The Eternal Empire: Emperor Maurice dies before being overthrown
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One question when you were describing the kingdoms, i especially noticed this when you were talkinf about the germani, you they eere to the west of the Franks, and that the poles were to the west of them, do you mean east?
OTL Beijing, I assume? Or is the ruler based out of Kaifeng or Luoyang?
The Jin Dynasty's capital was in Beijing, so it might still be in OTL Beijing.
Its Beijing. Kaifeng is (if I'm reading the map I'm working off of right) somewhere around the southern border. Luoyang is somewhere south of the border, in the second kingdom.
The kingdoms are based off of the ten circuits of Tang China, not including sections of the fourth. Basically Heibei, Hedong, and Guanzhong are in one kingdom. Hennan, Shannan, and Huiannan are in the second. The third contains most of Jiangnan, and part of Lingnan. The fourth controls Jiannan, and most of LIngnan. There's a bit of overlap there from border warfare and the messy administrative breakup of the Tang, but that should give an idea what the borders are.
Manchuria is not under Chinese control at this stage, and spoiler ITTL it never will be.
Who controls Manchuria then at this point? Khitans, Jurchens, or Koreans?
Part 81: The East in 1192
Part LXXXI: The East in 1192
To begin our look at the wider East will will begin by looking at Arabia and Markuria, dominated still by the Kingdom of Markuria, now on its last legs. Since unifying Nubia several centuries ago Markuria had replaced the long fallen Abyssinia as the primary Roman contact south of Egypt. However, since their defeat at the hands of the Romans in 1160 Markuria was very clearly in decline. Arabia erupted in revolt in 1176, and while this was put down it was put down by other Arabs.
These Arabs solidified themselves as the powers behind the Markurian throne, and soon Arabic monks were filling key positions in the Markurian court. This would continue until the 1180s, when a second major revolt broke out in the peninsula. This time attempts to put down the revolt failed, and a major Markurian army was completely destroyed when a relief fleet sent to evacuate them was caught in a storm and scattered. Soon thereafter an Arab fleet, consisting of ships captured from ports along the Red Sea Coast, met the Markurians in battle off the Arabia Felix coast, and smashed it to pieces.
The king of Markuria still held out his claims to the coast of Arabia, but it was well and truly lost. The new Kingdom of Hejaz, under a family called the Fatimoi. This group claimed descent from the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter, though this is about as credible as claims that the original Caesars were descended from a pagan goddess. That is to say, not at all. Whether it is true or not however, the descent was claimed to claim for the king the title of Caliph, which had not been claimed by anyone since Leo crushed the First Caliphate in the 700s.
And the title stuck, giving us the Second Caliphate. However, this new state was fundamentally different than the old. The largest difference was the meaning of the title itself. Originally a term for both a religious and political leader, the first meaning was completely dropped. Indeed, the Caliph was crowned by the Bishop of Mecca, in a ceremony deliberately designed to mimic the crowning of a Basileos Augustos in Constantinople. Also introduced was a highly professional bureaucracy, completely unlike the rather ad hoc system which had kept the First Caliphate running in its century of power. The Bedwai were kept in line by a highly professional force of soldiers who had made their names serving as soldiers in the Markurian army, both as infantry and as the premier cavalry force of the kingdom.
As we will see in everything from organization to military prowess the Second Caliphate far eclipsed the First.
The loss of Arabia was a devastating blow to Markuria, both militarily and financially. The kingdom derived the vast majority of its revenue from taxes and tolls placed on Red Sea trade, but with the Arabs now gone there was a sudden boom in competition in the region, and the better organized Arab state that emerged was able to collect more revenue despite lower fees, pushing more merchants into Arab ports rather than Markurian. Tax revenues plummeted.
Hand in hand with this problem was the loss of Arab soldiers for the king’s armies. Arab soldiers had made up the cream of Markuria’s military forces, both as mercenaries and as conscripts. And not just Arabs from the conquered regions. Soldiers from the interior, beyond Markuria’s realm of control, had signed up for pay as well, but between the suddenly difficult journey to join the army, and the loss of tax revenue with which to pay such soldiers, the capabilities of the Markurian army plummeted as well.
The kingdom was not quite dead in 1192, but it will not survive the next fifty years.
