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Thirteen Day Retreat (Part I)
Introduction
Few military clashes in the history of mankind have inspired as much interest and gave birth to so many myths, war tales, poems, and, of course, historical research as did the Great Votive War. While being clearly not the biggest conflict of modern times (and, in fact, being hardly a single conflict at all), this series of societal shifts, intercommunal struggle, migrations, famines, and vicious warfare gained its prominence in the historical thought of the West mostly due to the contrasting nature of the forces it pitted against each other. In Christian Europe, it is to this day seen as one of the last moments that defined its civilizational antagonism to the Buddho-Iranian world. For Rusichi, this clash of civilizations wasn’t as deeply existential and bitter: the Great Hanstvo’s campaigns in Europe left no scars in the Rusichi national psyche and left only an imprint of pleasant awakening in the self-feeling of its ruling elite that realized the true power of the state they represented. Yet, of all participants of this war, it is the Xasar culture that was left the most sensitive of, most curious about, and most inspired by this great conflict. In a matter of hardly a dozen years, the Xasar Shahdom was to suffer the biggest existential threat since its foundation four centuries prior. In subsequent decades, it underwent most violent changes that, as modern political philosophers state, almost put the “Xasar Project” on an entirely different path of an etatist dystopia (or utopia, when seen from the etatist standpoint). The man that epitomized that historical turbulence of the Xasar nation was Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, a person described in many books as a military genius, failed lover, administrative visionary, power-hungry warmonger, dark mystic, and, using words of a Xasar poet, “last knight of the dying past and first soldier of the sobering tomorrow.”
While books upon books have been written about his life and interpretations of his achievements, two particular weeks of Arslanzade’s life have attracted particular attention of military historians and theoreticians. Known as the Thirteen Day Retreat, this lightening campaign in the peak of the Italian Votive War pitched the best veteran force of the Xasar Shahdom against the most determined and most zealous enemies that sprawling empire had encountered in centuries. Not only does it capture the drama and dirt and pathos of warfare of the early Age of Discoveries, but it also serves as a gem of military genius attributed to one of the most brilliant generals in history.
Sources
As it often happens in history, the most interest arises among public to events often insignificant, simply due to the fact that they’re well-documented and colorfully described by contemporaries. The Thirteen Day Retreat is one of the greatest example of such paradox, and the source that we owe most of our knowledge to is the “Journals of the Italian War,” written by Luiggi Lascada.
A third son in a once prominent, but now bankrupt noble family from Fiorentia, Luiggi Lascada was an Italian interpreter on Xasar administrative pay when the Vulgar Votives broke out. From what we know, in his youth Lascada followed his two brothers and numerous other poor nobles into the swelling ranks of “prestatore di vita,” hired duelists who, according to the laws of most Italian cities, were allowed to represent plaintiffs in judicial duels. His martial skill, however, seems to have been lacking, since Luiggi had to leave that well-paying business by his mid-twenties: after a duel that went horribly wrong he was brought to a local monastery hospital by his brothers, a bloody gash in his shoulder and a piercing wound in his stomach. There, he made a miraculous recovery, but the near-death experience made him reconsider his life choices, so Luiggi Lascada decided to stay there to assist the monks in hospital duty. Still feeling unready to withdraw from the world and dedicate his life and soul to the service of God, he declined an offer to join monastic brothers in their solitude and dedicated his life to learning medicine and chemistry (of course, in their relatively primitive forms known in Christian Europe). In his journals, he later claimed to have been an apprentice of a famous Mauri physiologist Abkhanas Rhasati during the latter’s brief period of employment by the Duke of Fiorentia. However, it’s doubtful that Lascada had enough talent in him to reach his teacher’s level, because after Rhasati’s departure in 1274 Luiggi wasn’t hired by any moneybag but chose to return to his monastic hospital instead. His life would have been predetermined from that point, had it not been for the wave of Xasar conquests that gradually absorbed Italy in a loose amalgam of collaborating counties, military occupation zones, and vassal city-states.
