The dawn of 526 brought with it the appointment of Flavius Aloysius to succeed his father Merobaudes as
magister peditum per Germaniae – much to the disappointment of Theodoric and his Greens, who had hoped to install the Ostrogoth crown prince Theudis in that office. In truth, and despite whatever misgivings he might have toward the Blues, Constantine III felt he had no real choice in the matter. Despite the Arbogastings’ increasingly brazen ambitions and the cloud of suspicion which still lingered from the apparent assassination of Chlodomer, Aloysius was still his brother-in-law and a well-connected man even besides that, a proven warrior and captain of men who had cultivated friendships with his father’s
de facto vassals among the northern Germanic federates both on the campaign trail (usually against Slavic raiders these past few years) and in peacetime. The
Augustus was also both keen on tipping the factional scales
too strongly in favor of the Greens, and on continuing to avoid a revolt so he could continue focusing all of his energies onto working on Rome.
Merobaudes’ demise at the very end of the previous year may also have been connected to the latest outbreak of fratricidal hostilities among the Merovingians this year. This time Ingomer butted heads with Childebert: the former considered a raid which devastated several farms on his side of their shared border to be the work of the latter’s warriors, while Childebert claimed this black deed had been carried out by yet more unidentified brigands. The two kings clashed at Otmus[1] with small armies, comprised only of their household retainers and whatever levies they could summon on their way, and Ingomer proved victorious over his little brother. However, Eucharius Syagrius intervened with his legions to prevent the conflict from escalating and reported the matter to Constantine, who then ordered Aloysius to sort it out in a test of his worth as
magister peditum. Although sympathetic to the cause of Ingomer, Aloysius was also keen on retaining the emperor’s trust after having only just secured his job and (after first twisting Ingomer's arm into going along with his plans) mediated a truce in which both sides would pay a weregild to the families of each other’s fallen warriors in accordance with Frankish custom, and Childebert would also pay restitution to Ingomer’s farmers: a mutually satisfactory outcome, if only barely in Ingomer's case, which prevented further bloodshed and territorial losses, and thus kept him in Constantine’s good graces months after he took office.
Ingomer and Childebert departing from Aloysius' presence after negotiating an end to their latest brotherly squabble
Far to the east, the Rouran finally reached the northern frontier of the Western Hephthalite realm. Mioukesheju Khagan had been looking forward to enacting revenge for the massacre of his envoys during the many years he spent riding through the uncharted wilderness beyond Chorasmia, and now his chance had arrived at long last. The Rouran stormed past the Syr Darya near spring’s end like a horde of men possessed, obliterating the Eftal tributary kingdom of the Afrighids on the southern shores of the Aral Sea with the suddenness of a thunderclap and utterly destroying their capital of Kath[2] before moving on to the Hephthalite lands proper.
The initial Rouran rampage caught Toramana off-guard: the
Mahārājadhirāja had been busy juggling his vassals while also keeping an eye on his western frontier, where he had learned Sabbatius had finished dealing with his own rebellious Miaphysite population, and so had reason to worry about a future Eastern Roman invasion. The task of organizing the first Hephthalite response to the Rouran invasion fell instead to his local vassals and governors, who proved to be utterly unsuited to the task. The local Mazdakite militias and Hephthalite warbands were unwilling to answer to the Parthian lords of the Houses of Varaz and Isfandiyar, who in any case held them in contempt as peasants who’d gotten too big for their britches and foreign interlopers little better than this newest nomadic invader, and their disjointed armies promptly marched into disaster against Mioukesheju Khagan at Āmul[3].
As the Rouran swung southward from the smoldering ruins of Kath and Hazarasp[4] and rode along the Amu Darya, they crushed each of the three disparate hosts which had marched against them and now foolishly camped separately out of hatred for one another, starting with the Parthian vanguard and then annihilating the Mazdakites: only a few hundred of the fastest Hephthalite riders were able to escape the calamity, with the rest who did not die beneath Rouran lances and arrows being forcibly conscripted into their ranks as arrow fodder under the threat of an even more painful death. The escapees sounded the alarm wherever they went, spreading news of an all-destroying race of terrible half-man, half-horse creatures which had burst from the wilderlands to sate their appetite for human blood and tears, and who knew neither enlightenment nor the very concept of mercy. These Rouran nipping at their heels seemed to live up to their tall tales by laying waste to the countryside, slaughtering thousands and enslaving thousands more wherever they could, and they fell upon any attempt by the local Hephthalites to rally and organize a new army in the northern lands with the swiftness of an arrow; so it was natural for the people of Parthia, southern Khwarazm and Khorasan to flee to their walled cities for shelter.
