956 brought with it not only a new, uneasy peace on Ireland but also a shake-up in the Christian Levant. Adémar de Bonne had been succeeded as the first post-Crusade Patriarch of Jerusalem by a native from Galilee, Boulos of Cana[1], but now he too was dead and Aloysius V seized the opportunity to promote his own brother Constantine from the parish of Bethlehem to the vacated patriarchal see. At age 46 Constantine was still relatively young for a Patriarch, but neither could he be deemed practically or literally still a child (as he would have been if his father had appointed him to the office in prior decades) and he had made a name for himself in translating Arabic texts on science & medicine into Latin on top of accruing a positive reputation in his parish, so the pushback which the imperial family faced for this appointment was insufficient to keep him out of the office. Since the Aloysians claimed descent from Judah Kyriakos, a 2nd-century Bishop of Jerusalem and the last verifiable descendant of Saint Jude Thaddeus who they claimed to be their great maternal progenitor, as far as the Emperor and his siblings were concerned Constantine was just returning to their ancestor's office anyway. In any case, Constantine's ascent to this Patriarchate in tandem with his twin Michael and their eldest sister Maria in their more established offices cemented the leading roles of Aloysius IV's middle children in the administration, care and defense of the Holy Land.
Far to the north, the termination of the latest hostilities between the Britons and Irish freed the former up to begin seeing to a new task which the Emperor had given them: supporting the Danes in their own fratricidal struggle with the Norwegians, with a latter-day Viking raid on the monastery of Lindisfarena serving as the Romans' official
casus belli (though the reavers were unable to overcome the monastery's new walls, and the Norwegians insisted these men were acting of their own accord & had no ties to their king, the fact that the captured raiders were all Norwegian themselves was presented as proof enough of Norwegian aggression to the Christian world). Prince Harald of Denmark, now a grown man and the first Danish prince to undergo baptism since Claudius-Fjölnir, rejoined his father King Sigtrygg's fleet on the eve of war with the Garmrsons of Norway and brought with him the support of both the Holy Roman Empire's Belgic squadron (with the Emperor's youngest brother Count Sètemy of Flanders commanding it), and the British fleet which now no longer had reason to keep Ireland under blockade. The Norwegian king Hákon Eiríkrson tried to beat the odds by attacking the Danish fleet in port before its many allies could arrive, but the surprise was foiled by delays brought on due to poor weather and the Danes first repelled his assault on the port of Roskilde before going on to defeat the now-outnumbered Norwegians in great naval battles off Hlésey[2] and Fanø toward the end of this year.
Danish and Norwegian longships battling in the waters off Fanø, while a fire started by Sètemy's Roman fireships burns on the tides in the background
Across the Levantine border, Saif al-Islam Ghazi came to feel that his position was stabilizing after the previous year's purges and began turning his attention to preparing Iraq for a great counterattack against the Christians, even as his nominal overlord Hasan continued to intrigue against him in the background. He would actually have preferred to go after Egypt first, so as to reunify Dar al-Islam under the 'legitimate' Hashemite ruling branch, but since the crusaders physically completely separated the two realms and the court in Al-Qadimah was not willing to even negotiate terms of surrender to Kufa, such a course of action was presently impossible. However, the many disasters which had afflicted Iraq in this century – the ongoing (even if
de facto frozen) Fitna with Egypt, the terrible Zanj Rebellion, the equally terrible Great Kharijite Rebellion, the great Alid revolt, the corruption and disorder which increasingly plagued Ja'far's term as Grand Vizier, and finally the conflicts brought by himself & his fellow Turks – had all piled up to make their road to recovery (much less regaining the ability to seriously challenge the Holy Roman Empire, itself now in a much stronger position and more united than could have been thought possible at the start of the tenth century) a very, very long one.
