While in the West the Blues were returning in triumph from the fields of the Sarmatians & the Greens continued to scheme toward a comeback, the East continued its deadly struggle against the Avar-Turk coalition throughout all of 657. Although mercifully Heshana had been distracted by the sudden Muslim attack on their Lakhmid allies, Mouhan Khagan mounted relentless offensives against the territory which Tryphon had recaptured in the previous year, inflicting a heavy defeat upon the Eastern Romans at the Battle of Nicopolis in the spring and capturing Philippopolis with his mangonels in the summer. An eastward thrust out of Dacia led by his sons also succeeded in prying the entirety of Scythia Minor from Roman control, with even the provincial capital of Tomis[1] surrendering in the first week of June.
Tryphon did not intervene immediately against the Avars’ resurgence both because he was not entirely certain that Heshana Qaghan’s baleful gaze had been definitively lifted from Asia Minor in the first months of 657, and then because he wanted to launch a counteroffensive against the Turks after he became quite sure that they had been distracted. The Eastern Romans successfully pushed the forces Heshana had left behind under Törtogul Tarkhan across the spring and early summer months, inflicting an especially sharp defeat on the Qaghan’s eldest living son at the Battle of Laodicea Combusta. The Helleno-Isaurian general had managed to drive the Turks back to the upper reaches of the Halys in Cappadocia by the time the Avar pressure on his western flank could no longer be ignored.
Returning over the Hellespont in late June and definitively setting out from Constantinople with a rested & reinforced army in the following month, Tryphon first swung north to engage the sons of Mouhan Khagan as they descended from Scythia Minor. At the Battle of Anchialus the Romans sent Tulugui Tarkhan and Zuhui Tarkhan riding for the hills, after which they turned to engage Mouhan’s primary horde as it stormed on toward Adrianople and followed up with a second victory over the latter at Vereja[2]. Tryphon aggressively pursued Mouhan as he fell back, reeling, and heaped additional defeats upon the Avars at Diocletianopolis[3] and Storgosia[4]. Mouhan apparently had enough after these hard blows and sued for terms in November, and though Tryphon was willing to continue until he had pushed the Avars back over the Danube altogether, the regency council in Constantinople decided to take his offer out of fear of the lingering Turkic threat after the latter recaptured a poorly-defended Mazaka in the winter.
Heshana Qaghan, for his part, was having a little more trouble dealing with the Muslims than he (and most reasonable observers) thought he would at first glance. Despite being considerably outnumbered, Ubaydallah’s army trounced the old Turkic emperor’s vanguard at Anbar west of Ctesiphon and laid briefly threatened the city before being forced away by the arrival of Heshana’s main army. The Arab cavalry proved a match for their Turkic adversaries both at range and in close combat, and Ubaydallah was able to fight them to a standstill at the Battle of Saniyy to the south before falling back to win another victory outside of al-Hira, compelling Heshana to pull back to Babylon before 657 was half-over.
Ubaydallah's Arab horsemen galloping to engage Heshana Qaghan's Turks at Saniyy
The frustrated Qaghan drew additional reinforcements from that metropolis’ garrison before going back on the offensive, sending forth parties of Turkic horsemen to fend off Ubaydallah’s efforts to raid the Mesopotamian countryside while concentrating the majority of his army against that of the Muslims. At the Third Battle of al-Hira he no longer underestimated Ubaydallah and, after sacrificing a party of less reliable North Caucasians to persuade the Islamic general that his feigned retreat had worked, successfully drew the latter into a feint of his own, overwhelming the Muslim cavalry and camelry with sheer numbers and largely destroying them. Heshana went on to recapture al-Hira, while Ubaydallah escaped the slaughter with scarcely over 1,000 men and appealed to the Caliph for reinforcements – an appeal which was ignored back in the Holy Cities, for Qasim took his defeat both as a sign that he should not go to war with the Southern Turks just yet and an opportunity to dispose of some of his internal enemies before they could gain the prestige and followers to threaten a
fitna.
