula. In this campaign the prince was assisted not only by his able African lieutenants and the survivors of Constans’ command staff but also by the attacks of the faithful Celtiberians and Aquitani in the north, which at last became too grave for the Visigoths and their allies to ignore. Although Vismaro was finally confronted in force and defeated by Theodoric right before he could take the Baurg, the distraction he’d provided had bought Venantius critical time and set up the latter’s victory over Teutobaudes & Liuveric at the Battle of Aurgi late in the year.

While the Western Roman civil war may still be far from a conclusion, the war between the Anglo-Saxon cousins on the edge of the Roman world was fast approaching its climax this year. Æþelhere had bet on forcing a major battle in order to create the circumstances for a favorable peace settlement before the Romano-Britons entered the conflict, and he seemed to have gotten his chance at Stocctun[6] where the junior Raedwaldings had marched to meet his challenge. The battle which followed at first appeared as though it would follow the same course as their earlier clash at Dunholm, where Æþelhere had been soundly defeated: the North Angle shield-wall stood its ground in the face of withering fire from his Cambrian archers and an infantry assault, then pursued the latter after they retreated in failure. But this time Æþelhere was ready and even counting on such an outcome, having amassed a strong reserve (including his more numerous cavalry) and springing a counterattack involving these fresh forces once the overconfident North Angles were out of formation and thought they had won the day.

Thus did the Battle of Stocctun end in a victory for Æþelhere and the South Angles, whose counter-charge caught their opponents off-guard and swept them from the field. Eadwald of Bernicia survived the disaster, but Eadberht of Deira and his oldest son Eadmer had been among the most reckless pursuers of the retreating South Angle infantry and were consequently among the first to be fall before Æþelhere’s sudden counterattack. Æþelhere for his part chased the defeated Eadwald to Dunholm before offering terms, fearing that assaulting the town would cost him so many lives as to compromise his chances of fending off a Romano-British attack and a protracted siege would take too much time: Deira was essentially to be partitioned between Bernicia and South Anglia, with the former incorporating Dunholm and the lands beyond it while the greater share of the fallen kingdom (including Eoforwic) was to be absorbed by the latter.

King Eadberht of Deira unwisely exhorting his disorganized men to push on against the South Angle reserve's counterattack shortly before his death on one of the latter's spears​

Eadwald was not confident that his remaining troops could carry on the war and was himself concerned that the Picts or Gaels of Dál Riata might attack him in this moment of vulnerability, so he took the deal and installed his remaining underage nephew Eadhelm as the nominal lord, or ealdorman[7], of Dunholm. He himself would now reign as king of a consolidated and truncated North Angle kingdom, solidifying the ties between Bernicia and Deira by further arranging his own son Eadwig’s marriage to Eadhelm’s sister Eadhburh (as they were first cousins, Eadwald had to donate a sum of gold and build a monastery on the island of Lindisfarena[7] to secure a Papal dispensation for the match), while Æþelhere extended the South Angles’ reach up to the Vedra[8] and affirmed his kingdom as the mightier of the Anglo-Saxon realms. Though he was not able to completely conquer Deira, much less reunify the Anglo-Saxons under his leadership, the king in Tomtun did also achieve this limited victory quickly enough to dissuade Artorius from attacking his southern underbelly, and toward the end of the year they feasted at a royal lodge near Undulana[9] as if nothing had happened between them.

In the distant East, Emperor Yang continued his preparations for the invasion of Baekje, steadily assembling an army of as many as 180,000 soldiers for the task (to be further joined by his Goguryeo allies and whatever insurgents Geumryun of Silla could muster) over the course of 607. Heon of Baekje did try to negotiate with Yang, asking what he could possibly do to reach an accommodation with the Huangdi, but had been informed that he would need to give Geumryun his kingdom back as a starting point for any peace settlement. This was something he was absolutely unwilling to do after all the centuries of warfare between their kingdoms and the resources he had sunk into conquering Silla in the first place, so the countdown to the Chinese expedition was irreversibly set.

The talks having broken down in the spring, King Heon was finally able to get through to the Japanese regents and persuade them to begin making preparations of their own. Alas it was too little, too late – and even if they had started earlier, Yamanoue no Mahito & Kose no Kamatari certainly had no chance of raising enough troops to match the Later Han’s overwhelming numerical advantage man-to-man, not with the gōzoku system in place: few among the Yamato lords were particularly interested in returning to Korea to fight what they assumed would be a suicidal struggle against China. Thus aside from praying for a miracle or fifty, Heon spared no expense in improving his fortifications and recruiting additional soldiers of his own in a desperate bid to improve his chances for the war to come.

Where 607 had been a year which favored the sons of Florianus, 608 marked a shift in the tides of war. Once again the largest and most important battles were being fought in Dalmatia, where Viderichus of the Ostrogoths and his remaining sons were moving to confront Constantine head-on as the latter drew near to Aquileia. The Gothic king had brought a large number of reinforcements out of the peninsula with him, nearly emptying the cities of northern Italy (especially Ravenna) of their garrisons in the process, and coupled with the troops Prince Theodoric already had the Amalings would be fielding a formidable host of 28,000 for the battles to come in the summer months. On the other hand, Constantine had at his back a slightly smaller force of 24,000 – a mix of Eastern Romans, Sclaveni federates and new recruits raised from the loyalists of Macedonia, Moesia and Dalmatia – which had been whittled down somewhat from earlier battles and skirmishes with the Othonians.

First the vanguards of both armies met at the Battle of Fons Timavi[10], where Theodoric was defeated by the Carantanian heir Valuk: he retreated after losing a thousand men in the clash, while the Florianic force had sustained only a fifth as many casualties. This victory allowed Constantine to progress toward Aquileia itself, where Viderichus was waiting with his full strength. In the battle which followed, Constantine initially had the advantage, as his heavy Eastern cavalry crunched through their Gothic counterparts (in the process killing the latter’s commander Geberich, another son of Viderichus) and Roman infantry wedges pierced gaps in the Othonian shield-wall at the same time that those victorious horsemen fell on their flanks. The imperial pretender sent his Slavs through these gaps and believed his decisive victory over his usurping uncle’s chief lackey was now imminent.

However, Viderichus had taken advantage of his greater numbers to maintain a large reserve, and personally led those men into the fray at this critical juncture. His counterattack was further aided by the Othonian crossbowmen and archers under his son’s command, who had holed up behind an array of crude breastworks thrown up specifically to better protect the approach to Aquileia in case their front lines were breached, and together they drove the Florianic troops back in a vicious clash. Seeing that his weary and increasingly dispirited soldiers were beginning to falter before the fresher Othonian reserve, Constantine tried to turn the battle around by charging into the fray himself, backed up by his candidati bodyguards and the various Slavic princes with him (who brought their own retinues).

Soon enough the Stilichian heir reached and slew Viderichus: though the Ostrogoth king was a much more experienced combatant, he was also much older, and unlike their troops he was the one worn out from earlier fighting while Constantine was still full of energy. However, almost immediately after his victorious duel Constantine was himself slain by a barrage of Othonian bolts and arrows – Theodoric had seen the Stilichian imperial standard closing in on his father’s position and, either not knowing or caring about the risk to Viderichus, ordered the men under his command to concentrate their fire on it. Valuk of Carantania, the younger Horite princeling Seslav Radimirović, and the Dulebian Prince Beloslav as well as his nephew Gostevid were killed, either by the same missiles that felled their overlord or in the sustained Ostrogoth counterattack which followed. The Battle of Aquileia had been costly for both sides – 6,000 Othonians and 7,000 Florianists had fallen when nightfall compelled the former to break off their pursuit – but it was unmistakably a victory for the usurper’s faction, and especially for Theodoric personally as he both avenged his brothers and succeeded his father Viderichus without actually being responsible for the latter’s death (if only barely).

Constantine and his comitatus immediately before their deaths. Valuk of Carantania can be seen trying to hand him a new shield as Theodoric's arrows descend upon them, while Gostevid the Dulebian holds the Ostrogothic royal standard (freshly pried from the cold dead hands of Viderichus' standard-bearer) behind both and Seslav the Croat stands to Constantine's right​

News of the Battle of Aquileia came as a welcome relief to Otho himself, who had been engaged in a stand-off before Rome itself with Iaunas for much of 608’s first half. The many Othonian troops present in the Eternal City – in fact they represented Otho’s largest force-concentration besides the field army with which Viderichus and Theodoric were confronting Constantine in Dalmatia – had not only deterred Iaunas from storming Rome, but also kept pro-Florianic elements within the city well under control. After he himself had received the bad news and a pro-Florianic riot ended with the mob being massacred by Otho’s legionaries before they could come close to prying the Porta Tiburtina[11] open, the discouraged Iaunas fell back to Praeneste: his defeat in the Saharan sands had made him a much more cautious and risk-averse leader, one who certainly would not test Rome’s defenses without Constantine around to aid him. Reinforcements dispatched by the victorious Theodoric further aided Otho in not only fending off an attempt by Iaunas to opportunistically seize lightly-garrisoned Ravenna later in the year, but also in retaking several cities along Italy’s eastern seashore from the African Roman army.

Only in Hispania did the Florianic faction still enjoy any significant success in this year. As the last of the sons of Florianus still standing, it fell to Venantius to take up his side of the family’s claim to the purple, and he continued to bitterly hold out against the attacks of the numerically superior Visigoths and Franks throughout this year. Aided by a renewed Celtiberian attack from the north, Venantius even managed to mount a large-scale offensive in the western reaches of the peninsula: further affixing Liuveric and Teutobaudes’ attention onto Toletum with a feint in that city’s direction, the new claimant reclaimed Emerita Augusta from its depleted rebel garrison and swept through Lusitania in the summer and autumn months, linking up with the Celtiberians of Vismaro and scoring the only major Florianic victory this year in the Battle of Aeminium[12] to secure his gains.

In the east, Otho took advantage of his eldest nephew’s demise in the Battle of Aquileia to send out peace feelers to Constantinople, offering to formally cede the dioceses of Dacia, Macedonia and Achaea back to the Eastern Empire (once again) in exchange for their recognition of him as the Western Emperor. Although the Eastern Caesar Leo counseled his father against taking this deal, believing it to be dishonorable and victory against Otho to still be feasible, Arcadius II ultimately fell to the temptation to restore the pre-Stilicho and pre-Sabbatius borders of the two empires – he had been thinking of taking these dioceses back as ‘payment’ even if Constantine had won anyway – and his son reluctantly went along with his commands.

Arcadius also arranged the betrothal of his grandson, ironically similarly named Constantine, to the late Western Constantine’s daughter Verina. Since the two were not only extremely young but also first cousins, their match required a dispensation from Pope Lucretius, who duly provided it at Otho’s request. Lucius, the Pope recognized by the Florianic faction, did not give his approval, and was further supported in this matter by Patriarch Firmus of Carthage just as Gennadius II of Constantinople backed Lucretius at Arcadius’ order. By the end of 608 Carthage and Constantinople had excommunicated each other, ostensibly over the Carthaginian Patriarchate’s insistence on using unleavened bread for the Eucharist (whereas the Eastern Heptarchs forbade doing so), but it was quite obvious to all involved that this conflict was chiefly political; notably only Lucretius joined the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate while Cyril II of Antioch, John IV of Jerusalem, Theodosius II of Alexandria and Yahballaha of Babylon all sat this clash out, despite Arcadius pressuring them to follow Gennadius’ lead.

A portrait of the fallen Western Caesar Constantine and his Eastern counterpart & friend Leo under the gaze of Christ, painted in (or to depict) the happier days of their youth​

Since the recaptured cities and forts of the eastern provinces were already garrisoned by Eastern Roman troops at the late Constantine’s invitation, their handover to the East was more a matter of formality, much to the frustration of Venantius. This Eastern Roman betrayal of the Florianic cause and seizure of the Balkan dioceses also made them into the Avars’ primary enemy, as Dulo Khagan remained fixated on pushing southward from Moesia while limiting his attacks into the less wealthy Dalmatian territories to raids on the Slavic federates’ homelands. In the confusion following the Eastern Romans’ withdrawal from Dalmatia and before they could fully consolidate control over Macedonia, the Avars made significant progress toward Thessalonica, but were turned back in a wintertime battle before the city itself by Leo.

Further still in the direction of the rising Sun, the Later Han made their move this year. Emperor Yang did not actually strike the first blow – a panicking Heon of Baekje did that, leading a 20,000-strong army over the Imjin and into Goguryeo territory to pre-emptively secure the northern riverbanks before his opponents could storm over it. As it were, the Baekje army proved incapable of stopping the Sino-Goguryeo host from doing just that once they got going: in the ‘Battle’ of Yonan Heon ended up retreating in a hurry before the 200,000-strong combined army of his enemies, only engaging in limited skirmishes to cover his withdrawal, and although he again changed his mind and attempted to make a stand on the Imjin River itself a few days later the terrain advantage did him little good against such overwhelming strength.

Since he fielded ten times his opponent’s number, it was trivial for Emperor Yang to fix the much smaller Baekje army in place with a 50,000-man detachment while the rest of his army crossed the Imjin further upriver. Seeing that he had been outmaneuvered, Heon again attempted to withdraw but was intercepted and defeated by the Chinese & Goguryeo cavalry at the Battle of Panmunjeom, where just the allied horse outnumbered the entire Baekje army by 2:1 – and, after routing and further mauling their opposition, would outnumber them by almost 4:1, having halved Heon’s fighting strength in their victory. Due to these heavy losses Heon did not even have enough men left to effectively garrison his fortresses, forcing him to rely on many thousands of poorly-trained and equipped peasants conscripts to do that job instead.

Emperor Yang of Later Han leads his vastly superior army to crush the faltering Baekje forces at the Battle of Panmunjeom​

These weak and unreliable troops proved incapable of resisting the Chinese siege engines and numbers, and by the time Kose and Yamanoue were able to land at the small port of Mulahye-gun[13] with 22,000 reinforcements late in the year, there wasn’t much of Baekje left to save. Indeed, Yang had actually already overrun the entirety of Silla’s old territory in the southeast of the peninsula and installed Geumryun in his ancestral capital of Seorabeol[14], and the irresolute Heon was about ready to capitulate. However, though he tried to tell the Japanese regents that it was impossible for them to defeat Yang with the modest host they had brought over the sea, they insisted that he keep fighting anyway since it would have been an unacceptable blow to their honor to expend so much gold and rice to raise this army, only to then go home in defeat without even fighting at all. Accordingly plans were drawn up for a counterattack aimed at the Chinese host now encircling Baekje in the Korean peninsula’s southwestern corner sometime in the early winter of 609, no matter that this course of action may have erased the line between bravery and suicidal foolhardiness altogether.

609 continued the trend of Othonian victories, though none were as important as last year’s Battle of Aquileia. In the north Theodoric II of the Ostrogoths, who had been designated his father’s successor not only as king over their people but also as the Othonian faction’s magister militum, sought to press his advantage against his badly bloodied Sclaveni rivals (now also abandoned by the Eastern Romans), but was limited by Otho II’s own demands for more troops with which to mount a push in central & southern Italy: the usurper thought the Sclaveni were broken beyond hope of recovery after Aquileia, and could be disposed of at his leisure later. Nevertheless Theodoric was able to capture the Carantanian and Horite capitals at Ljubljana (as the former called the town they had built next to the partially-resettled Illyro-Roman city of Emona) and Zagrab, respectively, and kill the Carantanian Prince Borut as the latter fought to buy his kin and people time to evacuate eastward; but evacuate eastward they did, with the Carantanian and Horite royal courts fortifying themselves in Ceľe and Brod[15], which the Romans still called Celaia and Marsonia.

To continue applying pressure to the Sclaveni even as he called the Ostrogoths away, Otho found an unorthodox ally in the Iazyges to the far north, who he promised protection from both the Avars and the Arbogastings if they would but lend him their help. The new Sarmatic king Rathagôsos agreed and led 13,000 warriors over the western Carpathians to assail the Dulebes, the only Sclaveni principality which Theodoric had been unable to reach, and drove them toward their core fortified towns around Lake Pelso. Beloslav’s son Vidogost had ruled the Dulebian principality for barely a year before being fatally injured while trying to hold back the Iazyges advance at the Battle of Arrabona[16], though his young son and successor Blahoslav managed to do so more successfully in a great cavalry melee outside Municipium Mogetiana[17] toward the end of the year.

Prince Vidogost of the Dulebes meets the Iazyges in battle near Arrabona​

It was in Italy that Otho dedicated most of his efforts, even dragging Theodoric II (who would privately grumble that he was a far more adroit political schemer than a military strategist) back to his side for the great push against Iaunas. In mid-summer the combined Romano-Gothic forces drove Iaunas out of Praeneste, removing the immediate threat to Rome, and over the later summer and first autumn months they slowly but surely evicted the Africans from central Italy, retaking other cities and towns such as Sulmo[18] and Luceria as they went. Their greatest prize was Capua, which Otho retook with the use of siege engines constructed in Rome and Ravenna. However Iaunas’ retreat had been a methodical one, designed to delay and whittle down the Othonian forces while he concentrated his own and reinforcements from Africa & the Mediterranean islands (particularly Sardinia) continued to land in the southern ports he controlled, and in October the Thevestian king brought his enemies’ advance to a crashing halt in the Battle of Beneventum, where his Moorish horse-archers outmaneuvered Otho’s crossbowmen and the superior African cavalry put their counterparts to flight before mauling the Othonian army in its retreat.

