My schedule is growing more and more constrictive as the school year approaches, but I think I can at least get the rest of David's reign done before then. I wrote another update last night but it just doesn't seem to have the 'spark' or 'energy' most of my writing does. I hope its tolerable, but if its not I'll do a rewrite. Please let me know what you think, it'll remain unthreadmarked for the time being.
Part LXXI: The Defense of Khaldea (1542-1544)
The sudden Persian invasion had struck the Romans like an avalanche, sending panic across the empire and especially the capital, which lay less than fifty miles from their furthest point and would have been left high and dry if Siyavash had been able to batter his way through the mountains. Bad communication in Pontos, especially between the regent Konstantinides and the provincial bandons, paralyzing the initial response to the invasion, and by the time word reached David in the far west it seemed as if the entire empire were about to be torn apart in the lion’s jaws. Though the ongoing negotiations with the Khandarhids complicated things severely, David was suitably spooked by this and began scrambling forces eastward in hopes of holding the passes and the capital long enough for true help to arrive. Finally, as July drew to a close, he himself took ship with the majority of the army left in the west, determined not to have bought Constantinople for Trapezous’ price….
Ultimately, David was unable to reach his capital before winter made the seas impossible due to logistical problems, a series of disastrous crashes on the Paphlagonian coast and pure bad luck in terms of storms. With the winter came an all-too brief pause in the fighting, though, and he was determined to use this break as an opportunity to rally his empire against the invaders. Most of the western army had been rushed to support Siderokastron while it was under assault, but the bandons from Pontos proper were either unraised or badly-positioned, again due to administerial incompetence and miscommunication. After sacking Konstantinidis, he organized the bandonoi into the fighting force that they were intended to be and made preparations to counter-attack across the mountains come spring. An army such as that of Siyavash could not be allowed to remain so close to the imperial capital, and it was of the utmost importance amongst the Roman command to push them as far away as possible as soon as possible.
By the time the passes began to thaw again in April 1543, Roman forces were distributed as follows: 30,000 footmen, including the best surviving veterans of the western campaigns and the war against the Dadianis, were camped under David himself directly at the mouth of the pass, with most of the few thousand cavalry that could be mustered up on such short notice with them to create a total force of around 35,000. A smaller force of 15,000 bandonoi was held in reserve at Matzouka near the Mylos River, which flowed along the pass, with orders to fight to the death against any Persian force that managed to get past the main force, while another reserve of 10,000 (mostly non-bandonoi militiamen from within Trapezous itself, of highly various quality) would remain within the capital to fight alongside the people of the capital in its defense if things came to that. God willing they never would, but David couldn’t take that chance. As he broke camp and marched southward on 16 April, the fate of the newly-restored Roman Empire seemed to rest on the shoulders of the Imperial army.
Seemed is the operative word. Siyavash had pulled back out of the pass as the snows began to fall, but he had not withdrawn far enough. The Persian army took atrocious losses from the cold, hunger and various camp diseases that winter, dwindling from 25,000 in November with only some 15,000 of the original force surviving to see the end of the snows. Luckily for the Persians, however, a smaller force dispatched the previous year into Samtskhe under Farrukhan Mehrani had turned back to reinforce them, bringing their total number to around 25,000. Still, the shahanshah could tell that his men’s morale had gone through the floor, and that he would need to withdraw southward to reform and prepare for the campaign to resume in 1544. In hopes of hastening this process enough to resume campaigning later that year, he sent orders for a force of 15,000 to be mustered at Bitlis as both a reserve and an auxiliary. He then began making preparations to depart in mid-April, once the region was warm enough to do so, but these plans would be dramatically altered by the arrival of the Romans.
After nearly four weeks crossing the pass--it wasn’t completely clear of snow, and the Romans were forced to brave onwards through the ice--David emerged onto the plateau on 9 May, now with an army numbering only about 30,000. Still, it was quite the force and he decided that he could and should engage Siyavash while his army was effectively coming out of hibernation and thus not at its best form. In addition to his not-completely-functioning force, Siyavash had also been caught nearly completely flat-footed by the sudden appearance of the Romans, not expecting them to arrive for a few more weeks, and was forced to suddenly break camp to meet them.
In this unready and slightly panicked state, he made a hasty and nearly disastrous decision, retreating towards the south-west rather than facing David outright. In doing so, the Persians scrambled directly into sight of the Kozokastron Fortress, a minor outpost in the mountains which was in contact with the Romans via signal fires. Their path was revealed and David scrambled a force to intercept them, but the light cavalry that rushed over the mountains was overeager, and rather than waiting to ambush the Persians they attacked them outright. They were driven back, and Siyavash managed to redirect his force southeastwards and escape into the open country. The qizilbash were still thick on the ground in this region, but it would take time to gather them, and as the mountains started to shrink behind him Siyavash was just as aware as David that in the interim the Persians would hold the upper hand.
However, this advantage would not last, and having already decided that a strategic withdrawl was in his best interests Siyavash decided to get while the getting was good and move southwards. Bayburt and Erzincan both remained in Roman hands, and while he had bypassed them the year before now that there was a proper Roman army coming after him the fortified cities formed the beginnings of a cage that could trap him in hostile territory. By the end of May, when the first major Qizilbash forces began to rally to David’s camp in the Pontic foothills, the Persians had managed to reach Erzincan. While Shirazi’s incompetent siege had continued for months at this point and his army was a shattered wreck of its former self, Siyavash’s arrival was able to abruptly turn the tide of the affair, pounding through the city walls with a vast array of cannonade. Most of the city’s defenders surrendered in exchange for good treatment, though Ismail and most of the Safaviyya retreated into the citadel to await relief.