Northeast of Arabia is of course the main opponent the Romans faced in the East, Turkic Persia. Originally the great pagan empire that opposed the Romans, by 1192 Eastern Christianity was ascendant in the country. While Zoroastrian paganism endured in a small number of areas, notably Daylam, somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the population of the state were now Christian. Note that this number does include the large numbers of inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who were uniformally Christian after what was now close to six centuries of rule under Christian rulers. First the Muslim Arabs, then the Catholic Orthodox Romans, and now the Eastern Turks. As this area represented both a densely populated, and wealthy, region it does rather weight the scales.
This was an extension of a trend toward Christianity which had been ongoing even under native Persian rule, which the Zoroastrian Shahs had been unable to stem. Eastern Christianity by this point was highly different than either Muslim or Catholic Orthodox. While Muslims added the Book of Muhammad as a supplemental to the Gospel, and the Catholic Orthodox teachings now largely excluded the Jewish books from its own Gospel the Eastern Church did neither, keeping the Bible as it had been before the rise of Islamic Christianity and the Council of Thessalonika.
I should note here that when I say that the Jewish books were excluded from the Christian Bible I should note that this did not mean they were not acknowledged at this point, that final change would not come until the 1561 Council of Melan. Rather it meant that sermons, teachings, and perhaps most importantly, copies of the Bible simply did not include these books. This was pursued by Jacoboi clerics as simply focusing on the Books of Christ, but Chalcedonians were highly critical of the practice and maintained these books inside their own works. When the Chalcedonians were discredited following the events of the 1240s their practices largely ended, even in their strongholds in Greece.
But, back to Persia. The Turkic state was heavily focused on building a Roman style bureaucracy, but this effort was at this stage largely a failure. Corruption was rampant, even moreso than its Western neighbor, and the Turks were dependent just as their predecessors had been, on revenues extracted from tolls on the Silk Road.
This is a critical weakness of the Servet Dynasty, much as it was with Parthia in the early days of the Roman state. While the Sassanids had been able to call on the Seven Houses of Persia and their solid foundations this was not true of the Turks, not least because the Seven Houses are virtually extinct inside Persia itself.
Rather the Turkic Emperor relied on levied soldiers from tribal or regional groupings inside his empire to supplement his Turk cavalry. As was usual for Persian rulers Daylamites in particular were highly regarded for their infantry forces, but from Mesopotamia came further heavy infantry. These infantry forces were used primarily as garrison troops across the Empire, and would be brought up on campaign to support the Turk horse archers as needed.
And over the past century they had been badly needed in the East. A general period of warfare had defined the Eastern steppe during the 1000s. We will discuss the far eastern steppe later, but north of Persia a government called the Western Liao Empire had attempted to subjugate the region. The Liao were a peoples from much further East, north of Daquin, but in the early 1100s an alliance of Hunnic tribes and two northern Qin kingdoms had formed, and driven them from their homeland. The Liao had thus fled West, to form this new state.
In 1126 the Liao had defeated the Turkic Emperor, and captured him at the battle of Merv, forcing him to sign a humiliating peace treaty that effectively vassalized the Turkic Empire to the Liao. The Turkic Emperor was made to pay a large tribute of gold, slaves, and horses to the Liao. He died a broken man the next year.
The Emperor’s death sparked a dynastic war between his oldest son and younger brother, eventually leading to the son, Arslan, to become Emperor. Arslan was a young and dynamic ruler, who began his reign by murdering all of his own siblings. But he then began an ambitious reform project to adopt a more Roman governing style to his realm, and solidified a tax collection system in Mesopotamia. The system was highly inefficient, but did bring much needed additional cash into the Empire. Finally in 1136 he felt the time was right to reclaim Turkic independence from the Liao.
He gathered a large army and marched on Nishapur, taking the city and brutally sacking it. The Liao Khagan marched his own army south, out of his capital at Gurgani, meeting the advancing Turks. The battle which followed was bloody, but indecisive. In the end however the Liao Khagan was forced to retreat from the field, leaving Arslan standing victorious. The Turk Emperor marched on, and in 1138 he entered Merv and reclaimed it for the Turkic Empire.
