Rather than pursue their enemies into Hispania, Emperor Honorius and his lieutenants instead spent the first months of 468 countering the latest Alemanni invasion, which devastated the Roman Rhineland once more (although fortunately the Western Romans’ fortification efforts allowed thousands of farmers to find safety and prevented the barbarians from torching cities such as Augusta Treverorum and Mogontiacum, which would have destroyed fifteen years’ worth of work in restoring those cities to even a shadow of their former glory after Laudaricus’ assault) before progressing further toward the heart of Roman Gaul. While winter slowed both armies’ movements, a still-visibly infuriated Honorius further made a point of traversing through Burgundian territory, stopping at the Burgundian capital of Lugdunum and strongarming Gondioc into sending his sons to Ravenna.
The Alemanni got as far as Divodurum before Honorius reached them, and forced a battle on March 9 while they had surrounded the city and were waiting for its defenders to starve & surrender. Even though Gondioc had acceded to Honorius’ demands and sent his children to Ravenna before they left his lands, he and his Burgundians were still ordered to mount the first attack on the disorganized but massive and sprawling enemy horde while the Romans moved up to flank them and the Franks followed a good distance behind, both providing only limited missile support at best. The inevitable happened not long after the Burgundians made contact with the Alemanni, as their king was killed by one of their raging berserkers within minutes of the battle being joined; though considering Gondioc had proven himself decidedly treacherous and directly caused the death of the faithful Syagrius, it is exceedingly unlikely that Honorius was at all broken up over his death, and may very well have intended to expend the unreliable Burgundians as arrow-fodder as Theodosius I did with the Visigoths at the Frigidus.
In any case, the rest of the battle proceeded as Honorius planned – the Franks under Childeric hurried up and closed with the Alemanni before the Burgundians could crumble and rout completely, while the Romans (spearheaded by cavalry wedges under Honorius’ and Arbogast’s direction) crushed through the Alemanni flanks and pushed them into a rout over the Mosella[1]. The five warlords leading this particular barbarian coalition were surrounded and annihilated with their retainers, having responded to the Augustus’ attempt to initiate battlefield negotiations by throwing an ax in his general direction, while their now-leaderless horde broke and fled back north in total disorder with the Western Romans in hot pursuit & easily inflicting great casualties. While the Alemanni were now so weakened that Honorius thought they wouldn’t threaten his empire for another decade upon surveying the carnage, they had also done a bigger number on the imperial army than its leaders hoped: nearly 7,000 Romans and federates laid dead out of an army of about 25,000 compared to the 16,000 fallen Alemanni and Suebi. Gondioc's eldest son Chilperic[2] was allowed to ascend to the Burgundian throne, but unsurprisingly resented Honorius for his lack of forgiveness and was kept under close watch by the emperor in turn.
In the meantime, Gaudentius had marched back out of Hispania with a few Visigoth reinforcements – to his great frustration, Euric had been stingy with his own manpower – and occupied the coast of Narbonensis, establishing himself in the city of Narbo. Honorius of course returned south to crush him towards the end of spring, but the casualties the Alemanni inflicted upon his army and the fortifications of the cities Gaudentius had (re)occupied further slowed his progress. By the year’s end, Honorius was still besieging Gaudentius in Narbo, having secured the surrender of Baeterrae and Carcasum[3] in the summer and autumn respectively, while the latter had given up hope of Euric leaving Hispania to help him and was considering mounting a breakout attempt of his own.
As to why Euric had not lifted a finger to assist his co-conspirator, he was busy trying to purge Hispania of all elements which threatened his newly-imposed rule, so as to establish the peninsula as an independent kingdom firmly under his control. In practice this meant ruthlessly targeting the Hispano-Roman administration and clergy, who experienced a number of indignities ranging from the seizure of their churches and the arrest of their prelates by the Goths or worse, Euric’s Priscillianist allies (who took to this persecution with a glee and ferocity that far outpaced that of the Arian Visigoths, and could only be matched by the Donatists of Africa), the routine taking of hostages and the killing of any official who refused to recognize Euric as their king or was suspected of shirking their duties and aiding the Western Romans. Euric’s efforts to stabilize his rule threw Hispania into greater bloody turmoil and, though the Hispano-Romans were generally an urban people and thus unable to easily escape his grasp, he largely failed at securing their cooperation; instead he made many martyrs and even more underground allies of Honorius and Roderic.
