The Panther: A Medieval Slovene Kingdom TL

[SealTheRealDeal]

If you're interested in rules regarding guest posts, see the author's notes of the 7th indexed post.

In 745 the Avars of Pannonia were again counted amongst the ascending powers of post-Roman Europe. Samo’s Empire was long gone and the Kaghanate had largely recovered the manpower it had lost in its costly attempt on Constantinople. In their immediate path lay the slavic principality of Carantania, a small pagan state that lacked allies. In desperation Prince Borut of Carantania became a vassal of the powerful if disorganized Lombard Kingdom[1] and allowed his son Gorazd and nephew Hotimir to be baptized as hostages in the court of the Lombard Duke of Friuli.

In the series of raiding actions and campaigns that characterized the following frontier conflict Aistulf, Duke of Friuli and brother of the King, emerged as a dominant leader and expanded his land to include Carniola, a Slavic principality that had been tributary to the Avars which he had invaded and fortified. Following this success he seems to have gained the idea of building a personal empire in the east as soon afterwards Gorazd died under suspicious circumstances in May of 747. At the time the royal court in Pavia was too preoccupied with its own matters to invest much interest in the intrigues of Aistulf’s court, meaning that Hotimir had to turn to the clergy for support and even then had to primarily rely on his own intuition to survive. From a safe distance he kept a close eye on his captor, and in doing so was able to learn much in the way of warfare, political maneuvering, and the internal struggles of the Lombard Kingdom.

In 749 two events massively changed the prevailing situation. The Pope had intervened in the Lombards’ latest war against the Grecians[2] and upon agreeing to back down the “Italophile” King Ratchis was promptly deposed by his dukes and replaced by Aistulf. Aistulf promptly reoriented his goals towards an aggressive campaign to drive the Grecians from Italy and at least temporarily lost interest in wiping out Borut’s line of succession.

The second event of note was the death of Borut. Upon hearing of his uncle’s death Hotimir hurriedly set out for Krnski Grad[3] with a veritable army of priests. There he stood atop the Prince Stone and was inaugurated in a mostly traditional manner. He then took up the duty of entrenching Christianity in his lands and preparing the forces he had inherited for the clash with Aistulf that he believed to be inevitable.

The priests quickly found places as a literate technocracy, however the spread of Christianity was a slow and difficult task that would not be completed within his lifetime. However Hotimir possessed other traits that made him acceptable to the old believers. Particularly the friction between him and the Lombard King and his desire to avenge his cousin, who though baptized was viewed as something a martyr. As a result the conflict that began in 751must be viewed in two lenses, one Christian, and one pagan.

In 751 Aistulf had taken Ravenna and now dared to threaten Rome, and by extension the Pope. Citing his duty as a Christian, Hotimir launched his revolt. To his predominantly pagan subjects however the revolt was explained in anti-Lombard terms, a matter that not only ensured their support but ensured that the Carniolans who had been fuming under Lombard rule flocked to his banner. The Lombard garrison in Carnium quickly opted to change sides when faced with the prospect of defending a city full of the same pagans that were besieging them. This defection was aided by the fact that the Lombard commander knew Hotimir from Aistulf’s court and his men as Italians rather than Lombards themselves felt more loyal to the Pope than to their king. Thus Hotimir lead a sizable pagan host out onto the Padan Plain, ostensibly to save the Pope.

Aistulf’s response was quick and he marched his much larger army north to meet his former hostage. After wintering the two sides met southeast of Verona, and Hotimir deployed his army with their backs to the Adige and oddly their unguarded camp in front of them. The location forced Aistulf into a frontal attack and eliminated opportunities for flanking maneuvers, yet he attacked anyways believing his force to poses sufficient numerical and qualitative advantages to make the attack work. After an exchange of arrows the Lombard army advanced, and quickly found its formations broken up by the earthworks, tents, and carriages within the camp. Worse, to bolster his power in preparation for his expansionist campaigns Aistulf had greatly expanded the army and opened it up to Italians.[4] Many of these new soldiers turned out to be more interesting in looting the camp than participating in the march. As a result the Lombard force engaged the defending army piecemeal, reversing any advantages it should have had.

An approximation of the two commanders' deployments with with Hotimir's forces (black) deployed behind their camp.​

The battle dragged on for hours with relatively high losses on both sides. However, wishing to preserve his numerical advantage for a later engagement on more even terrain, Aistulf sounded the retreat. The Carantanians pursued and extracted a heavy toll on the enemy, particularly those preoccupied with looting. Hotimir’s plan had won the day but with much of his supplies stolen and his army badly maimed he had to remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Of the engagement Paul the Deacon wrote:
The Wends of Carantanum fell upon the retreating Langobards with great fury and murderous intent. The grass was watered with their blood and it is said that that evening they performed human sacrifices to their gods while their prince prayed in the nearest church. Prince Hotimir may be the most pious of men, but his people are by far the least.

The winter of 751/752 provided minor breathing space for the two commanders. For Aistulf the situation was destined to become worse. North of the Alps Pepin the Short had overthrown the Merovingians and proved quite eager to support the Pope and assert the Frank’s position as the foremost kingdom in Western Europe. As much as Aistulf would have loved to simply wait where he was as Hotimir’s horde starved on the riverbank he had to march west to prepare for a confrontation with a far more dangerous opponent. Aistulf fell back to Pavia and rallied a great army for a forward defence in the Susa Valley.

Hotimir meanwhile took up the roll of the beggar for a time and after a lengthy process of threats, negotiations, and intercession by the city’s Bishop, managed to convince the city of Verona to open its granaries to his army. As soon as spring broke both sides made their moves. Aistulf moved northeast with great haste and Hotimir moved to encamp along the Via Francigena between Pavia and the valley,[5] his idea being that depending on the outcome of the battle he could cut off Aistulf’s retreat or fight a significantly weakened if victorious enemy.