In Hispania the Gallic and Visigothic forces amassed under Teutobaudes and Liuveric resumed their advance, this time targeting the cities of southeastern Hispania while Liuveric’s brother Theodoric (not to be confused with the new Ostrogoth king) was placed in command of a secondary army to contain Venantius and Vismaro in the west. In this again they had considerable success, rooting out the Florianic opposition from Valentia[19] down to Carthago Nova and Illiberris[20] over the course of 609. However, two developments which boosted Venantius' flagging cause occurred this year, which otherwise was one in which they lost much ground: first, after months of skirmishing and stalemate he won a smashing victory over Theodoric the Balthing in the Battle of Aquae Flaviae[21], where the Gothic prince fell from the town’s Trajan-era bridge and drowned in the Tamaca[22] during his retreat, and secondly cracks began to emerge within the Othonian coalition – Teutobaudes resented being passed over for the office of magister utriusque militiae yet again, as well as Otho’s arrangement of an alliance with the Iazyges who had long troubled the northern marches behind his back.

East of Rome, the Eastern Caesar Leo and his legions continued to engage the Avars in a back-and-forth with few dramatic developments this year. The same could not be said of the Later Han on the other end of the Eurasian landmass, where 609 began with a dramatic Baekje-Yamato assault on the Chinese lines encircling southwestern Korea. Though comically outnumbered – the allies had assembled a total of 32,000 troops against 150,000 Chinese, Goguryeo and Silla soldiers – Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito did enjoy the element of surprise when they launched their attack on January 4: Emperor Yang was confident in his position of overwhelming strength and had been told to expect an imminent Baekje surrender in the last months of 608, and so not only were many of his men not ready for the sudden enemy attack, but he himself had encamped close to the front lines.

The aggressive allied offensive broke through those Chinese front lines and threatened the Huangdi himself, temporarily cutting his camp off from the rest of the Han army. But although this development came as a very unwelcome surprise to Yang, he quickly regained his nerve and held out long enough for his reinforcements to enter the battlefield, burying the determination and ferocity of the Baekje and Japanese attackers beneath the crushing weight of their numbers and superior technology (namely the Chinese crossbow, against which neither had any answer). In their last moments the regents assailed Yang’s own position after he emerged from his tent to rally the troops defending the imperial camp: but even in that they were ultimately unsuccessful, Kose being shot to death by a troop of crossbowmen while Yamanoue did actually manage to reach Yang and engage him in a duel amid the snows, only for Yang to hold him off long enough for a spear-armed bodyguard to come to his aid and kill the Japanese warlord with a blow from behind. Heon surrendered on January 9, a day after the deaths of his allies, only to be executed by Yang for starting this war and supposedly misleading him about the peace talks (although he certainly would have committed to negotiating his surrender if the Yamato had not come) anyway.

Yamanoue no Mahito's frantic charge toward Emperor Yang after the latter exposed himself to rally his surprised troops​

The Honam Offensive, as this audacious but ultimately failed gambit came to be known, had ended in an unmitigated disaster for the allies, whose army was effectively destroyed by the Han and their own allies shortly after the fall of the Yamato regents. The regents’ reliance on their own families’ estates to raise their army also crippled their own clans through the extensive losses incurred among their adult male relatives in the catastrophe. A rump Baekje did continue to linger, but now as a Chinese puppet – Yang had most of Heon’s household massacred or sold into slavery save for an infant granddaughter named Inwon, who he installed as a puppet queen and whose marriage to Geumryun’s considerably older son Beopheung he arranged. This was intended as a further reward for his primary client in Korea, with the understanding that Silla should absorb what little remained of Baekje in the future through this match.

In Japan itself, the regents’ disastrous failure was the Tennō’s opportunity. For many years Yōmei had been overlooked, a sickly prisoner in the gilded cage that was his court who even needed constant assistance to ride a horse; but the death of the Ōomi and most of their ardent followers among the aristocracy on the battlefields of southwestern Korea created a power vacuum which he was quick to take advantage of. He sacked those ministers of theirs who were still present in the ranks of his government, replaced them with his own kinsmen or servants, and proclaimed that once more the Emperor of Japan could and would rule in his own right; though, mindful of how his father Heijō’s overly heavy-handed and tyrannical ways had created the circumstances for his downfall, Yōmei also only executed those pro-Kose & Yamanoue figures whose loyalty he suspected were too strong, or who had abused their office and thus whose deaths would be met with celebration by the people. As a ruler in his own right, Yōmei’s first move was to dispossess the Kose and Yamanoue remnants of nearly all their estates: in an odd mirror to the reforms of the Stilichians far to the west (not that Yōmei could have possibly known this), the land was divided into lots and redistributed to the common families already living on them, creating a class of smallholders loyal to the new regime.

In comparison to the preceding years, 610 was a year mercifully free of large battles – at least in the western reaches of the Roman world – as both the Othonian and Florianic factions sought to rest and rebuild their armies after so many thousands of soldiers and multiple royal & imperial personages on both sides had perished in the clashes of 606-609. Two of the few major battles of 610 were fought between the Iazyges and Dulebes, with the latter aided by a small Carantanian contingent and Roman remnants of Constantine’s and Florianus’ army; at the Battle of Caesariana[23] Rathagôsos’ renewed push on Lake Pelso was foiled by Blahoslav’s reinforced host, and at the Battle of the Arrabo[24] the Dulebes followed through with a counterattack which forced the Iazyges back, further away from the great lake. Rathagôsos blamed his defeats on the failure of the Lombards and Bavarians to assist him, for both had been reluctant to lend the Iazyges a hand after nearly two centuries of endemic raiding and skirmishing between their peoples.

Aside from the battles in Pannonia, Otho also mounted an additional push against Iaunas in south-central Italy but was again repulsed, this time in the Battle of Atella[25]. Iaunas in turn counterattacked, recapturing Aesernia[26] but having his own main thrust on Rome thwarted in the Battle of Caieta[27]. Venantius attempted his own offensive in Hispania with Vismaro’s support but failed to make much headway against the larger armies of Teutobaudes and Liuveric, who forced him to break off his attack and retreat in the Battle of Malaca[28], where Liuveric and Vismaro slew one another as the former tried to pursue the withdrawing Florianic army: following this, he decided to wait for his mother to send him additional reinforcements, which she was trying to cajole out of the Berber tribes of Mauretania Tingitana, even as Teutobaudes was summoning additional Germanic warriors (mostly Lombards, Bavarians and Thuringians who would otherwise have no excuse to avoid helping the Iazyges) to join him.

However, although his faction may have barely made any progress on the martial side of things, a few more political developments which benefited Venantius did occur this year. Firstly tensions between the Blues and Greens continued to mount, accelerated not only by the various Teutonic federates’ failure (or refusal) to help the Iazyges and by extension Otho’s plans for Pannonia & Dalmatia, but also by the death of Julianus’ Blue wife Renata shortly after giving birth to their son Liberius in August of this year. To paper over this crack, Otho deigned to marry his younger daughter Theodosia to Teutobaudes’ eldest son Aloysius, though as the former was twelve and the latter was eleven as of 610 it would still take some years for them to consummate the marriage.

Secondly, Liuveric of the Visigoths had left behind an underage heir in Hermenegild II. With his brother Theodoric the Balthing having predeceased him, the Visigothic nobility and clergy sought to assemble a regency council to support the boy’s mother Leodegundis in stewarding the realm, but Theodoric II pressed for their Thing to make him regent instead – on the basis of the kinship between the Amalings and Balthings, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, for he was Liuveric’s cousin through his aunt Matasuintha, and was backed in his demand by Otho II. Venantius noted these developments while in the middle of re-affirming his agreements with Vismaro with the latter’s successor Antaro, and at his mother’s suggestion, decided it would be worthwhile to try prying the Visigoths and Blues away from the Greens.

Theodoric II of the Ostrogoths receiving a Visigoth delegation. He will offer them not only his condolences on the death of their king (and his cousin) Liuveric, but also insist that he be made regent over the latter's successor, placing the Ostrogoths in a position of supremacy over their kindred and (he hopes) setting up the reunification of the Goths in the future​

To the east of Dalmatia, Leo was making slow but steady progress in evicting the Avars from the Diocese of Dacia, starting with the province of Dardania. By the year’s end Eastern Roman forces had secured Ulpiana and Tauresium[28], and were also besieging Serdica where a substantial garrison of Avars, Gepids and pro-Avar Sclaveni had entrenched themselves. Determined to not have his gains rolled back so quickly, Dulo Khagan opened a second front by attacking across the lower-most banks of the Danube into Thrace with a secondary army of 20,000, overrunning the provinces of Moesia Secunda and Scythia in short order and sending large numbers of refugees – Greek, Thraco-Roman and Slav alike – flooding into southern Thrace as winter descended upon the land.

Well south of the two embattled Roman Empires, a certain man had a religious experience which would affect not only himself, but many nations in the future. While meditating in the cave of Hira in a mountain overlooking Mecca, Muhammad ibn Abdullah reportedly received a visit from the archangel Gabriel, considered by Jews to have helped the prophet Daniel interpret his visions and by Christians to have been the angel who appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce that God had chosen her to conceive and bear Jesus. As Muhammad would later explain to his wife and then his wife’s cousin Waraqah, Gabriel had embraced him, though his illiteracy kept him from fully understanding the angel’s message.

Waraqah in turn convinced him that the apparition was a sign that God had chosen him as a new prophet, and warned that he may soon be treated with hostility by the other Meccans just as many past prophets were hated in their homelands. Over the next few years, Muhammad would grow more confident in his prophethood thanks to additional revelations on the Jabal an-Nour (‘Mountain of Light’, as he called the mountain in which Hira was located) and his family’s support – indeed they were the first to hear his message, his first converts, and among his most zealous disciples. Of these the most important were naturally his wife Khadijah and their then-twelve-year-old son Qasim, for whom Muhammad came to receive the kunya[30] ‘Abu al-Qasim’.

The entrance to the cave of Hira, where Muhammad was said to have been visited by the angel Gabriel (or in Arabic, Jibril)​

Venantius was not the only emperor (or at least, imperial claimant) who had the good fortune to have his enemies’ greed and growing infighting to extract him from a difficult situation in 610. While bringing his armies out of Korea, Emperor Yang was pleased to note that the Southern Chinese alliance against him had fractured, just as he had planned: without an imminent Later Han invasion to worry about, tensions between Chu and Cheng had escalated to the point where the former launched an attack on the latter to regain territory lost in previous decades, while the Minyue did not intervene and instead further fortified themselves within their mountains. Yang was content to let Chu and Cheng bleed each other some more before moving in to crush the victor, resting and rebuilding his own forces in the meantime.

Over the sea, the Tennō Yōmei continued his reforms to enhance imperial authority. Emperor Yang had demanded of him tribute, and with the Japanese army destroyed in the Honam Offensive he’d had little choice but to agree, even as the Chinese further insulted him by referring to him as a mere ‘King’ of the Yamato. Becoming a tributary meant restoring trade relations with the Later Han however, and with that trade came the wealth and ideas with which Yōmei sought to turn Japan into a power capable of shaking off the Chinese yoke in the future. For now he still moved gradually, careful not to antagonize his magnates into overthrowing him as they did his father.

This year, that meant establishing a robust central administrative apparatus divided into two ministries – the Jingi-kan or ‘Department of Divinities’, which governed Shinto clergy and ritual practices in a mirror of the Chinese Ministry of Ceremonies & Rites, and the Daijō-kan or ‘State Department’, an outgrowth of the imperial privy council which was further divided into lesser departments responsible for matters of state, such as enforcing imperial justice or leading and funding the military. To staff these ministries, Yōmei exclusively recruited from the Yamato clan and the most promising ranks of that class of free smallholders he had created the year before: ancestors of the kuge, or the Japanese court nobility of better times. In so doing the Emperor also solidified two Japanese traditions: first a habit of copying and creating indigenized versions of foreign practices to catch up with and hopefully eventually surpass more advanced foreign powers, and secondly Japan’s own variation of dynastic cycles – where China was prone to violently falling apart and being reunified by dynasties which would then prosper for a time before declining and resetting the cycle, Japan went through cycles of imperial governments where the Emperors ruled alone and concentrated on inward development & protecting the Home Isles, followed by military governments focused on interventionism or outward expansion beyond Japanese waters like that of the fallen Kose and Yamanoue.

Emperor Yōmei is confronted with the sight of a spirited bureaucratic dispute in the Daijō-kan between a freeman recruited from the provinces and one of his kinsman​

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

[1] Near Kistanje.

[2] Krka River.

[3] Lucera.

[4] Teramo.

[5] Jaén.

[6] Stockton-on-Tees.

[7] Lindisfarne.

[8] The River Wear.

[9] Oundle.

[10] Near Duino.

[11] Now also known as the Porta San Lorenzo.

[12] Coimbra.

[13] Mokpo.

[14] Gyeongju.

[15] Slavonski Brod.

[16] Győr.

[17] Somlóvásárhely.

[18 Sulmona.

[19] Valencia.

[20] Granada.

[21] Chaves.

[22] The Tâmega River.

[23] Baláca.

[24] The Rába River.

[25] Near Aversa.

[26] Isernia.

[27] Gaeta.

[28] Málaga.

[29] Gradište.

[30] A teknonymic nickname (derived from a parent’s child) in Arabic.

 

[Circle of Willis]

611, much like 610, was a quiet and less bloody year in the Western Roman Empire than 604-609 had been – a moment of relative calm amid the Aetas Turbida. Not only were both the Othonians and Florianists still focused on raising new armies to replace their heavy losses from the preceding years, but in particular the latter’s claimant Venantius was engaged in intense politicking, as he maneuvered to try to sway the Visigoths and the Blue faction as a whole over to his side. Pursuing this diplomatic course necessarily required him to pause military efforts against the latter’s forces across Hispania, in addition to reassuring his Celtiberian allies that he would not sell them out to the Goths.

This is not to say 611 was an entirely bloodless year, of course. Several battles were still fought in central Italy, though they may have been smaller-scale and had less at stake than the earlier massive back-and-forth clashes on the roads between Rome and Neapolis, as Iaunas and Otho II sought to continue to test each other’s strength. Of these, the Battle of Saepinum[1] was the most important in the long term: although the town itself was neither particularly wealthy nor populous, the Othonians’ success in taking it gave them a foothold close to Florianic-held Beneventum, one of Otho’s and Theodoric’s main targets in the Italic campaign to come.

Aside from these limited battles in central Italy, most of the problems plaguing the Western Empire lay on its periphery this year. In the north, the Continental Saxons and Frisians took advantage of the March of Arbogast and its various neighbors emptying themselves of fighting men to intensify their seasonal raids. Teutobaudes sought to send some of his soldiers in Hispania away to defend their homes, but was denied by Otho, who (at the suggestion of Theodoric the Amaling) was beginning to suspect that the Romano-Frankish duke may indeed be looking for excuses to slacken his efforts against Venantius over the slights of the previous years. Theodoric had less success in getting his overlord to let him leave Italy and fight the Sclaveni than he did in turning said overlord against Teutobaudes however, allowing the various Slavic principalities to continue rebuilding their previously-shattered strength and plot a push against Gothic Dalmatia (or, in the case of the Dulebes, holding ground against the Iazyges).

Continental Saxons raiding a Thuringian village under Arbogast's protection. These escalating attacks on the northern frontier and Otho's unwillingness to give Teutobaudes leave to respond to them increasingly drove a wedge between the Blues and the rest of the Othonian coalition​

The Western Romans’ treacherous Eastern kindred were having rather more trouble this year. The Avars' winter offensive had smashed through the lower Danubian limes and led to them overrunning the entirety of northern Thrace while most of the Eastern Roman legions west of the Bosphorus were still clearing the Diocese of Dacia under Caesar Leo’s command, forcing Arcadius II to not only order his son to suspend that campaign and return to aid him but also to bring up additional forces from his empire’s eastern reaches to counter the Avar advance before they reached Constantinople. Arcadius even called in his auxilia Thraeces from the Susianan and Mesopotamian garrisons, warning those Sclaveni troops that their homes were in grave danger, which Heshana Qaghan would have gladly taken advantage of if he wasn’t still busy grappling with the arduous task of reconstructing a devastated Persia.

By early summer Dulo Khagan and his horde had gotten as far as Adrianople, overcoming increasingly stiff Eastern Roman resistance on the road from Moesia & Scythia to do so, but there they were finally pushed back by a major counterattack out of Constantinople under the personal leadership of the aging Eastern Augustus himself. Following the Battle of Adrianople, there was a brief lull in the fighting as Arcadius waited for his son to join him at the city while Dulo retreated to Dorostorum[2] on the Danube to concentrate his own forces for a decisive clash. That battle would come on July 31, as both hosts moved to engage the other at Marcianople: from the south Arcadius & Leo had marched to besiege the city, weakly held by a garrison of fewer than 5,000 (mostly Gepids and pro-Avar Slavs) with an army of 35,000, while from the north Dulo rode to the defenders’ relief with 25,000 men at his back.

