Verse XLVII: The gallant Harald in the field
Verse XLVII: The gallant Harald in the field
- - -
“We may well say God save the Empire because nothing will save Emperor Harald.”
- King Constance of Bavaria, 971
- - -
Taken from:
“The Chronicle of Emperor Harald.”
In humanist terms both Emperors lost the Battle of the Two Emperors. But, in more realistic terms, Harald lost.
The battle of the Two Emperors was a terrible battle. Both armies were of equal size and used similar equipment, as the crossbow was dominant in both the west and east. The two armies assembled at Perugia, facing each other. The Greeks had positioned themselves with a forest protecting their eastern flank, whilst the Germans position was more exposed.
Harald decided to march his army forward to attack the Greeks rather then wait for the Greeks. Why Harald did such a rash and foolish act is unknown, although in the years after the battle the story circulated that on the night before the battle Harald was visited by the ghost of Rudolph the Great, who blamed him for the fall of Rome and the destruction of the Empire. The only way that Harald could be forgiven for such an act would be to kill the Greek Emperor and retake Rome.
Harald lead the charge, at the head of his huscarls, charging his heavily armoured knights into the Greeks western line, whilst the eastern wing, comprised of the Infantry heavy 4th Imperial Legion engaged the Greek eastern line. Harald hoped to push against the flanks of the Greek army whilst leaving his centre weak, so as to fool the Greeks into being surrounded. When the Greeks would push at the weak centre the Trans-Elbian cavalry, lead by Prince Stephen the Scarred, son of the Duke Michael of Polania would then push forward, to reinforce the weak centre of the German line.
Haralds horsemen, organised into the tightly packed cunei grouping, charged at the Greeks first by hailing them with javelins before hacking away with their swords and spears. For the first hour the battle went in Harald’s favour. His quick manoeuvring prevented the Greeks from unleashing Greek fire before attacking. Unbeknownst to the Germans several forces of Anabasii, the light horsemen of mostly Patzinak origin, had been kept in reserve by the Greek Emperor, and he sent them to sweep down on the engaged Germans. When the German line slackened the heavy Bulgarian Cavalry, the Klibanophoros, moved through the Greek infantry and with couched lances (a novelty in Germany at this time) and charged into the eastern arm of the German army. In normal circumstances the German troops would have formed a shield wall to hold against cavalry charge, but as they were already fighting they were slain by the Klibanophoros. Those not slain were stuck with fear. Their training failed them, and they fell into cowardice and fled the battle, and the eastern flank of Haralds army collapsed. The Burgundian and Lombard levees followed.
In the face of this Duke Otto of Frizlar, commander of the centre of the German army decided to send the Legions under his command to the aid of the Emperor. His troops were the freshest of all those in Haralds army, especially the Frankish knights. They approached the Greek lines in a loose formation more suited to tournaments rather then open battle. When this was realised the knights reformed into cunei, but in the confusion they lost form and the Greeks attacked them, cutting them down.
Prince Stephen’s forces remained away from the main force of the battle, and upon witnessing the loss of much of the German Army Stephen decided to abandon the fight. His fled from Perugia, abandoning Emperor Harald.
The Greek army had suffered greatly in the battle. Unlike their comrades in the eastern wing there were Pikemen in the western part of the German line. The pikemen maintained their structure and courage, and deflected the Klibanophoros attacks, many dying upon their pikes. The Emperor Nikolaos ordered the centre of his line to fall back in a feint, to lure the Germans in. In an ordinary battle the Germans would have followed, but because of the loss of the eastern flank the commanders were unwilling to risk an advance forwards without effective defence along the entire line. With the collapse of the eastern flank the Greeks prepared to flank Otto and Harald.
Harald was isolated, surrounded by the advancing Greek army. Upon seeing the collapse of his eastern flank his spirit left him. He ordered the retreat from the field of battle, and guarded by his huscarls he retreated back to his camp where he met Duke Otto and the remainder of his army. Despair gripped the Emperor, and he removed his armour, throwing away his sword and spear. He dressed himself in the simple habit of a monk and simply walked out of the camp. In the chaos and confusion of dismantling the camp in the face of the Greek army his disappearance was not noted.
There are various stories about where Harald ended up. Following the Battle of the Two Emperors, the most popular being that Harald entered one of the many monasteries of Italy. Some suggested that the Anabasii scouts would have encountered him and killed him for any food he carried, as they had with so many other peasants they encountered in Italy. The truth is that we may never know what happened to Harald. The Chronicler George of Umbria suggested that Harald was one of the abbots of Saint Vincenzo al Volturno abbeys, such as at Saint Clemente at Casauria.
Thus did the Emperor Harald leave the pages of history.
- - -
Taken from:
“930-1230: The Creation of modern Europe.”