After restoring order and eliminating all who he deemed to be threats to his new regime, the Atabeg's next moves included rebuilding Iraq's economic strength – an effort in which he relied on the import of slave labor from Bilad as-Sudan, including his Egyptian rivals' new partners among the Kanem, though he made sure to retain Ja'far's policy of mass-castrating the new slaves to prevent a second Zanj Rebellion down the line – and launching his much-belated offensive against the Kharijite remnants. In the time it took for him to attain and consolidate his position of supremacy over all Iraq, the followers of Ibn Junaydah had fought among themselves and reduced their own number from dozens to three men, all of whom governed over more consolidated statelets themselves: Ibn Junaydah's own last surviving grandnephew Sultan ibn Faisal still held their home fortress of Diriyah and controlled the Nejd from there, Zayd al-Sadiq controlled a domain stretching from 'Asir to the Hadhramaut and centered on Yaman, and Abu Sa'id and his
Baqliyya controlled Bahrayn and Oman in the east. Identifying the kindred of the false Mahdi as the most immediate threat, Saif al-Islam descended to the Hejaz with his army and used the holy cities (Mecca having since been cleansed of the Kharijites with yet more blood) as his base for further offensives into the Nejd. To combat the expert desert raiders of
al-Askariyyah ('the soldiers') – as the followers of Sultan were known – the Turks used a strategy of putting every town that wouldn't immediately submit to the torch, herding the surviving populations into friendly towns or remote oases where they could more easily be kept under watch, and killing anyone they found outside these secure sites who couldn't immediately identify themselves as a soldier of the Caliph's army or a pilgrim on the
Hajj.
Saif al-Islam Ghazi, Atabeg of Kirkuk and de facto ruler of the Iraq-based Hashemite Caliphate following the downfall of Ja'far, in his prime. An ambitious and capable warlord, he would cement the military ascendancy of the Turkic people in what used to be (and technically still was) the heart of the Arab world, and hoped to set Dar al-Islam on a course of recovery so that they might soon turn their blades back in the direction of Christendom
Meanwhile, all the way to the east in Nam Việt, Kishi no Kisa was finally able to get out of bed and take up command against the Vietnamese once more in mid-956. His injuries had made it very difficult for him to speak above a whisper, so he now primarily communicated to his subordinates by writing (in Classical Chinese, naturally) and certainly could not shout orders on the battlefield, but despite being in such a debilitated state the man was the furthest thing from a quitter and determined to get revenge on his would-be killers. Under his authority the Chinese forces in Nam Việt switched to an aggressive posture once more and began to push toward Sơn La from both the north and the east, though progress was extremely slow given the rough terrain, King Giáp's Tai allies and the fact that he had taken advantage of the extra time allotted by Kishi's long stay in bed to not only hastily build new defenses, but also take some ground back in the direction of Cổ Loa, then disperse some of his loyal troops in those territories to serve as partisans and further train & organize resistance among the locals against the oncoming Chinese.
The Norwegians engaged in further battles at sea against the Dano-Roman alliance throughout 957. Despite facing bleak odds which only worsened by the day, Hákon of Norway fought manfully and well, often falling back on a strategy of drawing the larger allied fleets into fjords where he could neutralize their numerical advantage and even make use of nearby landward defenses, such as fortified towers from where his archers could fire on the Christian & Danish vessels, in order to prevail time & again. In any case Hákon also tried to open additional fronts to distract the Romans, but his initial effort to persuade the Norse-Gaels of the Isles to raid Britain & Ireland was flatly shot down by the elderly King Dubhgall, who still remembered the valiant but ultimately disastrous efforts of the Sons of Ráðbarðr (and his own father for that matter, though
he died fighting the Picts and not the Romans or Britons) in the late ninth century and viewed renewed conflict with the Holy Roman Empire to be tantamount to suicide.
Resolving that if he wanted something done he'd have to see to it himself, Hákon sent his brother Þorkell to sail to England with 4,000 warriors while he tied down the British navy off Stavanger. The Norwegians knew they had little chance of going home unless everything went perfectly for them and did not entertain any hope of sparking a revolt among the Anglo-Norse populace, due to the latter's embrace of Christianity and being on good terms with their new neighbors, but hoped to do enough damage to either force the Romans to the negotiating table or (more realistically) delay any major invasion of Norway itself. Elsewhere Hákon did have more luck with inciting a revolt among pagan Wends on and south of Rȯjana[3], as well as agitating the nearby Balts of Pomerania to intensify their raids on the northeastern fringe of the Holy Roman Empire.
