Wait, no, I was wrong, there's still another wave of steppe invaders before the Mongols, the Cumans. Forgot about them since in history they were kind of a net positive for settled societies, wrecking previous steppe invaders (famously annihilating the Pechenegs on behalf of the Byzantines) more than they ever got around to doing to civilization themselves. Also, pretty prominent successful service as mercenaries.
Alternate History Vivat Stilicho!
- Thread starter Circle of Willis
- Start date
You are right,i thought that they were Peczengs.My mistake,thanks for reminding me about that.
Yes,Cumans were better for everybody in OTL,and they never,even facing mongols,united.
Their remnants hide in Hungary,and are good hungarians now.
866-870: Reordering Haemus' Neighborhood
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
As the Romans and Muslims continued to try to grind each other down in a bloody back-and-forth, most of the dramatic movements in 866 happened along the former's northern front with the Magyars instead. Faced with multiple federate kingdoms closing in on him from all sides, Grand Prince Attila resolved that his people's only hope would be to use his horde's superior mobility to engage and hopefully defeat each threat in detail before they could all pile up on and inevitably bury him. From the rugged hills and partly rebuilt salt mines around Potaissa, the Magyars first hurried southward to take on the Gepids, whose army their scouts had determined to be the smallest of the assorted foederati marching against them even after picking up local Dacian allies along its path. Some 20,000 Magyars surprised the Gepid-Vlach force, which was about four times smaller than their own number, well before King Thrasaric II was able to link up with the Dulebians & Count Vinidario: the resulting Battle of Bersobis[1] turned out to be a massacre, in which the aforementioned king and his three sons all fell alongside 4,000 of their men. Thrasaric's brother Gadaric briefly succeeded him but died of his own battle-wounds not long after leading the survivors, whose numbers were further whittled down by the Magyar pursuit, with the Magyars nipping at their heels.
Attila pillaged rural Gepidia for supplies but otherwise had little time to rejoice in this smashing victory, for very soon afterward he had to turn his host around to deal with the aforementioned Dulebes, who had in turn been marching south & eastward with the bulk of the remaining Danubian legions under Counts Vinidario & Thierry to try to link up with the ill-fated Thrasaric. The first clash between this larger Roman army (numbering 8,000 strong) and the Magyars at Ziridava[2] favored the former, as the heavily armored legionaries forming their front line were able to weather several Magyar charges with the support of the much more lightly-equipped Dacians behind them and the Dulebian cavalry consistently chased off the Magyar horse-archers before retreating to safety in the hills around & behind their infantry. However, Attila withdrew from that battlefield not only because the Romans were clearly ready for him this time & crushing them there would probably cost him more than he could afford (for he still had more battles ahead with the Thraco-Serb army also moving in from the southeast), but also to lure his enemy into a sense of false confidence while he prepared their next battlefield.
Magyar marauders burning down a Gepid village in-between their victory at the Battle of Bersobis and their engagements with the Romano-Dulebian/Pannonian army
That battlefield would be by the Vlach village of Lipova, which stood at a strategic point along the course of the River Marisus[3] east of Ziridava. When the Dulebian Prince Slavibor (brother-in-law to the Emperor's lieutenant Radovid) and the two Counts arrived there, they were surprised to find that the Magyars had apparently given up their biggest advantage by dismounting to fight along a ramshackle barrier comprised of their own wagons & carts, which they had erected at the entrance of the narrow defile through which the Marisus flowed. Lacking both siege weaponry and the means with which to construct such weapons anywhere near themselves, the Romans formed up into an offensive wedge and tried to smash through the Magyar position head-on under the belief that their superior heavy equipment would help them carry the day, but were frustrated by the Magyars' numbers and determination.
Once the Roman attack had completely stalled, Attila's son Géza sprang the last step of the Magyar trap, having led a thousand men with their horses through a little-known side-path while the battle was raging. Now these men mounted a cavalry charge against the exhausted Romans, driving them into a rout and also killing Slavibor, who attempted to turn the tide at the last minute by charging toward Attila himself but was slain before he could get anywhere near the Grand Prince. Only the valor of the Vlach rearguard under Valerian (Lat.: 'Valerianus') of Severin[4], a descendant of the eighth-century Dacian Count Traianu of Sucidava who helped Aloysius II fight Bulan Khagan of the Khazars, prevented the Magyars from rending this Roman army as badly as they had done to Thrasaric's Gepids.
Still, Attila's work was not yet done. While the two Counts retreated in disarray, the combined Serbo-Thracian forces had crossed the Danube and were moving northwestward, threatening the Magyar host from behind. Fortunately for the Grand Prince, while his own horde was certainly battered and exhausted compared to these South Slavs, fierce rivalries and lingering territorial disputes had driven a massive stake in-between the Serbs and Thracians, who marched & camped as two separate hosts and generally did not care to work together – something which could have been mitigated had a commander of the late Murí's stature been around to browbeat the feuding peoples into working together, but alas, he was dead and even if his successors were around, the Serbian and Thracian princes were less likely to heed their commands than his anyway. Thus, rather than having to fight both at once, the Magyars were able to roll up the Serbs first in the Battle of Balș and then the Thracians afterward at the Battle of Caracal, though neither of these engagements along the Olt River and its tributaries was as smashing a victory as the others which Attila had won earlier this year.
Further still to the north, the final battle for Norway was at hand in the summer of 866. The men of Agðir and Vestfold had gathered at Kaupang[5], the latter's capital, to make their last stand against the numerous Hrafnsons and their war-host of Hálogalanders, swollen by additional Viking adventurers who could sense that that great clan's greatest victory yet was near at hand and wanted a cut of the loot. Another vicious mixed battle, partly fought on land and partly at sea, ensued with the Vestfolders mostly manning the landward defenses of their seat of power while their fleet and what remained of Agðir's sought to oppose the landing of Einarr and Hrafn at the Viksfjord harbor. The allied army fought well, but by this time Grimr and his kin had built up far too much momentum to be stopped: their warriors broke through the two lines of wooden fortifications the Vestfolders had set up by both weight of numbers and murderous ferocity, while the waters of the Oslo Fjord were turned red as the eldest and youngest sons of Ráðbarðr smashed their way through their enemy's line of longships in one boarding action after another.
Einarr the Elder leads the Hrafnson men on his flagship against the last stand of the men of Agðir and Vestfold
Hrafn Ráðbarðrson caught up to & killed the last king of Agðir, Froði the Fast-Sailing, after the latter's ship ran aground on Viksfjord, while Vestfold's own king Hroðulfr the Haughty refused to long-suffer the disgrace of defeat or witness his family be reduced to servitude beneath the Hrafnsons and so burned his own hall down with him & them inside it. The victorious Hálogalanders promptly sacked Kaupang and acclaimed Grimr King of Norway, as had been planned. However Ráðbarðr and his sons, though seeming just as festive as most others in the feast which Grimr pitched to celebrate their triumph, scarcely felt that way behind closed doors – for they knew that Norway was only Step #1 toward their own ambitions, and that they had to keep their brother/uncle in line lest he get so comfortable in his new throne that he becomes disinclined to support them on the rest of their campaign of conquest.
Come 867, the Mideastern front being at a standstill and the continued inability of his subordinates to defeat the Magyars on their own persuaded Emperor Aloysius to exit the former theater and turn his attention to the latter instead. Scornfully proclaiming that "Bestowing the name of a dragon upon a maggot will not make it one", he boarded Venetian ships in Phoenicia and set sail for Constantinople, trusting that unlike the Danubian legions & federates, his son & subordinates remaining there would be able to hold the Saracens back while he was gone – and that he would be able to defeat the Magyar threat quickly enough that they wouldn't have to fight without him for long anyway. And indeed, when Al-Khorasani made another push out of Aleppo later this year Duke Andronikos, Alexander Caesar and the other Roman generals present to oppose him did so capably in the Battle of Ma'aret Mesren[6].
Before he even reached the Danube, Aloysius collected the Serbian and Thracian hosts, chastising their leaders for their folly as he did so. Intelligence indicated that the Magyars had moved from the Dacian mountains and onto the Pannonian plain where they could both employ their preferred cavalry tactics to the fullest and find richer pickings than the Dacian towns, which – between their fortifications and Dacia still being an imperial backwater outside of its mines – tended to not at all be worth the effort it would take to crack their defenses open. The Augustus Imperator was joined by Croatian and Italic reinforcements, who fortunately were not weighed down by the same problems that had hindered the Serbs and Thracians, at Sirmium (which the local Serbs pronounced 'Sirmijum') before crossing the Sava & Danube Rivers that summer. Attila, who had tried and so far failed to take the Pannonian towns around Lake Pelso ('Balaton' in his own tongue), duly turned to head off with this new threat at the head of his now 16,000-strong horde: Aloysius meanwhile would be facing him with a larger but more fractious army of about 25,000 men total, which had been further joined by part of the Danubian legions & the Dulebian-Dacian field army under Counts Vinidario & Valerian while Count Thierry led the rest in defending the area around Lake Pelso.
The two sides collided near the ruins of Partiscum[7], a former Iazyges settlement that had remained abandoned even after the Slavs and Pannonians retook the region under the aegis of the Roman Emperors. Since the Romans had brought not only contingents of Arab and African light horsemen (though not the majority of the Ghassanid and Moorish armies respectively, which had been left in the Levant) but also a preponderance of heavy cavalrymen, the resulting battle did not disappoint when it came to featuring massive clashes of the Magyar horsemen with the Empire's own mounted elites. This Attila's warriors fought fiercely and well, but the Romans had come far since they fought the first Attila's much more numerous and more frightening Huns, and ultimately they had the victory on that bloodsoaked plain. Aloysius' own squire, Radovid the Younger – who the Augustus Imperator had taken under his wing as a favor to his father, the senior Radovid – distinguished himself in this engagement by smiting the Magyar horka (captain, equivalent to Turco-Mongol tarkhan) and Attila's nephew Koppaný, for which the Emperor rewarded him with formal elevation to the chivalric rank and a set of gilded spurs: in so doing, he also established the tradition of squires literally 'earning their spurs' as part of the increasingly formalized knighting ceremony.
Aloysius III vanquishes the Magyars at the Battle of Partiscum. His squire Radovid the Younger can be seen right behind him, holding a devotional banner of the Madonna and Child aloft amid the ongoing whirlwind of violence, moments before engaging in his own duel with Horka Koppaný (who in turn can be seen about to finish off a downed knight with his ax)
Over in China meanwhile, the Liang and True Han had spent the past few years concentrating on a myriad of small positional battles around Xiangyang – the former wanting to maintain the landward siege they had established against that great citadel, the latter seeking to undermine the enemy blockade and set the stage for a real breakout attempt. The Han got their chance in this year at last, having shipped in enough reinforcements over the Yangtze and slowly but surely retaken enough of the fortlets between Xiangyang and Fancheng to make a serious go at breaking the Liang siege of their city. Crown Prince Liu Yong and the faithful general Sun Bo signaled the beginning of their attack with the first known intentional use of gunpowder in history, loosing a dozen flaming arrows with pouches of sulfur & saltpeter (the same combination once devised in an experiment by alchemists in the employ of Si Shenji, a brother of Si Lifei from the previous century) which then exploded one after another in the night sky.
Now around the same time, Duanzong had made multiple attempts to cross back over the lower Yangtze, which convinced his Liang enemies that the main thrust of the True Han counteroffensive would come in the east (which did seem the more sensible direction, as it would have pushed them back from the capital of Jiankang). Instead this central-based attack achieved success beyond the expectations of the Han, for Sun's forces not only cleared out the last Liang strongholds still standing around Xiangyang but also carried them all the way to Fancheng. The Liang had taken the city by the treachery of Liu Hu at the war's start and held it up until now: but the Han recaptured it in a day by using fire arrows to damage the gate and demoralize the garrison commander into surrendering with hardly a fight. By retaking the 'twin' of Xiangyang thusly, they greatly pushed back the Liang threat to their control over the Yangtze.
In Aloysiana across the Atlantic, once more the Dakarunikuans had much to learn from the British, some of whose outcasts Naahneesídakúsu took in this year (no matter how severe their crimes) in exchange for divulging the secret of European brickmaking. As it turned out, baking bricks in the fires of a kiln (for which Dakaruniku also did not lack timber to feed) would harden them and greatly increase their durability, much faster than just leaving them to dry in the Sun's light would have at that. Furthermore a crude mortar, also made from mud, would serve in better binding these bricks together. Having thus completed another great technological leap which would normally have taken his people centuries if not millennia (as it had the original discovers, the peoples of the Middle East) in his lifetime, Naahneesídakúsu could now get around to building great works and fortifications of a size and longevity that his father & ancestors could only dream of.
A fired brick from ninth-century Dakaruniku. The Dakarunikuans were not the first Wildermen to build with bricks, but they were the first to do so with bricks that had been hardened by baking in a kiln, making for stronger & more durable structures than those made with simpler sun-dried mudbricks (adobe)
The Saracens made another effort at moving the front lines in the Levant come 868, and this time they had more success than in the previous year. Following a bloody skirmish near the Qaysi-built village of Nubl in which the Ghassanid king Al-Ayham II was killed, Duke Skleros and the Caesar were defeated in the larger Battle of Arpad[8] this summer, enabling Al-Khorasani to push the Romans off the Aleppo Plateau and resume serious incursions into Ghassanid Mesopotamia once more. It was not all bad news for the Romans however, as Duke Andronikos and his imperial nephew next rallied to stop an over-ambitious Muslim advance to the west in the Battle of the Lake of Antioch[9] and the follow-up Battle of Mount Kurd, with Al-Ayham's young son and successor Al-Harith VIII killing his killers and thus avenging the late Ghassanid phylarch in the course of these engagements.
What really was bad news, however, was that Alexander was still unable to sire a legitimate heir, despite being allowed multiple excursions back to Antioch in this year and the past one to see his wife: he and Onoria Anicia were unable to conceive thus far, and it was rumored that the latter was infertile – rumors which were further reinforced by the prince's own increasingly notorious rakish ways, for the young & dashing heir to the purple was said to leave a trail of not only broken hearts but also bastards in his wake, evidently being a man lacking his father's iron self-discipline and instead harkening back to the ways of more roguish Aloysians like Aloysius I. Worse still, his twin Alexandra gave birth to her own (unquestionably lawful) first child with Yésaréyu in Antioch this year, a Stilichian daughter named Yusta (Lat.: 'Augusta'). However, the Caesar himself seemed content to take his time and made no move to separate from his wife, assuring all who questioned him that they were still young & would surely have a son sooner or later. Ironically despite his inability to father a legitimate son, Alexander did father a bastard whose parentage he could not deny in this year: a son dubbed Alexander of Syria (or 'Alexander the Arab'), whose mother was the Arab princess Arwa bint Al-Ayham, a sister of the Ghassanid king who was doubtless named after her formidable great-grandmother.
Alexander Caesar in Antioch alongside his highest-born mistress Arwa bint al-Ayham, with whom he has just further complicated the Aloysian line of succession
Up north, the twins' father was working to definitively box the Magyars in western Dacia and to force them to the peace table. The Romans here followed up on their victory in last year's Battle of Partiscum by maneuvering to chase the remaining Magyars off the Pannonian Plain and into the Dacian Carpathes, calling on the local Vlachs to begin sallying from their forts to harass the Magyars along their retreat as they did so. Aloysius also took a moment to engineer the acclamation of Radovid the Younger as Kňehynja of the Dulebes: the Dulebian nobility may never have been willing to elevate Radovid the Elder, who after all had been born a mere slave, to lead them, but his freeborn and imperially-backed son who also happened to be their late Prince's nephew was evidently a different story, particularly in light of the deceased Slavibor having failed to leave any other viable male heirs. After being defeated in another battle near the gold mines of Ampellum[10], Attila capitulated and sued for peace, at which point Aloysius agreed to negotiate the terms of the Magyars' integration into the Holy Roman Empire despite both the Dulebes (including both Radovids) and the Dacians counseling him to exterminate them instead – the federate system had once more proven itself capable of containing invaders from the east long enough for the Emperor to step in even under the stress of multiple defeats, and the Magyars had proven themselves a worthy addition to its ranks.
No sooner had the Romans pushed the Magyars to the brink and continue to mostly hold their ground against the Muslims in the east, however, did new problems arise – or rather, an old one reared its head once more – further still to the north. While Grimr was still consolidating his hold on Norway and parceling out land & spoils from his final victory to his followers as thanks, his brother and nephews had not only already set their sights on the next target, but were beginning to move against it to boot. Between his own reputation as something of a living legend who had traveled further than any other Viking; the riches which he was still doling out as proof of that; promises of more fertile soil to win which they also had a more realistic chance of holding against Rome's power than whatever Ørvendil was hoping to achieve; and his own charisma, Ráðbarðr found no shortage of volunteers continuing to flock to his own banner, who he sent on a number of raids targeting both British shores and the Continent (so as to keep Aloysius guessing as to where he'd strike).
While the Belgic squadron sallied to support the British fleet in keeping as many of these Vikings away from their shores (and to intercept raiders who were trying to return home with their ill-gotten gains), the Romans questioned and threatened Claudius-Fjölnir about this uptick in Viking activity, who strenuously denied any Danish responsibility. Adalric of Swabia was only prevented from marching on Denmark with the army Aloysius had given him by the king's willingness to quarter a number of legionaries in his ports, during which the raids continued to come from Norway – thus proving that Denmark genuinely had nothing to do with this wave of attacks. In the meantime, Flóki the Fearless landed in northern Britain ahead of his family and did not return with the reavers who accompanied him: instead, he remained behind to scout out the land and contact elements of the 'Remnant' faction of the Pelagians who had managed to endure in secrecy, having learned that British Christianity was not a wholly unified front and eager to ensure that the Norsemen would find help waiting for them when they launched their full invasion.
Flóki the Fearless negotiating terms of alliance with crypto-Pelagian representatives in eastern Britain
In China, with the imminent threat of a Liang invasion over the Yangtze dispelled, the Han armies in the center of the Middle Kingdom strove to regain territories around Xiangyang & Fancheng. Feeling the victory which had once seemed imminent now slipping out of his grasp, Dingzong tried to halt the tide's reversal by gambling on a large-scale naval battle on the Yangtze, which he hoped would renew the possibility of a cross-river invasion. In this he was to be disappointed, for the Han navy continued to assert its superiority in the Battle of Chaisang[11], and he died of old age in the autumn of this year, his last regret being the realization that he would not be able to unify China before he perished after all. Duanzong was not far behind his rival, for he too passed away in the winter of 868, leaving the choice of whether to continue hostilities or to try to make peace to their heirs: respectively Gangzong (Ma Jin) & Duzong (Liu Yong).
The Augustus Imperator spent much of 869 reordering the Peninsula of Haemus, for what he hoped to be the last time any Roman Emperor would have to do such a thing. The ceasefire with Attila held throughout the winter, despite the periodic provocation by either over-bold Magyars or his own Dacian and Dulebian auxiliaries who hungered for revenge against the nomads for devastating their lands, and a foedus binding the future of the Magyars to the Holy Roman Empire was finalized and inked by the end of springtime. This new federate horde was allotted the still-wild and sparsely populated frontier lands in northern Dacia, comprising those territories north of the Danube and what little remained of Constantine's Dacian Wall – most of which had not even been part of the Roman world until the Aloysian wars of conquest & reconquest in this direction, being known instead as the home of the 'Free Dacians' between Trajan's conquests and the great barbarian migrations which began in the third century – as well as portions of the old Roman provinces of Dacia Porolissensis and Dacia Apulensis[12]. In addition to setting them up as a guard on the Dniester, Aloysius also required Attila, his household and the leading families of the Magyar confederacy to undergo baptism in an effort to both exert Roman cultural & spiritual influence over them and to cool tensions with their new neighbors.
However, this was not the end of Aloysius' business in the Balkans. To both shore up his Danubian defenses (now hopefully a secondary rather than primary bulwark against nomadic invaders from the northeast, with the Magyars being positioned to challenge any such invasion first) and resolve the political crisis gripping the Gepids in the wake of their own royal family's decimation at the hands of the Magyars, the Emperor took the additional step of centralizing the rest of Dacia into another feudatory theoretically strong enough to stand on its own legs, with one supreme marquess set above to govern over the other marcher lords of this territory. There was no man better suited for that role than Valerian de Severin, who was accordingly hailed as the first Voievod of the Dacian March – the title having been absorbed from the Slavs into the Dacian language, and in this case still meaning 'general' or 'military governor' though the associated office was more like that of a ruling prince – by his peers and with Aloysius' approval.
To kill another bird with the same stone, Aloysius also assented to Valerian's marriage to the late Thrasaric's (rather ironically named) daughter Hunnila, thereby folding the Gepid state into Dacia. Thus, 869 marked the rise of a new Dacian principality spanning most of old Roman Dacia, stretching from the riverbanks opposite Singidunum in the west to the very mouth of the Danube on the Euxine coast in the east and up to Apulum, which the Vlachs rebuilding it had begun to simply call 'Alba' due to the white stone used for its walls, in the north[13]. While the Gepids might no longer be a distinct kingdom, they would survive the calamity of the ninth century as a people – one of the last East Germanic peoples to have avoided totally assimilating into Romanitas, alongside the handful of Tauric Goths – and in addition to retaining their lands, lordships and traditional customs (up to and including their own legal code and courts to go along with their self-governing feudatories & towns) under the authority of the ascendant Severin clan, from their position along the Danube and on account of their success in building up their own towns by that great river they were also well-positioned to become captains of commerce in the Balkans over the next centuries[14].
Valerian of Severin, Voievod of a new Dacia, enters the Gepid capital at Dierna/Orschova, backed by the Dacian and Gepid nobility who have agreed to hail him as their new prince
Now Aloysius may have been inclined to stick around longer and enforce further arrangements to facilitate peace & reconciliation between his preexisting federates in Southeastern Europe, but continuing Islamic pressure in the east compelled him to return to the Levant now that his job up north was done and the Magyar threat had been neutralized. After reinforcing the depleted Danubian legions with those soldiers of theirs that he'd taken to Syria and now brought back, and recruiting from the federates to compensate (including insisting on the Magyars providing him with 2,000 horsemen in an early token of loyalty, to be led by Géza), he marched back to Constantinople and then sailed from there to Antioch to aid the Skleroi and Alexander Caesar once more. His arrival came in just the nick of time, for after several more inconclusive engagements, Ahmad & Al-Khorasani had managed a significant breakthrough by drawing the Romans into the major Second Battle of Azaz: despite losing there, their feint proved successful as enough Ghassanid & Roman troops were drawn away from Edessa to allow for Al-Jannabi to take the city with the real main thrust of the Saracen offensive in the summer of 869, to the shock & fury of the Roman leadership and King Al-Harith.
Over in China, the newly-enthroned Emperors Gangzong of Later Liang and Duzong of True Han attempted to avoid a simple reversion to the status quo prior to Duanzong's first war against the Liang by continuing hostilities and fighting to respectively either gain some land south of the Yangtze or hold on to some territory (aside from Xiangyang & Fancheng) north of it. In this regard both men were still unsuccessful this year, as the Liang armies proved too strong for the Han to overcome in their efforts to regain ground beyond that great river bisecting China and the Han fleet remained an insurmountable obstacle to Liang efforts to expand their operations south of the Yangtze in turn.
However, Duzong at least managed to obtain the personal satisfaction of besting his traitorous kinsman Liu Hu, who he resoundingly defeated in the Battle of Xinye just northeast of Fancheng. Driven back to his camp and abandoned by his Liang allies, in the rout, Liu Hu called upon his twin concubines to die with him as he planned to commit suicide in his tent (knowing that there was no way the main Liu branch would show any mercy to him after all the trouble he had caused them), only to be informed by a Chu retainer that the Cheng sisters had already fled with the Liang. Thus he lamented not merely the fickleness of the female sex but also his own foolishness in not realizing that his mistresses were Liang spies sooner, before asking that retainer to behead him lest Duzong catch up to him or he lose his own nerve before he could stab himself in the heart.
The head of the arch-traitor Liu Hu is presented before the new Emperor of True Han, Duzong/Liu Yong
The Magyars first saw action in Roman service in 870, when Aloysius deployed them as part of his screening force in his first engagement with the Saracens since his Balkan excursion. Géza and his men reportedly turned in a good performance at this Battle of Doliche[15], working well enough alongside the Africans, Bulgars & Christian Arabs of the imperial army (with whom they had no quarrel, unlike every single one of their new neighbors back in Southeastern Europe) and effectively answering the Arabs' arrows with their own in the high-speed skirmishes which preceded the Roman victory there and another shutdown of attempted Islamic incursions over the lower Euphrates. Aloysius did have to allow Géza to return home later in the year however, as his father Attila died of old age just one year after settling their people in the lands allotted by their new overlord and he now needed to formally assume leadership over the Magyars.
On the other side of Europe, a match was thrown onto the Hrafnsons' stockpile of timber & whale wax around the North Sea in a dramatic fashion this year. While leading a raid on English shores, as he had already successfully done many times before, Ráðbarðr himself was ambushed by a combined Anglo-British mounted detachment near the village of Hlūd[16] before he could return to his longship. Most of his reaving company was killed, but he and a half-dozen survivors yielded after the Ríodam Guí (Lat.: 'Caius/Gaius') II offered to afford him the respect that a king deserves and to hold him for ransom. Naturally, the British king was lying and reminded Ráðbarðr that since they were actually on English soil, the latter's fate was really in the hands of his ally, England's own king Eadulf Half-Hand – so nicknamed because he lost half of his left hand to a Viking raider's ax when he was young. Suffice to say, Eadulf was not in a forgiving mood and duly had this long-time scourge upon his people and their Briton neighbors burned to death in his own longship alongside his remaining cohorts in a parody of the Viking funeral customs, while the surviving inhabitants of Hlūd (having just been raided by the Norsemen right before the battle) came out of their homes & hiding places to cheer the marauders' fiery demise.
