Probably the best thing as with the Khazars on the offensive in the east it forces them on the defensive. Especially since the empire has a clear naval superiority. However it would be pretty hostile ground with the bulk of the Egyptians as well as the Muslims opposed to the empire. Could go either way and there is the possibility that the Muslims might be content to lose Egypt as an uncomfortable province for the empire to hold - albeit a very rich on - while they make progress in the Levant region.
Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!
- Thread starter Circle of Willis
- Start date
Probably the best thing as with the Khazars on the offensive in the east it forces them on the defensive. Especially since the empire has a clear naval superiority. However it would be pretty hostile ground with the bulk of the Egyptians as well as the Muslims opposed to the empire. Could go either way and there is the possibility that the Muslims might be content to lose Egypt as an uncomfortable province for the empire to hold - albeit a very rich on - while they make progress in the Levant region.
No military changes till 13th century? it seems,that mongols would come on schedule here.
Attacking Egypt seems logical,especially if nubians help.
By the way,why they do not attacked muslims? they knew,that they are next.
P.S about strongholds without good engineers - we poles made many of them from 910AD in OTL,when,instead of average earth wall,they made big wooden boxes which was filled with stones or earth,and then covered by earth.
It was easier to built,and stronger,too.
Attacking Egypt seems logical,especially if nubians help.
By the way,why they do not attacked muslims? they knew,that they are next.
P.S about strongholds without good engineers - we poles made many of them from 910AD in OTL,when,instead of average earth wall,they made big wooden boxes which was filled with stones or earth,and then covered by earth.
It was easier to built,and stronger,too.
Another thing,or rather person.I read few books about chineese judge from Tang dynasty period,wroten by Robert van Gulik who used old chineese book
Since he lived since 630 t0 700 AD,@Circle of Willis could still use him for his China.
Since he lived since 630 t0 700 AD,@Circle of Willis could still use him for his China.
688-691: Push and pull
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Aloysius returned to Syria with Constantine and his army in tow early in 688, docking at Laodicea in March and immediately moving to relieve Antioch to the north as he had done Leptis Magna the previous year. Ali’s scouts forewarned him of the Roman approach and he left a part of his army behind to keep the Ghassanids and Syro-Greek forces bottled up behind Antioch’s walls, while moving to engage the Emperor in the favorable terrain provided by the wooded and watered gardens of Daphne (so named after the Hellenic naiad) a few miles south of the city. The Hashemites had been unable to take full advantage of the defensive value of the Leontes River back in 686 due to the speed at which Aloysius had crossed it and then the fury with which he defended his bridge-head, but this time Ali was able to comfortably occupy the Woods of Daphne ahead of the Romans’ arrival and – between his terrain advantage and the comparable sizes of their armies, both around 20-25,000 strong – expected to finally defeat the Augustus of all Rome with ease.
Aloysius was no stranger to forest battles, however, and the Woods of Daphne were a well-manicured retreat for the aristocracy – not exactly comparable to the wild and sprawling Teutoburger Wald which he had also overcome. The legions barreled through their Arab opponents’ efforts to block the paved Roman roads which ran through the gardens, and had both the discipline and heavy equipment to withstand the ambushes which they tried to spring from the thickest of thickets amid the gardens and fountains. At one point the Muslims even temporarily succeeded in separating Aloysius’ vanguard from the majority of his army with a wall of rubble torn from the ruined ancient temple to Apollo built by Seleucus Nicator in ages past (already damaged and abandoned by a fire set in the time of Julian the Apostate), but once more Aloysius fought off his foes – this time ably assisted by his now-blooded son – until his legions had dismantled the crude Islamic barricade and were able to come to his rescue.
After fighting a losing fight for two days, the frustrated Ali gave the order to fall back to the east on the third day, once the defenders of Antioch had made the decision to sally and forced his siege detachment away from their city. Aloysius wasted no time in linking up with the Ghassanid & Syro-Greek forces and then taking the fight to the retreating Arabs, promptly spending the rest of 688 evicting them from those cities and villages across Syria, Mesopotamia & Palaestina which they had previously seized in his absence. For his part, Ali evidently had decided that his prospects of defeating the Roman Emperor in a head-on battle at this time were dubious at best, so in an attempt to preserve his remaining forces he withdrew from all but those sites which he deemed important and fought only for major fortresses & settlements such as Edessa, Dara and Apamea-Zeugma. Aloysius’ aggressive pursuit kept him on the backfoot, preventing him from consolidating his forces as easily as he would have liked, and one by one these cities fell back into his hands over the rest of 686 anyway.
Roman and Ghassanid troops preparing to ambush an Arab column during the latter's retreat from the Woods of Daphne near Antioch
Engaging in combat for most of the year did not keep Aloysius from directing family affairs, albeit with less direct involvement than he would have liked, alongside his wife. For some time Helena had sought to find a worthy husband for their daughter Serena (now a grown woman of twenty-one), and though loath to finally part with the last of her children to still live at court with her, this year the Empress settled on a promising captain from a Macedonian family of high birth named Thomas Trithyrius. Besides having ably campaigned in the Caucasus with the Khazars, Georgians and Armenians, his father Theodotus had been one of many patricians to side with Helena against her first husband Tryphon two decades prior and was appointed Consul for the East twice by her (664-665 and 674-675) for it, hence the latter’s nickname Dishypatos (‘twice-consul’). Aloysius signed off on the proposal in the hope of securing the support of the Trithyrii and other aristocratic Greek families for Constantine when the latter should succeed him as Augustus of all Rome, and Comes Thomas was temporarily recalled from Edessa in the summer so that he might marry and try to conceive a child with the imperial princess before being sent back to the front lines.
While Ali was getting pummeled by the Augustus to the northeast, his big brother was working on regaining ground in North Africa. King Stilicho had used the time and space bought for him by Aloysius to fully muster the strength of his African kingdom, and bolstered by the Garamantian refugees driven away by the Caliph’s original offensive, he now advanced across the Libyan coast to try to push into Cyrenaica and then Egypt from the west. The Moors recaptured Hesperides[1] from its Arab defenders on the cusp of the searing African summer, but ran into massive resistance spearheaded by Abd al-Rahman himself west of the ruined Cyrene soon after. Following this defeat Stilicho pulled back a ways to the west, making his stand at the sacked remains of Arae Philaenorum and successfully holding back the Arab assault with the help of those parts of the town walls which were still standing. While the Romans in Africa had avoided the worst-case scenario and actually ended the year with more ground than they had taken, it was also clear to Stilicho and his officers that they could not retake Egypt on their own, something which the king made clear to the Augustus in his messages.
Beyond Rome’s border, the second Sayyid brother’s record was closer to the first than the third this year, as Al-Abbas continued to push the Khazars and their remaining allied contingent back in the eastern Caucasus. Mithranes & Kundaçiq were forced to retreat north of the Kura after suffering a defeat at the Battle of Parsabad, as without the Roman and Armenian troops called away by Helena to help defend Upper Mesopotamia against Ali in the previous year, they were unable to hold back the Islamic counterattack. News of this latest reversal persuaded Aloysius and his generals that they could not win the war so long as they divided their forces up across such a broad front stretching from the Caspian to Cyrenaica, in which the Arabs would always enjoy the advantage on account of the non-Ephesian locals’ sympathies and how much closer the front-line was to their powerbase than Aloysius’ back in Western Europe. Instead, the Emperor began formulating plans for a decisive strike to crush the head of the snake – Abd al-Rahman, who he judged to be the most capable of the senior Sayyid brothers – in Egypt, link Roman Africa to the Roman Levant, and hopefully cripple Islam’s fighting strength in the coming years.
The Khazars’ difficulties this year did not end in the eastern Caucasus. By this time the great Talhah ibn Talib had died of old age, not long outliving his master and friend Qasim ibn Muhammad, and the Hashemite court was eager to find a replacement for God’s Lance. Abd al-Rahman and Al-Abbas thought they might have found him in the person of Maslamah al-Sulami, a scion of the Banu Sulaym (a Hejazi Arab tribe with close ties to the Quraish) who had been the most successful of the Arab generals left in Persia while the latter had moved to shore up the defenses of the Caucasus. After overseeing the reconstruction of the Great Wall of Gorgan (even if it wasn’t entirely up to the old Sassanid standard) he was rewarded with command of the Islamic armies in Persia in Al-Abbas’ continued absence.
A battle between Kundaçiq Tarkhan's Khazars and Al-Abbas ibn Qasim's Arabs
With his command, Al-Sulami launched a daring counterattack which caught Kundaç Khagan – at the time still consolidating his hold on Khorasan and not expecting the Arabs to go on the offensive after the thrashing he’d previously handed them – off-guard. He dealt the Khazars their most serious defeat in the east to date at the Battle of the Oxus in the early summer, but Kundaç rallied his warriors to crush the Arabs and send them reeling back soon after they had crossed that great Khorasani river[2]. Although Al-Sulami had barely avoided death or captivity (probably soon followed by death) and thus the fate of Cyrus of Persia, and a defeat this early in his career demonstrated that he would not be an equal or superior to the late Talhah (who had never known defeat until he ran into Aloysius very late in his life), his earlier victories had shaken Kundaç out of the belief that Persia would be easily conquered and added pressure to the Romans to win the war quickly and decisively in the west.
Well east of this warzone, a new one was opening up as China’s armies marched out of Jiaozhi to restore their new ally Harivarman to the Champan throne. Against the 125,000 Chinese soldiers arrayed against them, Prabhasadharman could only muster some 30,000 reinforced by another 20,000 Srivijayans sent by his father-in-law Sangramadhananjaya. Despite an initial victory over the Chinese vanguard at Kandarpapura[3], Prabhasadharman could not stall Zhongzong’s much larger host for long – especially as a growing number of Cham lords were bribed or intimidated into defecting to his rival ahead of the unceasing Later Han advance – and was driven from his capital at Simhapura by mid-summer.
By the end of the year the entirety of Champa had submitted to the return of Harivarman, while Prabhasadharman and his wife Bhimadevi had fled from the southern Cham village of Vijayapura aboard a Srivijayan ship to join the latter’s father far to the south. Peace could have been secured at this juncture had Zhongzong not demanded Sangramadhananjaya hand the usurper over for execution, which the Mahārāja refused. Zhongzong consequently ordered preparations for a fleet and expeditionary force to be assembled for a follow-up attack on Srivijaya itself, to chastise yet another defiant regional rival to the Middle Kingdom and compel them to pay tribute.
Zhongzong's army marching across Champan farmland nearly unopposed
689 was a relatively quiet year in western Eurasia, despite the ongoing hostilities, as the Romans moved to concentrate their forces for a major invasion of Egypt while the Muslims were alternating between rebuilding & reordering their own bloodied hosts on one hand, and using their existing front-line forces to delay and distract the Romans (whose plan grew more obvious by the day as additional legions and federate auxiliaries mustered either in Palaestina or Libya) for as long as possible. For the Roman imperial court, the most prominent development this year (other than the continued stirring of unrest among their Frankish subjects, whose succession crisis had yet to be personally addressed by Aloysius) was diplomatic in nature: Aloysius & Helena dispatched messengers to reaffirm the Roman alliance with Nubia, and secure their aid in retaking Egypt.
For obvious reasons, the Muslims had no interest in letting any Roman diplomatic embassy through their territory, forcing the envoys to move in secrecy. The Roman ambassadors instead had to depart Jerusalem in disguise, and moved in a completely unexpected way: southward through the Hejaz, then by ship from Jeddah to the port of Suakin (formerly known as Limen Evangelis to the Romans), from where they traveled overland to Nubian territory. Abd al-Rahman had not anticipated the Roman party to take such an audacious course, and by their daring and sheer luck they managed to avoid detection and make it all the way to their destination – Dongola. Unfortunately, in an equally massive stroke of luck for the Muslims, by this point both the great Michaêlkouda and his son Thadeosi (Thaddeus) were long dead, and Nubia was ruled in name by the latter’s underage son Balô and in practice by his mother, the queen-dowager Kerike. She was a cautious figure, fearful of the power of Islam which hemmed her son’s kingdom in on three sides, and proved unwilling to go to war with the Caliph despite the best efforts of the Roman diplomats to persuade her otherwise: instead Kerike had been trying to negotiate a treaty with Abd al-Rahman in hopes of diplomatically securing Nubia’s independence.
Kerike and her son, Balô of Nubia, sailing on the Nile. The Nubian queen-regent's name would be cursed by Christendom for spoiling one of their best chances for many centuries to lock Islam out of the eastern Mediterranean and her own lands due to what she claimed was prudence, and which the Romans denounced as cowardice
While Aloysius pressed ahead with the plan to crush Abd al-Rahman and the cream of the Islamic army in Egypt even without support from Nubia on an additional front, the Muslims themselves continued to conduct guzat attacks all along the Levantine and African frontiers to try to keep the Romans off-balance. Having once had his ambition denied, Ali considered abandoning his brother to be crushed by the Romans so that he might seize the Caliphal office for himself, but reconsidered and committed to a strategy of trying to pin as many Romans down in the Levant as he could after realizing that being behind not only Abd al-Rahman and his children but also Al-Abbas and his in Hashemite seniority, on top of having the spottiest combat record of the three brothers, he did not command nearly enough support to effect a successful coup.
Speaking of Al-Abbas, he and Maslamah al-Sulami also continued to do their part on the northern front against the Khazars, although with considerably less success this year than the last as Kundaç and Kundaçiq respectively used the tributaries of the Kura and the Oxus to hold back the Islamic armies. That said, Al-Sulami did inadvertantly score a major blow and raise his profile near the end of 689 when old Kundaç Khagan was felled by a stray arrow after outrunning his bodyguards in an overly bloodthirsty pursuit of the retreating Arab army after winning the Battle of Āmul[4]. His son, now Kundaçiq Khagan, swore an oath of vengeance even as he hailed his father’s death for being worthier of a warrior than simply expiring from old age in a bed but was too far away from the Khorasani front to prevent the Khazar horde there from falling into disarray, preventing them from capitalizing on their victory and press into the Persian heartland as the first great Khagan of the Khazars had originally intended.
Far to the east, China was mounting its first major naval expedition under the Later Han, as negotiations with Sangramadhananjaya went nowhere in the first half of the year and the Emperor of China grew impatient. To augment conscripted merchant junks gathered from the ports of southern China so that they might transport a 30,000-strong expeditionary force to Srivijayan soil, Zhongzong commissioned the construction of thirty louchuan (‘tower-ships’) – purpose-built warships outfitted with mangonels and portholes for crossbows & small ballistae to take the fight to Srivijaya’s homeland. However the Chinese as a whole had little to no experience with warfare on the high seas, having primarily engaged in riverine warfare when they touched the waters with hostile intent at all, while the Srivijayans were much more experienced mariners and deeply familiar with the sea by the thalassocratic nature of their empire.
Thus did Zhongzong receive a rude surprise when his fleet set sail from Panyu: Sangramadhananjaya launched a counterattack and engaged the Chinese head-on in the waters around the Cham Islands[5], just off the coast of the latest kingdom he’d subjugated. The larger Srivijayan fleet was comprised mostly of smaller, more agile vessels than the hulking Chinese transports and tower-ships, and under the Mahārāja’s direction their veteran crews effortlessly sailed circles around the inexperienced Chinese sailors and admirals, aided by favorable winds which further battered the Chinese. The Chinese formation broke up under Srivijaya’s attack (especially the merchant junks, most of which panicked and became easy prey for the enemy) and of the thirty vaunted tower-ships, twenty-five were sunk or isolated, boarded and overwhelmed in detail by Srivijaya’s marines. The remnants of the Chinese fleet limped back to the ports of Champa in defeat, having lost many thousands of sailors and soldiers in addition to the majority of their ships, but the disastrous Battle of the Cham Islands still did not dissuade Zhongzong from preparing to try for a southward push again with an even larger fleet in a year or two: this was not the first time a bunch of upstart barbarians defeated the first Chinese force sent against them, and he would not allow one loss to bring his ambitions to a crashing halt any more than his ancestors would have given up whenever the Tibetans, Koreans or Tegregs dealt out the occasional defeat.
Srivijayan marines swarming a doomed Chinese junk and the panicking sailors & soldiers aboard
While the Chinese were still building up their second expeditionary fleet and army, 690 saw the Romans make their move against Egypt without Nubian assistance, as Kerike was able to reach an accord with Abd al-Rahman. The Roman ambassadors still at her court were prepared to plot a coup against her, but too many of Nubia’s generals and princes were willing to wait and see what sort of agreement she reached with Abd al-Rahman first after decades of constant battles, raids and retreat. To the Romans’ disappointment, the Caliph (having carefully considered his own difficult position) chose not to press the Nubians too hard and demand terms which would surely have set the Nubian elite against their queen-regent if she even thought of accepting them: the Arabs and Nubians would pledge peace, free trade and travel, the enforcement of safe passage for the other’s diplomats and merchants, and Nubia would have to build a mosque in Dongola for the benefit of visiting Arabs while the Hashemites renewed their commitment to religious tolerance for Christians (within the bounds of jizya of course)[6].
Although the Nubians had been taken off the table, Aloysius was not the sort of man to be easily discouraged by such negative developments and pressed on against Abd al-Rahman. After making his final preparations (and allowing Constantine leave to spend some time with his considerably older wife at Antioch, finally getting the latter pregnant), he marched down the coast of Palaestina with a fairly formidable force of 25,000 men near the start of August, while Stilicho resumed the offensive from the west with some 15,000 Moors and Gothic federates. The Emperor also had a surprise up his sleeve, one which used Roman mastery over the sea to his advantage: Constantine sailed from Tyre for Alexandria with another 10,000 legionaries, including many Greeks raised at Helena’s expense. The plan was to draw Abd al-Rahman’s forces off to the Sinai Peninsula and Cyrenaica, allowing the Caesar to easily conquer Alexandria and incite a Christian uprising which would result in Egypt falling back into Roman hands and the destruction of the Arab armies within the lost province. Since this commitment of 50,000 men to the Egyptian offensive left the Levant only weakly held by Thomas Trithyrius and the scant remaining Roman forces left behind there, speed was of the essence to a Roman success.
At first, the Roman strategy proceeded as planned. Abd al-Rahman had pulled together a similar number of troops to counter the expected Roman offensive: he personally led 20,000 men to engage Aloysius’ army head-on, while directing another 20,000 under his general Aflah ibn Yaqub to meet Stilicho’s thrust and keeping another 10,000 in reserve. As it so happened, the Caliph was also expecting a Roman landing at or around Alexandria and thus did not place his reserves there, where Constantine may have had a chance to destroy them, but rather further inland at the newly constructed Arabic headquarters of Fustat[7]. Forward elements of Abd al-Rahman’s army were defeated as they tried to hold off the Romans at the Battle of Gaza, and Abd al-Rahman himself fell back before Aloysius’ furious onslaught at the Battle of El-Arish (as the Arabs called Rhinococura), while Stilicho defeated Aflah at the Battle of Corniclanum[8] to clear the path into Cyrenaica and western Egypt.
An engagement between Stilicho's Moors and the Arabs in Libya
The highlight of the campaign was Constantine’s arrival in the lightly-defended Alexandria, which he was able to take according to his & his father’s expectations. However, contrary to those expectations, no great revolt among the Christians of Egypt materialized after he hoisted the chi-rho over the city’s landmarks (including its famous lighthouse). Certainly the Ephesian community of Alexandria hailed the return of the Romans, and some 2,000 of them enlisted in the imperial ranks, but the Miaphysites and especially the more extreme Monophysites who by now outnumbered both rival sects combined preferred the rule of Islam, which had proven far less repressive than Roman governance. Few of these heretics actively took up arms to fight for the Muslims (who only allowed small quantities of non-Muslims to fight alongside them in specialist roles anyway), but they were generally uncooperative with the returning Romans and quite a few more assisted the Muslims by feeding them intelligence on Roman movements.
Despite these difficulties and the lack of Nubian support from the south (which may have weakened the Islamic defense in Egypt to the point where he would have succeeded in his aims), Constantine struggled on, and over the next two months expanded the Roman zone of control to Cabasa[9] and a ways up the Nile. Abd al-Rahman’s maternal cousin Al-Awwam ibn Abd’allah led the Arab reserve to confront him as he fought his way toward Fustat, and was initially defeated by the heir to Rome near the ruins of the Trajan-era fortress of Nikiou[10]. However, Al-Awwam was able to defend Fustat against the pursuing Romans, who lacked the numbers to easily storm the fortified town. By this time (around October) Abd al-Rahman had also managed to stall Aloysius’ advance in eastern Egypt at the Battle of Leontopolis[11], slightly pushed the Emperor back to Pelusium, and used the breathing room he had gained to send reinforcements west. Rather than risk getting caught in a pincer between Fustat and the Caliph’s detachment, Constantine retreated back down the Nile and toward Alexandria.
Similarly, toward the end of 690 the Muslims in the west managed to score reversals against Stilicho’s offensive at Zygra[12] and then Antipyrgus[13], forcing him back toward Cyrenaica and away from Egypt. Worst of all for the Romans, Ali had resumed his offensive in the Middle East to take the pressure off his big brother and made tremendous progress against the weakened defenses left there by the deployment of most of the Roman forces in the Orient against Egypt, finally marching into Phoenicia and splitting the Roman Levant in two as he had originally intended years prior. A valiant effort on the part of Thomas Trithyrius and other Roman generals in the region prevented the fall of Jerusalem and most Roman-held cities north of Phoenicia, but Aloysius and Constantine were now trapped in an unenviable position to say the least – the former unable to make further headway against the Caliph and having to worry about Ali descending upon him from the north, the latter stuck in a shrinking area around Alexandria.
Rounding out the Muslims’ good fortune this year, Al-Sulami was able to capitalize on the good fortune of having killed the Khazar Khagan in the aftermath of a defeat to go back on the offensive in Khorasan and retake a swathe of territory closer to the Oxus from his disorganized army. Al-Abbas to the west was less fortunate, as he felt the wrath of Kundaçiq Khagan in the Caucasus. After absorbing reinforcements over the previous winter, the western Khazar army staged a limited attack in the direction of the Kura and retreated after seemingly being defeated by the Arab defenders, only to then turn around and devastate the pursuing Islamic army in the Battle of Nij. There the second Sayyid brother barely managed to escape encirclement when Kundaçiq’s cavalry overwhelmed his and attacked his army while they retreated from the Georgians and other Caucasian footmen before them, and said army was mauled in the retreat. The Khazars pressed Al-Abbas back beyond the Kura yet again and this time they did not stop until they reached Tabriz, where the Hashemite prince was finally able to muster a solid defense with the backing of settlers from the Azd tribe.
Kundaçiq Khagan seeking yet more Arabs to kill, so that he might avenge his father by shedding as much of their blood as possible
Come 691, all eyes in western Eurasia were fixed on the climax of this second great Roman-Arab war – so much so, that in all the excitement and bloodshed even the Caesar Constantine himself nearly overlooked the birth of his own firstborn, who was named Aloysius to honor his conquering grandfather. Said grandfather had marched his army back east first, intending on securing his rear lines and restoring the overland connection between the Roman Levant and Constantinople before sailing to Alexandria, where he trusted that Constantine could hold out long enough against the armies of the Caliph and al-Awwam for him to arrive. In the meantime, Stilicho was assigned with pushing out east once more and relieving Constantine’s position if possible.
The Arabs meanwhile were pressing hard on all fronts, as Caliph Abd al-Rahman was determined to crush Constantine in Alexandria and Ali sought to take as much land in the Roman Mideast as he could from Aloysius before the latter’s full strength arrived. The ghilman corps spearheaded his victory over Constantine in the Battle of Cabasa that spring, after which the heir to the Roman Empire retreated behind the walls of Alexandria (which his engineers had restored to the best of their ability over the past year) in preparation for a lengthy siege. After establishing basic siege lines and securing the cooperation of the Coptic monks of the Enaton, a large monastic district southwest of the great city, the Muslims launched a number of intensifying assaults in hope of taking Alexandria before Aloysius could return for his son. Many Islamic warriors would fall beneath the restored walls, the onagers placed atop them by the Caesar’s legions, and the arrows and other missiles of the defenders.
Aloysius moved aggressively in this race to save his only legitimate son and heir. Sweeping northward, he helped break Ali’s siege of Jerusalem and linked up with the majority of the remaining Levantine Roman and Banu Kalb forces who had gathered at that holy city under Thomas Trithyrius. With his son-in-law in tow, the Augustus launched an audacious crossing over the Jordan to try to force battle with Ali, who resolved to meet his challenge both to prevent the Romans from tearing into his own rear lines and in hopes of finally defeating the Emperor who had made him out to be the least of his brothers. The Roman army of 15,000 met Ali’s slightly larger force of approximately 18,000 near Gerasa[14], a ways east of the Jordan.
Ali sought to take advantage of his greater numbers by extending his battle-line, planning to let the Romans push against his seemingly weak center before folding his flanks around them and destroying the legions once they had been encircled, but Aloysius saw through his deployment, and once more his valor and wily planning would help him overcome even a foe as competent as the third Hashemite prince. Forming his ranks into a few great offensive wedges as he had during the relief of Constantinople a quarter of a century ago, with the largest being in the dead-center of his host, the Augustus led a thundering charge which ripped through the Islamic center and reserve much faster than Ali had anticipated, then turned his army to the right – again with greater alacrity than the youngest of the sons of Aisha had foreseen or wanted – and rolled up the Islamic left. Once again Ali had to retreat in defeat before the mighty Emperor of the Romans, having lost yet another chance to escape from under the shadow of his more successful and popular brothers.
Aloysius Gloriosus, aged 49 as of 691, after vanquishing yet another Islamic host on the battlefield near Gerasa. His son-in-law Thomas Trithyrius stands to his right and is directing the collection of enemy heads and loot
As the tide of Islam retreated from the territories it had occupied in the western Levant in the aftermath of the Battle of Gerasa, Abd al-Rahman decided to ramp up his efforts to take Alexandria ahead of Aloysius’ imminent arrival, Roman maritime supremacy having made it completely impossible for him to stop Helena from sending her son supplies and reinforcements (including a unit of Cilician Bulgars) by ship. After an attempt to tunnel under the walls had failed thanks to the Romans’ counter-tunnels and underground counterattacks (much as the Arab sapping efforts at Leptis Magna had previously), he had his men dig and cover trenches close to the city walls, and transported ladders and a ram through these in an effort to bring them close enough for a sustained assault without being destroyed by the archers and onagers on said walls. On June 15 he launched a final attempt to storm the walls (led by his vaunted ghilman) from these positions, benefiting from the fact that Constantine could not aim his onagers straight downward to take out the majority of his ladders.
