Res Novae Romanae: A Revolution of the Third Century TL

[Salvador79]

Hope the Confederation wins. The Mazdakist seem to be a threat to democracy.

In Eran, their regime looks more democratic than anything the locals have had over the past, well, over the entire recorded historical past. Their effects on the Confederacy`s democracy, though, are something different...

Here comes the next part:

Reform and Secession War(s)

In Alexandria, the Council debated the consequences of the fruitless campaign against the Mazdakists and its causes hotly. What had previously been differences of opinion now turned into enmities: a larger group, with its base primarily in Egypt, Anatolia and the African coast, saw the lack of a well-defined common legal framework as the reason for the outbreak of the conflict, and the lack of centralized control over the military as a result for the Confederal failure to regain Assyria. In their view, the solution consisted in forging a closer union – going further than even the plans of the Koinon Neon movement of the late 11th century – and making an example of the Libyan and Sicilian civitates which had sent too little or no contributions.

The minority, which consisted of these very civitates, but also of a few more, which feared or otherwise rejected these new policies, saw the control which new elites exerted over the Confederal body politic as the source of the escalation, and a logically following lower popular enthusiasm for defending the Confederacy as the reason for the poor military performance. In their eyes, the solution consisted in a “Second Revolution” (a term which would recur often in the political discourse of the Eastern Mediterranean over the next centuries), in which the population took back power from the oligarchs and factional leaders, concluding a peace treaty or perhaps even an alliance with the new Mazdakist neighbor in the East.

This conflict had proportions which could no longer be solved by a parliamentary decision of the Council. The view of the majority would soon take the shape of several amendments of the Symphonion, made possible by a broad alliance between the leadership of the collegialist and the socialist factions, which also included Phineas Klytemnidos, the Rhodian oligarch who possessed a vast network and influence in the Aegean islands. The alliance also enjoyed the support of most of the military tribunes of the troops assembled in Syria.

The constitutional amendments of 1237, often simply referred to as “the Reform”, stated that

• all civitates put all of their armed forces, on land as well as at sea, under the common command of two Strategikoi elected annually by the Council
• the Council has the right to legislate and collect a number of taxes hitherto reserved for the civitates in order to fund this common military,
• the Council further elects two Censors for a period of five years, who oversee the necessary Confederal financial administration
• and a supreme court, whose 24 judges were each individually elected for fifteen years by Conventa of delegates in twelve regions of the Confederacy, would serve as a final level of appeal which should work, through its rulings, towards a harmonized Confederacy-wide judicial tradition.

Almost a quarter of the delegates left the Council under protest when they realized that the Reform would actually jump the hurdle. The Reformist majority quickly seized the opportunity and ruled that the “civitates defectores”, which had not sent sufficient contingents to the military effort against the Mazdakists, had to pay the hefty fine of 270,000 Alexandrinian tetradrachms. Until this payment reached the Confederal coffers in full, property of the civitates defectores and of their citizens could be impounded Confederacy-wide.

To the dissidents, the Reform amendments made the disadvantageous situation they faced within the Confederacy very clear. They travelled home with a single message: Alexandria plays Rome and wants us to submit. In some civitates, this caused the shock, the reflection and the doubts about which political agenda they should pursue and at which costs, which the Reform majority in the Council had hoped for. In more politicised civitates, though, especially in those ruled by Agonistic Christians, and among these especially in the Libyan civitates, which had begun to feel closer to their coreligionists and conationals South of the border than to Alexandria and the pagan rest of the Confederacy anyway over the last century, this message was met with wild and angry defiance.

From 1237 to 1240, the isonomic half of the Mediterranean world fell into what was soon a full-fledged civil war. The so-called civitates defectores violently rejected their labeling and the ruling against them. They refused to put their armed forces under the command of the new Confederal strategikoi. When their property was impounded in a neighbouring Reformist civitas, especially Agonistic Libyan civitates, but also Lycaonian civitates in league with their Isaurian neighbours would respond with what can only be called raids.

But not only the civitates defectores plotted secessions. Across Italy, member civitates of the conservative Latin League allied themselves with their radical Aetas Aurea neighbours, some of whom were counted as civitates defectores by Alexandria, because they would not suffer the humiliation of being officially ruled from Alexandria. Instead of impounding the latter`s property, they built a common short-lived breakaway Latin Republic with Rome as capital.

The Latin Republic was soon destabilized as Alexandria managed to drive a wedge between the heterogeneous groups and external threats (see following sub-chapters) appeared whose repulsion would be easier within the Confederacy than outside it. The Council managed to win back the Latin League members by promising to install the new Supreme Court in Rome and guaranteeing the status of Latin as second official language, then tackled the remaining pockets of radical resistance militarily under the pretext of defending peaceful civitates from aggressive defectores.

Nevertheless, it became evident that the Confederacy was in no position to launch a second offensive against the Mazdakists in Assyria, as the first strategikoi had to move their reorganized troops in order to quell the insurgencies in various places.

While Italy was won back after three years, the Lycaonians returned into the fold in 1239 in the face of an advancing Mazdakist army and after the Censors had reduced the penalty for their defections to a mere quarter of the original sum, and Sicily, where a brutal social war between loyalists and secessionists ravaged for two years and devastated the island, was finally pacified, too, the Libyan civitates were more successful. They joined forces with their mostly nomadic brethren from the desert beyond the Confederacy`s official borders and managed to successfully secede from the Confederacy, forming a theocratic Libyan nation state with its capital in Thagaste. Its Latin name was “Sacra Confoederatio Nationis Libyanae”, but its official language was Libyan, of course. Libyan forces were able to beat back Confederal armies sent against them three times: in 1237, in 1238 and in early 1240. In August 1240, the secession of Libya was officially acknowledged by Alexandria with a treaty known as the Peace of Leptis Magna.

The Confederal army led by the new strategikoi could only intervene occasionally in favour of the loyalists in Italy, Sicily and Africa because in the East, the Mazdakist Army of the Light threatened to advance farther West into Confederal territories. The small Republic of Sophene had fallen into Kersasp`s hands at minimal cost in 1237. Confederal military intelligence reported about preparations for an impending invasion of Cilicia.

When it finally came in 1239, it was the baptism of fire for the reorganized military of the state which still called itself a Confederacy when, in modern terms, it had really turned into a federal republic. In the Battle of Gindaros, the Confederacy`s defending army was led by the Egyptian strategikos Akoris. The great historical importance of the Battle of Gindaros is not just derived from its result – Kersasp was dealt such severe losses that he was forced to withdraw behind the Euphrates – but also because it was the first documented instance of the use of a new weapon which revolutionized warfare: Syrian Fire. Various highly inflammable substances had been experimented with by Phoenician distillers/apothecaries/chemists, but Akoris was the first to use them in battle – the burning liquid being pumped from a (somewhat) safe distance against the wooden archer wagon circles turned the tide of the battle not so much for the real amount of damage it caused, but for the devastating psychological effect it had on the Mazdakist soldiers.