Tenth-century Wendish warriors. Regardless of whether they fought for or against the Holy Roman Empire, the Wends were in the process of adopting provably successful Roman-style equipment and tactics, though they were still a bit behind the times (as evidenced by their majority usage of the older round shields, among other things)
In response to these annoyances, Aloysius V called on the Obotrite and Lutici federates to marshal their strength for the suppression of both the rebels and the Pomeranian raiders. Furthermore, in addition to the two legions he directed to their aid, the Emperor also sent the Knights of St. Gabriel – with the Banu Hashim still recovering from the defeats & disorder of the past decades, the elderly Sigmar von Feuchtwangen agreed to travel to fight Germanic, Slavic & Baltic pagans in northern Europe, having been assured by Maria (effectively the leader of the Gabrielites' female wing as its 'Abbess-General', though formally she was still only titled an abbess) that the Muslims likely wouldn't dare attack and if they did, her brothers were capable of holding the fort in his absence. The first stage of one such fort, dubbed
Le Crac des Anges[4] ('Fortress of the Angels') based on a translation of the native Aramaic term for a walled town ('karəḵā') into Francesc, had recently begun construction as a rare joint project between the two orders in the Homs Gap: being the only such jointly-built castle and controlling a major passageway between the Levantine coast & the Syrian hinterland from the high hill it was constructed on, it would gain much fame in future centuries as one of the greatest and most important of the crusader castles.
On the other hand, Sigtrygg of the Danes hoped to spark a revolt among the jarls within Norway itself, which would certainly have made gaining a foothold on the other side of the Sound much easier for him. In secret negotiations he promised those who would hear him out that when he died, he would divide his crowns: his Christian son Harald would inherit Denmark, but a Hrafnson-ruled Norway would go to his pagan son Eiríkr, so the jarls that held to the old ways would have nothing to fear in regards to religion. The Romans were not involved with these talks and most likely never would have agreed to such terms if they knew about it, but Sigtrygg hoped that the remoteness of the Norwegian kingdom and the installation of a ruler who would at least no longer raid their shores would mollify them in the future. However, even those jarls who were interested in his scheme made it known that they would not rise up against Hákon without a decisive Danish victory or two to convince them that the Garmrsons' hold on Norway was not as firm as it presently seemed.
In the Near East, the Hashemites (or at least, their nominal servant the great Atabeg of Kirkuk) did achieve a major victory in their quest to restore order to the Arabian peninsula. The Turkic army of Saif al-Islam managed to almost reach the
Askariyyah center of power at Diriyah this year, forcing Sultan ibn Faisal to gather his remaining forces and launch a desperate counterstrike before they pinned and strangled him within its walls. The Kharijites attacked the Hashemite loyalists' camp near Qarma[5] in the Al-Batin Valley, but the element of surprise which they were counting on was ruined by less fanatical traitors in their ranks, who had gone over to Saif al-Islam earlier that day and warned him to remain alert after nightfall in exchange for pardons. Sultan himself was killed in the failed night raid, and most of his remaining followers scattered to the desert after the disastrous ending to the Battle of Qarma. Those who had not done so, including his entire family, holed up in Diriyah but did not have the numbers to properly defend its walls against Saif al-Islam's assault two weeks later, following which he ruthlessly put them all to the sword. Diriyah itself was destroyed in the bloodbath, though this was neither the first nor the last time that such a fate would befall the Nejdi fortress. One down, two more to go: with the Nejd brought back under control and the remaining Kharijites hiding in its sands shattered, Saif al-Islam could now move along to suppress Zayd al-Sadiq in Yemen and Abu Sa'id in Bahrayn.
The army of Saif al-Islam mopping up Kharijite remnants in the Nejd as they approach Diriyah, the final stronghold of Ibn Junaydah's family
Further to the east, the Pecheneg rebellion against the Khazars was in full swing and Menachem Khagan's passive strategy was quickly proving ineffective in the face of Kuerçi Khan's dynamic offensives. Not only did he effectively concede many trade routes and pastures (by extension, the herds of horses, sheep & other animals on which the Khazars relied both for military purposes and just to feed themselves) to the Pechenegs, but his plan of waiting out the storm in his cities made the Khazars look weak both to their own vassals and outside forces, which were quick to take advantage. The Bulgars on Khazaria's northern fringe took this conflict as a chance to renounce their suzerainty beneath & end tribute payments to Khazaria, while the Ruthenians under Emperor Aloysius' brother-in-law Grand Prince Daniel began to push on their western border and the Christian Alans & Avarians of the North Caucasus contacted Roman representatives to negotiate a reversion of their allegiances back toward the Empire. Hoping to correct his mistake and stave off a coup by his own outraged sons, Menachem marshaled his army at Atil and prepared to set out to confront the Pechenegs in the field once more, but in the terms of the steppe horsemen, taking such action now may have been tantamount to shutting the stable door after the horse has already bolted.