The Romans fought back fiercely however, and despite being outnumbered by the forces of Islam, benefited handsomely from the force multiplier that was Alexandria’s mighty walls. As forceful as it was, Abd al-Rahman could only sustain his assault for four hours and broke it off in the late afternoon after the nearly-successful capture of a section of the southern wall was overturned by the personal intervention of Constantine and his comitatus. The Caesar briefly crossed blades with one of the most promising of the young ghilman – an Ethiopian who had been renamed Haqq ad-Din – but despite losing their swordfight and being disarmed, remained calm and had the quick thinking to ram his opponent with his shield, sending the surprised Haqq ad-Din tumbling off the wall to his death while one of his bodyguards pulled him back before he too fell over the edge. As this last-ditch attempt at taking Alexandria had floundered and Aloysius was hurriedly piling his army onto transport ships in Phoenicia, while to the west Al-Awwam & Aflah had achieved the only major Islamic success this year in pushing Stilicho back, Abd al-Rahman decided the time was right to sue for peace.
Constantine, Caesar of Rome, and members of his comitatus (personal guard) around the time of their defense of Alexandria
The Caliph did have some spots of luck this year which persuaded his enemies to agree to a truce and negotiations. In the case of the Romans, their troubles in the far West had grown to a point where Aloysius and Constantine could no longer put off dealing with them: the succession-related disorder in Francia had escalated to the point of civil war between various Merovingian scions, some Saxon tribes had regained the courage to harass the northern frontier once more, and the Emperor’s loyalists warned him of yet another conspiracy within the Senate to raise one of their own to the purple while he was busy in the east. As for the Khazars, Kundaçiq Khagan had launched a second offensive against Tabriz and finally succeeded in taking the city this time, but soon found that his victory was largely due to Al-Abbas having successfully extracted himself and the majority of the Islamic forces out east – where they defeated the eastern Khazar tarkhans in the Battle of Bukhara beyond the Oxus. One of the casualties of that battle was Doulan Qaghan, whose demise dashed all remaining hope of restoring the Southern Tegreg realm and doomed those Tegregs who had fled north to eventually fade into the ranks of the Khazars.
Far off to the east, Zhongzong was prepared to launch his second attack on Srivijaya. Rejecting an entreaty from the court of Sangramadhananjaya for peace, the Emperor of China sent forth a fleet twice as large as the one which had been defeated at the Battle of the Cham Islands, including sixty tower-ships and many other transports carrying a total of 55,000 soldiers. The Srivijayans met them further south this time, off Pulau Kundur[15], but this time China’s improved discipline and larger numbers allowed them to achieve a victory over the Srivijayans (who had not expected their foe to improve significantly since their last clash) and clear a path to advance further southward.
The Chinese landed thousands of troops southwest of Champa at Ligor, quickly compelling the submission of that city-state’s leadership, and began to demand the same from the rest of Srivijaya’s vassals on the Asian mainland, while Zhongzong now demanded Sangramadhananjaya surrender & pay tribute to him, assured that this victory would be sufficient to intimidate the Mahārāja. To his surprise, however, it was Sangramadhananjaya’s turn to bluntly refuse, and to instead muster the full might of Srivijaya to drive the Chinese from their waters. Another great naval battle between the Chinese Dragon and the last non-Indian great power in Asia to not have bowed to it to date now became imminent.
The Chinese war-fleet setting sail for Srivijaya's home waters
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[1] Benghazi.
[2] In the vicinity of modern Nukus, Uzbekistan.
[3] Huế.
[4] Türkmenabat.
[5] Cù Lao Chàm.
[6] These terms are similar to but more moderate than the historical Baqt treaty between Makuria and the Umayyads, where the Makurians (Nubians) were also obligated to ship a number of slaves to the Arabs and not offer refuge to escaped slaves, on account of the Hashemites’ position not being as overwhelming as that of and under greater threat than the RL Caliphate around the end of the seventh century.
[7] Now part of Cairo.
[8] Ajdabiya.
[9] Shabas-Sounkour.
[10] Zawyat Razin.
[11] Kafr al-Muqdam.
[12] Sidi Barrani.
[13] Tobruk.
[14] Jerash.
[15] Côn Đảo.
Aloysius was no stranger to forest battles, however, and the Woods of Daphne were a well-manicured retreat for the aristocracy – not exactly comparable to the wild and sprawling Teutoburger Wald which he had also overcome. The legions barreled through their Arab opponents’ efforts to block the paved Roman roads which ran through the gardens, and had both the discipline and heavy equipment to withstand the ambushes which they tried to spring from the thickest of thickets amid the gardens and fountains. At one point the Muslims even temporarily succeeded in separating Aloysius’ vanguard from the majority of his army with a wall of rubble torn from the ruined ancient temple to Apollo built by Seleucus Nicator in ages past (already damaged and abandoned by a fire set in the time of Julian the Apostate), but once more Aloysius fought off his foes – this time ably assisted by his now-blooded son – until his legions had dismantled the crude Islamic barricade and were able to come to his rescue.
After fighting a losing fight for two days, the frustrated Ali gave the order to fall back to the east on the third day, once the defenders of Antioch had made the decision to sally and forced his siege detachment away from their city. Aloysius wasted no time in linking up with the Ghassanid & Syro-Greek forces and then taking the fight to the retreating Arabs, promptly spending the rest of 688 evicting them from those cities and villages across Syria, Mesopotamia & Palaestina which they had previously seized in his absence. For his part, Ali evidently had decided that his prospects of defeating the Roman Emperor in a head-on battle at this time were dubious at best, so in an attempt to preserve his remaining forces he withdrew from all but those sites which he deemed important and fought only for major fortresses & settlements such as Edessa, Dara and Apamea-Zeugma. Aloysius’ aggressive pursuit kept him on the backfoot, preventing him from consolidating his forces as easily as he would have liked, and one by one these cities fell back into his hands over the rest of 686 anyway.
Roman and Ghassanid troops preparing to ambush an Arab column during the latter's retreat from the Woods of Daphne near Antioch
Engaging in combat for most of the year did not keep Aloysius from directing family affairs, albeit with less direct involvement than he would have liked, alongside his wife. For some time Helena had sought to find a worthy husband for their daughter Serena (now a grown woman of twenty-one), and though loath to finally part with the last of her children to still live at court with her, this year the Empress settled on a promising captain from a Macedonian family of high birth named Thomas Trithyrius. Besides having ably campaigned in the Caucasus with the Khazars, Georgians and Armenians, his father Theodotus had been one of many patricians to side with Helena against her first husband Tryphon two decades prior and was appointed Consul for the East twice by her (664-665 and 674-675) for it, hence the latter’s nickname Dishypatos (‘twice-consul’). Aloysius signed off on the proposal in the hope of securing the support of the Trithyrii and other aristocratic Greek families for Constantine when the latter should succeed him as Augustus of all Rome, and Comes Thomas was temporarily recalled from Edessa in the summer so that he might marry and try to conceive a child with the imperial princess before being sent back to the front lines.
While Ali was getting pummeled by the Augustus to the northeast, his big brother was working on regaining ground in North Africa. King Stilicho had used the time and space bought for him by Aloysius to fully muster the strength of his African kingdom, and bolstered by the Garamantian refugees driven away by the Caliph’s original offensive, he now advanced across the Libyan coast to try to push into Cyrenaica and then Egypt from the west. The Moors recaptured Hesperides[1] from its Arab defenders on the cusp of the searing African summer, but ran into massive resistance spearheaded by Abd al-Rahman himself west of the ruined Cyrene soon after. Following this defeat Stilicho pulled back a ways to the west, making his stand at the sacked remains of Arae Philaenorum and successfully holding back the Arab assault with the help of those parts of the town walls which were still standing. While the Romans in Africa had avoided the worst-case scenario and actually ended the year with more ground than they had taken, it was also clear to Stilicho and his officers that they could not retake Egypt on their own, something which the king made clear to the Augustus in his messages.
Beyond Rome’s border, the second Sayyid brother’s record was closer to the first than the third this year, as Al-Abbas continued to push the Khazars and their remaining allied contingent back in the eastern Caucasus. Mithranes & Kundaçiq were forced to retreat north of the Kura after suffering a defeat at the Battle of Parsabad, as without the Roman and Armenian troops called away by Helena to help defend Upper Mesopotamia against Ali in the previous year, they were unable to hold back the Islamic counterattack. News of this latest reversal persuaded Aloysius and his generals that they could not win the war so long as they divided their forces up across such a broad front stretching from the Caspian to Cyrenaica, in which the Arabs would always enjoy the advantage on account of the non-Ephesian locals’ sympathies and how much closer the front-line was to their powerbase than Aloysius’ back in Western Europe. Instead, the Emperor began formulating plans for a decisive strike to crush the head of the snake – Abd al-Rahman, who he judged to be the most capable of the senior Sayyid brothers – in Egypt, link Roman Africa to the Roman Levant, and hopefully cripple Islam’s fighting strength in the coming years.
The Khazars’ difficulties this year did not end in the eastern Caucasus. By this time the great Talhah ibn Talib had died of old age, not long outliving his master and friend Qasim ibn Muhammad, and the Hashemite court was eager to find a replacement for God’s Lance. Abd al-Rahman and Al-Abbas thought they might have found him in the person of Maslamah al-Sulami, a scion of the Banu Sulaym (a Hejazi Arab tribe with close ties to the Quraish) who had been the most successful of the Arab generals left in Persia while the latter had moved to shore up the defenses of the Caucasus. After overseeing the reconstruction of the Great Wall of Gorgan (even if it wasn’t entirely up to the old Sassanid standard) he was rewarded with command of the Islamic armies in Persia in Al-Abbas’ continued absence.
A battle between Kundaçiq Tarkhan's Khazars and Al-Abbas ibn Qasim's Arabs
With his command, Al-Sulami launched a daring counterattack which caught Kundaç Khagan – at the time still consolidating his hold on Khorasan and not expecting the Arabs to go on the offensive after the thrashing he’d previously handed them – off-guard. He dealt the Khazars their most serious defeat in the east to date at the Battle of the Oxus in the early summer, but Kundaç rallied his warriors to crush the Arabs and send them reeling back soon after they had crossed that great Khorasani river[2]. Although Al-Sulami had barely avoided death or captivity (probably soon followed by death) and thus the fate of Cyrus of Persia, and a defeat this early in his career demonstrated that he would not be an equal or superior to the late Talhah (who had never known defeat until he ran into Aloysius very late in his life), his earlier victories had shaken Kundaç out of the belief that Persia would be easily conquered and added pressure to the Romans to win the war quickly and decisively in the west.
Well east of this warzone, a new one was opening up as China’s armies marched out of Jiaozhi to restore their new ally Harivarman to the Champan throne. Against the 125,000 Chinese soldiers arrayed against them, Prabhasadharman could only muster some 30,000 reinforced by another 20,000 Srivijayans sent by his father-in-law Sangramadhananjaya. Despite an initial victory over the Chinese vanguard at Kandarpapura[3], Prabhasadharman could not stall Zhongzong’s much larger host for long – especially as a growing number of Cham lords were bribed or intimidated into defecting to his rival ahead of the unceasing Later Han advance – and was driven from his capital at Simhapura by mid-summer.
By the end of the year the entirety of Champa had submitted to the return of Harivarman, while Prabhasadharman and his wife Bhimadevi had fled from the southern Cham village of Vijayapura aboard a Srivijayan ship to join the latter’s father far to the south. Peace could have been secured at this juncture had Zhongzong not demanded Sangramadhananjaya hand the usurper over for execution, which the Mahārāja refused. Zhongzong consequently ordered preparations for a fleet and expeditionary force to be assembled for a follow-up attack on Srivijaya itself, to chastise yet another defiant regional rival to the Middle Kingdom and compel them to pay tribute.
Zhongzong's army marching across Champan farmland nearly unopposed
689 was a relatively quiet year in western Eurasia, despite the ongoing hostilities, as the Romans moved to concentrate their forces for a major invasion of Egypt while the Muslims were alternating between rebuilding & reordering their own bloodied hosts on one hand, and using their existing front-line forces to delay and distract the Romans (whose plan grew more obvious by the day as additional legions and federate auxiliaries mustered either in Palaestina or Libya) for as long as possible. For the Roman imperial court, the most prominent development this year (other than the continued stirring of unrest among their Frankish subjects, whose succession crisis had yet to be personally addressed by Aloysius) was diplomatic in nature: Aloysius & Helena dispatched messengers to reaffirm the Roman alliance with Nubia, and secure their aid in retaking Egypt.
For obvious reasons, the Muslims had no interest in letting any Roman diplomatic embassy through their territory, forcing the envoys to move in secrecy. The Roman ambassadors instead had to depart Jerusalem in disguise, and moved in a completely unexpected way: southward through the Hejaz, then by ship from Jeddah to the port of Suakin (formerly known as Limen Evangelis to the Romans), from where they traveled overland to Nubian territory. Abd al-Rahman had not anticipated the Roman party to take such an audacious course, and by their daring and sheer luck they managed to avoid detection and make it all the way to their destination – Dongola. Unfortunately, in an equally massive stroke of luck for the Muslims, by this point both the great Michaêlkouda and his son Thadeosi (Thaddeus) were long dead, and Nubia was ruled in name by the latter’s underage son Balô and in practice by his mother, the queen-dowager Kerike. She was a cautious figure, fearful of the power of Islam which hemmed her son’s kingdom in on three sides, and proved unwilling to go to war with the Caliph despite the best efforts of the Roman diplomats to persuade her otherwise: instead Kerike had been trying to negotiate a treaty with Abd al-Rahman in hopes of diplomatically securing Nubia’s independence.
Kerike and her son, Balô of Nubia, sailing on the Nile. The Nubian queen-regent's name would be cursed by Christendom for spoiling one of their best chances for many centuries to lock Islam out of the eastern Mediterranean and her own lands due to what she claimed was prudence, and which the Romans denounced as cowardice
While Aloysius pressed ahead with the plan to crush Abd al-Rahman and the cream of the Islamic army in Egypt even without support from Nubia on an additional front, the Muslims themselves continued to conduct guzat attacks all along the Levantine and African frontiers to try to keep the Romans off-balance. Having once had his ambition denied, Ali considered abandoning his brother to be crushed by the Romans so that he might seize the Caliphal office for himself, but reconsidered and committed to a strategy of trying to pin as many Romans down in the Levant as he could after realizing that being behind not only Abd al-Rahman and his children but also Al-Abbas and his in Hashemite seniority, on top of having the spottiest combat record of the three brothers, he did not command nearly enough support to effect a successful coup.
Speaking of Al-Abbas, he and Maslamah al-Sulami also continued to do their part on the northern front against the Khazars, although with considerably less success this year than the last as Kundaç and Kundaçiq respectively used the tributaries of the Kura and the Oxus to hold back the Islamic armies. That said, Al-Sulami did inadvertantly score a major blow and raise his profile near the end of 689 when old Kundaç Khagan was felled by a stray arrow after outrunning his bodyguards in an overly bloodthirsty pursuit of the retreating Arab army after winning the Battle of Āmul[4]. His son, now Kundaçiq Khagan, swore an oath of vengeance even as he hailed his father’s death for being worthier of a warrior than simply expiring from old age in a bed but was too far away from the Khorasani front to prevent the Khazar horde there from falling into disarray, preventing them from capitalizing on their victory and press into the Persian heartland as the first great Khagan of the Khazars had originally intended.
Far to the east, China was mounting its first major naval expedition under the Later Han, as negotiations with Sangramadhananjaya went nowhere in the first half of the year and the Emperor of China grew impatient. To augment conscripted merchant junks gathered from the ports of southern China so that they might transport a 30,000-strong expeditionary force to Srivijayan soil, Zhongzong commissioned the construction of thirty louchuan (‘tower-ships’) – purpose-built warships outfitted with mangonels and portholes for crossbows & small ballistae to take the fight to Srivijaya’s homeland. However the Chinese as a whole had little to no experience with warfare on the high seas, having primarily engaged in riverine warfare when they touched the waters with hostile intent at all, while the Srivijayans were much more experienced mariners and deeply familiar with the sea by the thalassocratic nature of their empire.
Thus did Zhongzong receive a rude surprise when his fleet set sail from Panyu: Sangramadhananjaya launched a counterattack and engaged the Chinese head-on in the waters around the Cham Islands[5], just off the coast of the latest kingdom he’d subjugated. The larger Srivijayan fleet was comprised mostly of smaller, more agile vessels than the hulking Chinese transports and tower-ships, and under the Mahārāja’s direction their veteran crews effortlessly sailed circles around the inexperienced Chinese sailors and admirals, aided by favorable winds which further battered the Chinese. The Chinese formation broke up under Srivijaya’s attack (especially the merchant junks, most of which panicked and became easy prey for the enemy) and of the thirty vaunted tower-ships, twenty-five were sunk or isolated, boarded and overwhelmed in detail by Srivijaya’s marines. The remnants of the Chinese fleet limped back to the ports of Champa in defeat, having lost many thousands of sailors and soldiers in addition to the majority of their ships, but the disastrous Battle of the Cham Islands still did not dissuade Zhongzong from preparing to try for a southward push again with an even larger fleet in a year or two: this was not the first time a bunch of upstart barbarians defeated the first Chinese force sent against them, and he would not allow one loss to bring his ambitions to a crashing halt any more than his ancestors would have given up whenever the Tibetans, Koreans or Tegregs dealt out the occasional defeat.
Srivijayan marines swarming a doomed Chinese junk and the panicking sailors & soldiers aboard
While the Chinese were still building up their second expeditionary fleet and army, 690 saw the Romans make their move against Egypt without Nubian assistance, as Kerike was able to reach an accord with Abd al-Rahman. The Roman ambassadors still at her court were prepared to plot a coup against her, but too many of Nubia’s generals and princes were willing to wait and see what sort of agreement she reached with Abd al-Rahman first after decades of constant battles, raids and retreat. To the Romans’ disappointment, the Caliph (having carefully considered his own difficult position) chose not to press the Nubians too hard and demand terms which would surely have set the Nubian elite against their queen-regent if she even thought of accepting them: the Arabs and Nubians would pledge peace, free trade and travel, the enforcement of safe passage for the other’s diplomats and merchants, and Nubia would have to build a mosque in Dongola for the benefit of visiting Arabs while the Hashemites renewed their commitment to religious tolerance for Christians (within the bounds of jizya of course)[6].
Although the Nubians had been taken off the table, Aloysius was not the sort of man to be easily discouraged by such negative developments and pressed on against Abd al-Rahman. After making his final preparations (and allowing Constantine leave to spend some time with his considerably older wife at Antioch, finally getting the latter pregnant), he marched down the coast of Palaestina with a fairly formidable force of 25,000 men near the start of August, while Stilicho resumed the offensive from the west with some 15,000 Moors and Gothic federates. The Emperor also had a surprise up his sleeve, one which used Roman mastery over the sea to his advantage: Constantine sailed from Tyre for Alexandria with another 10,000 legionaries, including many Greeks raised at Helena’s expense. The plan was to draw Abd al-Rahman’s forces off to the Sinai Peninsula and Cyrenaica, allowing the Caesar to easily conquer Alexandria and incite a Christian uprising which would result in Egypt falling back into Roman hands and the destruction of the Arab armies within the lost province. Since this commitment of 50,000 men to the Egyptian offensive left the Levant only weakly held by Thomas Trithyrius and the scant remaining Roman forces left behind there, speed was of the essence to a Roman success.
At first, the Roman strategy proceeded as planned. Abd al-Rahman had pulled together a similar number of troops to counter the expected Roman offensive: he personally led 20,000 men to engage Aloysius’ army head-on, while directing another 20,000 under his general Aflah ibn Yaqub to meet Stilicho’s thrust and keeping another 10,000 in reserve. As it so happened, the Caliph was also expecting a Roman landing at or around Alexandria and thus did not place his reserves there, where Constantine may have had a chance to destroy them, but rather further inland at the newly constructed Arabic headquarters of Fustat[7]. Forward elements of Abd al-Rahman’s army were defeated as they tried to hold off the Romans at the Battle of Gaza, and Abd al-Rahman himself fell back before Aloysius’ furious onslaught at the Battle of El-Arish (as the Arabs called Rhinococura), while Stilicho defeated Aflah at the Battle of Corniclanum[8] to clear the path into Cyrenaica and western Egypt.
An engagement between Stilicho's Moors and the Arabs in Libya
The highlight of the campaign was Constantine’s arrival in the lightly-defended Alexandria, which he was able to take according to his & his father’s expectations. However, contrary to those expectations, no great revolt among the Christians of Egypt materialized after he hoisted the chi-rho over the city’s landmarks (including its famous lighthouse). Certainly the Ephesian community of Alexandria hailed the return of the Romans, and some 2,000 of them enlisted in the imperial ranks, but the Miaphysites and especially the more extreme Monophysites who by now outnumbered both rival sects combined preferred the rule of Islam, which had proven far less repressive than Roman governance. Few of these heretics actively took up arms to fight for the Muslims (who only allowed small quantities of non-Muslims to fight alongside them in specialist roles anyway), but they were generally uncooperative with the returning Romans and quite a few more assisted the Muslims by feeding them intelligence on Roman movements.
Despite these difficulties and the lack of Nubian support from the south (which may have weakened the Islamic defense in Egypt to the point where he would have succeeded in his aims), Constantine struggled on, and over the next two months expanded the Roman zone of control to Cabasa[9] and a ways up the Nile. Abd al-Rahman’s maternal cousin Al-Awwam ibn Abd’allah led the Arab reserve to confront him as he fought his way toward Fustat, and was initially defeated by the heir to Rome near the ruins of the Trajan-era fortress of Nikiou[10]. However, Al-Awwam was able to defend Fustat against the pursuing Romans, who lacked the numbers to easily storm the fortified town. By this time (around October) Abd al-Rahman had also managed to stall Aloysius’ advance in eastern Egypt at the Battle of Leontopolis[11], slightly pushed the Emperor back to Pelusium, and used the breathing room he had gained to send reinforcements west. Rather than risk getting caught in a pincer between Fustat and the Caliph’s detachment, Constantine retreated back down the Nile and toward Alexandria.
Similarly, toward the end of 690 the Muslims in the west managed to score reversals against Stilicho’s offensive at Zygra[12] and then Antipyrgus[13], forcing him back toward Cyrenaica and away from Egypt. Worst of all for the Romans, Ali had resumed his offensive in the Middle East to take the pressure off his big brother and made tremendous progress against the weakened defenses left there by the deployment of most of the Roman forces in the Orient against Egypt, finally marching into Phoenicia and splitting the Roman Levant in two as he had originally intended years prior. A valiant effort on the part of Thomas Trithyrius and other Roman generals in the region prevented the fall of Jerusalem and most Roman-held cities north of Phoenicia, but Aloysius and Constantine were now trapped in an unenviable position to say the least – the former unable to make further headway against the Caliph and having to worry about Ali descending upon him from the north, the latter stuck in a shrinking area around Alexandria.
Rounding out the Muslims’ good fortune this year, Al-Sulami was able to capitalize on the good fortune of having killed the Khazar Khagan in the aftermath of a defeat to go back on the offensive in Khorasan and retake a swathe of territory closer to the Oxus from his disorganized army. Al-Abbas to the west was less fortunate, as he felt the wrath of Kundaçiq Khagan in the Caucasus. After absorbing reinforcements over the previous winter, the western Khazar army staged a limited attack in the direction of the Kura and retreated after seemingly being defeated by the Arab defenders, only to then turn around and devastate the pursuing Islamic army in the Battle of Nij. There the second Sayyid brother barely managed to escape encirclement when Kundaçiq’s cavalry overwhelmed his and attacked his army while they retreated from the Georgians and other Caucasian footmen before them, and said army was mauled in the retreat. The Khazars pressed Al-Abbas back beyond the Kura yet again and this time they did not stop until they reached Tabriz, where the Hashemite prince was finally able to muster a solid defense with the backing of settlers from the Azd tribe.
Kundaçiq Khagan seeking yet more Arabs to kill, so that he might avenge his father by shedding as much of their blood as possible
Come 691, all eyes in western Eurasia were fixed on the climax of this second great Roman-Arab war – so much so, that in all the excitement and bloodshed even the Caesar Constantine himself nearly overlooked the birth of his own firstborn, who was named Aloysius to honor his conquering grandfather. Said grandfather had marched his army back east first, intending on securing his rear lines and restoring the overland connection between the Roman Levant and Constantinople before sailing to Alexandria, where he trusted that Constantine could hold out long enough against the armies of the Caliph and al-Awwam for him to arrive. In the meantime, Stilicho was assigned with pushing out east once more and relieving Constantine’s position if possible.
The Arabs meanwhile were pressing hard on all fronts, as Caliph Abd al-Rahman was determined to crush Constantine in Alexandria and Ali sought to take as much land in the Roman Mideast as he could from Aloysius before the latter’s full strength arrived. The ghilman corps spearheaded his victory over Constantine in the Battle of Cabasa that spring, after which the heir to the Roman Empire retreated behind the walls of Alexandria (which his engineers had restored to the best of their ability over the past year) in preparation for a lengthy siege. After establishing basic siege lines and securing the cooperation of the Coptic monks of the Enaton, a large monastic district southwest of the great city, the Muslims launched a number of intensifying assaults in hope of taking Alexandria before Aloysius could return for his son. Many Islamic warriors would fall beneath the restored walls, the onagers placed atop them by the Caesar’s legions, and the arrows and other missiles of the defenders.
Aloysius moved aggressively in this race to save his only legitimate son and heir. Sweeping northward, he helped break Ali’s siege of Jerusalem and linked up with the majority of the remaining Levantine Roman and Banu Kalb forces who had gathered at that holy city under Thomas Trithyrius. With his son-in-law in tow, the Augustus launched an audacious crossing over the Jordan to try to force battle with Ali, who resolved to meet his challenge both to prevent the Romans from tearing into his own rear lines and in hopes of finally defeating the Emperor who had made him out to be the least of his brothers. The Roman army of 15,000 met Ali’s slightly larger force of approximately 18,000 near Gerasa[14], a ways east of the Jordan.
Ali sought to take advantage of his greater numbers by extending his battle-line, planning to let the Romans push against his seemingly weak center before folding his flanks around them and destroying the legions once they had been encircled, but Aloysius saw through his deployment, and once more his valor and wily planning would help him overcome even a foe as competent as the third Hashemite prince. Forming his ranks into a few great offensive wedges as he had during the relief of Constantinople a quarter of a century ago, with the largest being in the dead-center of his host, the Augustus led a thundering charge which ripped through the Islamic center and reserve much faster than Ali had anticipated, then turned his army to the right – again with greater alacrity than the youngest of the sons of Aisha had foreseen or wanted – and rolled up the Islamic left. Once again Ali had to retreat in defeat before the mighty Emperor of the Romans, having lost yet another chance to escape from under the shadow of his more successful and popular brothers.
