PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
ERE really lucked out here from suffering even worse consequences of Sabbatius ambition. And Avars will find out that besieging Constantinople is not like besieging other cities.
Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!
- Thread starter Circle of Willis
- Start date
Well it sounds like 'Persia' is going to continue to be a cock-pit for some time to come, although the eastern empire has a very valuable breathing space. Have to see how the Turks now manage against the Chinese and the latter will definitely have a numerical advantage. Have to see whether the Hephthalite empire can manage a revival or will it basically be a solo Indian empire now?
Anthemius has done very good to manage what he has although he has had to be a lot more tolerant than his predecessor to hold onto territory in the east and south and that could well end up being deeply unpopular with a lot of the Ephesian hierarchy. Have to see how long that lasts.
A bit surprised that Anthemius kept Belisarius in what sounds like a totally isolated region surrounded by the Turks rather than withdrawing him and his forces to help on the main defensive position. Mind you it sounds like there are few actual Roman troops left with the general.
The eastern empire has been fortunate that so many things have happened to keep its opponents from attacking together rather than sequentially but it does mean it has to fight them one at a time over a longer period, which gives it little rest.
In the west Romanus is starting to rebuild the army and also realises the danger of the peasantry being undermined again but whether he can keep them in a decent position to prevent the aristocracy becoming too powerful. I wonder if he will aid Anthemius against the Avars?
So the Anglo-Saxons have split, only this time the Saxons rule the northern rather than the southern territories.
However at least for the moment they are willing to support each other against external threats. Are there possible further settlers to come over from the mainland or would religion now be a barrier to that?
Axum has found a measure of peace and unity, at least for the moment but they have lost both territory and the best chance their likely to get to aid their coreligionist in Egypt.
As usual a hell of a lot going on. Have to see how things develop.
Anthemius has done very good to manage what he has although he has had to be a lot more tolerant than his predecessor to hold onto territory in the east and south and that could well end up being deeply unpopular with a lot of the Ephesian hierarchy. Have to see how long that lasts.
A bit surprised that Anthemius kept Belisarius in what sounds like a totally isolated region surrounded by the Turks rather than withdrawing him and his forces to help on the main defensive position. Mind you it sounds like there are few actual Roman troops left with the general.
The eastern empire has been fortunate that so many things have happened to keep its opponents from attacking together rather than sequentially but it does mean it has to fight them one at a time over a longer period, which gives it little rest.
In the west Romanus is starting to rebuild the army and also realises the danger of the peasantry being undermined again but whether he can keep them in a decent position to prevent the aristocracy becoming too powerful. I wonder if he will aid Anthemius against the Avars?
So the Anglo-Saxons have split, only this time the Saxons rule the northern rather than the southern territories.
However at least for the moment they are willing to support each other against external threats. Are there possible further settlers to come over from the mainland or would religion now be a barrier to that?Axum has found a measure of peace and unity, at least for the moment but they have lost both territory and the best chance their likely to get to aid their coreligionist in Egypt.
As usual a hell of a lot going on. Have to see how things develop.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Indeed, Anthemius hasn't been totally bereft of luck so far. Much of what's in store for him & the ERE I can't spoil now of course, but what I can answer is that Belisarius is presently stuck in the far east due pretty much entirely to the Turks. Illig won't allow the ERE to send troops through Persia (in either direction) and Anthemius doesn't trust the Turks to not just jump & assassinate his best general if he tries to recall the latter through their lands, since after all they betrayed the Romans to start their conquest of Persia in the first place. Them letting Belisarius' family & some gold reach him might be a sign that these Tegregs are a bit more honorable than the Augustus gives them credit for, or just a one-off favor borne of pragmatism (it would be rather silly of Illig to break his peace agreement with the ERE by attacking them just after signing it, after all).
It'll be a while before the WRE is ready to put its new army to action - Anthemius will have to fight on his own for at least a little while, and since the deaths of the previous emperor & his entire family severed the most recent tie between the two imperial dynasties, they really should work on patching relations up in that regard too. In the interim, while the Avars probably can't take Constantinople head-on, rest assured they won't be a pushover for either Roman Empire either, and that they've got some plans for the rest of the decade.
The English royals haven't converted to Christianity just yet (although certainly an increasing number of their subjects have), and their conquest & holding-on to the Midlands area will have given them a considerable and considerably well-established population of Pelagian Britons to govern as well. They're still able to soak up migrants from the mainland in the meantime. But the Pelagian teachings are finding their share of listening Anglo-Saxon ears as the latter settle in next to their new Romano-British neighbors, and present unwelcome competition for the orthodox missionaries from the continent...
It'll be a while before the WRE is ready to put its new army to action - Anthemius will have to fight on his own for at least a little while, and since the deaths of the previous emperor & his entire family severed the most recent tie between the two imperial dynasties, they really should work on patching relations up in that regard too. In the interim, while the Avars probably can't take Constantinople head-on, rest assured they won't be a pushover for either Roman Empire either, and that they've got some plans for the rest of the decade.
The English royals haven't converted to Christianity just yet (although certainly an increasing number of their subjects have), and their conquest & holding-on to the Midlands area will have given them a considerable and considerably well-established population of Pelagian Britons to govern as well. They're still able to soak up migrants from the mainland in the meantime. But the Pelagian teachings are finding their share of listening Anglo-Saxon ears as the latter settle in next to their new Romano-British neighbors, and present unwelcome competition for the orthodox missionaries from the continent...
Ah hadn't realised this last point. That could complicate matters greatly.
Just wanted to say that I'm still following and enjoying this timeline and looking forward to more of it!
554-557: False starts
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
At its outset, 554 seemed like it would be a good year for the Eastern Romans. They had made peace with the Turks, Basil was making progress against Nahir’s second rebellion in Mesopotamia, and Anthemius was on his way to lift the Avar siege of Constantinople. Roman morale was further boosted when the Augustus crossed over the Hellespont on March 29, compelling Chiliantoubingdoufa Khagan to withdraw before even making it through the outermost Anthemian Wall rather than risk being crushed between the returning imperial army and the sallying garrison under Narses. For the first time, the Eastern Romans had made the despised and all-destroying Avars retreat.
But their jubilation did not last overlong: Chiliantoubingdoufa did not flee far, turning to face the pursuing emperor near the devastated Adrianople on April 4. The spring rains had hindered both the Avar and Roman cavalry equally, but in their furious clash the former still proved superior and put the latter to flight after drawing in & overcoming the imperial cataphracts with a feigned retreat, followed by a forceful charge led by Chiliantoubingdoufa himself. The Roman infantry withdrew in remarkably good order at first, but crumbled and was eventually routed altogether under the constant harassment of the Avar horse-archers and the charges of their lancers.
Anthemius retreated back to Constantinople, with Chiliantoubingdoufa in hot pursuit. In hindsight the Avars’ complete lack of a fleet made it nearly impossible for them to take the city (certainly they could not do it by starvation), though he had 30,000 men compared to about 12,000 Roman defenders (including the survivors of Adrianople), but that did not mean the Khagan had no options to make the Romans’ lives miserable. He began by flinging the heads of the Eastern Roman casualties from the earlier Battle of Adrianople at their still-living comrades as soon as he completed some mangonels, and eventually broke through the Anthemian Wall after four months. Only once his assault on the far stouter Theodosian Walls flounder horribly did Chiliantoubingdoufa realize the impossibility of what he hoped to achieve here, but nevertheless he persisted in carrying on the siege with the hope of extorting Anthemius of enough gold to justify this campaign.
An Eastern Roman legionary of Anthemius' army tries to stand his ground against an Avar lancer and Slavic auxiliary footman
While Constantinople had come under siege, the Western Roman Empire’s leadership was divided on how to respond. Magister militum Aemilian advised waiting and concentrating on continuing to build up their new army, which he did not believe to be remotely ready to take on the Avar hordes at this early point in time. However, the empress Frederica believed this to be a fantastic opportunity to avenge her brothers and people, and pressed Romanus II to attack the Avars at once – in the name of aiding his Roman brethren to the east, of course. Romanus believed both positions had merit, that his army wasn’t ready yet but also that he could hardly pass up a chance to regain Illyricum from the Avars while they were bashing themselves senseless against the Theodosian Walls, and sought a compromise as he usually did: he would not attack this year, but accelerate the build-up of his troops as quickly as humanly possible for a counter-invasion of the Avar territories in 555.
Further to the east, while Belisarius continued his defensive preparations (such as they were) in the Caucasus Indicus, renewed battles were raging around him between the Tegreg Turks and the Hephthalites. Illig set out to crush Faghanish in Bactra, establishing siege lines around the older Eftal prince before the mountain passes could clear enough for him to retreat ahead of the 15,000-strong Turkic army – which incidentally was not comprised solely of Turks (though they did make up its majority), but included a not-insignificant Persian contingent as well. Throughout the summer, Menua moved to try to assist his brother and catch the Turks in a pincer movement, but Illig’s scouts kept him well-informed and with ample opportunity to prepare.
When Menua first appeared late in the year to threaten Illig’s flank with 10,000 men, the Turks seemingly withdrew to the south in a hurry. The defenders of Bactra, eager to exact revenge on the opportunistic vultures who had been seizing land they believed to be rightfully theirs and who had kept them under siege for months, rushed forth to join their Hunnish brethren and crush Illig once and for all: as far as the brothers could guess, with the Tegregs now engaged in war against the Chinese, Illig and his army were all that stood between them and a reconquest of lands as far as Media. If they could just pin him down and decisively crush him on the banks of the Balkh River, they would be able to recover the western reaches of their patrimony and maybe even displace their eldest brother in the Hephthalite line of succession.
It was this overconfidence and eagerness to vanquish him as quickly as possible that Illig had bet on. He lured the Hephthalite army into attacking across the right bank of the Balkh with a feigned retreat, inciting the rival princes to pursue him all the way to his camp and to even start pillaging it (having promised his soldiers that whatever they lost there, they would be more than doubly compensated when they took Bactra following their battlefield victory) before leading a counterattack against their disordered & overextended forces. The White Huns were utterly defeated, Faghanish killed in single combat with the Turkic prince, and to add insult to injury their baggage train was pillaged by the victorious Turks before Bactra, too, fell and was sacked. Menua was left alone to gather the scattered survivors of the Eftal army and limp back to the west & south to avoid Belisarius’ territory, further harried by the Turks as he went, even as his father and brother were gaining the upper hand against the Guptas.
The Tegregs prepare to launch their counterattack against the Hephthalites currently burning and looting their camp
In an inversion of the situation of the Hephthalite royal family, Illig’s kindred were floundering against the Chen dynasty’s massive armies even as he secured Bactria and Sogdia for their people with his victory at the Battle of Bactra. Early on in 554, Istämi Khagan was trounced in the Battles of Guazhou and Yumen Pass within days of one another, while his son Issik was still crossing the Tian Shan. Even when they did unite their armies while Emperor Xuan had to detach elements of his to garrison the forts & towns he had retaken, father and son were still defeated by the latter’s 120,000-strong host (outnumbering theirs by almost 3:1) in the Battle of Yizhou[1]. By the year’s end, the Chinese had made good progress toward securing the Silk Road while the Turks had been reduced to guerrilla warfare of a sort, harassing their lumbering army’s supply lines and forward detachments in fast-moving columns of horse-archers rather than risking another head-on engagement against such a behemoth opponent.
The spring of 555 saw the Western Romans beginning their attack against the Avars, whose strength was still heavily concentrated around Constantinople. Aemilian led a force of 23,000 (including 6,000 cavalry) from Ravenna into Avar-occupied Dalmatia, battering his way past the resistance being mounted by newly-settled Sclaveni at the Battles of Andautonia and Burnum[2]. By June, the legions had recovered large parts of western Dalmatia and were inching toward Sirmium and (aided along the coast by the Western Roman navy) Diocleia, which they hoped to recover to create a land bridge from Histria to the Roman possessions in Macedonia.
In the face of this unexpected incursion, the irate Khagan did not at first wish to abandon his siege of Constantinople. He relented only after a last assault on the Theodosian Walls in June met with bloody failure, coupled with Anthemius’ stubborn refusal to even treat with him – much less to offer him tribute to leave the city and the Eastern Romans alone – while the Western Roman advance continued mostly unabated, and the Slavic chiefs in the west threatened to begin negotiating with Aemilian. However, after the Avars left Constantinople (with the Eastern Romans pursuing them and recovering territory as far as Philippopolis), they did not move to immediately counter the Western Romans head-on. Instead, although Chiliantoubingdoufa (now increasingly referred to simply as ‘Qilian’ by the Romans) detached a force of 10,000 under his kinsman Buluzhen to hold off Aemilian’s main army, he took the bulk of his horde southward into Western Roman-controlled Macedonia and Achaea.
Aemilian engaged Buluzhen’s division at Domavia, testing the new cavalry legions for the first time that July. The equites sagittarii and caballarii graves both acquitted themselves well in combat against their Avar counterparts, who were surprised at the speed with which the Romans had adopted their technology and the Roman cavalry’s new ability to fight them on even ground, and although the arcuballistae turned out to lack the punching power to stop an Avar charge outside of very short range, Buluzhen himself was shot to death by several Roman crossbowmen while trying to reorganize his men for another such attack. The Battle of Domavia thus ended with some 3,000 Avar casualties compared to under a thousand on the part of the victorious and more numerous Romans – a rousing bit of good news. ‘Tragically’, the Frankish petty-king Chlodio of Durocortorum was one of those few hundred Roman casualties: after receiving the news, his brother (and close ally of Aemilian) Childeric of Neustria annexed his kingdom on the grounds that he’d left no sons – only two daughters, who he would conveniently take into custody at once – thereby reuniting the southern half of the Frankish kingdom once ruled by their father Ingomer. In a more genuinely unfortunate development for the magister militum, he would never have much opportunity to celebrate either his victory or his ally’s gain, as by the time of his triumph the Avars’ main host had placed Thessalonica under siege and burned & pillaged as far as southern Thessaly.
The Battle of Domavia was the new Western Roman cavalry's baptism by fire, and by all accounts it was a test they passed with flying colors
Aemilian was at a quandary: if he continued to press the attack against Sirmium & Singidunum, he would leave the southern reaches of the Diocese of Illyricum vulnerable to continued Avar devastation. If he moved to assist in the defense of Achaea (all Macedonia outside of Thessalonica having been overrun at this point), he would obviously be unable to follow up on his success at Domavia. In the end though, the choice was not his to make. Emperor Romanus commanded him to move to Athens by sea and stop the Avars’ main thrust by all means necessary, reasoning that recovering eastern Illyricum should be easily done if the Avars’ backs were already broken in Boeotia or whereabouts. Even if Aemilian had considered the possibility that this was a Green machination or even Romanus’ own initiative to punish his power-play among the Franks, ultimately he obeyed the command (since to not do so would have meant abandoning a large number of Roman citizens to their deaths or enslavement and defying the well-established Augustus) and boarded ships bound for Athens along with 15,000 of his men, leaving the rest to hold their gains in Dalmatia.
This Western Roman army disembarked at Piraeus late in the year, just in time to relieve the Avar siege of Athens. Qilian Khagan fell back into Boeotia, but was again forced to withdraw from battle at the village of Lebedea after Aemilian sent a division of lightly-armed Moors to scale the nearby Mount Helicon and threaten his flank through the abandoned Valley of the Muses. The Roman generalissimo had also further exploited his naval supremacy by detaching a 3,000-strong force to reach & occupy the pass of Thermopylae in hopes of cutting off the Avars’ route of retreat. In turn, Qilian surprised him by refusing to attack the Western Romans at such a favorable position, and instead move his horde through the Aetolian mountains toward the year’s end, aided by a mild winter and the not-insubstantial number of Slavs who he’d left behind there to secure his army’s rear – and who consequently began to permanently settle down in that region with their families.
Off in the east, Belisarius petitioned Illig for permission to leave his mountain strongholds and return to Roman territory. The Turkic prince was interested in this proposal but demanded the immediate handover of Roman Paropamisus first, which Belisarius thought was an entirely sensible tradeoff but one which he had no authority to grant: instead, he recommended that Illig make this demand to the Augustus Anthemius. Unfortunately, this was also the year in which Basil the Sasanian passed away at the age of 75, and fighting in Mesopotamia intensified as the rebel Nahir gained the advantage over his grandson & successor Vologases – much of the Mesopotamian and Assyrian countryside fell to the Nestorian insurgents even though the Romans continued to hold the major cities, waterways and roads. In those chaotic circumstances, the Turkic messengers were murdered by brigands in Nahir’s service as they tried to make their way to Constantinople.
An irate Illig demanded that he be allowed to march into Mesopotamia to punish the killers, a demand which Vologases advised Anthemius to turn down – despite his mounting difficulties against Nahir – out of (not entirely unjustified) worry that the Turks were just looking for a pretext with which to conquer Mesopotamia & Assyria. Since his request had been rebuffed, Illig decided he would not allow Belisarius to exit Paropamisus after all and increasingly turned a blind eye to his warriors when they wanted to raid Mesopotamia. The aging general of the Orient thus ended up spending another year in the Caucasus Indicus, where his son Porphyrius married Varshasb’s daughter Perwane and where he had an excellent seat to watch as the Tegregs consolidated their hold on much of Bactria, while Menua assumed a defensive posture in Gedrosia with his few remaining troops. The Eftal prince was counting on his father and oldest brother returning west to aid him, having been encouraged by news that they’d taken the upper hand against the Guptas and were besieging Pataliputra to the point that he did not immediately retreat over the Indus following last year’s disastrous defeat in the Battle of Bactra.
Sassanid court depiction of a battle between Christian Mesopotamians and Turkic raiders
To the northeast, the Chinese continued their push all the way to the western edge of the Tarim Basin, receiving the submission of the kings of Khotan and Yarkand (who had only recently switched their allegiance from the Hephthalites to the Turks). This brought Chinese authority to the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains for the first time since the Han Dynasty, but also overextended even the massive armies brought forth by Emperor Xuan and gave Istämi Khagan – who Xuan thought had been utterly defeated after the Battle of Yizhou and the fall of the Hexi Corridor – new opportunities to concentrate his horde against the divided and increasingly scattered Chinese garrisons. With this strategy and a second wind provided in part by manpower contributions from the Chuyue and Khazar tribes, he was able to retake the Hexi Corridor and cut the emperor off from his own empire.
A new batch of newcomers brought a war of their own to the New World in the summer of 555, as well. Inspired by the example and tales of Amalgaid, several new fianna sailed for the Insula Benedicta this year, only to find that he and most of his warriors had settled down. Now that they had permanent homes and families of their own to worry about, the original band of Irish warriors had little desire to venture far from the homesteads they had built between Brendan’s monastery and Ataninnuaq’s camp, and declined to join the newcomers on their own adventure. Refusing Brendan’s counsel to similarly settle the land and live peacefully next to the local Wildermen, the newly arrived Irishmen elected Óengus mac Ailill as their leader and struck out on their own in a southeastward direction from the monastery.
It was not long before the Irish warband ran into more Wildermen[3], but having brashly neglected to take Brendan or any of the monks along as translators, their meeting was not fruitful in the slightest – indeed, it did not take long for mutual confusion and suspicion to escalate to violent hostility. One hot-blooded and reckless young Irishman interpreted his similarly ornery counterpart among the natives as attempting to steal his weapon during a shouting match, and ‘gave’ it to him blade-first. As had been the case with Amalgaid’s battle against Ataninnuaq, the Irish prevailed against their enemies primarily on account of their technological advantage, though this time they had numbers on their side as well.
Óengus would go on to establish his own kingdom south of Brendan and Amalgaid’s community[4], not only claiming the wives and daughters of the men his fianna slew for himself and his warriors but also inviting additional families from Ireland to join them (and to especially bring women for the benefit of those warriors who did not get, or refused, the Wilder-women). To anyone who would make the journey to this bountiful new-found land the new petty-king promised farmland, freedom and more fish than they could possibly dream of. Thus was another Irish statelet on the Insula Benedicta born, and one with a far less positive relationship with the indigenes than what Brendan and Amalgaid had worked for.