The first to learn of the disaster was Flóki, who duly informed his many brothers of what had happened. The news of their father's treacherous and torturous death rendered the Ráðbarðrsons (and Amleth the Dane) collectively apoplectic with rage, and for now agreeing to recognize Einarr (as the eldest among them) as their leader, they massively accelerated their plans for the invasion of Britannia for vengeance's sake. In truth these events had proceeded according to the machinations of Grimr of Norway, who feared that the longer his brother and nephews stayed, the stronger their temptation to usurp his kingdom (something he had only narrowly staved off previously) would grow; and besides, he had long resented Ráðbarðr for being superior to him in just about every regard anyway, the latter's insistence on rendering him a vassal at the end of their conquests being the last straw. Thus, when he saw a chance to feed advance intelligence about Ráðbarðr's movements to the Anglo-Saxons & Britons, he took it to be rid of Ráðbarðr and his shadow once and for all.
Despite having been utterly defeated, betrayed and doomed to a death that was not only painful but also calculated to mock the funerary customs of great Norse chiefs, Ráðbarðr remained defiant before his Anglo-British captors, cursing them thusly before being consumed by the flames: "Today you are roasting an old boar. Feast well on his flesh while you can, and remember this day when his farrow of hogs come for his bones."
Fortunately for Grimr, his nephews did not see his hand in their father's death, instead focusing their fury against the kingdoms of Roman Britain. Einarr and his brothers struck in the autumn months of 870, launching their attack out of season in an effort to catch the Britons and English off-guard: for this expedition the sons of Ráðbarðr benefited from inheriting the fruit of their father's final project in the form of the single greatest host of Vikings to ever sail forth from Scandinavia as a cohesive fighting force, a 'great heathen army' which numbered as many as 15,000 strong and thus narrowly outsized the force with which Ørvendil once led against the Aloysian heartland. Steinn the Strong led 3,000 of these men on an audacious attack against the Belgic squadron at its home port at Bruges, and while unable to sink every single ship in that particular harbor, he managed to inflict enormous damage on the Romans' primary northern fleet before retreating – a victory which significantly altered the naval balance of power in the North Sea (further) in the Vikings' favor, and made it possible for his kindred to invade Britannia without Adalric's legions being able to immediately descend on their heads like a sack of hammers. Grimr, meanwhile, was quite relieved at the prospect of no longer having to house & feed the hordes of adventuring warriors his brother had invited into his new kingdom of Norway, and at having apparently escaped detection & consequently justice by his nephews: he further supplied their expedition with provisions and volunteers from his ranks to keep up his pretense.
The main thrust of the Viking assault first fell on the shores of English Lindsey, Einarr leading the first landing party to swarm the Anglo-Saxon garrison of Tric[17], formerly the Roman fort of Traiectus, located on a certain 'beard-shaped headland' which would now serve as their first foothold against the kingdoms of Britannia. From there the Norse took advantage of the Romans' own road, along which Traiectus had been a stopover, to bypass the nearby swampland and push further inland more quickly. No demands for tribute or even any offer to negotiate were issued: the heathens had come for conquest and vengeance, and could not be bought off, at least not now while their blood was still boiling and their temperament downright volcanic – as demonstrated by their storming of Hlūd, where their father was executed and which they now wiped off the map in retaliation.
Flóki had by this time cultivated an alliance with the Pelagian Remnants, who fed the Vikings information and promised to take up arms to support them whenever they showed up to the towns said Remnants were living in in exchange for religious freedom and self-governance beneath the raven standard, and this alliance further proved critical to the Ráðbarðrsons' first major victory on British soil this year. The English and Britons were alarmed by reports of the size of the Viking horde that had descended upon them, and scrambled to not only raise their full strength for this challenge but to also combine their armies: of course, the Vikings preferred not to get into a fair fight with their foes, and heeded the words of Flóki's heretic spies to find & attack the enemy hosts separately. Einarr and his brothers descended upon Eadulf Half-Hand at Turcesige[18] with their full might, crushing the half-assembled army he was still amassing there with the aim of joining up with Guí in a furious wintertime battle: Eadulf himself attempted to flee the massacre via the nearby Fossdyke built in Roman times but was unable to outswim Hrafn Ráðbarðrson & Amleth Ørvendilson, captured after a struggle and put to death by blood-eagle. With this done, the Norse converted the English camp at Turcesige into their own winter quarters and the brothers agreed that they would first work to finish off Eadulf's kingdom in the next year before turning on the Romano-British.
The Ráðbarðrsons assembling their army (and a few Pelagian heretics) near Turcesige, ready to challenge the Holy Roman Empire once more for revenge and also to carve out their own kingdoms from Christendom's northern periphery
The Vikings beyond Rome's British borders also saw their own opportunity to act, and took it in this year. In Pictland, a trivial dispute at an autumn feast between King Dungarth and Map Beòthu of Cé led to insults, which then inexplicably and massively escalated to the latter murdering the former. In fact, Map Beòthu had been advised to usurp the Pictish throne by his wife Gruoch and the woods-witches on whose counsel he relied, on the grounds that he had proven himself a more capable leader for their people in these dangerous times while Dungarth's record was one of incompetence – the last straw for Map Beòthu being the revival of the Uí Néill's fortunes over Dungarth's chosen Ulaid allies in Ireland, thereby proving once more that the previous king had poor judgment and was prone to backing the wrong horse. His usurpation did not go unchallenged however, and his resulting civil war with the sons of Dungarth gave his old enemy Óttar of the Isles an opening to invade Pictland in force once more. Óttar's own in-laws in Dyflin also went to war in an attempt to stop the rise of Muiredach mac Donnchad, the incumbent Uí Néill High King and King of Meath & Tara, before he overcame his remaining native enemies and could consolidate his position as High King of Ireland. Thus, the conflict which would eventually become known as the War of the Five Kingdoms began to grow from these seemingly disconnected roots…
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[1] Berzovia.
[2] Arad, Romania.
[3] The Mureș River.
[4] Drobeta-Turnu Severin.
[5] Now part of Larvik.
[6] Maarrat Misrin.
[7] Kecskemét.
[8] Tell Rifaat.
[9] Lake Amik, which no longer exists since it was drained in the 1970s. The lake was fed by the Karasu/Aswad River and in turn fed into the Orontes.
[10] Zlatna.
[11] Now part of Jiujiang.
[12] Essentially, this puts 'Hungary' to the east of where it actually is IRL – this is a Hungary which, instead of being located on the Pannonian Plain, spans most of Moldavia, Bukovina & northern Transylvania, with the Szekelerland lying at its geographic center.
[13] This then can be said to be a much more Wallachia-centric 'Romania' without most of Moldavia and half of Transylvania, but which has gained more of the Banat to compensate.
[14] Comparable to the Transylvanian Saxons or Danube Swabians, though of course the Gepids will have been in the Banat for much longer than either real-life group (who only started moving into Romania/the Danube valley in the 12th-13th centuries historically) and belong to an entirely different branch of the Germanic peoples.
[15] Dülük.
[16] Louth, Lincolnshire.
[17] Skegness, Lincolnshire.
[18] Torksey.
Attila pillaged rural Gepidia for supplies but otherwise had little time to rejoice in this smashing victory, for very soon afterward he had to turn his host around to deal with the aforementioned Dulebes, who had in turn been marching south & eastward with the bulk of the remaining Danubian legions under Counts Vinidario & Thierry to try to link up with the ill-fated Thrasaric. The first clash between this larger Roman army (numbering 8,000 strong) and the Magyars at Ziridava[2] favored the former, as the heavily armored legionaries forming their front line were able to weather several Magyar charges with the support of the much more lightly-equipped Dacians behind them and the Dulebian cavalry consistently chased off the Magyar horse-archers before retreating to safety in the hills around & behind their infantry. However, Attila withdrew from that battlefield not only because the Romans were clearly ready for him this time & crushing them there would probably cost him more than he could afford (for he still had more battles ahead with the Thraco-Serb army also moving in from the southeast), but also to lure his enemy into a sense of false confidence while he prepared their next battlefield.
Magyar marauders burning down a Gepid village in-between their victory at the Battle of Bersobis and their engagements with the Romano-Dulebian/Pannonian army
That battlefield would be by the Vlach village of Lipova, which stood at a strategic point along the course of the River Marisus[3] east of Ziridava. When the Dulebian Prince Slavibor (brother-in-law to the Emperor's lieutenant Radovid) and the two Counts arrived there, they were surprised to find that the Magyars had apparently given up their biggest advantage by dismounting to fight along a ramshackle barrier comprised of their own wagons & carts, which they had erected at the entrance of the narrow defile through which the Marisus flowed. Lacking both siege weaponry and the means with which to construct such weapons anywhere near themselves, the Romans formed up into an offensive wedge and tried to smash through the Magyar position head-on under the belief that their superior heavy equipment would help them carry the day, but were frustrated by the Magyars' numbers and determination.
Once the Roman attack had completely stalled, Attila's son Géza sprang the last step of the Magyar trap, having led a thousand men with their horses through a little-known side-path while the battle was raging. Now these men mounted a cavalry charge against the exhausted Romans, driving them into a rout and also killing Slavibor, who attempted to turn the tide at the last minute by charging toward Attila himself but was slain before he could get anywhere near the Grand Prince. Only the valor of the Vlach rearguard under Valerian (Lat.: 'Valerianus') of Severin[4], a descendant of the eighth-century Dacian Count Traianu of Sucidava who helped Aloysius II fight Bulan Khagan of the Khazars, prevented the Magyars from rending this Roman army as badly as they had done to Thrasaric's Gepids.
Still, Attila's work was not yet done. While the two Counts retreated in disarray, the combined Serbo-Thracian forces had crossed the Danube and were moving northwestward, threatening the Magyar host from behind. Fortunately for the Grand Prince, while his own horde was certainly battered and exhausted compared to these South Slavs, fierce rivalries and lingering territorial disputes had driven a massive stake in-between the Serbs and Thracians, who marched & camped as two separate hosts and generally did not care to work together – something which could have been mitigated had a commander of the late Murí's stature been around to browbeat the feuding peoples into working together, but alas, he was dead and even if his successors were around, the Serbian and Thracian princes were less likely to heed their commands than his anyway. Thus, rather than having to fight both at once, the Magyars were able to roll up the Serbs first in the Battle of Balș and then the Thracians afterward at the Battle of Caracal, though neither of these engagements along the Olt River and its tributaries was as smashing a victory as the others which Attila had won earlier this year.
Further still to the north, the final battle for Norway was at hand in the summer of 866. The men of Agðir and Vestfold had gathered at Kaupang[5], the latter's capital, to make their last stand against the numerous Hrafnsons and their war-host of Hálogalanders, swollen by additional Viking adventurers who could sense that that great clan's greatest victory yet was near at hand and wanted a cut of the loot. Another vicious mixed battle, partly fought on land and partly at sea, ensued with the Vestfolders mostly manning the landward defenses of their seat of power while their fleet and what remained of Agðir's sought to oppose the landing of Einarr and Hrafn at the Viksfjord harbor. The allied army fought well, but by this time Grimr and his kin had built up far too much momentum to be stopped: their warriors broke through the two lines of wooden fortifications the Vestfolders had set up by both weight of numbers and murderous ferocity, while the waters of the Oslo Fjord were turned red as the eldest and youngest sons of Ráðbarðr smashed their way through their enemy's line of longships in one boarding action after another.
Einarr the Elder leads the Hrafnson men on his flagship against the last stand of the men of Agðir and Vestfold
Hrafn Ráðbarðrson caught up to & killed the last king of Agðir, Froði the Fast-Sailing, after the latter's ship ran aground on Viksfjord, while Vestfold's own king Hroðulfr the Haughty refused to long-suffer the disgrace of defeat or witness his family be reduced to servitude beneath the Hrafnsons and so burned his own hall down with him & them inside it. The victorious Hálogalanders promptly sacked Kaupang and acclaimed Grimr King of Norway, as had been planned. However Ráðbarðr and his sons, though seeming just as festive as most others in the feast which Grimr pitched to celebrate their triumph, scarcely felt that way behind closed doors – for they knew that Norway was only Step #1 toward their own ambitions, and that they had to keep their brother/uncle in line lest he get so comfortable in his new throne that he becomes disinclined to support them on the rest of their campaign of conquest.
Come 867, the Mideastern front being at a standstill and the continued inability of his subordinates to defeat the Magyars on their own persuaded Emperor Aloysius to exit the former theater and turn his attention to the latter instead. Scornfully proclaiming that "Bestowing the name of a dragon upon a maggot will not make it one", he boarded Venetian ships in Phoenicia and set sail for Constantinople, trusting that unlike the Danubian legions & federates, his son & subordinates remaining there would be able to hold the Saracens back while he was gone – and that he would be able to defeat the Magyar threat quickly enough that they wouldn't have to fight without him for long anyway. And indeed, when Al-Khorasani made another push out of Aleppo later this year Duke Andronikos, Alexander Caesar and the other Roman generals present to oppose him did so capably in the Battle of Ma'aret Mesren[6].
Before he even reached the Danube, Aloysius collected the Serbian and Thracian hosts, chastising their leaders for their folly as he did so. Intelligence indicated that the Magyars had moved from the Dacian mountains and onto the Pannonian plain where they could both employ their preferred cavalry tactics to the fullest and find richer pickings than the Dacian towns, which – between their fortifications and Dacia still being an imperial backwater outside of its mines – tended to not at all be worth the effort it would take to crack their defenses open. The Augustus Imperator was joined by Croatian and Italic reinforcements, who fortunately were not weighed down by the same problems that had hindered the Serbs and Thracians, at Sirmium (which the local Serbs pronounced 'Sirmijum') before crossing the Sava & Danube Rivers that summer. Attila, who had tried and so far failed to take the Pannonian towns around Lake Pelso ('Balaton' in his own tongue), duly turned to head off with this new threat at the head of his now 16,000-strong horde: Aloysius meanwhile would be facing him with a larger but more fractious army of about 25,000 men total, which had been further joined by part of the Danubian legions & the Dulebian-Dacian field army under Counts Vinidario & Valerian while Count Thierry led the rest in defending the area around Lake Pelso.
The two sides collided near the ruins of Partiscum[7], a former Iazyges settlement that had remained abandoned even after the Slavs and Pannonians retook the region under the aegis of the Roman Emperors. Since the Romans had brought not only contingents of Arab and African light horsemen (though not the majority of the Ghassanid and Moorish armies respectively, which had been left in the Levant) but also a preponderance of heavy cavalrymen, the resulting battle did not disappoint when it came to featuring massive clashes of the Magyar horsemen with the Empire's own mounted elites. This Attila's warriors fought fiercely and well, but the Romans had come far since they fought the first Attila's much more numerous and more frightening Huns, and ultimately they had the victory on that bloodsoaked plain. Aloysius' own squire, Radovid the Younger – who the Augustus Imperator had taken under his wing as a favor to his father, the senior Radovid – distinguished himself in this engagement by smiting the Magyar horka (captain, equivalent to Turco-Mongol tarkhan) and Attila's nephew Koppaný, for which the Emperor rewarded him with formal elevation to the chivalric rank and a set of gilded spurs: in so doing, he also established the tradition of squires literally 'earning their spurs' as part of the increasingly formalized knighting ceremony.
Aloysius III vanquishes the Magyars at the Battle of Partiscum. His squire Radovid the Younger can be seen right behind him, holding a devotional banner of the Madonna and Child aloft amid the ongoing whirlwind of violence, moments before engaging in his own duel with Horka Koppaný (who in turn can be seen about to finish off a downed knight with his ax)
Over in China meanwhile, the Liang and True Han had spent the past few years concentrating on a myriad of small positional battles around Xiangyang – the former wanting to maintain the landward siege they had established against that great citadel, the latter seeking to undermine the enemy blockade and set the stage for a real breakout attempt. The Han got their chance in this year at last, having shipped in enough reinforcements over the Yangtze and slowly but surely retaken enough of the fortlets between Xiangyang and Fancheng to make a serious go at breaking the Liang siege of their city. Crown Prince Liu Yong and the faithful general Sun Bo signaled the beginning of their attack with the first known intentional use of gunpowder in history, loosing a dozen flaming arrows with pouches of sulfur & saltpeter (the same combination once devised in an experiment by alchemists in the employ of Si Shenji, a brother of Si Lifei from the previous century) which then exploded one after another in the night sky.
Now around the same time, Duanzong had made multiple attempts to cross back over the lower Yangtze, which convinced his Liang enemies that the main thrust of the True Han counteroffensive would come in the east (which did seem the more sensible direction, as it would have pushed them back from the capital of Jiankang). Instead this central-based attack achieved success beyond the expectations of the Han, for Sun's forces not only cleared out the last Liang strongholds still standing around Xiangyang but also carried them all the way to Fancheng. The Liang had taken the city by the treachery of Liu Hu at the war's start and held it up until now: but the Han recaptured it in a day by using fire arrows to damage the gate and demoralize the garrison commander into surrendering with hardly a fight. By retaking the 'twin' of Xiangyang thusly, they greatly pushed back the Liang threat to their control over the Yangtze.
In Aloysiana across the Atlantic, once more the Dakarunikuans had much to learn from the British, some of whose outcasts Naahneesídakúsu took in this year (no matter how severe their crimes) in exchange for divulging the secret of European brickmaking. As it turned out, baking bricks in the fires of a kiln (for which Dakaruniku also did not lack timber to feed) would harden them and greatly increase their durability, much faster than just leaving them to dry in the Sun's light would have at that. Furthermore a crude mortar, also made from mud, would serve in better binding these bricks together. Having thus completed another great technological leap which would normally have taken his people centuries if not millennia (as it had the original discovers, the peoples of the Middle East) in his lifetime, Naahneesídakúsu could now get around to building great works and fortifications of a size and longevity that his father & ancestors could only dream of.
A fired brick from ninth-century Dakaruniku. The Dakarunikuans were not the first Wildermen to build with bricks, but they were the first to do so with bricks that had been hardened by baking in a kiln, making for stronger & more durable structures than those made with simpler sun-dried mudbricks (adobe)
The Saracens made another effort at moving the front lines in the Levant come 868, and this time they had more success than in the previous year. Following a bloody skirmish near the Qaysi-built village of Nubl in which the Ghassanid king Al-Ayham II was killed, Duke Skleros and the Caesar were defeated in the larger Battle of Arpad[8] this summer, enabling Al-Khorasani to push the Romans off the Aleppo Plateau and resume serious incursions into Ghassanid Mesopotamia once more. It was not all bad news for the Romans however, as Duke Andronikos and his imperial nephew next rallied to stop an over-ambitious Muslim advance to the west in the Battle of the Lake of Antioch[9] and the follow-up Battle of Mount Kurd, with Al-Ayham's young son and successor Al-Harith VIII killing his killers and thus avenging the late Ghassanid phylarch in the course of these engagements.
What really was bad news, however, was that Alexander was still unable to sire a legitimate heir, despite being allowed multiple excursions back to Antioch in this year and the past one to see his wife: he and Onoria Anicia were unable to conceive thus far, and it was rumored that the latter was infertile – rumors which were further reinforced by the prince's own increasingly notorious rakish ways, for the young & dashing heir to the purple was said to leave a trail of not only broken hearts but also bastards in his wake, evidently being a man lacking his father's iron self-discipline and instead harkening back to the ways of more roguish Aloysians like Aloysius I. Worse still, his twin Alexandra gave birth to her own (unquestionably lawful) first child with Yésaréyu in Antioch this year, a Stilichian daughter named Yusta (Lat.: 'Augusta'). However, the Caesar himself seemed content to take his time and made no move to separate from his wife, assuring all who questioned him that they were still young & would surely have a son sooner or later. Ironically despite his inability to father a legitimate son, Alexander did father a bastard whose parentage he could not deny in this year: a son dubbed Alexander of Syria (or 'Alexander the Arab'), whose mother was the Arab princess Arwa bint Al-Ayham, a sister of the Ghassanid king who was doubtless named after her formidable great-grandmother.
Alexander Caesar in Antioch alongside his highest-born mistress Arwa bint al-Ayham, with whom he has just further complicated the Aloysian line of succession
Up north, the twins' father was working to definitively box the Magyars in western Dacia and to force them to the peace table. The Romans here followed up on their victory in last year's Battle of Partiscum by maneuvering to chase the remaining Magyars off the Pannonian Plain and into the Dacian Carpathes, calling on the local Vlachs to begin sallying from their forts to harass the Magyars along their retreat as they did so. Aloysius also took a moment to engineer the acclamation of Radovid the Younger as Kňehynja of the Dulebes: the Dulebian nobility may never have been willing to elevate Radovid the Elder, who after all had been born a mere slave, to lead them, but his freeborn and imperially-backed son who also happened to be their late Prince's nephew was evidently a different story, particularly in light of the deceased Slavibor having failed to leave any other viable male heirs. After being defeated in another battle near the gold mines of Ampellum[10], Attila capitulated and sued for peace, at which point Aloysius agreed to negotiate the terms of the Magyars' integration into the Holy Roman Empire despite both the Dulebes (including both Radovids) and the Dacians counseling him to exterminate them instead – the federate system had once more proven itself capable of containing invaders from the east long enough for the Emperor to step in even under the stress of multiple defeats, and the Magyars had proven themselves a worthy addition to its ranks.
No sooner had the Romans pushed the Magyars to the brink and continue to mostly hold their ground against the Muslims in the east, however, did new problems arise – or rather, an old one reared its head once more – further still to the north. While Grimr was still consolidating his hold on Norway and parceling out land & spoils from his final victory to his followers as thanks, his brother and nephews had not only already set their sights on the next target, but were beginning to move against it to boot. Between his own reputation as something of a living legend who had traveled further than any other Viking; the riches which he was still doling out as proof of that; promises of more fertile soil to win which they also had a more realistic chance of holding against Rome's power than whatever Ørvendil was hoping to achieve; and his own charisma, Ráðbarðr found no shortage of volunteers continuing to flock to his own banner, who he sent on a number of raids targeting both British shores and the Continent (so as to keep Aloysius guessing as to where he'd strike).
While the Belgic squadron sallied to support the British fleet in keeping as many of these Vikings away from their shores (and to intercept raiders who were trying to return home with their ill-gotten gains), the Romans questioned and threatened Claudius-Fjölnir about this uptick in Viking activity, who strenuously denied any Danish responsibility. Adalric of Swabia was only prevented from marching on Denmark with the army Aloysius had given him by the king's willingness to quarter a number of legionaries in his ports, during which the raids continued to come from Norway – thus proving that Denmark genuinely had nothing to do with this wave of attacks. In the meantime, Flóki the Fearless landed in northern Britain ahead of his family and did not return with the reavers who accompanied him: instead, he remained behind to scout out the land and contact elements of the 'Remnant' faction of the Pelagians who had managed to endure in secrecy, having learned that British Christianity was not a wholly unified front and eager to ensure that the Norsemen would find help waiting for them when they launched their full invasion.
Flóki the Fearless negotiating terms of alliance with crypto-Pelagian representatives in eastern Britain
In China, with the imminent threat of a Liang invasion over the Yangtze dispelled, the Han armies in the center of the Middle Kingdom strove to regain territories around Xiangyang & Fancheng. Feeling the victory which had once seemed imminent now slipping out of his grasp, Dingzong tried to halt the tide's reversal by gambling on a large-scale naval battle on the Yangtze, which he hoped would renew the possibility of a cross-river invasion. In this he was to be disappointed, for the Han navy continued to assert its superiority in the Battle of Chaisang[11], and he died of old age in the autumn of this year, his last regret being the realization that he would not be able to unify China before he perished after all. Duanzong was not far behind his rival, for he too passed away in the winter of 868, leaving the choice of whether to continue hostilities or to try to make peace to their heirs: respectively Gangzong (Ma Jin) & Duzong (Liu Yong).
The Augustus Imperator spent much of 869 reordering the Peninsula of Haemus, for what he hoped to be the last time any Roman Emperor would have to do such a thing. The ceasefire with Attila held throughout the winter, despite the periodic provocation by either over-bold Magyars or his own Dacian and Dulebian auxiliaries who hungered for revenge against the nomads for devastating their lands, and a foedus binding the future of the Magyars to the Holy Roman Empire was finalized and inked by the end of springtime. This new federate horde was allotted the still-wild and sparsely populated frontier lands in northern Dacia, comprising those territories north of the Danube and what little remained of Constantine's Dacian Wall – most of which had not even been part of the Roman world until the Aloysian wars of conquest & reconquest in this direction, being known instead as the home of the 'Free Dacians' between Trajan's conquests and the great barbarian migrations which began in the third century – as well as portions of the old Roman provinces of Dacia Porolissensis and Dacia Apulensis[12]. In addition to setting them up as a guard on the Dniester, Aloysius also required Attila, his household and the leading families of the Magyar confederacy to undergo baptism in an effort to both exert Roman cultural & spiritual influence over them and to cool tensions with their new neighbors.
