607 saw continued movement on all fronts of the Western Roman civil war, with the results generally favoring the sons of Florianus. The heaviest fighting occurred in Dalmatia, where Constantine sought to push on toward the Ostrogoth seat of power at Aquileia and also seize Ravenna, where Otho II had first begun his campaign to usurp the purple. In this, the young pretender might have made more progress against King Viderichus’ sons were it not for the continued Avar attacks in his rear – which by mid-year threatened Thessalonica – forcing him to detach elements of his army eastward to shore up his Macedonian garrisons, which were contained to their cities and forts while Dulo Khagan rampaged across the countryside. Ultimately he ended up asking his father-in-law the Eastern
Augustus to send more Eastern Roman reinforcements to defend the Balkan provinces, which Arcadius proved awfully happy to do.
After the Avar assault was blunted by a large Eastern Roman army under their
Caesar Leo in the Battle of Scupi in July, Constantine felt sufficiently confident to keep pushing westward in strength. He met the Amaling princes in the Battle of Burnum[1] at the start of September, and there overcame them – with his greater numbers he was able to use his heavier Roman infantry to fix the Goths defending the crossings of the nearby Corcoras[2] in place, while his Slavs and the ultra-heavy
clibanarii cavalry Arcadius had loaned him crossed at an unguarded ford further upriver and outflanked the Othonian army. The younger Ostrogoth prince Theodemir was one of the casualties of the bloody rout which followed – struck down by Constantine’s own hand – and Viderichus felt compelled to march to the defense of his kingdom as a consequence of this defeat.
The Eastern Roman heavy cavalry loaned to Constantine smashing through the Italo-Roman legionaries among the Othonian infantry in the Battle of Burnum
The Othonian
magister militum’s decision to leave Italy was a perilous one, as Iaunas had gone on the offensive once again starting in May. Bolstered by local recruits raised across southwestern Italy in the preceding winter & spring months, the Florianic
magister militum now went on his own warpath across central Italy and this time defeated the forces Otho sent out of Rome to challenge him at Beneventum and Luceria[3]. By the time Viderichus had left Italy to challenge Constantine in Dalmatia, the Africans had occupied Praeneste (well within striking distance of Rome itself) and there was sufficient fear within the Othonian camp that Iaunas could just walk into Rome with the aid of Florianic partisans within the walls, that Otho continued to concentrate a large number of troops within the Eternal City (allowing Iaunas’s men to push as far as Interamna[4] by the year’s end with little contest) and remained present there himself.
In Hispania, Venantius arrived at Cartago Nova in time to rally what remained of his slain middle brother’s forces and prevent the complete collapse of the Florianic position in the peninsula. He turned back the onslaught of Teutobaudes and the Balthing brothers in the Battle of Hispalis early in the year, where his Moorish horse-archers proved too formidable a foe for even the heavy Gallo-Roman cavalry under the former’s direction, then fought further fierce battles at Corduba and Aurgi[5] to safeguard his family’s hold on the southern rim of the Iberian Peninsula. In this campaign the prince was assisted not only by his able African lieutenants and the survivors of Constans’ command staff but also by the attacks of the faithful Celtiberians and Aquitani in the north, which at last became too grave for the Visigoths and their allies to ignore. Although Vismaro was finally confronted in force and defeated by Theodoric right before he could take the Baurg, the distraction he’d provided had bought Venantius critical time and set up the latter’s victory over Teutobaudes & Liuveric at the Battle of Aurgi late in the year.
While the Western Roman civil war may still be far from a conclusion, the war between the Anglo-Saxon cousins on the edge of the Roman world was fast approaching its climax this year. Æþelhere had bet on forcing a major battle in order to create the circumstances for a favorable peace settlement before the Romano-Britons entered the conflict, and he seemed to have gotten his chance at Stocctun[6] where the junior Raedwaldings had marched to meet his challenge. The battle which followed at first appeared as though it would follow the same course as their earlier clash at Dunholm, where Æþelhere had been soundly defeated: the North Angle shield-wall stood its ground in the face of withering fire from his Cambrian archers and an infantry assault, then pursued the latter after they retreated in failure. But this time Æþelhere was ready and even counting on such an outcome, having amassed a strong reserve (including his more numerous cavalry) and springing a counterattack involving these fresh forces once the overconfident North Angles were out of formation and thought they had won the day.