Óengus and his men building a fort on the east side of the Insula Benedicta, where they intend to settle and from which they intend to rule the local Wildermen rather than live alongside them as peaceful neighbors like Amalgaid and Brendan
Aemilian waited until the snows cleared in spring of 556 before once more pursuing the Avars, who by this time had retreated to the plains of Thessaly. Slowed by Slavic attacks as he pushed north, he nevertheless managed to reach and engage Qilian Khagan’s 24,000-strong horde in June that year. Unfortunately the Thessalian flatlands were very favorable ground for the Avar cavalry, who still dwarfed their Western Roman counterpart in numbers (if no longer quite as much as they had in skill and quality of equipment). The Battle of the Plains of Thessaly, fought southwest of Mount Olympus on land where the Greek gods and titans were said to have clashed for the final time, ended in a major Avar victory, for the 2,500 Roman heavy cavalry Aemilian had with him were still too few to withstand the nearly 10,000 Avar lancers Qilian fielded and his crossbowmen were decisively outshot by the Avar horse-archers.
It was a testament to Aemilian’s own skill and the discipline of the Roman legions that they still managed to withdraw from the field and into Boeotia through the Aetolian mountains in sound order, despite being harried by the Avars & Sclaveni that entire time, which whittled their numbers down from 9,000 (out of 14,000 to have fought at the Plains of Thessaly) to 7,000. Nevertheless, upon returning to Athens he was excoriated by the emperor for having lost half of the army he took to the battlefield and relieved of command. Instead, since Fritigern’s consulship was ending this year, the Visigoth king was appointed magister utriusque militiae in Aemilian’s stead; ostensibly to soothe tensions and reward the soon-to-be ex-magister-militum, but more probably to keep him in Rome and thus firmly under Romanus’ thumb, the Romano-Frank was in turn made the Western Roman Consul for 556-557.
As the Eastern Roman army under Anthemius was threatening to push past Thrace, Qilian Khagan opted not to follow up on his victory in Thessaly and invade Boeotia & Attica once more in favor of attacking his enemies to the north instead. He led the Avars to another victory at Maronea, driving the Eastern Romans back toward Trajanopolis before stopping to sue for terms late in the year – the Slavs under his authority warned him that Fritigern was massing for another attack, not from the south but from the west. But the Avars were not the only ones to have to worry about an enemy attacking them in the flank this year: in October, the Garamantians too fell onto the Eastern Romans’ already-overloaded plate. Though they had long enjoyed a peaceful relationship with the Roman Empire (to whom they traded large numbers of Troglodyte[5] slaves), the depletion of the underground water reservoirs which their heavily-irrigated farms depended upon caused the Garamantian kingdom to decline and fragment, and those of their people which didn’t just scatter to the desert winds had begun to invade Roman Cyrenaica in search of new homes.
Their water supplies drying up and their homeland turning from well-irrigated farmland into desert forced the Garamantians to change from Roman friends to foes, and migrate into Roman territory to survive
Even as Thrace continued to be ravaged by warfare and Egypt began to burn anew, Mesopotamia and Assyria still did not go untroubled, for in this year Nahir captured Karka and was again proclaimed king there. Vologases meanwhile was struggling to hold the cities of Mesopotamia, and after being tipped off by Exilarch Ahunai that the Jews of Ctesiphon were once again considering defecting to the rebellion, pre-empted any such subversion by taking hostages from the leading families of that city. The Turks were also beginning to cross the Tigris in greater numbers, although since their attacks stopped in the marshes of central Mesopotamia, the Nahir-supporting regions felt the worst of these raids and the Eastern Romans were disinclined to engage the Tegregs in open warfare once more. It was under those troubled circumstances that Vologases appealed to his cousin the Augustus to march back into Mesopotamia and help him restore order before the situation deteriorated to the point where Illig might be tempted to renew efforts to conquer the region for the Turkic Khaganate.
In the distant Orient, 556 proved to be a year of seismic events. In India, the Hephthalites finally defeated the Guptas once and for all, capturing and sacking their capital of Pataliputra for the last time. The Samrat Madhavagupta was killed in the fighting, and those sons and grandsons of his who did not immediately perish with him were put to death by the Hunas afterward; only the women of his household were spared, to be gifted to the princes and captains of the Eftal army. The fairest of his daughters, Madhavadevi, was married to the Hunnish crown prince Baghayash in an effort to solidify the White Huns’ claim to be the Guptas’ successors as rulers of all India, and to more firmly bind northeastern India to Eftal rule. This last victory and the suppression of the Guptas ensured that the Hephthalites would not lose their Indian bastion even as their homeland fell under Turkic rule: indeed Mihirakula’s reign would in hindsight be marked as a transitory period between the rough-riding, hard-fighting Eftal conquerors of the past who governed huge but unstable realms and the increasingly Indianized, stable and firmly sedentary Hunas of the future.
To the north, beyond the snow-capped Himalayas and Kunlun Mountains, the Turks were hard at work setting off their own geopolitical earthquake. Istämi Khagan aggressively harried the Chinese as Emperor Xuan sought to pull his overstretched armies back together and fight to reopen the Hexi Corridor, resisting the temptation to pillage northern China in favor of concentrating their smaller forces against the Chinese hosts in the field. The constant Turkic attacks kept the Chinese off-balance and unable to consolidate their forces without first being significantly whittled down, culminating in the massive Battle of Jiaohe[6] on August 28.
The Tegregs assailed the Chinese army as it crossed the Silk Road and neared the western entrance to the Hexi Corridor. Although Emperor Xuan had nearly three times the Turks’ numbers – 85,000 men to their 30,000 – the Chinese did not expect to be attacked here, their scouts having been disposed of in earlier skirmishes with the Turkic light cavalry while the chief magistrate of Jiaohe (whose son had been taken hostage by Prince Issik) deceived the emperor and told him he had nothing to worry about as he passed by the city. For three days the Turks mounted hit-and-run raids against the strung-out Chen army as it pressed ever forward, the gates of Jiaohe having been shut behind them, and peeled away multiple regiments & thousands of men at a time with feigned retreats, only to pepper them with arrows the entire time and eventually destroy them utterly in the Tarim sands.
On the third day of the battle, Istämi’s own scouts informed him that the frustrated Emperor Xuan was riding at the head of the Chinese column, no doubt to direct forward elements of his army against the Turks and eager to leave the Tarim behind. The Khagan seized upon this opportunity and threw everything he had at his disposal against the Chinese vanguard, isolating it with Issik’s help and scoring a decisive victory over the emperor and actually capturing Xuan himself. Xuan proceeded to offend Istämi with his haughty and imperious conduct even while in chains, bluntly rebuffing the latter’s attempt to negotiate by stating that he would sooner die than bow his neck before a savage from the snowy wastelands north of the Middle Kingdom, after which the Khagan obliged him by running him through and sticking his head on a lance to frighten his remaining troops. Said remaining troops still comfortably outnumbered the Turks, but they were weary and thirsty after days of marching under the desert sun and enduring constant attacks by the Turks; the death of their leader shattered their morale and the Turks easily scattered them with a deadly charge, the scattered survivors who weren’t hunted down or surrendered and joined the Tegregs going on to most likely die in the eastern Tarim desert.
Not all of the Chinese captives were as stubborn as their emperor. These defeated officers have bent the knee to Prince Issik and added their expertise to the Tegreg armies, even if it likely means fighting their fellow Chinese in the future
The Tegreg victory in the Battle of Jiaohe not only decisively reversed the tide of the Chen-Turkic war, but it also destabilized China itself, as Emperor Xuan’s younger sons challenged his designated heir Prince Yuan (now nominally Emperor Jing) over the succession – a mirror to the civil war he had fought with his own brothers at the start of his reign. Istämi took the opportunity to freely reconquer Gansu and give his men leave to pillage northern China to their heart’s content before returning southwest to aid his elder son against the White Huns, although he had learned from past Turkic misadventures into ‘China proper’ not to go too far or to commit to any conquest of the lands beyond Gansu this time (much to the annoyance of his more aggressive son Issik). Goguryeo, inadvertantly released from Chinese suzerainty along with its fellow Korean kingdoms by this latest Chinese civil war, also maneuvered to retake its western territories from the fraying Chen dynasty.
Beset by increasing troubles in Mesopotamia and now the Garamantians as well, Anthemius had little choice but to agree to negotiate in the early winter of 557, even if the terms he was to reach would certainly be unfavorable. The Avars expanded well into the Diocese of Thrace, leaving the Eastern Romans with only the provinces of Europa (including of course Constantinople itself) and Haemimontus south of Deultum[7], but settled for a more modest financial tribute than Qilian had initially sought and promised a ten-year moratorium on raids into what remained of Roman Thrace (unless the Eastern Romans were to do something to mortally offend them, naturally). By the time these negotiations had concluded, the Garamantians had already sacked the long-declining city of Cyrene, which contained but a fraction of the population – and goods to plunder – it used to have in its imperial heyday before the Kitos War.
His eastern flank secured for now, Qilian turned his full attention back to the west. Leading an army composed of the re-consolidated garrisons Aemilian had left across Dalmatia, his own Visigoths and assorted reinforcements from other parts of the Western Roman Empire, Fritigern had managed to recapture Sirmium and Singidunum (or rather, what was left of them) from the Avars by mid-summer. Qilian wasted no time in riding to engage Fritigern northwest of Naissus: there the vengeful and less-disciplined Gothic contingents were drawn out of formation by Avar feigned retreats and decimated in the Khagan’s furious counterattack, with the magister militum and Visigoth king himself being felled by half a dozen arrows. Carpilio, as Fritigern’s deputy, was responsible for managing the retreat and ensuring that there was still a Western Roman army at all by the day’s end.
A Turkic Avar horse-archer and Slavic nobleman with their Ostrogothic captive following the Battle of Naissus, 557
While the Greens were left reeling from the backfire of their latest maneuver and the demise of their strongest representative at this point in time, Romanus had little choice but to give Aemilian his old post back. Fortunately he proved a more loyal man than his father, and attended his duties rather than immediately attempt to overthrow the emperor who had sacked him just a year ago. He and Carpilio were tasked with halting the renewed Avar onslaught, which now threatened to roll back all of the Western Romans’ recent gains and then some. This was no easy task after the beatings they had been taking, even with newly trained & attired cavalry legions joining them, and the Romans suffered more reverses throughout the summer which forced them to retreat almost all the way back to the Carantanian lands – though mercifully the Dinaric Alps kept the Avars’ attention focused on the Pannonian-Dalmatian plain and away from the recaptured cities along the coast. Worse still, the Garamantians had begun to attack the Western Empire’s Tripolitanian region in this time as well.
At last, Aemilian and Carpilio would make their stand on the banks of the Dravus, north of Celaia, where the Illyro-Roman villas remained in ruins even as Slavic villages had begun to spring up around them[8]. They had with them 12,000 men, including the Italian clibanarii and 2,000 Sclaveni under Ljudevit’s direction, with which to face 20,000 Avars on that chilly September day. Qilian Khagan had sent some of his own Slavic chieftains to treat with the Carantanian prince and persuade him to return to the Avar side, but whether for honor’s sake or out of fear that Qilian would just kill him for his earlier betrayal if the Avars should prevail over the Romans, Ljudevit steadfastly refused to abandon his new overlord, for which the Roman chroniclers lauded him as the first among the righteous Sclaveni.
The Western legions and their federates held firm in the face of both Avar charges and feigned retreats alike this time, and with some help from the Roman crossbowmen Ljudevit’s warriors acquitted themselves well against their own Slavic brethren. Crucially Carpilio was able to overpower Qilian’s own heavy cavalry at the head of a great wedge of the new Roman cavalry, spearheaded by himself and the clibanarii, after which the Khagan ordered a retreat. The Romans did not pursue their enemy far: both the Blues and the Greens urged the Augustus not to push his luck, and given the course of the war thus far and the Garamantian attack in the south, he was not willing to argue.
The Battle of the Dravus demonstrated the importance of the improved Western Roman heavy cavalry to combating the Avars. Had Romanus waited until he had more of these men at the ready, his legions may have been able to affix the border much further to the east
While the Garamantians were besieging Leptis Magna, Romanus sued for terms and Qilian, who was still recovering from the bruising he’d taken at the Dravus, was inclined to hear him out. In any case, it was now clear to Romanus that he would have to properly prepare for the next round of hostilities with the Avars instead of opportunistically rushing them with a half-baked army at best; and that in spite of his resentment toward the Eastern Romans for bringing this new horde down on his borders, much as had been the case with Attila, defeating Qilian would almost certainly require both halves of the Roman Empire to work together – their separate and uncoordinated strikes against the Khaganate just now had done the West very little good and the East, none at all.
Thus did the Western Romans and Avars basically exchange territory at the end of 557, though the trade favored the latter by far. They got most of Macedonia (sans Thessalonica, which stood unconquered) and Achaea down to Aetolia, while the Western Romans hung on to western Epirus, preserved a southern border in the Phthian region of southern Thessaly, and regained a stretch of the Dalmatian coastline: large numbers of Illyro-Roman legionaries and their families, as well as some Ostrogoths, would be resettled at Iader[9], Spalatum[10], Narona and the isle of Laus[11] near the former site of Epidaurum[12] (which however remained under Avar control and Slavic settlement) over the rest of the century. Ljudevit was rewarded with the rank of dux and the modest expansion of federate state toward and into the Dinarides, following the course of the Corcoras[13] southward and being granted port access at Tharsatica[14] while also stretching eastward to Aquama[15]. As these ruined towns were resettled by Slavs, their new denizens would give them Slavic names to replace the Latin ones, though the old names remained in use by imperial Roman cartographers.
Dux Ljudevit and his bodyguards inspecting a newly-built Carantanian settlement in the lands they'd won under the Western Roman aegis
In the distant east, the arrival of the Eftals’ full strength in Bactria and Anthemius’ return to Mesopotamia compelled Illig to cease raiding the latter region and concentrate all his attention against the former. In that endeavor he would receive aid from his kin, who after all no longer had to worry about China for the foreseeable future. His brother Issik rejoined him with 15,000 horsemen mid-year at the order of their elderly father, and together they managed to stop the Hunnish advance and claw Bactra back from Mihirakula’s forces. To eliminate their second front and be able to concentrate worry-free against the Tegregs themselves, Mihirakula and his sons appealed to Belisarius for a truce, and even sent emissaries by sea to Roman Egypt to seek a peace settlement leaving what remained of Roman Paropamisus alone with Anthemius III: having no real reason or desire (or even ability, in Anthemius’ case) to keep on fighting the White Huns at this point, the Romans proved accommodating to these requests, bringing a formal end to the over-half-a-century of hostilities between their peoples which had begun with Sabbatius and Toramana long before Anthemius was even born.
Finally, far beyond the Tian Shan Mountains, like its new continental trading partner and burgeoning role model, Japan was descending into a civil war of its own. The Great King Heijō’s efforts to centralize authority into his capital at Asuka and to replace the kabane, or hereditary nobility, with appointed governors unsurprisingly provoked backlash from those very same aristocrats. Although the spread of Buddhism had also created fault-lines within the nobility (as it did across Yamato society as a whole), both Buddhist and Shintoist kabane could be found on both sides of this brewing conflict, united either in defense of their privileges or the Great King whom they had sworn to serve. Geography was a more important determinant of allegiances: the closer a lord or village was to Asuka, the more likely they would be receptive to Heijō’s attempted reform. That the royalist faction was smaller than the rebels was compensated for by the rebels being less organized and – at least in the northern provinces – under threat from the Emishi[16] tribes, who sensed an opportunity to push back against steady Yamato encroachment in their old enemies’ division.
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[1] Hami.
[2] Near Kistanje.
[3] This meeting (and resulting engagement) would have occurred south of Trinity, Newfoundland.
[4] Around Trinity Bay.
[5] The ‘Troglodytes’ or ‘cave-dwellers’ were a group of primitives mentioned as being routinely enslaved by the Garamantian Berbers in Herodotus’ Histories. They may have been related to modern Saharan peoples in Chad, such as the Toubou.
[6] West of modern Turpan.
[7] Develtos, on the Gulf of Burgas.
[8] In the vicinity of Maribor.
[9] Zadar.
[10] Split.
[11] Dubrovnik.
[12] Cavtat.
[13] Krka River.
[14] Rijeka.
[15] Čakovec.
[16] The Jōmon-era indigenes of Japan who preceded the Yamato, and who were probably related to the modern Ainu of Hokkaido. They are often depicted with Ainu-like features, such as full beards, in Japanese art.
But their jubilation did not last overlong: Chiliantoubingdoufa did not flee far, turning to face the pursuing emperor near the devastated Adrianople on April 4. The spring rains had hindered both the Avar and Roman cavalry equally, but in their furious clash the former still proved superior and put the latter to flight after drawing in & overcoming the imperial cataphracts with a feigned retreat, followed by a forceful charge led by Chiliantoubingdoufa himself. The Roman infantry withdrew in remarkably good order at first, but crumbled and was eventually routed altogether under the constant harassment of the Avar horse-archers and the charges of their lancers.
Anthemius retreated back to Constantinople, with Chiliantoubingdoufa in hot pursuit. In hindsight the Avars’ complete lack of a fleet made it nearly impossible for them to take the city (certainly they could not do it by starvation), though he had 30,000 men compared to about 12,000 Roman defenders (including the survivors of Adrianople), but that did not mean the Khagan had no options to make the Romans’ lives miserable. He began by flinging the heads of the Eastern Roman casualties from the earlier Battle of Adrianople at their still-living comrades as soon as he completed some mangonels, and eventually broke through the Anthemian Wall after four months. Only once his assault on the far stouter Theodosian Walls flounder horribly did Chiliantoubingdoufa realize the impossibility of what he hoped to achieve here, but nevertheless he persisted in carrying on the siege with the hope of extorting Anthemius of enough gold to justify this campaign.
An Eastern Roman legionary of Anthemius' army tries to stand his ground against an Avar lancer and Slavic auxiliary footman
While Constantinople had come under siege, the Western Roman Empire’s leadership was divided on how to respond. Magister militum Aemilian advised waiting and concentrating on continuing to build up their new army, which he did not believe to be remotely ready to take on the Avar hordes at this early point in time. However, the empress Frederica believed this to be a fantastic opportunity to avenge her brothers and people, and pressed Romanus II to attack the Avars at once – in the name of aiding his Roman brethren to the east, of course. Romanus believed both positions had merit, that his army wasn’t ready yet but also that he could hardly pass up a chance to regain Illyricum from the Avars while they were bashing themselves senseless against the Theodosian Walls, and sought a compromise as he usually did: he would not attack this year, but accelerate the build-up of his troops as quickly as humanly possible for a counter-invasion of the Avar territories in 555.
Further to the east, while Belisarius continued his defensive preparations (such as they were) in the Caucasus Indicus, renewed battles were raging around him between the Tegreg Turks and the Hephthalites. Illig set out to crush Faghanish in Bactra, establishing siege lines around the older Eftal prince before the mountain passes could clear enough for him to retreat ahead of the 15,000-strong Turkic army – which incidentally was not comprised solely of Turks (though they did make up its majority), but included a not-insignificant Persian contingent as well. Throughout the summer, Menua moved to try to assist his brother and catch the Turks in a pincer movement, but Illig’s scouts kept him well-informed and with ample opportunity to prepare.
When Menua first appeared late in the year to threaten Illig’s flank with 10,000 men, the Turks seemingly withdrew to the south in a hurry. The defenders of Bactra, eager to exact revenge on the opportunistic vultures who had been seizing land they believed to be rightfully theirs and who had kept them under siege for months, rushed forth to join their Hunnish brethren and crush Illig once and for all: as far as the brothers could guess, with the Tegregs now engaged in war against the Chinese, Illig and his army were all that stood between them and a reconquest of lands as far as Media. If they could just pin him down and decisively crush him on the banks of the Balkh River, they would be able to recover the western reaches of their patrimony and maybe even displace their eldest brother in the Hephthalite line of succession.