However, this was not the end of Aloysius' business in the Balkans. To both shore up his Danubian defenses (now hopefully a secondary rather than primary bulwark against nomadic invaders from the northeast, with the Magyars being positioned to challenge any such invasion first) and resolve the political crisis gripping the Gepids in the wake of their own royal family's decimation at the hands of the Magyars, the Emperor took the additional step of centralizing the rest of Dacia into another feudatory theoretically strong enough to stand on its own legs, with one supreme marquess set above to govern over the other marcher lords of this territory. There was no man better suited for that role than Valerian de Severin, who was accordingly hailed as the first Voievod of the Dacian March – the title having been absorbed from the Slavs into the Dacian language, and in this case still meaning 'general' or 'military governor' though the associated office was more like that of a ruling prince – by his peers and with Aloysius' approval.
To kill another bird with the same stone, Aloysius also assented to Valerian's marriage to the late Thrasaric's (rather ironically named) daughter Hunnila, thereby folding the Gepid state into Dacia. Thus, 869 marked the rise of a new Dacian principality spanning most of old Roman Dacia, stretching from the riverbanks opposite Singidunum in the west to the very mouth of the Danube on the Euxine coast in the east and up to Apulum, which the Vlachs rebuilding it had begun to simply call 'Alba' due to the white stone used for its walls, in the north[13]. While the Gepids might no longer be a distinct kingdom, they would survive the calamity of the ninth century as a people – one of the last East Germanic peoples to have avoided totally assimilating into Romanitas, alongside the handful of Tauric Goths – and in addition to retaining their lands, lordships and traditional customs (up to and including their own legal code and courts to go along with their self-governing feudatories & towns) under the authority of the ascendant Severin clan, from their position along the Danube and on account of their success in building up their own towns by that great river they were also well-positioned to become captains of commerce in the Balkans over the next centuries[14].
Valerian of Severin, Voievod of a new Dacia, enters the Gepid capital at Dierna/Orschova, backed by the Dacian and Gepid nobility who have agreed to hail him as their new prince
Now Aloysius may have been inclined to stick around longer and enforce further arrangements to facilitate peace & reconciliation between his preexisting federates in Southeastern Europe, but continuing Islamic pressure in the east compelled him to return to the Levant now that his job up north was done and the Magyar threat had been neutralized. After reinforcing the depleted Danubian legions with those soldiers of theirs that he'd taken to Syria and now brought back, and recruiting from the federates to compensate (including insisting on the Magyars providing him with 2,000 horsemen in an early token of loyalty, to be led by Géza), he marched back to Constantinople and then sailed from there to Antioch to aid the Skleroi and Alexander Caesar once more. His arrival came in just the nick of time, for after several more inconclusive engagements, Ahmad & Al-Khorasani had managed a significant breakthrough by drawing the Romans into the major Second Battle of Azaz: despite losing there, their feint proved successful as enough Ghassanid & Roman troops were drawn away from Edessa to allow for Al-Jannabi to take the city with the real main thrust of the Saracen offensive in the summer of 869, to the shock & fury of the Roman leadership and King Al-Harith.
Over in China, the newly-enthroned Emperors Gangzong of Later Liang and Duzong of True Han attempted to avoid a simple reversion to the status quo prior to Duanzong's first war against the Liang by continuing hostilities and fighting to respectively either gain some land south of the Yangtze or hold on to some territory (aside from Xiangyang & Fancheng) north of it. In this regard both men were still unsuccessful this year, as the Liang armies proved too strong for the Han to overcome in their efforts to regain ground beyond that great river bisecting China and the Han fleet remained an insurmountable obstacle to Liang efforts to expand their operations south of the Yangtze in turn.
However, Duzong at least managed to obtain the personal satisfaction of besting his traitorous kinsman Liu Hu, who he resoundingly defeated in the Battle of Xinye just northeast of Fancheng. Driven back to his camp and abandoned by his Liang allies, in the rout, Liu Hu called upon his twin concubines to die with him as he planned to commit suicide in his tent (knowing that there was no way the main Liu branch would show any mercy to him after all the trouble he had caused them), only to be informed by a Chu retainer that the Cheng sisters had already fled with the Liang. Thus he lamented not merely the fickleness of the female sex but also his own foolishness in not realizing that his mistresses were Liang spies sooner, before asking that retainer to behead him lest Duzong catch up to him or he lose his own nerve before he could stab himself in the heart.
The head of the arch-traitor Liu Hu is presented before the new Emperor of True Han, Duzong/Liu Yong
The Magyars first saw action in Roman service in 870, when Aloysius deployed them as part of his screening force in his first engagement with the Saracens since his Balkan excursion. Géza and his men reportedly turned in a good performance at this Battle of Doliche[15], working well enough alongside the Africans, Bulgars & Christian Arabs of the imperial army (with whom they had no quarrel, unlike every single one of their new neighbors back in Southeastern Europe) and effectively answering the Arabs' arrows with their own in the high-speed skirmishes which preceded the Roman victory there and another shutdown of attempted Islamic incursions over the lower Euphrates. Aloysius did have to allow Géza to return home later in the year however, as his father Attila died of old age just one year after settling their people in the lands allotted by their new overlord and he now needed to formally assume leadership over the Magyars.
On the other side of Europe, a match was thrown onto the Hrafnsons' stockpile of timber & whale wax around the North Sea in a dramatic fashion this year. While leading a raid on English shores, as he had already successfully done many times before, Ráðbarðr himself was ambushed by a combined Anglo-British mounted detachment near the village of Hlūd[16] before he could return to his longship. Most of his reaving company was killed, but he and a half-dozen survivors yielded after the Ríodam Guí (Lat.: 'Caius/Gaius') II offered to afford him the respect that a king deserves and to hold him for ransom. Naturally, the British king was lying and reminded Ráðbarðr that since they were actually on English soil, the latter's fate was really in the hands of his ally, England's own king Eadulf Half-Hand – so nicknamed because he lost half of his left hand to a Viking raider's ax when he was young. Suffice to say, Eadulf was not in a forgiving mood and duly had this long-time scourge upon his people and their Briton neighbors burned to death in his own longship alongside his remaining cohorts in a parody of the Viking funeral customs, while the surviving inhabitants of Hlūd (having just been raided by the Norsemen right before the battle) came out of their homes & hiding places to cheer the marauders' fiery demise.
The first to learn of the disaster was Flóki, who duly informed his many brothers of what had happened. The news of their father's treacherous and torturous death rendered the Ráðbarðrsons (and Amleth the Dane) collectively apoplectic with rage, and for now agreeing to recognize Einarr (as the eldest among them) as their leader, they massively accelerated their plans for the invasion of Britannia for vengeance's sake. In truth these events had proceeded according to the machinations of Grimr of Norway, who feared that the longer his brother and nephews stayed, the stronger their temptation to usurp his kingdom (something he had only narrowly staved off previously) would grow; and besides, he had long resented Ráðbarðr for being superior to him in just about every regard anyway, the latter's insistence on rendering him a vassal at the end of their conquests being the last straw. Thus, when he saw a chance to feed advance intelligence about Ráðbarðr's movements to the Anglo-Saxons & Britons, he took it to be rid of Ráðbarðr and his shadow once and for all.
Despite having been utterly defeated, betrayed and doomed to a death that was not only painful but also calculated to mock the funerary customs of great Norse chiefs, Ráðbarðr remained defiant before his Anglo-British captors, cursing them thusly before being consumed by the flames: "Today you are roasting an old boar. Feast well on his flesh while you can, and remember this day when his farrow of hogs come for his bones."
Fortunately for Grimr, his nephews did not see his hand in their father's death, instead focusing their fury against the kingdoms of Roman Britain. Einarr and his brothers struck in the autumn months of 870, launching their attack out of season in an effort to catch the Britons and English off-guard: for this expedition the sons of Ráðbarðr benefited from inheriting the fruit of their father's final project in the form of the single greatest host of Vikings to ever sail forth from Scandinavia as a cohesive fighting force, a 'great heathen army' which numbered as many as 15,000 strong and thus narrowly outsized the force with which Ørvendil once led against the Aloysian heartland. Steinn the Strong led 3,000 of these men on an audacious attack against the Belgic squadron at its home port at Bruges, and while unable to sink every single ship in that particular harbor, he managed to inflict enormous damage on the Romans' primary northern fleet before retreating – a victory which significantly altered the naval balance of power in the North Sea (further) in the Vikings' favor, and made it possible for his kindred to invade Britannia without Adalric's legions being able to immediately descend on their heads like a sack of hammers. Grimr, meanwhile, was quite relieved at the prospect of no longer having to house & feed the hordes of adventuring warriors his brother had invited into his new kingdom of Norway, and at having apparently escaped detection & consequently justice by his nephews: he further supplied their expedition with provisions and volunteers from his ranks to keep up his pretense.
The main thrust of the Viking assault first fell on the shores of English Lindsey, Einarr leading the first landing party to swarm the Anglo-Saxon garrison of Tric[17], formerly the Roman fort of Traiectus, located on a certain 'beard-shaped headland' which would now serve as their first foothold against the kingdoms of Britannia. From there the Norse took advantage of the Romans' own road, along which Traiectus had been a stopover, to bypass the nearby swampland and push further inland more quickly. No demands for tribute or even any offer to negotiate were issued: the heathens had come for conquest and vengeance, and could not be bought off, at least not now while their blood was still boiling and their temperament downright volcanic – as demonstrated by their storming of Hlūd, where their father was executed and which they now wiped off the map in retaliation.
Flóki had by this time cultivated an alliance with the Pelagian Remnants, who fed the Vikings information and promised to take up arms to support them whenever they showed up to the towns said Remnants were living in in exchange for religious freedom and self-governance beneath the raven standard, and this alliance further proved critical to the Ráðbarðrsons' first major victory on British soil this year. The English and Britons were alarmed by reports of the size of the Viking horde that had descended upon them, and scrambled to not only raise their full strength for this challenge but to also combine their armies: of course, the Vikings preferred not to get into a fair fight with their foes, and heeded the words of Flóki's heretic spies to find & attack the enemy hosts separately. Einarr and his brothers descended upon Eadulf Half-Hand at Turcesige[18] with their full might, crushing the half-assembled army he was still amassing there with the aim of joining up with Guí in a furious wintertime battle: Eadulf himself attempted to flee the massacre via the nearby Fossdyke built in Roman times but was unable to outswim Hrafn Ráðbarðrson & Amleth Ørvendilson, captured after a struggle and put to death by blood-eagle. With this done, the Norse converted the English camp at Turcesige into their own winter quarters and the brothers agreed that they would first work to finish off Eadulf's kingdom in the next year before turning on the Romano-British.
The Ráðbarðrsons assembling their army (and a few Pelagian heretics) near Turcesige, ready to challenge the Holy Roman Empire once more for revenge and also to carve out their own kingdoms from Christendom's northern periphery
The Vikings beyond Rome's British borders also saw their own opportunity to act, and took it in this year. In Pictland, a trivial dispute at an autumn feast between King Dungarth and Map Beòthu of Cé led to insults, which then inexplicably and massively escalated to the latter murdering the former. In fact, Map Beòthu had been advised to usurp the Pictish throne by his wife Gruoch and the woods-witches on whose counsel he relied, on the grounds that he had proven himself a more capable leader for their people in these dangerous times while Dungarth's record was one of incompetence – the last straw for Map Beòthu being the revival of the Uí Néill's fortunes over Dungarth's chosen Ulaid allies in Ireland, thereby proving once more that the previous king had poor judgment and was prone to backing the wrong horse. His usurpation did not go unchallenged however, and his resulting civil war with the sons of Dungarth gave his old enemy Óttar of the Isles an opening to invade Pictland in force once more. Óttar's own in-laws in Dyflin also went to war in an attempt to stop the rise of Muiredach mac Donnchad, the incumbent Uí Néill High King and King of Meath & Tara, before he overcame his remaining native enemies and could consolidate his position as High King of Ireland. Thus, the conflict which would eventually become known as the War of the Five Kingdoms began to grow from these seemingly disconnected roots…
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[1] Berzovia.
[2] Arad, Romania.
[3] The Mureș River.
[4] Drobeta-Turnu Severin.
[5] Now part of Larvik.
[6] Maarrat Misrin.
[7] Kecskemét.
[8] Tell Rifaat.
[9] Lake Amik, which no longer exists since it was drained in the 1970s. The lake was fed by the Karasu/Aswad River and in turn fed into the Orontes.
[10] Zlatna.
[11] Now part of Jiujiang.
[12] Essentially, this puts 'Hungary' to the east of where it actually is IRL – this is a Hungary which, instead of being located on the Pannonian Plain, spans most of Moldavia, Bukovina & northern Transylvania, with the Szekelerland lying at its geographic center.
[13] This then can be said to be a much more Wallachia-centric 'Romania' without most of Moldavia and half of Transylvania, but which has gained more of the Banat to compensate.
[14] Comparable to the Transylvanian Saxons or Danube Swabians, though of course the Gepids will have been in the Banat for much longer than either real-life group (who only started moving into Romania/the Danube valley in the 12th-13th centuries historically) and belong to an entirely different branch of the Germanic peoples.
[15] Dülük.
[16] Louth, Lincolnshire.
[17] Skegness, Lincolnshire.
[18] Torksey.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Interesting times all around. What the merry viking marauders don't realise is that Roman Empire is not nearly as weakened as when it had to abandon Britain, it's more likely that the ravages of Norse invasion and eventual Roman counterattack will most likely force unifying of English and Brito-Romans into single political entity. Also, there will be the first inquisition to root out the treacherous heretics.
Thus starts the Pictish play
Thus starts the Pictish play
1.True,Vikings would be defeated in England,no matter what they manage to achieve there.But - they could conqer Ireland and Scotland first,and HRE would liberate them - and send there right rulers,of course.
Rulers,who agree to be HRE vassals.
It seems,that only lasting viking achievment would be Irealnd and Scotland becomig part of EU,sorry - HRE.
Well,maybe Inquisition,too - somebody must find pelagians,and once they deal with them,they could remain.
2.Indeed,and would end with HRE approved King.
I think,that only place when viking could survive is America.
Where Dukuruniku just discovered how to made good bricks.Interesting,when first local calvary become real thing?
Hungarian vassals - good thing for HRE.
P.S if Alexander do not get rightfull heir,i see return of Stillichans in theathers next seazon !
The Aloysians had a good run, 200+ years. Not as good as the Capetians who managed nearly 400 years before failing to produce an undisputed male heir surviving to adulthood, but the Capetians were the absolute extreme end of the bell curve there. At least the consequence of the run ending is unlikely to be Hundred Years War level disastrous. Hopefully. Well, there was that one Roman civil war following the Battle of Manzikert. . .
Interestingly, the end of the mainline Capetians was also the result of adultery, the Tour de Nesle scandal, which was so salacious it could have been written by GRRM, though of course GRRM would have made all the women 12 and the men 50.
Interestingly, the end of the mainline Capetians was also the result of adultery, the Tour de Nesle scandal, which was so salacious it could have been written by GRRM, though of course GRRM would have made all the women 12 and the men 50.
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871-875: Furore Normannorum, Part I
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The great Norse invasion of the British Isles which began in the previous year only continued to build up steam throughout 871, as the Ráðbarðrsons could barely wait for the snows to begin thawing before resuming their attacks on England and Britannia. As soon as the weather conditions allowed it they proceeded from Turcesige toward Eoforwic, leaving a trail of devastation as they went forth in their vengeful rage. Eadulf's eldest son Osric had been hurriedly crowned there, and though the English field army had been destroyed at Turcesige the winter before, he still resolved to make a stand in the seat of the Rædwaldings so that none could say that the dynasty abandoned this 'second city of Britain' (from where they had reigned since converting to Christianity) like cowards. This decision proved to be brave but foolish, as Osric did not actually have enough men to adequately defend Eoforwic's walls – when the Vikings arrived at March's end, Flóki's Pelagian spies within the city informed him of this fact, and armed with this intelligence the Vikings duly stormed the city rather than invest & dig in for a long siege.
Flóki himself and Hrafn assaulted the part of the walls which were most thinly defended, overcoming it and leading to the fall of Eoforwic soon after. Osric meanwhile had been killed by their brothers Einarr and Steinn as well as Amleth, who had evidently decided that the son of their father's killer did not deserve the honor of a one-on-one duel and swarmed him together, and the Vikings sacked the city in their triumph – only the Pelagian community, who painted an eight-pointed cross on their doors with woad in imitation of the first Passover, were spared from the inevitable whirlwind of pillaging, murder and rapine, with Flóki himself even reportedly killing at least one over-eager Viking who tried to ignore this signal (which the Pelagians had arranged with him well in advance) and break down one such door. However the other Rædwaldings were not present to be captured & held for ransom or offered up to the Norse gods as blood sacrifices (Old Nor.: blót), having evacuated at Osric's order. His own household had gone north to take shelter with his father-in-law Æthelred the Open-Handed, the High Reeve (Old English: hēahgerēfa) of Bebbanburh, but as his children were still underage the English kingship next passed by the Witan's collective will to his brother Osbald, who had gone west to collect those soldiers who hadn't gone to Turcesige as well as scattered stragglers from their father's army.
Osric the Saxon and his household guards (Eng.: 'heorðgeneatas', 'hearth-companions') make their last stand against the oncoming Ráðbarðrsons
Osbald and his other brothers led these ragged remnants to Déuarí[1], where they finally linked up with the Ríodam Guí – he had originally planned to march directly to Turcesige and join Eadulf there once the weather cleared, but since the Vikings struck more quickly than he could have imagined and had made no secret of their laying waste to the English countryside, he had promptly changed course. This combined army moved out to threaten the fallen Eoforwic (or as its Viking conquerors now called it, 'Jórvík'), not only because they had the best chance of any single force still standing on the British Isles to resist this 'Great Heathen Army' but also to buy time for Æthelred to prepare the defenses of northern England & protect Osric's family. The Vikings, who had been planning to burn down Bebbanburh next, were compelled to change course and face the Anglo-British alliance at the Battle of Wacafeld[2], thereby fulfilling that strategic aim at least.
Though even their combined strength (4/5ths of which was British) still amounted to barely half the size of the Viking invasion army, the allies presented the first serious challenge for the Vikings here: the Norse archers & skirmishers' missile exchange with the British longbowmen rapidly turned into a massacre favoring the latter, forcing the Ráðbarðrsons to immediately charge across the open field and push through the withering fire to get into melee combat as quickly as possible, only for the superior British cavalry to charge from the nearby woods and rout their own handful of horsemen before rushing their flanks. The Ráðbarðrsons' leadership prevented a rout in that moment and the Norsemen's sheer weight of numbers eventually gave them the victory in the end, but the English & British were able to withdraw in good order and Guí most certainly denied them the pleasure of collecting his head.
Meanwhile in the east, the Viking invasion of Britain was far from the mind of Aloysius III, for the Emperor was instead focused on trying to regain Edessa from the claws of his Caliphal counterpart. The Romans' main army enjoyed greater success in this endeavor than their British federates had against the Norsemen throughout 871: first they defeated Al-Khorasani and Al-Jannabi in the Battle of the Syrian Gates near Pagrae[3], then they rolled the Hashemites back toward Edessa with further victories at Ciliza[4] and Birtha[5], and finally got around to placing the fallen Ghassanid capital back under siege near the end of the year. Ahmad, meanwhile, managed to scrounge up additional reinforcements from his Persian subjects in exchange for furthering the Aryanophilic policies of his forefathers – thus avoiding having to beg his Alid cousins for help and offering concessions like a resumption of raids on the Indian border, which could very well have reopened the Salankayana-Chandra front – and brought these up to support Al-Khorasani in trying to break the Roman siege.
In Aloysiana across the Atlantic, the men of Dakaruniku found that wherever they went, the local Wildermen tended to die in great numbers from the diseases (mostly fevers) they themselves had survived before and were now immune to – much as had once happened to them in the dark days following first contact with the New World Britons. Besides being interpreted as an obvious sign that the gods favored them over their neighbors rather than any quirk of natural biology, this development suited Naahneesídakúsu just fine, since it weakened his enemies and made them even more amenable to the idea of simply surrendering to his emissary than waging an increasingly obviously doomed struggle against his war-host. Ultimately, while he would be unable to reach the mouth of the great Míssissépe (or as the Dakarunikuans called it, 'Warú-Das-Darahčiiš', the 'Swift Holy Waters') by the end of his lifetime, he did get as far as the mound-town of Akánuʾwihax[6] (Mis.: 'Big House'), which occupied a strategic point overlooking the course of that river and thus represented a strategically important acquisition for the rising warlord – all the better that it and many other such conquests were made with much in the way of threats and cajoling, but relatively little bloodshed compared to how Kádaráš-rahbád would have approached them.
The riverine city of Akánuʾwihax, an important acquisition by the men of Dakaruniku along the course of the Míssissépe/Warú-Das-Darahčiiš
Throughout 872, the war in Britannia found itself short of major engagements: rather, both the Anglo-British and the Norse spent most of their time maneuvering against the other and trying to set up favorable conditions for when they should fight their next pitched battle. In particular, the Vikings turned their attention south, away from Bebbanburh – after all, not only had the Britons shown themselves to be a more formidable threat, but the English royals of fighting age and their remaining forces were located in that direction – and aggressively harried both the British hinterland and coasts, destroying no small number of villages and driving their surviving inhabitants to seek shelter at the nearest lord's castle from the marshy Iceni coast to the isle of Gueth[7]. Their only notable territorial acquisition this year was the easterly island of Thaneth[8], which was secured by Flóki and Steinn as a base from which to stage more extensive attacks against eastern Britain later.
The battles were fiercer and the fronts moved more quickly in the independent Celtic kingdoms in 872. Map Beòthu had seized both the Pictish capital at Pheairt and the sacred site of Sgoin on the onset of his civil war with the sons of Dungarth, and successfully defended both against the rival princes in the Battle of Craoibh[9], but while the Picts were busy shedding one another's blood in this and other engagements, Óttar of the Isles had landed in Cait once again – this time with some 2,000 men – and rapidly overtook the northern shores of the kingdom, driving all those Picts who he did not kill or else bent the knee before his advance into the rugged highlands. Now in late 872 Map Beòthu finally decisively defeated the princes Máelchon and Domelch map Dungarth at the Battle of Gheàrr-loch[10], breaking the resistance of their partisans for the time being: but both young men were able to escape from Pictland, and would eventually end up in Bebbanburh where they lamented the usurpation of their homeland by a vicious and tyrannical 'Witch-King' to all who would hear.
Contrary to the rumors spread by his enemies, Map Beòthu was not inclined towards senseless cruelty (he was no less nor any more ruthless than most kings in a similarly precarious position had to be) nor reviving the ancient druidic faith of the Celts at Christianity's expense (despite his indulgence in superstition and consorting with woods-witches, the king remained at least nominally a Christian himself). Arguably he couldn't have done such things even if he wanted to, anyway – because he now had to dedicate all of his time and resources to combating the rising threat posed by the Norsemen of the Isles, who had overrun nearly half his kingdom by the end of 872. He did strike up an alliance with the Irish High King Muiredach Mac Donnchad Uí Néill, himself a far less controversial and unambiguously Christian figure, who in turn had been off to a good start in the war against their common Norse enemies, in his case achieving a number of victories over the men of Dyflin which culminated in a fairly significant triumph at Loch Ramhar[11].
Map Beòthu was many things, few of them good; the Romans and their allies considered him at best a greedy and hateful usurper, at worst a crypto-pagan who consorted with witches. But few would deny that he was a much more brutally effective leader than his predecessor, and perhaps the king the Picts needed to fend off the Viking threat of the 870s
On the eastern front, unlike their subjects in Britannia the Romans were due to fight another major battle against the Arabs this year. Al-Khorasani marched to relieve the besieged Al-Jannabi in Edessa with some 32,000 men in the summer of 872, while Emperor Aloysius stood ready to oppose him with a similarly-sized army. Since their forces were more or less evenly matched and neither veteran commander was inclined to just slog it out conventionally without employing any battlefield trickery, both the Augustus Imperator and the Islamic generalissimo resolved to concentrate their strength against one part of the other's battle-line in hopes of breaking through there and rolling up the rest of the enemy host. The Romans massed in the center, intent on cleaving the Saracens in half and rolling up their divided flanks afterward; whereas Al-Khorasani deployed his men in an oblique formation with a strong and greatly advanced left wing, his objective being to break the Roman right before turning to crush their center & left.
Both the Romans and the Arabs achieved their initial goals, with the Saracen center giving way before a great offensive wedge directed by the Emperor while the Roman right in turn was crunched beneath the Muslims' own assault. Alexander Caesar had commanded the Roman right wing and fell there, hounded and cut down by a squadron of Islamic ghilman despite his best efforts to fend them off, yet news of the imperial heir's demise (while sure to have baleful consequences for the Aloysian line of succession) did not faze his ever-steely father, who was reported to have remarked "Many thousands of soldiers have died and will continue to die for God and for Rome today. There is no time to mourn any lone one of them over-much above the rest," before returning to doggedly fighting on. The Roman center pressed forward and broke past the Arab reserve contingent, threatening even the Caliphal encampment: but there the elite qaraghilman and remnants of that reserve contingent managed to stand and fight long enough for the main Saracen force to break the Romans' other wing and wheel around to attack the main body of the imperial army.
