The Panther: A Medieval Slovene Kingdom TL
- Thread starter SealTheRealDeal
- Start date
Philippe le Bel
Banned
Excellent! Hopefully this bomb will explode outward into the vacuum the Avars might leave 
3. Two Collapse to the Benefit of One
Upon his ascension in 763, Valtunk seemed to have a fairly straightforward path laid out ahead of him in the form of his fathers proven strategies. However by 767 the mere continued existence of Carantania was in question.
When discussing the Impairment[1] a few key social matters must first be outlined.
1. The slow process of adopting Christianity: the pagan revolt of 758 was far from conclusive, and there remained large pagan populations throughout Carantania and Carniola.
2. The expansion into Upper Pannonia brought in large numbers of additional Slavic pagans.
3. The weakening of the Avar Kaghanate had to lead Slavic de-facto sub-states forming in western Pannonia.
4. As the Avar raiders began looking elsewhere, the levy that the King could muster was allowed to shrink.
Despite this, the first years of Valtunk’s reign were generally peaceful, and as the Via Gemina came back into use eastern transalpine trade began to pick up to a degree not seen since the fall of Rome in the west. To any observer at the time the Impairment would have happened suddenly and without warning. Nonetheless on the night of June 4th 767 the count of Ljubljana[2], a Christian, was assassinated. As word spread a general revolt by the adherents of the old way took shape. The revolt in the duchies of Carantania and Carniola was subdued with with some hardship even though much of the ruling class and a good portion of the population was Christianized. The frontier regions on the other hand proved much more difficult, though nonetheless progress was being made.
That changed when the rebels made contact with Posavski, a warlord who controlled the most powerful of the aforementioned Slavic de-facto substates. Records of the event claim that he was a charismatic leader who wanted to liberate the Slavs of Carantania from their concubinage to the Italians. He ambushed the forces of Valtunk on the west bank of the Drava, and upon their rout initiated the invasion of Carniola. In a series of battles his forces proved superior to both frontier defenses[3] and the levies of the king and his counts. By 768 Posavski controlled most of the country side and was besieging Ljubliana castle while Valtunk retreated to Carnium.
The defense of Ljubljana fell to no less a man then Julius di Verona, a merchant who had served in Legio I Veronica during Hotimir’s campaign against the Avars and had been tasked with leading the “legion” to Valtunk’s aid. Upon hearing news of Valtunk’s most recent defeat he gave orders to his men to make camp on the hill east of the castle and only attack if they saw smoke rising from the city. He then proceeded to ride ahead with only some cavalrymen to Ljubljana, where he hastily prepared a defense of the earth and wood castle that over looked the boomtown.
Posavski’s army was not well equipped for a siege, and was especially worried by the fact that the first snows had begun to fall, perhaps it is for this reason that he was so eager to claim victory when Julius made a show of burning the crosses of the castle’s chapel and throwing open the gates. Julius also took care to craft an elaborate ceremony of surrendering the city to keep Posavski occupied for over an hour while his men crossed the river and marched up the hill to the castle. A messenger ran up the hill to alert Posavski of the new army they were about to give battle to, however they found the gate firmly shut and the walls once again manned by the castle’s garrison. Those who had gone into the castle to accept the surrender were either dead, or tied up as hostages as Posavski was.
Posavski accepting the surrender of Ljubljana.
The Pagan army pinned between a manned fortress and a smaller army took its chances with the army and the most senior chieftain who had not gone to accept the surrender organized a quick charge, and much to their displeasure found that the men of Verona maintained their dense shield wall and expertly folded back their flanks to counter the broader front presented by their enemies’ larger number. The battle progressed and the Veronese continued to hold, until suddenly the pagan forces collapsed into a general rout, Julius had lead the garrison in a sally.
When news of the victory reached Valtunk he is reported to have broken into tears, regardless of the validity of this claim he was composed enough to make for Ljubljana where he congratulated Julius on his accomplishment and made preparation for the next year’s campaign season.
The first matter of preparation was levying new troops, which of course requires negotiations with the nobles loyal to Valtunk, and more cleverly a proclamation praising the city of Verona, which sufficiently miffed the cities of Padua and Treviso that their merchant ministries established their own legions, Patrizia and Tiziana respectively [4]. The other matter was preparing for peace, and Valtunk had a number of subjects sent to Italy to become priests, theorizing that them being fully fluent in the native tongue and able to better relate to the Slavic way of life would make them more capable of gaining converts.
Troops took time to prepare and as a result it was summer before the campaign season began in earnest, and much of the season was spent in Carniola. Notably Valtunk increasingly differed to Julius on military manners. As the royal army began pushing into the frontier regions they noticed a disturbing trend, Avar horsemen were increasingly being found amongst the ranks of the enemy. This fact was not wasted, and rumours of an impending Avar invasion were intentionally spread, discrediting the pagan cause, pressuring stuborn nobles to lend their levies more freely, and hastening the deployment of the Padovani and Trevisani legions.
None the less the Avar threat turned out to be all too real, as during the campaign season of 770 the King’s army was confronted with an almost exclusively Avar force which proved “easy” to route yet immensely difficult to actually destroy.
To the north east of the kingdom’s boundary near the fortress of Vindobona they were finally able to catch the Avar force trying to cross the Danube near the Lobau, having been refused entry to the fortress that was supposedly tributary to them. Durring the battle the legions made up the center and flanks of the royal army of 12,000 and unlike Aistulf they succeeded in driving their foe into the river.
From this point forward the campaign takes a much more aggressive and morbid turn. The army advanced from the northwest, penetrating deep into Pannonia. By this time the Avars were imploding from revolts and a power struggle within the Avar tribe. The result was that few battles of any note were to be had, and much of the land the army advanced into had already been plundered, many soldiers took out their frustrations on the populations they encountered, a popular tactic being to present their banner (depicting the burning cross of Ljubljana), and to immediately kill any who did not make the sign of the cross, a test that surely many Christians would have failed as well. The collapse of the Avar confederation was made terminal when the army fell upon the Ring of the Avars, which was taken after a quick siege aided by craftsmen from Padua in 774.
Following this triumph it had become apparent that Valtunk would be the new master of Pannonia a group of lesser Avar notables under a man name Bayan came forward to offer their fealty to the King. Posavski, who had converted by this point of his imprisonment, was also eager to swear allegiance to the King in order to reclaim his Pannonian territory. As a result the king and his massive army was no longer needed, as the kings vassals were now capable of handling what remained of organized resistance in Pannonia. With that the King embarked west to prepare for peace and the bitter pill it meant for him.
----
[1] A term used to refer to the revolt and the decentralization of power that it caused (it was the impairment of royal power).
[2] Built on the former site of Emona, it was a “boom town” that had started to develop at the terminus of the Via Gemina.
[3] The blockhouse-esque things I detailed in the previous part.
[4] Confusingly both were also designated “Legio I”.
Seal returns from his exile of many moons
So… I guess the Avars were conquered. Next update will detail the aftermath and implications of that, God knows it’s desperately needed as it goes without saying that this is about as huge as it gets. I’ll also be sure to include a section on the “legions”, since they played such a prominent role in this conflict and I'll also make a new map (for obvious reasons). After that I’ll finally get around to showing how the rest of the world is responding to these pterodactyls butterflies.
As always, please viciously chew me out if I made a mistake.
When discussing the Impairment[1] a few key social matters must first be outlined.
1. The slow process of adopting Christianity: the pagan revolt of 758 was far from conclusive, and there remained large pagan populations throughout Carantania and Carniola.
2. The expansion into Upper Pannonia brought in large numbers of additional Slavic pagans.
3. The weakening of the Avar Kaghanate had to lead Slavic de-facto sub-states forming in western Pannonia.
4. As the Avar raiders began looking elsewhere, the levy that the King could muster was allowed to shrink.
Despite this, the first years of Valtunk’s reign were generally peaceful, and as the Via Gemina came back into use eastern transalpine trade began to pick up to a degree not seen since the fall of Rome in the west. To any observer at the time the Impairment would have happened suddenly and without warning. Nonetheless on the night of June 4th 767 the count of Ljubljana[2], a Christian, was assassinated. As word spread a general revolt by the adherents of the old way took shape. The revolt in the duchies of Carantania and Carniola was subdued with with some hardship even though much of the ruling class and a good portion of the population was Christianized. The frontier regions on the other hand proved much more difficult, though nonetheless progress was being made.
That changed when the rebels made contact with Posavski, a warlord who controlled the most powerful of the aforementioned Slavic de-facto substates. Records of the event claim that he was a charismatic leader who wanted to liberate the Slavs of Carantania from their concubinage to the Italians. He ambushed the forces of Valtunk on the west bank of the Drava, and upon their rout initiated the invasion of Carniola. In a series of battles his forces proved superior to both frontier defenses[3] and the levies of the king and his counts. By 768 Posavski controlled most of the country side and was besieging Ljubliana castle while Valtunk retreated to Carnium.
The defense of Ljubljana fell to no less a man then Julius di Verona, a merchant who had served in Legio I Veronica during Hotimir’s campaign against the Avars and had been tasked with leading the “legion” to Valtunk’s aid. Upon hearing news of Valtunk’s most recent defeat he gave orders to his men to make camp on the hill east of the castle and only attack if they saw smoke rising from the city. He then proceeded to ride ahead with only some cavalrymen to Ljubljana, where he hastily prepared a defense of the earth and wood castle that over looked the boomtown.
Posavski’s army was not well equipped for a siege, and was especially worried by the fact that the first snows had begun to fall, perhaps it is for this reason that he was so eager to claim victory when Julius made a show of burning the crosses of the castle’s chapel and throwing open the gates. Julius also took care to craft an elaborate ceremony of surrendering the city to keep Posavski occupied for over an hour while his men crossed the river and marched up the hill to the castle. A messenger ran up the hill to alert Posavski of the new army they were about to give battle to, however they found the gate firmly shut and the walls once again manned by the castle’s garrison. Those who had gone into the castle to accept the surrender were either dead, or tied up as hostages as Posavski was.
Posavski accepting the surrender of Ljubljana.
The Pagan army pinned between a manned fortress and a smaller army took its chances with the army and the most senior chieftain who had not gone to accept the surrender organized a quick charge, and much to their displeasure found that the men of Verona maintained their dense shield wall and expertly folded back their flanks to counter the broader front presented by their enemies’ larger number. The battle progressed and the Veronese continued to hold, until suddenly the pagan forces collapsed into a general rout, Julius had lead the garrison in a sally.
When news of the victory reached Valtunk he is reported to have broken into tears, regardless of the validity of this claim he was composed enough to make for Ljubljana where he congratulated Julius on his accomplishment and made preparation for the next year’s campaign season.
The first matter of preparation was levying new troops, which of course requires negotiations with the nobles loyal to Valtunk, and more cleverly a proclamation praising the city of Verona, which sufficiently miffed the cities of Padua and Treviso that their merchant ministries established their own legions, Patrizia and Tiziana respectively [4]. The other matter was preparing for peace, and Valtunk had a number of subjects sent to Italy to become priests, theorizing that them being fully fluent in the native tongue and able to better relate to the Slavic way of life would make them more capable of gaining converts.
Troops took time to prepare and as a result it was summer before the campaign season began in earnest, and much of the season was spent in Carniola. Notably Valtunk increasingly differed to Julius on military manners. As the royal army began pushing into the frontier regions they noticed a disturbing trend, Avar horsemen were increasingly being found amongst the ranks of the enemy. This fact was not wasted, and rumours of an impending Avar invasion were intentionally spread, discrediting the pagan cause, pressuring stuborn nobles to lend their levies more freely, and hastening the deployment of the Padovani and Trevisani legions.
None the less the Avar threat turned out to be all too real, as during the campaign season of 770 the King’s army was confronted with an almost exclusively Avar force which proved “easy” to route yet immensely difficult to actually destroy.
To the north east of the kingdom’s boundary near the fortress of Vindobona they were finally able to catch the Avar force trying to cross the Danube near the Lobau, having been refused entry to the fortress that was supposedly tributary to them. Durring the battle the legions made up the center and flanks of the royal army of 12,000 and unlike Aistulf they succeeded in driving their foe into the river.
From this point forward the campaign takes a much more aggressive and morbid turn. The army advanced from the northwest, penetrating deep into Pannonia. By this time the Avars were imploding from revolts and a power struggle within the Avar tribe. The result was that few battles of any note were to be had, and much of the land the army advanced into had already been plundered, many soldiers took out their frustrations on the populations they encountered, a popular tactic being to present their banner (depicting the burning cross of Ljubljana), and to immediately kill any who did not make the sign of the cross, a test that surely many Christians would have failed as well. The collapse of the Avar confederation was made terminal when the army fell upon the Ring of the Avars, which was taken after a quick siege aided by craftsmen from Padua in 774.
Following this triumph it had become apparent that Valtunk would be the new master of Pannonia a group of lesser Avar notables under a man name Bayan came forward to offer their fealty to the King. Posavski, who had converted by this point of his imprisonment, was also eager to swear allegiance to the King in order to reclaim his Pannonian territory. As a result the king and his massive army was no longer needed, as the kings vassals were now capable of handling what remained of organized resistance in Pannonia. With that the King embarked west to prepare for peace and the bitter pill it meant for him.
----
[1] A term used to refer to the revolt and the decentralization of power that it caused (it was the impairment of royal power).
[2] Built on the former site of Emona, it was a “boom town” that had started to develop at the terminus of the Via Gemina.
[3] The blockhouse-esque things I detailed in the previous part.
[4] Confusingly both were also designated “Legio I”.
Seal returns from his exile of many moons
So… I guess the Avars were conquered. Next update will detail the aftermath and implications of that, God knows it’s desperately needed as it goes without saying that this is about as huge as it gets. I’ll also be sure to include a section on the “legions”, since they played such a prominent role in this conflict and I'll also make a new map (for obvious reasons). After that I’ll finally get around to showing how the rest of the world is responding to these pterodactyls butterflies.
As always, please viciously chew me out if I made a mistake.
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4. Hollow Tellurocracy
Valtunk’s realm had swollen by approximately 263,000km^2,[1] and assuming a population density of 4 people per km^2 then that meant more than a million new subjects, mostly Slavic, mostly pagan, were now within his domain. While many warlords had sworn themselves to Valtunk the actual power the king commanded over them is questionable, and the Carantanian rule over the former Avar lands has often been characterized as more akin to simple hegemony rather than even the sort of feudalism that would flourish in the coming century.
A map showing the extent of the Kingdom following the conquest of the Avars.
Division of the Kingdom:
The war against the Avars, while hugely successful and having filled the crown’s coffers to the point of overflow, had politically bankrupted the King. In order to keep such a massive force in the field for such a long time he had been forced to cash every favour, forgive every debt, and wave many obligations of his vassals. As a result at the end of the conflict his traditional power base had been broken. As king his realm was now disturbingly decentralized, himself being reduced to merely a mediator between his vassals and a figure to guide the realm’s interactions with the outside world.
One of his last acts of consequence was to over see the division of the conquest, and due to the nature of the final phase of the conquest these new vassals also had a considerable degree of autonomy from their liege, with many historians characterizing the early Carantanian rule as more akin to a tributary relationship, which is certainly true for the Nitrans and Moravians who only paid tribute and seemingly did not adopt Christianity for another three decades. However most of the others did at least pay him lip service and ask for permission to do things that they really could have done on their own, such as Bayan’s request in 780 to occupy the land abandoned by the Magyars. Notably he granted Vindobona a Hotimir-esque city charter as thanks for its (in)action during the battle of the Lobau.