It was this overconfidence and eagerness to vanquish him as quickly as possible that Illig had bet on. He lured the Hephthalite army into attacking across the right bank of the Balkh with a feigned retreat, inciting the rival princes to pursue him all the way to his camp and to even start pillaging it (having promised his soldiers that whatever they lost there, they would be more than doubly compensated when they took Bactra following their battlefield victory) before leading a counterattack against their disordered & overextended forces. The White Huns were utterly defeated, Faghanish killed in single combat with the Turkic prince, and to add insult to injury their baggage train was pillaged by the victorious Turks before Bactra, too, fell and was sacked. Menua was left alone to gather the scattered survivors of the Eftal army and limp back to the west & south to avoid Belisarius’ territory, further harried by the Turks as he went, even as his father and brother were gaining the upper hand against the Guptas.
The Tegregs prepare to launch their counterattack against the Hephthalites currently burning and looting their camp
In an inversion of the situation of the Hephthalite royal family, Illig’s kindred were floundering against the Chen dynasty’s massive armies even as he secured Bactria and Sogdia for their people with his victory at the Battle of Bactra. Early on in 554, Istämi Khagan was trounced in the Battles of Guazhou and Yumen Pass within days of one another, while his son Issik was still crossing the Tian Shan. Even when they did unite their armies while Emperor Xuan had to detach elements of his to garrison the forts & towns he had retaken, father and son were still defeated by the latter’s 120,000-strong host (outnumbering theirs by almost 3:1) in the Battle of Yizhou[1]. By the year’s end, the Chinese had made good progress toward securing the Silk Road while the Turks had been reduced to guerrilla warfare of a sort, harassing their lumbering army’s supply lines and forward detachments in fast-moving columns of horse-archers rather than risking another head-on engagement against such a behemoth opponent.
The spring of 555 saw the Western Romans beginning their attack against the Avars, whose strength was still heavily concentrated around Constantinople. Aemilian led a force of 23,000 (including 6,000 cavalry) from Ravenna into Avar-occupied Dalmatia, battering his way past the resistance being mounted by newly-settled Sclaveni at the Battles of Andautonia and Burnum[2]. By June, the legions had recovered large parts of western Dalmatia and were inching toward Sirmium and (aided along the coast by the Western Roman navy) Diocleia, which they hoped to recover to create a land bridge from Histria to the Roman possessions in Macedonia.
In the face of this unexpected incursion, the irate Khagan did not at first wish to abandon his siege of Constantinople. He relented only after a last assault on the Theodosian Walls in June met with bloody failure, coupled with Anthemius’ stubborn refusal to even treat with him – much less to offer him tribute to leave the city and the Eastern Romans alone – while the Western Roman advance continued mostly unabated, and the Slavic chiefs in the west threatened to begin negotiating with Aemilian. However, after the Avars left Constantinople (with the Eastern Romans pursuing them and recovering territory as far as Philippopolis), they did not move to immediately counter the Western Romans head-on. Instead, although Chiliantoubingdoufa (now increasingly referred to simply as ‘Qilian’ by the Romans) detached a force of 10,000 under his kinsman Buluzhen to hold off Aemilian’s main army, he took the bulk of his horde southward into Western Roman-controlled Macedonia and Achaea.
Aemilian engaged Buluzhen’s division at Domavia, testing the new cavalry legions for the first time that July. The equites sagittarii and caballarii graves both acquitted themselves well in combat against their Avar counterparts, who were surprised at the speed with which the Romans had adopted their technology and the Roman cavalry’s new ability to fight them on even ground, and although the arcuballistae turned out to lack the punching power to stop an Avar charge outside of very short range, Buluzhen himself was shot to death by several Roman crossbowmen while trying to reorganize his men for another such attack. The Battle of Domavia thus ended with some 3,000 Avar casualties compared to under a thousand on the part of the victorious and more numerous Romans – a rousing bit of good news. ‘Tragically’, the Frankish petty-king Chlodio of Durocortorum was one of those few hundred Roman casualties: after receiving the news, his brother (and close ally of Aemilian) Childeric of Neustria annexed his kingdom on the grounds that he’d left no sons – only two daughters, who he would conveniently take into custody at once – thereby reuniting the southern half of the Frankish kingdom once ruled by their father Ingomer. In a more genuinely unfortunate development for the magister militum, he would never have much opportunity to celebrate either his victory or his ally’s gain, as by the time of his triumph the Avars’ main host had placed Thessalonica under siege and burned & pillaged as far as southern Thessaly.
The Battle of Domavia was the new Western Roman cavalry's baptism by fire, and by all accounts it was a test they passed with flying colors
Aemilian was at a quandary: if he continued to press the attack against Sirmium & Singidunum, he would leave the southern reaches of the Diocese of Illyricum vulnerable to continued Avar devastation. If he moved to assist in the defense of Achaea (all Macedonia outside of Thessalonica having been overrun at this point), he would obviously be unable to follow up on his success at Domavia. In the end though, the choice was not his to make. Emperor Romanus commanded him to move to Athens by sea and stop the Avars’ main thrust by all means necessary, reasoning that recovering eastern Illyricum should be easily done if the Avars’ backs were already broken in Boeotia or whereabouts. Even if Aemilian had considered the possibility that this was a Green machination or even Romanus’ own initiative to punish his power-play among the Franks, ultimately he obeyed the command (since to not do so would have meant abandoning a large number of Roman citizens to their deaths or enslavement and defying the well-established Augustus) and boarded ships bound for Athens along with 15,000 of his men, leaving the rest to hold their gains in Dalmatia.
This Western Roman army disembarked at Piraeus late in the year, just in time to relieve the Avar siege of Athens. Qilian Khagan fell back into Boeotia, but was again forced to withdraw from battle at the village of Lebedea after Aemilian sent a division of lightly-armed Moors to scale the nearby Mount Helicon and threaten his flank through the abandoned Valley of the Muses. The Roman generalissimo had also further exploited his naval supremacy by detaching a 3,000-strong force to reach & occupy the pass of Thermopylae in hopes of cutting off the Avars’ route of retreat. In turn, Qilian surprised him by refusing to attack the Western Romans at such a favorable position, and instead move his horde through the Aetolian mountains toward the year’s end, aided by a mild winter and the not-insubstantial number of Slavs who he’d left behind there to secure his army’s rear – and who consequently began to permanently settle down in that region with their families.
Off in the east, Belisarius petitioned Illig for permission to leave his mountain strongholds and return to Roman territory. The Turkic prince was interested in this proposal but demanded the immediate handover of Roman Paropamisus first, which Belisarius thought was an entirely sensible tradeoff but one which he had no authority to grant: instead, he recommended that Illig make this demand to the Augustus Anthemius. Unfortunately, this was also the year in which Basil the Sasanian passed away at the age of 75, and fighting in Mesopotamia intensified as the rebel Nahir gained the advantage over his grandson & successor Vologases – much of the Mesopotamian and Assyrian countryside fell to the Nestorian insurgents even though the Romans continued to hold the major cities, waterways and roads. In those chaotic circumstances, the Turkic messengers were murdered by brigands in Nahir’s service as they tried to make their way to Constantinople.
An irate Illig demanded that he be allowed to march into Mesopotamia to punish the killers, a demand which Vologases advised Anthemius to turn down – despite his mounting difficulties against Nahir – out of (not entirely unjustified) worry that the Turks were just looking for a pretext with which to conquer Mesopotamia & Assyria. Since his request had been rebuffed, Illig decided he would not allow Belisarius to exit Paropamisus after all and increasingly turned a blind eye to his warriors when they wanted to raid Mesopotamia. The aging general of the Orient thus ended up spending another year in the Caucasus Indicus, where his son Porphyrius married Varshasb’s daughter Perwane and where he had an excellent seat to watch as the Tegregs consolidated their hold on much of Bactria, while Menua assumed a defensive posture in Gedrosia with his few remaining troops. The Eftal prince was counting on his father and oldest brother returning west to aid him, having been encouraged by news that they’d taken the upper hand against the Guptas and were besieging Pataliputra to the point that he did not immediately retreat over the Indus following last year’s disastrous defeat in the Battle of Bactra.
Sassanid court depiction of a battle between Christian Mesopotamians and Turkic raiders
To the northeast, the Chinese continued their push all the way to the western edge of the Tarim Basin, receiving the submission of the kings of Khotan and Yarkand (who had only recently switched their allegiance from the Hephthalites to the Turks). This brought Chinese authority to the Tian Shan and Kunlun Mountains for the first time since the Han Dynasty, but also overextended even the massive armies brought forth by Emperor Xuan and gave Istämi Khagan – who Xuan thought had been utterly defeated after the Battle of Yizhou and the fall of the Hexi Corridor – new opportunities to concentrate his horde against the divided and increasingly scattered Chinese garrisons. With this strategy and a second wind provided in part by manpower contributions from the Chuyue and Khazar tribes, he was able to retake the Hexi Corridor and cut the emperor off from his own empire.
A new batch of newcomers brought a war of their own to the New World in the summer of 555, as well. Inspired by the example and tales of Amalgaid, several new fianna sailed for the Insula Benedicta this year, only to find that he and most of his warriors had settled down. Now that they had permanent homes and families of their own to worry about, the original band of Irish warriors had little desire to venture far from the homesteads they had built between Brendan’s monastery and Ataninnuaq’s camp, and declined to join the newcomers on their own adventure. Refusing Brendan’s counsel to similarly settle the land and live peacefully next to the local Wildermen, the newly arrived Irishmen elected Óengus mac Ailill as their leader and struck out on their own in a southeastward direction from the monastery.
It was not long before the Irish warband ran into more Wildermen[3], but having brashly neglected to take Brendan or any of the monks along as translators, their meeting was not fruitful in the slightest – indeed, it did not take long for mutual confusion and suspicion to escalate to violent hostility. One hot-blooded and reckless young Irishman interpreted his similarly ornery counterpart among the natives as attempting to steal his weapon during a shouting match, and ‘gave’ it to him blade-first. As had been the case with Amalgaid’s battle against Ataninnuaq, the Irish prevailed against their enemies primarily on account of their technological advantage, though this time they had numbers on their side as well.
Óengus would go on to establish his own kingdom south of Brendan and Amalgaid’s community[4], not only claiming the wives and daughters of the men his fianna slew for himself and his warriors but also inviting additional families from Ireland to join them (and to especially bring women for the benefit of those warriors who did not get, or refused, the Wilder-women). To anyone who would make the journey to this bountiful new-found land the new petty-king promised farmland, freedom and more fish than they could possibly dream of. Thus was another Irish statelet on the Insula Benedicta born, and one with a far less positive relationship with the indigenes than what Brendan and Amalgaid had worked for.
Óengus and his men building a fort on the east side of the Insula Benedicta, where they intend to settle and from which they intend to rule the local Wildermen rather than live alongside them as peaceful neighbors like Amalgaid and Brendan
Aemilian waited until the snows cleared in spring of 556 before once more pursuing the Avars, who by this time had retreated to the plains of Thessaly. Slowed by Slavic attacks as he pushed north, he nevertheless managed to reach and engage Qilian Khagan’s 24,000-strong horde in June that year. Unfortunately the Thessalian flatlands were very favorable ground for the Avar cavalry, who still dwarfed their Western Roman counterpart in numbers (if no longer quite as much as they had in skill and quality of equipment). The Battle of the Plains of Thessaly, fought southwest of Mount Olympus on land where the Greek gods and titans were said to have clashed for the final time, ended in a major Avar victory, for the 2,500 Roman heavy cavalry Aemilian had with him were still too few to withstand the nearly 10,000 Avar lancers Qilian fielded and his crossbowmen were decisively outshot by the Avar horse-archers.
It was a testament to Aemilian’s own skill and the discipline of the Roman legions that they still managed to withdraw from the field and into Boeotia through the Aetolian mountains in sound order, despite being harried by the Avars & Sclaveni that entire time, which whittled their numbers down from 9,000 (out of 14,000 to have fought at the Plains of Thessaly) to 7,000. Nevertheless, upon returning to Athens he was excoriated by the emperor for having lost half of the army he took to the battlefield and relieved of command. Instead, since Fritigern’s consulship was ending this year, the Visigoth king was appointed magister utriusque militiae in Aemilian’s stead; ostensibly to soothe tensions and reward the soon-to-be ex-magister-militum, but more probably to keep him in Rome and thus firmly under Romanus’ thumb, the Romano-Frank was in turn made the Western Roman Consul for 556-557.
As the Eastern Roman army under Anthemius was threatening to push past Thrace, Qilian Khagan opted not to follow up on his victory in Thessaly and invade Boeotia & Attica once more in favor of attacking his enemies to the north instead. He led the Avars to another victory at Maronea, driving the Eastern Romans back toward Trajanopolis before stopping to sue for terms late in the year – the Slavs under his authority warned him that Fritigern was massing for another attack, not from the south but from the west. But the Avars were not the only ones to have to worry about an enemy attacking them in the flank this year: in October, the Garamantians too fell onto the Eastern Romans’ already-overloaded plate. Though they had long enjoyed a peaceful relationship with the Roman Empire (to whom they traded large numbers of Troglodyte[5] slaves), the depletion of the underground water reservoirs which their heavily-irrigated farms depended upon caused the Garamantian kingdom to decline and fragment, and those of their people which didn’t just scatter to the desert winds had begun to invade Roman Cyrenaica in search of new homes.
Their water supplies drying up and their homeland turning from well-irrigated farmland into desert forced the Garamantians to change from Roman friends to foes, and migrate into Roman territory to survive
Even as Thrace continued to be ravaged by warfare and Egypt began to burn anew, Mesopotamia and Assyria still did not go untroubled, for in this year Nahir captured Karka and was again proclaimed king there. Vologases meanwhile was struggling to hold the cities of Mesopotamia, and after being tipped off by Exilarch Ahunai that the Jews of Ctesiphon were once again considering defecting to the rebellion, pre-empted any such subversion by taking hostages from the leading families of that city. The Turks were also beginning to cross the Tigris in greater numbers, although since their attacks stopped in the marshes of central Mesopotamia, the Nahir-supporting regions felt the worst of these raids and the Eastern Romans were disinclined to engage the Tegregs in open warfare once more. It was under those troubled circumstances that Vologases appealed to his cousin the Augustus to march back into Mesopotamia and help him restore order before the situation deteriorated to the point where Illig might be tempted to renew efforts to conquer the region for the Turkic Khaganate.
In the distant Orient, 556 proved to be a year of seismic events. In India, the Hephthalites finally defeated the Guptas once and for all, capturing and sacking their capital of Pataliputra for the last time. The Samrat Madhavagupta was killed in the fighting, and those sons and grandsons of his who did not immediately perish with him were put to death by the Hunas afterward; only the women of his household were spared, to be gifted to the princes and captains of the Eftal army. The fairest of his daughters, Madhavadevi, was married to the Hunnish crown prince Baghayash in an effort to solidify the White Huns’ claim to be the Guptas’ successors as rulers of all India, and to more firmly bind northeastern India to Eftal rule. This last victory and the suppression of the Guptas ensured that the Hephthalites would not lose their Indian bastion even as their homeland fell under Turkic rule: indeed Mihirakula’s reign would in hindsight be marked as a transitory period between the rough-riding, hard-fighting Eftal conquerors of the past who governed huge but unstable realms and the increasingly Indianized, stable and firmly sedentary Hunas of the future.
To the north, beyond the snow-capped Himalayas and Kunlun Mountains, the Turks were hard at work setting off their own geopolitical earthquake. Istämi Khagan aggressively harried the Chinese as Emperor Xuan sought to pull his overstretched armies back together and fight to reopen the Hexi Corridor, resisting the temptation to pillage northern China in favor of concentrating their smaller forces against the Chinese hosts in the field. The constant Turkic attacks kept the Chinese off-balance and unable to consolidate their forces without first being significantly whittled down, culminating in the massive Battle of Jiaohe[6] on August 28.
The Tegregs assailed the Chinese army as it crossed the Silk Road and neared the western entrance to the Hexi Corridor. Although Emperor Xuan had nearly three times the Turks’ numbers – 85,000 men to their 30,000 – the Chinese did not expect to be attacked here, their scouts having been disposed of in earlier skirmishes with the Turkic light cavalry while the chief magistrate of Jiaohe (whose son had been taken hostage by Prince Issik) deceived the emperor and told him he had nothing to worry about as he passed by the city. For three days the Turks mounted hit-and-run raids against the strung-out Chen army as it pressed ever forward, the gates of Jiaohe having been shut behind them, and peeled away multiple regiments & thousands of men at a time with feigned retreats, only to pepper them with arrows the entire time and eventually destroy them utterly in the Tarim sands.
On the third day of the battle, Istämi’s own scouts informed him that the frustrated Emperor Xuan was riding at the head of the Chinese column, no doubt to direct forward elements of his army against the Turks and eager to leave the Tarim behind. The Khagan seized upon this opportunity and threw everything he had at his disposal against the Chinese vanguard, isolating it with Issik’s help and scoring a decisive victory over the emperor and actually capturing Xuan himself. Xuan proceeded to offend Istämi with his haughty and imperious conduct even while in chains, bluntly rebuffing the latter’s attempt to negotiate by stating that he would sooner die than bow his neck before a savage from the snowy wastelands north of the Middle Kingdom, after which the Khagan obliged him by running him through and sticking his head on a lance to frighten his remaining troops. Said remaining troops still comfortably outnumbered the Turks, but they were weary and thirsty after days of marching under the desert sun and enduring constant attacks by the Turks; the death of their leader shattered their morale and the Turks easily scattered them with a deadly charge, the scattered survivors who weren’t hunted down or surrendered and joined the Tegregs going on to most likely die in the eastern Tarim desert.
Not all of the Chinese captives were as stubborn as their emperor. These defeated officers have bent the knee to Prince Issik and added their expertise to the Tegreg armies, even if it likely means fighting their fellow Chinese in the future
The Tegreg victory in the Battle of Jiaohe not only decisively reversed the tide of the Chen-Turkic war, but it also destabilized China itself, as Emperor Xuan’s younger sons challenged his designated heir Prince Yuan (now nominally Emperor Jing) over the succession – a mirror to the civil war he had fought with his own brothers at the start of his reign. Istämi took the opportunity to freely reconquer Gansu and give his men leave to pillage northern China to their heart’s content before returning southwest to aid his elder son against the White Huns, although he had learned from past Turkic misadventures into ‘China proper’ not to go too far or to commit to any conquest of the lands beyond Gansu this time (much to the annoyance of his more aggressive son Issik). Goguryeo, inadvertantly released from Chinese suzerainty along with its fellow Korean kingdoms by this latest Chinese civil war, also maneuvered to retake its western territories from the fraying Chen dynasty.
Beset by increasing troubles in Mesopotamia and now the Garamantians as well, Anthemius had little choice but to agree to negotiate in the early winter of 557, even if the terms he was to reach would certainly be unfavorable. The Avars expanded well into the Diocese of Thrace, leaving the Eastern Romans with only the provinces of Europa (including of course Constantinople itself) and Haemimontus south of Deultum[7], but settled for a more modest financial tribute than Qilian had initially sought and promised a ten-year moratorium on raids into what remained of Roman Thrace (unless the Eastern Romans were to do something to mortally offend them, naturally). By the time these negotiations had concluded, the Garamantians had already sacked the long-declining city of Cyrene, which contained but a fraction of the population – and goods to plunder – it used to have in its imperial heyday before the Kitos War.
His eastern flank secured for now, Qilian turned his full attention back to the west. Leading an army composed of the re-consolidated garrisons Aemilian had left across Dalmatia, his own Visigoths and assorted reinforcements from other parts of the Western Roman Empire, Fritigern had managed to recapture Sirmium and Singidunum (or rather, what was left of them) from the Avars by mid-summer. Qilian wasted no time in riding to engage Fritigern northwest of Naissus: there the vengeful and less-disciplined Gothic contingents were drawn out of formation by Avar feigned retreats and decimated in the Khagan’s furious counterattack, with the magister militum and Visigoth king himself being felled by half a dozen arrows. Carpilio, as Fritigern’s deputy, was responsible for managing the retreat and ensuring that there was still a Western Roman army at all by the day’s end.