When Kersasp intervened in an internal power struggle between groups of Armenian nobles and launched his invasion of Armenia, for which he needed all the soldiers of his Western Army, in 1240, the Confederal leadership finally had their hands free to crack down on the last pockets of anti-Reformist and secessionist resistance in the Aegeis and in Southern Italy. After a last attempt to bring Libya back into the fold failed and the Treaty of Leptis Magna was signed, internal warfare within the shrunk Confederacy ended.

But not all centrifugal tendencies were of a militant nature or involved civitates defectores. As the steps towards legal harmonization took more concrete shapes, the New Great Sanhedrin at Jerusalem and the Samaritan King in Sebaste both raised fundamental objections in 1241 respectively 1242. Lengthy negotiations were conducted, and several Councils repeatedly put the plans concerning the installation of the Supreme Court on hold, until in 1247, a peaceful secession of the Jewish and Samaritan civitates was mutually agreed upon. With the Treaty of Berytus, which established the independence and borders of the new Jewish and Samaritan states, a continuation of mutual military assistance between the two and the Confederacy was agreed upon.

Nevertheless, the military power of the Confederacy had suffered, and plans for a reconquest of Assyria were put on hold, for the time being.

Danaprian Chaos

The Confederacy may not have survived the crisis of 1237-1240 at all, had not chaos simultaneously befallen the Roman Empire, too.

Roman colonization of Danapria had relied, to an unprecedented extent, on slave labour. This exerted not only destabilizing and militarizing effects on its Sklavenian neighbours in the woodlands of the North, where almost all of the slaves were obtained. It also proved an immense risk for the security of the entire colony. In 1238, between 70,000 and 100,000 Sklavenian slaves toiled on the irrigated Danaprian latifundia, where a century ago only the grass of the steppe had grown.

Some unrecorded incident, which happened throughout 1238 in the vicinity of Neapolis Borysthenea, must have been the spark which ignited this powder keg. Within weeks after the first villa burned, the slave revolt had extended up and down the entire Roman portion of the Borysthenes. Whether the revolting slaves had plotted their rebellion with the help of free Sklavenians from the North is unclear, but the latter quickly showed up and helped the revolting slaves in plundering the Danaprian towns, leading them Southwards onto the Taurean peninsula, where even more prizes awaited them.

To be continued.

 

[Archangel]

With whom did the Baetican civitates sided?

 

[Salvador79]

With whom did the Baetican civitates sided?

@Archangel,
The Baetican civitates, although dominated by radicals when joining the Confederacy in the 1080s, have not only enjoyed 150 years of prosperity, unaffected by the devastations of the early 12th century. That alone is no warrant against egalitarian radicalism, since Italy has surely recovered, too, and yet Aetas Aurea still holds out. But Baetica also shares a direct border with the (Gallo-)Roman Empire. It´s too small to stand alone (something the conservative Latin League must also have observed about their own situation, too), and potential allies are either too far away, or, in the case of the Western Libyans, too culturally different. The Baeticans will have developed close ties with the non-Libyan civitates on the North African coast, from Tingis over Rusaddir to Rusacurrum, which are strongly commercially oriented and where less virulently political brands of Christianity thrive alongside polytheism. For all these reasons combined, I´ve decided not to have them side with the secessionists and remain loyalist instead, although it was a close race.

 

[Archangel]

Where are the borders of the “Sacra Confoederatio Nationis Libyanae”?

 

[Salvador79]

Where are the borders of the “Sacra Confoederatio Nationis Libyanae”?

I will post a final map. They are mostly inland, and stretching farther South than the old Roman limes.

 

[Salvador79]

Last installment, part four

Cont.:

The Sklavenians ramsacked various towns and the countryside in Roman Tauris for almost two weeks before a local division of the Imperial army managed to confront them in the Battle of Kerkinitis. Numerically far superior, but entirely disorganized, the rebels suffered heavy losses, but ultimately, they managed to break apart the Roman lines, encircle smaller isolated groups and annihilate them. After their dearly paid victory, they took revenge by setting the town of Kerkinitis on fire.

Realising that this would be just the beginning if they stayed on Tauris, many revolting slaves seized boats and ships from the Roman Taureans of Kerkinitis, and set sail. Only few of them were caught and sunk by the Classis Romana Euxina; some sunk by Neptune`s fault alone, but most of fleeing slaves managed to reach the Bithynian or the Paphlagonian coast, where civitates of the Confederacy provided a safe haven for them. Not few of them were immediately recruited by the Confederal army in the Reform civil wars, or for the Syrian front against the Mazdakists.

In Sirmium, imperator augustus Arcadius briefly considered demanding the extradition of the escaped slaves, which might have served as a good pretext for an invasion of the weakened Confederacy. He was forced to abandon this idea, though, when he learned that chaos was still reigning supreme in Danapria: now Alanian and other Sarmatian groups had risen against Imperial rule.

The expansion of the Roman Empire into the Pontic steppe and the general introduction of the praedia system had created winners and losers among the Alans and other Sarmatians. While the former, which had become a new landowning elite, remained staunchly loyal to the Empire, there was quite a large number of the latter, too. Unable to continue their traditional lifestyle and condemned to toil away as farmhands, day labourers in the towns, and lately also badly paid border auxiliaries under the command of other groups who enjoyed a better connection to Sirmium, their frustration was as great as their number. Seeing Kerkinitis burn – a symbol for the unbelievable, the first defeat of a Roman imperial army after a hundred years – , they now rose in rebellion in great numbers, joining the remaining rebels, and moved Southwestwards along the Pontic coast, plundering and leaving behind a trail of devastation.

Arcadius gathered a massive army, even calling upon the Gallo-Roman imperator caesar Tyrianus, against the invading Alano-Sklavenian hordes. Some say his army numbered 40,000, some – certainly exaggerating – say it was 100,000 men strong. They sighted the Alano-Sklavenians on the left bank of the river Pyretus, and the sight of Arcadius` army must have conveyed a clear message, for the rebels immediately returned and fled. They moved faster than Arcadius` large army. But over the course of the next years, it turned out that there was no safe place in Roman Danapria they could turn to – and that not even the adjoining woodlands offered sufficient protection.

Viewed from a Roman perspective, Arcadius and Tyrianus were bound in the Northern Black Sea region for four full years before they finally declared the region safe again. This did not mean that the rebellious Alans and Sklavenians had been annihilated – most of them had ultimately fled Eastwards across the steppe and, in all likelihood, arrived among the Törtogur, who dwelled on both sides of the river Rha [1]. Their arrival in that region would at least provide an explanation for the subsequent Törtogur migrations.