A map displaying a very simplified version of which people generally ruled where. Yellow represents land mostly controlled by Lombard nobles. Blue represents land mostly controlled by Carantanian-Carniolan nobles. Red represents land mostly controlled by Pannonian Slav nobles. Green represents land mostly controlled by Avar nobles. Orange represents the northern duchies (such as Moravia). The Julian March is shown in light green.
A New City:
Following his return from Pannonia in 774 King Valtunk stopped in Ljubljana, which had ballooned even further due to the logistical effort needed for the campaign to the east. This matter, along with the fact that the castle was still unoccupied, did not escape the King. Before continuing on to Krnski Grad he had the town and its environs mapped. Upon returning to his capital he set about drawing on this map, great circular walls like those of the Avar capital though made of stone, roman-esque facilities such as markets, stables, and inns which were meant to facilitate its growth as a trade hub, numerous buildings based on those in Krnski Grad, a large church, and a new stone castle soon found their ways onto the map. The King met with numerous stonemasons, and even sent a request to Pope Adrian I for his new Church to be made a Cathedral.
All of this, or at least the start of this multigenerational project, was to be financed with the loot from the conquest, and it was very apparent that the king was willing, eager even, to spend his entire share on a new capital. This desire for a new capital is understandable. Krnski Grad was a sorry capital for a Kingdom that controlled the magnificent settlements of the Padan Plain and the vast territory of the former Avar Kaghanate. Furthermore it was poorly placed, isolated from the rest of the realm by the Carinthian-Slovenian Alps, where as Ljubljana commanded the connecting route between the two major areas of the Kingdom, while still being firmly within the Carantania-Carniola cultural continuity.
Ground would be broken on the castle the following year, but construction would be a slow process, not hastened by the King’s habit of retroactively tacking on every nifty feature he came across, most notably his decision to include wide cobblestone roads after travelling to Rome for Charlemagne’s coronation. Needless to say the project was over budget and construction soon slowed to a crawl as the loot ran out and the King could only spend a portion of his revenue on further construction. None the less he was recorded to begun holding court there regularly within the decade.
On the topic of records:
Around the same time written Carantanian, or at least attempts at writing Carantanian with the Latin alphabet, enter the historical record. The men he had sent to Italian monasteries to become priests had returned and brought with them knowledge of writing. By this time the Christian faith was finally reasonably well established in Carantania and Carniola, the victory over Posavski’s pagan revolt apparently served as proof of the Christian God’s superiority. Instead many of these men were sent to preach to the newly conquered, and overwhelmingly Slavic, peoples of Pannonia.
In this period we get the first surviving manuscript written in Carantanian, “Trans-Danubian Panonia Under the Rule of the Sword”. Written by Father Anze, one of Valtunk’s priests, it documented the missionary activities of he and his brothers of the faith, as well as the harsh rule Bayan implemented in his lands, and his campaigns to enforce the eastern border of the former Avar Kaghanate.
Julius in Dacia:
To the south of Bayan’s fiefs lay a mysterious land of hills and forests separated from the Pannonian plain by a spur of the Carpathians. This land was nearly absent from the written record, being a province that had fallen nearly a century before the migration period had begun. Given the availability of information in the early middle ages, it is almost certain that even that much would have been unknown. The collapse of the Avars had in theory brought this land into the Kingdom of Carantania, yet even Avar rule had not gone unchallenged in this region, and the task of establishing a set border with the powerful Bulgar Khaganate to the southeast fell to Julius, who lead an expedition onto the forested plateau to cement the king’s rule. The force was small, not much more than a thousand men, mostly legionaries, but quite a few second sons of Slavic and Avar nobility as well as the forces of a handful of Pannonian notables who were to too late in kneeling to the King to receive a portion of the Pannonian pie. What it lacked in size it made up for with the quality of this core of personnel.
During this campaign he also refined his craft, abandoning the gimmicks that had characterized Carantanian military history up to this point, and devising an aggressive tactic that he and his force could easily repeat. The “Auroch Formation” involved an infantry line that was able to march in close enough order to quickly form a shield wall, supported on its flanks by cavalry forces. The idea was that it would quickly close with and encircle the enemy,[2] and given how hilly and forested the region was, such aggressive, straightforward, tactics were less hindered by enemy archery. These tactics also best befit his force composition.
The conquest of the region was simple enough, those warlords who did not kneel tended to prefer attacking each other rather than organizing resistance against the expedition. Instead the primary threat faced by the expedition came from the Bulgars, who seemed interested in testing the merits of those who had replaced the Avars, and launched a series of probing raids into the region. Julius was sure to give a strong showing, even changing his attire to include a bearskin as to cut a more imposing figure.
During these campaigns the assistance of the local populace proved decisive. The populace wanted the raiders driven away, and as Julius’ correspondence with the King records that “the majority populace of these lands is Latin speaking and God-fearing” it is likely that they felt a degree of kinship with Julius, or vice-versa. They provided his army with food, shelter, intelligence, and when possible they joined him. They would not have been a qualitative replacement for his legions. However quantity has its own qualities, as exhibited by the fact that a Grecian in the court of Khan Telerig records a report that one of the raids was defeated by “a shield wall that stretched beyond ones peripheral vision when looked at from the distance an arrow flies.”[3] Julius’ own reports claim that the cavalry did most of the work, and that the locals were only useful in extending the flanks to prevent encirclement and give the impression that he commanded greater numbers that he actually did.
Evidently the strategy worked as the raids tapered off, and Julius set about establishing his administration of the “Julian March”.
His administration turned out to mimic that of the King in many ways, with much of the power being divvied up amongst his followers. He divvied the east up amongst the Avars as many Avars lived in this region. He selected Gilău as his own personal land, and granted the lands immediately around Gilău, and the lands of latin peoples to his legionary companions, ensuring that he and his most trusted allies held the middle of the land. The rest of the land was given to the many Slavic nobles, most of whom were of Pannonian rather than Carantanian extraction.
Notably he was much more of an absentee lord than the king was, he spent much of his time in the court of the King, visiting old friends in Verona, and even spent some time in Constantinople, where his experience against Bulgar raiders was sought.[4] As a result, Gilău remained little more than a small town, notably only for the fact that it’s fortified manor received tribute from the rest of the march. Additionally on Julius’ initiative it had received a new church and a large Vineyard, which was originally meant to be an olive farm before he realized that they wouldn’t grow there. The fact that he picked the location on the basis that it was the least ravaged by war, and that his only improvement was an attempt to Italianize the place, should indicate just how much interest he had spending his share of the loot on improving his holdings.
The Carantanian Legions:
As much as classicists tend to turn their noses up at their mention, the legions are ubiquitous to the military history of the Kingdom of Carantania. In their original form, they were no more than town militias formed under the circumstances of Hotimir’s charters. That the merchants would be the ones to establish them is also to be expected, under Lombard rule they had been required to serve, and their profession meant that they had the greatest interest in ensuring that the countryside remain free of banditry.
Had it not been for the pact made between the Veronese and Hotimir the legion would have likely remain just an oddly named town watch. The Avar War of 760 saw their first deployment to the frontier and lead to the understanding that the further the frontier was pushed the more opportunities would be opened to the merchant class. Under this direction the self styled legion began taking itself more seriously, drilling more often, and maintaining a stock of provisions should an expedition to the frontier be required. The success of the legion, and the prospect that it would earn its city the King’s favouritism lead to the cities of Treviso and Padua replicating it, right down to being called “Legio I [female given name that starts with the same letter as its city]”. The establishment of rival legions led to a new morale factor, the legions became very competitive, to not at least equal the performance of their peers was to accept the inferiority of their city.
The Legions also benefitted from the fact that, at least initially, the merchants dominated them. The merchants had more disposable income, and thus tended to own superior equipment. Though they carried the same sort of bows, shields, and spears as one may expect of soldiers in the period, mail was “ubiquitous amongst even their archers”, and a not insignificant percentage of the infantry owned swords in addition to their spears. This town militia could also field a formidable cavalry detachment. As merchants they were also used to travelling for long periods of time, and had more than enough carts at their disposal to carry supplies for their campaigns. Additionally their profession meant that they had some off with which they could drill, unlike farmers who had to devote most of their time to their fields. All of these marginal advantages add up to create a force that was certainly a cut above most of their foes.
Probably the most peculiar aspect of legions is their exclusively female naming. Unfortunately the actual reason for this oddity is quite pedestrian; an influential member of the Merchant Ministry of Verona had used some bribes and stocked up brownie points to have it named after his wife. The idea that it was meant to be to remind the men of the legion of their homes and wives seems to be a post-facto construction.[5] One that may have been established early enough to have convinced the other cities to follow suit.
[1] Couldn’t find a given size for the Avar Khaganate, so I just subtracted the area of the Kingdom of Croatia from the Kingdom of Hungary. It’s probably not exact, but probably good enough as a ballpark answer.
[2] If this sounds like Shaka’s Bullhorn formation, that would be because it basically is exactly that.
[3] Certainly an exaggeration.
[4] Evidently what ever they wanted of his was undignified for a man of his caliber, as the returned after a mere month, and sent a note to his king detailing some perceived failings of the Empire’s defenses which was appended with a list of provisions required for a joint Carantanian-Bulgar invasion of Thrace. Unfortunately this letter does not survive in full, though the King’s reply, “please refrain from starting a war with the Romans” does.
[5] Sort like how red was picked for the New Model Army because it was cheap, and later on misinformation about it “making the soldiers less able to see the blood they shed” began to spread.
Bleh that took way longer than it should have sorry for the wait. Hopefully I can manage at least an update per-month from now on.
Next update will be what the rest of the world has been up to as well as some matters that I have alluded to in this part and past parts. Before then I think I may revise this timeline, not changing any details, but perhaps explaining some things better.
Also, does anyone know of a good topographic map without borders and with major rivers accentuated? As you can see the map I have been using doesn’t even work with this update that only concerned a single kingdom.
A map showing the extent of the Kingdom following the conquest of the Avars.
Division of the Kingdom:
The war against the Avars, while hugely successful and having filled the crown’s coffers to the point of overflow, had politically bankrupted the King. In order to keep such a massive force in the field for such a long time he had been forced to cash every favour, forgive every debt, and wave many obligations of his vassals. As a result at the end of the conflict his traditional power base had been broken. As king his realm was now disturbingly decentralized, himself being reduced to merely a mediator between his vassals and a figure to guide the realm’s interactions with the outside world.
One of his last acts of consequence was to over see the division of the conquest, and due to the nature of the final phase of the conquest these new vassals also had a considerable degree of autonomy from their liege, with many historians characterizing the early Carantanian rule as more akin to a tributary relationship, which is certainly true for the Nitrans and Moravians who only paid tribute and seemingly did not adopt Christianity for another three decades. However most of the others did at least pay him lip service and ask for permission to do things that they really could have done on their own, such as Bayan’s request in 780 to occupy the land abandoned by the Magyars. Notably he granted Vindobona a Hotimir-esque city charter as thanks for its (in)action during the battle of the Lobau.
A map displaying a very simplified version of which people generally ruled where. Yellow represents land mostly controlled by Lombard nobles. Blue represents land mostly controlled by Carantanian-Carniolan nobles. Red represents land mostly controlled by Pannonian Slav nobles. Green represents land mostly controlled by Avar nobles. Orange represents the northern duchies (such as Moravia). The Julian March is shown in light green.
A New City:
Following his return from Pannonia in 774 King Valtunk stopped in Ljubljana, which had ballooned even further due to the logistical effort needed for the campaign to the east. This matter, along with the fact that the castle was still unoccupied, did not escape the King. Before continuing on to Krnski Grad he had the town and its environs mapped. Upon returning to his capital he set about drawing on this map, great circular walls like those of the Avar capital though made of stone, roman-esque facilities such as markets, stables, and inns which were meant to facilitate its growth as a trade hub, numerous buildings based on those in Krnski Grad, a large church, and a new stone castle soon found their ways onto the map. The King met with numerous stonemasons, and even sent a request to Pope Adrian I for his new Church to be made a Cathedral.
All of this, or at least the start of this multigenerational project, was to be financed with the loot from the conquest, and it was very apparent that the king was willing, eager even, to spend his entire share on a new capital. This desire for a new capital is understandable. Krnski Grad was a sorry capital for a Kingdom that controlled the magnificent settlements of the Padan Plain and the vast territory of the former Avar Kaghanate. Furthermore it was poorly placed, isolated from the rest of the realm by the Carinthian-Slovenian Alps, where as Ljubljana commanded the connecting route between the two major areas of the Kingdom, while still being firmly within the Carantania-Carniola cultural continuity.
Ground would be broken on the castle the following year, but construction would be a slow process, not hastened by the King’s habit of retroactively tacking on every nifty feature he came across, most notably his decision to include wide cobblestone roads after travelling to Rome for Charlemagne’s coronation. Needless to say the project was over budget and construction soon slowed to a crawl as the loot ran out and the King could only spend a portion of his revenue on further construction. None the less he was recorded to begun holding court there regularly within the decade.
On the topic of records:
Around the same time written Carantanian, or at least attempts at writing Carantanian with the Latin alphabet, enter the historical record. The men he had sent to Italian monasteries to become priests had returned and brought with them knowledge of writing. By this time the Christian faith was finally reasonably well established in Carantania and Carniola, the victory over Posavski’s pagan revolt apparently served as proof of the Christian God’s superiority. Instead many of these men were sent to preach to the newly conquered, and overwhelmingly Slavic, peoples of Pannonia.
In this period we get the first surviving manuscript written in Carantanian, “Trans-Danubian Panonia Under the Rule of the Sword”. Written by Father Anze, one of Valtunk’s priests, it documented the missionary activities of he and his brothers of the faith, as well as the harsh rule Bayan implemented in his lands, and his campaigns to enforce the eastern border of the former Avar Kaghanate.
Julius in Dacia:
To the south of Bayan’s fiefs lay a mysterious land of hills and forests separated from the Pannonian plain by a spur of the Carpathians. This land was nearly absent from the written record, being a province that had fallen nearly a century before the migration period had begun. Given the availability of information in the early middle ages, it is almost certain that even that much would have been unknown. The collapse of the Avars had in theory brought this land into the Kingdom of Carantania, yet even Avar rule had not gone unchallenged in this region, and the task of establishing a set border with the powerful Bulgar Khaganate to the southeast fell to Julius, who lead an expedition onto the forested plateau to cement the king’s rule. The force was small, not much more than a thousand men, mostly legionaries, but quite a few second sons of Slavic and Avar nobility as well as the forces of a handful of Pannonian notables who were to too late in kneeling to the King to receive a portion of the Pannonian pie. What it lacked in size it made up for with the quality of this core of personnel.
During this campaign he also refined his craft, abandoning the gimmicks that had characterized Carantanian military history up to this point, and devising an aggressive tactic that he and his force could easily repeat. The “Auroch Formation” involved an infantry line that was able to march in close enough order to quickly form a shield wall, supported on its flanks by cavalry forces. The idea was that it would quickly close with and encircle the enemy,[2] and given how hilly and forested the region was, such aggressive, straightforward, tactics were less hindered by enemy archery. These tactics also best befit his force composition.
The conquest of the region was simple enough, those warlords who did not kneel tended to prefer attacking each other rather than organizing resistance against the expedition. Instead the primary threat faced by the expedition came from the Bulgars, who seemed interested in testing the merits of those who had replaced the Avars, and launched a series of probing raids into the region. Julius was sure to give a strong showing, even changing his attire to include a bearskin as to cut a more imposing figure.
