So,plague made war longer,but ERE would still lost it.And WRE would do nothing for next 10 years,and could engage in another cyvil war.
If muslims here would be patient enough,they could take most of territories they take in OTL from turks,ERE and WRE.
Althought even then WRE and ERE woud survive.Turks probably not.
Indo romans would survive at least for next generation,China would become more powerpuff.Maybe they start war with India?
Monks would colonize Norh America,and Briton would join.I could see british kingdom in exile there fighting till 21 century.
P.S When Roland would heroically die? maybe fighting muslims,like in song,when they attack Africa?
Well another blow for the WRE when it was looking so promising. Although the Turks seem to have been hit harder than the ERE which has given a significantly breather for the latter. Although a new threat is slowly gathering in the south. I get the feeling that the Islamic explosion northwards is likely to happen after the death of Mohammad's son rather than of the prophet himself - or at least after the civil wars and unrest that will probably follow that death. I could see Talhah ending up as the 1st Caliph here or possibly marrying into the prophet's family and gaining the throne that way.
Suspect that when the storm comes it will also come down the Nile as well, with Nubia probably falling before then. An exhausted and still largely Monophysites Egypt are likely to welcome the lighter hand of the Muslims as OTL.
Mihirabhoja could have imperiled the entire dynasty in taking his eye off the key ball of the security of his home base with an expensive and unsuccessful war having drained both treasury and loyalty among much of his subjects with revolt in both the east and the only recently subdued south.
Renzong's empire is a lot more secure and it looks like the Northern Turkish Khanate is going to be crushed although it sounds like Tölis Qaghan is going to put up as tough a fight as he can. However whether it will be worth the costs especially with the instability that will occur across the western part of the northern steppes. Which is likely to mean endemic raiding of any areas he controls and disruption of the silk route. Unless some group, probably most likely the Khazars emerge as the new power there. In which case I wonder what way they will go religiously?
Both the already settled Irish/Gauls and the British king are now looking for lands in the far west. Not sure how the latter will get useful and reliable intelligence as he will either have to send some of his own people, probably in disguise or trust foreigners. Hopefully he will realise that going north of the existing settlements would be disasterous and that south is the better option. [Although he and probably his descendants won't fully realise how much better for quite a while]. Its still going to be a big issue getting any significant numbers of settlers from his people across the Atlantic with the technology and knowledge of the time even without trying to keep such movements a secret from the current settlers. One other factor of course is its going to draw more attention to the western lands and you could see other groups seeking their fortune there, including English, people fleeing disorder in the empire and possibly even surviving northern pagans as Christianity closes in on them although its a couple of centuries early for the Vikings at the moment.
Anyway some very interest developments.
I think you do have an error at the start of Renzong's war on the Turks.
In May, the Emperor directed no fewer than 600,000 troops divided into three two-hundred-thousand strong armies to advance beyond the dilapidated Great Wall onto Turkic territory. Tölis Qaghan was rightly fearful of these mighty hosts and called upon his tributaries to assist him, only for the likes of the Khazars, Karluks, Kimeks and Oghuz to demonstrate their true allegiance by sending the heads of his envoys back to him. With his own horde thrown into turmoil, Tölis did not believe he had any chance to defeat the Chinese, but honor (and the threat of rebellion among his tarkhans, who did wish to fight) compelled him to try regardless. His brother Chaki Tarkhan was killed and the Turkic army under the latter’s command routed by the forward-most of Renzong’s six armies in the Battle of the Hetao Plain this year, but to the west Tölis himself managed to prove that even in these decadent last days the Tiele wolf still had some fangs left in its mouth by defeating the Kimeks and Oghuz before they could combine their forces.
^ Oops, that is indeed an error. I've fixed it now, thanks for catching that.
Now unfortunately there's very little I can elaborate on at this stage, because then we'd be heading into a veritable minefield of spoilers. But one of the things I can say with certainty that these next two & a half decades in particular will be an extended pivotal moment for the entire Roman world in particular - I've got much in the way of 'interesting times' planned until about 670 or so - and you can bet that just about every character in or around the Mediterranean Basin who's been named in this recent chapter will have a part to play in those critical chapters ahead.
The other thing I can say is that while I am going to push to finish the 640s with the next chapter (to come by August 1 at the latest, I'll also be posting a map with it as we'll have reached the midpoint of the seventh century), the chapter after that will be a factional overview again since it's been quite a while since the last one about the Visigoths. This time we'll be leaving Europe behind momentarily to take a more detailed look at the reunified China of the Later Han.
^ Oops, that is indeed an error. I've fixed it now, thanks for catching that.
Now unfortunately there's very little I can elaborate on at this stage, because then we'd be heading into a veritable minefield of spoilers. But one of the things I can say with certainty that these next two & a half decades in particular will be an extended pivotal moment for the entire Roman world in particular - I've got much in the way of 'interesting times' planned until about 670 or so - and you can bet that just about every character in or around the Mediterranean Basin who's been named in this recent chapter will have a part to play in those critical chapters ahead.
The other thing I can say is that while I am going to push to finish the 640s with the next chapter (to come by August 1 at the latest, I'll also be posting a map with it as we'll have reached the midpoint of the seventh century), the chapter after that will be a factional overview again since it's been quite a while since the last one about the Visigoths. This time we'll be leaving Europe behind momentarily to take a more detailed look at the reunified China of the Later Han.
One other point that occurred to me. Emperor Stilicho died of the plague shortly after agreeing a peace with the hated Donatist heretics. I wonder if some of the more extreme elements - plus possibly some political enemies of the dynasty - could start arguing that the former was God's response to the latter? True a lot of other people have died of the plague but religious fanatics or people seeking to score political points have never been bothered too much by the facts on the ground.
Either way it looks like the WRE is going to be weakened, at least in terms of its ability to interact with other powers. Another regency during which a weak regent is allowing assorted groups, probably not just the blues and greens to gain power so that when the new emperor comes of age he could be seriously restrained in terms of what he can do both internally and in foreign affairs. Which with the crisis in the east and the foresight of a coming Muslim storm bodes distinctly badly for both empires and their so far pretty much unlimited monopoly of the Med.
646 heralded more turns in the war between the Eastern Romans and Turks, which became more favorable to the former as the year went on. Following last year’s victories, Rangan Tarkhan swept over the Ufrenus River to sack Gindarus[1] and threaten both Alexandria and Antioch, forcing Leo II to return northward in force to drive him back. This bought Rangan’s father Heshana valuable time to return to Palaestina and restore order to the recently-conquered province, which he did with hundreds of hangings and the taking of hundreds more hostages from both the Christian and Jewish communities. Since it was clear to the Qaghan that he could not reasonably expect the two religions’ leaders to govern Palaestina as co-equals, he decided to favor the Jews in the belief that their being an oft-persecuted minority would make them more dependent on Turkic protection for their continued survival and more opposed to a Roman return, while the Christians (or the Ephesian majority at least) might be more inclined to welcome the Romans should they strike back.
Of course Ephraim protested ferociously at the Qaghan’s decision to elevate Ezekiel ben Yair to sole governorship of their shared home, which frustrated Heshana to the point of killing him for threatening sedition (that is, reverting to Roman allegiance). Ephraim’s son Abel led the Christian rebellion in the countryside which followed, and rapidly spread to Galilee where the Eastern Romans left them weapons and intrepid volunteers among the legions even as the bulk of the Roman army there fell back northward to deal with Rangan Tarkhan. Now initially Heshana intended to return to Egypt after appointing the most sycophantic Christian he could find, a minor cleric named Macarius, to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (though this obviously went unrecognized by the rest of the Heptarchy and even the majority of Palaestina's Christian populace) and retaking Galilee. However he went north instead upon hearing at Ptolemais[2] that his son had retreated to Cyrrhus in the face of Leo’s army and a secondary counterattack from the north led by Stephen II of Georgia, leaving Ezekiel to try to root out Abel’s rebellion and oppress the Christians of Palaestina and the Galilee with a larger number of Turkic troops backing him up.
Despite Heshana’s failure to return to their side this year, Monophysite forces continued to operate independently and achieve some successes in Lower Egypt with only limited Turkic support. From Heliopolis they took a number of other cities and fortresses whose garrisons had been weakened by defection and the Leonine Plague, starting with the citadel of Babylon-in-Aegyptus which they had already begun to besiege in the previous year, decisively linking one of their main strongholds at the Faiyum Oasis to the Nile at Heracleopolis Magna[3] and terrorizing both the Ephesians and more moderate Miaphysites who had the misfortune of living in their path. However, their compatriots in Upper Egypt were far less fortunate and were ruthlessly rooted out by the Nubians of Michaêlkouda, who were steadily advancing down the Nile and adding to their strength elements of the thinly stretched Roman legions and bands of Upper Egyptian Ephesian volunteers who they had aided along the way.
An Egyptian Monophysite rebel, whose faction was generally in ascendancy throughout the late 640s
In India, Mihirabhoja immediately set about restoring order to his lands in the typical Huna fashion. He engaged the partisans of Mahipala in a series of sanguinary engagements along the lower Ganges and ruthlessly sacked every city he took back from the rebels, including Lakshmanapuri[4] and Prayaga[5]. While his behavior scarcely endeared him to his subjects nor were they conducive to the long-term prosperity of the realm he was trying to reunite, the Mahārājadhirāja did succeed in suppressing unrest and threats of sabotage behind his advancing lines in the short term and put his nephew firmly on the back foot for most of this year. However, his drive to the east stalled at the First Battle of Banaras[6], where Mahipala and his generals were able to scatter his cavalry with a well-timed elephant counter-charge.
The southern Indian rebels in the Deccan and Tamilakam had greater luck than Mahipala did this year. Mihirabhoja sent his generals Vinayaditya and Yosada to bring the rebel kings there to heel, but both were defeated and killed in the summer and autumn by the Kannada Chalukyas and Tamil Cheras, respectively. These disasters not only further sapped Huna strength and prevented them from shutting down a major second front in their civil war, but encouraged additional rebellions across the south of India – particularly in the lands inhabited by the Telugu, the third major Dravidian ethno-linguistic group of southern India alongside the Tamils and Kannada. Many of these smaller uprisings took on a religious character, spurred on by Hindu brahmins who sensed a chance to reassert their old ways and rebuild their old order after decades of unsympathetic Buddhist rule.