A party of Visigoths and Priscillianist heretics terrorizing a family of Hispano-Roman landowners
Speaking of Roderic, Euric’s eldest nephew had made his way to Iol Caesarea and joined King Stilicho of the Moors & Vandals there by the start of summer. Together they set out to crush Ricimer between themselves and Majorian, who had most recently liberated Utica and Hippo Diarrhytus from the usurper’s control. Ricimer, for his part, was well aware of the danger and resolved to deal with the two enemy armies separately before they could link up and stomp him into the North African plains. He moved against Majorian first, engaging him near Thabraca[4] on June 1 and managing to defeat the magister militum there by overcoming his cavalry with Donatist assistance, forcing the Western Roman infantry to fall back under a constant hail of stinging missiles; but Majorian had given as good as he got, mauling Ricimer’s army to a greater degree than the Suebian had expected or hoped.
The rebel Vandals & Suebi were thus in no shape to counter the Moors, loyalist Vandals & Visigoths when they reached Hippo Regius two days after the Battle of Thabraca. As had been the case in the east, that city’s population revolted against its rebel garrison and welcomed Stilicho and Roderic as liberators; in a show of courage worthy of his namesake, the former raced ahead of the latter and their bodyguards to attack Donatist agents who attempted to burn down the church of Saint Augustine which Ricimer had spared and killed most of them himself, despite taking several stab wounds to his chest and arms. Meanwhile Majorian reordered his troops quite quickly and resumed the advance within little over a week, which Ricimer chose not to contest – thus, Thabraca fell with hardly a struggle to the Western Romans soon after Ricimer’s short-lived victory anyway.
The Suevic King of the Vandals had chosen not to fight because he was retreating back into the Aurès and Atlas Mountains, fortifying the mountain passes behind him as best he could and striving to hold them with his Vandals & Suebi while directing his Donatist allies to disperse and harry any Roman attempt to pursue them. His strategy paid its first dividends when Majorian and Roderic marched to crack his defenses at Bulla Regia[5], having left Stilicho to recuperate by the coast, only to find their supply lines under constant harassment by the Donatists which only escalated the closer they got to the mountains. Eventually, the two gave up and lifted the siege in the autumn after an especially brutal Donatist raid not only left them with too few supplies to continue but also destroyed the siege weapons Majorian was bringing up from Carthage, preserving Ricimer’s life and state for another year.
Elsewhere, the Eastern Romans were having issues of their own. Peroz’s army met Anthemius’ beneath the walls of Nisibis on April 8, and though the emperor was counting on Aspar and the Armenians to show up and even the odds against the larger Persian host, he was nowhere to be found. By the time Aspar did arrive, Anthemius had been crushed to death beneath a dying pachyderm when Peroz countered the Romans’ cavalry charge with his elephants and the imperial army – now caught between the Shah and the sallying garrison of Nisibis – had been routed in disarray; nevertheless, his arrival caught the battle-weary and celebrating Persians entirely off-guard, and while he frightened the Shah into fleeing for his life by charging his position with a wedge of Armenian cataphracts, the thousands of Eastern Roman prisoners-of-war regained heart and revolted against their Persian captors, further throwing the latter’s ranks into chaos. The Sassanids were wholly routed by sunset, though Aspar did not pursue them in favor of instead chasing the defenders of Nisibis into the city before they could shut its gates behind them – by nightfall, Nisibis had fallen and the Alan generalissimo allowed his men to viciously sack the city.
In truth, events had proceeded according to old Aspar’s design. He had carefully delayed his advance in hopes of getting his longtime rival the emperor killed; this done, he now expected to be able to control Anthemiolus, or rather Anthemius II. His first success was in persuading the sixteen-year-old new Augustus of the Orient to initiate peace talks with Shah Peroz rather than continue waging war against the Persians as his mother Licinia Eudoxia had advocated, citing the heavy casualties they’d taken in the Battle of Nisibis and the need to secure their victory before the Persians find some other opportunity to turn the tables on them. Clearly (though not utterly) defeated, Peroz agreed to hand over the Armenian rebel Varsken and his associates for judgment by King Vahan and to cede Nisibis to the Eastern Romans, slightly adjusting the Roman-Persian border for the umpteenth time this century.