Aloysius Gloriosus, aged 49 as of 691, after vanquishing yet another Islamic host on the battlefield near Gerasa. His son-in-law Thomas Trithyrius stands to his right and is directing the collection of enemy heads and loot
As the tide of Islam retreated from the territories it had occupied in the western Levant in the aftermath of the Battle of Gerasa, Abd al-Rahman decided to ramp up his efforts to take Alexandria ahead of Aloysius’ imminent arrival, Roman maritime supremacy having made it completely impossible for him to stop Helena from sending her son supplies and reinforcements (including a unit of Cilician Bulgars) by ship. After an attempt to tunnel under the walls had failed thanks to the Romans’ counter-tunnels and underground counterattacks (much as the Arab sapping efforts at Leptis Magna had previously), he had his men dig and cover trenches close to the city walls, and transported ladders and a ram through these in an effort to bring them close enough for a sustained assault without being destroyed by the archers and onagers on said walls. On June 15 he launched a final attempt to storm the walls (led by his vaunted ghilman) from these positions, benefiting from the fact that Constantine could not aim his onagers straight downward to take out the majority of his ladders.
The Romans fought back fiercely however, and despite being outnumbered by the forces of Islam, benefited handsomely from the force multiplier that was Alexandria’s mighty walls. As forceful as it was, Abd al-Rahman could only sustain his assault for four hours and broke it off in the late afternoon after the nearly-successful capture of a section of the southern wall was overturned by the personal intervention of Constantine and his comitatus. The Caesar briefly crossed blades with one of the most promising of the young ghilman – an Ethiopian who had been renamed Haqq ad-Din – but despite losing their swordfight and being disarmed, remained calm and had the quick thinking to ram his opponent with his shield, sending the surprised Haqq ad-Din tumbling off the wall to his death while one of his bodyguards pulled him back before he too fell over the edge. As this last-ditch attempt at taking Alexandria had floundered and Aloysius was hurriedly piling his army onto transport ships in Phoenicia, while to the west Al-Awwam & Aflah had achieved the only major Islamic success this year in pushing Stilicho back, Abd al-Rahman decided the time was right to sue for peace.
Constantine, Caesar of Rome, and members of his comitatus (personal guard) around the time of their defense of Alexandria
The Caliph did have some spots of luck this year which persuaded his enemies to agree to a truce and negotiations. In the case of the Romans, their troubles in the far West had grown to a point where Aloysius and Constantine could no longer put off dealing with them: the succession-related disorder in Francia had escalated to the point of civil war between various Merovingian scions, some Saxon tribes had regained the courage to harass the northern frontier once more, and the Emperor’s loyalists warned him of yet another conspiracy within the Senate to raise one of their own to the purple while he was busy in the east. As for the Khazars, Kundaçiq Khagan had launched a second offensive against Tabriz and finally succeeded in taking the city this time, but soon found that his victory was largely due to Al-Abbas having successfully extracted himself and the majority of the Islamic forces out east – where they defeated the eastern Khazar tarkhans in the Battle of Bukhara beyond the Oxus. One of the casualties of that battle was Doulan Qaghan, whose demise dashed all remaining hope of restoring the Southern Tegreg realm and doomed those Tegregs who had fled north to eventually fade into the ranks of the Khazars.
Far off to the east, Zhongzong was prepared to launch his second attack on Srivijaya. Rejecting an entreaty from the court of Sangramadhananjaya for peace, the Emperor of China sent forth a fleet twice as large as the one which had been defeated at the Battle of the Cham Islands, including sixty tower-ships and many other transports carrying a total of 55,000 soldiers. The Srivijayans met them further south this time, off Pulau Kundur[15], but this time China’s improved discipline and larger numbers allowed them to achieve a victory over the Srivijayans (who had not expected their foe to improve significantly since their last clash) and clear a path to advance further southward.
The Chinese landed thousands of troops southwest of Champa at Ligor, quickly compelling the submission of that city-state’s leadership, and began to demand the same from the rest of Srivijaya’s vassals on the Asian mainland, while Zhongzong now demanded Sangramadhananjaya surrender & pay tribute to him, assured that this victory would be sufficient to intimidate the Mahārāja. To his surprise, however, it was Sangramadhananjaya’s turn to bluntly refuse, and to instead muster the full might of Srivijaya to drive the Chinese from their waters. Another great naval battle between the Chinese Dragon and the last non-Indian great power in Asia to not have bowed to it to date now became imminent.
The Chinese war-fleet setting sail for Srivijaya's home waters
====================================================================================
[1] Benghazi.
[2] In the vicinity of modern Nukus, Uzbekistan.
[3] Huế.
[4] Türkmenabat.
[5] Cù Lao Chàm.
[6] These terms are similar to but more moderate than the historical Baqt treaty between Makuria and the Umayyads, where the Makurians (Nubians) were also obligated to ship a number of slaves to the Arabs and not offer refuge to escaped slaves, on account of the Hashemites’ position not being as overwhelming as that of and under greater threat than the RL Caliphate around the end of the seventh century.
[7] Now part of Cairo.
[8] Ajdabiya.
[9] Shabas-Sounkour.
[10] Zawyat Razin.
[11] Kafr al-Muqdam.
[12] Sidi Barrani.
[13] Tobruk.
[14] Jerash.
[15] Côn Đảo.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
With Aloysious having to run all over the empire, putting out the various fires (and I'm sure he would have it no other way), I wonder just how strong Helena's influence is, as she is in Constantinople most of the time and has time to spare to cultivate connections with people of importance, though the difference between two halves might put some tamper on her power in the West. The problem would be that centuries of different development can't be overcome just like that and for all purposes West, East and Africa are but three realms glued together. I think it would take quite considerable reform to forge something more lasting, against not insignificant resistance, probably something that will fall upon Constantine.
That ambush had to be very sus, even without amogus.
In other words, nothing new in the West.
That ambush had to be very sus, even without amogus.
In other words, nothing new in the West.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
You guys have pretty much nailed it - the past division of the Roman Empire might have been unfortunate, but it also had practical advantages which made even good emperors like Valentinian and Theodosius go through with it as well. Right now the East is the junior partner in the reunited (H)RE simply because it's the weaker half, having been clobbered by the Turks and Avars almost nonstop for the first half of the seventh century while the West got off comparatively lightly with 'only' two civil wars and some Avar attacks in the same timeframe, so as has been said the Aloysians really only have to worry about unstable federates, small-time barb incursions, and the Senate still being the Senate right now. But if that changes or a freak opportunity presents itself, that Greek-speaking half of the Roman world may seek either to dominate or break away from the Latin Occident.
Despite Aloysius technically being the sole sovereign of all Rome while she's just his consort (and not a formal co-ruling empress-regnant in her own right), Helena basically runs the Orient as an autonomous subject of her husband in the Occident since - as you've correctly identified - his connections in that half of the empire are skin-deep outside of its military. However this state of affairs is just a symptom of a greater trend, the aforementioned Eastern autonomy. Even after she dies, the Senate of Constantinople (claiming to represent the interests of the Greek-speaking East) is going to want to continue governing her half of the empire with a relatively free hand, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople & Antioch are going to continue to want to remain at arm's length from the other Heptarchs - but especially Rome (who they identify as being the one closest to the emperors themselves).
Constantine's a hard worker who will certainly try his best, but he's going to have quite a bit of work to do in regards to more closely binding the East to the West. And as you may guess, the only thing worse than having to deal with the Roman Senate alone is having to deal with two Senates...
Yeah, the Empire split in the first place because of the need for an Emperor to lead the armies to prevent generals from rebelling combined with 3 major widely separated frontiers. There are 4 frontiers now with Egypt lost, and once there is an Emperor less energetic than Aloysius we could well see a repeat of the Gallic and Palmyrene Empires as the armies responsible for the Rhine/Danube/Eastern/African frontiers proclaim their own Emperors the moment their front is neglected by the singular Emperor, on top of Senatorial shenanigans.
Avoiding this requires administrative and cultural reform so Emperors can trust far flung generals with authority without fearing coup.
Avoiding this requires administrative and cultural reform so Emperors can trust far flung generals with authority without fearing coup.
You guys have pretty much nailed it - the past division of the Roman Empire might have been unfortunate, but it also had practical advantages which made even good emperors like Valentinian and Theodosius go through with it as well. Right now the East is the junior partner in the reunited (H)RE simply because it's the weaker half, having been clobbered by the Turks and Avars almost nonstop for the first half of the seventh century while the West got off comparatively lightly with 'only' two civil wars and some Avar attacks in the same timeframe, so as has been said the Aloysians really only have to worry about unstable federates, small-time barb incursions, and the Senate still being the Senate right now. But if that changes or a freak opportunity presents itself, that Greek-speaking half of the Roman world may seek either to dominate or break away from the Latin Occident.
Despite Aloysius technically being the sole sovereign of all Rome while she's just his consort (and not a formal co-ruling empress-regnant in her own right), Helena basically runs the Orient as an autonomous subject of her husband in the Occident since - as you've correctly identified - his connections in that half of the empire are skin-deep outside of its military. However this state of affairs is just a symptom of a greater trend, the aforementioned Eastern autonomy. Even after she dies, the Senate of Constantinople (claiming to represent the interests of the Greek-speaking East) is going to want to continue governing her half of the empire with a relatively free hand, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople & Antioch are going to continue to want to remain at arm's length from the other Heptarchs - but especially Rome (who they identify as being the one closest to the emperors themselves).
Constantine's a hard worker who will certainly try his best, but he's going to have quite a bit of work to do in regards to more closely binding the East to the West. And as you may guess, the only thing worse than having to deal with the Roman Senate alone is having to deal with two Senates...
So,HRE is waiting for next cyvil war which break it into ERE and WRE again.
Only reason why that not happened now are muslims.As long as they remained united,HRE would remain united.Hopefully.
If we do not have clear succesion,cyvil war could fuck HRE anyway.
But - it is old roman problem,how to deal with succesion without cyvil wars.
Once they avoided it for about 100 years by adopting promising politicians/generals and giving them part of power when old emperor still lived,but it is not possible now.
Nubia probably doomed itself just like in OTL - question is,would they survive till 14th century,or longer?
About aksumites remnants - i read theory,that Uganda kingdoms/there were few,and they never united/ were made by people who run from Ethiopia in 15th century.
Could you made those who arleady run from arabs made their kingdoms in Uganda about 650AD ?
Han - it seems,that they could either lost,or emulate Rome and destroy their seafaring enemies.
I once read,that Tang dynasty could have gold mines in Australia - no matter if it is true or not,you could made your Han do so.
About other new comers - phoenicians and Carthage of old were great sailors,knew about Madera,possible Carribean and Brasil,too.
They also knew how to circumnavigate Africa,so you could use colony in South Africa,too.
You could use some abadonned colony there,if you need it.
No matter who would meet them,christian or muslims,they would react in similar way to Moloch worschippers.
Africa - good,that donatists are smart enough to not help muslims,like in OTL.
But it could change.
Europe - romans must remember about amber road,they need money,so when they made it work again?
Or,even better,go through Baltic and take Gotland again.
Prussian tribes never united in OTL when faced by german onslaught,why should they be smarter now?
Only difference - some tribes could agree to be christian without fight.
In OTL Teutonic order wiped out every tribe that try that without being conqered,it could change now.
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Circle of Willis
Good to see this back and some great battles. Basically showing the practical limits of the empire given speed of communications and travel at this time and also the fragility of the empire due to internal tensions and differences.
I was surprised that Aloysius thought there would be a Christian uprising in Egypt supporting the return of the empire given its past history in the region. If the empire struggled to hold it when facing less powerful opponents it was always going to be a big ask to do it here. I think the queen regent in Nubia was wise to avoid joining the bloodshed given how exposed her nation is but fear its not going to stay independent much longer.
Part of the problem is that the current borders are rather unstable. Egypt in Muslim hands exposes the southern flank of the Roman Levant while that in turn threatens Muslim control of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It really needs one side or the other to lose significant territory before things are more stable and I can't see either side willing to agree that.
A lot could depend on how the eastern theatre goes with Kundaçiq Khagan having something of a 'crusade' of his own against the Muslims who killed his father so I doubt this is going to end soon unless he also dies or either side wins a big victory. A Khazer domination of most of Iran could be interesting although not sure what the status of that region is now. Its been so fought over and seen so many foreign groups ruling it that is there an Iranian identity still?
Going to be a big rumble in the SE Asia region. Hopefully Sangramadhananjaya can pull off a big victory like before else China is going to bring the region under its control although it could then be facing a serious case of overstretch with its other gains beyond the traditional Han territory of the time.
Good to see this back and some great battles. Basically showing the practical limits of the empire given speed of communications and travel at this time and also the fragility of the empire due to internal tensions and differences.
I was surprised that Aloysius thought there would be a Christian uprising in Egypt supporting the return of the empire given its past history in the region. If the empire struggled to hold it when facing less powerful opponents it was always going to be a big ask to do it here. I think the queen regent in Nubia was wise to avoid joining the bloodshed given how exposed her nation is but fear its not going to stay independent much longer.
Part of the problem is that the current borders are rather unstable. Egypt in Muslim hands exposes the southern flank of the Roman Levant while that in turn threatens Muslim control of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It really needs one side or the other to lose significant territory before things are more stable and I can't see either side willing to agree that.
A lot could depend on how the eastern theatre goes with Kundaçiq Khagan having something of a 'crusade' of his own against the Muslims who killed his father so I doubt this is going to end soon unless he also dies or either side wins a big victory. A Khazer domination of most of Iran could be interesting although not sure what the status of that region is now. Its been so fought over and seen so many foreign groups ruling it that is there an Iranian identity still?
Going to be a big rumble in the SE Asia region. Hopefully Sangramadhananjaya can pull off a big victory like before else China is going to bring the region under its control although it could then be facing a serious case of overstretch with its other gains beyond the traditional Han territory of the time.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
I reckon TTL Iran will be seen a lot like OTL Afghanistan (Belisarians FTW), although are still many centuries ahead, for Afghanistan area to be messed up as well, there might be still more steppe nomad conquerors ahead.
There always was more nomad steppe conquerors - till armies get muskets.
692-695: Peace, for a time
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
692 saw the three great powers of western Eurasia coming together to negotiate another peace treaty, the second in as many decades. Despite being the aggressor (again) and having to fight on two fronts, the Muslims had managed to avert a total collapse of any of their frontiers as well as any important deaths among their leadership, and were in a position to hold on to at least some of their gains. Meanwhile, the Romans had failed to either salvage their destroyed Garamantian federates or retake Egypt as originally planned, but had managed to hold the line in the Levant and acquire some gains in the Mesopotamian and Caucasian frontiers. The Khazars, of course, had made a considerable advance in the Caucasus and definitively reached the Oxus in Khorasan, even if they were unable to hang on to their conquests south of that river.
The peace settlement which Aloysius & Helena, Abd al-Rahman and his brothers, and Kundaçiq Khagan hashed out in Antioch would be based on these territorial delineations as of the war’s end. Constantine would withdraw from Alexandria, the only major city in Egypt which the Romans had taken and held throughout the war, where despite his efforts his position was deemed unsustainable; all Ephesian Christians who wished to return into Christendom’s fold were allowed to leave unmolested with him and all the property they could carry, while those who elected to stay behind were still to be guaranteed life, liberty and the protection of the law under the rule of the Caliph. The Muslims would further pay a hefty indemnity, not only because they started this war but also to compensate the Romans for peacefully leaving Alexandria, which would go a long way to refilling Rome’s coffers. Those Alexandrian Greeks who left would mostly resettle in Anatolia, helping to revitalize the towns and lands devastated by Heshana’s onslaught and Arab raids over the course of the seventh century.
However, the lands of the Garamantes in Cyrenaica and eastern-central Libya would remain under Islamic control, for although they had successfully defended Leptis Magna, Stilicho and his Moors had still been pushed from these slightly more distant territories in the last months of the fighting. Now homeless, the remaining Garamantian Berbers would settle among and inevitably assimilate into the ranks of the Africans over the coming centuries. Rome would be compensated for this territorial loss with the reaffirmation of the Jordan as its eastern boundary with the Caliphate and the handover of the Mesopotamian fortresses taken by Aloysius & secured by Thomas, extending from Edessa southward to Nicephorium[1], Meskene[2] & Barbalissos[3] as well as eastward to the village of Nawar[4] and the ruined fortress-city of Nisibis.
Mosaic of a Garamantian exile in Carthage. Those who remained true to Rome rather than live in submission to the conquering Caliph added to the ranks of the Africans not only their numbers, but also their skills both as agriculturalists and (mostly light) warriors, and passed to their descendants among the Moors an even more intense-than-usual hatred of the Saracen enemy
Further north, the 692 Peace of Antioch was uniformly negative for the Muslims in and around the Caucasus. Abd al-Rahman had to acknowledge Christian gains in the Caucasus – namely, that Georgia completely expelled Islam from its lands, Mithranes once more restoring his rule over the old hinterland of Caucasian Albania while the Caspian coast went to the Khazars. Said Khazars got to extend their dominion to Tabriz, which Kundaçiq spitefully claimed he would only return for a ransom he knew the Caliph could not afford after having to also pay the Romans to leave Alexandria. Arsaber’s Armenians also recovered Naxuana[5], Her[6] and access to Lake Urmia’s northern and western shore. Beyond the Caspian, the Khazars and Muslims firmly fixed their border at the Oxus.
All in all, the Peace of Antioch was not the permanent peace which the peoples of the Middle East and the Caucasus longed for, but another temporary armistice in-between the wars the three great empires remained mired in. Although they knew they could afford to lose the Garamantians so long as the Moors still stood, Aloysius and Helena were painfully aware that their failure to reconquer Egypt left their extended Levantine frontier unsustainable in the long term. Abd al-Rahman had finished off the Garamantians and won some territories for Islam, but these gains were offset by losses elsewhere which left his army and people not entirely satisfied with his leadership. And Kundaçiq Khagan most certainly did not believe he was even close to avenging his father’s death with what he had conquered so far. There was little doubt among all involved that hostilities would resume once the dueling empires had sufficiently recovered from this bout of warfare and (at least in the case of the Romans and Arabs) sorted out their respective internal troubles. These lingering hostilities also allowed the Mesopotamian Jewry to weave themselves into the Silk Road trade network as intermediaries between Roman Christendom and the Arabic Caliphate, and they were able to secure a lucrative niche for themselves especially under the latter’s more generous and (for now) relatively tolerant patronage.
While a state of peace (fragile though it was) had begun to settle in western Eurasia once more, on the landmass’ eastern end another war was reaching its fever peak. Zhongzong’s fleet sailed on toward the heart of the Srivijayan Empire, the Chinese Emperor being determined to bring this southern rival to heel once and for all and thereby assert the Middle Kingdom’s supremacy in all of the cardinal directions. Sangramadhananjaya led his own navy to meet them in the largest known naval engagement of the seventh century, so close to its ending. The Battle of Terengganu[7], also known as the Battle of Tan-Tan to the Chinese, pitted China’s fifty-two remaining louchuan, scores of mengchong leather-covered warships, and over a hundred transports and lesser support vessels against an armada of well over 300 Srivijayan ships, though only about 80 of these were comparable to the larger Chinese warships in size and power.
The Chinese had sheer bulk and might on their side, but the Srivijayans were still the more experienced sailors and their ships were more maneuverable, being much better-used to ocean travel (and warfare) than their Chinese opponents. Sangramadhananjaya used these advantages to the fullest in the battle which followed, drawing some of the Chinese ships out of their close formation before having his own smaller, more agile vessels (and the marines they carried) swarm them in isolation. When the Later Han admirals tired of this strategy to whittle down their fleet and committed to an aggressive assault, trusting in their louchuan vanguard to batter the smaller and weaker Srivijayan ships out of the way with ease, Sangramadhananjaya reformed his ships into a crescent with his own flagship in the dead-center of the formation and his heavy warships concentrated at the tips of the formation. When this Srivijayan formation enveloped them, the Chinese found themselves being attacked on all sides and having to hastily refocus to fighting their way out of the trap, which they did at great cost – thirty of the louchuan and scores of the lesser ships were lost while the Srivijayan casualties were comparatively light. The Mahārāja had gained a great victory in the Battle of Terengganu, and now that the tide was turning, he prepared to launch a counteroffensive to recover his sphere of influence across Southeast Asia.
More agile Srivijayan warships closing in to board one of their Chinese foes at the Battle of Terengganu
693 marked a return to peacetime for the Holy Roman Empire, but by no means did this mean the Emperor could rest on his laurels. While Helena worked to further rebuild and fortify her half of the Roman world, Aloysius had to go about restoring internal tranquility to his own immediately after exiting the Middle East. He started with Italy, where he returned to Rome for a triumphal procession displaying the plunder he had collected from his battles in the Orient (including the tribute the Muslims had paid him to evacuate Alexandria) and trumpeted the Roman victories at Leptis Magna and in the Levant (while quietly downplaying the demise of the Garamantians and the failure to secure Egypt). The Augustus also took the opportunity to place two major relics from Christ’s crucifixion, the Crown of Thorns and the Holy Lance, in Saint Peter’s Basilica for safekeeping; they had both originally been stored in Jerusalem and their movement to Rome, with the assent of both Helena and Patriarch Abel of Jerusalem, demonstrated ongoing Roman worries as to the long-term viability of Roman control over the holy city.
With that done, Aloysius went on to confront the Senate. As his spies and loyalists in that august body had forewarned, a conspiracy had begun to form among Senators to do unto him as they had once done to Emperor Venantius: certainly they had disdained him as the latest in a succession of uncouth and ignoble barbarians to have taken and kept mastery over Rome by force of arms, hardly an uncommon opinion among the ancient Italo-Roman aristocracy, but the long wars with the Caliphate had given the more ambitious and over-bold of their ilk the idea that they now had a wonderful opportunity to throw off Aloysian rule altogether and retake control of Rome for ‘true Romans’ (a category which did not and would never include the Stilichians and Aloysians in their view, no matter that the Senate itself was hardly blameless in the decline of its influence over centuries). These same Senators quailed at the prospect of having to actually tell Aloysius what they thought of him to his face however, and those less committed to the plot (some of whom were not even actually guilty of anything more than sharing the same social circles as the more involved parties and badmouthing the Emperor when they thought nobody was listening) quickly sold out their co-conspirators.
The Augustus quickly identified the ringleaders and those worth prosecuting from the Senators he could simply intimidate into submission (and personally found so pathetic that it would be a waste of his time to kill them), determining that of the truly guilty it was one Manius Aemilius Lepidus who had been the brains behind the conspiracy. This Lepidus, doubtless a remote descendant of the third pillar of the Second Triumvirate, had schemed to falsely declare Aloysius had died in his wars abroad; subvert Rome’s garrison; buy the allegiance of the Italian elite; and imprison those who he judged could not be bought (including the Pope). Found guilty after being buried beneath an avalanche of his treacherous co-conspirators who all sought to save their own skins, he was also notable as the only one of the arrested schemers to face his inevitable execution for treason with composed dignity. Nonetheless Aloysius remained unimpressed by his stoicism, answering the Senator’s bitter insults with perhaps the most succinct summary of the Romano-Germanic dynasties’ record compared to that of the old Italo-Roman aristocracy to be recorded in the pages of history: “Though you denounce me as a savage unworthy of the purple and this crown which I wear, I have done more for Rome in thirty years – and before me the Stilichōnes had done more still in three centuries – than the Gens Aemilia can boast of having done in the past six hundred.”
Aloysian loyalists in the Senate, safe in the knowledge that their patron has returned to the Eternal City and will not give their enemies a chance to assassinate them, denouncing traitors to their Emperor
After unraveling this latest Senatorial conspiracy, Aloysius moved further north, stopping in Gaul to sort out the Frankish succession before continuing on to his capital at Augusta Treverorum. His legions forced an end to the fighting between the Merovingian scions, and kept these princes apart while he heard out their claims and studied the familial relationships between them and Theudebert III, the last uncontested Frankish king. Ultimately the Emperor determined that Dagobert of Aurelianum, the most senior of Theudebert’s male descendants (being the eldest son of his second son), should inherit by weight of both Frankish and Roman law & custom, but also marry his kinswoman Ingeltrude (eldest granddaughter of Theudebert’s eldest son) to unify the branches of the Merovingian family tree which he believed had the most legitimate claims to their throne. Dagobert’s kindred fumed at his decision, especially Chlothar of Bagacum[8] and Childebert of Durocortorum; but while they were mightier than Dagobert’s faction and knew it, these magnates feared the prospect of rebelling against Aloysius, a provably indomitable war-leader who had reigned for more than 30 years at this point.
Thus were the lesser Merovingians compelled to swear fealty to Rome’s chosen king and promise the restoration of peace to their federate lands in northern Gaul. In order to both keep that peace and give his heir practical experience in governing & working with his future federate vassals, Aloysius also insisted on the appointment of the Caesar Constantine as Dagobert’s Mayor of the Palace, not dissimilar to how his father Arbogastes had sat in that same capacity for Theudebert (and effectively ruled Francia for him, as the latter was still a child then) in the early decades of the seventh century. Once Constantine and his household had been installed in Lutetia with half a dozen legions for security and the enforcement of the imperial peace, Aloysius moved on to Augusta Treverorum.
The Caesarina Maria, Constantine's wife and daughter of the Augustus Theodosius IV, and Dagobert's queen Ingeltrude following the former's household being settled in Lutetia
From his seat of power on the Mosella, the Augustus prepared to deal with the Saxon frontier in the last months of the year. Instead of invading the Saxons’ forest homes in the dead of winter, he did try to chastise them through diplomats and by challenging them to single combat at first. Only a few tribes sent champions to answer Aloysius’ challenge, and fewer still actually kept their word to once more pledge submission & friendship to Rome after he slew said champions and dispelled any notion on their part that they could underestimate his fighting skill simply because he was now in his fifties. Still, the injuries these younger and more hot-blooded Saxons inflicted upon him in their duels combined with his advancing age to remind the graying Emperor of his impending mortality: Aloysius must have thought that he had to get right with God while he still had time left, because he proved more generous than usual with his alms-giving on the Christmas of 693 and also sponsored the construction of the first official foundling hospital in the Roman Empire[9] with Archbishop Teutobochus of Augusta Treverorum on that day.
