For the Dream of the Dead Empire: A Post-Roman TL

[shakaka36]

Okay boys and girls, my lovely weekend is over and I am now back to work in rainy Cincinnati... So expect an update in the next day or two.

Just out of interest how far ahead have you planned in the TL? Do you have a vague vision of what the long term effects of West Europe (and perhaps even the entirety of Europe) will be?

I know where I'm going in the short run, I kind of know I'm going in the mid-term, and in the long run... not so much. I have some characters/stories/ideas that I want to put into practice but the full picture is relatively flexible (I welcome suggestions and reader opinions!).

I am personally of the opinion that the period 500-1000 AD is one of the most pivotal in history, and the events that occurred within it had massive implications across the continents of the Old World. a POD in north-eastern France in 1000AD might severely change the history of Europe, but five hundred years earlier and it can... well, you'll see.

Of course when it comes to butterflies flying east of the Indus... well, I'll probably need some help.

 

[Daztur]

Of course when it comes to butterflies flying east of the Indus... well, I'll probably need some help.

Yeah that's one of the hard things about TLs that cover a lot of years, pretty soon the "everybody is their own sibling" butterflies hit EVERYWHERE.

 

[shakaka36]

Okay everybody, here comes an update with some action




Northern Gaul – Winter, 481



The bitter cold of winter stung the channel coast. Snow had been heavy this season, the past year’s gentle winter being met in turn by this year’s frozen hell. Ice drifted sluggishly towards the mouth of the Somme, joined every so often, by a bloodied and frozen corpse.

Syagrius, seated in the headquarters of a makeshift encampment beside the river, had taken his hands out of his thick fur gloves, trying desperately to warm them over his fire. Syagrius, son of Aegidius, the greatest Roman leader west of the Ionian Sea, cowered before the cold as surely as did a newborn babe.

This was no time to be on campaign. In a winter like this, he ought to be home in Noviodunum. He ought to be home with his wife, and their children who seemed to grow more insufferable every time he saw them. He ought to be lounging on his own couches, in his well insulated home, eating hearty winter foods designed to keep the blood from freezing. He was losing men to the cold every day. Hypothermia, frost bite (he’d sent one of his legates home after the poor fellow had lost a fifth toe to that scourge), the common cold. His only comfort the knowledge that however much his men, provisioned as best they could be, were suffering, his enemy must surely be suffering worse.

The chaos across the border, in the land of the Franks, had expanded rapidly since the death of Childeric at the beginning of the year. Many in Noviodunum had seen only the opportunity, the hope that dynastic troubles among the Merovingians would give the Romans a chance to move back to the frontier. What they had not anticipated was that between the disruption of agricultural labors by Childeric’s mobilization of Frankish forces the year before, the acceleration of Saxon raids on less well-defended Frankish territory, and the general breakdown of the agricultural economy due to the succession crisis, a great many Franks were desperately hungry.

And more desperately hungry men meant more raiding parties striking across the river at lands nominally under Syagrius’s protection. Defending them had required a mobilization of significant military resources in the midst of one of the coldest winters in living memory.

The fighting had been mostly easy. These were disorganized rabbles, mostly Frankish freedmen whose patrons were too busy with politics in Tornacum to keep them in line. They scattered when they saw Roman troops, and if cornered fell easily.

This morning had been no exception. They were a few dozen miles downriver from Frankish Samarobriva (Amiens), where a group of marauders had been ravaging the local villages and had kidnapped the wife of a local aristocrat. Syagrius had taken personal command of a small detachment of troops, some two hundred men, and chased the Franks for the better part of a week, before cornering them against the icy river. Forced to choose between a frozen doom in the water or a warrior’s death by Roman steel, they chose the latter.

The barbarians are not without honor, Syagrius mused to himself. “I’ll give them that.”

The skirmish was over by mid-afternoon, but Syagrius was tired and could tell his men were too, so rather than march on, they got to work crafting a makeshift encampment by the river to last them the night. The irony was not lost on Syagrius. Five hundred years earlier Julius Caesar’s army had walked these lands: fighting barbarians in the day and sheltering in makeshift camps at night. Now ‘Romans’ who were mostly the descendants of those older barbarians did the same, freezing and bleeding for the empire their ancient fathers had frozen and bled to stop.

‘The Empire.’

Syagrius practically snorted as he thought the words.


******


Augusta Treverorum – Winter, 481



Marcus of Narbo (Narbonne) loved the winter. Though as he peered into the faces of the huddled masses walking the streets of the city, he suspected he was probably the only one.

