While I would like that option I think the problem is it would only be once the Britons started converting to the formal church doctrine. While their a small minority sect and the dominant one has been so successful their not going to be tolerated.
Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!
- Thread starter Circle of Willis
- Start date
While I would like that option I think the problem is it would only be once the Britons started converting to the formal church doctrine. While their a small minority sect and the dominant one has been so successful their not going to be tolerated.
Indeed.Pelagians could survive only if they sail to Brendan lands.And keep long distance from catholics there.Maybe going South ,and taking over Tolteks ?
574-576: Barbarian musings
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The middle of the 570s was a generally peaceful time in the Roman world, but not an entirely uneventful one: Hermenegild of the Visigoths, who had been raised at the imperial court in Rome itself and was made Consul this year alongside the military count Jovinus, promulgated a new legal code heavily based on the Corpus Iuris Civilis in the summer of 574. Dubbed the Codex Visigothorum (‘Code of the Visigoths’), the new laws of the kingdom notably abolished all remaining legal distinctions between the Visigoths and their Hispano-Roman subjects and neighbors; incorporated the Corpus’ more humane legislation on women and slaves; and mandated the emancipation of Christian slaves owned by Jews, while imposing a new head-tax on the Judaic community in Gothic Hispania in an effort to induce conversions[1]. Though Hermenegild was less outwardly brutal toward the Jews than his father Fritigern had been, evidently the apple had not fallen all that far from the tree.
While Constans was pleased that the the cultural assimilation of the Visigoths (who after all were the oldest of the West’s foederati) into Romanitas was now more or less complete with the promulgation of this new law code, the Codex Visigothorum did raise two pressing issues. First and most obviously, although the Visigoths were now virtually indistinguishable from Hispano-Romans, they still retained significant political autonomy (as represented by the sustained rule of the Balthing kings and the Visigothic nobility in their lands) which their adoption of much of Roman law did little to undermine. Second and even more urgent, although the Codex incorporated many aspects of canon law and the Corpus’ insistence that being an Ephesian Christian was necessary to enjoy the full protection of the law (among other benefits of citizenship), it also sought to empower the Hispanic bishops who were now more involved than ever in the daily affairs of the kingdom.
These privileges Hermenegild believed should be within his power as an autonomous king, and a just reward for the Visigoths’ century of able service as part of the Western Roman army (periodic disastrous defeats and rebellions aside). The question of whether a federate king should have the ability to call synods and appoint bishops within his borders, without consulting the Emperor or the Patriarch under whose authority his kingdom’s clerics fell – in other words, whether the federates should have their own autocephalous ('self-headed') church within the greater Ephesian framework – was raised for the first (and certainly not the last) time in Roman history.
Although he certainly harbored centralist intentions, the Western Augustus was pragmatic enough to call an ecumenical council in Rome to answer the Hispanic Church’s question and offer up a bare minimum of concessions to Hermenegild rather than bluntly rebuff the king: he had no desire to provoke a conflict which could give the Avars an opening so soon after having just scored a major Roman victory over them. Since Hispania had no tradition of autocephaly – quite unlike the Cypriot Church, whose independence from the Antiochene Patriarchate was confirmed in the First Council of Ephesus – the entire Heptarchy (even the See of Constantinople, which initially favored granting the Hispanic Church autocephaly to undermine Rome) favored Rome’s position that the Hispanic bishops should remain under its authority and that though Hermenegild and his heirs could recommend episcopal candidates within his borders, the Emperor and the Pope still had the final say in their appointment. The support both Constans and Anthemius expressed for the Heptarchs’ decision ensured that Hispania would not be elevated to autocephalous status anytime soon.
A fresco in the Domus Laterani/Lateran Palace, where the Lateran Council to decide matters of autocephaly and autonomy in the federate kingdoms (itself actually only the first of several Lateran Councils) was held, which was finished early in the reign of Constans II
However, this Lateran Council was not a total loss for the Visigoths: in acknowledgment of the Visigoths’ embrace of Ephesian Christianity and deep steeping in Roman customs over the past century & a half, the Heptarchy also afforded the Hispanic Church a degree of autonomy from its Roman mother-church. The Archbishop of Toletum was recognized as the Primate (first & highest-ranking prelate) of Hispania, and Hermenegild’s authority to call synods regulating affairs within his kingdom was recognized, so long as the laws they established did not contradict general Ephesian doctrine of course[2]. In effect, the Visigoth kingdom now enjoyed a measure of official ecclesiastical and legal autonomy from the Roman Empire and the Church, although in that regard the council’s immediate and obvious effects were limited to the preservation of a few aspects of Germanic law (such as sanctioning judicial duels) within the Codex Visigothorum and making life for Jews harder in Visigothia than anywhere else in the Western Roman Empire.
A faithful Ephesian and among the most Roman of Visigoths, Hermenegild accepted the Lateran Council’s rulings in the winter, although he would continue to try to widen the Hispanic Church’s autonomy for some time to come. The Lateran Council itself did not conclude after reaching a decision on the status of the Hispanic Church, and would instead drag out for two more years: the Ephesian leadership decided that these peaceful years, when they were already assembled in one place, would be a good time to sort out the greater question of who had the authority to grant a codex, or ‘tomos’ in Greek, of autocephaly/autonomy. The Gothic king’s example would inspire other federate rulers to seek similar status, starting with the recently-enthroned Frankish king Clovis II who (much like Hermenegild) believed that his people’s major contributions to the Western Roman Empire’s various campaigns over the past century meant that there was no way the Emperor and Church could rightly refuse his requests.
A statue of King Hermenegild, who is revered by the descendants of the Visigoths for striving to balance his personal Christian zeal and adherence to civilized ways with preserving a healthy measure of self-governance in western Hispania
Further to the east, Anthemius III had to deal with a peacetime matter among his own vassals. The Laz king Bakur (Pacorus) III perished from a chill in February of this year, and as he had no sons who survived into adulthood, the Lazic succession was immediately contested between the husbands of his daughters: Iberia’s king Mirian IV claimed his crown by right of primogeniture, for his wife Elene was the elder daughter, but the powerful magnate Archil of Phasis[3] cast aspersions upon the latter’s paternity and claimed the Lazic throne through his marriage to Salome, the younger princess. Archil appealed to Anthemius to judge the matter himself, but Mirian and the Iberians pre-empted any decision in Constantinople by invading Lazica in May and seizing the royal capital of Archaeopolis[4].
Presented with this fait accompli and reluctant to shed any more blood without pressing need after the numerous wars that immediately followed his grandfather’s death, the Eastern Augustus agreed to acknowledge Mirian as king over all the folk of Kartlos[5] in exchange for the doubling of tributary payments for the rest of the decade, and bribed Archil with both the position of sacellarius (state treasurer of the East) at court and a palatial estate in Chersonesus. While the newly united Caucasian realm was called ‘Sakartvelo’ in the tongue of the Kartlians, it soon became better-known abroad as ‘Georgia’ owing to Mirian’s zealous patronage of Saint George, after whom he had named his & Elene’s eldest son and in whose honor he would eventually build 365 churches across his unified kingdom – one for each day in the year.
As a result of the greater Kartlian kingdom's dedication to Saint George under Mirian IV/I and his successors, the dragon-slaying saint lent his name to the entire country
While Anthemius was dealing with his Caucasian vassals and Issik Khagan was in the middle of moving forces from his realm’s northwestern frontier to the border with his brother, Baghayash was already racing off to secure new conquests in southern India. At first he had a deceptively easy time toppling the nominal hegemon of Tamilakam, the Kalabhra dynasty, which had been declining for over a century by the time he kicked their rotting door in. With just those forces which had survived the Battle of Brahmagiri the Hunas destroyed the Kalabhra army in the Battle of Kodumanam[6] in May of this year, after which their Mahārāja Karunandan surrendered without further delay and was taken prisoner (but nonetheless treated courteously) all the way up north to Indraprastha.
But as it turned out, this was only the beginning of the Huna-Tamil conflict. As with the Kannada, the Samrat next faced a triumvirate of Tamil kings in his push to the tip of the Indian subcontinent: the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas – so called the Muvendhar, or ‘Three Crowned Kings’, of Tamilakam, who had been increasingly loosely bound beneath Kalabhra rule until he helpfully eliminated their overlord. They had never been subjugated by an outsider, not even by the Mauryas at the height of their power, and evidently had little desire to bend their knees now before the Hunas when the Samrat first sent emissaries demanding submission to their palaces.
After almost effortlessly crushing the Kalabhras, Baghayash moved on to besiege Karur, the ancient seat of the Cheras. He was mistaken in his initial assumptions that the Muvendhar would be as easy to subdue as their former master and that the monsoon season would deter them from campaigning, however; for the Pandyas and Cholas had observed the manner in which the Carnatic kings were brought low by the Hunas, then the rapidity with which their former suzerain was toppled, and now hurried to the relief of their neighbor. The Tamils converged upon the Huna siege camp on a dark and stormy July night, attacking under conditions which prevented the northern invaders from utilizing their primary strengths – their bows and horses – and, coupled with the Chera forces sallying from Karur’s gates after the night sentries on the city wall reported signs of battle to their king Thennavan, routed the army of the Samrat. Baghayash himself would have been killed or captured were it not for the valor of his son Harsha, who helped him fight his way out of the increasingly disastrous battle before the Hunas' situation became untenable. As he had after his initial defeat in Karnataka, a seething Baghayash withdrew to the north and (far from being humbled by this battlefield rebuke) immediately began to prepare for a second assault on the last of the surviving Dravidian kingdoms to defy him.
Backed by the element of surprise and a heavy downpour from above, the Tamil alliance was able to scatter Baghayash's larger host and put his pan-Indian ambitions on pause in the Battle of Karur
Finally, to the east of India, the victories of the Later Han & Later Zhou over the Turks in the north and the Chu’s success in fending off their various neighbors in the south brought to most of China a brief respite from the violence common to the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms period. Only in the northeast did the flames of war continue to burn, as the Great Qi furiously fought to repel Goguryeo from their territories around the Liao River. In this year, Emperor Xiaojing’s armies broke the Korean enemy’s siege of Sanshan in the spring and steadily drove the Goguryeo back toward the Yalu River over the course of the summer & autumn, culminating in a decisive Qi victory in the Battle of Posuo[7] at the end of September. King Yeongnyu of Goguryeo was slain in this battle, and his son Yeongyang sued for peace immediately afterward; however the vindictive Emperor Xiaojing felt he was on the precipice of a total victory, and spurning the advice of his councilors to simply restore the northern Korean kingdom’s traditional vassalage beneath Chinese rule and to collect hostages & tribute, he chose to instead cross the Yalu & finish Goguryeo off.
575 dawned on the Lateran Council’s attendees before they knew it. The church council first and foremost tried to grapple with the question of where the power to grant autonomy and autocephaly lay: did it lie with the individual Heptarchs, or with a general ecumenical council? Pope John advocated the former course, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Elias of Jerusalem and Thaddeus of Babylon, citing the need to respond quickly if additional federates were to approach him with a request for autonomy or even autocephaly; however Patriarch Raziel of Antioch, whose see hqad been forced to recognize Cyprus’ autocephaly by nothing less than an ecumenical council, led the charge in favor of the latter position, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Theodosius of Constantinople, Aaron of Alexandria and Samaritanus of Carthage on grounds ranging from simply upholding tradition to keeping the Heptarchy and the greater body of Christian believers balanced. In the end, the Lateran Council could not reach a decision in this year and agreed to continue debating the issue into 576.
The Lateran Council did make real progress on the other question its attending prelates had to answer, however. Clovis II’s request was not granted in full, much as Hermenegild’s had not been, but a concession was made – not just to appease him and the Blues in general, but to also pre-empt any desire for legal and ecclesiastic autonomy on the part of the Burgundians as well – with the elevation of Aegidius, Archbishop of Lugdunum and kinsman to the Syagrii clan which counted his namesake among its most illustrious forebears, to become the first ‘Primate of the Gauls’[8], referring to the three traditional Gallic provinces of Lugdunensis (now effectively administered entirely by the Franks and Burgundians), Aquitania and Narbonensis.
Also akin to Hermenegild, Clovis II’s right to call a council of the bishops within his kingdom to solve matters of law (so long as their solutions did not challenge official church doctrine) was similarly upheld. Though the Frankish king was considerably less willing to accept such small concessions than his Visigoth counterpart, he was kept in line by Aemilian and Constans considered the outcome a victory, having continued to tread the tightrope between the Greens and Blues while conceding only the bare (and largely symbolic) minimum to both to keep them on-side.
The Merovingians' dream of an autocephalous Frankish Church, answering to none under God save themselves and the Archbishop of Durocortorum who crowned them in His name, may have been delayed by the decision of the Lateran Council; but it was not (and would not be) altogether denied as far as Clovis II and his heirs were concerned
Across the sea from Francia, the old Riothamus Constantine passed away in April of this year. His grandson, who would soon turn thirteen years of age, ascended to the British throne as Artorius III; but despite Constantine’s best efforts to secure the line of succession, he could not head off a coup from the grave, which was exactly what happened almost as soon as his body turned cold. Early in June, a week before the boy-king could be crowned his uncle Arviragus overthrew him with the support of a majority of the Consilium Britanniae, soon after which he coerced the Bishop of Londinium into crowning him Riothamus instead.
However, Artorius’ position was not entirely hopeless. The young prince’s faithful servants were able to spirit him away to South Anglia before his usurping uncle could arrest and arrange a fatal ‘accident’ for him, and he was generously received by King Æþelhere in Lincylene. There he was summarily married to his betrothed Beorhtflæd, and acknowledged as the legitimate Riothamus of Britannia by both the English and the Western Roman envoys in attendance: though both kingdoms still needed more time to recover and rebuild their armies from their last bout, this turn of events all but guaranteed another round of warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Romano-Briton sometime in the next few years.
Princess Beorhtflæd of the South Angles on her way to marry the equally young Riothamus-in-exile Artorius III. Although already distantly related through their Ælling ancestors, theirs was the first direct dynastic link between the Pendragons and Raedwaldings
While the Turkic brothers were making their final preparations for their inevitable conflict with one another this year, east of their lands the Great Qi who had (albeit only partly) helped repel the younger of the two were celebrating another rousing victory. Emperor Xiaojing’s much larger army mopped up the remaining Goguryeo resistance, and King Yeongyang was forced to flee into hiding after his capital of Pyongyang fell to the besieging Qi forces in May. Rather than install a kinsman of Yeongyang’s or even his own family, Xiaojing sought nothing less than to incorporate the lands of Goguryeo into his empire, and because they had the nerve to opportunistically attack him while he was distracted on other fronts he imposed stiff taxes & took many slaves from the Koreans. Unsurprisingly, this decision did not endear him to his new subjects and Yeongyang had little trouble inciting a rebellion against the occupiers toward the end of the year.
The destruction of Goguryeo did not seem to phase Heijō across the waters, for in 575 the Great King did proclaim himself Tennō – ‘Heavenly Sovereign’, the Japanese Son of Heaven and equal to the Emperor of China – and rename his country from Wa to Nippon, the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. This proclamation was regarded with disbelief and mockery in the Qi court, where Japan continued to be referred to as ‘Wa’ for many years to come and Heijō himself was dismissed as a megalomaniacal dwarf-barbarian[9] who clearly thought far too highly of himself. Truly, the Romans were not the only imperial civilization which had to deal with 'barbarians' seeking to rise above their station in these years.
Regardless of what the Chinese thought, the first Emperor of Japan did treat his self-proclaimed ascent to imperial godhood with the utmost seriousness and retroactively applied the title Tennō to his predecessors, mythical and otherwise. Such was Heijō’s commitment to his own elevation that he now refused to grant any of his subjects an audience without a screen between them (so that said subject could not look upon him directly), demanded that these subjects kowtow in his presence, and made referring to himself or his now-hallowed predecessors by their given names (as opposed to their imperial title) punishable by death unless first granted explicit permission to do so (an honor which Heijō only gave to his mother & his wife).
As part of his self-elevation to imperial rank, Heijō also strongly emphasized his family's claim to descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu to further build legitimacy for his autocratic rule
Half a world away, a grimmer and less questionable sign of divine displeasure struck the Blessed Isle – or as its Irish settlers were calling it, Tír na Beannachtaí (‘Land of Blessings’). Though many Gaels who answered to an Uí Néill overlord heeded the High King of Tara’s order not to sail across the Atlantic, there was no shortage of Irishmen from Munster, Connaught and Leinster who cared not what he thought, and were motivated to cross the sea in search of adventure and lands by the messages brought back to Ireland by Papar returning for supplies or to report developments far in the west to their fellow monks and abbots back home. These people helped Amalgaid and his vassals expand their borders to include ever more of Brendan’s island, but the livestock they brought over transmitted another plague which further decimated the native Wildermen and killed both the rival High King himself & Chief Ataninnuaq.
Amalgaid’s half-Wilderman son Pátraic claimed kingship over the Land of Blessings and was immediately challenged for supremacy by Ólchobar mac Óengus: this new generation of New World leaders wasted no time in perpetuating the rivalry of their fathers. The intercession of the elderly Brendan prevented open warfare for now, and Pátraic’s wedding to Ólchobar’s sister Máel-Muire was even a somewhat joyful relief for the people of the island from the ravages of plague. Alas it was clear to all who attended the festivities that Brendan was not long for this world, despite his heroic efforts to exert his waning (though still surprisingly formidable) energy via not only the negotiations, but also missionary works and church-building in his advanced age; and when he should perish, it was highly likely that the tenuous peace which he had just arranged would follow him in short order.
Come 576, the Lateran Council finally reached an answer to the question of who was supposed to be able to grant autonomy and autocephaly to the daughter-churches of the Heptarchy. Pope John executed a tactical retreat from his position after losing the support of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Babylon – brought about by pressure from agents of Emperor Anthemius, who had little desire to grant any of the Patriarchs any additional rights and powers; especially not the primary Patriarch of the West. Thus, for now it was affirmed that a grant of autocephaly/autonomy could only be issued by the unanimous decision of an ecumenical council.
The Western Augustus Constans and Pope John both accepted this ruling & brought the Lateran Council to a close, having determined that upsetting the balance of power at this point in time was not worth the costs (up to and including mutual excommunications if they’d pushed things too far) they were estimating. They would have to wait for the Eastern Empire to grow weaker before they could make any plays to further strengthen their half of the Roman world – temporally or spiritually – at the former’s expense, but were confident that either they or their successors would have other opportunities to push the envelope in the future. That the Lateran Council’s decision also made it more difficult for the Christians of the federate kingdoms to increase their autonomy from Rome – if the Pope could get even one of the other Patriarchs on his side, he could lawfully block any such move from the monarch and bishops of the vassal kingdom in question – was further considered a silver lining. In the meantime, Constans strove to negotiate the betrothal of Caesar Florianus to the daughter of King Boniface of Altava, the princess Dihia (Dihya), with the hopes of finding a quicker and more feasible way of shoring up Stilichian power.
East of the Roman world, 576 also marked the beginning of the long-awaited fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern Turks after years of buildup and a decade of rising tensions. In March, Issik Khagan sent envoys to his brother Illig demanding the immediate handover of the latter’s Silk Road bastions; but since he knew full well that his demand was completely unacceptable, he launched his attack before those messengers even reached Illig at Samarkand, where the Southern Turk leader had moved his residence to better direct his northeastern armies. First blood was drawn between the Turkic Khaganates in the Battle of Khotan, where a surprised force of 4,000 Southern Turks and their local Tocharian allies put up a stiff fight – but were still ultimately routed and almost completely destroyed by the 12,000-strong vanguard of the Northern Turkic horde.
Issik Khagan in the Tarim Desert, where he has gone to challenge his brother for control of the central Silk Road
After sacking Khotan, Issik moved on to besiege Kashgar, one of the largest Tarim cities under his brother’s suzerainty. The petty-king of the city refused to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, and his resolve to resist was further hardened when Issik bluntly threatened to wipe Kashgar off the face of the earth for his impudence. Unfortunately for the Northern Turks, the city was not only wealthier than Khotan but also sufficiently well-fortified and provisioned to withstand a siege, and managed to hold out until Illig arrived to relieve them with 25,000 men in tow (including many Persians and Bactrians). Issik and his similarly-sized army retreated to more favorable ground around Tumshuq[10] to the east, but were still defeated in a great battle there anyway and pursued back toward Khotan, which the Southern Turks would recapture by the start of June.
Illig now went on the offensive, seeking to not only repel his brother’s invasion but to also do what the latter had planned and seize the Northern Turks’ half of the Tarim Basin for himself. The Southern Turks proceeded toward Kucha and took the city by storm, relying on their Persian engineers to build siege weapons capable of overcoming its defenses. The more civilized Illig expressed greater restraint in his treatment of Kucha than Issik had when he captured Khotan, limiting his troops’ pillaging to a few districts rather than allowing them to run amok across the entire city and only explicitly demanding the deaths of the Kuchan royal family’s adults for refusing to open their gates and prostrate themselves before him when he gave them the chance to do so.
From Kucha Illig advanced toward Karashahr, but in a mirror image of the earlier fighting around Kashgar and Tumshuq, he was assailed by Issik after the latter had gathered reinforcements from his northwestern-most vassals at Urabo[11]. At the Battle of Karashahr which followed, the Khazars and Oghurs excelled and made names for themselves among those western Turkic tribes, while the tide of combat went poorly for the Southern Turks; they sustained 4,000 losses and were driven back to Kucha. After being beaten in another engagement near Bharuka, Illig fell all the way back to his own territory, and Issik pursued him as far as Khotan and Tumshuq before stopping to consolidate his (admittedly highly limited so far) conquests. Both Khaganates took the autumn and winter as an opportunity to rest and plan their next moves, which would certainly expand the war beyond the Tarim Basin come 577.
The Battle of Karashahr marked the emergence of previously-obscure Turkic peoples recently subjugated by their much better-known Tegreg cousins, such as the Khazars, onto the pages of history
Still further eastward, the Great Qi were turning their attention to their former ally in the west. Emperor Wucheng of Later Han took Emperor Xiaojing’s preoccupation with Goguryeo to repay the Qi’s abandonment of him in the middle of their war against the Northern Turks with an invasion of his own, and had just sealed an alliance with Later Zhou – who the bandit-emperor considered a truer friend for having aided him all the way to the end of the struggle against Issik – to carve up the Qi realm between themselves. The Han army stormed out of Luoyang and down the Yellow River while Zhou forces moved in from the northwest, eventually crossing the Sanggan River in the summer.
