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Chapter Seventeen: Flame and Saltwater
Chapter Seventeen: Flame and Saltwater
"The Roman Empire was beaten, and bloodied, and raped in those years, and every dishonour befell God's chosen people for their sins"
Theodore Ritsos, Epirot monk of the fifteenth century, On the Scythian Wars
Nowhere, in 1229, better symbolised the return of Roman power and glory that the reign of George of Genoa had brought than the great fortified centre of Germanikeia.[1] Fifteen years previously, Rōmanos the Bastard had based himself at the then relatively small town prior to his great victory over the Sultan Tuğtekin at Apameia, and the victory had widely been credited to the blessings of the town’s bishop and its enthusiastic population. Following the fall of Damascus, the confiscated wealth of Syria’s unfortunate Muslim communities had flowed into Germanikeia, with the eunuch general lavishing fountains, churches and high new walls upon the fortunate city. Even the minorities benefited: in 1226, the city’s Jews were granted permission by the Bastard to construct for themselves a particularly lavish new synagogue, decorated with mosaics and marble. Such was the prosperity of Germanikeia that the Patriarch of Antioch himself had found excuses buy a splendid estate in its environs. The Empire, so it must have seemed by the 1220s, had resoundingly struck back. It was then perhaps unsurprising that Šurhaci Khan, seeking to achieve a quick surgical strike to the imperial defences should have aimed not for one of the traditional centres, but Germanikeia. Sure enough, by late spring, when the city’s fertile fields should have been being planted by the local peasantry, an observer from the battlements would have seen only smoke and dust. The Jušen were coming.
The army that was descending upon Germanikeia was perhaps the largest and most formidable army that had marched out of Mesopotamia since the glory days of the Abbasid Caliphs. At its centre lay a core of veteran Jušen warriors, perhaps ten thousand strong. Alongside them, Šurhaci had called up levies from all of his subjects and hired mercenaries, so that the army was swelled by Iranians, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds and a whole host of other peoples.[2] Naturally, supreme command was held by the Khan himself but he was ably supported by his two young nephews, Abatai and Wúqǐmǎi. But the peoples of Germanikeia did not panic. Their city, as had been so clearly shown fifteen years before, had the favour of God, and in any case, their great general and his army were only a few weeks away. Germanikeia had enough stores to sit and wait for God’s inevitable retribution to fall upon the whore-worshipping barbarians.[3]
This strategy, though, relied on Germanikeia being a happy and united city, which, beneath the facade, it clearly was not. Germanikeia’s prosperity had been built on the backs of conquered Muslims, and it was unfortunate that in this city, unlike many others in the East, a large Islamic community continued to exist, even if it was trodden quite brutally underfoot by the haughty imperial authorities.[4] And predictably it would be the Muslims who spelt the downfall of the “Flower of the East”.[5] To their horror the citizens of Germanikeia awoke just a week into the siege to find the gates of their city had been opened by traitors within, and the Jušen army duly descended, aided by the gleeful Muslims. Germanikeia’s cathedrals and palaces were looted, its nuns raped, and prayers were offered to Allah and Muhammad in every Christian building that could be found. It was not only Muslims who profited. The Armenian contingent of the Jušen army, cheated of being able to seize the pretender prince Smbat due to their overlord’s grander designs, proved perfectly happy to take out their frustration in the name of Christ by beheading each and every monk they found in the large Chalcedonian monastery set up by the Patriarchate of Antioch. Nearly eight hundred years after the council of Chalcedon, some wounds still ran deep.
For the imperial authorities, the fall of Germanikeia to an army of pagans, Ishmaelites and heretics was a nightmare of biblical proportions: and worse was to come. In August, with the main Tagmata of the East assembled, two large armies set out, commanded by Rōmanos the Bastard and a protégé of his, one Eusthatios Kantakouzenos, respectively. The plan was for Kantakouzenos’ lightly equipped troops to harry and harass the Jušen force as it marched ponderously westward towards the wealthy cities of the Orontes Valley, before Rōmanos’ armies closed to deliver a neat kill. This strategy, cautious and methodical, had served Rōmanos well in his campaigns against the Salghurids, but Šurhaci Khan was a very different opponent. Employing speed and cunning, he contrived to avoid Eusthatios Kantakouzenos altogether, leaving the junior commander and his army blundering around the deserts without any clear idea of what to do next. Rōmanos now had to face the full might of the Khan alone, and here, his skills as a commander deserted him. Just fifteen miles downriver from the scene of his great triumph at Apameia, the Empire’s greatest general was cornered and annihilated, together with some eight thousand crack troops. The bloody head of the Bastard was sent to his half brother Leo Nafpliotis, with an order to surrender Prince Smbat. Šurhaci had done his homework well. Not only had he opened up the whole East to conquest more comprehensively than even Kürboğa: he had also taken steps to rip apart the united front of the Roman nobility so painstakingly reassembled by the Emperor.
The wave of bad news now came thick and fast. In December 1229, Antioch surrendered peacefully to Šurhaci, and duly reaped the rewards: the great Jušen army retreated from its walls, and the Khan himself, with just a few retainers and guards, entered the city with gifts for the Patriarch and local nobles. News of the extraordinarily generous treatment offered to Antioch soon saw most of the cities of Syria open their gates to the enemy, with the notable exception of Damascus, where an imperial garrison installed by Rōmanos twelve years before attempted to hold out. It was a disaster: Wúqǐmǎi and his men stormed the city, and subjected it to a sack even more savage than that which had befallen Germanikeia. With the Tagmata cut to bloody ribbons, and the guarantee of good treatment in case of peaceful surrender, it is hardly surprising that the whole frontier should have simply melted away. Come Easter 1230, Šurhaci Khan and his army were taking on provisions in Cilicia, and crossing the Taurus. A leisurely campaign of destruction across the Anatolian plateau then followed, with Iconium becoming the third city to act as an example to others. Stoutly fortified Caesarea was able to beat off a Jušen assault, thanks to the belated arrival of Eusthatios Kantakouzenos and his men, but Šurhaci was perfectly happy to place Kantakouzenos and his army under siege and retreat to Cilicia for the winter. The unfortunate general was forced to spend his Christmas and Epiphany celebrations dining on rats and vultures.