The Arabs and Khazars too used the first years of the new peace to settle mounting internal troubles. Abd al-Rahman had to bear the anger of some of the Arab tribes, infuriated by how their conquests this time around were a good deal more modest than they had imagined and by the signing of the Baqt with Nubia. The Caliph sought to assuage their anger by sponsoring expeditions against targets he believed (or at least hoped) would be softer and easier prey – the Indo-Romans and Hunas to the east, as well as the inland tribes beyond the Swahili coast. The Belisarians had dug in deeply and their mountain bastions proved resilient against this new threat, against which they had been preparing since the early reign of the late Hippostratus I.
The same could not be said of the Hunas, whose Mahārājadhirāja Pravarasena had neglected his western frontier to harass the Southern Indian kingdoms and set a strong watch on the border with Tibet (and by extension the Later Han). One furious Islamic razzia across the Gedrosian desert and into Sindh later, Pravarasena found himself scrambling to organize troops from his other frontiers into an army capable of responding to the guzat, who had even managed to briefly cross the Indus and pillage as far as the walls of Aror[10]. Ali requested the honor of leading a larger expedition comprised of those Arab forces which had been preserved through the war with Rome and the Khazars against this latest group of pagans they’d picked a fight with, keen on salvaging his wounded pride after having performed the worst of his brothers on previous battlefields, and Abd al-Rahman granted it to him.
An Islamic ghazi and his expedition stopping their raid short of the walls of Aror, Sindh
The Khazars had perhaps the fewest internal issues to worry about out of the ‘big three’ powers dominating western Eurasia. Kundaçiq Khagan’s marriage to the Roman princess Irene and openness to foreign ways disgruntled the traditionalist elements of the Khazar aristocracy, who resented the influx of foreign dignitaries and recruits into his retinue and his continuing work on Atil – a city for Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Tengriists alike – in part for said foreign wife’s benefit. And in spite of his oath of vengeance against the Hashemites, he proved willing to facilitate the work of and grant monopolies to a growing trade network spearheaded by a faction of Mesopotamian Jews (so-called the ‘Radhanites’[11] after the name of their home province, Radhan, in the Islamic wilayat of Kufa), further stoking traditionalist resentment.
Tensions boiled over at a celebratory feast in Atil’s new palace during the early months of 693, where the traditional-minded Tuzniq Tarkhan got drunk enough off of airag[12] to speak his mind. He called out the Khagan, who was similarly intoxicated after consuming fewer cups of more potent Pontic wine, as a traitor to their old gods and old ways, and declared that it was a good thing Kundaç Khagan had died before he could see his son selling their people out to foreigners; naturally Kundaçiq snatched a lance from one of his bodyguards and killed the mutinous Tarkhan on the spot for these insults. Tuzniq’s kindred promptly rose in rebellion against the Khagan, but he bought their probable allies off with bribes drawn from his war booty and crushed them in detail once they had been isolated. Still, their brief rebellion was a sign of worse things to come as the Khazars entwined themselves more deeply with the politics, religions and other changes brought on by their extended contact with Rome and the Caliphate.
Radhanite merchants from the Caliphate, bound for China, hailing their Khazar guide after making it to Kath in Khazar-held Transoxiana
On the other end of Eurasia, the Srivijayans had launched their push to reclaim much of their sphere of influence (or ‘mandala’) from the Later Han in the wake of their great victory at Terengganu. Chinese garrisons in Malay cities such as Ligor were blockaded and compelled to surrender, or ousted in uprisings incited by the imminent return of the Srivijayans whose ruling hand the natives felt had been lighter for decades than the Chinese one had been in a few years. Emperor Zhongzong was incensed at this turn of events, but resisted his initial impulse to put together a third major expedition against Srivijaya: Sangramadhananjaya had proven himself to be a much tougher foe to beat than the Tibetans or Turks or Yamato, and the Son of Heaven was concerned that another defeat at his hands might start giving China’s other tributaries the idea that they could rebel against him – and get away with it. Instead he decided to sue for peace, offering to recognize the demarcation of the great southern sea into Chinese and Srivijayan spheres of influence; but now it was Sangramadhananjaya’s turn to refuse, as with the way mostly cleared by the defeat of the Chinese navy at Terengganu, he now entertained the idea of an amphibious attack to retake Champa for his son-in-law.
694 was another year spent largely on careful internal consolidation by the incumbent lords of the Roman world. Even Aloysius’ punitive expeditions against the rebellious Saxon tribes were not as expansive and forceful as his previous expedition in the 680s – the Augustus‘ ranks had been worn down by attrition after all, as well as a need to reinforce the garrisons on his other borders and to give those legions (and especially their federate auxiliaries) who had accompanied him all the way to the north some rest. In any case Aloysius himself sought to pursue a different strategy to bring the Saxons to heel once more, hoping that diplomacy would succeed in ensuring a more lasting peace on his northern border (so he could concern himself with the more gravely imperiled eastern ones to a greater degree) where naked force had only beaten the Saxons into submission for a short time previously.
While the Emperor did effectively utilize his remaining forces to crush several Saxon war-hosts of not-insignificant size in battle and spike the heads of their kings and chieftains throughout 694, he was more willing to negotiate generous terms with those Saxon lords who were ready to talk before crossing swords and more readily showed clemency to the survivors whose kin had unwisely chosen to fight him instead. Aloysius always offered the same terms to those Saxons who were prepared to bend the knee and reconcile themselves to him: they had to open their homes and hearts to Christ, which in practice meant tolerating the movement of Christian missionaries through their lands, not harming any Saxon who chose to convert to the new religion, and similarly respecting the sanctity of any churches these priests, their new flocks and their Roman backers might build on Saxon soil. The Augustus also reached out to the Anglo-Saxons for help in proselytizing to the Continental Saxons, hoping that the latter would be able to comprehend Biblical teachings more easily if it were delivered in a language much more similar to their own than Latin.
In exchange for accepting the advance of Christianity (even if they did not convert to the faith themselves, though certainly those who went that extra step would be acknowledged as friends of Rome and be treated more preferentially than their neighbors), Aloysius imparted only a light burden onto the Saxon chieftains and princes who agreed to his terms. He took few hostages from their households, and little tribute – at times he would even waive the latter requirement entirely, ostensibly as a show of Christian charity, but it also helped that he’d amassed enough plunder from ransacking the camps of defeated Islamic armies and towns in the distant Orient that he did not have to rely on Saxon treasure to keep his legionaries well-paid, and thus could afford to avoid driving them to material ruin and thus continued rebellion. As part of a general cutting-back on personal amusements so as to make amends with God in his twilight years (and perhaps recalling how poorly the last time he indulged in this habit went for him), in a show of self-restraint the Augustus also consciously avoided even the comeliest of the Saxon princesses sent to his court. Still, not all or even most of the Saxon tribes could be tamed so easily – many sought to resist Christianity, which they identified as a key element of Romanization, and remained hostile or at best in a state of armed neutrality toward the Romans for years to come.
As for Aloysius’ heir, Constantine – ever more interested in scholarly matters than those of the sword – sought to further entrench Roman ‘soft’ power over Francia, so as to secure the generational loyalty of these people (who were after all his kindred by blood, albeit increasingly remotely) and keep the peace by way of letters rather than yet more bloodshed. He sponsored the construction of monasteries to advance learning and, critically, a school attached to the Merovingian palace in Lutetia[13] which would serve as the model for the one he aspired to build in Augusta Treverorum itself. There he had his own son, Aloysius Junior, educated by the finest scholarly minds in Rome alongside the children of both the newly-minted Frankish royals and their rivals, in hopes of both reconciling the next generation and ensuring that they would grow up to be erudite and virtuous rulers – people steeped in the Roman intellectual tradition who not only knew how to govern a realm, but were also wise in numbers and letters both, having received an education in the liberal arts and the finer tenets of the Ephesian Christian faith in addition to skills at arms.
Constantine in Lutetia with the assembled princelings of the Merovingian dynasty, who were to be raised both in the high Romano-Gallic cultural tradition and to be as mighty at arms as their Frankish ancestors under his supervision
In the east, Helena was making her own contribution to the reorganization of the Roman state. In order to more effectively rebuild the fighting strength of the Roman East, and inspired by the military reforms of the Stilichians in Italy, she and Aloysius resettled veterans of their legions and the Greek-speaking refugees who had fled the advance of the Muslims (including virtually all of the Alexandrian Greeks who followed Constantine), as well as descendants of earlier waves of refugees who had fled the Avar and Turkic onslaughts, across the long-devastated Anatolia, which had yet to rebuild – in fact accelerating that rebuilding process was another intended positive from this program of resettlement. Of course where possible, the original owners were restored to their rightful land and title, but the ravages of the Turks and then (even if only briefly) Islamic guzat had ensured there would be both much spare land left in Roman Asia Minor and many refugees to redistribute it to.
In exchange for new lands to live on, these Anatolian Greeks would be required to contribute at least one soldier per household (or more in times of crisis) to the army for 20 years, and were organized into regional legions – in a sense, replacing the Eastern limitanei border-guards with larger regional forces who would augment and be augmented by the Caucasian and Arab federates. Each of these new legions was placed under a military count, and multiple legions further organized into larger zones of operation designated as a théma (‘theme’, meaning placement) and headed by a Dux. This system would serve as the prototype for the military backbone of the Orient in the centuries ahead and influence the military development of the Occident as well, being notable enough to be recorded in the Virtus Exerciti, and it conferred upon the Romans the advantage of having strong local defenses capable of engaging in autonomous operations at a relatively low cost to the central treasury; but as future Emperors would find out to their sorrow, they also gave ambitious dukes and counts a built-up powerbase from which to challenge the legitimate Aloysian Augusti for the purple.
Thomas Trithyrius distributing devastated Anatolian land, which had fallen into abeyance, to both the landless veterans of the Roman army and exiles from Alexandria, Syria & the Balkans by his mother-in-law's order
To the east, the Arabs finally found an enemy they would have more luck against than the Romans and Khazars in the Hunas. Ali divided his army, sending a diversionary detachment to once more strike through the Gedrosian Desert and trick the Hunas into believing the newest of their hostile neighbors would be coming overland when in truth he had piled the majority of his veterans onto a fleet assembled out of South Arabia, the Qahtanite sailors having been promised generous settlements and shares of the plunder in ‘Al-Hind’ once it had been conquered. This fleet landed the youngest of the sons of Aisha and his host at Debal[14], where they took the Huna defenders completely by surprise and took the port after only a few short hours of combat.
From Debal, Ali swarmed upward along the banks of the Indus, catching the main Huna army in the region in a pincer with his overland detachment and destroying it at the Battle of Buqan as it tried to fall back behind the great river. The Huna Raja of Sindh, Tujina, was a staunch Buddhist and a defiant captive who refused to convert Islam under pain of death; so death Ali gave him, and the sight of his head on the Muslim prince’s lance compelled those among his captains and governors who were not so committed to the teachings of the Buddha to submit to the House of Submission. By the end of the year Ali could report to his brothers, who had ceased their raids on the Indo-Roman kingdom in the face of the sturdier resistance of its king Aspandates (‘Aspandhat’ to his Sogdian and Tocharian subjects), that he had managed to overrun the lands west of the Indus and established a bridgehead on its eastern banks, opening a path deeper into India while Pravarasena was still assembling armies to push him back.
Further still to the east, the war between the Later Han and Srivijaya was entering its endgame. The Srivijayans disembarked a considerable host of 35,000 in the southern reaches of Champa, hoping to retake the kingdom for Prabhasadharma, and recaptured Panduranga[15] as their foothold with the connivance of that city’s prince and garrison. However, while Srivijaya may have bested the Chinese at sea, on land the Emperor’s armies were still supreme and Emperor Zhongzong’s general Xie Junji descended upon them with 90,000 men, including both local Champan collaborators pledged to the Chinese client-king Harivarman and a substantial contingent of Turkic auxiliary cavalry.
The ensuing Battle of Panduranga unsurprisingly resulted in a Srivijayan defeat and withdrawal to their ships, as well as the capture and swift execution of both Prabhasadharma and the Srivijayan general Kariyana (who incidentally had been the Srivijayans’ representative and appointed harbormaster at Simhapura during Prabhasadharma’s brief reign). Zhongzong continued to think better of pursuing the Srivijayans into the sea and repeated his offer for an armistice. With his claimant slain and the Chinese position on the Asian mainland clearly unassailable, Sangramadhananjaya agreed at last to a truce and peace negotiations, winding down this last of the great seventh-century clashes between the Later Han and their neighbors toward its conclusion.
695 was a quiet enough year in the West that even Aloysius got to rest his aging bones for a few months. Idle indolence did not suit the still-dynamic Emperor however, and he soon busied himself with a new project: putting what he and his son had written so far in the Virtus Exerciti into practice even as they continued to add chapters to the manual. Since by this time Rome had, by design or by happy accident, effectively raised a wall of federate kingdoms along its eastern frontier, he determined that the limitanei – already long worn down to almost nothing by the wars of the 7th century, whether by way of attrition against invaders like the Avars and Turks or from being added to the hosts with which Aloysius had crisscrossed Europe, Africa and the Middle East – would be folded into the ranks of the exercitus praesentalis, or imperial field armies, and the old distinctions between them, the pseudocomitatenses and comitatenses fell by the wayside. Accompanying this change in the army’s structure, paygrades were streamlined and made more uniform as an additional cost-cutting measure: after all, Aloysius wasn’t about to keep paying salaries to units he was disbanding, and which often had already ceased to exist save on paper years or decades prior.
With the responsibility of being Rome’s first line of defense on the borders now being devolved entirely to the foederati, Aloysius sought to make the role of the mobile comital reserve into the preserve of the aforementioned exercitus praesentalis. Each of these hosts were set up as field armies numbering ideally 35-40,000 strong (though in practice it was rarely easy to exactly meet these numbers), more-or-less uniformly trained and equipped to a high standard, and stationed at centers of imperial power with the old comital responsibility of moving quickly to respond to threats which the federates couldn’t handle, or else forming the core of an imperial expeditionary force intent on launching a major offensive into enemy territory: originally Aloysius planned for five such armies – one in Augusta Treverorum, one in Ravenna, one in Rome, one in Thessalonica and one in Constantinople. The ‘proper’ Roman legionaries of these standing armies were to still be augmented by contingents of auxilia palatina (‘palace auxiliaries’), special cohorts recruited from the best and fiercest fighters among the federate kingdoms to directly answer to the Augustus’ orders, though for security purposes they would always be heavily outnumbered by the ordinary legions.
Replacing the old comitatenses/pseudocomitatenses/limitanei divisions in their ranks were divisions of rank and wealth. The infantry of these imperial armies tended to be landless volunteers or conscripts fighting for a wage, but the cavalry were increasingly exclusively drawn from the class of martial smallholders established by Stilicho & Eucherius I and expanded over the years, generational military service being made into a precondition for their family’s continued ownership of even small plots of land. Hence, the very term caballarii would gradually take on the meaning of a hereditary military elite rather than remaining a generic term for horsemen, becoming synonymous with the antiquated equites as the true ‘knights’ of the Empire.
A late-seventh-century Romano-Frankish caballarius from Augusta Treverorum's environs. Since Aloysius' reforms would turn the core Roman armies into, essentially, all-comitatenses forces with an emphasis on mobility, its cavalry arm (especially the heavy cavalry) continued to gain primacy over the infantry and enjoyed an attendant rise in social status
Outside of military matters, the Caesar’s daughter – duly named Maria after her mother – was also conceived and born in Lutetia over the course of this peaceful year. Less joyful was Constantine’s interaction with his eldest half-brother Sauromates, the Comes Barcinensis, who invited the former to a conciliatory Easter feast at his Spanish home to mark the end of Lent: confident that Sauromates would not dare do any harm to the Empire’s lawful heir out of fear of imperial wrath and that his children would continue the legitimate Aloysian line even if the Count was foolish enough to try something, Constantine accepted the offer. The feast itself was a conventionally pleasant affair where nothing seemed amiss, but the Caesar fell sick on the journey back over the Pyrenees and nearly died before beginning to recover thanks to the intervention of skilled monastic physicians near Nemausus[16].
Sauromates immediately protested his innocence, pointing to how Constantine had fallen ill on the road and not in or near Barcino, and privately boasting to his friends that if he truly wished his little brother dead then the latter would be. Nevertheless Aloysius demanded he come to Augusta Treverorum to personally testify in his own defense, but the Count never got the chance, for he himself died while Constantine was still bedridden – fatally stabbed in a lovers’ quarrel by the husband of his latest mistress, one of the bad habits which he had inherited from his father having apparently caught up to him, immediately after which said man was killed on the spot by his guards. Nonetheless Helena was widely suspected to have ordered the assassination, though not even Aloysius could find proof of it in their shared lifetimes, and certainly she had both motive (the Augusta had long feared one or more of her husband’s bastards would try to kill her lawful one to get closer to the purple, and now whether Sauromates had really tried to poison Constantine or not, she seemed to be vindicated in her view) and opportunity (what with being the de facto co-ruler of the Roman East, she surely had the gold to persuade the assassin into realizing the lethal course of action he’d only been thinking about for months).
Beyond Helena’s half of the Empire, Abd al-Rahman was spending his own twilight years seeking his own advantages for the next round of hostilities with Rome and the Khazars. The power of ‘Greek fire’ had been made apparent to the Arabs by the ease with which the Romans had destroyed their fleet the one time they’d dared try to contest the Mediterranean in the last round of fighting, and the Caliph put his sages and engineers to work on finding an Islamic answer to it. The result was naphtha, a sticky and highly flammable fuel mixture whose very name was derived from the Arabic word for petroleum (naft), originally made with oil gathered from pits east of the Tigris. Abd al-Rahman hoped to not only deploy this weapon at sea but also on land, and began to train some of his ghulam to fling clay pots filled with the stuff to set their foes ablaze.
A qaraghulam of the new Islamic naffatun corps demonstrating the use of his new weapon for Abd al-Rahman
Naphtha was not available at the time to Ali and his sons, who had to make do with more traditional weapons as they continued to do battle with the Hunas in Sindh. Huna resistance rapidly stiffened east of the Indus, and the Arabs met their first real battlefield reversal in the region at the Battle of Brahmanabad[17], where Pravarasena drove them back with elephants and a larger body of cavalry. Forced southward toward the captured fort of Rawar, Ali nevertheless fought on and managed to turn the tables there, defeating the Mahārājadhirāja’s army with a combination of trenches, caltrops and fire-arrows which caused no small number of his war elephants to panic and stampede among their own lines. The Hunas fell back behind the Thar Desert to await reinforcements, while Ali split his attention between harassing them with forward parties detached from his own host and locking down the eastern bank of the Indus for Islam.
While the war between the Muslims and the Hunas continued to intensify, the one between China and Srivijaya came to its conclusion in 695. Zhongzong and Sangramadhananjaya sought to hammer out a peace which would acknowledge the battlefield realities as of this year and allow both emperors to save face: consequently, with Prabhasadharma already dead, the Srivijayans conceded the return of Champa to the Chinese sphere of influence. In exchange, China withdrew its remaining garrisons south of Champa (which could not be sustained thanks to Srivijayan mastery of the sea anyway) and made way for the restoration of Srivijaya’s own mandala of influence around the southern seas. Crucially the Srivijayans were also not required to pay tribute to the Dragon Throne, making them the only regional power to have successfully fought China at the Later Han’s zenith to a standstill. Other kingdoms which had been made to bow, such as the Yamato and Tibetans, surely took notice of this revelation that the Chinese were not invincible and were encouraged in their designs to break free from Chinese overlordship by it as the eighth century dawned.
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[1] Raqqa.
[2] Maskanah.
[3] Qala’at Balis.
[4] Tell Brak.
[5] Nakhchivan.
[6] Khoy.
[7] Kuala Terengganu.
[8] Bavay.
[9] The Roman habit of abandoning unwanted infants to die of exposure declined following the Christianization of the empire, but it must not have gone away entirely, as from the seventh and eighth centuries onward the Catholic Church established institutions to take in these abandoned children. There, they were to be baptized and cared for until foster-parents could be found for them.
[10] Rohri.
[11] A term applied to early medieval Jewish merchants who maintained a trade network spanning the old Roman sphere, the ascendant Islamic Caliphate and the Silk Road. They were probably not all from Radhan, despite the name – Radhanites were active as far west as the heart of the Carolingian Empire.
[12] Fermented mare’s milk, also known as kumis.
[13] On Île de la Cité.
[14] Karachi.
[15] Phan Rang.
[16] Nîmes.
[17] Mansura, Pakistan.
The peace settlement which Aloysius & Helena, Abd al-Rahman and his brothers, and Kundaçiq Khagan hashed out in Antioch would be based on these territorial delineations as of the war’s end. Constantine would withdraw from Alexandria, the only major city in Egypt which the Romans had taken and held throughout the war, where despite his efforts his position was deemed unsustainable; all Ephesian Christians who wished to return into Christendom’s fold were allowed to leave unmolested with him and all the property they could carry, while those who elected to stay behind were still to be guaranteed life, liberty and the protection of the law under the rule of the Caliph. The Muslims would further pay a hefty indemnity, not only because they started this war but also to compensate the Romans for peacefully leaving Alexandria, which would go a long way to refilling Rome’s coffers. Those Alexandrian Greeks who left would mostly resettle in Anatolia, helping to revitalize the towns and lands devastated by Heshana’s onslaught and Arab raids over the course of the seventh century.
However, the lands of the Garamantes in Cyrenaica and eastern-central Libya would remain under Islamic control, for although they had successfully defended Leptis Magna, Stilicho and his Moors had still been pushed from these slightly more distant territories in the last months of the fighting. Now homeless, the remaining Garamantian Berbers would settle among and inevitably assimilate into the ranks of the Africans over the coming centuries. Rome would be compensated for this territorial loss with the reaffirmation of the Jordan as its eastern boundary with the Caliphate and the handover of the Mesopotamian fortresses taken by Aloysius & secured by Thomas, extending from Edessa southward to Nicephorium[1], Meskene[2] & Barbalissos[3] as well as eastward to the village of Nawar[4] and the ruined fortress-city of Nisibis.
Mosaic of a Garamantian exile in Carthage. Those who remained true to Rome rather than live in submission to the conquering Caliph added to the ranks of the Africans not only their numbers, but also their skills both as agriculturalists and (mostly light) warriors, and passed to their descendants among the Moors an even more intense-than-usual hatred of the Saracen enemy
Further north, the 692 Peace of Antioch was uniformly negative for the Muslims in and around the Caucasus. Abd al-Rahman had to acknowledge Christian gains in the Caucasus – namely, that Georgia completely expelled Islam from its lands, Mithranes once more restoring his rule over the old hinterland of Caucasian Albania while the Caspian coast went to the Khazars. Said Khazars got to extend their dominion to Tabriz, which Kundaçiq spitefully claimed he would only return for a ransom he knew the Caliph could not afford after having to also pay the Romans to leave Alexandria. Arsaber’s Armenians also recovered Naxuana[5], Her[6] and access to Lake Urmia’s northern and western shore. Beyond the Caspian, the Khazars and Muslims firmly fixed their border at the Oxus.
All in all, the Peace of Antioch was not the permanent peace which the peoples of the Middle East and the Caucasus longed for, but another temporary armistice in-between the wars the three great empires remained mired in. Although they knew they could afford to lose the Garamantians so long as the Moors still stood, Aloysius and Helena were painfully aware that their failure to reconquer Egypt left their extended Levantine frontier unsustainable in the long term. Abd al-Rahman had finished off the Garamantians and won some territories for Islam, but these gains were offset by losses elsewhere which left his army and people not entirely satisfied with his leadership. And Kundaçiq Khagan most certainly did not believe he was even close to avenging his father’s death with what he had conquered so far. There was little doubt among all involved that hostilities would resume once the dueling empires had sufficiently recovered from this bout of warfare and (at least in the case of the Romans and Arabs) sorted out their respective internal troubles. These lingering hostilities also allowed the Mesopotamian Jewry to weave themselves into the Silk Road trade network as intermediaries between Roman Christendom and the Arabic Caliphate, and they were able to secure a lucrative niche for themselves especially under the latter’s more generous and (for now) relatively tolerant patronage.
While a state of peace (fragile though it was) had begun to settle in western Eurasia once more, on the landmass’ eastern end another war was reaching its fever peak. Zhongzong’s fleet sailed on toward the heart of the Srivijayan Empire, the Chinese Emperor being determined to bring this southern rival to heel once and for all and thereby assert the Middle Kingdom’s supremacy in all of the cardinal directions. Sangramadhananjaya led his own navy to meet them in the largest known naval engagement of the seventh century, so close to its ending. The Battle of Terengganu[7], also known as the Battle of Tan-Tan to the Chinese, pitted China’s fifty-two remaining louchuan, scores of mengchong leather-covered warships, and over a hundred transports and lesser support vessels against an armada of well over 300 Srivijayan ships, though only about 80 of these were comparable to the larger Chinese warships in size and power.
The Chinese had sheer bulk and might on their side, but the Srivijayans were still the more experienced sailors and their ships were more maneuverable, being much better-used to ocean travel (and warfare) than their Chinese opponents. Sangramadhananjaya used these advantages to the fullest in the battle which followed, drawing some of the Chinese ships out of their close formation before having his own smaller, more agile vessels (and the marines they carried) swarm them in isolation. When the Later Han admirals tired of this strategy to whittle down their fleet and committed to an aggressive assault, trusting in their louchuan vanguard to batter the smaller and weaker Srivijayan ships out of the way with ease, Sangramadhananjaya reformed his ships into a crescent with his own flagship in the dead-center of the formation and his heavy warships concentrated at the tips of the formation. When this Srivijayan formation enveloped them, the Chinese found themselves being attacked on all sides and having to hastily refocus to fighting their way out of the trap, which they did at great cost – thirty of the louchuan and scores of the lesser ships were lost while the Srivijayan casualties were comparatively light. The Mahārāja had gained a great victory in the Battle of Terengganu, and now that the tide was turning, he prepared to launch a counteroffensive to recover his sphere of influence across Southeast Asia.
