Alexander's Empire

The Xiongnu are faster than heavy cavalry, and better fighters than light cavalry. And by this time, chariots were going out of fashion as weapons.

Anyway, just a short update for today.

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Part XXII - A Battle to Remember

The two armies faced each other across the river. Then, suddenly, a minaan galloped up to the river bank and shot off a volley of arrows into the massed ranks on the other side. Several hundred men fell, shafts protruding from weak points in their armour, but the Xiongnu withdrew to their ranks, as if it was merely for entertainment. Then, two more minaans rode forwards, and shot off more arrows before withdrawing. More Chola swordsmen fell, and the Chola general, frustrated, sent forward his own foot archers, but they were unable to hit the swiftly moving Xiongnu. Then, a whole tuman moved forward to the river bank, and fired off several volleys, driving the Chola archers back into their own ranks, as a second tuman rode up behind them. The second tuman then began firing as the first entered the river and began to cross. The Chola general, seeing this, ordered his archers forward to kill them as they swam across, but were fired on by the second Xiongnu tuman. Nevertheless, they managed to kill around a thousand of the first tuman before it reached the bank, where it rode down the small division of archers detailed to halt it. They held off most of the Chola force until the second tuman had crossed, whereupon the rest of the army entered the river while the two tumans held off the Chola army. Once the whole of the Xiongnu army was across the river, they formed a line five tumans long, but only two deep, and advanced on the enemy, firing all the while. The Chola army was bracing for the impact of these warriors when they suddenly wheeled, splitting the front line and having each tuman take a place in the front. Then the Xiongnu halted and fired off several volleys at the Chola, before splitting in half and galloping along the face of the Chola army. The Chola general reacted swiftly, but the Xiongnu horsemen cut their way through the small groups of men who attempted to hem them in, and galloped off into the distance. The confused Chola army milled around for a while, until the Xiongnu returned and harried the rear of the army as it tried to reform to face the threat. The army finally finished turning, and then the Xiongnu were upon them, weaving in and out in front of them, each tzut and minaan riding his own path as they lead their divisions. Occasionally, a group would swoop in and kill several men before riding off again, taking very few casualties. Then, all of a sudden, the whole army charged, smashing into the Chola ranks like a hammer. The fighting continued for several minutes, until the Xiongnu broke off and rode away. The Chola army, remoralized by this turn of events, broke ranks and charged after them. The Xiongnu force continued retreating, dividing up into the ten tumans, each heading in a different direction, dividing up the Chola army which followed them.
A running battle followed, continuing for several days as the Xiongnu force divided further, minaans and then tzuts taking their own routes, and eventually turning to destroy their pursuers. After two weeks, the Xiongnu army had reformed at Omkareshwar, with the Chola army largely destroyed, and the Chola Emperor, Adiyta, prisoner.
The Xiongnu gained enough young boys to replace the men they had lost, as well as a promise of a further three minaans in two years' time. Now they returned west, to face the army Philip had mustered against them in Antioch...

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No map here, I'm afraid, as the situation has changed little.
 
Well the Mongol horsemen must have arrows, a bow, and some kind of light sword or dagger, and still be faster than heavy cavalry and fight better than light cavalry? Yea maybe Mongolians are skilled horse-archers and can use a light sword or dagger easily. Horse archers can outrun heavy cavalry but cannot be better than light cavalry.
 
They are not merely horse archers. Remember, the Xiongnu are the horse nomads who would eventually, IOTL, become the Mongol and Turkic nomads we all know and love, and fight in almost the exact same fashion as them.
They will have tough leather armour, often studded, be able to use both bow and sword exceptionally well, and have the most endurable horses in the world. Any horseman able to keep up with the Xiongnu for long distances will kill their horse, and foot soldiers are horribly vulnerable to mounted Xiongnu. Heavier cavalry, while not quite as heavy as OTL's mediaeval knights, will not be able to keep up with the Xiongnu for more than a few hours, and the Xiongnu, being master bowmen, can shoot very well from the saddle, and have one in six horsemen as more heavily armoured melee fighters, armed with lances, and easily able to meet the heavier Macedonian cavalry on equal terms, or even better, as their ponies are much more manoeuvrable, and they have spent their whole lives in the saddle.