Peroz is astounded by news of Aspar's arrival so soon after he defeated Anthemius at Nisibis, and orders his men to prepare a defense even as he himself prepares to flee the field
East of Persia, the Hephthalites confronted the newest arrivals in their neighborhood toward the end of spring. Ever-militant Akhshunwar recommended they welcome the Fufuluo with an ambush in northern Sogdia, but where the older and more aggressive general saw only danger, his nephew scented opportunity. Mehama instead greeted the elders and chiefs of the Fufuluo to Samarkand with gifts and a feast, and made them an offer: if they joined forces and crushed the Eftals’ enemies together, he’d grant them lands to settle wherever they wished, though preferably these settlements would be carved out of their shared conquests. The Fufuluo agreed with the stipulation that they be allowed to linger in Hephthalite Khwarezm in the meantime, and Mehama thus added a powerful new ally to the Hephthalite confederacy. But before they could crush the Persians, first he had to fulfill his obligations to the Gupta Emperor and help him crush the Bengali rebels threatening to overthrow him, which would also give him his first opportunity to measure the abilities of his new allies.
In China, Emperor Qianfei finally provoked several major rebellions against himself with his cruel and arbitrary excesses: his uncles Liu Yu, Prince of Xiangdong[6] and Liu Xiuren, Prince of Jian’an, were finally moved to raise their standards in armed rebellion after Qianfei made an attempt on the former’s life and then demanded the latter’s wife and several other princesses of the Liu clan offer themselves to the palace staff, while a bad harvest and Qianfei’s stinginess in distributing food to the starving peasantry sparked further rebellions in central and northern China. The Rouran took the opportunity to ride right back into Liang Province[7], although Shouluobuzhen Khagan had grown a little more cautious after his previous defeats at Emperor Wen’s hands and decided to wait for the Chinese to further weaken themselves before pushing his luck any further.
Soon after the beginning of 469, Gaudentius mounted his desperate breakout attempt. On the night of February 20, the rebels departed from Narbo under the cover of a blizzard and stormed towards the encampment of the much larger Western Roman army, with Gaudentius in particular attempting to seek out Honorius’ command tent and cut the emperor down in single combat. Unfortunately for them, not only were the Western Roman legionaries and federates alert, but there were so many of them that the rebel attack quickly got bogged down; worse still for Gaudentius personally, although Honorius wasn’t more than a reasonably competent fighter, he was surrounded by candidati bodyguards as a man of his stature should be, one of whom dispatched the usurper before he even laid eyes on the true Augustus. Thus did the second of the great conspirators fall.
Gaudentius’ deputy Magnus[8] surrendered Narbo to Honorius the morning after his master’s death, and gave the usurper’s family up to him as well. The emperor greeted his newly-widowed sister Serena as gently as he could given the circumstances, and had expressly ordered that her treasonous husband’s corpse not be further desecrated both for her sake and out of respect for the memory of the latter’s father Aetius. Killing their children, his own nephew and niece and grandchildren to the venerable Aetius, was also a completely unconscionable course of action for the Augustus, though he doubted Gaudentius would have hesitated if he had the chance to eliminate Augusta Euphemia and the young Eucherius. Still, because their mother had given them a claim to his purple cloak and their father had tried to assert that claim, Honorius felt he had no choice but to order them into (admittedly highly comfortable) exile on Capri, and Serena voluntarily went with them. The emperor privately lamented that this was almost an ignominious an end to the legacy of Flavius Aetius, vanquisher of Attila the Hun, as outright slaughtering them would have been.
As far as destinations for exile went, it could have been much worse for Serena and her children than Capri
After dealing with his and Gaudentius’ shared family, Honorius marched onward into Hispania to deal with Euric. But he did not get far before being intercepted by the barbarian rebel’s army in the mountain pass of Rozaballes[9] on April 6, for Euric had judged Gaudentius’ position hopeless and quietly massed his forces to counter the inevitable Western Roman attack following the latter’s downfall over the winter, leaving the Priscillianists behind to further terrorize the Hispano-Romans and disrupt any possible rebellion on their part while he was gone. Their path forward blocked by a shield-wall of Visigoth nobles and champions backed by the less well-armed and poorer warriors of that people, and with the cliffs above crawling with Vasconians who showered them with arrows, javelins and rocks, the Western Romans ultimately failed to force the pass open and fell back.