More agile Srivijayan warships closing in to board one of their Chinese foes at the Battle of Terengganu
693 marked a return to peacetime for the Holy Roman Empire, but by no means did this mean the Emperor could rest on his laurels. While Helena worked to further rebuild and fortify her half of the Roman world, Aloysius had to go about restoring internal tranquility to his own immediately after exiting the Middle East. He started with Italy, where he returned to Rome for a triumphal procession displaying the plunder he had collected from his battles in the Orient (including the tribute the Muslims had paid him to evacuate Alexandria) and trumpeted the Roman victories at Leptis Magna and in the Levant (while quietly downplaying the demise of the Garamantians and the failure to secure Egypt). The Augustus also took the opportunity to place two major relics from Christ’s crucifixion, the Crown of Thorns and the Holy Lance, in Saint Peter’s Basilica for safekeeping; they had both originally been stored in Jerusalem and their movement to Rome, with the assent of both Helena and Patriarch Abel of Jerusalem, demonstrated ongoing Roman worries as to the long-term viability of Roman control over the holy city.
With that done, Aloysius went on to confront the Senate. As his spies and loyalists in that august body had forewarned, a conspiracy had begun to form among Senators to do unto him as they had once done to Emperor Venantius: certainly they had disdained him as the latest in a succession of uncouth and ignoble barbarians to have taken and kept mastery over Rome by force of arms, hardly an uncommon opinion among the ancient Italo-Roman aristocracy, but the long wars with the Caliphate had given the more ambitious and over-bold of their ilk the idea that they now had a wonderful opportunity to throw off Aloysian rule altogether and retake control of Rome for ‘true Romans’ (a category which did not and would never include the Stilichians and Aloysians in their view, no matter that the Senate itself was hardly blameless in the decline of its influence over centuries). These same Senators quailed at the prospect of having to actually tell Aloysius what they thought of him to his face however, and those less committed to the plot (some of whom were not even actually guilty of anything more than sharing the same social circles as the more involved parties and badmouthing the Emperor when they thought nobody was listening) quickly sold out their co-conspirators.
The Augustus quickly identified the ringleaders and those worth prosecuting from the Senators he could simply intimidate into submission (and personally found so pathetic that it would be a waste of his time to kill them), determining that of the truly guilty it was one Manius Aemilius Lepidus who had been the brains behind the conspiracy. This Lepidus, doubtless a remote descendant of the third pillar of the Second Triumvirate, had schemed to falsely declare Aloysius had died in his wars abroad; subvert Rome’s garrison; buy the allegiance of the Italian elite; and imprison those who he judged could not be bought (including the Pope). Found guilty after being buried beneath an avalanche of his treacherous co-conspirators who all sought to save their own skins, he was also notable as the only one of the arrested schemers to face his inevitable execution for treason with composed dignity. Nonetheless Aloysius remained unimpressed by his stoicism, answering the Senator’s bitter insults with perhaps the most succinct summary of the Romano-Germanic dynasties’ record compared to that of the old Italo-Roman aristocracy to be recorded in the pages of history: “Though you denounce me as a savage unworthy of the purple and this crown which I wear, I have done more for Rome in thirty years – and before me the Stilichōnes had done more still in three centuries – than the Gens Aemilia can boast of having done in the past six hundred.”
Aloysian loyalists in the Senate, safe in the knowledge that their patron has returned to the Eternal City and will not give their enemies a chance to assassinate them, denouncing traitors to their Emperor
After unraveling this latest Senatorial conspiracy, Aloysius moved further north, stopping in Gaul to sort out the Frankish succession before continuing on to his capital at Augusta Treverorum. His legions forced an end to the fighting between the Merovingian scions, and kept these princes apart while he heard out their claims and studied the familial relationships between them and Theudebert III, the last uncontested Frankish king. Ultimately the Emperor determined that Dagobert of Aurelianum, the most senior of Theudebert’s male descendants (being the eldest son of his second son), should inherit by weight of both Frankish and Roman law & custom, but also marry his kinswoman Ingeltrude (eldest granddaughter of Theudebert’s eldest son) to unify the branches of the Merovingian family tree which he believed had the most legitimate claims to their throne. Dagobert’s kindred fumed at his decision, especially Chlothar of Bagacum[8] and Childebert of Durocortorum; but while they were mightier than Dagobert’s faction and knew it, these magnates feared the prospect of rebelling against Aloysius, a provably indomitable war-leader who had reigned for more than 30 years at this point.
Thus were the lesser Merovingians compelled to swear fealty to Rome’s chosen king and promise the restoration of peace to their federate lands in northern Gaul. In order to both keep that peace and give his heir practical experience in governing & working with his future federate vassals, Aloysius also insisted on the appointment of the Caesar Constantine as Dagobert’s Mayor of the Palace, not dissimilar to how his father Arbogastes had sat in that same capacity for Theudebert (and effectively ruled Francia for him, as the latter was still a child then) in the early decades of the seventh century. Once Constantine and his household had been installed in Lutetia with half a dozen legions for security and the enforcement of the imperial peace, Aloysius moved on to Augusta Treverorum.
The Caesarina Maria, Constantine's wife and daughter of the Augustus Theodosius IV, and Dagobert's queen Ingeltrude following the former's household being settled in Lutetia
From his seat of power on the Mosella, the Augustus prepared to deal with the Saxon frontier in the last months of the year. Instead of invading the Saxons’ forest homes in the dead of winter, he did try to chastise them through diplomats and by challenging them to single combat at first. Only a few tribes sent champions to answer Aloysius’ challenge, and fewer still actually kept their word to once more pledge submission & friendship to Rome after he slew said champions and dispelled any notion on their part that they could underestimate his fighting skill simply because he was now in his fifties. Still, the injuries these younger and more hot-blooded Saxons inflicted upon him in their duels combined with his advancing age to remind the graying Emperor of his impending mortality: Aloysius must have thought that he had to get right with God while he still had time left, because he proved more generous than usual with his alms-giving on the Christmas of 693 and also sponsored the construction of the first official foundling hospital in the Roman Empire[9] with Archbishop Teutobochus of Augusta Treverorum on that day.
The Arabs and Khazars too used the first years of the new peace to settle mounting internal troubles. Abd al-Rahman had to bear the anger of some of the Arab tribes, infuriated by how their conquests this time around were a good deal more modest than they had imagined and by the signing of the Baqt with Nubia. The Caliph sought to assuage their anger by sponsoring expeditions against targets he believed (or at least hoped) would be softer and easier prey – the Indo-Romans and Hunas to the east, as well as the inland tribes beyond the Swahili coast. The Belisarians had dug in deeply and their mountain bastions proved resilient against this new threat, against which they had been preparing since the early reign of the late Hippostratus I.
The same could not be said of the Hunas, whose Mahārājadhirāja Pravarasena had neglected his western frontier to harass the Southern Indian kingdoms and set a strong watch on the border with Tibet (and by extension the Later Han). One furious Islamic razzia across the Gedrosian desert and into Sindh later, Pravarasena found himself scrambling to organize troops from his other frontiers into an army capable of responding to the guzat, who had even managed to briefly cross the Indus and pillage as far as the walls of Aror[10]. Ali requested the honor of leading a larger expedition comprised of those Arab forces which had been preserved through the war with Rome and the Khazars against this latest group of pagans they’d picked a fight with, keen on salvaging his wounded pride after having performed the worst of his brothers on previous battlefields, and Abd al-Rahman granted it to him.
An Islamic ghazi and his expedition stopping their raid short of the walls of Aror, Sindh
The Khazars had perhaps the fewest internal issues to worry about out of the ‘big three’ powers dominating western Eurasia. Kundaçiq Khagan’s marriage to the Roman princess Irene and openness to foreign ways disgruntled the traditionalist elements of the Khazar aristocracy, who resented the influx of foreign dignitaries and recruits into his retinue and his continuing work on Atil – a city for Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Tengriists alike – in part for said foreign wife’s benefit. And in spite of his oath of vengeance against the Hashemites, he proved willing to facilitate the work of and grant monopolies to a growing trade network spearheaded by a faction of Mesopotamian Jews (so-called the ‘Radhanites’[11] after the name of their home province, Radhan, in the Islamic wilayat of Kufa), further stoking traditionalist resentment.
Tensions boiled over at a celebratory feast in Atil’s new palace during the early months of 693, where the traditional-minded Tuzniq Tarkhan got drunk enough off of airag[12] to speak his mind. He called out the Khagan, who was similarly intoxicated after consuming fewer cups of more potent Pontic wine, as a traitor to their old gods and old ways, and declared that it was a good thing Kundaç Khagan had died before he could see his son selling their people out to foreigners; naturally Kundaçiq snatched a lance from one of his bodyguards and killed the mutinous Tarkhan on the spot for these insults. Tuzniq’s kindred promptly rose in rebellion against the Khagan, but he bought their probable allies off with bribes drawn from his war booty and crushed them in detail once they had been isolated. Still, their brief rebellion was a sign of worse things to come as the Khazars entwined themselves more deeply with the politics, religions and other changes brought on by their extended contact with Rome and the Caliphate.
Radhanite merchants from the Caliphate, bound for China, hailing their Khazar guide after making it to Kath in Khazar-held Transoxiana
On the other end of Eurasia, the Srivijayans had launched their push to reclaim much of their sphere of influence (or ‘mandala’) from the Later Han in the wake of their great victory at Terengganu. Chinese garrisons in Malay cities such as Ligor were blockaded and compelled to surrender, or ousted in uprisings incited by the imminent return of the Srivijayans whose ruling hand the natives felt had been lighter for decades than the Chinese one had been in a few years. Emperor Zhongzong was incensed at this turn of events, but resisted his initial impulse to put together a third major expedition against Srivijaya: Sangramadhananjaya had proven himself to be a much tougher foe to beat than the Tibetans or Turks or Yamato, and the Son of Heaven was concerned that another defeat at his hands might start giving China’s other tributaries the idea that they could rebel against him – and get away with it. Instead he decided to sue for peace, offering to recognize the demarcation of the great southern sea into Chinese and Srivijayan spheres of influence; but now it was Sangramadhananjaya’s turn to refuse, as with the way mostly cleared by the defeat of the Chinese navy at Terengganu, he now entertained the idea of an amphibious attack to retake Champa for his son-in-law.
694 was another year spent largely on careful internal consolidation by the incumbent lords of the Roman world. Even Aloysius’ punitive expeditions against the rebellious Saxon tribes were not as expansive and forceful as his previous expedition in the 680s – the Augustus‘ ranks had been worn down by attrition after all, as well as a need to reinforce the garrisons on his other borders and to give those legions (and especially their federate auxiliaries) who had accompanied him all the way to the north some rest. In any case Aloysius himself sought to pursue a different strategy to bring the Saxons to heel once more, hoping that diplomacy would succeed in ensuring a more lasting peace on his northern border (so he could concern himself with the more gravely imperiled eastern ones to a greater degree) where naked force had only beaten the Saxons into submission for a short time previously.
While the Emperor did effectively utilize his remaining forces to crush several Saxon war-hosts of not-insignificant size in battle and spike the heads of their kings and chieftains throughout 694, he was more willing to negotiate generous terms with those Saxon lords who were ready to talk before crossing swords and more readily showed clemency to the survivors whose kin had unwisely chosen to fight him instead. Aloysius always offered the same terms to those Saxons who were prepared to bend the knee and reconcile themselves to him: they had to open their homes and hearts to Christ, which in practice meant tolerating the movement of Christian missionaries through their lands, not harming any Saxon who chose to convert to the new religion, and similarly respecting the sanctity of any churches these priests, their new flocks and their Roman backers might build on Saxon soil. The Augustus also reached out to the Anglo-Saxons for help in proselytizing to the Continental Saxons, hoping that the latter would be able to comprehend Biblical teachings more easily if it were delivered in a language much more similar to their own than Latin.
In exchange for accepting the advance of Christianity (even if they did not convert to the faith themselves, though certainly those who went that extra step would be acknowledged as friends of Rome and be treated more preferentially than their neighbors), Aloysius imparted only a light burden onto the Saxon chieftains and princes who agreed to his terms. He took few hostages from their households, and little tribute – at times he would even waive the latter requirement entirely, ostensibly as a show of Christian charity, but it also helped that he’d amassed enough plunder from ransacking the camps of defeated Islamic armies and towns in the distant Orient that he did not have to rely on Saxon treasure to keep his legionaries well-paid, and thus could afford to avoid driving them to material ruin and thus continued rebellion. As part of a general cutting-back on personal amusements so as to make amends with God in his twilight years (and perhaps recalling how poorly the last time he indulged in this habit went for him), in a show of self-restraint the Augustus also consciously avoided even the comeliest of the Saxon princesses sent to his court. Still, not all or even most of the Saxon tribes could be tamed so easily – many sought to resist Christianity, which they identified as a key element of Romanization, and remained hostile or at best in a state of armed neutrality toward the Romans for years to come.
As for Aloysius’ heir, Constantine – ever more interested in scholarly matters than those of the sword – sought to further entrench Roman ‘soft’ power over Francia, so as to secure the generational loyalty of these people (who were after all his kindred by blood, albeit increasingly remotely) and keep the peace by way of letters rather than yet more bloodshed. He sponsored the construction of monasteries to advance learning and, critically, a school attached to the Merovingian palace in Lutetia[13] which would serve as the model for the one he aspired to build in Augusta Treverorum itself. There he had his own son, Aloysius Junior, educated by the finest scholarly minds in Rome alongside the children of both the newly-minted Frankish royals and their rivals, in hopes of both reconciling the next generation and ensuring that they would grow up to be erudite and virtuous rulers – people steeped in the Roman intellectual tradition who not only knew how to govern a realm, but were also wise in numbers and letters both, having received an education in the liberal arts and the finer tenets of the Ephesian Christian faith in addition to skills at arms.
Constantine in Lutetia with the assembled princelings of the Merovingian dynasty, who were to be raised both in the high Romano-Gallic cultural tradition and to be as mighty at arms as their Frankish ancestors under his supervision
In the east, Helena was making her own contribution to the reorganization of the Roman state. In order to more effectively rebuild the fighting strength of the Roman East, and inspired by the military reforms of the Stilichians in Italy, she and Aloysius resettled veterans of their legions and the Greek-speaking refugees who had fled the advance of the Muslims (including virtually all of the Alexandrian Greeks who followed Constantine), as well as descendants of earlier waves of refugees who had fled the Avar and Turkic onslaughts, across the long-devastated Anatolia, which had yet to rebuild – in fact accelerating that rebuilding process was another intended positive from this program of resettlement. Of course where possible, the original owners were restored to their rightful land and title, but the ravages of the Turks and then (even if only briefly) Islamic guzat had ensured there would be both much spare land left in Roman Asia Minor and many refugees to redistribute it to.
In exchange for new lands to live on, these Anatolian Greeks would be required to contribute at least one soldier per household (or more in times of crisis) to the army for 20 years, and were organized into regional legions – in a sense, replacing the Eastern limitanei border-guards with larger regional forces who would augment and be augmented by the Caucasian and Arab federates. Each of these new legions was placed under a military count, and multiple legions further organized into larger zones of operation designated as a théma (‘theme’, meaning placement) and headed by a Dux. This system would serve as the prototype for the military backbone of the Orient in the centuries ahead and influence the military development of the Occident as well, being notable enough to be recorded in the Virtus Exerciti, and it conferred upon the Romans the advantage of having strong local defenses capable of engaging in autonomous operations at a relatively low cost to the central treasury; but as future Emperors would find out to their sorrow, they also gave ambitious dukes and counts a built-up powerbase from which to challenge the legitimate Aloysian Augusti for the purple.
Thomas Trithyrius distributing devastated Anatolian land, which had fallen into abeyance, to both the landless veterans of the Roman army and exiles from Alexandria, Syria & the Balkans by his mother-in-law's order
To the east, the Arabs finally found an enemy they would have more luck against than the Romans and Khazars in the Hunas. Ali divided his army, sending a diversionary detachment to once more strike through the Gedrosian Desert and trick the Hunas into believing the newest of their hostile neighbors would be coming overland when in truth he had piled the majority of his veterans onto a fleet assembled out of South Arabia, the Qahtanite sailors having been promised generous settlements and shares of the plunder in ‘Al-Hind’ once it had been conquered. This fleet landed the youngest of the sons of Aisha and his host at Debal[14], where they took the Huna defenders completely by surprise and took the port after only a few short hours of combat.
From Debal, Ali swarmed upward along the banks of the Indus, catching the main Huna army in the region in a pincer with his overland detachment and destroying it at the Battle of Buqan as it tried to fall back behind the great river. The Huna Raja of Sindh, Tujina, was a staunch Buddhist and a defiant captive who refused to convert Islam under pain of death; so death Ali gave him, and the sight of his head on the Muslim prince’s lance compelled those among his captains and governors who were not so committed to the teachings of the Buddha to submit to the House of Submission. By the end of the year Ali could report to his brothers, who had ceased their raids on the Indo-Roman kingdom in the face of the sturdier resistance of its king Aspandates (‘Aspandhat’ to his Sogdian and Tocharian subjects), that he had managed to overrun the lands west of the Indus and established a bridgehead on its eastern banks, opening a path deeper into India while Pravarasena was still assembling armies to push him back.
Further still to the east, the war between the Later Han and Srivijaya was entering its endgame. The Srivijayans disembarked a considerable host of 35,000 in the southern reaches of Champa, hoping to retake the kingdom for Prabhasadharma, and recaptured Panduranga[15] as their foothold with the connivance of that city’s prince and garrison. However, while Srivijaya may have bested the Chinese at sea, on land the Emperor’s armies were still supreme and Emperor Zhongzong’s general Xie Junji descended upon them with 90,000 men, including both local Champan collaborators pledged to the Chinese client-king Harivarman and a substantial contingent of Turkic auxiliary cavalry.
The ensuing Battle of Panduranga unsurprisingly resulted in a Srivijayan defeat and withdrawal to their ships, as well as the capture and swift execution of both Prabhasadharma and the Srivijayan general Kariyana (who incidentally had been the Srivijayans’ representative and appointed harbormaster at Simhapura during Prabhasadharma’s brief reign). Zhongzong continued to think better of pursuing the Srivijayans into the sea and repeated his offer for an armistice. With his claimant slain and the Chinese position on the Asian mainland clearly unassailable, Sangramadhananjaya agreed at last to a truce and peace negotiations, winding down this last of the great seventh-century clashes between the Later Han and their neighbors toward its conclusion.
695 was a quiet enough year in the West that even Aloysius got to rest his aging bones for a few months. Idle indolence did not suit the still-dynamic Emperor however, and he soon busied himself with a new project: putting what he and his son had written so far in the Virtus Exerciti into practice even as they continued to add chapters to the manual. Since by this time Rome had, by design or by happy accident, effectively raised a wall of federate kingdoms along its eastern frontier, he determined that the limitanei – already long worn down to almost nothing by the wars of the 7th century, whether by way of attrition against invaders like the Avars and Turks or from being added to the hosts with which Aloysius had crisscrossed Europe, Africa and the Middle East – would be folded into the ranks of the exercitus praesentalis, or imperial field armies, and the old distinctions between them, the pseudocomitatenses and comitatenses fell by the wayside. Accompanying this change in the army’s structure, paygrades were streamlined and made more uniform as an additional cost-cutting measure: after all, Aloysius wasn’t about to keep paying salaries to units he was disbanding, and which often had already ceased to exist save on paper years or decades prior.
With the responsibility of being Rome’s first line of defense on the borders now being devolved entirely to the foederati, Aloysius sought to make the role of the mobile comital reserve into the preserve of the aforementioned exercitus praesentalis. Each of these hosts were set up as field armies numbering ideally 35-40,000 strong (though in practice it was rarely easy to exactly meet these numbers), more-or-less uniformly trained and equipped to a high standard, and stationed at centers of imperial power with the old comital responsibility of moving quickly to respond to threats which the federates couldn’t handle, or else forming the core of an imperial expeditionary force intent on launching a major offensive into enemy territory: originally Aloysius planned for five such armies – one in Augusta Treverorum, one in Ravenna, one in Rome, one in Thessalonica and one in Constantinople. The ‘proper’ Roman legionaries of these standing armies were to still be augmented by contingents of auxilia palatina (‘palace auxiliaries’), special cohorts recruited from the best and fiercest fighters among the federate kingdoms to directly answer to the Augustus’ orders, though for security purposes they would always be heavily outnumbered by the ordinary legions.
Replacing the old comitatenses/pseudocomitatenses/limitanei divisions in their ranks were divisions of rank and wealth. The infantry of these imperial armies tended to be landless volunteers or conscripts fighting for a wage, but the cavalry were increasingly exclusively drawn from the class of martial smallholders established by Stilicho & Eucherius I and expanded over the years, generational military service being made into a precondition for their family’s continued ownership of even small plots of land. Hence, the very term caballarii would gradually take on the meaning of a hereditary military elite rather than remaining a generic term for horsemen, becoming synonymous with the antiquated equites as the true ‘knights’ of the Empire.
A late-seventh-century Romano-Frankish caballarius from Augusta Treverorum's environs. Since Aloysius' reforms would turn the core Roman armies into, essentially, all-comitatenses forces with an emphasis on mobility, its cavalry arm (especially the heavy cavalry) continued to gain primacy over the infantry and enjoyed an attendant rise in social status
Outside of military matters, the Caesar’s daughter – duly named Maria after her mother – was also conceived and born in Lutetia over the course of this peaceful year. Less joyful was Constantine’s interaction with his eldest half-brother Sauromates, the Comes Barcinensis, who invited the former to a conciliatory Easter feast at his Spanish home to mark the end of Lent: confident that Sauromates would not dare do any harm to the Empire’s lawful heir out of fear of imperial wrath and that his children would continue the legitimate Aloysian line even if the Count was foolish enough to try something, Constantine accepted the offer. The feast itself was a conventionally pleasant affair where nothing seemed amiss, but the Caesar fell sick on the journey back over the Pyrenees and nearly died before beginning to recover thanks to the intervention of skilled monastic physicians near Nemausus[16].
Sauromates immediately protested his innocence, pointing to how Constantine had fallen ill on the road and not in or near Barcino, and privately boasting to his friends that if he truly wished his little brother dead then the latter would be. Nevertheless Aloysius demanded he come to Augusta Treverorum to personally testify in his own defense, but the Count never got the chance, for he himself died while Constantine was still bedridden – fatally stabbed in a lovers’ quarrel by the husband of his latest mistress, one of the bad habits which he had inherited from his father having apparently caught up to him, immediately after which said man was killed on the spot by his guards. Nonetheless Helena was widely suspected to have ordered the assassination, though not even Aloysius could find proof of it in their shared lifetimes, and certainly she had both motive (the Augusta had long feared one or more of her husband’s bastards would try to kill her lawful one to get closer to the purple, and now whether Sauromates had really tried to poison Constantine or not, she seemed to be vindicated in her view) and opportunity (what with being the de facto co-ruler of the Roman East, she surely had the gold to persuade the assassin into realizing the lethal course of action he’d only been thinking about for months).
Beyond Helena’s half of the Empire, Abd al-Rahman was spending his own twilight years seeking his own advantages for the next round of hostilities with Rome and the Khazars. The power of ‘Greek fire’ had been made apparent to the Arabs by the ease with which the Romans had destroyed their fleet the one time they’d dared try to contest the Mediterranean in the last round of fighting, and the Caliph put his sages and engineers to work on finding an Islamic answer to it. The result was naphtha, a sticky and highly flammable fuel mixture whose very name was derived from the Arabic word for petroleum (naft), originally made with oil gathered from pits east of the Tigris. Abd al-Rahman hoped to not only deploy this weapon at sea but also on land, and began to train some of his ghulam to fling clay pots filled with the stuff to set their foes ablaze.
A qaraghulam of the new Islamic naffatun corps demonstrating the use of his new weapon for Abd al-Rahman
Naphtha was not available at the time to Ali and his sons, who had to make do with more traditional weapons as they continued to do battle with the Hunas in Sindh. Huna resistance rapidly stiffened east of the Indus, and the Arabs met their first real battlefield reversal in the region at the Battle of Brahmanabad[17], where Pravarasena drove them back with elephants and a larger body of cavalry. Forced southward toward the captured fort of Rawar, Ali nevertheless fought on and managed to turn the tables there, defeating the Mahārājadhirāja’s army with a combination of trenches, caltrops and fire-arrows which caused no small number of his war elephants to panic and stampede among their own lines. The Hunas fell back behind the Thar Desert to await reinforcements, while Ali split his attention between harassing them with forward parties detached from his own host and locking down the eastern bank of the Indus for Islam.
While the war between the Muslims and the Hunas continued to intensify, the one between China and Srivijaya came to its conclusion in 695. Zhongzong and Sangramadhananjaya sought to hammer out a peace which would acknowledge the battlefield realities as of this year and allow both emperors to save face: consequently, with Prabhasadharma already dead, the Srivijayans conceded the return of Champa to the Chinese sphere of influence. In exchange, China withdrew its remaining garrisons south of Champa (which could not be sustained thanks to Srivijayan mastery of the sea anyway) and made way for the restoration of Srivijaya’s own mandala of influence around the southern seas. Crucially the Srivijayans were also not required to pay tribute to the Dragon Throne, making them the only regional power to have successfully fought China at the Later Han’s zenith to a standstill. Other kingdoms which had been made to bow, such as the Yamato and Tibetans, surely took notice of this revelation that the Chinese were not invincible and were encouraged in their designs to break free from Chinese overlordship by it as the eighth century dawned.
====================================================================================
[1] Raqqa.
[2] Maskanah.
[3] Qala’at Balis.
[4] Tell Brak.
[5] Nakhchivan.
[6] Khoy.
[7] Kuala Terengganu.
[8] Bavay.
[9] The Roman habit of abandoning unwanted infants to die of exposure declined following the Christianization of the empire, but it must not have gone away entirely, as from the seventh and eighth centuries onward the Catholic Church established institutions to take in these abandoned children. There, they were to be baptized and cared for until foster-parents could be found for them.
[10] Rohri.
[11] A term applied to early medieval Jewish merchants who maintained a trade network spanning the old Roman sphere, the ascendant Islamic Caliphate and the Silk Road. They were probably not all from Radhan, despite the name – Radhanites were active as far west as the heart of the Carolingian Empire.
[12] Fermented mare’s milk, also known as kumis.
[13] On Île de la Cité.
[14] Karachi.
[15] Phan Rang.
[16] Nîmes.
[17] Mansura, Pakistan.
Sergeant Foley
Well-known member
@Circle of Willis Good timeline.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
With his success in India, I reckon Ali is building up his power base for an eventual Fitna. The sheer distances involved in such conflict would make naval part of war much more important and would you look at it, his brothers have access to naptha.
The senate conspiracy was just terrible, no chance of actual success but would cause terrible damage, typical for pampered nobility out of touch with reality in their ivory towers. In other words - senate keeps being senate.
The senate conspiracy was just terrible, no chance of actual success but would cause terrible damage, typical for pampered nobility out of touch with reality in their ivory towers. In other words - senate keeps being senate.