The Roman response to Hákon of Norway's gambits came in fast and hard throughout 958. Prince Þorkell Eiríkrson made a last-minute change of plans upon being informed by his panicked spies that there was no chance of an Anglo-Norse uprising in support of his coming – well, those spies who didn't get handed over to the authorities for a brutal interrogation and hanging, anyway – and ended up only landing six hundred men in England, a large raiding party but hardly a worthwhile invasion force, while diverting course to strike at eastern Britannia with the majority of his army. The trick worked out as well as it could, persuading Íméri to concentrate his much larger army (now back in force from Ireland) on destroying the northern Norwegian detachment and buying Þorkell a few good weeks to lay waste to British towns as far inland as Drolépont[6]. At first the only serious resistance he found came from fewer than 1,000 inexperienced and hastily-assembled militia under Count Errépe ('Agrippa') de Sidomage, a descendant of the ill-fated Amleth of the Scyldings (and thus distant kin to himself); they fought bravely enough at the ensuing Battle of Odoné[7] to win much admiration from their fellow Britons and a place in their heroic poetry & music, far surpassing any contemporary observer's expectations of men of their caliber, but were wiped out by the end of their last stand (Errépe himself was found headless but still fervently clinging to his sword), and after disposing of them Þorkell even threatened Lundéne itself briefly in the late spring months.
However, the Norwegians' luck ran out once the
Ríodam turned his army back south. Having raided villages around the British capital but failed utterly to break through its defenses and his seaborne route of retreat blocked off by a reserve British fleet, Þorkell tried to retreat to his boats overland, only to be waylaid near Sédomage[8] (not to be confused with the seaside seat of the descendants of Amleth & Ophelíe, though they share the same naming root) while marching along the Icknield Way. The Norsemen were annihilated in the battle which followed, their captives freed & their ill-gotten plunder reclaimed, putting a dead stop to Hákon's hopes of distracting the Romans from launching an offensive against his homeland by laying waste to Britain; that they were dealt with so quickly, when the last major Norse invasion of Britain took a decade to defeat and left lasting marks on the land, was also a sign of how far the Britons & English had come since. Norwegian hopes of agitating a revolt in Ireland, either among the Norse-Gaels of the longphorts or the Irishmen themselves, also did not pan out – Muichertach and all his fellow Irish kings were had little desire to antagonize the Emperor who had indirectly tried to help them, and Hákon's remaining cousins were in no rush to launch a suicidal rebellion to support him either (not to mention that the descendants of Flóki in Dublin, now going by the name of Mac Amlaibh after Gaelicizing, shared the same disdain for their ancestor's fratricidal betrayer as the Hrafnsons of Denmark).
Last stand of the British militia of the Count of Sidomage at Odoné. While they were ultimately utterly defeated, these men were credited with mauling and blunting the main thrust of Þorkell Eiríkrson's attack that the Ríodam Íméri gained the time to suppress the Norwegians' feint and turn the main British army around, avenging them by annihilating their killers a month later
The Balts and insurgent Wends did not enjoy much more in the way of good fortune this year, either. A large Pomeranian raiding force of 2,800 was defeated by a mere 800 Christians – a mix of faithful Wends, legionaries and the Gabrielites who left the Middle East, the last of whom numbered 20 knights and 120 common sergeants – in the Battle of Dymine[9], soon after which the Pomeranians retreated and the princes responsible for these attacks offered apologies & restitution to Aloysius V in order to forestall any retaliation. The Hochmeister Sigmar was not content to have his career be capped off with what would have been considered a minor skirmish in his crusading days though, so he requested and received command of the efforts to take Rȯjana back from the rebel Wends. Christianity had been exceedingly slow to take root on the remote island compared to the mainland Wendish principalities west of the Oder, and the Rani tribe which had replaced the old Germanic Rugians there had established a great cult center on Cape Arkona to their four-faced god of war & plenty Sventovit; given the massive disparity in the numbers between those of their kind who had accepted Christ and those who had not, the latter had little trouble overcoming the former when they rose up against Roman influence. It was now up to Sigmar to change that state of affairs.