Thus did the Battle of Stocctun end in a victory for Æþelhere and the South Angles, whose counter-charge caught their opponents off-guard and swept them from the field. Eadwald of Bernicia survived the disaster, but Eadberht of Deira and his oldest son Eadmer had been among the most reckless pursuers of the retreating South Angle infantry and were consequently among the first to be fall before Æþelhere’s sudden counterattack. Æþelhere for his part chased the defeated Eadwald to Dunholm before offering terms, fearing that assaulting the town would cost him so many lives as to compromise his chances of fending off a Romano-British attack and a protracted siege would take too much time: Deira was essentially to be partitioned between Bernicia and South Anglia, with the former incorporating Dunholm and the lands beyond it while the greater share of the fallen kingdom (including Eoforwic) was to be absorbed by the latter.
King Eadberht of Deira unwisely exhorting his disorganized men to push on against the South Angle reserve's counterattack shortly before his death on one of the latter's spears
Eadwald was not confident that his remaining troops could carry on the war and was himself concerned that the Picts or Gaels of Dál Riata might attack him in this moment of vulnerability, so he took the deal and installed his remaining underage nephew Eadhelm as the nominal lord, or
ealdorman[7], of Dunholm. He himself would now reign as king of a consolidated and truncated North Angle kingdom, solidifying the ties between Bernicia and Deira by further arranging his own son Eadwig’s marriage to Eadhelm’s sister Eadhburh (as they were first cousins, Eadwald had to donate a sum of gold and build a monastery on the island of Lindisfarena[7] to secure a Papal dispensation for the match), while Æþelhere extended the South Angles’ reach up to the Vedra[8] and affirmed his kingdom as the mightier of the Anglo-Saxon realms. Though he was not able to completely conquer Deira, much less reunify the Anglo-Saxons under his leadership, the king in Tomtun did also achieve this limited victory quickly enough to dissuade Artorius from attacking his southern underbelly, and toward the end of the year they feasted at a royal lodge near Undulana[9] as if nothing had happened between them.
In the distant East, Emperor Yang continued his preparations for the invasion of Baekje, steadily assembling an army of as many as 180,000 soldiers for the task (to be further joined by his Goguryeo allies and whatever insurgents Geumryun of Silla could muster) over the course of 607. Heon of Baekje did try to negotiate with Yang, asking what he could possibly do to reach an accommodation with the Huangdi, but had been informed that he would need to give Geumryun his kingdom back as a starting point for any peace settlement. This was something he was absolutely unwilling to do after all the centuries of warfare between their kingdoms and the resources he had sunk into conquering Silla in the first place, so the countdown to the Chinese expedition was irreversibly set.
The talks having broken down in the spring, King Heon was finally able to get through to the Japanese regents and persuade them to begin making preparations of their own. Alas it was too little, too late – and even if they had started earlier, Yamanoue no Mahito & Kose no Kamatari certainly had no chance of raising enough troops to match the Later Han’s overwhelming numerical advantage man-to-man, not with the
gōzoku system in place: few among the Yamato lords were particularly interested in returning to Korea to fight what they assumed would be a suicidal struggle against China. Thus aside from praying for a miracle or fifty, Heon spared no expense in improving his fortifications and recruiting additional soldiers of his own in a desperate bid to improve his chances for the war to come.
Where 607 had been a year which favored the sons of Florianus, 608 marked a shift in the tides of war. Once again the largest and most important battles were being fought in Dalmatia, where Viderichus of the Ostrogoths and his remaining sons were moving to confront Constantine head-on as the latter drew near to Aquileia. The Gothic king had brought a large number of reinforcements out of the peninsula with him, nearly emptying the cities of northern Italy (especially Ravenna) of their garrisons in the process, and coupled with the troops Prince Theodoric already had the Amalings would be fielding a formidable host of 28,000 for the battles to come in the summer months. On the other hand, Constantine had at his back a slightly smaller force of 24,000 – a mix of Eastern Romans, Sclaveni federates and new recruits raised from the loyalists of Macedonia, Moesia and Dalmatia – which had been whittled down somewhat from earlier battles and skirmishes with the Othonians.