Ever since he was a boy, he had loved it. Was anything more beautiful than snow? That great white equalizer, that covered all things and made the world look new and different once more? Oh how he had played in it as a child, throwing snow balls around with his sisters, building figures from it, even making little snow huts to hide in. As an adult he had found other things to love. People were often more sullen in the winter, made sad and cold in equal measure. And when those people were women…

Well, Marcus prided himself on his ability to make women happy and warm.

So though the common people of the great Rhineland city seemed to do nothing else but complain of what a terrible winter it was, Marcus of Narbo could not help but cast his head high to the falling snow, and smile.

Dressed in priestly garb, he talked his way past the burly guards (Saxon mercenaries, if he was not mistaken) that stood outside the home of Domitianus, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the city.

Domitianus was hosting the latest of a series of meetings of the city’s aristocratic elite, that had dominated the upper class social calendar in Augusta Treverorum since the passing through of the corpse of Childeric in early Spring. Marcus took a seat among a group of onlookers in one of the home’s several luxuriant lounges. His neighbors on the couch were merchants, priests, lesser city officers… important enough to have been invited but not so important as to be permitted to speak. In the center of the room stood a clutch of the city’s Great Men, and a few from other towns in the Rhineland. They were debating the same thing they had been debating all year: How to respond to the ongoing Frankish dynastic crisis.

“With the death of Chlodemer, events in Tornacum will only grow more unstable.” One old man, whom Marcus did not recognize, retorted to another, whose words the priest had missed while entering the room. “Childebert’s claim to the throne is now all but a dead letter. The Rhineland should throw its support behind the other boy now, and we can help bring all this to a close before serious warfare breaks out!”

“Perhaps warfare is appropriate!” Roared another, a bearded man whose build and scarred face suggested a military past. “Let the barbarians kill themselves! Meanwhile we can use the time to prepare our own forces to join the fray!”

“What forces! We are an unarmed city Fagus… No matter how long we try to train some rabble of local boys, even a piss-poor band of Franks will still crush us on the field!”

“Coward!” screamed Fagus, his face a dark red. “This is the greatest chance we will ever have to restore our independence!”

Albinus, a man Marcus knew well, having once stayed in his home, rose now from his chair to speak. “.. And yet that chance is still far too slim. We all sympathize with your patriotism Fagus, we do… But we must be realistic. It does us no good to be free for a day, and razed to the ground the next.”

Fagus, now sensing that his otherwise factional colleagues had united against his arguments, began to calm.

“We need not stand alone. Soon the intrigue and petty pissing contests will end and real fighting will break out among the Franks. When it does their control of the southern border will collapse. All we have to do is raise a force strong enough to hold the Rhineland for a short while… and surely General Syagrius will come east to link up with us!”

Marcus smiled.

After all, how would Syagrius know to come east, unless somebody took the time to tell him?


******


Samarobriva – Late Winter, 482



As the late morning sun began to break through the haze of heavy cloud that had blanketed the sky for what seemed like an age, Syagrius peered out at the city to his east. Samarobriva, the Frankish jewel of the Somme.

The brutal winter was ebbing now, and in the night the clouds had disgorged not snow but a foul half-frozen sleet. The thawing ground around the Roman camp had turned to mud, wrecked further by the stomping boots of almost three thousand soldiers.

But as their General poured over maps of the Somme and its environs, the Roman army seemed charged with energy. Good Gallic men, preparing to engage in a triumph of the kind Romans had rarely achieved in their lifetime. They sat bunched in groups, chattering as they sharpened their weapons, and checked their armor for holes and breaches. Their officers discussed plans over and over, repeating the same details again and again until they knew them all by heart.

The hellish winter had turned into a great boon for Syagrius. The strength of
the Roman counter to the Frankish raids had surprised peasant and townsman alike along the frontier. They had expected to be left to their own devices till Spring. But Syagrius has sided with those eager to take advantage of the Frankish political crisis, and had insisted on raising the forces to fight the raiders even among the blizzards.

To be sure, he had regretted the decision many times. But as he witnessed the outpouring of popular support for the campaign, the gratitude of local people, for generations used to being abandoned by the soldiers their taxes paid for, he knew he had made the right decision.

It was, above all, a political matter. A powerful faction of southerners (mostly hailing from lands closer to the Loire) had opposed his decision to send forces to the Somme. Syagrius had taken a gamble, knowing that failure would significantly weaken his hand against his subordinates. That risk had now all but evaporated. The raids had largely collapsed, and with Spring just around the corner, the Somme region seemed safer than it had been in a generation. Syagrius could have gone home a victor.