Senatores boni viri,sed senatus mala bestia.Or something like that./my translation - senatores good people,but senate evil beast/
Back to topic - saxons are making more troubles then they should be capable of doing.
Sriviya could discover Australia here,but since its gold mines are inland,and there is little good land there,they probably never settle there.
Muslims would not conqer India,like in OTL,but they would fight long war with Hunas.Which mean,that Hunas themselves would not have time to fight anybody else.
Han would rule as long as somebody do not start cyvil war.Tang in OTL fought muslims in Asia,Han could do the same.
It would be funny,if one day muslims found Roman-Khazar-Hunas-China alliance gathered against them.
Since romans remembered about phoenixians circled Africa,they could do the same to get to India.And,since they had myths about Paradise islands West,and greek stories about real islands there,they could found searoad to Americas through Canaries.
Creating knights is good thing,they remained good military force till 15th century in OTL.Here,they could remain efficient for next 600-700 years.
P.S @Circle of Willis ,i think this is time for reopening Amber road.Rome need money,after all.
And,even better,go by Baltic there.Goths remember Gothland island,after all,and taking prussian tribes would be child play.
And - it would be funny,if HRE made Teutonic order to rule there !
Another thing - if they took what remained of Alexandria librery with them,they could invent new things - for example,steam machine.I remember some polish AH where romans do not fell and did so.Forget title,as usual.
Another good chapter although again more war pending in the west with all three powers preparing for the next round. I'm also wondering what relations are like between the Khazars and the Chinese empire as they must be in close contact. Although the Khazar empire is orientated against the Muslims and it sounds like Zhongzong has decided his empire need a pause rather than further conflict. Especially since it has been at costly war for some time and the failure to crush Srivijaya will as you say make some of his non-Chinese subjects restless. I also note the reference to the Later Han at its zenith which suggests that things could be down-hill for the dynasty from now on.
I also note that Aloysius 'planned' 5 centres for the field army which suggests that the final number will differ. Also none are in Africa - which is now threatened - so possibly an additional one in Carthage while their also some way from the eastern frontier so possibly one at Antioch. Also having two in Italy, at Rome and Ravenna, which is far from any immediate threat would seem excessive. The development of a theme system in the east makes sense, although as with the development of a knight class in the west will be a potential problem as a source of revolt or disorder. Also there are hints that both on land and especially at sea Islam will be more of a threat in the future than it was.
The Huna have had continued problems for a century or so now and seen regular military failure so I fear they are going to struggle against an expansive Islam. Especially since the combination of the wealth of India and the lack of easy loot in other directions could lure a lot of warriors to the theatre. Although if Ali uses his increasing power and prestige to make a claim for higher rank that could give the Huna some relief. [Given his name and the tension I wonder if he's going to be the trigger for a Sunni/Shia type split?]
Your also foreshadowed the arrival of Anglo-Saxon missionaries to aid in the conversion of those parts of Germany still outside church control and their conquest by Christianity. Although whether it will be as savage as OTL remains to be seen. Unfortunately I can see a savage like Charlemagne emerging to seek conquest by bloody massacre of anyone who won't submit to his expansion.
Plus with both those holy relics being moved from Jerusalem to Rome that could cause potential issues. Its could revive the papacies desire to claim primarcy over the other patriarchs and also cause resentment in Constantinople and the east that one of the relics didn't go there.
I also note that Aloysius 'planned' 5 centres for the field army which suggests that the final number will differ. Also none are in Africa - which is now threatened - so possibly an additional one in Carthage while their also some way from the eastern frontier so possibly one at Antioch. Also having two in Italy, at Rome and Ravenna, which is far from any immediate threat would seem excessive. The development of a theme system in the east makes sense, although as with the development of a knight class in the west will be a potential problem as a source of revolt or disorder. Also there are hints that both on land and especially at sea Islam will be more of a threat in the future than it was.
The Huna have had continued problems for a century or so now and seen regular military failure so I fear they are going to struggle against an expansive Islam. Especially since the combination of the wealth of India and the lack of easy loot in other directions could lure a lot of warriors to the theatre. Although if Ali uses his increasing power and prestige to make a claim for higher rank that could give the Huna some relief. [Given his name and the tension I wonder if he's going to be the trigger for a Sunni/Shia type split?]
Your also foreshadowed the arrival of Anglo-Saxon missionaries to aid in the conversion of those parts of Germany still outside church control and their conquest by Christianity. Although whether it will be as savage as OTL remains to be seen. Unfortunately I can see a savage like Charlemagne emerging to seek conquest by bloody massacre of anyone who won't submit to his expansion.
Plus with both those holy relics being moved from Jerusalem to Rome that could cause potential issues. Its could revive the papacies desire to claim primarcy over the other patriarchs and also cause resentment in Constantinople and the east that one of the relics didn't go there.
IMO, the Theme system and its historical issues shouldn't be copied wholesale. The Theme system in its historical form was above all driven by bankruptcy, the field armies couldn't be paid with the loss of tax base and so were settled on depopulated lands, shooting 2 birds. They then caused a century of coups again because due to the bankruptcy, the Themes were the primary military force in the Empire, little connected to central authority, and their Strategoi, particularly the Anatolics next to Constantinople easily able to march on the Capitol.
The unified Empire, even just the Eastern half, simply isn't bankrupt to the same extent and will simply not mass settle its regular armies. Granting lands to refugees in exchange for military service in said regular armies strengthens central control as it did for the Stilichans, the opposite of what the Theme system did historically. Forming regional militias to rally local forces for defense in depth of course does create distributed military centers of power, but they can't form the same political threat if regular armies exist, and especially not if Constantinople is not the sole center of government.
Really, it would be more just a revision of the old Limitanei to account for the fact that the other borders are covered by Federate Kingdoms, and the disproportionate strength of the Caliphate compared to other enemies requires far deeper defenses. And coups generally came from the mobile armies, not the Limitanei, who lacked the requisite mobility or prestige.
The unified Empire, even just the Eastern half, simply isn't bankrupt to the same extent and will simply not mass settle its regular armies. Granting lands to refugees in exchange for military service in said regular armies strengthens central control as it did for the Stilichans, the opposite of what the Theme system did historically. Forming regional militias to rally local forces for defense in depth of course does create distributed military centers of power, but they can't form the same political threat if regular armies exist, and especially not if Constantinople is not the sole center of government.
Really, it would be more just a revision of the old Limitanei to account for the fact that the other borders are covered by Federate Kingdoms, and the disproportionate strength of the Caliphate compared to other enemies requires far deeper defenses. And coups generally came from the mobile armies, not the Limitanei, who lacked the requisite mobility or prestige.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
To answer the points which I can address without giving too much away (any- and every-thing else, as usual, can't be spoiled)...
1) Indeed Aloysius' plans for where his central armies to be located aren't final yet. The idea behind putting two such stacks in Italy is that Ravenna was the empire's military capital (and the army located there can move quickly to fight in the western Balkans or southern Germany as needed) while Rome needs one for the prestige it commands, but aside from the redundancy of having two such major forces in one region, the Senate's failed conspiracy just now has given away one of their main tricks - bribing people to fight for them, which they're going to have to stick to in the future (just more subtly) since they aren't exactly a military powerhouse themselves.
In that regard planting a big army for them to potentially buy off right in & around their city was probably not one of Aloysius' greatest ideas, especially since there's no threat to Italy right now that justifies camping two armies there anyway. But with peace for a time and the Muslims venting their desire for expansion in India for a change, the Aloysians may well have the time to fix that.
2) The seventh century has not been the finest hour of the Hunas, to be sure. But as you've all noted, the Muslims expanding more successfully in their direction could be a double-edged sword for the Caliphate. Even if Ali doesn't rebel against the older brother who has overshadowed him pretty much his entire life, Abd al-Rahman is a pretty old guy himself (older than both Aloysius & Helena actually) and after he's gone, it's a fair bet that his son (the great-grandson of the Prophet) won't be able to command similar loyalty from his uncle and cousins. Sufficient Islamic conquests in Al-Hind just mean that junior branch of the Hashemites will have their own power-base from which to stage a rebellion; and while the distance will make it harder for them to make a grab for the Caliphal office than the one possessed by the second branch descended from Al-Abbas (Persia), it also insulates them from the retaliation of the senior Hashemites and makes it easier for them to break away from the Caliphate altogether if they so choose.
Whether there's a doctrinal aspect on top of the political one to a future fitna is still up in the air, but if a lasting split happens then that's basically guaranteed as Indian Islam will inevitably evolve to have at least some major differences from the 'original' Islam (which after all dictates that they should've been absolutely obedient to Muhammad's senior line of descent in the first place).
3) The development of the Roman military (including both the Anatolian themes, the emergent chivalry of Europe and the new central armies) will be something to watch in the future. There's not too much to fear from the themes in terms of disloyalty right now or in the foreseeable future, since most of the thematic soldiers being resettled refugees from elsewhere will (as @shangrila noted) guarantee a generational loyalty to their imperial patrons for at least a good while. It's a few generations down the road when the memory of these initial Aloysian gifts has faded and their descendants start taking what they've got for granted that loyalty will probably become an issue, but again, they're presently tucked away in Anatolia and far away from most of the imperial power centers (except of course Constantinople).
Which leads into one main reason why Aloysius is setting the new Roman military up in this way - spreading power out to ensure that no single rebellion anywhere in the reunified empire can topple his dynasty. The central armies are geographically distributed not just to respond to threats from outside the empire that the federates can't handle, but also to hopefully keep them at arm's length from one another. (In that regard Aloysius has already messed up by planting two armies in Italy, and another at Thessalonica which isn't far enough from the one at Constantinople, but what can I say - even good emperors can't be perfectly competent at all times, though at least he has time to fix it by moving two of the armies further apart before they're fully constituted. As one of my favorite games from back when I was a kid would put it, perhaps it's just a 'senior moment' on his part.)
Entrenching a class divide between the ranks by turning the cavalry into a chivalric class is also expected to help in that regard, since the latter's interests are now less likely to be the same as the 'lesser' infantry. Additional distinctions like a proper code of chivalry will likely emerge at some point in future centuries to further set the knights apart from the common soldiers. The Senate, ambitious governors and generals, etc. might be able to bribe the common footsoldiers with money, but the knights already have their own land & attendant income and thus are theoretically going to be less susceptible to bribery. (At least the Aloysians hope so, anyway.) And the geographic distribution of the knights - there isn't a single region that has a monopoly or anything resembling one on this emerging new class - is also intended to improve the coup-proofing aspect of the Aloysian reforms: even if, for example, the Senate somehow gets every single knight in Italy on board with a rebellion and the great landowners of Greece bribe the entirety of the Thessalonian army to fight for them, the Emperor still has the chivalry of Gaul and Germania to fall back on as a solid core for his loyalist forces.
Basically, Aloysius isn't naive enough to expect that there will never be a rebellion against him or his descendants (especially since he just dismantled the latest one), so he's hoping to ensure that the Domus Aloysiani will always at least have a fighting chance - or better - against would-be usurpers and that rebellions will always be contained to the region they start in rather than becoming an empire-wide thing. It's not perfect (they'd be pretty hosed if, for example, by sheer misfortune all the mature Aloysians happen to be living in places within reach of rebellious dukes/governors/Senators and their armies but also far from loyalist bastions when these rebellions pop off, and too much disunity in the ranks is also something they'd want to avoid for obvious reasons) but he and his successors still have time to figure out & patch up the problems down the road.
I'll be doing a deeper dive into the state of the Roman military in the chapter after next, as part of another faction overview centered on the reunited (H)RE. But first I'm going to try to close out the seventh century, which also means a new map & family tree will be included. The rate of publishing new chapters is probably still going to be a bit slow this December (finals and holidays are coming up) but I'm certain we'll be out of the century by the end of 2022.
1) Indeed Aloysius' plans for where his central armies to be located aren't final yet. The idea behind putting two such stacks in Italy is that Ravenna was the empire's military capital (and the army located there can move quickly to fight in the western Balkans or southern Germany as needed) while Rome needs one for the prestige it commands, but aside from the redundancy of having two such major forces in one region, the Senate's failed conspiracy just now has given away one of their main tricks - bribing people to fight for them, which they're going to have to stick to in the future (just more subtly) since they aren't exactly a military powerhouse themselves.
In that regard planting a big army for them to potentially buy off right in & around their city was probably not one of Aloysius' greatest ideas, especially since there's no threat to Italy right now that justifies camping two armies there anyway. But with peace for a time and the Muslims venting their desire for expansion in India for a change, the Aloysians may well have the time to fix that.
2) The seventh century has not been the finest hour of the Hunas, to be sure. But as you've all noted, the Muslims expanding more successfully in their direction could be a double-edged sword for the Caliphate. Even if Ali doesn't rebel against the older brother who has overshadowed him pretty much his entire life, Abd al-Rahman is a pretty old guy himself (older than both Aloysius & Helena actually) and after he's gone, it's a fair bet that his son (the great-grandson of the Prophet) won't be able to command similar loyalty from his uncle and cousins. Sufficient Islamic conquests in Al-Hind just mean that junior branch of the Hashemites will have their own power-base from which to stage a rebellion; and while the distance will make it harder for them to make a grab for the Caliphal office than the one possessed by the second branch descended from Al-Abbas (Persia), it also insulates them from the retaliation of the senior Hashemites and makes it easier for them to break away from the Caliphate altogether if they so choose.
Whether there's a doctrinal aspect on top of the political one to a future fitna is still up in the air, but if a lasting split happens then that's basically guaranteed as Indian Islam will inevitably evolve to have at least some major differences from the 'original' Islam (which after all dictates that they should've been absolutely obedient to Muhammad's senior line of descent in the first place).
3) The development of the Roman military (including both the Anatolian themes, the emergent chivalry of Europe and the new central armies) will be something to watch in the future. There's not too much to fear from the themes in terms of disloyalty right now or in the foreseeable future, since most of the thematic soldiers being resettled refugees from elsewhere will (as @shangrila noted) guarantee a generational loyalty to their imperial patrons for at least a good while. It's a few generations down the road when the memory of these initial Aloysian gifts has faded and their descendants start taking what they've got for granted that loyalty will probably become an issue, but again, they're presently tucked away in Anatolia and far away from most of the imperial power centers (except of course Constantinople).
Which leads into one main reason why Aloysius is setting the new Roman military up in this way - spreading power out to ensure that no single rebellion anywhere in the reunified empire can topple his dynasty. The central armies are geographically distributed not just to respond to threats from outside the empire that the federates can't handle, but also to hopefully keep them at arm's length from one another. (In that regard Aloysius has already messed up by planting two armies in Italy, and another at Thessalonica which isn't far enough from the one at Constantinople, but what can I say - even good emperors can't be perfectly competent at all times, though at least he has time to fix it by moving two of the armies further apart before they're fully constituted. As one of my favorite games from back when I was a kid would put it, perhaps it's just a 'senior moment' on his part.)
Entrenching a class divide between the ranks by turning the cavalry into a chivalric class is also expected to help in that regard, since the latter's interests are now less likely to be the same as the 'lesser' infantry. Additional distinctions like a proper code of chivalry will likely emerge at some point in future centuries to further set the knights apart from the common soldiers. The Senate, ambitious governors and generals, etc. might be able to bribe the common footsoldiers with money, but the knights already have their own land & attendant income and thus are theoretically going to be less susceptible to bribery. (At least the Aloysians hope so, anyway.) And the geographic distribution of the knights - there isn't a single region that has a monopoly or anything resembling one on this emerging new class - is also intended to improve the coup-proofing aspect of the Aloysian reforms: even if, for example, the Senate somehow gets every single knight in Italy on board with a rebellion and the great landowners of Greece bribe the entirety of the Thessalonian army to fight for them, the Emperor still has the chivalry of Gaul and Germania to fall back on as a solid core for his loyalist forces.
Basically, Aloysius isn't naive enough to expect that there will never be a rebellion against him or his descendants (especially since he just dismantled the latest one), so he's hoping to ensure that the Domus Aloysiani will always at least have a fighting chance - or better - against would-be usurpers and that rebellions will always be contained to the region they start in rather than becoming an empire-wide thing. It's not perfect (they'd be pretty hosed if, for example, by sheer misfortune all the mature Aloysians happen to be living in places within reach of rebellious dukes/governors/Senators and their armies but also far from loyalist bastions when these rebellions pop off, and too much disunity in the ranks is also something they'd want to avoid for obvious reasons) but he and his successors still have time to figure out & patch up the problems down the road.
I'll be doing a deeper dive into the state of the Roman military in the chapter after next, as part of another faction overview centered on the reunited (H)RE. But first I'm going to try to close out the seventh century, which also means a new map & family tree will be included. The rate of publishing new chapters is probably still going to be a bit slow this December (finals and holidays are coming up) but I'm certain we'll be out of the century by the end of 2022.
696-700: Seven to Eight
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
696 was another quiet year in Rome, the dawning of peace on the eastern frontier and the return of its Emperor having returned calm and dispelled uncertainty to the Empire. With all immediate threats having been dealt with, Aloysius devoted his time and energy – which still remained considerable despite the Augustus having entered his twilight years – to building up the five core exerciti he had planned. The next generation of common soldiers and knights were steadily recruited and trained between this year and the first few years of the next century, while the fabricae hummed back to life to churn out their arms and armor, fueled by the still-mostly-preserved Mediterranean trade network both overland and by sea (unfortunate and evidently increasingly permanent loss of Egypt notwithstanding).
Though the rift between him and his wife Helena had widened further still since the suspicious death of his eldest son Sauromates the year prior (ironically occurring right as he was starting to try to be a more faithful husband and patch up relations with her), Aloysius was unable to find any evidence that would suggest the Augusta had eliminated his firstborn. Certainly if she had done it (as she had good reason to, being that Sauromates posed and quite possibly had acted in such a manner as to be a threat to her own son’s succession rights & life), she did not tell him when he bluntly asked her if she was responsible. In any case, this lack of evidence coupled with the need to maintain imperial unity against the Muslims abroad and peace & good order within the Empire’s borders so that he might build up his army in peace compelled the Emperor to not pursue open conflict with his Empress. That said, he also confirmed Sauromates’ own son, his eldest grandson Antoninus, as the next Comes Barcinensis, thereby entrenching the first bastard cadet branch of the Aloysian dynasty as a middling player in northeastern Hispania for many more years to come.
Rome’s newest great enemy was similarly exploiting the temporary state of peace to continue building up their resources for the next war. Old Abd al-Rahman did not entirely put his faith in his new naphtha stockpiles and the men he was training to wield it, but also sought additional allies with whom he could balance the odds even slightly against the Roman-Khazar alliance. To that end the Caliph extended a hand to an old Roman enemy, who his traders and messengers could now reach with the Garamantians no longer in their way: the Donatist kingdom of Hoggar. Their king Mazippa was leery of these strangers from the East, who he considered to unbelievers as wicked as any other non-Donatist, but on the other hand it was also apparent to him that the hated Romans were presently unassailable without outside help. For fear that an unchallenged Roman Empire might eventually decide to march south and wipe Donatism off the map once and for all, a still-skeptical Mazippa did eventually come around and agree to ally with the Muslims against Rome.
Arabic art depicting the Donatist king Mazippa, their new ally in the Hoggar Mountains, and his son Cutzinas
While an uneasy peace continued to hold in the Mediterranean, the Muslims further out east were being anything but peaceful. Ali continued to campaign further into India, resolving the Siege of Aror (the Sindhi regional capital) in a daring midnight assault which was precipitated by his sons’ leadership of a party of the bravest and mightiest chosen warriors in his host in scaling the walls and opening the city gates, after which much booty was plundered and thousands of slaves sent back home or distributed among the warriors as was customary when a pagan city failed to surrender in time. The Hashemite princes had managed this feat just in time to secure their rear and control over the lower Indus against a more forceful Huna response, as Pravarasena returned from beyond the Thar Desert and made for their positions at the head of a host of 30,000. Despite having less than half his number, the Muslims fought the Battle of Aror with a fanatical ferocity and tactical ingenuity which the Hunas could not match, drawing out and isolating chunks of the larger Huna host to be destroyed in detail with a series of feigned retreats – ironically not dissimilar to how the Hunas’ ancestors had fought against the Sassanid Persians and Guptas.
Pravarasena retreated back across the Thar Desert in defeat, a third of his army having been killed or compelled to surrender before the power of Islam that day, but this time Ali would follow him. The Huna army was further broken up beneath the pressure of Islamic raiders constantly nipping at their heels, and some of the local potentates felt this show of weakness on the part of their Huna overlords meant that they had best submit to the newcomers while they still had a chance to secure good terms for themselves. The Muslims welcomed these defectors and traitors to the Huna Empire as they advanced, starting with the ayukta of Mandore; of course those who refused to similarly convert to Islam, pledge loyalty to the Caliph and add their forces to Ali’s army were fair game for forceful subjugation and enslavement or extermination, for being idol-worshiping pagans in the eyes of the Muslims, they had no rights (certainly nothing resembling the tolerance afforded to the other ‘People of the Book’) in Islamic eyes. Still others resisted however, fighting on in defense of their oaths and gods even when trapped behind the advancing Islamic lines.
On the other side of the world, across the great Atlantic the increasingly isolated British settlers of Aloysiana were making discoveries of import, even as their Irish enemies continued to settle the far northeastern reaches of the continent in greater comfort. While they built no new great settlements at this point in time so as to avoid stretching themselves too thinly, their explorers did chart about half of the length of Lac-de-Virgine[1], that great lake which formed the source of the Saint Pelagius River. And of greater immediate importance to them, some of their Wilderman allies and subjects who actually practiced basic agriculture (rather than being mere nomadic hunter-gatherers) shared their knowledge of the local plants with the Britons. In particular little barley, squash and assorted herbs like goosefoot, previously thought to be but weeds by the settlers[2] were cultivated for the first time on the settlers’ riverside farms this year, providing them with much-needed sources of food that could more easily grow in the cold conditions of northern Aloysiana than the dwindling stock of crops they had brought with them from the Old World.
Isolated from their home in a bitterly cold and untamed land, the Britons of the New World had little choice but to lead hard and austere lives even by the standards of the time, though they at least were able to practice their religion without fear of an Ephesian resurgence and secure aid from some of the local Wildermen to make their days a little easier
Come 697, and Rome’s borders in the east and south once again came under threat from hostile raiders despite it having been barely five years since the Truce of Antioch had been inked. Islamic guzat once again began to harry the Levantine frontier, while the Donatists surged out of their mountains in numbers unseen since the punitive expedition of Emperor Stilicho had seemingly decisively chastised them and cooled their self-righteous ardor. In response to the growing threat in the far east while the Danubian frontier remained largely stable and the Avars had yet to recover from their thrashing thirty years prior, Aloysius heeded Helena’s request to transfer the growing exercitus praesentalis at Thessalonica to Antioch in case a major effort had to be made to defend Syria & Mesopotamia in the near future.
Developments that far away from Gaul did not overly concern the Caesar Constantine, who instead focused on entrenching the Romanization of the Franks once and for all. The heir to Rome had struck up a genuine friendship with King Dagobert of Francia over their shared interest in the classics, and as Mayor of the Palace he used this advantage for all it was worth. Constantine fought to safeguard the Gallo-Roman populations of Francia’s cities, their traditional magistracies and privileges, and their commercial industries & infrastructure (the jewelers of Lutetia, for example, or the potters of Durocortorum) against decay and subjugation by the Frankish magnates in the countryside. Not dissimilar to their Visigoth counterparts in past centuries, the Frankish military aristocracy viewed these Roman cities as rivals and natural supporters of a stronger central authority (or Roman subjugation of the Frankish people altogether) – and also like said Visigoths, they were not necessarily wrong, as Constantine not only sought to protect Romanitas in northern Gaul but also assertively subsume the Franks into it.
Since Dagobert was an enemy to these magnates, many of whom were his own Merovingian kindred and still believed they had a greater right to the Frankish throne, it was only natural that he should try to protect and cultivate them as his powerbase at Constantine’s recommendation. For now, the fact that their children were still being held in Lutetia as glorified hostages and the lingering threat of still-nearby Aloysius descending upon them like the wrathful fist of God kept them from entering open rebellion against their liege and his liege. This bought Constantine precious time to continue having said children raised in the Roman fashion under his direct supervision and to try to foster lasting friendships between them, his own son Aloysius Junior, and the children of the Gallo-Roman elite who he had also invited to live and study in Lutetia.
However as surely as the already-considerable Roman influence over the Franks deepened, the Franks were leaving their mark on the Roman mosaic. Notably although the Caesar prevailed upon Dagobert to favor the traditional Roman Rite over the indigenously developed Gallican Rite of his kingdom in this year on the grounds that the latter was essentially a degenerated provincial variation of the former, the class of Frankish prelates he’d been promoting and bringing into close contact with the Roman clerical authorities would eventually add a Gallo-Germanic flair to some aspects of the Church in the West anyway, most notably in its music[3]. Similarly, the Gallic monks who prospered under Constantine’s patronage also built upon the traditional Roman foundation of illuminated manuscripts, developing their own distinctive artstyle and uncial script.
Constantine personally educating his son Aloysius Junior in letters. Likely motivated by how he only rarely ever met his father as a child, the Caesar took a personal interest in the upbringing of his own children
In this year the Muslims made no great advance out of Sindh, as Ali needed a little time to consolidate his rule over the region and install garrisons in the cities he’d conquered and sacked up to this point – while the defecting local rulers’ armies certainly helped with that regard, and he didn’t have many men to spread out in the first place, the Muslim prince did feel the need to leave at least a few hundred loyal veterans from his Arabian homeland in places like Aror to keep the local collaborators under watch and in line. Instead the major showdown between the Hunas and Muslims this year happened at sea: a fleet sailing out of the great Yemenite port of Muza, transporting reinforcements and supplies to Ali after he’d requested it of his brother the Caliph, ran into a Huna fleet sailing out of Gujarat to land a Huna army behind Ali’s lines at Debal.
As it so happened, among the troops Abd al-Rahman had sent there was a contingent of naffatun, whose fiery new weapon he hoped to test on an Indian battlefield before sending them against the Romans. On the occasion where the ships carrying them got close enough to mount a boarding action (or were approached by their Indian enemies for the same purpose), these naffatun proceeded to hurl their blazing clay pots at the Hunas instead, with the splendid results the Arabs had been looking forward to. The Hunas soon retreated in disarray and fear after a half-dozen of their ships were set afire in this manner, ending the Battle of the Gulf of Makran in an Arab victory. Abd al-Rahman’s commanders did note one weakness on the part of the naffatun, however: they could not project their fiery might over a longer distance as the Romans did with their siphons, instead having to physically throw their clay or copper projectiles by hand. On the other hand, it was also hoped that the naffatun could be deployed on land en masse, unlike the Romans’ Greek fire which remained largely restricted to the sea (and later to the defense of city walls) for many more centuries.
