AHC: Make the "Dark Ages" true?
- Thread starter SunKing105
- Start date
Thomas1195
Banned
What if other barbarian tribes in Western Europe also act like the Huns - so Milan, Padua, Verona, Marsailles, Rome, Ravenna... and other cities in Western Europe suffer the same fate as Aquileia - the Fall of Rome would be similar to the Fall of Arnor in LOTR. Cities, buildings, churches are razed to the ground and erased from world map, while texts and books are burned to ashes. There you go, a true Dark Age in Western Europe, with only barbarian tribes and kingdoms and bandits there. Then, throw into that an ATL.Plague of Justinian as well.
TTL Europe would have been Third World by today.
Justinian would not bother to reconquest at all.
TTL Europe would have been Third World by today.
Justinian would not bother to reconquest at all.
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Not everything good in European is Roman. Even still it is not as if Charles I was the first king to have connections to Rome. The Merovingians actually were direct inheritors of Rome legally and recognized as such by the Emperors in Constantinople. In a scenario without Charles I, we could guess Frankish-Byzantine relations would be better.
We also should not trust Charles I and his biased biographers which attempted to paint everything before Pepin II as negatively as possible. Even that they did a poor job with.
The Greek Dark Ages will not work. Whatever happened there, was some sort immense calamity combining many factors. Namely, plague, famine, destruction of most past political orders remembered less as history and only in myth and the collapse of trade relations.
I would say the only way to create a true Dark Ages is through ASB. That is take an environmental POD. Force a cooling trend upon Europe similar to the little ice age or that which occurred during the Bronze Age collapse, cause mass famines, add a plague and then have the Huns gain domination in Europe but descend into internal warring.
Ultimately, the main ingredient missing is a foreign people large enough and alien enough to induce sufficient loss of institution and continuity to destroy the society. In the Bronze Age collapse, there was people of this sort in great abundance. In Europe, not so much. Rome and the nearby Germanic world was so intimately linked as to be the same creature by the period we discuss. The Huns meanwhile were somewhat familiar with and too many of the Germanic peoples of the steppe. Even still the Huns are not the types to destroy a sedentary world intentionally. We would need either a people whose ideology requires destruction or a people migrating due to true interest in taking land and in replacement and enslavement of the local population. This is what happened to Assyria in the Bronze Age collapse. Something that likely was a combination of fleeing famines, plague and then a certain revolutionary instinct.
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I am not sure the Huns have the power to do this.If they win in the Rhineland, I suspect their play is to vassalise the Franks, Goths, etc and rule from just beyond the Rhine the majority of Europe. Such a situation would not be terrible to be frank and would be an interesting scenario.
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Thomas1195
Banned
I am not talking about the Huns doing that. I am talking about having other barbarian groups being much more barbaric than IOTL and thus imitating the Huns in this aspect (wanton destruction of cities and towns).
Basically a post-apocalypse version of Fall of Rome, with the once great Western Roman Empire is reduced to series of barbarian tribes, villages and wooden forts, with some barbarian groups dwelling in city ruins, as well as bandit camps. There would be only few Roman a.k.a civilized havens like Venice in Western Europe.
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Even in what would become England (which most closely matches the situation outlined in the OP) the light only burned dimmer and occasionally sputtered, it never went out (Bede for example). So somehow have the situation in the old Roman provinces of Britannia replicated in the rest of the Western Empire. Earlier and more virulent Plague of Justinian seems the best bet.
Thomas1195
Banned
You can read my scenario - basically all Roman cities in Western Europe including Rome go the way of Aquileia, and then throw into that a Plague of Justinian.
I think that this is possible without the Roman Empire. The issue was the relative familiarity between the Germanic and Latin world that in many cases was legitimately already molded. Only those Germanic groups which are very outer may have the ability to do this due to having less familiarity. That leaves peoples in Scandinavia, possibly the Vandals and the wider Hunnic confederation.