Arcadius had learned his lesson from the slave rebellion. He ordered a massive reorganization of the Danaprian plagae, decreeing a law that, for every slave owned by an estate, there must be seven free men hired by the same estate, so that the number of slaves would never reach dangerously destabilizing proportions. As an undesired consequence, Danapria`s recovery and recolonisation was slow. In many places, the army had to take over directly, and moved farmer soldiers from Moesia and Thracia into the more threatened Eastern plagae to recolonize the dry but productive Danaprian lands. The easy life of luxury had ended in Roman Danapria, giving way to a much more cumbersome, modest and unflamboyant existence. Over the rest of the 13th century, Roman presence in Danapria would never reach pre-revolt levels again. In part, this was also owed to a slow degradation of the soil, which became salinized through excessive and unprofessional irrigation in some places.

It is this thinned out and disillusioned nature of the Roman presence in Danapria which, perhaps, helps us understand why a later Roman Imperator, Drusus, would abandon most of the province except for Tauris upon the invasion of the Törtogurs as vassals of the Chigil Xaqanate at the end of the 13th century. The Törtogurs, in their turn, would not dominate the region for long, being pushed Westwards by Sklavenians who took over the abandoned agricultural structures of the Romans and built their first fortified towns, while the Törtogurs erected a short-lived reign over the Gepids and Costoboci in the Northern Carpathians.

Hibernia Aflame

The four years in which the Gallo-Roman Caesar Tyrianus was away in the East were enough, though, to open up a window of opportunity for some ambitious Gallo-Roman noblemen.

Throughout the beginning of the 13th century, two Hibernian petty kingdoms had turned, through mutually beneficial relations with different Gallo-Roman houses, into not-quite-so-petty kingdoms: the (Salvianine Christian) Ervanian dynasty of the Muriani in the South-West, and the (Hespidian Manichaean) Scotian dynasty of the Niallani in the East. The Muriani had subdued the much larger tuadum of the Evanacti, while the Niallani had even conquered a few islands off the coast of the Picts, whose relations to the Gallo-Roman Empire had been less cordial of late.

Grown in size, power and influence, both tuada had gathered followers who all sought their own little advantages from allying with the new strong player against some tiny and weak neighbor. On the surface, such alliances took the form of adopting either of the two new religions.

So far, the polarization had been a purely Hibernian affair, and military conflicts were still at a low intensity. But in the absence of the Caesar and his powerful Rhine armies, Gallo-Roman aristocratic alliances stepped up their engagement on both sides. The slightest provocation could cause the Hibernian powder keg to explode now.



[1] Volga

 

[Archangel]

Hope the Muriani win.

Did the Sklavenoi that settle in Danapria pick some of the Roman's culture?

 

[Salvador79]

Did the Sklavenoi that settle in Danapria pick some of the Roman's culture?

They must pick up some of the knowledge concerning irrigated agriculture because Southern Ukraine does not support their traditional slash-and-burn agriculture (no forests; if not irrigated, it reverts to steppe, if irrigated in the wrong way, it salinises). I suppose some will get the hang of some of these things, others won`t; the failure of some and greater population of others will speed up concentration of power, especially since those who fail can`t really rely too heavily on plundering the Roman colonies which have withdrawn to the coast, as that would still incur punitive campaigns and I´m sure their fortifications will be massively increased. The latter, in itself, will influence the Sklaveni, too: towards a shift from light wooden forts to solid stone-walled towns, which are more adequate for the steppe anyway, if only slowly.
Judging from OTL history, I think there will be also scattered remnants of the Roman population left, a few people trying to hold out in the abandoned forts / towns of Neapolis Borysthenea, Chortitia and Kallipolis, even after they`ve fallen under Sklavenian control. Also, Tauris and the old Bosporan Greek towns are still around and still officially Roman, so there`ll be some sort of interaction. But certainly not enough to linguistically Romanise the Sklavenian language, for example.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

And the provocation came. Both sides blamed the other for having started the hostilities: Was a bunch of Niallans first in stealing a consecrated host and urinating on it? Or was a mob of Ervanii first in forcing a Manichaean electus to drink the blood of a sheep?

Either way, within months, all petty kingdoms of the island, and a large number of domini clarissimi from Gaul and Hispania were participating in the conflagration, which lasted for three years (1239-1242). Not only its duration distinguished it from earlier military conflicts on the island. On both sides, indigenous Hibernians, though much more numerous and the nominal belligerents, were increasingly marginalized on the battlefields. Several battles in different quarters of the island were all decided by the heavy Gallo-Roman cavalry, against which the extremely light infantry of the various Hibernian tuada (archers, slingers and swordsmen alike only carried light shields) and the few chariots they could muster proved utterly inadequate. Towards the end, it was more or less Gallo-Roman knights fighting each other, with the Hibernians relegated to the ceremonial opening champion combats and an otherwise rather auxiliary role, in their own lands.

When Caesar Tyrianus returned from the East, he made the Hibernian peace negotiations his first priority. In Tyrianus` view, restoring the peace between Gallo-Romans may have been the top priority, although in the light of the outcome, some may find this hard to believe. With the Peace of Tara in 1242, the division of the island into only seven tuada with fixed and clearly delineated borders was decided. Both exhausted primary opponents and belligerents, the Muriani and the Niallani, received only little territorial gains, and their overall prospects were less favourable now than before the war, for their various small neighbours had now become consolidated into larger, stronger units. Most importantly, though, the kings of all seven tuada gave tracts of lands (including the defeated clans who lived in them, now turned into serfs) to the Gallo-Roman aristocrats who had fought for them and who should, by all means, fight for each of them in the future, too. The opposite reaction – a Hibernian closing of ranks and the ousting of all Gallo-Romans – had certainly been in the cards, too; to what extent Tyrianus` diplomacy was able to prevent such an outcome is difficult to ascertain.

As it was, Hibernia would soon become dotted with castles in the Gaulish and Hispanian styles, which took almost a century to take on more native Hibernian architectural inspirations. In them, cadet branches of several of the most important houses of Gallo-Romam nobility developed. As they slowly took on a new and distinctly Hiberno-Galloroman identity, their surroundings, especially the new courts of the seven not-so-petty kings, adopted military tactics, equipment and technology, but also, for example, culinary preferences from their foreign-descended vassals, who were a personalized web of political ties between the island and its large neighbor, who saw Hibernia as its backyard and exclusive zone of influence.