A Turkic Avar horse-archer and Slavic nobleman with their Ostrogothic captive following the Battle of Naissus, 557
While the Greens were left reeling from the backfire of their latest maneuver and the demise of their strongest representative at this point in time, Romanus had little choice but to give Aemilian his old post back. Fortunately he proved a more loyal man than his father, and attended his duties rather than immediately attempt to overthrow the emperor who had sacked him just a year ago. He and Carpilio were tasked with halting the renewed Avar onslaught, which now threatened to roll back all of the Western Romans’ recent gains and then some. This was no easy task after the beatings they had been taking, even with newly trained & attired cavalry legions joining them, and the Romans suffered more reverses throughout the summer which forced them to retreat almost all the way back to the Carantanian lands – though mercifully the Dinaric Alps kept the Avars’ attention focused on the Pannonian-Dalmatian plain and away from the recaptured cities along the coast. Worse still, the Garamantians had begun to attack the Western Empire’s Tripolitanian region in this time as well.
At last, Aemilian and Carpilio would make their stand on the banks of the Dravus, north of Celaia, where the Illyro-Roman villas remained in ruins even as Slavic villages had begun to spring up around them[8]. They had with them 12,000 men, including the Italian clibanarii and 2,000 Sclaveni under Ljudevit’s direction, with which to face 20,000 Avars on that chilly September day. Qilian Khagan had sent some of his own Slavic chieftains to treat with the Carantanian prince and persuade him to return to the Avar side, but whether for honor’s sake or out of fear that Qilian would just kill him for his earlier betrayal if the Avars should prevail over the Romans, Ljudevit steadfastly refused to abandon his new overlord, for which the Roman chroniclers lauded him as the first among the righteous Sclaveni.
The Western legions and their federates held firm in the face of both Avar charges and feigned retreats alike this time, and with some help from the Roman crossbowmen Ljudevit’s warriors acquitted themselves well against their own Slavic brethren. Crucially Carpilio was able to overpower Qilian’s own heavy cavalry at the head of a great wedge of the new Roman cavalry, spearheaded by himself and the clibanarii, after which the Khagan ordered a retreat. The Romans did not pursue their enemy far: both the Blues and the Greens urged the Augustus not to push his luck, and given the course of the war thus far and the Garamantian attack in the south, he was not willing to argue.
The Battle of the Dravus demonstrated the importance of the improved Western Roman heavy cavalry to combating the Avars. Had Romanus waited until he had more of these men at the ready, his legions may have been able to affix the border much further to the east
While the Garamantians were besieging Leptis Magna, Romanus sued for terms and Qilian, who was still recovering from the bruising he’d taken at the Dravus, was inclined to hear him out. In any case, it was now clear to Romanus that he would have to properly prepare for the next round of hostilities with the Avars instead of opportunistically rushing them with a half-baked army at best; and that in spite of his resentment toward the Eastern Romans for bringing this new horde down on his borders, much as had been the case with Attila, defeating Qilian would almost certainly require both halves of the Roman Empire to work together – their separate and uncoordinated strikes against the Khaganate just now had done the West very little good and the East, none at all.
Thus did the Western Romans and Avars basically exchange territory at the end of 557, though the trade favored the latter by far. They got most of Macedonia (sans Thessalonica, which stood unconquered) and Achaea down to Aetolia, while the Western Romans hung on to western Epirus, preserved a southern border in the Phthian region of southern Thessaly, and regained a stretch of the Dalmatian coastline: large numbers of Illyro-Roman legionaries and their families, as well as some Ostrogoths, would be resettled at Iader[9], Spalatum[10], Narona and the isle of Laus[11] near the former site of Epidaurum[12] (which however remained under Avar control and Slavic settlement) over the rest of the century. Ljudevit was rewarded with the rank of dux and the modest expansion of federate state toward and into the Dinarides, following the course of the Corcoras[13] southward and being granted port access at Tharsatica[14] while also stretching eastward to Aquama[15]. As these ruined towns were resettled by Slavs, their new denizens would give them Slavic names to replace the Latin ones, though the old names remained in use by imperial Roman cartographers.
Dux Ljudevit and his bodyguards inspecting a newly-built Carantanian settlement in the lands they'd won under the Western Roman aegis
In the distant east, the arrival of the Eftals’ full strength in Bactria and Anthemius’ return to Mesopotamia compelled Illig to cease raiding the latter region and concentrate all his attention against the former. In that endeavor he would receive aid from his kin, who after all no longer had to worry about China for the foreseeable future. His brother Issik rejoined him with 15,000 horsemen mid-year at the order of their elderly father, and together they managed to stop the Hunnish advance and claw Bactra back from Mihirakula’s forces. To eliminate their second front and be able to concentrate worry-free against the Tegregs themselves, Mihirakula and his sons appealed to Belisarius for a truce, and even sent emissaries by sea to Roman Egypt to seek a peace settlement leaving what remained of Roman Paropamisus alone with Anthemius III: having no real reason or desire (or even ability, in Anthemius’ case) to keep on fighting the White Huns at this point, the Romans proved accommodating to these requests, bringing a formal end to the over-half-a-century of hostilities between their peoples which had begun with Sabbatius and Toramana long before Anthemius was even born.
Finally, far beyond the Tian Shan Mountains, like its new continental trading partner and burgeoning role model, Japan was descending into a civil war of its own. The Great King Heijō’s efforts to centralize authority into his capital at Asuka and to replace the kabane, or hereditary nobility, with appointed governors unsurprisingly provoked backlash from those very same aristocrats. Although the spread of Buddhism had also created fault-lines within the nobility (as it did across Yamato society as a whole), both Buddhist and Shintoist kabane could be found on both sides of this brewing conflict, united either in defense of their privileges or the Great King whom they had sworn to serve. Geography was a more important determinant of allegiances: the closer a lord or village was to Asuka, the more likely they would be receptive to Heijō’s attempted reform. That the royalist faction was smaller than the rebels was compensated for by the rebels being less organized and – at least in the northern provinces – under threat from the Emishi[16] tribes, who sensed an opportunity to push back against steady Yamato encroachment in their old enemies’ division.
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[1] Hami.
[2] Near Kistanje.
[3] This meeting (and resulting engagement) would have occurred south of Trinity, Newfoundland.
[4] Around Trinity Bay.
[5] The ‘Troglodytes’ or ‘cave-dwellers’ were a group of primitives mentioned as being routinely enslaved by the Garamantian Berbers in Herodotus’ Histories. They may have been related to modern Saharan peoples in Chad, such as the Toubou.
[6] West of modern Turpan.
[7] Develtos, on the Gulf of Burgas.
[8] In the vicinity of Maribor.
[9] Zadar.
[10] Split.
[11] Dubrovnik.
[12] Cavtat.
[13] Krka River.
[14] Rijeka.
[15] Čakovec.
[16] The Jōmon-era indigenes of Japan who preceded the Yamato, and who were probably related to the modern Ainu of Hokkaido. They are often depicted with Ainu-like features, such as full beards, in Japanese art.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
WRE can count itself lucky it didn't lose it's entire new model to the premature invasion and foolish commander change. Aemilian must have had quite a ''serves you right'' moment when he heard of Fritigern's defeat. I reckon this will not be the last time Frederica convinced Romanus to do something stupid. Romans though have much more space for improvement than Avars, so unless they have a major brainfart, the next round will go much worse for Avars, even with piss poor cooperation from ERE.
I think Tegregs are at their zenith, their current khagan understands the limits of their power, but Issik seems like someone who will never grow out of his hotheadedness.
ERE vs Hephthalites wars are concluded for now, I reckon this generation of leaders will not see a conflict in this direction.
I think Tegregs are at their zenith, their current khagan understands the limits of their power, but Issik seems like someone who will never grow out of his hotheadedness.
ERE vs Hephthalites wars are concluded for now, I reckon this generation of leaders will not see a conflict in this direction.
557-560: Shifting sands
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
558 found the Western Romans striving to recover from the bruising latest round of their conflict with the Avars, to deal with the refugees flooding into Thessalonica and Athens from the Greco-Macedonian countryside, and to resettle & fortify the lands they had managed to win back along the Dalmatian coast. The most exciting developments in Rome this year therefore were firstly the relief of Leptis Magna, done by a combined force of Moors traveling by land and a detachment of the Western Roman army freshly returned to Italy, which moved by sea under Aemilian’s direction; and secondly the marriage of the Caesar Constans, now eighteen, to Carpilio’s daughter Verina, marking the first union of the imperial Stilichians to the Aetians in a century and thus another step upward in terms of the latter’s rising fortunes. To celebrate the occasion, the bridegroom’s father appointed Carpilio Consul for the 558-559 term. In a less happy occasion, mutual raids and hostility between the two remaining Frankish kingdoms of Lutetia and Noviodunum began to ramp up this year, fueled by the former’s King Childeric’s annexation of his brother Chlodio’s kingdom and return from the Balkan battlefields.
Their Eastern brethren, meanwhile, were dealing with much more ‘exciting’ matters. Anthemius’ arrival in Mesopotamia emboldened his cousin Vologases to aggressively counterattack outward from the cities, and brought the second rebellion of Nahir towards its climax. The 16,000-strong imperial army barreled through the Mesopotamian countryside, undoing most resistance through judicious shows of force & collection of hostages with one hand, and offers of amnesty & the disbursement of yet more of the remaining treasure previously plundered by Sabbatius with the other; all were also promised protection against the Turks, which Nahir had been unable to deliver, and which happily coincided with the end of Turkic raids (although Anthemius had nothing to do with that and the Hephthalites, everything). In the end, only the Nestorian die-hards proved so stubborn that there was no way for Anthemius to deal with them except with the sword.
Nahir was alarmed by Anthemius’ progress on undermining his presence in rural Mesopotamia, and in an effort to rally his supporters and consolidate his hold on the region before all of both flew to the emperor’s side, the old rebel bet everything on a major battle with the Eastern Romans. He pulled his army back together and laid siege to Babylon, then withdrew southeastward toward the Mesopotamian marshes when the Augustus inevitably moved to engage him. No doubt his idea was to nullify the Romans’ advantages in numbers and equipment (especially heavy infantry and cavalry) with the wetland terrain, which he and his closest lieutenants had become intimately familiar with after spending the last decade of Sabbatius’ reign hiding from Roman justice there.
Once more Anthemius III would catch more flies with honey, rather than vinegar. This mosaic depicts his officials distributing alms to Mesopotamian insurgents who have surrendered and received his pardon
Unfortunately for Nahir, one of his less close lieutenants – a relative newcomer named Maadai, who joined with the rebels following the confiscation of his estate on a rival’s trumped-up accusations six years prior – had already proven receptive to Anthemius’ strategem, and fed the emperor’s spies reports on his leader’s movements in exchange for amnesty and having his land returned to him. Consequently Anthemius was able to intercept Nahir near the ruins of ancient Ur and Larsa[1] in August, moving 3,000 of his lighter troops by boat down the Euphrates to cut the rebels off before they could escape into the marshland. The battlefield was not as favorable as Nahir would have liked, though at least he managed to figure out Maadai’s treachery with the aid of the latter’s own servants and promptly put the traitor to death before the latter could bury a knife in his back once battle was underway.
Nahir’s strategy hinged on breaking through the 3,000-strong light detachment of the imperial Roman army, mostly comprised of Arabs and led by the Ghassanid prince al-Nu’man, with his considerably larger host of 10,000 and then racing into the marshes, which were not far to the east of Ur. In that he was unsuccessful, as the Arabs’ horse- and camel-archers were able to keep up with his own bowmen and their cavalry kept his men off-balance with repeated charges and retreats, scattering his skirmishers and light footmen only to fall back when he sent in his more heavily-armored troops to deal with them. Anthemius, Vologases and the rest of their army arrived from the west late in the afternoon, threatening to trap Nahir between them.
In the face of these odds, the rebel chief sought to buy himself time by engaging the emperor in disingenuous negotiations, while maneuvering to get his men through al-Nu’man’s force and back on the road to the marshes once the sun began to set. However Vologases saw through this ruse, and after one of his scouts reported seeing Maadai’s head on a pike in the rebel camp, he persuaded Anthemius to attack near twilight – just as Nahir himself was pulling up his tent pegs and racing to assail al-Nu’man’s division once more. The ensuing battle proved decisive, but not in the way Nahir had hoped: the rebel army was mauled and scattered by the heavy Roman cavalry leading Anthemius' assault, while he himself was fatally wounded and ironically died not long after managing to reach the marshland, having been spirited through al-Nu’man’s lines by his most devoted adherents.
In contrast to the Ghassanids, the Eastern Romans relied on their ultra-heavy cataphract and clibanarii cavalry to win the day. This heavy horseman is notably equipped with stirrups, adopted (much as the Western Romans had done) following the recent Avar war
While the Roman world was settling its internal affairs, the Turks and Hephthalites continued to fight across Bactria and Gedrosia. 558 proved more favorable for the White Huns than most of the previous years had been, as Baghayash and Menua secured a growing stream of reinforcements from India (including several dozen war elephants, which proved effective against the Turkic cavalry) and pushed their Turkic counterparts back with victories at Bactra, the Upper Oxus and Pura. Though far from finished, the Tegreg brothers were forced to pull back from most of Bactria and Gedrosia to regroup, with Illig in particular seeking to up Persian recruitment to even the odds and deduce the best way in which the Turks could overcome the Eftals’ tusked pets from Persians who had handled the beasts in the past.
In China, Emperor Jing was decisively defeated and killed by one of his brothers in the Battle of Shouchun this summer. The victor, Prince Junliang, entered the imperial capital of Jiankang soon after and there proclaimed himself Emperor Zhi of Chen. His pronouncement was opposed by the remaining rival Chen princes who still contested the Dragon Throne, Princes Bian and Chao, temporarily allied with one another to more effectively combat him. Emperor Zhi sent entreaties to Istämi Khagan to intervene against his brothers, who were based in northern China: but the Khagan remained committed to letting the Chinese bleed themselves against one another without becoming a pawn in their hands, or worse a scapegoat for them to unite against, and so no Turkic attack beyond the usual raids through the damaged Great Wall occurred.
Come 559, with troubles in the Balkans and Mesopotamia having been settled for the time being, the primary concern of both Roman Empires now remained the Garamantians. In an early case of renewed Eastern-Western military cooperation, Aemilian exchanged messages with the Eastern Roman commander in Cyrenaica, the Dux Libyarum Aretion, to better co-ordinate their counterattacks against the Garamantians and to try to restore their antebellum borders in Libya. While the Western Romans had lifted the siege of Leptis Magna a year before, the Garamantians struck again in force and bypassed that city to successfully capture the much less-defended Oea[2] instead, so Aemilian intended on driving them out of there first. In the meantime, Aretion would hold his position and mount only modest probing attacks until the Western Romans could come east, at which point he planned to launch a major attack on Cyrene and crush the Garamantians between their legions.
The numerous and highly motivated (if also disorganized) Garamantians proved a more tenacious foe than Aemilian had initially expected. Their skirmishers and light cavalry proved a nearly equal match for the Mauri of the Western Roman army, while the Romans’ heavy cavalry could hardly hope to catch up to the latter beneath the African sun, and the Altavan king Daniel was shot dead by a mounted Garamantian archer early in the battle. To achieve victory, Aemilian borrowed an Avar trick and baited the Garamantes into rushing his lines by having his horsemen conduct a feigned retreat in the aftermath of Daniel’s demise and counterattacking when they fell for his trap. Firmus, now King of Altava, avenged his father by slaying the Garamantian leader in the melee which followed, driving the hostile Berbers to flight.
The Garamantians were no primitive barbaric rabble, but organized warriors capable of manufacturing arms & armor of decent quality and employing sophisticated tactics in battle, and could give the Romans a reasonably difficult time
While Aemilian and Aretion spent the rest of the year steadily reclaiming their lost lands as planned, only to be buffeted by a second wave of Garamantian hordes fleeing their collapsing desert kingdom in December, in the easternmost outpost of the Roman world a curious development was unfolding. Mindful of the Eastern Empire’s still-poor relations with the Turks, Anthemius had accorded to Belisarius the newly-minted honor of Dux Ultimis Orientis – ‘duke of the furthest east’ – and thereby conferred upon him both absolute civil and military authority over the exclave of Paropamisus. As the emperor was concerned about the Turks killing his envoy to Belisarius or taking them hostage after the death of their own in Mesopotamia (though that had been Nahir’s fault), he took advantage of the new peace settlement with the White Huns to send his attendant via a boat sailing through the Persian Gulf and docking at a port near the mouth of the Indus, known to the Romans as ‘Barbaricum’[3], before traveling northward to the mountains of the Paropamisadae through Hunnish territory.
Necessity brought on by isolation compelled Belisarius to govern with an even lighter hand than his emperor did in most parts of the Eastern Roman Empire. His Paropamisus could not be organized and run like any other Roman province, even if he had wanted to, as the number of actual Romans in his army was far too few to control the area without the cooperation of the tribal Paropamisadae and he barely had any literate Greco-Roman officers with him to administer the small cities of the region. Instead Belisarius largely ‘ruled’ through friendly tribes like Varshasb’s, who pledged to aid the Romans in wartime and were more or less left to govern themselves in exchange; at most Belisarius offered to mediate in inter-tribal disputes, through which he built a reputation for honesty and impartiality that further gradually warmed the Paropamisadae to his governance and gained him the attention of even those tribes who would previously reject any association with him out of hand. Varshasb himself once wondered aloud why Belisarius didn't just crown himself king of that mountainous land (it was not as though his emperor could do anything about it), but was sternly shot down by the general – neither the passage of time nor having to deal with Sabbatius' obsessions and being stranded in the furthest end of the Roman world could wear down his ironclad loyalty to Rome[4].
And while the general built a modest chapel in Kophen to serve his own religious needs and those of the few Roman soldiers with him, by and large the Paropamisadae continued to practice Buddhism or their own pagan traditions around it; these lands were almost untouched by Christianity, with even Nestorianism’s furthest reaches into this region under the old aegis of the Sassanids having spread only as far as Zaranj and Harev, now contested by the Turks and Eftals. Indeed far from interrupting (or even more foolishly considering his position, persecuting) them, Belisarius gained an appreciation for the Greco-Buddhist art style which had dominated in these mountains since Alexander first came through them centuries ago. With only two priests in the Belisarian household, proselytization was nearly impossible at this point in time, although in later years these clerics would find a handful of interested converts and acolytes from the population of Kophen – Ephesian Christianity’s mustard seed in the Caucasus Indicus.
Mural depicting one of Belisarius' priests administering the Eucharist to one of the first Paropamisadae converts to Christianity
Speaking of the Turks and Eftals, their battles continued to rage around Belisarius’ mountain sanctuary. This year the Turks retook the advantage, inflicting a great defeat on the White Huns at the Battle of Dozzaab[5] in May and again at Bela (which Belisarius identified by its old Macedonian name, Rhambacia) in October, having waited for summer to pass before attempting to cross the Gedrosian desert. In the former case, at the recommendation of the Persian experts Illig had recruited they turned the Hephthalite war elephants against their masters with swarms of flaming arrows, after which Baghayash and Menua were reluctant to deploy the beasts they still had remaining. These victories reclaimed much of Gedrosia for the Tegregs, and pushed the Eftals all the way back to the banks of the Indus.
As for the true ‘furthest east’ in a geographic sense, in Japan the civil war between royalist and autonomist kabane was coming to a climax. The rebels achieved a major victory over outnumbered and divided royalist forces in the Battle of Maizuru Bay in the summer of 559, after which the Great King Heijō relented and sued for peace with the rebel chiefs. As part of the settlement he reached with the magnates, he agreed to suspend his reforms, acknowledge their traditional privileges and direct the Yamato armies against encroaching Emishi in the north, while they once more pledged themselves to his service. However the Great King was not in truth dissuaded from the cause of reform and centralization, and sought to ally with the Buddhist Soga clan – which he judged to be more sympathetic to foreign influence, including the Chinese model of governance – on account of their shared fondness of certain continental cultural imports, thereby splitting them away from the more fiercely traditionalist rebel clans ahead of any renewed internal conflicts.