Though Erzincan and Erzurum were both now in Qutlughid hands, at least to an extent, Siyavash felt that he was too exposed to enemy counter-attack to remain at Erzincan, as the sudden arrival of a large Roman force--he was unsure just how large David’s army was, nor if it had been reinforced by another--could see him pinned inside the city and between Romans outside the walls and inside the walls. Not enjoying the notion of an eastern Alesia, he decided his best option was to hastily refortify Erzincan’s outer walls to allow a smaller force to stay behind to try and take the citadel while the bulk of his force went south into Bitlis to link up with his reinforcements. The Qutlughids departed in the middle of May, before the wall was even completed, and this left the siege force to finish repairs a mere six hours before David arrived.
David had chafed in the Pontic foothills, watching the enemy which had come to within a hair’s breadth (or so he believed) of destroying his empire slip away into the high steppe without a fight, one which he was sure he could win. Once the qizilbash necessary to cover his force’s advance had assembled at his camp, he was eager to give chase, believing that the Persians could finally be crushed and the insults which Arslan had heaped upon him be done away with, and gave the order to march at once. In friendly country and moving along well-established supply networks, the Romans were able to move quite quickly, and came within days of catching the Persians at Erzincan. The brutal treatment which the people of Erzincan had been subjected to infuriated the Romans, as many of them had relatives in the region which could easily have faced the same fate. The valley was filled with the roar of cannons as the hastily-rebuilt walls were laid bear, and after coordinating an assault with the defenders of the citadel the Romans swept into the remnants of the city, slaughtering the remaining Persian forces and ironically causing even more damage than Siyavash’s army had. After restoring Roman rule in Erzincan, David’s army swiftly moved south-eastward in pursuit of the Persians.
As they approached the frontier, the road network which the Romans had used to speed their advance began to falter, their speed being hurt by the sudden lack of supplies they faced in country that had already been devastated twice by passing armies within the last year. The locals, mostly Armenian highlanders, were standoffish at best given the Romans’ less than stellar treatment of their neighbors across the border, and their advance became much slower. The Persians, meanwhile, finally held the advantage in terms of speed and familiarity, and were able to fairly quickly outstripe the Romans as they withdrew back towards their staging bases. By early July, with heat rising and the supply situation getting steadily worse, David began to suspect that Siyavash was attempting to draw him out past his supply lines and ambush him in the high steppe. Mindful of what had happened the last time he had ignored the voices in his head, he pulled back across the border, albeit after dispatching several thousand light horsemen to pursue the Persians further and harass them to the best of their extent.
Thus, Siyavash was able to escape into Bitlis. Humiliated by the forced retreat across the countryside, the shahanshah could practically feel his power starting to slip away from him like the foundations of a house made of sand. Still, he retained control of the forces available to him, and with them there was the possibility of a victory to restore his prestige and the control over his empire. He spent the autumn of 1543 and into the winter and spring of 1544 reorganizing his army into a proper fighting force, sacking, banishing or executing incompetent officials (Shirazi was tied to a cannon and, well, you can picture the rest) and creating a secondary supply corps to keep his main force fed.
David, meanwhile, had turned east to lay siege to Erzurum, in hopes of driving the Persians out of Roman territory that campaign season. Upon arriving, however, he found the city’s Roman and Armenian population expelled into the lands surrounding its walls, and the Persian forces holed up within with a great deal of cannonade, powder and enough supplies to last for several months. The Romans laid siege to the city, pressing the walls with everything they had, but ultimately the walls had been too well-fortified (by themselves, ironically enough) or reinforced and were defended too fiercely--none of the Persians were willing to surrender after the massacre at Erzincan--to be taken quickly, and David quickly decided they had to be starved out. The siege continued throughout the winter, and by the spring the defenders showed no sign of surrender. The bandonoi, meanwhile, had been in the field too long, and their absence from their farms was threatening famine. A decisive battle was needed, and quickly.
Fortunately for the Romans, Siyavash decided that now was the time to strike. He marched north from Bitlis, hoping to relieve Erzurum and inflict a crippling blow on the Trapezuntines that would allow him to sweep to the coast, as he was also experiencing supply problems. The two armies met in early June, or rather didn’t meet, dancing around each other to try and gain the upper hand in terms of natural positions. Eventually, on 16 June, the Romans managed to bait the Persians into anchoring their flank on the hills west of the city, putting themselves under the guns atop the ridgeline and breaking up their front in the irrigation canals of the region. The Romans attacked the leftmost section of the army first, crushing it easily before turning to attack the larger sections. However, because they were slowed by the canals they were able to make little headway, and the Persians were able to pull back in time to avoid encirclement and inflict heavy casualties on the Romans in the process. Luckily for the Romans, a cavalry force sent to outflank the Persians would become disoriented and blunder into their camp, which they would set fire to before fleeing. With a rematch almost certain to be a Roman victory, Siyavash retreated south, away from the city and into the mountains. The highlander groups--qizilbash, Armenians and Kurds--sensed the opportunity for loot and began to stalk them as they retreated southwards, attacking and managing to capture parts of the supply train, making the whole affair a very public and very humiliating defeat.
In the aftermath, Erzurum surrendered. David stood down most of the bandonoi, remaining in the region with 15,000 men to secure it and ward off any Persian return. It was a wise decision, because Siyavash would return only two years later….