The Chinese mangonel: once adopted by the Rouran to attack the walls of Chinese cities, upon their arrival in Central Asia it became the reason why they could laugh at Hephthalite fortifications
Alas, that too proved to at best provide momentary relief from the invaders’ depredations. The Rouran might be savage, but in no way did that mean they were totally ignorant of their surroundings. Centuries of fighting the Chinese had taught them the value of siege warfare, and they had learned the secrets of Chinese siege weapons such as the mangonel – a sort of primitive trebuchet where men pulled on cords attached to a lever to hurl the projectile on the other end – from captured engineers and bureaucrats long ago, without which they would never have been able to menace the fortified cities of the Han half as thoroughly as they did. Kushmahan and Merv learned this lesson the hard way when the Rouran built such weapons from local trees to knock holes in their walls, then put their garrisons and every man above the age of twelve within to the sword while carrying the rest of the survivors off as slaves. Other cities and Parthian nobles in Mioukesheju’s way began to surrender in hopes of receiving lenient treatment, while the Hephthalite nomads who’d settled in the area raced westward to answer the alarmed Toramana’s call to arms.
It took the
Mahārājadhirāja some months to finish putting together a sufficiently formidable army. In truth he could have immediately ridden out to confront Mioukesheju with the Hephthalite warbands and his household cavalry, but age and experience had made Toramana more cautious, and what he’d learned from his scouts led him to believe that such a course of action would be suicidal. So it was the case that, though the Rouran had gutted or otherwise received the submission of much of Khorasan by the time the royal Eftal host set out to stop them, Toramana brought with him no fewer than 35,000 warriors – Fufuluo, Persians both Mazdakite and Zoroastrian, Parthians, Daylamites, Lakhmid Arabs and Assyrians, a fractious coalition but one which he was able to hold together with his personal presence, charisma and formidable reputation.
Toramana’s decision to exercise a healthy degree of caution paid off, as he defeated Mioukesheju and put the Rouran to flight for the first time in the Battle of Nishapur on July 30; there the Eftals not only found that the Rouran could be beaten, but also identified their chief weakness – their own considerable losses from their disastrous final bout against the Chinese and Tegregs, as well as attrition over the long march from their homeland to Persian soil, also forced the Khagan to fight with quite a bit of caution himself, and to beat a hasty retreat when the winds of battle turned against him. Mioukesheju struck back with all of his pent-up hatred and pushed Toramana back in further battles at Abiward[5] and Sarakhs, showing that the Rouran’s initial onslaught was not a fluke and that they could not easily be driven out of Persia either, but against such a strong enemy army in increasingly mountainous territory his options were limited. As the year wore on he added the strength of Parthian houses that had flipped their allegiance to his horde and started conscripting Chorasmians & Khorasanis to further bolster his numbers, but these could only compensate for so much.
Mioukesheju Khagan preparing to lead his army into battle against the Hephthalites on Persian soil
While his increasingly distant cousins were trading blows with the newcomers from the north, Mihirakula was busy contending with their old enemies to the northeast. After finally crossing through the Pamir Mountains the new
Mahārājadhirāja of the East first clashed with the Tegregs at the occupied oasis town of Karghalik[6], which the Chinese called Piaosha, and scored a rousing victory there. He followed up by retaking Khotan from the Turks, putting the garrison which Yami Qaghan had installed there to the sword, and also reinstalled the pro-Hephthalite Tocharian king of Yarkand.
However, Mihirakula began to run into problems when he moved against Kashgar, where Yami Qaghan was also riding with the bulk of the Tegreg army to blunt his advance. The Turkic cavalry proved to be every bit equal to the finest of the
Hunas, while their infantry contingent of Chinese spearmen and crossbowmen were more than equal to the Eftals’ own inferior Bactrian and Indian footsoldiers despite being outnumbered by the latter. As Yami Qaghan repelled him from Kashgar and called forth reinforcements through the Hexi Corridor, Mihirakula dug in at Khotan and prepared to fight a longer war than he initially expected.