The great clash between the Lombards and the Franks took place in the shadows of the Graian and Cottian Alps. The Lombards had long been well known for their traditions of fighting on foot, however the relatively flat valley proved ideal for the Frankish army which had a large component of mounted infantry. The Lombards proved unable to match this mobility and were eventually outflanked. Facing the possibility of being over run and completely defeated on the spot, Aistulf initiated a hasty disengagement and retreat. Within the week he would halt his retreat when the riders he had sent ahead to warn Pavia returned with news of Hotimir’s location. Aistulf halted his retreat and surrendered to the pursuing Franks, as with good reason he believed Pepin would be a kinder captor than the vengeful Hotimir.


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[1] OTL he made the same agreement with the Bavarians, who at the time were a more centralized and expansionist power than the Lombards.

[2] An archaic alternative to “Greek”, and in this case it refers to the Byzantines/Romans. I like the idea of alternate timelines also using alternate terminology.

[3] OTL it’s now Karnburg.

[4] As by this point the difference between Italians and Lombards was a matter class, (the upper social stratas being Lombards and the lower ones being Italians) so it is likely that the "Italian" actions at Carnium and the Battle Near Verona is the result of people who have traditionally not been soldiers being forced to serve with little training and little potential for social advancement through service.

[5] He’s not a mind reader, it’s just the logical invasion route (which is also why Aistulf choose to mount his defense there both OTL and TTL)

Anyways I hope that what I have presented is enjoyable and not too wild. I’ll admit that my readings for this first part have been very sparse so if you think I screwed the pooch on something (travel times? everything?) please be brutal with your criticism.

The title is a reference to two things. One is the heraldic Black Panther that has been claimed to be an ancient Carantanian symbol (the evidence for it may be questionable, but it certainly has rule of cool on its side). The other is the Ljubljana Gap which is the space between the Eastern and Dinaric Alps, and is the homeland of the Slovenes.

Also next update will include the establishment of Hotimir’s realm, and I wanted to know what you think the Franks and the Pope would see fit to give him. I was thinking Austria and Neustria north of the Po, but then I realized that that would put Pavia (the Lombard capital!) in his domain. It seems a bit much to deprive Ratchis’ rump Lombard Kingdom of the old Lombard capital. So let me know where you’d place his new western border.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

The Council of Rome, December of 752, proved to be a watershed moment in history. There had been talk of imposing a Carthaginian peace on the Lombards, however over the course of the council cooler heads prevailed. Ravenna and the territory connecting it to Rome was ceded to the Pope. Hotimir was elevated to the status of an independent king, his domain stretching from the edge of Panonia in the east to a western frontier from Lake Garda in the north along the Mincio and Po rivers to the northern border of the former Exarchate of Ravenna. Ratchis, who had fled to a monastery when he was deposed, was returned to the throne of the reduced Lombard Kingdom.

This statesmanship is considered to be amongst Pepin the Short’s greatest accomplishments. In weakening the Lombards he had punished them for daring to see themselves as the Frank’s equals. In empowering Hotimir he ensured that for the foreseeable future there would be no risk of another rival arising from Italy, and Hotimir’s kingdom could be useful as buffer state under Frankish influence. In taking no territory for his own kingdom he gained a favour he could hold over the Pope, and he reinforced the perception that the Frankish realm had already been the foremost territorial entity in western Christendom.

After Christmas Mass in Rome, Hotimir departed for his lands. As he passed through the major cities of his new lands he issued extensive charters granting the cities a high degree of autonomy. His aim was to ensure the personal loyalty of the important population centres. Verona was issued a particularly generous city charter by “the beggar king”.

He also made attempts to reconcile himself with the local elites now in his service. Though with his military superiority already established and their power undercut by the city charters it is likely that they had little choice in burying the hatchet.

He also took note of the means of travel between his lands. The Via Gemina, at least the portion of it beyond the Lombard’s traditional eastern frontier, had fallen under considerable disrepair. Upon returning to Krnski Grad he sent for Italian stonemasons, the road would have to be restored if his realm were to function as a single territorial entity.

Those stonemasons had a second use. While he campaigned in the west the Avars had resumed raiding his east, and there was a need to repair and expand the fortifications along the border. His fortification of choice was an innovation from Aistulf’s conquest of Carniola. This being a small, typically cubical, single storey stone structure topper with a larger wooden structure with a peaked roof and an abundance of arrow slits.[1] These buildings were impervious to arrows and as the over hang of the wooded structure allowed attackers on foot to be attacked with arrows, rocks, and boiling oil that had been prepared bellow. They would be of little use against a proper army, but they were effective area denial systems for smaller raiding parties. They were typically grouped together on the outskirts of a village, and a roof access hatch meant that during the night simple signals could be communicated with torches. A single torch meant that a weakness had been observed and that a sally should be conducted at dawn. A torch waved vertically meant that that outpost had also observed weakness. A torch waved horizontally meant that that outpost had reason to believe the Avars were actually preparing for just that; this was an absolute veto. Two torches being waved wildly indicated that a proper Avar army had gathered and that, as their position was now indefensible, they should immediately gather the villagers and attempt to flee to the nearest proper fortification.

Hotimir did not just reinforce the border though, the population of Carantania and Carniola were beginning to out grow their lands, and he also didn’t want his homeland swallowed by his western lands. Along the Rječina, Slava, Mur, and Drava rivers he began a creeping expansion of the network of frontier villages and fortifications.[2] While fairly passive as far as invasions go, this was still a blatant attack on the Avars and pitch battles became more common.

He began to prepare for an inevitable decisive battle and in 758 his improved army was put to work against their own countrymen. In a few regions of Carniola, typically along the Via Gemina, villagers angered by the increased Italian presence, mostly stonemasons, rose in a anti-Christian anti-Italian revolt. His army was more than capable of putting down this challenge to his rule, and according to an observer from the Papacy “it was clear that his army was now indeed an army rather than a horde”. However it is apparent that his faith in his ability to retain the loyalty of his mostly pagan people was deeply shaken. This doubt is apparent as the following year he accepted an offer of unconditional support from the Merchant Ministry of Verona.[3]

The spring of 760 proved decisive. In rapid succession more than a dozen settlements along the Drava river were destroyed. It was apparent that the Avars sought a final end to the Carantanian encroachment. Hotimir was also looking forward to a major engagement to end the lengthy period of monotony and uncertainty. He rallied an army that was surely larger than any other he had commanded and marched off to the defence of the settlements.