While Honorius had been knocked back on his heels, Majorian was facing similar frustration in Africa. Even with Stilicho (whose injuries had healed by now) joining them and retaking command of the Mauri, he and Roderic were unable to breach Ricimer’s defenses across the Atlas and Aurès Mountains for most of the year, their efforts constantly undermined by the traitor Vandal’s well-stocked fortifications before them and Donatist raids behind their lines. Only when Roderic boldly took Thagaste[10] without a siege by scaling its wall with a few handpicked warriors and opening its gates for the rest of the Western Roman army on the night of November 13 – coincidentally also the birthday of Saint Augustine, who was born in that town over a century before – did they finally start making serious progress toward rooting Ricimer out of his mountains.
Meanwhile in Constantinople, Aspar had returned for a triumphal procession, which was altogether rather grim and subdued in light of the death of Anthemius I. He also tried to further pressure his young overlord into arranging the betrothal of his eldest son Ardabur to the princess Alypia[11], middle daughter of Anthemius I and Licinia Eudoxia, as a personal reward for his long years of service under the Eastern Empire. Anthemius II was reluctant to part with his younger sister, especially considering she was still a child of ten while Ardabur was forty-six and already a widower with children from his first marriage, but assented to a betrothal until Alypia came of age.
Over in India, the Hephthalites and their new Fufuluo allies spent the late spring and early summer marching to Pataliputra, and arrived in time to break an ongoing siege of the Gupta capital by Purugupta’s army. From June onward, their combined forces and the army of Vishnugupta rapidly pushed those of Purugupta back toward the core of his power in Samatata[12]. As the allied armies prepared to besiege Wari-Bateshwar, Purugupta elected to surrender to his nephew rather than fight to the death, and against the advice of his more ruthless courtiers Vishnugupta allowed his uncle to live (albeit under watch) at his court. Now released from his obligations and having secured good relations with his eastern neighbor, Mehama was free to focus his gaze toward the Sassanids and to undertake the final preparations to avenge his father. In turn Shah Peroz was not entirely blind to the Eftals’ ambitions, and hurried to fortify his border with them and to move the armies he still had after his recent war with the Eastern Romans to the eastern satrapies.
Still further east in China, Emperor Qianfei’s demoralized and poorly-led armies suffered a string of defeats at the hands of his princely uncles and the peasant rebels both, and were further hampered by chronic desertions to the rebel armies which had far more competent and charismatic leaders than himself. However, as the loyalist forces were being swept from the field at the Battle of Yiyang on August 18, a stray arrow fatally wounded Liu Yu while Liu Xiuren was thrown from his horse while pursuing the enemy and suffered serious enough injuries to leave him bedridden for weeks, leaving their forces disordered and uncertain even in victory. This was not good enough for Qianfei, who demanded the heads of his generals for not being able to score a single clean victory over his many enemies, resulting in said generals collaborating with dissatisfied palace attendants to assassinate him at a war council days later.
Nobody much mourned the emperor or even cared to investigate whose knives happened to be planted in his back; instead the Song court quickly and smoothly enthroned Qianfei’s younger brother Liu Zixun[13] as Emperor Xiaowen, with the powerful court official Deng Wan as his regent. However, negotiations with the princely army went less smoothly and indeed completely fell apart when Liu Xiuren arose from his sickbed and insisted on continuing the war with the aim of seizing Jiankang for himself, in which he enjoyed the continued loyalty of their foremost general Shen Youzhi[14]. Meanwhile the lower-born insurgents had carved out domains for themselves, the largest and most threatening of which was that of Chen Yong in Yingchuan[15].
The new child-emperor Xiaowen of the Song dynasty and his regent, Deng Wan
470 saw continuing breakthroughs on the part of the Western Roman army in Africa and their loyal federates. From Thagaste they pursued Ricimer to Tipasa[16], while also retaking Milevis[17] and Constantina[18] throughout the summer in the face of heavy Donatist resistance; in these vicious battles quarter was neither asked for nor provided by either side, particularly not between the Donatist and Ephesian Africans who shared over a century of bloody (and now bloodier still) history. On September 27, Ricimer found himself cornered after the Vandal garrison of Theveste[19] suddenly switched sides in hopes of finding clemency and slammed the town gates shut in his face.