During these campaigns the assistance of the local populace proved decisive. The populace wanted the raiders driven away, and as Julius’ correspondence with the King records that “the majority populace of these lands is Latin speaking and God-fearing” it is likely that they felt a degree of kinship with Julius, or vice-versa. They provided his army with food, shelter, intelligence, and when possible they joined him. They would not have been a qualitative replacement for his legions. However quantity has its own qualities, as exhibited by the fact that a Grecian in the court of Khan Telerig records a report that one of the raids was defeated by “a shield wall that stretched beyond ones peripheral vision when looked at from the distance an arrow flies.”[3] Julius’ own reports claim that the cavalry did most of the work, and that the locals were only useful in extending the flanks to prevent encirclement and give the impression that he commanded greater numbers that he actually did.
Evidently the strategy worked as the raids tapered off, and Julius set about establishing his administration of the “Julian March”.
His administration turned out to mimic that of the King in many ways, with much of the power being divvied up amongst his followers. He divvied the east up amongst the Avars as many Avars lived in this region. He selected Gilău as his own personal land, and granted the lands immediately around Gilău, and the lands of latin peoples to his legionary companions, ensuring that he and his most trusted allies held the middle of the land. The rest of the land was given to the many Slavic nobles, most of whom were of Pannonian rather than Carantanian extraction.
Notably he was much more of an absentee lord than the king was, he spent much of his time in the court of the King, visiting old friends in Verona, and even spent some time in Constantinople, where his experience against Bulgar raiders was sought.[4] As a result, Gilău remained little more than a small town, notably only for the fact that it’s fortified manor received tribute from the rest of the march. Additionally on Julius’ initiative it had received a new church and a large Vineyard, which was originally meant to be an olive farm before he realized that they wouldn’t grow there. The fact that he picked the location on the basis that it was the least ravaged by war, and that his only improvement was an attempt to Italianize the place, should indicate just how much interest he had spending his share of the loot on improving his holdings.
The Carantanian Legions:
As much as classicists tend to turn their noses up at their mention, the legions are ubiquitous to the military history of the Kingdom of Carantania. In their original form, they were no more than town militias formed under the circumstances of Hotimir’s charters. That the merchants would be the ones to establish them is also to be expected, under Lombard rule they had been required to serve, and their profession meant that they had the greatest interest in ensuring that the countryside remain free of banditry.
Had it not been for the pact made between the Veronese and Hotimir the legion would have likely remain just an oddly named town watch. The Avar War of 760 saw their first deployment to the frontier and lead to the understanding that the further the frontier was pushed the more opportunities would be opened to the merchant class. Under this direction the self styled legion began taking itself more seriously, drilling more often, and maintaining a stock of provisions should an expedition to the frontier be required. The success of the legion, and the prospect that it would earn its city the King’s favouritism lead to the cities of Treviso and Padua replicating it, right down to being called “Legio I [female given name that starts with the same letter as its city]”. The establishment of rival legions led to a new morale factor, the legions became very competitive, to not at least equal the performance of their peers was to accept the inferiority of their city.
The Legions also benefitted from the fact that, at least initially, the merchants dominated them. The merchants had more disposable income, and thus tended to own superior equipment. Though they carried the same sort of bows, shields, and spears as one may expect of soldiers in the period, mail was “ubiquitous amongst even their archers”, and a not insignificant percentage of the infantry owned swords in addition to their spears. This town militia could also field a formidable cavalry detachment. As merchants they were also used to travelling for long periods of time, and had more than enough carts at their disposal to carry supplies for their campaigns. Additionally their profession meant that they had some off with which they could drill, unlike farmers who had to devote most of their time to their fields. All of these marginal advantages add up to create a force that was certainly a cut above most of their foes.
Probably the most peculiar aspect of legions is their exclusively female naming. Unfortunately the actual reason for this oddity is quite pedestrian; an influential member of the Merchant Ministry of Verona had used some bribes and stocked up brownie points to have it named after his wife. The idea that it was meant to be to remind the men of the legion of their homes and wives seems to be a post-facto construction.[5] One that may have been established early enough to have convinced the other cities to follow suit.
[1] Couldn’t find a given size for the Avar Khaganate, so I just subtracted the area of the Kingdom of Croatia from the Kingdom of Hungary. It’s probably not exact, but probably good enough as a ballpark answer.
[2] If this sounds like Shaka’s Bullhorn formation, that would be because it basically is exactly that.
[3] Certainly an exaggeration.
[4] Evidently what ever they wanted of his was undignified for a man of his caliber, as the returned after a mere month, and sent a note to his king detailing some perceived failings of the Empire’s defenses which was appended with a list of provisions required for a joint Carantanian-Bulgar invasion of Thrace. Unfortunately this letter does not survive in full, though the King’s reply, “please refrain from starting a war with the Romans” does.
[5] Sort like how red was picked for the New Model Army because it was cheap, and later on misinformation about it “making the soldiers less able to see the blood they shed” began to spread.
Bleh that took way longer than it should have sorry for the wait. Hopefully I can manage at least an update per-month from now on.
Next update will be what the rest of the world has been up to as well as some matters that I have alluded to in this part and past parts. Before then I think I may revise this timeline, not changing any details, but perhaps explaining some things better.
Also, does anyone know of a good topographic map without borders and with major rivers accentuated? As you can see the map I have been using doesn’t even work with this update that only concerned a single kingdom.
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Certainly most proper cities would have some sort of force, though they may not be called legions or have the same arrangements with the king. In particular I imagine Trst and Pulj offering semi-professional naval services in place of a Verona-model Legion.
As to whether they would be a counterbalance for the nobility, possibly. They could also end up becoming nobility by another name. The nobles could try to get their own legions through being generous patrons to a particular city. To be completely honest I'm not entirely sure how exactly this will pan out.
Subbed!
Not sure how I missed this one.
Are you planning to take this as far as the arrival of the Magyars?
Not sure how I missed this one.
Are you planning to take this as far as the arrival of the Magyars?
Good to have you along.
I have every intention of taking this to the modern day. Let's just hope I can increase my rate of production somewhere along the line.
5. Roman Emperors, Hordes, and Door to Door Merchants of Death: The Outward Ripples of Carantanian Ascendancy
Carolingian Ascendancy:
The Franks had long since been the foremost kingdom in the west, Pepin the Short’s intervention in Lombardy had been a mere show of force compared to some of the kingdom’s previous exploits. The Frankish kingdom did have an Achilles heel, its adherence to Salic Law meant that the Kingdom was divided amongst the heirs of the deceased king. Whether king Charles assassinated his brother in order to reunify the kingdom cannot be known for certain, but that is certainly the assumption under which Gerberga, Carloman’s wife, fled to Pavia. There she and her sons were welcomed into the court of Desiderius, a Lombard who had overthrown Ratchis’ successor while Valtunk’s kingdom was seemingly on the verge of collapse in 768.
Desiderius understood that the Lombard Kingdom could not hope to prosper with both the Franks and Carantanians ready to defend the Pope’s territory at a moment’s notice. He first sought alliance with the Franks by offering his daughter in marriage to Charles, the Franks after all did not occupy Lombard lands and were thus preferable, but when Charles had the marriage annulled it became apparent that arranging an alliance with one of the two would not be possible. For this reason, he sought confrontation with Charles while the Carantanians were guaranteed not to intervene. In very rapid succession he proclaimed an anti-Pope, recognized Charles’s nephews’ claim to the Frankish throne, and occupied Ferrara. Charles initially did not respond, he still had many matters in his own kingdom to attend to following his brother’s passing, and Desiderius took this as an opportunity to begin a campaign of expansion at the Pope’s expense. Finally, in 773 Charles crossed the Alps with a Frankish host intent on curbing Desiderius’ excesses. By 774 Pavia was besieged, and as if that were not enough, the Avars collapsed and Valtunk, their vanquisher, rode for Milan after first visiting Ljubljana and Krnski Grad.
The Carantanian contribution to this campaign is rightfully viewed as an embarrassment. Valtunk entered the city to negotiate its surrender, as he had not the troops to besiege it and its population had revolted against its lord. The Milanese were actually quite eager for this prospect and hoped to be annexed as both shelter from the Franks and because they knew of the city charters his father had granted. When he replied that he only wanted to restore Ratchis’ heir to the Lombard throne he was thrown into a dungeon. As many of their men had yet to return from Pannonia, even the king’s legions were unable to come to his aid. Instead Charles was forced to break the siege of Pavia to conduct a rescue, as it was believed that the rebellious Milanese could not be trusted not to kill Valtunk. The siege was quite quick, with the Milanese quickly realizing the futility of their resistance.
It is recorded that Charles had personally overseen Valtunk’s release, as he had heard many tales of the King’s war with the Avars and accordingly had great respect for the man. Valtunk would accompany Charles for the remainder of the Lombard campaign, contributing a contingent of Avar horse archers to the vast Frankish host. The decisive action would instead be fought the following spring in then plains between Pavia and Milan. Valtunk’s cavalry succeeded in luring away a large portion of the Lombard cavalry, and the Lombard’s left flank was turned by a fierce attack by Charles’ uncle Bernard, during which Theodicius of Spoleto was killed.[1] The battle was a decisive defeat for Desiderius, who had only taken the offensive as he thought Charles had broken the siege out of weakness. Instead he was lead in chains through his former capital, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento had reestablished their independence of the Lombard crown.
As the Lombard King, Charles inherited Tuscia and what remained of Neustria, he had desired to also assert his authority over the two southern duchies, but the Pope did not wish to be surrounded again, and it was clear that Theodicius of Spoleto and Arechis II of Benevento had sufficiently different goals that the two would not be uniting to throw off the Frankish yoke. Instead the primary threat was posed by Desiderius’ son Adalgis who along with Gerberga and Desiderata[2] fled to Constantinople following the defeat of Desiderius. In 787 he would return with a Grecian army to retake the Lombard kingdom, however upon landing in Southern Italy this force was defeated by Grimoald III[3] who then went on to lay siege to Naples.
As though relations between the Franks and the Grecians were not stressed enough, in 800 Charles was crowned Roman Emperor, a direct challenge to Irene of Athens. This divide would define the diplomacy of the era, and separated the meditereanian world into opposing camp for the remainder of the reign of Charles and his son.[4]
Valtunk and Charles maintained an amicable relationship. While they never campaigned together again, they kept in correspondence, the topic of which was often the Fossa Carolina, system of canals and lakes that linked the Rhine and Danube rivers greatly increasing the wealth of Pannonia. Additionally, Valtunk aligned Carantania with the Franks in their dispute with Constantinople, and accordingly sought out alliance with the Bulgars. For this reason, he is sometimes counted as one of Charles’ paladins.[5] Charles’ passing in 814 meant the ascension of Louis the Pious. Relations between the two were not as cordial as they had been under Charles, but Louis did receive a small subsidy from Valtunk to aid in his first civil war.
All Mesopotamia Set Ablaze:
The records of the Magyars in the land of Etelkoz are not well recorded. What is known is that that the came under increasingly frequent attack from Avars and Bulgarians from 760 onwards, and that by 780 they had vacated the land.
They next re-enter the written record in 785, when Abbasid scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan notes that:
There has been much concern about an incursion into the northern frontier of the Caliphate. A band of northern tribesmen have appeared to come to the aid of the Zoroastrian rebels of Tabaristan. They have pillaged a great swath of the region and have thus far bested the forces sent to dislodge them from the Mugan Plain. Their raids have thus far carried them south of Mosul, Allah forbid they make any more headway, I fear Kufa isn’t prepared for a siege.
Kufa was spared the Magyar sabre, but their raids would take them to the environs of Gaza[5], Basra, Isfahan, Trapezus, and Tarsos. So great was the devastation wrought by the invading nomads that a fragmentary source from late 8th century Baghdad complains that, “The city smells of a million additional unwashed bodies. It is as though the entirety of Mesopotamia has taken shelter behind our walls.” An interesting effect of this movement was the spread of Muʿtazila ideas to the country sides, as those taking refuge in cities were often subjected to the scholastic culture of Baghdad and Basra.
The frequency and range of these raids was only made possible by the relative wealth of the Fertile Crescent. Each raid returned with large amounts of plunder, plunder which tempted other central Asian tribes to participate. It was not long before the Kazars too began sending raiding parties south as to not cede their hegemony to the Magyars.
This northern raiding was not unchecked; many collections of raiders were cut down while trying to return to their lands while encumbered by their loot. The Abbasids also sought to counter this nomadic threat by incorporating many more Turkish Mamluks into their military, and the Armenian Theme proved to still be the foremost defensive district of the Grecians. By the mid 800s the frontier with the Magyars had settled, their kingdom encompassing Tabaristan, Caucasian Albania, and some of the eastern Armenian Highland.
Persian writing of this period often refers to them as “Neo Parthians”, a reference to the past non-Persian non-Zoroastrian tribe that had driven a previous non-Persian empire from their lands. Some seemingly hoped that these people could be made into Neo Sasanians, and there seems to have been a great effort on the part of Tabaristan’s Magi to infiltrate the court of Kaghan Dursac. Armenian and Iberian missionaries also had a presence in his court, and some Muʿtazila scholars later joined these. It seemed that the “Refugee King” of the Magyars was content to retain his own Tengri faith while engaging in some degree of syncretism.
On the topic of Kaghan Dursac, he is often considered to be in the running for history’s richest men, as his Yurt was recorded to have been made from fine purple dyed silk, with the wooden frame coated in gold leaf. So opulent was he that he is recorded to have given the Kazzar Kaghan enough gold to hire and outfit a massive army with which to fight the Bulgar-Carantanian alliance, saying that “for me acquiring wealth is only a matter of stooping down to gather it.”
Twilight of the Heptarchy:
The near east was not the only region that was confronted with raiders in this period. In 793 the abbey on Lindisfarne was attacked by group of Scandinavian tribesmen. This assault by an alien people was big news that disturbed the people of Northumbria, but further afield it went unnoticed. The loot brought back did not go unnoticed in the land of the attackers. More attacks followed, striking targets up and down the coasts and even striking deep inland, culminating in a colossal invasion later in the century. It was these people against whom Charles would spend his last days campaigning against, and in spite of managing to take Jutland it is these people who would define the coming age. The Viking Age had begun and nowhere was beyond their reach.
The last part of that would be proven true when in 859 their raids took them into the Mediterranean, and the following year raiders attacked Luni, Pisa, and Fiesole in Italy. This would be when the Viking threat first entered into the peripheral territories of Carantania, and two years after that the first combat between Carantanian and Viking would occur during the Steppe War.
The World at the time of Charles’ death.[6]
[1] Ha! This timeline there’s no ambiguity about when he died!
[2] Charles’ former wife.
[3] Son of Arechis II
[4] More on that next time, but for this update it’s worth mentioning that this division provided additional justification for Beneventan aggression against the Grecians.
[5] Now I just need to make sure to butterfly Type-Moon out of existence…
[6]I’m sorry for subjecting you to the worst worlda on this site.
edit: Huge thanks to @Aqua817 for making a worlda for me
---
AN: [original worlda for reference]
>be me
>promise to give an update a month
>professors give an assignment every week
>getting to the end of the term the weekly crap lets up
>only have 2 exams, you can finally work on the TL
>because you only have 2 exams you instead have 7 papers due in the last week
>year is done
>fall ill
>no energy to do anything
>finally finish the written part
>“ok making a worlda doesn’t look too hard”
>4 hours later you’re just pleased that it doesn’t look absolutely terrible when zoomed out
I’m sorry this took so long, hopefully the rest of the break is more productive. As always if you think something’s off please let me know.