The year 698 was another year in a row of mercifully peaceful years for the Holy Roman Empire, and inspired in its citizens the hope that they might be able to end the seventh century on a quiet note after all the turbulence which had afflicted their fathers and grandfathers through its early and middle years. The most notable, and worrying, development this year was the continued uptick in violence along the frontiers, with Hoggari raiding parties in the south managing to slip past the Moorish border defenses and sacking the town of Auzia[4] (although they could not breach the walls of its castellum, behind which some of its residents were able to find shelter). King Stilicho’s sons pursued the raiders to Dimmidi and routed them there, freeing the slaves they had taken and recapturing most of the booty from their prior rampage, but the incident nevertheless marked the most dangerous Donatist raid in more than half a century and was feared to be a sign of worse to come.
In response to this development and concerns that the Donatists might attack simultaneously with, or worse still truly be allied to, the Muslims, Aloysius moved the exercitus he had originally based in Rome to Carthage instead. The army in Ravenna was trusted with the dual responsibility of both safeguarding the Danube (in the absence of the reassigned Thessalonian one) and keeping Italy under lock & key: though many of its officers and knights were drawn from the assimilated Ostrogothic aristocracy of northern Italy who had survived the downfall of the Amalings, they had no particular affection for the Senate (who had been of no help against the Stilichians or Aloysius to their former overlords) nor for the people of central and southern Italy in general. That a conspiracy led by Lucius Aemilius Lepidus, cousin to the same Lepidus the Emperor had just put to death a few years prior for sedition, to bribe some of that army’s captains into assassinating him the next time he visited Rome was revealed by those same loyal captains certainly made this decision an easier one.
Helena shaped the East’s response to incessant Islamic raiding in tandem with the Caucasian and Christian Arab federates who had always been closer to the Second Rome than the First. The Augusta (and, less importantly in this case, her distant husband) authorized those federates to launch counter-raids into Islamic territory to answer the crimes of the guzat, a role for which the Armenians, Bulgars and Ghassanids in particular established semi-professional forces of border reivers. These men had the responsibility of harassing Arab villages on the other side of the border, to be sure, but they were also under orders to alert Christian settlements on their side of the border to Islamic raids, help evacuate the locals into nearby fortresses, and skirmish with the enemy until reinforcements (namely elements of the exercitus praesentalis newly moved to Antioch) could arrive in-theater. The Latin West reapplied the term limitanei to these men, but history will better remember them by the name the Greek East gave them – akritai, ‘frontiersmen’ – and their back-and-forth with the Muslims will turn large stretches of the Roman-Caliphal border into a sparsely populated no man’s land, whose extent would periodically shift with the border itself over the course of the many, many wars that the two great empires were yet to fight in their future.
An Armenian marcher lord, of the sort that would have been recognized as a captain of the easternmost 'limitanei' or 'akritai' by the Romans
As for those Muslims whom the Armenians, Georgians, Cilician Bulgars and Christian Arabs were reorganizing to fight, they continued to carry their war of expansion on into India this year. Ali was satisfied at the progress he had made in consolidating his hold on Sindh, and while he deemed the reinforcements his brother had sent him to be disappointing in their number, nevertheless he continued to cross the Thar Desert in force – relying on trains of camels for his logistics in-between the tobas or ponds which the desert’s dwellers used to sustain themselves. However, not all of those desert dwellers would meekly bow their heads or retreat in the presence of the oncoming Muslims. Some of these people, called the Thar after their arid homeland, rallied to Pravarasena as he prepared to counterattack against Ali’s army once again and assisted him in maneuvering through the desert sands.
In the Battle of Kahu-Jo-Darro[5], the Hunas and Thars caught the Arabs off-guard and drove them back in one of the rare unambiguous victories for the Dharmic religions this early into their clash with Islam. Ali was able to safely retreat thanks to the bravery of the ghulam and rebounded to fend off the pursuing Hunas at Mansura, the name he had given Brahmanabad to commemorate his victories in the Sindh. Still, Pravarasena’s rebuke had stung enough that 698 would end with him resting back in Aror on the Indus, his gains on the other side of the Thar Desert lost for now, and reconsidering his strategy going forward: perhaps there was merit to the concept some of the ghulam captains had thought up about deploying naphtha on land, although he wasn’t certain that their fuel mix was stable enough to pull it off without incinerating themselves. However, sure enough, events in the coming year would intervene to prevent Ali from committing fully to fighting the Indians in the short term…
In 699, the Caesar Constantine took advantage of another sleepy and relatively peaceful year to turn his attention to the state of the Latin language. Now it was no secret that spoken (or vernacular) Latin had not been the same as written (or Classical) Latin for centuries at this point: few outside the chambers of the Senate, relic of the ancient Roman ways that it was (for all its other faults), would have spoken as Cicero did in 299 AD, much less 699 AD. Still it was on an ordinary Sunday in this year that the heir to the purple dropped in on a sermon in the church of Castrodunum[6], a respectable castle-town under Merovingian rule which lay on the River Liger[7] – and found himself baffled by the rustic speech of the common Gallo-Romans. The priest’s readings and sermon had been barely intelligible to Constantine even though he had no problem carrying on a conversation with the more cultured Gallo-Roman elite, and even though the Bible said priest had been reading from was written in proper Latin.
The studied Caesar was dismayed by how far Latin’s status had been allowed to decay while the Stilichians and Aloysians were busy battling various threats of a physical nature to the Empire, and by his father’s unwillingness to do anything about it or even comprehend why this unacceptably tarnished Rome’s legacy in his eyes. While he did not openly move on the issue until after he became Emperor, Constantine would make it his personal mission to correct these errors in the pronunciation of Latin and standardize church services across the Latin half of the empire, and began making plans to that effect with the learned bishops and monks with whom he was close from this point onward, years before he would don his father’s mantle. In the east he would defer to his mother and acknowledge the supremacy of Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament and the first Bible translated from Hebrew, even as the vernacular Greek of the commons was hardly staying perfectly static either and beginning to produce yet another case of regional diglossia.
The Bishop of Aurelianum opening a summons from Constantine, inviting him to help in harmonizing Latin church services across the western half of the Roman Empire
Aloysius’ lack of interest in abstruse matters of linguistics did not mean he was entirely blind to religious and social matters, however – he merely concentrated on the more practical aspects. As the old Emperor continued to have an interest in ensuring his soul would not end up in a place of eternal torment after passing away, he continued to build on his previous efforts to make up for a life in which he did not (to put it gently) live with the highest moral character, sponsoring the construction of new hospitals and the expansion of existing ones in the cities of the Roman world in tandem with the local clerical authorities and even the federate kings even as he never quite stopped building up his armies. The Augustus’ efforts in this area and to keep the Church rigorously supplied with tithes had the side effect of keeping the performance of charitable duties roughly balanced between the diocesan clergy, who primarily attended to the needs of urban areas, and the monasteries which generally tended to the sick and wounded of the countryside[8].
For their part, his family did follow his lead in working for the relief of the poor. Constantine and Dagobert worked together to greatly expand the existing chapel-hospital of Lutetia into a much larger hospital complex (and pilgrim’s inn, and homeless shelter) called the Hostel-Deu[9] or 'hostel of God'. Meanwhile Helena had the position of Constantinople’s orphanotrophos (director of the imperial orphanage) elevated in rank and extended her patronage to her fair share of hospitals in the Orient, which retained the designation of xenodochion (‘guesthouse’) even as their counterparts in the West increasingly uniformly adopted the Latin term hospitāle and Vulgar variations thereof.
In the east, Ali once more went on the offensive, this time soundly beating Pravarasena and his Thar auxiliaries at the Battle of Jangladesh[10]. He ultimately thought better of trying to deploy his brother’s naffatun in land combat, instead falling back on more conventional tactics and simply using the great dunes of the Thar to conceal his maneuvers to harass, flank & ultimately rout the Hunas. The Islamic prince made it as far as the marshy Rann of Kutch, on the southeastern edge of the desert, before the hostile terrain and ill news from Kufa conspired to halt him yet again: Abd al-Rahman had passed away, the eldest grandson of the Prophet having fallen asleep on the night of September 9 and never waking. The Caliph was 70 at the time of his demise. Leaving his army and two eldest sons behind to look after their latest conquests in Sindh, Ali hastened back to Medina where Abd al-Rahman was to be entombed.
Abu Bakr ibn Ali, eldest son of the third grandson of the Prophet, destroying Hindu and Buddhist idols in the wake of the Islamic victory at Jangladesh which finally secured the Thar Desert for the Caliphate's easternmost flank
Once back in Medina, Ali was also to pledge allegiance to the late Caliph’s son Abd-‘Allah (or Abdullah as he would be recorded in most non-Arabic histories), now rightfully Caliph of all Dar al-Islam. However, neither he nor his second brother Al-Abbas thought particularly highly of their nephew; Abdullah had not shared in their tribulations nor fought in the early wars to expand Islam’s reach under their father (his grandfather) Qasim, but rather got to grow up in the lap of luxury at Abd al-Rahman’s increasingly elaborate court in Kufa. The new Caliph’s uncles soon made it clear to him that he had to earn their allegiance, not simply take it for granted, and Ali in particular burst out laughing when Abdullah dared make implied threats toward their life: he was an old man himself with few years left to lose anyway (though more than Al-Abbas), had faced much worse on battlefields from Syria to India than his pampered nephew, and in any case his own hardened sons and army would gladly avenge him if the need arose. As 699 drew to a close, Abdullah was left to weigh the costs of appeasing his uncles or paying a cost in blood to try to forcibly hold the Caliphate together by fitna instead.
In 700 the news of Abd al-Rahman’s death was greeted with excitement across the imperial courts of Christian Europe, where it was seen as a new opportunity to push the Muslims back and regain the remainder of Syria or even Egypt. Borne by merchants and official Roman envoys alike, the news reached Helena in Constantinople first, then Constantine, and last of all Aloysius. The Augustus of all Rome had tired of lounging about in Augusta Treverorum in the early months of the last year of the seventh century, and he had decided to end his boredom by mounting another campaign against the Frisians – resolving to meet their periodic irritating raid or bout of piracy with overkill by marching against them with 30,000 men, a mix of the exercitus praesentalis based in his capital and federate troops supplied by the Franks and Thuringians.
Aloysius had spent the first half of 700 pummeling the Frisian tribes across the soon-to-be-former southern half of their domain, and captured their elected king Hroðward (also known as Hrotheweard) at the Battle of the Isala[11]. However, the arrival of a messenger from Lutetia with news regarding the death of his old nemesis Abd al-Rahman caused him to hold off on completely destroying the Frisians. Instead he enforced a peace settlement by which the Isala was made into Rome’s new boundary with Frisia; the lands south and west of it were partitioned between the elements of the Roman army who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield just now, newly promoted to hereditary counts and knights. Moreover, the Frisians were required to pay tribute and accept the free movement of Christian missionaries through their lands, similar to the Continental Saxons to the east. Hroðward himself and his young son Folcwald were both also taken back to Augusta Treverorum as hostages – Hroðward for five years, Folcwald until his father’s death.
While Aloysius made a beeline for Antioch after reaching this settlement with the defeated Frisians, eagerly anticipating either the implosion of the Caliphate into civil war or the succession of Abd al-Rahman’s untested son Abdullah – both outcomes that he predicted would give him an opportunity to prevail with ease and reconquer more territory in Syria or even make another, more successful play for Egypt – he did also commission the intensification of Christianization efforts across Roman-ruled or influenced Germania before he left the West. Part of that process was a growing number of Anglo-Saxon missionaries, whose tongue was not only still familiar enough with that of their Continental cousins to make the conversion of the Saxons as a whole a smoother process, but who could also still intelligibly converse with and preach to the freshly subjugated Frisians[12]. Consequently, one in every four (or three in Holland) Ephesian priests who came to Frisia to proselytize to the locals and build churches was English rather than any variety of Roman.
English missionaries spreading the Good News to Frisians and Saxons, whose tongues were still similar enough to their own to allow a degree of mutual intelligibility – making them ideal agents through which the Romans could spread their faith to these remaining northwestern Germanic holdouts
Speaking of the Anglo-Saxons, it was not only their relatives on the continent who had to worry about their involvement in new religious troubles. In Britannia, the Ephesian church first re-established little over a century ago by Gratian of Suindinum had grown enough of a following in Londinium to worry the British Pelagians, and relations between the two Christian sects in the capital had become tense in more recent decades. A fight between Pelagian and Ephesian youths quickly escalated into a sectarian riot in which Gratian’s church was burned down and the bishop Florentius lost a hand, enraging the continental Ephesians who joined their surviving British brethren and the English in demanding redress.
Confronted with the threat of a joint Anglo-Roman invasion as Aloysius & Constantine issued threats from the mainland while the Bretwalda Æthelheard began to stir in Eoforwic, the Riothamus Corineus yielded: he reminded the Romans that decades ago he had fought with their Emperor on the fields before Constantinople, and pledged to both punish the riot’s ringleaders (whose heads he spiked above the gates of Londinium) and to rebuild the Ephesian church in his capital at his own expense. As the Romans were preparing for war with the Arabs again these gestures were sufficient to mollify them: however such submission greatly displeased more hard-line elements of the Pelagian Church and the attendant British aristocracy, who found Corineus’ apparent willingness to bow before the Ephesian tyrants to be cowardly and contemptible, while the Riothamus for his part justified his caving to Ephesian demands on the grounds that a war with Rome and England would be suicidal for Britannia. These early clashes and disagreements would be but the prelude to renewed religious conflict in the former Roman Britain through the coming eighth century after the relative calm of the seventh…
Thanks to the efforts of the Aloysians, the spread of Christianity was not only beginning to pick up pace among the remaining Teutonic peoples who had yet to fully accept the Gospel, but also among the Sclaveni as well. Among the South Slavs, the Carantanians (being Rome’s first ever Slavic federates) were most familiar with the new religion and in the winter of this year their new prince Bogomir was baptized along with his family in the presence of Aloysius (then passing through toward Antioch), becoming the first Slavic Christian ruler in Europe: his newborn heir was also christened Andrej (Andrew), making him the first Slav dynast of note to bear a Christian name in recorded history. And further north, King Skarbimir of the Polani (the successor of Lech II, who had assisted Aloysius during his Zeroth Crusade nearly forty years prior) accepted the first Christian missionary to step foot on his people’s soil – Aurelian of Vetera – as a courtesy to his mighty ally the Emperor; while Aurelian’s preaching did not find a particularly receptive audience at the court of the Polish king during their lifetimes, he persisted and would plant the very first seed of Christianity in a Slavic territory outside of Rome’s borders.
One difficulty consistently reported by Ephesian proselytizers working among the barbarian peoples was communication: not only was there an obvious gulf between Latin/Greek and the languages of the Teutons and Sclaveni, but there was no single Germanic or Slavic language which the missionaries could learn and then preach in wherever they went, either. A priest or monk who learned to speak Saxon was not guaranteed to be able to easily communicate with Lombards or Bavarians, for example, nor was one who had lived with the Dulebians & learned their tongue necessarily well-suited to preach to the Poles or Thracians. And while the federates who had settled deeper into the Roman world like the Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks benefited from having large pre-existing populations of Latin-speakers into whose ranks they could largely assimilate over the centuries, no such population existed in the forests of Germania where Rome came to its northernmost federates and not the other way around (much less in the Slavic lands – ‘Germania Slavica’ – beyond), or in the Peninsula of Haemus where the Illyro-Roman populace had been eradicated or pushed to the coast by the Huns and Avars.
Now progress had been made in adapting the Latin alphabet to the Germanic language, mainly by training cadres of Thuringian/Bavarian/Lombard/Alemanni priests and monks who could both convincingly preach in their native tongues and translate old Germanic epics or produce new manuscripts using the Latin alphabet rather than the runes of their ancestors, thanks to the century or more that those peoples had been living under Roman suzerainty and consequently gained exposure to Roman culture by trade and earlier proselytization efforts. In regards to the Saxons and Frisians the Romans also had the good fortune of being able to call upon English missionaries from northern Britannia, who could converse intelligibly with those barbaric peoples owing to the similarities between their languages.
But work was slower with the Sclaveni, many of whom were understood to live well beyond Roman authority (for from the Polans and Bohemi the Romans had learned of numerous other Slavic tribes, of whom the Antes were merely one among many, living between their border and that of the Khazars north of the Pontic Steppe), and the Carantanians could not be reasonably expected to convert all of their kindred by themselves. As such, the idea of devising a standard Slavic alphabet to assist in translating works for and preaching to the Slavs (rather than trying to impose the Latin or Greek alphabets upon them, for they had taken less readily to that than the Germanic peoples) began to be debated in Rome and Constantinople around this time, in hopes that the Sclaveni as a whole might be brought to Christ’s light (and good relations with Rome) at an accelerated pace.
As for the Muslims, they were doing what they could in this year to disappoint the Romans and frustrate the latter’s wish for a fitna which would make a campaign of reconquest in the Middle East a good deal easier. Abdullah (perhaps recognizing the danger his large and still – in large part – fragile empire was in) apologized for giving his uncles offense previously and tried to reach an accord with them, which ironically only made them think he would be easier to push around. For the sake of unity and not turning their blades against their brethren, both in blood and in faith, after months of ambivalence and negotiation before the shura the Hashemites struck an agreement this autumn: Al-Abbas and Ali received considerable concessions in being affirmed as Emirs of respectively Fars (actually an amalgamation of the great wilayat of Fars, Azerbaijan and Khorasan, effectively constituting old Persia) and Al-Hind (Islamic India).
While still nominally obligated to support the Caliph militarily, the Hashemite uncles were now essentially sovereign rulers in all but name, free to govern and tax their dominions as they wished and even to select their own heirs rather than have their vast domains default back to Abdullah when they should pass away. Adding insult to injury, even as he promised to support his nephew against the Romans, Ali also extorted the promise of continued assistance from the Caliphate in subjugating more of India to his rule – essentially making Abdullah pay to have an even bigger and more unruly vassal. While Abdullah averted a civil war right at the end of the seventh century with this extremely lopsided compromise and the Romans did not attack immediately as he had feared, the longer the tenuous peace with Rome held, the more he would reconsider the accord he had reached with his uncles and whether it was wise to have sought internal peace at any cost, even that of the entire eastern half of the Caliphate. Of course, only one thing was sure to happen if he were to renege on this deal…
The third Caliph, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Rahman, praying with his near but not-so-dear kindred after apparently having reconciled with them. He regretted the terms of the agreement he had struck with his uncles almost immediately however, and sought to find ways to go back on it after it became apparent that Aloysius and Helena were not going to strike immediately after his father's death
1. Holy Roman Empire
2. Helena's Court
3. Franks
4. Burgundians
5. Alemanni
6. Bavarians
7. Thuringians
8. Lombards
9. Visigoths
10. Basques
11. Celtiberians
12. Carantanians
13. Dulebes
14. Horites
15. Serbs
16. Gepids
17. Thracians
18. Bohemians & Moravians
19. Africans
20. Bretons
21. Romano-British
22. Anglo-Saxons
23. Picts
24. Dál Riata
25. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta & Connachta
26. Frisians
27. Continental Saxons
28. Polans
29. Vistula Veneti
30. Antae
31. Avars
32. Georgia
33. Armenia
34. Ghassanids
35. Banu Kalb
36. Cilician Bulgars
37. Dar al-Islam (Senior Hashemites)
38. Abbasids
39. Alids
40. Nubia
41. Hoggar
42. Kumbi
43. Khazars
44. Kimeks
45. Karluks
46. Oghuz Turks
47. Indo-Romans
48. Hunas
49. Later Salankayanas
50. Kannada kingdoms of the Chalukyas & Gangas
51. Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Pandyas & Cholas
52. Anuradhapura
53. Tibet
54. Later Han
55. Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo & Silla
56. Yamato
57. Champa
58. Chenla
59. Srivijaya
60. Irish of the New World
61. New World Britons
====================================================================================
[1] Lake Ontario.
[2] Corn, the third key element of the ‘Three Sisters’ (maize/beans/squash) of Eastern Woodlands native agriculture, is still missing – it wouldn’t even reach the Mississippi until 800 AD at the earliest. The combination which the Britons have absorbed from the locals was cultivated by the natives of the Eastern Agricultural Complex isn’t as naturally productive as the Three Sisters, the non-squash elements being replaced by corn and beans later as a result, but will help in keeping them afloat for now.
[3] Usage of the Gallican chant was historically abolished by Pepin the Short in 753 after he was impressed by the much more elaborate (Old) Roman chant. However, the Gregorian Chant was developed from a synthesis of the Old Roman and Gallican chants under the Carolingian Renaissance.
[4] Sour el-Ghozlane.
[5] Mirpur Khas.
[6] Châteaudun.
[7] The Loir River in western France, not to be confused with the Loire River.
[8] Historically, the role of monasteries came to eclipse that of the diocesan clergy in the Catholic Church’s works to relieve the poor after Charlemagne and the eighth century at the latest, the latter having been weakened by the ascent of feudalism, post-Roman deurbanization and the growing practice of endowing monasteries rather than parish churches with land by the nobility of Europe.
[9] The Hôtel-Dieu of Paris. Tradition holds that it was built in the mid-seventh century, while in written records its existence is first noted in 829; for TTL I’ve gone with a blend of both origins, there being an already existing small hospital in Paris/Lutetia which is then greatly expanded under royal & imperial patronage (though a good deal earlier than the ninth century, obviously).
[10] The original name for the environs of modern Bikaner, back then still a barren desert – the city itself wasn’t built until 1488.
[11] The IJssel.
[12] Old English is apparently quite closely related to Old Frisian as well as the Old Saxon of the continent.
Though the rift between him and his wife Helena had widened further still since the suspicious death of his eldest son Sauromates the year prior (ironically occurring right as he was starting to try to be a more faithful husband and patch up relations with her), Aloysius was unable to find any evidence that would suggest the Augusta had eliminated his firstborn. Certainly if she had done it (as she had good reason to, being that Sauromates posed and quite possibly had acted in such a manner as to be a threat to her own son’s succession rights & life), she did not tell him when he bluntly asked her if she was responsible. In any case, this lack of evidence coupled with the need to maintain imperial unity against the Muslims abroad and peace & good order within the Empire’s borders so that he might build up his army in peace compelled the Emperor to not pursue open conflict with his Empress. That said, he also confirmed Sauromates’ own son, his eldest grandson Antoninus, as the next Comes Barcinensis, thereby entrenching the first bastard cadet branch of the Aloysian dynasty as a middling player in northeastern Hispania for many more years to come.
Rome’s newest great enemy was similarly exploiting the temporary state of peace to continue building up their resources for the next war. Old Abd al-Rahman did not entirely put his faith in his new naphtha stockpiles and the men he was training to wield it, but also sought additional allies with whom he could balance the odds even slightly against the Roman-Khazar alliance. To that end the Caliph extended a hand to an old Roman enemy, who his traders and messengers could now reach with the Garamantians no longer in their way: the Donatist kingdom of Hoggar. Their king Mazippa was leery of these strangers from the East, who he considered to unbelievers as wicked as any other non-Donatist, but on the other hand it was also apparent to him that the hated Romans were presently unassailable without outside help. For fear that an unchallenged Roman Empire might eventually decide to march south and wipe Donatism off the map once and for all, a still-skeptical Mazippa did eventually come around and agree to ally with the Muslims against Rome.
Arabic art depicting the Donatist king Mazippa, their new ally in the Hoggar Mountains, and his son Cutzinas
While an uneasy peace continued to hold in the Mediterranean, the Muslims further out east were being anything but peaceful. Ali continued to campaign further into India, resolving the Siege of Aror (the Sindhi regional capital) in a daring midnight assault which was precipitated by his sons’ leadership of a party of the bravest and mightiest chosen warriors in his host in scaling the walls and opening the city gates, after which much booty was plundered and thousands of slaves sent back home or distributed among the warriors as was customary when a pagan city failed to surrender in time. The Hashemite princes had managed this feat just in time to secure their rear and control over the lower Indus against a more forceful Huna response, as Pravarasena returned from beyond the Thar Desert and made for their positions at the head of a host of 30,000. Despite having less than half his number, the Muslims fought the Battle of Aror with a fanatical ferocity and tactical ingenuity which the Hunas could not match, drawing out and isolating chunks of the larger Huna host to be destroyed in detail with a series of feigned retreats – ironically not dissimilar to how the Hunas’ ancestors had fought against the Sassanid Persians and Guptas.
Pravarasena retreated back across the Thar Desert in defeat, a third of his army having been killed or compelled to surrender before the power of Islam that day, but this time Ali would follow him. The Huna army was further broken up beneath the pressure of Islamic raiders constantly nipping at their heels, and some of the local potentates felt this show of weakness on the part of their Huna overlords meant that they had best submit to the newcomers while they still had a chance to secure good terms for themselves. The Muslims welcomed these defectors and traitors to the Huna Empire as they advanced, starting with the ayukta of Mandore; of course those who refused to similarly convert to Islam, pledge loyalty to the Caliph and add their forces to Ali’s army were fair game for forceful subjugation and enslavement or extermination, for being idol-worshiping pagans in the eyes of the Muslims, they had no rights (certainly nothing resembling the tolerance afforded to the other ‘People of the Book’) in Islamic eyes. Still others resisted however, fighting on in defense of their oaths and gods even when trapped behind the advancing Islamic lines.
On the other side of the world, across the great Atlantic the increasingly isolated British settlers of Aloysiana were making discoveries of import, even as their Irish enemies continued to settle the far northeastern reaches of the continent in greater comfort. While they built no new great settlements at this point in time so as to avoid stretching themselves too thinly, their explorers did chart about half of the length of Lac-de-Virgine[1], that great lake which formed the source of the Saint Pelagius River. And of greater immediate importance to them, some of their Wilderman allies and subjects who actually practiced basic agriculture (rather than being mere nomadic hunter-gatherers) shared their knowledge of the local plants with the Britons. In particular little barley, squash and assorted herbs like goosefoot, previously thought to be but weeds by the settlers[2] were cultivated for the first time on the settlers’ riverside farms this year, providing them with much-needed sources of food that could more easily grow in the cold conditions of northern Aloysiana than the dwindling stock of crops they had brought with them from the Old World.