The Hibernian War of 1239-1242, the build-up to it and its political aftermath would become the blueprint for a tremendously successful Gallo-Roman foreign policy – one driven and undertaken by its largely autonomous aristocracy, caught in a competition against each other, and at times mediated, regulated and safeguarded by the Caesars. This uniquely Gallo-Roman colonization would occur in a similar fashion on the Pictish Islands, in Rygia, Sygnia and Moria [2] throughout the rest of the 13th and the 14th centuries, where they would spark the development of quite a powerful hybrid maritime society of course.

Religious issues between Hespidian Manichaeism and Salvianine Christianity were not really discussed and settled with the Peace of Tara at all. Clearly, this shows how superficial the influence of both religions on the island still was at this point in time, being more of a pretext than a real cause of the conflict. Over time, this would change, as we know, both cults together causing not only endless bloody conflicts, but also inspiring the unique monastically dominated tradition and culture which, for many, represents quintessential “Hibernian-ness” today.

[2] all denoting parts of Western Norway

To be continued.

 

[Archangel]

And Roman culture enters a bit more of the Hibernian culture.

Are the Monasteries only from the Christian side?

 

[Salvador79]

No, they're also Manichaean.

 

[Salvador79]

Cont.:

Kersasp`s Further Conquests

The Mazdakist conquest of Armenia was completed by 1244, although centralised control from Nihavand was seldom felt in the more remote mountains and Mazdakist Iranianisation of the religious, political, social and economic system was concentrated on the valleys of the Artaxes, Tigris and Arsanias and around the great lakes of Van, Seven and Urmia.

Kersasp crowned his Mesopotamian-Caucasian campaign with an inclusion of Iberia and Albania: Mtshketa fell in 1246, Partav in 1248. He returned to Nihavand triumphantly, where he enjoyed powers unprecedented in a single person since Mazdak`s revolution – and maybe even more powers than the Sassanid and Kidarite Shahanshahs, in spite of the constitutional supremacy of the Hanjaman Mardomé, which did not dare to question his authority after such victories, for in contrast to the shahanshahs of old, Kersasp had a large and keen state apparatus working for him, supported by a broad popular movement, which Mazdakism still was.

The enthusiastic concordance of the Iranian populace and their head of state, Kersasp (who was, nominally, merely a member of the Hanjaman Mardomé who had been, during a specific time period in the past, tasked with commanding an operation of the Army of the Light), was only threatened by prolonged periods of peace – but there wouldn`t be any. After only four years, just enough for a minimal replenishment of the necessary technical, human and victual resourcecs, Kersasp embarked on another campaign of conquest and conversion, this time aimed at the East.

He easily defeated the Surenids – the last of the ancient Parthian dynasties – in Sistan in 1252, and marched his armies across the barren wastelands into the Indus valley. Between 1253 and 1256, eleven important towns, federations and kingdoms of North-Western India submitted to him, before his army, whose supply lines had been vastly overstretched, finally encountered an enemy they could not defeat. In the Yamuna valley, an alliance between the Dardic republics and the Gupta Empire dealt Kersasp`s Army of the Light its most serious defeat. When Kersasp realized that he had pushed his luck, and sought to return to Eran with the remnants of his invasion army, militias from the cities he had defeated but which now revolted cut off his retreat. Not far from Ujjain, Kersasp found his death in 1257. From the army of 50,000 soldiers plus baggage which had followed him, only a few hundred escaped with their bare lives.

Missionaries

After such a major defeat, Eran was weakened and thrown back on itself for a while. This did not stop the spread of the Mazdakist faith by zealous missionaries, though. They founded small groups of believers in Sogdia and Choresmia, further adding to the colourful religious heterogeneity of Central Asia, and even across India, where military might had failed.

In the West, Mazdakism found those civitates of the Confederacy, where politicized Christian groups dominated, immune to their ideas. Egypt, with its comparatively wealthy peasantry and well-to-do workers, did not become a hotbed of Mazdakism, either, although a few secluded communes were established. Within the Confederacy, Anatolia and Achaia proved comparatively more fertile. Between 1240 and 1300, roughly every sixth citizen of these two regions converted to Mazdakism, according to the data gathered by the new Confederal Censors.

While such conversions created tensions and conflicts, they did not escalate into a full-scale war again within the borders of the Confederacy. In the Roman Empire, though, things looked different. In the militarized plagae, Mazdakism was strictly outlawed and severely persecuted. In Dalmatia, Epirus and Northern Italy, though, Mazdakist missionaries found their way into towns and villages and managed to stir the otherwise tranquil political life in these parts.

The South-Western third of Sirmium`s Empire had enjoyed two centuries of peace, in which prosperity had returned and social structures remained very conservative. The cities of Northern Italy, Dalmatia and Epirus were, in fact, those places where the pre-revolutionary Roman order was preserved to the greatest extent. Old and established decurional elites, who also owned large tracts of land, still ruled and administered their cities and maintained large networks of clients; old Latin Law was still obeyed; and although provincial administration had been replaced with the denser network of plagae and upward mobility into the highest political tiers was only possible by joining the army, people had come to consider, by the 13th century, that the way their society was governed was in general accordance with what they thought was a millennium-old mos maiorum.

The prosperity of its cities depended on trade, which was still carried out by private enterprises run by old commercial dynasties here (and not monopolized by the army, like up North along the Danube). Profitable trade, in turn, depended on competitive production in the towns and in the hinterland. Based on quicker mechanization in parts of the Confederacy (especially in Anatolia), Dalmatia and Epirus faced strong competition especially in the textile business. In contrast to the ranch owners on the Borysthenes (before its fall) and to the Army, private businessmen and manufacturers in the South of the Empire no longer had any slaves available, after such a long period of peace. Coloni could not be used with the same degree of flexibility, and wage labourers became increasingly too expensive given the falling prices of many products traded across the Mediterranean if one did not invest in a more efficient production. Thus, especially Dalmatian oligarchs invested. The number of watermills and windmills installed in Dalmatia and Epirus quadrupled over the first three decades of the 13th century.

As a result, the demand for labour sank, and so did wages. In the towns along the coast, a hugely grown proletariat was faced with falling living standards and unemployment. Gone were the days of political tranquility. In this environment of poverty and uprootedness, Mazdakist missionaries quickly found many new converts. Municipal administrations were keen to enforce the ban on this religion, but they lacked the necessary forces, and so the movement grew throughout the 1240s and 1250s and began to threaten the existing social order.

The Roman Empire was not a good place to be a Mazdakist, though, as they would soon discover. In 1261, Sirmium finally dispatched a large military counter-insurgency contingent. Within two years, Dalmatia and Epirus were combed, and thousands were crucified for belonging to an insubordinate sect, yet more were carried off into military slavery. Thousands of surviving Mazdakists fled to the Dalmatian islands, from where they would haunt the Adriatic Sea as pirates for the next at least four decades, in spite of massive efforts by the Imperial navy to root out the problem.