Anyway, on with the next update. Enjoy.:D

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Part XXIII - The Battle of Antioch

The Xiongnu army now turned back west to face the army Philip had mustered. They met Philip outside the city, as he did not wish to be forced to wait out a siege that could end only in defeat or retreat, as he still had the ships used to transport his army by sea.
The Macedonian army numbered 73,000 to the Xiongnu 100,000, but they were all confident that victory would be theirs.
The two armies met on the plains east of Antioch, where Philip was able to counter the Xiongnu mobile forces with several thousand newly-raised light cavalry of his own, forcing them to fight head to head. The fight continued all day, but as the sun set, the Macedonian army had been driven back into the first ring of trenches around the city, though many of the Xiongnu had lost their horses and been forced to fight on foot.
That evening, Philip received disastrous news. The Tyrian allies of the Xiongnu had sunk the Macedonian navy and cut off his retreat. The Macedonians would have to fight merely to survive. Withdrawing their entire force to the defences around the city, they prepared for the inevitable Xiongnu onslaught.
For three days, the Xiongnu threw themselves at the trenches around the city, and for three days, they were held off. They had been forced to abandon their horses in the first trench, as it was impossible to fight from horseback in the narrow confines of the trench. On the fourth day, however, it seemed that the Xiongnu would take the last trench, until a force struck them from the north with such ferocity that they were forced to withdraw. This force was the Militant Order of Aristoklitic Zurvan.
The Aristoklitic Zurvanites were a group of Aristoklites who lived in Greece and Italia, but considered themselves separate from the main body of Aristoklism to the East. Their Militant Order had been formed seven years before, as they believed that only by taking up arms could they convince Zurvan that His people deserved His attention, and, seeing the power of Philip's Empire, had pledged themselves to him in secret. The First Order was five thousand men strong, and it was these men who fought for Philip during the Battle of Antioch. Though small, through an impressive use of tactics they convinced the Xiongnu that they were fighting a much larger force, causing them to withdraw for the day.
The Priests Militant entered the city and marched directly to the Temple of Zurvan, where they rested and worshipped until the following morning.
The Priests Militant were an elite fighting force, having trained in secret since their formation, and were proficient with almost any weapon. They dressed in heavy armour, wearing crimson robes beneath it, along with a crimson cape and Chalcidean helmet with a crimson crest. They did not use cavalry, preferring to fight on foot with the sarissa, bow, and sword. They spent ten hours each day training and four in worship, and were fanatical to the point of madness, but had discipline to rival any in the world.
The following morning, the Xiongnu took the last trench. The Macedonian defenders retreated back within the city, and, while still strong enough in numbers, their morale was at an all-time low. The Xiongnu finally brought up their siege weapons and began bombarding the city walls. They focussed all of their power on the weakest section of the walls, to the South, but still it took four months to breach them.
With the walls breached, the Xiongnu filled in the trenches in front of them, providing a flat path for their cavalry to cross. The Macedonians had filled the breach with men, forming a phalanx that stretched back onto the street behind the wall, where the army was massed. The Xiongnu spent no time using arrows, but, sending their heaviest cavalry to the front, charged the Macedonians. The Xiongnu horses charged onto the spearpoints so fast that their riders were able to leap over their heads as they died, right into the Macedonian ranks. They hacked a gap in the Macedonian phalanx for their cavalry to fight their way through, and slowly backed the Macedonians back from the breach.
The fighting continued through the night, and would continue to do so until the end of the battle. The Macedonians, knowing that they could not win, fought with a bloody minded determination, forcing the Xiongnu to fight for every street and building. The Macedonians would place a phalanx across each street, with archers behind and in the buildings to the side, forcing the Xiongnu to attack them head on, which was a bloody business. After a few hours, the Xiongnu learned that horses were extremely vulnerable in an urban combat environment, as the Macedonians had laid down iron nails in the roads to lame the horses, rendering them useless. They were also vulnerable to archers, and so the Xiongnu fought on foot, negating their greatest advantage. But Macedonians continued to fall. Three days later and the Xiongnu were hardly any further in than before, as the Macedonians had only four roads to block with over 50,000 men, and the Xiongnu could only come at them is small numbers, which were easily slaughtered by the pikemen. It was for this reason that the Xiongnu began setting fire to buildings. The Macedonians were forced to withdraw from the scorching blaze, and when it died down, the Xiongnu surged forward, seizing more of the city in five hours than they had in three days. Then the Macedonians fought back, and the Xiongnu were hard-pressed to keep their gains.
Two weeks later, the Macedonians were finally beginning to fall back. The gruelling fighting had taken a huge toll on both sides, but neither side would give up. Ten days into the fighting, the Priests Militant had been cut off defending their temple, and had held it alone for almost two days before the Xiongnu finally slew the last of them. The Xiongnu leader, reviewing his forces during the second week was horrified to learn that none of his ten tumans remained intact, and that one was completely destroyed, except for one Minaan, and three were less than half of their full strength. Conferring with his surviving Minaan and tuman officers, he came to the conclusion that this was unacceptable. If the Macedonians fought with this tenacity in just two more cities, his army would be ruined. Therefore, he made a peace offer to Philip.
Philip, seeing no other option, agreed to meet Yuseh Rhan, the Xiongnu Great King, outside the city. A special tent was laid for this occasion. It was pure white, and thrice the size of typical Xiongnu tents. As the Xiongnu stood past to let Philip ride through, they were amazed. For Philip had chosen his cleanest, tallest warriors to act as his honour guard, and it seemed to the Xiongnu that these men, though grim, were brighter than any they had seen in days.
In the tent, discussion passed through an interpreter, but was easy enough. Both leaders, being great in wisdom, saw that an equal treaty was the only way to avoid lasting hatred on both sides, and so a new border was agreed, granting the Fertile Crescent back to Macedonia, and Yuseh Rhan gave Philip his daughter's hand in marriage, with the agreement that, on the death of Yuseh Rhan, his empire would be divided equally between his sons and whomsoever ruled Macedon at the time. They also swore a blood oath, becoming blood brothers. The two men, while unable to understand each others' language, nevertheless left the meeting the greatest of allies.
Philip also secured Yuseh Rhan's agreement to aid him in his future campaigns to reunite his empire.
Thus ended the Battle of Antioch, the bloodiest battle to be fought in the ancient world.