According to the Dravied[4] both sides were relatively even at around 20,000 combatants each and met at a ford in the river. The climax of the battle occurred when Hotimir lead a cavalry maneuver to flank the enemy who had found his men’s shield wall centered on Verona’s “Legio I Veronica” to be able to withstand the Avar assault. As Hotimir’s cavalry maneuvered it collided with an enemy cavalry formation that apparently had the same idea. After a bloody melee both sides fell back and their armies soon disengaged for the day. During the night the Avar army moved away. According to the Dravied this is due to the Avar Khan falling in the cavalry action. However it also has Hotimir die of an arrow wound sustained during the disengagement, even though Church records place his death three years later in Krinski Grad, so it certainly can’t be relied on for details.

The battle while indecisive in tactical terms, did represent the start of a period where the Avar Khaganate de facto yielded ownership of their northwestern frontier.[5]

Hotimir is often brought up in discussions regarding Carantania’s greatest monarchs. He won its independence from the Lombards, established it as a relevant player in European diplomacy, maintained a reasonably centralized authority, initiated the restoration of the Via Gemina ,and greatly expanded his realm to the west and east. However his military prowess was lacking to an extent, he has no decisive victory to his name, and his attempts at Christianizing his people were generally lacklustre. Any assessment of his achievements must be mindful of the situation he left to his successor.

The approximate borders of Carantania at the time of Hotimir's death in 763AD​

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[1] Think 18th century frontier blockhouses, despite being the loser of the previous part, Aistulf sure was an ingenuitive man.

[2] He seems to have also learned a preference for aggression during his time as Aistulf’s hostage, infact expanding along the Rječina is actually butting head with the Croats rather than the Avars

[3] It’s like a proto-guild, and under Verona’s city charter its basically been running rampant, up to and including establishing a citizen army (the self proclaimed “Legio I Veronica”)

[4] An epic poem composed by Antonio in the Venetian dialect circa 952, it has a few erroneous details and it likely exaggerates the role of the Veronan contingent, as it would still have been in its formative years at the time

[5] There appears to have been some sort of succession crisis, although its unknown if the Khagan fell in battle or if his fellow nobles deposed him. It is known that his successor focused on the east and attempted to bring a few more nomadic tribes into their confederation

Sorry for the wait on the update, moving back into my dorm took up a fair bit of time. As always criticism is not only welcome but highly desired. Particularly with the map. The northern border which was basically guess work.

Should I have an "intermission" to check up on what the butterflies have been up to, or at this point should I pick up right at Valtunk's coronation?

Spoiler

Valtunk just inherited a bomb

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.


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[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.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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?).

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

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.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Thucydides' Trap:

The Greek Historian Thucydides described the Peloponnesian War as an inevitable consequence of Athen’s rise, writing that the dispute between Corcyra and Corinth was but the last of a series of flash points in the long lead up to the clash. For the Carantanians and the Grecians a similar reality existed.

The question of which one precisely the rising power was depends on the scope from which the question is examined. Certainly, in the exact context of the mid 800s, it was the Byzantines on the rise relative to the Carantanians. However, as the Grecian peak had arguably been under Justinian, and Carantania had only become a notable power a century earlier, it may also suffice to characterize the Grecians as the established power at risk of being usurped. Regardless, the tension between the two powers was apparent. In no less than three areas macro forces were pushing the two towards conflict.

The fierce naval and economic competition between Trst and Venice on occasion turned the Adriatic into a literal battleground. During the late 850s the two cities to intimidate and block each other gradually gave way to ships flagged to their cities assuming each other to be hostile and fleeing or attacking upon recognition. By the time of the Croatian crisis Trst was already on a war footing.

On the opposite end of the Balkans the Bulgars represented the next area of confrontation. The Bulgars had long been an annoyance to the Grecians. The Bulgars occasionally raided, with increasingly less success now that the Roman state was on the upswing again. That they also often involved themselves in Roman politics, supporting one side or another during internal crises, was a much more concerning matter. That Carantania was allied with them and bending over backwards to assist them in the steppe war could only be interpreted as an endorsement of such behavior. The Grecians must also have been aware of Ratislav’s policy of not moving an inch east of the Dnieper, effectively meaning that the war hosts the Carantanians and Bulgars had raised to fight the Khazars could be repositioned to fight in the south.

The final area of contention lay between the other two, and fittingly would explode outwards to engulf those regions as well. Croatia was an area of interest to both polities. To Levan quote Levan the Kartvelian’s On The Carantanians, Croatia was, “The half-civilized fringe region between the vibrant economies of the Mediterranean coast and the tribal despotism of the interior.” Both sides had jockeyed for influence over the Duchy, a contest which Carantania had been winning. Basil I sought to change this and threw his support behind the usurper Domagoj of Croatia, who had deposed Duke Zdeslav of the long reigning Trpimirović dynasty in 864. Zdeslav and his brothers were quick to make a beeline for their aunt’s residence in Ljubljana,[1] wherein they became a fixture of Queen Ema’s court. Domagoi’s call for independence from Carantanian pretensions was eagerly embraced by the Dalmatians, who were eager to be able to fight back against the impositions of Trst. In the interior however, the deposition of the prestigious Trpimirović dynasty was less well received. The result was a civil war in which Duke Domagoj received direct military assistance from the Grecians.

Beyond these macro influences, there were individual actors as well which ensured that Carantania and the Grecians would come to blows.