Out east, the Hunas continued to struggle against the South Indians. The losses they had incurred over the past decade of fighting made a strategy of simply grinding their foes down untenable, and the limitations on their resources became apparent with the Salankayana-led counterattack which reclaimed the ruined Nellore this year. Although simultaneous northward attacks by the Gangas and Chalukyas were brought to a halt in the hills of Desh[5], Mihirabhoja no longer had the men to respond both to these Kannada kingdoms and the Salankayanas, and all of his efforts to negotiate a separate peace with any of the three kingdoms failed in this year: per the holy oaths they had sworn to their gods and staked their honor on, the allies insisted that either he negotiate with them as a bloc, or else fight on to their deaths or the downfall of the Huna empire itself.
Toward the end of 657, the
Mahārājadhirāja surprised everyone – including himself – when he finally relented and agreed to enter peace negotiations with all three opposing kings. Apparently deciding that keeping half of his empire was better than betting and potentially losing it all, Mihirabhoja agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the kingdoms of the Deccan and Tamilakam and to no longer demand tribute from them, although he did successfully push for the return of any lands north of the Godavari River which might have been seized by the rebels. In truth, Mihirabhoja was not moved by the human cost of these wars (beyond whatever impact they might have had on his ability to achieve his strategic objectives) but more-so by yet another emerging threat on his northern frontier – this time it was the Tibetans who had taken notice of his difficulties and, with their own avenues for expansion elsewhere presently choked off by the dominance of the Later Han, now placed pressure on the Licchavi rulers of the Kathmandu Valley and the petty-kings of Monyul[6], both of whom were under the protection of the Hunas.
Although arguably the Indo-Romans bore the greatest responsibility in weakening the Hunas, Indians by and large credited Nandivarma and his cohorts for liberating the southern half of the subcontinent from the rule of the Eftal dynasts
The early months of 658 saw Tryphon launching an ill-advised attack toward Scythia Minor in spite of the ongoing peace negotiations, which was repulsed by Mouhan Khagan and his sons at the Battle of Odessus[7]. Mouhan nevertheless graciously carried on with the talks, while the regency council took the opportunity to weaken the newly-disgraced general by demoting him and instead appointing a figure more amenable to their interests, the Pontic Greek Nicanor, to replace him as the supreme commander of the Eastern Roman armies in the field. In their final treaty, the Avars agreed to return half the treasures and all the slaves they had taken in the recent campaign, and to leave all Eastern Roman territories save Scythia Minor. They also pledged not to attack this half of the Roman Empire again for five years.
Nicanor and Tryphon (whose popularity with the troops had made it impossible for the regents to dispose of him altogether) were sent eastward to retake Mazaka and evict the Turks from the remainder of Eastern Roman Anatolia, which at first they were able to do despite lingering mistrust & resentment between the generals and an attempted poisoning of Tryphon’s wine (which instead killed his aide-de-camp). However, these tensions and Tryphon’s growing antagonism toward the regime in Constantinople moved to the fore in a most dramatic fashion once Heshana Qaghan returned that summer after finishing off the remnants of Ubaydallah’s shattered host at the Battle of As-Sinafiyah. The Eastern Romans moved to meet him on the edge of the Cilician Plain north of Adana, this time fielding a smaller army than Leo II had at Karkathiokerta – about 12,000 strong – against a larger Turkic host of 35,000.
Despite this rather glaring numerical disparity, the Romans did enjoy a terrain advantage from forming up in the southeastern foothills of the Taurus Mountains. Alas, whatever theoretical chances they may have had against Heshana were quickly dashed when Tryphon decided to prioritize his ambitions and grudges over the security of the Eastern Roman Empire, and simply abandoned Nicanor to his fate after the latter came under attack by Heshana’s horse-archers. The majority of the Eastern Roman army followed Tryphon’s orders to retreat, leaving 4,000 men to be annihilated along with Nicanor himself in the Battle of Adana. From there, the rebellious general hastened back to Constantinople and effected a coup against the now-defenseless regency council, while Heshana eagerly followed to retake as much of Asia Minor for the Turks as he could.
The already hard-pressed Nicanor is alerted to Tryphon's betrayal and abandonment along with the majority of his army, guaranteeing his defeat and doom at the hands of the Turks
While Tryphon obviously could not kill the empress-mother Martha nor Patriarch Plutarch II, instead being forced for reasons of political necessity to merely confine them to indefinite imprisonment, the rest of their ministers were not so fortunate. The general began an exhaustive purge of the regency’s other ministers and court officials & bureaucrats whose loyalty he found wanting, a purge which soon escalated to also hunting down their families and confiscating their wealth & estates which he then dispensed to the population of Constantinople for almost every day in the month of August to curry popular favor.