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d2mn81a


The map is now too large to attach, so I hope that you can see it. I can't, but then, my browser often has a problem displaying images, so...:eek:
If you can't see it, the I will go back to the older format.
 
Well, it doesn't show up, so I'll just post a link to it if you don't mind:
http://godraimundo.deviantart.com/art/Alexander-s-Empire-late-248BC-158967406

Though honestly, I'm not sure if I really like the new map, could you at least colour the countries entirely, since it just looks weird to me this way...

Also, the peace treaty doesn't really seem like an equal treaty to me, since Macedonia gets Mesopotamia back and once Yuseh dies, it will even get a part of the Xiongnu empire with the rest being divided.
 
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Yeah, I was just trying something there, and if people don't like it, I'll go back to the old style. I might well do that anyway, as it seems a lot of hassle having to post a link so that everyone can see the map.

And I will give Yuseh's reasons for accepting the seemingly unfair in the next post but one...
 
Yeah, I'm gonna go back to the old map on the next update.
God knows when that'll be though, as the exam season is almost upon me:(:eek:
 
Bump
Also, did any of you see Alexander the Great v.s. Attila the Hun on deadliest warrior? The Huns were half Mongolian right? Well anyways Attila the Hun killed Alexander the Great so you can only prove that the Mongolians are strong, but thats it. Still nonstrategic though.
 
I'm sick of revising, so I composed this under a tree in my garden while enjoying the lovely weather and eating barbecued animals. :)