While the Hephthalite-Rouran war raged on through 527, a third party was beginning to take interest in the former’s distraction by the latter. Sabbatius was kept well-informed of the developments to his east by both the spies on his payroll and merchants traversing the Silk Road, who saw firsthand how the Rouran – or, as the Romans came to know them, the ‘Avars’ (after ‘Uar’, the name of an unrelated historical people living in the area who had long ago been subsumed into the ranks of the Eftals) – were laying waste to Chorasmia and Khorasan and how it was taking all of Toramana’s energy just to keep up with his new foes. The Eastern
Augustus dispatched a diplomatic mission comprised of Narses’ most trusted and most diplomatic servants to cross through the Caucasian kingdoms and over the Caspian Sea to greet Mioukesheju Khagan near the devastated city of Hazarasp, which the Rouran chieftain received gracefully – though the envoys’ first impressions were also shaped by what they saw of Hazarasp itself. Suffice to say that between the burnt-out shell of the town, the mass graves and the pieces of Hazarasp’s notables decorating stakes around the Rouran camp, the Eastern Roman delegation was torn between the Rouran’s apparent usefulness in battling the Western Hephthalites and worries that partitioning Toramana’s realm with them might end as poorly for the Orient as allying with Attila against the Occident did eighty years before.
Regardless, the envoys came to Mioukesheju’s tent with a mission and whatever their misgivings, they were determined to carry it out to the best of their ability. After exchanging gifts, they pitched their proposal for an alliance against Toramana, which the Rouran khagan – feeling quite pressured by the fierce and more numerous Eftals himself, in spite of his early battlefield successes – was quite happy to accept. Sabbatius accordingly began a new empire-wide recruitment drive and to mass troops on the Mesopotamian frontier, including Belisarius and his growing
bucellarii corps, while his diplomats explained to Mioukesheju that it would take the Eastern Empire some time to marshal enough resources & armies to intervene due to their recent difficulties with rebels – but also that the emperor was a man of his word, and help would inevitably come if they could just hang in there for another few months, or a year at most. Though the Eastern Empire had been battered by its fair share of violence in recent years, Sabbatius simply could not allow a fantastic opportunity to crush Toramana like this one to slip through his fingers.
To further secure his western frontier and completely eliminate the risk of an attack from that direction while he was busy in Persia, Sabbatius offered to marry his younger daughter Theodora to the
Caesar Theodosius. He knew that there was little chance of such a backstab from the Western
Augustus of course, especially with the latter being tied down by the reconstruction of Rome, but figured it never hurt to make sure. In any case, Constantine III welcomed the proposal to tie the Western & Eastern imperial dynasties closer together: thus the young heir to the Occident was wedded to the even younger princess of the Orient on July 27 of this year. The festivities provided the perfect backdrop for Anastasia, the Eastern empress’ sister, to suggest the marriage of her other daughter Anastasia Junior to Sisenand of Baetica, who had recently succeeded his father Sisebut as lord of that land: suspecting nothing of his elder brother’s demure widow and one of his most consistently loyal vassals, the amiable Constantine agreed over a cup of strong wine.
Theodora Junior is prepared for her wedding to Theodosius, Caesar of the Occident, while her mother and namesake watches over her with two handmaidens
The Romans were not the only great powers playing marriage games in 527, of course. Toramana spent the entirety of this year in the saddle, leading his armies back and forth to counter the unrelenting strikes of the Rouran and attempting a partially successful counteroffensive toward Merv in June, but his courtiers kept him informed of the Eastern Romans’ budding alliance with Mioukesheju Khagan. Aware of the noose tightening around his realm, he sought to reconcile with his estranged cousins to the east and offered the hand of his only remaining unmarried daughter Anzaza to Mihirakula.
For his part, Mihirakula was too busy battling the Tegregs and Chinese to assist Toramana against the Rouran this year. He started 527 well by withstanding Yami Qaghan’s assault on Khotan in the spring, matching the bolts of the latter’s Chinese crossbowmen by lining the city walls with his own Indian longbowmen and boldly sallying out with his cavalry to drive back the Tegregs in a contest of bows & lances, then pursued his foes to Kashgar, which the Tegreg host gave up without a fight. It soon became apparent why they had done that however, as Yami Qaghan had pulled his men east to link up with reinforcements trickling in over the Silk Road and returned to attack the Eastern Hephthalites while they were investing Bharuka[7].