The difficulty is that as mentioned by others above, the invaders of the 4th and 5th centuries did not want to destroy the Empire but to live within it, hence many of them adopting Roman Law and so on. Even Attilla wanted tribute and more is produced from even a broken system than a destroyed one. Better people than me have wrestled with why British Cities declined more than European ones, it wasn't by generally burning to the ground but by becoming irrelevant. So can the conditions in Britannia be replicated in mainland Europe?
There was a cold period in the Early Middle Ages from the 4th to the 9th century, i.e. between the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, though it doesn't seem to have been as pronounced as the Little Ice Age.
The late 6th century and 7th century was warm actually do much so that the coast of aksum dried up
I have hard time finding what more you can seriously do between 350 and 650 CE to have a bigger collapse, let's see all the plethora of bad things that already happened:
- Protracted warfare during the fall of the Western Roman empire, instead of having the empire fall relatively fast and have a smooth continuation into the post-Roman world, we had a very protracted fall and thus more warfare than we otherwise would have needed. I guess we could go further but in essence we would be adding to a factor that already existed OTL.
- Climate decline, the winter of 536 is famous enough. You can't really change climate with non-ASB PoDs that keep everything else exactly the same within a short timeframe.
- Diseases, the Justinian plague was bad enough and happened after the climatic decline and economic decline and thus involved a impoverished population which means higher mortality, what more can you realistically add?
- Some people might point that the Eastern Roman empire didn't collapse but really insofar as the dark ages are concerned it basically did by 650 CE, it lost the Levant, Egypt, and most of the Balkans to Slavs and Avars, Constantinople declined to very low levels even if the remained the biggest city in Europe for a while. And arguably the Eastern Roman Empire surviving is what allowed the Gothic war in Italy to happen which also helped with the establishment of the Avars, also one could argue that the creation of a separate Islamic world was possible only with the strong Chalcedonian counterpart in Eastern Rome and this also had important consequences in the development of medieval slave trade and piracy. So it's not obvious that Byzantium falling to Goths, Sassanids or Huns is going to create a bigger economic decline.
- Places like England, modern East Germany and Poland suffered massive demographic declines, can other places also go such a way? Maybe but such gaps can only last a couple of centuries at most before they are filled.
well actually we can since usually one climate change has affect in a worldwide scale just no every effect is the same , kinda of like how modern global warming causes freak snow stroms despite the temperature growing , global warming lead to other climatic pressures on other parts of the world where it was not all desertifation like arabia or aksum of that time.
If you wanted to snuff out the minor examples of light to be found in the dark ages, a combination of factors would be necessary.
There are multiple factors that could have truly doomed Europe in the early medieval period, but I think that only 3 are really necessary.
First, move the Viking invasions up by two centuries: Viking incursions around the year 600 AD instead of 800 AD induce a wave of chaos and destruction across Northern Europe, stifling trade and prosperity in coastal regions and along rivers all across central Europe and Britannia.
Second, have a Mongol Khan unite the tribes in the same era, similar to Genghis Khan. A Mongol khanate such as his could have annihilated the Byzantine Empire, whose armies were already decimated (in multiplicity) by both the Sassanid wars and Slavic barbarian invasions. The Sassanid Empire, while stronger than the Byzantines, would likely not be able to stand up to the Khan's armies either, as proven when the Empire's successors were utterly crushed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
This would also likely create the circumstances for the third and final nail in Europe's coffin: The black plague. While bubonic plague did specifically spread to Europe in the 12th century, many modern pathologists have done studies to suggest that such diseases were rampant in Asia for centuries and only the increased travel along Mongolian silk roads
and increased trade via Portuguese routes along the African coasts spreading the disease to Europe. With a Mongol Khanate adopting the same methods of biological warfare, as well as forming stable trade routes along the silk road, I have no doubt that plague similar to The Black Death would sweep through Europe, acting as the final nail in the coffin for the fledgling nations of Francia, as well as the independent tribal nations of Britannia and Germania.