The Islamic army then converged upon the Roman one from multiple directions, a dangerous position to be sure. In a testament to his grit and martial ability, Aloysius managed to redirect his legions against the Muslim wing and break through their ranks to reach safety in the west, even despite that being the strongest part of their army. But although this Battle of Edessa had not been as catastrophic as the one Emperor Valerian fought with the Sassanids six centuries before, and enough of the Roman army had survived to ensure that they weren't yet down for the count, it still represented a significant defeat for the Holy Roman Empire and one of the larger Islamic victories in recent decades. Aside from the fallen Alexander, whose corpse Ahmad had returned to his father in a gesture of respect (and to try to facilitate a truce on account of the Muslims' casualties from Edessa being quite high as well), the Bulgar Khan Belkermak and Al-Ayham were both slain as well. The Cilician Bulgars would endure: but Edessa it seemed would be the final doom of the Ghassanids, for although their royal house remained extant through Al-Ayham's young children & siblings, the losses they sustained on that battlefield broke what remained of their power and closed the door on any realistic chance of them recovering their (already greatly truncated) kingdom.
Alexander Caesar struggles to fend off the elite Turkic ghilman swarming him on the battlefield before Edessa
In China meanwhile, the Liang and Han finally reached a truce and began peace negotiations after more inconclusive fighting, culminating in a final series of counteroffensives in both the west and east by the True Han by which they were respectively able to expel the last Liang garrisons in the mountains & woods around Xiangyang but not to establish, much less expand, a beach-head on the northern banks of the Lower Yangtze. Gangzong and Duzong agreed to return to the original borders of their empires – mostly running on the Yangtze, with the exception of the Han exclave centered around Xiangyang – which, at first glance, seemed as though the rival dynasties had just expended an enormous amount of effort and lives to end up in more or less the same situation they were in at the start of the century. However, not only had they tested each other's strength once more and taken some valuable lessons from this war – certainly the True Han will be sure not to appoint any more princes-of-the-blood to positions of great import for starters, instead relying on their mandarins and generals of lower birth – but a more prominent strategic development had taken place in the north, where the Jurchens had managed to gain ascendancy over the Khitans in large part thanks to the conflict with the Han greatly reducing the Liang's ability to support their allies up north. The Liang may have won this round, but they now had to worry about the next one being a proper two-front war against both the Han and the rising power of the Jin.
After a relatively quiet 872 full of maneuvers and 'foraging' rather than dramatic pitched battles and sieges, the Sons of Ráðbarðr returned to form in 873 with audacious offensives targeting the Ríodam's realm, striking at Guí and Osbald before the latter two could engage in their own counter-offensive against the Vikings. After inflicting further defeats on the British fleet throughout spring, the Norsemen used Thaneth to safely bypass the difficult terrain of the Fens entirely and begin landing in force in southern Icenia & near Lundéne, and their first target for a storming & sacking was Camalóui[12] – a grievous insult which Guí had to answer, for it was also the hometown of the Pendragon dynasty. This Flóki knew and intended, for the strategist among the Ráðbarðrsons hoped to draw the British High King into battle on ground more favorable for the Norse and got his chance when the allied army reached a ford on the Lesser Metaris[13].
When the British and English attempted to cross at Bellol[14], the Vikings were waiting in ambush (having taken hostages from among the leading village families to force them into pretending that nothing was amiss) and inflicted a resounding defeat on the allies before they could finish moving their full strength over the ford. The British longbowmen did not seem so formidable when caught unprepared and out of position, and Guí himself was badly wounded in the retreat. Following this victory some of the Norsemen hoped to pillage north- and westward into the British hinterland, but the Ráðbarðrsons maintained discipline and directed their army towards Lundéne instead. Panic was already setting in at the British capital as news of the Battle of Bellol's outcome spread, but the city's stout defenses and considerable stockpile of supplies might have still allowed its outnumbered garrison to hold out until help could arrive from the continent.
Alas for the defenders, a fortuitously timed Pelagian uprising within the walls – carefully planned to launch alongside the Norsemen's own assault and to secure the city's northern gatehouse for their benefit – fatally compromised their carefully planned defenses. As a reward for their allies the Norsemen installed the Pelagians' local leader Guílodhin (Old Brit.: 'Gwylyddyn') as the city's bishop and burnt his Ionian counterpart Guidelén (Lat.: 'Vitalianus') at the stake, as had happened to many a Pelagian heretic, on his order. 873 would thus end with the Norsemen in control of both the English and British capitals, while the defenders of Christian Britannia were left in great disarray and lamented Guidelén's death as a martyr.
Norse fireships leading the amphibious segment of the great Viking assault on Lundéne, their flames further serving as a signal for the Pelagians within the city to rise up
Beyond Roman borders, the other Celtic Christians at least were having a better time. Map Beòthu resolved that the best way to win the loyalty of his recalcitrant new subjects would be to deliver them from the fury of the Norsemen, and although his weakened army could not hold Pheairt against Óttar's army when the latter landed, he was at least able to defend the holy site of Sguin in a sanguinary battle to the north. This was the extent of Map Beòthu's major engagements this year, as he now needed to rebuild his depleted forces in the Caledonian Highlands and was limited to taking opportunistic swipes at the Norsemen who had stormed his kingdom's shores until that was done. Across the Irish Sea, High King Muiredach's offensive continued to gain steam as he won the loyalty of the petty-kings of Connachta and Mumhain, with whom he crushed an attempt by the Norsemen in the west to come to Dyflin's aid in the Battle of Carntierna[15]. Those Vikings who had settled at Corcaigh surrendered and were drafted into opposing their kindred to the east, while the Vikings of Hlymrekr[16] were killed to the last man and their settlement sacked sometime after their great defeat.
News that his British subjects were now groaning beneath the axes of an invader even more troublesome than the Anglo-Saxons had once been, and that Adalric still struggled to assemble a fleet capable of challenging the Norsemen in the North Sea (much less crossing to finally relieve the beleaguered Britons & Saxons), represented a new and most undesired frustration for Aloysius. After all, the Emperor was still grappling with the demise of his only son and the trouble this caused for the line of succession – the Stilichians duly sent him their condolences but he had the feeling that it was an insincere gesture, especially since Alexander's death without lawful issue cleared the way for his grandson, Alexandra's second child and firstborn son Stéléggu to become the most obvious contender for the purple. Furthermore, he was still at war with the Muslims who were eager to press their renewed advantage after the Battle of Edessa, and while sending the Italian fleets to fight in the North Sea seemed like the most straightforward way to clear a path for Adalric's army, that was not possible as long as the Saracens still threatened the eastern Mediterranean.
As usual however, once the Emperor had collected his thoughts, he tackled this assortment of thorny challenges with an understated grit and determination. No pronouncement would come from Aloysius on the matter of succession yet: neither the toddler Stéléggu (being a female-line descendant of his) nor Alexander the Arab (having been born out of wedlock) were qualified to succeed him both under the law and in his own mind, and instead he resolved to remarry and father another son as soon as he could, even though he was getting up there in years. And as for the Muslims, he spurned all suggestion of negotiating a surrender or even ceasefire, not that Ahmad or Al-Khorasani would have settled for anything less than Antioch in their euphoria over the smashing success outside Edessa anyway. Despite now being at a disadvantage, the Augustus Imperator and faithful Duke Andronikos turned back overconfident attempts by the Saracens to advance upon Antioch at the Battles of Souran[17] and Beselatha[18] this year.
The Holy Roman Emperor Aloysius III on a rare break, aged 54 as of 874 but looking at least ten years older due to the stresses of constant warfare, and now also having to cope with the loss of his heir & consequently a looming succession crisis
The Viking onslaught kept on coming throughout 874, as the Sons of Ráðbarðr were not sated by their conquest of Lundéne and eager to sustain the momentum of their offensive before their enemies could catch a breath. Guí II died of his injuries in the early winter months of this year and was duly succeeded by his son Artur IX, who had barely been crowned in the fortress of Camalué[19] and made arrangements with Osbald for his marriage to the latter's niece, Osric's daughter Cynehild (though the wedding itself would have to wait for some time, for she was presently stuck in Bebbanburh) when he was forced to contend with the Norsemen swarming out of his fallen capital. Artur's reign was off to a poor start as the Vikings smashed through the Anglo-British defense at Avongeoíne[20] and then again at Gelleu[21], with his younger brother Guítri (Old Brit.: 'Gwydre') laying down his life to ensure the new Ríodam would safely escape.
It was then that the Ráðbarðrsons decided to split up so as to gain the most ground possible, not only because they were now confident that their victory was imminent, but also because dissent was swelling in their own ranks and putting pressure on them to do so: their own increasingly impatient warriors wanted to start actually settling & enjoying the fruits of their triumphs. Einarr & Hrafn (and Amleth) went back north to finish off the English while Flóki & Gunnarr remained in the south to crush the Pendragons, and Steinn would continue to guard the seas against the Roman forces marshaling on the continent. The English and British, however, did not split their own forces up in response, for Artur successfully argued that they needed to hold their remaining army together and that their chance of victory would dramatically improve if they concentrated their strength against the divided Viking armies in detail.
A British peasant trying to defend an abbot during a Viking attack on one of their inland monasteries, which unfortunately laid in the path of the Ráðbarðrsons' westward rampage
Artur's wisdom in this matter was proven toward the end of 874, despite additional summertime setbacks in the form of the Viking sack of Guenté[22] and another defeat at Flóki's hand in the Battle of Cornogóui[23], the latter being made all the more painful by the Vikings having the audacity to taunt him with his brother's head on a spear. But as the Norse advanced deeper into the British West Country, threatening to split the Pendragons' Dumnonic possessions away from their last remaining major city of Gloué, the Ríodam found his chance to turn the tables and seized it with both hands at the Battle of Magne-Sylve[24]. A squadron of British horse-archers, the handful of knights in Pendragon service who had managed to retain their Sarmatian ancestors' tradition of mounted archery, drew the Viking army into attacking his English allies on the edge of these western woodlands. The still-much more numerous Vikings overwhelmed Osbald's shield-wall and killed him, but as they chased the fleeing Englishmen into the forest which gave the battlefield its name, the majority of the British and English troops (now led by Osric & Osbald's younger brother and successor, Oswiu) promptly ambushed them.
Caught out of formation on difficult terrain, the Vikings received their first serious defeat of the campaign here: Gunnarr the Amorous was among the thousand Norsemen killed, making it as far as a forest meadow where he tried and failed to form the men he still had with him up into a shield-wall, and his own severed head was among many others in a sack later brought to Flóki by the only Norse prisoner kept alive (only to be released after first being mutilated) by the vengeful Artur. News of this grisly loss reached Jórvík just in time to spoil Einarr's coronation as King of the Norsemen of Britain there, and unsurprisingly infuriated the remaining Sons of Ráðbarðr beyond reason – Einarr himself would sack Déuarí in his rage after first procuring that isolated city's surrender under the false promise of lenient treatment. While Artur worked to stabilize his new front-line against the Norsemen, one which stretched from the eastern edges of Cambria's mountains to old Dumnonia's border in the south and was anchored at Gloué, Einarr and Amleth marched south to rejoin Flóki and crush the Britons once & for all, leaving Hrafn to set out north with orders to extinguish the last significant center of English resistance at Bebbanburh.
Victorious British & English soldiers of Artur and Oswiu's army prying the raven banner from the soon-to-be cold & dead hands of Ráðbarðr's middle son in a clearing in the Magne-Sylve
Off in the east, Aloysius III began his own new offensive against the Arabs after first bringing additional Balkan reinforcements from over the Bosphorus to strengthen his army, hoping to end this war quickly so as to be able to throw his full strength at the Vikings presently laying waste to Britannia. The Saracens drew them into battle on what they thought would be favorable ground on the River Ufrenus[25], but were caught off-guard by Aloysius' decision to have smaller detachments cross at unguarded fords further up that river from his army's main crossing point, who then emerged to attack Al-Khorasani's flank overland when battle was joined some days later. Further up north, though much of the Georgians' strength might be presently committed to the imperial army, they mustered enough soldiers to launch a destructive incursion into Azerbaijan with help from the Alans and Caucasian Avars, with only Bab al-Abwab[26] managing to hold out against them and eventually having to bribe the besieging army to leave due to the Muslims' over-commitment to the Levantine front leaving them with no spare troops to relieve the city.
The Romans managed to drive the Saracens back over the Euphrates with the ferocity of their initial onslaught, isolating Edessa (which was besieged once more) and also threatening Aleppo and Harran. The former city was captured by treachery, as some of the kin of the Roman collaborators previously executed by Ahmad sabotaged one of its gates for the Romans, who promptly stormed in and sacked the place; Harran meanwhile surrendered without much of a fight yet again, the second time they had done so before Aloysius in this war, which got him to contemptuously deride the Harrani people as cowards in his private notes. Only Edessa's garrison still held out, fearing that Aloysius would kill them all if they yielded. However Al-Khorasani rallied the armies of Islam to finally stop the Roman offensive in the Battle of Balis[27], and after regaining their footing the Saracens made plans to come to Edessa's relief and to definitively drive the Romans out of the territories being contested in this conflict, including the former Ghassanid lands.
The Norse continued their westward attacks on the Anglo-British coalition straight through 875. For his part, Artur understood that the disparity in the numbers between their armies made pitched battle a risky proposition, and that he would be best-off avoiding it unless the Vikings could be brought to battle in favorable conditions (or if he could manufacture those favorable conditions himself) as had been the case with the Battle of Magne-Sylve, and so generally avoided direct confrontation with the vindictive heathens coming for his head. Instead, the Ríodam relied on his cavalry advantage to harass the advancing Vikings, using the preponderance of small castles and fortified manors dating back to Britannia's days as an independent kingdom surrounded by enemies as bases for this method of warfare and also to further slow the Norsemen – thus buying himself time enough to hold out for help from the mainland.
When the Sons of Ráðbarðr slowly and painfully pushed their way past this network of defenses and the constant back-biting attacks on their armies to reach the western limits of Roman Britain, they further found their path obstructed by natural barriers: the Cambrian Mountains in the north, and the swamps & woodland of Dumnonia in the south which had already proven so problematic for Flóki & Gunnarr. Sheer numbers and grit carried the Norsemen far as they had done before, and for a few short weeks they placed Artur himself under siege in Camalué: but in a smaller-scale recreation of Ørvendil's logistical woes when he invaded Treveria the constant raids on their supply-lines from those British castles they had been unable to conquer on the way, a lack of villages to 'forage' from (their denizens having withdrawn to said castles with their resources well in advance) and the inhospitable terrain of the Dumnonian Levels by which they camped ultimately forced Flóki to withdraw in failure. A similar attack on Gloué by Einarr also faltered before its stout Roman walls on account of its English & British defenders being ready, numerous enough to properly man those defenses, and the lack of a meaningful Pelagian underground community which could sabotage the defenders there as their compatriots had done in Lundéne – Artur had launched a hunt for said Pelagians before the Vikings could arrive, and his soldiers left their burnt corpses tied to stakes outside the city to intimidate the oncoming Norse besiegers.
A skirmish between Norse warriors and dismounted British knights (Bry.: 'cavalier') in the mud & reeds of the Dumnonian Levels
Up north, Hrafn was not having any more luck with sieges than his older siblings, for an outbreak of disease at his camp forced him to withdraw and allowed the English holdouts up there to breathe a little more easily. The 'Witch-King' of Pictland was also back on the warpath this year: the Norsemen of the Isles made some headway further inland and captured Sguin earlier in 875, but they did not get to savor their victory for long before Map Beòthu descended from the highlands with a new army. He launched an audacious night assault on Óttar's army as the Norse were still marshaling to invade his mountain stronghold at Céthramh Mhoire[28], with forward elements of his army approaching the Viking camp wearing coats with branches, grasses and flowers attached, so as to disguise themselves as bushes and small trees until they got close enough to attack the Norse guards at Óttar's palisade with javelins and arrows. Map Beòthu followed up this victory by driving the Norse from Sguin and Pheairt, demonstrating to Óttar that the Picts could not be taken lightly even in the aftermath of a civil war. This trend of reversing Viking fortunes took a more positive turn – with misfortune turning to good fortune for a change, rather than the other way around – in Ireland, where Muiredach attempted to go for the Hiberno-Norsemen's throats after his victories in the past few years and besieged Dyflin but was routed when the defenders unexpectedly mounted a forceful sally against him.
While the war in Britain had become a holding action, the one in the east was fast approaching its climax. As Al-Khorasani needed to raise quite a substantial number of reinforcements to replenish his ranks after the battles of the previous years, the Arabs were unable to move quickly enough to save Edessa from falling back into Roman hands. Roman siege engineering made quicker work of that city's already-damaged defenses than the Saracens had hoped, and since Al-Jannabi did not consider yielding even at the last possible moment (before the Roman ram touched the city gates), the victorious Christians ruthlessly wiped out the Islamic garrison to the last man to avenge the death of their Caesar. With this last thorn in his rear lines removed, Aloysius could turn and face the Muslims advancing against Aleppo, meeting them for another major battle on a plain near the Arab village of Deir Hafir.
Old Al-Khorasani deployed his army in a very different fashion than at the Battle of Edessa three years prior, strengthening both of his wings (rather than just one) at the expense of his center. He also took advantage of his superior numbers to detach a division under Al-Turani with orders to circle around Aloysius' army entirely, attack their camp and cut off their retreat so that he could hopefully totally annihilate the Rūmī in this engagement, but Al-Turani's inability to read the map he was given resulted in these men getting lost and eventually deciding to return to camp rather than follow through with their orders. In any case Aloysius deduced that his opponent was most likely attempting a re-run of Cannae and responded by having Andronikos drive a massed offensive wedge comprised of his stoutest legionaries and federate heavy troops through the weak Islamic center even as the cavalry on his own wings seemingly retreated before their counterparts, practically egging the Arabs on to close their trap. When they did just that, he rallied his horsemen to attack the Muslim pincers, effectively encircling the encirclers of his heavy infantry (who were still valiantly holding out despite being under attack from all sides).
The Islamic ranks collapsed in disarray at this development and to the Emperor's delight even Al-Khorasani himself was killed, separated from his bodyguards in the chaos and cut down by a squadron of eager young knights: the old generalissimo fought well in his own defense, but not only was he no longer nearly as spry and deadly as he was in his own youth, but he faced 8:1 odds and his opponents were practically competing for the opportunity to be the one to present his head to Aloysius. However, the Romans' declaration of victory and tossing of the hard discipline which had just seemingly won them the battle so they could go & pillage the Islamic camp was rather premature. Al-Turani's lost division returned in time to witness the Romans sacking their encampment and although the temptation to flee from what appeared to be a crushing defeat must have been great, this last Islamic general standing exhorted them to launch into an attack, snatching victory from the maw of defeat by driving the shocked & confused Romans into retreat. Caliph Ahmad was found far away from his litter, having jumped into a well to avoid being captured or killed by the Romans, and after being fished out of there (and swearing the ghilman who helped him back up to never speak of this embarrassing episode again) finally received an offer to negotiate terms of truce from Aloysius' camp.
Since this war had been a generally evenly matched back-and-forth, with both sides winning and losing a similar number of battles (and none of these engagements, not even the most significant Roman defeat at Edessa, being crippling blows), Ahmad pursued moderate terms for the Treaty of Aleppo and Aloysius agreed. In exchange for a lump-sum payment of reparations from Kufa for starting the conflict, Aleppo & Harran were returned and the remaining Ghassanid territories were conceded to the power of Islam, including Edessa itself. Though the Romans still controlled these cities at the time, they didn't have the manpower to actually hold any of them for long in the face of a determined Muslim offensive, and both parties knew it.
The Ghassanids and other Christian Arab nobility would be compensated with estates and high office in the Prefecture of the Orient, ultimately integrating into the Constantinopolitan nobility to a great extent much as the exiled Sassanids had. They would also be allowed to bring with them the holy Mandylion (the 'icon not made by hands', a relic in the form of a cloth with the face of Christ imprinted upon it which first came into the possession of Edessa's Christian king Abgar; not to be confused with Jesus' burial shroud, appropriately named the Holy Shroud, or the Veil of Veronica which the eponymous saintess used to wipe the Savior's brow on his road to Calvary), which would be held at Constantinople for safekeeping until and unless Christendom ever retook Edessa. While these gains were not especially grand relative to the cost, Ahmad sold his victory as a great triumph over the Banu Ghassan, who had earned a special and bitter acrimony with their kindred for being the champions of the Arab Christians and one of Rome's primary eastern shields against Islamic expansion; meanwhile, Aloysius had managed to limit his losses in the East, killed the Islamic generals most responsible for Alexander's death, earn some financial compensation for his troubles, and was free to finally get around to delivering Britannia from the fury of the Norsemen.
Following the Treaty of Aleppo, the 'Icon Not Made By Hands' from Edessa joined the ranks of other relics such as the True Cross and the Lance of Longinus which had been 'exiled' from their rightful sanctuaries in the Holy Land, and would serve as one of many motivators for the Romans to fight to retake the eastern lands which they had been slowly but steadily losing to Islam
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[1] Deva Victrix – Chester.
[2] Wakefield.
[3] Bagras, Turkey.
[4] Kilis.
[5] Birecik.
[6] Memphis, Tennessee. Its core is what's now known as Chucalissa, an archaeological site within the T. O. Fuller State Park.
[7] Vectis – the Isle of Wight.
[8] Tanatus – the Isle of Thanet.
[9] Crieff.
[10] Garelochhead.
[11] Lough Ramor.
[12] Camulodunum – Colchester.
[13] The River Little Ouse.
[14] Thetford. This alternate British Romance/Brydany name is comparable to French Belleau ('fair stream').
[15] Fermoy.
[16] Limerick.
[17] Sawran.
[18] Bizaah.
[19] Camalet – Cadbury Castle, Somerset.
[20] Windsor, Berkshire. The name is a Brydany approximation of Old English Windlesora (the origin of the modern name 'Windsor'), 'winch by the river' – 'avon' for river, 'geoíne' being derived from the Latin ciconia or crane.
[21] Calleva Atrebatum – Silchester.
[22] Venta Belgarum – Winchester.
[23] Durocornovium – Swindon.
[24] Sylva Magna – Selwood Forest.
[25] The Afrin River.
[26] Derbent.
[27] The former Barbalissos near Maskanah, Aleppo.
[28] Kirriemuir.
Flóki himself and Hrafn assaulted the part of the walls which were most thinly defended, overcoming it and leading to the fall of Eoforwic soon after. Osric meanwhile had been killed by their brothers Einarr and Steinn as well as Amleth, who had evidently decided that the son of their father's killer did not deserve the honor of a one-on-one duel and swarmed him together, and the Vikings sacked the city in their triumph – only the Pelagian community, who painted an eight-pointed cross on their doors with woad in imitation of the first Passover, were spared from the inevitable whirlwind of pillaging, murder and rapine, with Flóki himself even reportedly killing at least one over-eager Viking who tried to ignore this signal (which the Pelagians had arranged with him well in advance) and break down one such door. However the other Rædwaldings were not present to be captured & held for ransom or offered up to the Norse gods as blood sacrifices (Old Nor.: blót), having evacuated at Osric's order. His own household had gone north to take shelter with his father-in-law Æthelred the Open-Handed, the High Reeve (Old English: hēahgerēfa) of Bebbanburh, but as his children were still underage the English kingship next passed by the Witan's collective will to his brother Osbald, who had gone west to collect those soldiers who hadn't gone to Turcesige as well as scattered stragglers from their father's army.
Osric the Saxon and his household guards (Eng.: 'heorðgeneatas', 'hearth-companions') make their last stand against the oncoming Ráðbarðrsons
Osbald and his other brothers led these ragged remnants to Déuarí[1], where they finally linked up with the Ríodam Guí – he had originally planned to march directly to Turcesige and join Eadulf there once the weather cleared, but since the Vikings struck more quickly than he could have imagined and had made no secret of their laying waste to the English countryside, he had promptly changed course. This combined army moved out to threaten the fallen Eoforwic (or as its Viking conquerors now called it, 'Jórvík'), not only because they had the best chance of any single force still standing on the British Isles to resist this 'Great Heathen Army' but also to buy time for Æthelred to prepare the defenses of northern England & protect Osric's family. The Vikings, who had been planning to burn down Bebbanburh next, were compelled to change course and face the Anglo-British alliance at the Battle of Wacafeld[2], thereby fulfilling that strategic aim at least.
Though even their combined strength (4/5ths of which was British) still amounted to barely half the size of the Viking invasion army, the allies presented the first serious challenge for the Vikings here: the Norse archers & skirmishers' missile exchange with the British longbowmen rapidly turned into a massacre favoring the latter, forcing the Ráðbarðrsons to immediately charge across the open field and push through the withering fire to get into melee combat as quickly as possible, only for the superior British cavalry to charge from the nearby woods and rout their own handful of horsemen before rushing their flanks. The Ráðbarðrsons' leadership prevented a rout in that moment and the Norsemen's sheer weight of numbers eventually gave them the victory in the end, but the English & British were able to withdraw in good order and Guí most certainly denied them the pleasure of collecting his head.