Carantanians were on the frontlines from day one. Many of the Pannonian Slavic nobles had freely intermarried with the Croatian nobility, and accordingly had family or even held title in the Duchy. With Carantanian nobles and levies already deployed on the side of the legitimists, formal Carantanian entry was inevitable.

There were also some who openly sought war. Queen Ema repeatedly wrote to her husband and other major nobles to make war with the usuper as she found Zdeslav’s case compelling, and war was supported by both supporters of the king and nativists who disliked having a Moravian monarch.[2] The militia of Trst was also gnawing at the bit for a chance to settle the score with Venice, and went ahead without royal direction. In a largely unprovoked coup de main, the Trst militia struck two targets at once in an effort which demonstrated an unrivaled mastery of amphibious and littoral combat. The westward prong was comprised of a trio of merchant ships which sailed into Venice to trade, their cargo hulls packed with militiamen who quickly commandeered the most warlike of the Venetian ships moored there, and burned those which they could not crew. For the remainder of the war Venice would be blockaded by its own navy. At the same time the bulk of the militia attacked and seized the islands of Cres and Krk from their Roman garrisons.

Basil I scored an even more impressive victory when he determined that the end of the Steppe war a month prior could only have meant a preparation for war. Determined to not be caught off guard he redirected the troops of the Armenian themata destined for Croatia to instead first check the sharpness of their swords on the Bulgars. In the decisive Battle of the Maritsa the massive army raised and lead by the Bulgar Khan imitated Carantanian tactics and anchored it’s right flank on the river. However the veteran troops of the Armenian Theme proved to be a wholly different opponent from the Khazars, and the Bulgar right flanks was flattened by a timely cataphract charge. The survivors of this action were driven into the river, bringing about the near extermination of the Bulgar nobility.

With the activation of the Carantania-Bulgar Alliance, a formal state of war at last existed between the two great powers.

The impenetrable fortress of Klis, with walls built right to the edge of shear cliffs, served as Domagoj's capital
​

The Conclusion of the Steppe War:

By March of 864 the Ratislav’s policies hadn’t done anything more than entrench the existing stalemate. The conflict had long run its course, seeking to avoid calling their troops up for yet another campaign season the combatant sides opted to instead cut their losses then and there. In the treaty the Bulgars agreed to a border on the Southern Buh.

Seemingly, the Khazars won. However even more so than the Bulgars they were spent. Little more than an appendix of the Magyar horde, something Levan described in his final writings as, “The rightful place of the Hebrews.”[3] The Khazar decline accelerated further when the Varangians who had made their way south in preparation for their spring employment found themselves neither needed nor wanted. A set of circumstances which lead to them seizing the Dnieper basin in Rurik’s name.

Varangian rule in Kyiv​

The impairment of the Arabs:

A final question that needs to be addressed before going any further into the Dalmatian War is the matter of why the Grecians felt secure campaigning west with their eastern forces. The answer to that is straight forward. The Ummah was imploding.

The Mihna refers to the Abbasid policy of persecuting non-Muʿtazila sects of Islam. As Magyar raiding began to subside in the 840s the Abbasids needed to find new ways keeps their hosts of Turkic slave soldiers preoccupied. Thus, the implementation of the Mihna in the countryside fell to them, and the persecution which might have been a mere phase became an institution vital to the function of the Abbasid state.

With academic efforts to end the policy failing, many non-conformists sought to escape the reach of the Abbasids. Ahmad ibn Hanbal had sought to do so in such a way which would not endanger the unity of the Ummah and arranged for his “kidnapping” by Magyars. However, much like the attempt to steal the corpse of Ali, this plan was found out and he was executed for spreading fitna. Following this his followers and many other non-conformists took up a sort of mimicry Hegira, residing in any community willing to shelter them.

The tyranny of the Mihna did not go un answered. It began first as an insurgent campaign spear headed by the Kharijites, but by the 860s it had evolved into pitched battles waged by vast armies. As the revolt was being put down a second one, comprised of Zanj slaves, erupted in lower Mesopotamia. The Abbasids would only survive by yielding authority to those serving them in the field, entrenching the Mamluks as the true power within the Caliphate. In time the slave soldiers and slave bureaucrats would cloister the Caliph within the earthly paradise of Baghdad, where he would be kept ignorant of their affairs and conduct beyond the city’s ring-like walls. The Mihna had not only brought about the one thing it was meant to stop,[4] but it had brought the whole Islamic golden age crashing down.[5]

A selection of turkish swords
​

[1] You may recall that would-be-King Semik had married the sister of Duke Trpimir. She’s not the queen obviously, but she has been permitted to reside in Ljubljana all the same.

[2] Ironically the nativist faction coalesced around the Croat princess in opposition to Carantanian queen.

[3] And unless one of you wants to invoke that judgmental twat in a guest post, that’ll be the last we hear from Levan.

[4] The Mamluks seizing power.

[5] So this is an Abbasid equivalent to the Crisis of the Third Century, complete with a societal transformation as dramatic as that of the Principate into the Dominate. Only question is, what form the Dominate shall take.


This was going to be longer, but I wanted to make maps for the battles and campaigns of the Dalmatian War.

As always: Questions, comments, concerns? Write me up! (preferably here or via PMs, I know I stepped on some potentially sensitive subjects here and I’d really prefer to avoid finding myself kicked when I next try logging on...)

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

The Graecians Ascendant:

Following the decisive Greek victory at Maritsa, Basil I scored a follow up victory just south of the Danube. Near modern day Silistra, the Marquis of Gilău was caught while attempting to cross the Danube, having one third of his force south of the river and the rest on the north bank. Despite being in this very poor position when the Greek army arrived he demanded that one of the boats taking him across to the southern bank immediately so that he could lead his men. However, the boat crew saw how quickly the battle was coming to a close and turned back before even traversing half the river’s width. The boat crew went so far as to tie up their lord so as to prevent him from trying to swim the remaining distance. The young Marquis retreated with his remaining forces back to the Julian March to fight a defensive war on more familiar terrain.