But Mazdakism was not the only revelatory religion spreading far and wide. After their secession from the Confederacy, Libyan Agonisticism became even more heterodox than it had been – and with the economically and culturally powerful North united with the tribes who travelled across the Libyan desert, every new wave and group spread faster across the desert, and more of it reached the Aethiopian people living in lands like Wagadu, Agisymba and Kanem.

There, Agonistic Christian messages, regardless how thwarted, undermined the legitimatory foundations of divine kingships, causing a series of political upheavals in these countries towards the end of the 13th century, which would mark the beginning of an era of Agonisticised Aethiopian societies and later rivalling empires. As can still be witnessed, Aethiopian Agonistic Christianity diverged even more from the version of the cult practiced in its homeland in the Levante: the belief in spirits, the veneration of ancestors, and a very non-Mediterranean understanding of the nature of the Holy Ghost were dominant features of the religion which began to develop at this historical threshold.

To be continued with a more Asian chapter.

 

[Archangel]

Christianity is expanding itself in the Africa Horn.

 

[Salvador79]

Christianity is expanding itself in the Africa Horn.

Actually, it´s along the Niger river and throughout the Sahel that a very heterodox Christianity is expanding. *Aethiopia means Black Africa generally ITTL. Wagadu is in OTL Mali, Agisymba is the Greek label I´ve stuck on the iron age civilization along the middle course of the Niger that we know very, very little about, and Kanem is on the OTL border of Chad and Sudan.
All of these are termiuses of Libyan=Berber trade routes, that is why I´ve had the expansion take this way.

It´s bound to be not a one-way thing, though: while Agonistic Christian ideas seep into the South, the mixture between them and animism is fed back towards the North, where the separation of the Sacra Confoederatio Nationis Libyanae from the now rather exclusively Mediterranean Confederacy has loosened cultural ties between Libyans=Berbers and Mediterranean Christianity, allowing for a more and more heterodox outlook of Libyan Agonisticism. The more this mixture consolidates itself, the more it´s also going to be perceived as something new and weird by Mediterranean observers. So, one could, to a certain extent, also say that African culture is spreading Northwards, although I must agree that the opposite statement has more arguments in favour it.

 

[Salvador79]

I realized that I hadn`t yet really touched upon the Germanic tribes and also neglected the Roman Empire (Sirmium) somewhat lately, so I am correcting these omissions within this final update now, before I´ll move on to Asia as promised.

Cont.:

The Rise of Moraha

The relations between the Roman Empire and the Germanic groups living just North of it are marked, throughout Antiquity, by the persistent problems and brave efforts of the Germanic groups to adapt to changing circumstances – chiefly among them the changing political structures of their Imperial neighbor in the South.

During five centuries of direct contact, Germanic groups outside the Empire have repeatedly tried to learn from Roman models. During the 9th and 10th centuries, larger groups and military kingship evolved under Roman influence. When the Empire underwent its greatest phase of weakness around the turn of the millennia, various Germanic groups along the imperial border, pushed by other migrations and the worsening climate, attempted to profit from this weakness, beginning with raids and ending with duchies carved out of former imperial territory in the West. As the Empire recovered in the second half of the 11th century in the East, and in the 12th century in the West, too, this strategy no longer worked. The borders of the Empire or Empires, whose capitals in Sirmium, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis and later Lugdunum were considerably closer to Germania, were well guarded again. Raids incurred disproportionate and cruel punitive campaigns, and after Crispus` victory over Candidus and the half-hearted reunification in 1092, the Gallo-Romans no longer needed barbarian duces along the Rhine, either.

The 12th century was almost a lost century for Magna Germania. The Empire was extremely strong and played out the various petty kings against each other, while it kept the borders safe and even airtight at times. The self-reliant military command economy of the Roman Empire – which had developed, in no small part, as a Roman reaction to the Germanic threat initially, but which had long become self-referential – required very little imports and produced no uncontrolled export-oriented surpluses. Thus very little trade occurred across the Danube. Imitating the new, changed Roman role model of this time was difficult and almost impossible for the Germanic groups. The foundation of the Empire ruled from Sirmium was its military bureaucracy and its equally military education system, both of which were intricately linked with each other. Building up a centralized army was already difficult enough for the Germanic petty kings – only the Warmanni and the Heormanni succeeded in doing so in the second half of the 12th century. A professional administration would have required much more resources and knowledge than any Germanic ruler of this time, even the most successful, was able to muster. Building up knowledge through institutionalised education, likewise, required resources and knowledge, which simply wasn´t available to the degree that would have been necessary to build up a state that could have withstood imperial manipulation and maybe even overpowered the Empire.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the seeds of a change which could address this problem were sown. Once again, Germania adapted to a challenge raised by the Romans.

Of the two super-kingdoms with centralized armies – Ermanic`s Warmanni North of the pre-Pannonian Danube, and Ucaric`s Heormanni centered around Chattia – the Heormanni were militarily stronger and halted the Warmannian Westward expansion while continuing their own Eastward expansion after the Battle of the Solaha.

Ermanic left a legacy which lasted longer, though. Both his Warmannian Empire, and Ucaric`s Heormannian Empire fell apart almost simultaneously in succession wars soon after their founder-king`s deaths. But while Ucaric had merely built a central royal army and a rudimentary royal administration to go with it – both being scaled down by his successors, who were unable to maintain the necessary expenses in the absence of permanent conquests –, Ermanric had also done his very best to sow the seeds of knowledge growth.

Two policies of Ermanic were central to this strategy: the establishment of the Great Sanctuary in his capital, Moraha, and his sponsorship of secret societies in which professional knowledge and skills were proliferated.

In the Great Sanctuary of Moraha, built as an extension of an earlier cultic place of the Quadi, pagan priests from the various tribes which had formed the Warmannian confederation were permanently assembled, maintained by a large donation of land whose peasants paid the land rents Ermanric had introduced directly to the Sanctuary`s treasury instead of to one of the king`s vassals. In the great complex of sacred buildings which quickly developed around the central Sanctuary, myths and various other important texts were written down and records were kept of more contemporary proceedings, contracts, royal edicts and much more. There were also schools destined for the education of future priests who would share and propagate a common Warmannian identity transcending tribal boundaries.

The secret societies, on the other hand, were of an entirely secular identity. They, too, initially received privileges like access to the king´s court and council, tax exemptions and exemptions from military service. While all of these became moot with the disintegration of the super-kingdom, the secret societies had formed and endured. They were basically circles of people with specialized knowledge or skills, and a reaction to the secretive environment under which important individuals like blacksmiths, healers, prospectors, distillers etc. conducted their business. Keeping the secrets of their trade to themselves and only passing them on to the son who would follow in their footsteps was a customary habit, Ermanic knew, which endangered the preservation, proliferation and increase of knowledge in his lands. Yet, expecting these specialists to tell everyone the secrets upon which their livelihood depended was naïve, too. The secret societies were Ermanic´s answer to this conundrum: They brought these people together in Moraha at regular intervals, where they would communicate with each other, establish a sort of in-group code, and initiate newcomers on their own terms under the benevolent eyes of the king, who was, at least in Ermanic`s case, very willing to turn their collective demands into royal edicts.