But instead, he had opted to use his improved standing among the subordinate officers and the common soldiers to take a new gamble. Samarobriva was both a major town and the main Frankish position on the river Somme. If Syagrius could take it, he could drastically increase Roman control of the river, thus much reducing future raiding and potentially serving as a bridgehead for rebuilding Roman authority in the shattered old lands of Belgica.

Informants in the city told him that the Frankish garrison force, at nine hundred dangerously outnumbered by the Romans, had declared their support for Childebert, son of Childeric, and the Chlodemer-ite faction that defended his claim to the throne. Since supporters of Childebert were now rapidly losing power (and the boy himself was being held captive by his uncle’s assassins in Tornacum), this left Samarobriva dangerously exposed. Capturing the city would also give Syagrius tremendous political leverage. He could use it to interfere in Frankish politics, perhaps lending his support to whatever faction was willing to legitimize his seizure of the city.

But first, he had to seize it.


*******


Strabo’s legs were drenched by the stink of his own urine as he drove his sword once more into the rib-cage of a Frankish warrior.

Twice he’d struck this bastard down, and twice he had risen up again, like a beast of the Devil, mouth spitting blood, eyes grey as ash, innards dripping out onto the muddy river bank. “Stay down this time you barbarian whoreson!” The young soldier screamed as he stomped his boot down hard on the man’s skull.

Even through the heavy leather he could feel the horrifying crunch of snapping bone.

This time the Frank did not get up.

But Strabo had no time to notice. His squad was still dangerously tied down against the river by the Frankish warriors. The General had assumed the Frankish forces would be all inside the city, ready to defend the main gate that extended to the Roman side of the river. Those men, like Strabo, sent across the river in makeshift rafts were supposed to be a surprise, noticed by the Franks only after they were already infiltrating the side-gates.

The General had been unaware of course, of the presence of several Frankish warbands camped in the woods near the Frankish side of the river. Those warbands were now giving the Romans hell.

Strabo ducked the swing of an enemy blade, responding in kind with a quick stab to the groin that brought his opponent down easily. Of the fifteen men he’d crossed with, he counted nine still standing, against ten, eleven Franks.

They’d win, of that he was still certain, but would Strabo live to see it?

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind, than he heard a welcoming sound from behind him.

Reinforcements were disembarking, another fifteen soldiers to help the fight.

The surviving Franks turned tail, and headed for the woods.

But there would be no rest for the Romans till the city was theirs. Strabo looked up and down the river to see that reinforcements, part of a reserve that The General had held for just such a reason as this, were now landing at several points across the river. Frankish warriors were being overwhelmed or fleeing for the woods. The ranking officer among the squad and their reinforcements gave the order to advance.

“To the city!”


******


Satisfied that the battle was firmly under control, Syagrius left his headquarters to the control of his legates, and rode through the broken gate and into the city. The remaining Frankish forces were attempting to defend the Forum and a handful of administrative buildings nearby. The flanking detachments, having triumphed over unexpected troubles, had successfully seized the side-gates, and taken control of the east of the town before the Franks inside even realized what was happening.

They were trapped.

And they would die.

Syagrius slowed his horse, as he approached the forward operating command established by his men in a small marketplace of the city.

“General! We were not expecting you so soon…” Barked Flavus, a skillful young commander originally from Britannia. “We are not quite ready to…”

“Relax Flavus. You’re doing fine.” A skilful young officer, Flavus often seemed to lack self-confidence. It was one of the things that Syagrius, so often surrounded by self-important blowhards, liked most about him. “Do we have them surrounded?”

“Yes sir. On all sides. There is no way for them to escape the city.”

“And they’re confined just to this area?” Syagrius gestured to a shaded region demarcated on a map of the city.

“Correct sir. We have evacuated most of the citizens from the contested ground, and we believe they should surrender within the hour.”

“Attack.”

“Excuse me sir?”

“You heard me. Attack. I want those barbarians dead. Now.”

Flavus considered arguing with his commander.

Considered.


******


Northern Gaul – Spring, 482



With the winter ended and the bloom of Spring beginning, Northern Gaul was visited by weeks of torrential downpour. The rain seemed without end, sending the great rivers of the region into flood, threatening the cities upon them. In Lutetia Parisorum, dozens died when the flooding Seine spread disease to the city’s water supply. In Samarobriva, newly conquered by the Roman army of Syagrius, the city was effectively divided when two bridges, damaged during the fighting to conquer the city, collapsed into the raging waters.