Meanwhile in the east, the Viking invasion of Britain was far from the mind of Aloysius III, for the Emperor was instead focused on trying to regain Edessa from the claws of his Caliphal counterpart. The Romans' main army enjoyed greater success in this endeavor than their British federates had against the Norsemen throughout 871: first they defeated Al-Khorasani and Al-Jannabi in the Battle of the Syrian Gates near Pagrae[3], then they rolled the Hashemites back toward Edessa with further victories at Ciliza[4] and Birtha[5], and finally got around to placing the fallen Ghassanid capital back under siege near the end of the year. Ahmad, meanwhile, managed to scrounge up additional reinforcements from his Persian subjects in exchange for furthering the Aryanophilic policies of his forefathers – thus avoiding having to beg his Alid cousins for help and offering concessions like a resumption of raids on the Indian border, which could very well have reopened the Salankayana-Chandra front – and brought these up to support Al-Khorasani in trying to break the Roman siege.
In Aloysiana across the Atlantic, the men of Dakaruniku found that wherever they went, the local Wildermen tended to die in great numbers from the diseases (mostly fevers) they themselves had survived before and were now immune to – much as had once happened to them in the dark days following first contact with the New World Britons. Besides being interpreted as an obvious sign that the gods favored them over their neighbors rather than any quirk of natural biology, this development suited Naahneesídakúsu just fine, since it weakened his enemies and made them even more amenable to the idea of simply surrendering to his emissary than waging an increasingly obviously doomed struggle against his war-host. Ultimately, while he would be unable to reach the mouth of the great Míssissépe (or as the Dakarunikuans called it, 'Warú-Das-Darahčiiš', the 'Swift Holy Waters') by the end of his lifetime, he did get as far as the mound-town of Akánuʾwihax[6] (Mis.: 'Big House'), which occupied a strategic point overlooking the course of that river and thus represented a strategically important acquisition for the rising warlord – all the better that it and many other such conquests were made with much in the way of threats and cajoling, but relatively little bloodshed compared to how Kádaráš-rahbád would have approached them.
The riverine city of Akánuʾwihax, an important acquisition by the men of Dakaruniku along the course of the Míssissépe/Warú-Das-Darahčiiš
Throughout 872, the war in Britannia found itself short of major engagements: rather, both the Anglo-British and the Norse spent most of their time maneuvering against the other and trying to set up favorable conditions for when they should fight their next pitched battle. In particular, the Vikings turned their attention south, away from Bebbanburh – after all, not only had the Britons shown themselves to be a more formidable threat, but the English royals of fighting age and their remaining forces were located in that direction – and aggressively harried both the British hinterland and coasts, destroying no small number of villages and driving their surviving inhabitants to seek shelter at the nearest lord's castle from the marshy Iceni coast to the isle of Gueth[7]. Their only notable territorial acquisition this year was the easterly island of Thaneth[8], which was secured by Flóki and Steinn as a base from which to stage more extensive attacks against eastern Britain later.
The battles were fiercer and the fronts moved more quickly in the independent Celtic kingdoms in 872. Map Beòthu had seized both the Pictish capital at Pheairt and the sacred site of Sgoin on the onset of his civil war with the sons of Dungarth, and successfully defended both against the rival princes in the Battle of Craoibh[9], but while the Picts were busy shedding one another's blood in this and other engagements, Óttar of the Isles had landed in Cait once again – this time with some 2,000 men – and rapidly overtook the northern shores of the kingdom, driving all those Picts who he did not kill or else bent the knee before his advance into the rugged highlands. Now in late 872 Map Beòthu finally decisively defeated the princes Máelchon and Domelch map Dungarth at the Battle of Gheàrr-loch[10], breaking the resistance of their partisans for the time being: but both young men were able to escape from Pictland, and would eventually end up in Bebbanburh where they lamented the usurpation of their homeland by a vicious and tyrannical 'Witch-King' to all who would hear.
Contrary to the rumors spread by his enemies, Map Beòthu was not inclined towards senseless cruelty (he was no less nor any more ruthless than most kings in a similarly precarious position had to be) nor reviving the ancient druidic faith of the Celts at Christianity's expense (despite his indulgence in superstition and consorting with woods-witches, the king remained at least nominally a Christian himself). Arguably he couldn't have done such things even if he wanted to, anyway – because he now had to dedicate all of his time and resources to combating the rising threat posed by the Norsemen of the Isles, who had overrun nearly half his kingdom by the end of 872. He did strike up an alliance with the Irish High King Muiredach Mac Donnchad Uí Néill, himself a far less controversial and unambiguously Christian figure, who in turn had been off to a good start in the war against their common Norse enemies, in his case achieving a number of victories over the men of Dyflin which culminated in a fairly significant triumph at Loch Ramhar[11].
Map Beòthu was many things, few of them good; the Romans and their allies considered him at best a greedy and hateful usurper, at worst a crypto-pagan who consorted with witches. But few would deny that he was a much more brutally effective leader than his predecessor, and perhaps the king the Picts needed to fend off the Viking threat of the 870s
On the eastern front, unlike their subjects in Britannia the Romans were due to fight another major battle against the Arabs this year. Al-Khorasani marched to relieve the besieged Al-Jannabi in Edessa with some 32,000 men in the summer of 872, while Emperor Aloysius stood ready to oppose him with a similarly-sized army. Since their forces were more or less evenly matched and neither veteran commander was inclined to just slog it out conventionally without employing any battlefield trickery, both the Augustus Imperator and the Islamic generalissimo resolved to concentrate their strength against one part of the other's battle-line in hopes of breaking through there and rolling up the rest of the enemy host. The Romans massed in the center, intent on cleaving the Saracens in half and rolling up their divided flanks afterward; whereas Al-Khorasani deployed his men in an oblique formation with a strong and greatly advanced left wing, his objective being to break the Roman right before turning to crush their center & left.
Both the Romans and the Arabs achieved their initial goals, with the Saracen center giving way before a great offensive wedge directed by the Emperor while the Roman right in turn was crunched beneath the Muslims' own assault. Alexander Caesar had commanded the Roman right wing and fell there, hounded and cut down by a squadron of Islamic ghilman despite his best efforts to fend them off, yet news of the imperial heir's demise (while sure to have baleful consequences for the Aloysian line of succession) did not faze his ever-steely father, who was reported to have remarked "Many thousands of soldiers have died and will continue to die for God and for Rome today. There is no time to mourn any lone one of them over-much above the rest," before returning to doggedly fighting on. The Roman center pressed forward and broke past the Arab reserve contingent, threatening even the Caliphal encampment: but there the elite qaraghilman and remnants of that reserve contingent managed to stand and fight long enough for the main Saracen force to break the Romans' other wing and wheel around to attack the main body of the imperial army.
The Islamic army then converged upon the Roman one from multiple directions, a dangerous position to be sure. In a testament to his grit and martial ability, Aloysius managed to redirect his legions against the Muslim wing and break through their ranks to reach safety in the west, even despite that being the strongest part of their army. But although this Battle of Edessa had not been as catastrophic as the one Emperor Valerian fought with the Sassanids six centuries before, and enough of the Roman army had survived to ensure that they weren't yet down for the count, it still represented a significant defeat for the Holy Roman Empire and one of the larger Islamic victories in recent decades. Aside from the fallen Alexander, whose corpse Ahmad had returned to his father in a gesture of respect (and to try to facilitate a truce on account of the Muslims' casualties from Edessa being quite high as well), the Bulgar Khan Belkermak and Al-Ayham were both slain as well. The Cilician Bulgars would endure: but Edessa it seemed would be the final doom of the Ghassanids, for although their royal house remained extant through Al-Ayham's young children & siblings, the losses they sustained on that battlefield broke what remained of their power and closed the door on any realistic chance of them recovering their (already greatly truncated) kingdom.
Alexander Caesar struggles to fend off the elite Turkic ghilman swarming him on the battlefield before Edessa
In China meanwhile, the Liang and Han finally reached a truce and began peace negotiations after more inconclusive fighting, culminating in a final series of counteroffensives in both the west and east by the True Han by which they were respectively able to expel the last Liang garrisons in the mountains & woods around Xiangyang but not to establish, much less expand, a beach-head on the northern banks of the Lower Yangtze. Gangzong and Duzong agreed to return to the original borders of their empires – mostly running on the Yangtze, with the exception of the Han exclave centered around Xiangyang – which, at first glance, seemed as though the rival dynasties had just expended an enormous amount of effort and lives to end up in more or less the same situation they were in at the start of the century. However, not only had they tested each other's strength once more and taken some valuable lessons from this war – certainly the True Han will be sure not to appoint any more princes-of-the-blood to positions of great import for starters, instead relying on their mandarins and generals of lower birth – but a more prominent strategic development had taken place in the north, where the Jurchens had managed to gain ascendancy over the Khitans in large part thanks to the conflict with the Han greatly reducing the Liang's ability to support their allies up north. The Liang may have won this round, but they now had to worry about the next one being a proper two-front war against both the Han and the rising power of the Jin.
After a relatively quiet 872 full of maneuvers and 'foraging' rather than dramatic pitched battles and sieges, the Sons of Ráðbarðr returned to form in 873 with audacious offensives targeting the Ríodam's realm, striking at Guí and Osbald before the latter two could engage in their own counter-offensive against the Vikings. After inflicting further defeats on the British fleet throughout spring, the Norsemen used Thaneth to safely bypass the difficult terrain of the Fens entirely and begin landing in force in southern Icenia & near Lundéne, and their first target for a storming & sacking was Camalóui[12] – a grievous insult which Guí had to answer, for it was also the hometown of the Pendragon dynasty. This Flóki knew and intended, for the strategist among the Ráðbarðrsons hoped to draw the British High King into battle on ground more favorable for the Norse and got his chance when the allied army reached a ford on the Lesser Metaris[13].
When the British and English attempted to cross at Bellol[14], the Vikings were waiting in ambush (having taken hostages from among the leading village families to force them into pretending that nothing was amiss) and inflicted a resounding defeat on the allies before they could finish moving their full strength over the ford. The British longbowmen did not seem so formidable when caught unprepared and out of position, and Guí himself was badly wounded in the retreat. Following this victory some of the Norsemen hoped to pillage north- and westward into the British hinterland, but the Ráðbarðrsons maintained discipline and directed their army towards Lundéne instead. Panic was already setting in at the British capital as news of the Battle of Bellol's outcome spread, but the city's stout defenses and considerable stockpile of supplies might have still allowed its outnumbered garrison to hold out until help could arrive from the continent.
Alas for the defenders, a fortuitously timed Pelagian uprising within the walls – carefully planned to launch alongside the Norsemen's own assault and to secure the city's northern gatehouse for their benefit – fatally compromised their carefully planned defenses. As a reward for their allies the Norsemen installed the Pelagians' local leader Guílodhin (Old Brit.: 'Gwylyddyn') as the city's bishop and burnt his Ionian counterpart Guidelén (Lat.: 'Vitalianus') at the stake, as had happened to many a Pelagian heretic, on his order. 873 would thus end with the Norsemen in control of both the English and British capitals, while the defenders of Christian Britannia were left in great disarray and lamented Guidelén's death as a martyr.
Norse fireships leading the amphibious segment of the great Viking assault on Lundéne, their flames further serving as a signal for the Pelagians within the city to rise up
Beyond Roman borders, the other Celtic Christians at least were having a better time. Map Beòthu resolved that the best way to win the loyalty of his recalcitrant new subjects would be to deliver them from the fury of the Norsemen, and although his weakened army could not hold Pheairt against Óttar's army when the latter landed, he was at least able to defend the holy site of Sguin in a sanguinary battle to the north. This was the extent of Map Beòthu's major engagements this year, as he now needed to rebuild his depleted forces in the Caledonian Highlands and was limited to taking opportunistic swipes at the Norsemen who had stormed his kingdom's shores until that was done. Across the Irish Sea, High King Muiredach's offensive continued to gain steam as he won the loyalty of the petty-kings of Connachta and Mumhain, with whom he crushed an attempt by the Norsemen in the west to come to Dyflin's aid in the Battle of Carntierna[15]. Those Vikings who had settled at Corcaigh surrendered and were drafted into opposing their kindred to the east, while the Vikings of Hlymrekr[16] were killed to the last man and their settlement sacked sometime after their great defeat.
News that his British subjects were now groaning beneath the axes of an invader even more troublesome than the Anglo-Saxons had once been, and that Adalric still struggled to assemble a fleet capable of challenging the Norsemen in the North Sea (much less crossing to finally relieve the beleaguered Britons & Saxons), represented a new and most undesired frustration for Aloysius. After all, the Emperor was still grappling with the demise of his only son and the trouble this caused for the line of succession – the Stilichians duly sent him their condolences but he had the feeling that it was an insincere gesture, especially since Alexander's death without lawful issue cleared the way for his grandson, Alexandra's second child and firstborn son Stéléggu to become the most obvious contender for the purple. Furthermore, he was still at war with the Muslims who were eager to press their renewed advantage after the Battle of Edessa, and while sending the Italian fleets to fight in the North Sea seemed like the most straightforward way to clear a path for Adalric's army, that was not possible as long as the Saracens still threatened the eastern Mediterranean.
As usual however, once the Emperor had collected his thoughts, he tackled this assortment of thorny challenges with an understated grit and determination. No pronouncement would come from Aloysius on the matter of succession yet: neither the toddler Stéléggu (being a female-line descendant of his) nor Alexander the Arab (having been born out of wedlock) were qualified to succeed him both under the law and in his own mind, and instead he resolved to remarry and father another son as soon as he could, even though he was getting up there in years. And as for the Muslims, he spurned all suggestion of negotiating a surrender or even ceasefire, not that Ahmad or Al-Khorasani would have settled for anything less than Antioch in their euphoria over the smashing success outside Edessa anyway. Despite now being at a disadvantage, the Augustus Imperator and faithful Duke Andronikos turned back overconfident attempts by the Saracens to advance upon Antioch at the Battles of Souran[17] and Beselatha[18] this year.
The Holy Roman Emperor Aloysius III on a rare break, aged 54 as of 874 but looking at least ten years older due to the stresses of constant warfare, and now also having to cope with the loss of his heir & consequently a looming succession crisis
The Viking onslaught kept on coming throughout 874, as the Sons of Ráðbarðr were not sated by their conquest of Lundéne and eager to sustain the momentum of their offensive before their enemies could catch a breath. Guí II died of his injuries in the early winter months of this year and was duly succeeded by his son Artur IX, who had barely been crowned in the fortress of Camalué[19] and made arrangements with Osbald for his marriage to the latter's niece, Osric's daughter Cynehild (though the wedding itself would have to wait for some time, for she was presently stuck in Bebbanburh) when he was forced to contend with the Norsemen swarming out of his fallen capital. Artur's reign was off to a poor start as the Vikings smashed through the Anglo-British defense at Avongeoíne[20] and then again at Gelleu[21], with his younger brother Guítri (Old Brit.: 'Gwydre') laying down his life to ensure the new Ríodam would safely escape.
It was then that the Ráðbarðrsons decided to split up so as to gain the most ground possible, not only because they were now confident that their victory was imminent, but also because dissent was swelling in their own ranks and putting pressure on them to do so: their own increasingly impatient warriors wanted to start actually settling & enjoying the fruits of their triumphs. Einarr & Hrafn (and Amleth) went back north to finish off the English while Flóki & Gunnarr remained in the south to crush the Pendragons, and Steinn would continue to guard the seas against the Roman forces marshaling on the continent. The English and British, however, did not split their own forces up in response, for Artur successfully argued that they needed to hold their remaining army together and that their chance of victory would dramatically improve if they concentrated their strength against the divided Viking armies in detail.
A British peasant trying to defend an abbot during a Viking attack on one of their inland monasteries, which unfortunately laid in the path of the Ráðbarðrsons' westward rampage
Artur's wisdom in this matter was proven toward the end of 874, despite additional summertime setbacks in the form of the Viking sack of Guenté[22] and another defeat at Flóki's hand in the Battle of Cornogóui[23], the latter being made all the more painful by the Vikings having the audacity to taunt him with his brother's head on a spear. But as the Norse advanced deeper into the British West Country, threatening to split the Pendragons' Dumnonic possessions away from their last remaining major city of Gloué, the Ríodam found his chance to turn the tables and seized it with both hands at the Battle of Magne-Sylve[24]. A squadron of British horse-archers, the handful of knights in Pendragon service who had managed to retain their Sarmatian ancestors' tradition of mounted archery, drew the Viking army into attacking his English allies on the edge of these western woodlands. The still-much more numerous Vikings overwhelmed Osbald's shield-wall and killed him, but as they chased the fleeing Englishmen into the forest which gave the battlefield its name, the majority of the British and English troops (now led by Osric & Osbald's younger brother and successor, Oswiu) promptly ambushed them.
Caught out of formation on difficult terrain, the Vikings received their first serious defeat of the campaign here: Gunnarr the Amorous was among the thousand Norsemen killed, making it as far as a forest meadow where he tried and failed to form the men he still had with him up into a shield-wall, and his own severed head was among many others in a sack later brought to Flóki by the only Norse prisoner kept alive (only to be released after first being mutilated) by the vengeful Artur. News of this grisly loss reached Jórvík just in time to spoil Einarr's coronation as King of the Norsemen of Britain there, and unsurprisingly infuriated the remaining Sons of Ráðbarðr beyond reason – Einarr himself would sack Déuarí in his rage after first procuring that isolated city's surrender under the false promise of lenient treatment. While Artur worked to stabilize his new front-line against the Norsemen, one which stretched from the eastern edges of Cambria's mountains to old Dumnonia's border in the south and was anchored at Gloué, Einarr and Amleth marched south to rejoin Flóki and crush the Britons once & for all, leaving Hrafn to set out north with orders to extinguish the last significant center of English resistance at Bebbanburh.
Victorious British & English soldiers of Artur and Oswiu's army prying the raven banner from the soon-to-be cold & dead hands of Ráðbarðr's middle son in a clearing in the Magne-Sylve
Off in the east, Aloysius III began his own new offensive against the Arabs after first bringing additional Balkan reinforcements from over the Bosphorus to strengthen his army, hoping to end this war quickly so as to be able to throw his full strength at the Vikings presently laying waste to Britannia. The Saracens drew them into battle on what they thought would be favorable ground on the River Ufrenus[25], but were caught off-guard by Aloysius' decision to have smaller detachments cross at unguarded fords further up that river from his army's main crossing point, who then emerged to attack Al-Khorasani's flank overland when battle was joined some days later. Further up north, though much of the Georgians' strength might be presently committed to the imperial army, they mustered enough soldiers to launch a destructive incursion into Azerbaijan with help from the Alans and Caucasian Avars, with only Bab al-Abwab[26] managing to hold out against them and eventually having to bribe the besieging army to leave due to the Muslims' over-commitment to the Levantine front leaving them with no spare troops to relieve the city.
The Romans managed to drive the Saracens back over the Euphrates with the ferocity of their initial onslaught, isolating Edessa (which was besieged once more) and also threatening Aleppo and Harran. The former city was captured by treachery, as some of the kin of the Roman collaborators previously executed by Ahmad sabotaged one of its gates for the Romans, who promptly stormed in and sacked the place; Harran meanwhile surrendered without much of a fight yet again, the second time they had done so before Aloysius in this war, which got him to contemptuously deride the Harrani people as cowards in his private notes. Only Edessa's garrison still held out, fearing that Aloysius would kill them all if they yielded. However Al-Khorasani rallied the armies of Islam to finally stop the Roman offensive in the Battle of Balis[27], and after regaining their footing the Saracens made plans to come to Edessa's relief and to definitively drive the Romans out of the territories being contested in this conflict, including the former Ghassanid lands.
The Norse continued their westward attacks on the Anglo-British coalition straight through 875. For his part, Artur understood that the disparity in the numbers between their armies made pitched battle a risky proposition, and that he would be best-off avoiding it unless the Vikings could be brought to battle in favorable conditions (or if he could manufacture those favorable conditions himself) as had been the case with the Battle of Magne-Sylve, and so generally avoided direct confrontation with the vindictive heathens coming for his head. Instead, the Ríodam relied on his cavalry advantage to harass the advancing Vikings, using the preponderance of small castles and fortified manors dating back to Britannia's days as an independent kingdom surrounded by enemies as bases for this method of warfare and also to further slow the Norsemen – thus buying himself time enough to hold out for help from the mainland.
When the Sons of Ráðbarðr slowly and painfully pushed their way past this network of defenses and the constant back-biting attacks on their armies to reach the western limits of Roman Britain, they further found their path obstructed by natural barriers: the Cambrian Mountains in the north, and the swamps & woodland of Dumnonia in the south which had already proven so problematic for Flóki & Gunnarr. Sheer numbers and grit carried the Norsemen far as they had done before, and for a few short weeks they placed Artur himself under siege in Camalué: but in a smaller-scale recreation of Ørvendil's logistical woes when he invaded Treveria the constant raids on their supply-lines from those British castles they had been unable to conquer on the way, a lack of villages to 'forage' from (their denizens having withdrawn to said castles with their resources well in advance) and the inhospitable terrain of the Dumnonian Levels by which they camped ultimately forced Flóki to withdraw in failure. A similar attack on Gloué by Einarr also faltered before its stout Roman walls on account of its English & British defenders being ready, numerous enough to properly man those defenses, and the lack of a meaningful Pelagian underground community which could sabotage the defenders there as their compatriots had done in Lundéne – Artur had launched a hunt for said Pelagians before the Vikings could arrive, and his soldiers left their burnt corpses tied to stakes outside the city to intimidate the oncoming Norse besiegers.
A skirmish between Norse warriors and dismounted British knights (Bry.: 'cavalier') in the mud & reeds of the Dumnonian Levels
Up north, Hrafn was not having any more luck with sieges than his older siblings, for an outbreak of disease at his camp forced him to withdraw and allowed the English holdouts up there to breathe a little more easily. The 'Witch-King' of Pictland was also back on the warpath this year: the Norsemen of the Isles made some headway further inland and captured Sguin earlier in 875, but they did not get to savor their victory for long before Map Beòthu descended from the highlands with a new army. He launched an audacious night assault on Óttar's army as the Norse were still marshaling to invade his mountain stronghold at Céthramh Mhoire[28], with forward elements of his army approaching the Viking camp wearing coats with branches, grasses and flowers attached, so as to disguise themselves as bushes and small trees until they got close enough to attack the Norse guards at Óttar's palisade with javelins and arrows. Map Beòthu followed up this victory by driving the Norse from Sguin and Pheairt, demonstrating to Óttar that the Picts could not be taken lightly even in the aftermath of a civil war. This trend of reversing Viking fortunes took a more positive turn – with misfortune turning to good fortune for a change, rather than the other way around – in Ireland, where Muiredach attempted to go for the Hiberno-Norsemen's throats after his victories in the past few years and besieged Dyflin but was routed when the defenders unexpectedly mounted a forceful sally against him.
While the war in Britain had become a holding action, the one in the east was fast approaching its climax. As Al-Khorasani needed to raise quite a substantial number of reinforcements to replenish his ranks after the battles of the previous years, the Arabs were unable to move quickly enough to save Edessa from falling back into Roman hands. Roman siege engineering made quicker work of that city's already-damaged defenses than the Saracens had hoped, and since Al-Jannabi did not consider yielding even at the last possible moment (before the Roman ram touched the city gates), the victorious Christians ruthlessly wiped out the Islamic garrison to the last man to avenge the death of their Caesar. With this last thorn in his rear lines removed, Aloysius could turn and face the Muslims advancing against Aleppo, meeting them for another major battle on a plain near the Arab village of Deir Hafir.
Old Al-Khorasani deployed his army in a very different fashion than at the Battle of Edessa three years prior, strengthening both of his wings (rather than just one) at the expense of his center. He also took advantage of his superior numbers to detach a division under Al-Turani with orders to circle around Aloysius' army entirely, attack their camp and cut off their retreat so that he could hopefully totally annihilate the Rūmī in this engagement, but Al-Turani's inability to read the map he was given resulted in these men getting lost and eventually deciding to return to camp rather than follow through with their orders. In any case Aloysius deduced that his opponent was most likely attempting a re-run of Cannae and responded by having Andronikos drive a massed offensive wedge comprised of his stoutest legionaries and federate heavy troops through the weak Islamic center even as the cavalry on his own wings seemingly retreated before their counterparts, practically egging the Arabs on to close their trap. When they did just that, he rallied his horsemen to attack the Muslim pincers, effectively encircling the encirclers of his heavy infantry (who were still valiantly holding out despite being under attack from all sides).
The Islamic ranks collapsed in disarray at this development and to the Emperor's delight even Al-Khorasani himself was killed, separated from his bodyguards in the chaos and cut down by a squadron of eager young knights: the old generalissimo fought well in his own defense, but not only was he no longer nearly as spry and deadly as he was in his own youth, but he faced 8:1 odds and his opponents were practically competing for the opportunity to be the one to present his head to Aloysius. However, the Romans' declaration of victory and tossing of the hard discipline which had just seemingly won them the battle so they could go & pillage the Islamic camp was rather premature. Al-Turani's lost division returned in time to witness the Romans sacking their encampment and although the temptation to flee from what appeared to be a crushing defeat must have been great, this last Islamic general standing exhorted them to launch into an attack, snatching victory from the maw of defeat by driving the shocked & confused Romans into retreat. Caliph Ahmad was found far away from his litter, having jumped into a well to avoid being captured or killed by the Romans, and after being fished out of there (and swearing the ghilman who helped him back up to never speak of this embarrassing episode again) finally received an offer to negotiate terms of truce from Aloysius' camp.