When the Warmannian Empire collapsed, its capital Moraha suffered a decline, too, but it was not a total breakdown. Various factions of the royal army fought against each other and carved out successor states – but Moraha remained the centre of Warmannian identity. Its Great Sanctuary continued unabated, and over the next few decades would educate not only priests, but increasingly also taught the children of wealthy artisans and important warriors to read and write their Suebian language in a slightly modified version of the Latin alphabet. When, decades later, another king, Gunthar, united the Warmannian Empire again for the duration of seventeen years, he had the Law of the Land codified by a pan-tribal assembly, prepared and documented by the scribes of the Great Sanctuary who then kept the Codex Warmannicus in their library and increasingly also began teaching specialists in legal matters.

Moraha also remained the seat where the secret societies, which proved highly resilient against political instability, continued to meet, even though they also sprawled regional dependencies in Langobardia [3], Rugia [4] and Boiovaria [5] throughout the rest of the 13th century, and from there into even the remotest village in later centuries, when the population of the Warmannian lands began to increase significantly.

The Germanic race to catch up the technologically and culturally far more advanced Romans began, thus, in the early 13th century in Moraha, and from here, Moraha would grow into the leading city of all Germania and a beacon of sageness and lore to which other Germanics, regardless of how often and with or against whom they fought their wars, looked up and from where they would draw their influences for centuries to come.

The War of the Factions

The militarized Roman Empire had, in many ways, become a static, rigid giant throughout the peaceful 12th century, in which its hegemony between the Alps and the Caucasus was undisputed. Not being driven by any immediate urgency and increasingly turned into machineries programmed at reproducing elites, the Academiae Martis were no longer sparkling sources of innovation and even developed a certain tendency towards sterile dogmatism. Nevertheless, the avowedly meritocratic system which Diocles had built around them and around the military leaders recruited there guaranteed, for a historically unusual length of time, peace and inner stability even after it gradually lost its meritocratic nature. (Sons of common soldiers could still rise through the academic degrees – but the politically most prestigious and economically most rewarding positions of administrative leadership and military command were increasingly filled only with graduates from the two most renowned academiae, in Serdica and in Lauriacum, and to immatriculate here, you would have to be born into one of the leading families of post-Dioclean senior administration and military leadership, or at least be a very close client of one of its patriarchs.)

This stability was lost in the War of the Factions of the 1250s. Since the end of the 12th century, two dogmatic factions had emerged within the academies – and implicitly also within the military and the administration. This academic origin has often been over-stressed by Hellenic historians, who saw the events in the Roman Empire through the lens of their much more politicized culture. In the context of Sirmium`s Empire, the academic aspect of the conflict served as the culturally and socially necessary fig leave for crude and very unphilosophical struggles for power and wealth long after the underlying dispute had lost its relevance.

The two factions were the Valentini and the Modestiani (named after two influential magistri, Valens and Modestus). Philosophically, the Valentini leaned towards strict, authoritarian Plotinism, the suppression of superstitious cults, the restriction of academy-based military and administrative promotions to hard and objective subject matters where judgement was less subjective and less prone to clientelist favoritism, and for monetary austerity, while the Modestiani were more open towards a moderate absorption of philosophical influences coming from Alexandria, religious tolerance, a very cautious demilitarization of society, more public investment in things that made life more comfortable, and a wider inclusion of the arts into the curriculum of the academies. Socially, the Valentini were backed by the middle and upper-middle tiers of the administrative pyramid, while almost all early Modestiani were members of the highest echelons. Valentinian and Modestian factions formed within each academy in the early 13th century, until dissense escalated to a degree that some academies ousted the members of the faction which represented a minority within their institution.

The initially large majority of those in the military and administrative leadership who belonged to neither faction ignored this trend for too long – until it was too late and new appointments for leading positions were more and more made according to factionality, and the rivalry of the two factions had become entrenched far beyond the walls of the academies.

When Imperator Arcadius died of one of the epidemics which ravaged Europe throughout the 13th century, the Concilium Magistrorum was so divided that it could not agree on a successor. When Gratianus, a Modestian, was elected by a thin relative majority, the Valentinians refused to accept the result, calling for the new Concilium in four week`s time, during which “uncorrupted and law-abiding” electors should be chosen by the magisterial concilia of the plagae. Gratianus, backed by his Modestian allies, rejected this demand, in turn, and threatened anyone who failed to comply with his orders with a condemnation for high treason.

The Valentinian faction rallied behind their candidate, Trebonianus. At the evening of election day, the first blood was shed. One week later, Sirmium had suffered from a fire for which both sides blamed one another, and another week later, the two factions met in the first of many open battles. After a first hot phase, power blocs consolidated, with Trebonianus controlling Thrace and the Lower Danube, while Illyria, Noricum, the Alps and Northern Italy were loyal to Gratian. In both camps, black lists appeared and political persecutions flared up.

As the conflict went into its second year, though, these persecutions began to ebb, and the leadership within both camps had shifted from the academically-dominated factions to the respective clientelage networks of two of the most influential families of the Empire, for Gratian belonged to a family which traced its lineage to Gaius Antoninus Crispus, the reconqueror of Gaul, whereas Trebonianus was backed by three military leaders from the Spalatini family which had protected and supported Trebonianus` rise into the highest circle of power, a family which claimed Diocles, the Savior of the Empire, as its forefather.

The War of the Factions continued for another six years, in which countless Concilia were called and held and ignored by the other side, and battles were fought, in which over 60,000 men fell altogether, until Florentius, another Modestian and friend of the Spalatini family who had followed Gratian after the latter had been killed on the battlefield, finally subdued the last pockets of resistance in the Carpathians (Trebonianus had been killed earlier, too) in 1259.

Contrary to much Hellenic historiography, the War of the Factions was not an early, isolated precursor of the civil wars of the 15th and 16th century in which constitutional isonomy would finally be introduced in those successor states of Sirmium`s Empire between the Alps and Thrace, which were not conquered by Suebian and other Germanic kingdoms, too. Rather, it was the beginning of an era of renewed inner conflict, oligarchical infights and instability in the Roman Empire, which would slowly but surely destabilize it.

To be continued, now really with Asia.

[3] in OTL Bohemia
[4] Weinviertel
[5] Upper Palatinate

 

[Archangel]

Can you remind me where Moraha is?