The Battle of Marcianople which followed was a close one, despite the disparity in numbers. The Eastern Romans’ own horse archers, backed up by light cavalrymen sent by their Ghassanid and Lakhmid vassals as well as skilled Mesopotamian foot-archers, were able to give their Avar counterparts a formidable fight in their initial skirmishes, and even after a mounted melee began the Roman cavalry in general had the upper hand in the first stage of this battle. However, the Marcianople garrison sallied at an inopportune moment for the Romans: while there was no way the defenders (being outnumbered 7:1) could have won the battle on their own, their sudden attack distracted Arcadius just as the Roman horsemen were pursuing those of the Avars, who seemed to be falling back – as a feint, for they were pulling back to where Dulo was amassing the majority of his lancers for a massive charge.

Arcadius himself was felled by a Gepid spear-thrust from behind when Dulo’s reserve collided with and tore through his cavalry out front, leaving his son with the task of holding the Roman army together for the climax of the battle. Fortunately, Leo would perform admirably in that task and go on to lead the Romans to victory. Under his command the strength and discipline of the Roman infantry (in particular the palatine legions from Constantinople and the determined auxilia Thraeces proved instrumental to resisting the Avar onslaught) held fast in the face of the Avars’ two-pronged attack, while their heavy cavalry rallied and pincered the flanks of Dulo’s great mounted wedge and blunted its momentum before it could crunch through the Roman infantry ranks as it had previously done to their own.

The East's new Augustus Leo rallying his faltering army outside Marcianople following his father's demise (and narrowly avoiding dying in the same way)​

Dulo survived the debacle and managed to extract 16,000 of his soldiers from the battlefield in a fighting retreat, while the new Eastern Augustus decided to chase Marcianople’s broken defenders into the soon-to-be-retaken city and finish them off than risk getting lured into some other Avar trap. The Khagan noted this hesitancy and lack of killing instinct on the behalf of his younger rival, and after suing for peace, managed to bluff his way into a settlement that wasn’t completely detrimental to the Avar Khaganate in the autumn, despite their recent defeat at Marcianople. He had to return the entirety of Moesia Secunda to the Romans and also concede most of the Diocese of Dacia, but was able to use the threat of his remaining forces to cling to the northern Dacian provinces of Moesia Prima and Dacia Ripensis as well as Scythia in far-northeastern Thrace, securing some footholds for the Avars south of the Danube. For his part, Leo now had to consolidate Eastern Roman control over the regained provinces as well as the entirety of Macedonia and Achaea, which his father had stolen away from the Western Empire and which were politically impossible for him to just give back now, even though he had opposed seizing them in the first place.

On and just beyond the extreme eastern edge of the Roman world, the Indo-Romans were doing their part to not only restore the overland routes of the Silk Road (something which required them to work together with their former, or perhaps not-so-former, enemies the Turks and Hunas) but also to spread the Gospel into Central Asia. Christianity was slow to spread among the hardy and warlike peoples of the Caucasus Indicus, most of whom remained adamantly Buddhist or otherwise steeped in their traditional practices: but the Belisarians nevertheless had managed to, very slowly but surely, cultivate a modest community of co-religionists in Kophen, Bactra and the other trading towns of their small kingdom, which had emerged as an unlikely oasis of calm and tolerance (certainly compared to its parent, the Eastern Roman Empire of Arcadius II) amid the constant violence which had roiled Persia, Central Asia and northern India for more than a century at this point. While nominally under the authority of the Patriarch of Babylon, being so cut off from the rest of the Roman world, the Church of the Caucasus Indicus and its head, the Bishop of Kophen, were practically autocephalous by necessity, and similarly did not pursue the more intolerant policies of its parent church since the demographics of their kingdom made such ideas politically untenable.

While Sophagasenus’ mission to China may have been the most notable (and furthest-ranging) of the Paropamisadae evangelists’ efforts, the bulk of their activity outside the Indo-Roman kingdom itself was actually in Central Asia, specifically targeting the decimated and struggling remnants of the Sogdian and Tocharian civilization in & around the Tarim Basin. These communities had been repeatedly fought over by the Turks and Eftals, then by the Northern and Southern Turks, and proved highly receptive to the universal redeemer's message of healing, peace & salvation brought forth by Indo-Roman missionaries – as well as their diligence and expertise in areas such as trade and engineering, inherited from their Roman precursors and mentors, which were useful to the Tarim cities in bad need of everyone & every resource they could get for rebuilding.

The Christians faced stiff competition from the much more established Buddhists, to be sure: but exhaustion from so much bloodletting and the need to first restore their homes to even just a shadow of their former glory kept theological disputes amid the eastern sands & mountains non-violent for now, and for the first time in almost 200 years Central Asia could look forward to a positive future – in this case, as a religious and cultural mosaic buoyed by the lifeblood of trade which continued to return to the Silk Road.

An Indo-Roman Christian priest greeting a Chinese Buddhist monk in the Tocharian city of Khotan, one of many devastated by the Central Asian wars of the past century-and-a-half​

612 marked a return to great violence across Western Europe, starting with two important deaths. The first of these took place in Othonian Hispania, where an agent of Theodoric II (disguised as a messenger bearing a missive from Aquileia) murdered the prominent Visigoth nobleman Suinthila, a captain in Liuveric’s army and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Ostrogoth king’s efforts to become Hermenegild II’s regent. However it soon became apparent that the Gothic king had miscalculated, as this brazen assassination of one of his enemies drove the remaining Visigoth nobility and young Hermenegild’s mother Leodegundis to take Venantius’ offer and defect wholesale from the Othonian faction. Venantius agreed to forgive the Visigoths for having rebelled against his father and killing his brother in battle, and promised the Goths further territorial compensation in southern and southeastern Hispania after the war; in exchange, they pledged their swords to his cause and would fight alongside him against their former allies on Otho’s side, in addition to acknowledging the loss of their northernmost territories to the Celtiberians.

This switch in allegiances bore fruit for the Florianic camp almost immediately. Buoyed by the Visigoths (now led in the field by Sabbas, another lieutenant of the Balthing brothers), their spring offensive caught Teutobaudes – who had so far proven less receptive to Venantius’ entreaties – by surprise and forced him out of central & eastern Baetica, starting with a rousing victory in the Battle of Carissa[3]. By late summer, the Florianists had pushed Teutobaudes all the way back to Carthago Nova, although they were not successful in trapping him in the city or cutting his army’s supply lines – in a reversal of fortune, the Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni had smashed the Florianic-aligned Aquitani (with a 900-man Celtiberian contingent supporting them) in the Battle of Barbastrum[4] near the foothills of the Pyrenees, keeping the northeastern roads open for supplies and reinforcements this year.

Venantius and Sabbas leading their combined armies against a very unpleasantly surprised Teutobaudes in eastern Baetica​

Now it was Otho’s turn to curse Theodoric for the exact opposite of what the latter had been complaining about: that he may have been the better general between the two of them, but lacked patience and political skill to such an extent that he was now fracturing the coalition keeping Otho himself afloat. Still, Theodoric was not a man he could afford to excessively anger, so after a heated but private exchange of words in the Gardens of Sallust, the two men resolved to try papering over their disagreement with victories of their own against Iaunas. In that they had some success in Italy this year to balance out Teutobaudes’ heavy defeats in Hispania somewhat, using Saepinum as a springboard to capture Beneventum from the Africans and eventually cutting Capua off from Neapolis. Iaunas returned to the latter city by ship, leaving the former well-provisioned and defended by a sizable garrison of 8,000 to resist the inevitable siege by Othonian forces.

Alas, Venantius did not have long to rejoice in his own not-insignificant victories this year: his mother Dihia passed away in the first week of August, crushed beneath grief from losing almost her entire family in the span of a few years and the stress of helping her last remaining son fight this civil war. Accordingly the pretender left Hispania for Altava, both to appropriately mourn Dihia and to formally take up that kingdom’s crown – there were no other viable heirs with a connection to the royal family of the Altavan Silingi, his uncle’s machinations and the earlier war between Garmul and his parents had seen to that. Venantius further had to reassure the Western Moors that (in line with his parents’ original designs for Africa) he would hand Altava off to a younger son, should one be born to him and his wife, rather than make it a permanent possession of the Western Roman Emperors in the event that he were to topple Otho.

On the other side of the world, Suryawarman of Kuntala was embarking on his most ambitious project yet. Unlike his father, he was less interested in conquering foreign rivals, preferring to instead expend the wealth he and Dewawarman had amassed on splendid monuments to add glory & luster to his kingdom – and there was no better way to do that than to construct a new, gleaming metropolis of a capital, in his estimation. Thus did work begin on the banks of the Musi River, a ways east of Kuntala itself, to raise up a new city which the king named ‘Srivijaya’[5] – ‘shining triumph’ – in honor of his family’s victories around the Malay Strait in recent decades.

Aside from the tropical wood and precious metals which could be found in abundance in Sumatra itself, Suryawarman imported building materials as diverse and expensive as Indian marble, Chinese jade and even a few articles of Roman glass which had originally been brought to China over the Silk Road. He also hired famed architects and engineers from the Huna Empire and Later Liang to lend a continental flair & organization to his future capital, all to make it truly fit for a man who claimed to helm a rising maritime empire. The result would be a resplendent combination of Indo-Buddhist and Eight Dynasties Chinese architecture, centered around river and maritime transportation more than any land-bound road, and serviced by one of Asia’s largest seaports downriver: not for nothing would Chinese travelers and chroniclers call this city ‘Jugang’, or ‘giant port’, in future centuries.

A Huna-style Buddhist temple under construction in Srivijaya​

613 saw considerable movement in Italy, even as the other fronts of the Western Roman civil war remained mostly static. Still smarting over the defection of the Visigoths to the Florianic cause a year ago, Otho II and Theodoric agreed (in spite of their recent shouting matches) to try to compensate by driving Iaunas out of Italy and firmly locking the peninsula down for the former’s cause, and dedicated all the resources they possibly could get their hands on to that task this year. They left a force of 16,000 to continue besieging Capua, which did not seem likely to surrender any time soon, and moved the rest of their army – swollen to 28,000 by a recruitment drive over the past winter and spring, including the enactment of conscription in north-central Italy and the emptying of the imperial treasury to entice evocati (retired veteran legionaries) to re-enlist – southward.

Iaunas accepted the challenge, and moved to engage his foes after amassing reinforcements of his own (bringing his army’s strength up to 23,000) at Neapolis. They would fight three battles across southern Italy over the course of this year – the first was at Aequum Tuticum[6] in the late spring, where forward elements of the Othonian army were the first to secure the hills near Beneventum and Iaunas retreated with little loss after failing to dislodge them from their strong position before the rest of the usurper’s host arrived. The second engagement was fought at Nuceria[7], and this time it was the Africans who had the upper hand, repelling the Othonian effort to surround and besiege Neapolis in a proper pitched battle that summer. The collapse of one of the Othonians’ own pontoon bridges (originally put together to facilitate their offensive crossing) over the Sarnus[8] during their retreat drowned over a thousand of their men, and though Otho and Theodoric themselves survived, Iaunas was now encouraged to counterattack and pursue his rivals northward toward Allifae[9].

The two sides committed to their third and biggest engagement this year on the banks of the Volturnus[10], where Otho and Theodoric had turned to take up defensive positions in the last days of June. The day at first favored the Florianists, as they used siege weapons captured from the Othonian baggage train after their earlier victory in the Battle of Nuceria (initially intended for a siege of Neapolis) to destroy the guard-towers which Otho had thrown up to secure the Volturnus’ main crossing, after which they secured that bridge and crossed the river in force. At this point Otho, who had predicted this outcome, directed a large counterattack against the Florianists before they could finish crossing: but although his cavalry wedge and supporting infantry smashed through the front line of Iaunas’ shield-wall, the Moorish king led his horse-archers to circle & shoot into their flanks, greatly blunting the impact of the Othonian assault and inducing confusion & fear in their ranks.

But even as victory seemed imminent for the Florianists, the usurper was playing his last card to turn the tables on Iaunas. Theodoric entered the fray now, having crossed further upriver with 6,000 men (nearly all of whom were his Ostrogothic subjects) in the early hours of the morning, and attacked those elements of the Florianic host which had yet to cross the Volturnus from behind. Now it was the latter’s turn to panic, and though the situation could have been salvaged, Iaunas’ death from a crossbow bolt to the eye at this critical juncture dashed all of his men’s remaining hopes. By evening the Battle of the Volturnus had clearly ended in a major victory for Otho and Theodoric; by the end of the year, they had collapsed the Florianic position in southern Italy almost entirely, with only the defenders of Capua and Neapolis still stubbornly holding out in the name of Venantius while the rest of the peninsula’s ‘boot’ had submitted to Othonian authority once more – the smaller Florianic garrisons having been either pushed to consolidate in Neapolis, destroyed altogether by the now far larger Othonian armies, or evacuated by the Carthaginian fleet back to Sicily or Africa. Iaunas’ daughter Tia succeeded him in Theveste now, and like her husband and neighboring king Venantius, nursed a deep grudge against the enemies who’d killed her father.

Italo-Roman and Ostrogothic soldiers of Otho's army assailing Iaunas' men on the banks of the Volturnus, soon to turn into one of the biggest setbacks for the Florianic cause in this entire war​

To the far north, Eadwald of the North Angles spent 613 consolidating his realm’s northern border at the edge of the Pictish Highlands, within the shadow of the mountain range which the neighboring Gaels of Dál Riata called Am Monadh[11] and where Gnaeus Julius Agricola had led the Romans to a fleeting victory over the native Picts in the Battle of Mons Graupius nearly six centuries prior. The English prevailed over an alliance of half a dozen Pictish tribes in the sorely hard-fought Battle of the Deva[12], where although heavy rain & mud had hindered their cavalry and the fog did the same to their archers, Eadwald led the more heavily-equipped Anglo-Saxon infantry to victory over the woad-painted Picts in a brutal, grueling melee on the riverbanks (in the process personally slaying one of their six kings, Uallas, in a sword-duel) which lasted nearly ten hours before the latter finally broke.

Following this victory, the exhausted king declared that there was nothing beyond the river worth conquering and used the Flumen Deva as his realm’s northeastern boundary. Atop the site of the long-abandoned Roman camp nearby[13], he built a fortified town to control the crossing, which he named Norþburh[14] and where he settled some of his hardiest veteran warriors and their families. Now the North English realm’s border ran from the estuary of the Deva in the east, to the peninsula of Cowal (as the English dubbed the land its former Gaelic masters, from whom they’d wrested it in earlier skirmishes, had called ‘Còmhghall’) in the west. To the north the Picts loomed in their impregnable mountains, into which only the most foolhardy Anglo-Saxons would march, while to the northwest Dál Riata still stood as the Gaels’ primary foothold in extreme northern Britannia, bruised but far from totally beaten after the loss of Cowal to the English.

Anglo-Saxon veterans of Eadwald's host beginning to settle down at Norþburh ('Norbury'), on the extreme northeastern border of his kingdom​

Far south of Britain and the Roman world, Muhammad ibn Abdullah began to publicly preach his message – whose core elements included an ardent belief in and submission to the One God (from which the name of this new religion, Islam, was derived), the need for frequent prayers, mutual aid, and lurid visions of the oncoming Day of Judgment – this year. Aside from his wife and children, his first converts included various cousins and extended kindred, the younger scions of merchant houses who had little hope of inheriting much from their fathers, and other less fortunate members of Meccan society. Wealthier converts were instructed to set their slaves free if they accepted Islam, for all were supposed to be equal in the eyes of Allah: these slaves further contributed to the numbers of Muhammad’s followers.

However, Muhammad had little luck in swaying the majority of Meccans to his side, for they disdained his rejection of worldly wealth and the traditional Semitic pantheon which they had followed for thousands of years: in their eyes, Muhammad was either a madman or a conman, and one who probably ripped off the theological concepts of his Jewish and Christian neighbors (or both simultaneously, in the case of Ebionite Christians like his wife) for his new religion at that. Truly, the old saying that ‘no prophet is welcome in his hometown’ seemed to apply to Muhammad just as it had the other Abrahamic prophets whose legacy he claimed. For the time being however, the Meccan elite mocked Muhammad in their cups rather than violently persecute him and his followers, deeming them insufficiently threatening to justify a crackdown and believing that they would give up when the apocalypse Muhammad spoke of failed to materialize.

Most Meccans did not spare Muhammad's preachings a thought at this time, preferring to put their trust in the gods of their ancestors and their holy Black Stone – the Kaaba – which was dedicated to Hubal, the chief of those gods​

The fortunes of war are ever fickle, and for the Western Roman Empire 614 proved to be no exception to this rule. First and most importantly, Otho II had insisted on attempting a major amphibious invasion of Italy’s outlying islands and Africa itself: a risky and costly strategy which, if carried out successfully, would allow him to finally end this war by rooting his last remaining nephew out of his core stronghold (and ideally also result in the death of said nephew). Early in the year it seemed as though he might actually be able to realize his designs, as the Carthaginian fleet was defeated in the Battle of Scyllaeum[15] in March and most of the skeleton garrisons left by Iaunas in Sicily surrendered or even defected to Otho shortly after he landed legions on the island: about the only good news for Venantius in the spring of 614 was that his wife Tia gave birth to their first child, a daughter baptized as Serena.