Emperor Xiaojing left 30,000 men behind to pacify Goguryeo while he hastened back west with the rest of his army, raising additional troops from the liberated Chinese populace of the northeastern provinces and recruiting Mohe[12] mercenaries to replace his earlier losses as he went. By the time he had himself crossed over the Sanggan, the Zhou army had breached Yanmen Pass and divided to lay siege to Baozhou & Jicheng. The Great Qi wasted no time in rolling these two armies up separately over the summer, dealing a severe blow to the Later Zhou and forcing their Emperor Shenwu to retreat southward with his remaining men to join Wucheng and the Later Han.
It took until July for the combined hosts of Han and Zhou to meet the Great Qi near Yecheng. Having arrived ahead of Xiaojing’s larger army, Wucheng demonstrated no small amount of cunning in preparing the battlefield, littering it with caltrops and pits full of wooden spikes while also setting up additional rows of sharpened stakes to protect his archers in the hours before the Qi host’s arrival. His intrigues were not intended to hurt only his enemy, either: Wucheng persuaded Shenwu to place the already bloodied and weary Zhou troops in a gap between his stakes and other traps, claiming that the narrowness of the gap would give them a better chance to withstand the Qi assault when the reality was that his various traps would inevitably funnel more Qi troops into the Zhou ranks than they could handle.
The Battle of Yecheng which followed proceeded almost exactly as Wucheng had hoped. The allied armies defeated the Qi, though not as decisively as the bandit-emperor would have liked; Xiaojing had the sense to retreat with the better part of his force intact after witnessing his forward-most contingents getting mauled between the Han traps and the tenacious defenders themselves. The Zhou suffered the brunt of the fighting and soaked up crippling casualties, including their Emperor Shenwu, which left them more dependent on the Han than ever. Shenwu’s teenage son and successor, Xianzong, suspected nothing and took up Wucheng’s offer to not only study under his wing but also marry his sister Princess Zhenyuan to the latter’s own heir Hao Jian. While he had succeeded in reducing Later Zhou to a puppet state of Later Han, Wucheng was aware that the Qi were far from finished, and decided not to take the next logical step – eliminating young Xianzong and annexing his northern neighbor altogether – until he had first seen the much more threatening Xiaojing off.
Emperor Wucheng of Later Han overseeing the Battle of Yecheng from a hilltop and directing his reserves to fend off the few Qi troops who managed to break through his array of booby-traps and stakes
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[1] Historically, it took until 654 (65 years after their adoption of Catholicism) for the Visigoth kings to legally equalize their Gothic and Hispano-Roman subjects with the Liber Iudiciorum, although they did take some steps toward achieving that throughout the 6th century.
[2] A step toward a status comparable to autonomous (though not auticephalous, or wholly self-governing) Orthodox churches.
[3] Poti.
[4] Also known as Nokalakevi, near Senaki.
[5] The legendary ancestor of the Georgians. According to Caucasian tradition he is the son of Togarmah; grandson of Japheth; great-grandson of Noah; and also brother to Hayk, the equally legendary forefather of the Armenians.
[6] Kodumanal.
[7] Near Jiuliancheng, which is now part of Dandong on the Sino-Korean border.
[8] This honor was historically accorded to the Archbishop of Lyon…in 1079.
[9] ‘Wa’ was rendered in Chinese using the character for ‘Wo’, meaning ‘dwarf’ or ‘pygmy’. The Japanese’s supposedly shorter stature remains a popular subject for mockery in China even to this day.
[10] Tumxuk.
[11] Urumqi.
[12] A Tungusic people living in what is now Manchuria. One of their largest tribes, the Heishui who lived along the banks of the Amur River, are thought to be the ancestors of the Jurchen and by extension, the modern Manchus.
While Constans was pleased that the the cultural assimilation of the Visigoths (who after all were the oldest of the West’s foederati) into Romanitas was now more or less complete with the promulgation of this new law code, the Codex Visigothorum did raise two pressing issues. First and most obviously, although the Visigoths were now virtually indistinguishable from Hispano-Romans, they still retained significant political autonomy (as represented by the sustained rule of the Balthing kings and the Visigothic nobility in their lands) which their adoption of much of Roman law did little to undermine. Second and even more urgent, although the Codex incorporated many aspects of canon law and the Corpus’ insistence that being an Ephesian Christian was necessary to enjoy the full protection of the law (among other benefits of citizenship), it also sought to empower the Hispanic bishops who were now more involved than ever in the daily affairs of the kingdom.
These privileges Hermenegild believed should be within his power as an autonomous king, and a just reward for the Visigoths’ century of able service as part of the Western Roman army (periodic disastrous defeats and rebellions aside). The question of whether a federate king should have the ability to call synods and appoint bishops within his borders, without consulting the Emperor or the Patriarch under whose authority his kingdom’s clerics fell – in other words, whether the federates should have their own autocephalous ('self-headed') church within the greater Ephesian framework – was raised for the first (and certainly not the last) time in Roman history.
Although he certainly harbored centralist intentions, the Western Augustus was pragmatic enough to call an ecumenical council in Rome to answer the Hispanic Church’s question and offer up a bare minimum of concessions to Hermenegild rather than bluntly rebuff the king: he had no desire to provoke a conflict which could give the Avars an opening so soon after having just scored a major Roman victory over them. Since Hispania had no tradition of autocephaly – quite unlike the Cypriot Church, whose independence from the Antiochene Patriarchate was confirmed in the First Council of Ephesus – the entire Heptarchy (even the See of Constantinople, which initially favored granting the Hispanic Church autocephaly to undermine Rome) favored Rome’s position that the Hispanic bishops should remain under its authority and that though Hermenegild and his heirs could recommend episcopal candidates within his borders, the Emperor and the Pope still had the final say in their appointment. The support both Constans and Anthemius expressed for the Heptarchs’ decision ensured that Hispania would not be elevated to autocephalous status anytime soon.
A fresco in the Domus Laterani/Lateran Palace, where the Lateran Council to decide matters of autocephaly and autonomy in the federate kingdoms (itself actually only the first of several Lateran Councils) was held, which was finished early in the reign of Constans II
However, this Lateran Council was not a total loss for the Visigoths: in acknowledgment of the Visigoths’ embrace of Ephesian Christianity and deep steeping in Roman customs over the past century & a half, the Heptarchy also afforded the Hispanic Church a degree of autonomy from its Roman mother-church. The Archbishop of Toletum was recognized as the Primate (first & highest-ranking prelate) of Hispania, and Hermenegild’s authority to call synods regulating affairs within his kingdom was recognized, so long as the laws they established did not contradict general Ephesian doctrine of course[2]. In effect, the Visigoth kingdom now enjoyed a measure of official ecclesiastical and legal autonomy from the Roman Empire and the Church, although in that regard the council’s immediate and obvious effects were limited to the preservation of a few aspects of Germanic law (such as sanctioning judicial duels) within the Codex Visigothorum and making life for Jews harder in Visigothia than anywhere else in the Western Roman Empire.
A faithful Ephesian and among the most Roman of Visigoths, Hermenegild accepted the Lateran Council’s rulings in the winter, although he would continue to try to widen the Hispanic Church’s autonomy for some time to come. The Lateran Council itself did not conclude after reaching a decision on the status of the Hispanic Church, and would instead drag out for two more years: the Ephesian leadership decided that these peaceful years, when they were already assembled in one place, would be a good time to sort out the greater question of who had the authority to grant a codex, or ‘tomos’ in Greek, of autocephaly/autonomy. The Gothic king’s example would inspire other federate rulers to seek similar status, starting with the recently-enthroned Frankish king Clovis II who (much like Hermenegild) believed that his people’s major contributions to the Western Roman Empire’s various campaigns over the past century meant that there was no way the Emperor and Church could rightly refuse his requests.
A statue of King Hermenegild, who is revered by the descendants of the Visigoths for striving to balance his personal Christian zeal and adherence to civilized ways with preserving a healthy measure of self-governance in western Hispania
Further to the east, Anthemius III had to deal with a peacetime matter among his own vassals. The Laz king Bakur (Pacorus) III perished from a chill in February of this year, and as he had no sons who survived into adulthood, the Lazic succession was immediately contested between the husbands of his daughters: Iberia’s king Mirian IV claimed his crown by right of primogeniture, for his wife Elene was the elder daughter, but the powerful magnate Archil of Phasis[3] cast aspersions upon the latter’s paternity and claimed the Lazic throne through his marriage to Salome, the younger princess. Archil appealed to Anthemius to judge the matter himself, but Mirian and the Iberians pre-empted any decision in Constantinople by invading Lazica in May and seizing the royal capital of Archaeopolis[4].
Presented with this fait accompli and reluctant to shed any more blood without pressing need after the numerous wars that immediately followed his grandfather’s death, the Eastern Augustus agreed to acknowledge Mirian as king over all the folk of Kartlos[5] in exchange for the doubling of tributary payments for the rest of the decade, and bribed Archil with both the position of sacellarius (state treasurer of the East) at court and a palatial estate in Chersonesus. While the newly united Caucasian realm was called ‘Sakartvelo’ in the tongue of the Kartlians, it soon became better-known abroad as ‘Georgia’ owing to Mirian’s zealous patronage of Saint George, after whom he had named his & Elene’s eldest son and in whose honor he would eventually build 365 churches across his unified kingdom – one for each day in the year.
As a result of the greater Kartlian kingdom's dedication to Saint George under Mirian IV/I and his successors, the dragon-slaying saint lent his name to the entire country
While Anthemius was dealing with his Caucasian vassals and Issik Khagan was in the middle of moving forces from his realm’s northwestern frontier to the border with his brother, Baghayash was already racing off to secure new conquests in southern India. At first he had a deceptively easy time toppling the nominal hegemon of Tamilakam, the Kalabhra dynasty, which had been declining for over a century by the time he kicked their rotting door in. With just those forces which had survived the Battle of Brahmagiri the Hunas destroyed the Kalabhra army in the Battle of Kodumanam[6] in May of this year, after which their Mahārāja Karunandan surrendered without further delay and was taken prisoner (but nonetheless treated courteously) all the way up north to Indraprastha.
But as it turned out, this was only the beginning of the Huna-Tamil conflict. As with the Kannada, the Samrat next faced a triumvirate of Tamil kings in his push to the tip of the Indian subcontinent: the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas – so called the Muvendhar, or ‘Three Crowned Kings’, of Tamilakam, who had been increasingly loosely bound beneath Kalabhra rule until he helpfully eliminated their overlord. They had never been subjugated by an outsider, not even by the Mauryas at the height of their power, and evidently had little desire to bend their knees now before the Hunas when the Samrat first sent emissaries demanding submission to their palaces.
After almost effortlessly crushing the Kalabhras, Baghayash moved on to besiege Karur, the ancient seat of the Cheras. He was mistaken in his initial assumptions that the Muvendhar would be as easy to subdue as their former master and that the monsoon season would deter them from campaigning, however; for the Pandyas and Cholas had observed the manner in which the Carnatic kings were brought low by the Hunas, then the rapidity with which their former suzerain was toppled, and now hurried to the relief of their neighbor. The Tamils converged upon the Huna siege camp on a dark and stormy July night, attacking under conditions which prevented the northern invaders from utilizing their primary strengths – their bows and horses – and, coupled with the Chera forces sallying from Karur’s gates after the night sentries on the city wall reported signs of battle to their king Thennavan, routed the army of the Samrat. Baghayash himself would have been killed or captured were it not for the valor of his son Harsha, who helped him fight his way out of the increasingly disastrous battle before the Hunas' situation became untenable. As he had after his initial defeat in Karnataka, a seething Baghayash withdrew to the north and (far from being humbled by this battlefield rebuke) immediately began to prepare for a second assault on the last of the surviving Dravidian kingdoms to defy him.
Backed by the element of surprise and a heavy downpour from above, the Tamil alliance was able to scatter Baghayash's larger host and put his pan-Indian ambitions on pause in the Battle of Karur
Finally, to the east of India, the victories of the Later Han & Later Zhou over the Turks in the north and the Chu’s success in fending off their various neighbors in the south brought to most of China a brief respite from the violence common to the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms period. Only in the northeast did the flames of war continue to burn, as the Great Qi furiously fought to repel Goguryeo from their territories around the Liao River. In this year, Emperor Xiaojing’s armies broke the Korean enemy’s siege of Sanshan in the spring and steadily drove the Goguryeo back toward the Yalu River over the course of the summer & autumn, culminating in a decisive Qi victory in the Battle of Posuo[7] at the end of September. King Yeongnyu of Goguryeo was slain in this battle, and his son Yeongyang sued for peace immediately afterward; however the vindictive Emperor Xiaojing felt he was on the precipice of a total victory, and spurning the advice of his councilors to simply restore the northern Korean kingdom’s traditional vassalage beneath Chinese rule and to collect hostages & tribute, he chose to instead cross the Yalu & finish Goguryeo off.
575 dawned on the Lateran Council’s attendees before they knew it. The church council first and foremost tried to grapple with the question of where the power to grant autonomy and autocephaly lay: did it lie with the individual Heptarchs, or with a general ecumenical council? Pope John advocated the former course, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Elias of Jerusalem and Thaddeus of Babylon, citing the need to respond quickly if additional federates were to approach him with a request for autonomy or even autocephaly; however Patriarch Raziel of Antioch, whose see hqad been forced to recognize Cyprus’ autocephaly by nothing less than an ecumenical council, led the charge in favor of the latter position, in which he was supported by Patriarchs Theodosius of Constantinople, Aaron of Alexandria and Samaritanus of Carthage on grounds ranging from simply upholding tradition to keeping the Heptarchy and the greater body of Christian believers balanced. In the end, the Lateran Council could not reach a decision in this year and agreed to continue debating the issue into 576.
The Lateran Council did make real progress on the other question its attending prelates had to answer, however. Clovis II’s request was not granted in full, much as Hermenegild’s had not been, but a concession was made – not just to appease him and the Blues in general, but to also pre-empt any desire for legal and ecclesiastic autonomy on the part of the Burgundians as well – with the elevation of Aegidius, Archbishop of Lugdunum and kinsman to the Syagrii clan which counted his namesake among its most illustrious forebears, to become the first ‘Primate of the Gauls’[8], referring to the three traditional Gallic provinces of Lugdunensis (now effectively administered entirely by the Franks and Burgundians), Aquitania and Narbonensis.
Also akin to Hermenegild, Clovis II’s right to call a council of the bishops within his kingdom to solve matters of law (so long as their solutions did not challenge official church doctrine) was similarly upheld. Though the Frankish king was considerably less willing to accept such small concessions than his Visigoth counterpart, he was kept in line by Aemilian and Constans considered the outcome a victory, having continued to tread the tightrope between the Greens and Blues while conceding only the bare (and largely symbolic) minimum to both to keep them on-side.
The Merovingians' dream of an autocephalous Frankish Church, answering to none under God save themselves and the Archbishop of Durocortorum who crowned them in His name, may have been delayed by the decision of the Lateran Council; but it was not (and would not be) altogether denied as far as Clovis II and his heirs were concerned
Across the sea from Francia, the old Riothamus Constantine passed away in April of this year. His grandson, who would soon turn thirteen years of age, ascended to the British throne as Artorius III; but despite Constantine’s best efforts to secure the line of succession, he could not head off a coup from the grave, which was exactly what happened almost as soon as his body turned cold. Early in June, a week before the boy-king could be crowned his uncle Arviragus overthrew him with the support of a majority of the Consilium Britanniae, soon after which he coerced the Bishop of Londinium into crowning him Riothamus instead.
However, Artorius’ position was not entirely hopeless. The young prince’s faithful servants were able to spirit him away to South Anglia before his usurping uncle could arrest and arrange a fatal ‘accident’ for him, and he was generously received by King Æþelhere in Lincylene. There he was summarily married to his betrothed Beorhtflæd, and acknowledged as the legitimate Riothamus of Britannia by both the English and the Western Roman envoys in attendance: though both kingdoms still needed more time to recover and rebuild their armies from their last bout, this turn of events all but guaranteed another round of warfare between Anglo-Saxon and Romano-Briton sometime in the next few years.
Princess Beorhtflæd of the South Angles on her way to marry the equally young Riothamus-in-exile Artorius III. Although already distantly related through their Ælling ancestors, theirs was the first direct dynastic link between the Pendragons and Raedwaldings
While the Turkic brothers were making their final preparations for their inevitable conflict with one another this year, east of their lands the Great Qi who had (albeit only partly) helped repel the younger of the two were celebrating another rousing victory. Emperor Xiaojing’s much larger army mopped up the remaining Goguryeo resistance, and King Yeongyang was forced to flee into hiding after his capital of Pyongyang fell to the besieging Qi forces in May. Rather than install a kinsman of Yeongyang’s or even his own family, Xiaojing sought nothing less than to incorporate the lands of Goguryeo into his empire, and because they had the nerve to opportunistically attack him while he was distracted on other fronts he imposed stiff taxes & took many slaves from the Koreans. Unsurprisingly, this decision did not endear him to his new subjects and Yeongyang had little trouble inciting a rebellion against the occupiers toward the end of the year.
The destruction of Goguryeo did not seem to phase Heijō across the waters, for in 575 the Great King did proclaim himself Tennō – ‘Heavenly Sovereign’, the Japanese Son of Heaven and equal to the Emperor of China – and rename his country from Wa to Nippon, the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. This proclamation was regarded with disbelief and mockery in the Qi court, where Japan continued to be referred to as ‘Wa’ for many years to come and Heijō himself was dismissed as a megalomaniacal dwarf-barbarian[9] who clearly thought far too highly of himself. Truly, the Romans were not the only imperial civilization which had to deal with 'barbarians' seeking to rise above their station in these years.
Regardless of what the Chinese thought, the first Emperor of Japan did treat his self-proclaimed ascent to imperial godhood with the utmost seriousness and retroactively applied the title Tennō to his predecessors, mythical and otherwise. Such was Heijō’s commitment to his own elevation that he now refused to grant any of his subjects an audience without a screen between them (so that said subject could not look upon him directly), demanded that these subjects kowtow in his presence, and made referring to himself or his now-hallowed predecessors by their given names (as opposed to their imperial title) punishable by death unless first granted explicit permission to do so (an honor which Heijō only gave to his mother & his wife).
As part of his self-elevation to imperial rank, Heijō also strongly emphasized his family's claim to descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu to further build legitimacy for his autocratic rule
Half a world away, a grimmer and less questionable sign of divine displeasure struck the Blessed Isle – or as its Irish settlers were calling it, Tír na Beannachtaí (‘Land of Blessings’). Though many Gaels who answered to an Uí Néill overlord heeded the High King of Tara’s order not to sail across the Atlantic, there was no shortage of Irishmen from Munster, Connaught and Leinster who cared not what he thought, and were motivated to cross the sea in search of adventure and lands by the messages brought back to Ireland by Papar returning for supplies or to report developments far in the west to their fellow monks and abbots back home. These people helped Amalgaid and his vassals expand their borders to include ever more of Brendan’s island, but the livestock they brought over transmitted another plague which further decimated the native Wildermen and killed both the rival High King himself & Chief Ataninnuaq.
Amalgaid’s half-Wilderman son Pátraic claimed kingship over the Land of Blessings and was immediately challenged for supremacy by Ólchobar mac Óengus: this new generation of New World leaders wasted no time in perpetuating the rivalry of their fathers. The intercession of the elderly Brendan prevented open warfare for now, and Pátraic’s wedding to Ólchobar’s sister Máel-Muire was even a somewhat joyful relief for the people of the island from the ravages of plague. Alas it was clear to all who attended the festivities that Brendan was not long for this world, despite his heroic efforts to exert his waning (though still surprisingly formidable) energy via not only the negotiations, but also missionary works and church-building in his advanced age; and when he should perish, it was highly likely that the tenuous peace which he had just arranged would follow him in short order.
Come 576, the Lateran Council finally reached an answer to the question of who was supposed to be able to grant autonomy and autocephaly to the daughter-churches of the Heptarchy. Pope John executed a tactical retreat from his position after losing the support of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Babylon – brought about by pressure from agents of Emperor Anthemius, who had little desire to grant any of the Patriarchs any additional rights and powers; especially not the primary Patriarch of the West. Thus, for now it was affirmed that a grant of autocephaly/autonomy could only be issued by the unanimous decision of an ecumenical council.
The Western Augustus Constans and Pope John both accepted this ruling & brought the Lateran Council to a close, having determined that upsetting the balance of power at this point in time was not worth the costs (up to and including mutual excommunications if they’d pushed things too far) they were estimating. They would have to wait for the Eastern Empire to grow weaker before they could make any plays to further strengthen their half of the Roman world – temporally or spiritually – at the former’s expense, but were confident that either they or their successors would have other opportunities to push the envelope in the future. That the Lateran Council’s decision also made it more difficult for the Christians of the federate kingdoms to increase their autonomy from Rome – if the Pope could get even one of the other Patriarchs on his side, he could lawfully block any such move from the monarch and bishops of the vassal kingdom in question – was further considered a silver lining. In the meantime, Constans strove to negotiate the betrothal of Caesar Florianus to the daughter of King Boniface of Altava, the princess Dihia (Dihya), with the hopes of finding a quicker and more feasible way of shoring up Stilichian power.
East of the Roman world, 576 also marked the beginning of the long-awaited fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern Turks after years of buildup and a decade of rising tensions. In March, Issik Khagan sent envoys to his brother Illig demanding the immediate handover of the latter’s Silk Road bastions; but since he knew full well that his demand was completely unacceptable, he launched his attack before those messengers even reached Illig at Samarkand, where the Southern Turk leader had moved his residence to better direct his northeastern armies. First blood was drawn between the Turkic Khaganates in the Battle of Khotan, where a surprised force of 4,000 Southern Turks and their local Tocharian allies put up a stiff fight – but were still ultimately routed and almost completely destroyed by the 12,000-strong vanguard of the Northern Turkic horde.
Issik Khagan in the Tarim Desert, where he has gone to challenge his brother for control of the central Silk Road
After sacking Khotan, Issik moved on to besiege Kashgar, one of the largest Tarim cities under his brother’s suzerainty. The petty-king of the city refused to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, and his resolve to resist was further hardened when Issik bluntly threatened to wipe Kashgar off the face of the earth for his impudence. Unfortunately for the Northern Turks, the city was not only wealthier than Khotan but also sufficiently well-fortified and provisioned to withstand a siege, and managed to hold out until Illig arrived to relieve them with 25,000 men in tow (including many Persians and Bactrians). Issik and his similarly-sized army retreated to more favorable ground around Tumshuq[10] to the east, but were still defeated in a great battle there anyway and pursued back toward Khotan, which the Southern Turks would recapture by the start of June.