Tryphon asserted himself as the new, sole regent for Constantine V and began to install his own relatives and subordinate officers (whom he knew he could depend upon, unlike the Constantinopolitan elite who viewed him as an uncouth half-savage from the province of Isauria) to fill the gaps created by the purges: most notably he awarded to his brothers Sisamoas and Konon the civil office of
magister officiorum and the high-ranking military one of
magister militum praesentalis (making him responsible for the defense of the capital), respectively. All the while, the Turks retook all the ground they had lost in Anatolia over the last few years and then some, seizing most of the Pontic coast from Trebizond to Sinope by the end of 658.
Meanwhile in India, with an uneasy peace settling along his southern frontier, Mihirabhoja marched his bloodied and weary armies to fight yet another war in the southern foothills of the Himalayas. The Tibetan ruler Mangnyen Tsenpo, now no longer the over-bold young conqueror who challenged the Later Han but a greatly aged and wizened leader, had directed his forces to assail both the Licchavi and Monyul, and overran both kingdoms with ease by the time the Hunas were in position to respond. Despite efforts by Buddhist monks to broker a peace between the two emperors, Mangnyen was unwilling to withdraw from his conquests and Mihirabhoja was unwilling to cede even more of his
mandala to outside rivals, so protracted hostilities between the two Buddhist great powers. This year, the Hunas’ edge in heavy cavalry and elephants gave them the victory in the Battle of the Chitwan Valley.
On the other side of the Earth, the Romano-Britons were making their return to the New World exactly ten years after their first disastrous expedition had set out. The
Riothamus Albanus had carefully prepared his second expedition, providing them with weapons and shields, twice the supplies of the first one and extra salt with which to preserve their provisions at great expense to himself, and also acquiring the services of two outcast Gaelic monks who had converted to Pelagianism and taken wives as translators. Three ships bearing seventy-two men, twenty-nine women and eighteen children set out for Londinium to Pensans and from there across the Atlantic, making stops on Paparia away from known Irish monastic settlements before continuing toward the Gaelic-held islands to the southwest.
The second wave of Romano-British settlers braving the bitter autumn rains of the northern sea on their voyage to the 'Isle de Sanctuaire'
Studiously avoiding interaction with the Irish settlers as much as they were able, the British eventually managed to row and sail their way to an island mercifully free of hostile Irishmen, which they dubbed ‘Isle de Sanctuaire’[8] – the ‘Island of Sanctuary’ – and sought to establish their colony. Unfortunately, they soon found that the Irish had good reason to not want to settle it: not dissimilar to the site of Porte-Réial, the colonists’ chosen sanctuary was a bitterly cold and windswept place, with little in the way of arable soil and stormy waters surrounding it which had threatened to sink many a ship. Before the end of the year they had already begun to look for an alternative, and their eyes were drawn further west rather than north to the even more frigid and lifeless shores they had passed on the way to Isle de Sanctuaire.
Come 659, the tenuous peace between the Avars and the Eastern Roman Empire held, as despite the new Eastern Roman regent’s opposition to the agreement in the first place Tryphon knew better than to actually break the truce while facing the resurgent Turks. The Avars, for their part, did not attack Thrace again in favor of refocusing their full might against the Western Romans: Mouhan Khagan persuaded his junior tarkhans and chieftans not to launch a rebellion against him for his extremely limited success against the Orient by assuring them that he had an ace up his sleeve for the fight against the Occident. Macedonia had been part of the Western Empire for fewer than thirty years at this point, with much of the Greco-Roman population still concentrated in or around large cities such as Thessalonica and Dyrrhachium while the countryside was inhabited chiefly by unassimilated Slavic tribes of dubious loyalty who had come with the Avars, so outside of those aforementioned fortified cities most of the diocese rapidly fell to Mouhan’s attack in the spring.
While the Western Roman Empire marshaled its forces, the Avars next turned their sights onto the Slavic federates who were holding Pannonia and Dalmatia for the Stilichians. Theodosius IV ordered Theodahad of the Ostrogoths to join the Horites, Dulebes and Carantanians in holding off Mouhan’s onslaught, which the Gothic king did without enthusiasm. In the first week of May their combined forces were able to thwart the Avar vanguard under the Khagan’s heir Tulugui Tarkhan at the Battle of the Upper Naronus[9], using the valleys through which the river flowed to neutralize the Avars’ cavalry advantage, but their victory proved to be short-lived – before the month had ended, the main Avar host had caught up to them and delivered unto the Roman federates a resounding defeat at the Battle of Aquae Sulphurae[10] to the north. Theodahad was able to escape with ‘only’ a quarter of his Ostrogoths killed, but only tatters remained of the Sclaveni contingents, and both the Dulebian prince Rodoslav and his Carantanian counterpart Dragomir were both killed.