While Mihirabhoja’s headache grew, the Chinese were maneuvering to put an end to their largest one since the reunification of the Middle Kingdom. Emperor Renzong directed his armies to converge upon the Northern Turkic capital at Ötüken, determined to force a showdown that Tölis Qaghan could not possibly run from – and Tölis proved more than willing to take up his challenge. The Northern Turks aggressively harried China’s vast armies as they closed in on Ötüken, sapping their strength with ambushes and raids in the forests & steppe beyond the Gobi Desert, and targeting their supply lines as said lines grew increasingly overextended with each step the Chinese took beyond China. That said, the amount of manpower Tölis had to concentrate against Renzong’s forces just to have any appreciable impact on them at all meant that he had fewer men with which to slow down the oncoming offensive of Karadakh and the rebel Turks from the west.
The Battle of Ötüken which followed these initial skirmishes on May 31 was the largest battle on the steppe up until that point and would remain such for many years yet, pitting some 80,000 Tegreg Turks – virtually all the warriors Tölis could still muster, including the barely pubescent and the elderly who could still ride among his tribe – against at least a quarter of a million Chinese, with other elements of their host lagging behind. As was common for engagements of this scale, the ‘battle’ was less a singular pitched engagement and more a series of multiple smaller battles being fought in and around the Orkhon Valley which surrounded the Turkic imperial capital. The Chinese held an obvious and increasingly overwhelming advantage in numbers, with reinforcements from the rearward elements of their combined army trickling in every day, but the Northern Turks put up such a remarkably fierce struggle (often overcoming the Chinese cavalry corps who Renzong had trained and expanded specifically to crush them, despite frequently being outnumbered just by these Han horsemen) that Renzong himself wavered and almost called a retreat after five days of fighting, changing his mind only when informed of the arrival of his western Turkic allies on the evening of the fifth day.
The Later Han cavalry at Ötüken. Although heavily armored and trained specifically to counter the heavy lancers of the Tegregs, they would nevertheless have been overcome by the skilled and desperately ferocious warriors of Tölis Qaghan anyway were it not for the arrival of their Western Turkic allies
The unified Sino-Turkic army went on to decisively crush the Tegregs and their loyalists on the sixth day of battle. A last-ditch stampede of the remaining Northern Turkic heavy cavalry broke through the forward-most Chinese lines and briefly threatened Renzong (his face was scarred by a Turkic arrow), but the swift arrival of Chinese reinforcements put a stop to this last gambit of Tölis’ and the Qaghan did not survive more than an hour past noon. By the time the Sun had set on June 6, Ötüken was being ransacked by the victorious Sino-Turkic troops, Tölis’ wives and children had been captured & brought before Renzong, and of his army 70,000 Tegregs had been killed or surrendered. Qubin Tarkhan, Tölis’ last surviving brother, rallied the survivors and fled towards the great lake which the Chinese called the ‘Beihai’[7] or ‘northern sea’, but despite his pretension to the title of Qaghan it was clear that the Northern Turks had been crippled by their massive defeat at Ötüken and had no chance of recovery.
Come 647, the Western Roman Empire and specifically the Stilichian dynasty heralded some good news. Early in the year, a son was born to Bradamantis and Eucherius of Altava: immediately christened Stilicho after his fallen uncle, this boy’s birth was met with celebration both among his paternal Stilichian kindred in Rome and his maternal Arbogasting relatives up in Augusta Treverorum. The latter would not get to rejoice for long however, as while returning from seeing off a minor and otherwise totally inconsequential Slavic raid on Thuringian territory in the early summer months, Arbogastes was thrown from his horse and went into a coma. Theodahad capitalized on his rival’s unexpected incapacitation to press his imperial lover to dismiss the Romano-Frank and appoint him magister militum instead, and Egilona gave in after a month – only for Arbogastes to regain consciousness around Christmastime, much later in the year.
In the Orient, with Palaestina still in a ‘manageable’ – if also far from truly peaceful – state, Heshana stormed back through Phoenicia and further devastated the land-of-cedars before assailing Leo’s position from the south, forcing the latter to break off the attack on his son just after winning battles at Germanicia[8] and Samosata[9] which had nearly cleared Commagene of Turks. In mid-summer the Qaghan defeated the combined Eastern Roman-Caucasian army at the Battle of Seleucia Pieria[10], actually fought south of Antioch’s seaport around the mouth of the Orontes, and then went on to sack the eponymous city. However, Leo was able to retreat to Antioch with the majority of his and Stephen’s forces still intact: as Heshana could not overcome Antioch’s defenses head-on even after Rangan Tarkhan joined him, the Southern Turkic Qaghan decided to just keep Syria’s premier metropolis under siege instead, and hope that disease and hunger would do for him what arrows and lances could not.
While the Qaghan and the much younger Eastern Augustus remained locked in a standoff at Antioch, the former sent Rangan to further ravage the Caucasian kingdoms and make absolutely sure that Leo would not be able to acquire additional reinforcements from those mountain kingdoms in the future. Greatly irritated by how the Caucasians’ second wind had nearly ruined him, Rangan executed his father’s command with gusto and first laid waste to northern Armenia before attacking Georgia, capitalizing on the crippling of these kingdoms’ armies at the Battle of Miks a decade prior and the conscription of most of their remaining fighting men into the army under Stephen of Georgia which was now trapped in Antioch with Leo. The Southern Turks burned and pillaged numerous towns from Manzikert[11] to Partav[12] before having to camp for winter, killing many thousands and enslaving many more who were not able to escape to Roman Anatolia ahead of their coming, with plans to push further into Georgia in the following year.
Rangan Tarkhan in the Caucasus Mountains
In Egypt, the Monophysites and Turks were solidifying their position in much of Lower Egypt even as the Nubians were securing Upper Egypt in the name of Leo II. The Turks managed to persuade the garrison of Oxyrhynchus to surrender before directly fighting the Nubians for the first time at a double-battle before Hermopolis Magna[12] and Antinoöpolis[13], where a nephew of Heshana’s by the name of Chukshak Tarkhan was defeated & killed while trying to besiege the twinned cities with 800 Turks and ten times as many Monophysite Copts. Though Michaêlkouda recaptured Oxyrhynchus immediately after this reversal, other Turkic tarkhans and their local allies had greater luck further down the Nile, where they captured cities from Sais in the west to Clysma[14] in the east. However, they made little progress toward the Mediterranean coast, and the Dux et Augustalis Aegypti Eusebius checked their advance on Alexandria at the Battle of Naucratis in the autumn.
Further still to the east, Mihirabhoja gathered additional troops for another push down the Ganges, which succeeded in breaking through Mahipala’s secondary defenses in the Second Battle of Banaras. Loyalist Huna forces drove their rebel counterpart toward the dilapidated Pataliputra, but were again fended off before they could land the deathblow in a great battle within sight of the city’s western towers and walls. The Mahārājadhirāja also sent a 15,000-strong detachment to push against his nephew’s southern flank, eventually driving into Orissa after defeating several smaller rebel field armies and compelling the surrender or defection of multiple Indian cities over the course of 647, before they too stalled at Raipur for need of reinforcements in the face of stiffening rebel resistance. Mihirabhoja did not strike any further south, effectively abandoning his lands in the Deccan and beyond to the Dravidic rebels until he had finished off Mahipala – which meant not only allowing the Kannada and Tamil kingdoms to recover large tracts of territory previously ceded to the Hunas, but also letting the Telugu establish two competing kingdoms of their own in the eastern Deccan: a northern one whose monarchs claimed to be heirs to the long-defunct Salankayanas, and a southern one claiming heritage from the similarly extinct Chutus.
Nandivarma, founding king of the Later Salankayanas, making a Vedic sacrifice alongside his wife Srimahadevi. Perhaps as a reaction to the Buddhist character of Huna domination, many of the South Indians who rose up against them strongly attached their cause to the Vedic-Hindu tradition and sought the guidance of its priestly brahmin caste
Beyond India and the Himalayas, while the Huna Empire continued to burn itself down, its resurgent Chinese counterpart was finalizing their triumph over the Northern Turkic Khaganate. As his western Turkic allies went home to enjoy their newfound freedom, plunder and slaves, Emperor Renzong established a ‘Protectorate-General for the Pacification of the North’ (or ‘Anbei Protectorate’) to finish off the threat still posed by Qubin Qaghan; consolidate his newfound authority over the Mongolian Plateau; and serve as advanced protection for China’s northern frontier beyond even the Great Wall. To serve as the first commander of this military zone he chose Wang Yangxiang, the general of the army he’d taken up north which had sustained the fewest losses. As for the Tegregs themselves, Renzong brought Tölis’ family back to Luoyang as hostages and scattered the vast majority of their people (those who were not already being taken away as slaves by the western Turks, anyway) throughout his empire.
The Emperor saw in them potential as formidable mounted auxiliaries, and allowed many Tegreg men to avoid death or slavery for themselves and their close kin by enlisting as horsemen in the ranks of the same Chinese army which had just defeated them. However, he was careful to spread them out over garrisons from the Korean border to Jiaozhi and Guangdong in the south (ensuring they could not form an ethnic state-within-a-state inside China). Military service within these Turkic, or ‘Tujue’ as the Chinese called them, families became hereditary, but the families themselves were frequently moved around from frontier to frontier, both to better serve Chinese military needs and to prevent them from ever putting down roots which could grow into a base for rebellion. In time, Renzong expected the Tegregs would marry into the native Chinese population, teach their children to communicate in Hanyu[15] and Sinicize, progressively assimilating over the generations and ultimately fading away as a distinct ethnic group as other northern nomads such as the Xianbei already had.
648 began with the Occidental half of the Roman world holding its breath, as many in the circles of power feared that Arbogastes would revolt at the news of his dismissal from the realm’s highest military office and replacement by his arch-rival. Yet by spring’s end they could release a great sigh of relief, as the former magister utriusque militiae’s son-in-law Eucherius managed to talk him down from open rebellion (in part by threatening that Mauretania would not support him in such an endeavor). Egilona and Theodahad repaid the peace overtures emerging from Altava and Augusta Treverorum by marrying in August of this year, formally making the King of the Ostrogoths into the stepfather of the then-eleven-year-old Augustus Theodosius IV and his brother Romanus. Suffice to say, Eucherius had almost immediately gained cause to regret his sense of restraint & duty toward the Western Empire, especially as Egilona had Theodahad appointed Ravenna’s urban prefect (effectively placing the fortress-city and its environs back under Ostrogoth authority) as a sort of dowry.