Since Xasar administrators were but a thin film of experienced bureaucracy trying to control a largely informal net of collaborating political entities, finding effective communicators was a key for them. A scholarly man of noble descent, capable of conversing with a rich man and a peasant equally well, was a natural choice for the unknown headhunter that invited Lascada to serve the Shah as the “voice of Mithra.” Lascada doesn’t describe the process of his hiring in his journals, but he does provide us with motivation that was driving him (although it’s likely that he was merely trying to rationalize and ennoble his motives to some degree). He explains that his life in the monastic hospital situated on the crossroad of major highways intersecting Italy from North to South, had let him meet “fellow Italian souls of all ways of life, and nurture their bodies and souls so that they, too, could blossom again.” That experience made him feel what in today’s terms could be described as Pan-Italian proto-nationalism. He viewed the division of his land as a tragic historical mistake and thought that the only good future for the “people of Italic lands” can be found in the enlightened appropriation of all the administrative achievement of the Xasar and, paradoxically, Isidorian Romans. While Lascada’s knowledge of the ways of the long-deceased Isidorian Empire was superficial and clearly overly romantic, he viewed his service to the Xasar as the only way he could learn their ways and pass them to his contemporaries in a set of organized, detailed notes, which could someday be put to a good use by some “Enlightened Italic Prince” (a figure clearly inspired by Ishpaxabhad [army chief] Arslanzade himself).
That combination of relatively unbiased approach, attention to details, closeness to decision-making, and disinterest in sensationalism and propaganda was what made Lascada’s “Journals of the Italian War” a particularly valuable source of knowledge for modern historians. In fact, the Journals weren’t supposed to be published at all, until one of Lascada’s distant relatives found them more than a century after Luiggi’s death and decided to turn them into a printed publication.
When reading Lascada’s notes, one has to be, of course, aware of their shortcomings. Lacking any practical military knowledge and experience, the author often falls victim to naïve rationalization of warfare, while failing to recognize the hectic, often irrational nature of hostilities. Lascada’s description of war is one of a cruel game of chess, in which military commanders may possess different intelligence and finesse, but nonetheless are driven by cold calculations and reason. On the other hand, that obsession with finding rationality in everything makes Lascada’s notes a captivating read that’s inspired thousands of young men to dedicate their lives to officer careers, unaware of the boredom and chance and horror that war is. Also, it’s likely that without Lascada’s military inexperience modern historians wouldn’t receive all the little details about Xasar and their opponents’ military and administrative organization: aware of his inability to separate meaningful details from routine facts, he took upon himself to capture virtually everything there was to capture about the campaigns of Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, from regimental order of battle to common foraging practices. (In some instances, that obsession with details reaches almost comic standards. For example, the author dedicates two pages of his book to horse grooming practices of Xasar stablemen, and in another instance he describes a recipe of semolina oatmeal with smoked beef cooked in a field camp for a company of Xasar foot soldiers.)
Such was the influence of “Journals of the Italian War” on the world of book publishing, that “karash-chimiy,” (or “war notes”) became one of the popular genres in Xasar, and later, in world literature. In fact, latest archeological findings were so close to the description of events made by Luiggi Lascada, that some historical authors named him “the forefather of military journalism.”
Events leading to campaign
Early Vulgar Votives were seen as a comic peculiarity by Konstantinkert. Thousands of badly armed, undisciplined, hysterically zealous peasants and poor-fellows, crossing the Alps in blind belief to smite their foes with the power of their faith, were indeed just a field exercise for Xasar cavalry camped in North Italy. Time and time again, these unruly mobs were dispersed by small squadrons of lancers and then hunted down by horse archers: the pattern repeated itself at Centala and Vigonia (spring and summer of 1299) and near the Amiantifera lake (winter of 1300). In their dispatches, Xasar cavalry commanders contemptuously described half-starving crowds of Frankish commoners, looking more like wandering bands of refugees than actual armies. Satrap Ixandhar Odigesha of Ishfera Kumiy (North Italy) would then forward these dispatches to Konstantikert with even more exaggerated details, describing clouds of flies and miasma surrounding the hordes of peasant Votivists as the biggest obstacle his glorious cavalry had to overcome. Odigesha was glad to depict Frankish Europe as a collapsed society, which population is driven not as much by religious zeal or a surplus of armed men, but by a mere desire to leave the chaos of Europe and find order in the prosperous lands of the most benevolent Shah (which Odigesha was, of course, going to deny them). Meanwhile, Satrap Osrasidar Surenavaiy of Ishfera Gomiy (South Italy) was not blind to the trouble brewing on Italy’s western border, receiving plenty of disturbing intelligence from his network of spies and Mauri merchants. Surenavaiy tried to change Odigesha’s perception of post-Frankish Europe, but the latter one just suspected that Surenavaiy was simply envious of his military achievements and growing prosperity. In the last ditch effort to prevent the inevitable, Surenavaiy took it upon himself to approach the Shah directly, but by the time South Italian Satrap’s message arrived to Konstantikert, columns of Fellow Brothers of St. Ambrose the Alexandrian were already crossing the Alps.