Illig now went on the offensive, seeking to not only repel his brother’s invasion but to also do what the latter had planned and seize the Northern Turks’ half of the Tarim Basin for himself. The Southern Turks proceeded toward Kucha and took the city by storm, relying on their Persian engineers to build siege weapons capable of overcoming its defenses. The more civilized Illig expressed greater restraint in his treatment of Kucha than Issik had when he captured Khotan, limiting his troops’ pillaging to a few districts rather than allowing them to run amok across the entire city and only explicitly demanding the deaths of the Kuchan royal family’s adults for refusing to open their gates and prostrate themselves before him when he gave them the chance to do so.
From Kucha Illig advanced toward Karashahr, but in a mirror image of the earlier fighting around Kashgar and Tumshuq, he was assailed by Issik after the latter had gathered reinforcements from his northwestern-most vassals at Urabo[11]. At the Battle of Karashahr which followed, the Khazars and Oghurs excelled and made names for themselves among those western Turkic tribes, while the tide of combat went poorly for the Southern Turks; they sustained 4,000 losses and were driven back to Kucha. After being beaten in another engagement near Bharuka, Illig fell all the way back to his own territory, and Issik pursued him as far as Khotan and Tumshuq before stopping to consolidate his (admittedly highly limited so far) conquests. Both Khaganates took the autumn and winter as an opportunity to rest and plan their next moves, which would certainly expand the war beyond the Tarim Basin come 577.
The Battle of Karashahr marked the emergence of previously-obscure Turkic peoples recently subjugated by their much better-known Tegreg cousins, such as the Khazars, onto the pages of history
Still further eastward, the Great Qi were turning their attention to their former ally in the west. Emperor Wucheng of Later Han took Emperor Xiaojing’s preoccupation with Goguryeo to repay the Qi’s abandonment of him in the middle of their war against the Northern Turks with an invasion of his own, and had just sealed an alliance with Later Zhou – who the bandit-emperor considered a truer friend for having aided him all the way to the end of the struggle against Issik – to carve up the Qi realm between themselves. The Han army stormed out of Luoyang and down the Yellow River while Zhou forces moved in from the northwest, eventually crossing the Sanggan River in the summer.
Emperor Xiaojing left 30,000 men behind to pacify Goguryeo while he hastened back west with the rest of his army, raising additional troops from the liberated Chinese populace of the northeastern provinces and recruiting Mohe[12] mercenaries to replace his earlier losses as he went. By the time he had himself crossed over the Sanggan, the Zhou army had breached Yanmen Pass and divided to lay siege to Baozhou & Jicheng. The Great Qi wasted no time in rolling these two armies up separately over the summer, dealing a severe blow to the Later Zhou and forcing their Emperor Shenwu to retreat southward with his remaining men to join Wucheng and the Later Han.
It took until July for the combined hosts of Han and Zhou to meet the Great Qi near Yecheng. Having arrived ahead of Xiaojing’s larger army, Wucheng demonstrated no small amount of cunning in preparing the battlefield, littering it with caltrops and pits full of wooden spikes while also setting up additional rows of sharpened stakes to protect his archers in the hours before the Qi host’s arrival. His intrigues were not intended to hurt only his enemy, either: Wucheng persuaded Shenwu to place the already bloodied and weary Zhou troops in a gap between his stakes and other traps, claiming that the narrowness of the gap would give them a better chance to withstand the Qi assault when the reality was that his various traps would inevitably funnel more Qi troops into the Zhou ranks than they could handle.
The Battle of Yecheng which followed proceeded almost exactly as Wucheng had hoped. The allied armies defeated the Qi, though not as decisively as the bandit-emperor would have liked; Xiaojing had the sense to retreat with the better part of his force intact after witnessing his forward-most contingents getting mauled between the Han traps and the tenacious defenders themselves. The Zhou suffered the brunt of the fighting and soaked up crippling casualties, including their Emperor Shenwu, which left them more dependent on the Han than ever. Shenwu’s teenage son and successor, Xianzong, suspected nothing and took up Wucheng’s offer to not only study under his wing but also marry his sister Princess Zhenyuan to the latter’s own heir Hao Jian. While he had succeeded in reducing Later Zhou to a puppet state of Later Han, Wucheng was aware that the Qi were far from finished, and decided not to take the next logical step – eliminating young Xianzong and annexing his northern neighbor altogether – until he had first seen the much more threatening Xiaojing off.
Emperor Wucheng of Later Han overseeing the Battle of Yecheng from a hilltop and directing his reserves to fend off the few Qi troops who managed to break through his array of booby-traps and stakes
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[1] Historically, it took until 654 (65 years after their adoption of Catholicism) for the Visigoth kings to legally equalize their Gothic and Hispano-Roman subjects with the Liber Iudiciorum, although they did take some steps toward achieving that throughout the 6th century.
[2] A step toward a status comparable to autonomous (though not auticephalous, or wholly self-governing) Orthodox churches.
[3] Poti.
[4] Also known as Nokalakevi, near Senaki.
[5] The legendary ancestor of the Georgians. According to Caucasian tradition he is the son of Togarmah; grandson of Japheth; great-grandson of Noah; and also brother to Hayk, the equally legendary forefather of the Armenians.
[6] Kodumanal.
[7] Near Jiuliancheng, which is now part of Dandong on the Sino-Korean border.
[8] This honor was historically accorded to the Archbishop of Lyon…in 1079.
[9] ‘Wa’ was rendered in Chinese using the character for ‘Wo’, meaning ‘dwarf’ or ‘pygmy’. The Japanese’s supposedly shorter stature remains a popular subject for mockery in China even to this day.
[10] Tumxuk.
[11] Urumqi.
[12] A Tungusic people living in what is now Manchuria. One of their largest tribes, the Heishui who lived along the banks of the Amur River, are thought to be the ancestors of the Jurchen and by extension, the modern Manchus.
Great chapter,as always.
1.Now,we would have catholic Britain,but island still would not be united.
I see zealots of british faith sailing to New world and starting colony there,300 years later their USA would rule world
2.Nippon finally come - which mean,that after futere USA beat them,they would create manga !
Jokes aside - we would have emperors ruling for next 200-300 years,and later first aristocrats,and later samurais would take their power away.
Main reason - Nippon was too poor to maintain China-style armies made from peasants,so they eventually must gave power to feudal lords.
3.In OTL during Tang dynasty nestorians come to China, but get relatively quickly assimilated.Just like jews - China is only country which manage to assimilate jews.
Some nestorians probably come to Japan,too - about 800AD there was some artisan which come from China who probably was christian.
Author could made it quicker and stronger,both in China and Japan - if he need nestorians there.
4.Paparia - now we would have real wars there,and real states.When they become rich enough,WRE coud decide to help them in achiewing peace by sending roman governor.
1.Now,we would have catholic Britain,but island still would not be united.
I see zealots of british faith sailing to New world and starting colony there,300 years later their USA would rule world
2.Nippon finally come - which mean,that after futere USA beat them,they would create manga !
Jokes aside - we would have emperors ruling for next 200-300 years,and later first aristocrats,and later samurais would take their power away.
Main reason - Nippon was too poor to maintain China-style armies made from peasants,so they eventually must gave power to feudal lords.
3.In OTL during Tang dynasty nestorians come to China, but get relatively quickly assimilated.Just like jews - China is only country which manage to assimilate jews.
Some nestorians probably come to Japan,too - about 800AD there was some artisan which come from China who probably was christian.
Author could made it quicker and stronger,both in China and Japan - if he need nestorians there.
4.Paparia - now we would have real wars there,and real states.When they become rich enough,WRE coud decide to help them in achiewing peace by sending roman governor.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
So begins the big Turkic throwdown, I reckon all of their neighbors wish it would last forever.
Wucheng seems to be the most cunning of the eight, but will that be enough?
Wucheng seems to be the most cunning of the eight, but will that be enough?
577-580: Dragon-taming
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
577 proved a more fruitful year for the Augustus Constans’ schemes than the previous ones had been. In the spring he successfully arranged the union of his heir Florianus to the African princess Dihya (whose name was rendered ‘Dihia’ in Latin) of Altava, and the thirteen-year-old Caesar formally married his slightly younger betrothed in a lavish ceremony come autumn. Since Dihia’s father Boniface had no other children, any grandsons he would get out of this marriage were fated to succeed him: or in other words, the Stilichians would eventually acquire Altava – the larger and more powerful of the two great Moorish kingdoms – as a permanent addition to their power-base. King Boniface would have preferred his daughter marry Otho, the younger of Constans’ sons, but was denied this by the machinations of the Empress Dowager Frederica, who fought to set Otho up with a daughter of the Anicii clan instead.
To hopefully preserve some measure of Altavan autonomy, Boniface added a condition to his assent: if the union of his daughter and Constans’ son were to produce more than one son, then Altava would be passed to a younger brother of the future Caesar. This arrangement did not overly concern the emperor at the time, since he could still comfortably live with the prospect of a Stilichian cadet branch ruling in Africa so long as (ideally) they remained loyal to their cousins in the Eternal City. Indeed, he seemed to quickly set aside any concerns about the implications of a Stilichian African kingdom (as well as the more morbid consideration that it could provide refuge to his dynasty in case the future decades or centuries went pear-shaped for them) in favor of praying that Florianus would give him a grandson or two as quickly as possible, so that he could next arrange a match between that grandson and a Thevestian princess to bring both African kingdoms into Stilichian hands.
The wedding of the Caesar Florianus to Dihia of the Mauri was expected to bind Altava's destiny to that of the Stilichians, whether through direct absorption or a cadet branch
Further south in Africa, the Kaya Maghan of Kumbi who had welcomed the Ephesian missionary Lucas of Thysdrus 15 years prior died at the end of June. His son and successor, Bannu, had long been sympathetic to the Christian teachings and underwent baptism at Lucas’ hand days after his coronation, inviting his family and several of his trusted loyalists to do the same: thus did West Africa receive its first Christian monarch. Still necessity compelled Bannu to tolerate the still-considerable pagan majority of his modest kingdom – and he himself had not shaken off certain pagan superstitions, chief among them a belief in sorcerous and divinatory rites.
News of this ‘Baptism of the Blackamoors’ (as the Mauro-Romans of northwestern Africa, seeking a term to better differentiate these ‘Aethiopians’ from ‘Moors’ like themselves, referred to black sub-Saharan Africans) was met with widespread celebration in churches across Carthage, Altava and Theveste alike. For bringing this state of affairs about, Lucas would be canonized by the Ephesian Church years after his own death. But his conversion in no way endeared him to his Donatist Berber neighbors immediately to the north – quite the opposite.
Warriors from Aoudaghost and Taghazza began to raid villages on Kumbi’s border with increasing ferocity and ruthlessness, while in more distant Hoggar the Donatist regime imposed heavier tariffs on shipments of gold from Kumbi. Bannu retaliated with equal violence against the Donatist heretics he could reach, and in his correspondence to Patriarch Samaritanus Lucas made no secret of his wishes that Kumbi would one day grow strong enough to coordinate a great cleansing of the Donatist strongholds with the Western Roman Empire. The prospect of such a holy war brought a smile to the Patriarch’s lips and heartened the Ephesians of Africa, for by this point they had been longing to pull the thorn called Hoggar from their side for over a century.
Depictions of Mary and the infant Jesus with dark skin (also known as a 'Black Madonna') became popular with the growing mass of Ephesian converts in West Africa not only for obvious aesthetic reasons, but also as a challenge to their increasingly iconoclastic Donatist enemies
Far east of Rome, the war between the Turkic Khaganates was widening. Issik Qaghan not only launched a renewed drive on Kashgar in the Tarim Basin, but also marshaled additional forces for an attack into Southern Turkic-controlled Chorasmia. Over the course of the spring and summer the Northern Turks would sack Gurganj, Kath and Hazarasp and ride as far as Baykand[1], alarming Illig who feared that if left unchecked this secondary army could endanger his supply lines in Sogdia. He allayed his fears by personally charging forth to thwart their advance in the Battle of Bukhara that July, but the mass of mostly lightly-equipped Northern Turkic raiders avoided destruction in that single battle and continued to not only occupy Chorasmia but carry out destructive raids further into Persia and Transoxiana.
While Illig had to depart the Tarim Basin to deal with these additional headaches in Chorasmia & Transoxiana, by no means would his brother allow the conflict in the war’s original theater to be put on pause while he was gone. Issik pressed his advantage to once more sack Aksu, take Khotan and burn down Tumshuq, then fanned out to simultaneously place Kashgar and Yarkand – the two major Tarim oasis-cities still remaining under Southern Turkic control – under siege. As before, the ever-redoubtable Kashgar stood firm against the threats and arrows of the Northern Turks, but Yarkand’s royals only held out for a few weeks before reconsidering and taking Issik’s offer to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, having witnessed the fall of the rest of the Tarim Basin while Illig remained preoccupied with fending off other Northern Turk forces to the west and north. With Yarkand having yielded mostly bloodlessly, Issik was free to concentrate his forces in the Tarim against Kashgar, which he did shortly before winter came.
In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han pressed his advantage against the Great Qi as soon as the weather permitted it. While the snows were still melting he advanced to capture Shangdang[2], Taiyuan and Zhao[3] with the help of the remaining Later Zhou forces, then made a move early in the summer to seize Qingzhou and cut the northern third of the Great Qi realm from the rest of Xiaojing’s lands. The rival emperor recognized this danger and recalled over a third of the troops he had previously left in Korea to help push the Han-Zhou host away from Qingzhou, but Wucheng dove into the opening this movement of Qi troops created and pushed to seize towns as far as Mayi[4], securing the headwaters of the Sanggan River.
Xiaojing did manage to reverse some of these successes late in the year, containing the Han-Zhou coalition to the mountains of Shanxi after his Mohe mercenaries helped him deal them a serious defeat at Shanggu in October, but soon had to redirect his eyes to Korea. There, his withdrawal of a good chunk of his occupying forces gave the Goguryeo considerable breathing room, and King Yeongyang had begun to not only defeat the remaining Qi troops there in the field but to liberate towns in his own name. As winter began to set in, the Emperor of Great Qi resolved to hurry back to Korea, crush Yeongyang once and for all, and then return his full attention to the Han and Zhou, who he judged would need at least most of the next year to lick their wounds and reinforce their armies after the Battle of Shanggu anyway.
A Mohe chief arriving at the Qi court to negotiate the terms of his people's employment as mercenaries
578 saw a renewed outbreak of violence in Britannia. After seizing the throne, Arviragus wasted precious little time in rewarding his allies with land, coin and high offices – but he never quite managed to reconcile with his nephew’s partisans, and this year the rancor between them finally exploded into open violence when he attempted to arrest Aradoc ap Maelgwn, the King of Gwynedd and chief among the Cambrian princes known to be sympathetic to young Artorius’ cause. Unfortunately for the Riothamus in Londinium, Aradoc’s kin and warriors cut down his soldiers in an ambush before they could leave the mountains of Cambria, after which the freed petty-king immediately denounced him as a tyrant and instigated an open rebellion to restore Artorius.
This revolt did not come at a particularly good time for Artorius himself, for he had just fathered a daughter named Clarisant, nor for Æþelhere of the South Angles, who did not feel his armies had sufficiently recovered from the last Anglo-British war to strike again so soon. Further complicating the picture, the pro-Artorius rebellion found many supporters among those wronged by Arviragus, but these partisans were scattered all over Britannia with little ability to communicate and coordinate the war effort with one another: the chief rebels were Aradoc in Gwynedd, Dux Alban of Durovernum Cantiacum[5], and Drystan II of Cornovia, all located on the periphery of the British kingdom and separated by the territories of Arviragus’ loyalists. Still, the opportunity was too great for Artorius to ignore and at his urging Æþelhere eventually agreed to move against his usurping uncle in the next year, having secured a promise of renewed military assistance from the Western Roman Empire in this endeavor early in the autumn.
Also in Britain, the North Angles waged a war of their own against the local Britons. Their King Eadric passed away in April of 578, after which his son Eadwine succeeded him; and although Gereint of Alcluyd was content to continue to survive as a tributary to his newly ascended brother-in-law, over-bold elements in the Brittonic court violently disagreed and murdered him, after which his cousin Gyllad seized that kingdom’s throne and renounced all ties to the North Angles. This proved to be a dire mistake, as an irate Eadwine promptly led a large army of 5,000 to ravage the Cumbric countryside and besiege Alt Clut. Seven months later, Gyllad capitulated to the English after exhausting the last of his rations under the promise that he would ‘keep his head’, which Eadwine honored by drowning him in an icy lake. Thus did the last independent principality of the Britons meet its end.
Gyllad took the throne of Alcluyd on the promise that he would lead the Britons to a new, glorious chapter of their history. Instead, his recklessness wound up closing the book on them altogether
In the Turkic lands, Illig Qaghan launched his riskiest maneuver yet. Faced with the prospect of Kashgar (and with it any control he still had in the Tarim Basin) falling while the Northern Turks were redoubling their assault into Transoxiana and Persia this year, he swept eastward to deal with the former threat first. In the great Battle of Kashgar which followed this May, he prevailed and scattered his brother’s Tarim army days before the oasis-city’s supplies ran out – at the cost of the other Northern Turkic armies breaking through his weakened defenses in the west. Bukhara fell to their advance, and by mid-July they even threatened the Southern Turk ruler’s temporary capital at Samarkand.
At this point, with Illig in danger of losing his capital and being trapped in the Tarim Basin, Issik Qaghan sought terms. His reasoning was that even though he had just been defeated at Kashgar, his brother’s position was clearly so disadvantageous that the latter would negotiate and allow the Northern Turks to at least keep their gains just to extract himself from the trap being closed around him. In that he was mistaken, as Illig pushed his army back over the Tian Shan Mountains and raced across Ferghana to surprise and crush the secondary Northern Turkic army in the Battle of the Sughd River[6], which the Indo-Roman chroniclers of Kophen would record as the ‘Battle of the Polytimetus’ in their report to Anthemius III, on the first day of snowfall in 578 – not bad for a man who had nearly been crippled by the Romans several years prior. As the year came to an end, Illig took his turn to call the stunned Issik to the negotiating table instead.
Further to the east, 578 initially appeared as though it would be a more successful year for Emperor Xiaojing of Great Qi than 577 had been. Just as the resurgent Goguryeo threatened to expel the Chinese from their lands altogether, he arrived to deal them a stinging rebuke at the Battle of Gungnae[7], driving Yeongyang’s army back south of the Yalu and spending most of the spring & summer recapturing towns as far as Pyongyang. However, as they besieged Pyongyang once more and stood on the cusp of victory, disaster struck: an outbreak of plague devastated the Chinese siege camp, and Xiaojing himself was one of the many casualties.
Yeongyang sallied forth from Pyongyang and scattered the leaderless, decimated & demoralized Qi army the day after Xiaojing’s death, but the Goguryeo’s third wind was rapidly becoming the least of the latter’s problems. Xiaojing’s son Luo Xie was enthroned in his stead as Emperor Mingyuan, but as he was but a boy of ten, a regency council jointly headed by his mother the Empress Dowager Yuan and the general Xing Yu arose to govern the realm in his name. The Later Han were emboldened by this turn of events and began pushing eastward out of Shanxi once more in the autumn months, hoping to succeed where they had failed before and sever the Qi realm at Shandong. The Qi were now in danger of falling in a manner similar to how Xiaojing had toppled the Chen, and it remained to be seen whether young Mingyuan’s regents could handle their crumbling situation better than the ill-fated Aiping of Chen’s had handled theirs.
Weakened by plague and the sudden death of their emperor, the Qi army was promptly routed by the resurgent Goguryeo outside the latter's capital of Pyongyang in 578
579 saw the Western Roman Empire rocked by the death of its magister militum. Although not entirely unexpected – Aemilian was approaching seventy by the time he was found to have passed away in his sleep – the loss was hard-felt nonetheless, for he had ably led the Western Roman legions in many wars, become a major fixture in both the army and government, and proven his loyalty after initially participating in his father Aloysius’ failed rebellion against Theodosius III (to the point that when he was temporarily sacked, unlike his old man, he did not rise up against then-emperor Romanus II). His demise also left a vacuum to be filled at the highest echelon of Roman military leadership: immediately his son Genobaudes petitioned the Augustus to be appointed to succeed him, while the Greens pushed the candidacy of King Viderichus of the Ostrogoths.
Constans surprised both cliques by naming his brother-in-law Honestus the new magister militum instead. While he considered the loss of such an able and experienced generalissimo to be a hard blow indeed, the emperor also saw opportunity in Aemilian’s death – that is, an opportunity to greatly hamper the influence of the federate factions and reinforce his own. By appointing Honestus, a man he knew to be absolutely loyal to himself and unaffiliated with either the Blues or Greens, and allowing him to begin pushing out and marginalizing the officers Aemilian installed over his lengthy tenure in favor of others whose fidelity to the House of Stilicho above any other faction was not in doubt, Constans could now be certain that the Roman army could never be turned against him.
Of course, the Augustus was not entirely blind to the potential issues that snubbing the Blues and Greens so overtly could cause, and made moves to allay their anger. He called on his mother to use all her influence to calm the Greens, reminding her that not only was he her son but that he had granted her many a favor in the past, while the Blues he compensated with gold and civil offices of prominence across Gaul. Constans was pleased to see that no open rebellion broke out against him from either faction’s ranks for the rest of 579, although lingering concerns that troops controlled by the Blues or Greens might abandon him and his faithful legions– as well as, arguably even more concerning, Genobaudes and Viderichus meeting and feasting cordially with greater frequency than any Blue and Green leaders before them – compelled him to adopt extreme caution in his foreign policy and indeed to avoid conflict, even with the likes of the Avars, as much as he could, even if it meant forgoing opportunities to expand the Western Empire.
Honestus, Constans II's brother-in-law and now magister utriusque militiae, who the emperor hopes to not only be a loyal servant but as also as close to his ancestor Aetius in martial ability as possible
The first such chance which he passed up on out of paranoia (whether justified or not) was not one against the Avars however, but rather the Romano-British. Although the civil war which pitted Artorius III’s supporters against those of Arviragus created an opening through which the Western Romans could have theoretically invaded in force and reabsorbed southern Britannia, Constans decided to instead work entirely through his Anglo-Saxon allies to exdploit the situation instead of committing either himself or the bulk of his strength to an expedition over the Oceanus Brittanicus, for fear that a still-irate Genobaudes and the Blues might stab him in the back if he should turn away from them. To that end he dispatched half-a-dozen legions (including 2,000 missile troops – half sagittarii, half arcuballistarii – plus a thousand heavy horsemen and a complement of engineers) to aid Æþelhere and Artorius, once more commanded by Jovinus.