Isolated from their home in a bitterly cold and untamed land, the Britons of the New World had little choice but to lead hard and austere lives even by the standards of the time, though they at least were able to practice their religion without fear of an Ephesian resurgence and secure aid from some of the local Wildermen to make their days a little easier
Come 697, and Rome’s borders in the east and south once again came under threat from hostile raiders despite it having been barely five years since the Truce of Antioch had been inked. Islamic guzat once again began to harry the Levantine frontier, while the Donatists surged out of their mountains in numbers unseen since the punitive expedition of Emperor Stilicho had seemingly decisively chastised them and cooled their self-righteous ardor. In response to the growing threat in the far east while the Danubian frontier remained largely stable and the Avars had yet to recover from their thrashing thirty years prior, Aloysius heeded Helena’s request to transfer the growing exercitus praesentalis at Thessalonica to Antioch in case a major effort had to be made to defend Syria & Mesopotamia in the near future.
Developments that far away from Gaul did not overly concern the Caesar Constantine, who instead focused on entrenching the Romanization of the Franks once and for all. The heir to Rome had struck up a genuine friendship with King Dagobert of Francia over their shared interest in the classics, and as Mayor of the Palace he used this advantage for all it was worth. Constantine fought to safeguard the Gallo-Roman populations of Francia’s cities, their traditional magistracies and privileges, and their commercial industries & infrastructure (the jewelers of Lutetia, for example, or the potters of Durocortorum) against decay and subjugation by the Frankish magnates in the countryside. Not dissimilar to their Visigoth counterparts in past centuries, the Frankish military aristocracy viewed these Roman cities as rivals and natural supporters of a stronger central authority (or Roman subjugation of the Frankish people altogether) – and also like said Visigoths, they were not necessarily wrong, as Constantine not only sought to protect Romanitas in northern Gaul but also assertively subsume the Franks into it.
Since Dagobert was an enemy to these magnates, many of whom were his own Merovingian kindred and still believed they had a greater right to the Frankish throne, it was only natural that he should try to protect and cultivate them as his powerbase at Constantine’s recommendation. For now, the fact that their children were still being held in Lutetia as glorified hostages and the lingering threat of still-nearby Aloysius descending upon them like the wrathful fist of God kept them from entering open rebellion against their liege and his liege. This bought Constantine precious time to continue having said children raised in the Roman fashion under his direct supervision and to try to foster lasting friendships between them, his own son Aloysius Junior, and the children of the Gallo-Roman elite who he had also invited to live and study in Lutetia.
However as surely as the already-considerable Roman influence over the Franks deepened, the Franks were leaving their mark on the Roman mosaic. Notably although the Caesar prevailed upon Dagobert to favor the traditional Roman Rite over the indigenously developed Gallican Rite of his kingdom in this year on the grounds that the latter was essentially a degenerated provincial variation of the former, the class of Frankish prelates he’d been promoting and bringing into close contact with the Roman clerical authorities would eventually add a Gallo-Germanic flair to some aspects of the Church in the West anyway, most notably in its music[3]. Similarly, the Gallic monks who prospered under Constantine’s patronage also built upon the traditional Roman foundation of illuminated manuscripts, developing their own distinctive artstyle and uncial script.
Constantine personally educating his son Aloysius Junior in letters. Likely motivated by how he only rarely ever met his father as a child, the Caesar took a personal interest in the upbringing of his own children
In this year the Muslims made no great advance out of Sindh, as Ali needed a little time to consolidate his rule over the region and install garrisons in the cities he’d conquered and sacked up to this point – while the defecting local rulers’ armies certainly helped with that regard, and he didn’t have many men to spread out in the first place, the Muslim prince did feel the need to leave at least a few hundred loyal veterans from his Arabian homeland in places like Aror to keep the local collaborators under watch and in line. Instead the major showdown between the Hunas and Muslims this year happened at sea: a fleet sailing out of the great Yemenite port of Muza, transporting reinforcements and supplies to Ali after he’d requested it of his brother the Caliph, ran into a Huna fleet sailing out of Gujarat to land a Huna army behind Ali’s lines at Debal.
As it so happened, among the troops Abd al-Rahman had sent there was a contingent of naffatun, whose fiery new weapon he hoped to test on an Indian battlefield before sending them against the Romans. On the occasion where the ships carrying them got close enough to mount a boarding action (or were approached by their Indian enemies for the same purpose), these naffatun proceeded to hurl their blazing clay pots at the Hunas instead, with the splendid results the Arabs had been looking forward to. The Hunas soon retreated in disarray and fear after a half-dozen of their ships were set afire in this manner, ending the Battle of the Gulf of Makran in an Arab victory. Abd al-Rahman’s commanders did note one weakness on the part of the naffatun, however: they could not project their fiery might over a longer distance as the Romans did with their siphons, instead having to physically throw their clay or copper projectiles by hand. On the other hand, it was also hoped that the naffatun could be deployed on land en masse, unlike the Romans’ Greek fire which remained largely restricted to the sea (and later to the defense of city walls) for many more centuries.
The year 698 was another year in a row of mercifully peaceful years for the Holy Roman Empire, and inspired in its citizens the hope that they might be able to end the seventh century on a quiet note after all the turbulence which had afflicted their fathers and grandfathers through its early and middle years. The most notable, and worrying, development this year was the continued uptick in violence along the frontiers, with Hoggari raiding parties in the south managing to slip past the Moorish border defenses and sacking the town of Auzia[4] (although they could not breach the walls of its castellum, behind which some of its residents were able to find shelter). King Stilicho’s sons pursued the raiders to Dimmidi and routed them there, freeing the slaves they had taken and recapturing most of the booty from their prior rampage, but the incident nevertheless marked the most dangerous Donatist raid in more than half a century and was feared to be a sign of worse to come.
In response to this development and concerns that the Donatists might attack simultaneously with, or worse still truly be allied to, the Muslims, Aloysius moved the exercitus he had originally based in Rome to Carthage instead. The army in Ravenna was trusted with the dual responsibility of both safeguarding the Danube (in the absence of the reassigned Thessalonian one) and keeping Italy under lock & key: though many of its officers and knights were drawn from the assimilated Ostrogothic aristocracy of northern Italy who had survived the downfall of the Amalings, they had no particular affection for the Senate (who had been of no help against the Stilichians or Aloysius to their former overlords) nor for the people of central and southern Italy in general. That a conspiracy led by Lucius Aemilius Lepidus, cousin to the same Lepidus the Emperor had just put to death a few years prior for sedition, to bribe some of that army’s captains into assassinating him the next time he visited Rome was revealed by those same loyal captains certainly made this decision an easier one.
Helena shaped the East’s response to incessant Islamic raiding in tandem with the Caucasian and Christian Arab federates who had always been closer to the Second Rome than the First. The Augusta (and, less importantly in this case, her distant husband) authorized those federates to launch counter-raids into Islamic territory to answer the crimes of the guzat, a role for which the Armenians, Bulgars and Ghassanids in particular established semi-professional forces of border reivers. These men had the responsibility of harassing Arab villages on the other side of the border, to be sure, but they were also under orders to alert Christian settlements on their side of the border to Islamic raids, help evacuate the locals into nearby fortresses, and skirmish with the enemy until reinforcements (namely elements of the exercitus praesentalis newly moved to Antioch) could arrive in-theater. The Latin West reapplied the term limitanei to these men, but history will better remember them by the name the Greek East gave them – akritai, ‘frontiersmen’ – and their back-and-forth with the Muslims will turn large stretches of the Roman-Caliphal border into a sparsely populated no man’s land, whose extent would periodically shift with the border itself over the course of the many, many wars that the two great empires were yet to fight in their future.
An Armenian marcher lord, of the sort that would have been recognized as a captain of the easternmost 'limitanei' or 'akritai' by the Romans
As for those Muslims whom the Armenians, Georgians, Cilician Bulgars and Christian Arabs were reorganizing to fight, they continued to carry their war of expansion on into India this year. Ali was satisfied at the progress he had made in consolidating his hold on Sindh, and while he deemed the reinforcements his brother had sent him to be disappointing in their number, nevertheless he continued to cross the Thar Desert in force – relying on trains of camels for his logistics in-between the tobas or ponds which the desert’s dwellers used to sustain themselves. However, not all of those desert dwellers would meekly bow their heads or retreat in the presence of the oncoming Muslims. Some of these people, called the Thar after their arid homeland, rallied to Pravarasena as he prepared to counterattack against Ali’s army once again and assisted him in maneuvering through the desert sands.
In the Battle of Kahu-Jo-Darro[5], the Hunas and Thars caught the Arabs off-guard and drove them back in one of the rare unambiguous victories for the Dharmic religions this early into their clash with Islam. Ali was able to safely retreat thanks to the bravery of the ghulam and rebounded to fend off the pursuing Hunas at Mansura, the name he had given Brahmanabad to commemorate his victories in the Sindh. Still, Pravarasena’s rebuke had stung enough that 698 would end with him resting back in Aror on the Indus, his gains on the other side of the Thar Desert lost for now, and reconsidering his strategy going forward: perhaps there was merit to the concept some of the ghulam captains had thought up about deploying naphtha on land, although he wasn’t certain that their fuel mix was stable enough to pull it off without incinerating themselves. However, sure enough, events in the coming year would intervene to prevent Ali from committing fully to fighting the Indians in the short term…
In 699, the Caesar Constantine took advantage of another sleepy and relatively peaceful year to turn his attention to the state of the Latin language. Now it was no secret that spoken (or vernacular) Latin had not been the same as written (or Classical) Latin for centuries at this point: few outside the chambers of the Senate, relic of the ancient Roman ways that it was (for all its other faults), would have spoken as Cicero did in 299 AD, much less 699 AD. Still it was on an ordinary Sunday in this year that the heir to the purple dropped in on a sermon in the church of Castrodunum[6], a respectable castle-town under Merovingian rule which lay on the River Liger[7] – and found himself baffled by the rustic speech of the common Gallo-Romans. The priest’s readings and sermon had been barely intelligible to Constantine even though he had no problem carrying on a conversation with the more cultured Gallo-Roman elite, and even though the Bible said priest had been reading from was written in proper Latin.
The studied Caesar was dismayed by how far Latin’s status had been allowed to decay while the Stilichians and Aloysians were busy battling various threats of a physical nature to the Empire, and by his father’s unwillingness to do anything about it or even comprehend why this unacceptably tarnished Rome’s legacy in his eyes. While he did not openly move on the issue until after he became Emperor, Constantine would make it his personal mission to correct these errors in the pronunciation of Latin and standardize church services across the Latin half of the empire, and began making plans to that effect with the learned bishops and monks with whom he was close from this point onward, years before he would don his father’s mantle. In the east he would defer to his mother and acknowledge the supremacy of Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament and the first Bible translated from Hebrew, even as the vernacular Greek of the commons was hardly staying perfectly static either and beginning to produce yet another case of regional diglossia.
The Bishop of Aurelianum opening a summons from Constantine, inviting him to help in harmonizing Latin church services across the western half of the Roman Empire
Aloysius’ lack of interest in abstruse matters of linguistics did not mean he was entirely blind to religious and social matters, however – he merely concentrated on the more practical aspects. As the old Emperor continued to have an interest in ensuring his soul would not end up in a place of eternal torment after passing away, he continued to build on his previous efforts to make up for a life in which he did not (to put it gently) live with the highest moral character, sponsoring the construction of new hospitals and the expansion of existing ones in the cities of the Roman world in tandem with the local clerical authorities and even the federate kings even as he never quite stopped building up his armies. The Augustus’ efforts in this area and to keep the Church rigorously supplied with tithes had the side effect of keeping the performance of charitable duties roughly balanced between the diocesan clergy, who primarily attended to the needs of urban areas, and the monasteries which generally tended to the sick and wounded of the countryside[8].
For their part, his family did follow his lead in working for the relief of the poor. Constantine and Dagobert worked together to greatly expand the existing chapel-hospital of Lutetia into a much larger hospital complex (and pilgrim’s inn, and homeless shelter) called the Hostel-Deu[9] or 'hostel of God'. Meanwhile Helena had the position of Constantinople’s orphanotrophos (director of the imperial orphanage) elevated in rank and extended her patronage to her fair share of hospitals in the Orient, which retained the designation of xenodochion (‘guesthouse’) even as their counterparts in the West increasingly uniformly adopted the Latin term hospitāle and Vulgar variations thereof.
In the east, Ali once more went on the offensive, this time soundly beating Pravarasena and his Thar auxiliaries at the Battle of Jangladesh[10]. He ultimately thought better of trying to deploy his brother’s naffatun in land combat, instead falling back on more conventional tactics and simply using the great dunes of the Thar to conceal his maneuvers to harass, flank & ultimately rout the Hunas. The Islamic prince made it as far as the marshy Rann of Kutch, on the southeastern edge of the desert, before the hostile terrain and ill news from Kufa conspired to halt him yet again: Abd al-Rahman had passed away, the eldest grandson of the Prophet having fallen asleep on the night of September 9 and never waking. The Caliph was 70 at the time of his demise. Leaving his army and two eldest sons behind to look after their latest conquests in Sindh, Ali hastened back to Medina where Abd al-Rahman was to be entombed.
Abu Bakr ibn Ali, eldest son of the third grandson of the Prophet, destroying Hindu and Buddhist idols in the wake of the Islamic victory at Jangladesh which finally secured the Thar Desert for the Caliphate's easternmost flank
Once back in Medina, Ali was also to pledge allegiance to the late Caliph’s son Abd-‘Allah (or Abdullah as he would be recorded in most non-Arabic histories), now rightfully Caliph of all Dar al-Islam. However, neither he nor his second brother Al-Abbas thought particularly highly of their nephew; Abdullah had not shared in their tribulations nor fought in the early wars to expand Islam’s reach under their father (his grandfather) Qasim, but rather got to grow up in the lap of luxury at Abd al-Rahman’s increasingly elaborate court in Kufa. The new Caliph’s uncles soon made it clear to him that he had to earn their allegiance, not simply take it for granted, and Ali in particular burst out laughing when Abdullah dared make implied threats toward their life: he was an old man himself with few years left to lose anyway (though more than Al-Abbas), had faced much worse on battlefields from Syria to India than his pampered nephew, and in any case his own hardened sons and army would gladly avenge him if the need arose. As 699 drew to a close, Abdullah was left to weigh the costs of appeasing his uncles or paying a cost in blood to try to forcibly hold the Caliphate together by fitna instead.
In 700 the news of Abd al-Rahman’s death was greeted with excitement across the imperial courts of Christian Europe, where it was seen as a new opportunity to push the Muslims back and regain the remainder of Syria or even Egypt. Borne by merchants and official Roman envoys alike, the news reached Helena in Constantinople first, then Constantine, and last of all Aloysius. The Augustus of all Rome had tired of lounging about in Augusta Treverorum in the early months of the last year of the seventh century, and he had decided to end his boredom by mounting another campaign against the Frisians – resolving to meet their periodic irritating raid or bout of piracy with overkill by marching against them with 30,000 men, a mix of the exercitus praesentalis based in his capital and federate troops supplied by the Franks and Thuringians.
Aloysius had spent the first half of 700 pummeling the Frisian tribes across the soon-to-be-former southern half of their domain, and captured their elected king Hroðward (also known as Hrotheweard) at the Battle of the Isala[11]. However, the arrival of a messenger from Lutetia with news regarding the death of his old nemesis Abd al-Rahman caused him to hold off on completely destroying the Frisians. Instead he enforced a peace settlement by which the Isala was made into Rome’s new boundary with Frisia; the lands south and west of it were partitioned between the elements of the Roman army who had distinguished themselves on the battlefield just now, newly promoted to hereditary counts and knights. Moreover, the Frisians were required to pay tribute and accept the free movement of Christian missionaries through their lands, similar to the Continental Saxons to the east. Hroðward himself and his young son Folcwald were both also taken back to Augusta Treverorum as hostages – Hroðward for five years, Folcwald until his father’s death.
While Aloysius made a beeline for Antioch after reaching this settlement with the defeated Frisians, eagerly anticipating either the implosion of the Caliphate into civil war or the succession of Abd al-Rahman’s untested son Abdullah – both outcomes that he predicted would give him an opportunity to prevail with ease and reconquer more territory in Syria or even make another, more successful play for Egypt – he did also commission the intensification of Christianization efforts across Roman-ruled or influenced Germania before he left the West. Part of that process was a growing number of Anglo-Saxon missionaries, whose tongue was not only still familiar enough with that of their Continental cousins to make the conversion of the Saxons as a whole a smoother process, but who could also still intelligibly converse with and preach to the freshly subjugated Frisians[12]. Consequently, one in every four (or three in Holland) Ephesian priests who came to Frisia to proselytize to the locals and build churches was English rather than any variety of Roman.
English missionaries spreading the Good News to Frisians and Saxons, whose tongues were still similar enough to their own to allow a degree of mutual intelligibility – making them ideal agents through which the Romans could spread their faith to these remaining northwestern Germanic holdouts
Speaking of the Anglo-Saxons, it was not only their relatives on the continent who had to worry about their involvement in new religious troubles. In Britannia, the Ephesian church first re-established little over a century ago by Gratian of Suindinum had grown enough of a following in Londinium to worry the British Pelagians, and relations between the two Christian sects in the capital had become tense in more recent decades. A fight between Pelagian and Ephesian youths quickly escalated into a sectarian riot in which Gratian’s church was burned down and the bishop Florentius lost a hand, enraging the continental Ephesians who joined their surviving British brethren and the English in demanding redress.
Confronted with the threat of a joint Anglo-Roman invasion as Aloysius & Constantine issued threats from the mainland while the Bretwalda Æthelheard began to stir in Eoforwic, the Riothamus Corineus yielded: he reminded the Romans that decades ago he had fought with their Emperor on the fields before Constantinople, and pledged to both punish the riot’s ringleaders (whose heads he spiked above the gates of Londinium) and to rebuild the Ephesian church in his capital at his own expense. As the Romans were preparing for war with the Arabs again these gestures were sufficient to mollify them: however such submission greatly displeased more hard-line elements of the Pelagian Church and the attendant British aristocracy, who found Corineus’ apparent willingness to bow before the Ephesian tyrants to be cowardly and contemptible, while the Riothamus for his part justified his caving to Ephesian demands on the grounds that a war with Rome and England would be suicidal for Britannia. These early clashes and disagreements would be but the prelude to renewed religious conflict in the former Roman Britain through the coming eighth century after the relative calm of the seventh…
Thanks to the efforts of the Aloysians, the spread of Christianity was not only beginning to pick up pace among the remaining Teutonic peoples who had yet to fully accept the Gospel, but also among the Sclaveni as well. Among the South Slavs, the Carantanians (being Rome’s first ever Slavic federates) were most familiar with the new religion and in the winter of this year their new prince Bogomir was baptized along with his family in the presence of Aloysius (then passing through toward Antioch), becoming the first Slavic Christian ruler in Europe: his newborn heir was also christened Andrej (Andrew), making him the first Slav dynast of note to bear a Christian name in recorded history. And further north, King Skarbimir of the Polani (the successor of Lech II, who had assisted Aloysius during his Zeroth Crusade nearly forty years prior) accepted the first Christian missionary to step foot on his people’s soil – Aurelian of Vetera – as a courtesy to his mighty ally the Emperor; while Aurelian’s preaching did not find a particularly receptive audience at the court of the Polish king during their lifetimes, he persisted and would plant the very first seed of Christianity in a Slavic territory outside of Rome’s borders.
One difficulty consistently reported by Ephesian proselytizers working among the barbarian peoples was communication: not only was there an obvious gulf between Latin/Greek and the languages of the Teutons and Sclaveni, but there was no single Germanic or Slavic language which the missionaries could learn and then preach in wherever they went, either. A priest or monk who learned to speak Saxon was not guaranteed to be able to easily communicate with Lombards or Bavarians, for example, nor was one who had lived with the Dulebians & learned their tongue necessarily well-suited to preach to the Poles or Thracians. And while the federates who had settled deeper into the Roman world like the Visigoths, Burgundians and Franks benefited from having large pre-existing populations of Latin-speakers into whose ranks they could largely assimilate over the centuries, no such population existed in the forests of Germania where Rome came to its northernmost federates and not the other way around (much less in the Slavic lands – ‘Germania Slavica’ – beyond), or in the Peninsula of Haemus where the Illyro-Roman populace had been eradicated or pushed to the coast by the Huns and Avars.
Now progress had been made in adapting the Latin alphabet to the Germanic language, mainly by training cadres of Thuringian/Bavarian/Lombard/Alemanni priests and monks who could both convincingly preach in their native tongues and translate old Germanic epics or produce new manuscripts using the Latin alphabet rather than the runes of their ancestors, thanks to the century or more that those peoples had been living under Roman suzerainty and consequently gained exposure to Roman culture by trade and earlier proselytization efforts. In regards to the Saxons and Frisians the Romans also had the good fortune of being able to call upon English missionaries from northern Britannia, who could converse intelligibly with those barbaric peoples owing to the similarities between their languages.
But work was slower with the Sclaveni, many of whom were understood to live well beyond Roman authority (for from the Polans and Bohemi the Romans had learned of numerous other Slavic tribes, of whom the Antes were merely one among many, living between their border and that of the Khazars north of the Pontic Steppe), and the Carantanians could not be reasonably expected to convert all of their kindred by themselves. As such, the idea of devising a standard Slavic alphabet to assist in translating works for and preaching to the Slavs (rather than trying to impose the Latin or Greek alphabets upon them, for they had taken less readily to that than the Germanic peoples) began to be debated in Rome and Constantinople around this time, in hopes that the Sclaveni as a whole might be brought to Christ’s light (and good relations with Rome) at an accelerated pace.
As for the Muslims, they were doing what they could in this year to disappoint the Romans and frustrate the latter’s wish for a fitna which would make a campaign of reconquest in the Middle East a good deal easier. Abdullah (perhaps recognizing the danger his large and still – in large part – fragile empire was in) apologized for giving his uncles offense previously and tried to reach an accord with them, which ironically only made them think he would be easier to push around. For the sake of unity and not turning their blades against their brethren, both in blood and in faith, after months of ambivalence and negotiation before the shura the Hashemites struck an agreement this autumn: Al-Abbas and Ali received considerable concessions in being affirmed as Emirs of respectively Fars (actually an amalgamation of the great wilayat of Fars, Azerbaijan and Khorasan, effectively constituting old Persia) and Al-Hind (Islamic India).
While still nominally obligated to support the Caliph militarily, the Hashemite uncles were now essentially sovereign rulers in all but name, free to govern and tax their dominions as they wished and even to select their own heirs rather than have their vast domains default back to Abdullah when they should pass away. Adding insult to injury, even as he promised to support his nephew against the Romans, Ali also extorted the promise of continued assistance from the Caliphate in subjugating more of India to his rule – essentially making Abdullah pay to have an even bigger and more unruly vassal. While Abdullah averted a civil war right at the end of the seventh century with this extremely lopsided compromise and the Romans did not attack immediately as he had feared, the longer the tenuous peace with Rome held, the more he would reconsider the accord he had reached with his uncles and whether it was wise to have sought internal peace at any cost, even that of the entire eastern half of the Caliphate. Of course, only one thing was sure to happen if he were to renege on this deal…
The third Caliph, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Rahman, praying with his near but not-so-dear kindred after apparently having reconciled with them. He regretted the terms of the agreement he had struck with his uncles almost immediately however, and sought to find ways to go back on it after it became apparent that Aloysius and Helena were not going to strike immediately after his father's death
1. Holy Roman Empire
2. Helena's Court
3. Franks
4. Burgundians
5. Alemanni
6. Bavarians
7. Thuringians
8. Lombards
9. Visigoths
10. Basques
11. Celtiberians
12. Carantanians
13. Dulebes
14. Horites
15. Serbs
16. Gepids
17. Thracians
18. Bohemians & Moravians
19. Africans
20. Bretons
21. Romano-British
22. Anglo-Saxons
23. Picts
24. Dál Riata
25. Irish kingdoms of the Uí Néill, Ulaidh, Laigin, Eóganachta & Connachta
26. Frisians
27. Continental Saxons
28. Polans
29. Vistula Veneti
30. Antae
31. Avars
32. Georgia
33. Armenia
34. Ghassanids
35. Banu Kalb
36. Cilician Bulgars
37. Dar al-Islam (Senior Hashemites)
38. Abbasids
39. Alids
40. Nubia
41. Hoggar
42. Kumbi
43. Khazars
44. Kimeks
45. Karluks
46. Oghuz Turks
47. Indo-Romans
48. Hunas
49. Later Salankayanas
50. Kannada kingdoms of the Chalukyas & Gangas
51. Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Pandyas & Cholas
52. Anuradhapura
53. Tibet
54. Later Han
55. Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo & Silla
56. Yamato
57. Champa
58. Chenla
59. Srivijaya
60. Irish of the New World
61. New World Britons
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[1] Lake Ontario.
[2] Corn, the third key element of the ‘Three Sisters’ (maize/beans/squash) of Eastern Woodlands native agriculture, is still missing – it wouldn’t even reach the Mississippi until 800 AD at the earliest. The combination which the Britons have absorbed from the locals was cultivated by the natives of the Eastern Agricultural Complex isn’t as naturally productive as the Three Sisters, the non-squash elements being replaced by corn and beans later as a result, but will help in keeping them afloat for now.
[3] Usage of the Gallican chant was historically abolished by Pepin the Short in 753 after he was impressed by the much more elaborate (Old) Roman chant. However, the Gregorian Chant was developed from a synthesis of the Old Roman and Gallican chants under the Carolingian Renaissance.
[4] Sour el-Ghozlane.
[5] Mirpur Khas.
[6] Châteaudun.
[7] The Loir River in western France, not to be confused with the Loire River.
[8] Historically, the role of monasteries came to eclipse that of the diocesan clergy in the Catholic Church’s works to relieve the poor after Charlemagne and the eighth century at the latest, the latter having been weakened by the ascent of feudalism, post-Roman deurbanization and the growing practice of endowing monasteries rather than parish churches with land by the nobility of Europe.
[9] The Hôtel-Dieu of Paris. Tradition holds that it was built in the mid-seventh century, while in written records its existence is first noted in 829; for TTL I’ve gone with a blend of both origins, there being an already existing small hospital in Paris/Lutetia which is then greatly expanded under royal & imperial patronage (though a good deal earlier than the ninth century, obviously).
[10] The original name for the environs of modern Bikaner, back then still a barren desert – the city itself wasn’t built until 1488.
[11] The IJssel.
[12] Old English is apparently quite closely related to Old Frisian as well as the Old Saxon of the continent.
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