By this time the
Augustus Theodosius had pulled together no fewer than sixteen legions from Italy, southern Gaul, Hispania and the cities of Dalmatia, further augmented to a total strength of 22,000 with auxiliary reinforcements supplied by the Bavarians and Alemanni and the remnants of the Sclaveni under the Croat prince Hranislav. However, he was suspicious of Theodahad II’s survival as well as that of a majority of his men, and ordered the Ostrogoths to remain behind at Aquileia – which seemed to have suited his stepbrother just fine. Confident that Theodahad would not dare attack him from behind so long as he kept the Ostrogoths’ heir hostage at Rome, the Emperor set out from the capital in mid-June (leaving his newly pregnant wife Sergia there to await his return) and marched to challenge Mouhan Khagan’s slightly larger army near a Slavic village which the Romans had recorded as ‘Cladosa’[11].
The battle which followed seemed to favor the Romans at first. Theodosius’ cavalry had the better of the clash with their Avar counterparts and Hranislav killed Tulugui Tarkhan with a spear to the face, for which he received the Emperor’s congratulations and authorization to pursue the retreating Avars. The legions and Teutonic federates also generally made quick work of Mouhan’s Slavic and Gepid infantry, and within a few short hours of combat it appeared as though the Romans had already won the day. Mouhan had intended for his horsemen to execute a feigned retreat and lure the Romans into a position where he could spring his large reserve into action, putting the pressure back on them, but Theodosius was ready and sent in his own reserve to finish breaking the Avar army.
Zuhui Tarkhan's second army bursting forth to charge the surprised Romans at the climax of the Battle of Cladosa
However, it was at this critical juncture that an entire second Avar army led by Zuhui Tarkhan, now his father’s new heir-apparent in the wake of his elder brother’s demise hours earlier, emerged from the south. Zuhui led the majority of his cavalry on a ferocious attack against Theodosius’ now-exposed command post, felling the Western
Augustus and most of his staff, before turning to roll up the rest of his army. The leaderless Western Roman force fought gamely on for another three hours, but toward twilight they were ultimately routed with grievous casualties – about half of their army was wiped out either on the battlefield or in the rout, including Hranislav of the Horites and his eldest son Hranimir, who tried to bring Mouhan Khagan down in a valiant but futile last charge fueled by desperation and despair.
The Avars had taken no small loss themselves, and Mouhan was left grieving for his eldest son as night fell. The true benefactor of this Avar triumph was Theodahad II: it was he who had been feeding a suspicious Mouhan information on Western Roman movements through Green agents (originally implanted under his father) who had managed to escape the earlier purges and continued to linger within the imperial army, making the Avar victory at Aquae Sulphurae and their ambush of Theodosius IV possible in the first place. With the Emperor killed and his army shattered, the Goth king took his own forces and swept into Italy, inciting his allies in Ravenna who’d been dispossessed or at least demoted after his father’s downfall to rebel against their replacements and open the gates to him. From there he threatened Rome itself, where Gaius Sergius and his daughter the Empress threatened to kill his heir – their hostage – Thorismund if he did not stand his forces down and present himself to face imperial justice.
To the astonishment of the Sergii, Theodahad threw these terms back in their face and boasted that he still had other sons to continue his lineage even if they did kill Thorismund, after which he continued to hurry onward to the Eternal City. Despairing, Gaius Sergius did go on to execute his now-useless hostage and spike his head above the Salarian Gate, but of course this did not dissuade Theodahad for the Ostrogoth king had resolved to pursue his revenge and the overthrow of the Stilichians at all costs. Rather than bother with a siege, the Ostrogoths and their Italian allies from Ravenna stormed Rome’s walls head-on, trusting that they could overcome the much-depleted garrison in the wake of the Battle of Cladosa and that said defenders were not numerous enough to even fully man the Aurelian Walls.