Theodahad continues to celebrate his wedding to the widowed empress-regent Egilona in Ravenna's palace, even as the latter visibly wishes to retire to her chambers
While the Western Roman Empire continued to be quietly roiled by its internal troubles and power politics, its Eastern counterpart was still struggling to fend off the external threat posed by the Southern Turk invasion. 648 seemed to be off to a good start when the Siege of Antioch was indeed brought to an end by disease and starvation – but on the part of the Turkic besiegers, not the Eastern Roman defenders as Heshana Qaghan had hoped. Ghassanid guerrilla attacks compromised his supply lines and an outbreak of disease from drinking water tainted by the casualties of the earlier Battle of Seleucia Pieria decisively forced the Turks to break the siege and withdraw, giving Leo II a chance to breathe and safely evacuate himself from the front. The Eastern Roman Empire had averted its untimely end, for now: had Antioch fallen and all the Roman & allied troops bottled up there killed or taken captive, it is unlikely that they could have recovered, especially with Leo's heir Constantine still but a toddler and their resources still depleted by the plague which bore his name.
However, Heshana’s eldest living son was experiencing almost enough success to offset his father’s failure. Rangan Tarkhan’s drive into a poorly defended Georgia resulted in him devastating that kingdom’s Iberian core, burning down both their old capital of Mtskheta and their new one at Tbilisi as well as the Georgians’ main port at Phasis, only stopping at the better-fortified and garrisoned former Lazic capital of Archaeopolis following the arrival of Eastern Roman reinforcements there before turning around to lay waste of their newly-acquired Albanian lands instead. Not only would this northern Turkic army send home huge quantities of booty and slaves, but Rangan also continued to occupy nearly the entirety of the Second Rome’s Caucasian vassal-kingdoms, sending their ruling Mamikonian and Khosroviani dynasties fleeing – first to Theodosiopolis[16] and Trebizond[17] respectively, then on to Constantinople itself to join the similarly defeated and exiled Amardian royals of Padishkhwargar at Leo’s court.
North of the Caucasus Mountains, an entirely different Turkic empire was beginning to take shape. While his immediate neighbors to the east returned to squabbling among themselves without an overlord to worry about any longer, Karadakh Xan (Khan) of the Khazars had set his sights quite a bit higher and strove to establish an empire of his own on the western Eurasian steppe. In 648 the Khazar hordes accordingly crossed the Volga, and began to subjugate the Oghuric Turks – descendants of the Huns and their easternmost subject peoples, such as the Akatziri – living in the middle stretch of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, as well as the Antae who comprised the easternmost of the Slavic peoples. In the coming years and decades these Khazars would expand further both to the south and west, bringing them closer to the Roman world and creating not just new headaches, but also on occasion new opportunities for their future neighbors.
Karadagh Xan (or 'Xağan' – that is, Khagan – as he styled himself after shattering the Tegreg yoke) and his Khazars beginning their thunderous ride westward across the Pontic Steppe
East of both the Khazars in the north and the Hunas in the south, whose civil war was beginning to settle into a costly stalemate this year, the Later Han were wrapping up their campaign against the remnants of the Northern Turkic Khaganate. Qubin Qaghan had proven himself to be no less tenacious a fighter and leader than his doomed brother Tölis, but similarly he lacked the resources and manpower to fend off the overwhelming Chinese onslaught from the south. After two years of skirmishes, ambushes and raids immediately following the great Turkic defeat at the Battle of Ötüken, Wang Yangxiang finally cornered the last of the Tegreg princes and his 3,000 remaining warriors on a plateau north of the Beihai[18] with his own force of 20,000 horsemen, including a number of Turkic defectors.
There the Tegregs made their last stand and were wiped out to the last man, despite managing to inflict horrific losses on their attackers (especially the pro-Chinese Turkic contingent, which Wang placed at the forefront of his army precisely to provoke Qubin’s men and was promptly almost annihilated), and the victorious Protector-General of the North sent Qubin’s head to his master the Huangdi. With this final victory the Chinese had put an end to the Northern Turkic Khaganate once and for all, securing their northern frontier for centuries to come – it would be some time yet before another nomadic horde even approaching the might of the Tegregs would emerge from these steppes and forests. For their part, the Southern Turks were too busy waging their great war against the Eastern Roman Empire to register much of a reaction to the destruction of their northern cousins, or even to take advantage of the new power vacuum on the steppe & along the middle length of the Silk Road.
On the other side of the world, after years of preparation the Romano-British sent forth their first expedition across the Atlantic. Fewer than a hundred volunteers, most of them men, sailed from the port of Pensans[19] in hopes of finding land suitable for settlement on the other side of the great ocean and establishing an outpost there. Posing as traders, they were able to rest and resupply as far as the Gaelic monastic settlements on Paparia, but immediately ran into trouble when they actually reached the New World. The Irish petty-kings and colonists on the eastern side of the Tír na Beannachtaí were suspicious of these heretical outsiders and would not permit them to settle on the island, outright attacking them and killing seven of the Britons when they tried. The British returned to their ships and fled with great haste, sailing further south and eventually stopping at a smaller island[20] south of Tír na Ceo: after confirming that no Gael had settled on this land yet and giving thanks to God for such mercy, there they built a village called Porte-Réial[21] (‘Port Royal’, Lat.: Portus Regalis) and sent five of their number back to the Riothamus Albanus to inform him of their success despite a rocky start.
The first Romano-British expedition to the New World prepares to cast off and depart from Londinium's port
Come 649, Eucherius and Arbogastes mounted their counterattack (of words & letters rather than swords, at least for now) against Theodahad in hopes of halting the latter’s rise to supremacy at the Western Roman court, and received some help from Gaius Sergius in the process. Although unsuccessful in pressing for Arbogastes’ reinstatement, they were successful in cajoling and intimidating Egilona into appointing Arbogastes promagister (deputy) to Theodahad, giving the Blue chieftain an office from which he could check his rival and nominal superior’s efforts to tamper with the Roman army to the Greens’ advantage. And though Theodahad succeeded in getting Sergius replaced as praepositus sacri cubiculi by a eunuch friendly to his interests, having been able to conceal his maneuver under a veneer of ‘respecting tradition’ (the tradition being that the imperial chamberlain was usually a eunuch), his enemies were able to secure Sergius’ appointment to the equally high office of quaestor sacrii palatii – chief justice of the Western Empire. For his part, Eucherius achieved a critical success in getting his nephews away from Rome and therefore any chance that their stepfather might seek to usurp them: he prevailed upon Egilona to allow him to take the now-twelve-year-old Theodosius IV under his wing, while eight-year-old Romanus was sent away to be raised under Sergius’ tutelage at the latter’s family villa on the shores of Lake Lucrinus[22].
Meanwhile, following his failure to take Antioch in the previous year, Heshana changed strategies once more. Leaving Rangan to contain the Eastern Romans in the north, sit on the Armenians and Georgians, and launch periodic raids deep into Anatolia (one Turkic band of 800 raiders would penetrate as far as Gordium[23] this year but was set upon and destroyed by Roman cavalrymen while trying to return to Rangan’s lines) to prevent Leo from organizing new armies there, he returned to Egypt to take charge of the combined Turkic-Monophysite efforts there. Pushing past multiple raids & attempts on his life by Ephesian zealots in Palaestina along the way, the Qaghan and his reinforcements broke Eastern Roman resistance on the path to Alexandria at the Second Battle of Sais this summer, where they also killed Duke Eusebius.
From there, Heshana pushed further down the Nile to besiege the capital of Roman Egypt as well as a number of other cities on the coast such as Diospolis Inferior[24], Tamiatis and Tanis. However, his hopes of achieving the sort of quick victory here which he could not secure at Antioch did not materialize, either. A plot among some of Alexandria’s Coptic citizens to open the city gates to his horde was revealed to the Roman authorities by a double agent among the conspirators, resulting in said plotters being left hanging from the walls by the time the Turks got there. The Qaghan’s complete lack of a navy on the Mediterranean coast also made it impossible for him to cut off any of these cities’ seaborne supply routes. Leo could do little to immediately relieve the remaining loyal cities of Aegyptus, but then it seemed like he hardly had to, and with the Turks presently stuck in the south his attention turned to seeking war-winning wonder-weapons from Constantinople's brightest alchemists and wise men with which he hoped to overcome his manpower deficiency.
Worse still, although Egilona was far from ready to commit the Western Empire’s forces to the war, she and the rest of the Western imperial court were sufficiently alarmed at the Turks’ progress into Egypt to come to a more limited agreement with Leo II – ships bearing surplus grain periodically traveled from Carthage to augment resupply efforts for the benefit of Alexandria and these other besieged port cities. At the same time, the Nubians and Ephesian Roman troops accompanying them had begun to leave Upper Egypt altogether and posed a major threat to his rear, in addition to pressuring his own Monophysite allies’ oasis strongholds in conjunction with Garamantian federates. Seeing no way to take the coastal Egyptian cities (save by way of costly assaults) at this time, and unwilling to expand the war by attacking Western Roman-controlled Africa, the frustrated Qaghan decided to see off the threat he could most easily challenge – the Nubians – and after leaving small token forces to maintain his siege camps, he marched south to confront Michaêlkouda as the year, and the decade, came to an end.
Beyond the realm of the Turks, Sogdianus had espied another opportunity for expansion while rebuilding his own kingdom and waiting for the Hunas to bleed themselves white. The collapse of the Northern Turkic Khaganate meant the dissolution of their authority over not only their rival Turks to the west, but also the Bactrian, Sogdian and Tocharian merchant princes to the southwest – or in other words, immediately to the north & northeast of the Indo-Romans. Though the Silk Road trade and the passage of time had allowed them to recover somewhat from the ravages of Issik Qaghan almost a century ago, their city-states were still rather vulnerable to attackers attracted to their growing wealth, such as the recently unleashed Kimeks and Oghuz Turks to the north.
A Bactrian envoy performs obeisance before Sogdianus, acknowledging the Indo-Roman king as his city's protector
Sogdianus did not have to work overly hard to persuade them that he – a king who had seen off Huna hordes four times (or even more) the size of his own army – could be their protector. With diplomacy and only the occasional demonstration of force, he was able to step into this power vacuum to place formerly Turkic-held Bactria and parts of Sogdiana along the Upper Oxus under Indo-Roman authority, from Drapsaka to Nautaca[25], and to also secure the Iron Gate mountain pass between Samarkand and Bactra. This was as much as Sogdianus dared to take while the Hunas remained a threat, but his conquests (or rather annexations, truthfully) in this direction made the previously well-defended but rather impoverished Indo-Roman kingdom much richer and would provide his heirs with a broader base from which to expand in the future.