The Franks had long since been the foremost kingdom in the west, Pepin the Short’s intervention in Lombardy had been a mere show of force compared to some of the kingdom’s previous exploits. The Frankish kingdom did have an Achilles heel, its adherence to Salic Law meant that the Kingdom was divided amongst the heirs of the deceased king. Whether king Charles assassinated his brother in order to reunify the kingdom cannot be known for certain, but that is certainly the assumption under which Gerberga, Carloman’s wife, fled to Pavia. There she and her sons were welcomed into the court of Desiderius, a Lombard who had overthrown Ratchis’ successor while Valtunk’s kingdom was seemingly on the verge of collapse in 768.
Desiderius understood that the Lombard Kingdom could not hope to prosper with both the Franks and Carantanians ready to defend the Pope’s territory at a moment’s notice. He first sought alliance with the Franks by offering his daughter in marriage to Charles, the Franks after all did not occupy Lombard lands and were thus preferable, but when Charles had the marriage annulled it became apparent that arranging an alliance with one of the two would not be possible. For this reason, he sought confrontation with Charles while the Carantanians were guaranteed not to intervene. In very rapid succession he proclaimed an anti-Pope, recognized Charles’s nephews’ claim to the Frankish throne, and occupied Ferrara. Charles initially did not respond, he still had many matters in his own kingdom to attend to following his brother’s passing, and Desiderius took this as an opportunity to begin a campaign of expansion at the Pope’s expense. Finally, in 773 Charles crossed the Alps with a Frankish host intent on curbing Desiderius’ excesses. By 774 Pavia was besieged, and as if that were not enough, the Avars collapsed and Valtunk, their vanquisher, rode for Milan after first visiting Ljubljana and Krnski Grad.
The Carantanian contribution to this campaign is rightfully viewed as an embarrassment. Valtunk entered the city to negotiate its surrender, as he had not the troops to besiege it and its population had revolted against its lord. The Milanese were actually quite eager for this prospect and hoped to be annexed as both shelter from the Franks and because they knew of the city charters his father had granted. When he replied that he only wanted to restore Ratchis’ heir to the Lombard throne he was thrown into a dungeon. As many of their men had yet to return from Pannonia, even the king’s legions were unable to come to his aid. Instead Charles was forced to break the siege of Pavia to conduct a rescue, as it was believed that the rebellious Milanese could not be trusted not to kill Valtunk. The siege was quite quick, with the Milanese quickly realizing the futility of their resistance.
It is recorded that Charles had personally overseen Valtunk’s release, as he had heard many tales of the King’s war with the Avars and accordingly had great respect for the man. Valtunk would accompany Charles for the remainder of the Lombard campaign, contributing a contingent of Avar horse archers to the vast Frankish host. The decisive action would instead be fought the following spring in then plains between Pavia and Milan. Valtunk’s cavalry succeeded in luring away a large portion of the Lombard cavalry, and the Lombard’s left flank was turned by a fierce attack by Charles’ uncle Bernard, during which Theodicius of Spoleto was killed.[1] The battle was a decisive defeat for Desiderius, who had only taken the offensive as he thought Charles had broken the siege out of weakness. Instead he was lead in chains through his former capital, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento had reestablished their independence of the Lombard crown.
As the Lombard King, Charles inherited Tuscia and what remained of Neustria, he had desired to also assert his authority over the two southern duchies, but the Pope did not wish to be surrounded again, and it was clear that Theodicius of Spoleto and Arechis II of Benevento had sufficiently different goals that the two would not be uniting to throw off the Frankish yoke. Instead the primary threat was posed by Desiderius’ son Adalgis who along with Gerberga and Desiderata[2] fled to Constantinople following the defeat of Desiderius. In 787 he would return with a Grecian army to retake the Lombard kingdom, however upon landing in Southern Italy this force was defeated by Grimoald III[3] who then went on to lay siege to Naples.
As though relations between the Franks and the Grecians were not stressed enough, in 800 Charles was crowned Roman Emperor, a direct challenge to Irene of Athens. This divide would define the diplomacy of the era, and separated the meditereanian world into opposing camp for the remainder of the reign of Charles and his son.[4]
Valtunk and Charles maintained an amicable relationship. While they never campaigned together again, they kept in correspondence, the topic of which was often the Fossa Carolina, system of canals and lakes that linked the Rhine and Danube rivers greatly increasing the wealth of Pannonia. Additionally, Valtunk aligned Carantania with the Franks in their dispute with Constantinople, and accordingly sought out alliance with the Bulgars. For this reason, he is sometimes counted as one of Charles’ paladins.[5] Charles’ passing in 814 meant the ascension of Louis the Pious. Relations between the two were not as cordial as they had been under Charles, but Louis did receive a small subsidy from Valtunk to aid in his first civil war.
All Mesopotamia Set Ablaze:
The records of the Magyars in the land of Etelkoz are not well recorded. What is known is that that the came under increasingly frequent attack from Avars and Bulgarians from 760 onwards, and that by 780 they had vacated the land.
They next re-enter the written record in 785, when Abbasid scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan notes that:
There has been much concern about an incursion into the northern frontier of the Caliphate. A band of northern tribesmen have appeared to come to the aid of the Zoroastrian rebels of Tabaristan. They have pillaged a great swath of the region and have thus far bested the forces sent to dislodge them from the Mugan Plain. Their raids have thus far carried them south of Mosul, Allah forbid they make any more headway, I fear Kufa isn’t prepared for a siege.
Kufa was spared the Magyar sabre, but their raids would take them to the environs of Gaza[5], Basra, Isfahan, Trapezus, and Tarsos. So great was the devastation wrought by the invading nomads that a fragmentary source from late 8th century Baghdad complains that, “The city smells of a million additional unwashed bodies. It is as though the entirety of Mesopotamia has taken shelter behind our walls.” An interesting effect of this movement was the spread of Muʿtazila ideas to the country sides, as those taking refuge in cities were often subjected to the scholastic culture of Baghdad and Basra.
The frequency and range of these raids was only made possible by the relative wealth of the Fertile Crescent. Each raid returned with large amounts of plunder, plunder which tempted other central Asian tribes to participate. It was not long before the Kazars too began sending raiding parties south as to not cede their hegemony to the Magyars.
This northern raiding was not unchecked; many collections of raiders were cut down while trying to return to their lands while encumbered by their loot. The Abbasids also sought to counter this nomadic threat by incorporating many more Turkish Mamluks into their military, and the Armenian Theme proved to still be the foremost defensive district of the Grecians. By the mid 800s the frontier with the Magyars had settled, their kingdom encompassing Tabaristan, Caucasian Albania, and some of the eastern Armenian Highland.
Persian writing of this period often refers to them as “Neo Parthians”, a reference to the past non-Persian non-Zoroastrian tribe that had driven a previous non-Persian empire from their lands. Some seemingly hoped that these people could be made into Neo Sasanians, and there seems to have been a great effort on the part of Tabaristan’s Magi to infiltrate the court of Kaghan Dursac. Armenian and Iberian missionaries also had a presence in his court, and some Muʿtazila scholars later joined these. It seemed that the “Refugee King” of the Magyars was content to retain his own Tengri faith while engaging in some degree of syncretism.
On the topic of Kaghan Dursac, he is often considered to be in the running for history’s richest men, as his Yurt was recorded to have been made from fine purple dyed silk, with the wooden frame coated in gold leaf. So opulent was he that he is recorded to have given the Kazzar Kaghan enough gold to hire and outfit a massive army with which to fight the Bulgar-Carantanian alliance, saying that “for me acquiring wealth is only a matter of stooping down to gather it.”
Twilight of the Heptarchy:
The near east was not the only region that was confronted with raiders in this period. In 793 the abbey on Lindisfarne was attacked by group of Scandinavian tribesmen. This assault by an alien people was big news that disturbed the people of Northumbria, but further afield it went unnoticed. The loot brought back did not go unnoticed in the land of the attackers. More attacks followed, striking targets up and down the coasts and even striking deep inland, culminating in a colossal invasion later in the century. It was these people against whom Charles would spend his last days campaigning against, and in spite of managing to take Jutland it is these people who would define the coming age. The Viking Age had begun and nowhere was beyond their reach.
The last part of that would be proven true when in 859 their raids took them into the Mediterranean, and the following year raiders attacked Luni, Pisa, and Fiesole in Italy. This would be when the Viking threat first entered into the peripheral territories of Carantania, and two years after that the first combat between Carantanian and Viking would occur during the Steppe War.
The World at the time of Charles’ death.[6]
[1] Ha! This timeline there’s no ambiguity about when he died!
[2] Charles’ former wife.
[3] Son of Arechis II
[4] More on that next time, but for this update it’s worth mentioning that this division provided additional justification for Beneventan aggression against the Grecians.
[5] Now I just need to make sure to butterfly Type-Moon out of existence…
[6]
edit: Huge thanks to @Aqua817 for making a worlda for me
---
AN: [original worlda for reference]
>be me
>promise to give an update a month
>professors give an assignment every week
>getting to the end of the term the weekly crap lets up
>only have 2 exams, you can finally work on the TL
>because you only have 2 exams you instead have 7 papers due in the last week
>year is done
>fall ill
>no energy to do anything
>finally finish the written part
>“ok making a worlda doesn’t look too hard”
>4 hours later you’re just pleased that it doesn’t look absolutely terrible when zoomed out
I’m sorry this took so long, hopefully the rest of the break is more productive. As always if you think something’s off please let me know.
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6. A generation wasted? : The Developments of a post-Valtunk Carantania
The Passing and succession of Valtunk:
In December of 830 Valtunk passed away at what must have been an exceedingly old age. The last years of his life had largely been spent in Ljubljana where, in light of his near total lack of control beyond the city’s walls, he had taken to micro managing every detail of the city’s construction. He was also lacking physical power, in the last decades of his life he was unable to ride a horse and had to sit in a cart when he wanted to tour his city. The term “Impairment” is actually derived from this trivia. It was born from a misconception that the strong and wise king had held the kingdom together while he was healthy, and that the massive decentralization was a result of his failing health. As the Ljubljana Cathedral was not yet complete, he was instead buried in Krnski Grad near the graves of his uncle and cousin. His successor was his son, Pribislav.
Autonomous wars: The Steppe War
Pribislav would with some justification be considered to be an immensely weak ruler. On the whole he never sought to reassert any royal power, nor did he give much direction to the kingdom’s relations with other polities. He was wholly content to let his vassals do as they wished and get bossed around by his allies.
The Steppe War is an excellent example of the latter. The Bulgars wished to wrestle control of the Pontic–Caspian steppe away from the Khazars, and they had found the fortress of Sarkel to be beyond their means to take. As such Carantania and its legions were called upon for the task. The assembled force, only numbering three thousand or so, set out in good cheer in 832, after all only a generation ago their forefathers had marched down from the alps and taken the whole of Pannonia for themselves. Now they too marched down from the mountains[1] to take the whole of Europe right up to the Urals. The campaign that followed was not a disaster by any means, but it also failed to produce any great triumph, instead it only yielded the start of the protracted blood bath on the steppes.
One thing in the expedition’s favour was the presence of Bayan the Younger, the second son of Bayan, and a man who had in his youth served as a retainer for the elderly Marquess Julius. In the opening campaign of the Steppe War he showed tactical brilliance reminiscent of his former liege,
“The scouts reported the approach of a large Khazar host and there was great concern amongst the legionaries of Vindobona who carried no traditions of the Avar war. Bayan the Younger took up a strong position with his left flank anchored on the Dnieper. Seeing this defensive formation, the Avars were furious, as they wished to fight a more traditional steppe battle. He responded by accusing them of just wanting the mobility needed to run away while leaving the infantry to be slaughtered. He then ordered them to fight on foot to which they agreed having been so brow beaten. As the Khazars closed in the genius of the order became clear to all, the dismounted archers fired faster, farther, and more accurately than their mounted counterparts, and the Khazars were forced to turn tail and run under the merciless hail. As a result the legionaries no longer feared the Khazars and the Avars now obeyed the younger Bayan as they had his father.
The battle did have its costs though, the archers had expended most of their arrows while the enemy had barely gotten a shot off. This was to be remedied with a night raid into the enemy camp to capture quivers, a plan that greatly pleased the Avars. Who actually fought each other over the right to partake in the raid. Their enthusiasm was not for not, as later that night the party returned reporting not only the capture of many quivers, but that they had burned the leader’s yurt with him inside. Knowing that such opportunities were fleeting bayan awoke his own camp and in the pitch black of the night marched to be east of the enemy camp. As morning broke he committed the legionaries and what followed was nothing less than a massacre.”
-Annals of the Steppe War Vol 1
The expedition to Sarkel would be the high point of the conflict, its fall and sack came swiftly with the assistance legionaries of Vindobona. Unfortunately, rather than taking the city for themselves as to secure the whole of the steppes west of the fortress the Bulgars and Carantanians were instead content to merely loot and raze the fortress to the ground, ensuring that there would be no meaningful victory on the steppes. The sack also demonstrated the limits of the Christianization that occurred in Valtunk’s era, as some Avars took it upon themselves to single out a number of Jewish Khazars “in retaliation for their role in the murder of Tengri’s son the carpenter god”.
Autonomous wars: Seven Against Venice
Mirroring the situation in the east, Pribislav soon allowed allies to drag him into a war in the west. More specifically, he had sought alliance with the Croatians, and secured a marriage between his son Semik and a Croatian Princess who brought the mouth of the Rječina river as her dowry. In exchange the Pibislav agreed to wage war on Venice, a maritime rival of Croatia, a pest controlling the mouths of many rivers flowing from some of Carantania’s wealthiest lands, and an outpost of the Grecians, justifying the war in the wider conflict between Rome and Constantinople. The conflict would later be known as the “Seven against Venice” both in romantic memory of the classical play “Seven Against Thebes”, and in reference to the seven prominent towns and cities which coalesced against Venice; Ljubliana, Verona, Treviso, Paudua, Pula, Trst, and Nin[2].
Much like the steppe war, victory would not be forth coming in this endevour. The Venetians, though on paper overwhelmed, conducted an inspired defense of their lagoon, with their ships winning a number of skirmishes against the poorly organized blockade. It would not be long before the tensions between the rival cities and frustrations over the lack of progress boiled over. Skirmishes broke out between the three senior legions, and soon a pitched battle erupted. The exact details of the engagement are obscured by many conflicting accounts, but most agree that Legio I Veronica had driven the others from the field of battle prior to the King’s order for all forces to disband and return to their homes. The “siege” of Venice was broken and the war was more or less unilaterally ended.
A Picture of Pannonia: The Panther Lazing on the Veranda
While this was happening notable social and economic developments took place in a Pannonia which had finally settled down after the conquest. The construction of the Fossa Carolina had brought a new level of economic activity to the banks of the Danube, especially the east bank which lacked even Roman ruins. The new trade network which stretched from the North Sea to the Black brought not only goods, but merchants, and even some migrants. The “Danubian Franks” as they would come to be called can trace their origin to this period. They were also joined by Italians seeking larger plots of land, and most numerous of all, Slavs descending down from the Alps.
This new economic activity also caught the attention of some from even further afield. Pannonia was toured by the writer, diplomat, and priest, Levan the Kartvelian, who had been sent by the Magyar Khagan to examine the land’s potential as a trading partner, and more pressingly, to examine the kingdom which had been helping the Bulgars against the Magyar’s allies. In his writings he frequently compared things to cats, particularly big ones, such as his description of the battles between Magyars and Turkomen as being “like lions fighting tigers”. Of Carantania he made a somewhat less flattering comparison.