When the Italian phase of the Great Votive War started, Ishpaxabhad Ixandhar Dagalujuglu was the supreme commander of Xasar troops in Italy. A distinguished and experienced general, Dagalujuglu was a heavyweight of Xasar military, a brilliant logistician who oversaw introduction of gunpowder artillery to battlefields as opposed to siege-only use of the previous century. However, he had one severe weakness that proved to be critical for his armies. A seventy-six-year-old man with a gout, Dagalujuglu simply lacked the energy required to win that extraordinary campaign to follow. At first, his “let them come for us” approach was clearly giving satisfactory results. In the summer of 1301, he achieved two strong tactical victories: first, when he let his firepower decimate a joint Angevine-Arlese column under Count Jaqius II of Nimes near Fasana Crossing, and then three months later when a slave-soldier detachment of Bishop of Muenster outran the main advancing force and was easily crushed in a short clash at Cherascia. However, neither of the defeated forces was fully shattered, and both were allowed to regroup and rejoin the main core of Francien Votive armies, led by King Charles II of Burgundy. Dagalujuglu had a plan that in a different campaign would be rather solid: to guard key junctions of North Italian road network and react to any Votivist attempts to break into the Po river valley by giving them defensive field battles, in which he knew he could use his beloved field artillery to his advantage. Destroying enemy armies in the field, indeed, was unnecessary for him, as long as he kept them contained in the Alpine foothills, where they would quickly run out of supply and exhaust their logistical capabilities. What he underestimated, however, was the sheer desire of the Votivist leaders to give him a decisive battle. When the entirety of the sixty-five thousand Votivist force was spotted on the move toward Rivola, Dagalujuglu had no other choice than take all his available thirty three thousand troops to meet them in battle in early summer of 1302.
As the Votivist troops were still arriving to their camp south-east of Rivola, Dagalujuglu started bombarding them from his Grand Redoubt, provoking a reckless charge of Aquitanian nobility. That charge was easily repulsed, only to be followed by another mass assault, this one reinforced with large formations of dismounted Aquitanian knights and squires. For a brief moment, all of Dagalujuglu’s splendorous artillery was under a risk of capture, but a timely deployment of heavy pike formations and tufenj fire from the flank gave the Xasars enough time to evacuate the artillery pieces before withdrawing from the doomed redoubt in good order. What would look like a defeat for any other commander, however, was merely another opportunity for the hardened Xasar general. Upon seizure of the redoubt, the Aquitanians didn’t withdraw to the main camp (now crowded with even more reinforcements), but chose to stay and move their own humble artillery and touphenjuirs (tufenj soldiers) to the safety of the hill position. Seeing that the enemies had thus split their forces, Dagalujuglu quickly put together a bold new plan of attacking the captured redoubt at the dawn in three columns, while cutting it off from the main Votivist camp with the fourth one. The plan had good chances of success, but two sleepless nights had put a heavy toll on the old general’s heath, and by the morning of the following day Dagalujuglu was found dead in his tent, most likely a victim of a stroke. The leadership passed to the second-in-command, Paxabhad [second army chief] Shainiy-Gadahme. Obedient executor with hardly any personal initiative, Shainiy-Gadahme chose to stick to his superior’s last order, even despite the fact that by the morning it started raining heavily, rendering Xasar tufenj and artillery corps ineffective and making the march through the valley between the redoubt and the Votivist camp extremely sluggish. What followed was a disaster that didn’t result in a collapse of the entire Xasar army only due to the deteriorating weather conditions, ironically.