First the vanguards of both armies met at the Battle of Fons Timavi[10], where Theodoric was defeated by the Carantanian heir Valuk: he retreated after losing a thousand men in the clash, while the Florianic force had sustained only a fifth as many casualties. This victory allowed Constantine to progress toward Aquileia itself, where Viderichus was waiting with his full strength. In the battle which followed, Constantine initially had the advantage, as his heavy Eastern cavalry crunched through their Gothic counterparts (in the process killing the latter’s commander Geberich, another son of Viderichus) and Roman infantry wedges pierced gaps in the Othonian shield-wall at the same time that those victorious horsemen fell on their flanks. The imperial pretender sent his Slavs through these gaps and believed his decisive victory over his usurping uncle’s chief lackey was now imminent.
However, Viderichus had taken advantage of his greater numbers to maintain a large reserve, and personally led those men into the fray at this critical juncture. His counterattack was further aided by the Othonian crossbowmen and archers under his son’s command, who had holed up behind an array of crude breastworks thrown up specifically to better protect the approach to Aquileia in case their front lines were breached, and together they drove the Florianic troops back in a vicious clash. Seeing that his weary and increasingly dispirited soldiers were beginning to falter before the fresher Othonian reserve, Constantine tried to turn the battle around by charging into the fray himself, backed up by his
candidati bodyguards and the various Slavic princes with him (who brought their own retinues).
Soon enough the Stilichian heir reached and slew Viderichus: though the Ostrogoth king was a much more experienced combatant, he was also much older, and unlike their troops
he was the one worn out from earlier fighting while Constantine was still full of energy. However, almost immediately after his victorious duel Constantine was himself slain by a barrage of Othonian bolts and arrows – Theodoric had seen the Stilichian imperial standard closing in on his father’s position and, either not knowing or caring about the risk to Viderichus, ordered the men under his command to concentrate their fire on it. Valuk of Carantania, the younger Horite princeling Seslav Radimirović, and the Dulebian Prince Beloslav as well as his nephew Gostevid were killed, either by the same missiles that felled their overlord or in the sustained Ostrogoth counterattack which followed. The Battle of Aquileia had been costly for both sides – 6,000 Othonians and 7,000 Florianists had fallen when nightfall compelled the former to break off their pursuit – but it was unmistakably a victory for the usurper’s faction, and especially for Theodoric personally as he both avenged his brothers and succeeded his father Viderichus without actually being responsible for the latter’s death (if only barely).
Constantine and his comitatus immediately before their deaths. Valuk of Carantania can be seen trying to hand him a new shield as Theodoric's arrows descend upon them, while Gostevid the Dulebian holds the Ostrogothic royal standard (freshly pried from the cold dead hands of Viderichus' standard-bearer) behind both and Seslav the Croat stands to Constantine's right
News of the Battle of Aquileia came as a welcome relief to Otho himself, who had been engaged in a stand-off before Rome itself with Iaunas for much of 608’s first half. The many Othonian troops present in the Eternal City – in fact they represented Otho’s largest force-concentration besides the field army with which Viderichus and Theodoric were confronting Constantine in Dalmatia – had not only deterred Iaunas from storming Rome, but also kept pro-Florianic elements within the city well under control. After he himself had received the bad news and a pro-Florianic riot ended with the mob being massacred by Otho’s legionaries before they could come close to prying the
Porta Tiburtina[11] open, the discouraged Iaunas fell back to Praeneste: his defeat in the Saharan sands had made him a much more cautious and risk-averse leader, one who certainly would not test Rome’s defenses without Constantine around to aid him. Reinforcements dispatched by the victorious Theodoric further aided Otho in not only fending off an attempt by Iaunas to opportunistically seize lightly-garrisoned Ravenna later in the year, but also in retaking several cities along Italy’s eastern seashore from the African Roman army.
Only in Hispania did the Florianic faction still enjoy any significant success in this year. As the last of the sons of Florianus still standing, it fell to Venantius to take up his side of the family’s claim to the purple, and he continued to bitterly hold out against the attacks of the numerically superior Visigoths and Franks throughout this year. Aided by a renewed Celtiberian attack from the north, Venantius even managed to mount a large-scale offensive in the western reaches of the peninsula: further affixing Liuveric and Teutobaudes’ attention onto Toletum with a feint in that city’s direction, the new claimant reclaimed Emerita Augusta from its depleted rebel garrison and swept through Lusitania in the summer and autumn months, linking up with the Celtiberians of Vismaro and scoring the only major Florianic victory this year in the Battle of Aeminium[12] to secure his gains.