With the northern flank secured Basil moved west to link up with the forces of Domagoj of Croatia. A force of Zdeslav Loyalists attempting to besiege Klis was forced to withdraw to the northeast at Basil’s approach.

The combined force marched north from there towards the Zrmanja River. Where it met with the Carantanian Royal Army.[1] King Ratislav had sought to link up with the Zdeslav Loyalists in hopes of swiftly ending the conflict and having failed to do so was in no position to fight a pitched battle. True to form the Carantanians anchored one flank on the river and positioned their legions on the opposite end.

The Graecian Cataphracts were again tasked with breaking the extended flank and driving the force into the river. Had the hilly terrain of the river valley not sapped them of their momentum they may have succeeded in inflicting a sequel to Maritsa. Instead the legionaries of Padua held firm after giving some ground during the initial charge. Further a force of Avar horsemen began harassing the Cataphracts with their archery.

The potential to destroy such a valued unit was too tempting, and as the Cataphracts extricated themselves from their inopportune situation the signal was given to pursue. With that the Carantanian forces became extended and dispersed over the hilly and forested terrain.

The significance of this was paramount. The Carantanians were used to fighting on flat plains, be it the Padan, Pannonia, or the Pontic Steppe. Ratislav in particular had centralized army command so that the battle could be directed. The fact that much of his army was now beyond line of sight[2] carried grave consequences, especially as the Graecians were used to fighting amongst the hills of Anatolia, and had robust systems for coordinating their forces.

The result was a costly route upon the Graecian counter attack, and total disaster was only narrowly averted due to the protracted resistance of the Avar cavalry.



The Fall Campaign:

The Carantanian royal army had been badly mauled during the battle, and completely demoralized by its inability to fight on even footing with the enemy. It was King Ratislav’s judgement that the army was too big for one man to command, at least in Croatia’s terrain. The army was to break up into smaller units and disperse, gaining the confidence to operate as such by augmenting local bands of Zdeslav Loyalists. Beyond repairing the army’s over centralized command, this also allowed the force to cover more ground, raising Zdeslav’s banner over more villages and presenting an omnipresent threat to Grecian supply depots. Additionally, it eliminated the possibility of the Royal Army being wiped out in a single pitched battle. Additionally, it allowed the royal army to better interoperate with the levied forces of Carantania’s landed nobility, who were trickling into the theatre.

In this new paradigm the Carantanians were able to achieve a more even rate of exchange with the Grecians and their local allies. During this phase of the war a number of key engagements soured the Grecian appetite for war. Near Cavoglave the King himself participated in a cavalry change which succeeded in routing a force of Varangian mercenaries who had been tasked with guarding a supply depot containing the Grecian’s winter food stocks.

In an engagement near Vrpolje, Legio I Patrizia had a rematch with the Cataphracts. Against the superior mobility of the Cataphracts the legion had to thin out and widen their lines, provoking the Grecian horsemen into a frontal charge across the farmer’s field that separated them. It was then that their horses began collapsing beneath their riders, flinging them down upon the field which had been seeded with caltrops.[3] The legionaries were quick to fall upon the crippled cavalry detachment.

Meanwhile, the Dalmatian/Grecian camp was splintering. Duke Domagoj was an alpha personality, and his relations with the Grecian Emperor were confrontational at times as both saw themselves in overall command. Despite having sought out an alliance with the Grecians the Duke remained a committed papist and showed no interest in reorienting the duchy’s faithful towards Constantinople. Accordingly, Basil I took news of the deteriorating supply situation and the maiming of his most prestigious cavalry unit as cause to cut and run.

As his former ally withdrew Domagoj fought a series of rearguard actions, including a particularly successful stand at Trogir, as he withdrew south towards Klis. However, rather than subject his supporters to a lengthy siege, or leave the country side at the mercy of the occupiers, Domagoj asked for terms before the first snowfall of 865.

Thus the war concluded. Domagoj went into exile in Rome. Zdeslav was restory to the throne of Croatia, which had expanded to include a handful Dalmatian city states which had defected when Basil I withdrew. Thanks to Trst’s aggressive early moves the Kingdom of Carantania had succeeded in capturing Venice and a number of small Adriatic islands. However, in annihilating the First Bulgarian Empire Basil I had restored the Danube frontier, bringing a vast amount of land and resources back into the Imperial fold.

In the following years Basil would maintain his momentum, capturing Aleppo after a yearlong siege and raiding deep into the lands of the Magyars. By and large his reign was a high point in Grecian history.

Major engagements of the Dalmatian war. Gracian/Domagoj victories in purple, Carantanian/Zdeslav victories in red.​

Geopolitical landscape of the Balkans following the Dalmatian War.​

[1] Referring to the combined force of the King’s retinue and the merchant legions.

[2] During the final campaign of the steppe war he even had a carriage with a raised platform, from which he could observe the entire battlefield.

[3] You may recall from part [part 3] that the legion was aided by contingents of craftsmen. In that case they were used to make siege equipment, turns out they aren’t limited to making ladders.


Author’s notes:

Wow once again I’m well over a month late on things. Also I think my offering of maps was a little more meager than I’d originally envisioned. Maybe I’ll post a map depicting the over extension of the Carantanian flank at Zrmanja.

Anyways, next update will cover some areas I’ve been pretty mean to until this point. I think it’s about time the Anglos and Arabs finally got their feet back beneath them.

As always: Comments? Questions? Concerns? Hate mail? You know where to send it!

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Danyal of Egypt: The Unlikely Origins of the Anti-Caliphate

In 868 Egypt was under the governorship of Azjur al-Turki, who as a Mamluk proved a very obedient servant of Baghdad. Accordingly, the anti-Mihna revolt which had so paralysed the Abbasid state also occurred here as well. However, the Muslims were divided between Sunni and Alid camps, and there were further divisions within the Sunni camp.