This assistance was most welcome among the South Angles, and indeed had been all they were waiting for before going on the offensive against Arviragus. Alas, in the time it took for the Western Roman reinforcements to join them at Gariannonum[8], Arviragus was able to crush Drystan of Cornovia and set his head on a spear to be carried at the forefront of his army, eliminating one of Artorius’ three primary loyalists. Undeterred, the Anglo-Roman army pressed into Romano-British territory and inspired risings among the people who had grown weary of Arviragus’ arbitrary and tyrannical ways; notably Camulodunum welcomed young Artorius without a fight, although its castellan may have been motivated by the state of its fortifications (still not fully repaired since Æþelhere last overcame them with Roman help in the last Anglo-British bout) as much as he was by any sentiment he may have had for the rightful Riothamus.
Still, the Anglo-Romans’ advance on Londinium was slowed by the many castellae which still stood in their way: Arviragus had expended much of his wealth to ensure that the magnates and captains who manned these forts would not break faith with him, and there were few cases like Camulodunum’s as the Anglo-Romans tried to close in on the capital. While they fell one after another thanks to Roman engineering and Anglo-Saxon bravery & numbers, overcoming these castellae still cost the allies valuable time and blood, preventing them from wrapping the war up as quickly as Æþelhere and Constans had hoped. Arviragus took the opportunity to contain the Cambrian loyalists of Artorius led by the King of Gwynedd; push the Cantiaci back into Britannia’s southeastern corner; and portray himself as a righteous defender of the Pelagian teachings and of British liberty against the barbaric South Angles, Western Roman slavers and their puppet in his nephew, all in an effort to win back the Romano-British populace and enthuse his soldiers into giving their all against the odds.
Cross-section of a Romano-British castella's entrance as its defenders are being warned of the oncoming Anglo-Roman army
Over in what Illig Qaghan’s Persian courtiers termed ‘Turkestan’, negotiations between the two Qaghans of the Turks extended over the spring of 579, but ultimately broke down over an inability to agree on new boundaries for their respective empires. Since Illig was still of the mind that he could restore the status quo antebellum following his victories in 578, Issik Qaghan decided he would have to first disabuse his big brother of that notion on the battlefield before resuming talks. While they were still at the negotiating table, he surreptitiously re-concentrated his forces against Kashgar, and amassed significant reinforcements to join his army in the Tarim Basin – including conscripted Tocharians and even Chinese engineers from the distant east, captured either in his previous rampage against China or on more recent wintertime raids against settlements around the Great Wall while the Great Qi, Later Zhou and Later Han remained distracted with each other.
With this army Issik was finally able to capture Kashgar, forgoing a prolonged siege in favor of simply breaching its walls and storming its streets in a blood-soaked frenzy out of fear that Illig’s own army could return at any moment to undo his besieging force as had already occurred several times in this war. The city’s defenders fought back fiercely, unhorsing and wounding even Issik himself in the process, but they were eventually still overcome by the greater numbers and ferocity of the Northern Turkic host, which then proceeded to massacre most of Kashgar’s citizenry and cart the survivors (including most of the women and children of the royal household) away as slaves. Ironically, this ran contrary to Issik’s intention and in fact undermined his purpose for attacking the city in the first place: he had wanted to capture Kashgar intact, since sacking it would destroy its value as a Silk Road hub for years to come, but the seriousness of his wounds forced him off the battlefield and kept him from maintaining discipline among his ranks in the critical hours following the city’s fall.
The Northern Turkic horde storming Kashgar
By the time Northern Turkic messengers arrived to relay Issik’s offer of renewing peace talks to Illig, the Southern Turkic Qaghan had cleared out the weakened Northern Turkic forces in Chorasmia, saving Transoxiana and Persia proper from further harassment for the time being. Far from being impressed by the Sack of Kashgar, Illig was now determined to crush his troublesome little brother once and for all, and sent the envoys back to their master with a counter-offer of a duel to the death to settle their dispute. Issik was able to refuse without shame on grounds of his recent injuries, so as 579 drew to a close, Illig rode forth to contest the Tarim Basin the old-fashioned way instead.
In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han succeeded in his intended goals, going so far as to overrun the north of the Shandong Peninsula in a spring & summer of furious campaigning. Indeed, the Han absorbed the northern third of the Great Qi’s territories over this year – because the Qi leadership, finding their situation untenable, wisely decided to move their court and armies southward toward Jiankang, breaking through Han attempts to trap them north of the Yellow River in an oft-harried but consistently disciplined retreat. Unlike their Chen predecessors, Empress Dowager Yuan and her generalissimo Xing Yu were able to work together effectively to steward the Qi realm in Emperor Mingyuan’s minority, and though the Qi lost their original homeland the retreat which these two oversaw ensured that the dynasty as a whole would survive 579. By abandoning the north they also left Wucheng with the unenviable task of dealing with the resurgent Goguryeo, who dared push past the Yalu again and got as far as the Liao River before the Han-Zhou armies were able to hold them back.
On the other side of the Earth, the greatly aged Brendan breathed his last on May 16[9] this year, having survived to celebrate his 95th birthday. He was buried on the grounds of the monastery which he built and which would soon bear his name – the first of its kind in the New World – and greatly mourned by the people of the Tír na Beannachtaí, who had come to rely greatly on his wisdom and diplomatic ability for generations now, while the Ephesian Church would canonize him in short order for his many feats, not only as an explorer but also as a peacemaker and builder of communities.
Though it was widely feared that High King Pátraic and his rival sub-king Ólchobar would immediately come to blows without Brendan’s calming influence, both felt bound by a promise to not fight one another which they swore by his bedside a few days prior to his death. After all, he had been a mentor to both of them when they were younger, and Ólchobar recalled that Brendan had saved him from Amalgaid’s fury as an adolescent while Pátraic had named his own oldest son after the soon-to-be saint. Even these two felt sufficient grief over his death and respect for his legacy that they formalized their promise, jointly swearing an oath on his Bible (one of two on the entire island as of 579) to preserve the peace until at least a year had passed since his death.
The final resting place of Brendan, soon-to-be patron-saint of explorers and mariners, on the coast of Tír na Beannachtaí
580 saw the war in Britannia approach its climax. The Anglo-Roman army and its pro-Artorius auxiliaries continued their slow but steady progress toward Londinium, aided by Artorius III himself taking a leading role in striving to win his subjects over: he urged his allies to treat his future subjects leniently and to avoid despoiling those towns and castellae which they were forced to capture by force, while also proclaiming that – far from being a Roman stooge and crypto-Ephesian – he was born & would die a Pelagian, and also would never infringe upon the liberties and privileges which the Romano-British had established for themselves over the past century and a half. The pretender’s insistence on pushing himself to the forefront of the allied army, so that the Romano-Britons could see he was no coward as they marched, and on personally distributing relief to prisoners-of-war and civilians alike whenever they took another village or fort also went a long way to combating Arviragus’ efforts to slander him and undermine his reputation in Britannia.
Conversely, Arviragus was beset by a riot in Londinium after he attempted to simultaneously levy additional taxes and conscript the populace to expand his army before winter’s end. Although he managed to put down the unrest, the Riothamus now had reason to worry that the capital’s populace might actually open the gates to his nephew even if the Consilium Britanniae remained mostly loyal, especially as word of Artorius’ generosity spread while his own name was increasingly associated not with the defense of British liberty and religion but rather with miserly tyranny. As a result, in mid-April he decided not to take any chances with a siege of Londinium and instead sallied forth to meet the Anglo-Romans on the field of battle.
Despite the odds, Arviragus chose the battlefield and his moment to strike quite well. The Cantiaci under Alban attempted to march on Londinium again as soon as they heard he had left the city, but their ranks had been thinned by earlier defeats and their approach was disorderly: he had good reason not to fear them. As for the main enemy to his front, the Riothamus chose a great forest for the place where he would meet the advancing Anglo-Roman army. Against the 16,000-strong Anglo-Roman army outside what both British and Roman chroniclers would call the Battle of Silva Tiliarum[9], or the ‘Lime Forest’ after the many linden trees therein, Arviragus would field 9,000 soldiers: given his severe numerical disadvantage, he counted on not only the terrain to help balance the odds in his favor but also heavy rainfall (of which there was much in the days leading up to the battle) to debilitate their dreaded arcuballistarii, as had been key to his father’s victory at Caesaromagus years before.
Unfortunately for the Riothamus, the improved oiled-leather bowstrings on the Roman crossbowmen’s weapons did turn out to be waterproof and these men were able to fight even despite the constant rain and heavy mist which afflicted Britannia in the spring of 580. Fortunately for him though, the ground had turned to mud thanks to the aforementioned rain, which impeded the arcuballistarii considerably – since their crossbows had been made larger and heavier to better combat the Avars, they could no longer simply press the weapon to their belly while reloading but had to press it into the ground with one foot instead, inevitably fouling the crossbow when the ground it was being pressed into was wet and muddy. Still, the presence of Roman archers equipped with conventional composite bows and pro-Artorius British longbowmen gave the alliance the upper hand in the initial exchange of missiles, while the outward-most line of Arviragus’ troops (into which he had pressed his least dependable troops, including the conscripts from Londinium) quickly buckled under the three-pronged assault of the Anglo-Roman infantry and cavalry.
Only once the Anglo-Romans pursued this weak first contingent into the woods did Arviragus commit the rest of his army to a forceful counterattack, catching his more numerous opponents by surprise. The ambush led to a ferocious battle under the trees, in which Jovinus was injured – this time fatally – by a British legionary’s javelin and Arviragus himself came to blows with his nephew. Usurper and tyrant though he may have been, the former’s courage could not be doubted after he threw himself against the pretender & his bodyguards with a shield-cleaving fury, and he fought manfully until he tripped over a tree root and exposed himself to a fatal blow from Artorius’ sword. Following their leader’s ironic demise in the heavily wooded terrain he himself had chosen in hopes of gaining an advantage, the remainder of the British army quickly surrendered, though the fighting had been quite even up until then.
While Jovinus lay dying and distant Constans remained aloof to the prospect of directly integrating Britannia, Æþelhere proved himself to not only be a (finally successful) glory-seeker but a man of honor by allowing his son-in-law to take the British throne rather than backstabbing him in this moment of triumph. Pragmatism probably played a role in his decision next to his own conscience however, as the Ephesian Angle king must have been aware that the still overwhelmingly Pelagian Romano-British would react poorly to any attempt on his part to rule over them directly, and neither he nor the Western Augustus particularly wanted to invest the amount of blood and treasure that would have been needed to keep them down at this moment in time; they both judged their interests to be better-served by installing a friendly Riothamus instead. In any case, the Anglo-Saxon king was present along with a Western Roman delegation a few months later when Artorius and Beorhtflæd were crowned in Londinium.
Artorius and Beorhtflæd visiting a Romano-British village to try to build goodwill for their new regime – and their conciliatory policies toward Pelagian Britannia's historical enemies, the Romans and Anglo-Saxons
The new Riothamus had to immediately issue a number of concessions to both his foreign backers and his new subjects to survive in his new position: thus did he grant a general amnesty to his uncle’s supporters, sign treaties of friendship with the Angles on top of agreements to restore and widen trade with the Romans, and (though he could not countenance conversion to the Ephesian rite) further grant his protection to the first Ephesian church to be built in Londinium in over a century. To steward over this church (whose attendees in 580 consisted entirely of Roman merchants who decided to set up shop in Londinium and their families) and begin preaching orthodox doctrines to the British Pope John appointed a missionary from Gaul, Gratian of Suindinum[10], who would debate with the city’s Pelagian bishop Appius II that November.
The debate changed nobody’s minds, but it was received as a sign that Artorius was following through on his promise of greater tolerance for non-Pelagians without fatally compromising his own standing among the Pelagian faithful. Indeed it served to justify all three parties’ optimism that Artorius’ assumption of power also meant the turning of a new page in Britannia’s relations with its Anglo-Saxon and Roman neighbors, which had ranged from cold at best to (quite frequently) openly hostile and violent since the time of Stilicho and Claudius Constantine. Over in Rome, Constans further dared to hope that plugging Britannia back into the Roman-controlled Mediterranean trade network and the gradual efforts of Ephesian missionaries who could now operate in Artorius’ kingdom once more would allow his descendants to more smoothly reintegrate the long-lost British provinces while expending only a minimum of Roman blood in the future.
Off in the east, Illig returned to the Tarim Basin in May, having first spent the winter and spring months driving the last of Issik’s western forces out of Chorasmia and decorating his yurt with the skulls of the Oghur, Khazar and Türgesh chiefs who Issik had entrusted with leading that secondary army. With his western flank secured the Southern Turkic Qaghan focused his attacks on Kashgar, which the Northern Turks decided to try to defend in open battle rather than a siege on account of the damage they had done to its walls. Issik’s lingering wounds ensured he would remain bed-bound in Khotan this year however, and without his leadership his primary army was defeated in the ensuing battle on June 1 this year; Illig’s cavalry mercilessly pursued them as far as Khotan, only breaking off the chase when they entered the range of the city garrison’s arrows – and Issik’s own eyes.
With Kashgar retaken and the gateway back into the Tarim Basin reopened, Illig began to reassert Southern Turkic power in the desert, pushing up the Yarkand River to retake Tumshuq and Aksu. In retaliation for his brother’s excesses he also sent his Turkic and Persian horsemen forth to aggressively raid those parts of the Basin which were still controlled by Issik, pillaging numerous villages & caravans on roads which had managed to stay relatively safe until now and further disrupting trade along the Silk Road. The violence, and its impact on the profits of everyone involved, was now escalating to a point where emperors Anthemius III and Wucheng both sent embassies to the feuding brothers this year to request that they cease fighting, or at least cease allowing their troops to behave like bandits.
In China, while the Later Han were still busily struggling to consolidate their gains in the northeast and the Great Qi continued to manage the retreat of their forces and associated refugees south & east of the Yellow River, matters were beginning to heat up once more beyond the Yangtze after several years of peace. Emperor Shang of Later Liang mounted a new offensive against Chu, managing to penetrate almost all the way to Changsha before being turned back in the Battle of Liuyang east of the Chu capital. Nevertheless the Liang forces were able to remain in control of significant parts of Chu’s eastern and southern territories, while Emperor Yang of Chu was reluctant to peel large amounts of troops away from his other borders for a proper counterattack out of fear that all his other neighbors would take it as an invitation to dogpile him again.
Lastly, across the Atlantic Pátraic and Ólchobar’s truce actually held until exactly a year had passed after Brendan’s death, defying the pessimistic expectations of the rest of the islanders. Even though both kings notably began to stockpile resources, erect new palisades and repair old & damaged ones, and assemble bands of warriors in the weeks and months leading up to May 17, such was the respect which the soon-to-be-saint’s legacy commanded that neither attempted a direct pre-emptive attack on the other. Only once precisely one year and one day since their beloved mentor perished did Ólchobar raise the standard of rebellion, finally lighting the kindling which he and Pátraic had been stacking for some time.
Now in the fashion typical of the petty wars of the Gaels of this time, both men avoided attacking the other’s increasingly well-fortified villages in favor of engaging in cattle raids and crop-burning, while occasionally challenging the other to pitched battles (though they always disappointed one another this year). Settlers not fervently loyal to either faction began to flee further into the Blessed Isle to avoid the fighting and set up new, more remote settlements. Thus did the Irish extend their reach across more and more of the Tír na Beannachtaí – and build the foundations for additional petty kings who would reject the rule of the more established contenders to the east and north, ironically fragmenting the Gaelic hold on this island even as they expanded it at the same time.
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[1] Poykent.
[2] Changzhi.
[3] Now part of Shijiazhuang.
[4] Shuozhou.
[5] Canterbury.
[6] The Zeravshan River.
[7] Ji’an.
[8] Burgh Castle.
[9] In the vicinity of modern Epping Forest, which would have been part of a much larger woodland and dominated by linden trees in pre-Saxon times.
[10] Le Mans.
To hopefully preserve some measure of Altavan autonomy, Boniface added a condition to his assent: if the union of his daughter and Constans’ son were to produce more than one son, then Altava would be passed to a younger brother of the future Caesar. This arrangement did not overly concern the emperor at the time, since he could still comfortably live with the prospect of a Stilichian cadet branch ruling in Africa so long as (ideally) they remained loyal to their cousins in the Eternal City. Indeed, he seemed to quickly set aside any concerns about the implications of a Stilichian African kingdom (as well as the more morbid consideration that it could provide refuge to his dynasty in case the future decades or centuries went pear-shaped for them) in favor of praying that Florianus would give him a grandson or two as quickly as possible, so that he could next arrange a match between that grandson and a Thevestian princess to bring both African kingdoms into Stilichian hands.
The wedding of the Caesar Florianus to Dihia of the Mauri was expected to bind Altava's destiny to that of the Stilichians, whether through direct absorption or a cadet branch
Further south in Africa, the Kaya Maghan of Kumbi who had welcomed the Ephesian missionary Lucas of Thysdrus 15 years prior died at the end of June. His son and successor, Bannu, had long been sympathetic to the Christian teachings and underwent baptism at Lucas’ hand days after his coronation, inviting his family and several of his trusted loyalists to do the same: thus did West Africa receive its first Christian monarch. Still necessity compelled Bannu to tolerate the still-considerable pagan majority of his modest kingdom – and he himself had not shaken off certain pagan superstitions, chief among them a belief in sorcerous and divinatory rites.
News of this ‘Baptism of the Blackamoors’ (as the Mauro-Romans of northwestern Africa, seeking a term to better differentiate these ‘Aethiopians’ from ‘Moors’ like themselves, referred to black sub-Saharan Africans) was met with widespread celebration in churches across Carthage, Altava and Theveste alike. For bringing this state of affairs about, Lucas would be canonized by the Ephesian Church years after his own death. But his conversion in no way endeared him to his Donatist Berber neighbors immediately to the north – quite the opposite.
Warriors from Aoudaghost and Taghazza began to raid villages on Kumbi’s border with increasing ferocity and ruthlessness, while in more distant Hoggar the Donatist regime imposed heavier tariffs on shipments of gold from Kumbi. Bannu retaliated with equal violence against the Donatist heretics he could reach, and in his correspondence to Patriarch Samaritanus Lucas made no secret of his wishes that Kumbi would one day grow strong enough to coordinate a great cleansing of the Donatist strongholds with the Western Roman Empire. The prospect of such a holy war brought a smile to the Patriarch’s lips and heartened the Ephesians of Africa, for by this point they had been longing to pull the thorn called Hoggar from their side for over a century.
Depictions of Mary and the infant Jesus with dark skin (also known as a 'Black Madonna') became popular with the growing mass of Ephesian converts in West Africa not only for obvious aesthetic reasons, but also as a challenge to their increasingly iconoclastic Donatist enemies
Far east of Rome, the war between the Turkic Khaganates was widening. Issik Qaghan not only launched a renewed drive on Kashgar in the Tarim Basin, but also marshaled additional forces for an attack into Southern Turkic-controlled Chorasmia. Over the course of the spring and summer the Northern Turks would sack Gurganj, Kath and Hazarasp and ride as far as Baykand[1], alarming Illig who feared that if left unchecked this secondary army could endanger his supply lines in Sogdia. He allayed his fears by personally charging forth to thwart their advance in the Battle of Bukhara that July, but the mass of mostly lightly-equipped Northern Turkic raiders avoided destruction in that single battle and continued to not only occupy Chorasmia but carry out destructive raids further into Persia and Transoxiana.
While Illig had to depart the Tarim Basin to deal with these additional headaches in Chorasmia & Transoxiana, by no means would his brother allow the conflict in the war’s original theater to be put on pause while he was gone. Issik pressed his advantage to once more sack Aksu, take Khotan and burn down Tumshuq, then fanned out to simultaneously place Kashgar and Yarkand – the two major Tarim oasis-cities still remaining under Southern Turkic control – under siege. As before, the ever-redoubtable Kashgar stood firm against the threats and arrows of the Northern Turks, but Yarkand’s royals only held out for a few weeks before reconsidering and taking Issik’s offer to surrender in exchange for lenient treatment, having witnessed the fall of the rest of the Tarim Basin while Illig remained preoccupied with fending off other Northern Turk forces to the west and north. With Yarkand having yielded mostly bloodlessly, Issik was free to concentrate his forces in the Tarim against Kashgar, which he did shortly before winter came.
In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han pressed his advantage against the Great Qi as soon as the weather permitted it. While the snows were still melting he advanced to capture Shangdang[2], Taiyuan and Zhao[3] with the help of the remaining Later Zhou forces, then made a move early in the summer to seize Qingzhou and cut the northern third of the Great Qi realm from the rest of Xiaojing’s lands. The rival emperor recognized this danger and recalled over a third of the troops he had previously left in Korea to help push the Han-Zhou host away from Qingzhou, but Wucheng dove into the opening this movement of Qi troops created and pushed to seize towns as far as Mayi[4], securing the headwaters of the Sanggan River.
Xiaojing did manage to reverse some of these successes late in the year, containing the Han-Zhou coalition to the mountains of Shanxi after his Mohe mercenaries helped him deal them a serious defeat at Shanggu in October, but soon had to redirect his eyes to Korea. There, his withdrawal of a good chunk of his occupying forces gave the Goguryeo considerable breathing room, and King Yeongyang had begun to not only defeat the remaining Qi troops there in the field but to liberate towns in his own name. As winter began to set in, the Emperor of Great Qi resolved to hurry back to Korea, crush Yeongyang once and for all, and then return his full attention to the Han and Zhou, who he judged would need at least most of the next year to lick their wounds and reinforce their armies after the Battle of Shanggu anyway.
A Mohe chief arriving at the Qi court to negotiate the terms of his people's employment as mercenaries
578 saw a renewed outbreak of violence in Britannia. After seizing the throne, Arviragus wasted precious little time in rewarding his allies with land, coin and high offices – but he never quite managed to reconcile with his nephew’s partisans, and this year the rancor between them finally exploded into open violence when he attempted to arrest Aradoc ap Maelgwn, the King of Gwynedd and chief among the Cambrian princes known to be sympathetic to young Artorius’ cause. Unfortunately for the Riothamus in Londinium, Aradoc’s kin and warriors cut down his soldiers in an ambush before they could leave the mountains of Cambria, after which the freed petty-king immediately denounced him as a tyrant and instigated an open rebellion to restore Artorius.