From Merv Arslan continued north in 1139, and met the Liao khagan once again outside Gurgani. This time the bloody battle that followed was a solid Turk victory, and the Liao were forced to retreat to the East, leaving all territory once under Turkish hands back in the Emperor’s control. Arslan died in 1141 while on campaign, and his successor Togrul was unable to maintain initiative against the Liao, being killed himself in 1144 during a battle near Samarkand. His successor, Solomon, was able to negotiate a peace in 1148 that saw Turkic tribute significantly reduced, though no eliminated.
The truce lasted for nine years, but in 1157 the Liao struck once again, and in a series of successful campaigns drove the Turks back, retaking Samarkand and eventually Merv. Steady progress south was made for the next four years, with the two sides not being to force, or being unable to do so, a decisive battle. Solomon was eventually able to halt the advance in Kwarzem, but another decade of inconclusive fighting followed. Another truce was signed, this one for ten years, and required a far larger tribute be paid.
Solomon died in 1173, four years into his peace, and his own son, also named Arslan, continued the truce for the entire period. But in 1179 he struck, and this time would not be turned back. Over the course of the next several years Arslan pressed the Liao across the steppe. Utilizing mercenaries from further north Arslan retook all of the lost Turkish territory once again in 1181, and pressed the Liao for a major battle on his terms. This finally occurred in 1183, and was a major loss for the steppe empire. The Liao were badly bloodied and forced to sign a new treaty. Many of their people were taken as slaves and forced to work on large fortifications on the frontier, designed to keep the Turks from having to fight such a long and costly series of wars again.
More fighting followed naturally, as Arslan was forced to contend with his former mercenaries, but in 1190 he was once again victorious. Only to then die of sickness later that year. His brother took power, as Solomon III, the previous Solomon we discussed was Solomon II, and he continued the focus on the East, securing the northern border for the next several years. He did not return to the capital in Persia proper until 1196, and only then learned of the Roman encroachment onto Turk territory to the West. In a rage he sent orders to mobilize for war with Rome, but was talked down. The Romans would wait until the Turkic Empire had had time to catch its breath, rebuild its shattered treasury, and regather armies. But very soon, Solomon knew, he would do to the West what he had done to the East.
And now for the first time we turn our attention even further east, the land of Daqin. We’ve very briefly touched on this land before, but never in any detail. This is primarily because getting into the long history of the Republics would be far too distracting from the primary Roman narrative, and because until many centuries in the future the two might as well have lived on different planets apart from trade connections.
But of course, this century is the exception. For the first time in recorded history a war will be fought between East and West, Rome against Daqin. Or rather Rome against the Huns who happened to have conquered the place. Now steppe empires are nothing new. Going all the way back to the Scythians such organizations have existed, and the Huns of Attila were a devastating force in their day. But the Huns of the steppe north of Daqin were different. Highly organized, skilled at all manner of warfare, and adaptive to their enemy technology they would build an empire stretching from the islands of Ilbon off the coast of the Asian mainland of Samhan all the way to the border of Syria, and came so close to adding all Roman lands as well. It was the largest Empire the world has ever seen.
Though the Hunnic Empire of the 13th century will be short-lived its impact was enormous.
In 1190 Daqin was divided into four kingdoms, roughly aligning to old boundaries set by the Tang Empire. These borders are not exact, but will give a solid approximation. First, in the north was the Kingdom of Guinnei. This corresponded to the three northernmost districts of the Tang Dynasty, these being Hebei, Hedong, and Guanzhong. The capital of Guinnei was at Beijing, which was and is one of the foremost cities of the regions.
Second was the Kingdom of Huainan which consisted of Henan, Shannan, Huianan, and southern Longyou. Huainan was the largest of the kingdoms, and had the largest army. The capital was at Zhongzhou, which you will not find on a modern map. The city was destroyed in the failed unification wars of the 1800s.
Third was the Kingdom of Jiangnaxi which consisted of most of Jiangnan, and eastern portions of Lingnan. The capital was at Jiangzhou.
Finally there was Lingan, which controlled the remainder of Lingnan, and most of Jiannan. Capital was at Guangzhou.
The individual policies of the kingdoms don’t really matter to our narrative, except for the external policies of Guinnei. Bordering directly with Huainan, its larger and more powerful southern neighbor Guinnei had been forced to rely on northern mercenaries to retain independence. In the periods of peace the two kingdoms had been able to put aside their differences in order to wage war further north, and one such period had resulted in the destruction of the original Liao Empire north of Daqin proper. Afterward however hostility had resumed, culminating in a major war in 1157 that lasted for twelve years, and ultimately resulting in a Guinnei victory, but both sides were exhausted and short of funds.