Since this war had been a generally evenly matched back-and-forth, with both sides winning and losing a similar number of battles (and none of these engagements, not even the most significant Roman defeat at Edessa, being crippling blows), Ahmad pursued moderate terms for the Treaty of Aleppo and Aloysius agreed. In exchange for a lump-sum payment of reparations from Kufa for starting the conflict, Aleppo & Harran were returned and the remaining Ghassanid territories were conceded to the power of Islam, including Edessa itself. Though the Romans still controlled these cities at the time, they didn't have the manpower to actually hold any of them for long in the face of a determined Muslim offensive, and both parties knew it.
The Ghassanids and other Christian Arab nobility would be compensated with estates and high office in the Prefecture of the Orient, ultimately integrating into the Constantinopolitan nobility to a great extent much as the exiled Sassanids had. They would also be allowed to bring with them the holy Mandylion (the 'icon not made by hands', a relic in the form of a cloth with the face of Christ imprinted upon it which first came into the possession of Edessa's Christian king Abgar; not to be confused with Jesus' burial shroud, appropriately named the Holy Shroud, or the Veil of Veronica which the eponymous saintess used to wipe the Savior's brow on his road to Calvary), which would be held at Constantinople for safekeeping until and unless Christendom ever retook Edessa. While these gains were not especially grand relative to the cost, Ahmad sold his victory as a great triumph over the Banu Ghassan, who had earned a special and bitter acrimony with their kindred for being the champions of the Arab Christians and one of Rome's primary eastern shields against Islamic expansion; meanwhile, Aloysius had managed to limit his losses in the East, killed the Islamic generals most responsible for Alexander's death, earn some financial compensation for his troubles, and was free to finally get around to delivering Britannia from the fury of the Norsemen.
Following the Treaty of Aleppo, the 'Icon Not Made By Hands' from Edessa joined the ranks of other relics such as the True Cross and the Lance of Longinus which had been 'exiled' from their rightful sanctuaries in the Holy Land, and would serve as one of many motivators for the Romans to fight to retake the eastern lands which they had been slowly but steadily losing to Islam
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[1] Deva Victrix – Chester.
[2] Wakefield.
[3] Bagras, Turkey.
[4] Kilis.
[5] Birecik.
[6] Memphis, Tennessee. Its core is what's now known as Chucalissa, an archaeological site within the T. O. Fuller State Park.
[7] Vectis – the Isle of Wight.
[8] Tanatus – the Isle of Thanet.
[9] Crieff.
[10] Garelochhead.
[11] Lough Ramor.
[12] Camulodunum – Colchester.
[13] The River Little Ouse.
[14] Thetford. This alternate British Romance/Brydany name is comparable to French Belleau ('fair stream').
[15] Fermoy.
[16] Limerick.
[17] Sawran.
[18] Bizaah.
[19] Camalet – Cadbury Castle, Somerset.
[20] Windsor, Berkshire. The name is a Brydany approximation of Old English Windlesora (the origin of the modern name 'Windsor'), 'winch by the river' – 'avon' for river, 'geoíne' being derived from the Latin ciconia or crane.
[21] Calleva Atrebatum – Silchester.
[22] Venta Belgarum – Winchester.
[23] Durocornovium – Swindon.
[24] Sylva Magna – Selwood Forest.
[25] The Afrin River.
[26] Derbent.
[27] The former Barbalissos near Maskanah, Aleppo.
[28] Kirriemuir.
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PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
The succession of Aloysious III will be interesting, you hinted several times on future usurpers, once Aloysious dies there will likely be instability for generations, giving islam more opportunity for expansion, tempered only by possible fitna or two.
I wonder if it worked
I wonder if it worked
Interesting that Al-Turani's inability to read a map saved the Muslims. Cause if he had sacked the Roman camp, both armies would be sitting on each other's camps, but the Muslim supreme general would still be dead and their Caliph captured.
Yeah, Aloysius is going to find it near impossible to get a son to adulthood in his remaining lifespan. And Roman Emperors, with supreme warlord as their core responsibility, have a very hard time justifying prolonged underage regencies. Same for Germanic tribal kingship. And both have a long tradition of female line inheritance (or simple legitimization by marriage), going back to Augustus for Romans.
As for the inability to regain naval control of the North Sea, clearly they aren't using enough Greek Fire. Historically of course, the Byzantines held Greek Fire so closely secret at Constantinople that they rarely even issued it to their frontline fleets, such that multiple times, when those fleets joined usurpers, they got fried tried to blockade Constantinople. So secret that the whole thing was lost in one of the disturbances of the capitol. Somewhat disappointing that the Trier centered HRE is doing much the same. It's interesting to think on the possibilities of Greek Fire being much more widespread, high chance the secret gets exposed sure, but even that means more actual development and improvement. Maybe even kickstart a chemical industry of sorts.
Yeah, Aloysius is going to find it near impossible to get a son to adulthood in his remaining lifespan. And Roman Emperors, with supreme warlord as their core responsibility, have a very hard time justifying prolonged underage regencies. Same for Germanic tribal kingship. And both have a long tradition of female line inheritance (or simple legitimization by marriage), going back to Augustus for Romans.
As for the inability to regain naval control of the North Sea, clearly they aren't using enough Greek Fire. Historically of course, the Byzantines held Greek Fire so closely secret at Constantinople that they rarely even issued it to their frontline fleets, such that multiple times, when those fleets joined usurpers, they got fried tried to blockade Constantinople. So secret that the whole thing was lost in one of the disturbances of the capitol. Somewhat disappointing that the Trier centered HRE is doing much the same. It's interesting to think on the possibilities of Greek Fire being much more widespread, high chance the secret gets exposed sure, but even that means more actual development and improvement. Maybe even kickstart a chemical industry of sorts.
So,little changed in East,notching in Cina,vikings are fucked,and Dakuruniku get more lands.
Well,when vikings kicked by romans come to America,dukuruniku would be fucked,too.
P.S Those future vikings probably would be pelagians,which would not stop them from beating british pelagians there.It would be funny,if in this TL 2023 few remain british villages in America would claim,that they,not vikings,are real pelagians - and nobody would care.
Well,when vikings kicked by romans come to America,dukuruniku would be fucked,too.
P.S Those future vikings probably would be pelagians,which would not stop them from beating british pelagians there.It would be funny,if in this TL 2023 few remain british villages in America would claim,that they,not vikings,are real pelagians - and nobody would care.
The loss of Upper Mesopotamia and the destruction of a loyal Federate is a pretty serious defeat, bordering on disastrous if the Caliphate weren't exhausted doing so. The fall of Edessa triggered the 2nd Crusade after all, and long before that, the loss of most of Upper Mesopotamia to Shapur II triggered Julian's disastrous all out invasion.
As for China, historically, a Northern Dynasty pushing the border to the Yangtze is immediate prelude to reunification. This is because until the development of the Pearl River area during the Song, the Yangtze Delta made up a huge proportion of South China's economy, and a border right there threatens to cripple that. Vietnam's successful secession from China right around this time in history was in large part because the Red River region was actually the most developed in China south of the Yangtze delta, separated by mostly barely controlled tribal territory and so a state controlling the Red River declaring independence imposes huge power projection penalties on a reconquest.
How well the North or South is doing typically is judged in relation to the Huai, which at that time was a major East West artery parallel to and in between the Yellow River and Yangtze, and was considered the cultural border between North and South Chinese..
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
I wouldn't dismiss the fall of the Ghassanids too quickly. Yeah, it doesn't seem all that impressive on a map (not that the guy most responsible for ensuring this gain lasts can read those anyway), but it still does represent the loss of a strategically important march territory held by a proven vassal to Islam after hundreds of years of holding back the green tide.
So far the Romans, by way of the Aloysians' generally capable military leadership and maintaining a mostly united Christian front, have managed to significantly slow westward Islamic expansion compared to the RL Byzzies. Aside from it taking the Hashemites a century longer than it did the Rashidun/Umayyads to take the western Levant, the Caliphate's western possessions actually still aren't as expansive as those of the pre-Anarchy at Samarra Abbasids, since they haven't broken into Antioch or Cilicia or Armenia yet. And until now, the Ghassanids had consistently helped out bigly with keeping things that way at great cost to themselves - if Aloysius' succession crisis isn't handled very carefully, the situation can get pretty hairy for the HRE (at least east of the Bosphorus) pretty quickly.
Anything more & everything else, as usual, is spoiler material.
So far the Romans, by way of the Aloysians' generally capable military leadership and maintaining a mostly united Christian front, have managed to significantly slow westward Islamic expansion compared to the RL Byzzies. Aside from it taking the Hashemites a century longer than it did the Rashidun/Umayyads to take the western Levant, the Caliphate's western possessions actually still aren't as expansive as those of the pre-Anarchy at Samarra Abbasids, since they haven't broken into Antioch or Cilicia or Armenia yet. And until now, the Ghassanids had consistently helped out bigly with keeping things that way at great cost to themselves - if Aloysius' succession crisis isn't handled very carefully, the situation can get pretty hairy for the HRE (at least east of the Bosphorus) pretty quickly.
Anything more & everything else, as usual, is spoiler material.
Indeed.If HRE face cyvil war,they could lost much more.
And thanks about China info - it seems,that they would be united again.Which mean,China supporting Indio-romans against muslims again.
Which mean,islam could not do as they want even if HRE fall to civil war.
876-880: Furore Normannorum, Part II
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Having managed to grind the war in the east to a halt at long last, even at the cost of a federate kingdom and the Caesar, the Romans now spent 876 turning their attention westward. Aloysius III was no doubt in a foul mood as he did so, for this was the second time an emergent threat west of the Bosphorus distracted him from the greater conflict with the armies of Islam, but as his subjects had learned to expect, the old Emperor channeled his wrath in a cold and focused manner rather than letting it erupt like a volcano as the last two, far more outwardly emotional Aloysiuses might have done. His first priority ahead of even battling the Vikings ravaging Britain, however, was to sire a replacement for the late Alexander as quickly as possible: to that end Aloysius took Giustia (Lat.: 'Justa') Equitia, a daughter of that year's Princeps Senatus, as his second wife while moving toward Britain through Italy.
The new Augusta did not hold that office for long though, for she showed signs of pregnancy soon after her husband left Italy and gave birth to a sickly boy who nevertheless managed to survive in December, baptized as Constantine; still before the year was done, she passed away from medical complications following the birth. Aloysius did not express nearly as much grief and solemnity over this loss as he did his beloved first wife Euphrosyne, though doubtless he was grateful that she managed to give him a new male heir. The Stilichians and Aloysius' daughters by said first wife were less than pleased, and while Euphemia (having grown up disliked by both her father and elder sister for 'killing' their wife/mother and now become an abbess in Gaul) was no longer of any relevance to Roman power politics, Alexandra was keenly aware that this birth of a new brother jeopardized her chances of putting her own blood (and by extension that of her mother's) on the throne. The Skleroi's message of congratulations to their Emperor was similarly muted, for Duke Andronikos and his cohorts were already starting to gravitate toward the claim of his fallen nephew & ward's infant son Alexander the Arab (even at the cost of entering a collision course against his still-living niece), and had tried & failed to persuade Aloysius to dub him the new Caesar previously.
The complexities of dynastic politics aside, 876 also saw the first naval clashes between the Holy Roman Empire's Mediterranean armada and the Viking fleet. The mostly Greek or Italian admirals who had been tied down by clashes with an increasingly formidable Saracen navy in the Mediterranean now sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules for the choppier waters of Northern Europe with their many ships and fiery secret weapon, having been assigned with the job of clearing a path across the Channel by their Emperor, and consequently came to blows with Steinn the Strong who had been responsible for preventing Adalric from crossing said Channel for years. At the large-scale Battles of Ouessant[1] and Lisé[2] this year, the Vikings proved the fiercer warriors in the boarding actions which defined most naval engagements, but they were both outnumbered by their adversaries and had no means of countering Greek fire. Steinn was ultimately defeated and much of his fleet incinerated between these clashes, grousing to his brothers that he would have won if not for said 'sorcerous' flames, and Aloysius and Adalric only had to wait for winter's end to begin crossing over in force.
A Greek dromon deploys its lethal fire against Vikings attempting a boarding action in the waters off the isle of Lisé
With help on the way, the Britons and Anglo-Saxons now knew that they only needed to hold out until the legions arrived on their shore, while the Vikings conversely ramped up their efforts to defeat their remaining enemies in a desperate attempt to beat the clock. Flóki pulled off a major coup in the form of a diversionary attack on Gloué to cover his surprise attack on Camalué in the spring of this year, not only attacking the castle out of season and under the cover of a raging thunderstorm but furthermore catching the remaining defenders while they were celebrating Good Friday. The fortress thus fell to the heathens' assault, but to the immense frustration of the Sons of Ráðbarðr, Artur himself managed to escape into the Dumnonian Levels through a tunnel and continue directing the resistance against their invasion. Unencumbered by any real royal court to speak of at this point, the Ríodam navigated his way through the marshy countryside with the help of Pendragon partisans and eventually sailed to join his younger sister Arturia (Lat.: 'Artoria') and what remained of their household at Gloué, which would serve as his final headquarters in the war against the Norsemen.
The Fall of Camalué proved to be the high-water mark of the Norse advance into Britannia, as the array of natural & artificial barriers now standing in their path further west proved insurmountable when combined with the determined and better-prepared Christian defenders. Earthenworks, castles and natural terrain features such as wooded mountains and hills gave the British and English no shortage of advantages with which to hold back the remaining Ráðbarðrsons, who were defeated by numerically inferior Christian forces in a number of battles along a front line which stretched from Gloué to the eastern Irish Sea, of which the most serious was the Battle of Magne-Dobunne[3] where a British longbowman took out one of Einarr's eyes.
An effort by Flóki to besiege Gloué once again, this time combining those southern forces who had just taken Camalué with reinforcements from eastern Britain, was frustrated by Artur's and Oswiu's aggressive defensive strategy. Attempts to cross the Sabrénne were halted by the defenders' destruction of the bridge over the river before the Vikings even arrived as well as the fire-boats which the Britons floated downriver, preventing the Norsemen from cutting off the western approach to the city from the Britons' remaining territories in Cambria, and constant day & night raids by mounted Anglo-British parties continually hindered the Vikings' construction of crude siegeworks east of the city. Furthermore the Pelagians among Flóki's army were not experienced siege engineers, and the primitive onagers they lashed together at his command proved inferior to the mangonels with which the defenders flung missiles at their besiegers from the walls; ultimately, the siege was lifted after a failed assault following Steinn's announcement of his defeat at sea was itself followed by an outbreak of cholera late in the year.
A Norse assault force preparing to contest one of the bridges over the Sabrénne with its British & English defenders, a literal high-water mark for the campaign of the Sons of Ráðbarðr in Britannia
Beyond Rome's borders in Britain, the Picts and Irish continued to wage their own separate war against the Norse threat in their respective lands. Continuing the previous year's pattern, Map Beòthu repelled an Island Norse counterattack through which Óttar had hoped to recapture a foothold near Pheairt, then marched northward and launched his own offensive into the Norse-held coastlines of north-central Pictland, rooting the Vikings out from the coasts of Circinn and his own native Cé by the end of 876. Such success could not be said of his Irish ally Muiredach, who faced additional setbacks in the war with Dyflin – in this year, the Irish were driven from their high royal seat of Tara, and the Norsemen of Corcaigh also took advantage of Irish weakness to defect back to the side of their kindred. It would seem that after the initial victories of the Gaels, the war in Ireland was now seesawing back in the Vikings' favor.
The vanguard of the imperial legions landed in Britannia in the late spring of 877, in the form of Adalric of Swabia and his 10,000 landing at Doubrée[4] under escort by scores of war galleys & dromons. Steinn the Strong had assembled some 2,000 men with whom he attempted to fight off this landing both by sea, in a bay just east of the city proper[5] and on the beaches (including by posting archers and javelineers on the cliffs above), but was unsuccessful on both counts and had to retreat further inland in the face of the Romans' numbers and naval artillery, the uprising of the city's Ionian population at the sight of Roman & Christian banners approaching them, Greek fire and the determined fury of the Alemanni king, who had built up a head full of steam in all those years where Viking naval supremacy prevented him from marching to Britain's rescue. Still, the resistance Steinn had offered on the cliffs & walls and the need to bring more reinforcements over the Oceanus Britannicus to build on Adalric's hard-won beachhead delayed Roman maneuvers deeper into Britain and gave the Sons of Ráðbarðr time to scramble and pull their forces back together to try to stop the latter's inevitable march.
The remaining brothers got their chance a few months later, when Aloysius III himself had landed to take command and lead the Romans toward Lundéne. Behind him some 25,000 soldiers followed: a mix of grizzled veterans from the East (ranging from Italians to Africans to Greeks and Magyars), Adalric's soldiers and other federate reinforcements picked up along the Emperor's march from places like Aquitaine and Barcelona. In opposition the Ráðbarðrsons fielded some 15,000 men – reinforcements in the form of additional Norse adventurers hoping to conquer & settle had helped them replenish their losses in the previous years, but the wave of Vikings they received in this year would likely be the last unless they prevailed in the battle to come, which would be fought northwest of Novele-Hosté[6], near that port's primary mine and iron-smelting hub. To compensate for their inferior numbers and lack of cavalry, the Vikings moved with haste to secure a favorable defensive position on the slope of a high hill blocking the Romans' road northward, their flanks protected by woodland & small rivers while a marsh laid before them.
The Romans began by having their archers, who were superior in both number and skill to their Norse counterparts, advance and begin trying to whittle down the great shield-wall on the hill down with their arrows. However, the Norse were well-prepared and resisted these missiles (further hindered by the wind, which was blowing southward against the Romans that day) with ease behind their stout shields, no matter whether the arrows were coming from Syro-Greek archers or mounted African skirmishers. The marshy terrain in front of the hill, and said hill's steepness, made it exceedingly dangerous for the lightly-equipped Africans of Aloysius' army to try to get close enough to use their javelins as well. An infantry attack was ordered next, but even the doughty and heavily armored legionaries floundered in this regard: their darts stung the Norsemen, being heavy enough to punch through shields and yet possessing soft enough heads to deform and get stuck in said shields much like the older pila, but the process of marching through wet swampy ground and up the hill left them exhausted in the face of the determined Viking defense.
The Norse shield-wall bracing as the Roman heavy infantry collides with them at the Battle of Novele-Hosté. Notably there are Normans bearing kite shields in the Romans' front line, for this engagement was the first recorded instance of Christian Norsemen (in this case, of Danish extraction) battling their pagan cousins under the chi-rho
Nonetheless Emperor Aloysius was not the sort of man to give up after being confronted with obstacles like these, and sought to draw the Vikings out of their formidable defensive position with feigned retreats. His cavalry advantage would prove critical to this strategy, although it did also require him to risk his elite heavy horsemen (who had little to no chance of smashing through the Viking shield-wall conventionally in the circumstances of his engagement) once it became obvious that the Norsemen wouldn't bite at his African and Magyar horse-archers. A rush of knights and paladins failed to break the Norse wall, as the Emperor expected, but when they fell back downhill some of the Vikings followed, thinking that their apparent success at beating back the best the Empire had to offer meant they had said Empire on the ropes. Flóki strove to hold the men back, rightly suspecting a trap, but Steinn was among those who elected to pursue the Roman cavalry and his warriors followed after him. When Aloysius inevitably sprang his counterattack, spearheaded by these 'retreating' heavy cavalrymen – whose discipline had been sorely tested and yet came out gamely by their liege's strategy – and Adalric's longsword-wielding Swabians, the Vikings who had descended into the marsh were massacred and their deaths opened up a gap in the shield-wall.
The Romans were quick to press their advantage, swarming back uphill and trying to push into the hole where Steinn and his contingent had been. Equally quick thinking on the part of the remaining Ráðbarðrsons prevented them from winning the battle then and there, as their stout reserve was committed to plug this gap and push the Romans back downhill. However, the advantage was now assuredly with the Empire, and Aloysius was content to chip away at the surviving Norsemen from afar and to launch limited probing attacks against their forest and stream-protected flanks to determine additional weak points for the rest of the day. Nightfall compelled both sides to retreat to camp, but battle would doubtless be renewed on the morrow and the Romans were clearly gaining the upper hand, so much so that their victory was nearly certain in the long term. Plans for a night attack on the part of the Vikings amounted to nothing when it became clear to Einarr, Flóki and the rest that the Roman camp was too well-guarded for them to get away with such a thing, and the decision was made to withdraw from this battlefield in the early morning hours instead.
The Norse withdrawal was covered by a 3,000-strong rearguard of volunteers who took oaths to die bravely that midnight led by the elderly Thorgeir the Tower, who at this point had lived such a long and eventful life that his sole remaining ambition was to achieve a glorious exit from Miðgarðr to Valhǫll. This they achieved after sunrise, when the Romans attacked in force and slowly but surely ground them down to the last man: the Vikings were driven from their hill sometime after noon and the last of their number wiped out in a ravine to the northeast, Jarl Thorgeir himself included, who could only be identified from his corpse's massive frame. They had done well enough to buy the Ráðbarðrsons time to flee back toward Lundéne, where Einarr and Hrafn sought to make a stand on the still mostly-preserved walls while Flóki set out to contain the Anglo-British, who were now breaking out of the west and advancing to link up with their Emperor. Amid these triumphs Aloysius did receive a bit of dire news however, for Constantine Caesar suddenly perished after months of his physical condition improving, having only recently reached his first birthday; though the boy's death seemed natural enough, foul play was immediately suspected on account of all the parties who stood to gain from his removal, but the Emperor's determined inquiries ultimately failed to identify any poisoner.
Thorgeir's Vikings fighting on against the Romans even after being driven off their hill
In any case, Aloysius still had a war to fight in Britannia, and prosecuted its next steps throughout 878. Having overcome the Norse army in the field down south, his next objective was to retake Lundéne, and to that end he spent the winter and part of the spring months arranging for a massive land-and-sea assault which would hopefully crush the head of the Norse serpent in that city. Bombardment of the walls by imperial mangonels preceded a massed overland assault from the west & north spearheaded by Adalric and Yésaréyu, while Radovid Radovidov of the Dulebes (having had to leave his father behind in their homeland on account of the latter's advanced age & worsening health) captained a secondary division which sailed up the Thamis to assail the city's bridge and southern gates. Against this overwhelming pressure and with huge gaps smashed in their walls by the Roman siege artillery, the Vikings and Pelagians defending the city were slowly but surely overwhelmed over a week of fierce urban fighting, although Aloysius did not fail to note that he seemed to be fighting rather fewer than 9-10,000 Norsemen (the estimated number which successfully fled from the Battle of Novele-Hosté).
Only after they had conquered Lundéne did it become apparent to the Romans that the reason for this was that, indeed, a substantial element of the Viking army did not stay in the city but rather moved further north or west under the command of Flóki: moreover the brothers Einarr and Hrafn hadn't stayed to die in the British capital either, instead fleeing by boat and slipping through the Roman blockade an entire week before the final Roman assault. While frustrated, Aloysius was still certain that his victory was inevitable and would not allow his foes' escape to sour the post-victory celebrations, which included the burning of every single Pelagian they could identify, including the posthumous incineration of the heresiarch Guílodhin – the Pelagian 'bishop' of the city had died fighting, knowing full well he'd get no mercy if he begged for it, but this did not prevent the Romans from dragging his corpse around the city before lashing it to another pyre. At Yésaréyu's counsel plans were made to bring in outside assistance from Africa to extirpate Pelagianism for good, for after all they had retained much experience in purging heretics from their long struggle with Donatism, but no such anti-heretical tribunals would be organized until the fighting was over.
Suffice to say, the Ionian Britons and their Roman overlords were not in any mood to shake hands & let bygones be bygones with the Pelagian Remnants who they had once hoped would just quietly disappear
While the Romans continued to build on their victories by inflicting further defeats on the Vikings in the field at Verúlamy and Elaune[7], in the process uniting with the Anglo-British army of Artur & Oswiu at the latter engagement, the Vikings' conflict outside the Empire's borders also continued to rage. Map Beòthu strove to sustain his counterattack and fully drive the Island Norse into the sea this year, but hit a snag at the Battle of Þingvöll[8] where Óttar had raised a surprisingly formidable field fortification (hence the name of the site) to protect his beach-head and threw back the assaults of the Picts over several days of hard fighting. On the other hand, in 878 the tide of war to the west turned to favor the Irish once more, as Muiredach managed to separately rout the armies of Dyflin and Veisafjǫrðr before they could link up at the Battles of Cill Chainnigh[9] with the aid of his local ally, the King of Osraige.
In the east there was a transition of power in Saracen lands, for in this year Caliph Ahmad was found dead. Officially it was reported that he had drunkenly stumbled into one of the palace wells in Kufa and drowned, however this account was highly scrutinized on the grounds of the traditional Islamic prohibition on alcohol (which one would assume that a Caliph in good moral standing, at least, would observe) as well as Ahmad having no great reputation for engaging in alcoholic revelry beforehand. It was more probable that dissatisfied soldiers among his ghilman, aggravated by the relatively modest gains he'd won at the peace table despite paying such a high price in their blood and resenting having to cover up his cowardice at the Battle of Deir Hafir, arranged this poetic fate for him.