Mihirakula received Toramana’s marriage proposal while retreating from his severe defeat at Bharuka, and though he was clearly in no shape to help against the Rouran at present, accepted it anyway with the promise that he would ride to the Western Hephthalites’ aid as soon as he got the Turks off his back. There were encouraging signs that he was accomplishing this as the seasons changed, as Yami Qaghan unwisely divided his armies to go after both Kashgar and Khotan (over the Tarim’s northern and southern routes) following his latest victory only to promptly be beaten back at both cities by the Eftals, with Mihirakula rallying his men at Kashgar to repel the Tegregs’ first army in August before running them ragged to catch and kick back their secondary army at Khotan in September. As the year wound down, both sides engaged in back-and-forth skirmishing while awaiting reinforcements – Indians from over the Upāirisaēna and Pamir Mountains for Mihirakula, and yet more Turks and Chinese from over the Silk Road for Yami.
Very soon after Lakhana's conquest of northern India Indian troops, such as war elephants and these longbowmen, came to comprise a large and increasingly critical element of Eastern Hephthalite/Huna armies
528 brought with it a shakeup in the Green camp, for Theodoric of the Ostrogoths did not live to see the start of summer this year. His loss was greatly mourned by his people, who had massively multiplied both in numbers and influence under his long and able reign, and by Constantine III as well: though on occasion his ambition and power had intimidated the
Augustus, Theodoric had also ably served three generations of emperors (Constantine himself, his father Eucherius II and his grandfather Honorius II) as their longtime
magister militum since 484, and never did threaten open treason against them. His only son (and Constantine’s maternal cousin) Theudis was his lawful and natural successor, being already a grown man and a seasoned captain.
However Theudis was also known to be highly sympathetic to Ephesians, a product of his closeness to his Roman mother Domnina Majoriana and his education at the court of Ravenna (including Ephesian clerics as his tutors), and many among the Arian Ostrogoth nobility felt he was more Roman than Goth – if they didn’t just suspect him of being a crypto-Ephesian altogether. These rebellious elements gathered behind a kinsman of the Amalingian main line, Optaris, who they acclaimed as their true king. Obviously, this could not stand: Constantine was determined to ensure his cousin’s smooth succession and commanded Aloysius to assist Theudis in putting down the rebels, which Aloysius did without enthusiasm, feeling that the less proven and certainly less trusted Optaris would be much less of an able leader for his rival Greens. To both men’s surprise, Constantine next rewarded Aloysius with the office of
magister militum rather than Theudis, who had expected to also inherit his father’s rank in the Roman government in addition to his crown but found himself without room to complain after having just enjoyed imperial support in suppressing Optaris’ revolt.
Theudis meets Optaris' lance with his sword in close combat
While the West was putting down the small fire which had flared up in Pannonia this year, the East was finally in position to light a much bigger one to the east. Sabbatius completed his preparations for another war with the White Huns by mid-April and immediately launched an offensive down the Tigris to start, aimed at overrunning the Nineveh Plain before Toramana could dispatch sufficient reinforcements to the area. As it turned out, Toramana had detached several thousand troops from his main armies in the east to shore up the garrisons of his Assyrian cities – but they were far from enough to successfully resist the onslaught of Sabbatius’ army, which numbered 40,000 strong (although only about 20,000 of those were actual Romans, the other half being comprised of allies, federates and mercenaries: the Armenians, Kartvelians, Ghassanid Arabs, Moesogoths and even a few Sclaveni).
Within six months, the Eastern Romans had once more retaken the whole of Assyria, capping off their initial slew of conquests with a victorious storming of Nineveh itself at the end of August. One of Toramana’s many sons with Nanai, Bagayash, attempted a last stand in its citadel and was felled by an arrow shortly before the surrender of the surviving defenders: archers serving under Belisarius and Basil quarreled for some time over who had scored the kill. Meanwhile Sabbatius himself had not forgotten the treachery of Patriarch Shila and the Nestorians of the city, which directly contributed to the chain of events which culminated in his friend Theodosius’ death, and although Shila had been dead for half a decade by this point his family was still around to suffer the emperor’s ire.