Although he still had a chance of withdrawing to Capsa, Ricimer calculated that he was unlikely to easily get away from the Berber light cavalry in Western Roman service, and evidently had tired of running anyway. So instead he made his last stand a ways north of Theveste with a ragged force of 3,000 rebel Vandals and Donatist die-hards, once more occupying the mountain pass with a shield-wall of the former while the latter took up positions behind or above them to attack the Romans with missiles. But this time a Vandal deserter had informed Majorian and his lieutenants of a goat track in the Aurès Mountains which would allow them to circumvent Ricimer’s shield-wall, and Stilicho was assigned to attack through this hidden path with 300 handpicked warriors while Majorian and Roderic attacked Ricimer head-on to distract him.
The battle went exactly as Majorian planned, for the surprised Vandal shield-wall crumbled in shock when Stilicho emerged to attack them in behind; old Ricimer threw himself at the African king in desperation and wrath, but Stilicho turned the tables and struck his head off at the climax of their duel, in so doing avenging his extended family. As part of their surrender Theveste also yielded up Ricimer’s wife (and Stilicho’s sole surviving cousin) Guntharith, who was as glad as anyone to be rid of the vicious husband who’d killed the rest of her family; Stilicho would have married her to further reinforce his ties to the fallen Silingi dynasty, but between canon law forbidding a marriage between first cousins and Guntharith’s own desire to retreat into a convent, this did not come to pass and he instead later married the niece of Apocorius, the Ephesian Bishop of Iol Caesarea. What little Vandal resistance had survived up to this point crumbled soon after Ricimer’s demise while their Donatist allies fled back underground or, rightly fearing King Stilicho would crack down hard on them, far south beyond the Atlas Mountains and toward their distant Berber cousins in the Hoggar Mountains, well beyond Rome’s reach[20].
With Ricimer defeated, Majorian and Roderic next turned their focus to the last conspirator standing in Hispania, leaving Stilicho to consolidate his rule over the remaining Vandals. As time marched on and the years turned into decades, then into centuries, the three peoples under the rule of the House of Altava (as Stilicho’s dynasty was called after their ancestral seat) – the diminished Vandals still living in the Aurès Mountains, the Ephesian Berbers of the Numidian plains and the Atlas Mountains, and the descendants of Punic and Roman colonists dwelling in the coastal cities – would come to share the rustic varieties of Latin already being spoken by the last of these groups[21] and meld into a provincial people who increasingly called themselves Muri, a corruption of the name Mauri in their new tongue.
The future of Roman Africa, as encapsulated by Stilicho's own family
Speaking of that last surviving conspirator, Euric continued to defy the Western Empire this year. Honorius II had decided on a different tack after his attempt to fight through the Pyrenees ended in failure, and directed the Western and Eastern Roman fleets to clear the path for a landing in northeastern Hispania; but Euric was ready, and countered with fireships being rowed by Hispano-Roman prisoners and captained by Priscillianists prepared to throw themselves into glorious martyrdom. In a battle off Barcino[22], the combined Roman fleet was caught off-guard and had to withdraw back to the Baleares after experiencing significant casualties from the combusting Visigoth vessels, derailing Honorius’ invasion plans: once more, Euric had thwarted Roman designs and bought himself another year of freedom. Still, with Ricimer’s head now decorating a spear in Theveste, Honorius believed it was only a matter of time before the undivided might of Rome would, slowly if need be but surely all the same, grind Euric into dust.