By Michael von Nuremburg, 1390
After the Battle of the Two Emperors the German army under the control of Duke Otto of Fritzar was in a perilous position. Its strength had been sapped from the battle and could not face the Greeks in open battle. The only open was to retreat north, out of Latinum and into northern Italy. Duke Otto sought orders from the Imperial Government. However, with both the Emperor and the King of the Romans dead (or in the case of Harald, missing) then Otto looked to the Consol of the Germans for his orders. Otto was a solid supporter of the Empire. He had entered the Imperial Army early in life, and was loyal to the Emperor first, and had few tribal loyalties. He marched north, arriving at Milan with a broken army in January 972. His soldiers were essential for keeping the order in northern Italy during Lent. He faced down the Italian lords who horded their grain, organised the garrisoning of the fortifications along the Po River, and reviving the peace in Northern Italy. In April he received summons from the Consul of the Germans to attend the Placitum Generalis, the first session of the Imperial Diet for a year.
Leaving Italy in the hands of his lieutenants and the surviving palatine officials of the former Kingdom of Italy, Duke Otto marched north to Karlsburg.
- - -
Taken from:
“The Eastern Empire after Simeon I”
By James von Werden, 1393
In Constantinople the mood had turned against the war. Despite the Bulgarian influence on the Greeks the military thinking of the Greeks relied on only going to war when politics and diplomacy had failed, and otherwise it was to be avoided at all costs. When war was to be engaged, it was to be for defensive or to avenge a wrong. So from that point of view the war in Italy had been a stunning success, avenging the attack on Corcyra by Emperor Harald, and bringing Southern Italy back into the fold.
Emperor Nikolaos returned to Constantinople at Christmastime, and he was welcomed in the city as a hero, but trouble lurked in the Eastern Empire. The Paulican heresy had erupted in a new guise, that of the Bogomil heresy [1], named after its Bulgarian founder, one of those many crazed monks that emerged in the Greek lands throughout the centuries.
The Bogomil heresy was based on the dualistic heresy of the Paulicans of Armenia combined with those who sought Church Reform in Bulgaria. The language of the Greek Church was (surprisingly) Greek, and in the Bulgarian themes the Greek language was spoken by the upper echelons of society, and in the towns that were re-settled by Greeks from Anatolia or the Aegean coast. Therefore the Slavic peasantry were isolated from the church, which lead to misinterpretation and confusion of the scriptures, and the dualism of Paulicanism found many supporters in the Slavic peasants.
The new form of Paulicanism was therefore tarnished with anti-Greek motives. The Bulgarian Monk Bogomil transcribed the new testament into Bulgarian vernacular in 963, and later throughout the Bulgarian lands vernacular scriptures appeared more frequently. As the various Emperors occupied the throne during that decade, the fact that the Paulicans were peaceful group meant that the secular authorities bore them little thought, although another Paulican sect in Aachea was destroyed by Nikoloas during his first years as Emperor.
However the appointment of Philip Argos as Patriarch of Constantinople laid the seeds for the Bogomil Revolt. Argos was radically opposed to the Paulican creeds, especially the Bogomils for their use of Bulgarian scripture. When Emperor Nikoloas went to war in 970 in Italy Nikoloas began his campaign against the Bogomils. The elderly monk Bogomil was arrested for heresy and imprisoned in Constantinople, whilst Bogomil villages in Macedonia were destroyed, with the prefects hunted down and executed. As the majority of the Bogomils were Bulgarian, Bulgarians who did not follow the Paulican heresy flocked to the banner of Bogomil the Martyr. In Thrace a vast peasant army was formed. Nominally it was lead by John of Servia, a former priest from the town of Servia in the Duchy of Salonica. After converting to Paulicanism he wandered Bulgaria preaching to those who would listen. John hoped to use the peasants to form a perfect Paulican community. They would march across the Bulgarian lands gathering people and supplies, and would arrive in the Vlach lands north of the Danube, where Imperial control was reliant upon a series of undermanned forts, the most famous being that of Asprokastron, the White Castle. It was even hoped that they would march into the steppe and be free from all secular and ecclesiastical control of Constantinople.
However, as Alcuin told St Charles the Great in the year 800:
“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
The great Bogomil army attacked churches, monasteries, towns and farms. Like a cloud of locusts they carved a wave of destruction across Thrace and Macedonia. The Bulgarian Tagama Army was ordered out against the Bogomils. However peasants warned the Bogomils of the approach of the Imperial Army, and the Bogomils scattered into the countryside, retreating to marshy or mountainous terrain to continue their war. The cause of the Bogomil revolt had started as religious but had now turned to one of race. [2]
Faced with this war at home Emperor Nikoloas withdrew from Italy. The territories held by the Greeks at that time became part of the Exarch of Benevento [3], a territory that was legally part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The border between the Exarch and the Western Empire was set from Viterbo in the west, Spoleto in central Italy to Ascoli in the east. He also held the eastern coast of Sicily along with the towns of Ragusa and Gela along the southern coastline. The western portion of the island was held by the Emir of Ifriqiya, who had sought an allegiance with the Eastern Emperor to destroy the Western Empire.