In the east, Otho took advantage of his eldest nephew’s demise in the Battle of Aquileia to send out peace feelers to Constantinople, offering to formally cede the dioceses of Dacia, Macedonia and Achaea back to the Eastern Empire (once again) in exchange for their recognition of him as the Western Emperor. Although the Eastern
Caesar Leo counseled his father against taking this deal, believing it to be dishonorable and victory against Otho to still be feasible, Arcadius II ultimately fell to the temptation to restore the pre-Stilicho and pre-Sabbatius borders of the two empires – he had been thinking of taking these dioceses back as ‘payment’ even if Constantine had won anyway – and his son reluctantly went along with his commands.
Arcadius also arranged the betrothal of his grandson, ironically similarly named Constantine, to the late Western Constantine’s daughter Verina. Since the two were not only extremely young but also first cousins, their match required a dispensation from Pope Lucretius, who duly provided it at Otho’s request. Lucius, the Pope recognized by the Florianic faction, did not give his approval, and was further supported in this matter by Patriarch Firmus of Carthage just as Gennadius II of Constantinople backed Lucretius at Arcadius’ order. By the end of 608 Carthage and Constantinople had excommunicated each other, ostensibly over the Carthaginian Patriarchate’s insistence on using unleavened bread for the Eucharist (whereas the Eastern Heptarchs forbade doing so), but it was quite obvious to all involved that this conflict was chiefly political; notably only Lucretius joined the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate while Cyril II of Antioch, John IV of Jerusalem, Theodosius II of Alexandria and Yahballaha of Babylon all sat this clash out, despite Arcadius pressuring them to follow Gennadius’ lead.
A portrait of the fallen Western Caesar Constantine and his Eastern counterpart & friend Leo under the gaze of Christ, painted in (or to depict) the happier days of their youth
Since the recaptured cities and forts of the eastern provinces were already garrisoned by Eastern Roman troops at the late Constantine’s invitation, their handover to the East was more a matter of formality, much to the frustration of Venantius. This Eastern Roman betrayal of the Florianic cause and seizure of the Balkan dioceses also made them into the Avars’ primary enemy, as Dulo Khagan remained fixated on pushing southward from Moesia while limiting his attacks into the less wealthy Dalmatian territories to raids on the Slavic federates’ homelands. In the confusion following the Eastern Romans’ withdrawal from Dalmatia and before they could fully consolidate control over Macedonia, the Avars made significant progress toward Thessalonica, but were turned back in a wintertime battle before the city itself by Leo.
Further still in the direction of the rising Sun, the Later Han made their move this year. Emperor Yang did not actually strike the first blow – a panicking Heon of Baekje did that, leading a 20,000-strong army over the Imjin and into Goguryeo territory to pre-emptively secure the northern riverbanks before his opponents could storm over it. As it were, the Baekje army proved incapable of stopping the Sino-Goguryeo host from doing just that once they got going: in the ‘Battle’ of Yonan Heon ended up retreating in a hurry before the 200,000-strong combined army of his enemies, only engaging in limited skirmishes to cover his withdrawal, and although he again changed his mind and attempted to make a stand on the Imjin River itself a few days later the terrain advantage did him little good against such overwhelming strength.
Since he fielded ten times his opponent’s number, it was trivial for Emperor Yang to fix the much smaller Baekje army in place with a 50,000-man detachment while the rest of his army crossed the Imjin further upriver. Seeing that he had been outmaneuvered, Heon again attempted to withdraw but was intercepted and defeated by the Chinese & Goguryeo cavalry at the Battle of Panmunjeom, where just the allied horse outnumbered the entire Baekje army by 2:1 – and, after routing and further mauling their opposition, would outnumber them by almost 4:1, having halved Heon’s fighting strength in their victory. Due to these heavy losses Heon did not even have enough men left to effectively garrison his fortresses, forcing him to rely on many thousands of poorly-trained and equipped peasants conscripts to do that job instead.