Speaking of the Hunas, in this year Mihirabhoja continued to make progress against his rebellious nephew, though it went slower than he would have liked. After baiting Mahipala into launching a major counterattack out of Pataliputra, he sent three loyalist armies to converge upon and surprise him at Aunrihar near the Gomti River. There he inflicted upon the rebels a severe defeat and pursued Mahipala back to Pataliputra, which he placed under siege and cut off from the rest of the rebel territories; their predecessors had done enough restorative work on the city’s defenses to discourage an assault, so Mihirabhoja contented himself with trying to starve Mahipala out. Further to the south, while the infantry of his Orissan detachment laid siege to Raipur, much of the cavalry began to raid in the direction of the self-proclaimed Telugu kingdoms of the eastern Deccan, both to collect resources and slaves for themselves and to reapply pressure onto those rebels – effectively reminding them that the Hunas had not forgotten them, and would indeed return at the earliest opportunity.
On the other side of the world, Albanus of Britannia was gladdened to hear that his expedition had found suitable ground for a colony beyond the Atlantic – and certainly beyond Rome’s reach. Along with the returning colonists he dispatched another pair of ships (to be guided by said returnees) to bring supplies and return with a more detailed report of this island they had discovered, particularly how many additional colonists they could support. Unfortunately this second expedition was slowed by poor weather (even by the standards of the North Atlantic, following a route which bent close to the Arctic, in the seventh century) and the total non-cooperation of the Papar, for the monks had been warned of the Pelagian heretics trying to set up a colony by their fellow Gaels to the southwest.
When the British ships finally reached Porte-Réial, having had to start consuming some of the provisions they were supposed to bring over to survive, they found that the encampment now lay in ruins. In their absence the settlers had mostly starved, having failed to farm the island’s poor soil amid worse weather, facing stiff competition from the Irish on Tír na Ceo for the fishing waters around the island and coming under attacks from the local Wildermen (with whom they were unable to communicate for lack of a translator – the New World monks having also refused to lend them aid in this matter – until misunderstandings escalated to open hostilities) when they tried to forage inland. Anyone who survived the fatal Wilderman raid in April of 649 had long since scattered – perhaps fleeing (and most likely dying) further inland or taking their chances with the hostile Irish on nearby Tír na Ceo – leaving Porte-Réial utterly abandoned. Of course the Riothamus was infuriated when his first colony’s failure was reported back to him not even a year after he’d heard about it just barely beginning to put down roots, but he had begun to learn what needed to be done to ensure better odds of success next time – namely finding more suitable land for agriculture and foraging, staying well away from the Irish and having translators on hand to communicate with any local Wildermen they might run into – and was determined to try again.
Almost nothing remained of the Romano-Britons' first abortive attempt at a New World colony, Porte-Réial, save the earthworks they had thrown up in an ultimately vain effort to defend themselves from hostile locals. Despite this disaster however, their high kings now knew that the lands beyond the Atlantic were hospitable: they need only prepare and plan more wisely for their next attempt
1. Western Roman Empire
2. Eastern Roman Empire
3. March of Arbogast
4. Franks
5. Burgundians
6. Alamanni
7. Bavarians
8. Thuringians
9. Lombards
10. Ostrogoths
11. Visigoths
12. Celtiberians
13. Aquitani
14. Bretons
15. Dulebes
16. Carantanians
17. Horites
18. Mauri
19. Garamantes
20. Remnants of Georgia & Armenia
21. Nubia
22. Hoggar
23. Kumbi
24. Romano-British
25. Anglo-Saxons
26. Picts
27. Dál Riata
28. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta & Connachta
29. Irish of Lesser Paparia, Greater Paparia & the New World
30. Frisians
31. Continental Saxons
32. Vistula Veneti
33. Iazyges
34. Avars
35. Gepids
36. Antae
37. Southern Turkic Khaganate
38. Lakhmids
39. Indo-Romans
40. Dar al-Islam
41. Khazars
42. Kimeks
43. Oghuz Turks
44. Karluks
45. Sogdians & Tocharians
46. Hunas (Mihirabhoja)
47. Hunas (Mahipala)
48. Telugu kingdoms of the Later Salankayanas & Eastern Chutus
49. Kannada kingdoms of the Chalukyas & Gangas
50. Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Pandyas & Cholas
51. Anuradhapura
52. Tibet
53. Later Han
54. Goguryeo
55. Korean kingdoms of Baekje, Silla & Gaya
56. Yamato
57. Champa
58. Funan
59. Srivijaya
[15] The Chinese name for their own language, specifically the dialect spoken by the Han. As of the seventh century the Later Han would have been speaking and writing in ‘Middle Chinese’, a language closer to modern Cantonese than to the Old Chinese of the (Former) Han.
[16] Erzurum.
[17] Trabzon.
[18] Near modern Severobaykalsk.
[19] Penzance.
[20] Isle Madame, Nova Scotia.
[21] Arichat.
[22] The Lucrine Lake in Campania.
[23] Yassıhüyük.
[24] Tell el-Balamun.
[25] Shahrisabz.
And that brings us to the midpoint of this century. @ATP Trust me, the journey's going to matter as much as the destination – without exploring the major developments to come in depth, the outcome they're building up to won't make much sense But first, as I've said before, a brief break in the form of an overview of the now decisively-ascendant Later Han before we return full-throttle to some of the most interesting (appropriately, in the Chinese sense) times for the two Romes yet.
Full throttle indeed, ERE is being throttled and it looks like WRE is going to have another uncivil war before Theodosious reaches the age of majority.
Full throttle indeed, ERE is being throttled and it looks like WRE is going to have another uncivil war before Theodosious reaches the age of majority.
Greek fire time! I doubt it will be a war winning weapon though.
Good point. I think OTL it was developed against the Muslims and may have proved decisive in defeating early attacks on Constantinople by sea but could see 1st use against the Turks here. Although its primary a naval weapon and the Turks have no real navy, at least not on the Med so they would have to find land based uses, which could be more difficult. Possibly a nasty surprise for besiegers attacking a city equipped with such defences?
Well the murderous war between the ERE and the Turks continues, leaving them both potentially vulnerable to other threats, although I suspect this will only occur when the current head of the Muslim empire dies, which will give the two combatants even more time to tear each other apart.
The other Turkish empire fought hard but has been extinguished although how easily China can hold such a vast region, especially if its largely depopulated now by the war and the deportation of the survivors as it would be a hell of a resource sink. Further south incompetent leadership seems to have ended the hopes of the Huna empire and possibly also Buddhism?
On the plus side for them it sounds like the Indo-Romans could have a brighter future, although this would draw them out of their secure mountain bastion. Also it sounds like the Khazers are also going to be more powerful, possibly playing their OTL role of allies to the ERE against the Muslims.
Britain is quiet but the southern British kingdom has put its foot in the water in seeking to establish a settlement in N America but its ruler is starting to realise how expensive and difficult it would be, as well as prompted hostility from its neighbours.
In the WRE things are quiet at the moment but a potentially very destructive storm is simmering and could explode at any time. The two heirs to the throne are now out of Theodahad's hands which probably increases their chances of survival but can they be kept from their mother [and step-father] for that long?
Full throttle indeed, ERE is being throttled and it looks like WRE is going to have another uncivil war before Theodosious reaches the age of majority.
Greek fire time! I doubt it will be a war winning weapon though.
Indeed.All according to plan.Becouse muslims agents are beyond all that wars and misfortunes to take entire world for Allah!
Jokes aside - this time muslims could take even more then in OTL.
Greek fire - good for navy and nothing more.Game changing there,but turks do not have navy anyway.
About America - interesting,when finally somebody find some real city-state.Then we would see real development - capturing rich city is better then building small vilage on your own.
I remember some story on SB with roman colony in America,when they build empire.
Maybe WRE,if they get defeated on mainland,could do the same here?
Generally, I subscribe to the school that weapons don't win wars, and overly relying on a few 'wonder-weapons' to turn the tide rarely (if ever) works out well. While Germany's outsized focus on wunderwaffe in the latter half of WW2 is probably the most infamous example, there's plenty of examples of the same phenomenon playing out earlier in history - as we know the Byzantines' Greek fire couldn't compensate for their many other problems (structural and external alike) in the end, and even the conquistadors bringing guns to an obsidian-club fight wasn't what made their conquest so easy and long-lasting (the Aztecs' neighbors all hating their guts and the tide of disease must've played a much bigger role there than a few muskets & cannons).
All that said, of course, the fire which Leo's hoping to bring to the table won't be without its uses. It's way too optimistic to think that that trick alone can alter the course of the war effortlessly, but at the least he might be able to give Heshana a very rude surprise with it.
Definitely worth keeping an eye on the Khazars & Indo-Romans in future chapters, as well. They both enjoy good positions where the neighborhood powerhouses are distracted or outright shattered, while also neighboring comparatively weak targets for expansion.
Indeed we're approaching a point where more Europeans will strive to join the Irish in colonizing the New World, as the knowledge that it's not only out there but is livable in the long term continues to spread. While the British are both the best-positioned and most motivated to do it right now, the English and maybe even the Picts won't want to be left too far behind. That said, the Romans proper are still going to have way too much to worry about in the Old World to indulge in huge colonial projects of their own in the near future, though it's likely they will have a lingering interest in affairs across the Atlantic as time goes on (in fact they already kind of do, as they've established a precedent of banishing pretenders to the purple before they cause trouble there with Liberius) and will develop some more limited stake in the colony game when (and if) the circumstances permit.
Generally, I subscribe to the school that weapons don't win wars, and overly relying on a few 'wonder-weapons' to turn the tide rarely (if ever) works out well. While Germany's outsized focus on wunderwaffe in the latter half of WW2 is probably the most infamous example, there's plenty of examples of the same phenomenon playing out earlier in history - as we know the Byzantines' Greek fire couldn't compensate for their many other problems (structural and external alike) in the end, and even the conquistadors bringing guns to an obsidian-club fight wasn't what made their conquest so easy and long-lasting (the Aztecs' neighbors all hating their guts and the tide of disease must've played a much bigger role there than a few muskets & cannons).
All that said, of course, the fire which Leo's hoping to bring to the table won't be without its uses. It's way too optimistic to think that that trick alone can alter the course of the war effortlessly, but at the least he might be able to give Heshana a very rude surprise with it.