“The Carantanians have taken the Panther as their symbol, a type of super leopard which does not actually exist. I think a more fitting cat would be the little Lynx, or perhaps even an overgrown feral cat. Perhaps they were once greater than they are now, but at present they are but mere farmers lazing around on their verandas[3] while allowing Franks and Romans to handle trade.”
-On the Carantanians
Levan’s embassy was received in Ljubljana in 840, where he was somewhat more impressed with the city, and he was able to bear witness to an important episode in the city’s court politics.
“Mojmir of Moravia had initiated a war with the Franks over the lands of some people further west[4], and Pribislav the Weak lacked neither the integrity to go to his vassal’s aid nor the spine to force him to back down. Instead he resorted to using his daughter to buy the compliance of Mojmir.”
-On the Carantanians
Levan’s words may have been a factor in the Khagan Dursac II’s decision to commit a large force to the aid of the Khazars, including a significant force of Paulician auxiliaries who fought in the Grecian style and proved quite the challenge for the Legio I Vittoria[5]
Levan and the Magyar Embassy
Onwards: A Last Revisionist View of Pribislav
The reign of Pribislav has long since been looked down on, though there is a recent trend to view his reign more favorably. Now the trend is to view him as the one who set the foundation for the eventual end of the impairment. In doing very little, and only calling upon his vassals when it was in their interest[6], he was able to transform the throne from a prolific debtor to a net creditor. In allow seeming disasters like the infighting amongst the legions and the seemingly endless Steppe War, he let his vassals bleed themselves dry while he conserved and built royal power. It is very easy to see the merit in the argument that he was seeking to empower his son. Given the promise Prince Semik displayed both in court and on the Steppe it is likely that he would have made good use of his father’s gift, and it suffices to say that the kingdom was robbed when he died an early death due to a stray arrow catching him in the eye in 846. That said it’s not like Rastislav squandered his father-in-law’s gift following his ascension in 848.
A romanticized rendition of Rastislav’s royal entry to Ljubljana after his coronation in Krnski Grad
[1] The Carpathians this time
[2] The Croatian Capital
[3] Likely a reference to the areas shaded by the overhang of the frontier fortifications, which would have had little other use given the relative degree of peace at the time.
[4] Meaning the Bohemians
[5] the legion of Vindobona
[6] such as sending the Avars (who sought to maintain their steppe warfare traditions) and Vindobonans (who sought prestige for their new legion) to the steppes and sending the Italian cities (who were fed up with Venice’s mere existence) after Venice.
---
Yup I was serious way back when I said I'd rope in Greater Moravia stuff. Also given the apparent hype around my choice of Magyar settlements I guess I'll have to bring them up more often going forward. I think that for the next few updates I'll be alternating between a tight focus on Carantania like this and a wider scope like the previous update.* I hope that sounds good.
*Also, since that means next update will largely concern the same areas as the previous one [The Frankish Realm(s?), the Magyars and Abbassids in the middle east, the Dutchy of Benevento which controls most of Southern Italy (including Naples!), and the Vikings thrashing England out of existence] feel free to leave any suggestions for developments there or things you want me to elaborate on. Alternatively you can suggest some other area you'd like to see me cover (Spain? The Eastern Romans?).
In December of 830 Valtunk passed away at what must have been an exceedingly old age. The last years of his life had largely been spent in Ljubljana where, in light of his near total lack of control beyond the city’s walls, he had taken to micro managing every detail of the city’s construction. He was also lacking physical power, in the last decades of his life he was unable to ride a horse and had to sit in a cart when he wanted to tour his city. The term “Impairment” is actually derived from this trivia. It was born from a misconception that the strong and wise king had held the kingdom together while he was healthy, and that the massive decentralization was a result of his failing health. As the Ljubljana Cathedral was not yet complete, he was instead buried in Krnski Grad near the graves of his uncle and cousin. His successor was his son, Pribislav.
Autonomous wars: The Steppe War
Pribislav would with some justification be considered to be an immensely weak ruler. On the whole he never sought to reassert any royal power, nor did he give much direction to the kingdom’s relations with other polities. He was wholly content to let his vassals do as they wished and get bossed around by his allies.
The Steppe War is an excellent example of the latter. The Bulgars wished to wrestle control of the Pontic–Caspian steppe away from the Khazars, and they had found the fortress of Sarkel to be beyond their means to take. As such Carantania and its legions were called upon for the task. The assembled force, only numbering three thousand or so, set out in good cheer in 832, after all only a generation ago their forefathers had marched down from the alps and taken the whole of Pannonia for themselves. Now they too marched down from the mountains[1] to take the whole of Europe right up to the Urals. The campaign that followed was not a disaster by any means, but it also failed to produce any great triumph, instead it only yielded the start of the protracted blood bath on the steppes.
One thing in the expedition’s favour was the presence of Bayan the Younger, the second son of Bayan, and a man who had in his youth served as a retainer for the elderly Marquess Julius. In the opening campaign of the Steppe War he showed tactical brilliance reminiscent of his former liege,
“The scouts reported the approach of a large Khazar host and there was great concern amongst the legionaries of Vindobona who carried no traditions of the Avar war. Bayan the Younger took up a strong position with his left flank anchored on the Dnieper. Seeing this defensive formation, the Avars were furious, as they wished to fight a more traditional steppe battle. He responded by accusing them of just wanting the mobility needed to run away while leaving the infantry to be slaughtered. He then ordered them to fight on foot to which they agreed having been so brow beaten. As the Khazars closed in the genius of the order became clear to all, the dismounted archers fired faster, farther, and more accurately than their mounted counterparts, and the Khazars were forced to turn tail and run under the merciless hail. As a result the legionaries no longer feared the Khazars and the Avars now obeyed the younger Bayan as they had his father.
The battle did have its costs though, the archers had expended most of their arrows while the enemy had barely gotten a shot off. This was to be remedied with a night raid into the enemy camp to capture quivers, a plan that greatly pleased the Avars. Who actually fought each other over the right to partake in the raid. Their enthusiasm was not for not, as later that night the party returned reporting not only the capture of many quivers, but that they had burned the leader’s yurt with him inside. Knowing that such opportunities were fleeting bayan awoke his own camp and in the pitch black of the night marched to be east of the enemy camp. As morning broke he committed the legionaries and what followed was nothing less than a massacre.”
-Annals of the Steppe War Vol 1
The expedition to Sarkel would be the high point of the conflict, its fall and sack came swiftly with the assistance legionaries of Vindobona. Unfortunately, rather than taking the city for themselves as to secure the whole of the steppes west of the fortress the Bulgars and Carantanians were instead content to merely loot and raze the fortress to the ground, ensuring that there would be no meaningful victory on the steppes. The sack also demonstrated the limits of the Christianization that occurred in Valtunk’s era, as some Avars took it upon themselves to single out a number of Jewish Khazars “in retaliation for their role in the murder of Tengri’s son the carpenter god”.
Autonomous wars: Seven Against Venice
Mirroring the situation in the east, Pribislav soon allowed allies to drag him into a war in the west. More specifically, he had sought alliance with the Croatians, and secured a marriage between his son Semik and a Croatian Princess who brought the mouth of the Rječina river as her dowry. In exchange the Pibislav agreed to wage war on Venice, a maritime rival of Croatia, a pest controlling the mouths of many rivers flowing from some of Carantania’s wealthiest lands, and an outpost of the Grecians, justifying the war in the wider conflict between Rome and Constantinople. The conflict would later be known as the “Seven against Venice” both in romantic memory of the classical play “Seven Against Thebes”, and in reference to the seven prominent towns and cities which coalesced against Venice; Ljubliana, Verona, Treviso, Paudua, Pula, Trst, and Nin[2].
Much like the steppe war, victory would not be forth coming in this endevour. The Venetians, though on paper overwhelmed, conducted an inspired defense of their lagoon, with their ships winning a number of skirmishes against the poorly organized blockade. It would not be long before the tensions between the rival cities and frustrations over the lack of progress boiled over. Skirmishes broke out between the three senior legions, and soon a pitched battle erupted. The exact details of the engagement are obscured by many conflicting accounts, but most agree that Legio I Veronica had driven the others from the field of battle prior to the King’s order for all forces to disband and return to their homes. The “siege” of Venice was broken and the war was more or less unilaterally ended.
A Picture of Pannonia: The Panther Lazing on the Veranda
While this was happening notable social and economic developments took place in a Pannonia which had finally settled down after the conquest. The construction of the Fossa Carolina had brought a new level of economic activity to the banks of the Danube, especially the east bank which lacked even Roman ruins. The new trade network which stretched from the North Sea to the Black brought not only goods, but merchants, and even some migrants. The “Danubian Franks” as they would come to be called can trace their origin to this period. They were also joined by Italians seeking larger plots of land, and most numerous of all, Slavs descending down from the Alps.
This new economic activity also caught the attention of some from even further afield. Pannonia was toured by the writer, diplomat, and priest, Levan the Kartvelian, who had been sent by the Magyar Khagan to examine the land’s potential as a trading partner, and more pressingly, to examine the kingdom which had been helping the Bulgars against the Magyar’s allies. In his writings he frequently compared things to cats, particularly big ones, such as his description of the battles between Magyars and Turkomen as being “like lions fighting tigers”. Of Carantania he made a somewhat less flattering comparison.
“The Carantanians have taken the Panther as their symbol, a type of super leopard which does not actually exist. I think a more fitting cat would be the little Lynx, or perhaps even an overgrown feral cat. Perhaps they were once greater than they are now, but at present they are but mere farmers lazing around on their verandas[3] while allowing Franks and Romans to handle trade.”
-On the Carantanians
Levan’s embassy was received in Ljubljana in 840, where he was somewhat more impressed with the city, and he was able to bear witness to an important episode in the city’s court politics.
“Mojmir of Moravia had initiated a war with the Franks over the lands of some people further west[4], and Pribislav the Weak lacked neither the integrity to go to his vassal’s aid nor the spine to force him to back down. Instead he resorted to using his daughter to buy the compliance of Mojmir.”
-On the Carantanians
Levan’s words may have been a factor in the Khagan Dursac II’s decision to commit a large force to the aid of the Khazars, including a significant force of Paulician auxiliaries who fought in the Grecian style and proved quite the challenge for the Legio I Vittoria[5]
Levan and the Magyar Embassy
Onwards: A Last Revisionist View of Pribislav
The reign of Pribislav has long since been looked down on, though there is a recent trend to view his reign more favorably. Now the trend is to view him as the one who set the foundation for the eventual end of the impairment. In doing very little, and only calling upon his vassals when it was in their interest[6], he was able to transform the throne from a prolific debtor to a net creditor. In allow seeming disasters like the infighting amongst the legions and the seemingly endless Steppe War, he let his vassals bleed themselves dry while he conserved and built royal power. It is very easy to see the merit in the argument that he was seeking to empower his son. Given the promise Prince Semik displayed both in court and on the Steppe it is likely that he would have made good use of his father’s gift, and it suffices to say that the kingdom was robbed when he died an early death due to a stray arrow catching him in the eye in 846. That said it’s not like Rastislav squandered his father-in-law’s gift following his ascension in 848.
A romanticized rendition of Rastislav’s royal entry to Ljubljana after his coronation in Krnski Grad
[1] The Carpathians this time
[2] The Croatian Capital
[3] Likely a reference to the areas shaded by the overhang of the frontier fortifications, which would have had little other use given the relative degree of peace at the time.
[4] Meaning the Bohemians
[5] the legion of Vindobona
[6] such as sending the Avars (who sought to maintain their steppe warfare traditions) and Vindobonans (who sought prestige for their new legion) to the steppes and sending the Italian cities (who were fed up with Venice’s mere existence) after Venice.
---
Yup I was serious way back when I said I'd rope in Greater Moravia stuff. Also given the apparent hype around my choice of Magyar settlements I guess I'll have to bring them up more often going forward. I think that for the next few updates I'll be alternating between a tight focus on Carantania like this and a wider scope like the previous update.* I hope that sounds good.
*Also, since that means next update will largely concern the same areas as the previous one [The Frankish Realm(s?), the Magyars and Abbassids in the middle east, the Dutchy of Benevento which controls most of Southern Italy (including Naples!), and the Vikings thrashing England out of existence] feel free to leave any suggestions for developments there or things you want me to elaborate on. Alternatively you can suggest some other area you'd like to see me cover (Spain? The Eastern Romans?).
Fantastic work, man!
I'm very glad to see a Slovenia TL on here, and it's even better when it covers such an obscure period of history. I'm certainly following this from now on. Very interested to see how the relationship between Croatia and Carantania progresses, as well as the development of Magyar Armenia.
Keep up the good work!
I'm very glad to see a Slovenia TL on here, and it's even better when it covers such an obscure period of history. I'm certainly following this from now on. Very interested to see how the relationship between Croatia and Carantania progresses, as well as the development of Magyar Armenia.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much! Good to have you along! *scribbles down Croatia as a potential area to be covered in the next update*
7. The Curtain Rises
In the Ninth Century the world order began to drastically alter in unprecedented ways. For the sake of cohesiveness these trends will be examined through examination of urban developments.
The urban behemoths of Chang’an, Luoyang, Kyoto, Constantinople, and Baghdad dwarfed anything further north or west, often by orders of magnitude. Still, the winds of change were now blowing at gale force as will be explored in the following roundabout tour of the emerging urban areas.
Kamachia: Built Upon the Hopes and Dreams of Millions
During the Magyar’s initial raids into the middle east they had acquired plunder of all sorts. Most spectacular amongst these were the bodies of and objects associated with Christian Saints and Muslim Wali. Additionally, while aiding the population of Tabaristan they requisitioned their Atash Behram (Victorious Fire). As Tengrism had no pilgrimages, the Magyars were initially perplexed by the fact that these objects were held to be as important as they were.[1] None the less, the Magyars noticed the crowds these captured objects gathered, and eventually it was decided to concentrate them in a single place for convenience. The city of Kamachia, located near the Pirsaat river, and already the most prominent city in the Shirvan, was decided to house these objects.
Pilgrims provided the Khagan a predictable and annual source of income, not to mention a far more reliable and less risky source of income given that the Turkish slave soldiers of the Caliphate seemed to be growing more numerous by the season. However, rather than deterring the Magyars, some of their most daring raids would be to explicitly target and plunder holy sites. The best well known of which involved a plot on the part of some dissident Shia to smuggle the body of Ali out of Najaf and away to a site beyond the authority of the Caliph. This scheme fell through when the plot grew too big for its own good, though sources dispute whether it was the result of an informant amongst the plotters or the authorities simply catching on to the scheme.
Despite this failure, the impact on Kamachia was immense as noted by Levan the Kartvelian.
“Kamachia is the jewel of the whole nomadic race. I will admit to having made that statement while having yet to visit Merv or Samarkand. However, the impression I have gained from my visits to the cities of the Khazars leads me to this conclusion. Atil is fine, though it is the sort of overgrown rest stop for merchants that the Carantanians would be proud of. Balanjar and Samandar are similar, though lacking the palaces and administrative facilities that make Atil passable. In contrast Kamachia is a wonder of the world with its towering mosques, fire temples, and churches which put the mosques and fire temples to shame, the builders of whom rightly see their task as a competition to produce architectural proof of the validity of their faith. That is to say nothing of the city’s other features. Despite being somewhat out of the way, the shear volume of pilgrims have ensured that its markets and merchant’s quarter is as productive as any north of the Caucasus. The fact that the city gains the purest water, run off right from the nearby mountains, contributes to the health and livelihood of its citizens. The Persian style palaces constructed by the Khagan rival those of Baghdad. The Khagan himself has granted patronage to writers such as myself, enabling the arts to flourish in a manner not present in any nomad city, and the threat of Magyar overreaction ensures that order is maintained despite the strong presence of many competing creeds.”