This revolt did not come at a particularly good time for Artorius himself, for he had just fathered a daughter named Clarisant, nor for Æþelhere of the South Angles, who did not feel his armies had sufficiently recovered from the last Anglo-British war to strike again so soon. Further complicating the picture, the pro-Artorius rebellion found many supporters among those wronged by Arviragus, but these partisans were scattered all over Britannia with little ability to communicate and coordinate the war effort with one another: the chief rebels were Aradoc in Gwynedd, Dux Alban of Durovernum Cantiacum[5], and Drystan II of Cornovia, all located on the periphery of the British kingdom and separated by the territories of Arviragus’ loyalists. Still, the opportunity was too great for Artorius to ignore and at his urging Æþelhere eventually agreed to move against his usurping uncle in the next year, having secured a promise of renewed military assistance from the Western Roman Empire in this endeavor early in the autumn.
Also in Britain, the North Angles waged a war of their own against the local Britons. Their King Eadric passed away in April of 578, after which his son Eadwine succeeded him; and although Gereint of Alcluyd was content to continue to survive as a tributary to his newly ascended brother-in-law, over-bold elements in the Brittonic court violently disagreed and murdered him, after which his cousin Gyllad seized that kingdom’s throne and renounced all ties to the North Angles. This proved to be a dire mistake, as an irate Eadwine promptly led a large army of 5,000 to ravage the Cumbric countryside and besiege Alt Clut. Seven months later, Gyllad capitulated to the English after exhausting the last of his rations under the promise that he would ‘keep his head’, which Eadwine honored by drowning him in an icy lake. Thus did the last independent principality of the Britons meet its end.
Gyllad took the throne of Alcluyd on the promise that he would lead the Britons to a new, glorious chapter of their history. Instead, his recklessness wound up closing the book on them altogether
In the Turkic lands, Illig Qaghan launched his riskiest maneuver yet. Faced with the prospect of Kashgar (and with it any control he still had in the Tarim Basin) falling while the Northern Turks were redoubling their assault into Transoxiana and Persia this year, he swept eastward to deal with the former threat first. In the great Battle of Kashgar which followed this May, he prevailed and scattered his brother’s Tarim army days before the oasis-city’s supplies ran out – at the cost of the other Northern Turkic armies breaking through his weakened defenses in the west. Bukhara fell to their advance, and by mid-July they even threatened the Southern Turk ruler’s temporary capital at Samarkand.
At this point, with Illig in danger of losing his capital and being trapped in the Tarim Basin, Issik Qaghan sought terms. His reasoning was that even though he had just been defeated at Kashgar, his brother’s position was clearly so disadvantageous that the latter would negotiate and allow the Northern Turks to at least keep their gains just to extract himself from the trap being closed around him. In that he was mistaken, as Illig pushed his army back over the Tian Shan Mountains and raced across Ferghana to surprise and crush the secondary Northern Turkic army in the Battle of the Sughd River[6], which the Indo-Roman chroniclers of Kophen would record as the ‘Battle of the Polytimetus’ in their report to Anthemius III, on the first day of snowfall in 578 – not bad for a man who had nearly been crippled by the Romans several years prior. As the year came to an end, Illig took his turn to call the stunned Issik to the negotiating table instead.
Further to the east, 578 initially appeared as though it would be a more successful year for Emperor Xiaojing of Great Qi than 577 had been. Just as the resurgent Goguryeo threatened to expel the Chinese from their lands altogether, he arrived to deal them a stinging rebuke at the Battle of Gungnae[7], driving Yeongyang’s army back south of the Yalu and spending most of the spring & summer recapturing towns as far as Pyongyang. However, as they besieged Pyongyang once more and stood on the cusp of victory, disaster struck: an outbreak of plague devastated the Chinese siege camp, and Xiaojing himself was one of the many casualties.
Yeongyang sallied forth from Pyongyang and scattered the leaderless, decimated & demoralized Qi army the day after Xiaojing’s death, but the Goguryeo’s third wind was rapidly becoming the least of the latter’s problems. Xiaojing’s son Luo Xie was enthroned in his stead as Emperor Mingyuan, but as he was but a boy of ten, a regency council jointly headed by his mother the Empress Dowager Yuan and the general Xing Yu arose to govern the realm in his name. The Later Han were emboldened by this turn of events and began pushing eastward out of Shanxi once more in the autumn months, hoping to succeed where they had failed before and sever the Qi realm at Shandong. The Qi were now in danger of falling in a manner similar to how Xiaojing had toppled the Chen, and it remained to be seen whether young Mingyuan’s regents could handle their crumbling situation better than the ill-fated Aiping of Chen’s had handled theirs.
Weakened by plague and the sudden death of their emperor, the Qi army was promptly routed by the resurgent Goguryeo outside the latter's capital of Pyongyang in 578
579 saw the Western Roman Empire rocked by the death of its magister militum. Although not entirely unexpected – Aemilian was approaching seventy by the time he was found to have passed away in his sleep – the loss was hard-felt nonetheless, for he had ably led the Western Roman legions in many wars, become a major fixture in both the army and government, and proven his loyalty after initially participating in his father Aloysius’ failed rebellion against Theodosius III (to the point that when he was temporarily sacked, unlike his old man, he did not rise up against then-emperor Romanus II). His demise also left a vacuum to be filled at the highest echelon of Roman military leadership: immediately his son Genobaudes petitioned the Augustus to be appointed to succeed him, while the Greens pushed the candidacy of King Viderichus of the Ostrogoths.
Constans surprised both cliques by naming his brother-in-law Honestus the new magister militum instead. While he considered the loss of such an able and experienced generalissimo to be a hard blow indeed, the emperor also saw opportunity in Aemilian’s death – that is, an opportunity to greatly hamper the influence of the federate factions and reinforce his own. By appointing Honestus, a man he knew to be absolutely loyal to himself and unaffiliated with either the Blues or Greens, and allowing him to begin pushing out and marginalizing the officers Aemilian installed over his lengthy tenure in favor of others whose fidelity to the House of Stilicho above any other faction was not in doubt, Constans could now be certain that the Roman army could never be turned against him.
Of course, the Augustus was not entirely blind to the potential issues that snubbing the Blues and Greens so overtly could cause, and made moves to allay their anger. He called on his mother to use all her influence to calm the Greens, reminding her that not only was he her son but that he had granted her many a favor in the past, while the Blues he compensated with gold and civil offices of prominence across Gaul. Constans was pleased to see that no open rebellion broke out against him from either faction’s ranks for the rest of 579, although lingering concerns that troops controlled by the Blues or Greens might abandon him and his faithful legions– as well as, arguably even more concerning, Genobaudes and Viderichus meeting and feasting cordially with greater frequency than any Blue and Green leaders before them – compelled him to adopt extreme caution in his foreign policy and indeed to avoid conflict, even with the likes of the Avars, as much as he could, even if it meant forgoing opportunities to expand the Western Empire.
Honestus, Constans II's brother-in-law and now magister utriusque militiae, who the emperor hopes to not only be a loyal servant but as also as close to his ancestor Aetius in martial ability as possible
The first such chance which he passed up on out of paranoia (whether justified or not) was not one against the Avars however, but rather the Romano-British. Although the civil war which pitted Artorius III’s supporters against those of Arviragus created an opening through which the Western Romans could have theoretically invaded in force and reabsorbed southern Britannia, Constans decided to instead work entirely through his Anglo-Saxon allies to exdploit the situation instead of committing either himself or the bulk of his strength to an expedition over the Oceanus Brittanicus, for fear that a still-irate Genobaudes and the Blues might stab him in the back if he should turn away from them. To that end he dispatched half-a-dozen legions (including 2,000 missile troops – half sagittarii, half arcuballistarii – plus a thousand heavy horsemen and a complement of engineers) to aid Æþelhere and Artorius, once more commanded by Jovinus.
This assistance was most welcome among the South Angles, and indeed had been all they were waiting for before going on the offensive against Arviragus. Alas, in the time it took for the Western Roman reinforcements to join them at Gariannonum[8], Arviragus was able to crush Drystan of Cornovia and set his head on a spear to be carried at the forefront of his army, eliminating one of Artorius’ three primary loyalists. Undeterred, the Anglo-Roman army pressed into Romano-British territory and inspired risings among the people who had grown weary of Arviragus’ arbitrary and tyrannical ways; notably Camulodunum welcomed young Artorius without a fight, although its castellan may have been motivated by the state of its fortifications (still not fully repaired since Æþelhere last overcame them with Roman help in the last Anglo-British bout) as much as he was by any sentiment he may have had for the rightful Riothamus.
Still, the Anglo-Romans’ advance on Londinium was slowed by the many castellae which still stood in their way: Arviragus had expended much of his wealth to ensure that the magnates and captains who manned these forts would not break faith with him, and there were few cases like Camulodunum’s as the Anglo-Romans tried to close in on the capital. While they fell one after another thanks to Roman engineering and Anglo-Saxon bravery & numbers, overcoming these castellae still cost the allies valuable time and blood, preventing them from wrapping the war up as quickly as Æþelhere and Constans had hoped. Arviragus took the opportunity to contain the Cambrian loyalists of Artorius led by the King of Gwynedd; push the Cantiaci back into Britannia’s southeastern corner; and portray himself as a righteous defender of the Pelagian teachings and of British liberty against the barbaric South Angles, Western Roman slavers and their puppet in his nephew, all in an effort to win back the Romano-British populace and enthuse his soldiers into giving their all against the odds.
Cross-section of a Romano-British castella's entrance as its defenders are being warned of the oncoming Anglo-Roman army
Over in what Illig Qaghan’s Persian courtiers termed ‘Turkestan’, negotiations between the two Qaghans of the Turks extended over the spring of 579, but ultimately broke down over an inability to agree on new boundaries for their respective empires. Since Illig was still of the mind that he could restore the status quo antebellum following his victories in 578, Issik Qaghan decided he would have to first disabuse his big brother of that notion on the battlefield before resuming talks. While they were still at the negotiating table, he surreptitiously re-concentrated his forces against Kashgar, and amassed significant reinforcements to join his army in the Tarim Basin – including conscripted Tocharians and even Chinese engineers from the distant east, captured either in his previous rampage against China or on more recent wintertime raids against settlements around the Great Wall while the Great Qi, Later Zhou and Later Han remained distracted with each other.
With this army Issik was finally able to capture Kashgar, forgoing a prolonged siege in favor of simply breaching its walls and storming its streets in a blood-soaked frenzy out of fear that Illig’s own army could return at any moment to undo his besieging force as had already occurred several times in this war. The city’s defenders fought back fiercely, unhorsing and wounding even Issik himself in the process, but they were eventually still overcome by the greater numbers and ferocity of the Northern Turkic host, which then proceeded to massacre most of Kashgar’s citizenry and cart the survivors (including most of the women and children of the royal household) away as slaves. Ironically, this ran contrary to Issik’s intention and in fact undermined his purpose for attacking the city in the first place: he had wanted to capture Kashgar intact, since sacking it would destroy its value as a Silk Road hub for years to come, but the seriousness of his wounds forced him off the battlefield and kept him from maintaining discipline among his ranks in the critical hours following the city’s fall.
The Northern Turkic horde storming Kashgar
By the time Northern Turkic messengers arrived to relay Issik’s offer of renewing peace talks to Illig, the Southern Turkic Qaghan had cleared out the weakened Northern Turkic forces in Chorasmia, saving Transoxiana and Persia proper from further harassment for the time being. Far from being impressed by the Sack of Kashgar, Illig was now determined to crush his troublesome little brother once and for all, and sent the envoys back to their master with a counter-offer of a duel to the death to settle their dispute. Issik was able to refuse without shame on grounds of his recent injuries, so as 579 drew to a close, Illig rode forth to contest the Tarim Basin the old-fashioned way instead.
In China, Emperor Wucheng of Later Han succeeded in his intended goals, going so far as to overrun the north of the Shandong Peninsula in a spring & summer of furious campaigning. Indeed, the Han absorbed the northern third of the Great Qi’s territories over this year – because the Qi leadership, finding their situation untenable, wisely decided to move their court and armies southward toward Jiankang, breaking through Han attempts to trap them north of the Yellow River in an oft-harried but consistently disciplined retreat. Unlike their Chen predecessors, Empress Dowager Yuan and her generalissimo Xing Yu were able to work together effectively to steward the Qi realm in Emperor Mingyuan’s minority, and though the Qi lost their original homeland the retreat which these two oversaw ensured that the dynasty as a whole would survive 579. By abandoning the north they also left Wucheng with the unenviable task of dealing with the resurgent Goguryeo, who dared push past the Yalu again and got as far as the Liao River before the Han-Zhou armies were able to hold them back.
On the other side of the Earth, the greatly aged Brendan breathed his last on May 16[9] this year, having survived to celebrate his 95th birthday. He was buried on the grounds of the monastery which he built and which would soon bear his name – the first of its kind in the New World – and greatly mourned by the people of the Tír na Beannachtaí, who had come to rely greatly on his wisdom and diplomatic ability for generations now, while the Ephesian Church would canonize him in short order for his many feats, not only as an explorer but also as a peacemaker and builder of communities.
Though it was widely feared that High King Pátraic and his rival sub-king Ólchobar would immediately come to blows without Brendan’s calming influence, both felt bound by a promise to not fight one another which they swore by his bedside a few days prior to his death. After all, he had been a mentor to both of them when they were younger, and Ólchobar recalled that Brendan had saved him from Amalgaid’s fury as an adolescent while Pátraic had named his own oldest son after the soon-to-be saint. Even these two felt sufficient grief over his death and respect for his legacy that they formalized their promise, jointly swearing an oath on his Bible (one of two on the entire island as of 579) to preserve the peace until at least a year had passed since his death.
The final resting place of Brendan, soon-to-be patron-saint of explorers and mariners, on the coast of Tír na Beannachtaí
580 saw the war in Britannia approach its climax. The Anglo-Roman army and its pro-Artorius auxiliaries continued their slow but steady progress toward Londinium, aided by Artorius III himself taking a leading role in striving to win his subjects over: he urged his allies to treat his future subjects leniently and to avoid despoiling those towns and castellae which they were forced to capture by force, while also proclaiming that – far from being a Roman stooge and crypto-Ephesian – he was born & would die a Pelagian, and also would never infringe upon the liberties and privileges which the Romano-British had established for themselves over the past century and a half. The pretender’s insistence on pushing himself to the forefront of the allied army, so that the Romano-Britons could see he was no coward as they marched, and on personally distributing relief to prisoners-of-war and civilians alike whenever they took another village or fort also went a long way to combating Arviragus’ efforts to slander him and undermine his reputation in Britannia.
Conversely, Arviragus was beset by a riot in Londinium after he attempted to simultaneously levy additional taxes and conscript the populace to expand his army before winter’s end. Although he managed to put down the unrest, the Riothamus now had reason to worry that the capital’s populace might actually open the gates to his nephew even if the Consilium Britanniae remained mostly loyal, especially as word of Artorius’ generosity spread while his own name was increasingly associated not with the defense of British liberty and religion but rather with miserly tyranny. As a result, in mid-April he decided not to take any chances with a siege of Londinium and instead sallied forth to meet the Anglo-Romans on the field of battle.
Despite the odds, Arviragus chose the battlefield and his moment to strike quite well. The Cantiaci under Alban attempted to march on Londinium again as soon as they heard he had left the city, but their ranks had been thinned by earlier defeats and their approach was disorderly: he had good reason not to fear them. As for the main enemy to his front, the Riothamus chose a great forest for the place where he would meet the advancing Anglo-Roman army. Against the 16,000-strong Anglo-Roman army outside what both British and Roman chroniclers would call the Battle of Silva Tiliarum[9], or the ‘Lime Forest’ after the many linden trees therein, Arviragus would field 9,000 soldiers: given his severe numerical disadvantage, he counted on not only the terrain to help balance the odds in his favor but also heavy rainfall (of which there was much in the days leading up to the battle) to debilitate their dreaded arcuballistarii, as had been key to his father’s victory at Caesaromagus years before.
Unfortunately for the Riothamus, the improved oiled-leather bowstrings on the Roman crossbowmen’s weapons did turn out to be waterproof and these men were able to fight even despite the constant rain and heavy mist which afflicted Britannia in the spring of 580. Fortunately for him though, the ground had turned to mud thanks to the aforementioned rain, which impeded the arcuballistarii considerably – since their crossbows had been made larger and heavier to better combat the Avars, they could no longer simply press the weapon to their belly while reloading but had to press it into the ground with one foot instead, inevitably fouling the crossbow when the ground it was being pressed into was wet and muddy. Still, the presence of Roman archers equipped with conventional composite bows and pro-Artorius British longbowmen gave the alliance the upper hand in the initial exchange of missiles, while the outward-most line of Arviragus’ troops (into which he had pressed his least dependable troops, including the conscripts from Londinium) quickly buckled under the three-pronged assault of the Anglo-Roman infantry and cavalry.
Only once the Anglo-Romans pursued this weak first contingent into the woods did Arviragus commit the rest of his army to a forceful counterattack, catching his more numerous opponents by surprise. The ambush led to a ferocious battle under the trees, in which Jovinus was injured – this time fatally – by a British legionary’s javelin and Arviragus himself came to blows with his nephew. Usurper and tyrant though he may have been, the former’s courage could not be doubted after he threw himself against the pretender & his bodyguards with a shield-cleaving fury, and he fought manfully until he tripped over a tree root and exposed himself to a fatal blow from Artorius’ sword. Following their leader’s ironic demise in the heavily wooded terrain he himself had chosen in hopes of gaining an advantage, the remainder of the British army quickly surrendered, though the fighting had been quite even up until then.
While Jovinus lay dying and distant Constans remained aloof to the prospect of directly integrating Britannia, Æþelhere proved himself to not only be a (finally successful) glory-seeker but a man of honor by allowing his son-in-law to take the British throne rather than backstabbing him in this moment of triumph. Pragmatism probably played a role in his decision next to his own conscience however, as the Ephesian Angle king must have been aware that the still overwhelmingly Pelagian Romano-British would react poorly to any attempt on his part to rule over them directly, and neither he nor the Western Augustus particularly wanted to invest the amount of blood and treasure that would have been needed to keep them down at this moment in time; they both judged their interests to be better-served by installing a friendly Riothamus instead. In any case, the Anglo-Saxon king was present along with a Western Roman delegation a few months later when Artorius and Beorhtflæd were crowned in Londinium.
Artorius and Beorhtflæd visiting a Romano-British village to try to build goodwill for their new regime – and their conciliatory policies toward Pelagian Britannia's historical enemies, the Romans and Anglo-Saxons
The new Riothamus had to immediately issue a number of concessions to both his foreign backers and his new subjects to survive in his new position: thus did he grant a general amnesty to his uncle’s supporters, sign treaties of friendship with the Angles on top of agreements to restore and widen trade with the Romans, and (though he could not countenance conversion to the Ephesian rite) further grant his protection to the first Ephesian church to be built in Londinium in over a century. To steward over this church (whose attendees in 580 consisted entirely of Roman merchants who decided to set up shop in Londinium and their families) and begin preaching orthodox doctrines to the British Pope John appointed a missionary from Gaul, Gratian of Suindinum[10], who would debate with the city’s Pelagian bishop Appius II that November.
The debate changed nobody’s minds, but it was received as a sign that Artorius was following through on his promise of greater tolerance for non-Pelagians without fatally compromising his own standing among the Pelagian faithful. Indeed it served to justify all three parties’ optimism that Artorius’ assumption of power also meant the turning of a new page in Britannia’s relations with its Anglo-Saxon and Roman neighbors, which had ranged from cold at best to (quite frequently) openly hostile and violent since the time of Stilicho and Claudius Constantine. Over in Rome, Constans further dared to hope that plugging Britannia back into the Roman-controlled Mediterranean trade network and the gradual efforts of Ephesian missionaries who could now operate in Artorius’ kingdom once more would allow his descendants to more smoothly reintegrate the long-lost British provinces while expending only a minimum of Roman blood in the future.
Off in the east, Illig returned to the Tarim Basin in May, having first spent the winter and spring months driving the last of Issik’s western forces out of Chorasmia and decorating his yurt with the skulls of the Oghur, Khazar and Türgesh chiefs who Issik had entrusted with leading that secondary army. With his western flank secured the Southern Turkic Qaghan focused his attacks on Kashgar, which the Northern Turks decided to try to defend in open battle rather than a siege on account of the damage they had done to its walls. Issik’s lingering wounds ensured he would remain bed-bound in Khotan this year however, and without his leadership his primary army was defeated in the ensuing battle on June 1 this year; Illig’s cavalry mercilessly pursued them as far as Khotan, only breaking off the chase when they entered the range of the city garrison’s arrows – and Issik’s own eyes.
With Kashgar retaken and the gateway back into the Tarim Basin reopened, Illig began to reassert Southern Turkic power in the desert, pushing up the Yarkand River to retake Tumshuq and Aksu. In retaliation for his brother’s excesses he also sent his Turkic and Persian horsemen forth to aggressively raid those parts of the Basin which were still controlled by Issik, pillaging numerous villages & caravans on roads which had managed to stay relatively safe until now and further disrupting trade along the Silk Road. The violence, and its impact on the profits of everyone involved, was now escalating to a point where emperors Anthemius III and Wucheng both sent embassies to the feuding brothers this year to request that they cease fighting, or at least cease allowing their troops to behave like bandits.
In China, while the Later Han were still busily struggling to consolidate their gains in the northeast and the Great Qi continued to manage the retreat of their forces and associated refugees south & east of the Yellow River, matters were beginning to heat up once more beyond the Yangtze after several years of peace. Emperor Shang of Later Liang mounted a new offensive against Chu, managing to penetrate almost all the way to Changsha before being turned back in the Battle of Liuyang east of the Chu capital. Nevertheless the Liang forces were able to remain in control of significant parts of Chu’s eastern and southern territories, while Emperor Yang of Chu was reluctant to peel large amounts of troops away from his other borders for a proper counterattack out of fear that all his other neighbors would take it as an invitation to dogpile him again.
Lastly, across the Atlantic Pátraic and Ólchobar’s truce actually held until exactly a year had passed after Brendan’s death, defying the pessimistic expectations of the rest of the islanders. Even though both kings notably began to stockpile resources, erect new palisades and repair old & damaged ones, and assemble bands of warriors in the weeks and months leading up to May 17, such was the respect which the soon-to-be-saint’s legacy commanded that neither attempted a direct pre-emptive attack on the other. Only once precisely one year and one day since their beloved mentor perished did Ólchobar raise the standard of rebellion, finally lighting the kindling which he and Pátraic had been stacking for some time.
