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Welcome everybody to my first timeline, about my favorite Italian city, please comment and share what you think! Since this is the first time I have actually written a timeline, if I make any rookie mistakes, please point them out.

Alrighty then, without further ado, get ready for...

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GLORIA A LA SUPERBA
A MOSTLY REALISTIC GENOWANK




In 888 CE the empire of the Karlings had just fallen. Instead of a massive Empire of the Franks there were five Kingdoms. These were East and West Francia, Italy, Lotharingia, and Burgundy. Each of these kingdoms were falling apart themselves, but the one we will focus on for now is Italy. The Italian King Adam Karling was rapidly losing power to the nobles, he wasn’t a warrior, and was more comfortable making friends with courtiers and visiting his bishop than keeping his vassals loyal and punishing those who defied him. So much, in fact, were the nobles able to break away that even non-feudal vassals became independent. The cities of Pisa, Genoa, and Florence became independent communes of Italy. King Adam was technically the de jure overlord of each commune, but in reality the power lied in the hands of the elected duke, or duce (pronounced dootchey), of each city. Ever since the time of the Romans, Italy had held a very large urban population, and therefore it is no surprise that the cities in Post-Karling Italy (the official name for Italy between 879 CE and 941 CE) gained enough political control to be let free by the then weak king. Pisa, and Florence had already been established as prosperous cities for some time, having been so since pre-Roman times, but Genoa had at this time, only been a backwater fishing village of three thousand souls, and only controlling the area immediately adjacent to their town. But the Genovese elected their duce all the same, and the heads of their wealthiest and most influential families chose Alexander diSavona as their leader.

Alexander was known as the wealthiest man in Lombardia, and his funds would allow Genoa to begin it’s period of growth in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. Alexander was born in the town of Savona, a small city a short distance to the west of Genoa. He had bought a home in Genoa as a young man, and from there used it as a sort of “base of operations” for his commercial endeavours. He made a fortune trading all around the Mediterranean, buying and selling goods like sugar from Cyprus, wheat and barley from Sicilia, olives from Greece, and wine from Lombardia, among other things of course. Being the wealthiest man in the region, and having more than a large amount of an affinity for Genoa, Alexander instantly began work trying to turn her into a port city worthy to be compared to Alexandria and Amalfi. To truly appreciate what Alexander did for Genoa, one must really comprehend what it was like beforehand. Imagine a town tucked into the foothills of the Alps, finding just enough flat land along the coast to set up a few docks for the fishermen to tie their boats to. It was nothing like the bustling metropolis it is today, instead, only about eight hundred homes and less than a hundred other buildings dotted the hilly landscape. The only ships in the sea were small fishermen’s boats, and the only stone buildings were those of the wealthy families and the three churches. How Alexander was able to turn the village into a city on par with Pisa and Amalfi in only forty years is still a sort of legend to Genovese today. For a few years all Alexander could do was try and encourage his fellow merchants in the city to go further abroad for profits, and spend his personal wealth so build more docks and boats to encourage people to work and live in Genoa. He had success, but nothing too dramatic. Though in 892 CE, something terrible happened. The Saracens of Tunisia, which was at the time held by the declining Abbasid Caliphate began to raid and sack the cities of Italy, reaching as far north as Luni, a town dangerously close to Genoa. Therefore, seeing this as his chance to show the Mediterranean that Genoa was no longer an insignificant backwater, Alexander petitioned Pope Formosus to allow Genoa and the other Italian communes to organize an attack on the Saracens in Tunisia. The Pope quickly agreed, he himself scared that the Saracens would come for Roma next. Alexander sent emissaries to the duces of Florence, Amalfi, Pisa, and Venice, and a request to King Adam for troops to fight the “Saracen scourge”, and invited the warrior bands from Asturias to join in the fight. That summer, over thirteen thousand troops (nearly all the Genovese troops were in the form of mercenaries paid for by Alexander himself) and seventy-three galleys set off to Sardinia, where the Saracens had built a camp in the hills of Calari. The soldiers landed in southern Gallura on June 21st, and proceeded south to meet the Saracen force. Alexander was no commander, though, and while he was there at the battle, he gave command to his more able “friends”, the generals of the rival merchants from Pisa and Amalfi. On July 2nd the forces met, with the outnumbered Saracens immediately beginning to be pushed back. The next day the Saracens in Sardinia had either died, surrendered, or escaped back to Tunis in the night. Alexander and his mercenaries celebrated, and the next three days were spent resting and waiting for the fleet to come down south to pick them up and bring them to Tunis.

By July 19th the Italians landed outside Monastir, the closest spot to Tunis itself without terrible enemy resistance. There was a small fleet there in Monastir, but it was too insignificant to even challenge the Italian one. The city was besieged, and on September 5th it surrendered to the Italian forces. There the Italian forces split temporarily, with three thousand men boarding part of the fleet and heading east to occupy Malta and try to loot as much from Sicilia as possible. The rest, though, moved around Tunis to besiege Bizerte, and by December 11th it was taken. With the lands around Tunis occupied, and the main Abbasid forces being held up in Egypt, where the Caliph was fighting a war against the Egyptian Sultan there, the Italian force from Sicilia and Tunisia came together in Bizerte and celebrated Christmas there. On December 28th they began their march to Tunis, where the Saracen forces had converged to defend the city. The Italians knew that the city would be well stocked, and that any siege would last an incredibly long time, especially with the amount of soldiers they had. So, Alexander sent an emissary to King Charles Karling of West Francia. He asked for the King of the Western Franks to help the Italians in their righteous quest to defeat the Saracens and retake the Mediterranean for Christendom. While King Charles decided, the Italians set up camp around Tunis, constructing siege engines and ladders. Apart from the few casualties from archers atop the walls of the city, the siege was rather uneventful for several months, until, though, word reached the Italians of an Abbasid army that had broken through Egyptian lines in Sinai and was marching towards them. They were still at Alexandria, but the siege would likely not be finished by the time they arrived. But, to make sure that the morale of Tunis’ defenders stayed low, Alexander ordered that anyone caught trying to leave or enter the city be killed on sight, and any birds shot down. The Tunisians would have no idea that their salvation may be coming, but, until then, all Alexander could do was build more siege engines and hope that the city surrendered before the Abbasid army came. What Alexander didn’t know, though, was that the West Francians had decided to help the Italians, after Pope Formosus met with King Charles, and their nobles were joining each other, with their armies, in Barcelona, readying themselves to join the Italians and fight the infidel Saracens. The discomforting thing, though, was that it would be a close race between the West Francian reinforcements and the Abbasid army. The campaign had gone great for the Italians thus far, but soon that could all change.

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Also, if anyone wants a map...
This is one I made that is super easy to edit
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