As the flames around the Mediterranean began to die down with Ricimer’s defeat, the Saxons and Romano-Britons were respectively lighting and trying to put out new ones in Britain. This year Ælle decided to show that (despite his previous heavy defeat at Ambrosius’ hands) he was far from done by pressing hard against the Britons to his west and hacking a bloody swath toward Deva, securing the city’s surrender near the end of the year and in so doing also establishing a Saxon presence on the west coast of the island for the first time. Meanwhile Ambrosius was busy re-fortifying the towns in the northeast of his realm and rebuilding Roman forts to guard against the next Saxon attack (whenever it should come), though Irish attacks out of Demetia intensified to the point where he felt compelled to personally respond and smash them at Abertawe[23] in the fall; he elected not to try to drive the Irish out of Demetia entirely, thinking that would needlessly drain his limited resources, but instead accepted the submission of the Uí Liatháin who ruled that corner of Britannia and entered a foederati contract with them, hoping that these Irish would now be of use to him against their own kind as well as the Saxons and other sea-borne raiders.
While the Western Romans came a step closer to restoring internal order, the Persian Empire’s woes were just beginning anew this year, as the reinforced Hephthalites finally launched their long-awaited attack in the summer. Choosing to concentrate their forces and those of the Fufuluo into a single mighty host rather than diluting their strength to go after different targets, Mehama and Akhshunwar smashed through the incomplete frontier defenses of Khorasan and drove straight to Aria and Zaranj, both of which they captured by the end of July, before rampaging across Sakastan and Carmania. The object of their shared wrath was Bam, where Khingila had been treacherously murdered and Akhshunwar routed in disgrace ten years prior, and once they successfully stormed it on August 18 the two poured their bottled-up vengeance over the city’s hapless inhabitants: what Attila threatened to do to Rome, they now did unto Bam – utterly razing it to its foundations, while also killing every living creature they could find and piling the citizenry’s heads into six bloody pyramids. So thorough had the massacre been that Persian poets would lament not even flies survived to feast on the corpses.
A Fufuluo chief trying to assure Akhshunwar that he did his part in destroying Bam and definitely did not lack for zeal
Peroz had been shocked and appalled by word of the Eftals’ cruelty, but it was the reports of their strength that especially dismayed him. Although he initially thought of wearing down that great Fufuluo-enhanced strength down by forcing them to besiege one fortified city after another, the annihilation of Bam forced him to take to the field and try to stop the Hephthalites from doing the same to more of his cities. The Hephthalites seemingly divided their forces after intimidating nearby Jiruft into surrendering immediately after leveling Bam, and so Peroz thought he had a good chance of victory as he set out from Shiragan[24] – but this was a trap, and one he barely escaped when Mehama and the Fufuluo suddenly fell upon his host while he was battling Akhshunwar’s mostly-Eftal host outside the ruins of Bam on October 1.
Having destroyed the Persian field army for now, the Eftals divided for real, with Mehama striking northward to recover the territories lost after his father’s death and Akhshunwar continuing to advance across the south. While the former’s fury had been sated by the destruction of Bam and he no more brutally sacked the cities he conquered from this point on than any other warlord would have done, Akhshunwar’s conduct remained so brutal that no Persian garrison would surrender to him after the year’s end, as he demonstrated over and over that doing so in no way guaranteed he would spare them or the towns they protected.
Finally, in China the forces of the child-emperor Xiaowen prevailed against those of Liu Xiuren by outlasting them, withstanding their siege until Liu Xiuren’s slowness in paying his troops resulted in them mutinying and killing him at the end of summer; having decapitated itself, the princely army dispersed soon after. Deng Wan and his ilk had no time to catch their breath however, for Chen Yong pushed onward to Jiankang in their wake and the city’s defenders had little time to restock their larders or to repair their damaged walls. Sympathizers among the capital’s poorer residents fed the rebel chief information on where Liu Xiuren’s siege engines had done the most damage, and on December 17 Chen Yong’s more numerous army were able to take Jiankang by storm precisely by flooding these weakened sections of the wall with their greater numbers. Xiaowen and Deng Wan managed to flee with several attendants, but did not get far before being waylaid by bandits and killed for their valuables just before the year’s end. Meanwhile, Chen Yong proclaimed himself Emperor Chengzu of a new Chen dynasty[25], though he still had other rebel generals (including former lieutenants of the Liu clan) to mop up before he could truly rule as Emperor of China.
Having toppled the Song, Chen Yong now sits enthroned as Emperor Chengzu of the new Chen dynasty
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[1] The Moselle.