Although the
Augustus did not outright sack Nineveh or other Assyrian towns he did condemn Elisha, Shila’s son-in-law and successor to the Patriarchate, to be burned at the stake while his brothers-in-law were beheaded, followed by a broader purge aimed at the Nestorian clerical and aristocratic elite of Assyria (in which Basil’s archers, being Ephesian Assyrian exiles almost to a man, were the most enthusiastic participants). The emperor’s catharsis came at the cost of giving the Nestorians many new martyrs, of course – and it even brought him veiled criticism from his wife, who had hoped to reconcile the Nestorians of her homeland with the Ephesian orthodoxy dominating her husband’s empire – but in his hour of victory he could no more pass up on such a fine chance to get vengeance for their infuriating betrayal and his ensuing defeat in his second great bout with Toramana, as well as those Ephesians who the Nestorians had themselves martyred in the past decades, than he could the chance to ally with the Rouran newcomers against the Eftals to begin with. With Assyria subjugated for the time being, the Eastern Romans ended the year by preparing to march into Mesopotamia so that they might tear out the heart of the Western Hephthalite state.
Ioannes the Moesogoth leading barbarian federates and mercenaries beneath the walls of Nineveh, awaiting only the siege tower under his cousin the emperor's direction to roll into position
The Eastern Roman invasion could not have come at a better time for their new ‘Avar’ allies, who were really starting to feel the weight of attrition from their running battles with Toramana across Khorasan. The
Mahārājadhirāja had been on the verge of gaining the upper hand when he made the mistake of detaching several thousand soldiers under Bagayash to defend his western frontier: not enough to actually hold Assyria against the Eastern Romans, it turned out, but too high a number for him to afford in the war against Mioukesheju Khagan. The Rouran regained the initiative and recaptured Merv late this year, once more crossing the Murghab River[8] and increasingly threatening Media & Fars.
Mihirakula grew concerned as reports of his fellow Hephthalites’ struggles worsened over the course of the year, and he made up his mind to quickly resolve his struggle with the Tegreg Turks and Chinese so he could rush to their aid. In this endeavor he was off to a poor start, as his effort to march against pro-Chinese Kuqa ended in a bloody defeat against Yami Qaghan’s reinforced host. The Tegregs went on to recapture Kashgar in another furious battle, nearly trapping Mihirakula inside the Tarim Basin by severing his connection to the Pamir Mountains. However, the Eastern
Mahārājadhirāja managed a limited turnaround at the eleventh hour after collecting a last spurt of Indian reinforcements and gave Yami Qaghan a stinging blow in the Battle of Yarkand that November, after which he sued for peace and received a favorable response from the increasingly frustrated and tired Tegreg chieftain. Negotiations between the Chen court, the Tegregs and the Eastern Hephthalites would drag on into the next year, during which Mihirakula had little choice but to grimly look on as his kindred’s situation continued to deteriorate to the west – and to direct his Indian and Sogdian forces to move to his western border in hopes of aiding them once an agreement was made with his present enemies to the north and east.
Last of all, 528 was also the year in which Aksum and Himyar went to war once again. This third conflict between Kaleb and Dhu Nuwas was instigated by the latter, who seized on the opportunity provided by the former’s distraction by Macrobian[9] raiders harassing his eastern frontier to launch a long-prepared invasion of the Aksumites’ Najrani protectorate. Dhu Nuwas was absolutely brutal in his treatment of the Christian Arabs of Najran, who he viewed not only as heathens but also traitors who’d fatally compromised his efforts against Kaleb (together with the Banu Qurayza) in their previous war half a decade ago, and openly burned many hundreds of them in their churches on top of the thousands he had killed through more conventional means. At the same time he also sent several of his sons and cousins to attack Muza with 10,000 men, which they did successfully – though contrary to his orders, they sacked the great port city for its riches, adding to his notoriety. The
Baccinbaxaba was enraged by this attack and the black deeds which followed, agreeing to take up Dhu Nuwas’ challenge that this should be the last bout between their kingdoms: only one of either Aksum or Himyar would survive this war if he had anything to say about it.
A Himyarite executioner making martyrs out of Najran's Christians following Dhu Nuwas' reconquest of the region
529 was a relatively quiet year in the West, as both Aloysius and Theudis needed time to consolidate their control over their respective territories in the north and east of the Western Roman Empire. On Aloysius’ part, besides arranging matches between his children with various Alemanni, Bavarian and Lombard royals to secure these federates’ continued support (not only for the Western Empire in general, but for him and his family specifically) the new
magister militum also sought to complete his father’s project to subjugate the rest of the Thuringians, which Merobaudes had been unable to accomplish over the past quarter-of-a-century. This Constantine allowed after Aloysius carefully phrased his arguments to give him the impression that the Thuringians (or rather, the half that Merobaudes had failed to subdue up till now) were not a particularly strong people, and their addition would further secure the empire’s northern borders but not drastically alter its internal balance of power.