Šurhaci, meanwhile, had bigger plans in mind. With the Emperor George’s ability to respond now effectively paralysed, the Khan could prepare for the final humbling of the Roman Empire at his own pace. Accordingly, in 1231 an eerie silence fell across Anatolia. The great barbarian army never descended, and the surviving shivering peasants had only the wheeling birds and their scattered flocks for company as they wandered the desolate and smoking landscape. Kantakouzenos, the last great hope of the East, managed to escape Caesarea, but when he eventually reached Constantinople, he was a broken man. George could hope for no help from that quarter. God, it seemed, had abandoned the Empire utterly.
The following year, the hammer blow finally fell. Led by Abatai and Wúqǐmǎi, a Jušen army of some sixty thousand men wound its way through the Taurus passes, passed the blackened ruins of what had been Iconium, and then descended into the fertile lowlands of Bithynia. In May, the fields should have been being worked intensively in the good wealth, but instead a scene of weed-strewn abandonment greeted the brothers. The outlying communities had retreated two years previously to the great fortresses, and few had dared emerge since. Where once peasants had tilled the fields, and ambitious priests had sought plum seats, there was only silence and despair.
Accordingly, it proved little effort to wrest from the control of the locals the fishing towns of Abydos, Cyzicus and Moudania[6], with all of the villages in between them turned over to the supply of the bloated occupying army. With the coast secured, Abatai and Wúqǐmǎi began to requisition ships and boats, to begin a truly impressive feat of engineering on behalf of their uncle.
Šurhaci Khan had not allowed his time in Antioch to go to waste, and had taken care to acquaint himself with the history of the peoples he aimed to conquer. In his quest to knit Iran and Europe together into one realm, Šurhaci was most impressed by the behaviour of the ancient kings of Persia and accordingly portrayed himself, particularly to Iranian audiences, as the avenger of Greek injustices. Following this example, a fateful decision was made. Šurhaci would invade Europe by means of a colossal, man-made land bridge, with ships being sent from the captured ports of Cilicia and Syria to aid with construction.[7] By the end of July, preparations were complete, and the Khan himself set off from Cilicia to bear witness to the great crossing. Crossing Anatolia at double speed, the Khan and a picked group of a hundred or so close bodyguards arrived at Abydos in time to see the taming of the sea itself before Jušen power.
Šurhaci Khan himself was the first man to cross the bridge, the first of his people to set foot in Europe. Pointedly, he made a firm indication of his view of this new continent, pissing over the graveyard of a small ruined monastery on the European side of the straits. But by this point, on the sixteenth of August 1232, the light was fast failing, and a wind was sweeping down from the north-east disturbing the calm conditions. Accordingly, the Khan retreated to the Asian side of the pontoon to await the dawn.
With the seventeenth dawning into a hot and dry day, the crossing began. Initially, the Jušen horsemen, who formed the vanguard of the army, made slow progress, reassuring their nervous mounts as they passed along the line of boats. By mid-morning, though, the Kurdish and Armenian contingents had been able to start moving over. Everything was progressing smoothly before the Khan’s eyes: until the first ship appeared from the north-east.
How the ships had been concealed was unclear to the Jušen, and is indeed not mentioned in any of our otherwise unusually specific sources. What happened next, though, is doubted nowhere. As more ships emerged into view and swept down towards the suddenly horribly exposed Jušen column, a dazzling orange flame began to blaze into life, fanned by the hot wind. Mounted on the prows of the warships were a complicated system of pumps, canisters and nozzles, from which emanated a horrifyingly viscous boiling liquid. Panic rapidly began to break out along the length of the column, with warriors near the end leaping into the water with the hope of swimming to shore. It was all in vain, for the secret weapon of the Roman Empire burned even on the surface of the water. Within minutes, the Jušen bridge was aflame and falling apart, as the surface of the sea boiled and churned. The air was filled with screams, and the salt tang of the morning sea was rapidly replaced by the harsh scent of oil and burning human flesh. From the Asian shore, Šurhaci Khan could only watch in horror as his years of success came to a horrifying conclusion.
There was another observer to the Battle of Abydos. Some way back, upon a particularly large Roman ship, the Emperor George was watching, clutching an icon of the Virgin Mary. And the Emperor at that moment knew a truth, a truth that would soon spread to all of the communities of his shaken Empire. The Empire of the Romans was guarded by God, and the Romans were God’s chosen people. Doubt that fact, and God would rain down fury and death upon the Christian world. But hold true to the sacred allegiance of Heaven and Empire, and all would be well, for now, and forevermore.
Who, watching the death of Šurhaci Khan’s dreams of world empire amidst flame and salt water, could have possibly disagreed?
______________________________ [1] The Turkish city of Kahramanmaraş in modern OTL.
[3] Naturally, the principle Jušen deity, the sky-goddess Abka Hehe, is presented by bishops and priests as being nothing but a demonic prostitute.
[4] Generally, Islamic communities seem to have fled northern Syria when the Byzantine armies returned in the ninth and tenth centuries IOTL, testament to the fact that the religion was still small and lightly established even as late as three centuries after Muhammad’s death. It seems unlikely to me, however, that all Muslims would have left, especially with the profits to be made acting as middlemen between Constantinople and its Islamic neighbours.
[5] Even today, Kahramanmaraş is known for the production of orchids.