Definitely worth keeping an eye on the Khazars & Indo-Romans in future chapters, as well. They both enjoy good positions where the neighborhood powerhouses are distracted or outright shattered, while also neighboring comparatively weak targets for expansion.
Indeed we're approaching a point where more Europeans will strive to join the Irish in colonizing the New World, as the knowledge that it's not only out there but is livable in the long term continues to spread. While the British are both the best-positioned and most motivated to do it right now, the English and maybe even the Picts won't want to be left too far behind. That said, the Romans proper are still going to have way too much to worry about in the Old World to indulge in huge colonial projects of their own in the near future, though it's likely they will have a lingering interest in affairs across the Atlantic as time goes on (in fact they already kind of do, as they've established a precedent of banishing pretenders to the purple before they cause trouble there with Liberius) and will develop some more limited stake in the colony game when (and if) the circumstances permit.
Yes,Aztec were dicks,and still do not finish off their enemies.Becouse they need fighting enemies for sacrificies,not slaves.It is strange,that they do not fall earlier.
I read about some indian state which defeated them many times,becouse Aztecs fought to take live prisoners,and those indians fought to kill.
Forget name,as usual
Khazars in OTL becomed jews becouse theit powerfull neigbours were christians and muslims,if nothing change,they could do the same.
Indo romans luck would end when Hunas stop their cyvil war and retake South,two generations maybe?
America would become more popular when they found better lands there.They do not need mysterious cities of gold for that.And sea road from Spain.
P.S "Mysterious cities of gold" is good old cartoon ,watch if you can.And,about superweapons - i read in few books about alternate history about slingers using grenades with blackpowder as gamechanger.
Personally,doubt it - if it was good,somebody would use it.
And saw using WW1 grenades for sling in good french movie "Captain Conan".You coud watch it,too.
P.S
There were at least 2 city-states who beat Aztecs,one of them was Tarascans.
Religion: Confucianism and Taoism, inasmuch as they can be considered religions rather than just traditional and philosophical schools of thought, blended with folk religious practices which differ from region to region. Buddhism is also rapidly growing among the Chinese populace. Indigenous pagan rites are still practiced by the wild folk of the southwest, and Christianity and Manichaeism have joined Buddhism as the new religions from the West which are making some waves in China, though neither are remotely as popular.
Languages: Hànyǔ – that is, the Chinese language. Historians in the future will record the variant spoken by the Chinese of the Later Han era as ‘Middle Chinese’, though certainly its contemporary speakers would not call it that. Numerous local dialects of Chinese distinct from the one used at the imperial court in Luoyang are spoken by the lower orders of society, particularly south of the Yangtze where they have been influenced by the tongues of the indigenous Baiyue and Nanman peoples: these lower-status dialects include Min, Yue and Hakka. Non-Chinese languages within the confines of the Later Han dynasty’s rule include Turkic, Bai-Yi and Vietnamese (the last of the Baiyue languages).
For much of the sixth century and the first few decades of the seventh, the Middle Kingdom was in a state of chaos, divided between eight warring dynasties and four kingdoms straining to break free of the hold of the Sons of Heaven. But no longer: ‘an empire long divided must unite’, as the old saying from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms goes, and this time it fell to a gang of bandits from Mount Hua to do what none of the magnates and generals competing over the carcass of the fallen Chen dynasty could. After many years of hard fighting and wily scheming, they have reunified the land, and proudly sit atop the freshly polished Dragon Throne as its new dynasty – the Later Han (Chinese: Hòu Hàn), named after China’s last truly great dynasty which had been toppled four hundred years ago, the latter of whom are henceforth being referred to as the ‘Former’ Han (Qián Hàn).
From their new seat of power the Later Han have many opportunities, and mercifully few challenges at this juncture in time. China’s greatest and most abundant resource has ever been its people, and even the ravages of the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms period could not put a major dent in that. With such a vast manpower pool to work with, they will not be lacking for workers to build their grand palaces, canals, roads and other infrastructure projects at home, nor soldiers with which to impose their will abroad. Already the incumbent Emperor Renzong, successor to China’s latest unifier Emperor Yang, has begun work on a series of massive canals to link the old Chinese centers of power around the Yellow River to the newer ones around the Yangtze, while also destroying the Northern Turkic Khaganate which had once terrorized China’s northern frontier.
No power exists around the reunited Middle Kingdom which can pose a serious threat to its frontiers as of the mid-seventh century. As has been said, the Northern Turks are no more, having been laid to waste by the innumerable legions of Emperor Renzong and their own treacherous vassals to the west: now many of their former people live in China proper, having been deported from their steppe homeland beyond the Gobi Desert either as slaves or auxiliary troops for the same army that just brought them low. Seemingly ascendant powers in the Yamato to the east and Tibetans to the west have been put in their place, and the Koreans made to bow before the Dragon Throne yet again. The Srivijayans are too far to the south to come into any serious conflict with China, while Funan and the Cham have no desire to engage in hostilities with such an overwhelmingly powerful neighbor. If anything, at present the Dragon is content to digest its northern conquests in peace, and perhaps cast its gaze westward to the Tarim Basin and Central Asia in the future.
Nay, if the Later Han should expect any major challenge in the near future, it will likely come from within. In addition to winning victories abroad, they have worked hard to create peace and prosperity at home, so that the Chinese people can safely rebuild from the devastation of the Eight Dynasties & Four Kingdoms and even reach for new heights of wealth and technological achievement. But their origin as outlaws and progressive land reforms mark them as worse than even mere peasants in the eyes of China’s sages and landowners, even as they try to earn the former’s affection with patronage of the Confucian and Taoist traditions while undermining the latter with their support for the peasantry. A new challenge may also arise from the mandarins they are cultivating with their restoration and expansion of the Former Han-era imperial examination system, for every sufficiently large bureaucracy tends to develop a mind of its own which may not always remain in-line with the wishes of the ruler it serves, while the eunuch officials at court present both a useful tool and a more traditional threat to the Emperors if left unmonitored. Above all, the Later Han would do well not to forget the second half of the Sanguo’s opening lines: ‘an empire, long united, must divide’.
But there is no need to mar the radiant new dawn of China’s newest dynasty by focusing over-much on the specter of such dark clouds. The ancient dynastic cycle always has its ups and downs, and fortunately for Chinese civilization, the Later Han are representing a definitive ‘up’ so far for their subjects. All others who live in the rising Dragon’s shadow must surely tremble as it soars to the heavens, and would do well to keep their heads down beneath its newly energetic gaze lest they end up like any one of the nations which have foolishly battled it in the recent past. Renzong himself aspires to immortality: not for himself, as Qin Shi Huang did to the extreme of consuming mercury, but for his dynasty. And while breaking the dynastic cycle so that they might reign until the stars burn out is an extremely lofty ambition, the Later Han are nothing if not ambitious. They have risen so high already, and have increasingly shed their fear of the heights of power – what’s one more mountain to climb?
The running themes of Later Han governance as of the mid-seventh century are primarily the restoration of law & order throughout China, and a marked shift toward the centralization of the state coupled with a vast expansion of its administrative bureaucracy at the expense of more local and traditional wielders of power. Of course, as with all dynasties to date, the state is helmed by the Huángdì or ‘Emperor’, autocrat of all-under-Heaven: the ‘Son of Heaven’ (Tiānzǐ) whose words were divine commandments from above, and expected to be obeyed immediately by his faithful servants – at least so long as he still has the Mandate of Heaven (Tiānmìng), which is to say, the sanction of the will-of-the-universe itself to govern wisely and well over the people. An Emperor who rules poorly, and/or is beset by natural disasters such as famines or plagues or earthquakes, can be said to have lost the Mandate, opening him to challenge by ambitious rebels from below.
Fortunately, the incumbent Emperor Renzong has continued to build on the successes of his forebears, and neither he nor the Later Han appear likely to lose the Mandate anytime soon. Despite the humble roots of his clan, the Emperor has surrounded himself with no less pomp than past Chinese emperors from more stable dynasties with loftier origins: his court is more colorful and merry than the austere courts surrounding his father and grandfather, signifying his dynasty’s shift in policy from warfare to rebuilding and ensuring Chinese prosperity for ages to come. In keeping with imperial tradition, though his birth name may be Hao Jing (Hao being the name of the Later Han’s specific ruling house), none but his closest family members may call him that: in public he will go by a niánhào or different name for each ‘era’ (distinct periods in an emperor’s reign, by which the Chinese calendar has numbered and identified its years since Emperor Wu of Former Han) – presently he has just ended the era of Wutai (‘martial and grand’) and begun the era of Yongye (‘harmonious endeavor’) after vanquishing the Northern Turks, such that his subjects would address him as Emperor Yongye until he chooses to change the era again. When he perishes, his heir will accord him a posthumous name evaluating his entire reign, but he will primarily be remembered by his temple name – that is, the name by which his descendants will honor & worship him: Renzong, ‘benevolent ancestor’.
The Emperor Renzong (or, technically, Yongye as of 650 AD) expressing appropriate filial piety by completing a stele honoring his late father, Emperor Yang
Beneath the Emperor exists an increasingly vast administrative apparatus, whose elements function as the thousand arms of their sovereign through which his commands are executed. The Three Departments and Six Ministries which Renzong’s father Emperor Yang instituted late in life form the innermost core of the Chinese bureaucracy, building on the reforms of the Chen dynasty to fully supplant the ‘Three Ministries and Nine Lords’ of the Former Han. These ministers and bureaucrats dwell primarily in the imperial capital of Luoyang, only venturing out to the provinces and circuits when necessary, and work more closely with the Emperor than the other administrative officials do.
The titular three departments are:
The Chancellery (Ménxià Shěng), responsible for directly advising the Emperor and consulting with him on edicts. The men of the Chancellery are additionally responsible for the maintenance and security of Luoyang’s gates (hence their nickname, the ‘Agency at the Gate’), the imperial residence and attendants, and the Emperor’s wardrobe and seals. The office of Grand Chancellor is the oldest and most prestigious in the entire Chinese government.
The Department of State Affairs (Shàngshū Shěng), also known as the Imperial Secretariat, constitutes the primary executive arm of the Later Han dynasty. It lords over and coordinates the six ministries of government, as well as the nine ceremonial courts. Due to its importance as the primary engine of the Chinese government, the office of Director (ling) is traditionally held by the imperial Crown Prince – in Renzong’s case, his heir Hao Xianggui – or in cases where the heir to the Dragon Throne is still a minor, left vacant until said Crown Prince comes of age, with its duties being taken up by the Vice Director (puye).