On the eastern steppes, Menachem Khagan routed the Pechenegs in a battle north of Atil and wasted little time in giving chase. However, this was a trap set by Kuerçi Khan – one the Khazars should have seen through, and would have if they had not increasingly forgotten their own nomadic roots – and inevitably the upstarts turned around to maul their pursuers in a great ambush, pinning the Khazar host against the banks of a tributary of the great Volga[10] and killing many thousands there. Menachem and most of his sons were among those Khazars who fell in the carnage, leaving the Khaganate in the hands of his youngest son Benjamin. As the new Khagan, Benjamin determined that it was no longer possible to defend his people's position on the steppes with what armies remained under the Khazar standard and made the difficult decision to move his capital southward to Balanjar, in the process essentially reorienting the Khazar realm to become a wholly & definitively sedentary North Caucasian kingdom rather than a steppe power with pretensions to nomadism.
Many Khazars had already settled in the North Caucasus over the past century, so that he had enough of a base for a viable kingdom there already; Benjamin's conundrum now was how to extract himself & his court from Atil without getting massacred by the Pechenegs roaming outside. He decided that his best bet would be to start a war between the Ruthenians and the aforementioned Pechenegs, who were already fated by geography to collide sooner or later anyway, and so he decided to hand the northern Khazar fortress of Sarkel over to the former while the latter were keeping it under siege. As expected, Grand Prince Daniel sent an army to relieve his prize, resulting in the first direct engagement between the Ruthenians and Pechenegs (which he won). Both sides were further blindsided by the Volga Bulgars raiding them while they were distracted with one another & the Khazars and the arrival of similarly opportunistic Rus' marauders from upriver, who they (and Benjamin Khagan, though it was too late for the Rus' to do him any good) alternately skirmished with and tried to enlist into their respective ranks.
Ruthenians, supported by Rus' mercenaries, battling Pechenegs on the Pontic Steppe. Somewhere out of view, Benjamin Khagan of the Khazars breathes a sigh of relief and prays that his enemies remain distracted by one another for as long as possible
In 959 the Dano-Roman coalition, having crushed the Norwegian incursion into Britain and contained the Wendish pagan uprising, worked on breaking into Norway proper for the first time. Having been initially confounded by his defensive strategy, the allies resolved to draw the Norwegian navy away from its own shores where they could use the many defensible fjords to their own advantage, and try to attain a decisive victory in the open sea where the latter would be more vulnerable. They were initially unable to do so, as Hákon was wise enough not to fall for the bait they had set for him on the edge of his waters, but Sigtrygg was eventually able to persuade the enemy king to come forth and challenge him through a traitor in the Norwegians' midst: Sigurðr, Jarl of Agðir, who had been promised a doubling of his territory and a lifetime exemption from taxation with no exceptions if he turned coat in secrecy. It was Sigurðr who treacherously advised his king that it was safe to pursue the Danes following the latest Norwegian defensive victory in the Battle off Hvasser, in the hope that they would score a big enough follow-up triumph to dissuade the Danes & Romans from fighting any longer.
Hákon proceeded to sail into a trap prepared for him by the Danes and Romans on the eastern edge of the Kattegat[11], with the Danish fleet sailing in from the east to block his entry into the Sound (which he planned to sail through on his way to the major enemy port at Roskilde) while the combined Romano-British armada emerged to block off his retreat. Realizing that he had been tricked, Hákon immediately tried to change course and sail home rather than test the insurmountable odds arrayed around him (for he had seventy-five longships against more than two hundred of the enemy), and favorable winds enabled him to break through the Roman lines before Count Sètemy could get all of his own ships into position: however, the majority of his fleet was not as lucky. Of the seventy-five Norwegian vessels involved in the Battle of the Sound, only twenty-five were able to retreat with their king; by the time they returned home, the army of Agðir had occupied and burned down much of the Garmrson capital at Túnsberg[12], though Hákon's household remained safe on Slottsfjellet to the north of the town. While the vengeful Norwegian loyalists promptly drove the rebels away with great bloodshed, their defeat at sea still left them without the ability to repel a Dano-Roman landing, and Jarl Sigurðr assumed that his former master's defeat was just a matter of time.