Now in the fashion typical of the petty wars of the Gaels of this time, both men avoided attacking the other’s increasingly well-fortified villages in favor of engaging in cattle raids and crop-burning, while occasionally challenging the other to pitched battles (though they always disappointed one another this year). Settlers not fervently loyal to either faction began to flee further into the Blessed Isle to avoid the fighting and set up new, more remote settlements. Thus did the Irish extend their reach across more and more of the Tír na Beannachtaí – and build the foundations for additional petty kings who would reject the rule of the more established contenders to the east and north, ironically fragmenting the Gaelic hold on this island even as they expanded it at the same time.
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[1] Poykent.
[2] Changzhi.
[3] Now part of Shijiazhuang.
[4] Shuozhou.
[5] Canterbury.
[6] The Zeravshan River.
[7] Ji’an.
[8] Burgh Castle.
[9] In the vicinity of modern Epping Forest, which would have been part of a much larger woodland and dominated by linden trees in pre-Saxon times.
[10] Le Mans.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
So the conquest of the New World will be done by the infinite circle of Irish people trying to get away from the Irish people.
gral
Well-known member
Sounds right.
Turkis brothers wonted money from silk road ,so they fought for it so much,that there would be no money.Well,they always could attack somebody else to get money,right?
Yes,i am talking about you,ERE and China.
About pelagians - becouse,unlike bad catholics,they consider themselves pure,they should named themselves puritans.And go to New world to save their purity.
And they could prosecute all catholics there.
Yes,i am talking about you,ERE and China.
About pelagians - becouse,unlike bad catholics,they consider themselves pure,they should named themselves puritans.And go to New world to save their purity.
And they could prosecute all catholics there.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Though I can't talk about my future plans for the European colonization of the New World in detail because spoilers, I can say that the Romano-British and English (and denizens of the British Isles in general, really) will have an important part to play down the road after the Irish, if only because they're supremely well-positioned geographically to get a head-start on the colonization business. I can also say that the next chapter will be a factional overview of the Romano-British kingdom: seems like this would be a good time for it since this past chapter was pretty Britain-centric (at least in its European segments). Plus it'll probably be the last chapter of its kind in the 6th century, since we're now only about 20 years away from the dawn of the 7th! Here's hoping I can get there by the 1st anniversary of the timeline's beginning, this coming May.
I'll be using that upcoming chapter to address the Pelagians' evolving structure and doctrines in more detail, as well. Suffice to say that their core beliefs are actually fundamentally opposed to what we would recognize as Puritan/Calvinist positions, especially salvation and God having a predestined elect (I can't think of anything that would be more anathema to a Pelagian) - I think Arminianism and Methodism would be much closer to the Pelagians' theology, though they don't go as far as the Pelagians do on concepts like original sin. I hope you'll find it as interesting to read as I find it interesting to brainstorm & write, since the Romano-British will represent this timeline's first exploration of a 'sub-Roman' society with not only a heretical offshoot of Roman Christianity as their religion, but also a language and customs descended from Rome's heritage too (in their case, a surviving - and evolving - British Latin which didn't go extinct).
I'll be using that upcoming chapter to address the Pelagians' evolving structure and doctrines in more detail, as well. Suffice to say that their core beliefs are actually fundamentally opposed to what we would recognize as Puritan/Calvinist positions, especially salvation and God having a predestined elect (I can't think of anything that would be more anathema to a Pelagian) - I think Arminianism and Methodism would be much closer to the Pelagians' theology, though they don't go as far as the Pelagians do on concepts like original sin. I hope you'll find it as interesting to read as I find it interesting to brainstorm & write, since the Romano-British will represent this timeline's first exploration of a 'sub-Roman' society with not only a heretical offshoot of Roman Christianity as their religion, but also a language and customs descended from Rome's heritage too (in their case, a surviving - and evolving - British Latin which didn't go extinct).
Arleady emerged.Remember donatists in Africa?
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The Donatists are certainly extremely aggressive against those they deem to be heretics or apostates (even by the standards of the time, keeping in mind that neither Roman Empire considers you a full citizen if you don't hold to the Ephesian orthodoxy), austere, all-around militant & unforgiving, rather puritanical and trending in an iconoclastic direction - all that on top of being tribal nomads living in a desert. In these regards they're definitely comparable to early Islam, especially the strict & extremely violent Kharijites who came to dominate the Maghreb. But they've got a couple factors working against them that the Arab Muslims didn't IOTL:
That said, a long time ago I did say (not in any of the actual timeline entries mind, so if you've only been skimming those you'd have missed it) that I've butterfly-proofed the existence of three important religious leaders for the purposes of where I'm planning to go with this timeline. And I'm sure you can guess who's the first of those three, as well as the only one who is likely to appear in the timeframe I have outlined for Vivat Stilicho You can be assured that I've got some twists in mind to keep the religion he's founding from being a total carbon copy of and evolving along the exact same trajectory as its RL counterpart too, of course.
- The Berbers are in no way unified behind Donatism (if anything there are probably more Ephesian Berbers than Donatist ones, a lot more at that), unlike the Arabs under the Rashidun Caliphate;
- Their main enemies (the WRE and its Moorish vassal kingdoms) aren't exhausted or particularly weak, unlike the historical 7th-century ERE and Sassanid Persia;
- And Hoggar - the main Donatist kingdom - is looking at a pretty precarious position in the next century or two, sandwiched between the aforementioned Moorish vassal kingdoms of Altava & Theveste (both of which are larger, stronger & wealthier than it) to the north and the recently-converted Soninke of Kumbi to the south, a young & rising Ephesian power in West Africa.
That said, a long time ago I did say (not in any of the actual timeline entries mind, so if you've only been skimming those you'd have missed it) that I've butterfly-proofed the existence of three important religious leaders for the purposes of where I'm planning to go with this timeline. And I'm sure you can guess who's the first of those three, as well as the only one who is likely to appear in the timeframe I have outlined for Vivat Stilicho
You can be assured that I've got some twists in mind to keep the religion he's founding from being a total carbon copy of and evolving along the exact same trajectory as its RL counterpart too, of course.The Donatists are certainly extremely aggressive against those they deem to be heretics or apostates (even by the standards of the time, keeping in mind that neither Roman Empire considers you a full citizen if you don't hold to the Ephesian orthodoxy), austere, all-around militant & unforgiving, rather puritanical and trending in an iconoclastic direction - all that on top of being tribal nomads living in a desert. In these regards they're definitely comparable to early Islam, especially the strict & extremely violent Kharijites who came to dominate the Maghreb. But they've got a couple factors working against them that the Arab Muslims didn't IOTL:
Suffice to say, without drastic changes (whose existence I can neither confirm nor deny, because spoilers) it's unlikely that they'll get to pour out of the Atlas Mountains and go on a conquering rampage anytime soon, at least not against the Roman world. Southward (especially southeastward) against sub-Saharan Africans, maybe. But that's a long way off and as far as anyone living in ITL's 580 would be able to guess, Hoggar's Ephesian neighbors will only grow stronger relative to it and it's the Ephesian missionaries who are so far having the most success in reaching out to sub-Saharan peoples.
- The Berbers are in no way unified behind Donatism (if anything there are probably more Ephesian Berbers than Donatist ones, a lot more at that), unlike the Arabs under the Rashidun Caliphate;
- Their main enemies (the WRE and its Moorish vassal kingdoms) aren't exhausted or particularly weak, unlike the historical 7th-century ERE and Sassanid Persia;
- And Hoggar - the main Donatist kingdom - is looking at a pretty precarious position in the next century or two, sandwiched between the aforementioned Moorish vassal kingdoms of Altava & Theveste (both of which are larger, stronger & wealthier than it) to the north and the recently-converted Soninke of Kumbi to the south, a young & rising Ephesian power in West Africa.
That said, a long time ago I did say (not in any of the actual timeline entries mind, so if you've only been skimming those you'd have missed it) that I've butterfly-proofed the existence of three important religious leaders for the purposes of where I'm planning to go with this timeline. And I'm sure you can guess who's the first of those three, as well as the only one who is likely to appear in the timeframe I have outlined for Vivat Stilicho
I had the feeling he would be one of those three characters.
Although some others have been protected against butterflies already haven't they? Thinking of Belasarius and Arthor for instance who were born long after the PoD.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Indeed, but as I also said, I had decided to set up a butterfly net until 500 - hence the existence of figures like Belisarius or Saint Benedict who were born before or during that year (the exception being historical figures whose parents or ancestors already explicitly met different fates & people ITL, such as the Visigoth royals). The three religious figures I'm talking about are the only historical personalities that will still be around after the 500 cutoff, when I've let all the butterflies (except for those three of course) fly free.I had the feeling he would be one of those three characters.
Important thing in Africa - tse-tse fly.It was what stopped nomad from conqering more Bantu territories,becouse it killed almost all horses.
Sadly,i forget where exactly line between tse-tse territory and rest is.Author could change it for himself,anyway.
And muslims were very lucky to start their conqest when both Persia and ERE were weak.Now,it would must happen to WRE and turks,too.Not possible.
About Tang dynasty in OTL - jesuits discovered writing from their times about christians there from at least 680AD,and thought that they were ephesyian.
They were wrong,they were nestorians.Some probably go to Japan in that period,too.Author could made it happen earlier,if he need nestorians there.
Relatively easy way by sea,n OTL at least from about 600 AD.
And,china sailors could discovere Australia/which,according to some article i read,Tang dynasty did/,when Japan could ,using Kuro-siwo,get to North America.Problem would be with returning....
Sadly,i forget where exactly line between tse-tse territory and rest is.Author could change it for himself,anyway.
And muslims were very lucky to start their conqest when both Persia and ERE were weak.Now,it would must happen to WRE and turks,too.Not possible.
About Tang dynasty in OTL - jesuits discovered writing from their times about christians there from at least 680AD,and thought that they were ephesyian.
They were wrong,they were nestorians.Some probably go to Japan in that period,too.Author could made it happen earlier,if he need nestorians there.
Relatively easy way by sea,n OTL at least from about 600 AD.
And,china sailors could discovere Australia/which,according to some article i read,Tang dynasty did/,when Japan could ,using Kuro-siwo,get to North America.Problem would be with returning....
OK had forgotten that limit on the butterfly net.
I had a suspicion that the three would all be religious characters.
Here be dragons
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Capital: Londinium (Bretanego: Lundeinéo)
Religion: Pelagian Christianity. A fading minority of Celtic pagans still survives in the remotest reaches of Cambria’s mountains: however they are very few nowadays, face constant encroachment by Pelagian missionaries while their former patrons among the petty-kings of that land now shun or even actively persecute them, and they will probably not survive the end of the sixth century. Conversely, Ephesian Christians are (very slowly) beginning to return under the reign of Artorius III.
Languages: Bretanego – ‘Britannic’, or Early British Romance – has evolved from the old Vulgar Latin (itself a dialect most closely related to Gallo-Roman Latin) of Britain to become the primary language spoken by the people of southern Britain. Amidst the mountains of Cambria, where Roman culture and the Latin tongue had always struggled to establish itself even before Britannia gained its independence from the Western Empire, an eponymous dialect of Brittonic[1] is still spoken with some regularity, though Bretanego has been slowly spreading there thanks to the Pelagian Church.
Britannia at the close of the sixth century is a nearly unrecognizable place compared to the Britannia which existed at the beginning of the fifth. It no longer answers to the Emperor in Ravenna or Rome but to its own line of kings, the Pendragons who have had to work themselves to the bone (and often bounce back from hazardous positions of weakness) to keep their kingdom safe and free. While it remains Christian, Britannia adheres to Pelagianism, a form of Christianity which is considered heretical by the Ephesian Romans; a feeling which is assuredly mutual. And any feeling of certain security, such as it was between the many usurpers who arose to contend for the purple from the isle and the barbarians battering its shores, vanished between the departure of its legions in Claudius Constantine’s ill-fated challenge to Stilicho and the final severance of ties with the mainland under Ambrosius I.
Still, for all that, Britannia still survives as of 580 AD as an exemplar of sub-Roman civilization, no longer quite bound to Rome but rather building off the basis inherited from it and evolving into something altogether new. As British bards put it in their poems and songs, does an apple that falls from a tree remain part of that tree forever? Though beset by challenges and tragedies, the Pendragons have persevered through trials that would have shattered weaker dynasties and kingdoms, and laid down the foundation for national legends with their valiant deeds in battle and in peacetime alike. And that they and their kingdom have managed to stand apart from and against the Western Roman Empire for over a century and a half, without also being swallowed up by their hostile barbarian neighbors, is considered by many of the British themselves to be nothing less than a miracle and proof of God’s reward for their good works.
The Britannia of 580 has just emerged from fertile soil for another one of those national legends, and into one more crucial turning point in a century-old history already full of such decisive moments. In the span of a few years their new Riothamus, Artorius III, has had to flee his kingdom before his uncle Arviragus could arrest and/or kill him; married Beorhtflæd Æþelheresdohter, a princess of his people’s traditional and most persistent enemies the Anglo-Saxons; secured an alliance both with the aforementioned Anglo-Saxons and his people’s other traditional enemy, the Western Romans; and retaken his rightful crown with the help of these former enemies, in the process slaying Arviragus in combat. No doubt there is enough material here for any minstrel to work with, even if the rest of Artorius’ reign should prove disastrous.
But now he must rule a kingdom that, while (for now) preferring him over his tyrannical usurper of an uncle, is also at best suspicious of him, his wife and his choice of friends. It remains to be seen whether this third Artorius can live up to the legacy of his namesake – not necessarily with battlefield feats against foreign enemies, but more-so by stabilizing his position, bringing peace and prosperity to his subjects, and especially by making his temporary friendships with the English and Romans into something more permanent without compromising himself or the independent traditions which the British have come to cherish amid their struggles. A tall order to be sure, but it can be argued that Ambrosius and the first Artorius faced worse, and in any case it is one which this Riothamus – if he is truly a Pendragon at heart and not the sort of weak puppet Arviragus tried to paint him as – will not run away from.
The political structure of the Romano-British state can perhaps be best-described as ‘proto-feudalistic’ – a patchwork of autonomous lords and petty-kings with hereditary fiefdoms and private armies, who protect their peasants in exchange for taxes which are increasingly collected in kind rather than in coin, of whom the monarch is but the first and most prestigious peer. These monarchs, titled Riothamus or ‘Great King’ (though in 580’s Bretanego his subjects call him the Réiotamo) and addressed as dominus rex (‘lord king’, Brt.: dominò réi) since Britannia first won its independence from the Western Roman Empire more than a hundred years ago, have managed to maintain the dynastic continuity of their venerable House of Pendragon (‘chief dragon’, Brt.: Pendraiguno, and rendered as Penn Draig in Brittonic by their Cambrian subjects from whom the moniker originated in the first place) for as long as Britannia has stood. Administratively the kingdom is still nominally organized into three of Roman Britain’s five remaining provinces – Maxima Caesariensis (the new northernmost province, though more than half of it has been lost to the English), Britannia Prima (southern Britain) and Britannia Secunda (Cambria) – but these provinces functionally only exist on paper and their appointed praesides[2] (Brt.: présedes) are more like peers of and mediators for the local nobility rather than true governors.
The Pendragons serve a higher purpose than just their hereditary role as Britannia’s temporal sovereigns. In line with Pelagian doctrine, they are required to serve as moral exemplars who virtuous nature is beyond reproach so as to inspire their social inferiors, and sinful conduct that is practically permitted if not expected of their continental counterparts – such as keeping mistresses or throwing lavish banquets – is not only frowned upon, but actively chips away at the legitimacy forming the foundation of their reign. As well behavior considered tyrannical such as imposing overly high taxes, tolerating corrupt favorites, and undermining the privileges and liberties of the nobility, the Pelagian Church and the cities invariably (and very conveniently for the offended parties) frequently gets interpreted as conduct unbecoming of a divinely-sanctioned Riothamus and an excuse by disgruntled lords to overthrow the responsible monarch, as Arviragus can attest to.
Artorius (Brt.: Arturo) III, the young Riothamus of Britannia as of 580 AD. Retaking his rightful throne is only the beginning of his true struggle: reconciling with his people's ancient Roman and English adversaries while preserving the identity they have forged for themselves over the last 150 years of struggle
Among the most important duties of a Riothamus is the ‘March of Good Example’: a sort of royal progress which he is expected to undertake every few years. He must tour Britannia (accompanied by his wife, any royal children old & healthy enough to travel, and the Bishop of Londinium), directly interacting with & aiding his people – distributing alms, arbitrating local disputes, investigating corruption, and personally executing criminals whose crimes merit the death penalty among other duties, all while displaying exemplary personal conduct – before returning to Londinium. Failing to undertake a scheduled March of Good Example is considered a very poor omen for a Riothamus. Leading the British army into battle, in so doing living up to the example set by the founders of their dynasty and setting an example of manly courage for their own troops to follow, is another duty of the Riothamus and certainly a much more hazardous one at that: of Britannia’s six monarchs since independence, half have been killed in battle (Artorius I, Artorius II and Arviragus), as has one royal heir (Maximus of Dumnonia, father of the current Riothamus Artorius III).
Although the Riothamus is understood to be the single most powerful temporal authority in Britannia, the kingdom’s magnates collectively outweigh his might by a fair margin. They still go by the old Roman titles of comes (Brt.: còmété) and dux (Brt.: doí), but invariably these men are the patriarchs of aristocratic families (many of which can trace their origins to old Brittonic aristocratic clans which accepted Romanization, or the families of prominent Roman settlers who did not flee to the mainland in the fifth century) which control and tax hereditary fiefs from a castellum or local fortress, a privilege which comes with the sworn responsibility of fighting in defense of their subjects and overlord. To that end they maintain private armies, paid for by the peasants who depend upon them for protection.
In more recent decades, as Britannia’s position grew more precarious the kings have taken to carving out smaller fiefs (with attendant villages to oversee, tax and protect) for trusted retainers, and the counts & dukes have increasingly done the same with royal authorization. These lesser lords are usually titled baronés (‘military official’) or caballarii (‘knight’, Brt.: cavallerés) based on whether they are professional footmen or horsemen. While their fiefs are supposed to be life honors rather than strictly hereditary and thus to revert to the overlord upon their death, in practice they tend to pass their roles and their livelihoods down to their sons (who often serve them as armigers from a young age) with the permission of the aforementioned overlords. Naturally, this has made Britannia a much more decentralized and politically fragmented kingdom than the Western Roman Empire (even counting its many barbaric federates), although it does also mean a charismatic and well-regarded Riothamus can still call upon a pool of professional and motivated soldiers. It could always be worse – at least all of Britannia’s nobility owe their immediate allegiance to the Riothamus, and not to one another in a complicated feudal hierarchy[3].
A Romano-British villa which has since been converted into a castellum (Brt.: chastelo), as has become necessary for its owners and tenants to survive in these times. The outer wooden wall has been replaced by one of bricks and a gatehouse has been erected to better protect the entrance
On the other hand, the most powerful of the magnates are the petty-kings of Britannia (mostly found in the west of the country, especially Cambria), whose dynasties in some cases even predate Roman rule. To counterbalance both these and the newer grandees of the realm, the Pendragons have secured one such petty-royal title for their dynasty – the kingship of Dumnonia – and established a tradition of granting it, along with all its attendant lands and sworn subjects, to the heir of the Riothamus. This serves to give said heir a power-base of his own, and a chance to get practical governing experience before succeeding his father.
Aside from the magnates, the Pelagian Church is the second great pillar of Pendragon rule. The Bishop of Londinium has been its formal head since Pelagius himself usurped the office with the backing of Claudius Constantine and his sons in 418, though he and the rest of the Pelagian Church also owe solemn allegiance to the Riothamus (who in turn bears the duty of defending Pelagianism against all its enemies, be they pagans or the orthodox Ephesian Christians). The Pelagians repay the Crown for its protection by preaching in support of it, frequently portraying the Riothamus as Britannia’s first and greatest line of defense against the aggression of foreign barbarians and Romans alike in their sermons, and supplying the British kings with literate bureaucrats & civil officials (not dissimilar to the Ephesian Church on the mainland, ironically).
Notably the Pelagians do not have a strong monastic tradition, with few monasteries and convents compared to the continent. Instead most of their holy men and women live spartan lives as mendicants, swearing vows of chastity & poverty and wandering the kingdom, subsisting off the generosity of those they meet and performing good deeds (such as preaching the Gospel, healing the sick and assisting other women in childbirth, in the case of Pelagian mendicant sisters). To the Pelagians, embracing God’s world and actively seeking out to help others living in it is a far more pleasing way of approaching Him, both in His eyes and their own, than isolating oneself in a cloister.
Pelagians can be identified by their extensive use of the eight-point cross in their iconography
Britannia’s few remaining cities worth the name form the third pillar propping up the Pendragons. Londinium, Camulodunum (Brt.: Camelod) and Glevum (Brt.: Glouvé) are the only relatively large and wealthy cities left in southern Britain, their thousands of citizens protected by the stone Roman walls and towers which British engineers and stonemasons work hard to maintain. They are jointly governed by urban prefects appointed by the Riothamus and locally-elected assemblies, and provide more in a year’s taxes – in coin (minted exclusively at the old Roman mints in Londinium and Camulodunum), no less, and not in crops – than most of their neighboring villages combined. As trade with the continent has been restored, their merchants and craftsmen – previously languishing in poverty compared to their continental counterparts as their trade partners were limited to fellow Romano-Britons, the Irish kingdoms and occasionally the Anglo-Saxons in peacetime – will likely grow in wealth and prominence again soon.
The magnates, the Church and the people of the cities come together in the Consilium Britanniae, or ‘Council of Britain’. Originally established in 430 to support the regency of the underage Ambrosius I, the Consilium has since evolved into a semi-permanent institution comprised of lords, leading clergymen and representatives selected by the urban councilors. When called into session (typically once every three to five years, but sometimes annually in times of great distress and once a decade in times of extended peace & prosperity), the Consilium meets around a great round table in Londinium’s palace (formerly the Roman praetorium, or governor’s residence) to bring whatever grave concerns they might have to the Riothamus and to counsel him on legislative matters, the granting or revocation of fiefs, settling disputes between British society’s greats, the appointment of new Bishops of Londinium and matters of taxation & warfare, among other questions of importance to the kingdom.
Crucially, their aristocratic and clerical components must also approve the ascension of a new Riothamus after the old one has perished: usually they grant their approval to the King of Dumnonia quite automatically, but in cases of egregious immorality on the part of the royal heir or other grave questions surrounding their legitimacy (such as questionable paternity, or simply the existence of a wealthy and well-armed usurper) the Consilium can and will look for other, more fitting successors to the legacy of Ambrosius I and Artorius I. Most recently, Arviragus was able to usurp the British throne for several years by bribing and intimidating most of the councilors into electing him Riothamus in place of his nephew, the rightful heir.