-The Civilization of the Magyars
A painting depicting a scene in the Kamachia palace.
Trst: The Mouth Through Which Carantania Speaks
While the most impressive city in Carantania would certainly be Ljubljana or one of the Italian cities, Trst, or Trieste as it was still known at the time, was no slouch. With Venice continuing to command the mouths of the Adige and Piave, Trieste emerged as the Kingdom’s premiere port of trade. From its harbors ships sailed out to bring all manner of exports to the markets of the wider Mediterranean.
Normally the royal embargo on trade with the Venetians would be impossible to enforce. However it is important to remember that the Merchant ministries were the ones to field the legions which were humiliated in the debacle, as a result merchants ignoring the embargo risked penalty not only from the King but also from their associations.
Further spurring its development was the invaluable service the nearby salt evaporation ponds provided to the Kingdom’s invaluable east-west trade. The plains of Pannonia were prime grazing land, but prior to this point someone, even a fairly wealthy noble, would have had no clue. The balance of trade passing through the Ljubljana Gap was overwhelmingly tilted in the favour of the Kingdom’s Italian subjects. The sudden availability of salt, brought about by one of Pribislav’s few investments beyond the walls of Ljubljana, allowed the trade balance to improve as salt cured meats began making their way west, and also provided a new export for the city’s own merchants.
Perhaps its most significant development is the civic pride displayed by its mariners. Like the other cities acquired by Hotimir, Trieste had been gifted broad autonomy, including the right to establish its own militia. Unlike its inland sisters, Trieste’s force was neither dominated by merchants nor parading around as a “legion”. Instead, it was initially founded by fishermen, and only after the disastrous war with Venice did it begin taking itself seriously. More than that, the defeat incensed the populous and cemented a sort of siege mentality. The militia’s role expanded from merely keeping the Gulf of Trieste pirate free to escorting merchant shipping in the Adriatic, taking action against shores harboring pirates, and ultimately establishing what amounted to an international protection racket in the Adriatic, a direct challenge to Venice’s own trade operations. This was a manpower intensive operation, which could not have been maintained had it been limited to the city and its environs as the legions were. Instead it recruited from every coastal community, even subordinating the town of Pola and the town of Trsat, and its officers were known to recruit adventurous seamen from foreign territories under their “protection”.
A drawing of a Kondura, a smaller boat originating in Croatia, and one which would not be adopted until a later period, yet remains synonymous with medieval Trst.
Naples: Benedictine Bureaucratic Management
The fall of Neapolis to Grimoald III of Benevento raised some uncomfortable questions for the duchy. Specifically pertaining to who would rule it. It would be by far the largest and most important holding in the Kingdom, and whoever it was entrusted with would have immense power. Benevento however was still the political center of the dutchy for at least the time being. Taking the city for himself would require all of the Duke’s attention and would certainly leave him vulnerable to the intrigues of Benevento’s court, while entrusting it to one of his subjects would empower said subject to the point of potentially creating a power imbalance.
A solution materialized in the form of the Benedictine monks, an organization which had received a great amount of patronage from Grimoald III’s father Arechis II. Members of the clergy had held land and secular power since the decline and fall of Western Rome, so the idea was not particularly radical. However, the decision to task Paul the Deacon, a well-known figure of the court of Benevento and educator of the Duke’s mother, with the administration of the city by learned men produced far more radical results than originally intended. Paul brought with him a great many men from Montecassino and given his extensive knowledge of Roman history, set out to recreate the organization of a Municipium. The degree to which the Municipium’s structure was actually replicated is debatable at best given the number of positions filled by unelected monks during any given year, yet the efforts had some appreciable impact. An elected representative body did meet seasonally, the rule of the monks did not decay into standard despotism, the Dukes of Benevento consistently received their taxes in full on time, and the city operated in accordance with a yearly calendar which would be drawn up in the time between Christmas and the New Year. Additionally, the use of the Beneventan script in the civil administration allowed the unusual script to expand, gradually replacing other Latin derived scripts and Grecian on signage and documents within the environs of Neapolis.
The great harbour of Neapolis
Toulouse: The Guard Post of the Pyrenees
Along the path one would take while travelling from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean stands an old Roman city supplied by multiple rivers. This city, Toulouse, was already prominent as the capital of the Frankish County of Toulouse, and during the time of Charles the Great had grown even more prominent as the logistical hub and muster point for his annual expeditions to Iberia.
The great king was dead, and the Frankish realm was consumed by civil war, but Toulouse continued to grow in prominence. During the Frankish civil war the city was the seat of Pepin II, who had aligned with Lothair once it became apparent that Charles the Bald could not win on his own and that Louis the German would be unable to act while the simmering border conflict with the Carantanians lingered. In the end Charles the Bald was deposed from the throne of West Francia, and Pepin II’s Kingdom of Aquitaine was recognized by Emperor Lothiar.
During the war against Charles the Bald, Pepin had allied with a band of Vikings. Given the barbarism of his allies, Pepin badly needed to regain public faith before the people of Aquitaine decided to have him replaced. To remind the populace that he was indeed the great grandson of Charles the Great he resumed the annual musters and raids into Andalusia. Overtime these actions would bind the Spanish marches and even the Duchy of Vasconia to the Kingdom of Aquitaine. Additionally, by continuing to employ Vikings in these military operations he was able to redirect their violence away from his own people and towards other non-Christians, something which allowed him to better resist the demands of the lower nobility than Lothair or Louis the German.[2]
A painting of Toulouse from a later period.
Jorvik: A Mound of Loot Piled Atop Some Ruins
As his last act, Charles the Great had managed to conquer Jutland, stemming the Viking raids for a period. However, with his death and the subsequent Frankish civil wars Jutland was all but rid of the Frankish yoke. As Louis the German was temporarily distracted with the rise of Lothair in the west the Danes to their opportunity and engaged in the last great movement of the Migration Period. That of the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in southern Northumbria and the large groups of Danes and other Scandinavians who followed in its wake as it ravaged the countryside.
At this time the preeminent power in Britain was the domains of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex and Kent. This meant that the Scandinavian incursion was limited to north of the Thames river. However, it equally meant that the invaders had a free hand to deal with the Mercians who were in many ways still reeling from their unprecedented loss at Ellandun, and Northumbria. It is in this context that a large swath of land fell to the invaders.
York fell in 850, and it wasn’t long before the whole of Christendom was gripped by rumours of the horrendous acts carried out by the invaders congregated there. There were tales of the fate of the local populous, such as people being forced to worship Odin or being killed by having their bodies carved and sculpted into the likeness of a bird. There were also tales of a striking contrast, of great mounds of gold looted from the surrounding countryside piled up in great heaps, which the invaders would dance around in spite of the ruinous state the city remained in. Some of the more outlandish tales combined subjects of anxiety, such as one where the invaders had converted York’s church into a temple of “Baal-Odin”.
Regardless of how nightmarish or mundane the situation really was in the north, one thing was certain; Jorvik, as its new inhabitants called it, was emerging as the political centre of a powerful new polity in Britain.
The Franks Casket was long held to be an example of the heretical hybridization of Christianity and Norse paganism, present consensus however gives it an Anglo-Saxon origin.
Copanic: Making Lemonade Lemon Juice From Lemons
Further east, another frontier with another group of pagan peoples was also experiencing a development. Lothair’s advance against Louis combined with Ratislav of Carantania’s drive into Bohemia made the outcome of the Frankish Civil War a foregone conclusion. Louis the German surrendered early, hoping to at least get to keep the Bavarian throne.[3] However, it turned out that Lothair would instead post Louis “the Wend” to the newly created Sorbian March. After living out of one of Henry the Fowler’s estates in Merseburg for a while he set off and established his base of operations near the Junction of the rivers Spree and Dahme. His castle was built on an island in lake Müggelsee and it’s unclear if the Sorbian village predates its construction or if they congregated there afterwards. Louis was not fond of his subjects. He described the Sorbs as “barbarians” who lived in “the forest”. However, they seem to have liked him as, he is recorded to have been “dragged out into the forest every day for one stupid reason or another.” Exactly what he means by “the forest” is impossible to know, as he is know to have applied the term to isolated villages, towns on the banks of major rivers, Copanic itself, and on occasion, even his own courtyard. Between the poverty of his new realm, the annoyance of his subjects, and the constant need to campaign against more ornery tribes, he lived a very stressful life, in his last years there were days when his melancholy would keep him in bed.
That said, he did develop Copanic as a functional center of administration and missionary activity. Early efforts at acquiring assistance from Rome fell flat, as Carantania held a near monopoly on Slavic speaking clergy, and its leadership still bared ill will towards the former King of East Francia. With that option struck down Louis was forced to turn to Constantinople, where he was able to solicit the service of the brothers Cyril and Methodius. These missionaries brought not only the word of God with them, but they also brought the written word in the form of a strange alphabet they’d devised while working amongst the Bulgarians. In this context Copanic emerged as one of the foremost bastions of Christian proselytization, the mission would in fact be so renowned that not just the brothers, but also five of their disciples would be canonized as Saints.[4]
Lake Müggelsee today.
Holmgard: Appearing on the Map
By 860, Rurik, a Varangian (Scandinavian) had established a personal hegemony over a swath of Slavic and Finnic peoples. His power was great, sufficiently so that his men had engaged in some opportunistic raiding in the south, taking by surprise Carantanian, Bulgarian, Magyar, and Khazar forces on numerous occasions during the steppe war. Varangians also frequently served as mercenaries for the principle combatants of the conflict, particularly for the Khazars who used the Varangains and their river craft as something of a hard counter to the Carantanian’s favourite tactic of anchoring one flank on a river.
The contacts they made as mercenaries and adventurers also served to help integrate themselves into trade networks, which they quickly came to dominate. Holmgard, Rurik’s seat of power, accordingly emerged as a major[5] hub for trade. Its ideal position on the Volkhov River even gaining it the reputation of being “the Atil of the north”.
Excavations in the old city during its recent housing boom have served to fill in the historical record where the absence of literary sources had created a black hole of information. Amongst the objects found are the remains of Persian rugs, Baltic amber, Anglo-Saxon “claw beakers”, silver ornaments, silver ornaments, blades of wootz steel from India, animal pelts, and, perhaps most pertinent to this series, caskets of salt from Trst. As you may have noticed, quite a bit of the aforementioned objects originate in Christian Europe, indicating that despite their common Scandinavian origins, Holmgard likely had a very different reputation than Jorvik.
A recreation of the medieval city, part of Varangian Museum located on the outskirts of the modern city.
[1] well some of them. Sadly they apparently stripped may relics of their gold and jewels.
[2] no Capitulary of Quierzy here!
[3] a rump Frankish empire survives! Mind you it’s probably the polity equivalent of Charles II at this point, but hey a pulse is a pulse.
[4] I said I’d touch on the Group of Seven! Now I’m pretty sure I’ve made good on the last of the promises I made on that first page (now on to the ones I've made on the second page...
[5] well, as major as you can get being that far north.
…
I’m really sorry guys. Making this update was way harder than I expected.Who would have thought that rewriting the history of an entire continent would require so much effort. Yeah no I won’t try excusing it.
I don’t want to give up on this timeline, I got plans man. However, I recognize that I need to increase the frequency of content for this timeline, and also that as the world continues to expand that will become increasingly difficult (if this update is anything to go by at least). So, I’m now opening up the floor to guest posts. That would mean more content (admittedly not my own, but I need to put the timeline before my ego) and probably better content given that my writing is barely more engaging/informative that bullet points (and I suppose even that can be debated).
More than anything (and admittedly this is probably asking too much) I’d like to try to foster a community here. Kind of like the fanatical one Augenis was able to foster around his wonderful The Silver Knight (may as well mention who and what I’m shamelessly and undeservedly aping). So think of this update as a tour of the sand box which you are now able to play in. Just be sure to pm me any post ahead of time for my approval, my aforementioned plans are still somewhat vague, so at least for the time being I will be less policing your content (though there may be some of that if your post is pretty far reaching) and more just keeping track of what is being added/making sure it doesn’t conflict with what’s already in the timeline.
Huzzah! Just like that I have breathed new life into this barren corpse of a TL!
Nah, I don’t really expect anyone to make use of this feature. I doubt many people would think my TL is worth their contributions, and I know quite a few of my (former?) readers have their own timelines which rightfully should be their priority rather than giving me handouts.
The urban behemoths of Chang’an, Luoyang, Kyoto, Constantinople, and Baghdad dwarfed anything further north or west, often by orders of magnitude. Still, the winds of change were now blowing at gale force as will be explored in the following roundabout tour of the emerging urban areas.
Kamachia: Built Upon the Hopes and Dreams of Millions
During the Magyar’s initial raids into the middle east they had acquired plunder of all sorts. Most spectacular amongst these were the bodies of and objects associated with Christian Saints and Muslim Wali. Additionally, while aiding the population of Tabaristan they requisitioned their Atash Behram (Victorious Fire). As Tengrism had no pilgrimages, the Magyars were initially perplexed by the fact that these objects were held to be as important as they were.[1] None the less, the Magyars noticed the crowds these captured objects gathered, and eventually it was decided to concentrate them in a single place for convenience. The city of Kamachia, located near the Pirsaat river, and already the most prominent city in the Shirvan, was decided to house these objects.
Pilgrims provided the Khagan a predictable and annual source of income, not to mention a far more reliable and less risky source of income given that the Turkish slave soldiers of the Caliphate seemed to be growing more numerous by the season. However, rather than deterring the Magyars, some of their most daring raids would be to explicitly target and plunder holy sites. The best well known of which involved a plot on the part of some dissident Shia to smuggle the body of Ali out of Najaf and away to a site beyond the authority of the Caliph. This scheme fell through when the plot grew too big for its own good, though sources dispute whether it was the result of an informant amongst the plotters or the authorities simply catching on to the scheme.
Despite this failure, the impact on Kamachia was immense as noted by Levan the Kartvelian.
“Kamachia is the jewel of the whole nomadic race. I will admit to having made that statement while having yet to visit Merv or Samarkand. However, the impression I have gained from my visits to the cities of the Khazars leads me to this conclusion. Atil is fine, though it is the sort of overgrown rest stop for merchants that the Carantanians would be proud of. Balanjar and Samandar are similar, though lacking the palaces and administrative facilities that make Atil passable. In contrast Kamachia is a wonder of the world with its towering mosques, fire temples, and churches which put the mosques and fire temples to shame, the builders of whom rightly see their task as a competition to produce architectural proof of the validity of their faith. That is to say nothing of the city’s other features. Despite being somewhat out of the way, the shear volume of pilgrims have ensured that its markets and merchant’s quarter is as productive as any north of the Caucasus. The fact that the city gains the purest water, run off right from the nearby mountains, contributes to the health and livelihood of its citizens. The Persian style palaces constructed by the Khagan rival those of Baghdad. The Khagan himself has granted patronage to writers such as myself, enabling the arts to flourish in a manner not present in any nomad city, and the threat of Magyar overreaction ensures that order is maintained despite the strong presence of many competing creeds.”
-The Civilization of the Magyars
A painting depicting a scene in the Kamachia palace.
Trst: The Mouth Through Which Carantania Speaks
While the most impressive city in Carantania would certainly be Ljubljana or one of the Italian cities, Trst, or Trieste as it was still known at the time, was no slouch. With Venice continuing to command the mouths of the Adige and Piave, Trieste emerged as the Kingdom’s premiere port of trade. From its harbors ships sailed out to bring all manner of exports to the markets of the wider Mediterranean.