The Norwegian rearguard makes their stand against the Danes surrounding them in the Battle of the Kattegat, giving their king an opportunity to escape the Dano-Roman ambush & carry on the fight for years to come
To the south, Saif al-Islam spent the year rooting the Kharijites out of 'Asir, a task made all the more difficult by heavy rainfall and the tribes of the region having cemented their loyalty to the anti-Hashemite cause since they were first recruited & then greatly rewarded by Ibn Junaydah. The 'Ilmi Muslims meanwhile sought vengeance upon all those who had a hand in sacking Mecca and the Atabeg was happy to deliver; he responded to said local tribes' defiance with hostage-taking, the seizure of farm- and pasture-lands, and regular massacres to thin their numbers & break their will to resist. Alas his ruthless strategy took some time to bear fruit, and although he was eventually successful in securing 'Asir for the Caliphal authorities, it had taken him so long that Zayd al-Sadiq had plenty of time to prepare for his coming in the mountains of Yemen further still south of 'Asir.
To the east, Benjamin Khagan took advantage of the new outbreak of fighting between the Ruthenians and Pechenegs to break out of Atil and head for the safety of the mountains to his south. Kuerçi Khan was busy besieging Sarkel after defeating the Ruthenians south of that town this year, but upon hearing that his ancestral enemy was trying to flee from the steppe altogether, he dispatched a strong force of 7,000 riders under his son Batbayan Tarkhan to track down and annihilate the Khazar caravan before it could reach the Caucasus Mountains. Batbayan intercepted and massacred a large & conspicuous Khazar party traveling south of the Don-Volga portage, but although they retrieved much booty and many captives, the Pechenegs could not find a trace of Benjamin or the Ashina imperial household there. Batbayan realized that this was a decoy, but it was too late; despite his frantic efforts to catch up to Benjamin, the latter managed to cross the Terek River and reach Balanjar.
After re-establishing his court at Balanjar, Benjamin organized the remaining Khazar forces and gathered reinforcements from his remaining Caucasian vassals, such as the Kumyks & Juhuros, to oppose the Pecheneg onslaught. Despite being outnumbered 2:1, he proceeded to defeat Batbayan Khan in the Battle of the Terek Delta[13], aided by Kumyk scouts who helped him navigate the marshy waters of said delta and maneuver around the more numerous Pechenegs. Between Batbayan retreating in defeat and Daniel pressuring his western flank, Kuerçi Khan resolved to focus on fending off the Ruthenian threat and mopping up the remaining Khazar presence on the steppes first before coming after Benjamin in force once more. Thus, he oversaw the capture of Sarkel toward the end of this year and also sent his son to try to redeem himself by taking Atil once & for all, now that it was only defended by a skeleton garrison and was populated only by those too poor or infirm to flee with either of Benjamin's caravans. Benjamin himself, for his part, tried to reconcile with and negotiate support from the Holy Roman Empire to survive these still-dire straits.
Benjamin (bar Menachem) Khagan, the last Khazar emperor to rule from Atil and the first to rule from Balanjar, sitting at the heart of his reconstituted court in the new capital. While losing the original heart of Khazaria to the upstart Pechenegs was certainly a huge blow, the Khagan was not inclined to give in to despair and believed that with enough grit & hard work, the Khazars can still build a new future for themselves in the North & East Caucasus
Far beyond the steppe, Kishi no Kisa had overcome desperate & ferocious Vietnamese resistance to finally reach King Giáp's mountain fortress at Sơn La. The Tibetan revolt had also been suppressed by this time, freeing up thousands of Chinese soldiers to aid in the suppression effort and to descend upon Giáp's Tai tribal allies to the north and west of his final great stronghold as well. The difficult terrain and weather represented further significant obstacles to the Chinese – the monsoon made fighting through the jungles & mountains around Sơn La even more difficult than usual, while the Vietnamese and Tai were fond of emerging from seemingly nowhere to launch back-biting surprise attacks across and even within the Chinese siege lines – but, slow though progress might be under such rough conditions, the Han were still surely gaining ground. Kishi himself optimistically wrote that in spite of all the challenges he had faced and the gravity of the wounds he had incurred, the end of the Vietnamese resistance was finally in sight, and that not only was Giáp's defeat inevitable but that he fully expected the latter's people to give up once he was no more since after all, they had no more great fortresses to hide in past Sơn La.