But all things end, even rain. As the ground dried and the rivers subsided, Gundahar, cousin to the King of the Burgundians, and the man most blamed for the chaos that had consumed the Kingdom of the Franks, rode out on another diplomatic mission.

The Franks would have no dealings with him. The Alemanni had tried to ally with Childeric, and the Visigoths were the very enemy that his cousin sought to counter.

So really there was only one place for Gundahar to go.

He rode for Noviodunum.

 

[ImperatorAlexander]

Great update as always!
How many troops does Syagrius have in total?

 

[Magnum]

awesome and very well written. I like how the story shows how much the Romans had fallen, that one of their greatest battles is fought with a couple of hundred men and each skirmish of a dozen or so warriors can prove decisive.

I bet Syagrius would love to be in command of Roman armies from even 50 years prior.

Also, the entire region seems very volatile and could probably swing whichever way.

 

[Berserker]

thats some fine story telling. for a second I thought I was reading a historybook.

 

[euromellows]

Great update. Do you have map of Syagrius' realm and the disintegrating Frankish kingdom? This is really quite good and I'm trying to picture the borders. I'm hoping that if Syagrius can get some victories on his board how sustainable his 'kingdom' would be.

Also has he any contact with the remaining (?) Romano-British, if they even exist during this period.

 

[mrhistory]

Map?

Excellent POD and very solid writing style. If you need to fill in some information on larger events to set your stage you may consider the faux history book approach from the future of your ATL, that seems to work well.

 

[shakaka36]

How many troops does Syagrius have in total?

Actually a somewhat difficult question. In the first half of the 5th century, when regularly still fighting Imperial forces, a lot of the Barbarian groups could put up to about 20,000 men on the field. Those forces of course varied in quality from hardened military professionals (often with experience in the Roman army) to reservists more comfortable with a plow than a sword. Although they rarely had need to mobilize those kinds of forces in the second half of the century, I assume they still had the kind of manpower base necessary to do so if pressed.

Going off that we can try to supplement the meager historical information we have. Given its ability to (for a few decades) fend off serious barbarian attack in our period, but also noting its eventual failure, I would put the total available military forces in Syagrius's realm at around 15,000.

That said, Syagrius is not going to be able to actually fight with an army like that. For one thing many of those men are needed on semi-permanent guard duty on the various frontiers. Others are under the command of subordinates whose willingness to follow Syagrius's orders is very limited.

At this point, the 3,000 odd men that he mobilized to fight along the Somme is probably the largest feasible field army for him at this point. Now faced with a major defensive crisis he could definitely do better than that, but on an 'elective' campaign, he's quite limited. But of course given the importance of the political constraint, a change in political affairs in the Domain could easily change his ability to mobilize troops.

awesome and very well written. I like how the story shows how much the Romans had fallen, that one of their greatest battles is fought with a couple of hundred men and each skirmish of a dozen or so warriors can prove decisive.

I bet Syagrius would love to be in command of Roman armies from even 50 years prior.

Also, the entire region seems very volatile and could probably swing whichever way.

I like the idea of showing some 'little guy' battle perspectives. Fundamentally, no matter how large the force you're fighting in, for individual soldiers a lot of whether you live or die is dependent on you and the couple of people standing either side of you.

I actually like to think of the region as having a being under a kind of 'Stability of Impotence' effect. Yes every political regime is relatively weak, and vulnerable to being swept away. But because that's true of every regime in Gaul (without a great and willing to take risks leader like Clovis), nobody is really in a position to seriously undermine everyone else.

To really swing things, you need either some external stimuli, or some coalition formation.

Great update. Do you have map of Syagrius' realm and the disintegrating Frankish kingdom? This is really quite good and I'm trying to picture the borders. I'm hoping that if Syagrius can get some victories on his board how sustainable his 'kingdom' would be.

Also has he any contact with the remaining (?) Romano-British, if they even exist during this period.

At this stage you're just as well off looking at an OTL map for the 470s/early 480s. No real 'division' of the Frankish regime on a territorial basis has happened yet, with a lot of people still hopeful the succession can be resolved at court. And while Syagrius's seizure of Amiens is a major win for him, it doesn't really change the border since that city was right next to his territory to begin with.

In a few years we may have a few more changes to show, and then I'm planning on doing a (likely poorly drawn) map.

As for the Romano-British, they are very much around. They have only limited contacts with Gaul right now, but look for that to change soon...

Excellent POD and very solid writing style. If you need to fill in some information on larger events to set your stage you may consider the faux history book approach from the future of your ATL, that seems to work well.