[2] Historically this was Chilperic II of Burgundy, his uncle (killed by Merovech back in 443 ITL) having been the first. He was most famous for being father of Clotilde, the future Frankish queen, and was historically assassinated by his younger brother Gundobad, who later became the most ambitious and successful of the Burgundian kings.
[3] Carcassone.
[4] Tabarka.
[5] Near Jendouba.
[6] Historically Emperor Ming of Liu Song, Liu Yu was indeed almost killed by his nephew (who called him the ‘prince of pigs’ due to his great weight & girth, and apparently sought to carve him up like one) and was saved only because his brother Liu Xiuren cracked a joke that Qianfei approved of. Although initially an improvement over Qianfei, he also became cruel and tyrannical in his later years, and the Liu Song soon collapsed under the rule of his young & inept sons.
[7] Approximately modern Gansu.
[8] Historically, this Magnus was an elder statesman who was appointed Consul in 460 by Majorian and also became Praetorian prefect of Gaul in 469.
[9] Roncesvalles.
[10] Souk Ahras.
[11] Historically, Alypia was the name of Anthemius’ oldest daughter with Marcia Euphemia.
[12] Around the Meghna River. Samatata was a great center of Buddhism before the Muslim invasions.
[13] A younger son of Emperor Xiaowu, Prince Liu Zixun historically was put forth as a claimant to the throne by his staff (of whom Deng Wan was the chief) and quickly gained the allegiance of various ministers and generals opposed to both Qianfei and Liu Yu/Emperor Ming. However, they were eventually defeated by Liu Yu and Liu Zixun was summarily executed by his general Shen Youzhi.
[14] An experienced general who historically served the Liu Song for over 20 years. He fought under Emperors Wen and Xiaowu before siding with Liu Yu/Ming against Qianfei, then Ming’s sons Houfei and Shun. He fought to the end to preserve the Liu Song against the usurper Xiao Daocheng (who founded the Southern Qi), ultimately committing suicide together with his eldest son when their defeat and the dynasty’s fall became imminent.
[15] This rebel domain approximately extends over central & eastern Henan, northwestern Anhui and northern Hubei.
[16] Tifesh.
[17] Mila.
[18] Constantine, Algeria.
[19] Tébessa.
[20] The Berbers these Donatists are joining are early Tuaregs, who reportedly founded a kingdom in the Hoggar Mountains of southern Algeria in the 4th century under the fugitive queen Tin Hinan. She in turn was buried at Abalessa, a town located in those highlands.
[21] The African Romance language historically survived from Roman imperial times (between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD) to at least the 14th century, if not the 15th. Apparently its closest still-extant relatives are Sardinian and, to a much lesser extent, Maltese.
[22] Barcelona. Historically it was Gaiseric the Vandal who used fireships to defeat the Roman navy, which he did at Cape Bon in 468.
[23] Swansea.
[24] Sirjan.
[25] Historically there was a Chen dynasty of Southern China, founded by a Chen clan which did not bother to give their dynasty a new name, but they did not emerge until the mid-6th century.
Circle of Willis
I think there is one typo where you talking about Aspar's desire to be married to the new eastern emperor's younger sister
- is there a "didn't" missing there?assented to a betrothal until Alypia came of age.
Like the reference to the pass at Roncesvalles.
Was there some references to an earlier battle with Ricimer's last stand being betrayed by a traitor "to him anyway" telling Majorian's attacking force of a path behind their position and then Stilicho's force attacking from their rear numbering 300. Which seems a little small given the danger of it getting detected while isolated.
Well the western empire has largely restored order and the east looks externally secure with the Sassanid's looking in deep shit. I wasn't expecting the Hephthalites to co-op the newcomers into their army but its greatly increased Mehama's strength and seriously exposed problems for the Persians. At least while both Hephthalites and Fufuluo are co-operating with each other, which in this time period - or even much later - can change very quickly.
So the Guptas seem to have secured their position in India while we have a new dynasty in China, if they can secure themselves and also handle their northern neighbours.
Fear PK is right that events in both Iberia and N Africa will make the western empire more doctrinarian and intolerant that way. Which is likely to lose it ground in the longer run. Also that Aspar will look towards a new war with the western empire, given the latter is just recovering from another major period of strife while Constantinople's eastern borders look secure for the moment and they have regained the great bastion of Nisibis.
Steve