Meeting around a round table reinforces the impression that the Riothamus is but the first peer among the realm's peers, not an overbearing absolute monarch as the continental emperors are (at least in theory)
The Pendragons serve a higher purpose than just their hereditary role as Britannia’s temporal sovereigns. In line with Pelagian doctrine, they are required to serve as moral exemplars who virtuous nature is beyond reproach so as to inspire their social inferiors, and sinful conduct that is practically permitted if not expected of their continental counterparts – such as keeping mistresses or throwing lavish banquets – is not only frowned upon, but actively chips away at the legitimacy forming the foundation of their reign. As well behavior considered tyrannical such as imposing overly high taxes, tolerating corrupt favorites, and undermining the privileges and liberties of the nobility, the Pelagian Church and the cities invariably (and very conveniently for the offended parties) frequently gets interpreted as conduct unbecoming of a divinely-sanctioned Riothamus and an excuse by disgruntled lords to overthrow the responsible monarch, as Arviragus can attest to.
Artorius (Brt.: Arturo) III, the young Riothamus of Britannia as of 580 AD. Retaking his rightful throne is only the beginning of his true struggle: reconciling with his people's ancient Roman and English adversaries while preserving the identity they have forged for themselves over the last 150 years of struggle
Among the most important duties of a Riothamus is the ‘March of Good Example’: a sort of royal progress which he is expected to undertake every few years. He must tour Britannia (accompanied by his wife, any royal children old & healthy enough to travel, and the Bishop of Londinium), directly interacting with & aiding his people – distributing alms, arbitrating local disputes, investigating corruption, and personally executing criminals whose crimes merit the death penalty among other duties, all while displaying exemplary personal conduct – before returning to Londinium. Failing to undertake a scheduled March of Good Example is considered a very poor omen for a Riothamus. Leading the British army into battle, in so doing living up to the example set by the founders of their dynasty and setting an example of manly courage for their own troops to follow, is another duty of the Riothamus and certainly a much more hazardous one at that: of Britannia’s six monarchs since independence, half have been killed in battle (Artorius I, Artorius II and Arviragus), as has one royal heir (Maximus of Dumnonia, father of the current Riothamus Artorius III).
Although the Riothamus is understood to be the single most powerful temporal authority in Britannia, the kingdom’s magnates collectively outweigh his might by a fair margin. They still go by the old Roman titles of comes (Brt.: còmété) and dux (Brt.: doí), but invariably these men are the patriarchs of aristocratic families (many of which can trace their origins to old Brittonic aristocratic clans which accepted Romanization, or the families of prominent Roman settlers who did not flee to the mainland in the fifth century) which control and tax hereditary fiefs from a castellum or local fortress, a privilege which comes with the sworn responsibility of fighting in defense of their subjects and overlord. To that end they maintain private armies, paid for by the peasants who depend upon them for protection.
In more recent decades, as Britannia’s position grew more precarious the kings have taken to carving out smaller fiefs (with attendant villages to oversee, tax and protect) for trusted retainers, and the counts & dukes have increasingly done the same with royal authorization. These lesser lords are usually titled baronés (‘military official’) or caballarii (‘knight’, Brt.: cavallerés) based on whether they are professional footmen or horsemen. While their fiefs are supposed to be life honors rather than strictly hereditary and thus to revert to the overlord upon their death, in practice they tend to pass their roles and their livelihoods down to their sons (who often serve them as armigers from a young age) with the permission of the aforementioned overlords. Naturally, this has made Britannia a much more decentralized and politically fragmented kingdom than the Western Roman Empire (even counting its many barbaric federates), although it does also mean a charismatic and well-regarded Riothamus can still call upon a pool of professional and motivated soldiers. It could always be worse – at least all of Britannia’s nobility owe their immediate allegiance to the Riothamus, and not to one another in a complicated feudal hierarchy[3].
A Romano-British villa which has since been converted into a castellum (Brt.: chastelo), as has become necessary for its owners and tenants to survive in these times. The outer wooden wall has been replaced by one of bricks and a gatehouse has been erected to better protect the entrance
On the other hand, the most powerful of the magnates are the petty-kings of Britannia (mostly found in the west of the country, especially Cambria), whose dynasties in some cases even predate Roman rule. To counterbalance both these and the newer grandees of the realm, the Pendragons have secured one such petty-royal title for their dynasty – the kingship of Dumnonia – and established a tradition of granting it, along with all its attendant lands and sworn subjects, to the heir of the Riothamus. This serves to give said heir a power-base of his own, and a chance to get practical governing experience before succeeding his father.
Aside from the magnates, the Pelagian Church is the second great pillar of Pendragon rule. The Bishop of Londinium has been its formal head since Pelagius himself usurped the office with the backing of Claudius Constantine and his sons in 418, though he and the rest of the Pelagian Church also owe solemn allegiance to the Riothamus (who in turn bears the duty of defending Pelagianism against all its enemies, be they pagans or the orthodox Ephesian Christians). The Pelagians repay the Crown for its protection by preaching in support of it, frequently portraying the Riothamus as Britannia’s first and greatest line of defense against the aggression of foreign barbarians and Romans alike in their sermons, and supplying the British kings with literate bureaucrats & civil officials (not dissimilar to the Ephesian Church on the mainland, ironically).
Notably the Pelagians do not have a strong monastic tradition, with few monasteries and convents compared to the continent. Instead most of their holy men and women live spartan lives as mendicants, swearing vows of chastity & poverty and wandering the kingdom, subsisting off the generosity of those they meet and performing good deeds (such as preaching the Gospel, healing the sick and assisting other women in childbirth, in the case of Pelagian mendicant sisters). To the Pelagians, embracing God’s world and actively seeking out to help others living in it is a far more pleasing way of approaching Him, both in His eyes and their own, than isolating oneself in a cloister.
Pelagians can be identified by their extensive use of the eight-point cross in their iconography
Britannia’s few remaining cities worth the name form the third pillar propping up the Pendragons. Londinium, Camulodunum (Brt.: Camelod) and Glevum (Brt.: Glouvé) are the only relatively large and wealthy cities left in southern Britain, their thousands of citizens protected by the stone Roman walls and towers which British engineers and stonemasons work hard to maintain. They are jointly governed by urban prefects appointed by the Riothamus and locally-elected assemblies, and provide more in a year’s taxes – in coin (minted exclusively at the old Roman mints in Londinium and Camulodunum), no less, and not in crops – than most of their neighboring villages combined. As trade with the continent has been restored, their merchants and craftsmen – previously languishing in poverty compared to their continental counterparts as their trade partners were limited to fellow Romano-Britons, the Irish kingdoms and occasionally the Anglo-Saxons in peacetime – will likely grow in wealth and prominence again soon.
The magnates, the Church and the people of the cities come together in the Consilium Britanniae, or ‘Council of Britain’. Originally established in 430 to support the regency of the underage Ambrosius I, the Consilium has since evolved into a semi-permanent institution comprised of lords, leading clergymen and representatives selected by the urban councilors. When called into session (typically once every three to five years, but sometimes annually in times of great distress and once a decade in times of extended peace & prosperity), the Consilium meets around a great round table in Londinium’s palace (formerly the Roman praetorium, or governor’s residence) to bring whatever grave concerns they might have to the Riothamus and to counsel him on legislative matters, the granting or revocation of fiefs, settling disputes between British society’s greats, the appointment of new Bishops of Londinium and matters of taxation & warfare, among other questions of importance to the kingdom.
Crucially, their aristocratic and clerical components must also approve the ascension of a new Riothamus after the old one has perished: usually they grant their approval to the King of Dumnonia quite automatically, but in cases of egregious immorality on the part of the royal heir or other grave questions surrounding their legitimacy (such as questionable paternity, or simply the existence of a wealthy and well-armed usurper) the Consilium can and will look for other, more fitting successors to the legacy of Ambrosius I and Artorius I. Most recently, Arviragus was able to usurp the British throne for several years by bribing and intimidating most of the councilors into electing him Riothamus in place of his nephew, the rightful heir.
Meeting around a round table reinforces the impression that the Riothamus is but the first peer among the realm's peers, not an overbearing absolute monarch as the continental emperors are (at least in theory)
British society is a decidedly sub-Roman one, and it shows. Their descent – and, in the eyes of the ‘proper’ continental Romans living across the Oceanus Britannicus, degeneration – from Romanitas can be seen in everything from their language and religion, to the manner in which their society is organized and the wares that they manufacture. As one can call federate peoples such as the Goths and Franks ‘Romanized barbarians’, so too would it be accurate to describe the Romano-British as ‘barbarized Romans’, children of the Roman world who have had to grow up surrounded by (and adapting to) various Celtic and Germanic barbarians who have at times come close to destroying them utterly.
It is impossible to discuss just how ‘sub-Roman’ the British are without the first two items mentioned above: their language, and their religion. Of these, the first – called ‘Bretanego’, or Britannic – is a Romance language which quite clearly evolved out of vernacular British Latin, itself a regional dialect of the Roman mother-tongue most closely related to the Romano-Gallic dialect still widely spoken across the sea. The survival and continued supremacy of Romano-British institutions over the southern reaches of Great Britain, even in forms denounced by the Romans themselves as ‘degenerate’ and ‘mangled’, has allowed them to absorb terms from their Brittonic and Anglo-Saxon neighbors without many drastic phonological or orthographic changes (one major exception being Bretanego’s habit to stress the penultimate syllable in many Latin-derived words – represented with an acute accent in writing – which is a feature it picked up from Cambrian Brittonic).
The result is a language that greatly resembles a simpler, bastardized Latin offshoot rather than something that immediately looks much more Celtic or Germanic. For example, in Bretanego the Latin title Riothamus (‘Great King’) has not reverted to its original Brittonic name Rigotamos or the Cambrian Riatav, but rather become Réiotamo in the mouths of its speakers; if given a few more centuries, this title will probably further evolve into the even shorter and simpler Ríodam. As another example, take the originally Roman name ‘Artorius’, borne by the most famous Pendragon of them all and still intensely popular among his dynasty (including the current Riothamus). In Bretanego it is now rendered ‘Arturo’[4], a sort of midpoint between its Latin origins and the Cambrian ‘Arthwr’; again, if the British manage to survive a few additional centuries and further distance their tongue from its Roman roots, ‘Arturo’ will likely evolve into simply ‘Artur’[5].
Londinium, or 'Lundeinéo' as the Romano-British call it nowadays, near the end of the sixth century. The city's decline from its Roman heights to half its former population and wealth, at a generous guess, matches the post-fifth-century trajectory of the Romano-British kingdom itself
The other elephant in the room is the Pelagian Church, considered by the Ephesians to be a heretical offshoot of orthodox Roman Christianity which broke away when the British provinces did and has now led several generations of Romano-Britons straight to Hell. Conversely, the Pelagians claim that they are the only truly free people on God’s Earth, and that the Ephesian Church has enthralled many more unfortunate Romans into falling in line beneath the whips of slave-drivers (and then, after dying, falling into Hell). Structurally the Pelagian hierarchy is flatter than the Ephesian one: they have only three bishops, of which the Bishop of Londinium is considered a first-among-equals between the bishops of Britannia’s other cities (Glevum and Camulodunum), and each leads the priests of the parishes of central, western and eastern Britannia respectively. Their services are carried out in Bretanego, not Latin, and even their largest and most prominent churches tend toward simpler, less ornamented designs than the grand edifices to God’s glory which the Ephesian Romans have built in Rome, Carthage and other metropolises.
But if churches be ‘bodies’ of believers, this is a difference of the flesh compared to the Ephesians, not of the soul. To address that, it is necessary to delve into questions of doctrine – and that of the Pelagians dates back to when Pelagius first put his heterodox thoughts to parchment in the fifth century. The core teachings of Pelagianism are the same as what he wrote then: original sin, and more generally the notion that God would create anyone or anything that is inherently, irredeemably evil, is an Augustinian corruption of the true faith, borne out of the Manichaeism which Pelagius’ archenemy in life had dabbled in. To create humans with an inherently fallen nature, inclined toward sin, and then demand of them lives of virtue is unreasonable in the eyes of a Pelagian, and thus impossible for God to have done as an entity of perfect reason and compassion. And if sin were unavoidable, then how could it be fair or logical to call it sin?
Rather, the Pelagian position is that the Most High gifts to (and continues to tolerate in) humans absolute free will, which does however come attached with absolute responsibility for one’s actions – ultimately, it is up to humans to decide whether they go to Heaven or Hell when they leave their mortal coil behind. Thus to the Pelagians, it is not only possible for humans to choose God over Satan and achieve a perfect, sinless existence under their own power, but in fact that is God’s true design and wish for humanity. In the Pelagian retelling Adam and Eve made poor choices of their own volition, which got them expelled from the Garden of Eden and set a poor example that all their descendants ought to reject; by contrast Jesus Christ is above all an exemplar and instructor of the pure life which all Pelagians ought to aspire to. To that end it is essential to live humbly in perpetual modesty and moderation, exerting a conscious effort to spurn temptation, to conduct oneself irreproachably at all times and above all to perform good works, which are critical to cultivating virtue and gaining entry into Heaven. As Pelagius himself (elevated to sainthood in the Pelagians' reckoning even as the Ephesians continue to consider him a dangerous heretic) wrote in the treatise On a Christian Life[6]:
Truly to the Pelagians, James 2:14-26[7] must be among the most important passages of the Bible. The notion that a truly just and benevolent God would allow a hypocrite who claims to believe, but does nothing to better the lives of his fellow man, into Heaven simply for bleating about his supposed zeal like a clanging cymbal is laughable to these British Christians; and the idea that the same God would destine some souls for salvation and others for damnation, no matter what their deeds in life were, strikes them as madness. No, to them, if one has true faith then it will show in their exercise of free will to adopt an ascetic lifestyle, perform good works and behave in a manner so honorable and virtuous towards others as to be beyond reproach – that is, to eventually live a sinless life and earn entry to Paradise. This doctrine is to be reflected in their government, ecclesiastic and temporal alike: to be sure no less is expected of the clerics and princes of the realm, who must live as faultlessly as possible (and entirely faultlessly at that, if possible) to set an example which their parishioners and subjects will follow.
Just as importantly, the decentralization of the British realm and the autonomy afforded to the realm’s magnates is considered important to the spiritual health of Britannia under the Pelagian tenets. Without the capacity for virtuous self-regulation (a capacity that would have been stifled by an emperor with theoretically absolute power, such as those which the continental Romans have much to their own misfortune), how can the British elite and their subjects say they are free and pursue Christ’s example to become free of sin? As God gave man free will so that he may choose to walk the easy path of license and sin or the hard path to purity and true liberation from the shackles of this world, so too must the Riothamus who rules by His authority allow his subjects their choices.
Alas in practice, the Pendragons, their magnates and their prelates are all only human, with all the flaws and fallibility that that entails. When they stumble, they make the Ephesians’ rebuttal for the latter much more succinctly and obviously than any doctor of the Church can. The Ephesians challenge the Pelagians’ assertion on human sinlessness thus: if humans are not sinners by nature, then there is no need for Christ to have come at all, and the Pelagians have reduced the Savior of Mankind to little more than a self-help guru – they are essentially arguing that humans can save themselves, after all. As for the primacy which the Pelagians have afforded to good works over faith, the Ephesian position is that both are of equal importance to attaining salvation, and having faith in Christian teachings should naturally lead one to perform good works: against the Pelagians’ reliance on passages from James 2, the Ephesians raise (fittingly) Ephesians 2:3-10[8].
The Pelagians’ teachings, already considered excessively prideful and prone to performative Pharisaic self-righteousness in the eyes of Rome and the other centers of orthodoxy, further reduce rituals such as infant baptism (which the Pelagians still practice per the guidance of Pelagius, who believed it was unnecessary for the infant’s salvation but would bring him closer to God nonetheless) and the veneration of saints (for whose intercession the Pelagians do not quite pray for, as Ephesians do – merely for guidance in imitating their virtues) to hollow mockeries without meaning in the Ephesians’ estimation, as well. All these points were raised by Gratian of Suindinum against Appius (Brt.: ‘Appeo’) II, Bishop of Londinium, in their debate with each other in November of 580, and will likely be echoed many more times in the future as the Ephesians once again contend with the Pelagians for the souls of the British people.
Though it had been put on hold for almost two centuries by the final Roman departure from Britannia in the 430s and the Pendragons' hard-won successes in preserving their independence afterward, the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius is likely to resume between their spiritual successors since the Romans have installed a friendly regime in Londinium
The rest of British society bears a passing resemblance to the Roman one from which it grew – and not even the Roman society of today, but the one which existed between Diocletian and Stilicho. True, there are no slaves in Britannia. But the majority of Romano-Britons live as tenant farmers, tilling the land of their proto-feudal overlords and paying them with a cut of their produce in exchange for protection from the various threats that have constantly probed and pushed against Britannia’s borders over the past century and a half. Among this group are the descendants of Anglo-Saxons who settled too far south, too quickly when it seemed as though Ælle had been on the verge of total victory against Artorius I, only to end up on the wrong side of the Anglo-British border when the Ællingas and Pendragons made peace: they have been allowed to live beneath the returning Romano-British landlords, at the cost of assimilating to the sub-Roman social order and eventually, culture. Whatever their origin these peasants have more rights than the Roman coloni do, such as the ability to terminate their contract and leave to work for another nobleman at any time, but theirs is a difficult life regardless, which can easily be ended by a bad harvest or illness long before they even see a single English, Roman or Gaelic raider. And for all their lord’s military protection and the right to shelter in his castellum when attacked, in times of crisis these tenant farmers could stil be conscripted to fight in the British army anyway.
Freeholders who manage to afford their own personal plot of land to live on & farm (no matter how small and poor it might be compared to the greater estates of the nobility, which might at least come close to recapturing the grandeur of a continental latifundium) don’t even get the ‘luxury’ of being exempt from conscription unless Britannia’s back is against a wall, being required to be able to maintain at least a spear, shield and helmet at all times in case the Riothamus goes to war and calls them up – or raiders assail their homestead, always a possibility even in peacetime. The urban craftsmen produce works of a typically lower standard than those produced by their forefathers or the Roman workshops on the continent, while the merchants have a limited (and literally insular, what with trade with the continent being difficult at best before the time of Artorius III) set of partners to sell these wares to; they are both fewer in number and poorer than their continental counterparts.
But with trade picking up again in recent times, who knows? Perhaps under Artorius III, Britannia will regain some of the wealth and luster it had as a Roman province (or set of provinces). And perhaps, one day, her people will be able to make their mark in a new world, where they can try to make their own fortune without kings & lords always taking a bite out of their produce and realize the Pelagian ideal – to become men capable of choosing not to sin, and actually managing to stick to it – without any Romans, Gaels or Anglo-Saxons breathing down their necks. One day…
A Romano-British village in 580. The past century and a half has been a very difficult time for these people, but tomorrow is always a new day and now, there is finally a reasonable chance that it will be a day filled with prosperity and fewer barbarian raids to worry about
It is impossible to discuss just how ‘sub-Roman’ the British are without the first two items mentioned above: their language, and their religion. Of these, the first – called ‘Bretanego’, or Britannic – is a Romance language which quite clearly evolved out of vernacular British Latin, itself a regional dialect of the Roman mother-tongue most closely related to the Romano-Gallic dialect still widely spoken across the sea. The survival and continued supremacy of Romano-British institutions over the southern reaches of Great Britain, even in forms denounced by the Romans themselves as ‘degenerate’ and ‘mangled’, has allowed them to absorb terms from their Brittonic and Anglo-Saxon neighbors without many drastic phonological or orthographic changes (one major exception being Bretanego’s habit to stress the penultimate syllable in many Latin-derived words – represented with an acute accent in writing – which is a feature it picked up from Cambrian Brittonic).
The result is a language that greatly resembles a simpler, bastardized Latin offshoot rather than something that immediately looks much more Celtic or Germanic. For example, in Bretanego the Latin title Riothamus (‘Great King’) has not reverted to its original Brittonic name Rigotamos or the Cambrian Riatav, but rather become Réiotamo in the mouths of its speakers; if given a few more centuries, this title will probably further evolve into the even shorter and simpler Ríodam. As another example, take the originally Roman name ‘Artorius’, borne by the most famous Pendragon of them all and still intensely popular among his dynasty (including the current Riothamus). In Bretanego it is now rendered ‘Arturo’[4], a sort of midpoint between its Latin origins and the Cambrian ‘Arthwr’; again, if the British manage to survive a few additional centuries and further distance their tongue from its Roman roots, ‘Arturo’ will likely evolve into simply ‘Artur’[5].
Londinium, or 'Lundeinéo' as the Romano-British call it nowadays, near the end of the sixth century. The city's decline from its Roman heights to half its former population and wealth, at a generous guess, matches the post-fifth-century trajectory of the Romano-British kingdom itself
The other elephant in the room is the Pelagian Church, considered by the Ephesians to be a heretical offshoot of orthodox Roman Christianity which broke away when the British provinces did and has now led several generations of Romano-Britons straight to Hell. Conversely, the Pelagians claim that they are the only truly free people on God’s Earth, and that the Ephesian Church has enthralled many more unfortunate Romans into falling in line beneath the whips of slave-drivers (and then, after dying, falling into Hell). Structurally the Pelagian hierarchy is flatter than the Ephesian one: they have only three bishops, of which the Bishop of Londinium is considered a first-among-equals between the bishops of Britannia’s other cities (Glevum and Camulodunum), and each leads the priests of the parishes of central, western and eastern Britannia respectively. Their services are carried out in Bretanego, not Latin, and even their largest and most prominent churches tend toward simpler, less ornamented designs than the grand edifices to God’s glory which the Ephesian Romans have built in Rome, Carthage and other metropolises.
But if churches be ‘bodies’ of believers, this is a difference of the flesh compared to the Ephesians, not of the soul. To address that, it is necessary to delve into questions of doctrine – and that of the Pelagians dates back to when Pelagius first put his heterodox thoughts to parchment in the fifth century. The core teachings of Pelagianism are the same as what he wrote then: original sin, and more generally the notion that God would create anyone or anything that is inherently, irredeemably evil, is an Augustinian corruption of the true faith, borne out of the Manichaeism which Pelagius’ archenemy in life had dabbled in. To create humans with an inherently fallen nature, inclined toward sin, and then demand of them lives of virtue is unreasonable in the eyes of a Pelagian, and thus impossible for God to have done as an entity of perfect reason and compassion. And if sin were unavoidable, then how could it be fair or logical to call it sin?
