Part 12: The Peace of Dalmatia
The knife may save what the sword has lost -Eastern Roman Proverb

In the autumn of 812 a shroud hung over Constantinople. The fall of Epirus had shocked the empire and Constantine VI, Basileus of the Roman Empire, was swiftly becoming a very unpopular man. Accusations that the emperor had ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’ ran through the imperial elites’ circles. And while the common populace may not have fully understood the ramifications of their emperor’s actions, there could be no denying the refugees fleeing the Bulgar hordes, nor the ever-increasing price of goods or the constant chants from Theodosian walls as the priests prayed for victory. In the Sacred Palace, Constantine VI descended into cruelty and madness, alternating between lashing out in anger and refusing to accept the reality of his blunders. For everyone outside of the imperial family, it seemed that the writing was on the wall for the Isaurians. Still, finding the emperor in a pool of his own blood, his throat slit, was a surprise. The palace eunuchs and imperial patricians were understandably shocked and appalled. So shocked and appalled that they waited a full day before appointing Nikephoros Genik the new Basileus Rhomaion.

A man with a mind for numbers and a heart for war, Nikephoros had spent the last decade tending to the Empire’s finances, watching as the treasury of Constantinople was sunk to the bottom of the Adriatic, trampled in the Pannonian plains or thrown from the mountains of Cilicia. While it can never be proven that Nikephoros had a hand in the death of Constantine VI, it can also not be disproven, nor discounted. Nikephoros inherited a dismal situation, facing enemies on all his borders. But one did not get away with (possibly) assassinating an emperor by being timid. The next spring Nikephoros departed Constantinople, with every available soldier in tow. A campaign of cruelty and slaughter followed. Villages were ‘liberated’ from the Bulgars, which often meant being wiped off the face of the earth for their ‘treachery’ bending the knee to Krum.

The initial campaign went well and by summer the war had turned from one of reconquest to simple conquest. For the next few months, the Eastern Romans marched across Bulgaria proper, encountering surprisingly little resistance. By July the army had decimated Preslav and threatened Pliska. With the Eastern Roman troops in spitting distance of his capital, Krum dispatched a messenger, begging for peace. Word had reached Krum of the atrocities Nikephoros had committed against Krum’s people, as well as his own, and Krum hoped to spare Pliska the destruction visited upon so much of southern Bulgaria. Unfortunately, Nikephoros was confident in his ability to destroy the Bulgars once and for all and set off for Pliska soon after the messenger was dismissed. Though the Bulgars in Pliska put up a fierce fight, the numbers were simply not in their favor. Soon enough, Pliska was a smoldering ruin, looted and ransacked, its inhabitants maimed, killed or enslaved. And yet Krum was nowhere to be seen. And of the ferocious horde that had menaced the Roman Empire, not many more than ten thousand men were counted among the casualties. The reason for this would become tragically clear soon afterwards, as the Roman soldiers passed through the Balkans on their way home. In the narrow mountain passes, Krum’s ambush was put into action, trapping the Roman army and attacking from both sides. The end result was a slaughter, and only a fraction of Nikephoros’ forces survived the battle.

The disaster at Pliska was a terrible blow to the Eastern Roman Empire. Nikephoros, along with most of his entourage, had been slain in the ambush. The army returned to the capital in disgrace to find another surprise waiting for them- a new emperor. With Nikephoros gone, Bardanes, the leader of the Roman armies in Anatolia, marched into the capital and claimed the throne for himself. Nikephoros’ army was tired, ragged and not exactly happy with their former commander’s refusal to accept the Bulgarian surrender, and didn’t put up much of a fight against the coup.

For his part, Bardanes acted with a much cooler head than his predecessors. Greek historians would later note the bitter irony that Bardanes, a soldier whose life had been spent at war, was more willing to find diplomatic solutions than Nikephoros, a bureaucrat who had never seen battle before his campaign against the Bulgarians. The tribute that the Isaurians had been sending to the Abbasids had been ended by Nikephoros during the latter’s brief reign, and this was proving troublesome for the empire’s eastern border. To alleviate the issue and secure Anatolia and Armenia, Bardanes renewed the flow of treasure to the Arabs, and called for a peace with Krum and the Western Roman Empire at the same time.