Emotionally crushed by that early setback in his new role, Shainiy-Gadahme passively withdrew to the vicinity of Pavia, effectively ceding all lands to the east of it to the enemy. Afraid to split his troops ever again, he allowed the Votivists capture key supply depots prepared by his predecessor for campaigning in North-Western Italy. The Xasar army still might have been able to pull off an effective defense, but a short-living popular rebellion (a salt riot, really) in Medilano became a “black swan” for Shainiy-Gadahme and his troops. The rioters killed Satrap Ixandhar Odigesha and, despite being eventually suppressed, distracted the Xasar city garrison enough to let a dashing raid by Burgundian Marshal du Fiollers to capture southern city gates in an unlikely turn of fate. By the time the news of the salt riot reached Pavia, Medilano had already fallen to the Burgundians, cutting the Xasar army from their largest supply depot.
The following eight months, to the spring of 1303, were known as the Long Slumber among the Xasar troops stuck in Pavia. General Shainiy-Gadahme still believed that Pavia had to be protected at all costs, ignoring the fact that the Votivist, disjointed and ill-disciplined as they were, started to successively capture North Italian towns one-by-one, establishing their own supply base and simultaneously eroding the Xasar one. By early summer of 1303 it became evident that prolonged inactivity would be fatal, and two oxavarans (brigades) were finally dispatched under a capable commander Kaikhuluj Arslanzade to deal with Votivist foraging parties roaming the countryside. Despising his superior’s inactivity, Arslanzade disobeyed the orders and instead struck two Votivist forces engaged in sieges of Xasar outposts. This resulted in small-scale victories at Rivergara and Lodia, but relatively high losses among the victors just persuaded Shainiy-Gadahme that the split of forces was still a bad idea.
The wake-up call would come when Piachencia became besieged the fall of 1303. Shainiy-Gadahme’s attempt to re-establish contact with the defenders was low-energy and ineffective, and by early winter of 1303 Piachencia had fallen. That practically turned Pavia into an armed camp of prisoners of war: despite absence of direct siege actions by the Votivists, Shainiy-Gadahme’s forces were fully isolated and blockaded in the town that could ill-afford feeding an army twenty-five thousand strong throughout the winter. Another eight weeks later, an outriding party spotted a large Neustrian force moving toward Vilatteria bridge over the Fiume river. To Kaikhuluj Arslanzade, the message was clear: if the Votivists succeeded, the Xasar army would be completely cut off from the rest of the Shahdom, with no chances of withdrawal. By then, Shainiy-Gadahme was compeletely paralyzed by the enormity of the task at hands, and, ironically, that helped Arslanzade persuade his superior to give him a single mounted oxavaran to secure the bridge. Strategically, however, Shainiy-Gadahme’s vision of Arslanzade’s mission stayed strictly defeatist: the rising star general was instructed to break through, escape from the Neustrians, and bring more reinforcements in an attempt to rescue the Pavian army.
Grudgingly, Arslanzade accepted the orders. His forced march to Vilatteria bridge, however, brought an unexpected hope: only a small detachment of light cavalry consisting of African slave-converts protected the bridge when the Xasar oxavaran reached the river in two march columns. Executing a quick transition to a battle formation (a maneuver Arslanzade will later become famous for), Arslanzade led a dashing attack on the bridge and easily overwhelmed the defensive force. Under interrogation, captured soldiers admitted that the bulk of the Neustrian army was about three days away from the bridge. Encouraged by this news, Arslanzade sent messengers to Pavia, begging his superior to break from stupor and immediately march toward the only way out of the encirclement. According to a popular anecdote, the message was worded in a laconic, yet rather sarcastic manner, and Shainiy-Gadahme refused to even acknowledge it as a legitimate order from his subordinate. Two days later, advancing columns of the Count of Niverne appeared in the vicinity of Arslanzade’s force, and he, seeing that the best result of his mission was unachievable, decided to fall for the second best: escape into Central Italia with the remainder of his tiny force.