The straw that broke the turkish camel’s back came when the Copts entered the fray. The Coptic revolt was centred on the old Babylon Fortress and the Coptic community it housed, and was led by twin brothers.

The first of these, Danyal, was a well learned man. He had trained to be a priest, but skipped out on his ordination to join his brother Abraam as a merchant. Even though Abraam had more experience in the field it seems Danyal came to become the dominant figure in their business. Abraam was physically strong, and is noted to have had a knack for predicting the movements of bandits, but otherwise was of low intelligence. On their travels Danyal had noted the widespread disorder in Egypt, and realized that it could well be an opportunity.

Babylon fortress was right on the doorstep of Fustat, and when the Copts seized its walls it became a dagger aimed right at the Egyptian Governorate’s heart. Azjur al-Turki besieged the fortress, but as siege entered its second year Danyal observed that the besieging force must have been reduced by the need to fight rebels elsewhere, and inferred that the remainder had become complacent following a year of relative inaction. He was proven correct when Abraam lead a sally which not only routed the besiegers but chased up to and through the gates of Fustat.

Azjur al-Turki had been killed in his chambers by a Kharijite who was them self slain by a Coptic rebel as they attempted to sneak out of the city. Having decapitated the Abbasid regime in Egypt, the matter of stabilizing the country came to the fore, and Danyal proved to have thought up a remedy to this as well. With a body of picked men he sailed to Jeddah and supposedly thwarted an Alid attempt on the holy cities. He was then clear in his threat that if the Banu Hashim did not break with Baghdad he, as a Christian, would have no qualms about razing the holy cities. Thus a new Caliphate under a local Abbasid was proclaimed, with Danyal as hereditary governor of Egypt. By this stroke Danyal was able to fold the Sunni rebels and a portion of the loyalist forces into his own, and the Alids were defeated in short order.

Under Danyal the capital moved back to Alexandria, the Mihna was ended, and the government retreated from matters of theology, outside of continued lip service to the new Anti-Caliph. Additionally, he invaded the southern levant, temporarily capturing Jerusalem in a continuation of his war on the Abbasids of Baghdad.

To further ingratiate himself to his Muslim subjects he arranged the marriage of his brother to local Arab nobility, and avenged the fall of Aleppo by seizing Cyprus, Crete, and Sicily with a navy of north african seamen. Before his death in 888 AD he even entered negotiations with the Pope to establish a Catholic-Anti-Caliph alliance against the Umayyads, Abbasids, and Byzantines, and initiated the reopening of the Canal of the Pharaohs so as to secure his access to the puppet Anti-Caliph. Having died childless,[1] his successor was his brother Abraam. Abraam tended to avoid governance, preferring to spend his time campaigning. That “he could only solve any problem he could hit and run from any problem he couldn’t” was supposedly a popular saying.

With him being on campaign so frequently, the raising of his child fell largely to his wife, and it is perhaps little surprise that after his passing in 890 Governor Mikhael became Governor Mohammed.

A portion of the former Babylon Fortress, where Danyal's revolt began.

​

Scimitars in the Snow: Imperialism and State Consolidation in Inner Asia

On the opposite end of the decaying Abbasid Caliphate, another rising power began to stir. The Samanids of Samarkand had been insulated from the chaos of the Mihna by virtue of distance. Further, as important figures in the Turkish slave trade they had grown wealthy off the Abbasid thirst for Mamluks.

Even with Khorasan and Transoxiana under their rule they still found that they could not acquire Turkish slaves as fast as the Abbasids were placing orders for them. Under Isma’il ibn Ahmad the immense wealth of this far flung Abbasid outpost was put into invading Zhetysu and, in and even more daring move across the Tien Shan and into the Tarim Basin. The details of this semi-mythical expedition are largely lost to time and conflicting accounts. However, it is clear that it consisted of 20,000 slave soldiers[2] and was lead by a general known only by the name of Assad. It is also know that the shores of Lake Balkhash, the passes of the Tien Shan, and the city states of Tarim fell under Samanid rule.

Thoroughly shrouded in mystery is the circumstances of Assad’s death. In his final dispatch he claims to have crossed yet another mountain range wherein,

“Most glorious Emir,

I find myself in a land populated by those who worship jinn and have thus gained their powers. They ride into battle on horseback yet fight on foot with long straight swords. In a previous skirmish with them we sustained over a hundred martyrs before we were able to put them to route. We learned the secret of their prowess when we stormed one of the infidel’s stupas, only to find statures of terrifying monsters inside.

This society of devil worshipers is befittingly militaristic, and we have been engaged many further times since. I will return to the Tarim Basin once more as I am clearly under prepared for an extended campaign at this time. After regrouping I will assail this land once more, Inshallah.”
-Address to the Emir, Assad.

The exact details are unknow, but it is seems Assad had stumbled into the middle of the Tibetan Civil War, and is possibly the reason why Osung’s resistance to Yumtan imploded as suddenly as it did. This is unfortunate for the Samanid state, as not only had they lost a capable general, but the Tibetan Empire and its Uyghur allies would contest the Tarim Basin for the remainder of Samanid rule there.

Inner Asia and the Silk Road, much of which fell under Samanid rule during Isma’il's reign.​

Wessex Waning, Danelaw Declining: The Start of the North Sea Reconquista

As the preeminent power in England, Wessex had been spared the initial wave of Danish settlement. At the same time however its rulers had not quite come to appreciate how the balance of power had shifted following the Danish migration. Accordingly when the Danes invaded in 868 the Kingdom of Wessex was caught unprepared.

While it still put up a good fight, its forced winning a number of victories which likely contributed to it retaining its independence, it was forced into a tributary relation with Jorvik. Additionally, by treaty King Æthelred’s younger brother, Alfred, was exiled from the kingdom on account of his repeated battlefield successes marking him as a threat to the Danelaw.

That however, did little to diminish the threat the determined prince posed. He travelled amongst the regional courts of the ever decentralized Frankish Kingdom and collected donations and second sons, with whom he formed a powerful mercenary force which employed the same tactics as the Vikings to raid up and down the coasts of Scandinavia and Jorvik.