The Central Secretariat (Zhōngshū Shěng), constituting the primary legislative arm of the Later Han dynasty. Its secretaries are responsible for drafting imperial edicts, reading their contents and other incoming messages out loud to the Emperor, answering his questions and making revisions to their proposed policies until he is satisfied. Its Director is the least prestigious of the three central departments.
Furthermore six additional ministries (plus nine ceremonial courts & five directories of such little power comparatively that they are not counted in the overall name of this central Chinese bureaucracy) fall beneath State Affairs’ jurisdiction:
Personnel (Lìbù), responsible for the hiring, appointments, promotions and demotions of officials in the civil administration.
Finance (Mínbù), responsible for the census and associated taxation. Technically its name translates to ‘Ministry of People’, belying both its responsibility for conducting the household-based imperial census and the populist overtures of the Later Han monarchs.
Rites (Lǐbù), not to be confused with the Ministry of Personnel, responsible not only for ensuring that religious rites and court rituals are conducted correctly but also for the imperial examination system and foreign relations.
War (Bīngbù), responsible for the promotions and demotions of military officers, recruitment and the maintenance of imperial arsenals, as well as the post office.
Justice (Xíngbù), responsible for policing, the administration of imperial justice and the upkeep of its prisons. However this Ministry has no control over the Imperial Censorate, a sort of internal affairs agency which exists to investigate corruption within the government (including the Ministry of Justice itself) and answers only to the Emperor.
Public Works (Gōngbù), responsible for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure such as roads and canals, other public projects (such as the reconstruction of the Great Wall and flood control efforts along the Yellow & Yangtze Rivers), the exploitation of natural resources, and the recruitment of temporary workers on these aforementioned public works.
Emperor Renzong meeting with his ministers
Beyond Luoyang, the Later Han have divided the rest of China up into thirteen circuits (dào), three-hundred fifty-eight prefectures (zhōu), and nearly sixteen hundred districts & counties (xiàn) for administrative purposes. From the circuit prefects to the lowest yamen (town mandarins) the officials presiding over these provincial administrative units are appointed by the central government, serve at Luoyang’s leisure and are strictly prohibited from raising private militias of their own: their tenures are spent adjudicating in local matters, collecting taxes to send to Luoyang and reinvesting the tax proceeds redistributed to them from the capital into local projects for years at a time, before the capital inevitably reassigns them elsewhere to prevent them from putting down roots and cultivating a personal powerbase in the province they had originally been assigned to. The Emperors’ hope is that by diffusing power so broadly, no single locality will ever be able to form an effective nexus for opposition to their dynasty.
To staff this great bureaucratic engine of state, the Later Han sovereigns rely upon both the more traditional class of palace eunuchs (tàijiàn) and a newer class of so-called ‘scholar gentry’ (shēnshì) – recruits selected through the imperial examination system. The former continue to enjoy access to the high offices of state on the grounds that, as they cannot father children, they would have less incentive to try to overthrow their employers and establish their own dynasty than most. Many eunuchs, both of Chinese origin and those originally taken as slaves from foreign enemies such as the Northern Turks or Tibetans, serve the Later Han court not only as officials & civil servants in all of their departments & ministries, but also as palace attendants (in particular tending to the ladies & children of the imperial household), personal servants and couriers.
All this said, one may also be forgiven for thinking that by default eunuchs should have motive enough to dislike working for the same people responsible for castrating them. And certainly the legendary corruption of the Ten Attendants, whose crimes contributed to the collapse of the Former Han and the emergence of the Three Kingdoms, has made the Later Han more leery of giving their eunuchs too much power than previous dynasties. Their solution was to create a new class of civil servants, selected for merit and (theoretically) absolutely loyal to the dynasty to whom they owed their fortunes: the scholar-gentlemen, also popularly known by other names such as the literati or mandarins.
Men of good social standing (excluding categories such as diviners, entertainers and vagrants) who could pass a grueling three-day examination (keju) in a sealed chamber, testing both their familiarity with the Confucian canon and whether they could apply the lessons from these ancient texts to statecraft, would win for themselves an administrative appointment in their county. More difficult exams, testing only the best and brightest at the provincial and then nation-wide levels, stood in the way of those who sought higher (and therefore more prestigious & better-paying) offices beyond the county level in the Later Han bureaucracy. To guarantee the highest possible chance of success, prospective examinees would study at whatever specialized school they could afford, with the wealthiest and most ambitious attending the Imperial Academy (Guózǐjiàn) in the capital.
Students preparing to take the imperial civil service examination, or 'keju'
Although the Later Han have gone to great lengths to keep civil government apart from the military, necessity has compelled them to merge the two functions of state in some frontier areas. Nowhere is this more evident than in the far north, where Renzong has established the ‘Anbei Protectorate’ (Ānběi Dūhù Fǔ, formally the ‘Protectorate-General for the Pacification of the North’) atop the core of the Northern Turkic Khaganate – now a sparsely populated border region following the deportation of most of its indigenous Turco-Mongol population, with Chinese strength concentrated into the impromptu colonies growing out of their permanent military camps and outposts there.
A Protector-General (dūhù) – the conquering general Wang Yangxiang as of 650 AD – governs over the vast lands stretching from the Gobi Desert to Lake Baikal as the region’s supreme military dictator, wielding absolute military and political authority alike and answering only to the Emperor (who can dismiss him at any time). The Protector-General is supported by six legates (jiédùshǐ) governing the smaller military districts (Dūdū Fǔ) which this vast territory has been divided up into. They only closely govern the fortified encampments of their soldiers, which in time will grow into Chinese colonies of a sort as those soldiers’ descendants continue to live and fight on the frontier, and collectively they must work with the few remaining (all non-Tegreg and highly autonomous) Turkic tribes in the region to maintain the Emperor’s peace and good order.
From the cloistered imperial court in Luoyang’s palace, the Later Han emperors have striven to re-establish the Confucian ‘four categories of the people’ (Sì Mín) as a key part of their greater effort to restore harmony to China. Though they claim to be reasserting the old traditions of Confucius however, there are some distinct differences in their new order which sets it apart from the old order of the long-gone Former Han and Eastern Jin. Most prominently, the Later Han are in the process of replacing the old landed aristocracy with a new class of scholar-gentry, while completely divesting their former military responsibilities onto a professional military force; empowering the peasantry with a new equal-field system, which has the benefit of further strengthening their central authority and indebting said peasants to the dynasty; and promoting social mobility to a degree rarely seen before in Chinese history, at least until they have sufficiently expanded their civil and military bureaucracy to handle the needs of empire.
Since the scholar-bureaucrats were the only people (other than eunuchs) qualified to hold office under the Later Han regime, it is hardly surprising that they are rapidly evolving into a social class in their own right, even though in theory their position is not supposed to be a hereditary one. With their salaries and the connections they made in government, they are often able to buy up considerable estates & quasi-legally keep them in the family in spite of the Later Han’s pretension to being the sole ultimate landowner in all of China, and to subsist off the rents from the tenant farmers working for them. In turn they would send their sons to more elite schools in hopes that they will be able to improve their chances of passing the keju, thereby securing a government sinecure off of which to live comfortably and perpetuating the family tradition. This has allowed them to increasingly supplant the old military and landowning aristocracy at the peak of the ‘four categories’, and as a distinct social class – both the material and intellectual elite of China – they are now referred to as the ‘scholar-gentry’ (shēnshì).
The lesser farmers (nóng) constitute the second traditional stratum of Chinese society, and if the scholar-gentry can be said to be the brain of the Later Han regime, then these peasants must clearly form both its heart and spine. China is the most populous nation on the Earth, with as many as 50 million citizens as of their mid-seventh-century census, and the great majority of these are tillers of the soil. It is in the interest of the Later Han to appease them with the implementation of the equal-field system, by which all land in the empire is declared to be the property of the Son of Heaven and parceled out as equally as possible to the humble families who work on it: the stated ambition of the Emperors is to ensure that all of their subjects will have enough farmland with which to support themselves, although certainly breaking the power of the old magnates and instilling a sense of debt to their dynasty in these small farmers was a nice bonus, if not the real intention of their land reform. In return, not only do the farmers remain sufficiently sated so as to not revolt, but they provide the Later Han with the manpower pool critical to their great works and military recruitment. Soldier-smallholders, or fǔbīng ('territorial soldiers'), are a unique sub-category of the farmer caste who will be described in greater detail in the Military section.
The artisans (gōng) are considered less vital to Confucian society than the food-producing farmers, but are still ranked more highly than the merchants who technically produce nothing. Guilds of skilled laborers – papermakers, blacksmiths, potters, and so on – increasingly dominate production in China’s cities, as the safety afforded by Later Han rule has allowed the most skilled of craftsmen to accumulate sufficient capital to hire others as apprentices and expand their family businesses into larger enterprises capable of controlling the exercise of their craft in their neighborhoods & districts. Among these guilds, the silk-weaving industry stands out in that it is overwhelmingly dominated by women: for many centuries silkworm farming has been exclusively practiced by women, having inherited the task from the Yellow Emperor’s wife Leizu according to legend, and as clothmaking is also traditionally considered women’s work they dominate the rest of the silk manufacturing process as well.
Merchants (shāng) form the fourth and least esteemed of the four Confucian castes. However, though the Confucian intellectual elite holds them in contempt for not actually producing anything of value with their own hands – merely exchanging and shuffling around the goods produced by others – this has not kept them from accumulating wealth and becoming quite prosperous & influential themselves under Later Han rule. Ironically, though the Later Han began their career as bandits who preyed on trading caravans, as Emperors they have worked hard to secure China’s roads & waterways from brigands much like they used to be, and this (along with the expansion of additional infrastructure) has only benefited the merchants who can now trade & travel more safely than they have in over a century. The greatest merchant families can easily make as big a profit as any circuit prefect collects in taxes annually, and will happily exploit the imperial examinations remaining open to their caste (for now, which they understand is almost certainly only a temporary measure) by pushing their sons into the best academies money can buy, in hopes that they will pass the keju and pull their family’s status up from the bottom of the Four Occupations to its peak.