Heijō, Great King of Yamato, with two of his daughters
Both the Eastern and Western Romans remained largely focused on the Garamantine issue throughout 560. A civil war following the assassination of King Izdârasen drove his heir, Amêzyan, to abandon the capital Garama[6], and to instead gather & lead his 25,000 followers (plus probably well over a hundred thousand noncombatants – the wives, children, elderly parents and invalid kin of those warriors – with them) northward late in 559, and by the end of January 560 he had driven Aretion from Cyrene again. By mid-April he had also taken Leptis Magna, Aemilian having elected to evacuate the city by sea and to await further reinforcements from Hispania & Italy rather than risk tackling such a massive force at the earliest opportunity.
Amêzyan’s attack was by far the largest and most threatening Garamantian invasion either of the two Romes had faced and would ever have to concern themselves with. In response, Aemilian and Aretion continued their cooperation and conducted coordinated withdrawals toward Africa Proconsularis & Egypt proper respectively, deploying their light troops to skirmish with the advancing Berbers and occasionally indulging in limited counterattacks to buy time for their overlords to rush more reinforcements to North Africa. Come July, both commanders felt they had amassed enough soldiers for a major counterattack, and that though their hosts were still individually slightly smaller than Amêzyan’s – 20,000 Western Romans and 18,000 Eastern Romans – they could crush him between both.
Amêzyan was not blind to the danger however, and after his scouts informed him that both of his enemies’ armies had ballooned in size, he decided to take quick action to concentrate against & crush them separately. Correctly identifying the Eastern Roman army as the smaller of the pair, he allowed Aretion to push a ways into Cyrenaica before attacking and defeating him near Barca[7], swarming the Romans as they marched through the Libyan countryside. Mounted Garamantian skirmishers drew parts of the Roman army out with a hit-and-run attack, giving the latter the impression that they were about to scatter after their arrows & javelins had little effect on the much more heavily-armored Eastern Romans; Aretion recognized the danger and tried to rein his men in, but the younger and less experienced recruits from Egypt & Cyrenaica gave chase and were mauled by Amêzyan’s counter-charge while the Greek, Syrian and Mesopotamian veterans sent to him by Anthemius had stayed put. The Eastern Romans withdrew to reorganize after sustaining 4,000 casualties, but were attacked and chased away by Amêzyan once again at Sozusa[8].
Prince Amêzyan of Garamantia on the shores of Cyrenaica
Having dealt with the Eastern Roman threat for now, the Garamantians next turned to engage the Western Romans, who had just retaken Leptis Magna around the same time that Aretion’s men were being defeated outside Barca. Their armies met east of that city, where Amêzyan sought to repeat the tactics which he’d just used against the Eastern Romans to success. Aemilian and his soldiers had seen more feigned retreats than they ever would’ve liked from all the time they spent fighting the Avars however, to the point that he’d used it himself to defeat another Garamantian warband previously, and would not fall for such a trick in the Libyan plains.
After seeing that the Western Romans (even their Visigoth contingent, which still bitterly remembered their near-annihilation after falling to an Avar feigned retreat at Naissus a few years prior) were holding fast, the Berber prince tried to reposition his troops for a committed assault. Alerted by the Romans’ own Berber vassals to this development, Aemilian ordered a full-scale attack of his own while the Garamantian ranks were still disorganized and in the process of maneuvering to their new positions. The Western Roman charge, spearheaded by great wedges of their heavy cavalry, routed the Garamantians and brought the Battle of Leptis Magna to a victorious conclusion. Amêzyan retreated from all but the easternmost frontier of the province of Africa, and further compounding his troubles, Aretion also recovered sufficiently to recapture the Cyrenaican coast a few weeks later. Consequently, he sued for terms in the week of Christmas this year, and his request was received favorably by the Roman courts – though the process of working out his future employment as a foederatus would last into the next year, as he had attacked both Roman Empires and still occupied territory belonging to both as well.
While the Romans were still distracted in Africa, tensions between the Merovingians boiled to a violent climax in northern Gaul in mid-560. Mutual and increasingly destructive raids had given both Childeric and Gunthar sufficient grounds to declare war upon the other, and Aemilian sternly recommended that Romanus and the rest of the Western Roman government not get involved when they inevitably did just that in late May. Officially he insisted that all eyes should remain fixed against the Garamantians and Avars, but Frederica would have bet her left foot that the magister militum really just wanted the Romans to stay out of the way while his key ally fought and (he hopes) succeeded in absorbing its main remaining competitor among the Franks.
Still, the Greens were in no shape to persuade their Augustus or push back against the Blues after their repeated failures and his modest success against the Avars. Thus the Franks did fight throughout the summer and autumn while Romanus stayed aloof at Aemilian’s suggestion, with Childeric in particular striving to meet his hated cousin in battle and limiting devastation of the Gallic countryside to a minimum (also as advised by Aemilian, and ostensibly to avoid damaging the kingdom he was hoping to win). As the Western generalissimo had bet on, he eventually prevailed and slew Gunthar in the Battle of Verbinum[9] on October 31, thereby forcibly reuniting the Franks under his banner and marking another major step in the restoration of Blue power in the years following Aloysius’ downfall. As for the Greens, their only bit of good news this year was that King Viderichus of the Ostrogoths came of age: Frederica’s nephew was an Ephesian, the first to rule the Ostrogoths openly as such, and she expected him to restore their people to glory in addition to accelerating their integration into Roman culture & politics, especially now that the Avars had forced them to move their center of power into Italy.
West of Rome, another barbarian people also got their first Christian kings. Æþelric and Eadric were both baptized at Eoforwic on the first of June this year, joining the Church which a great number of Anglo-Saxons had already converted to in the preceding decades. The brothers pledged to set land and funds aside for the construction of new churches and monasteries across their land, both to demonstrate their newfound piety and to bring the remainder of their pagan subjects into the fold. Between them however, it was the kingdom of the North Angles which was more uniformly Ephesian in its faith: in South Anglia there were numerous Britons, who still held to Pelagianism and whose clerics also spread the heresiarch’s teachings on the supremacy of human free will to any among the South Angles who would hear. Their numbers were still considerable enough that Æþelric was wary of violently persecuting them, instead instructing Ephesian missionaries (whether from the continent or Anglo-Saxons taught by the continentals) to debate the Pelagians wherever possible and attempting a softer method of containing Pelagianism’s growth among his people by only permitting the Ephesians to build new churches.
The baptism of brother-kings Æþelric and Eadric, through which the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons formally joined the Christian world
560 was also a year of drastic change for all of the great eastern empires. Firstly the conflict between the Turks and the White Huns approached its peak, with the former trying to finish things up by pushing their enemy beyond the Indus and the latter launching unexpected attacks into Turk-held Bactria and Sogdia to relieve the pressure on their southern flank. The decisive battles of the war were fought at the Bolan Pass in May and Osh in September: the Eftals won the former and in so doing managed to stop the Tegregs before they reached the Indus, though not without first losing what remained of their holdings in Gedrosia, while the Turks prevailed in the latter to put a definitive limit on the Huns’ efforts to recover their northern homelands and secure Khujand (including the last church Sabbatius built) for themselves.
A few days after the Turkic victory in the Battle of Osh, Istämi Khagan died of a sudden chill. Illig and Issik sought a ceasefire with the Hephthalites so they could call a ‘kurultay’ – a great council of the myriad Turkic khans and shamans who had answered to their father – in order to sort out the succession, as well as to rest themselves and their warriors after the past decade of constant hard fighting. The Eftals were even more exhausted, having been pushed to the brink between Sabbatius’ wars, the Gupta uprising and now the Turkic invasion, so it was easy for Mihirakula to agree to a truce. With that done, the brothers turned inward and summoned their great all-Turkic council.
By the year’s end, all involved had come to agree that the Turkic Khaganate should be divided. The massive size to which their empire had grown under Istämi, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the snow-capped forests of Siberia and from the eastern banks of the Tigris to the Gobi Desert, had made it far too vast and unwieldy for a lone Khagan to govern effectively. Neither brother wished for such a headache to fall into their lap. In addition, although Illig was the elder of the two his increasing adoption of and fondness for Persian ways, on top of his fascination with Buddhism, was off-putting to more traditional-minded Turkic elders.
Illig arrives at the Turkic kurultay he and his brother had called immediately following the death of their venerable father, Istämi Khagan
Thus it was agreed that he would assume leadership of the Southern Turks who had followed him into Chorasmia, Persia and Bactria, while Issik would rule the Northern Turkic Khaganate (as the remainder of Istämi’s empire would be known). The former set his capital at the Silk Road town of Konjikala, which the Turks called Ashgabat in their own tongue, while the latter kept an itinerant court but nominally governed his half of the Turkic realm from the shadow of the sacred mountain Ötüken[10]. The Northern Turks had by far the larger realm on paper, and more of Istämi’s warriors elected to follow Issik rather than his brother, who they derided as having grown soft; but the Southern Turkic Khaganate (also known as 'Turan' to its Persian subjects) was wealthier, more sophisticated and much more populated, with Illig’s court giving rise to a unique and highly influential blend of Persian traditions, Turkic culture and Eftal Buddhism over the coming decades. Though the gulf between them would widen with the passage of years, the brother-khagans pledged to remain allied to one another against any threat which would see the Turks’ sweeping gains undone for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile in Indraprastha, Mihirakula did not long outlive the last of his major enemies. He breathed his last in November of 560, and unlike the Turkic Khaganate, the Eftal empire he was leaving would not be partitioned between his surviving sons. As the heir-apparent and a prince untainted by significant defeats, Baghayash smoothly succeeded his father as the master of northern India, assigning his surviving brother Menua to guard the Hephthalite parts of Bactria against future Turkic encroachment. Notably he did not assume the title of Mahārājādhirāja, as was Hephthalite tradition, but called himself a Samrat instead in the footsteps of the Guptas and Mauryas. As he was himself half-Indian and wedded to the Gupta princess Madhavadevi (though certainly not by her choice), this seemed like a logical progression in the Indianization of the White Huns, who would be increasingly exclusively referred to as the ‘Hunas’ from this point onward; but with his assumption of the imperial title the Eftal dynasty also laid claim to rulership over all India, as far as or even further than the mighty Ashoka had gone.
China too saw a change in rulers this year, for the civil war between the Chen princes reached its crescendo in the late summer. Emperor Zhi met his brothers in a massive engagement in Anhui beneath the summer sun, and the armies they had brought were so gigantic in size – Zhi fielded as many as 190,000 troops, while Princes Bian and Chao brought a combined 120,000 to the battlefield – that their clash was not so much a single battle but actually a series of battles fought in & around Hefei over the course of four days. Although Zhi outnumbered his brothers by a healthy margin, they cleverly isolated and crushed divisions of his larger army in detail, gradually whittling down the imperial host while he overconfidently partied in Hefei’s palace and left the fighting to his inept and poorly-coordinated generals.
By the time Zhi realized what was happening, killed the general who advised him to relax and let them handle the rival usurpers with ‘thunder-clap alacrity’, and assumed personal command, it was the twilight of the second day – and too late for him. The emperor’s flailing assault failed in the next morning, and Zhi himself was captured in the rout and brought before his younger siblings at Prince Bian’s tent. Reportedly he pretended to be graceful in defeat, only to suddenly fatally stab Prince Chao with a hidden dagger when the latter went in for a brotherly embrace; slice open the throat of Chao’s bodyguard when he moved to intervene; and to then also lunge at Bian, who promptly killed him in self-defense. Since Chao’s man did not survive his wound, conveniently the only living witnesses to the fallen emperor’s supposed last bout of murderous rage happened to be Bian and his own loyalists. In any case, Bian was now the last Chen prince standing and proudly assumed his place atop the Dragon Throne as Emperor Xiaowen.
Prince Bian must have had a dry sense of humor indeed, for having taken the throne under a cloud of suspicion regarding the extremely convenient deaths of his remaining brothers, he took on a regnal name that meant 'filial and civil'
1. Western Roman Empire
2. Eastern Roman Empire
3. March of Arbogast
4. Franks
5. Burgundians
6. Alemanni
7. Thuringians
8. Lombards
9. Bavarians
10. Ostrogoths
11. Visigoths
12. Aquitani
13. Altava
14. Theveste
15. Carantanians
16. Romano-British
17. North and South Angles
18. Britons of Alcluyd
19. Picts
20. Dál Riata
21. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta and Connachta
22. Frisians
23. Continental Saxons
24. Veneti
25. Antae
26. Iazyges
27. Avars
28. Gepids
29. Hoggar
30. Garamantes
31. Caucasian kingdoms of Lazica, Iberia and Albania
32. Armenia
33. Padishkhwargar
34. Ghassanids
35. Lakhmids
36. Nubia
37. Aksum
38. Quraish & Yathrib
39. Northern Turkic Khaganate
40. Southern Turkic Khaganate
41. Indo-Romans (nominally Eastern Roman subjects)
42. Hunas
43. Chen Dynasty
44. Goguryeo
45. Southern Korean kingdoms of Baekje, Gaya and Silla
46. Yamato
47. Champa
48. Funan
49. Papar and Irish New World kingdoms
====================================================================================
[1] Around Nasiriyah.
[2] Tripoli.
[3] Karachi, then also known locally as Debal or Banbhore.
[4] Historically, Belisarius was offered the Western Roman crown by the Ostrogoths – which would have given him power over lands far more valuable to a Roman than Paropamisus – while besieging Ravenna in 540. Such was his loyalty to the Roman state that he seemingly accepted this offer, only to deliver Ravenna to the Eastern Empire instead and to continue to faithfully serve Emperor Justinian even after being recalled under suspicion of actually harboring thoughts of usurpation.
[5] Zahedan.
[6] Germa.
[7] Marj.
[8] Susa, Libya.
[9] Vervins.
[10] In Mongolia’s Kharkorin district.
Their Eastern brethren, meanwhile, were dealing with much more ‘exciting’ matters. Anthemius’ arrival in Mesopotamia emboldened his cousin Vologases to aggressively counterattack outward from the cities, and brought the second rebellion of Nahir towards its climax. The 16,000-strong imperial army barreled through the Mesopotamian countryside, undoing most resistance through judicious shows of force & collection of hostages with one hand, and offers of amnesty & the disbursement of yet more of the remaining treasure previously plundered by Sabbatius with the other; all were also promised protection against the Turks, which Nahir had been unable to deliver, and which happily coincided with the end of Turkic raids (although Anthemius had nothing to do with that and the Hephthalites, everything). In the end, only the Nestorian die-hards proved so stubborn that there was no way for Anthemius to deal with them except with the sword.
Nahir was alarmed by Anthemius’ progress on undermining his presence in rural Mesopotamia, and in an effort to rally his supporters and consolidate his hold on the region before all of both flew to the emperor’s side, the old rebel bet everything on a major battle with the Eastern Romans. He pulled his army back together and laid siege to Babylon, then withdrew southeastward toward the Mesopotamian marshes when the Augustus inevitably moved to engage him. No doubt his idea was to nullify the Romans’ advantages in numbers and equipment (especially heavy infantry and cavalry) with the wetland terrain, which he and his closest lieutenants had become intimately familiar with after spending the last decade of Sabbatius’ reign hiding from Roman justice there.
Once more Anthemius III would catch more flies with honey, rather than vinegar. This mosaic depicts his officials distributing alms to Mesopotamian insurgents who have surrendered and received his pardon
Unfortunately for Nahir, one of his less close lieutenants – a relative newcomer named Maadai, who joined with the rebels following the confiscation of his estate on a rival’s trumped-up accusations six years prior – had already proven receptive to Anthemius’ strategem, and fed the emperor’s spies reports on his leader’s movements in exchange for amnesty and having his land returned to him. Consequently Anthemius was able to intercept Nahir near the ruins of ancient Ur and Larsa[1] in August, moving 3,000 of his lighter troops by boat down the Euphrates to cut the rebels off before they could escape into the marshland. The battlefield was not as favorable as Nahir would have liked, though at least he managed to figure out Maadai’s treachery with the aid of the latter’s own servants and promptly put the traitor to death before the latter could bury a knife in his back once battle was underway.
Nahir’s strategy hinged on breaking through the 3,000-strong light detachment of the imperial Roman army, mostly comprised of Arabs and led by the Ghassanid prince al-Nu’man, with his considerably larger host of 10,000 and then racing into the marshes, which were not far to the east of Ur. In that he was unsuccessful, as the Arabs’ horse- and camel-archers were able to keep up with his own bowmen and their cavalry kept his men off-balance with repeated charges and retreats, scattering his skirmishers and light footmen only to fall back when he sent in his more heavily-armored troops to deal with them. Anthemius, Vologases and the rest of their army arrived from the west late in the afternoon, threatening to trap Nahir between them.
In the face of these odds, the rebel chief sought to buy himself time by engaging the emperor in disingenuous negotiations, while maneuvering to get his men through al-Nu’man’s force and back on the road to the marshes once the sun began to set. However Vologases saw through this ruse, and after one of his scouts reported seeing Maadai’s head on a pike in the rebel camp, he persuaded Anthemius to attack near twilight – just as Nahir himself was pulling up his tent pegs and racing to assail al-Nu’man’s division once more. The ensuing battle proved decisive, but not in the way Nahir had hoped: the rebel army was mauled and scattered by the heavy Roman cavalry leading Anthemius' assault, while he himself was fatally wounded and ironically died not long after managing to reach the marshland, having been spirited through al-Nu’man’s lines by his most devoted adherents.
In contrast to the Ghassanids, the Eastern Romans relied on their ultra-heavy cataphract and clibanarii cavalry to win the day. This heavy horseman is notably equipped with stirrups, adopted (much as the Western Romans had done) following the recent Avar war
While the Roman world was settling its internal affairs, the Turks and Hephthalites continued to fight across Bactria and Gedrosia. 558 proved more favorable for the White Huns than most of the previous years had been, as Baghayash and Menua secured a growing stream of reinforcements from India (including several dozen war elephants, which proved effective against the Turkic cavalry) and pushed their Turkic counterparts back with victories at Bactra, the Upper Oxus and Pura. Though far from finished, the Tegreg brothers were forced to pull back from most of Bactria and Gedrosia to regroup, with Illig in particular seeking to up Persian recruitment to even the odds and deduce the best way in which the Turks could overcome the Eftals’ tusked pets from Persians who had handled the beasts in the past.
In China, Emperor Jing was decisively defeated and killed by one of his brothers in the Battle of Shouchun this summer. The victor, Prince Junliang, entered the imperial capital of Jiankang soon after and there proclaimed himself Emperor Zhi of Chen. His pronouncement was opposed by the remaining rival Chen princes who still contested the Dragon Throne, Princes Bian and Chao, temporarily allied with one another to more effectively combat him. Emperor Zhi sent entreaties to Istämi Khagan to intervene against his brothers, who were based in northern China: but the Khagan remained committed to letting the Chinese bleed themselves against one another without becoming a pawn in their hands, or worse a scapegoat for them to unite against, and so no Turkic attack beyond the usual raids through the damaged Great Wall occurred.
Come 559, with troubles in the Balkans and Mesopotamia having been settled for the time being, the primary concern of both Roman Empires now remained the Garamantians. In an early case of renewed Eastern-Western military cooperation, Aemilian exchanged messages with the Eastern Roman commander in Cyrenaica, the Dux Libyarum Aretion, to better co-ordinate their counterattacks against the Garamantians and to try to restore their antebellum borders in Libya. While the Western Romans had lifted the siege of Leptis Magna a year before, the Garamantians struck again in force and bypassed that city to successfully capture the much less-defended Oea[2] instead, so Aemilian intended on driving them out of there first. In the meantime, Aretion would hold his position and mount only modest probing attacks until the Western Romans could come east, at which point he planned to launch a major attack on Cyrene and crush the Garamantians between their legions.
The numerous and highly motivated (if also disorganized) Garamantians proved a more tenacious foe than Aemilian had initially expected. Their skirmishers and light cavalry proved a nearly equal match for the Mauri of the Western Roman army, while the Romans’ heavy cavalry could hardly hope to catch up to the latter beneath the African sun, and the Altavan king Daniel was shot dead by a mounted Garamantian archer early in the battle. To achieve victory, Aemilian borrowed an Avar trick and baited the Garamantes into rushing his lines by having his horsemen conduct a feigned retreat in the aftermath of Daniel’s demise and counterattacking when they fell for his trap. Firmus, now King of Altava, avenged his father by slaying the Garamantian leader in the melee which followed, driving the hostile Berbers to flight.
