Here is the next chapter. This one is mostly OTL, with all the alternate parts toward the end. Also, no map with this one, I'm afraid.
The Legacy of the Merovingians, chapter IV
Emperor Justinian and the Ostrogoth War
Emperor Justinian of Constantinople (officially Emperor of the Romans) was born in 483 in Tauresium, a small town in the province of Dardania. He was the son of an Illyrian peasant and the nephew of Justin, who was in the Imperial Guard and later became Emperor.
Justinian was not called that originally; he took the name when Justin adopted him, took him to Constantinople and ensured his proper education. This meant he was very well versed in jurisprudence, theology and Roman history. In 518, when Emperor Anastasius died, Justinian successfully helped Justin become Emperor. As the old man grew senile, Justinian started doing the governing, and was made a consul in 521. Justin died in 527, and Justinian became Emperor.
In 525, Justinian had married Theodora, a controversial marriage since Theodora was of a lower class than him, and furthermore rumoured to have been a prostitute. In fact, had Justin not passed a law permitting intermarriage between classes, this woman would have been lost in the annals of history. Instead, she would become (arguably) one of the most famous empresses in Roman history, and Justinian's strongest supporter.
In 526, Justin had started a war against Persia over the kingdom of Iberia. This war was inherited by Justinian, who decided to secure victory quickly. He failed to do this, and in the spring of 532, after six years of protracted warfare between the (East) Romans and the Sassanid Persians, an 'Eternal Peace' was proclaimed to exist between the two nations, with Iberia recognized by Justinian as a Persian possession, in return for the recognition of Lazica as a Roman possession by the Persian Shahenshah Yazdegerd III.
In 533, a war was started against the Vandals, with the intention of retaking Africa. After beating the Vandals twice (at Ad Decimum and Tricamarum) the Vandal kingdom was absorbed into the Empire.
Despite his victories, Justinian quickly found himself having to deal with a major riot in the hippodrome of Constantinople. The supporters of the four chariot teams (white, red, blue and green), who were normally directly hostile to each other, had united to oppose Justinian's rule. The chants of 'Blue!' or 'Green!' had by the end of the day changed to a unified 'Nika!' ('Win!' or 'Conquer!'), directed against the Emperor. Thus the riots became known as the Nika riots. The rioters ended up flooding across the street and sieging the imperial palace for five days. Justinian was about to flee the city and leave the senate to decide upon a successor, but Theodora forced him to stay.
Encouraged by his quick victory against the Vandals and the quelling of the Nika riots, Justinian sent his general Belisarius to conquer Italy, which had been taken by the Ostrogoths almost fifty years earlier. In the autumn of 535, Belisarius landed on Sicily, quickly taking the island, just as his fellow general Mundus was invading Dalmatia. Belisarius' preparations to conquer mainland Italy were interrupted around Easter of 536, when a revolt broke out in the newly conquered province of Africa (the former Vandal kingdom), and he personally went there to quash it. He was back in Sicily by June, and quickly invaded Italy, taking Rome and Naples by the end of the year.
After a successful defence of Rome, Belisarius managed to capture the Ostrogothic capital of Ravenna in 540. Just before conquering the city, the Ostrogoths offered to make him West Roman Emperor. Belisarius feigned acceptance, entered the city, proclaimed it, and the rest of Italy, part of Justinian's empire, and finally found and captured the Ostrogothic king Witiges and his court. They were sent home as war prisoners, but before they reached Constantinople, Justinian, suspicious that Belisarius would still declare himself Emperor, sent him off to deal with a new Persian invasion of Syria.
Belisarius waged an inconclusive campaign against the Sassanids, which ended with a truce signed in 542, under which Persia (in exchange for the payment of an immense amount of gold) agreed not to attack Justinian again in five years. The great general now went back to Italy, only to find that the situation had changed significantly.
The Ostrogoths had now elected a new king, Totila, and were waging a ferocious campaign against the Romans. The kings of Burgundy and Francia also fought them, and as Belisarius had fallen out of favour with Justinian, the campaign he waged became a highly lacklustre one, only briefly managing to hold Rome. Belisarius was now dismissed by the Emperor, and would spend the rest of his life in retirement.
As quick as the fall of Belisarius was the rise of his successor, Narses. He arrived in Italy to find nothing but a horrible military situation which, coupled with the horrible plague that had hit the Empire, made his position an extremely difficult one. However, he coped, and by 550 the Ostrogoths had collapsed once more, never to rise again. It was now that Justinian decided to recover southern Gaul, and sent Narses through the Alps to attack Burgundy. This was a fatal flaw, and the beginning of the end for Justinian.
The Burgundians had decided to respond to the news of the Roman invasion by stacking their troops in the foothills of the Alps. This proved an efficient strategy, and as the tired Roman soldiers marched down from the passes they were quite surprised to find that Burgundian soldiers were attacking them. The Roman army got through, but only after taking massive casualties.
By now, King Teudebert of Francia had heard of the Roman invasion, and was massing an army of around 25,000 men in Albiga to counterattack. He crossed the border into Burgundy in September 550, and in November he fought a battle against the Romans in Albenate. The battle was a narrow victory for Teudebert, who now decided to follow the Romans across the Alps and attack them somewhere in Northern Italy. These plans were diverted only by a sudden strike of fate, and one that would change history forever.
In November of 550, as winter set on in the Alps, Narses and his army were marching through a narrow pass. An unfortunately placed block of ice made one of the horses on Narses' carriage slip rather nastily down a steep slope, and everyone in it was killed, including the general. The Roman armies continued their march, but with severely decreased morale, and when the Emperor found out about Narses' death, he immediately decided to sue for peace with Teudebert.
Negotiations were held in Vienne, the Burgundian capital, in January of 551. The agreement reached was that, in exchenge for recognition of its ownership of Italy, the Romans would agree to leave Francia and Burgundy alone, and never invade the countries for another 50 years. This was a result which pleased all of the parties to the treaty, and the Franks were celebrating the end of the war until July that same year, when King Teudebert died in a hunting accident. His barely ten-year-old son, aptly named Childebert, would now rule over all of the Franks. His rule would mark the start of two hundred years of cultural decline, and Francia would take a long time to fully recover.