The same could hardly be said of Sabbatius’ ambitions, which only grew grander as he realized that the Eftals were in such poor shape that he might be able to grab a lot more than just Assyria. The Eastern Emperor managed to tear a swath down the Euphrates and Tigris in the first half of this year, subduing one poorly defended city after another either through siege or (more frequently) through coercive negotiations, and bringing him to the gates of Ctesiphon once more by the start of July. Toramana could not ignore such a threat to his seat of power and hastened west with all the strength he had left, leaving behind scattered Hephthalite tribes and Mazdakite fortresses to defend themselves against the resurgent Rouran as best they could. To prevent the entire eastern half of his empire from falling to Mioukesheju Khagan overnight, he did leave the eldest of his grandsons – Narayana – behind with 5,000 armored horse archers to lead & stiffen local resistance, keeping for himself 25,000 troops with which to confront Sabbatius.
At first the
Mahārājadhirāja achieved some success in battling the Eastern Romans. In a great battle before Ctesiphon that September, despite being considerably outnumbered Toramana was able to draw out a large Roman infantry contingent under the reckless Ioannes with one of his classic feigned retreats and nearly annihilate them; only the intervention of Belisarius and his
bucellarii saved the emperor’s reckless cousin from his demise at the business end of Toramana’s lance, and his corps from total destruction. Still, the casualties the Eastern Romans incurred and Toramana’s second charge through the gap created in their line, which threatened Sabbatius himself, compelled them to withdraw northward from Ctesiphon.
However, though they had won the day and some time to survive, the White Huns did not get to enjoy their reprieve for all that long. Toramana could not sit in Ctesiphon and wait for Sabbatius to come to him, as the Eastern Romans were quickly rallying at Samarra while Narayana was hard-pressed by the Rouran to the east: Mioukesheju took advantage of the
Mahārājadhirāja’s distraction to immediately go on the offensive once more, and had not only already sacked Nishapur but was beginning to cross the central Persian deserts by the time he won the Battle of Ctesiphon. Hoping to knock Sabbatius out of the war quickly so he could focus his full attention against the Rouran once more, Toramana set out to challenge him as he marched his legions back south from Samarra for a second go at the Eftal capital.
The two grand armies of the eastern powerhouses – 35,000 Eastern Romans and 24,000 Hephthalites – met at a largely abandoned hamlet north of Ctesiphon called Baghdad on October 31, just before the start of the rainy season which would surely inhibit their maneuvers until April of 530. The battle at first favored the Hephthalites, whose horse archers devastated the lightly armored ranks of Slavic skirmishers sent forth by Sabbatius at the beginning and outshot even the best of the Ghassanids and Belisarius’
bucellarii, and the furious charge of their heavy cavalry – led by Toramana himself and three of his oldest sons – broke through the legions composing the Eastern Roman center as they were still forming up for battle in front of their camp. However, as they surged toward said Eastern Roman camp in a bid to eliminate Sabbatius and end the war in a single stroke there, the Hunnish cavalry fell into a trap prepared by Sabbatius at Belisarius’ counsel: ditches dug and filled with sharp stakes, which not only felled the Hephthalite riders foolish or unlucky enough to charge directly into them but also (combined with the typical palisades erected around the Roman encampment) funneled them into narrow avenues and gateways defended by the
Excubitores and other elite palatine legions under Sabbatius’ personal command.
In their attempt to avoid Belisarius' stakes at the climax of the Battle of Baghdad, the Eftal heavy cavalry found themselves charging directly into the prepared ranks of Sabbatius' best legionaries and palace guards instead
A terrible slaughter followed, leaving the flower of Western Eftal nobility almost entirely shorn of its petals. Toramana managed to survive thanks to the sacrifice of his son Ghatifar, but was badly wounded and barely conscious by the time he managed to return to his lines. Alas, upon his return he found that those lines were crumbling anyway, as the heavy Eastern Roman, Gothic and Arab cavalry & camelry commanded by the
Caesar Anthemius squaring off against his left and the Caucasian division which formed the Eastern Romans’ own left wing had caved in his flanks. The Lakhmids were the first to flee the battlefield in disarray and terror, kicking off a broader rout in which the Hephthalite army (in particular its infantry, comprised of both Zoroastrian and Buddhist Persians as well as a Daylamite contingent) was mostly destroyed. Of the 24,000 men which Toramana had brought to the Battle of Baghdad, only 6,000 managed to make it back to Ctesiphon a week later with their
Mahārājadhirāja, whose wounds had become infected: delirious and feverish, Toramana was clearly in no shape to command the defense of his capital as the year drew to a close and Sabbatius closed in to establish siegeworks around him.