A rare case where all four Confucian castes can be seen in one place: the county administrator (a scholar-gentleman) hosts a feast to which he has invited prominent local smallholders (farmers), the heads of the city guilds (artisans) and rich traders (merchants)
Of course, there are many occupations which exist outside of this Confucian ideal, and are accordingly considered lower-status for the most part. Soldiers are generally disdained by the scholars, who consider them to have embraced the concept of wǔ (all-destroying violence and warfare) by default while they themselves are peaceful cultivators of intellect and creators of peace (wén), but the Later Han themselves do not share this contempt for the pragmatic reason of not wanting to give their army cause to overthrow them, so soon after having just secured absolute power over China. Other individuals who are considered ‘mean people’ (jiànrén) and accordingly treated contemptuously by polite Confucian society include entertainers (of all kinds – for example, a regulation passed under Renzong stipulating that all male prostitutes must wear a green headscarf to identify themselves in public has given rise to the poular insult ‘Tā dài lǜ mào zi’, or ‘you wear a green hat’, implying effeminacy and infidelity) and slaves (including many new ones gathered from the Turkic steppe by Renzong’s most recent victorious expedition), who are sometimes one and the same.
Beyond the society of the Chinese (Han, Min, Yue, Hakka, etc. alike), the empire of the Later Han also encompasses several non-Chinese peoples of note. The most recent addition to China’s ethnic composition are of course the Tegreg Turks (Tiělè), many thousands of whom were deported from their homeland after Renzong conquered it. Those who have not simply been reduced to slavery have been compelled to serve China instead as mounted auxiliaries, for the Later Han have become well aware of the skill & ferocity of their cavalry from their battles across the northern steppe & desert, and soldiering will become a hereditary occupation within their families. Immediately to the east of the former Turkic homeland, the Chinese also hold sway over some of the Tungusic Mohe tribes living in the northeastern provinces of Liaodong and Liaoxi near the Korean border, who are said to be descendants of the ancient Donghu that troubled the northernmost of the Warring States from ages past.
Meanwhile, on the other side of China various ‘barbaric’ subject peoples descended from the pre-Han Chinese natives can be found in the jungles and mountains, often as autonomous subjects of the empire manning its wild frontier. In the southwest the Chinese collectively ascribe to the Bai, Yi, Zhuang, Dai and Miao tribes the name of Nánmán, ‘Southern Barbarians’, as they once did in the times of the Three Kingdoms when these peoples had been briefly united by their most famous high king, Meng Huo, and his warlike wife Zhurong. Further still to the southeast dwell a people who the Chinese call the Nányuè (‘Southern Yue’), but who call themselves Người Việt (‘Yue People’) – the Vietnamese, last surviving remnant of the Baiyue tribes who once dominated the lands south of the Yangtze, who have managed to cling to their traditions even in defeat and after centuries of subjugation. Further to the west, Later Han advances against the Tibetans has brought a number of those hardy mountain folk under Chinese rule, in addition to the distinct Qiang people with whom they are more familiar.
A decidedly less-than-flattering depiction of a Vietnamese slave as a dark-skinned dwarf at the feet of his Chinese masters, dated from the Later Han era
The Later Han’s promotion of a traditional basis for their rule has extended to the equal promotion of Confucian and Taoist teachings, while also preserving a tolerant attitude to outsider religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Manichaeism – of which the first, having first been introduced under the Chen dynasty more than a century prior, is China’s fastest-growing religion as of the mid-seventh century. Confucian scholars have been drawn into an increasingly intense rivalry with their Taoist and especially Buddhist counterparts, and are articulating a more strictly materialist and rationalist philosophy to counter the mysticism of the others & safeguard what they hold to be China’s cultural heritage at its purest. The Later Han Emperors themselves tend to gravitate between the rationalist and state-interventionist policies pushed by the Confucian intellectuals on one hand and the laissez-faire ones promoted by the Taoists on the other, with Renzong and his father Yang favoring the former, though in a much more moderate and restrained fashion (for example, in continuing to allow for a greater degree of social mobility through the imperial examinations) than the Confucian faction would like.
As has been said, there are several religions introduced from beyond the borders of China which have found rising popularity among the Chinese. Of these, Buddhism is far and away the most successful as of the mid-seventh century: originally brought by Central Asian and Indian mercers in Chen times, it has spread like wildfire even during the chaos of the Eight Dynasties and Four Kingdoms Period, attracting converts from all strata of Chinese society dissatisfied with Confucianism and Taoism’s answers to their problems and spawning several uniquely Chinese schools of thought over the past hundred-and-a-half years. The Mahāyāna or ‘Great Vehicle’ branch of Buddhism is the most popular one in China, in contrast to the dominance of the Theravāda branch in India, as its veneration of boddhisatvas (saints who have attained enlightenment, but consciously refuse Nirvana so that they might help others in this world find enlightenment as well) makes it more appealing to the ancestor-worshiping and worldly sensibilities of the Confucian Chinese – and in turn, though they may be loath to admit it, Buddhist concepts are influencing the Confucian thinkers of Later Han times as well. Of the Mahayana schools, an especially meditative one native to China called Zen (Chán) has become especially popular, and Buddhist monasteries and convents are acquiring large amounts of land donated by the newly faithful – something which may also arouse the jealousy of the Confucian and Taoist establishment in the future…
Additional outsider religions which have found a following in China, though not nearly to the extent of Buddhism, include Christianity and Manichaeism. The former, known to the Chinese as the ‘Luminous Religion’ (Jǐngjiào), was introduced earlier this century by the Indo-Roman missionary Sophagasenus, and is chiefly associated with said Indo-Romans (named ‘Later Ionians’ or Hòuyuān by the Chinese, who seem to consider them successors of the long-gone Greco-Bactrians or Dayuān owing to their geographic location and many of Belisarius’ soldiers being of Greek extraction) as well as the greater Roman Empires they broke off from; the Middle Kingdom knows enough of the great empire it trades with at the western end of the Silk Road to distinguish between the Western Roman Empire, which keeps the original Dàqín designation of the Roman Empire, and the Eastern Roman Empire, which the Chinese now call Fúlǐn and believe to be in strife with Dàqín. As the religion continues to quietly grow beneath the notice of the imperial authorities, the Heptarchy may find it worthwhile to nominate a bishop and organize a whole Diocese of Serica in another century or two. Meanwhile Manichaeism, or the ‘Religion of Light’ (Míngjiào), has slightly older roots in China than Christianity and is increasingly associated with the Turks, especially now that the Tengriist Northern Turks have fallen while their Manichaean cousins to the south still endure.
Chinese Buddhist art from the seventh century, painted under the Later Han
The Imperial Chinese war machine is one that makes fullest use of their empire’s greatest and most numerous resource – the Chinese people themselves. In every war they have fought against outside forces, the Later Han and preceding dynasties have consistently brought a huge (or downright overwhelming) numerical advantage to the table, and it is not uncommon for travelers from as far as the Roman world to hear of Chinese hosts burying adversaries who they outnumber by four, eight or twelve times under the sheer weight of their soldiers. But it would not be accurate to put China’s battlefield victories down to just its enormous manpower pool: the numbers belie a good deal of mechanical ingenuity, tactical complexity and adaptability rivaling that of the Romans, and the employment of non-Chinese auxiliary forces in specialized roles, all factors which are no less important to the triumphs of the Later Han than the sheer number of soldiers they can field at any given time.
Organizationally, the Later Han have adopted the military system of the Former Han as a base, while adding some major innovations of their own. The massive numbers of soldiers for which they are best known are the result of Former Han-style conscription, to which all able-bodied Chinese men at & above the age of twenty are subject unless they are able to pay a scutage tax, which none but the wealthy could possibly afford. Conscripts will not be discharged and permitted to return to their households until either two years have passed, or whatever crisis necessitated their drafting in the first place has been brought to an early end.
However the core of the Later Han’s military power are its ‘territorial soldiers’, or fǔbīng, rather than masses of draftees. Not dissimilar to the smallholding citizen-soldiers forming the heart of the Western Roman army (but certainly far more numerous – with over 600 fǔbīng units in the mid-seventh century, the Later Han can normally count on 150-250,000 of these soldiers, quite literally ten times as many smallholder legionaries as the Stilichians can muster even at the best of times, organized into many 4,000-man divisions of which up to five can be further grouped into an expeditionary corps at a time), the fǔbīng are organized into units of four to ten families apiece, all of whom are allotted small plots of private land exempted from the equal-field system. In exchange for keeping these farms in the family, they owe the imperial state hereditary military service. Every year, even those male family members who haven’t already been assigned to the frontier or a field army are rotated in & out of Luoyang or other military bases closer to their homes for training and guard duty to keep them sharp, and they are expected to be able to quickly assemble for a campaign on short notice. The vast majority of the fǔbīng households are concentrated in China’s northwest, especially around Luoyang and the upper Yellow River basin from where the Later Han themselves originated.
Generally, the Later Han rely on the fǔbīng for most of their foreign expeditions, while conscription edicts are only issued in times of a major foreign invasion, civil conflict or at most a short-term expedition against a close-by enemy where the deployment of such overwhelming manpower is expected to bring the war to a victorious conclusion very quickly, like the recent war with the Northern Turks. Accordingly fǔbīng troops are well-trained and equipped, with all but their missile contingents outfitted in heavy míngguāngjiǎ (‘bright-brilliant armor’) made of iron or steel lamellae-like flakes, bound with cord or lace depending on their rank. Conscript troops are much less so, having been trained for only a few weeks to a month before being sent to the front with the ‘cord-and-plaque’ armor (a cuirass made of low-quality front-and-back iron plates held together by two simple cords of rope) popularized for common soldiers under the preceding Song and Chen dynasties, a one-piece iron helmet or even just a padded cap, and a spear & long shield or crossbow.
Chinese infantry formations on the offensive
Many of the fǔbīng (as well as all of the conscripts) do battle on foot in huge formations, intimidating their foes with both discipline and sheer numbers as they move and fight in such a way as to give the impression of being an unstoppable, highly coordinated onslaught. While the latter’s less-than-impressive equipment has already been described above and require no further exploration, the former use thrusting spears, the dāo (a single-edged sword) and tower shield or bows and crossbows, of which the Later Han are known to manufacture both heavier conventional single-shot crossbows and repeating crossbows (zhūgě nǔ) capable of firing up to ten small bolts without reloading. However, due to the latter’s extremely short effective range and how much smaller its bolts are compared to those of the regular crossbow, the repeater is not a popular weapon and has a reputation as a tool more suited to women and weaker men seeking to defend their homes from robbers than a true soldier’s weapon in the field of battle. Officers typically wield the jiàn, a double-edged blade, in the place of the enlisted man’s dāo.