The Garamantians were no primitive barbaric rabble, but organized warriors capable of manufacturing arms & armor of decent quality and employing sophisticated tactics in battle, and could give the Romans a reasonably difficult time
While Aemilian and Aretion spent the rest of the year steadily reclaiming their lost lands as planned, only to be buffeted by a second wave of Garamantian hordes fleeing their collapsing desert kingdom in December, in the easternmost outpost of the Roman world a curious development was unfolding. Mindful of the Eastern Empire’s still-poor relations with the Turks, Anthemius had accorded to Belisarius the newly-minted honor of Dux Ultimis Orientis – ‘duke of the furthest east’ – and thereby conferred upon him both absolute civil and military authority over the exclave of Paropamisus. As the emperor was concerned about the Turks killing his envoy to Belisarius or taking them hostage after the death of their own in Mesopotamia (though that had been Nahir’s fault), he took advantage of the new peace settlement with the White Huns to send his attendant via a boat sailing through the Persian Gulf and docking at a port near the mouth of the Indus, known to the Romans as ‘Barbaricum’[3], before traveling northward to the mountains of the Paropamisadae through Hunnish territory.
Necessity brought on by isolation compelled Belisarius to govern with an even lighter hand than his emperor did in most parts of the Eastern Roman Empire. His Paropamisus could not be organized and run like any other Roman province, even if he had wanted to, as the number of actual Romans in his army was far too few to control the area without the cooperation of the tribal Paropamisadae and he barely had any literate Greco-Roman officers with him to administer the small cities of the region. Instead Belisarius largely ‘ruled’ through friendly tribes like Varshasb’s, who pledged to aid the Romans in wartime and were more or less left to govern themselves in exchange; at most Belisarius offered to mediate in inter-tribal disputes, through which he built a reputation for honesty and impartiality that further gradually warmed the Paropamisadae to his governance and gained him the attention of even those tribes who would previously reject any association with him out of hand. Varshasb himself once wondered aloud why Belisarius didn't just crown himself king of that mountainous land (it was not as though his emperor could do anything about it), but was sternly shot down by the general – neither the passage of time nor having to deal with Sabbatius' obsessions and being stranded in the furthest end of the Roman world could wear down his ironclad loyalty to Rome[4].
And while the general built a modest chapel in Kophen to serve his own religious needs and those of the few Roman soldiers with him, by and large the Paropamisadae continued to practice Buddhism or their own pagan traditions around it; these lands were almost untouched by Christianity, with even Nestorianism’s furthest reaches into this region under the old aegis of the Sassanids having spread only as far as Zaranj and Harev, now contested by the Turks and Eftals. Indeed far from interrupting (or even more foolishly considering his position, persecuting) them, Belisarius gained an appreciation for the Greco-Buddhist art style which had dominated in these mountains since Alexander first came through them centuries ago. With only two priests in the Belisarian household, proselytization was nearly impossible at this point in time, although in later years these clerics would find a handful of interested converts and acolytes from the population of Kophen – Ephesian Christianity’s mustard seed in the Caucasus Indicus.
Mural depicting one of Belisarius' priests administering the Eucharist to one of the first Paropamisadae converts to Christianity
Speaking of the Turks and Eftals, their battles continued to rage around Belisarius’ mountain sanctuary. This year the Turks retook the advantage, inflicting a great defeat on the White Huns at the Battle of Dozzaab[5] in May and again at Bela (which Belisarius identified by its old Macedonian name, Rhambacia) in October, having waited for summer to pass before attempting to cross the Gedrosian desert. In the former case, at the recommendation of the Persian experts Illig had recruited they turned the Hephthalite war elephants against their masters with swarms of flaming arrows, after which Baghayash and Menua were reluctant to deploy the beasts they still had remaining. These victories reclaimed much of Gedrosia for the Tegregs, and pushed the Eftals all the way back to the banks of the Indus.
As for the true ‘furthest east’ in a geographic sense, in Japan the civil war between royalist and autonomist kabane was coming to a climax. The rebels achieved a major victory over outnumbered and divided royalist forces in the Battle of Maizuru Bay in the summer of 559, after which the Great King Heijō relented and sued for peace with the rebel chiefs. As part of the settlement he reached with the magnates, he agreed to suspend his reforms, acknowledge their traditional privileges and direct the Yamato armies against encroaching Emishi in the north, while they once more pledged themselves to his service. However the Great King was not in truth dissuaded from the cause of reform and centralization, and sought to ally with the Buddhist Soga clan – which he judged to be more sympathetic to foreign influence, including the Chinese model of governance – on account of their shared fondness of certain continental cultural imports, thereby splitting them away from the more fiercely traditionalist rebel clans ahead of any renewed internal conflicts.
Heijō, Great King of Yamato, with two of his daughters
Both the Eastern and Western Romans remained largely focused on the Garamantine issue throughout 560. A civil war following the assassination of King Izdârasen drove his heir, Amêzyan, to abandon the capital Garama[6], and to instead gather & lead his 25,000 followers (plus probably well over a hundred thousand noncombatants – the wives, children, elderly parents and invalid kin of those warriors – with them) northward late in 559, and by the end of January 560 he had driven Aretion from Cyrene again. By mid-April he had also taken Leptis Magna, Aemilian having elected to evacuate the city by sea and to await further reinforcements from Hispania & Italy rather than risk tackling such a massive force at the earliest opportunity.
Amêzyan’s attack was by far the largest and most threatening Garamantian invasion either of the two Romes had faced and would ever have to concern themselves with. In response, Aemilian and Aretion continued their cooperation and conducted coordinated withdrawals toward Africa Proconsularis & Egypt proper respectively, deploying their light troops to skirmish with the advancing Berbers and occasionally indulging in limited counterattacks to buy time for their overlords to rush more reinforcements to North Africa. Come July, both commanders felt they had amassed enough soldiers for a major counterattack, and that though their hosts were still individually slightly smaller than Amêzyan’s – 20,000 Western Romans and 18,000 Eastern Romans – they could crush him between both.
Amêzyan was not blind to the danger however, and after his scouts informed him that both of his enemies’ armies had ballooned in size, he decided to take quick action to concentrate against & crush them separately. Correctly identifying the Eastern Roman army as the smaller of the pair, he allowed Aretion to push a ways into Cyrenaica before attacking and defeating him near Barca[7], swarming the Romans as they marched through the Libyan countryside. Mounted Garamantian skirmishers drew parts of the Roman army out with a hit-and-run attack, giving the latter the impression that they were about to scatter after their arrows & javelins had little effect on the much more heavily-armored Eastern Romans; Aretion recognized the danger and tried to rein his men in, but the younger and less experienced recruits from Egypt & Cyrenaica gave chase and were mauled by Amêzyan’s counter-charge while the Greek, Syrian and Mesopotamian veterans sent to him by Anthemius had stayed put. The Eastern Romans withdrew to reorganize after sustaining 4,000 casualties, but were attacked and chased away by Amêzyan once again at Sozusa[8].
Prince Amêzyan of Garamantia on the shores of Cyrenaica
Having dealt with the Eastern Roman threat for now, the Garamantians next turned to engage the Western Romans, who had just retaken Leptis Magna around the same time that Aretion’s men were being defeated outside Barca. Their armies met east of that city, where Amêzyan sought to repeat the tactics which he’d just used against the Eastern Romans to success. Aemilian and his soldiers had seen more feigned retreats than they ever would’ve liked from all the time they spent fighting the Avars however, to the point that he’d used it himself to defeat another Garamantian warband previously, and would not fall for such a trick in the Libyan plains.
After seeing that the Western Romans (even their Visigoth contingent, which still bitterly remembered their near-annihilation after falling to an Avar feigned retreat at Naissus a few years prior) were holding fast, the Berber prince tried to reposition his troops for a committed assault. Alerted by the Romans’ own Berber vassals to this development, Aemilian ordered a full-scale attack of his own while the Garamantian ranks were still disorganized and in the process of maneuvering to their new positions. The Western Roman charge, spearheaded by great wedges of their heavy cavalry, routed the Garamantians and brought the Battle of Leptis Magna to a victorious conclusion. Amêzyan retreated from all but the easternmost frontier of the province of Africa, and further compounding his troubles, Aretion also recovered sufficiently to recapture the Cyrenaican coast a few weeks later. Consequently, he sued for terms in the week of Christmas this year, and his request was received favorably by the Roman courts – though the process of working out his future employment as a foederatus would last into the next year, as he had attacked both Roman Empires and still occupied territory belonging to both as well.
While the Romans were still distracted in Africa, tensions between the Merovingians boiled to a violent climax in northern Gaul in mid-560. Mutual and increasingly destructive raids had given both Childeric and Gunthar sufficient grounds to declare war upon the other, and Aemilian sternly recommended that Romanus and the rest of the Western Roman government not get involved when they inevitably did just that in late May. Officially he insisted that all eyes should remain fixed against the Garamantians and Avars, but Frederica would have bet her left foot that the magister militum really just wanted the Romans to stay out of the way while his key ally fought and (he hopes) succeeded in absorbing its main remaining competitor among the Franks.
Still, the Greens were in no shape to persuade their Augustus or push back against the Blues after their repeated failures and his modest success against the Avars. Thus the Franks did fight throughout the summer and autumn while Romanus stayed aloof at Aemilian’s suggestion, with Childeric in particular striving to meet his hated cousin in battle and limiting devastation of the Gallic countryside to a minimum (also as advised by Aemilian, and ostensibly to avoid damaging the kingdom he was hoping to win). As the Western generalissimo had bet on, he eventually prevailed and slew Gunthar in the Battle of Verbinum[9] on October 31, thereby forcibly reuniting the Franks under his banner and marking another major step in the restoration of Blue power in the years following Aloysius’ downfall. As for the Greens, their only bit of good news this year was that King Viderichus of the Ostrogoths came of age: Frederica’s nephew was an Ephesian, the first to rule the Ostrogoths openly as such, and she expected him to restore their people to glory in addition to accelerating their integration into Roman culture & politics, especially now that the Avars had forced them to move their center of power into Italy.
West of Rome, another barbarian people also got their first Christian kings. Æþelric and Eadric were both baptized at Eoforwic on the first of June this year, joining the Church which a great number of Anglo-Saxons had already converted to in the preceding decades. The brothers pledged to set land and funds aside for the construction of new churches and monasteries across their land, both to demonstrate their newfound piety and to bring the remainder of their pagan subjects into the fold. Between them however, it was the kingdom of the North Angles which was more uniformly Ephesian in its faith: in South Anglia there were numerous Britons, who still held to Pelagianism and whose clerics also spread the heresiarch’s teachings on the supremacy of human free will to any among the South Angles who would hear. Their numbers were still considerable enough that Æþelric was wary of violently persecuting them, instead instructing Ephesian missionaries (whether from the continent or Anglo-Saxons taught by the continentals) to debate the Pelagians wherever possible and attempting a softer method of containing Pelagianism’s growth among his people by only permitting the Ephesians to build new churches.
The baptism of brother-kings Æþelric and Eadric, through which the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons formally joined the Christian world
560 was also a year of drastic change for all of the great eastern empires. Firstly the conflict between the Turks and the White Huns approached its peak, with the former trying to finish things up by pushing their enemy beyond the Indus and the latter launching unexpected attacks into Turk-held Bactria and Sogdia to relieve the pressure on their southern flank. The decisive battles of the war were fought at the Bolan Pass in May and Osh in September: the Eftals won the former and in so doing managed to stop the Tegregs before they reached the Indus, though not without first losing what remained of their holdings in Gedrosia, while the Turks prevailed in the latter to put a definitive limit on the Huns’ efforts to recover their northern homelands and secure Khujand (including the last church Sabbatius built) for themselves.
A few days after the Turkic victory in the Battle of Osh, Istämi Khagan died of a sudden chill. Illig and Issik sought a ceasefire with the Hephthalites so they could call a ‘kurultay’ – a great council of the myriad Turkic khans and shamans who had answered to their father – in order to sort out the succession, as well as to rest themselves and their warriors after the past decade of constant hard fighting. The Eftals were even more exhausted, having been pushed to the brink between Sabbatius’ wars, the Gupta uprising and now the Turkic invasion, so it was easy for Mihirakula to agree to a truce. With that done, the brothers turned inward and summoned their great all-Turkic council.
By the year’s end, all involved had come to agree that the Turkic Khaganate should be divided. The massive size to which their empire had grown under Istämi, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the snow-capped forests of Siberia and from the eastern banks of the Tigris to the Gobi Desert, had made it far too vast and unwieldy for a lone Khagan to govern effectively. Neither brother wished for such a headache to fall into their lap. In addition, although Illig was the elder of the two his increasing adoption of and fondness for Persian ways, on top of his fascination with Buddhism, was off-putting to more traditional-minded Turkic elders.
Illig arrives at the Turkic kurultay he and his brother had called immediately following the death of their venerable father, Istämi Khagan
Thus it was agreed that he would assume leadership of the Southern Turks who had followed him into Chorasmia, Persia and Bactria, while Issik would rule the Northern Turkic Khaganate (as the remainder of Istämi’s empire would be known). The former set his capital at the Silk Road town of Konjikala, which the Turks called Ashgabat in their own tongue, while the latter kept an itinerant court but nominally governed his half of the Turkic realm from the shadow of the sacred mountain Ötüken[10]. The Northern Turks had by far the larger realm on paper, and more of Istämi’s warriors elected to follow Issik rather than his brother, who they derided as having grown soft; but the Southern Turkic Khaganate (also known as 'Turan' to its Persian subjects) was wealthier, more sophisticated and much more populated, with Illig’s court giving rise to a unique and highly influential blend of Persian traditions, Turkic culture and Eftal Buddhism over the coming decades. Though the gulf between them would widen with the passage of years, the brother-khagans pledged to remain allied to one another against any threat which would see the Turks’ sweeping gains undone for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile in Indraprastha, Mihirakula did not long outlive the last of his major enemies. He breathed his last in November of 560, and unlike the Turkic Khaganate, the Eftal empire he was leaving would not be partitioned between his surviving sons. As the heir-apparent and a prince untainted by significant defeats, Baghayash smoothly succeeded his father as the master of northern India, assigning his surviving brother Menua to guard the Hephthalite parts of Bactria against future Turkic encroachment. Notably he did not assume the title of Mahārājādhirāja, as was Hephthalite tradition, but called himself a Samrat instead in the footsteps of the Guptas and Mauryas. As he was himself half-Indian and wedded to the Gupta princess Madhavadevi (though certainly not by her choice), this seemed like a logical progression in the Indianization of the White Huns, who would be increasingly exclusively referred to as the ‘Hunas’ from this point onward; but with his assumption of the imperial title the Eftal dynasty also laid claim to rulership over all India, as far as or even further than the mighty Ashoka had gone.
China too saw a change in rulers this year, for the civil war between the Chen princes reached its crescendo in the late summer. Emperor Zhi met his brothers in a massive engagement in Anhui beneath the summer sun, and the armies they had brought were so gigantic in size – Zhi fielded as many as 190,000 troops, while Princes Bian and Chao brought a combined 120,000 to the battlefield – that their clash was not so much a single battle but actually a series of battles fought in & around Hefei over the course of four days. Although Zhi outnumbered his brothers by a healthy margin, they cleverly isolated and crushed divisions of his larger army in detail, gradually whittling down the imperial host while he overconfidently partied in Hefei’s palace and left the fighting to his inept and poorly-coordinated generals.
By the time Zhi realized what was happening, killed the general who advised him to relax and let them handle the rival usurpers with ‘thunder-clap alacrity’, and assumed personal command, it was the twilight of the second day – and too late for him. The emperor’s flailing assault failed in the next morning, and Zhi himself was captured in the rout and brought before his younger siblings at Prince Bian’s tent. Reportedly he pretended to be graceful in defeat, only to suddenly fatally stab Prince Chao with a hidden dagger when the latter went in for a brotherly embrace; slice open the throat of Chao’s bodyguard when he moved to intervene; and to then also lunge at Bian, who promptly killed him in self-defense. Since Chao’s man did not survive his wound, conveniently the only living witnesses to the fallen emperor’s supposed last bout of murderous rage happened to be Bian and his own loyalists. In any case, Bian was now the last Chen prince standing and proudly assumed his place atop the Dragon Throne as Emperor Xiaowen.
Prince Bian must have had a dry sense of humor indeed, for having taken the throne under a cloud of suspicion regarding the extremely convenient deaths of his remaining brothers, he took on a regnal name that meant 'filial and civil'
1. Western Roman Empire
2. Eastern Roman Empire
3. March of Arbogast
4. Franks
5. Burgundians
6. Alemanni
7. Thuringians
8. Lombards
9. Bavarians
10. Ostrogoths
11. Visigoths
12. Aquitani
13. Altava
14. Theveste
15. Carantanians
16. Romano-British
17. North and South Angles
18. Britons of Alcluyd
19. Picts
20. Dál Riata
21. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta and Connachta
22. Frisians
23. Continental Saxons
24. Veneti
25. Antae
26. Iazyges
27. Avars
28. Gepids
29. Hoggar
30. Garamantes
31. Caucasian kingdoms of Lazica, Iberia and Albania
32. Armenia
33. Padishkhwargar
34. Ghassanids
35. Lakhmids
36. Nubia
37. Aksum
38. Quraish & Yathrib
39. Northern Turkic Khaganate
40. Southern Turkic Khaganate
41. Indo-Romans (nominally Eastern Roman subjects)
42. Hunas
43. Chen Dynasty
44. Goguryeo
45. Southern Korean kingdoms of Baekje, Gaya and Silla
46. Yamato
47. Champa
48. Funan
49. Papar and Irish New World kingdoms
====================================================================================
[1] Around Nasiriyah.
[2] Tripoli.
[3] Karachi, then also known locally as Debal or Banbhore.
[4] Historically, Belisarius was offered the Western Roman crown by the Ostrogoths – which would have given him power over lands far more valuable to a Roman than Paropamisus – while besieging Ravenna in 540. Such was his loyalty to the Roman state that he seemingly accepted this offer, only to deliver Ravenna to the Eastern Empire instead and to continue to faithfully serve Emperor Justinian even after being recalled under suspicion of actually harboring thoughts of usurpation.
[5] Zahedan.
[6] Germa.
[7] Marj.
[8] Susa, Libya.
[9] Vervins.
[10] In Mongolia’s Kharkorin district.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
The Blues are still gaining strength and Frederica is bound to convince Romanus do something really stupid sooner or later.
Well, Turkic divorce was much more civil than I thought it would be.
Yep, I'm sure that's exactly how it happened.
Well, Turkic divorce was much more civil than I thought it would be.
Yep, I'm sure that's exactly how it happened.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Heh, well the Turks won't be staying on friendly terms for long, especially as the Southern Khaganate grows more Persianized and the gulf between the brothers deepens (to say nothing of any descendants they might have). Like most steppe warriors, the Tegregs weren't made to set up & enjoy long stretches of peacetime. But for the short term, I do have plans for both Khagans which will drive them against enemies besides each other.
Next week's the last week of January, so I'm gonna try to get two chapters done. Since I just updated the map and it's been a while since the last narrative & factional chapters, I believe now's a good time for one of each to close the month with; and since most of both have been about the Romans in the past, I think the giants of the east have a stronger claim on the next entries. One for the White Huns, who are the oldest of Rome's major enemies still standing in the Orient and have undergone much Indianization over the past century, and the other for China on account of the...completely uncontroversial ending to their latest round of fratricidal fighting, as you pointed out
Rajamandala
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Capital: Indraprastha.
Religion: Theravada Buddhism.
