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.