Emperor Yang of Later Han leads his vastly superior army to crush the faltering Baekje forces at the Battle of Panmunjeom
These weak and unreliable troops proved incapable of resisting the Chinese siege engines and numbers, and by the time Kose and Yamanoue were able to land at the small port of Mulahye-gun[13] with 22,000 reinforcements late in the year, there wasn’t much of Baekje left to save. Indeed, Yang had actually already overrun the entirety of Silla’s old territory in the southeast of the peninsula and installed Geumryun in his ancestral capital of Seorabeol[14], and the irresolute Heon was about ready to capitulate. However, though he tried to tell the Japanese regents that it was impossible for them to defeat Yang with the modest host they had brought over the sea, they insisted that he keep fighting anyway since it would have been an unacceptable blow to their honor to expend so much gold and rice to raise this army, only to then go home in defeat without even fighting at all. Accordingly plans were drawn up for a counterattack aimed at the Chinese host now encircling Baekje in the Korean peninsula’s southwestern corner sometime in the early winter of 609, no matter that this course of action may have erased the line between bravery and suicidal foolhardiness altogether.
609 continued the trend of Othonian victories, though none were as important as last year’s Battle of Aquileia. In the north Theodoric II of the Ostrogoths, who had been designated his father’s successor not only as king over their people but also as the Othonian faction’s
magister militum, sought to press his advantage against his badly bloodied Sclaveni rivals (now also abandoned by the Eastern Romans), but was limited by Otho II’s own demands for more troops with which to mount a push in central & southern Italy: the usurper thought the Sclaveni were broken beyond hope of recovery after Aquileia, and could be disposed of at his leisure later. Nevertheless Theodoric was able to capture the Carantanian and Horite capitals at Ljubljana (as the former called the town they had built next to the partially-resettled Illyro-Roman city of Emona) and Zagrab, respectively, and kill the Carantanian Prince Borut as the latter fought to buy his kin and people time to evacuate eastward; but evacuate eastward they did, with the Carantanian and Horite royal courts fortifying themselves in Ceľe and Brod[15], which the Romans still called Celaia and Marsonia.
To continue applying pressure to the Sclaveni even as he called the Ostrogoths away, Otho found an unorthodox ally in the Iazyges to the far north, who he promised protection from both the Avars and the Arbogastings if they would but lend him their help. The new Sarmatic king Rathagôsos agreed and led 13,000 warriors over the western Carpathians to assail the Dulebes, the only Sclaveni principality which Theodoric had been unable to reach, and drove them toward their core fortified towns around Lake Pelso. Beloslav’s son Vidogost had ruled the Dulebian principality for barely a year before being fatally injured while trying to hold back the Iazyges advance at the Battle of Arrabona[16], though his young son and successor Blahoslav managed to do so more successfully in a great cavalry melee outside Municipium Mogetiana[17] toward the end of the year.
Prince Vidogost of the Dulebes meets the Iazyges in battle near Arrabona
It was in Italy that Otho dedicated most of his efforts, even dragging Theodoric II (who would privately grumble that he was a far more adroit political schemer than a military strategist) back to his side for the great push against Iaunas. In mid-summer the combined Romano-Gothic forces drove Iaunas out of Praeneste, removing the immediate threat to Rome, and over the later summer and first autumn months they slowly but surely evicted the Africans from central Italy, retaking other cities and towns such as Sulmo[18] and Luceria as they went. Their greatest prize was Capua, which Otho retook with the use of siege engines constructed in Rome and Ravenna. However Iaunas’ retreat had been a methodical one, designed to delay and whittle down the Othonian forces while he concentrated his own and reinforcements from Africa & the Mediterranean islands (particularly Sardinia) continued to land in the southern ports he controlled, and in October the Thevestian king brought his enemies’ advance to a crashing halt in the Battle of Beneventum, where his Moorish horse-archers outmaneuvered Otho’s crossbowmen and the superior African cavalry put their counterparts to flight before mauling the Othonian army in its retreat.
In Hispania the Gallic and Visigothic forces amassed under Teutobaudes and Liuveric resumed their advance, this time targeting the cities of southeastern Hispania while Liuveric’s brother Theodoric (not to be confused with the new Ostrogoth king) was placed in command of a secondary army to contain Venantius and Vismaro in the west. In this again they had considerable success, rooting out the Florianic opposition from Valentia[19] down to Carthago Nova and Illiberris[20] over the course of 609. However, two developments which boosted Venantius' flagging cause occurred this year, which otherwise was one in which they lost much ground: first, after months of skirmishing and stalemate he won a smashing victory over Theodoric the Balthing in the Battle of Aquae Flaviae[21], where the Gothic prince fell from the town’s Trajan-era bridge and drowned in the Tamaca[22] during his retreat, and secondly cracks began to emerge within the Othonian coalition – Teutobaudes resented being passed over for the office of
magister utriusque militiae yet again, as well as Otho’s arrangement of an alliance with the Iazyges who had long troubled the northern marches behind his back.