Languages: Bactrian is the original and official court language of the Hephthalites, although it is beginning to be phased out in favor of Pali. Along with Sogdian, it is also the vernacular in those parts of the northern Hephthalite homeland which they have managed to retain, while Sanskrit is still in use by the remaining Indian elite and other Prakrit languages are spoken day-to-day by the vast non-Eftal majority of the empire’s population. The Prakrit languages spoken by their Indian subjects include:
- Apabhraṃśa
- Ardhamagadhi
- Gandhari
- Kamarupi
- Magadhi
- Maharashtri
- Pali
- Shauraseni
The Hephthalites have come far in the past century and a half. Until the fifth century they were so insignificant that, if they had existed as a distinct people at all, their origins are shrouded in mystery: all that is known is that once they emerged from the mountains of the Badakhshan region, they were an ethnically heterogenous confederation of Bactrian, Sogdian and Turkic tribes, at that time led by the mighty brothers Khingila and Akhshunwar. It is from that Turkic element that they can most closely be associated with the ‘Black’ (or ‘true’) Huns who terrorized Europe under Attila – they may very well have been a splinter of the Xiongnu people who gradually moved west after the destruction of their empire by the Han dynasty.
Regardless of their humble and obscure origins, the Hephthalites quickly put themselves on the map as a force no less destructive and frightening to face than their Hunnish cousins. Within a hundred years they would topple the Sassanid Empire and bring the Guptas to their knees, creating a leviathan of an empire which stretched from the source of the Euphrates to the mouth of the Ganges. Alas, actually holding these vast lands together proved more difficult than conquering it: between the collapse of their alliance with the Eastern Romans against the defeated Persians, the arrival of the Rouran and Tegreg Turks on the scene, and their own catastrophic infighting, they did not long retain many of those conquests. Indeed the entire western half of their empire was lost less than halfway through the sixth century, first to the Eastern Roman Emperor Sabbatius and now to the Turks; the latter of whom intrude upon even the Hephthalite homeland.
Despite those stinging defeats however, the White Huns still endure in India, where they have recently eliminated the last major threat to their rule by suppressing the remnants of the Gupta Empire: their hold on the northern parts of the subcontinent is now stronger than it has ever been. Baghayash rules them now, putting an end to the lofty western ambitions of his predecessors Khingila, Akhshunwar and Toramana: the son of an Indian mother himself, his vision is pan-Indian and strictly directed southward, while intending only to fight defensively to preserve what remains of his northern border rather than to expand it outward against the Turks and what remains of the Roman presence in the Upariśyena Mountains. Accordingly, not only has he married a princess of the Gupta dynasty which he helped his father Mihirakula to topple, but he has adopted their imperial title of Samrat – replacing the title of Mahārājādhirāja which had been borne by every White Hunnish emperor until now – and is even setting about replacing Bactrian, his ancestral tongue, with Sanskrit at his court.
Some traditionalists among the Eftals grumble that not only have they lost their rightful soil to the Turks and Romans, but now they are losing their souls to India under Baghayash’s direction (though he did not start this process of Indianization, for his grandfather Lakhana was the one to move the Eftal capital to Indraprastha in 518). But these voices are few, their ranks gravely thinned by the wars of the past half-century while many more Hephthalites have come to settle in India, live among and intermarry with the locals, and prosper behind the safety of the great Upariśyena. To Baghayash, it is only common sense to focus on the part of the world where his people have been able to make their success last, and contrary to the griping of the Bactrian old guard, he does not expect a less dangerous existence in India to dull their formidable martial ability. The Samrat intends for the Hunas to follow in the footsteps of the Yuezhi, fellow Bactrians who seamlessly integrated themselves into Indian society and culture and went on to create the largest and wealthiest empire on the subcontinent to date: of course, whether they can push to match or even exceed the standard set by the Kushans remains to be seen.
The Hephthalites are well aware that though they have become the masters of northern India, their rule will not last long without the support of the Indians who greatly outnumber them, and to that end have sought to integrate and co-operate with them in ruling over the subcontinent. They have not adopted the old Gupta administrative model in full, but preserved some of its elements while also decentralizing authority from Indraprastha and involving a large number of Indians in the increasingly feudalistic government of their empire. At the top of the pecking order sits the Samrat, or Huna Emperor, who typically rules with a light hand and leaves his feudatories to their devices unless a war has broken out either abroad or between said vassals. His heir and deputy is traditionally titled Mahasenapati, or ‘supreme army commander’. Notably, as its name suggests this office inherently comes with military responsibilities, and so it is not given to underage or newborn sons of the Samrat much as the title of Caesar is in the Roman world.
Mihirakula near the end of his life with his Mahasenapati and eventual successor, Baghayash, as well as an Eftal guard in Persianized armor
The twenty-six old Gupta bhuktis (provinces) have been abolished with the Hunnic conquest, replaced by thirteen feudatories governed by hereditary sub-kings – all appropriately titled raja. These houses were formerly Bactrian clans of high rank, linked to the ruling dynasty of the Hephthalites, and like their overlord they have since intermarried considerably with the local nobility to enhance their ties to and ease of governing each region. The Hunas have named their feudatories after the legendary kingdoms of the Āryāvarta, giving the impression that they are striving to restore that part of Indian history and myth: for example, the lands around Indraprastha which fall under the direct rule of the Samrat form the kingdom of Kuru, and it is neighbored by the principalities of Panchala and Trigarta. Royal officials titled kumaramatyas serve as a intermediaries between the Samrat and his rajas, ensuring the latter remain informed of their obligations to the former.
In the Gupta style each kingdom is further divided into districts called vishayas, governed by appointed officials called ayuktas (servant-officers). These men are not supposed to pass their title on to their children in theory, as each ayukta is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Huna raja, but in practice it is not unheard of for the raja to let their ayuktas serve for life unless the ayukta rebels or otherwise gravely offends them in some fashion, and to respect their wishes in regards to their successor upon their death. Each vishaya can further be broken down into four categories: collections of self-governing Indian villages called a pethaka or santaka (each village has its own headman and elders, but collectively elected a lokayukta to represent their concerns to the raja and Samrat), cities large and notable enough to acquire a nagarapati (prefect) who answers directly to the Samrat, estates set aside for Buddhist or Hindu temples called agrahara, and the personal estates of the lesser Indian and Huna nobility.
A Huna raja, flanked by a Buddhist monk, grants an audience to his Indian subjects
The militaristic Hunas are focused less on the collection of material revenues, as the Guptas formerly had been, and more-so on ensuring that every step of their empire’s hierarchy is capable of supplying them with troops when the need arises – which has proven to be quite often. Each raja is required to maintain a standing force of cavalry and elephants, whose size and expenses will be determined by the size of their own principality. The same is true of the lesser feudatories, with both Huna Rajputs and the traditional Indian kshatriyas expected to use the revenue from their lands to keep hundreds of armed and mounted retainers in their service and ready to fight when called upon by the Samrat. The large cities governed by a nagarapati, such as Ayodhya or Mathura, are expected to provide the infantry core of the Huna armies in the form of specialized shreni: though the term is applied to all self-regulating urban Indian guilds in general, the ones most relevant to combat (and thus the ones which the Hunas are most interested in) are the traditional guilds of warcraft – the ones which have supplied mercenaries belonging to a proud warrior tradition dating back at least to the Arthashastra of the 3rd century BC, and who have even been mentioned in the legendary Mahabharata.
There exists some caste fluidity within the Hephthalite government. Being Buddhists for the most part, they are not as fussy about appointing men from the lower castes to offices such as ayukta or even kumaramatya as a more traditionally-minded Hindu dynasty might be. The vaishyas, or merchant caste, have benefited the most from this arrangement – every nagarapati in the Huna empire as of 560 AD is a vaishya, for example, and in general their literacy & numeracy skills make them indispensable to the warlike Hunas, to the consternation of the higher-ranking kshatriyas. That said, the Hunas still respect caste limitations to an extent so as to not needlessly offend the aforementioned kshatriyas: most of their non-urban-shreni Indian warriors come from that caste, leaving the majority of the mercantile vaishyas and the laborer shudra caste to toil at home and sustain the imperial armies with their taxes.
Another hallmark of advanced civilization: the Hunas have taken to minting coins in India's cities, motivated by the example of the Guptas, Romans and Persians. This silver coin honors Baghayash and Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha's stepmother
Mihirakula near the end of his life with his Mahasenapati and eventual successor, Baghayash, as well as an Eftal guard in Persianized armor
The twenty-six old Gupta bhuktis (provinces) have been abolished with the Hunnic conquest, replaced by thirteen feudatories governed by hereditary sub-kings – all appropriately titled raja. These houses were formerly Bactrian clans of high rank, linked to the ruling dynasty of the Hephthalites, and like their overlord they have since intermarried considerably with the local nobility to enhance their ties to and ease of governing each region. The Hunas have named their feudatories after the legendary kingdoms of the Āryāvarta, giving the impression that they are striving to restore that part of Indian history and myth: for example, the lands around Indraprastha which fall under the direct rule of the Samrat form the kingdom of Kuru, and it is neighbored by the principalities of Panchala and Trigarta. Royal officials titled kumaramatyas serve as a intermediaries between the Samrat and his rajas, ensuring the latter remain informed of their obligations to the former.
In the Gupta style each kingdom is further divided into districts called vishayas, governed by appointed officials called ayuktas (servant-officers). These men are not supposed to pass their title on to their children in theory, as each ayukta is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Huna raja, but in practice it is not unheard of for the raja to let their ayuktas serve for life unless the ayukta rebels or otherwise gravely offends them in some fashion, and to respect their wishes in regards to their successor upon their death. Each vishaya can further be broken down into four categories: collections of self-governing Indian villages called a pethaka or santaka (each village has its own headman and elders, but collectively elected a lokayukta to represent their concerns to the raja and Samrat), cities large and notable enough to acquire a nagarapati (prefect) who answers directly to the Samrat, estates set aside for Buddhist or Hindu temples called agrahara, and the personal estates of the lesser Indian and Huna nobility.
A Huna raja, flanked by a Buddhist monk, grants an audience to his Indian subjects
The militaristic Hunas are focused less on the collection of material revenues, as the Guptas formerly had been, and more-so on ensuring that every step of their empire’s hierarchy is capable of supplying them with troops when the need arises – which has proven to be quite often. Each raja is required to maintain a standing force of cavalry and elephants, whose size and expenses will be determined by the size of their own principality. The same is true of the lesser feudatories, with both Huna Rajputs and the traditional Indian kshatriyas expected to use the revenue from their lands to keep hundreds of armed and mounted retainers in their service and ready to fight when called upon by the Samrat. The large cities governed by a nagarapati, such as Ayodhya or Mathura, are expected to provide the infantry core of the Huna armies in the form of specialized shreni: though the term is applied to all self-regulating urban Indian guilds in general, the ones most relevant to combat (and thus the ones which the Hunas are most interested in) are the traditional guilds of warcraft – the ones which have supplied mercenaries belonging to a proud warrior tradition dating back at least to the Arthashastra of the 3rd century BC, and who have even been mentioned in the legendary Mahabharata.
There exists some caste fluidity within the Hephthalite government. Being Buddhists for the most part, they are not as fussy about appointing men from the lower castes to offices such as ayukta or even kumaramatya as a more traditionally-minded Hindu dynasty might be. The vaishyas, or merchant caste, have benefited the most from this arrangement – every nagarapati in the Huna empire as of 560 AD is a vaishya, for example, and in general their literacy & numeracy skills make them indispensable to the warlike Hunas, to the consternation of the higher-ranking kshatriyas. That said, the Hunas still respect caste limitations to an extent so as to not needlessly offend the aforementioned kshatriyas: most of their non-urban-shreni Indian warriors come from that caste, leaving the majority of the mercantile vaishyas and the laborer shudra caste to toil at home and sustain the imperial armies with their taxes.
Another hallmark of advanced civilization: the Hunas have taken to minting coins in India's cities, motivated by the example of the Guptas, Romans and Persians. This silver coin honors Baghayash and Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha's stepmother
Any discussion of Hephthalite society in India should logically begin with the Hephthalites themselves. No longer the nomadic and free-riding White Huns of old, over the past fifty or so years a majority of the Eftal noble clans have settled down on hereditary estates parceled out to them by their emperors. No small number of these conquerors have married and had children with the surviving women of the kshatriya families they displaced, mirroring their overlord’s treatment of the Guptas, and forming a new aristocracy called the raja-putra or ‘sons of the kings’ – in short, Rajputs. From the rajas who govern the thirteen Mahabharata-styled great feudatories to the most minor of marcher lords assigned to the southern borders of the empire, these Rajputs form the core and backbone of Huna rule in northern India, and continue to provide the Samrat with his most reliable warriors.
A Huna Rajput impresses the reality of the new order upon some of his more recalcitrant Indian subjects
Aside from the growing Rajput class, the traditional order of India also survives under Hephthalite rule, for the new overlords of northern India do not wish to spark unnecessary conflict by overturning it altogether. Most of the Indians in the empire still hold to their Hindu traditions, including the Vedic caste system: brahmins, the priests and scholars; kshatriyas, the warriors and princes; vaishyas, the merchants and smaller landowners; and shudras, the laborers and servants. Of these, the kshatriya caste has been most adversely affected by the Huna conquests, having taken the brunt of the fighting and thus sustained the highest casualties. To compensate, not only have the surviving kshatriya jatis (clans) acknowledged Hephthalite rule so as to avoid extermination and to keep what lands remain in their hands, but the Rajputs are usually reckoned as kshatriyas by the Hindu populace (helped in no small part by their intermarriage with shattered kshatriya houses).
The other castes are still in place, although Hephthalite rule has brought a reduction in brahmin privileges while empowering the vaishyas and shudras to an extent. The new Buddhist ruling class, never too keen on the Hindu caste system, have struck down ancient statutes forbidding inter-caste marriage, and promoted many vaishyas (as well as a smaller number of shudras) to both great and modest offices under their government. The brahmins, meanwhile, have had their period of flourishing under the Guptas promptly come to a stop under the Hunas: Buddhist temples are the ones growing in size and splendor with official patronage now, while Hindu ones stagnate or languish. The Hunas donate gifts to assist with their upkeep and usually do not go out of their way to antagonize the brahmins into revolt, to be sure, but no longer do the brahmins have the ears of emperors and kings, and no small number of their kind have had to take up secular occupations (often trade or agriculture, putting them in competition with the more experienced vaishyas) to sustain themselves without access to huge amounts of state largesse. Suffice to say the Eftal invasions have disrupted the Brahmanic system, and compelled even its most fervent adherents to take a more flexible approach to life.
The continued survival of the caste system under Hephthalite rule also means the continued existence of the unfortunate dalits – the ‘untouchable’ casteless. However despised they may be by the polite Hindu society which has forsaken them, as the Hunas have mitigated the worsening abuses of the caste system in their time as India’s rulers, so too have they brought some measure of relief and new opportunities to the untouchables. The best-off of the dalits are those who were formerly Hindu priests, cast out for having taken the side of Buddhism in the religious struggle between it and Hinduism under the Guptas, or else for refusing to abandon friends who have done the same; these mostly seamlessly transitioned into the role of monks, gurus to the Rajputs, and administrators since their co-religionists have conquered northern India. Other dalits find an escape from the dreary roles practically assigned to them from birth in the Hephthalite army, where they are entitled to the same opportunities for self-enrichment via plunder as other soldiers and able to climb the ranks on the basis of merit before their less judgmental Huna commanders.
While contemptuous of the Brahmanic caste system, the Buddhist Hunas are generally neither fanatics nor revolutionaries, and for now have taken steps to mitigate rather than abolish it in order to maintain a semblance of stability across their empire
Aside from the Hindu and Buddhist supermajority of the White Hunnish empire’s populace, there also exists minorities of pagans, Zoroastrians and even Christians in the northwest of the empire. The pagans are invariably die-hard Hunnic traditionalists who have not left Bactria for India: whether they live as tribal nomads in the rugged Bactrian countryside or as sedentary city-dwellers along their portion of the Silk Road, they still hold to their pantheon of old gods, of which the sun god Zūn (identified with the Persian Mithra) is the most prominent. The Zoroastrians and Christians are both holdovers from Sassanid times, and are officially tolerated by the Mahārājādhirājas and Samrats in exchange for their continued support and financial contributions; the Christians in Hephthalite territory are invariably Nestorians who hold to the Patriarchate of Ctesiphon and have naught but hostility toward the Roman-aligned Ephesians, so to them supporting the Hephthalites against the persecutors of their western brethren is the logical move to make, and they have also established contact with the Nasrani Christian community of southern India (currently far outside Hephthalite authority) said to be established by Saint Thomas decades after the death of Jesus.
A Huna Rajput impresses the reality of the new order upon some of his more recalcitrant Indian subjects
Aside from the growing Rajput class, the traditional order of India also survives under Hephthalite rule, for the new overlords of northern India do not wish to spark unnecessary conflict by overturning it altogether. Most of the Indians in the empire still hold to their Hindu traditions, including the Vedic caste system: brahmins, the priests and scholars; kshatriyas, the warriors and princes; vaishyas, the merchants and smaller landowners; and shudras, the laborers and servants. Of these, the kshatriya caste has been most adversely affected by the Huna conquests, having taken the brunt of the fighting and thus sustained the highest casualties. To compensate, not only have the surviving kshatriya jatis (clans) acknowledged Hephthalite rule so as to avoid extermination and to keep what lands remain in their hands, but the Rajputs are usually reckoned as kshatriyas by the Hindu populace (helped in no small part by their intermarriage with shattered kshatriya houses).
The other castes are still in place, although Hephthalite rule has brought a reduction in brahmin privileges while empowering the vaishyas and shudras to an extent. The new Buddhist ruling class, never too keen on the Hindu caste system, have struck down ancient statutes forbidding inter-caste marriage, and promoted many vaishyas (as well as a smaller number of shudras) to both great and modest offices under their government. The brahmins, meanwhile, have had their period of flourishing under the Guptas promptly come to a stop under the Hunas: Buddhist temples are the ones growing in size and splendor with official patronage now, while Hindu ones stagnate or languish. The Hunas donate gifts to assist with their upkeep and usually do not go out of their way to antagonize the brahmins into revolt, to be sure, but no longer do the brahmins have the ears of emperors and kings, and no small number of their kind have had to take up secular occupations (often trade or agriculture, putting them in competition with the more experienced vaishyas) to sustain themselves without access to huge amounts of state largesse. Suffice to say the Eftal invasions have disrupted the Brahmanic system, and compelled even its most fervent adherents to take a more flexible approach to life.
The continued survival of the caste system under Hephthalite rule also means the continued existence of the unfortunate dalits – the ‘untouchable’ casteless. However despised they may be by the polite Hindu society which has forsaken them, as the Hunas have mitigated the worsening abuses of the caste system in their time as India’s rulers, so too have they brought some measure of relief and new opportunities to the untouchables. The best-off of the dalits are those who were formerly Hindu priests, cast out for having taken the side of Buddhism in the religious struggle between it and Hinduism under the Guptas, or else for refusing to abandon friends who have done the same; these mostly seamlessly transitioned into the role of monks, gurus to the Rajputs, and administrators since their co-religionists have conquered northern India. Other dalits find an escape from the dreary roles practically assigned to them from birth in the Hephthalite army, where they are entitled to the same opportunities for self-enrichment via plunder as other soldiers and able to climb the ranks on the basis of merit before their less judgmental Huna commanders.
While contemptuous of the Brahmanic caste system, the Buddhist Hunas are generally neither fanatics nor revolutionaries, and for now have taken steps to mitigate rather than abolish it in order to maintain a semblance of stability across their empire
Aside from the Hindu and Buddhist supermajority of the White Hunnish empire’s populace, there also exists minorities of pagans, Zoroastrians and even Christians in the northwest of the empire. The pagans are invariably die-hard Hunnic traditionalists who have not left Bactria for India: whether they live as tribal nomads in the rugged Bactrian countryside or as sedentary city-dwellers along their portion of the Silk Road, they still hold to their pantheon of old gods, of which the sun god Zūn (identified with the Persian Mithra) is the most prominent. The Zoroastrians and Christians are both holdovers from Sassanid times, and are officially tolerated by the Mahārājādhirājas and Samrats in exchange for their continued support and financial contributions; the Christians in Hephthalite territory are invariably Nestorians who hold to the Patriarchate of Ctesiphon and have naught but hostility toward the Roman-aligned Ephesians, so to them supporting the Hephthalites against the persecutors of their western brethren is the logical move to make, and they have also established contact with the Nasrani Christian community of southern India (currently far outside Hephthalite authority) said to be established by Saint Thomas decades after the death of Jesus.