The ending indicates the Roman Empire will fragment and be partially conquered by the German kingdoms.

What's the current status of Greek in the Roman Empire?
Is there a Jireček Line?

 

[Salvador79]

Can you remind me where Moraha is?

The ending indicates the Roman Empire will fragment and be partially conquered by the German kingdoms.

What's the current status of Greek in the Roman Empire?
Is there a Jireček Line?

I haven`t said Thank you lately for commenting on this TL and providing feedback, which always feels really good, to know that people still read the TL. So: Thanks for your comments and questions, Archangel!

Oops, I did not say where Moraha is. I´ll edit this in the post. It is on the namesake river, which in OTL we call Morava. (Although it´s today in the Czech Republic, it´s not a Slavic word, it derives from two Germanic versions of PIE words which both denote water. Especially the latter syllable, which is similar to Latin "aqua", was popular with speakers of Suebian varieties, hence I´ve made up quite a few such river names: Solaha = Saale, Moraha = March/Morava, Wiltaha = Moldau/Vltava.) I imagine it to be somewhere between OTL Brno and OTL Zlin, situated on the banks of the river: close enough to the Romans to absorb what little influence seeps out to the North, yet far enough and in hilly terrain so as to be easily defendable.

As for the fracturing, I suppose this has to come sooner or later. The Empire in the Balkans holds together so firmly, and keeps the Germanic groups off in such a determinate manner because of the monolithic nature of the military state. Yet, without a serious danger, such a system won`t go unquestioned forever, I thought, and I suppse I´ve kept it together without greater trouble for a bit too long already.
It´s a powerful state and society still, though, with the Balkans much more deeply colonised and cultivated. Once the military dictatorship crumbles - but that can`t be a quick process, I thought -, the door is open both for isonomic reform / revolution movements and for barbarian invaders, especially if the latter have developed a half-decent economy and state, too. Especially the latter still takes some time, though. With the factional war, I thought I´d set a first precedent which throws into question the smoothness and solidity of the system.

Yes, there are still Greek speakers around, but fewer than OTL because of the sustained Latinisation policies of the Empire. Greek is a tainted language for the military dictatorship because it´s associated with the Confederacy and revolutionary or otherwise unuseful philosophy. The line is bound to be slightly farther South, and even in the South, Latin permeates deeper at least within the middle and upper echelons of society.

 

[Archangel]

What's the literacy levels in the various post Roman or Roman nations?

 

[Salvador79]

What's the literacy levels in the various post Roman or Roman nations?

Hm.
Let´s start with the assumption that literacy levels at the point of major divergence (around 240-250 CE) in the Roman Empire were around 15-20 %. (Within this group, there were stark differences though between a small group of people who could read and write complex texts, and a much larger group of people who could decipher and write simple stuff, perhaps with a few mistakes thrown in.)

In the 2-3 centuries that followed, literacy levels are going to be highest in the Roman Empire (Sirmium), followed by the Confederacy, and lowest in the Gallo-Roman Empire.

In the Roman Empire (Sirmium), literacy levels in the civic plagae from Northern Italy to Epirus would be similar to those at PoD. In the military plagae, they´d be considerably higher, perhaps up to 30 or even 35 %, because of the formalised training of soldier-craftsmen, a really large administration and an in-depth penetration of the Empire into the wooden hilly hinterland of the Balkans. (Women would mostly still be illiterate, though.)

In the Confederacy and its successor states, literacy is bound to be highest among Jews, Samaritans, and Agonistic Christians, i.e. in the Levante, in Libya (mostly in Northern, urbanised Libya, not among the nomadic desert-dwellers), and in Sicily, perhaps even transcending the 30-35 % of the military plagae of the Roman Empire.
Then, there´s a number of regions where literacy levels will be slightly higher than at PoD (perhaps 25 %), with all the gains at the low levels of literacy: this is the case in all the regions where latifundia have been transformed into cooperatives, requiring the peasantry to be at least rudimentary literate if they want to engage in complex market interactions, keep records etc. In the rest, not much has changed.

In the Gallo-Roman Empire, literacy was comparatively low at PoD already, and it will have dropped during the late 3rd and 4th centuries because of de-urbanisation and a less institutionalised and more feudal military. From the 5th century onwards, literacy will recover a little, but still be lower than 10 %.

 

[Salvador79]

Last installment, part eight

Cont.:

The Rise of Chigil Power and Its Consequences

The establishment and expansion of Mazdakist Eran not only caused a fragmentation of the Confederacy in the Mediterranean. It also led to a diversion of the Silk Road, which connected China and Europe economically, towards the North, avoiding Mazdakist Eran, where foreign merchants frequently had most of their cargo taxed away for redistribution. From the 1220s onwards, trade routes ran straight Westwards from Sugd, across the wide steppes, till they reached the Black Sea.

On the Silk Road, Sogdian merchants travelled from Tanais to Chang´an. On their entire Western portion from Kashyar onwards, they were mandatorily accompanied – against good payment, of course – by Chigil cavalry convoys. This agreement was mutually beneficial: it enhanced the safety of Sogdian traders and strengthened their monopoly on the Western portion of the Silk Road. At the same time, the convoys were not just an excellent source of revenue for the Chigils, but also paved the ground for lopsided political alliances between the Chigil Xaqanate and various tribes of the steppe. Within two decades and with only two minor military excursions, the Onogur led by the Magyars and, further in the West, the Törtogur, who had incorporated additional Alanian elements, had become vassals of the Chigil Xaqanate.

The ascendancy of the Chigil Xaqanate not only led to the erection of the splendid gardens, baths, and palaces in a style which heavily borrowed from earlier Persian models but infused them with Saka and even Chinese influences, with which Xaqans celebrated their hegemony in their winter capital and which still form Samarqand`s landmarks.

It also led to a diversion of China`s trade with Northern India, which increased greatly after Mazdakist Eran impeded commercial relations with Europe. Indo-Chinese trade completely avoided Chigil-dominated and Sogdian-monopolised Kashyar. Given the geography of the Tarim Basin, this inevitably meant an increased importance of the passes between the Dardic lands and Chokukka [1], the Westernmost outpost of the Khotanese kingdom; passes, which led over some of the highest mountains of the world.

This diversion meant two things: Chokukka became an enticing bone of contention between the Chigil Xaqanate and the (multinational, but predominantly Saka) Kingdom of Khotana. And Indo-Chinese trade caravans now passed through a territory into which the Haythela or Sveta Huna had moved.