They were correct in their assessment, although the few hundred defenders left did put up a fierce enough fight to cost 2,000 Ostrogoths their lives. Theodahad prevented his men from sacking the capital since he had other intentions in mind for it, but he did explicitly order the death of Gaius Sergius (who was felled at the walls) and Theodosius’ brother Romanus, who had gotten as far as Ostia where he’d sought sanctuary in the Church of Saint Aurea[12] but was ruthlessly dragged out by Ostrogoth soldiers and beheaded as soon as they were sure they’d gotten off the church grounds. Theodahad found his uncle Julianus, grandson of the usurper Otho II through his elder daughter Juliana and another long-time hostage at the Roman imperial court, hiding in a cistern out of terror that he would either be killed by his Stilichian kindred or his Amaling ones; instead Theodahad compelled the Senate to hail him as the new Western
Augustus, although Pope Sylvester adamantly refused to do the same and instead locked himself in a tower out of disgust at the Ostrogoths’ violation of sanctuary to kill Romanus.
Theodahad explaining to a stunned Julianus that he will not be killed in the ongoing purge of the Stilichian imperial household and its loyalists, but actually elevated to the purple (even if only to serve as the Greens' pawn)
This usurpation of the purple by the Amalings (even if it were through a branch with Stilichian blood) was obviously poorly-received in Africa and Germania. Eucherius of Mauretania and the
magister militum Arbogastes both agreed to denounce Julian as an illegitimate ruler and Theodahad as a traitor, pledging themselves to the cause of Sergia Aurata’s unborn child should it turn out to be a son – though they did remain suspiciously silent as to what they would do should she give birth to a daughter instead. For her part, the fearful
Augusta had managed to flee aboard a ship from Ostia ahead of her far less fortunate brother-in-law, and opted to sail for Arelate rather than Carthage out of concern that her late husband’s paternal uncle might seek to usurp the throne for himself and kill her child should a son be born to her. In any case, Theodahad and his puppet Julian II now faced a geographically divided but still formidable opposition, and sought to shore up their position by arranging for the Amaling usurper’s marriage to the Visigoth princess Fredenanda toward the year’s end.
The Sabbatic dynasty in Constantinople did not enjoy much better luck than their Stilichian counterparts had this year. Many feared that Tryphon would seize the Oriental throne for himself, but few expected him to do it within a year of overthrowing Constantine V’s original regency council. Yet that was precisely what happened: after foiling yet another poisoning attempt by demanding his would-be poisoner, one of many court officials who disdained his usurpation of power, drink the drugged wine first and personally killing the man when he refused, Tryphon suspected that he would never be able to rest so long as Sabbatic partisans remained active – and that the best way to neutralize them would be to eliminate the male line of the dynasty founded by the conquering Sabbatius 160 years ago.
So it was that the Isaurian general had his Isaurian guards suffocate the fourteen-year-old Constantine to death in his bed on a February night. The demise of the Eastern
Augustus, who unlike Stilicho and Theodosius IV had never gotten a chance to rule in his own right, was followed within the week by the empress-dowager Martha’s ‘suicide’ (supposedly out of despair) by suddenly falling out of the window of the Blachernae Palace where she was being confined, while the uncooperative Patriarch Plutarch was said to have fasted to death in confinement after denying (or being denied, some might say…) food and water for ten days. Meanwhile Tryphon himself claimed the purple by virtue of his marriage to Helena, the late emperor’s younger twin and now the sole remaining member of the Sabbatic dynasty to still live, with the acclamation of both the army and the Senate of Constantinople (not that the latter had much choice) as well as a proper coronation once a more sympathetic Patriarch, Antony, had been invested.
Tryphon about to execute yet another one of his old rivals after catching the man trying to flee Constantinople in the wake of his coup
Tryphon did at least manage to win a few victories with which to vindicate his usurpation of the Eastern Roman throne, defeating the armies of Heshana Qaghan at Synnada[13], Dorylaeum and Amastris[14]: with these triumphs he halted the Turkic advance before it could penetrate into the mountains of the southwest or threaten the Bosphorus once more. However, the new
Augustus also lacked the manpower to launch any serious counterattack this year and instead had to wait until he’d assembled new legions in Achaea and Ionia for that purpose. Heshana took advantage of this lack of offensive action on the part of the still-scrambled Eastern Romans to drive the garrisons of Sinope[15] and Amisos[16] to surrender, eliminating the last major pockets of Roman resistance behind his lines and allowing him to consolidate his forces for another offensive drive in 660.