The negotiations between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires occurred over the next two years, during which time an uneasy peace reigned in the Adriatic. Both empires were exhausted from the fight and simply wanted an end to the war. The resulting treaty, the Peace of Damatia, set the boundary between the empires in the Adriatic. Eastern Roman control of Venice was, in theory, reaffirmed, although the Doge still reigned supreme in the Republic. Dalmatia, Pannonia and Sicily were confirmed to be under the rule of the East, while Sardinia and Corsica were given to the West. In terms of titles, Adelchis was granted the title of emperor- though Bardanes remained unwavering in his refusal to add ‘Roman’ to the title.

The Lombards had proven willing to negotiate with Bardanes, but the Bulgars were not so open to diplomacy. Rage at the destruction of Pliska and a feeling of invincibility from slaying Nikephoros combined into a potent mixture of emotions that called the Bulgar hordes to war. In 814 Krum laid siege to Constantinople. For three months the Bulgars waited outside of the Roman capital. However, with no navy the siege was doomed to failure- though it did not break naturally. It took a sortie led by Bardanes himself to drive the Bulgars back to the Thracian countryside. No peace was to be reached with the Bulgars, though the return of the armies in Sicily allowed the Romans to reassert control over Epirus-though Pannonia remained a step too far for the war-weary empire. In what would become known as the Oath of Shumen, Krum repudiated the Romans’ offers of armistice, famously vowing that no peace would exist until Pliska had been rebuilt by the stones and hands of the Roman Empire. For the remainder of his reign, Krum offered a sizable reward for Roman artisans abducted during raids, as well as Roman statues or other loot taken from the Eastern Romans. The next decade saw this policy continued, and a cycle of raids and retaliation between the Bulgars and the Eastern Roman Empire.

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Europe and the Mediterranean in 823 AD, 10 years after the Roman War ended and two years after the death of Emperor Adelchis
 
An excellent end to such a big war!

This seems like a partial Roman victory, even if they now have foolishly made a new enemy.

Bavaria is growing, and I suspect they will become everyone's next big head-ache.

Francia is still a mess, if a bit less of one.
 
An excellent end to such a big war!
Thanks! I was a little worried that it would be too sudden of an end, but I guess people liked it.

This seems like a partial Roman victory, even if they now have foolishly made a new enemy.
Which Romans :p ? This is what I get for my steadfast refusal to use the word Byzantine. I'll probably start soon, just to make it less confusing as to which Rome I'm referring to.

Bavaria is growing, and I suspect they will become everyone's next big head-ache.
Bavaria only really threatens the pagans. They might not get along with the Lombards, but their dispute over Dalmatia is a moot point now that the Eastern Romans have reasserted their control there.

Francia is still a mess, if a bit less of one.
Yeah. I'd imagine that being the cartographer for the Merovingian court is something of a thankless job.
 
A really nice update archimededcircle. Though I am a big confused on how "Roman" the Lombards are exactly? Do they speak Latin or a mix. Whats their government like at this point? Is it more of a OTL HRE situation?
 
Though I am a big confused on how "Roman" the Lombards are exactly?
For the most part they're just the Lombard kingdom with a thin veneer of 'Roman-ness' painted on. Though as I've said before, it's really how Roman they consider themselves to be that's important, and the answered turned out to be 'Roman enough to start a war over Sicily'.
Do they speak Latin or a mix.
They speak Latin, for the most part anyway. It's not quite the same as classic Latin, but not different enough to be characterized as a Vulgar Latin either. This is pretty much in keeping with OTL, where the Germanic languages of the Migration Period were swept away in favor of Romanticized languages.
Whats their government like at this point?
In general, not much different than when I talked about it here. For a more specific look at the Lombard government, you'll have to wait until next update.
Is it more of a OTL HRE situation?
I'm not sure what you mean by this question. They are basically this timeline's version of the HRE, just with a geographically better claim.
 
Damn, I had hoped Nikephoros would do better at Pliska ITTL. While he was somewhat of a warmonger, avoiding Pliska might have allowed a Roman resurgence more than 50 years earlier than IOTL. :(

Either way, great update.
 
Is this timeline dead? I was rather hoping to see what the Lombards were going to do next. :/
I'm not sure I would say it's dead. Real life has kept me super busy, and looking back on the timeline there are several things I feel could have been handled better. Once my job ends this summer, I'm thinking of rebooting it though.
 
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