All this said, although Chinese armies are traditionally quite infantry-centric and that of the Later Han is no exception, the new dynasty is putting in the work to expand their cavalry corps to account for between a quarter to a third of the fǔbīng troops, so that they might more effectively deal with the nomadic threats on their northern border and carry out far-reaching mobile expeditions into the west. Later Han cavalry divisions raised from the fǔbīng families are invariably well-armored and versatile heavy horsemen, as the dynasty has outsourced its light cavalry capabilities to Turkic auxiliaries and mercenaries from Inner Asia: they are almost universally armed with bows, a saddle quiver containing up to thirty arrows, a long dāo as a secondary melee weapon, and a lance or glaive as their main one in addition to a smaller wrist-mounted shield for close combat, although some Later Han horsemen are also known for using more exotic weapons such as maces, war-picks and even meteor hammers.
Not content with heavily armoring their riders, the Later Han have also taken the Chinese tradition of horse-armor to new heights, although full-body barding is still rare and seen only in the most elite formations – most of their cavalry horses would sport a metal chamfron (mask for head protection) and partial rawhide or iron-lamellar frontal barding than a full coat of iron or steel flakes. Mirroring the Turkic style, they are expected to draw enemies out of formation with their arrows and feigned retreats before closing in with lance and glaive to finish off anyone who they haven’t already shot dead. The Later Han’s cavalry forces were originally organized and equipped specifically to counter the Northern Turks, but since said Turks have been defeated (and ironically still proved more than a match for these specialized opponents of theirs in the final battles of the Later Han’s conquest of their Khaganate), in peacetime these elite mounted troops are almost exclusively assigned to protect the frontier either as border guards or a mobile reserve.
Heavy cavalry of the Later Han riding towards their final confrontation with the Northern Turks at Ötüken
The Chinese back their massive and diverse numbers of soldiers with an equally impressive logistics and engineering train, not unlike the Roman armies far to the west. The huge and well-organized supply trains of the Later Han army are the reason why its great hosts did not simply starve to death or die of thirst in the Gobi Desert, and that was just in their most recent conflict with the Northern Turks. Military engineers have similarly proven indispensable to the Later Han’s campaigns to reunify China – fortifying their camps, helping them ford the numerous rivers crisscrossing the land, and digging roads on which their armies can more quickly march – and they are no less useful in the foreign terrain of China’s external enemies, whether they are tasked with setting up crude elevators with which to move supplies on the Himalayan mountainside or identifying and digging wells on the Turkic steppe. Against more sophisticated or better-fortified enemies (such as rival Chinese dynasties), the Later Han can count on these engineers to put together a broad array of complex siege engines, ranging from hinged ‘cloud ladders’ and mobile siege towers to covered battering rams, repeating ballistae and mangonels, the latter of whom’s design the Rouran/Avars had copied and used to great effect against Roman cities in the far west.
Aside from the ethnically Chinese majority, the Later Han have also taken to recruiting considerable numbers of auxiliary troops from neighboring non-Chinese ethnic groups to round out its army’s weaknesses. Of these the Tiele Turkic cavalry are the most numerous and best known, as many thousands of the defeated Turks have agreed to fight for their conqueror rather than have themselves and their kin be reduced to slavery; they provide the Later Han with horse archers, light cavalry and additional elite heavy horsemen. From the Nanman and Vietnamese peoples, the Later Han can call up skilled light infantry outfitted in homemade rattan armor, nimble foot-scouts and skirmishers armed with javelins & poison darts. And from the west come their Tibetan and Qiang subjects, hardy mountain infantrymen who go into battle clad in ‘mirror armor’ – a combination of iron mail and bronze or steel discs, neither of which the Chinese use themselves. These auxiliary contingents enhance the strengths of the Later Han’s Chinese core forces while covering their weaknesses (chiefly a lack of light troops), and so contribute in their own distinct ways to keeping their conqueror’s army not only the largest but also consistently the strongest in East Asia as of the mid-seventh century.
Tiele auxiliary cavalry in Later Han service moving to flank Tibetan footmen who've been pinned down by the Chinese infantry
I didn't realise how completely the eastern steppes north of the Gobi had been depopulated. Can the Later Han manage to maintain control over such a vast region, which is likely to be a significant fiscal drain? If not who gets draw in to fill in the vacuum?
This would be almost certain to butterfly Ghenghis and the Mongols but of new steppe groups managed to settle the region someone else could rise as their equivalent.
Eternal dynasty is impossible,but ,if Emperor not only teach his son well,but also made rule for teaching all next emperors,it should last till next big natural disaster.
P.S Maybe all new emperors would be checking if their goverment is still working well? and made it mandatory,let say,each 10 years ?
All Empires felled becouse ruling elites gradually becomed weak and corrupted.If they keep checking for it....
Most likely, as it does seem China's managed to break the old curse of 'interesting times' for a while at least. They're definitely well-positioned for a Tang-like renaissance between being reunified, having craploads of resources & manpower to play with, and all the other major powers near them that they haven't already subdued being distracted or mired in civil wars (or just dead, in the case of the Northern Turks). In fact the Later Han can be said to be a bit better off than the early Tang IOTL were, since the Northern & Southern Dynasties period was brought to an early end by the (Liu) Song ITL and China then spent most of the 5th and 6th centuries united under the Song & Chen, as opposed to remaining fractured and engaged in constant upheaval for ~200 years straight from the demise of the Jin to the rise of the Sui (who then had their own problems before imploding and being toppled by the Tang after fewer than 40 years in power).
I didn't realise how completely the eastern steppes north of the Gobi had been depopulated. Can the Later Han manage to maintain control over such a vast region, which is likely to be a significant fiscal drain? If not who gets draw in to fill in the vacuum?
This would be almost certain to butterfly Ghenghis and the Mongols but of new steppe groups managed to settle the region someone else could rise as their equivalent.
There's no denying that those northern steppes are in a very bad way, but I didn't specify that the population there was Turco-Mongol for nothing. The Tegregs & their fellow Turks in that region may have been pretty much destroyed by their disastrous final war and consequent deportations, but the Mongolic peoples (precursors to the Keraites, Khamags, Merkits, Naimans, etc.) are still around and marginally to moderately better off than their former Turkic neighbors, depending on how close they had been to the Tegregs.
It'll definitely take them a long time to fully recover and pose any sort of meaningful threat to China, but then 600-700 years is a long time indeed. Such a long time, in fact, that I must admit I don't have much planned that far ahead 😅 I can say with confidence that our specific Genghis isn't a religious figure and thus is not one of the three butterfly-proofed individuals I do have planned, but the jury's still out on a similar nomadic conqueror arising from the ranks of the Mongols all those centuries down the road.
Eternal dynasty is impossible,but ,if Emperor not only teach his son well,but also made rule for teaching all next emperors,it should last till next big natural disaster.
P.S Maybe all new emperors would be checking if their goverment is still working well? and made it mandatory,let say,each 10 years ?
All Empires felled becouse ruling elites gradually becomed weak and corrupted.If they keep checking for it....
While the exact longevity of the Later Han is naturally a huge spoiler, rest assured they will be trying mightily to avoid falling for as long as they can. Thanks to their name, they also do have a pretty obvious measuring stick to compete against in that regard - the original/Former Han's ~400 years.
On a side note, it has not escaped my notice that this thread has hit 20k views as of today. Big thanks from the bottom of my heart to all you wonderful readers 😀
Eternal dynasty is impossible,but ,if Emperor not only teach his son well,but also made rule for teaching all next emperors,it should last till next big natural disaster.
P.S Maybe all new emperors would be checking if their goverment is still working well? and made it mandatory,let say,each 10 years ?
All Empires felled becouse ruling elites gradually becomed weak and corrupted.If they keep checking for it....
The problem tends to be that even a good ruler depends on his government bureaucrats and if enough of them become corrupt then they will find no corruption to report to him.
Or alternatively that there's so much infighting that the ruler is unable to clear out most of the bad wood and often will end up being persuaded that the good wood is bad and removing that. This assuming of course that the ruler himself isn't corrupt in terms of being lazy or too concerned with what he thinks are the important roles for a ruler and missing what he needs to be doing.
There's no denying that those northern steppes are in a very bad way, but I didn't specify that the population there was Turco-Mongol for nothing. The Tegregs & their fellow Turks in that region may have been pretty much destroyed by their disastrous final war and consequent deportations, but the Mongolic peoples (precursors to the Keraites, Khamags, Merkits, Naimans, etc.) are still around and marginally to moderately better off than their former Turkic neighbors, depending on how close they had been to the Tegregs.
Ah I misread this as the Mongols having been included in the mass clearance that occurred for the Turks. That could mean they play a significant role earlier possibly.
It'll definitely take them a long time to fully recover and pose any sort of meaningful threat to China, but then 600-700 years is a long time indeed. Such a long time, in fact, that I must admit I don't have much planned that far ahead 😅 I can say with confidence that our specific Genghis isn't a religious figure and thus is not one of the three butterfly-proofed individuals I do have planned, but the jury's still out on a similar nomadic conqueror arising from the ranks of the Mongols all those centuries down the road.
So your not, yet anyway, planned that far ahead. Which would rule out a certain monk in Wittenberg. Makes me think who those other two religious leaders are but no doubt we will find out in time. Suspecting at least one will be a Christian reformer of some form or another but could be wrong. I was hoping you were taking it to the 24th century at least.
While the exact longevity of the Later Han is naturally a huge spoiler, rest assured they will be trying mightily to avoid falling for as long as they can. Thanks to their name, they also do have a pretty obvious measuring stick to compete against in that regard - the original/Former Han's ~400 years.
Well intend doesn't mean they will succeed of course. Too much could go wrong in part because they are so secure they become complacent. Possibly a succession crisis between multiple sons of an emperor for instance. The Hana looked very secure in India only a decade or so back but some bad decisions have left them reeling and I suspect at least one of the Roman empires could well have gone down by now without author fiet.
Plus of course the Han had their own interim between the early and late Han.
On a side note, it has not escaped my notice that this thread has hit 20k views as of today. Big thanks from the bottom of my heart to all you wonderful readers 😀
Although the Turks seem to have been hit harder than the ERE which has given a significantly breather for the latter. Although a new threat is slowly gathering in the south. I get the feeling that the Islamic explosion northwards is likely to happen after the death of Mohammad's son rather than of the prophet himself - or at least after the civil wars and unrest that will probably follow that death. I could see Talhah ending up as the 1st Caliph here or possibly marrying into the prophet's family and gaining the throne that way.