However, Otho had far less luck when he set out to attack Africa and sail his fleet directly into the Gulf of Carthage[16] in the summer months. Although he and Theodoric had launched weak feint-attacks on Corsica & Sardinia to distract their enemies from their true plan, the ruse was foiled by Anicius Symmachus of all people – the Senator chose this time to get back at the men who had denied him the crown he felt he was owed by sending agents to Carthage, alerting Venantius to the imminent attack on the African capital and giving him a chance to plan countermeasures with his captains. As he had at Neapolis and by flipping the allegiance of the Visigoths, the King of Altava and pretender to the purple sought to overcome difficult odds with a creative strategy: this time, he countered the onslaught of the larger Othonian fleet in the Battle off Aegimuri[17] that June with fireships filled with kindling and large amounts of fatty oils, aided by favorable winds which allowed these ships to close in on and explode near his uncle’s vessels with a minimum of losses to his own crewmen. Among the casualties was his cousin Julianus, Otho’s only son, who drowned after leaping overboard from his burning flagship early in the battle.

Once the last of the fireships had done their job, the Florianic fleet proceeded to sweep forward and finish off the devastated remnants of their Othonian counterpart. By nightfall on June 20, out of 30,000 men (half being his expeditionary force and the other half being sailors) and 100 ships (although only a third of these or fewer would have been actual war galleys, the rest being merchant & fishing vessels pressed into service as troop transports) Otho had lost nearly 10,000 men and 48 ships, while Venantius’ much lighter losses amounted to 3,000 men and 19 ships out of 20,000 soldiers & sailors aboard 70 ships. The irony that the usurper had lost his male heir shortly after the last son of Florianus sired his own first child was not lost on observers from the Curia Julia to Aquileia, either: this and other extensive losses among Otho’s Italic troops further altered the balance of power within Italy in the Ostrogoths’ favor. Theodoric the Amaling used his position of growing strength to both insist on the appointment of additional Green cronies to posts within the Othonian military (where many officers’ positions had opened up thanks to Aegimuri) & civil bureaucracy and not-so-subtly suggest that he be named Otho’s new Caesar in place of Liberius, the former’s four-year-old grandson, on account of his marriage to Julianus’ older sister Juliana.

Where before his uncle Otho had dealt him a severe blow at the Volturnus, come 614 Venantius sought to return the favor at Aegimuri​

Besides staving off a total defeat which had seemed increasingly inevitable since his father-in-law’s defeat and demise on the Volturnus, Venantius’ great victory at Aegimuri renewed the hopes of his followers elsewhere. In the northeast the Carantanians and Horites counterattacked into Ostrogoth-held territory, retaking their rightful capitals at Ljubljana and Zagrab while those of Theodoric’s warriors who did not burn or drown in the Battle off Aegimuri were still busy helping their overlord restore Othonian authority across southern Italy. Their Dulebian neighbor were also sufficiently heartened to forsake all thought of surrender and fended off another Iazyges attack in November, which had come perilously close to Blahoslav’s seat of power at Mogent[18] (as the Slavs now called Mogentiana, where the Dulebian princes had built their fortified residence or castellum – from which they derived an additional alternative name for the site, ‘Kostel’).

These developments also convinced Teutobaudes & the Blues that Venantius still had a reasonable chance of winning this civil war, and the birth of a daughter to the last of the senior Stilichians created a new opportunity for them to bridge the gap between their families. Thus, not only did the Dux Germanicae keep fighting in Hispania to a minimum for the rest of this year, but he and Venantius continued their secret negotiations, and he now proposed a match between his younger son Arbogastes to the newborn Serena. Though the Othonians had been ascendant in the previous year, truly this one brought them back down into the dirt with a series of reversals on nearly all fronts, and now the possibility of a Blue defection as the Greens continued to tighten their grip on Otho’s government…

Far off in the distant east, beyond the mountains of the Paropamisadae and the sundered halves of Turkestan, Emperor Yang of Later Han decided that he had waited long enough – and that 614 would be a good time to initiate what he hoped to be his penultimate campaign to reunite China under his dynasty. By this time the Cheng and Chu had beaten each other senseless, though the latter had had the worst of the fighting: accordingly it was they who Yang targeted first when he crossed the Yangtze in May with 250,000 troops including his eldest son & Crown Prince Hao Jing, who had recently come of age. Having brought such overwhelming force to bear at such a fortuitous time against a weakened enemy, Yang’s offensive was done & over with as quickly as he had calculated, as the battered remains of the Chu army rapidly melted away under the Later Han onslaught and his rival Emperor Ai capitulated near the end of June, having barely lasted a month against the Han.

The rapid Han conquest of Chu alarmed Cheng and Minyue, who revived their old alliance to fend off the Han even as the former hurried to secure as much Chu territory as they could before the Han did it. This too Yang had foreseen, and it was these two realms (and less so the feeble Chu) that he had brought a quarter of a million soldiers south of the Yangtze to deal with. Immediately after securing the Chu capital at Changsha, the Emperor of Later Han sent young Hao Jing (ably assisted by a staff of much more experienced & trusted generals, of course) to contain the Minyue to their mountains with 75,000 men while he took the majority of his army to crush the Cheng in the west. By the end of 614 Yang had routed the Cheng in the Battle of Enshi and was aggressively pursuing them into the forested mountains of Sichuan, while Hao Jing had won his first battles against the Minyue at Ningbo and Linhai but hesitated to similarly press his advantage – something which his father hoped was just due to a rectifiable lack of confidence & experience, and not a sign of an overly timid streak in the Crown Prince.

Emperor Yang of Later Han and Crown Prince Hao Jing outside Changsha, on the day before their parting​

Further still past the eastern seas, the Tennō Yōmei’s reforms continued apace. This time he sought to further streamline the administration of his domains, which necessitated the abolition of the old kabane system and replacing it with one of imperial provinces headed by appointed governors. In an effort to appease and co-opt the local magnates rather than simply terrorize them into submission as his father Heijō had attempted (and failed in), Yōmei offered to draw appointees from the ranks of these local clans as well, rather than rely exclusively on his Yamato kin and closely associated lackeys from around Asuka. Of course, not all the noble clans of Japan proved receptive – no fewer than eight took up arms in the west that summer.

In so doing however, they played into Yōmei’s hands. The Emperor had carefully raised an army out of the small freeholders he had created out of the former Kose and Yamanoue fiefdoms, men whose loyalty was strictly bound to him (as their emancipator and patron) alone and who were both more numerous and more loyal than the mercenaries Heijō had employed. With this host, he and his heir Prince Iso-no-kami crushed the insurgents, then proceeded to free the peasants of the affected western provinces and redistribute the rebels’ estates to them as well. With the example having been made, minus the excessive violence and repression of Heijō, the rest of the Japanese nobility soon fell in line rather than continue underestimating their overlord and testing his patience. As his program of land and administrative reform rolled onward, Yōmei also began to give thought to the idea of constructing a larger, grander capital city than the palace town of Asuka toward the end of 614, as well.

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

[1] Sepino.

[2] Silistra.

[3] Bornos.

[4] Barbastro.

[5] Palembang. It historically succeeded Kuntala/Kantoli and became the capital of the Srivijaya Empire on account of being a better-situated & accessible port. Historically Srivijaya was not, as far as we know, ever actually the name of the city, although it certainly was the name of the great maritime empire centered on it.

[6] Ariano Irpino.

[7] Nocera Superiore & Inferiore.

[8] The Sarno River.

[9] Alife.

[10] The Volturno River.

[11] The Grampians.

[12] The River Dee in Aberdeenshire.

[13] Normandykes, now in a suburb of Aberdeen.

[14] Aberdeen.

[15] Scilla.

[16] Gulf of Tunis.

[17] Zembra Island.

[18] Keszthely.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Byrsa Citadel of Carthago, 20 July 615

Venantius set his quill down next to the parchment he’d been working on with a sigh and tried to relax in his chair, to little success. It was not that he had failed in any particular endeavor: far from it, he felt so close to a breakthrough that he now found himself filled with a nervous energy that he couldn’t repress until he actually had proof of his success in his hands. That, and he could not shake off the fear that somehow, he might just find himself robbed of that success at the last possible minute, not an altogether unreasonable thing to worry about given how unpredictable the fortunes of this un-civil war against his uncle Otho had been – every time he and his brothers thought victory was imminent Otho and his savage Green allies always managed to turn the tables, and just a year before Venantius himself had staved off what had been intended to be their death-blow in a fiery battle on the waters near Carthago itself. For now things were hanging in the balance, as Otho was still recovering from Aegimuri while he in turn needed to rebuild his armies after the debacle on the Volturnus the year before, but in wartime that balance was meant to be broken sooner or later.

The King of Altava and pretender to the Western Roman Empire had been personally penning a letter to Teutobaudes, Dux Germanicae and one of Otho’s most powerful (yet also, apparently, less-than-faithful) lieutenants, agreeing to his terms and the marriage of his newborn daughter Serena to the Romano-Frank’s younger son Arbogastes. Even after the Sun had set Venantius continued to work by candlelight, determined both to see this task through to the end himself and not to trust anyone else with it. Was this paranoid of him? Perhaps, but he had learned of Otho’s prepared invasion of Carthago well ahead of time thanks to the treachery of his uncle by marriage, Anicius Symmachus, who had otherwise seemed a faithful enough supporter of the usurper – and apparently was still putting up a sufficiently convincing charade to avoid getting his head put on a spike to this day. How many of his own generals, prelates and Senators could he be absolutely certain wasn’t similarly communicating with the enemy behind his back, or at least considering keeping their options open? Not enough to sleep easily on nights just like this one.

In a further effort to clear his head, Venantius rose from his seat and began to move out onto the balcony. He determined that some fresh air would be more than welcome at this point, and the marble balustrade provided protection against any assassin who dared to sneak up on him and try to throw him off the citadel. Once he threw the door open and left the private study behind, he was greeted right away by a strong breeze, and closed his eyes as he drew in a deep breath. For a few seconds he savored the familiar scent of sea salt, driftwood and seaweed, just as he had remembered them from his younger years in this city, before exhaling and continuing to stroll forward, until he found himself leaning on the stone railing and gazing out onto his (hopefully entirely temporary) capital below.

The pale moon and many stars in the night sky were almost unnecessary, for Carthago was still alit with numerous lamps and cooking fires. Well, it was a pleasantly breezy summer night, and not all that late if Venantius remembered correctly. Numerous ships were gently rocking in the harbor, sleek war galleys and huge merchant vessels (though not ones carrying grain bound for Italia, their cargo had since been seized and doled out to Venantius’ loyal subjects instead) alike. The market was still busy, teeming with fishmongers and farmers hawking goods which could then be cooked and eaten by their buyers almost immediately afterward, and at this hour the streets were still crowded with people going about their evening business, even children at play and young lovers haunting their secret hideaways – as the emperor-in-Carthago and his wife would have at different stages of their youth. Ah, wait, arguably they still were young: they weren’t even thirty yet, Venantius reminded himself, though he felt a good deal older than he really was. Must be that decade of constant campaigning and battles that caused his sense of time to slip up, he thought.

Speaking of haunting, the pretender’s thin smile wore off as his eyes moved away from the harbor & markets to find the only overwhelmingly dark part of Carthago – the Tophet, where the absence of light severely distinguished it from the rest of the city. His lips curled into a sour grimace as he recalled his priestly tutors’ lessons on it, and his father’s fury after having caught him and Tia playing amid the gravestones and stelae on one of the few nights where he deigned to visit Carthago. That was where the Carthaginians of yore buried the children and infants they had sacrificed in unholy fire to Ba’al Hammon, Tanit, Moloch and all those other demons they revered as gods, Father Ugustinu[1] (nay, Augustinus in proper Latin and not the rustic speech of the Africans, Venantius reminded himself) had warned them: disturbing their rest was extremely disrespectful, and foolish of them besides.

Venantius clenched one hand into a fist atop the marble railing. He could not even begin to imagine what those children (those old enough to comprehend what was happening to them, anyway) thought in their final moments, to have been betrayed to a fiery death by the parents who they should have been able to have unconditional trust and love in, all so that those same parents might attain material blessings which they clear valued over their own children. But then, was not a Roman Emperor supposed to be a sort of father to the Empire, hence their usage of the title Pater Patriae? And yet here he (and before him, his brothers) and Otho were, sending many thousands upon thousands of their ‘children’ to kill one another on the battlefields of Hispania, Italia and the Peninsula of Haemus to determine which of them would sit the imperial throne.

Perhaps it could not be helped, though. Uncle Otho had been the aggressor, repaying Grandmother’s tearful pleas and Father’s mercy by arranging for his allies to ambush and murder the latter as soon as the former died, and then waging war upon his branch of the House of Stilicho in his bid to usurp the purple. Some material fortune was not what was at stake here: Venantius knew that if he did not carry on his brothers’ fight, he and his own family being cast out and reduced to paupers was the absolute kindest treatment they could expect from a victorious Otho, and unlikely besides. If the fate of the rest of his immediate family was anything to go by, his uncle probably wasn’t going to stop until they were all dead. At least, that was what Venantius told himself to justify waging this civil war to the bitter end. After all, as there could only be one Sun in the sky, so too there could only be one Emperor in the Roman West.

So much for taking a breath of fresh air and setting aside those concerns for even a minute, the prince huffed. It had occurred to him that he killed Cousin Julianus in that great Battle off Aegimuri last year, yet he could not find it in himself to feel anything but a triumphant realization that he’d paid Otho back for the latter’s massacre of his own immediate family over the past few years, even if only slightly. After all, his uncle only had the one son to lose, while he himself had lost his father and two brothers on the field of battle – and more recently his mother too, albeit indirectly, from the heartbreak of having all the men in her family besides himself die well before their time. And speaking of a reckoning…one of these days he’d have to chastise his Sabbatic cousins in Constantinople for piling backstabbing atop backstabbing and carving three entire dioceses away from the West in their moment of weakness, too. Perhaps there should be only one Emperor not only ruling over the Occident, but over the entire Roman world.

At the outset of this war such dark thoughts would have sickened Venantius, even if he never did ever get to know Julianus well, but now he had determined that the killing had not only been overdue vengeance but necessary. Otho himself had shown that showing mercy to him and his brood was a misguided kindness, one they would answer with treachery and death if ever given the chance. That said, though he may now have a blasé attitude toward slaying his kinsman in battle and have become hellbent on sending Otho to follow his son into the afterlife, Venantius was still more conflicted about offing the women and children of that family. Not even the hatred that had welled up between the Stilichian branches could fully convince him to dispose of Otho’s daughters and young grandchildren too, for the prince found that as he stared into the dark and gloomy Tophet below, there was no excuse he could think of to accept the blood of children and infants (regardless of the crimes of their father and grandfather) on his hands and still live with himself.

“Oh, there you are, Venantius.” And who should interrupt Venantius in the middle of such morose musings, than the last person he would have wanted to see him like this? “Lord above, I was getting worried – I and the servants have been looking for you up and down the Byrsa this past hour!” There in the doorway stood Tia, Queen of Theveste and prospective Augusta: tall and fair like her father while lacking virtually any trace of her Jarawa[2] mother, she was a beauty in Venantius’ sight, even with her blue eyes narrowed into a glare and her arms crossed. She must be quite peeved indeed, for Venantius could see that her hair was more of a mess than usual – since she succeeded Iaunas, Tia had been prone to indulging in the queenly privilege of letting her hair down outside of state functions, but he’d known since their shared childhood that she also had a habit of furiously running her hands through it when agitated. “You could at least tell me when you’re going to disappear for hours on end, lord husband.”

“Ah. I am sorry to have aroused your concern, my fair lady.” Venantius forced a smile as he moved to embrace his friend and wife, hoping to soothe her evident anger and frustration with him before it boiled over completely. He thought it a good sign that she did not push him away, and even allowed him to briefly nuzzle the fluffy golden locks which fell about and past her shoulders, though she did not hug him back. “I just have a lot on my mind at this time.”

“As do we all,” Tia retorted, unconvinced. “I was there at this afternoon’s council with all your other councilors and great captains, if you recall.” Of course, Venantius remembered that well. It was unusual to involve women in such proceedings, but his wife insisted on knowing where he wanted her soldiers (the ones who remained after so many others had perished with her father two years ago, anyway) to go fight – and die – and he could not deny her, for she ruled the Eastern Moors as a queen in her own right. “You are not bearing the burden of fighting this war all on your lonesome, lord husband, the rest of us are keenly aware of what is at stake in the years to come.”