In any case, Al-Turani (having succeeded his mentor Al-Khorasani as the generalissimo of the Islamic armies) was quick to move to consolidate power and prevent anything like the civil war at the beginning of Ahmad's own reign. For Ahmad's successor he chose Ubaydallah, son of Ahmad's fourth wife Layla of the Banu Thaqif tribe: this prince was chosen over his older brothers precisely because Al-Turani had judged him to be the most pliant of the sons of Ahmad, being a short and physically unimpressive sort who much preferred astrology, astronomy and various other scholarly pursuits to statecraft or warfare, while still (barely) being old enough to nominally lead the Caliphate without requiring a regency council or otherwise raising questions about his competence. Those among Ubaydallah's brothers who didn't get the hint and accept luxurious life arrest in or around Kufa were quietly disposed of, as were those among Ahmad's ministers who refused to accept the change in government, and to demonstrate his piety & worthiness as the new Hashemite Caliph Ubaydallah's first act in office would be to conduct the hajj to Mecca & Medina, even as his puppet-master scrambled to fill the ranks of his government with trusted subordinates.
Caliph Ubaydallah reviewing prototype inventions presented to him by various scholars. Absent-minded and withdrawn by nature, the new Caliph was praised as a champion of learning by 'Ilmi devotees but garnered little love elsewhere for he mostly left matters of state to his advisors, such as Al-Turani
In China, as the ashes of war continued to cool, the rival Liang and Han courts surprised observers by apparently condescending to a double marriage, with Gangzong of Liang's granddaughter Princess Ma wedding Duzong of Han's grandson Liu Yang and Duzong's youngest daughter Princess Liu in turn marrying Gangzong's youngest son Ma Shan. Theoretically this match was supposed to firm up the still-fresh truce between the rival dynasties, who after all still officially considered themselves to be the rightful Emperors of China and the other to be but pestilential rebels standing in their way. In practice neither the Liang nor the Han thought that truce would be permanent and in fact were expecting a resumption of hostilities well within their respective leaders' lifetimes: however, Gangzong hoped to buy himself time enough to eliminate the Jurchen Jin up north, who stood ascendant over his own Khitan friends and were by now overtly allied to the True Han, while Duzong needed more time to rebuild his mauled forces (including doubling the size of his fleet, to which he added many paddle-driven warships, in order to protect the course of the Yangtze) and further shore up the defenses of Chu around Xiangyang.
The weight of the Roman war machine continued to press the Vikings in Britain hard through 879. Flóki had tried to raise a cavalry unit capable of rivaling the knights of the Empire, seizing many horses from British farms in the lands they still occupied and retraining those warriors chosen to ride the beasts to actually fight from horseback with spear & shield rather than simply using their steeds for transportation (the old Germanic way), but neither time nor numbers were on his side and his half-baked Viking cavalry were soundly beaten in the Battle of Gyre[10]. Other attempts by the Ráðbarðrsons to compensate for their inability to radically alter & update their method of warfare to better compete with the Romans' combined arms, such as digging trenches and filling them with sharp stakes to deter the superior Roman cavalry at the Battle of Margedóui[11], proved insufficient now that they both lacked numerical superiority and were facing grizzled commanders in the form of Aloysius III and his lieutenants, who were aware of and took countermeasures against such tricks.
As Aloysius and his forces marched onward, the Emperor also had to deal with the substantial influx of Norsemen who had already started settling parts of eastern & northeastern Britannia under the aegis of the Sons of Ráðbarðr. Of course anyone who refused to submit to Roman authority was to be killed or driven away, but those Vikings who could tell the wind was now blowing furiously against the Ravens and chose to bend the knee presented him with a conundrum. Massacring/expelling them anyway, while the course of action preferred by his vindictive English and British vassals, would surely delay the Roman push to recover their island possessions in full and create all sorts of trouble behind their lines, as the Norse settlers had come in surprisingly large numbers and with surprising speed – rooting them out from hamlet after hamlet represented a cost that, while affordable to Aloysius, got in the way of bigger and better things. Moreover, Aloysius had been impressed by the conduct of his Norman warriors on battlefield after battlefield and saw a chance to grow their ranks if only these Vikings could be made to serve the Roman order.
So, the Augustus Imperator embarked on a novel course of action to begin winning the peace before winning the war. He accepted the surrender of those Vikings who would kneel before him, undergo baptism and contribute one man or boy per household to the imperial army: they would be allowed to live on the lands they settled. However, the Anglo-Saxons and Britons driven from their homes were also entitled to return, and where it wasn't possible for them to simply evict the Vikings occupying said home to a nearby field of similar value, the land would still be recognized as legal property of the original owner and the Norse families living on said lands were to be made into their tenants. This development had the effect of turning a good deal of English or British peasants into petty landowners with at least one tenant family bound to them, qualifying the former for their traditional fyrd and thus helping rebuild the devastated manpower of the English kingdom in the long run.
A Viking captain is baptized into the Christian faith by an English bishop in the presence of Aloysius III
It was Aloysius' hope that since the English still had much in common with the Norse culturally, what with their languages even remaining mutually intelligible to an extent at this late point in their hitherto-divergent histories, the former would be able to quickly come to terms with and assimilate the latter even despite the violent shock of the initial Norse invasion. Furthermore he also considered demonstrating such clemency to be a way of inducing the remaining Vikings opposing him, who otherwise had very good reason based on their own conduct and that of the Pendragons & Rædwaldings in the war thus far to assume that he'd try to kill them all and thus have no incentive to surrender, to give up before they cost him even more blood and treasure. As for the Britons, to reaffirm his commitment to defending their lands Aloysius also took for his third wife Artur's sister Arturia, through whom he hoped to father a longer-lived male heir once more despite his sixtieth birthday looming on the horizon.
Up north beyond the old English border, the conflict between the Picts and the Island Norse had come to its apex. Map Beòthu besieged Þingvöll rather than try to storm it this year, prompting Óttar to land his relief force north of the Pictish host in the hope of encircling & pinning his old enemy against the defenders of the makeshift Norse town. Together, they would then squeeze the Pictish army into oblivion from front and rear. However, he unknowingly played into the hands of Map Beòthu, who was planning to draw the defenders of Þingvöll out from behind their earth-and-stone wall and defeat the Norsemen once & for all in a great battle of annihilation. The Norse garrison seemingly overran the outermost Pictish siege line with ease when they sallied forth to support their compatriots' attack, and the Picts fell back to their main camp in & around the ruined hillfort of Cnoc Pherghalegh[12] west of Þingvöll.
However, the Picts ably defended their palisade and the remaining crumbling walls of their ancestors' fortress there, and upon being signaled by the waving of a great Roman-styled dragon standard from the camp's highest tower a secondary Pictish division – previously well-hidden in the untamed woods around Cnoc Pherghalegh – rushed to ambush the Norsemen, led by Map Beòthu's son Lutrin. The bold young prince acquitted himself well in his combat outing and the Vikings, whose attack had already completely stalled against the defense of Cnoc Pherghalegh, were soon routed. Óttar himself engaged and nearly overcame Lutrin but found himself in single combat with Map Beòthu when the latter intervened, and was slain by his long-time adversary at the conclusion of a fierce duel pitting the strength of the Norse longaxe against that of the Pictish longsword, which would be sung of for many years by both Nordic skalds and Celtic bards. With this victory in hand, Map Beòthu soon sat down for talks with Óttar's son Þorfinn and issued terms for the departure of the Norsemen from his lands, a demand which the latter prince had little choice but to acquiesce to.
The Witch-King of Pictland stands at the high point of his reign following the Battle of Cnoc Pherghalegh, having beaten the Romans and their vassals to expelling the Norse invaders from his lands
The war in Britannia reached its own climax in 880. By this point, the 'Great Heathen Army' which had taken the Britons and English by storm a decade prior had been whittled down to half its strength, and the Norsemen had gone from seemingly having total victory within their grasp five years ago to staring down extremely long odds and the probability of painful defeat now. Though there were clamors for the surviving Ráðbarðrsons to sue for peace, that proved an impossibility between Einarr's refusal to give up on the crown he had just taken upon his brow at Jórvík back in 874 and Flóki's understanding that while the rank-and-file Vikings might be able to reach an accord with the Romans, as the ringleaders who had wrought such destruction they were probably not going to be half as lucky. With Aloysius (now leaving a pregnant Arturia behind in Lundéne), Artur, Oswiu and the others marching upon Jórvík from the south and the High-Reeve Æthelred descending from the north, the brothers decided to concentrate their remaining might against the former and to bring the Romans to battle on a site equally or more advantageous than the wooded hills near Novele-Hosté (for all the good the terrain did them there in the end). Only Hrafn would be absent, sent back to Norway to call their uncle Grimr to enter the war in force.
The Vikings got their chance at the strategically-situated town of Stanfordbrycge[13], southeast of Jórvík, which had once been the Romano-British fortress-town of Derventio but became a pale shadow of its former self after the Anglo-Saxon conquest and more recently ruined by the Viking invasion. The imperial army, which had just recently received the surrender of most lingering Viking garrisons and villages in English Lindesege or 'Lindsey' to the south, found its path to Jórvík blocked by slightly under 10,000 Vikings at the still-standing stone bridge over the River Derwent west of their latest camp at Poclintun[14]. Confident in his overwhelming numbers – by now his army was still 20,000 strong thanks to both local and continental reinforcements over the last few years, despite the need to garrison various recaptured towns & forts – and the fact that he had beaten the Norsemen in every engagement since his landing in Britannia, old Aloysius resolved to give battle. As expected, the pre-battle negotiations went nowhere quickly: Einarr and Flóki had no expectation of success in the first place for the aforementioned reasons, while Aloysius would accept nothing less than the surrender and disbandment of the Norse army, and Artur & Oswiu were united in offering the Norsemen nothing more than "Five feet of our soil apiece, or however much more as each man demonstrates he deserves with his valor and as his height shall require" – that is, a grave for the Sons of Ráðbarðr and all who would follow them.
Now the Norsemen had naturally positioned a contingent of their fiercest fighters on the bridge itself, and the rest of their army on its other end, to make the crossing as difficult for the Romans as humanly possible. To counter this, Aloysius deployed the siege engines with which he intended to hammer away at Jórvík's walls: they couldn't be used on the bridge itself for fear of causing its total structural collapse, forcing the Romans to waste more time seeking an alternative path northward, but they could certainly clear the Viking end of the bridge of enemies. In the meantime Oswiu asked for the English contingent to be given the place of honor at the head of the Roman attack and the Emperor obliged, so they were the first to march on the bridge under the covering fire of the British longbowmen & other imperial archers and to contest its possession with the Viking vanguard. The fighting there was difficult to be sure, and Oswiu himself was killed early on by an ax-swinging berserk wearing a bear's hide; but not only did the Romans' numbers eventually prove too much, Aloysius further exploited his numerical advantage by directing parties of legionaries & federate auxiliaries alike to cross the Derwent at nearby bridges, in boats and even in the occasional barrels.
A dying Cyning Oswiu crawling away from the berserkers holding Stanfordbrycge, even as more of his own English subjects & their dismounted Norman allies are swarming the position at his overlord's order
The Norsemen could not afford to divide their much smaller army up significantly, and so their undermanned and haphazard attempts to oppose these other crossings ended in failure. The battle had begun in the morning and while it took until after-noon for the Romans to get over the river, they managed it all the same. Einarr and Flóki formed their men up into a compact shield-wall closer to their camp, initially out of range of the Roman mangonels, which gamely resisted every attack mounted by the Romans for another three-and-a-half hours (including the last of said mangonels' ammunition when Aloysius had them wheeled into range). Aloysius meanwhile commanded his archers to fire over the Norse shields, inflicting heavy casualties on the lesser (and less-armored) warriors who formed the reserve standing behind the front line of heavily armored and well-shielded fighters, further thinning their ranks at a faster pace than if he'd just stuck to frontal attacks; he also 'cycled' his ranks, further leveraging his greater numbers into allowing entire divisions of his army to rest and then replace the ones he had sent in to assail the Norse formation when the latter were bloodied & worn out. Another British longbowman felled Einarr with an arrow to his remaining eye near sunset, after which the already utterly exhausted and battered Norse army began to crumble entirely. Flóki was able to lead a few thousand men on a fighting retreat westward and eventually escape when night compelled the Romans to cease their pursuit, but by & large, the Great Heathen Army did not survive the Battle of Stanfordbrycge.
Aloysius and his army reached Jórvík shortly after their final triumph, where Einarr's teenage son Tryggve had been acclaimed as king by the surviving Norse leadership for the sole purpose of negotiating their surrender. The resulting peace settlement solidified the reality that, while their rampage may have 'only' lasted a relatively brief ten years, the Sons of Ráðbarðr had decisively altered Britannia's course for centuries to come. Tryggve and his cohorts were allowed to live, and he was even made Jarl/Earl of Lindesege where the Norsemen who'd come to Britannia and made peace with the Empire had settled, in exchange for their submission to imperial authority and conversion to Christianity. As for the British and English, with the sons of Osric and Osbald still underage and thus unfit to reconstruct England, the reconstituted Witan elected Artur their king on account of his marriage to the English princess Cynehild (the former's eldest daughter), thereby placing Britannia and England in personal union: it is now to Artur and the Pendragons that Tryggve and his heirs owed their allegiance. For the first time in a long time, Roman Britain was whole again, albeit as a vassal kingdom rather than a set of provinces.
Courts were opened to allow the British and English survivors of the Great Heathen Army's warpath to bring charges against those invaders who had committed egregious offenses against them or their families and communities, resulting in more than a few Vikings having to give up their plundered treasures or else being punished with enslavement or death. However, the majority of the newcomers retained their lives and at least scraps of the land they had temporarily conquered, and were further expected to serve as a bulwark against any more of their pagan kindred who might come over the North Sea with hostile intentions; in time they would contribute to the emergence of a melded Anglo-Norse culture, described as 'Middle English'[15] by scholars. Moreover, since the Pelagian Remnant had caused such trouble for the loyal Britons and English alike, Aloysius and Artur thought it imperative to establish specially appointed clerics and tribunals to extirpate the heresy once and for all before they sold the country out to the next Norse invader, a task for which they brought in African veterans of upholding Ionian orthodoxy and suppressing heretics – thus that which would be remembered as the 'First British Inquisition', indeed the first such special inquisition in the history of Roman Christianity, was born.
Daily life in a Christianized Anglo-Norse village under the watch of a nearby British fort in the decades after the end of their Viking ancestors' invasion
Aloysius' British marriage bore consequences which would manifest in a much shorter term than these developments though, for later in the year the new Empress Arturia did give birth to a third son for the Emperor to once more complicate the schemes of the Stilichians and Skleroi: this time, the father dispensed with Aloysian tradition and instead of bestowing a Greek name upon the child, gave him his own name. Also in the short term, the remaining Ráðbarðrsons were definitively scattered in the aftermath of Stanfordbrycge – Flóki and his men fled west, evacuating Britain entirely from Déuarí and sailing to the isle of Manaw to determine how to play their very few remaining cards in relative safety, while Hrafn found himself arrested by Grimr back in Norway. Garmrson hoped to sell his nephew to Aloysius for peace and trade ties, but the younger man escaped confinement and retreated to lead a band of outlaws in the Norwegian countryside, swearing revenge not just for this act of treachery but also for the truth of his father's death: his uncle had made the inadvisable decision to gloat about his betrayal of Ráðbarðr to the latter's youngest son when he thought he had him at his mercy. And speaking of revenge, Amleth too had left Britain with Hrafn: he had more reason than most to stay, having taken as a concubine the British lady Ophelíe (Lat.: 'Ophelia') de Sidomage[16] and sired a son with her – but even despite this and her willingness to vouch for him before the Emperor if he converted and married her lawfully, he still insisted on sailing back home so that he and his friend might jointly get revenge on their uncles instead, leaving his new family behind.
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[1] Ushant.
[2] Lisia – Guernsey.
[3] Magnis/Magnae Dobunnorum – Kenchester.
[4] Portus Dubris – Dover.
[5] Now Langdon Bay.
[6] 'Nova Ostia' – Hastings.
[7] Alauna – Alchester.
[8] Dingwall.
[9] Kilkenny.
[10] Gyrus Roman Fort – now Baginton, near Coventry.
[11] Margidunum – Bingham, Nottinghamshire.
[12] Knockfarrel.
[13] Stamford Bridge, East Yorkshire.
[14] Pocklington.
[15] IRL, 'Middle English' culture & language emerged from the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Norse or 'Anglo-Scandinavian' culture which sprouted in the Danelaw & Northumbria was something different, and actually destroyed by said Normans in their Harrying of the North.
[16] Sitomagus – Dunwich.
The new Augusta did not hold that office for long though, for she showed signs of pregnancy soon after her husband left Italy and gave birth to a sickly boy who nevertheless managed to survive in December, baptized as Constantine; still before the year was done, she passed away from medical complications following the birth. Aloysius did not express nearly as much grief and solemnity over this loss as he did his beloved first wife Euphrosyne, though doubtless he was grateful that she managed to give him a new male heir. The Stilichians and Aloysius' daughters by said first wife were less than pleased, and while Euphemia (having grown up disliked by both her father and elder sister for 'killing' their wife/mother and now become an abbess in Gaul) was no longer of any relevance to Roman power politics, Alexandra was keenly aware that this birth of a new brother jeopardized her chances of putting her own blood (and by extension that of her mother's) on the throne. The Skleroi's message of congratulations to their Emperor was similarly muted, for Duke Andronikos and his cohorts were already starting to gravitate toward the claim of his fallen nephew & ward's infant son Alexander the Arab (even at the cost of entering a collision course against his still-living niece), and had tried & failed to persuade Aloysius to dub him the new Caesar previously.
The complexities of dynastic politics aside, 876 also saw the first naval clashes between the Holy Roman Empire's Mediterranean armada and the Viking fleet. The mostly Greek or Italian admirals who had been tied down by clashes with an increasingly formidable Saracen navy in the Mediterranean now sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules for the choppier waters of Northern Europe with their many ships and fiery secret weapon, having been assigned with the job of clearing a path across the Channel by their Emperor, and consequently came to blows with Steinn the Strong who had been responsible for preventing Adalric from crossing said Channel for years. At the large-scale Battles of Ouessant[1] and Lisé[2] this year, the Vikings proved the fiercer warriors in the boarding actions which defined most naval engagements, but they were both outnumbered by their adversaries and had no means of countering Greek fire. Steinn was ultimately defeated and much of his fleet incinerated between these clashes, grousing to his brothers that he would have won if not for said 'sorcerous' flames, and Aloysius and Adalric only had to wait for winter's end to begin crossing over in force.
A Greek dromon deploys its lethal fire against Vikings attempting a boarding action in the waters off the isle of Lisé
With help on the way, the Britons and Anglo-Saxons now knew that they only needed to hold out until the legions arrived on their shore, while the Vikings conversely ramped up their efforts to defeat their remaining enemies in a desperate attempt to beat the clock. Flóki pulled off a major coup in the form of a diversionary attack on Gloué to cover his surprise attack on Camalué in the spring of this year, not only attacking the castle out of season and under the cover of a raging thunderstorm but furthermore catching the remaining defenders while they were celebrating Good Friday. The fortress thus fell to the heathens' assault, but to the immense frustration of the Sons of Ráðbarðr, Artur himself managed to escape into the Dumnonian Levels through a tunnel and continue directing the resistance against their invasion. Unencumbered by any real royal court to speak of at this point, the Ríodam navigated his way through the marshy countryside with the help of Pendragon partisans and eventually sailed to join his younger sister Arturia (Lat.: 'Artoria') and what remained of their household at Gloué, which would serve as his final headquarters in the war against the Norsemen.
The Fall of Camalué proved to be the high-water mark of the Norse advance into Britannia, as the array of natural & artificial barriers now standing in their path further west proved insurmountable when combined with the determined and better-prepared Christian defenders. Earthenworks, castles and natural terrain features such as wooded mountains and hills gave the British and English no shortage of advantages with which to hold back the remaining Ráðbarðrsons, who were defeated by numerically inferior Christian forces in a number of battles along a front line which stretched from Gloué to the eastern Irish Sea, of which the most serious was the Battle of Magne-Dobunne[3] where a British longbowman took out one of Einarr's eyes.
An effort by Flóki to besiege Gloué once again, this time combining those southern forces who had just taken Camalué with reinforcements from eastern Britain, was frustrated by Artur's and Oswiu's aggressive defensive strategy. Attempts to cross the Sabrénne were halted by the defenders' destruction of the bridge over the river before the Vikings even arrived as well as the fire-boats which the Britons floated downriver, preventing the Norsemen from cutting off the western approach to the city from the Britons' remaining territories in Cambria, and constant day & night raids by mounted Anglo-British parties continually hindered the Vikings' construction of crude siegeworks east of the city. Furthermore the Pelagians among Flóki's army were not experienced siege engineers, and the primitive onagers they lashed together at his command proved inferior to the mangonels with which the defenders flung missiles at their besiegers from the walls; ultimately, the siege was lifted after a failed assault following Steinn's announcement of his defeat at sea was itself followed by an outbreak of cholera late in the year.
A Norse assault force preparing to contest one of the bridges over the Sabrénne with its British & English defenders, a literal high-water mark for the campaign of the Sons of Ráðbarðr in Britannia
Beyond Rome's borders in Britain, the Picts and Irish continued to wage their own separate war against the Norse threat in their respective lands. Continuing the previous year's pattern, Map Beòthu repelled an Island Norse counterattack through which Óttar had hoped to recapture a foothold near Pheairt, then marched northward and launched his own offensive into the Norse-held coastlines of north-central Pictland, rooting the Vikings out from the coasts of Circinn and his own native Cé by the end of 876. Such success could not be said of his Irish ally Muiredach, who faced additional setbacks in the war with Dyflin – in this year, the Irish were driven from their high royal seat of Tara, and the Norsemen of Corcaigh also took advantage of Irish weakness to defect back to the side of their kindred. It would seem that after the initial victories of the Gaels, the war in Ireland was now seesawing back in the Vikings' favor.
The vanguard of the imperial legions landed in Britannia in the late spring of 877, in the form of Adalric of Swabia and his 10,000 landing at Doubrée[4] under escort by scores of war galleys & dromons. Steinn the Strong had assembled some 2,000 men with whom he attempted to fight off this landing both by sea, in a bay just east of the city proper[5] and on the beaches (including by posting archers and javelineers on the cliffs above), but was unsuccessful on both counts and had to retreat further inland in the face of the Romans' numbers and naval artillery, the uprising of the city's Ionian population at the sight of Roman & Christian banners approaching them, Greek fire and the determined fury of the Alemanni king, who had built up a head full of steam in all those years where Viking naval supremacy prevented him from marching to Britain's rescue. Still, the resistance Steinn had offered on the cliffs & walls and the need to bring more reinforcements over the Oceanus Britannicus to build on Adalric's hard-won beachhead delayed Roman maneuvers deeper into Britain and gave the Sons of Ráðbarðr time to scramble and pull their forces back together to try to stop the latter's inevitable march.
The remaining brothers got their chance a few months later, when Aloysius III himself had landed to take command and lead the Romans toward Lundéne. Behind him some 25,000 soldiers followed: a mix of grizzled veterans from the East (ranging from Italians to Africans to Greeks and Magyars), Adalric's soldiers and other federate reinforcements picked up along the Emperor's march from places like Aquitaine and Barcelona. In opposition the Ráðbarðrsons fielded some 15,000 men – reinforcements in the form of additional Norse adventurers hoping to conquer & settle had helped them replenish their losses in the previous years, but the wave of Vikings they received in this year would likely be the last unless they prevailed in the battle to come, which would be fought northwest of Novele-Hosté[6], near that port's primary mine and iron-smelting hub. To compensate for their inferior numbers and lack of cavalry, the Vikings moved with haste to secure a favorable defensive position on the slope of a high hill blocking the Romans' road northward, their flanks protected by woodland & small rivers while a marsh laid before them.
The Romans began by having their archers, who were superior in both number and skill to their Norse counterparts, advance and begin trying to whittle down the great shield-wall on the hill down with their arrows. However, the Norse were well-prepared and resisted these missiles (further hindered by the wind, which was blowing southward against the Romans that day) with ease behind their stout shields, no matter whether the arrows were coming from Syro-Greek archers or mounted African skirmishers. The marshy terrain in front of the hill, and said hill's steepness, made it exceedingly dangerous for the lightly-equipped Africans of Aloysius' army to try to get close enough to use their javelins as well. An infantry attack was ordered next, but even the doughty and heavily armored legionaries floundered in this regard: their darts stung the Norsemen, being heavy enough to punch through shields and yet possessing soft enough heads to deform and get stuck in said shields much like the older pila, but the process of marching through wet swampy ground and up the hill left them exhausted in the face of the determined Viking defense.
The Norse shield-wall bracing as the Roman heavy infantry collides with them at the Battle of Novele-Hosté. Notably there are Normans bearing kite shields in the Romans' front line, for this engagement was the first recorded instance of Christian Norsemen (in this case, of Danish extraction) battling their pagan cousins under the chi-rho
Nonetheless Emperor Aloysius was not the sort of man to give up after being confronted with obstacles like these, and sought to draw the Vikings out of their formidable defensive position with feigned retreats. His cavalry advantage would prove critical to this strategy, although it did also require him to risk his elite heavy horsemen (who had little to no chance of smashing through the Viking shield-wall conventionally in the circumstances of his engagement) once it became obvious that the Norsemen wouldn't bite at his African and Magyar horse-archers. A rush of knights and paladins failed to break the Norse wall, as the Emperor expected, but when they fell back downhill some of the Vikings followed, thinking that their apparent success at beating back the best the Empire had to offer meant they had said Empire on the ropes. Flóki strove to hold the men back, rightly suspecting a trap, but Steinn was among those who elected to pursue the Roman cavalry and his warriors followed after him. When Aloysius inevitably sprang his counterattack, spearheaded by these 'retreating' heavy cavalrymen – whose discipline had been sorely tested and yet came out gamely by their liege's strategy – and Adalric's longsword-wielding Swabians, the Vikings who had descended into the marsh were massacred and their deaths opened up a gap in the shield-wall.