While the Roman world descended into civil strife and the Hunas continued to wrestle with the Tibetans along the roof of the world, the Romans’ British descendants strove to establish the first European colony on the New World’s mainland this year. Leaving the bitterly cold and inhospitable Isle de Sanctuaire behind, the colonists sent by Albanus made their way to what they soon learned was the mouth of a great river and there founded their new settlement[16], which they named Porte-Réial[17] with the hope that it would turn out better than the last colony to bear that name. They had also passed an island on their way to founding this new colony, which they dubbed ‘Isle de Sacradé-Sanc’[18] – the Island of the Holy Blood, so named after the many wild grapes there with which these Pelagians made the Communion wine for the first Christian service (heretical though it may have been in the eyes of the Ephesians, had they known of it at all) to be celebrated on the soil of the mainland.
The first months of 660 saw the Avars take hold of Roman Dalmatia and most of Pannonia, driving those Slavs who would not once more submit to death or slavery under their yoke deeper into the territory of the Bavarians, Lombards and Carantanians. Arbogastes took the initiative to prevent a domino effect and the complete breakdown of the federate borders which had been carefully preserved for almost two centuries in the east by swearing to assist the Sclaveni in recovering their territories, freeing their subjugated countrymen and shattering the Avar threat once and for all, in the meantime settling the Croat and Dulebian refugees in temporary encampments in Noricum and the territories of these neighboring federates – and dispensing bribes out of his own pocket to keep them neighborly for a time.
Despite this, Arbogastes did not act immediately, preferring to wait and gather his forces (including the survivors of Theodosius’ army) in the north until Sergia Aurata gave birth to her & Theodosius’ child. Consequently the entire first half of 660 was dominated by battles between the Greens and Eucherius’ Moors, who first contended for control of the high seas. Patriarch Boniface of Carthage firmly opposed Theodahad’s seizure of power and declined to recognize Julian II as
Augustus of the Occident, ensuring that his seat and its fleet would fall into the hands of Eucherius in short order, and the Stilichian king of Mauretania took full advantage of this gift as well as the loyalty of the Western Empire’s African legions. After a poorly-planned and over-hasty first attempt at landing on Sicily was repelled in the Battle of Lilybaeum, the Moors rebounded to thrash Theodahad’s fleet in the Battle of Malta and the Battle of Caralis[19].
Once the seas were cleared, Eucherius landed near Paestum in Lucania, completely bypassing his first intended landing zone in Sicily and catching Theodahad (who had expected him to stick to his original plan) off-guard. The Ostrogoths moved both their army in Capua and the one they’d sent down to Messina to await the Africans’ arrival in Sicily to try to crush Eucherius between them, but the imperial uncle was cannier and engaged them separately – first routing the southern army at Marathea[20], then turning to drive the northern one back toward Capua in retreat from the plains of Abellinum[21] soon after. As a rule, the African king executed any Ostrogoths who fell into his hands but allowed Italian legionaries to live if they would swear a holy oath on the Bible to fight for him, and following these victories the cities of southern Italy (where the influence of the Greens was not nearly so prominent as it was in the north) by and large fell in line behind him.
Unfortunately for both sides, it was then that Sergia Aurata delivered her child on a midsummer night: a daughter, quickly baptized as Maria. Naturally Eucherius took the opportunity to declare himself the rightful
Augustus, by virtue of being the most senior male Stilichian still standing. However Arbogastes declined to support his claim, instead asserting that his legitimate son Aloysius – as the son of Serena, elder sister to both Stilicho and Eucherius – should take up the purple instead, and fetching the young man from the monastery where he’d been shunted off to learn some discipline an entire year prior after managing to impregnate the elder Iazyges princess Aritê, one of his mother’s servants and the daughter of a merchant from Avaricum in rapid succession. Arbogastes married Argamênos’ younger daughter Leimeiê off to Lech II’s own heir Jaroslaw so as to reaffirm that alliance, then marched the combined might of the north and the Sclaveni (both from within and without Western Roman borders) southward to crush all opposition to his son’s claim.