As a result Guinnei was forced to disband much of their mercenary army, and these soldiers returned to the steppes with a large amount of knowledge both about the kingdom they had served, and crucially experience in fighting sieges.
In the steppe itself a power vacuum had opened up with the fall of the Liao. Into this void stepped a group called the Khamad Mongol. The Khamad Mongol had been the primary allies of the Daquinese in their wars against the Liao, and had used the victory to expand eastward into lands formerly occupied by the now removed lords. In subsequent years Khamad Mongol waged numerous wars against other steppe confederations, in particular the Tantans to their south, culminating in a decisive Tantan defeat in 1141. This victory left the Mongols with control over a vast territory of fertile land and large population.
However the Khamad Mongols were far from unified, and this new power left them divided as lower ranking chieftains tried to secure more land and power for themselves and their group than for the whole. As such the chances of consolidation seemed lost. But, in 1151 a young man named Jochi of the Keraites, another steppe tribe, was driven from his homeland and came to the Khamad Mongol territory, offering himself and his followers as allies. He proved himself a capable and adept warrior, and soon had amassed more followers for himself. When war broke out in Daqin in 1157 Jochi traveled south with five hundred men that followed him, and fought on the fields of Daqin for the first time. Once again he proved adept at the task, and came to command a group of thousands during the war. When the fighting was over he took his pay and departed for home.
And if you are having a case of déjà vu and thinking of the case of Servet after the First Nubian War then congratulations, you aren’t alone. There has been a large amount of suspicion about the early life of Jochi in recent years on this front. There are no actual records of him serving in the war between Guinnei and Huainan. That said, its fairly likely he did fight, but was not as important as later stories would have us believe. These stories are all from oral traditions after all, and ones passed down after he became the Genghis Khan.
Regardless, using some newfound status Jochi was able to usurp control of the Khamad Mongol for himself and promised spoils to those who would follow him. Winning followers Jochi launched assaults on the other tribes, defeating each in turn. He abandoned the old ways of killing or exiling the soldiers and instead incorporated each tribe into his own, and bringing men who showed talent into his confidence. Using this network of followers Jochi did what no other Khamad Mongol had ever done, conquer his neighbors and unite the tribes. We remember this united steppe force as the Huns.
But a merely unified state meant nothing if he could not provide the promised rewards. And the reward he had promised were great indeed. And so Jochi turned to the greatest source of wealth he could find, Daqin itself.
At this stage northern Daqin was defended by a massive wall, built by the Qin dynasty in the 300s before the Christ. This was an enormous undertaking. Greater than Hadrian’s more famous fortification in both scope and ambition. It was also a complete and utter waste of money. Unlike the wall of Hadrian which could act as a fortification, control commerce on the island of Brittania, and divided up the land of a powerful tribe, the Wall of Qin was a fortification primarily, and one which was utterly unsuited to any job whatsoever. It was too long, required too many men to garrison it, and didn’t act as enough of a barrier regardless.
Maybe if Daqin had been a place that was known for unity it might have fared better, but as it stands it really is difficult to label the wall anything but a failure. Later phrourions built on the frontier would far better serve the defensive needs of future states, and the Wall will decline in both importance and repair. Today little remains other than the foundations, the stone either removed as building material for other fortifications, or simply worn down by a thousand years of neglect. There is an effort underway to rebuild parts of it, but the project hasn’t met the large funding requirements that would be necessary.
The ineffectiveness of the Wall was demonstrated when Jochi penetrated it at a point he knew to be undergarrisoned, and led an army of thirty thousand south toward Beijing. The Hunnic conquest of Daqin was on. Guinnen’s king quickly raced out to try and meet the threat with sixty thousand men, but in a battle near Xuanfu his army was completely annihilated and the king was killed. Among the lost were the artillery pieces of the army, which were quickly turned on Bejing, and the city fell after several weeks of bombardment. Jochi let his army loose to pillage the city, killing tens of thousands and capturing vast amounts of wealth. Surviving officals were forced to bow before the Khagan, and swear fealty to him.