The Huna armies have grown alongside their list of conquests, and not just in numbers. The addition of Persians and especially Indians have greatly diversified their ranks and capabilities, ensuring that the White Hunnish army of 560 is far better equipped to handle a wide array of threats than the one of 460. Of course, that is not to say the Hunas have entirely forgotten their own roots: the fearsome horse-archers who buried many a Sassanid host beneath their arrows and the hooves of their agile steeds remain the core of any Hephthalite fighting force. It would be more accurate to say that under Mihirakula and Baghayash, the Hunas are fielding two armies separated by ethnicity and fighting style, but sharing a common command in the Samrat and his generals.
The cavalry-focused martial traditions of the Hephthalites are being carried onward by their Rajput descendants. The nobility of India’s new order who trace their lineage to the Hunnic conquerors are compelled to provide the Samrat with armies of horsemen when he demands it: a combination of mounted archers and lancers, armed and armored as heavily as their patron can afford. Unsurprisingly this means that the esteemed rajas close to their emperor can usually field thousands of fully armored riders riding atop mail-barded horses, looking very similar to one another regardless of whether they are armed with an intimidating 12-foot (nearly 4 meter) war-lance or a mighty composite bow, while a small landowner from a minor Rajput clan may only be able to afford a hundred or even fewer unarmored horse-archers. The best of the best among the Hunas fulfill both roles and are accompanied to the battlefield by trusted attendants to hand them their lances after expending their arrows, making them very versatile elite cavalry. When not on campaign, these armed retainers typically continue to work for their employer as private guards, tax collectors and local law enforcers.
A cursory look at the equipment of the Huna heavy cavalry of 560 will show that they are markedly influenced by their old Persian enemies-turned-subjects, and to a lesser extent by their newer Rouran and Turkic foes. Iron spangenhelms crafted and ornamented in the Persian style (sometimes even including a metal mask, particularly among elite contingents and the household lancers of the Samrat) have replaced the felt hats and leather helmets of old, and the wearing of a mail hauberk beneath their traditional lamellar armor has also become much more common among the Hunas, as have heavy horse-barding – all borrowed from the Persian savaran who had long proven to be the best-suited to match an Eftal lancer in the battles of the previous century. From their steppe rivals the Hunas have prominently incorporated curved slashing swords, all the better to cut opponents down with from the back of a speeding horse.
A Huna officer of the imperial household, 560. Note his combination of lamellar and mail armor, Persian-style helmet and ornaments, and heavy horse barding. He also uses a shield, a rarity among the Hunas who prefer to wield long two-handed lances
The Sassanid habit of mard ō mard, literally ‘man to man’ – seeking out prominent enemy commanders and champions to engage in heroic single combat – is also alive and well among the Hunas, readily finding a new home in their proud and warlike hearts. Alas this particular adopted tradition has encouraged recklessness, potentially to the point of indiscipline and disorder, among the younger and more hot-blooded warriors of the Huna army. Their over-eagerness to shower themselves and their house in personal glory, while presently encouraged by their commanders in an attempt to keep morale high and get these young men to go above and beyond their duties, may lead them to compromise those very same generals’ plans in the future.
As to the ‘properly’ Indian half of the Huna army, as is their tradition it is typically organized and led by men of the kshatriya caste. Unlike the Hephthalites and their Rajput heirs, the Indians rely most heavily on masses of foot-archers equipped with bamboo longbows, which are less prone to being damaged by the damp tropical conditions of the subcontinent (especially during monsoon season) than the composite bows of the Hunas. Elite bowmen are not only outfitted with armor but also often armed with steel longbows, a Gupta invention that gives them the best of both worlds: the power to match an Eftal composite bow, and the durability of the bamboo longbow in Indian conditions. Mercenaries from the shreni guilds are typically contracted, either directly by the Huna crown or by kshatriya magnates, to form the infantry of the Huna armies (though they are not well-regarded by the Hunas themselves) and further protect these archers in battle.
Left: a common Indian longbowman, shreni spearman and mounted skirmisher of the Huna era – numerous, but lightly armored if at all. Right: a cataphract of the kshatriya, attired somewhat differently compared to his new Huna peers
The Guptas had already replaced the chariot, a former mainstay of Indian warfare, with horse-riding cavalry well before the White Huns even entered India. Accordingly, the kshatriya officers and champions of the Indian armies almost always put themselves into the more prestigious role of heavy cavalrymen, garbed in mail and armed with lances (albeit shorter ones than what the Rajputs are used to) and maces. But no discussion of the Indian cavalry would be complete without its most towering element: the war elephants, provided at great cost by certain kshatriya clans and elephant-taming shreni.
Once they terrorized the Hephthalite horsemen in past battlefields, but now they bring their devastating bulk to fight in service of those same Hephthalites’ descendants. The greatest and most formidable Indian elephants in the Huna army are those which are armored in great sheets of mail or gilded lamellar, bear blades on their tusks and carry a complement of archers in a howdah; but even unarmored pachyderms can pose a major obstacle to an enemy host which has not adequately prepared to deal with them ahead of time. Mindful of how easily a stampeding force of war elephants can disrupt and break a cavalry charge from past experience, the Hunas have learned to utilize their elephant corps against enemy horsemen rather than orderly infantry formations, and to rely on their own light cavalry to counter & chase off anti-elephant weapons such as the carroballistae fielded by the Romans.
Grey as a mouse, big as a house: an unarmored war elephant fielded by the Hunas shaking the battlefield as it advances
The main deficiency of the Huna army of 560 is not so much the quality of the troops or their equipment, for the Samrat is not in the habit of conscripting peasant mobs from the ranks of the shudras and dalits to fight for him – whether they come from Hephthalite/Rajput clans with a fighting tradition dating back to time immemorial, kshatriya jatis that have endured the Eftal conquest, or the shreni guilds, by and large the warriors of the Indo-Hunnic hosts are men who know what they are doing on the battlefield. Rather, it is communication and coordination between the specialized Rajput and Indian contingents that is their most pressing issue. When they manage to work together, the two halves of a Huna fighting force cover each other’s weaknesses very effectively and present a set of combined arms which is difficult for any foe to overcome; when they fail to do so however, whether due to inter-ethnic rivalries or a simple inability among their commanders to coordinate, those same weaknesses in each half of the host become glaringly obvious and trivial for any foe to exploit.
The cavalry-focused martial traditions of the Hephthalites are being carried onward by their Rajput descendants. The nobility of India’s new order who trace their lineage to the Hunnic conquerors are compelled to provide the Samrat with armies of horsemen when he demands it: a combination of mounted archers and lancers, armed and armored as heavily as their patron can afford. Unsurprisingly this means that the esteemed rajas close to their emperor can usually field thousands of fully armored riders riding atop mail-barded horses, looking very similar to one another regardless of whether they are armed with an intimidating 12-foot (nearly 4 meter) war-lance or a mighty composite bow, while a small landowner from a minor Rajput clan may only be able to afford a hundred or even fewer unarmored horse-archers. The best of the best among the Hunas fulfill both roles and are accompanied to the battlefield by trusted attendants to hand them their lances after expending their arrows, making them very versatile elite cavalry. When not on campaign, these armed retainers typically continue to work for their employer as private guards, tax collectors and local law enforcers.
A cursory look at the equipment of the Huna heavy cavalry of 560 will show that they are markedly influenced by their old Persian enemies-turned-subjects, and to a lesser extent by their newer Rouran and Turkic foes. Iron spangenhelms crafted and ornamented in the Persian style (sometimes even including a metal mask, particularly among elite contingents and the household lancers of the Samrat) have replaced the felt hats and leather helmets of old, and the wearing of a mail hauberk beneath their traditional lamellar armor has also become much more common among the Hunas, as have heavy horse-barding – all borrowed from the Persian savaran who had long proven to be the best-suited to match an Eftal lancer in the battles of the previous century. From their steppe rivals the Hunas have prominently incorporated curved slashing swords, all the better to cut opponents down with from the back of a speeding horse.
A Huna officer of the imperial household, 560. Note his combination of lamellar and mail armor, Persian-style helmet and ornaments, and heavy horse barding. He also uses a shield, a rarity among the Hunas who prefer to wield long two-handed lances
The Sassanid habit of mard ō mard, literally ‘man to man’ – seeking out prominent enemy commanders and champions to engage in heroic single combat – is also alive and well among the Hunas, readily finding a new home in their proud and warlike hearts. Alas this particular adopted tradition has encouraged recklessness, potentially to the point of indiscipline and disorder, among the younger and more hot-blooded warriors of the Huna army. Their over-eagerness to shower themselves and their house in personal glory, while presently encouraged by their commanders in an attempt to keep morale high and get these young men to go above and beyond their duties, may lead them to compromise those very same generals’ plans in the future.
As to the ‘properly’ Indian half of the Huna army, as is their tradition it is typically organized and led by men of the kshatriya caste. Unlike the Hephthalites and their Rajput heirs, the Indians rely most heavily on masses of foot-archers equipped with bamboo longbows, which are less prone to being damaged by the damp tropical conditions of the subcontinent (especially during monsoon season) than the composite bows of the Hunas. Elite bowmen are not only outfitted with armor but also often armed with steel longbows, a Gupta invention that gives them the best of both worlds: the power to match an Eftal composite bow, and the durability of the bamboo longbow in Indian conditions. Mercenaries from the shreni guilds are typically contracted, either directly by the Huna crown or by kshatriya magnates, to form the infantry of the Huna armies (though they are not well-regarded by the Hunas themselves) and further protect these archers in battle.
Left: a common Indian longbowman, shreni spearman and mounted skirmisher of the Huna era – numerous, but lightly armored if at all. Right: a cataphract of the kshatriya, attired somewhat differently compared to his new Huna peers
The Guptas had already replaced the chariot, a former mainstay of Indian warfare, with horse-riding cavalry well before the White Huns even entered India. Accordingly, the kshatriya officers and champions of the Indian armies almost always put themselves into the more prestigious role of heavy cavalrymen, garbed in mail and armed with lances (albeit shorter ones than what the Rajputs are used to) and maces. But no discussion of the Indian cavalry would be complete without its most towering element: the war elephants, provided at great cost by certain kshatriya clans and elephant-taming shreni.
Once they terrorized the Hephthalite horsemen in past battlefields, but now they bring their devastating bulk to fight in service of those same Hephthalites’ descendants. The greatest and most formidable Indian elephants in the Huna army are those which are armored in great sheets of mail or gilded lamellar, bear blades on their tusks and carry a complement of archers in a howdah; but even unarmored pachyderms can pose a major obstacle to an enemy host which has not adequately prepared to deal with them ahead of time. Mindful of how easily a stampeding force of war elephants can disrupt and break a cavalry charge from past experience, the Hunas have learned to utilize their elephant corps against enemy horsemen rather than orderly infantry formations, and to rely on their own light cavalry to counter & chase off anti-elephant weapons such as the carroballistae fielded by the Romans.
Grey as a mouse, big as a house: an unarmored war elephant fielded by the Hunas shaking the battlefield as it advances
The main deficiency of the Huna army of 560 is not so much the quality of the troops or their equipment, for the Samrat is not in the habit of conscripting peasant mobs from the ranks of the shudras and dalits to fight for him – whether they come from Hephthalite/Rajput clans with a fighting tradition dating back to time immemorial, kshatriya jatis that have endured the Eftal conquest, or the shreni guilds, by and large the warriors of the Indo-Hunnic hosts are men who know what they are doing on the battlefield. Rather, it is communication and coordination between the specialized Rajput and Indian contingents that is their most pressing issue. When they manage to work together, the two halves of a Huna fighting force cover each other’s weaknesses very effectively and present a set of combined arms which is difficult for any foe to overcome; when they fail to do so however, whether due to inter-ethnic rivalries or a simple inability among their commanders to coordinate, those same weaknesses in each half of the host become glaringly obvious and trivial for any foe to exploit.
Well been off the site for a week but catching up. A hell of a lot happening although the eastern empire is still clinging onto Mesopotamia and may have largely exterminated the remaining Nestorians. They are still distinctly overstretched and face problems with both the Turks and Avars but have been given a breather. Can't see the Garamantes lasting as a threat for long as they have such limited resources and no-where to retreat to.
The Huna as they are now have been reduced to their Indian lands and looks like they won't be a major power outside the peninsula in future. However they could have a big impact both there and in neighbouring areas. Also if they do push southwards with success I wonder what impact that would have on the mercantile empires to the south and their influence in SE Asia? Especially given that their rule could result in Buddhism staying dominant in India longer and possibly even eclipsing Hinduism?
Like everybody else I believe Bian's account of how his brothers died. China is reunited again for the moment but the assorted Korean states have escaped its rule for the moment and the eastern Turkic Khanate is a formidable foe to possibly keep it in check.
I hadn't realised how far east and hence how isolated Belisarius's enclave was. That's a hell of a long way from the rest of the empire and no matter how great his loyalty I can't see it staying part of the empire long past his death. Probably going to end up being part of either the Huna or Western Turkic Khanate.
Anyway good to see how things are developing and thanks for all the hard work on this project.
Steve
The Huna as they are now have been reduced to their Indian lands and looks like they won't be a major power outside the peninsula in future. However they could have a big impact both there and in neighbouring areas. Also if they do push southwards with success I wonder what impact that would have on the mercantile empires to the south and their influence in SE Asia? Especially given that their rule could result in Buddhism staying dominant in India longer and possibly even eclipsing Hinduism?
Like everybody else I believe Bian's account of how his brothers died.
China is reunited again for the moment but the assorted Korean states have escaped its rule for the moment and the eastern Turkic Khanate is a formidable foe to possibly keep it in check.I hadn't realised how far east and hence how isolated Belisarius's enclave was. That's a hell of a long way from the rest of the empire and no matter how great his loyalty I can't see it staying part of the empire long past his death. Probably going to end up being part of either the Huna or Western Turkic Khanate.
Anyway good to see how things are developing and thanks for all the hard work on this project.
Steve
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Hey, welcome back @stevep ! Yes - after a rocky middle of the century, the Romans have room to breathe and can see light at the end of the tunnel they're currently in. Remains to be seen whether it's the exit to a better seventh century or a speeding train with 'Avar' and 'Turk' written on it, but at the very least they have an opportunity to rest, rebuild their armies, fully reorient against their most pressing threats and also kick around a relatively weak horde in the Garamantians.
Very good point re: the effects of a strong Buddhist empire in India on Southeast Asia. We aren't far from the emergence of the first great Indianized Malayo-Polynesian maritime empires (ex. Malay Srivijaya and Javanese Sailendra) and though they were generally equally accepting of both Buddhism and Hinduism historically, having a stronger Buddhist lean transmitted by Huna merchants & monks is sure to manifest in different ways than the OTL kingdoms. A more Buddhist Bali probably wouldn't develop the Brahmanic-based caste system it's still got up to this day, for example.
As for Bian, we'll be visiting China's situation through his eyes next chapter - like I said last week, we were overdue for both a factional and narrative update, and since the Hunas got the former I think it's only fair for the Chinese to get the latter. Suffice to say that not all Chinese regard the tale Bian's spinning about his brothers' convenient demise with the seriousness he thinks it (and he) deserves, either...
Yes - after a rocky middle of the century, the Romans have room to breathe and can see light at the end of the tunnel they're currently in. Remains to be seen whether it's the exit to a better seventh century or a speeding train with 'Avar' and 'Turk' written on it, but at the very least they have an opportunity to rest, rebuild their armies, fully reorient against their most pressing threats and also kick around a relatively weak horde in the Garamantians.Very good point re: the effects of a strong Buddhist empire in India on Southeast Asia. We aren't far from the emergence of the first great Indianized Malayo-Polynesian maritime empires (ex. Malay Srivijaya and Javanese Sailendra) and though they were generally equally accepting of both Buddhism and Hinduism historically, having a stronger Buddhist lean transmitted by Huna merchants & monks is sure to manifest in different ways than the OTL kingdoms. A more Buddhist Bali probably wouldn't develop the Brahmanic-based caste system it's still got up to this day, for example.
As for Bian, we'll be visiting China's situation through his eyes next chapter - like I said last week, we were overdue for both a factional and narrative update, and since the Hunas got the former I think it's only fair for the Chinese to get the latter. Suffice to say that not all Chinese regard the tale Bian's spinning about his brothers' convenient demise with the seriousness he thinks it (and he) deserves, either...
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Some bad news, guys - my desktop won't start up after I cleaned it the other day. Unfortunately since that's where I do all my writing, I won't be able to post the next update until I've gotten that fixed. (I'm writing this post on an older machine right now.) Gonna get it looked at in the computer store starting tomorrow, but they usually take at least a few days. Hopefully I'll be able to get it back & still manage to post the next chapter sometime next week, even if it will technically be in February rather than before the end of January as I had planned.
I warned you to be careful with that flame-thrower!
Seriously, no problem. Take your time and get what you need. We can wait a few days or longer if necessary.
Great chapters.
ERE have new enemies - but they fought each other.So - they would survive.
Eftals conqered all India.Since till 1480AD there existed kind of natural bridge to Ceylon,they could take it,too.And save entire India from caste system.
China is China.
WRE - they have nomad vassals in Panonia,who was horse archers.How many of them survived?
Avars - they were mainly medium calvary,not horse archers - so their tactic was to pin enemy with slavic cannon-fodder,and then finish with charge.Now,with new roman army,it would be no possible.
I see many more Ljudovic princes in the future.
Slaves - in OTL they were very long unorganized - for example,when Czech was still part of Great Moravia there were 14 princes there,but only four after 906 AD.And one in 966.
So,when they started organize themselves,it was relatively fast.
Poland lands - Avars were there,but ,except Cracow,there was no any strongholds.
And,sadly to said,they were all slawers - one of main income of first both polish and czech rulers was slaves sell to jewish merchants,like Ibrahim-ibn Jakub.
England christanized - Britons are doomed,maybe few manage to sail to America and survive there ?
ERE have new enemies - but they fought each other.So - they would survive.
Eftals conqered all India.Since till 1480AD there existed kind of natural bridge to Ceylon,they could take it,too.And save entire India from caste system.
China is China.
WRE - they have nomad vassals in Panonia,who was horse archers.How many of them survived?
Avars - they were mainly medium calvary,not horse archers - so their tactic was to pin enemy with slavic cannon-fodder,and then finish with charge.Now,with new roman army,it would be no possible.
I see many more Ljudovic princes in the future.
Slaves - in OTL they were very long unorganized - for example,when Czech was still part of Great Moravia there were 14 princes there,but only four after 906 AD.And one in 966.
So,when they started organize themselves,it was relatively fast.
Poland lands - Avars were there,but ,except Cracow,there was no any strongholds.
And,sadly to said,they were all slawers - one of main income of first both polish and czech rulers was slaves sell to jewish merchants,like Ibrahim-ibn Jakub.
England christanized - Britons are doomed,maybe few manage to sail to America and survive there ?
Heaven's will
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
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!"
====================================================================================
[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.
“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!"
====================================================================================
[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.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Well, if he succumbs, then China will probably be in for more of interesting times.
General Luo had balls - but how many of his soldiers would survive this ? And Emperor was fool to provoke him.
China problem - Emperors was almost absolute rulers,who ruled becouse they have mandate of heavens,and could do almost everything to their subjects.
Which mean,that they could misbehave 10.000 times - and do not see,that 10.001 times would kill them.And procure next emperor with the same problem....
China problem - Emperors was almost absolute rulers,who ruled becouse they have mandate of heavens,and could do almost everything to their subjects.
Which mean,that they could misbehave 10.000 times - and do not see,that 10.001 times would kill them.And procure next emperor with the same problem....
gral
Well-known member
People are also more familiar with the Japanese version of that phrase - banzai.
As Prince Bian himself admitted, he wasn't paranoid enough - and it looks like the crap will hit the fan in China...