Arbogastes informing Eucherius' envoy to leave Augusta Treverorum at once and tell his master that, in fact, the Dux Germanicae and all who followed him had chosen a much different course than the latter had hoped
Theodahad assigned garrisons to defend the Alpine passes from the Blues’ approach and also counted on Visigothic reinforcements sent by his uncle’s new in-laws to even the odds, but Arbogastes routed this new army and killed the Gothic count Ardabastus at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae[22]. While Aloysius was eager to fight his way through the Alps, his father went on to simply bribe the legion-and-a-half Theodahad had stationed to guard the pass at Alpis Cottia[23] into letting them pass and joining his ranks. Meanwhile, Eucherius defeated the Greens once more at Beneventum, where he took Theodahad’s brother Odotheus prisoner and then promptly executed him, and came to threaten Rome itself toward the end of summer.
By autumn, it was clear that the Green position had become dire and that while Theodahad may have gotten some momentary revenge on the Stilichians, he was now staring down utter disaster on two fronts – a thorny position Julian had likened to the killers of Venantius immediately after their great crime, writ large. While Arbogastes descended on Rome from the north with many thousands of Teutons, Sclaveni and Romano-Germanic & Gallic legionaries – certainly more that he could comfortably detach smaller forces to secure his supply line and tie up Green bastions such as Mediolanum while keeping a formidable main army with himself – Theodahad sent his other brother Modaharius to at least delay the Romano-Frank, turning his attention and the bulk of his remaining forces to Eucherius in the meantime. Under his leadership and driven by the sort of valor that could come only from desperation, the Greens managed to push their African foes back a ways at Teanum and Ager Falernus[24], but Eucherius’ Moorish skirmishers lured them into a disastrous defeat on the frozen Volturnus that winter while they were marching to relieve the besieged Capua. Theodahad threw himself into Eucherius’ ranks in despair and rage, killing several men before being brought low himself, and for his crimes the African pretender ordered his corpse to be quartered for public display at the forefront of his army.
While Eucherius was finish the struggle with Theodahad, Arbogastes had destroyed Modaharius’ smaller army at the Battle of Tarquinii[25] and stole a march on Rome itself, entering the Eternal City unopposed on Christmas Day while Eucherius and his men were still licking their wounds from the Battle of the Volturnus and had just convinced the defenders of Capua to yield to them. Julian II had yielded to them without a fight and begged for mercy, but Arbogastes had none of it to spare and put the usurper to death alongside Theodahad’s next eldest son Thrasaric. Pope Sylvester continued to decline to crown a claimant at this time even as the Senate rushed to transfer their allegiance to Aloysius with such haste that even the Romano-Frankish prince was disgusted at their sycophancy, and negotiations between the Blues and Eucherius broke down in a matter of days as neither side was willing to relinquish their claim to the purple, so it was clear the war would have to continue until one had been decisively beaten by the other. Though his position may have seemed weaker than that of Arbogastes & Aloysius, and there were serious concerns that the Stilichians’ time on the imperial throne might finally be up, the Mauri king was determined to at least not give up on Rome’s doorstep without even trying to fight – that after all would have been most disappointing conduct for a Stilichian.
Eucherius of Mauretania, aged 42 as of 660 AD, here seen pondering how to evict yet another treacherous faction led by a rival family of Romanized barbarians out of the Eternal City despite having a smaller and more war-weary army
With the Avars still digesting their new conquests and the Thracian frontier remaining somewhat stable as a result, the Eastern Romans had a much less ‘exciting’ 660 than their Western cousins did. Tryphon moved his Achaean reinforcements over the Aegean to join the new army he’d been building in Anatolia at Ephesus, and from there launched his planned counteroffensive against the Turks. He almost immediately ran into Heshana’s own renewed offensive however, and the two sides fought sanguinary battles east of Nicaea, then at Pessinus and Gordium. Each of these were hard-fought victories for the Romans, pushing the Turks well away from the Bosphorus and back into Galatia, but Tryphon’s losses were more grievous and less sustainable than those of Heshana. The Eastern Emperor’s greatest triumph this year thus was not won on the battlefield, but in the porphyry chamber of the Great Palace in Constantinople, where his young bride gave birth to their first child late in the year – a daughter, who he named Irene after his own Greek mother.