Normally the royal embargo on trade with the Venetians would be impossible to enforce. However it is important to remember that the Merchant ministries were the ones to field the legions which were humiliated in the debacle, as a result merchants ignoring the embargo risked penalty not only from the King but also from their associations.
Further spurring its development was the invaluable service the nearby salt evaporation ponds provided to the Kingdom’s invaluable east-west trade. The plains of Pannonia were prime grazing land, but prior to this point someone, even a fairly wealthy noble, would have had no clue. The balance of trade passing through the Ljubljana Gap was overwhelmingly tilted in the favour of the Kingdom’s Italian subjects. The sudden availability of salt, brought about by one of Pribislav’s few investments beyond the walls of Ljubljana, allowed the trade balance to improve as salt cured meats began making their way west, and also provided a new export for the city’s own merchants.
Perhaps its most significant development is the civic pride displayed by its mariners. Like the other cities acquired by Hotimir, Trieste had been gifted broad autonomy, including the right to establish its own militia. Unlike its inland sisters, Trieste’s force was neither dominated by merchants nor parading around as a “legion”. Instead, it was initially founded by fishermen, and only after the disastrous war with Venice did it begin taking itself seriously. More than that, the defeat incensed the populous and cemented a sort of siege mentality. The militia’s role expanded from merely keeping the Gulf of Trieste pirate free to escorting merchant shipping in the Adriatic, taking action against shores harboring pirates, and ultimately establishing what amounted to an international protection racket in the Adriatic, a direct challenge to Venice’s own trade operations. This was a manpower intensive operation, which could not have been maintained had it been limited to the city and its environs as the legions were. Instead it recruited from every coastal community, even subordinating the town of Pola and the town of Trsat, and its officers were known to recruit adventurous seamen from foreign territories under their “protection”.
A drawing of a Kondura, a smaller boat originating in Croatia, and one which would not be adopted until a later period, yet remains synonymous with medieval Trst.
Naples: Benedictine Bureaucratic Management
The fall of Neapolis to Grimoald III of Benevento raised some uncomfortable questions for the duchy. Specifically pertaining to who would rule it. It would be by far the largest and most important holding in the Kingdom, and whoever it was entrusted with would have immense power. Benevento however was still the political center of the dutchy for at least the time being. Taking the city for himself would require all of the Duke’s attention and would certainly leave him vulnerable to the intrigues of Benevento’s court, while entrusting it to one of his subjects would empower said subject to the point of potentially creating a power imbalance.
A solution materialized in the form of the Benedictine monks, an organization which had received a great amount of patronage from Grimoald III’s father Arechis II. Members of the clergy had held land and secular power since the decline and fall of Western Rome, so the idea was not particularly radical. However, the decision to task Paul the Deacon, a well-known figure of the court of Benevento and educator of the Duke’s mother, with the administration of the city by learned men produced far more radical results than originally intended. Paul brought with him a great many men from Montecassino and given his extensive knowledge of Roman history, set out to recreate the organization of a Municipium. The degree to which the Municipium’s structure was actually replicated is debatable at best given the number of positions filled by unelected monks during any given year, yet the efforts had some appreciable impact. An elected representative body did meet seasonally, the rule of the monks did not decay into standard despotism, the Dukes of Benevento consistently received their taxes in full on time, and the city operated in accordance with a yearly calendar which would be drawn up in the time between Christmas and the New Year. Additionally, the use of the Beneventan script in the civil administration allowed the unusual script to expand, gradually replacing other Latin derived scripts and Grecian on signage and documents within the environs of Neapolis.
The great harbour of Neapolis
Toulouse: The Guard Post of the Pyrenees
Along the path one would take while travelling from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean stands an old Roman city supplied by multiple rivers. This city, Toulouse, was already prominent as the capital of the Frankish County of Toulouse, and during the time of Charles the Great had grown even more prominent as the logistical hub and muster point for his annual expeditions to Iberia.
The great king was dead, and the Frankish realm was consumed by civil war, but Toulouse continued to grow in prominence. During the Frankish civil war the city was the seat of Pepin II, who had aligned with Lothair once it became apparent that Charles the Bald could not win on his own and that Louis the German would be unable to act while the simmering border conflict with the Carantanians lingered. In the end Charles the Bald was deposed from the throne of West Francia, and Pepin II’s Kingdom of Aquitaine was recognized by Emperor Lothiar.
During the war against Charles the Bald, Pepin had allied with a band of Vikings. Given the barbarism of his allies, Pepin badly needed to regain public faith before the people of Aquitaine decided to have him replaced. To remind the populace that he was indeed the great grandson of Charles the Great he resumed the annual musters and raids into Andalusia. Overtime these actions would bind the Spanish marches and even the Duchy of Vasconia to the Kingdom of Aquitaine. Additionally, by continuing to employ Vikings in these military operations he was able to redirect their violence away from his own people and towards other non-Christians, something which allowed him to better resist the demands of the lower nobility than Lothair or Louis the German.[2]
A painting of Toulouse from a later period.
Jorvik: A Mound of Loot Piled Atop Some Ruins
As his last act, Charles the Great had managed to conquer Jutland, stemming the Viking raids for a period. However, with his death and the subsequent Frankish civil wars Jutland was all but rid of the Frankish yoke. As Louis the German was temporarily distracted with the rise of Lothair in the west the Danes to their opportunity and engaged in the last great movement of the Migration Period. That of the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in southern Northumbria and the large groups of Danes and other Scandinavians who followed in its wake as it ravaged the countryside.
At this time the preeminent power in Britain was the domains of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex and Kent. This meant that the Scandinavian incursion was limited to north of the Thames river. However, it equally meant that the invaders had a free hand to deal with the Mercians who were in many ways still reeling from their unprecedented loss at Ellandun, and Northumbria. It is in this context that a large swath of land fell to the invaders.
York fell in 850, and it wasn’t long before the whole of Christendom was gripped by rumours of the horrendous acts carried out by the invaders congregated there. There were tales of the fate of the local populous, such as people being forced to worship Odin or being killed by having their bodies carved and sculpted into the likeness of a bird. There were also tales of a striking contrast, of great mounds of gold looted from the surrounding countryside piled up in great heaps, which the invaders would dance around in spite of the ruinous state the city remained in. Some of the more outlandish tales combined subjects of anxiety, such as one where the invaders had converted York’s church into a temple of “Baal-Odin”.
Regardless of how nightmarish or mundane the situation really was in the north, one thing was certain; Jorvik, as its new inhabitants called it, was emerging as the political centre of a powerful new polity in Britain.
The Franks Casket was long held to be an example of the heretical hybridization of Christianity and Norse paganism, present consensus however gives it an Anglo-Saxon origin.
Copanic: Making Lemonade Lemon Juice From Lemons
Further east, another frontier with another group of pagan peoples was also experiencing a development. Lothair’s advance against Louis combined with Ratislav of Carantania’s drive into Bohemia made the outcome of the Frankish Civil War a foregone conclusion. Louis the German surrendered early, hoping to at least get to keep the Bavarian throne.[3] However, it turned out that Lothair would instead post Louis “the Wend” to the newly created Sorbian March. After living out of one of Henry the Fowler’s estates in Merseburg for a while he set off and established his base of operations near the Junction of the rivers Spree and Dahme. His castle was built on an island in lake Müggelsee and it’s unclear if the Sorbian village predates its construction or if they congregated there afterwards. Louis was not fond of his subjects. He described the Sorbs as “barbarians” who lived in “the forest”. However, they seem to have liked him as, he is recorded to have been “dragged out into the forest every day for one stupid reason or another.” Exactly what he means by “the forest” is impossible to know, as he is know to have applied the term to isolated villages, towns on the banks of major rivers, Copanic itself, and on occasion, even his own courtyard. Between the poverty of his new realm, the annoyance of his subjects, and the constant need to campaign against more ornery tribes, he lived a very stressful life, in his last years there were days when his melancholy would keep him in bed.
That said, he did develop Copanic as a functional center of administration and missionary activity. Early efforts at acquiring assistance from Rome fell flat, as Carantania held a near monopoly on Slavic speaking clergy, and its leadership still bared ill will towards the former King of East Francia. With that option struck down Louis was forced to turn to Constantinople, where he was able to solicit the service of the brothers Cyril and Methodius. These missionaries brought not only the word of God with them, but they also brought the written word in the form of a strange alphabet they’d devised while working amongst the Bulgarians. In this context Copanic emerged as one of the foremost bastions of Christian proselytization, the mission would in fact be so renowned that not just the brothers, but also five of their disciples would be canonized as Saints.[4]
Lake Müggelsee today.
Holmgard: Appearing on the Map
By 860, Rurik, a Varangian (Scandinavian) had established a personal hegemony over a swath of Slavic and Finnic peoples. His power was great, sufficiently so that his men had engaged in some opportunistic raiding in the south, taking by surprise Carantanian, Bulgarian, Magyar, and Khazar forces on numerous occasions during the steppe war. Varangians also frequently served as mercenaries for the principle combatants of the conflict, particularly for the Khazars who used the Varangains and their river craft as something of a hard counter to the Carantanian’s favourite tactic of anchoring one flank on a river.
The contacts they made as mercenaries and adventurers also served to help integrate themselves into trade networks, which they quickly came to dominate. Holmgard, Rurik’s seat of power, accordingly emerged as a major[5] hub for trade. Its ideal position on the Volkhov River even gaining it the reputation of being “the Atil of the north”.
Excavations in the old city during its recent housing boom have served to fill in the historical record where the absence of literary sources had created a black hole of information. Amongst the objects found are the remains of Persian rugs, Baltic amber, Anglo-Saxon “claw beakers”, silver ornaments, silver ornaments, blades of wootz steel from India, animal pelts, and, perhaps most pertinent to this series, caskets of salt from Trst. As you may have noticed, quite a bit of the aforementioned objects originate in Christian Europe, indicating that despite their common Scandinavian origins, Holmgard likely had a very different reputation than Jorvik.
A recreation of the medieval city, part of Varangian Museum located on the outskirts of the modern city.
[1] well some of them. Sadly they apparently stripped may relics of their gold and jewels.
[2] no Capitulary of Quierzy here!
[3] a rump Frankish empire survives! Mind you it’s probably the polity equivalent of Charles II at this point, but hey a pulse is a pulse.
[4] I said I’d touch on the Group of Seven! Now I’m pretty sure I’ve made good on the last of the promises I made on that first page (now on to the ones I've made on the second page...
[5] well, as major as you can get being that far north.
…
I’m really sorry guys. Making this update was way harder than I expected.
I don’t want to give up on this timeline, I got plans man. However, I recognize that I need to increase the frequency of content for this timeline, and also that as the world continues to expand that will become increasingly difficult (if this update is anything to go by at least). So, I’m now opening up the floor to guest posts. That would mean more content (admittedly not my own, but I need to put the timeline before my ego) and probably better content given that my writing is barely more engaging/informative that bullet points (and I suppose even that can be debated).
More than anything (and admittedly this is probably asking too much) I’d like to try to foster a community here. Kind of like the fanatical one Augenis was able to foster around his wonderful The Silver Knight (may as well mention who and what I’m shamelessly and undeservedly aping). So think of this update as a tour of the sand box which you are now able to play in. Just be sure to pm me any post ahead of time for my approval, my aforementioned plans are still somewhat vague, so at least for the time being I will be less policing your content (though there may be some of that if your post is pretty far reaching) and more just keeping track of what is being added/making sure it doesn’t conflict with what’s already in the timeline.
Huzzah! Just like that I have breathed new life into this barren corpse of a TL!
Nah, I don’t really expect anyone to make use of this feature. I doubt many people would think my TL is worth their contributions, and I know quite a few of my (former?) readers have their own timelines which rightfully should be their priority rather than giving me handouts.
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It's located where Shamakhi (a city in Azerbaijan) is today. OTL it was the capital of the Shirvanshahs, who dominated the region for an extremely long period.
Interesting to see that, as a result of Moravia and Nitra being under the Carantanian sphere, the Group of Seven ironically ends up heading more north than OTL, with Köpenick serving as TTL's Velehrad, to a land administered by the very man who put Rastislav into power OTL! A twist of fate, to be sure.
Since not much is mentioned in this regard, aside from Carantania's dominance over Rome-aligned Slavic-speaking clergy, does this mean that the Sorbian March will turn out Orthodox or even Eastern Catholic in terms of religion? Did the brothers Cyril and Methodius end up going to Rome TTL too? I can only presume that they weren't forced out of the March as they were out of Great Moravia OTL, so how does this impact religious developments elsewhere in the North-Western Slavic world, like in Poland? That whole paragraph just raises so many questions and possibilities!
Hopefully this timeline sees more activity with this decision of yours! Maybe I might try and give a go at doing a guest post on this very topic, but probably not because, even with my contributions elsewhere, I don't think they're that good! Maybe I'm overcritical, but it happens. Good luck though on getting more content out on your end!
Since not much is mentioned in this regard, aside from Carantania's dominance over Rome-aligned Slavic-speaking clergy, does this mean that the Sorbian March will turn out Orthodox or even Eastern Catholic in terms of religion? Did the brothers Cyril and Methodius end up going to Rome TTL too? I can only presume that they weren't forced out of the March as they were out of Great Moravia OTL, so how does this impact religious developments elsewhere in the North-Western Slavic world, like in Poland? That whole paragraph just raises so many questions and possibilities!
Hopefully this timeline sees more activity with this decision of yours! Maybe I might try and give a go at doing a guest post on this very topic, but probably not because, even with my contributions elsewhere, I don't think they're that good! Maybe I'm overcritical, but it happens. Good luck though on getting more content out on your end!
I'm still not entirely of one mind on much regarding the specifics of how their mission pans out regarding ties to Rome and expansion into Poland and the East Slavic lands. One thing that I have been intending to explore in the future is a Catholic Church with more non-Latin rite branches, So a Sorbian Greek Catholic Church is a possibly.
Thanks, hopefully this was the last I'd see of the inactive thread warning.
8. The Panther on the Prowl
Ratislav: Changing Everything
The Ascension of Ratislav to the Carantanian throne in 848 marked a major shift in the political dynamics of Carantania.
Ratislav was foreign. As a Moravian he was the kingdoms first non-Carantanian ruler. While Proto-Slavic had yet to break up, it suffices to say that his native dialect was significantly different from that of the traditional Carantanian nobility. In fact multiple records survive stating that the King often said things that those around him could not follow. One source even described him as “speaking funny and making up words.” A particularly stark difference between Moravians and Carantanians in this period would be the extent of Italian influence. Ratislav was noted for dressing “like a primitive”, having a pallet which strongly favored beer over wine and was seemingly entirely averse to olive oil, being barely literate, and having poor Latin proficiency. It is perhaps not surprising that many of the local nobles and court personalities did not take to him.
Ratislav wielded far more power than previous kings. It is worth remembering that he was also the Duke of Moravia and had considerable holdings there in addition to the Carantanian crown lands. This meant that in terms of income and manpower he would be far less dependent on his numerous vassals. In fact, it was more often the case that his vassals were dependent on him. This granted him both more power to make requests of his vassals and more power to act without their involvement.
Ratislav was also a far more active ruler. Not only more so than Pribislav, but unlike Valtunk his efforts were intentional and premeditated rather than reactions to developments beyond his control. Perhaps he would be best compared to Hotimir who converted Carantania to Christianity, conspired to end Lombard dominance, and initiated the eastward push of the frontier.
However, the alienation he endured in court gave him the impetus to spend less time there. Instead, while his wife Ema handled the day to day intrigue of the capital, he spent much of his rule travelling his kingdom and engaging in more worldly efforts.