East of Rome, the Eastern
Caesar Leo and his legions continued to engage the Avars in a back-and-forth with few dramatic developments this year. The same could not be said of the Later Han on the other end of the Eurasian landmass, where 609 began with a dramatic Baekje-Yamato assault on the Chinese lines encircling southwestern Korea. Though comically outnumbered – the allies had assembled a total of 32,000 troops against 150,000 Chinese, Goguryeo and Silla soldiers – Kose no Kamatari and Yamanoue no Mahito did enjoy the element of surprise when they launched their attack on January 4: Emperor Yang was confident in his position of overwhelming strength and had been told to expect an imminent Baekje surrender in the last months of 608, and so not only were many of his men not ready for the sudden enemy attack, but he himself had encamped close to the front lines.
The aggressive allied offensive broke through those Chinese front lines and threatened the Huangdi himself, temporarily cutting his camp off from the rest of the Han army. But although this development came as a very unwelcome surprise to Yang, he quickly regained his nerve and held out long enough for his reinforcements to enter the battlefield, burying the determination and ferocity of the Baekje and Japanese attackers beneath the crushing weight of their numbers and superior technology (namely the Chinese crossbow, against which neither had any answer). In their last moments the regents assailed Yang’s own position after he emerged from his tent to rally the troops defending the imperial camp: but even in that they were ultimately unsuccessful, Kose being shot to death by a troop of crossbowmen while Yamanoue did actually manage to reach Yang and engage him in a duel amid the snows, only for Yang to hold him off long enough for a spear-armed bodyguard to come to his aid and kill the Japanese warlord with a blow from behind. Heon surrendered on January 9, a day after the deaths of his allies, only to be executed by Yang for starting this war and supposedly misleading him about the peace talks (although he certainly would have committed to negotiating his surrender if the Yamato had not come) anyway.
Yamanoue no Mahito's frantic charge toward Emperor Yang after the latter exposed himself to rally his surprised troops
The Honam Offensive, as this audacious but ultimately failed gambit came to be known, had ended in an unmitigated disaster for the allies, whose army was effectively destroyed by the Han and their own allies shortly after the fall of the Yamato regents. The regents’ reliance on their own families’ estates to raise their army also crippled their own clans through the extensive losses incurred among their adult male relatives in the catastrophe. A rump Baekje did continue to linger, but now as a Chinese puppet – Yang had most of Heon’s household massacred or sold into slavery save for an infant granddaughter named Inwon, who he installed as a puppet queen and whose marriage to Geumryun’s considerably older son Beopheung he arranged. This was intended as a further reward for his primary client in Korea, with the understanding that Silla should absorb what little remained of Baekje in the future through this match.
In Japan itself, the regents’ disastrous failure was the Tennō’s opportunity. For many years Yōmei had been overlooked, a sickly prisoner in the gilded cage that was his court who even needed constant assistance to ride a horse; but the death of the Ōomi and most of their ardent followers among the aristocracy on the battlefields of southwestern Korea created a power vacuum which he was quick to take advantage of. He sacked those ministers of theirs who were still present in the ranks of his government, replaced them with his own kinsmen or servants, and proclaimed that once more the Emperor of Japan could and would rule in his own right; though, mindful of how his father Heijō’s overly heavy-handed and tyrannical ways had created the circumstances for his downfall, Yōmei also only executed those pro-Kose & Yamanoue figures whose loyalty he suspected were too strong, or who had abused their office and thus whose deaths would be met with celebration by the people. As a ruler in his own right, Yōmei’s first move was to dispossess the Kose and Yamanoue remnants of nearly all their estates: in an odd mirror to the reforms of the Stilichians far to the west (not that Yōmei could have possibly known this), the land was divided into lots and redistributed to the common families already living on them, creating a class of smallholders loyal to the new regime.