Part XXIV - The Empire Strikes Back

Yuseh Rhan was facing discontent within his army. Many of his men, including his officers, wished to leave the hot lands of the south and return to the cooler lands of their homes. During the battle of Antioch, their discontent had played a part in forcing Yuseh Rhan to appeal for peace. Thus, with a peace treaty negotiated, he sent three of his seven reorganised tumans home to hunt and grow strong, while he remained in the west. He used a further three of his tumans to formalise his rule over his new empire, and sent his last tuman to Philip, in keeping with his promise to help Philip reunite his empire.
The Macedonian Empire had suffered during the Xiongnu war. Although in many places Hellenic unity was stonger than ever, the fringes of the empire were breaking away. Massalia had long chafed under Macedonian hegemony, and now the cosmopolitan port had declared the formation of the Massaliot Empire, comprising the old territories of Massalia, Etruria, Kurnos and Sardinia, and had rejected Macedonian emissaries, and was preparing to invade Magna Graecia and Sicily.
Aegyptus was falling to Kush, where the Old Gods were once again beginning to be worshipped, and the militant cult of Rha-Horakhty had pronounced Khakheperre Senusret III the Pharaoh of all Egypt, and was advancing towards Alexandria, where the only remaining loyal Macedonian force was garrisoned.
In the west, Punic armies were on the move, and had conquered Utica and Libya, and were facing down Kush in Cyrenaica, while their navies skirmished with the Massaliot fleets around Sicily.
Sheba had occupied Nabataea, and was planning to use it as the battleground when Philip invaded, though they had a smaller army in the east to advance up the Tigris and capture Babylon if it seemed undefended.
Philip knew that he had to strike fast if he was to retain any form of order, and so he did. His army descended upon Tyre before it was fully prepared, taking the defenders by surprise and seizing the city. Those who welcomed him were allowed to remain, but those who resisted his rule were bound and enslaved. Philip the turned towards Nabataea and Sheba, and on the way was reinforced by the Xiongnu force promised him.
The Sheban army had advanced as far north as Petra, the historic capital of Nabataea, where they met Philip. His army marched out of the north like an avalance, not even stopping to make camp. It seemed that the Sheban army would be crushed as it scrambled to deploy.
In the middle of this scramble, ten thousand Xiongnu warriors appeared out of nowhere, smashing directly into what would have been the centre of the Sheban phalanx and destroying it. The Shebans quickly formed up on the wings and began to close on the Xiongnu flanks, but the master horsemen melted away as quickly as they had appeared.
The Sheban commander was on the verge of panic himself, as he had banked on at least an hour to gauge his opponent's forces and dispositions, but as the Xiongnu withdrew, he glimpsed the Macedonian army, now barely a mile away, which had deployed into full battle formation almost without stopping. The formation was not what he had expected, and he cried aloud as the Macedonian archers were in the van of the army and were massacring his phalanx; the Sheban psiloi had been destroyed by the Xiongnu.
The Macedonian archers were more than half a mile ahead of their own lines, so the Sheban cavalry rode out to challenge them, but the Macedonians had learnt from fighting the Xiongnu, and instead of aiming at the soldiers, aimed rather at the unarmoured horses, bringing them down in their hundreds and fouling the charge enough for them to withdraw back into their own lines.
Now truly panicking, the Sheban commander ordered his own archers forward to strike at the Macedonian phalanx, which was singing as it advanced. They poured flight after flight of arrows into the Macedonians, but arrows too were a weapon they had learned much about from the Xiongnu, and they carried larger shields than usual, with the front rank holding their shields in front of them and the ranks behind raising them over their heads. Many still fell as arrows came through the gaps, but the Macedonians hardly halted.
The Sheban archers finally withdrew, defeated, and the phalanxes faced each other over less than a hundred paces of ground. The Macedonians were silent now, and simply stared at the Shebans. The Sheban commander was frantically trying to find a weakness in his foe's army when the Macedonians broke the stillness and charged. Within seconds the battlefield was changed from a glittering order to a bloody melee. The Macedonians had one more trick up their sleeve, even this late in the battle. As the first few ranks jabbed at each other, the fourth and fifth Macedonian ranks hefted heavy javelins and hurled them over their comrades' heads into the Sheban ranks. The Shebas fell, being more concerned with the enemy directly in front of them, and by the time they noticed the javelins t was too late. The Macedonians had broken the Sheban line in several places, and many of the Shebans in the rear ranks broke and ran, but to no avail. As they fled, the Xiongnu horsemen sprang upon them, having carried out a flanking manoeuvre unnoticed by the Shebans, and cut them down. Seeing this, the Shebans gathered together, forming several tight bands of men who refused to surrender. They knew that they were broken, but their pride demanded they fight on.
Philip saw that they would not break without inflicting huge damage on his army, so he ordered them to withdraw just out of spear range. They still surrounded the Shebans, who were now grouped into formations that looked a lot like hedgehogs, but were no longer fighting with them. The Macedonian archers once again moved to the front, and stuck their arrows in the ground. These arrows had oils soaked rags wrapped just below the tips, and each archer had a small brazier in which a fire was lit. They lit the rags on the arrows and fired them into the tightly packed mass of Shebans, causing panic amongst them. The Shebans now faced a terrible choice: fire or sword. Many chose sword as the less painful and more honourable death, but plenty burned instead. Seeing that this tactic worked on one group of Shebans, Philip ordered it replicated on each of the other groups.
Not one Sheba survived this terrible battle, an unusual occurrence, but it meant that the next Sheban force had no knowledge of Philip's new tactics, and fell in the same manner as the first.
Seeing no other option as the Macedonian force advanced on his capital, the Sheban King surrendered within weeks and was executed. His brother was set on the throne after pledging allegiance to Philip, and was left with a force of five thousand loyal Macedonians to keep order.
Returning to the site of the original battle at Petra, Philip now faced a choice. Should he go north, to attack the Massaliot army that was rampaging through Magna Graecia, or west, to combat the Kushite army and then the Punic force in Cyrenaica?