The first of such effort came about when the Croat Duke, evidently seeking to test his northern neighbour, demanded the return of Trsat, as his sister had not become Queen of Carintania as intended. A quick marshalling of his retinue and a swift march down to the contested area prompted the Croatian Duke to change his tone and expand the fortress of Klis where he held court.
The second effort followed swiftly. With the Frankish realm falling into yet another civil war, he began posturing to invade Bohemia, something which had been the goal of the Moravians for at least one generation prior. Once Lothair had won in the west, he occupied Bohemia, and invaded Bavaria in support of Lothair’s own invasion from the west. In an effort to curry some favour with the Crown’s traditional allies he made sure to be modest in his territorial claims, and granted some of the new lands to Carantanian rather than Moravian nobility.
In the east he made his most noteworthy commitment. As much as he disliked having to defer to the opinion of the Bulgars regarding matters to the east and south, he was even more averse to allowing the conflict they had dragged his kingdom into to drag on for eternity. Ratislav sought to end the Steppe War. In 855 he commanded Legio I Vittoria to return home, [1] quite a momentous occasion for Vindobona as many of the legionnaires had set out in their youth and were now middle aged, many even returning with families they had formed on the steppes. In return their place was taken by elements of the King’s retinue and the three original legions. This served as both a display of royal power and as a way to force greater cooperation amongst the legions of Verona, Treviso, and Padua, whose insubordination and infighting during the siege of Venice was widely seen as the nadir of Carantanian power. Additionally, it served as a way to assert his superior position over his Bulgarian allies, something he accomplished by refusing to fight east of the Dnieper, forcing the Bulgars to drop any plans of a second great expedition to Sarkel and to instead adopt a more defensive stance.
The plan was to draw the Khazar-Magyar alliance into an attritional war nearer the Bulgar’s powerbase, and hopefully from there force the enemy to a negotiated peace. For a while this seemed to be working, but in the 860s the extensive use of Varangian mercenaries indicate that the war was in fact escalating rather than winding down.
Perhaps Ratislav’s most noteworthy innovation was his push to standardize Carantanian spelling, ordering the creation and transcription of a Carantanian dictionary. While this effort to standardize spelling ultimately floundered due to resources limitations, a small number of dictionaries were produced, and amongst their notable contributions is the modern spelling of Carantania, as opposed to Karuntinea or any of the other spellings used during the middle ages. This dictionary also had the innovation of appropriating some letters of Cyril’s Sorbian alphabet to make up for some deficiencies of the Latin alphabet which would not be reused in any of the later standardization efforts.
Ratislav as depicted by a contemporary Bulgarian Artist
Pannonia: Competing Identities
The conquest of Pannonia was nearing its centennial by this point, and yet its precise identity within the Kingdom largely remained up in the air with regards to most aspects, religion being the notable exception.
Avars had once ruled the region as a minority, and even before the Carantanian conquest evidence suggests they were beginning to adopt the Slavic language of their subjects. Following the conquest the Avars as a distinct ethnic group were largely reduced to a collection of surnames and some nobles who used bows rather than lances while on horseback. By all estimates slavs made up the majority of the region’s population. As they all spoke dialects of proto-slavic which had varying degrees of mutual intelligibility one may have assumed that that a clear Slavic identity would be emerging. However, in addition to the localized reality of the middle ages, there were other notable demographics in the region.
Latin speakers were one such demographic. Forming an arc from Northern Italy, through the Ljubljana Gap, to the cultural and linguistic island of Castellum, down to the Julian March, Latin speakers held significant influence and formed many sizeable minorities and pluralities. “Italia Orientis”, as some later sources called it, emerged as a concept quite early, with the prominence of Italian merchants helping to facilitate intercommunal consciousness. Limiting the potential dominance of this identity however was the small size of this community relative to the number of slavs, and the efforts of some local nobles to both prevent the sort of anti-Latin revolts that Hotimir had faced and prevent the Latins from recreating the minoritarian rule that the Avars had previously imposed on the region.
A broadly similar demographic would be the Danubian Franks. As merchants they had similarly strong inter communal ties, though they had lost some degree of relevance with the decline of the Frankish Empire, and over time they grew increasingly detached from their ever-unstable homeland. Still, they formed a distinct community of villages and quarters along both banks of the Danube.
What was apparent was than Pannonia’s identity would remain highly diverse for the foreseeable future.
The remnants of Castellum, a romanized village which was a major focal point of Italia Orientis.
Medieval Great Power Diplomacy: Relations with Lothringia and the Grecian Empire
Lothair’s reunified Frankish Kingdom was largely viewed as a significantly weaker polity than that ruled by Charles the Great. In 855 Lothair passed away and was succeeded by his son Lothair II, who was by most accounts a less capable ruler. His realm was regularly targeted by Viking raiders, and his uncle’s ability to assemble a new power base within the Sorbian march provided an internal threat. Accordingly, he sought to shore up external alliances. He notably dropped any pretenses of ruling the Southern Italian Duchies, and sent permanent diplomatic missions to Rome, Ljubljana, Toulouse, and Constantinople. That Lothair II put a premium on Carantanian opinion is evident by the fact that his (illegitimate) son Hugh was sent to its royal court, though he proved to be a schemer whom Queen Ema would soon dismiss.
The Grecian Empire in this period was rapidly recovering from a particularly low ebb. Under the Amorian Dynasty they had lost both Sicily and Crete to the Arabs, and their forceswere committed to the life or death struggle over eastern Anatollia. With the Grecians rendered impotent for the time, Carantanian diplomacy had ignored them, focusing instead on matter to the north east and west. The massive Bulgar and Carantanian commitment to the Steppe War were in large part only possible because the Empire to their south was a non-factor. However in 867 Basil I came to power via Coup De Etat, and ushered in the “Macedonian Renascence”. The Arabs suffered reversals and the Iconoclastic disputes which had paralyses the empire were done away with. While the recovery had in fact begun under the last of the Amorians, the coup and the energy of Basil I stunned the Frankish envoys and through them news reached the court of Ljubljana where a new interest in the affairs of Constantinople was taken up. The Queen dispatched a new envoy to the Byzantines to learn the intentions of their new emperor, and a letter was sent to the Marquis of Gilău ordering him to “prepare for the possibility of war.”
Of the trio of European Great Powers,[2] two were recovering from their own nadirs, and seemingly on a collision course as a result, while the third was sinking ever deeper into its own.
A Contemporary depiction of the coronation of Basil I
[1] However he was content with allowing the Avar nobility to waste their resources in the fruitless conflict.
[2] Some would consider the Kingdom of Aquitaine to also constitute a great power. However, this project will hold to the orthodox view of that occurring at a later date.
Hey I'm posting again, almost within a month! Hopefully I can get out two posts next month covering some some of the courtly politics of Queen Ema, a conclusion to the Steppe War, a Byzantine-Carantanian standoff over Croatia, and perhaps the succession of Lothair.
Questions, concerns, corrections, suggestions? I'm all ears!*
*well eyes technically, as this forum is a text-based (ergo visual) medium.
The Ascension of Ratislav to the Carantanian throne in 848 marked a major shift in the political dynamics of Carantania.
Ratislav was foreign. As a Moravian he was the kingdoms first non-Carantanian ruler. While Proto-Slavic had yet to break up, it suffices to say that his native dialect was significantly different from that of the traditional Carantanian nobility. In fact multiple records survive stating that the King often said things that those around him could not follow. One source even described him as “speaking funny and making up words.” A particularly stark difference between Moravians and Carantanians in this period would be the extent of Italian influence. Ratislav was noted for dressing “like a primitive”, having a pallet which strongly favored beer over wine and was seemingly entirely averse to olive oil, being barely literate, and having poor Latin proficiency. It is perhaps not surprising that many of the local nobles and court personalities did not take to him.
Ratislav wielded far more power than previous kings. It is worth remembering that he was also the Duke of Moravia and had considerable holdings there in addition to the Carantanian crown lands. This meant that in terms of income and manpower he would be far less dependent on his numerous vassals. In fact, it was more often the case that his vassals were dependent on him. This granted him both more power to make requests of his vassals and more power to act without their involvement.
Ratislav was also a far more active ruler. Not only more so than Pribislav, but unlike Valtunk his efforts were intentional and premeditated rather than reactions to developments beyond his control. Perhaps he would be best compared to Hotimir who converted Carantania to Christianity, conspired to end Lombard dominance, and initiated the eastward push of the frontier.
However, the alienation he endured in court gave him the impetus to spend less time there. Instead, while his wife Ema handled the day to day intrigue of the capital, he spent much of his rule travelling his kingdom and engaging in more worldly efforts.
The first of such effort came about when the Croat Duke, evidently seeking to test his northern neighbour, demanded the return of Trsat, as his sister had not become Queen of Carintania as intended. A quick marshalling of his retinue and a swift march down to the contested area prompted the Croatian Duke to change his tone and expand the fortress of Klis where he held court.
The second effort followed swiftly. With the Frankish realm falling into yet another civil war, he began posturing to invade Bohemia, something which had been the goal of the Moravians for at least one generation prior. Once Lothair had won in the west, he occupied Bohemia, and invaded Bavaria in support of Lothair’s own invasion from the west. In an effort to curry some favour with the Crown’s traditional allies he made sure to be modest in his territorial claims, and granted some of the new lands to Carantanian rather than Moravian nobility.
In the east he made his most noteworthy commitment. As much as he disliked having to defer to the opinion of the Bulgars regarding matters to the east and south, he was even more averse to allowing the conflict they had dragged his kingdom into to drag on for eternity. Ratislav sought to end the Steppe War. In 855 he commanded Legio I Vittoria to return home, [1] quite a momentous occasion for Vindobona as many of the legionnaires had set out in their youth and were now middle aged, many even returning with families they had formed on the steppes. In return their place was taken by elements of the King’s retinue and the three original legions. This served as both a display of royal power and as a way to force greater cooperation amongst the legions of Verona, Treviso, and Padua, whose insubordination and infighting during the siege of Venice was widely seen as the nadir of Carantanian power. Additionally, it served as a way to assert his superior position over his Bulgarian allies, something he accomplished by refusing to fight east of the Dnieper, forcing the Bulgars to drop any plans of a second great expedition to Sarkel and to instead adopt a more defensive stance.
The plan was to draw the Khazar-Magyar alliance into an attritional war nearer the Bulgar’s powerbase, and hopefully from there force the enemy to a negotiated peace. For a while this seemed to be working, but in the 860s the extensive use of Varangian mercenaries indicate that the war was in fact escalating rather than winding down.
Perhaps Ratislav’s most noteworthy innovation was his push to standardize Carantanian spelling, ordering the creation and transcription of a Carantanian dictionary. While this effort to standardize spelling ultimately floundered due to resources limitations, a small number of dictionaries were produced, and amongst their notable contributions is the modern spelling of Carantania, as opposed to Karuntinea or any of the other spellings used during the middle ages. This dictionary also had the innovation of appropriating some letters of Cyril’s Sorbian alphabet to make up for some deficiencies of the Latin alphabet which would not be reused in any of the later standardization efforts.
Ratislav as depicted by a contemporary Bulgarian Artist
Pannonia: Competing Identities
The conquest of Pannonia was nearing its centennial by this point, and yet its precise identity within the Kingdom largely remained up in the air with regards to most aspects, religion being the notable exception.
Avars had once ruled the region as a minority, and even before the Carantanian conquest evidence suggests they were beginning to adopt the Slavic language of their subjects. Following the conquest the Avars as a distinct ethnic group were largely reduced to a collection of surnames and some nobles who used bows rather than lances while on horseback. By all estimates slavs made up the majority of the region’s population. As they all spoke dialects of proto-slavic which had varying degrees of mutual intelligibility one may have assumed that that a clear Slavic identity would be emerging. However, in addition to the localized reality of the middle ages, there were other notable demographics in the region.
Latin speakers were one such demographic. Forming an arc from Northern Italy, through the Ljubljana Gap, to the cultural and linguistic island of Castellum, down to the Julian March, Latin speakers held significant influence and formed many sizeable minorities and pluralities. “Italia Orientis”, as some later sources called it, emerged as a concept quite early, with the prominence of Italian merchants helping to facilitate intercommunal consciousness. Limiting the potential dominance of this identity however was the small size of this community relative to the number of slavs, and the efforts of some local nobles to both prevent the sort of anti-Latin revolts that Hotimir had faced and prevent the Latins from recreating the minoritarian rule that the Avars had previously imposed on the region.
A broadly similar demographic would be the Danubian Franks. As merchants they had similarly strong inter communal ties, though they had lost some degree of relevance with the decline of the Frankish Empire, and over time they grew increasingly detached from their ever-unstable homeland. Still, they formed a distinct community of villages and quarters along both banks of the Danube.
What was apparent was than Pannonia’s identity would remain highly diverse for the foreseeable future.
The remnants of Castellum, a romanized village which was a major focal point of Italia Orientis.
Medieval Great Power Diplomacy: Relations with Lothringia and the Grecian Empire
Lothair’s reunified Frankish Kingdom was largely viewed as a significantly weaker polity than that ruled by Charles the Great. In 855 Lothair passed away and was succeeded by his son Lothair II, who was by most accounts a less capable ruler. His realm was regularly targeted by Viking raiders, and his uncle’s ability to assemble a new power base within the Sorbian march provided an internal threat. Accordingly, he sought to shore up external alliances. He notably dropped any pretenses of ruling the Southern Italian Duchies, and sent permanent diplomatic missions to Rome, Ljubljana, Toulouse, and Constantinople. That Lothair II put a premium on Carantanian opinion is evident by the fact that his (illegitimate) son Hugh was sent to its royal court, though he proved to be a schemer whom Queen Ema would soon dismiss.
The Grecian Empire in this period was rapidly recovering from a particularly low ebb. Under the Amorian Dynasty they had lost both Sicily and Crete to the Arabs, and their forceswere committed to the life or death struggle over eastern Anatollia. With the Grecians rendered impotent for the time, Carantanian diplomacy had ignored them, focusing instead on matter to the north east and west. The massive Bulgar and Carantanian commitment to the Steppe War were in large part only possible because the Empire to their south was a non-factor. However in 867 Basil I came to power via Coup De Etat, and ushered in the “Macedonian Renascence”. The Arabs suffered reversals and the Iconoclastic disputes which had paralyses the empire were done away with. While the recovery had in fact begun under the last of the Amorians, the coup and the energy of Basil I stunned the Frankish envoys and through them news reached the court of Ljubljana where a new interest in the affairs of Constantinople was taken up. The Queen dispatched a new envoy to the Byzantines to learn the intentions of their new emperor, and a letter was sent to the Marquis of Gilău ordering him to “prepare for the possibility of war.”
Of the trio of European Great Powers,[2] two were recovering from their own nadirs, and seemingly on a collision course as a result, while the third was sinking ever deeper into its own.
A Contemporary depiction of the coronation of Basil I
[1] However he was content with allowing the Avar nobility to waste their resources in the fruitless conflict.
[2] Some would consider the Kingdom of Aquitaine to also constitute a great power. However, this project will hold to the orthodox view of that occurring at a later date.
Hey I'm posting again, almost within a month! Hopefully I can get out two posts next month covering some some of the courtly politics of Queen Ema, a conclusion to the Steppe War, a Byzantine-Carantanian standoff over Croatia, and perhaps the succession of Lothair.
Questions, concerns, corrections, suggestions? I'm all ears!*
*well eyes technically, as this forum is a text-based (ergo visual) medium.
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