“Yes, yes.” Venantius reached a hand up to run it through his own curls, colored as dark as ripe olives, as he tended to do when put on the spot by others. “And I’m thankful for it. But there are some secrets that I must keep even from my own council, as you well know, even though I trust them as much as a sovereign can reasonably trust his councilors and cannot rule or wage war without them.” Tia, however, was a different story. As not only his wife but also one of his oldest friends from their shared childhood, the King of Altava had no issue confiding in her even when he was too paranoid to tell those same secrets to anyone else. “In particular, there is something I am working on which – if things unfold like I’ve been hoping they will for years now – will fracture our enemies’ camp even more than the defection of the Visigoths did. I would be surprised if it were not fatal to my not-so-dear uncle, actually.”

“Oh. Has something come up with that Senator, Symmachus?” Like that, for example. Venantius dared not reveal the name of his unexpected ally in the Senate to anyone but Tia for fear that it would eventually find its way from their lips to Otho’s and Theodoric’s ears. But no, that was not what (and who) he had been working on, so he shook his head.

“Nay. This is much bigger than him and his friends in the Curia Julia.” Tia had to walk out onto the balcony and come to rest next to Venantius to hear him over the night winds, as he refused to raise his voice even just a smidge while discussing this conspiracy he’d been on the verge of capping off. “I speak of Teutobaudes and his Blues. He has agreed to defect to our camp, and to take all his soldiers and the federate kings he counts as friends with him, in exchange for guarantees.”

The hopeful-empress said nothing but stared at him intently, willing him to explain, so Venantius continued on. “His demands may seem somewhat steep, but they are are not altogether unreasonable and well worth the alliance, in my eyes. He wants the office of magister utriusque militiae, a voice and a vote in the replacement of every single Green lackey in the military and civil bureaucracy both if – once – we prevail, plum appointments for certain allies of his in the Senate, assistance in defending the northern frontier from the likes of the Saxons and Frisians…and the hand of our daughter for his younger son, Arbogastes.”

Tia had nodded along with each item on the list of Teutobaudes’ demands save that last one. “Serena is one, Venantius. She has barely learned to walk and talk, and if I remember rightly, this boy you speak of is eleven or twelve years her senior – “

“I know, I know.” Venantius responded quickly, and defensively. “I would never have agreed to send her away from our court at her age, anyway. Did you read the letter I was writing in the study, by any chance?”

“Nay, it may have been fun for us to do when we were ten, but I cannot say I am still in the habit of reading other people’s private correspondence.” Well, Venantius supposed he should be grateful for that.

“I am writing back to Teutobaudes to inform him that I have agreed to his demands, and since he has made it clear that he will not agree to a simple betrothal contract, I will consent to the marriage-by-proxy of his son to our daughter. I did, however, insist that she will not be leaving our household to join his until the age of thirteen, and that the marriage not be consummated until at least three years after that.”

“And you did not think to tell me any of this beforehand?”

“Dear wife, I assure you I would have told you all of this after I had finished the letter, and before handing it to the agentes in rebus for dispatch.” Tia’s look remained ominous, so Venantius pressed on, “Understand that this is a matter of the utmost importance, which must be handled with both secrecy and speed. We need Teutobaudes and the Blues if we are to win this war, Tia. Since your father was slain at the Volturnus and our positions in Southern Italia collapsed two years ago, I have decided that it would be best for us to attempt a second strike into the peninsula from the north, especially as Otho and the Ostrogoths are visibly still present & prepared to respond to another attack into the south. And I cannot cross the Alps with hope of success without the numbers Teutobaudes can bring us – indeed, without him the best we can ask for is to hold what we already have. Unless we push into Italy and take Rome, you will never be able to don the purple and be hailed as Augusta outside of Carthago.”

That seemed to do the trick, as Tia swallowed whatever words she might have had to say and nodded with a look of grim determination as soon as he’d reminded her of her fallen father. It reminded Venantius of the look on her face when, after his victory off Agrimuri, they discussed how best to deal with Otho’s branch of the dynasty and all who supported them, like the Amalings, in the event of a total victory – and she had by far been even more ‘thorough’ in her suggestions than he. Though she had not lost as many kin to Otho’s ambitions as Venantius, she had fewer to lose to begin with. “Very well, husband, I understand.” She simply uttered, instead, and fortunately she did not pull away when Venantius took hold of her hand to reassure her.

Odd that he had been thinking of the Carthaginians’ sacrifice of their children for good fortune earlier, when he had been planning for some time to wed his own child to a distant and much older stranger from a house with his middle brother Constans’ blood on their hands, to decisively turn his own fortunes around in this war. But then, it was not as if he was passing little Serena through the fire; marriage was not comparable to that ghastly pagan rite of sacrifice in the slightest, he reminded himself.

Besides, if Arbogastes had any sense he certainly wouldn’t mistreat an imperial princess, regardless of her age or even his own personal feelings on being denied a choice in matrimony as much as she.

“That is all I ask.” To break the awkward silence which ensued, Venantius resolved to try to change the subject. “Now then. You have sought me out, for an hour by your telling. What for, my lady?”

“Ah, yes!” Tia brightened immediately, evidently quite happy for the opportunity to divert the conversation away from perilous politics to a happier topic, and moved to take the Altavan king’s other hand in her free one. “I have the best of news, darling, which I had been so excited to tell you – and it is why I was so cross that I could not find you sooner. The medicus confirmed it earlier to-day: once more, I am with child.”

At that, Venantius himself forgot about wars & schemes & underage marriages and immediately moved to kiss his wife full on the mouth, feeling his stress drain away at this news that their efforts in the marital bed was bearing fruit once more. She responded enthusiastically, and they were both panting slightly when they broke away from one another. “Best of news indeed,” Venantius said, beaming even as he felt poorly for having been too busy to see the signs of late. “A son. It must be a son, after the daughter we have had last year.”

“Yes…a son is exactly what I am praying for, love.” Tia nodded earnestly. “What will you name him, I wonder?”

“Eucherius, perhaps, after the first Augustus of our house. Or Stilicho, after his father and the progenitor of our gens.” It always seemed strange to Venantius that although his dynasty called themselves Stilichōnes after the dutiful and valorous Romano-Vandal who founded their house, his ancestors had been loath to give the name of Stilicho to any of their male offspring. According to what Father had told him once, it was because it was thought too barbaric in origin for a Roman emperor, and the Stilichians (especially in the first decades of their rule) had been all too eager to distance themselves from their roots. But as far as Venantius was concerned, that was a silly reason to not honor their first patriarch, and he would sooner surround himself with heroic Romano-Germanic lords of war like the original Stilicho or his late father-in-law Iaunas than the ‘proper’ Roman vipers of the Senate or the Italic lieutenants of Otho anyway.

“Worthy names for a worthy heir to the purple.” Tia answered, nodding, all hostility and grimness seemingly likewise drained out of her by this happier exchange. “I have only some passing knowledge of the demands war makes on men, my love. But I hope you will be able to remain here in Carthago long enough to celebrate our next child’s birth.”

“Absolutely. My uncle cannot strike, and so far has not struck, so soon after his loss at Aegimuri anyway.” Venantius yawned. After that fleeting moment of joyful relief, he really did not feel like returning to tackle the stresses that had been building up over the past months & years, not yet. Finishing and sending that letter could wait until tomorrow morning. “In any case, my empress, the hour is growing late, and we can see below that our people are beginning to snuff out their lights and return to their homes. I cannot say I wish to discuss matters of state any further, myself. Shall we retire to our chambers?”

“Certainly, my emperor. With luck, this will be the first good night of sleep you have in the past eight months. The Lord knows you could use it.”

“Oh, I’m certain I will. Alas there will be no room for luck in our bed, not with you in there to help me.” Venantius teased back; they both had a good laugh at that, and Tia did not resist as Venantius put his arm around her and began setting off for the Byrsa’s imperial bedchamber. As they departed his study, his thoughts turned less to playing between the sheets and more to how the Stilichians might well recover their Vandalic looks through her: though of Mauri descent on both sides of her heritage, little Serena was a pale and blonde toddler – it was now up to God to determine whether her (hopefully) brother would appear much the same way, or take after the swarthier paternal side of his family, where Moor’s blood had drowned out its Vandal counterpart long ago.

It would be fitting, the pretender deemed, that after the self-inflicted calamity that was this ‘Time of Troubles’, Stilicho should come again – in both name and likeness – to one day have a leading role in guiding Rome out of the darkness it had been stumbling in for the past decade.

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[1] A hypothetical Early African Romance rendering of Augustine, based off of the Sardinian ‘Austinu’ on account of that language’s similarity to African Romance (as noted by medieval Arab chroniclers, who were around when it had yet to go extinct, and more modern Spanish & Italian linguists both).

[2] An ancient Berber tribe of the Aurès Mountains. Their most prominent historical representative was Dihya, a late-seventh-century Christian queen who waged a years-long war of resistance against the Rashidun Caliphate after the fall of her predecessor Caecilius (‘Kusaila’) of Altava.

 

[Circle of Willis]

After the vicious back-and-forth struggles of the past two years, both the forces of Otho and those of Venantius sorely needed time to regroup and rebuild their thoroughly bloodied ranks, making 615 a rare and relatively peaceful break in the ongoing Aetas Turbida. While Otho concentrated on recruiting new soldiers and maintaining control over the parts of the Western Roman Empire which he still held, Venantius was busily engaged in diplomatic subterfuge, making renewed overtures to Teutobaudes and the Blue faction who comprised half of his uncle’s supporters. The Dux Germanicae seemed more receptive this year, not only because of Venantius’ victory at Aegimuri the year before, but also because of the various slights which Otho had inflicted upon the Blues (some not quite by his own choice, but by the demand of Theodoric and the rival Green clique) piling up: his awarding of too many offices in both the civil bureaucracy and the military to Green-backed candidates, neglect of the northern frontier as it strained under intensifying Continental Saxon and Frisian raids, and now his upping of Gaul’s grain quotas to prevent food riots in Rome and compensate for the loss of African grain to his nephew even though the heavy spring rains, short summers and long winters all but ensured chronically lean harvests.

By mid-year Venantius and Teutobaudes had ironed out the terms of their deal: the Blues were prepared to defect and hand the Florianic claimant fully half of his uncle’s power in exchange for the office of magister militum, the marriage of his newborn daughter Serena to Teutobaudes’ own younger son Arbogastes, help in securing the empire’s northern border, and the general ascendancy of the Blues in government. But their plans were nearly scuppered when an informant for Otho (a clerk in the pretender’s household with ties to one of the latter’s Carthaginian spies) was able to read Venantius’ final letter to his new ally, which he unwittingly left exposed after retiring to his bedchambers with his Thevestian wife Tia one July night. When Teutobaudes showed up to what he thought was a conciliatory dinner, followed by a war council in Arelate that August, he was promptly seized by Otho’s Scholae, pronounced guilty of treason and strangled before the usurper while the latter calmly enjoyed a goblet of wine.

The Augustus Otho about to welcome Teutobaudes to a luxurious last meal​

Leadership of the Blues devolved onto Teutobaudes’ older son Aloysius, an inexperienced young man of sixteen who had wisely stayed behind at Barcino while his father went to Arelate and who managed to survive an assassination attempt shortly after the latter’s demise, but who did not command either the confidence of Venantius (though he did recognize the lad as his father’s successor to the office of Dux Germanicae) or the Germanic federates who had respected his father. About all he could do was formalize the realignment of the Blues with the former, which did serve to confine Otho’s rule to Italy, southeastern Gaul and the Dalmatian coast. Venantius duly ordered his loyalists in Hispania (including the Celtiberians and Aquitani) and the Visigoths to amass with Aloysius’ forces and prepare to invade Italy from the north, though he himself would wait in Carthage until his next child was born before taking command – and he had the additional wrinkle of having to get these disparate armies to co-operate after they had spent the past decade killing one another. As for Otho, he did at least manage to firmly lock the peninsula down with his victory over Iaunas on the Volturnus and Venantius’ haste in carrying out his marital duties gave the usurper warning of the above imminent attack into northern Italy, but it became very difficult for him and Theodoric to see any remaining path to victory at this time without an Aegimuri-like turnaround of his own.

While the Western Roman factions were preparing for the Aetas Turbida’s next round of hostilities, off to the southeast more trouble was stirring around the Red Sea. Muhammad had never stopped preaching his message, no matter how much scorn and ridicule was heaped upon him by the Meccans, and his following had grown to over a hundred strong in the preceding years; no longer did the Meccan elite view him as just some inconsequential ‘village idiot’ to laugh and spit at, now they had no choice but to increasingly consider him a threat to their power and beliefs. After two of his converts, the outsider Yasir and his slave-wife Sumayyah, were tortured to death, he resolved to flee Mecca for safer shores with his remaining devotees.

Unfortunately for the Sahabah[1], as Muhammad’s associates came to be known, they had chosen Aksum as the destination of their hijrah[2]. Across the Red Sea they did not find refuge in a stable and powerful empire, but one consumed in the flames of un-civil conflict. Though both Tessema and Gadara were dead – the former slain in an ambush by the Jews of Semien, while the latter had expired from old age – their progeny and followers continued to battle one another in support of their respective chosen claimants, Ioel and Gersem. Over the years this war of succession had withered the authority of Aksum itself, already long neglected and frittered away under the long and inadequate reign of the weak Baccinbaxaba Tewodros: Aksum by now was less a unified empire and more a collection of feudatories and tribes nominally loyal to one so-called emperor or the other, but who were virtually entirely autonomous in fact and who pursued their own interests even when it drove them to cross spears with their supposed allies or overlords.

In those circumstances bandits and raiders from beyond the empire’s borders could and did freely prey on the countryside, with little fear of retribution from the authorities who were too busy battling one another to enforce imperial law & order. Though not persecuted for their religion, Muhammad and his Sahabah were under threat from such brigandage for the same reason as anyone else: their material possessions. More of their number were martyred in a savage raid on their first refuge, the fishing village of Massawa, and Muhammad & Khadijah ended up having to expend a small fortune to buy the survivors something resembling safe shelter in nearby Adulis. There the Islamic Prophet himself denounced the disorder and violence, blaming the unenlightened ways of the Aksumites themselves for it in both his teachings and private conversations with the remaining Sahabah, and suggesting that only true submission to God ('Islam') could bring peace to this land.

Muhammad's envoys meeting with Gersem, the nominal emperor in Aksum's eastern & southern territories​

Further off in the distant east, Emperor Yang of Later Han continued to prosecute his war against his remaining rivals in Southern China with great efficiency. He already had the Cheng on the ropes, having allowed them to severely weaken themselves in years of war with the now-defeated Chu, and spent 615 finishing them off in Sichuan. Come September, the Han would achieve their final decisive victory in the Battle of Jiading[3], where Yang drew his opponent Emperor Zhen of Cheng into the battlefield with a feint and dashed his hugely outnumbered army to bloody ruin against the Min River: Zhen himself was one of the casualties, shot to death by Han crossbowmen while trying to swim to safety upriver after shedding his armor.

Shortly after this crushing triumph, Yang received the surrender of Zhen’s successor Zhao Tong (who did not even manage a coronation before capitulating to the advancing Han host), annexing the remaining domains of Cheng into Later Han and once more allowing his vanquished enemies to live – but only after uprooting and resettling them elsewhere in his empire, far removed from their power-base. With the Cheng defeated he could now turn his full attention against Minyue in the southeast, where his own heir Hao Jing was struggling to make progress. Though he strove mightily to impress his father, Crown Prince Jing was frustrated by the Minyue’s determined defense and numerous mountain fortresses across Fujian, which required him to expend much time and resources on slow sieges while their raiders harassed his supply lines; his father retaking command there in December came as a relief.

616 was the year in which the diplomatic maneuvers of 615 finally began to bear their blood-red fruit. After celebrating the birth of his first son Stilicho in the spring Venantius would begin his campaign by seizing Arelate, where he was spared the need for a lengthy siege by infighting between the committed Othonians of the city garrison and their comrades who had greater loyalty to the Blue clique: by the time he got there, the former was still in the middle of purging the latter in a number of vicious street battles which left the walls woefully undermanned, allowing him to successfully storm the city. After adding the surviving Blues to his army and beheading the Greens who refused to swear allegiance to him as the true Augustus of the Occident, Venantius moved on to Italy itself.

However, Otho was well-prepared to meet his last nephew’s advance, having spent the past year fortifying the Alpine passes after being forewarned of the Blues’ defection and the likelihood of a Florianic invasion of northern Italy. Over the summer of 616 he repelled two Florianic probing attacks, first in the Battle of Savo[4] and then further to the north at the Battle of Oscela Lepontiorum[5], where Aloysius and Arbogastes’ uncle Godomar II of Burgundy was cut down. Not even a supporting offensive on the part of the Carantanians and Horites, which overran most of the Dalmatian coastal cities under Ostrogoth protection and threatened Aquileia until Theodoric fended them off at the First Battle of Tergeste[6], could create an opening for Venantius to push into Italy proper.