The Romans were quick to press their advantage, swarming back uphill and trying to push into the hole where Steinn and his contingent had been. Equally quick thinking on the part of the remaining Ráðbarðrsons prevented them from winning the battle then and there, as their stout reserve was committed to plug this gap and push the Romans back downhill. However, the advantage was now assuredly with the Empire, and Aloysius was content to chip away at the surviving Norsemen from afar and to launch limited probing attacks against their forest and stream-protected flanks to determine additional weak points for the rest of the day. Nightfall compelled both sides to retreat to camp, but battle would doubtless be renewed on the morrow and the Romans were clearly gaining the upper hand, so much so that their victory was nearly certain in the long term. Plans for a night attack on the part of the Vikings amounted to nothing when it became clear to Einarr, Flóki and the rest that the Roman camp was too well-guarded for them to get away with such a thing, and the decision was made to withdraw from this battlefield in the early morning hours instead.
The Norse withdrawal was covered by a 3,000-strong rearguard of volunteers who took oaths to die bravely that midnight led by the elderly Thorgeir the Tower, who at this point had lived such a long and eventful life that his sole remaining ambition was to achieve a glorious exit from Miðgarðr to Valhǫll. This they achieved after sunrise, when the Romans attacked in force and slowly but surely ground them down to the last man: the Vikings were driven from their hill sometime after noon and the last of their number wiped out in a ravine to the northeast, Jarl Thorgeir himself included, who could only be identified from his corpse's massive frame. They had done well enough to buy the Ráðbarðrsons time to flee back toward Lundéne, where Einarr and Hrafn sought to make a stand on the still mostly-preserved walls while Flóki set out to contain the Anglo-British, who were now breaking out of the west and advancing to link up with their Emperor. Amid these triumphs Aloysius did receive a bit of dire news however, for Constantine Caesar suddenly perished after months of his physical condition improving, having only recently reached his first birthday; though the boy's death seemed natural enough, foul play was immediately suspected on account of all the parties who stood to gain from his removal, but the Emperor's determined inquiries ultimately failed to identify any poisoner.
Thorgeir's Vikings fighting on against the Romans even after being driven off their hill
In any case, Aloysius still had a war to fight in Britannia, and prosecuted its next steps throughout 878. Having overcome the Norse army in the field down south, his next objective was to retake Lundéne, and to that end he spent the winter and part of the spring months arranging for a massive land-and-sea assault which would hopefully crush the head of the Norse serpent in that city. Bombardment of the walls by imperial mangonels preceded a massed overland assault from the west & north spearheaded by Adalric and Yésaréyu, while Radovid Radovidov of the Dulebes (having had to leave his father behind in their homeland on account of the latter's advanced age & worsening health) captained a secondary division which sailed up the Thamis to assail the city's bridge and southern gates. Against this overwhelming pressure and with huge gaps smashed in their walls by the Roman siege artillery, the Vikings and Pelagians defending the city were slowly but surely overwhelmed over a week of fierce urban fighting, although Aloysius did not fail to note that he seemed to be fighting rather fewer than 9-10,000 Norsemen (the estimated number which successfully fled from the Battle of Novele-Hosté).
Only after they had conquered Lundéne did it become apparent to the Romans that the reason for this was that, indeed, a substantial element of the Viking army did not stay in the city but rather moved further north or west under the command of Flóki: moreover the brothers Einarr and Hrafn hadn't stayed to die in the British capital either, instead fleeing by boat and slipping through the Roman blockade an entire week before the final Roman assault. While frustrated, Aloysius was still certain that his victory was inevitable and would not allow his foes' escape to sour the post-victory celebrations, which included the burning of every single Pelagian they could identify, including the posthumous incineration of the heresiarch Guílodhin – the Pelagian 'bishop' of the city had died fighting, knowing full well he'd get no mercy if he begged for it, but this did not prevent the Romans from dragging his corpse around the city before lashing it to another pyre. At Yésaréyu's counsel plans were made to bring in outside assistance from Africa to extirpate Pelagianism for good, for after all they had retained much experience in purging heretics from their long struggle with Donatism, but no such anti-heretical tribunals would be organized until the fighting was over.
Suffice to say, the Ionian Britons and their Roman overlords were not in any mood to shake hands & let bygones be bygones with the Pelagian Remnants who they had once hoped would just quietly disappear
While the Romans continued to build on their victories by inflicting further defeats on the Vikings in the field at Verúlamy and Elaune[7], in the process uniting with the Anglo-British army of Artur & Oswiu at the latter engagement, the Vikings' conflict outside the Empire's borders also continued to rage. Map Beòthu strove to sustain his counterattack and fully drive the Island Norse into the sea this year, but hit a snag at the Battle of Þingvöll[8] where Óttar had raised a surprisingly formidable field fortification (hence the name of the site) to protect his beach-head and threw back the assaults of the Picts over several days of hard fighting. On the other hand, in 878 the tide of war to the west turned to favor the Irish once more, as Muiredach managed to separately rout the armies of Dyflin and Veisafjǫrðr before they could link up at the Battles of Cill Chainnigh[9] with the aid of his local ally, the King of Osraige.
In the east there was a transition of power in Saracen lands, for in this year Caliph Ahmad was found dead. Officially it was reported that he had drunkenly stumbled into one of the palace wells in Kufa and drowned, however this account was highly scrutinized on the grounds of the traditional Islamic prohibition on alcohol (which one would assume that a Caliph in good moral standing, at least, would observe) as well as Ahmad having no great reputation for engaging in alcoholic revelry beforehand. It was more probable that dissatisfied soldiers among his ghilman, aggravated by the relatively modest gains he'd won at the peace table despite paying such a high price in their blood and resenting having to cover up his cowardice at the Battle of Deir Hafir, arranged this poetic fate for him.
In any case, Al-Turani (having succeeded his mentor Al-Khorasani as the generalissimo of the Islamic armies) was quick to move to consolidate power and prevent anything like the civil war at the beginning of Ahmad's own reign. For Ahmad's successor he chose Ubaydallah, son of Ahmad's fourth wife Layla of the Banu Thaqif tribe: this prince was chosen over his older brothers precisely because Al-Turani had judged him to be the most pliant of the sons of Ahmad, being a short and physically unimpressive sort who much preferred astrology, astronomy and various other scholarly pursuits to statecraft or warfare, while still (barely) being old enough to nominally lead the Caliphate without requiring a regency council or otherwise raising questions about his competence. Those among Ubaydallah's brothers who didn't get the hint and accept luxurious life arrest in or around Kufa were quietly disposed of, as were those among Ahmad's ministers who refused to accept the change in government, and to demonstrate his piety & worthiness as the new Hashemite Caliph Ubaydallah's first act in office would be to conduct the hajj to Mecca & Medina, even as his puppet-master scrambled to fill the ranks of his government with trusted subordinates.
Caliph Ubaydallah reviewing prototype inventions presented to him by various scholars. Absent-minded and withdrawn by nature, the new Caliph was praised as a champion of learning by 'Ilmi devotees but garnered little love elsewhere for he mostly left matters of state to his advisors, such as Al-Turani
In China, as the ashes of war continued to cool, the rival Liang and Han courts surprised observers by apparently condescending to a double marriage, with Gangzong of Liang's granddaughter Princess Ma wedding Duzong of Han's grandson Liu Yang and Duzong's youngest daughter Princess Liu in turn marrying Gangzong's youngest son Ma Shan. Theoretically this match was supposed to firm up the still-fresh truce between the rival dynasties, who after all still officially considered themselves to be the rightful Emperors of China and the other to be but pestilential rebels standing in their way. In practice neither the Liang nor the Han thought that truce would be permanent and in fact were expecting a resumption of hostilities well within their respective leaders' lifetimes: however, Gangzong hoped to buy himself time enough to eliminate the Jurchen Jin up north, who stood ascendant over his own Khitan friends and were by now overtly allied to the True Han, while Duzong needed more time to rebuild his mauled forces (including doubling the size of his fleet, to which he added many paddle-driven warships, in order to protect the course of the Yangtze) and further shore up the defenses of Chu around Xiangyang.
The weight of the Roman war machine continued to press the Vikings in Britain hard through 879. Flóki had tried to raise a cavalry unit capable of rivaling the knights of the Empire, seizing many horses from British farms in the lands they still occupied and retraining those warriors chosen to ride the beasts to actually fight from horseback with spear & shield rather than simply using their steeds for transportation (the old Germanic way), but neither time nor numbers were on his side and his half-baked Viking cavalry were soundly beaten in the Battle of Gyre[10]. Other attempts by the Ráðbarðrsons to compensate for their inability to radically alter & update their method of warfare to better compete with the Romans' combined arms, such as digging trenches and filling them with sharp stakes to deter the superior Roman cavalry at the Battle of Margedóui[11], proved insufficient now that they both lacked numerical superiority and were facing grizzled commanders in the form of Aloysius III and his lieutenants, who were aware of and took countermeasures against such tricks.
As Aloysius and his forces marched onward, the Emperor also had to deal with the substantial influx of Norsemen who had already started settling parts of eastern & northeastern Britannia under the aegis of the Sons of Ráðbarðr. Of course anyone who refused to submit to Roman authority was to be killed or driven away, but those Vikings who could tell the wind was now blowing furiously against the Ravens and chose to bend the knee presented him with a conundrum. Massacring/expelling them anyway, while the course of action preferred by his vindictive English and British vassals, would surely delay the Roman push to recover their island possessions in full and create all sorts of trouble behind their lines, as the Norse settlers had come in surprisingly large numbers and with surprising speed – rooting them out from hamlet after hamlet represented a cost that, while affordable to Aloysius, got in the way of bigger and better things. Moreover, Aloysius had been impressed by the conduct of his Norman warriors on battlefield after battlefield and saw a chance to grow their ranks if only these Vikings could be made to serve the Roman order.
So, the Augustus Imperator embarked on a novel course of action to begin winning the peace before winning the war. He accepted the surrender of those Vikings who would kneel before him, undergo baptism and contribute one man or boy per household to the imperial army: they would be allowed to live on the lands they settled. However, the Anglo-Saxons and Britons driven from their homes were also entitled to return, and where it wasn't possible for them to simply evict the Vikings occupying said home to a nearby field of similar value, the land would still be recognized as legal property of the original owner and the Norse families living on said lands were to be made into their tenants. This development had the effect of turning a good deal of English or British peasants into petty landowners with at least one tenant family bound to them, qualifying the former for their traditional fyrd and thus helping rebuild the devastated manpower of the English kingdom in the long run.
A Viking captain is baptized into the Christian faith by an English bishop in the presence of Aloysius III
It was Aloysius' hope that since the English still had much in common with the Norse culturally, what with their languages even remaining mutually intelligible to an extent at this late point in their hitherto-divergent histories, the former would be able to quickly come to terms with and assimilate the latter even despite the violent shock of the initial Norse invasion. Furthermore he also considered demonstrating such clemency to be a way of inducing the remaining Vikings opposing him, who otherwise had very good reason based on their own conduct and that of the Pendragons & Rædwaldings in the war thus far to assume that he'd try to kill them all and thus have no incentive to surrender, to give up before they cost him even more blood and treasure. As for the Britons, to reaffirm his commitment to defending their lands Aloysius also took for his third wife Artur's sister Arturia, through whom he hoped to father a longer-lived male heir once more despite his sixtieth birthday looming on the horizon.
Up north beyond the old English border, the conflict between the Picts and the Island Norse had come to its apex. Map Beòthu besieged Þingvöll rather than try to storm it this year, prompting Óttar to land his relief force north of the Pictish host in the hope of encircling & pinning his old enemy against the defenders of the makeshift Norse town. Together, they would then squeeze the Pictish army into oblivion from front and rear. However, he unknowingly played into the hands of Map Beòthu, who was planning to draw the defenders of Þingvöll out from behind their earth-and-stone wall and defeat the Norsemen once & for all in a great battle of annihilation. The Norse garrison seemingly overran the outermost Pictish siege line with ease when they sallied forth to support their compatriots' attack, and the Picts fell back to their main camp in & around the ruined hillfort of Cnoc Pherghalegh[12] west of Þingvöll.
However, the Picts ably defended their palisade and the remaining crumbling walls of their ancestors' fortress there, and upon being signaled by the waving of a great Roman-styled dragon standard from the camp's highest tower a secondary Pictish division – previously well-hidden in the untamed woods around Cnoc Pherghalegh – rushed to ambush the Norsemen, led by Map Beòthu's son Lutrin. The bold young prince acquitted himself well in his combat outing and the Vikings, whose attack had already completely stalled against the defense of Cnoc Pherghalegh, were soon routed. Óttar himself engaged and nearly overcame Lutrin but found himself in single combat with Map Beòthu when the latter intervened, and was slain by his long-time adversary at the conclusion of a fierce duel pitting the strength of the Norse longaxe against that of the Pictish longsword, which would be sung of for many years by both Nordic skalds and Celtic bards. With this victory in hand, Map Beòthu soon sat down for talks with Óttar's son Þorfinn and issued terms for the departure of the Norsemen from his lands, a demand which the latter prince had little choice but to acquiesce to.
The Witch-King of Pictland stands at the high point of his reign following the Battle of Cnoc Pherghalegh, having beaten the Romans and their vassals to expelling the Norse invaders from his lands
The war in Britannia reached its own climax in 880. By this point, the 'Great Heathen Army' which had taken the Britons and English by storm a decade prior had been whittled down to half its strength, and the Norsemen had gone from seemingly having total victory within their grasp five years ago to staring down extremely long odds and the probability of painful defeat now. Though there were clamors for the surviving Ráðbarðrsons to sue for peace, that proved an impossibility between Einarr's refusal to give up on the crown he had just taken upon his brow at Jórvík back in 874 and Flóki's understanding that while the rank-and-file Vikings might be able to reach an accord with the Romans, as the ringleaders who had wrought such destruction they were probably not going to be half as lucky. With Aloysius (now leaving a pregnant Arturia behind in Lundéne), Artur, Oswiu and the others marching upon Jórvík from the south and the High-Reeve Æthelred descending from the north, the brothers decided to concentrate their remaining might against the former and to bring the Romans to battle on a site equally or more advantageous than the wooded hills near Novele-Hosté (for all the good the terrain did them there in the end). Only Hrafn would be absent, sent back to Norway to call their uncle Grimr to enter the war in force.
The Vikings got their chance at the strategically-situated town of Stanfordbrycge[13], southeast of Jórvík, which had once been the Romano-British fortress-town of Derventio but became a pale shadow of its former self after the Anglo-Saxon conquest and more recently ruined by the Viking invasion. The imperial army, which had just recently received the surrender of most lingering Viking garrisons and villages in English Lindesege or 'Lindsey' to the south, found its path to Jórvík blocked by slightly under 10,000 Vikings at the still-standing stone bridge over the River Derwent west of their latest camp at Poclintun[14]. Confident in his overwhelming numbers – by now his army was still 20,000 strong thanks to both local and continental reinforcements over the last few years, despite the need to garrison various recaptured towns & forts – and the fact that he had beaten the Norsemen in every engagement since his landing in Britannia, old Aloysius resolved to give battle. As expected, the pre-battle negotiations went nowhere quickly: Einarr and Flóki had no expectation of success in the first place for the aforementioned reasons, while Aloysius would accept nothing less than the surrender and disbandment of the Norse army, and Artur & Oswiu were united in offering the Norsemen nothing more than "Five feet of our soil apiece, or however much more as each man demonstrates he deserves with his valor and as his height shall require" – that is, a grave for the Sons of Ráðbarðr and all who would follow them.
Now the Norsemen had naturally positioned a contingent of their fiercest fighters on the bridge itself, and the rest of their army on its other end, to make the crossing as difficult for the Romans as humanly possible. To counter this, Aloysius deployed the siege engines with which he intended to hammer away at Jórvík's walls: they couldn't be used on the bridge itself for fear of causing its total structural collapse, forcing the Romans to waste more time seeking an alternative path northward, but they could certainly clear the Viking end of the bridge of enemies. In the meantime Oswiu asked for the English contingent to be given the place of honor at the head of the Roman attack and the Emperor obliged, so they were the first to march on the bridge under the covering fire of the British longbowmen & other imperial archers and to contest its possession with the Viking vanguard. The fighting there was difficult to be sure, and Oswiu himself was killed early on by an ax-swinging berserk wearing a bear's hide; but not only did the Romans' numbers eventually prove too much, Aloysius further exploited his numerical advantage by directing parties of legionaries & federate auxiliaries alike to cross the Derwent at nearby bridges, in boats and even in the occasional barrels.
A dying Cyning Oswiu crawling away from the berserkers holding Stanfordbrycge, even as more of his own English subjects & their dismounted Norman allies are swarming the position at his overlord's order
The Norsemen could not afford to divide their much smaller army up significantly, and so their undermanned and haphazard attempts to oppose these other crossings ended in failure. The battle had begun in the morning and while it took until after-noon for the Romans to get over the river, they managed it all the same. Einarr and Flóki formed their men up into a compact shield-wall closer to their camp, initially out of range of the Roman mangonels, which gamely resisted every attack mounted by the Romans for another three-and-a-half hours (including the last of said mangonels' ammunition when Aloysius had them wheeled into range). Aloysius meanwhile commanded his archers to fire over the Norse shields, inflicting heavy casualties on the lesser (and less-armored) warriors who formed the reserve standing behind the front line of heavily armored and well-shielded fighters, further thinning their ranks at a faster pace than if he'd just stuck to frontal attacks; he also 'cycled' his ranks, further leveraging his greater numbers into allowing entire divisions of his army to rest and then replace the ones he had sent in to assail the Norse formation when the latter were bloodied & worn out. Another British longbowman felled Einarr with an arrow to his remaining eye near sunset, after which the already utterly exhausted and battered Norse army began to crumble entirely. Flóki was able to lead a few thousand men on a fighting retreat westward and eventually escape when night compelled the Romans to cease their pursuit, but by & large, the Great Heathen Army did not survive the Battle of Stanfordbrycge.
Aloysius and his army reached Jórvík shortly after their final triumph, where Einarr's teenage son Tryggve had been acclaimed as king by the surviving Norse leadership for the sole purpose of negotiating their surrender. The resulting peace settlement solidified the reality that, while their rampage may have 'only' lasted a relatively brief ten years, the Sons of Ráðbarðr had decisively altered Britannia's course for centuries to come. Tryggve and his cohorts were allowed to live, and he was even made Jarl/Earl of Lindesege where the Norsemen who'd come to Britannia and made peace with the Empire had settled, in exchange for their submission to imperial authority and conversion to Christianity. As for the British and English, with the sons of Osric and Osbald still underage and thus unfit to reconstruct England, the reconstituted Witan elected Artur their king on account of his marriage to the English princess Cynehild (the former's eldest daughter), thereby placing Britannia and England in personal union: it is now to Artur and the Pendragons that Tryggve and his heirs owed their allegiance. For the first time in a long time, Roman Britain was whole again, albeit as a vassal kingdom rather than a set of provinces.
Courts were opened to allow the British and English survivors of the Great Heathen Army's warpath to bring charges against those invaders who had committed egregious offenses against them or their families and communities, resulting in more than a few Vikings having to give up their plundered treasures or else being punished with enslavement or death. However, the majority of the newcomers retained their lives and at least scraps of the land they had temporarily conquered, and were further expected to serve as a bulwark against any more of their pagan kindred who might come over the North Sea with hostile intentions; in time they would contribute to the emergence of a melded Anglo-Norse culture, described as 'Middle English'[15] by scholars. Moreover, since the Pelagian Remnant had caused such trouble for the loyal Britons and English alike, Aloysius and Artur thought it imperative to establish specially appointed clerics and tribunals to extirpate the heresy once and for all before they sold the country out to the next Norse invader, a task for which they brought in African veterans of upholding Ionian orthodoxy and suppressing heretics – thus that which would be remembered as the 'First British Inquisition', indeed the first such special inquisition in the history of Roman Christianity, was born.
Daily life in a Christianized Anglo-Norse village under the watch of a nearby British fort in the decades after the end of their Viking ancestors' invasion
Aloysius' British marriage bore consequences which would manifest in a much shorter term than these developments though, for later in the year the new Empress Arturia did give birth to a third son for the Emperor to once more complicate the schemes of the Stilichians and Skleroi: this time, the father dispensed with Aloysian tradition and instead of bestowing a Greek name upon the child, gave him his own name. Also in the short term, the remaining Ráðbarðrsons were definitively scattered in the aftermath of Stanfordbrycge – Flóki and his men fled west, evacuating Britain entirely from Déuarí and sailing to the isle of Manaw to determine how to play their very few remaining cards in relative safety, while Hrafn found himself arrested by Grimr back in Norway. Garmrson hoped to sell his nephew to Aloysius for peace and trade ties, but the younger man escaped confinement and retreated to lead a band of outlaws in the Norwegian countryside, swearing revenge not just for this act of treachery but also for the truth of his father's death: his uncle had made the inadvisable decision to gloat about his betrayal of Ráðbarðr to the latter's youngest son when he thought he had him at his mercy. And speaking of revenge, Amleth too had left Britain with Hrafn: he had more reason than most to stay, having taken as a concubine the British lady Ophelíe (Lat.: 'Ophelia') de Sidomage[16] and sired a son with her – but even despite this and her willingness to vouch for him before the Emperor if he converted and married her lawfully, he still insisted on sailing back home so that he and his friend might jointly get revenge on their uncles instead, leaving his new family behind.
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[1] Ushant.
[2] Lisia – Guernsey.
[3] Magnis/Magnae Dobunnorum – Kenchester.
[4] Portus Dubris – Dover.
[5] Now Langdon Bay.
[6] 'Nova Ostia' – Hastings.
[7] Alauna – Alchester.
[8] Dingwall.
[9] Kilkenny.
[10] Gyrus Roman Fort – now Baginton, near Coventry.
[11] Margidunum – Bingham, Nottinghamshire.
[12] Knockfarrel.
[13] Stamford Bridge, East Yorkshire.
[14] Pocklington.
[15] IRL, 'Middle English' culture & language emerged from the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Norse or 'Anglo-Scandinavian' culture which sprouted in the Danelaw & Northumbria was something different, and actually destroyed by said Normans in their Harrying of the North.
[16] Sitomagus – Dunwich.
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PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Norsemen learned the hard way the difference between warriors and soldiers, though I doubt they took lessons to heart. Garmrson should really heed the instructions from rules for the evil overlords, but sadly they haven't been written yet.
HRE is in serious danger of splitting up after Aloysious dies, with Stilichians controlling Africa, Hispania - possibly all of former WRE and Sklerois controlling former ERE, with Aloysious IV could only be certain of support of his uncle. It's quite likely Italy and Galia would be the most contested areas of this turbulent era.
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Also
HRE is in serious danger of splitting up after Aloysious dies, with Stilichians controlling Africa, Hispania - possibly all of former WRE and Sklerois controlling former ERE, with Aloysious IV could only be certain of support of his uncle. It's quite likely Italy and Galia would be the most contested areas of this turbulent era.
Signing in for the afterlife:
''You fell down the well twice.''
''I like wells.''
''Charming, sign here.''
Also
Well,Vikings way are finished,unless we get cyvil war in Empire.
Which could happen,unless....servant Arturia would save throne for Shirou Emiya, i mean her son.
Pity,that irish manage to win on their own,Empire would be happy to liberate them,and stay there for next 1000 years as their overlords.
Well,maybe in next chapter.
Unless we get our cyvil war.
Personally,i hope that there would be no cyvil war till all vikings who want freedo get to America.
War in China would continue,but not now.
Muslims are ruled by turks,as it should be.Maybe they officially become Sultans,when roman cyvil war start,and muslims finally would get more lands.
Which could happen,unless....servant Arturia would save throne for Shirou Emiya, i mean her son.
Pity,that irish manage to win on their own,Empire would be happy to liberate them,and stay there for next 1000 years as their overlords.
Well,maybe in next chapter.
Unless we get our cyvil war.
Personally,i hope that there would be no cyvil war till all vikings who want freedo get to America.
War in China would continue,but not now.
Muslims are ruled by turks,as it should be.Maybe they officially become Sultans,when roman cyvil war start,and muslims finally would get more lands.
Hah, Vikings still getting wrecked at Stamford Bridge eh? And we might get to see both the Roman and Islamic empires collapse into civil war at the same time. The Alids in Khorasan were disloyal enough even to the legitimate Caliph, with a pretty obvious Turkish military government instead, that's a pretty good excuse to rebel.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
And if they play their cards right, they might get significant support from both Arab tribes and Persian bureaucracy, though with Arab tribes being effectively demilitarised it remains to be seen how effective they would be, possible resurgence of kharijites aside. Might also see Zanj rebellion at the same time.
Yes,persians in OTL always treated turks as inferior barbarians.
It would be funny to have 2 HRE and two Caliphates at the same time.....