Going forward I will definitely be using the faux history book approach at times.

 

[RGB]

So far so good, and I love the detail (like that bit about the bridges).

 

[shakaka36]

Sorry about the lack of updated guys, RL has me a little snowed under. Hope to get a couple out this week though.

 

[euromellows]

I await eagerly with anticipation.

 

[forget]

This TL creates something beautiful by choosing to apply itself to the only truly worthy lost cause in the entirety of history.

Let the Roman Empire be reborn.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Another good update.

If I have one (very minor!) criticism, it's that a lot of the names you give the Romans seem somewhat outdated. They call to mind soldiers of the Late Republic and Principate, rather than of the fifth and sixth centuries. Perhaps a few more Christian and Greek names might be good to see?

 

[shakaka36]

If I have one (very minor!) criticism, it's that a lot of the names you give the Romans seem somewhat outdated. They call to mind soldiers of the Late Republic and Principate, rather than of the fifth and sixth centuries. Perhaps a few more Christian and Greek names might be good to see?

Absolutely, I had been thinking about this myself. Apart from Albinus, whose stuffy old name (complete with 'Aurelius' to signify his family got its citizenship under Caracalla) is a representative of what a stuffy old man he is, I really should be using later names. My only defense is I'm very fond of old Roman names

More Christian names are definitely in order, but as far as Greek ones go, since all the Romans we've dealt with so far are from the Northwest of the old Empire, I assume that Greek names would not be that common.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Absolutely, I had been thinking about this myself. Apart from Albinus, whose stuffy old name (complete with 'Aurelius' to signify his family got its citizenship under Caracalla) is a representative of what a stuffy old man he is, I really should be using later names. My only defense is I'm very fond of old Roman names

More Christian names are definitely in order, but as far as Greek ones go, since all the Romans we've dealt with so far are from the Northwest of the old Empire, I assume that Greek names would not be that common.

Ha, well, I guess that's reasonable!

From my readings, the most common "old style" names still in existence in the sixth century were Flavius, Aurelius and Tiberius. Flavius in particular had become something of a prestige name, as it was associated with Constantine the Great, with Aurelius a more "common" one.

As for Greek names, Theo- was quite common in all its forms. A good place to look for ideas of names could be the lists of Popes between about 300 and 700, as the Papacy prior to the tenth century tended to be ruled by priests who retained their given name.

 

[Berserker]

what about Romans with Barbarian names??

 

[Ofaloaf]

Say, Shakaka, have you had a crack at Penny MacGeorge's "Late Roman Warlords"? It has a dashed good section on Northern Gaul, and discusses the probable shape of "Soissons" at the time.

what about Romans with Barbarian names??

How many Romans with Barbarian names were there? All I think of that are related to the area are Arbogast, a recipient of a letter by Sidonius Apollinaris who lived in Trier and may have been either a Frank or Roman, and Hubaldus of Rouen, mentioned only briefly in MacGeorge's work, apparently from another letter of Sidonius' that I haven't been able to find so far.

 

[Grouchio]

When's the next update? Can we have some frankish pictures sometime?

 

[shakaka36]

Sorry guys.. Things just keep blowing up and blowing up at work, and so i'm running behind. Still hoping to have the next update up in the next 48 hours. Hopefully by mid-week next week all this **** will be under control and I can get back on a decent writing/research schedule.

what about Romans with Barbarian names??

I don't imagine that their would have been too many in this period. Perhaps in the future we will see some romanized barbarian names however...

Say, Shakaka, have you had a crack at Penny MacGeorge's "Late Roman Warlords"? It has a dashed good section on Northern Gaul, and discusses the probable shape of "Soissons" at the time.

I read it a few years ago at University, though I concede I don't have a perfect recollection of it, nor access to a copy. A focus on 'Roman warlords' is obviously a major focus of this TL, at least early on. Given the decided lack of evidence for the period, I am trying to embrace the spirit of the period as much as possible, while accepting that reflecting the precise history is all but impossible. On the point of Soissons, I have given Syagrius more or less the traditionally accepted borders for the Domain, while also underlining his relative administrative weakness and making clear that he operates in a context where he is heavily constrained by the existence of other powerful Roman warlords.

Btw, are you still working on your CKII mod?

When's the next update? Can we have some frankish pictures sometime?

What do you mean by "pictures"? A Map? A map will be forthcoming in a couple of updates, because honestly, at this particular stage a map of the area would not differ in any particularly meaningful way from a map of OTL at approximately this time.