Come 960, initial plans for a Dano-Roman landing in Norway were disrupted by the death of Aloysius V in bed at the age of sixty-two. Before proceeding with the invasion, the princes & prelates of the Roman world first had to properly crown and anoint his successor as Aloysius VI. Aged forty-two at the time of his ascent to the imperial throne just as his father had been, the sixth Aloysius was also the first to abandon the practice of adding the honorific
nomen Flavius to his name upon coronation on the grounds that there had already been three Flavius Aloysiuses ruling in a row (and he would have been the fourth if he kept it), ending a tradition in imperial nomenclature that had been in place since the time of Constantine the Great[14]. In any case, the new
Augustus Imperator was of a less warlike build than his father, having been far too young to participate in the Crusade and in fact only becoming old enough to start squiring when it was already on the verge of ending; and while he did spend much of his adolescent years in Outremer & even married a crusading lord's daughter, he had primarily exhibited interest in administrative and religious matters rather than martial ones. This naming convention was certainly not the only Constantinian tradition he was thinking of ending.
Nevertheless, though he personally had plans of his own to build on his father's steps toward reunifying the governments in Rome & Constantinople, since strategies had already been drawn up and forces assembled for the next campaign against Norway, Aloysius VI resolved that it would be a huge waste of the Holy Roman Empire's time & resources to not follow through on that first. Although the Romans did not land any legions of their own in Norway at this time, they supplied 1,200 Anglo-Norse auxiliaries from England captained by Earl Magnus Haroldson of Lindesege (who, as a Tryggvason, was the patriarch of the most senior line of Ráðbarðr's descendants and a cousin to the Danish kings) and continued to provide naval support, assisting in ferrying thousands of Danish warriors across the Kattegat. Thus Haroldson's men and another 5,000 Danes landed in Agðir, where they were promptly further joined by the remaining forces of Jarl Sigurðr, and marched on the Norwegian capital as autumn approached. Unable to withstand such an army with the resources he had on hand, Hákon abandoned southern Norway and evacuated to the Garmrsons' home province of Hálogaland in the far north with his family, where the winters may be bitterer than ever but at least he was surrounded by his loyalists and the remoteness of the area deterred pursuit by the Hrafnsons.
Imperator Caesar Aloysius Sextus Augustus, the first Holy Roman Emperor to dispense with the nomen Flavius. Though he physically seemed even more formidable than his crusading father and was the husband of Adela of Louvain, daughter of the mighty Norman Duke Ogier of Galilee, Aloysius VI was a practical man whose interest mainly lay in political and administrative reforms
Over in Dar al-Islam, after finalizing his reconquest of 'Asir and the adjacent territory of Najran for the Hashemites, the Atabeg next began his offensive into Yemen where Zayd al-Sadiq had, in turn, taken great steps to entrench himself. Initial Turkic forays into the Yemeni highlands ended in disaster, so Saif al-Islam decided to go after the coastal towns first and then slowly work through the mountains with the aim of gradually strangling Zayd in Sana'a. The Hashemite army proceeded to take the border-town of Harad as a foothold, then slowly but steadily inched through fierce Yamani resistance toward Zabid further south. In order to accelerate his progress along the coasts, the Atabeg also commissioned a new Red Sea fleet in Jeddah with the intent of eventually sailing directly to the port of Aden, which had languished under Kharijite rule.
Meanwhile, the Baqliyya of Bahrayn were simultaneously putting pressure on Saif al-Islam's eastern flank while he was tied down in Yemen (though they did not have the strength to mount major offensives into the reconquered Nejd, much less back into Iraq) and reopening peace talks with the Caliphal court. Abu Sa'id and his people were growing exhausted of the endless warfare, and he saw no realistic way in which he could defeat Saif al-Islam & overthrow the Hashemites within his lifetime after all the losses of the previous years, so although recognizing Hashemite authority and begging them for amnesty in exchange for submission was still not an option, he offered moderate peace terms, the return of the Black Stone and even to pay reparations to Kufa in return for a 'perpetual' truce. Although the Baqliyya Imam was not expecting much to come of this, Caliph Hasan proved surprisingly receptive, if only because he was hoping to rope the Baqliyya into the greater conspiracy he was building to bring down Saif al-Islam and regain full temporal power over his Caliphate. However, disagreements over the amount of tribute and Hasan's demand that the Baqliyya hand over many towns back to him (in order to build up his own credibility) eventually caused negotiations to break down this time.