Having reached Ravenna, Arslanzade immediately contacted Satrap Surenavaiy of South Italy and demanded all resources the latter could gather to be thrown to the rescue of the Pavian army. Recognizing Arslanzade as a capable leader (or simply facing a leadership crisis), Surenavaiy delegated to the rising star of the army extraordinary powers of military enlistment and material acquisition. Surenavaiy also performed a “xavaniysham:” voluntary lending of a part of personal wealth “for the good of the state.” (In more ordinary times, such an act would have required a written agreement with the Shah and the High Treasurer, since the nature of xavaniysham required eventual reimbursement with no interest. The nature of events in 1304 was, however, so desperate that Surenavaiy decided to surpass the necessary procedures, thus risking to lose all donated funds if the Shah later refused to acknowledge a retrospective application (which is exactly what eventually happened).) Once given a free hand in unoccupied Ishfera Kumiy, Arslanzade immediately started conscription among small communes of Xasar colonists in North Italy, majority of which were either veterans of earlier Italian conquests or sons of such veterans. At the same time, recruiters were sent to the Balkans with an order to hire cutthroats of any background as mercenaries and bring them to Italy on merchant ships going for the same destination (needless to say, Surenavaiy’s donation came handy at that task). Mistrusting local condottieri in fighting against fellow Christians, Arslanzade made a single exception when he hired a Venetian mercenary company led by one Izidoro di Valiacci, an open Tinanian who, as Arslanzade had figured, would have been hated by the Votivists even more than a Buddhist ever could be. In preparation for campaigning next year, a network of supply depots was established, with provisions being gathered by Xasar troops through extortion of cities and often straightforward marauding of countryside.
In March of 1304, disturbing news from Pavia started reaching Toscana. Shainiy-Gadahme’s “kidnapped army” had run out of horsemeat, and soldiers had to resort to boiling and eating their leather boots and saddles. Realizing how desperate the situation was, Arslanzade rushed West without waiting for his artillery train to leave Ravenna and easily dispersed several roaming foraging squadrons and Vulgar Votivist bands. However, Brother-Judicate Renneus of the Holy Fellowship of Spearbearers, a smart and experienced Francien commander, persuaded his superiors to not meet the rescuing force in an open battle and not to attempt to take Pavia by storm. Instead, he argued that all the Christians had to do was keep Arslanzade’s force away from vicinity of the besieged army and prevent the leader of the Pavian garrison from learning about the rescue attempt. Despite some hot debates with King Charles II of Burgundy, Renneus’ plan was accepted, and it spelled doom of the besieged army. Shainiy-Gadahme agreed to negotiate surrender to the Aquitanian king after the latter promised to protect Xasar prisoners from a slaughter by the Burgundian zealots. Surprisingly, upon laying down their arms, Shainiy-Gadahme’s soldiers had indeed their lives spared, although majority of them were sold into slavery and some were even encouraged to convert to Christianity and join the slave-convert army of King Ptolemei of Neustria (that later became a source of great mistrust between the Burgundians and the Aquitano-Neustrian alliance). Shainiy-Gadahme himself was taken to Neustria as well, where Ptolemei hoped to force the Xasar commaner to serve him as a military adviser (another display of surprising tolerance by the Votivists). Ironically, after the end of the Great Votive War Shainiy-Gadahme would return to Konstantinkert only to be arrested and executed for treason by the orders of newly crowned Usurper Shah Kaikhuluj Arslanzade himself.
Having learned of the fall of Pavia, Arslanzade hurried to return to Toscana and prepare for an aggressive summer campaign, hoping to strike separate Votivist forces in piecemeal battles, using the fortress of Ravenna as his rear base. Howeveer, in early June of 1304, another “black swan” changed everything for the Xasar. Ravenna rebelled, and Izidoro III, the Duke of Toscana, previously happy with his position of the first man among the Italians, declared his Duchy’s independence from the Satrap of Ishfera Kumiy. The latter, technically, had already been dead, and no new candidate had been appointed from Konstantinkert still, so that declaration of independence was done in a shady, ambiguous way that could give the Duke a lot of situational flexibility. Within a week, though, all ambiguity had vanished: Xasar artillerists and marines were butchered by a mob in Ancona, and the remnants of Xasar naval squadron were forced to quickly leave the harbor. Upon briefly bombarding the city with cannons and causing a significant fire, the squadron withdrew for the Balkan port of Sypilit, leaving Arslanzade and his fourteen thousand troops completely cut off from any sources of support in his army camp in Bolonna. Soon, the semi-official military dictator of North Italy learned that three Votivist forces which combined strength neared seventy four thousand troops had crossed the Po river and were marching in three columns, ready to cut the remaining Xasar force north of Apennines from any retreat routes.
The stage was set for one of the most glorious campaigns in modern military history.