In comparison to the preceding years, 610 was a year mercifully free of large battles – at least in the western reaches of the Roman world – as both the Othonian and Florianic factions sought to rest and rebuild their armies after so many thousands of soldiers and multiple royal & imperial personages on both sides had perished in the clashes of 606-609. Two of the few major battles of 610 were fought between the Iazyges and Dulebes, with the latter aided by a small Carantanian contingent and Roman remnants of Constantine’s and Florianus’ army; at the Battle of Caesariana[23] Rathagôsos’ renewed push on Lake Pelso was foiled by Blahoslav’s reinforced host, and at the Battle of the Arrabo[24] the Dulebes followed through with a counterattack which forced the Iazyges back, further away from the great lake. Rathagôsos blamed his defeats on the failure of the Lombards and Bavarians to assist him, for both had been reluctant to lend the Iazyges a hand after nearly two centuries of endemic raiding and skirmishing between their peoples.
Aside from the battles in Pannonia, Otho also mounted an additional push against Iaunas in south-central Italy but was again repulsed, this time in the Battle of Atella[25]. Iaunas in turn counterattacked, recapturing Aesernia[26] but having his own main thrust on Rome thwarted in the Battle of Caieta[27]. Venantius attempted his own offensive in Hispania with Vismaro’s support but failed to make much headway against the larger armies of Teutobaudes and Liuveric, who forced him to break off his attack and retreat in the Battle of Malaca[28], where Liuveric and Vismaro slew one another as the former tried to pursue the withdrawing Florianic army: following this, he decided to wait for his mother to send him additional reinforcements, which she was trying to cajole out of the Berber tribes of Mauretania Tingitana, even as Teutobaudes was summoning additional Germanic warriors (mostly Lombards, Bavarians and Thuringians who would otherwise have no excuse to avoid helping the Iazyges) to join him.
However, although his faction may have barely made any progress on the martial side of things, a few more political developments which benefited Venantius did occur this year. Firstly tensions between the Blues and Greens continued to mount, accelerated not only by the various Teutonic federates’ failure (or refusal) to help the Iazyges and by extension Otho’s plans for Pannonia & Dalmatia, but also by the death of Julianus’ Blue wife Renata shortly after giving birth to their son Liberius in August of this year. To paper over this crack, Otho deigned to marry his younger daughter Theodosia to Teutobaudes’ eldest son Aloysius, though as the former was twelve and the latter was eleven as of 610 it would still take some years for them to consummate the marriage.
Secondly, Liuveric of the Visigoths had left behind an underage heir in Hermenegild II. With his brother Theodoric the Balthing having predeceased him, the Visigothic nobility and clergy sought to assemble a regency council to support the boy’s mother Leodegundis in stewarding the realm, but Theodoric II pressed for their Thing to make him regent instead – on the basis of the kinship between the Amalings and Balthings, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, for he was Liuveric’s cousin through his aunt Matasuintha, and was backed in his demand by Otho II. Venantius noted these developments while in the middle of re-affirming his agreements with Vismaro with the latter’s successor Antaro, and at his mother’s suggestion, decided it would be worthwhile to try prying the Visigoths and Blues away from the Greens.
Theodoric II of the Ostrogoths receiving a Visigoth delegation. He will offer them not only his condolences on the death of their king (and his cousin) Liuveric, but also insist that he be made regent over the latter's successor, placing the Ostrogoths in a position of supremacy over their kindred and (he hopes) setting up the reunification of the Goths in the future
To the east of Dalmatia, Leo was making slow but steady progress in evicting the Avars from the Diocese of Dacia, starting with the province of Dardania. By the year’s end Eastern Roman forces had secured Ulpiana and Tauresium[28], and were also besieging Serdica where a substantial garrison of Avars, Gepids and pro-Avar Sclaveni had entrenched themselves. Determined to not have his gains rolled back so quickly, Dulo Khagan opened a second front by attacking across the lower-most banks of the Danube into Thrace with a secondary army of 20,000, overrunning the provinces of Moesia Secunda and Scythia in short order and sending large numbers of refugees – Greek, Thraco-Roman and Slav alike – flooding into southern Thrace as winter descended upon the land.
Well south of the two embattled Roman Empires, a certain man had a religious experience which would affect not only himself, but many nations in the future. While meditating in the cave of Hira in a mountain overlooking Mecca, Muhammad ibn Abdullah reportedly received a visit from the archangel Gabriel, considered by Jews to have helped the prophet Daniel interpret his visions and by Christians to have been the angel who appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce that God had chosen her to conceive and bear Jesus. As Muhammad would later explain to his wife and then his wife’s cousin Waraqah, Gabriel had embraced him, though his illiteracy kept him from fully understanding the angel’s message.
