Part V: An Empire United
This post follows on with the thread “no Vandal invasion of Africa scenario”. In this ATL, although significantly weakened and reduced by a century of war, the Western Roman Empire has survived. But as both halves of the Roman Empire undergoes a period of economic revival in the early 6th century, the traditional and evolving systems of Empire come under increasing strain. Soon the old balance of power will collapse and a new order will rise from the ashes...
The Western Roman Empire has all the familiar elements of the 6th century –clashing religious controversies, decaying political traditions, the rise of new social and economic forces, the intertwining of domestic and foreign affairs in the conduct of the Empire. But all this is pervaded by the indefinable force of human personality. The key to understanding the Western Empire in the 6th century lays in the character and personality of the Western Emperor Messianus. In 524 Messianus was a popular choice for the purple, a member of the Italian émigré, he had gained recent fame in campaigns to pacify and subjugate the Moors of Numidia and Mauretania. . He was also a keen reformer, promising to end the corruption and mismanagement that had festered under his gluttonous predecessor Paeonius. But behind the elegant panegyric of his coronation, lay a much deeper disorder, a disintegrating political system.
As the Western Roman Empire entered the latter half of the 6th century, it became clear that the old system was breaking down. The weakening of the military and administrative systems (after the barbarian invasions of the 5th century) had allowed local elites to considerable exert pressure on imperial authority. In order to maintain the loyalty of the provinces in the face of territorial and military decline, the central government created (or revived) provincial assemblies, and appointments to the provincial bureaucracy had been limited to members of the local senatorial elites. Barbarian 'federates' had been allowed unprecedented powers, and were virtual rulers of much of Italia and Illyricum. By the end of the 5th century, the centralised bureaucracy had largely collapsed and the Western government had increasingly come to rely on local elites (and the church hierarchy) to administer the provinces. These powerful local elites often avoided paying taxes, consolidating their local authority and using their influence to the detriment of the state, of smaller landowners, and of the general peasantry.
Messianus hope to end their flagrant corruption of the age and restrain the unprecedented autonomy of local elites by returning his government and the Empire to strong centralism and the ‘divine’ imperial authority of the 4th century. In the name of restoring tradition he embarked, with pedantry and stubbornness, on a campaign to pass laws curtailing the privileges of the aristocracies, the bishops and the ‘federates’. He campaigned vigorously against corruption, reforming the taxation system and freeing the tenant farmers from their rigid obligations. But for all his administrative skill and his moral piety, Messianus was too rash. He was utterly convinced of the correctness of his policies and in his quest to pursue them he alienated his allies among the landowning aristocracy. This left him vulnerable and isolated, rebellion and sedition became inevitable.
When the crisis broke, unsurprisingly, it was over a matter of religion. In Messianus’s mind, the imperial title meant a monarch without limits or challenges to his authority, not even from the Pope in Rome. In 529, he excommunicated and later arrested Pope Seronatus for refusing to support his affirmation on the teachings of the ascetic Maximus ‘the Confessor’. In response, a number of local synods were convened in Milan, in which Messianus was condemned. Encouraged by the backing of the now exiled Pope and the Italian bishops, the Gothic comes foederatorum Theodoric and his Gothic ‘federates’ revolted against imperial authority.
This affront to imperial authority forced Messianus to move quickly, and he raised a large force to quell the rebellion. But the war opened badly, Theodoric defeated an imperial army sent against him and won many of the Italian senatorial elite to his banner. Soon all of Italia was in open revolt. Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Emperor realised that the time had come for him to profit from the tensions and disorder within the West. His own imperial dream was no less idealistic than Messianus’s: the re-unification of the Empire under his own rule. But, unlike Messianus, he had the resources and talent to realise his vision. In Italia he gained Theodoric’s allegiance and submission by recognising him as rex Gothorum and granting him the "right" to govern all Italy north of the Po as a 'federate' kingdom under Eastern suzerainty (effectively granting him recognising him as the king of northern Italy). In 531, Eastern forces (accompanied by Gothic allies) crushed the Western imperial army near Naples and secured Italia for the Eastern Empire.
While Messianus’s battered army prepared to evacuate Sicily, Fasir (a Moorish camel-borne prince of Ouarsenis and former ally of Messianus) swept down from his mountain stronghold and raised the African aristocracy in revolt. Faced with rebellion at home and defeat in Italia, Messianus attempted to join his army in Sicily but was murdered by own generals in exchange for amnesty. Soon afterwards the Eastern Emperor Belisarius was joyously welcomed into Carthage, where he rewarded Fasir with the title magister militum per Africae and restored the privileges of the African aristocracy. In 533, Belisarius is supreme ruler of a Roman Empire stretching from the sands of Syria to the Pillars of Hercules. The civil war that led to the re-unification of the Empire was not a replay of the destructive Justinian wars of the OTL which ruined Italian infrastructure and left the country depopulated. Despite a few bloody battles in Campania, the ATL reconquista of the West is a relatively short, profitable (for the East) and popular.
Any thoughts?