EDIT: There's your map. :)

252BC.PNG
 
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Part XXV - An Imperial Alliance

Philip decided to go north. He left a force of seven thousand men under General Hieronymos to guard against any sudden Kushite thrust from Sinai, either north, into Judea, or south, into Nabataea and Sheba.
His decision was made in the knowledge that the Punic and Kushite armies were skirmishing in Cyrenaica, but Massaliot forces were invading Magna Graecia and had gained naval dominance around Sicily, defeating the Punic navy off Kurnos as Philip marched against Sheba. Philip's army, by the time he reached Epidamnos, numbered 43,000, less than the Massaliot force of 47,000, but all armed in the fashion Philip had devised for his war against Sheba.
Only 39,000 of these men reached Magna Graecia, as the Macedonian fleet was attacked by a Massaliot force during the crossing, and a large part of it was lost. The Macedonians escaped under cover of night, with the rest of the fleet making land the next day. The army assembled at Neapolis, the last major city not to have fallen to the Massaliot force, and marched forth three days later.
Some cities had actively joined with Massalia, and Philip's secondary aim was to take and punish these cities, but first he had to find the main enemy force and bring it to battle. Fortunately, the Massaliot genertal proved accomodating, and the two forces met some way to the north of Capeva.
The Massaliot force drew up in a typical Classic Hellenic formation as used by Alexander III, perhaps unaware that Philip's new tactics made such a position dangerous, or perhaps confident that their weight of numbers would win out anyway.
Philip's army halted half a mile from the enemy, and the archers, now more heavily armoured and in the place of the psiloi that were previously employed were sent forward. The Massaliot psiloi advanced in an attempt to halt them as the Massaliot general sent his own archers forward to reinforce the psiloi.
The Macedonian archers loosed shafts as they walked, massacring the lightly armoured psiloi and finally routing them off the field. They then fought the Massaliot archers for almost half an hour, but eventually the heavier armour of Macedonia won out, and the Massaliot archers withdrew, leaving the main Massaliot force unprotected. Philip's archers rained shafts down on them, killing them in their hundreds and then thousands, before running out of arrows and moving to the flanks of the main Macedonian phalanx.
The Massaliot commander was still confident that his numeric advantage would win the day for him as the two armies clashed. His force was steadily pushing back the Macedonians, and it looked as if they were on the verge defeat. Then the Massaliot scouts came rushing in from both directions. On the left, Philip's Companions crested the hill, while the Xiongnu appeared on the right flank. The Companions smashed the left flank, and Philip's army began closing on the centre like a door.
Seeing his army's defeat, the Massaliot commander ordered a general withdrawal. They managed to fight their way back to the bridge at Venafrum, under attack all the way, and, crossing the bridge, destroyed it, leaving Philip's forces in control of Southern Italy, but with no way to cross.
Philip marched to Caiatia, wishing to cross there, and found a small Massaliot force in the town, numbering about three thousand. He expected to defeat them easily, but they had fortified the bridge, making it almost impassable, and had archers on the banks to kill any who tried to swim across.
Philip left Caiatia after only a limited attempt to cross there, and that night he crossed upriver under cover of darkness. Coming upon Caiatia from behind, he massacred the small defending force and, ascertaining thet the main Massaliot army had withdrawn further north, marched after them. He followed them to the city of Roma, which had actively sided with the Massaliot invaders, hoping to regain some of it's former glory.
The rebels had decided to make their stand to the south of the city. They now numbered less than Philip's army, though reinforcements were quickly coming to reinforce them. Philip's scouts sighted them ont he fifth day of Hyperberetaios and brought them to battle on the sixth. The battle was a simple affair, in which Philip's forces rolled right over the enemy, destroying them utterly, and then marching on Roma.
The city was burned and it's citizens sent south as slaves to Magna Graecia and thus to the rest of the Empire, and some were even sold to the Xiongnu and ended up in the Eastern City-States, serving masters who had never heard of Roma.
After this, Philip's army mached north and met the reinforcing army, resulting in a battle which neither side won. After this battle, both sides agreed to a peace treaty in which the status quo ante bellum was maintained, and Massalia and Macedonia made a pact to destroy the southerners who were still skirmishing with both of them at sea. Massalia was also to recognise the King of Macedonia as her nominal overlord; she was to become a Macedonian vassal.
Philip's army was then shipped by the Massaliot fleet to the city of Utica, which was still holding out against the Punic invaders...
 
I will be making a Youtube of this because it is too interesting. Who knows how long it will take me but I will do more till the end. That is why you must do more, so I will have a job.
 
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