At the same time Alfred went on the charm offensive, convincing many coastal lords to conduct no trade what so ever with the norse men, and securing Papal sanction for his private war against the invaders. As a result the rulers of Jorvik found their coffers running low as a highly mobile, motivated, and well-funded enemy nibbled away at their peripheral lands.

Alfred even extended his campaigns to distant Iceland, prompting some of the peaceful islanders to seek lands even further west.

Alfred the warrior prince, some say he was the greatest King the world had never had.​

[1] as popular as the theory that he was gelded in battle is, it seems more likely that he was only sterile.

[2] mind you the Uyghur account claims 400,000, but that can surely be dismissed.


Author's Notes:

Shorter update this time, perhaps a little too short given the extent of developments covered here, but at the same time I want to leave myself plenty of wriggle room when it comes to the far peripheries of this TL. Next update will hopefully advance us into the 900s.

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Cross-Mediterranean Relations: A Tale of Two Monks

Following the Dalmatian war relations with the Grecians did not recover. Accordingly, the court of Ljubljana was most receptive to the overtures of alliance by Danyal of Egypt.

Initially this diplomacy was mostly symbolic, with the real benefits being mercantile in nature. Arabic accounts of Italians and even some Slavs visiting the Nile Delta begin to appear in this era. As do Carantanian accounts of Arabic merchants visiting Istria and northern Italy. A monk of the Monte Maria abbey named Domicijan recorded the following.

“Today we were visited by a man of dark complexion who was only able to converse with us in Greek. We initially assumed him to be a Grecian until he volunteered the information that he was an Egyptian monk. Specifically he was looking to make a pilgrimage to where his fellow countrymen had been martyred. I was the first amongst my peers to deduce that this meant St. Maurice and the rest of the Theban Legion. We regretfully had to inform him that he must have made a wrong turn for Acaunum was yet further west. He was disheartened by this news. So, having made the pilgrimage myself once, I offered to guide him there if he would guide me around Egypt.”

This traveller, Andras of Alexandria, made some interesting observations during his brief stint in Europe. Domicijan recorded a number of these in the first volume of his travel loge,

“Andras was only somewhat impressed with the cities of Northern Italy. He was always sure to impress upon me that Egypt had larger cities that were closer together. He was however very impressed with how large they were compared to the rivers they were built upon. The Nile, the same river that God had turned to blood, was apparently far larger than anything he had observed thus far in Europe. I tried to impress upon him the size and scale of the Danube, but he insisted that a river connecting two seas was impossible.[1]

Instead the natural feature of this country he found most impressive was the mountains. He found it unimaginable that a people, the Romans, had been able to rule over both mountains upon which snow falls in the summer, and Egypt, which he ensured me had never received a single flake of snow.

Returning to the subject of rivers and cities, he felt that the autonomy of the cities was a natural outgrowth of the area’s lack of a dominant river. He explained that in Egypt he the Nile is the only river, and that who ever controls it has an iron grip over all the cities, as all the cities are on the banks of the Nile. The fact that our king resided in a small city on a small river meant that he had no real power to govern.”

This passage highlights the significance of this writing. More than a mere travelogue, it presents a comparison of civilization on both sides of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, Andras’ account does not survive, and Domicijan’s record of his travelling partner’s reaction to Europe is quite sparse. He writes far more on Egypt.

“Egypt wears a mask. Upon first arriving there by boat one would be forgiven for thinking it the greenest, wettest country on the Earth. For by the coast is a large area with an unrivalled density of rivers and fantastically rich soil. It is not until you travel well inland that it becomes apparent that all the rivers are in fact just one split up by hundreds of Islands at its mouth. The Country beyond very much desperately clings to the banks of this one river just as Andras had explained. Worse yet, the great river was not navigable like our Danube. Quite the opposite, after three weeks travel up river one finds themselves facing a great section of rapids so impassible that they form the southern border of the realm.

Andras explain to me that there are Christian kingdoms further south, but that the cataracts make them hard to contact. I suppose that is good, for because of this barrier the Christians of the south have not experienced the same Mahometian rule that Egypt had previously endured. Despite the change in leadership Egypt’s country side and cities remain dotted with the temples of the Mahometus.

Andras ensured me that the African interior had many Christian states, and that between Europe and Africa it was the Mahometian world that was small and fragile. He also spoke of his desire to undertake a mission to bring the word of Christ to the very source of the Nile, and did so with such passion that I neglected to point out that even the legions of the tyrant Nero had found passage that far south to be impossible.

While journeying through Egypt he pointed out a number of holy sites. Should I ever visit Rome I will be sure to compare our Pope’s house to that of the Pope of Alexandria. However, the funeral of the Pharaoh was the grandest of religious ceremonies I observed in Egypt. It was in Babylon Fortress where we had stopped on our way back up the river. Andras cried twice upon learning of Pharaoh Abraam’s death, once for the Pharaoh’s passing, and once more for having not known that Pharaoh Danyal had already passed and been replaced while he was on his journey.”

This chance encounter proved fruitful for both nations as the Carantanian presence at the funeral elevated the prominence of Carantania at a pivotal time. For under Abraam’s mismanagement the islands of Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus had revolted, and the North African seamen Danyal had employed to conquer them had been infiltrated by Alids. For then Governor Mikhael the situation was quite desperate. What Carantania offered was a fleet and Dyophysite intermediaries.[2] The frequency of cross-Mediterranean diplomacy hastened considerably as terms of alliance were established. Domicijan would prove vital in this diplomacy as he became a impermanent fixture in the courts of both Ljubljana and Alexandria. His assessment of the Governor as a crypto Christian who merely took his status as governor more seriously[3] likely helped keep negotiations on track when Mikhael converted to Islam.

In the end, the Anti-Caliphate would succeed in soliciting the naval strength of Venice and Trst.