And that’s where we’re going to leave Jochi. He has just begun his conquest of Daqin, and the remaining states are going to have to scramble to figure how to respond. We will of course be meeting his empire once again in fifty years after Romanos III’s assassination, as his descendants turn their eyes west to Constantinople, and revenge.
Next time we’ll be back on track with the reign of the next Roman Emperor, and the beginning of the Turkic Wars which will occupy most of the next thirty years of Roman history.
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The Mongols conquer Japan ITTL with Japan ending up under Korean influence as Ilbon is a Korean term for Japan?
Well, in theory in early Polish statehood, all land was prince's personal property, which was only lended to members of his "drużyna" (armed force) who became later nobility.
And there is a problem - early Slavs were polygamous (Mieszko I, the guy who introduced Christianity to Poland IOTL had seven vives before being baptized) and the succesion law was agnatic seniority combined with gavelkind - if this practice went on by two hundred years (since IOTL Poland became Christian in 966, and ITTL it is somewhere in 1100s), it would mean abundance of younger sons who have no land for themselves (and every son was bound to get their share) and cannot become clergymen as a way of eliminating them from the throne, so I imagine that TTL's Polish kings would need to start imprisoning their younger brothers permanently in "harems" like Turkish sultans did IOTL to keep the land from fracturing.
Also, if you plan for Polani (minor nitpick, but the name beginning with "L" is more probable in Byzantine-dominated world to arise, since Constantine Porphyrogenitus called Polans "Lendzeninoi", John Kinnamos "Lechitoi" and so on) is to become somewhat unimportant, you can't exactly conciliate this with German crusading against Baltic pagans - since it only became possible, when Poland became as unimportant as it could be after Bolesław III died and his sons started 200 year long period of feudal fragmentation.
If it's still important - there is much less room from German crusaders, they might of course settle in Poland (there was a lot of German settlers there, in fact fair share of Poles have German-sounding surnames), but they would not carve their independent states.
Good info. I'll go back and rewrite some of that to address this. Although I wasn't saying that Poland would be unimportant, but rather that it wasn't important yet. Since its still very much on the periphery of the Mediterranean.
Well that would be telling.
But basically in general, since China is divided and significantly weaker in OTL these Mongols are conquer it earlier. (Also since the Turks have already done a number on the Western Liao at this stage they aren't going to go to war with the Khan at this stage).
Anyways, who controlled Manchuria before the Mongols conquered it? The Koreans or the Jurchens?Well that would be telling.
But basically in general, since China is divided and significantly weaker in OTL these Mongols are conquer it earlier. (Also since the Turks have already done a number on the Western Liao at this stage they aren't going to go to war with the Khan at this stage).
It was part of the old Liao territory. Parts of it went to the Khamad Mongol, part to the Tatars. The rest is controlled by the Jurchen. They'll be addressed when we come back to East Asia since at the point this one left off there hadn't been any conflict between them and the Mongols.
I didn't say that you said it would be unimportant, I interpreted this as saying that it would be important in future, and I stated that this (Poland being important in future) is mutually exclusive with German crusading in Baltics to some extend, because it mostly happened because Poland was (IOTL, I was not talking about TTL) unimportant and thus it's dukes had no control over Teutonic Order which one of them invited, if it's important ITTL, that it'd have this control, so only room for independent German crusading is Livonia, where Poland had no influence in Middle Ages.
Ah okay. So, Crusading isn't really a thing ITTL There will for instance be no Teutonic Order equivalent. What is happening is just that the eastern German dukes are waging low level border wars to capture slaves and loot to enrich themselves, and maybe add a bit more land to their holdings. There isn't a concerted German effort to conquer and convert the pagans of the Baltic. If they convert, that's great. If they don't, well we'll take back these captives back and try again next year. And no need to try too hard.
But they have literally no border with the Baltics if Poland exists, if crusading isn't a thing ITTL, you're basically saying than they're using ships to get to Baltics to loot there (and these lands were not rich at the moment) and Polish king (and they need to cross Pomerania if they aim to do this) does nothing and really anyone is like: "sup, we need to let those foreigners sail near our coast for no return". If that's the aim, I suppose that we will see Germany becoming mercenary-exporting nation (as for example, Scotland was IOTL) - if younger, not inheriting sons of nobility who OTL went crusading don't get to so, they'd probably sell their swords to the one who could pay for their services.