Godomar, King of the Burgundians, leading what would turn out to be his last attack against Otho's legionaries at the Battle of Oscela Lepontiorum​

Faced with the feared reality that his uncle had already readied himself to check any overland assault, Venantius sought an alternative route to Italy – the sea. The Italian fleet had been thoroughly mauled at Aegimuri and only partially rebuilt by Otho in the two years since, and was not expected to put up much of a fight against its larger and stronger African counterpart, especially as Venantius had ordered the latter’s expansion while still in Carthage precisely in case he needed to contest the waters around Italy. But fight well they did at the Battle off Turris[7] that August: in a straightforward contest of ramming and boarding actions with none of the tricks employed off Carthage previously, the remaining Italian ships of Otho – leashed together for mutual support – put up a surprising amount of resistance and were eventually overcome only by brute force & the weight of numbers, leading Venantius to chastise his admirals for having won such a costly victory afterward.

Unexpectedly valiant last stands at sea aside, the way was finally cleared for Venantius to begin sailing to and landing in Italy. The claimant and his advance-guard landed first at Genua[8] in the early weeks of September, where the city’s prefect and garrison went over to him on account of their previous Blue loyalties. Otho tried to drive them back into the sea with a counterattack but failed due to not having enough soldiers to repel the Africans and their various federates while simultaneously trying to purge Teutobaudes’ other associates in Italy, thanks to a factor beyond either of their control. Far to the northeast, the Iazyges had ignored his orders to continue applying pressure to the Dulebes in favor of raiding the lands of their old Lombard and Bavarian enemies, as the latter had followed Teutobaudes and Aloysius into rebellion.

Venantius' legionaries resisting Otho's attempt to drive them back into the sea near Genua​

Consequently the Dulebians, exhibiting more discipline and self-restraint, chose not to pursue them but rather to support their fellow Sclaveni in another attack on the Ostrogoth lands, resulting in a victory for the combined Florianist host at the Second Battle of Tergeste and Theodoric drawing more of his troops back to Aquileia to defend his capital. Between the continued need to defend the Alpine passes (lest Venantius exploit any slackening of the defenses there to move soldiers overland into Italy) and Theodoric’s abandonment, Otho found himself unable to prevent his nephew from securing and expanding his beach-head in Liguria as 616 came to a close. Besides once more instigating a conscription drive in Italy’s cities – as the situation grew more dire for the Othonians, he was prepared to send untrained paupers armed with slings and sticks against Venantius – Otho could do little but further try to cajole and browbeat a generally unimpressed Theodoric to send some Ostrogoths back to aid him, stressing the importance of salvaging his cause if they did not want to face Venantius’ wrathful judgment together.

Elsewhere, Heshana Qaghan’s reconstruction of Persia continued apace. For their new Persia, the Tegregs had opted to build and settle new cities rather than rebuild old ones ravaged by the Eftals, Romans or themselves: consequently sites such as Istakhr and Rayy continued to languish, only partly rebuilt if at all, while new cities (or at least, preexisting small towns in the process of becoming cities) such as Shiraz and Qom flourished as the bulk of Heshana’s growing stockpile of resources and manpower were directed to them. The Qaghan further empowered Manichaeism where he could, assigning Manichaean bishops and presbyters to both spread the ‘Religion of Light’ and serve his regime as its main administrators; he also privileged the Manichaean ‘Elect’, who forswore alcohol and adopted vegetarianism to demonstrate their more advanced faith, with lower taxes and a fast track to offices within his growing administration. Only the Mazdakite Buddhists of the Zagros managed to avoid the imtrusion of Manichaeism into their territories, which remained at an autonomous arm’s length from Esfahan’s control – Heshana had no wish to provoke a conflict with these warrior-monks and the communes they watched over while still in the process of rebuilding the rest of Persia.

Manichaean priests tutoring two of Heshana's sons in Shiraz, newly expanded from a village near the devastated Istakhr into a blossoming city which will soon outshine its neighbor​

In China, Yang attempted a few pushes into Minyue territory, but was frustrated by the same problems which plagued his son: difficult terrain, the preponderance of well-prepared and provisioned fortresses, and constant Minyue attacks on his supply convoys. In the face of this dogged resistance he chose to try giving the Minyue king Huang Ruo terms: in exchange for Minyue’s surrender and absorption into Later Han, he would be gifted the hereditary dignity of ‘Prince of Min’ and allowed to continue governing the mountains of Fujian which he called home. Ruo initially refused and appealed to Emperor Wenxuan of Later Liang for aid.

Unfortunately for the embattled mountain lord, the southernmost rival emperor was a man of peace who was far more concerned about his commercial ventures to the south than the Han threat, and who believed he had enough wealth to buy armies capable of resisting Yang’s onslaught when the latter inevitably came for him. Emperor Yang, meanwhile, adopted the strategy used by his ancestors to crush Huang Ruo’s Shanyue ones back in the day of the original (or ‘Former’, as opposed to his ‘Later’) Han dynasty – he had his much larger armies fan out to seize and hold the valleys and riverbanks of Fujian where the Minyue grew their crops, then waited to starve Ruo into submission. The Minyue might have stockpiled provisions in their mountain holdfasts, but without the more fertile low ground they could not replenish their stocks, and as their efforts to retake the valleys faltered before Yang’s more numerous and better-equipped armies their defeat became a matter of time so long as the Liang declined to intervene.

Come 617, Venantius struck westward from Genua to open up the Alpine passes for the rest of his army, scoring victories at Ceba[9], Sanctus Petrus[10] and finally Augusta Praetoria[11] under marginally less difficult conditions than those under which he’d attempted to force the passes on the other side of the Alps the year before. With at least some of the mountain passes opened by force (and others by simply besieging, then bribing their defenders to stand down or defect), he was able to bring those elements of his army who hadn’t yet crossed into Liguria by ship over the Alps and concentrate them around Augusta Taurinum[12]. Otho meanwhile was concentrating his own legions at Ravenna to meet Venantius in pitched battle, having managed to persuade Theodoric to contribute an additional 5,000 Goths after the latter successfully held off the combined strength of the South Slavs in the First Battle of the Aesontius[13] on a rainy March day.

Theodoric standing triumphant in the aftermath of the First Battle of the Aesontius, one of several failed Sclaveni attempts to cross the river​

The usurper and the pretender finally directly clashed for the first time since Aegimuri outside Placentia[14] on May 1. Their armies were roughly evenly matched in numbers – thanks to his Ostrogoth reinforcements, Otho held a slim advantage over Venantius with 25,000 men to the latter’s 24,000 – so the course of the battle would be determined by the rival imperial claimants’ generalship. Correctly assuming that Venantius would have to take the offensive while he was defending his home ground and thus did not have to take up an aggressive posture, Otho arrayed his men into stout shield-walls (further reinforced by dismounting some of his heavy horsemen and ordering them to join the infantry lines) across the farmland outside Placentia, anchored by field fortifications and commandeered villas filled with crossbowmen who bore tower scuta for additional protection.

To overcome his uncle’s strong defense and slightly larger numbers, Venantius sought to defeat the enemy army in detail. First he led his cavalry into battle against those of Otho: his African horse-archers and Gallo-Roman caballarii proved a decisive advantage in this regard, and put his uncle’s less numerous and less skilled equestrian corps to flight before noon. That done, he amassed his infantry into wedges spearheaded by his best & heaviest (aside from his own legionaries, these were often Franks or Visigoths), and sent them barreling through portions of Otho’s lines who his scouts identified as being the thinnest & likeliest to break under pressure, with the intent of driving the Othonian soldiers into their field fortlets & villas where they could be contained and isolated. Meanwhile his cavalry pressured the now-exposed flanks of the Othonian army, supporting the infantry offensive and causing the extremities of his uncle’s battle-lines to essentially cave in on themselves or even break entirely and flee toward Placentia. This strategy was not without its flaws and near-misses – at one point, Venantius had to personally confront and exhort Antaro the Celtiberian into following a wedge of heavily armored Franks & Visigoths (his former enemies) right as Otho was leading a counterattack against them.

Otho is surrounded and nearly brought down by Venantius' elite African legionaries outside Placentia, moments before he can cross lances with his nephew​

But succeed it did, and by sunset the Othonian army had been broken up and largely either trapped in their own field fortifications or driven from the battlefield altogether by the advance of Venantius’ elite legions and allied federates. Otho himself found his courage failing with his counterattack and quit the field shortly after noon, greatly contributing to the collapse of his army’s morale, and the people of Placentia opened their gates to welcome the victorious rival pretender in shortly after nightfall. Of the 25,000 Othonians who fought in the Battle of Placentia, 17,000 were lost: 7,000 of these men lay dead or dying by the battle’s end while as many as 10,000 were taken prisoner, surrendering in the fortlets and villas where they had taken shelter, and Venantius gave them a choice to either defect to his army or swear a holy oath on the Bible to go home and never take up arms against him again. (Naturally, those who refused to do either were summarily beheaded for treason) Meanwhile he himself had lost 5,000 men, almost a quarter of the soldiers he had fielded, which was a testament to how hard-fought the Battle of Placentia had been and how strong Otho’s field defenses were even after his own faction had successfully executed their strategy. One of those 5,000 was the young Aloysius, who was shot to death by several of Otho’s arcuballistarii and duly succeeded by his even younger brother Arbogastes, immediately appointed Dux Germanicae at age fifteen by his Stilichian father-in-law.

Twice now Otho had attempted to achieve an Aegimuri-esque turnaround of his own, and twice he had failed: to suggest that his situation had become dire would be an understatement on the level of painting Cato the Elder as a man who slightly disdained Carthage, while Venantius’ momentum now seemed unstoppable. The usurper had retreated to Ravenna in the wake of his disastrous defeat, trusting in its marshes and the stout walls which neither Attila nor the Avars came close to bringing down, but this move left his control over Rome and the rest of Italy shaky, especially with his army now almost completely depleted. The death of his choice of Pope, Lucretius, from dropsy was not only another bit of bad news, but gave Anicius Symmachus and other opportunists in the Senate their opening to declare that his cause was obviously cursed by God and to deliver Rome to Venantius.

Consequently the claimant first strove to win over the Roman mob with a display of generosity – ‘gifting’ to them a large amount of grain which he had been responsible for holding back in Africa’s ports in the first place until now – and then had the great pleasure of welcoming both his family and his candidate for the Papacy, Lucius II, to the Eternal City early in the fall. Soon after, Lucius (hailed by the people of Rome as the true Pope, while Lucretius could now be safely denounced as an Antipope in public) formally crowned him Augustus of the Occident in the Basilica of Saint Peter with the additional approval of Patriarch Firmus of Carthage. Winter and the year’s ending saw Otho besieged in Ravenna by an army which included 3,000 of his former soldiers who’d been taken captive at Placentia, while Theodoric remained his only hope of salvation after having held the Sclaveni back two more times on the Aesontius.

Far off in the Orient, Emperor Yang continued to pressure the Minyue to force a surrender out of them. His hosts had fortified themselves in the valleys where the Minyue grew most of their food and the latter’s attempts to drive them out had largely proven unsuccessful despite their best efforts, including lashing together crude but inventive mangonels to provide artillery support from the mountainside. As it became increasingly undeniable that no help from Later Liang was ever forthcoming, Huang Ruo admitted defeat toward autumn and sent envoys from his mountain stronghold to inform Yang that he’d reconsidered & accepted the Later Han Emperor’s terms to save his people from imminent starvation.

Minyue troops descending from the high ground to assail a Later Han fort occupying one of their fertile valleys​

To the astonishment of Crown Prince Hao Jing, his father accepted the submission of the King of Minyue and actually followed through on his end of their deal a few weeks later despite all the trouble he’d given them, as opposed to betraying and killing Huang Ruo the instant the latter exposed himself. Yang in turn explained that the damage such treachery would inflict upon his reputation was too high a cost, and that it would reduce if not eliminate the likelihood that his future enemies would surrender and agree to peaceful integration into the new order of the Later Han. In any case with the defeat of Minyue, the Chu and the Cheng, the Han had now advanced well past the Yangtze and only had three more opponents left to overcome before they could boast of having reunited China: Later Liang immediately to the southeast, against whom Yang immediately began to undertake preparations for war, and the two remaining barbarian kingdoms, Yi in the southwest and Nanyue far to the south.

The Florianic army spent the first months of 618 trying to capture Ravenna, a difficult feat given the marshland which surrounded the city’s already-formidable fortifications. Though outnumbered almost ten-to-one by their besiegers, Ravenna’s remaining garrison of 2,000 were well-provisioned and could count on those stout defenses (natural and manmade both) to greatly even the odds. Furthermore, Otho was keenly aware that his nephew would kill him if given the chance, and thus ruled out surrender at all costs. By the start of summer, Venantius had made little progress beyond encircling the city and his own men were taking losses not only from the defenders’ fire, but also from the elements and swamp-borne diseases.

Under those poor conditions, it was perhaps not entirely unexpected that Venantius would order a retreat when Theodoric approached from the north with 12,000 Ostrogoths, despite still holding an advantage in numbers. Once he was certain that the Florianic army had withdrawn beyond at least a few days’ marching distance, Otho duly opened the city gates and welcomed his only remaining major ally, believing that the relief of Ravenna had given him a third chance to turn things around. In that the usurper was mistaken – once the Goths had made it into the city, Theodoric betrayed him almost immediately and murdered him at dinner that same evening, then followed up by taking his family captive and wiping out most of the Othonian defenders at their barracks or in a few hours of confused street fighting.

Theodoric's Ostrogoths treacherously attacking Otho's palace in Ravenna​

As it turned out, Venantius had played one last trick to vanquish his uncle despite the latter’s seemingly impregnable position. Though he despised the Greens even more-so than the Blues, the pretender understood that starving Otho out was not a realistic option given how well-stocked Ravenna’s larders were according to his own informants, and that storming the city was even less so due to how strong its defenses were. Consequently he secretly cut a deal with Theodoric II, who recognized that any prospect of a long-term victory was irretrievably lost at Placentia, to simply betray Otho and hand Ravenna over in exchange for some measure of leniency. Of course, he was not so foolish as to keep the man who (together with his late father Viderichus) made and unmade his uncle’s usurpation in the first place around for long: once Theodoric turned Otho’s household over to Venantius in the Palace of Domitian a week later – apparently under the belief that he would be forgiven much as the Blues had been – he barely got to exit the main hall of that palace before being cut down by the guards in sight of his own eldest son Theodahad, who was then taken prisoner.

Venantius ultimately did agree to show Theodahad some of the mercy he’d promised the latter’s father, if only to avoid having to squander precious resources on destroying the rest of the Ostrogoths in & around Aquileia when so much blood had already been spilled over the past near-fifteen years. He allowed the latter to take up kingship of the Ostrogoths, but not without considerable penalties for the Greens having supported Otho until the very last minute: he had to send his own sons, Athalaric and Thorismund, to Rome as hostages as well as his much younger half-brother Julianus, Theodoric’s son with Otho’s eldest daughter Juliana, on top of agreeing to pay considerable annual financial reparations for ten years and losing both the Gothic estates nearest to Ravenna & the entire Dalmatian coast. Istria was handed to the Carantanians, finally giving them direct access to the Adriatic, while the Horites were gifted the rest of that coastline; an exception was made for the major cities still mostly populated by Illyro-Romans (such as Venetia[14], Tharsatica and Spalatum), which were placed under direct imperial administration via prefects appointed at Rome’s leisure, though their port facilities and bustling markets remained open to the Sclaveni with no restrictions.

Venantius next had to deal with the daughters and grandson of Otho. He banished his cousins Juliana and Theodosia (now both widowed) to remote convents in Armorica and the mountains around Altava, respectively, and thought that was enough to neutralize them. Otho’s grandson through his fallen male cousin Julianus, the now-eight-year-old Liberius, was another question. His wife Tia (then pregnant with their second son Eucherius, who would be born late in 618) had grimly suggested having the boy disposed of, warning that their hold on the throne would never be fully secure so long as a male-line descendant of his uncle survived and pointing to how Otho had abused his own father’s mercy to gather the time & resources to usurp the purple in the first place as grounds for ruthlessness in this situation. The newly enthroned emperor conceded that that was true, but was evidently still reluctant to kill a child he was related to, and before the year was over he believed he’d found the solution to their troubles: having been kept informed of how the men of Hibernia had found a number of remote islands far on the other side of the Atlantic by the Church, Venantius decided to send Liberius into exile at the monastery founded by Saint Brendan on Tír na Beannachtaí. If he survived the trip, the young princeling would be the first Roman royal to set foot on the New World.

However, defeating Otho, scattering his branch of the Stilichian family and re-establishing the primacy of his own would prove to only be the start of an entirely new set of problems for Venantius. Aside from still having to keep a close eye on the resentful Ostrogoths, he also had to juggle relations with the Senate (including his decidedly untrustworthy uncle-by-marriage Symmachus) and the slightly less treacherous Blues; resolve the brewing schism between Constantinople and Carthage (now with Rome under Pope Lucius II having switched sides to stand with the latter); restore order to the northern frontier where the Continental Saxons, Frisians and Iazyges continued to run rampant; and, obviously, rebuild the Western Empire’s military and economic strength after fourteen years of bitter internecine fighting had decimated both. In any case though, it seemed the Aetas Turbida had finally, mercifully ended, if not anticlimactically, then at least in much the same way it had begun – with a major Ostrogothic betrayal of the sitting Western Roman Emperor at the time. At least, that was what Venantius, Tia and their supporters hoped.