- - -
Taken from:
“Early modern Italy: From Exarch to Commune.”
By various, edited by the brothers of St. Gall
The former King of Italy, Andrew of Venice had changed his allegiance from Karlsburg to Constantinople, hoping to maintain his rule no matter which Emperor commanded Italy. He made his capital at the fortress of Benevento, and was named Exarch of Italy by the Eastern Emperor Nikoloas. In May 972 he held his first court, where he proclaimed that every year his vassals and gastalfs had to provide soldiers and material for two campaigns each year against the Western Emperor in the north. He granted the merchants of Amalfi, Naples and Gaeta great freedoms to encourage the recovery of trade through the port cities. Corn and olive oil were exported to Constantinople, as they had for centuries, and silk production was encouraged across southern Italy. The Venetian kings of Italy had discouraged the growth of mulberry trees and the silk industry in Italy, as domestically produced silk, carried north to the great fairs of Milan and Genoa. The Venetians imported silk from the Eastern Empire, and so the rise of Italian silk hurt the Venetian economy.
So as Exarch Andrew had reversed his attitudes and actions that he had taken as King, which had been aimed at enriching Venice, but he also needed to secure his control over his lands. Southern Italy had been only controlled by a series of vassalage and benefices to a greater degree to that of the north, and Andrew was able to exercise great personal control by granting the royal vassals of the court benefices and land. He guaranteed the fiscal and jurisdictional privileges of the influential Abbey of Saint Vincent of Volturno. The Exarch also made all other monasteries under his rule subservient to Saint Vincent of Volturno, including those within the walls of Rome herself. These acts bought the allegiance of the Monastery of Saint Vincent of Volturno…
- - -
Taken from:
‘Ecclesiastical Estates and the rebirth of trade in early modern Europe.”
By Urban of Tours, 1432
The Abbey of Saint Vincent of Volturno
The Abbey of Saint Vincent of Volturno had been a powerful force in southern Italy for two hundred years, as since 800 the abbey had owned large estates across the Beneventum. Capitalising on its position at the foot of the mountains, the monks of Saint Vincenzo obtained the dairy products of the mountain folk to exchange for the cereals and the animal products of the costal lowlands. With the spread of money based rather then the barter economy of the Dark Ages the Abbey became and important trading fair in southern Italy during the 10th Century. The monks acted as witnesses to the trade, requiring only a small tariff on goods other then grains or dairy products. The monks themselves produced many goods such as glassware and fine liturgical metalwork. From 973 the monks began to produce fine silks as well.
During the Second Sicilian Crisis the abbey possessions were deliberately ignored by the forces of the Eastern Emperor, as the monastery had not been keen on the Latin rite or filioque, and had been a prominent opposer to the fourth Lateran Council in southern Italy. To Emperor Nikoloas the Abbey presented a significant ally. But with this sign of immunity many landowners near the Saint Vincent
terra offered their lands to the Abbey so that they may seek protection from the Eastern Emperors ravaging army. With the enlargement of the
terra the town of Isernia fell under the jurisdiction of the Abbey. To protect the villages and farms under its control the Abbot allowed for the raising of a militia force from the freemen of the
terra.
The monks of Saint Vincent sponsored the settlement of villages in its
terra granting leases in exchange for the settlers clearing woodland and developing it into mixed farmland. with the ban on mulberry and silk production lifted by the Exarchs of Benevento, mulberry tree plantations were encouraged, and by the turn of the millennium the brothers of Saint Vincent were producing not only mulberries themselves, but had begun to produce raw silk. Whilst they would not produce silk of a great quantity to compete with other growers in Apulia and Cambria, but the silk of Saint Vincent was used exclusively by the bishop of Rome.
However as the new millennium dawned the monks of Saint Vincent were about to change yet again, the economically minded brothers and the merchants of Amalfi, Gaeta and Naples would become stabled together.
- - -
“Ten years ago, these Saracens and Greeks wouldn't dare cross us Germans. I mean, what happened?”
- Consul of the Germans Henry the wise, addressing the 972 Placitum Generalis.
- - -
[1] IOTL the term Bogomil was not used to describe the Bogomils until well into the 11th Century.
[2] TTL version of Bogomilism is more militant then OTL, which IOTL was fairly peaceful.
[3] Although Andrew would use the title Exarch of Italy rather then Exarch of Benevento at this stage.
- - -
Thoughts?
And yes, I promise that there will be a map of Italy coming shortly now that it has settled down a bit.