About the only silver lining to the calamity the Western Eftals found themselves in was that Mihirakula had finally concluded his drawn-out negotiations with the Tegregs and Chinese. Those negotiations had gone on for so long that an impatient Yami Qaghan actually broke the truce in mid-year, thinking Mihirakula was stalling to buy himself time and reinforcements, and only returned to the table after being defeated at Niya (having circled his army around to take the southern Tarim route in a failed attempt to catch Mihirakula off-guard). In November the belligerents settled on the cession of Kashgar to the Turks, who would install their own vassal king there, and by extension the submission of the northern Tarim Basin to Tegreg and Chinese suzerainty: the Eftals would retain Khotan and Yarkand in their own sphere of influence however, and control over the southwestern passes of the Silk Road in the Basin.
It was not unreasonable of Narayana (now effectively the leader of his people, as the oldest of his father’s male descendants to still be alive, at liberty and not in Ctesiphon) to suspect his distant relative of having purposely drawn out the talks to let the Western Hephthalites get beaten into a position where they’d have to submit to their Eastern kin for protection, though Mihirakula insisted the delay was due to Chinese and Turkic intransigence – if he’d had his way, he claimed, they’d have kept on fighting to ensure that there would be no reduction to the Eftal sphere of influence in the Tarim, so Narayana and Toramana had better be grateful that he was willing to concede Kashgar to his new enemies for their sake in the first place. Regardless of the truth of the situation, the situation was dire enough that Narayana knew he could not afford to offend Mihirakula and turn him away. Thus did 529 end with the Eastern Hephthalites finally beginning to move to assist their Western brothers, while Yami Qaghan and the Tegregs took note of how their newest acquisitions brought their western border right up to the Rouran who’d just escaped their judgment a decade before.
Prince Narayana riding on a Persian plain with what few Western Eftals remain to accompany him
Lastly, the Aksumite-Himyarite war continued to proceed to Dhu Nuwas’ advantage this year. Himyarite forces successfully cleared southwestern Arabia of the remaining Aksumite garrisons there while Kaleb remained distracted by the Macrobians. Dhu Nuwas then swept northward, bribing the Banu Quraish into defecting to his side with the riches he plundered over the previous year and so gaining Mecca bloodlessly, before laying siege to Yathrib. This time he won over the allegiance of the Banu Qaynuqa, another Jewish Arab tribe living in and around the city, but was fiercely resisted by the Banu Qurayza who (correctly) feared that he still sought revenge on them for their past treachery.
However, late in the year the tide began to turn, as Kaleb finally subdued the Macrobian tribes and hurried to cross the Red Sea before Yathrib fell. He landed in the Tihamah with an advance force of 8,000 warriors, of whom 4,000 were Alodians under the command of his son (and their king) Ablak, and despite being outnumbered he went on to catch Dhu Nuwas by surprise and break the siege of Yathrib in December. The Himyarites fell back to Mecca and prevailed against the Aksumites in a hotly contested battle outside the city with the help of their new Quraish allies, whose cavalry proved indispensable in outmaneuvering the Aksumites and whose camels scared the Ethiopian and Nubian cavalry away. However, the Aksumite fleet was ferrying more troops over the Red Sea every day to reinforce Kaleb’s army and Dhu Nuwas came to the conclusion that he had to go on the offensive again, and soon, to crush the Aksumites before their army swelled to a size that he could not possibly match.
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[1] Château-Thierry.
[2] Beruniy.
[3] Türkmenabat.
[4] Hazorasp.
[5] Dargaz.
[6] Kargilik.
[7] Aksu.
[8] The Bartang River.
[9] Historically, the actual Macrobian kingdom known to Herodotus had fallen no later than the 1st century AD. ‘Macrobian’ survives as a pre-Islamic name for the Somali people, who at this time lived both in fairly sophisticated coastal city-states capable of competing with Aksum and Himyar in the Red Sea commercial arena and as nomadic inland pastoralists.