Finally, after a decade & a half of fighting & scheming (and despite the loss of both of his parents and every single one of his brothers) Flavius Venantius Augustus stands triumphant as of the end of 618, and has even succeeded in reinvigorating the senior Stilichian line by fathering three healthy children. Alas, the quest to take the purple was only the first half of his various troubles​

In distant Asia, while Emperor Yang was still consolidating his conquests and building up for the next round of campaigns against the remaining potentates of far-southern China, the Huna Samrat Megavahana was not allowing his own more peaceful foreign policy to get in the way of future expansionist schemes. He established extensive commercial contacts with the Anuradhapura kingdom, which dominated the northern half of the island of Sri Lanka (known to the Romans as Taprobana, itself a translation of an older Indian term for the island – Tambapaṇṇī, or ‘copper-red earth’), and in 618 he arranged the marriage of one of his daughters to their king Gajabahu III. While at the time this seemed inconsequential, by deepening ties with Anuradhapura to the point of a marriage alliance, Megavahana was (knowingly or not) laying the groundwork for future co-operation between the Buddhists of his empire and those of the island kingdom against the Hindu Dravidian kingdoms of the subcontinent’s far south which had previously resisted his father & grandfather’s efforts at conquest.

On the isles of the Yamato further still to the east, the Tennō Yōmei continued his reforms to strengthen central authority while causing minimal offense to his highborn subjects. In 618 he issued two edicts: one substituted the kabane system, now rendered defunct by the creation of provincial and county administrators, with a thirty-rank table of court ranks (each with a progressively higher salary paid in the form of koku, or rice bushels), and the second commanded the construction of a more permanent, better-fortified capital than Asuka where he could properly hold such a large and well-paid court. For this palace town’s site Yōmei selected Mount Yoshino deep in the Yamato Province where his clan originated, as it was naturally highly defensible and its numerous cherry blossom (or sakura) trees held great aesthetic appeal to him, and the new capital was duly named after the mountain it would be built on & around: thus, the era in Japanese history which followed the Asuka Period and his resumption of imperial power would popularly be known as the ‘Yoshino Period’[15], though like Srivijaya far to the south, it would still take several more decades for the Yamato to complete Yoshino’s construction.

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[1] ‘Companions’ – disciples who personally met with and were converted by Muhammad.

[2] An Arab term meaning ‘migration’. Historically, Muhammad had a much easier time in Aksum and established a positive relationship with its then-emperor Armah, also known as Najashi to Arab chroniclers.

[3] Leshan.

[4] Savona.

[5] Domodossola.

[6] Trieste.

[7] Porto Torres.

[8] Genoa.

[9] Ceva.

[10] Sampeyre.

[11] Aosta.

[12] Turin.

[13] The Isonzo or Soča River.

[14] Venice.

[15] Historically, the era of Japanese history following the Asuka Period is known as the Nara Period, as the new Japanese capital was built in modern-day Nara (north of Yoshino).

 

[Circle of Willis]

Capital: Baurg-af-Thorismund (Latin: Burgi, Espanesco: Burgos). However, the city of Toletum (Esp.: Toledo) is the largest in the Visigothic kingdom, the seat of its primate-archbishop, and where the royal court has been residing with increasing frequency since the reign of Hermenegild I: it is likely that the capital will soon be formally moved there, especially with the rise of the Celtiberian kingdom nearby.

Religion: Ephesian Christianity. At this point, Arianism & Priscillianism are effectively extinct in Hispania.

Languages: Espanesco[1] – ‘Hispanic Romance’ – is the sermo publicus spoken from day-to-day by the Hispano-Roman citizenry who comprise the vast majority of the Iberian Peninsula’s population. It has also increasingly displaced Gothic as the primary language of even the Visigoth military aristocracy, who have assimilated into the ranks of their Hispano-Roman neighbors & subjects to the point where it is difficult to distinguish them from one another today: previously they would have spoken Gothic outside of state functions, but as of the early seventh century, the vast majority of Goth-descended families simply speak Espanesco even in private. Of course, Latin remains the sole written language of royal & Church business.

Of all the Western Roman Empire’s barbarian federates, the Visigoths have by far the oldest, arguably the closest and inarguably one of the most complicated relationships to their patron. Initially when they were still known as the Thervingi, they were bitter and persistent enemies of the Romans: from Gutthiuda (as they called their former dominion in eastern Dacia) they helped bring about the Crisis of the Third Century, slaying Emperor Decius and his heir Herennius Etruscus at the Battle of Abritus in 253 under King Cniva, then a hundred years later their new king Fritigern I would deal Eastern Roman Emperor Valens an even more crushing blow at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Though the Thervings were eventually contained, crucially they were never decisively defeated, broken up and dispersed across the Empire; but rather they became autonomous foederati, who settled as a single unit within Roman borders and retained their own political & military structure. This set the pattern which Rome would repeat with various other barbarian migrants over the next two hundred years, turning them into vassals rather than citizen-subjects.

The Visigoths, as the Romans came to refer to the Thervings and their affiliates – based on a translation of the Gothic term Wesi Gutans, or ‘Western Goths’, into Latin as Visigothi – have since generally served their Roman overlords with competence, diligence and a little more loyalty than their Ostrogoth cousins. For this they have been rewarded with lands first in the Macedonia, then in Hispania after Attila and his Huns destroyed that third homeland of theirs (following Gotland itself and then Gutthiuda-in-Dacia). Though their Iberian kingdom has expanded, contracted, been partitioned and then stitched itself back together from time to time in the past two hundred years, unlike the kingdom they had in Macedonia it has managed to survive the test of time.

The same cannot quite be said of the Gothic culture itself, however. Over that same timeframe they have found themselves enraptured by and increasingly assimilating into Romanitas, shedding their traditional language and customs twice in order to better fit into Roman civilization – first converting away from Germanic paganism, and then the Arian heresy which they initially embraced thanks to the efforts of the missionary Wulfila. By the end of the 610s, the Visigoths are almost indistinguishable from the Hispano-Roman citizenry of the Iberian Peninsula in manner of dress, religion, warfare and even speech for the most part. The royal Balthing clan is one of a handful of elite Visigothic families to privately remember and communicate in the Gothic language, and even they do so with less frequency than ever before.

Still, though they have been quite happy to adopt most aspects of the Roman civilization which they deemed more advanced and prosperous than their own, the Visigoths have not been content to become mere lapdogs for the Emperors. Their bards still sing of the victories won by Cniva, Fritigern and the first Alaric over the Romans, while their lords and clerics do dare justify these wars. In particular, the Balthings proudly profess that their ancestor Fritigern was not some mindless aggressor but in fact right to destroy Valens and his army at Adrianople: they view their victory there as a sign of God’s justice, for the Eastern Romans had tried to starve them into selling their own children into slavery for dog meat beforehand. The relationship between Alaric I and Flavius Stilicho, which was thorny at first but eventually evolved into an odd friendship of sorts, can be considered a microcosm of the Visigoth-Roman relationship through the ages.

More recently, the Visigoths set in motion the first domino leading to the Aetas Turbida by rebelling against Augustus Florianus II after he sent their king at the time, the first Hermenegild, to his death in Hoggar, then tried to seize the kingdom for his son (and Hermenegild’s son-in-law) Constans. As by all accounts Hermenegild had been a genuinely loyal supporter of Rome and a devout Christian, who had been raised in the Roman court after the troubles of the 530s and 540s, his family and people considered this an especially egregious act of ungrateful betrayal on their overlord’s part. No doubt the sons of Hermenegild saw themselves in Fritigern as they fought against that perceived injustice, and though both of them died over the course of the Aetas Turbida, Visigothia has managed to remain standing in the aftermath under the nominal leadership of Hermenegild’s young grandson, also named Hermenegild, after realigning with Florianus’ son Venantius to remain independent – this time, from their fellow Goths in Italy, who were the staunchest backers of the usurper Otho.

With their shift in allegiance and the consequent victory of the Florianic faction, the Visigoths are set to endure as the oldest and one of the most notable ‘sub-Roman’ vassal kingdoms of the Western Empire for some time yet. Though Rome may remain their employer, they can still boast that they have no master but the Lord. Time will tell if they have sufficiently impressed Venantius into respecting their autonomy, or if he will insist on trying to bring them to heel as his father did – and whether Hermenegild II will follow the course of his grandfather & namesake as well as that of Alaric I and Theodoric I, or walk in the footsteps of his father Liuveric, Fritigern & Cniva.

Spoiler: Government

The Visigothic kingdom’s organization can be best described as ‘proto-feudal’, an ongoing attempt to merge Roman civil administration and law with the simpler and less stratified society of the Goths. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy sits the Visigothic king (Gothic: ‘rīks’, Esp.: ‘rey’), a scion of the royal Balthing clan which ranks second among all Goths after only the Amalings who rule the Ostrogoths, and similarly claims descent from the Germanic god (and their namesake) Gaut even after converting to Christianity, much to the confusion of the Christian royal chroniclers. The incumbent monarch as of the 618 is Hermenegild II, son of Liuveric and grandson of Hermenegild I: as he is only twelve years old, the day-to-day governance of the kingdom is in fact carried out by a regency council including his mother, the Gothic noblewoman Leodegundis, and Archbishop Hadrian of Toletum. Had Liuveric’s brother Theodoric not predeceased him, as Ataulf did Alaric I in ages past, he would likely have become king instead while Hermenegild II would have to wait well into adulthood for a chance at the throne.

Like other Germanic kings, the Visigoth monarch is first & foremost supposed to be a war-leader, boldly riding into battle with his troops to lead them by example and striving not to be outdone by them in feats of heroism on the field – a sharp contrast to Roman emperors and generals, who usually direct the flow of battle from the rear and personally sully their hands in combat only when necessary. In the transition from being Germanic sacred kings to Christian ones, the Gothic kings have also retained a role in the spirituality of their kingdom: Hermenegild I won for himself & his heirs the right to call synods to regulate affairs within their borders at the Lateran Council of 574, although not autocephaly for the Hispanic Church nor the right to appoint bishops on their own initiative. When the king calls such a synod, he will work with the bishops and lords of the realm to issue regulations on matters civil and religious, though of course they must all work within the boundaries set by past ecumenical councils.

These kings acknowledge the Augustus in Rome as their overlord, swearing an oath on the Bible to faithfully follow them into wars; to contribute warriors to the defense of the Western Empire against any who may come to threaten it; and to duly pay the tribute which he owes the Empire – in the case of the kings of Hispania, it is the gold of their mines which is in most demand by the Emperors. In return they are acknowledged as a foederatus Romani (‘federate of the Romans’) and socius Augusti (‘friend of the Emperor’), with the right to govern their autonomous polity within the official Roman borders and to be addressed as Domines Rex (‘lord king’) in imperial correspondence.

A depiction of Hermenegild II in his youth, surrounded by angels representing God blessing his reign. Although previously the Balthings (such as Alaric I) were oft-described as red-haired, silver-eyed and towering, this Hermenegild was none of these things, which contemporary chroniclers ascribe to him having Hispano-Roman grandmothers on both sides of his family​

Aside from their military commitments and an inability to pursue an independent foreign policy however, the Visigoths (and other similar federates) enjoy considerable autonomy – beyond keeping their traditional form of governance, they also have their own laws (though they are strongly encouraged to adopt as much of Roman law as possible, both from above by the emperors and from below by their new Roman subjects & neighbors: in the Visigoths’ case they use the Codex Visigothorum, a legal code put together by Hermenegild I and based heavily on the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Romans) and mint their own coins, which typically depict the likeness of the Gothic king at the time on one side and the Emperor or a religious symbol (often a Gothic cross, like the one adorning their banner) on the other. This autonomy they guard jealously, not only against the Stilichian Emperors (hence their occasional rebellions, of which the prelude to the Aetas Turbida was only the most recent) but others too – as even their Ostrogothic kin found out, to their master Otho’s immense frustration, in the last years of the Aetas Turbida.

The rule of the Visigoth kings has never been absolute within their borders. In the past they were constrained de jure by their ancestral laws & customs, nowadays by the written word of the Codex Visigothorum, and always by the nobility of their realm de facto. Each king designates a successor early in his reign, typically one of nearest male relatives (sons are first to be considered, then brothers, cousins and so on), and upon his death this heir can reasonably expect to be elected by an assembly of the realm’s nobility and episcopacy (Got.: ‘þing’, Lat.: ‘consilium regis’, Esp.: ‘concilio real’) – but they can and will elect a different successor if they deem the king’s chosen prince an utterly unworthy choice. At times they will also elect to partition the realm between the king’s sons per his will, although every time this has happened in the past two centuries, the Visigoth kingdom has managed to fall back together after a fratricidal war or several. Aside from advising the king in matters of state and electing his successor, the royal council of the Visigoths also assists (or hinders) him in drafting and implementing laws like the aforementioned Codex. The noble families of the Visigoth kingdom govern their own estates in the countryside, resembling the latifundia common to the Hispano-Roman elite of Baetica but often more militarized with a strongly fortified villa at its core, and maintain their own private retinues of warriors, giving them power-bases independent of the king they have sworn oaths of fealty to in case they feel like revolting against him.

Over the past century and a half, the Hispano-Romans have become more involved in Visigothic politics as the Visigoths themselves became more ‘Roman’. City magistrates, great landowners, bishops and abbots have joined the Visigoth royal council in increasing numbers, especially as the adoption of Roman law empowers the former, while gifts and sales of land to the Church have given the latter power & influence in the countryside to rival that of the traditional Gothic military aristocracy. The Archbishops of Toletum have effectively become the kings’ primary deputies since the 574 Lateran Council acknowledged them as the Primates (leading prelates) of Hispania, and with a child-king on the throne these days, it is said that the Archbishop Hadrian (Esp.: Adriano) overshadows even the queen-mother on the regency council. At present the Archepiscopate of Toletum (and by extension the Church in Hispania) still falls under the authority of the Roman Pope, though the Patriarchs of Carthage have argued that they should actually be under African authority since they were elevated from the rank of bishop in 535. No doubt Patriarch Firmus will raise this matter again as soon as a church council is called to try to reconcile East and West, seeing it as an opportunity to seek rewards for having stood by the Florianic cause from the beginning.

The Hispano-Roman Archbishop Hadrian of Toletum, Primate of Hispania and arguably the most powerful man in the kingdom during the minority of Hermenegild II​

Spoiler: Society

As has been said, the Visigoths of 618 are not the same as those of 418, having undergone centuries of Romanization. This manifests in their laws, manner of social organization, religion, warfare & military equipment, and even their language, which is perhaps the clearest indicator of just how far they have shifted away from their roots. Virtually every Visigoth still alive is at least bilingual, and a majority can speak only one tongue – not the Gothic of their ancestors but Espanesco, the variant of Vulgar (or popularly spoken) Latin common to Hispania. Espanesco has been spoken by the Hispano-Roman majority of the peninsula for many years already, even if they write exclusively in ‘proper’ Latin (see for example the motto on their standard, which is only ever written in Latin and not Espanesco), and is distinctly influenced by the accents and languages of the pre-Roman Iberian peoples. Even King Hermenegild II and his grandfather would not refer to themselves, or be referred to, by the Gothic Airmanagild: in official correspondence their name is written as the Latin Hermenegildus, and in speech they would be referred to as Hermenegildo in Espanesco, while the king in-between them is popularly known as Liuverichus or Leovericho rather than Liuveric – and similarly no Visigoths would be called (and are only marginally more likely to call themselves) Wesi Gutans in the Hispania of today, using the term Visigodos instead.

Distinctive features of Espanesco include silencing initial h’s, betacism (the shift of v sounds to b, which began in the third century long before any Goth set foot on Spanish soil) and the contraction of Latin’s four conjugations (–āre, –ēre, –ere, –īre) to three (–ar, –er, –ir), as exemplified by the shift of vivere (to live) -> bever, which will probably become beber or bibir in the future, as well as the diphthongization (transformation into double vowels) of both stressed closed syllables, ex. castĕllum (castle) -> castiello or prŏbam (proof) -> prueba, and open ones, ex. tempus (time) -> tiempo. A u-to-o vowel shift coupled with the removal of the final –m in Latin words has also been observed in Espanesco speech, ex. amicum (friend) -> amigo.

The very name ‘Espanesco’ is another example of this trend, as well as the silencing and dropping of initial h’s and an i-to-e vowel shift (its root is the Latin Hispanicus/Hispanicum). As the Hispanic centers of power and populations remain in the south, away from the principality of the Aquitani and Vascones, and the Goths will soon join them it is unlikely that initial f’s (which is not a letter in their language) will shift into h’s or become silent anytime soon, however: for example the Latin filius (son) has à Espanesco fijo, but from there is unlikely to become hijo. The Visigoths have given to Espanesco far less than they took – a number of words (ex. tapa or ‘cover’, from the Gothic tappa) and the introduction & Romanization of patronymics on a large scale (ex. Hermenegild II would be referred to not as the Gothic ‘Airmanagild Liuvericssunus’, but the Latin ‘Hermenegildus filius Liuverichus’ or Espanesco ‘Hermenegildo Leoverichez’) comprise the extent of their influence on a language which otherwise bears little resemblance to their ancestral tongue.