A later depiction of Alexandria​

Same Breed, Different Temperament: Normandia Rises From The Sea, Bursts The Banks Of A River, and Establishes Itself On Land

Alfred was not the first Christian to launch retaliatory raids against Scandinavia. The Christianized Danes of Jutland had done so for many years prior. Christian lords who found themselves in the market for mercenaries highly coveted these raiders on the basis of their confessional commonality.

In 894, the King of Aquitaine was one such Christian lord. In preparation for the annual raid into Moorish Iberia he hired a sizable band of “Jutes”[4] under the leadership of Gurim. Records of the following campaign are scant. However, it seems that the egos of Gurim and the King were too large to share the same room as Gurim’s men departed midway through the campaign.

They re-enter the record later that spring when they occupied a fishing village in the Kingdom of Asturias for supplies and to wait out a storm. Evidently they were not heading home. Instead it seemed they were still after the wealth of the Moors.

This much is confirmed by their actions along the western coast of Iberia. They raided down the coast pillaging the coastal settlements and taking their rampage up the Marateca river, then carrying some of their smaller ships over to the Sorraia River, so as to assault the Tagus Estuary from two directions. The City of Lishbuna fell swiftly to this attack

Attempts by the local authorities to evict the Danes failed, and the Caliphate of Cordoba was then entangled with conflicts against Aquitaine and Asturias. As a result the door was left open for the families of Gurim’s raiders, followed by yet more raiders impressed with the quality of the loot, followed in turn by their families. The result was the emergence and consolidation of a new polity along the banks of the lower Tagus river. In the language of the locals it was named Normandia, after it’s rulers, the Normans.[5]

Moorish hill forts offered little protection to those in the valleys and plains bellow.​

Empire of the Romans: Lothringia

By the late 800s the foremost state of western Christendom was looking to lose that title.

To the north it withered under Viking raids. Nowhere along its coasts were safe, the riverine capabilities of Viking longboats made even settlements far inland vulnerable. Even its own subjects proved to be bothersome as the Jutlanders took the Wends as fair game, greatly disrupting missionary efforts there. Throughout the empire booms were constructed to impede river travel, greatly reducing the flow of commerce whilst providing at best a nuisance to the raiders.

To the south it faced the troubles of governing Italy while having a government based north of the Alps. Upon the death of Louis II in 875 the Lombard nobility of Northern Italy attempted to elect the Duke of Spoleto as King of Italy, a clear rejection of Boso, the husband of Louis II’s daughter. For the third time in a row the Frankish armies marched through the St. Bernard pass and gave battle to the Lombards, this time venturing south to subdue Spoleto. However, this provoked the Duchy of Benevento to close ranks with its fellow southern Lombards, and the Franks would be driven from the city of Spoleto by the arrival of a Carantianian-esque “legion” from Naples.

Recognizing the need to be able to better project power over the southern frontier, Boso announced plans to move the capital from Aachen to Aosta.[6]

These plans went unimplemented as many of the northern lords revolted. Taking advantage of this disruption, the Wends dragged Charles the Fat Wend into the forest, refusing to feed him until he proclaimed the Wendish March’s secession from the Frankish realm.

The ensuing military conflict produced a stalemate which only compromise could quell. In Italy city charters were extended to the cities in order to reduce the influence of the Lombard nobility.[7] In the north the taxes and obligations of the nobility were reduced so as to enable them to better conduct their local efforts against the Vikings.[8] Finally it was agreed to “forever” respect the local laws and customs of the Wends,[9] and to make their marquess obligated to maintain a traveling court for the purpose of mediating disputes.[10]

Boso. If there were any descendants of Romulus left by then, he wasn't one of them. ​

[1] Seems Domicijan failed to explain the function of the Fossa Carolina.

[2] The fact that the Copts were Miaphysite seems to have contributed to the revolt.

[3] It is true that the Coptic community of Egypt remained prominent and relatively empowered after Mikhael became Mohammed. However, this is more likely due to the fact that half of his family was still Christian, and, while he was closer to his mother, he definitely bore no grudge against his father. And, while he did marry Christian that may have simply been to keep things in the family.

[4] What contemporary sources used to distinguish the Christianized Danes of Jutland from the pagans on the Islands.

[5] Yes I did just make a Norman state in Portugal. Hopefully this appeases rather than enrages the Lusiboos.

[6] Or to establish it as a second/seasonal capital in addition to Aachen. The sources conflict.

[7] RIP

[8] RIP

[9] RIP

[10] Neither Louis the Wend nor Charles the Fat Wend liked leaving Copanic. This seems to have irritated the Wends quite a bit.

Author's notes:
And nope! Still not in the 900s. But I'm almost there...

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Hey all, just figured I'd let you know that I haven't forgotten about this TL (my signature won't let me forget).

Quite the opposite I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

Particularly about how poorly planned out it has been. I never really made a planning doc or anything like that, let alone anything like a planned Carantanian royal lineage. I was very liberal with letting the butterflies flap their wings, and accordingly I have a world that increasingly bears little resemblance to OTL. Which isn't a bad thing, provided one has made plans for it.

I did have some ideas of things I wanted to happen iTTL, for instance I intended for the Crusades and Mongol invasions to still happen on schedule.

However, the Middle East (and to a lesser extent Europe) have been changed to the point where I don't think it's possible to have the crusades, at least not ones that are recognizable. And given that I've let the butterflies go so far as reunifying Tibet, and Islamizing the Uighurs way ahead of schedule, I think it's safe to say Temüjin has been butterflied.

So I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking and work to come up with an actual plan going forward, and there's a reasonable chance I may retcon some details from past updates* to make things more manageable going forward.

I may also change up the delivery going forward. For simplicity's sake I might make it a bit more disjointed so as to jump between points of interest rather than show everything in between as I've been trying to do. But I'll consult with you guys before deciding on that.

Just figured I'd give a heads up.

*and if that is the case I'll be sure to keep a detailed change log so you can quickly see what has been changed.