3 little nudges in the footnote of history that doom Europe to a period of misery and death for at least a couple centuries.
in the year if the viking invasions start attacking the franks circa 610s they are screwed Chlothar II and Dagobert I had united frakia there was no political instabilty to take care of from 610s to 639
"induce a wave of chaos and destruction across Northern Europe, stifling trade and prosperity in coastal regions and along rivers all across central Europe and Britannia." ironicly the otl vikings improved trade in europe
"Second, have a Mongol Khan unite the tribes in the same era, similar to Genghis Khan. A Mongol khanate such as his could have annihilated the Byzantine Empire, whose armies were already decimated (in multiplicity) by both the Sassanid wars and Slavic barbarian invasions. The Sassanid Empire, while stronger than the Byzantines, would likely not be able to stand up to the Khan's armies either, as proven when the Empire's successors were utterly crushed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century."
when and how? since you said mongol well the proto mongols where under the reing of the eastern turkic khagante
the tang dynasty would destroy this state in the 630 even if we get a pod where its 600 ad and it takes some the same time chenghis took to unite the mongols , the proto mongols would not deal with a divided china playing defensive like the jin and song with stupid rulers
they would be facing a rising tang dynasty under one of the greatest chinise emperors to ever live Gaozu who would have no qualms of taking the figth to the steppe.
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Not to mention that the cultural and political evolution of the steppe societies hadn't really developed to the point where a Genghis Khan analogue is possible. That required a lot of factors.
even if we assume that this is possible and for some x reason the tang allows the expasion of the proto mongols to the western turkic khagante it took the rising tang some 2 decades to conquer the western turks since they where busy with interal affiars and the tibetan empire
so a khante with a big boder with china would take the same time and now would border with the tibetan empire how does this khanate push to persia? sure much less anatolia sure persia is bad
here unlike the mongols they would be dealing with the tang and tibetan empires , compared to fragmented tibet and fragmeneted china.
Thomas1195
Banned
@Goldensilver81
Delay the Roman contact with Goth and other barbarian tribes that met the Romans earlier until the late 4th century, so when Adrianople occurs, the Goths would have been much more barbaric ITTL (IOTL they were the more civilized tribes). Also, have the Lombards (infamously brutal) arrive in the late 4th century as well. Basically, the Roman Empire would have been assaulted by multiple Hunnic-sque barbarian tribes. Then, have all of them acted like the Huns IOTL in the Sack of Aquileia in 452 - I mean, like a Medieval 2: Total War player who select "exterminate settlement" every time they conquer a city/town/castle. Cities and towns are razed to the ground and wiped off the earth, while texts and books are burned to ashes.
You don't want a scenario in which Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Padua, Verona, Cordoba, Toulouse, Marsailles... go the way of Aquileia.
Western Europe would have been reduced to barbarian camps, villages, settlements in city ruins and wooden ramparts, with population massively reduced in a much greater magnitude than IOTL. There would be very few fortified Roman havens left in places like Venice, where the barbarians could not attack. Now, we can move the Viking raids to this time period (say, 500-600), the Vikings might not loot a lot in this much impoverished Europe ITTL, but they would very likely bring the Plague of Justinian back to Western Europe when raiding the Byzantine Empire.
Delay the Roman contact with Goth and other barbarian tribes that met the Romans earlier until the late 4th century, so when Adrianople occurs, the Goths would have been much more barbaric ITTL (IOTL they were the more civilized tribes). Also, have the Lombards (infamously brutal) arrive in the late 4th century as well. Basically, the Roman Empire would have been assaulted by multiple Hunnic-sque barbarian tribes. Then, have all of them acted like the Huns IOTL in the Sack of Aquileia in 452 - I mean, like a Medieval 2: Total War player who select "exterminate settlement" every time they conquer a city/town/castle. Cities and towns are razed to the ground and wiped off the earth, while texts and books are burned to ashes.
You don't want a scenario in which Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Padua, Verona, Cordoba, Toulouse, Marsailles... go the way of Aquileia.
Western Europe would have been reduced to barbarian camps, villages, settlements in city ruins and wooden ramparts, with population massively reduced in a much greater magnitude than IOTL. There would be very few fortified Roman havens left in places like Venice, where the barbarians could not attack. Now, we can move the Viking raids to this time period (say, 500-600), the Vikings might not loot a lot in this much impoverished Europe ITTL, but they would very likely bring the Plague of Justinian back to Western Europe when raiding the Byzantine Empire.
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