Further south, in this year Caliph Qasim faced the first instance of a specter that will haunt many more Islamic rulers for many centuries into the future: Muslims who thought themselves more Islamic than even he, the son of the Prophet. Some of Ubaydallah’s surviving soldiers, denouncing Qasim as a corrupt ruler who shamed his blessed father’s memory and ought to be replaced by someone more ‘righteous’ for his failure to back them up against Heshana’s Turks, made an attempt on his life as he was being carried from Mecca to Medina in a litter (old age having weakened him to the point where, despite having been a vigorous fighter in his youth, he could barely stand on his own these days).
One of Qasim’s wives shielded him from the would-be assassin who got closest (at the cost of her arm) and that man & his fellow conspirators were cut down by his guards immediately afterward. However, the incident left the aging Caliph shaken even as he denounced his near-killers as
khawarij (‘Kharijites’) – ‘outsiders’ who had exiled themselves from the Ummah with their treason. Accordingly, he began to gather the resources for a more serious northward offensive against the Turks in order to appease the assassins’ sympathizers; in this manner they thus essentially managed to realize their late master’s goal, though they had failed to end the Caliph’s life as they’d intended and even lost their own.
Further off to the east, the Hunas successfully wrested back the land of the Nepala from Tibetan hands in 660. In the spring Mihirabhoja defeated Mangnyen Tsenpo once again at the Battle of Devghat, after which he followed up with another victory at Kathmandu itself in the summer, and so sent the Tibetans fleeing from the valley altogether. However, the
Mahārājadhirāja was much less successful in challenging his northern foe for Monyul – there, come autumn the Tibetans descended upon the Huna army under Mirahvara as they rode through the Paro Valley and resoundingly defeated them in the Battle of Kyichu. Once again the heads of large Buddhist monasteries along the Himalayan border sought to arrange a truce and peace talks between the two emperors before even more Buddhist blood was unnecessarily spilled, but although both Mihirabhoja and Mangnyen agreed to the former once the snow began to fall, negotiations between the pair were unfruitful on account of Mihirabhoja’s refusal to lose even more territory by ceding even just Monyul to Tibet, ensuring that hostilities would continue on into the next spring.
Last of all, in April of this year Liberius was finally elected Abbot of Saint Brendan’s on Tír na Beannachtaí by his brothers, having first endured the death of Abbot Conall and then being defeated in his first attempt at the office by the latter’s handpicked successor Ruarc four years prior. Now he could finally realize his ambition to return to and more thoroughly explore what he believed with certainty to be the mainland of the New World, and indeed he immediately did so with gusto. Within eight months he had successfully retraced his steps to the cross he’d erected on his last visit 15 years ago, and was personally overseeing the establishment of a new Irish colony at ‘Cois Fharraighe’[26] (‘Seaside’), this time recruiting settlers from Ulster wjho'd been boxed out of the other preexisting Irish colonies so that this final quarter of the Emerald Isle might have a part (perhaps even the biggest) in claiming the New World for Christianity and the Gaels alongside their brethren. Toward the end of the year, while looking for the Wildermen he'd met on his first journey to the continent, the last grandson of Otho II reported his momentous discovery of an entire new continent to Rome – unaware that the Holy Father had
slightly bigger problems involving his kindred to worry about at the time.
Cois Fharraighe, the first-ever European settlement on the as-of-yet-unnamed landmass west of the Atlantic Ocean, built overlooking the great natural harbor which Liberius hoped to eventually transform into a greater port and doorway for further exploration & colonization of this region
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[1] Constanța.
[2] Stara Zagora.
[3] Hisarya.
[4] Now part of Pleven, Bulgaria.
[5] A hilly region of the Pune district in today’s Maharashtra, most famous for being the homeland of the Marathas.
[6] Roughly equivalent to modern Bhutan.
[7] Varna.
[8] Anticosti Island.
[9] The Neretva River.
[10] Ilidža, now a suburb of Sarajevo.
[11] Velika Kladuša.
[12] Now the
Basilica of Santa Aurea. The present-day basilica was built in 1483, but Ostia must have had a church dedicated to its patron saint since at least the 3rd century, when it was made into a bishopric.
[13] Şuhut.
[14] Amasra.
[15] Samsun.
[16] Cap-Diamant.
[17] Quebec City.
[18] Île d'Orléans.
[19] Cagliari.
[20] Maratea.
[21] Avellino.
[22] Aix-en-Provence.
[23] Col de Montgenèvre.
[24] Near Monte Massico.
[25] Tarquinia.
[26] Halifax.