Rather, the Pelagian position is that the Most High gifts to (and continues to tolerate in) humans absolute free will, which does however come attached with absolute responsibility for one’s actions – ultimately, it is up to humans to decide whether they go to Heaven or Hell when they leave their mortal coil behind. Thus to the Pelagians, it is not only possible for humans to choose God over Satan and achieve a perfect, sinless existence under their own power, but in fact that is God’s true design and wish for humanity. In the Pelagian retelling Adam and Eve made poor choices of their own volition, which got them expelled from the Garden of Eden and set a poor example that all their descendants ought to reject; by contrast Jesus Christ is above all an exemplar and instructor of the pure life which all Pelagians ought to aspire to. To that end it is essential to live humbly in perpetual modesty and moderation, exerting a conscious effort to spurn temptation, to conduct oneself irreproachably at all times and above all to perform good works, which are critical to cultivating virtue and gaining entry into Heaven. As Pelagius himself (elevated to sainthood in the Pelagians' reckoning even as the Ephesians continue to consider him a dangerous heretic) wrote in the treatise On a Christian Life[6]:
Pelagius' treatise said:
Truly to the Pelagians, James 2:14-26[7] must be among the most important passages of the Bible. The notion that a truly just and benevolent God would allow a hypocrite who claims to believe, but does nothing to better the lives of his fellow man, into Heaven simply for bleating about his supposed zeal like a clanging cymbal is laughable to these British Christians; and the idea that the same God would destine some souls for salvation and others for damnation, no matter what their deeds in life were, strikes them as madness. No, to them, if one has true faith then it will show in their exercise of free will to adopt an ascetic lifestyle, perform good works and behave in a manner so honorable and virtuous towards others as to be beyond reproach – that is, to eventually live a sinless life and earn entry to Paradise. This doctrine is to be reflected in their government, ecclesiastic and temporal alike: to be sure no less is expected of the clerics and princes of the realm, who must live as faultlessly as possible (and entirely faultlessly at that, if possible) to set an example which their parishioners and subjects will follow.
Just as importantly, the decentralization of the British realm and the autonomy afforded to the realm’s magnates is considered important to the spiritual health of Britannia under the Pelagian tenets. Without the capacity for virtuous self-regulation (a capacity that would have been stifled by an emperor with theoretically absolute power, such as those which the continental Romans have much to their own misfortune), how can the British elite and their subjects say they are free and pursue Christ’s example to become free of sin? As God gave man free will so that he may choose to walk the easy path of license and sin or the hard path to purity and true liberation from the shackles of this world, so too must the Riothamus who rules by His authority allow his subjects their choices.
Alas in practice, the Pendragons, their magnates and their prelates are all only human, with all the flaws and fallibility that that entails. When they stumble, they make the Ephesians’ rebuttal for the latter much more succinctly and obviously than any doctor of the Church can. The Ephesians challenge the Pelagians’ assertion on human sinlessness thus: if humans are not sinners by nature, then there is no need for Christ to have come at all, and the Pelagians have reduced the Savior of Mankind to little more than a self-help guru – they are essentially arguing that humans can save themselves, after all. As for the primacy which the Pelagians have afforded to good works over faith, the Ephesian position is that both are of equal importance to attaining salvation, and having faith in Christian teachings should naturally lead one to perform good works: against the Pelagians’ reliance on passages from James 2, the Ephesians raise (fittingly) Ephesians 2:3-10[8].
The Pelagians’ teachings, already considered excessively prideful and prone to performative Pharisaic self-righteousness in the eyes of Rome and the other centers of orthodoxy, further reduce rituals such as infant baptism (which the Pelagians still practice per the guidance of Pelagius, who believed it was unnecessary for the infant’s salvation but would bring him closer to God nonetheless) and the veneration of saints (for whose intercession the Pelagians do not quite pray for, as Ephesians do – merely for guidance in imitating their virtues) to hollow mockeries without meaning in the Ephesians’ estimation, as well. All these points were raised by Gratian of Suindinum against Appius (Brt.: ‘Appeo’) II, Bishop of Londinium, in their debate with each other in November of 580, and will likely be echoed many more times in the future as the Ephesians once again contend with the Pelagians for the souls of the British people.
Though it had been put on hold for almost two centuries by the final Roman departure from Britannia in the 430s and the Pendragons' hard-won successes in preserving their independence afterward, the struggle between Augustine and Pelagius is likely to resume between their spiritual successors since the Romans have installed a friendly regime in Londinium
The rest of British society bears a passing resemblance to the Roman one from which it grew – and not even the Roman society of today, but the one which existed between Diocletian and Stilicho. True, there are no slaves in Britannia. But the majority of Romano-Britons live as tenant farmers, tilling the land of their proto-feudal overlords and paying them with a cut of their produce in exchange for protection from the various threats that have constantly probed and pushed against Britannia’s borders over the past century and a half. Among this group are the descendants of Anglo-Saxons who settled too far south, too quickly when it seemed as though Ælle had been on the verge of total victory against Artorius I, only to end up on the wrong side of the Anglo-British border when the Ællingas and Pendragons made peace: they have been allowed to live beneath the returning Romano-British landlords, at the cost of assimilating to the sub-Roman social order and eventually, culture. Whatever their origin these peasants have more rights than the Roman coloni do, such as the ability to terminate their contract and leave to work for another nobleman at any time, but theirs is a difficult life regardless, which can easily be ended by a bad harvest or illness long before they even see a single English, Roman or Gaelic raider. And for all their lord’s military protection and the right to shelter in his castellum when attacked, in times of crisis these tenant farmers could stil be conscripted to fight in the British army anyway.
Freeholders who manage to afford their own personal plot of land to live on & farm (no matter how small and poor it might be compared to the greater estates of the nobility, which might at least come close to recapturing the grandeur of a continental latifundium) don’t even get the ‘luxury’ of being exempt from conscription unless Britannia’s back is against a wall, being required to be able to maintain at least a spear, shield and helmet at all times in case the Riothamus goes to war and calls them up – or raiders assail their homestead, always a possibility even in peacetime. The urban craftsmen produce works of a typically lower standard than those produced by their forefathers or the Roman workshops on the continent, while the merchants have a limited (and literally insular, what with trade with the continent being difficult at best before the time of Artorius III) set of partners to sell these wares to; they are both fewer in number and poorer than their continental counterparts.
But with trade picking up again in recent times, who knows? Perhaps under Artorius III, Britannia will regain some of the wealth and luster it had as a Roman province (or set of provinces). And perhaps, one day, her people will be able to make their mark in a new world, where they can try to make their own fortune without kings & lords always taking a bite out of their produce and realize the Pelagian ideal – to become men capable of choosing not to sin, and actually managing to stick to it – without any Romans, Gaels or Anglo-Saxons breathing down their necks. One day…
A Romano-British village in 580. The past century and a half has been a very difficult time for these people, but tomorrow is always a new day and now, there is finally a reasonable chance that it will be a day filled with prosperity and fewer barbarian raids to worry about
The British military of the sixth century is a tripartite beast, divided by economic and political necessity. Its core remains the royal legions of the Riothamus, consisting almost entirely of heavy horsemen paid by him in coin or (increasingly) in grants of land, and supported by the private armies (considered by the Romans who battled them & took their measure to be oversized bucellarii contingents) of the nobility. Though these have emerged as the primary fighting forces of Pelagian Britannia, the Romano-British can and do at times issue orders for a general levy of every able-bodied man in their kingdom regardless of actual skill, combat experience or equipment, for whatever good that might do during the crises which would justify such a move.
The royal legions are, as mentioned above, mostly comprised of cavalry. These caballarii (Brt.: cavallerés) swear lifetime oaths of service to the Riothamus in exchange for small grants of land, mostly concentrated around Londinium or in the valley of the Tamesis, and still greatly resemble the heavy cavalry of the Western Roman Empire in both tactics and equipment: armored in mail and ornate ridge helmets, and armed with a thrusting spear, spatha and round shield (typically painted sky-blue with a white chi-rho, white with a blue eight-point cross, white with the red dragon of their overlords, or the colors of the long-defunct Britones Seniores and Secundani Iuniores legions – wheel-like designs in red & green and yellow & red, respectively). Until Artorius III’s war to reclaim his rightful throne they had fallen behind their continental counterparts, lacking stirrups and proper lances, but that is changing quickly under his direction. As of 580 the Riothamus has only 1,500 of these men left to count on, organized into one-and-a-half legions further comprised of a total of fifteen hundred-man detachments (each capable of independent action to repel small raids, or launching their own into enemy territory) akin to the Roman ala or cuneus.
The other element of the Riothamus’ personal legions, and certainly the one which makes them stand out more compared to the continental Roman legions of this time period, are the royal longbowmen. Recruited from the mountainous region of Cambria in the west and paid in gold rather than land, these men bring with them early forerunners to the mighty longbow, lovingly crafted from a single block of yew or elm and ‘only’ nearly as tall as the bowmen themselves, which has already proven to be a formidable weapon against the English and Romans – capable of outranging even a heavy arcuballista, and more easily proofed against inclement weather. The patronage of the Riothamus affords these early longbowmen greater protection than the ‘common’ British archers in the form of a helmet & mail coat, for which Roman observers classify them as sagittarii graves (‘heavy archers’) while the Romano-British themselves simply refer to them as sagitarés réigale (‘king’s archers’ or ‘royal archers’). As of 580, Artorius III has about 600 of these men left in his employ, a mix of Arviragus’ reconciled veterans and new recruits sent by the Cambrian kings to win goodwill with him.
Reenactor clad as one of the King's Archers. He's definitely going to need a bigger bow for the coming centuries
Though these royal legions form the core of the British armies, the bulk of their fighting strength comes from the nobles great & small. All landowners in Britannia, from free peasants who own a hovel & small plot of land which they work with their families and a few hired laborers to the great magnates who oversee pseudo-latifundiae worked by hundreds of tenant farmers, are legally obligated to maintain fighting equipment and to always be at the ready to defend Britannia’s freedom at the command of the Riothamus. After assembling at the appointed time & place, these men are organized into hundred-man cohorts by their province’s praeses, invariably based on which part of the province they came from and with the most prominent local magnates (typically a duke or count) appointed to command them. It is not unheard of for the neighbors and subjects of a hated great lord to kick up enough of a fuss that the praeses ends up appointing someone else to command the cohort, though. Once organized, the responsible praeses then leads this ad-hoc legion to await further orders from the Riothamus, whether to operate on their own or to join his army and march beneath his dragon-standard. The Romans have found that these men mostly fight on foot and struggle to imitate the discipline of their forebears, and have taken to describing them as imitationes legionarii ('imitation legionaries') or, less disparagingly, Brito bellatores (‘British warriors’).
The poorer end of this body of warriors tend to wear no armor beyond a helmet, while the middle of the group are usually able to afford a byrnie to protect their torso. In any case their typical armament would consist of a spécolo – a weapon equally capable of being thrown like a javelin or used in melee combat like an ordinary spear, based on the Anglo-Saxon angon & the Roman spiculum[9] and deriving its name from the latter – and a shield (painted either with a chi-rho, eight-point cross or some other distinctive symbol associated with their family to set them apart from their neighbors), with an ax or long dagger called the saechso (doubtlessly based on the seax wielded by their neighbors) as secondary weapons in case the spécolo is thrown or proves unwieldy in close quarters. The nobility often wear ornamented ridge helmets, carry spathae as their secondary weapon and ride horses (all the better to command the footmen from, and to flee a losing battle on…) to distinguish themselves from their lessers. In combat, the more heavily armored warriors typically form the front-and-center ranks of a British shield-wall, while the lighter and poorer spearmen form a reserve behind them to serve as supernumeraries – stepping forth to fill in any gaps that might open up in the front-line – or a mobile force capable of quickly moving to shore up the formation’s flanks against surprise attacks.
A Romano-British 'imitation legionary'. Note his spangenhelm (this man is neither sufficiently wealthy nor high-ranking to afford a traditional ridge helmet) and spécolo
The tribal warriors from Cambria are a different bunch compared to their Romano-British counterparts, always being led by their native kings & princes and organized however they please with no real input from the praeses of Britannia Secunda. Their equipment tends to be lighter than that of the Brito bellatores too, with many Cambrians fighting unarmored or wearing only a helmet for protection. The late Count Jovinus and the Western Romans have little regard for most of these troops, considering them undisciplined rabble for the most part, but have made note of three types of Cambrian warriors they considered to be an actual threat: the well-armored and aristocratic campwyr or ‘champions’ who proved formidable individual fighters with sword & javelin but tended to be too few in number to make a significant impact against a legion, the bêrfelawyr or ‘long-spearmen’ who could pose a real challenge (especially to cavalry) were it not for their lack of armor making it trivial for sagittarii and arcuballistarii to turn their formations into pincushions, and the saethwrabhyr or ‘longbowmen’ who were the only Cambrian force they had no easy counter to.
Last and least of all were the unfortunate leves, or ‘general levy’ of the British people. These are the paupers and tenant farmers drafted in emergencies, pressed into combat with little to no training and only whatever equipment they can afford – or, more likely, scrounge up from their surroundings, ranging from hunting bows to literal sticks and stones. The Riothamus Constantine, who had first envisioned them to be an all-consuming tide on the battlefield capable of overwhelming any English warband or Roman legion with their numbers when he thought up this idea, has found out the hard way that these low-class conscripts were too poorly equipped and organized to be of any great use in battle, and are virtually always the first to flee under even mild pressure: in other words, a quantity with no quality attached, not even quantity itself. When they are called up, the British kings and lords prefer to send them forth as marauding mobs to burn the enemy’s crops and damage whatever infrastructure they come across, while also hoping that they do not run into any real opposing warriors (such engagements have always ended disastrously for the leves unless they have literally every possible factor, from the terrain to an overwhelming numerical superiority to the element of surprise, going their way).
The high kings of Britannia also maintain a modest standing fleet, based out of Londinium's harbor and (like the royal legions, particularly its archers) wholly under their control. In this they have no choice, since without it their kingdom would certainly have been buried long ago. As it is, while not quite an impenetrable 'wooden wall' yet (else Arviragus would still be Riothamus), this early British navy has proven instrumental to fending off coastal raids and at least blunting the strength of Roman expeditionary forces which have made it to British shores, as they did in the twilight years of the Riothamus Constantine's reign. As they had at the beginning of the sixth century, the British still favor the small and swift liburna design: biremes armed with a ram and harpax, or ballista-launched grappling hook, capable of keeping up with the longships of the English and outmaneuvering the larger galleys of the Western Romans.
The royal legions are, as mentioned above, mostly comprised of cavalry. These caballarii (Brt.: cavallerés) swear lifetime oaths of service to the Riothamus in exchange for small grants of land, mostly concentrated around Londinium or in the valley of the Tamesis, and still greatly resemble the heavy cavalry of the Western Roman Empire in both tactics and equipment: armored in mail and ornate ridge helmets, and armed with a thrusting spear, spatha and round shield (typically painted sky-blue with a white chi-rho, white with a blue eight-point cross, white with the red dragon of their overlords, or the colors of the long-defunct Britones Seniores and Secundani Iuniores legions – wheel-like designs in red & green and yellow & red, respectively). Until Artorius III’s war to reclaim his rightful throne they had fallen behind their continental counterparts, lacking stirrups and proper lances, but that is changing quickly under his direction. As of 580 the Riothamus has only 1,500 of these men left to count on, organized into one-and-a-half legions further comprised of a total of fifteen hundred-man detachments (each capable of independent action to repel small raids, or launching their own into enemy territory) akin to the Roman ala or cuneus.
The other element of the Riothamus’ personal legions, and certainly the one which makes them stand out more compared to the continental Roman legions of this time period, are the royal longbowmen. Recruited from the mountainous region of Cambria in the west and paid in gold rather than land, these men bring with them early forerunners to the mighty longbow, lovingly crafted from a single block of yew or elm and ‘only’ nearly as tall as the bowmen themselves, which has already proven to be a formidable weapon against the English and Romans – capable of outranging even a heavy arcuballista, and more easily proofed against inclement weather. The patronage of the Riothamus affords these early longbowmen greater protection than the ‘common’ British archers in the form of a helmet & mail coat, for which Roman observers classify them as sagittarii graves (‘heavy archers’) while the Romano-British themselves simply refer to them as sagitarés réigale (‘king’s archers’ or ‘royal archers’). As of 580, Artorius III has about 600 of these men left in his employ, a mix of Arviragus’ reconciled veterans and new recruits sent by the Cambrian kings to win goodwill with him.
Reenactor clad as one of the King's Archers. He's definitely going to need a bigger bow for the coming centuries
Though these royal legions form the core of the British armies, the bulk of their fighting strength comes from the nobles great & small. All landowners in Britannia, from free peasants who own a hovel & small plot of land which they work with their families and a few hired laborers to the great magnates who oversee pseudo-latifundiae worked by hundreds of tenant farmers, are legally obligated to maintain fighting equipment and to always be at the ready to defend Britannia’s freedom at the command of the Riothamus. After assembling at the appointed time & place, these men are organized into hundred-man cohorts by their province’s praeses, invariably based on which part of the province they came from and with the most prominent local magnates (typically a duke or count) appointed to command them. It is not unheard of for the neighbors and subjects of a hated great lord to kick up enough of a fuss that the praeses ends up appointing someone else to command the cohort, though. Once organized, the responsible praeses then leads this ad-hoc legion to await further orders from the Riothamus, whether to operate on their own or to join his army and march beneath his dragon-standard. The Romans have found that these men mostly fight on foot and struggle to imitate the discipline of their forebears, and have taken to describing them as imitationes legionarii ('imitation legionaries') or, less disparagingly, Brito bellatores (‘British warriors’).
The poorer end of this body of warriors tend to wear no armor beyond a helmet, while the middle of the group are usually able to afford a byrnie to protect their torso. In any case their typical armament would consist of a spécolo – a weapon equally capable of being thrown like a javelin or used in melee combat like an ordinary spear, based on the Anglo-Saxon angon & the Roman spiculum[9] and deriving its name from the latter – and a shield (painted either with a chi-rho, eight-point cross or some other distinctive symbol associated with their family to set them apart from their neighbors), with an ax or long dagger called the saechso (doubtlessly based on the seax wielded by their neighbors) as secondary weapons in case the spécolo is thrown or proves unwieldy in close quarters. The nobility often wear ornamented ridge helmets, carry spathae as their secondary weapon and ride horses (all the better to command the footmen from, and to flee a losing battle on…) to distinguish themselves from their lessers. In combat, the more heavily armored warriors typically form the front-and-center ranks of a British shield-wall, while the lighter and poorer spearmen form a reserve behind them to serve as supernumeraries – stepping forth to fill in any gaps that might open up in the front-line – or a mobile force capable of quickly moving to shore up the formation’s flanks against surprise attacks.
A Romano-British 'imitation legionary'. Note his spangenhelm (this man is neither sufficiently wealthy nor high-ranking to afford a traditional ridge helmet) and spécolo
The tribal warriors from Cambria are a different bunch compared to their Romano-British counterparts, always being led by their native kings & princes and organized however they please with no real input from the praeses of Britannia Secunda. Their equipment tends to be lighter than that of the Brito bellatores too, with many Cambrians fighting unarmored or wearing only a helmet for protection. The late Count Jovinus and the Western Romans have little regard for most of these troops, considering them undisciplined rabble for the most part, but have made note of three types of Cambrian warriors they considered to be an actual threat: the well-armored and aristocratic campwyr or ‘champions’ who proved formidable individual fighters with sword & javelin but tended to be too few in number to make a significant impact against a legion, the bêrfelawyr or ‘long-spearmen’ who could pose a real challenge (especially to cavalry) were it not for their lack of armor making it trivial for sagittarii and arcuballistarii to turn their formations into pincushions, and the saethwrabhyr or ‘longbowmen’ who were the only Cambrian force they had no easy counter to.
Last and least of all were the unfortunate leves, or ‘general levy’ of the British people. These are the paupers and tenant farmers drafted in emergencies, pressed into combat with little to no training and only whatever equipment they can afford – or, more likely, scrounge up from their surroundings, ranging from hunting bows to literal sticks and stones. The Riothamus Constantine, who had first envisioned them to be an all-consuming tide on the battlefield capable of overwhelming any English warband or Roman legion with their numbers when he thought up this idea, has found out the hard way that these low-class conscripts were too poorly equipped and organized to be of any great use in battle, and are virtually always the first to flee under even mild pressure: in other words, a quantity with no quality attached, not even quantity itself. When they are called up, the British kings and lords prefer to send them forth as marauding mobs to burn the enemy’s crops and damage whatever infrastructure they come across, while also hoping that they do not run into any real opposing warriors (such engagements have always ended disastrously for the leves unless they have literally every possible factor, from the terrain to an overwhelming numerical superiority to the element of surprise, going their way).
The high kings of Britannia also maintain a modest standing fleet, based out of Londinium's harbor and (like the royal legions, particularly its archers) wholly under their control. In this they have no choice, since without it their kingdom would certainly have been buried long ago. As it is, while not quite an impenetrable 'wooden wall' yet (else Arviragus would still be Riothamus), this early British navy has proven instrumental to fending off coastal raids and at least blunting the strength of Roman expeditionary forces which have made it to British shores, as they did in the twilight years of the Riothamus Constantine's reign. As they had at the beginning of the sixth century, the British still favor the small and swift liburna design: biremes armed with a ram and harpax, or ballista-launched grappling hook, capable of keeping up with the longships of the English and outmaneuvering the larger galleys of the Western Romans.
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[1] Old Welsh.
[2] The Late Roman title for governors in the British provinces.
[3] Somewhat comparable to the historical Anglo-Norman setup, where all nobles are pledged to the king regardless of rank rather than, for example, having barons answer to earls who answer to dukes. Unlike the Norman kings, the Riothamus is not considered the supreme landowner of every inch of British soil and their various lords are not merely their tenants.
[4] Also the RL Spanish & Italian rendition of Arthur.
[5] The rendition of Arthur in many other RL languages, both Romance (such as Portuguese) and non-Romance (such as Norwegian).
[6] This was brought up at the Council of Diospolis as a sign of Pelagius’ slip into heretical teaching.
[7] Source of the ‘faith without works is dead’ quote.
[8] Source of the ‘you have been saved by faith, not by works, so that no-one can boast’ quote.
[9] A Late Roman javelin and thrusting spear, itself based not only on the famous pilum which it succeeded but also the angon used by Frankish & other Teutonic foederati who were entering Roman service in increasing numbers from around 250 onward. It was longer & heavier than the plumbata & lancea but shorter than the pilum, and seems to have been used as a thrusting spear more frequently than the latter.
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