Though they wrote all their records in Latin, Visigothic chroniclers did use their own distinct script based on the older uncial script of the Romans​

Language is far from the only thing the Visigoths have picked up from the Hispano-Romans, though it is perhaps the most obvious. When they first settled in Iberia, they built fortified camps and towns for themselves in the countryside and generally kept away from the Hispano-Roman urban centers, creating a de facto state of segregation between the peoples: the Visigoths took over all military functions while leaving civil ones (as well as the task of growing enough food for them all) to the Hispano-Romans. As well, there existed two sets of laws in the Visigothic kingdom then, with the Visigoths governing themselves according to the ancient Germanic laws of their forefathers while Roman civil & canon law continued to be implemented by the Hispano-Romans’ magistrates and clergy.

These barriers have fallen with the progressive Romanization of the Goths, which necessarily includes their conversion to (orthodox) Christianity. The baptism of the Visigoths into Ephesian Christianity, greatly accelerated from the late fifth century onward by the military defeat of the old Arian faction in the Second Great Conspiracy of the 470s, removed a major obstacle to both peoples sharing religious services and engaging in intermarriage. And Hermenegild I’s promulgation of the Codex Visigothorum has eliminated legal segregation in the kingdom since 574, replacing the two separate legal codes with a unified one that incorporates elements of Germanic law (such as legalizing trial by combat) while generally favoring the Romans’ own civil code, the Corpus Juris Civilis put together by the Eastern Augustus Sabbatius and his Western Roman counterparts a few decades prior.

The result is that by the seventh century, the Visigoths have become largely indistinguishable from the Hispano-Romans: even among Roman writers they are collectively referred to as Hispani (Esp.: Hispanos or increasingly Espanos), or ‘Spaniards’, with growing frequency, and barring any great changes this will probably become the standard by the start of the eighth or ninth centuries. Even the Visigothic nobles who still bother to speak Gothic among family and friends now live as their Hispano-Roman counterparts do: overseeing estates (latifundia) comprising farms, orchards, vineyards & mines worked by peasants or slaves and producing everything from wheat & lettuce to olives to grapes to gold & silver, centered around villas built in imitation of the Roman style. Buying slaves or coloni (serfs) in bulk from their Hispano-Roman neighbors is certainly not unheard of, either: the Stilichian land reform programme has yet to impact Hispania nearly as much as it has Italy or even Gaul, so most of the rural populace still live as tenant farmers or outright slaves rather than freeholders (albeit ones with martial responsibilities to the state).

The Balthing princess Liuvigoto, sister of the first Hermenegild and great-aunt of the second, with her Hispano-Roman husband Agricolus of the Montes Aregenses. Intermarriage between the two peoples became far more frequent following the Visigoths' embrace of Ephesian Christianity from the late fifth century onward and the royal family was no exception​

That said, there do remain a few, subtler differences between the peoples still. In keeping with their martial tradition, Visigothic villas tend to be better-fortified than those of the Hispano-Romans, to the extreme that some of them (especially in the north of the kingdom) are accurately referred to as castellae (castles) by the Romans. Though virtually all Roman aristocrats (not even just those in Hispania) employ at least a few tough men as guards and enforcers on their estates, Goth-blooded magnates have a habit of employing a larger number of poorer Visigoths as a private retinue of trained and well-equipped warriors, who serve not only to protect their master’s estate from brigands and catch runaway slaves or coloni but also follow him to war when the King in the Baurg issues a call to arms. Visigoth nobility are also more inclined to give their peasants a way out of their humdrum lives of menial labor on the farm or orchard via enlistment during wartime, as described in greater detail further below. And as mentioned previously, the Visigoths remain quite proud of their history: men like Fritigern and Alaric may be considered villains or at best reluctant allies in Roman histories, but there are two sides to every story and they are the heroes in their descendants' retelling – indeed even as the Visigoths fade away as a distinct ethnic group, the enshrining of memories of these men's deeds in the emerging Romano-Gothic culture of Hispania will help set their descendants set themselves apart from the rest of the Latin West.

Hispano-Roman society thrives with minimal Visigoth intrusion in the cities and churches of the Spanish provinces, as the Visigoths’ descendants mostly live on their rural estates and only visit cities to purchase more slaves or exotic goods even after becoming much friendlier to the Hispano-Romans. Hispania’s cities, long protected from the worst ravages of these hard times by both the imperial legions & stout Gothic shields and connected to the Mediterranean trade network fostered by Roman authority, are safe harbors for merchants and skilled workers of all stripes: from humble bakers, to potters and metalsmiths, to the jewelers and manufacturers of garum (a fermented fish sauce) who command the highest prices for their services. The garum produced in the factories of Gades[2] in particular is considered the best in the entirety of the Western Roman Empire, so much so that unlike other varieties it is not watered down (turning it into hydrogarum) or mixed with wine (making it oenogarum) even at the Emperor’s table, and so naturally it is one of the kingdom’s most prominent exports alongside the gold of Hispania’s mines, which is always in demand at Roman mints.

These cities generally run themselves autonomously of any direct control by the Visigothic King, being administered instead by their bishops in tandem with elected councils representing the interests of the merchants & artisans. They are responsible for the maintenance of infrastructure (baths, sewers, tax offices, etc.) and law & order, the latter served by well-drilled and equipped militias recruited from each city’s upstanding citizens, and all of it paid for by the considerable wealth of these mostly-untouched urban settlements. The Visigoths have founded few true towns of their own, of which the greatest is the one which has sprung up around the Baurg – the fortress of their kings, founded in 444 – in northern Hispania, and which is called ‘Burgos’ in Espanesco: these are administered by royally-appointed prefects instead, and they are their king’s representative in all matters civil, judicial, and in taxation. But even Burgos pales in comparison to Toletum, which has blossomed into Hispania’s largest and most prosperous city over the past two centuries on the back of a great metalworking industry (fueled by the Visigoths’ own need for weapons and armor of high quality), and to where Hermenegild II and his court will likely move in the coming years. Its prominence and more central location (now that the Goths have lost the northern fringe of their kingdom to the Celtiberians and Aquitani/Vascones) makes it a more logical place to name the urbs regia or royal capital.

A garum factory in Gades, Baetica. The workers must bear the horrific stench of fermenting fish, for the end-product is sure to fill the community's coffers and their pockets with gold once it is shipped out to the Roman aristocracy elsewhere​

As the kingdom’s single greatest preserve of literacy and numeracy in addition to its inherent spiritual importance, the Ephesian Church in Hispania forms the third great pillar of Visigothic rule after the martial might of their nobility and the wealth of Hispania’s cities. As part of the amalgamation of the old Roman legal & political structures into the Visigothic kingdom, the Archbishops of Hispalis, Emerita Augusta and Toletum have effectively taken over the positions and functions of the old Roman governors of the provinces of Baetica, Lusitania and Carthaginensis respectively, becoming top-ranked civil and ecclesiastical governors in their own right who answer only to God, King and Emperor. In particular the Archbishop of Toletum has effectively become the King’s deputy in civil affairs as well as those of religion.

The closeness of the Church to the Visigothic Crown has lent the latter and its subjects a certain reputation for strong religious fervor among Rome's barbarian vassals: besides the churches they have built and the monasteries they patronize, the clearest expression of the Balthings’ newfound piety can be found in the words which adorn their royal banner – ‘Hoc Signo Tvetvr Pivs/Hoc Signo Vincitvr Inimicvs’[3] or ‘This sign safeguards the pious/This sign conquers the enemy’, referring to the cross (with the Greek letters for ‘alpha’ and ‘omega’ hanging from it in imitation of their overlords’ chi-rho) nestled in the heart of the Gothic eagle roosting on its sunset-colored field.

Below him and his peers, bishops have effectively substituted the mayoral position in Hispania’s large cities and it is not unheard of for parish priests to take up judicial responsibilities in the countryside, while the priests and novices of the towns also often double as bookkeepers, clerks, notaries, etc. Indeed, the Visigothic Crown’s small bureaucracy (which mostly tends to the royal treasury, archives and communication with the rest of the Empire) is comprised entirely of priestly clerks. Sales and donations of land by devout kings such as Hermenegild I have also made many an abbot not only rich, but also regional players in their own right with considerable estates attached to their monasteries. This pattern which repeats itself to varying but usually lesser extents in the other federate kingdoms save that of the Ostrogoths and the two Moorish states, where the Church commands similar influence due to those federates’ close proximity to two of the Heptarchic Sees, Rome and Carthage respectively.

Assorted treasures donated by Hermenegild I to the Archdiocese of Hispalis in the late sixth century, one of many signs that the zeal of recent converts has yet to fully burn out in the hearts of the Visigoths​

Aside from the coloni and slaves at the bottom of this societal ladder, another definitive loser under the internal arrangements of the Visigothic Kingdom are its Jewish population, who face unusually virulent anti-Semitism from their overlords and neighbors – while Jews can scarcely be said to be favored citizens in the Roman West any more than they are in the East, the Visigoths’ antipathy toward them is of a greater degree than virtually anywhere else in the Western Roman Empire, driven by multiple factors: religious (like other Christians of this time period, the Goths are firmly convinced that the Jews have collectively accepted blame for the judicial murder of Jesus Christ per the Gospel of Matthew, and are maddened by their refusal to repent & convert), cultural (most Jews try to avoid enlisting in the Gothic army to fight & potentially die in Christian wars which they consider to be of no benefit to themselves, arousing the contempt of the Visigoths who have inherited a strong sense of machismo from their Teutonic forebears) and economic (the Hispano-Roman magnates & merchants dislike the competition posed by Jewish-owned farms & businesses, respectively). When the Sabbatic Plague struck last century, they were blamed and attacked in pogroms of a larger number & intensity than in the rest of the Western Empire and its federates, and the Codex Visigothorum discriminates against the Hispanic Jewry to a greater extent (notably imposing an additional head-tax on them, simply because they are Jews) than the Corpus Juris Civilis it was based on.

Spoiler: Military

As there are three pillars to the Visigothic Kingdom of the seventh century so too can there be said to be three tiers to its army, based on the evolving proto-feudal hierarchy of their civil society and mirroring developments in the other Romanized barbarian kingdoms. The Visigoths themselves form the top tier, naturally: having transformed themselves from barbarian mercenaries in Rome’s employ into the military aristocracy of Hispania over the past two centuries, they are now as valuable to their Roman overlords in recruiting, organizing and directing Hispanic armies as they are at actually engaging in direct combat. All able-bodied Visigoth men must swear to rally to their king’s banner in wartime as part of their oath of fealty (without which they cannot legally hold land in the kingdom), and train at arms and horsemanship from boyhood in preparation for this role. Although in the past they were mostly an infantry-centric force, in more recent decades most Visigoths have made the switch towards mounted warfare instead, noting the effectiveness of Roman and African cavalry and taking advantage of the introduction of the stirrup.

As they primarily function as the commanders and elite cadre of the Visigoth army in the field, the nobility of the realm have increasingly adopted Roman military titles: most bear the title of Count (Lat.: Comes, Esp.: Conde), but those trusted lords assigned to guard the kingdom’s frontiers use Duke (Lat. Dux, Esp.: Duque) instead. Their junior officers (lesser landowners sworn to, and often related to, them) are typically referred to as Barons (Lat.: Baro, Esp.: Barón) or ‘soldier-servants’, and those men’s retainers are styled Knights in imitation of the post-sixth-century Roman heavy cavalry (Got.: Cniht, Lat.: Caballarius, Esp.: Caballero). Romans outside of Hispania refer to them collectively as the milites, the ‘proper’ soldiers of the Gothic realm, while those within usually call them juramentados or ‘the oathsworn’ (the Espanesco word for ‘oath’, juramento, coming from the Latin iuramentum).

Their equipment trends toward the heavier end, as each nobleman is legally mandated to purchase and maintain his own equipment as well as those of any armed retainers sworn to him: a helmet, hauberk, spear or lance, sword or ax, shield and horse are the bare minimum expected of any self-respecting Gothic warrior, who contribute to the Western Empire its second-largest federate cavalry contingent after the Moors and ahead of the Franks. Some Visigoths have adopted the lance and shock tactics too, following the lead of their Roman overlords after clashes with the Avars, but the preference of others (especially those whose estates lie in the mountains of central Hispania) is for an older style of warfare where they fling javelins at their foes before closing in with shorter, less brittle spears or swords. Of course, when battlefield conditions make it necessary they can & will dismount, and prove themselves no less adept in a shield-wall than their ancestors did at Abritus and Adrianople.

The cities of Hispania contribute the second grade of Visigoth soldiers and the majority of their infantry, though these men are rarely (if ever) actually Goths themselves: Hispano-Roman urban militias. Cities and large towns such as Corduba, Hispalis and Toletum are authorized by both the Emperor and the Visigoth King to recruit, drill and maintain modest numbers of soldiers out of their own citizenry for policing and defense purposes, and the former further authorizes the latter to add their strength to his armies in times of war. As times grow too dangerous for the cities to outfit these men like the lightly-armed vigiles (night-watchmen) of old, the urban militias of seventh-century Hispania are typically equipped in one of two ways at their employer’s expense: as pedites loricati (‘armored infantry’) with a helm, mail- or scale-coat, spear and shield, or unarmored ranged fighters – either arcuballistarii (crossbowmen) or sagittarii (archers with simpler self-bows). In their own common speech they are then asteros (Esp. for hastati or ‘spearmen’), ballesteros and sagitarios respectively; their Gothic overlords have noted that they are stout and disciplined defensive fighters, but grow less motivated the further they are deployed from home.

A mounted Visigoth 'juramentado', supported by two young sons of his, and a Hispano-Roman 'astero' (Lat.: 'pedes loricatus') of the seventh century​

The last and least of the Visigothic armies are its peónes – ‘pawns’, or more charitably ‘footsoldiers’. Despite centuries of Romanization, like many Teutonic peoples the Visigoths still disdain conscription, which they consider little better than slavery: instead when war comes, noblemen are known to sometimes (especially when the fighting is expected to be hard) assemble the fighting-age men working on their estates and offer them a shot at glory, plunder and freedom from their obligations as peasants in exchange for following him into battle. This same offer has been made to the coloni working on Hispano-Roman latifundia, to whom it is often even more attractive (on account of the generally harsher conditions on those plantations compared to the smaller and less punitive Gothic estates) despite the obvious risks to life and limb, with increasing frequency over the years as the Visigoths’ wars grow bigger and more dire.

The rabble who take up this deal serve the Gothic kings and nobles as scouts and light skirmishers, lacking the equipment or training to amount to much else, but if these peónes manage to survive they will return home with a share of the loot and entitlement to their cottage & the scrap of land they had previously farmed. It may not be much, but at least they will be able to call themselves free men with a free home rather than mere tenant farmers, and work for themselves rather than a landowner. Those landowners naturally do not consider this arrangement to be nearly as beneficial for themselves: to avoid giving their workers a chance to walk off the job, the Hispano-Roman aristocrats who can afford it will opt to pay the Gothic kings a tribute in gold (which can then be spent to hire & outfit mercenaries, hence its name in Espanesco – escudaje, the ‘shield-tax’) in exchange for having their estate’s coloni exempted from recruitment. Bishops and abbots do not have to worry about this tax however, as the Gothic kings have exempted them from taxation and their peasants from recruitment by default.

Tabletop model of a Hispano-Roman peón. He must be better off than his neighbors, to be able to afford a real javelin and not simply a fire-hardened & sharpened stick​

The double allegiance the Hispano-Romans and Visigoths owe to both the Visigoth kings and the Roman emperors present a serious complication for these men on those occasions where the two are at odds, such as the recent Aetas Turbida. As the King is physically closer to them and offers them a way out of their proto-feudal obligations on the latifundia by way of enlisting in his army, the poorer people of the countryside generally favor the Goths, while those of the cities and the upper class (who would like to avoid being subjected to anything resembling the Stilichian land reforms for as long as possible) lean toward the Augustus in Rome on account of their stronger socioeconomic ties to the rest of the Empire.

Conversely some Visigoths (especially from families living near the eastern or southern coast, where Roman civilization is still at its strongest, and the younger sons of nobles who stand to inherit little from their fathers) have elected to leave their people behind altogether and enlist directly in the Roman legions, as do urban Hispano-Romans who do not wish to answer to a Gothic commander (although that has become less of a problem with the latter’s steady assimilation into Romanitas). In the recent Time of Troubles as many Hispano-Romans fought for the sons of Florianus as did for Otho while a minority of Visigoths waged war on the former’s behalf in support of the claim of Constans and Adosinda to the Gothic crown, although they all eventually unified under Venantius’ banner after he managed to reconcile with the Visigoths as a whole.

A Visigoth officer of the Equites Honoriani Iuniores, a Western Roman cavalry unit​

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[1] Comparable to Old Spanish/Castilian.

[2] Cádiz.

[3] Historically a motto of the Visigoth remnant-kingdom of Asturias, and still preserved in the modern Asturian coat of arms.