When the Chigils installed one of the Xaqanate`s leading clan`s chieftain as Shad in Yarqand, the oasis town closest to Chokukka, along with quite a large number of horsemen, the King of Khotana sought and forged a military alliance with Murong Fulianchou, King of the Tuyuhun, in 1241. This alliance, while not entirely between equals – the Tuyuhun possessed, already at this point in time, a much greater military power than Khotana –, proved nevertheless beneficial for both parties. Khotana was protected and continued to thrive off the trade which flowed along the Southern rim of the Tarim Basin. The Tuyuhun Kingdom, in turn, gained access to new ressources, with which it could continue its military build-up, as well as impulses from an urbanized culture independent of Chinese Empires like the Northern Wei, which facilitated the development of its own independent centralized administration of sorts. As a result, the Tuyuhun would soon make their own grand entrance on the imperial Chinese stage.

The commercial networks of the Dardana Sanyukta Gana, though, came under ever greater threats from the growing number of uprooted nomads who roved the slopes of the Muztagh and Simeru mountains. Especially the Haythela or Sveta Huna were attracted by the vast amounts of valuable goods which traversed the lands in increasingly armed guild convoys. All these riches came from the legendary land of milk and honey in the South.

Dards and Sveta Huna

The inevitable happened in 1247. After a few minor incursions into the lands of the Khowara and the Shina in previous years, it was now a much larger Sveta Huna horde – some say, 40,000 horsemen, although this number is in all likelihood an exaggeration – which moved Southwards across the dangerous mountain passes and into Chitral valley. Along the way, drastically outnumbered guild convoys had chosen to simply hide In the nearest fortified mountain monasteries.

When the White Huns reached more densely populated areas, confrontation became inevitable. Early on, Skardu had fallen into their hands and was converted into the first fortress of the White Huns. After a few weeks, though, in which large swaths of the Northern Dardic countryside were pillaged, the allied republican armies led by the goshthipatayah Silendar of Takshasila confronted the White Huns in open battle. Dardic losses appear to have been high – one factor which explains the initially passive stance of the Dards towards Mazdakist advances in their Southern vicinity a few years later –, but the White Huns were, apparently, unable to inflict an outright defeat on their opponents, and retreated into the Northern Chitral valley over which they had consolidated their control.

Uncontested Sveta Huna dominion over the towns of Chitral and Skardu, the Khowara and Shina tribes and the trade of the Dardic guilds with China lasted for a good decade, during which more and more clans moved across the mountain passes and into this new land. When the Dardic Republics had finally fought back and killed Kersasp, eliminating the Mazdakist threat from the South-West, they attempted to liberate their Northernmost member republics. This proved harder than they had hoped, though. Numerous and well-entrenched by now, the White Huns defeated two Dardic armies in 1256 and 1259, as well as a local revolt in 1257. After their last defeat, the Dardana Sanyukta Gana even had to pay a considerable tribute in order to avoid a devastating counteroffensive. Thus endowed with money and glory, Mihragul, the White Hun commander of Skardu, began to transform the hitherto loose and decentered tribal alliance. Wielding far greater power than any other White Hun chieftain, Mihragul had himself crowned as a shah (to his White Hun retainers; to the subordinate Dardic population, he was a raja).

Obtaining this position had not been easy – keeping it proved harder still. Leaders of other Haythela tribes, now reduced to vassals, needed to be kept from conspiring against him and busied with tasks which would strengthen rather than weaken Mihragul`s power. The only option Mihragul could think of was yet more raids and wars.

The Sveta Huna hordes of the 1260s were large – and increasingly heterogeneous, as members of indigenous, semi-sedentary non-Haythela mountain tribes like the Kaspir apparently also participated. They sacked Takshasila, Sagala and Kashyapapura. Nothing, apparently, could stop them. And so they rode on, Southwards, along the course of the Indus, reaching as far as Minnagara, before they returned to the North laden with loot.

This immense success turned out to be their downfall, though. The White Huns had plundered far beyond the borders of the Dardana Sanyukta Gana – and therefore brought other, powerful city republics into the Dardic fold. They contributed fresh military forces to the common effort of pushing the Sveta Huna back North across the mountains.

It did not quite come to that, but the second great defensive alliance of 1264 (after the first alliance which had triumphed over the Mazdakists in 1257), this time between the Dardic Republics and a number of Indus valley and coastal statelets) did defeat the Sveta Huna near Uraya and, once again, after the siege of Skardu so decisively that Mihragul had no choice but to give up his control over the valley and retreat into even more mountainous and remote territories. The defeats had undermined his authority to such an extent, though, that he was killed soon after by a conspiracy of leaders from other tribes.

From Tribal Warriors to Mercenaries to Monks

New Haythela leaders promised their followers fresh opportunities elsewhere – and found them in a strategic partnership with the dwindling Kidarite Kingdom. In 1266, the Kidarite King Khallar hired a large number of Haythela mercenaries for the campaign with which he planned the Kidarite comeback on the stage of Southern Asian empires.

Khallar would have preferred, for reasons belonging in the sphere of military tactics, to attack either the Chigils to his North, or the Dards to his East. The Haythela were opposed to both of these plans, though, as the memory of the defeat against the Dards was still very fresh, while the earlier defeat at the hands of the Chigils at the beginning of the century was not entirely forgotten yet, either. Therefore, the only remaining option was to attempt to reconquer parts of Mazdakist Eran. The latter still had not fully recovered from the shock and losses of Kersasp`s annihilation in India, so the moment seemed propitious.

The combined Red and White Hunnic attack on the Mazdakist province of Parthia would be the second but last military offensive by Huns (the last being the Westward migration of the Törtogurs a few decades later). It was an unmitigated disaster. Khallar would have needed strong forces trained to tackle the multitude of war-wagons from which Mazdakist bowmen showered their opponents with arrows – for example heavily clad infantry with axes which could dismember the armour of the wagons. The Haythela, though, were experts in light cavalry. Countering this was something the Mazdakists were well-versed in. The relatively improvised Red Hun infantry was not strong enough for the task Khallar set it. When they realized that humiliation would be the only prize on this battlefield, large squadrons of White Hun horsemen simply deserted. Khallar broke off the attack and retreated, while the Haythela sought refuge in the remote valleys of the mountains where they ultimately remained.

To be spared from a punitive campaign, the Kidarite King had to pay a handsome reparation. It helped the Mazdakist government in halting the debasement of their national currency and stabilized the social situation in Eran in the 1270s. To the Kidarite Kingdom, it was the final blow which discouraged further adventures beyond their strongholds in Bactria, to which they would remain confined for such a long time that Kermichionite identity became synthesized into the overarching Bactrian culture, which had previously already absorbed various Iranian, Hellenic, and Tokharian groups. The Kidarites, and the dynasties which succeeded them, were relegated to a minor, but stable position as the local power controlling mountainous Bactria at the periphery of larger empires which would shape the next centuries.

[1] Kargilik / Yecheng


To be continued.