To the northeast, Aloysius VI and Benjamin Khagan inked a new Roman-Khazar treaty by which the latter formally returned Alania & Avaria in the North Caucasus back to Roman overlordship, resolved all lingering border disputes with Georgia in the Georgians' favor, and also ceded Tamantarkhan ('Tamatarcha' to the Romans), which he could hardly hope to defend against a determined Roman attack anyway. In exchange for these broad concessions, the Roman Emperor pledged not to impose unreasonable dues on Khazar traders passing through the Cimmerian Bosphorus[15] now that it was under full Roman control again for the first time in centuries, to drop his historical claim on Khazar-rebuilt Tana (now effectively the Khazars' only remaining major port in the west, although silting and the Ruthenian-Pecheneg threat was increasingly pushing trade eastward to Azaq[16]), and to enter a renewed alliance with Khazaria against their enemies to the north. Pontic Greek fireships and marines as well as Georgian auxiliaries assisted in beating back Tana's Pecheneg besiegers this year while the Khazar garrison in Atil continued to hold its inner fortress against Batbayan Khan's forces, even as those same Pechenegs pushed the Ruthenians further west & up the Donets and also beat back Benjamin's attempts at counterattacking in the direction of the Kuma River.
And on the other end of the continent, Kishi no Kisa finally achieved his great breakthrough in Nam Việt. It had taken him years of effort and a huge investment of soldiers & other resources, but over nine months he systematically cleared out Sơn La – methodically breaking through each layer of the Vietnamese defenses and grinding the determined but hugely outnumbered defenders down through bloody attrition until finally, he had the whole mountain fortress in his hands and could report a decisive success to Renzong. Alas, his hard-won victory was soon spoiled not only by the discovery that King Giáp and his household were not there, but also by dire news from the east: Giáp had in fact escaped well ahead of the Chinese siege of his great bastion, slipped through their lines and had now sprung his final gambit, an uprising in Cổ Loa itself. Years of his own careful planning and that of his agents paid off, as the Vietnamese capital lacked enough Chinese defenders for Kishi to hold it – its garrison having been largely emptied to support the attack on Sơn La – and it soon fell back into the hands of the rightful king. Kishi himself was apoplectic at the revelation of Giáp's trick, but Renzong had by now passed away from old age and the new Emperor Zhezong had had just about enough of the war in 'Nanyue'; he finally, grudgingly agreed to start negotiating a settlement other than unconditional surrender with the persistent Giáp.
By holding out for over 20 years and trading his own western base of Sơn La for Cổ Loa, King Giáp had established the basics of the Vietnamese strategy for defeating overwhelmingly superior enemies: outlasting, surprising and exhausting them even at a huge cost to themselves. A good deal of luck was also critical to his fortunes, since if the Chinese had pressed him at this point, without any more resources or a route of retreat he almost certainly would have been done for
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[1] Kafr Kanna.
[2] Læsø.
[3] Rügen.
[4] Krak des Chevaliers. Historically, the original fortress wasn't built until 1031 under the direction of the Mirdasid emirs of Aleppo, and was not transferred to Hospitaller ownership until 1143 – it was under them that it reached its zenith (the Templars never owned a stake in this particular castle).
[5] Dhurma.
[6] Duroliponte – Cambridge.
[7] Othona – Bradwell-on-Sea.
[8] Another (candidate for) Sitomagus – Thetford.
[9] Demmin.
[10] In the vicinity of modern Kharabali, with the river in question being the Akhtuba.
[11] Off the shore of modern Gilleleje.
[12] Tønsberg.
[13] Near Kizlyar.
[14] Historically, this naming tradition was terminated three hundred years earlier by the Heraclians, Heraclius himself and his very short-lived oldest son Constantine III being the last to bother with adding 'Flavius' to their nomenclature.
[15] The Kerch Strait.
[16] Azov.
, the attrocity that is Welsh language is too much even for the Irish, even the Polish names don't come close to what the Welsh are capable.