Waraqah in turn convinced him that the apparition was a sign that God had chosen him as a new prophet, and warned that he may soon be treated with hostility by the other Meccans just as many past prophets were hated in their homelands. Over the next few years, Muhammad would grow more confident in his prophethood thanks to additional revelations on the Jabal an-Nour (‘Mountain of Light’, as he called the mountain in which Hira was located) and his family’s support – indeed they were the first to hear his message, his first converts, and among his most zealous disciples. Of these the most important were naturally his wife Khadijah and their then-twelve-year-old son Qasim, for whom Muhammad came to receive the kunya[30] ‘Abu al-Qasim’.
The entrance to the cave of Hira, where Muhammad was said to have been visited by the angel Gabriel (or in Arabic, Jibril)
Venantius was not the only emperor (or at least, imperial claimant) who had the good fortune to have his enemies’ greed and growing infighting to extract him from a difficult situation in 610. While bringing his armies out of Korea, Emperor Yang was pleased to note that the Southern Chinese alliance against him had fractured, just as he had planned: without an imminent Later Han invasion to worry about, tensions between Chu and Cheng had escalated to the point where the former launched an attack on the latter to regain territory lost in previous decades, while the Minyue did not intervene and instead further fortified themselves within their mountains. Yang was content to let Chu and Cheng bleed each other some more before moving in to crush the victor, resting and rebuilding his own forces in the meantime.
Over the sea, the Tennō Yōmei continued his reforms to enhance imperial authority. Emperor Yang had demanded of him tribute, and with the Japanese army destroyed in the Honam Offensive he’d had little choice but to agree, even as the Chinese further insulted him by referring to him as a mere ‘King’ of the Yamato. Becoming a tributary meant restoring trade relations with the Later Han however, and with that trade came the wealth and ideas with which Yōmei sought to turn Japan into a power capable of shaking off the Chinese yoke in the future. For now he still moved gradually, careful not to antagonize his magnates into overthrowing him as they did his father.
This year, that meant establishing a robust central administrative apparatus divided into two ministries – the
Jingi-kan or ‘Department of Divinities’, which governed Shinto clergy and ritual practices in a mirror of the Chinese Ministry of Ceremonies & Rites, and the
Daijō-kan or ‘State Department’, an outgrowth of the imperial privy council which was further divided into lesser departments responsible for matters of state, such as enforcing imperial justice or leading and funding the military. To staff these ministries, Yōmei exclusively recruited from the Yamato clan and the most promising ranks of that class of free smallholders he had created the year before: ancestors of the
kuge, or the Japanese court nobility of better times. In so doing the Emperor also solidified two Japanese traditions: first a habit of copying and creating indigenized versions of foreign practices to catch up with and hopefully eventually surpass more advanced foreign powers, and secondly Japan’s own variation of dynastic cycles – where China was prone to violently falling apart and being reunified by dynasties which would then prosper for a time before declining and resetting the cycle, Japan went through cycles of imperial governments where the Emperors ruled alone and concentrated on inward development & protecting the Home Isles, followed by military governments focused on interventionism or outward expansion beyond Japanese waters like that of the fallen Kose and Yamanoue.
Emperor Yōmei is confronted with the sight of a spirited bureaucratic dispute in the Daijō-kan between a freeman recruited from the provinces and one of his kinsman
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[1] Near Kistanje.
[2] Krka River.
[3] Lucera.
[4] Teramo.
[5] Jaén.
[6] Stockton-on-Tees.
[7] Lindisfarne.
[8] The River Wear.
[9] Oundle.
[10] Near Duino.
[11] Now also known as the Porta San Lorenzo.
[12] Coimbra.
[13] Mokpo.
[14] Gyeongju.
[15] Slavonski Brod.
[16] Győr.
[17] Somlóvásárhely.
[18 Sulmona.
[19] Valencia.
[20] Granada.
[21] Chaves.
[22] The Tâmega River.
[23] Baláca.
[24] The Rába River.
[25] Near Aversa.
[26] Isernia.
[27] Gaeta.
[28] Málaga.
[29] Gradište.
[30] A teknonymic nickname (derived from a parent’s child) in Arabic.
